My 13-month-old son and I just spent an exceedingly pleasant evening listening to WEFUNK Show 555, a chronicle of Paisley Park‘s Golden Age creations. If you have even a passing interest in the genius/megalomania of Prince, the show is highly, highly recommended—not just for the killer music, but also for the fascinating trivia provided by WEFUNK guest host Duke Eatmon.
Among Eatmon’s more fascinating tidbits is his mention of Tanya’s Island, a 1980 Skinemax-style film starring a young, extremely hot actress named D.D. Winters. She would soon be rechristened Vanity, and become the frontwoman for Prince’s first “girlfriend band,” Vanity 6. (She would also blow her shot at starring in Purple Rain by doing too much blow and sleeping with director Albert Magnoli.)
Words can scarcely do justice to the lunacy of Tanya’s Island. As best as I can figure, the film centers on a love triangle between Vanity, an abusive boyfriend/svengali named Lobo, and a gorilla who may or may not be imaginary. As this review explains:
Jealousy arises when Lobo discovers that Tanya is seeing someone else, even if he isn’t from the same species, and the fact that the ape pulled the head off his pet piglet doesn’t exactly endear the animal to him…The man goes to the lengths of trapping [the gorilla] in a cage and demanding that Tanya accompany him to the other side of the island, but she refuses and frees the ape. Lobo then plumps for the alternative, caging Tanya in his quickly constructed fort. Violence follows.
As does interspecies sex, apparently. View at your own risk. Or just skip the whole filthy enterprise and watch Vanity’s true masterpiece, the legendary “Nasty Girls” video.
Jordan // Mar 30, 2009 at 11:10 am
Nothing beats the sci-fi novel I read in eighth grade about a post-apocalyptic world ruled by Mormons that involves a woman getting raped by a giant warthog because she smeared herself with female warthog pheromones. And she dies as a result. I don’t think my language arts teacher read that particular book before putting it on the lending library shelf in her classroom.
Brendan I. Koerner // Mar 30, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Please tell me you remember the title of that one. Googling “Mormon warthogs sci-fi” reveals nada.
Jordan // Mar 30, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Sadly the internet is proving to be of no use in this case. I only know I’m not imagining this a) because it’s way to weird to have been a figment of my imagination and b) I found a copy of the book again some years later in a used book store and dog-eared the nasty part for whoever was unlucky enough to pick it up.
Brendan I. Koerner // Mar 31, 2009 at 11:19 am
Hmmm, you sure it was a warthog? Seems like it should be listed in this database, but I’m coming up snake eyes:
http://www.mormonsf.org/
I’m starting to think using “warthog” as a search term might be the problem. Perhaps it was another member of the pig family?
Gramsci // Mar 31, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Apollonia 6 > Vanity 6 > Leonard Part 6
Also, who knew Dr. Pulaski from TNG was part of a singing group in her younger days?
Jordan // Mar 31, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Unfortunately the warthog storyline was just a subplot, so it probably wouldn’t show up in summaries. If I remember correctly, the main storyline was about an assassin who was an agent of the Mormon government and the assassins’ guns, which were coded to their DNA.
Yeah, this was a seriously weird novel.
Donaldo Davisini? // Apr 14, 2013 at 3:49 am
Is anyone really surprised she’d make a movie like this? Vanity got fired from a sperm bank ’cause she got caught drinking on the job! The Time took their time takin’ their turn on Vanity while Prince wrote “Erotic City”