Devicanska svirka (1973) [TV]

... aka: Song of Virgins
... aka: Virgin's Music

Directed by:
Djordje Kadijevic

Passing through the country on his way to the city, a young man named Ivan (Goran Sultanovic) arrives in a small village. After a black carriage being driven by two white horses rolls across a dusty road in the distance, his own driver (Toma Kuruzovic) refuses to take him the rest of the way to his destination... not even if God himself asked him to. Ivan is then forced to go by foot. As he approaches a large castle, he can hear strange music playing. A young boy passing through warns him to stay away right before the black carriage speeds down the road and runs him down. The coachman, Bartolomeo (Ivan Jagodic), stops and his passenger, the mysterious, sexy and extremely voluptuous Sibila (Olivera Katarina) step out to check on the unconscious, bleeding boy. Sibila asks for Ivan's help and, perhaps mesmerized by her impressive cleavage, ignores the ample warning he's already had and agrees. Ivan gets into the coach and they all go to the castle, where the boy soon passes away. Claiming she doesn't know his parents or what to even do with the body, Sibila asks Ivan to stay. After all, her castle wasn't always so quiet and lonely and perhaps with him there now things will finally change. He agrees. Again, it's all about the cleavage.

Almost immediately entering the doors of her own home, Sibila wastes no time letting her crazy colors show. When Ivan tells her he'll stay as long as she wants him to, she bursts into laughter... and sometimes that laughter has a strange echo to it. She acts like a bird, says a lot of things that don't make any sense whatsoever, discusses cemeteries and other depressing things, warns him “If you only knew how cruel I am...” and then describes her relationship with her former husband and how she didn't exactly kill him but instead took all of his joy away until he finally did die. Amazing rack or no, the fact all of this doesn't have Ivan running for the nearest exit is pretty perplexing. The two even make get romantic in the same room where the child's corpses lies and then again on a shine dedicated to her dead hubby!

Still, Ivan has fallen in love. Didn't take long but it never did in the olden days. Sibila even dresses up in a white wedding gown after he declares his adoration for her. All the while, Bartolomeo is lurking around spying on them... and that strange organ music keeps playing. Sibila tells him it's the “Virgin's Music” and promises to show him where it's coming from “at the end.” While that has a certain uneasy finality to it, she assures him “The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.” That hardly sounds much better! At one point Ivan does get freaked out and runs away, but he ends up going back. Sibila even offers him the chance to leave and Bartolomeo's coach services but he again refuses. The allure of the unknown is too great. Candelabra in hand, she eventually takes him up a winding staircase to show him her morbid surprise.

Despite the fact you'll want to grab the protagonist, shake him and tell him what an idiot he is at various points, this is still excellent as a Gothic mood piece. The photography, lighting, barren sets and strong use of shadow (which recall silent era films) all help to make this genuinely creepy. Music and sound are used sparingly to eerie effect and even the low quality print I had to view seemed to enhance the atmosphere. Helping to hold everything together, no short order considering the dialogue often feels empty and superfluous, is a good cast. It's especially nice seeing Katarina, best known for playing the female lead in the semi-famous witch torture film MARK OF THE DEVIL (1970), again. It's obvious the director had seen Mark himself because she's given the exact same wardrobe here to maximize her cleavage. I had no idea she was as good an actress as she is until I saw this.

The director made a number of other horror films, usually produced by Serbian public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Beograd (Radio Television of Serbia). Some of the others include Darovi moje rodjake Marije (1969), LEPTIRICA (1973), Sticenik (1973) and Zaklevta (1974). He received a bit of international attention with A Holy Place (1990) and now works as a college professor and art historian.

★★★

Sexandroide (1987)

... aka: La dagy de les sexandroides
... aka: Les sexandroïdes
... aka: Sex Android

Directed by:
Michel Ricaud

Sexandroide is a shot-on-video exercise in plotless gore, nudity and overall bad taste - a videotaped Grand Guignol if you will - that runs just 57 minutes and is divided into three segments. I guess one could call it an anthology, though there's no linking segments to tie the stories together so this just really comes off like three shorts shown back-to-back-to-back. Though French in origin, there's no real dialogue to listen to in any of the segments so subtitles aren't even be needed for this one. Our first tale is titled "Le dagyde," which immediately had me hopping on the ole search engine to find out what in the hell that even was. "Dagyde" is derived from the Greek word dagos, meaning “doll.” The definition I found claims a dagyde is a doll similar to, but not exactly the same as, a voodoo doll, though it sounds exactly the same. The doll represents a person who's going to be the subject of a magical ritual or spell. Needles or pins are then inserted into various places on the doll to indicate where energy, for good or ill, is to be sent. Hey, I need to make watching this crap, and having you read about it, at least somewhat educational, don't I?

A man seen only in shadow opens an envelope containing a Polaroid of a woman. He places a fingernail, a snippet of hair, an earring and a bobby pin all presumably belonging to the woman on the photo and then starts messing around with a voodoo doll. The woman in the photo, who's at a bar, soon starts feeling woozy and excuses herself to the bathroom. She pukes in the sink and, as clothes are ripped off the voodoo doll, her clothes are also ripped off. First goes her dress and then her stockings and then her panties, bra and garter until she's standing their butt ass naked. The man then pokes the voodoo doll in the vagina until the woman is bleeding profusely from between her legs all over the floor and into a toilet. Next up comes the eyeballs and breasts, which also start bleeding all over the place. He then burns the doll's face, slits its throat and hangs it from a noose, all of which happen to the girl in the bathroom. Though she screams a few times, she mostly moans and sounds like she's getting off.

