Quote: Given Joe D’Amato’s prodigious work-rate and his willingness to engage with just about any filone, it comes as little surprise that he should have made a mondo film, Follie di Notte.
The closest points of comparison are probably the two Jimmy Matheus / Bruno Mattei entries hosted by Laura Gemser and released about the same time, Le Notti porno nel mondo and the self-explanatory Emanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo n. 2, the latter co-scripted by Mattei and D’Amato.
Though Gemser is absent here, her stand in being Amanda Lear – a popular singer of the time, who book-ends proceedings with performances of a couple of her songs in a nightclub – it’s otherwise largely business as usual:
A touch of stock footage of Brazil in an unsuccessful attempt to convince us that the routine there, featuring a panther woman and some J&B bottles, wasn’t conveniently filmed in Rome; voice-over documentary type scenes of highly dubious authenticity, such as a black mass cum orgy and a look inside a S&M club filmed with a rather noisy ‘hidden’ camera where outwardly respectable men enjoy being whipped and humiliated; doubts over that Lear knew what she was actually commenting on in her bridging scenes; and the overlaying of the mass of dialogue-free material with stock library music, much of it forming a Piero Umiliani greatest hits collection.
Being a D’Amato production, it’s also a touch more sexually explicit than Mattei’s films and others of the time, with brief masturbation and fellatio shots amongst the simulated fumblings between the likes of two ‘primitive’ dancers and a couple of ‘lesbian’ ‘ballerinas’.
Although deeply in love with her boyfriend – and indeed sleeping in the same bed with him – a schoolteacher cannot handle the almost complete lack of intimacy he will allow. Increasingly frustrated, she gradually finds her sexual appetites leading her into ever more risky situations…
Senses of Cinema wrote:
“But it was with the release of Romance in 1999 that Breillat would face censorship internationally, when the film was either banned altogether in some countries, or given an X rating. It was a situation Breillat spoke out about when she declared that, “censorship was a male preoccupation, and that the X certificate was linked to the X chromosome.” Breillat’s statement was echoed in the French poster for the film, which features a naked woman with her hand between her legs. A large red X is printed across the image, thus revealing the source of the trouble: a woman in touch with her own sense of sexual pleasure.
Romance, and the world-wide discourse about pornography that erupted in the wake of its release, best typifies the challenge and the interest of her work. Romance is about a woman, Marie, whose boyfriend refuses to have sex with her. Her frustration leads her to a series of affairs in an effort to not only find pleasure, but seemingly to arrive at some better understanding of her own desire. The film is sexually explicit, and features, as do many of Breillat’s films, acts of unsimulated sex, hence the many accusations leveled against Breillat that she is a pornographer. Indeed, Breillat willfully courted such accusations by casting Rocco Siffredi, a famous Italian porn star, as one of Marie’s lovers. Moreover, Marie’s sexual encounters are marked by a sense of sadomasochism. Indeed, after having her baby she winds up with a man who is also the principal of the school where she teaches, having blown up her apartment and her boyfriend (who is also, presumably, the father of her child) on the way to the hospital.
Romance was banned in Australia upon its release in January 2000. In his review of the Office of Film and Literature’s (OFLC) report on the film, Adrian Martin describes the reason for the ban. And in so doing, Martin arrives at precisely the thing that makes Breillat’s films so difficult, and so interesting. Martin surveys the censors’ objection to the scene where Marie is solicited by a man in the hallway of her building. In this scene, a man offers Marie twenty-dollars to perform cunnilingus on her, to which she assents without saying a word. Of course, more occurs, as Marie is turned over (or turns over) as her perpetrator then enters her from behind. As he continues, Marie seems to sob, and when he leaves, she shouts that she is not ashamed. Martin notes that in describing the scene, the writer of the OFLC report says that “he orders Marie to turn over,” and that she tries to “scuffle away.” Martin replies, “…I did not see Marie try to ‘scuffle away’ during the scene, or be forced to turn over.” Martin’s point is that this writer’s language reveals his own moral response to an image, as opposed to what is actually present in the image: “One of the most interesting things about Romance is the way in which it inscribes in its own material ambiguous designation of obscenity.” In other words, neither Breillat nor Caroline Ducey (Marie) give us any concrete signs of her own response to what is happening. We cannot walk away confident of Marie’s outrage, only our own, at best. Indeed, the whole scene begins with a voice-over where Marie proclaims that it is, in fact, her fantasy to be taken this way. Yet, the act itself is inscribed into the realist space of the plot, thus blurring the line between fantasy and reality that is signaled by Marie’s voice-over.
