Category Archives: Sex

El Topo (1970)

Posted on September 28, 2012 | 6 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lust is not good.

This is an experimental film that has received a large and loyal following. Although considered highly controversial at the time it is pretty tame by today’s standards. The story deals with a mysterious gunman named El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) who comes out of nowhere to avenge a town that has been massacred. Once finished with this he takes the perpetrator’s women and goes off into the desert. Here he must prove himself against four different masters whom all appear to be invincible. Yet it is the women and his lustful desires that turn him into a victim. Defeated and demoralized he turns to spirituality and ends up fighting to save some deformed people from a town that has barricaded them into an underground cavern.
The blood, violence, and sexuality are no big deal. The special effects are weak and the editing is choppy. In many ways it comes off looking like an amateurish artifact from a bygone era. Yet content wise it is fascinating and Director Jodorowsky shows a unique and definite talent. It bites off more than it can chew especially with its low budget, but it is far from a failure as certain scenes are guaranteed to leave a strong impression.
It has a reputation of being convoluted, but I found it to be quite lyrical. Once one adjusts to its mesmerizing use of symbolism it becomes almost riveting. The heavy allegorical nature is both intriguing and provocative and the unique vision helps raise it well above the fray.

If nothing else it will keep you engaged. It is fun and interesting to see one man go through such different stages and it effectively gives you a complete understanding of him by showing all the different sides to his personality. Besides having a lot of religious correlations and an overall negative view of women there is also, surprisingly, a lot of comedy and lightheartedness.

It does fail to leave an overall strong impact and the tone is cold and alienating with characters that are unpleasant. I also felt it gets too bogged down with its use of symbolism and need to build everything up to epic proportions is overdone. Still for those that like movies that are weird and different they won’t be disappointed. The castration of a pompous colonel is amazing. The showdowns with the masters are memorable and the game of Russian roulette amongst a group of churchgoers isn’t bad either.

The film promotes a rather curious statement made by its director and used as a tagline on most of its posters and box covers. It states “If you are great ‘El Topo’ is a great picture. If you are limited than ‘El Topo’ is limited.” This statement has always struck me as funny because it allows no room for anyone to criticize the film otherwise they will be labeled as ‘limited’. In any case I give this film 7 out of 10 points, which I guess only makes me 30 percent limited.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 18, 1970

Runtime: 2Hours 5Minutes

Rated: NR (Not Rated)

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Studio: Douglas Films

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Sex, Surreal/Fantasy

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The Telephone Book (1971)

Posted on August 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: She likes obscene calls.

            Due to the recent death of writer/director Nelson Lyon on July 17th I felt it was time to dig up my old copy of this bizarre underground cult flick and give it another view. I stated in another review I made about this film that I considered it The Gone with the Wind of underground moviemaking and I still stand behind it. The film is hampered by its low budget and black and white photography, but I was impressed with it creative camera angles, editing, set design and music. Lyon showed a genuine vision and made the most out of what little resources he had. Even the content, which could be seen as pornographic by some, is presented in such a quick paced and diverting style that it becomes engaging and amusing.

The basic premise deals with Alice (Sarah Kennedy) an over-sexed young blonde living alone in an apartment with walls lined with wall paper that has hundreds of pictures of people in various sex acts. One day she gets a call from an obscene phone caller and she falls in love with him because it was the ‘most sweetest and most beautiful dirty call’ she had ever received and although she had received other obscene calls in her life this one ‘had class’. She becomes obsessed with meeting the man. He tells her that his name is John Smith and that he is ‘in the book’.  She goes through the telephone book to call him up, but because she lives in New York City she realizes there are a lot of John Smiths. The rest of the film deals with her encounters of all the various John Smiths that she meets as well as her climatic meeting with the real John Smith and the very weird conversation that she has with him.

