Sleaze Artists

Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style and Politics is a collection of essays on the subject of horror and exploitation movies, edited by Jeffrey Sconce. As is usual with this type of book the articles are of varying interest, and intellectual density and/or obscurity.

There’s an essay on the troubled but fascinating history of Maro Bava’s masterpiece Lisa and the Devil, in its various incarnations. The essay on sound and image in video nasties I’ve already spoken about. Other essays cover Doris Wishman’s sexploitation movies from a feminist perspective, the career of Todd Haynes, movies about homosexuality in the military, Aztec mummy movies and sundry other topics.

It’s reasonably interesting, but nowhere near as good as Xavier Mendik and Graeme Harper’s Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics or Tombs and Tohill’s superb Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984, or the Necronomicon series of books edited by Andy Black.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad boasts stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, and a script by Brian Clemens. With those two involved you just can’t go wrong. And this 1974 movie is every bit as much fun as you’d expect it to to be.

John Phillip Law is surprisingly lively and entertaining as the hero Sinbad, and then there’s Tom Baker as the villainous Prince Koura and the bodacious Caroline Munro as the beautiful slave girl Sinbad falls for. Her main role in the movie is to display as much cleavage as as is humanly possible, and she does a heroic job. With her and John Phillip Law onboard no-one can complain about a lack of eye candy whichever way your tastes run.

Sinbad has quite by accident come into possession of a mysterious gold tablet, which it turns out is one of three that together form a sort of key that can unlock vast powers. The Grand Vizier of Mabaria has another piece, but the evil Prince Koura is also determined to possess all three pieces. Sinbad must prevent this from happening by setting out on a dangerous voyage to find the third tablet, but he must also battle magical creatures summoned up by the wicked Koura.

There are adventures a-plenty, and there are some very clever monsters. Ray Harryhausen really excelled himself in this one. The eight-armed statue of the goddess Kali that comes to life wielding eight swords is particularly impressive. And there are cute but evil little winged humunculi devil things. I want one of those. The monsters are imaginative and even witty rather than relying on simply being huge and terrifying.

Director Gordon Hessler keeps things moving, the support cast is extremely solid, and everything looks right. Tom Baker is a memorable and interesting villain, and it’s all great fun.

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

The first time I saw Tod Browning’s 1935 opus Mark of the Vampire I was bitterly disappointed by it. It wasn’t what I was expecting, and it wasn’t what I wanted. Seeing it again I’m more inclined to be tolerant of it. You just have to accept that it’s not a horror movie, it’s really a movie in the tradition of The Cat and the Canary, a mystery with some horror trappings. And it’s essentially a comedy.

If you accept those things then even Lionel Barrymore’s performance becomes almost bearable. It is of course a remake of Browning’s lost silent film London After Midnight. Browning seems to have been quite attracted by the idea of combining comedy with horror. His last movie, Miracles for Sale, follows a similar formula (and is quite fun).

It’s impossible to say very much at all about the plot without revealing spoilers. In 1935 somewhere in central Europe a nobleman is murdered, apparently the victim of a vampire. But things are not what they seem to be.

Lionel Atwill and Lionel Barrymore have a good deal of fun in their respective roles. Bela Lugosi’s performance is in effect a parody of his own performance in Dracula, and Lugosi shows considerable flair in sending himself up. Carol Borland looks suitably bizarre and iconic and her appearance is one of the more memorable features of the movie. James Wong Howe’s cinematography is one of the movie’s great strengths. It’s an MGM movie, so it’s a fairly glossy kind of horror movie.

I have mixed feelings about Tod Browning as a director. His work is remarkably uneven, and I have the impression that unless he was very enthusiastic about a project he had a tendency just to go through the motions.

I’m still not a great fan of this film, but if you accept it for what it is there’s a certain amount of enjoyment to be had. It does make you realise why MGM were not renowned for their horror films! In fact MGM were responsible for some of the worst horror movies in history, their 1941 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde being arguably the absolute worst of all time.

