Entry 100: Perverted Stories #32 (2001)

Perverted Stories #32

Dir: Jim Powers

Well, this is it...100 goddamn, sanity-doubting entries in the Basement of Sleaze!  Y'know, when I started doing this, I doubted I'd make it to entry 20 before losing interest...Turns out I look forward to writing these fucking things now more than ever.  Guys, I LOVE movies (especially the off-kilter, unusual, unheralded ones), and this whole exercise is about sharing that love with you.  I've never had a bad experience in the Basement; even the "bad" movies are enhanced because it's so much fun to write about them!  I've come close to throwing in the towel a couple of times; time constraints and low readership have frustrated me, but you know what?  Fuck it!  Even if the only person left reading this is Mrs. Basement of Sleaze, if she gets a chuckle out of it and maybe decides to seek out a movie she wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to, it's all worthwhile.  This has also been a great way to work through my film collection; nearly everything I've written about here has been viewed on VHS, DVD or Blu-ray.  In the age of streaming this and on-demand that, I still enjoy the process of walking over to my shelves, selecting a feature, looking over the packaging artwork and popping it into the appropriate player.  Physical media will never die!  I'm not gonna keep rambling here; just wanted to say "thank you" to everybody who's still reading this thing.  Alright, let's cut the sappy horseshit!

I have a BIG announcement to make here: as this is my 100th entry, I've decided (because nothing's sleazier than hubris) to make Basement of Sleaze products available to you, dear reader.  Check 'em out at:

http://www.redbubble.com/shop/basement+of+sleaze

Now, before you go thinking this is some sort of scheme to line my coffers with phat t-shirt cash, you should know that I think I make about $2 for every shirt sold and, honestly, I don't have that many readers.  But if you decide to pick one up and I see you wearing it out and about, I'll buy you a drink (and you'd better believe it's gonna be a goddamn stiff one)!

Okay, on to tonight's feature!  As you might be aware, we are now in the midst of Fuck Flick February, where I usually take the opportunity to examine gems from the golden age of adult cinema.  I will not, for the most part, take a look at any contemporary porno flicks.  See, in the seventies and early eighties, porn was still being made by folks who considered themselves filmmakers.  While not always successful, they were at least trying to make legitimate films with story, dialogue, sets, music and all of the other necessary ingredients of film.  They weren't always "good," but they were oftentimes interesting (this notion was successfully lampooned in P.T. Anderson's fantastic Boogie Nights).  Contemporary porn, by contrast, is pretty goddamn boring, usually comprised of a bunch overlong fuck scenes strung together with the barest thread of plot (sometimes not even that).  Okay, I'll give you that some of the movie parodies are amusing, but for the most part, it sucks.  I have, however, decided to break that rule in order to bring you the first entry in this year's FFF.  You see, I've been saving this one for awhile...Journey with now into the Basment of Sleaze as I bear witness to some Perverted Stories...#32!

Why, you may ask, am I covering entry 32 in a (apparently very lengthy) series?  What about #s 1-31?  Won't I be lost?  Well, Perverted Stories is a series of unconnected anthology porno shorts with fantastical/supernatural twists; think Spielberg's Amazing Stories television series with WAY more anal sex.  I'll be honest with you, I'm not even really interested in writing about this whole movie, it's just the first segment, "Along Came the Spider," that I feel I need to share with you.  But be warned; there are some things that, once seen (or read about), cannot be unseen (or read about).

A musclebound worker in a douchey, Affliction-type T-shirt is moving some boxes around in a dust old warehouse.  He is observed from the shadows by a shadowy, inhuman figure (the creature's POV is represented by some 80s home video level split screen and toning effects; imagine Predator remade by public high school kids).  When he freaks out after running across a black widow spider, the creature leaps from the shadows: it's a goddamn mutant spider woman!  The veiny, slimy creature with enormous pink lips kind of resembles Janis from The Muppet Show if she were put though one of Seth Brundle's telepods with an arachnid.  Anyway, because this is an "adult film," the she-creature immediately unzips the poor guy's pants and starts blowing him; he reciprocates by taking her amazing spider-anus to pound town and, after several sanity-doubting, seemingly endless minutes, he comes and she kills and webs him (he paid no attention to the red hourglass tattoo on her stomach).

Look, I've seen my share of shit.  I've seen Cannibal Holocaust.  I've seen Salo.  I've seen Men Behind the Sun.  I've seen A Serbian Film.  I don't know if anything has ever repulsed/fascinated me quite the way this 12-minute sequence from a shitty, early 2000s porno movie has.  What the actual fuck?!?!  Even ignoring the obvious question of how, exactly, this mutant spider has perfect human female breasts and genitalia, one still has to wrap one's brain around the idea that a man, when assaulted by an absolutely disgusting spider-creature, decides that the best course of action is to perform cunnilingus on it before engaging in vigorous vaginal and anal sex.  Maybe it's just me, but fuck; I'm having a REALLY difficult time connecting that thought process.  I DO need to commend the film's effects artist; the makeup effects are genuinely good and supremely creepy-the spider woman's veiny, pulsating head and vacuum-like, dripping pink maw will stick with you for days.  In fact, here's a photo:

For the record, the other three "stories" in this movie consist of a woman fucking voodoo zombies in the desert, a dismayed man who, upon discovering that his Vietnamese mail order bride doesn't speak English, decides to be classy as fuck and have sex with her before sending her back AND a guy who screws a corpse he finds floating in his pool (which is notable because the actress in the scene does a horrible job of playing dead).

On that note, pleasant dreams, everybody!  I'll be back soon with some X-rated cartoons!  Oh yeah; for the curious, here's a link to the entire goddamn "Along Came the Spider" scene: