Fée sanguinaire, La (1968)

... aka: Bloodthirsty Fairy, The 

Directed by: Roland Lethem An interesting 25-minute short, shot in grainy 16mm and in black-and-white; almost dialogue-free and full of "shocking" images and student film-esque button pushing (and, ultimately, some sort of political message). Two mysterious men dressed in black and with cigarettes dangling from their mouths drop a large, presumably heavy (since it takes two to carry it) package off on a doorstep and walk away. When the home's owner (Pierre Lampe) returns he drags the package inside, then goes about doing a few more activities before deciding to finally open it. Upon removing the paper, he notices it's a large steel barrel. Using a blowtorch, he gets the lid off and sees it's full of oily water... but rising out of the water is a nude, voluptuous, smiling woman (To Katinaki), who immediately starts to entice the man by massaging her breasts. Naturally, being in a barrel for who knows how long, she needs to get cleaned off and hops into a bubble bath. While she's lounging in the tub, the man gets into bed, lights a cigarette and starts to remove him clothes in anticipation. We get to see fantasies from both the man and "the fairy."

His fantasies are completely sex driven, but despite her smiling face and joyous demeanor, the woman's are a little on the sick side. She first goes up to a policeman and beats him to death with his Billy club. Next up, she goes up to a nun on a park bench, starts feeling her up and strangles her to death with her rosary. She pokes a little boys eyes out with her fingers and then has sex with a black man in a public park. After finishing up in the tub, the woman then joins the man in bed, where his pleasure quickly turns into pain as the woman whips out a straight razor and cuts off his penis (all of this is cut with a chicken getting its head cut off and two men dribbling the blood on themselves). The man then dies a bloody death on the floor.

 

The woman then drops the penis into a jar. Seems she has a whole collection of penises... and they're of some rather famous people. Some jars have penises in them, some do not. Amongst the jars with dicks are "Luther-King," "Diem" (the first president of South Vietnam), "Kennedy," "Rockwell," "Verwoede" (a South African prime minister) and "Strobel." Amongst the ones without dicks: "Franco," "Kossygine" (Soviet premiere Aleksei Kosygin), "Waldeck-Rochet" (a French communist), "Johnson," "Paul VI," "De Gaulle," "Salazar" and "Kiesinger." So the "fairy" has been neutering famous political leaders (we can assume her latest victim is one, as well). What does it all mean? I'm sure the "neutering" of various political figures is pretty self-explanatory, especially considering that all of the emasculated figures had been assassinated before this was made. The short ends with the delivery guys dropping the package off at some gated military facility and then a picture of a swastika with Nixon's face in the middle.

The director did some acting (he appeared in the horror-comedy Mama Dracula in 1980) and directed other short films; many of them horror-themed (or just gory). Jean-Pierre Bouyxou (who plays one of the package deliverers) later went on to appear in a half dozen films for Jean Rollin and several for Jesus Franco.

★★1/2