The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2005): or, Open Wide and Say AAAAAAAUGH!

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 11!

 
A doctor and a nurse working the graveyard shift at a hospital specializing in cosmetic surgery retire to a forbidden, closed-off room for a little stress-relieving sex--or quite a lot of it, actually. Unfortunately, the rumpy-pumpy is interrupted by the appearance of the Slit-Mouthed Woman--a long-haired ghost seeking revenge for the mutilation that earned her the name. Three years later, the hospital is abandoned and the ghost a popular urban legend. A journalist writing for a Cosmo-esque magazine who was tasked with writing an article on the story disappears a few days before deadline, and pretty young go-getter Yoko is tasked with finishing the story. As she investigates the Slit-Mouthed Woman's history, she and her live-in stepsister Kazumi are drawn deeper into a mystery that will soon threaten their happiness, if not their lives.

I really don't have that much to say about The Slit-Mouthed Woman. I didn't know anything about it before queuing it up on Netflix instant, but I believe it's an example of the pinku genre of Japanese film, short movies that typically mix extreme genre film-making (often horror, martial arts, true crime, and/or ultraviolence) with tons and tons of softcore sex. The ghost story is competently done, drawing from a well-known and fairly creepy Japanese legend you can read more about here. The woman's first appearance is pretty scary, though her subsequent materializations diminish the overall effect with their clockwork regularity: people enter the hospital, they have borderline-explicit sex (including many, MANY lingering shots of sloppy tongue-kissing--director Takaaki Hashiguchi clearly has a fetish), and then BOOM, ghostliness. The journalist's story is really just a framework for these vignettes. Basically it plays out like Skinemax international, only with better acting.

If you're the sort of person who likes ghostly urban legends and lots of nudity and sex, this is a good way to spend just over an hour of your time. Slight, but not terrible. 1.75 thumbs.

Nota bene: there are several movies based on this story, apparently, including this one from Asia Extreme. The one on Netflix instant is *not* that movie.

No more ribs before bedtime!

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Blu-Ray Review--MONAMOUR (2006): or, Tinto Brass's World of Asses

Mention the name Tinto Brass to fan of exploitational cinema, and you're bound to see a little gleam appear in his or her eye. As the writer and director of Salon Kitty (simultaneously one of the most lushly artistic and one of the grime-encrusted sleaziest examples of the Nazisploitation subgenre) and one of the directors of the historical epic Caligula (probably the most expensive and star-studded exploitation movie ever made), Brass has already staked out his place in the pantheon of Exploitation Godhood. Even if none of his later movies could possibly harness the power of that one-two punch to the crotch he delivered in 1976 and 1979, Brass has laurels enough to rest his haunches upon well into retirement.

But like many a movie-making madman, for Brass, resting on a pile of shrubbery was never an option. Film is not a vocation for men like Brass, Franco, and others--it's sustenance. They have to make movies, or else wither and die from creative starvation. Sure, the public's tastes change, the budgets get smaller and smaller, and perhaps the edge is dulled as the visionaries get older and their eyes less sharp, but they're still out there, making movies on whatever scale they can--because they must.

All that's by way of introducing Brass's 2006 movie, Monamour, recently released on Blu-Ray by Cult Epics. The film shows that Brass still has an eye for magnificent composition, lush design, and gorgeous Euroflesh of the highest order. It also shows that age has softened none of Brass's perverse obsessions, which here are in full and varied display. As a result, Monamour plays as either the dirtiest mainstream movie you ever saw*, or else the most lavish porn ever made**, with only the actual penetration scenes cut.

This is, of course, a recommendation.

* Caligula excluded.
** Ditto.

The plot is basically Unfaithful (2002) all over again. Prominent literary editor Dario (Max Parodi) has come to Mantova for a literary festival, bringing along his beautiful, free-spirited, and extremely restless young wife Marta (Anna Jimskaia). Six months into their marriage she is feeling the wane of what was once a passionate affair--no longer do they make love in public while bemused duck hunters look on, and she hasn't climaxed since she said "I do." (Marta records all this late at night in her journal--sitting at her writing desk, pantsless, while Brass gives us an up close and detailed view of her open marrone degli occhi.)

While looking at some explicitly sexual murals at the famous Palazzo del Te (including one of Jupiter's Erect Cock), Marta meets and mysterious stranger, Leon (Riccardo Marino), who seems to have been built in the same Sexy Factory as a young Antonio Banderas or Unfaithful's Olivier Martinez. Like that latter Latin Lothario, this Roman rapscallion uses the silent, forward, borderline-rapey seduction method that always seems to work in stories like these. Before you know it Marta is blowing Leon at a literary fest dinner, having anal sex with him in cafe restrooms, and dancing drunk and nearly naked in public squares, stopping only to quaff more champagne and stick her tongue down the younger man's throat. Of course it's not long before Dario starts getting suspicious (Marta's sudden distaste for wearing panties in public is one clue; her ass-baring dirty dance with Leon at the Lit Fest Ball is another), which paradoxically inflames his dormant desire for his wife to new heights. Is Marta's affair a marital tragedy, or a new kind of happy ending?

