The Devil Within Her (1975): or, The Little Things Hurt the Most

In case you're not aware of the fact, dear parishioners, the inimitable and irrepressible Emily I. has been hosting a ♥February of Horror Shorties♥ over at her wonderful webstop, Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense (which if you're not already following, I suggest--nay, INSIST!--that you do so right now). In this shortest of months she's been paying tribute to the shortest of killers, be they implacable infants, demonic dwarfs, eeevil elves, or the titular deadly dolls. (I can only assume Malevolent Mannequins and Grumpy Golems are disqualified due to height limits.) Since I have a soft spot in my withered, blackened briquette of a heart for little people of the sinful variety myself, I could not pass the opportunity to throw my own comically tiny hat in the ring.

As luck would have it, Netflix instant offered up a doozy for me, a previously unknown-to-me flick from the seventies that not only boasts the formidable acting talents of Donald Pleasence, Joan Collins, and B-Movie royalty Caroline Munro, but also offers TWO tiny terrors for the price of one! Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your pram handles for the wild 1975 killer kiddie flick with a difference, The Devil Within Her.

The liquor waited patiently. "Soon," it thought. "Very soon."

We open to find former exotic dancer and socialite Lucy Carlesi (Collins) in the midst of an extremely difficult labor. Thrashing, sweating, and howling like a bear-trapped she-wolf, Lucy writhes under the watchful eye of the world's creepiest OBGYN Dr. Finch (Pleasance, natch), who, try as he might, just can't dislodge the bundle of joy from his patient's uterus. An exasperated nurse sponges the doctor's brow and asks, pointedly, "What's wrong, sir?" To which Dr. Finch replies sagely, "This one...DOESN'T WANT TO BE BORN!"* Which opinion I'm certain went miles toward relaxing the vaginal death-clamp Lucy had on the little tot up to that point, what?

*This line of dialog reflects the film's original title, I Don't Want to Be Born, which I assume was scrapped because nothing in the subsequent story supported the idea that the baby baddie was anything but thrilled with its nativity. Still, that title makes more sense than the official IMDb title of the film, Sharon's Baby--since not only is the mom's name Lucy, but no character named "Sharon" appears anywhere in the film in ANY capacity. A rose by any other name?

Did I say "little" tot? Well, that is perhaps an error. Finally wrenching the infant free with a set of heavy-duty, chrome-plated forceps (*ssshhhhhhhmmmPOP!*), the doc immediately sees what the problem was: the kid's the size of an 18-month-old toddler! Still, all's well that slides shrieking through the Glistening Gates of Life, and with the mother out of danger and the child dutifully decanted, Doc Finch stumbles out into the waiting room to give new father Gino Carlesi (Ralph Bates, veteran of such Hammer horrors as Taste the Blood of Dracula, The Horror of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde, and Vicar-ious formative influencer Lust for a Vampire**) the good news.

"Banged Joan Collins, did you? Good show, old chap!"

**It is solely Bates' good fortune at having stood next to Yutte Stensgaard at one point in his life that prevents my holding his truly awful Italian accent in this film a cockpunchable offense.

Not so fast, though: as soon as Lucy attempts to nurse her newborn son, the tyke repays her motherly leanings by clawing blood from her face! It appears that in addition to being abnormally large, the baby also possesses the strength of TEN BABIES! Which is still not much, I guess, but hey. The befuddled parents wisely switch over to bottle-feeding and install their child in a truly hideous yellow-and-brown themed nursery. The kid makes his displeasure known by biting the housekeeper Mrs. Hyde hard enough to draw blood, and thereafter trashing the room like a member of Mini Kiss! Shocked that a less-than-month old baby could rip the head off a Raggedy Andy doll and toss the changing table around from the confines of its crib, the parents start looking for explanations.

From JC Penney in 1975: the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Wallpaper Collection

Now this is where things get a little wacky.

