'BOXING HELENA' PROVES THAT WHEN IT COMES TO OBSESSION, STIMULATING DIALOGUE (AND LIMBS) ONLY GET IN THE WAY.

Everyone loves a good smoking ruin of a movie. Witness the popularity of fascinating train wrecks like Crimes of Passion, Hudson Hawk and Last Action Hero, each infinitely more entertaining in their own way than a truckload of Oscar-winners. There are few pleasures to rival the completely sedentary evening spent with your most sardonic friends cackling like freshmen on hallucinogens at movies like BOXING HELENA.

Boxing Helena turned out to be one of the most hilarious 104 minutes of 1993. The initial buzz that surrounded the film -- insistently referring to it as "bound to be controversial"-- all but assassinated any potential audience this uproarious trash may have had to begin with. It was said that people who actually saw it tried to get their money back from embarrassed, albeit non-budging, theater managers. But for lovers of Bad Movies, owning the film is a whole other story. When you pop this into the ol’ dvd player at home with friends, you welcome the ridiculous plot and anticipate the ludicrous transformation Sherilynn Fenn will go through. Furthermore, Helena takes itself so seriously that we can only respond with gales of derisive crowing.

Fenn plays a convincing man-eating bitch who makes the mistake of sleeping (just once) with Julian Sands, a prominent surgeon, and obviously some sort of thumbsucking psycho whose mother used to parade around the house naked. Obsessed with Fenn, although she'd rather be bulldozed by a speeding truck than speak with him, Sands climbs a tree to spy on her in her bedroom, makes covert phone calls, and eventually throws a party for her. She comes, dances in the fountain (no kidding, our favorite scene) and, natch, leaves with another guy. This gets our flipped-out doc all steamed up and, apparently, sends him over the edge.

Soon enough, kismet strikes. Party-girl Fenn gets bulldozed by a speeding truck right outside Sands's estate, and the next thing we know she wakes up without legs in his mansion. Not in the best of moods, she berates him, screams her head off and throws anything she can get her hands on across the room. Can't have that, Sands concludes, and soon she's armless too, which is revealed to us when he's spoonfeeding her. "I have just one question..." she begins with a straight face. Just try to stem the reflex to ask -- for her -- "Where the hell are my arms?"

As improbable as it may seem, she grows to love him (sure, we'd fall in love with someone who cut off our arms and legs, too). That does not, however, stop her incessant talking, and we can only presume that Sands would have gotten around to cutting her head off as well, if the movie hadn't ended first. Fenn and Sands are both hopelessly earnest, while the supporting cast either has a superb handle on this nonsense (witness Bill Paxton's shag-haired rock stud) or seems to have wandered in off the street: Art Garfunkel, as Sands's pal, sits around in a silent daze as if someone told him Paul Simon was supposed to show up.

This is the movie that Kim Basinger had to fight like hell to get out of, not to mention cough up a hefty fine -- the best few mil she ever spent. As for writer/director Jennifer Lynch, (weirdo daughter of David), the 23-year-old director, who posed for press shots in front of the Venus de Milo and talked about how we're all in our own boxes, you've got to give it to her -- at least she makes us laugh -- if not with her.

DELICIOUS REMEMBERS: Dom DeLuise

Actor/ comedian passed away in his sleep Monday.

Comedian and actor Dom DeLuise has passed away at the age of 75, according to TMZ.com and Entertainment Tonight. He is reported to have died in his sleep around 6 P.M. on Monday at a Los Angeles hospital.

DeLuise was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933. He attended the School of Performing Arts in Manhattan and Tufts University. Throughout the 1960s, DeLuise appeared in various television programs, including a variety show with Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart, and spent many years on "The Dean Martin Show." In 1968, his own program, "The Dom DeLuise Show," debuted on CBS. For several years in the early '90s, DeLuise hosted "Candid Camera."DeLuise's first notable film role was in Oscar-winning director Sidney Lumet's 1964 movie, Fail Safe.

