Zenabel (1969)

Title	Zenabel
Origin	Italy, 1969
Genre	Adventure: Comedy
Director	Ruggero Deodato
Starring	Lucretia Love, Mauro Parenti, Lionel Stander, John Ireland
Music	Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai
Blurb	-

Something for the Dads Zenabel, friends, cow and udders.

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(1:42 min, 768 x 576, 25.1MB)

Here's a saucy piece of swashbuckling adventure, adapted from a popular comic book, and directed by Ruggero "Cannibal Holocaust" Deodato. This bad-boy of Italian cinema has quite a following, yet in one lengthy forum discussion I read recently there was not a single mention of Zenabel.

Which is a shame as it's a whole lot of fun. We open up in gloriously rustic style with a group of beautiful maidens peeling off their garments and splashing into a river by a picturesque waterfall. In slow motion, to vibrant and unusual theme music. Talk about starting as you mean to go on! One glance at this and no red-blooded male could fail to sit down and watch to the end (in fact I stood so transfixed it took me twenty minutes to realise I hadn't actually got round to sitting down yet).

I think featuring the cow was truly inspired. It adds a homely touch yet is indefinably kinky at the same time (in real life it would inevitably have laid its pats in the water and the girls would have had to get out). All this nudity is even relevant to the plot, because the next scene is about women bathing by a waterfall with nothing on.

The story is set in Spain in the seventeenth century or thereabouts. Fair Zenabel (Lucretia Love), secretly of aristocratic stock, has her inheritance usurped by the evil Baron Don Alonso (John Ireland). So she raises an army of virgins to fight for her birthright. Along the way many women will show off their charms, and many men will be made fools of. Zenabel has a couple of male sidekicks whom she tries to make wear dresses. One is a strange-looking beanpole (probably a glandular complaint), the other is played by grizzly Lionel Stander, Max from Hart to Hart. Fans of his will be delighted to see him at one point strip down to a ridiculous pair of underpants!

Bum Pleasure Wicked Zenny gets her just deserts.

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(2:23 min, 768 x 576, 21.9MB)

Soon Zenabel's army clashes with a horde of bandits, much to the men's derision. But when their leader Gennaro (Mauro Parenti) contemptuously dares her to shoot him in the backside she actually goes ahead and does so. Lucky for him her rifle blew up in her face - and blimey did she look sheepish! Zenny makes haste in any direction but his, and in one of his occasional avant-gardeisms Deodato turns the camera upside down and has Zenny scarpering across the sky.

Justice must prevail and happily the Bandit King chases down the Virgin Queen and soon has her at his mercy. Hmm, what is her punishment to be? Pull her pants down that's right, take your belt to her and give that bare bottom a damn good thrashing! Argghh no you fool, don't perform a "sex act" on her! So not only does he throw away a golden opportunity with no more than a playful slap, but considering that later on Zenny is still claiming to be a virgin he also forfeits his right to call himself a gentleman. Bah!

Torture Chamber Zenny is forced to suffer the Baron's knob jokes.

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(1:57 min, 384 x 288, 10.0MB)

Mostly the tone is of light comedy, with many scenes of nudity (usually with discreet covering of the rudest bits). The more restrained scenes have just one or two women naked at a time, sometimes there's a whole screenful of them. This is boob and bum lovers' heaven! One fine set-piece has a pack of nudes hunted through the woods with horses and dogs.

Sometimes a slightly darker tone takes over, such as a very gothic scene in a torture chamber. Zenabel is at the Baron's mercy, but the worst she has to suffer is too much phallic innuendo. The jokes surely suffer in translation, but I suspect as usual they were on the weak side in Italian too.

Deodato's direction is lively enough, though not especially distinctive. Production design and locations are effective, despite the feeling there was not a lot of money to work with. The music is modern in style, and the standard is very variable, but the main themes are rich, bold and enhance the mood.

By far the film's greatest asset is its star Lucretia Love herself. She is beautiful and vivacious, and can act her part as well. She truly is the Queen, Zenabel!

Ratings

Quality: 7/10   Fun: 8/10

Review copy

Publisher	Unlicensed
Format	DVD Region 0, PAL 4:3
Certificate	VM 14 (Italy)
Image	English dub, Greek subtitles, weak VHS transfer from NTSC source

Mondo Candido (1975)

Title	Mondo candido
Origin	Italy, 1975
Genre	Adventure: Comedy
Director	Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi
Starring	Christopher Brown, Michelle Miller, Jacques Herlin
Music	Riz Ortolani
Blurb	-

Most notorious for their shockumentary pieces such as Mondo Cane and Africa Addio, Italians Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi took on a literary adaptation for their final collaboration. Voltaire's classic of the enlightenment Candide seems an unlikely basis for exploitation cinema. But this scurrilous satire, once suppressed as obscene, is such a vast blank canvas for images of sex, violence, and just plain blowing things up it's a wonder no-one thought of it before.