Over afternoon cocktails and cigs with her BFF Mandy (Munro, looking SMOKIN' HAWT as usual), Lucy relates via ponderously voiced-over flashback some strange events that occurred just before she left England to marry Gino in Italy. Lucy used to be a showgirl before Gino made a (more-or-less) honest woman of her, and regularly brought in the crowds shakin' her money-maker(s) while sharing the stage with her partner Hercules--A DWARF. To give you an idea of the level of sensual artistry we're talking about here, check out Lucy and Hercules in full regalia, giving the people what they want:

In the Jingle Jangle mornin', he comes murderin' you...

SASSY, isn't it?

On the night of her farewell performance, Lucy is bidding adieu to Hercules, when the Little Person starts getting Big Ideas of a sexual nature. These he acts upon, feeling up Dame Collins with his dexterous little hands. She admits that, "Maybe, for an instant, I was fascinated!" and thus indulges Hercules so far as to cup a bit of side-boob. When the novelty of tiny fingers wears thin, she rejects the little Lothario with extreme prejudice and banishes him from the fleshy delights of her undercarriage for good. Then she promptly invites club owner Tommy (John Holmes-lookalike and Sleaziest Man in Britain 1974 finalist John Steiner) into her un-dressing room for a little slap-and-tickle before she's off the market in Rome.

Lucy's a bit of a slut, you see.

Open for Business

 As might be predicted, Hercules does NOT take this well. When Lucy stumbles in a drunken, post-coital stupor from the club for the last time, the dwarf steps out of the shadows and pronounces this curse: "You will have a baby--a monster that grows in your womb! As big as I am small, and possessed by the Devil himself!"

Which explains a lot, you'll agree.

Only Lucy seems to forget her story immediately upon telling it, and begins searching instead for a genetic explanation for the baby's giantism and muscular prowess. Since she and Gino obviously come from pure upper-crust breeding stock, she settles on the only scientifically plausible hypothesis: the baby is Tommy's, and thus she has to find out what genetic abnormalities her former lover may have planted when he strewed his seditious seed in her fertile gynecological garden. Because that will help, somehow.

"...so I says to the bird, 'Weasel? I fought it were a bluddy paintbrush!' HAW-HAW!
...
Anyway, that's when they slapped the cuffs on."

Of course the child is no genetic freak, but is actually supercharged with the awesome power of a sexually frustrated dwarf--because Little People can do that, apparently. As Lucy, Gino, and Gino's sister Albana (Eileen Atkins)--who is actually Sister Albana, a nun--try to figure out what (the fuck) is wrong with the baby, this pre-verbal Pazuzu goes on a horrific, adorable rampage. He wrestles a priest, trashes his room a few more times, bloodies Tommy's nose, drowns two expendable extras, drops a dead rat in Mrs. Hyde's tea, and somehow learns to tie a noose and sharpens a shovel blade to razor-keenness! All without his parents ever quite catching on! Though to be fair, being rich AND English AND parents in the 1970s, they do both seem to stay drunk most of the time.

They're all there, thank God.

There's so much to talk about with this movie, I'll never encompass it all--but here are a few things that made me happier than they should have. For one, we never actually see the baby in full-on It's Alive rampage mode--we only see the tragic, hilarious consequences, which I found even more satisfying than an animatronic tot could possibly have been. Joan Collins overacts as much here as she did in any full season of Dynasty, emoting with such emphatic projection you can almost see the spittle fly. Director Peter Sasdy's TV career focus comes through as well, since the movie often feels like a made-for-TV affair--though a rather lengthy sex scene between Gino and Lucy late in the game gives the lie to that presumption. The director does manage a rather disturbing nightmare sequence though, and if you can't appreciate little touches like Lucy periodically hallucinating Hercules in the crib instead of her child, well, all I can say is you must be made of stone.


The movie does raise some unanswerable questions however. We never figure out exactly how Hercules was able to command the powers of Satan, or if in fact he was in league with the devil at all. For all we see, his curse's efficacy might simply be the result of some dread power Little People have tamed that we full-sized folk could never harness. For his part, Hercules seems to have forgotten all about his curse, returning to work at Tommy's club where he gets to cavort nightly among half-clad Cockney girls; nice work if you can get it, so long as no Italian nuns who minored in Dwarfen Exorcism at St. Olaf's Cloister and Finishing school take it in their heads to start fighting your mojo.

