Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge (1999)

 

Director: Gary Whitson

Cast: Debbie D as Stacey; Barbara Joyce as Trish; Tina Krause as Lisa; Dean Paul as Dr. Baines; Sunny as the Dirty Blonde

Ephemeral Waves

 

I wanted to verify you were prettier than me.

Slighted because her boss Trish (Barbara Joyce) felt the most attractive female staff member was needed to talk to their male clientele, Stacy (Debbie D) is not impressed, armed with a shrink and growth ray, thus bringing us vore fetish before this was a known thing. Anyone who has no idea what “vore” means, well, Stacy realises that one has to eat her way up the corporate ladder to get anywhere...

This is a W.A.V.E. Production, which begins with two women getting wet t-shirts for their promo image, openly showing that this company was making softcore. This was an idiosyncratic one thought as, from New Jersey, W.A.V.E from their 1987 had their scripts written by fans, and were fan funded, producing mail ordered ultra-low budget films which catered to their idiosyncratic obsessions. As a result, Eaten Alive is going to be a bizarre experience for so many, in which a male scientist, with a British accent, creates a ray gun able to grow or shrink objects which Stacy uses to her advantage. Among its stilted amounts of dialogue, you get the first moments of this begin something exceptionally strange when the first victim, a W.A.V.E regular and a director in her own right, Tina Kraus, is shrunk and you witness, through video toaster effects and weird positioning of Debbie D's head, a nude woman the size of Tom Thumb being eaten by another. Clearly, this was someone who had a fetish who wrote this, a trendsetter in fact, but the result including the stock screams in the soundtrack and how low budget the sequence is makes it even stranger.

Whilst at least one (clothed) English man is eaten, the fetishishtic nature of this short clear in how all the victims are depicted naked, as Stacy develops a perverse ritual for this. There is even an extended scene of trying on bikinis with an extensive lack of music; this becomes more curious in how modest this production still is in terms of explicit context as, baring Krause being more comfortable with her scene, all the nudity here is the equivalent of a sixties softcore film, topless only, shot as an ultra-low budget film decades after. It is both, as a result, very tame but because of the context kinkier in paradox. It is, absolutely, strange to witness, one of those productions whose history, for those who knew of it, is matched by the fact that all its effects have to be completed with very cheap green screen and digital editing to pull this off, literally splicing the actresses awkwardly in place when they are shrunk. That is not an insult either, as W.A.V.E Productions were clearly a group whose work were made proudly aware they literally had shoestring budgets to these titles, working off their fan base’ interest in them.

That side does make this weirder too, knowing the script’s dialogue is made from a normal person unleashing his idiosyncratic obsessions, like entering the id of a person’s brain tapped into like a beer keg, and I include here for all the jokes I have made within this review no kink shaming, or shaming at all if it was not a kink at all but something that they wanted to see onscreen. It does admittedly produce one of the strangest moments I have probably witnessed in a film – a scene inside Stacy’s gullet, with a naked actress sprayed with water, with slowed down moans and a heart beat on the soundtrack - which is filthier than porn, but it was and so weird it was inspire. Including seven minutes of outtakes as an extra, this comes from this side of independent cinema which is entirely alien for many, as alien to the mainstream view of cinema as you could get, and it is admirable in this, how strange and out-there it is. Certainly, this feels like outsiders to cinema, people you normally do not find even in some softcore cinema despite the casts' careers. It is meaningful in seeing something closer to the world of the film viewer himself or herself rather than something fabricated, more so when time has passed and we can look back on this for that reason and a gleefully (and purposely) bizarre production.

Mistress Frankenstein (2000)

 

Director: John Bacchus

Screenplay: John Bacchus, Joe Ned, John Paul Fedele and Michael Raso

Cast: Darian Caine as Helena Frankenstein; Heidi Christine as The Broadway Girl; Jessie Harcourt and Jade Duboir as the Housemaids; John Paul Fedele as Dr. Frankenstein; Bennigan Feeney as Igor; Michael R. Thomas as The Monster / Gypsy / The Burgomaster / Karl The Inspector; John Bacchus as Stable Boy / Hippie Couple / Father Karl; A.J. Khan as The Hooker; John Link as Karl The Jester; Kimbo as Himself

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #265 / Cinema of the Abstract Candidate

 

Frankenstein's Monster: Now the villagers with their torches, it's an incessant pain in the ass, I'm telling you.

