Bluebeard (1972) (aka Barbe Bleue, Fr.)

This very black comedy film from veteran director Edward Dmytryk was based upon Charles Perrault's classic French folktale first published in the late 1600s. The film's poster revealed the entire plot - and the many demises of Bluebeard's unfortunate wives:

Burton is Bluebeard. He had a way with the world's most beautiful, most seductive, most glamorous women...he did away with them.

It told about the evil and sadistic Count Bluebeard - Baron von Sepper/Bluebeard (Richard Burton), a WWI biplane flying ace with a blue-colored beard. He was an Austrian aristocrat, avant-garde photographer, and predatory husband who lived in a castle.

His most recent vivacious spouse, suspicious American vaudeville-cabaret dancer Anne (Joey Heatherton), had married him almost immediately after meeting him at one of her dance performances. On their wedding night, her champagne was possibly drugged, and she escaped sleeping with the Count. She had engaged in a sexy photo shoot (wearing a thin and transparent, lacy black nightgown) with the Count, but he wasn't aroused by her.

While searching the castle and using a forbidden small gold key on a massive key ring, she discovered that all of her husband's previous wives (all international beauties) had suffered horrible fates and were stored frozen in a vault in the Baron's basement, beyond a secret passage and sliding door.

Bluebeard's Six Previously Murdered Ex-Wives
	Character Description	Manner of Death
Elga (Virna Lisi)	A singer (always singing)	Beheaded by a guillotine
Erika (Nathalie Delon)	A model with a baby-talk voice. She asked Bluebeard about which of her breasts with pet names that he preferred; she was seduced in a lesbian scene with a Prostitute (Sybil Danning) while learning how to pleasure a man	Erika and the Prostitute were both impaled in the back by a falling chandelier with an elephant tusk
Magdalena (Raquel Welch)	A raunchy and nymphomaniac nun in a white habit (always clothed in the entire sequence) who repentently and continually told Bluebeard "vulgar revelations" of previous sex partners	She was entombed alive and suffocated in a locked coffin (off-screen)
Brigitt (Marilu Tolo)	A man-hating feminist, alcoholic and secretly an S & M dominatrix who enjoyed being whipped	Drowned in a wine vat
Caroline (Agostina Belli)	A free-spirit who liked to skinny-dip and sunbathe nude	Her throat was ripped out by Bluebeard's pet falcon as she reclined back and he commanded "Strike!"
Greta (Karin Schubert)	She was wrapped naked in a red sash which was spun to reveal her body	She was shot and 'accidentally' killed during the hunting of a wild boar (shown near the beginning of the film and then later, in flashback)

To buy time from being killed herself as the next victim by dawn, Anne convinced mass-murdering killer Bluebeard, who had also mummified his dead mother, to tell his wives' life/death stories - a series of vignettes in flashback - to free his soul. He revealed that he had been forced to kill each of them because they were about to make love to him, and he couldn't face the fact that he was impotent.

When Anne explained that Bluebeard was mother-fixated, she bared her breasts to him - and he turned away, proving her point. The film concluded with Bluebeard dead from gunshot, and Anne freed from the freezer vault.

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

After making a few short films and documentaries, Italian-American director Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood feature film (his second film) was this low-budget Roger Corman-produced film released by AIP. With $600,000 as the film's budget, he was instructed to make an exploitation film, and he lived up to expectations by providing liberal amounts of nudity and violence, and a number of cinematic trick shots and editing techniques.

The film's poster announced:

"America in the 30s was a free country. Bertha was jes' a little bit free'er than most."

The Bonnie-and-Clyde like road film was set during the Depression-era 1930 in the South, and loosely adapted the autobiography of the real-life title character in anarchist Ben Reitman's 1937 book Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha.

It told of the plight of 16 year-old tomboyish Arkansas farm girl Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey). After her father Jack died in a mechanically-faulty crop-dusting plane crash, she fled on a railroad boxcar, thus acquiring her nickname, and joined up with labor union organizer "Big Bill" Shelly (David Carradine, Hershey's real-life lover at the time). Bill's radical goal was to fight the railroad bosses and unionize Reader Rail Road.

Both with rebellious natures, Bertha allowed herself to be seduced and devirginized in the boxcar. [Note: They both claimed the sex scenes weren't simulated.].

After a series of transient adventures, one of which involved the murder of a bigoted, cheating Southern lawyer during a card game, she helped Bill escape from a railroad chain gang after he had been arrested for inciting violence. They became fugitives from the law after robbing a train and reluctantly took to a life of crime.

Bill was imprisoned and severely beaten for his past unionizing efforts, while Bertha was forced to become a prostitute. They had one final reunion in a shack, where they experienced one more bittersweet reunion, before they were both discovered and viciously beaten.

In the climactic, symbolic bloody ending, Bill was crucified with his hands nailed to the side of a boxcar.

