OSS117 - Double Agent

The Assassination Game

OSS117 - Double Agent
aka Niente rose per OSS 117
aka OSS117 Murder For Sale
France/Italy 1968
Directed by Renzo Cerrato, 
Jean-Pierre Desagnat & André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Well this is going to be another very short OSS117 review but I can finally say I’m very disappointed with Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set, OSS117 Five Film Collection, which collects the films made about this character in the 1960s and which, in the case of this film, is based on Jean Bruce’s novel Pas de roses pour OSS 117. Not because Kino Lorber have done a bad job... on the contrary, the transfers and prints on these things look fantastic. I think it’s more that these bandwagon competitors to the Bond franchise are just, mainly, as dull as ditchwater. And I can’t blame the actors either. 

OSS117 - Double Agent is about Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, alias OSS117, infiltrating the crime syndicate known as ‘The Organisation’ (no, not that organisation... a much smaller, fictional one) in order to foil their plan of assassinating people for money. Why the secret service are targetting this organisation in particular was, I think, passed off with an attempted explanation at the start which I really didn’t understand and it felt like a bit of an excuse to be honest. The plot goes from silly to worse as OSS117 is injected with a poison which will kill him once every 24 hours unless he has the next stage of the antidote, as the way his new employers try to keep their hired help on a leash and more pliable to their assassination missions. Hubert gets involved with a few ladies, has a few fist fights and eventually saves the day in the most anticlimactic, throwaway manner possible... which you wouldn’t expect from a film populated with some quite good actors, to be honest. 

For this fifth and final of the 1960s screen outings for the character, the lead actor has once again been replaced. John Gavin is playing him here and there’s even a reference... and a jokey dig... to the change in the male lead this time as one character describes him as having had plastic surgery to look like a specific killer and he gets the reply, “He’s much better looking now.” I guess it serves as some kind of testament to the acting talent that even Gavin... who was later signed on to take over from George Lazenby as James Bond, starting with Diamonds Are Forever (reviewed here), before Sean Connery decided to come back on board at the eleventh hour... can’t help save this film. The script and pacing is so awful. 

Nor can some of the other exciting names in the cast liven things up either... such as George Eastman playing a splendid henchman to the arch villain, played by future Bond villain Curd Jürgens, the wonderful Rosalba Neri and, five years after trying to kill Connery’s 007 in Thunderball (reviewed here), the stunning Luciana Paluzzi. I am guessing Paluzzi may just have been cast for her former association with the Bond film because, bizarrely, she disappears from the narrative about a third of the way in and is never mentioned again, even when it’s logical that OSS117 should run into her again at the close of the picture. 

Replacing composer Michel Magne for this one is the late but very great Piero Piccioni but, it has to be said, as nice as this score is as a standalone listen on CD, even Piccioni can’t save this one. I have to wonder at producer/director André Hunebelle’s decisions about this. He has two great composers on these films and it’s like he’s ordered them to play almost against the images and make them feel somewhat antiseptic and inappropriate to what’s going on in the film. As I said, Piccioni’s music sounds very easy on the ears but, really, does nothing to improve this one. A John Barry score would have really helped liven this picture up but, yeah, I have to wonder how both Magne and Piccioni seemed to both turn up such ‘out of place’ scores for these movies. 

And that really is me done with OSS117 Double Agent. I said it was going to be a short review and I can’t think of anything really good to say about the experience. The film feels somewhat lethargic and has a script which really lets everyone down. I can’t, in all consciousness, recommend this one to anybody. Possibly the dullest eurospy movie I’ve seen, I would guess. 

The Castle Of Fu Manchu

 

Cold Cuts

The Castle Of Fu Manchu
UK/West Germany 1969
Directed by Jess Franco
Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so I said that, as much as I love Jess Franco, after seeing his previous effort in The Fu Manchu Cycle, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this one and, frankly, I was right to be thinking that. That being said, The Castle Of Fu Manchu is actually slightly better than The Blood Of Fu Manchu (reviewed here).

