Schmollywood Babylon

Eyes Behind the Wall (Giuliano Petrelli, 1977)

How the hell should I describe this one then? Hmm. It’s difficult. The thing is that I didn't know it existed until yesterday when I found a bootleg DVD in a second hand store in Stockholm (I later found out it’s out on DVD in Italy, but with no subs - I’m sure this version from “Video Dimension” is using the same video file, but with added English subs) and I couldn't resist it. It’s hard to define the genre of Eyes Behind the Wall. Some people would say it’s a giallo, and it is kinda… because Italian thrillers is called giallo no matter if there’s a murder or not. But still, it’s more a drama with a touch of thriller and tons of sex and nudity. But with an art house quality and some excellent acting.

Fernando Rey plays an invalid writer, confined to his wheelchair. His slight younger wife Olga keeps him company, but he’s bored because I can’t have his freedom. So that’s why he’s installed an advanced spy cam-thingie in the apartment he’s renting out. This time it’s rugged but still hot stranger John Phillip Law who’s paying the rent. He likes to spend his days working out in the nude and sleep. Rey makes his wife watch the young man, and triggers her into following him, reporting his whereabouts to her husband and soon also making a very personal contact with him. But things get more fucked up than expected…

Wow. What a great movie! I didn’t expect it to be so excellent, a twisted and brave psycho-sexual thriller-drama with some genuine surprises and nude shocks! Maybe I’m out of my league here, but somehow… it could have belonged with the erotic, twisted thrillers of the 90’s - but this one still feels very 70’s and with the same kitschy sets as always. What I love is that there’s no judgement going on here from the old man, he’s defending a sexual adventure his young neighbor experiences to his shocked wife, his open-minded and wants to learn and see. When the final twists comes it’s not as shocking actually, it feels more like completely natural considering the drama we’ve just seen unfolded in front of our eyes.

A the same time the movie is so twisted - only the technical issues with this hidden spy-thingie is right out from an Italian James Bond rip-off, and the twists it takes to show the decandent life of the four people living in this house - and that includes the butler. We see straight sex and gay sex, full frontals and completely without shame. What makes Eyes Behind the Wall such a pleasure is also the absurdly awesome disco scene, probably one of the coolest I’ve seen in an Italian film from the time. It’s both cheesy and genuinely good.

I wish I could tell you everything in this movie - but I can’t! It would be so many spoilers and this is a movie that wants to surprise the audience. But see this in front of you; Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window + Brian De Palma’s Body Double, but with a huge splash of european art house absurdities and the storyline from Fulci’s New Ripper with the husband sending out his wife to fuck unknown men. That kinda describes it okay, but it’s still a unique film of it’s own.

Eyes Beind the Wall is from now on one of my favorite genre films from Italy!

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. .

The Last House On Dead End Street (Roger Watkins, 1977)

This is one movie that has escaped me for the main part of my movie collecting career, so when I found the Barrel release at Stockholms no. 1 video store Monkey Beach a while ago, I of course took the chance to see it and judge by myself! I can understand how this film attracts sleaze monglers and people obsessed by very, very regional and cheap horror films of the seventies. The Last House On Dead End Street is a wannabe Taxi Driver before Taxi Driver was made, mixed with a very gritty 42st cinema approach - badly lit and amateurish acting. This of course doesn’t mean it sucks, far from!

This guy, Terry, is terribly bitter after being in prison once again. So he comes out with a rage towards the society which means he decides to make his own snuff movies and yeah, kill people for the real in front of the camera. He gets a small crew and the start to find their victims…

Its not much of a story to talk about, but it’s strangely effective and artistic. We follow Terry’s struggle to make his first real movie mixed with some truly surreal and strange scenes, both in this movie alone and in the movie-in-movie. Somehow it feels like a nice bunch of New York intellectuals trying to make the sleaziest, grittiest exploitation movie they could make - but never scene. This makes The Last House On Dead End Street almost too cynical for its own best. But it keeps it together until the end - until the unnecessary voice over at the very end. There’s some truly impressive shock scenes - all to the wonderful - no! - MASTERFUL score by...a stock music archive. There’s some use of a low-key, brooding opera during one of the kill scenes that alone makes this movie a lot better than it should be.

