Sexangle (John Jesnor Lindsay, 1975) [NSFW]

(NOTE: This concerns a 1970s grot loop and as such will contain NSFW elements such as sexual references and - in the words of Simon Bates - sexual swear words.  Such as "fucknut" and "arsecandle".  Probably.)

From Hull it came.

One of two short (under half an hour) grimy porn loops made back-to-back (or, as Stanley B. Herman's legendary Uncle Hank would yell in Darren Aronofsky's 2000 soul-gnawing mindfuck Requiem for a Dream, "Ass to ass!") in 1975, along with Health Farm - both movies featuring the character of Lady Samantha as played by attractive but elusive performer 'Debbie', this twin-spin of sin being her only two known roles - this would be a point of interest in director John Lindsay's celebrated grot career for one reason that I shall express in three words.

Cosey. Fanni. Tutti.

Yes, you read that right.  The sometime singer and guitarist from post-punk industrial noiseniks Throbbing Gristle (birthed into this sick world as Christine Newby in the Kingston-upon-Hull of 1951) has an unashamedly extensive resume in the pornographic sphere if you didn't already know: her decidedly feminist and empowered take on the male-ruled heteronormative realm of the patriarchal porn of the '70s included COUM Transmissions' 1976 art installation-cum-exhibition (cum exhibition?) entitled Pornography at the London Institute of Contemporary Art displaying many of her jazz mag photoshoots framed as museum artworks.

Not called Tessa.  Not from Sunderland.

Director John Lindsay was by this time well underway in his smut career, having started in 1970 with a series of 8mm shorts beginning with Miss Bohrloch starring future star of the sex scene bombshell Mary Millington in her debut performance.  After graduating to series of 'nymphette' or 'Lolita' scenarios - loops featuring grown women dressed in schoolgirl outfits - such as 1974's Jolly Hockey Sticks (starring future therapist and doctor of sexology Ava Cadell - also star of Norman J. Warren's Spaced Out [a.k.a. Outer Touch] and at least four of Andy Sidaris' frankly mind-boggling 'Bullets, Bombs and Babes' movies) Lindsay graduated to not-quite feature length (just over 20 minutes apiece) with the double feature of Sexangle and Health Farm in 1975.

We open with Lady Samantha Huntingdon (the aforementioned Debbie) looking lovely in a green dress as she makes a telephone call from her stately manor to the 'international design centre' where she confirms to the receptionist (Suzette Sangallo, whose only other credit is in the George Harrison Marks joint 'Come Play With Me' alongside the lovely Mary Millington, a flick that ran continuously in a West End cinema from 1977 to 1981 - that's a lot of stained macs stickying up those seats) that it's fine for the appointment to take place at Huntingdon Towers today (actually, it's called Uplands House according to the signage).  When the girl confirms that both she and Mr Purkiss (I think that's the name - the sound quality on the copy I tracked down isn't exactly the best), Lady Sam hangs up the phone and we see her friend Suzie (Cosi herself) finishing removing her clothes and announcing "Sorry, darling - I'm having a shower now".  Just as we begin to enjoy her soaping her very nice mammaries beneath the cascading waters, Lady S. has to descend the stairs to answer the door (you just can't get the help these days) to Mr Purkiss (?) (Timothy Blackstone, who amidst a career in suspect '70s fare like Confessions of a Driving Instructor and The Hot Girls made appearances in legit stuff such as Colditz and as a Thal soldier in the classic Doctor Who story 'Genesis of the Daleks') and his assistant.  

Showing them up to the master bedroom, the stately Lady states that her boudoir is the room that she would like decorated first.  One assumes she means 'decorated' as in 'festooned with bodily fluids' considering the events that are obviously about to unfold.  Suzie really should have waited to have that shower, she'll just need another one shortly along with the other three.  Mr We're Just Going With Purkiss says that he will have to "take some measurements, first" - I bet you will, my son - and so his assistant Miss Waugh (I'm pretty sure on that one: they pronounce it like people say Evelyn Waugh, which really annoys me as they always say 'Evil-Lyn War' and I reckon it should be pronounced 'Evellin Woff') accompanies Lady Samantha, who tells her "I want to show you the bathroom".

Of course, Suzie is still showering, but the blithe and spirited Samantha merely introduces her as her "friend" before leaving Miss Waugh to take notes on the renovations even though her gaze seems more fixed towards Cosi's cosy looking muff than her notepad.  As Suzie emerges all dripping wet nature takes its course as it surely must when two sexy brunettes are left alone together, and when Lady S. pokes her head round the door to show them Purkiss' designs she is greeted by the sight of them indulging in their designs on each other with their tongues down each others' throats.  Other orifices shall doubtless soon also get a lingual lashing as we progress.  But I digress.  Clearly delighted with developments, Our Lady of the Immaculate Wide-On returns to Mr Purkiss and offers to help him with the measuring, but first "I'll just take orff [she's very posh] my dress - mustn't get it creased" and removes her smashing frock to reveal an even more cracking green satin corset and sheer stockings.

Declaring "Mr Branson," - oh, he's called Branson now?  Definitely didn't sound like that earlier - "come over here" she literally reels him in with the tape measure to her bed where he immediately begins feasting on her baps: "Oooh, that's super!  I love my tits being sucked!".  Meanwhile, Suzie and Miss Waugh have made their way from the bathroom to the corner of the bedroom, where Suzie sits in a chair legs akimbo whilst Miss Waugh proves herself a very cunning linguist eliciting the deathless line "Please, please, stick your tongue right up!" in a voice that I strongly suspect isn't Cosi's own.  The ADR / looping on this is absolutely, hilariously terrible by the way - dialogue often coming in when people's mouths aren't even moving.  It's genius.  Some of the extreme close-ups of the labial lapping are positively gynaecological.  Branson or Purkiss or whatever the hell he's called has by now progressed, like an excited teeneger, to the stage of some light fingering of which the Lady approves but she soon hoiks his trousers down with a "Now let's see what you've got... Oh, super!  Just what I want" and begins slurping on his sausage.

Suzie (well, whoever's providing her voice) declares "I want to kiss you now!" and snogs her own pussy juices out of Miss Waugh's mouth before laying her down on the floor and stating that she wants "to kiss your slim body all over".  Brankiss or whoever seems to soon tire of being fellated by a beautiful lady - the silly sod - and declares "What lovely big tits.  I want to fuck them." in a voiceover with all the unbridled passion of the bored voice at the other end of the drive-through speaker.  Still, he gets his wish for a titwank - the jammy sod - and the accommodating Samantha continues to lap at the tip of his glans with each upward thrust.  Suzie and Waugh are still literally munching on the rug, but have progressed into a 69 by this point.

"Stick your big hard prick right up my juicy cunt.  Oh, lovely.  Super.  Harder.  Put it right up." There's something quite odd (and profoundly arousing) about hearing a line like that in a plummy cut-glass accent.  Clearly I don't move in the right circles, unlike Mr Whomever, who is indeed right up the lady as she shifts from cowgirl to reverse cowgirl and does indeed seem to be enjoying herself definitely creaming (you can't fake that) before taking his load over her face and wabs in glorious slow motion, accompanied by a cacophonous wall of noise of wails that sounds like something off a Goblin soundtrack.

