Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation (2008)

Due to the success of the irreverent, trashy-vulgar mid-80s teen sex screwball comedy Bachelor Party (1984) which starred young actor Tom Hanks, there had to be a sequel - although over 20 years later.

This sex comedy was a direct-to-DVD reimagined 'sequel' 24 years later about a three-day party in Miami. It was released in an R-rated and unrated version.

The plot was predictable - a couple (dating for two months) was about to be married:

• Ron (Josh Cooke)
• Melinda (Sara Foster)

Ron celebrated his last moments of bachelorhood with a party hosted by his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Todd (Warren Christie).

A weekend in Miami involved lots of topless females (non-main cast members) including:

• nude shower buddies
• bare-breasted flight attendants
• unclothed strippers
• topless golf caddies

[See other entries: "Raunchy Teen-Sex Comedies of the 1980s."]

The Cook (2008)

Director Gregg Simon's film was a typical, unexceptional B-movie slasher/horror film (and black comedy) with sexually-hungry, stereotypical female characters in a cutely-named Lambda Epsilon Zeta (LEZ) sorority house. Its clever tagline revealed the plot premise:

"Sorority Babes: The Other White Meat."

During a spring break, while everyone departed for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, eight of the horny, partying, trash-talking coeds were left behind at the beginning of the vacation recess.

A new handsome 'hungry' Hungarian cook (Mark Hengst) began working for the house, soon revealed to be a homicidal maniac. He was cooking up gourmet meals from the cannibalized flesh of dead sorority sisters and feeding them to the other unsuspecting girls.

The film was an excuse for three nude scenes, basically.

• Brooke (Nina Fehren), a topless, flat-chested, brunette lesbian student laid back as two girls on either side of the bed consumed a tequila body shot off of her stomach.
• Brooke also luxuriated in a bubble bath where she furiously masturbated herself, while she was unknowingly peeped upon. The stranger came upon the naughty girl and murdered her.
• Kristen (Brooke Lenzi), a shy and religiously zealous blonde, performed as a slave in a sexual S&M bondage scene; she was persuaded, after some lesbian kissing earlier, to be chained in a room, blindfolded, wearing only a bra and panties; she was with her red-headed dominatrix partner Anastasia (Penny Drake), who removed her top. Afterwards, while still bound, the mad cook killed her.

Diary of a Nymphomaniac (2008, Sp.) (aka Diario de una Ninfómana, or Insatiable – Diary of a Sex Addict)

Director Christian Molina's erotic romantic melodrama, a tale of self-discovery, was adapted by screenwriter Cuca Canals from French author Valérie Tasso's novel, Insatiable: The Sexual Adventures of a French Girl in Spain. The psychological arthouse film conveyed problems with the double standard of sex for men and women, and sought to preach gender equality in regards to sex.

[Note: This film was not to be confused with the soft-core Diary of a Sex Addict (2001), a direct-to-digital video release, about a male sex addict.]

It chronicled, as the title described, the promiscuous sexual adventures of a late 20 year-old, hedonistic thin French girl named Valére (Val) (Belén Fabra) with a tremendous sexual appetite.

Without any emotional connection, her hypersexual life was composed of a series of bold sexual encounters (in parks, cemeteries, and hotels) with a number of various men, during one-night stands, affairs, and random acquaintances. Partners included frequent trysts with Alex (David Vert) and Barcelonian Hassan (Pedro Gutierrez).

Val's beloved, aging French grandmother Abuela/Marie Tasso (Geraldine Chaplin) assured her that she must enjoy life as much as she could: "If I could start anew, I'd get f--ked as much as I could." She added: "A man who gets laid is a super macho. If it's a woman, she's a slut."

Val described her feelings when making love: "I've been asked what I feel when I make love. It's like a mix of energy with the other person that makes me fly and merge with the cosmos. The energy of my orgasm is a small part of me that goes and ends up mixing with the universe. A sidereal trip that takes me to infinity." She also thought to herself about the many men with whom she had sex, including Alex:

Like him, many others just want to f--k me, and I like that, but it hurts because, above all, I'm a woman.

She began to fear that she might be missing out on domesticity and a legitimate family life, and she worried that her rabid sex life was harming her:

I think that's my problem. I can't control it. I need sex. I see a man and I need him. But no one understands that. People stare at me. It happens with strangers that don't attract me. I'm scared. Scared of not being like other women. Scared of being hurt someday. Of not being able to live with one man, not having a family. Nymphomania, a man's invention to make women feel guilty if they break the rules.

After interviewing with charming older businessman Jaime (Leonardo Sbaraglia), she willed herself to settle down with him. After she became pregnant, he became psychopathic and abusive, and ran off with her money, so she aborted and returned to her liberated lifestyle.

For a short while, she tried out paid prostitution in a brothel with Madam Cristina (Angela Molina), but also found it stifling and unenjoyable, and then re-embraced her original worship of nymphomania and found freedom and redemption - and life again, expressed in her final lines:

I'm a promiscuous woman, yes, because I want to use sex as a means to find what everyone is looking for. Recognition, pleasure, self-esteem and, in short, love and affection. What's pathological about that? If you want to give me a name, go on, I don't mind. But you must know I'm really a mermaid, a dryad, simply a nymph.

The Duchess (2008, UK/US/It./Fr.)

In this British drama, witty and attractive 17 year-old naive aristocrat Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley) was set up and then trapped in an emotionally-distant, arranged marriage with callous but regal and powerful Duke of Devonshire William Cavendish (Ralph Fiennes). She suffered the conjugal loss of her virginity to her loathsome husband (with his sole contractual intention to produce a male heir) who complained as she undressed in front of him for the first time, and took scissors to her bodice:

"For the life of me, I could never understand why women's clothes must be so damn complicated."

However, the Duke was completely displeased with the Duchess' birth of a girl, without providing him with a legitimate male heir.

She was experimentally initiated into the art of pleasurable love-making in a seductive Sapphic scene with her personal friend/divorcee Lady Elizabeth 'Bess' Foster (Hayley Atwell), who soon betrayed her trust and became her husband's live-in mistress.

