Tag: doug brunell

Oddtober 2024: Sinful Cinema Series 7: The Stendhal Syndrome by Doug Brunell

Book: Sinful Cinema Series 7: The Stendhal Syndrome (say this five times in a row as fast as you can)

Author: Doug Brunell

Type of Book: Non-fiction, film criticism

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Well, it’s not that odd, strictly speaking, but discussing Doug Brunell’s Sinful Cinema series has become as close to a tradition as I am capable of establishing.

Availability: Published by Chaotic Words in 2024, you can get a copy here.

Comments: Every year Doug Brunell, using a system unknown to me though I picture him pulling titles of all known horror movies out of a very large hat, randomly selects a film to dissect for his Sinful Cinema series. These film examinations are a hoot, especially when the film he discusses involves a topless investigator busting a human trafficking ring, or a paranormal fraud wrecking lives, or a weird island in Greece where a vampire is entombed, sort of. I think that the “hoot” element for me is that the movies he discusses are generally forgotten or under-known, which generally points in the direction of the films being fringe or loony in some manner, and the real value of the book comes about when Brunell examines the film and finds value that would have gone right over my head without his guidance.

I won’t say he redeems those films, because each one, though sort of awful in execution, has something of great worth in it somewhere and I can count on Brunell’s sharp eye and erudite analysis to show me where that value lies. I also greatly appreciate that Brunell marries his erudition with a willingness to take each movie seriously. I mean honestly, The Abductors was an absolutely horrible film, but after reading Brunell’s open-minded take, there was more to the film than I absorbed in my first watch, probably because I got really distracted by the heroine’s refusal to cover her breasts, even during a frantic car chase. Brunell also goes beyond basic criticism and investigates those involved in the films, sharing all kinds of interesting trivia about the script, crew and actors.

All of these films, given their fringe or forgotten status, were wholly new to me. I watched them before I read Brunell’s take and his books gave the films some gravitas, but because they were unknown to me, I had no preconceived notions regarding them. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I had some trepidation about this year’s film, Dario Argento’s The Stendhal Syndrome.

When I was much younger, I tolerated Dario Argento and the other Italian directors who created the “giallo” style of film making. I found the plots to be too labyrinthine and, frankly, pompous for them ever to really resonate with me. But at the time, such films were very hard to find and watch in Farmer’s Branch, Texas, so anything new beyond what we could rent at Blockbuster or watch on cable was going to be a hit, even if only temporarily. The closest I can come to saying I really like an Argento film is to assert that Suspiria was a pretty good movie (the original, the trailers for the remake seemed so awful that I laughed when I saw one). I wondered how Brunell would handle a film that has been well-discussed in film circles and has such a divisive quality to it, for The Stendhal Syndrome is a movie people either love or hate. I did not like coming into this knowing I really disliked the film he was discussing. I wondered if he would be able to pull off his bad movie redemption act. I mean, if a man can discuss The Abductors in a manner that on some level redeems the hilarious awfulness of it, perhaps he could sway me on The Stendhal Syndrome.

Brunell himself had some of the same trepidation I felt. He wondered if he should even discuss it even though it was the film that he picked during his annual random selection.

Believe it or not, The Stendhal Syndrome was another random pick. It just so happened, however, that it was a film I had seen before. Incidentally, it is also my favorite Dario Argento movie. These things, along with it being well-known and newer, made me reconsider several times if I wanted to write about it. After all, a lot has been written and said about the film, and many of the people involved in it have been interviewed (and I knew my chances of securing interviews with any of the Argento clan was slim-to-none). The biggest question I had was: Could I add anything new to the discussion of this movie?

For me, the answer is yes, Brunell added something new to the discussion because even though Argento is well-known and this film is somewhat controversial, I have not read any criticism of it, and I suspect a lot of those who love or hate the film are in the same boat. So even if some of his observations are not groundbreaking, Brunell’s accessible writing coupled with his unironic affection for the films he discusses, even the hilariously shitty ones, means that people who don’t want to wade through dry and jargon-heavy criticism just to understand what the hell this film was trying to accomplish will find useful and probably new information.

I recall watching this film many years ago when I first moved to the Austin area. Vulcan Video, now gone forever, had a more extensive foreign horror section and I came across a lot of excellent Japanese and Italian horror I never knew existed. I absolutely despised this film and I realize that part of my dislike could be chalked up to not fully getting it. And I guess that is a shame because I didn’t have the visceral dislike of Asia Argento that I currently have. Even had I liked it then, I can’t help but wonder how I would react to the film now given the way Asia Argento’s life has played out in the news over the last few years. Brunell briefly addresses the “problematic” nature of Asia Argento, acknowledging it then promptly moving on to discuss the interesting details I missed.

