Remember, Ladies: No Orgasm Goes Unpunished

I knew this day would come, the day I finally check out yet another godawful Fifty Shades of Grey knockoff that confuses abuse with romance. I’m talking, of course, about the 2017 British movie DARKER SHADES OF ELISE.

This movie was put in my Tubi queue shortly after reviewing that more notorious Fifty Shades knock-off, 365 Days, as it looked like it would provide ample opportunities for ridicule. Then I realized I’d have to watch it first, and the prospect of doing that was significantly less fun.

via GIPHY

It took the recent Netflix release of the second installment of the 365 Days saga—if a collection of montages, drone shots and sex scenes, varnished over with an overbearing pseudo-R&B soundtrack, even qualifies as a “saga”—to spur me to learn about Elise’s darker shades.

Elise is subjected to the judgmental gaze of
Janet, the cunty co-worker.

Elise (Becca Hirani), once an aspiring model and actress, is now a bored London housewife, married to workaholic Rick (Tommy Vilés). At the movie’s opening she shows up at his barren office with champagne bottle and glasses in hand, interrupting Rick having a flirty conversation about salads(?) with his colleague Janet (Louisa Warren). Janet, who should really be a lot humbler considering her shitty dye-job, takes her sweet time fucking off, making sure to give Rick’s wife a condescending once-over on her way out the door. Rick is just as annoyed by the interruption. It’s their anniversary, Elise reminds him. Surely, he could make time to celebrate. Though Rick apologizes, he’s not making any indication he plans on leaving the office anytime soon. When he gets a call about a work “emergency,” he seems positively relieved.

Elise begins to suspect Rick of having an affair. “Know what I would do?” Elise’s friend Bianca (Charlene Cooper) volunteers. “Go fuck every man in sight.” But Elise says she can’t do that—she’s married. Bianca, as the free-spirited/slutty best friend, doesn’t see that as a barrier. Then, just to rub salt into her friend’s wounded sex life, Bianca hurries Elise out the door so she can greet her latest internet hook-up. Elise instead lingers at the back window, getting so turned on watching a hot Black guy go down on Bianca that she can’t help but touch herself. 

There can be a fine line between sexy and sad,
and Elise quickly crosses it.

It’s while tailing Rick, hoping to catch him in the act of cheating, that Elise meets Felix (Arron Blake), an attractive, if somewhat hawk-faced, photographer. Felix immediately starts chatting up Elise, who blushes at his smarmy compliments but clearly enjoys the attention. When he asks if he can photograph her, she gives the request a millisecond of consideration—the same amount of time required to cut to Elise in her apartment, posing for Felix. Felix just as quickly jumps to suggesting Elise take her dress off. “What?” Elise gasps. “I don’t even know your name.” Wait, what? I’m sorry, even in my desperate bar trash days, when my affection was won by anyone who would talk to me for more than three minutes, I still knew the names of the men I was about to leave the bar with, at least until the next morning.

Once introductions are out of the way the pair kiss. Though Elise isn’t exactly resistant, this seduction feels more like an uncomfortable assignment in a James Franco-led acting class. Elise stops Felix before things go too far, but her marital commitment snaps a day or so later when Rick and his assistants, doing some pre-meeting prep work at the apartment, respond to her offer of refreshments like she just farted. Rick and company are barely out the door before Elise is inviting Felix over to initiate her into the joys of adultery.

Felix shows us the pale side of the moon.

Because movies can’t let female orgasms go unpunished, Felix quickly proves to be every bit of the creeper we suspect him of being. In the first of many red flags, he shows up in Elise’s bedroom while Rick is in the shower (this apartment building either has really shit security or Felix can scale walls like Spider-Man). Despite her protests, Felix fucks Elise (quickly), ducking out of the room—but not out of the apartment—the moment Rick asks his wife to hand him a towel. But, uh-oh, Rick decides now is time to tend to his husbandly duties and initiates sex with Elise, thinking her flushed face and WAP are the result of watching him shower (Vilés is cute, but “moisture-inducing” might be a wee bit of an overstatement).

Felix enjoys the show.

But watching Elise bone her husband gets Felix dripping, so after Rick leaves on yet another business trip the photographer proposes inviting random men over to fuck her while Felix watches. How would she like that? Elise responds as if just offered a cup of tea: “Yeah. I guess so.”

Felix wastes little time finding participants for his voyeuristic fantasies, though it’s clear what he really enjoys is Elise’s terror when these randos suddenly appear unannounced in her home, like the hunky Black man (not the same one who ate out Bianca), who walks into the bathroom while she’s bathing and begins undressing.

He quickly breaks the ice.

Later, Felix brings two twinks over to have their way with her. Elise is so blinded by all this nubile British boi-flesh that she fails to notice Felix has set up his camera to record the action. Or maybe she’s too horny to care. It’s not until brings home Mindy the Half-Price Dominatrix (Claire-Maria Fox) that Elise realizes this affair has to end.

The moment Elise re-evaluates her relationship with Felix.

Felix isn’t one to let go easily, however, and he quickly launches into a campaign of harassment that begins with threats and humiliations before quickly escalating to revenge porn and gang rape. Elise, feeling she has no other option, confesses the affair to Rick. That’s when things get all murder-y.

Though its title and marketing suggest Elise is a down-market Fifty Shades rip-off, it’s really just a kinkier (and significantly cheaper) Fatal Attraction, with a little bit of Animal Instincts thrown in. With a beefed-up script, higher production values and an effort to make the sex scenes sexy, Elise could’ve been an OK direct-to-streaming erotic thriller. As it is, Shannon Holiday’s script is populated with one-note characters spouting bland and/or dumb dialog (including a police detective making the most ridiculous/offensive request of a victim ever) and Jamie West’s direction does nothing to elevate the material. Whereas Fifty Shades and 365 Days are as much lifestyle porn as they are just porn, Darker Shades of Elise is aggressively drab, as if West shot the entire movie through a dirty window.

Director Jamie West captures the romance of the London setting.

The cast is largely comprised of actors who have worked together on similar Z-grade titles, and while none of them are especially good, a few are better than the material they are given. Had Elise’s character been given a few more shades, I have no doubt that Hirani could’ve made her seem more like a fully realized human being instead of a doormat in need of a good lay. Similarly, I’d like to think Blake might have displayed some charm in the early scenes had the script supplied Felix with any, which would make Elise’s attraction to him more believable and his psychopathic behavior a bit more shocking. Instead, he comes across as a predator from the start, though, for what it’s worth, Blake is quite effective the nastier he gets. Weirdly, the only character given any sort of nuance is Rick, who is first shown to be an insensitive dick, only to soften up over the course of the movie. I found myself wondering if the movie might’ve been better served if Vilés and Blake switched roles, though both actors would’ve been better served taking different jobs.

I know I’m trespassing on Nick DiRamio’s territory, but girl,
who did your make up?

So, Darker Shades of Elise wasn’t as unwatchable as I feared, but that’s about the most that can be said for it. It isn’t sexy, it isn’t good, and it’s not worth your time.

On the other hand….

Let There Be No More Tomorrows After This Day

Binge and purge.

While Darker Shades of Elise is bad, 365 DAYS: THIS DAY, as most readers already know, is fucking dreadful, and just as offensive as the first movie. The “story,” using the loosest definition of the word, picks up several weeks/months (time doesn’t matter in this universe) after the first movie, on the wedding day of Massimo (Michele Marrone, who again contributes to the movie’s soundtrack, as grating as it is relentless) and “Low-ra” (Anna-Marie Sieklucka). The final scene of the previous film, in which Laura and her friend Olga (Magdalena Lamparska) are seen being driven into a tunnel but never coming out the other side, is explained away in a few lines of dialog: there was an accident and Laura miscarried (but don’t tell Massimo she was ever pregnant!). Now let us never speak of it again.

Massimo has his own secrets, like the fact that he has a twin brother, Adriano. The brothers may be identical, but they are quite different: Massimo looks like drug trafficker while Adriano looks like a drug trafficker who uses the product. Henceforth, they will be known as Scowly and Twitchy. Anyway, Laura is pissed that Scowly—who, you’ll remember, kidnapped her and held her prisoner until she finally submitted to fell in love with him—withheld this information from her. She’s also starting to get a teensy bit annoyed that Massimo treats her like his property (who would’ve guessed?). But while Laura is relatively accepting of her abusive relationship, cheating on her is just a bridge too far. So, when she catches Scowly in flagrante delicto with his ex, Anna (Natasza Urbanska), she storms off, not realizing it was Twitchy the whole time.

Scowly and Twitchy

Nacho undulates into Laura’s life.

Enter Nacho (yes, Nacho), Scowly and Laura’s new gardener, who conveniently shows up to give the cuckqueaned gangster’s wife a lift, ultimately taking her to his place. It turns out Nacho, who is never once shown gardening, lives in a beautiful seaside villa. It’s his father’s place, he explains. Laura doesn’t ask any more questions, since Nacho, played by reality show contestant Simone Susinna, has a smile that can melt away panties and cloud minds. Yet, while Nacho is significantly more pleasant than Scowly, viewers—those who have made it this far, at least—will suspect that he, too, is a piece of shit, and they’d be right. He’s just significantly less shitty than Massimo.

The only reason to watch the film adaptations of Blanka Lipińska’s porno trilogy is the explicit sex, and even there This Day disappoints. The sex scenes may be early and often (the first one happens a mere two minutes in), but there is significantly less flesh bared this time out. It’s not like Sieklucka and Marrone decided to beef up the nudity clauses in their contracts. They still get naked, just not as frequently, though you can still rest assured that Sieklucka will be baring more than either of her male co-stars. And it’s not like the sex is all that daring or interesting, the movie failing to realize that in the internet age it will take more than whipped cream and toys to get audiences’ collective blood pumping. However, there is a scene on a golf course that will get them laughing.

Olga and Domenico are interrupted—again.

As with the first one, I’m providing the time codes for the “good parts” of This Day. I’m not counting that first sex scene, in which Laura and Scowly have pre-wedding sex (sample romantic dialog: “I don’t have panties”) as both actors remain fully clothed. The same goes for Olga and Domenico’s frequently interrupted couplings (people are always walking in on each other fucking in this movie), which aren’t very explicit and meant solely as comic relief. So, for those who want to see the hot people have simulated sex without having to sit through the movie’s remaining 95 minutes of watching them drive Lambos, eat spaghetti, shop, jet ski, drive Corvettes, walk on the beach, lounge on patios, lounge by the pool, and model comically large sunglasses, here are the parts to fast-forward to:

I eat your face!

10:40 – Massimo and Laura’s wedding night. “You have one hour. Then I’ll do whatever I wan’ w’ju,” Scowly tells his bride. “No,” she replies, “I’ll do whatever I want with you.” She ties him (fully clothed) to a chair, then gets naked and pleasures herself with a vibrator until Scowly gets so horny he breaks free of his flimsy restraints and pounces on her. This scene segues into the movie’s honeymoon montage, which includes hot tub sex (non-explicit), Laura walking topless along the beach and, during a game of golf, Laura squatting over one of the holes as her husband/kidnapper putts a ball toward her cooch. 

 

Laura proves that nothing will make golf sexy.

21:10 – Massimo and Laura, who had sex on a patio table during the movie’s first two minutes, have sex on a dining room table after she slinks into the room wearing skimpy lingerie (almost everyone in this movie walks as if they are about to make a stripper pole their bitch). Scowly finally shows his ass (Marrone isn’t much of an actor, to put it kindly, but his body—woof!). He also goes down on Laura, which may not be entirely simulated.

Michele Marrone displays his greatest strength as an actor.

38:42 – Massimo gets his Christmas gift: a night of BDSM Lite with a box set of sex toys. So, just like any other night. Laura is gift wrapped in a garter belt and leather cuffs with gold lettering spelling out “Fuck Me” (Eat your heart out, Nicholas Sparks.) Scowly once again gets naked, though the illusion that he’s really giving it to his victim/wife is shattered with a brief full-frontal flash.

No wonder he had to use the toys on Laura.

51:00 – Laura walks in on “Massimo” and Anna. Not terribly explicit but you a brief glimpse of Urbanska’s naked butt (Marrone’s is kept covered by his shirttail).

1:09:17 – Laura and Nacho get it on (though it might be a dream; the movie isn’t clear, and you won’t care). Lots of close-ups of Laura looking pre-orgasmic and Nacho looking sleepy. Nacho kisses his way down her naked torso before dining downtown.

Hel-lo!

1:25:25 – Laura may/may not be dreaming of Nacho eating her pussy for breakfast. “Are you having a nightmare or just an erotic dream?” asks Nacho when she wakes up. Then they have spaghetti for breakfast, because they are in Italy.

1:30:18 – No sex, but Nacho finally shows his ass. 

