Okay, a break for a while from all the heavy stuff, to say the solipsism of writing about my own writing.  Here:

In all candor I must say I sort of miss old-style sexploitation, a genre of movies that seems to have flourished between the mid-1960s, when people got tired of the nudie-cuties and mid-1970s, after which time when moviemaking seems to have fissioned into mass market movies, which due to their mass-market character reach for a lowest common denominator with respect to erotic content (meaning, not much) and outright porn.  I have nothing against outright porn, mind you, it’s just that as a thaumatophile I sort of like people who worked a bit, even at absurd pretenses, to get pretty girls out of their clothes and into peril, peril which often included mad science and its consequences.  I guess I’ll always just get more out of Invasion of the Bee Girls than a lot of other movies that have more explicit sexual content.   Oh where are the drive-ins and grindhouses of yesteryear?

Which is why I sort of have a soft spot for Fred Olen Ray, (personal site here) who seems to be busy keeping the sexploitation flame burning bright, sometimes even with mad-science overtones.  His movies might be utterly goofy, but they can be mined profitably for entertainment.  (Ray has made lots and lots of movies, including Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Bikini Drive-In, Bikini Hoe-Down, and the Bikini Escort Company.  We’re talking commitment here, people.) Here’s an example, from Ghost in a Teeny Bikini.

Christine Nguyen here plays “Muffin Baker,” who in turn is playing a character in a movie within the movie (which we will later learn is called Missing in Acting).  And she’s in trouble, tied to a table in the half-convincing-looking mad lab of a “Dr. Sin,” who I think I vaguely remember from graduate school.

Happily for our unnamed heroine she is soon rescued by a character named Bardo, sent straight from Central Casting’s “Weightlifter with a Machine Gun” division.  Bardo is played by Nick Manning, the most relevant fact about whom I could find is that as of this writing he has 460 acting credits to his name in IMDB, which include Anal Ballerinas and My Teacher is a MILF.

After a bit of sub-Homeric narration by Bardo of his travails in rescuing the girl, we are treated to this bit of sparkling dialog

Muffin

How much time do you think we have until they blow us all up?

Bardo

Let’s not talk about killing. We only might have thirty minutes left until we ourselves are killed by those who we seek to kill.

Now you or I, dear reader, might have a variety of reactions to this interesting revelation, among which might be

• Professionalism.  Get busy killing those whom you seek to kill and who seek to kill you.  A job is a job, damnit!
• Self-preservation.  Excuse me, but you didn’t happen to say “blown up,” did you?  You did?  In that case, would you excuse me for a moment?  I need to slip into a comfortable pair of running shoes.

But you or I, dear reader, clearly would not be following the cinematic logic of the situation.  Fred Olen Ray understands it however.

Muffin

Makes me melt when you touch me like that. Make love to me, Bardo.

Bardo

If we are to die, then let it be in each other’s arms.

Yep.  Makes perfect sense.

And I know that all dedicated readers of this blog will doubtless look at that last image and think:

That dingus over there in the far right-hand side of the image.  Is that the lab’s main power supply?  What is it running?  What is the experiment?  Please tells us, Mr. Ray!

But unfortunately we never learn, because at that point Muffin’s director-boyfriend yells “Cut!” ending the scene and getting on with the main, and even sillier, movie.

Oh well.  At least I understand that Fred Olen Ray has Bikini Frankenstein coming out, so maybe there’s something for us thaumatophiles to hope for.