SKINcoming -- September 2006! Part OneBy Mike McPadden

September means "back to school" so allow us to educate you on the new class of DVD releases containing naked (student) bodies this month. Part One, which follows, is a round-up of the previous two weeks' releases, while Part Two, which will run next week, looks ahead at what the rest of the month has in store.

SEPTEMBER 5, 2006

ALMOST STRANGERS (2001)
STUDIO: BBC Warner
NUDE: Claire Skinner
THE SKINNY: The BBC TV production Almost Strangers centers on a mammoth family reunion taking place at a London hotel where numerous individuals from every corner of the planet converge and attempt to makes sense of the fact that they're all, somehow, related. Naturally drama arises and secrets are spilled and--thank you, European television--there is nudity. That last bit comes from lovely, pert-nerpled Brit bird Claire Skinner.

DIAMONDS N DA RUFF (2006)
STUDIO: Maverick Entertainment
NUDE: Deborah Sinico
THE SKINNY: Latin lovely Cindy Collazo portrays Bianca Hernandez, a Florida native with Broadway dreams, in the roughneck hip-hop adventure Diamondz n da Ruff. Bianca migrates to the Big Apple to pursue an acting career and quickly gets lost in New York's rotten core. Thugs, hustlers, and various other lowlifes bring high drama to Bianca's journey, while Deborah Sinico brings the flesh.

DORM DAZE 2 (2006)
STUDIO: Lions Gate
NUDES: Jasmin St. Claire (Picture: 1), Julia Beatty, Lola Davidson (Picture: 1), Julian Wells (Picture: 1), Heather Storm (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: Rolling in on the home-video success of the 2003 National Lampoon farce Dorm Daze is its set-at-sea sequel titled, naturally enough, Dorm Daze 2. This time the lusty lads and curvaceous coeds of Billingsley College sail off for a semester on a cruise ship, which happens to dock at the island resort of San Paradiso just in time for Spring Break. Will these aspiring scholars learn anything? Will there be jokes regarding bodily emissions? Will a single bikini top stay on? The answers to these (and other) questions may seem obvious, but witnessing the uproarious results in Dorm Daze 2 will earn you a T-and-A-plus!

THE FEEDING (2006)
STUDIO: Lions Gate
NUDES: Kara Maria Amedon (Picture: 1), Courtney Hogan, Lynnili James, Jennifer Leigh (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: The Appalachian mountains, under the best of circumstances, pose all sorts of challenges for a traveler. In the new scare flick The Feeding, the presence of treacherous trails, poverty-stricken locals, and ornery wildlife is further complicated by the awakening of an "ancient evil" in the form of a hungry monster. Fortunately for a group of clueless campers, Special Agent Jack Driscoll (Robert Pralgo) has been hunting the beast for years. Even more fortunately, for everybody, The Feeding is crammed end-to-end with knockout nudity in the grand, glandular tradition of vintage dead-hiker horror movies. The females on hand in The Feeding will make more than just your mouth water.

HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1: SPECIAL EDITION (1981)
STUDIO: Fox Home Video
NUDE: Pamela Stephenson (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: Comic visionary Mel Brooks's History of the World Part 1 is a centuries-spanning, anything-goes riot of bad taste and great jokes. The movie begins with urinating cavemen, moves on to the orgies of Rome, sets the Spanish Inquisition to music, and climaxes with a cockeyed look at the French Revolution. English funny-lady Pamela Stephenson spills over the top of her fancy Marie-Antoinette-type get-up in that last segment, providing a sexy launch pad for History's singularly most uproarious sequence: the coda that salutes "Jews in Space."

MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE (1994)
STUDIO: Image Entertainment
NUDES: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gwyneth Paltrow (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: New York City and pretentious intellectuals go together like Jennifer Jason Leigh and getting naked in movies. All those particular elements come together most effectively in arthouse director Alan Rudolph's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Jennifer portrays the titular Dorothy Parker, an acclaimed 1920s wit who held court at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel, where she and other literati types gathered at a round table to get drunk and, according to the most annoying people you'll ever meet, churn out comic gold while attempting to one-up each other's schticks. Never mind the alleged bon mots and focus, instead, on the genuinely delicious bon-bons of Jennifer and her co-star, young and dewy Gwyneth Paltrow.

SHOCK-O-RAMA (2006)
STUDIO: E.I. Independent
NUDES: Misty Mundae (Picture: 1), A.J. Khan, Julian Wells (Picture: 1), Merav Tal, uncredited actresses
THE SKINNY: Misty Mundae? Naked? In a horror movie? From E.I. Independent cinema? Why, that is most shocking! Sarcasm aside, Shock-O-Rama, which does make good on all the aforementioned attributes, is a sly, ambitious effort from the New Jersey powerhouse that revived the art of softcore sexploitation for the twenty-first century. Here Misty plays a nudie actress who aims to leave behind the studio whose skin flicks have made her famous. Sound familiar? Fans of B-movie super-siren Misty know that Shock-O-Rama is a reflection of the star's real-life struggle with her softcore past. Only here there's lots of blood, guts, screaming, and madness--probably even more than what went down at Seduction Cinema when Misty announced that she was out of there.

THE STRAUN HOUSE (2005)
STUDIO: Asylum Pictures
NUDE: Denice Duff (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: Hey, if you're watching direct-to-DVD horror movies, there's a reasonable chance that you might have some issues with rage. It's okay. We all do. Especially when the damn things don't contain any female nudity! Just don't attempt to treat your occasional bouts of monumental upset with a visit to the anger-management program portrayed in The Straun House. The feel-better message of the Straun technique's practitioners actually serves as a smoke-screen for their hideous family experiments and ghastly physical abuse of patients. Instead you can relax knowing that The Straun House will not only satiate your need for jolts and gore, but that sweet-sacked Denice Duff appears in the buff too. And that's De-nice, indeed!

