J Lane

I remember this being on British TV about a year after it was cancelled in the US. It wasn't good. The old Lucy shows are not that bad if dated. This was terrible. The main trouble was that a septuagenarian Lucy was doing bizarre physical comedy. The had her chasing ducks, skating, dancing along to Jane Fonda. Most of the time you thought it was going to end up with a hip transplant gag! The Biography channel recently showed a clip from this show in a programme about Lucy. It was a clip where she was sitting talking, and it was funny. It was a shame that her verbal comedy wasn't the driving force for this show. Sadly Lucy died soon after thinking that the public had turned her back on her due to the poor ratings of this show.

This film is on the border. The first half is so bad it's good, and then it gets to be so bad it is just plain bad. Liliana Cabal dose a good job of playing someone with no memory. But that is the high point. The rest of the acting is bad. Now a few points on Vampire Lore. Most modern film makers do not seem to take 'Buffy...' and Stoker as gospel and mess with it. I don't think this film is any worse. This film seems to be set in the same general biological area Able Ferrara's 1995 film 'The Addiction'. With the vampires okay in daylight with shades and able to suffer injury. In Anne Rice novels vampires have been known to suffer memory loss from blows to the head. So that is okay. Crosses, that one is dropped in a lot of more modern films. In 'The Hunger' the vampires also wear crosses (albeit Egyptian style ones). This film is trying to be modern and scientific about vampires, which means dropping the superstition.

One night in 1996 I switched on Turner Network Europe at about midnight, I expected to see either the 'WCW' or an old US government information film from the 40's. If it had been the former I would have gone to bed. But it was the latter. Which was then closely followed by a trailer for the feature at midnight. I was intrigued and stayed up to watch. 'Private Parts' isn't a easy film to watch at 3 am, though it is a great film. The photography and the mood created is impeccable. From the nod to Hitchcock in the bathroom scene to the oddly familiar corridors of the hotel. But to be honest I forgot about this film for a few years. Though something jogged my memory and I had to seek it out again.

I was not disappointed. The second time not hampered by fatigue I could see what a great film this is. Defiantly a forgotten gem. Turner Classic Film's has been known to show this film in the UK and it is well worth a look. Sadly they no longer show old info film. So I can no longer use the ten point test to see if my co worker is a Soviet Spy...