Two Males for Alexa / Due maschi per Alexa (1971)

“In the arms of just one man, a woman is already half abandoned.” – Mario (Emmanuelle Arsan) Les enfants d’Emmanuelle (1975) 

The cheating adulteress is supposed to be frowned upon as a sinner, or even framed as the villain, who deserves what’s coming to them when they are caught, in almost any story/scenario, in faint retribution for the deceived, heartbroken victim. The scorned will feel entitled to justice and payback, with the punishment not matching the crime but rather how much honor and dignity needs to be recovered, and the more massive the ego, the more massive the blowback, so massive sometimes that one starts to wonder who the real villain and victim are here. 

The old-fashioned love-triangle conflict seems to almost always end badly in fictional drama, and Juan Logar’s Two Males for Alexa goes all-in to try and illustrate the worst possible, albeit elaborate, outcome to infidelity.

 

Two Males for Alexa is a Spanish/Italian co-production, with a strong and familiar cast, including Italian Goddess Rosalba Neri, the wonderful and always welcome Emma Cohen, Eduardo Calvo, and a brooding and vengeful Curd Jürgens. It was filmed in Paris and Normandy, with additional interior sets filmed at studios in Rome and Madrid, and features an exquisite soundtrack composed by Piero Piccioni. 

I’m not very familiar with co-writer and director Juan Logar, but he does have a small but interesting looking output of rare films as writer and director. He has a more extensive list of credits in voice dubbing for Spanish edits of films including his own Two Males for Alexa.

 

I’ve been fond of this film for quite some time, and it is one of many that I’ve been meaning to get around to reviewing for what feels like ages. It’s got to be one of Rosalba Neri’s best sexy thrillers. The premise is interesting, and it does go hard on the misery and regret from the hopeless ‘escape room’ punishment the adulterers have to face (almost a little on the proto-Saw (2004) side), and I do believe it really does stand out from its erotic Euro thriller brethren of its time. 

(As usual, no one rocks the knee high boots quite like Rosalba Neri. I’m pretty sure she wears her own clothes on set, as I’ve seen some of her fashionable outfits reused in more than one movie.)

 

A filthy rich older gentleman, Ronald - sometimes Roland in the subtitles (Jürgens), driving from Paris to his country mansion off the coast of Normandy, appears to have troubled thoughts of a beautiful younger woman, our lead heroine Alexa (Neri), and another young man, Pietro (Juan Luis Galiardo). Alexa is Ronald’s wife, but at the moment she’s not with him; she’s with Pietro having a romantic time at the beach a short distance from the villa, water skiing and having a nude embrace while kissing Pietro on a picturesque shoreline. It’s highly suggestive that the possibly armed (we do see him with a gun from a brief flashback) Ronald is moving in for a double homicide to get even with his cheating wife, but he has something more elaborate and theatrical in mind.

 

Later, while Alexa and Pietro are making love in his house, without them at first noticing, a sweaty and disturbed Ronald slowly enters the room with a gun, stares for a while, calls out Alexa’s name, and turns it on himself. He shoots himself in front of them and falls dead, rudely interrupting their coitus. When Pietro tries to exit the room, multiple apparatuses from the security system lock the lovers in with Ronald’s corpse before a tape recording of Ronald’s voice explains to them his true thoughts and that the three of them will now be together forever in this tomb he’s prepared, as he gets in a kind of final winning hand and last laugh. Ultimately, after giving up trying to escape, it ends up being a very miserable descent for the two trapped lovers who end up with nothing to do but reflect on deep regrets and missed opportunities in their lives while they slowly run out of oxygen and wait to die.

 

Since our two lead adulterers are trapped in a room most of the time, we are treated to numerous flashbacks, which include how Alexa and Ronald first met at his castle where his daughter Catherine’s (Cohen) wedding party had commenced. Before she met Ronald, Alexa was Catherine’s college friend who, at the night of the wedding party, drank too much and had to spend the night and be watched over by Ronald at Catherine’s request. In the morning, Alexa and Ronald bond over breakfast and one thing leads to another. Their meeting does have a charming and tender start but such an ugly and brutal outcome, with the most cynical take on age-gaped relationships I can recall. Everything starts to slowly fall off the rails after they meet Pietro at a nightclub. 

(Emma Cohen’s character is a voice of reason who sees through it all while everyone else is kind of clouded by their passions. Catherine is also worried about her father and her inheritance that she suspects her new mother-in-law is after.) 