Cabaret (1972)

Bob Fosse's musical was the first one ever to be given an X rating (although later re-rated) with its numerous sexual flings (including bisexuality, homosexuality and abortion) and hedonistic club life.

Set in a decadent early 1930s Berlin cabaret club, the Kit-Kat Club (with perverse stage shows), it told of a threesome love triangle between:

• Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), an American singer, seductive and wildly reckless, and wearing anti-androgynous costumes on stage
• Brian Roberts (Michael York), a reserved and naive academic Ph.D student, an English language teacher, a bi-sexual
• Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem), a rich and suave aristocratic, married playboy (also bisexual)

When Brian was a tenant in the boarding room apartment with Sally and shared one of her rooms for tutoring lessons, she attempted to seduce him. Sally asked a disinterested, platonic Brian as she placed his hand on her breast:

Sally: "Doesn't my body drive you wild with desire? Doesn't it?"
Brian: "It's a very nice body.
Sally: Do you really think so, darling? It does have a certain kind of style. I mean, look, it's very flat here, not much hips, and here." (she moved his hand to her breast)
Brian: "It's a little early in the day for this sort of thing, isn't it?"
Sally: (caustically wondering) "Maybe you just don't sleep with girls. (pause and no reply) Oh, you don't. Well, listen, we're practically living together, so if you only like boys, I mean, I wouldn't dream of pestering you. Well, do you sleep with girls or don't you?"

Although reluctant to discuss such matters, Brian admitted: "I do not sleep with girls. Let me be absolutely accurate." He then confessed how he was unlucky with three previous attempts at heterosexual sex - all were disastrous ("The word for my sex life now is 'nil,' or as you Americans would say, 'plenty of nuttin'"). She asked: "Why didn't you tell me in the first place?" They decided to continue to remain best friends, albeit platonic (Sally: "And friends are much harder to find than lovers. Besides, sex always screws up a friendship, anyway, if you let it. So we won't let it").

She suspected that he was gay, but eventually they became lovers. They began kissing, became romantic, and ended up making love in bed. She reminded Brian: "Maybe those three girls were just the wrong three girls." He asked: "Doesn't my body drive you wild with desire?"

There was also the infamous threesome weekend drinking scene when the trio were slowly dancing together in the living room of Maximilian's palatial country estate. While they were in a circle in each other's arms, the record stopped with a potent silence.

Later, during an argumentative quarrel, Sally accused Brian of being extremely jealous of Max ("he's everything that you're not") - "rich...suave...and divinely sexy."

Sally: "He really appreciates a woman."
Brian: (exasperated) "Oh, screw Maximilian!"
Sally: "I do."
Brian: (after a pained laugh, pause and smile) "So do I."
Sally: "You two bastards!"
Brian: "Two. Two?! Shouldn't that be three?!"

Brian's bi-sexuality was revealed, and both of them were having shared sexual relations. Max enjoyed sexual dalliances with both Sally and Brian, and they had both betrayed each other.

Deep Throat (1972)

See the separate feature article: Porn Chic of the 1970s.

Deliverance (1972)

British director John Boorman's gripping, absorbing action-adventure film Deliverance (1972) told about four suburban Atlanta businessmen friends who encountered disaster in a summer weekend's river-canoeing trip. It included a disturbing, ad-libbed sequence of forced rape.

At shot-gun-point in the woods, in a nightmarish and frightening sequence, a sexually-perverted rustic mountain man (Bill McKinney) viciously targeted and humiliated Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty) - a chubby-faced, defenseless intruder into his territory.

The fat salesman was forced to first strip down to his underwear, and then after a degrading roll around in the dirt and up a steep, leaf-strewn hillside while fondling and groping his prey, the mountain man/rapist made Bobby squeal like a female sow before sodomizing him.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)

Woody's Allen's irreverent comedy was based upon Dr. David Reuben's notorious, best-selling sex manual, with seven witty segments on topics such as bestiality, exposure, perversion, and S&M.

The comedy was rated R for its frank candor and sexual situations, although it contained no explicit scenes of sex.

It included numerous episodes or vignettes:

