Filmed in Algeria, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Philippines, Morocco and Tunisia, Long Live Death! is directed and written by Fernando Arrabal, who co-founded the Panic Movement with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor.
He based much of the movie on his own experiences growing up during the Spanish Civil War. The main character is Fando (Mahdi Chaouch), whose mother (Nuria Espert) turns his father in to the authorities as a suspected communist. She tells her son that he was executed but in truth, he’s only been placed in jail. As a result, his son wonders if he’s even alive and what happened to him.
That’s a basic explanation of a movie that is a hallucination of violence with shocking moments in almost every frame. Arrabal’s father was captured by the Spanish Army, was supposed to spend thirty years in prison and then escaped after entering a mental hospital, disappearing into the snow. He was never seen again.
This movie feels like him trying to work that out. What emerges is a movie filled with real surgical footage and no shortage of animal violence. It’s near Italian in its slaughter so beware if you’re upset when that happens in movies. Humans are also destroyed in this, as a man is buried and has horses step on his exposed head, while a priest has his balls cut off and then fed to him.
Pure shock and not for shock’s sake. This is filmmaking and presents an unfiltered look at a world that no ten year old should have been put through.
The Radiance release of Viva La Muerte is the first blu ray release of the movie with English subtitles. It has a new 4K restoration of the original 35mm negative by the Cinémathèque Toulouse in collaboration with Fernando Arrabal; an audio discussion from the Projection Booth podcast featuring Mike White, Heather Drain and Jess Byard; Sur les traces de Baal, a short documentary by Abdellatif Ben Ammar in which the filmmaker followed Arrabal’s film and captured him at work on Viva la Muerte!; VIDARRABAL, a feature-length documentary on Arrabal by Xavier Pasturel Barron capturing the life and work of this singular filmmaker, playwright, painter and essayist, featuring interviews with admirers, friends and family, including members of the Panic Movement he founded; an interview with scholar and Spanish cinema expect David Archibald; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork and a booklet featuring new writing by Sabina Stent and an archival interview with Fernando Arrabal.
Christine and Betty (Ann and Vicki Michelle, who are real-life sisters; Elke Sommer was their au pair as they grew up) are runaways who want to be models. Christine is soon hired by an agent, Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines) but as you can tell, this isn’t a movie about modeling. It’s about the occult and the job in the country Christine gets is all about getting her in the coven of Gerald Amberley (Neil Hallett) and into his bed; both happen and she soon learns that she can control white magic or magick if you wear Stevie Nicks garb. Sybil is down with darker magic and wants to control Betty.
There’s also this guy named Johnny (Keith Buckley) who wants to help Betty escape, but he also wants to deflower her because, you know, guys.
This was filmed at the Admiral’s Walk in Pirbright, the same place where Terror and Satan’s Slave was shot. Director Ray Austin started as a stunt man on movies like North by Northwest and Operation Petticoat; working with Chee Soo on The Avengers, he helped Diana Rigg be the first Western actor to do kung fu. He was married to Yasuko Nagazumi and the stepfather of her daughter Miki Berenyi from the band Lush. He also directed The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.
Writer Hazel Adair created the soap opera Crossroads but didn’t make this movie under her own name. Along with wrestling announcer Kent Walton, they created Pyramid Films. She became Klaus Vogel and he was Ralph Solomons; they also made Clinic Exclusive, Can You Keep It Up for a Week?, Keep It Up Downstairs and Game for Vultures.
