The Movie:

Confusing part out of the way first: although this movie has been titled Cheeky! on the covers of this and previous video releases, the official title that appears onscreen is Transgressing, which is the English-dubbed version of the Italian film Transgredire. With me so far? While there's certainly a lot of cheeks (nudge nudge wink wink) in this film, I don't know why this title was used other than to appeal to those looking specifically for that and little else.

The only Tinto Brass film I had seen previously was Caligula, which is his most well-known but he has also disowned that one due to the external meddling that went on with that. This one is much more light-hearted and fun. The plot is rather simple: Carla (Yuliya Mayarchuk) moves from Venice to London, to be joined later by her boyfriend Matteo (Jarno Berardi). In London looking for a plac...Read the entire review

The Movie:

While probably best known to most people for darker fare like Caligula and Salon Kitty, Tinto Brass has pumped out some lighter material as well, and 2000's Cheeky! is a shining example of just how well he can combine comedy with eroticism. All the heat you'd expect from some of his better films like Frivolous Lola is present, and it mixes with some clever and very humane humor to make for a thoroughly enjoyable film that doesn't in the least skimp on what Brass is known for (and that would be beautifully shot booty).

Like many of his films, this one tells the story of a woman with a taste for the carnal. This time around her name is Carla (played by the lovely and ever so curvy Yuliya Mayarchuk), a young woman who has just arrived in London where she'll be working as an intern for a month much to the dismay of her boyfriend, Matteo (Jarno Berar...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Agusti Villaronga's In a Glass Cage belongs to a tradition of European art films that is as unpleasant as it is (arguably) artistically vital and morally necessary. These movies aim to provoke a visceral sense of disgust and outrage by getting us far too close-in to the cruel, rancid, inhuman decadence represented by the ultra-right regimes (the Nazis in Germany, the Fascists in Italy) under which the Continent suffered during World War II, as well as the shameful history and lurid, sickly fascination/"nostalgia" that are their legacy. Some salient points on this tradition's timeline are Visconti's The Damned, Liliani Caviani's Read the entire review

THE MOVIES:

On-screen eroticism is, so often, such a drab and joyless affair, so utterly free of real color and actual pleasure, that those who inject sexual cinema with genuine wit and fun tend to stand out from the pack. Such is the case with Radley Metzger, the incomparable New York distributor-turned-filmmaker who had not one, but two careers in adult cinema: under his own name, directing smart and tastefully "softcore" adult films, often shot in exquisite international locations with impeccable production values, and under the pseudonym of "Henry Paris," working the other side of the softcore/hardcore divide, yet still bothering to inject those pictures with humor and style. Cult Epics' new Blu-ray box set Radley Metzger's Erotica Psychadelica collects three of his finest efforts from the former career, while providing some hint of his metamorphosis into the latter.

Fi...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Tinto Brass' 2005 ode to promiscuity and ladies' asses begins with a nice opening shot of a painting on display in the city of Mantua where we are soon introduced to a beautiful young woman named Marta (Anna Jimskaia) whose marriage to husband Dario (Max Parodi) isn't going so well. When we met this couple he's just finished himself off in bed, leaving her unfulfilled and having to take matters into her own hands - which is exactly what she does when she heads out for the day to visit an art gallery. Here she meets Leon (Riccardo Marino), a suave Frenchman who shows and instant attraction to her, something she doesn't get with her husband. They talk and she learns that he's a writer in town for a festival of erotic literature (presided over by the director himself!) and then go at it right there in the gallery. After the pair attend, she gives into Leon's charms and sleeps wi...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Radley Metzger's 1969 adaptation of Alexandre Dumas Fils' novel Lady of the Camellias, alternately known as Forbidden Love is a lush, Technicolor fever dream of sex and drugs set some time in the Rome of the future where we meet a man named Armand (Nino Castelnuovo) who lives under the domineering control of his wealthy father. Armand likes the ladies, and more or less has his pick - he's a handsome guy with a fat bank account and this makes him attractive to a lot of people. His friend Gastion (Roberto Bisacco), warns him against the beautiful Marguerite (Daniele Gaubert), a woman he meets who has a penchant for sleeping around and for drug use, but Armand will have none of Gastion's warnings, he knows what he wants and he wants Marguerite, even if Olympe (Silvana Venturelli) would be more than happy to take her place.

