The Hills have Thighs (4 Stars)

I've never had to wait so long for a film before. "The Hills Have Thighs" was made in 2010 and released on DVD a short time later on DVD, but it was a limited edition and already out of stock by the time I tried to buy it. So I've waited... and waited... and waited... until it was finally remastered for Blu-ray earlier this year. It isn't available from Amazon, it's sold exclusively by Makeflix. Click the picture above for a link.

As you might have guessed, it's a parody of "The Hills Have Eyes", a horror film made four years earlier in 2006. A man called Bill is hiking alone in the mountains of South Texas. What he doesn't know is that the area was used for atom bomb tests 60 years previously. As a result women have turned into busty mutants who capture men and use them for sex. Poor Bill. All I can say is that they wouldn't need weapons to capture me. I'd surrender to them and do whatever they demand.

When he doesn't return home, four of Bill's friends go searching for him. (From left to right: Mary, Sandy, Mark and Ben). They don't know if he's alive or dead, but they at least want to find his body. When they find his wallet, still full of money, they fear the worst. What sort of person would take Bill but leave his money behind?

The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. If that's the case, the mutant women must be pure and sinless. They don't want money, they just want men.

The four friends meet a mysterious woman called Tanya wandering in the mountains. She tells them she's been looking for her father for the last 10 years, but she's obviously keeping secrets from them. This is the weakest part of the film. The director could have added an extra 15 minutes to tell us what her true intentions are. But Tanya helps them by giving them a warning. She tells them that the women will capture men alive but kill women.

Ben and Mark send Mary and Sandy away for their own safety, so they can confront the mutant women themselves.

It's a battle like the world has never seen before. I just have one question: if the women have lived all their lives in the mountains, where have the fashionable clothes come from? Shouldn't they be running around naked?

Who will win the battle? Buy the Blu-ray if you want to find out. You can't expect me to tell you everything.

When talking about the Smallville episode "Exodus", Kristin Kreuk insisted that she hadn't used her tongue when she was kissing Tom Welling. She says it wouldn't have been professional. Obviously Julie K. Smith and Brandin Racklet thought differently when they were sharing a passionate kiss. They look like duelling tongues. In my books that's professional enough.

The Hills have Thighs (4 Stars)

This is a delightful film written and directed by Jim Wynorski. It was made for television, and subsequent DVD releases were all limited editions and hard to find. This week it was finally released on Blu-ray. I've ordered the Blu-ray and I'm still waiting for it to arrive, but I couldn't resist watching it while I'm waiting. I shan't write too much about it today. I'll wait for the Blu-ray to arrive.

The film takes place in the South Texas Hill Country, an area I know almost nothing about. I always thought Texas was a hot part of the country, but the characters complain about the cold, and snow is visible on the mountaintops. The area was used for nuclear tests. This has led to terrible mutations. The area is populated by busty women with the intelligence of prehistoric cave women. They can't talk, they can only grunt. Bill is hiking in the area, and he's captured by the women. They keep him as a sex slave, forcing him to have sex with them every day.

A month later his friends set out to find him. Does he really need rescuing? Without help he'll eventually die of exhaustion, but is that really so bad? I can't think of a better way to die.

This is a bawdy romp with ten sex scenes in 70 minutes. It's what Jim Wynorski does best. He should make less films about giant sharks and more films about giant breasts.

Bigfoot or Bust (4 Stars)

So what do you want? Bigfoot or big busts? The following photos may help you decide.

Do you want a closer look?

Becky LeBeau

Gail Thackray

Cindy Lucas

Christine Nguyen

Rocky DeMarco

Unfortunately, it's difficult to judge the busts because the girls keep their clothes on.

Jim Wynorski says that naked girls are so 1990's. Today men like to see them clothed.

Evidently everyone disagrees.

"Let us be naked in your next film! The fans demand it!"

