Without Uncle Jess Franco, and also without shamefully sophomoric teenage utility belt creations, there would be no EUROTRASH UTILITY BELT. And now we have the troof put out there, we have to proclaim DR WONG'S VIRTUAL HELL is a DELIGHT of a late period Franco flic.
Filmed in a few seedy hotels in sunny Torremolinos and with comic book bubbles for some dialogue (echoing something of Kiss Me, Kill Me), Franco's own oddball musical scoring, weird color film dying, curvaceous natural women, occult musings and lots and lots of lesbo sex, Houston, we have a winner.
Franco is the cruel evil genius Dr. James Wong, who's daughter (played by the Franco stalwart Lina Romay) Tsai Ming and Loba (the female wolf seductively played by Analia Ivars) have hatched a sinister plan to kidnap the 18 year old daughter of some pop star for 1 million dollars (which later becomes 2 million for no reason).
Muy elegante! As for the kidnapped victim, somehow Dr.Wong is able to take over the father's hotel room TV to broadcast her dire situation. (There is also this god of harlots thing that appears to be made of bread.)
Franco has Howard Vernon play Johnny CAGLIOSTRO who through his visionary practices knows that his friend in the material world, Detective Nelly Smith (also played by Lina R.) will need his talismanic help to stop the machinations of Dr. Wong et al.
As foul as you can get, uncle frank.
Like a nice sandwich with little bread and lots of meat, the actual Virtual Hell has virtually minimal set-up until the viewer gets absolutely bombarded by 47 straight minutes of psychedelic erotic film. Franco's musical backdrop reinforces a wild journey from burlesque dancing replete with a dive piano rag until a Numbers Station kicks in with dark feedback bouncing around your noggin. He throws a nice little blues jam alongside continuous - "very front of the mic"- orgasmic ladies. Well done, sir. Now we should talk about those VR goggles the onlookers are wearing...
things are getting a little...diss..o...so..ciated
And so it goes for what might make the movie overall seem as an excuse for Franco watch Romay and Ivars Get It On but the guy was like 100 years old when he made it, so mad props. And if you think all the licking, slurping and stand-up scissoring was indulgent, well, yes that's the point.
It also reminds me of the type of surreal fetish stuff one could pick up at Charles Gatewood's table at various underground cons. The kind of stuff that makes you wonder if you should be owning this, uhm, er, art. RIP, buddy.
Dr. Wong's Virtual Hell wasn't Franco's most famous work but the amount of winners he produced from Vampyros Lesbos (another crucial link in how this blog came to be) to Venus in Furs to She Killed in Ecstasy to Mansion of the Living Dead this piece of deviant cinema should be included among the greatest hits for its sheer fun. Often times, production levels leave something to be desired however movies that have an addled singular vision of non-hollywood perversion is what we approve of here on EUROTRASH UTILITY BELT. Thanks again, Jess.
Yep, just the cover this time - I judged the contents of this particular ish to be sub-par, but loved the image. Hungry for more content? Well, there are some seriously odd musical mixes that have recently floated to the top from the storied past of The Thermonuclear Bar radio show. Listen and download via the soundcloud HERE. Enjoy with a BBQ and a cold chillum.
BLACK CANDLES (or the Sexual Rites of the Devil) - fulfills all necessary qualities to be a 10 of 10 Eurotrash Utility Belt film. Sex, drugs, violence, black magic, bestiality, more drugs, orgies, fallen priests, weird dreams, and then more sex. Yes, it's all here.
As we plan to get even more obscure in our references on this site, the herbs spoken of (that are audible/understandable) at 35:23 are mandrake, foxglove, and purple berries. The others sound like lapis odorat and la borrelia magitiva.
The only reference I could find to Purple Berries and aphrodisiacs come from RAW's Sex and Drugs book and the closest name was a street name: Purple Hearts. This is then is called Luminal - "one of the strongest of the barbituate drugs"
BLACK CANDLES doesn't really need too much of a review, it truly speaks for itself. The only requirement set forth by us: Watch it under the influence.
We could have no better signage prefigure a return to new EUROTRASH UTILITY BELT posts than the opening marker from the delightful BLOOD SPLATTERED BRIDE. This 1972 classic is ripe with the expoiltation/giallo scumbag trademarks and some highly interesting yet subtle nods to older mythologies.
wedding night, oh what a night
The late Spaniard director, Vincente Arada, deftly moves about the borderline of where dreams can influence reality, shining light on myth's shadowy, stranger areas. Perhaps the opening wedding night rape is a statement on the unnamed husband's split personality - protector and ravenous sexual aggressor - or what Susan, the virginal wife played by feline Maribel Martin, dreams for at the same time as abhors.
When things go bad, how about a change of scenery? Into something less spooky, you say?
Hiding away in a castle that looks like the undead are at every corner wouldn't be most people's idea of a safe place. And Susan's wedding veil being torn by a cannon was a visual pun whose significance is not lost on this viewer (nor is the, uh, "trimming the hedges" shot later). Here we are met with the creepy female majordomo and the nearly catatonic teenage girl suffering from trauma. These characters are classically one-dimensional but quickly the film turns to something more unconventional.
