David F. Price Movies

Mistaken identity provides the basis for this Australian screwball transvestite comedy. The trouble begins in the rural town of Worondilla in the sugar cane district of northern Australia. The town is preparing for its annual Sugar Week celebrations. This year an all-girl band is being brought in. Three of the five members are lesbians. When the band leader Courtney learns that her guitarist, Jo, has had sex with a local lothario, who also bedded lead singer, Angie, Jo is out of a job, and the band is without a guitar. They begin advertising. At the same time, an angry wife, Irene, leaves her obnoxious husband and town barber, Barry, after he pawns her piano. Barry is crazy about Elvis and loves singing his songs at the local tavern with his sons. The sons are terribly upset that their mother has left them and do not know that she is secretly staying at the same hotel as the band. When her son Mick, an effeminate looking fellow, sees the band's ad, he dresses up as a female and applies for the job. He will spend the money he earned to get his mother's piano back. More trouble ensues when Angie,who thinks of herself as straight, falls in love with the new guitarist, "Michelle." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A substantial improvement on its predecessor, this in-name-only sequel retains only a few characters from the original To Die For, standing alone as an effective vampire tale in its own right. The complex plot revolves around the facilities of vampire Doctor Max (Michael Praed), whose stores of whole blood provide temporary food supplies for wayward bloodsuckers in need of a fix. Into Max's clinic arrives young Danny (Jay Underwood) and his sister Nina (Rosalind Allen), whose adopted baby is suffering from an unknown affliction. While Danny eventually falls under the seductive spell of the translucent-looking Celia (Amanda Wyss), Max's predatory brother Tom (Steve Bond) sets his sights on Nina's unprotected neck, leading to a confrontation with Max over the fate of Nina and her child, revealed to be a human/vampire half-breed, of whom Max is the father. Events are further stirred by the arrival of manic vampire hunter Martin (Scott Jakoby), who is obsessed with destroying them all. This slick and stylish production belies its low budget with technical panache (aside from occasional cost-cutting measures in the special effects department), which includes superb photography, razor-sharp editing, and a script that provides dimension and believable motivations for its characters without skimping on scares. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

When her adoptive mother Joan Crawford died in 1977, erstwhile actress/author Christina Crawford and her brother Christopher were left out of Joan Crawford's will, "for reasons which are well known to them." Industryites have suggested that it may have been this posthumous act of rejection rather than an alleged lifetime of parental abuse that inspired Christina Crawford to pen her scathing autobiography Mommie Dearest. The 1981 film version of this tome was evidently meant to be taken seriously, but the operatic direction by Frank Perry and the over-the-top portrayal of Joan Crawford by Faye Dunaway (whose makeup is remarkable) has always seemed to inspire loud laughter whenever and where-ever the film is shown. According to the film (and the book that preceded it), Joan Crawford was a licentious, child-beating behemoth, who stalked and postured through life as though it was one of her own pictures-more Strait-jacket than Mildred Pierce. This is the film with the notorious "wire coat hanger" scene, just in case you need a reminder. Surprisingly, one emerges from Mommie Dearest with more sympathy for the monstrous but intensely vulnerable Crawford than for her whining daughter (played as an adult by Diana Scarwid, and as a child by Mara Hobel). Our favorite scene: Joan Crawford dazedly replacing her ailing daughter in the cast of a daytime TV soap opera. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide