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 MARI-COOKIE
AND THE KILLER TARANTULA
(Sub Rosa) 1998.
Erotic horror/comedy. 85 minutes. Rated 17+ for nudity, sexual content.
Written and Directed by Jess Franco. In Spain, an aging, unattractive
stripper (Lina Romay) entices all those who watch with her hypnotizing
performance. After lulling an admirer into a drug like induced trance, she
takes them home for a little extra fun. Of course, little does the admirer
know, that the aging, unattractive stripper turns into a killer tarantula
and sexually annihilates her victims before enslaving or killing them. As
people start to disappear, the town sheriff (Michael Bauer) is hot on the
case…all while wearing a thong and topless. Also entangled is a woman (Linnea
Quigley) searching for her missing daughter (Amber Newman).
God this was a nutty flic. First things first. Amber Newman is an
absolute babe. Secondly, one of my all time loves, Linnea Quigley, isn’t
what she use to be, but boy oh boy..she still does it for me. She
doesn’t get naked (but she does in the nude commentary… see below)
here, but she does wear a nice, teasing bikini. She still looks great, but
she has put some meat on her thighs. Doesn’t matter, I would still kill
for her. I was face to face with this dreamboat about ten years ago, and
as usual, I froze and said absolutely nothing to her. She looked at me,
smiled, and then looked at me like I was a retard after I just stared at
her. Loser. Lina Romay is just gross, but she nicely pulls off this odd
character. It is downright hilarious when she turns into the tarantula.
Think of a rubbery Halloween spider with Lina’s face super-imposed onto
it. You’ll die laughing. Reminded me of The Fly (the original). There is
lots of nudity and explicit shots (the best being an amazing shot of Amber
Newman, good God), but the sex is more suggestive than shown. I’ve read
that this movie is a collection of spoofs goofing on some of Jess’s past
work. Not sure if that’s true though. The DVD includes US and European
versions (the Euro version is even nuttier than the US), a making of
feature with nude commentary by Linnea Quigley, a truly disturbing short
film called “Les Psycholettes” (Spanish short about a group of
Lesbians who ride shitty mopeds and like to cut men’s penises off and
wear them as necklaces), isolated soundtrack, trailers, and some other
stuff. Hey, if you know Jess Franco, you’ll enjoy this. If you do not
know Jess, you will be left scratching your head. I must say, this is
perhaps the oddest DVD I’ve ever watched. Everything is way out
there…– Denis Sheehan
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