Joe D'Amato's follow-up to Anthropophagous opens much as its predecessor had finished, with George Eastman's hulking man-monster literally spilling his guts.
The similarity ends there, however, as rather than consuming his own entrails and thus bringing about his demise, Eastman's character, Mikos Stenopolis, has the capacity to regenerate just about any damage he may sustain within a remarkably short period of time, much to the surprise of the staff at the local hospital.
This ability, it seems, is the result of some experiments carried out on Mikos in his Greek homeland, a plot device clearly intended to further link the character to the previous film, which had actually taken place on a Greek island.
If the experiment has left Mikos's near immortal - he cannot regenerate damage to his brain, leading to a variant on the time-honoured aim for the head scenario - it has also left him even more psychotic than he already was.
Mikos's nemesis, who was responsible for his initial gut-spilling, is a Greek Orthodox priest, played by Edmund Purdom with dubious accent. His role in the experiment is equally unclear. As he tries to explain to Charles Borromel's unsurprisingly uncomprehending police chief, "I serve god with biochemistry."
What is certain, however, is that Purdom's priest is Dr Loomis to Eastman's Michael Myers, with the bulk of the film - scripted by Eastman and possibly Bruno Mattei, under his Jimmy Matheus alias - playing out as a homage / rip-off of the first two Halloween films in setting and incidents. Mikos, an unstoppable force of evil, is even referred to as "the boogey-man" a number of times.
Rather than the occasion being Halloween, though, it is the big game between the Rams and the Steelers for "the championship". Whilst the intention here was clearly to Americanise the film, the attempt fails. First, as Kim Newman noted in Nightmare Movies, since the adults gathered for the game - conveniently leaving their children alone with the babysitter to face the monster - incongruously snack on pasta. Second, because the filmmakers' representation of the game is more like soccer or rugby than gridiron, going from end to end at a frantic pace. (It may also be noted that at one point the supposed quarterback according to the voice-off is clearly a running back from the hand-off play that is made and the jersey number he is wearing; in another a touchdown is scored just before half-time but there seems to be no point-after attempt.)
Whereas Carpenter had his characters watch The Thing from Another World, D'Amato has the children, played by William Berger's daughter Katya and son Kasimir, watch one of his Dominican Republic films. Thankfully, however, Mark Shannon and Lucia Ramirez are dubbed as for an innocent romantic drama rather than a horror-porn hybrid.
If D'Amato skips on the sex and nudity that represents one of the two major components of his film-making approach, he more than compensates for this with horror and gore, whether Mikos holding in his entrails at the start; drilling one victim through the head; subjecting another to an involuntary trepanation with a band-saw, or putting a third in an oven. In other words, the film is just as worthy of its Rosso sangue - Red Blood - name as its Absurd one.
Though D'Amato would be the first to admit he is no John Carpenter, he is also a better director than many would give him credit for, generating plenty of atmospheric and a particularly suspenseful final act in which the kids - one bed ridden - must somehow defend themselves against the unstoppable boogey-man.
Other points of note include an early role for Michele Soavi, as an ill-fated member of a motorcycle gang; a practical joke playing, mask-wearing kid, and on-screen role for dubbing-artist Ted Russoff.
Carlo Maria Cordio provides an eerily effective soundtrack of swirling and droning synthesiser-led themes that build to intense, percussive crescendos in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Goblin or Fabio Frizzi's work on City of the Living Dead, but which ultimately lacks their subtlety and imagination.
In sum, better than you might think.
Showing posts with label annie belle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label annie belle. Show all posts
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Thursday, 25 December 2008
Laure / Forever Emanuelle
Another day, another Annie Belle Emmanuelle film.
Aficionados will, however, no doubt note that I use the two M spelling on this occasion.
There is a reason: that Laure / Forever Emmanuelle was scripted and co-directed - albeit anonymously - by the real-life Emmanuelle and / or creator of the character, Emmanuelle Arsan, who also appears on screen, as Myrte, a friend of Belle's character Laure.
This makes, not surprisingly, for an intriguing case as far as theories of auteurism go, of a film which is officially credited to no-one, almost as if being from an unknown source in the manner of a number of erotic / pornographic works, but which clearly otherwise represents Arsan's take on Emmanuelle more than any of the other films bearing her / the character's name.
It's also strange to see Arsan in the flesh. Being of Thai origin, she is if anything more like Laura Gemser than Sylvia Kristel or Belle physically, more Black or Yellow Emanuelle than Emmanuelle. This also tends to put a different slant on the colonialist / exoticist / imperialist / orientalist - delete as applicable - aspects of the franchise, making the whole that bit more cosmopolitan and perhaps allowing for the possibility of challenging the binaries of the exotic and familiar and of orientalist and occidentalist discourses.
Will the 'real' Em(m)anuelle please step forward - Arsan as Myrte
The story in brief is that Laure and Myrte are part of an expedition into a remote area of the Philippines where they, along with Professor Morgan and hippie-type cameraman Nicholas - the inevitable Al Cliver - hope to make contact with a mysterious tribe, the Mara. Nothing so unusual about this, except that the expedition's intentions are more ethnographic than sensation seeking, with none of the usual cannibal ferox subtext or excesses.
Instead the Mara - a significant sounding name if we consider Hindu and Buddhist theology - represent something of the the innocence that has been lost by the westerners and westernised members of the expedition. Specifically, they have an annual rite of rebirth whereby each member of the tribe is reborn to assume a new identity, which they then keep for the next year before the cycle begins again.
The image and the reality - Belle and Cliver make love over his footage of their and others' lovemaking
Indeed, it takes rather a long time for the expedition to get underway, with the first half of the film being more concerned with detailing the erotic exploits of Laure and company and featuring various intellectual digressions that, if not necessarily registering as genuinely profound, indicate an somewhat uncommon level of ambition.
There is also some low humour, as when Laure's assisting the professor with his slideshow of the Mara is short-circuited by the attentions of some of her friends hidden beneath the podium much like Police Academy.
The limit point within the film's discourse of sexual freedom is also apparent. It is, unsurprisingly, male homosexuality While Nicholas indicates that he is not jealous when Laure goes off with another man, on the grounds that he feels whatever she feels and that whatever makes her happy makes him happy, there is never any suggestion that he and the Professor are going to engage with one another sexually in the same ways as Laure, Myrte and the other women do.
The film also features a transgendered character who comments on having chosen her gender. Crucially, however, she is also presented as having a female rather than a male lover in what is either a more challenging instance of queering gender identity or a means of recuperating the character back into the fold, whereby every man wants a woman and every woman a man and / or a woman.
Actually co-directed by Arsan along with Ovidio Assonitis, the film is well enough put together, with good use of locations; a pleasing Nico Fidenco meets Pierre Bachelet score courtesy of Franco Micalizzi, and some nice self-referential touches.
A potential double-bill candidate for screening with Marguerite Duras's India Song?
Aficionados will, however, no doubt note that I use the two M spelling on this occasion.
There is a reason: that Laure / Forever Emmanuelle was scripted and co-directed - albeit anonymously - by the real-life Emmanuelle and / or creator of the character, Emmanuelle Arsan, who also appears on screen, as Myrte, a friend of Belle's character Laure.
This makes, not surprisingly, for an intriguing case as far as theories of auteurism go, of a film which is officially credited to no-one, almost as if being from an unknown source in the manner of a number of erotic / pornographic works, but which clearly otherwise represents Arsan's take on Emmanuelle more than any of the other films bearing her / the character's name.
It's also strange to see Arsan in the flesh. Being of Thai origin, she is if anything more like Laura Gemser than Sylvia Kristel or Belle physically, more Black or Yellow Emanuelle than Emmanuelle. This also tends to put a different slant on the colonialist / exoticist / imperialist / orientalist - delete as applicable - aspects of the franchise, making the whole that bit more cosmopolitan and perhaps allowing for the possibility of challenging the binaries of the exotic and familiar and of orientalist and occidentalist discourses.
Will the 'real' Em(m)anuelle please step forward - Arsan as Myrte
The story in brief is that Laure and Myrte are part of an expedition into a remote area of the Philippines where they, along with Professor Morgan and hippie-type cameraman Nicholas - the inevitable Al Cliver - hope to make contact with a mysterious tribe, the Mara. Nothing so unusual about this, except that the expedition's intentions are more ethnographic than sensation seeking, with none of the usual cannibal ferox subtext or excesses.
Instead the Mara - a significant sounding name if we consider Hindu and Buddhist theology - represent something of the the innocence that has been lost by the westerners and westernised members of the expedition. Specifically, they have an annual rite of rebirth whereby each member of the tribe is reborn to assume a new identity, which they then keep for the next year before the cycle begins again.
The image and the reality - Belle and Cliver make love over his footage of their and others' lovemaking
Indeed, it takes rather a long time for the expedition to get underway, with the first half of the film being more concerned with detailing the erotic exploits of Laure and company and featuring various intellectual digressions that, if not necessarily registering as genuinely profound, indicate an somewhat uncommon level of ambition.
There is also some low humour, as when Laure's assisting the professor with his slideshow of the Mara is short-circuited by the attentions of some of her friends hidden beneath the podium much like Police Academy.
The limit point within the film's discourse of sexual freedom is also apparent. It is, unsurprisingly, male homosexuality While Nicholas indicates that he is not jealous when Laure goes off with another man, on the grounds that he feels whatever she feels and that whatever makes her happy makes him happy, there is never any suggestion that he and the Professor are going to engage with one another sexually in the same ways as Laure, Myrte and the other women do.
The film also features a transgendered character who comments on having chosen her gender. Crucially, however, she is also presented as having a female rather than a male lover in what is either a more challenging instance of queering gender identity or a means of recuperating the character back into the fold, whereby every man wants a woman and every woman a man and / or a woman.
Actually co-directed by Arsan along with Ovidio Assonitis, the film is well enough put together, with good use of locations; a pleasing Nico Fidenco meets Pierre Bachelet score courtesy of Franco Micalizzi, and some nice self-referential touches.
A potential double-bill candidate for screening with Marguerite Duras's India Song?
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
La Fine dell'innocenza / The End of Innocence / Blue Belle / Emanuelle's Daughter Blue Belle
There are, I think, at least two ways of reading Blue Belle / La Fine dell'innocenza.
The first, suggested by the Oriental setting and Annie Belle's appearances in Forever Emanuelle and Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle - the later opposite Laura Gemser - is as Em(m)anuelle junior.
The second, suggested by Harry Alan Tower's involvement in the production, along with the presence of his wife/partner Maria Rohm in the cast, is as a more Sadean exercise along the lines of Jess Franco's Eugenie and Justine, being about the initiation of a naïve young woman into the workings of the real world.
La bellissima Belle
Whatever the case, director Massimo Dallamano was a good choice to help a stranger to such material, with his Sacher-Masoch adaptation Venus in Furs and schoolgirls in peril gialli What Have You Done to Solange? and What Have You Done to Your Daughters?, demonstrating a facility for taking what could have merely been sleaze seriously.
A messy close up of someone eating, recalling Dallamano's background as spaghetti western cinematographer
The story, significantly co-authored by Belle, begins with her guardian Michael arriving at the convent school to take her character, confusingly also called Annie Belle in apparent reference to Emmanuelle Arsan's eponymous, semi-autobiographical heroine, away with him.
He gives her a new outfit, which she changes into in the back of the Rolls Royce as a passing cyclist keeps pace with the car and, presumably much like the implied male spectator, enjoys the show.
Already, however, there is also a split evident: if the cyclist knows nothing of the couple and their relationship and plays no further part in the proceedings, we are likely to already more than a little disconcerted by the film-makers' declining to spell out the exact details of Michael and Belle's relationship with one another nor offer the expected explicit condemnation of his borderline incestuous cum Humbert Humbert tendencies.
Nor do things become much clearer after the action shifts to Hong Kong. Michael introduces Belle to his idle rich expatriate associates, before then being arrested on - admittedly well-founded - suspicion of currency smuggling. Left on her own, Laure is forced to make her own way in this demi-monde.
Intertextuality, 70s style
What follows is very much the usual stuff: copious nudity; some intentional humour, much of it revolving Al Cliver's collection of erotic curious and the reactions of more respectable old-timers to them (Cliver's presence feels very much of the cast-one, get-one-free variety, as also seen with the Gemser-Gabriele Tinti pairing in the Black Emanuelle films) ; extensive travelogue and quasi-documentary shooting, including sequences at a Buddhist temple where nun Ines Pellegrini delivers some pat Eastern wisdoms; various softcore lesbian and heterosexual numbers and, most problematic of all, a no-becomes-yes rape scene in which Belle loses her hitherto surprisingly retained virginity at the hands of her new mentor and confidant Linda's lover, Angelo. (Angelo's identity is revealed by the giallo-esque image of his distinctive ring, which Belle recognises in the resulting flashback.) In the end, however, Belle emerges triumphant, a new woman ready to face the world and whatever it can throw at her.
The female gaze, objectifying the male body?
Dallamano's backround as a cinematographer is in evidence in the way he directs, with a particular emphasis on shots that position us distanced from the action through some sort of barrier - a window frame, a piece of ironwork, a fence etc. - or with one character looking in on another.
The importance of voyeurism is further confirmed by several observational moments within the film, with telescopes, binoculars or through a keyhole. While for the most part these present men observing women, they are not exclusively about the "male gaze," with the keyhole scene in fact showing two women objectifying a man. In addition, another scene presents one character listening in, via a discreetly off the hook telephone, to two others making love, indicating a different, aural rather than visual regime and dynamic at work.
Whatever...
