I decided that James and I should start off the new year with a new tradition. Every month, we will venture over to our favourite video store and buy some sort of trashy, exploitation movie to watch and add to our collection. He had mentioned how he wanted to own more of them so I thought that this would be an easy way to start, especially since we aren't made of money. I got the first one and after reading the description on the back, I knew we had to see it. So our inaugural Exploitation FOTM is: In the Folds of the Flesh
Director Sergio Bergonzelli's In the Folds of the Flesh has been labeled one of the most over-the-top movies in the Giallo genre and within the first 10 minutes of the film, you can easily see why. I don't think I have ever been so confused while watching a movie, and I like a lot of weird movies. The whole point of this film seemed to be to try to throw as many plot twists and turns as possible at you, so that you can never guess what's going to happen and by the end of it, you don't really care anymore. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the script makes no sense when the writing credits include two different screenplays as well as two "ideas"...Right.
The basic plot of the movie is this: The film stars a family that is comprised of a clearly troubled mother and her incestuous son and daughter who like to get it on out in the open. At the beginning of the film you see what appears to be a younger version of the daughter cutting off her father's head after he rapes her. The mother then tries to cover up the act and a thief on the run happens to stumble onto their property and see the mother burying the body. Cut to 10 years later and you get this: the family receives an unexpected male guest; the guest makes sexual advances towards the daughter (and usually the brother gets jealous and does the same); either the daughter accepts and then murders the guest or the brother murders them; the daughter starts going crazy and calling all the murdered guests "Daddy"; the mother and son destroy the evidence; the mother looks freaked out. That scenario occurs at least 3 times during the film, or at least that's where I stopped counting. As these murders occur, we start to learn more and more about what really happened that night and that's where it all starts to make absolutely no sense. Was it really the father that raped the daughter? Is the father really dead? Is the there another daughter who is insane? Does anyone actually know what's going on?
As if all that weren't enough, when the mother and son go to kill the theif, they use some of the mother's convenient, secret stash of cyanide. She knows they will work because she has seen them work before...in a Nazi death camp of course! This leads to a hilarious flashback and probably the sleaziest scene of the movie. It shows (in black and white of course) a bunch of naked women being ushered into the showers. A young version of the mother, with the biggest and bounciest boobs of them all, is spared by a Nazi officer, probably so that he can use her for sex, and is forced to watch her family die. Of course, there are big windows that you can see in through to the showers and she persists to run towards them in hysterics. The rest of the flashback is basically her jumping up and down and crying in front of the glass, giant boobs bouncing away, as her family inside scratch at the glass and eventually fall down and die. It basically makes one big joke out of Nazi death camps and shows the most nudity in the whole film. Ridiculous! Oh yeah, and these flashbacks are intercut with shots of the fat thief, furiously splashing about in the bathtub. And you mustn't forget the pet turkey vultures, sexy 8-track poetry that causes the siblings to very nearly get it on in front of everyone in the dining room, the murder of a dog, the daughter's very odd attachment to her blonde wig, and then fact that they live in what appears to be a castle on an archaeological site and keep all of the old bones on display in their house. Thoroughly confused now? Me too.
Though yes, you could say that the erratic and fractured nature of the film reflects the damaged and utterly confused mind of it's main characters...I'd still say it's just too damn convoluted and nonsensical to be that deep. Nonetheless, In the Folds of the Flesh is worth a watch so you can see truly excessive, lurid Giallo filmmaking in it's possibly most absurd example. As confusing as it is, the pacing is actually quite rapid and it's full of all sorts of fun visuals and ultra cheesy gore. If you're a fan of the genre and like Argento, Fulci and Bava, then you should check this one out for the fun of it.
Besides watching the above, we've indulged in some of our recent purchases, Return of the Living Dead 2, Scanners, and Blood for Dracula (a birthday gift from James). We also watched Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole as well which I really enjoyed. The animation was beautiful and the owls were so cute! And this little baby owl makes me want to explode when I look at it!
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