"Bluebeard" (1972) d/ Edward Dmytryk, Luciano Sacripanti

 Sometimes, when an actor has truly "made it", as legendary British star Richard Burton certainly had by 1972, having snagged five Oscar nominations for 'Best Actor', and one for 'Best Supporting Actor' by 1970, he gets the opportunity to perform in as grandiose a chunk of seventies Eurosleaze as tonight's review, while surrounded by no less than eight of the most beautiful women in the world at the time. You've got Marilu Tolo, who'd appeared in Mio caro assassino(1972), Virna Lisi, who'd go on to appear in Lucio Fulci's Zanna bianca (1973), Karin Schubert, who'd turned up in Enzo Castellari's Gli occhi freddi della paura (1971),  Agostina Belli, who also show up in Giorgio Ferroni's La notte dei diavoli (1972),  and topping it all  off (for me, anyway) there's Nathalie Delon, Raquel Welch, Sybill Danning, and Joey Heatherton. For proper perspective,also try to remember that Dicky was going home to Elizabeth Taylor when shooting wrapped. Poor devil...


"This chaise makes my ass sore. Do you mind if I lay on my Belli?", asks Agostina.
Kurt Von Sepper (Richard Burton) is an Austrian WWI pilot, big game hunter, and member of the aristocracy, his bluish beard, well admired by all his nationalist chums, while his overactive appetite for a wide variety of strikingly beautiful women leads to each lovely's respective demise at his judgmentally murderous hands, in Bava-esque, giallo-licious ways.At least until the American pixie, Anna (Joey Heatherton), with true love in her eyes, comes along. She gives her new husband a pass after stumbling upon an old cleaning woman brushing the hair of the corpse of his dead, mummified mother. Stumbling into a secret freezer full of dead wives, on the other hand, she finds much harder to forgive. Von Sepper regretfully informs his enthusiastic spouse that she's joining the gruesome display and going on permanent bye-bye's before the sun rises, but she cunningly buys herself time by hearing extensive confessions to all of her husband's previous crimes first.


I'd say five Hail Marys, two Our Fathers, and an Act of Contrition for a swig o' the wine outta Magdalena's (Raquel Welch) tabernacle.
Through flashbacks, Greta (Karin Schubert) gets "accidentally" shot on a hunt after threatening to reveal the true extent of a war wound he'd received, then Elga (Virna Lisi) gets rubbed out by guillotine over her incessant warbling,  while Erika (Nathalie Delon) is a virginal model whose bedroom inexperience forces Kurt to hire a prostitute (Sybill Danning) to school her in the art of lovemaking. When the girls get too sleepover-y for his proper taste, it's the rhino horn chandelier for both of them. Magdalena (Raquel Welch) is a nymphomaniac-turned-nun whose constant flow of graphic carnal confessions earn her an asphyxiation in a nearby casket. Brigitte (Marilu Tolo) is a gun-shootin', hangbag puntin', bundle of feminism whose mile wide masochistic streak leaves Kurt no choice but to extinguish her. Then there's the brattish Caroline (Agostina Belli) who also doesn't make it to the final reel. A guy who couldn't hit it off with any of this crumpet'd have to be impotent...like Kurt is, surprise, surprise. What ensues, I'll leave you to experience for yourselves.


"I understand the 'milk,milk' paht, dahling, it's when you go 'round the corner that confuses meh."
For the perverted section of Woprophiles out there (hopefully every last one of you!), all of Burton's co-stars put their fleshy wares on full display here, save for Raquel Welch, who looks just as fine in a nun's habit as she does in a bathing suit, any old damned way. The soundtrack, by maestro Ennio Morricone, is top shelf, as always, full of allusion and character. While we're on the subject of moods and maestros, the film's atmosphere is notably thick with the brightly colored influence of  Mario Bava, the artificial bodies lending an air of dark humor about the production, as well. Bluebeard isn't perfect, but there's more than enough beauty in front of the lens, and behind it, as well, to make this a highly enjoyable screening, and a three Wop score sounds reasonably fitting. Equally artsy and exploitative, see it.


"What, no Francoise Pascal or Christina Lindberg?!!?", begs the Baron (Burton). 

"Candy" (1968) d/ Christian Marquand

Ewa Aulin is probably my favorite blonde of the late sixties/early seventies, exuding a child-like innocence with sensuality so pure, your heart'd probably stop if you tried to snort a line of it. Nowhere is this more evident than her 1968 star-studded counter-culture sexploitative romp, Candy, based on a satirical update on Voltaire's Candide in the form of Terry Southern's novel (but you knew that already). Unfortunately,  Ms. Aulin's acting ability never attained the same levels as her beauty, and this is also painfully obvious to anyone watching the movie, with the bubbly starlet often phonetically sounding out words like she's never heard them before. Propping her up throughout, like a theatrical crutch, are the likes of Richard Burton, John Huston, John Astin, James Coburn, Walter Matthau, and Brando himself. So she's no Bette Davis. She's fucking great to look at.


I'd give the Gobstopper to Slugworth for some of this Candy (Ewa Aulin).
Mr. Christian (Astin) has got his square hands full with his teenage daughter, Candy (Aulin), who's snuck off to see Mac Fisto(Richard Burton), the great poet/piss artist who tries to compromise her morals in the back of his glass-bottomed limo (praise heaped upon the upskirt Gods here), as driven by his faithful manservant, Zero (Sugar Ray Robinson), on a ride home from school, with her father walking in on the self-pickled performer raping a mannequin as his daughter sinks Emmanuel the Mexican gardener's (a completely rotten Ringo Starr in his acting debut) balls atop the pool table. While sending Candy off to live with her libidinous uncle (also John Astin), Mr. Christian is knocked unconscious on the airport runway by Emmanuel's vengeance-minded sisters (with no less than Florinda Balkan among their ranks!) just as they board a plane full of soldiers, as led by General Smight (Walter Matthau), and he naturally tries to play 'hide the bayonet' with Candy at 50,000 feet, before sky diving after his men. I'm starting to notice a pattern developing here...


Flint's knocking at yer backdoor, and he's comin' in.
Back on Terra firma, Candy's unresponsive father is operated on in New York by Dr. Krankheit (James Coburn), an unorthodox neurosurgeon who implants an electrical outlet into the back of his domepiece (later used to power a transistor radio at the raucous after party), triumphantly flipping a bloody bird at the medical theater before helping Candy with her...posture. Ahem. When the patient deliriously wanders out into the street, Candy gives chase, after which she's fucked inside a grand piano by a hunchbacked art thief (Charles Aznavour), groped by a pair of beat cops, and enlightened (insert another 'ahem' here, please) by a phony guru (Marlon Brando) who lives inside a customized eighteen-wheeler.She leaves him frozen solid and follows a mysterious hooded figure that turns out to be her father into a collapsing temple before strolling through a meadow in a plain white dress past all the colorful characters she has encountered along the way; her dress becoming more ornately decorated as she goes, finally returning to her otherworldly form and returning to the stars from whence she came.


"That doesn't feel like a 'Super 8' to me!!"
The striking Aulin turned up in such genre favorites as Giulio Questi's Death Laid An Egg the same year, and Aristide Massaccesi's Death Smiles on a Murderer as well as Jorge Grau's Legend of Blood Castle, both 1973, as well as an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus during it's premier season, interestingly enough. I think many negative critics of tonight's film have been unreasonably austere in their judgment. This one plays like a bump n' grind version of an early Jodorowsky journey, though you'll find more honest to goodness T n' A in Alejandro's work than you ever will here. The thrills, like most of the chuckles you'll encounter in Buck Henry's mirthfully satirical dialog, are cheap, harmless fun. A cult classic packed with groovy psychedelia and frenetic energy that entertains throughout that I'd deduce is easily worth three Wops on the scale.


Could you imagine Brando getting airborne like this in '78? Me, neither.

"Exorcist 2:The Heretic"(1977)d/John Boorman

ca·tas·tro·phe/kəˈtastrəfē/Noun
1. An event causing great and often sudden damage or suffering.
Usually, when a sequel fails, it's because it serves up a whole lot more of the same things the first movie provided to an audience who believed they wanted more of those things after enjoying them the first time round, then discovering that the familiarity that has replaced the excitement they originally felt has left them, more often than not, kinda flat.Duplicating all the wonderful, horrible things that make The Exorcist a genuinely terrifying box-office smash and one of the greatest horror movies of all-time apparently wasn't an option in John Boorman's sequel four years later, as Heretic not only avoids them completely, it seeks an identity all its own:a deliriously overblown, badly acted, perplexingly scareless, heavy-handed, putrid disaster full of unintentional laughs.The producers seemingly ignored the fact that William Peter Blatty and Billy Friedkin walked away from a creative pow-wow convinced that an effective sequel wasn't in the cards, and went ahead and evacuated their cinematic bowels anyway, with dollar signs in their eyes, resulting in shame and embarrassment for anyone foolish enough to put their name on this picture.Every aspect of this movie is effectively ineffective:Linda Blair balked at appearing in possession makeup of any kind, opting instead to reveal her teen chunkiness and inability to act worth a lick to the world, forever damning herself to roles in driftwood like Roller Boogie(1979) and Zapped Again!(1990).Never to be out-hammed, the oft-sozzled Richard Burton shouts every line and sweats like John Wayne Gacy if he guest starred on Xusa.James Earl Jones looks rightfully humiliated in his giant locust suit.Director Boorman(who hated the original!!!), normally on point, has nothing to work with here.Even maestro Ennio Morricone's soundtrack is a mishmosh of suspenseless bromidic disco rock that the Solid Gold Dancers wouldn't boogie to.The punchless story is farther from coherence than a Turkish Star Wars(Haven't reviewed that gem yet, have I? Hmmmmm)script as written by Ted Geisel.The MPAA must have imposed their R rating on the film out of pity since there's no nudity, sex, profanity, or violence either.In fact, I'm of the belief that the phrase "epic fail" was coined at a Heretic screening.