I can’t say Brunell’s discussion of this movie redeemed it for me, but it did enable me to see past my dislike of Asia Argento long enough to take on what Brunell has to say about the film. I will attempt to give a very brief synopsis of the plot: Anna Manni is a detective investigating a rape case when she collapses at the Uffizi Gallery. She suffers from Stendhal syndrome and becomes agitated or enters a completely altered mental state while in the presence of great works of art. This tendency of hers made it very hard initially to know what the hell was actually happening and it was comforting to learn that even learned critics still don’t agree on what actually happened in the film versus what Anna perceived to be happening. Anna is helped by a man named Alfredo, whom we learn has stolen her gun when she was unconscious and later sexually assaults her. Anna experiences an unraveling, her personality changing radically as she becomes hardened, more masculine in her approach to sexual and romantic relationships. Alfredo continues to stalk her and it seems as if Alfredo has killed Anna’s boyfriend, a man named Maria, but we later learn he could not have been responsible for Maria’s murder. To reveal who did it will ruin the film for those who have not seen it, but hopefully this is enough to frame this discussion.

Brunell does an apt job of discussing the symbolism of the pieces of art that cause Anna to dissociate or descend into hallucinatory psychosis, but the best part for me was his explanation of why it is Anna was so awful to me. I recall not really caring about what happened to Anna because she was so unpleasant. Nasty, even. Her reactions to others were, in my much younger mind, aggressively rude. I didn’t understand her but Brunell goes a long way in correcting some of my assumptions about Anna.

I think most people are familiar with the idea that when women experience extreme stress, we often end up messing with our hair. Anna cuts her hair short after her attack, and even her brother teases her that she looks like a boy, to her consternation. Brunell makes the argument that this common act of cutting her hair was Anna attempting to become more masculine, dealing with the trauma of rape by adjusting her personality until she exhibits masculine traits. She began with her hair, but as she dissembled further she began to engage in self-harm. However, instead of harming herself in a covert way and on a place on her body that was not visible, she was exhibiting a need to appear more masculine. When she deliberately breaks a wine glass in her hand, this is how Brunell dissects the scene:

Anna breaks the glass in her hand and does not seem to react at all to the pain, internalizing it much as a man would do.

He elaborates more:

Cutting her hand is done in public, where most females who resort to cutting do so in private. It is also seemingly done “accidentally,” where females traditionally do it deliberately and with ritual.

Anna’s last name, Manni, evidently translates to “a fierce or strong man.”

She later engages in a sort of masculinization of her sexuality. She is seeing a man named Marco who clearly adores her but is utterly tone deaf to the very real distress Anna is exhibiting. Anna reveals in therapy that she shrinks from the idea of being fucked and prefers the idea of being the one who fucks. When Marco pushes her to have sex, she responds in an increasingly hostile manner that he does not pick up on. When Anna asks him if he wants to “have sex,” when she generally referred to it as “making love,” she is showing a departure from the more romantic view of sex. It gets creepier:

When she spins him around and pushes him face first into the wall and then begins thrusting at him from behind, it is a decidedly male act.

[…]

When she tells him that she is now fucking him and starts to reach down his pants, Marco demands she stop. She tells him to “shut up,” and that she does not want to hear his voice. As if that were not enough, she tells him she is not finished yet and throws him to the ground and kicks him.

Another wrinkle in the film that Brunell helped smooth for me was the reason why Alfredo, who raped and killed a number of women, didn’t kill Anna and kept stalking her. This was an especially sharp observation on Brunell’s part. You see, after she collapses the first time in the film, she loses her identity. It takes her a while to regain her sense of self, her psychic slate wiped clean. Alfredo sees the state Anna is in after she is overcome by art, and it affects how he treats her when compared to his usual victims:

It seems clearer in hindsight than it does during the scene, but Alfredo is toying with Anna and wants her alive so that he can experience her purity repeatedly. If he can have her as she was in the museum, forgetting all sense of self, it is like having a fresh victim every time in the same person.

My first and sole viewing of this film was definitely hampered because I did not understand why Alfredo became so obsessed with Anna. She was pretty, sure, but nothing about her seemed to spark such dedicated obsession. I get it now. And I can also say that much of this movie is indeed better understood in hindsight. It is a film you will probably need to watch several times to really see all that Dario Argento wanted his audience to know.

Brunell explains further:

Anna’s mental collapse began after experiencing the Stendhal syndrome and exciting something in Alfredo, who treats her differently than he does his other victims. Art has acted as the catalyst, and now, as she actively pursues art on her own, her downfall will be hastened.

Brunell does a fine job of making clear the color symbolism, art meaning and psychological motivations in The Stendhal Syndrome but in the end I still don’t like this film. I understand it better, but even after Brunell’s careful examination I still find myself confused as I marry together his measured evaluation with my own memories of the film. Was Alfredo somehow possessing his victim even though he was alive when she begins to adopt masculine traits? I have no idea.

But it’s still sort of worse than that because I also wonder who on earth bought Asia Argento as a police detective, be it now or then. Her status as an art-loving law enforcer was on par with Tara Reid as an archaeologist in the stinker Alone in the Dark, or Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in the Bond film, The World Is Not Enough. And let’s not get into the whole “watching his daughter get raped in one of the most sadistic scenes ever is gross” accusation levied at Dario Argento. That one doesn’t actually carry much weight with me because it gets leveled at every parent who directs their child in a film that isn’t G-rated, but it is something that gives this film just an extra layer of “ick” when one considers the role Asia Argento played in the rise of and eventual marginalization of the “me, too” movement.

Overall, I think Doug Brunell made the right choice to discuss a famous film that he had already seen. I can understand why he was concerned that his take on the film would not be fresh and I think following the rules he set out for himself just makes sense. This was one of his strongest Sinful Cinema examinations and it enabled someone who outright dislikes the film and the female lead to see a lot more worth and nuance in a performance that seemed disjointed and bitchy when I first watched it (for what it’s worth, my dislike of Asia Argento began long before accusations against her as an abuser and worse came out – her role in The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things rubbed me the wrong way, so much so that I began to refuse to watch anything else she was in). I really appreciated the art discussions because when I saw it all those years ago the Internet made assembling information like that a lot harder and I had little incentive to revisit the film.

The book suffers a bit because it didn’t bring any of those “wait, that was the woman from Last House on the Left” moments, and of course he was unable to speak to either Argento. Still, he has a long and interesting discussion with Troy Howarth, a horror movie fan and critic, and that interview is one of the “worth the price of admission”chapters in this book. I was afraid I would leave this book without any of the more joyful revelations I had with some of his earlier books in this series, but the inclusion of Howarth exposed me to a writer I had not heard of. He has a book examining the film, Alice, Sweet Alice, that I almost discussed this Oddtober but rejected in favor of Bad Ronald.

So even though I didn’t like this year’s Sinful Cinema movie offering as much as previous years, it wasn’t Brunell’s fault that I am just not that into giallo/rape revenge films or the Argentos in general. In fact, he gave me different perspectives to think about regarding the film and now I have a new author to read. All in all, if the movie was a miss, the book definitely is not. Argento completists may want this on general principle but if you are less familiar with Dario Argento, this would be a great primer to consult as you get your feet wet. This book may not be for everyone but I highly recommend it for those who both love Brunell’s sharp but open-minded criticism and this genre of film.

Oddtober 2020: Sinful Cinema Series vol. 5 by Doug Brunell

Book:  The Amazing Mr. X from the Sinful Cinema Series

Author: Doug Brunell

Type of Book: Non-fiction, cinema studies, film criticism

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Less odd than disheartening – this book illustrates how it is that being very good at what you do is no assurance you will ever become famous or even well-respected in your craft.

Availability: Published by in 2020 by Chaotic Words, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Doug Brunell has become a staple of my “Oddtober” adventures.  I’ve read a little of his fiction (I read Black Devil Spine and my main criticism was that I wish he’d just let loose a bit more and wallowed in the depravity because he was soooo close to pulling off the most difficult feat a horror writer can achieve – pornographic violence that doesn’t pander) but am mostly familiar with his looks at weird, fringe and/or under-known films.  I hope he keeps updating his Sinful Cinema series until either I or this site dies because I think his work has become the OTC version of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. You gotta watch Linus out there in the pumpkin patch and you gotta have a Sinful Cinema volume or it just doesn’t feel like Halloween.

I am in a strange place with The Amazing Mr. X because I want to engage in my usual, endless examination, and this film isn’t outrageous like some of the films Brunell has explored. I have had no qualms about spoiling the plots of those films because the plot and characterization took a backseat to the shlock, sleaziness or overall hokeyness.  Few watch Crypt of the Living Dead or The Abductors for plot complexity or interesting characterization and god help those who find such titles and hope that at least the acting is decent.  But Brunell has a gift for seeing the intent behind bad or outrageous films, showing his readers unexpected ways to look at the plots, character arcs that would have been missed among all the stilted delivery and random boob shots, and his biographies of those involved in the films show the crazy ways Hollywood is connected, from the winding paths between sexploitation and Disney franchises to how the name of a small boat that takes a researcher to a vampire-infested, in-bred island can demonstrate the uneasy interactions between rational science and pagan tradition.  Without Brunell, the average film fan might not have ever understood all of these connections and ideas that permeate even the crappiest low budget horror film, and his extraordinary love of the subject redeems films I would have ignored had I known about them.

That is not the case with The Amazing Mr. X. I can see watching this just because.  In fact, I sort of want to watch it with Mr. OTC to see what he thinks of it.  As Brunell notes in his examination, this film has a lot of things that hamper it, mainly the title, which leads one to believe that this is going to be some sort of character-driven science fiction film.  It’s not.  Brunell says it’s a noir film disguised as a horror film and he’s right.  Every actor hits their mark, the plot is a masterful series of misdirections that never seem forced or false, and all the important characters have unexpected redemption arcs that make sense and are not insulting, forcing a schmaltzy and happy ending.

So I don’t want to spoil this film.  I think you need to watch it, decide what you think is happening, and then read Brunell’s book.  This film is fairly easy to get hold of.  I watched it on Amazon Prime for free but the film is also all over YouTube.

Quick synopsis: The extremely wealthy Christine was widowed when her husband Paul died in a car crash. She feels his presence still and is having trouble moving on. Her somewhat annoying but adorable younger sister, Janet, wants her to accept an engagement ring from her new suitor, Martin, a likeable guy, but on the night when Martin proposes, Christine meets Alexis, a clairvoyant and spiritualist (who has a big squawking crow as his familiar, a bird whose role in this film was not clear to me until Brunell explained the ending), who knows all about Paul and Martin.  His unexpected knowledge weighs on her until she consults Alexis for help and becomes a regular client of his as she uses his psychic powers to try to reconnect with Paul.  Paul’s memory is causing Christine to become unhinged and Janet and Martin become suspicious of Alexis. They hire a private investigator, who is a former magician who knows all the tricks of psychic con men (a sort of James Randi figure, may he rest in peace), to look into the psychic and, sure enough, he has a file on Alexis.  To make sure Alexis is the man he thinks he is, the investigator and Martin send Janet in as bait to get his fingerprints but Alexis is two steps ahead of them because he is, indeed, a con man. That may seem like a spoiler but it isn’t because the viewer knows Alexis is a fraud the moment she sees him.  But in the end, Christine really is in danger, Paul is the source of this danger, and by the time everyone figures out what is going on, Christine is more or less a second thought as far more interesting characters shape the end.

This film is an interesting history piece.  Filmed in 1948, it comes at a sort of crossroads in cultural reactions and social movements.  Young widows filled with grief at the untimely deaths of their young husbands were not uncommon after WWII, so this movie had a sort of anchor in Christine. But spiritualism was dying off, men like Alexis raising more suspicion than praise, so much so that the film’s title was changed from The Spiritualist. But Christine (and Janet) are wealthy, presumably through their family, leaving them prey to con men, while also showing that they didn’t need anyone to take care of them.  Moreover, Alexis, played by Turhan Bey (who was known as the “Turkish Delight” and once dated Lana Turner but couldn’t marry her because his mama didn’t approve), was shoved into a role that was losing potency.  The trope of women swooning over suave sheik types of men was drawing to an end.  Yet in spite of these issues, from the terrible title to the tired tropes to the lack of a “big name,” the film works.  Brunell speculates that if one big name had been cast, this film would today be far better known than it is.

One of the benefits of reading Brunell’s books after watching these films is that they encourage me to watch carefully, almost training me in film analysis.  I missed the subtext behind the ending, and there were other bits and pieces I didn’t pick up on.  But it’s interesting what I did see before I read Brunell, things I would have missed ordinarily.  For example:

–I didn’t entirely connect the dots but I felt a sort of discordance at first because it seemed like Christine, who was played by the lovely Lynn Bari, was the protagonist of the film.  Why was the film called The Amazing Mr. X if Christine is the lead character?  Well, she isn’t.  Alexis is, and that misdirection is intentional and part of why this film is so clever.

–Janet, who is at least ten years younger than Christine, has a chipmunk voice, appears ditzy and silly, and Alexis is able to ingratiate himself to her by insinuating that she is actually the more mature, more grounded of the sisters. Even Christine scoffs at this but Alexis is not wrong. Janet may be silly but she is not plagued by ghosts of dead husbands with questionable motives, she offers unwavering moral support, and is capable of saving lives when the chips are down.  Christine, who has a sort of Joan Crawford, 1940s remote elegance that often is linked to feminine intelligence, is easily fooled, ridiculously unable to act in her own best interests, and at the end the least interesting character in the film.

–I wondered why I liked the bad guy – Alexis – so much when he was a con man.  Because I’m supposed to.  Again, the director laid out a path I was walking on before I knew I was even walking.

And I picked up on these things because I was anticipating Brunell’s book and what it would show me.  It’s a fun sort of mental exercise, a puzzle that connects my experience to the ideas of someone very well-versed in film while showing me the puzzle pieces that I missed.  For example, Brunell’s discussion of the lighting in the film was fascinating and far outside my wheelhouse.

And though the cast and crew biographies are not as salacious as those in the other volumes of Sinful Cinema I’ve read, they are still very interesting.  For example, one of them was blacklisted by McCarthy.  One was utterly beloved by all who knew him. One actress lost her acting contracts when she refused to divorce her husband at the demand of a studio executive. And all of them, very good at their craft, never achieved the fame they deserved.  Seriously, this was a tight cast.  The weakest link was the detective and even he had decent acting chops.  If you dislike Christine, it’s because Lynn Bari’s performance was deliberate in its attempt to create that emotion.  If you begin to enjoy the Gidget-like Janet, well-done because she’s a character who only seems like a caricature of a chatty blonde until you juxtapose her with the more “competent” female character and realize she’s pretty cool.  (And though you aren’t wholly expected to want to root on Alexis as he cons Christine, if you do find yourself feeling ambiguous about him, you’re in good company because I didn’t want Christine to come to harm, but if Alexis got a few bucks out of her, c’est le vie.)

Brunell’s other four volumes in the Sinful Cinema series focus on more outrageous or fringe fare and initially I wondered if I was watching the correct film because I didn’t find myself falling into the sort of MST3K mindset one uses when watching a film that is notably terrible in some manner.  This is a well-crafted, though certainly flawed film, with an interesting script, good actors, and mystery elements that are always honest, never resorting to uneven characterization or left-turn plot twists.  Yet in its own way its as much an outlier as Crypt of the Living Dead because the cast and crew themselves remained outliers in an acting community that never gave them their well-earned dues, the film itself got lost among other noir films that didn’t mislabel themselves via terrible titles, and this film seems… cursed in a way, including a leading lady who died in a notorious fashion before the film began production, and terrible timing.

I really enjoyed Brunell’s tour through The Amazing Mr. X. It was particularly enjoyable seeing his keen eye take on a film that isn’t mostly boobs, poor acting, terrible casting, and inexplicable plot elements.  It’s great to see unexpected weirdness in more mainstream and conventional fare.  Highly recommended.

The Abductors, #1 in the Sinful Cinema Series by Doug Brunell

Book: The Abductors: Sinful Series 1

Author: Doug Brunell

Type of Book: Non-fiction, cinema review, film history

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Because the film is a huge, steaming pile of horse shit but Brunell’s love and enthusiasm for this type of grindhouse/sexploitation genre actually made me second guess my initial reaction.

Availability: Published by Chaotic Words in 2016, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Jesus Allah fuck, this is a terrible film.  I’m not going to say you in particular would hate this film because a lot of you have weird tastes or you wouldn’t be reading here in the first place. Also, if you mute it so that you are not subjected to appalling dialogue delivered by people who probably would have been better used in outright porn, there are some interesting things going on. For example:

–If you are tired of seeing buoyant, surgically enhanced breasts, the natural boobs in this film may be just what the doctor ordered.  Additionally, people tired of the PAWG trope will delight in the mostly flat, often saggy butts found on the women (and men) in The Abductors.

–How do you feel about pubic hair?  Fans of the bush will love this movie.

–Do you have strong opinions about hairy chests on men lacking even the 1970s Burt Reynolds version of muscles, who look hilarious when they get handcuffed to trees?  You are in luck.

–Do you harbor unresolved and unsettling feelings about helicopters, especially when you see them flying low over trees or landing on lakes so small you sense that they received a fine for even trying to land, let alone trying in the dead of night? Take this film to your therapist.  It could be key in your recovery.

–Have people told you that if the Olympics had a “cringe” category, your grimaces could bring home a gold medal?  Do you need practice covering up second-hand embarrassment so that you can endure your Uncle Jack’s casual sexism as he gets drunk at Christmas dinner?  Consider this film your training camp.

So it’s clear that this is a bad, bad film.  And that’s okay.  Without bad films we wouldn’t have had Mystery Science Theater 3000. The bad film has its charms, and Doug Brunell has such a keen eye and sympathetic take on the genres that bring us terrible films that if you read his books after you watch the films he discusses, you can genuinely find yourself wondering if maybe you got it all completely wrong.  To be completely frank, you probably won’t find much in Brunell’s writing that redeems this film, nor does he serve as an apologist for bad cinema (he refers to this film as being part of a “sleaze saga”). Rather, he accepts films as they are, discusses the times that spawn such films and the career arcs of the people involved. He recognizes the film’s many (many, many) flaws, but he also has such a great knowledge of genre, the specific cinematic tropes at work when older schlock was released, and the various ways filmmakers attempted to subvert those tropes, that the background he gives as he discusses the movies is the price of admission for the Sinful Cinema series.

