A Serbian Film (2010)

How bad can a movie themed on
mid-century communist propaganda possibly be?!

A Serbian Film is one of those controversial movies you get once in a blue moon that the creators insist there is deeper meaning to, much to the disagreement of audiences and critics. Mark Kermode disputed there being any legitimate allegory being made by the movie, and it has gone down in recent history as one of the most horrifying films ever made. Having finally subjected myself to its uncut version, I am baffled as to how anybody can not recognise the statements being made. I know virtually nothing about Serbia, except for it having a history of severe unrest in many senses, but I could very explicitly identify what the movie was trying to convey. Despite what one might expect having heard the grisly keywords associated with it, A Serbian Film is a devastatingly effective movie with plenty of angst.

Miloš is a retired porn actor who has settled down with a wife and child, but given up a good income and lavish lifestyle in the process. Struggling to get by and realising a quiet part of him misses the guy he once was, he is informed by a former colleague of a filmmaker who is producing a new high art form of pornography, and wants Miloš as his star. Coddled beneath several layers of armed security guards is Vukmir, a sinister and eccentric multimillionaire with a chip on his shoulder about the state of modern Serbian society. He is well practised in his prophetic rhetoric, ranting at length about what real art is, and what it is to feel and live. He wants to sign Miloš for big bucks, but is unwilling to tell his actor exactly what he will be performing, as part of some pornographic method acting school of thought or something.

No autographs, please.

Miloš is dubious about the unspecified nature of the work, but his wife Marija is heavily swayed by the money he will receive in return, so he decides to go for it. First day on set, Miloš is directed by Vukmir via an earpiece while flanked by several armed heavies holding cameras. Some odd domestic is going on between a mother and her adolescent daughter, both of whom go on to be central co-stars in this weird improv. By the second day, Miloš' convictions are being tested too hard by Vukmir's depraved setups, and he decides the next day to throw in the towel.

Suddenly Miloš awakens, hungover and bloodied, and it is three days later. Haunted and unable to find anybody he knows, he racks his brain for scraps of memory and tries to piece together what the hell happened to him. Through flashback and footage on a stolen camera, the movie takes us through Miloš' dreadful search for the truth, and we know things will somehow never been the same for him again.

Fans of Last House on the Left may recall that the original draft of its script was a more pornographically-oriented take on things, and as A Serbian Film was wrapping up, I couldn't help but compare it to Last House. It ultimately tells the same story, of an innocent and loving family torn apart by cruel outsiders, and how the family members react and are irreparably damaged by the ordeal. It is hard to classify either movie as horror, because they are really more like hard dramatic tragedies; they show us relatable and likeable characters whose terrible experiences stir emotional reactions in us as viewers. If I felt anything at the end of A Serbian Film, I felt sadness.

This is the greatest show!

Another element that these two movies have in common is that they narrate from the perspective of the family while framing them visually from the voyeuristic view of the aggressors. A Serbian Film is a very slickly produced picture, with sharp and very precise camerawork and sound. As we follow Miloš through this dark chapter, the camera always follows him like a stalker: we see him from over the shoulders of the people he converses with, or the corners of rooms. The feeling of being watched is intrinsically woven into the style of the movie, while sound forces the foreboding atmosphere upon us like a millstone, with inventive use of string plucking, static-like electronics and even what sounds like tearing paper. An incredible tension is created, starting with small tugs and stirs, and finally climaxing (eh-hem) in the film's closing minutes as an unbearable outburst.

This film is nothing short of ballsy. Srđan Todorović gets to show off an incredible range in the role of Miloš, and wouldn't work so well were it not for his courage to do exactly what the character requires of him. Were his performance to lack a certain emotion and vulnerability, we would not be able to feel for him anywhere near as much as we do by the time his nightmarish ordeal finally ends. I cannot imagine any of the roles in this movie being easy to fill for a director or for an actor, and every single person gives it their all, and absolute sincerity. Sergej Trifunović as Vukmir grasps just the right note of villainy and cunning. He is eccentric without being cartoonish, and measured enough for us to never quite peg him as a straight-up bad guy; he genuinely believes in what he does, and there is more to his motives than simply enjoying causing pain.

If this scene doesn't turn you on, you
clearly don't understand high art.

There is a great scene early on in the movie in which Miloš and Marija are in bed together watching one of his old skinflicks. They have the old "difference between love and fucking" discussion and Marija tells him that she quite fancies just being fucked once in a while. So he tries on the rough, underwear-tearing persona that he hung up years ago, and while she seems somewhat turned on by it, he clearly is not. The action cuts back and forth between the couple fucking, and Miloš' onscreen performance, before he recedes, turns his wife back over, starts to kiss her, and goes on to actually make love to her. This tells us so much about Miloš, and about his relationship with Marija. Although he clearly has the capacity (and from what we all hear, quite the knack) for your classic porn-style fucking, it is a compartmentalised section of his personality that he realises he doesn't like to open out into other sections, and just maybe, he has grown to dislike that side of himself.

Many an exploitation flick is accused of doing exactly what it says on the tin: exploiting suffering. More specifically, they are accused of 'glorifying' violence. A Serbian Film has definitely met its fair share of this vein of criticism, but it never once looks at violence through a rose tinted filter. Every second of pain is depicted as cruel and senseless, and despite its inherently sexualised framing, is never presented for titillation or kicks. It wants us to look at its content in the harsh, brutal way that it truly exists in the world, and ultimately, it wants our understanding of Miloš to grow as a result. The impact of the movie hinges on how we feel for the characters being wronged, not how gross and sensationalist it can be.

Uh... no homo.

The casual moviegoer is unlikely to accidentally stumble into this picture without any prior understanding of what they are getting themselves into, but let it be known: this is a gruesome and hard-hitting picture which in its uncut version uses some very disturbing imagery. It is stuff you won't shake off easily, but if you feel you can handle it, it is very worth seeing. I got so much more from watching this movie than I had anticipated, and am still somewhat surprised to be declaring it a moving and very effective piece.

I wonder what Roger Ebert would have made of this movie. Although he was still alive and critiquing when it came out, he never reviewed it. I feel like his 70s self - the same one that commended Last House - would have seen redeeming qualities in it, and perhaps even recommended it, much to the horror of the average moviegoer. In his mid-80s, Siskel-centric era, he may have decried it for its sexually-oriented violence. I know that by his twilight years, he had grown pretty damn tired of the hardcore exploitation flicks. That was his taste. I love me a hardcore exploitation flick, and A Serbian Film is as extreme as it gets in terms of content and context.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Daniel Farrands has caused something of a stir in recent years with his choice of film projects. Last year he threw bees into so many bonnets that Nicolas Cage practically showed up to scream about his eyes, with the controversial Haunting of Sharon Tate. This year he has swiftly followed it up with The Murder of Nicole Brown, and with these two titles coming consecutively, people's ears have pricked at the not-so-subtle trend emerging. Farrands has been universally branded as a smut-peddler  thanks to these projects, and I was inclined to consider him such myself after watching Sharon Tate, but my research into that picture dragged up something a little odd.

A good ten years ago, my sister raved to me about "the most disturbing" movie she had ever seen, titled The Girl Next Door, and I didn't get around to seeing it until about 18 months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by this grimy and largely unheard of little movie, and in retrospect, it plays rather intriguingly as a part of Farrands' filmography.

