Double Agent 73

There's much to love about Doris Wishman's sleazy parody of the spy film. So let's just get right to it, shall we?

1. The overly busty Chesty Morgan plays special agent Jane Renee. She's basically a ramped up fetishist's dream. Her tits are GI-normous, she has a relatively attractive face, although she does kinda look like a day-shift, about to be past her prime, stripper. Luckily, I love almost past their prime day shift strippers.

2. She can take pictures with her boobs via an implanted camera. She also uses them as weapons, in slow motion, no doubt.

3. Her shoes are fantastic! Platforms and towering heels. I also love the lingering shots of them. (This is sort of a Wishman signature - as I've seen the lingering feet shot in several of her films.)

4. The line 'you'll never get away with this!' Easily one of my favorite lines to hear in anything.

5. An anonymous heroin ring, fronted by a guy with a HUGE birthmark on his face and fake Russian accent! Anonymous!

6. Exploding lipstick.

7. Mad-cap car chases.

8. An overall blatant disrespect of the law.

9. Leopard wall paper and zebra sheets! Was this filmed in my house?

10. Death by earring, phone cord, and ice cube choking (three different deaths).

11. A pretty violent shower stabbing.

12. Plenty of mustachioed, Jess Franco-lookalike villains.

13. And her tits are also poisonous.

If you are uninitiated to Wishman yet, this might be a hilarious way to get you going. Literally.

The Sin Syndicate

Meet the Zero Girls.

Dolores is a half-Cuban/half-Chinese curvy brunette burlesque dancer who gets picked up by the mafia to become a stripper. She's raped in Cuba and sent to the states to become a hooker. "I didn't know I'd already been bought and paid for."

Lorna (oh, how I love the name Lorna - it's so tough sounding and you never hear of anyone naming their kid Lorna) is an American girl next door type who got 'caught up in a party girl lifestyle.' Before she knew it, she was being raped for two days before being sent to the 'Syndicate' for prostitution.

Candy was left an orphan in London after the Blitz. She was only three days old when her parents were killed. She spent the next eighteen years growing up in an orphanage and even considered becoming a nun. She left the convent at 21 and became a secretary and fell in love. Her first sexual experience is in an apartment inexplicably decorated in an African motif and soon after this, she meets the mob boss and becomes a Zero Girl.

Monica met the mob boss on her wedding night when she was just nineteen. Her own husband made her a Zero Girl, introducing her to the life when they were supposed to be on their honeymoon. Instead of a romantic evening, Monica was forced to strip nude in a room full of strange men and then hook up with another Zero Girl while the men watch.

We get to watch as these women strip and fuck their way into complete oblivion, with no possible way of redemption. But after what they've subjected themselves to, what redemption could be possible? Dolores narrates, 'You've seen us before. You've seen us on every street where pretty bodies are an easy mark with a price. To the rackets, we're Zero Girls. Nothing. Zero. We're all owned by the syndicate, body and soul. Or should I just say ‘body,' because after a few nights you can't remember being a woman or ever having a soul....'

THE SIN SYNDICATE is Michael Findlay's first feature (possibly - there are no known previous efforts, but who knows, he was prolific and film didn't get stored properly way back when) and treads familiar Findlay territory in it's overtly women hating overtones. The film is is essentially an exercise in how four women's soul's are eradicated by a life turning tricks, BUT it's no where near as appalling as some of his other efforts (THE FLESH TRILOGY). And while this might seem an understatement, coming from a film where the very first scene is a woman being strung up and tortured, Michael is just getting started (this is the early 60's and the Findlay would have two more decades to explore his depravity, alongside his equally cracked wife, Roberta, who credits herself with being the first female pornographer). I'd call this a warm up for his later completely revolting efforts in sickening viewer with misogyny, rape, torture, and an overall hatred for all of humanity.

So, if you like that sort of thing, you know, a supreme hatred of EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, and you dig some vintage sleaze and burlesque alongside your rape and torture, look no further. The girls are beautiful in that retro sexy way, curves and cat-eye makeup, and while all are obviously amateur actresses, they seem to elicit some sort of sympathy by the end. The dudes are just that sleazy.

