By Selwyn HarrisMarch, it is said, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. For our purposes, this March is coming in like a naked actress and going out like a whole bunch more naked actresses. So while the weather outside is neither winter nor quite yet spring, the latest batch of bare babes on disc makes this month unseasonably warm. And sticky.
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March 7, 2006
Jarhead (2005)
NUDES: Brianne Davis (Picture: 1), Becky Boxer (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: Universal Home Video
THE SKINNY: Dummy Dorko Jake Gyllenhaal dons Marine garb for American Beauty director Sam Mendes in this way-heavy-maaan meditation on, like, the uncoolness of war and stuff. Brianne Davis flashes her scuds while changing shirts, and Becky Boxer's boom-booms briefly swing to and fro in a homemade porn video.
Girl 6 (1996)
NUDES: Theresa Randle (Picture: )
STUDIO: Fox Home Entertainment
THE SKINNY: In 1996 Spike Lee took on the pertinent and pressing issue--circa 1986--of phone sex via his low-budget morality tale Girl 6. Be sure to dial up Theresa Randle, who, in the title role, bares her deliciously dusky, thick-nipped Girl 2 while posing for a nude photographer.
Free Enterprise (1998)
NUDES: Audie England (Picture: 1), Lori Lively, Stacy Rossman (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: Anchor Bay Entertainment
THE SKINNY: Free Enterprise represents the ultimate Star Trek geek's wildest fantasy made goofball farce--plus boobies. William Shatner portrays himself (or, you know, the wink-wink version of his bloated-star persona that we first got to know in those Priceline commercials) as he's called on to provide life lessons for a gaggle of socially and romantically stunted sci-fi schlemiels. Audie England beams up her bitables topless in a hot tub from the original version of the movie, while DVD bonus bareness comes from Stacy Rossman and luscious redhead Lori Lively.
Kids in America (2005)
NUDE: Stephanie Sherrin (Picture: 1 - 2)
STUDIO: Universal Home Video
THE SKINNY: One can't help but feel sorry for today's kids in America. Take, for example, Kids in America. Whereas the teen sex comedies of two decades ago could be relied on to deliver raunch, raucous revelry, and, most importantly, naked racks, contemporary pubescent romps remain pigeon-holed by PG-13 ratings and the sorry state of affairs that equates lingerie and navel rings with bona fide nakedness. Kids in America boasts a plot that would have played well in the pre-John-Hughes 1980s: a phalanx of fed-up high-school students plots revenge against an overbearing principle while, sprinkled throughout, we witness their sex-starved fantasies come to life. The most jarring contrast of our modern wet-blanket age to the glory days of yore is that skintillating Stephanie Sherrin is called upon to recreate Mr. Skin's all-time favorite nude scene: Phoebe Cates's slow-motion bikini-top-popping swimming-pool emergence from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Here in 2005, naturally, the camera cuts away before Stephanie's sugar sacks bust free into visibility. But wait . . . hit the pause button on your DVD remote control and you'll see that Steph's milk spigots accidentally swing into the shot. Maybe this modern age isn't totally without merit after all.
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March 14, 2006
American Psycho: Uncut Collector's Edition (2000)
NUDES: Samantha Mathis, Cara Seymour (Picture: 1), Krista Sutton (Picture: 1), Guinevere Turner
STUDIO: Lions Gate Films
THE SKINNY: Christian Bale hilariously interprets the titular slayer of Bret Easton Ellis's novel in that rarest of films that infinitely improves upon its source material. Bale's ?-'80s American Psycho digs Huey Lewis and the News almost as severely as he's into slaughtering prostitutes, but neither can quite compete with how deliriously he enjoys pumping himself up in a mirror during group sex. Stellar nakedness punctuates various obsessive freak-outs over fancy business cards, Phil Collins, and power tools applied to human bones. Best moment: Bale's advice to Krista Sutton while she surveys Cara Seymour's open ass crack: "Don't just stare at it--eat it!" There are some nice bonus nips on the disc, as well, courtesy of Samantha Mathis.
Los Anos Barbaros (1998)
NUDES: Hedy Burress, Allison Smith (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: Urbanworks
THE SKINNY: Los Anos Barbaros, a.k.a. The Barbaric Years, is a French-Spanish co-production that features two enormously appealing American starlets in their altogether. As always, naked chicks prove to be the universal language. Hedy Burress and Allison Smith--the latter being the grown-up (and out) Jennie Lowell of the CBS sitcom Kate Allie--play travelers who turn up, and strip down, in Spain during the 1950s.
Basic Instinct: Ultimate Unrated Edition (1992)
NUDES: Sharon Stone (Picture: 1 - 2), Jeanne Tripplehorn
STUDIO: Lions Gate Films
THE SKINNY: It's one of the most celebrated sex shockers in Hollywood history, and rightly so. Writer Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven created a powderkeg of a plot in Basic Instinct and needed just the right fireball to make it go off properly. They found her, of course, in the blazingly erotic personage of Sharon Stone, whose performance transformed this ice-pick-murder mystery peppered with brazen flue flashes and rough-sex tumbles into a scandalously incandescent classic. This Ultimate Unrated Edition arrives on DVD just in time for the theatrical unveiling of Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction (2006). So you can get worked up at the multiplex with the latest onslaught of Sharon's stones then take care of yourself with the original on disc in the privacy of your own very special Kleenex chamber.