• Do Aphrodisiacs Work? - set in Elizabethan times, with a court jester/Fool (Woody Allen) who attempted to seduce a chastity belt-wearing Queen (Lynn Redgrave) after she drank the sex-potion without the King (Anthony Quayle) knowing
• What is Sodomy? - a love-making sketch about an Armenian shepherd in love with a sheep named Daisy, and polite Dr. Doug Ross (Gene Wilder), the Armenian's physician, who also fell in love with Daisy ("That was really something. I never thought it could be like this. Never in my wildest imagination. You're really something special")
• Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching an Orgasm? - an upper-class Italian newlywed couple, Fabrizio (Woody Allen) and Gina (Louise Lasser) experienced problems having sex, until it was discovered that Gina enjoyed sex only in public places; a spoof of Casanova '70 (1965)
• Are Transvestites Homosexuals? - about the misadventures of a middle-aged married couple, Tess and Sam (Lou Jacobi), a closet transvestite, when they had dinner with the parents of their daughter's fiancee
• What Are Sex Perverts? - a TV game show called "What's My Perversion?" hosted by Jack Barry, with a panel of four celebrities (Pamela Mason, Regis Philbin, Toni Holt, and Robert Q. Lewis) attempting to guess the guest's perversion (exposing himself on subways)
• Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate? - a horror/monster movie spoof (a parody of director Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (1955) starring Bela Lugosi), featuring the release of a giant killer breast (a "fiendish tit") from mad sex expert/scientist Dr. Bernardo's (John Carradine) laboratory, which passed a billboard reading: "Every body needs milk" - the runaway boob was finally captured in the countryside with an enormous bra
• What Happens During Ejaculation? - the last sci-fiction vignette with director/star Allen featured as a white-clad, neurotic Sperm in a futuristic NASA-like mission control center (the brain of a subject) awaiting intercourse with NYU graduate (Erin Fleming) and preparing to be launched during orgasm

Frenzy (1972)

This tawdry yet suspenseful thriller was the first Alfred Hitchcock R-rated film (and his second-to-last film) - it also was the first and only Hitchcock film to contain nudity (although unnecessary to the plot and somewhat awkward).

In the opening sequence, a nude female corpse - another victim of the 'necktie strangler' - floated in the Thames River as spectators watched and a politician spoke about pollution.

Also nudity (a body-double's breast) was seen during the vicious and agonizing necktie strangulation-rape scene of ex-Mrs. Brenda Margaret Blaney (Barbara Leigh-Hunt). When she begged for her life, the serial killer Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) tore off her dress and bra (exposing one breast), screamed at her: "Love me!...Women - they're all the same", and then revealed that he was the notorious Necktie Killer. After a lengthy struggle, she was left dead with her twisted tongue hanging out.

Frenzied Necktie Strangulation of Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt)

In the final scene set in Rusk's apartment bedroom, framed murderer Richard "Dick" Blaney (Jon Finch) had fled there after escaping from prison to kill Rusk. He beat a figure under bedclothes (thinking it was Rusk) with a crowbar, until he realized that the body belonged to an anonymous nude female (Susan Travers) (another strangulation victim murdered earlier off-screen, with contorted features: rolled-back eyes and a curved tongue) when her arm with bracelets dangled off the side of the bed.

[Note: It was highly likely that the same actress, Susan Travers, also appeared in the film's opening, floating face-down in the Thames River as the first seen "Necktie" victim.]

Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) found Blaney at the scene - now fully implicated, but then heard someone lugging a large trunk up the stairs. They remained quiet as necktie murderer Bob Rusk was tricked into being apprehended (with the damning evidence - a nude victim - in his own bed) after entering. Oxford noted to Rusk:

"Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie."

Fritz the Cat (1972)

Ralph Bakshi's explicit animation feature was based on R. Crumb's underground comic strip. The success of the film led to other X-rated animated films, such as Bakshi's own film Heavy Traffic (1973), and Dirty Duck (1974) (aka The Down and Dirty Duck) (with the tagline: "Wouldn't you like a good duck tonight?")

This was the first major animated motion picture to receive an X rating - with its naked characters, orgies, drug use, and foul language - among cartoon cats and creatures. it featured full-frontal nudity and animated sexual intercourse, but nothing explicit.

In an early scene, as Fritz felt up a blonde female cat's chest, he assured her:

"You can help me. You must save me. By so doing, you too will be saved...You have a lovely set of eyes there. Ah, little sweet one with your heart of gold, I know the place where we can be alone to join our souls in sacred truth..."

He then invited all three female cats to join him in a walk-up apartment: "Together we shall all learn the real existential essence of the life force." In a bathtub, before having sex with all of them, he said:

"Let's all get close together...Closeness and fulfillment of our hidden desires through which we reach the truth. Fulfillment is important, don't you think so, Winston?..Now I'm getting to the truth, I think, yes."

Hit Man (1972)

Director George Armitage's blaxploitation crime classic was an adaptation of Ted Lewis' novel Jack’s Return Home that previously inspired the seminal gangster film Get Carter (1972, UK), although this black Americanized remake version was set in California, had a 'modified' ending, and featured lots of nudity - it had the tagline: "He aims to please."

Ex-pro football 49-ers player Bernie Casey portrayed burgundy-suited enforcer 'hit man' Tyrone Tackett, an ex-Oakland cop, who traveled to his hometown of Los Angeles to attend the funeral of his beloved brother Cornell. Tyrone perused Los Angeles neighborhoods (a dogfight arena, a gangster's mansion, a porn house, a brothel, etc.), where he vengefully sought answers to Cornell's mysterious death, spoke to Cornell's girl friend-prostitute Irvelle Way (Bhetty Waldron), and left a trail of bloody corpses amongst the underworld of mobsters and porn kings.

