B.W.'s Top Twenty Sex Sirens of Cult Cinema : The Top Ten

                    10) Adrienne Barbeau

                              9) Gloria Guida
 
                 8) Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith

                        7) Rene Bond

                       6) Corinne Clery

                        5) Madeline Smith

                             4) Ewa Aulin

                             3) Annie Belle

                      2) Francoise Pascal

                   1) Christina Lindberg

"L'alcova" (1984) d/ Joe D'Amato

We'll take a torrid turn towards the sexy tonight as we examine one of Papa Joe's sultry softcore Brass-esque period pieces from the mid-eighties, starring the source of my every Matool joke, Al Cliver, as well as the brunette bombshell from Avere vent'anni aka/ To Be Twenty(1978) and former Miss Italy 1975, Lilli Carati, D'Amato fave, the Black Emanuelle herself, Laura Gemser, and last, but never least, the angelic apple of my exploitative eye, Annie Belle, who'd not only outgrown the Lolita roles that comprised much of her early acting career by this point, but also the trademark bleached pixie hairdo in favor of lengthier brunette tresses. Naturally, you won't hear any complaints outta this guy.


"But I didn't want a slave, I wanted cornetti di crema!!"
Elio(Al Cliver) is a victorious soldier returning from an Abyssinian conquest to his Italian villa, bearing gifts for his lovely young wife Alessandra (Carati), who's been carrying on with his secretary Wilma (Belle) while he's been out expanding the empire for his Duce, who was political bedfellows with a fuehrer of his own, ahhh, you all know how that story goes by now... He surprises his spouse with a princess-turned-slave named Zerbal (Gemser), a gift from an African king, gracious for not having been snuffed out by the then-advancing fascist war machine. Alessandra initially hates the dusky gift ( Zerbal greets her with "Hello.Go and get yourself fucked." ),  at least until she's given the lanky woman in a kooky saliva-heavy ceremony, after which she's wrapped around Zerbal's impossibly long fingers, in more ways than one, as you had to know was coming.


"...now this is a very cool place to hit...", exclaims Elio (Al Cliver).
Perhaps incensed at not being able to give Elio his usual post boot removal blow job, Zerbal defiantly switches radio stations, breaks windows, and climbs trees barefoot ("Treat her like a pet, not a slave!" Elio scolds) until she finally turns her new mistress' racial slurs into 'ooh's and 'aah's, leaving a jealous Wilma as the odd lesbian out in the mix. Meanwhile, the jilted pantiless secretary and self-proclaimed 23 year old virgin teases and resists the advances of  his son Furio (Roberto Caruso), a fellow soldier and young guest, when she isn't wanking Elio off in the hallway as they both eavesdrop Zerbal and Alessandra in the bedroom. After a coke and champagne-fueled sass-off between the mistress and secretary, Elio returns with the equipment with which to make moving pictures, showing his three ladies what has to be the most vintage hardcore stag loop I've ever seen, and exclaiming, "We can do better than that!". Having gone belly up financially, he films his wife dressed as a nun, forcing her privates into the face of a bound up Wilma, before letting his filthy gardener Pepe rape her, on camera. Reunited with Furio, Wilma interrupts Zerbal getting a ceremonial slave lickdown from Elio, chucking the stolen stag film she'd made into a candle below, igniting the Abyssinian's gown, and bringing us to a fiery, vengeful climax.


My stone's gone from flint to jade over Wilma (Annie Belle).
The production values are top notch, and D'Amato has decorated the lush Italian countryside with appropriately beautiful people, none of which were strangers to softcore(only Carati made the jump to hardcore features), to play out his perverted power play here, and the performances aren't entirely flat as one might expect, given the prolific director's track record. I'd have given it three Wops if it didn't overextend itself towards the middle, but a solid double seems fitting for a movie whose plot mirrors the director's own life with a knowing smirk, having had to "resort" to pornography due to "economic" reasons, himself.


Amazing how she maintains eye contact with those obstructions in plain view. I know I couldn't do it.