The film’s structure is basically made up of a lot of vignettes all dealing with various forms of perversity. Some famous character actors appear in cameos and some of which prove to be quite outrageous and funny. Barry Morse best known for playing Lieutenant Gerard in the 1960’s TV-series ‘The Fugitive’ has one of the film’s best moments playing Har Poon ‘the greatest stag movie actor of all-time’. He has a scene where 10 naked ladies, at least that is how many I was able to count, all jump on top of him and begin sucking on his various body parts. There is Roger C. Carmel as a psychiatrist who enjoys exposing himself to ladies on a subway train, but when Alice decides to do the same thing in return he becomes shocked and repulsed. Character actress Lucy Lee Flippan makes her film debut here as a ‘reformed’ obscene phone caller who describes how when her husband was away at work and her kids where at school she would call up men at their jobs and talk dirty to them while masturbating  with a banana. There is also William Hickey playing a man suffering from a permanent and incurable erection.

The best appearance though comes from Norman Rose famous for narrating many films. Here he appears wearing a mask of a pig and playing the actual obscene phone caller. He describes how he calls 4 different women a night every week of the year except for two when he goes on vacation to ‘get out of the grind’. He also explains how he has perfected his obscene phone skills to the point that he could seduce the president of the United States if he wanted to, but doesn’t because he has ‘no political ambitions’. The conversation gets weirder including telling Alice about his foray into becoming an astronaut while he seductively washes her hair, but Lyon’s use of imagery during this segment keeps it interesting and even memorable. My only complaint would be that I wished he had taken off the mask so we could have seen what he really looked like.

The film ends with an eye popping animation segment dealing with a giant headless naked woman who squats down and has sex with a sky scrapper that needs to be seen to be believed. This is also the only part of the film that is in color.

Despite the fact that it was all done on a shoestring budget and with no character development I had few complaints although I didn’t understand how the obscene caller was always able to call up Alice and get a hold of her even when she was not at home and at someone else’s place. This was of course before cellphones, but I suppose demanding logic from a film that otherwise revels in the absurd would prove futile. The film did not do well on its initial run, but was rereleased in 2011 to much more positive reviews both here and in Europe. Through word of mouth it is expected to gain the cult following it deserves and maybe eventually a DVD or Blu-ray release.

Kennedy is delightful in the lead, but her appeal may depend on one’s personal tolerance. She looks and acts almost exactly like Goldie Hawn and was her replacement on the ‘Laugh-In’ show when Hawn left to concentrate on her movie career. I enjoyed Kennedy’s giddiness and child-like enthusiasm to all the perversions around her, but her voice sounds like she has sucked in helium and could prove annoying to some.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 3, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 24Minutes

Rated X

Director: Nelson Lyon

Studio: Rosebud Films

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Animation, Black & White, Crude Comedy, Cult, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Quirky, Sex

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10 (1979)

Posted on July 6, 2012 | 4 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bo Derek is hot.

George Webber (Dudley Moore) is a successful songwriter who has just turned 42 and finds himself longing for a beautiful younger woman (Bo Derek) that he sees while driving. Problem is he meets her on her wedding day and yet he still pursues her all the way to Mexico where she goes for her honeymoon.

It’s really, really hard to believe that this was such a big hit. It meanders badly and has a lot of slow stretches. It is also not that sexy. Bo is only shown sporadically and you never really get to see her naked, or at least not from the front. Writer/director Blake Edwards incorporates his patented slapstick humor, but it’s uninspired and doesn’t mesh well with a film that is supposedly working on a more mature and sophisticated level.

The issue of middle-age, or better yet ‘male menopause’, has been handled before and better. In fact this thing can’t hold a candle to Tom Ewell and The Seven Year Itch. The issues it brings up are quite general and handled superficially. It offers no new perspective and is shockingly unimaginative.

Dudley Moore fits nicely into his role and it seems not too far removed from the man himself as it deals with a uniquely talented man that harbors a degree of cynicism and detachment. His relationship with girlfriend Samantha (Julie Andrews) has some interesting elements and it could have been a foundation for a movie in itself.

Derek is stunning, but rather poor in the acting department. Having a beautiful lady portray such a shallow person is a real turn off. Sure it’s done to give the film its point, but it seems extreme.

Overall I found the film to be weak and empty and unable to even come close to meeting its reputation.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 5, 1979

Runtime: 2Hours 2Minutes

Rated R

Director: Blake Edwards

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Sex

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Boccaccio ’70 (1962)

Posted on July 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: It’s all about sex.