Once again we have the regular cast of Christopher Lee as the titular character, Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion-Crawford as Nayland Smith’s assistant Dr. Petrie. Marion-Crawford died shortly after filming this one and, frankly, he does kind of look on his last legs here (check out Stephen Thrower’s extra feature on the previous disc in the series to get a quite credible explanation of just why the performances in the two Jess Franco films look a little half-hearted and phoned in). Returning from the last film we have Richard Greene in his second go round at Nayland Smith and, I’m happy to say, he has a lot more to do here too. Not a huge deal but, you know... more.

I knew this was a troubled production as soon as I started watching this one when I realised that pretty much the entire pre-credits sequence was edited footage from two completely different movies. One of them being from the climactic scenes of the earlier film The Brides Of Fu Manchu (reviewed here) and the other I somehow managed to correctly identify (although I’ve never actually seen the film itself) as being from the black & white 1958 movie A Night To Remember, with the Titanic doubling as a ship destroyed by what I think must be Fu Manchu’s deadly ice weapon... although the true nature of the device with which he threatens the world seems to be deliberately unclear, at least in scientific terms. For some reason, the footage mixed in from A Night To Remember is dyed blue, possibly because the producers were maybe trying to distract the audience to thinking they were using some kind of night footage, perhaps? I’m not so sure it’s... well it’s pretty obvious and just looks completely out of place and, also, way more interesting than a lot of the rest of this film.

So yeah, budgetary problems which would make sense seeing that Fu Manchu decides to destroy a big dam with the weapon as another demonstration but a) there seems to be no explanation of how the dam is in any way affected by the mechanism that causes its destruction, the writers don’t seem to give a damn, so to speak and b) because the actual footage of the dam bursting is tracked in from a film I’d not heard of before called Campbell’s Kingdom. Which explains why, if you look carefully, you can see Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker running around in one or two shots (which is what prompted me to investigate because, I was pretty sure they just weren’t around as background extras in a scene).

Also, once again, Fu Manchu threatens the world with some bizarrely indescribable destruction unless ‘the world obeys him completely’ but... and this now seems to be a theme in series... it’s still not really made clear what he actually wants. Just that he wants it... or else.

And in this film especially, everybody seems to be either discovering a necessary clue a fair few times... such as Smith figuring out the source of the opium required is in Panama, then making the revelation again later and then somehow figuring out they need opium which, yeah, they also already knew... or in the case of Fu Manchu himself, asking for information he already has. Such as when somebody tells him that he has Nayland Smith in the building just across the water and they will give him over to him if he releases a certain prisoner... and then Fu Manchu interrogates him as to where Nayland Smith is and, you know, he gives him the exact same information again, like everyone is just going around in circles. I can only suspect that the script was changing here at an alarming rate and scenes were maybe shot and then different ones also shot as an alternative and then, maybe, with not enough money to finish the shoot, all the versions of scenes or logical deductions were just edited into the same picture to pad it, hence the further need for tracking in footage from other films too. I have no idea but it’s as good a guess as any, I suppose.

So, yeah, cheap and cheerful but way better than the previous film, although that’s obviously not saying much. However, there are some nice things to watch out for. For instance, Rosalba Neri wearing a fez... that’s got to be worth the price of admission alone. And, yes, she looks ridiculous but, you know, enjoy it while we have it. Also, although this is certainly not Franco at his best as a director (and not too far from his worst), he does manage to get in some more creative shot designs as in some of his other, more lionised films and there’s some lovely lighting used in Fu Manchu’s castle where he pitches a lot of purple against green and sometimes red. This film looks very nice in some sequences but, in this case, a good looking film does not add up to it being more than the sum of its dire parts, alas.

Actually, one of the more ‘creation through necessity’ Franco moments comes when Christopher Lee is spliced into the footage watching the destruction of the damn. Some of it is from master shots of something which actually belongs to the scene and other stuff in close up is spliced in from what is obviously an entirely different studio setting, possibly where Lee’s wearing a different costume too. It actually put me in mind of some of those earlier Russian propaganda films by the likes of Sergei Eisenstein, where he would deliberately take a character out of context for the close ups. So that was kind of interesting. It’s also nice to see, again, Franco turning up in one of his own movies (at least he’s not focus pulling with his spare arm while still in the shot on this one, I presume) in an uncredited but in no way minor part. I always enjoy seeing him pop up like this so, if you’re a Franco fan, you might definitely want to check this one out.

