The Frightened Woman

Frightened Woman.

Original Title: Femina Ridens

Aka: The Laughing Woman

Directed by: Piero Schivazappa

Thriller/Drama, 86.03min

Italy, 1969

Distributed by: Shameless Films Entertainment.

Story:

A young woman spends the weekend with a Doctor in an attempt to unveil his evil ways, although get’s more than she bargained for when the erotic game takes a serious turn. Slowly but surely roles are changed and a fiendish plan is set in motion.

Me:

Femina Ridens could easily be viewed as being degrading towards women, as it does deal with a topic that will at first estrange women and could be perceived as objectifying them. This would be an easy statement to make about this movie and many like it in the ”exploitation” genre. But if you where to claim that this movie is an insult towards women, then it’s a fair guess that you have missed the point of the movie (or fell asleep before the final reel) as I would claim that the major plot twist makes this movie a highly feminist movie. After all who is using whom for their own needs here? Who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist?

Maria [Dagmar Lassander] is an eager journalist who get’s an opportunity to spend the weekend with Dr. Sayer [Philippe Leroy, who you possibly saw in Dario Argento’s pale finale to the Mother’s Trilogy, The Mother of Tears, Umberto Lenzi’s splendid Gang War in Milan or Lilliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, yeah the one that jumpstarted the Nazisploitation genre], whom she plans to spend a few nights and days with so that she can get the scoop on him. She suspects that he is a murderer who kills his victims as he climaxes during sex, and she's going to bring him in. Or at least that is her initial plan...

Getting into action, Maria goes home with Sawyer but soon finds that he’s once again setting his sinister plans and sexual fantasies into action as she's lured into a fiendish world of sadomasochistic eroticism. At first she resists, but with time she starts to come around, only to learn that Sayer instead rejects her once she has submitted to him. Maria becomes desperate, and continues to play along with Sayers sadomasochistic games, and in one weak moment he confides in her and shows her photographs of his previous victims…

Now terrified of becoming Sayer's next victim, Maria tries to commit suicide by downing a fistful of pills instead. This is where things start to get really interesting. When Sayers realises that Maria dying would deprave him of his latest sex slave, he saves her. But this rescue isn’t salvation but instead becomes his damnation. He starts to feel emotional towards Maria, after all he shared his secret of the murders with her, and she listened to him tell the tale of his childhood memories, she knows him on a deeper level. (Which could be of use for her invest gory newspaper article!)

Dr Sayer, also grows as a character, in his fear of loosing his sexual play thing, he tends to her and nurses her back to health, and the two find themselves growing closer and closer. But subtly Maria is taking the dominating role instead of Sayer. It is now she who resists his approaches, as he moves in for intimacy, she backs off, taunting him in the same way he taunted her earlier.

Finally the climax to their erotic sadomasochistic game, in a sudden twist that you possibly may have seen coming, but at the same time a highly satisfactory climax, and the same one I claim makes this movie a feminist movie. Ages ago academics like Cynthia Freedland and Laura Mulvey argued that classic filmmaking is dominated by the “Male Gaze”, i.e. Women are only objects on screen for a male audience to google at, hence the starting accusation of this piece that it could easily be seen as a classical movie where females are only there to bring a voyeuristic and erotic element to the movie. But as I also pointed out the roles change and with the final scenes the tables have been turned on “us” the male audience, and if we follow Carol J. Clover’s writings on the female role in “horror cinema” she points out that we actually accept the fact that we identify with the “final girl/women in peril”, hence rendering her an active, valuable character and in no means passive and unimportant. That is exactly what happens here, as the final scene is played out. The rush of insight makes us realise that Maria is not a victim in yet another cheesy chauvinistic exploitation flick, but a strong, determined predator with a very obvious agenda that she is following in a splendid genre piece that plays with traditional gender roles and prejudice inherited from previous entries in the genre.

Trashy, 60’s pop arty, bold and an excellent movie to say the least. The cinematography by Carlo and Sante Achilli is fabulous, often reminiscent of Gialli photography, and relying heavily on symmetrical compositions to create stern images that go hand in hand with the strict and spartan modernism of Dr. Sayer's house of sin.

Producer Guiseppe Zaccariello only produced a handful of movies, among them Mario Bava’s milestone Giallo A Bay of Blood [1971], Rino Di Silvestro’s Nazisploitation Deported Women of the SS Special Section [1976], and Joe D’Amato’s Jungle war/Spaghetti Western hybrid Tough to Kill [1978]. Zaccariello not only produced, but also wrote scripts, and got a screenwriter credit on all three movies which all, by coincidence, just like Schivazappa’s Femina Ridens feature great scores by maestro Stelvio Cipriani.

If you are into that Freudian analysis thing, then you’ll have field day with this movie. It’s riddled with male/female emancipation as it uses archetypical gender roles and the prejudice that lies within those roles, subtle symbolism, especially the fabulous scene where Dr. Sayer walks into the crotch of a giant statue of a woman lying on her back only to have razor sharp sliding doors slam shut behind him in a monstrous Vagina Dentate. Once the doors open, only Sayers skeleton remains… Make what you want of it, but it’s a marvellous scene.