I honestly wanted to say that I didn’t think Alexa initially had intentions of marrying Ronald merely to intercept her step-daughter’s inheritance, but Alexa does admit at one point to Pietro that she did marry him for his money, but this might just be her saying what Pietro wanted to hear. There were other times when I did think Alexa admired and looked up to Ronald before they got married and before Pietro entered the picture.

 

It would be bold of me to make an “Alexa did nothing wrong” argument here. It’s true that if Alexa didn’t cheat and continue to deceive her husband, none of this would have happened. However, my personal thought is that if everyone in the love-triangle believed in and understood eroticism then everything would have worked out much better. It wasn’t by mistake that I referred to Alexa as a heroine earlier rather than a cheating villain. Alexa is a heroine, albeit a tragic one. She is an embodiment of the possible, in a society that is determined to make the love she is capable of creating impossible. Is she really responsible for all that takes place? 

Alexa’s capacity for love is greater than the fidelity her husband expected of her. She could have loved all three (there is a third man in the flashback scenes, Phillipe (Manolo Otero)), but that is not how the society they are embedded in works, hence the disharmony. Yes, her capacity for love extends beyond just one man, and this incongruity with tradition results in misfortune.

 

After Ronald catches Alexa and Pietro together for the first time, when all cards are on the table, following an awkward exchange between everyone, Pietro is slightly misled (or deluded) into thinking that Ronald is understanding, possibly consenting to the affair, but not really. Pietro misunderstands it as having a “modern” mindset, but you know the husband, holding his glass of whisky, mildly feigning indifference, is having none of it and is plotting something cruel to have his “justice”. To some, love is nothing but market ownership. The more erotic someone is, the more they can handle the idea of their love feeling pleasure with someone else, without feeling devasted or betrayed. So, I suppose it is understandable that an old school wealthy capitalist who owns a castle and a mansion wouldn’t seem to have an erotic bone in his body.

As Pietro mentions later on to Alexa, "he loved you so much he thought of the most sadistic way to kill you." Considering the suffering and devastation that results from Ronald's revenge scheme, I would say his ego and jealous possessive mindset are the real sickness rather than the tendency to want to love more than one person. But if everyone got along in this story and loved each other in erotic harmony then I guess we wouldn't have much of a conflict. This is an erotic thriller after all, and passion, jealousy, and getting-even are the order of the day. 

 

Towards the end, the movie does go one deeper by having Alexa and Pietro, while they lay hopeless, reflect on past lost loves (Phillipe for Alexa, and an unnamed woman played by Christine Laurent for Pietro) and the regret over what could have been. They let the simple things slip by because they looked for more, thought they deserved more, but when it backfired and they found themselves meeting a regretful fate, that possible happiness they would’ve had otherwise with the ones they let slip away seems mighty alluring for them at this point.

 

When Alexa and Pietro are at their most helpless, laying on the floor, running low on air, things do get delightfully delirious, and possibly hallucinogenic, for the wrap-up. In the last moments, they kind of remind me of zombies. I love Neri and Galiardo’s performances here. There’s also something about a pale, sweaty, and deadly Alexa. Her blank, apathetic expression betrays how volatile she is at this point. She’s obviously changed here. It’s kind of like another layer to the character and to Rosalba Neri’s acting that I really appreciated. The closeout comes off as an impressive Shakesperean tragedy that’s more fulfilling than it has any right to be.

 

I have to note that the footage is the same, but the dialogue and music between the Italian (Due maschi per Alexa) and Spanish (Fieras sin jaula) edits are different during the final scene. The intros to both versions of the film are edited differently with different music themes as well. Plus, there are interchangeable clothed and nude scenes with Rosalba Neri depending on which version you are watching. This is a little jarring because I didn’t fully realize this until I watched both versions so closely for the sake of this review. I can’t say which I prefer, but for completeness, I would try to watch them both if you can. They hit differently. 

But wait, there’s another version I rewatched at the last minute after I decided to pull out my old washed-out looking DVDr of the film, the West Germany edit under the title of Im Rausch der Sinne, that has pornographic inserts with different actors (how'd I forget that!?) and, I was surprised to observe, adds a major plot twist to the ending (which causes the movie to remind me even more of Saw) that’s at odds with the ending to both the Spanish and Italian versions. So that’s frustrating. At least Rosalba Neri still kills it in every ending.