There's also some weirdness - the film stops abruptly to give us stock footage of the Blitz, the Cuban revolution, and even more inexplicably, a battleship being bombed! There's also a strange sequence where the screen goes completely black, three cots are illuminated, the girls are being pawed at by thugs, while Dolores strips on stage. It's extremely stylized. Gotta class it up for those refined perverts sitting in the theatre jacking it to this. Because you know that's what they did back then.

And if this has taught you anything, let it be this - 'wherever there are men, there will be Zero Girls!'

Hideout in the Sun

Ah, the nudie cutie picture. You gotta call the nudie cutie a 'picture' as opposed to a movie because that's what movies were back in those days, pictures. It just sounds better that way. Hideout in the Sun (1960) is Cavalcade favorite Doris Wishman's first picture. For those Wishman-uninitiated, she's one of the most prolific female directors in history (female directors still being somewhat of an anomaly) and popularized nudist movies, as well as made roughies, horror movies, and all manner of sexploitation films in a career spanning almost four decades. Although some refer to her as the female Ed Wood, I love her, but I love Ed Wood too, so there.

You would think that a nudie cutie would necessarily have to have a plot. Well, this one is a bit smarter, I suppose, and it does - it concerns brothers Steve and Duke, two bank robbers, who have just hit a joint for a hundred grand. Duke, the ringleader of the pair and a bit Bela Lugosi looking, does the actual stealing, while Steve reluctantly drives the getaway car. After the heist (while this movie does take place in '60, Duke speaks likes he's strait outta of a 40's noir picture - it's all 'heist', 'double cross', 'dame', 'curtains' and he's the only one that talks like this), the brothers head to the marina to catch a boat to Cuba. Rodriguez, the boat captain, doesn't like the heat the recent robbery has brought (the brothers' deeds are all over the news), and decides not to disembark for Cuba yet, telling them to come back in a little while.

The brothers go to a shopping center and highjack Dorothy and her car as the lovely redhead is leaving a dress shop. Duke demands she take them to her destination where they can lie low until their boat can leave. Dorothy explains she's on the way to the Hibiscus Country Club, and Duke thinks this'll be the perfect spot to hide out. Upon arriving however, they realize the Hibiscus is a nudist camp, and Duke couldn't be more pissed, as is his way. He threatens Dorothy with violence and chain smokes and Steve decides When in Rome and joins the nekkid revelers in the pool, well, wearing a towel.

Steve's liking what he sees, and remarks how healthy and happy all the nudists look. And indeed they do. Nudists have a good time, man. They play volleyball, they swim in the pool and sunbathe, they drink ice cold Coca-Colas, they just relax. The nudist camp is a a pretty idyllic and easy going place, innocent as it were even despite the nudity, and Steve figures he could get used to this way of life, as well as life with Dorothy. I mean, he's already seen her naked.

But reality check time ensures Steve and Duke must head back off to their boat, which incidentally leaves without them. Duke hits Steve on the head and takes off with the money case, running straight into a Serpentarium (Lord, how I wish there were still such things as Serpentariums - basically a south Florida institution housing all manner of poisonous snakes and reptiles in pastel colored enclosures with a giant fiberglass snake out front - sounds like heaven, doesn't it?), and falling victim to a Cobra bite, which kills him instantly. Steve calls the cops and turns himself in, but not before returning to Hibiscus to tell Dorothy to wait for him, which she agrees to, and SCENE.

I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the plot. It's not super complex, don't get me wrong, but I was kinda surprised there was a plot at all. The nudie cutie was commerically viable because it was the only way back in the day you could go to the cinema and see boobs. Mind you, there was no full-frontal, all the nudists conceal their junk with beach balls, towels, flowers, all manner of props, because you couldn't just let your balls or your pubic hair hang all out. But breasts were cool and perverts would undoubtedly go see these flicks to see the boobies. Especially by today's standards, this movie seems as tame as it gets. It's all innocence and suntans and beach volleyball.

But seriously folks, how long can we really watch a bunch of naked people play volleyball and swim in the pool? Not very long. And as much as I loved this movie, the happy-go-lucky nudist parts often dragged. (But it's still a beautiful picture - the retro kitsch factor is unbelievable - something about that South Florida setting in the 60's.) Apparently, as times changed, however, the nudist movie died along with the fact that audiences wanted more hardcore and Wishman would be on hand over the next several decades to deliver. Can't say that I blame them.