The Sculpture - Installation ”Hon-en Katedral” (literally she-a cathedral) by the artist collective Niki de Saint Phalle / Jean Tinguely / Per Olof Ultvedt was re-produced for the movie, as the original once stood at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1966. After entering the giant sculpture through the vagina visitors could enjoy a cinema, a rollercoaster ride, gaze upon a goldfish pond or buy soda from a vending machine. Now that should give you an impression of size!

As you may recall from my bit on Luciano Ercoli’s The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion, Dagmar Lassander never really made an imprint on me in any of her movies, (even though she was in two Fulci movies and that first tickling Ercoli Giallo) but this is possibly one of the exceptions, as she really makes this movie work and her acting is top notch as she slowly shifts from victim to perpetrator. She really sells the part perfectly, and instead of the regular “Oh I’m in Shock!” face, she actually manages to act with her facial expressions here too. She is fully believable as she curiously sets foot into Dr. Sayers world, terrified as he starts to enslave and break her down, flirtatious and sexy as she gives in to his plan, only to set her own in motion and stand victorious and content after her triumph. Once again this transition and performance is what sells the shift into a feminist theory discussion held above.

This edition claims to be a restored version, and for a change it’s not a marketing trick (which the UNCUT – UNRATED stamps usually signal to me when I’m choosing editions to buy), as the team at Shameless with the use of a varied bin of source materials, and constant dialogue with director Piero Schivazappa. This all led up to their screening for him, where he held with script in hand, later responded; “It is as faithful as it can be to the original script”, “This IS the version of my film to watch.” Once again Shameless bring a fascinating movie back to the intended vision of the filmmakers and make it available for fans of the genre after a painstaking labour of love is presented.

Image:

1.85 : 1, Remastered for 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

English Dialouge, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo

Extras:

The customary assortment of Trailers for other titles available from Shameless: Tonino Valerii’s My Dear Killer, Corrado Farina’s Baba Yaga (which Shamless also restored to HIS vision of the movie, not the butchered version available previously), Lucio Fulci’s Black Cat, Guiliano Carnimeno’s RatMan, and both of Massimo Dallamano’s Venus in Furs, and What Have They Done to Your Daughters. There’s also the Shameless Redux trailer for The Frightened Woman, but below I give you the original grindhouse trailer for your entertainment.

Storm Warning

Storm Warning

Directed by: Jamie Blanks
Australia, 2007
Horror, 82min
Distributed by: Noble Film


Story:
A rich couple, Ro and Pia, hire a small boat for the day and plan to spent it fishing and relaxing on the seas. But a sudden storm forces them to seek shelter and they end up on an island with only one house to hide in. While investigating the house Rob stumbles upon a secret weed farm and understands that who ever lives there will not take lightly to their intrusion. At the same time Pia notices that there’s a pickup pulling up just outside the house, and the home owners are less than pleased to find them there.


Me:
At first you will feel that this is just another one of those set em’ up, knock ’em down, movies going along for yet another torture porn ride. But then you'll start to get drawn in, and you don’t really know any longer what to think, and then at the end of the movie you will feel satisfied.

Jamie Blanks Storm Warning is indeed a very interesting movie, which after an initial viewing actually had me feeling quite satisfied, something I never expected as the narrative started to unfold. Being a wild blend of outback/hillbilly slashers like Texas Chain Saw, Hills Have Eyes, and Razorback meets modern torture porn in the style of the Saw, Hostel and Wolf Creek, Storm Warning toys around with gender roles and comes up with a few interesting surprises. And straight off the bat it has to be made known that this movie, even though it is made at the same time as those other T.P. movies (I hate that terminology and refuse to use it any more in this review.) it was in fact scripted by master of Australian genre cinema, Everett De Roche with movies like Link, Razorback, Harlequin and Patrick on his resume some thirty years ago when the Australian Exploitation genre was at it’s height. Also at one point in time, the movie was supposedly going to be helmed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Worth pointing out before we get started is that director Jamie Blanks is one of those multi talented John Carpenter-ish creators who directs, edits and scores his own movies. The score for Storm Warning does it’s job and works with the movie, some parts are perfect, others less. But it’s not the score that is the main ingredient for making this a successful movie, it’s the cunning twists that are within that original script. It’s also a pleasure to see a director who has previously made a few lesser impactful movies like the decent Urban Legend and the tame Valentine, finally hit the nail right on the head.


Anyhow, the movie chugs along at normal pace to start with, and you know from the setup that these two wealthy characters Rob [Robert Taylor] and Pia [Nadia Farès] are going to wind up in some strange place, and meet even stranger people, and have some really strange terrifying shit happen to them. It’s the premise for that genre. And they do, some fifteen minutes in, as they seek shelter from the sudden storm that darkens the sky, forcing them into land, or rather a small island. During this set up, an ordinary day out in a small boat fishing and taking up the sun, Blank’s establishes two important character traits that are going to be shattered during the course of the movie.