Voltaire's aim was to poke fun at the optimistic world view of German philosopher Leibniz. To test it to the limits of absurdity, the philosophy of Dr. Pangloss is summed up by the motto of "all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds". His pupil, the innocent young Candide, is naïve enough to follow this creed throughout the wars and disasters of the mid-eighteenth century. That philosophical spat may be forgotten, but paste in a backdrop of the conflicts and crises of today and the work must still have relevance. And it's obvious how it would appeal to a pair of cynical Mondo merchants.

Things start off quite faithful to the original. The fabulous fairy-tale castle of Château de Pierrefonds stands in for the seat of the Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh (Gianfranco D'Angelo) in Westphalia. Alongside his sweetheart the Baron's pure and chaste daughter Cunegonda (Michelle Miller), Candido (Christopher Brown) lives a charmed life under the philosophy of his tutor Dr. Pangloss (Jacques Herlin). He's free to prance about the gardens making an absolute fanny of himself without raising so much as a snigger from passers-by. An ideal world indeed. During these frolics he may happen to encounter artistic tableaux such as a recreation of Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe. Already we have established that anachronisms will be tolerated and are even welcome, and that a subject has a greater chance of being included if it offers opportunities for nudity.

Harvesting fruit Pangloss & Paquette (Sonia Viviani) bonking up a ladder.

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(1:24 min, 320 x 240, 7.1MB)

Things are about to go all pear-shaped for Candido. Pangloss wanders through the orchard meditating, with his usual back-to-front logic, on the principle of circumference and all things round. He spies peasant girl Sonia Viviani up a ladder picking apples. In particular he spies her magnificently round bare behind and cannot resist the temptation. Cunegonda, aboard a swing, looks on and is intrigued.

Wouldn't it be nice to try something like that with Candide? Contriving an accident, she launches herself off the swing (in slow motion, and set to music) and lands with her legs wrapped around the neck of the innocent young soul. He may be shocked, but seems in no hurry to wrest himself free. By the time a furious procession of grotesques arrives from the castle he has his head firmly jammed up his sweetheart's skirts and is refusing to come out.

Exiled! Now Pangloss's philosophy will be put firmly to the test as Candido is forced to make his own way in the world. Press-ganged by the Prussian army, Voltaire's horror of militarism is illustrated by the troops' suicidal toughening-up exercises in readiness for a futile battle. Against the vast opposing army they are mere cannon fodder, and lots of things get smashed up, set on fire, and blown sky-high (some by anachronistic tanks).

Castle Invasion Hells Angels play fast and loose with the kitchen-maids.

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(1:46 min, 320 x 240, 9MB)

How are things going with Cunegonda in the meantime? Left alone in her castle chambers she plays the part of a typical Seventies bimbo, dancing in carefree style to pop music surrounded by the latest electrical gadgets.

This idyll cannot last forever. The castle is invaded! Demonic knights are pictured as Hell's Angels rampaging through the kitchens on motorbikes, terrorising the maids and (very important) ripping off their clothes.

This may seem a severe test for the world view of Pangloss. How can the castle being razed to the ground be "for the best"? But the crazy doctor not only has no trouble incorporating the disaster into his philosophy, he welcomes it gleefully. Of course it's for the best, even himself catching syphilis is "for the best"!

Inquisition Meatgrinders, nude nuns, wimples and figleaves.

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(2:42 min, 320 x 240, 12.6MB)

After harrowing adventures Candido returns to the castle, only to find that it's fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and they are staging an auto-da-fé

Obviously this is an irresistible opportunity for any film-makers inclined towards exploitation to indulge themselves, and this is one of the principal set-pieces. Nuns stripped down to their wimples are handed out figleaves before being flattened in screw-presses, put through meat-grinders, and tied up in sacks full of cats and dogs. Amongst other things...

But Cunegonda is here! She dances to a rock band led by her idol Attila. Alas, Candido is to discover that his sweetheart is not as pure and chaste as he believed. Mortified, he is told that not only has she been repeatedly raped, she enjoyed it too!

This is to be the parting of the ways for the lovers, and the beginning of the second phase of the story. Cunegonda heads off to America, while Candido sets off in a distant pursuit accompanied by his faithful African slave.

Outdoor Shower Candido pursues Cunegonda amongst the girls of the IDF.

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(0:48 min, 640 x 480, 8.5MB)

This second half is also a parting of the ways between the original and the adaptation. The wars of the eighteenth century are replaced with contemporary conflicts in Northern Ireland and Israel.