At the same time it’s just another exploitation movie, a bit fancier version of Michael Findlay’s Snuff. Those two also share the snuff-myth. The Last House On Dead End Street was made with alias for everyone involved, which started rumours that it was a snuff movie. Roger Watkins, who later admitted to be the director, never really knew until 1979 that it got a cinema release - when someone stopped him on the street, recognize him from the movie. And it’s a grim and very cheap film, with lots of unconvincing gore and boobs and asses and everything in-between. Most of it is quite arty, not sexy (which I’m sure is the deliberately) and entertaining. The short running time of 77 minutes is perfect - I can’t even imagine what the rumoured 175 minute version could have delivered (probably more boring scenes) to its audience!

Surprisingly stylish and freaky, The Last House On Dead End Street is a minor exploitation masterpiece. So if you want to see a man giving blow-job to a hoof and a half-naked woman in blackface being whipped by a retarded hunchback, this IS the movie for you.

Good luck.

Corruption (Robert Hartford-Davis, 1968)

"Oh dear. Oh dear...", I can imagine Peter Cushing utter those words that while watching Corruption for the first time, the without a doubt the nastiest and oddest production in his filmography. How he ended up in this film is a mystery. I mean, just to see him mingle in “Swinging London”-scene is almost more bizarre than seeing him brutally killing naked women to the sound of frantic jazz music.

I first saw this on downloaded version, probably ripped from the Spanish DVD, which actually completely deletes one murder scene and also removes - what I can remember - some more violence and nudity. So I’ve eagerly been awaiting a proper release, a release I could support - and Grindhouse Releasing finally gives us a stellar blu-ray with both the UK/US version and the sleazier and gorier international version.

Peter Cushing plays a stiff but slightly obsessed surgeon who have a beautiful, ex-model, girlfriend. During a wild, tobacco-oozing party where a David Hemmings-wannabe photographer wants to take photos of Cushings girlfriend in the nude, they get into a fight and the hot lamp falls directly on her face… burning her slightly on the cheek. In an old movie like this it means her whole life is destroyed and she can never, never, never show herself in public again… and good old Cushing wants a beautiful wife and needs to kill women to get new and fresh skin.. or whatever… to make his own woman look good.

Yeah, it’s basically a sleazier version of Eyes Without a Face or any film by Jess Franco dealing with a crazed doctor wanting to sex up his wifey. But is it good? Of course it’s good, it’s just so damn strange seeing Peter Cushing wrestling a naked hooker in a seedy hotel room, all shot with the widest lens possible - a trick also used later in the film where Cushing once again brutally (of course) kills a girl in a cramped train cabin, but there the lens is so wide the bodies of the two actors gets even more distorted making it more psychedelic that it was probably first meant to be.

The acting is quite uneven, especially from the supporting cast; it ranges from completely zero interest to over-acting of the worst kind. So we should be grateful the two leads, a restrained Cushing, and Sue Lloyd, who plays his unlucky wife, totally owns the movie. Lloyd is an interesting character for many reasons, and the real controversial thing is her way of emotionally manipulating her husband into killing more and more girls. She’s not the apathetic and comatose woman seen in many other similar movies, she’s in full rage here - using Cushing for her own good. This makes Corruption even more misogynic, and I wonder… is the title meant to the about the corruption of Cushing from his shallow wife? The script almost blames her own condition on herself, for being a “slut” in front of the still camera!

Cushing was a true gentleman and it’s easy to understand his dislike of Corruption - but it’s also strange he didn’t see it when he was reading the script or was shooting the movie? I mean, he actually smears a woman’s naked breast with his bloody hands! It’s hard to be subtle during a moment like that!

Corruption is trash, but it's also bloody, sleazy trasha and it's never boring. The finale is one of a kind and also gives the alternative title "Laser Killer" some back-up. If Cushing had been alive today I seriously doubt he would have wanted to participated in Grindhouse Releasing's new blu-ray edition, but I, for one, is very happy this movie finally has given the treatment it - kinda - deserves. 

(and remember to listen the latest episode of The Human Centipod!)

Women in Cellblock 9 (Jess Franco, 1978)

Have the traumatic experience with the gynaechological adventure of Doriana Gray I've stayed away from Uncle Jess. Not because I didn't like it, I thought it was fine movie, but because I was slightly tired of vaginas up close. The thing is that the Francos I haven't watched here at home now only seem to be sleaze, sex and maybe even porn - so imagine my worries while starting Women in Cellblock 9, the new blu-ray from Ascot Elite. I remember the HD images I saw the last time and I didn't want to experience them again. But I didn't have to worry, this is - compared to Doriana Gray - a Disney movie. Eh, yeah, almost. Except it includes rape, torture, murder and total nudity for most of the running time!

