Malena (2000, It./US)

Writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore's (known for Cinema Paradiso (1988)) nostalgic, coming of age romantic drama was set during 1940s fascist-wartime Sicily. The European release of 106 minutes was cut to 92 minutes by Miramax to reduce the liberal scenes of nudity for American audiences.

The story told of voluptuous schoolteacher Malena Scordia (Monica Bellucci, a beautiful model turned actress) - a seductive, luscious heroine (with flowery dresses) in the friendless seaside town of Castelcuto. She was the object of transfixed, autoerotic, fanciful romantic infatuation for lots of young town boys, including 13 year old Italian boy Amoroso Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro) who rode a second-hand bicycle, and served as the film's narrator.

The maturing adolescent boy was transfixed by Malena as were others. She was met with lecherous stares, nasty gossip about her promiscuous sexuality, and wolf whistles from the men, and jealous gossip from the women when she strolled through town.

Renato often spied upon her (he watched as her dress strap fell to reveal one breast, and another time saw her bathe her breasts with lemon juice). With others, he found himself aroused by her ("What a wonderful ass...What I wouldn't give for an hour with her"). He stole her panties from a laundry line, often saw her face in place of others, and masturbated frequently while thinking about her on his squeaky-springed bed.

He fantasized that he was touching Malena as he was lying on his bed (and planning to masturbate to a booklet of pictures of naked females). His bedroom door opened and Malena entered and stood before him in a white dress. He pulled down her white silky dress and removed her black bra straps, to reveal her breasts in front of his eyes. He then moved his hands slowly down her entirely naked body.

Malena (Monica Bellucci) - The Fantasy Object of Young Renato's Mind

In parallel scenes during self-pleasuring, he also imagined her as his co-star in a series of elaborate, sexually-charged erotic black and white fantasies (of being her hero and making love to her) inspired by his favorite movies: Tarzan films ("Me Tarzan, you Malena"), westerns ("Renato, you've got the biggest gun in the West") and gladiator films.

Renato was taken to a local brothel by his father (Luciano Federico) to be sexually awakened. When preparing to have sex with prostitute Lupetta (Elisa Morucci) who was instructed to "treat him right," he was asked: "Is it your first time?" He responded: "I've imagined it many times." For an instant, he imagined that Malena was standing nude in front of him.

She became a mistreated war widow when her new husband Nico (Gaetano Aronico) died during the war, and her father, a Latin teacher Professor Bonsignore (Pietro Notarianni), died during an Allied bombing.

Small-town prejudice from jealous women and murmuring crowds falsely accused her of adultery ("I'd skin her alive...How disgusting"), as circumstances forced non-conformist, widowed and poverty-stricken Malena to become a prostitute - fulfilling the false charges laid against her. She began serving clients including occupying members of the German army.

After the liberation of Sicily in the war, the townsfolk (mostly female) again scorned and humiliated Malena, and punished her for her beauty. They dragged her into the street, crudely clipped off her hair with a pair of scissors, and left her severely beaten, bloody and half-naked in the piazza's street. As they banished her, they screamed at her:

"Now you'll see what happens when you steal our men and sleep with the filthy Germans....It's the end of spreading your legs, whore!...Now let's see what men make of you. This will teach you some respect...The wicked come to a wicked end."

Maze (2000)

Co-writer/producer/director/star Rob Morrow's (with his feature debut as writer and director) was both a romance and a character study of Tourette Syndrome. It told its tale through a story about afflicted New York painter and sculptor/artist Lyle Maze (Rob Morrow), who felt that he might never find romance or companionship.

A romantic triangle between the three major characters (the artist and another couple) was the predictable plotline in this melodramatic chick flick:

• Lyle Maze (Rob Morrow)
• Callie (Laura Linney)
• Mike (Craig Sheffer)

It featured a very full-frontal nude scene of Oscar-nominated Laura Linney (in You Can Count on Me (2000)) as pregnant fashion stylist Callie, the live-in lover/girlfriend of idealistic and liberal doctor Mike (Craig Sheffer), Lyle's best friend. She posed for Lyle while Mike was on an extended overseas medical mission with Doctors Without Borders, and inevitably, Lyle began to fall in love with her.

In another scene, brunette Lenna (Sheila Zane) also posed naked for the artist.

