La tête froide (1970)

... aka: Cold Head, The
... aka: Deuxième partie

Directed by:
Patrick Hella

Shots of a car speeding down the road are intercut with kinky sex flashes (a woman with a whip rides a guy, for instance). Then the car crashes into a tree, the male driver (Christian Chaix) is decapitated and the bloody, injured female ("Marie Laurence" / Marie-Paule Mailleux) scoops up his head and returns to her home. There, she cleans herself and the head off, prepares dinner for herself and the head, buys the head a Ken Doll to keep it company, puts the head on a mannequin's body and then has a series of strange hallucinations, which include having sex with her bloodied lover, dancing in a room by herself with a spotlight, etc. Things culminate in her having sex with the head and then throwing it into the trash bin.

Although this seems to have been somewhat inspired by Repulsion (1965), right down to the sound of a clock ticking during one scene, it's also somewhat interesting as a boundary-pushing precursor to such later films as Lamberto Bava's Frozen Terror (1980), which also featured a couple getting involved in a car crash and the woman bringing the severed head home to make love to, as well as Re-Animator (1985), which turns out to not be the first movie with a disembodied head, uh, going down on a woman. There's no dialogue, technically-speaking it's pretty rough around the edges and it runs just 13-minutes (a scene with fellow underground Belgian filmmaker Roland Lethem, future Jess Franco movie regular Jean-Pierre Bouyxou and others was removed).

After making many short experimental films, Hella made a few documentaries and would go on to become a prolific casting director for such films as Duplicity (2005) and In Bruges (2008). Leading lady Mailleux appeared in several other shorts (including some for the same director), landed a small supporting role in José Ramón Larraz's Cannes-nominated psychological horror film SYMPTOMS (1974) and then disappeared promptly afterward (IMDb states that she died in 1999 while living in India).

★★

La casa del tempo (1989)

...aka: House of Clocks, The

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

Like several other Fulci films, this opens with a literary quote; this time from 19th Century French playwright and novelist Honoré de Balzac ("The Human Comedy"), as if it's striving for some sort of respectibility. A very wealthy and seemingly normal elderly couple; Victor (Paolo Paolini) and Sara (Bettina Milne) Corsini, live in a gated mansion along with their maid Maria (Carla Cassola), one-eyed hired hand Peter (Al Cliver) and army of Doberman Pinchers they let roam free outside. Victor believes that the dozens of clocks that fill the home are his "children," and he and his wife are up to something strange involving the rotting corpses of his niece and nephew, which are kept in a locked room. After Maria discovers the bodies, Sara jams a spear into her stomach until her guts start pouring out. Meanwhile, three thoroughly obnoxious 20-somethings; Tony (Keith Van Hoven), Diana (Karina Huff) and Paul (Peter Hintz) are driving around smoking weed, arguing and plotting to break into the mansion. First, they stop by a supermarket, where Diana distracts the cashier by letting him sniff her panties while the other two shoplift dinner. For some reason, one of them also decides to lighten the mood by suffocating a cat in a plastic bag. Nice.

The three end up at the mansion, where Diana pretends to be a stranded motorist to coerce the couple to let her in so she can use their phone. It isn't long until her buddies barge in. There's a struggle over a rifle and the elderly couple, as well as Peter, are all killed. The thieves hide the bodies, start looting the place and plot to leave, but can't because the dogs are gathering around outside the door. Now trapped inside the home, the clocks all begin rewinding by themselves, bodies turn up missing and characters who were killed return to life and start attacking. There are three impalements (including one with a steel fence), three shotgun killings (including a stomach blown away), a hand stabbed with a knife, a head bashed off a table, a strangling, chainsaw and axe usage (both strangely off-screen) and zombie hands emerging from the ground. Despite this, the film actually isn't as gory as most of Fulci's other 80s offerings.

It's confusing, the characters are all horrible people you could care less about and nothing really makes a lick of sense, which has prompted some fans to refer to it as "a surreal gem," which is the same thing the same fans said about his sloppy, horror clip recycling hodgepodge NIGHTMARE CONCERT (1990, aka A CAT IN THE BRAIN). Sorry, but I still don't buy it. It's easy to come up with a senseless story and then not have the courage of your convictions by writing everything off at the very end. In this case (feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you don't want this thing spoiled) the film settles for a groan-inducing "it was all just a dream" twist as our leading lady wakes up from a horrible nightmare and learns that her friends had the same exact nightmare. Now scared, they decide not to actually break into the house and drive off. That's all capped off with an absurd attempt at irony when the bagged kitty cat comes to life, jumps in the driver's face and causes them to crash and be killed anyway! The "moral" ending is surprisingly similar to the one used by Lamberto Bava for GRAVEYARD DISTURBANCE (1987), and I hated the conclusion of that flick, too.

So while I wanted to kill all the characters myself and cringed at the terrible dubbed dialogue and hated the silly "twist" ending cop-out, the movie isn't completely worthless. It has an OK music score, a basic attempt at atmosphere both inside (spinning clocks, light glittering off various things, some coloring...) and outside (fog rolling in...) the mansion, as well as enough red stuff to keep the gorehounds from straying. I'm sure if you love all things Fulci, you'll also love this. Well, if you can look past the very cheap, very soft look of the "telecolor" cinematography.

It was originally made for Italian TV and was part of a four-part series called Le case maledette ("The Doomed Houses"), which also included the Fulci-directed SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS, as well as the Umberto Lenzi-directed HOUSE OF LOST SOULS and THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT. This one supposedly was too violent for TV, so it briefly played theatrically before heading to video. Though there was no VHS release in America, it got a R1 DVD release via Shriek Show in 2002.

★★

Demented Death Farm Massacre... The Movie (1986)

...aka: Death Farm

...aka: Hillbilly Hooker

...aka: Honey Britches

...aka: Honey Pie
...aka: Little Whorehouse on the Prairie

...aka: Shantytown Honeymoon

Directed by:

Donn Davison

Fred Olen Ray

Fred Olen Ray purchased the rights to a low-budget 1971 hicksploitation flick originally released as SHANTYTOWN HONEYMOON (aka HONEY BRITCHES and several other titles), added a few minutes of new footage featuring John Carradine as "The Judge of Hell," changed part of the music score and then sold it to Troma, who did their usual re-packaging/re-title job to give it some camp appeal. Back in the 70s, the film was re-released numerous times under a variety of different titles, including HILLBILLY HOOKER and LITTLE WHOREHOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. The director of the original film was Kentucky-born Donn Davison (aka Phil Chandler), who had worked as a spook show magician, managed the Dragon Art Theater adult cinema in California, did voice over work and trailer narration, served some time behind bars for obscenity charges back in the mid-70s and was apparently a national yo-yo champion and spokesperson for Duncan Yo-Yo's!

In addition to this film, Davison (who passed away in 1999) had also directed a 1968 redneck drama titled MOONSHINER'S WOMAN (often mistaken for another alternate title for this when it's an entirely different film) and added his own footage to several other features, including THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN (which was filmed in 1965 and re-released with Davison's newly-added footage as BLOOD BEAST OF MONSTER MOUNTAIN in the mid-70s) and SHE-FREAK (filmed in 1967 and re-released with new scenes as ASYLUM OF THE INSANE). Though it probably sounds like this will be a complete mess, surprisingly enough it isn't in that bad of shape. The footage with a depressingly frail and sometimes incoherent Carradine only amounts to a couple of minutes and has him (in the best later-day Lugosi tradition) babbling a bunch of nonsense that has nothing to do with the movie. It's badly spliced in and utterly pointless, but the original feature, while dumb as can be, is pretty fun at times.

A couple of thieves rob a jewelry store, make off with over a million dollars in rare jewels, steal a helicopter, crash it and then steal a jeep. This being a super low-budget regional film, none of that is actually visualized for us. It's simply described during a car radio broadcast (voiced by Davison himself) right before the bluegrass staple "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms" comes on. The two thieves; British-accented Philip Courtley (Jim Peck) and his younger accomplice Kirk Taylor (Mike Coolik), along with their girlfriends; Amazonian, big-breasted, chain-smoking bitch Suzanne (Trudy Moore) and meek, abused Karen (Valerie Lipsey), run out of gas while heading down to Florida to sell the stolen diamonds. Stuck in the backwoods of North Carolina, the quartet push their jeep off to the side of the road and then head into the woods looking for some place to hide out until they can get some gas.

