Immortal Sins (1991)

Susan (Maryam d’Abo) follows her husband Mike (Cliff De Young) to Spain where he is renovating the mansion his family once lived in before they went to the USA some generations ago.

Things for and between the couple seem fine at first, but Mike is plagued – well, perhaps not plagued exactly – by dreams and what amounts to visions of having sex with a beautiful woman (Shari Shattuck). These dreams do have a sinister undercurrent, and it becomes increasingly unclear if they truly are dreams. Particularly once Mike and Susan encounter Diana, who introduces herself as a very remote cousin of Mike’s. Diana, you see, does look exactly like the woman from Mike’s dreams. It doesn’t escape Susan’s notice that her hubby has the look of a guy on his face who just got a very enthusiastic physical reaction whenever he meets Diana, nor that he becomes increasingly withdrawn, sickly, cranky, and unwilling to fulfil his husbandly duties. That’s not just an opportunity for some fine rows between the couple. Susan also rather quickly decides something truly strange is going with Mike, some malignant influence hanging over him far beyond mere infidelity. Susan’s my kind of heroine, so she quickly starts on a campaign of research, and learns about a family curse.

On paper, this Corman-produced film shot in Spain by a Spanish director and with a Spanish crew, sounds a lot like a pure bit of Skinemax horror. However, while it does contain its share of sex scenes – which feel as if they were shortened by someone’s censorship knife in the VHS-based version I’ve watched - is actually a pretty serious and effective effort at evoking the virtues of traditional Gothic horror while adding quite a few Gothic romance tropes to the genre mix. Just, you know, Gothic horror with a few more naked breasts and more shots of Cliff De Young’s naked chest than you usually get to see. So if even one of these things floats your boat, you are rather in luck with the film. Generally, Immortal Sins’s approach to what amounts to a rather standard erotic horror set-up feels not so much like the US cable TV that probably inspired its existence but like a lost European horror film from the 70s, Spanish director Hervé Hechuel clearly putting quite a bit of effort into making the eroticism a bit more dreamlike than an American director would and well, actually, turning the rest of the film rather more dreamlike also.

Ironically, quite a bit of that dreamlike effect of proceedings is based on the director’s atmospheric approach to location shooting that turns an actual picturesque Spanish village, woods and roads (and a nifty building and cellar) into rather sinister places where the idea of a curse, a succubus, and the sins of the fathers coming down to first provide the sons with a lot of sex and then to crush them seem just par for the course.

While the dialogue is often – but not always – a bit rough, the acting is generally fine. Cliff De Young has always been good at playing this particular kind of libidinous asshole, while d’Abo does fine shouting matches with him but is also genuinely fun to watch when she goes on her research spree or when she starts seeing things. Sexploitation expert Shari Shattuck knows her stuff too.

This all adds up to a surprisingly effective low budget flick, certainly one of the more interesting Corman productions of the early 90s and a film I’d rather like to see uncut and with decent picture quality.

They’re Playing with Fire (1984)

Young Jay (Eric Brown) clearly hits the jackpot of teenage dreams. His hot (if you like the type) Professor Diane Stevens (Sybil Danning) seduces him with all the subtlety and charm we know from Sybil Danning. Who’d have thought she has ulterior motives for it?

Before you know it, she and her husband Michael (Andrew Prine) ask Jay to break into the home of Michael’s – hilariously unpleasant - grandmother and mother to frighten them a bit. It’s apparently all part of a bizarre plan to have the two declared mentally unfit so that Michael and the rather costly Diane can get at their money. Diane’s veeeery convincing, so Jay agrees. However, he’s not terribly good at frightening old ladies and instead finds himself chased off and nearly shot in the back (Mum’s got guns). While he is fleeing, someone more competent murders the ladies, hiding the bodies afterwards.

Jay, Diane and Michael fall into the usual habit of infighting, distrust and betrayal. However, someone goes around killing more people, particularly those stumbling into the home of Grammy and Ma.

A look at the packaging and one-sheets of Howard Avedis’s film suggests some sort of teen sex comedy but in truth, all comedy included is exclusively of the inadvertent type. In truth, this is a tits and ass thriller that for the last thirty minutes or so veers into the realm of the bizarro slasher – perhaps imagining itself to be an American giallo – and ends on one of the more bizarre ideas of what the words “happy end” mean. But explaining that last one would really be telling.

Obviously, it’s not a very good film. Avedis’s direction is just sort of there and the plot feels as if someone had mashed up the pages of about three different movies without much of an interest in coherence, logic or any of those other advanced concepts of the art of screenwriting.