And to be blunt, there is charm to schlock. For interior designers, it’s the Memphis Group.  For bibliophiles, it’s the “so bad it’s good” that writers like Richard Laymon and VC Andrews bring to the table. What would bad music discussions be without The Shaggs and Jandek?  When you read Brunell’s take on schlock films, you see the charm.  Whether or not the charm works on you is subjective.  But when you read Brunell’s work, objectively you see how one bad movie’s reach can extend into cinema you’d never expect from a sexploitation film.  Brunell sees how it is that the worst can be a link to the best, or maybe just a link to something that isn’t quite as bad. His knowledge and love of the topic are infectious, so much so that I actually sat through the whole of The Abductors so I would be assured I could follow his book about the film.

Quick synopsis: This film is the second in the “Ginger” trilogy but if Doug Brunell doesn’t write a book about the other two films I’ll be damned if I watch them.  So the plot is simple: White slavers are kidnapping women to sell to men who can blow $100k in 1970s money on cheerleaders taken hostage and “trained” to be excellent companions for really old men who wear Sansabelt slacks and live in a split-level home with orange shag carpet. After a convertible with three witless cheerleaders is run off the road, the three women kidnapped, a private investigator calls in Ginger, a woman who may be a spy, may be a detective, but never wears a bra, to help him.

(Honest to god, the first time we see her in street clothes, she is wearing a cropped denim vest with no buttons or zipper and no top underneath.  Later when she tries to seduce a bad man who unties her bizarre top that looks like the old Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders’ tie uniform but as imagined by Fredrick’s of Hollywood and made by a hippie who learned to crochet in rehab, she takes forever to retie it and when she does, she ties it with her boobs outside of the fabric.  She spends a lot of time topless or naked. Oh, and I remember this most clearly: the credits say “Chantilly Place” provided Cheri Caffaro, the lady who played Ginger, with all her “knits.”)

Together Jason, the private eye, and Ginger manage to track down the slavers by recruiting a pretty private eye and having her swallow a pill of some sort that allows them to track her for up to 25 miles. But before this happens, Ginger gets involved with a pudgy dude who looks like Steve Majors but isn’t (the scene where he dances with Ginger in what appears to be the courtyard of a rest home for geriatric hotel band members is cringe-gold – she’s actually got maracas). Pretty private eye gets kidnapped by slavers, Ginger watches her be relocated on a helicopter on pontoons, and is so upset she befouls a white shag carpet with like-Steve-Majors-but-isn’t and dun-dun-DUN, afterward he takes her hostage because SPOILER ALERT: he’s the head slaver.

Predictable stuff happens – all the men involved are dumb and will spill any number of beans if you show them boobs or grab their dick. Sex is had atop a pool table. An enormous henchman who “trains” the girls gets kicked in the crotch by a girl and then kicks her in the crotch in response (his name is weird and I cannot recall it now but Mr. OTC and I called him “Jablowme”). A woman gets gut punched, sexual torture is implied, but it all ends well when Ginger escapes and gets all the information she needs out of like-Steve-Majors-but-isn’t by, and I shit you not, restraining him in a shower, spraying him with water from the shower head and soaping him up.  He is utterly undone by the water spray, begging her not to spray his chest anymore.  Brunel actually manages to discuss this scene in a thoughtful manner that never would have occurred to me.

The three kidnapped girls end up really liking the men who bought them and stay with them. Ginger and Jason are nearly shot by a banker’s desk guns, but good prevails, the end.

The biggest problem with the film is that no one can act. Ginger speaks only in double entendres and they are delivered with a flat, smirking dullness. The men are all dumb or speak in gangster-ese. Every man seems like he’s dressed like a leisure-suit Harlequin, all the women have their nipples exposed at all times, and what is represented as the height of luxurious domestic decadence would need to be fumigated to qualify as a modern Motel 6.  The abducted girls only speak when they are introduced to the used car salesmen who purchased them, asking them innocent questions over dinner, wondering how they will be able to explain to the neighbors that they are sex slaves.  But the plot, oh the stupid plot, and the acting, tend to make all the excellent cheese turn into something that is merely cheesy.

Most notable is how difficult it will be for modern audiences to stomach this film.

