Hollywoodshack
Because of a certain weakness in this movie, I have decided to review Housewives from Another World without finishing it. So, you might also want to read A Review from Another Critic. I haven't seen all the "good parts" because the first scene started in the middle of the best part, making the other sex scenes a bit slow and boring. Max is caught cheating with another woman (Rebecca Love) by Karen (Heather Vandeven) before she is possessed by aliens who want Max's satellite plans. A villain pops in here and there wearing a cone hat and a fez who is paying Max's rival to steal the plan, too. So many bad guys, but not much of a good guy is Max. Vandeven "penthouse pet of the year" has not made much of any films outside of Penthouse or these Retromedia movies. She has a long boring solo shower scene and seems to be posing for an extended photo session. Her prize money needs to be spent on more acting lessons.
jmatrixrenegade
This is one of a range of tongue in cheek soft porn films with various overlapping participants including a basically straight role (here playing the boss) in each. I liked "The Devil Wears Nada" the best, but this is one of the better ones. Overall, it is a good experience.Heather Vandeven is the lead here and as in "Life On Top," though she comes off a bit stiff at times, she has a nice acting style in the non-sex roles. Distinctive voice.She also handles something of a duo role (before and after the alien invasion) well. Starting off as a sharp tongued wife (the title is a misnomer in that no one here is really a "housewife" -- she is coming home from a business trip, another works at some tech firm & apparently isn't married & the third isn't really given much of a back-story).Another review speaks of "unintentional" humor but these films are intentionally satiric. The espionage subplot down to its conclusion is not supposed to be taken seriously, for instance. The characters in these films generally have fun with this sort of thing.I personally like films like this to have a bit of plot to go along with the porn and this one has enough to move things along. Some amusing aspects including how the husband gets a neighbor to have sex with him & what happens afterward. Of course, we are here mainly for the soft porn. I think some might find these scenes a mixed bag, but Heather and Rebecca Love was my favorite with an interesting back shot at her pubic hair that is notable.Christine Nyugen (spelling?) is decent overall -- I find her a bit more bland than Heather Vandeven (Rebecca Love has certain assets but isn't asked to do much in way of acting). The guys do their part.
Smooth B
This is my first softcore review in quite some time. When I saw this movie on Cinemax a couple of nights ago, I felt compelled to come back to IMDb to get the review juices flowing again. Yes, this movie had THAT kind of an effect on me."Housewives From Another World" is a quality skin flick from Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia pipeline. Fred's "Bikini" franchise has been going strong for a while now, and I suppose he's decided to branch out a little bit.We begin with Max (Frankie Cullen), a researcher working on a deep space satellite....no, wait. Let's not begin there. Let's begin with Max banging the neighbor lady Rita (Rebecca Love) upstairs in the bedroom, because that's how the movie starts. Rebecca Love's chest is on display here (when is it NOT on display) and that's what matters the most here. Good way to start the movie!After that, we get into the plot: While Max is having sex with Rita, two things happen simultaneously: his wife, Karen (Heather Vandeven), comes home from a business trip early, and a small meteorite crashes in the backyard of the house. Karen finds Max upstairs in bed with Rita, causing Rita to scamper away. Karen, obviously distraught about catching her husband in bed with the neighbor, resigns herself to drinking away her problems. She finds the destroyed meteorite in the yard and picks up a few shards of it.....when that happens, a strange thing happens to her. Her body is taken over by an alien life form!As I mentioned before, Max is a researcher, working on a deep space satellite. His work is what the aliens have come to Earth for, because the construction of the satellite means imminent doom for their planet. While that's going on, Tom (Tony Marino) and Carla (Christine Nguyen), Max's co-workers and fellow researchers, are also trying to steal Max's plans for their own personal gain...well, Tom has a few bad debts he has to pay off, but you get my drift.Meanwhile, the alien inside Karen makes it her duty to "take care" of her husband so he can focus on his work. Yep, I said it. She even recruits Rita and Carla (their bodies anyway) to help her in her quest to foil Max's plans. The movie worked in a bare-bones plot, but as we all know, a good plot is merely a side dish in a softcore movie.The aliens inhabiting these three ladies have never experienced carnal knowledge before, so they spend most of the movie having sex with the guys and with each other. Hey, it's softcore, what do you expect? The sex scenes were solid for the most part, and Heather Vandeven surprised me by pulling off the comedy in a decent fashion. Rebecca Love and Christine Nguyen are veterans of the game by now, and they turned in worthwhile performances in supporting roles. A naked Rebecca Love is always a treat that NEVER disappoints. I attribute the sex scene performance to her adult film experience, but the girl can be funny and sexy at the same time.In short, HFAW is a pretty good way to spend 80 minutes. The sex wasn't bad, the plot was good for a chuckle, and the women all had boobs-a-plenty. Solid attributes if you ask me, and definitely worth a couple spins on the DVR.Women: A. There was something about all three of these women that I liked. Why I like Rebecca Love should be obvious; just look at her chest. However, she's not bad at softcore comedy. Christine Nguyen is probably the best pure actress of the three, but she turned in a couple of decent sex performances too. Heather Vandeven had the lead female role here, and she was solid. Not great, not bad, but solid. She wasn't great at anything, but she was good at just about everything.Sex: B+. The sex scenes were pretty good for the most part; however, a couple of them just didn't seem to have any heat. I have to say that I like MRG's style of presenting sex scenes better, because they tend to feel and look a bit more realistic. I thought all three girls were going to have a lesbian three-way at one point, but Karen just watched while Rita and Carla went to town on each other....points off for that. You can't have three girls in a girl-girl scene and only two of them get naked. Sorry.Story: B. The story was decent enough, but nothing spectacular. It did the job it was asked to do, which was to exist in between the sex scenes. There were a couple of funny parts, such as when the three women were discussing strategy about what to do with Max. The way the girls were interacting with each other during this scene was unintentionally funny; it felt like dialogue straight out of an old alien sci-fi movie. I literally busted out laughing when Rita said, "We must kill Max" in a very deadpan way.Overall: A-. I'm giving this movie an A- on the strength of the female performances and the comedy throughout the movie. If this movie didn't have the funny quotes in it, I probably would've given it a B+ or even an outright B. "Housewives From Another World" is a pretty funny flick, and I'm glad I was able to catch it on Cinemax this past Friday night. Skinemax and softcore fans should be happy with this one.