This writer's choice to make films based on true crime events is far from recent. The Girl Next Door is taken from the crimes of Gertrude Baniszewski and her children towards Sylvia Likens, and while it never shies from the grit of the ordeal, it shows an incredible amount of craft and care -- almost sensitivity. I cannot help but wonder how, in the space of fifteen-odd years, Farrands' approach to filmmaking can have deteriorated so terribly.

Any bozo can string together 90 minutes of depravity and call it a movie, but not many manage to pull off true human horror in a way that feels real or relatable. Last House on the Left, Eden Lake and Creep are fine examples of well-crafted stories of man vs. man, and while The Girl Next Door may not be quite as competent a picture as these, it gives it a bloody good go, and delivers an unexpectedly strong and engaging look at child abuse.

Mom, you're blocking the TV!

Based on Jack Ketchum's novel of the same name, the movie is about two young carnival girls taken in by a single mother. Meg (Blythe Auffarth) and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor) go to live at the home of Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker) so that their carny parents can more freely make a living on the travelling circuit. Ruth is a smoky, emaciated mother of many adolescent children, whose house is always full of local kids. The narrative chooses to focus on David (Daniel Manche), a kid who hangs out at the Chandler residence, and tells the story from his perspective. This proves a very clever choice; not only does the audience endure the cruelty on screen, but considers it from the innocent stance of a child who is free to come and go as he pleases. There are some great little scenes in which David tries to broach the subject of Ruth's abuse to his parents, but doesn't quite know how to, or simply sits in silence alone, fretting over what should be done.

The strongest element of this movie is how the narrative handles the events. Many a lower picture simply shows us people inflicting cruelty on others and just expects us to believe in their reasons for doing so. When you hear of such a twisted true crime story on the news, often the toughest thing to comprehend is how things get to that point, particularly when multiple aggressors are involved. Who first suggests such crimes? What does one have to do, or say, to a person to get them to behave in such ways? In the real world, everything has momentum and contributing factors that move situations from A to B, and so if we are to truly engage with a movie like this, we have to understand the villains as real people and not caricatures of evil.

It's not as if Ruth and her children just randomly start torturing the girls the day they arrive. There is a slow build up, a series of escalating incidents that eventually lead to the abuse, and Farrands' writing is integral to this realism. Everyone likes to think that they would have the morality and strength to stand up to bad people and prevent them from doing harm, but human behaviour is complex and some people have the capacity to manipulate and influence others negatively. When defending the use of violence in movies, I sometimes use Game of Thrones as an example. If we hadn't been shown Joffrey's many escalating acts of cruelty, would we have understood him in the way that the characters around him did, and would we have felt satisfied by the end of his story? A good narratives fleshes out its antagonists in a way that uses them as more than a plot device or pantomime villain.

There is a largely unnecessary framing device that follows David in middle age, beginning with him witnessing a hit and run, and ending with his conviction to let go of his decades-old guilt. It's not a bad idea to try and give some indication of the long term effects of this trauma on David as our young narrator, but what it could have added to the picture as a whole is undermined by how rushed and tacked on it feels. The ending is rather abrupt, and the momentum of the drama might have been better served by simply scrapping the framing and brooding on the dark basement where the ordeal finally screeches to a halt.

Suck my fat one, ya cheap dimestore hood.

Acting is surprisingly good, particularly from Blanche Baker, and good use of colour and space is made to convey the freedom of wide open spaces and the rigidity of the house's four walls. There is a tangible sense of atmosphere, of time and place, in a way that reminds me of Stand By Me. The kids feel real, and do and say things that creatures unsure of who or what they are would. Against the backdrop of colourful '50s suburbia, the visceral goings-on in the house appear that much darker and dirtier. It's not a long or rambling movie, but it succeeds in crafting a very believable world in creative ways. 

The abuse inflicted upon the girls is upsetting and difficult to forget, so this is not an exploitation movie for beginners, but those with the stomach for such scenes and an appreciation for good writing will really dig The Girl Next Door. Meanwhile, Farrands should seriously go back to the drawing board with the way his career is going, and maybe take a Screenwriting 101 refresher course, as he seems to have forgotten everything.

Pretty Baby (1978)

I confess that I first sought out Louis Malle's Pretty Baby merely because of the torrent of ongoing online controversy that encircled it some forty years after its making. At that point, I was a 19-year-old college student, and of the whole cast and crew, was only familiar with Susan Sarandon (whose career I devised my entire second year film studies project on). Nowadays, I know much about many of the people involved, and most recently, began to read Brooke Shields' autobiography There Was a Little Girl, which details the infamous relationship she had with her mother Teri. I sometimes wonder at how society seems to have gone backwards in so many of its ideas and tolerances, and how the more time goes by, the more incredible it seems that a movie like Pretty Baby was ever made; it certainly wouldn't be nowadays, perhaps in the same way as Lolita, which director Stanley Kubrick later lamented that he could not take to the full extent of his source material, because of 1960s Hollywood censors.

Pretty Baby is a period piece, about a prostitute named Hattie (Sarandon) and her pre-adolescent daughter Violet (Shields), who live in a New Orleans brothel in the early 20th century, just before and during and after the legal clamp-down on the sex industry. Much to the uproar of the small-minded back in the '70s - and to this day - the visual narrative includes a couple of very brief shots of young Brooke Shields, who was only 11 or so when she filmed, naked. But let us start this debate by going back to the definition of pornography, which is material created with the intent of titillating or arousing the viewer. Now, if you are of broad mind, you will accept that a photograph or video of a person naked - whatever their age - does not fit this definition, as nudity is not inherently sexual; an idea modern society is losing grip of. I would argue that the next step in this logic is that a movie tells a story through a combination of narrative media: visuals, sound, etc. As I have mentioned in previous reviews, we as an audience need to see and hear and feel the full extent of our characters' lives if we are going to feel for them. If we had not seen in gruesome detail the cruelties of Joffrey Baratheon, would we have as much reason to hate him?

The movie opens with the gutteral groans of a woman, and a fade in of the bemused and intrigued Violet's face. We all instantly ask the same question: is she witnessing pain or ecstasy? The questions that these speechless opening moments force us to ask ourselves carry on throughout the movie. As it happens, Violet is watching her mother Hattie give birth to another john's illegitimate baby. But, I concede, whether Violet had been bearing witness to childbirth or paid fornication, the experience would have been just as relevant to her life, and to our experience as an audience.

Violet and Hattie live in the glamorous brothel of Madame Nell (Frances Faye), a wide, darkwood classical house with moody burgundy interiors and all the sophistication of the many palaces the elder March daughters visited in Little Women. Here, men of position go there to fulfill their fantasies, and one day, the time has come for young Violet, whose age is never explicitly revealed, to be deflowered by a paying customer. The girl sweet-talks the winning bidder in the naive, scripted way only an eleven-year-old who has been instructed what to say could - much to his disdain.

In between all this action, a photographer has arrived at Madame Nell's, seeking models for his intimate portraits of Louisiana prostitution. He is Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a stern but sensitive being whose heart breaks over the auctioning of Violet's virginity. Among his work with the other women, the girl becomes enamoured with him - again, as only eleven-year-olds do - and he with her, though in a far more paternal and protective fashion. When the fuzz are closing down all the brothels, Hattie moves out with the john  who impregnated her and their illegitimate son, leaving Violet behind. Bellocq marries her in an attempt to save her from a life of imminent poverty and abuse.