Wait.What.
A sweaty, loud priest named Lamont(Burton) is assigned by the Cardinal(Paul Henried) to the Church's investigation into Father Merrin(Max Von Sydow)'s mysterious death while performing an exorcism four years earlier at the MacNeil's residence.His inquiries first lead him to Regan(Blair), who only seems to be possessed these days by a slow metabolism and a burning desire to spend the whole running time wearing little else but unflattering sequined tap costumes and low cut nighties and says airheadedly, "I was possessed by a demon.Oh, but it's okay, he's gone now!".Seriously.While her actress mother is somewhere "on location"(translation:Ellen Burstyn wisely passed on this one), Regan has been roughing it in a lush Manhattan penthouse, still cared for by Sharon(Kitty Winn, who wasn't as wise as Burstyn it would seem) and treated by a psychiatrist named Tuskin(Louise "Cuckoo's Nest" Fletcher, who should have known better), who straps the girl's ample forehead and her own into what looks like an old wood grain eight track player with a lightbulb to travel into each other's subconscious via hypno-telepathy where the original exorcism plays out between Merrin and an obvious Regan stand-in (who didn't refuse to wear possession makeup) that causes Tuskin's heart to "fibrillate"(translation:heave suggestively and make inappropriate lusty noises) in the same manner that Merrin's did.Lamont, who's never seen or used this contraption before, mind you, exclaims "I know where she is! Help me to find her!" and goes under himself, prepared to hypnotize her heart back into beating normally. Later, Regan dreams of Pazuzu, who has taken the guise of a swarm of locusts(huh?) when he isn't possessing people with healing powers, preventing man's inevitable cerebral evolution where he will have achieved oneness with God, after Lamont later hypno-raps with the demon about it.He approaches the Cardinal with the idea of a Church-funded(!) trip to Africa(!!) to seek a man named Kokumo(James Earl Jones) who had survived Pazuzu's onslaught of hungry grasshoppers as a boy, and thus, might be able to teach him how to show Regan to oust the dormant do-badder.

I suppose this'd be terrifying if you were an unsprayed cabbage leaf.
In Africa, Lamont admits to tribesmen that he knows the circumstances behind their holy man's untimely plummet-to-death years earlier by flying there with Pazuzu during a trance(!!!), getting shelled with rocks by the nubians while a sequined Regan feels his pain at an embarrassing interpretation of "Lullaby of Broadway" thousands of miles away, taking a flopper off the stage.The combo priest/human sweat sprinkler system flies to the village of Jepti with the aid of Ned Beatty(what I said about Winn and Fletcher earlier?The same goes for you, Ned) and through telekinesis uses Regan(who's not hooked up to the contraption btw) to get the demon to help him track down the one man who'd defeated him in the past.Yeah, makes sense.Kokumo first appears to Lamont as a disgruntled tribesman-in-a-giant-locust-suit(think A Christmas Story's Ralphie-in-the-bunny-jammies uttering gems like,"If Pazuzu comes for you I will spit a leopard", and by "leopard", he means a sloppy cherry tomato) then as a scientist researching..drumroll... the damaging effects of locust swarms in Africa(what else).Lamont sweatily queries,"When the wings have brushed you … is there no hope once the wings have brushed you?"(verbatim btw, no exagerration) and Kokumo shows him a new breed of female "good locust" that has a calming effect on the evil swarm.A stroke of symbolism as artistically painted by a roller, methinks.After a cheap mixture of phony and real harrowing airplane sequence obviously thrown in to cash in on the disaster craze so popular at the time, Lamont and Regan end up at the Georgetown residence only to be pelted by packing-peanuts-painted-brown-to-resemble-locusts as thrown in front of a wind machine by production assistants, and confronted once again by Regan's possession double who morphs into what-shoulda-been-a-horny-slut-temptress-but-only-comes-off-as-a-gussied-up-busty-chipmonk and tries to seduce Lamont, who sweatily mauls the scantily-dressed teenager(!).Finally coming to his senses, he rips the impostor's heart out of her chest, signalling another locust/packing peanut swarm, which the real Regan dispatches by swinging an imaginary bullroarer over her head like a lasso while spinning in place.Wait.What.Then Tuskin, who's been outside chaotically battling a possessed Sharon the whole time while the building literally cracked open for some reason, turns Regan's guardianship over to the priest.Huh?If you're confused reading this, just wait 'til you actually watch it.

"You are gonna march yourself down off of that altar, and you are gonna call Aunt Mbvotu and thank her for your adorable new locust jammies, young man!"
Also deserving of embarrassment here is an uncredited pre-Diff'rent Strokes Dana Plato as a young autistic stutterer(really!).Well, let's let the poor girl rest in peace, instead.Then there are the names(Walken, Fonda, Carradine, Ann-Margret, Sarandon, Segal, Voight, Nicholson, Kubrick) who either turned down the movie outright, or wisely disappeared pre-stench.During the notorious premiere, the audience laughed and even threw things at the screen at a Hollywood Blvd. theater.Don't listen to the sparse few advocates kicking around the notion that Heretic "isn't as bad as all that", woprophiles, it's that laughably bad and worse.One wop.

You should be swinging that imaginary bullroarer at your agent's head, Linda.