            This film, which is well over 3 hours, is a compilation of four different sex tales directed by legendary Italian greats: Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Mario Monichelli. The segments also star some of the most beautiful and sexiest women to ever grace the screen including: Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, and Romy Schneider. These ladies are at their most stunning and really light up the screen with their presence. Despite the extreme length the film moves along in a breezy fashion and I was actually surprised how quickly the time went.

The first segment directed by Monichelli and entitled ‘Renzo e Luciana’ was cut from the initial American theatrical release and it is easy to see why as it lacks the energy and flair of the others. It stars Marisa Solinas who doesn’t have the sex appeal and star power of the other leading ladies and apparently this was the reason why it was cut, but now has been restored on the recent Blu-ray release. The story is rather simple and deals with Luciana (Solinas) getting married to Renzo (Germano Gilioli), but having to move-in with her parents as they are unable to afford a home of their own. She also must keep her marriage a secret because the contract that she signed at the accounting firm that she works at strictly states that the female employees must remain single. This is so their overweight, lecherous boss can flirt and go out with them and threaten to fire them if they resist. Because of her financial situation and sparse job market Luciana is forced to put up with his advances. Although seeing two young newlyweds struggling as they start out can at times be touching this segment doesn’t have enough comedy, or drama to keep it afloat. The only lasting image one remembers from this is when Luciana goes to a public pool and sees her fat boss prancing around in nothing but a skimpy bikini bottom, which might be enough to make some viewers sick.

‘Le tentazioni del dottor Antonia’ is the second segment and directed by Fellini with his usual visual flair and style. The plot is about an older gentleman named Antonio (Peppino De Filipo) who is quite prudish and protests and tries to ban any type of public display of sexuality. When a giant billboard is erected in front of his apartment showing an alluring model (Ekberg) in a provocative pose while holding a glass of milk he becomes irate. His initial anger turns to horror as the giant model comes to life and begins to terrorize him in all sorts of comical ways. The special effects are pretty good. Filipo plays his role to a delightfully hammy level and Ekberg is striking. The ironic ending, which features a lot of surreal elements, is amusing.

The third feature is entitled ‘II lavaro’ and is directed by Visconti.  Here a rich young husband (Thomas Milian) can’t seem to avoid being caught cavorting with prostitutes despite the fact that he is married to the beautiful Pupe (Schneider). She decides that the only way to prevent this is by becoming a prostitute herself and then having him pay her to be his mistress. This segment starts out with a humorous and engaging tone, but eventually becomes talky, static, and stagy. Schneider is the best thing about it and is intoxicating in every scene that she is in. She not only speaks fluent Italian here, but German as well.

The final segment entitled ‘La riffa’ and directed by De Sica is by far the best. It is about a raffle that all the men in a small village get involved in to see who will win one night with the beautiful Zoe (Loren).  The irony here is when timid Cuspet (Alfio Vita) who looks and acts exactly like Rowan Atckinson’s Mr. Bean character, ends up winning it. De Sica nicely plays everything up to its full potential and captures the nuances and eccentricities of the characters well. Loren is both sexy and funny and shows a flair for frantic comedy. The sequence involving Cuspet and Zoe’s rendezvous is amusing, touching, and even a bit surprising.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 26, 1962

Runtime: 3Hours 25Minutes

Rated NR (Not Rated)

Directed by: Federico Fellini,  Vittorio De Sica, Mario Monichelli, Luchino Visconti.

Studio: Cineriz

Available: VHS, DVD (Region 1 and 2), Blu-ray, Netflix Streaming

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Posted in 60's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Sex, Surreal/Fantasy

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Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

Posted on June 22, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: They want sex slaves.

During the end of WW II in a northern city of occupied Italy a group of bourgeoisie men and women round up a group of teenage boys and girls and take them to an isolated mansion where they are forced to become sex slaves. They are also inflicted with cruel tortures in this story based on the writings of Marquis De Sade.

The film is interesting, but only up to a point. Director Pasolini’s natural lighting fetish really works here and he makes it into an art form. His ability to find the perfect moment in the day to shoot the scene and be able to frame the action within the shadows is amazing and along with the color schemes gives it a very distinctive look and an unusual atmosphere.