In perhaps the visual (and musical) highlight of the film female soldiers of the IDF clash with Arab freedom fighters. Caught unawares after a shower the girls give battle still only partly clothed, in one case even blasting away with a machine gun completely naked. In symbolic futility the two armies mutually slaughter each other, their bodies left littering a field of poppies to the fading strains of one of the masterworks of Riz Ortolani.

Such an unusual mix of literature and exploitation is difficult to sum up. It's a work that is obviously aimed at a wide audience rather than a narrow arthouse crowd. As such the directors need to be judged not by the faithfulness of the adaptation, or the relevance of the ideas explored, creditable enough though these are.

The primary appeal of Mondo Candido is the richness of the imagery that it contains. There is an almost ceaseless parade of startling and original tableaux to compel the attention, and composer Ortolani excels himself in accompanying the images with some magnificently florid themes to round out the sensory experience. No fan of European cinema, arthouse or trash, will want to miss it.

Ratings

Quality: 9/10   Fun: 8/10

Review copy

Publisher	Unlicensed
Format	DVD Region 0, NTSC 4:3 (slight letterboxing)
Certificate	VM 18 (Italy)
Image	Acceptable but washed-out VHS transfer.

Murder Obsession (1981)

Title	Follia omicida
Origin	Italy, 1981
Genre	Giallo: Horror
Director	Riccardo Freda
Starring	Stefano Patrizi, Silvia Dionisio, Anita Strindberg, Laura Gemser
Music	Franco Mannino
Blurb	-

Riccardo Freda was over seventy when he directed this his final completed work. Always adapting to the times, the Italian maestro moved through the genres of costume drama, peplum, gothic horror, and finally the giallo. Murder Obsession could be regarded as his summing up of his career.

This one even begins on a film set, the fictional director Hans (Henri Garcin) always carrying a camera with him which he calls his "third eye". He also has "Director" written on his chair in childish letters with a marker pen, and allows his assistant's dog to run free between takes. Welcome to the world of Freda, and his often slapdash approach to his art.

The star of the film-within-a-film is also the star of our real one. Stefano Patrizi plays Michael Stanford, thirtyish, a successful lead actor so we are told. His role-within-a-role is as a leather-gloved strangler, jumping out on starlet Beryl (Laura Gemser), ripping off her top, and getting so murderously into the part that it goes well beyond the bounds of method acting. Everyone is shocked by Beryl's near-death experience, but it was the last scene anyway so the director just calls "print it". But Michael is mortified - where did all that rage come from? Could he be destined to suffer it again and again, until he finally kills someone for real?

The shoot wrapped up, Michael relaxes alone at home, strumming his guitar and singing (in English) a ballad, or judging by his interpretation, possibly a dirge. Proving he can manipulate items of furniture just as ineptly as guitar strings, Michael destroys a drawer and some photos fall out. Photos of Mother! It's a surprise and almost a relief to find a character in a psychological thriller so indifferent to his mother that he hasn't bothered seeing her for nigh on twenty years, and whose memories of her hold nothing but fondness. So this is going to be a very short film is it? About ten minutes?

But what the hell, Michael decides he'll go to see his mother (Anita Strindberg) anyway, and he'll take his girlfriend Deborah (Silvia Dionisio) with him too. It's while driving there that we get a hint of the truth: Michael has some serious Father problems. In a strange flashback reverie, Michael and his mother sit watching a formal concert (the dark atmosphere and high-backed chairs are very reminiscent of the "family torture" sequence in Fulci's Lizard) conducted by his father, the "Maestro". Bizarrely, grown Michael is the very image of his father down to the last facial hair, yet Michael aged ten looks nothing like him with his curly blonde locks. And he's staring at his father with absolute daggers! Father then collapses with a badly feigned heart attack. It's all beginning to look very Oedipal.

Michael swerves the Landrover off the road at this point. Events are conspiring to make Michael look like a cack-handed moron, though I'm sure that wasn't the intention. Things like this have to happen in bad films just to keep the story moving along. But it has to be said that Stefano Patrizi is rather poor in the role. Presumably he was the best they could come up with after all the money was spent on assembling such a solid crew of totty.

Eventually Michael and Debs make it to his mother Glenda's isolated mansion. She lives in this decaying pile alone, tended to only by eccentric and rather sinister servant Oliver (John Richardson). Soon the rest of the folks from the film-crew turn up too - Hans, Shirley (Martine Brochard) and Beryl (looking very un-glam in a yellow rain-jacket). Glenda, though more than delighted to see Michael, is unimpressed by the rest of this bunch. Especially poor Debs!

So let the murders commence. I'll spare you any more plot exposition. We've got our haunted house, filled it with our cast of fair maidens and homicidal head-cases, so who needs a credible plot anyway? Certainly not Riccardo Freda! For him it's all about the pictures.

Nighttime in his world is for lightning storms and candelabras. Disembodied footprints pace the stairs. There are zombies, bats and giant Satanic spiders. All clichés, bad ones too, but orchestrated by the Maestro into an almost musical symphony of delirium.

Forest of thorns.

Magical ceremony.

Arachnid sexual harrassment.

A dream sequence goes on for so long it has time to be interrupted by another dream sequence. This short scene, an austerely beautiful magical ritual in a deep crypt of flickering shadows, is perhaps the highlight of the film, and I was disappointed that there was not more in this sublime gothic style. I was eagerly anticipating a very special visual concoction saved up for the ending, and Freda certainly did not let me down!

Freda freely borrows imagery from other horror films, and even directly quotes himself. Such as the small yappy dog zipping up and down the staircase from Double Face, or my favourite, the black leather-gloved hand cutting the circuit-breaker from Tragic Ceremony. Are these deliberate homages, or has he simply run out of ideas? Who can tell, and when the final mix is so effective, who really cares?

Veteran scream-queen Silvia Dionisio is pretty and charming as principal babe. Though Debs being often somewhat put-upon, she's sometimes required to act a little tetchy, and her mouth goes all crooked. Laura Gemser, clearly cast for her name only, is functional, though wisely she is given little to do besides take off her clothes. Anita Strindberg, perhaps perturbed at being cast as practically a grandmother, seems unsure about how to play her role until her character becomes more clearly defined as the story progresses. All three ladies undress frequently enough to maintain interest, though not so often as to move into brown-paper wrapper territory. The rest of the cast make little impact.

There are a few gore effects but they are amusingly bad (an interview with rather sheepish effects man Sergio Stivaletti is included on the disc). At one point a character was bumped off without my even realising it. I thought it was a sort of subliminal flashback and it looked cool. Truth is the effect was so poor it didn't bear holding on screen for longer than three frames.

The music is a little odd, being a mixture of electronic riffs, classics from Bach, and some ponderously clanking contemporary piano pieces. Overall it's effective enough in producing an uncanny atmosphere.

I warmly recommend Murder Obsession to the more forgiving gothic horror fan who doesn't mind his films a touch ropey, and almost completely insane.

Unfortunately this edition from Raro Video is sub-standard. It's an English dub, with some restored scenes with subtitles only. Obviously mastered from VHS it often shows analogue artefacts such as ragged outlines and flickering horizontal lines. The sound is poor with lots of noise and crackle. The image is cropped top and bottom in pretend "widescreen", sometimes cutting off heads - it happens to Laura Gemser in the very first frame.

Clips for download

Laura Gemser nude (minor spoiler, click for stills):

http://rapidshare.com/files/237589801/Laura-Gemser-in-Murder-Obsession-1.avi
(2:12 minutes, 768x576, 17.1MB)

Anita Strindberg topless (minor spoiler, click for stills):

http://rapidshare.com/files/237457156/Anita-Strindberg-in-Murder-Obsession-1.avi
(1:23 minutes, 768x576, 13.1MB)

On Youtube, Silvia Dionisio is tied to a cross (stills):

Murder Obsession Youtube clip

Ratings

Quality: 4/10   Fun: 9/10

Review copy

Publisher	Raro Video
Format	DVD Region 0, PAL 4:3 (1.85:1 letterbox)
Certificate	18 (UK)
Image	Weak VHS transfer, overly cropped top & bottom

School for Unclaimed Girls (1969)

Title	The Smashing Bird I Used to Know
Origin	UK, 1969
Genre	Drama: Women in prison
Director	Robert Hartford-Davis
Starring	Madeleine Hinde, Patrick Mower, Dennis Waterman, Maureen Lipman
Music	Bobby Richards
Blurb	Where the initiation rites are wrong... Very wrong!

Re-released under the export title which captures its essence rather better, this unusual piece of British exploitation from the tail end of the Sixties wastes no time getting into its swing. Nicki, 16, in an unsettled sleep, suffers her worst (and recurring) nightmare.

She's back at the fairground, aged just 9, taking her first ride on the merry-go-round. Scared, she calls to her father, who reaches for her and falls, his skull crushed beneath the hooves of a mechanical horse as its helpless rider Nicki screams, and her mother looks on in despair.

"I want to get off!" Nicki screamed...

...her father tried to reach her and fell.

What a thing to have on your conscience - all your life!

It seems a bizarre, not to say tasteless, way to kill someone off even written down baldly like that. But on the screen, painted in the wildest psychedelic sensations, it even rivals the hallucinogenic extremes of Italiana such as Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin for lurid excess.

Nicki wakes, only to find herself back in a real life nightmare. She cannot hide from the sounds of her mother's passionate affair with sleazy toyboy Harry Spenton. A more unsatisfactory Daddy-substitute Nicki could not imagine.

So here we have the sense of guilt and the family conflict that will fuel the drama, summarised in one of the most fascinating, if bemusing, opening sequences you're ever likely to see. The title theme is terrific too, if somewhat incongruous, suggesting a slow resolute march towards destiny (with breaks for mellow reflection) rather than the uncertain future of a guilty and troubled schoolgirl on the brink of adulthood.

It's all the more frustrating then that we immediately move into a cringe-inducing sub-soap-opera breakfast-table spat between Nicki and her mother. Anyone familiar with the works of director Robert Hartford-Davis (The Fiend, Incense for the Damned) will be all too familiar with these extremes of unevenness in execution and tone.

Madeline Hinde stars as Nicki, and to be honest she can't really act. She's not truly beautiful either, but still cuts a handsome figure - her jaw looks likes it came off the front of a JCB! She has a strong enough screen presence to play the lead (despite an uncanny knack of changing her appearance entirely with each new camera angle). On the other hand, Renée Asherson as Mummy wouldn't even get a role on Crossroads based on this showing, and Patrick Mower's Spenton is an adequate but shallow and lazy characterisation.

Matters need to be brought to a head quickly if the audience is not to lose interest. A melancholy Nicki sets off to school in her smart uniform (complete with straw boater) but (this well-spoken girl suddenly realising she attends a comprehensive), she turns back at the gates to jump into the sportscar of boyfriend Peter (Dennis Waterman). He isn't the Lothario you might expect - he's quite a nice young man in fact, who works in an up-market antique shop for boss Geoffrey (a wonderfully slimy Derek Fowlds).

But now it's time for the infamous launderette scene (I am grinding my teeth as I write this). Spenton goes and spends an inordinate amount of screen time trying to talk Mummy into investing in a launderette. Perhaps I'm missing out on the context here and this is something that was "of its time". Was "launderette" a word forever on the lips of the "in-crowd" back then? Was ownership of such an establishment a key to membership of the "jet-set"? Whatever, there's way too much of it (and too much of Mower entirely for my liking - the film isn't about him, he is merely a catalyst). But to get to the salient point, wide-boy Spenton is trying to buy the launderette with Nicki's trust-fund money. Oh dear!

Morning, and Nicki feels angry and betrayed.

Playing truant in Dennis Waterman's sports car.

Bitch-slapping Patrick Mower, a bounder and a cad.

Meanwhile, Nicki is making the most of her day's bunking off. Peter drives her to Mummy's riding stables. She takes her horse Dandy out for a gallop on the downs, and the music accompanies her in a glorious explosion of joy. I could almost forget about the launderette business after this! But for Nicki, returning home to find herself alone with the importunate Spenton, this is the first she's heard about what is to happen with the money that was to see her through college. Furious, lashing out, there's a flash of a blade, and then...

This is the incident that puts Nicki in a remand home. It's another infuriating moment. The scene, just as it builds to a blood-soaked climax, suddenly wraps up and jumps forward to place Nicki in the office of psychiatrist Dr. Sands. On reflection it's a wonderfully-done transition, but for the first-time viewer simply baffling and frustrating.

Anyway, it isn't such a bad place for a remand home. Nicki could hardly have hoped for better if Mummy had bundled her off to boarding school, though the clientèle leave something to be desired. Never mind, bubbly up-the-duff Susan (Janina Faye) is nice, and dorm supervisor Miss Waldron (Colette O'Neil) seems stern but fair. Perhaps Nicki is as puzzled as we are by the presence of a young and strikingly pretty Lesley-Anne Down, but research reveals that her character Di attempted suicide (though I've yet to notice the slashed-wrist make-up she is alleged to sport).

The rec. room, new face Nicki, and Lesley-Anne Down with a guitar between her legs.

Maureen Lipman amuses Michelle Cook with a rude but incomprehensible anecdote.

Nearly time for lights out on Miss Waldron's floor - Nicki heads for the bathroom.

Will Nicki be able to look after herself in here? Luckily for her the other actresses were (so the gossip goes) selected by Hartford-Davis by a practical examination in shaggabilty rather than for their commanding physical prowess. In fact I reckon I could smash any one of these girls' faces in (provided I got the first blow in when she wasn't looking). And Nicki attracts the affections of dorm bully Sarah (Maureen Lipman), a lesbian partial to sapphic kisses after lights out. Lying beside Nicki in bed Sarah opens up and tells her story. It's a remarkable tour de force monologue by the young actress, and does a world of good for the film's otherwise slim pretentions towards serious drama.

Otherwise, banal dialogue and wooden acting render much of the time on Miss Waldron's floor clunkingly dull. But occasionally the screen bursts into life in an astounding orgy of excess. Now is a good time to take back any flippant remarks I may have made about the girls' fighting abilities. When one girl attacks another out of jealousy the results could not have been more sudden and devastating if one of them had stepped on a landmine on the way to the lavvy. It's an absolutely thermonuclear catfight, with even the next dorm joining in, bursting pillows and ripping tops everywhere. Watch out for Lesley-Anne Down in pink pyjamas getting stuck in like Minnie the Minx!

Regressing with Dr. Sands.

Post pillow-fight - doesn't seem quite so clever now does it?

Wistful - friendship with Sarah.

Let's return to the more serious side of the story. Being a remand home, not a borstal, the girls are here for assessment, protection and help. When Nicki first arrives she is practically catatonic. It falls upon psychiatrist Dr. Sands, Marnie style, to delve into her past and get her head straight again. Faith Brook is excellent as the sympathetic older woman, reminiscent of Lilli Palmer as Britt Ekland's shrink in Night Hair Child, or Maria Schell as the prison reformer in 99 Women. What with Nicki's guilt over her Daddy's death, and then the stabbing business with Spenton, the doctor really has her work cut out, but begins to make some progress. "I finally got a reaction" she says, putting it mildly. Blimey, "I finally brought on an absolute screaming frenzy of psychedelic recovered memory" would be nearer the mark!

So will Nicki stick it out with the help of Dr. Sands, and risk being sentenced to a spell in borstal? Or will she take up with rebellious Sarah and her plans to escape? This genre being clichéd as it is I don't think I need to answer that one. But can there ever be a truly happy ending for a girl as ill-starred as Nicki?

Judged objectively, this is a very solid B-feature effort. The cast is remarkable for the number of present and future TV stalwarts, the camerawork is expertly fluid and involving, and the photography often beautiful with an unusual pastel palette. Those with better taste than myself might say it was over-scored, but I found that the music by Bobby Richards really helped to drive the story along.

Not surprisingly given its origins the sleaze factor is low by the standards of just a few years later, but there's a sprinkling of nudity, and Valerie Wallace in particular has reason to regret the advent of slow-motion and freeze-frame. I get the feeling Hartford-Davis was too fond of his starlets to subject them to too much real degradation.

Smashing Bird is difficult to sum up. High-points of classic delirium punctuate stretches of leaden banality, its unevenness leaving one reeling in exasperated bewilderment. I wonder how it would have turned out if it had concentrated on the fairly creditable drama at its core rather than emphasising the exploitation angle. Probably too much sanity would have destroyed much of its eccentric charm. I've totally fallen in love with it, and it's near the top of my favourites of any genre.

Clip for download

The classic introductory sequence:

http://rapidshare.com/files/235895784/Intro-from-The-Smashing-Bird-I-Used-to-Know.avi
(3:41 minutes, 480 x 288, 16.9MB)

or the Smashing Bird Intro on Youtube (low quality)

Ratings

Quality: 7/10   Fun: 10/10

Review copy

Publisher	Slam Dunk Media
Format	DVD Region 2, PAL 4:3 (1.66:1 letterbox)
Certificate	18 (UK)
Image	Very good - clean, slightly soft, with attractive colours.

Sex of the Witch (1973)

Title	Il sesso della strega
Origin	Italy, 1973
Genre	Giallo
Director	Elo Pannacciò
Starring	Susanna Levi, Camille Keaton, Franco Garofalo
Music	Daniele Patucchi
Blurb	-

Angelo Pannacciò is one of the more obscure Italian directors, but any Euro-cult fan who sees his film Cries and Shadows will soon want to see another one. And here is another one, Sex of the Witch, made the previous year. Though superficially sharing a theme with The Shad (a bizarre melting pot of teenage possession and supernatural lesbian rape) this title largely eschews horror for more traditional giallo territory.

We start off with a priest being chauffeured through the Italian countryside. Is he going to an exorcism? I hope so. The accompanying laconically jangling theme tune is engaging if rather incongruous. And when the director's credit appears he's the only one to have his name in that big chunky "cake-slice" Seventies typeface. Things are looking promising.

Well, it turns out it wasn't an exorcism after all. The priest arrives at the mansion of Sir Thomas Hilton to administer the last rites as the patriarch lies upon his deathbed. Surrounded by his extended family of nephews and nieces, his consciousness slowly fading, Sir Thomas muses upon his life, and the callow generation that will succeed him.

Impotently he rails against their shallow morals, their alienation from their past, and the hopelessness of their future (Pannacciò has an inexplicable penchant for lengthy sermonising in his screenplays). Typical sentiments of the older generation these may be, but in this case he demonstrably has a point. Even as these thoughts pass through his mind the manservant and the maid are attempting to copulate in the very mausoleum into which his body will soon be entombed!

