Salon Kitty (1976) and a word (or a hundred) about online shopping

Was this what they signed up for when they joined the Hitler Youth?

Tinto Brass is one of a handful of true auteurs of erotic cinema, and an ever rarer species in that unlike, say Radley Metzger, he survived the advent of both hardcore and home video and continues to produce his own brand of softcore cinema to this day.  He's best known in the United States for 1979's Caligula, which is a damn shame.  I reckon that there's few, if any, filmmakers whose work could survive being butchered by Penthouse editor Bob Guccione.  A far, far better indicator of Brass' considerable talents is 1976's Salon Kitty, a sly and witty exploitation film that has far more on its mind than mere titillation (not that that is remotely neglected.)   Kitty uses the true story of a Nazi brothel to examine the clash of cultures when National Socialism arrived in the debauched heart of Weimar Germany and the messy business of mingling sex and politics, and it does so with lavish production design, appealing cabaret numbers and an excellent cast loaded with veterans of the grindhouse and the arthouse.  Of course, many out there will disagree with me.  Some will find this movie to be deeply offensive or outright pornographic.  That's great.  There would be little fun in sharing our thoughts on film if we all thought the same way.  Unfortunately, there's some out there who not only don't like this movie, but think that no one else should either.  Worse, these people have the ear of a certain major online retailer.

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974)

It begins with a body...

I see that I haven't posted a new review in over a month.  (Thankfully, Allex has kept the blog active in my absence.)  There's not really a great explanation for my silence.  I've watched a metric shit-ton of movies in the past month, so it's not like I haven't had plenty of choices to write about.  Sure, I've had some new projects going on, but none so time-consuming that I couldn't produce a few reviews in the past few weeks.  No, I think it's simply best written off as a summer vacation.  But I'm back now, summer heat be damned, with a review of Massimo Dallamano's 1974 giallo/poliziotteschi hybrid What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

Rabid (1977)

Marilyn Chambers as Rose, "Typhoid Mary" for a new strain of rabies

Everybody has that fear that affects them like no other.  Other thoughts might make you uneasy, might get your heart racing, but there's that one that has a special place in your nightmares, that twists your stomach into knots and robs you of sleep.  For me, it's always been physical corruption.  A maniac with a machete is nowhere near as scary to me as a killer inside, attacking and transforming your very cells and rotting you away from within.  It's no wonder, then, that the early films of David Cronenberg, those labeled as "body-horror," or sometimes "venereal horror," are among my very favorite horror films.

Rabid, Cronenberg's second feature, tells the story of Rose (Marilyn Chambers) a young woman involved in a terrible motorcycle accident.  When the ambulance comes to whisk her away, none of the bystanders question the fact that it arrives so soon with no phone calls having been made.  And so it is that she's taken, not to a state hospital, but to a private plastic surgery clinic nearby, where the chief of surgery is all too eager to try out a new experimental technique.  It seems he's developed a process whereby skin grafts can be transformed into something like embryo cells, able to match the structures of nearby tissue.  Although the technique has shown considerable promise, there's also the risk of rapid tumor development, and so Rose is kept under observation for 30 days in an induced coma.

Frank Moore as Hart, Rose's erstwhile lover

The hospital is the setting for several satirical moments that establish Cronenberg's themes long before things inevitably start to go badly.  The patients in the clinic talk casually among themselves about the multitude of times they've gone under the knife.  A man talks about the latest work being done on his eyes, as though routine plastic surgery was as essential as regular check-ups.  A young woman says she's back to have another nose-job; apparently, her daddy thought she still looked too much like him after the last one.  All these people seem at best dimly aware that their bodies are incredibly complicated organic systems; they all see their flesh as lumpy clay from which they might sculpt something more perfect than human.

If that is the goal, then Rose is the realization.  She awakens in the middle of the night as almost an entirely new kind of being.  She rips the IV from her arm; it seems she no longer has the need for traditional sustenance.  Instead, her biological imperative is now centered on a new "organ" grown from the experimental tissue grafted on to her.  Under her arm is a tiny, grotesque orifice from which extrudes, in moments of passion or bloodlust, a phallic "stinger" with which she feeds.

