Tag Archives: Chuck Vincent

Warrior Queen (1987, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The place is Pompeii in the year 79 A.D.

One of the jewels of the Roman Empire, Pompeii is overseen by the decadent Clodius Flaucus (Donald Pleasence).  Despite the warning that the statues of the Temple of Jupiter have been crying salt and that a goat was recently born with the head of a human, Clodius refuses to believe that anything bad could happen to Pompeii.  (“I’d like to see the cow!” Clodius exclaims with  a laugh.)

In the arena, the gladiator Goliath (Marco Tullio Cau) throws deadly frisbees and demands slave girls as his reward for victory.  In the streets, all the women adore Marcus (Rick Hill) but he has eyes only for one of the new slaves, the comely virgin Vespa (Tally Chanel).  Vespa has been purchased by Berenice (Sybil Danning), a former mistress of Caesar who is secretly working to free the slaves.

Warrior Queen was directed by Chuck Vincent.  Vincent was a veteran of the adult film industry and was considered to be one of the best hardcore directors around.  His X-rated films were even positively written up in the New York Times.  In the 80s, he tried to go mainstream and ended up making movies like this one.  Produced by British B-movie impresario Harry Alan Towers and filmed largely in Italy, Warrior Queen was an attempt to capitalize on the minor sword-and-sorcery revival that followed the success of Conan the Barbarian.  There’s plenty of nudity and violence but there’s not much plot and the film feels much longer than its 70-minute run time.  When the volcano does erupt, it’s represented by stock footage and someone shaking the camera while filming the extras.  Pompeii has never looked so cheap.

The main attraction here is Sybil Danning and Donald Pleasence.  Pleasence gives it his all and earns however much he made for this movie.  Danning is only in a handful of scenes and can be seen yawning at several points in the movie.  I think she’s supposed to be the title character but she’s actually neither a warrior nor a queen.  Rick Hill (of Deathstalker fame) and Tally Chanel are at least appealing as the leads, even if Chanel looks more like a lost cheerleader than a Roman slave girl.

The main thing that I learned from watching this film is that the lava that hit Pompeii wasn’t actually that thick, wide, or deep and everyone should have been able to just hop over it and escape.  Anyone who died at Pompeii has no one but themselves to blame.

Cinemax Friday: Young Nurses In Love (1987, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Chuck Vincent was widely considered to be one of the best directors to work in the adult film industry during the Golden Age of Porn.  As a director, he put as much emphasis on characterization and plot as he did on getting the so-called money shots.  One of his adult films, Roommates, even got a favorable write-up in The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Vincent was less successful when he tried to move over into mainstream filmmaking.  Vincent directed B-movies, most of which went straight to video.  The majority of them were either dumb sex comedies or erotic thrillers and they often featured porn stars in “straight” roles.  Though the majority of Vincent’s mainstream films were adequately put together, they never got the attention that his adult films did.  In the adult film industry, Vincent was an artist but, when it came to mainstream films, he was viewed as just being another competent director who churned out B-movies.  One of the few places where Vincent’s movies were appreciated was on late night Cinemax.

Young Nurses In Love is  typical example of Vincent’s mainstream work.  It takes place at Hoover Hospital, where the doctors are all rich and strange and the nurses all wear the tightest uniforms around.  The plot, as it is, involves a sperm bank where sperm from some of the most brilliant people in history is being stored.  Nurse Ellis Smith (Jeanne Marie) is an agent of the KGB who has gotten a job at the hospital so she can steal that sperm and the Russians can use it to create supercommunists.  Dr. Reilly (Alan Fisler) is also a CIA agent and he hopes to use his “bedside” manner to convince Nurse Smith to turn against her employers.  Can he do the trick?

Young Nurses In Love is meant to be a satire of medical soap operas.  (It was advertised as being a sequel to Garry Marshall’s Young Doctors In Love, though Marshall himself was in no way involved with the production.)  While Dr. Reilly is trying to save the super sperm, the rest of the hospital staff get caught up in their own softcore dramas.  There’s a mafia subplot.  There’s plenty of nurses trying to land a rich doctor husband subplots.  Jamie Gillis, Annie Sprinkle, and Veronica Hart all have small roles.  The humor is frequently forced.  Instead of letting the jokes develop naturally, Young Nurses In Love just piles one incident on top or another without much comedic rhyme or reason.  With the exception of Jamie Gillis, none of the actors seem to have a natural talent for comedy and the stiff delivery of their “funny” lines will probably inspire more groans than laughs.  For all the attempts to be racy, this R-rated film is mild enough to qualify as a PG-13 today.