"Is it-a hott in-a here, or is it just-a ME?"

Horror-wise, The Devil Within Her touches on several raw socio-cultural nerves--young parents' fears that something might be wrong with their baby, the age-old Otherness of the Differently Sized, the battle between medicine and religion, and the wages of past sin repaid in the present. It also provides buxom showgirls, costumed dwarf dancing, baby on the rampage, and Joan Collins shedding her top and swallowing the scenery whole. One could ask for more, I suppose--but that would just be greedy.

So what are you waiting for? Get to Netflix Instant and queue this one up. You'll be glad you did. 2.75 thumbs. And thanks to Emily I.--everyone's favorite Horror Shorty! ;) --for being my dwarf-addiction enabler!

"Yay! Breastfeeding time!"

A few more photos from The Devil Within Her (1975): 

"All right, it's true--I've been hitting the bottle."

"I must break you."

"I'm afraid I'll be home late, my dear. I have some reports to sodomize. What?"

Sister Albana goes merkin-shopping.

Bedside lamp, or death ray?

Everyone's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed dwarf

"OMG Vicar! Put it away!"

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RIP Tura Satana : 1938-2011

She never "tried" anything. She just *did* it.

As most people have probably heard by now, B-Movie Empress and larger-than-larger-than-life human being Tura Satana has passed away. I don't know as much about her life as many others, but her work in Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! instantly rocketed her to my number one anti-heroine of all time. Reading the brief biographical sketches of her by Jimmy McDonough in his Meyer biography Big Bosoms and Square Jaws, I saw that her real life put even her most famous roles to shame. There simply never was anyone like her, on screen or off, and never will be again. She will be greatly missed.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! MMMMMovies Review
Tura Satana on Wikipedia
Tura Satana Official Website
Meyer collaborator (and film critic of some note) Roger Ebert on Satana

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The Afterman (1985): or, Apocalypse When?

We begin: a bearded, slightly dumpy man sits in a darkened, presumably underground room, surrounded by dot-matrix printers and TRS-80s. Barely decipherable alerts flash in blocky green letters, monitoring something or other that's bound to be important. The Man watches news footage of atomic bombs dropping, and wistfully stares at old photos.When he gets hungry, he goes to a huge storeroom filled to the rafters with cardboard boxes. The boxes contain cans of futuristic spray-food substance, which he devours greedily. He stares at the screens, falls asleep, twiddles his thumbs. Apparently this is all he does; this is what his life is like.

Well, it's not quite ALL he does. A man has needs besides food and shelter, after all. When the Wily Worm of Wantonness rears its cyclopean dome, he waddles to another part of the complex and, shirtless, enters a walk-in freezer. There he finds the frost-flecked body of a woman, upon whose nude, frozen flesh he satiates his wicked urges.

At some length. In the first 5 minutes of the movie.

So many questions.

Cold hands, warm heart

Ladies and germs, welcome to The Afterman, Belgian director Rob Van Eyck's bleak vision of a speculative future, circa 1985. Executed entirely without dialogue, the flick is half art-house sci-fi, half grimy exploitation road movie, and 100% MAD. It's a movie that feels simultaneously thoughtful and incoherent, skillful and inept, intellectually serious but at times deliriously dumb. Take a bit of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, filter it through Quest for Fire, and dunk it in the boiling effluvia of the grindhouse melting pot, and maybe you're almost there. It's a movie that, quite frankly, I can scarcely believe exists.

Shortly after his necro-tryst with his Passed-On Popsicle of Passion--who may be his deceased wife, but is not certainly such--the Man (Jacques Verbist--NOT the guy on the VHS cover) is forced to evacuate his bunker due to a massive system failure, which leads to an off-screen explosion. We are left to infer that he's been waiting out the apocalypse, which has dismantled civilization--deserted, crumbling buildings dot the landscape, and abandoned heavy machinery returns to rust all around. Whatever brought about the fall of society was presumably not the atom bombs he was watching earlier, at least in my reading, since lush forests and fields stretch to the horizon and no one evinces the slightest radiation burns or tumors. Still, whatever happened isn't terribly important; the point is, the End has arrived, and the remaining humans must survive as best they can.

