We Await. Charles Pinion, 1996.
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Edition screened: Saturn’s Core Blu-ray, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 55 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Saturn’s Core BD also includes Pinion’s Red Spirit Lake (1993).
Red Spirit Lake. Charles Pinion, 1993.
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Edition screened: Saturn’s Core Blu-ray, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 69 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 02.5/5❤
The Saturn’s Core BD also includes Pinion’s We Await (1996).
Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll. Ray Dennis Steckler (as Sven Christian), 1969.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 77 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
This is about as good and bad as an erotic underground performance art film possibly could be.
Sex & Fury (Furyô anego den: Inoshika Ochô). Norifumi Suzuki, 1973.
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Edition screened: Discotek Media Blu-ray, released 2004. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 188 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Discotek release surprised me with three or four on-screen interpretive comments, nicely positioned at the top of the screen in a discreet font. They provided two-sentence explanations of cultural references such as the koi-koi card game or a notorious Japanese anarchist. Appreciated and enjoyed.
I also enjoy spinning my wheels about how much I hate comic relief in film. Who is this audience that I’m told needs relief from - cannot bear another moment of - the tension or beauty or intrigue that binds the film together? Maybe it’s about that other kind of relief, the bodily kind, and gomer-goober scenes in a film are permissive cues for that audience sitting in the frequency-and-urgency section to turn their heads toward a companion, phony horse-teeth silent laugh while placing their hands on their thighs, extend that posture adjustment to a standing position with “I’ll just be a minute,” a quick shrug and more horse teeth as though something’s funny.
Sex & Fury stars Reiko Ike and Christina Lindberg in a B-level Lady Snowblade-style film. The cultural comments are the opposite of comic relief. You can turn off your brain, enjoy the topless swordplay, and allow Discotek’s good annotations to provide a little much-needed intelligent relief.
Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood. Ed Wood Jr. and Boris Petroff, 1962-1975.
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Edition screened: Severin Blu-ray set, released 2024. English language. Runtime of four feature films approximately 239 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals in any film.
The Severin set includes four feature films:
• ‘Necromania’: A Tale of Weird Love! (1971, Ed Wood Jr. as Don Miller, 53 minutes)
Watchable and unexpectedly sensual.
• The Only House in Town (1971, Ed Wood Jr. as Flint Holloway, 54 minutes)
Almost unwatchable; mostly disjointed scenes of chasing around in a semi-derelict house. Internet comments that the film is “unfinished” are generous.
• The Young Marrieds (1972, Ed Wood Jr. as Richard Trent, 68 minutes)
Also unexpectedly sensual and moderately entertaining.
• Shotgun Wedding (1962, Boris Petroff; written by Ed Wood Jr. as Larry Lee, 64 minutes)
This harmless hicksploitation film with no nudity or erotic content of any sort is the winner in the bunch. It would pass as an unusually entertaining double-length episode of The Beverley Hillbillies and features three attractive young women in Ozark-sexy getups who break into scenes with lines like “Pa! The preacher fell in the hog wallow!”
The sophisticated musical score of Shotgun Wedding is striking. Because the script, acting, and production are indistinguishable from The Beverley Hillbillies or Petticoat Junction, one expects mindless bits of incidental music dolloped out two or three measures at a time rather than a well-executed bebop groove that runs almost continuously. The show-stopping scene is the wedding dance. We see a barn dance trio of banjo, acoustic guitar, and dobro, but we hear an excellent Dick Dale-style lounge-surf instrumental, fully choreographed for four couples and featuring one male dancer whose exceptionally polished moves and poise prove him as a serious professional dancer.
