1970s Mexican Horror Part Four - (René Cardona Jr. Edition)

BLOOD FEAST

(1972)

Overall: WOOF

 

Not to be confused with Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1963 crapfest of the same name, René Cardona Jr.'s Blood Feast, (La noche de los mil gatos, Night of a Thousand Cats), is rightfully regarded as a terrible piece of celluloid in its own right.  His first straight foray into horror, director René Cardona Jr. makes a thoroughly pathetic attempt at the genre, turning in something that is catastrophically boring even in its butchered, American cut which runs a measly sixty-three minutes long.  About half of such a running time is spent with Hugo Stiglitz flying around a in a helicopter, essentially pulling the Night at the Roxbury "Eh...me...eh?" gag as he hovers above scantily-clad women by their outdoor swimming pools, landing by the ones who pick up on his asinine attempt at wooing them over.  He then brings them to his castle, shows them a bunch of disturbing Gothic decor, and murders them in order to grind them up and feed the chunks to his plethora of felines.  This structure gets rinsed and repeated until a woman's car stalls during her getaway at the end, making the whole thing as insultingly lazy as it is stupid.

 

TINTORERA

(1977)

Overall: WOOF

 

While Jaws: The Revenge is commonly recognized as the worst movie to spawn in the wake of Steven Spielberg's aquatic terror blockbuster, (unless we are to count the purposely terrible Sharknado boom in later decades), René Cardona Jr.'s wretchedly dull Tintorera, (Tintorera: Killer Shark), is easily the most misleading.  Despite the fact that the movie does in fact include shark hunting, the first proper attack happens a whopping hundred minutes in, rendering over two-thirds of it as nothing more than the saga of vacationing gigolos.  Both Hugo Stiglitz and Andrés García get more ass than a toilet seat as women come in and out of the proceedings, with a top-billed Susan George receiving the most screen time during the second act.  Those hip to its casually sleazy agenda, (i.e those who are not waiting in endless frustration for the tiger shark-munching mayhem to finally commence), may appreciate the violence towards animals, moronic character behavior, copious amounts of nudity, and tropical ocean bloodshed in the last twenty-odd minutes of the mercifully shorter American cut.  For the rest of us though who have far better things to do with our time, this must honestly be viewed as an insulting piece of trash that misses its intended mark by untold miles.

 

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

(1978)

Overall: MEH

During the late 1970s, René Cardona Jr. seemed hellbent on torturing his audience with two hour long, boring-ass movies set on a boat and The Bermuda Triangle, (El Triángulo diabólico de las Bermudas, Il triangolo delle Bermude, The Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, Devil's Triangle of Bermuda), is another textbook example.  Featuring frequent on-screen collaborators Hugo Stiglitz and Andrés García, John Huston of all people joins the festivities as well, presumably to pay off gambling or tax debt.  Based on the sensationalized "non fiction" book of the same name by Charles Berlitz , it is indeed set in the infamous ocean mass that was long fabled to hold supernatural powers and the premise itself of trapping a boat full of people there is not in and of itself a poor one.  The hopeless vessel suffers navigation and machinery malfunctions, several of its passengers drown or are mortally injured during a hurricane, and their S.O.S. messages seem to float around cryptically with others that are decades old.  Cardona Jr. as well as fellow screenwriters Stephen Lord and Carlos Valdemar even throw in a stupid creepy kid and her stupid creepy doll who nonchalantly spouts cryptic warnings the whole way through.  A sluggish watch that is at least thirty minutes too long, (with an unacceptably low amount of exciting set pieces at its disposal), it fails to maintain the right ominous vibe.

 

CYCLONE

(1978)

Overall: WOOF

Imagine Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat except without a single solitary line of interesting dialog, interchangeably miserable characters, a dog getting murdered and eaten, cannibalism, wah-wah guitar music, sharks, and about two hours long.  This will give one a proper grasp of what René Cardona Jr.'s survival horror tragedy Cyclone, (El Ciclón, Terror Storm), entails.  Once again containing a misleading title, the tropical storm only shows up in the very first scene, so anyone that was expecting a Mexican Twister full of wailing-wind set pieces will be even more disappointed than the already disappointing film is.  Instead, we have lots of people trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean and then the movie ends.  This is not an exaggeration as things grow both dire and boring throughout the running time, with the only deviation being another new obstacle for our rag-tag group of survivors to endure.  The only character whose name you are likely to remember is Carroll Baker's aforementioned survivor food dog Christmas since everyone else merely lays around exhausted and famished, only coming alive to bicker with each other.  Cardona Jr certainly sticks to his dour guns as far as the tone is concerned, but with the stakes quickly established and then stubbornly stuck to with no one to care about, it is a merciless chore to sit through.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Five - (Alain Robbe-Grillet Edition)

