Schmollywood Babylon

Forgotten Naschy: The Unliving (Fred Olen Ray, 2004)

I've always had a love-hate relationship with director Fred Olen Ray, sometimes just screaming at him (inside of me, very quite and not especially aggressive) for just being too sloppy and careless and sometimes I just wanna buy him ten Whisky Sours and tell him I envy his life and who frakking awesome he is. The Unliving, formerly known as Tomb of the Werewolf, comes around in the middle of these two states of mind. First of all, I expected more than a few boobs - but instead what I got was a softcore movie! Cinemax would be proud!

Daninsky is one and for all killed and trapped with a silver cross and locked into a secure tomb in his old villa. In the present yet another shitty “documentary” show about the supernatural is in the works, and from Daninsky’s only living relative, Richard, they’re invited to search for the treasure that is said to be hidden there - and tell the story about the curse at the same time. What Richard doesn’t know is that Elisabeth Bathory, has made him his closest friend - and she wants to raise Daninsky from the dead and… hell, I don’t know what’s I’m writing about now.

The story isn’t the first priority in The Unliving (I wonder why they abandoned the far cooler title Tomb of the Werewolf?) and much of it goes on in the bedroom, where we’re treated to an array of softcore sex scenes, enough to make me blush! Thankfully Paul Naschy, once again playing his character Waldemar Daninsky - a polish werewolf who never seems to get any peace of mind! Naschy is also the best thing with The Unliving, even if he gets terribly little to do. It’s hardly his movie, even if he’s ruling the DVD cover and is billed first in the credits.

But you know, I dig watching Naschy. I can watch movies where he’s just have a minor supporting part, as long as he’s there. That sex appeal might have weakened with his age, but he was still close to his death a powerhouse of ego, seducer and kindness. A slightly bitter man who never, I think, realized what a superstar he really was. The only two competent actors involved are Jay Richardson (who only seem to star in Fred’s films, who is he? Is he a full time actor?? What do he dream of?) as Richard and Michelle Bauer as Bathory. They’ve done this a million times and makes it work.

I wonder what Naschy thought of the movie? Did he like it? Did he like it for real or only to be polite to those involved? I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, it delivers what it’s set out to deliver: boobs. But for us who really doesn’t care about boobs it’s Naschy that leads the dance. He’s old and somewhat frail, but makes the best of it even if the wigs are shoddy and the dialogue stiff.

Too much sex, not enough gore, too little Naschy is my judgement. BUT it’s important to understand it’s still a Waldemar Daninsky flick, which also make it a must own.

Interior. Leather Bar. (James Franco & Travis Mathews, 2013)

With Interior: Leather Bar on the living room table, teasing me with it’s presence I had to watch William Friedkin’s Cruising again, just to prepare me for James Franco’s and Travis Mathews experimental docu-drama. I love Cruising so much, it might be one of my top twenty favorites of all time actually, and I think I’m pretty sure of that after seeing many times over the years. The big thing has always been the lost 40 minutes, minutes even Friedkin claims to have been shot and included in the first cut, but was cut on the orders from Warner Bros - who probably was shocked to see graphic sadomasochistic gay sex in seedy leather bars in New York splashed up on the screen.

Friedkin wanted it to be real. And Pacino is said to have been in these scenes to. Awesome is the only word I can find. But this footage have never been found, maybe it’s destroyed or rotting in some storage somewhere and will never be found in our lifetime. Here’s where Franco and Mathews comes in, wanting to examine both the rumors about the lost footage and make a short movie about dealing with non-mainstream sexuality. Franco feels he have been raised to think a certain sex and love is unnatural and he wants to get over it once and for all. He hires Val Lauren to play Pacino’s part, a bunch of actors with experience from pornographic films and sets out to shoot the lost 40 minutes.

First of all, don’t expect 40 minutes of footage from Cruising, which some people seem to have misunderstood. This is a drama with the actors playing themselves, but still playing actors, improvising and discussing sex, personal dilemmas with dealing with gay sex and just the world around them and the reaction they will get. Franco is there as a hyperactive producer/director, often discussing with others what meaning this movie has, but no one is really sure. Which is also part of the criticism it’s gotten in reviews - but I think it’s just a part of Franco’s game. He wants that to happen.

Because why do there have to be a clear meaning with movie, as long it shows something, long it tells at least part of a story.

Interior. Leather Bar is actually very similar to Cruising: both men slightly reluctantly signs up to do a job they don’t know so much about, going more or less undercover, having a steady contact with their boss and the reflects over what they really are towards the end. The big difference is how Franco more or less abandons Val here, while Paul Sorvino is there, somewhere, in the background at least.

So make no mistake, this is an experimental piece of cinema. I personally loved it, G didn’t. He liked it, but felt it didn’t feel finished. There’s a poetry in something that’s not dealt with completely. We’re left alone with our thoughts (much like in the orginal movie by Friedkin, which some viewers finds frustrating), and that can make us feel quite helpless in a situation like this. Oh, and also expect graphic sex - not overly nasty, but there’s enough cock in action to make John Travolta happy.

A curious, quirky film. And very good.

Caligula (Tinto Brass, 1979)

When the Gore Vidal scripted Caligula finally was released after several years in production it earned a lot of money on the box office. The rumour says it took in around 20 million dollars that first week, before it was pulled back into what the critics hoped to be obscurity. That didn’t happen, of course. It became one of Penthouse most bestselling productions and still lives on through new releases. I sincerely think it’s a good, maybe even great, film. It’s far from perfect, but it’s also the beauty marks what makes it what it is today.

When Tinto Brass left the production, producer and professional smutpeddler Bob Guccione cobbled together the film in the way it wasn’t meant to be. He used outtakes, stuff that was out of focus, scenes where the actors and extras just was taking a break, edited scenes in the wrong order and sometimes even creating scenes that didn’t exist in the first place, from combining footage not meant to be near each other. This means the film has a very special atmosphere. Just like Robert Altman, Tinto Brass prefers to stay on a distance with his cameras, never letting the actors know what’s going on. With Guccione’s way of putting together the film it feels even more intimate, even more voyeuristic. It takes away some of the stylishness Brass gives to his films, but also adds to the quality in an odd way.

The impressive sets, reminding us of theatre stages, gives the film a dreamy, outworldly look. Most scenes are often only blocked from one side, which gives us the impression there’s an audience sitting on the other side - so basically, with it’s big and bold words and tasteless scenes of sex and carnage - Caligula IS a stage, a perverted opera with the sounds of screaming instead of singing. Malcolm McDowell, still the hottest actor of the time, makes the movie his own - but look at him, look how he always gives the other actors - from the extra to the veteran stars - attention. That’s acting my friends, not the ego show it could have been with any other actors.

I don’t give much for Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud not being aware of the pornographic nature of the film. Both are fantastic, but you need to be blind not to see what’s going on right behind their backs in a lot of scenes. There’s some graphic stuff there, both violence and sex - sometimes simulated sex, sometimes not at all. Then, I mean, this was still a sexual revolution at the cinema and it being funded by Mr Porn himself, well, how could they don’t know? I think they had a blast - and a big paycheck - and spending time with other Shakespearean actors in Rome, not bad at all. Even I would say yes to that.

Caligula could have been the first movie I saw together with G (he fell asleep), even before Night of the Lepus and Food of the Gods 1 and 2. It was in 2007 and it was the very impressive Imperial Edition from Penthouse Films/Image, which still is the ultimate release. Today I saw it on blu-ray from Arrow Video, which looked fine - but still a bit rugged and murky. But I’m not complaining. It’s after all the worlds most expensive sex film, recut a million times, loathed and loved. It’s been alive all this years, and it’s visible. Isn’t that a beautiful destiny of a film?

What’s extra fun is that many years later both Gore Vidal and Helen Mirren...and a bunch of other famous people (including the AWESOME Karen Black!)… starred in “Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula”, a special short movie/fake trailer made for the art exhibition Venice Biennale. It’s a lot of fun, check it out:

Emanuelle in America (Joe D'Amato, 1977)

This is one of those few much talked about Italian exploitation films I haven’t seen until now (I still haven’t seen Patrick Still Lives, to name another one) when found it cheap at Monkey Beach (THE best film store in Stockholm, visit it!). I will be honest with you and say I never been that interested in nudity, especially female nudity. I mean, a movie which revolves around this subject - the MacGuffin of naked women - ain’t that interesting for me. And really, I’m not even sure I would find any more interest in male nudity on this level either. When Jess Franco does his magic it’s often so much more than the sleaze, there’s something else, a darkness, an artiness that attracts me. Joe D’Amato on the other hand seldom goes beneath the surface of his characters - but it happens, and Emanuelle in America is one of those films where he actually seems to have something to say. Kinda.

Emanuelle is of course, as usual, a famous photographer with a semi-ugly boyfriend with way too tight jeans and lots female, nude, friends around her. She’s also, I guess, a nymphomaniac and goes out on adventures all over the world to partly take cool photos she can sell to magazines, but also fuck around a lot - sometimes with ugly men, sometimes with semi-ugly women (I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder blah blah blah). In Emanuelle in America she infiltrates a Harem, she visits an orgy (and participates, what else?!), visits an African tribe (or is it?!) and of course uncovers an organisation that delivers snuff films to the very, very, very, very, very rich people of the world! Just a day in the life of Emanuelle!

Alright, there’s a lot of female pubic hair and men with perfect helmet haircuts with eyes that glisten of cocaine, George Eastman shows up in a cameo and has I (I guess!) a stunt cock for his Tarzan-esque sex scene, some not-so-tasteful zoofilia and lots of gorgeous cinematography by Aristide Massaccesi - D’Amato himself of course, under his real name. The mix of comedy, drama, sex and in the end, thriller, makes this one helluva exploitation film - maybe one of the purest in this very special, sleazy, bizarre genre. What makes it a lot better than a lot of other similar films is how it suddenly turns around at the end, delivering some very dark, nasty fake snuff scenes. Emanuelle wants to see some real hardcore and her lovers puts on a snuff movie - and then takes her to the set of that place.

Here D’Amato goes for the throat. This is NOT fun, this is violent and nasty and very graphic. A brilliant touch is how he keeps the battered look of the snuff scenes even when Emanuelle is watching it life, to make it both very real - and maybe even just an LSD-hallucination by our heroine. Even if it’s hardly tasteful or well, close to not being arty, I find this to be a great twist during the end - before the even sillier ending, maybe a nod from D’Amato and friends that we shouldn’t take their filmmaking so serious. It’s all fun and games at the end, an illusion.

And it’s during those last twenty minutes Emanuelle in America becomes superior to a lot of other exploitation movies. It dares to provokes us in so many different ways. Mindfucking deluxe. I like that. A lot. .

Mansion of the Living Dead (Jess Franco, 1985)

This is the 55th movie by Jess Franco I've seen, and this means I have between 100-150 to watch, depending who you ask. Franco's films had a tendency to appear under different titles and different versions, so it's hard to say exactly how many movies he directed. IMDB states now 201 flicks, but that could be changed within days. My pal Jocke have talked about Mansion of the Living Dead for a long time. Not that he actually likes it, but more because it's a terrible movie in his eyes. So I had to get it, and thanks to Severin who recently released a nice box with four of Franco's sleazier eighties films the nightmare is now reality, to paraphrase Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City. I've seen it... and what the hell do I think of it? Let's see...

Four German women, among them Lina Romay in her finest wig, arrives to the Canary Islands for a vacation of men, booze and hot lesbian sex. But what the hell, the hotel is completely empty and so is the island itself. Not even a half-naked man on the beach! The only people around is the quite hunky but grumpy hotel portier Antonio Mayans (with blonde hair, very odd!) and an old man who seems to be slightly crazy and not really related to the rest of the story. When one of the women disappears the other just think she's met a man and is porking around somewhere. The secret lays in the strange sect of dead monks with silly, dime store skeleton masks, hanging around nearby in their monastery. Yeah, that's about that I think...