Lenna (Sheila Zane)

The Monkey's Mask (2000, Australia)

This Australian erotic and provocative, neo-noir, crime-murder mystery-thriller, directed by Samantha Lang, hinted at its subject matter with the tagline:

"No evidence just a smell of sex and violence."

The sapphic murder mystery contained various graphic sex scenes between its two main female stars:

• Dr. Diana Maitland (Top Gun's Kelly McGillis), an alluring, willowy-blonde, open-minded bisexual poetry English professor
• Jill Fitzpatrick (Susie Porter), late 20s ex-cop turned lesbian, leather-jacketed, tomboyish, a short-haired private investigator

Diana, who was married to cold and handsome lawyer Nick (Marton Csokas), was a sexually-voracious femme fatale who enjoyed kinky sex. Jill was quickly drawn into a torrid, lustful lesbian love affair with the seductive teacher Diana, when she became involved in the investigation of a young strangulation murder victim. The dead individual was Mickey Norris (Abbie Cornish). - a nymphomaniacal university student in Sydney who was taking one of Diana's poetry classes.

While Diana and Jill shared numerous lesbian love scenes (including oral sex), Jill realized that Mickey's amateur poetry was laced with sex and death as she investigated Mickey's death for her grief-stricken parents.

In the opening scene, Mickey read some of her poetry while standing in front of an audience:

"Love is a torture - love tortures me. Does love torture you? If it does, why are you laughing? I feel you in the room like a knife. You cut out my cunt, so why not cut out my heart? Your prick is a knife that hurts me. You grunt like a beautiful pig. (Audience laughter) I wish my cunt could hurt you."

Naked States (2000)

In this highly-rated, attention-getting, 74 minute HBO documentary (America's Undercover series) from director/producer Arlene Donnelly, photographer Spencer Tunick traveled cross-country around America for five months in the late 90s to capture uneroticized pictures of nudes in every one of the 50 US states. The tagline was, appropriately:

"AMERICA'S IN FOR A NUDE AWAKENING."

He specialized in images of people becoming spontaneously nude, often in large group settings, such as:

• 100 people on a busy street at 6:15 am in Times Square in NYC
• the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada
• a gathering of the New Jersey Tri-State Metro Naturists in New Jersey
• a biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota
• a Phish rock concert with 1123 nude concert-goers in Maine, breaking a record for the largest number photographed naked

Many everyday folks were interviewed for their views on body image and on getting nude, often describing liberation and self-expression.

100 Girls (2000)

Writer/director Michael Davis' Cinderella-like teen-sex comedy (direct-to-video) was part of a trilogy of similar films:

• Eight Days A Week (1997), starring Keri Russell
• 100 Girls (2000)
• Girl Fever (2002), starring Jennifer Morrison

The tagline described the plot:

"He met the girl of his dreams. If only he can meet her again."

It told about geeky, love-struck college student Matthew's (Jonathan Tucker) desperate quest for a mystery woman (unseen with an unknown name, who was carrying a basket of laundry and bound for the basement) with whom he had a one-night-stand in a darkened dorm elevator during a power outage/blackout, after he had attended a party. Always considering himself a loser, he actually lost his virginity during the sexual encounter.

Matthew (Jonathan Tucker)	Francesca - His Cross-Dressed Disguise

The only clue the girl-obsessed Matthew had was her pair of panties - so he went on a bizarre search (involving scenes of voyeurism, various disguises including cross-dressing as Francesca, deceptions and burglaries) to find the matching bra in a girls' dormitory ("virgin vault") of 100 girls - the film's title. He became the maintenance man at the dormitory - an advantageous position for his search. However, Matthew suffered from an inferiority complex about the size of his penis, and insecurity and nervousness around pretty females ("Deny it we may, but we are all afraid of women. Every single one of them").

