TWO BIG BOOBS

What is TWO BIG BOOBS? In a word, bizarre.

Buddy (John Mandara) and Arthur (Milon Castle) were once popular comedians in the days of vintage Hollywood, renowned across the land for their slapstick routines.

But one day, as Buddy's narration and breathless flashbacks illustrate, they suddenly find themselves out of favour with the buying public. Hollywood is fickle and very quickly the pair of pals are thrown out of town, sleeping rough with nothing but their tweed suits and thick cigars to get by on.

With no idea of what they should do next, Buddy has a vision on their first night: a stripper proudly displaying her huge norks for the camera. Hmm, there has to be an idea in there somewhere. And there it is, that next morning in the newspaper: an appeal by producer Hal (Hal Zito) looking for people to help him in the filming of smut.

So, Buddy and dim-witted Arthur head across to the other side of town, where they introduce themselves to Hal's shady filmmaking outfit Fuck 'Em Studios . Hal is delighted to have two heroes of "violent comedy" on board, and suggests that they make an epic smut movie for him. But, he warns, if they mess it up he'll ensure that they never work in Hollywood again ...

And so, behind closed curtains, Buddy and Arthur start filming in the hope of creating an erotic masterpiece. As you'd imagine from two bungling idiots (think: The Chuckle Brothers), things do not go according to plan ...

The rest of this 56-minute conundrum is a succession of vignettes in which Buddy and Arthur film comely women naked, all the while looking for "that" killer scene.

The comedy is painful, truly awful. So much so that you'll probably find yourself laughing eventually. There can be no denying that the performances are hugely energetic and writer-director Nathaniel Shoehorn has affection for the bygone era of W C Fields, the Stooges and so on.

More quickly paced than Gareth Gates' virginity-losing dalliance with Jordan, TWO BIG BOOBS earns points by mixing vintage 8mm loop footage with new, black-and-white digital video scenes (all the nudie clips in the film stem from loops - Buddy and Arthur supposedly "pointing" their camera at them). It doesn't work too well, but the effort is there.

Ultimately though, I have to refer readers back to the opening line of this review. Yes, the film is brisk, manic, chock-full of bad gags and made up of quite a bit of grainy 8mm footage. But, more than that, it's simply bizarre. That might even make it worth giving it the once-over.

Stick around until the end too, and the filmmakers do at least compensate you by revealing the meaning of life. Unless you've guessed it already?

TWO BIG BOOBS is presented in full-frame 1.33:1 and looks clean and sharp during the new footage, and grainy during the 8mm footage. Understandably. But the two get along together crudely, in an odd way.

English mono audio is fine throughout.

Secret Key Motion Pictures' region-free disc opens with an attractive animated main menu page. There is no scene-selection menu, but the film does come equipped with 12 remote control-accessible chapters.

The biggest extra - and probably of more interest to most than the main feature - is a collection of fifteen 8mm loops from yesteryear, also shown in full-frame. Lo and behold, sharp-eyed viewers may recognise some of these lovelies from the main feature ...

These are monochrome efforts that for the most part look very scratchy and grainy. But images are clear enough, as is the jazz bar music that has been added to each of these originally silent shorts.

They're all of the plotless, handheld homemade variety, and each involves a woman either naked or getting naked for the camera. These being from what appears to be the 1950s, it's unsurprising that we don't get to see too much of the groin area. But, in keeping with the theme of the main feature, they do at least offer plenty of sizeable mammaries for your money. For the most part these morsels run between 2 and 8 minutes long.

The most intriguing of these loops is the 11-minute "The Apple Knockers And The Coke", which closes proceedings. This begins with a couple of minutes of archive footage celebrating the wonder of Marilyn Monroe. Then, an onscreen title claims that what follows is a lost "classic" film of Monroe's! Whether or not the young filly in the film is genuinely Norma Jean, who knows - it looks feasible at times - but she's a game gal anyway, first lying on her back to have apples rolled up and down her naked torso, and then playfully spilling cola down her chin and onto her bazookas. It's definitely one for the more curious to check out ...

These loops can be watched as a whole, or individually through a happily animated scene-selection menu.

Elsewhere on the disc, we get a gathering of trailers for other Secret Key titles. These include ALL THE SINS OF SODOM, BUSTY BOMBSHELLS OF THE ATOMIC AGE, SKIN IN THE 50S, SKIN IN THE 60S, HIDEOUT IN THE SUN, THE LOVE STATUE, DADDY DARLING, INGA, MOONLIGHTING WIVES, NAUGHTY NUDES '64, THE SEDUCTION OF INGA, THE SEXPERTS and THE SEXPLOITERS.

Again, viewers have the option to either watch each trailer in isolation or adopt the "Play All" method.

Finally, the disc includes the usual link to the Alternative Cinema catalogue.

Bizarre. Truly bizarre.

Review by Stuart Willis