SUMMER STORM (2004)
STUDIO: Here!, Genius Products
NUDE: Miriam Morgenstern (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: The German-made Summer Storm is a sensitive tale about coming of age... and coming out of the closet. A pair of young rowers ditches the city to compete in a wilderness-set boat race and, along the way, one discovers that he prefers his best buddy to the female competition. With Miriam Morgenstern around and showing off her Teutonic ta-tas, we can't help but find it hard to sympathize with the movie's sexually confounded hero.

SUPERNATURAL: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (2005)
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
NUDES: Amy Acker
THE SKINNY: The WB (now CW) series Supernatural chronicles the efforts of orphaned twenty-two-year-old brothers who battle paranormal forces, some of whom they blame for the deaths of their parents. In a unique stroke of luck, the dudes' dad left behind a guidebook for snuffing spooks and flamb?g phantoms. The bros do their business week-to-week, and in an episode titled "Dead in the Water," co-star Amy Acker proves to be alive and nipping during a bathtub scene, as she slips the tip of her left love bobbler momentarily into view.

*

SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

DARK ASSASSIN (2006)
STUDIO: Hart Sharp Video
NUDES: Uncredited actresses
THE SKINNY: Dark Assassin does for kung-fu movies what director Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi (1992) did for Mexican shoot-'em-ups--that is, it takes a rugged old grindhouse genre and blasts it full of enthusiastic freshness and do-it-yourself bravado. Jason Yee plays an ex-con attempting to go straight but continually crossing paths with his crooked former pals. Naturally everyone involved is a martial arts maniac. As punches and kicks crash down and bodies fly, a phalanx of lethally sexy Asian females disrobes at various intervals, so don't miss all the tits and Ass-assin.

GLOOMY SUNDAY (1999)
STUDIO: Warner Home Video
NUDE: Erika Marozs?/a (Picture:1)
THE SKINNY: Gloomy Sunday takes place in a 1930s Budapest restaurant where owner Laszlo (Joachim Kr?b) and resident piano player Andr?(Stefano Dionisi) simultaneously go ga-ga for waitress Ilona, who is brilliantly embodied by Euro beauty Erika Marozs?/b. Repeated unveilings of Erika's massive rackage make the men's plight eminently understandable and this Sunday anything but gloomy.

HEADSPACE (2005)
STUDIO: Visual Entertainment
NUDES: Pollyanna McIntosh (Picture: 1 - 2), Tatiana Vidus (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: The horror-mystery-sci-fi-thriller Headspace tracks the downward spiral of young thinking-man Alex (Christopher Denham) as he expands both his mind and inner madness at sudden and alarming rates. After initially experiencing pleasant visions after meeting an ominous chess master, Alex soon becomes prone to vicious nightmares and harrowing apparitions. And then everyone around him takes to turning up dead. Headspace proves to be an effectively unsettling vehicle for this bum trip of a thrill ride, especially when those thrills come courtesy of the niftily naked Pollyanna McIntosh and Tatiana Vidus.

I AM A SEX ADDICT (2005)
STUDIO: IFC Films
NUDE: Olia Natasha (Picture: 1 - 2), Amanda Henderson (Picture: 1), Corinna Chan
THE SKINNY: "I Am a Sex Addict", declares the title of this indie-film opus from writer-director-star Caveh Zahedi. "Welcome to the club," replies Mr. Skin. In the titular role of Every Man on Earth--um, make that a Sex Addict--Zahedi patrols the outermost fringes of erotic undertakings, lamenting, on the eve of his third wedding, the last of his days as a free spirit willing to plug any and all open (and some not-quite-open) sockets. All told, though, Sex Addict is not the flesh-fest one might hope for, but what skin is on hand is choice. Just ogle Olia Natasha to satisfy your carnal cravings.

LOWER CITY (2005)
STUDIO: Palm Pictures
NUDES: Alice Braga (Picture: 1 - 2), uncredited actresses
THE SKINNY: A woman comes between a pair of best buddies in the romance Lower City and the results are as hot-and-bothered as the movie's Brazilian setting. The central figure (and what a figure!) of the plot's love triangle is portrayed by South American firecracker Alice Braga (the real-life niece of nudity goddess Sonia Braga). Alice's power over her two lovers in the film is as palpable as her grip will be on you as you watch her electrify one sexually charged scene after another. Lower City will take you higher--and harder.

LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN (2006)
STUDIO: Weinstein Company
NUDES: Jennifer Miller (Picture: 1), Lucy Liu (Picture: 1)
THE SKINNY: The topsy-turvy (and occasionally topless) world of Lucky Number Slevin slams together a mob war, film-noir detective work, a hitman, and a case of mistaken identity that lands Slevin (Josh Hartnett) in the eye of this cinematic storm. Lucky viewers will enjoy Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman as rival crime lords, Stanley Tucci as the gumshoe looking to pile-drive their illegal operations, and Bruce Willis as a witty gun-for-hire--but even more than those dudes, you'll dig the naked flesh on display courtesy of jugs-and-butt-baring Jennifer Miller and nipple-slipper Lucy Liu.

LA PETITE J?USALEM (2005)
STUDIO: Kino
NUDES: Fanny Valette (Picture: 1), Elsa Zylberstein (Picture: )
THE SKINNY: Romeo and Juliet gets a Jewish/Muslim makeover in the French drama La Petite J?salem. Orthodox Jewish girl Laura (Fanny Valette), who has always been steadfastly religious, finds her beliefs shaken when she falls for a male practitioner of Islam (Hedi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre). Viewers themselves will be shakin' upon the sight of fantastic Fanny and Elsa Zylberstein, as her sister, in the raw. Now that's kosher!


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