SUPPORTER DAY: The Image (1975)

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The Image AKA The Punishment of Anne was based on L’Image, a high class dirty book if there ever was one. According to the Rialto Report, it was written by “Jean de Berg, later to be revealed as the pseudonym of Catherine Robbe-Grillet, a mysterious French writer, photographer, and actress of Armenian descent, who was also married to the French writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet.”

Broken up into ten chapters, this is the story of Jean (Carl Parker), an older writer who has come to Paris and who soon meets an old friend by the name of Claire (Marilyn Roberts). He’s soon part of her world of BDSM along with her younger partner Anne (Mary Mendum, Metzger’s girlfriend at the time, she would also appear in several Joe Sarno movies).

What’s really interesting in the above-mentioned Rialto Report article is that beyond the interiors being shot in a property owned by Roy Cohn was that none of the leads believe they performed any of the sex in director Radley Metzer’s first hardcore film.

This was way rougher than many were ready for, even in the Golden Age, but it retains its classy feel despite of that. Just like The Score, Metzger shows a side of the bedroom that many even today don’t want to see or even discuss.