It's probably just as well that I don't have Blu-Ray screengrabbing capabilities as yet, because I would be hard-pressed to find a single frame of this film that I could post here without the Blogger Police shutting me down. As I said earlier: this is a porn, only without the actual penetration. Everything up to the very border of that--and I mean EVERYTHING--is present and accounted for. If you don't like seeing puckered starfish, turgid tube-steaks, spot-lit lady-parts,and lots and lots of simulated sex (of just about every configuration), then you had best stay well away from this one. Tinto also tips his hand as to his own personal "special needs," as we get many lovingly filmed odes to asses of all kinds, not to mention several scenes of Marta and her brazen confidant Sylvia (Nela Lucic) chatting while on toilets or otherwise squatting down to urinate.Threesomes, lesbianism, anal, masturbation, simulated-or-possibly-not oral sex--whatever floats your boat, chances are Brass has it covered.

So why does Brass tease the line of pornography without actually barreling over? Perhaps he thinks it's ugly, and Brass's work is about nothing if not the beauty of desire. The movie is sumptuously filmed, the compositions are striking and often gorgeous, and the sex scenes orchestrated for maximum artistic erotic impact. Whether the manner of sexual congress is to your taste or not, you still have to appreciate the artist's eye he brings to even the sleaziest material. It's a beautiful film to look at, and there's always something eye-pleasing on screen. With Monamour, Brass shows once again that he doesn't so much tread the line between sleaze and art, as he denies the existence of any such line.

Also included in this 2-disc set is a short film by Brass, Kick the Cock, which explores the ins and outs of special needs culinary study. Special features include making-of featurettes for both films, director's commentary, and trailers.

Monamour is a slight but sexy film, worth looking at for fans of Brass and Eurosleaze enthusiasts. Cult Epics has once again delivered an excellent Blu-Ray package for material other distributors might not touch with a ten-foot salami. 2 Thumbs. Stay sleazy, Tinto. Stay classy, Signor Brass.

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Blu-Ray Review: Camille 2000 (1969)

Marguerite (the stunning Danièle Gaubert) is a girl who seems to have it all. Young, beautiful ,and married to a fabulously rich duke who puts few demands on her time and fewer still on her body, she is free to explore all the pleasures and excesses that late-sixties Rome has to offer.

These, you will find, are considerable.

We watch Camille as she organizes and attends a series of galas, orgies, and freak-out happenings, against some of the most sumptuous settings and clad in the grooviest fashions imaginable. She drinks, shoots up, and pops pills with abandon, floating from one erotic adventure to the next in a haze of altered reality. (When one of her exhausted, tripping friends asks breathlessly, "Marguerite, don't you ever come down?" she replies, "Not if I can help it!") The victim of an unspecified wasting disease, Marguerite has apparently decided to live life to the fullest every day, and to grab all the sexy goodies she can in the process.

Directed by Radley Metzger, the infamous auteur behind art-house classics (The Lickerish Quartet, 1970) and less-respected but no less arty porn flicks (The Opening of Misty Beethoven, 1976), Camille 2000 is a movie with so much style, substance almost doesn't enter into the equation. From the lush cityscapes of Rome, to bedrooms with inflatable furniture and mirrored walls, Metzger delivers one visual treat after another, for which the main story of Marguerite's affair with comparatively stodgy businessman Armand (Nino Castelnuovo) is simply the framework. The new Blu-Ray release from Cult Epics does great justice to Metzger's film, and should have arty-erotica fans standing at attention and saluting.

Nota bene: I do not have screen-capture capability on my blu-ray...therefore I have shamelessly stolen all the images in this review (unless otherwise noted) from Retrocinema by Wetcircuit, an excellent site that everyone should visit immediately. Full credit to Wetcircuit, who I hope will not hate and/or sue me.

About that story--Marguerite's world of carefree, casual sex and drug use is rocked when she meets and falls in love with Armand, the son of a wealthy Italian tycoon in Rome to learn the family business. After some rather stoic flirtatiousness at a couple of parties (including an orgy featuring a Eurobabe in an amazing mesh bikini), Marguerite takes Armand to her bed, kicking off a series of sensual sex scenes and an affair that will change everything for her, and not really in a good way. While Marguerite is a free-love kind of girl, Armand demands faithfulness.

Beautimous

When he tells her he wants her to be his alone, Marguerite sighs, "Are we there already? Measuring love like a coffin? Who loves the most, how do we measure it? In carats, or ducats?" Armand is not to be dissuaded, however, and Marguerite reacts by breaking a date with him so she can make love to a cruel young Count with whom she has a strange sex/power relationship. When Armand learns of the betrayal, he responds as you would expect--by sending a model to Marguerite's bedroom, who then strips nude to reveal a note on her back reading "YOU ARE A WHORE! I WAS AN IDIOT!" 

Okay, maybe you wouldn't expect that. But it does make an impression.

"No, it wasn't the couch...that one was all me."

The rest of the film is about Marguerite's relationship with Armand, how his need for faithfulness and hers for freedom clash. This comes to a head when Armand's father confronts her and warns her off, leading to a break-up, misunderstandings, erotic revenge, and a glittery partner-swapping bondage party with chain-mail dresses and public sex! Finally, Marguerite's strange malady reappears, lending a tragic end that you pretty much had to think was coming.

