Pieces of A Dream
#Life could be a dream, sh-boom, sh-boom#
#Life could be a dream, sh-boom, sh-boom#
Today you're going to get two, count 'em two, movie reviews in one. How can mere mortals such as ourselves manage that, you ask? Surely the effort required would tax any human being beyond their utmost powers.
Well, it's simple. Sleeping Dogs and Fatal Conflict are both crappy science fiction movies and both have a lengthy, extended sequence of large numbers of women in bondage at the very beginning of the movie. In fact, their scenes constitute the largest mass branking and chastity belt scenes ever caught on film-possibly the only ones, certainly the only ones in a mainstream film. And in fact, to a large extent they are the exact same scenes.
We have watched both movies from beginning to end and thus are in a position to tell you authoritatively that as movies they suck. But the bondage scenes at the beginning of both films are so striking, so original and so lengthy that it is definitely worthwhile to rent or buy the movies just to see them.
A scene featuring eight slavegirls wearing chastity belts, branks and collars. This is
part of a panning shot, there are a lot more slave girls in the scene. Dreamlike? You bet!
The bondage scenes have a strange, dreamlike, fetish fantasy quality that makes them stick out from both movies like a sore thumb, though it's clear that the scenes were initially filmed for Sleeping Dogs and were picked up and perhaps even added on to in Fatal Conflict. In fact Fatal Conflict extends the fetish material with some women in prison scenes that includes branding scenes and upskirts imagery, so we suspect that both movies represent an unconscious urge to create a mainstream fetish film (more on that at the very end of this article).
OK, down to brass tacks. Sleeping Dogs opens with a jewel thief's attempt to break into a secret underground emerald processing factory operated by villain C. Thomas Howell. Fatal Conflict opens with an attempt by secret agent Kari Wuhrer to infiltrate a secret underground emerald processing station operated by villain Leo Rossi.
It's an unusual emerald processing station to say the least. For starters, each and every one of the jewelers working in it are attractive young women - real babes. And these women are all dressed only in futuristic chastity belts, branks, collars and sheer white cotton t-shirts that barely make it to their belly buttons, with not a bra to be seen among them, which means lots of nipples are poking through that sheer cotton.
Jewelry slavegirls babes whose only clothing that isn't fetish attire is filmy t-shirts that their breasts strain valiantly against. Now this is science fiction!
Fairly unusual personnel and costuming, for an emerald processing plant, wouldn't you say? I know I would say. Of course, there's a logical explanation for the chastity belt, collars and branks. The brank, a metallic gag that is built into the collar and is activated by a remote controlled electronic lock, keeps the jeweler babes from slipping emeralds into their mouths.
Actually, we think this gag and collar combination is a beautiful design. We don't know who the prop master was, but they have our kudoes! And wouldn't you say that anybody who put this much thought into the design of the gag and collar had to be ... interested?
We'll let you guess where the chastity belts (also featuring remote-controlled electronic locks) keep the jeweler babes from slipping emeralds. It's never explained in the movie, but it's the only explanation.
The jeweler babes work standing up (HAS to be tiresome, but then, sitting on those hard chastity belts would probably be tiresome, too) at wooden tables, eight to a table. They scrutinize emeralds, they shine laser beams on emeralds, they count emeralds, they polish emeralds with little cloths and they put emeralds in little trays and carry them around (no sign of grinding or faceting technology at work here).
The camera shows the jewelry babes at work in complete detail. Very complete detail, almost as if it's an industrial film about processing emeralds by jeweler babes. But the camera isn't ALL business. There are quite a few long, lingering shots of the jeweler babe's lovely butts spilling out of their thonglike chastity belts.
There are a lot of shots like this to let viewers know just how strictly those chastity belts enclose the soft, yielding flesh of the jeweler babes' nubile bodies. Because that's what emerald processing is all about!
As the jewelers work in their windowless prison, they're guarded by a slew of fully clothed, heavily armed thugs carrying automatic weapons from the 1990s. At first I thought this was an anachronism, as these movies are set far enough in the future that interstellar flight is commonplace. But early in Fatal Conflict there's a shot of the Argos Women's Prison Colony where Wuhrer spends some time, and the date of the movie is 2029.