First of all, Lina is very cute in this movie. She's alive, totally packed with energy. She steals every scene she's in. Not saying she's a good actress, but she has the charisma and is the highlight of the film even if her part is mostly walking around naked in a wig, having long conversations with everyone she meets - when she's not involved in almost graphic oral sex with her friends. Antonio Mayans has always been a good actor and he clearly looks odd in his blonde hair, but is not bad in the part.

That's what's good with Mansion of the Living Dead. Oh, there's more I like - there's ideas here and there that feels edgy and original and the movie itself is quite pleasant to watch. The cinematography is alrighty... a bit flat, but it's hard to build something atmospheric from a cheap hotel at the Canary Islands. There's a few sequences set in a hotel corridor where Franco deliberately is using out of focus and uses a more experimental, dreamy visual style. Those are very good, it's Franco when he's inspired and wild. Me like.

But Mansion of the Living Dead is not a good movie. It's close to very uninspired, even lacking much of Franco's trademarks - like zooms and creative use of depth. The shoot itself seems to have been more fun - so maybe the happiness of drinking drinks by the beach and hanging in bars, listening to jazz, took over in the end. Fine by me, I love Jess and Lina - and if they found a way to shoot a movie and have a vacation at the same time, that's just awesome.

Let me throw out a controversial opinion: Mansion of the Living Dead is more of Franco's The Shining than a rip-off on the Blind Dead franchise. It wouldn't be the first eurocult version of The Shining, House of Lost Souls by Umberto Lenzi is another one. The dreamy hotel, the mysterious rooms, the odd people showing up - are they real or ghosts? When people have theories that The Shining is a symbol for the genocide of the American natives, Mansion of the Living Dead more focuses on the Christians genocide on those who had other beliefs or opinions. The hotel they're living in has a German bar (the same country the main cast is suppose to be coming from) - is that a reference to the holocaust, a modern inquisition, who was supported by the Catholic church?

Lina Romay is Jack Nicoholson here, channeling the past and ultimately creating her own doom. She goes after those she love, being one with the doomed building that caught her attention from the beginning...Or that might just be a lot of bullshit. It's just a softcore skinflick trying to be harcore horror...But you'll never know.

Strange things have happen in the world of Jess and Lina.

Doriana Gray (Jess Franco, 1976)

This is probably the first time I’ve reviewed a porn movie on Ex-Ninja… and it’s not any blue movie, it’s one directed by my favorite filmmaker Jess Franco. Like many of Franco’s films there were different versions released for different markets, some with porn inserts, some with less or more violence, some with different actors and storylines. I don’t know what Franco thought about this, but I still think it reflects the notion that film is a living organism. It changes, transforms – for good and bad. What changes was made to Doriana Gray I don’t know, but it clearly feels like the porn – the graphic scenes of masturbation and sex – belongs in the story. Well, story. It’s not much of that, but still it has a lot of that magic only Franco could conjure with his special form of filmmaking.

Lina Romay is Doriana Gray (or Grey, according to some sources), a lonely aristocrat living alone together with her mute butler in a big mansion. She’s a recluse and very hard to get close to, but a journalist – played by a stiff Monica Swinn – manages to get inside and befriends the lonely woman. She has a sister, a twin sister, who lives in an asylum (under a certain Doctor Orloff…). The twin sister is a sexual predator, a nymphomaniac, who lives for sex and with sex. This somehow affects Doriana and the journalist gets more and more drawn into her world of possession and eroticism…

That was hard. But I think I’m kinda correct story wise. It really doesn’t matter, because Doriana Gray is more of poetic (or “pornetic”?) and very intimate showcase for Lina Romay. Lina never really makes a good performance, but she sure has charisma and especially under the eyes of her lover Jess. It really feels like it was shot with Franco and no one else. There’s some stunning footage of Lina just moving around the house, sensually and with the glimmering nightfall sun coming in from behind, and you get that feeling that there’s just them then and now, no one else. Doriana Gray has a lot of these beautiful moments, but I’m afraid they’re shattered by some of the ugliest porn I ever seen.