Immediately upon his emergence, the Man sees a group of other men watching him from a nearby ridge. With an inarticulate cry of glee, he rushes to them, while they calmly, ominously watch him come. He's clearly overjoyed to meet fellow survivors, and embraces their tough-guy leader. Unfortunately for him, his gesture is disastrously misread, as the wordless myrmidions lay the boots to him, after which the Leader sardonically rapes his ass while his henchmen circle-jerk around them! Welcome to our Brave New World, Bippy!

"Wait a minute...YOU'RE NOT A PROCTOLOGIST!"

At this point, we're still less than 10 minutes in, by the way.

Left bloody and now understandably shy of strangers, the Man sets about surviving without his cans of Post-Apocalyptic Cheez Whiz to rely upon. Despite his doughy physique and post-traumatic stress, he proves to be quite the trapper, snaring a muskrat underwater with his bare hands! It's a hard-knock life out there, but as long as there are aquatic rodents to be had, our Man will never go hungry.

I have seen the future, and it needs salt.

What happens next is hard to explain--the Man follows some strange sounds to a cave and sneaks inside, where he finds what appears to be a fully functioning day spa! There's tile, potted plants, patio lounge chairs, and a clearly man-made (and well-chlorinated) swimming pool, in which a beautiful woman is swimming nude! "Dude, where's the power for the filters and lights coming from if the world is over?" you might well ask--but don't expect an answer, since nobody talks.

As the Man watches from behind some palm leaves--which he sometimes rustles meaningfully--another naked woman joins the first for a dip, which quickly becomes an aquatic lesbonic sex-up. This goes on for quite some time--not that I'm complaining--but comes to a surprising end when the first water nymph goes down below the water line to pleasure her lover, who holds her there with her strong thighs until she drowns! (And from the sadistic look on the survivor's face, this was clearly the intended result.) Our Man zips up and freaks (the fuck) out, then runs weeping from the scene--as would we all.

Fifteen minutes now. Try to keep up.

When she was bad, she was horrid.

And so the movie goes--we traverse the post-Apocalyptic landscape with our portly, hollow-eyed hero, and through him we discover just how far into savagery the human race descends without the burden of the Social Contract to keep us in line. At his next stop he spies on an agricultural couple who have vegetables, livestock, and a beautiful slave woman (Danielle Detremmerie) in a chicken-wire pen. The bald, shirtless Farmer leads Slave Woman around on a swing-set chain, and periodically takes advantage of her from behind as she bends at the waist to weed the cucumbers. The girl submits without a struggle, used to this treatment. The Farmer's wife continues feeding the chickens without batting an eye.

Later that night, while the Horny Horticulturist has more loud sex with his wife (this guy plows more than soil, if you get what I'm sayin'), the Man sneaks in to steal some food--but is quickly captured and enslaved himself! Over the following days he is whipped viciously, teamed with the girl to till the Farmer's fields--literally, not figuratively, this time--and never seems to understand that a cage made out of chicken wire and extremely thin sticks should not be an impediment to his freedom. Then again, he does get a little non-rodent grub and something to do all day, so maybe it's a measured decision. He's the Cube Monkey of the future!

"Well, we might as well face it--we're here for good. So, wanna do it?"

Eventually he does break free, however--beating his Priapic Prison Papa with a post--and takes off cross country with a sack of ham and the beautiful slave woman on his heels. At first he doesn't want to share his booty with her--nor she hers with him--but that all changes when he wanders into a cliche pool of quicksand and she pulls him out. From there on out they share and share alike, both in sustenance and sexiness.

They have sex a lot.

In fact, it becomes clear as Van Eyck draws us along that, at least according to him, when you remove all the social constructs and rules of behavior, only two things matter to the human creature: food, and fucking. And not necessarily in that order. Every vignette in the movie incorporates the two: something always gets eaten, and someone always gets fucked. (Though there's no actual food in the lesbian swimmers scene above, the previous statement still holds--IYKWIMAITYD.) This was clearly one of Eyck's main philosophical points of the movie, and his dedication to it is admirable. Sure, it's not exactly a ground-breaking anthropological theory, but it does lend the flick a certain pseudo-intellectual aspect that, if missing, would lessen its impact considerably in my humble.

