Hot Nights of Linda (1975)

Hot Nights of Linda is a steamy sexually overheated 1975 offering from Jess Franco.

Marie-France (Alice Arno) takes a job looking after the two daughters of a wealthy recluse, writer Paul Radeck (Paul Muller). He’s a writer, so he is therefore a man who deals in fictions. His daughter Linda is an invalid and never speaks. The other daughter is Olivia (Lina Romay). She’s actually his niece and adopted daughter.

There’s a disturbing atmosphere in the luxurious modernist ocean-front Radeck villa (a typical Jess Franco location which the director utilises with his customary flair for getting the best use out of a location). Radeck is a troubled man. He does not seem to have recovered from the death of his wife. It’s not clear why Linda is an invalid but Marie-France does suspect that the problem might be psychosomatic.

Olivia is a strange girl. No-one played sexually obsessed mad girls better than Lina Romay so she’s perfectly cast. Olivia confides in Marie-France, up to a point. Olivia is troubled by a nightmare. It’s the same nightmare every night. It’s a sexual fantasy nightmare. What she doesn’t tell Marie-France is that she remembers seeing a murder. But of course Olivia is mad, so we can’t be sure if this is a genuine memory or a distorted memory, or a delusion or part of a twisted sexual fantasy.

Olivia is a virgin. She masturbates constantly. She clearly has some sexual issues and equally clearly these are a major factor in her madness.

The Radeck villa is under surveillance by a sleazy cop and a young female photo-journalist (played by Catherine Lafferier). Apparently Paul Radeck is suspected of killing his wife. The detective and the photo-journalist take lots of photos, mostly nude photos of female members of the Radeck household, so there’s a definite voyeurism theme here.

Things get crazier. The three members of the Radeck family may all be mad, but they’re not necessarily all mad. And if they’re all mad they’re mad in different ways, although we can’t help feeling that in all three cases there’s a sexual basis to the madness.

Eurocult movies of this era often exist in several different cuts often with different titles. It can be bewildering and that’s especially the case with this movie. Franco claimed that at least ten different cuts of this movie (with ten different titles!) were in circulation at various times, some of which featured hardcore footage.

My main problem with this movie is the ending, which I hated. But according to Lina Romay this was not the ending they originally shot or intended. The ending of the English-dubbed version on the Severin Blu-Ray was added later by the producers and was totally contrary to Jess Franco’s intentions.

The existence of multiple cuts frustrates some eurocult fans but in a weird postmodern way it’s kind of cool. In those case where more than one cut survives you can watch very different versions of the same movie and choose the one you like.

What makes this movie fascinating is that there are at least three different versions that were shot by, and approved by, Franco. Including the hardcore cut in which Lina appears. And some of these versions have totally different endings, which is very postmodern.

There’s plenty of eroticism, all of it unhealthy.

Hot Nights of Linda is a Jess Franco movie that gets a bit overlooked, largely because it was made at a time when he was making so many movies, and so many of those movies are considered Franco classics. Hot Nights of Linda is however important in being a movie Franco conceived entirely as a starring vehicle for Lina Romay. She’s in top form and she owns this movie completely. Maybe not among the very best Franco movies but very much worth seeing, and highly recommended.

Severin have released this movie in a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack. The transfer allegedly comes from a 35mm print discovered in a Barcelona bordello, which is just such a wonderfully Jess Franco thing that one would like to believe it’s true. The combo pack also includes the French hardcore version on a separate disc.

The A-B-C's of Love (1953)

The A-B-C's of Love, released in 1953, is one of the six burlesque movies included in the Something Weird DVD boxed set Strip Strip Hooray.

Lillian Hunt is the credited director and she’s credited on a lot of these burlesque movies. I know nothing else about her and I have no idea of the precise nature of her contribution to these movies. Directing a burlesque movie must obviously have been quite different to directing feature films.

In the case of most of the movies in this set we know which burlesque theatres were involved but in this case that information seems to be impossible to ascertain.

