Girls, Guns and Ghouls

Review of Noble Lady, Bound Vase (1977)

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:49:15 GMT

Also known as:
Kifujin shibari tsubo

Obsession. These pages wouldn't exist without it. To some degree I'm obsessed with cult cinema as a whole, but particular subsets of cinema set me to lying awake at night, my mind spinning on ways to obtain complete collections, on writing that next review, viewing that glorious image once more. I'm obsessed with the works of director Jesus Franco. Russ Meyer. Jean Rollin. With the Blaxploitation genre. Films with Charlton Heston in them. With cinematic muses such as Soledad Miranda and Lina Romay. This paragraph could go on ad infinitum. My latest obsession, something that has been gnawing at my subconscious for some years,and has now boiled to the surface, are the Japanese Nikkatsu S & M films that star Naomi Tani.

That's not to say I want to see every single Nikkatsu film, or every Naomi Tani film. If I had three lifetimes, then maybe yes. I've yet to see a Nikkatsu film that I didn't enjoy though, such as Secret Chronicle, Prostitution Market. It's just that Nikkatsu and Naomi are such a potent combination in my mind, a perfect storm of aesthetics, I just can't turn away. That opening Nikkatsu logo, such a thing of beauty. Then there's Ms Tani herself, a vision in every film. Interestingly enough, and perhaps 'too much information' for you, the S & M scenes don't actually turn me on. It's just the visual artistry woven in with these bizarre plotlines that, I could only imagine, would turn any slightly feminist-minded person away. Always lushly photographed, produced and scored, the films invariably have a sweaty, sick-minded man, spirit Naomi's character away to some secluded place and subject her to various S & M practices, usually involving her being suspended in traditional Japanses rope poses. Eventually she converts to the man's practices and can't return to her old life, sometimes even proving herself the man's superior in perversion.

I can't honestly tell you what's captivated me about these films. I can only defend them on the sensuous beauty that's being captured on film, the poetry of the landscapes and music. Each one has a different setting. Sometimes ancient Japan, sometimes contemporary, sometimes during the world wars. I don't know a whole lot about Japanese culture per se, so I'm not about to launch into a criticism of their cinema or their predilections. I guess it's just some sort of instinctive thing - I don't know much about art but I know what I like, if you get my drift. So if women being subjected to stylised torture in a film is inherently offensive to you, I suggest you don't continue reading this review. Now, to tonight's film, which is actually quite nasty and it's protagonists have very little redeeming features. It's certainly a perverse outcome at the end and one that would alienate most decent-thinking folks, especially women! Be warned, I'm going to give away the ending, as it's so integral to an understanding of the film.

As the subtitles told me, we're in the early Showa era, 1928. It's lovely hilly countryside in Japan where we meet Namiji (Tani), wife of a rich farmer. Namiji is his wife because her father risked the family's money, and lost it all. Her father sold her to this course, abusive man who gloats at this 'noble lady's fate. The first time we see them together he is tying up the passive Namiji and having rough sex with her. We also realise one of the young farm helpers, Shinkichi, is in love with her but dare not reveal his feelings. The farmer's younger sister shows up for a holiday, chauffered in a Rolls-Royce so we know for sure this is a rich family. They way these two behave together there's obviously an incestuous history between them. The farmer basically molests Namiji in front of everyone, to which his sister only laughs. After more rough sex with the farmer and Namiji, Shinkichi is seen running a letter to the city for her. He delivers it to a young doctor in the city and returns. Later the farmer's sister tries to seduce Shinkichi but the simple, virginal man is inept and runs away. Unfortunately for Namiji, she also spots Shinkichi delivering a package to Namiji, and what is behind it all.

The next scene is Namiji, basically hog-tied, being beaten by the farmer and his henchmen with a bamboo pole. The farmer interrogates Namiji about her 'boyfriend' and confronts her with a lock of hair found in the parcel. Later, The farmer's sister visits the tied-up Namiji and Shinkichi, cutting the rest of her clothes away and forcing her to urinate in front of them. The sister laughs and skips around with glee. She's the equal of the farmer in the sadism stakes. Her husband shows up but is mainly ignored by his disdainful wife. They drag him to Namiji and Shinkichi's cage - yes, they're now in a cage - to view the spectacle. Namiji is now in a set of stocks and the farmer torments his wife with the prospect of either burning the lock of her boyfriend's hair or having sex with Shinkichi. Reluctantly, Namiji agrees to have sex with Shinkichi on the condition she orgasms in ten minutes. Shinkichi tries to pleasure the hapless woman but fails, so the farmer has one of his indentured helpers penetrate her with a dildo.

More torture awaits. The drunken farmer parades Namiji and Shinkichi naked on a horse, saying they're lucky they're doing this in private and not in public, as would have been done to adulterers in the Edo period. Next, Namiji and Shinkichi are crucified - without the nails - in the farmer's garden as the tormentors take tea. Surpisingly, Namiji's bespectacled boyfriend turns up to rescue her. The farmer is shocked but excited at causing suffering to him too. The farmer has one of his lackey's cut off Namiji's underwear which causes great hilarity for the farmer and his sister, for some reason. They laugh that Namiji has a 'monkey's vagina' but the boyfriend says he loves her and would be 'an animal' for her. The farmer then shrieks that they'll have a 'monkey's wedding' in celebration.

After a mock wedding, to which the farmer's invited dozens of drunken local men, the men watch througha gap in the door as the boyfriend tries to make love to Namiji. He finds to his horror that her 'vase' has been tightly bound with rope and he can't do a thing about it. The farmer and his lackeys then drag Namiji outside in the pouring rain, tie her to a pole and start to ravish her. The weak boyfriend gives up under the onslaught of the crowd. The farmer's sister, aroused by the spectacle, sneaks into Shinkichi's cage and demands sex for his release, but her equally aroused husband follows her there slaps her around, demanding respect and has forceful sex with her. The perverse woman is finally fulfilled. Shinkichi sneaks out into the rain, cutting Namiji's bonds and injuring the farmer in the process. The farmer's sister is disappointed in her brother's hysterical, grieving reaction to his wife leaving. Shinkichi and Namiji escape into the countryside and make love in a barn. After a tender moment of afterglow, Shinkichi is horrified when Namiji spots some rope asks him to tie her up. After pleading with her to stop, he flees in disgust and bewilderment.

Namiji returns to her brutish animal of a husband, now distraught with loneliness and longing. Overjoyed at her return, he has now become quite tender and loving. He drapes a kimono over her shoulders, and asks if he can burn the lock of hair now. Namiji quietly agrees. Hair burned, they begin their new life together. Shinkichi runs through the hills toward town, and a new freedom. We end the film with the sight of two monkeys tied together in what was once Namiji's cage.

Well. What can I say about the plot of Noble Lady, Bound Vase? A woman is sold into an exploitative marriage by an uncaring father, treated badly by her jailor/partner and despite having the chance to escape, returns to him. The snaggle-toothed, boorish bad guy 'gets the girl.' The farmer does basically everything wrong by Namiji and still wins her love, or at least presence, in the end. Although we get the feeling she would have stayed with Shinkichi if he'd gone along with her newly-found 'needs.' Earlier in the film we see a subtle hint of Namiji's sensuous experience of being bound the way she fingers her bindings. So perhaps Namiji learns to love a masochistic lifestyle rather than a man, and will leave him at some stage - who knows? Look, I can't try to defend what this film depicts, it's storylines and values. By most standards of 2010, they're wrong in every sense. Still, I have to relay to you, gentle reader, that Noble Lady, Bound Vase is a work of art. Green hills, flowers, drops of water falling from roofs, gentle flute music playing. Vibrant, colourful costumes, the setting of the farm and warm interiors. This is not some cheap pornographic film, made in someone's basement. This is a beautifully made piece of wide-screen cinema. I'm sure there's a lot of symbolism that I don't pick up on, but I don't really care, it's a visual feast to let wash over you, if you let it. There does seem to be a running theme of monkeys throughout, as they often pop up in the film.

Of course, Naomi Tani's the main focus of the film, and she carries it well. Naturally she's physically beautiful with a voluptuous body and perfect face, but the woman has acting chops as well. We do get a sense of her confusion and inner turmoil, as she suffers, but a fragment of her enjoys, her horrible husband's treatment. The actor playing the farmer, and the actress playing his perverse sister, are also excellent in their roles, skipping and jumping in demonic glee, at each new indignity they heap on poor Namiji. The change of heart in the farmer, right at the end, is a bit abrupt and unbelievable, but it certainly gives the actor the chance to show a different side of his character. It's interesting to see his expression change from a mask of joyful malice, to a soft face that's actually quite kind. The boyfriend is also good at conveying his goodness but ultimate weakness, when he gives up on defending his love. Director Masaru Konuma is to be commended in exploring these different aspects of human nature and producing quite a potent cauldron of love, lust, sadism, envy and grief. The cinematography of the film is also splendid, with glorious close-ups of faces in all kinds of states, to exploring the rural expanse and mountains of Japan. This is one director who loves nature.

To sum up, I won't recommend Noble Lady, Bound Vase to any but the most open-minded of cineastes out there. On my own terms, I enjoyed it as a filmic experience, and it certainly adds fuel to my Nikkatsu/Naomi Tani obsession.

Obsessions � they can drive you mad, or drive you to create. Fingers crossed creativity wins for the time being!

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.

Review of Jesus Franco's Exorcism

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:13:42 GMT

Jesus Franco has contributed countless hours of entertainment to the pantheon of cult cinema. Though not on the level of artistic merit of his Succubus or Venus in Furs, Exorcism is still extremely fun to watch and possibly the only time where the man himself takes centre-stage as the main character. And what a character he is. Franco's insane, defrocked priest Vogel, is a memorable nutter for the ages. For those of you who like female flesh on display, Exorcism must be the ne plus ultra of the naked-women-hanging-in-chains genre. I think most of the film's budget went at the local hardware store with all the chains on view! Franco's muse Lina Romay also features, and is her usual uninhibited self. Let's take a look at the film and see if any actual exorcisms take place.

The first scene is our Lina hanging naked on a flimsy cross in some kind of dungeon as another blonde woman, virtually naked but for tiny leather straps, begins to torture her. A group of lascivious bystanders sit around the room and watch with interest and arousal. A few light whips and nail-scratches later, and the mysterious woman then beheads a white dove and drains the blood into a ceremonial goblet. I'm not a big fan of animal cruelty in films, and thankfully that is the last we see of such things in tonight's film. The woman forces her victim to drink the blood and then begins seducing her into satanic delerium. Finally, a knife is drawn and poor little Lina is stabbed to death. Or is she? We soon see that it's all a bizarre nightclub act as the two women laugh, and hold hands at the crowd's applause.

The owner of the nightclub, Pierre de Franval (Pierre Taylou) also publishes Venus Magazine, an underground paper which Mathis Vogel (Franco) contributes sado-masochistic stories for. One day Vogel meets Pierre at his office to submit a new story, and the awkward man meets his friend Anna (Romay) who was performing last night at the club. The topic comes up about how Vogel is a defrocked Catholic priest. Vogel confirms this. After a few socially inept moments the clearly uncomfortable author leaves, but not before overhearing about how Pierre and Anna are going to stage a 'black mass' in the near future. Of course, it's all for laughs, but the obsessed ex-priest only hears the black mass part. The stage is set for the mayhem to ensue. Suspicious and becoming obsessed with Anna, Vogel rents an apartment next to hers, and spies on her and Martine (Catherine Lafferiere), Anna's partner from the 'performance' at the nightclub. He goes into sweaty raptures as he watches Anna and Martine in naked Sapphic embraces.

Dejected and lonely, Vogel goes into a bar late at night and picks up a prostitute. They quickly go back to his real place, a mansion in the city, which even has a private chapel. Things become tense as Vogel's judgement of her sins begins to come to the fore. Mockingly, the girl mentions something about a 'black mass' she's been taken to. Vogel goes berserk, dons some priestly vestments and chains the naked girl up. Claiming he's going to exorcise her, he tortures and kills her with a knife - not before extracting a confession as to where the next black mass is going to take place. Vogel turns up and horrified, watches the debauchery. Hanging upside down, a naked woman has her crotch stabbed by the presiding Satanic Queen known as 'The Countess' (France Nicholas), flanked by Anna and Martine in bondage outfits. Vogel flees in digust. Later the master of ceremonies introduces the victim, very much alive, to the crowd in attendance, who then proceed to have a soft-core naked orgy.

