By Dan Scapperotti

Six luscious Penthouse Pets make their way up a winding walk to the front door of a strange castle. Here, they are told, the next Pet of the Year will be chosen. The door creaks open and a gloomy butler bids them enter. Shortly after, the first of the Pets suffers death by vibrator. She won’t be the last in the new DVD release Who’s Killing the Pet?. The film was shot during this year’s Pet of the Year playoffs in Los Angeles.

“All the girls die in different way,” says Justine Joli, the Pet centerfold for September 2007 and Pet of the Year runner up. “I’m one of the last to die and one of the dumbest ones there. They gave me the campy role. It was a lot of fun to play that, actually. How often do you get to get killed in a porn movie?” Joli bites the dust when she is poisoned by the cook after they have a long, intimate encounter.

“There are a number of eccentric home owners that actually have built castles in Los Angeles,” she continues. “This place was really a castle with a moat and everything. We filmed inside, outside we filmed everywhere.” [Read more…]

By Dan Scapperotti

She was a rarity in the early 1960s television, a female detective who could use a gun and toss the bad guys around just as well as her male counterparts. She was Honey West, a beautiful detective who took over her father’s agency after his death. The folks at VCI Entertainment, who can always be counted on to release some rare gems, is releasing the complete Honey West series consisting of all 30 episodes. Extras come up a little short with just some photos and early television commercials to round out the four disc set.

The character was created by the husband and wife writing team of Skip and Gloria Fickling. According to Gloria, the character was a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Mike Hammer. With titles like This Girl for Hire, A Gun for Honey, Honey in the Flesh and Blood and Honey the authors were certainly going after the Mickey Spillane crowd.

[Read more…]

By Carlos Delgado

We’re talking with Jolene Blalock for her cover story in the next print issue of Femme Fatales and trying to hold off the Star Trek questions for as long as possible. She’s set to appear in Starship Troopers 3 in early August, but Blalock is best known for being the sexiest Vulcan ever, T’Pol, in the Star Trek series, Enterprise. She talks about her movie, doing comedy (she trained with the famed Second City troupe), and surfing. But we can’t wait any longer and ask Jolene her opinion of the upcoming J.J. Abrams’ Trek movie.

BLALOCK: I’m a little perturbed that William Shatner’s not in it, but that’s just me. If Leonard Nimoy is in it, shouldn’t William Shatner be in it? But I haven’t read the script. I’m just venting.

Blalock has never been one to mince words and today’s conversation is no different. Femme recently did a photo shoot with her at a dirty, dodgy, drive through motel in Los Angeles and Blalock jumped right in, never once complaining. In short, she’s game. And she hasn’t forgotten her fans; she’s scheduled to appear at this year’s ComicCon in San Diego. About the sold out convention she says…

BLALOCK: You know it’s only the fourth convention I’ve ever done. I do enjoy them but I don’t get to do them very often. I’m looking forward to it because it’s an experience to be in that room with all of the fans and just to see everyone come up with their special unique costumes. It’s the sci-fi gay parade. You know, gay pride? But for sci-fi, sci-fi pride. That’s what it is.

The full interview and exclusive eight-page photo feature will hit newsstands in mid August.

Photos from Femme Fatales Magazine by Dove Shore

By Dan Scapperotti

Admittedly an acquired taste, Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian Bombshell had a screen presence many an actor would die for. Her dance routines are exuberant and when she belts out a tune her entire face lights up and seems to have a life of its own. Although born in Lisbon, Miranda was raised in Brazil where she became a top nightclub entertainer with her own radio program. Brought to the States to appear in a Broadway musical, Streets of Paris, she quickly became a sensation prompting 20th Century Fox to film her performance and include it in the Betty Grable musical Down Argentine Way.

Soon the singer was a fixture in a batch of musicals starring Grable and Alice Faye. Usually attired in some over the top South American regalia with a bare midriff and wearing a wacky turban, Miranda brought to life even the most pedestrian films. Her persona and rapid fire delivery was celebrated in the 1943 Busby Berkely musical The Gangs All Here where her song “Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat” has become the height of camp leading into Berkeley’s sexually subversive banana number.

Fox has just released The Carmen Miranda Collection that consists of five of her films. In The Gangs All Here, which features spectacular Busby Berkeley numbers, Miranda plays Dorita an entertainer who must reunite lovers Alice Faye and James Ellison. She gets top billing in Greenwich Village as a nightclub entertainer who, once again, must bring the young lovers together. This time, it’s Vivian Blaine and Don Ameche who must overcome a string of misunderstanding before cupid’s arrow finds its mark. A trio of unlikely cousins, Vivian Blair, Miranda and Phil Silvers, inherit a rundown Texas plantation in Something for the Boys. Salvation appears when the army decides to turn it into a home for army wives.

