Curse of Her Flesh, The (1968)

... aka: Curse of Her Passion, The
... aka: Curse of the Curious, The
... aka: Curse of the Flesh, The

Directed by:
"Julian Marsh" (Michael Findlay)

Entry number 2 in the Findlay "Flesh Trilogy," preceded by THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH (1967), again mixes gratuitous nudity, off-color, raunchy and sometimes hilarious dialogue, Vaseline-smeared camera lenses and violent scenes of mayhem and murder. Along with scribblings like "What ever happened to Gigi Darlene?" and "A man and a woman from Krelly, spent the night belly to belly. Because in their haste, they used library paste, instead of petroleum jelly." the title and credits amusingly show up on strip club restroom wall where a guy is taking a leak. It's always nice when filmmakers are cheeky enough to understand just what kind of audience they're catering to. Things open with a brief flashback recap of the first film to get us up to date. If you recall, weapons expert Richard Jennings ("Robert Wester" / Michael Findlay) had walked in on his wife Claudia (Angelique) with her lover Steve (Ron Skideri, as "A. Dick Feeler") in the throws of passion. Frantic, Richard ran out into the street, was struck by a car, lost an eye and then went crazy and started taking out his frustrations on women he deemed "filthy sluts." After killing numerous other women, he decapitated his wife with a table saw and then, if I recall correctly, was shot dead with an arrow by a would-be victims. I guess we're going to have to overlook that little detail because he's back in action here once again.

Richard goes to a theater where Adele (Jane Bond) and some other lady do a lesbian-themed stage show wearing thongs made from 10 dollar bills and dance to a song called "The Right Kind of Lovin" while a strobe light flashes. Afterward, Richard (posing as another club owner named "Joe Davidson") goes home with Adele, dips her cat's paws in poison and gets it to scratch her. She keels over dead after he leaves, but not before the two have the following conversation about her kitty...

 Richard: "That's a nice little pussy you have there."
 Adele: "Thank you. Everyone who sees my pussy likes it."
 Richard: "Is it friendly?"
 Adele: "Oh yes, sometimes I play with it for hours."
 Richard: "Does it ever get tired?"
 Adele: "No it never gets enough. Sometimes the girl next door comes over and brings her pussy and puts it with mine."

With Adele out of the way, Richard then goes after "Red Hot Scandals of 1968" star Stella ("Lena Brice" / Linda Boyce), whose credo is "I never object when I'm getting paid." After Stella performs in a long S&M-themed show where she whips a woman (an uncredited Uta Erickson), cuts off her clothes with a switchblade and then lick the blood off her body, she meets "Joe" backstage. After messing around a bit on the couch, he quickly kills the mood by informing her that "One piece of fish smells the same as the next" and then tells her he wants her to incorporate a strap-on into her next stage performance. Stella ends up trying out the dildo on her lesbian neighbor Maura ("I once had a girlfriend who said my big toe was better than any man") first, and accidentally kills her with it (Richard hid a knife inside). After Stella tries to blackmail him for five thousand bucks, Richard puts poison all over her and her stage partner's g-strings so they die from "something they ate" during her next stage performance.

What Richard is really wanting to do is get revenge on his dead wife's former lover Steve, who got off quite easy - no pun intended - the first time around. He starts by murdering Steve's brother Terrence (fellow erotica director and frequent Findlay collaborator John "Ellie" Amero) with a samurai sword. He then learns Steve's girlfriend Paula (Eve Bork) is a huge whore who lost her virginity at age 12. Knowing that Steve won't marry her if she's not a virgin, Richard agrees to help her out by sending her to an unscrupulous doctor who surgically rigs up a fake hymen inside of her (!!) After the wedding, Richard then sends Steve some home movies starring his "virginal" new bride; one called "Squash Crazy" where she gets pleasured with a huge vegetable, and another detailing her operation. Once Steve learns his wife has tricked him, he immediately shoots her dead with a harpoon gun, but then Richard shows up armed with a machete hoping to "chop the ugly penis from your body!" Which man will come out on top?

Since this was made primarily to cater to the sex film crowd, all of the nude scenes go on for what feels like forever and take up the majority of the 80 minute running time. which is par for the course. However, this does go that little extra mile to be outrageous and entertaining, which puts it a notch above other similar films from the time. It's amusingly twisted, the dialogue is often hilarious and it's actually pretty fun; a slight improvement over the previous film actually. Roberta Findlay (using her usual "Anna Riva" alias) was the co-producer, co-writer and cinematographer and also provided the voice of a radio announcer. The trilogy concluded with The Kiss of Her Flesh (1968). All three titles are available through Something Weird.