But DeLuise's film career took off with the help of Mel Brooks, who cast him in The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles and History of the World: Part I; in the latter, which he had a memorable and hilarious turn as the lascivious, wine-guzzling Emperor Nero. He appeared with Gene Wilder in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and The World's Greatest Lover.

DeLuise was a frequent co-star of Burt Reynolds, appearing in films like The End, Smokey and the Bandit II , The Cannonball Run and the film version of the broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He also supplied his vocal talents to animated films such as The Secret of Nihm, An American Tail and All Dogs Go to Heaven. DeLuise made his directorial debut in 1973 with Hot Stuff.

Reynolds released a statement to ET on Tuesday morning (May 5). "I was thinking the other day about this. As you get older you think about this more and more, I was dreading this moment. Dom always made everyone feel better when he was around. I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. I will miss him very much," Reynolds said in the statement.

Aside from film and TV, DeLuise is known for his work in the kitchen and has published several cookbooks, including "Eat This...It'll Make You Feel Better!" As an author, he's also published numerous children's books.

DeLuise was married to the comedian and actress Carol Arthur. They have three sons, Peter, Michael and David.

'THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK' CASTS A DELICIOUS SPELL AND PROVES TO BE A CAULDRON FULL OF FUN!

That old "Jack" magic has us in his spell in the ultimate Jack Nicholson part -- old Scratch himself. He is undisputably the star of THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, despite formidable competition from his unlikely coven of modern day Rhode Island witches played delightfully by Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon.

When John Updike wrote his risque' 1984 best seller, he was definetely dancing on the edge of antihereo in Daryl van Horne. Screen writer Michael Cristofer compounds the chaos with a beguiling brew of satanic spoof, sexual bickering, monster mash and Gothic slapstick comedy. If Hawthorne were alive and well in the '80s and inclined to caffeine abuse, he might have penned this frantic genre-bender, with its uninhibited exploration of repression's fruits -- political and physical -- with Daryl as devil's advocate to the women's movement. The sly chauvinist is against liberation, unless it's sexual. But he is not above using feminist propaganda to flatter and seduce the trio who inadvertently summoned him. Naturally, they find him irresistible. (Each of them manless and sorely oppressed in Eastwick.)

With its white steepled church and lawns more pristine than AstroTurf, it makes the perfect Puritan theme park. We fly down into this manicured doll town with its Halloween orange trees, aboard a cinematic broomstick, swept up in the fractured fantasy by director George Miller who directs this eccentric fairy tale with his customary flair and adolescent gusto. His proportions are outsized and the mood is demonic Disney. With a sky full of chubby, children's-book clouds and a dance number in an explosion of pink balloons, you think this is how the Devil would romance Mary Poppins -- provided Poppins would not be put off by cherry vomit.

One dark night over Cheez Whiz and martinis, the three women lament the lack of good men, wishing idly for the ideal lover -- "a dark prince, traveling under a curse, on a dark charger." They clink a toast to a thunderclap. And suddenly out of the wet New England woods, something wicked their way comes -- in a speeding black Mercedes with extra running lights and the power to leap potholes. Daryl van Horne, cloven hoofs hidden under his Lakers high-tops, makes his entrance into quaint, colonial Eastwick. He's a supernatural cutup, equal parts blasphemy, brimstone and catnip. Nicholson hasn't frothed like this since he cut loose in The Shining. His Daryl, unlike Devils of yore, arrives in sartorial disarray. He's a reactionary womanizer who makes man's men like Bruce Willis come off like closet quiche-eaters. Curiously, the allegedly independent women Daryl woos are easy catches, more willing even than Stepford Wives.

