Tulia, a young model is invited to a photographer's country home for what purports to be a quiet weekend retreat - but soon appears to be anything but.
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This long lost gem from 1970 is especially interesting because of the contrast it delivers between English stiff upper lip and a depravity all wrapped up in the characters of this movie.It also has been an inspiration i think for later films like "Last house on the left" and in lesser extend even "Evil Dead" with the isolation of a cabin in the woods.Performance of the actors is often "of"and seems to be building up to some more psychological play and the dialog feels some what strange cause it switches to much between intelligent and plain stupid ,also is the intent of the aunt and nephew to obvious and with some thought and nuances it could have had some good plot development and it would have been a better movie.The "victim" in this movie is a model that gets doped up and sort of forced, all though it is sometimes hard to tell if she is being raped or actually excepts her position and does this all out of free will and at some points that's a little bit hard to swallow.The ending was a bit of a drag when she realized that the nephew photographed the rape and she seemed really upset about this like she did not even notice it. Stil,it was a movie ahead of his time and overall there is right in this"wrong"so you will still think about it later on and decide it's really a shame that this was lost for such a long time. This is a great example of a 70's cult classic and not to be missed by anyone who likes cult flicks.A whirlpool of fun.
Talking to a fellow IMDb'er recently about Euro 'genre' movies,I was asked if I had seen any titles by writing/directing auteur Jose Ramon Larraz.With having heard of,but never seeing any of Larraz work,I decided to take advantage of my discussion with the fellow IMDb'er,by finally taking Larraz debut, (which was believed lost for decades) off my shelf,and excitingly getting ready to enter the whirlpool. The plot:With the mysterious disappearance of Rhonda having put a stop to her fun'n'games and her nephew Theo's amateur photography,kind aunt Sara decides to pay a visit to the London,in the hope of catching the eye of an up and coming fashion model.Sneaking into a fashion shoot,Sara is taken aback by the glamorous appearance of a new model called Tulia.Introducing herself,Sara tells Tulia that she would really like to take her back to the country house that she resides in,so that her nephew Theo can do an outstanding photo shoot which Tulia can place in her portfolio.Delighted at receiving such attention,Tulia jumps in sweet aunt Sara's car,and begins to look forward to her special photo-shoot.Arriving at the country house,Tulia discovers that instead of taking part in a photo-shoot,that aunt Sara and Theo are going to make Tulia take part in seduction,and murder.View on the film:Despite the only known edition to exist being a timecoded Video version,co-writer/ (along with Sam Lomberg) director Jose Ramon Larraz is able to break out of the viewing constriction's by displaying an expert eye in creating an incredibly murky atmosphere,with Larraz using the country house setting to to build a real mood of isolation,thanks to Larraz making the endless row of tresses by a sign to Tulia, (played by the stunning Vivian Neves) that there is nowhere for her to run away from Sara, (played with a wonderful battle axe bite by Pia Andersson) and Theo's, (played with a chilling smirk by future Larraz collaborator Karl Lanchbury) games.Along with the creeping atmosphere in his directing,Larraz and Lomberg give their screenplay a strong swipe of crawling sleaze,with Larraz and Lomberg gradually taking their time to fully place Tulia in Sara and Theo's games, which leads to the writers delivering an excellently ruthless ending,as Tulia starts to fear that she will never be able to get out of this deadly whirlpool.
After many years this fine first film from Jose Ramon Larraz has finally surfaced from an online dealer.The film itself is amazingly sleazy considering its both British (though registered in Denmark) and from the 60's, before films like EXPOSE and FRIGHTMARE became the norm. The film has many similarities to other Larraz films of the period, such as being set in rural England during the fall and featuring a severely warped family relationship.Stars frequent Larraz favorites Karl Lanchbury (in yet another oddball role similar to those in DEVIATION, SCREAM AND DIE and VAMPYRES) and Andrew Grant (also in DEVIATION and EMMA PUERTAS OSCURAS). Its score is by Stelvio Cipriani, who also did the score for Larraz's DEVIATION (which was VERY similar to his score for Mario Bava's TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE aka BAY OF BLOOD).
The sexy nature of this picture made it an erotic winner, and the ending death scene where the girl is stabbed with her boots on led to its release with that title. Excellent. Sorry it isn't available on video!