The burlesque movie had a brief blossoming in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These were actual burlesque shows filmed live in actual burlesque theatres. Although usually shot without a theatre audience what the movie gives you is exactly what the audience would have seen. This obviously gives these movies a great deal of historical importance. We don’t need to speculate on what a real burlesque show in the golden age of burlesque was like.

This is both the strength and the weakness of these movies. They show burlesque as it really was, both the good and the bad.

The good is represented by the strip-tease routines which offer a kind of innocent naughtiness and cheerful sexiness, qualities totally lacking in popular culture today.

These strip-tease artistes would have been horrified to be told they were part of the sex industry. They considered themselves to be in show business. They could dance and they devised and then worked up their routines the same way that any other live theatrical performer would have done. They were not just taking their clothes off. They were putting on a show.

For the most part they were quite unembarrassed by the taking off their clothes part. They were never completely naked. They would strip down to a G-string and pasties.

Having said that, how much the girls could get away with varied enormously from city to city. It was entirely up to the whims of the local authorities. On the rare occasions that they could get away with dispensing with the pasties they would do so. On even rarer occasions audiences in some places might get a “blink and you’ll miss it” glimpse of the girl without her G-string.

In a burlesque movie it’s G-strings and pasties. While considered somewhat scandalous at the time if released today these movies would get at most a PG rating.

The strip-tease routines have plenty of nostalgia value and some are pretty impressive.

The bad in burlesque is represented by the other entertainments on offer. The strip-tease routines were just part of a burlesque show. There would often be straightforward musical numbers and dance routines (this movie offers us a frenetic fully clothed tap-dancing routine).

The songs were usually not very good. Some of the dance numbers are OK.

But the worst part of burlesque was the comedy, and there was a huge amount of it. The comedy was usually provided by what were known as “baggy-pants” comics. There were dirty jokes but they were not the problem. The problem is that this style of comedy was excruciatingly unfunny. You wait for the punchline is these sketches but usually there is no punchline. Sitting through the comedy routines is an ordeal.

Comedy of course is a very individual thing. Maybe audiences of the time actually enjoyed this brand of comedy.

The burlesque movies give us the lot. You get half a dozen (occasionally more if you’re lucky) strip-tease routines but you get at least one straightforward musical number and a lot of comedy.

How good a particular burlesque movie is depends entirely on how good the strip-tease artistes are. They’re the reason you’re going to watch these movies. Everybody’s Girl (1950), Midnight Frolics (1949), 'B' Girl Rhapsody (1952) and French Follies (1951) are pretty good - the strippers are good and their routines are clever and erotic in that delightfully vintage 1950s way. The A-B-C's of Love is the weakest such movie I’ve seen so far. The strip-tease routines are not that great.

These burlesque movies won’t appeal to everyone but if you have an interest in burlesque or vintage erotica they’re essential viewing. And if like me you just enjoy oddball movie genres they’re intriguing. There are however much better movies in this genre than The A-B-C's of Love.

Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

Mission Bloody Mary, released in 1965, was the first of a series of three eurospy movies featuring Ken Clark as American secret agent Dick Malloy, Agent 077. It was an Italian-French-Spanish co-production. It was followed by From the Orient with Fury (Agente 077 dall'oriente con furore) and Special Mission Lady Chaplin (Missione speciale Lady Chaplin).

Confusingly it appears that Agent 077 was named Jack Clifton in the European versions but renamed Dick Malloy in the English dubbed versions.

Mission Bloody Mary begins in a typical eurospy way. Someone has been causing US military aircraft to crash and they have stolen a new super H-bomb nicknamed the Bloody Mary.

It’s obviously a case for the CIA’s top agent Dick Malloy, if they can tear him away from the case he’s working on at the moment. That case happens to be a beautiful blonde. Agent 077 hates leaving a job unfinished but he promises the blonde that he’ll be back to finish the job.

Agent 077 finds his contact and of course she’s a glamorous female, Dr Elsa Freeman (Helga Liné). There’s another glamorous female who seems likely to be more dangerous, a Chinese stripper named Kuan (played by Mitsouko).

The bodies slowly start to accumulate. And people are trying to kill Dick Malloy, so he must be getting close to something.