So to the reading of the will, and here we have an old-fashioned Christie-esque motive for murder. The Hilton patrimony is to be distributed amongst his descendants (apart from the pointedly disinherited daughter Evelyn, and in addition to the family lawyer Boskin, to everyone's disgust), each receiving an equal share of the remaining family fortune as they attain the age of thirty. Given time to reflect on the implications, anyone of the age of, ooh say twenty-nine years and ten months, may start to see their future as rather uncertain.

The youngsters of this family seem unpromising as prospective killers. Not one of this litter of neurasthenics and consumptives looks capable of bludgeoning anyone to death without having an asthma attack and having to go home. Nevertheless, a murder is soon committed, and a detective is called in to investigate.

What about the other suspects? Aunt Evelyn (Jessica Dublin) for example? It's always a bad sign to be called Evelyn in an Italian film, and given that furthermore she runs a herbal medicine shop in a film with "witch" in the title, it's as well to monitor her activities very closely.

Then there's the lawyer Boskin (Gianni Dei), according to the cousins a homosexual, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. And the wonderfully shifty, golfball-eyed manservant Tony (Franco Garofalo) who seems to spend his entire working day trying to get inside the maid's saucy knickers, not without success. Finally, being ready-primed for silliness, we mustn't overlook the animal kingdom, the family having recently acquired a large and vicious-looking dog.

Largely unperturbed by the violent death of one of their number, the brothers, sisters and cousins go about their business (whatever that is, as none of this bunch appears to have a job), and lazily pursue romantic entanglements within and around the ancient decaying Hilton mansion in the sunny Worcestershire countryside (clearly the part of Worcestershire known as "Little Italy", due to its Mediterranean climate and the preponderance of Fiats and Alfas on the roads - at this time Italian cinema often still pretended, for obscure reasons, that its thrillers were set in England, even if as in this case it meant no more than changing the names and featuring the occasional right-hand drive vehicle).

The most notable member of the cast is Camille Keaton, playing Ann, the shy, withdrawn, and dare I say it slightly tapped, family beauty. As usual Camille sleepwalks through the role in the most adorable fashion. Occasionally she speaks a few words, and these are accepted as being appropriate to the situation.

All the while the atmosphere is low-key and dreamy. The camera often keeps its distance, allowing the characters to open up as if unprompted. Opportunities for relatively restrained scenes of nudity are never missed. The typically repetitive but infectious keyboard score is sometimes light, sometimes tense, and strangely effective as a coherent whole. And director Pannacciò proceeds with all the confidence one would expect of an 'Elo Antonioni.

Which would be all very well if he wasn't in fact a complete hack, happy to stoop so low as to splice in a nightclub scene from a completely different film in the expectation that we won't notice, or at least won't care. The cast can barely act, the dialogue is banal, and the ideas dim-witted. The production design is of amateur dramatics standard, with only the family mausoleum being an impressive original location.

But only a select contemporary audience chooses to follow cinema like this. Such pretention and incompetence is what we expect, even hope for, and it is good.

So how is this story to move along? The detective (Donald O'Brien) is of the standard-issue clueless giallo type, only there to summarise the plot and stir things up a little by arresting the wrong person.

Plot points are introduced absolutely at random. Strangers are continually turning up at the door and being admitted to the house without declaring their business or even stating their name. It is revealed that Sir Thomas made a breakthrough in genetic engineering so startlingly revolutionary that only the most far-seeing of science fiction writers would dare to contemplate it. The police inspector remarks that this was very clever of him.

And then Boskin broaches a delicate subject with Susan (Susanna Levi), the only member of the family with her head remotely together. Apparently, when she was a child, Aunt Evelyn injured her in an intimate area, leaving a scar. Casually dropped in, seemingly innocuous, this comes across as a real kink. It's even relevant to the storyline and not, as one reviewer who ought to know better suggested, just an excuse to watch Susan fondling her breasts in the mirror!

More than this I will not reveal, except to note that the resolution of the plot is even more ridiculous than I ever dreamt it could be, and that it is all wrapped up with a coda that is as delightful as it is outlandish. I enjoyed it a lot.

Clip for download

A montage to set the scene, including some nudity. Note that we see the killer's face surprisingly early. This isn't the spoiler it appears to be as the revelation leaves us none the wiser.

http://rapidshare.com/files/235057255/Camille-Keaton-in-Sex-of-the-Witch-1.avi
(5:16 minutes, 368x208, 21.6MB)

Ratings

Quality: 3/10   Fun: 8/10

Review copy

Publisher	Unlicensed
Format	DVD, PAL 4:3 (2.35:1 letterbox)
Certificate	VM 18 (Italy)
Image	Sub-sub VHS, ragged border, but watchable. Italian language with good fan subtitles.