Except that's not really what the film's about. What it's about is the visual experience of Metzger's imagery, the amazing sets and costumes and compositions, which are usually centered around the act of sticky love. Two long sequences in Marguerite's amazingly appointed bedroom are visually stunning, containing some representations of oral sex (but cunni- and fellati-) that are both artistic and tasteful. (ba-dump) To be honest the story drags a bit at times, but if you give yourself over to the beauty of the images on the screen, it's well worth the trip.

For Mad Movie fans, there is joy to be had in the amazing costumery of Marguerite's hippie entourage, including some that look like they just walked off the set of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Also, though the flick was filmed in English, few of the actors seem comfortable in the language, and Armand's father's mush-mouthed delivery is an unintentionally hilarious highlight. The acting throughout is fairly wooden, but whether that's a directorial decision, or a result of the language barrier, or just how Europeans acted in the 60s, it's still rather secondary. Gaubert is stunning, Rome is beautiful, and the camera drinks it all in. That's all you really need.

Promo Art from Cult Epics

Cult Epics has done a great job with the Blu-Ray presentation, improving greatly upon previous transfers (despite some perhaps inexpungable print damage). The colors and sound are great, and the disc is packed with extras, including behind-the-scenes and restoration featurettes, commentary by Metzger himself, deleted scenes, outtakes, and trailers. A great package for lovers of 60s sexploitation.

Movie: 2.5 thumbs
Blu-Ray:  3 thumbs

And be sure to visit http://www.retrocinema.wetcircuit.com/ for more great images from this and other films!

Not from the Cult Epics transfer, but it does appear in the film, and was too wild not to show. Credit to Tenebrous Kate for the grab!

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The Beast and the Vixens (1974): or, Bigfoot Meets Bigboob

He's much more than just a cryptid/hominid who may or may not stalk the uncharted reaches of the Great Northwest Forests (or Florida swamplands, or Arkansas Delta, or Okaloosa Wilderness Area); Bigfoot is a piece of our American cultural heritage--a modern myth, a symbol. Part noble savage, part monster, he represents the duality inherent in our very nature, the angel and the beast, the boiled-down essence of humanity. In literature, pop culture, and especially film, Sasquatch has become the soft wax upon which we can imprint our grossest fears and grandest hopes. Is he a lust-crazed monster, the violent, rapey man-beast of the uncontrolled id? Is he a phantom of Nature herself, the ghost of a disappearing pristine environment? Protector of the Woodlands, or Invader of the Suburbs? The answer is simple: he is, or can be, all of these things.

We've seen him as killer, a cipher, and even as a roided out serial rapist--but I don't think we've ever seen "Sasquatch as Voyeur." Until now! In his 1974  sexploitation/Squatchsploitation mash-up, The Beast and the Vixens (aka The Beauties and the Beast), director Ray Nadeau and writer Gaynor MacLaren envision Bigfoot as Russ Meyer's Immoral Mr. Teas meets Arch Hall Sr.'s Eegah! And the results, my friends, are just about as glorious as that makes them sound.

Allow me to elucidate:
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DVD Review: Jess Franco's PAULA-PAULA (2010)

In a brief interview on Intervsion Picture Corp.'s recent release of Jess Franco's 2010 direct-to-DVD effort Paula-Paula, the director opines that this flick is perhaps the "weirdest" movie he has ever made. Anyone familiar with the trash auteur's prodigious output will understand just what a bold statement that is; sadly, after watching the piece, they will also be forced to wonder whether that claim is evidence that Franco has finally lost whatever marbles he still had. Designated by its own credits as "An Audio-Visual Experience by Jess Franco"--rather than, you know, a movie--Paula-Paula is about as weird as your average student film, and about as technically proficient. It's certainly nowhere nearly as strange as Franco's periodically brilliant 70s output, and partakes of little of the visual poetry and narrative oddness of even his most maligned trash quickies. It's perhaps not entirely without interesting aspects, but taken as a whole it's a disappointing effort that even the director's most ardent admirers might have trouble championing.

Claiming to be based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the "experience" centers around beautiful but disturbed Paula (Carmen Montes), committed to a mental institution after murdering--or did she?--her friend/lover, also named Paula (Paula Davis). Things get confusing, though, as it's not entirely clear whether this second Paula actually exists, or is the Hyde-like manifestation of Paula-Prime's id. (Franco's life-partner and muse Lina Romay makes a brief appearance as the head of the institution.) As near as I can figure, most of the movie takes place in the disturbed woman's mind, as she remembers/daydreams making love to Paula-2 at great length, and now and then gyrates nude on an exercise machine.

And that's about it. Really.

