Late Night Cable Review: Cinderella’s Hot Night (2017, dir. Dean McKendrick)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

Ever wanted to watch Dean McKendrick and some of his usual late night cable actors try to spoof a Hallmark movie? I’m glad I have now.

You could take that title card, put in the title of a Hallmark movie, and not have to change anything else about it.

The movie starts off with narration from Christine Nguyen. She introduces us to the prince of Cratonia named Steven (Kyle Knies). Steven’s father is not happy about his son being a bachelor.

Sarah Hunter is his secretary named Samantha. She shows up to tell the audience that there is going to be some business dealings with an American company, so that he will have an excuse to meet Cinderella.

The movie wastes no time cutting to Cindy (Karlie Montana) who works at Universal Imports. She’s not having the best of days. At least she isn’t getting fired for wearing that top to work.

In fact, her boss Patrick (William F. Bryant) is concerned about her, and invites her into his Godfather office.

Why does he have that?

Also, I guess he didn’t live happily ever after with Kira Noir at the end of The Deadly Pickup (2016).

The Deadly Pickup (2016, dir. Dean McKendrick)

As you can read, she is getting kicked out of her apartment. Her boss does what any good boss would do to make sure an intern doesn’t lose their position by having to get a job. He gives her a spare room at his house.

Patrick could die tomorrow, and no one where he lives would care.

Then we meet his wife, Mona, played by Beverly Lynne.

That’s a face you can trust. She plays the wicked stepmother character.

They have a butler who has a name within the film, but I think his stage name will do just fine.

If I had to sum-up Regis’ character in this film, then it would be like the maî·tre d in Barbara Broadcast (1977). That guy has to be given a blow job by any waitress or costumer who drops dishes, a glass, or a vase–anything breakable. He doesn’t seem to get any pleasure from it. It’s part of the job for him. He really seems to just want to go about his business managing the restaurant.

Barbara Broadcast (1977, dir. Radley Metzger)

That’s Regis. With that in mind, it has been a whole five minutes of runtime.

By the time they shot this film, Lynne was 43 years-old. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see her get a scene. You don’t usually see that in one of these late night cable movies.

Immediately after they finish, Patrick shows up to tell us that his company will have some dealings with the prince.

What’s missing? We have Cinderella. We have the wicked stepmother. We have the father who sometimes is part of the Cinderella story. It’s the stepsisters we need.

Enter Grace (Blair Williams) and Sylvia (Penny Pax). This isn’t the Emma Marx from the first film. This is Penny Pax circa the sequels to The Submission Of Emma Marx (2013).

They’re exactly what you would expect–ditzy and entitled.

Patrick tells them Cindy is coming, and we move onto the next scene.

And that is all you need to see of the next scene. That is all there is to it. This is the only time they meet until much later. This quick, casual, and super-short scene.

Wait a second, this place was burned to the ground in Paranormal Sexperiments (2016).

Paranormal Sexperiments (2016, dir. Terrance Ryker)

I don’t like it when different films that use the same sets break continuity.

Patrick brings Cindy home. She gets the reception you would expect from the sisters.

Penny Pax, presumedly because she’s sick of her dress causing her to blend in with the bed…

grabs Regis, and drags him to another room. They must really expect privacy in this house because they never close the door.

It even appears to have confused one of the actors or crew members, because they get caught in this shot.

I was confused too. The movie was expecting me to get into this sex scene with those three pink dogs in the background? I couldn’t stop looking at them throughout this part.

The next morning, they make an immigration joke…

before Patrick tells us he is going to hop a plane to go see Steven on his native movie-set.

To quote Christine Nguyen, Cindy has been left in a “den of vipers.” I think Cindy is wondering about that statue behind her. I certainly was.

They make Cindy fetch a bottle of wine.

After arriving in Cratonia, Patrick and Samantha hit it off well. They have sex…

we see an Instagram photo…

and Patrick dies along with everyone onboard the plane.

Christine Nguyen tells us this via voiceover narration in a very nonchalant and upbeat way.

Oh, well. Goodbye, Patrick. We hardly knew you.

