I’ll admit that about three years after seeing The Vampire and the Ballerina (L’amante del vampire) the only thing I
could seem to remember about it was the dance numbers. The movie had left a
good impression on me for some reason, and I don’t think it was just because of
the dance scenes, which were surprisingly sexy for 1960. During a recent
re-watch the rest of the movie was like viewing it for the first time. It’s a
fun, atmospheric Italian vampire piece from the gothic horror golden age, and after
seeing a lot of those, they tend to get lost in the memory over time if you
don’t re-watch them on occasion.
This one, along with the same year's The Playgirls and the Vampire (1960),
does have enough sexy gimmicks to help it standout in the mix; and what might
also make it a little more interesting to some is that it is an early effort
from Renato Polselli, someone whose
particular brand of erotic, expressionistic madness touches my heart. Polselli’s cinematic characteristics
seen in films like Delirium (1972)
and The Reincarnation of Isabel (1973)
aren’t quite as apparent in The Vampire
and the Ballerina as they would be in Polselli’s
Vampire of the Opera (1964) later on,
but it’s still a charming attempt at a gothic horror film, in romantic B&W,
that Polselli co-wrote with prolific
screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi as well
as Giuseppe Pellegrini.
It’s amazing what Mario
Bava could accomplish when he had free creative reign considering films
like Lisa and the Devil (1973) and Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), but
with 5 Dolls for an August Moon (5
bambole per la luna d’agosto), we have an example of Mario Bava as a director for hire, being pressured to return to the
newly booming giallo genre he helped create with the previous entries Blood and Black Lace (1964) and The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963).
Admittedly,
5 Dolls is a more conventional
affair in comparison to Lisa and Twitch and is obviously influenced by Agatha Christie’s seminal Ten Little Indians. I wouldn’t call it
an adaptation but more of a self-conscious tribute with several trendy updates
and sly nods to the source material. It turns out that Bava didn’t think highly of Ten
Little Indians at all. When he was approached with the script, written by Mario di Nardo, and asked to direct the
film he mainly accepted the job, despite some apprehension, because he would
get paid up front, which disputes a previous notion I had that 5 Dolls was Bava’s own take on Christie’s
classic novel. Making an Agatha Christie
inspired giallo was the fashionable thing to do at the time, and, not being
able to add much to the script, Bava
directed a giallo he would end up having very little regard for, which is
unfortunate because it’s one of my favorites. It also has one of my favorite
soundtracks, by Piero Umiliani.
The
story concerns ten characters, five of them women (most likely the titular 5
dolls), on an island. In the spirit of Ten
Little Indians, with no way of presently leaving the island, they are
killed off one by one by an unknown assassin whom they eventually realize has
to be one of them.
During an interview included on the 2006 Blue Underground
release of Succubus, Jess Franco spoke of a sixteenth century
book he had come across on a bookshelf entitled Necronomicon that had belonged to
a wealthy actor and film producer Pier A.
Caminnecci, who had invited Jess over
to his house to indulge in his extensive jazz collection, as the two were
mutual jazz fans. Jess read a short
story from this particular book that was so extraordinary he had to make it into a movie. Of
course, this incarnation of the Necronomicon was most likely an imitation since
this popular mythical tome came entirely from HP Lovecraft’s imagination in the early twentieth century, but it’s
still fun to think that Jess may’ve
been influenced by the actual ‘book of the dead’ written by the “Mad Arab”
Abdul Alhazred. Jess blended the
material from the book with a script for a horror movie he had previously
worked on, and the result is one of his most provocative films.
Considering movies like Barbarella (1968), Top
Sensation (1969), and Russ Meyer’s
Vixen! (1968), it would seem that
the late ‘60s, the peak of the sexual revolution in the western world, was a
turning point for erotic movies. Sexually charged films from this era were not
only challenging censorship but were also challenging the monolithic wall of
puritanical behavior that associated sex solely with marriage, which also
mirrored the changing attitudes towards sex during the revolution.