Carmen Montes as Paula-Prime

Let's get to the good stuff first--Franco dedicates Paula-Paula to his longtime friend Friederich Gulda. A talented pianist and composer of both classical music and jazz, Gulda provided the score for my favorite Franco flick, the phantasmagorical and fascinating Succubus (1969). When Gulda passed away in 2000, Franco inherited many of his friend's unpublished jazz compositions. It is this music that Jess builds Paula-Paula around, and I have to say, I thought it was pretty great--in fact, I would readily buy a soundtrack recording, and put it on regular background rotation. If you like 60s-style jazz, I wager you'll dig it too. Also, while not a great actress (though to be fair she's not given much to do here), Montes has a beautiful figure reminiscent of the best-remembered 70s Eurotrash screen queens. Davis is a more modern beauty, with tattoos and piercings aplenty, which I guess is supposed to differentiate her from her alter-ego. Still, the women are as easy on the eyes as the music is on the ears.

Tres Veces

Other than that--hoo boy. The movie was clearly filmed in someone's apartment--probably the same one where Jess holds court on the DVD interview segments. Set lights and reflecting screens are clearly visible in frame throughout, and while Jess might argue this is to expose the artificiality of the medium or some such, it comes off as just sloppy. In fact the whole thing--camera angles, sets, blocking--looks shockingly amatuerish; and depressingly so, since we know the man to be capable of much better. Add to that the fact there's almost no narrative--after the brief set-up, it's an hour of slow-motion nudity and boring video effects--and it's even harder than usual to figure out what Jess might have been thinking.

Perhaps Franco calls this an "experience" rather than a movie because he didn't intend to tell a story. Played as a long-form music video coupling Gulda's excellent jazz with Franco's own obsession with the nude female form, maybe it'll work for some viewers. And to be fair, with its fixation on nude, writhing women and cavalier attitude toward plot, I was reminded periodically of Jess's famous 1973 film Female Vampire (aka Erotic Kill), which was less about vampirism than about Lina Romay's crotch. I didn't particularly enjoy that one either, as praised as it often is by others, so maybe some viewers will find things to like here. In any event, I'm pleased to know that, old and decrepit as he is, Jess can still get beautiful young women to disrobe for him and his tireless camera eye. But unfortunately that vicarious pleasure doesn't translate to a compelling audio-visual experience, at least for me.

Lina Romay tries unsuccessfully to obscure a set light.

DVD extras include three short interviews with Franco, and it has to be said, he looks BAD--palsied, chainsmoking as usual, and sometimes lying down on his couch in mid-sentence or else wracked by coughing fits. But he's still fascinating to listen to, particularly when he talks about the current state of the Spanish film industry and his views on the perceived prejudice against young people and especially women who want to make films. His introduction and discussion of Paula-Paula are less interesting, in my opinion, though it is telling that he claims to enjoy this type of movie-making because it "allows me to work quickly." Franco's always had more ideas than time or money to implement them, sometimes famously abandoning movies in mid-production to rush off and film something else, so I can see why the super-speed of video might appeal. And then again, maybe he's rushing to get as many out on film in whatever form as possible before the Reaper comes knocking. I can't fault him for that, but I just wish the result was better.

1.5 Thumbs

Nota bene: the film aside, Intervision put together a great DVD, and has also recently released Franco's 1973 film The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff, which the Duke snatched up for review and which, one hopes, is more representative of the Franco we know and sometimes love. So I'll look forward to hearing what His Prurience has to say about that one!

Can't argue there

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Black Candles (1982): or, Sometimes You Get the Goat, and Sometimes the Goat Gets You

José Ramón Larraz's 1982 Satanic cult thriller Black Candles starts off with a bang. And by that I mean it begins with a balding, middle-aged man whiling away his afternoon by banging his much younger, much more attractive mistress. Rightly pleased with himself, the elder lover chuckles at his girlfriend's silver necklace, calling it, "The Devil's Paw" in a dismissive, smarmy way. Things go from titillating to tragic, however, when somebody spears a voodoo doll with a nasty looking hat pin, leading our depiliated debauchee to suffer a massive coronary while wrapped in the arms (and legs) of his lady. To her credit, the girl seems completely unfazed by this turn of events. The camera then  pans to a photo of the man's newly widowed wife Fiona (Helga Liné), which glares disapprovingly from the nightstand at her late philandering husband and his paramour. Could she be behind the supernatural assassination that abnegated his assignation?

Spoiler: yup.

Originally titled Los ritos sexuales del diablo (The Sexual Rites of the Devil), Larraz's film is jam packed with dysfunction, depravity, and sex sex sex, sprinkled with enough outrageous cult-centered shenanigans to keep horror/exploitation fans happy. You want an old dark house filled with evil family secrets? You got it. You want a hapless, disbelieving heroine menaced by a Satanic cult with its fingers in every strata of village society? Happy to oblige. You want necro-incestuous dream sequences and an extended sex scene involving an actual, factual goat? Step right this...waitaminnit, what kind of fucking sicko ARE you?

"It's a family heirloom. My grandmother had it fashioned from the first farthing she made as a prostitute!"

 After the credits, we join the deceased man's sister Carol (Vanessa Hidalgo) and her husband Robert (Mauro Ribera), who have come to comfort Fiona in her grief and to see about the dispensation of her brother's estate. Unfortunately it's a very dark and stormy night when they arrive, and the electricity has been knocked out at the mansion. Luckily Fiona has a metric shitload of BLACK CANDLES around to light the way. When Robert--a defrocked priest and now professor of theological studies at some unnamed university--comments on the occult symbolism of the light sources, Fiona admits to a fascination with demonology, laughing, "Intelligent people all over the world continue to make pacts with the devil!" I hope for their sake they don't also bet a lot of money on poker.