In one unusual sex scene, Tyrone had sex with two women almost simultaneously - one during a phone call to his girlfriend Rita Biggs (Marilyn Joi), his boss' wife in Oakland, who was sitting by a pool in a black bikini, and one next to him on the couch. He instructed Rita to pleasure herself:

"Take off your top...now take a handful. Hold that left one for me, my favorite one, baby. That's me holding you, baby, touching you. Lips all over your body, finding your secret places. Can you feel me, sweet thing? Deep and way inside, hot and strong!"

When she abruptly hung up when her husband popped up in the pool next to her, Tyrone then turned his attention to the female next to him, motel manager Laural Garfoot (Lisa Moore).

Tyrone Seducing Rita Biggs (Marilyn Joi) On the Phone

Part of the reason why Tyrone's resistant brother was killed by gangsters (by the kingpin's chauffeur Shag Merriweather (Bob Harris)), led by Nano Zito (Don Diamond), was because Cornell objected to his girlfriend Irvelle being a hooker. Evidence was unearthed that Cornell was drunk when his car plunged through a guard-rail into the ocean, where he drowned.

There was a brief sexy role for Pam Grier, who was yet to go on to her own famed career as a female blaxploitation star in the action sub-genre, in the violent Black Mama White Mama (1972), Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster (1975), and Sheba, Baby (1975).

Tackett had sex with porn star/hooker Gozelda (Pam Grier) in a memorable sex sequence in her apartment, when she stripped down and reclined on top of him, and told him she had to "kidnap your ass." She said that "the first act is coming up" as she kissed him down the length of his chest.

Tyrone Having Sex with Gozelda (Pam Grier)

Later, he accompanied Gozelda to a porn showing of one of her films, Youngblood in the packed theatre of porno-theatre chain owner Theotis Oliver (Ed Cambridge) - where she was his kept woman. During the viewing of the porn movie, Tyrone discovered that his Afro-haired niece Rochelle Tackett (Candy All), Cornell's teenaged daughter, was one of co-actresses in the film. Tyrone was visibly upset during the screening of the film showing his naked and scared niece led by actresses Gozelda and Irvelle to a bedroom where she was painfully raped. He was also shocked when Gozelda admitted that Rochelle was one of them "nice girls" and had to be coerced to appear in the stag film with her - "We had to drug her and slap her around to get her clothes off."

In retaliation, after finding Rochelle shot in the head by Shag, Tyrone deposited Gozelda from his car trunk into the middle of Africa America - a wildlife animal sanctuary or preserve, where she was mauled by a lion! Other retaliatory murders including Tyrone's hanging of Oliver in his porn theatre, Zito's shooting death by Oliver's thugs, and Tyrone's shotgunning of Shag (as payback for the murders of Rochelle and Cornell).

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Horror film director Wes Craven's second effort (and his first release as both a writer and director) resulted in this infamous, controversial, taboo-breaking and often revolting 'snuff'-type shock exploitation film. Reportedly, it was based upon Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring (1960), and had similarities to the real-life gruesome Charles Manson murders. The notorious film was censored or severely edited for release.

A remake followed many decades later, director Dennis Iliadis' slickly-made, sadistic and graphically-violent The Last House on the Left (2009) - produced by Craven himself.

It was about the relentless ordeal of two teenaged girls:

• Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassell), a 17 year-old birthday girl
• Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham)

In the film's opening scene under the credits, Mari was showering, preparing to go out with Phyllis and search for pot while on their way to a Blood Lust concert.

They were apprehended and kidnapped by a sadistic group of escaped convicts led by Krug Stillo (David Hess), who first described himself to Phyllis: "You must think we're pretty stupid. No, hah! We ain't stupid. We might be, uhm, horny old pigs, but, uh, we ain't stupid." Phyllis' blouse was opened to expose her breasts, and then Krug punched her in the stomach and raped her (off-screen) as Mari watched in horror.

In another disturbing and humiliating scene after they were taken to a woodsy area, blue-wearing Phyllis was forced to urinate with her clothes on ("Piss (in) your pants...Do it!"). The camera panned down, showing her wettened blue-jeans.

Then, they was stripped naked and forced to have oral sex with each other ("Make them make it with each other! Lezzies"). The girls went ahead, rationalizing: "lt's just you and me here. Nobody else. Just you and me, okay?" When Krug left for awhile, Phyllis was allowed to put her clothes back on, and then whispered to Mari: "I'm gonna make a run for it." Phyllis made a run for it, but was cornered, and stabbed in the back by Fred "Weasel" Podowski (Fred Lincoln).

Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) and Mari (Sandra Cassell) - Their Ordeal in the Woods

After repeated stabbings, Phyllis was dis-emboweled and butchered, after which psychopathic, sadistic gang member Sadie (Jeramie Rain) reached in and pulled out her gooey intestines to examine them. Phyllis' left hand and half of her forearm were amputated (off-screen).