This was one of Chuck Vincent’s lesser mainstream films.  For a better Chuck Vincent-directed comedy, check out Student Affairs.

Cinemax Friday: Student Affairs (1987, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Director Chuck Vincent wasn’t the only director who making hardcore porn in the early 80s but he was one of the few to receive critical acclaim.  A director who put as much emphasis on storylines and characterizations as he did on getting the money shots, Vincent was responsible for some of the final films to come out of porn’s so-called Golden Age.  His best-known adult film, Roommates, was even given a favorable review in The New York Times.

Vincent was also one of the few porn directors to regularly direct “mainstream” films as well.  Of course, Vincent was never hired to direct a big studio film or anything like that.  Instead, he directed B-movies, the majority of which were either neo-noirs or dumb sex comedies.  Though Vincent was an above average director who had a knack for getting good performances out of unlikely actors, his mainstream films never got as much attention as his pornographic films.  (It makes sense when you consider that Vincent was, at the time, the best director working in the porn industry but just one of my many competent directors making B-movies.)  One place where Vincent’s B-movies were popular was on late night Cinemax.

Student Affairs is one of Chuck Vincent’s better B-films.  It opens with a group of actors auditioning for a dumb teen sex comedy called Student Affairs and then it follows them as they go to a high school and shoot the movie.  The film alternates between scenes of the sex comedy that they are filming and scenes of what’s going when the cameras aren’t rolling.  The cast is made up of familiar types.  There’s a centerfold who is worried that she is going to be washed-up at the age of 20.  There’s the intellectual and classically-trained actor who has been typecast as idiot.  There’s a vain male model and there’s another starlet who is convinced that she’s going to be a big star someday.  The film itself is almost plotless but it’s obvious that Vincent had a lot of affection for both his cast and the characters that they play.  When it comes to Student Affairs, both the film and the film-within-the-film are dumb sex comedies with predictable plots but Chuck Vincent’s direction makes this a surprisingly sincere dumb sex comedy.  When Rex (Andy Nichols) complains that he’s never going to have the career that he deserves because his physical appearance has typecast him as a dumb jock, both Vincent and the movie take him seriously.

There have been many great films made about the making of movies.  Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night comes to mind.  So does Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man.  Chuck Vincent was neither Truffaut nor Rush and Student Affairs is hardly a great film.  But, for a dumb sex comedy that was made for little money, Student Affairs is better than most.

Sadly, Vincent died just five years after the release of Student Affairs.  If he had lived longer and directed more films, Vincent and his oeuvre would probably be ripe for rediscovery.  Unfortunately, Vincent died just before directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez made B-movie cool again.

 

Going There: Bad Blood (1989, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Oh man, this is a twisted movie.

Yuppie lawyer Ted (adult film actor Randy Spears, credited here as Gregory Patrick) is shocked when he sees a painting of a man who looks just like him.  He is told that the portrait was painted in 1964 and that the man in the painting is the late husband of the artist, Arlene (porn legend Georgina Spelvin, credited here at Ruth Raymond).  Arlene goes on to reveal that Ted is actually her long-lost son and then she invites him and his wife, Evie (Linda Blair, credited here as Linda Blair), to come out to her mansion.  What Ted doesn’t realize is that Arlene believes that he is actually her husband reincarnated and she is planning on doing away with Evie so that she can have her son all to herself and do what it is she wants to do with him.  Yes, this film goes there.

Chuck Vincent was one of the leading directors of the Golden Age of Porn.  Unlike most other adult film directors, his movies were popular with not only the public but also with critics.  (His best-known film, Roommates, received a rave in the New York Times.)  In the 80s, Vincent tried to make the move into mainstream film, mostly directing sex comedies and dopey thrillers.  Most of his mainstream films featured adult performers in dramatic roles, which made them very popular on late night cable.

Bad Blood feels like a combination of Fatal Attraction and Misery.  There’s even a scene where Arlene ties up her son in bed and then breaks his toes to keep him from leaving.  (Bad Blood, though, came out a year before Rob Reiner’s film so the resemblance is probably a coincidence.)  Spelvin, who was widely regarded as being the best actress to ever regularly appear in pornographic movies, gives a great, demented performance as Arlene and Linda Blair is also good as Evie.  Chuck Vincent was a good director, even when he was doing schlocky straight-to-video stuff like this.  Perhaps because of his background in adult films, Vincent never hesitated about taking his films to the places where other directors would be scared to tread.  Sadly, Vincent died in 1991 and most of his movies have fallen into obscurity.