Posts Tagged ‘Exploitation’
Lady Alexander (Luciana Paluzzi) moonlights as Jane's (Camille Keaton) hairstylist.
Before hitting the big time, such as it was, in Day of the Woman (Zarchi, 1978), Camille Keaton spent several years in Italy making low-budget movies such as this one, which has the lovely, giallo-tinged original title Extracts from the secret archives of a European capital’s police force.
The plot concerns three ostensibly British gentlemen and a girl (at least, the script seems to think it’s set in Britain, given the references to the Scotland Yard): Bill (Tony Isbert), a rich boy with a mommy complex; Joe (Máximo Valverde) and Fred (Giovanni Petrucci), a couple of working-class guys who are seemingly just out to scam some money from Bill; and Jane (Camille Keaton). The relationships between our heroic quartet is never made clear, except that all the boys seem to be infatuated with young Jane. And really, who can blame them? [...]
Tags: 1970s, Black Mass, Camille Keaton, Exploitation, Giallo, Giovanni Petrucci, Horror, Jess Franco, José Calvo, José Gutiérrez Maesso, Leonardo Martín, Luciana Paluzzi, Mario Bianchi, Máximo Valverde, Paul Müller, Riccardo Freda, Robert Hampton, Tony Isbert, Tragic Ceremony
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Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda): mysterious vampire, interpretive dancer.
Linda Westinghouse (Ewa Strömberg) is a lawyer who has a recurring dream about a mysterious brunette (Soledad Miranda, credited as Susann Korda) whom she later, on a date with her boyfriend, Omar (Andrés Monales), sees dancing in a nightclub. The dance involves Miranda taking off her clothes and putting them on a mannequin, which brings the doll to life. “You are very excited,” says Omar to Linda. Linda denies it, but in a session with her therapist, Dr. Steiner (Paul Müller) — who doodles distractedly in his notebook, which quite subtly sets up a recurring theme of masculine disregard for women’s experiences — we learn otherwise; Linda confesses that her dreams of Miranda have more than once brought her to orgasm. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Andrés Monales, Beni Cardoso, Dennis Price, Ewa Strömberg, Exploitation, Jaime Chávarri, Jess Franco, José Martínez Blanco, Lesbian Horror, LGBT, Manfred Hübler, Paul Müller, Siegfried Schwab, Soledad Miranda, Vampire, Vampyros Lesbos
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Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) knows the importance of colour coordinating your eye patch.
Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) is mute since being raped as a child. One day, she leaves the family farm and follows a man who seemingly can’t stop talking to the city. As you might’ve guessed, it doesn’t end well. The man, Tony (Heinz Hopf), is a pimp who forces Madeleine into prostitution and heroin addiction. After at first refusing, Madeleine soon has her mind changed by a scalpel to the eye. Despite the steady heroin supply, Madeleine doesn’t very much like prostitution, and sets out to get her revenge on Tony and the tricks. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Action, Bo Arne Vibenius, Christina Lindberg, Exploitation, Heinz Hopf, Heroin, LGBT, Prostitution, Rape, Revenge, Vengeance
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I'm not only a writer, I'm also a spokesperson for the NRA.
In 1974, Meir Zarchi and his eight-year-old daughter were driving to a park when they saw a woman crawl naked out of the bushes. The woman had been raped by two men and Zarchi helped her to the police, where they had the misfortune of running into a singularly unhelpful police officer. It was this episode that inspired Zarchi to write and direct Day of the Woman. While the very fact that Zarchi chose to make a B-movie about rape is exploitative, in its first release, Day of the Woman wasn’t marketed as exploitation and didn’t create much controversy, but went mostly unnoticed. However, the film was re-released in 1980 as I Spit on Your Grave and sold on its, not insubstantial, exploitation trappings. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Anthony Nichols, Camille Keaton, Day of the Woman, Drama, Eron Tabor, Exploitation, Gunter Kleemann, I Spit on Your Grave, Meir Zarchi, Rape, Revenge, Richard Pace, Thriller, Vengeance
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Also known as Ilsa: The Wicked Warden, Ilsa: Absolute Power, Wanda: The Wicked Warden, and half a dozen other titles.