Dr Frankenstein: What are you gonna do, it goes with the territory.

Frankensteins Monster: It goes with the territory...

Let us not kid ourselves with Mistress Frankenstein - from Seduction Cinema, creators of The Erotic Witch Project films, this is cinema meant to titillate a heterosexual male target audience, imaging women together in prolonged sex scenes padded out with a semblance of plot. It is crass, as a maid says to another if, "as a lesbian", whether she will be deflowered by the other, and it is not defendable. I am here, reviewing this, however to see what strange ways this New Jersey based company made these films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, structured around horror and genre structures, and by this point improvised to an extreme with an openly goofy tone.

And Mistress Frankenstein is weird. Set in an ill-defined time, clearly in the modern day but with a castle (behind CGI fog) that has the normal room decor of someone's house, the next heir of the Frankenstein lineage is a putz, whose wife Helena (Darian Caine) even before her death and resurrection was puritanical to anything remotely sensual. His tuxedo wearing servant Igor (a very flamboyant Bennigan Feeney) wishes he was more interested in twerking his nipples than the doomed attempt to get Helena's attention even when he brings her back to life, more so as, as a result of a new brain Igor acquired, she develops a greater interest in other women, whilst the locals, mostly all named Karl, will get wind of this and be the angry mob who acquire burning torches on-line on www.torch.com. This sounds far more complex than the film actually is, a film instead where a random fart and poo gag happens before the opening credits, in a very modern bathroom, for the sake of it. From director John Bacchus, who started with films like The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989), this is openly silly, very cheaply made from Seduction Cinema, with all the silliest humour, even some Dad humour, you can get. I do not think this is even an insult, as there is something charming within this even as Mistress Frankenstein is not a film I can recommend to many. Those willing to experience it watch a film where everyone on camera helped pitch in on the production, as much as people behind the camera are likely on camera at some point, and this company managed to release a lot of these films at the 2000s and the early DVD market with the mentality of a merry band producing what they fancied.

Very improvised, if you watch the outtakes (included on the old DVD release) you see that this was made by a small group of people, likely the same people off-screen behind the cameras as is onscreen, improvising what makes them laugh as they made erotica scenes only involving women. As a result, here especially, you have a schism. Softcore with the curiosity, whilst I will not suggest feminist ideals with this film, that the women are openly sexual figures, whilst all the men, even when they watch and leer on the nudity and sex, are a bunch of goofballs, inept, get distracted taking a picture of their own erection, or getting their arms ripped off. The modern Dr. Frankenstein is an dorky figure, Igor, whilst a gay stereotype, at least sympathetic as he deserves more attention from a man whose relationship with his wife Helena was doomed even before her transformation, and the stable boy gets distracted by an attractive gypsy whilst her colleagues steal everything including a pair of bongos. Only the Frankenstein's Monster, already present, has some intelligence, liking milk and cookies, and throwing his lot with the gypsies when he catches one with the aforementioned bongos. All of this as I write this, creating sound sentences, does sound completely odd, more so as an ultra low budget production. I attempted to view The Erotic Witch Project as a fascinating, forgotten cultural item, which it is, but this from the future director of Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006) feels now is part of a vast plain of cinema which, for many, is undefendable, yet is compelling for me as a border of how cinema can be different from what you expect.

