Fan-Boy Icons #58: Duran Duran

When you are kid in the '80s with MTV it was hard to get away from Duran Duran. Not that you wanted to, necessarily. Sure, I was in the transition from hair metal to harder metal at the time, but Duran Duran had quite an appeal. For one thing, despite being pop, their music is quite interesting and the musicianship is apparent. Also while they have a boy-band vibe as far as looks go, their music is not they typical saccharin one associates with New Kids on the Block and their progeny. They even spawned two other pretty awesome bands. Power Station with John Taylor and Andy Taylor (bass and guitar respectively) fronted by Robert Palmer and with Tony Thompson on drums. Around the same time singer Simon LeBon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, and drummer Roger Taylor

One thing I like about Duran Duran is that there is a bit of nerdliness to them. First, "Duran Duran" is a character from the comic book and film Barbarella, and their lyrics are not of the typical "hey girl I love you" variety so common of pop music. They take some chances with lyrics and video images. "Girl on Film" was a particularly daring, and rather pervy, video. An interesting thing was that they were not exactly trying to get attention with it, as it was their third single. The video below is the uncut version, so be warned there are boobies and thongs.


Duran Duran - Girls On Film [Uncensored] by hushhush112

Possibly their best song, and my particular favorite, is "Rio." To me it is quite an amazing song and the lyrics and music are very evocative of the Mexican Riviera, and is just beautifully complicated without over-reaching.


Duran Duran - Rio by EMI_Music

WIP Wednesday: Chain Gang Girls (Sasuke Sasuga, 2007)

AKA Kûga no Ori: Nami dai-42 Zakkyobô

This Pinky Violence WIP effort is somewhere between an Ilsa film and a Scorpion film. There is a good deal of torture, though not of the extreme type typical in Ms Thorne's films, and there is a revenge aspect like Ms Kaji's films. Our lead character, Nami, like Scorpion is f the rather "unbreakable" variety. In matter of fact, the film's plot is extremely similar to the first Scorpion film, Joshuu 701-Gô: Sasori, 女囚７０１号　さそり. Sadly, "Nami" has none of Meiko Kaji's charm in this role. She can certainly take a beating, but whether by her own skill or her direction she is rather unimpressive. More impressive is the HBIC (possibly Yuko Kosaka), who is very much what the role demands.

There are a few interesting twists on the standard WIP formula. Nami is thrown into a multi-prisoner cell occupied by a gang of sorts. They decide she needs some softening up before becoming part of their gang, and all but the HBIC go after her. Nami, however, can both take it and dish it out. Later, the gang's number-two wants to fight her one-on-one, but is unable to best Nami and resorts to a weapon. The HBIC does not like this, declaring "no weapons in a one-on-one fight. You lose." She goes so far as to make her number-two suffer the punishment brought on by the guards afterwards. She even allows Nami to be a "lone wolf" as long as she does not interfere with the gang. Another slight variation is in this film's version of the "hot box." They have a sealed room that allows no light in, and public address horns that blare high pitched noise. Nami is held there for three days, and is a complete wreck when she returns to her cell. Her treatment by the guards, and the respect she earns for not being a wimp, leads her cellmates to plot her escape.

This is by no means a great WIP film. It was shot on video. The sets are cheap. The costumes are not very imaginative. There is little of the more aggressive approach typical of these films. There are some interesting aspects, to be sure. WIP genre fans may enjoy it, if only for the diversions from formula. It seems a bit tame for Pinky Violence, and is not overly sexual. There are worse films, but I would not go out of my way to see this one.

Nerd Girl of Note #137: Maura Monti

Before Pam Grier was Coffy (1973), and before Meiko Kaji was The Scorpion (1972), Maura Monti played a female action hero in the 1968 Luchador film La Mujer Murciéglo, aka The Batwoman. Monti is an Italian born Mexican import who had appeared in a previous Luchador film, Santo el Enmascarado de Plata vs La Invasión de los Marcianos (aka Santo vs the Martian Invasion, Alfredo B. Crevenna, 1967) , and later in Blue Demon Destructor de Espías (Blue Demon Spy Destroyer, Emilio Gómez Muriel, 1968).

The interesting thing about The Batwoman is that she is a female hero who is not motivated by revenge. In that sense she is more a Barbara Gordon Batgirl than her better known compatriots Coffy and The Scorpion. Her motivation is fighting crime, not getting back at her tormentors. Now, that does not make her a purely Feminist heroine. She does run around in a bikini most of the time, however she does not sleep with anyone, nor use her feminine wiles to outdo her opponents. There are only a few rather sexist bits, like The Batwoman fainting when the monster sneaks into her room, and she is scared by a mouse at the end, but mostly it is a pretty solid role.