Vogel then tracks down, and enters the house of the Countess and her rich husband. He subdues the man with chloroform and kills the sleeping woman, Franco giving us a gore scene as he disembowels her. He then stabs the unconscious man to death. In the meantime a police inspector is on the case of the murders, Inspector Tanner (Olivier Mathot) but questioning a local thug gets him nowhere. He then questions Pierre, and begins to get somewhere. He tells Pierre that Vogel is actually an escaped lunatic from Germany, as well as an ex-priest. Meanwhile we're treated to an S & M scene where the master of ceremonies is revealed to be a masochist who likes to be treated like dirt by his mistress when having sex. When he leaves Vogel enters the room and kills her. Still obsessed with Anna, he visits her at night, chloroforms and drags her back to his mansion. He claims to love her and not want to kill her - even though he's going to 'exorcise' her of Satan's influence. Pierre and Martine, now lovers, sense something is wrong when Anna disappears for a couple of nights. Vogel is doing his exorcism rite with Anna, who is now naked and hanging in chains at his mercy. When Vogel visits Pierre again at the office, he believes he can draw the lunatic out and rescue Anna. He tells Vogel about the black mass he's staging that night. Vogel flees the office in a lather, not before saying he'll be there. Inspector Tanner investigates Vogel's house but is ambushed by the maniac, knocked out and left for dead.

Back at the nightclub, Martine leads the faux-satanic mass this time, and motions to 'kill' another victim but Vogel gets to her first and as Pierre screams, kills her. Vogel flees with Pierre in hot pursuit. Vogel returns to his home, unties the still-living Anna and flees with her in a clapped-out car. The now-recovered Tanner and Pierre corner him finally, and Tanner pulls a gun. Firing a warning shot - with a weaker-sounding 'bang' than my old cap-gun could make - Anna's fate will be determined by who has the stronger will, the lunatic ex-priest or the force of the law ...

Well folks, if you were looking for projectile vomiting, spinning heads or levitation you'll be sorely let down by Exorcism. In fact, this film is not about exorcism at all. Appearing under many titles and I gather, many different versions - there's hardcore variants out there as well - this is pure sleaze and exploitation all the way, Jess Franco style. as well. With an insistent 'Vogel' theme weaving it's way through the film by Daniel White and constant cutaways to swans, birds and scenery it's unmistakably a Franco film and all the better for it. I'm not exactly sure where the film is set though. The killings nudge the film into the horror zone, especially the Herschell Gordon Lewis-like disembowelling of the Countess. Nonetheless, the main reason for this film to exist is to show naked women being whipped, scratched, smeared with blood, made love to, indulging in orgies, being dominatrixes and being kidnapped and ravished. With an obviously small budget Franco does well with his sets, and seems to have access to an endless supply of castles and mansions. It is Europe, I guess.

Franco does well in his central role as Vogel, one moment fierce, murderous and righteous, the next world-weary, the next crying and gibbering at the thought of 'exorcising' the one he loves, Anna. I don't know of many instances where Jess took the lead role, usually he just plays simpleton bit-parts or cameo victims. He certainly can carry a film but whether he could have taken a heroic role is anyone's guess. Lina Romay is as cute and uninhibited as ever, and while she doesn't have the presence of Soledad Miranda - who does? - her energy, sexual presence and enthusiasm is a high point of many a Franco film and Exorcism is no exception. The rest of the cast are adequate but it's Jess and Lina that carry the proceedings. The bumbling inspector characters don't really add anything during the main part of the film but do cause the chase which concludes it, so I guess they have some relevance in the end.

To finish up, if you enjoy Franco's films and the atmosphere he creates, you'll get something out of this one, there's nothing surer. If you're anti-Franco or even fifty-fifty, this one won't convert you. It's roughly made, nonsensical at times and wall-to-wall sleazy. I'm sure you can tell I'm on the pro-Franco side and I adored Exorcism. Definitely recommended.

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.

Review of Altered States (1980)

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:31:00 GMT

Sometimes out of conflict great things spring forth. Writer Paddy Chayefsky, who penned the original novel of Altered States in 1978, ended up removing his name from his screen adaptation - leaving his real name, Sidney Aaron - after creative conflict with director Ken Russell. Yet Russell's vision is at times amazing, controversial, confronting and memorable. True to the Russell pantheon in it's visual excess, yet Altered States benefits from Chayefsky's literate script which strikes me as being quite accurate in capturing how quite a lot of academics would talk. With standout performances from all involved, a fascinating story and makeup effects from one of the original masters, Dick Smith, this is a film to own and watch. Please be warned of spoilers, as I'm going to do the full plot in this review.

Eddie Jessup is a searcher, looking for a universal truth. Whether it's God or the original self, it doesn't matter. As a university professor of abnormal psychology, Jessup is studying schizophrenia in the late sixties, and consequently begins to be drawn into studying other states of consciousness. He's single-minded and introverted, but brilliant and has the respect of his colleagues, some of which are his friends. When we first meet him he's floating in a sensory-deprivation tank, intrigued by the hallucinations he encounters in his already fevered brain. His research is about to take a radical and dangerous turn. At a university party, Eddie (William Hurt's first film role) meets Emily (Blair Brown) a pretty doctoral candidate of physical anthropology. She can tell he's weird and intense, but is strongly drawn to him. After they've made love in quite an erotic scene, Emily asks Eddie what he's thinking about. He says that he sees visions of Christ on the cross when having sex. Eddie tells her about his belief in God, before his father died painfully of cancer. When they both get teaching positions at Harvard, Emily suggests they get married. He eventually agrees, but can't seem to show her the love she shows him unconditionally.