"Laure"(1975)d/Ovidio G. Assonitis, Emmanuelle Arsan

When it comes to favorite Euro sex kittens of the seventies, French-born Annie (Brilland)Belle forever tops my list.Drinking in her faultless face, the aerodynamic curves of her body down to the familiar chestnut-hued pubic shrubbery of her mound, even momentarily, causes my Longinal spear to jut northwards like a natural compass pointing towards hot tantric sexcapades.After working with the late Jean Rollin in Bacchanales Sexuelles(1974) and Lips of Blood(1975) to commence her acting career, the platinum cropped Belle found herself to be one of the most sought after actresses in the exploitation genre once she relocated to Italy, scoring three roles in 1976 alone, with tonight's review, a late night softcore staple on cable during the eighties, released internationally as 'Forever Emmanuelle' to cash in on the carnal craze pioneered by French-Asian author Marayat Rollet-Andriane, being one of them.Rollet-Andriane wrote and appeared in tonight's feature under her nom de plume of Emmanuelle Arsan, and though she's also credited as director on the picture, her husband, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, a French diplomat who producer Assonitis claimed to be the true author of all books under the legendarily infamous pen name, handled the task himself, later asking to have his name removed from the credits when the producers toned down his script.Also aboard for this sexploitative little ditty are Al Cliver, Belle's beau for a number of years, whose storied work under Fulci and D'Amato remains among genre fans' fondest movie memories, and the gruff-voiced Orso Maria Guerrini, perhaps best known for his work in Castellari's Keoma(1976).

Annie, Annie, Annie per sempre!Sono pazzo per te, gattina.
Laure(Annie Belle) is a free-spirited minister's daughter, sans panties, in the Phillipines.Her old man, also a christian missionary and the director of L.I.P.S.(Lance Institute of Pacific Studies, seriously), gives an anthropological lecture about the hermetic Mara tribe that exist on a remote archipelago, and how they're spiritually reborn, Phoenix-style, through some fabled secret ritual he'd like to get the skinny on, while Laure handles the A/V aspect of the presentation, and some sapphic young minx performs cunnilingus on her under the table.At her beseeching, the resident philanthropist, a weatherbeaten old hippie, sanctions an expedition to shed more light on the mysterious Mara, because the idea "really turns him on".Not on my personal list, but hey, to each his own.Heading the expedition will be the leading authority on the lost tribe, Professor Morgan(Orso Maria Guerrini) and his Thai-babe assistant Myrte(Emmanuelle Arsan), who will also be providing emergency quim, since his wife finds herself pregnant and thus, unable to tag along.Representing L.I.P.S.(and how!)on the historic journey are Laure, and her latest flame, a filmmaker named Nicola(Al Cliver), that she even exchanges "matrimonial vows"(open to interpretation in this case, as the silver-cropped nymph is free to swap juices with whomever she pleases along the way, as we're reminded by gems of pseudo-intellectual hot air like, "Jealousy is an obscenity.") with, her father overseeing, before the group pulls a bedroom mazurka(Laure on Morgan, Nicola on Myrte in the shower) and finally departs, some fifty minutes into the movie.

"Unlike Matool, my tool is a cool place to hit", remarks Nicola(Al Cliver).
In between more hokey sexual philosophising comprised of dialogue nobody would ever say(“I still see love everywhere, but it’s you who shows it to me because you love everything.”) Laure dry-frigs a Filipino ride-thumber in the backseat of their car, and gives up the goodies to an impoverished Filipino bumpkin in his house while other peons drag the modest residence and set it afloat on a raft, while Nicola seems very content to peep-tom all the action on his telephoto lens-mounted 16mm camera, when he isn't skinny-dipping with her in a grotto swimming pool complete with picturesque waterfall.If the film has a "Holy fuuuuuck!" moment, it's this:Nicola and Laure are picked up in a helicopter as piloted by a drag queen named Dolly(Pierre Haudebourg) who hovers over the city in auto-pilot as a mid-air orgy between he/she, Laure, and his girlfriend(!) ensues in front of Nicola's camera lens, the footage from the adventure later serving as an aphrodisiac for the couple as it's being edited on a moviola.My, oh my.After what seems like a brief, long-winded eternity, the copulatative quartet finally finds itself in the picturesque jungle where Laure gets ample opportunity to skinny-dip, fuck by the campfire, and sunbathe in the buff in between hacking through dense underbrush until they finally stumble upon the mountain-dwelling, Moe Howard-haircut sporting Mara tribe who abruptly paint the young nympho silver and tag team her on the ground.That's the kind of rebirth I can get behind, folks.