As such, when we watch this act on screen, and many others like it, we are left only with what we think of what we see. Moreover, we project our own values back on to the screen, as Martin further notes when he cites a review of the film that describes the scene between Marie and Rocco Siffredi as a “humiliating affair.” Of course, there is, to my eyes, no signs of humiliation in that scene. If anything, it is a frank and very physical depiction of a sexual encounter. Siffredi asks Marie if he can have anal sex with her, an act that stands as the possible source of said humiliation. However, this possibility is complicated by the fact that she very calmly consents, on the condition that he first continue to make love to her. Moreover, the scene begins with Marie telling Siffredi, while holding a soiled condom, how men like to keep things hidden – how easily they are disgusted. The only sign of shame in the sequence comes when she admits to Siffredi, in the middle of sex, that she only sleeps with men that she doesn’t like. If there is shame here, it is the viewer’s.
The second of Nikkatsu’s trilogy of softcore melodramas looking at prostitution in various Japanese cities, this dark look at ritualistic temple sex in Edo from director Noboru Tanaka is quite a departure from the light, comic tone of Chusei Sone’s Maruhi: Joro Ichiba. Resembling nothing so much as an Asian version of all those Roman-set Italian sex films of the 1970s, the film deals with various members of Japanese royalty subjecting women to sadomasochistic sexual practices in the temple for supposedly religious reasons. Rie Nakagawa stars with Yuri Yamashina, Moeko Ezawa, and Hijiri Abe. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
IMDB: At the happy Willard ranch, a moonshiner father decides to teach his son a lesson or two about women, however, no one can come between Junior and his Sassy Sue.
Synopsis : A decadent Count in 1920’s Japan becomes obsessed with the works of the Marquis de Sade. He creates a theatre to show plays adapted from the notorious writers novels, and recruits a variety of theives, prostitutes and low lives to act out his fantasies on stage for the delight of his rich and decadent friends. In search of new sensations, the nobleman orders one of the actors, on pain of death, to make love to the noblemans wife while he watches. Unfortunately, this incursion of real life into his fantasy world will have dire consequences for the count and his coterie. Full of startling images and with a gripping storyline, this film is a feast for the eyes and mind. A classic waiting to be discovered.
Bonus : – Documentary on pink cinema – Interview with movie critic Jasper Sharp
IMDB: Experimental anthology film consisting of nine segments – Contrasts, The Janitor, The Plumber, Another Wet Dream, The Happy Necrophiliacs, On a Sunday Afternoon, A Face, Politfuck, Flames – all focused on 70s sex, love and politics.
Storyline: A group of friends decide to spend the night at a creepy old rundown house. They hold a seance that unleashes the evil spirit of De Sade. All kinds of debauched carnal activities immediately follow thereafter.
Description: This film is part of The Avon Dynasty – Joe Davian Collection DVD box set from Alpha Blue Archives: One of the older films in the set if the 1975 date is to be trusted features an early appearance from Vanessa Del Rio starring alongside David Williams. The story follows a group of swingers who unwittingly unleash the spirit of the true Marquis De Sade (played by some nutjob in a black bondage mask) during a seance. This, of course, leads to all manner of degrading and violent sex. Despite the hardcore sex throughout the film, Davian was making a horror film (or at least a cheap porno film with horror movie elements) this time out and you know it from the time the eerie music hits the screen during the opening credits and it’s solidified when the action moves from various inner city apartments to a creepy, creaky old house. Vanessa gets lead around with a collar on, acting like a dog as she’s slapped in the face by her partners cock and then later on she has a cucumber inserted into her pussy which is then peeled using a vegetable peeler while still inserted inside of her! Once it’s peeled, it’s sliced and fed to her. In a later scene she has her supple ass beaten with nunchucks as she screams ‘oooo pain’ while De Sade holds her down. She also finds herself getting nipple clamped again.
This is a documentary on the 70’s French porn industry. There are generally two kinds of porn documentaries–those that actually take an insightful look behind the scenes, and those that are just an excuse to show a lot of nudity and XXX porn footage. This is actually somewhere in between. It’s generously seasoned with porn footage, but there are also a lot of (fully-clothed) interviews, and they even talk to the owners of porn theaters, some typical porn customers (including some pre-adolescent boys who are walking by the the theater–I wonder what their parents thought of that?), as well as a guy who makes promotional billboards for porn movies although he claims never to have seen one!
Get up close and personal with 16 of the most successful women in the adult film industry as they shed their clothes for an intimate photo shoot with director Deborah Anderson. As questions are asked, personal stories about their lives are revealed, from why they chose the business of sex to how they got into it in the first place. These porn stars have always been discreet about their private lives in the past, yet Anderson has a way of opening up a dialog allowing them to share more than just their naked skin on screen. Their true inner vulnerability is touching, yet the characters they have created are confident and intoxicating. Once you hear their stories, you’ll never look at them in the same way again.