This 90 minute film is sometimes a chore to watch. Bad acting, inexplicable costume and hair changes in the middle of a driving scene, and the idea that all women need is either a skilled lover or to be raped in order to “break” them all work to erode the average viewer’s patience, tolerance and sanity. Watching young women’s breasts be groped and twisted as they are told they are about to be tested for their sexual skills is something rarely seen in current non-pornographic, semi-mainstream or mainstream films, though it was a bit more common place in the daring ’70s.

But applying current mores to an old film should only be done when one is comparing the changes, not condemning that which is outdated for being outdated.  Brunell doesn’t do that and his refusal to condemn these films for their lack of PC content is refreshing.  He actually reproduces a couple of lines from an Amazon review that remarks that this film is an affront to all that is politically correct.  But placing the film in the context of the time when it was made, Brunell points out that while the film is sexist, even as it tries to make Ginger into a badass investigator/spy who can kick ass and suck cock and always solve the case, it is notably lacking in the casual racism that was part and parcel of the sexploitation and grindhouse film industry.

And because he has watched all three Ginger films, Brunell can sincerely explain how this film is an improvement upon the first, that Ginger has a character arc that was as important to the filmmaker as showing her boobs in every scene.  I think that’s important to know, that underneath it all, goals were set and achieved and that some people may have actually improved their acting chops. This was someone’s artistic vision – they were trying very hard to make a good movie.

The best part of Brunell’s examinations of these films is his look at the people in the films and where they ended up.  He has an interview with Jeramie Rain, who played “Jane,” one of the three abducted cheerleaders (she’s the one with the short dark hair, which naturally means she’s the one who was best suited to be a dominatrix, hilariously beating the bed next to her new owner with a double-coiled black whip). Rain is very notable for her role in The Last House on the Left, the Wes Craven film that fucked me up so badly that I will never forget Mari’s near-pre-Raphaelite death scene, her hair spreading out into the water as she dies.  Rain plays Sadie, the psychopathic moll who delights in the violence her male friends inflict on the girls they abduct.  Rain has some interesting stories about the film.

Brunell also notes that future porn actor Harry Reems, from Deep Throat, has a role in this film of the “blink and you’ll miss it variety.” Best of all, he shows the direct line from the director of this sleazy and unintentionally hilarious film to a lucrative Disney franchise. The cast info at the end of Brunell’s books never fail to surface some WTF details that show how small the entertainment world really is.

So what I am trying to say here is that this is a terrible film and you should only watch it in conjunction with Brunell’s Sinful Cinema series.  The worst film has to offer is often swallowed easier when you have someone who is knowledgeable in the genre, both sympathetic to and willing to discuss with humor the film’s many flaws, and able to write about it all in books that inevitably are better than the films that Brunell examines.  I highly recommend you check out Brunell’s work.

And yeah, this is more Odd than October, but maybe if you watch The Abductors, you’ll find the perfect Halloween costume.  Seventies banker, hot pants cheerleader, plaid-suited sex lord, or maybe you can just walk around naked like Ginger did. All you’ll need is a platinum wig!

Crypt of the Living Dead by Doug Brunell

Book: Crypt of the Living Dead, Sinful Cinema Series #2

Author: Doug Brunell

Type of Book: Non-fiction, film criticism

Why Do You Consider This Book Odd: It shows the charm and marginal merit of a film that I initially felt had neither but could see once I read Brunell’s take on the film.

Availability: Published by Chaotic Words in 2017, you can get a copy here:

Comments: I’ve begun to despair of the horror genre as of late, and it may be because I’ve reached the age to where there is very little that’s new under the sun.  It’s not helped by the fact that so often genre films are endeavors where those with marginal talents do the bare minimum necessary to get a film together, as evidenced by many of the anemic offerings on NetFlix.  For every Babadook or It Follows, there are a dozen miserable titles that one shouldn’t bother to remember because they all tell the same story, poorly acted, with little spark.

But perhaps I’m being an old crank.  Well, actually, I am being an old crank, at least where the horror genre is concerned and I needed to be reminded that sometimes the desire to see only that which is wholly new, unconventional or somehow rarified can cause us to overlook films that might be interesting if only paid attention.

Enter Doug Brunell’s look at little-known films.

I came across Doug’s work after he read my compendium TL;DR and introduced himself on Twitter. I looked up his work and was delighted to see that he was a fellow traveler in the bizarre and fringe and had written analyses of the cinematic corollaries to some of the books I discuss here.  I saw the title Crypt of the Living Dead, and thought it had something to do with zombies.  Nope, this is a vampire film. (Matt Kaplan’s The Science of Monsters links zombies, werewolves and vampires together as monsters conjured by mass fears of overpopulated cities, disease, especially diseases caused by bodily rot, and though that is certainly not relevant to this discussion it was interesting to see all three monsters represented in this film, as it features a vampire who turns into a wolf and the title leads modern audiences raised on George Romero films to think of zombies.)  I decided it would be interesting to watch the film first and then read what Brunell had to say about it.