After walking through the woods for what seems like an eternity, the quartet run into young and naive country bumpkin Reba Sue (Ashley Moore), whose father "sold" her to an old, bearded, pudgy moonshiner named Harlan Cravens (George Ellis) to clear up a 200 dollar debt. Harlan is a not only a loud slob, but he's also a paranoid, woman-hating religious nut who thinks every woman is a whore and won't consumate his relationship with his shapely new wife. No problem, Kirk's game. After the two of them get it on, Karen and Reba Sue get into a catfight that ends in death as one of the ladies gets her head bashed in with a moonshine jug. From here on out it's a free for all with characters chasing each other around the house and through the woods trying to kill one another. There's a pitchfork-through-the-neck and someone gets mowed over by a pick-up truck.

While this doesn't quite cut it as a horror film (despite the "spooky" new footage/ music and a couple of gory moments) and doesn't quite cut it as sexploitation (there's just one sex scene with only partial nudity), it does work OK as a redneck movie. The accents are hilarious and the characters; especially Harlan and Suzanne, are entertaining enough to keep you watching. The cast also includes Pepper Thurston as a black whorehouse madam named Jessie-Belle (uh, get it?) and R. Kenneth Wade as Harlan's semi-retarded hired hand Tobey.

If you're interested in seeing the original film minus the Ray-shot scenes, Something Weird offers it on VHS and DVD-R.

★★

Devil Within Her, The (1975)

...aka: Baby, The
...aka: Evil Baby
...aka: I Don't Want to Be Born!
...aka: It Lives Within Her
...aka: It's Growing Inside Her
...aka: Monster, The
...aka: Sharon's Baby

Directed by:
Peter Sasdy

Former stripper Lucy Carlesi (Joan Collins) has just given birth to a 12-pound baby boy... who scratches her face and licks her blood just minutes after it exits the womb! Dr. Finch (Donald Pleasence) recommends she not breast feed because what just occured is clearly a sign of post partum depression. Lucy, her bland Italian husband Gino (Ralph Bates) and infant Nicholas all return home and things quickly go from bad to worse. Lucy relates a howlingly funny flashback to her former glory days as an exotic dancer to her completely useless best friend Mandy (Caroline Munro). You see, a year or so earlier, right after performing her patented Hunchback of Notre Dame-inspired strip act (!!) Lucy's dwarf co-star Hercules (George Claydon), Quasimodo to her Esmeralda, decided to try for some backstage action. After a failed attempt to grab her breast, Lucy shrieks, her sleazy boss Tommy (John Steiner) barges in and kicks the dwarf out so he can have sex with her instead. As Lucy is exiting the building later that night, the spurned dwarf emerges from behind the stage to curse her and tell her she's going to have a possessed baby.

So what does having a possessed infant entail? Well, it's messy. The baby manages to completely destroy its room and all its toys in a matter of seconds. It's super-strong. The baby easily draws blood by clawing and smacking people around. It hates crosses and has a fit during an attempted baptism. And it's deadly. The baby pushes its sitter (Janet Key) into a pond, where she hits her head on a rock and drowns. It also manages to tie a noose, climb into a tree, lower it around someone's neck and then lift them off the ground until they're dead. And it's even got enough oomph to pick up a shovel and swing it with enough force to decapitate someone during the film's only gory moment. Thankfully, Gino's full time nun / part time animal pathologist (!?) sister Albana (Eileen Atkins), who shows her affection for her brother by rubbing noses with him (!?) has flown in from Italy for a visit. After nearly everyone is already dead, Albana finally gets around to performing an exorcism on the baby during an exciting climax where the crib shakes, the baby rolls over onto its stomach twice and the dwarf keels over dead in the middle of a showgirl act. The end.

