Monster of the Day #3502

Updated on November 6, 2023 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

Boy, if it’s not one damned thing it’s another.

So Friday we watched Chatterbox, the talking va-jay-jay movie. Ah, the ’70s. Yes, it’s on Amazon Prime.

We had one person decamp, and I apologize and certainly understand. Most everyone liked it, though, generally. Amiable and weird is a decent combination to base your film around, and even with rampant nudity–Candace Rialson is topless quite a lot–it was pretty inoffensive. I think it’s because the film doesn’t have a mean bone in its body. It probably could have been even shorter, but it’s certainly an oddity and, if you’re in the right mood, strangely engaging.

The cast is quite good, headed by Rialson, who more famously also did nice work for Joe Dante and Alan Arkush in Hollywood Boulevard. Everyone could act, and it’s probably the only film that I felt could have used more Rip Taylor (not in a negative way). Prof. Irwin Corey also makes an appearance. Not for everyone, to be sure, but it’s there if people want to take a look at it.

Thanksgiving approaching fast! Man, the last two months of the year are always a blur.

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  • Amiable is exactly the right word. It actually plays as weirdly innocent despite the subject matter and nudity, probably because Candace Rialson was a pretty good actress and gives Penny a real vulnerability. The first 30 minutes in particular are actually pretty darn funny, but they pack so much story in so fast that you’ve already completed a full story arc climaxing (sorry) in Virginia’s TV debut with 45 minutes of movie still remaining. It never does click along so consistently again, although still sporadically inspired. The ending is stupid, but how else are you going to wrap it up in a hurry once you run out of puns and double-entendres.

    Giving it more thought than the filmmakers probably ever did, it ends up being a pretty good demonstration of the ways in which the sexual revolution failed women. Think about it, you have a young woman who’s actually pretty content with her steady relationship who has outside forces insisting that *really* she’s sexually repressed (not actually evident, given she seems to have been in a healthy sexual relationship with her boyfriend until Virginia interferes) and would be happier if she just banged her way through life.

    Penny is pressured by Virginia into a potentially dangerous (and clearly unwanted) situation with the basketball team, who fortunately are content with kisses. She then gets taken advantage of by a man who only is only interested in one knight stands (boo) and thinks this should be OK with the women involved because they are “liberated”. In the end all she really wants is to stop being exploited (both for sex and fame) and have a normal relationship with her steady.

    Yes, I have way overthunk this and I really don’t think it’s intentional, more that it was sort of floating in the zeitgeist of the time period and crept in despite itself. It is definitely a movie that could have not been made in any other time or place than 1970’s America.

    Rialson may have felt a bit that way herself, given that shortly after this she gave up her exploitation film career to marry and start a family.

  • kgb_san_diego

    Being the one who decamped… :-)

    I actually left because of network issues — no comments from y’all (really, the whole point of these parties), the movie pausing a lot — but yeah, I didn’t fight real hard to get back in. Humor is very subjective, and rather than feeling the movie amiable, I was cringing and rolling my eyes. To each their own.

  • The Rev.

    I completely zoned out that it was movie night. Sorry I missed it. At least it’s a movie I’ve seen. And I’m pretty much on board with the opinions thus far. It was not what I expected, definitely an odd movie, but surprisingly well-made and genuinely entertaining, although the second half can’t maintain the first half’s fun.

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    They need to beat those monkeys which by coincidence is close to what the wife responded back after being mainsplained about sex.

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    The watch parties can eat up quite a bit of bandwidth. I have to make sure I use my best computer and sometimes an ethernet cable.

  • Kirk Draut

    That’s one of those movies that was always on the shelf at every video store. I was always mildly curious, but figured it was a 5-minute joke dragged out to movie length.

  • I’m in the less than impressed camp. Yeah, there’s a certain sort of “innocence” to the film–it really doesn’t mean to offend–but the scene with the poor girl completely (and pointlessly) naked in front of all those doctors really kind of turned me off on the whole thing. That she didn’t have a single person in that flick not trying to exploit her didn’t help matters. And the ending kind of sucked too.

    Don’t get me wrong. There are much, much worse flicks out there from that time period. Some of them I even liked, sort of. This just isn’t my bag.

    On a much more cheerful note, the new Godzilla v. Megalon is on YouTube subtitled. It seems to be a sequel to Godzilla v. Gigan Rex and it’s rather entertaining.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I love the weird juxtaposition between “What To Tell Your Wife About Sex” headline and what those three guys are doing.

  • Ken_Begg

    Very nicely done, Jane. Thanks!

  • Ken_Begg

    Sorry, I misinterpreted. You are certainly right about humor, but it was such an oddity to be found on Amazon Prime that I couldn’t give it a pass. in any case, I hope your network issues resolve themselves.

    I think it was during Baba Yaga that my old computer froze entirely and I thought it was effecting everyone, since I was host. (It wasn’t, as it turned out.) It finally inspired me to hook up my “new” computer that had been sitting on the floor for two years. No problems since then.

  • Ken_Begg

    You’re not wrong, but it is still fairly watchable.

  • Ken_Begg

    Also, a new Jet Jaguar short!

  • Gamera977

    Great take on it GJ, I got the same impression. Seems like Penny wanted a nice stable healthy relationship and Ginny is an egotistic fanatic that just just keeps pushing for more and won’t shut up.

  • Gamera977

    It was… interesting…

    I thought about dropping out but found it less offensive than I thought it was going to be. Still I don’t think I ever want to watch it again.

    Somehow I think it would have been better with Abbot and Costello or the Three Stooges in it.

    ‘You smuggling a parrot in your panties lady???’

  • One wonders what Groucho Marx would have said.

  • The Rev.

    Not sure I liked the Gigan redesign (although Gigan Rex was better), but I quite liked what they did with Megalon. I understand why CGI worked better for those two, but of course I’d have preferred suits, like with the Hedorah short.

    But the Jet Jaguar one…oh, how my heart sang. I WANT MORE

  • Megalon is so boss in that short. They really did a lot to redeem the old boy.

    As for the Jet Jaguar short, my main complaint is that it ends just when it’s getting good!

    Honestly, with the exception of the anime movies, these haven’t been bad years for the Big Guy.

  • Eric Hinkle

    “I’m under contract and have bills to pay, but there’s no reason why you people need to sit through this.”

  • Honestly, I should have thought of that.