Ann Michele went on to be in Psychomania, House of Whipcord and Young Lady Chatterley, while her sister Vicki acted in Queen Kong, The Sentinel, the TV show ‘Allo, ‘Allo and The Greek Tycoon. Supposedly, Anthony Quinn “personally asked the producers to reduce the size of Michelle’s part thinking that her good looks and bright costume would detract the audience’s attention from him.” They have both spoken badly of their experiences on this movie, saying that they were hardly paid and pressured into more nude scenes than they had agreed to.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Hammer Time
Peter Cushing was originally cast in this as Julian Fuchs and completed one day’s filming before leaving when he learned that his beloved wife Helen was dying from emphysema. He was replaced by Andrew Keir and this was one of the many troubled items of this production, as just five weeks later, director Seth Holt had a heart attack and collapsed into cast member Aubrey Morris’s arms before dying. Michael Carreras finished the filming, but Holt was rewriting the movie almost every day, as he was unhappy with Christopher Wicking’s script, which was based on The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker. So is The Awakeningand this is way more interesting than that.
Professor Fuchs (Keir) has found the tomb of Tera (Valerie Leon), a queen so unholy that she was drugged into suspended animation by priests who buried her with her relics, guarded so that she would never rise again. Fuchs becomes obsessed and creates a new temple under his home, where he brings her body. He also gives his daughter Margaret (also Leon) Tera’s ring and tells her to always wear it. Soon, the powers of the queen tempt the young lady into acts of evil.
Corbeck (James Villiers), her father’s rival, starts to use her to gather all of the evil treasures. When they are taken, the owners die one by one. Finally, they are used to bring Tera back from the dead, only to have Fuchs and Margaret try to stop her. They kill Corbeck, but the queen has risen, killing Fuchs and battling with Margaret as the temple falls all around them.
Here’s the most incredible part: in the hospital, we see a woman wrapped in bandages, the first mummy of the film. Who is it? We’re never told as she opens her eyes. It could be either woman and sadly, we never got a sequel to this. I wish we had, as despite all of the issues, it has a gorgeous look to it and I loved seeing Leon in a leading role.
26. DANZA MACABRA: Boogie down with some soundtrack heavy Giallo.
Ronald Marvelling (Curd Jürgens) has married a new wife, a much younger one, by the name of Alexa DuBois (Rosalba Neri) but within weeks, she’s making love in the sand with Pietro (Juan Luis Galiardo) and he’s downing J&B and clutching a pistol. This is no happy marriage. His daughter Catherine (Emma Cohen) is worried about all of this but more because she wants her inheritance and not out of any concern for her father.
The film then flashes back to how Alexa went from being Catherine’s friend to marrying her father without giving up the chance to make love to much younger men. Yet to keep up appearances, Marvelling allows her to make love to anyone she pleases, even if he doesn’t understand why. As we make our way through the nightclubs, mansions and love nests that make up the rich lives of the three protagonists, we’re left realizing that even all the money in the world doesn’t mean that problems can’t fester and eat at you.
Marvelling kills himself and locks down his home, as steel covers the windows and doors, trapping them inside. A recorded version of his voice tells them that they will be blamed for his murder and will die with him. There’s no escape.
This was directed by Juan Logar, who also was one of the writers of the script. It’s an interesting movie due to its structure and how claustrophobic it becomes. The Spanish version was obviously made in a time of censorship, so none of the nudity made it into the film that they saw.
Two Males for Alexa is scored by Piero Piccioni, who created a Hammond organ heavy jam that drives the action. He also did the soundtrack for more than two hundred other movies, including Camille 2000, Marta, The 10th Victim and Crazy Desires of a Murderer. Speaking of murder, Piccioni was one of the suspects of in the politically motivated murder of Wilma Montesi. Luckily, he was acquitted when it was discovered that he never Montesi and was on vacation with his lover Alida Valli at the time of the killing. This case inspired La Dolce Vita and the scandal ruined the political career of Piccioni’s father Attilio, who had to step down as the secretary of his party and as foreign minister.
This is just barely a giallo yet it’s enjoyable nonetheless. I mean, Rosalba Neri may be one of the most perfect women to ever walk this planet, so if all she does is eat bread for 90 minutes, I’ll still watch that. She does more than that here.
Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971): Five years after Africa Blood and Guts, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi returned with this movie, which is pretty much one of the roughest films I’ve ever made it through.
