21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stars In Her eyes, December 2, 2007
This review is from: Chantal (DVD)
Here's a DVD that's been `coming soon' for about three years. Thankfully, it's been well worth the wait because Seduction Cinema have put together a superb package. The main event is a remake of Nick Phillips' late 1960s "Chantal" and this 2-disc set has that original feature on its second DVD along with an interview with the director and an audio commentary with Phillips and 42nd Street Pete. There's also a short film called `These Girls Are Fools'.
The main course, though, is Tony Marsiglia's stunning remake which features an utterly superb central performance from Misty Mundae as the innocent, wide-eyed titular character who dreams of becoming a movie star. However, she soon finds that far from being laced with tinsel, Hollywood is loaded with manipulative predators all too eager to lend a helping hand.
In some ways, this is Marsiglia's most straightforward film in terms of storytelling. There's none of the confusing narrative that characterized his previous release,
Sinful, or the more dreamlike sequences in the excellent
Lust for Dracula (Director's Cut). However, there are one or two moments of weirdness. For example, having been turned away from her first port of call, Chantal decides to lower her sights and enters the bowels of a decrepit hotel presided over by the creepy Pablo (Tony Marsiglia). On finding that she doesn't have enough money for a room even in this hell-hole, Pablo offers her a deal: he'll keep her suitcase and belongings with him, but he'll allow her to take two items with her. "Not the pink ones," he rasps excitedly like an obscene phone caller in imminent danger of a heart attack.
There are fine performances from the supporting cast. Darian Caine as an aggressive lesbian photographer gives perhaps her best performance to date with Marsiglia favorite, Andrea Davis, as her co-defiler. They subject the witless Chantal to their forceful attentions in a powerful scene that is harrowing to watch. Julian Wells also turns in a fine performance. Here, she plays an actress wannabe who's already been put through the wringer and is now reduced to turning tricks on the street.
Also present on the DVD are a behind the scenes featurette and an interesting audio commentary from Marsiglia and producer, Michael Raso. However, the icing on the cake is a fascinating, separate audio commentary from Tony Marsiglia and Misty Mundae. Aside from the business of `Chantal', Misty speaks about her decision to stop making softcore films. She admits with refreshing honesty that since making
Masters of Horror: Lucky McKee - Sick Girl, offers of acting work that she's been willing to undertake have not been numerous.
At one point, Marsiglia asks Misty about how she and her fellow actresses prepare for sex scenes and in a delightfully catty aside she mentions an actress whose name has been partially removed from the soundtrack:
Misty: Working with [this actress], she'd be like `oh no, I don't wanna do it that way. I have to be atop, I can't be abottom, and let's do the scissor thing because then we look really good. And make sure that you hold under my boob to cover my scar.'
Marsiglia: What did the director say?
Misty: Oh, pssh! The director of that movie? Not much!
Marsiglia: I don't think I've seen this one.
Misty: Good!
I think Misty is talking about
The Erotic Mirror which, in my opinion, is not a bad piece of softcore entertainment. And the "scissor thing" does look good.
`Chantal', for me is a four star film, but the extra features give this package a five star rating. Misty Mundae fans should consider it a must-have.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not your typical Misty Mundae flick, March 14, 2008
This review is from: Chantal (DVD)
This is one of Misty Mundae's last exploitation skin flicks. Unlike most of her work, which is a lot of fun, her work with Tony Marsiglia is always more thoughtful. This film was made immediately after "Lust for Dracula". That movie was very confusing. This one makes much more sense, and I felt that I was watching an actual movie, only one with a lots of beautiful, naked women in it. That's very good. What kept this from being a five star film is that it is just such a downer, it kills the eroticism. There is a rape scene, where Andrea Davis rapes Misty while Darrian Caine gets the whole thing on film. In a standard Misty movie, all the above would happen without the rape, and it would be very hot. Instead, it's just painful to watch. Probably the best acting I've seen from Misty, she carries the movie on her slim shoulders. If you always wondered if Misty can act convincingly, this movie answers the question with a definite yes. If you enjoy seeing Misty kiss a bunch of hot naked women, trust me, that's not what this movie is about. Most of all, it made me sad that she has left this genre. She was the best there ever was.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Awful, and yet oddly appealing., February 9, 2011
This review is from: Chantal (DVD)
Chantal (Tony Marsiglia, 2007)
While it is certainly the case that Erin Brown, who goes by the name Misty Mundae when doing either softcore of low-budget horror (viz. Kurtzmann's The Rage), is hands down one of the most beautiful actresses in the softcore industry, it is often overlooked that, when she's given material she can really sink her teeth into, she's also a pretty decent actress (viz. Lucky McKee's Sick Girl). Because she's been typecast as a softcore actress, she rarely gets material of this caliber, but in her defense, she's willing to take roles that most softcore actresses wouldn't touch with ten-foot poles as long as they contain the possibility of pushing that particular envelope. Tony Marsiglia's Chantal, an anti-Horatio Alger tale about a fresh-faced young thing who tries (and fails) to make it in Hollywood is exactly that kind of role. It doesn't live up to its potential in any way, but it's certainly an interesting enough attempt to give it a watch.
Marsiglia, save his first (a no-budget 1995 horror flick called Phoenix that seems impossible to come by these days) and as-of-this-writing-most-recent (2009's Suzie Heartless, because Misty's off making CSI these days don't you know) features, has cast Misty Mundae in everything he's done, be it straight softcore (Lust for Dracula) or attempts to break out of the mold (this). Interestingly, said attempt to break out of the mold is actually a remake of an earlier softcore outing by porn/horror king Nick Millard (the original is included in this DVD release). Chantal was one of the eleven(!) flicks Millard directed in 1968, and is eminently forgettable--to everyone, it seems, save Marsiglia. It stuck in his craw enough that he had to remake it. And Misty Mundae is just about the perfect lead for this. There's so much discussion of how the perfect woman can look both the princess and the slut, and all of it's wrong. This works because Mundae is only capable of looking the princess. No matter how degraded/degrading the material, she is always the fresh-faced innocent girl next door. And that is why she has such a huge following among softcore aficionados. In a movie like this, which is barely even a softcore production (this is far more about the breaking of Chantal's will than it is about the various sexual entanglements in which she finds herself), the draw is the destruction of that innocence. Some might say that the fact Misty Mundae still looks like an angel, albeit a dirty, homeless one, by the time we get halfway through the movie undercuts what's going on. Not so, Brutus. (Though I will admit it does kind of stab longtime Mundae co-conspirator Julian Wells' immortal line "I'm 21. This is what a year on these streets will do to you." in the foot.) Given where this movie ends up (and while I'm sure you can guess, I won't spoil it for you), innocence is necessary. Even the beginning of the cynical gleam in the eye would have compromised that ending.
I'm going on and on about a movie to which I'm giving a mediocre rating because while it's technically crap (it's Seduction Cinema, what do you expect?) and Marsiglia's writing, as usual, could've used a great editor, there's actually a lot to think about here. Marsiglia dances around with Hollywood clichés that are as old as, well, Horatio Alger stories, but he manages to make something halfway interesting out of them. I liked this more than the two stars I'm giving it would seem to imply, and I am recommending you watch it, as long as you're willing to put up with occasionally-awful dialogue and cinematography that could have been done by a ten-year-old. **
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