"Justine"(1968)d/Jesus Franco

Tonight we examine the screen adaption of a book once called "the most abominable book ever engendered by the most depraved imagination"(that's a tall order,shorty) by no less than Napoleon Bonaparte, resulting in the thirteen year imprisonment of its author;a man known the world over as the father of Sadism, the Marquis DeSade.An ambitious undertaking for any director, granted, and somewhat ironic that none other than Jesus Franco would helm the project during one of his more prolific and respectable periods of work.Perhaps the true irony here is that Franco doesn't bung the whole production down the lavvy, despite his signature eternity-long zooming hand held shots that often end up blurred and out-of-focus, or more often, on some broad's hairy gravy boat, on display for all to see.In this film, the bush just happens to belong to the daughter of silver screen swashbuckler,Tyrone Power,whose fatal heart attack came ten years earlier in 1958, and not directly after screening Romina in her birthday suit here as one might deduce.Also lending credibility to the Italian production are performances by Franco regular Maria Rohm, the one and only Klaus Kinski(who's kind of wasted here, only bagging silent screen time as DeSade himself), the actress behind the husky screen voice of Pazuzu in The Exorcist, Mercedes McCambridge, and even local great Jack Palance, who's not only appropriately off-the-chain as a sexually deviant libertine here, he also levitates for anybody interested in seeing that sort of thing.Nothing would surprise me at this point after checking out some of the search topics that bring readers to the Wop every day.Y'never know.So does Franco do the literary pornography of DeSade any justice?Read on for my verdict.

DeSade(Klaus Kinski)lets his quill do all the talking.
As we begin,the Marquis DeSade(Kinski)relates the sad tale to the viewer from the confines of prison, tortured by hallucinogenic images of, well...bare-assed women being tortured(I'm pretty sure he grooved on this sort of thing IRL).Juliette and Justine(Maria Rohm, Romina Power)get thrown out of a nunnery when their father unexpectedly dies.When Juliette's friend, Madame de Buission, turns out to be a brothel madam, the more virtuous and pure sister, Justine, bows out gracefully, while her nasty whorish sister Juliette willingly sets up camp in the whorehouse, learning all the carnal skills to make herself the apex prostitute.Meanwhile, things for Justine go from bad to progressively worse.A passing priest jacks her up for her gold doubloons and passes her on to a fat old scumbag named Du Harpin, who frames her with a gold amulet stolen from his master, Monsieur Derroches, ultimately landing her in prison.There she is befriended by Dusbois(Mercedes McCambridge),a gravelly-voiced she-assassin who takes pity on her for her innocent looks, and incorporates the young girl in a daring escape plan involving a set fire.Her sister, meanwhile, has honed her treachery to a fine point, adding murder to her growing list of unscrupulous talents; killing her madam and a rich client to boost her own pile of duckats.When Dusbois' henchman vie for dibs on deflowering their new young accomplice in the forest, she makes her escape, finding shelter and love for a short time in the home of a painter named Raymond.

Dusbois(Mercedes McCambridge),a condemned virago, still manages to set aside some quality gypo dancing time.
Her happiness with Raymond is short-lived though, as the police inquire as to her whereabouts, forcing her to flee into the woods, coming upon the shrewd and loafer-light Marquis de Bressac, who hires her as an attendant to his wife, the Marquise(genre fave Sylvia Koscina), that he's been planning to eighty-six all along.When she refuses to kill the woman for him, he kills her himself with poison and frames Justine anyway, branding a huge M(for murderer) between her smallish(but appetizing just the same!) busom.At the same time, her sister Juliette has amassed a small fortune from her wicked ways that she no longer fancies sharing with fellow prostitute Claudine, so she sinks her in the drink while bathing in a river.Just when things seem to be looking up for Justine as she finds herself in a chateau occupied by a monastic brotherhood led by Father Antonin(Jack Palance), she discovers in horror that the men are perverted hedonists in search of the highest forms of physical pleasure, torturing women that they keep as sex slaves.During a ceremony where Antonin plans to reward Justine for rapidly learning their philosophy by releasing her through torture-killing her(Englebert Humperdinck would not be amused), things go wrong and she escapes once again.Her brief lover Raymond rescues her again only to have Dusbois abduct her again, forcing her to appear nude in a stage show where the crowd notices her murderess brand, causing her to be dragged off by the police again(Phew!).Before the King's men can enforce their justice though, she is noticed by a minister's mistress who saves her life.The woman of position turns out to be Juliette herself, confessing that her life of big black evil badness turned out be less fulfilling than she thought, and her sister Justine would finally be rewarded despite her long-standing misery.Justine takes up at the palace with her sibling, and is reunited with her lover, Raymond.Awwww, that's nice.