The Duchess of Devonshire then found love with rising politician and childhood sweetheart Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), whom she first kissed during a secret meeting after she told him about her upset:

"I fear I've done some things in life too late and others too early."

When he kissed her and then apologized, she kissed him more passionately.

Later, she challenged her husband's double-standard with a proposed "deal" - she demanded her similar right to be happy and take a lover ("I give you my blessing if you will accept my feelings for Charles Grey"), although her husband refused and continued to demand that she give him a son: "A deal. I don't make deals. Why would I? I'm in charge of it all."

After the confrontation, the Duke forcibly and angrily raped Georgiana as she screamed out: "Get off...Is this how you treat your whore?" - it was the one act of sexual intercourse that produced a boy between them ("Success at last").

The Duchess' Affair with Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper)

After the birth, the Duchess continued to engage in an extra-marital affair with Charles on several occasions, most notably during a vacation (without her husband) at Bath -- rebelling against her loathsome husband. Georgiana's affair produced a love-child with Grey, named Eliza Courtney, which she had to give up to the Grey family in the film's most tear-jerking scene. Eliza would be raised as Charles' niece, although Georgiana could often visit her daughter. Later in life, Eliza named her own daughter Georgiana, after her mother.

Elegy (2008)

This elegiac arthouse film (with a classical music soundtrack), adapted from Philip Roth's short novel "The Dying Animal," told about a May-December romance between:

• Consuela Castillo (34 year-old Spanish actress Penelope Cruz), a provocative Cuban-American literature student, the daughter of conservative Cuban immigrants
• David Kepesh (65 year-old Ben Kingsley), Consuela's teacher in a course in literary criticism

He was an aging, divorced, eminent, but empty-hearted English literature professor at New York's Columbia University. He was also an amateur photographer who was cheating on his middle-aged lover at the same time. His affair was with another ex-student named Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), with whom he had been having a 20 year "pure f--king," no-strings attached relationship.

Kepesh quickly developed an erotic and passionate liaison with his insightful and wise student Consuela and particularly admired her beautiful breasts and face as a "work of art" - seen voyeuristically in a few scenes. As he stroked between her breasts, he told her:

Kepesh: "You have the most beautiful breasts I've ever seen."
Consuela: "Do you like them?"
Kepesh: "I worship them." (He kissed one breast)

He also told her: "And you have a beautiful face I can't stop looking at." She admitted to him that she had slept with only five others ("they were boys"), and that the most extreme sexual thing she had ever done was go to bed with two guys together. When asked, he declared: "A future with you scares me," but his desires for her turned possessive, jealous and obsessive.

He ultimately drove her away after a year with his commitment phobia - that is, until two years later in the excessively melodramatic ending on New Years' Eve. Unexpectedly, she came to him to tell him that she had developed breast cancer and was scheduled for surgery in two weeks (it turned out to be almost immediately).

She had one final request for a favor - to be photographed by him before surgery. She then asked if he would still desire her after the operation:

"Will you still wanna f--k me if I lose my breast? Will you be up for that?"

After the operation, he visited her in intensive care when she told him she had one entire cancerous breast removed:

Consuela: "They took the whole thing. I didn't think you would come... because I'm no longer beautiful."
Kepesh: (lovingly) "I'm here."

He realized he could still truly love her with an incomplete, damaged body.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

This popular bawdy comedy by director Nicholas Stoller (and co-produced by Judd Apatow) was advertised as:

"A Comedy About Getting Dumped and Taking It Like a Man."

It exemplified the decade of the 2000s, and demonstrated that it was more commonplace to see male genitals gratuitously on display on film - especially in a humorous or natural situation.

A notorious break-up scene opened the film, between a couple who had been boyfriend/girlfriend for 5 years:

• Peter Bretter (the film's writer Jason Segel), a TV show music composer
• Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), Peter's crime/cop-series TV star girlfriend

He had just emerged from the shower wrapped in a towel when Sarah arrived at his LA apartment - he sensed why she was there. The pathetic and whiny Peter asked: "Are you breaking up with me?" He dropped his towel and spent long minutes exposed to her and pleading. When she asked him to get dressed, he refused, claiming: "I know what that means. If I I put my clothes on, it's over, OK?" She claimed that they had been growing apart for some time, and leading different lives. [Although she said "there's no one else," she had been unfaithful to him for over a year before the announced breakup.] Then, his trembling voice whimpered: "Would you like to pick out the outfit that you break up with me in?"

In a montage of one-night stands, Peter was seen having sex with various women (including Spanish Sex Girl (Carla Alapont) who was miffed about him forgetting her name), after a pediatrician told him that he should sleep with as many women as possible to get over his ex-girlfriend ("F--k everything that moves").

Still pining over Sarah and attempting to forget her about three weeks later, Peter took a Hawaiian vacation to the island of Oahu, where as he arrived at the hotel, he noticed that Sarah was also vacationing there with her new tattooed boyfriend - repugnant, sex-crazed, hip-thrusting English rock-star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) (with genital herpes) in a band named Infant Sorrow. When Peter first saw her in the lobby, he quipped about why he was there: "I came here to murder you." He found some comfort when sweet, flirtatious and sympathetic hotel receptionist-clerk Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis) offered him four nights in the expensive Kapua suite.

As he walked on the hotel grounds, he saw Aldous and Sarah on their outdoor lanai, and told his male friend on the phone: "I just saw Sarah, and I'm pretty sure I just ruined her day." Little did he know that a few moments later, they were making energetic love together in their bedroom:

Frenetic Aerobic Lovemaking in Hotel Room: Sarah with Aldous

As Peter became more infatuated with Rachel (and went to a beach party with her), Sarah inevitably felt some jealousy as her own relationship with Aldous was beginning to fall apart.

In one of the more comic scenes, the two couples had dinner together where part of the discussion was about one of Sarah's films in which people were killed by mobile phones. During this scene, there was a montage of struggling religious newlyweds Darald (Jack McBrayer) and his redhaired bride Wyoma (Maria Thayer), also vacationing at the hotel, experiencing initial awkward couplings (Wyoma: "I can't feel anything," Darald: "It hurts me"), but then soon after having pleasurable sex.

