Dune (1984)

Several attempts have been made to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel Dune to both the big and small screen. David Lynch’s 1984 version remains the most controversial, and the most interesting. Critics hated it and it tanked at the box office.

In my experience it seems that people who loved Frank Herbert’s original novel tend to hate the David Lynch movie, and people who disliked the novel tend to enjoy Lynch’s movie. I personally disliked the novel so I guess it was always likely that I’d enjoy the movie. The novel is a hodge-podge of all the craziest and silliest ideas of the 1960s. Only a madman could turn it into a movie. Luckily David Lynch is indeed a madman.

This is of course High Fantasy, not science fiction. It has antigravity, which is magic. The Bene Gesserit sisterhood are witches. The guild navigators use magic to travel through space. Spice is a magical substance.This far future society is a feudal society. The epic power struggle at the centre of the plot is the kind of power struggle between powerful aristocratic families that is straight out of the Middle Ages. All of the science fiction elements are pure magic.

The futuristic setting is mostly an excuse for the production designers and costume designers to go totally nuts and create a bizarre insane aesthetic. That aesthetic works for me. Maybe Blade Runner is the most visually impressive science fiction movie ever made but in its own deranged way Dune is just as extraordinary. There are hints of ancient Egypt and Minoan Crete but also some Buck Rogers influence. It’s an aesthetic drawn from multiple times and sources but it forms a coherent whole. It’s futuristic and it’s retro.

It’s important to remember that Frank Herbert’s novel was written in 1965. It was heavily influenced by the emerging drug culture, and by the growing interest in the occult, esoteric philosophy, alternative religions and hippie-dippie mysticism. Herbert threw huge amounts of this kind of nonsense into the novel. Lynch at least makes those elements fun.

I don’t think Lynch was particularly interested in finding good actors. He wanted actors with the right vibe. Kyle MacLachlan is not exactly a great actor but playing a young man who doesn’t really understand what is going on is the sort of thing he did well.

Siân Phillips really was a great actress and her specialty was playing dangerous powerful scheming women. As the head Bene Gesserit witch, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, she’s an absolute joy. Sting has only a bit part. He was presumably given this part so that he could be featured on the posters. He certainly wasn’t cast for his acting ability.

The plot involves a power struggle between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, with the Emperor pulling strings in the background and with the Bene Gesserit pursuing their own agenda.

Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) has a Destiny. He is some sort of Chosen One. Again, this is pure High Fantasy stuff.

The key to absolute power is control of the spice, found only on a single planet. House Atreides has wrested control of this planet from House Harkonnen. The Baron Harkonnen wants revenge, and wants control of the spice. The Harkonnen will fight to regain control of the planet. The odds seem to be stacked against House Atreides, they have a traitor in their midst, they suffer disaster. Paul can retrieve the situation only by accessing the powers he has as the chosen one. Accessing those powers may kill him but he has no choice. The power struggle is important but the real story is Paul’s attempt to achieve his Destiny.

The Harkonnen are obvious bad guys. That makes the Atreides the good guys. In theory anyway. It is worth pointing out however that Paul is also seeking absolute power. And he’s pretty ruthless. He’s not just a charismatic leader. He is a kind of messiah, foretold by prophecy. If Paul comes out on top that will be a good thing, as long as you accept that it’s a good thing for one man to have absolute power.

There’s a lot of voiceover narration but without it the movie would have needed lengthy expository dialogue scenes. That would have made it more like a straightforward science fiction movie. On balance the voiceover narration is a better fit for this movie. It also gives us more of a sense of characters driven by Destiny.

Lynch seems to have been attracted by the idea of filming Dune specifically because it’s not science fiction. He was not trying to make a science fiction film. The fact that all the pseudoscience is in practice nothing more than magic didn’t bother him at all.

One thing that distinguishes Dune from the average space opera is that it does not deal with a fictional futuristic culture. It deals with four totally separate fictional futuristic cultures. Each of the four planets involved in the story has its own entirely distinctive culture. Which requires an entirely distinctive aesthetic. And each of these cultures really does feel like a coherent culture.

It’s the visuals that stand out. They’re stunning. The production design and the costumes are extraordinary. And this is pre-CGI so the effects really do look cool.

And this a David Lynch movie. If you’re desperately trying to figure out what it actually means then you’re missing the point. That’s like trying to figure out what a dream means, or what an acid trip means, or what it means when you have a high fever and you’re delirious. You just sit back and experience this movie.

This was a Dino De Laurentiis production and one thing you have to say about Dino is that he was willing to back wild crazy projects. Without him there would have been no Barbarella, no Conan the Barbarian, no Flash Gordon. It’s unlikely that anyone else would have let David Lynch loose on a project like Dune, with a huge budget to play with.

Dune is a wild crazy ride but I enjoyed every minute of it. I love this movie. Very highly recommended. And it looks wonderful on Blu-Ray.

Gor (1987)

Gor is a 1987 American science fiction/fantasy adventure film from the Cannon Group. It was shot in South Africa. It is based on Tarnsman of Gor, the first of John Norman’s rather controversial Gor novels. Harry Alan Towers co-produced and co-wrote the script.

The initial setup follows the novel reasonably closely. It begins in the present day. Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini) is an American college professor who is obsessed by a rather wild theory. He believes that a Counter-Earth exists. It’s a planet within our solar system but due to the particular nature of its orbit it has remained undiscovered. It is a very Earth-like planet and its inhabitants are human (in the novel it is explained that the people of Gor came originally from Earth). Tarl has a ring given to him by his father. He believes it is the secret to reaching Gor. And indeed Tarl does find himself on Gor.

It is a planet at roughly the cultural level of the Bronze Age. There is no modern technology. Warriors use swords and bows. There are countless tiny city-states. And there’s a megalomaniac who wants to absorb all the city-states and create an empire. This villain is Sarm (Oliver Reed).

Tarl joins up with a small group of rebels. One of his motivations is the fact that one of the rebels is a very attractive young woman warrior, Talena (Rebecca Ferratti). Sarm has sacked their city and stolen their home-stone (which has immense religious significance to them). Tarl has to learn how to become a warrior. The ultimate objective is to reach a forbidden mountain range where Sarm has his stronghold, destroy Sarm, retrieve the home-stone and free the city-states that he had conquered.

This small band has lots of misadventures along the way. There’s plenty of action, including a girl-fight between Talena and a slave-girl. It all builds to a reasonably OK action finale.

Not surprisingly Oliver Reed is by far the best thing in this movie. Oliver Reed as a sinister, cruel, power-crazed, sexually depraved super-villain - what’s not to love?

Urbano Barberini is an adequate but rather colourless hero. Rebecca Ferratti is OK and she certainly looks great in skimpy warrior-woman outfits.

Don’t get too excited about Jack Palance’s name in the credits. He gets about two minutes of screen time. His brief appearance is a teaser for the second movie (Gor 2: Outlaw of Gor) in which he plays a major role.

The first problem with this movie is that the low budget made it impossible to include one of the coolest features of the novel, the tarns. These are gigantic birds of prey which warriors ride into battle. Dropping them from the story was a wise idea - in 1987 you would have needed a fairly substantial budget to do them convincingly.

With his Gor novels John Norman was certainly trying to write popular entertaining adventure tales but he was trying to do a whole lot more than that. Norman is a philosopher by profession. He used the Gor novels to engage in all kinds of philosophical, political, social and cultural speculations. This meant that the world-building was a lot more important than the action-adventure plots. Norman created a fictional human society radically different from our own in all sorts of ways. The society of Gor is alien, shocking and totally fascinating. None of that makes it into the movie. The movie is a stock-standard barbarian warrior adventure tale.

A major problem is that this movie is ludicrously tame. There’s one mildly shocking scene (a slave-girl being branded) but overall the violence is very subdued. There’s zero sex. There’s zero nudity. There’s zero sexiness. Even the cat-fight between Talena and the slave-girl is very very tame. This is a movie based on a novel with BDSM overtones set in a society in which female slavery is a central component of that society and it’s clear that the producers were terrified of such subject matter and decided to ignore it.

In fact they ignored every single element that makes the novels fascinating and provocative. This movie has absolutely zero connection to the novels.

And unfortunately as a stock-standard barbarian warrior adventure tale it just doesn’t have enough sufficient pace and energy.

I admit I’ve only read the first three novels but they’re actually extremely interesting and deal with touchy subject matter in a complex and intelligent way. They’re provocative, but in a good way. Norman offers both titillation and food for thought. He’s challenging us to think about how societies work.

I can’t help thinking that this movie would have been a whole lot better with someone like Jess Franco directing, or even Joe D’Amato, or even perhaps Lucio Fulci.

Gor just doesn’t make the grade.

The German release offers both Gor movies on Blu-Ray and DVD, with both German and English language options.

I’ve reviewed the first three Gor novels and I recommend them - Tarnsman of Gor, Outlaw of Gor and Priest-Kings of Gor.

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, released in 1989, is one of the most notorious of all animes. It was based on a manga series by Toshio Maeda. There were in fact several Urotsukidoji OVAs.

The first thing I want to say is that although it is often described as hentai I think that’s very misleading. There is some reasonably explicit sexual content but the sex is probably the least excessive and outrageous element in a very excessive and outrageous anime. I would certainly not describe this as hentai. And there’s a great deal more to Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend than sex.

There are three separate worlds - the human, beastman and demon worlds. After sleeping for three thousand years the Chojin (or Overfiend as it’s somewhat unfortunately rendered in the English title) is about to awaken. According to legend the Chojin will unite the three worlds. This will be a good thing. Perhaps.

The Chojin will be reborn in human form. Nobody knows the identity of the human in which the Chojin will be reborn. Various factions within the beastman and demon worlds are very anxious to find this human host, although they are not entirely sure what they then intend to do.

It seems likely that the human host is a student at a particular Japanese university. There are at least three students there who are possibilities. One is Nagumo. Nagumo is in love wth a sweet girl named Akemi. A muscle-bound athlete named Ozaki is another possibility, as is the socially inept Niki who is sexually obsessed with Akemi.

Amano and his sister Megumi are from the beastman world. They want to find the Chojin, preferably before the demons find him.

The problem is that the human host has no idea that he is the Chojin. Even when he finds out he still doesn’t know what his purpose is, or what his destiny is. Nobody knows what the Chojin’s destiny is. Nobody knows what will happen when and if he tries to unite the three worlds.

This is not a straightforward good vs evil story. The demon world might be disturbing but that does not necessarily make it evil. The Chojin might be good or evil. You have to bear in mind that Japanese concepts of the supernatural are very different from western Christian concepts.

Amano has been given a glimpse into the future and it worries him.

The rebirth of the Chojin certainly makes an impact, although whether it’s going to be a good thing or a very bad thing remains uncertain. Suffice to say that the Chojin is not what anybody expected. And it appears that whatever forces have been unleashed may be unstoppable.

There’s a weird romance angle which will have strange consequences. There are prophecies to be fulfilled and destinies to be achieved.

Along the way there’s a breathtaking amount of mayhem and carnage.

Amano is as close as this movie comes to having a hero. He and his sister Megumi and their odd little demon pal Kuroko are the good guys. Or at least they think they’re the good guys.

This is a movie in which there are forces that represent pure evil, but perhaps they’re not pure evil. It depends on your point of view, and on the price you consider worth paying to achieve goals that may or may not be desirable.

The violence is extreme but it’s so over-the-top that it’s less disturbing than more realistic violence would have been.

This movie’s reputation would lead one to expect truly shocking sexual content but I really don’t think there’s anything overly shocking here. It’s certainly an anime for grown-ups.

It’s the stylistic excess that is most shocking here. It’s stylistic excess pile upon stylistic excess to the point of madness. There’s a certain appeal to that. This is not an anime constrained by considerations of moderation or good taste.

It’s a wild ride but I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

The Kitty Media release includes the movie version as well as a slightly different version on DVD. The Blu-Ray offers the option of watching in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dubbed version is included as well but I have no idea why anyone would want to an anime dubbed into English.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future (1983)

I always get excited when I see the words “directed by Antonio Margheriti” in a movie’s credits. It invariably means I’m in for a good time. I have no problems with profound movies and arty movies but sometimes you just want the cinematic equivalent of a burger and fries. Antonio Margheriti understood this and he would do you a great burger and fries and throw in a thick shake as well. I respect that.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future came out in 1983. I love the fact that we don’t get an introduction explaining what’s going on. Margheriti is confident he can entertain us enough to keep us watching and that it will be more fun to find these things out slowly.

At the beginning we don’t know if we’re on Earth or some other planet and we don’t know if we’re in the distant past or the distant future. We do know that things are pretty primitive.

We’re introduced to a tribe who are more or less at a Stone Age level of culture. They are however reasonably peaceful and friendly. They’re certainly friendly towards a mysterious stranger named Yor (Reb Brown). He’s just saved the life of Kalaa (Corinne Cléry). She’s a total babe and when he returns to her village with her and sees her dancing and sees the way she moves her hips he’s comprehensively smitten. She thinks he’s pretty nice as well. She knows a hero when she sees one and Yor is definitely a hero.

Yor has a medallion that he wears around his neck. He has no idea what it is but he’s certain that it’s important.

Disaster is however about to strike. There’s another tribe, a tribe of beast-men, and they’re not the least bit peaceful or friendly. They raid the village of Kalaa’s tribe, slaughter the men and carry off the women.

There are lots of dangers to worry about. The dinosaurs for starters. But there are worse things than dinosaurs.

There’s another tribe living out in the desert. Their queen is reputed to have magical powers. They worship her as a goddess. She’s blonde and beautiful. Yor falls for her in a big way.

Yor might be a hero but he doesn’t know too much about women. He doesn’t know enough to realise that these two chicks are going to be trying to scratch each other’s eyes out. Kalaa is a very jealous woman and as far as she’s concerned Yor is her man.

Yor has always had a feeling that there is something important he must do. There is a secret that he must unravel. He has a Destiny.

There’s yet another tribe living by the sea, and sure enough there’s another babe anxious to throw herself at Yor. And there’s a Mysterious Island, which might provide the answers for which Yor has been searching.

I’m being very vague about the plot because it’s ingenious and rather cool and it’s more fun to see it unfold gradually (although the posters give some of it away).

Suffice to say that this is not quite the prehistoric adventure movie it seemed to be at the beginning.

There are people on the island and they’re very different from the other inhabitants of this world. They’re definitely not Stone Age people. There are robots and rayguns. There’s also an insane and very twisted villain. He is Overlord. He has minions, and very nasty they are too.

This movie started life as a four-part Italian television series. It was edited down to less than half its original length for feature film release. The plot is still perfectly coherent (rather crazy but it does make sense).

This film may not have had anything like a Hollywood budget but it’s visually very impressive. Imagination and flair (which this movie has in abundance) always count for more than money. Best of all this was 1983 so there’s no CGI. The special effects are old school but they work just fine.

This film is fast-moving and action-packed. It has a big dumb but likeable hero. It has feisty sexy females. It looks terrific. It boasts some great location shooting (in Turkey). It has monsters and villains. It has crazy twists and turns as Yor figures out what’s going on. It’s lots of fun. A total blast from start to finish. Very highly recommended.

Reb Brown isn’t much of an actor but he’s energetic and has a certain naïve charm and you can’t help liking him. John Steiner oozes slimy evil menace as Overlord. Corinne Cléry is a fine heroine. She is best-known for The Story of O (1975), one of the best erotic movies ever made. She’s also in Lucio Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey (1986) which is an absolute must-see movie.

I’ve reviewed a number of Antonio Margheriti’s films including his giallo Naked You Die (1968) and his amazing science fiction films The Wild, Wild Planet (1966) and The Snow Devils (1967).

Excalibur (1981)

John Boorman’s Excalibur is a very ambitious retelling of the legend of King Arthur. Despite its ambitions it was apparently a rather modestly budgeted movie. Boorman claims to have inadvertently kicked off the sword-and-sorcery boom of the 80s. Given that Conan the Barbarian came out in 1982, a year after Excalibur, he may have a point.

Excalibur aims to retell the entire Arthurian legend, starting before the birth of Arthur.

Boorman’s idea was to show the three stages in the history of the land, coinciding with the three stages of Arthur’s life. The idea that the king and the land are one is central to the myth. If the king thrives, if he is strong and just, then the land thrives. If the king loses his way then the land suffers.

The first third of the movie is the first stage, an age of barbarism and chaos. It is Arthur’s destiny to unite and civilise the land. Boorman saw the story as also being a metaphor for the rise of Christianity and a more rational individualistic outlook displacing the older nature-centred concept of the land, the king and the people being mystically and magically linked. Which in some ways means that civilisation contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, since an individualistic rational conception of life is incompatible with the older truth that the king and the land are one. Boorman doesn’t try to tell us which of those outlooks we should prefer. We have to make up our own minds. This is a movie for grown-ups.

Britain is a chaotic divided land. The sorcerer Merlin (Nicol Williamson) aims to unite the land under Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne). He hopes that Uther will be the man capable of doing so, but Merlin has his doubts when Uther becomes obsessed with Igrayne (played by Boorman’s daughter Katrine Boorman), the beautiful young wife of the duke of Cornwall (Corin Redgrave). Uther persuades Merlin to use his magic to allow him to spend the night with Igrayne, with Igrayne thinking she is making love with her husband. This night of lust will have immense consequences. The child that results is Arthur, and the deal was that the child would be Merlin’s to raise as he sees fit. The other consequence is that Igrayne’s young daughter Morgana (Arthur’s half-sister) will have a life-long grudge against both Merlin and Arthur.

Merlin sees the boy Arthur as the man destined to bring a new world into being. Merlin however knows that there will be no place for him in this new world. He is in effect putting in train events that will destroy the world of magic and of the old gods, the world to which he belongs. Merlin accepts this as inevitable. Morgana will also come to realise that there is no place for her in this new world. She belongs to the world of the old gods, the world of mysticism and magic.

This first stage of the movie has a dark grungy look. This was not quite the first epic to go for this look. The excellent The War Lord, made back in 1965, had pioneered the gritty realistic approach to the epic but Excalibur puts this approach to a very different use.

The second stage begins when Arthur becomes king, ushering in an age of prosperity, peace and stability. The whole look and tone of the movie changes. Everything is bright and airy. Camelot is not quite a fairy tale world, but it is a world of light and of order.

This can however only continue as long as the king is strong and just. The problem is that Arthur is betrayed by his queen Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi) and his best friend and most trusted knight, Lancelot (Nicholas Clay).

The king has lost his faith in himself and in his destiny and he has lost his sense of his own destiny. The king sickens physically, morally and spiritually and the land sickens. There is famine and plague, and misery. Again the tone and look of the movie changes. We’re now in a dark and gloomy world.

Morgana has played a sinister role in promoting discord between the king and queen, but it is the betrayal by Guenevere and Lancelot that does the real damage.

Once again magic has been used to bring about a fateful sexual union, and the birth of a child which will have consequences. The child is Mordred, the son of Arthur and Morgana.

Merlin is determined to prevent the fatal consequences which will follow, and a battle of magic between Merlin and Morgana ensues.

The Arthurian legend is no cheerful fairy tale. It is a tragedy. The triumph of good over evil cannot be assumed. The triumph of the new world over the old cannot be assumed. In this third stage of the movie there is hope, perhaps the Quest for the Grail can restore both the king and the land, but it’s a precarious and desperate hope.

Merlin and Morgana are by far the most interesting characters. They are outsiders. They belong to a different world. A pre-rational world of pagan gods, nature mysticism and magic. Arthur is ushering in a new world, a world in which there will be no place for Merlin and Morgana. While Morgana has other more personal reasons for opposing Arthur she would have to oppose him anyway because he represents this new world.

Merlin is aware that there will be no place for him in this new world. He believes it is destined to come anyway, and that he is destined to play a major part in bringing this about.

Perhaps Merlin knows that Arthur’s world will not last, and will end in a reversion to chaos and barbarism. Perhaps he sees human history as a cyclical thing, as in Norse mythology where the world will inevitably be destroyed, and then reborn. The idea of an eventual rebirth is certainly implicit in the Arthurian legend - one day a king will once again appear and will once again claim Excalibur from the lady in the lake.

This movie probably has more resonance today than it had in 1981, given that we now live in an age of gloom and pessimism.

There are some great action scenes and the movie can certainly can be enjoyed as a fantasy action movie, or even indeed as a sword-and-sorcery movie. There is however also plenty of thematic and emotional complexity.

Boorman relies mostly on fairly simple special effects. It’s another demonstration that talent and imagination (and intelligence) matter more than money and gee-whizz digital effects.

Excalibur looks superb on Blu-Ray and John Boorman’s audio commentary is what an audio commentary should be. He doesn’t tell us things that we can perfectly well see for ourselves. Instead he tells us how and why he made the movie and what he was trying to achieve.

Excalibur is very highly recommended.

Honey (Miele di donna, 1981)

Honey is an Italian-Spanish co-production released in 1981. Assigning it to a genre is tricky to say the least. The original title Miele di donna translates literally as A Woman's Honey. It’s a very strange movie, and a very good and very interesting one.

It begins with a woman (played by Catherine Spaak) forcing her way into the office of a book editor (played by Fernando Rey). She produces a manuscript and a gun. She insists that he read the manuscript aloud. We assume she is a writer and that she has written this manuscript.

The story in the manuscript then unfolds on screen.

A young woman named Anny (Clio Goldsmith) is in a cab looking for the Pensione Desiderio (the Desire Guest House). The cab driver has never heard of the place but surprisingly it is easy to find.

Right from the start the Pensione Desiderio has a strange mysterious atmosphere. Anny is welcomed by the landlady (Donatella Damiani), an extraordinarily voluptuous woman. The landlady is annoyed by find the maid Inés (Adriana Russo) once again spying on one of the guests. She scolds the maid and then invites Anny to join her in spying on that guest. He is an amazingly musclebound individual who apparently spends almost all his time in an odd inexplicable physical training routine.

Things are already becoming a little strange. The landlady suggests that Anny might like a bath. After her bath the naked Anny has an encounter with the landlady. It’s not exactly a sexual encounter but what it is is not at all clear.

There’s some confusion about Anny’s room. It is not yet ready for her. The geography of the Pensione Desiderio is also ambiguous. It seems much bigger than it should be and finding the kitchen or the bathroom is a challenge. It’s as if Anny has entered a maze. The Guest House of Desire is a maze, as is the movie itself.

There appear to be both men and women guests. There’s a middle-aged man who seems delighted that the Pensione has another guest. There’s also Ridolfi, who seems to be a gentleman although perhaps of the playboy type. He is a dance teacher.

Anny wanders naked into one of the rooms and has to hide under the bed when Inés and the middle-aged man walk in. Inés and the man have sex on the bed, with Anny hidden under the bed but watching them in a mirror.

There’s a lot of voyeurism in this movie but it’s all female voyeurism. It’s women who do the watching.

Then the girls arrive, for their dance lesson. Anny witnesses the dancing class, and it’s a perfectly ordinary dancing class. This is actually more disturbing, since by now we are expecting weird things to keep happening.

There’s a slight sense of temporal and geographical ambiguity. We feel that we’re not in the 80s any more but these events may have occurred a few years earlier, or many years earlier. At times the music and certain other elements add a slight Middle Eastern flavour. Are we really in western Europe? There’s a subtle sense of exoticism.

There is definitely a slight surreal vibe, and a dream-like quality to the events as they unfold. So what is going on? Is this simply a novel written by the lady writer (the one played by Catherine Spaak)? It could be that, or it could be a dream or a fantasy. We can’t even be sure that the lady writer was the actual author of the manuscript. There’s also a subtle suggestion that perhaps we’re seeing events through the eyes of someone who did not understand those events. We also get a sense that Anny, although she appears to be in her early 20s, is a bit child-like and there’s a definite sense that she does not understand her own erotic longings.

And then Anny finally reaches the room assigned to her and things get a lot more dream-like.

Clio Goldsmith gives a remarkable performance. She has the right wide-eyed innocence. She makes Anny seem a little naïve but without pushing it too far.

This is a movie in which we could be dealing with more than one unreliable narrator - the lady writer and Anny might both fall into this category. Much depends of course on whether that manuscript is fiction or non-fiction.

Ending a movie like this is always tricky. It’s a movie that relies on being mysterious and keeping us disoriented. An ending that explains too much can destroy the sense of mystery. Whether you’re happy with the ending depends to some extent on what kind of movie you were hoping for. I was fine with the ending.

This is a movie with a strong streak of eroticism but it’s not a straightforward erotic movie. It’s definitely arty and somewhat cerebral and somewhat surreal and don’t expect a conventional linear narrative. I think all these elements work. It’s also a genuinely interesting exploration of female voyeurism. I loved this movie. Very highly recommended.

The Raro Video Blu-Ray offers an excellent transfer but there are no extras. That’s a pity. I’d like to know a bit more about the film’s director and co-writer, Gianfranco Angelucci, and about the other writers (Liliane Betti and Enrique U. Herrera). I’d definitely like to know more about Clio Goldsmith.

Scyla (1967)

Scyla is a 1967 sexploitation feature by Nick Millard (who usually used the name Nick Phillips). It’s an intriguing attempt at mixing sexploitation with mythology, in a contemporary setting.

As usual with Millard’s films it was shot without synchronised sound. In this case he is able to turn a liability into an asset. This is not a realist film. The voiceover narration adds to the dreamlike feel and it works.

Gregory spends most of his time on the beach. He doesn’t do much except laze around. It’s not a bad life but there is one thing missing in his life - love. Gregory is a bit of a romantic. He’d like to meet that one special girl.

He thinks he’s met her when he encounters the lovely blonde Scyla Dane on the beach. He suggests to her that they should split and find somewhere where they can groove. He may or may not have been making progress with her but then her boyfriend Montgomery shows up. Montgomery is a really uptight guy who doesn’t like the idea of his chick grooving with other guys.

Gregory has however become obsessed. He has Scyla’s address. It was on a slip of paper that she left on the beach. Maybe she intended Gregory to find it?

Gregory finds Scyla’s house and watches Scyla and Montgomery making love. This triggers the first of many fantasy/dream sequences. They’re probably Gregory’s fantasies but sometimes they seem to be Scyla’s fantasies. The fantasy is of course Gregory and Scyla making it together.

Gregory goes to visit his old girlfriend Circe. Circe is a witch. Of course she’s not really a witch. This is 1967. There are no real witches. Except maybe Circe really is a witch. Gregory makes a big mistake. He tells Circe about his new love. He doesn’t want Circe any more, he wants Scyla. As you might expect Circe does not take this very well. No man has ever rejected her.

Circe isn’t a real witch but she uses her magic powers to try to seduce Gregory and also creates a sexy nymph to tempt him. Somehow Gregory manages to resist the temptations of two gorgeous naked chicks crawling all over him. He’s so much in love with Scyla that he is impervious to the sexual charms of other women.

Circe isn’t giving up. If her magic doesn’t work on Gregory it might work on Scyla. Somehow Circe is going to win Gregory back. Not because she loves him, but because she now wants him because he doesn’t want her.

How much of what we’re seeing is real? Is any of it real? Are any of these women real? The movie leaves it to the viewer to decide.

The mythology/fantasy aspect works quite well. The film does succeed in making us doubt reality. Millard doesn’t give us any fantasy scenes that look like scenes from a fantasy movie. He just gives us a lot of scenes that may or may not really be happening.

Of course in a Nick Millard movie you expect some fetishism. There’s not very much of that here, but there are a few moments. The nymph’s thigh-high black boots are a very Nick Millard touch. Not to mention Circe’s rubber panties.

There’s a colossal amount of nudity including frontal nudity, some if it very explicit. This movie was pushing the edge of the envelope in that respect in 1967.

Scyla is an in intriguingly offbeat sexploitation movie with a nicely enigmatic atmosphere. Highly recommended.

This is one of three Nick Millard movies in Retro-Seduction Cinema’s San Francisco Sex Collection. The transfer is fullframe and black-and-white which is how the film was shot. Personally I think these types of movies looked better when made in black-and-white.

I’ve reviewed several of Nick Millard’s other movies, including the wonderfully avant-garde How I Got My Mink (1969), the very existential Oddo (1967) and the delightfully sleazy exercise in foot fetishism Pleasures of a Woman (1972). I’m quite fond of his sexploitation movies.

The Island of the Fishmen (1979)

The Island of the Fishmen AKA Island of Mutations (original Italian title L'isola degli uomini pesce) is a 1979 horror film directed by Sergio Martino. It was released in the US by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in a heavily edited form (including a great deal of newly shot footage replacing existing footage) under the title Screamers.

It is 1891 and a French prison ship has sunk, presumably somewhere in the Caribbean. There are a dozen or so survivors but their troubles have just begun. Something drags their lifeboat towards an island. They assume it’s a current but we have seen enough to know that there’s something sinister in the sea.

Half a dozen men make it to the beach but before long only three remain alive, the ship’s medical officer Lieutenant Claude de Ross (Claudio Cassinelli) and two prisoners.

One of the prisoners is convinced that this is a voodoo island. He’s at least partially correct.

They think their troubles are over when a beautiful young woman rides up on horseback but she informs them that the island belongs to Mr Rackham and that he does not like trespassers and they would be well advised to leave. They will later discover that the woman is Amanda Marvin (Barbara Bach).

They make their way to the house of Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson) and he seems inclined to be hospitable.

There’s tension in the house between Amanda and Mr Rackham. He clearly has romantic designs on her and she most definitely does not reciprocate his feelings. The household also includes a Haitian voodoo priestess, Shakira (Beryl Cunningham), and she seems to feel a certain attraction to Rackham. There are other voodoo priestesses on the island and Rackham has a small private army of presumably Haitian warriors.

There are monstrous things living in the swamps and in the sea. They seem to be half man and half fish. Everyone on the island is aware of them and they don’t seem too worried. Claude on the other hand is very worried.

As one might have predicted a romance blossoms between Claude and Amanda. Gradually Claude learns the truth about what Rackham is up to on the island, and he also discovers that his services as a doctor are required. Rackham needs him to keep an old man alive. The old man is Amanda’s father Professor Ernest Marvin (Joseph Cotten). The professor had been involved in a scandal some years earlier, a scandal involving horrifying medical experiments. Rackham has good reasons for needing Professor Marvin’s services.

Just as Claude has put all the pieces of the puzzle together he finds that there are important things he did not know and those things change the picture completely.

Professor Marvin, Rackham and Shakira are all mad, but mad in different ways. Somehow Claude has to find a way to save Amanda. And there’s a time factor - this is a volcanic island and the volcano seems to be getting much more active.

The script obviously uses The Island of Dr Moreau as a jumping-off point but pretty soon the story starts developing in rather different directions. There are hints of certain well-known legends and some very definite Lovecraftian elements but I don’t want to risk spoilers by saying any more.

Richard Johnson is excellent as the sinister obsessed Rackham. Claudio Cassinelli plays the hero rôle pretty well and Barbara Bach is a fine spirited heroine (and she adds some glamour).

The movie has a definite steampunk feel. There are occasionally cheesy moments but the Italians had a knack for making cheesiness stylish. And mostly it isn’t that cheesy. The special effects work pretty well. The fishmen are obviously guys in rubber suits but they look fine. The sets are great. As low budget movies go this one looks terrific.

This isn’t really a horror movie. It’s more like a mutated version of a late 19th century scientific romance with some horror thrown in.

This movie doesn’t seem to have much of a reputation which might be a consequence of that heavily altered US version referred to earlier. This movie is so much fun. You’re not supposed to take it seriously. It’s a romp and it’s done with style and energy. Very highly recommended.

Full Moon’s Blu-Ray release is barebones but the transfer is excellent.

Deathstalker II (1987)

Deathstalker II is one of the many sword & sorcery epics churned out by Roger Corman in the 80s. This one is more deliberately cheesy and hammy than most but it’s good-natured fun.

It’s not a true sequel to Deathstalker, having little to do with the earlier film and being much more of a spoof of the whole sword & sorcery genre.

Thief and adventurer Deathstalker (John Terlesky) rubs afoul of a formidable lady named Sultana (Toni Naples) over a jewel he stole and she vows revenge. His problems really begin when he rescues Reena (Monique Gabrielle). In fact he has to rescue her a couple of times, much against his will and his better judgment. She insists that she is both a seer and a princess. He is sceptical.

In fact she is a princess but there are two princesses. The second is Princess Evie (also played by Monique Gabrielle. She is not only a fake princess, she’s not even human. She’s a clone created by evil sorcerer Jarek (John Lazar) in order to allow him to gain control of the kingdom. She’s also a sort of vampire (the screenplay throws in everything but the kitchen sink).

Reena wants Deathstalker to help her regain her throne. He has no desire to do this until she mentions that there will be a huge reward in it for him.

Reena and Deathstalker encounter zombies (it was the 80s and zombies were all the rage) and are captured by scantily-clad amazon warriors. Deathstalker has to fight their fiercest warrior Gorgo (played by lady wrestler Queen Kong) and she’s pretty terrifying.

The amazon queen (played by María Socas) isn’t such a bad sort after all. She does make him engage in a fight-to-the-death with Gorgo and then tries to force him into marriage (being an amazon tribe they’re short of men) but when her plans are foiled she doesn’t hold a grudge. The amazons turn out to be on the side of the good guys (even if Reena gets pretty jealous when she catches Deathstalker canoodling with the queen).

Jarek of course has despatched a team of terrifying thugs to track down and capture Princess Reena. He needs her alive because if she dies then the fake princess will die too).

We then get a succession of pretty enjoyable action sequences interspersed with lots of gags and pop culture references). They even find a way to add explosions to a sword & sorcery movie.

There’s plenty of sexual innuendo and a fair few topless scenes.

It’s all very silly but in a likeable way and director Jim Wynorski keeps the pacing breathless.

It was shot at a small studio in Argentina, using a lot of the sets built for the first Deathstalker movie. Most scenes were shot at night, making extensive use of fog machines, otherwise you’d have seen the freeway in the background.

The acting is very broad. John Terlesky and John Lazar ham it up unmercifully and the three main actresses have plenty of fun vamping it up. Monique Gabrielle handles her dual roles well, being sexy and evil as Evie and cute and adorable as Reena. María Socas takes things more seriously than the rest of the cast but she’s excellent as well.

This is a Roger Corman movie and Corman liked to save money. In this movie Deathstalker encounters hordes of miscellaneous thugs and henchmen but in fact they’re just three guys. Their faces are always masked so that the audience thinks Corman paid for lots of extras.

The end credits sequence is basically a blooper track.

Shout! Factory include this movie in their excellent four-movie Roger Corman Sword & Sorcery DVD boxed set. Deathstalker II gets a very good transfer and there’s an audio commentary featuring director Jim Wynorski and stars John Terlesky and Toni Naples. It’s obvious that they had a ball making this movie.

Deathstalker II is definitely not an attempt at a serious sword & sorcery movie. It’s silly and goofy but it’s fast-moving, exciting and amusing. If you’re in the mood for a real beer and popcorn movie this one should fit the bill. Very highly recommended.

Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (1971)

Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (Morgane et ses nymphes) is a 1971 French erotic horror movie with a definite surrealist tinge. It’s a movie that gets overlooked even by people who usually like this sort of thing.

I don’t know much about the movie’s director, Bruno Gantillon, but this seems to have been his only foray into this genre.

Two girls, Françoise (Mireille Saunin) and Anna (Michèle Perello), are on a motoring trip. They stop at a gloomy inn. There’s a slightly sinister-looking dwarf giving them the eye. We will later learn that his name is Gurth (Alfred Baillou). The landlord advises the girls to leave at once, and not to go through the village.

The girls drive through the forest and get hopelessly lost. They start to get worried when they realise they’ve driven past the same landmarks half a dozen times. It’s the middle of the night and they’re running out of petrol. They take shelter in a dilapidated barn. It’s all a bit miserable and it’s cold but they cuddle up together, and the cuddling gets a bit intense and you know what happens next.

Next morning Anna has disappeared. Françoise is very upset. The sinister-looking dwarf tells her to follow him. He’ll take her to her friend. Instead he takes her to a lake where a boat, apparently propelled by magic, takes her to a castle. Apart from the dwarf the inhabitants of the castle are all female. And all young and pretty. Morgane (Dominique Delpierre) seems to be in charge.

Gurth seems to have a very enjoyable time watching the sapphic cavortings of Morgane’s girls.

We assume that Morgane is some sort of witch. She appears to have some magic powers. She seems to be able to manipulate time, or at least she can manipulate a person’s perceptions of time.

Gurth is her faithful servant, or at least that’s what appearances suggest. He might of course be a sorcerer. His position is rather ambiguous.

Morgane has her three girls, her love slaves - Yaël, Sylviane and Sarah. How they feel about Françoise’s arrival is yet to be seen. There’s the potential for jealousies.

And what of Anna? What has become of her? Her fate will be important.

And where do the old women fit in? Morgane’s queendom is a queendom of youth and beauty.

As you might expect Françoise’s arrival leads to turmoil. There were perhaps power struggles already simmering but if Françoise is to become Morgane’s favourite there will certainly be trouble.

This is not really a horror movie. It has some affinities to Jean Rollin’s movies of the same period but many of Rollin’s movies are not actual horror movies either (movies such as The Iron Rose or The Escapees). Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay definitely belongs to le cinéma fantastique (as do Rollin’s movies). It’s a movie that takes place in a different reality, the world of faery for want of a better word. Morgane’s queendom is a faery queendom. It’s not evil, but it’s not like our world. The rules are different. It can seem cruel. It is a world of beauty, love and sex. It may seem shallow, but maybe Morgane’s world is concerned with things that really matter while our world is concerned with trivia. It just depends on your point of view.

Morgane is not evil, but she is cruel and capricious and she simply does not operate according to human rules.

So it’s not a horror movie in the sense of dealing with overtly terrifying or horrifying things, but it is a disturbing movie.

The sense of otherworldliness is achieved quite effectively. We are constantly tempted to judge Morgane and Gurth and Yaël, Sylviane and Sarah but then we find ourselves reminded that human judgments are simply irrelevant in the world of faery.

This is also very much a world of women, a world of female passions and female jealousies.

This is one of those movies that offers classy arty softcore erotica. Beautiful women engaging in low-key lesbian love play, with hints of perversity. There’s a lot of nudity. I don’t think any of the nudity is gratuitous. It’s a fantasy movie but it’s an erotic fantasy movie. The nudity is essential (not that I have a problem with gratuitous nudity anyway).

The acting is quite good. We do feel that these are characters from a dark fairy tale rather than from the real world, which is as it should be. Dominique Delpierre as Morgane and Alfred Baillou as Gurth are particularly good, giving performances that are wonderfully ambiguous.

The movie enjoyed modest success in France but was never released in the U.S. or Britain. It was therefore entirely unknown in the Anglosphere until Mondo Macabro released it on DVD some years back. Their excellent DVD release should have rescued this movie from obscurity but unfortunately it still remains almost unknown.

Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay is a movie that does not deserve to languish in such obscurity. It’s a hypnotic subtly disturbing dream-like movie shot in a wonderful 15th century castle. It’s a superb example of le cinéma fantastique.

Mondo Macabro’s DVD release can still be found at a reasonable price and it offers an excellent transfer.

Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay is very highly recommended.