Satan's Baby Doll (1982)

Director: Mario Bianchi

Writers: Gabriele Crisanti, Piero Regnoli

Composer: Nico Catanese

Starring: Jaqueline Dupre, Marina Hedman, Aldo Sambrell, Giuseppe Carbone, Giancarlo Del Duca, Alfonso Gaita, Mariangela Giordano

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Tender young flesh seduced by the ultimate evil!

Plot: In the crypt of the remote castle of the Aguilars lies the recently-deceased body of Maria. Her husband Antonio is a jealous bully, his mute brother Ignazio is in a wheelchair peeping on his caretaker Sol, a novice. Also present are Miria, the couple's virginal daughter, and Isidro, a factotum who fears Satan's power. A frequent visitor is Juan Suarez, a doctor who wants Miria in a sanatorium for a month. She doesn't want to go. Isidro tries to exorcize the castle's evil spirits. Bodies pile up. Is Miria's mother truly dead, and who is Satan's tool?

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

Hmmmmm.  Where to start?  Director Bianchi thought it best to begin with a two minute softcore lesbian makeout session and you know what?  He was right.  The music over that (by Nico Cantanese, for his sole feature film) is pretty fucking of-it's-day-Eurosleaze great.  Sadly, that one motif is repeated enough over the first few minutes that you get the idea that he'd run out of ideas.  I counted two themes used in the picture with that first, main one playing 80% over the other one and you hear it A LOT, which got old fast.   The nudity, ahem, thankfully does not tire.

It needs to be said, before you stop reading, that there's a lot of nudity.  It's shocking, I know, because it's an Italian horror movie.  It's a small cast.  There are 3 women and 4 men.  Between this troupe of 7 actors, you get to see 3 different pair of tits (for a total of 6 - count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 boobs!), 3 glorious Euro bushes and two dicks.  Dicks, you say?  Yes.  More on that in a moment.  When the film needs to move, it does at a reasonable pace.  But there are many scenes that linger for a long, long time and over stay their welcome, and they all revolve around naughty bits.  Now, I know what you're thinking; "Hey, Scorethefilm.  What gives?  Don't you like the sex?".  I do, and thank you for asking.  However when the already overplayed and once memorable theme makes yet another go around AND the sex act feels like it's playing out in real time (because it takes a while) only it goes beyond that, then it's too much.  Sol (Giordano) pleasures herself in bed while the parapalegic, wheelchair bound Ignazio (Gaita) secretly watches on.  You'd think this would last 60 seconds or so but it goes on for a full four minutes.  This is softcore, not porn so no graphic stuff.  This is a frequent thing with this flick.  And then, BAM!  An hour in, someone looks like she's going to go down on Ignazio...

And then she does.  For real.  With hard dick in hand, she does her little mouth dance.  Alright, it seems that we now just went hardcore.  I can dig it.  A couple of minutes in you can tell that she's already at the point in the act that she ready to milk it for all it's worth, so to speak.  So she's fist pounding it like she's in the whack-a-mole finals and occasionally tries to restore life with her tongue, hoping that will light the nerve endings on fire, but that clearly isn't helping.  Look, I've been there.  It's frustrating when you're unable to finish on cue but it's also sad to watch.  She spent 4 full minutes trying to make that happen after she'd given up on the throat bath.  After that, she sets her sights on bangin' Antonio (Sambrell), her husband before she died, but this time, after another overlong speed bag session with his dick and her uvula, they have vaginal sex.  

 Now, you could make the argument that these two hardcore scenes help the story and I would not disagree in this case, but the sheer length of the scenes makes you aware that this is no longer artistic but rather excessive.  But that's just me.  Anyway, back to the movie proper... There's something strange going on that involves Antonio's dead wife from the beginning of the picture.  Is she alive or what?  What's making all this weird shit happen?  As the film goes on you get more and more until you know exactly what the fuck is going on in the last half hour.  Once that happens, bodies start dropping like flies and the kills are fun.   There's a bit of padding in addition to the sex and some of the dialogue exchanges get tedious where a character will repeat the same thought but with different words.  It's not an economic screenplay by a long shot.  Mood is more important.  And it didn't hurt that it was filmed in a castle, giving that Gothic vibe and the widescreen print I watched was dirty which adds to the sleaze factor.  Italian dub with English subs is the way to go.  It's no classic but there's a good movie in here somewhere.  Great fucking posters, right?

Female Vampire (1973)

Original title: La Comtesse Noire

Director: Jesus Franco

Writers: Jesus Franco, Gerard Brisseau

Composer: Daniel White

Starring: Lina Romay, Jack Taylor, Alice Arno, Monica Swinn, Jesus Franco, Luis Barboo, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Raymond Hardy, Anna Watican, Gilda Arancio, Roger Germanes, Ricardo Vazquez

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Maailman Kuulu Shokki!

Plot: Countess Irina Karlstein is the last in a line of vampires. Compelled to suck the life force from her victims during sex, her activities attract the attentions of Dr Roberts, who comes to realise that the spate of bizarre deaths currently plaguing Madeira have a supernatural source. Meanwhile a poet, Baron Von Rathony has become infatuated with Irina. She wants to reciprocate his love, but knows that to do so will surely mean the man's death.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

When I write a film score, this is how I want my name to appear on the screen...

That's actress Lina Romay as Countess Irina Karlstein.  She gets naked...A LOT!  This is a beautifully shot film with lots of pretty images.  This picture has several names depending on the cut.  I watched the 100 minute version which is really slow but in a meditative kind of way.

This could be the first interview with a vampire. Really, that's a reporter on the right asking the Countess about her vampire ancestry.

The Countess may be a mute but she knows the language of love!

That's Doctor Roberts played by the writer/director, Jess Franco.

Ahh, lesbian vampire mating rituals...

That scene above is actually pretty erotic.  You should see the Countess' face when she surfaces from her snack.  Scrummy.

There's no torture but it sure looks like there's going to be.

The Countess falls for Han Solo.  He's a poet...and a scoundrel. 

So I was in the mood for an early 70s, European erotic vampire movie and this one fit the bill. Like a lot of films in that sub genre, it's slow and it's slower than most but then it's designed to be that way.  It's a horror movie but there are no scares or even attempts at any.  It plays out like a meditative dream.  Daniel White wrote a lovely theme that sounds an awful lot like that Frank Sinatra classic, "I Get Along Without You Very Well", but it's the only theme in the movie.  The orchestral version gets the most play but then you get other variations done in different, more pop/elevator influenced, styles.  That's a problem because those don't work well and really date the picture plus it's total overkill hearing the same theme ad nauseum.  Other than the grossly repetitive score, it's an hour and forty minutes of relaxed vampire goings-on with wall to wall nudity, extended soft core sex scenes and very little talking.  I rather liked it but I don't recommend starting this after midnight with a glass of wine.  It'll put you to sleep.  I knew it was going to happen which is why I picked this type of flick.  It fit the bill.

Sock It to Me Baby (1968)

Director: Lou Campa

Writer: Ronald Edwards

Composer: N/A

Starring: Ileen Wreffer, Larry Hunter, Rosina Martin, Dina St. Helena, Gillian Martine, Illya Souvern, Ron Wreffer, Bobby Niles, Richard Bennett, Patrice Dinehart, Richard Kennedy, Linda Herb, Theresa Faiello, Dotty Kaly, Jeanne Serta, Alice Bozy, Carolyn Barbato, Tony La Rocca, Dom Conte

More info IMDb

Plot: A bored couple separately seduces young girls, when the husband becomes obsessed with and begins to pamper a young neighbor with disastrous results.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? Noop.

Now here's something I can sink my teeth into. Gratuitous 1960s Go-Go babes!

That's not me in the first pic although it would be (at first, until I surveyed the landscape and swooped in for the kills).  I dig shit like this.  B&W boobs are awesome (and so are the 60s washed out color ones).  Ron Baker (Hunter) is a bored husband of a wealthy and (unbeknownst to him) a closet lesbian.  She's not satisfying him sexually and so he drinks...and he gambles...and he's lookin' fer love in all kinds of places.  The thing is, his wife is bangin' some of the broads he is.  But that's OK for us viewers.  We get to benefit from it.

Ron's been drinking and he's got designs on an underage pretty.  Meet Tina (Wreffer).

She's a horrible actress.  But she does like to read Spider-Man comic books.

But then Ron likes to drink and fuck...and in that order.

Tina's got a nice ass...and cans to boot.

What saves this picture is the abundance amount of nudity, it's in black & white and it's only 85 minutes long which doesn't feel to bad.  Usually pictures like this are loaded with filler and they're boring as hell.  The music was hit and miss, with the latter being a somber jazz rendition of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen".  Talk about a buzz kill.  For what it is, it's reasonably entertaining although you'll have a hard time sitting through Ileen Wreffer's rough, childish acting.  She plays it way too young, retarded or high on the reefer (or all three).  Otherwise, it's not that bad.