After dinner, there was an orgasm competition between the two duos in adjacent rooms. As Peter made love to Rachel next door, Sarah faked a loud energetic orgasm with her partner Aldous to upstage the others.

The Orgasm Competition in Neighboring Rooms
		Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis) with Peter
Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) with Aldous

Suddenly, Aldous became angry at her faked orgasm:

"I made a mistake coming here with you...You're still involved with him next door, ain't ya?...You should've seen yourself at dinner, Sarah. Then we come back here and you put on that ghastly performance. I mean, I've heard that women do fake orgasms, but I've never seen one. It really deeply upset me...Was that genuine or did you fake that?"

After they argued and she called him a "prick" and criticized him for his conflicting "full of s--t" tattoos, he declared that he was breaking up with her the next morning ("Right, I'm probably going to clear off now"). Then he boasted about having had sex with the housekeeper the other day.

Soon after they split from each other, Sarah approached Peter to try and reestablish and rekindle their relationship, through sex. As they voraciously kissed, she apologized and told him: "I miss you...God, I missed you, Peter." Sarah offered intercourse: "Get hard for me" and began to stroke him, although he at first tried to stimulate himself. When she suggested her mouth for fellatio, he assented, although oral sex was ineffective and she asked: "What's wrong with you?" When he continued to be impotent, he explained: "Something doesn't feel right anymore." She asked if he had been drinking. He was apparently not emotionally turned on by her and feeling ambivalent. He explained the real problem - yelling at her:

"Maybe the problem is that you broke my heart into a million pieces and so my cock doesn't want to be around you anymore! Okay? EVER! Because you know what I just realized? Huh? You're the goddamn devil! OK?!"

When he confessed to Rachel what had happened ("we fooled around a bit") and that he could now see clearly that he and Sarah were not right for each other, Rachel was hurt and broke up with him, telling him not to write, call, or e-mail. However, Peter was able to reconcile with Rachel in the final scene, set in his dressing room in LA. (It occurred after she attended the opening performance of his Dracula rock opera for puppets, titled A Taste For Love). Again, he stood naked (mirroring the film's earlier scene) and embraced and kissed Rachel.

Hancock (2008)

In this superhero action comedy, with a possible first for super-hero films, scruffy, alcoholic, amnesiac, crime-fighting super-hero 'John Hancock' (Will Smith) was propositioned at a bar by an attractive African-American Hottie (Hayley Marie Norman). He took her back home for sex, to his junky two trailers stuck together.

Their conversation was filled with double entendres about Jiffy-Pop and her come-on line:

"Do you want me to give you something else to pop?... Pop this, Superman!"

He attempted to warn her that she should get away from him when he became sexually-excited - he used the following euphemism:

"When I get to the moment...you know, when I start climbin' the mountaintop, you know...you're gonna need to be as far away from that as possible."

The near-lethal sex scene showed the exterior of his trailer home rocking back and forth as she called out "Hancock! Oh yeah!", and then there was a shot of the girl flying across the room onto his sofa. Three large-sized blast holes were peeled open on the roof of his trailer, supposedly from his powerful ejaculate.

He apologized:

"Sorry...That's not fair to anybody..Thank you for being OK with that."

And then as she used his bathroom, he offered to fly her into the atmosphere to view Earth. She abruptly drove off without answering his request.

Incendiary (2008, UK)

The real-life events of star Michelle Williams' life (with Heath Ledger who fathered her child) echoed her portrayal in this far-fetched British melodrama. She played the role of a Cockney-accented "Young Mother" in a loveless marriage, who went insane from guilt and grief after she lost her husband and 4-year-old son in a suicide bombing at a North London Soccer game.

She wasn't present at the game on Saturday afternoon, because she was engaged in an affair with attentive Daily Express tabloid reporter Jasper Black (Ewan McGregor). In her kitchen, she asked him as she seductively stripped in stages, first doffing her sweatshirt:

Young Mother: "Does this bother you?" (She removed her white tank top)
"What about this? Does this bother you?" (She unhooked her bra from behind to expose her breasts) "And this?"

She stood tantalizingly topless before him. He responded: "Well, now I don't know what to say." She told him casually:

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way. I suspect that if we wait around until you knew what you had in mind, we'd be here all day and my husband and boy will be home, and my husband will kick your teeth in."

She led him to the living room as she removed her panties from under her skirt and her shoes, and laid on the couch as she let him enter her from behind. The TV was broadcasting the game in the room as they had sex in various positions.

The bomb exploded catastrophically at the nearby stadium as he literally climaxed inside her, and she watched in horror at the devastation until the TV lost the signal. She presumably thought that the bombing was an apt punishment for her tartish indiscretion.

[Note: The film premiered at Sundance on the day that Heath Ledger died.]

The Informers (2008)

Set during a week in 1983 (the Greed Decade) in a decadent Los Angeles filled with debauchery (sex, drugs) and narcissism, this bleak, sordid and nihilistic film was loosely adapted from Bret Easton Ellis' 1994 short-story collection of the same name.

Australian director Gregor Jordan's multi-stranded ensemble film, critically assailed by most reviewers for being prurient for no redeeming reason, featured excessively soulless, hedonistic, morally-loose yuppies (and their dysfunctional families).

In one scene, depraved and satiated rock star Bryan Metro (Mel Raido), seemingly bored with fame and celebrity and in a drug haze in a hotel room, kissed and then suddenly and viciously punched a groupie in the face rather than have sex with her.

A menage-a-trois group-sex threesome of mutual sex partners included the following:

• Christie (Amber Heard) - blonde, bed-hopping, and usually semi-clothed (most of her screentime was naked)
• Graham Sloan (Jon Foster), a privileged drug dealer
• Martin (Austin Nichols), a bi-sexual rock video director/producer

It was an "open-door" relationship for the three, who sought after free-flowing cocaine, sex, parties, promiscuous self-gratification, and the spoiled life. They drove expensive cars and often booked fancy, expensive hotel rooms.