The parallel lines of human desire intersect most pointedly when the Woman is captured by a hard-partying Cannibal Clan, who really enjoy playing with their food. (Ba-dump.) Later they are taken in by a group of monks who have a hot-tub in their monastery (wha?), worship a statue of a man's ass, and accept payment for their B&B services by forcing the Man to fellate them. They also sacrifice wayward travelers by cutting out their hearts and eating them, but luckily the Woman catches them at it before Manny's on the menu and they make good their escape.

Freaky Friar Loves Huffing

As the film winds down, love continues to bloom between the Man and Woman. They steal clothes from a man bearing a strangely well-stocked suitcase. They forage. They have sex. He fights off some would-be rapists, impaling one on a bed of exposed rebar. Conflict arises when they are taken in by the Castle Woman, an aristocratic Zsa-Zsa Gabor type who totes an elephant gun and has an exotic, scantily clad pianist-cum-housemaid. The Man has sex with the Castle Woman, and his jealous Woman nearly freezes herself to death in the wild out of spite. They make up, have a kid, and finally arrive at the ocean. The End--or perhaps, just perhaps, the Beginning?

The Afterman is a film made of incongruities. Whiplash editing and the lack of exposition or context make for some confusing transitions and plot-points (for instance, the Man figures out what the cannibal clan are eating well before we do, making his retching reaction explicable only in retrospect). Other times, though, the flick feels extremely well-made; some of the shots of the post-Apocalyptic desolation are quite beautiful and haunting, as when the pair hole up in a disintegrating greenhouse, or walk through a crumbling factory that feels like a ruined cathedral. The lack of explanation regarding the nature of the social downfall is often frustrating, but also frees Van Eyck to create scenes of both medieval squalor and modern opulence, which may or may not be a stab at the persistence of class consciousness even after the supporting struts are kicked away. The loosely stitched vignettes never really pretend to a coherent plot, and yet still manage to draw the viewer along as well as any carefully woven narrative thread--partly because we want to see what madness the film will throw at us next.

"Okay--whoever wants to be tonight's entree, hands up!"

As I mentioned above, the quest for sex is pervasive, and so is a strain of brutish violence, executed with special effects that gain rather than lose power by their gritty, low-rent appearance. I've no reason to think the muskrat Man-snack is not a real dead creature; similarly, when the freed cannibal captives attack their guard and graphically gouge out his eyes, I think we're looking at actual ocular orbs--though hopefully those of a sheep and not a human being. Other scenes, such as the rebar impalement, the Farmer's crushed head, and a monk who takes a pitchfork to the neck, are no less visceral. Through repetition and commitment, Van Eyck creates a believably dangerous world for his characters to navigate.

Lead actor Verbist does a fine job as the Man, who learns about this terrible new reality along with the audience. Hollow-eyed, terrified, and perpetually confused, he's pretty much the perfect stand-in for the viewer. Detremmerie is lovely and believably tough, pulling her Man out of the fire as often as he returns the favor. The rest of the cast does well too--everyone has a lean, hungry look appropriate to the material. It's a compliment to both cast and director that even without dialogue we sympathize with the characters and become invested in their plight.

When she plays Peekaboo, she plays for keeps.

In closing, The Afterman is a movie that made me wonder aloud from whence (in ye fucke) it sprung. It fascinated me, held my interest, and stayed in my brain long after the end-credits rolled. Morality play? Speculative picaresque? Blood-and-boobs exploitational drive-in fodder? Maybe all, maybe some, maybe not. But it's certainly unique in my experience, and a film I enjoyed immensely. 2.75 thumbs. If you can find a copy, check it out.

Nota Bene: according to imdb, a 25th Anniversary Edition DVD was released in 2010 at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. Also, in 2005 Van Eyck directed Afterman 2 which has no plot description on imdb but does show Jacques Verbist returning in the cast. That's a movie I'll definitely be seeking out by hook or crook to see how, if at all, the director updated his vision.

