Aliens (1986, directed by James Cameron)

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

When I learned that today was Sigourney Weaver’s birthday, I flashed back to the first time I saw Aliens.

I was just a kid, probably too young for the movie. My father rented Aliens from the local Blockbuster. It had been years since the movie had first come out but my father, who went to every Star Trek movie premiere and who still knows the lore of Star Wars better than I do, had never seen it and he was planning on correcting that oversight. My family gathered in the living room. We turned out all the lights. The tape was slipped into the VCR. Play was hit. Our boxy television turned into a movie screen and Aliens began.

And it scared the Hell out of me.

Today, I think people forget just how scary both Alien and Aliens are the first time that you watch them. After the first time, you at least know when the aliens are going to jump out at people and you also know who is going to survive. Today, if I rewatch Aliens, I know not to get to attached to the any of the Colonial Marines. I also know not to trust Carter Burke, even if he is played by Paul Reiser. I watch the movie in anticipation of Bill Paxton’s “Game over, man,” instead of dreading it. When I first watched it, all I knew is that the screen suddenly went dark, the soundtrack was full of screeches and the deaths of the Marines, and that the only thing scarier then being confronted with one alien was being confronted with a hundred of them at once. When I watch today, I know Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is going to prove to be a good android. I didn’t have the assurance when I first watched the movie. For all I knew, he was going to just abandon Ripley (Weave), Newt (Carrie Henn),and Hicks (Michael Biehn) on the planet.

Sigourney Weaver was the heart of that film. She went from being angry and bitter over what happened during then first Alien to still being angry and bitter but willing to risk her life to save Newt. From the start, she alone understood the Xenomorph threat and she was ultimately victorious because she was not only as determined and ruthless as the Queen but she actually had the heart that her opponent lacked. Ripley won because she was actually fighting for something more than just conquest. She was fighting to save Newt from becoming an incubator.

I usually think of Aliens as being the last Ripley film. I don’t acknowledge the third film because I find the idea of killing Newt and Hicks to be a betrayal of what made the first Aliens more than just a scary action movie. The fourth film, I don’t acknowledge because it asks me to believe that Winona Ryder would still be acting like Winona Ryder in the 23rd century. Aliens is a scary movie but it’s also a movie that ends with the promise of hope. After all that she’s been through, Ripley finally has a chance to start again with Newt, Hicks, and Bishop. That hope is something that is too often missing from the follow-ups.

Happy birthday, Sigourney Weaver! I’m going to go watch Aliens.

Film Review: The Submission of Emma Marx (2013, dir. Jacky St. James & Eddie Powell)

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

With The Submission of Emma Marx, I have now seen four different variations of Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), including the official version.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015, dir. Sam Taylor-Johnson)

The official one was only really good for an elementary school sleepover. They showed next to nothing to the point that it was laughable, and Anastasia Steele was the worst English major ever to only name a few problems with the film.

Old Fashioned (2014, dir. Rik Swartzwelder)

Old Fashioned (2014) was one of the most offensive pieces of garbage I’ve sat through all year. If you thought Fifty Shades was bad in its’ portrayal of women, then are you in for a surprise with that movie.

Pleasure or Pain (2013, dir. Zalman King)

Pleasure or Pain (2013) could show more than the official one, but you OD’d on the massive amounts of erotica pretty quickly.

This movie can show everything that the official one couldn’t show and more even in the edited down to softcore version I watched, which was plenty for me. This has a Christian Grey who is willing to be alone in a room with a woman whereas Clay wouldn’t do that in Old Fashioned. Unlike Pleasure or Pain, this does a good job of not overdoing the sex and doesn’t wear out its’ welcome in general. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its’ problems, but it is still the best one I have seen so far.

According to Jacky St. James in X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time (2015), she read the book Fifty Shades of Grey, and was offended at the way the female character was portrayed, so she wrote the script for this movie. That’s a good thing, but it will lead to some stiltedness about the film.

Let’s jump in.

Like a lot of movies, it doesn’t actually begin with the title card I put at the beginning of the review. This one starts and continues like a film noir in that it has a lot of voiceover narration by Emma Marx (Penny Pax). She is getting her butt paddled by this movie’s Christian Grey.

He is William Fredricks who is played by none other than my favorite steak cutter from Erotic Ink (2011).

Erotic Ink/Love Is a… Dangerous Game (2011, dir. Eddie Powell)

That’s Richie Calhoun. No relation that I am aware of to urban cowboy Rory Calhoun.