Anyways, Nguyen finally decides to show up as Cindy’s fairy godmother.

Cindy’s main problem is that she is lonely. With a little magic, Cindy’s fairy godmother is naked, and ready to pleasure Cindy.

That’s because even James Franco had his mind blown in Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) about the fact that he could be making a movie with pornographic sequences in it and the Disney film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) at the same time.

It makes sense that these two would end up together. They already did this in a previous movie.

College Coeds vs. Zombie Housewives (2015, dir. Dean McKendrick)

I have two problems with this scene.

The first is that picture of a pineapple on the wall. The second is the tiara. It’s a little difficult to pay attention when you keep wondering how that is going to stay on.

Mona now visits a cameo appearance by Ryan Driller in order to find out that her husband was in a lot of debt, and she’s stuck with it. This part only exists so they can’t pay Regis to stay around, and can con Cindy into doing their bidding in exchange for continuing to stay with them. That’s how she is going to slip into the standard Cinderella role.

We also find out that Regis comes from Iowa and is probably going end up shoveling pig shit.

“Pig shit” must be the magic phrase though, because Grace decides to have sex with him before he leaves.

Now we can skip over some things because it’s the standard Cinderella stuff. The only thing you need to know is that Steven decides to hold a New Year’s Eve party in America.

Cindy has a shower scene so she can have a couple of flashbacks. One of the two flashbacks is to the only time Steven and her have been in a room together up to this point. It’s as if they felt they needed to remind you that they even know each other.

Moaning about not being able to go to the ball, a visit from The Fairy Godmother, and we are at the party.

I beg to differ. What about that tattoo on her arm?

Inside, you know the deal. Hi there, guy on the right.

She ends up running away from the party and The Fairy Godmother’s magic is faulty as usual. It leaves one of the shoes intact.

Steven wants her tracked down, and he’ll creep out Sarah Hunter if he has to in order to find her.

He arrives at what appears to be the entrance to a different house that was used in Bikini Model Mayhem (2015).

Bikini Model Mayhem (2015, dir. Jon Taylor)

After you get over the red Buddha sitting next to a plant in the shape of hair on a troll doll, he has found her. They consummate the shoe fitting.

They live happily ever after.

Mona and her daughters are turned into “scullery maids.”

And I guess Regis went back to Iowa. He gets no closure in this film.

That was different from the usual. The acting is fine all-around. They really did take a generic Hallmark plot and add sex to it. I didn’t like seeing Penny Pax play this kind of character. However, if you haven’t seen her play Emma Marx, then I can’t see it bothering you. The sex stuff was fine even if they really should have taken some of the humorous things out of the room. I mean I liked them for the purposes of having fun with this movie. But if you are watching it for the sex, then I could see it being distracting, and taking you out of the moment. The plot is Cinderella. You know the story.

This one is about average.

Late Night Cable Movie Review: Bikini Model Mayhem (2016, dir. Sal V. Miers)

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

It’s funny, but according to IMDb this movie isn’t going to premiere until January 24th of this year. That must be huge news for Cinemax who had this in their app, which is where I watched it.

That title made me think I was in store for something like Bikini Avengers (2015), which funny enough has some of the same actors in it. Also, that title card does in no way tell you the kind of film you about to watch. Here’s a song that I think does a fine job of telling you what kind of movie this is. That being Alice Cooper’s Elected.

Yep, it’s a parody of pop culture and politics. And it’s actually pretty good.

I knew I was in for something decent when the movie opened with several shots like the one above. It meant someone was going to bother to add a little style and therefore probably actually have a story.

It begins when a woman named Augustine (Katie Morgan) walks into a bar and proceeds to try and seduce a politician named Bill (Eric Masterson). She’s certainly pretty. She’s definitely caught his eye. However, something just isn’t right. When he asks her if he can buy her a drink, she says:

After he tells her he needs to be careful being a politician and all she says:

She says it must have been a program glitch. Don’t know about you, but that’s all the proof I need. She’s hot. Augustine and Bill leave and go to have sex. They seem to be having a good time till…

Then her eyes light up and…

That’s when we cut to a lab where we see a guy in a tie and a guy in a lab coat looking at a monitor showing what the obvious robot…bikini model robot, as she is called, sees. No time for that though because we need to meet our leading lady!