There were many sexy females in this film and sex-filled dialogue (mostly Matthew's plentiful voice-overs), with interspersed views of nudity (not outright, usually breasts) that objectified the women. Some of the identified female characters were:

• Cynthia (Jamie Pressly), a blonde "sexual sorceress" (described by Matthew as "dessert, the creme brule of womanhood," with "golden orbs whose wondrous tips are upturned, aimed right at his eyes")
• Arlene (Katherine Heigl), a competitive tomboy, who didn't wear make-up; she challenged Matthew to a game of 'strip foosball' in the dorm; when he lost, he was humiliated: "Thank God I turned the thermostat up that day. Otherwise my manhood would've recoiled like a turtlehead instead of hanging out like an anaconda waiting for a match"; during a challenge match, Matthew distracted Arlene and won, and the voluptuous Arlene was stripped down to her red bra, although she accused him of cheating; by the film's end, it was revealed that she "practiced an alternative lifestyle" and hooked up with Wendy
• Window Girl (Biljana Filipovic), who stripped in her window when Matthew turned off the A/C in the dorm

Window Girl (Biljana Filipovic)

• Rene (Ivana Bozilovic/Ivana Firestone), a breast-scribbling cheater
• Wendy (Larisa Oleynik), a cute girl-next-door; one of Matthew's high-school classmates - ("A testament to why women in our society are cheer-leaders. Everything she did was perfect. She was arousing in that virginal Mary Ann, not Ginger sorta way. This kind of girl is scary. She's the kind of girl you take home to mom. And even scarier, she's the kind of girl you marry and she becomes your mom. She dresses you, feeds you, leaves notes on toilet seats telling you what chores need to be done. She's scary because you could just see yourself falling for her. But, at the same time, you feel that if you fall for her, you're settling for just the average"); by film's end she confessed that she was a closeted lesbian and enjoyed Arlene's company
• Barbara (Kristin Herold), known as "Ever Tan Barbara"
• Dora (Marissa Ribisi), a lonely, intellectual outcast, and semi-suicidal; she was very sensitive and self-aware but considered herself "ugly" ("No one will ever have passion for me"); she was a closeted reader of sexual novels (D.H. Lawrence, Colette, and Henry Miller), and ultimately let Matthew videotape her naked

The key female was promiscuous art-school student Patty (Emmanuelle Chriqui), who had a mean, narcissistic, nicotine-gun-chewing and abusive boyfriend named Crick (Johnny Green). In Matthew's first encounter with her, he considered her a "slut" for staying with Crick, but was became curious when she described her ben-wa balls (kegel balls). Later, he changed his mind about her: "She wasn't a slut. She was a luscious voice of experience." He made love to her and described it: "We didn't make cinema love. We made the kind of love where you just laugh together, when your bodies make that farting noise when air gets trapped in between you. Patty taught me things." She advised: "Look into my eyes. Concentrate on me. Concentrate on us." Afterwards, Matthew thought to himself how he had been trained by her to be more sexual, but was indifferent about her: "Our transcendent fusion was not the romantic type, it was just fun. That verified my experience with her as not serious and nothing cosmic. I used her."

Matthew's advertisement in the school newspaper for his 'mystery girl' suggested that they rendezvous again on a Thursday night in the basement laundry room. The ad brought a shadowy figure to him to tell him to give up his quest: ("Stop trying to find me....I don't want you to find me....There's nothing to talk about. I don't like you"). Later, he surmised that his mystery female had a boyfriend already, or was drunk and didn't remember him. He concluded: "I'm just a big steaming pile of loser."

During one particular voice-over as the camera surveyed the bodies of various females, Matthew described God's perfect creation - the female - exemplified by his videotaped views of Dora, who had requested that Matthew film her naked:

I love women. I love those emerald pools masquerading as eyes. Lips. I love smiles and the yawns.The eating. With skin so soft, women are head to toe cashmere. A woman's skin inspires a man's fingers to have Magellan's love of exploration. It's women's bellies that drive me wild. It's more than just the fact that it's the only part of a woman's body you easily see naked. The belly hints at the pleasures beyond. You're so near and yet so far. Everything about a woman draws you to her sexuality. The small triangle between her legs is like the head of an arrow which points, 'Go here! Go here!' Or if you follow the graceful line of the pectoralis major, it inevitably draws your eyes to the golden orbs climaxed by the nipple. God is in the details. And the nipple is His greatest detail.