And sometimes, this improvised cheaply made film managed something. Helena dies due to an unfortunate horse riding accident, and when I say "horse", the horse named Hilary was two people in a cheap two-person horse costume. The horse is shot by the stable boy upon Dr. Frankenstein's request, who blindfolds Helna and lets her ride on his back, only for her to strike her head barely in a tree, stuck there, and die instantly. That scene with the horse alone is why I have gotten interested in Seduction Cinema as, managing to get into Blockbusters and even British DVD rental stores like Global Video, you get bizarre moments like this. That shot specifically, of the stable boy shooting the horse, was legitimately funny regardless of context for how unexpected it is to witness. Among this reoccurring group of people who are in these films (director John Bacchus himself, who plays the stable boy among other roles, and actresses like Darian Caine to A.J. Khan), they let themselves indulge in their weird sense of humour, a world of its own where even Kimbo, the man in a gorilla suit who appeared in The Erotic Witch Project, is in this film in a cameo alongside a variety of other films by the company from this period with IMDB credit.

The sex scenes are long - trying to watch this not for titillation is ridiculous in itself. Scored to porn elevator vaporwave music with a lot of saxophone, the film has a lot of sex, with some scenes in-between, and where the interest lies for me is what ties them together in a format, before the internet became fully usable by many and porn clips could just be downloaded that excised this. There are very time dated references to being "2k complaint", prop nipple clamps are two wooden laundry pegs connected with tinfoil, and a brain is acquired from Clive's Body Shop, where you learn a politician's brain is cheap and difficult to sell off. Possibly indebted a little to Frankenhooker (1990), Frank Henenlotter's cult film from New York City, Darian Crane's Helena post resurrection shuffles along, in a mini skirt and tube top, to be with as many women as she can, the hotel room always used clearly informing the viewer most of this film is shot in one person's house.

In context, all of this is peculiar, where most will be frustrated with its randomness or the length of the sex scenes. It barely attempts a plot, one which never leads to anywhere as a jester, a random very hairy man is costume, appears at Dr. Frankenstein's window, in his very modern garden, spying at his resurrection of his wife and lets the Burgomaster be aware of this. I think it says a lot of this film where, as erotica meant to sell, the end credits sequence is Kimbo the gorilla playing at a keyboard in a hall as the Jester goes into a long monologue, involving his seed, as Frankenstein's Monster ballroom dances with a woman. This is bizarre, and this would have been on a rental stand in Global Video in my country, as it got a release in the British DVD market, all because there was a time where an audience wanting titillation existed for the new DVD format. A group such as Seduction Cinema could fill that market whilst doing whatever they thought would be funny.

This is more so the case as, not trying to parody the template of a film such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), this feels less inhibited, with a scene or two with a sitcom laugh track, to eco hippy parodies appearing for a scene, complaining of Dr. Frankenstein's environment harm let alone playing God, for a joke. Including the scene transitions, of peoples' heads spinning against a super imposed rainbow, this clearly knows it is eccentric and working with very little. Again, caution is advised against something like this being watched by anyone even if you do not factor in that erotic content, as that is a subjective thing dependent on the viewer. More an issue in this case is that Mistress Frankenstein would put people off for how cheap and how openly ridiculous it is, barely strung together and aware of this. It does not feel ironic either, but made as much in pleasing itself as it does to fit a market.

Even for that market, which exists into the modern day even with hardcore pornography available, this had the creative decision for one of its last scenes to have an epilepsy inducing threesome, set to black with the image flashing in and out, with moans repeated almost a cappella in rhythm to the music, which does raise questions of films like this even fitting the softcore market as suitable licenses. Especially as the early 2000s is a territory still open to consider, this, like any other outsider cinema, is going to be more interesting to view as a snapshot of the era. Less because they are good films but to imagine what they represent of the era, shot within weeks with the fashions and items at hand. That, and how, like an old Something Weird Video release for a decade before, I have found myself with Seduction Video films getting increasingly stranger the few I have seen, and this is bonkers to say the least when I did not expect this level of eccentricity.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Haphazard/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

The Erotic Witch Project 1 & 2 (2000)

Director: John Bacchus

Screenplay: [Erotic Witch 1] John Bacchus, Michael Raso and Joe Ned / [Erotic Witch 2] John Bacchus

Cast: [Erotic Witch 1] Darian Caine as Darian; Laurie Wallace as Katie; Victoria Vega as Vikki / [Erotic Witch 2] A.J. Khan as Dr. A.J. Khan; Darian Caine as Darian; Katie Jordan as Barbara; Rio as Dee Dee; Allanah Rhodes as the Coma Patient

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #243-4

 

Yes, I have had a portion of my own faeces...