Like Pam Grier, Maura Monti is quite the athletic specimen for a time when women did not take up athletics. I will hazard a guess that the few in-the-ring scenes with The Batwoman are not done by Monti (the actress wrestling wears a full-body outfit, and is clearly of a different build), but it is clear she is at least a strong swimmer, and the fight scenes she is certainly performing are no worse than most.

Now, clearly we are talking about a film that DC could easily sue over, and perhaps did. It is a total Batman ripoff. Aside from the dead parents angle, she is very much Batman, and many of the visuals are similar to the Batman television series. Her mask is totally an Adam West mask. It is not tongue in cheek, and does not try to be as campy as Batman was, but really, it is plain where they were going with this.

Fortunately, some kind soul has done a nice job of adding subtitles to this film and put it on Youtube. Big ups to Bubba Shelby for letting us know. There are a few weird things in the translation, but it gets an A+ from this gringo with little Spanish in his utility belt. You can check it out here.

Bikinis are not just for swimming, but there is a fair bit of that to justify it.

Escape from "El Reptilicus"

I am not judging, but this is clearly not the same woman as above.

Remember kids, throwing acid is wrong. Even at mad scientists. Also, see the monster? That's what happens when Ultraman has unprotected sex with a Sleestak.

Like El Santo, the mask stays on. Well, mostly.

Alter-ego: a rich woman who uses her fortune to fight crime... They are clearly ripping off Iron Man. Gah!

"Yes, I'm wearing a bikini. Now can we get on with your report?"

¡Mas Luchadores Magnífico!

The world of Lucha Libre is a big one, and there are many, many Luchadores we could talk about, but let's hit a few highlights.

Blue Demon was a former bad-guy/heel wrestler who became a good guy after his tag-team partner was unmasked. He was a rival of Santo, despite their being on the same side, and Blue Demon's defeat of Santo is a thing of Lucha Legend. Blue Demon is easily second only to Santo in popularity and mythic stature. He did twenty-five films altogether, nine of which costarred Santo. Several had him in charge of a league of wrestlers as in The Champions of Justice (Federico Curiel, 1971).

Irma González was a National Women's Wrestling Champion and the UWA World Women's Champion. She and partner Irma Aguilar were the National Women's Tag Team Wrestling Champions. [via Lucha Women] I can find very little on the web, en Inglés at least, about Irma, but apparently she is still active in training wrestlers today. According to Wikipedia, "in the early 1960s a female wrestler called La Novia del Santo (Spanish for 'the Bride of El Santo') worked the Mexican circuit. Under the silver mask was Irma González, a well known wrestler who had promised her fiancé that she'd stop wrestling, but went back in the ring under a mask when she could not resist the draw of competition. La Novia got El Santo's blessing to use the name and is the only non-family member ever given the right to use the Santo name. Gonzáles only wrestled as 'La Novia del Santo' for 7 months until she got married." According to the IMDb, Irma appeared in three films as a wrestler; Doctor of Doom (René Cardona, 1963), Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (René Cardona, 1964), Los Hermanos del Viento (Alberto Bojórquez, 1977, possibly not a wrestling film)

An odd entry that I just learned about via Lucha Women is April Hunter. I have known about April for quite a while. She was a fitness model, adult model, and American wrestler, but apparently has quite a following on the Mexican and Japanese Lucha Libre circuit. Like our other entrants today, April has several film credits, including Â! Ikkenya Puroresu (Ah! House Collapses, Naoki Kudo, 2004, a Japanese wrestling-zombie movie), Just Another Romantic Wrestling Comedy (Kim Sky/Evan Seplow, 2006), and Hell House (2009). She has wrestled under other names including April Kincaid, The Prize, Big Red, and Beautiful Soldier.

Lastly, we'll look at Tinieblas, a wildly popular wrestler who appeared in films with Blue Demon, and was apparently the second Luchador to have a comicbook made based on his character. His backstory, according to a comment made here by CRwM of And Now the Screaming Starts): "Tiniblas was supposedly the lone survivor of a race of ancient space travelers that perfected themselves mentally and physically by harnessing a sort of zero energy that permeated the universe. His mask protects him from harmful cosmic rays that can penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. If he loses the mask, these ray will disintegrate him instantly. Being the perfect physical and mental specimen, Tiniblas didn't just wrestle, he also had a long-running column in a Mexico City newspaper that was a sort of 'ask the perfect space alien anything?' column. People asked him about the ultimate purpose of existence, the mysteries of the universe, relationship troubles, financial matters, and cooking hints. It was probably the single most helpful feature ever run by a newspaper anywhere." He could not be any more wrong than most advice columnists, now could he?