This is an excellent starting point for budding Wishman fans, because it's a great slice of early exploitation cinema shot by a lady. And the vintage cheesecake shots are not to be missed. Think naked girlies romping and posing in fountains. It's as sexy as this gets, really. It seems this film was ultimately lost, until Wishman found a pristine copy in her storage room some forty years later. So now it's been given anamorphic treatment and looks fantastic. If you watch one nudie cutie picture this year, please let it be this one. Or you can watch Nude on the Moon, I don't care.

In the Folds of the Flesh

Sergio Bergonzelli's In the Folds of the Flesh has to be one of the most bizarre flick, even more bizarre than my weekly dose of Tim and Eric. It opens with the police in pursuit of Ron Jeremy lookalike, Pascal, an escaped convict. They chase Pascal to Lucille's, a Barbara Steele lookalike's, house, more of a villa really, where he sees Lucille burying a body wrapped in a carpet. The police gain access to Lucille's villa and capture Pascal. Cut to swirling colors and an ominous quote from Freud and the opening credits.

Cut back to the villa, only it's thirteen years later. Cousin Michele has arrived and he's pretty excited. We meet Lucille again, as well as the girl she is supposed to be governess too, Falesse, even though Falesse seems at least fifteen years too old for her role, and Lucille's son, Colin upon Michele's arrival. Falesse shows Michele some human skulls and Colin goes outside to feed the pet vultures. Then Michele's German Shepard digs up another skull and Colin kills the dog for being so nosy. It's an all too real scene of animal cruelty and one I did not enjoy. I HATE animal cruelty in movies, absolutely hate it. Luckily, it doesn't last too long.

Back inside, after some shameless flirting on Michele's part, Falesse takes out a dagger and stabs him. She seems to go into a psychotic trance or something, her eyes glaze over because she's apparently remembering another killing - and her memories come to her sort in a sort kaleidoscopic form and Colin comes in and drags Michele's body away. Just another day at the office for Colin. Then Alex, a friend of Michele's arrives, while Colin and Lucille do laundry. And by do laundry, I mean, they dissolve Michele's body in a vat of acid. Alex shamelessly flirts with Falesse as well. He tells her, "I'm no amateur, I've got technique, you'll find out." Then they all sit down to a meal wearing some pretty awesome outfits. They quote Freud, play guitar, and eat chicken, apparently a sign of virility, according to Colin. They they listen to a recording and Colina and Falesse dance and start making out while Alex laughs feverishly and cheers them on. Lucille breaks this party up and Falesse and Alex retire upstairs for some heavy petting. He takes her wig off and she freaks, something about only daddy can touch her hair and she cuts his head off with a sword. Then she clumsily puts her wig back on, has some more kaleidoscopic memories that intone a sexual relationship between Falesse and daddy and Lucille comes in to remove the body. Anyone sensing a pattern?

Then there's a scene at a mental hospital where some girls in mod outfits play with dolls and sing to themselves and suddenly we're back at the villa and Falesse is describing her crippling loneliness. Then Pascal shows up again to blackmail Lucille into giving him money or else he'll report the killing from thirteen years ago. Pascal wants them to dig up the bones of the body but they dig up Michele's dog instead and throw the corpse at him. He freaks and shoots their pet vulture. You would think then that it would be clobberin' time, but Colin and Pascal end up wrestling for way too long and the Pascal takes the upper hand. It's weird, because the family should get the upper hand because they've so owned that position before. They easily dispatch Michele and Alex and seem to enjoy doing so. I guess Pascal is blackmailing them, but shit, with all the swords and daggers they have lying around for stabbings and beheadings, you would think they would use them. But that would starve us of the unusual killing to come.

So Pascal ties them all up and treats Colin to a 'passion play' which is essentially the fondling of naked Falesse and then he makes Colin shine his shoes while promising an encore performance of the 'passion play.' He then orders Lucille to fix him a souffle and they go outside. Then Lucille has a flashback to her days as a Nazi concentration camp prisoner where she watched as her mother and sister were gassed. The Nazi's rape and torture her, but not before she learned how to kill someone with cyanide, which is the way they plan to kill Pascal, which they do, with excellent results. In fact, it's one of the most inventive kills I've ever seen. They place the cyanide tablets on a Coo-coo clock and when the hour strikes, the tablets fall into Pascal's bath tub. Instant death and reason to wear a vintage gas mask. Falesse comes in and freak because apparently she had fallen in love with Pascal (!?!) and then she makes Colin her slave and they make out under the disapproving eyes of Lucille.