Moving forward to 1974, Eddie and Emily, now with two daughters, are separating. All Eddie's idea, as we find out from his scientist friend Arthur Rosenburg (Bob Balaban) as Emily still loves him just as much. However, Jessup is so utterly focused on his theories and investigations, that he must remove himself from his family and all responsibilities to progress further. The driven Eddie is heading to Mexico to track down a mushroom ceremony held by a tribe of Mayan descendants. After they cut his hand and put his blood into the mixture, Eddie drinks it and has incredibly strong hallucinations, viewing three-eyed goats being crucified, his father suffering and he and Emily naked, tuning to stone and blowing away in the wind.

Taking the mixture back to Boston, Jessup resumes the isolation tank experiments with Arthur helping him again. This time, he injects the potent hallucinogen to amplify the isolation tank effect. As Arthur listens, Eddie talks about regressing to a primal proto-human state, where he is hunting and killing a goat. At one stage, a guttural growl is heard from the tank, and Eddie is brought out with blood on his mouth. Not only that, but X-rays and blood tests show temporary simian characteristics such as an ape-like skull, which get Jessup even more excited! Emily comes back from an anthropology trip, still in love with Eddie and concerned that he's cracking up. His genetic structure altered by his awakened primal memories, Eddie begins to experience physical changes even at home, his arms and brow swelling and his feet becoming ape-like, then reverting back. Undaunted, Eddie tries the experiment again, and this time comes out completely physically changed by the hallucinations, emerging as a small ape-like man, played by a smaller actor named Miguel Godreau. The ape-man goes on a rampage, brutally beating two guards at the laboratory and ending up at the zoo, killing and eating a small antelope before falling asleep and reverting to Jessup, whom the police subsequently discover.

Emily retrieves Eddie from the police station, deeply concerned about his mental state. She needs him back in her life but he insists on another submersion in the tank, along with a new dose of the hallucinogen. Watched by Emily, Bob and the skeptical Mason Parrish (a histrionic Charles Haid) Jessup begins the experiment anew and this time, after a few minutes of seemingly nothing happening, he begins mutating again, this time into something even before an ape-man. A sort of formless, screaming, embryonic shape, emitting huge amounts of energy. Bob and Mason drag Emily out of the room but are knocked unconscious by the bizarre events taking place in the lab. Emily revives and re-enters the room to find Jessup replaced by a quiet whirlpool cloud of protoplasmic energy, from the beginning of existence. Emily wades into it's center and maintaining her grasp on humanity, pulls Eddie out of it and back to reality.

Later Mason and Bob argue over the experiment and it's ramifications for the scientific world, while Emily seems to be heading for an hysterical nervous breakdown. She takes Eddie home but they make love off-screen. Jessup describes that the beginning of existence, that he experienced finally in the experiment, is empty, lifeless and indifferent. That he realises now that only human life matters, and what we make of it. Despite his revelations, Eddie claims he can't control the experiment and the pull of the abyss he's created. He begins to change again into the glowing, embryonic Eddie creature. Emily rushes to embrace and help him, but contact with this being causes her to transform into a being of pure, fiery energy that is obviously in pain. Eddie, still retaining his mind, smashes his one arm - the other had disappeared into his blob-like body - into a wall, over and over again in an attempt to regain his humanity. His human self flickers through the creature and finally after much effort, Jessup is himself again. He embraces Emily and they briefly both turn into a glowing ball of energy before becoming naked and human again. Eddie tells Emily he loves her, finally giving her the affection she craves, and very much deserves.

Long a cult film, Altered States didn't do too well at the box office originally. Being neither a Star Wars-type science fiction piece or pure horror, Eddie's journal is pretty cerebral and inward-looking until the pretty straightforward, sentimental message of the end. I guess that could have turned quite a portion of the paying audience away, back in the day. Still, there's much to enjoy here. Performance-wise, Hurt and Brown are excellent and they both convey scientists passionate about their own quests. Emily is also passionate about Eddie, and Blair Brown brings across her single-mindedness about him that even baffles her. Even though we have moments of subtle drama, you know it's a Ken Russell film when Jessup hallucinates scenes of naked bodies falling into a fiery Hell, multiple-eyed goats lashed to crosses and naked statues being blown to dust by a howling wind. The final lightshow that depicts his descent into the moment existence began is nice to watch, being quite abstract and kaleidoscopic. Dick Smith's makeup work is fantastic, I particularly like the ape-man Jessup becomes, who is actually quite fearsome with his primal rage, as played by Miguel Godreau. Eddie's more primal, blob-like self is obviously well-done, but because of the glow given it by the special effects team, much of the detail Smith would have put it in is lost. Still, the glow is part of the story, the primal energy of creation, so we need to have it seen. I have read some criticism of the film's ultimate ending - that after all Eddie Jessup's searching, he just ends up with the answer of 'Love is all you need' essentially. I found it a nice emotional pay-off after all of Emily's suffering. Perhaps in some ways Altered States, at it's core, is an elaborate and distinctly oddball chick-flick. This is coming from someone who enjoys the occasional chick-flick, by the way. The wayward rogue finally sees the error of his ways and brings true love to our heroine. So what if he needs an isolation tank, and a potent hallucinogen to do it?

If you like your science fiction literately written and well-made, yet still with a vein of human warmth running through it, I can definitely recommend Altered States. The flamboyance of Ken Russell, and the detail and articulation of Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay merge into a nice balance that withstands the test of time. Well worth a re-view!

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.

Review of Quest for Fire (1981)

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:58:21 GMT

I love a good prehistoric adventure film, and Quest for Fire would have to be the best of what is admittedly a fairly small genre. As a cinematic work of art it delivers on most fronts, being made with care and detail. Yet, you could come at it from a purely exploitation point of view and enjoy the gore and prehistoric sex scenes. So there's no way to lose with this one. It's the film I've enjoyed the most in recent years and I hope I can convey that enjoyment in this review, and encourage folks to track it down and give it a look. An adaptation of a 1911 novel by J. H. Rosny, Quest for Fire is a French-Canadian-U.S. co-production directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud with an invented language by Anthony Burgess.