Despite her misgivings about her sister-in-law's interests and her already burgeoning suspicions about her brother's death, upon being shown to her room Carol immediately strips down to lingerie and knee-boots to make sweaty Eurolove with her sacrilegious hubby, who in these scenes looks a lot like an Italian Jamie Gillis. A hot and bothered Fiona fondles herself while spying on them through a peephole in the wall, making good the old saying that the lady of the house comes first. And third. And fifth.

Helga just had an orgasm. And boy, is she pissed about it!

That night Carol dreams of wandering the estate's gardens in her white stockings and garter belt, followed by her brother's ghost. After a few vaseline-coated fish-eye lens shots and some nonsensical jump cuts, she finds herself in her bedroom, suddenly having hot passionate sex with her dead brother! Fiona pounds on the door, then teleports inside to make out with Carol while her brother licks her legs. She wakes up in a sweat, and 15 minutes into the movie we've already sent the "taste" bar through the floor.

Think there's nowhere to go but up? Keep dreaming.

"Well here's a bush that needs tending!"

 With nothing left to be gained by keeping the audience in the dark, Larraz next has Fiona talking to a devilish-looking fellow in priest garb about how they need to get rid of Carol and her husband by the Sabbath, since there's a big party planned and they haven't got enough place settings. To that end Fiona's maid pilfers a necklace from Carol's suitcase, which will be useful in their scheme to mystify her into leaving. (Apparently just chucking them out is not an elegant enough plan.) While Carol continues to hear ghostly voices telling her to leave the place forever--which she ignores, naturally--the maid and a stable hand make suggestive small talk in the barn. (Her: "I'm sure you've never seen a billy goat mounting a woman...and later coming inside of her." Him: "No, never.")

Lest you think these Satanists are all talk, we cut almost immediately back to the barn, where the brother's lover from Scene One lies on a tuffet of hay in her knee-high, fringed suede boots (and little else), waiting for--wait for it--A GOAT. And if you're thinking they won't go there...well, I didn't think so either. But here we are.

"Wait, Mr. Larraz...what's my motivation?"

Turns out the goat's...erm, stuff...is needed for their ritual, which is some convoluted thing to make Carol believe she's going crazy before she tumbles to the fact that everyone around her is actually worshiping the devil. Which is a long way to go for Gaslight, but I guess just because you're a devil worshiper doesn't necessarily make you a great planner. Still, I shouldn't judge too harshly, since the plan seems to work like goatbusters: Carol sees all kinds of crazy visions (though nothing as crazy as what the audience just saw), and Fiona seduces Robert like a rabid minx, several times, finally making him a member of their coven. (We know he's completely gone over to the dark side because he stops wearing the gold crucifix that has decorated his tufty chest mane for the whole flick--well, that and he forces anal sex on Carol, to her moderate, understated distress.)

You'd think there'd be no trumps left once you've played the Fucked By a Goat card, and in fairness you'd be right. The filmmakers give it a go, however, by having the middle-aged maid cuckold her drunken husband with a young farm hand--while the husband is right there in the bed, egging the sweaty stud on! Later the drunk tries to warn Carol about the cult, and for his trouble is skewered with a sword Edward II-style by his former friends. Thereafter it's a short trip to the Final Sacrifice, where Fiona initiates Robert into the coven by letting him do her on the altar (a fair trade, imo), then takes on the Evil Priest before they all hold Carol down for similar treatment and sacrifice. Completely overpowered by the cult and with no savior to be seen, it looks like Carol is doomed...

"That's Fred, Sheryl, Bobby, Johnson...and of course you know our accountant Maury."

In the excellent book Immoral Tales, authors Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs quote Larraz on the director's opinion of Black Candles: "I don't like that film. That film made a lot of money...No one in that film could act. So what do you do with them? You put them in bed and have them jump on each other!" And that's bad because...? Still, from a serious artistic point of view, you can't really argue the point. The movie suffers from nonsensical plotting, bad dialogue made worse by the usual atrocious dubbing, and a cop-out ending of the sort that usually infuriates me. And to Larraz's point, the acting across the board is pretty bad, except perhaps in the case of Helga Liné, who is a fine actress in my humble and does what she can with an underwritten role.

That said, for fans of the more outrageous end of the Eurotrash sexploitation spectrum, Black Candles more than delivers the goods. The movie is jam packed with sex, most of it about as explicit as a softcore movie can get. (Though for what it's worth, the goat sex scene is pretty tastefully done.) In addition to the bestiality and backdoor forcing, Larraz betrays a real oral fixation here, with Fiona on the giving and receiving end of such on more than one occasion. (Ed. note: zang.) Most of the girls are gorgeous, particularly the young Satantic "vessel" (Lucille Jameson, maybe?) who displays remarkable dedication in a nonspeaking role. It's worth noting that Helga Liné performs several nude scenes, and still looks gorgeous in lingerie, thigh-high boots, and the altogether despite being over fifty years old at the time of filming. However, for the "full-length" shots, as it were, an obvious body double is used.