The sweet and virtuous Justine(Romina Power), willing to break it all out for love and art.
Surprisingly, the movie is as reasonably close to the book as one could expect here, sparing audiences Justine's death at an untimely lightning bolt after confessing her sins to her sister(!).I dunno, I woulda dug seeing that, to be truthful.Franco sandwiched this release between 99 Women and Eugenie, The Story of Her Journey into Perversion, before moving on to Venus in Furs, and two Christopher Lee vehicles, The Bloody Judge and Count Dracula, the following year.The oft-nude Power would continue on in Italian film for decades, adding singing, writing, and painting to her already impressive repertoir.She does an adequate job here(though she's at least five years older than the literary model fyi), always looking the right mixture of innocence and untapped sex appeal.McCambridge, who also landed a part in 99 Women as Franco-philes will already know, bagged herself a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1949 and was once called the greatest living radio actress by none other than Orson Welles himself.Tonight's review will finally break the string of three wop movies we've had here recently, though it should be noted that a two wop Franco movie is like a three wopper for other directors, in most cases.Worth a look!

Jack Palance's portrayal of Father Antonin is based entirely on a chunk of Prosciutto di Praga...believe it....or not.

"Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma"(1975)d/Pier Paolo Pasolini

The year was 1985.I had just received another package of movies from a good friend of mine in Chicago who I'd been buying mailorder original genre vhs tapes from,and amongst the titles in this particular shipment was an obvious bootleg with a zeroxed sleeve glued over a common vhs dustcover.His packages usually came with a funny,upbeat letter,peppered with personal updates and pleasant small talk.Not the case this time."You asked about Salo' in your last letter.I liked it so much I passed my own personal copy on to you.ENJOY.",was all it said.All I had asked previous to this sudden sombre tone,was if he had ever heard of the movie,and perhaps expressed some interest in seeing it for myself,after reading the title in someone's list of necessary cinematic evils.I'd seen all the others on the list,and quite frankly,none of them were all that evil.That afternoon,I ate dinner in front of the parlour television and screened Pasolini's infamous final film.Perhaps I should say,I tried to eat dinner,before the nauseousness took over.What passed before my eyes that day was the sickest,most degenerate and perverted excuse for a movie I had ever seen up to that point.I've probably seen a few that give this one a run for its money since,but I'm not a fifteen year old anymore,unfortunately.
A transpositive satire based on the notorious "120 Days of Sodom" written by the Marquis De Sade,and even more loosely,on Dante's Inferno,Salo' replaces the most cruel and depraved writings of the Marquis with vicious unsympathetic barbs against human nature,the struggle for and ultimate corruption of absolute power,and of course,fascism.Limply placed political slander aside,this is a brutal movie,certainly not for all cinematic tastes;I liken it to the cinematic equivalent of Serrano's "Piss Christ".Is it art?Is it a masterpiece or simply a vile piece of shit dreamed up by yet another pseudo-intellect-cum-pervert?I'll let you draw your own conclusions on what exactly it is,and where it belongs.What follows,then,is the review I swore I'd NEVER be able to write...