Bigfoot or Bust (4 Stars)

This is a musical comedy directed by Jim Wynorski. Maybe the title should have been "Bigfoot or Big Bust". The film stars some of the most beautiful actresses alive, including the incredible Christine Nguyen.

A team of beautiful women is hunting Bigfoot in the mountains of sunny California. Funny. I always thought Bigfoot was sighted further north.

"You want me to join a Bigfoot hunt? I'll grab my weapons".

"A hammer? Maybe that's too small".

"What about a baseball bat? No, that's too Harley Quinn".

"A chainsaw! I love the way it vibrates!"

Christine goes into action with a mini-sword. I didn't know they made them that small.

It's not the size, it's the way she uses it!

The gang's all here. With hunters like this, Bigfoot doesn't stand a chance.

There are unexpected difficulties. A second girl gang arrives from the future. They're not hunting Bigfoot himself, they're hunting his droppings. (I only said droppings because I don't want to say shit). In the year 2050 Bigfoot's droppings are a miracle cure, so the future girls want to sell his droppings and become trillionaires. Don't get too excited, it's all about inflation. In the year 2050 a trillion dollars will only be enough to book a luxury cruise to the Bahamas.

Will the two teams work together or against one another? Obviously, the future girls don't want Bigfoot to be killed. They need to collect more droppings the next time they visit the past.

Yet another problem is the intervention of two rednecks who want revenge for Bigfoot killing their father. Or maybe they killed their father themselves and blame Bigfoot. They're not the sharpest knives in the draw.

So what does the topless man have to do with the story? He doesn't participate in the hunt, he just gives directions from afar. He's the gratuitous hunk so that Jim Wynorski can't be accused of being sexist. Unfortunately, the strategy backfires. As a man he's the only one in the film allowed to #freethenipple, so his inclusion in the film gives it a sexist touch.

So which team catches the Bigfoot? I'm not telling.

The film is hilarious. Its only weakness is the lack of the nudity that was common in Jim Wynorski's earlier films.

Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl (3½ Stars)

Let's be honest. With a title like this you can't expect a deep, meaningful film that will sweep the Oscars. What you can expect is a comedy romp that will keep you entertained for an hour or two. In this case only one hour, because it only has a run time of 62 minutes.

The film is meant as an homage to "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" and Roger Corman's "Attack of the 60 Centerfold". Those are the films to compare it with. For a while "Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold" was my favourite film, but I've gone off it due to the poor quality of the DVD. I wrote begging for a remastered version, but I've been told that Roger Corman has lost the original tapes. Ouch! They're probably on a shelf in the cellar, hopefully not in the damp.

The camgirl in the title is Beverly Wood, a photo model who poses live on a subscription website. She also promotes products for money. A group of scientists have developed a way of ending world hunger. They've created food that automatically restores itself. If a sausage is cut in half, the other half grows back within seconds. In fact, both halves grow back, so the sausage has doubled itself. It's a miracle of Biblical proportions.

Beverly hopes she can share the Nobel Prize by posing naked with the miracle food. The scientists say that more testing is needed, but Beverly is impatient. She bites off part of the sausage, not thinking about what it might do in her stomach. How do you digest a self-replicating sausage? The effects aren't what anyone expects. She grows to 50 feet tall overnight. Fortunately – or is it unfortunately? – her bikini also grows in size.

Beverly's manager is her husband Bradley. What she doesn't know is that he spends his evenings with their maid Fuchsia.

Look who the barman is! It's the one and only Mike Gaglio! His appearance is little more than a cameo.

And talking of cameos, that's Jim Wynorski at the bar eyeing Bradley critically.

It's a tough position for any man to be in. Beverly, played by Ivy Smith in her first film role, is a beautiful woman. Most men would be glad to have a wife like her.

But just look at Fuchsia, played by the eternally young Christine Nguyen. No man can resist her.

Fuchsia also eats the miracle food to take on Beverly woman to woman.

