THE REINCARNATION OF SEX – Not that you should care, but I've been reduced to watching freebies on 'YouTube' recently due to compromised funds. Really need to can the fags and booze for a bit and get back into the realms of healthy stuff like bluray / DVD combo binging. Anyway, I was alerted to 'The Reincarnation of Sex' by the Bleeding Skull website, which has served me pretty well over the years with its constant excavation of freaky oddities – so thank you people, if nothing else you have brought a long forgotten Brazilian semi-porno about a talking plant to the attention of another guy with too much time on his hands. Despite being a bit put off by its silly title, 'The Reincarnation of Sex' got the better of me simply by being ten times sillier than its title could ever suggest. I'm being a bit cavalier and possibly quite ignorant in saying this, because I watched it without subtitles. There is a chance that it harbours mysteries of which I know nothing. There is a chance that, contained within the dialogue flying around between grunting bodies and psychic Rhododendrons is a revelatory force which pieces together all the bad shag moments into something that not only makes sense, but is a poignant and penetrating treatise on the human condition. But - I really, really doubt it. And I know gonzoid trash when I see it. So I'm prepared to believe 'The Reincarnation of Sex' to be a thoroughly incoherent stab at sexy gore and leave it at that. OK, well the 'plot' is basically about a house where a guy is beheaded after messing with a farmer's daughter or something. The guy's head gets buried beneath a pot plant, which then develops psychic abilities as evinced by its weird echoey voice. The plant seems to like to to incite any new occupants of the house (we go through at least three or four cycles of fresh tenants) to sex and murder whilst the ghost of the farmer's daughter (was there ever really a farmer in it? Who cares) wanders around brandishing a knife. You'll probably already know whether you can stomach it or not. It didn't entirely set me alight, but then again I did watch it at three in the morning, pissed, after that Denzel Washington flick about the drunken aviator, who, despite being an arrogant narcissist, turns out to be a hero when he redeems his humanity in an act of self destructive honesty. Denzel, you didn't exactly prime my headspace, man. I digress. 'The Reincarnation of Sex' has a certain sensibility – quite early eighties Euro gothic, a bit too flat to be Fulciesque, but kind of in the same area. The silliness, the giddy lack of cohesion, felt good at first but then got a little grating. And the sex just seemed a bit pointless, because, well, on-screen shagging is pretty boring unless it's particularly ornamental or just mental – in this case, most of it was simply shagging, although granted, there was a nasty bit with a dildo which was quite good. I also could've done with a bit more sinister plant and a bit more gore. But hey, I'm being a little mean. It's good to know that films like this exist, that upturned stones still send a few wonky looking insects scurrying out into the light.
THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS – The other thing I'm doing now is basically rewatching some of my old stuff until I can afford to buy some new. It strikes me that I almost never go back to well over half of the films I've seen, and have probably only watched most of the remainder a couple of times max. I think this is my third outing with THWLW, a film I've never really gotten along with in the past. Pleased to say though, it does grow on me a little more every time I check it out. I really dig 'Zeder', and today I was reminded of why. You probably all know the plot, but, just in case, an arts conservationist arrives in a small town on an island and begins work on the restoration of a painting in a chapel. The painting and its 'author' are surrounded by mystery and ill boding. After his friend is killed, conservationist guy has to delve deep into the small town's troubled past, and the darkness comes closing in. THWLW is a languid slow burn as hazy as its rustic setting, but it does reward patience. It hangs the broad canvas of a murder mystery around a succession of 'moments', passages whose eerie qualities transcend mere narrative concerns. The murder mystery itself, which isn't quite Giallo in nature despite THWLW being of a similar ilk, is a bit lack lustre in its unfolding and doesn't really make much sense in the end. But again, as with so much Italian product of the era, there's a dissociation between this film's 'rational', story telling aspect and its images and atmospheres. Like the final reveal – pretty lame on one level, but totally crazy in terms of how it's delivered. THWLW's strength lies in those scenes which achieve a really odd mood without being obvious – for instance, the one where conservationist's new hottie lurches into an account of a dream about eating a load of snails, then nonchalantly reveals her fridge to be full of yucky, yep, snails. There's lots of atmospheric detail – figures in silhouette, shadows behind curtains, arms of unknown provenance reaching out from doorways... and the film's titular image – red lips painted across the boarded up windows of an abandoned house – what was that all about? 'What was that all about?' is actually a fitting epitaph for THWLW, a film whose real mystery shares its essence with that mad painter's weird pictures. If it were not for some of the pacing and occasional moments of clunkiness, I'd be a hundred percent sold. As it is, I hope I get to arrange a return visit sometime soon.
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