That being said, the film is still a bit of a mess and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to most people. Indicator have, as usual, pulled out all the stoppers on this box set Blu Ray restoration of The Fu Manchu Cycle but, while this disc has a few extras, such as The Coughing Horror, a restored half hour episode from the silent film serial sequel, The Further Mysteries Of Dr. Fu-Manchu, I noticed that this is the only disc in this set where they couldn’t find anyone to record a commentary track. Maybe it was time reasons or maybe, you know, they just couldn’t find anyone to say anything polite about the movie but it’s a shame they couldn’t get Francophile Stephen Thrower to do a commentary for this. That being said, the film is still a valuable addition to the set and I think Indicator have, once again, done themselves proud. A sturdy release of a not so sturdy sequel. Grab this box set though because, yeah, it’s precious treasure in Blu Ray form. 

The Harry Alan Towers Fu Manchu Cycle at NUTS4R2

 The Face Of Fu  Manchu

The Brides Of Fu Manchu

The Vengeance Of Fu Manchu

The Blood Of Fu Manchu

The Castle Of Fu Manchu 

Videoman (aka Videomannen)

VHYes!

Videoman (aka Videomannen)
2018 Sweden Directed by Kristian A. Söderström
Screening 26th August at FrightFest 2018

Okay, so alongside the totally awesome Luciferina (reviewed by me here), Videoman (aka Videomannen) was easily one of the best movies playing at FrightFest this year (out of the five I got to see, at any rate). Set in contemporary Sweden, the plot follows a few days in the life of one Ennio Midena (played by Stefan Sauk), an Italian immigrant who absolutely loves the giallo and horror movies of his country and who used to own the best VHS rental shop in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s but, since the decline and near disappearance of VHS and Betamax, now gets by as best he can. Ennio is a composite based loosely on a few of the director’s friends (Söderström told us this before the screening), one of whom is indeed called Ennio Midena. The film is not of the horror genre, it’s a comic/social drama piece infused with a big shot of imagery and stylings borrowed from Ennio’s favourite genres and it’s a good fit. Indeed, in his introduction and discussion with the director, before the film unspooled for its appreciative audience, Alan Jones commented that it was a film which mixed the styles of Dario Argento and Mike Leigh and, while I can completely understand the sentiment, I’m not 100% sure Leigh (or possibly even Argento) would be the absolute best comparisons here, although Argento certainly gets more than his fair share of references littered all over this wonderful movie.

Anyway, the plot set up is simple... Ennio Midena has obviously seen better days and he lives in a basement flat in a replica of his old video store in which houses his collection (which he still rents tapes out from, if people meet his exacting standards in terms of the quality of their equipment). He is pretty much an alcoholic and doesn’t suffer gladly the fools who disagree with him about various movies (and even formats... I’ll get on to that in a minute). One day, however, he is faced with an eviction notice which means he’ll soon be homeless unless he can pay all his debts within two weeks. He doesn’t know how to face this new challenge but, while on the lookout for more films for his huge VHS collection, he meets a lady called Simone (played by Lena Nilsson), who is hoping to unload an old box of videotapes to anyone who wants to pay for them. In the box he spies an extremely rare, early edition of Lucio Fulci’s classic Zombi (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters... reviewed by me here), branded by a specific company in a specific box, which means something to collectors of such material in Sweden. Actually, I know there’s a similar equivalent in the UK when it comes to the second hand market for old, pre-censored VHS tapes branded by certain companies in specific packaging, so I can relate to this film being used as a plot device here, especially since Zombi was one of the ones which got banned in the UK over the whole Video Nasties furore of the 1980s and then later released in a much censored version in this country.

Anyway, Ennio offers the lady to buy the tape but she wants to get rid of the whole box in one go and, since the price is ludicrously cheap concerning the title in question, he takes it all off her hands. Within a very short amount of time though, through the ‘collectors’ grapevine, a legendary and mostly anonymous internet VHS dealer named after Jess Franco’s movie Faceless rings and says she is interested in the rare Zombi tape. Enzo says it’s not for sale but she offers a ludicrous amount of money for it... enough for Ennio to finally pay off all his debts... and arranges to meet with him a few days later to collect the tape and give him the money. Then tragedy strikes, as Ennio returns home later to find that his copy of Zombi has vanished from his collection, even though it was in one of the special sets of shelves which he keeps under lock and key. What follows for the remainder of the film is a truly brilliant and hilarious romp through the underbelly of old school VHS collectors comprising various friends and acquaintances of Ennio as he tries to figure out who has stolen his tape and how he is going to get it back before his meeting with Faceless. Meanwhile, he is also trying to keep up a semblance of a social life going and, for the first time in a long time, the similarly alcoholic Simone may be a good, potentially romantic partner for him. Will things work out for this unlikely pair or is there more danger lurking around the corner?