★★1/2

Thousand Pleasures, A (1968)

... aka: 1000 Pleasures

Directed by:
"Julian Marsh" (Michael Findlay)

File this gritty little black-and-white roughie / sickie next to the Findlay's notorious "Flesh Trilogy." It provides all of the nude and soft sex scenes one would expect with some hilariously off-the-wall and truly demented subject matter sure to raise more than a few eyebrows. Richard Davis (the director, as "Robert Wuesterwurst") has just stabbed his shrewish, nagging wife (Roberta Findlay, as "Anna Riva") to death with a butcher knife. He puts the body in the back of his station wagon and then sets out to find a suitable dumping spot. While driving along a vacant country road, he runs across a pair of female hitchhikers; Maggie ("Artemidia Grillet" / Uta Erickson) and Jackie (Linda "Mactavish" / Boyce), standing in the middle of the road. He agrees to give the two ladies a lift. One falls asleep in the back, while the other repays Richard for the lift by going down on him ("Listen, you'll love it... and, besides, I haven't had lunch yet.") After the wife's body is discovered, one of the women giggles and proclaims "He's the one!" They then force Richard to come to their island home off the coast of Cape Anne, where he's introduced to the rest of their, er, family. And what a twisted bunch they turn out to be!

For starters, there's "Little Baby" (Kim Lewid), a fully-grown, retarded blonde who wears only a diaper, sleeps in a crib, sucks on her thumb and makes a mess with her toys. Richard then catches her "doing things to herself that babies aren't supposed to do" like massaging her breasts in front of a mirror and masturbating with a candle! Belle ("Marie Brent" / Janet Banzet) uses this distraction to give him drugged tea. Richard tries to escape the crazy house but is knocked out by the lone male; henchman Bruno ("Ellsworth Dinsmore" / John Amero). He awakens to find Maggie and Jackie, a couple of "true lesbians," towering above him. They both hate men, fancy themselves modern day Amazons and "revel in the hot caress of female voluptuousness." So what do they want with Richard? Well, his sperm. Since they refuse to have sex with men, they simply jerk him off to get it then inform him that they'll keep the babies if they're female but kill any boy they may have. Also living in the home is a black full-figured nymphomaniac maid named Anna (Donna Stone), whom Richard dubs "Boobarella" for obvious reasons. Anna keeps Richard busy in the bathtub, bedroom and couch in an effort to keep him from straying too far.

Baby breast feeds off one of the lesbians while the other whips her back until it's all bloody. Afterward, they sodomize her with a fire poker until she throws up milk (!?!) When the lonely Belle tries to seduce emasculated brute Bruno, he pushes her to the ground and then puts a lit cigarette out on her breast, so she runs off to her bedroom and masturbates to a dyke rag. After being warned by Anna to get out of there before he's killed, Richard attempts to flee again, is captured by Bruno again and is dragged back to the house, where the lesbians beat him with a shovel, roast his feet over the fireplace and burn him with cigarettes. He eventually looses his mind, strangles one of the women and slashes up several more with a straight razor before meeting his match with Boobarella's massive mammaries. Things ends with a pretty funny lesbian nod to Gone With the Wind of all things!

This is all cheap, tacky and technically very crude, with ragged editing, awful acting, continuity errors galore, out of focus shots and inept use of post sync dialogue and voice-over (note how they try to quickly squeeze in lines when an actor's back is to the camera). However, as customary with much of the Findlay's work, there's enough amusing dialogue and warped, tasteless stuff going down in here to put it a notch above similar sex flicks from this time. The opening credits (which feature Stone dancing nude in front of three mirrors to the great garage rock tune "Is It On, Is It Off" by The Bit A Sweet) are littered with pseudonyms, but nearly everything was done by by Michael and Roberta. He not only directed and stars, but also produced (as "Julian Marsh") and edited (under the name "Richard Jennings" as a nod to the Flesh flicks). She not only appears briefly and does the voices of numerous characters but also produced and shot it (as "Anna Riva"), did the music (as "Robin Aden") and the lighting (as "Robin Marx"). The script is credited to "Berla L. Moke;" which is clearly a shared pseudonym.