Somewhere in an anonymous South American country four women is captured by the military regime, or at least by two of the regime's executioners - one of them the evil, Evil, EVIL dr Costa (the always excellent Howard Vernon), an expert torturer working under an Ilsa-like female camp leader (sorry, don't can't identify the actress - please help me!). Of course they want the truth from these poor women and starts to torture them in the most hideous way, not counting the psychological terror and rapes! But our heroines plans their escape, and they're gonna use their bodies to get what they want!

I expected something more shitty, actually. To be honest. But I got a quite slick and entertaining piece of sleaze, Smart? No way, but stylish like hell. The only scene that seemed a bit forced in the first one, in the truck, where the dialogue obviously is an afterthought, added on all the clips where you don't see the one talking in frame! I actually don't think the truck driver wanted to be in the picture either, because the only time you see something of his face you can see his eye, looking stressed directly into the camera. Poor guy. But Franco did his best hiding the man anyway. 

Women in Cellblock 9 is a straight man's dream. There's nothing remotely arty with it, nothing personal. Except the end, which is surprisingly downbeat and bleak - which makes it rise above many of the similar movies made at the time. But except that it's just entertainment, trashy, evil entertainment. One detail I noticed was that the guards, which normally is some dudes picked from the streets without any thoughts, looks unusally "cute". I, with my vivid imagination, thinks maybe Howard Vernon had a hand in the casting here. The man was a famous flirter, a very charming man who probably wanted some good-looking men around him for once, to take away the pain with all the nude women! ;)

Far from Franco's best movie, but more entertaining and well-made than I thought it would be. The acting is also quite good - with the casual-looking Vernon leading the talents, but the girls aren't that bad either. As always the location looks like the park behind some hotel in Spain, but I wonder where it was shot? It feels I've seen that "jungle" many times in Franco's films. 

Ah, one thing I noticed. In the English dubbing they actually never see "cellblock", but instead "blockcell". What the hell? Is that even a correct word? :)

Give the blu-ray a shot, I think it's worth it!

The Metafilmic Dreamland of Uncle Jess: Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies (Jess Franco, 2013)

Private dick Al Pereira is dreaming. He's talking in his sleep, waving with imaginary guns. "I'm Al Pereira!" he screams, rolling around in the body we recognize as Spanish actor Antonio Mayans. This is the fourth... or is it the fifth time? Anyway, the umpteenth time Mayans plays Pereira (Eddie Constantine also plays him in Attack of the Robots, from 1966...). And probably the last. Mayans is older, with wrinkles and grey hair. The former so slim man is now a slightly chubby gentleman with a twinkle in the eye.

What follows in Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies is a deconstruction of the career of Franco, much like Jean Rollin did with Night of the Hourglass, one last gasp of insanity. It's also a sharp - and confusing - slaughter of manliness. We have Pereira, who think he can get every women in the world. He loves Chuck Norris and have a strong Christian faith, seeing himself as a sacristan - a "Christian cop", responsible to keep control over what happens in the church. Against him he have a couple of female demons (which just is just a couple of naked women), daughters to Fu Manchu! They want him, but the loath him. They see through, that he's just fake. A racist, misogynist fake. At the end of the movie the camera turns around and Franco sits there, laughing at Mayans who's having a blast dancing and reciting Shakespeare's Macbeth. Franco says "We've just made Pereira look like an asshole, but that doesn't matter".

The world Pereira living in is fake. He's in a movie. He's in a Franco movie, and sometimes he's Antonio Mayans receiving directions from Jess Franco sitting just outside the frame. This is meta, very meta. A couple of times the scene is shot in the front of a mirror, so we can see a very frail Franco sitting there, giving instructions or enjoying the sight. In one scene we're witnessing the rehearsal of a scene, with Franco in the middle of the shot, and the finished scene directly after. Slowly the typical late-Franco style film with endless scenes of naked women showing their pubic hairs a bit too much transforms into a bizarre comedy, a satire over filmmaking, over acting and manliness, religion and sex. Often they've placed the spotlights in the middle of the shot, like Franco tells us he doesn't give a shit. It's not about silly details like that, it's about filmmaking as an art form.

This is a very acquired taste. But if you're in the right mood, this movie will leave you with a huge smile on your face. It's very hard to dislike, especially after Franco leaves the boring nude scenes and tries on some kind of story, fragmented, surrealistic and absurd - but still a story, something that actually can be read and analyzed. Maybe that's not the meaning, but what the hell.