Pretty Baby is a long, brooding and sensuous movie, and anyone who pays attention to it can see it for what it is. The odd naked shot is a natural extension of the situation, and as Roger Ebert so gracefully put it, "it's an evocation of a time and a place, and a sad chapter of Americana". The young Brooke Shields shows immense capability that her later career didn't seem to present opportunities to demonstrate, while Carradine conjures the same sorrowful, fair-haired onlooking lover that Peter Firth did in the same year in Roman Polanski's version of Tess.

I love Pretty Baby. It is a rare sort of movie that gives me the low, underlying stirrings of sympathy and yearning that real life relationships give me. Not the kind that make you shout at the screen about what the characters should do, but the kind that moves you, as if your close friend were living this same existence, and an external feeling of remorse and sorrow, yet lack of control over the chaos.

Killer Barbys (1996)

This was a cheap indulgence of a movie in several ways. It cost me two quid, and it looks like they paid the graphic designer of the cover art about the same wage, so the poor little Quasimodo of a DVD was waiting for someone like me to come pick it up, like Toy Story but with home media: they have hopes and dreams, and the forgotten clones of celluloid B look at the moon through the window of the DVD store each night and dream of a horror freak who will love them as they are. Killer Barbys (or Vampire Killer Barbys according to the cover) was that little outcast, and I was the horror freak.

I took a chance, took a ch-ck-ch-chance chance on it because it had Jess Franco's name on it. I've reviewed several Francos, both for UKHS and my own blogs, and his iconic status in European horror makes any little fantasy of his worth my time. Bloody Moon was highly amusing '80s kitch, while Female Vampire was far more typical of Franco's love for gothic naked vampiresses and had an X-Rated cut available. Killer Barbys fits somewhere in between, following the ordeal of mid-'90s punk band The Killer Barbies (a real band in a sort of semi-autobiographical Jagger-type movie portrayal), whose van breaks down in the misty woods on their way to a gig. The three guys and two gals spend most of their time fucking and smoking joints (my kind of people), and do the classic split thing when a creepy old sage in a nice suit invites them to take refuge at the castle of Countess von Fledermaus nearby. The horniest couple stay behind to alleviate some of their horniness, while the others head up to the castle.

Vintage Franco

The old guy, we know, is the lover/secretary of the Countess, who at first is a sinewy corpse gasping on silk bedsheets, starved of the young blood that sustains her vitality. One or two of the band get picked off and used to rejuvenate the Countess enough to show herself to her guests, one of whom she seduces very swiftly over dinner and fucks to death. This, naturally, involves a lengthy sequence of the Countess writhing on the naked body of her doomed lover, covered in his blood.

The movie is thrown off terribly by the presence of an unhumorously comic trio, a freak and two dwarfs he keeps as 'children', who don't kill the horny couple in the woods as we so obviously expect them to, but wank over the sight of them boning, and swap all the punk Barbie dolls decorating the band van with animal skeletons. They are a bad joke to the end, and actively detract from the steam of the movie's engine, in a fashion darkly reminiscent of my beloved bumbling cops in Craven's Last House on the Left.

As a Franco, the movie operates on about a quarter of the production budget that US movies would, and it shows from beginning to end. Highlights include poor visual angles as we watch the Countess 'stab' her lover's 'body' and totally not the mattress right next to him; and the obvious mannequin being thrown out of the window in lieu of a stunt double is movie gold (see The Sinful Dwarf). Franco's style is firmly burrowed in the early '80s, and refuses to update, except for funky '90s clothing. The girls spend the majority of the movie in a t-shirt and panties at the most and just silver go-go boots at the least. The Countess is a fucking stunning 'older' woman who we get to see writhe around naked. A Francophile will be in their fucking element with Killer Barbys.

The music is another strength: although the title song by The Killer Barbies is overused, the early-'90s grunge-punk music is invigorating, and ironic enough to contrast the screen action to good effect. So far, all the Franco movies I've seen have been very distinct, despite Jess's reputation for a couple of favourite subgenre themes. Killer Barbys is a fun, poorly dubbed and unique viewing experience that is 90 minutes well spent, and a pretty cool introduction to the real life Killer Barbies discography.

Sweet Hostage (1975)

As Exhibit D in the Linda Blair Victim Files, Sweet Hostage is on a different level to the others. Here, Linda Blair is Doris Mae Withers, and she is by far the spunkiest and most independent of Blair's characters up to that point. While the title conjures up some images of an innocent young girl in a flowing white dress being violated by a slobbering psychopath (and not all of these connotations are unfounded), the extent to which Blair's character is a victim, or even really a hostage, is very minimal indeed, and this is by the will of both the lead characters in this surprisingly moving two-hander.


Linda stars alongside veteran Martin Sheen, whose paternity over several of the Brat Pack is so wonderfully obvious from the offset. It is like Sheen is creating a living, breathing mold for what his son(s) would become, and when I say this, I think, of course, of Charlie. Here, Sheen plays a manically sophisticated escaped mental patient with a penchant for romantic poetry, and a tendency towards the occasional flip-out. He has that sort of omniscient life force about him, an energy and buzz that seems superhuman, in the same league as Jack Nicholson, that makes anything he does simply fascinating to witness.

Blair and Sheen make a remarkably formidable pair. They have such chemistry from their very first encounter, a sort that, despite the great talent of these two actors, surely goes beyond make believe. In the same eerily ever-present way that Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling had such simmering sexual tension in a beauty-beast relationship, this sweet 15-year-old and this eccentric stranger 20 years her senior have a tangible connection that enables their entire story to ease by, under unspoken promise of meaningfulness. As it turns out, Linda Blair later revealed in an interview that she fell in love with Sheen whilst filming.

Doris Mae starts off the film as a young tomboy, living in some rural Southern town, where she chatters with the locals with familiarity, but acts as an exasperated onlooker throughout her parents' frequent conflicts at home. She generally seems her normal happy self when she is away from the farm where she lives. In the opening sequence, we are introduced to Leonard Hatch (Sheen), a gallant fellow who bows and recites poetic stanzas for the ladies. He is also on the run from a not too harsh-looking mental institution, and blends in remarkably well: he seems to be one of those selective psychopaths, who knows when to play it cool, which is why Doris Mae thinks nothing of hitching a ride with him when her truck breaks down.

After a little engaging banter, it becomes evident that Leonard does not plan to drop his new Lady Fair off at the farm. Yet Doris Mae is no victim. She insists on holding the power over her captor. "If you're gonna rape me, just pull over and get it over with!" she demands. But Leonard has no such vulgar intentions. His intentions may be rather unclear, but if anything, he seems more in want of a companion, and perhaps a pupil, to whom he can impart all of the romantic wisdom deemed by the doctors to be illness.

The pair live together in a little abandoned farm, and grow to love each other. It says all you need to know about rural Southern towns in the '70s when the thing that causes authorities to be alarmed to a possible kidnapping is Sheen's character purchasing women's clothes at a store. For whatever reason, the store girl deems this highly suspicious/inappropriate and calls the police, who seem to share her suspicions enough to pursue this women's-clothes-buying deviant. It also says all you need to know that this incident demonstrates more effort to save Doris than her parents ever do. But Doris doesn't need or want saving, and the inevitable fallout of the law's involvement turns the story into a sort of Romeo and Juliet tragedy.