Though I watched the VHS version (hence the less-then-stellar screen caps), Something Weird has paired this with Take Me Naked (1969), also by the Findlay's, for their DVD release. The company has also released numerous other Findlay films over the years, including Body of a Female (1964), Satan's Bed (1965; the film debut of Yoko Ono!), THE ULTIMATE DEGENERATE (1969) and the ridiculously awful Yeti cannibal flick SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974).

★★1/2

Touch of Her Flesh, The (1967)

... aka: Touch of Her, The
... aka: Touch of Her Life, The
... aka: Touch of Her Passion, The
... aka: Way Out Love

Directed by:
"Julian Marsh" (Michael Findlay)

After opening credits reflected off of nude female body parts, we meet one Richard Jennings (played by the director under the name "Robert West"). Richard, a writer and weapons expect, is off to Boston for a convention, leaving behind his young wife Claudia (Angelique). And you know what mice do when the cat's away... Claudia immediately invites her lover over and the two start getting busy. He tells her "With all those weapon's, he could be a real lady killer!" And he doesn't know the half of it. Forgetting some papers, Richard comes home early and peeks in on what his wife is doing in the bedroom. Instead of confronting her, he runs away and out into the street where he's struck down by a car. When Richard comes to he's at the hospital. A doctor informs him that he'll be temporarily paralyzed and that he's lost an eye. Richard tells him his name is Stanley Blenda and that he has no home and no relatives to contact.

Now in a wheelchair and wearing an eye patch, Richard rents out an apartment and starts drinking heavily. He has a trip out scene full of swirling camera shots of various women massaging their breasts and writhing in bed, and of visions of Claudia in bed with the other man. His voice over explains what men should do if they're ever caught in the "soft pink trap" or "the hot vice of love." Richard informs us that "The only true escape for any man trapped in the sexual vortex of the female being... It is to destroy her and all who act like her... Kill her naked, in public!... Kill the filthy beast so that those gates of flesh shall never open again!" Yes, you gotta love that colorful Findlay dialogue. I know I sure do!

Richard plans on killing his wife, but first he wants to teach a few other "filthy sluts" a lesson they won't soon forget. He goes to a club where a black go-go dancer has just finished her act. She goes backstage to change, where she gets a special poison rose "to symbolize the innocent pubescence she once had" from Richard. After pricking her finger on one of the thorns, the dancer heads back out on the stage to do a topless dance to a song called "The Right Kind of Lovin" before keeling over. So thanks for the dance, Vivian Del Rio. And thank you for sharing your amazingly nice rack with the world. Richard next goes to a burlesque show to watch a stripper (Sally Farb) do a routine with a boa on a leopard-print couch. Once she's done, he uses a blow gun to shoot a poison dart into her neck!

Scared her husband is out to get her, Claudia has been hiding out at an art / woodworking studio in Oyster Bay where she plays piano and paints. Her friend Janet (Suzanne Marre), whom Richard refers to as "the pig who poses nude," is her model. Richard spies on Janet having a conversation with her hooker friend ("Marie Lamont" / Peggy Steffans) and then picks the hooker up, takes her back to his apartment, makes her strip and then makes her lie down on the bed while he leaves the room to "prepare himself." He comes back with a knife and gets the hooker to rat out where his wife and Janet have been hiding before stabbing her in the stomach. Richard then shows up at the studio armed with a crossbow for an ineptly staged MOST DANGEROUS GAME where tops will get ripped off, someone gets their head cut off with a table saw and another is shot with an arrow.

The first entry in the financially successful "Flesh Trilogy" (which is followed by THE CURSE OF HER FLESH and THE KISS OF HER FLESH), this is typical late 60s Findlay "roughie" stuff. Made without recorded sound, all of the dialogue was dubbed in later. Not that it really matters since the acting is absolutely terrible. Most of the actresses don't even try acting scared, but that's not quite why they were hired. There's lots of nudity and these ladies aren't the stick figures we see today, but rather "healthy" women with some meat on their bones. All but one have really large breasts. Some even have a really large gut to match what they've got up top. Michael Findlay also wrote, produced and edited under the alias "Julian Marsh." His wife and co-conspirator, Roberta Findlay (using the name "Anna Riva"), co-produced, shot it, lit it, provided the voice of Claudia and also appears as the nude body during the opening credits and it the nightmare sequence.

While not traditionally good, and there's not as much crazy camerawork as I'd hoped, the storyline is entertaining and it has its moments here and there. Most of the nude scenes go on for a very long time, which will try the patience of some viewers. The DVD distributor is (surprise!) Something Weird.

★★