Well I’m obviously not going to tell you but I will say that Videoman is a true gem of a movie for people who are familiar with the strange ‘collector types’ who live out their passions through their hobbies while also giving some nice little nods to giallo and horror as it goes along.

For instance, after a prologue scene which we kind of see from a different point of view later in the movie, we are properly introduced to Ennio as he is sitting with his feet up on his desk, facing the front of the camera with both feet taking up a large part of the foreground right of the screen. He takes first his right leg and then his left leg down and we see his foot has been hiding from view a big bottle of J&B whisky. It’s a great little visual joke for lovers of Italian exploitation film as there seems to be a bottle of handily placed J&B in every giallo and police procedural movie going... so J&B spotters will love this moment. In fact, there aren’t too many scenes in this movie where Ennio isn’t seen to be necking down some J&B straight from the bottle so admirers of Italian film should feel right at home with this movie from the outset.

Also, the various houses and apartments of Ennio and his fellow ‘collectors’ are filled with various posters and locaninde of famous (and some possibly not so famous) gialli and horror movies of the 1970s and 80s. Indeed, there’s even a copy of one of Alan Jones’ books on Dario Argento in one of the early scenes in the film. Not to mention a ‘reflection in a pool of blood moment’ towards the end of the movie which deliberately mirrors David Hemming’s bloody reflection at the conclusion of Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (aka Deep Red, which I reviewed here).

There are some great, very true to life ‘collector’ moments in the movie too, which ring true to being closely observed slices of real life. The argument, for example, as to who is the greater director between Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. I mean, obviously it’s Argento but Ennio is insistent it’s Fulci and uses the diversity of genres Fulci has worked in compared to Argento to try and make his point, insisting Argento only makes films in the giallo mould. Which leads onto another nice moment where his friend brings up Argento’s Suspiria, which is obviously a horror film, as an example to the contrary. Ennio’s flat reply that it’s just a giallo with a witch in it is... very disappointing, hilarious and just plain wrong but it’s definitely the kind of argument I’ve seen before. I wonder what would have happened if Ennio’s friend had brought up Five Days Of Milan or Argento’s involvement in helping write (along with Bertolucci), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West but... I guess Söderström wisely didn’t want to stretch the point too far and lose the humour of the scene.

The same scene has a great moment where the two are watching a Rosalba Neri movie with hardcore inserts and are arguing about whether Neri is actually masturbating in the close up shot. It’s proved, via a scar, that it’s not Neri’s body in the shot and this scene is also interesting because it shows the usefulness of DVD and Blu Ray technology as opposed to the detail you couldn’t see in a paused VHS playback. Of course, Ennio sneers at his friend for not watching VHS films anymore (although his friend still collects them... he just doesn’t watch them) and I’d have to say that, on this one again, I’m not in Ennio’s camp on this as DVD and Blu Ray technology is way better, for all kinds of reasons, than having to watch video cassettes. Ennio is also perplexed that another collector catalogues his films by director rather than distributor and... yeah... I’ve been in those kinds of arguments too (although I would have to stress that I’m not a collector, like the characters in this movie).

Yet another thing I can relate to is when another friend of Ennio’s, who is married, has been reigned in by his wife and doesn’t have the time, or permission, to watch what he really wants to watch... and also Ennio comments that he’s not even allowed to hang up his old movie posters in the house he shares with his partner. Oh yeah, I’ve made those observations myself to people in my life and it seems to be a universal truth that, if your boyfriend or girlfriend doesn’t share your movie passions, those cool movie posters won’t be seen on your walls again.