 

Two Males for Alexa features absolutely gorgeous exterior shots (with two credited cinematographers José F. Aguayo hijo and Igino Fiorentini) on the beach and during some of the flashbacks (That breakfast table scene right outside of Ronald’s castle just mentally transports me to a kind of comfort place), but it’s also so grim and claustrophobic. The two trapped lovers undergo an ordeal that breaks them at the end. Rather than devolving into a hysterical and screaming mess, they move into a rather apathetic and exhausted state. The initially hedonistic and happy-go-lucky lovers are broken down into two reptiles at the end. They’re not in each other’s arms comforting one another but are like two trapped animals, fatigued, full of regret, and pretty much done with everything and each another. So, even though Rosalba Neri is hotter than hell in it, this is definitely not the joyful erotic experience the title suggests or that I tried to imagine but another counter sex revolution cautionary tale than warns us of the potential consequences of abandoning or devolving our morals. And to that I say boo. 

© At the Mansion of Madness 

Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973)

I first saw Horror Rises from the Tomb many years ago (around 2003) as part of a four movie bargain set of zombie movies, and my initial thoughts were, “too slow and not enough zombies.” I had no idea who Spanish filmmaker Paul Naschy was at the time, nor would I have probably cared. I was disappointed I didn’t get the zombie movie the misleading box cover promised. I then cast it aside as an irrelevant film that was best forgotten. (Boy is adult-me really annoyed at teenage-me right now.)

In the midst of my giallo collecting craze around 2008, I eventually came upon a Naschy thriller called Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974). Needless to say, I dug it and finally became interested in director/writer/actor Paul Naschy. My next Naschy film was Human Beasts (1980), which to me was an even greater experience. Then, after having fun with a couple of Naschy’s werewolf movies, I thought, despite my disconcerting memories of the film, I’d give Horror Rises from the Tomb another go with a new perspective as a Naschy fan and without my zombie film bias.

Night of the Walking Dead / El extraño amor de los vampiros (1975)

"The sun shining in my dreams / The light is getting hot / Saved by eternity / I have seen death so close / Away, awhile the angels crossed the sky / But I'm condemned to stay here." -- Heavenly  

In his memoirs, Paul Naschy said he had referred Argentine film directing stalwart Leon Klimovsky to be director of his seminal Spanish horror classic La noche de Walpurgis, AKA The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971), because one of the film’s financers wanted a quick and reliable director.

It would seem that Klimovsky was known for his fast shooting and workmanlike skills, and yet he managed to direct some real atmospheric classics of Spanish horror, often on low budgets and high pressured shooting schedules, and he introduced an oft-imitated technique of filming vampires and zombies in slow-motion, capturing a uniquely nightmarish plane of existence in the process.
  
Klimovsky’s vampire films are exceptional and interestingly varied, and they belong alongside the best of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin. The aforementioned The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman was a record breaking box office success that revived the Spanish horror fantasy genre. The other Klimovsky directed vampire films that followed were the epic The Dracula Saga (1973), the more grindhouse flavored The Vampires’ Night Orgy (1974), and the romantic, adventurous, and somewhat eclectic Night of the Walking Dead / The Strange Love of the Vampires, the topic for tonight

The Other Side of the Mirror / Al otro lado del espejo (1973)

Jess Franco could film movies faster than I can write reviews for them. His films can sometimes have an overwhelming low quality feel to them, making them difficult to digest for the majority. The natural location shots, haunting tone, memorable and well-chosen female actors (Franco definitely had an eye for female leads that just seemed to resonate with the camera lens), and Franco’s brand of bizarre surrealism and eroticism don’t seem to be enough to save the films for many, but they are nonetheless a huge hit for others. Al otro lado del espejo contains all of the aforementioned elements and yet has a higher-than-usual quality feel to it, most likely due to the terrific acting and screen presence from its leading lady (Emma Cohen of Horror Rises from the Tomb and Night of the Walking Dead) and a believable tragic story.

Jazz pianist/singer Ana (Cohen) is profoundly affected by her father’s (Howard Vernon) suicide shortly after her engagement. After calling off the wedding, Ana leaves her homeland on Madeira Island only to undergo several failed relations when she intermittently becomes hypnotically driven to kill any man that becomes close to her.

It isn’t just enough to say that Ana is haunted by images of her dead father in the mirror. She doesn’t just see him, but she finds herself at times in the mirror, in Franco’s looking glass world. It can also be viewed as Ana’s mental reflection on her emotional trauma. The memory of her father’s suicide driven by his stubborn disapproval of her marrying and leaving him is intertwined with Ana’s psyche, manifesting itself when she murders any man that shows any sexual interest in her. Ana’s traumatization, spurned the moment of her outcry into the mirror, yields a malediction that could either be viewed as some sort of curse or spell from her father’s ghost or played off as the result of a kind of posttraumatic stress disorder. If taken at face value, the goose bumps inducing ending, made more dramatic with church bells signifying the wedding that never was, reveals which one happens to be the case.