I mean, I’m happy I’m gay after seeing the stuff going on here. The truth be told, I feel for becoming totally asexual after watching hairy, flaccid dicks getting sucked on by women who clearly don’t want to be there. The big ejaculation scene is just… a failure, like the dick itself didn’t even care if it could jizz or not. Then there are the gynecological close-ups of Lina’s vagina – I promise you, I never seen anyone go sooooooo close to that thing in my whole life. And it’s not the slightest erotic either. Virtually all the sex is bad in this film, and I’m not sure it’s meant to be. I just think Franco stepped over that border that only he could appreciate and gave it as a gift to us innocent bystanders. Thanks Jess, you almost made me impotent.

But if we forget the porn and look at the rest, it’s a damn fine movie. Very Personal and intimate, the way only the Europeans could mix exploitation and arthouse during the seventies. It has beautiful locations, something of a trademark of the director, and in the end a classic Jess Franco production.

The only thing you need to do after watching it is to wash your eyeballs with soap and acid, to get the vagina-cam footage erased from your memory. It might hurt, but it’s worth it. 

The Hot Nights of Linda (Jess Franco, 1975)

Watching Jess Franco talk about movies is the best thing ever. It's like he's slowly waking up from the frail existance he lived in the last years, sitting there with his cigarette remembering small details from one of the 200 feature length movies he directed from the fifties up to his death in 2013. Sometimes the memory need some helps and he yells out for Lina Romay, who's probably sitting the next room smoking, and she appears instantly filling in the facts. Franco was a man who lived in movies, who in his own words had the feeling of movies. That's the reason why he decided to make Lina  star after Soledad Miranda died, they both had the feeling - the awareness of the audience on the other side of the creative process, the chemistry with the camera and Franco and of course the ability to just look through the technoloy and catch our eyes. 

Not all of Franco's movies were masterpieces, but imagine anyone being able to make 200 of those? That's impossible. He was a working man, a filmmaker of jazz and pleasure, someone who had cameras for eyes and printed negatives with his brain. The Hot Nights of Linda was made during his many years with Eurociné, a French production company who probably made some of the worst movies I ever seen, but still created some kind of poetry in the trash they made. Linda was made as a co-production with Spain and Eurociné never showed up on set, which can explain why it's a lot better than some of the other productions Franco made for them. That didn't stop them from taking the movie and - according to Franco - edited into at least ten different movies - including "Just Sex" (which Franco, laughingly adds, must have been just a short movie). 

Alice Arno, who never was that fond of acting, plays Marie-France Bertrand, a young teacher hired to go to the riviery to help a rich widower (Paul Müller) with their two daughters, Linda and Olivia (Catherine Lafferière and Lina Romay). Linda is paralyzed and is cared for by a mute servant, Abdul (Pierre Taylou) and Olivia is revolting against everyone and everything with a very sinister idea of sexual terror, incest and just plain violence. Marie-France is slowly drawn into their games of sex and intrigue, whether she like it or not...

The Hot Nights of Linda was made during a very creative period of Franco's career. He produced masterpiece after masterpiece, often complex erotic dramas with suspense and sometimes dashes of horror. We're talking highly original pieces here, far more intelligent and emotionally charged than you can imagine at a first look. Linda is not the best of the bunch. It feels a bit uneven, especially the first half our or so. The scenes shot in Paris is the usual crappy Eurociné quality, but when it finally arrives to Spain, in Alicante, it suddenly rises in quality. Architecture have always been important in the works of Franco, and here he uses a beautiful by-the-sea mansion in Greek style (an hotel, he says in an interview). Not as spectacular as Ricardo Bofill's houses used in, for example, She Killed in Ecstacy and Countess Perverse, but wonderfully bright and stylish - the perfect place of a really twisted sexual nightmare. 