I could go into detail about the bad stuff. Like it's a very cheap film, sloppily made in a good-looking hotel somewhere. Some of the comedy, especially towards the end just doesn't work - but still find it's place in the very absurd last half hour. The nudity in the first part is boring and...boring. But somehow it's become a part of the later career of Uncle Jess, so I guess it belongs there. But still, you have to give it to him that he's never been interested in finding the most gorgeous women. For him a nude woman is enough, even if she's not "perfect" in the eyes of the mainstream audience.

You can say what you want, but this is the best Franco has made in years - and it's also the final movie in his amazing career. I'm probably not the only one who's hair stood up during the last scene, where Mayans turns to the camera and over and over again tries to quote Macbeth - in English and Spanish:

This is a story
told by an idiot
full of sound and fury
signifying nothing.

Camera turns to Uncle Jess.
That's it. That's cut. 

The End.

Sodoma's Ghost (Lucio Fulci, 1988)

I remember when I got Sodoma's Ghost. It was on VHS (can't remember the country or release) and with enthusiasm I put the tape in the player and expected something so good it would blow my mind away - a logical thought when you're young and had been watching all of Fulci's big classics the weeks before. 

Disappointment, to say the least. 

Sodoma's Ghost is sleaze, it's good old nazisploitation with a horror twist. And it's not really a good one either. It's sloppily made and have flat directing. The actors are bad (something I usually blame on the script, but these guys can't act) - except maybe Robert Egon as Willy the Nazi, who have a lot of charisma. The theme - sex orgies at a remote Italian villa and the title references Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - but the similarities ends there. It's basically one of those TV-movies (Ghosthouse, House of Lost Souls, House of Clocks etc) but with a lot more nudity.

Not much happens. The kids come there, meets ghosts, some people die, there's boobs and then everything is over in the crappiest ending since... I don't know when. It's one of those endings that should be forbidden. A slap in the face of the audience. But then... I can't help but feeling entertained. Maybe because I KNOW it's a genius behind the camera, someone who once had great visions, a true storyteller, a visual master. I want to find something good.

It's hard in this movie. Really. I admit that. But you know, I think I found it...

There's something interesting going on during the opening minutes of Sodoma's Ghost. We see everything from the point of view of a simple super 8 camera, gradually we understand it's a wild party and we jump out from the camera and Fulci intercuts his film with the footage filmed by the nazi. After a while the black and white footage shot in the beginning of the movie is screened during the party, making the nazis watch themselves. But soon real stock footage, black & white - just like the super 8 camera - is edited into the scene, airplanes leaving the ground, getting closer and closer. The party, filled with drugs and sex, gets more and more absurd - and Fulci's movie speeds up, just like it's an old movie - but still stays in the movie we're watching (Francis Ford Coppola did a similar thing in Bram Stoker's Dracula). This scene gets crazier crazier until the stock footage airplanes drops a bomb on the party...

This IS a very complex sequence. I'm fully aware that Sodoma's Ghost is the most loathed of Fulci's latter day production - and even I think it's his worst. But here we have something, Fulci is still trying. He have a plan with the scene, he knows what he's doing with the material. It's so damn complicated that I'll fully understand if it goes right over the head of those who hates the film without remorse.

Then you can add to this that he revisits the Sodoma's Ghost set in Nightmare Concert, where he's suddenly drawn in to it all - a TV-photographer who transforms himself into Willy the Nazi, and once again the space and time is bent, but this time from Fulci's own view. Did this meta-experiment bring the idea of Nightmare Concert to Fulci? When a film-in-a-film transforms into the film we're watching, then it's something going on. Someone have been thinking. Someone got tired of making crap and decided to make a movie to end it all, to show the world how he felt about it. 

This movie might be trash, but it's trash with a thought. At least during some moments. Sodoma's Ghost have one important moment, a moment that defines the whole movie. This is the genius of Fulci, he never - NEVER - gives up. 

The Island of the Bloody Plantation (Kurt Raab, 1983)

What's really interesting about The Island of the Bloody Plantation is the background and the people involved... and why the hell they did it! Peter Kern and Kurt Raab wanted to get some money to make their own movies and to once and for all make this happen they decided to make a movie so commercial it would make them rich and they could make whatever movies they wanted to make. So they hooked up with a Philippino producer and a director, hired all their Fassbinder-friends and off they went to the land of... chaos.