"Don't mess with me, dear. I crap bigger than you."

 Sex aside, the Satanic Panic elements are handled reasonably well, and the way the whole village from the doctor to the local constable is part of the cult--a cult that kills Carol's brother and absorbs her only other protector into its ranks--really works to generate some suspense for our the hapless damsel in undress. (There are some clear nods to Rosemary's Baby, as contractually required.) I also found the sets and some of the lighting very effective, and for all his sniffery Larraz does manage some stylish shots and compositions. Art will out, one presumes.

In closing, Black Candles is sexy, outre, never boring, and entirely MAD, and for that I can only salute it. Sure it has its shortcomings, but don't we all? 2.25 thumbs. 

Some more photos from Black Candles (1982):

Looks like someone's horny.

Markie Post in an early role.

She'll eat your heart out.

It was the last time Mario agreed to "go first" at Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.

"Honey, would you still love me if I'd had sex with a convict when I was younger?"
"Why of course, darling!"
"Well...what if I'd banged a goat? Like...yesterday?"

Resuscitate Me

"Relax, baby--I'm a professional."

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DVD Reviews: JOY (1983) and JOY & JOAN (1985)

Continuing to live up to their reputation for bringing Mad Movie fans the best in titillating Eurotrash, the fine folks at Severin Films have recently put out a couple of legendary sexploitation flicks from the 80s, Sergio Bergonzelli's 1983 opus Joy, and Jacques Saurel's 1985 follow-up, Joy & Joan.

Inspired by the 1981 autobiography of French-American supermodel "Joy Laurey" (a pseudonym, apparently) and its sequels, the Joy movie series spanned six films, including the French TV movies Joy in San Francisco and Joy in Africa (both 1992). Comparisons to the long-running Emmanuelle series are apt, especially in that those flicks were likely their model and cinematic inspiration. Judging from the first two films in the series, I'd be willing to say that the Joy films are almost as sexy and at least as MAD as their 70s predecessors, and have a lot to offer fans of both sumptuous Euroflesh and the kitchen-sink plotting that often makes European films of this vintage such a...well, joy to watch.


In the first flick, the title role is portrayed by Canadian beauty Claudia Udy (a busy girl in 1983, appearing that same year in Skullduggery, The Funny Farm, and American Nightmare). This inaugural entry finds Joy already a successful, globe-trotting supermodel, filling her days posing for fashion spreads as well as skin-mag centerfolds, her nights with wild parties and champagne by the bucket-full. But she's haunted by the memory of one night as a child, when she spied on her father and mother shagging like rabid minx in their palatial country estate. (This we get to see in lovely, detailed flashback.) Sometime after this Joy's parents divorced, and it's clear the lack of a father figure--colored by this graphic, much-revisited childhood memory--has shaped Joy's psychological development in Very Significant Ways.

Sez you.

How significant becomes clear when she meets older man Marc (Gérard-Antoine Huart, who previously appeared in 1970's The Blood Rose ["The First Sex-Horror Film Ever Made!" according to its dubious tagline] and a year after this film graduated to Emmanuelle IV) at a ribald art show opening. After tooling around the City of Lights for hours in Marc's not-at-all-a-compensation convertible, they arrive back at Joy's luxurious shag-pad (literally--the floor looks like someone fragment-bombed the Children's Television Workshop), where Marc sits outside her apartment for hours until she comes out in nothing but an overcoat to invite him in, whereupon he pins her arms over her head on the mattress and fingerbangs her to shuddery bliss. Then...he leaves, without so much as loosening his tie! Whether this was a master stroke (so to speak) of sexual power-games or the result of having forgotten his cock-ring in his other pants, the effect is the same: Joy becomes infatuated with her superannuated lover, and soon promises to do anything he wants, just to make him happy.

Before you can say Story of O, Marc has taken Joy to a mysterious, richly furnished mansion, which is apparently some sort of club for wealthy degenerates. Telling her, "There is no love--only proof of love!", he takes her into a round room that looks like something out of a Star Trek holodeck (sex module) and commands her to sit in the Captain's chair and fiddle with the controls for him, IYKWIM. Things get weird when a tuxedoed old man and his two younger henchmen appear to set up a camera, complimenting Marc on his companion's good health while Joy frigs away for their entertainment. ("Oh, Monsieur, a magnificent specimen. A vagina in the bloom of youth, right in the middle of blossoming!" Gee, thanks, guys!) These gentlemen later retire to a control room to watch the CCTV feed, and Joy clearly gets off on this particular voyeurism/exhibitionism combination. It really is like the Château du Roissy, only with cams and cables instead of chains and whips.

These are the voyages of the Starship Fucksurprise

I was really interested at this point in the sexual power games going on: Marc as the Master, bringing out Joy's submissive tendencies through commanded exhibitionism rather than S&M. Add to that Joy's not-so-subconscious Daddy issues, and there was a veritable steam bath in the making. Udy has a great body--I mean, a REALLY great body--although her oddly-positioned 80s boob job and ocular-hazard nipples might be off-putting to some. Still, she invests Joy with a naive freedom and thirst for sexual discovery that's genuine and affecting. Director Bergonzelli, who also helmed exploitation classics like In the Folds of Her Flesh (1970, also available from Severin Films) and Our Lady of Lust (aka Christiana, the Devil Nun, 1972), has a real eye for sumptuous visuals, and a talent for sexy weirdness.

