It’s also notable for having been made by two of the more interesting figures in the exploitation film scene, Jack Hill and John Lamb. Director Jack Hill has become something for a cult legend (partly due to Quentin Tarantino’s enthusiasm for his work). Hill’s Spider Baby is one of the weirdest movies ever made. He directed the two best blaxploitation movies of the 70s, Coffy and Foxy Brown. And he directed the incredibly interesting Switchblade Sisters, a sort of grand operatic Shakespearian girl juvenile delinquent epic.
Producer John Lamb’s two cinematic interests were underwater cinematography and nudie films, interests he combined in the quirky but rather appealing The Mermaids of Tiburon which he directed himself.
Mondo Keyhole is about a serial rapist so as you might expect it’s not exactly politically correct. Howard Thorne runs a mail order business dealing in nudie movies and BDSM movies. Rape is a kind of sideline for him. He’s married to sex-crazed blonde bombshell Vicky so lack of sex should not be his problem. His wife has other interests as well, such as drugs.
The explanation for Howard’s peculiar sexual trouble is simple. He can’t get it up. Not with Vicky, and not with any of the girls at the office (they’ve all tried their best). He can only get aroused by rape.
Which is why Vicky is a drug-addled neurotic mess. She needs some lovin’ and she needs it real bad. You can’t fault her for a lack of determination. She has tried everything to get Howard interested. But Howard is just not interested in any girl who actually wants him. Sadly Vicky never figures out that what she needs to do is to refuse to have sex with him. That would get him excited, he’d force himself on her and they’d both be happy.
It’s obvious that Howard is also excited by the danger of what he is doing, by the chance of being caught, and he’s as much excited by the pursuit of a woman as he is by actually catching her.
This film is like several of Hill’s other films, being trashy but also trying to be arty. Surprisingly it’s a combination that Hill was on occasion able to pull off with at least some success. In this case the producer was prepared, up to a point, to allow him to indulge these pretensions (and Lamb had demonstrated some mild arty pretensions of his own in The Mermaids of Tiburon).
Mondo Keyhole has some obvious Freudian influences although Jack Hill was personally pretty sceptical of Freud’s theories ( he was more fond of Jung and he does throw in the odd Jungian touch).
Hill was also much influenced by the early films of Radley Metzger who had demonstrated that erotic films really could have class and even genuine touches of artiness. Mondo Keyhole has more in common with Metzger’s films than with the average 60s sexploitation flick.
Interesting the guy playing the part of pornographer Howard Thorne was a real pornographer and quite a few scenes are shot on his actual business premises.
Most of the interiors were shot at John Lamb’s house. With John Lamb involved you'd expect some underwater sequences, and you get them (shot in Lamb’s own pool). And for those who like that sort of thing there’s some location shooting offering fascinating glimpses of LA in 1966.
This is a sexploitation roughie but with lots of dream imagery. We’re told at the beginning that some scenes depict reality and some depict fantasy and that’s pretty much the case. The characters in the movie are part of a social scene in which the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred by drugs, self-indulgence, craziness and an excess of decadence. The movie is an exercise in psychedelic decadence. The descent into Hell orgy scene manages to be both amusing and outrageous.
There’s also a great deal of nudity. This was 1966 so naturally it’s all strictly softcore. It has to be said that the movie features some remarkably attractive young ladies and as Jack Hill proudly points out, everything you see is real, not silicon.
There’s also of course a great deal of rape. To some extent the movie does make an attempt to unravel the psychology of rape. If Howard had been sexually functional then with a gorgeous wife like Vicky he would never have developed his peculiar and nasty taste. And he does have a certain desire to be punished. But this is an exploitation movie and in such movies sometimes a rape scene is just a rape scene. If you’re bothered by such scenes then don’t watch this movie.
The scenes in which Vicky desperately tries to seduce her husband are very erotic but also rather sad. The hurt she feels when he rejects her once again is palpable. There’s also a memorable scene of Vicky trying to seduce herself in a mirror. The movie also has karate lesbians.
This movie is part of VCI’s Psychotronica Collection which also includes a John Lamb-Jack Hill nudist film, The Raw Ones. Mondo Keyhole comes with an excellent audio commentary featuring Jack Hill. The transfer is non-anamorphic but it’s widescreen and image and sound quality are good. Mondo Keyhole is a mix of art, psychedelia and rape but it’s intriguing and stylish and it’s a must for Jack Hill fans and for sexploitation fans. Highly recommended.
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