They inevitably learned about the perils of unprotected sex (and HIV/AIDS) and their own emotional emptiness, when bikinied Christie developed sores and lesions all over her body, and was left ill lying on a towel on a sandy beach as the downbeat film ended (the film's final line: "There's no more sun").

Death of Christie on Beach Due to HIV/AIDS

Jolene (2008)

Director Dan Ireland's provocative, episodic, coming-of-age road movie, told in reflective voice-over narration, was based on a controversial short story by E.L. Doctorow, titled ''Jolene: A Life." It followed the unfortunate tale of a redheaded Southern girl over a ten-year period. Her life took her from rural South Carolina to Phoenix to Las Vegas, then to Tulsa and finally Hollywood.

Its tagline was:

"A LIFE BETWEEN THE EXIT SIGNS."

Shot in 2006, it played in film festivals in 2008, finally received a distribution deal in 2010 (with only a handful of showings in theatres), and then was released on DVD in 2011.

The title character was raised in an unsatisfactory foster home in South Carolina:

• Jolene (Jessica Chastain in her screen debut), a 15 year-old, red-headed teenaged orphan

Jolene was married at the age of 15 to dim-witted 20 year-old Mickey (Zeb Newman) in order to escape ("Mickey seemed like a dream come true"). She found herself in a worse situation. In the house of Mickey's parents, her Uncle Phil (Dermot Mulroney) had illegal sex with the ingenue during passionate encounters, and Jolene was left homeless when ultra-religious, domineering and volatile Aunt Kay (Theresa Russell) discovered their indiscretions.

As a troubled minor, she was committed to a mental hospital ("juvenile loony bin"), where she had a torrid lesbian affair with tough attendant Cindy (Frances Fisher). She mused: "It wasn't too bad being loved by a woman. Once you get going, it doesn't matter who it is and what they've got. All you have to do is close your eyes." After escaping, she was on the road hitchhiking and in a quest for uncontaminated love, stability and happiness.

Jolene drifted further from place to place, resorting to road-side prostitution ("But I did have to take a deep breath on occasion across the country and sell it once or twice") along the way. In Phoenix, she was a roller-skating Dairy Queen waitress, where she came into contact with deceiving, drug-dealing, transplanted New Orleans tattoo artist and parlor owner Coco Leger (Rupert Friend). After marrying him, she discovered that he was already married with a baby son.

Two other marriages were further attempts to find love - continuing the repetitive, traumatic pattern of disastrous self-punishment. Her marriages were to:

• Sal Fontaine (Chazz Palminteri), a wealthy, aging Las Vegas mobster/gambler, a client in the Las Vegas club where she was a high-class stripper ("Sal was a gentleman. He never sat at the stage to stare at my ass like the others")
• Brad Benton (Michael Vartan), a multimillionaire, born-again fundamentalist zealot, very eccentric, a brutalizing lunatic partner in Tulsa who favored anal sex

She found herself pregnant and gave birth to a son with Brad:

"For the very first time in my life, I had something I wanted. I was Jolene... his mother. And I could believe in God now."

However, she was charged as an unfit, kidnapping mother (married previously), and Brad received legal custody of the child. The film ended with Jolene at 25 years of age dreamily fantasizing that she might become an actress ("Don't they say if you wish hard enough, your dreams might come true?")

The Kreutzer Sonata (2008, UK)

This low-budget British film from writer/director Bernard Rose was an adaptation of Tolstoy's 1889 novella of sexual jealousy and rage, part of a trilogy of modern Tolstoy adaptations. The title referred to Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major. The film had been made numerous times previously, including Éric Rohmer's The Kreutzer Sonata (1956), and as a Soviet drama The Kreutzer Sonata (1987, Russia).

It told about a Beverly Hills-California couple in a toxic marriage after four years:

• Edgar Hudson (Danny Huston), a middle-aged philanthropist husband
• Abigail (Elisabeth Röhm), his attractive pianist second-wife

He was obsessively paranoid and suspected that she was engaged in an affair with handsome young Japanese-American violinist Aiden (Matthew Yang King), with whom she was to play a charity benefit concert-duet of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata (Violin Sonata No. 9).

The flashback scenes (four years earlier) of Edgar's and Abby's initial love-affair, a passionate and clandestine relationship (since she was married to someone else at the time) were truly semi-explicit and sexy, although now the 'honeymoon' was over and with two children, the passion had left the discontented marriage.

Earlier, in contrast, they engaged in protracted and rampant coupling throughout their home, shot with a hand-held digital video camera. The intimate, semi-improvised scenes of the two unashamed performers were upfront and convincing.

Edgar's increasing pathological insecurities and self-torment developed into mad jealousy over fears of his being cuckolded (the way she had cheated on her former partner).

Martyrs (2008, Fr/Can.)

Writer/director Pascal Laugier's unrated, gory, nihilistic horror film was accused of being one of the most violent movies ever made - part of a hardcore trend in French films called the "New French Extremism" that portrayed intense pain, hatred and suffering. Its premise was that spiritual transcendence was just beyond the horizon of ultimate pain.

The basic film plot was that young females were being tortured by a quasi-religious group, led by elderly Mademoiselle (Catherine Bégin), who were searching for a rare true martyr who could achieve euphoric transcendence or transfiguration and see beyond death.

The controversial film was similar to the graphic, torture-porn film franchises in the US begun with Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005), although more compelling with greater intellectual significance. When the divisive film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, it caused many audience members to walk out. The final 15 minutes of the unpleasant film was considered unflinchingly horrendous in its portrayal of cruelty.

The plot was a brutal tale about abducted, abused (although there were no signs of sexual abuse) and badly-battered young 10 year-old Lucie Jurin (Jessie Pham as youth) who - in 1971 - escaped from her chained captivity in a torture room-chamber in an abandoned, unused brick slaughterhouse. Found malnourished, dehydrated, bloody and bruised, half-clothed, filthy, and starving after running down a road, she was hospitalized in pediatric services. She was observed as suffering from "malnutrition, dehydration, mild hypothermia." She was placed in an orphanage, where she developed a close friendship with another abused victim Anna (Erika Scott as youth).