For what some might deem an exploitation picture typical of the mid-'70s TV movie scene, Sweet Hostage is a poignant and touching film that deserves much wider viewing and acclaim than it has ever received. Blair and Sheen carry the movie flawlessly, and seemingly without much need for direction, and make one of the most sweet and unconventional romantic couples of lost cinema.

Bitter Moon (1992)

Boy, don't you hate it when you really like something, and everybody else decries it as absolute shit? You feel like you're seeing something they aren't. Or they're seeing something you aren't. It's a weird feeling. And as I looked up the reviews of Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, my heart sank. Were we watching the same movie? Not only was there barely anything on the net about the movie (no interviews, few reviews...), but everybody (thankfully, except Ebert) hated it, and I just didn't get it.

I had developed a real admiration for Polanski's work from his early films - Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Tess (1979) being my favourites. When browsing on Netflix late one night, I came across Bitter Moon, and took it on because I love Polanski movies, and wanted to give Hugh Grant one last chance to prove some acting skills beyond being his usual dithery English twat of a self. Well, my first motivation was ultimately supported. The second was an unsurprising let down.

Grant plays Nigel, who is exactly like every other guy he has ever played. He wears dodgy suits, stutters and grins a lot, and recites lengthy apologies when leaving a game of cards, as the other players ignore him entirely. He is on board a cruise ship with his wife Fiona, played by Kristin Scott Thomas as most of the other women she has ever played. She is stiff, matriarchal, cold and at times cunning. They are attempting to conquer the seven year itch with a trip to India, an aim not eased by the sudden presence of gorgeous, mysterious french woman Mimi. Mimi is played by Polanski's beautiful wife Emmanuelle Seigner, whom he has directed several other times, and she is an absolute siren. As her doomed lover later describes, she has a sexual maturity and a childish naivete.

That night on deck, Nigel is set about by a loud Yankie cripple, Oscar, played by Peter Coyote, who is one of those types who imposes themselves on you with their dramatic demeanours. He begins to inflict his lifestory on Nigel over glasses of whiskey, teasing him with acknowledgement of his lust for Mimi, and promising that if Nigel will hear his story, he can have her.

The script, by Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn (great name, by the way, John) is based on the beautiful french novel Lunes de fiel by Pascal Bruckner, which I bought and read after falling for this movie, as I am a moderately talented french-speaker who finds great practise in french literature and a dictionary. Polanski diverts a little more from his original source than is characteristic of his work: Rosemary's Baby and Tess, both around three hours in length, take their time and stay remarkably loyal to the novels upon which they are based. It is a quality I truly admire about Polanski. He does not condense: he is a caring storyteller who makes sure everything is taken into account, and hence succeeds in creating as vivid a world on screen as those on the page, film after film.

However, the powerful themes of Bitter Moon are bold, aggressive, primal. I believe I enjoyed this movie so much because it seemed to quite uncannily remind me of myself in years past. This is not an easy thing to admit, as Oscar and Mimi, both of whom begin as starcrossed Parisian lovers and show promise of lifelong affection, are ultimately wretched people. This is not necessarily their faults. Not all the time. But in coming to this conclusion, we are guided by the stark way in which Polanski addresses human behaviour and emotion.

Though Nigel and Fiona end up playing an interestingly pivotal role in the film's finale, Mimi and Oscar are the real focus, with Nigel playing the fourth wall to which the story is narrated. Oscar introduces his story some years earlier, where he is a middle-aged writer, living his dream Hemingway Paris life on a trust fund left by his pioneer grandfather. He is full of life and poetry and exuberance, and looking to write the masterpiece that will finally get him published. One day on a bus, he notices a beautiful young woman, 'my sorceress in white sneakers', who cannot find her ticket. Oscar slips her his, and takes the fine from the conductor. His romantic mind is besotted, and he stalks the city and the bus route looking for her. He finally bumps into her in a restaurant, and asks her out. Thus their touching romance begins.

In this movie, at the age of 26, Emmanuelle Seigner achieves that incredible balance, also achieved by the likes of Linda Blair, Catherine Deneuve and Britt Ekland, of being both terribly cute and thrillingly sexy. It's in the look and the nature, and it is so rare to fall dead in the middle of the spectrum, but it can create some fascinating onscreen characters, as all these actresses proved throughout their careers. When we first see Mimi on the bus, she is schoolgirl-like. She has long, straight, blonde hair and flat shoes, and her gaze is downcast. Her blossoming sexuality creeps in, from the low cut leotard and mini skirt she wears on their first date, to the sensational way she holds a baguette in the elevator. It is nicely escalated by a brilliantly memorable scene involving milk, a well timed toaster and George Michael's 'Faith'.

Oscar's life, or the imagery Polanski and cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli present it with, is as extravagant and poetic as his narration of it. Although I revel in the romantic way Oscar describes Mimi's vagina to Nigel, others I have watched with have not hesitated to laugh. Oscar's increasingly outrageous antics are at times quite laughable, but as his narration reminds us, he doesn't care what we think, because nobody could hate him more than he does himself. Moreover, he wants us to know him truthfully; he is committed to this cause. It plays out with the sense of Oscar taking some quasi-grandiose opportunity to record his memoir, even if it is only in the single mind of the single man to whom he tells it.

As our preliminary introductions to Mimi and Oscar have revealed, their current selves are considerably different to the two lovers at the beginning of Oscar's story. For one thing, Oscar was able-bodied enough to fuck for several days straight, and is now a paraplegic. For another, that timid city girl Mimi now wears voluminous curls, smoky makeup and slinky dresses, and loves to thrash about on the cruise ship dance floor. They have separate cabins and Oscar is content with an open relationship. What has gotten them both to this stage? And why is it so important for Nigel to hear, when Oscar has already declared that he does not begrudge Mimi seeking elsewhere 'that which I cannot provide'?

Now, this is a pretty fucking kinky picture. Among all the embarrassing hoo-haa by bored, unsatisfied housewives and excited students over the terrible Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, I declared that anybody seeking truly erotic and entertaining films should watch two Polanskis: Bitter Moon and Venus in Furs (also starring Seigner, who ignites the screen more than twenty years after playing Mimi). It turns out that both Oscar and Mimi have fairly ravenous sexual appetites, and fairly adventurous tendencies to match. And anybody who's ever visited Paris can attest to it being one of Europe's sex shop capitals (if it's not, I'm surprised: my partner Leon was amused to see a namesake sex shop there!) - so the next chapter of their affair commences: S&M.

In the course of this chapter, two major forces occur: the S&M gives way to cruelty which lies in a grey area between kink and abuse; and Oscar declares with their increasingly outside-the-box sexual experiments, that they were approaching 'sexual bankruptcy'. Their collaborative need for more eventually outdoes them, and the great love of Oscar's life is dead, and seemingly his soul along with it. When Mimi no longer presents any sexual potential, he casts her off, leaving her heartbroken and eventually so desperate for him that she is willing to do anything.