The sexual or venereal overtone to Rose's mutations in unmistakable

Rose's new feeding organ doesn't just provide her with sustenance, it also spreads an infection to her victims.  Once "pricked" men and women develop delirium, sweat profusely, foam at the mouth, and eventually lapse into fits of irrational violence.  Worse, they can spread the virus through their own saliva, so what begins as a handful of isolated incidents quickly becomes a plague sweeping across Montreal (a clear inspiration for the "rage virus" in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.)

For all of the fantasy in its construction, Rabid is a remarkably prescient film.  The controversy which would erupt over the use of embryonic stem cells was still two decades away, and yet that is exactly the foundation of Rabid's transformational science.  Likewise, had it been release even a few years later, the sexual basis of this deadly plague would have made an AIDS allegory seem inevitable.

Montreal under martial law, as body disposal units drive by

The scope of this film is also stunning, given the miniscule budget Cronenberg had to work with.  Rabid was made largely with government grants; its final budget was less then one thirtieth of what he made The Fly with nine years later.  Yet, in an interview accompanying the film's DVD release, Cronenberg describes Rabid as his first "epic."  There are a tremendous number of characters here, with locations across Montreal and the surrounding countryside.  Most impressive of all are the scenes in the final act once Montreal is put under martial law.  Cronenberg uses well the resources at hand to depict a city caught between a deadly plague and an over-zealous and incompetent government response.

As the woman at the center of the plague, Marilyn Chambers does quite a good job depicting Rose's desperation to understand and to resist the new instincts driving her.  Although far from a world-class performance, there's a much-appreciated understatement to her take on the role that suggests she could have developed into an actress of reliable talent had she been given the chance.  It seems a real shame that the stigma attached to her participation in the adult film industry kept her from a legitimate acting career.

The rabies vaccine doesn't seem to be working

Rabid is not the best of Cronenberg's horror films; the 80's would bring genuine masterpieces seemingly every couple of years.  But as an early example of his favorite themes, it already clearly shows the talent that would make him, in the words of J. Hoberman, writing for the Village Voice, "film for film, the most audacious and challenging director in the English-speaking world."

The Little Mermaid (1976)

Malá morská víla watches her prince from the rocks

Beloved throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union, but little seen in the English-speaking world, Karel Kachyna's 1976 adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid is a work of beauty and enchantment that can stand alongside Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast as one of the all time great cinematic fairy tale adaptations.  Like Cocteau's film, Kachyna's stunning imagery evokes the magic and terror that makes their respective fairy tales such primal, resilient narratives.

Violent Naples (1976)

Action across the streets and rooftops of Naples

If you're interested in any type of Italian genre film, eventually you're gonna end up in front of an Umberto Lenzi movie.  Seriously, you could get a decent primer on the trends in Italian cinema by just glancing through his filmography.  Over the course of 34 years, Lenzi tried his hands at peplum, Euro-spy, spaghetti westerns, giallo, poliziotteschi, sex comedies, cannibals and zombies.  This has caused some commentators to write him off as a hack or a mercenary.  I prefer the term "craftsman."  His work was never path-breaking, never particularly innovative nor profound.  Yet he was adept at working within received structures and conventions and putting together films that were professional, often quite exciting, examples of their kind.

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)

Grau's zombies show a little gumption

I've been a fan of zombie films ever since I first saw the original Night of the Living Dead years and years ago.  Since then I've watched too many to count.  Especially in the last few years since 28 Days Later the big and small screen have been so flooded with zombies that even an aficionado like myself can't keep up.  But I keep trying.  The sub-genre, at its best, can provide some of the best thrills that horror film has to offer, so I'm perfectly willing to wade through the swill to find the good stuff.  And let me tell you, friends, I found the good stuff tonight.  The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) is, in my not particularly humble opinion, the best zombie film not directed by George Romero or Lucio Fulci.

Ray Lovelock (Murder Rock) plays George, a Manchester hippie heading out to the countryside for a few days of peace and quiet.  When he stops for gas his motorcycle is rear-ended by Edna (the beautiful Cristina Galbó, star of one of my all-time favorite giallos What Have You Done to Solange?)  His bike out of commission until a new wheel can be sent in from Glasgow, he decides that Edna owes him a ride the rest of the way, and so off they go.