So, apparently, the author thinks that we'll be colonizing other planets in the next 30 years (Fatal Conflict was released in 2000) and that the very first thing we'll do when we get there is build women's prisons in outer space. I leave it to you to decide which is more unlikely.
Women's prisons are apparently the first thing we will build when we colonize other planets. Makes perfect sense to me -- I just didn't think it would make sense to anyone ELSE. Spooky.
The thugs never say anything, just stand around with their M-16s and ogle the jeweler babes. Because the jeweler babes are gagged, they never say anything, either.
In both movies, the scenes in the emerald plant are intercut with plot-intensive scenes of the break-ins and of the villains doing dastardly deeds, people yelling at each other, hitting each other, running from one place to another and doing all the other things people in B-level science fiction movies do. The prosaic nature of the plotline scenes contrasts strongly with the jeweler babe scenes with their images of half-naked women in fetish attire silently and calmly going about their manufacturing business guarded by heavily armed thugs.
It's as if pieces of a fetish dream had somehow fallen into these movies and lodged there, interrupting their flow and draining the plotline scenes of all meaning with their dreamlike, hypnotic power.
#Life could be a dream, sh-boom, sh-boom...#
Or to put it another, perhaps more accurate way, the jeweler babe scenes in both movies are like clips from another, much better movie that were lifted and dropped into Fatal Conflict and Sleeping Dogs. But we know that the scenes originate with Sleeping Dogs because the jewel thief in Sleeping Dogs (played by Scott McNeill) actually interacts with the jeweler babes. He hooks up with one of them during the course of his heist, which coincides with a police raid. (Sleeping Dogs' plot is in fact lousy with coincidences, but at least it's intelligible, which is more than you can say of Fatal Conflicts' plotline). He also engages in a shootout in the middle of the emerald processing room, sending the jeweler babes mmmphing and diving for cover. He eventually uses some sophisticated electronic doohickeys to free the jeweler babes of their branks, collars and chastity belts during his escape, sending them running frantically for freedom, safety or whatever in a massive episode of feminine jigglery.
The costuming on the jewelry babes is just brilliant. Fatal Impact and Sleeping Dogs are one of just three mainstream movies and/or TV shows to use gags to symbolize slavery (I'm counting Fatal Impact and Sleeping Dogs as only one film because they both use the same clips to such a great extent, though they are not identical.)
The other two productions to use gags to symbolize slavery are both science fiction: the TV series Clepoatra 2525 and the film Alien Apocalypse.
#But what matters most is that feelin' you get when you're hypnotized
That's why it seems like a dream has got me hypnotized...#
In Sleeping Dogs we also learn that the jeweler babes are slaves. Heather Hanson, who plays the jewelry slavegirl babe who hooks up with the jewel thief, tells him so after he frees her of her gag. She says she was sold to Howell to pay off a gambling debt-nice bit of background that only adds to the fetish quality of the scenes.
The costuming on the jewelry babes is just brilliant in respect to visually identifying the workers as slaves. Fatal Impact and Sleeping Dogs are one of just three mainstream movies and/or TV shows to use gags to symbolize slavery (I'm counting Fatal Impact and Sleeping Dogs as only one film because they both use the same clips to such a great extent, though they are not identical.)
The other two productions to use gags to symbolize slavery are both science fiction: the TV series Cleopatra 2525 and the film Alien Apocalypse, as detailed in this post on my Politically Sexy website.
I have no idea WHY this aspect of slavegirl imagery has only occurred to science fiction writer/directors -- it's such a powerful, dramatic form of imagery that you'd think mainstream filmmakers and TV producers would have been all over it since the dawn of time.
The effect of the gag/collar, combined with the chastity belts and crop-top T-shirts is to make the viewer aware that these women are particularly abject slaves -- they must do what they are told and wear -- or not wear -- what they are told. They are not equivalent to workers at a modern factory, even if they're doing the same sort of things you'd expect to see at a modern emerald processing facility.