Don’t you love that I felt I needed to crop the title card to keep us from getting in trouble, but his breasts are perfectly G-Rated? Anyways, that’s Megan (Jacqui Holland). She’s canvassing the area to make sure people know to vote for Senator G.W. Bushwacker (Andy Espinoza Long) in his gubernatorial bid. Seeing as he’s got time to kill waiting for the cable guy, he agrees to hear her out. Clearly we need to hear about his positions. Policy positions as she corrects him.

She says that “unlike the other candidates in this race, Senator Bushwacker refuses to go negative.” That’s a load off my mind. I mean as she goes on to say “he could point out that Mayor Jefferson beats his wife, and he’s embezzled millions from the state treasury. And Sterling, well, he got his law degree from a Crackerjack box. And he has a hard drive filled with child pornography, not to mention his involvement in the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby — but he won’t.”

Phew! Good thing Bushwacker doesn’t throw around wild claims. This guy though, he’s skeptical and asks why he should believe what she says. Isn’t it obvious? Those things are in the “talking points” they gave her to take around while knocking on people’s doors. He concedes that those things may be in the talking points, but what’s in it for him. The wheels start turning in her head and she suggests higher wages. Boy this guy is a tough sell though cause he’s “still on the fence.” How about “lower taxes”, she says. “Warmer”, he replies. Then she has a moment of revelation: “How about the government keeping its stinking hands off your Medicare?” Course he’s a young guy so Medicare isn’t really an important issue for him. At this point she says “the choice is clear. It’s either the wife-beating embezzler, the pedophile kidnapper who passes himself off as a lawyer, or Senator G.W. Bushwacker, a true American patriot.” Oh, and then she remembers: “Did I mention you can keep your guns?”

I feel for this guy. I mean lower taxes sounds good. I don’t really have to worry about Medicare at this point, but it’s nice to know he’ll stand up for the elderly. Bushwacker is running a no negative campaign. Plus, he does’t beat his wife, embezzle money, isn’t a pedophile kidnapper, doesn’t pass himself off as a doctor…I mean a lawyer, and he’s a true American patriot. Clearly there is one more thing I know I would certainly need to ask before giving Bushwacker my vote.

I wish I could show you the look actress Jacqui Holland gets on her face as she reluctantly pulls up her top. It’s great! By the way, it’s her film. She steals the show. No sex scene happens though because we have more important things to attend to. We cut to the lab and find out that Bushwacker is working with a doctor to create bikini model robots to embarrass Bushwacker’s opponents. He wants robots so they can’t turn on him later like real women could. Makes sense.

Now we cut to Megan at home with her boyfriend. Megan is kind of broken up. She said, “I could barely even look at myself.” He tries to comfort her, but he clearly just doesn’t understand. She was talking about her most recent Facebook post of course! I mean it only got six likes. What the hell! Maybe some people just didn’t see the dress right.

I can’t say I expected that to come back around again. Regardless, he finds it weird that it’s that which has her broken up and not her taking her top off. Men! “Country first, babe. It was my patriotic duty.” A damn fine American. Oh, and they have sex.

Meanwhile, back in the lab they have made a new bikini model robot and they send her off to go after that lawyer. She says that she is being sexually discriminated against at her job. By that she doesn’t mean that anyone there won’t have sex with her. They’re not that discriminating. They just don’t want her wearing sexy clothes. She works at a retirement center after all. But the lawyer is not easily convinced. He needs to see exactly what happened. Apparently, some guy had a heart attack after she bent over. So she bends her breasts towards his face. He’s a good lawyer though. He says, “He’ll leave no stone unturned.” That means we need to make sure she didn’t bend over in the other direction.

Poor actor Ryan Driller, if he’s not murdered like in Carnal Wishes, then they just shove a butt in his face. Of course they have sex till the photographer shows up.