Incest, pop psychology, severed human heads, fabulous seventies fashion, pet vultures, Italian villas, and Nazi sex torture are just a few of my favorite things covered herein. But then it gets weird (I know! It gets weirder! Too much so for me to account for here.) and all plot twisty. And while seventies Italian cinema isn't known for it's linear narrative storytelling, this has so many freakin' plot twists, flashbacks, psychotic episodes and reveals by the third act to keep anyone entertained. Strange, weird, and at times, wonderful (watch it just for the fashion and makeup alone), don't expect a gialli or anything close. It has none of those trappings. This one is in a genre by itself but appeals to the vintage sleaze fan in me. Yay! Vintage sleaze!

The Touch of Her Flesh Part 2

So let's begin where we left off last time, with some lovely young ladies masturbating with clothing. Richard then tells us (his words again) that women trap men in 'sexual vortexes' so he's going to kill 'em all 'so those gates of flesh shall never again reopen.' I absolutely love the language in the voiceover. Richard is so serious.

Cut to a swingin' nightclub where a lovely light-skinned black girl is shakin' it for us to some groovy tunes. Then she retires to her dressing room and takes off her clothes to change into even skimpier clothes. She receives some flowers and then returns to the dance floor to get nekkid again. Unfortunately, she's attracted the attention of Stanley and he drugs her (via the flowers, I'm assuming, remember, numerous substances were abused during the viewing of this picture) and she, we can also assume, dies.

Then a quick weird cut and we're following a chick in a super cute jacket and updo walking through the woods. We find out this is Janet, Claudia's friend. Janet joins Claudia at her hideout, remember, she's hiding from Richard, the husband that she spurned, and Janet and Claudia take off their clothes, but not before Claudia plays a mournful tune on the piano. Janet assures Claudia Richard won't find her and then they rub around on each other.

Cut to a burlesque joint. There are some beautiful sexy dancing ladies in this movie! And of course, grouchy old serious Richard wants nothing to do with any of this sexyness. This scene features a raven-haired beauty on a backdrop of leopard print dancing it up. She's absolutely stunning and the embodiment of sex. So of course she must die. Creative as always, Richard takes her out while she's on stage with a poisoned mouth dart shot out of a piece of bamboo. He then picks up a prostitute that knows Janet and threatens her with an ornately handled knife. If she tells him where Janet and Claudia are, he won't hurt her. She tells him and he stabs her any way.

Here's where the film definitely takes on the 'roughie' vibe. Yeah, there were a couple of deaths of pretty ladies, but up until the pro, Richard doesn't ever use his hands on them, he either drugs them or uses the antiquated yet effective method of mouth dart as described above. The movie just seemed like sleaze before, but when Richard hunts down Janet and Claudia, he gets hands-on. He roughs up Claudia bad, hits her, rubs her breasts, sexually abuses her, threatens to kill her with a circular saw, calls her any number of names, which basically goes on way too long until he finally kills her. Janet, in the meantime, has been listening to this violence perpetrated on her friend and takes off running when she knows Richard is done and coming for her. He's somehow procured a crossbow and chases the panty-clad Janet for quite some time through the abandoned building serving as their hideout until Janet somehow gets the crossbow away from Richard and crossbows him. (She doesn't kill him though, I know you're all super attached to Richard by now so don't get upset; he comes back for two more sequels like a good vengeful killer.) And scene.

Like I mentioned before, Touch of Her Flesh is a wild ride. It's sexy, sleazy, rough, and daring. If you like boobs, vintage lingerie, 'real' women, and obnoxious music that works within its context, this is the picture for you. The women in this movie are gorgeous and they have curves and real tits, too. It's interesting to watch a movie like this from over forty years ago and see how what we regard as beautiful has changed. The curvaceous Janet, for example, would likely be considered 'fat' by today's standards, but here, she's a popular model.

Last night I watched The Curse of Her Flesh, the second installment in the Findlay FLESH trilogy, but I was reeeeeeeaaaalllly tired and my notes are incomprehensible and only half a page long. I must mention the opening credit sequence, however, because I think I enjoyed it almost as much as the credits on naked asses and boobs from the first installment. A guy is at a seedy club and he goes to the nasty bathroom to take a leak. Alongside the 'call Angela for a good time' messages posted in the urinal, the credits appear written in crude magic marker. Brilliant! There's also an excellent stripper in the beginning doing a great chair dance. So I might have to watch this one again, because I know there are some treats in there. Oh, I do remember another great scene with Richard, a dancer, and a calico cat and the dialogue is just hilarious double entendre. Stay tuned!

The Findlay's Touch of her Flesh

So having watched my first Milligan film, I was thinkin' a lot about watching Findlay movies. Both are grindhouse-era type of stuff, the Findlays I guess I know really little about, since I've read Milligan's bio. I used to think I knew a thing or two about this stuff and then I was schooled by reading the Milligan book.  Hey, maybe be I should write that Findlay bio, get down and dirty and find out all of the stuff about Michael and Roberta like in the Milligan book. I know I would be bound to find out some seedy stuff. Nobody steal my idea. I've got a Doris Wishman book in the works too. 

So I posted about the Ghastly Ones and I was thinking about Milligan and his reputation and about the Findlays and their reputations (Roberta considers herself THE first female pornographer) and decided I would revisit their infamous FLESH trilogy, starting of course where it began, with The Touch of Her Flesh. (Disclaimer: I watched this last night, numerous substances were abused. I have seen it before, but my notes and review may or may not reflect this. Also, it is Friday, but I am in, and drinking heavily after a looooooonnng day of waitressing, so bear with me please. Or not. It's up to you entirely. I have notes, but whether or not they are coherent is entirely my fault.)

My first note for the Touch of Her Flesh is 'Boobies!'. This is the first film I have ever seen that projects the opening credits onto body parts, mainly boobs and asses. It's a nice touch, one I would like to see implemented more often. So that's cool. Then we are introduced to Claudia and her hubby, Richard, who I will call Stanley. He leaves on a business trip or some shit and Claudia invites her hot young piece over to grope her outside of her underpants and kind of lay next to her and rub around a little bit. Then she takes off her bra and smothers him with her tatas and it's not at all sexy, but Claudia could be sexy if the scene wasn't so awkward with the lover guy wearing his trouser pants and groaning all the time. And all of this is set to classical music. 

Then lover man fakes going down on Claudia and she seems to really enjoy it. She's totally faking it. And then Stanley/Richard returns and watched Claudia through the window and gets disgusted and runs off into the night. We get some great exterior vintage NYC shots here and then old Stanley gets run over by a car. The expression on his face while he's watching Claudia in the throws of fake ectasty are classically perverted  and I love them. He wakes up in the hospital and gives them a fake name and goes out into the world to kill all women from here on because of the wrongs he has suffered by Claudia's cheating. And now he has an eye-patch and is giving off some serious I-look-like-Ed-Wood but with an eye patch vibe. 

So Stanley/Richard retires to a rented room with his eye patch and his modus operandi to rid the planet of all women, because, by his reasoning, they're all sluts and they (his words) bury all manhood deep within their female souls. He tells us this in an ominous sounding monologue while we're treated to footage of a woman masturbating with a some sort of fur stole and another woman stuffing a cardigan into her vagina. I am really having trouble putting this into words because it's seriously like nothing I've ever seen before. I guess it's exactly what I describe it as, although I'm not sure if I'm representing it accurately. Then he stops his voiceover and some more ladies masturbate and there's some shots of a flower in a another woman's pubic area and then some breasts are fondled and all the while some more classical music is playing.

Now, I don't mean to leave you hanging, but this is going to have to be a two-parter, maybe a three-parter, because my buzz is kicking in and there is A LOT left to describe. I'll hit it up manana with more sleazzzzzzy details, I promise you. There's lots more swingin' sexy action in this one and it's only the first part of the trilogy! This might take awhile. So get ready. Tomorrow I'll regale you with lots more sexy sexy sexy! Cause it just gets sexier and it gets a helluva lot rougher too. 

Schoolgirl Report #1: What Parents Don't Think is Possible

Nothing quite says New Year's Eve celebration quite like a 1970's-era German sexploitation flick masked as an educational film. Thus, I spent a quiet New Year's at home with the bf watching said movie - The Schoolgirl Report #1 (quick search - found out there's ten of these bad boys - and that they were wildly popular for a time, at least in their native land).

The film is set up like so - Renate (sp?) and her classmates are on a school trip to a witness all the thrills and excitements the power plant has to offer, and as interesting as that all sounds, Renate sneaks back to the bus to lay the bus driver. She's discovered by the matronly school marm, and a council is called in order to discuss what to do with Renate. Expulsion? But she only has a month left until graduation? She's a good student, what do we do, besides sit here and ring our hands? She admitted she doesn't love the bus driver. Sex without love!? What is this crazy concept?How, oh how, do we, the parents, makes sense of all this craziness?! Enter a psychologist man to explain (and defend!) Renate's behavior, and he does so super-sexily with eight erotic vignettes involving other teens from Renate's class. 

In one, a young girl pictures two horses getting it on, begins masturbating next to her sleeping younger sister, when mom walks in and catches her, and, you got it, shames her for it. Another has two teens meet up with two 'hot' studs (hot in quotes because this is very subject to opinion) and have sex with them at a construction site with hilarious results. One couple relegates themselves to sitting on a wheelbarrow filled with some sort of white liquid, which splashes all over the other couple, in the throws of passion by some pipes. 'How am I supposed to get an orgasm now?!,' the hot stud complains. A third has a lovely try and seduce a priest with her cleavage revealing blouse, only to have her advances rebuked for not being sincere. Another involves a tryst in a pool, only to result in an unwanted pregnancy. 

The film is clearly sexploitation. However, the softcore is interspersed with real scenes of women being interviewed on the street about their ideas towards sex in the 20th century. Do they engage in sex without love? Would they ever be paid for sex? Do they have boyfriends? Etc. and on down the line. Most of the women are young, but like the actresses in the movie, appear to be over 18. Most are very forward thinking in their attitudes about sex. They speak of sexual encounters candidly and openly. They admit to having sex outside of love, of relationships, to masturbating. They seemingly have no problem being women in this sense. But there is a morality to this film. And I'm making it seem much more forward and ahead of it's time than it is. It is actually quite a (gasp!) conservative film. A conservative sexploitation film, you ask? Sure....

There are consequences to our actions as some of the vignettes indicate. In very few of the scenes, do the women actually seem to be enjoying themselves, at least not in the sense of maybe they weren't very good actresses to begin. (Often when a film is in its native language and I have to read subtitles, I don't pay as much attention to the performance. Does this make sense? It's especially true when I watch Japanese movies and I don't watch a lot of German films but yeah, maybe they aren't good actresses or I'm just not paying attention like I should. Anyway....it didn't look like the ladies were having a particularly good time, with the exception of maybe Renate in the frame story.) Even thru the most eyebrow-raising scenes (the horse love masturbatory one in particular really struck a cord), there is a certain tenderness here, especially the last scene about virginity, the conclusion being maybe it really is better when you're actually in love. Some of the women interviewed admit to having STD's and seeming somewhat ashamed of it, laughing it off eventually. The film occupies its own dual universe - at one measure it is outrageous, defiant, even anti-authority, and in another educationally minded and sincere. 

The film began as a book- a best seller in Germany in 1969. It was kind of like the German version of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). This humble beginning, as it were, lends the film a further conservative, if not even clinical vibe. What is masking as a nudie film is actually a smart take on a slice of life, it gives us a glimpse of the impetuous youth of the 1970's. Softcore sleaze aside, I'm going to call this a cultural artifact. Maybe not a super important one, but a cultural artifact nonetheless. 

Whoa, I didn't think it would arrive at that, but it has and I'm going to try to track down the rest of these (which I think is the first thing I've actually resolved to do for the new year, being one that doesn't really dispense with a lot of silly resolutions every year). I'm sure they get worse, and loose the edge of this one, as it so often happens, but I like it when my vintage smut turns out to be socially conscious. Well, I guess I like it now, since I think this is the first time it's happened. My smut being socially conscious, that is.