Amuck (1972)

Original title: Alla Ricerca del Piacere
AKA: Hot Bed of Sex

Director: Silvio Amadio

Writer: Silvio Amadio

Composer: Teo Usuelli

Starring: Farley Granger, Barbara Bouchet, Rosalba Neri, Petar Martinovitch, Dino Mele, Umberto Raho, Nino Segurini, Patrizia Viotti

More info: IMDb

Tagline: He kidnapped beautiful women, forcing them to do what he wanted...AND HE WANTED EVERYTHING!

Plot:  Greta Franklin, a beautiful American blonde, arrives on an island near Venice and rings the door-bell of Richard Stuart, a famous novelist who lives in a beautiful house with his wife Elonora. She manages to be hired as Richard's new secretary, the former one having disappeared without a trace. What Richard and Eleonora do not know - yet- is that Greta has a secret motive for taking the job: not only did she know Sally, her predecessor, but she was her lover.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I'm not a huge fan of the Giallo (Italian murder mystery) genre.  Maybe it's because I haven't seen that many good ones.  The kills are usually cool and they're stylish but the pacing is generally slow and that can be a deal breaker if the picture doesn't have much else going for it.  AMUCK is different and I appreciate that. Barbara Bouchet always brightens up a any picture she's in and back in the 70s you could pretty much count on her getting naked so that's a plus.  By the way, there's a lot of nudity in this picture.  The love scene flashbacks are in slow motion and that's not a bad way to do it.

Teo Usuelli's score is all kinds of groovy.  I was totally diggin' it and the slower tracks felt an awful lot like Ennio Morricone so I was surprised seeing Usuelli's name in the credits instead.  The picture has some nice moments and a reasonably good finale but the highlight is definitely Bouchet.  The movie isn't nearly as exciting as the poster below suggests, as great as the poster is.

Mark of the Whip 2 (2010)

Director: Trevor Barley (as Roman Nowiscki)

Writer: Jakes Spear

Composer:  Frank Cossak

Starring: Tiffany Love, Maria Vaslova, Stacy Silver, Kate Blond, Julia Orlova, Sarka Kay, Zdenka Navotna, Kristi Lust, Helga Cernik, Conrad Bismark

More info: Teraz Films

Plot:  Some broad at a convent leaves for some reason and gets tangled up with some bad guys who want her to go back to the convent and steal a painting.  Along the way she gets whipped...a lot.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Possibly but not likely.

Part of the Nunsploitation Project (July & August 2013). Click here for more naughty nun insanity! 

So you've got these guys, see, that look like Nazi Gestapo officers.  Every male in the movie is wearing a creepy lifelike mask where the lips don't move. It's pretty damn cool, actually.

After the opening credits and creepy Nazi fondling we head on over to the convent.

I am so firing my lawn guy and I'm hiring these gals instead.

Now, this picture is two hours long.  Think about that.  Two fucking hours long.  But it's a fetish film with a story so it's going to be padded with stuff.  I'm getting ahead of myself.  What I'm trying to say is that this flick has some incredibly hilarious moments and there are a bunch.  It's enough to keep you interested in between the whipping bits.

 "Shit! He's done the sudoku."

She actually says that.  All of the women have thick Eastern European English accents.  They also speak in monotone which helps with the fun.

One of the nuns turns on the telly for some light entertainment...

The newscaster says something like, "A woman had been found naked, bound and apparently whipped to death and it appears that she endured multiple orgasms before dying."  If that's not exactly right it's pretty damn close.  This shit's funny.

The nun that's leaving tells the Mother Superior that she no longer wishes to stay.  The MS tells her she can keep her uniform but she has to leave her badge.  She removes the cross from her neck and tosses it onto the desk.  Hilarious.  Who would have thought there'd be so much humor in a softcore fetish sex tape?

 

Look familiar?

There's lots of whipping...

I spy a J&B bottle.  Classic.

 Uh, oh, this can't be good...

 Yes it can.

 

One little

Two little

Three little penguins...

Two little

One little
 

No little penguins.

This is going to appeal to some of you.  The whipping stuff, while I dig it, isn't all that great.  It's such softball stuff, staged and fake.  I'm not saying I want a severe beating but this flick doesn't work for me on that level.  It's well shot and I dig the scenarios but some of them go on too long and I found myself wanting to get back to the well written funny stuff.