EDEN AND AFTER

(1970)

Overall: MEH

Even by Alain Robbe-Grillet's demanding standards, Eden and After, (L'Eden et après, Eden a potom...), is more impenetrable than usual.  Though it does posses a "story" and even something resembling a "plot", (both deservedly in quotation marks), Robbe-Grillet made it up on the fly during shooting, all as an experiment inspired both by the filmmaker's frustration with his previous, black and white movies failing to make a buck and by composer Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone music.  Themes were chosen at random and none of the performers were savvy to what if anything they were to properly convey, leaving Robbe-Grillet and his cinematographer Igor Luther to construct the finish product from moment to moment.  A truly experimental work then in a literal sense, the results are hit or miss as far as avant-garde cinema is concerned.  Many of the shots are evocative and there are engaging moments where it all seems to be heading to some destination, no matter how obtuse.  A montage of fragmented ideas first and foremost, it is all strictly up to interpretation and to be taken at face value, but it may fairly leave a predominant amount of viewers left scratching their heads in hefty bemusement.

 

N. A PRIS LES DÉS...

(1971)

Overall: MEH

 

The experimenting for experiment's sake continues with N. a pris les dés..., (N. Has Taken the Dice...); a companion piece to the previous year's Eden and After in that it is made up of footage from the exact same shoot.  More aggressively than before, Alain Robbe-Grillet insists on the viewer doing all of the work here, even flat-out proclaiming in the closing moments that none of the images presented have any meaning and that it is up to the viewer to "choose the game" based on coming to any conclusion as to what they have just watched.  One could argue that this is the modus operandi of all of Grillet's cinematic works, but this particular example has an extra layer of redundancy to it, considering that we have already experienced these openly admitted, meaningless images.  Whereas Eden and After had some semblance of a narrative through-line that the audience could put together after considerable straw-grasping, its accomplice comes off more as a series of outtakes, offering up mere variations of the same already arbitrary set pieces.  One could edit the fragments together in absolutely any order, flip through a dictionary and pick out words at random, and then have the characters narrate them over the results and it would be an identical viewing experience.  This may be the point, to make something that forces more interactive participation, but it is unavoidably indulgent and pretentious in its unorthodox process.

 

SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE

(1974)

Overall: MEH

Incoherent throughout every last frame, Alain Robbe-Grillet's Successive Slidings of Pleasure, (Glissements progressifs du plaisir), is a stereotypical art film with macabre sensibilities to go along with its exploration of the perverse.  A young, beautiful, yet above all else hopelessly disturbed woman is accused of murdering her female partner/lover/roommate/employee and we are witness to her repetitive bouts of fantasy where everyone that she meets becomes a pawn in her sadistically fascinated psyche.  There are no moments herein that can be trusted to actually be taking place in the "real world", which is the entire point for Robbe-Grillet who takes the opportunity to explore the deep, flowing recesses of Anicée Alvina's mind.  It casts a hypnotic spell on the audience, with a subdued, sinister sound design accompanying an assortment of surreal images involving a bed sinking into a beach, a nude mannequin, body art, blasphemy, masturbation, a shovel, a pair of blue shoes, eggs, a broken glass bottle, and some other stuff.  The pacing is comatose and overbearing at an hour and forty-five minutes, but it does make for a compelling watch at irregular intervals at least.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Four

THE VAMPIRE HAPPENING

(1971)

Dir - Freddie Francis

Overall: MEH

A failed horror/comedy set up by producer Pier A. Caminnecci and British cinematographer/director Freddie Francis as a staring vehicle for the former's wife Pia Degermark, The Vampire Happening, (Gebissen wird nur nachts, They Only Bite at Night), is at least too innocently stupid to be unwatchably terrible.  Francis disowned the project since he found it to be a problematic production as Caminnecci allegedly insisted upon cameos from friends and whatnot.  The resulting movie goes for a juvenile combination of blood-sucking and horndog hijinks, none of which are remotely funny yet are clearly trying to be.  It is no accident that it cast The Fearless Vampire Killers' Ferdy Mayne in a supporting role as Count Dracula himself, turning in a fittingly hammy performance with one of the most exaggerated Béla Lugosi impressions dubbed over it.  Most of the movie hinges upon Degermark playing two different characters, one undead, one not, and both perpetually horny as Yvor Murillo whimpers around trying to murder the vampiric one.  Francis seems to have given up before the project even got going since there is no cinematic showiness to the proceedings, making for something both visually dull and groan-worthy in its doofy attempts at humor.

