Wow! A pretty bonkers film, this. Part Mills & Boon Romance, part seventies softcore, and part psychological horror.
It’s superbly shot, acted, directed, and so on. In many ways, certainly visually, and occasionally sonically, it’s very beautiful.
But there’s also a rather horrid rotten core to it as well. This mainly emanates from an awful lil’ Hitler type character, called Chief.
For now I’m going to leave my ‘review’ pretty basic. I’ve long wanted to watch this film, as: I’ve always loved the poster; I quite like Kris Kristoffersen, in the ‘70s; and Sarah Miles is gorgeous!
There were parts of this film I could barely watch. Two parts. One involves the Chief dispatching the family cat, involving his hapless henchmen in the heinous act.
*Can’t see many films nowadays going places like this! And certainly not in the manner of this ‘handling’.
The other? Well, I basically bailed on the film. Not ‘cause I think it’s bad. But because it was getting too dark for me, as I am these days. I need light, warmth, happiness!
Would I recommend watching this film? That’s a tough one, to be honest. But I’m glad there are films like this out there. Because it’s not your average humdrum pulp potboiler.
I think it’s a film I might come back to? But then I might not? Who knows? Who cares…
I certainly want to find out two things arising from watching it: what font they’ve used in the titles, and on the posters. And who designed the superb Avco Embassy ident that we see at the beginning.
I watched the film on YouTube. And I see that it’s also been made available to download, here.
I only really knew Sarah Miles as a dotty aristo’ type, from an episode of Suchet’s Poirot. It’s kind of odd, alarming, and yet very erotic, seeing her as she appears here.
But here, nothing is merely surface appearances; the theme of her son spying on her lovemaking complicates what could’ve been straightforward eroticism.
In an intriguing footnote, Earl Rhodes, who plays the utterly loathsome Chief, continued acting for a while, before switching to being a cameraman. Later on he became involved with the Falun Gong martial arts/religious movement. This latter activity saw him deported from China, back to the UK, in 2002.
FOOTNOTE:
This film is based upon, or at least shares a title with, a book by notorious Japanese novelist Mishima. From what little I’ve read about him, he was a right wing nut job. So it’s possible that in his book the Chief type character is the hero. Whereas in this film I’d say he’s certainly not. But it’s all very interesting. Mishima committed seppuku, ritual self-disemboweling, after staging a failed ‘nationalist’ coup!