As luck would have it, the feeling i...Read the entire review

Radley Metzger's The Lickerish Quartet (1970) belongs in that tiny window of movie-going that lasted from roughly 1969-1975, when both art house movies were chic focal points among the cultured classes and sexually-explicit movies aspired to click with those audiences and gain critical acceptance. Today this West German-Italian co-production in English seems almost quaint, a proto-Emmanuelle type of pretentious if earnest would-be art film, part Twilight Zone-type fantasy (complete with twist ending), part giallo-like Italian psychological thriller.

Few will find it as erotic as audiences certainly did when it was new, though co-star Silvano Venturelli has an undeniably sensational body. Instead, the picture is best enjoyed as a cultural artifact of its era. This review can't explain its time-specific impact any better than the film's original trailer (included on the dis...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

I must admit, I am completely flummoxed by this one. Where do I even begin writing about Italian director Tinto Brass' Attraction? Watching it was a chore, and to give this 1969 film much consideration at all seems like too much effort wasted on the undeserving; yet, I am charged with writing a review. Punished once watching the movie, punished twice having to relive it.

There is nothing as bourgeois as a "plot" in Attraction, so there is not much to summarize. In short, it is a psychedelic pop-art experiment (or "experience," as the DVD cover informs us), one long music video love letter to the most laughable parts of the 1960s. It stars Anita Sanders as Barbara, a married white woman who gets dropped off in a rather safe wilderness by he...Read the entire review

"Where are we?"
"Me, too."

Cult Epics has released L'Urlo (The Howl), director Tinto Brass' cult avant-garde, mondo weirdo-fest from 1968 starring the incomparably delectable Tina Aumont. A memorably bizarre mixture of surrealistic sex and violence and counter-culture rabble-rousing, L'Urlo isn't as impenetrable as one might fear, partly because Brass leaves it up to you as to what it all means. Logic and morality are thrown out, and sensation and emotion and feeling dominate. Cult Epic's print is supposedly restored to the director's original, uncensored version, while the addition of a commentary by Brass himself adds immeasurably to the fun...well, maybe not "fun."

There is a plot to L'Urlo, but it's just a loos...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

It's a story just like any other. A guy sees a girl in a nightclub, thinks she's sexy, and asks around about who she is. The scoop is that her father has just died, and the girl, Jane (Ewa Aulin, Candy), is hiding her grief in the nightlife, consoled by her partner in questionable activity, her brother Jerome (Charles Kohler). Her stepmother (Vira Silenti) is there, too, dancing with her lover. Before the interested guy, Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant, A Man and a Woman), a fellow of questionable repute himself, can make his move, however, the girl is gone and he's also told that his tab has been cut off, he's too deep into Prescott, the nightclub's owner. As if having the flow of booze cut off wasn't bad enough, when Bernard goes to settle ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

A notorious figure on the mid-20th century literary scene, Jean Genet was well regarded by some and reviled by others for his obsessive and passionate portraits of the love that blossomed in the darkest of places. Bravely pioneering queer literature when the very notion would get a writer arrested rather than earn him plaudits, his florid prose took readers through society's underbelly, finding romance and tragedy in prisons, seaside hovels, and the servant's quarters in supposedly respectable homes. His novels and plays alike broke boundaries, and his work became a rich mine for many a filmmaker. Fassbinder adapted his novel Querelle, Todd Haynes' appropriated his work for Poison, and Tony Richardson transformed a Genet story into the ma...Read the entire review

