Joe Bob Briggs

And all Mr. Mossfelt has to do is say, "Yeah, they were dirty." And then later he can say, "But they weren't that dirty. I could still see the guy."

But instead he says, "I don't recall."
And so the lawyer says, "You don't recall whether your contacts were dirty, or you don't recall saying they were dirty?"

And Mr. Mossfelt says, "I don't think they were dirty."
So the lawyer says, "Your testimony today is that your contacts were not dirty and you did not tell Anthony Verrazano that they were dirty, is that correct?"

And Mossfelt goes, "I don't remember what I told Anthony Verrazano."
And by this time the jury is going, "What is this guy trying to hide?"
Or you see the same thing when somebody just plain remembers it wrong. And so he remembers it one way on May 30 and another way on June 30 and another way on July 30, and the lawyer says, "Would you say your memory was better today, or three months ago, right after the event occurred?"

And they won't answer this question. They'll say anything to make the jury think that whatever they remember today is exactly the truth. When all they have to say is, "Well, the details were probly better back three months ago, but the gist of it is the same."

Or they could even say: "You know what? You're right! I did say something different the first time you asked me. I'll be horsewhipped if I didn't."

The worst one I ever saw was during that recent case of the schizophrenic homeless man who knifed to death a former Radio City Rockette on the streets of New York.

One of the prime witnesses was a lady who wrote all these notes down in her diary--notes like, "They found the guy who did it." And the defense attorney was trying to prove that she later identified the homeless man because the police told her he was "the guy who did it."

And so the question was, "Were you attempting to be accurate when you wrote that in your diary?"

"I wasn't attempting to be accurate or inaccurate," she answered.
And then, when the attorney kept hammering on her to tell us exactly what that meant, the lady was practically in tears, but she would never admit that she did just exactly the same thing anybody would do. Which is: She assumed the cops arrested the guy who did it. Later on she went down to the station, took a look at him in a lineup, and said, "Yep, that is the guy who did it." She confirmed it.

But instead she makes herself look like a liar, 'cause she's fighting the cross-examiner on something that doesn't make a flip's worth of difference.

Why do people do this?
Somebody gimme an explanation, 'cause I'm fresh out.
Speaking of quaint American traditions, I think we're finally nearing the end of the erotic-thriller onslaught. After approximately 17,000 erotic thrillers in the last five years, we now have Blondes Have More Guns, a slapstick version of Basic Instinct that's so goofy it's like watching Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

You wanna scream: "Okay! Okay! We get it! It's over! Enough already! Either stop making these movies or just kill me now!"

This is one of those Top Gun-type flicks where the police captain says, "We're placing her under surveillance." Cut to a knight in armor walking through the police station, with cops saying, "Good luck, Sir Valence."

Then there's the scene where a security guard sees something happening on his monitor, pulls out his pistol and screams, "Cover me!" And a cop throws a blanket over him.

You get the idea? Cheap puns. Huge-breasted women. Dinner forks through the eyeball. Sharon Stone cross-your-legs impersonations. Disgusting bathroom humor.

I loved it.
Gloria Lusiak is the woman who likes to get nekkid and sex men to death while drilling them with a plug-in chainsaw. Michael McGaharn is the dimwit cop who can't decide whether to sleep with her or her twin sister. And George Merriweather is the shameless producer-writer-director who filled this thing with so many one-liners it's almost impossible to describe.

There is literally at least one gag every five seconds. Not since The Groove Tube have we had a movie this mindless, this senseless, this gross, this disgusting, with this much gratuitous nudity. The man's a genius.

Absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story.
Twenty-one dead bodies. Sixteen breasts. Three buckets of gooey discolored stage blood.

Multiple aardvarking. Diet-cola guzzling.
One motor vehicle chase, with grenade. Multiple coke-sniffing.
Pizza sex. Candelabra sex. Multiple cross-dressing.
Gratuitous Don Woo infomercial. Gratuitous guy in a bunny suit.
Upchuck Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nomination for:

George Merriweather, for cramming Basic Instinct, Indecent Proposal, Body Heat, and Body of Evidence into the same spoof, and spending at least 50 bucks on the movie.

Four stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.

Joe Bob's Find That Flick
This week's noggin-pummeler comes from...Joe S. McNair of Kyle, Texas:
"I was working at a theater (sorry, it was a sit-down, not a drive-in) back in the 1970s, and we had this movie come to the theater titled When Women Had Tails. The local movie-review guy called it 'the worst movie ever made.'

"Before the review the theater was empty. After the review we sold it out. Everybody wanted to see the 'worst movie ever made.'

"Anyway, who was the female lead in the flick? She was one of those Italian bombshells; they all looked alike. To be honest I can't remember her face, but I don't think that was the portion of her anatomy that we were supposed to remember anyway.

"I would like to have a copy of this one in my collection. Any ideas?"
A video will be awarded to the correct answer. (The winner chooses from a list of about a thousand 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.

We Don't Have a Winner!
In a previous column, Crazy Dan Marsh of Wayne, Mich., wrote:
"What is this movie? It's a spy flick with a shipping crate on a dock. Anyway, the crate machine-guns women in bikinis on or near the dock. A very bad-tempered box. I think it was a spy flick."

For the sixth time in history, we have no correct answers. The video will still be awarded to late entries.

Copyright 1995 by Joe Bob Briggs. Distributed by NYT Special Features/Syndication Sales.