"Stool inspection again??" bemoan the curvaceous commie captives.
Anteinferno:In the fascist-occupied region of Italy at the tail end of World War Two,four powerful leaders(The President,the Duke,the Magistrate,and the Bishop)devise a twisted plan to retain absolute power for themselves,realizing their reign is on borrowed time with the impending allied advance.First,they agree to marry each others daughters.The second step is carried out by armed gestapo,who kidnap eighteen of the rival partisan/communists' children,nine boys,nine girls,taking them to a remote palace for a brutal four month period,accompanied by four middle aged whores whose ribald and depraved tales of carnality will sexually arouse the leaders into fleshing the stories out on their young captives.
Circle of Manias:Mrs. Vaccari(Hélène Surgère) relates mild,non-invasive stories of sexual perversity(at the ripe old age of six!) to the men,who chastise the prostitute for not going into more lurid descriptive details describing the acts she once performed:i.e. the size of the solicitors' genitals,the intensity of their climax,etc.,etc.The children are told they are already dead to the outside world,and they must adhere to even the most degenerate demands of the men at all times,else their names will be written into a book,assuring them a fate far worse than any death one could dream of.They force the naked children to act like dogs on leashes,barking and begging for tablescraps,which one of the leaders jams full of nails and forces a young girl to eat,tearing her mouth apart.Good little doggie.

Golden showers bring righteous power;The Duke is A number one with this girl's number ones.
After the Circle of Manias naturally comes the Circle of Shit:After hearing the next whore's deuce-based debauchery,the Duke,aroused by the sight of a young girl crying for her dead mother,drops his trousers and pinches one off in front of everyone,then forces her to eat it with a spoon.All the children are fed a diet of spoiled food,then their bedpans are checked nightly to make sure they have not defecated,in preparation for an elaborate shit feast(!).At the dinner table a giant silver platter of human excrement is brought out,the cross-eyed President tells shit jokes with his shit-covered mouth,then shows everyone his fancy ass,demanding that one of the male guards penetrate it for him.There's even a male-on-male shit kiss in here somewhere.
The Circle of Blood begins with an elaborately bizarre mock-marriage between the guards and the leaders,after which the Bishop takes it in the shorts from a guard with a monster endowment.Then the captives start to rat each other out to their kidnappers;one girl is found to be hiding a photograph(not allowed!) which leads to two other girls having a sexual relationship after lights out(unacceptable!)which leads to one of the fascist guards sleeping with a black maid,both of whom are dispatched with bullet-riddled domepiece death for doing so.Finally,all of the captives who somehow broke rules or refrained from obeying the leaders in some way,ending up in the book of names,are brought out to the courtyard,to be tortured and killed horribly in a bloody orgy by the men and their guards for their disobediance.Scalpings,brandings,eye-gougings,tongue removal,genital burnings,gang rapes,everything goes at this party,with the leaders voyeuristically taking turns watching the sick spectacle through binoculars in a picture window while the remaining three participate(and form a chorus kickline in their bathrobes.Nice.).Two young collaborators,desensitized by the horrific violence before them(and acted out upon them) have become fascist guards,and dance a waltz together.

If thine own tongue offends thee,have a group of semi-nude perverts cut it out for you.
Pasolini,a gay Marxist and so-called intellectual in a country torn by perpetual power struggles between communism and fascism,rubbed both sides the wrong way throughout most of his career,ultimately leading to his brutal murder,where he was allegedly called "a dirty communist" and "a piece of shit" before being beaten to death then driven over by car multiple times after soliciting a male prostitute for sex and driving to Ostia where he was killed.Personally,I don't think its entirely out of the question that this,his final movie,a scathing and visually disgusting satire of Mussolini's regime in World War Two Italy,was the final nail in his casket.Despite what those who would champion this sort of thing as a cautionary tale of the evils of fascism and power,you can't help but think the moral of the story is a thin facade for the jollies that sex freak Pasolini got from the subject matter itself,and presenting it all to the audience without an iota of humanity behind it.Taken as a moral warning,the perverted leaders are far too cartoonish to ever be taken seriously by anyone with half a brain(Beware the Duke with a beard full of piss!The cross-eyed President with a mouth full of shit!The sadist Magistrate with his whip and nail-laden cheese!The gay Bishop who's a sucker for enormous penises!),and on this level,it fails miserably.Pasolini was merely an extreme pervert playing out his OWN twisted fantasies here,and it's plain to see.Politics aside,the film does precede torture porn like Hostel by a few decades,and is worth a look if that's your bag.Truly one of the most outrageously over-the-top films ever made,and for that and that alone,I give it:

"Fibromyalgia,my shitty ass!",exclaims the President,"Smell this candle's papaya and mango fragrance!"