A few more images from The Afterman (1985): 

Even after the Apocalypse, programmers are all the same.

Wheelbarrow

"You're SO lucky you're the last man on earth, buddy."

The Duke of DVD initiates another manservant.

The Louvre, circa 3535 AD.

Now THAT'S a spicy meatball!

No one steals Zsa Zsa's turnips.

 

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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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Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977), Or How To Get Fux'ed By Satan

My dearest of friends, please, draw nearer. No, nearer still--yes, that’s it, close enough that you can hear my faint whisper, for I have a word whose mere utterance can shake the very foundations of our ignorant society: nunsploitation. That’s right, dearest readers, once again the Duke of DVD returns from up on the mount to bring you what you need! The honeyed drippings I bring you now aren’t silly rules etched upon stone tablets by a faceless and impotent god, heavens no! They are instead of a movie that may well be the paragon of a genre we hold most dear, a shining beacon which causes us to lift our palsied hands and turn our faces towards its radiant beauty, tears streaming down our faces as heretical bliss takes over.

Friends, when auteur and nunsploitational genius Jess Franco's Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun dropped through my mail slot with a resounding thud, I snatched it up with much alacrity and sprinted to the Ducal theater, clutching it to my chest possessively, like a man who had just bought the severed penis of a mass murderer from a rather unscrupulous coroner in order to dip said penis into a river upstream from his hated neighbor’s lands, thus letting the evil drift down to murder all of his enemy’s cattle, children, and crops. One does not let such a prize out of one's sight, and I didn’t intend to with the DVD copy of this movie, I assure you! I settled down in my chair to bask in the glory, but little did I know how depraved a movie I had in store.

Let us explore, shall we?

Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun starts off with young Maria (Susan Hemingway), a 15-year-old tart who lives alone with her mother and who likes to run around the woods with her boyfriend, laughing and flirting like a whore. She’s doing just that when her boyfriend manages to steal a kiss before they are surprised by the outrageously evil priest Father Vicente (William Berger). He chastises the youths for their wicked ways. Maria asks what she’s done wrong, and Father Vicente replies, “You didn’t offend me, child, but what about God?” What about God, indeed, sir! He drags young Maria back to her mother’s house and fills both of them full of such lies that Maria’s mother gives her up to a convent--one that Father Vicente just happens to hang out in. Not only does he hoodwink Maria’s mother into letting her go, but he also takes all of their savings, claiming it as a “dowry” to the convent. Mama mia!

"Yes, yes child...that's how you churn the Lord's Butter!"

Father Vicente whisks Maria away to the Serra D’Aires convent, a very castle-like edifice out in the country. Very quickly, she is interviewed by the Abbess (Ana Zanatti), who insists on everyone referring to her as “Most Eminent Priestess,” a moniker that should raise a few eyebrows. In full view of the priest, the head nun insists on doing the ol’ tried and true Virgin Finger Test™, by making Maria hike up her skirts so that the Abbess can ram a cold, twisted finger into the virginal honeypot Maria carries around with her. (Nota bene: besides being an entry requirement to most of the Vicar’s social gatherings, the Virgin Finger Test™ can also be fun at Bat Mitzvahs, retirement parties, office gatherings, and presidential inaugurations. Ask for it by name!) The Priestess notes the absence of under-garments, a state Maria says is because of how poor she and her mother are. The Priestess replies “Were you tempted because you weren’t wearing proper under linens?” Now how many times have I heard that?!

"Bish, pleez. Commando is how I roll."

Satisfied that Maria is indeed still bearing an intact hymen--or was, anyway--the Abbess sends her off to her new room, whereupon two nuns immediately enter and recruit Maria into a devotional kissing game. Heyo! What a convent! Maria is then made to go to the confessional, which amounts to a curtained-off corner of the main church. While all of the other nuns sit in their seats, Maria recounts her sins to Father Vicente. He very quickly steers her to the lewd, and she finally admits to having a dream in which she performed fellatio upon a boy. Father V loves this form of shrift, needless to say, and begins playing tug of war with cyclops right there in the booth! His fevered moans get louder and louder as Maria talks more and more about playing the skin-flute. The rest of the nuns titter with laughter as Father Vicente finally achieves sexual release inside his confessional--something the Vicar does daily, I might add.

