This Week's Haul: Straight-to-Video Laserdiscs

I bought a few Laserdiscs this week and I wanted to share my thoughts, and a little history, about each one of them.

As a collector, I visit various stores and thrift shops in search of any physical media that catches my eye. I thought I would post about the finds I make whenever I have new items to show off.

The first laserdisc I found is my first PM Entertainment laserdisc. For anyone who doesn't know, PM Entertainment was an independent production company that was formed in 1989 and ran through the 90s. They were famous for making the most insane straight-to-video action films that ever graced the video store. These films were filled with action, with an action scene happening every 10 minutes or so, and nudity. Most of the big straight-to-video stars of the 90s worked with PM Entertainment. Everyone from Don "The Dragon" Wilson to Cynthia Rothrock to Lorenzo Lamas made at least one film with the company and those films are among their best films. Hell, they even tried to turn Anna Nicole Smith into an action with TO THE LIMIT and SKYSCRAPER (a film that is miles better than the similarly named SKYSCRAPER, starring The Rock. 

A TIME TO DIE stars Traci Lords and Richard Roundtree. Lords was infamous for crippling the porn industry by lying about her age (she was 16 at the time she starred in her first adult film) which lead to the film company that hired her (X-Citement Entertainment) being sued by the government for distributing child porn. In 1986, video stores and porn shops were instructed to remove and destroy any video that featured Lords. If they didn't, they would also be brought up on child porn related charges. Lords moved over to the Hollywood side of the film industry where she worked with Jim Wynorski and John Waters.

The film itself isn't all that great. The story is really standard and the action scenes are a bit of a letdown. Lords is really good in the film, though. It's not a bad film. Just an underwhelming one.

Playboy was really popular in the video store during the 80s and the 90s. The videos that they released were too soft to be hardcore pornography but too hard to be softcore. They were too hard to be softcore by being nothing but sexiness and nudity. At least softcore films plots and acting. Playboy videos were more easily accessible because yoou didn't have to go into a private room to find them (most of the time. Some video stores did put them in with the hardcore stuff.)

Playboy was also very accessible to hormonal teenagers looking for something they can deposit into the spank bank for later use. If you were an 80s and 90s kid, then your father had some Playboy magazines and/or videos hidden somewhere in the house. These magazines and videos helped us all during the pre-internet times.

This laserdisc is the first volume of four videos. Each video is an anthology of different "stories" that involve the star of the segment striping while the camera moves around her. The setting is usually different with many of them revolving around a photoshoot because they are doing one already so why use the talent that is already paid for. Watching these today brings back a lot of nostalgia for times when it was always interesting to find something new to "entertain" us.

Next up is a film I had never heard of before but I knew I must have it. The film is called AMERICAN ANGELS: BAPTISM IN BLOOD (although it is misspelled in the credit bug on the back where it is called AMERICAN ANGELES, BAPTISM IN BLOOD.) This is a hell of a title for a film so I bought it based it solely on it. Its a female wrestling movie that was trying to capitalize on G.L.O.W.: GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING, which was still airing on TV. 

I have not watched the film yet. I do plan on it but I have a few other films to watch first. I did look the film up and it seems like some people find it fun. The plot on imdb.com is great and I am very much looking forward to watching it.

The film Laserdisc from this run is a video store classic: BODY CHEMISTRY 3: POINT OF SEDUCTION.

The 90s were wild. Not only did we have PM Entertainment to give us our action and Playboy to give us our titilations but we also had the straight-to-video erotic thrillers to give us some rest time in between the sec scenes. These things were everywhere in the 90s and they gave us a lot of beautiful women to take it. There were the 2 Shannons (Whirry and Tweed), Tanya Roberts, Joan Severance, Griffin Drew, and Julie Strain. My friends and I watched these things all the time and even had a split between the 2 Shannons. A few of us were on Team Whirry while others were on Team Tweed. I was one of the few that sat on the fence. Both of them were great and I couldn't choose one over the other.

The BODY CHEMISTRY series, which there are four, got its start in 1990 with BODY CHEMISTRY. The film is really well made with a good mystery and some wonderful sex scenes. The film was actually released in theaters where it made $2 million. 

The film was very popular when it was released on video with a sequel, BODY CHEMISTRY II: THE VOICE OF A STRANGER, releasing the following year. The mystery was still good and the sex scenes were decent as well. BODY CHEMISTRY 3: POINT OF SEDUCTION hit video in 1994 while the final film in the series. BODY CHEMISTRY 4: FULL EXPOSURE hitting in 1995.

I love the BODY CHEMISTRY series. While I appreciate the sex and nudity, which there is a lot of, I love how the films are more than that. They tell stories that have some real mystery to them. Many of the erotic thrillers that hit in the 90s were more sex than mystery but the BODY CHEMISTRY movies gave us something in between the sex scenes that we could get invested in. These films were made in the mold of the porn films of the 70s just without the hardcore stuff. 

Erotic thrillers would lose their luster after 1995, where the films being made were more sex than story. Sex scenes would go on for a really long time which caused them to be a bit boring. These films played out more like modern day porn without the hardcore stuff. Although, I bet you could insert hardcore shots and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.