When they arrived the Filipino producer was bankrupt. Peter Kern decided to visit the mens room at that moment, started to cry in there... and when he was steady enought to go back he took control over the production - but not until he, Udo Kier and Barbara Valentin figured out a plan to steal the material that was shot by the Filipino director... which they did (it's like a scene from a movie, but you need to hear Kern tell this story yourself). After a lot of problems then could finish the film... and it's without a doubt an oddity.

Somewhere on a tropical island an ex-nazi, Otto Globocnik (Karl-Otto Alberty) rules. He have a lot of female slaves that works for him, and of course a gang of perverted guards. Udo Kier is one of them, Hermano, and he's also the good guy here. He's in love with one of the slaves and wants to free her and the rest from this tropical hell! Insert boobs, sex, some torture, murder and more boobs... and you get the strangest sleaze movie ever made. Mostly because everyone involved is middle-aged gay men (and Barbara Valentin, the ultimate faghag) and it's just made as an experiment.

A very mainstream experiment. The acting is a bit better and there's some interesting details in the scripts, which is the only sign that there's really competent people involved in every part of this movie. But it's bascially a more expensive Jess Franco movie (and it's also edited by Karl Aulitzky - Linda and Bloody moon) with slightly awkward sexual situations with me who obviously doesn't enjoy it to the fullest. It's not really gory - except a body bitten by spiders who look really gruesome - but it's also never boring. It's just such a bisarre movie because of all the friends of Fassbinder doing something they probably never done before - and never done again after this.

Udo Kier is the only one who seems comfortable in the genre - but they others try their best. Karl-Otto Alberty does yet another of his evil nazis and the inclusion of Barbara Valentin as Bloody Olga might be a slightly humorous reference to the Ilsa movies (and maybe Wanda the Wicked Warden - aka Greta aka Ilsa). My personal favorite is Hans Zander, sleazy as few and the one who gets the worst death at the end. Kurt Raab have a lot of fun with his multi-sexual character who considers all his male slaves his childre, but still makes them fuck with the slaves for his pleasure.

The Island of the Bloody Plantation is a lot of sleazy fun, but it's probably most fun for us who have seen all these fantastic actors doing really, really serious stuff before and after. I wonder what Fassbinder would have thought about it?

I'm personally sure he would have loved it!

 

Massage Parlor Murders (Alex Stevens & Chester Fox, 1972)

Today's second Vinegar Syndrome review, this time a sleazy little thriller set in New York called Massage Parlor Murders. It's as good as the title suggests. Four years later it was re-edited and with a slightly new title, Massage Parlor Hookers! The trailer for the original and first version and the sex-version is both on the blu-ray and it's so fun comparing them. It's almost like one of those trendy trailer re-edits from few years back, transforming The Shining to a dramedy and West Side Story to a zombie/demon flick. But back to the actually movie...

Some tough cops prowls the streets in the hunt for criminals. One of them are a regular visitor at a massage parlor, but when one of his favorite hooker is killed by an unknown, sadistic madman, he goes berserk (together with his faithful colleague)! But the killer is always one step ahead and more victims is harvested! Our heroes meets one creep after another and at the same time the body count is rising...

Now this was a fun film. Totally retared, but not badly made and with a fun cast that desperatly tries to imitate the realistic roughness of similar cop movies from the same time. This is obvious a 42nd street answer to The French Connection, with two buddy cops trashing criminals and solving crimes in the hard parts of New York. They even have a long, well-made car chase in the middle of it. What's even more interesting his how it both seems to succeed Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper (in one scene, but still...) and David Fincher's Seven, but instead of the super-stylishness of these two movies, Massage Parlor Murders mores comes of as a colorful, porn-lit, "regional" big city thriller with a lot of nudity. Hard to describe. 

While most set-ups are flat the actors stand out. Not because they're brilliant, but because they're taking their job seriously. Fine character actor George Dzundza plays a small part as "Mr Creepy" and the gritty, dirty exterior locations are awesome. This is one of those movies that's hard to take seriously but looks so good and have a good pacing, making it a pearl of super-cheap exploitation cinema. How's the gruesome parts then? Well, I mean. We're not talking Carlo Rambaldi or Sergio Stivaletti here. The effects are very primitive and the blood look like red color, you know, how it looks in cheaper movies during the 70's - and it's SO charming. What's there's not to love?

Not a movie for the regular movie fan I guess, but for us who's into obscure cinema this is a must. The blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome is insanely good. It looks like a completely new movie trying to come off as newly made retro-style grindhouse movie. The trailer for the first edit of the movie also is also almost too awesome for it's own good!