We then suddenly cut to what is clearly a different day as a chauffeur (performer unknown, name not listed on any credits I could find) who is loading the Lady's baggage into the back of the car (licence plate 'Sexy 1' of course)as she and Suzie come down the stairs and kiss each other goodbye.  Giving Suzie the keys to look after the house, Lady S. climbs into the open-topped vehicle and is pretty much open-topped herself, her diaphanous blouse blowing open in the wind and displaying her decolletage.  After she has been dropped off at wherever she was going, the driver heads down a country lane where he encounters a girl (wait, is this Suzette Sangallo?  She's credited as 'Girl', rather than Miss Waugh and only she, Cosi, Debbie and Blackstone are actually listed as credits.  I'm so confused) walking down the road in very short hotpants and knee-high boots.  This causes an exclamation of "What a lovely bit of cunt.  This is too good to be missed" as he sets off in pursuit, which isn't very MeeToo is it?  Removing his chauffeur regalia, he picks her up and asks her back to "my place" for drinks, arriving at the Lady's manor as if he owns the place.  It's under these false pretences that he lures her inside and asks her if she's a student.  "No, you silly boy, I'm a dancer" she declares, which does explain the hotpants and go-go boots, and gives him a brief demonstration of her moves, prompting an "Ooh, you sexy bitch, come here!"

The hotpants are soon off and the cunnilingus begins when Suzie enters and after a surprised "What's this?" swiftly sheds her dress and in just panties and high heels declares "Off!" and bundles away the hired help to kneel between the legs of the hitchhiking hottie and take over tonguing duties.herself.  Not to be deterred, the driver slides down Suzie's lingerie and his a bit of a lick and a finger himself.  Very soon, he's the one on the receiving end of Suzie's oral action, the girl swiftly joining in to make it a double BJ,  "OK lovers, let's see what you can do" sayeth Suzie, and the lucky bastard of a chauffeur gets to shag first the hitchhiker and then Suzie herself, banging away at her and ejaculating over her stomach while she and the girl indulge in some passionate deep French kissing before like him the film swiftly ends.

Very much a game of two halves; I think I enjoyed the first scene a little more despite Cosi doing boy-girl in the second part. Recommended to anyone interested in the adventures of Ms Fan Tutti (who I discovered whilst writing this has a small role in Ken Russell's Gothic, which gives me an excuse to watch that film again  Not that I need an excuse.  I love that movie) or the 1970s porn scene in general.  It was absurdly poorly done in places, but it did succeed in getting my gristle throbbing.

The Legend of El Hombre Lobo (Dorian Cleavenger, 2019)

Having grown up as a fan of Eurotrash, Euro-slash and all things Euro-sleaze (I'm fairly sure I was the only person at my school with a VHS copy of Jess Franco's Vampyros Lesbos, as evidenced by the amount of my fellow pupils who asked to borrow it) I've always had a soft spot for the horror emanations of the Iberian peninsula; whether it be the works of Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Leon Klimovsky or Jorge Grau. I was so there for it as I'm sure the youths still say.  That being the case, the works of Paul Naschy (or Jacinto Molina Alvarez to his mum) hold a very special place in my blackened heart as Naschy's name conjures so many joyfully ghoulish images to my mind, whether it be Morgue-dwelling hunchbacks, headless mediaeval sorcerers or (and especially) the tragic Polish lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky (a.k.a. El Hombre Lobo).  Naschy's most famous role of the many he essayed in his multi-decade career, Daninsky partook of his carnivorous lunar activities over eleven - or twelve if we are to believe in the mythic 'lost' 1968 entry Les Noches del Hombre Lobo (The Nights of the Werewolf) - movies between 1968 and 2004

And so it was a happy surprise of serendipitous proportions when one evening roaming about the byways and highways of the interwebs I stumbled across the Youtube channel of Eric Yoder, a make up effects guy and short film maker.  Among the lovingly-crafted brief but brilliant tributes to classics such as William Lustig's Maniac (Night of the Maniac), Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case (Belial), Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper (The Los Angeles Ripper), Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (a spot-on trailer titled Within the Woods) and John Carpenter's The Thing (Who Goes There) I found, to my delight, a 40-minute tribute to Naschy's lupine alter ego and his adventures: the appropriately reverently-titled The Legend of El Hombre Lobo.