Careful examination of the chastity belt in the foreground shows that the front gaps a lot -- plenty of room for a nimble slavegirl to slip a hand in there and shove emeralds up her pussy. There has to be a built-in plug to prevent that. Two of them, in fact. I mean, I don't know for sure, there are no scenes showing the interior of the chastity belts or branks, but there just HAVE to be built-in plugs ... SOB! ... there just HAVE to be!
What's more, what they're wearing are particularly INVASIVE garments. A proper brank has a built-in plug gag to stifle speech, and it's hard to see how a brank designed to prevent emeralds from being slipped into the mouth could possibly work unless it had a built-in plug, and quite a large one at that.
Same with the chastity belt -- unless it featured a large plug for EACH of the orifices it conceals, it would be WORSE than no chastity belt at all, as it would simply serve to hide the act of sleeping the gems up the old wazoo.
Back to the movies. In Fatal Conflict, Wuhrer never appears in any scene with a jeweler babe or in the jewelry processing room. Instead she appears in a surveillance room that is supposedly next to the jeweler babe room just as the thugs are ordered to put their antique rifles in the gun ports and kill all the jeweler babes. Before they can, Wuhrer hoses the lot of them down with her antique machine gun and they all die. Then Wuhrer cries "run for it gals!" and the jeweler babes do their running and mmmphing act again, which is to say the clips from Sleeping Dogs are used again.
Is a leather coverall with lots of zippers and pockets the uniform of the Geek Girl of the Future? Kari Wuhrer joins the fashon trend inspired by Eva Savealot of TV commercial fame and Yves of the Lone Gunmen. (Boy, these references are so time-limited I can already feel them becoming obscure...)
Now as to which set of clips is better, I tend to go for Fatal Conflict over Sleeping Dogs because Fatal Conflict does a lot more butt ogling and ogling in general of its jeweler babes. But Sleeping Dogs has a lot more scenes of scantily clad babes running for cover and mmmphing. Fatal Conflict also has more jeweler babes-in Sleeping Dogs you never see more than eight jeweler babes in a single frame, whereas Fatal Conflict has some frames that show a dozen jeweler babes at their naked bondage work. All in all, I'd give the edge to Fatal Conflict, especially considering the extra added women's prison of the future branding scenes.
The way the extra Fatal Conflict scenes work out is, after infiltrating the villain's emerald plant, Wuhrer is assigned to infiltrate the villain's spaceship. For some reason they decide that the best way to do that is have her sneak into a women's prison, break out and hook up with the villain in her guise as an escaped con (because y'know all criminals trust other criminals-it's the criminal thing to do!)
You know your butt is not your own when it's branded in the women's prison of the future in outer space. And KUDOES for thinking to brand the babes on the butt and not some stupid place like the arm or shoulder. And what the hell did these gals do to wind up caged in outer space, anyway? Doesn't sound like a shoplifting charge ...
So off to the women's prison they go, a futuristic sort of place on another planet where the prisoners' primary activity is crawling through dirty tunnels on their hands and knees and pulling rocks around with their bare hands. But first they have to be branded, a relatively painless procedure in the prison of the future which involves pulling up the flimsy cotton dresses that barely cover their butts and allowing the guard to brand them with a laser doohickey. We are also treated to many scenes of the brands being inspected.
After the brand is made, it's inspected by the sort of woman who doesn't mind spending her entire day looking at other women's butts up close. Not just once, but several times. The film makes sure you know about this by giving you a closeup of the antique clipboard used by the guard to keep a record of her inspections, which shows that the gals get checked at LEAST half a dozen times a day. Tasty ...
Immediately after being branded, the prisoner babes (all of them are young, attractive women of course) have to climb a ladder. And the camera is right there to look up their dresses as they do so. Very shortly thereafter, Kari makes contact with other agents planted inside the prison and escapes.
Well, it COULD be a coincidence that the camera shows the panties of a woman climbing a ladder several times in the show. Also, what about that coincidental thing with apples falling from trees and gravity?
To answer some questions that Kari Wuhrer fans have:
We do get to hear Kari make a reference to being branded and we do get to see her crawling through tunnels in her short cotton dress on her hands and knees, so it's not a total wash. Still, I imagine Kari Wuhrer fans who remember her from MTV and Sliders were hoping for more.
I will say that Wuhrer does all she can with her role, bringing a lot of intensity and feistiness to her character, but after the prison scene it's all basically a bunch of nattering around on a spaceship with some hapless, semi-innocent space pilot guy she hooks up with. Same with Sleeping Dogs-- after the jewel heist, the thief and the slave girl hide out from the coincidental police raid in a crate which, coincidentally, is stowed on board the very same craft the bad guys are imprisoned in cold sleep in after being caught. When a meteor coincidentally hits the ship it coincidentally frees C. Thomas Howell from cold sleep and he unfreezes the other bad guys and they coincidentally-on-purpose take over the ship.
What you wind up with in both movies is a good guy and a good gal running around on a spaceship controlled by bad guys, arguing and hiding and hitting and shooting a lot. C. Thomas Howell plans to do something terrible to a space colony with his ship, Rossi plans to do something terrible to Los Angeles with his ship. They must be stopped no matter how much arguing and running and hiding and hitting and shooting it takes! So, if lots of images of people running down corridors and crawling through vents and arguing and so forth are your cup of tea, these are your movies.
If you're more like me, you'll find them incredibly dull. The powerful, dreamlike images of the jeweler babes in bondage are much more arresting than anything in either movie, so it's easy to tell what went wrong-they made the wrong movie!
You don't establish a jewelry finishing operation staffed entirely by beautiful, shapely young women and have them polish nothing more than your emeralds.
Image courtesy of sponsor Sex and Submission.
The movie they SHOULD have made is the one that was clearly in Hyde's heart when the jeweler babe scenes were conceived and filmed ... A movie about jeweler babe slavegirls and their brave struggle for freedom from their cruel masters. Because, let's face it, you don't establish a jewelry finishing operation staffed entirely by beautiful, shapely young women and then make them to polish nothing more than your emeralds.
Now in my version of the movies, coincidentally entitled Sleeping Conflict, these poor slavegirls, after the end of their shift, are forced to eat gruel from bowls on the floor, naked but for their chastity belts, with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
"Hey, I caught these two having sex with guards. What'll their punishment be? The usual? More sex with guards?"
After dinner, the branks go back on and it's time to entertain the guards. The guards specify the kind of entertainment they want by using their remote controls to either release the brank or the chastity belt. The still naked and cuffed jeweler babes are then forced to serve their cruel masters with whatever body part isn't locked tight, and whether or not they are uncuffed or ungagged while doing so is strictly up to the guards, who are big on security if you know what I mean.
Furthermore, the jewelry slaves frequently are stopped wherever they are and given on-the-spot body cavity searches by the guards, in full view of whoever happens by.
The slavegirls could also hide emeralds inside the chastity belts themselves. So frequent body cavity searches only make sense...
And we make sure the viewers know that the gags the babes are wearing have built-in wadding that fills their mouths, and that their chastity belts have built-in plugs that ensure that no emeralds have room to get inside any body cavities.
The story is a Great Escape kind of deal, with the jewelry babes plotting a mass escape from their cruel masters. We see the clever subterfuges they adopt so that they can communicate, and the sly ruses they use to effect their escape. We see their courage and resourcefulness in the face of extreme male domination, and we know just how bad it is because we've seen it in complete detail and graphically. When the jewelry babes escape and the villains get hosed with antique machine gun fire, it's so much more meaningful than being coincidentally rescued by Wuhrer or MacNeill, because we saw all that they went through in order to escape.
The fact that this presents us with a movie whose female leads spend almost the entire film wearing chastity belts and gags when they aren't having sex is, um, a coincidence.
In conclusion, I urge producer Simandl to film the good film, the one that had imagery that was arresting enough to open both Sleeping Dogs and Fatal Conflict. Film the fantasy, not its rationale.
Lloyd Simondl now produces movies featuring lots of lesbian bondage and dominance action via a website called Boundheat. Here's a vidcap from the Boundheat Sword and Sandal movie Caligula's Spawn Part I.
Somebody FINALLY took my advice!
(Full disclosure: Boundheat is a sponsor of Bondagerotica.)
"Hey, this thing really does make your tits look bigger!"
