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The cover art for Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray
rightly plays up A Woman’s Torment as a horror film
rather than a porno.
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I can’t believe it’s been a year since I’ve reviewed any straight porn. Not that any of you are complaining. Judging by the analytics, y’all aren’t nearly as interested in porn as I thought you’d be. With that in mind, I thought I’d check out one of director Roberta Findlay’s fuck films since she wasn’t all that interested in porn, either.
Roberta’s 1977 movie A WOMAN’S TORMENT, which she also wrote and produced—all under the pseudonym Robert Norman—was inspired by Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, or so says the copy on the back of Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray of the film. Though this may be true, the film has more in common with the American horrors of Curtis (The Killing Kind) Harrington or Robert Vincent (Blood Mania) O’Neil, minus the overt eroticism.
The woman’s torment we see at the film’s opening is the more typical kind as the camera takes us into the Manhattan bedroom of Dr. Otis Vorel (a bewigged Jake Teague, who’s pretty great in this) and his much younger wife Estelle (Jennifer Jordan), in the middle of doing it. That a TV broadcast of a baseball game is playing while the couple bangs should give you an idea of how hot the sex is, but in case that’s too subtle there are Estelle’s cries for Otis to just “hold her.” But Otis just keeps pounding away.
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A metaphorical representation of the eroticism
of Otis and Estelle’s coupling (Source: giphy)
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Once Otis gets off, he’s genuinely perplexed by Estelle’s tearful complaints. “I just made love to you. Or am I hallucinating?” he asks. “Wrong, my friend,” Estelle snaps. “You just masturbated inside of me.” Otis then has the audacity to say: “I’m sorry you didn’t have an orgasm, but it’s not the end of the world.” And he’s supposed to be a psychiatrist.
There’s more to Estelle’s anger than unsatisfying sex. She’s certain her husband has no problem making other women come. Otis, however, is adamant that he’s never been unfaithful in all the years they’ve been married.
He’s lying, of course. He’s been carrying on an affair with Fran (Crystal Sync, also bewigged, billed as Harris Compton), whom he and Estelle see later that very night at a party hosted by Fran and her architect husband Don (Jeffrey Hurst, who got my bear senses tingling).
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| Look, it’s R. Bolla! |
There’s one other resident in Fran and Don’s apartment, Fran’s stepsister Karen, primarily played by Tara Chung (I’ll elaborate later). Karen, however, is not attending the party, preferring to stay inside her darkened room, clutching a doll and a pair of large scissors. I’d say she’s got issues, but as someone who finds parties more stressful than job interviews, her avoiding Fran and Don’s didn’t strike me immediately as a red flag. Don, however, thinks Karen belongs in an institution and approaches Otis about providing his professional assessment. Otis is more interested in guzzling vodka and sneaking away to feel-up Don’s wife in the kitchen. Too bad for him Fran has decided that tonight’s the night to call it quits (“Affairs aren’t like a marriage—they
end.”)
Don confronts Fran about the affair after the party, which Fran inadvertently admits in her denial. Unlike Estelle, Don gets a charge out of Fran’s infidelity, saying he likes it when other men find her attractive. “Fran, you are a cock-stirring sight,” Don leers from the bed, adding: “Come here, wench. Let me make love to you.”
“All right,” Fran says resignedly. “Let’s get this over with.”
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| Don and Fran get it over with. |
The couple then proceeds to get it over with, which is about as hot as it sounds. (In the interest of full disclosure, it wasn’t just that the couple’s sex was perfunctory that had diminished the scene's erotic appeal, but that Sync abstractly resembled the co-owner of a company I used to work for, a very pious woman who once used her position to mandate that “Xmas” not be used as an abbreviation for Christmas in file names because it made Jesus cry or something. Her husband—who bragged about owning 51% of the company to his wife’s 49%—was even worse: he followed the Gospel According to Fox News. So, because of this association with a past employer, Sync and Hurst’s scene first struck me as funny, until I began to picture my past employers making apathetic love, and then I began to cry, just like Jesus did when I labeled files “Xmas Card 2013”.)
Meanwhile, in the next room, Karen is packing her suitcase.
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| Oops, she forgot the scissors. |
Karen takes off for Fran and Don’s beach house on Fire Island, sacrificing her suitcase to the tide before she’s even made it to the house’s front door. Once inside, she turns on every light in the house, then takes a shower, becoming aroused until hallucinations of a man attacking her with a knife kills her masturbatory mood and sends her running upstairs in a panic. Discovering
Michael Gaunt (billed as Michael Grant) waiting for her only intensifies Karen’s terror.
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| Arguably more startling than Karen’s phantom attacker. |
Karen immediately grabs a knife from the kitchen counter, but Gaunt convinces her he’s harmless. He’s just a line worker from the power company, there to make sure the electricity is still working after the prior night’s storm. He even builds a fire for her. As he talks (and talks and talks), Karen goes from frightened to horny and whips off her bathrobe. Gaunt protests, saying he’s never taken advantage of a lady in distress, but Karen, who’s been practically mute until now, taunts him into giving her what she craves (“Certainly a big stud like you isn’t afraid of a little girl like me.”) The lineman quickly acquiesces, giving Karen a thorough fingering, a scene that immediately brought Margaret Cho’s
“Fat Pussy” to mind. Karen isn’t as agreeable when Gaunt wants to fuck, however.
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She let him nut first, at least.
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Back in Manhattan, Fran and Don have Otis and Estelle over for afternoon cocktails, during which they discuss what to do with Karen. Fran, heretofore worried Karen receiving any mental health treatment would tarnish her family’s good name, grudgingly agrees to making an appointment with a specialist for her troubled stepsister. Then it’s time to gather ‘round the piano for a sing-along!
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| No, seriously. |
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Marlene Willoughby as Mrs. Grudkow
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Meanwhile, Karen continues to be besieged by drop-in guests. First, there’s nosy neighbor Fanny Grudkow, who, despite appearances, is not a camp drag queen but adult film actress
Marlene Willoughby. Willoughby’s comedic skills are commendable (favorite moment: Fanny empties sand from her shoe onto the coffee table, then scolds Karen for her poor housekeeping), and it’s not like the movie is totally devoid of humor, but the scene is out of place tonally. It’s akin to splicing a skit from
The Carol Burnett Show into the middle of
Last House on the Left.
After dispatching Fanny, Karen spends some alone time on the beach with her demons. While she’s out of the house, a pair of young lovers (Clea Carson and some anonymous dude who either looks like a sexier Ed Begley, Jr., or a homely Hugh Grant) decide to use her house as a fuck pad, because what’s breaking and entering when you’re horny? It’s at this point in the movie that audiences finally get treated to a more varied menu of sex acts in a single sex scene, rather than just one or two (the movie’s first blowjob doesn’t happen until nearly an hour in). That said, you may wish this movie never discovered cunnilingus, or a zoom lens. John Waters was right: hardcore pornography does look like open heart surgery.
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Although it’s generally less bloody.
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Weirdly, during all of Fran and Don’s discussions about Karen’s welfare, no one seems all that worried about her missing. Except, she’s not. It turns out the couple knows she’s at the beach house, and only become concerned when she doesn’t answer the phone. So, they urge their good friend Otis to go out to Fire Island to make a welfare check, of sorts.
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| Dr. Otis, checking Karen’s welfare. |
In case we need any further proof that Otis is a shitty psychiatrist, the doctor judges Karen to be perfectly sane because that pussy is crazy good. Then, in a tone of voice used by men who call waitresses “toots,” the doctor tells Karen to make some coffee while he takes a shower. Instead, Karen rips a power cord from a lamp and joins Otis in the bathroom administer some shock therapy. Oh, Fran’s not going to be happy when she discovers all these bodies. What will become of her family name then?
A Drive-in Horror with Cumshots
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Roberta Findlay, billed as Anna Riva,
starred in the dreary 1966 sexploitation
movie Take Me Naked, directed
by her husband Michael.
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Roberta Findlay’s film career dates back to the early 1960s, starting with the 1964 film
The Body of a Female—made by her then-fiancée
Michael Findlay and his friends
John and Lem Amero—in which she starred as the titular body, as well as working as a lighting technician. After she and Michael married the couple collaborated on numerous roughies, including the infamous
Flesh trilogy (though Roberta later
denied having much involvement in those movies) and my personal favorite,
A Thousand Pleasures. By 1970 Roberta had experience in almost every aspect of filmmaking, including directing, cinematography, screenwriting, editing, lighting and composing (she was studying to be a classical pianist when she and Michael met). However, she never talks of being interested in film as a creative outlet. She wasn’t an artist; she was just looking to get paid.
Yet, A Woman’s Torment, with its witty and surprisingly nuanced script, artful cinematography (excepting traumatizing close-ups of pussy eating), better-than-average acting, plus Walter Sear’s effective sound design, shows she might have been more ambitious than she let on. It’s not just a better-than-expected adult movie, considering it’s from the same woman who helmed the execrable Prime Evil, it might also rank as one of Roberta’s best films, period. It’s less a fuck flick with a body count than it is a drive-in horror with cumshots.
The movie’s quality is even more impressive when you consider that the lead, Tara Chung, ran off with a gaffer midway through shooting. (I wonder if Roberta’s production company made the mistake of paying Chung up front?) Luckily, Chung left behind her wig (yeah, she wore one, too), so Roberta, ever resourceful, donned it for some pick-up shots, and for the most part you can’t tell when she’s standing in for her AWOL actress.
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| Usually. |
Chung may have been an unreliable employee, but she is quite good in the role of Karen, effectively conveying her character’s troubled mental state. She’s also the most enthusiastic sexual performer in the cast, though to be fair to her co-stars, Karen is the only character written as being overwhelmed by her desires. And while we’re on the subject of
A Woman’s Torment as erotica, let’s just say Roberta’s indifference to the genre shows. The R-rated cut of the film included on the Vinegar Syndrome disk is actually preferable to the original X-rated version as the hardcore scenes have all the fiery heat of a contractual obligation. An erotic masterpiece this ain’t.
I was also surprised by the feminist themes in A Woman’s Torment—surprised because, though Roberta’s life and career qualify her as a feminist pioneer, she is adamantly not a feminist. If you listen to the interview she gave The Rialto Report podcast, you’ll learn she’s the opposite (she bluntly states that she hates women and children). But maybe that’s why she could so deftly write Otis’s sexism: Roberta herself is a misogynist. In that light, maybe she intended Estelle to come off as a selfish bitch rather than a woman demanding the same sexual satisfaction as a man. Either way, “You just masturbated inside of me” is still an awesome line.
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| The wigs of Torment. |