When the school year was almost over, he stood in front of the dorm ("Virgin Vault") one evening and rhetorically poured his heart out to declare his true love. In the film's most memorable monologue (there were many instances in the literate script of Matthew's voice-over musings about males and females), Matthew vowed that he would be transformed by his dream woman:

Without you, I'm as lonely as an abandoned dog on the side of a highway. I have gift anxiety, even though I don't know when your birthday is. We can spend perfect days shopping and cooking together. I swear, I'll never make wisecracks when you scrape your tires against the curb while parallel parking. If you consent to live with me, I'll clean the toilet every week. I'll do it with my tongue if you ask. I will strike the words 'hooters' and 'love rockets' from my vocabulary. I'll love you. Even if your name is Mimi and you want me to pronounce it 'May May'. I will only pass gas underneath the covers and only under the direst of circumstances. Hell, I'll go on a low cholesterol diet. And I won't buy one of those red sports cars when I hit my mid-life crisis. Your parents can come visit us every week, even if your mom is a big witch with a capital B. And your folks don't have to go to a retirement home because they can come live with us. I declare, I will separate the whites from the colors, I'll learn the mysteries of hot and cold water washes. I'll never huff and puff while waiting for you to put on your makeup. If you're a cat person, I'll never point out the fact that a dog can save your life from drowning, but a cat can't. I will happily go see chick flicks with you, like 'Pride and Prejudice'. I'll make a point to try new food like okra gumbo. I won't curl my nose at vegetables whose awful taste is disguised by having cheese put on it. I pledge to always say 'yes' when you ask, 'Is my hair looking okay tonight?' I'm gonna bring a whole new meaning to the word 'cuddle'. I'll be thoughtful enough to read your horoscope every day. I'm gonna save every birthday card you send me! And I'll actually write you real letters when we're apart. I'm never gonna expect you to know where I left my car keys, and I'll never leave my socks on the floor. With me, you'll find the cap is always on the toothpaste. I'll start wearing those male bikini style underwear if you like. My belly button will always be lint free. I want to full-on kiss your clitoris. It will be the most passionate, intimate experience you've ever had. I declare now, I will give my life for you. If you fail to come to me, I know some part of me will surely die.

Many of the girls called out that they were the one - the "mystery girl." Although he realized Patty was the girl in the elevator, she dismissed his interest in her: "You fell in love with another girl in that elevator. I'm not that girl...Go away."

Eventually, in the film's conclusion during a second black-out (Matt deliberately switched off the power to the entire dorm), he made one final attempt to proclaim his true love for Patty - and this time she accepted. Now, he really appeared to love her, based on what she had told him earlier: "There's a certain way a man stares at the woman he loves. The man looks like a boy on his birthday. He treats the woman as if she were a gift he's waited so long to open and now he can't wait to see what treasure is inside." They kissed as the film ended.

Quills (2000)

Director Philip Kaufman's major studio film, an R-rated historical period drama, starred Oscar-nominated Geoffrey Rush as the victimized, crazed and imprisoned Marquis de Sade as an inmate in the Charenton Asylum for the Insane administered by the head religious priest Abbe du Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix).

The infamous censored and incarcerated author (appearing naked at times in his cell) persuaded one of the insane asylum's laundry girls, feisty Madeleine "Maddy" LeClerc (Kate Winslet), to smuggle in writing paper and ink so that he could continue his scandalous work. Later in the film, the Marquis used wine, blood, and even his own feces as ink, when deprived.

During the course of the film, Coulmier developed an attraction for the disciplined (whipped) laundry girl punished for her infraction - who later became the innocent victim of an asylum riot.

The Major Fantasy Sequence (of Necrophilia) Between the Priest (Joaquin Phoenix) and Madeleine LeClerc (Kate Winslet)

In the film's most notorious sequence, Madeleine was put on display in the asylum's chapel on an altar with candles surrounding her. She had a very filmy cloth over her naked body, which Coulmier pulled back. He then started to kiss and fondle her, and began to make love to her. He climbed on top of her -- and then was startled when her eyes opened and she kissed him back and held him as they started to make love (with her legs around him), until a pounding at the door awakened him from his perverse dream. He horrifically realized that he was embracing a corpse.

Rated X (2000)

Distributed by cable TV's Showtime Network and directed by actor Emilio Estevez, this R-rated film was a semi-biopic portrayal of American sleazy-porn pioneers of San Francisco - The Mitchell Brothers. The film was taglined: "They put the 'X' in Sex." It was released in both R-rated and Unrated versions (a minute longer).