Yeah, baby, just like that, but only in alpine white chocolate with a wicked Peyronie's hook to the right...
Tragically, Belle hasn't appeared in front of a camera since 1989.She followed up her star turn here with Annie(1976), Velluto nero(1976), and Un giorno alla fine di ottobre(1977), before later appearing in Deodato's La casa sperduto nel parco(1980), Rosso sangue(1981) and L'alcova(1985) for Joe D'Amato.Always a favorite of mine, for sure.Cliver's filmography includes Deodato's Ondata di piacere(1975), Velluto nero(1976), Mondo cannibale/White Cannibal Queen(1980) for Franco, L'alcova(1985) for D'Amato, and then there's his Fulci work:Zombi 2(1980), Il gatto nero(1981), L'aldila(1981), I guerrieri dell'anno 2072(1984), Murder Rock(1984), Touch of Death(1988), Il fantasma di Sodoma(1988), The House of Clocks(1989), and Demonia(1990).Safe to say he was one of Lucio's favorites, too, eh?If you buy what Linda Lovelace's autobiography, 'Ordeal', tells you, she was the original actress hired to play Laure, but refused to partake in the hardcore goodness found in the script rewrites, so she was given a lesser role instead, and dropped out of the production altogether soon after that.Assonitis claims it was her drug problem that sealed her fate, and that you can still catch a glimpse of her in the movie if you're sharp of eyeball.Face it, if this movie consisted of ninety-three minutes or so of Annie Belle sitting in a chair in various states of undress and cracking her knuckles, I'd still be enthralled enough to not only watch all the way through, but to think very favorably of both the performance and also the production itself.Luckily, tonight's movie, though somewhat flawed and slow to pay off, is a pretty artistic, well-photographed stab at sexuality which helps it achieve some of the top rankings of its genre class.On the scale, three sexy, sexy wops.Hunt down the definitive Severin dvd release, sharpish.

I'd totally throw on a Beatle wig and some Indio-in-a-can for some of this action.

"Rosso sangue"(1981)d/Aristide Massaccesi

A lot of you droogies' first experience with tonight's entry will have come with the Wizard Video vhs release back in the eighties,as "Monster Hunter" in a big box only slightly smaller than the average Irish girl's ass.Ease up,Molly,I'm just sayin'.Though it was often marketed as a sequel to Massaccesi's "Antropophagus",it bears little resemblance to that film,other than the casting of George Eastman in the antagonist role,and the several outstandingly original gruesome guignol-esque set pieces featured within.It plays more like an Italian Halloween rip-off than the aforementioned cult classic,yet still merited inclusion as one of the infamous thirty-nine Video Nasties successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in dear ol' Blighty back in'84,making the original uncut Medusa tape highly sought after in the collectors world.Aristide handles the red meat of the production with the same zeal of his fellow mediterranean colleagues,but fumbles when dealing with most of the scenes tying it all together,instead serving up repeated tear-shedding tedium in its place,apart from a lot of spirited smoking...I dig that,you know.Also interesting to note,is the German National Socialist Black Metal band who took their name from one of tonight's alternate titles,Absurd,before strangling one of their fans to death with an electrical cord.And you thought Hall and Oates had some unhinged promotions!The cast of tonight's focus includes Edmund (Pieces) Purdom,Christian(Caligula:The Untold Story) Borromeo,Katya Berger,and the always delectable Annie (House on the Edge of the Park)Belle,with a cameo from director Michele Soavi as a biker bound for the bodycount!Despite its weaknesses,Sangue is a fairly decent little slasher from a director whose main legacy will always be hardcore porn.Good stuffs!