The Product:
For some artists, the cult is as good as it gets. There's never a realistic run at the mainstream, and even with such a limited inferred fanbase, a decent career can be carved out of life along the fringes of fame. So many manage to do it, especially in today's interconnected Internet world, that old school success seems almost unnecessary. For former Christian Death frontwoman Gitane Demone, a stint as part of the founding Goth rock outfit has lead to an interesting and often elusive time as a compelling solo artist. Toning down the shock in favor of fetish and sensuality, Demone now rides the musical rails somewhere between torch and torment. She can play a venue like an intimate cabaret. At other instances, she's totally in touch with the death metal moments that made her (in)famous. As the two DVD set Life After Death indicates, Gitane Demone is an acquired, mostly Eu...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Travel back to the glorious, sexy, silly '70s

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Anna Biller, Perfect craftsmanship
Likes: Parody, Explotation films
Dislikes: 70s fashion
Hates: Not being around to enjoy the '70s

The Movie
Bambi (Anna Biller) lives the life of your average suburban Los Angeles wife in the 1970s, working as a secretary, taking care of her husband Rick, keeping a fine house and drinking her spare time away. But under the influence of her independent, Playboy-reading, blonde-bombshell pal Sheila, she starts getting frustrated at the lack of attention from her business-focused hubby. Soon the two girls are on their own in a brand new world, wearing very little and chasing good times as ...Read the entire review

In July 1975, the Dutch-born, California-based conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader set sail alone from Cape Cod aboard a 13-foot sailboat, purportedly bound for Falmouth, England. He considered his journey a work of performance art, and had he arrived in England it also would have marked a world record for the smallest piloted watercraft to cross the Atlantic. Alas, nine months after Ader set off, his sailboat was discovered partially-submerged 150 miles off the coast of Ireland. Ader was gone, presumed drowned.

Begun thirty years after Ader's disappearance, Here is Always Somewhere Else considers the life and legacy of the conceptual artist though interviews with his widow and brother, friends and neighbors, artists inspired by his work, and by a sailor that never knew Ad...Read the entire review

Cult Epics has released Slogan, the 1969 Pierre Grimblat "cult" film starring legendary French musician/singer/actor/director Serge Gainsbourg and English model/actress Jane Birkin. Now, when I see the word "cult" stamped on a DVD box under an older title, I'm always a little intrigued, wondering if the film truly is a "cult" item or if the moniker's inclusion is just a bit of hyperbolic marketing, calculated to sell discs. Quite frankly, I had never heard of Slogan before, but Gainsbourg and Birkin were somewhat familiar names to me from the late 60s and early 70s, so maybe I was in for a treat here with Slogan, coming in totally cold on a title and finding something fun or unique (which can be one of the most satisfying movie-watching experiences, when it comes off right).

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=32790 Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:21:58 PDT Recommended

The Voyeur (L'Uomo che guarda), 1994, Italy. 99 minutes
Directed by Tinto Brass
With: Francesco Casale, Katarina Vasilissa, Cristina Garavaglia, Raffaella Offidani, Franco Branciaroli

The Italian director Tinto Brass, like the American Russ Meyer, is proof that the auteur theory is an open tent. It would be tough to make the case for Brass as a great filmmaker -- he is essentially a silly titillator -- but he puts his unmistakable stamp on whatever he makes, asserting himself as the true author of his films no matter who provided the source material. With "The Voyeur," he takes a novel by a genuinely great artist, Alberto Moravia, and turns it into a Brassian bacchanal of female crotches, prosthetic erections and slo-mo bouncing breasts -- all while managing to slip in Moravian themes of betrayal, ennui and alienation. Certainly, that's something like genius.

What mak...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=20091 Thu, 09 Feb 2006 10:37:48 PST Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Walerian Borowczyk is known almost exclusively now as an erotic filmmaker with an art house pedigree and a fantastic imagination -- I don't recommend the pornographic monster movie La b te but it does has its own kind of squeamish merit. I haven't seen his other strictly erotic films but I remember seeing a couple of his imaginative animated short subjects in High School - they were as interesting as those by Jir Trnka. But he did make one amazingly good later feature about a desperate love with horrible consequences, sort of a cross between Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Pabst's Pandora's Box called A Story of A Sin, or A Story of Sin. It just knocked me out, and I wish it would come to DVD in a quality edition.

Goto, l' le d'amour is Walerian Borowczyk's first feature, a quizzical totalitarian satire...Read the entire review

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