Sketches of a Strangler (1978)

Title	Sketches of a Strangler
Origin	USA, 1978
Genre	Thriller: Stalker
Director	Paul Leder
Starring	Allen Goorwitz, Meredith MacRae
Music	Arlon Ober
Blurb	A disturbed art student uses his desire to paint beautiful women as a guise to get them alone. These women of the night, prostitutes and exotic dancers, become the victims of his fits of passion.

Here's an obscure offering from a straight-to-bargain-bin label I usually wouldn't look at twice, but picking up the case and turning it over I was intrigued. What is this thing? There are three very odd screenshots on the back. A belly dancer, a woman robed like an angel, and a fat, pensive-looking looking man. The effect is so endearingly amateurish I wondered if I'd come across a unique, no-budget, undiscovered gem.

After only a moment's watching I put those hopes to rest. This is obviously just some routine American TV thriller, though I was right to think "obscure" and "no-budget". I wondered why anyone would bother releasing it, but settled down to watch till the end with the usual grim determination I reserve for junk I've actually paid for. Amazingly, it turned out to be exactly the kind of awful species of delirium I dream of stumbling across. This is my pick for the first review on this blog, and possibly its first serious online review.

It's a cliched set-up. A glamorous but ageing prostitute alone in a hotel room, a knock at the door, enter Jack (Allen Goorwitz), the shy thirtysomething fat boy who never grew up. Some hesitant monosyllabic bargaining and they get down to business. In a simple but very effective vignette he moves to strangle her, one-handed, his face turning beetroot-red with the brute force required.

So we know who the serial killer is, how can he be stopped? This prostitute has a twin sister (Meredith MacRae), a dowdy teacher who jets into LA (accompanied by some groovy Seventies disco) to meet the detectives assigned to the case. She resolves to avenge her sister by posing as a hooker to trap the killer before he strikes again. Clearly this is a suicidally stupid idea (how's she going to recognise him? A-ha, by getting strangled of course!), and she is firmly told so, but is determined to press ahead with her plan anyway.

What do we know about Jack? Well, he's an amateur artist, this hobby being his only way of meeting women. Always totally unsuitable women too, tarts, strippers, and most memorably an ageing ex-starlet earning crumbs as an artists' model. He lives a comfortable life supported by matronly older sister Eileen. She finds the lazy slob exasperating, but nevertheless dotes upon him. Eileen is impressed by a crusading stage evangelist (she's the one pictured on the back cover in "angel" pose) and the poor boy is badgered into leafleting for her on the streets. Could it be that Jack is not the only one with sex problems? Perhaps mother problems too!

Those are the ingredients, what does director Paul Leder (I Dismember Mama, The Baby Doll Murders) make of them? Well, after a slow start, he slowly stirs the mix into a delightful, hilarious mess. Bad dialogue and worse acting only serve to bring his considerable visual flair into sharper focus. I'm sure he had a serious and suspenseful chiller in mind, and to the forgiving viewer this sincerity of intention brings humour and charm to a work that viewed objectively would be an embarrassing disaster.

A theatre hosts a bizarrely staged sermon against the "obscenity" of the "evening news". A nightclub belly-dancer works her act into an absurd frenzy to impress the impassively sketching Jack. A hackneyed breakfast-table scene with the detective's neglected, be-curlered wife ("I like young boys!") brings on splutters of genuine laughter. Best of all, a twee and stilted piece of sitting-room flirting evolves into a truly chilling scene of murder as grim music rises and the camera slowly zooms in on the face of the killer.

I call this a delicious piece of trash, certainly recommended for the sleaze connoisseur in search of ever more obscure morsels to feed his addiction. You want it, you need it!

Youtube clip: Life class
how Jack reacts when asked to sketch a real live naked woman

Ratings

Quality: 2/10   Fun: 8/10

Review copy

Publisher	ILC Prime
Format	DVD Region 0, PAL 4:3
Certificate	15 (UK)
Image	Typical nasty sub-VHS upscaled from NTSC complete with interlacing artefacts

Take a dive into my Sea of Sleaze

In this blog I will be reviewing some of my favourite films from the era I love the most, the turn of the 1970s.

What made those few years so special? The rolling back of censorship brought in a tidal wave of violence, sex and sleaze, and never a shortage of directors and actresses eager to drench themselves within it. Ambition flourished, ability seldom kept pace. Often intentions were sincere, almost naïve, and this gave even some of the lowest works a certain undeniable charm. Sadly as the 1980s drew near this atmosphere was to descend into one of cynicism and, even worse, irony.

Perhaps the finest examples of this golden age of excess came from Italy. But alongside the acclaimed, almost respectable masters such as Argento and Bava there flourished the strange journeyman-genius of the likes of Polselli and Pannacciò.

It's this wild, inept, sometimes demented cinema that fascinates me the most.