The acting by the adults is amazing as they project evilness without flaw. The perverted stories they tell in some ways is more shocking than the actual scenes and the casual way they go about their sick behavior achieves an unprecedented level.

The story itself has some good insights. It shows the veneer of civilized behavior and how the passive nature of the victims and society as a whole only helps to allow evil to flourish. There’s also the main point which is that evil is truly a part of the human make-up and hides itself in everybody and can come out if provoked including the victims themselves.

Yet the film makes its point and then hammers it home without pause. The non-stop perversity becomes excessive and the redundancy eventually makes the shock value and message meaningless. Showing the background of these captors might have helped given it more of a balance.

I have nothing against those who wish to ‘push the envelope’ and there is nothing that says movies need to be tasteful, or even entertaining, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Pasolini simply used the material as an excuse to explore his own dark fantasies. Of course DeSade’s actual writings were far more twisted and unsettling then anything you see here and the film is a significantly toned down version.

Actual teenagers were used and there is an abundance of nudity and perversity. Something like this could never have been made here in the states and exactly how it ever got made is more interesting than the film itself. If there was ever a movie begging for a “Making of…” documentary it’s this one. It is also interesting to note that Pasolini was mysteriously killed by a hit-and-run driver just a few days before the film’s official release.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: November 22, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 56Minutes

Rated NC-17

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (The Criterion Collection)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Exploitation, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Sex

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Heavy Traffic (1973)

Posted on June 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: A world without women.

            Animated feature with some live-action scenes dealing with a lonely 24 year old artist named Michael who is still living with his parents in a rundown New York City apartment and aspires to be an underground cartoonist.

The film seems compelled right from the beginning to shock and offend as many viewers as it can. Violence and blood, lots of blood, seems to spurt out of characters heads and bodies every few minutes. Breasts pop out of female dresses with just as much regularity and there is even a segment dealing with spousal abuse that gets rather nasty.  Racial stereotypes abound and the N-word is used liberally by the white characters. Some may consider this groundbreaking while others might think it was done by someone who has been sitting alone in his studio too long and needs to seek professional help.  I can appreciate the no-holed-barred approach and the idea that cartoons don’t have to be just for kids, but the edginess is no longer as potent these days since Family Guy, American Dad, and South Park come quite close to what you see here and in some ways are even more outrageous.

The story is too free-form and lacks focus. It took quite a while before I could get into it and the beginning comes off like a lot torrid, wild images thrown at you without cohesion, or direction. The characters are vulgar, gross, and unlikable. Michael, as the protagonist, as some appeal, but he is too detached.

There were some scenes that I found to be quite funny, but they all come in the second half. The scene where Michael describes a new fantasy comic he wants to create to a very sickly, old publisher is great and nicely symbolizes how the old guard is out of touch with the tastes and ideas of the younger generation. His idea deals with an apocalyptic world that has no women, so the men have sex with a pile of garbage instead only to have a real woman appear and then be taken away by God who wants her for himself. This sequence is by far the funniest and most imaginatively perverse of the whole film and I wished that this had been the main premise.  Another segment has Michael’s father bringing home an obese prostitute for Michael, which in a gross sort of way is highly amusing. Another similar scene has Michael trying to have sex with another woman on the rooftop of a building, but inadvertently knocks her over the side wall and she spends the rest of the film dangling naked by a telephone wire. The Godfather who eats a hearty meal of spaghetti while in front of a row of urinals deserves mention as well.

The film is certainly not for all tastes. The animation may not hold up to today’ s standards and the live action segments are not as interesting. The ending falls flat and gets extended longer than it should. Supposedly the initial idea was to have it end with a climatic car chase with images of penny arcade pinball machines flashed across the sky, which would have been better, but due to budget restraints was scrapped.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 8, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 17Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Animation, Crude Comedy, Cult, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat, Sex, Surreal/Fantasy

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Fore Play (1975)

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: This sex goes limp.