A History of Violence (2005)
NUDE: Maria Bello (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: New Line
THE SKINNY: Mind-blowing filmmaker David Cronenberg blasts apart the revenge melodrama in A History of Violence and throws in Maria Bello's vagina, to boot. Viggo Mortensen stars as a diner owner who takes on a pair of robbers and is hailed as a hero, thereby exposing more about himself that he wanted to. Exposing herself flat-out brilliantly is Maria as Viggo's wife, who serves up her ravishing rump and fluffy muff in an explosive stairway sex grapple.
Marebito (2004)
NUDE: Tomomi Miyashita (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: Tartan Video
THE SKINNY: Are there ghosts in the subways of Tokyo? A photographer is determined to find out in the acclaimed Japanese fright flick Marebito. As he confronts the mysteries of the beyond, Tomomi Miyashita appears naked, right up-close and personal. She's so hot it's scary.
Sleeper Cell: The Complete First Season (2005)
NUDES: Melissa Sagemiller, Axelle Grelet, Maureena Galindo, Marika Taylor, Monica Himmelheber
STUDIO: Showtime Entertainment
THE SKINNY: Mass-murdering terrorists may be human, after all. That seems to be the message of Showtime's series Sleeper Cell, which chronicles the day-to-day doings of a group of radical insurgents as they await the proper moment to blow you up. Proving that naked ladies make the world go 'round, the lovable bus bombers of Sleeper Cell are just as charmed as the rest of us by the bare likes of Melissa Sagemiller, Axelle Grelet, Maureena Galindo, Marika Taylor, and Monica Himmelheber. Pow!
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MARCH 21, 2006
House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim (2005)
NUDE: Paige Peterson
STUDIO: Lions Gate Films
THE SKINNY: The original video-game horror adaptation House of the Dead (2003) showcased a healthy portion of nude hotties battling flesh-devouring zombies, one of whom was Erica Durance, who went on to guest as young Lois Lane on Smallville. Let's hope similarly superheroic luck shines on Paige Peterson, who aims her torso torpedoes at the rampaging undead in this straight-to-video sequel.
Dear Wendy (2005)
NUDE: Alison Pill (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: Wellspring Media
THE SKINNY: From the same Danish arthouse-outrage factory that produced Bryce Dallas Howard's firebush-baring Manderlay (Picture: 1) comes Dear Wendy, a meditation on guns, violence, and Alison Pill's love pillows. Boob, boob; bang, bang.
Sexual Confessions (2003)
NUDES: Darian Caine, Katie Jordan, Ruby Larocca, Kelli Summers
STUDIO: Seduction Cinema
THE SKINNY: Veteran Seduction Cinema vixens Darian Caine, Katie Jordan, Ruby Larocca, and Kelli Summers breathe luminously erotic life into a series of female fantasies that we get to witness played out before the camera. Also on this disc is the original version of Sexual Confessions from 1973 starring Sandy Carey and Cindy Hopkins. It's a deliriously delightful one-two punch from the modern masters of softcore sensationalism paired with a blast from the ultra-arousing grindhouse past.
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March 28, 2006
Sex Is Zero (2002)
NUDES: So-Won Ham (Picture: 1 - 2), Jae-yeong Jin, Lee Shin, Si-hu Yun (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: Panik House
THE SKINNY: From Korea comes one of the greatest wet-hot-American teen sex farces ever made, prettied up and packed with amazing extras from the heroic DVD mavens at Panik House. Sex Is Zero details the arrival of a twentysomething Navy vet and martial-arts devotee (Chang Jung Lim) on a college campus, where he deals with zany roommates, raucous hijinks, and, surprisingly, heartfelt romance with a coed aerobic champion (Ji-won Ha). Sex Is Zero combines hardcore gross-out comedy--fried-sperm sandwich anyone?--with uproarious comedy and genuinely moving emotion. Plus it showcases some awe-inspiring Asian beauties in the raw. Sex may be zero, but this DVD is a perfect ten.
2001 Maniacs (2005)
NUDES: Cristen Beavers, Christa Campbell, Gina Marie Heekin, Kodi Kitchen, Wendy Kremer, Marla Malcolm, Bianca Smith
STUDIO: Lions Gate Films
THE SKINNY: It may seem unusual that a bargain-basement redneck splatter flick would spawn a sequel forty years after the original's release, but Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) is itself no ordinary movie. Directed by pioneering gore-meister Herschell Gordon Lewis, Maniacs chronicles a town in the Deep South that appears only once a century and only to avenge the Confederates' loss of the U.S. Civil War by offing Yankee tourists in inventively grotesque fashions. 2001 Maniacs continues the story in blood-red color, with a monumental modern update: naked chicks, and tons of them! (Picture: )
I Love Your Work (2003)
NUDE: Franka Potente (Picture: 1)
STUDIO: ThinkFilm
THE SKINNY: Giovanni Ribisi portrays a movie star in the midst of a marital meltdown in the indie drama I Love Your Work. Franka Potente of Run Lola Run bares her breasts. You'll especially love her work here.