Red-wearing Mari was next - she had Krug's name carved into her upper chest and was then brutally raped (as he drooled onto her face). She vomited and then walked dazedly into a nearby pond to half-submerge and cleanse herself. Krug shot and killed her there, and she floated on the water's surface.

This ugly scene was intercut with views of 'surprise party' preparations for Mari by her parents John and Estelle Collingwood (Gaylord St. James and Cynthia Carr). Ironically, in a later scene, the escaped convicts took refuge in the home of the upscale small-town parents, the hospitable Collingwoods - where there was animalistic payback revenge/slaughter of the gang.

Father's Pursuit of Krug with Chainsaw

In grotesque sequences of ultra-violent revenge, the father semi-electrocuted Krug, chipped out his teeth out with a chisel (in a dream sequence) and pursued him with a chainsaw and killed him (off-screen, evidenced by blood splatter).

Meanwhile outdoors, the mother cleverly enticed gang member "Weasel" to have sex (she had also convinced him to have his hands tied behind his back) - he told her: "Now you just unzip me, and that's all l'll need you for." At first, his penis ("little thing...poor little fellow") became caught in his zipper and he was unresponsive, but as she touched him more and more, he warned: "lf you don't watch it, l'm gonna come." She urged: "Please come then, sweetie." He asked: "Don't you want me to do you good and proper?" - she replied: "You can do both, can't you?" - he boasted: "Hell, yeah! I can come five or six times if you want me to." She sank down to crotch-height, and as he was climaxing, she viciously bit off and dismembered his penis. After returning home, she fought off Sadie with a knife, and then was able to slash her throat with the weapon in the pool.

Last Tango in Paris (1972/1973, It./Fr.) (aka Ultimo Tango a Parigi)

Director Bernardo Bertolucci's film was a landmark, controversial erotic film that received an X-rating, due mostly to the fact that the film featured a major star who had sex throughout the entire movie. Brando and director Bertolucci were both nominated for Oscars in the highly-acclaimed and debated cinematic work.

In 1974, it became the first film to be prosecuted under Britain's Obscene Publications Act. The film was available in a censored R-rated version in 1981 (with modifications mostly to the anal-sex butter scene which was not in the original script), and as an uncut X-rated (or NC-17) version. [When re-released in 1997, the MPAA re-rated the film as NC-17.]

It told about a distraught, confused, grieving widower and middle-aged, overweight American exile Paul (Marlon Brando) who plunged into a sado-masochistic, sex-crazed, physical (yet impersonal and basically anonymous) relationship after his wife's suicide. He met up with young, big-breasted 20 year-old Parisienne ingenue Jeanne (Maria Schneider), a proper bourgeois female who was engaged to be married, but nonetheless acted in a carefree manner and accepted his prurient sexual demands.

Paul's gutter-language and set of 'no questions asked' rules was notable for the time: "We are going to forget everything we knew - everything" - and their relationship became increasingly more vile, slavish, empty, humiliating, and unromantic (i.e., "You know in 15 years, you're going to be playing soccer with your tits. What do you think of that?")

In their first coupling in the apartment, he picked her up (clothed), carried her to a window with closed venetian blinds, and forcefully made love to her standing up, without saying anything. Afterwards, they both collapsed to the floor still embracing. They had frequent, controversial, carnal and raw sexual scenes but then everything between them became increasingly more vile, empty and unromantic.

Paul insisted on having a sexual affair - conducted anonymously without names. He demanded 'no questions asked' and 'no names' rules:

"I don't have a name....No, no, I don't, I don't want to know your name. You don't have a name and I don't have a name either. No names here. Not one name... I don't want to know anything about you. I don't wanna know where you live or where you come from. I wanna know nothing.... Nothing, nothing, do you understand?...You and I are gonna meet here without knowing anything that goes on outside here. OK?...Because, because we don't need names here. Don't you see? We're gonna forget everything that we knew. Every - all the people, all that we do, all that we, wherever we live. We're gonna forget that, everything, everything."

In another sequence when they were hugging each other naked and coupled together, she proposed that they concentrate - and "Maybe we can come without touching," but they were unsuccessful; then she suggested that they invent names for each other; he countered: ("Oh, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name. Do you wanna hear my name?"); after he made animal sounds, she complimented him: ("It's so masculine"), and then she made her own barnyard sounds ("Listen to mine") - and he joked: "I didn't get the last name" and they continued speaking in grunting moans and sounds.

The film outraged some viewers for a full-body panning shot up Jeanne's body in an elevator, including a full-frontal closeup shot of Jeanne's pubic hair. Also, it was notorious for its bathtub washing scene. There was also the disturbing and explicit anal sodomy scene on the floor using butter from a block as a lubricant during intercourse (with his earlier command: "Go get the butter"). His emphasis was on pure sex, basically anal - a reversal of conventional romantic love.

Controversial Scenes
The Butter Scene: "Go get the butter"		The Full-Frontal Scene

Later in a similarly-shocking scene, Paul reciprocated by letting Jeanne penetrate him anally with two fingers ("Put your fingers up my ass") - part of his objective to "look death right in the face...go right up into the ass of death... till you find the womb of fear." His set of rules was notable for the time: "We are going to forget everything we knew - everything."

But then she abandoned the apartment and they broke up. Their previous secretive and mostly sexual affair was over, but when he found her on the street, Paul insisted that a new one was beginning, although she wished to break off their relationship and didn't want to see him again. He wanted to resume everything, since he had fallen in love with her: "There's nothing to understand. We left the apartment, and now we begin and love all the rest of it." He shattered the anonymous nature of their relationship by telling her some details of his brutalized life, things that he had withheld from her in the past: "Yeah, listen. I'm 45. I'm a widower. I own a little hotel. It's kind of a dump, but not completely a flop house. Then I used to live on my luck and I got married, and my wife killed herself." Their original relationship had lost its anonymity, which she thought had been preferable: "It's better not knowing anything."

The film ended when he chased her through the streets and pursued her into her mother's Parisian apartment. He playfully donned her late father's Army cap (he was a colonel in French North Africa). When he removed it and confessed his love for her while approaching ("And now I've found you. And I love you. I wanna know your name"), she was horrified and fearful. Suddenly a shot rang out - she spoke her name "Jeanne" at the same moment he was shot point-blank in the stomach. Paul staggered to the balcony where he collapsed and died in a fetal position.

The camera tracked backwards to reveal the skyline, and Jeanne standing there with a revolver in her hand (her father's Army pistol from his military days). Dazed, Jeanne muttered the last lines of the film to herself (in French, translated below), rehearsing her lines that she would have to deliver to the police to explain his death (rationalizing and reassuring herself that it was self-defense when the stranger attempted to rape her):

"I don't know who he is. He followed me in the street. He tried to rape me. He's a lunatic. I don't know what he's called. I don't know his name. I don't know who he is. He tried to rape me. I don't know. I don't know him. I don't know who he is. He's a lunatic. I don't know his name."

The Pig Keeper's Daughter (1972)

T & A sleaze merchant and producer Harry Novak delivered this X-rated, sex-filled, soft-core romp with a Southern hillbilly-farm theme and a farmer's daughter.

The Ma and Pa Kettle films of earlier decades, and the popularity of TV's "Hee Haw" helped to spur films of this sort for various 'grindhouse' audiences, before the widespread advent of mainstream pornography, heralded by Deep Throat (1972) and watch-at-home videotapes.

See earlier description of other Backwoods Sexploitation Films.

This 'dirty' movie's tagline expressed a lot about its sexploitational plot:

"She brought a new meaning to the phrase, 'driving a hard bargain'!"

The DVD cover also tauted: "The psychotronic NUDIE redneck SEXPLOITATION shotgun PIG former CLASSIC!"

In this adult comedy, the main title character was 19 year-old unmarried, red-headed Moonbeam Swiner (Terry Gibson), the precocious pigkeeper's daughter with her favorite pig Lord Hamilton. Moonbeam's parents -- buxom Ma Molly Swiner (Gina Paluzzi) and Pa Swiner (Bruce Kimball). Her parents wanted her to marry a con-artist traveling Salesman (Peter James) who appeared in town.

Moonbeam Swiner (Terry Gibson) - The Pig Keeper's Daughter
Outdoors in the Farmyard
Horse-Trough Bathtub Sex

The film included many sex scenes, including a traditional romp-in-the-hay scene, an outdoor quickie with a 15 year-old hitchhiker, and a horse-trough bathtub sex scene.

There was also a sideplot about local stud Jasper (John Keith) and virginal girl-next-door Pretty Patty Smith (Peggy Church). In one scene, big-breasted Ma Swiner exchanged herself (opening her zippered panties) for free beauty products from the Salesman.

Pink Flamingos (1972)

Director John Waters, dubbed "The Prince of Puke," produced a unique crop of intentionally bizarre, crude, sexually-grotesque, and bad taste-laden cult films with eccentric oddball characters and harshly-vivid language. See also Waters' Female Trouble (1974) (later).

His gross-out, unrated (NC-17) seminal film Pink Flamingos was about an unusual transvestite trailer park matron-diva named Babs Johnson (played by Divine).

In the climactic ending scene, she literally ate real (and fresh) dog feces (termed coprophagia) in a competition to become the 'World's Filthiest Person Alive' - among other things.