Lucie felt haunted and terrorized by an imagined, nightmarish, ghoulish, masochistic pale-skinned Creature (Isabelle Chasse) - a scarred, scrawny, filthy, emaciated, stringy long-haired female who caused mutilations and flesh wounds.

Fifteen years later in 1986, 25 year-old Lucie Jurin (Mylène Jampanoï as adult) sought revenge for the individuals who abused a decade and a half ago. She came upon an isolated house and savagely, cold-bloodedly murdered with a shotgun an entire middle-class French family on a Sunday morning - the Belfonds (the two teens: high-school athlete Marie and college-bound Antoine, and Mr. Belfond and his wife Gabrielle). The crazed killer shook the dead bodies of the two adults and asked about her previous torture: "How could you do that to me?"

Afterwards, she phoned her friend Anna Assaoui (Morjana Alaoui as adult) and told her that she had vengefully killed who she believed were her tormenting, sadistic captors from years earlier. Abruptly after the murders, Lucie who had apparently gone insane, had another envisioning of the Creature, who remained in the house and wounded Lucie.

[Lucie seemed to be consumed with overwhelming psychological guilt represented by the Creature. During Lucie's escape 15 years earlier, she had left behind another bound female torture victim, and pleaded: "Forgive me, it's not my fault."]

Lucie was slashed and hacked at with a sharp-edged razor on her back and left wrist. Anna arrived at the house, stitched her up, and then Lucie helped her clean up the murder scene. They dragged the four bloody corpses to the bathroom before Anna dumped them into a muddy pit-hole outside. The Creature attacked a second time, seemingly unappeased by the slaughter.

Meanwhile, Anna realized that Gabrielle Belfond was still alive, and tried to keep it a secret from Lucie and help her escape. But Lucie found them and mercilessly smashed in Gabrielle's head with a hammer.

The Creature returned and the suicidal Lucie felt that she would never find rest from her torment and insanity. She slit her own arms with a razor blade, jumped through a glass window, and remorsefully ripped open her own throat with a box-cutter - giving her peace when she died in Anna's arms in the pouring rain. Melancholy about the death, Anna remained in the home through the next day.

A number of twists and surprises occurred in the film from this half-way point forward:

• Anna discovered stairs behind a cabinet in the house, leading to an underground chamber. Pictures of female torture victims (martyrs) lined the corridor of the laboratory. Down another trap door, she found where a real, imprisoned 'Creature' was chained up - she came upon the tortured woman, named Sarah Dutreuil, with scars and a metal blindfold contraption nailed to her head. Anna brought her up into the house, gave her a bath, and attempted to painfully remove the steel bolts from the blindfold

A Real Tortured 'Creature': Sarah Dutreuil

Anna Giving The Tortured Woman Sarah a Bath

Tortured 'Creature' Woman Sarah With Removed Metal Blindfold

• Strangers dressed in black arrived and shot the raving, maniacal 'Creature,' then took Anna as their new prisoner. The six corpses (the Belfonds, Lucie, and Sarah Dutreuil) were buried in the pit
• Anna was introduced to the depraved leader of a secret torture society - elderly Mademoiselle (Catherine Bégin), who believed that the quasi-religious group could learn from a tortured and suffering young woman, although most-times, they frustratingly only created "victims"; after a long period of torture and degradation, most subjects, such as Sarah, would "see things that don't exist" such as creatures, monsters, or cockroaches
• Mademoiselle believed they could discover the secrets of the afterlife through their experiments by finding a true martyr - a subject who would achieve a state of euphoric transcendence:
  
  "Martyrs are very rare. A martyr is something else. Martyrs are extraordinary beings. They survive pain, they survive total deprivation. They bear all the sins of the earth. They give themselves up, they transcend themselves... they are transfigured. It turns out that women are more responsive to transfiguration. Young women."
  
  
• The society was responsible for Lucie's kidnapping and torture as a child, and Gabrielle Belfond was her primary torturer.
• Anna was chained up in the same concrete cell where she had found Sarah (and where Lucie had been tortured); she was force-fed greenish slop, slapped, and regularly brutalized; her hair was cut and she was sponge-bathed; eventually she submitted without resistance, hallucinated, and heard voices, presumably from Lucie: "You're not scared anymore"
• For the final stage of her suffering, in the film's last 15 minutes, Anna was dragged away, clamped down to a steel medical gurney, and her skin from her entire body (except for her face) was flayed by a surgeon while she was alive - this caused her to achieve transfiguration; the camera burrowed deep into Anna's dilated iris to portray her agonizing ecstasy
• Mademoiselle was summoned to Anna's side, and asked: "Did you see? The other world?" Anna whispered something unintelligible into her ear

The members of the secret society were summoned to the house to learn of Anna's "authentic martyrdom" on the previous day. Anna was praised as being only the 4th individual in 17 years to have attained the stage of martyrdom, and the first to relate what she had seen. She had experienced a state of ecstasy lasting 2 hours and 15 minutes. Although still alive, she was now no longer communicating.

Just before revealing Anna's insightful testimony - what Anna had whispered about the afterlife (what "lay beyond death") - Mademoiselle spoke to her assistant Etienne (Jean-Marie Moncelet) and claimed that Anna's words were "very clear" and "precise" with "no room for interpretation." Mademoiselle attempted to speak about the indescribable, the unspeakable horror of what came after death:

Mademoiselle: "Could you imagine what there is after death?"
Etienne: "Are you okay?"
Mademoiselle: "Could you?"
Etienne: "No, I..."
Mademoiselle: "Keep doubting." (She placed a gun in her mouth and shot herself)

The film ended abruptly, with the definition of "martyr" - "noun, from the Greek 'marturos': witness"

Pighunt (2008)

In this independent horror-action film by director Jim Isaac, a group of ex-soldiers led by Iraq war veteran John (Travis Aaron Wade) went into the backwoods to go pig-hunting on his deceased uncle's remote ranch in Northern California. His buddies were:

• Ben (Howard Johnson)
• Wayne (Rajiv Shah) and Quincy (Trevor Bullock)
• Brooks (Tina Huang), John's sexy Asian artist girlfriend

They were soon joined by two other redneck locals, Jake (Jason Foster) and Rickey (Nick Tagas) - childhood acquaintances of John.

