Dial:Help

Dial: Help (1988) Directed By Ruggero Deodato, Starring Charlotte Lewis (1988).

George Costanza's allegedly bulimic model girlfriend played by Charlotte Lewis stars here. Two years before she was second fiddle to Eddie Murphy's comedy stylinz in The Golden Child. This is one of many terrible films in Deodato's later period just after Phantom Of Death and The Barbarians, a truly sad time for the man responsible for the female anal impalement exiting through mouth and turtle disembowelment seen world wide (which was obviously the high point of his checkered career). I can't say I feel bad for the cannibal king's occupational derailment, which he's still never recovered from. 

It opens with Claudio Simonetti's dopiest tune, which is available on "Evil Tracks" along with the score for Primal Rage and Nightmare Beach, which I highly recommend. The last time these two paisanos worked together was on my absolute favorite Deodato film, Cut & Run. I like how in the DR catalog Chas just writes "great underwear" after the description, too funny!

Stop prank calling me Eddie, I'm not transgendered

The lighting and set design look like a shitty Russ Mulcahy-esque new wave video and it begins with someone being strangled by a telephone cord, that's right it's a killer phone movie! In the late 80's Deodato was not the same film maker who went immediately for the jugular (the straight razor scene with David Hess and that innocent blonde played by Brigitte Petronio springs to mind as a disturbingly outrageous example). There's no element of threat and you feel secure in knowing there's no danger. So yeah, this one is pretty much a dull bore.

Look out pigeon, a Glen Frey or Rod Stewart video is about to start!

The version I saw on YT only had sound in one speaker. This is the flashiest I've ever seen this director get though, which I guess counts for something. Maybe he felt it was time to go all Argento (or Lamberto Bava) on us and class it up a bit. This seems like a prime film for Houseofselfindulgence to review (perhaps Yum-Yum will read this and take a stab at it). It's just too glossy and doesn't fit in with all the gore soaked grimy flicks in the DR catalog, but here we are.

Keep drinking, nothing helps!

I hate to beat a dead monkey or turtle, but this is a side of Deodato you're not likely to see ever again, it's very eurotrash. Maybe this was his attempt to go "mainstream", who knows?

Jenny (Lewis) the Brit model keeps getting heavy breathing phone calls and tries to forget them by hanging out at a cheesy party. She shakes her butt on top of a piano and tries to chillax.

One greaseball musician with a ponytail drives them around in his douchey sports car and waxes philosophical. 

NOOO!! Why didn't somebody call the suicide hotline, at least before they played that Neil Sedaka song?

A high pitched frequency noise blares out from her phone and kills all her fish in a giant aquarium, "Oh Shit, now it's gotten personal"! Her brain dead Italian neighbor who wears a Mona Lisa T-Shirt, lets her sleep at his pad. The irritating high pitched beeps start up again and put the lunkhead into a trance which causes him to almost take a nosedive off the roof of the building. 

We're almost 26 minutes in and the sheer boredom is almost unbearable, I want to shut it off but the beer is flowing and maybe I can power through, the shit I do for TOG I swear sometimes!

Hey this is that same pee colored bath water from Mad Foxes, uh oh!

RD's usual prolific screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici has fled the scene, there's noway he can be blamed for this abysmal disaster. It's kind of weird that this is the sole film that the two other writers besides Deodato have written, maybe they were eaten by a hungry tribe. 

I can't think of a worse stalker film right now but this one is so terrible that it should be on the top of the list, there's no real establishment of anything other than a mysterious phone call and a lame model. One guy who attempts to stab Jenny is killed by a bunch of quarters in a phone booth, Whu? You may want to rewind that part, is this film trying to be Maximum Overdrive all of a sudden?

The best/dumbest part happens when the phone decides to call up Jenny and give her a "blowjob" or turn her on by blowing hot winds at her. Sadly, this movie isn't even accidentally good, it's just completely worthless! 

POSSIBLY THE WORST PHONE MOVIE OF ALL TIME, CALL FOR ASSISTANCE YOU MAY NEED A CORONER! 

I'd say "This movie really sucks" but that would just be a ridiculous pun!





OK fine score one for this movie, that underwear looks pretty spiffy!

                                                         Can somebody Dial help already or at least call Life Alert!