This was shot primarily in Haiti, where the directors were the guests of Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, who gave them diplomatic cars, clearance to film anywhere on the island and as many extras as they required to be used as slaves being treated exactly as slaves were. They were also invited to a nightly dinner with Duvalier himself.
If your mind isn’t already blown, stick around.
Goodbye Uncle Tom is based on true events in which the filmmakers explore America in slavery times, using published documents and materials from the public record to make what they consider a documentary, even claiming to go back in time to achieve this level of realism.
This movie was made in opposition to the claims that Africa Blood and Guts was racist. It didn’t work, as Roger Ebert would say, “They have finally done it: Made the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary.” He also stated that “This movie itself humiliates its actors in the way the slaves were humiliated 200 years ago.”
The movie was originally released in Italy in a 119-minute version and was immediately withdrawn. I’ve read that the directors were sued for plagiarism by writer Joseph Chamberlain Furnas. It was then re-released with 17 more minutes of footage.
The director’s cut shows a comparison between the horrors of slavery and the rise of the Black Power Movement, ending with an unidentified black man’s fantasy of living out William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. In that book, Turned is divinely inspired and given a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and destroy the white race.
This ending upset American distributors so much that they forced Jacopetti and Prosperi to cut more than thirteen minutes of racial politics that would upset their audiences. Pauline Kael still said that the movie was “the most specific and rabid incitement to race war,” a view shared with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who said that Goodbye Uncle Tom was a Jewish conspiracy to incite blacks on white violence.
This movie is not for everyone. But I feel that it needs to be seen. I rarely get political on this site, but in truth, I feel that we as a country have not done enough to understand the roots of the black experience. While an Italian exploitation film isn’t the best way to learn more, it’s a start.
It’s no accident that Cannibal Holocaustwould eventually use the music of Riz Ortolani to juxtapose the horrific images on screen with the beauty of his compositions. The composer had been working with the duo since Mondo Cane, where his song “More” nearly won an Oscar.
But make no mistake that this movie, while intending to be educational and anti-racist, still employs the tools of the mondo and exploitation. How else do you describe the conceit that these filmmakers have gone back in time, taking a helicopter with them that they use to fly away from the terrors of the plantation at the end?
In 2010, Dr. David Pilgrim, the curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, said that when he showed this film to a class, it led to some major traumas. “On the day that we watched Goodbye Uncle Tom three students had unexcused absences, several cried while watching, one almost vomited; most sat, sad and disgusted. I taught for another fifteen years but I never showed that movie again.”
He went on to say that the film “is a more truthful portrayal of the brutality and obscenity of slave life than was Roots; however, I have some major problems with the film. I find it ironic that a movie that explored the exploitation and degradation of Black people was filmed in a way that exploited and degraded Black people. In some ways Goodbye Uncle Tom was just a XXX movie set against the backdrop of slavery; the “peculiar institution” served as an excuse to show sexual and violent gore. Jacopetti and Prosperi told a great many painful truths about slavery but they debased hundreds of Blacks to make the film.”
“I said all of that to say this: Jacopetti and Prosperi were not the messengers that I would have selected, and their implied assumptions about Blacks are troubling, but they made a movie that accurately portrayed the horrors of slavery. Of course, it is the case that a realistic depiction of the savagery of slavery would be difficult to watch no matter who made it. This is why when you finish watching Roots you may feel that a family has overcome great oppression and a nation has become more democratic; whereas when you finish watching Goodbye Uncle Tom you just feel sick to your stomach.”
That says a lot about this movie in a better way than I can, but I’m still going to try to sum it up: this is a well-made movie that may have been made with the best of intentions, but was made by two people who only had the experience to make exactly what they made. It is a movie made about slavery that used slave labor. It is a movie that offended both liberals and conservatives, those that believed in tolerance and those that were racist, those that were black and people who were white. This is a message movie that had its message taken away by American producers, leaving two hours of shock with none of the moral it so desperately needed.