The formerly dormant cruelty and pomposity in Oscar's nature comes to fruition, and he decides to play a game with Mimi: if she won't leave willingly, he'll torment her into wanting to leave. Oscar is very different to almost any male movie character to find himself in a situation similar to this. The Rom-Com approach would be to give in to the woman's desperation, and live an unwanted and unfulfilling lifestyle to satisfy her, because hey, her behaviour is quirky. The Thriller and/or Horror approach would be to, well... take a leaf out of Limey Lyney's book and make Fatal Attraction; just bump her off, because it makes for good tension and means the man can go off and live his life. But as truly thrilling as Bitter Moon is, it takes the dramatic route: the one that is neither end of the spectrum, and settles for the ways real people might actually behave in such a situation.

Oscar is no 30 year-old pretty boy who tells hushed tales of his abusive parents in a husky whisper, in justification of his being an asshole as an adult. Nor can he say that he has been wronged by Mimi. His response to Mimi's neediness is not revenge, it's mere reaction. He is an asshole, and he knows it. He vocally encourages Nigel, and us, to go ahead and hate him, as he has hit that wall of self-loathing in which no further damage can possibly be endured, or dispensed. So what can be done in order to correct the hatred we feel towards Oscar? Well, Mimi needs her turn.

After demoralising and tormenting her into a quivering state, and ditching her on a plane headed for some exotic island following a botched abortion he insisted upon, Oscar really has it coming to him. Is he redeemable? And if so, is it only because of the pity we can't help but feel for this wretched individual? Mimi makes a surprise return from the exotic island, where she has been for so long that her former lover assumed he was free and clear, and is her new self, with the skirts and the make up. And, living up to the classic noir femme fatale role, she has devised her own plan of action, in which the power swaps hands, and we see Oscar suffer equal humiliation, bringing around some sort of karmic balance.

Bitter Moon is one of those movies I watch with some regularity, because it is just so damn gripping. It is emotionally enticing and wild and is so wonderfully unconventional.

Deep Throat (1972)

Cultural scandal/phenomenon Deep Throat has a place in my life I believe to be unlike that of most other fans. For one thing, I'm 23. The movie is 20 years older than I am, and a lot of people my age are under the false impression that things from our parents' generation are stupid or lame or ugly. Don't worry, I've taken a deep breath and composed myself.... For another thing, porn is probably more easily accessed than decent healthcare nowadays (sad statement) and it has gone to muuuuuuch darker, creepier and distinctly less erotic lengths, which have become the norm for most viewers, i.e. the sexual content, explicit though it is, is way too soft for modern audiences.

But of course, I am a devout appreciator of vintage articles and the contexts within which they were created. My awesome Pop grew up in London in the 1960s, and was one of the original hippie generation, and so we have spent many, many hours over the years talking about those wonderful times, and the things people got up to. He, naturally, was the person from whom I first heard of the movie Deep Throat, and its iconic star Linda Lovelace.

Last week I bagged an original 1974 paperback printing of Inside Linda Lovelace on eBay for £6.50 and read it within a day. You see, odd as it may seem to some, pervy as it may seem to some others (simpletons), in the years since I first heard of the movie, I have read many books and articles, seen many movies, documentaries and interviews, and my interest in the whole Deep Throat - Linda Lovelace thing is significant. Perhaps this wouldn't be quite so the case were it not for Lovelace's crazy, tumultuous existence in and out of the public eye.

She was born Linda Boreman in 1949, and as a young adult met bar owner/photographer/professional creep Chuck 'JR' Traynor, this slimy geezer with the least sexy moustache I ever fucking saw. He taught her meditative techniques, being the self-professed love guru he was, that enabled her to open her throat like a sword-swallower and accommodate a phallus. Not long after the whole Deep Throat craze (which did go on for several years), Linda disappeared and popped up some years later as a distinctly frumpy and domesticated version of her former self, newly married, born again and raging against the porno machine. At the time when the hardcore feminism movement that my mother was once such an avid participant of was at its peak (if you can call it such), Linda was picked up by an odious activist named Gloria Steinem and rode the anti-porn wagon harder than she did Harry Reems. Once that craze had also fizzled, Linda struggled to maintain odd jobs as a divorced retired porn sensation, and several more years later, was doing the convention circuits signing photos, and promoting herself as the star of Deep Throat. She even did a couple of very tame 'glamour' photoshoots for magazines.

There are two sides to the Lovelace record: Side A focused all its energy on creating a stir, and being a general figurehead for the sexually liberated crowd; Side B was probably the first high-profile case of playing the Victim Card. As part and parcel of her mid-'80s feminism kick, the former story of liberation and good vibes became one of apparent torture, rape and control. Linda claimed that Chuck forced her at gunpoint to make all of her movies, threatened the lives of her family etc.etc. Coming to any sort of decision on what really happened has taken a lot of research, and anybody interested in corroborating this should seek out the same materials I did (Lovelace's several books are a twisting tale). But here is the way I see it:

Chuck Traynor was a slimy, over-sexed bastard who got a kick out of being some form of self-professed love guru, and Linda was an overprotected suburban girl from a devoutly Catholic family whose upbringing produced a simultaneous need for rebellion and control from a third party. In honesty, her early porno chic incarnation seemed something of an airheaded one. An old TV interview catches some uptight journalist asking her if her liberal ideas wouldn't cause imminent anarchy. She replies that she doesn't know what anarchy means. Cute, huh? Then, in a move that is sooooooo typical of modern girls, she found people condescended and shamed her for her sexual antics, and decided to totally relieve herself of said shame by blaming it on somebody else.

Almost everybody involved with Linda has denied her allegations of abuse, and their reasoning rings true. New York girls in 1972 didn't take much convincing to do something outrageous and against the grain - there was certainly no need to force anybody at gunpoint to perform in a porn movie. There'd have been a line all the way down the street of free-spirited hippy chicks who figured $1250 dollars for a few days of wild sex was exactly what they were looking for. Moreover, Chuck's later marriage to the era's other porn queen, Marilyn Chambers, painted a very different picture. Marilyn was a very strong-headed woman, who negotiated herself good deals, presented herself well in public, and was free of inhibitions. Not to mention, she never turned against the industry. Her marriage to Chuck has never been talked of on anything but good terms, and they allegedly left the divorce court hand in hand.

I do hope this considerable dilution of the story is raising all the appropriate red flags for you. There were so many things about Linda's allegations that didn't add up, and this time she just played mouthpiece for a militant feminist rather than a slimy perv. Linda insisted that every time somebody watched Deep Throat, they were witnessing rape. But the idea of all of these perfectly respectable adults - co-stars, crew, etc. - being in on a gang-conspiracy to force one particular woman into porn is quite ludicrous. Harry Reems, Linda's co-star (who, incidentally, spanked the spunk out of Traynor on the Sexy Moustache-Off) was an absolute class act from beginning to end, who actually served prison time when some narrow-minded jury somewhere decided to press obscenity charges. He even paid for Linda to have life-saving surgery later on. People who worked with him over the years described him as an absolute love with a heart of gold. The list of inconsistencies goes on, and sadly, almost taints our ability to enjoy what is actually a funky, silly little sex movie that earned its place in history. Almost...

Ambitions for middle-age summed up in one photo

Linda Lovelace, as herself, is a hippie chick living in Miami with a middle-aged divorcee, Dolly, who enjoys the swingers' life, but feels that sex is missing something. "I wanna hear bells ringing! Dams bursting! Rockets exploding!" she laments. Dolly, who I can only hope to be as cool as in my late forties, provides the perfect solution: a massive sex party! Woohoo!