Sound like one of the most ridiculous and ill-conceived films ever created? Yep, it pretty much is. Obviously the filmmakers were wanting to cash in on both the big early 70s devil craze created by ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and THE EXORCIST (1973) while also tapping IT'S ALIVE (1974), the surprise 'killer baby' hit made the previous year. Needless to say, they fail hard on both counts. The baby itself is never actually shown really doing anything. The film simply has one of the actors lean over the crib and suddenly jerk back, exclaiming "It bit me!" or "It hit me!" or "It spat on me!" followed by a shot of the baby lying in its crib wondering what the hell that big contraption is pointed in its face. I'll admit that I did laugh quite a few times watching this movie, but it also grows tiresome after awhile and has so many incredibly dull stretches that I'm not going to give it a "SBIG" rating.

There are many familiar faces in the cast... and most of them are terrible! While Collins does put some effort into her role, the woman just isn't a very sympathetic presence and her near-constant hysterics get highly irritating after awhile. And it pains me to say this, but Pleaseance and Bates (two actors I usually enjoy) are even worse. Pleasence is so subdued he might as well not even be there, while Bates' Italian accent is one of the worst ever commited to film. Atkins is also asked to do an Italian accent and while hers is pretty bad too (some of the unintented comic high points are her constant exclamations of "Day-Veeeel!") she's at least not utterly boring to watch like her male co-stars. Munro is around simply to look good but her character, who's screwing the same scrawny sleazebag who used to run around with her supposed best friend and may actually be the real father of the killer baby, has nothing to do and is distasteful. The most solid performance in the film is contributed by Hilary Mason (from DON'T LOOK NOW) as an elderly housekeeper who loathes the baby.

Even though I haven't seen everything from the usually-competent Sasdy, I can assume this is the low-point of his career. It's well-distributed in the UK and other countries, but there's no R1 release of this one.

★

La saga de los Drácula (1973)

... aka: Dracula Saga, The
... aka: Dracula: The Bloodline Continues
... aka: Last Vampire, The
... aka: Saga of Dracula, The
... aka: Saga of the Draculas

Directed by:
León Klimovsky

Berta (Tina Sáinz), a descendant of the Vlad Tepes (aka Dracula) clan, hasn't been back to her birthplace, a tiny Transylvanian village, since she was a child. Now living in London, married to Hans (Tony Isbert) and in the early stages of pregnancy, Berta receives a telegram from her some estranged relatives asking her to pay them a visit. Berta complies, but once she and her husband arrive in the village, she soon starts regretting they've ever come there. Their coachman refuses to take them to the castle so they're forced to walk by foot. On the way there they discover a topless woman lying in forest with puncture wounds on her neck and breast. They take her to a local inn/tavern where the superstitious townspeople write off the attack (and other similar recent attacks of young women in the area) to a pack of wolves but seem to live in fear about Castle Dracula and its inhabitants.

The next day, Dracula family "administrator" Gabor (J.J. Paladino) meets Berta and Hans at the inn and offers to take them to the castle. Once they arrive they can't locate anyone... but do find inscribed grave markers for each of the family members. He serves them a meal of raw meat and suspiciously thick and foul tasting wine to wash it down with while they wait for the family, who won't be arriving there until later that evening. Grandpa, the aged Count Dracula (Narciso Ibáñez Menta) shows up to reveal that he's remarried a sexy and much-younger young woman named Munia (Helga Liné). Berta's two cousins and childhood playmates; Xenia (María Kosty) and Irina (Cristina Suriani) are still around, too. Everyone seems overjoyed that Berta is pregnant and have a toast that evening to "The future Count Dracula." Though the Count tells his granddaughter they suffer from a genetic disease, it isn't long before the entire family are revealed to be vampires and they want Berta's baby to carry on the family bloodline.

I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised with this one. Despite the fact it's not difficult to find (a DVD was just released last year) this has a measly 67 votes on IMDb and a ho-hum 4.8 rating. While it starts like your usual Gothic horror yarn with all the usual trappings, it eventually charts it own course and becomes sort of like a vampire version of ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) with the blood sucking family holding the pregnant, innocent descendant prisoner in their castle. The woman's useless husband cheats on her with the sexy mistress of the castle and then passes on the vampire gene to the woman's unborn baby after they have sex. The baby then starts feeding internally off the mother, turning her sickly, anemic and eventually batshit crazy. Throw in a one-eyed, web-fingered melty-faced monstrous child kept hidden in the attic, two bizarrely-filmed nightmare sequences (one where our heroine is being chased through a building by a bat-faced monster and another where she leans in to kiss her grandmother and her head falls off!) and a bloody axe rampage at the finale where heads and limbs are hacked off right and left and you have this bizarre Spanish gem.