While I'm not entierly fond of the ending (Lina suggests it was the invention of Eurociné), the biggest flaw is the comedic side story where a clumsy cop with a big mustasche, investigating Müller's alleged murder of his wife) and a sex-crazy female photographer sneaks around the mansion, nagging like an unhappy married couple. Franco added them because he felt the movie would be too dark, but that's probably one of the few stupid ideas I've heard him say. Without those scenes it would have been among the best he's done. 

The Hot Nights of Linda is a dark, complex, sexy suspensful drama with some nudity and some violence. The blu-ray from Severin looks very good, even if the print (probably put together from several sources) isn't the best. As usual the Franco interview included is awesome, that man really knows what he's talking about. The second interview, with him and Lina at the same time, is also conducted in English and is harder to follow. But still interesting - we're talking the greatest couple ever lived here, so just sit back and enjoy what they have to say. 

Also included on the version I have is a hardcore (?) version of the movie, on DVD, but my interest in straight sex is weak as it can get...

....so I leave that to a rainy day when I have absolutely nothing to do ;)

Lorna the Exorcist (Jess Franco, 1974)

In the then newly created ruins of what would soon be the specially constructed paradise for tourists, La Grande-Motte, Jess Franco created yet another of his complex erotic dramas - with hints of the supernatural and deeply rooted incestous themes. Lorna the Exorcist (or Exorcism, Les possédées du diable, Linda etc) is a slightly mistitled chamber play - but set in front of modern architecture, hotel rooms and nightclubs - and once again Franco proves what a master storyteller he was.

Once again, while researching this title - including reading other reviews - it strikes me how many times critics need to focus on the technical flaws of it, but hey.... that's not flaws, that's Franco. That's his style. I'm pretty sure he was fully aware of the out of focus shots, the sometimes sloppy editing  etc etc - but he used it instead of trying to hide it. And yeah, it gives an extra dimension of realism. An edge found in the works of few other directors. It really enhances the dreamlike quality of the visual story. It's like you're there, in the editing room together with Franco, or in the room with Lina screaming her guts out. 

It's Aware Cinema. It's there together with us, the audience.

It's been 18 years since Patrick Mariel (stuntman and actor Guy Delorme) made a deal with the devil, the devil in the form of the witch/succubus Lorna (a mesmerizing Pamela Stanford). From being a poor sucker living with this wife in a simple apartment he becomes a wealthy businessman - and his wife gives birth to a beautiful daughter, Linda (Lina Romay). Now it's time for Lorna to take what's hers according to the deal they made: Linda. But Patrick refuses and soon he's back in her web of demonic possession, and so is his wife and daughter...

Except that overly graphic and uncomfortable sex scenes (which made me even more gay than before!) this is another emtionally smart drama, once again very personal and intimate. Just like only Jess Franco could do it. The cast is one of the best I've seen in this sleazier period of Franco's filmography. Pamela Standford is sensational and actually very disturbing - maybe scary - and Guy Delorme and and Jacqueline Laurent as middle-aged couple is very good. But Lina, slowly transforming from a happy, laughing teenger to a dark, moody, sexual predator is sensational. That last scene will haunt me for a long time...

Howard Vernon also shows up in a very small part, which makes me think he maybe was there to do still photography instead of acting and just did the part for fun - he's good, as usual, but it's a part anyone could have done. 

Often it's hard to describe the genius of Franco, and to those who never found the key to his craftmanship it must be impossible to even comprehend why it's so damn good. I think you, who's still a skeptic, just should stop worrying about the "flaws" and see the whole. There's a reason for everything and Franco used what he got to create exceptional dramas. You will, just like me, try to survive the almost gynecological close-up's of the nasty parts of some of the cast. It's not fun to watch, but somehow I think this movie wasn't meant to be sexy either. It goes beyond shallow things like fucking.

One of our cats, Buster, really liked Lorna also... as you can see down below ;)