I could talk about this kind of stuff for a while but, before you get the idea that this movie is just a bunch of hollow references holding a semblance of a story together... let me assure you that it really isn’t. The film is a nicely observed piece of genre tinged comedy with some goriness on occasion and some lovely moments, such as some dream sequences, dotted around. One such moment which occurs more than once, where Enzo finds himself trapped in a television set, is nicely shot and also later used quite brilliantly by being in the same composition as the sleeping Enzo, with the dream Enzo on the screen winking out of existence into static as the sleeping Enzo wakes up and opens his eyes. There’s some really nice stuff in here and I think genre fans who are collectors themselves or, like me, know people who think they are collectors, will get a lot out of this movie.

And the ending ‘punch line’ to the mystery of where Ennio’s Zombi tape has actually gone will probably ring a lot of bells and, I have to admit, I found it hilarious. I don’t want to tell you too much about it but I will say that I have known people who have done the same thing and the ‘incident’ which I won’t relate here has almost taken on the mantle of urban myth in terms of drunken VHS collectors over the years.

Videoman (aka Videomannen) is a truly delightful film and one I would recommend to pretty much anyone I know who is into these kinds of genre movies. I can’t wait to watch this one again and I have it on good authority that it will be getting a UK release at some point in the near future (although I’m not allowed to mention which label has acquired the rights for a UK release since... well, since I’m not supposed to know and somebody let it slip out in conversation by accident). However, if you’re in the UK and are wanting to see this one then that’s very good news. Now if only someone could secure a UK distributor for Luciferina, that would be my two favourite films of this year’s Fright Fest taken care of.


FrightFest 2018 @ NUTS4R2

The Most Assassinated Woman In The World

Luciferina

Hammer Horror - The Warner Brothers Years

Videoman (aka Videomannen)

Crystal Eyes (aka Mirada De Cristal)

The Devil’s Wedding Night

Pazuzu’s Petals

The Devil’s Wedding Night 
(aka Il Plenilunio Delle Vergini 
aka Full Moon Of The Virgin)
1973 Italy
Directed by Luigi Batzella (and uncredited Joe D’Amato) 
Virginia Cinematografica DVD Region 0

A girl running in the woods.

Without warning she goes a bit “psychedelic wash” like she's in a Monkees movie and then a big red eyeball comes out of the screen at you… ushering in some groovy credits which continue in a similar vein with scenes of nakedness in bright colour washes, letting you know you’ve entered the realm of... The Devil’s Wedding Night.

To say these titles are fairly striking may be a bit of an understatement. The giant crimson eyeball keeps coming back and really getting in your face.

I came to this film by my usual route I’m afraid. I was listening to some sound samples of some interesting looking Italian CDs and when my cousin asked me what I wanted for Christmas last November, I asked for this score. It’s pretty groovy... and actually quite funny in certain places when listened to within the context of the movie... but I’ll get to that later. Anyway, I was at one of the big Westminster Film Fairs towards the end of last year and I noticed that one of my favourite dealers had a copy of this movie going for a fiver... which is just as well seeing as what he charged me for Top Sensation (which I reviewed here and which, like this movie, also features the always beautiful Rosalba Neri in it).

So I bought it and it finally pushed its way up to the top of the backlog where I could watch it and see how the musical score works with the visuals.

Immediately after the titles, a man is searching through books in his study. He is to be one of the lead protagonists and he is particularly interested in reading an especially sinister passage from a book regarding an old magical ring with a blood red stone set in it that can conjure up demonic phenomena when it is held up to the moon during certain rituals.

The gentleman in question is interrupted in his readings by the entrance of another character who is quoting Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven. “Aha,” thought I. “They’re obviously trying to jump on the AIP/Roger Corman does Poe bandwagon which started back with House Of Usher in 1960.” That thought was further compounded by the fact that I knew one of these two gentleman playing.... well twin brothers actually, although they really didn’t look anything alike to me... was Mark Damon, who was in the aforementioned Poe flick and a few other similar kinds of titles back in the 1960s.

The first brother, the one who was reading, is actually an archeologist and he tells his “twin” of the magical Ring Of The Nibelungen. Yes, that Ring Of The Nibelungen, the guy explains. The one made famous by Wagner’s opera (as he pronounces Wagner like you or I might pronounce Robert Wagner, presumably not for comic effect). Actually, the way they pronounce Wagner is not nearly as laugh inspiring as the way they pronounce Nibelungen. And I thought cunnilingus was a mouthful (well, yeah, okay it is if you’re doing it right) but this stuff here is unintentional comedy gold.

