For the week of November 28, 2001
GRAPEVINE, Tex. (UPI) -- Oh no! Not the old plot about the electronic zapping device that gets flushed down the toilet of an airliner passing over San
Francisco, crashes through the fuselage, and lands in the storage room of an aerobics fitness center where two personal trainers are making the sign of
the triple-deltoid burrowing Nautilus machine!
*
To check out Joe Bob's voluminous guide to all the B movies
ever made, go to www.joebobbriggs.com or email him at
JoeBob@upi.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.
Yes, indeed, they don't make sex farces like that anymore-- unless you're Alain Siritzky, the guy responsible for that new "Emanuelle" series, who likes
his women insatiable and his men hunky and his photographers armed with plenty of slow-motion film and gauzy filters.
I speak of "The Ultimate Attraction," the sensitive and moving story of an almost bankrupt health spa that staves off a hostile takeover by advertising
"The Orgasmic Workout," which gives new meaning to the term "pelvic thrusts." B-movie queen Gabriella Hall is the Spandex-clad mastermind behind a
plot to use the sex clicker--which looks like a cross between a child's cell phone toy and a TV remote control--to send otherwise sober and responsible
fitness crazies into instantaneous monkey-dancing on the bench press.
There's a skeletal plot here, written by the legendary New York director/producer Rolfe Kanefsky, who made the teens-in-the- woods classic
"There's Something Out There." But it's the subtle direction of Rafael Glenn--I mean, how many guys need a Steadicam for the sex scenes?--that brings out
the haunting beauty of, for example, the "juice bar" scene. (You don't wanna know.)
Actually, I thought they stopped making these around the year 1983, when "Screwballs" came out, but apparently there's always a new generation of
filmmakers who ask the eternal question, "What would happen if I had a weapon that could make women take their clothes off and have sex with me at
any moment?" (It gets lonely on the Internet.)
Mostly it's an excuse for endless scenarios for ever more bizarre combinations of Eroticus Aardvarkus, with the occasional technical malfunction (Don't
take the clicker into a sauna) and the old "What would happen if it got stuck in the light socket?" sequence. Nina Leichtling plays the prim corporate
raider who, we know, will get her zap in the end.
In other words, they do make em, even in the new millennium. Because they're are some things you just never get tired of drooling over. Taylor St.
Claire, as a bio-engineered mutant caused by a clicker malfunction, has two of them.
Sixty-three breasts. Multiple aardvarking. Spandex fondling. Pull-down press abuse. Stair-machine ecstasy. Two orgies. Gratuitous art-gallery nude
body-painting. Crowbar Fu. Lesbo Fu. Tongue Fu. Drive-In Academy Awards for Rolfe Kanefsky, for writing the line "I am not a piece of meat who
can perform on cue!"; Gabriella Hall, for providing the arc of the movie, mostly in various stages of undress; Rick Jordan, as the would-be health spa
saboteur who says "Pamela, this is not the time! We're in the middle of a felony!"; Kiva, as Pamela, for ignoring Rick; Nina Leichtling, as the corporate
raider, for saying "You are such a beast!"; and Jacqueline Lovell, for her two enormous talents.
Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out.
"The Ultimate Attraction" website: none.
© Copyright 2001 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs