Noita palaa elämään (1952)

... aka: Resurrection of the Witch
... aka: Witch, The
... aka: Witch Returns to Life, The

Directed by:
Roland af Hällström

Archaeologist Hannu (Toivo Mäkelä) and his wife / assistant Greta (Hillevi Lagerstam) have received a government grant to do some excavating near a small Finnish village. While digging in the swamp lands they come across a skeleton with a large aspen stake driven through its chest. Because of the cold conditions, the find has been well-preserved through the centuries. The skeleton still has long black hair, there are enough clothing fragments to later reconstruct an entire dress and a small leather pouch around the neck still contains herbs and a talisman. Ignoring the "old wive's tales" from superstitious villagers, who've already warned that the plot of land is cursed and the skeleton is likely that of a woman executed three-hundred years earlier for practicing witchcraft, they remove the stake and take the skeleton back to the mansion where they're staying with wealthy Baron Hallberg (Aku Korhonen); a sleazy tyrant who doesn't quite have the best reputation in town himself. Due to the some uproar in the village, Hannu returns to the grave site later that night and finds a young, beautiful, naked woman lying in the grave. He picks her up and carries her back to the castle. The woman - who announces herself as Birgit (Mirja Mane) - is hungry, confused and disoriented... but that doesn't last for too long.

The bewitching beauty soon starts showing her true colors and easily manages to seduce all of the men staying in the castle; nearly driving everyone in the village insane in the process. Painter Kauko (Helge Herala) doesn't keep quiet about the crush he has on Greta (even in front of her husband), but his attentions soon begin to drift toward the pretty new visitor. The Baron's son Viekko (Sakari Jurkka) has been unable to find a girl in the area that his father has not gotten to first. You see, the village women have dubbed the old man a "perverted pig" because he has "spread his seeds all over" and forced himself upon nearly all of the women in the area. Now poor Viekko is afraid to court because he doesn't even know who may or may not be his sister! As a result, Viekko falls hardest of all for Birgit, figuring "Well if she's a bit out of her head, maybe she'll even like me." Birgit also sinks her claws into the married Hannu, driving his wife into the arms of the painter in the process. Ironically enough, the horny old Baron is the only one really able to resist her charms, simply because he's paranoid she's faking being a witch in order to get her hands on his money. He doesn't even care what she is really because to him "All women are witches."

Birgit laughs gleefully as she causes all kinds of problems for our protagonists. She bites Greta when she tries to touch her and bites Viekko's lip when he tries to kiss her. She disappears and reappears at will. She causes one farmer to chop another's leg up with a hoe. She makes a snake appear. She breaks a horse's leg simply by looking at it, makes another horse disappear and, when she tries to milk a cow, blood comes out. A bird lands even on her finger just like in some Disney cartoon. Every single time Birgit leaves the castle to frolic in the fields, a mob of angry townspeople are there to greet her armed with scythes, axes, hoes, spears and pitchforks and chase her around. Eventually, the resurrected witch feeds Viekko seeds of life and death from her pouch and attempts to make him burn down the mansion as a dedication of his love to her.

Plot-wise, this is rather ordinary, predictable fantasy-oriented material. It's extremely dialogue-heavy, the music is often laughably overbearing and overly-dramatic and the film attempts to throw us off at times by introducing the idea that Birgit may be a crazy village girl and not actually a witch, but that idea doesn't work at all since we've already seen and heard too much to believe otherwise. There's also a moral that's beaten over our heads in the least subtle way imaginable by having one character keep repeating: "We all have a beast inside us." And in case you somehow happened to miss it, the archaeologist character actually turns to face the camera and explains it to us once again at the very end. What actually sets this apart, aside from picturesque Finnish locations seldom seen in this genre, is how surprisingly frank and free this is when it comes to matters of sex. Compared to movies from nearly any other country made around the same time, this is startling in its bluntness, with character casually discussing and joking about sex and numerous sexual one-liners and double entendres. In fact, all of the characters seem quite obsessed with their various desires and relationships. When one character brings up artificial insemination, the Baron says "The traditional way is much more fun," but a village woman warns him "What you pork in the past will come oinking in the future." (Ha, I'm gonna have to remember that line.)

The Witch isn't just limited to sexual dialogue either. Lead actress Mane isn't one bit shy showing off what God gave her in numerous sequences seducing men, dancing with a sheer shawl or cavorting around outside completely naked, which certainly wasn't something commonly filmed in most other countries in the early 50s. These scenes made the film somewhat scandalous in its day. It also comes at no surprise that when this made it stateside, it was an "adult's only" release only shown in sleaze pits on the exploitation circuit. Dan Sonney's company Sonney Amusements - who also released such films as Striptease Girl and A Virgin in Hollywood - were the first to bite, giving this a U.S. theatrical release in 1954. Joseph Brenner Associates (The Bellboy and the Playgirls) gave it a whirl in 1957, too. One American ad promised audiences "Starling fantasy in naked reality!" Back in Finland, however, this was a film taken rather seriously and it won several major awards there. The locations, art direction, photography, acting, dialogue and atmosphere (lots of wind and fog) are all vastly superior to most of the no-budget amateur soft-core trash passing for erotica in American at the same time.

Along with Linnaisten vihreä kamari (1945) and THE WHITE REINDEER (1952), it was one of the first sound horror films produced in Finland and was based upon a 1947 play of the same name by Mika Waltari. Larry Buchanan's THE NAKED WITCH (1961) more or less copied this film's plot, as well as its poster art (having the nude witch shielded behind strategically-placed tree branches). On home video, there were VHS and DVD releases in Finland, but nowhere else to my knowledge.

★★1/2

Avere vent'anni (1978)

... aka: Being Twenty
... aka: To Be Twenty
... aka: Twenty Years Old

Directed by:
Fernando Di Leo

"I was 20. No one can ever tell me it was the best time of our lives." ~ Paul Nizan, French philosopher and writer

I sought this out because for a long time it was listed as a horror film on IMDb. It's really not, but does boast a super shocker of an ending right out of Last House on the Left, so I guess in that regard it qualifies. In either case, this is much better than the other films I've seen from director Di Leo, who also made the senseless sexed-up giallo SLAUGHTER HOTEL (1971) with Klaus Kinski and Rosalba Neri and the Last House-inspired 'terror' flick VACATION FOR A MASSACRE (1980) with Joe Dallesandro. Doe-eyed, pouty blonde Lia (Gloria Guida) meets hot blooded brunette Tina (Lilli Carati) on the beach and the two instantly hit it off. After all, they're both young, hot and pissed off... and neither has any clue what to do with themselves. Both girls are like many other young adults their age; first and foremost, life is about having fun. They're rebellious, carefree, aimless and not quite ready to completely grow up yet. They are, however, both fully aware of their attractiveness and know just how to use it to get their way. Clad in short shorts and flimsy tops minus a bra and without a dime to their name, the two young ladies hit the road looking for a lift. They pass on a ride and money from a moralizing lesbian in a sports car who tells them that "whores have more tact" than they do. Hungry, they decide to shoplift dinner from a supermarket. They also use their feminine wiles to get free coffee and offer an old man a blow job for a pack of Marlboro's. With the price of cigarettes these days, that's a bargain.

Lia knows of a group living commune called Piazza Dante where they can stay for awhile. An old lady tells them it's full of "queers, whores and druggies," but that does not deter them. Upon arriving, they meet the commune's owner Nazariota (Vittorio Caprioli), who's broke and wants the girls to pay their due by "communicating" with the men there. Tina is just fine with that arrangement. Unfortunately, most of the men there stink and stay zonked out most of the time from all the drugs they do. One tells her "Sex is for people who don't know how to love." Tina eventually finds a guy she's interested in; Rico (Ray Lovelock), who's also a druggie and drop out but more her type so she's willing to work with him. Also living there are Patrizia (Lucio Fulci regular Daniela Doria), a short-haired feminist mother of triplets, and Arguinas (Leopoldo Mastelloni), a pacifist in white face paint who supposedly hasn't moved from his meditative position in three months and keeps talking about the "Celestial Father." Though these people seem strange at first, you actually begin to sort of like them, especially when the police start hassling the group.

A documentary filmmaker shows up wanting to make "an analytical film on human relationships" and interviews the girls. Tina reveals that all her parents cared about was money and her maintaining her virginity until marriage, so she rebelled. Lia - who's quieter and more introspective than her outspoken friend - was raised in an orphanage run by unloving nuns and then was forced to become a housekeeper whose spinster boss made her have sex with her. The girls attempt to go straight by becoming door-to-door encyclopedia salesladies, which leads to numerous encounters with more colorful and / or lonely people. Tina starts masturbating for a professor and acts aroused when he mentions the world "culture" just to move some books, Lia turns down the advances of a rich lesbian when she tries to pay her for sex and both ladies decide to cheer up a lonely old widower the best way they know how. All things considered, things seem to be going alright... until police raid the commune and the two girls are ordered to leave Rome. If they don't return to their home towns by midnight the following day, they'll be put in jail.

Having no other real choice, Lia and Tina then hit the road and stop by a country restaurant for a bite to eat. There, they suggestively dance to some music from a jukebox... and inadvertently attract the attention of a dozen dangerous goons in the process. Everything leads up to a truly shocking finale telling the grim fate of the two girls, which is made all the more jarring because up until then we've just been following along with their (mostly) harmless and sometimes comical misadventures. Oddly, the much-lower-budgeted and less skillfully made American production The Young Cycle Girls (1978) from the same year also featured young women on the road trying to learn about life and love and all that and opted for the same style of ending. One wonders what the "message" of these two films may be. Is it that women should be punished for being independent, strong-willed or liberated, or is it that many men really, really resent women who are independent, strong-willed and liberated? Either way, the girls in both films pay the ultimate price in their quest for self-discovery at the hands of men who don't like their "teasing."

Guida and Carati were both mainstays of 70s and 80s soft-core and exploitation flicks and amassed dozens of credits apiece. Both look great in and out of their skimpy clothes and are featured in a number of sexy scenes (including a mild lesbian one with each other), but this movie goes beyond your usual sex flick. With its strong counter-culture youth rebellion mindset, I can even dub it 'The 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' of 70s sexploitation' whilst almost keeping a straight face. Most of the sex and nude scenes are at least plausibly worked in to the plot, there's a lot of sociopolitical commentary, name dropping of various famous politicians, philosophers and artists and much mention of the gender gap and the war of the sexes. At one point, three women even read from Valerie Solanas' deranged feminist ranting, "Scum Manifesto." The free-spirited weirdos, pacifists, whores, artists, runaways and druggies at the commune are portrayed as dancing to the beat of their own drummer only to have their party crashed by figures of authority (the police) and power (the gang). There's enough here for this to work on multiple levels, and with perhaps even multiple interpretations depending on the viewer.

Avere vent'anni first saw light on home video in the U.S. on the Private Screenings label; an outfit that specialized in erotica but most especially in imported Euro smut. Their release of the film (under the title To Be Twenty) is, as per their usual, cut, has terrible English-language dubbing, features a model on the box who is not in the film and has a new music score. In 2011, Raro Video released a decent 2 disc version of the film containing both the cut and uncut versions and in its original Italian language with English sub options.

★★★