Countless parodies (and rip-offs) exist of the original Blair Witch Project. A softcore parody not only exists for the film, but there are at least two, with the Jim Wynorski The Bare Wench Project (2000) series, which lasted for a further three films, than this has three sequels. The first two being covered here for this franchise is for a couple reasons. Alongside the practical issues of trying to cover softcore erotica, entirely designed around titillation with only plots to paste the scenes together, they follow a progression from each other alongside being shot within the same year, which is parodying the Blair Witch Project when it was a huge hit only to follow a year later with a very disappointing higher budgeted sequel. They are artefacts of a yesteryear; not only is the softcore erotic aspect not being covered but merely to be talked of, as something that specific in preference for each viewer is pointless to critique, but even if that subject does have to be talked of, the really interesting part of how The Blair Witch Project was such a huge pop culture phenomenon at this time it touches into a variety of other areas, such as a specific era of straight-to-DVD softcore. This pair of films, from a company called Seduction Cinema, shot in New Jersey, comes from a specific wave of softcore made for the then-new straight-to-video market.

This wave is one I vividly remember even when too young to rent these as, in the United Kingdom, this wave of cinema which had its own stars, Erin "Misty Mundae" Brown probably the most famous who worked with actresses who are in this double bill, these films were released and could be found in Global Video, the equivalent to the American Blockbusters we also had, the films found on the highest or lowest shelves, titles with bright red boxes on the covers warning they were for adults only, alongside mainstream releases and the early days of cult cinema where companies like Vipco sold with lurid covers and taglines the likes of The Nostril Picker (1993), another of the strange films found in such stores.

Time is going to raise a curious question of how we look to these films and their stars, especially as whilst the original Erotic Witch film has the perfect parody to work with, a micro-budget smash hit set in real woodlands, going to part two, sent in a grey walled building masquerading as a mental asylum where the only character from the first film is sent too as a sex crazed mess, you are dealing with none of the sheen of classical sexploitation or hardcore erotic cinema, but the shot-on-digital era of the early 2000s. This era could find itself like the shot-on-video genre film movement gaining a cult fan base, but works explicitly about sex have their own hurdles to deal with just for the fact that, whether prudishness or disinterest, most people want to watch genre films which, if they have any sex, they are just part of it. Ahead of time, these are not great parodies of the source material - they are curious works, both to think seriously of rather than dismiss, to think of the people (especially the actresses) as working figures rather than dismiss them, and for how odd these films are, especially when we get to Kimbo the gorilla...

These hurdles present the issue, as much a hesitance, in covering titles like this even if this is part of the Blair Witch history. You are dealing with both work entirely meant to be titillating, to masturbate to if I am blunt, more than story, and the issue of the audience. I could feel uncomfortable covering this if it led to readers viewing me as a tasteless heterosexual male, more so as the point of these two films is explicitly sex scenes between women only, a sexual fantasy used for male viewers and in this case explicitly targeting a male audience as the audience in how it is depicted. Note I did not say "lesbian", which comes with a whole issue in that the term in air quotes, which denotes one's real sexuality and definition for themselves, has been used in pornography and erotica in a way that is problematic. The idea of such scenes in erotic is not problematic in itself, but in terms of how it is depicted, and even that is subjective in a way we oversimplify. Even questioning whether I can cover these is problematic in itself as it makes presumptions - when there is possibly a gay or bisexual woman who has watched and enjoyed these films, who could roll her eyes at me having this moment of awkward existentialism rather than getting on with this review. This is why the concept of the male gaze feels completely inadequate in dealing with the subject for me, an oversimplified concept for tackling the likes of horror cinema and erotica as nowadays, the audience is a vast one in gender, sexuality and gender having become vastly more complex, including transgender politics, to consider. Yes, this is still a review where we will get into some deeply silly stuff, but this is worth raising ahead of time.