 

THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM

(1973)

Dir - Wojciech Jerzy Has

Overall: MEH

 

Poetically labyrinth-like, Wojciech Jerzy Has' non-literal adaptation of Bruno Schulz's novel Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą takes a similar approach that David Cronenberg would utilize with William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch two decades later.  Namely, this entails utilizing various other aspects from the author's writings into a story that is fundamentally impenetrable and made up of hallucinatory set pieces.  The Hourglass Sanatorium, (Sanatorium pod klepsydrą, The Sandglass), explores non-linear time, childhood memories, and a post-Holocaust Galicia landscape where Jan Nowicki visits his dying/already dead father in a dilapidated sanatorium only to embark on a spontaneous trek through his own interweaving psyche.  Each sequences feeds into the next in an effectively dreamlike manner where the locale changes in mid-shot and various imaginary characters float in and out.  Stylistically, it is purposely challenging and especially difficult to latch onto for those that are unfamiliar with Schulz' source materials.  While this makes it unavoidably frustrating as none of the many dialog exchanges provide any conventional, cohesive purpose, it is visually vast in its ethereal war-torn setting.  The atmosphere is particularly unsettling without utilizing any horror motifs in a narrative manner, but those who are lost within the first fifteen minutes will likely be just as lost by the final one-hundred and twenty.

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN

(1977)

Dir - Calvin Floyd

Overall: GOOD

The penultimate film from Swedish-born director Calvin Floyd, Victor Frankenstein, (Terror of Frankenstein), is a Swedish/Irish co-production that remains largely faithful to Mary Shelley's source materiel, at least compared to most other versions that had arrived by 1977.  Done on a noticeably modest budget, the most noticeable differentiating quality is its low-key tone.  Incidental music is used minimally and the narrative it told out of sequence, with a massive time jump taking place midway through, at which point the monster's exploits post-creation are told via a lengthy flashback sequence.  Both Lion Vitali and Per Oscarsson are well-utilized as the doctor and creature respectively, with Vitali having a youthful exuberance that quickly gives way to somber exhaustion and despair while Oscarsson is a more calmly sinister presence as opposed to the often-seen, purely tragic and pathetic one.  The pacing may be too deliberate for some and most of the elements in Shelley's novel are underplayed to fit it all into a ninety-minute framework.  Still, the slightly unorthodox approach makes the deliberate pacing more agreeable than it otherwise would be and the somber, less sensationalized atmosphere is a welcome addition to something that has been adapted to the screen countless times.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Three

THE NIGHT VISITOR

(1971)

Dir - László Benedek

Overall: GOOD

 

Hungarian-born director László Benedek takes a successful stab at detail-oriented, Hitchcockian suspense with The Night Visitor, (Salem Came to Supper, Lunatic, Papegojan); an English-speaking Swedish thriller with Ingmar Bergman collaborators Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann on board.  Several other notable thespians such as Per Oscarsson, Trevor Howard, Rupert Davies, and Andrew Keir are present as well and the distinguished cast along with Benedek's controlled presentation help to give such rural melodrama a classy aura.  The somber, menacing score by none other than Henry Mancini is both unorthodox and used sparingly as most of the more intense sequences play out in naturalistic, quasi-silence.  It is a white-knuckled affair in this regard as the audience is largely left guessing every step of the way as to what Sydow's wrongfully accused, almost anti-hero mental patient is up to as he goes about his elaborate scheme to get back at the people who put him in his present predicament.  This is particularly the case during the excellent and drawn-out opening set piece which throws the viewer right in without any spoon-feeding, as well as the equally elaborate ending that humorously seals Sydow's fate.

 

THE SINFUL DWARF

(1973)

Dir - Vidal Raski

Overall: WOOF

A rare sexploitation film from Denmark of all places, The Sinful Dwarf, (Dværgen, The Abducted Bride, The Dwarf), is bottom-barrel sleaze of the most boring and uninspired variety.  While Torben Bille seems to be enjoying himself as the dim-witted, diabolical title character who fetches women for his mother to prostitute and hook on heroin in a sex dungeon/attic, the presentation by director Vidal Raski is ugly, sluggish, and cinimatically flat.  Two different versions of the film exists depending on how much snore-inducing pornography one wishes to sit through, but both of them have the same unengaging structure where the entire first and second acts fail to progress the already paper-thin plot in any way shape or form.  A woman complains about not wanting to live in a dingy inn, her husband complains about not being able to find a job, and then we get a fresh rape scene before the exact same exchange happens the following day.  There are some quirky elements thrown in like Bille's eccentric mother pathetically trying to relive her nightclub heyday and a drug dealer named Santa Clause, but it is mostly just deplorable rape scenes taking place in grimy dwellings that will make you crave a shower after watching.  Whatever the point was to such an odious, no-budget trash-heap is lost on any audience member that is unfortunate enough to come across it.

SNAPSHOT

(1979)

Dir - Simon Wincer

Overall: MEH

A minor entry in Ozploitation that only merits its thriller tag within the last twenty minutes, Snapshot, (The Day After Halloween, One More Minute), serves as the theatrical debut from television director Simon Wincer.  While it is well acted and Wincer keeps things moving enough in the pacing department, the script, (which was originally by Chris Fitchett and then reworked by Wincer and screenwriter Everett De Roche), presents a dour scenario where a well-meaning young woman seems unable to catch a break from anyone in her life.  Her boss is an asshole, her best friend goes to some dubious lengths to get in her pants, her ex-boyfriend is a pathetic, stalking nutjob, her mother is a raving cunt, a photographer and his haphazard series of roommates are indifferent to her privacy, and a wealthy modeling agency owner is all about the sexual harassment.  With everyone on screen being various levels of unpleasant, it makes for a rough viewing experience where the only tension to be found is in hoping that Sigrid Thornton's protagonist will both merely make it out OK and get as far away from these people as possible.  The film is gritty without being boundary pushing, but the stakes are too low for too long, so there is little engagement to be had overall.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Two

THE LADY KILLS

(1971)

Dir - Jean-Louis van Belle

Overall: WOOF

For his follow-up to the vampire comedy Le sadique aux dents rouges, French writer/director Jean-Louis van Belle made the plodding, wretchedly monotonous The Lady Kills, (Perverse et docile); an early rape and revenge film with no style or purpose.  Carole Lebel sleepwalks through a movie that seems to be on tranquilizers in the first place, playing a woman who witnessed her sister's rape at a young age and then sets out in adulthood to murder all of the scumbag parties involved.  Episodic in nature, she travels across Europe, locates all of her victims easily, and then toys with them to fill out the running time until the perfect opportunity presents itself to do them in.  At no point are we ever given any insight into Lebel's character and nothing changes structurally the whole way through, which would not be a problem if it was not so dingily made.  The movie merely presents one unnecessarily elongated sequence after the other, with stock music replaying over and over again, only stopping for roughly five seconds or less at a time.  Excessive as far as nudity is concerned, its minimal-effort-attempts at being exploitative are pathetic at best and anyone unfortunate to come across it can merely watch the first fifteen minutes in fast forward to get the whole gist.

 

DRACULA AND SON

(1976)

Dir - Édouard Molinaro

Overall: MEH

 

Notable for containing Christopher Lee's tenth and final screen performance as the titular Count, Dracula and Son, (Dracula père et fils), exists in more than one version with different jokes thrown in depending.  Lee's voice is thankfully intact in both French and English cuts, though Bernard Ménez' dub was done by someone doing an effeminate Don Adams via Kermit the Frog impression that is persistently annoying, if still fitting to his weaselly character.  Such is the father/son dynamic between he and Lee, the latter as a noble, aristocratic, and stone-faced Count and the former as a pathetic dweeb who cannot even murder his own victims for nourishment.  The script by director Édouard Molinaro, Jean-Marie Poiré, and Alain Godard has only a small handful of clever bits at its disposal and it also uses some lazy plot devices like Ménez turning human for no decipherable reason as well as he and Lee caught in a love triangle between a woman who is the spitting image of the former's mother.  So, eeewww.  Some of the Hammer atmosphere is appreciated even if it fails to be sent-up as humorously as one would prefer and though it is refreshing to see Lee taking a lighthearted stab at his most famous on-screen persona, the movie is more awkwardly dull than funny.