You know the drill,this nurse is a little bit screwed.
At the outset,Mikos(Eastman) is being pursued by a man garbed in black(Purdom)through some dense woods.The chase leads the men to the grounds of a house,where the pursued unwittingly impales himself in the labonza on a gate spike,staggering to the house where he collapses,spilling his entrails on the floor like so much vermicelli into a colander.After he's taken to the hospital,the medics notice that he seems to be healing his own wounds without treatment.Sgt. Engleman(Borromeo),the head badge in charge,takes the mysterious man in black who's been hanging around,for questioning,but his lips will sink no ships.Soon afterwards Mikos breaks out of the hospital,skewering a nurse's head with a portable surgical skrewdriver in the process,and suddenly the stranger is ready to sing the sordid song to the authorites like Samantha Sang belting out her flash-in-the-pan hit, "Emotion" with the Bee-Gees on backup on Solid Gold.It seems he's a...biochemist priest(huh??)who runs a reasearch institute that Mikos managed to escape from after becoming contaminated by...umm,something or other,they're awfully vague here,so just throw in a "how come" of your own,I guess...which gives him the ability to regenerate dead cells and tissue,meaning he can self-repair any damage done to his body,save for his grey dome-sponge which,the priest relates,also happens to be the only way to kill him,and that naturally,the contamination has left him a pychopathic killer.Sounds reasonable enough to me.Mikos is struck by a hit-and-run driver,Dr. Bennett(who's apparently in some kind of rush to catch the football game at a friend's house with his wife,makes sense),while doing in a biker(Soavi),leaving the children,Katia(Berger),the disabled daughter with a spinal problem,Willy(Kasimir Berger)the incorrigible little bastard,and Emily(Belle),the delicious babysitter,as a veritable slasher smörgåsbord for the approaching "beard that slays".He introduces pickaxe-based death to a girl's skull cavity and parts the fissures in a bald orderly's skull with a bandsaw,leaving a superhuman maniac in a house with three virtually helpless victims.Let the chaos begin,right?Not exactly.

So that's where fresh pancetta comes from...
Emily prances around the house,little Willy watches entirely too much of a soap opera on television(which means,we end up watching entirely too much soap opera on television,if you know where I'm going here),the priest and cops drive around aimlessly,and the childrens' parents at a friend's house watching entirely too much of a football game(which means...yeah,that drill again)which adds up to roughly twenty minutes of screen time.I shit you not.Where was Mikos during this lull in the action?What was he keeping himself busy with the whole time?Don't be so goddamned inquisitive,horror fans,those details are Nihil ad rem to the mind-n-chunk blowing climax that follows.If you thought the drill and band saw deaths were a bit crass with prolonged focus on lurid details,you ain't seen nothin' yet.Mikos crosses paths with the already volcanically hot Emily,and decides to bake her head in an open oven,while she struggles,still alive.Slowly.Like,go and microwave yourself some Hot Pockets,pour yourself a drink,go out for a cigarette,come back in and he's still baking her frigging head slowly.At which point,Katia miraculously loses her traction,straps and weights,and squares off with the Beard to defend her annoying little brother,who she sends off to get help,from the "Boogeyman".She blinds him with a set of drawing compasses(!)before wailing away at his neck with a ornately fancy axe that an Appalachian goober might have bought off of the Home Shopping Network at three am,if she didn't already have it,finally decapitating him,"destroying the cerebral mass" once and for all.As if watching stuff like this on a regular basis doesn't have the same adverse effect on ours!

Mikos(George Eastman) is still waiting for her to pick an answer to the question he axed.
The score for tonight's entry was handled by Carlo Maria Cordio,a mash up of electronic synths,cheesy guitar riffs,and a reboot of some of the music he penned for Umberto Lenzi's "Mangiati Vivi" oddly enough.What's missing here is the creepy atmosphere that D'Amato(Massaccesi...tomayto,t'amato) produced for his earlier Antropophagus vehicle.Maybe it was the desolate Greek village,maybe the oatmeal n' latex pussed Montefiori(who also wrote Sangue) that struck a nerve in your humble N,but whatever the former had,the latter seems to be missing.If you're as heavily into Italian genre fare as I am,though,you'll definitely wanna score a copy of this flick for yourselves,if only for the gore effects and another loving look at Longtime girlfriend of Pier Luigi Conti aka Al "I'm a lucky,lucky man" Cliver, Annie Belle.The bottom line is this is a Massaccesi vehicle that isn't steeped in graphic depictions of the coital act,and still manages to score two wops on the scale.That,itself,is moderately impressive,is it not?

"That's for doing 'Murder She Wrote'!",Katia(Katya Berger)triumphantly exclaims as she raises Bradford Dillman's exsanguinated domepiece to the heavens.