Over at the campaign headquarters Megan gets to meet G.W. Bushwacker himself. And by that, I mean he tells her to take her clothes off and they have sex. And by they have sex, I mean it’s all in his head. But we do get another great Jacqui Holland facial expression!

Bushwacker invites her and the boyfriend out for drinks. Back in lab, the good scientist (Ted Newsom) makes sure his two bikini models are fully functional. I mean he makes them have sex with each other. At first they are hesitant because they are both girls, but they soon get into it just fine. During this we see a board that tells us bikini stands for Binary Instillation Kinetic Integration Naissant Intelligence. In other words, bullshit. Also, the scientist completely goes away during this scene just in case we weren’t sure that this scene is meant to both be for voyeurs of girl on girl and for people who swap themselves out for one of the girls. Now one of the dumbest things I have ever seen a movie do happens.

Let me explain what’s going on in that shot. The couple at the table are in the foreground, in focus, and are moving their mouths as if they are talking, but no sound whatsoever comes out of their mouths. All the sounds are coming from the guy in the background talking on his cellphone and to the bartender. And this goes on for awhile too. It took me some time to realize what was happening here. It’s not till he walks over to the table that the sound makes sense again. Wow!

One drink leads to another, then another, and Megan decides to ask Bushwacker about gay marriage. They drink to it with “bottoms up”. She says the talking points still say that Mayor Jefferson beats his wife, although he apparently has stopped, but now it also has the new information that he killed a guy. She also calls him on his bullshit about saying other politicians flip flop, but that when he does it he says he has simply “evolved”. According to Bushwacker: “He calls it like he sees it. Until he sees it differently.” Now the boyfriend gets up to take a bathroom break (clearly he’s not presidential material). In there he is ambushed by the two bikini models. Bushwacker then takes her to that bathroom.

That’s brilliant! Clearly somebody should have tried that during one of the debates. On the upside, at least we know Bushwacker will not be passing bathroom laws anytime soon seeing as he clearly doesn’t have a problem with men and women using the same public bathroom.

The next day the boyfriend has some explaining to do! Unfortunately for him, she’s seen the 1974 gay porn called Drive.

We cut back to the lab to find out the lawyer thing barely got a blurb in the paper before cutting back to Megan so we can get this line.

Actually, the movie Bad Johnson (2014) taught me that you just pee out your butthole when that happens. Also, 22 Jump Street (2014) taught us that they will just carve out a vagina for you. There’s plenty of ways to deal with peeing without a penis. Luckily for him, she does let him keep it. That’s when the robots show up before cutting to the lab.

Bushwacker doesn’t believe that his opponents will fall for the bikini models again. The scientist responds with, “Hmm, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, can’t get fooled again.” Bushwacker responds with, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” This is the greatest part of the movie for me. Remember when G.W. Bush ran for president the first time? Remember one of his campaign songs? It was Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who.

I remember very clearly because as soon as the news story talking about it ended, and it went back to the anchors, they immediately brought up that it was odd he was using it considering the song ends with the line: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

Now Megan and the bikini models show up at the lab and lead Bushwacker to believe they are on his side. They even have an orgy with him. But then…

However, it doesn’t mean the scientist is off the hook. He did kind of make all this nastiness possible. His response is that “we all have our little peccadilloes.” Or as he puts it succinctly, he gets his kicks from “schadenfreude”. Cue sirens and Megan says: “I think I hear your ride now.”

This is the kind of late night cable movie I love. If you are looking for one of these movies to check out, then just like Carnal Wishes, I recommend this one. Heck, I think I recommend this one even more. At least of the ones in the Cinemax app.

Late Night Cable Movie Review: Carnal Wishes (2015, dir. Jon Taylor)

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

This is one of the movies in the Cinemax app so I didn’t expect much. However, it’s rather ambitious for one of these. It’s like a version of Double Indemnity (1944). Well, maybe a little more like the remake of Double Indemnity called Body Heat (1981). It has the spider woman, the detective, the husband who has to die, and what was sorely missing from Double Indemnity and Body Heat: lesbians. Let’s talk about this movie.

The movie opens up with Rachel (Jayden Cole) shooting a man who we find out was her husband (Ryan Driller). He dies and falls into a pool. Since he isn’t William Holden, the movie plays the opening credits, then takes us back a week instead of him narrating the story. Of course by taking us back a week, I mean to a sex scene between Rachel and her husband. This is where I’d like to note that the sex actually has a purpose and is integrated into the story. Heck, this movie does something I never expected to see. Several times two people enter a room and don’t proceed to have sex with each other. That’s a rarity in the ones I’ve watched. In this one, for whatever reason, they basically tried to make a low budget film noir that happens to have sex prominently featured in it.

After they finish, he pops up, checks his phone, finds he has a meeting to attend at night, and basically just leaves. The next morning Rachel moans and groans about her husband to a female friend of hers named Daphne (India Summer). Kudos to this film for that not leading to a sex scene. It wouldn’t make sense here, so they don’t. That really was surprising coming off a movie like Scared Topless where three girls entering a house together means they all go to do a shower scene.

Now we meet the detective (Sean Juergens) and his friend with benefits who wants to get into the PI business. Of course we meet them when they are having sex. But like all of the sex scenes in the movie, it has a purpose. It establishes that the detective is an easily manipulated person. He kind of reminds me of actor John Heard in this movie. As for those two statues behind him, I’m assuming those are in case of premature ejaculation since The Joy Of Sex album no longer comes equipped with Big Jim Slade.

Now Daphne introduces Rachel to the detective since Rachel thinks her husband might be cheating on her. I mean he keeps leaving in the middle of the night for business meetings and is a little on the cold side when he’s with her.

Then comes a sex scene that I would say they messed up. Not in terms of it having a reason to exist. In this movie, when a girl is with a girl, it’s not because like most of these that just expect you to believe that all men are straight and all girls are bisexual. Here, when we see Daphne with a girl, it’s to establish she’s into girls and foreshadows the ending of the movie, which I will reveal since it’s very easy to figure out given this movie is a film noir. The reason I say it’s messed up is because it’s the only one that really feels like it’s just an act. It’s like buying that the Seyranyan sisters actually enjoy hanging out contorted into a small cube together rather than something they are doing for your enjoyment as a performance.

The detective returns to tell Rachel about his findings. He found out that as weird as it seems, the husband actually is going out to business meetings at these really odd hours. They have sex here after she tells him a sob story about her unhappy relationship with her husband. Now you’d think that screenshot is from before the sex scene when he tells her the news she didn’t want to hear, but it’s not. They cut to that after the sex. You’d think he just told her that he found her father raped and murdered on the side of the road, but they actually just had sex.

Then I went hiking. It’s really pretty out there when you’re not racing to get back to your car in a thunderstorm. But seeing as I’ve only once come across two people making out on the trail, let’s get back to the movie.

After the detective briefly texts with the girl from earlier, Rachel returns to lay it on this movie’s Fred MacMurray a little more. This time that her husband might be abusing her. They have sex again. Then we get a scene that honestly while it does serve another purpose, it’s almost there just to say this isn’t one of those movies folks because two girls enter a room and don’t go at it. The way it’s setup, they would in any other one of these, but they don’t here. Now the movie starts to speed to it’s conclusion as we immediately cut to her shooting her husband as we saw at the beginning of the film. After reporting the possible abuse to an actual cop with Rachel by his side, we get like a quick version of the end of Blowup (1966) or Blow Out (1981). By that, I mean that it all seems in place for him, but then it all slips through his fingers leaving him with nothing.

That’s right! Rachel’s friend is more than a friend. Same ending as you would expect, but it’s another girl she runs off with, rather than another guy. That’s it! I think Erotic Ink is still the best of these I’ve watched so far. But if you’re looking at the one’s available through Cinemax, then this is probably the best I’ve come across so far. It’s not perfect by any means, but they seemed to put an effort into this one. An actual movie that happens to have sex in it instead of a bunch of sex scenes hung on a clothesline.