When even this doesn't untangle Linda's tingle, she turns to hokey Doctor Young (the gorgeous Mr Reems), who discovers that her clitoris is in her throat. Well if that isn't your textbook male fantasy! He teaches Linda to give Deep Throat, and suddenly the girl's practically deafened by all the rockets and bells and bursting dams, and decides to dedicate her life to enjoying herself. Of course, this also means men enjoying themselves, and so Doctor Young enlists her as a 'nurse' to make home calls and enjoy various sexual escapades with various people. The goofy, slapstick action is nurtured by a wildly brilliant, and sadly unclaimed, soundtrack of grimy, funky guitar and amusing synth. The finale number, entitled Deep Throat To You All, is a wonderfully folky and surreal theme. In my mind, which remains static in downtown LA of 1976 or thereabouts, I have this cool fantasy that the soundtrack is the secret work of David Hess, whose music for Last House was nothing short of brilliant. It seems totally him. Alas, the shady Mafia background of the movie seems to have caused the musicians to seek anonymity, but the album is available, and it's brilliant.

As a piece of early '70s nostalgia, Deep Throat is a gem. How does it stack up as a porno? I guess it is entirely dependent on one's personal tastes. Myself, I have seen quite a bit of modern porn, and several factors are a turn off: firstly, lack of plot, style, or discernible creative talent involved; secondly, the freaky shit people do - I find a woman sucking a guy's juices out of another woman's anal cavity to be nothing short of nauseating; thirdly, the 'actors' are harsh, brassy, Botoxed to the gills and generally unrelatable. Porno chic has the appeal of being ordinary people enjoying each other, people you don't feel upstaged by, having sex you can identify with. Kinks are all well and good, but the bar for 'regular' porn has been skyrocketed to distinctly unerotic levels nowadays.

My viewing partner this time round was surprised at how satisfying Deep Throat was pornographically. Plenty of close up shots, plenty of momentum, and some fun variety. It's only about an hour long, but it's hard to get bored of; it's as fun as it is erotic. And for those modern fascists who insist they cannot get turned on by a woman with pubic hair, fear not! Even though 99.9%-vastly-recurring of women would have chewed your ear off for your apparent paedophilic tendencies at the time, Linda (for whatever reason) was a pioneer of several new practices, the first being the removal of her pubic hair.

The '70s are known for their pubic hair, although it wasn't really until the 2000s that women started appearing full 'Hollywood' (totally bare, that is) in film. And while every other woman in Deep Throat is hippie to the core when it comes to pubes, Linda is shown shaving hers off. In an interview, a woman journalist once grilled her about her grooming, saying she didn't know anyone else that did it. It's odd, and pretty depressing, that a mere twenty five years later, this wasn't merely the norm, but expected. Get ready for another personal preference: I love hairy guys. Beards, head hair, chest hair, pubic hair, bring it on. It looks manly, feels gorgeous, I go crazy for it. Thankfully, my boyfriend indulges me. However, the majority of guys my age shave, wax or even laser everything off, and if there is one thing that looks supremely gay, it's a guy with no pubic hair. It gives me the oiled-up Chippendale vibe, the apparent 'ideal' sexy look that comes off as staged, and utterly emasculated. Deep Throat has got some nice shaggy guys on board, with Harry at the helm, and pornstaches galore!

I could probably write more books than Linda did about her, and this movie, and about vintage porn in general. But I think I've pretty much summed up Deep Throat. It's wacky, cheesy, funny, naughty, ground-breaking, Conservative-offending brilliance, and it's an entirely viable mastabatory aid to boot.

Black Christmas (1974)

Today I decided to revisit a retro early-era slasher from 1974. Much can be learnt about the genre from watching the earliest examples. Where Last House on the Left gave us among the first "bad guy jumps out just as victim is escaping", Black Christmas presents POV killer shots, predating Sleepaway Camp, and even Halloween. As Halloween would go on to do, the opening sequence is from the perspective of our antagonist, here the deliciously ambiguous Billy, who is used to absolutely perfect extent.

Despite the writer's claims that his script was inspired by a Canadian mass murder, it seems far more likely that it originates in the form of the urban legend, The Babysitter and The Caller. We all know it: an innocent young woman is all alone in a big house, looking after the neighbour's child, when she is hassled with threatening phone calls, which are eventually traced from inside the house. On top of the 2006 remake, this concept has been used in several other horrors, including the original and remake of When A Stranger Calls. Now that remake was a really tense, terrifying ordeal... right up until they showed us the killer's face, and then he was suddenly in plain sight for the remainder of the film. It killed the effect like the words 'not tonight' kill a boner. It left my sister and I movie-blueballed, and we were not impressed.

So the first time we saw this fantastically '70s original movie, we were overjoyed. Not a single glimpse of our stalker's face did we get... all we ever saw was a silhouette, and one eye... once. This keeps things terrifying. Consider in Silence Of The Lambs, when Clarice has finally cornered Jaime Gumb in the house, she is confident and proud, and ready to take him down. However, when the place is plunged into darkness, she is scared, because she knows she is being watched, but can't watch back. This is exactly the primal fear that Black Christmas taps into, and it is immensely effective.

This honestly is one of the superior early '70s horror movies. It is simple, understated, surprisingly unexaggerated, and yet overwhelming in its atmosphere. Lesser movies (and certainly the majority of modern ones) like to use that typical shrill string music to create eery, still scenes in which threats may be lurking; Black Christmas embraces the silence, and recognises its merits in scaring people. But where appropriate, sound is used creatively....

The movie is set in a sorority house a few days before Christmas. All the girls are partying and readying to go home for the holidays, the resident gang including Jess, played by the beautiful Olivia Hussey of Romeo & Juliet, and Barb, wonderfully portrayed by Margot Kidder. And all the festivities cause the appropriate ruckus to mask a surprising number of murders within the house, performed by the creep Billy, who lives in the attic. The girls receive illegible phone calls from a guy they've dubbed 'The Moaner', and take it all fairly well. The drama that stops this from being a totally straight-up slasher pic manifests between Jess and her troubled musician boyfriend Peter. He is under immense stress about an upcoming exam at the academy where he's spent the past eight years, and she is unintentionally pregnant, and plans to abort.

This is another pattern you'll notice in early genre examples: these were not just gratuitous gore shows, but often had some political or ideological theme about them. To me, Black Christmas was something of a statement about the women's liberation movement that was gathering such momentum at the time, and the opposition it faced from those not so hot on the idea of equality. Each of the women at the house are independent in nature, and working hard towards a self-sufficient future. They are massacred for their troubles by a confused, reclusive, faceless man. In the foreground, we have the dispute over abortion between Jess and Peter: he insists that she keep the baby, even forbids her to abort it, and Jess refuses, insisting that she will not be forced to give up her future and ambitions. Very noble and sensible sentiments. But Peter is "an artist - he's highly strung", and so when one mad phone call is attributed to him and his anger, the finger is pointed at him. After all...have we ever seen Peter and 'Billy' in the same room at the same time?