It's blackly humorous, the cast is great (especially Menta as the bearded, weathered Dracula, who is perfect in his part) and it's even surprisingly creepy at times. The special effects are decent (with vampires given an effectively otherworldly slight green tint at times), the film has a nice misty soft-focus look and the score is excellent. Gothic/ vampire horror fans get what they want (old castles, foggy forests, dark dungeons...) and exploitation fans get what they want (gore, sex and a hilarious scene where the the two vampire cousins strip off in front of a rabbi in the woods and kill him) and everyone is happy. The cast also includes "Henry Gregor"/ Heinrich Starhemberg (the son of Austrian prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg) as a crippled doctor, Betsabé Ruiz as a vampire victim, Luis Ciges and Elsa Zabala.

Klimovsky is best known for his numerous pairings with Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy and holds the distinction of directing the actor more times than anyone else (if you exclude the times Naschy directed himself). The Naschy / Klimovsky collaborations include THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN (1971), Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf (1971), VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES (1972), Devil's Possessed (1974), A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1974), DEATH OF A HOODLUM (1975), Kidnapped (1976) and The People Who Own the Dark (1976). Other Klimovsky horror efforts that don't feature Naschy include Edge of Fear (1964), VAMPIRE'S NIGHT ORGY (1973), I HATE MY BODY (1974), NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD (1975) and Trauma (1978). If you ask me, his work is much more interesting than he's ever been credited for.

The 2008 Deimos DVD (which has been remastered from the original negative and looks great) gives you the option of watching the film dubbed (which is actually surprisingly well done) or in its original language with optional English subtitles. The disc also includes the trailer, an altered credits sequence and alternate "clothed" scenes used for more bashful markets to replace the nudity.

★★★

Eugénie (1970)

...aka: De Sade 2000
...aka: Eugenia
...aka: Eugénie de Franval
...aka: Eugenie de Sade
...aka: Eugénie de Sade
...aka: Eugenie Sex Happening

Directed by:
Jesus Franco

The opening credits, which don't waste any time getting right down to the nitty gritty by having a full-blown lesbian scene going on as names splash across the screen, state this is "based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade." That novel is "Eugénie de Franval," something I haven't read. And while I can't speak for this film as an adaptation (the 18th century tale has been moved to a modern day setting), I do know enough about de Sade to say this does justice to certain Sadean themes, such as finding exhilaration and comfort in the sexually forbidden and romanticism in cruelty, torture and death. The lesbian scene that opens the film is interrupted when a man comes into the room, one of the women leaves, the man acts as if he's going to make love to the other woman and then suddenly strangles her to death. All of this turns out to be a home movie that was filmed by a pair of serial killers. The man screening it is a reporter by the name of Attila Tanner (played by director/writer Franco under the name "Franco Manera"). Attila follows the viewing with a trip to the hospital to visit a mortally wounded young woman named Eugénie Radeck ("Susan Korday"/ Soledad Miranda), the female accomplice seen in the film, and listens to her deathbed confession, which is then recounted for us.

Eugénie (whose mother died just days after giving birth to her) lives in a large, snowbound home in Germany with her stepfather Albert (Paul Muller), a well-known and controversial erotica writer. Completely infatuated in a decidedly unhealthy way with the man who has raised her since birth (and vice versa), Eugénie begins sneaking into his library to read his sexually-sadistic books and finds herself becoming intrigued. She tauntingly exposes herself to him; giving him glimpses of her legs, staring intently and hanging on his every word. Albert tells her of the pleasures to be had in inflicting pain upon others and wants her to experience it first hand, so he arranges for Eugénie to accompany him on a French press tour. The two sneak a flight over to Brussels, hire a nude model (Alice Arno) and dear old dad takes pictures while his daughter murders her. The two return home, pick up a hitchhiker and then smother her to death, making passionate love after it's all over. Before long, the two have claimed a handful of victims, sinking their bodies in a nearby ice-covered lake. For an encore, Albert wants Eugenie to seduce a man, make him fall in love with her, break his heart and then kill him; something he plans on filming. He selects an overly-sensitive, virginal jazz trumpeter named Paul ("Andre Montcall"/Andrés Monales) as their prey. Eugenie starts dating him and finds herself falling in love; which turns out to be the undoing of both father and daughter.

