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. 

Michael (Michael Findlay, who co-directed and co-wrote this with his wife Roberta) wakes up in ancient Greece. Why? Who cares. The important thing is that the first woman that he runs into (Maria Lease, fated to one day direct Dolly Dearest), well, he beats into oblivion because he’s Michael Findlay.

Set to the poetry of Pierre Louys, we see Linda Boyce, Maria Lorello, Rosine Martinque, Denise Lemaine and Uta Erickson, the lesbians of this past time, playing in the woods. It tends to go on and on, but this feels like an attempt to be arthouse instead of grindhouse, except that Roberta shoots the women like Jess Franco in a Spanish ballroom in the mid 2000’s, her camera invading right into gynecology instead of the kind of fare that critics would pontificate upon.

Elsa Gidow, who wrote the first book of openly lesbian poetry published in North America, has a poem by the same title:

I shall not harm you at all nor ask you
        for anything,
You need have no fear;
I am only very tired and would like to
        rest awhile
With my head here
And play with the long strands of your
        loosed hair,
Or touch your skin,
Feel your cool breath on my eyes,
        watch it stir
Those rising hills where your breasts begin;
And listen to your voice whispering
        tender words
Until, perhaps, I fall asleep;
Or feel you kiss my forehead to comfort me
        a little
If I should weep.
That is all, just to lie so beside you
Till dawn’s lamp is lit.
You need not fear me. I have given
        too much of love
Ever to ask for it.

As for Mnasidika, she’s one of the characters in Pierre Louÿs’ The Songs of Bilitis, Translated from the Greek. Pretty cultured stuff for a movie made after the Supreme Court permitted genitals in movies and the Findlays went for it. This movie is, at times, just genitals. It was new at the time, I guess, and you didn’t need a baby coming out of it like Mom and Dad so that raincoaters could watch.

That said, the Findlays love ruined orgasms before that became a thing on Pornhub, so this ends with the women hunting down Michael and castrating him. That’s wild, because if you dwell on it, he had his wife filming a scene where his cock got cut off. As always, a maniac.

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.

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. 

For two movies, Richard Jennings (director and co-writer Michael Findlay, who did the story with his wife Roberta) has attacked women to get back at his now dead wife. Now, however, he is the one being hunted by Steve’s — the dead boyfriend of his dead wife — sister Maria (Uta Erickson, Electric Lover) and her boyfriend Don (Earl Hindman, appearing as Leo Heinz).

All the while, Richard is killing off women like Cleo (Donna Stone), who he beats with a tire iron on a snow-covered beach before torturing her with crab claws before electrocuting her through her earrings, followed by picking up a hitchhiker (Rita Vance) who he burns with a blowtorch and then wraps in blankets and sets on fire. Can that be topped? Well, he also douches another woman with acid and his sperm has become so filthy that it poisons an unlucky woman who swallows his fecund seed.

Maria, Don and her sister and lover Doris (Alice Grant who is also Suzzan Landau, Keyholes Are for Peeping) all conspire to get Richard into their trap, which involves her tying his member to a string connected to the trigger of a gun that will shoot him in his sex if he gets erect while watching her have sex with her boyfriend.

Yes, all of this happens and more. There’s a beach battle where Richard screams “I’ll slice you in two like a piece of cheese!” and Maria inserting beads into Don’s back door, which is even more astounding when you realize that he’s Wilson from Home Improvement. No wonder he never showed his face to that narc, Tim Allen! And I totally forgot that the sisters canoodle while Doris’ girlfriend Moana (Janet Banzet AKA Marie Brent and Pat Barrett; The Amazing Transplant) is recovering from the flu. The morals of this movie, I tell you, of which there are none.

There’s a theory that Findlay was abused by priests while he was a child and a lot of his movies are him working out his issues. “I do a service to all mankind with every Jezebel I kill,” he snarls at one point. Richard has gone from kind of, sort of the hero of the first film in this tragedy, a slasher villain in the second and now a complete lunatic with an eyepatch he may not even need, another crime of playing a doctor to women who don’t need his fingers all over and inside them, and a German accident that goes away as often as the patch he keeps taking off.

This was lost for years until Something Weird found it. I can’t even imagine what raincoaters in 1968 thought when attacked by this movie. For every moment of gorgeous women cavorting, you have Richard yelling, “My poisoned semen should take care of you well enough. So long, sucker!” A roughie made by lunatics, for lunatics and yet one that looks way better than it should.

You can get all three of these movies in one set from Vinegar Syndrome.

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. 

Who destroyed Richard Jennings’ (Michael Findlay) life? Was it his wife Claudia (Angelique Pettyjohn)? Or Steve (Ron Scardera), the lover she cheated on her husband with? Does it even matter to Richard any more? After all, he’s returned from the dead, like a demented 42nd Street grindhouse Jason Vorhees, How do you get over being stabbed in the heart? Well, maybe when your heart has been broken, you just go on.

After watching credits quite literally written on a bathroom wall and hear Roberta Findlay’s voice on the radio, recounting everything from the first movie, but never explaining how Richard came to own an art theater that presents live sex on stage and screens movies like Squash Crazy that is, to borrow a phrase from Pieces, exactly what you think it is.

He’s also become a degenerate Dr. Phibes, inventing all manner of weapons to kill his those on his perceived enemies list, like a dildo that kills and poisoned g strings. Richard also doesn’t need the eyepatch, in the same way that Dr. Doom really doesn’t need his mask, if we follow the ideas of Kirby over Lee . It appears and reappears at will, whether that’s a statement or just Findlay not caring about continuity when he has so much female flesh to show and a machete fight in a moving truck that ends with a castration to entertain you.

As if this is a proto-MCU movie, this even teases more over the end credits: “Will This End the Bloody Career of Richard Jennings? Has His Lust for the Blood of Naked Girls Been Satisfied?? Don’t Fail to See The Kiss of Her Flesh Coming Soon to This Theatre.”

As “The Right Kind” by The Jaybirds keeps playing on the soundtrack, this only gets more depraved. I know that fans of this movie like me romanticize the terrifying real life nature of what New York City was at this time, but who cares? It gave birth to this movie, in which a nude woman holds a cat over her sex and Richard hits her with this pillow talk: “Yes, this little pussy is really a primordial, carnivorous beast waiting to tear apart anything it can touch.”

You can get all three of these movies in one set from Vinegar Syndrome.