It was advertised as having "no limits" in its account of the two brothers:

• Artie Mitchell (Charlie Sheen), the coke-addicted, side-burned younger brother
• Jim Mitchell (Emilio Estevez, Sheen's real-life brother), balding

Told in flashback, the film surveyed their early grindhouse film-making days, the Mitchell Brothers' establishment and proprietorship of the O'Farrell Theater in the early 1990s, and the production of their X-rated Behind the Green Door with former Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers (Tracy Hutson of TV's Extreme Makeover - Home Edition). Artie reassuringly described to Marilyn how she would star as Gloria, who was:

"kidnapped from her hotel, taken to a secret sex club where she's met by a group of women who strip her. Now I know that sounds like rape, but hold on. No one gets raped. No one gets hurt. One of the women tells her to loosen up. This could be the best experience of your life."

Their spiraling-down lives due to drug and alcohol use, and personal conflict leading to the death of Artie at the hands of his own brother in 1991, which opened the film.

A Sampling of the Film's Many Nudes
Unidentified
Co-Worker (Joanne Boland)	Sandra (Carolyn Goff)

Reindeer Games (2000) (aka Deception)

John Frankenheimer's action-crime thriller starred Charlize Theron as beautiful femme fatale Ashley Mercer (Charlize Theron) - a dead con's pen-pal girlfriend - who engaged in a wild sex scene in a motel room in the film's opening to seduce ex-con auto-thief Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck). [When Rudy's cellmate Nick Cassidy (James Frain) was killed during a prison riot, Rudy took Nick's place and met up with Ashley when he was released.] Note: The names Rudy and Nick referred to two familiar Christmas characters: Rudolph and St. Nick or Santa Claus.

The twist was that he was assuming his cellmate's identity, and reluctantly became involved in a plan to hold up the Tomahawk Indian reservation casino in Michigan.

Theron provided some gratuitous topless nudity (after removing her black bikini top with one hand and flinging it away, while holding a drink glass in her other hand) in a swimming pool scene with her psychopathic outlaw trucker 'brother' Gabriel Mercer (Gary Sinise), revealing that she wasn't actually his abused sister/relative - but his love interest, in her complex, plot-twisting plan to rob the casino. Rudy watched in amazement as they seductively embraced each other.

The Infamous Pool Stripping Scene Between Ashley and Gabriel Mercer (Charlize Theron and Gary Sinese)

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Director Darren Aronofsky's effective and disturbing film told about the consequences of drug use for four individuals:

• Sara Goldfarb (Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn), a lonely, TV-addicted, diet-pill-popping Brighton Beach widow
• Harry (Jared Leto), Sara's heroin-addicted son
• Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), Harry's girlfriend
• Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans), Harry's drug-dealing best friend

Pre-release discussions claimed the film bordered on pornography and glamorized drug use.

In the film, Sara's addiction to weight-loss and obsession with being on a television show led to hallucinations, near insanity, and shock-treatment, while the harrowing price of heroin addiction caused her son Harry's arm to become severely infected and require amputation. Meanwhile, despairing and pained Marion, earlier seen in full-frontal before a mirror as she took drugs, began to prostitute herself to pay for her addiction.

The most controversial sequence took place at a Sunday evening stag party hosted by black pimp Big Tim (Keith David). It was argued that the scene was a necessary component and message that the cautionary film had to deliver about the consequences of drug use. It was a nasty, extremely-graphic lesbian orgy scene with a shared anal dildo between Marion and her female partner. The two wanted to increase their earnings in front of the frenzied crowd of party animals as Marion's partner asked: "So what are we gonna do now?" In a degrading so-called "ass-to-ass" scene, Marion shared a two-headed greased-up dildo with the female as a group of spectators watched and went crazy, tossed bills at them, and shouted as the pace quickened: "Ass-to-ass!" and "Come! Come! Come!"

The Infamous Ass-to-Ass Sequence

The scene shocked the MPAA which rated the harrowing film as NC-17 - Aronofsky and distributor Artisan appealed the ruling, claiming it was "neither correct nor justified." The appeal was denied, so Artisan was compelled to release it unrated. A slightly-modified, edited R-rated version of the film was released on video with a shortened sex scene.

Road Trip (2000)

Documentarian Todd Phillips' fiction-film debut was a raunchy, vulgar gross-out teen comedy that was typical of the new decade - with plentiful sex gags.

It featured beautiful, seductive, and aggressive sorority girl Beth Wagner (Amy Smart) whose one-night-stand sexual romp after stripping down to dark red panties as payback to male classmate Josh (Breckin Meyer) was videotaped and accidentally mailed to Josh's girlfriend Tiffany Henderson (Rachel Blanchard). As Beth removed one layer of clothing, she asked: "What do you look for in a girl?...Do you feel better yet?" When he responded that he felt a little better, she proceeded to go topless, as he commented: "She should be nice and attractive and...topless, and topless." She then climbed on top of him to kiss him.