Given the film's exotic and Orientalist themes, it is perhaps also worth mentioning that the dominance of the visual over the other senses is arguably less a universal than a product of western culture at a particular point in its development and that, as such, psychoanalytic notions that tend to be derived from the experience of these selfsame cultures may also be less generalisable than their proponents have often recognised. Though there is nothing new in this, with it quickly being recognised that Laura Mulvey's ideas here, for instance, very much assumed a white, middle class, heterosexual position, it is I think also worth reiterating.
Another interrelated issue here is that of consciousness and false consciousness: What do we say and do when the female spectator identifies with the 'wrong' subject position, as defined by the theorist and their theory? How does the theorist square a concern for women's own, supposedly authentic voice and experience, when it does not echo her own? What does the theoriest say when someone who is 'objectively' oppressed by patriarchy, capitalism and/or colonialism subjectively refuses to acknowledge this oppression?
Though such issues may seem navel gazing, the point is that they cut to the heart of exploitation cinema itself. Indeed, Blue Belle brings them closer to the fore than most exploitation films because of the multiple roles played by Belle. While it is difficult to say how far the film reflects her own thoughts on gender relations and coming of age, especially given that the actual writing of the screenplay also included contributions from Dallamano and Towers, the confused messages that emerge are nothing if not challenging.
Who was behind the oh so 1970s "porno rape" scene? Who detailed the reactions of Belle and those around her to her violation? Were these understood as representations of fantasy or of reality? If rape is undoubtedly abhorrent, does this mean that rape fantasies are necessarily bad, as per the old 'pornography is theory, rape is practice' line? Unsurprisingly I don't pretend to have any answers here - indeed, I think such questions are basically unanswerable. But again it is the fact that a basically unpretentious exploitation film that is provoking me to think about them and, hopefully, you to respond.
Like its models and the mondo, with its equivalent scenes of the exotic, unusual and perverse, the film's narrative approach is decidedly episodic, with individual scenes and sequences that often exist in and for themselves as much as a part of the larger whole: After the opening sequence has introduced Belle with medium-length brown hair the next scene, set in the Alps, sees her with her more familiar bleach-blonde pixie crop.
Another, decidedly what-the-hell moment, sees Belle being attacked by a group of robbers and rescued by the timely interventions of a martial artist as if in a Bruce Lee film. This is, however, then retrospectively revealed as being a scene from the making of a film within a film. If the inclusion of such material is incongruous, it also serves to further highlight the interconnections between world popular cinemas - think also here of the Ford / Kurosawa / Leone triangle, of Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars - and their willingness to borrow from one another's traditions in search of new attractions to present to their sensation-hungry audiences.
A similar hybridity is evident in Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera's scoring in which the acoustic guitar and female vocal led ballad predominant in the early European sequences, is contrasted with sitar - admittedly not the most obvious Chinese instrument - in some of the Hong Kong sequences before these two themes are eventually reconciled and combined in the penultimate scene.
The first, suggested by the Oriental setting and Annie Belle's appearances in Forever Emanuelle and Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle - the later opposite Laura Gemser - is as Em(m)anuelle junior.
The second, suggested by Harry Alan Tower's involvement in the production, along with the presence of his wife/partner Maria Rohm in the cast, is as a more Sadean exercise along the lines of Jess Franco's Eugenie and Justine, being about the initiation of a naïve young woman into the workings of the real world.
La bellissima Belle
Whatever the case, director Massimo Dallamano was a good choice to help a stranger to such material, with his Sacher-Masoch adaptation Venus in Furs and schoolgirls in peril gialli What Have You Done to Solange? and What Have You Done to Your Daughters?, demonstrating a facility for taking what could have merely been sleaze seriously.
A messy close up of someone eating, recalling Dallamano's background as spaghetti western cinematographer
The story, significantly co-authored by Belle, begins with her guardian Michael arriving at the convent school to take her character, confusingly also called Annie Belle in apparent reference to Emmanuelle Arsan's eponymous, semi-autobiographical heroine, away with him.
He gives her a new outfit, which she changes into in the back of the Rolls Royce as a passing cyclist keeps pace with the car and, presumably much like the implied male spectator, enjoys the show.
Already, however, there is also a split evident: if the cyclist knows nothing of the couple and their relationship and plays no further part in the proceedings, we are likely to already more than a little disconcerted by the film-makers' declining to spell out the exact details of Michael and Belle's relationship with one another nor offer the expected explicit condemnation of his borderline incestuous cum Humbert Humbert tendencies.
Nor do things become much clearer after the action shifts to Hong Kong. Michael introduces Belle to his idle rich expatriate associates, before then being arrested on - admittedly well-founded - suspicion of currency smuggling. Left on her own, Laure is forced to make her own way in this demi-monde.