Okay, so I digress. Must pay attention and get this stuff right because it gets funnier. It turns out, says our man, the archaeologist, that this ring was famous before Wagner wrote his opera about it because... oh yes... it was believed that the red stone is not a ruby, but filled with strange red stuff that was part of a meteor that landed long ago in the Carparthian mountains. Oh, stop smiling, I’m not making this stuff up... it’s in the film I tell you.

Now, by some bizarre leap of faith or twist of the imagination, our archaeologist reckons this must mean the ring is located in Transylvania, in a place called Castle Dracula, in fact. However, his Poe quoting twin brother is a little concerned about this because... “vampires”. But our hero, well one of our heroes, because both brothers feature quite comically in this bizarre movie, tells him not to worry. He explains to him that  he will be wearing the amulet that he found a year before in the Valley Of The Kings which is an anti-evil charm, originally fashioned for warding off the demon Pazuzu (if that name rings a bell with anyone, by the way, remember The Exorcist?). So he wears this for protection and goes off to Transylvania where he will meet his twin brother in two days.

Now then, the fact that the characters are twin brothers is something of a point of interest to me now, I’m afraid. I didn’t know who both these actors were but when, later in the story, they get around to mentioning “hey we’re identical twins”, I burst out laughing because, seriously, they look nothing like each other and when, furthermore, one was posing as the other to ward off suspicion, I was chuckling quite heartily that anyone could be so taken in. Well, as it turns out... both the characters are played by Mark Damon... so the joke’s on me a bit with that one. Moving swiftly on...

Brother A stays at an inn in Transylvania, the night before he finishes the last leg to Castle Dracula. Now the inn itself is quite interesting because I feel like I’ve seen it before. It doesn’t look very Transylvanian at all inside the set... in fact, I think Lee Van Cleef might have been in this set in one of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns... possibly The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I’m pretty sure this is an old Italian western set being reused here but perhaps an expert in such matters could look the film over for me sometime. I’d be interested to hear.

So, while at the inn, Brother A meets up with the landlord’s sexy daughter, who is afraid because in a few nights time, just by chance, it’s the ritual of the Virgin Moon in which, every fifty years, many virgins are summoned mysteriously to Castle Dracula and are never seen again. Our hero seems to be a bit of a ladies man (and I’m being polite here... if he was any more forward he’d be wandering off set somewhere tp sleep with half the film crew) and he offers the young lady in question protection... that is, he sleeps with her and “bingo” she’s not a virgin anymore... so she can’t be selected for the ritual “virgin sacrifice” which is an important social event on the Transylvanian calendar, to be sure. Of course, this doesn’t save her later in the film but... oh, look, none of this movie makes much sense, okay? Just go with it.

Anyway, our hero gets to Castle Dracula and finds, instead, a sexy housekeeper and Rosalba Neri playing a descendant of Count Dracula himself. He looks about the place a bit, including a study which is the dead spit of the one he’s seen in at the start of the film, with dozens of the exact same “by the yard” bound books as the ones filling his own library... he must feel at home then.

Well, he really must feel at home actually because it doesn’t take long for him and Lady Dracula (no, that’s not her actual character name but, in essence, that’s the message we are getting) to be involved in a sex scene which is, it has to be said, one of the funniest sex scenes I’ve seen in a movie which is trying to be erotic. Seriously guys... if you’re editing together footage of two naked people in close proximity to each other... don’t be breaking the 180 degree rule at that point. People will burst out laughing at the surprise... which is what I did.

And then Brother A ends up as a vampire in a box while Brother B comes to Castle Dracula to find him... which he does, rescuing him from his coffin and then plotting with his brother to stop Lady Dracula from going ahead with her ritual involving the ring and various young, virgin women and then later fighting him, as Brother A embraces his inner vampire.