The Reason for the Road Trip - Beth Wagner (Amy Smart)

This incident set up the cross-country road trip of the film's title from Ithaca, New York to Austin, Texas to intercept the damaging tape.

Another scene involved a student named Barry Manilow (Tom Green) at a party - who narrated the entire film in flashback. He conducted a sexual 'educational' experiment (the rubbing of each other's bare nipples) with two topless co-eds (Aerica D'Amaro and Bridgett Wise - each billed as Barry's Girl): "We're touching. It's a lot of fun. We're having a good time."

Several other females were gratuitously naked (Jaclyn DeSantis as Heather and Aliya Campbell as Wendy, others full frontal in the unrated version) in a pictorialization of Barry's story in a girls' locker room. Topless, Heather described to Beth her view of males:

Heather (to Beth): "Sweetie, listen to me, ok? They're all the same. All men are perverted pigs. All they care about, really, all they think about is sex, tits, and ass."
Beth: "You are so right. I feel so used."
Wendy: "Honey, let's face it, we're all used. In most men's eyes, we're just flesh."
Beth: "So sick."
Heather: "It is sick. Think about it, ok? If they had it their way... Oh god, I don't even wanna know what would happen if they had it their way, do you know what I mean?" (the camera panned in for close-up views of the breasts of both girls)

"All Men Are Perverted Pigs" Discussion
Heather (Jaclyn DeSantis)	With Wendy (Aliya Campbell)
Heather	Wendy

[Note: See also director Steve Rash's direct-to-DVD/video sequel titled Road Trip: Beer Pong (2009).]

Scary Movie (2000)

This R-rated comedy-horror spoof film (with many sequels in subsequent years) was accused of over-the-top tasteless, and offensive violence and sex.

It opened with the parody scene of Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) having her clothes stripped off by a masked killer (Dave Sheridan) (resembling the Scream murderer), and then running in her white bra and panties - in slow-motion - through lawn sprinklers while being chased. Her breast transplant was ripped out of her left chest by the killer's knife when she was stabbed. As she raced for help, she was hit and upended by her father's car, and the killer again approached with his knife to slash her - as the credits began.

There was also an outrageous and tasteless orgasm scene in which a virginal Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) was being encouraged to have sex with her crazed boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams). When he went to remove her panties, bats flew from her crotch area, and her pubic hair cascaded outward, as she giddily remarked: "I guess it's been a while." He joked: "It's very, uh, 70s of you." He put on protective glasses and took a hedge mower to her large growth of pubic hair.

Shortly afterwards, she was experiencing vigorous sex on top of him, screaming out: "What's my name, Bobby?", slapping him across the face, and growling. She was propelled to the ceiling with a gusher when he had an explosive orgasm as she was grinding on him. His volcanic ejaculation caused a massive firehose stream of whitish liquid to shower her upwards, where she was plastered to the ceiling. Bobby was so emptied out and drained that his chest frame became dessicated.

The Volcanic Orgasmic Ejaculation - Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) with Bobby

In another scene in a bathroom stall, a penis first tickled and then burrowed its way into Ray Wilkin's (Shawn Wayans) ear and exited out his other ear on the other side of his head.

Scrapbook (2000)

A low-budget, extremely difficult-to-watch, independent, cult horror film (shot on raw video) from director Eric Stantz (with a production company named Wicked Pixel) told of a sadistic serial killer named Leonard (or "Leo") (Tommy Biondo) who took as his final prisoner a female named Clara (Emily Haack).

Presumably "Based on Actual Events," the shocking, underground film was shot over a 13 day period, and its major star Biondo was also the film's screenwriter who had extensively researched serial killers to make the film more authentic (Biondo died of a head injury before the film was released).

The film (during the credits) opened with a bloodied victim (Angelia Sanderson) in a van, and then a long Steadicam scene in which young Leo was abused as a child by his half-naked sister (Elizabeth Hammock) (with a right breast nipple ring) - shown from the young Leo's POV. He was enticed by her: "You can touch me, it's OK. Nothing bad can happen. You can trust me" - as she guided his hands to touch her. She kept assuring him that everything was OK, told him to lie on her bed and that she was "in control," while she masturbated him and also pleasured herself - until they were interrupted by their mean brother (Sam Maiden, Jr.).

