The Beast

La Bête | France | 1975 | Directed by Walerian Borowczyk

Logline: The daughter of an aristocrat travels with her aunt to a country estate to be betrothed to the wealthy young heir only to find herself distracted by family secrets and perverse fantasies.

The Beast is the perfect mélange of high art and deep trash, from a decade where the boundaries of good taste were pushed to the edge of the envelope, only to be caressed and folded back. High art, because the movie’s approach to the subject matter was years ahead of its time; and deep trash, because the shocking and lurid nature of the subject matter was treated in a pretentious or, more often, unintentionally absurd fashion.

The late Polish director Walerian Borowczyk’s ludicrous tale is a forest-and-mansion-bound phantasy of the most beastly indulgences; a netherworld of turgid dressing room dramatics, and animalistic lust and desire bordering on the macabre. Yes The Beast is a beast all of its own. No other movie quite like it. Leave your sensibilities at the door would be a sensible suggestion, and keep your tongue gently probing into the side of your cheek.

The plot of the film is slight to say the least, but the imagery, mood, tone, and ultimately its sensual deliverance, is what provides the movie with its cult revelry, its vulgar poetry; leaving the clutches of her aunt Virginia (Elizabeth Kaza), the English heiress, Lucy (Lisbeth Hummel), explores the French estate and discovers a secret family history. Later she dreams of musical fancies, in particular the pretty countess Romilda (Sirpa Lane) abandoning her harpsichord to find a lost wee lamb, then being stalked by a large sexually-ravenous ursine beast that first skins the lamb, then lusts after Romilda herself.

More importantly Lucy later comes to realise that the man she is to marry, Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti),  might very well be the beast of her (decidedly naughty) dreams himself; some kind of lycanthrope, perhaps. The patriarch, Pierre de l’Esperance (Guy Trejan), of the wealthy, but crumbling aristocratic brood may have more than his spirits raised. Oh, the humanity!

The Beast began life as an 18-minute short filmed in 1973 and was intended for the director’s ambitious erotic compendium Immoral Tales (1974). Instead Borowczyk decided to construct a feature around the short. His stylistic and surreal sensibilities are like a lewd and lascivious cross between Tinto Brass, Roman Polanski and David Lynch. As a maverick visionary the director has made a striking paean to bestiality and wayward desire; his adoration runs wild and wicked indeed!

But Borowczyk doesn’t suffer offended fools gladly, kicking his film off with an extended sequence of a large black stallion rogering several mares. The camera catches the equine’s throbbing beasthood several times, as well as the mare’s pulsating pudenda; the director’s mind is in the stable’s trough it seems! But this is Walerian Borowczyk. His movies penetrate the mind like a bad feverish dream. You can’t help but return to the more outrageous, dark, and sexually-charged elements of his movies, as the sumptuous and vivid cinematography only provokes the viewer’s aesthetic demands.

The Beast is a strange and peculiar curiosity, oh yes. A satirical dream of animal ravishing, and amusing inter-racial (and inter-species) couplings, that suggests – like only a sophisticated sexploitation art flick can – that women fantasise about being ravished by bear-like beasts with enormous secreting erections until eventually the animal expires and the woman escapes with barely a scratch upon her alabaster thigh.

The Canyons

US | 2013 | Directed by Paul Schrader

Logline: A jealous young movie producer suspects his lover of cheating on him and slyly infiltrates her connections in order to expose her.

On paper this read as the great erotic neo-noir; Paul Schrader at the helm of a low-budgeter, Bret Easton Ellis as the scribe, Lindsay Lohan as the femme, a male porn star as her nemesis, an uber flash hillside pad, the dappled light of California, the dangerous edge of Tinseltown. Stir in a heady dose of jealousy, manipulation, bisexuality, intrigue, and deception, and everyone should be home and hosed.

But The Canyons unravels long before the noose tightens. There is so much more promise than deliverance, the house wants to grind, but the meat remains wrapped. Well, mostly. There is definitely a sleazy allure, a seedy appeal, a hint of provocation, and a flash of the merchandise. And therein lies the Rub; considering the agent provocateurs onboard this production, why wasn’t this played to the sordid hilt?!

Christian (James Deen) is a classic Ellis character, a cool, detached, egocentric trust fund kid with a loose career as an independent producer working on the outskirts of Hollywood. His latest film project features Ryan (Nolan Funk), a matinee idol-esque player who is having an affair with Christian’s lover, Tara (Lindsay Lohan). To complicate matters, or maybe just to grease the situation further, there is Ryan’s girlfriend Gina (Amanda Brooks), and Cynthia (Tenille Houston), an ex of Christian’s who is still his fuck-buddy.