It all gets a bit confusing and, frankly, the plot just lets go somewhere in the middle and drowns in the surrounding sea of scantily clad celluloid women. The ritual of the Virgin Moon seems to require the siren’s call of the ring, summoning young ladies who are held in place by some red cloaked, black masked, cult members, while the female house keeper rips the clothes off of each one and has a quick fondle of each of their bared breasts. I had no idea why she was doing this but it’s something both she and the camera were really getting into. When she gets to slash each one with a knife and watch the blood slowly drip down their naked protrusions, I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head in mock ecstacy... and then everyone starts chanting mock satanistic placations mixed in with “Om mani padme hum” and... wait, what? Yeah, that’s right. It’s all “satani this” and “Baal that” and then, all of a sudden. let’s throw some nice, peaceful “Om mani padme hum” in there too, shall we.

I’ve got nothing much more to say about this film. It’s both terrible and brilliant but, besides the full-on unintentional humour of pretty much most of the movie, there are a few saving virtues, along with the obvious one of large amounts of nudity, of course.

The film is mostly, apart from that amazing comedy sex scene, fairly well edited and the raw material of the shot design is great, with some nice compositions and some very fluid and smooth camera movements... it’s not a film to wallow in static shots at any one point.

And the music, too, is pretty cool but... that’s only when listened to as a stand alone listen. When it’s used in the context of the movie it sometimes gets used inappropriately. Like the times when the subtle, atonal washes of slow horror tones are immediately cross cut with heroic horse-riding music as Brother B rides to Castle Dracula, quite jarringly and... alas... repeatedly. It’s brilliant. Not as brilliant as the terrible acting in some of this though. I can’t believe people were taking this script seriously. And as for the ineffectual vampire guy who looks like a cross between the original Nosferatu and a slimmer version of Tor Johnson, but with less subtlety than either... well let’s just say that it’s a very hard film to take seriously and just leave it at that.

So do I recommend this one to my readers or not?

Yeah, of course I do. It’s hilarious. Don’t bother watching it if you want to be in any way frightened or want to try to take the film seriously on its own terms... the dialogue and plotting, as I’m sure you’ve probably gathered by now, is unbelievably bad. But if you are happy to have fun with these kinds of films then you’ll probably enjoy this one a lot. I can guarantee you that if you showed this as part of a pub screening double bill, there’ll be a lot of laughter in the house.

So grab yourself a pint... on The Devil’s Wedding Night.

Top Sensation

Das Goat

Top Sensation
aka The Seducers
aka Sklaven Ihrer Triebe
1969 Italy
Directed by Ottavio Alessi
Camera Obscura DVD Region 2

When I went to the Westminster Film Fair to pick up a copy of The Devil’s Wedding Night just recently, I shelled out the extra (for me, a bargain hunter to put it in the politest terms) cash for a limited edition DVD of Top Sensation by a German company who specialise in restorations of what they phrase Italian Genre Cinema... translation: Italian Exploitation Movies. They’ve done some pretty good giallo restorations in the past and I have a few of their movies sitting on my shelves.

I’d never actually heard of this movie before but the guy on the stall was talking to me and one of the other customers and they both recommended this film to me which was, apparently, a hot item of which he’d already sold most of his allocated limited edition stock of the title. I wasn’t sure until I picked it up but then I saw that it had my favourite “giallo babe” Edwige Fenech in it, in a definite state of undress, on the back cover. Not being one to shirk my responsibilites to my favourite female artists, especially if they are not wearing any clothing, I decided to make the transaction and, as I was forking over the hard earned cash, the stall holder furnished me with the wisdom that, I wouldn’t regret this purchase... especially the bit with the goat.

I thought no more of this, thinking perhaps that I had misheard the gentleman and wandered over to my favourite Westminster stall, with the two guys who specialise in Italian soundtracks. I mentioned that I’d just bought a film which I’d never heard of before with Edwige Fenech in it and when I told them the title they both commended me on having made an excellent purchase. Apparently I had a fine, upstanding genre movie in my hands. However, the two stallholders in question then looked at each other and added... “especially the goat scene”. I was kinda worried now but no amount of, well, whatever it is I could imagine with a goat taking place, could keep me from watching another movie with Edwige Fenech in her prime.

And so we come to Top Sensation. 

It may be a genre movie, for sure... but if it is, I’m not entirely sure what genre to put it in. It’s certainly an interesting movie but what’s really interesting about it is what was added into it for various different cuts of international releases. Fortunately, I’m able to see just what the extent of those are because this lovingly restored, albeit full frame (I’m assuming it’s open matte from a respectable company like this?) transfer by a company who I would have to call the German Criterion Collection of Italian trash cinema, is a two disc edition and includes all the alternate and freshly created (for the German  market, I’ll get to that later) footage on the disc.