In our next story, "Les sexandroïdes," a scared woman (who actually conveys fear and other emotions unlike the chick in the first story) makes her way down a flight stairs to a cheap dungeon set. There, she's attacked a mutant hunchback wearing a robe and shoots him until he goes away. A skull starts smoking, she becomes possessed and then does a long strip routine that involves removing her panties, giving a mannequin torso a lap dance, constantly bending over to show off her ass, playing with fire and violently flogging herself with a cat o' nine tails. The monster returns, whips her some more and then (really!) sticks four pins through her nipples, another long pin through her tongue and more into both of her boobs. He hands her a razor and she cuts off one of her nipples, hands it over to him and he eats it. After cutting himself and having her lick his blood, what could he possibly do for an encore? Well, cut out her eyeball, stab her through the throat and then gut himself over her corpse.

Finally comes "Les dents de l'amour" ("The Teeth of Love"); which is little more than a chick showing off her hot body. A casket is cracked open for a widow to have a private viewing but the corpse rises as a vampire (in really crappy makeup). He rips the woman's clothes off, bites her and then hops back in his coffin and goes to sleep. She then leans over on the coffin and comes back to life as a pale-faced vampire with an oversized set of plastic fangs who does a nude dance around the coffin... all set to  horrible covers of the Tina Turner songs "I Might Have Been Queen" and "What's Love Got to Do With It!" After her eight minute long grave gyration complete with spread eagle shots and crotch rubbing concludes, she climbs into the coffin with the vampire, hangs a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside and closes the lid. The end.

Sometimes you'll sit through something and wonder what kind of audience they had in mind when they made it. This is one of those times. Considering the director's only other output was hardcore porn, I think it's safe to say all of the actresses on hand (none of whom is credited) were probably porno gals. I would say perhaps professional strippers except none of them can actually dance, though they all have the bodies for it. The ass on the final girl is probably worthy of a star all on its own. Not only does the constant flesh scream porn, but so do the static long shots, the fact it was shot on videotape and the ultra cheap sets, which resemble something a community theater may throw together in half an hour. Rest assured, if there happens to be a chair or another prop in the room, it's there to be used in some fashion.

Released on video in both France and Japan back in the 80s, this finally made its American debut last year courtesy of Massacre Video, who offer both a DVD and a collector's edition VHS. The Massacre release includes hardcore inserts featuring different performers that were added to at least one of the two Japanese releases. As per the usual Japanese standard, these explicit shots have been censored so why they're even there in the first place is a mystery.

★★

Dumb Waiter, The (1979)

Directed by:
Robert Bierman

Sally (Geraldine James) receives a creepy phone call one evening from a man who asks “Haven't you seen me following you?” and then tells her to “Look out for me while you're driving... I'll be right behind you.” Later, after she picks up her dry cleaning and is heading home, she notices a car following closely behind. She doesn't give it too much thought until the car starts threateningly flashing its lights and then she pretty much knows who it is. The car pulls ahead, cuts her off and stops. A man jumps out, rushes toward her, opens her door and tries to pull her out but she's able to drive off and get back to her apartment. Ah, safe at last. Still a bit shook up over the incident, she calls her boyfriend and asks him to come over as soon as he can. While she's taking a bath and getting herself ready for his visit, the black-gloved psycho stalker (John White) is busy trying to find a way inside her apartment. Luckily for him, Sally has the titular contraption inside that she uses to get rid of her trash. That's all she wrote plot-wise in this 17-minute British short but, in this particular case, that's all it really has to be. This also obviously has nothing to do with the famous Harold Pinter play of the same name.

A pretty good sign for something like this is if you'd like for it to go on longer than it actually does or if you can imagine what it would be like placed inside a full length movie and it gets the wheels turning about what the rest of the film would be like. This achieves that much and it really could have been a signature set piece within a feature or perhaps even the big finale to one. It's stylish, well-shot, has a great eerie synthesizer score from Colin Towns and provides some actual suspense and several good shocks, which is pretty impressive for the short running time. The ambiguous freeze frame ending may not be for all tastes, though.

The only glaring issue I had was that Sally never calls the cops. Even putting this in context to when it was made that's a hard swallow. In those pre-Internet / pre-cell phone days, it was cake to find the numbers / names / addresses of whoever you wanted just skimming through a phone book. Given the general anonymity of phones back then, it wasn't uncommon at all to receive the occasional call from a stranger saying they were going to do something horrible to you. You didn't call the police for something like that, you told the person to fuck off and then hung up on them. However, someone threatening you, telling you they know where you live and then actually physically coming for you after trying to run you off the road certainly was, is and always will be enough reason to get in touch with the cops! The fact Sally doesn't drive straight to the police station after the attempted attack, doesn't even call them when she gets home and doesn't even mention it to her boyfriend so he'll hurry his ass along is pretty silly.

Director Bierman went on to make the BAFTA nominated D.H. Lawrence adaptation The Rocking Horse Winner (1983), the CableACE Award-winning TV movie Apology (1986) and the very polarizing Nicholas Cage vehicle Vampire's Kiss (1988), which wasn't particularly well-received at the time but has since gone on to garner a cult following. After such an interesting start, it's kind of a shame to see he was relegated mostly to TV work after 1990. All that is currently available for this one is a poor copy that was recorded from a TV broadcast. Apparently it played in UK theaters as a warm up to Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982), which is... odd.

★★★