The film is set in Europe about eighty thousand years ago, in the Paleolithic age. We're mainly concerned with the Ulam tribe, a group of Neanderthals struggling to survive in a hostile world. They have yet to learn the ability to make fire, and rely on a few smoking embers kept alight by devoted carers. When this fire dies out they must go out and find it as it occurs in nature or steal it from another tribe. An attack by a more primitive tribe of ape-men, the Wagabu, leaves the Ulam without fire and depleted numbers. Further hunted by wolves, the remaining tribe-members retreat to a swampy area and send their best, Naoh (Everett McGill), Amoukar (a recognisable Ron Perlman, pre-Hellboy) and Gaw (Nameer El-Kadi) out into the wilderness to find more fire. As soon as they set out they're on the run from sabre-toothed tigers - all three of them spending days stuck high in a tree - and eventually encounter the Kzamm, a group of red-headed Neanderthals who have resorted to becoming cannibals in order to survive, something the Ulam refuse to do. However, the Kzamm have fire, so Naoh, Amoukar and Gaw stage a scene, pretending to be berserk warriors and lead some of the Kzamm away. In doing so they also allow two of the cannibal cavemen's victims to escape, although one of them has already had his arm cut off so he probably doesn't last too long. Naoh is involved in a brutal battle with one of the cannibals and kills him not before having his privates nastily bitten.

Later, when the group escapes, they're followed by the female prisoner of the Kzamm who survived, Ika, (Rae Dawn Chong) of the Ivaka tribe. The Ivaka tribe are Homo Sapiens, Cro-Magnons of the era who cover themselves in full body-paint and are the most advanced of the humans in the film. They have pottery, can make fire and spear-throwers. With her fellow tribesman probably dead, Ika wants protection from the less-threatening, and non-cannibal Ulam men. At first they throw rocks at her to make her go away, but she persists. Eventually, she soothes Naoh's genital pain by applying a herbal poultice and giving him fellatio! So a bond of sorts is formed. The group encounters the Kzamm again but this time it's in the proximity of a herd of woolly mammoths (nicely dressed-up elephants). The cowardly Kzamm are frightened of the huge animals but Naoh shows no fear and gives one food. The Ulam men and Ika make their way through the herd and escape. Later at night, Amoukar attempts to have sex with Ika but she rejects him and moves closer to Naoh, who rapes her, doggy-style, in front of the two men to show his dominance.

The next day Ika discovers her tribe and beckons the three men to follow her. They can't understand her language though and need to get back to the Ulam. The next morning she's gone and Naoh is mysteriously upset. He leaves Amoukar and Gaw behind and tries to track her down, ending up the prisoner of the Ivaka after falling into quicksand. They laugh at and mock him, but eventually decide to use the powerful man as breeding stock and try to mate him with a chubby Ivaka woman. They show him how to make fire by twirling a stick into a piece of wood, and accept him as one of them, covering with their traditional body paint. Amoukar and Gaw are also trapped in the quicksand and mocked by the Cro-Magnons, including Naoh, who has learned how to laugh. Earlier in the film a rock drops on Gaw's head and Ika laughed uproariously, but the others have never laughed before. Eventually the captive Ulam escape and knock Naoh unconscious, to drag him away. Ika follows, being attached to the Ulam man.

The group of four then have to fight several renegade Ulam, who try to steal their fire. Gaw had been previously injured by a bear and was carried by Amoukar, but they defeat their enemies with spear-throwers supplied to them by the Ivaka. Resting in a cave, Naoh begins to have sex with Ika in the usual doggy-style but she shows him how to make love face-to-face and become more intimate. Sometime later Gaw is hit by yet another rock in the head and the whole group laughs. Eventually reunited with the Ulam, Ika shows them how to make fire the traditional Ivaka way, which is greeted with great jubilation. Ika is accepted into the tribe and we see that she is pregnant with Naoh's child, as he caresses her belly while they gaze at the full moon.

There's so much to like about this film. The performers bring their all to their roles, and we don't need to understand their guttural languages to understand their emotions and motivations. Ron Perlman particularly brings an ape-like quality to Amoukar, you can still see the simian instincts coming out now and then, especially when he's angry or sexually frustrated, poor guy! Rae Dawn Chong is a delight as the chattering Ika, both on the eyes as she's naked most of the time, and as the character as well. Without Ika there'd be no story as contact with her brings a new level of humanity to our rag-tag group of cavemen and nudges them to learn new things. She's a very cute person! Everett McGill as Naoh brings a bravery and nobility to his Neanderthal character, which I guess we and Ika are meant to respond to. Gaw is a lesser character, mainly to provide comic relief but it works this time, as laughter is an essential plot development. Scenically Quest for Fire is a gem, bursting with grand panoramas of countryside and forests. The music by Philippe Sarde is soaring and moving, complementing the various moods of the film with aplomb. The makeup effects, ranging from gored bodies and severed limbs to scarred apemen, saber-toothed tigers and mammoths, all work well, although the tribe of ape-like Waguba could probably have done with some more flexibility in their faces. A minor quibble.

It's nice to watch some key milestones happen for ancient humanity, such as laughter, fire and lovemaking. Whether any of it is historically accurate doesn't really matter, it's still an effective cinema experience, expertly directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. There is the theory that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, and that's where we got our red hair from. So who knows? I just know there's a wealth of fine elements in this film to enjoy and being set so far back in the past, Quest for Fire isn't likely to date anytime soon!

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.

Review of One Dark Night (1983)

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:02:50 GMT

The Eighties. Big hair. Leg warmers. Drum machines. It's an era that's been curiously neglected in these pages but as I get older, I seem to be warming to this era of cinema more and more. One Dark Night is a nice little example of the eighties look at least, without wading into the excesses of gore and sex that some films of this time explore. And let's face it, any film that has telekinetically-levitated rotting corpses, Batman's Adam West and Pee Wee's Big Adventure's Dottie (Elizabeth Daily) on the same screen has to be worth a view. It also has one of the earliest appearances of Meg Tilly, if there are any Tilly fans still out there.

