... aka: Impersonator, The
... aka: Passion of Blue Power, The
... aka: Taste of Blue Power, The
Directed by:
"F.C. Perl" (Lee Frost)
Veteran exploitation director Lee Frost (using the name "F.C. Perl" here),
who'd worked on such varied films as the haunted house nudie House on
Bare Mountain (1962), the influential pre-Ilsa Nazisploitation
flick (and video nasty) Love Camp 7 (1969), the biker flick
Chrome and Hot Leather (1971) and the drive-in favorite The Thing
with Two Heads (1972), decided to crank it up a few notches with this
mean-spirited "roughie." Clearly, this was originally a soft X
film and had hardcore inserts added to the mix later. I'm not
sure if Frost filmed the more explicit stuff or not, but it was obviously
shot at a different time because the lighting is completely different and
the actresses in the original 'soft' film are not the same actresses
pretending to be them in the hardcore shots. The lead actor, "Jason Carns"
(I. William Quinn) however was brought back to help with the
continuity (i.e. shoot some of the hard stuff). Quinn, who'd only
appeared in R-rated films, was
both better looking and a (slightly) better actor than your typical male X star. He'd
previously had a memorable role as a gay hustler who got picked up by a
necro mortician in the bizarre LOVE ME DEADLY (1973), and this was
his sole venture into porn territory.
As Climax opens, NYC police officer Eddie (Quinn) busts Linda
("Linda Harris" / Starlyn Simone) for prostitution. On the drive to
the station, he tries to scare her about a large court fine and all the
"mean dykes" awaiting her in prison, then offers her an opportunity to get
out of it. If she'll give him a blowjob, he'll let her off the hook: "For
thirty minutes I'll save you thirty days." She reluctantly agrees, he
drives off into the country, makes her strip in the backseat and then
starts having his way with her. But this isn't sex for pleasure, it's sex
for power. Eddie doesn't even finish. He suddenly stops, slaps her
around, pulls a gun on her, forces her to get out of the car during the
middle of a rain storm and "lay down in the mud and jerk off" while he
watches and finishes himself off. After he's through, he informs her "You
can get back to town on your own. I don't want to get my car dirty" and
takes off, leaving the poor, terrified, naked girl out in the middle of
nowhere. This sequence brings to mind real-life stories you'll see crop up
in the news from time to time; ones of cops picking up prostitutes and
beating / raping them, and also stories of men pretending to be
cops to lure women into traps so they can rape them. In the case of Eddie,
it's the latter.
Law enforcement is a profession that happens to quite fascinate me. There
seem to be two specific and diametrically opposed types of people drawn to
this line of dangerous work. The first are those selfless individuals who
genuinely want to be of service to and help other people. On the flip
side, there are those who secretly get their jollies being in a position
of authority and power (and are just as apt to abuse that privilege). You can
probably guess which camp Eddie falls into.
Disappointed by his failures in life, he's stuck working as a lowly security guard
who constantly gets hounded and belittled by his boss. Feeling
otherwise powerless about his life, he vents by taking his frustrations out on
women. And he has a particular predilection for women who are breaking the law
and help indulge his desire to exert force over them.
Word from the streets about what he's been up to
gets back to some real cops (played by Frost film regulars Wes
Bishop and Marland Proctor), who promptly begin looking into
things. A lonely, reclusive type, Eddie is out walking the beach one day
when he hears a commotion coming from a beach house. When he peers inside
the window, he sees a couple involved in a violent fight. The man has just
discovered his wife Mildred (Angela Carnon) has been having an
affair and comes at her with a gun. Mildred manages
to get it away from him and shoots him dead. Eddie, who constantly listens
in to the police dispatch on his CB radio, starts getting angry that the
woman hasn't yet been arrested ("She's got to be punished!") But first, a
trip to a massage parlor to, uh, relieve some tension.
At the massage parlor, the obese owner (Bob Cresee) offers Eddie
the option of one or two girls who specialize in French and Japanese
techniques. He walks off with Uschi Digard and ends up in a room
with two completely different women. What follows is a long sex scene
utilizing both Quinn and a completely different actor who keeps his head
turned from the camera the entire time to conceal his identity! And it's too bad Uschi just
disappeared, because the two girls who do this scene aren't very
attractive and one has what appears to be a hemorrhoid on her ass. This
scene also doesn't fit all that well with the frustrated psycho theme
since Eddie completes his task and nods off afterward, where he has
sepia-toned visions of what went down at Mildred's as well as
fantasies of apprehending the murderess while spooky music plays.
Unable to get the woman out of his mind, Eddie returns to the beach house
and spies on her having sex with her lover on the couch not even 24 hours
after she'd killed her husband; a crime she has successfully managed to
pass off as a suicide. After watching a subtitled sex loop, he has a dream
that he handcuffs Mildred to a police car, rapes her and then whips her
with his belt, then has another dream of her giving him a massage, their
doubles having sex and some cat o' nine tails crotch whipping. Eddie eventually shows up at Mildred's house. He pulls a gun on her, tries
to get her to confess to the crime, slaps her around, ties her up and
locks her in a bedroom until she's willing to spill the beans. And then,
something really odd happens. Eddie barges in on her wearing a blonde wig, make-up and a backless dress,
strips her, feels her up, bathes her, violates her with his finger, tosses
her on the bed and rapes her and then whips her with a belt. Everything
leads up to a police car chase that ends in a bizarre and very
unsatisfying fashion.
While the hardcore inserts do give this film a nastier edge than it
otherwise would have had, it also does the film some harm. The
fair-skinned, dark-haired Carnon refused to participate in the graphic
sex, so who did these guys get to stand in for her? A sun-baked blonde
with bad tan lines! If one can ignore all that, this is fairly well-acted
and effectively sick and twisted if you like that kind of thing.
★★1/2
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