Angel (1984, dir. Robert Vincent O’Neill)

The voiceover starts off with Emma asking the audience if they are curious about how the person you think you were can vanish and “someone new is born.” It then cuts to the bed with the title card on it. This is a bed made up for a couple who act both as the “normal” opposite of Emma and Mr. Fredricks, but are also there to open the film with a sex scene. But first he proposes to her. However, unlike an opening kill in a slasher movie, this sex scene goes on for an inordinate amount of time. I expected better here. Especially when the rest of the movie does hold itself to a higher standard. I kept track, and it lasts close to 20 minutes. On the upside, it does serve a purpose. It is meant to show you very vanilla sex to contrast with the three other scenes that we get between Emma and Mr. Fredricks.

With that marathon done, Nadia (Riley Reid) decides to shove her engagement ring right in the face of Emma.

I don’t recall exactly what Anastasia was doing going to meet with Grey, but Emma is going to see Mr. Fredricks to complete her masters thesis on gender equality in the workplace. It’s because he hires a disproportionate number of women as employees. To be exact, 97% of his 2,000 employees are women. She says to us that she has interviewed a lot of people “from female executives to male nurses to transgender women battling the glass ceiling.” If you are thinking that line felt a little forced, then you’re right. It’s a little Tasha Yar and Samantha Carter in early episodes of Stargate SG-1. Like the overly long sex scene, it too has a purpose though. It is supposed to make sure that BDSM doesn’t mean a surrender of equality, that she is in somehow being manipulated into it, or that this means she is a pervert/abnormal. We’ll get the same from him. He is also never portrayed as some sort of wounded deviant. They are both intelligent people with their own beliefs, and are always treated as such. Again, it can feel forced at times, but it still works in the end.

Now we meet Mr. Fredricks.

Since they have to save time to actually have sex scenes, they get right to talking about how he likes to be dominant and the enjoyment that can be derived from surrendering control to someone else.

This is probably as good a time as any to mention Penny Pax’s voice. I mentioned that there is voiceover narration throughout this, but I didn’t mention that while Pax does a fine job when onscreen, she really does have a horrible voice for narration. It works for the character and when we can see her, but when it is disembodied, then it gets to you.

The conversation went well for Mr. Fredricks because she goes home and masturbates. She wakes up the next morning to Nadia bringing her a letter from Mr. Fredricks requesting her to take advantage of an opportunity he is going to offer her, but only after she has graduated. He states explicitly that she is not to contact him till then.

We now get a montage of the last four months before her graduation passing by as she ponders how she will respond to giving up control when she lives by such rigid control in her own personal life. That’s when she gets a call from Mr. Fredricks. She wonders where he got her number.

My words exactly.

Finally, the four months pass, so she receives her instructions about where to go and how to be dressed.

I love this set. The table acts as both a distancing device between them because of where they stand at the start,…

and it also keeps an equality between them through its’ symmetry.

It wouldn’t be a Fifty Shades movie if it didn’t have some sort of negotiation scene. The difference is that she actually knows everything in the document. We don’t get stupid questions about butt plugs. In fact, she recognizes that it is “a contract soliciting [her] for a BDSM relationship”. She says that isn’t for her and gets up to leave. However, he reminds her that despite what she is saying, she did show up wearing exactly what he told her too, so he moves in to see if his instincts are right. They are as we know from the scenes that followed this one where she was very excited at this prospect.

I also accidentally caught Penny/Emma with a great surprised look on her face.

Now they have pretty vanilla sex till the very end when he adds a little BDSM element in the form of a tie that goes through her mouth to bind it.

We wake up in bed only to go into a flashback about their further negotiations that they had the night before. They worked out an equitable situation, which includes a job at his company. It lasts for a few minutes, and that is the last we here of it in the movie. Very refreshing when a movie can show what it is supposed to be about, and doesn’t have to pad itself out with stuff like negotiations because it wants to keep its’ R-rating. I love that he explicitly says “I won’t chase you, although, I’ll probably want to.” Not even Clay Walsh in Old Fashioned–a religious Fifty Shades–could do that. He also explicitly tells her that it would be fun to do it at work, but that as soon as work from 8 to 5 is over, she has no obligation to him until the weekends when they really have their fun. I mentioned it before, but at times it does feel forced even though it’s nice to hear.

She finds this whole thing exciting, new, and so unexpected from someone like herself.

Of course it’s no secret that the woman on the right is Jacky St. James making a cameo appearance in her own film. She did the same thing in Erotic Ink, which she didn’t direct, but did write.