Six girls have been murdered and crammed into a closet in famous occultist Karl Raymarseivich Raymar's apartment. Knives and utensils pierce the walls and Raymar, as he was known, is dead, his death mystifying the police as they carry the corpse away, sparks shooting from his fingers. Meanwhile back at high school, Julie Wells (Tilly) wants to join an elite club called 'The Sisters', comprised of blonde Carol (Robin Evans) Leslie (Daily) and Kitty (Leslie Speights). These girls are a group of snobs and Julie wants to prove herself to them, sick of being considered a goody-two-shoes 'good girl'. To make matters even more complicated, her boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels) used to go out with the bitchy Carol. Carol wants to teach Julie a lesson, and convinces her to stay the night in the local mausoleum as an initiation into the club.

In a side-plot we meet Raymar's estranged daughter Olivia (Melissa Newman) who just happens to be married to Adam West! Well, he's playing a down-to-earth character called Allan. At the same mausoleum where Julie's going to spend the night, Olivia mourns her father Raymar, even though she never met him. Some time later she's visited, against Allan's wishes, by a friend of her father's, a weird white-haired man called Samuel Dockstader (Donald Hotton) who explains that they worked together on occult experiments in the past. However, Raymar delved into darker and darker territory and became a psychic 'vampire', gaining powers of telekinesis by kidnapping young girls, terrorizing them, and feeding off the bioenergy they produced. Allan is skeptical but Olivia believes him.

'The sisters' drop Julie off at the mausoleum and give her a torch without a globe and and a couple of Demerols in case she cannot fall asleep. Leslie thinks they're going too far when she hears they're going to go back and scare the pants off Julie. Carol banishes Leslie from the group and eventually Steve runs into Leslie and hears about their heinous plan. He drives off to intercept Carol and Kitty. The other two girls are donning fright masks, throwing around disembodied hands and beginning their campaign of terror against Julie. Agitated by the demerols, Julie freaks out and hides under some pews. Raymar's still-sentient corpse is beginning it's own mission of horror, though. Psychic vampire that he was, Raymar's undying soul telekinetically levitates the cadavers of the mausoleum and begins terrorising Julie's two persecutors. Coffins slowly slide out of their chambers, and rotting figures float out of their chambers and towards the two girls. Eventually the screaming girls are surrounded by the hideous things and buried under a mound of decaying bodies, seemingly suffocating.

Olivia, seemingly on some kind of psychic instinct about the mayhem her late father's creating, arrives at the mausoulem. She finds Steve, who in turn is trying to find his girlfriend. They enter the chamber where Raymar resides, to find the sparking, glowing-eyed corpse has levitated itself out of it's coffin, and is draining the motionless Julie of her life essence. Can Raymar's long-lost daughter save the day, or while this remaining trio suffer the same fate as 'The sisters' and be squashed by a horde of floating cadavers?

If you're looking for sex and gore, you won't find it in One Dark Night. This is a subtle(ish) work as directed by Tom McLoughlin. The lighting and menacing music both add creepiness and the floating corpses are an effective, different touch. We're not talking zombies here. There's no life in these dead things, and they all represent different stages of decay. They're just the puppets of Raymar's vampiric spirit, which still seems to live on in it's shell in the mausoleum. The performances are all pretty stilted, but I didn't have high expectations in that area and that was fine. Elizabeth Daily doesn't convey any charm as she did in her "Dottie" days, and even Adam West is pretty nondescript in his skeptical husband role. There's no Batman to the rescue this one dark night! In the end I just wanted atmosphere which was delivered by the shadow-filled mausoleum and nicely-done makeup effects. Tom Burman and company have a nice sense of what an animated corpse would really look like and I was even slightly disturbed by a few closeup scenes, which is saying something. Raymar's fate at the hands of his daughter - I'd better not say much more - is quite startling and probably the closest the film comes to a gore scene. I didn't know makeup mirrors could have so many uses!

As the years pass the films of the eighties form a more nostalgic glow to me, and will probably feature more often in these pages. One Dark Night's a nice example of the era and I can quite recommend it for those who enjoy mood and shadow as much as splatter and exploitation.

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.

Review of Lady, Stay Dead (1981)

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:01:48 GMT

As an Australian I feel kind of duty-bound to cover what I can of our cult-cinema output. Well, that duty has tonight led me again into the land of director Terry Bourke. After the fiasco that is Inn of the Damned I was a bit hesitant to delve there again, but memories of reading about Lady, Stay Dead in Starlog magazine many, many a year ago re-ignited my curiosity. And in the end, this entry in the semi-slasher-thriller pantheon isn't really all that bad. It doesn't go as far as some dark horrors such as I Spit on Your Grave or Maniac, but we do get to spend some quality time with a sweaty, deluded loon for most of the film's running time.

Pretty singer/actress Marie Coleby (Deborah Coulls) has a charmed, affluent life in Sydney. She lives alone in a beach-side mansion with her dog and doting neighbour, old Billy Shepherd (Les Foxcroft) helps her out from time to time. She also has a penchant for swimming in the nude - via a body double, I suspect - in her luxury pool. We then met her gardener, the bearded Gordon Mason (Chard Hayward). Our first introduction to Mister Mason is in women's undies, embracing and muttering to a life-size doll in bed. By the looks of the photos on his wall, we quickly understand that Mason is obsessed, in a distinctly unhealthy way, with Marie. Marie continues to go on her bitchy way, oblivious, although she is nice to old Billy. During a photo-shoot at her mansion, Marie yells at Mason to clean up the mess left behind. Later she lets Billy know she's going on a trip for a while, and that her sister will be coming to mind the house and dog. Going to exercise at the beach, she doesn't realise Mason's watching her from afar, masturbating at the sight of his obsession doing stretches while he imagines images of naked women being tied up, or fondling themselves.