There were rumors of a 3,000 pound tusked black boar known as the Ripper (and "Hogzilla" or "Pigfoot"). Along the way, Deliverance-style, they ran into inbred redneck locals including a sheathed machete-wielding hippie guru/stranger (Bryonn Bain) with a van of pot-smoking hippie women outside a convenience store, and accidentally uncovered a monstrous marijuana plantation field.

One other major distraction was their sudden contact at a hot springs with a group of naked females, a strange lesbian hippie cult from a local commune. The women provided the obligatory breast shots (in particular an impressive looking brunette Willow (Michelle Redwine) along with blonde Cult Girl (Karen Viola)).

The unlikely fact was revealed that the strange hippie chicks (with boar's tooth necklaces around their necks) grew pot and by night worshipped the pig. Of course, things went horribly wrong very quickly.

Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008)

The film's title implied that this direct-to-video, unrated erotic soft-core thriller, premiering on the Lifetime Movie Network (without the nudity that was later added to the DVD release in early 2009), was the fourth installment in the Poison Ivy series of films (in 1992, 1996 and 1997).

Each of the previous films (and this one also) told about a flower-named psycho-girl seductress:

• Poison Ivy (1992) - Ivy (Drew Barrymore)
• Poison Ivy II (1996) - Lily (Alyssa Milano)
• Poison Ivy: The New Seduction (1997) - Violet (Jaime Pressly)
• Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008) - Daisy (Miriam McDonald)

In this case, the title was completely misleading - it instead referred to a secret, exclusive sorority of wealthy (and "poisonous"), influential coeds called the Ivys at a prestigious New England college named Beckshire. Many reviewers referred to the film as a sexy female version of The Skulls (2000) (followed by video sequels in 2002 and 2003) - about an equally nefarious male fraternity.

Innocent, naive, orphaned, virginal farm-girl Danielle "Daisy" Brooks (blonde Canadian actress Miriam McDonald), a 4.0 government major, was a transfer student to the school. During her first date with handsome student Blake Graves (Ryan Kennedy), she lost her virginity - and didn't realize until later that she had been web-cammed from a ceiling vent.

The femme fatale character was manipulative, ruthless, amoral, and conspiratorial female Azalea (Shawna Waldron), leader of the Ivys, who used sex and blackmail to seek her twisted, ambitious goals. Among other things, Azalea was competing with Daisy for a prestigious political science D.C. internship. The dark-haired, cleavage-baring Azalea promised sex to philandering son Blake, Dean Elizabeth Graves' (Catherine Hicks) son, in exchange for modifying her grades in the school's password-protected computer system.

They had a very hot sex scene on a sofa, when she removed her purple bra and aggressively made out with him - partially filmed in slow-motion (afterwards, she coldly told him: "Let's skip the cuddling"). She also disrobed from her black lingerie in the office of creepy teacher Professor Andrew Graves (Greg Evigan) to further her ends.

After Daisy was coerced to join the Ivys (and received a tattoo on her lower back), she soon decided that she had to extract herself from the "family" or society (she said: "If someone throws eggs at your house, you burn theirs down" - it was a saying she had learned from Azalea). Daisy was forced to team up with Blake to take the Ivys down, when the bisexual Ivy temptress plotted to murder the Professor (who had covered up one of the Ivy's previous killings) - and had set up Daisy for the crime. Daisy sought retribution by taping Azalea's statement of guilt ("When you're an Ivy, you can get away with murder").

In the film's conclusion, the two fought in a swimming pool until Daisy triumphed and exposed Azalea's cold-bloodedness.

The Reader (2008)

Director Stephen Daldry's Holocaust love story, adapted by David Hare from Bernhard Schlink's neo-classic novel, told about two characters in post WWII Berlin (1958), who engaged in an erotic, passionate and secret summer-time affair:

• Hanna Schmitz (Oscar-winning Kate Winslet), a beautiful, hard-working, uneducated, repressed 36 year-old tram conductor
• Michael Berg (David Kross, and Ralph Fiennes as an adult), a 15 year-old virginal German schoolboy

The film engendered some controversy regarding the under-aged actor David Kross (who had to wait until turning 18 to film the nude scenes, including a full-frontal view) and Winslet's nude appearances in a sexually-taboo scenario, and some unfounded accusations that her character in the film committed statutory rape.

The two first had a chance meeting when she helped him as he was suffering from the onset of scarlet fever. A few months later, she bathed him and dried him off, nude herself, after he had dirtied himself with coal dust in her basement.

Their first physical encounter was initiated by her as she stood behind him and realized his sexual excitement; she bluntly stated: "So that's why you came back" - she turned him around as he told her: "You're so beautiful." She asked: "What are you talking about?" and kissed him gently on the lips. She then said: "Look at me, kid" - forever after calling him 'kid.' He eagerly reciprocated the kiss and she instructed: "Slowly, slowly, shh..." as she tenderly kissed him again.

In the next scene at his family's dinner table, he was preoccupied in his erotic thoughts, remembering their first sexual intercourse together that afternoon. They learned each other's names after three visits. They would continue having sex on a regular basis, after which he would read literature outloud to her (The Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn, The Lady with the Little Dog, War and Peace, and Lady Chatterley's Lover).

The key to their relationship (and her past) was revealed when they had their first argument and she abusively told him: "You don't have the power to upset me. You don't matter enough to upset me," and when he told her after four weeks: "I can't live without you." They changed their ritual when she ordered: "Read to me first, kid. Then we make love." During a short bicycle tour holiday, she went skinny-dipping in her underwear as he sat on the shore and wrote her a love-poem.