The Beast in Space (1980)

The great thing about Alfonso Brescia’s movies is that they can always surprise you. You see something like his 1975 Amazons vs Supermen and you think that nobody could concoct a movie that made less sense than that one. And then you see his 1980 offering The Beast in Space (La bestia nello spazio), and realise with awe that it actually does make less sense than Amazons vs Supermen.

The Beast in Space is basically one of Brescia’s trademark anarchic space operas, which Lord knows are outlandish enough in themselves, but for some obscure reason he decided to combine it with a kind of pastiche of Walerian Borowczyk’s erotic classic The Beast (La Bête). Now The Beast had certainly ignited controversy upon its release five years before Brescia’s opus, but I’m not sure that the controversy would have attracted the notice of the kinds of audiences that would be likely to want to watch an Alfonso Brescia space opera, Borowczyk’s movie being very much an art-house movie. And as a way of introducing large amounts of sex and nudity into a science fiction film, well frankly I can’t think of a less logical way of doing this since The Beast is essentially an adult fairy tale.

The only possible explanation is that the female star of Borowczyk’s notorious movie, Sirpa Lane, was available and was willing to accept the lead role, so introducing an association with her infamous earlier role could be used as a marketing ploy. The result is bizarre indeed. The parts of the film that have been cribbed from The Beast have absolutely zero connection with the rest of the movie. And I really do mean zero connection.

The plot (if one can use such a term in relation to a Brescia film) is more or less the same as that of his earlier science fiction outings such as Cosmos: War of the Planets and War of the Robots. A dauntless space captain and his fearless crew travel to some distant planet to find something important there (in this case a rare mineral). They battle with hostile spaceships (the same hostile spaceships we saw in the earlier movies), they battle with golden-suited androids wearing odd wigs (the same golden-suited androids wearing odd wigs we saw in War of the Robots), they encounter an all-powerful and malevolent computer (yes, the same one we saw in his earlier movies), and then they return home. The only difference is that this time when they get to the distant planet they participate in an orgy, thus allowing Brescia to add very large quantities of skin and fairly raunchy softcore sex scenes. Why does the orgy take place? No-one knows. Oh, and Sirpa Lane gets to replay her most famous scene from The Beast. How does a member of the spaceship crew manage to get herself raped by a beast drawn partly from Greek mythology (he’s half-man and half-faun) and partly from an erotic fairy tale? No-one knows, but it allows Brescia to add even more skin and an even raunchier softcore sex scene.

After about 20 minutes of non-stop sex we’re suddenly back to the space opera. The crew react as if riotous orgies are all part of the job when you join the space fleet.
The sets and costumes, and the props, and even large chunks of actual footage, are recycled from his other sci-i movies. The acting is what you expect in an Alfonso Brescia movie - delightfully and outrageously bad. The cast includes a couple of Brescia regulars, and in addition a noted porn star of the time (Marina Hedman), and to be fair her acting is at least as good as that of everyone else in the film. Plus Sirpa Lane of course, whose acting style proves perfectly suited to the cinema of Alfonso Brescia.

One loves Brescia’s movies for the same reasons one loves Ed Wood’s movies.

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Revenge of the Creature was the first of two sequels to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Although it was made in 1954 and bears a superficial resemblance to other movies of the 50s that mixed sci-fi and horror elements The Creature from the Black Lagoon was really a throwback to the golden age of Universal monster movies. Like the best of those movies It has a monster with whom we can feel a fair bit of sympathy, and it proved to be a substantial hit for Universal.

In this sequel the gill-man has been captured and taken to an oceanarium in Florida to be studied by eager scientists. Scientists like Professor Clete Ferguson (John Agar). Of course you weren’t a real scientist in those days unless you had a beautiful female assistant, and that’s where Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson) comes in. Naturally the hunky professor falls in love with the glamorous blonde Helen, but he has a rival in the form of the man who captured the creature, the equally hunky Joe Hayes. He also has another rival, but he doesn’t know it yet. It’s strange that he doesn’t realise this, because it’s a well-known fact that all monsters have a serious weakness for beautiful human females, especially if they happen to be blonde as well. The monster escapes from his tank and runs amok. He kills a number of men, but he spares a woman and her child. Like the classic Universal monsters he has a human side as well, and is capable of feeling compassion. He’s also capable of other human feelings, because when he tracks down the luckless Helen he doesn’t kill her but carries her off. This was the 50s so it couldn’t be explicitly stated that his motivations were sexual but the hints are fairly obvious.

Jack Arnold, who directed the first Creature film, returns for the sequel and does a more than competent job. The cast is adequate, with Lori Nelson being an appealing heroine. The underwater sequences are skillfully executed. Like the first picture it raises disturbing questions about who is really the monster (the scientists’ ideas about studying the creature seem more akin to torture than to genuine scientific investigation consisting as they mostly of delivering electric shocks to the unfortunate gill-man with a cattle prod). So why does Revenge of the Creature fall rather flat? The main problem is the change of locale. Not only does Florida lack the mystique of the exotic Amazon setting of the first movie, it also fatally weakens the menace of the gill-man. Let’s face it, he’s not a particularly terrifying monster. He doesn’t have supernatural powers, and he’s the size of an average human. What made him scary in the first film was that he was on his home ground, able to exploit his knowledge of his home territory, and those hunting him were a handful of people isolated in the middle of the jungle. But when you put him in the contemporary United States, it’s hard to see him as much of a threat. You can’t help feeling that one cop with a gun should be sufficient to deal with this particular threat to civilisation.

There’s some breathtakingly sexist dialogue, with Helen’s two admirers not just discussing her like she’s a piece of livestock they’re negotiating to buy, but doing it right in front of her. But it was the 50s, and that’s what you get in 1950s movies. The scientists are extremely unsympathetic in other ways. The degree of callousness that they display towards the gill-man must have shocked even 1950s audiences, but it does serve to make the creature as much a victim as a monster and I would assume that was the intended effect. While it’s nowhere near as good as the first film it’s still quite entertaining.

The Legacy Collection DVd looks superb, and features a reasonably interesting commentary track with Lori Nelson and a couple of horror movie experts whose names I’ve forgotten.

And look out for Clint Eastwood making his movie debut, providing the comic relief as an inept lab assistant!

Sweet Violence (1962)

Juvenile delinquent movies are always fun, but trust the French to come up with a classy juvenile delinquent movie with a touch of sophistication. Sweet Violence (the French title was Douce violence but it was also released in the US as Sweet Ecstasy) is such a film.

Director Max Pécas, later to become something of a legend among European exploitation film-makers with a string of erotic thrillers and sex comedies, had had a major hit in 1961 with Daniella by Night (also released with the delightfully lurid title Daniela, Criminal Strip-Tease). That movie, a spy spoof with a dash of sex, had made Elke Sommer’s reputation as a sexy new star. It seemed logical to follow it up with another movie starring the same actress. Sweet Violence was a change of pace however. It’s a tale of bored rich kids living a life of fashionable alienation, existential chic and casual sex. It owes something to the French New Wave, and also (it appears to me) owes quite a bit to Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse which had been a sizeable hit in France. Like the protagonist of Bonjour Tristesse these young people are playing dangerous and destructive emotional and erotic games.

Olivier is the younger brother of a wealthy and successful actress. He finds life empty and meaningless, and he drifts into the orbit of Maddy and his friends, who have elevated empty and meaningless into the guiding principles of their lives. He falls under the spell of Elke (Elke Sommer). You only have to take one look at Elke’s eye make-up to realise she’s a bad girl and she doesn’t care. Elke already has a boyfriend, but in this crowd sexual partners are changed frequently so she is happy enough to engage in some erotic game-playing with the rather innocent Olivier. A wild ship-board party ends with the fiery destruction of an expensive yacht, and leads indirectly to a confrontation between Maddy and Olivier. In an American JD movie this would end with a game of chicken involving drag racing and hot rods. This movie’s climax does involve a game of chicken, but it’s done in a much more interesting and original way (which I won’t spoil for you except to say that it involves cranes and a building site).

Sweet Violence tries to be both an art-house movie and an exploitation movie. As an art film it doesn’t really make the grade but it does capture a certain mood of wistful youthful disaffection rather well. There are some effective sequences, and it’s superbly photographed (in black-and-white of course, the way God meant movies to be).

As an exploitation movie Sweet Violence is all tease. Despite the lurid DVD cover art the sex and nudity is all implied, not shown. There is one slightly perverse scene, in which Elke Sommer is trussed up and her sexual favours are auctioned off by her boyfriend, but it’s clear that she is a more than willing participant in such games. It’s all very very tame by later standards. In the late 50s French movies had achieved major box-office success on the American art-house circuit mainly by virtue of their sexual frankness in comparison with Hollywood movies of the time, but by the early 60s American exploitation movie-makers had upped the sexual ante to a point that made stuff like Sweet Violence seem very tame indeed. Sweet Violence did however have a sufficiently amoral tone and atmosphere of sexual license to make it very successful commercially.

The appeal of the movie today is mostly due to its style. And it has plenty of that. Gorgeous locations, great 60s sports cars, a boppy jazzy poppy soundtrack, wonderful clothes and fabulous hairstyles. It’s also delightfully camp and its attempts to be wicked and immoral are enormous fun. And it has Elke Sommer, an actress who had absolutely no need to take her clothes off in order to be sizzlingly sexy. She gives a pretty decent performance too. Sweet Violence is a treat for anyone who loves the early 60s.

The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)

The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (La Maldición de la momia azteca), the second in the Aztec Mummy series, is one of those seques that really requites you to have seen the first movie if you’re going understand what’s going on. Which is a pity in some ways, because it’s a different type of movie to The Aztec Mummy. The first movie had its cheesy moments but it had some real atmosphere and some nice ideas. The Curse of the Aztec Mummy is just silly fun, although it’s still highly entertaining silly fun. Adding a mysterious masked crime-fighter known as The Angel (in a cape and spandex tights no less) inevitably increases the camp quotient considerably!

The diabolical criminal mastermind who meddles so diastrously in Dr Almada’s past life regression experiments in the first film has escaped from custody, and he’s still determined to get hold of the fabulous Aztec treasure. His plan to discover the exact location of the treasure involves kidnapping both Dr Almada and his fiancee Flor and forcing them to repeat their earlier experiment - to send her back to her previous life when she was to be offered as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods.

It plays out very much in the style of an old Hollywood movie serial, with the good guys being captured by the bad guys, then escaping, then being recaptured, then re-escaping, and so on. The diabolical criminal mastermind behaves the way any good movie diabolical criminal mastermind should - when he has the hero at his mercy he doesn’t simply kill him, but instead devises a complicated and ingenious method of execution which of course fails, as such methods always fail in the world of the movies.

The acting is pretty basic, although Rosa Arenas is quite good as Flor. It lacks the wonderful gothic mood of the best Mexican horror movies, it lacks the genuine frisson of terror that the human sacrifice sub-plot in the first movie provided, and Rafael Portillo’s direction isn’t overly imaginative. It does however offer non-stop if somewhat bewildering action and plenty of unlikely plot twists and narrow escapes from certain death.

It can be found in BCI’s three-movie Aztec Mummy boxed set, nicely restored and including both the original Spanish soundtrack with sub-titles and an English dubbed version. It’s all good campy fun, and the boxed set is well worth picking up.