Jamie
Elliot Slater is some hot stuff. So naturally when he heads off to a swanky BDSM resort he catches the eye of Lisa, the head dominatrix. But not before he also catches on camera a previously unidentified jewel thief (duh) being pursued by some undercover cops. Can Elliot help catch the thief (and perhaps find love?) before it’s too late? Find out in… Exit to Eden.
How?! Elliot Slater has always had a different taste in love. So after his latest breakup he decides to descend fully into his fantasy by becoming a sex slave at an upscale BDSM resort where richie riches live out their wildest dreams. A photographer by trade, he happens to snap a pic of an illegal jewel smuggling operation run by Omar and Nina in action just before boarding the boat to his new life. Sheila and Fred and two of LA’s finest undercover cops who are on the verge of cracking the jewel smuggling case. But alas! The thieves get away. Learning that Elliot may in fact have the evidence they need to track down and capture Omar and Nina (and knowing that the thieves will do anything to get the evidence out of the way) they follow to the resort posing as a dentist looking for a good time and the resort’s handyman. Meanwhile at the resort Elliot is causing quite the stir, particular in the loins of the head of the resort, Lisa. Despite his overall cheekiness and unfitness as a sex slave (but almost certainly due to his rad rollerblading skillz), Lisa finds herself becoming more and more possessive over Elliot. Meanwhile Omar and Nina unsuccessfully attempt to get their mitts on Elliot while Sheila and Fred mostly don’t know what’s going on (but are learning a lot about who they are… you know… sexually). There is a particular focus on butts and obviously this all leads to Lisa being driven mad with love, lust, and love and lust for butts. She breaks Elliot out of the resort for an escape to New Orleans. The whole gang follows and the film comes to a climactic conclusion at an old plantation where Omar attempts to kill Elliot and is instead shot by Sheila. Lisa is ashamed of her antics and how they almost got Elliot killed. She sadly goes back to her lonely life as a dominatrix only to be delighted when Elliot shows up and insists that they can both have BDSM and love without compromise. Sheila and Fred nod approvingly as they also embark on their new sex positive lifestyles with new love interests. THE END.
Why?! Hoo doggy this is where the film gets into a little trouble. The book (duh, I read the book) is a straight faced BDSM romance novel centered around two sadomasochists who fall in love and have difficulty reconciling that fact with their pasts. Here Eliot Slater just seems like a playboy who likes a bit of light spanking and after his engagement fizzles he decides it’s time to become a BDSM sex slave on a whim… it’s actually insulting. Oh and the whole police and diamond thief plot was made up entirely for the film, so their motivations are obvious.
Who?! Probably the most notable is the model-turned-actress Iman.This was her last feature film and her acting career wasn’t super extensive. House Party 2 is the only other BMT qualifying film she had (I think) but what really caught my eye was this made-for-TV masterpiece Lies of the Twins. Uh… yes please.
What?! The MacGuffin in this case is a photo that Elliot was able to take of Omar which he doesn’t know the value of. Both the police and Omar will go to great lengths (if you know what I mean) to get their hands on it. Interestingly, Omar doesn’t seem so hard to find really… I mean he barely wears a disguise and acts suspicious in every scene.
Where?! Partially in LA (San Francisco in the book) and more dramatically in New Orleans. In the book the resort is on a private, unnamed island in the Caribbean. Here it’s made clear that the island is off the coast of Mexico but there isn’t any evidence of it being part of Mexico. Possibly it’s still a private exotic island that just happens to be off the coast of Mexico. C.
When?! This is a real classic B+ situation we have here as they use the police procedural portion of the film to shoehorn in some voiceover. Each time it chimes in Rosie O’Donnell helpfully tells us the date. The whole thing starts on June 13th and continues for about a week after that.
So I did indeed read this book and while I could hardly recommend it to anyone I think it understands its audience and the BDSM culture it’s writing about pretty well, which is a positive. It’s certainly interesting in that way because I think I now understand the critiques of the Fifty Shades films better as a result. It also gives me a real weird point of view on the film adaptation compared to say Patrick, who blessedly did not read the book. The film is a travesty. A real gut punch to fans of the book… who I guess they weren’t interested in courting. It comes off way more mocking of BDSM than anything else and is probably closer to a parody film like Fifty Shades of Black than Fifty Shades of Gray. I guess that’s the point, but the extraneous diamond smuggling plot really undermines the effort. Once you get past the ‘tee hee isn’t BDSM funny’ parts it’s just sweet ‘blading and diamond smugglers. So what’s the point? It all just seems like someone read Exit to Eden and was like this shit is hilarious and then when they realized it wasn’t as funny as they thought they added in some slapstick to hold it together enough to release. Terrible movie… just terrible. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Rosie O’Donnell and Dan Aykroyd in a BDSM sex comedy? Finally! Let’s go!