On his birthday, he ignored his friends who had planned a party for him to rush back to be with Hanna, but then complained that they always did what she wanted ("It's always on your terms"). Their last time together was spent with her giving him a stand-up, full-body, nude scrubbing before they made love one final time and she told him: "Now, you must go back to your friends" - she subsequently moved out of her apartment.

Then the film flash-forwarded eight years later to 1966, with Michael a law student at Heidelberg Law School, who observed Hanna's Nazi war-crimes trial for being an SS guard at a satellite of Auschwitz near Cracow during the war. The trial revealed that Hanna had the weak and sickly women also read to her outloud before they were sent to the gas chambers. She admitted, falsely to the judge (to conceal her embarrassment about her illiteracy), that she had written the report about the deaths of 300 trapped prisoners in a locked church fire. For her participation, she was singled out with life imprisonment.

[Note: Winslet's own first nude scene was filmed when she was 17 in director Peter Jackson's disturbing, R-rated coming-of-age drama Heavenly Creatures (1994, NZ).]

Sexdrive (2008) (aka Sex Drive)

Director Sean Anders' low-brow, R-rated road-trip sex comedy was filled with gratuitous nudity (plus homophobic slurs, various crude names for genital parts and sex acts), but only the unrated (and "Cream-filled" version) included 20 minutes of additional footage, with lots of male and female frontal nudity.

It was advertised as "RUDER, CRUDER, NUDER."

The unrated version began with the screenwriter/producer (John Morris) and director addressing the audience in front of an artificial background. They promised the viewers "a genuinely wacky, zany and unrated viewing experience...with more tits. Bare tits like these. These tits are good...plus, more cock, like this." Then, the two added: "We promise lots of additional scenes, takes and other bulls--t that will make the movie way too long. And this means a lower standard of film making for you - the viewer." They both cautioned the viewer to not watch the unrated version first ("This version of the movie is going to suck."

Behind them on pedestals stood a naked black man on the left, while a naked white female (Capri Cavelli) stood on the right, who were highlighted during their narration.

Film's Unrated Opening Introduced by Director and Producer

Throughout the unrated version, there were numerous random examples of anonymous, unrelated, completely-naked females (porn stars) walking by on camera, or appearing super-imposed or green-screened into the action.

Superimposed Figure (Capri Cavelli)		Random Naked Jogger
Superimposed Figure (Bridgette B)

The main story told about 18 year-old teen virgin and donut shop clerk Ian Lafferty (Josh Zuckerman), a recent high-school grad who often fantasized about sex. He was living in Chicago - and his obsessive goal was to hook up with a female and lose his virginity. From afar, he idolized and adored hometown girl Felicia Alpine (Amanda Crew), but she was in love with his best friend - pudgy and bespectacled Lance Nesbitt (Clark Duke).

When Ian contacted 19 year-old Ms_Tasty (Katrina Bowden) online - who claimed she was from Knoxville, Tennessee, he stole his older homophobic brother Rex's (James Marsden) restored orange-colored Pontiac 1969 GTO Judge to drive the distance, with his friends Felicia and Lance. During the drive south, they passed through Amish country where they came upon an annual Rumspringa party where Fall Out Boy was playing a concert. There, Ian met sexy Amish girl Mary (Alice Greczyn).

After a number of roadside diversions and adventures, Ian actually met Ms_Tasty in Knoxville, where she met him in a parking lot and asked for a ride in his vehicle. Afterwards, she proposed stripping down, and took her yellow top off for him so that he could provide feedback:

Ms_Tasty: "Whaddya think?"
Ian: "Thank you. That is one of the better sets that I've seen today."
Ms_Tasty: "I appreciate your honesty."
Ian: "They're nice...You are fit."
Ms_Tasty: "You're so sweet.... I think we should take your clothes off now."

But then as she unbuttoned his shirt, he chickened out and confessed that he had lied on his Internet profile about playing football, and that he loved someone else (Felicia): "I can't do this with you. I'm kissing you and I'm thinking about somebody else." She turned spiteful and ordered: "Take your f--king clothes off, asshole!" Further, Ian ran into difficulties when her psychotic boyfriend Bobby Jo (Dave Sheridan) appeared and held a gun to Ian's head. As she was driven away by Bobby Jo, he reprimanded her for flashing her breasts: "Do you always have to flash them the twins? You know, I mean, I do got a gun." She sweet-talked him by promising sex - the pepper grinder: "Oh, baby, you know they're only there for you....And if you do good, momma's gonna take real good care of you...Yeah, just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing here. The pepper grinder."

Eventually in a "Scuba Room," Mary ended up in bed with Lance - she expressed her worries to him about leaving the Amish community and joining him in Chicago: "If I don't go back, I'm gonna be shunned. I could never see my family again." He responded: "This Amish thing is a real motherf--ker." Later after a game of Go Fish, she was on top having sex with him, as she slapped him and he exclaimed: "I can't believe I'm banging an Amish chick. I mean, seriously, what are the odds?" In the film's concluding scenes, when she was unable to leave her community, Lance decided to remain behind and marry her (shown in the film's final freeze-frame)..

Ultimately, Ian and Felicia fell in love and they finally had sex on New Year's Eve - under the covers on a basement sofa.

In the ending of the unrated version, Felicia spoke to the audience in front of a backdrop screen - she teased that she would reveal herself topless: "Hi. I'm Amanda Crew, professional actor. You know in all the teen unrated DVDs, you never really get to see the star's naughty parts. Well, that is gonna change today. That's right. Take a seat, maybe close the door so mom doesn't come in. Get all ready. Looks good. Here we go." But then an enlarged picture of the testicles (prosthetic) of Brandy's (Andrea Anders) father (Josh Duarte) (from an earlier gag) superimposed on her chest - and then in an inset, she flashed her middle finger and called out: "Suckers!"

Epilogue of Unrated Version

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Writer/director Woody Allen's romantic comedy (with discreet sex scenes) told about the complicated and intimate relationships experienced by two American women on a summer holiday in Barcelona, Spain:

• Cristina (Scarlett Johanssen), a blonde, and a liberated, sexually-adventurous and spontaneous photographer/filmmaker (looking for "counter-intuitive love")
• Vicky (Rebecca Hall), a brunette, and a practical traditionalist master's degree student

Both were emotionally and sexually involved with charming lothario painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who was still committed to hot-tempered, exotic ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz).

