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Tonight! Cat around with the 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down as we curl up to FELIDAE!

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Oh, Don't get me started about cats. So adorable! Especially when they're single-handedly trying to solve a string of brutal ritualized serial killings... of cats! That happens, right?

At least it does in Felidae, an animated feature from Germany, and it's pretty great--so much so that I almost regret offering it up to the pitiless gaze of the Shout Down crew. Almost. Oh well, they can't all be risible stinkers.

To join along with us, just log into Twitter at 6pm Pacific time tonight--that's Tuesday, December 9th--and, using the hashtag #4DKMSD, comment along with us as you watch the film via the handy YouTube link below:



Hope to hear from you tonight. In closing, instead of using a pun involving the word "purr", let's not and say we did, alright?

Enough to give you paws.

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Ugh. Sorry about that. What is it about cats in particular that inspires godawful punning on the part of those who you'd think would know better? Is it a contact catnip high? Purrrr-haps. God!

Anyway, tonight the 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down crew tweeted along to Felidae, a German animated feature that introduces quite a few new practices to the roster of cartoon cat behaviors--though nothing that will be surprising to anyone who has ever played host to one of these fly eating, proudly butthole displaying, hate-fucking creatures.

Here. Read the transript and see what I mean. 

The 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down: Felidae on Storify
 
And now, as has become tradition, here is a trailer for next month's feature, Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill. That's right, people: Kommissar X is coming to the Show Down!

San Francisco gets Wenged!

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If you live in the Bay Area and don't wake tomorrow to find that you have been washed out to sea by the coming superstorm, you might want to head down to San Francisco's Roxie Theater. Taking place there will be the Bay Area premier of friend-of-4DK Andrew Leavold's highly recommended documentary The Search for Weng Weng, which is screening as the opener to the Facine/21: 21st Annual Filipino International Cine Festival. The film screens at 7pm. Andrew will be there and so, nature allowing, will I. Should you swim, paddle, wade, or snorkel, it would behoove you to be there also.

Friday's best pop song ever

The Fantasy of Deer Warrior (Taiwan, 1961)

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While googling The Fantasy of Deer Warrior to see if I could find any information to augment that found on its very limited Hong Kong Movie Database page, I came across, right near the top of the results, the post that my friend and podcast co-host Tars Tarkas wrote about it back in November of 2008. This was at a time when the film was still tantalizingly M.I.A. and consists merely of its poster and a couple paragraphs concerning what little was known about its contents. It was enough, however, to put me--along with, I imagine, many others—on a long and fruitless hunt for it. This was far from the first time that Tars had done a thing like this, and I couldn’t help imagining him cackling as he once again gleefully scattered the seeds of nerd obsession across the internet.

Of course, like so many of these cinematic chimeras lately, The Fantasy of Deer Warrior ultimately mocked all of our efforts by eventually turning up for free on the internet. Here is my report:

Where some films have a host of international locations and a lavish effects budget, The Fantasy of Deer Warrior has a forest and some animal costumes that look as if they were fashioned from footy pajamas. You might think that the novelty of that would wear thin rather quickly, but there are a couple of things about Deer Warrior that enable it to maintain our interest. For one, unlike Syd & Marty Krofft (or Roberto Rodriguez, for that matter), director Cheung Ying does not conceal his actor’s faces under all-enveloping, football mascot type heads, but instead leaves them exposed, peeking out from under cowl-like headwear that resembles those animal hoodies all the hipsters were wearing a couple years ago. This allows us to enjoy the contrast between the earnest expressions they wear as they gamely grind through the high melodrama of Deer Warrior’s plot and their adorable, flippity-floppity ears.

The visibility of the actors’ faces is also of interest because some of those faces are familiar ones, in particular that of the Deer Warrior himself, Ling Yun, who went on to star in a lot of Shaw Brothers movies, including the previously reviewed King Drummer, as well as a number of Chor Yuen films. I also should add that, while Deer Warrior is reportedly a children’s film, it, like a host of other Asian children’s films, sports a number of elements that would prompt senate hearings if they appeared in a Western children’s film of its era. These include a hero who kills a captive enemy in cold blood, a character named Erotic Fox (Lam Lam) whose animal costume is considerably more abbreviated than the rest and whom performs a hoochie koochie dance to the Champs’ “Tequila” at one point (she is also referred to in one exchange as having a “dirty smell”), and, if the English subtitles on the version I watched are to be believed, some instances of salty dialogue.


As the movie begins, fauna fatale Erotic Fox is maliciously stoking the already seething rivalry between prize bucks Warrior Deer and Sika Deer, who are both in love with the virtuous Miss Deer (Hsu Yu). While the two are brawling, word arrives from home that Warrior Deer’s family has been brutally attacked by a band of wolves lead by Evil Wolf (Li Min-Lang). Warrior makes his way back just in time for his father to die in his arms, at which point he swears blood revenge upon the wolf clan. And if you have just noted that this plot is identical to that of countless martial arts films, congratulations. Please keep in mind, however, that all of these people are wearing animal costumes.

