Findlay Week (August 18 – 24) Husband and wife Michael and Roberta Findlay made mean-spirited films. They collaborated on films like Take Me Naked, The Ultimate Degenerate, and the notorious Flesh Trilogy, plus they actually looked like criminals – walking mug shots! You expect to see them glowering on the cover of one of those tabloids next to a headline like “KIDNAPPER COUPLE COLLECTED VICTIMS FINGERS.” Instead they were pornographers which did make them like criminals in their day. A lot of the filmmakers of their era would claim they only made this kind of movie because there was money in it, but Michael and Roberta were sincere adherents. Even when audience tastes changed and the couple were divorced they continued to make their own films that mixed in elements of kink and cruelty. 

“Whatever she put in that tea hit me like a concrete lullaby.”

Man, the poetry that exists inside this film is kind of like finding a diamond in a shit-strewn toilet and I mean that as a compliment.

Richard David (Michael Findlay, still working through his issues and maybe some new ones as he directs, writes and stars in another, well, epic) has already killed his wife (that’s his real life wife Roberta, whose voice sticks around) and is barely on the run before he picks up hitchhikers Maggie (Uta Erickson) and Jackie (Linda Boyce). While Jackie engages in the kind of behavior that can cause a driver to crash his car, Maggie finds the bloodied body of Mrs. David in the backseat. They take him to their home, which is protected by Bruno (John Amero) and contains another lesbian, Belle (Janet Banzet), and their child of sorts, Baby (Kim Lewid) who is always naked in her crib. They plan on using Richard as their sperm bank to create new children and keep him in line through torture and constant sex with their maid Anna (Donna Stone), who he refers to as Boobarella.

Finally, she warns Richard to run, but it’s too late. The ladies burn him and beat him until he loses what’s left of his mind, strangling and slashing his way to a freedom that he doesn’t find, as Anna uses her massive mammaries to asphyxiate him into oblivion. This would be a climax in any other roughie, but we’ve already had a scene where two of the ladies breast feed Baby while whipping her bloody, then force her to puke up all of the milk. That’s commitment to the bit.

Sadly, Michael Findlay was killed by a helicopter on the roof of the Pan Am Building, literally cut to pieces in some reports, lacerated in others. He left behind quite a history of some of the most truly transgressive movies ever made. Much of the credit should go to his partner Roberta, whose cinematography elevates these from trash to trash with noir aspirations.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.