Sexploitation

[Guest TSMAdmin]

Welcome to TheSmartMarks’ DVD section

 

In today’s column, I’m going to review a double-feature of two sexploitation flicks. For those who don’t know, in the ‘40s to the ‘60s (and probably in some places up into the ‘70s), there would be traveling "road shows" of films known as exploitation flicks. Exploitation flicks would often feature things such as violence, genetic defects/medical mishaps/accidents, and (in the case of sexploitation flicks) nudity/sex, that have always been and will always be interesting to people, but were strongly against the society’s moral codes and thus couldn’t be even alluded to in legitimate cinema or media (think of them as a carnival sideshow on film). Exploitation flicks are interesting today not only because of their historical insight into our society’s taboos, but because many of the more famous ones, like their carnival counterparts a century earlier, had well-advertised and well-written gimmicks that were able to trick people into buying tickets without knowing or caring what the actual show was (and often, how bad the actual show really was). Now that the intelligence quota of my introduction has been filled, I present some random musings:

 

If Heaven were food, it’d be double chocolate Milano cookies and fresh strawberries. I had my economics final today, and if I pass it, I don’t have to do any economics work for the rest of the year! Needless to say, I hope I pass it, but it was rather hard, when all that was going through my mind were scenes from...

 

Confessions of a Psycho Cat / Hot Blooded Woman (special edition double feature)

Something Weird Video (2001)

 

Film (complete with minor plot spoilers!):

Confessions of a Psycho Cat opens with a shot of somebody’s bare bottom at a party (after all, this IS an exploitation flick!). After a few minutes of random party/nudity/sex scenes, we are introduced to our first character, known as the junkie. He’s late for the party, and his friends are pissed. Little do they know he was hunted through Manhattan parks and shot with an arrow by Virginia, the titular "psycho cat". He explains to his friends at the party how Virginia, a rich, mentally imbalanced woman, invited him, an actor, and a wrestler to play a deadly game: each would get a check for $100,000, and if they lived through the day with Virginia hunting/stalking them, they would get to cash the check. If Virginia catches them, they die (don’t worry though, Virginia informs them that since they’ve all killed in the past, accidentally or intentionally, it’s OK for her to kill them).

 

As if the plot couldn’t already discern, Confessions of a Psycho Cat is a bizarre film, to say the least. It’s consistently interesting, and, somewhat surprisingly, actually works as a "real" movie (though there are plenty of pointless nude party scenes as filler to suggest otherwise). The camera angles during pivotal chase and killing scenes add an unnerving surreal quality, and the performance of Eileen Lord as Virginia is just as creepy. With her wide eyes, disheveled hair, and overacting, Lord creates Virginia as someone who is obviously crazy, and was born into a spoiled rich family on top of that (she reveals that she hunts the three men because she couldn’t go with her brother to Africa and wanted to have her own safari). Also, for the part deep within all of us that is so obsessed with celebrities and their mistakes, the wrestler is played by none other than the infamous boxer Jake La Motta! The film’s madcap pace (it’s less than 70 minutes long) adds to the suspense and freakish nature of the film, although sometimes the editing can get a bit messy. The reason for this, the back of the box suggests, is that the film was shot as a straight horror/suspense film, and the nude scenes weren’t shot and added until later (which makes sense, because most of the nudity is at the party, out of context of the story).

 

Whereas Confessions of a Psycho Cat is an enjoyable albeit very strange film that can be difficult to follow, the other film on the DVD, 1965’s Hot Blooded Woman, is just difficult to follow. I’ve seen it several times and still haven’t the slightest clue what the plot is about. From what I can gather, the film’s main character is Myrtle, who is a bit mentally unstable (although nowhere near to the extent of Virginia). She’s privy to seducing anything that moves, go-go dancing, and getting into catfights – all because her husband George wouldn’t have sex with her on their wedding night (!). She even attempts to stab him to death while he sleeps for this very reason. It sounds a bit interesting, but the editing is really choppy; every scene seems cut and forced into the next. Not only that, but the film takes far too much luxury with its images, foregoing any hope of suspense or feeling for the surreal experience of watching two men fight for ten minutes to some jazz/big band music, or Myrtle attempt to dance seductively to a blues song, "Hot Blooded Woman", that’s poorly dubbed over stock footage of a live band (several bits of the film’s sparse dialogue are poorly dubbed as well – is this a foreign film?). On the whole, it’s a mess, like its lead, and not a terribly fun film to watch either.