Quote:Looking at the title and poster art, Love Hotel may seem like just another late roman porno film by the Nikkatsu Studios. That, however, could hardly be further from the truth. The talent involved in this production alone should be a enough to make Love Hotel one of the most interesting films from Nikkatsu’s roman porno era. And, one of the best, too.
Love Hotel was directed by master filmmaker Shinji Somai. It’s not rare that talented directors begin their career in the pink genre before breaking through to mainstream cinema. Somai, however, had already established his position as one of the most acclaimed Japanese directors of the 80’s. In 1985 he surprised the audiences with his one film Nikkatsu collaboration. To make matters more puzzling, Love Hotel was released only four weeks prior to Taifu Club, Somai’s crowning achievement and a landmark in Japanese cinema.
The explanation for Somai’s sudden roman porno dive is found in the production credits. While Nikkatsu indeed took care of the distribution Love Hotel was actually produced by The Director’s Company. It got tagged as Nikkatsu Meisaku Roman film afterwards, but it didn’t begin as their original production nor was it based on one of those 3 page screenplays Nikkatsu were notorious for. The storyline was crafted by the acclaimed manga artist Takashi Ishii, who later used the same storyline, although in heavily altered form, in his directorial debut; Angel Guts – Red Vertigo (1988).
Love Hotel begins with the downfall of Tetsuro Muraki (Minori Terada). His company goes bankrupt and he fails to pay back the money he owes to the yakuza. Not being able to get money out of him the loansharks rape his wife in front of him. The desparate Muraki plans to end his life in a Love Hotel after sex with a prostitute but finds himself too weak. The film continues two years later. Murakami has divorced from his wife in order to protect her from the debt, and become a taxi driver. One day he meets Nami (Noriko Hayami), a woman he believes might understand him due to being in a similar situation.
The first 10 minutes of Love Hotel is as graphic as any exploitation film. But that’s only the introduction. The remaining 79 minutes play purely for story and characters. The film never goes back to the yakuza themes again, and the amount of sex scenes is lower than what Nikkatsu’s own roman porno guidebook would require. In fact, appart from the beginning and occasional Eirin censorship here and there the film would be hard to associate with the pink genre if it wasn’t for the Nikkatsu logo in the opening and closing credits.
Still, there is a reason why Nikkatsu acquired the film. Compared to the director’s earlier work Love Hotel is definitely a griettier and more sexually explicit film. That, however, does not equal to decreased quality. Fans of Somai will recognize his touch easily. The long takes, stylish use of music (with Momoe Yamaguchi’s Yoru he playing during the pier scene) and deep focus on characters are all here. The cast is pretty good with very decent performances from both leads. The brilliant cinematography is courtesy of Noboru Shinoda, a frequent future collaborator of Shunji Iwai.
Reportedly Somai shot the film in 10 days, but the rush doesn’t show. The film features several terrific sequences but also holds up as a whole. There’s maybe a little bit of melodrama but that was also the case with Gyoei no mure (1983). The ending is excellent and beautiful – as you’d expect from Somai. In Nikkatsu’s roman porno catalogue Love Hotel is somewhat an oddity; an exploitation release that is almost not exploitation at all. Nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, it was awarded as Nikkatsu’s best film of the year.
Synopsis: Based on the 6th century A.D. Sanskrit play “The Golden Toy Chariot” by the famous Indian playwright Bhasa, “Utsav” faithfully follows Bhasa’s story-line. Vasantasena, a courtesan who dances at the King Palaka’s court hides in Charudatta’s house while running away from the amorous attentions of the king’s brother-in-law. She falls in love with Charudatta, though he is married and penniless. They have an affair. Meanwhile, the rightful heir to the throne – King Palaka’s brother – escapes from prison. While he is being pursued by the king’s troops, Charudatta helps him. The king’s brother-in-law strangles Vasantasena when she refuses to submit to him and leaves her for dead. When Charudatta tries to have her jewels pawned, he is arrested for her murder. What happens to him and the other characters constitutes the final part of the film.
Synopsis: A sad man meets a beautiful, secretive woman who may or may not be involved in some conspiracy ring dealing in kidnapped women used as prostitutes. After several days of their sadly passionate relationship she disappears. The sad man is unable to locate her as all the local Turkish people pretend not to remember any such woman. He suddenly finds her again (she finds him?) and before she can explain her disappearance she is killed in a car crash while he is in the passenger seat. He replays the accident over and over in his mind trying to remember how she died if he caused the accident himself by grabbing the wheel.
Quote: Reiko is a sex robot programmed to accumulate sexual experience. She goes through seven body types to experiences a variety of couplings. She returns to the company to download her accumulated info and escape from their control.