The CIA can’t provide Dick with much information. They know the Black Lily is involved, but they don’t know whether the Black Lily is an organisation or a person, or whether it refers to a man or a woman. The Black Lily might be operating independently, or on behalf of the Chinese or the Soviets. And that bomb could be hidden anywhere.

There will of course be double-crosses. This is after all a spy story. The script provides plenty of twists. Some of them you’ll see coming but some of them you won’t.

There are glamorous women and poor Malloy has no idea which of them he can trust. He gets into plenty of tight corners but he’s a tough guy and he can slug or shoot his way out of most situations.

Ken Clark was one of those American actors who realised that they weren’t going to reach the top in Hollywood but might do a lot better in Italy. He made peplums, spaghetti western, eurospy and action movies. He was the ruggedly handsome American type who prospered in 60s eurocult movies. He makes a more than adequate square-jawed wise-cracking hero.

Helga Liné and Mitsouko add some glamour. The other cast members are all perfectly competent.

The major difference between the Bond movies and eurospy movies was of course money. The makers of eurospy movies did not have the budgets for elaborate sets, fancy gadgetry and spectacular action set-pieces. They had to rely on more conventional action scenes. A lot depended on just how good a director was at staging such scenes. In this case Sergio Grieco proves to be very competent. The action scenes are excellent.

And there are plenty of them. Pacing is crucial to the success of these kinds of movies. The lower the budget of the movie the less forgiving the audience is going to be of slow patches. This movie has no slow patches. It just keeps powering along.

Director Sergio Grieco had a fairly typical career for an Italian genre director. He made peplums, swashbucklers and quite a few eurospy movies. Later he dabbled in poliziotteschi and sex comedies.

This was 1965 so there’s no nudity but there are some witty sexy moments. A good place for a woman to hide a secret message is in her bra, especially if she can be sure that the man for whom the message is intended will get the chance to look inside her bra. And Mitsouko gets to do a strip-tease routine.

At one point Malloy has to make sure that a female agent is not an imposter. To do so he will have to make a careful examination of her left breast. Fortunately one of Malloy’s secret agent skills is persuading young ladies to remove their clothing.

The violence isn’t graphic but the fight scenes are quite full-blooded.

Mission Bloody Mary has relatively few of the outrageous and fantastic elements that populate a lot of eurospy movies, in fact it has almost none, but it manages to provide plenty of excitement, and it’s stylish enough in a slightly gritty sort of way. On the whole this is a top-notch eurospy offering and it’s highly recommended.

The German Pidax Jack Clifton Agent 077 DVD boxed set includes all three 077 movies, with the English soundtracks as well. The transfers are fine.

I’ve reviewed the other two Agent 077 movies, From the Orient with Fury (1965) and the superb Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966).

Fräulein Leather (1970)

Fräulein Leather is a 1970 sexploitation feature written and directed by Nick Phillips.

Nick Phillips was actually Nick Millard, the son of legendary exploitation movie figure S.S. Millard (known as Steam Ship Millard and one of the notorious Forty Thieves of the exploitation movie business). Nick Phillips carved out his own niche in the business and had a long and prolific career. For some reason he doesn’t get as much attention as people like Russ Meyer, Doris Wishman and Joe Sarno but he does have some claim to being an interesting sexploitation auteur.

The 1960s-70s was the heyday of offbeat non-mainstream movie-making. There were avenues for the distribution of weird and wonderful oddball movies, avenues that no longer exist. If you wanted to make totally off-the-wall movies one of the best ways was to make sexploitation movies. All the distributors cared about was that your movie had enough nudity and simulated sex to make it saleable. Apart from that you could do what you liked.

There were American sexploitation movies that incorporated surrealist and fantasy and sci-fi and arty elements and lots of all-round weirdness, one notable example being Venus in Furs (1967). This was an ideal environment for Nick Phillips.

Nick Phillips gets comparatively little attention because his movies were very overtly erotic indeed and were very very low-budget productions with a bit of a ramshackle feel. As a result he’s a bit too disreputable even for critics who are prepared to celebrate Metzger, Meyer and even perhaps Wishman.

The movies of Nick Phillips are also heavy on the fetishism. Foot fetishism features in a lot of his movies and in this case there’s plenty of leather fetishism as well.

Like most Nick Phillips movie this one was shot without synchronised sound. Phillips makes a virtue of a necessity and decides to at least make the voiceover narration a bit interesting. It’s a woman’s rambling interior monologue.

Suzanne is a housewife who is disturbed by her lesbian sexual fantasies. The entire movie is an extended fantasy sequence. Women do often have quite lurid sexual fantasies and Suzanne is no exception. She fantasises about becoming part of a small circle of lesbians who are rather experimental in their sexual tastes. Leather boots are very prominent.

The voiceover narration explains Suzanne’s unhappy marriage and her conflicted feelings about her desires. She finds her fantasies humiliating and disturbing but very exciting. She analyses her feelings and is not always comfortable with the conclusions she reaches.

It’s probably no accident that when the movie opens she is lying in bed reading Camus. You could call this a sexistentialist movie.

There is no heterosexual sex in the movie. There are no male characters. The nudity is very explicit and the sex scenes are pretty much hardcore. Censors in those days were not quite sure how what to do about lesbian sex scenes and tended to allow film-makers to get away with quite a lot. There is an enormous amount of sex in this movie. But since Suzanne is obsessed by sex it does at least make some sense that the movie is basically little more than a series of her sexual fantasies.

Apart from one or two scenes shot on location this movie is all interiors, which kept the budget down. Again Phillips makes a virtue of a necessity, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere in which Suzanne is stifled by her own out-of-control fantasies and desires.

This is unapologetically a sex movie and if the sex on offer is not your thing the movie might not be your thing either. It does have an appealingly scuzzy sleazy feel to it, if you like that sort of thing. I do like that sort of thing so I enjoyed it. Your mileage may vary.

Media Blasters have released this movie on Blu-Ray in their Guilty Pleasures line, paired with the very early Nick Phillips movie Nudes on Credit (which is more a comedy than a sex film). The extras include a fascinating interview with the director. He has some amusing stories about the glory days of guerrilla film-making and makes no apologies whatsoever for the films he made (and nor should he).

The Cats (1968)

Duccio Tessari’s I bastardi (1968) is one of those European movies that gets a bit confusing when it comes to titles. It was released in English-speaking markets variously as The Cats, The Bastard, Mod-Cats and Sons of Satan. For convenience I’ll refer to it as The Cats.

This was an Italian-French-German co-production but was shot at least partly in the United States. Certainly all the location shooting (and there’s plenty of it) was obviously done in America.

Rita Hayworth is Martha and she has two sons, Adam (Kinski) and Jason (Giuliano Gemma). She loves them both but especially Jason. One can’t help feeling she may be a bit blinded by maternal love since we see Jason murder half a dozen people in the first few minutes of the movie. Martha calls her sons her kittens (hence the English title).

Adam and Jason are both criminals. Martha doesn’t mind as long as they pay her her allowance and keep her in whisky.

Jason’s killings were intended to wipe out Adam’s criminal rivals. Jason would be paid by receiving the proceeds of a jewel heist.

Everything is going great for Jason. He has lots of money. And he has a cute sexy girlfriend, Karen (Margaret Lee).

Unfortunately things are about to fall apart for him. He ends up grievously injured and is rescued by a pretty lady rancher, Barbara (played for former Bond girl Claudine Auger).

Fate has played a perverse trick on Jason. Barbara is his one chance of happiness. Any sane man would be delighted to win Barbara’s love but Jason doesn’t want her. He obviously prefers bad girls. And he has scores to settle. Revenge is all he can think about. He doesn’t care how much it might cost him.

So this is an obsession movie. It’s also a very dark very violent very cynical movie. Of all the characters in this movie Barbara is the only decent human being. Martha is a crazy drunk. Adam and Jason are psychos. Anyone who trusts Karen deserves what he gets.

We know this is all leading up to a violent finale and then the movie adds a twist that I can absolutely guarantee you won’t see coming. It really is the kind of thing you’re only going to see in an insane late 60s movie. There is a reason for it and when you find out the reason it’s kind of crazy.

Like most European movies that were filmed in the U.S. this movie still feels totally European. It’s a deranged eurocrime movie that just happens to take place in Arizona.

Rita Hayworth does the crazy drunk thing extremely well.

It’s hard to judge Kinski’s performances because of the English dubbing but he manages to get across plenty of Kinski derangement. Giuliano Gemma is effective enough as the obsessed Jason. Margaret Lee oozes sex and treachery.

You won’t get too many chances to see Rita Hayworth and Klaus Kinski starring in a movie together.

Kinski’s groovy sunglasses are a highlight. There’s plenty of that 60s aesthetic if you like that sort of thing (and I like it a great deal).

This movie is on DVD in the Warner Archive series. It’s barebones but it’s a pretty good transfer. The English dub is the only soundtrack option.

The Cats is a pretty decent movie if you enjoy movies about hyper-violent criminals. I liked it. Recommended.

Queens of Evil (1970)

Queens of Evil is a 1970 Franco-Italian co-production directed by Tonino Cervi. It’s a bit hard to decide to which genre this movie should be assigned. It’s not quite gothic horror, it’s not a giallo. It’s really a contemporary fairy tale gothic horror movie.

David (Ray Lovelock) is a young hippie riding his motorcycle to wherever it takes him. He stops to help a middle-aged man with a flat tyre. The man gives him an odd lecture. David expects it to be the kind of lecture that middle-aged guys would deliver to kids in 1970 but this is oddly different. Then there’s a car crash and there are police and David, being a hippie, doesn’t want to get mixed up with the police. He takes a side road and finds a house. He decides to sleep for the night in the shed. The following morning he meets the people who live in the house - three beautiful young women. David thinks their house looks like something out of a fairy tale.

There are some situations in life that are too good to be true. Three gorgeous very friendly babes living alone in a fairy tale cottage in the woods is one of those situations. Maybe he should have taken Liv’s advice. She was the first of the girls he encountered and she told him he’d be smart to leave. But of course he doesn’t. And there’s probably no male in the world who would have hopped on his bike and left. These girls are so friendly and gorgeous.

The girls are Samantha (Silvia Monti), Bibiana (Evelyn Stewart) and Liv (Haydée Politoff). They seem to be sisters.

There’s something else in these woods. It’s a kind of castle, the sort you’d expect in a fairy tale.

David notices that the girls seem to appear very suddenly and then, in the middle of a conversation with one of them, he’ll turn around and she’s gone.

Had David been more familiar with fairy tales he might have reflected that although there are certainly beautiful princesses in such tales not every female in fairy tales is a beautiful princess.

David becomes involved with Samantha. There are some slightly odd things about this house in the woods but David is so entranced by the three women that he doesn’t worry too much.

Of course things will end up becoming rather dangerous for poor David. He has no idea what he’s let himself in for. He’s very young and rather innocent.

Tonino Cervi’s career as a director wasn’t very extensive or distinguished but he does a fine job here. He creates a very subtle sense of unease. David knows there’s something slightly odd going on but it never occurs to him that it might be something to worry about. He’s a live and let live kind of guy. These chicks are a bit eccentric but he’s a hippie so that just makes them more fascinating to him.

Then slowly things become stranger. We know that eventually something really dramatic will happen but when it does Cervi manages to make it quite shocking.

Ray Lovelock was a fine (and versatile) actor and he does the innocent idealistic hippie thing extremely well. We really like David.

The three female leads are very effective. The three sisters seem to be slightly odd and a tiny bit disturbing but the three actresses don’t overdo this. And they manage to make the sisters seem a bit like the kinds of girls you might meet if you ever found yourself in a fairy tale. They’re beautiful and entrancing. They’re also seductive.