The hard-core, repulsive 95-minute film was titled 'Scrapbook' because Leonard recorded his sordid experiential story ("this is the story of my life, everything that the world needs to know and more. My pride and joy") with scrapbook writings, Polaroids, and other bits of trophies collected from his unfortunate victims. He told Clara:

"Just a few pages left, and you're my last chapter. You!"

The deluded fame-seeker was expecting the exhibition of the scrapbrook would bring "TV deals, movie deals, Jerry Springer! All of it! All through this!"

The voyeuristic film documented the harrowing, brutal and degrading experience that the humiliated and bound Clara had to endure, including beatings, multiple rapes, and being urinated on, and more, while she was starved, treated like an animal by being placed duct-taped in a trash can, and kept filthy and naked for the majority of the film. At one point, he dragged her into a dirty shower where he stripped her, attached her with handcuffs to the showerhead, roughly scrubbed her, threatened her with a straight-edged razor ("You gonna try and run?" he taunted), and forced shampoo down her throat before taking Polaroids - as he videotaped most of the incident. After the shower, he ordered her to lick and suck his limp penis, as he fondled himself - presented in full view, before commanding her to lie back, spread her legs, and touch herself. When he attempted intercourse with her, he became frustrated over being impotent, and angrily violated her with a bottle until she began to hemorrhage.

Repulsive Scenes of Clara's Sexual Torture

Eventually, she turned the tables on her tormentor by communicating with him through the scrapbook, by reading his entries and by adding to them with messages to him (she wrote: "My old life is becoming faded. I'm starting to understand you. You may be all I need...You are all I need") - and taking ultimate control. Manipulatively, she explained that she knew what to give him, and argued that the world needed to see him too, as she saw him, because she had learned what he was like.

She then seduced him (asking: "Do you love me?"), she intimately touched him and tantalized his body with the tip of a sharp knife ("Is it better when I do it to you, huh?") while he pleasured himself - she even drew some blood on his upper chest. While he was still naked, she duct-taped his hands and legs as he laid back on a cot (promising: "You'll like this...Don't you like it better when I'm doing it?") before lying on top of him - and then stabbing him with the knife in the bottoms of both of his feet. She took Polaroids of him screaming, and then repeatedly bashed his head with the camera itself. She added his pictures to the last pages of the scrapbook and escaped into the outdoors where she hobbled away, as the film faded to black.

Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000, Fr.) (aka Gouttes D'eau Sur Pierres Brulantes)

Director Francois Ozon's four-act, dark comedy/tragedy was from an unproduced play by 19-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Set in 1970s Berlin Germany and confined to the interior of the apartment of the central character, it examined both homosexual and heterosexual relationships.

The story centered on 20 year-old bi-sexual, red-headed Franz (Malick Zidi), who functioned as the live-in lover and houseboy for domineering and predatory 50 year-old bisexual traveling insurance salesman Leopold Bluhm (Bernard Giraudeau). By the end of Act 1, they had consummated their sexual love for each other in the bedroom, indulging in Franz's fantasy of a "dream man" - a stranger coming to bed wearing an overcoat.

Six months later, Act 2 found them at odds with each other, getting on each other's nerves, and constantly bickering, but their sex life remained good (Franz: "I never want another man after you"). Soon, they contemplated splitting up (Leopold: "We're good together, we just can't live together"). Things would change for the gay couple with the sudden arrival of the two ex-loves of both males in the remaining acts.

Franz rekindled love and the joy of sex when rejoined, during a surprise visit while Leopold was away, with his buxom blonde, lovelorn, and abandoned ex-fiancee Anna (Ludivine Sagnier) - they had known each other for almost four years. After her arrival, he noted that she had changed - looking at her bounteous chest: "You've changed, for the better. You're much prettier." He acted out the 'man-in-overcoat' fantasy with her before love-making (Anna later described their sex: "We've made love for two days straight. We got lots of pleasure").

Franz With Anna (Ludivine Sagnier)

In Act 4, they planned to move out, get a house and have children together to start their lives over ("...now we're together and we'll make it"), when Franz realized he couldn't have abandoned Leopold by himself without her - he admitted: "I think I still love him," and was saddened by the thought. Leopold's sad-eyed, "complicated" ex-lover Vera (Anna Thomson) of seven years, who had undergone a sex change operation (according to Leopold, she was "a former buddy who cut his dick off in Casablanca"), also arrived on the scene. Anna was intrigued by the company: "I want to stay awhile. The situation is so exciting."