 

Redeeming Aspects:

Confessions of a Psycho Cat – Eileen Lord’s spookily effective performance as Virginia, Jake La Motta’s death scene (without giving too much away, it’s a really funny, messed up "tribute" to his boxing nick-name), and of course the obligatory pointless nude scenes as filler (after all, this IS an exploitation flick!).

Hot Blooded Woman – A surprisingly good big-band/jazz score (good thing too, since you hear enough of it), and the laughs that come from the unrealistic situation of a man who spends his wedding night at home with his wife and doesn’t want to get laid.

 

Presentation:

Both films are presented in good ol’ 4:3 full-frame, in glorious black and white. Confessions of a Psycho Cat has been digitally remastered, and it shows. Although there are still some film specks (particularly in the last few minutes, which they apparently forgot to clean up), there are nowhere near as many as in Hot Blooded Woman, which constantly suffers from barrages of film specks and lines from the source material (personally I think this adds to the "authenticity" of the film, but I can see how it would bother some people). Hot Blooded Woman also suffers from the Something Weird digital watermark of... uhh... weirdness (SWV, presented in a camcorder/VCR-clock style font in the lower-right hand corner). The digitally remastered Confessions, probably as a result of remastering, has no watermark. The sound for both films is an authentic-sounding Dolby

Digital Mono.

 

Special Features:

Something Weird has loaded this DVD with (watermarked) sexploitation trailers. The trailers included are: Confessions of a Psycho Cat (which gives away most of the movie’s surprises, showing that it’s not a new trend for trailers to give away all the good stuff), Bad Girls Don’t Cry, Come Play with Me, Fuego (which the trailer proclaims as so honest, shocking, and unforgettable it was banned in its country of origin, Argentina, and the director was forced to leave the country – has Tony Schiavone discovered the secret of time travel?), In Hot Blood, Olga’s House of Shame (the most interesting trailer of the lot, which shows that S&M has been on film for a lot longer than I thought; that’s probably a bad thing), Ride the Wild Pink Horse (which, unfortunately, is not as interesting as its title), Spoiled Rotten, Stefania, and Submission. Besides these theatrical trailers, there is also a ten minute compilation of sexploitation movie posters (Alice in Acidland!, Beautiful, Bloody and Bare!) and lobby cards with a few radio spots providing the background music (Teenage Mother! Cotton Pickin’ Chicken Pickers! Poor White Trash! I didn’t even know the FCC allowed sexploitation radio spots).

 

There’s also an "archival short subject" from the 1950’s, from a national psychiatry board. Though the back proclaims it to be about mental illness turning Don Murray into a psycho, it’s really about how parenting choices can affect how a child grows up. As usual for these types of educational short subjects, everything is totally over-exaggerated to reflect political pop culture ideals at the time (e.g. all the mom wants is for her son to love her, all the dad wants is for his son to grow up and become a doctor). The subject also presents how prospective parents can deal with little Wally when the Beav comes along. The way these old educational short subjects work is that they are either hilarious due to the misinformation or outdated ideas (the best example of this being the famous Reefer Madness), or totally boring. This one leans more towards the latter.

 

Overall:

This is the first Something Weird Video DVD release I’ve picked up (didn’t even know they made DVDs before). The main attraction is an excellent, thoroughly twisted film, and its pairing with a somewhat less entertaining other film, as well as the trailers and short subject, shows that Something Weird (who, for those unfamiliar, deals mainly in archival shorts, old trailers, and exploitation and b-grade films) knows how to work with the DVD format. I look forward to picking up several other of these double features, because at around $20 (I think I paid $17 for this), just the fact that there are two films per disc (I don’t know what special features, if any, the other SW DVDs have) makes this a bargain for those into obscure older material. Now if only there was a forthcoming release of Alice in Acidland, Teenage Mother, or Olga’s House of Shame... I mean, not that I’d buy them or anything.

 

Edward Robins

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"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about... [just] remember that

there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste." - John Waters