Later as Gordon is doing some chainsawing, Marie berates him for making noise while she's on the phone, and also commands him to take some rubbish with him. As she prepares to leave for the airport, she doesn't realise that Gordon's entered the house. He's offended at being talked to like a child. She screams at him to get out, and that he's an idiot for bringing mud into the house. Gordon snaps, saying that Marie was meant to be different, not like all the other 'dumb housewives.' Things soon go from bad to worse, as Marie threatens to call the cops. Gordon pins her to a couch, and the frightened girl offers to kiss him to calm him down. Her revulsion gets the better of her though, and she soon spits in Gordon's face. This causes him to go off the deep end, and rape Marie over a sofa. Meanwhile we see that Billy is walking her dog down at the beach, so there are no witnesses. Afterwards, Gordon tries to say that he's there anytime for her if she likes it rough, unlike her soft yuppie boyfriends. The distraught girl screams that she's going to turn him in to the police, to which Gordon responds by picking her up and lowing her head-down into her fishtank. After a few minutes of struggling, it's all over. Completely crazed, Gordon begs the coprse to wake up, but she's pretty darned dead.

Billy returns with the dog and discovers Gordon carrying Marie's body - now wrapped in garbage bags - out for some sort of disposal. It's pretty clear to the old man what's happened, and we quickly cut away from his fate. Gordon tries to poison the dog but it's wary of the murderer, and runs away to the beach. Before any peace can return to Gordon's life, a new resident enters the house of death. Marie's older sister, Jenny Nolan (Louise Howitt) has come to mind the place while she was away. Wondering where her sister was, Jenny takes a shower, while the paranoid Gordon enters with his hedge-clippers to check her out. Before he can commit more mayhem, he spots Marie's dog yapping around the place, and pursues it back to the beach. He eventually shoots it off-screen. Mystified by her sister's absence, Jenny takes a walk and finds the dead dog at the beach. She runs to Billy's place and yells at the seemingly-sleeping man through his window. He doesn't answer, and Jenny leaves. Of course, we see the bloody wound on the dead man's head and see that Gordon has just arranged his cadaver that way. Gordon then decides to re-appear as the innocent gardener, and Jenny, though wary, is friendly to him and even has a coffee with him outside. He agrees to retrieve the dog and though grateful, Jenny can tell that there's something awry with this overly-attentive man. That night, Jenny discovers bits of seaweed on the floor and Marie's earrings in the fish-tank. She soon puts two and two together, and rushes back over to Billy's place.

Soon enough she discovers, with a scream, the old man's body hanging in his garage. Jenny dashes back to her house and quickly gets a call through to the beach security before Gordon turns up, with groceries and flowers, and cuts the phone line. Gordon tries to keep up the friendly facade of wanting to have dinner with her, but soon realises that Jenny won't be fooled and has found Billy's corpse. Turning psychotic, Gordon shows her Marie's corpse in the back of his truck. Jenny screams in an anguished state, but she soon comes to her senses enough to arm herself with a thick metal rod. The lunatic tries to break in a few times but gets progessively more injured by the feisty woman. Finally he begins to cut his way in with his trusty chainsaw, but the two security guards show up. Officers Rex Dunbar (James Elliott) and Clyde Collings (Roger Ward) try to calm Jenny down, but she's shattered by her sister's death. Dunbar goes out to find Gordon and ends up beaten into a semi-conscious pulp by him. Collings tell Jenny that Gordon's been in trouble with other women before, but they've never pressed charges, and that he's never gone this far before. Gordon begins to step up his siege and Collings and Jenny try to escape. Dunbar ends up burned alive by a botton of lighted petrol rolled at him. Jenny finds Marie's corpse and cries again at her senseless death. Collings, in a rage at the agonising death of his colleague, chases Gordon into the swimming pool and appears to get the upper hand, killing the maniac.

Jenny runs away to the beach and collapsing on the road, is relieved when the patrol car pulls up. Of course, all is not as it seems and it's Gordon at the wheel, with the corpses of Marie and now Collings in the back seat. He picks Jenny up and begins throttling her, but is suddenly aghast when he sees visions of Marie in his arms. Letting her drop to the bitumen, Gordon begins ranting and raving about Marie, and how he never meant to hurt her and still loves her. Lost in his delerium, Gordon's hit by a passing motorcyclist, both parties flying through the air. Gordon crashes back into the police car, just as another two cops drive onto the scene. Will the crazed gardener recover and kill his final victims, or is it the end for him and his reign of terror?

I don't quite know what it is, but there's something I quite enjoyed about Lady, Stay Dead, other than the fairly charmless title. Maniac-like, we know who's doing the killings and he's a socially inept, sweaty loser rather than an unstoppable force. He does seem to have it together enough to have some sexual experiences with bored housewives, though. Sex scenes, the body count and blood and gore-effects are kept to a minimum, although there are some flashes of exploitative nudity when Mason's remembering the 'other women'. There also seems to be a body double on hand for Deborah Coulls, as we never see her nude and facing the camera in her few nude scenes. Such is this type of film-making. There is a genuine sense of suspense as the film moves along, and we do wonder who indeed is going to survive Mason's insanity. It's kind of a pity it becomes a multi-player shootout at the end, I would have preferred a cat-and-mouse game between Gordon and Jenny to be the only focus, but it's still a lot of fun. Chard Hayward plays a appropriately perverted and crazed murderer, before they all started wise-cracking or coming back as re-animated zombies. Strangely enough, there is something lost and pathetic about him that makes you feel some degree of sympathy towards the character. Deborah Coulls plays Marie as the beautiful, spoiled bitch who at least has enough heart to be nice to her old neighbour Billy. She certainly doesn't deserve being raped and drowned in a fishtank. Louise Howitt as Jenny is probably the best actor in the cast, and holds up the film for the most part. Her genuine anguish at the loss of her sister is actually quite sad, and she makes a nicely determined-to-survive 'final girl'.

Although a low-budget production, Lady, Stay Dead has some nice touches courtesy of cinematographer Ray Henman. The New South Wales beach scenery is beautiful - I would love to own that house - and there some interesting shots such as looking up through a telephone as Jenny's dialling it in a panic, or following a rolling molotov cocktail before it explodes in a hapless victim's face. Bob Young's persistent, plonking piano score actually suits the proceedings with it's mournful droning. The easy-listening theme song of "Loving from a Distance" - heard many times, I must add, does suit Gordon's creepy nature and easily becomes the song of a stalker. Perhaps the overall nature of the film is a bit dubious towards women at times, but Gordon is portrayed as so utterly pathetic, and Jenny so sensible and well-balanced, that we viewers - hopefully - will side with the victims. The initial rape scene with Marie is filmed to show how horrible it is for her, and how ugly and digusting the whole experience is, rather than titillating for the assailant.