This is a boring, flat, and completely disastrous attempt at sex comedy. This is the type of teaser T & A picture that gives all other T & A pictures a bad name. Out of the entire running time there is less than a minute of any actual nudity. The sex jokes are stupid and a child could watch this and not be overly shocked. It also looks like it was meshed together on the smallest of budgets.

The film is structured much like a horror anthology with three different stories all based on the same theme in this case sex. The first one features comedian Pat Paulsen as a lonely man who buys a realistic looking sex doll (Deborah Loomis). The doll is supposed to be Polish, but her accent sound more like it is Swedish. This segment is somewhat interesting because Paulsen plays against type here. He is much more emotional and hostile. He even ends up swearing at his own mother (Sudie Bond). There is also an amusing bit of seeing him trying to get the doll, with her stiff arms and legs, into a taxi cab. However the segment goes by too fast and the ending is really stupid. Paulsen also sings here and it sounds as bad as you might expect.

The second segment features Jerry Orbach as a writer going through writer’s block. Here you see the film’s one and only offensive sight, which is having to witness George S Irving in a bikini bottom. He plays Orbach’s muse and takes him back into time to reverse certain sexual conquests that he initially bombed at. One amusing bit has him in a game where he must undress a beautiful lady in sixty seconds in order to have sex with her. He does only to find that she is frigid. Like with the first segment this one also has a really stupid ending.

The third and final story sounds like a winner, but fails terribly. It consists of Zero Mostel as the President whose daughter is kidnapped. As ransom he is forced to have sex with his wife (Estelle Parsons) on national television, which ends up being incredibly dull and unsexy. The only amusing bit, and it is a very brief one, is when one of the secret service agents has to frisk the first lady before she is allowed to hug her husband. Both Parsons and Mostel play dual roles neither of which is funny.

The film is sleep inducing. Although many sources list it with a very brief running time it ran a full 90 minutes on the print I saw, which of course only means more minutes of boredom.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: March 24, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Directors: John G. Avildsen, Bruce Malmuth, Robert McCarty

Studio: Cinema National

Available: DVD (Troma)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Crude Comedy, Drive-In/T & A, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sex

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The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968)

Posted on February 25, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lover in the attic.

This wacky film nicely exudes the mod, experimental wave of filmmaking that permeated the era of the late 60’s. The story takes place in London and is about a clothing manufacturer’s wife named Harriet Blossom (Shirley MacLaine) who one day calls her husband Robert (Richard Attenborough) while he is at work to tell him that her sewing machine has broken down. Robert sends his lowly assistant Ambrose Tuttle (James Booth) over to their house to help her fix it. Harriet is a bit bored with life and feels neglected by her husband, so she not so subtly seduces Ambrose and then hides him in the attic where he soon takes up residence.  He comes out only when Robert is away, but the unexplained strange noises that Robert hears and the many close calls make him think he is going insane and leads him to a nervous breakdown.

Director Joseph McGrath’s highly visual style is the real star. The lighting, editing, camera angles, set design, and costumes are creative and imaginative.  The home that was chosen for the setting has a nice architectural flair especially the attic and billiards room, which seems to be draped by a large stain glass window. Certain film professors show this movie to their classes as an example of how stylish direction can help accentuate a story as well as deftly define its era. I was disappointed to see that although McGrath is still alive he hasn’t done a film since 1984, which is a shame as it is obvious from this that he is quite gifted and I would have liked to see him doing more.

This is generally considered a vehicle for MacLaine, but to me her performance isn’t interesting. I think she is a first rate actress, but her character here is the only normal one in the film and she acts more like an anchor trying to corral the craziness around her. Booth, as her lover, goes to the other extreme, but doesn’t fare any better. He is too clownish and is always wearing various disguises and going through different personas, which makes the character unrealistic and cartoonish. If anything, out of the three main leads, it is actually Attenborough who does the best. His nervous and confused facial expressions are priceless. The scenes were he comes home from work and to ‘unwind’ pretends to be a conductor of a large orchestra while listening to a loud record, is amusing.

The colorful supporting cast though, full of legendary British Pros, is what steals the film. Some of them appear just briefly, but they still make a memorable and funny impression. Barry Humphries, playing a male character and not Dame Edna, is good as an art dealer. John Cleese, in one of his very first roles, is engaging as an argumentative postal clerk.  The best however is far and away Freddie Jones as the snippy, suspicious, relentless detective that will leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of Ambrose, who once he moves into Harriet’s attic proceeds to completely drop of society and disappear.