Opposite to Shotgun Wedding in every way are a series of nine mid-1970s stag loops made by Ed Wood Jr., included as bonus material on The Young Marrieds. Each of these is about 8:15 long, silent with clunky subtitles that stay on the screen for a long time and establish mood more than they summarize dialogue. Many feature John Holmes opposite the same red-haired actress. With the exception of The Two Faces of Kim, which consists simply of a transexual woman standing in front of a mirror shaving and doing her makeup to transform from Kim to Kim, these films are shockingly crude and obscene. Erotic features from the 1970s and 80s currently distributed by boutique labels often mention “The Golden Age of Pornography.” I never really contemplated the significance of that phrase until these aggressively seedy loops made me turn up my collar and slink down the disreputable other side of the street.
• 15″ Commercial (1974)
• Devil Cult (1973)
• Doc’s House Call (1973)
• Girl on a Bike (1973)
• Notorious Landlady (1974)
• The Two Faces of Kim (1975)
• The Virgin Next Door (1974)
• The Virgin Next Door Part Two (1974)
• Western Lust (1973)
Furies Sexuelles (Les Marie-Madeleine)/Prostitution Clandestine. Alain Payet, 1976.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #Peek-005, released 2021. French language with English subtitles. Combined runtimes approximately 210 minutes.
Summary: No violence to animals in either film.
• Furies Sexuelles (1976, approximately 106 minutes) 4/5❤
• Prostitution Clandestine (1975, approximately 104 minutes) 2.5/5❤
Sister Emanuelle (Suor Emanuelle). Giuseppe Vari, 1977.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals. 3/5❤
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Joe D’Amato, 1977.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.
Summary: A constrictor drops from a branch and wraps around Laura Gemser, followed at 34:22 by a one-second close-up of the snake being shot. 2/5❤
Emanuelle Around the World (Emanuelle - Perché violenza alle donne?). Joe D’Amato, 1977.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.
Summary: Sexual use of animals. 2.5/5❤
Details:
1) A snake crawls on the groin of a nude bound woman, 1:07:50-1:08:50
2) Depiction of a German Shepherd sexually assaulting the same woman, 1:09:26-1:10:25.
Emanuelle in America. Joe D’Amato, 1976.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: A woman manually stimulates a stallion, 22:48-23:50. I’m calling this nonconsensual as the horse was tethered and did not reciprocate. 4/5❤
Caged Heat. Jonathan Demme, 1974.
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Edition screened: Included on Shout! Factory DVD ‘Roger Corman’s Cult Classic Double Feature’ Jackson County Jail/Caged Heat, released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 78 minutes.
Summary: A dead roach - looking a lot like a rubber toy - is dropped into a pot of soup, 35:18.
Keyholes Are for Peeping. Doris Wishman, 1972.
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Edition screened: Included in AGFA Blu-ray set The Films of Doris Wishman: The Twilight Years. English language. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A curious film even on The Wishman Curve. Perhaps because of hurt feelings at a cocktail party, Boy I’ll Show Them Wishman intentionally sets out to make a comedy and casts semi-cult legend Sammy Petrillo as the lead. Petrillo’s performance is engagingly entertaining to whatever degree you look back fondly on the guy from high school who worked hard to be voted Class Clown, and a no-speak-good-English Puerto Rican janitor is played for coarse yucks in his too-large role as the titular Keyhole Peeper. But for my tastes, the funniest aspect of the film is that none of the peeped-through doors actually has a keyhole. We repeatedly see our kneeling janitor pressing his forehead against a door above the knob where a keyhole isn’t, or squinting at the key slot of a knob. [Why Oh Why is there not a Wishman film called Key Slot of a Knob?] Rest assured, this is not a career arc-changing narrative conceit on the part of our director. It is just Oh Whatever Doris being Oh Whatever Doris, setting herself up for the next cocktail party.
Black Emanuelle 2 (Emanuelle nera N° 2). Bitto Albertini, 1976.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 0.5/5❤
Black Emanuelle (Emanuelle nera). Bitto Albertini, 1975.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language, with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.
Summary: Long sequence of peaceful photography of African wild animals. No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 3/5❤
Included on this BD is Kier-La Janisse’s 20-minute documentary The Reluctant Icon - A Tribute to Laura Gemser, along with several commentaries and interviews.