Now the ending of the movie concludes its message and stance. It is easy for movies depicting female suffering to be dubbed 'misogynist' and the like. Actually, it is easy for people, out to get offended on others' behalf, to dig out something to complain about in almost any movie. But you know what I mean. Some may say, having watched a house full of independent, middle-class young women being slaughtered by some limp gimp of a man, that the movie itself is misogynist. Firstly, it seems to me that misogyny is rather like going into labour: you notice a million little things that could be a symptom of labour, but when it's actually happening, there's not a doubt in your mind about what's taking place, and how could you, in hindsight, have thought that those tiny things were the real thing?

If an entirely male crew wrote, directed, produced a movie which expressed severe hatred for women; if the casting agents said to each actress hired, "Thing is, we hate bitches, and we plan to degrade, marginalise and otherwise offend you by making this picture"; if the entirely male crew had showed up to press releases and premieres vocalising their hatred of the female population, and highlighting the movie's intention to express hatred and discrimination... then perhaps, we could say a movie is 'misogynist'. But otherwise, movies of quality tend to carry some message or moral at their core, not necessarily shared by its creators, but something worth expressing. It is a medium. Don't shoot the messenger, right?

If this movie, broken down into a basic motive, was something close to Independent Woman = Threat to Masculinity, therefore Independent Woman + Threatened Man = Dominant Male, therefore Problem = Solved, then perhaps there would be some undercurrent of masculine insecurity, as raved about by Siskel and Ebert back in the day. But if the formula were as simple as this, with women being punished for their independence and self-assurance, then surely Jess would pay the ultimate price for daring to abort Peter's baby. Perhaps we'd even be subjected to some MacDuff-style forced c-section for a particularly melodramatic effect.

But, if ambiguously, Jess survives the ordeal, and Peter is killed. If basic survival vs. death is totted up, does the movie's sympathy swing in Jess' favour? But what of the ambiguity of the ending? Billy is obviously still lurking, so it obviously wasn't Peter. He may yet kill Jess, but so far as we witness, he does not. The way I read it, Black Christmas is addressing the opposition to the women's liberation movement. Billy, the opposition, has claimed many victims, who remain unnoticed and unmissed. Jess, the liberated woman who will have an abortion, has come through male oppression, and will live on to do as she wills. However, Billy is still stalking, observing her with the potential for being another victim. Bottom line: Female liberation has gained its momentum, but it is still under threat, and must be conquered by assertion.

NOTE: I felt the ending I just concocted was sufficiently emphatic that I should leave it there, but I must somewhere add that this movie contains some of the most psychedelically '70s outfits a vintage hippie like myself could ask for. Guys in fur coats, anyone?!

Born Innocent (1974)

Every now and then with a child star, particularly one from the '70s, you have to wonder what their folks were thinking. I don't really plan on questioning how well juveniles are taken care of on set: it is a tricky topic, given the often inevitable outcome of the poor soul's trip to Hollywood. Some (Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields) turned out to be well-educated, classy and talented adults. So after The Exorcist (all dubbings and doubles aside), was there anything Linda Blair's parents weren't OK with? Video interviews with Mr and Mrs Blair show them to be very decent, loving and caring parents, which is all the more baffling: at least Terri Shields made herself obvious as a maniac with such ludicrous claims as "people want to see a sexy child". Linda's Act I consisted of regular victim roles, and one would surely be excused for questioning her overseers' choices. But then, despite being far less mainstream these days than Foster or Shields, Linda also turned out great. Solid B-movie credentials over the decades, solid commitment to various charities and animal organisations, including her own, and a good sport at horror conventions galore.

Exhibit C in the Blair Victim Files, after The Exorcist and Sarah T. respectively, is Born Innocent. Another (many more came) made-for-TV movie which took advantage of Blair's cute face and apparent lack of parental controls. Sarah T. was a good girl really, who became sucked up in depression and addiction and expressed remorse for the damage her troubles caused to others. Chris Parker is different. At least in the end. The sour-faced youngster is introduced with a swell of sympathetic string music that reoccurs throughout the movie. Chris is a young runaway who has been arrested again, and makes herself scarce in the holding cell crammed with young, female Peter Stormare types. She seems out of her depth in the whole runaway business: the other girls look ready to chew the balls off a wrestler, but Chris crouches in the corner, her sweet face obscured by her hair.

When hauled up in court, the ball is dropped on Chris at the same time it is on us. The Judge rather compassionlessly reveals that her parents have handed over full custody of her, making Chris a Ward of the State, a.k.a. Hapless Victim of Society. So off she is carted to a half-way house for unruly girls, where she is swiftly and clinically examined by the Nurse Ratched of the joint, a steely woman named Lasko. Stripped off and her cavities searched for substances, Chris seems further still out of her depth when told, "Girls get drugs in here any way they can." At this point, she's probably starting to wish she had smuggled in some dope.

Cute little Chris quickly comes to the attention of the resident aggressive dyke, who leers at her and seems to have a gang of cronies at her disposal. The staff are all incompetent, and mostly very hostile, with the exception of counsellor Barbara (Joanna Miles) who defends Chris from punishment when she offends the others. However, none are efficient enough in dealing with juvenile delinquency, as the tough lesbian proves when she and her gang corner Chris when she's in the shower. They pin her down and rape her with a toilet plunger. (So Mr and Mrs Blair, about your supervision of your 15 year old daughter's role choices...) That said, this scene is incredibly powerful, and is tackled with gritty realism by the actors and cinematographer. Without this scene, we would not have a full understanding of either the abuse of Chris, or the abuse in general of institutions. At this stage in the game, Chris is the softened victim, who recognises her own pain and feels sorrow.

Having earned a little merit, Chris is granted a visit home. Being that she was an affluent runaway, it's safe to assume that this is not such a privilege after all. Within minutes of being home, shit is going down. Her dad is one of those short, wide, balding assholes who goes red all over with rage. Her mum is a hopeless neurotic who just sits home and chainsmokes. The dad beats the mum, and Chris helplessly looks on. The dad later abuses his daughter, remarking on her tight jeans and smacking her about. The one person left to turn to is Chris' brother, who, although seemingly regretful, offers up every excuse he can muster as to why he cannot save his little sis from the abusive background he fled himself.

It is a sad situation when, actually given the option, Chris returns to the institution in favour of staying on at her parents' house for a few more days. And isn't it a miserable statement about the realities of child abuse? This incident cements the poor kid's downfall. She finds herself with nothing to live with, no life to return to, no goal to work towards; she might kill herself if she hadn't found some evident comfort in her bitter surroundings. Accompanied down the muddy slope by the same mournful string instrumentals, Chris eventually hits the bottom. She is finally just another runaway, problem child, young convict. Another brick in the wall, graffitied with 'Jesus Saves' and 'I Wish I Was Dead'.

Sadly, some forty years later, this is not one of those films we can say feels dated. The message, or warning, still rings hauntingly true. Life is easily fucked up. Especially when you're a parent fucking up your child's life. Talk of The System, and all its atrocities, is no less nowadays. Some may argue that it's only ever gone downhill. Children, being taken from or discarded by their parents, being circulated like unclaimed luggage on a carousel, through a stringy network of homes and institutions, and finally deposited on the other side of parental responsibility, with no qualifications, no support, no home and very little other than crime to turn to.