Quote: This movie is completely wacky. Completely. Wacky. It concerns the story of a poor water seller in Baghdad who stumbles his way through ali baba and his 40 thieves, the tower of Babel, sinbad the sailor, the island of the sirens and many others stories that either i didn’t recognise from the 1001 nights stories or were just made up by the animation team on one of what must have been many acid binges. The film was made in 1969 with a crew of about 15 animators and others (the same names pop up in multiple roles) and is thus forced to employ a number of techniques to cheapen the animation, using still frames incorporating live action shots (for such hard to animate things as the ocean) and shooting live action footage of miniature models for the landscape shots. Despite this there is a great deal of skill in the animation, especially in the number of things the morph into other things. Some scenes in this film are intensely erotic blending abstract and direct representations of sex scenes and orgies. The abstract sex scenes was some of the weirdest animation i’ve ever scene, essentially an undulating mass of pink springing forth the occasional phallus or feminine curve. It is interesting that although this movie does not conform to the styles and convention of Japanese anime there is visible in some characters prototypes of what would become staple anime genre identities. The mecha/ monster, the naive Kawaii girl, the gritty needs-no-man woman. However all in all this film is totally totally one hundred percent wacky. If a festival near you has got its hands on the only surviving print in the world, take advantage of the opportunity, go see it and take a tape recorder in with you and record the soundtrack, some classic psychedelic sixties music is attached to this movie.
Synopsis: The Countess is called away to tend a sick friend and imposes on the General to accept her daughter Marcilla as a houseguest. Some of the villagers begin dying, however, and the General’s daughter Laura soon gets weak and pale, but Marcilla is there to comfort her. The villagers begin whispering about vampires as Marcilla finds another family on which to impose herself. The pattern repeats as Emma gets ill, but the General cannot rest, and seeks the advice of Baron Hartog, who once dealt a decisive blow against a family of vampires. Well, almost.
Synopsis: In Zagreb, the stripper Anna de Istria works in a sleazy cabaret. She is seduced by the blonde Cynthia Robins that invites her to move to her house. Ana is disturbed by nightmares, where she kills a man with a spear, and Cynthia calls Dr. Paul Lucas to treat Ana. Meanwhile, a couple that lives in the house next door spies the movement in Cynthia’s house.
Like the unknown woman imagined by the poet – which is never quite the same nor entirely different- this new Glimpse 13 resembles it’s twelve prestigious precedents while having its own distinct identity. Roy Stuart has put extra effort into the design and implementation of the twenty odd sequences that make up this diverse album. All the imagination, energy, expertise, as if making a feature film. Probably because he had been working on a feature film project earlier this year. This is especially true of the brilliant main sequence, which tells the story and contrast of two girlfriends-an inexperienced childlike beauty that recites romantic poetry in the street and a more mature girl who likes to show off in front of her webcam.-The younger girl opposes her friends twisted plan to use her as bait to pick up and rip off a guy -but who will come out on top? …
And of course, this is the DNA of Roy Stuart, a bevy of pretty girls – brunette, blonde or redhead, all generously unshaven, get naked, play ,evolve, caress, love, with intensity and authenticity and who sometimes spring golden sources. The work is multi-faceted- even the darkest expression projects a surrealistic life-force along with the lighter work which is sheer fun,… a playful shared wink straight from the artist himself…
Two and a quarter hours of pure pleasure once again, Roy’s magic! – Christian Noirot
Anna is a modern, independent single girl, focused on her job and wary of getting caught in romantic relationships. Her life is all about fun. Strangers without strings. No commitment, no casualties. She has just found a new apartment, and is tempted to let her latest boyfriend, Frank, move in with her. Instead, she finds a tenant: The flamboyant, fun-loving Camilla, who shares Anna’s views on love and commitment. But then an old boyfriend happens to knock on her door: Johann, the very man who five years previously broke Anna’s heart.
There are two different cuts of this film. The one above is the official producer’s cut but the unfinished and much more explicit director’s cut is included here as an extra.
Synopsis A seminal Quebec erotic film about a curious girl who leaves her convent to explore the Montréal hippy scene, becomes a prostitute and meets her true love who doesn’t know she’s a hooker, that started erotic film genre in Canada.
Quote: Lionel Soukaz (1953, Paris, France) at age 20 started making underground short films in Super 8, dealing with homosexuality in line with the Parisian FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Revolutionnaire; Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action), pornography (Ixe) and social criticism (I Live in a Bush World). He worked as an organizer of many gay film festivals such as the Film Festival of La Rochelle in 1977, and the Fortnight of Homosexual Cinema in 1978 in Paris. This last one was interrupted by the Ministry of Culture when Soukaz was arrested. He made Race D’ep, un siècle d’images de l’homosexualité with Guy Hocquenghem in 1979. Since then, he has pursuited a discreet career as a video filmmaker.