Erotic Ink/Love Is a… Dangerous Game (2011, dir. Eddie Powell)

Upon her next visit to his house, he is still easing her way into the world of BDSM, and she likes it.

Emma and William develop a relationship where they both enjoy BDSM that is a metaphor for not being ashamed of who you are, not surrendering your rights as a human being, and not accepting being portrayed or thought of as broken just because other people think you are a deviant. It’s not surprising that this is the theme of The Submission of Emma Marx seeing as it is also present in Erotic Ink. There too, the main character had a judgmental couple who she knew, and another unusual guy played by Richie Calhoun in her life that she was fascinated by. In this film, it’s the soon to be married couple that is judgmental about her decision. However, they seem to get over it, and appear to get married. They too have every right to live their life the way they choose.

Just before Emma and Mr. Fredricks reach mutual happiness, he does throw her out because she begins to tell him that they are both deviants. He doesn’t follow her like he promised. She discovers that there’s nothing really wrong with her after spending time helping Nadia out with her wedding, and returns to him.

Of course Jacky St. James wasn’t going to let the movie end without recreating the most famous shot from Fifty Shades that I included at the beginning of the review.

I recommend this film. It is less of a typical pornographic film, and more of a political statement. If I have to choose between the horrific and abusive Old Fashioned, the tease and somewhat offensive Fifty Shades of Grey, or the endless erotica of Pleasure or Pain, then I’ll take The Submission of Emma Marx. However, I am worried about the sequels seeing as this does feel like a finished story.

Horror Film Review: The Mummy’s Shroud (dir by John Gilling)

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this underrated horror film from the legendary Hammer Studios, a British archaeological expedition travels to Egypt and makes the mistake of entering a mummy’s tomb. As often happens, it turns out that the tomb is cursed and everyone who sets foot inside of it is destined to be tracked down and murdered by a mummy!

That’s pretty bad news for some of members of the expedition. Among those who are now on the Mummy’s list, there’s Sir Basil Waldron (Andre Morrell) who, in the film’s most effective moment, finds himself talking to a toothless fortune teller who cackles as she tells him, “You are going to die!” (Needless to say, a 7 foot tall Mummy is soon standing behind him). And then there’s Claire (Maggie Kimberly), the linguist who translated the curse. And there’s the expedition’s hilariously pompous financial backer, Stanley Preston (John Phillips), along with Stanley’s son, Paul (David Buck). And finally, there’s poor Mr. Longbarrow (Michael Ripper), Stanley’s press agent. If you’ve seen any other Hammer films from the late 60s, you’ll recognize the majority of the cast and you will probably be able to guess everyone’s fate from the minute they first appear on screen.

That, of course, is part of the fun!

First released in 1967 and often dismissed as being one of the lesser horror films to come out of Hammer Studios, The Mummy’s Shroud is actually a pretty effective film. I watched it late last night, with lights out and the sound of rain pounding on the windows outside and I have to admit that, even if nothing about the film surprised me, it still had enough eerie moments that I found myself watching for sudden shadows and the sound of heavily wrapped feet.

And why not? Mummy’s are scary! Even if you don’t know all of the grotesque details that go into the mummification process, Mummy’s just look frightening. It’s the bandages, to be honest. The bandages keep you from knowing exactly who is doing the stalking but, at the same time, you know that if those bandages were unwrapped, you wouldn’t want to see what’s hiding underneath them. By their very existence, Mummies are proof of the finality of death.

And The Mummy in The Mummy’s Shroud is frightening! He towers over all of the “human” actors in the film and when he attacks, he does it with a sudden and savage cruelty. Perhaps the death that disturbed me the most was the death of poor Mr. Longbarrow, who is literally lifted up off of his feet and tossed out of a window. He crashes to the street below and, briefly, the screen is awash with Hammer’s trademark red blood. It’s a disturbing scene, both because Longbarrow is one of the few likable characters in the film and also because the Mummy could have just as easily and much more efficiently strangled him. Instead, the Mummy had to be mean about it.

Seriously, there’s nothing more frightening than a sadistic mummy.

The Mummy’s Shroud may not be one of Hammer’s best films but still, it’s an efficient little horror film and one that, I think, many other horror critics have been a bit too quick to dismiss.

Late Night Cable Horror: Erotic Ink/Love Is a… Dangerous Game (2011, dir. Eddie Powell)

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Two things first:

1. I saw the TV cut of this movie, not the original X-rated version. I could see a few edits, but they were only during the sex scenes to bring it down from hardcore to softcore.
2. I am assuming no one reading this is actually going to see it so I am going to talk about the ending. If you are that one person that is going to see it, I recommend it. Go watch it.

The movie opens up with a couple running through what looks like a storage area of sorts. Maybe a backroom of a museum or something. Immediately you know that this is not like other late night cable movies. It actually has a budget, better actors, an actual script, real camerawork, etc. Presumedly someone is chasing them, but we never see them. They make it to a particular place where they kind of just give up and she asks him to make love to her as if it’s their last day on Earth. They do just that, but this is miles above anything in the other movies I have reviewed. It’s like two people are actually having sex here. And I don’t mean the difference between simulated and unsimulated. Then the film cuts to a woman reading the story of these two characters before cutting back to them. It zooms in on a door handle, their scared faces, then boom. The book is closed.

This is our main character named Paulina Connelly (Natasha Nice). She was reading a book by her favorite horror novelist named Wes Mueller (Richie Calhoun). Connelly writes children’s books, but she would like to try her hand at a horror or thriller novel. Enter her boss.

He’s a little frustrated because he just had a 23 year old lady try and pitch him her 300 page autobiography. He of course explained that she’s 23, what life does she really have to write about. Now Connelly sits down and drops the bomb on him that she would like to write a horror novel. He tries to talk her out of it saying that’s quite a shift considering she started a series of books called “Molly the Magical Meerkat”, but she’s insistent, and he gives in.

Now she goes to her sister and her husband to talk about her idea. They think it’s a terrible idea to want to write stuff like Wes Mueller. To them it’s obvious that he’s not right in the head to write some of the stuff he does. The sister kind of reminds me of Lilith from Cheers. Anyways, we now cut to Wes Mueller and he does seem a little odd.

Yep, he’s just standing out there with his chainsaw. There’s no explanation given here. We just see him out there holding it with his eyes closed.

She cold calls Mueller and tells him she’s a fan. Turns out he knows who she is cause his niece is a big fan of her books. They have a few phone calls and we get more hints that Mueller is a little weird.

Then it’s back to the sister and her husband who inform her that Mueller was once in a mental institution.

The girl on the right is Jacky St. James who wrote the script for the movie. She has written numerous films like this and directed many of them as well.

Believe it or not, there was no sex scene during any of that. But now we get two in quick succession. First, we find out that the sister and her husband are not so puritanical as they seem. The sister knows about Mueller because she secretly reads his stuff. In fact, she has her husband sneak up on her as if he’s going to kill her. Then they have sex.

Back to the boss and we find out Mueller dropped off a cactus for her. Before that conversation goes anywhere Miss 23 comes in with a cookbook to pitch him. He points out that she is an English major, so what does she know about cooking. She doesn’t, but she does know a thing or two about how to get her way a la Baby Face (1933). By that, I mean she sleeps with him. This scene, like all the sex, is well acted. Especially this one because all of her moaning and reactions feel faked. Considering the quality of all the other sex, I think this was done on purpose since she is just using sex to get what she wants. She’s not actually enjoying it.

Then something happens that would never happen in any of the other late night cable movies I have watched so far. The sister surprises Connelly while she is in the shower, but they don’t join each other to go at it. She just drops off a gift, gives her a hug, and leaves. Then Mueller shows up right after the sister leaves.

They talk it out and she realizes that he really is okay. Quirky for sure. I mean part of his writing process is to go outside and mediate while holding a chainsaw. He also willingly checked himself into a mental hospital for research. This is when we get the best scene in the whole movie. She gets the brilliant idea to have him over to her sister’s place and do his best to freak them out.

He keeps just cutting at the meat without eating it and giving psycho looks at them. It’s pretty funny.

After they’ve had their fun messing with her sister, they go home and have sex.

Then we get the final scene of the movie when she returns to her boss with a manuscript for a new book. She wrote a romance novel based on her experience with Mueller. As the boss points out, “people aren’t always who they appear to be”. That’s the ultimate lesson of this film. That’s when she leaves. He pulls out a picture of himself. Proceeds to cut off the head. Then we see a picture of the 23 year old with a man, his head scratched out with a marker. He then places his own head over the other man’s. Yep, people aren’t who they appear to be. THE END.

Well, almost. After the credits roll, we get a quick shot of the sister coming in on Connelly and Mueller in bed together, screaming, and then passing out.

I really enjoyed this one.