For most of its running time this movie avoids gothic horror clichés, or uses such clichés in unexpected ways. The viewer is really not at all sure what’s going on. Are the three sisters just free spirits ignoring the rules of conventional society (in other words are they basically hippies like David)? Is one of them a psycho, or are they all psychos? How dangerous are they? How crazy are they? Are they witches? Are they good witches or bad witches? Is this a giallo or a gothic horror film? We come to suspect that something supernatural or paranormal may be going on. Of course we’re seeing things from David’s point of view, which may be distorted. He’s a hippie. He might be having a drug fantasy.

Things become clearer towards the end but we’re still left with a few questions. And the ending is not quite what we expect. It remains a movie that doesn’t quite slot neatly into a particular genre.

Mention should also be made of the production design which is both dazzling and unexpected. The sisters’ house might appear to be a fairy tale cottage in the woods but no fairy tale cottage has this kind of ultra-modernist interior decor.

Queens of Evil is a wonderful fascinating oddball movie. Highly recommended.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray presentation looks great and there are some nice extras.

The Black Cat (1966)

The Black Cat, written and directed by Harold Hoffman, is a very low-budget 1966 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story of the same name. It was made by Hemisphere Films, better-known for their schlocky but fun horror monster movies shot in the Phillipines.

It’s an attempt to set the story in the 1960s while still retaining as much of the Poe flavour as possible. This is Poe but in the world of crazy rock’n’roll music, miniskirts and go-go dancing. This works better than you might expect.

A rich rather decadent young man named Lou (Robert Frost) lives on the fortune he inherited from his parents. He plays at being a tortured writer. His pretty blonde wife Diana (Robyn Baker) buys him a black cat as a present. He calls the cat Pluto.

The wife is devoted but she feels neglected. Lou spends most of his time drinking and writing.

Lou had apparently been a sensitive child but there are hints that his relationships with his parents were not exactly healthy and he hates his deceased father.

Lou is spiralling downwards into madness, and it’s a mean nasty madness. He comes to believe that the cat is a demon. The key to Lou’s madness seems to be his attempts to blame anybody but himself for his problems. He thinks his father was out to get him. He thinks his wife is against him. And he thinks the cat is out to get him.

He blinds the cat in one eye, and later kills the cat.

If you’re sensitive to animal cruelty you might think twice about viewing this movie. It’s pretty obvious that there was no actual animal cruelty involved in the making of the movie. All the scenes involving animal cruelty are quite clearly faked, but there’s a great deal of implied animal cruelty.

After further displays of madness and evil Lou ends up in a lunatic asylum. A few months later he is released. The well-meaning psychiatrist is confident that Lou is cured. We will soon find out that his confidence is sadly misplaced.

Lou is soon drinking again. He is still obsessed with demons, and when he meets a hooker in a bar he decides she is a witch. He sees black cats everywhere. Things are not likely to end well.

I do enjoy movies about psychiatry, especially if (as is the case here) there is half-baked Fruedianism involved. The combination of psychobabble and demonic obsessions makes this movie even more enticing from my point of view.

Robert Frost might not be a very good actor but he does manage to be very scary. It’s an effectively disturbing performance. Robyn Baker is not the world’s greatest actress but she does OK as the wife who just can’t give up on her husband even as his madness and evil become more obvious.

This is a rather nasty mean-spirited movie but it does have some genuinely chilling moments and some effectively creepy moments as well. Harold Hoffman didn’t have much of a career and he certainly wasn’t a brilliant director but he achieves plenty of menace and foreboding. This is an odd horror movie but it’s strange 1960s gothic decadent vibe is interesting and surprisingly works very well.

It manages to feel like a Poe story and follows Poe’s plot surprisingly closely. The very low budget is obvious and the special effects look very cheap but the sinister atmosphere and the very gothic feel of inescapable impending doom makes up for this. This is a very dark rather effective horror chiller and it’s highly recommended.

This movie is part of a Something Weird DVD double-header, paired with The Fat Black Pussycat. The Black Cat gets a letterboxed transfer. It doesn’t exactly look pristine but I suspect finding a decent print proved next door to impossible. You get some oddball extras including a truly bizarre cat-themed burlesque routine.