But they can't stay angry with one another for long. They have a common enemy.

Bradley! What a pig! He deserves everything they do to him.

Summing up, the film is fun, but it's of far lesser quality than "Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold". The film is too short. The story could have been expanded, or at the very least there could have been more gratuitous nudity to distract from the lack of story. I've always liked Jim Wynorski as a director, but this isn't one of his best films. For me as a Christine Nguyen fan it's a must-watch, but she's been in better films.

I watched the film on the Full Action channel (called Full Moon in America) with a seven-day free trial. After watching it I checked out the other films available. It's a strange channel. Most of the films are censored. It's disgraceful that films made by Fred Olen Ray should be cut from 80 minutes to 55 minutes. I shan't subscribe to the channel when the free trial is over. The channel owners need to provide better quality.

Return of Swamp Thing (3 Stars)

Amazon Friday #5

This film was released in 1989, and it's a direct sequel to "Swamp Thing" (1982). I vaguely remember watching "Swamp Thing" on television about 20 years ago, and I was moderately impressed. I almost certainly recorded it on video tape, but I stopped watching videos after I moved house in May 2008. I didn't even unpack the boxes they were stored in, and I finally dumped them in the trash about five years later.

Wes Craven directed the original film. Jim Wynorski directed the sequel. I'm a big fan of Jim Wynorski, but I still think he's a strange choice to direct a film like this. He's not someone I would expect to make a super-hero movie. Admittedly, Swamp Thing is a monster, and Jim Wynorski makes excellent monster movies, but does Jim have a feeling for super-heroes, even super-hero monsters?

Based on the evidence of this movie, the answer is No. Swamp Thing is just an ugly green creature who walks around like a man, i.e. his motions are like a man and he talks like a normal man. No attempt is made to develop his character. He's just there. He climbs out of the swamp, he beats up the bad guys, and he jumps back into the swamp.

The film's villain is Dr. Anton Arcane, who also appeared in the first film. He's attempting to create a cure for ageing by splicing human DNA with animal DNA. This isn't for the good of mankind, he just wants the cure for himself so that he can live forever. He injects animal DNA into men that he's captured, turning them into misshapen monsters. When he's visited by his step-daughter Abby for the first time in 10 years he shows a few minutes of emotion, but this changes as soon as he realises she has pure DNA (whatever that is) and is the perfect subject for completing his experiments.

Judging by the visuals, Jim Wynorski had a bigger budget available than in his usual movies. He's invested the money in big explosions that take place at various points in the film. He should have put more money into getting a better script.

Dinocroc vs Supergator (3 Stars)

I admit, after I watched this film eight years ago, I didn't intend to watch it again. I'm a big fan of Jim Wynorski, but I didn't consider it to be one of his better films. Recently a friend of mine mentioned the film on Facebook and praised the musical score by Chuck Cirino. I couldn't remember the music, so I decided to pull it off my shelf and watch it again. I'm fortunate that my DVDs are neatly stored in alphabetical order. As someone who owns more than 2000 films, it's essential. I started to use bookshelves exclusively for my DVDs years ago, probably in 2008, when I only had a hundred films. I bought more bookshelves over the years as needed. I now have five large bookcases, all above head height, but the films on the top shelf are still within reaching distance. My top shelf is reserved for my favourite films, and the alphabetic ordering starts on the second shelf. Importantly, when I want a particular film, however long it is since I last watched it, I only need a few seconds to find it.

The film takes place in Hawaii on the island Kauai. An industrialist, Jason Drake, played by David Carradine, has been carrying out illegal experiments in his factory. He's been genetically modifying a crocodile and an alligator. They both increase in size rapidly. For unknown reasons the crocodile looks like it's been grafted onto a Tyrannosaurus Rex's body. Both creatures break out of the factory on the same day and head in different directions, looking for food... the two-legged kind of food.