Here especially I would argue three to four gazes exist at least, which makes simple erotica, entirely around a witch in Bacchusville in New Jersey who makes people feel horny in her prescience, more complicated to debate with seriousness. One is the gaze of a LGBTQ woman; second is a non-gendered eye, trying to stand back and scrutinise images or art which has sexual interactions between women, cis- or transgender, only, which can be argued to be difficult or even impossible to do; three is the male gaze, not taking into considering the viewer's sexuality which is a factor too; the fourth is the market which sells erotic imagery of women with other women which I would argue is entirely separate to even a male gaze, even a male gaze attracted to such imagery. The fourth gaze is the one which, not for this review to be talked of, but has to be considered in the wider scheme, as this in itself is where biases and perceptions are effected in itself. It is not just what a target audience buys where the considerations of problematic depictions of women, trivialisation, and just openly crass material has to be considered, but also the market which creates the product to sell this, as it has been allowed to be dictate what sells more.

If you stick to the template, and leave the politics to the side, this pair of films is very amateur wacky softcore. The first is a straight ahead parody, where in November 1999, three college co-eds (Darian Caine, Laurie Wallace and Victoria Vega) go to Bacchusville, New Jersey to find the Erotic Witch, the tape found two weeks later. It is as loose a parody as you can get, that in 1812 the erotic witch was a very sexual and pansexual woman tied up in the woods when the locals wished her gone. This never attempts a feminist reading of this at all - it is merely central to one of the many type of erotic and hardcore genres in existence, horror parodies, which vary from the Michael Jackson Thriller music video, Driller (1984), or The Hole (2003), the gay parody of the Ring franchise where watching a cursed video tape turns you gay in seven days afterwards.  

The film knows the joke at points and at others, it feels improvised to a sense half-baked. At first, you have the interviews of the original film, of stereotype creepy guys here. Inexplicably a redneck parody or two live in New Jersey, including one nearly slipping he was having sex with his sister, but seeing amateur actors in fake beards (throughout the duo) are amusing. The film does, as is always the issue with some of these erotic horror films, dangerously veers at first to the horniness of a possessed victim causing them to cross personal boundaries with others. An uncomfortable aspect of a lot of erotica for me as how forceful people are to have relationships with others, as happens to Darian Caine's character when she is possessed first in the woods, something the film has to quickly cross away from. Especially by the second film, when you get to the curse almost being a horny virus, the fantasy is there but ever since David Cronenberg made his debut Shivers (1975), about literally parasites that turn people into horny zombies, I have had thoughts of how that film spoilt the fantasy by emphasising how grotesque it could be in reality to have such a fantasy or even a sex utopia. Maybe that is just being cynical and ruining this fantasy, but Cronenberg was always ahead of his time.

There is some of the humour, the low hanging fruit variety, that this had probably a better received sequel than Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), the openness to parody the sequel the same year it was released ballsy in an admirable way. The sequel does not really follow it at all, but some references do stay. The opening to Joe Berlinger's film, better than the actual movie plot for the original film, is here, where tourists have invaded Bacchusville and spend their time just masturbating together in the open. Or that you have interviews with people like the disgruntled police chief or a tourist (in a ski mask and fake moustache) talking of how he is there to deal with erectile dysfunction with the help of the Erotic Witch. Even the plot point of even video recordings being deceptive is played for one joke, blackmail material on tape turning out just to have two women playing table tennis instead.

The main issue with covering either film is that, only over seventy minutes each, most of their scenes are the sex scenes, choreographed between the actresses, the first playing to the restrictions of the found footage genre of two cameras the co-eds have, the second film having multiple ones (and a CCTV in a room) to work with. No non-diegetic music exists baring a heartbeat sound in places, which is a weird thing to consider. The sequences are prolonged, and they do not vary either, baring the end of the second film where, with five actresses instead of three, there is an orgy sequence to conclude the film, which alongside a scene of a man in a gorilla suit playing cards with an actor playing a male detective, certainly ends these two films, if there were never further sequels, with a spectacle. They are softcore but by the end of the second film, it is surprising these films were not actually hardcore movies by how explicit they are. Obviously, with respect to their female casts, if you are not prepared to go that far in a film, even these films have actresses, whatever you think of the performances, a hell of a lot braver in baring themselves (literally) than most people.

Even this feels weird to type as, due to the issues in how comfortable societies are in talking about real sex in art, and the whole issue of gender bias and pornography's existence, even stating these things may be off-putting to some readers of this without getting into the eyebrow raising, crass type of review language you can get in actually reviews of softcore and hardcore movies. Also trying to critically judge a film entirely about sex, designed for arousal first, is a strange circumstance to have to work with, which adds to this. Really, it is a bizarre sensation to write notes about a softcore sex film entirely about sex, rather than plot, regardless of what I am sexually attracted to; you legitimately feel like an alien studying human culture if any reader looking at this review tried it depending on the work.

Your judgement in the "erotica" is entirely, for each reader, their reaction or interest in that area, which is for any viewer of these films to decide. The one thing to comment about is that, barring one actress in the second film, one named Rio whose appearance is exaggerated*, everyone here actually looks and acts like women you may bump into in New Jersey bar, with their tattoos and piercings, which is a positive. One of the accusations of pornography, alongside its sleazy underbelly, is their unrealistic images of the body and sex, to which these very real women being onscreen is to be praised. This rises as well, if you actually look into these figures in front of and behind the camera, the people who worked with Seduction Cinema are still human beings. For the women especially this should be considered, when sexism could arise to dismiss them for merely being in these and a few straight-to-video horror films, could easily happen.

Darian Caine, who appears in both films, is prolific in these films and straight-to-video genre movies from the era. In part 2, alongside being the most charismatic figure, you have A.J. Kahn; born in India to an Indian mother and Irish father, she plays a doctor with some likably nerdish charisma when introduced in the film, but alongside her own prolific career in these softcore films, her IMDB page credits her to having previously being a professional dominatrix, which whether factually accurate or not really undercuts these films just being dismissible grot by forcing you to think these are regular working women in the entertainment industry. Thinking beyond the surface, to the fact ordinary people who watch these films like us also act in them, especially those for these Seduction Cinema productions these are part of, opens a lot more to consider for them.

Some may be put off by the starkness of the sex scenes, but again this is entire subjective, unless one wants to ask whether it is pleasant to be laid on New Jersey woodland floor or a rock naked.  (It was probably cold outside in the shooting too, as was especially the case with the second film, explicitly set at Christmas and with snow outside.) What I can comment on is that both films have very odd senses of humour. The first film recreates the structure of the first Blair Witch film, but with changes like porn magazines and dildos being left outside the tent, or very bluntly sexually wood decorations instead of menacing stacks of rocks. A blown up doll is found up in a tree as they are apparently funny in context. Stranger for me, set up in the first film and eventually being called Kimbo in the second film, is a gorilla rampaging on the loose, played by someone in a very cheap gorilla costume. In the first film, they are credited as being played by one of the script writers Joe Ned. Kimbo is never involved in any of the sex scenes thankfully, barring the questionable choice of having someone make monkey noises behind the camera during one of the scenes.

My mind, rather than just dismiss it as a dumb running gag, whilst it clearly is, also could not help to evoke Thundercrack! (1975). Curt McDowell's two and a half hour film, seen uncut, is infamous as a cult hit, a hardcore haunted house film which is openly pansexual in content - heterosexual, gay and bisexual sex scenes - whilst being an elaborate horror comedy. Effectively a lewd version of James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), it has cult avant-garde filmmaker (and the film's screenwriter) George Kuchar in a role where, in a dress, he eventually marries the female gorilla that has been on the loose in that film's narrative since its start. Thundercrack in every way is a superior film, both for what strange and imaginative work you can do even with explicitly sexual content, but I think that probably softened me to Kimbo subconsciously. The character, which is just someone in a tatty gorilla suit, is from the same era where some truly strange things happened in these softcore films, like Jim Wynorski's Busty Cops (2004) having the titular lead's boss being a talking llama. Whether it is surviving being shot by a police detective, humping the sex doll at night in the words, or playing cards, sometimes dumb and embarrassingly slapdash comedy does work when it involves this character. My only disappointment was not exploiting a joke for the second film, where technology allows him to speak through a translator. Thus we learn this is a gorilla who likes twerking his own nipples, making him a lovably and progressive figure in his preferred kinks.