Aussie bloke Rob is a no crap guy, a barrister who after being forced to drop a case, tells his wife Pia that he’d in the blink of an eye “take the bastards outback and give them a good beating” if he only could. We now know that Rob is prone to violence. Then as the storm hits and the boat has to be dragged through a ditch to safety, it’s Rob that gets in the water. He’s not only prone to violence; he’s also a man of action. At the same time Pia, Rob’s French artist wife, makes very clear arguments that she is sickened by the system that let’s criminals walk free, and as they catch a fish, she is appalled by the way Rob clubs the fish to death with a champagne bottle. We now understand that Pia objects to unfairness and violence, even if it’s just as simple as killing a fish on a hook.


Both those statements are twisted around and shattered later in the film as they stumble upon the house and the warped family that live out on French Island. All along you think that Rob is going to rise to the occasion and bring about the downfall of the three family members that hold them captive, threaten to rape Pia, and take their lives. But he doesn’t. He’s all talk and no action when push comes to shove and as he lies passed out with a broken leg on the floor of the barn Rob is certainly not the hero character we have been led on to believe. Instead it’s Pia who takes it upon herself to find that inner strength to fight her way out of this nightmare. She’s just killed a small wallaby to prove that she loves Rob, as the bad guys where about to cut off his balls unless someone killed the little animal for dinner, so she has now put her values at stake, she can kill if she needs to. And she will. In a nutshell it’s Pia who takes out the villains and makes their escape possible, and she does it in three very, very innovative ways that had me right on the edge of my seat twice. One guy is strung up in a terrifying trap made of fishing rods and hooks, and as he hangs there Pia beats him to death with a hammer, she runs one guy into the back of a giant propeller as he tries to smash the window of the car she’s trying to escape in, and Poppa, the lead baddass in this movie is first castrated by the most vicious vagina dentate ever, as she crafts her own anti-rape device with the help of a jar and it’s cap. If you are male you are going to squirm in that sequence.


Movies like this are nothing without their villains, and the villains here are all top notch. They are pretty far down the road of insanity and their strange relationship to each other is important here. Poppy is the father of the family. Fiendishly portrayed by John Brumpton, he certainly makes for a menacing father figure. It’s quite obvious that the two sons Brett [Mathew Wilkinson] and Jimmy [David Lyons] are terrified of him, and that’s also why there is a natural pecking order between the two sons. The father takes shit out on Jimmy, Jimmy beats Brett.

Let me linger for a moment as I talk about Jimmy. David Lyon’s performance as Jimmy is stunning. He is just fantastic, and the way he made this character come to life on screen is fantastic. He little twitches, the fast replies to the other characters dialogue, his teasing of Pia, throwing in French gargles here and there is wonderful. I’m sure that if there was ever a plan for a Storm Warning 2, the Return to French Island, Lyon’s Jimmy would have to be back, resurrected from the dead to continue his trail of death and sadism. It’s also hilarious that Lyon went from this sinister murdering psycho to end up as a regular on the last season of the TV show E.R. From menacing killer, to helping doctor that’s a transition that made me laugh the last time I saw him on E.R. and it was tricky not to see him just as Jimmy in a lab coat. But what a performance. Great stuff indeed. But then again the acting in the movie holds a very high level, and all the actors are very impressive, perhaps that one could have wanted more from Nadia Farès character, but being semi nude with an all male cast may have been intimidating. Especially when three of them are telling you that they are going to rape you and then kill you, acting or not, it’s definitely a menacing scenario.


All three of the antagonists are very menacing, and do their best to come off as evil, vile sadists, and it works, they really are despicable. And the fouler you antagonists are the more violent deaths you can give them. It’s psychologically validated, unless you let them kill off all the protagonists which will leave you with a valuable anti hero instead! This is also the second important ingredient for the twist that comes when Pia starts to fight back. Usually you have your protagonists trying their damndest to make it to the end of the movie alive, but still they are one by one picked off and finally you get the lucky survivor making a final successful dash for it. But what differs De Roche’s screenplay and Blank’s movie from the rest is that all male characters in the movie are impotent! They never kill, maim or butcher anyone (Well there is that guy in the red tracksuit early on in the movie, but that’s mostly off camera, and more of an indicator to set up how potentially dangerous they can be.) Instead it’s Pia who kicks ass, tortures, maims, beats and murders the victims in this movie. The single white female pushes genre convention aside and from the moment when understands that she can’t rely on her dope of a husband becomes the Femme Fatale Killing Machine. She even leads the antagonists on before lureing them into death. Just like a praying mantis. And that was honestly surprising; I never could have seen that coming. I was certain that she’d be the survivor, but not before witnessing her hubby being killed and her at least raped, beaten and put though hell before she would make her last dash. It’s a refreshing move, even though the script is 30 years old, and could quite possibly be what makes Jamie Blanks Storm Warning one of the best movies in this genre so far.

Image:
1.78:1 Widescreen

Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, dts 5.1. English language with optional Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles.

Extras:
Interesting commentary track with director Jamie Blanks, screenwriter Everett De Roche, lead actor Robert Taylor and the set designer. A 23minute EPK with behind the scenes footage and cast/crew interviews. Trailers for Rambo, The Mist and REC also available from Noble Film.