However, the movie abandons this aspect of the story for most of the rest of the film, focusing instead on Joy's various adventures in France and internationally. We go with her to a photo shoot in Mexico, which allows Joy to run naked on the beach, pose provocatively on the Aztec ruins, and perform an awesome nude underwater ballet with a sea turtle, with whom she kinda makes out! Back home in France she becomes the spokesmodel for a new public service campaign:

Let My People Come

which makes her infamous and unpopular with a bunch of crabby feminists with whom she shares a TV panel. She visits her mom and her mom's second husband, and has an uncomfortable flashback of Stepdad molesting her when she was a teen, but quickly shrugs it off. Meanwhile, Marc is making souffle for his Other Woman while wearing a frilly apron (symbolism!) and getting cranky that Joy never returns his calls anymore. Finally she goes to America, where she stars in an action movie that is clearly a satire of the perceived American cinematic product of the time. (Her kung-fu fight in metallic overcoat is a hoot.) There she meets a professor who's into tantric sex, who takes her to a Yoga Orgy that is choreographed like a Busby Berkeley number and is just as effective.

The sexual power games come back into play when she hooks up with Marc again, who, unmanned and desperate to reassert his dominance, takes her to a Dante's Inferno-esque sex club (located in the empty underground tanks at an old gas station!). The Jacob's Ladder-ish orgy here--complete with whipping, shackles, glass rooms full of writhing, oiled bodies and shower-rape/gangbangs--is in stark contrast to the paradisaical sex of the tantric cult, and after giving in to Marc's demands and participating in it all, Joy decides she's finally outgrown him and needs to move on. Then her friend from America calls with the answer to the riddle she's been trying to solve all along...

Nuts

Overall, Joy is a very sexy, very entertaining example of 80s softcore sexploitation, with some wild scenes, a couple of interesting ideas, and no shortage of beautiful nudity to gaze upon. Severin's transfer of the film is quite pristine by my reckoning, and looks great on my HD. The audio is good, though you might curse that fact after having to sit through the plaintive "Joy Theme Song" several times over the course of the film. The ad copy states this is the first release of the complete uncut version of the film, as the aforementioned "dungeon orgy" was apparently excised previously, which I think must have damaged the theme and resolution of the film. The only other extra is "Reflections on Joy," an 11-minute interview with Claudia Udy about the production. Without makeup but full of enthusiasm, Udy comes across as pleasantly spacey and New Age-y, and shares several interesting anecdotes. An excellent DVD presentation all round.

Made two years later, the sequel Joy & Joan boasts a new director and a new star. One-timer Jacques Saurel is now behind the lens, and in front of it is Exploitation Royalty, Jean Rollin muse, and sometime porn star Brigitte Lahaie. You'd think such an illustrious actress in the lead role would signal an upping of the sexploitational ante, but whether due to the director's inexperience or simply the Law of Diminishing Returns, this second story captures only a little of the magic present in the first. That's not to say it's not worth watching, however, as the plot at least is about as mad as you could ask for.

As happens so often in Paul Naschy's Waldemar Daninsky saga, this first Joy sequel seems to have only nominative continuity with the prior film. As this narrative begins, Joy is still in love with Marc (portrayed here by Jean-Marc Maurel, a much younger actor, thus negating the Father Figure sex issues so important to the first flick). In Joy, Marc was an architect and his wife/main mistress a journalist, but here it's Marc who is the journalist, and there's no SO to speak of. Also, the Marc of Earth-2 is much more of a dick. Within the first few minutes of the movie he dumps Joy at a club, picks up a disco-slut on the dance floor, and makes damn sure Joy sees him as he grinds against her derriere and performs the tongue-centered maneuver the French made famous--well, ONE of them, anyway.

Joy gets extremely depressed, and it begins to affect her work--she can't even look happy while wearing a fluffy pink teddy bear head for a hat, so that should tell you something. In the depths or her despondency she's befriended by rich Germanic aristocrat Bruce (Pierre Londiche, in a role Helmut Berger would have knocked out of the fuckin' park), who showers her with gifts and offers to give her whatever she wants as long as she'll be his "companion." When Marc is called away on assignment to Thailand, Joy calls in the favor and has Bruce fly her over in pursuit. Her plans for how to get Marc back without looking like the most pathetic and needy woman on the planet are at this point unclear.

Can't Bear It

But not at all unclear are Bruce's intentions, as he quickly reveals himself to be a Sadean sexual-power player of the first order. In Thailand they stay at the home of "Le Prince Cornélius," a strange but powerful little man who owes Bruce his life somehow or other. Bruce has Le Prince assign Joy a maidservant, Millarca (Maria Isabel Lopez). "This woman is your slave! Do what you like with her!" he shouts, then demonstrates by slapping her around gratuitously, which judging from her reaction is something the girl's come to expect. Later Bruce makes his plans even more clear: "Once you get used to me, you won't be able to resist the pleasures that power and money bring!" Then he falls to her feet and starts licking her toes. Lahaie as Joy stares off into the distance in that impassive way she made an art form in Rollin's films.

