Thursday, May 11, 2023

Anybody Know How to Say “Dirty Dancing” in Yiddish?

Hey -- i actually got paid to watch the films these two trailers are from.

From Entertainment Weekly:

Two ''lambada'' movies dance onto home video -- A quick guide to the schlockiest moments of this embarrassment of kitsch riches

By Steve Simels Updated June 08, 1990 at 04:00 AM EDT

Years from now, when scholars reflect on the 1990s, they’ll probably find much of humanity’s behavior inexplicable. Why, for example, did we allow nuclear weapons? Racial bigotry? The destruction of the environment? And why did we stand for two simultaneous lambada movies?

For connoisseurs of schlock such questions are irrelevant. What matters is that Lambada and The Forbidden Dance are now in video stores and viewers who avoided their brief runs in movie theaters can check them out, remote control in hand. Which of the flicks is the biggest hoot? Which really delivers the exploitation goods? Does either give the real lowdown on this lambada business?

Nobody should have to watch both, so here’s a handy guide comparing these state-of-the-art examples of Le Bad Cinema.

Best Attempt at Redeeming Social Value: Both Lambada and The Forbidden Dance are message pictures of a sort. In the former, schoolteacher J. Eddie Peck flashes the slickest lambada moves in town in hopes of motivating inner-city kids to study math. In the latter, Brazilian princess Laura Herring uses her dance skills to agitate against the destruction of the Amazon jungle. The winner: Forbidden Dance, for its hilariously cynical end credit reading ”This picture is dedicated to the preservation of the rain forests.”

Most Gratuitous Tush Shots: Lambada director Joel Silberg, apparently an aging ’70s disco kid, often aims his camera at his dancers’ behinds. Forbidden Dance auteur Greydon Clark, perhaps cognizant of the lambada’s erotic origins, concentrates instead on other areas of the body. The winner (no contest): Lambada.

Most Soft-Core Sex Scenes: Notwithstanding Melora Hardin’s constant attempts to seduce her math teacher, Lambada is remarkably chaste for an exploitation picture. The Forbidden Dance, however, serves up attempted rape, lots of implied lesbianism, and a subplot set in a Sunset Strip brothel. The winner: The Forbidden Dance.

Most Lambada Per Minute: Neither picture bothers with more than 10 minutes of anything resembling authentic Brazilian dancing. But Lambada choreographer Shabba-Doo, who recycles the moves from the various Lionel Richie videos he also choreographed, at least offers a bit more motion. The winner: Lambada.

Most Ridiculous Ending: In The Forbidden Dance, the heroine spreads her message via a national TV show starring Kid Creole and the Coconuts.(Kid Creole fans can save time by fast-forwarding directly to this short scene.) In Lambada, rival gangs rumble in what may be the screen’s first trigonometry contest. The winner: The Forbidden Dance, for the scene in which a Latino housemaid runs off with a giant, bald voodoo priest.

The grade for each picture: D-

Like I said, I got paid. Is this a great country or what?

6 comments:

JB said...

Steve, I know you got paid, but, no one should have to watch these movies.

Gummo said...

Forbidden Dance should get extra shlock points for the presence of director Greydon Clark, who also directed Angels' Revenge, Final Justice and Satan's Cheerleaders.

steve simels said...

Gummy — the things you know.😎

mistah charley, sb, ma, phd, jsps said...

A/Two things I learned about Laura Harring, who is best known for her dual roles as Rita and Camilla Rhodes in the 2001 postmodern neo-noir film Mulholland Drive

1/She was shot in the head at the age of twelve in her parents' car in a parking lot when the two cars behind them got into a gunfight. The bullet missed hitting her brain by one millimeter. [imdb]

2/In 1987, Harring married Count Carl-Eduard von Bismarck-Schönhausen, great-great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck. Though the couple divorced in 1989, she retains the title of Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen. [Wikipedia]

As Robert Louis Stevenson stated in "Happy Thought" -

The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.


Or if not as happy as kings, at least as happy as countesses by marriage, who retain their title even after their former husband has had three later wives.

B/"dirty dancing" in Yiddish:

שמוציגע טענץ
shmutsige tents

[according to Google Translate]

Through a combination of circumstances, this morning YouTube offered me a performance by Marlene Dietrich of Sag' mir, wo die Blumen sind

Wikipedia says: She performed the German version on a tour of Israel, where she was warmly received; she was the first performer to break the taboo of publicly using the German language in Israel since WWII. Her version peaked No. 20 in German charts. [end of Wikipedia quote]

Although this was the first performance in the German language is Israel, I note that "dirty dancing" in German is rather similar to Yiddish

schmutziges Tanzen

steve simels said...

I have the most amazing readers on earth.😎

ChrisE said...

I haven't seen either of these movies, and am unlikely to do so. But this post did remind me that David Letterman - probably around the time they originally hit the theaters - did a Top Ten list about people capitalizing on this emerging dance trend. This is the only entry I can recall : "Arnold Schwarzenegger is... The Lambadanator." Now THAT's a movie I'd go to see...