Although generally entertaining the plot doesn’t go anywhere and is simply a set-up for a lot of absurdity. What is worse is the fact that this based on a true story that in its own right was very intriguing.  In the real-life incident that took place in 1913 a 33 year old woman by the name of Dolly Oesterreich met a 17 year old named Otto Sanhuber. She, like the character in the movie, was a bored wife of a wealthy textile manufacturer, and took in the young man as her ‘sex slave’, which he readily accepted. To avoid possible suspicion she had him move into their attic, where he remained for five years and despite some close calls was never caught.  When the Oesterreich’s moved to Los Angeles in 1918 Dolly made sure that their new home had an attic as well and Otto then took up residence there and the deception continued until 1920 when Otto finally ended up killing the husband.

Of course none of that happens here. In fact Ambrose is fond of the husband and considers the three to be one big happy ‘family’, which is offbeat for sure, but not particularly satisfying. Again, this film does have some funny moments. I thought the scene where Robert invents the world’s first inflatable bra only to have the system go awry during an exhibition, which forces the model’s breasts to grow to unbelievable proportions before they go floating in the air, to be hilarious.  Still the end result of this production can best be described as cinematic soufflé.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 11, 1968

Runtime: 1Hour 33Minutes

Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Director: Joseph McGrath

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS

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Posted in 60's Movies, British Movies, Farce, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Actual Events, Quirky, Sex

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Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976)

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 1 comment

dona1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: One is not enough.

This is an oddly structured Brazilian film that became a world-wide hit due to its explicit, edgy storyline.  It details the account of a woman named Dona Flor (Sonia Braga) whose first husband Valdomiro (Jose Wilker), was a bit on the wild side. After gambling away all of their money he dies. She becomes determined not to make the same mistake twice, so she remarries another man who is a doctor (Mauro Mendonca) and a much more responsible mate, but also stiff and boring. Problems ensue when the first husband, who she misses because he was more erotic and exciting in bed, comes back in the form of a ghost who only she can see.

The movie on a whole is well made. The characters are all likable and the theme music, which is played throughout the film, is appealing. The on location shooting is also quite distinctive. It really gives you a genuine, rare flavor of a small Brazil village and the people who inhabit them.

My main complaint with the film is that it takes the entire first hour just too illustrate her marriage with her first husband and the second hour to show her mourning and eventual remarriage. It’s not until the FINAL FIFTEEN MINUTES that the scenario the whole film is based on actually happens. When it does it is lively and funny, but the majority of the movie is surprisingly low key and melodramatic. The highly touted sex scenes are overrated. They are too brief and spread out very thinly.

Braga does well in her star making vehicle. She is able to convey both a simple, sweet nature as well as a sultry, sensual one. She has a pretty face and really does look great naked.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 22, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 50Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bruno Barreto

Studio: Embrafilme

Available: VHS, DVD (Director’s Cut)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Erotica, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sex

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Body Double (1984)

Posted on January 18, 2012 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sex through a telescope.

During the 70’s and 80’s director Brian DePalma, a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, made a lot of stylized thrillers using many of Hitchcock’s trademark devices.  He even storyboarded every shot that he did just like Hitch. Unfortunately a lot of these films had rather flimsy plots and characters and were over-directed, drowning out what little story there was. DePalma tried so hard to imitate Hitch that he ended up showing no original vision himself and made the viewer crave even more at seeing a genuine Hitchcock film.  This film, which I first saw when it was released 26 years ago, I felt was the best of DePalma’s Hitchcock imitations. Upon viewing it a second time many years later I found a lot more holes despite one clever twist and some good camerawork.