"Just as I thought, my dear--you're a half-quart low."

Maria is informed that over the next three days she can’t wear any clothing, and instead must be wrapped with thorny vines, in order to pay some sort of penance for her sins. Some nuns strip her and help wrap thorn-bush limbs around her supple breasts and hips. During this time we are also informed that a nearby castle is inhabited by the Grand Inquisitor, who no doubt employs a ruthlessly fanatical devotion to the Pope, and whose arrival I  was totally unprepared for. Later that night, we learn just what kind of party they're throwing at this convent: we see the Priestess praying to Satan, and we also get an extended lesbian scene that would raise the Devil’s own putrid cock like a daisy after a big rain.

"No, Father, I've never been in a confessional with a Hole of Glory. How does it work?"

Maria’s boyfriend shows up, hoping to entice her home. I thought we’d get some scene in which he’s found out by Father Vicente and made to stroke it over a fire or something, but nah, Maria vows to stay and drive the wickedness from her soul, and the poor boy leaves empty-handed and full-bollocked. Around this time we get a positively evil scene in which the Priestess gets mostly naked and engages in a Satan-summoning ritual, which involves placing a bowl full of baby’s blood (we’re told) directly under her hoo-hoo, and she writhes in ecstasy while two nuns pinch her nipples and otherwise rub up and down her body. The spell works, for we get a tiny glimpse of one of Satan’s hands, which look just like a normal hand, except it’s covered with so much curly thick hair that perhaps Franco intended for Satan to be a Wookie.

The latest Parish fashions.

Meanwhile, Maria finally wises up to the fact that Satan appears to have cloven-hoof-hold in this particular convent. She writes her mother a desperate letter, asking to be rescued from the rampant lesbianism and overt, unapproved fuckery going on. Unfortunately, the High Priestess intercepts her letter, and reads it aloud to the lecherous Father Vicente. As punishment, Maria is stripped to her smallclothes and made to stand in a small wooden cell. Before you can say “Hello, Vicar!”, Father V saunters in and forces Maria to reenact her dream--on his cock! Now how is she supposed to say her Hail Marys around a mouthful of uncut heretic man-meat? HOW, I ask you?!

"The power of CO--uh, Christ... compels you."

Finally, the promised event is nigh! The night that Maria loses her virginity to His Infernal Majesty. The mood is set: blacked out room save for a few sputtering candles, a dozen scantily-clad nuns moaning and rubbing themselves, and above it all the High Priestess holding court. Bizarrely, the High Priestess situates herself on the central altar and positions soon-to-be-not-so-chaste Maria directly behind her, so that Maria is leaning on the High Priestess’ back. Soon, the Devil Himself shows up, played insanely well by the hilariously-yet-appropriately-named Herbert Fux. In Franco’s world, Satan is the quintessential ladies' man, clad in a red silk body-suit and sporting cape and hairy hands--only he also has a giant dong coming out of the center of his forehead! In fairness, one assumes this was supposed to be a horn, but to me it looked like a rubber phallus attached to Satan’s face, which only added to the awesome. Maybe Satan needs two dicks, as there's so much 'sploiting to be done! Indeed, when he starts rogering Maria, the High Priestess also seems to be really enjoying things. At any rate, the vile yet somehow sexy deflowering is complete.

"You're staring at my forehead junk, aren't you?"

The next day, Maria is in tizzy. Her queries about the previous night’s activities get laughed away, with the Priestess claiming Maria has dreamed it all. Did she? Who cares! Maria flees the convent, heading into the nearby town, where she finally talks to someone ostensibly in power: the Mayor, a corpulent hog of a man. Offering to help her, he takes her off in a wagon, and Maria promptly falls asleep, confident that her fat savior will take her home. Instead, he hauls her back to the convent, into the waiting grasp of Father Vicente, who assures the mayor he did the right thing.