I was waiting for a character from one of the screen adaptations of Ellis’s novels to turn up, perhaps Tara might bring home Vic Ward (Kip Pardue) for a threesome, or Christian might bump into Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) coming out of his therapist’s office, or Blair (Jamie Gertz) might be smoking a cigarette at the next café table. Or maybe even Ellis himself might stroll past on the footpath and glance knowingly at the camera.

Funny that, because two of the characters in The Canyons do just that: turn and gaze straight into the lens, the eye of the camera, breaking the fourth wall, in a way reminiscent of the self-reflective tearing of the reality fabric that he does so brilliantly in his novels Glamorama and Lunar Park. It is these two moments that seal the Ellis stamp on the movie, and the overall tone and atmosphere of the movie. It’s a shame Ellis wasn’t game enough to really push the boundaries. Or perhaps he was, but Schrader felt it necessary to reign in some of the excess.

There’s full-frontal nudity, mostly male, though it should be duly noted that Lohan does not deliver the full monty. The movie’s most sexually provocative scene, a foursome, is much tamer than it should have been, with an earlier scene being the movie’s most notable “NC-17” moment; a random guy casually jerking off on the sofa whilst watching Christian go down on Tara.

Performances are precarious; James Deen was surprisingly convincing, considering his most prized asset was kept under-wraps for the most part. Nolan Funk oozed charisma, and tries hard, while the movie’s real star, Lindsay, gave off a Norma Desmond air of worn out quiet desperation, her once striking good looks lost behind foundation and heavy eye shadow, many years of heavy partying. She’s 26-going-on-46. Lohan is the movie’s anchor tearing through the loose sand on the seabed as the movie crashes on the surf.

The Canyons’ dreamy visual narrative of drifting camerawork, soft pastel cinematography, and a languid mise-en-scene is the movie’s best feature, and the imagery that lingered longest, and had the most symbolic resonance, was the opening montage of lost suburban movie palaces and cinemas, those that have become derelict, shuttered up, abandoned. They appear occasionally through the rest of the movie, as momentary visual interludes, a poignant motif of desertion, estranged melancholy, social decay, and glamour gone west.

This is not an exit. It’s Ellis courting Tinseltown. Rock and roll. Deal with it.

The Canyons screens as part of the Sydney Underground Film Festival, tonight, Sunday 8th, 7:30pm, Cinema One, The Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 

Saturn 3

US | 1980 | Directed by Stanley Donen

Logline: Two off-world scientists are terrorised after a jealous imposter arrives at their remote station and assembles a giant robot assistant.

I’m really quite fond of this curious piece of cosmic debris, not just because of the presence of svelte Farrah Fawcett (R.I.P.) and the chutzpah of Harvey Keitel. Saturn 3 is hopelessly derivative, with a clunky narrative, and some dodgy special effects. But it has a fascinating history.

The basic plot has Benson (Harvey Keitel), a psychopath on a mission, killing Captain James (Douglas Lambert) gruesomely (with little regard for plausibility), then impersonating the astronaut. He travels to Saturn 3 (is it an asteroid or is it Titan, it’s never made clear) with his large trusty canister (which, inexplicably, wasn’t sucked out into space in the bizarre locker-room-cum-airlock). Upon arrival he introduces himself to the two neo-hippie scientists, Adam (Kirk Douglas) and his partner Alex (Farrah Fawcett), who are in charge of a large hydroponic research station (Earth is over-populated and food is now being sourced off-world). There’s also Alex’s mutt, Sally, and a couple of service robots in the facility.

While contact with Earth is blocked due to a 22-day eclipse, Benson/James makes immediate lustful eyes for Alex (hey, who wouldn’t?) and repeatedly tries, in the most uncouth and vain manner, to get into Alex’s jumpsuit, much to Adam’s restrained chagrin. While he bides his time Benson assembles and initiates the helper, Hector, the first in the "Demi-God" series of robots. Hector is an eight-foot tall humanoid hulk with red and blue liquid in tubing running from foot to head (well, actually Hector doesn’t have a head, instead a pair of electric eyes on a swivel-stick), and a bulky metal casing protecting the canister Benson brought with him, which is revealed to hold a massive amount of brain tissue taken from fetuses – thus perfect for programming.