Other shocking and perverse sequences included:

• Babs' overweight mentally-retarded, half-dressed mother Edie (Edith Massey) who lived in a play-pen, dressed like a baby, and ate hard-boiled eggs
• Exhibitionism of clown-masked, tall Raymond exposing himself to two females lunching in a wooded park, after attaching a very long kielbasa sausage to his penis, and then stealing a left-behind purse
• Continuing conflict between Babs (and her family) and the envious and rival couple involved in black-market criminal activity, Raymond Marble (David Lochary) and Connie Marble (Mink Stole), and their manservant Channing (Channing Wilroy), who artificially inseminated kidnapped girls with his sperm inserted via a dispenser tube, kept them locked in a basement for nine months, and then sold the babies (in their "adoption clinic") to lesbian couples
• Bestiality Sex with live chickens crushed between Babs' delinquent son Crackers (Danny Mills) and Cookie (Cookie Mueller), as voyeuristic Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce) looked on from a nearby trailer window
• Babs' birthday party, with a cake decorated with the words: "Happy Birthday Babs The Filthiest Person Alive", and bizarre sex acts, including a topless woman (with pasties) dancing with a snake around her neck, and a gay contortionist (anonymous, uncredited as the "Singing Asshole") who ascended onto a performance stage, laid down on his back with his legs in the air, and musically sang or 'lip-synched' to The Trashmen's "Surfing Bird" ("Mau-mau-mau") by flexing his anal sphincter!
• Revelation of a Transexual's (Elizabeth Coffey, credited as "Chick with a Dick") male genitals in an outdoor park, when approached and flashed by Raymond
• Babs' oral incestual sex with her son Crackers, after they vandalized the Marbles' home and licked the furniture
• the revelation that Channing, after being castrated by one of the freed pregnant women in the basement ("I'm gonna cut that big fat worm right off you") (off-screen), had bled to death (Connie Marble: "He's been castrated. His penis is gone!")
• the scene of Babs' vengeful kidnapping and trial (kangaroo court) of the Marbles for burning down the trailer, and for "first-degree stupidity" and "assholism"; Babs delivered a stunning "filth politics" speech to TV and tabloid reporters, including Mr. John Vader who asked if blood was a turn-on: "It (blood) does more than turn me on, Mr. Vader. It makes me come. And more than the sight of it, I love the taste of it. The taste of hot, freshly killed blood...Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat s--t! Filth are my politics! Filth is my life!"
• the bound-and-gagged couple were tied to a tree, coated in tar and feathers, and gunned down in the head by Babs/Divine in front of the press - it was a 'live homicide'

"Live Homicide" of the Marbles

• the scatological, disgusting gross-out scene of Divine/Babs eating real fresh, recently defecated dog feces in a competition to become the 'World's Filthiest Person' at the film's conclusion - she gagged and then smiled at the camera in a close-up

Divine/Babs Eating Dog Feces	(Coprophagia)

Savage Messiah (1972, UK)

Flamboyant producer/director Ken Russell's R-rated unconventional, melodramatic biopic (one of many he directed in the 1970s) was loosely based on art collector H.S. Ede's 1931 biographical book of the same name, specifically a series of love letters. Taglines advertised the self-financed film:

"Every man has a dream that must be realized, a love that must come true, a life that must not stop"
And
"All art is sex!"

Set in Bohemian Paris and London of 1910-1915, it told about eccentric, struggling Vorticist French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Scott Antony). He had been dubbed the "Savage Messiah" during his unorthodox, intense, and platonic relationship with Polish-born aspiring author Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin), 20 years his senior. They had met in Paris when he was only 18. He died tragically young when killed at age 23 in WWI when fighting against the Germans.

One of Henri Gaudier's shapely and voluptuous models (fictionalized), with which he had an affair, functioned as his second 'muse' - enthusiastic suffragette Gosh Boyle (young Helen Mirren).

Gosh Boyle (Helen Mirren)

In the scene in which she posed and appeared naked as he drew her, she was ascending and descending various staircases, an obvious allusion to Marcel Duchamp's famous 1912 painting, Nude Descending a Staircase. Boyle was the daughter of a wealthy army officer, who spoke of free love.

She engaged in a conversation with him while climbing a staircase naked:

Gosh: "Do you think I'm beautiful?"
Henri: "You'll do."
Gosh: "Sexy?"
Henri: "Sexy? I thought that was a dirty word to you suffragettes."
Gosh: "I'm bored with politics. I want to be an artist."
Henri: "Excellent. The world needs more artists, fewer politicians."
Gosh: "All my lovers are poets."

When it was suggested to her that she sleep with quarrymen rather than poets for a "much better ride," she responded: "I don't care what I do so long as it's creative. I want to leave something behind me that was never there before." As she descended another staircase, she mentioned that as a Virgo, she felt she was subject to "cosmic boredom." She enthusiastically proposed dancing naked at the exhibition "in the spirit of nature."

Slaughter (1972)

This early 70s violent, fast-paced, action-blaxploitation film was directed by Jack Starrett (and AIP's Samuel Arkoff). The R-rated film was advertised with a word-play on the name of the title character:

"It's not only his name. It's his business and sometimes -- his pleasure!"

The film's posters proclaimed: "Jim Brown is 'Slaughter'." "The Fuzz had a warrant for him. The Mob had a contract on him. All Slaughter had was a name -- but he sure lived up to it."