But the basic cinematic release of the film is what I’ll tell you about first (the Italian TV cut is slightly different but, again, I’ll get to that in a minute). It’s all about seven people and, unlike the German version, only seven people. There are two principle locations... an Island (which is in a couple of scenes) and a boat. The plot invovles the super rich mother of a mentally retarded young man, Tony, and her employees who are hired to help Tony start to develop his mind. The plan is that Ulla, the Edwige Fenech character, will have sex with Tony so he’ll grow up fast. Instead, most of the time the one remaining bloke and three women seem to all be having sex together. Then they run aground on an island for a bit and Tony finds a goat sheperdess that he likes and she and her vengeful husband find themselves on the yacht as they sail off into trouble. There is some death and there are some very slight softcore sex scenes and lots of arguing and shouting... and that’s about it. It is, however, nice to look at and with people like Fenech and Rosalba Neri in the movie, I can’t say I regret buying this one at all. Even if it does have a scene on the island where, indeed, Ms. Fenech accidentally finds herself the (implied by the edit) object of affections of a goat. So those folks at the Film Fair weren’t kidding. About the goat. Kidding... about the goat. Um... yeah.

Anyway... the film ends with the machinations of the three people who are trying to win their fortune from Tony’s mother, foiled by a deed which, by the end of the film, only the audience knows about. The ship sails on into an uncertain future. At least in the Italian cinematic version.

In the TV version some extra resonance is added by use of flashbacks throughout the last couple of shots for the people who want the added depth or justification of why Tony has done what he has done (and I’m not telling you exactly what he has done because there’s not much I can give you in the way of spoilers for a movie like this but this would definitely constitute one). The resonance of the simplicity of the ending on the first version is a little spoiled and overworked for the Italian TV version, though.

The US version is surprisingly raunchier, with added footage to extend the relativley minor scenes of lesbianism, a lesbian threesome and, yes indeed, of the curious and inquisitive nature of the goat. I say surprising because the way the censors usually work in America is that they usually let all the violence through but cut out anything to do with sexuality... not that that makes a lick of sense mind you but that’s what they tend to do. Presumably the American’s would prefer their youngsters to see scenes of blood and carnage to emulate rather than teach them how to love and respect a woman. I really don’t understand this kind of censorship but, refreshingly, the trend is reversed here, from what I can see of the extended scenes from the American cut.

And then we come to the extra footage shot a year later for the German version...

Wow! Loads of new characters and nudity and death aplently as two 1970s police detectives, who are so sexist they make Regan from The Sweeney and Gene Hunt from Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes look like poster boys for feminism, link a series of murders to the people in the yacht. How on earth, I thought as I watched these scenes, are they going to have these two bring the alleged killers to justice since they obviously haven’t got any actors from the original shoot to help them out in that respect. Easy and quite hilariously unconvincingly, as it turns out. As the two investigate the island, they see the boat (off screen) and we then cut to a shot retracked in from earlier in the film where Tony drops a stick of dynamite. Rather than the dynamite being picked up and thrown in the sea like earlier, the detectives then hear an explosion as the ship is presumably destroyed, The two detectives look at each other and say “Let’s go home.”

Blimey. It didn’t take much for a German copper to solve a case in those days, did it?

Anyway, the discs have a few extra features, no expense spared by the always excellent Camera Obscura, and even an audio commentary on the disc... none of which I’ve watched yet. I prefer to review films like this without knowing anyone else’s responses. Would I recommend this movie to other people. Well, it’s kinda interesting and has the same kind of leisurely atmosphere as, say, Mario Bava’s Five Dolls For An August Moon (which also had Edwige Fenech in it, sans goat) but it’s certainly not the great movie that Bava’s masterpiece was. All in all I’d say that only fans of the naked bodies of Edwige Fenech and Rosalba Neri really need apply themselves to seeking out this movie. If, on the other hand, you are already a fan of the film, then this German edition from Camera Obscura is definitely the one to get as I doubt you’ll find a better version around at the time of writing this review. And if you do, say hi to the goat for me.