What many commentators miss is Aranda's somewhat occulted introduction of some very obscure mythology. In the bucolic garden scene Susan is drafting a pic of her husband when he becomes impatient to view her work and lunges for a view she then names the picture "Saturn".
That one word made my head cock back a little. Perhaps it was his starved gaze that consumed even his children that inspired Susan to spurt this out as she had little knowledge as to the "saturnalia of crime" that is to occur.
Another honeymoon romp comes and goes and we are curiously met with an opening shot of...
Corn. Not with a K like that horrible 90s band, but Corn you eat. And overflowing loads of it, nearly a ritual offering that heralds the emergence of the dark goddess.
Carmilla is consequently then seen by Susan in the woods. She is played by stunning Alexandra Bastedo, whom bares a resemblance to Playboy cover bunny Margaux Hemingway...an ish I still have a copy of... that I stole from my uncle...and absolutely ruined.
The final violation in the temple of Ops
Yet it is the moments of identification I can't seem to get over. If the Groom is called out by Susan as Saturn, the we should associate her in turn with JUNO, or rather Juno's shadow.
"Juno was the Goddess of marriage, pregnancy and childbirth.
She was the Queen of the Gods and part of the Capitoline triad that also included Minerva and Jupiter.
This Deity was an embodiment of the traditional female roles of wife and mother...Jealousy and vindictiveness (are shadow aspects)" v.
Juno was eaten by Saturn but later saved by another Goddess, her mother Ops, who feeds Saturn a stone that makes him evacuate his divine banquet. Now Ops is the chthonian goddess of fertility, earth and agriculture whom worshipers regularly depict holding a corn stalk... and there we have it. Case closed. Ops is here for a harvest, and it happens to be the groom.
on the ground and eating dirt as she consumes life to counteract the "decay"
"Is that what's worrying you? You're ALIVE!" "Alive?"
Perhaps it was Aranda's choice of Sheridan Le Fanu's story that peppered this movie with dreams, reality, sex and violence, even some Jungian bibliomancy for christ sakes, but you are here for the dirty pictures and I won't pontificate any longer.
This beach beauty could also be a Yemaya influence
BLOOD SPLATTERED BRIDE is awesome fun and having a look at the deeper meanings gives you so many more feels.
PSA: If you want to avoid being harvested by a dark Ops/Juno themed vampiric female you can make peace with her instead:
"On August 25, Ops was evoked by sitting on the earth itself, where She
lives in body and spirit. So, weather permitting, take yourself a picnic
lunch today. Sit with Ops and enjoy any sesame or poppy breadstuffs
(bagel, roll, etc) – both types of seeds are magically aligned with
Ops’s money-bringing power. If the weather doesnt cooperate invoke Ops by getting as close to the earth as you can (sit on your floor, go into the cellar) - Patricia Telesco
Otherwise just conjure a succubus, it's way more fun and less lethal.
I'm just going to come out and say it: The problem I have with your sports, your reality shows and your wack-ass worldview comes down to you being too scared to keep BEING WEIRD. The good stuff bubbles up and we sadly file it away without remembering our true freak natures. On the freeway, in school and at work our breathing stops as we stare at flashy, purchasable things...the kind of gunk that covers up the streetlight between your eyebrows.
I'm no different but here's how I recently hit the pause button. Take the example of the Balloon Boy. Remember that? Some hick kid steals his dad's makeshift UFO/weather balloon, flies it out of control and crashes it in a field to a media blitz across the nation. The story changes a bit when it turns out he wasn't in the balloon and his pop just wanted to get on the tele.
What got me was how cool that kid could have been if he actually did fly around INSIDE that thing. I won't wax super poetic on the need to get away from it all, you already know it. However, remember the initial feeling: remember being a little shithead who wanted to get away from your parents. The need to escape never goes away though: how about them Control Systems you deal with now?
So when I heard of Kent Couch strapping balloons to his lawn chair and flying away 200 miles to land safely in a field, I felt a deep smile well up. You can pull off the crazy even if your beer gut hangs to your knees.
Remembering what the hell kept you going as a kid is the takeaway here, boss. Kent's risk was worth it because I recalled the value of what people call "weird", "strange" and "ridiculous"... The weird jolted me back to me.
A grimoire from the past
Weird
Weird
Moving around in a storage unit popped up this old freakout book from the Eighties. Here I plotted utility belts, boats made of cardboard that could support a human, and a fucking lawn chair with enough Estes motor rockets and helium balloons strapped to it that would allow me to fly away.
I never pulled it off, maybe it was the early signs of the Demon of Procrastination finding a soul to feast on, but the idea seemed so reasonable to this kid. A lifetime later, I found some #daug from Oregon proving it could be done. That's just how the weird rolls... and that's why it is all that matters; because it ALL matters.
If the article on "America's First Ninja" looks interesting to anyone out there, you may read it in full, along with some pretty interesting and trending links, on this collection piece at The Standing Post.
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