Tag: sex

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Videodrome
(Director’s Cut)

Director – David Cronenberg – 1983 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 85m

*****

UK PAL laserdisc review.

Originally appeared in London Calling Internet. See also my review for What’s On In London during the film’s revival at the ICA.

Distributor Pioneer LDCE

Cat No: PFLEB 36041

£19.99

BBFC Certificate 18

Director David Cronenberg (1982)

Starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, Debbie Harry

Running Time 85 min

Mono

Widescreen: 1.85:1

Chaptered? Yes

CLV (Side 1)/CAV (Side 2)

2 Sides

A decade and a half on and still retaining its incredible power to shock, this is the film in which David Cronenberg first coined his battle cry, “Long Live the New Flesh.” If a clear lineage can be traced in his films from Shivers’ aphrodisiac turds through to Crash‘s orgasmic collision of swingers and twisted metal, Videodrome remains unique in Cronenberg’s oeuvre – a black joke, a come on to the censor.

Just suppose, runs the pitch, violent porno (television signals) directly affected people causing them to hallucinate. This is the fate which befalls sleazoid Channel 83 cable television executive Max Renn (a young Woods in his best – and edgiest – role to date) who tells porno programme sales agents their merchandise is “too SOFT…I’m looking for something TOUGH.”… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Volere Volare
(I Want To Fly)

Directors – Guido Manuli, Maurizio Nichetti – 1991 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A sexually insecure man turns into an animated cartoon character as he tries to start a relationship with the woman of his dreams.

PLOT

The shy Maurizio (Maurizio Nichetti) works dubbing old black and white cartoons while his more outgoing brother (Patrizio Roversi) dubs porno movies. Martina (Angela Finocchiaro) is a freelance fulfiller of her clients’ bizarre psychosexual fantasies. Upon meeting, the two are attracted to one another, but Maurizio’s inhibitions in the face of romance cause him to be transformed – slowly – into an animated cartoon character. Martina, meanwhile, is highly dissatisfied with her hitherto love life and is searching for a man somehow different from all others she’s known…

OPINION

Easily saleable by the epithet “adult Roger Rabbit“, this gentle and greatly likeable Italian sex comedy makes cinema history with a final bedroom scene in which live action woman disappears under the sheets with a cartoon lover! Early animation buffs will spot interesting works by the Fleischer and Terry Studios, with hilarious sequences where Maurizio adds a cacophony of real time sound effects as a one man band. Later, little animated black and white ducks crawl into his coat; later still, his hands turn into animated gloves to grope Martina (against Maurizio’s will) at a restaurant.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Naked Lunch

Director – David Cronenberg – 1991 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 115m

*****

Originally published in Film And Video – The Magazine. See also my reviews in What’s On In London and London Calling Internet.

PLOT

New York, 1953. Bug exterminator Bill Lee (Peter Weller) runs out of roach powder whilst treating an infested apartment. His initial accusations against his employers’ theft of the substance are revealed as groundless when he discovers wife Joan (Judy Davis) is using the brown powder as a drug. She persuades him to take up the habit. In a downtown interview, two narcotics detectives introduce Bill to his “Case Officer” – a typewriter sized bug with a talking orifice in its back who instructs him to kill Joan, as she is an Interzone agent.

After shooting his wife, Bill seeks counselling from Dr.Benway (Roy Scheider) who gives him a counter narcotic. A Mugwump gives Bill two air tickets to the Interzone where he meets (among others) Swiss expatriate Yves Cloquet (Sands) and writers Tom and Joan Frost (Ian Holm and Judy Davis). Throughout his adventures, friends Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelikner) encourage Bill to write his book Naked Lunch.

OPINION

Attempts have previously been made to turn William Burroughs’ seminal book Naked Lunch into a movie, but David Cronenberg’s version (produced by Jeremy Thomas of The Last Emperor fame) is the only one to reach fruition.… Read the rest