Cher, is first to succumb, as widowed sculptor Alexandra Medford. All it takes, in fact, is a little empathy. Daryl, wriggling like a kitty, invites Alexandra to join him in his king-size bed in a manner that may not be repeated here. "I appreciate your directness," says Alexandra. "But I am sure you are the most unattractive man I've ever met ... You're not even interesting enough to make me sick." "So which do you want, the bottom or the top?" asks the unflappable Daryl, who immediately mesmerizes her with a speech about macrame' and coffee makers.

Pfeiffer, as a small-town journalist with a half-dozen kids and a husband who deserted her, can't wait to join the magical me'nage. "I'd love to be a woman," whispers Daryl. "Look what you can do with your bodies ... make babies, make milk to feed the babies." We might gag at this ourselves, but Pfeiffer's Sukie Ridgemont is taken in, being inordinately proud of her fecundity. Sukie was the beginning of more substantial parts for Pfeiffer, who is exquisite and sweetly intent.

But it's Sarandon who makes the greatest impression in her transition from retiring wallflower to ravishing vixen. As recently divorced cellist Jane Spofford, she fleshes out the cartoon role as a repressed redhead who gives herself to the Devil in a smoking, bow-stroking musical interlude. After a duet, the sheet music bursts into flames, the cello burns and the lovers are equally consumed. From then on, Jane gives up her glasses and takes to wearing little girls' socks with her high heels. And we all know what that signifies.

But almost all are upstaged by the insanely underrated Veronica Cartwright, a former child star who plays the thirty-ish Felicia Gabriel, a prophetic pillar of the community who senses the Devil's presence, becoming ever more paranoid as the merriment progresses. It's a prissy part that's even harder to play sympathetically than Nicholson's, but Cartwright does so handily. She's terrific. And recent Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) is also a small marvel as her long-suffering husband.

The battle between the sexes escalates and the fantasies get nasty as we near the frenzied finale that finds Van Horne, covered in chicken feathers and pink slime, hilariously demanding of a congregation of Eastwick Christians if "God knew what he was doing when he created woman? You don't think God makes mistakes?" A moment of unmistakable brilliance!

Some purists will say that the film has very little to do with Updike's original novel, and they would be right. (The script was rewritten by award-winning playwright Cristopher on a daily basis.) But all that is small potatos when one views the final product. With outstanding performances, amazing art direction and cinematography, the film holds up as fun, diverting entertainment with a standout over-the-top Nicholson (in a role he was born to play!) There is also a lush score by John WIlliams that captures with amazing dexterity, both the witchy playfulness of it's subject and just the right feel of a small New England town.

This film was a big hit in theaters during the summer of 1987 and deserves to be seen again and again. One can only hope that Warner Brothers has plans to honor The Witches of Eastwick with a well deserved 2 -disc special edition that features a magnificent pristine print and enough bonus extras to equal the pull-out-all-the-stops finale of this marvelous film.

Delicious 'PROMISES, PROMISES'

Well kiddies, It's no secret to those who know me well, that the mere mention of the word musical sends moisture running down my thighs like a butter-based frosting dripping down a triple layer cake on a hot, summer day. (How vivid!)

One of the best muscials of the late 1960s was PROMISES, PROMISES by Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Neil Simon. Promises, Promises is a musical adaptation of Billy Wilder's popular film, The Apartment, about a corporate shlub named Chuck Baxter, who earns promotions by lending his pad out to executives for sexual liaisons. Things get complicated when Chuck falls for one of the office women, Fran, who is invited to the flat by an exec.

The musical spawned the memorable pop hits "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" and "Promises, Promises," both popularly recorded by Dionne Warwick.

Neil Simon penned the original book and revised it for the popular Encores! concert revival at City Center in 1997. In that revival, a "new" song, "You've Got It All Wrong," was interpolated. The score also includes "Knowing When to Leave" (which got radio airplay), "Where Can You Take a Girl?," "You'll Think of Someone," "Turkey Lurkey Time," "It's Our Little Secret," "A Fact Can Be a Beautiful Thing," "Wanting Things," "Whoever You Are, I Love You," "Half As Big As Life," "She Likes Basketball," "Upstairs," "A Young Pretty Girl Like You."