Yes, this is very distasteful, unsubtle, exploitative and sometimes disturbing material that not everyone is going to want to see, but it's still a worthwhile piece due to how it's executed. Franco manages to effectively capture the sick relationship between an intelligent, twisted, manipulative and jaded murderer and his equally warped, painfully subservient daughter while keeping true to the spirit of the source author by imbuing the film with a dreamy, (very) darkly erotic feel. He also manages to get good performances from his two leads. Muller is very good in his role but the beautiful Miranda really walks away with this one. She's often seen sitting in a fetal position, almost hugging herself, and gazing blankly at her father; someone she's almost elevated to God-like status in her own mind. Miranda manages to create a sort of tragic anti-heroine here, who's disturbed yet oddly naive and innocent all the same. Just looking at who raised her, and his motivations for doing so, is enough to make her a somewhat sympathetic figure regardless of the terrible things she ends up doing. Franco, on the other hand, is something of a minor debit in his acting role. Though important to the structure of the film, Franco himself is far too wooden to really bring the character, who seems to be stalking the father, to life.

This French/Liechtenstein co-production also boasts a haunting score from Bruno Nicolai, as well as superb cinematography from Manuel Merino, which primarily plays off whites and reds as the cold, wintery isolation of the Radeck home (where father and daughter live in their own little world) clashes with the red warmth of the jazz club (where Eugenie actually gets a chance to interact with others and potentially experience what a more 'normal' relationship is like). It's loaded with nudity and sex (though the director doesn't linger on it for a boring eternity like he does in some of his other films) and while there is some blood, there's no real effects work here. In other words, the blood is simply smeared on victims and that's that.
.

It was filmed in 1970, though IMDb claims it wasn't released until 1975. This wasn't Franco's first nor would it be his last trip to the de Sade well. He also made MARQUIS DE SADE: JUSTINE (1968), EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1969), JULIETTE (1970; a film that went unfinished due to star Miranda's tragic passing in an auto accident), PLEASURE FOR THREE (1974), EROTIC SYMPHONY (1980), WICKED MEMOIRS OF EUGENIE (1980), CRIES OF PLEASURE (1983) and HELTER SKELTER (2000), all of which are said to have been based on de Sade's work. The unrated DVD is from Blue Underground.

★★★

Dorian Gray (1970)

...aka: Bildnis des Dorian Gray, Das
...aka: Dio chiamoto Dorian, Il

...aka: Evils of Dorian Gray, The

...aka: Portrait of Dorian Gray, The

...aka: Secret of Dorian Gray, The

Directed by:

Massimo Dallamano

Oscar Wilde's famous allegorical novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which was first published in 1890, was a key adapted literary piece of the silent film era. There were versions of it made in 1910, 1913, 1915 (one filmed in the US, the other in Russia), 1916, 1917 and 1918 (which featured a young Bela Lugosi). Of those, only the the 1916 version (directed by Fred W. Durrant and starring Henry Victor) remains. What most rightfully consider the definitive screen version of the tale came in 1945. Directed by Albert Lewin for MGM, it starred Hurd Hattfield as Dorian, featured scene-stealing work from George Sanders and Angela Lansbury and was gorgeously photographed by Harry Stradling Sr., who received a well-deserved Academy Award for his work. The tale then layed dormant for about twenty-five years until it was resurrected once again by producers Harry Alan Towers and Samuel Z. Arkoff, two pioneering forces in the exploitation business. They tapped Italian-born Massimo Dallamano (who'd go on to make the popular giallo WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE? a year later) to direct and co-write the film, and brought along a cast of familiar faces for a version so over-the-top trashy that it was critically annihilated upon release.