Drake sends in mercenaries to capture the creatures and bring them back. The US government sends in specialists to kill them. The two groups briefly meet, when Drake's personal assistant is sent to kill anyone from the factory who's giving away secrets to the government agents. That's probably the weakest part of the plot: the rival groups don't challenge one another. In the first half we see mainly Drake's men, in the second half we only see the government agents. It's a loose end that Drake's men – the ones who haven't been killed – simply disappear.

Another problem is that the computer graphics are such poor quality. Nobody expects a low budget film to look like "Jurassic Park", but the monsters still look too bad to be taken seriously. The monster films made by Christopher Ray look better, and I'm sure he probably has an even smaller budget.

The film's title is misleading. The two monsters wreak havoc separately throughout the film. They only come together for a fight in the final five minutes.

As for the music, my usual opinion about film music is that it should produce emotional feelings without being consciously heard. It should be in the background while the viewer concentrates on the story itself. Nevertheless, I made an effort to listen to the music, and I have to agree with my friend. Chuck Cirino's score is excellent, especially in the film's opening scenes. Sometimes music is worth listening to in its own right.

The film has an assortment of pretty girls, as you would expect from any film directed by Jim Wynorski, but they don't last long. Most of them are unnamed characters who strut across the screen, showing off their bikinis, only to be bitten in half a few minutes later. What a waste!

The only girl who makes it to the end is the beautiful park ranger Cassidy Swanson, played by Amy Holt. 

It must be a rule in Jim Wynorski's monster films that any girl wearing a bikini is going to die. I wonder what his therapist has to say about that. We can just be happy that Cassidy was professional and left her bikini at home.

Overall, the film isn't very satisfying. It's not an awful film, but it's not good enough to be thrilling. At the very least, Jim could have added some gratuitous nudity. Maybe a girl or two lying nude on the beach who didn't get killed. Take off your bikinis and survive!

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The Witches of Breastwick 2 (3½ Stars)

Yesterday evening I heard the news about the death of Nikki Fritz, after a long battle with cancer. In order to remember her I pulled a DVD off my shelf with her name in the credits. In retrospect, this wasn't a good choice. Nikki Fritz appears in the film in a non-speaking role for only a minute, little more than a cameo.

This film has almost nothing to do with "The Witches of Breastwick", so the two films can be watched in either order. As much as I respect Jim Wynorski, I have to say that he was cashing in on the success of the first film, and he made a poor quality rip-off of his own work.

The similarities are that a man dreams about three witches, and then he meets the witches in real life. The house where the witches live is the same in both films, but that's where the similarities end. It's a different trio of witches, played by different actresses. The witches in the first film are malevolent, but in the second film they're attempting to help the man who's dreaming about them. The biggest difference is that the first film has a well written story, while the second film is just an excuse for a string of sex scenes. Yes, I enjoy sex scenes, but I want a bit more.

David, played by Frankie Cullen, has repeated dreams about being tied to a pole while three scantily dressed women dance around him. No sex, just teasing. Then a woman in black appears, and he wakes up. He calls it a nightmare, but I don't understand why. The only thing bad about it is that he wakes up. It's a dream I'd gladly have repeated in my head every night, especially if the three dancing girls are Rebecca Love, Lexi Lamour and ex-WWE wrestler Tylene Buck. And the woman in black is Nikki Fritz, but she's fully clothed. See the screenshot at the beginning of this post.

David visits a therapist, who gives him an address to visit. The three women from his dream are waiting for him. They're good witches, and they tell him that an evil witch from another world wants to enter our reality by having sex with him. Poor David. The only way to save the world is for the good witches to have sex with him so often that he's too exhausted for the bad witch to use him.

Wow! As plots go, that's pure minimalism. This isn't a good film, nowhere near the quality of the first film, but I've given it a better-than-average rating because it features hot girls.

I don't have time to watch any more films today, but tomorrow I'll make sure I watch a film with Nikki Fritz in a significant role.