What's going on with this? Entire Wal-Marts are filled with human beanbag chairs stuffed into the kind of sportswear that only looks good on Gabriela Sabatini. In fact, the complete uniform consists of white tennis shoes, pink socks with the little frilly things on the top, Mexican peasant blouses with peacocks stitched on the front, doorknob earrings, blonde hair the size of a beach ball, and Those Shorts.
Some women even choose Spandex. Let's not dwell on it.
The summer has become the time of year when everybody goes, "Well, it's hot. I think I'll just dress like a cud-chewing Amazonian rain-forest creature that only comes out at night." And then they walk around in herds, buying toilet-seat covers at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
My future ex-wife, Wanda Bodine, spends so much time in this uniform that by the end of the summer she has at least 30 brown and purple bruises on her legs from all the times she's banged into the dishwasher or stumbled on a rock at the Old Time Fiddlers Convention and Chili Cook-Off. The woman's legs look like a road map of Burundi, but she still puts on the white hot pants every day, like she's going over to Lincoln Center to rehearse a Bob Fosse production number.
"They're comfortable," she says.
"So is being nekkid," I've told her, "but that's another thing that wouldn't look so attractive in the daylight."
The lacerations on my face should be healed within the month.
And speaking of space aliens who like to get nasty, this week's flick is Femalien, starring Jacqueline Lovell and her two enormous talents as the sexy outer-space vixen who comes to Earth to investigate "intimacy."
So much for the plot.
First she watches a husband and wife have sex by the pool. Next she goes to a diner and fantasizes about the waitress.
Our story thickens into paint thinner as the evil owner of Total Body Workout gets the deed to the diner and threatens to tear it down.
Suddenly our heroine discovers that she can use outer-space love-juice energy to cause people to have sex at any moment. She livens up a boy-girl photo shoot, then moves on to a lesbo lingerie store for a fashion show before aardvarking around with the hunky goofball chef at the diner.
I don't wanna give away the rest of it, but it involves lesbian performance art, a massage table, and a New Age orgy. Femalien even speaks an occasional line of dialogue.
No dead bodies. Thirty-five breasts. Multiple aardvarking.
One pierced belly button. One orgy. Gratuitous dominatrix. Suntan-oil fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...
* Jacqueline Lovell, as Femalien, for saying "I can handle myself--I've been in more compelling worlds than this" and "I would like to observe variety" and "I believe I'm ready for interaction now."
* Matt Shue, as the diner chef who says, "Wow, you are simply not human!"
* And Venesa Talor, as the sexy, meditating diner owner who says, "An alien from outer space wants to make love to me? Let's go for it!"
Two and a half stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
Joe Bob's Find That Flick
This week's synapse scrambler comes from...Greg McGann of Granite Falls, North Carolina: "Back in the early '60s, my brother and I used to get up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to catch the horror flick on Sunrise Theatre before our parents woke up and changed the channel.
"We saw classics such as The Creature From The Black Lagoon, which scared the hell out of us at 6 and 4 years old.
"One picture, though, has stuck in my mind all these years because it was the first time I had noticed Hollywood taking creative license with time.
"The movie concerned some kind of alien menace that lived underground, and the local children were trying to convince the grown-ups to do something. The only thing I clearly remember is the climax, as the adults and children tried to run away before the thing blew up.
"They would show the timer counting down from about three seconds, then cut to the running children for a minute, then back to the timer, still counting down from three seconds, then show a soldier picking up a little kid and running with him, then back to the timer, showing 2.5 seconds, etc.
"I was only 6 years old, but I remember thinking that the bomb should have gone off while they were still climbing out of the hole if there were really only three seconds left.
"Does anybody know the name of this flick?"
A video will be awarded for the correct answer. (The winner chooses from our library of titles.) In the event of a tie, a drawing will be held. Send "Find That Flick" questions and solutions to Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221. You can also fax them to (213) 462-5982 or e-mail them to Joe Bob on the Internet: [email protected]. (E-mail entries must include a postal mailing address.)
We Have a Winner!
Mike Levin of Hong Kong wrote:
"I'm trying to recall the name of a B science-fiction flick featuring Cybill Shepherd. I saw it in 1982, but it must have been made in the early '70s.
"It's about aliens on Earth who are stealing livestock to send back to their planet, which is obviously starved for meat. The flesh is funneled through a spiral vortex, which resembles a lava lamp, in a cave near Cybill's home.
"For some reason, the aliens start adding human parts to the shipments (big surprise), and poor Cybill stumbles on this, exclaiming, in the movie's most unforgettable scene, 'Hey, that's Eddie Caber's arm!'
"It haunts me to this day. Any help in recovering the name of this film would be greatly appreciated."
We had 19 correct entries, so the winner was chosen at random. And he is...Jim Bardsley of Shreveport, Louisiana:
"The Cybill Shepherd movie in which the animal parts are funneled off to the alien planet (is that redundant?) would be The Return, also known as The Alien's Return, and it was made in the early '80s, not the '70s, as the initial inquiry surmised.
"It also starred Jan-Michael Vincent and Raymond Burr, among other notables."
1996 Joe Bob Briggs (Distributed by NYT Special Features)