According to an August 1972 Hollywood Reporter news-report, the highly successful grindhouse classic brought AIP "the biggest business in the 18-year history of the company." It was followed by the sequel Slaughter's Big Rip Off (1973), with Jim Brown reprising his title role.

It starred ex-Green Beret Captain Slaughter (ex-pro football player Jim Brown), a Vietnam war hero who proclaimed himself as the "baddest cat ever walked the earth." Similar to the same era's Shaft (Richard Roundtree), Slaughter was a gun-toting, contemptuous, fast-driving black protagonist after both racist, Mafia mobsters and federal cops. He was seeking revenge for the car-bombing murder of his parents.

Blonde 60's sex-pot Stella Stevens (January 1960 Playboy Playmate) co-starred in a small supporting role as Mafia mistress Ann Cooper, living in South America (although the film was shot in Mexico) with psychopathic, bigoted hit man Dominick Hoffo (Rip Torn), the most likely individual who murdered Slaughter's parents.

Ann (Stella Stevens) Startled When Emerging From the Shower

She provided the requisite nudity when she emerged from a shower, and she eventually became studly Slaughter's love-interest (at first, she met him when ordered to gather information), when he was coerced to travel to 'South America' by the feds after a botched sting, to take on the Mob. He vowed to extricate her from Hoffo's powerful grasp (killing him in the film's conclusion after he confessed), and shared two inter-racial sex scenes with her.

Street of a Thousand Pleasures (1972) (aka Arab Slave Market, or Dreams)

This was a notorious X-rated sexploitation (called a "nudie cutie") film from the early 70s, directed by William Rostler (aka Clay McCord) and released by Harry Novak. The film's subtitle was: "There's something in it for everyone." It also promised:

"A Journey Through the Whispered World of Women."

In the virtually plotless movie, American businessman/oil field geologist John Dalton (John Tull), during a trip to the Middle East away from his nagging wife in Los Angeles, rescued Arab sheik Abdul Ben Hassein from an assassination knife attack by shooting the assailant.

He was rewarded with a trip to the spectacular "street of a thousand pleasures," where he was introduced to the slave market-harem filled with dozens of naked women functioning as sex servants.

[Note: Some of the females included Uschi Digart - as Busty Slave Girl, pin-up girl Michelle Angelo - as Busty Girl with Apple, Joyce Mandel - as Busty Girl with Goblet, and many other un-credited beauties.]

"Girl-A-Vision"

He viewed scores of feminine treats with "Girl-A-Vision" (a hand-held camera presented his point of view from a hands-on perspective, often with enlarged close-ups of body parts).

Bodies could be caressed or kissed, and eventually, John had brief sex with a few of the females, including a black belly dancer (Malta).

The film ended with another strike by the Arab assassin, who killed the sheik (having sex) by stabbing him to death, while nearby, John was also having sex. After wrestling with the assassin, John left the Middle East and returned home with a willing American slave slave.

Virgin Witch (1972, UK) (aka Lesbian Twins)

This unscary British satanic cult thriller was part of a 1970s trend in Europe to release sexploitation films regarding the occult.

Its enticing taglines overplayed the film:

"She's the girl with the power...to turn you on!...to turn you off!"
"She'll blow your mind!"
"Her lust was innocence - her desires...evil!"

The film's sole intent was a flimsy plotline designed to display as many perky breasts and bare buttocks as possible, and to titillate with lesbianism - and even the first shot in the film's opening credits was a side view of a naked breast.

Virgin Witch - Betty (Vicki Michelle)
Sister Christine (Ann Michelle)

The film featured two runaways (with two real-life sisters in the roles):

• Christine (Ann Michelle)
• Betty (Vicki Michelle), the younger sister

In London, they answered an ad from a modeling agency, run by predatory head agent Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines). After Christine disrobed and was personally scrutinized and lustfully measured with a tape across her naked breasts and hips by Sybil, the two females were invited to a country mansion for a modeling audition photo shoot - supposedly an ad for cider.

Lured there together, Christine was photographed around the lush grounds by photographer Peter, who suggested that she disrobe ("I'm trying to get an angle, take your jeans off") for some Garden of Eden shots. Soon, he had discarded his camera and was having sex with her next to a tree - spied upon from afar by Sybil.

They discovered that Sybil was a lesbian high-priestess witch who managed a coven of witches, along with the owner of the Wychwold estate, Gerald Amberly (Neil Hallett). Sybil was attempting to seduce both girls, and especially Christine (with employment, sleeping together, and a kiss). While taking a bath, Betty was spied upon through a peephole by Gerald.

The two virgins were being prepared for an induction ceremony, and surprisingly, Betty was very eager to be inducted into the group during a sexualized midnight ritual. She was stripped, oiled up and led to the altar, where she was deflowered by a masked Gerald.

In the film's final twist, the un-innocent Christine revealed her own supernatural ESP-psychic powers to turn the tables and take over leadership of the coven with her own ritual. She set a large headshot of Sybil on fire -- and as it was set ablaze, Sybil's facial expression became pained.