Though Mr OTC and I agreed that the film might have gone down better had we been watching it with a space janitor and two wise-cracking robots, it wasn’t wholly bad.  In fact, I found myself uttering Yogi Berra-worthy statements as I watched it, like, “This film would be pretty good if it wasn’t so bad.”  Because there were moments in it that were entertaining, and most of those moments were entertaining because they were so weird.

A quick synopsis, and here be spoilers but I don’t think anyone will be watching this film with an eye toward creative storytelling or unexpected plot twists (but I will try to minimize them): An older man, who came to a small, almost inbred European island to study their customs, is crushed under the crypt topper of a woman called Hannah, who died in 1269.  He is crushed because a wild man (a literal wild man who resembles a cave man with an eye patch) and a robed man knock him over, shove him under the crypt, and knock the supports out from under it, crushing him, effectively decapitating him.  The man’s son, Chris, comes to the island and is greeted by the man in robes, Peter, who lives on the island with his sister, Mary.  We don’t know what Peter’s game is but he seems very helpful to Chris, helping him navigate the stand-offish islanders who are slow to welcome newcomers.  Mary is a schoolteacher and the kids are suitably creepy, as are the islanders, especially the fishermen who won’t even speak to Chris.  We find Chris has come to the island to get his dad out from under the crypt – the islanders were just going to leave him there, minus his head, because the tomb was too heavy to lift, evidently.  So Chris, with Peter’s help, organizes the fishermen on the island to try to go underground and lift the tomb and though they are divided on whether or not they should be messing around with Hannah’s tomb because, as you probably know, she was interred as a vampire and to mess with the tomb risks letting her out, they ultimately try to help. Mary and Chris “bond” and Peter seems excited at the prospect that his sister may leave the island with Chris. But nothing goes easily because Hannah has gotten out, she preys on the islanders and everything ends rather poorly for many of the islanders and, of course Peter, who was in thrall to the undead Hannah.  And it all seems okay at the end, once Hannah has been dealt with in a rather pyrotechnic manner, but alas, peace will be short-lived because evil now infests this little island.

As I watched the film, the deficits, which were funny rather than infuriating, were what I noticed first.  Here are the best of the “WTF” moments:

–When Chris’s dad was exploring the catacomb area, he walks under a sacrificed goat that has been strung up high and is bleeding out.  He feels the blood drip on his face and looks up and stands there staring at the bleeding goat as it spills blood all over his face.  When he finally starts walking again, he doesn’t bother to wipe the blood off, but instead wanders the catacombs with goat’s blood all over his face and head.

–Chris is such a dead ringer for notable porn actor John Holmes that it was distracting.

–Inexplicably, the only person who saw Hannah in her wolf form was, I am not kidding, completely blind.

–Mary, who taught in a one-room school house, forced one kid to stand in the corner ALL DAY because she found him playing in the cemetery because that is a totally reasonable thing for a grade school teacher to do.  The entire classroom is filled with children who would need a bath and a complete set of chromosomes to qualify as extras in Children of the Corn.

–Hannah, the person for whom the film is named and who ostensibly should have at least been a peripheral character, never says one word in the film.  Instead she writhes about in her tomb, wanders about in a filmy white dress, and generally looks kind of pretty but is basically just a piece of animated scenery.

–Chris and Mary hook up and Peter, who I may remind you is Mary’s brother, watches from outside.  Okay, sort of gross, right.  Then the next day when he sees them he is super pleased and overly enthusiastic about Chris nailing his sister and immediately demands that Mary leave the island with Chris because nothing says emotional security and trust like a stranger having sex with your sister within days of meeting her even though he’s supposed to be trying to haul his dad’s carcass out from a vampire’s tomb.

There are other moments that left me wondering what on earth was at play but mostly I focused on the silly plot points because the movie seemed very simple and the details of the film seemed secondary to the gentle mockery that made up most of my reaction.  But then I followed it up by reading Brunell’s analysis of the film and it changed the film for me.  Of course, the film isn’t suddenly rendered amazing after seeing it through Brunell’s filter – and Brunell himself points out the movie’s many flaws – but the efforts the filmmakers put into the film, as well as details that went completely over my head, combined with the themes that Brunell saw in the movie, certainly rescued it from the mental file where I had placed it alongside Manos: The Hands of Fate.

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