Aesthetically speaking, Helmut Berger was an ideal casting choice as Dorian, the man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Blonde, blue-eyed Berger is about as non-threateningly pretty as any man can be, which is crucial here because his allure is supposed to captivate men and women alike. His Dorian begins as a naive, well-meaning sort who has simplistic views on everything but quickly becomes victim to his own ego. Herbert Lom, surprisingly great in his off-beat role, co-stars as Henry Wotton; here an intelligent, gay, wealthy, worldly art collecter who cleverly manipulates those around him to get exactly what he wants. He has his eye on Dorian; slowly and methodically chipping away at his flimsy, half-formed ideals about life and love, and ensuring Dorian's budding relationship with virginal young actress Sybil Vane (Marie Liljedahl) stops before it really has a chance to begin.

Henry scares Dorian with his comments about aging ("One day you'll be old, wrinkled and ugly... We degenerate into hideous puppets."), encourages Dorian to be sexually experimental, not tie himself down, accompany him to parties where he can hobnob with filthy rich swingers and use his good looks to get whatever he wants. Henry's comments have also prompted Dorian to swear away his soul for eternal youth by a portrait his painter friend Basil Hallward (Richard Todd) has just made of him. Sybil is hit and killed by a car and once Dorian is exposed to the new jetset lifestyle and its kinky players, he's hooked and things begin spiralling out of control. Just as in most of the other adaptations of the story, Dorian remains his youthful self throughout the years as his painting tells of his true age.

Some have brushed this off as a silly piece of soft-core Euro-porn and I'm not going to argue with that sentiment. However, I have to say that I quite enjoyed the amped-up sexual compotent of this film and the places the director goes. The set-ups for the skin scenes, which range from innocent and sexy to seedy and discomforting, are sometimes so gloriously campy that you can't help but laugh. During one scene, Berger bends a wealthy old bat (Isa Miranda) over in a stable and has anal sex with her right next to a horse! My favorite bit though has to be when Berger (immediately after having sex with two different women) hops in the shower, drops the soap and a hand is shown grabbing it off the floor, only to reveal it's a heavily rouged/ mascara-wearing Lom using the opportunity to hop into the shower with him! And yes, Dorian does reciprocate.

One of Dorian's other lovers is Henry's equally predatory sister Gwendolyn (Maragaret Lee), who is bisexual and likes to be smacked around with a belt. Dorian also becomes an adult film star (!), has sex with a muscular black dude in a public toilet and attends a candlelit orgy at "The House of Pleasure," among other things. There's a cabaret musical number with a drag queen stripper, a nightclub called "The Black Cock" and sex scenes on a theater stage, in a field, on a yacht and on a beach. The porno director who Dorian works for is, interestingly enough, played by a black actress (Beryl Cunningham). While there is plenty of nudity, some of the sex is done subtlely or implied, and many of the scenes are strangely obscured when the camera dips behind tree branches, potted plants and curtains. The slapdash sexuality in this movie was unexpected (certainly pretty risque for the time) and actually kind of wonderful.

Visually, there are some very nice touches here. The film opens with an intriguing shot of bloody hands stretched out in front of the camera as it travels down stairs up to a kitchen sink followed by another elaborate camera shot tracking through a house with swank 70s decor. Dallamano also seems to have a way of making certain colors literally jump out of the screen at you, such as when Dorian takes his very red car on a drive through the lush green countryside. The settings are nice, the costuming is really interesting and they even throw in several disco scenes for us to snicker at.

Co-stars include Renato Romano as Dorian's former college friend, Maria Rohm (who is pitifully wasted here) as his wife, Eleonora Rossi Drago as a swinger and Stewart Black as Sybil's over-protective brother, who likely has incestuous designs on her and blames Dorian for her death. Liljedahl also gets to return after her death playing a woman named Gladys, who's a dead ringer for Sybil. It was filmed in London with Italian and West German backing. A cut VHS version was released here in America through Republic Pictures, but there's no official DVD for this one. The version I saw ran 98 minutes and uses the alt. title THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY (though it was packaged as the title I have listed here).

"Today, beauty is more important than genius." Indeed.

★★1/2