Jerry Orbach won the 1969 Tony Award for his work in the original staging, which was produced by David Merrick. The musical also received nominations for A. Larry Haine (Featured Actor in a Musical), Edward Winter (Featured Actor in a Musical), Jill O'Hara (Actress in a Musical), Marian Mercer (Featured Actress in a Musical), Michael Bennett (Choreographer), Robert Moore (Director) and Best Musical. Promises, Promises ran 1,281 performances and was one of the first mainstream Broadway musicals to offer a commercial pop sound in its score.

FOR EXTRA FUN:
Follow this link to YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qsEY9xw_D8 and watch the fantastic Broadway company perform the showstopping Act One closer "Turkey Lurkey Time". It's amazing!

AND
Here's a YouTube video of "Turkey Lurkey Time" at the December 2008 Burt Bacharach event in NYC. The evening's choreographer (Adam Cates) re-created the original production's choreography by Michael Bennett. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aukNN8J7EIY

EVERYONE HAS A BREAKING POINT. 'WHILE SHE WAS OUT' WAS OURS.

Suburban housewife Kim Basinger is forced to fend for herself when she becomes stranded in a desolate forest with four murderous thugs led by a horrifically miscast Lukas Haas! What starts off as a quick trip to the mall ends in the woods with a fight for her life. All she has is a toolbox and her will to survive.

"...truly exceptional..." says Ain’t It Cool News

"...a first rate performance by Kim Basinger" exclaims LA Weekly

"Amazing and Truly Creepy" raves Film Fetish.com

"Ordinary and Truly Tepid" say we.

Apart from the occasional gratuitous graphic violence, WHILE SHE WAS OUT never rises above what it truly is; a woman-in-peril TV movie of the week (circa 1974) that probably would have starred Elizabeth Montgomery. Although Liz would have given a more compelling portrayal and probably would have nixed squeaky voiced Lukas Haas as the chief baddie. (Haas is not so much threatening as he is irritating.) The film is not even unintentionally funny. But there are plenty of eye-rolling moments. . .

On Christmas Eve, Basinger leaves her two darling twinsies at home with her abusive husband whiles she goes out to get wrapping paper at the mall. On the way, she realizes that her cell phone is dying and she's

neglected to bring the charger with her. Naturally, once at the over-crowded mall parking lot, she leaves an insulting note on the windshield of a car that is taking up two spaces. This turns out to be one really stupid move - in a film dedicated to stupid moves - because the car belongs to a melting pot of amatuer thugs who are out for trouble. Things go from bad to worse for our poor stupid (albeit plucky) heroine, and she finds that she is forced to defend herself (rather nastily) with nothing but her trusty red toolbox.

Sounds fairly interesting but, amazingly, nothing that follows elicits true scares (or even unintended chuckles) - just groans. At one point, Basinger is seen standing in a brook in the middle of the woods repeating "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." and you get the distinct feeling the apology is to the viewer and not to the last two bad guys that she dispatched. And the baddies really are horribly bad at being bad. They probably would have a difficult time against a blind nun.

The film is not just inept, it's terrible. The 86 minute running time seems interminable. (Most of it seems like filler.) Perhaps this should have been a 22 minute segment in some horror anthology. (One of the lesser segments to be sure, but at least short enough to forget after you've hopefully gone on to a better one.)

As to the spectacular "surprise" ending, we defy anyone not to have it figured out long before Basinger gets to the mall.

'SNAKES ON A PLANE' -- SEE IT WITH SOMEONE YOU LOVE.

