Meridian (1990)

This direct-to-video B-movie masterpiece from Charles Band's incredible Full Moon Productions is a cheesy but enjoyably atmospheric retelling of The Beauty and the Beast featuring the mesmerizingly beautiful SherilynFenn. It also co-starred the equally beautiful and sexy Charlie Spradling (who is a girl, her name notwithstanding). This flick has SherilynFenn being drugged and sort-of raped by a beast and also later being the victim of an attempted rape.

I will naturally concentrate on the rape scenes, but the story, in a nutshell, is that SherilynFenn's character, Catherine, returns to her ancestral home with her friend, Gina (Charlie Spradling) in tow. Catherine is destined to relive the fate of her aunt, who was found brutally murdered while a band of gypsy performers was in town. Lo and behold, a band of gypsy performers shows up again and there's a curse on two brothers, one of whom is a devilishly handsome ladies' man and the other of whom turns into a hairy beast. Guess which one is the real monster.

Anyway, the devilishly handsome brother (and his circus freak compatriots) drugs the two girls about the 22:00 minute mark. He lifts Gina onto the table and rips open her blouse. Catherine tries to intervene, but he just pushes her away.

Catherine is carried by the devilishly handsome guy to a bedroom, where she is tossed onto the bed, drugged and woozy, but still conscious. He strips her naked, and sadly she does not fight him. But isn't that what a good roofie is supposed to do? He looks longingly at her, like he really wants to just fuck the hell out of her right now, but instead walks out and tells a masked and hooded figure in the hall, "She's all yours."

The masked and hooded figure takes off the hood and mask and it's the other brother--an identical twin. He goes into the room and does fuck the drugged Catherine, turning into the hairy beast during coitus. It makes for a nice visual.

The devilishly handsome brother, meanwhile, returns to the dining room, gropes the drugged Gina, strips her naked, roughly pushes her back onto a settee, and fucks her.

Neither scene involves any force, nor do the girls fight back. But they are drugged, after all, which counts as rape in the legal sense, if not the nonconsensual, hold her down while she is fighting back and screaming and brutally fuck her against her will sense.

At the 51:00 minute mark, the devilishly handsome brother attacks Catherine in a bedroom. He pushes her onto a bed and tries to kiss her but she bites him. He slaps her silly and binds one of her wrists to the headboard. Then he rips open her blouse to reveal her breasts and is just about to get down to business when the beast shows up and rescues her. So there's an attempted rape with light bondage and topless nudity.

That's about it. There's a dream sequence about 56:00 minutes in where Catherine and the beast are having a tender moment, but there's no GIMPness.

SUMMARY: Catherine and Gina are drugged and fucked. Catherine by a guy who turns into a hairy beast halfway through, Gina by the beast's good-looking but evil brother. Later, Catherine is slapped silly, has one wrist tied to a headboard, and has her blouse torn open to reveal her breasts in preparation for a rape but she is rescued. So, two instances of roofied date rape and an attempted real rape.

This is a classic B-movie (as many of the Full Moon productions were) that retells The Beauty and the Beast with sex and nudity. The GIMP factor, regrettably, is low, because the most exciting GIMP rapes involve fully conscious fighting-back victims and our rape victims were drugged into compliancy. The attempted rape, however, started off really well, with violence, light bondage, and nudity, so that was all to the good. Plus: SherilynFenn and Charlie Spradling. I give this a solid C+ for GIMP.

Meridian is available from Amazon in a 4-movie set entitled The Charles Band DVD Collection, Vol 1, which also includes Head of the Family (!) for $49.95. In case you aren't aware of the significance of that, read my review of Head of the Family, which has an incredible BATS scene with a completely naked and AOH bound Jacqueline Lovell (Sara St James). If all you want (or need) is Meridian it is available on a two-fer DVD for only $9.99, but the comments indicate it isn't a very quality version.