In the midst of sexual game-playing in the nihilistic film, the dominating and bossy Leopold commanded the humiliated group: "Everyone in the bedroom" - and both Anna and Vera were especially excited about the prospects of going to bed with him. Franz fantasized about murdering Leopold by shooting him in the forehead, while he made love to the other two women. During their threesome, Leopold showed a sexual preference for the younger Anna, and Vera left the bedroom (as Franz noted: "Fresh flesh wins out"). Commiserating with fellow outcast Franz in the living room, Vera admitted that when Leopold stopped loving her, she took a drastic, love-crazy measure: "I had a sex change for him, out of love for him, so he'd want me again. I was a boy and I became a woman." For awhile, the sex-change brought back his desire, but then it again died ("He made me a whore. Then he left me").

To his surprise, Vera proposed to Franz: "I'm not too old for you?...Well, maybe we could try something together," but he cautioned her: "It's too late." He told Vera that he had suicidally taken poison and was dying. Just before expiring, he told her: "I'm his creature, too." Meanwhile, Anna was happily making love to Leopold in the back bedroom, as he promised her how to easily make more money: "You''ll need to work for me."

Anna's reaction to Franz' death was: "Who'll father my children?", but Leopold calmed her by ordering her back to bed. He continued to exert his control and entrapment over an unloved and unwanted Vera when he instructed her: "Get undressed and come join us in bed," but when Vera replied, "You don't need me," he responded: "You need me" (the same words he had earlier said to Franz) - the film's final spoken line.

The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

Director Jonathan Lynn's black comedy crime caper about the Mafia contained multiple double-crosses.

The farce starred Amanda Peet as Jill St. Claire - a wide-eyed, perky receptionist/dental assistant in suburban Quebec. Her boss was accident-prone dentist Dr. Nick "Oz" Oseransky (Matthew Perry), who was married to nasty, double-dealing, shrewish French-Canadian wife Sophie (Rosanna Arquette).

After serving five years in prison and now in a witness-protection program, a contract killer - a Chicago gangster named Jimmy "the Tulip" Tudeski (Bruce Willis) (under the pseudonym "Jimmy Jones") - moved in to live next door to Oz in his suburban neighborhood, and became friends with him. Dr. Oz was desperate to get rid of his awful wife - so when she suggested that he fly to Chicago to rat out Jimmy to his old employer - the Hungarian mobster Janni Gogolak (Kevin Pollak), Oz agreed. He was led to believe that he would collect $10 million in return, which would allow him to afford an expensive divorce from Sophie. As it turned out, Sophie really wanted to collect the insurance money after her husband was murdered by a hired hitman.

Sophie's main goal was to off her husband, and she wanted Jimmy to do the hit, but then changed her mind and exposed Oz' plot to Jimmy. In the meantime, Jimmy found himself targeted by Gogolak gang members he had testified against. And then it was revealed that Jill was hired by Sophie for $5,000 to kill Oz, but after working with him, she had changed her mind. Jill - the starry-eyed, wanna-be, ingenue hitman apprentice began to idolize Jimmy and became part of his plan to set a trap for the hitmen targeting Jimmy.

In Tudeski's house, she stripped down to heels and a gun at the top of the staircase to get the edge - advice given to her by Jimmy. When the hitmen appeared and snuck upstairs, she innocently asked the two: "Hi. Are you guys looking for someone?" to distract them before they were both shot in the back by Jimmy. She then helped by using her gun to kill a third man. He complimented her: "Nice work" and suggested that she stay undressed, and in about 60 seconds told her to stick her head out the window. Jimmy’s Chicago gangster-friend Franklin 'Frankie Figs' Figueroa (Michael Clarke Duncan) complimented her: "You know, I can't think of nothin' finer than a fine naked woman holdin' a gun. And you're just all kinds of fine, now ain't you?" She quipped: "Don't get any ideas." As he walked away, he replied: "Seriously sweet ass." When another mystery hitman appeared outside, she smiled and asked innocently from an open window: "Can I help you?" before he became another victim. Jimmy then instructed her: "Now you can get dressed."

Jill (Amanda Peet) at the Window - "Can I help you?"