As someone who finds joy in retro minutiae such as "They got the font right!" or recognising a familiar musical cue or even film stock/grain, whether real or digitally achieved (as you can imagine, things like Tarantino & Rodriguez' Grindhouse project or even the Stranger Things opening titles moistened my eager gusset), I was almost clapping with glee as the film opened with appropriately applied film scratches and the caption 'Baliavasta, Transylvania - 1972'.  Baliavasta is, I guess, to Naschy's wolfman what Vasaria was to Lon Chaney and the Universal monsters.  Opening with a sequence of grave robbers in a moonlit, fog-shrouded cemetery who inadvertently revive the werewolf (just like in the 1943 Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man as well as Naschy's 1970 Assignment Terror) by removing the silver cross of the Mayenza chalice from his heart and get appropriately slaughtered for their troubles, we cut to a daylight drive through the rural Romanian woodlands where Paul (Matthew Thomas Stallings, also of other Yoder vids such as the aforementioned The Los Angeles Ripper), Jasmine (Anna Townsend) and Anna (Reese Gizzarelli) are searching for the last resting place of Jasmine's late parents.

After an encounter with a local villager who warns them away from the old cemetery as it is the cursed burial place of Count Vladislav (Cody Ruch) who was executed for witchcraft and vampirism - a sort of spear (as opposed to distaff) version of Patty Shepard's Countess Wandessa.  Of course they ignore him and go, where we find out from the tombstone that Jasmine's deceased mother's name was Elvira Shepard: after both Naschy's wife - and a frequent female moniker throughout his filmography - and Patty Shepard, the titular Vampire Woman of The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman a.k.a. Werewolf Shadow, and her father's name was Leon: possibly a reference to Oliver Reed's Leon Corledo from Hammer's 1961 The Curse of the Werewolf - the pioneering Spanish werewolf.  Whilst Anna finds herself irresistably attracted the Count Vladislav's Black Castle on the hill, Paul and Jasmine find themselves victims of Imre and Justine's fate in Dr Jekyll and the Werewolf - Paul is murdered by robbers who then attempt to rape Jasmine, who is rescued by a bearded Waldemar Daninsky (Shane Ronzio, who was cinematographer on Yoder's Thing tribute Who Goes There, going from camera man to wolf man).  Anna finds the tomb of Vladislav and manages to cut her hand and bleed all over it, prompting a prompt resurrection for the vampiric villain who looks a little like Bruce Payne's Nosferatu-styled Harker from Howling VI: The Freaks in a monk's habit.  As she is baptised in blood to become a sexy vampiress, Jasmine awakes to find herself tended by Waldemar and his elderly housekeeper-cum-witch Uswika Bathory (Nicole Albert).

When the vampires hunt Jasmine and wolfy Waldemar goes on the prowl (complete with red tinted lycanthropic POV shots reminiscent of Freddie Francis' Legend of the Werewolf), obviously the undead and the lupine clash but I really don't want to go into detail on the last part and spoil the end.  Rather, I urge genre fans to seek it for themselves.  It's 40 minutes of your time well spent that you could have wasted on some copaganda or lame spin-off show.  Plenty of those about.  But if anyone has affection for Gothic Euro horror - and in particular Werewolf Shadow, Dr Jekyll and the Werewolf or Night of the Werewolf - I think you'll love this.  I wonder if Rod and Troy from the Naschycast know about it?

Oh, and I must mention Mr Yoder's short The Old Man in the Rocking Chair, probably in both versions. It hits all the right giallo notes, with characters called Dario, Daria, Lucio, Lenzi and Mr Bava.  Tres gialli.  I think I slightly prefer the original 2019 version to the - admittedly better made - 2022 remake, if only for the superior use of Fabio Frizzi's 'Voci dal Nulla' from The Beyond at the climax.  Though the remake does boast a brilliantly Fulci-esque eye trauma.  I wonder if Katie of the Night and Sweet 'N Spooky Celise know about these flicks?  Not that I internet stalk women who are into Euro horror.  What?  I  don't!)

And I look forward to Walpurgis Night, in the hopes that it sees release, still being credited as being in post production on imdb.  This looks like it sees Ronzio return as Daninsky in a full-blown Dr Jekyll and Werewolf remake.  I do hope it sees the light of day.  We need more Daninsky in the world.