Everybody's Doing It...or Are They?

Zandalee

This is the film that finally answers the question, "How many people really want to see Judge Reinhold's naked butt?" The resounding answer is: none. Perhaps that's why this movie went straight to video.

The plot of Zandalee is even more improbable than its title. Judge Reinhold is a poet who can't fuck. Nic Cage is an artist who can't paint. They've been friends since they were little boys on the bayou, and now they're both lusting after Zandalee (yes, it's a name!), who is married to Reinhold, but begins an affair with Cage, who knows how to talk dirty. Got it?

The you-never-heard-of-her-before-and-probably-never-will-again Erika Anderson plays Zandalee with a range that goes from blank to blanker. She's like a girl in a snuff film who has no idea what's about to happen to her. To make up for her lack of talent, she prances around each scene with most or all of her clothes off. (This is the best part of the movie.)

Cage utters lines like, "We're inevitable. I want to shake you naked and eat you alive, Zandalee," and, "You want it and I want to give it to you. It's a perfect relationship." He and Zandalee also have conversations, like when he asks her, "Why'd you marry him?" When she replies, "Because he was a poet," Cage asks, "Isn't this poetry?" as he's slipping his fingers into her underpants. Who are we to argue? But when my friend Val heard Cage say, "When I go in my kitchen and I make toast, I smell your skin," she went berserk. "Did he say toast? Toast? Why would anyone fuck this guy? And if they did, why in hell would they admit it?"

Now, when it comes to determining whether Anderson and Cage were really having sex in front of the camera, or were just acting, there are a lot of scenes to consider. The inspired lovers have sex in an alley, sex on a clothes dryer (while Judge is in the next room talking to his family, for chrissakes) and, the coup de grace, sex in a church. Since Cage looked to us in all these exchanges of bodily fluid as if he hadn't showered in a month, we considered the possibility that no actress would ever have really fucked him on- or off-camera. But, after end-less watchings, Val and I agreed that the sex here was real, mainly because it's the only time Erika Anderson didn't look like she was in a coma.

9 1/2 Weeks

This is one of the most odious movies ever made. I have nothing against degradation and violence, as long as Mickey Rourke isn't the perpetrator. Here he is, once again (remember Wild Orchid?), as one of the world's richest men. Kim Basinger is an art dealer. He wants to take care of her: brush her hair, choose her clothes, blindfold her when they make love, force her to crawl across the floor, picking up dollar bills he's dropped. And you thought you were having fun in your private life!

Basinger likes it. He sticks foreign objects in her mouth--cherries, hot peppers, Jell-O. She swallows. He screws her on a genuine Frank Lloyd Wright dining table. They don't worry about scratching the finish. He screws her in back of some giant clock tower. They're not afraid of heights. He screws her in the rain, with water sluicing down all around. Neither of them catches cold. There's something that looks very much like spittle on Rourke's lips throughout, which Basinger seems to find appealing.

Could Kim Basinger have really done it with Mickey Rourke? Although I would be personally offended to find out she did, I wouldn't be surprised. But in the end, my friend Kari and I found nothing believable in this film, except the zits on Rourke's face.

Body Heat

I have always wished that the rumors about Kathleen Turner and William Hurt were true, if only because Turner had never been this thin and sexy before, and was never to be again, so I've always hoped that she got a little bang out of the buck, if you know what I mean.

There are three or four memorable sex scenes in this movie, especially the first one, where Hurt smashes in the window to Turner's house and takes her on the floor. But my friends and I all agreed that the scene that sticks out (pardon the pun) is when they're in bed, and the camera is overhead, and Turner reaches under the covers to ... rub him. You sure can't see any panty line, and it seems that what she grabs definitely belongs to Mr. Hurt. Well, anyway, it's a wonderful scene, and if they are just acting, they're both crazier than I thought.

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