Fortunately, They’re Playing with Fire has quite a few other things going on that turn it into something terribly entertaining, and often pretty damn funny. From the first “seduction” scene on, Brown and Danning have all the on-screen chemistry of two rather freakish looking pieces of wood. Danning seems – as is so often the case with her – to believe that shoving her breasts into someone’s face and hugging him awkwardly is the high water mark of all things erotic (full disclosure: aesthetically, Danning never did anything for me, which is a bit of a problem since she certainly isn’t as a rule hired for her acting prowess). Brown spends most of his screen time looking like a frightened rabbit in the headlight; except in the sex scenes with Danning, where he looks so damn uncomfortable you want to give the poor guy a pat on the head. Combined, these two are comedy gold, and if the film did this one purpose, I’d probably praise it as a masterpiece that’s finally honest about how the fulfilment of male teen sex dreams would actually look. Of course, it’s just rather spectacularly inept.

I’m particularly fond of the film’s slasher elements. The killer – and his backstory – make no sense at all, the presence of the victims in the house generally even less, and there’s a glorious randomness about every single scene involving him. A particularly delightful moment is when he starts a kill by stepping out of a wardrobe dressed in a Santa Claus costume. Now, keep in mind that the film neither takes place on Christmas, nor is there any particular connection between the killer and the holiday. It’s just something someone involved in the production thought to be a good idea at the time, and who could blame them?

Then there’s the happy end, but that’s something everybody should have to go through by themselves (while imbibing some legal drugs), I daresay.

Malabimba (1979)

The Karoly are an Italian noble family slowly slipping into poverty. They might still be living in a castle, but it's quite obviously falling into disrepair. The only financially fluent member of the family is Adolfo (Giuseppe Marrocco), and Adolfo is paralyzed and can't speak, and is - to the rest of the family's desperation - married to Nais (Patrizia Webley), who is usually called by names like "whore". Nais is in fact, and understandably, cheating on her husband with her lawyer (for some reason also living in the castle) with whom she has quite an interesting sado-masochistic relationship going on.

Be that as it may, the family matriarch (Pupita Lea) still wants her other son, Andrea (Enzo Fisichella) to marry Nais, so that the family can get their hands on Adolfo's money to help keep their decadent lifestyle up. Andrea isn't too happy with the idea. Firstly, he's a bit disturbed to think of things like this while his brother is still alive, and secondly, he is still not over the death of his wife some years ago. Nais herself wouldn't mind the arrangement and does her best (regularly appearing in Andrea's bedroom in the nude) to help Andrea along.

It's quite fortunate that the family has their own nun-in-training, Sofia (Mariangela Giordano) to care for Adolfo, or the poor man would die of hunger between all these people distracted by sexual innuendo.

At least Andrea has his daughter Bimba (Katell Laennec) to brighten his days, a charming, sixteen year old innocent. Innocent, that is, until the family has a séance, and the nasty spirit of one of the family ancestors takes her over. Lukrezia, as the ghost is called, seems to be quite a typical member of her family, as she is mostly interested in sex, cursing, and sex, and won't stop at minor things like trying to seduce her host's father.

People will probably look at me strange when I say this, but I think that Andrea Bianchi's Malabimba is a) the director's best film, b) the most watchable Italian rip-off of The Exorcist, and c) as good as hardcore porn horror films get.

The a) is obviously an easy accomplishment when you look at the rest of the director's filmography, (and the b also not too surprising when you have seen the other Italian Exorcists), but I think Bianchi does a truly swell job here of grounding the pornography in the psychology of his characters and vice versa.

Malabimba lives on its over-heated, utterly sexualized ambiance, where really nothing anyone does has no connection to a sexual hang-up. Even without a possessed teenager, the film is filled with characters completely driven by a sexuality that is (in the tradition of each and every film about the decaying rich, just more explicitly) barely held in control by weird ideas of propriety. So far, so porn, but what's most interesting is how much care (and that's not something one expects to say about anything Bianchi has done) has been put into providing an amount of logical motivation for the characters' sex-obsession. There really is no need for Bianchi or his scriptwriter Piero Regnoli to give reasons for anyone dropping their clothes at all, yet still they do, and thereby manage to make their film much more interesting (and possibly much more erotic) than they needed to. This does not mean that the characters act like you expect regular people to act, but as representations of people fallen prey to their urges they work quite brilliantly.

It also helps that Malabimba's actors are all quite good, properly overacting as it fits their characters.

The main reason for the film's existence is of course not to comment on the lifestyle of the idle not-rich-anymore, but to throw as much sleazy sex on screen as possible. Here, too, Bianchi excels (as he does - surprisingly - at providing moody set-ups). There's a palpable enthusiasm at breaking every taboo possible oozing from the screen, and it is surprising what a film can pack into 90 minutes when it is trying to. Really, there should be something in the film to offend (or delight) anyone. The film features the rampant sexualisation of a teenager, teddy bear masturbation (which I think is also a nice metaphor for sexual awakening, but what do I know), incest, the seduction of a nun, sado-masochism, sexual abuse of the handicapped - fun times. Basically everything apart from necrophilia and goat sex is somewhere in here; to find the latter two elements in a decent film, you'll probably have to look at Japanese cinema.

If the thought of all these things fills you with moral disgust or ethical panic, you'd probably best avoid Malabimba, but if you're like me and can appreciate a serving of sleaze, this comes highly recommended.

 

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