The second film is egregious in some very unfunny characters unfortunately for contrast, namely a female reporter (played by Katie Jordan) with her Eastern European cameraman, who talks of an awful experience in a gulag. At first, they seem a funny bickering comedy pair to have, only to become annoying in their hastily improvised bickering. In general, like those characters, there is a bit throughout these films which feel ill thought-out, where you can roll your eyes and ask, rather than the sexual content, why some ideas where wise to have. The crying confessional scene in the first film, parodying Blair Witch, eventually becomes a close up of a bared breast in the dark, which lasts a really strange and lasts a long length of time. Sound track cues are also perplexing. Heartbeat sounds are the closest to music in these films as mentioned, and the sound of the sea and seagulls in a masturbation scene in the New Jersey woodlands is just questionable. More questionable however, is in the orgy sequence having pig noises on the soundtrack. In mind to the point that it is the most explicit and intense scene, whether you had women, heterosexual couples or gay men acting the scene out, pig noises are acquired taste even if part of a mass witches' curse corruption, only for a really specific kink for a really specific target viewer when, for most viewers, probably just having five really attractive figures in said scene would sell without suddenly feeling the soundtrack from a Throbbing Gristle track has invaded it.

There are two more of these films afterwards - one a period prequel with Erin Brown herself, the other called Lust in Space: The Erotic Witch Project IV (2005) indicating even softcore gets to the point like other horror franchises you have to set them in science fiction. These films clearly churned out alongside all the others from the company who produced these, but in their own way, like the independent regional genre films of the seventies and eighties, and the underground video boom into the nineties,  Seduction Cinema by itself was at this prolific time for in that same ballpark. As regional as you can get, from New Jersey, for every parody they made like The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String (2003), they made many horror parodies, which indicates their film tastes. Without the older mystique of older softcore films, made on digital or in their starkness films which could be dismissed, these films do have a disadvantage in how to view them even as cultural artefacts, but they are curiosities in even how their construction is even exposed, such as one actress, playing one in a coma woken up, is abruptly introduced in a scene to make up numbers.

The more interesting thing for me from these types of films is these people making them. Figures like Darian Caine are visibly enjoying playing the possessed version of herself in a cheap straightjacket, chewing the scenery. That the script occasionally has some curiously memorable moments which make films like these time capsules, such as the suggesting Warren Beatty has likely slept with everyone in New York City, as esoteric and to the era it was made in as any joke can be. Even the director is fascinating to read into, just for the fact back in the day John Bacchus made a film called The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989). Eyebrow raising yes, but reading his filmography, Bacchus' career even under pseudonyms can be tracked through an entire time in genre film cinema, from independent and underground work shot on video in the eighties into the nineties, to someone who managed to ride the wave of softcore films like the Erotic Witch Project into the 2000s. He was also working in horror as well including a series of films where each word ends with the letter "Z", like Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006). I do not view either the Erotic Witch Project films, the first two, as being great parodies in the slightest, but they are interesting to see an industry that was there, with these reoccurring actresses and directors, which faded away. Softcore is still being made, still appearing in the few surviving high street stores in the United Kingdom still in spite of hardcore porn being easy to steal online. This particularly wave and these actresses form a part of forgotten history that, traversing the Blair Witch parodies, is fascinating to have stepped into on this path.  

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1) And even then, that is not to dismiss one figure onscreen next to everyone else, nor suggest a reverse body slander either before anyone raises this. If anything her costuming, even for this film, really exaggerated more, if by the standards of nurse costumes more likely to be found in an Ann Summers, a store here in the British Isles, hers is definitely the least likely to pass uniform regulations less for the skimpiness but how flimsy the material looks practically.

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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From https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/
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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.