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The Lickerish Quartet

Directed by Radley Metzger

Screenplay by Michael DeForrest

Italy| USA | West Germany, 1970

America’s number one softcore purveyor, Radley Metzger, and one of the pioneers of sex cinema, is best known as the director of such erotic milestones as Little Mother, Score and the French lesbian drama Therese and Isabelle. With all of his features, he was acclaimed for his stylish visuals and some say he was one of the best directors of the “porno chic” era of adult cinema. Just before making the transition into hardcore adult films, he directed what many believe to be his greatest and most mainstream movie, The Lickerish Quartet.

In a variation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, the film opens on an aristocratic family of three who watch a stag film together. There’s the father (Frank Wolff); his wife (Erika Remberg), and her grown son (Paolo Turco), who all...

The Lickerish Quartet

Review by Pete of Mondo Squallido

Stars: Silvana Venturelli, Frank Wolff, Erika Remberg, Paolo Turco | Written by Michael DeForrest | Directed by Radley Metzger

The second film chronologically from Arrow’s three Metzger releases is The Lickerish Quartet. A film that upon it’s release was critically praised by the likes of Andy Warhol but panned by critics such as Roger Ebert. A film that blurs reality and illusion and a film that is for some both visually complex and intellectually stimulating. The Lickerish Quartet is easily one of Metzger’s most ambitious films from his filmography.

The film opens up with a rich couple played by Frank Wolff and Erika Remberg watching pornography with Remberg’s son played by Paolo Turco. After becoming bored of the film, they decide to go to a travelling carnival to watch a live stunt show. One of the riders, played by...

Radley Metzger is one of the great makers of erotic cinema in the history of cinema. That said, his competition is virtually non-existent. Generally when filmmakers use nudity and sexuality it’s simply for exploitation purposes (be it pornography or Swordfish) or as a grand statement - be it Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris) or Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses). But with Metzger and Russ Meyer, there were a couple of directors who trafficked in nudity and still manages to do it without making films where you simply wait for the sex scenes. The Lickerish Quartet is now on Blu-ray, and our review is after the jump. The story follows a family, the husband (Frank Wolff), wife (Erika Remberg) and son (Paolo Turco) watch a dirty movie, and are intrigued by its star. When they go to the carnival, they see a motocross rider who looks...

“Crudity is in the eye of the beholder.” So says Erika Remberg in the opening scene of Radley Metzger’s 1970 softcore feature The Lickerish Quartet, one of a string of Metzger films that attempted to bring artistry to erotica at a time when cinema was open to that. Remberg is referring to a pornographic film that she watches with her husband Frank Wolff in front of their milquetoast grown son Paolo Turco, but she could also be describing the guiding principles of Metzger, a director who dealt with sex frankly and creatively in his long career, which extended to ...