Just Screenshots: 2017-03-19

I Madman (1989)

Even though the premise sounds very ordinary and repetitive, this late 80's thriller features an unusually great deal of tension and slick elements. Tibor Tikács' (love the name) "I, Madman" focuses on a young woman – Virginia – obsessed by reading bloody horror novels. She recently discovered the oeuvre of a bizarre but stylish writer named Malcolm Brand. Especially his book "I, Madman" fascinates her as it describes the acts of a horribly deformed doctor who kills people in order to make an actress fall in love with him. But fiction turns into reality when Virginia finds herself chased by the book's eerie doctor and murders are committed all around her. This film contains a few very bloody sequences but it's not at all a gore flick like so many other similar productions from that decade. The power merely lies in the subtly build up suspense-scenes (with excellent depressing images of a nearly pauperized city) and, especially, the presence of an ultra-grim monster! This mad doctor/writer/hurt romanticist is a fine horror creation that'll certainly appeal to every fan of the genre. (IMDB Coventry)

Whirlpool (1970)

aka

She Died with Her Boots On

Déviations sexuelles

Flash Light

Perversion Flash

This is the first film of the cult Spanish expatriate director Jose Larraz (which was lost until very recently). It is far more amateurish than his later (and better) films like "Symptoms", "Vampyres", and "The Coming of Sin", but it has the same basic themes--omnivorous sexual perversity played out against a background of haunting natural beauty. A Swinging London era fashion (played by Vivian Neves, who was a, um, Swinging London Era fashion model)is lured to an isolated country estate by a creepy older woman to meet her even creepier photography-obsessed nephew. She doesn't seem too perturbed to learn that a previous female model that went there has disappeared without a trace, nor does she find it strange that her first night there the aunt and nephew get her drunk and engage her in perverse game of strip poker. She almost has sex with the nephew (while his aunt secretly watches) but he isn't able to, uh, rise to the occasion. The next day he takes her into town and pays a friend to rip her clothes off and nearly rape her while he takes pictures. This doesn't seem to bother her either because soon she's involved in another bisexual three-way sex/photography session with the aunt and nephew. There is also an allusion to the old Bluebeard story--the model has been forbidden to enter the nephew's mysterious darkroom. Hmmmm. Guess what she does? (IMDB lazarillo) V&D