- Directed by Tom DeSimone
- Written by Mark Rosin
- Starring
- Candace Rialson
- Larry Gelman
- Jane Kean
- Perry Bullington
It’s once again time for the B-Masters Cabal to do unmeasurable damage to the critical discourse of cinema — another roundtable! This time around, we’ve decided to dissect movies which feature unruly and overly willful body parts. Thus, when you’re done here, the following selections are available for your perusal:
| And You Call Yourself a Scientist! | Severed Ties (1992) |
| B-Notes | The Frozen Dead (1966) |
| The Bad Movie Report | The Beast With Five Fingers (1946) |
| Badmovies.org | Soul Vengeance (1975) |
| Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension | They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968) |
| Opposable Thumb Films | The Eye (1993) |
| Stomp Tokyo | The Storm Riders (1998) |
| Teleport City | Fiend Without a Face (1958) |
But before you go anywhere…
We’ve all had it happen: we come up with something clever to say to impress someone in the conversation, we wait and wait for just the proper time to use it, we spit it out enthusiastically — and seventh-tenths of a second later, a previously dormant section of gray matter comes to life and lets you know (confirmed by the looks on the faces around you) that what you just said may qualify as one of the top ten dumbest utterances to escape human lips.
This entire movie’s like that. Everyone involved gave their all to make a film that they must have thought was wonderful, witty, daring, provocative, and all those other good adjectives. They put the finishing touches on, stepped back, and suddenly realized:
“We just made an entire movie about a talking vagina.”
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“Why can’t you keep your cell phone in your purse like ordinary women?” |
That’s right, folks; this is the movie that was quietly released by American Independent (which doesn’t normally do anything quietly), and then quietly given a single video release by Vestron. Every once in a while you see it on the racks of a video store that obviously doesn’t know what the movie is, or they would have jettisoned it long ago. Copies come up only so often on eBay, and then they go for outrageous prices, more because there’s that whole crap-cinema fan base these days, who just can’t resist finding out how bad a movie about a talking vagina can be.
That’s my job, folks.
The possessor of this miraculous organ is a hairdresser named Penny, played by Candice Rialson. Candice was last seen around these parts in Candy Stripe Nurses (1974), playing a young self-assured fox who takes off her clothes a lot. Here, for a change of pace, she plays an unsure and not particularly bright fox who takes her clothes a lot. In fact, the first scene has Penny in bed, enjoying the embraces of her slightly nebbish boyfriend Ted (Perry Bullington, who has made his living as Charles Band’s casting director for the last decade). And it’s right about here that a voice makes itself heard from Penny’s nether regions, criticizing Ted’s performance with acerbic wit. Penny, distraught, tries to hush it, but Ted takes umbrage and leaves.
Nothing like starting things with a bang, I always say.
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Gee, thanks. I really appreciate the local color. |
Penny goes to work, where further hijinks ensue, especially with an obviously lesbian client. Losing her job in the ensuing “scuffle,” she goes to a psychiatrist, the stubby Dr. Pearl (Larry Gelman) and, er, bares her problem to him. He’s so shocked by what he sees and hears — especially when the errant organ breaks forth into song — that he forgets that whole doctor/patient confidentiality thing and immediately starts calling showbiz types.
The upshot is a grand announcement made in front of a meeting of the AMA, which involves Penny strapped naked to a tilting table, while her vagina (dubbed “Virginia” at this point) belts out showtunes, accompanied by a goggle-eyed backup band. (Pearl describes Penny’s condition as defying “every law of science.” Try as I might, I can’t understand how a vagina that thinks it’s Mae West violates, for example, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.)
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USA! USA! USA! |
From this point, Dr. Pearl becomes a doctor-agent, arranging publicity that rockets Penny — or rather, Virginia — to stardom. All of this is over Penny’s feeble objections; as Dr. Pearl patiently explains, Virginia is the personification of the libido and other impulses that have been repressed by her conservative upbringing, and thus letting Virginia express herself is good and healthy and natural (and lucrative, naturally). Now, it’s been a couple of decades since this was made, and the whole “Free Love” thing has had a chance to die back from its fever pitch, so I might be looking at this from more sane eyes than was intended, but even in the ’70s I find it hard to believe that anyone could swallow this pseudo-feminist rhetoric as being grounds to strap a clearly reluctant girl to a table naked in front of an assembly of doctors…
Her first big showbiz break comes on the Professor Irwin Corey Show (hosted by erstwhile real-life comedian Irwin Corey — I was going to complain about his lame brand of humor, but then I remembered that my generation has given the world Adam Sandler and Tom Green). Here we see the gimmick that’s going to make it possible for Virginia to play broadcast TV: When Penny lifts her skirt, Virginia is covered with a strapless, self-adhesive bikini-bottom kind of thing — sort of a cross between a pasty and a codpiece. She belts out a hideous disco number called “Wang Dang Doodle,” and her stardom is assured. (Special thanks to Neil Sedaka for the music. Thanks. Thanks a whole freakin’ heap.)
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You want nudity? Fine — I got yer nudity right here. |
What follows is the expected whirlwind montage of her cross-country tour, complete with spinning newspaper headlines, planes and trains, and naturally, shots of Virginia dressed in a different codpiece for each occasion, including a major league baseball game and, apparently, the White House (last year, I could have believed it — but during the Carter administration?!?). Yes, the double entendres are flying fast and furious, especially with the headline that reads “Police Close Virginia’s Opening.”
You’d think that some semblance of sanity would be restored when Penny’s scandalized mother (Jane Kean) shows up, but once she hears about the dollars that are rolling in, she’s perfectly happy to open Penny’s coat for the photographers. “I’m their mother,” she says proudly to anyone who’ll listen.
With Penny becoming more and more the appendage to Virginia (instead of the other way ’round), can Penny ever regain the semblance of a normal life? Will she be able to go out in public without autograph hounds speaking directly to her groin? Will she be able to patch things up with Ted?
Shucks, you don’t think I’m going to tell, do you?
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“Aagh! My eyes! His jacket! My eyes!” |
It’s movies like this that make you realize how much things have changed in Hollywood in 25 years. A movie like this would never get made these days, no way, no how — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s most useful service to humanity is to provide a quick reference source for every euphemism for the vagina ever conceived, and every expression for sex and cunnilingus (yes, including “join me for lunch at the Y”). That, and the opportunity to see Candice Rialson’s breasts more often than you ever thought possible. But even then, you’ve got a nice pair of breasts surrounded by, well, the ’70s. It’s not a pleasant combination. Godawful music (the aforementioned “Wang Dang Doodle” — twice — and a production number called “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo” being the <ahem> centerpieces), hideous clothing, situations even tackier than the initial premise calls for (unless you don’t think a good-natured gang-bang with the entire high school basketball team is tacky), and a boom mike seen so often in the first ten minutes it should have gotten a supporting credit… Granted, there are much worse offenses to human culture to come out of the ’70s, but that’s like saying that Mussolini was nowhere near as nasty as Hitler.
And add to that a warped take on feminist free-love ideology, and you’ve got a movie that functions best as an artifact of an incomprehensible decade, and an icon for the phrase, “Never Again.”
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 0
- breasts: 2 (over and over again)
- explosions: 0
- dream sequences: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- popping champagne corks: far, far too many
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- Arlene Martel (Marlene, the lesbian client) played “T’Pring” in the classic episode “Amok Time” (I guess that’s why she wasn’t into Spock)
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