Meanwhile, Le Prince is spying on Joy, listening in on her phone conversations as she tries to track down where Marc is staying in Thailand. Le Prince is quite a character--the sort of guy who keeps a full grown tiger in a bamboo cage on his porch, conducts a native choir with his diamond-topped cane, and wears a white Neru suit buttoned to the chin, be he never so sweaty. He also has a weaselly face and David Bowie eyes, making him a weirdo henchman of the type Jess Franco would have killed for.

Sexy M.F.

Eventually Joy's relationship with Bruce goes sour when he hosts a party for her, slips her a roofie, and then has her laid on a sofa in the middle of a ring of tiki torches and has a dozen or so of the male guests gangbang her, while fire-dancers twirl their ignited batons on the periphery! It's a wild set-up, but Saurel's strange directorial stand-offishness robs the scene of any intensity or uncomfortable sexiness. When she wakes the next day and realizes what's happened, Joy escapes the compound with Millarca's help (but not before a sensuous massage from her "slave" turns into a lesbonic grope-a-thon) and takes off on foot through the jungle.

On the run from Le Prince, who is the only person tracking her, she makes it to the city and finds Marc, who seems to think it perfectly natural she should rush up to him half-clothed in the city square in Thailand. They duck into a photo booth that looks like it's made from a discarded refrigerator box for a quickie, while what seems like thirty dollars worth of photos click away through the automated (and now butt-printed) lens. True to form, Marc then rushes off to catch his plane back to France, leaving Joy to find her own way among the Thais and the ruffians on her trail. Could she love him more?

Say Fromage

Wandering aimlessly through the city, Joy FINALLY falls in with Joan (Isabelle Solar, in her only screen credit), a French-speaking tour guide who immediately takes a shine to Joy and offers her a place to crash. Of course Joan is instantly smitten with Joy, and makes advances that first night, but unready Joy puts her off. This leads to a very well-staged scene in which Joy and Joan lie on their beds on opposite sides of a shared wall, both masturbating and getting turned on by the sounds of the other person across the way. Saurel isn't what I'd call an accomplished director, but he definitely got that one right. A later scene where Joy and Joan give in to their passions on a moving train (in some beautiful but totally impractical and borderline dangerous positions) is another winner.

The rest of the movie has Joy and Joan on the run from Le Prince and Bruce, occasionally having rows due to Joan's fierce possessiveness that borders on psychopathy. There's some comic relief with Le Prince chasing them through the city's floating market Keystone Cops style, and it comes to a head when a kindly bartender befriends the girls only to have them kidnapped and taken to a cave-sauna/sex party that mirrors the first film's sex dungeon scene. Incredibly, Le Prince rushes in to the rescue here, fighting off half a dozen fully nude Thai men with his diamond-headed cane, chop-socky style! Eventually he's overwhelmed, though, Joy and Joan are raped, and they're all left in the now-empty cave complex to lick their wounds.

From L to R: Joan, Joy

The ending keeps spiraling into silliness, as Le Prince reveals his unlikely but charming ulterior motives for helping them, Joy flies back to France, and Joan joins her there later. When Joy leaves on a job assignment, lonely and petulant Joan is visited by Marc, which leads to a rather out-of-left-field denouement and a strong finishing sex scene.

Saurel is not nearly the director that Bergonzelli is, and manages to make Brigitte Lahaie, while ethereally gorgeous as ever, somehow LESS sexy than Claudia Udy was in the first. Lahaie plays all of her scenes with a blank, bored expression, which is kind of her go-to mode, but a talented director like Rollin has shown how to get her to use that and break out of it when it will have the maximum effect. The plot is pretty wild, but the chase scenes drag on quite a bit and there's a lot of dead space. Also surprisingly for a movie with Lahaie in the lead, it feels like there's significantly less sex here than in the original film, to its detriment. What's here is pretty good though, and all the female flesh on display is well worth drooling over.

Joan, thinking of eating out tonight

Severin's presentation is good again, very clear both visually and audibly. (Once again there's a painfully plaintive pop theme song, leaned on even more heavily here than in the last film.) No real extras on this disc, except again the uncut version of the film.

Severin has done a great job unearthing and presenting these two movies, and anyone with a soft (?) spot for Eurotrash softcore will be more than happy with the both of them. I give Joy 2.5 thumbs, and Joy & Joan 2.25. Both discs are available now from Amazon and the regular online and brick-and-mortar DVD merchants.

Note: Severin Films provided both DVDs to MMMMMovies for review purposes.

A few more images from Joy (1983) and Joy & Joan (1985): 

Her Heart Belongs to Daddy

To compete with television and the Internet, the local Aquarium took drastic steps.

Everybody Wants You

Coming out of her shell

Veggie Berger

Make a Grab for the Gusto

Doesn't Look Safe

Confusing...but verrrrry interesting.

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...