With both “the
pill” and penicillin on the market, pregnancy and STDs were less of an issue,
and a woman’s sexuality outside of marriage was becoming more widely accepted,
unlike the vicious double standard from before when it was more permissible for unmarried men to have sex. Naturally, sex began to saturate the media, was
used to sell products, and became a big part of mainstream culture. In
addition, more and more married couples began experimenting with extramarital
sex.
After the Hays Code was put to sleep in 1968 sexploitation cinema would really
begin to thrive. With hopes of being free from the restraints of
censorship, erotica would be used to explore new creative avenues of
film making.
Inevitably, a lot of these so called sexploitation movies were taken
to court, but a good way erotic filmmakers could get passed this was to not only make their
movies sexually explicit but to make them intellectual and artful as well, which
was particularly more common in foreign sex movies. On the VH1 documentary Sex the Revolution, John Waters said that in order to win in
court you had to prove that a prosecuted sex film was socially redeeming, which
would then make it acceptable.
The Italian-Spanish co-production La mansión de la niebla / Maniac Mansion was the directorial debut
of Spanish filmmaker Francisco Lara Polop,
who had been previously working as a unit production manager for about ten
years. He would also produce the Paul
Naschy classics The Hunchback of the
Morgue (1973) and Count Dracula’s
Great Love (1973).
Made at the height of the Spanish horror boom, Maniac Mansion really is quite the
fanciful gothic horror film with enough giallo and murder mystery influences to
make it appealing to all Eurocult fans.
The fiery intro credit sequence is hypnotic
and a nice mood setter, featuring a killer theme and a couple of
chilling evil-witch cackles. The beginning of the story is a lot more grounded
in reality with a somewhat unremarkable setup involving numerous shady characters,
among which are a few familiar faces including Jess Franco regular Alberto
Dalbés, before derailing into a foggy nightmare world, where things get a
lot more interesting. Initially, you might start feeling better off just
reading an Agatha Christie novel instead, but it does start to get good when all of the
characters seemingly enter what feels like Silent
Hill all of a sudden.
Although commonly referred to as a giallo, Alberto De Martino’s The Man with Icy Eyes would have to be
a rather atypical example of the genre, if not an ostensible one. It is set and
filmed in a southwestern desert city called Albuquerque, NM (where I’m from,
but we’ll get to that later). It doesn’t follow the violent murder mystery plot
set forth by Mario Bava and
popularized by Dario Argento, nor
does it have any of the attractive gothic horror crossovers with ultramodern
psychedelic fashions or drug-induced delirium. If anything, the film is more of
a rustic detective story with a smattering of the crime thriller and a climax
not entirely unlike that of Lucio Fulci’s One On Top of the Other (1969). Given the
film’s mystery element, tense soundtrack, and early ‘70s era, and considering the
presence of key players like Antonio
Sabato (Seven Blood Stained Orchids
1972) and Barbara Bouchet (Don’t Torture a Duckling 1972), I can
still dig the giallo tag. It also flirts with the supernatural, just a little,
and there’s a colorful nude photography scene with Bouchet to give the film a minimally erotic edge.
You might not know it from looking at the playful erotic
movie posters and DVD covers, but Simona
is no sex comedy. Though still playful and sexy in certain parts, Patrick Longchamps’ Fellini-inspired adaptation of the French novella Story of the Eye (1928) is a dark
oddity of avant-garde filmmaking, with a heavy undercurrent of social
alienation.
At the time the film was released its lead actress Laura
Antonelli had recently
achieved overnight fame from her award winning role in Salvatore Samperi’s sexy, controversial
dark-comedy Malizia (1973). She had
made such an impact that moviegoers flocked to see Antonelli in Simona,
which was actually shot about a year before Malizia (Simona was
shelved for a while before being released).
Simona was unfortunately confiscated in Italy for its explicit
content. One-time Belgian filmmaker Longchamps had a friend with connections in the
Vatican who organized a private screening of the banned film for four priests,
and after finally being approved by the church, Simona was released in Italy, where it made a lot of
money (the film was never released in its native country of Belgium). Eventually
the original film negatives were acquired by "distributors of ill-repute," and as it currently
stands, a properly restored version of Simona, as far as I know,
remains unrealized.
"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