Intertextuality, 70s style
What follows is very much the usual stuff: copious nudity; some intentional humour, much of it revolving Al Cliver's collection of erotic curious and the reactions of more respectable old-timers to them (Cliver's presence feels very much of the cast-one, get-one-free variety, as also seen with the Gemser-Gabriele Tinti pairing in the Black Emanuelle films) ; extensive travelogue and quasi-documentary shooting, including sequences at a Buddhist temple where nun Ines Pellegrini delivers some pat Eastern wisdoms; various softcore lesbian and heterosexual numbers and, most problematic of all, a no-becomes-yes rape scene in which Belle loses her hitherto surprisingly retained virginity at the hands of her new mentor and confidant Linda's lover, Angelo. (Angelo's identity is revealed by the giallo-esque image of his distinctive ring, which Belle recognises in the resulting flashback.) In the end, however, Belle emerges triumphant, a new woman ready to face the world and whatever it can throw at her.
The female gaze, objectifying the male body?
Dallamano's backround as a cinematographer is in evidence in the way he directs, with a particular emphasis on shots that position us distanced from the action through some sort of barrier - a window frame, a piece of ironwork, a fence etc. - or with one character looking in on another.
The importance of voyeurism is further confirmed by several observational moments within the film, with telescopes, binoculars or through a keyhole. While for the most part these present men observing women, they are not exclusively about the "male gaze," with the keyhole scene in fact showing two women objectifying a man. In addition, another scene presents one character listening in, via a discreetly off the hook telephone, to two others making love, indicating a different, aural rather than visual regime and dynamic at work.
Whatever...
Given the film's exotic and Orientalist themes, it is perhaps also worth mentioning that the dominance of the visual over the other senses is arguably less a universal than a product of western culture at a particular point in its development and that, as such, psychoanalytic notions that tend to be derived from the experience of these selfsame cultures may also be less generalisable than their proponents have often recognised. Though there is nothing new in this, with it quickly being recognised that Laura Mulvey's ideas here, for instance, very much assumed a white, middle class, heterosexual position, it is I think also worth reiterating.
Another interrelated issue here is that of consciousness and false consciousness: What do we say and do when the female spectator identifies with the 'wrong' subject position, as defined by the theorist and their theory? How does the theorist square a concern for women's own, supposedly authentic voice and experience, when it does not echo her own? What does the theoriest say when someone who is 'objectively' oppressed by patriarchy, capitalism and/or colonialism subjectively refuses to acknowledge this oppression?
Though such issues may seem navel gazing, the point is that they cut to the heart of exploitation cinema itself. Indeed, Blue Belle brings them closer to the fore than most exploitation films because of the multiple roles played by Belle. While it is difficult to say how far the film reflects her own thoughts on gender relations and coming of age, especially given that the actual writing of the screenplay also included contributions from Dallamano and Towers, the confused messages that emerge are nothing if not challenging.
Who was behind the oh so 1970s "porno rape" scene? Who detailed the reactions of Belle and those around her to her violation? Were these understood as representations of fantasy or of reality? If rape is undoubtedly abhorrent, does this mean that rape fantasies are necessarily bad, as per the old 'pornography is theory, rape is practice' line? Unsurprisingly I don't pretend to have any answers here - indeed, I think such questions are basically unanswerable. But again it is the fact that a basically unpretentious exploitation film that is provoking me to think about them and, hopefully, you to respond.
Like its models and the mondo, with its equivalent scenes of the exotic, unusual and perverse, the film's narrative approach is decidedly episodic, with individual scenes and sequences that often exist in and for themselves as much as a part of the larger whole: After the opening sequence has introduced Belle with medium-length brown hair the next scene, set in the Alps, sees her with her more familiar bleach-blonde pixie crop.
Another, decidedly what-the-hell moment, sees Belle being attacked by a group of robbers and rescued by the timely interventions of a martial artist as if in a Bruce Lee film. This is, however, then retrospectively revealed as being a scene from the making of a film within a film. If the inclusion of such material is incongruous, it also serves to further highlight the interconnections between world popular cinemas - think also here of the Ford / Kurosawa / Leone triangle, of Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars - and their willingness to borrow from one another's traditions in search of new attractions to present to their sensation-hungry audiences.
A similar hybridity is evident in Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera's scoring in which the acoustic guitar and female vocal led ballad predominant in the early European sequences, is contrasted with sitar - admittedly not the most obvious Chinese instrument - in some of the Hong Kong sequences before these two themes are eventually reconciled and combined in the penultimate scene.
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