Non Abstract Review: Two Something Weird Films

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American cinema shows a lot of the country's contradiction between sexual purity and sexual desire in their culture. The United States is known as both being one of the most sexually open and sexually repressive countries at least in terms of how both sides express themselves and clash noticeably. From chastity rings to the golden age of pornography. It even helps found religious belief, one of the influences to Anton LaVey eventually founding the Church of Satan when he himself, as a carnival organ player, saw the same male patrons lusting at erotic dancers at one tent, then at the Christian preacher's sermon with their families and wives in another tent. As an agnostic, the problem for me as much stems at least in Christian dogma from the rules and beliefs written thousands of years ago which drastically clash against modern day attitudes. Not even the "decadent" ideals of certain but beliefs held by very moral, very religious people which yet contradict older beliefs. (Such as the issues surrounding accepting gay men and women into the Church despite the fact their sexuality shouldn't affect their ability to be good, moral Christians). There's a vast different between a nun who believes chastity allows herself to reach a moral good by removing a distraction that she has little interest in at all, and then suggesting that masturbation is as much a sin as either murder.

As an agnostic baptised in the Protestant Church, I still hold the Seven Deadly Sins as an important set of moral codes but view them in a different way. Unless I am proven wrong and in folly, even sexual desire outside of monogamy is not truly lust as a sin, or at least is far removed from the worst that the sin of lust should imply. Adultery is lust as a sin, as it involves deceit and betrayal of trust. Objectification and unhealthy, obsessive desire is a sin in terms of distorting sexuality. Sexual violence, rape and harassment are absolutely sins even for atheists. Viewing another as merely meat is another, a concern in terms of whether pornography is redeemable or not in lieu of this. For me the issue has always been that pornography itself is an inert object, not inherently a form which is either good or evil. The problem always lies in the human beings who create something from it, entirely accountable on and off the camera for whatever is suggested and provoked.

The issue gets muddled when you have the sixties softcore of American exploitation. So chaste at even the later years of the decade that one of these films I've reviewing, The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill, doesn't have full frontal female nudity and does all it can to hide it. After you have pornography rise from the underground stag reels of before in the seventies, to take its place in culture and divisive discussion, you look to the older films which showed merely nudity and heavy petting and see them as tame. If it's still sinful morally to see Stacey Walker as Fanny Hill's daughter or Marsha Jordan as the titular character of The Head Mistress naked, it expresses quite an issue where even sexuality in its tamest form disrupts one's ability to reach a spiritual moralit. It suggests more a sin of incompetence from the religious personal who cannot focus and have willpower then the creators of these films, co-produced by David F. Friedman, Something Weird dug back up.

[SPOILERS IN BOTH REVIEWS.]

The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966)

Director: Peter Perry Jr.

Screenplay: Jim Markham

Cast: Stacey Walker as Miss Kissey Hill; Linda Cochran as the Duchess of Roxbury; Ora Kittle as the Duke of Roxbury; Ginger Hale as Meg; Orlando Fenwick as the Count de Sade; John Andrews as a Peasant; James Brand as The Orgymaster; Tony Sarcone as Sir Philip; Tom Duncan as Miss Hill's Lackey

Synopsis: The day in the life of Kissey Hill, the daughter of the infamous Fanny Hill, concubine to lords and the rich.

A particular factor with the films being talked of is how they've decided to depict themselves, taking influence for classical literature and erotica but on a significantly low budget scale and with American actors barely attempting to hide their accents. These are the films in the midst of a period, as well as predating hardcore eliminating their existence, which also came after the nudist films which had to depict themselves as educational documents to pass censors, documents which just happened to have beautiful models topless. Films which, at least in this case, attempted to be actual films or with this attempted to have a sense of style to them. Here we get something novel and in the case of The Notorious Daughter..., its ultimately its virtue when it attempts to replicate 19th century England.

Based on John Cleland's Fanny Hill, a notorious erotic novel still held in recognition centuries later, this film doesn't really have anything that particularly stands out in comparison baring its named connection, but the decision to make the protagonist her daughter has a charm to it immediately. The production has to struggle with its preteens at points, when Kissey's manservant is an American actor trying to wrap his vocals around an English accent, something even Hollywood actors have failed in, moments where its veneer is shown to be a forced one. However this in itself is a virtue in high sight, where that artificiality and how it disrupts the fantasy is compelling in itself. Especially as, for a movie whose excuse is only to see nude women, the production decided to acquire as many props and costumes as they could get their hands on and put it all in the sole set they had. That it's visually nubile, bee-hive haired women in period garb actually adds to the appearance in its artificiality. Even the music by Chet Moore and Sam Brown, period instrumentation, is unexpected in how earnest it tries to be of the period

It's rich colour and artifice evokes gay avant-garde filmmakers who loved classic Hollywood cinema and recreated them with as little or even less than this production did. I cannot help but wonder what Jack Smith, director of Flaming Creatures (1963) and Normal Love (1963), could've done with the single, multi-coloured set The Notorious Daughter... had, the type of film Anna Biller was visually recreating for Viva (2007). Knowing as well that, under a pseudonym, the cinematographer was László Kovács at the beginning of his career does also cause one to consider the style of the film, imagining the same man who would film Easy Rider (1969) and Ghostbusters (1984) filming something like this immediately springing to mind.

Structurally this is as threadbare as you can get, a series of sex scenes which pad out the running time leading to a wild party with guests. A large portion of this does including endless improvised sex, mainly cuddling and very sloppy kissing. The film's immensely chaste in the current day, no full frontal nudity and only really showing bared breasts and female buttocks. It's cheesecake which has to pad itself out with prolonged moments of actor pawing at each other accounting for actual sex. Thankfully this film also cuts to ridiculous facial expressions of its cast a lot, the face elastic especially in the onlookers at the final party. A series of three couplings, the party has three women (including the protagonist) and three men. Even if it's meant to decide which woman takes her clothes off and which man gets to sleep with her, the events that transparent include these absurd games of darts and not sneezing with snuff under one's nose that completely remove anything which could come off as problematic, a more absurd innocence being evoked instead.

Even when the film ends darkly, the wife of a Duke killing the heroine because she was his mistress, everything has an innocence to it throughout its length. This in itself, unlike the second film to be covered, undercuts any sense of a wrongness to the eroticism especially when it feels so kitsch in a playful way. The film's only sense of the perverse is distorted when it appears, where a character named De Sade is far from the libertine of reality but an older actor throwing fake rubies into the heroine's belly button and whose likes being whipped daintily by her whilst she's wearing thigh high leather boots. As a result a  film like this still possesses a fascinating as being not a great work but preferred for its curiosity and the eventual entertainment one gains from it.

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The Head Mistress (1968)

Director: Byron Mabe

Screenplay: Unknown

Cast: Julia Blackburn as Sophia; Marsha Jordan as the Head Mistress; Ray Sebastian (aka. Micro Cosim) as Luigi; Gee Gentell as Amelia; Victor Brandt as Mario; Samantha Scott as Philomena

Synopsis: In 17th century Italy, Mario (Victor Brandt) decides to pose as a dumb and mute man to become a man servant at an all girl's school, one ran by a very viscous and sexually obsessed head mistress (Marsha Jordan).

Following from The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill, this continues the desire for pretension or at least in terms of a lavishness that I cannot help but appreciate. Another period setting, this time evoking the later period erotic films from Italy itself that would start to make when censorship started to be chipped away. This film does immediately inform you of its artificiality (and context of how it was made) when an inn has a sign on the door, a piece of white paper with black marker writing, saying it's a pizza parlour/inn, something which cannot help but immediately raise a smile. Aesthetically aside from this it's just as capable or more so of being luscious with its erotic mosaics in the bathing room and costuming. There is however the irony that the emphasis on more realism with its natural outside locations and more muted look does actually undercut its qualities badly. The issue is to do with the fact that, also a film which pads its length out with lengthy scenes of actors caressing and writhing on top of each other, it feels like a film in dire need of more bolder aesthetic to have made it succeed. The restricted set (and focusing on close-ups of actors gurning) in The Notorious Daughter... actually helped it technically in having a more distinct style. The Head Mistress finds itself in contrast under closer scrutiny especially next to the films that would come from around the same time which had higher budgets. It's unfair to this softcore American feature to compare it next to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life films, which began with The Decameron (1971), but considering he would start that series only three years later, which naturalistic aesthetic contrasting eroticism and the fantastical, The Head Mistress does feel malnourished in terms of a film beyond kitsch. The issue which trying to live up to pretence is that you have to try to succeed or pray in hope in the future decades later its appreciated for its amateur enthusiasm, something which you can't say for The Head Mistress as it actually feels less engaged with using its style for any flourish, more an arbitrary attempt at period Italian environments. At least with The Notorious Daughter... one had the bright colours and low budget splendour of costume jewellery.

It's a more explicit film, now with full frontal and immediately showing its blatant disregard for logic in depicting its eroticism with how it begins with schoolgirls taking their tops off outside at a picnic before eating, as if fearing crumbs on their gowns. The problems with the film in terms of being a series of sex scenes however rears its head, something which The Notorious Daughter... could avoid by the entertainment in its look and everything else. It's worse with pornography¹, but unless one is actively engaged in titillation emotionally the long passages of sex in a filmed work can feel disconnecting and lead one to a sense of inertness. Here the scenes of the main character making out with various women is repetitious and boring without enough camp to sustain the moments, and not hardcore or explicit enough to raise even crass titillation.

The film also has a lot of the more problematic gender politics of yesteryear. The titular head mistress is a predatory lesbian who will even drug a schoolgirl under her wing, also leading to a flagellation scene with red paint added to the back of the prop whip for effect. Her back-story, which is shown, furthers the problem in how she became gay due to her male lover being killed (by way of a brief moment of decapitation and blood spurt) and then being raped by the male friends responsible for the former (thankfully, whilst still tasteless, the later is depicted by actors mouthing the actress' feet and torso rather than anything worse). That she is "cured" by the male hero and his libido just adds to the frustration that watching The Head Mistress, a film which flirts with charm but just doesn't work as anything but a curio. There is of course one bizarre part that does need mentioning, as even in a film as bland as this one, there's something to take away and make this review worth writing. That the Head Mistress, in the flashback sequence, takes her former lover's head and places it in a flower pot for a soil, leading to a plant growing from it. One that caresses her at night and, when the men responsible for her pain try to take it away, retaliates with extendable vines. Moments like this are evidence for American exploitation cinema always being worth viewing for its unpredictability. How even if this particular example is unrewarding, you can still get an exclamation point that makes the time spent of worth.

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1) Bluntly, the endurance of the libido depending on the length of the pornographic work, be it a ten minute clip or nearly an hour long or more, comes to thought (pun not intended). Mentally can one sustain beyond a clip online for a feature length, male or female viewer? Physically, to be blunter, to be able to sustain arousal for even an hour is incredible vitality. It also explains why people find themselves looking at the curtains and furniture in the background if they're bored of the length of the scenes of people having actual or mock sex.