Through the Looking Glass

As another reviewer said, "Through the Looking Glass" perhaps should not have been filmed as a hardcore feature. However, considering the outrageous subject matter, this is a film that would have a hard time avoiding the X rating..even without penetration scenes.

As far as 'porn films' go, to date i have only seen one other such film that is as good, and that would be Radley Metzger's porn masterpiece "The Image." "Through the Looking Glass," stars the classic beauty, Catharine Burgess, former Vogue model. Sumptuosly filmed in and around a beautiful mansion, Catherine is haunted by something from her past. She insists that there is some malevolent evil living in the house. of course her husband dismisses the idea. She has a beautiful young daughter who, for some reason, she seems to resent. And hidden in a dark attic, is a strange, ornate mirror, that Catherine is drawn to. Sexually frigid with her husband, the icy Catherine saves all her sexual energy for the mirror, which she enjoys masturbating in front of.

As this disturbing tale unfolds we learn the bizarre secrets of the mirror; a mirror that had hung in her bedroom as a young girl, that bared witness to a shocking secret concerning her own father. Adult film regular Jamie Gillis turns in an incredibly sinister performance as the evil, corrupt father. In fact the character that he creates might be the most corrupt, evil character in film history. The father, like this film, is totally amoral, and both might very well make more sensitive viewers feel somewhat sick.

This movie is a definite product of the 70's, and it most likely could not have been made before, or after that decade. "Through the Looking Glass" is obsessed with the subject of incest, and it is displayed here in the most graphic detail. This Gothic horror film culminates with a trip through the mirror, that takes Catherine to Hell, here portrayed as some nightmare of sexual violence and corruption. An early scene at a "mad tea party" had me thinking the whole thing might degenerate into cheap porn territory, but the film gathers momentum, and gets darker, and more disturbing as it reaches it's halfway point. It also gets more artistic, and more beautiful as well. Some might find this a depressing experience, and it definitely is NOT for the casual viewer. But for those with a taste for the surreal, the bizarre, or who just want to see something very different, might want to hunt down this gem. I've seen a lot of stuff from this genre, and nothing comes close to this outrageous piece of art house smut!

The so called Golden Age of porn is loaded with badly written, badly acted duds that do not live up to the maker's artistic pretensions. This one film is a notable exception. A brilliant, spooky ghost story that deals with extreme emotional/sexual repression, the film should never have been shot as a hardcore. The sex scenes take up about 30% of screen time, and, for once, actually get in the way of a great story. Some of the acting is a bit spotty. The film is cast with both porn and mainstream actors, and a number of the porn stars just can't act. Also, the film's climactic Hell sequence is much too graphic(did we really need to see a woman bathing in urine and feces? I think not) But overall, "Through the Looking Glass" is a damn good movie. The Looking Glass scenes are creepy! Whatever happened to director Jonas Middleton? Shoulda been a contender!!!

The 1970s "porno chic" must've truly been a "Golden Age of Porn;" 1976 alone witnessed two such features partially inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice books, and they're both preferable to some of the smut that passed for mainstream adaptations of the children's literature during the same period. Sure, there's no pornographic sex in the books, but neither are there bubbly characters breaking into mostly dull song and dance numbers every few minutes. The other Alice porno of 1976, "Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical" contains both and, thus, is something of a perverse Disney-esque production. "Through the Looking Glass," on the other hand, is actually rather intelligent--so is even some of the hardcore sex. Although it takes its title from the second Alice book, this film isn't an explicit Carrollian adaptation, with themes of incest, a Dantean Inferno, and old-dark-house tropes that have nothing to do with Alice. Yet, all of this is engaged through the mirror, along with other hints of references to Carroll's texts, and manages to interpret the books in one of the usual more competent ways, as a parable for growing up.

In this case, initiation to adulthood is mixed up with fatherly molestation and rape, but other than that it's not an inept interpretation of the text. Plus, this patriarchal system is congruent with the picture's aestheticizing of the male gaze (as theoreticized by the likes of Laura Mulvey). It reminds me of another Alice-adjacent film from the same period, Claude Chabrol's "Alice or the Last Escapade" (1977), which also features a female protagonist who thoroughly internalizes the male gaze, goes through glass (in Chabrol's case, a broken car window) and occupies a haunted house with a locked door to the supernatural in what is, overall, an exploitative, if not misogynist, exercise in filmmaking. The door and key business here, along with the mirror, recalls the Alice books. And, to underscore, the importance of the architecture in this one, the husband is an architect, and the protagonist Catherine is haunted from growing up in the house--retreating to the attic behind the door to relive those memories beside the mirror and other objects of her upbringing.

Besides the door and key, as well as a clock motif, another possible subtle callback to the first book, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," takes place at the beginning, where Catharine's chauffeur informs her that she's running late--in this case, for her and hubby's dinner date with another couple. On their way home, too, we see her daughter, Jennifer, running beside the car. Wearing blue-and-white dresses throughout most of the proceedings, Jennifer here is the new dream-child, the Alice. Catherine even mentions that Jennifer is starring in a school play in the same role she once occupied--perhaps, it's the role of Alice in a staging of Carroll's books.

As for the male gaze, it's arguably even more the traditional foundation of pornography than it is mainstream or Hollywood cinema, with a camera's gaze based on the presumed male spectator for looking upon the female body. Here, we get the mirror, which is already strongly associative with movies, of reflecting ghosts upon a surface. This mirror that Catherine masturbates in front of--or, "looking-glass vagina," to borrow Nina Auerbach's phrasing (as cited in "Alice in Pornoland: Hardcore Encounters with the Victorian Gothic" by Laura Helen Marks)--is not associated with her narcissism so much as it is with her dead father's gaze. Speaking of a "phallic camera," one of the most apt coitus encounters here begins with a focus on the father's penis, including in the form of a tracking shot, as he exits the mirror to attack his daughter. Aside from the graphic nudity and sex, with the monster threatening the heroine and a storm outside blowing through the attic's open window, it's the kind of filmmaking one would expect from classical cinema.

Not everything works, though. The incestuously complementary subplot of the brother-and-sister servants isn't developed any further than needed to establish another fellatio scene. The fantasy sequence resembling a pornographic mad tea party (although, it's really more of a banquet or picnic serving as an excuse for an orgy), while it includes a doppelgänger, is otherwise weighed down by the orgic excess. One shot that looks to be from a colonoscopy-like medical camera is arguably too obscene of a double entendre of Alice and the "rabbit hole" even for a porno. But, then, there are scenes such as the adroit combination of sex scene and old-dark-house, stormy-night imagery aforementioned; or some decent cutting for Catherine's conversation with herself, internalizing her father's gaze in front of the looking-glass; and, to top it off, that Dantean finale that is as good a horror-film nightmare as can be found in much of cinema in general.

In the freewheeling 70s, pornography very nearly went mainstream after DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES played to packed houses across the country and a number of "porno chic" films made around this time had decent budgets, actual plot lines, and attractive stars. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS is a classic grind house-cum-art house example from this era but it also stands alone as one of the eeriest sex films ever made. Beautiful "Vogue" model Catharine Burgess (once described as "a $2.98 Catherine Deneuve") stars as Catherine, a detached beauty with an accommodating architect husband, a young daughter, a father fixation and a dark secret. Catherine gets no sexual satisfaction from her husband because she spends most of her time in the attic, pleasuring herself before an antique mirror she's had since childhood and there's a demon in the reflection that shows the lady a world of unbridled lust on the other side of the glass. In a nod to ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Catherine sees a Mad Hatter's party that degenerates into an orgy with herself as centerpiece and the masturbatory and incestuous fantasies in the mirror are reflected in her husband and the household staff. Catherine has lived in the isolated mansion all her life and rarely leaves it but when her husband plans a trip to Paris for them, the insatiable satyr offers her an eternity of ecstasy at a terrible price...

The film has a strange, dream-like quality where sex & horror blend as if in a nightmare and Catharine Burgess' air of detachment only adds to the aura. The sex scenes, integral to the story, are few and far between so it's hard to see the "trenchcoat crowd" enjoying this one even though there's a memorable sequence where the viewer gets to go deep inside the heroine. Academy Award-winner Aron Obler & Harry Manfredini (FRIDAY THE 13th) contribute an evocative, moody score and the surreal, Fellini-esque ending segues into a denouement that is truly disturbing and not easily forgotten. Recommended, but not for the squeamish. Produced and directed by Jonas Middleton and released in hard and soft-core versions.

"A landmark movie" -Bruce Williamson, PLAYBOY

Gothic-horror fantasy in which wealthy but inhibited heiress Burgess finds a portal into a nether world where her repressed desire to escape an insipid marriage is inveigled by perverted temptations she's drawn to experience, but may suffer double jeopardy from which there's no return.

There's always a question as to whether it's hardcore-horror or vice versa (like the typical refrain is J-Lo a singing actress or an acting singer), and this nightmarish, slightly surreal tale probably could be toned down for a mainstream release and likely wouldn't be diminished in a redacted format (although the ending might arguably lose its lurid impact).

Except for not looking old enough to have teenage progeny, Burgess virtually satisfies the physical requirements of the role, her acting on the other hand isn't quite as outstanding; Gillis too fulfils his primary function (multiple times) without this rare dramatic performance belying his regular sweaty day job at which he was still obviously at the top of his game when this was made in '75.

Memorable/ uncomfortable moments include the garishly wild Mad Hatter's tea party which descends into a bawdy body buffet of debauchery, and then later on Gillis and Steen's characters practicing sordid Jack 'n Jill manoeuvres should temporarily ruffle one's moral fibres. That grubby little dream sequence is approx two-thirds in (no pun intended) and so if you don't like what's unfolding, there's still time to punch-out before things get really hectic. Forewarned is forearmed.

Memorable as those moments are, they're really mere support acts though to the film's piece-de-resistance, and Burgess's final foray through the looking glass, discovering what it really means to give into temptation, proving perhaps the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

Stylish sets, costumes, soundtrack and cinematography make all the difference but by no means do those elements articulate a masterpiece. Coherent and captivating it may be, it's still a hardcore-horror (whichever way you choose to view it) and so being both forewarned and open-minded is a necessity to hopefully be entertained and not disappointed by this unique movie experience.