The story is about Jack Scully (Craig Wasson) who is a struggling out of work actor who is offered a place to stay by a man named Sam (Gregg Henry). The house is a very modernistic place looking almost like the Space Needle in Seattle.  Jack is offered the home on condition that he takes care of the place while Sam is away on business.  During his stay Jack becomes obsessed with the attractive neighbor lady named Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton) who he watches through a telescope.  She does an erotic dance in her bedroom each night at the same time while wearing a revealing negligee. The dance itself is not real exciting and would probably bore most people after a minute or two, but Jack becomes hooked on it and watches it endlessly night after night.  Eventually he starts following the woman around during the daytime and even tries to start up a relationship with her. He also begins to notice another man, who is very creepy looking, is also following her and eventually he witnesses him murdering her, but Jack becomes convinced there is more to it.  With the help of a porn star named Holly Body (Melanie Griffith), who he meets along the way, the two set out to try and solve the mystery.

Wasson makes for an incredibly weak male lead. This helps somewhat because the character is very weak, but it is hard for the viewer to relate or care about him.  His best scenes come during his endless auditions and rather thankless treatment he receives from directors, producers, and acting coaches.  These are one of the few scenes that the film gets right as it hits the nail right on the head showing just how degrading working as a low paid, nameless actor can be in Hollywood. The porn star character is also weak as she is too cliched and predictable making her more annoying than anything despite the fact that Griffith plays the part pretty well.  The character was based on real-life porn star Annette Haven who gets listed in the credits as a ‘technical advisor’. I did like Gregg Henry though who makes for a great sleazy villain as well as Dennis Franz in a small, comic relief type role as a brash, stressed-out B-movie director.

The film also has a lot of rather implausible elements that prevents the viewer from getting as involved in it as they should. One of the biggest ones is when Jack sees Holly Body performing in a adult video that he has rented and becomes convinced that she may be connected to the case when he sees her do the same type of dance that the neighbor lady did, so in order to meet up with her he auditions as the male lead in her next X-rated production. Now I’m not completely sure how casting in these productions work, but having some guy with no experience starring and having sex with the industry’s biggest female star at the time seems to be a bit of a stretch. I would also think that a guy who was not used to having sex in front of the camera and with everyone staring at him might get nervous and be unable to ‘perform’ especially in what was still the pre-Viagra age.

The porn scenes themselves aren’t too interesting, or exciting.  This industry is no longer quite as underground, or taboo as it once was, so the shock factor is gone.  The characters and situations are handled in such a placid way that the viewer is given no real insight into the business, or the people who work in it.  The industry has evolved a lot in the past twenty-five years, so the scenes here become irrelevant.

There were a few things that I did like.  The scenes where Jack follows Gloria around in the shopping mall are pretty well handled despite the fact that I think they could have had a little more action here and there also needed to be more customers in the background.  However, the bird’s eye view, which is another patented Hitchcock type shot, showing Jack following Gloria around who is also being followed by the killer is good.  This part also features the one definitive moment from the film that I remembered after all these years.  It involves Gloria throwing away her old panties when she buys some new ones and then having Jack fish through the garbage, retrieve the panties, and put them in his pocket as a sort of ‘souvenir’.

Some of the shots during the actual murder are also really innovative especially the way the camera captures the giant drill, which is the killer’s weapon.  Probably the best shot of the entire film occurs when the killer drives the drill into the victim, which then goes through her body as well as the floorboards and then pops out of the ceiling from the floor below.  Yes, it is rather gory, but I still thought it was a really cool shot anyways.  I also thought the innovative design to the house that Jack stays in had potential, but I wished they had shown a little more of the place from different angles and given us more of a feel of the inside instead of having all the action occur in just one room.

Overall the film is slick, but very shallow and superficial.  The neighbor lady especially seems like a male fantasy.  DePalma gets too hyper with the camera.  I really don’t like his ‘spinning camera’ shots.  He spun it around Jack and Gloria as they kissed and it was tacky and cliched.  Once, in the film Blow Out, he spun the camera around so much in one scene that it started to actually make me feel dizzy and nauseous. The film has a scene during the closing credits showing how a body double is used during a film production, which is amusing and interesting, but a bit out of place for a thriller.  You walk away from the movie wondering how much more entertaining it could have been had Hitchcock himself been able to direct it.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 26, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 54Minutes

Rated R

Director: Brian De Palma

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD (Special Widescreen Edition), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Erotica, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Sex, Thrillers/Suspense

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