"Scandalous Behavior", aka "Singapore Sling" (1998)

by Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

It started out with the potential to be an unintentional comedy classic like Habitat, but no such luck. For example, in the first sex scene, they edited the camera cuts in the wrong order, so when one woman climbs atop the guy in a threesome, they change the camera angles and she isn't there yet! Oh-ho-ho it's magic, you know. Then the evildoers place some innocents into a car and let them drive off. Why let them get away? Are they evil doers with a heart of gold? Nah! They have a remote controlled explosive device to detonate the car. Only one problem - the victims drive off in a new Cadillac down a claustrophobic tree-lined alley, but the car that blows up is an older car, non-Cadillac, and in an empty treeless street.

All this in the first few minutes, so I had my hopes up so high!

Sigh. It just turned out to be another one of these things with the minimum plot necessary to justify the sex scenes, and the actors delivering their lines like local phys ed teachers presenting the team's car wash checks on the Muscular Dystrophy telethon.

The only good thing about the movie is that it is the DVD version of "Singapore Sling".

Hey, what's so friggin good about that?

Well, I'll tell ya - it's the 1998 movie in which the six foot tall former Playindividual Shannon Tweed appears to be sitting on the shillelegh for real. I have to say that when you are watching the movie, it does absolutely give the illusion that she's riding the Love Train. Is there any way to say for sure? Not a chance. They could be doin' it, or he could have an erection a couple inches behind her butt, or we could be looking at a shadow. I don't know. But it's some pretty hot monkey love for Ms Tweed, real or not.

Did you realize that it was almost 20 years ago that Shannon was the staple girl? She's still hot, but she has kids your age. Since the centerfold, she's had some rugrats with Gene Simmons, the tongue dude from KISS, and she has appeared in about a zillion low-budget productions as bad as or worse than this. Tweed isn't that bad in this movie, but the rest of the cast should be drowned in Bardahl and used to prevent engine knock in Oprah's vibrator.

By the way, this movie was directed by James Hong, whom you would immediately recognize as the official Hollywood Chinese Guy, from such great pictures as Blade Runner and Chinatown. He also stars in this film. He's in his seventies now. The first movie he appeared in was 1955's "Love is a Many Splendored Thing". That was some time ago, but the old boy is in great shape, and doesn't look much older than he did three decades ago. Point of passing info - he may look like a Chinese guy, but he's as American as you can get, born in Minneapolis, with an engineering degree from USC. His Chinese heritage turned out to be a great entree into acting, and he has done more than 100 movies!

Nudity from:.

• Shannon Tweed, including frontals and faux or real sex. The history of literature has been dominated by the "sins of the father" legacy. How much guilt do we owe those our fathers wronged, and what should we do about it. Should we pluck out our eyes like Oedipus, even though we are just unwilling and unknowning pawns? In this classical spirit, I am glad to see Shannon sharing her body with all of us, to atone for the many wrongs committed by her infamous grandfather, Boss Tweed. (Landon Hall is doing the same because of her own grandpa, Tammany.)
• Lisa Comshaw
• Rena Riffel
• others

General critical consensus: sorry, lads, but the New Yorker and Roger Ebert are inexplicably silent on this matter.

IMDB summary: 4.8 out of 10. Some viewers were rating it "as a movie", others "as an erotic entertainment", so the score doesn't really reflect either. Probably about 2-3 as a movie, about 7-8 as a softcore entertainment., so the five average makes some sense when you look at it that way.

DVD info from Amazon.