Not bad, but Sussina looks better from the front.

You’ve got 20 more minutes to go after Sussina shows his two handfuls—20 loooong minutes. Not only is This Day unerotic, offensive and stupid, it’s also punishingly dull. At this rate, watching the third installment will likely feel as if time is standing still. It’s time that would probably be better spent watching real porn (see the internet for details.) But who am I kidding? I know I’m going to watch it when it drops on Netflix.

Short Takes: ‘Sunburn’ (2018) ★★ 1/2

Put some sexy Europeans with complicated love lives around a swimming pool and I’m there: La piscine (a.k.a. The Swimming Pool), Swimming Pool (which is not a remake of La piscine), A Bigger Splash (which is) — I enjoyed them all. So, it was damn-near inevitable that I’d watch Vicente Alves do Ó’s 2018 film Sunburn (a.k.a. Golpe de Sol), which ups the ante by making its characters queer. Yes, please.

Four friends—Simão (Ricardo Barbosa, wearing Speedos for the majority of the film’s runtime), Vasco (Ricardo Pereira), Joana (Oceana Basílio) and Francisco (Nuno Pardal)—are spending a long weekend at Francisco’s secluded villa when they each receive a phone call from David, whom they haven’t seen in 10 years and whom a few hoped never to see again. When David invites himself over, his impending arrival turns what was supposed to be a relaxing weekend into a tense confrontation with their past decisions and encroaching middle age.

Though it would seem that it’s poised to rage out of control like the distant brush fires that surround Francisco’s villa, Sunburn spends much of its runtime merely smoldering, gradually revealing details about its characters and their history with David. Except, the movie never reveals as much as it holds back. In fact, for the first 20 minutes I wasn’t entirely clear on the characters’ relationship to each other. This is made more frustrating by intermittent voice overs from David himself that suggest the movie might take a much darker turn, but it’s just one more tease without a payoff.

Sunburn looks gorgeous, and writer-director do Ó manages to slip in a few pointed insights about aging and regret. That the characters’ sexuality (Simão and Vasco are gay; Francisco is bi, in a relationship with Joana) is treated matter-of-factly is also appreciated. But the movie is never as profound as it thinks it is and I never liked it as much as I hoped I would. It may be titled Sunburn, but this Portuguese drama is wearing SPF-50.

A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #5: ‘A Woman’s Torment’

The cover art for Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray
rightly plays up A Woman’s Torment as a horror film
rather than a porno.

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.

A metaphorical representation of the eroticism
of Otis and Estelle’s coupling (Source: giphy)

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).

“Everything tastes better when it’s sittin’ on a Ritz.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

She let him nut first, at least.

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!

No, seriously.

Marlene Willoughby as Mrs. Grudkow

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.

Although it’s generally less bloody.

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.

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

Roberta Findlay, billed as Anna Riva,
starred in the dreary 1966 sexploitation
movie Take Me Naked, directed
 by her husband Michael.

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.

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. 

The wigs of Torment.

Short Takes: ‘Operation Hyacinth’ (2021) ★★★★

A heterosexual police officer goes undercover in the gay community to solve a string of murders targeting homosexuals, and soon finds himself pushing himself further and further to not blow his cover (so to speak). No, they didn’t remake William Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising; this is the set-up for the much more recent, and much more dour Operation Hyacinth (a.k.a. Hiacynt), director Piotr Domalewski’s 2021 film currently streaming on Netflix.

Though I flippantly compared it to Cruising, Operation Hyacinth has more in common with the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s—like a homoerotic version of The Parallax View, or Three Days of the Condor if Jan Michael-Vincent were cast in the Faye Dunaway role (you’re welcome.)

Robert (Tomasz Zietek) is a young officer on Warsaw’s police force in 1985, when Poland was still a communist country and being an out homosexual meant having a target on your back (not that it’s much better today). At the beginning of the film Robert and his boorish partner Wojtek (Tomasz Schuchardt) are investigating the murders of two gay men. The murders are quickly pinned on a pimp who crossed paths with both victims. Robert, however, isn’t convinced they got the right guy. He appeals to the captain (Marek Kalita) to leave the case open for further investigation. The captain—also Robert’s father—tells him to take the win and move on. Robert instead elects to conduct a more thorough investigation on his own.

It’s during a raid of a notorious Warsaw tearoom—part of the real “Operation Hyacinth”—that Robert meets Arek, one of the fleeing “suspects.” When young art student mistakenly assumes Robert is also running from the police and not chasing him, Robert lets the assumption stand and begins cultivating Arek as an informant. That Arek quickly develops feelings for Robert is no surprise (Zietek does rock that mustache), and Robert exploits that attraction. But as the movie progresses, Robert—who’s engaged and regularly hooks up with his fiancée Helinka (Adrianna Chlebicka)—begins to regard Arek as more than just an informant.

Though Operation Hyacinth is primarily a police procedural, the movie’s setting makes the gay romance just as tense. Robert not only runs the risk of his identity being found out by Arek, but the risk of being outed to his colleagues and family is even greater. A scene of Robert and Arek narrowly avoiding discovery by Robert’s father are just as suspenseful as when Robert is almost discovered by the suspected killer he’s investigating.

Operation Hyacinth reassured me that not everything on Netflix sucks, as well as reminded me that 365 Days is not representative of Polish cinema. It also provides me an opportunity to show readers that I can give a movie more than three stars. Thriller fans, be they LGBTQ or straights who don’t shudder at the sight of two dudes doing it, should consider giving this one a watch. Just be warned that it gets pretty grim. As much as I liked it, I couldn’t help wishing it, too, had a WTF interrogation scene like Cruising, just to lighten the mood.

Short Takes: ‘The Female Bunch’ (1971) ★★

Poor Sandy (Nesa Renet). First, she’s left at the altar by her fiancé, and then the third-rate country singer she’s been boning on the rebound dumps her for that redhead who’s always sitting in the front row. What’s a girl to do? Swallow a bunch of sleeping pills, of course. She’s revived just in time by her girlfriend, Vegas go-go dancer Libby (Regina Carrol). Libby convinces Sandy that the best way to escape her man troubles isn’t with pills but by joining The Female Bunch, a group of young women living on a ranch where no men are allowed (an exception is made for Lon Chaney Jr., but he’s harmless, which is more than can be said for some of the real-life residents of the ranch location). To join, Sandy must allow herself to be buried alive for a few minutes, which is scary but still easier than joining the Kappas.

The ranch is run by Grace (Jennifer Bishop), a whip-wielding heroin addict. Sure, Grace may be a bitch, but she does take the girls along on drug runs to Mexico, allowing them to fuck the men at the bar while she meets with her connection. One of those men at the bar is Bill (Russ Tamblyn, better known today as Amber’s dad), who makes the mistake of accepting an invitation to visit one of the girls at the ranch, getting branded on his forehead for his trouble. He didn’t even get off first! Bill makes an even bigger mistake when he comes back for revenge. With shit getting real, Sandy reconsiders her membership to this gang of sexy, horseback riding criminals, but escaping might result in her getting buried for good.

The Female Bunch was directed by Al Adamson, so it goes without saying that it’s bad (Al had some help from John Cardos, but Cardos’ involvement doesn’t affect the movie’s quality one way or the other). That said, it’s not one of Adamson’s worst. Sure, the storytelling is sloppy and there’s only a passing concern for continuity and keeping shots in focus, but The Female Bunch manages to scrape by on sheer enthusiasm alone. Few of the females in this bunch can act, but that doesn’t stop them from biting into their bad-girl roles.

One of the females in that bunch who deserves special mention is trans actress Aleshia Brevard (billed as A’lesha Lee), who plays Sadie. Aleshia is generally overlooked by reviewers, most dwelling on how sad it is that this was Chaney’s last film. Hard to believe, given that once you see Brevard it’s pretty hard to forget her. Not only does Aleshia stand a foot taller than her co-stars, gaining extra height from big, flaming red bouffant (only Adamson's wife Regina Carrol’s hair is bigger), her performance is bigger, too. The way she channels her drag queen roots in portraying Sadie had me wishing she’d been made leader of The Female Bunch instead of Bishop. It would certainly be a more interesting movie if she had.

I read Aleshia’s first autobiography when it came out in 2001 (she published a follow-up shortly before her death in 2015) and was excited to finally see her in action. She may not have gotten many good roles (The Love God? and The Man with Bogart’s Face are two of Aleshia’s bigger films), but I’d like to think her work in exploitation films helped pave the way so trans actors like Laverne Cox could get more significant parts today. Though Aleshia is no longer with us, her website is still active and worth a visit for the photos alone.