(1968)
Overall: WOOF
Going for a sort of Z-grade arthouse goofiness as opposed to just straight women-hating sleaze, Michael Findlay's A Thousand Pleasures is still pornographic, still has naked ladies being killed, and is still not a real movie, but it also has a nonsensical surrealness that is equal parts boring and fun to laugh at. Findlay kills his nagging wife Roberta in the opening scene, (dialog done off camera of course), only for him to drive away and pick up two women, one of whom blows him immediately. We then go to the hitchhiker's house which has a naked woman in a diaper who is another woman's "baby" and "was doing things to herself that babies aren't supposed to do". Long story short, they need Findlay's sperm to procreate and he ends up being kidnapped and tutored, cue lots more ugly nakedness. Considering that Findlay has all of the sex appeal of Ron Jeremy at his worst, the cinematography is one notch below incompetent, and the whole thing has the feel as if it was shot in other people's homes illegally when they were out, it certainly puts the "rough" in "roughie". Still, Finlay's inner monologuing is hilarious and the details are quirky enough to make this a dingy bit of garbage that at least can maintain one's interest for a few seconds at a time.
(1969)
Dir - Michael Findlay/Roberta Findlay
Overall: WOOF
Kicking up the ambition and stepping away from the seedy aesthetic of their early roughies, husband/wife duo Michael and Roberta Findlay's Mnasidika is a fantasy "movie" of sorts that takes place in ancient Greece, (i.e. the woods with some togas), and has Pierre Louy's poetry being unintelligibly spoken over it. The title character comes from Louy's 1894 The Songs of Bilitis collection and Findlay plays a guy who gets transported to the period setting because reasons, quickly raping and murdering a naked woman also because reasons. He then disappears for about forty minutes in the middle so that lesbians in their birthday suits can frolic around unchecked. At its core, this is still nothing more than an excuse to have misogyny and naked body parts presented on screen so that movie theater patrons of the perverted variety had a place to jerk off, but the Findlay's adapt a pretentious student movie agenda, disguising the gross sleaze as something that arthouse critics could make fun of. In this respect, the film can be seen as a success since it is hilariously stupid and pathetic in whatever the hell it thinks that it is doing, but it is also brain-damage-inducing in its lifelessness. Labeling this as the worst thing in the Findlay's filmography would be like choosing the most worst Limp Bizkit song, but it is still as unwatchable as it gets.
(1969)
Overall: WOOF
All of the hallmarks in Z-movie proprietors Michael and Roberta Findlay's work are present with the apply-titled The Ultimate Degenerate, another bottom-barrel sleaze-fest that is as yucky as it is bizarre as it is boring. Here, Findlay portrays the title character who is a wheelchair-bound and wealthy recluse that hires women to do weird naked things with each other, himself, or with food. The women all have either a different hairstyle or ethnicity so one cannot say that the Findlays were not inclusive, but the movie stops dead of having a plot once the premise is laid out. We have two different narrators, (Uta Erickson at first and Earl Hindman after that), but nothing happens besides one nonsensical scene after the other where none of the ladies are allowed to have clothes on. The closing moments sort-of switch gears to a blurry and surreal nightmare montage, but it is still just naked people riving around until we get a POV tour of the entire house that culminates by zooming into Findlay's screaming mouth. The goofy dialog is all dubbed, (badly), the library-cued music never stops, it has a gay joke(?) ending, and it all looks as if it escaped from some pervert's basement, which is probably a compliment.
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