So if you're in the mood for a vintage Australian sleaze-thriller flick with a dash of slasher in there for good measure, Lady, Stay Dead may well tickle your fancy. Don't expect too much, and you might enjoy your time with this hedge-clipper-wielding, Antipodean nut-job.

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.

Review of Mantis in Lace (1968)

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:59:55 GMT

With titles to his name such as Street of a Thousand Pleasures and The Agony of Love, you'd probably expect any output from director William Rostler to have a fairly high sleaze quotient. Well, Mantis in Lace doesn't dissapoint in that area, but it's also a surprisingly well-made little film that actually has a few memorable moments while adhering to it's sleazeball aesthetic. The presence of Stuart Lancaster from such classics as Russ Meyer's Good Morning and Goodbye adds class to the proceedings, making the adventures of killer-stripper Lila quite an enjoyable view.

After the catchy, Nancy-Sinatra-sounding opening 'Lila' theme song runs through the credits, We meet pretty redhead stripper Lila (Susan Stewart) dancing in some smoky joint. After a skuzzball hippy-type makes a pass at her, she seems to like him and he buys her a drink. After some small talk over a game of pool, the two decide to take their 'connection' elsewhere. The guy's surprised when Lila wants to take her car and not his, to a deserted warehouse. Still, he goes along with it. They end up in the dusty, dark old place where Lila lights some candles and gets the drinks ready. She insists on doing one of her strip-dances for him, but strangely we only see her nude in silhouette. He agrees to this and eventually they get to the clinch. Lila puts a record on, and it's that Lila theme song again. After a sex scene - what seems an eternity of watching hands clutching bare backs - the guy offers Lila some LSD. After a few minutes she begins to moan 'oh wow', but soon enough has a very bad trip. Lights and evil faces swirl around and Lila hallucinates she's being squashed with bananas and cantaloupes! She'd already told the punk how much she hates bananas, as they LSD slowly took effect. Of course, the reason for our film is sex and mayhem, and now we're up to the mayhem part. Freaking out at the psychodelic onslaught, Lila grabs a screwdriver and attacks her lover. Mortally injuring him, she picks up a meatcleaver from a handy chunk of a wood, and hacks him to bits.

Lila then picks up another man at the club, older psychiatrist Frank (Stuart Lancaster). Frank seems to be aware there's something not quire right with Lila, but goes off with her anyway. Back at the murderess's warehouse - where she always goes because there she can be 'free' - Lila puts her record on again and does a slow strip, as thunder begins to surge in the background. It's quite an atmospheric scene. This time, Lila offers the LSD but Frank says no. After enduring a psychotically bad trip that propelled her to hack someone to pieces earlier, Lila takes that evil drug again, strangely enough. Soon, the bad hallucinations start again and poor old Frank is fairly quickly dispatched by screwdriver and meat-cleaver. Lila, in her drug haze, laughs hysterically and says how 'funny' the dismembered man looks.

The crazed woman has taken to disposing of the corpse-pieces by shoving them in a cardboard box, and leaving them for all the world to see. Of course, this sets the police on her trail and two bumbling cops trying to solve the crime. In the meantime, Lila takes a new guy, or is that victim, to her 'pad'. It's a more aggressive fellow this time around, and when Lila wants to start her games, the guy gets drunk and nasty. Still, in her LSD-induced state Lila gets the better of him with a garden hoe this time! Another box of body parts is found. The tide is beginning to turn, though. A real-estate agent takes a prospective buyer to the warehouse, and finds the cleaver and blood all over the floor. Promptly calling the fuzz, they decide to stake out the place. Soon enough, Lila turns up with another potential victim, who produces a handgun himself. Apparently he runs a liquor store and needs it for protection. As the two cops lie in wait, Lila begins to go through her strip-take-drugs-and-kill routine. As they realise what's going to happen, they spring into action. But the man, having been deprived of some Lila action, pulls his gun on them! A shootout ensues and one of our cast members will end up dead. Is Lila, our Mantis in Lace, about to meet her own end?

Mantis in Lace probably isn't really enough of anything to become a beloved exploitation gem to devotees of this type of film. There's a little blood and some nudity throughout, with a few strip-acts from other voluptous women for good measure. Still, nothing to rival the nakedness quotient of Street of a Thousand Pleasures. Having said that, this film is far superior in virtually every respect. I'm not sure what happened to Rostler's directorial skills over the years but what artistry is shown here, is all but lost in Pleasures. Mantis seems to enjoy exploring the seedy, smoke-filled underworld of strip clubs of the sixties. Strangely enough, while we often see the slender Lila dancing topless in the club, we never see her naked at all in the warehouse sex scenes. What gives? One question I had was about Lila's killing spree itself. When she first attacks the hippy-punk after the initial LSD trip, she grabs a handy meatcleaver just waiting to finish the job. Was she planning to kill any potential lover all along, even before the acid trip? Perhaps, I read in too much.

Technically Mantis in Lace is perfectly adequate and reasonably well-made. The 'Lila' theme may lock itself inside your brain for days, as it did mine. Leslie Kovacks' photography is quite nice, especially in the warehouse murder scenes. Lila's fruit-vegetable-twisted-faces LSD trips are depicted quite effectively, and may even approximate real drug experiences, I wouldn't know! I also loved the ominous, thunder-punctuated lead-up to Frank's death. Stuart Lancaster's presence is a plus for any film and he's no exception here, bringing an intelligence to the film that's sadly cut short. I would have liked his character to have an ongoing role, but that's a bit much to expect from this type of flick. Susan Stewart as Lila is perfectly pleasant-looking but she's got an odd way of delivering lines, almost a thick European accent at times. I guess it sort of adds to her 'otherwordliness'. Not a huge complaint, more of an observation.

So, if you're looking for a nice, humble sleaze-film that relishes it's vintage strip-club environs, go no further than Mantis in Lace. It doesn't drench the screen with gore or even that much sex, but there's something quite effective about the whole demented little endeavour.

© Boris Lugosi, 2010.