Vicky was - uncharacteristically - the first to make love with Juan Antonio after attending a Spanish guitar concert, although she was engaged to marry New York businessman Doug (Chris Messina).

Shortly afterwards, Cristina moved in with Juan Antonio and was regularly sleeping with him, when a suicidal and unstable Maria Elena arrived in a stupor and moved in too. They were able to establish a menage-a-trois relationship for a short while, with Cristina providing their relationship's missing ingredient.

Their time together also culminated in a one-time 'bi-sexual' kiss (and sexual encounter, off-screen) between Maria Elena and Cristina in a reddish-lighted darkroom.

The Wrestler (2008)

Darren Aronofsky's R-rated character drama featured Oscar-nominated Marisa Tomei in a fearless portrayal as Cassidy (her stage-name), a middle-aged, tattooed exotic stripper (with nipple rings) at the Cheeques club who pole-danced and performed lap dances for customers. One of her regular strip-club clients was has-been 1980s pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (a major Oscar-nominated comeback role for Mickey Rourke).

In one of the film's earliest scenes, the sensible-minded stripper performed a private lap dance in the VIP lounge for the Ram - for $60 with tip. Although she at first rejected his serious romantic attentions, after the Ram suffered a heart attack and underwent bypass surgery, she became more sympathetic to him and met him for a beer outside the club, where she revealed in real-life that she was single-mother Pam.

They formed a closer bond as he tried to reconcile with his estranged 20-something daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) and she supported him with advice.

However, Randy screwed up the chance to reconcile with Stephanie by forgetting a dinner date with her. Instead, he was getting drunk, snorting coke, and having sex with a blonde Rahway, NJ wrestling fan (Andrea Langi) in the restroom of a bar. (The wrestling fan had suggested that they "party like a fireman party," and then made fire-siren noises during rear intercourse.)

By the end of the film, Cassidy walked off from the stage in frustration - and quit her job - and drove to Wilmington, Delaware. It was the location of the Ram's scheduled 20th anniversary comeback bout with the Ayatollah (Ernest Miller) (who was actually a guy named Bob, a used car dealer in Phoenix).

Backstage, just before his introduction, Cassidy briefly spoke to the Ram, with her defenses broken down, expressing her sincere concerns about his return to the ring. She knew that the match would probably kill him, but he ignored her plea and went ahead and fought the fateful match anyway.

[Note: Tomei had researched her role for authenticity (and her post-40 physique was an asset) by visiting various strip clubs and talking to real-life strippers.]

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

Writer/director Kevin Smith's R-rated comedy/drama was about two cash-strapped, platonic, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania friends, Zack Brown (Seth Rogen) and roommate Miriam "Miri" Linky (Elizabeth Banks), who decided to earn quick money for their rent by making an amateur adult porno flick:

"Porn has gone mainstream, like Coke and Pepsi. With dicks in it."

The plot hinged on how the porn film-making would affect the relationship of the title characters - a typical romantic comedy theme - along with genital jokes, nudity, a gross-out scatological 's--t shot' (something that caused the MPAA ratings board concern), and other raunchy crudities.

Their first attempt was a Triple-X version of Star Wars (aka Star Whores) starring Hung Solo and Prince Layher, but that failed and they needed a new premise.

Their next porno, titled "Swallow My Cockuccino," was shot after-hours in the Bean-N-Gone coffee shop where Zack worked. Included in the cast were former porn star Traci Lords (as Bubbles whose one trick was below-the-waist bubbles-blowing) and real-life adult star Katie Morgan.

Nudity was displayed in the auditioning for the film by Auditioning Girl (Lena Cheney) who stripped off her dress, and by squeaky-voiced Stacey (Katie Morgan) who exhibited her breasts during the making of the porno film-within-a-film.

Other naked and topless strippers were seen in a montage sequence during interviews, as well as an exhibitionist, full-frontal view (and a backside testicular view) of fast-erectile star Jason Mewes (as Lester).

When Zack and Miri revealed their heartfelt emotions for each other in the film's conclusion after a misunderstanding (regarding Lester) and were reunited after a 3-month breakup, they married and established their own video production business to make amateur videos for couples.

The film's last lines were delivered by Zack: "Let us f--k."

Zombie Strippers! (2008)

The amusing tagline: "Live Dead Nudes" added to the film's intriguing title. It was a mindless, low-budget naked zombie exploitation film made by writer/director Jay Lee. It was shot in only a few weeks and played in only 400 theatres for one week before being directly released to DVD.

The entire film was a combo Showgirls and Return of the Living Dead. Set in the future (of 2012) during President Bush's fourth term, it was an allegorical take-off on Eugene Ionesco's 1959 absurdist play Rhinoceros.

This sexy zombie film's main starring character, performing at Rhino's, an underground strip club in the conservative Midwest of Sartre, Nebraska, was:

• Kat (former XXX-porn star Jenna Jameson in her feature film debut), the lead blonde stripper

The club was managed by Ian Essko (Robert Englund - Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street!).

An experimental chemical virus to re-animate the dead tissue of fallen soldiers to form an 'undead' army of super-soldiers (to replenish lost troops in Iraq) was accidentally released. The germs infected Byrdflough (Zak Kilberg), one of the soldiers in an elite Z squad sent to eradicate the laboratory zombies.

He in turn ripped out the neck of the lead stripper Kat (Jameson) at Rhino's and infected her - turning her and the rest of the pole-dancing zombie strippers into fast-moving, superstrong, intelligent and hungry zombies. They would take clients backstage after amazing stage acts and devour them ("I could just eat you alive").

Kat's zombification made her more alluring and desirable, leading to one of the film's gore-erotic highlights - a zombie show-down/catfight between rival Jeannie (Shamron Moore) and the decaying Kat. It featured a torn-off arm, and ping pong balls propelled from Kat's vagina (advancing later onto billiard balls) ("Prepare to die").