If this movie upsets you, perhaps you needed to be upset. You should be less upset about a movie made nearly fifty years ago and more upset about our nation’s history of racism and intolerance. And you should definitely be upset about the lack of civil rights in our country today, which no matter who is President continually must face challenges.
The Importance of Shocking: Gualtiero Jacopetti (2009): Included with the Goodbye Uncle Tom 4K set, this documentary by Andrea Bettinetti attempts to tell the story behind the man who made Mondo Cane.
Beyond the behind the scenes footage of the mondo films being created, this documentary gets into the journalism career of Jacopetti, which includes a scandal as the paper he worked for, Cronache, published photos so scandalous of Sophia Loren that he earned a one-year jail sentence. What I did not know was how influential his work on newsreels were, which went away from just reporting the news and expanded to cynically comment on events.
According to “Jacopetti’s Sexual Celebrity” by Dalila Missero, “Jacopetti was a famous journalist who was involved in a series of sex scandals, including episodes of paedophilia, prostitution and rape, which had made him a much discussed figure in the Italian media and entertainment system for almost a decade. ” The film does not shy away from this, as it explains how he had to marry a gypsy girl for some time before the marriage was annulled to escape from one of these charges.
This also goes deep into the 1961 car crash that claimed the life of his girlfriend, Belinda Lee, who Jacopetti was buried next a half century later. Beyond having compound fractures, his depression was so deep that American doctors were treating him with a cocktail of drugs that would stun several people.
He’s just as complicated as the films that he made. Hard to defend, yet also someone whose work has merit; if it were simple documentary and not exploitation, it would be celebrated. Yet the mondo genre is born in the gutter, even if it inspired today’s media. I walked away from this still unsure how I felt about Jacopetti, just like how I always feel strange watching his films. Beyond normal sleaze, you feel complicit in them as a viewer, as if you are condoning the ways in which they were made and the moments that they capture.
The Godfathers of Mondo (2003): Directed by David Gregory, this documentary attempts to explain not only the appeal of mondo and the films of Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, but whether or not they were guilty of war crimes as they filmed their mondo films.
Originally part of Blue Underground’s Mondo Cane Collection, this makes a welcome return on their Goodbye Uncle Tom release. This film may reveal that Carlo Rambaldi was hired to create the burning monk in Mondo Cane 2, yet the subjects are more guarded when having to discuss the atrocities they captured on film. These things, they claim, would still happen if they shot them or not. This is not what unguilty people say.
The strongest part of this film is that Jacopetti and Prosperi were still alive to tell their stories. Shot on their own, they each have a point of view of why they did what they did and how they were intending much of their work to be a condemnation of what they were capturing. Often, the humor and commentary was lost, particularly in America, where these things were edited from their movies. Yet the mondo is based on danger and shocking people, so you have to expect them to be controversial. That said, it seemed like these filmmakers went further every time, all the way to Goodbye Uncle Tom, a movie filmed with slaves of modern times to decry slaves of the past, where Jacopetti and Prosperi take a time traveling helicopter to the American South and reenact the horrors of slavery while wallowing in it.
I wish this had gotten more into Mondo Candido and what the duo did afterward, but this is such a rich document that it’s hard to say anything negative. Just hearing Ortolani talk about these films is something I never thought that I would hear.
The Blue Underground 4K UHD release of Goodbye Uncle Tom has both the Italian and English versions of this movie, as well as the two documentaries discussed above. It also has interviews with Jacopetti, Prosperi and Ortolani, behind the scenes photos and footage, interviews with author Mark Goodall and Professor Matthew J. Smith, the soundtrack to this movie and a collectible booklet with new essay by Dan Madigan. You can get this from MVD.