Benson, however, prefers to have Hector operate from direct input; a flesh-jack – cortical stack - at the base of Benson’s neck, thus Benson can communicate and instruct Hector, telepathically. Of course this means Hector is infused with Benson’s unhinged, homicidal nature, so it isn’t long before Hector is on the rampage and although Benson is accountable, the huge whirring killer-bot is out of his control.

Saturn 3 was the project of legendary production designer John Barry (Star Wars, Superman), who envisioned a lush and dark precautionary tale of the future. He provided the story and was the movie’s initial director. However the budget was cut back during production because of spiraling costs on Raise the Titantic! from the same film company.

According to imdb.com Barry was fired after creative disputes with Kirk Douglas, however I’ve also read that it was Barry's untimely death during production that led to legendary director Stanley (Singin' in the Rain) Donen take over. Donen apparently wanted to downplay the exploitation elements of the movie, so unfortunately a couple of intense scenes were cut before release: Adam and Alex killing Benson in a fantasy sequence (possibly after dropping the classic Blue Dreamer pills) and a rather gory sequence where Hector dismantles Benson’s body, which would explain a memorable production still of Hector with Benson’s severed head slotted over his/its own swivel-stick head.

The last quarter of the movie is incredibly clunky and the ending is very abrupt. There’s also a big jump in the narrative time-line that leaves the viewer going “Huh?” With seven assistant directors and six assistant editors I can’t help but wonder what the movie’s original rough-cut was like: no doubt far more interesting, visceral and dramatic. Indeed, renowned British author Martin Amis penned the screenplay, although from the finished movie you certainly wouldn’t be able to pick it.  

However, for all the dodgy parts of the movie there are elements that are intriguing, even cool. While the opening spacecraft sequence is shamelessly lifted wholesale from Star Wars, the font used for the title that precedes it is way funky. Benson’s approach to the asteroid/moon is B-grade indeed, but the decontamination chamber effect is visually striking. Adam and Alex’s outfits - costumes really - are risible (Farrah’s wardrobe and hair design is lifted straight from the pages of Vogue, yet her character is meant to be entirely naïve), yet Benson’s green spacesuit is very cyber-industrial-chic. The design of Hector, apparently inspired by the drawings of Da Vinci, is creepy and menacing, but unfortunately the “metal” is very plastic in appearance.

There are only three main actors (if you don’t count Douglas Lambert’s token appearance), and the performances are uniformly horrible. Not surprisingly the movie was nominated for three Golden Raspberry awards: Worst Actor (Douglas), Worst Actress (Fawcett) and Worst Movie. Kirk Douglas pulls more ridiculous facial expressions than a clown, Farrah spends more time delivering a wimpy “Uh” or “Oh” rather than her soft-spoken drivel, while Harvey Keitel appears to be sleepwalking, and, very oddly, had his voice re-dubbed by British actor Roy Dotrice. Curiously there is not a complete cast list at the end of the movie, so Douglas Lambert is not mentioned, and the poor fool who stumbled around inside the robot suit was never given due credit.

Still, like any deep trash, I pluck what I need; Elmer Bernstein’s score is okay, and hey, you get to see a brief glimpse of Farrah’s lovely naked breast, and then her sumptuous nude body in silhouette, which set my pubescent mind racing when I first saw it back in 1980! Mind you, you’re also subjected to 64-year-old Kirk wrestling Harvey buck-naked.

Yes, Saturn 3 seriously malfunctions, its space junk body dragged around like Achilles did through Troy with the slain body of Hector; Martin Amis throwing a little literary metaphoric weight when he has Adam explain to Alex the connection. The movie was shamelessly trying to capitalise on the horror-sf success of Alien (1979), yet has none of Ridley’s expert command over look, feel, mood, and tone. Some of Hector’s robot moves are impressively executed, and the gore effects, especially the severing of Benson’s hand and Captain James’ demise, are decent, but the rest of the effects are mutton dressed as lamb (and to think the movie was released in a 70mm blow-up!)

I only hope one day a special edition gets released with all the deleted scenes, an in-depth director’s commentary, and Harvey and/or Kirk commentary. It might sound crazy, but the movie deserves better treatment than the full-frame, no-frills DVD release that’s been floating around for many years.

Even better, a remake, or should I say re-envisioning, with a bigger cast, and more adult content! I might even start work on a spec screenplay myself ...