 

BORN FOR HELL

(1976)

Dir - Denis Héroux

Overall: MEH

Inspired by the mass murder of eight nurses in Chicago by Richard Speck, Born for Hell, (Die Hinrichtung, The Execution, Naked Massacre), is a dour co-production between West Germany, France, Italy, and Canada that was shot on location in both Dublin and Belfast, Ireland.  While Mathieu Carrière's disturbed Vietnam vet is almost entirely historically inaccurate from Speck, some of the details of the killing spree are intact such as him holding up his victims merely with a knife and as the film's title would suggest, the "Born for Hell" tattoo on his arm directly alludes to the "Born to raise hell" ink that Speck sported.  Set during the Northern Ireland Conflict, the movie's bleak backdrop is fitting for such an ugly story where Carrière's character is left to roam around a grungy, bomb-torn Belfast in a downtrodden daze that leads him to a nursing school out of a combination of self-destruction and boredom.  Some of the sequences are jarring such as him forcing two naked women to perform fellatio on each other as well as the penultimate scene of him slicing his wrists open over a disgusting public toilet.  French-Canadian director Denis Héroux maintains a gritty, uncomfortable tone, but the soundtrack choices are often odd as if somebody is playing random classical music records at full blast during arbitrary moments.

1970s Spanish Horror Part Fourteen

WHAT THE PEEPER SAW

(1972)
Dir - James Kelley/Andrea Bianchi
Overall: WOOF

An international co-production that was shot in Almería, Andalucía, Spain, What the Peeper Saw, (Night Hair Child, La tua presenza nuda!), runs with the standard "creepy annoying kid" premise, yet it does so in a plodding, uninteresting manner.  Primarily directed by James Kelley as his second and last feature, Italian filmmaker Andrea Bianchi was brought in to shoot some additional naked stuff with lead actor Britt Ekland, and the whole thing is further exploitative in that she rocks her birthday suit in front of fourteen year old Mark Lester who is the peeper of the title.  More ickiness between the two characters is alluded to than shown, but it is a catastrophically talky affair that hardly moves in any direction throughout its running time.  The final twelve minutes seem to signify a psychological element, but this is abandoned as soon as it is introduced, leading to a hilariously abrupt ending set to the annoying, inappropriate theme music that has already been played several dozen times by then.  Too boring to be infamously tasteless, it is better off just being forgotten about.

 

THE STUDENT CONNECTION

(1974)

Dir - Rafael Romero Marchent

Overall: MEH

 

For some, the novelty may suffice of seeing an aged Ray Milland spend over an hour trying to find out which young child witnessed him murder a hit man so that he can likewise silence said child.  Such is the gist of The Student Connection, (Un par de zapatos del '32); the first kind-of-giallo from prolific Spanish Western director Rafael Romero Marchent.  A curious opening finds a sunglasses-wearing, mustached, neck-braced man leaving an airport only to get in his car, park, remove his disguise that reveals him to be a bald guy, light a cigarette, and then patiently wait for an airplane to blow up.  Hardly suspense-laden, but it does have a ghastly enough pay off which sets the things in motion.  An infidelity thriller in part, most of the unsettling elements come from Milland's quest to discover which kid saw his anger-fueled outburst, the reveal of which is immediately predictable once we find out whose particular love interest is also a mother.  Disturbing premise aside, the movie itself has a monotonous structure and the only intense set piece is during the conclusion where Milland chases his little culprit onto a race track in full operation.  Otherwise, it is adequately shot, has about three pieces of music played relentlessly, and the performances get the job done.