20. WITCH, PLEASE!: Watch a saucy spell caster do her damnedest. Be sure to check the Witch, Please! book for spelling errors…
Anna (Michèle Perello) and Françoise (Mireille Saunin) are on a car vacation through France’s Auvergne when their car runs out of gas. Finding a barn to spend the night, they make love because this is wondrous Eurosleaze and why wait? When Françoise wakes up, Anna is gone and a dwarf by the name of Gurth (Alfred Baillo) arrives to guide her through the mythical forest of Brocéliande, into a canoe and through a river to the island of Avalon, a place where the legendary Morgan La Fey has set up her own kingdom, a place where women — if they pledge their souls to her — remain young forever.
Françoise is bathed by the women and the offer is explained. Eternal beauty in the thrall of the witch or to grow old in the basement dungeons. Anna has already accepted the offer but as Françoise runs, she keeps finding La Fey, who promises to share with her the secrets of magic.
Instead, our heroine and the dwarf conspire to leave this place behind, gathering the magical objects that will allow them to leave, A magic tunic is procured after an evening of love making with one of La Fey’s harem. A necklace controls the boat that can bring them back to the real world. Only Morgan’s topaz globe remains, but Gurth is caught and destroyed by the women, losing his eyes, voice and legs, giving the ring that keeps him alive to Françoise. He dies so that she may live, returning to the village where La Fey appears and gives Françoise back what she desires. The same past that she left as Anna sleeps in the barn, waiting for her.
Directed by Bruno Gantillon (who also directed seven episodes of HBO’s The Hitchhiker), who co-wrote the script with Jacques Chaumelle, this is the kind of movie lesbianism that men want but also the kind of movie that I want, because it feels like drugs. The kind that slow you down and lull you into a state where you are no longer sure what is real and what is a dream. An ancient castle, hazy lighting, sumptuous cinematography and poetry being recited in between lovemaking as wine is poured on bodies, all with vaguely sinister magical conversation. This is the party that you may have always wanted to be invited to.
This was released on DVD by Mondo Macabro and went out of print, but will be available in their Halloween sale this year on UHD and blu ray.
EDITOR’S NOTE: For the last two days of Cannon Month, I’m going to cover movies that weren’t produced by Cannon but which were distributed by them on one of their various home video labels including Cannon / MGM/UA Home Video, HBO/Cannon Video, Cannon Video, Cannon / Guild Home Video, Cannon / Rank Video, Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited, Cannon Classics, Cannon / Warner Home Video, Cannon/VMP, Cannon Screen Entertainment, Scotia/Cannon, Cannon International, Cannon/ ECV, Cannon / Showtime, Cannon / United Film, Cannon / Isabod, Cannon / Mayco and so many more.
Kevin Billington was the son of a factory worker who ended up marrying Lady Rachel Billington. He was also a director of plenty of TV movies, like a well-considered BBC version of Henry VIII. He ended up directing this international collaboration of French, Spanish and Italian producers. They paid Kirk Douglas an estimated $1 million dollars to star, which is about $7.2 million in today’s money.
Will Denton (Kirk Douglas) runs an isolated lighthouse to hide from a failed romance and the fact that he killed a man in self-defense. The only people he ever speaks to are the crew, Captain Moriz (Fernando Rey) and assistant Felipe (Massimo Ranieri). They watch over a very strategic trade route near the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southern tip of South America.
Yet in one horrible moment, it all changes, as Captain Jonathan Kongre (Yul Brynner) and his pirates — they include actors from Sergio Leone’s films, such as Luis Barboo, Víctor Israel and Aldo Sambrell — kill Moriz and Felipe, smash the lighthouse signal and start to loot everything they can. Surviving their attack along with an Italian sailor named Montefiore (Renato Salvatori), they begin to fight back.
Kongre has also made a change in his life. He always kills everyone on the ships that he takes over, but he’s fallen for one of the women on board, Arabella (Samantha Eggar). Denton tries to save her, but when Montefiore is caught and slowly killed, he puts his friend out of his misery, just as Kongre angrily gives the woman to his crew. Denton sinks the ship and it ends up with just the two men, battling each other to the death inside the lighthouse.
