A Thousand Pleasures (1968)

Director: Michael Findlay

Starring: Janet Banzet, Uta Erickson, Michael Findlay, Linda Boyce, Kim Lewid, Donna Stone, John Amero, Roberta Findlay

More info: IMDb & Something Weird Video

Tagline: Trapped by the fury of each other's white-hot emotions!

Plot: Michael Findlay stars as a misogynist who murders his wife but then realizes he's not the only sicko in town when he's abducted by crazed lesbians who keep a grown woman in diapers and a crib sucking her thumb as "Baby". You've got to see this misfit forcibly whipped and beaten into breast feeding.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? I kind of think I might.

The film opens with Richard washing dishes with his nagging wife berating him in the next room. It's the usual, "you can't do anything right" kind of shit. Richard decides to shut her up for good. Cue groovy music and hot dancing girl for the opening credits!











Richard's driving with his dead wife in the back. For some dumb reason he picks up two hitchhikers and one of 'em gets a little too curious.

"Guess what, Jackie? He's our boy! He's coming home with us."

JACKIE: Yes, to meet Little Baby!

"How's my pretty little baby."

All of the dialogue was recorded in post and Richard's voice has even less inflection than Ben Stein's if you can believe it. He can deliver lines like the worst of them!

"I've seen some nuts before but these two must've escaped from a fruitcake!"

"She was doing things to herself that babies weren't supposed to do and I thought to myself that I had something she could enjoy much more than that skinny candle."




I think it's the string quartet music that really elevates this to art. This is art, right?

"Whatever she put in that tea hit me like a concrete lullaby."

A minute late Richard escapes! But wait! There's a man wishing to do harm to him with...a baguette! NOOOOOO!

"When I woke up I saw them standing over my like naked Amazons."

"Why are you keeping me here?"

"I'll tell you why. We've been raising this demented girl as a baby but it's not the same thing. We want an infant to raise from birth as our own. We two alone, of all the girls in this house, are true lesbians. We feel no passion unless it is in the moist clutch of another woman. We revel in the hot carresses of female voluptusousness and the ecstasy of breasts squeezing upon breasts and soft, delicate pubes carressed by a pink tongue."






After a little show of their affection toward one another, one of the girls jerks Richard off in a rubber.



"Now that fat freak Davis will have to keep in line when he doesn't know what we did with his dead wife's body!"



Then Anna gives Richard a bath and a massage. She's got more bush than Kenya!








Next we have a strange little party...



























Belle (or whomever. I forget who's who) rubs one out solo.







Booberella (Anna) tells Richard he's got to get out or the other girls will kill him.


The chase is on!










Caught!




One of the girls whacks the shit out of him with the fireplace shovel, stick his feet in the fireplace to make sure he won't run away again and leave him passed out.






He comes to, grabs and knife and...












Bruno knocks him out...AGAIN!


Suffocation by boob?





Yep! Not a bad way to go, I suppose.



And then...






"Hold me. Come back with me and take care of Baby. Baby needs us both. Together we can be happy, happier than we ever were before."


"Oh, Anna, I didn't think you were interested in me anymore."


"Come, Anna, tomorrow is another day."



Well, there you have it. I'm practically speechless. It's not really that great of a film in the big scheme of things but all of the elements come together for something truly special. I totally dug it. It's barely over an hour, it's got A LOT of great nakedness, all of the dialogue (which is so bad it's good) was done in post making it feel odd, the acting is...there are people on screen doing things, the story is nutty and fun and the music choices are all over the place from classical to psychedelic. A THOUSAND PLEASURES surprisingly works despite everything that's stacked against it. I'm really curious now about Findlay's other films. He was only 30 when he made this one and he cranked out another 17 pictures after this before his freakish death in 1977. This is the second Michael Findaly picure I've seen this year after SNUFF (1976). I must see more...