Cristina Galbó as Edna

Along the way they come across...the machine.  As far as explanations for zombieism go, this has to be one of the kookiest.  The Ministry of Agriculture is testing out a new form of alternative pest control which uses ultra-sonic radiation to induce insects to kill each other (so far so good, in fact given recent news, vaguely plausible as far as horror film tech goes.)  But while this was shown in testing to work only on primitive nervous systems, it seems that humans nervous systems are primitive enough to be affected when they're recently deceased (or when...well, I don't want to spoil that surprise.)  So yeah, that's kind of silly, but if you're watching zombie films for their scientific plausibility I don't know what to tell you.

Such an ecological theme is hardly novel in zombie movies, or horror films more generally, even in 1974 when this film was made.  But whereas often the theme is a gimmick that receives mere lip service in the pursuit of easy thrills, Grau treats it with a grave solemnity that provides thematic resonance to the atmosphere of dread which pervades the film.  Long before the first zombie shambles to life, the opening scenes depict Manchester as a diseased and dying town, chocking in its own exhaust.

Director Jorge Grau adds an exciting wrinkle to the standard issue zombie plot.  At this point in the zombie apocalypse the stumbling dead are few enough in number that they're only causing localized chaos.  That means that when the police find George and Edna near the body of the first victim, they're understandably unimpressed with tales of cannibalistic monsters and jump to the more reasonable conclusion that they've found a pair of drug-addicted loons.  Consequently, our heroes find themselves on the run from both the dead and the cops.

Throughout the movie Grau combines terrific atmosphere and remarkable gore effects with stunning results.  The green rolling hills of the British (ok, technically Italian) countryside are not the obvious choice for setting a zombie movie, but in addition to being picturesque they create a palpable sense of isolation.  Moreover, Grau makes wonderful use of darkness and fog with some pretty great cinematography.  But the gore effects are really something special.  Even nearly forty years after the fact, this jaded horror fan was shocked by some of the scenes in this movie -- the effects are better than anything Romero and Savini pulled off in Dawn of the Dead four years later.  Indeed this was one of the UK's infamous "Video Nasties" and didn't receive an uncut video release in that country until 2002.

Grau makes great use of churches and cemeteries for Gothic atmosphere

The acting is mostly quite good, well above average for this kind of film.  Arthur Kennedy, as the inspector is particularly good.  The political undertones of Grau's film are embodied in the difference between young hip George and the brutal, conservative inspector.  It's interesting to note that such a character could have been the hero of any number of poliziotteschi films (take no prisoner "tough cop" movies inspired by Dirty Harry, which were all the vogue in Italy in the 1970's), whereas here the same characteristics glorified in those movies make Kennedy's inspector the antagonist of this film.  I don't know whether Grau intended the role as a commentary on those films, or on the Franco regime in his home country of Spain, but in either case Kennedy takes what could have been a one-note screeching villain and creates a fully realized character.  The Inspector is bigoted and quick to violence, but in Kennedy's hands it is clear that he is a human being motivated by principles, however misguided.  Grau notes, in an interview published in Jay Slater's essential volume Eaten Alive: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies, that "[he] took the job for purely professional reasons, almost mercenary...But when he met me he realised that it wasn't any old film, that for me every scene was important, and that awoke in him the reflexes of a man of the theater, a man full of love for his profession."
 
Zombie films have gotten bigger and flashier in the intervening years, but they've rarely been better.  Even fewer have captured the overwhelming atmosphere of dread -- the utter implacability of fate.  As horror fans we end up sitting through so much dreck that it's easy to forget why we bother.  But this...this is why.

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971)

Paper dolls of murder victims > chalk outlines.  End of story.

Lucio Fulci does not get the respect that he deserves.  Sure, he's drubbed by critics, but those of us who follow Euro-cult and b-movies are used to that.  So-called "serious" critics routinely deride the work of a host of directors, from Jean Rollin to Norifumi Suzuki, as "just" exploitation filmmakers, as though the fact that these artists took advantage of new freedoms from censorship meant that their work was bereft of artistic contribution.