If you’re expecting a light hearted Jules Verne adventure, well, this is as rough as it gets. It’s about a broken man trying to just live out his days coming up against a sophisticated villain who loves murder and carnage. I mean, they kill Douglas’ monkey. That’s how horrible the bad guys are. They deserve everything they get.
BONUS WILDCARD WEEK (September 22 – 28) Go order something from the SWV website and watch it!
Fredric Hobbs made some strange movies, that’s for sure. Only three are available — this one, Godmonster of Indian Flatsand Alabama’s Ghost— and none of them are alike other than the fact that all three are movies made by either someone who was an artist, borderline insane or probably both.
Adam (E. Kerrigan Prescott) is a rock star — his big song is “You Cannot Fart Around With Love” — who has become obsessed with the Hieronymus Bosch painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s led to him becoming unable to perform sexually and, as such, he must steal pornography.
So he does what any sex addict shouldn’t and gets a job at a burlesque theater, which ends with him stripping down to just his panties, which leads to him going into the psych ward. He can’t pay for therapy, but he doesn’t have a singing career without going through it. But suddenly, he falls for a nurse and we have a way too long softcore scene between them.
That’s when things get weird.
Hieronymus Bosch, who is now black and played by Christopher Brooks (Alabama from Alabama’s Ghost), arrives for exposition that tells us that it’s really the future and our hero — or whatever he is to us — is the new Adam after a future war and the painting is really his future, once he escapes from the doctor, who is now spraying the world with deadly gas. It ends as it must. with Adam and Eve making love on a giant flower and repopulating the world.
Say what?
This movie is totally 1971, an art film that hasn’t made any more sense with age. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Every Hobbs experience has made me question my own sanity, which is more than you should expect for an exploitation film about the evils of pornography.
BONUS WILDCARD WEEK (September 22 – 28) Go order something from the SWV website and watch it!
Lisbeth Olsen — not the first crossover this movie will have with The Sinful Dwarf — plays a woman whose husband (Bent Rohweder) has been drafted. Feeling lonely, she decides to hang out with a lesbian friend (Estelle Peters) who goes from removing Lisabeth’s wedding ring and making sapphic love to her to giving her over to multiple men and then selling her into sexual slavery. By the end of the movie, she’s become a street walker and she ends up servicing her drunken husband, who doesn’t even recognize her, but soon tells her — after he finishes, mind you — that he will always love her.
Directed by Svig Sven and written by Max Sundsen, this was supposedly produced by the same group that brought that perverted lil guy to you. This is so scuzzy that if you derived any pleasure from it, I may have to doubt your sanity. That said, it is on the Severin blu ray of The Sinful Dwarf, along with another adult film that shows mini star Torben Bille cattle-prodding the oyster ditch with his lap rocket.
BONUS WILDCARD WEEK (September 22 – 28) Go order something from the SWV website and watch it!
Dr. Ann Foster (Lindis Guinness, playing the film’s writer, who also was behind another adult movie made that year, The Flanders and Alcott Report on Sexual Response) is trying to get the Johnsons — Bob (John Keith) and Marie (Susan Westcott) — to have better sex while poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning are read by Peter Forster.
Then, just when the story seems boring — in an old porn movie — suddenly we get couple after couple in a variety of poses and positions, all while on a clear table that the camera zooms all over, under and around as old 60s LSD lighting like we’re at the Fillmore East except people are making sweet love as you watch.
One of those actors is Luanne Roberts, appearing as Christine Murray. She also shows up in Bonnie’s Girls, Prison Girls and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Also: Annette Michael, Aunt Fanny from Psyched by the 4-D Witch!
Director Eric Jeffrey Haims also made The Mislayed Genie, A Clockwork Blue, The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio, Sessions of Love and the previously mentioned The Flanders and Alcott Report on Sexual Response.
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