Bob Adams Movies
This wildly off-beat comedy is about a male dancer (Paul Mercurio) who refuses to follow the accepted rules of ballroom dancing and creates his own style of choreography, which infuriates the ballroom dancing establishment. Before he's scheduled to compete in the Pan-Pacific ballroom championships, he's forced to take up a new partner (Tara Morice), a beginner who initially seems without promise. With his help, she turns into an assured and wonderful dancer. Baz Luhrmann's visual style may be too bright, gaudy and exaggerated for some tastes, yet he treats his characters with compassion, which makes Strictly Ballroom such an engaging comedy. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, (more)
- 1972
Renegade filmmaker and noted aficionado of expressive bad taste John Waters exploded into international infamy with this darkly comic, no-budget parade of the perverse (his third feature film, and first in color), in which plus-size cross-dresser Divine stars as Babs Johnson, a flashy criminal on the lam from the FBI who is hiding out in a trailer outside of Baltimore, MD. Accompanying Babs are her mother (Edith Massey), an obese and dim-witted woman who is malignly obsessed with eggs; her degenerate son, Crackers (Danny Mills); and Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce), Babs' duplicitous "traveling companion" and Crackers' co-conspirator in unwholesome erotic play. While Babs would prefer to be left in peace, she takes great pride in her status as "the Filthiest Person Alive" (an honor confirmed by one of America's sleazier tabloid newspapers), and when Connie and Raymond Marble (Mink Stole and David Lochary) announce their plans to take the title away from her, Babs is not about to stand idly by. The Marbles are a hateful couple who kidnap women, force their homosexual manservant, Channing (Channing Wilroy), to impregnate them, and sell the babies to lesbian couples found unfit for legal adoption; the Marbles then turn the profits back into pornography and narcotics trafficking. Impressive stuff, to be sure, but Babs is not about to take a back seat to anyone in a battle of filth, and when the Marbles throw down the gauntlet, Babs and her family retaliate in a no-holds-barred battle to determine who truly are "the Filthiest People Alive." Featuring murder, bestiality, rape, dismemberment, coprophagia, a dizzying variety of sexual perversions, and a performance of "Papa Oom Mow Mow" you will not soon forget, Pink Flamingos is nonetheless a comedy, and a surprisingly successful one; shot on a budget of only 12,000 dollars, the film has grossed close to ten million dollars around the world, and its success launched John Waters into a career as America's leading authority on poor taste. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Divine, David Lochary, (more)
In this adventure, set in the south African Transvaal, six robbers begin victimizing an aged, bitter prospector and his daughter in order to steal his gold. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vincent Price
After a purse is stolen on a South African bus, this tale is set in motion--involving secret information and communist espionage. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
- 1967
The quest for a fortune gold bullion provides the impetus for this adventuresome crime drama set in Southwestern Africa. It all begins with a plane crash. The pilot barely survives. When he awakens he sees that he is near an abandoned, wreck of a wagon. He ends up taken in by a couple who talk about the wagon and its mysterious cargo. Soon after the pilot's return to Johannesburg, he finds that the wagon is purported to have been filled with gold. Excited, he, and others, including his son and his son's girl friend, return to the location and begin their search. Unfortunately, the couple who rescued him lie in wait and take them all hostage. For the second time in the story, the wife attempts to seduce the pilot and was with the first time, the pilot says no. Realizing that she was wrong to have done that, the repentant wife frees the captives, an act that costs her life. Later, the searchers find the treasure, but unfortunately, things are not as they seem to be and violence ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