Deliriously cheesy, SNAKES ON A PLANE is a riotous blend of Nature Runs Amok and In-Flight Terror subgenres. It plucks the best elements of both and tosses in a bit of TV Cop Show witness protection intrigue for good measure. S.O.A.P. begins and ends with beach montages. This threw us considering the film is about an airplane. During the opening credits, (which slide from beach shots to dirtbike stunts with all the narrative grace of a Mountain Dew commercial), we wondered if we had loaded the right film into our DVD player!

Nathan Phillips, the hunky motorcrosser in the opening, witnesses a bloody mob hit in Hawaii and is immediately almost taken out by members of the Eddie Kim gang. Luckily, Agent Samuel L. Jackson whisks him away to the safety of police custody via a hilariously hambone hotel-room shootout. From here we move to the airport - where you'll be thrilled to be out of the leafy wilds of Hawaii and into the sterile, claustrophobia-inducing halls and compartments of the travel industry.

Right off the bat, we're introduced to our flight crew, which features a few working girls, a sexually aggressive co-pilot, and even a token "Air-Mary" (or at least he seems to be). In the tradition of clichéd cop movies, Juliana Margulies is on her "last day on the job" and just wants it to be an easy one; however, somewhat NOT in the tradition of clichéd cop movies, she's not a cop - she's a stewardess. And we also learn that the chief baddie has decided to fill the plane with snakes, disguised as Hawaiian lais (don't ask), in order to kill off witness Phillips. (Already we're delighted at how the conventions of our various thriller subgenres are being appropriated, customized, retro-fitted, and inflated to near-bursting.)

Next we meet the passengers, who range from generic stereotypes (the fat woman in the muumuu; the kids flying alone for the first time) to outright celebrity parody (Rachel Blanchard as a blonde bimbo with a tiny purse-dog name Mary-Kate, who throws herself at Flex Alexander's germophobe rap star). This is all well and good because we just know that these idiots are going to be snake-bait in mere moments. (But honestly - don't think too hard about anything in this movie, because it doesn't pay. All we really need is to fill the plane with snakes, add passengers, stir and enjoy.)

Once the snakes arrive, this endearing little B-movie kicks into high-gear. The fanged stowaways start attacking and they pretty much don't stop for the duration, giving us dozens of hilarious attacks with a fairly hefty body count. The clichés also arrive in ferocious number - (The noble stewardess ventures back into the snake-ridden coach cabin to save the missing baby; the inevitable "is there anyone on board who can fly a plane?" Karen Black sequence), and with so many delicious snake incidents in between, it's pretty hard to get bored. Since Snakes On A Plane makes no attempt to rise above its B-movie premise, (and actually seems quite happy to wallow the ridiculous excesses it creates), it's very hard to get angry at it. The only thing that bothered us was the handling of the film's "gay" character, who ends up not being gay.

Yes, the gay-seeming steward who spends the movie clapping and looking wide-eyed and offering to suck the venom out of fat men's behinds ends up being a total hetero, which is kind of a dated joke and a bit of a screw-you to anyone who actually enjoyed the fact that a gay character was somewhat heroic, helpful, sensitive, and alive by the last reel. (And just why are the other stewardesses shocked that he's hugging his girlfriend at the end? Have they never had a conversation with this man during their 5-hour flights?) The filmmakers seem to be patting the homophobes in the audience on the head and saying, "it's alright to have liked that character because he's straight after all! Now get back to defacing pictures of Clay Aiken".
Anyway, while S.O.A.P. isn't high art it's certainly worth your time. Make sure and see it with a roomful of your snarkiest friends for maximum enjoyment. It's Fangy, Frothy Fun!

SEX IN L.A. GETS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THE HILARIOUS SCI-FI THRILLER 'SPECIES'.

Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey – sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts a definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is get laid. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But Species had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex.

In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger.

Species gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. There's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first.

Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous – can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we’re writing about, anyway – it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.– these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman – it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface.

Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his erection. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him.

Though it's far more polished, Species reminded us most of Humanoids from the Deep, a Doug McClure stinker in which icky reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Sweet stuff, but Species is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras.