04 October 2010

Malicious

Well it hardly seems like it, but it has been a whole month and I'm back in the States and back to watching old VHS tapes. I've got a lot of stuff that's been on hold for a long time before I left, we'll see how it goes. Thanks for sticking with me here at Lost Video Archive.


United States - 1992
Director - Ian Corson
Republic Pictures, 1994, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 38 minutes

Malicious is one of those films that is often described as a "guilty pleasure", an elitist bourgeoisie term that doesn't really make much sense. I first saw it on late night TV when I was in my teens and of course was enthralled with the concept of a sexually charged and bare-breasted Molly Ringwald. It was something that contradicted all prior notions I'd had of her. The story is classically sexist in its vilification of the sexually aware and demanding woman. The ostensible protagonist, a college baseball jock named Doug, can't keep his dick in his pants when his girlfriend is out of town and after fooling around with Molly finds that she won't leave him alone. Of course she is embellished with a number of what can only be called "psycho bitch" stereotypes which are meant to paint her as unstable and dangerous; in effect to justify her vilification. But this assertion is hard to swallow considering its historically endemic nature.

What Malicious wants us to believe is that it's okay if a man sleeps with someone (even if he's already in a relationship) as long as it didn't "mean anything", in fact, it's practically expected. If the woman  thinks it means something more than casual sex, that's asking too much, surely it was her fault for tempting him in the first place. It's the same bullshit double standard we've heard since the patriarchs blamed Eve for getting Adam kicked out of the garden.

3 comments:

Jason said...

Thanks, hey, um, do you happen to have the VHS cover scan for the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Death Warrant? (1990)

The Goodkind said...

Ah, sorry no. I've never been much of a JCVD fan, in fact I've only just started getting into action flicks in the last few years so my selection there is pretty limited in general.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, though - Molly had some nice tits.