Don't Go In The House (1979)

I decided to start from the beginning with the Don't... movies. They are a famous figure in the exploitation genre, and if the first installment is anything to go by, the titles offer rather irrelevant advice to potential victims. And for once, we find ourselves concurring with the taglines...'don't say we didn't warn you...' I mean, for God's sake, people: the title told you not to, and yet on you waltz into the house! Don't you know you're in the middle of a slasher movie?! Imaginative viewers have paid far more attention to the assertion of the movie's title than its characters do, and have suggested alternatives. A few of my own might include Don't Hitch Rides With Weirdos, Don't Snoop Around Weirdos' Houses and Don't Piss Off Child Abuse Victims. Any one of these could have served more suitably as the 'warning' of the story. 'Don't Go In The House!'? But all my stuff is in there!

Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) is a quiet, weird guy who looks like a less-striking David Hess and works at an incinerator plant. He is obsessed with fire, thanks to his abusive mother's fanatical religiously-based abuse of him during which she'd 'burn the evil out' of him. So, you may say, 'Good on ya, Donny -- ya landed ya dream job!' But with fire being top of his Christmas list, he is less than responsive in fire-related health and safety situations. The opening scene sees one of Donny's colleagues fishing around an incinerator for an aerosol can. Now, I'm no Incineratory Technician, but I know that where there's a furnace and there's a metallic container of compressed gas, I'm not gonna be around to see out the consequences. So, the can goes boom and all the other guys scramble to put out their professional friend who doesn't seem to know the words Stop, Drop and Roll, while Donny stares on hazily.

The guys get mad at little ol' Donny for being fucking useless in a crisis situation, and he runs off home. The first second you get a glimpse of the Kohler place, you practically see 'Bates' written all over it. The obvious inspiration for this crooked mansion atop a hill sets the ball rolling for several other allusions to predecessors of the horror genre. Now if you thought Donny was having a bad day, you should see the look on his face when he finds his mother at home dead. How awful! But, oh wait, Donny's mother was a maniacal child-abuser. After an initial burst of rage at the cold and pale (yet still visibly breathing) mother, he recognises his newfound freedom, and so decides to live the good life: he turns up his records and swings back on the chair. He even smokes a cigarette!

But now for the real fun... to pretend his mother is still alive, not show up for work for a week, and lure gorgeous ladies back to his house for a little hot stuff. First up is a snotty florist (Johanna Brushay), whom Donny offers a ride home. Then he pulls that classic "I just gotta swing by my place for a minute -- it's right on the way" thing. Donny is no slobbering hick with an eyepatch; in fact he looks deceptively friendly, so when he is the only person around to give a lift, politeness indicates that there is little room for hesitation on this request. But then when they get there, Donny insists she come in and meet Mother Kohler. The girl seems to be with us in imagining that any guy who brings a random stranger in to meet his mother probably has some kind of issue, but it would just be plain rude to refuse, right?

The exteriors of the house are completely Hitchcockean, and the interiors have a real Carrie feel to them, with the long cavernous stairwells and gloomy woodwork. It is, as a drunken victim later comments, in dire need of a paint job. One room in particular is quite the spectacle. Once the girl is knocked out (as was imminent -- these buggers are never man enough to just drag a conscious person off against their will, are they?), she wakes up naked, chained to the floor by her feet and her hands to the ceiling of a steel-lined room, and Donny comes storming in menacingly in his full work uniform. Sure hope he noted the extra hours he put in at home down on his time sheet.

The death of Donny's first victim is apparently what most of the fuss was about, and what landed the movie in hot water with the Daily Mail's dumbass scaremongering campaign. The poor girl is doused in petrol and set ablaze with a flamethrower. My initial thought whilst watching this sequence was that its state-of-the-art CGI (Highlander style) were far more than I ever expected from a picture like Don't Go In The House. And I suppose it is quite horrific. But then, I'd recall the death of Delecroix in The Green Mile as far more painful to watch in comparison. I would say the more disturbing aspect of the scene is the mechanical, laborious manner in which Donny carries it out. Albeit a little batty, so far he has come across as a relatively meek fellow, but the way he torches the girl like he does every day at work...it feels as meaningless as a porn actor having sex with his wife at night.

Donny starts hearing voices. Encouraging him to burn the evil out of others. Seems like the Old Lady is getting bored and jealous out there on th'other side. He collects a couple more victims, and chars his mother's body, and arranges them in a macabre Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style family. Now a colleague, Bobby (Robert Osth), calls to see what has kept Donny from work for a week. He invites him out with suggested hooker arrangements made. Hesitant at first, Donny agrees, and hits the clothing store to purchase some disco-worthy gladrags. There he is served by a hilarious camp salesman, who kits him up in a surprisingly plain suit, so when he rolls up to the disco he feels kind of uncomfortable.

Well, it's uncertain whether the promise of whores is really fulfilled. It seems more like Bobby has met two young women who agreed to go out for the night, and he... filled in the gaps, so to speak. They seem nice. Not really whore material. Everyone is eager to dance except our valiant hero, and the poor girl who gets foisted upon him makes the mistake of being a bit too insistent with a secret psycho. Hey -- easy thing to do. As he is sat at a candlelit table, the girl grabs his hands and tries to pull him towards the dancefloor, rather carelessly holding his bare arms over the flame. *Momma Flashback* Cue the publicly alarming episodes which finally draw outside attention to Donny's shenanigans. He freaks out and throws the flame in the girl's face, setting her hair alight and promptly legging it.

During his workless week, Donny anxiously consulted with Father Gerrity (Ralph D. Bowman), telling him of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, and of his murderous tendencies as a result. Gerrity advises that Donny forget it all and move on, that what's in the past can't hurt him. So Donny tried this, but as the little incident in the nightclub demonstrates, it's not had the greatest success rate. So along with the alarmed Bobby, who is left to deal with two girls whose night has been little of what was promised, Donny also has Gerrity looking for him.

He has meanwhile picked up a couple of drunk chicks looking for a ride to the nearest available booze-jockey. Having developed something of a flair for bringing chicks home, he offers them a much better night at his house. They're drunk, and dumb (deadly combo) so gladly accept and start obnoxiously snooping around once they get to the Kohler place, as dumbass victims often do. To be honest, if I invited a new 'friend' to my house, went to get drinks, and came back to find them snooping through my bedroom, I'd be pretty pissed too.

The Priest-Whoremonger duo descend upon Donny's house, freeing the drunk girls from their topless captivity, and taking on the Fire Demon. Donny suits up, and tries to barbecue Gerrity, who is rescued by Bobby, prompting the psycho to barricade himself in his creepy Family Den. Now here's the cool ending I didn't see coming... the Mother-shaped jerky and her poor companions start to creak to life and edge menacingly towards him. I wonder if perhaps the ending sequence of Tony Scott's wicked The Hunger was inspired by this far less stylish example. But dontcha love it when the Insanity card is played throughout, only for the Supernatural card to be suddenly whipped out like a Thai bride's cock at last minute?! What a riot!

I mean, that's assuming that this isn't just another manifestation of Donny's increasingly menacing psyche. If nothing else, Don't Go In The House lends an ear to the lonely, abused souls who suffer pain and degradation. Donny's seeking of redemption in the form of Gerrity demonstrates his ultimately good nature, and he is clearly a tortured man. But what could be learnt from the movie? I suppose, the only lesson the duration of this pretty decent horror teaches can be best summed up by its title, or better by some of my own suggestions. The aim of Don't Go In The House is to warn audiences Don't Piss Off Child Abuse Victims.