Where canned tomatoes come from.

The Priest and Priestess waste no time in punishing Maria. They drag her to the Inquisitor (which caught me completely by surprise!) and he sets about stripping her naked and tying her to the rack. Lots of torture ensues, and I was really wondering as to why they were all going through this farce until I realized that the Inquisitor suspects nothing ill about the Priest and Priestess, and isn’t himself in on all the Satan-lovin’ that’s going on at the convent. He’s simply doing his job and wringing a confession out of a naked, nubile young teen, a hallmark of the Inquisition for decades.

"Before we begin, could you please sign this insurance waiver?"

Soon, Maria signs a confession, admitting she made the whole shitstorm up and indeed loves Satan and all his many wizards with every inch of her blackened heart. Satisfied, the Inquisitor decrees that she’s die by fire the following day. Maria is left alone to think on her ruined life, and for some reason is also left a pencil and plenty of paper. She writes a last-ditch letter, detailing all that she’s been through, and then tosses the letter out a window, hoping some errant wind will carry her missive to someone who gives a flying fuck. As luck would have it, a foppishly dressed dandy is just at that moment riding by on his palfrey! He reads the letter, and gets as stern a look on that his lead-powdered face will allow.

"Dear sir or madam, you might be the next winner of The Inquisitor's Clearing House Sweepstakes! WTF?"

The next day, Maria is hauled out before man and God to answer for her supposed crimes. Inquisition guards stand ready as Father Vicente, the High Priestess, and the Inquisitor look on. Maria is tied to a stake and the fire is lit under her, but what’s this?! A giant gay riding a horse arrives with a few men of his own, demanding that Maria be set free. As it turns out, he’s the crowned Prince of Portugal! What fucking luck Maria has! (Well, except for being buggered by the Devil...) Of course, the Inquisitor immediately believes the Prince, and orders Maria cut down and the Priest and Priestess arrested! They in turn flee, running through the castle only to finally be cornered by Inquisition troops inside the church’s inner sanctum. Free-frame, the end.

Friends, the title of this movie conjures all sorts of images. “What Love Letters?!” you bleat, “I was hoping for some sexy letters detailing the cunnilingus rituals of the notoriously horny nuns of Portugal!” And you would be right to be vexed so, as I too was expecting something similiar. Instead, the love letters in question appear only to be missives to Maria’s mother asking for help, which of course never got mailed, let alone delivered, and the other being a letter tossed out a window only to become the genesis for a Deus Ex Fancypants.

In my aristocratic opinion, any normal nobleman would have read such a letter and immediately handed it to the Inquisitor as further proof that Maria fornicated with Satan. Oh sure, the rest of the convent needs be put to the stake as well, I mean, they were in on it, and the High Priestess regularly has sexual congress with the Devil too, so of course they all have to go.Then again, perhaps I can see the Prince’s end of things. Maria was forced, was she not? Despite having her cooch pumped full of midnight black semen, perhaps she does deserve leniency. The altruistic Prince was simply doing the chivalrous thing. Of course, he can never, ever, dip his wick into Maria’s befouled nethers--one thing you do NOT want is Satan's Sloppy Seconds--but I’m sure she’d make a fine dishwasher in the royal kitchens.

Once again, folks, Jesus Franco brings us the good stuff. His use of color, framing, and light are unparalleled in my mind. He just gets things right, all the fucking time. And the sets! I’ve probably said this before, but apparently all of Europe is rife with awesome castles, churches, and convents, just sitting there waiting to be used for movie-making purposes. Or defiled by hot Euro-babe fleshmongers, as the case may be. I loved this movie from start to finish, and firmly enshrine it into the Nunsploitation Hall of Awesome. Stop what you’re doing right now, and go get a copy for yourself. You will not regret it, my dearest friends. When has the Duke ever steered you wrong? (Except for that commercial I shot for Dandy Dan’s Coat-Hanger Home Abortion Kit. I was drunk ok? I lost a bet!)

3+ Thumbs Up

"Yes, I'll help, but I insist on being paid in donuts."

"Wow...I DO have a nice rack!"

Butt on Satan's Claw

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