Directed by Jess Franco.
Written by Erwin C. Dietrich, Jesus Franco.
More exploitation sleaze from the master of the genre. Like all the other films in the series, there’s plenty of flesh on display and plenty of disgusting torture scenes. And like all Franco films, you get the feeling that there’s an interesting “normal” film somewhere underneath all the sleaze (Lina Romay’s character in particular is interesting, and could have been better developed), but it never reaches the surface. Recommended for fans of the genre; the uninitiated are better off staying away.
Tags: 1970s, Exploitation, Jess Franco, Lina Romay, Women in Prison
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Downtown stars Jess Franco himself as Al Pereira, a down-trodden, debt-ridden private eye. One day a dame enters his office and, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, offers him a job he can’t refuse. The dame (Lina Romay) claims she’s the wife of a local mobster and wants Pereira to get photos of him (the mobster, not Franco) cheating on her. As you might already have guessed, things don’t go quite as planned, and Pereira gets entangled in the con Lina Romay’s character, Cynthia, has got going with her girlfriend, Lola (Martine Stedil). As you do. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Exploitation, Jess Franco, LGBT, Lina Romay, Martine Stedil, Neo-Noir
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Also known as Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay (Bruno Gantillo, 1971).
The 70s: drugs, disco, and lesbian horror. Morgane et ses nymphes is one of the better examples of the latter — atmospheric and sensual, if, as is typical for the genre, a bit slow. There’s a lot of skin on display, and lots of, fairly tame, lesbian sex. Like the best lez horror films, Morgane relies more on a dreamlike mise-en-scène than on cheap thrills, and is better for it. The acting is highly variable, but Alfred Baillou plays the dwarf Gurth with great pathos and Dominique Delpierre is commanding as Morgane.
Endings often disappoint me in lez horror, but Morgane gets it right. Definitely watchable.
Tags: 1970s, Alfred Baillou, Bruno Gantillo, Dominique Delpierre, Exploitation, Lesbian Horror, LGBT
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Also known as Barbed Wire Dolls. (Jess Franco, 1975.)
Good grief, Franco’s made a lot of crap. This one stars his muse, Lina Romay, as Maria, who is falsely imprisoned for murdering her father, after which the standard Franco women-in-prison stuff ensues — lots of nudity, torture, and piss poor dialogue. I often say that a lot of Franco’s films feel like they were written by accountants on mescaline, and Barbed Wire Dolls is no exception. Unfortunately, outside the sadistic torture porn, it doesn’t really have much to offer. I like Franco better when he manages to channel his sexual obsessions, amphetamine-fuelled nihilism, and technical ineptitude (though the latter might be a put-on. The man did work with Orson Welles) into inspired, speedy surrealism like Vampyros Lesbos (1971). So, no recommendation for Barbed Wire Dolls, except for the Franco and/or women-in-prison completists. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Exploitation, Jess Franco, Lina Romay, Women in Prison
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Also known as The Living Dead Girl (Jean Rollin, 1982).
In this Rollin classic, Catherine (Françoise Blanchard) is raised from the dead by a toxic spill, and returns to her old home, where, protected by her childhood “blood sister”, Hélène (Marina Pierro), she goes on a killing spree. [...]
Tags: 1980s, Exploitation, Françoise Blanchard, Jean Rollin, LGBT, Marina Pierro, Vampire
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(Ray Greene, 2001).
A documentary about US exploitation films from the 50s and 60s. Has the usual fringe-film-doc dilemma, in that it, quite naturally, focuses heavily on the exploiteers who were willing to be interviewed. This of course means that it can study its subjects – Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Harry Novak, &c – in quite some depth, but it also means that it ignores a lot of key figures and films. Which is only to be expected; no one documentary can encompass all exploitation cinema. The film also has a tendency to go on the defensive about the artistic significance of some films, which hurts its credibility. [...]
Tags: 1950s, 1960s, Documentary, Exploitation, Harry Novak, Roger Corman, Samuel Arkoff
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