P’s View on the Preview – This is one of those films where you think that it won’t qualify because it wasn’t released to theaters or something, and then you’ll realize that no … the Rosie O’Donnell and Dan Aykroyd BDSM sex comedy (based on a book?) was indeed released widely to theaters. The early 90s was something indeed. The preview did put China Beach on my radar, which is what the head BDSM woman is mostly known form, so that’s a plus I think. What were my expectations? Unfunny garbage. Isn’t that what early 90s bad comedies always are? Just unfunny garbage? It was like they were stretching the bounds of what could be called comedy.
The Good – The main three people (O’Donnell, Aykroyd, and Delaney) I thought were all pretty good. I mean, considering the film itself isn’t funny, they do a fine job of acting within the construction they are given. The diamond smuggling storyline also makes much more sense than I think a film like this usually would bother with: the bad guys need to find Elliot because they have a picture of one of the smugglers caught red handed with the diamonds. That’s it, that’s the bad guys’ plotline. That makes sense, like, definitely it would be bad for the bad guy to have that picture be discovered. The Good: The films makes some semblance of sense.
The Bad – I mean, it is unfunny garbage. Just like you would imagine. I won’t get into the btis about how the adaptation isn’t true to the story because I didn’t read the story (that’s Jamie’s job), but by all accounts that is its biggest crime. Paul Mercurio is such a nothing character he might as well not exist. You could swap anyone else out for him and the film would remain the same. And the entire thing just feels like a television production. Like they gave them the minimum amount of money to hire actors willing to appear semi-nude on screen and then made this. This unfunny garbage. Fatal Flaw: Unfunny garbage.
The BMT – Well we did it. This is actually, genuinely, one of the worst films in multiple metrics from 1994. So it is obviously 100% necessary that we watched it. And now we have. Congrats to us. And now I’ll forget I watched it, because there really isn’t a whole lot to like in this film. Did it meet my expectations? Unfortunately, yes, it is unfunny garbage, and is exactly what you would expect from an unfunny sex comedy from 1994.
Roast-radamus – A small shoutout for Product Placement (What?) for M&M’s which are the subject of several very specific jokes early in the film by O’Donnell. A fun Setting as a Character (Where?) for Eden, an island off the coast of Mexico, close enough to Los Angeles that you can get on a clipper ship and be there the next day it seems. I do think we have a MacGuffin (Why?) in that the cops and smugglers both want a specific picture from the main character Elliot. And I think this is closest to Bad in the end for being unfunny garbage.
Sequel, Prequel, Streaming – I have officially moved the StreetCreditReport.com to the preview, and I’m bringing back a classic in the new year! Now I know what you are saying: how could they not have made a sequel to this film!? It is crying out for the return of Sheila and Fred. In the sequel we find Sheila and Fred return to their undercover identities after a new serial killer strikes in the heart of Los Angeles, one that uses bondage as a weapon against his targets. Unravelling the mystery of a chain of underground BDSM clubs in L.A., they realize that their two cases had more to do with each other than they could have ever imagined. Is the serial killer actually a submissive being controlled by a dastardly dominant? Could it be Dr. Halifax, the bird enthusiast and creator of Eden? Or could it even be Fred, pushed to the brink by his crumbling marriage and newly discovered and unsatisfied sexual peccadilloes?! Find out in … Exit to Eden 2: The Fifty Shades Club.
You Just Got Schooled – I probably shouldn’t be doing this (because of Hall of Fame duties) … but whatever I watched another Anne Rice adaptation in Interview with the Vampire (also BMT Homework in that we’ve seen the sequel for BMT years ago, Queen of the Damned). The film is … fine. It is a cool eerie period piece, and it is an interesting take on vampire lore which plays off of the classics while also suggesting things like Dracula are just stories based on the real life vampires that exist in the story. The only odd bit is that Tom Cruise is absolutely awful in this film. They are lucky that he’s only in about half of it, because once he leaves the picture (albeit temporarily) it immediately becomes much more interesting. Still, decent enough film that it makes one wonder that there aren’t more sequels or a Netflix series. B-.
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 