 

SCHOOL OF DEATH

(1975)

Dir - Pedro L. Ramírez

Overall: MEH

The last film to be directed by Pedro L. Ramírez, School of Death, (El colegio de la muerte), is deliberately paced and well shot by cinematographer Antonio L. Ballesteros, but the story is unnecessarily scatter-brained and inconclusive.  Set in Victorian era London, it opens with a grisly mad scientist moment where a terrified young woman is strapped to a surgery table so that a horribly disfigured/presumed surgeon can slice at her temple.  Things switch to the boarding house of the title where of course odious headmistresses inflict harsh discipline on the orphans held up there, but then the movie changes gears yet again and becomes a Gothic mystery that alludes to prostitution and the living dead.  Depending on the viewer, it is either a plus or minus that the details are left persistently vague as to what exactly is going on and the motivation of such dubious characters, but the cliche blending is at least refreshing up until a point.  Ramírez' refuses to allow for any camera flashiness, but the movie is bathed in spooky, shadowy atmosphere and the set decoration and scenery are the typical brand of Hammer via-Euro-horror adherence.  It is unfortunate that the plot gets hopelessly muddled along the way, plus Ramírez could afford to tighten up the meandering flow, but the film at least looks and occasionally feels better than it is.

1970s Spanish Horror Part Thirteen

THE FISH WITH THE EYES OF GOLD

(1974)

Dir - Pedro L. Ramírez

Overall: WOOF

 

Almost certainly the most lethargic giallo ever made, Pedro L. Ramírez' penultimate film The Fish with the Eyes of Gold, (El pez de los ojos de oro), is unique in its completely sterile presentation.  Plot wise, Juan Gallardo Muñoz's script follows the formula to a tee; a foreigner has sex with a stranger and wakes up to her murdered body in his very same bed, whereas he spends the rest of the movie trying to clear himself of suspicion as the police logically suspect him.  We uncover the killer within the last few minutes, his motivation is due to a childhood trauma, there is an animal in the movie's title, etc.  So many of the pieces are all in their proper place so it is no small wonder that Ramírez took such an unorthodox route to differentiate it.  As strictly opposed to virtually every giallo on earth, there is almost no musical score throughout the entire movie so instead, everything, (and not just the suspense-building moments right before someone is picked-off), unfolds to odd silence.  All of the performances are equally Quaaluded out, particularly Wal Davis in the lead whose surfer dude looks apparently render him incapable of emoting.  It is just a shame that the listless tone renders the entire thing unwatchably boring and awkward instead of refreshingly singular.

LA MUERTE RONDA A MÓNICA
(1976)
Dir - Ramón Fernández
Overall: MEH

Giallo-adjacent, La muerte ronda a Mónica, (Death Haunts Monica, Il buio intorno a Monica), is a rare work in the genre from Spanish filmmaker Ramón Fernández and one that features both Jean Sorel and German model-turned leading lady Nadiuska.  The aforementioned actors play a doomed, wealthy couple who get in the middle of an endless stream of dubious people trying to either extort money from them or take over their company.  In the mean time, such things as extramarital affairs, casual nudity, a little lesbianism, killers hiding in shadows and delivering threatening phone calls, and a whole lot of chatty banter make up the predominant amount of screen time.  It is a typical bore in this respect, handled with little to no pizazz from Fernández from behind the lens.  That said, the third act finally busts out some sinister music and establishes a couple of intense set pieces, plus the expository scheme reveal at the end is worth a double-take to try and wrap one's head around due to its convoluted ridiculousness.  For the most part, everybody on screen besides Nadiuska's character is shady-at-best/vile-at-worst, so it is mostly a flatly paced bit of dour nonsense.

THE COMING OF SIN

(1978)

Dir - José Ramón Larraz

Overall: MEH

Filmmaker José Ramón Larraz delivers another slow-moving, erotic lesbian genre offering in his native Spain with The Coming of Sin, (La visita del vicio); a borderline disastrous bit of surreal sexploitation.  As usual, the pacing is challenging at best, as exciting set pieces are almost entirely absent and in their place is a strange tale of two women, (Patricia Granada and Lidia Zuazo, respectively), who go about their days doing naked stuff together while also exhibiting inconsistent behavior towards each other.  The arrival of Rafael Machado naked on a horse, (don't ask), further complicates things to say the least, as well as adding to the arbitrary mannerisms and mood swings of everyone on screen.  Though it maintains an air of evocative strangeness, the narrative is virtually impenetrable and pretentious in its aloofness, with an ending that seems laughably rushed.  The intimate cinematography by Fernando Arribas is impressive though, plus Larraz throws in a number of dream sequences that are just as otherworldly in tone as all of the woman-on-woman sex scenes and sleazy rape at the hands of Machado.  It may be trying to say something about feminist isolation and post-Franco liberation, but it does so in an aggravatingly indulgent and sluggish manner.