The 1946 Doll Face was based on a book by famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. The basic plot revolves around attempts to legitimize a burlesque queen. Miranda had a pair of accidents while making the film. First she cracked a couple of ribs and then she cut her foot on a rusty nail while filming the “Chico Chico” number and had to get a tetanus shot. For If I’m Lucky, her last film at Fox, Miranda gets three splashy numbers; “La Batacada”, “Bet Your Bottom Dollar” and “Follow the Band”.

The set includes some nice extras but a couple of the trailers suffer from the Fox curse; the prints they show don’t have the overlays which makes the trailer worthless and a bit bizarre..

By Dan Scapperotti

There is more to this Florida beauty than meets the eye. As if any more is needed. Since abandoning her native Minnesota at the tender age of sixteen, Krista Grotte has been involved in the mental health field. She majored in abnormal psychology and social work in college. An adventurous spirit led her to avoid the safe havens of the profession for the sometimes dangerous venues that deal with individuals with violent proclivities. But her real ambition was to become an actress.

“I’m a universal person,” Grotte says. “I have a lot of crazy life experience and that brings a lot to the table. I’m myself all the time. I develop a relationship with everyone I work with and I think it’s because I love it so much. The wildest thing I’ve done in my life happened when I was a teenager. I was pretty rebellious and we went to Wisconsin and had sex in a church.”

[Read more…]

By Dan Scapperotti

Can you imagine a trio of nerds creating phony casting sessions just to meet hot girls? That’s either terrible, dishonest and reprehensible, or a very clever idea. That’s just what happens in Cattle Call. Caught up in this scheme is pretty Marina Del all set to make it big in Hollywood. Playing the intrepid would be actress is Jenny Mollen who has appeared in The Raven, Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave and played Nina Ash, a werewolf, on a season of Angel. She almost got her big break featured on a primetime network series. Unfortunately, that series was the ill fated Viva Laughlin.

Just before auditioning for Cattle Call, Mollen decided to change her image and maybe get more serious roles. “I’m naturally blonde and I dyed my hair like two days before that audition because I was getting type cast and I didn’t want to play anymore wide eyed I-just-came-to-Hollywood type of girl fresh off the bus from Nebraska,” she says. “Wouldn’t you know it? The first audition I got as a brunette was Marina Del this girl who just got off the bus. She’s coming here to be an actress all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to take on the world. I’m going to be serious, I’m going to dye my hair dark and I got the exact role I was trying to avoid.” [Read more…]

On the April/May cover of Femme Fatales is India de Beaufort, the incredibly talented and beautiful model, actress, singer and songwriter. She appeared in Run, Fatboy, Run! directed by David Schwimmer. She is also the face of for the makeup company “Me by Mezhgan.” For her Femme Fatales photo shoot, de Beaufort suggested the pinup girl motiff from the Forties.
“I love the whole style” says the actress “ For a long time there were pinup girl pictures popping all over the place in my bedroom”. But de Beaufort didn’t only show us her pinup girl side; she also did a photo shoot in a simple modern style, showing her sexy and beautiful look. Mezhgan herself did de Beaufort’s makeup for the session.
“It was a so much fun to get my hair done in the Forties style and makeup and the stockings on and the garters” says de Beaufort. This is one issue you aren’t going to want to miss!

Photo by Dove Shore

By Steve Biodrowski

Posted from www.cinefantastique.com

Another Queen has screamed her final scream. Hazel Court, who starred in two of the greatest horror films ever made, died yesterday at the age of 82. The cause of death was not mentioned in the initial announcement, which was made here on the Classic Horror Film Board. Court’s contribution to the horror genre was small but significant. Although most of her credits were in episodic television (including a TWILIGHT ZONE episode titled “The Fear”), she also appeared in over half a dozen horror films, including GHOST SHIP (1952), DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS (1954), and DR. BLOOD’S COFFIN (1961). Moving back and forth across the Atlantic, she appeared in two productions for England’s Hammer Films, CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) and THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959), and in three for American International Pictures, THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962), THE RAVEN (1963), and MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964).

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By Dan Scapperotti
When director James Ryan was casting Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation for Fox Home Entertainment he knew he would need beautiful women. Lots of beautiful women. One set piece called for a group of strippers to get into a brawl over the central character who is being set up by his scheming would be brother-in-law. Enter Arianna Coltellacci.
Born in Italy, the actress moved with her family to her mother’s native Venezuela when she was eight years old. After studying journalism and geography in school, Coltellacci got a job as a creator-writer with a marketing firm doing commercials and publicity. On one shoot, [Read more…]

By Dan Scapperotti

Well it wasn’t the face that launched a thousand ships exactly, but the face and body of this gorgeous blonde certainly had their effect on young males during the Fifties. In her short career, Mamie Van Doren left her mark on sex and rock and roll in such films as Untamed Youth, High School Confidential and Running Wild. She and fellow blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield were the first American mainstream actresses to appear nude on screen. Australian author Barry Lowe recounts Van Doren’s cinematic adventures in Atomic Blonde: The Films of Mamie Van Doren (McFarland & Company).
“A friend introduced me to Mamie’s movies in the early ’70s when [Read more…]