From this point on, Deer Warrior proceeds in a manner right in line with its stock revenge plot, albeit with a couple of interesting digressions. Time is taken out, for example, to re-enact a couple of Aesop’s fables, in particular “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. There are also a couple of songs. Other musical interludes make use of enough needle-dropped western schmaltz for an entire Lawrence Welk episode (the idyll that the wolves shatter, for instance, consists of a bunch of kids in bunny and lamb costumes frolicking about to a syrupy instrumental rendition of “Jingle Bells).

Meanwhile, as the wolves pitilessly massacre all of the defenseless bunnies, lambs and baby goats in the forest, Miss Deer, who has been sidelined by her paramour’s revenge binge, becomes the subject of Evil Wolf’s unwanted attentions, with all of the kidnapping attempts and narrowly avoided rapes that that entails. Amid this, we are propelled through The Fantasy of Deer Warrior by our ever greater curiosity as to what bizarre representation of animal kind will be rolled out next. The population of this forest is indeed a very diverse and counterintuitively harmonious one, with apes living peacefully with and cozying up to goats, rabbits and a host of other critters. It is with great relish that we wait to see which of this menagerie will be revealed next.




My favorite of these, I think, are the birds that are used as messengers by the various animals, relaying their love notes, ransom demands, hate mail and other missives from one end of the forest to the other. These are, for the most part, portrayed by children in bird costumes who fly by means of some pretty squirrely process shots that represent Warrior Deer’s sole stab at special effects. Evil Wolf is also a treat, resembling, as he does so closely, the wolf from the Mexican Caperucita Roja movies.



I don’t know why exactly, but, for some reason, I expected The Fantasy of Deer Warrior to be more operatic in nature—perhaps to be something in the vein of a Chinese Peter and the Wolf. But, no, it really is just a bunch of actors in animal costumes variously tussling around in the forest until the 90 minute mark comes around. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. I have indeed watched many films that consisted of much the same elements, though without the benefit of animal costumes. One is tempted to wonder just how much many plodding martial arts programmers could be improved upon if this gimmick were employed—if they featured, say, Carter Wong dressed as a cow, Lo Lieh dressed as a giraffe, or Bolo Yeung dressed as a buffalo? Sadly, such things are to remain, like the Deer Warrior, consigned to the realm of fantasy.

Friday's best pop song ever

Podcast on Fire's Taiwan Noir Episode 16: Night Orchid and The Greatest Plot

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On this latest episode of Taiwan Noir, Kenny B and I have a relaxed back and forth about two more colorful Taiwanese wuxia films: Night Orchid, a Ku Long adaptation with a screenplay by Ku Long himself, and The Greatest Plot, a quasi-historical intrigue starring Yueh Hua and lo Lieh. You can download or stream the episode here.

Friday's best pop song ever


La Guerrera Vengadora (Mexico, 1988)

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On a recent visit to downtown Los Angeles, I made a disturbing discovery. The Grand Central Market, which once offered the opportunity to clog your arteries with the borderline disgusting street food of many nations, now had a kombucha bar, an upscale juicery, and a hipster-y breakfast spot called Egg Slut--and was furthermore crowded with affluent looking white families and their clamoring, overly-validated hellspawn. The Arcade, a swap-meet style street mall that was once a bountiful source of bootleg toys and cds, seemed to be going in a similar direction. I feared that someday soon, the tiny, overcrowded video store on Broadway where I bought the DVD of La Guerrera Vengadora for four dollars would be a thing of the past. This would truly be a shame, because La Guerrera Vengadora --a sterling example of 1980s Mexican action cinema, replete with exploding pickup trucks, icky sexual violence, flatulent synthesizer music and mustaches--should only be acquired in such a store. Ordering it from Barnes & Noble just wouldn’t feel right.

La Guerrera Vengadora stars Mexican radio personality turned actress/pin-up girl/singer (she sings the theme song), Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, who, thanks to roles in such films as Lola, the Truck Driving Woman and its sequels, became one of Mexican exploitation cinema’s rare female action heroines. Here she plays Rosita, a pneumatic high school teacher who is especially loved by her male students, who compose mash notes to her on her chalk board. When her younger brother is murdered and his girlfriend brutally raped by a gang of drug dealin’, car thievin’ bikers, she is prostrate with grief and rage. Equally disconsolate is her roommate and constant companion, a dwarf named Reintegro, who is played by Rene Ruiz, aka “Tun Tun” (meaning that the 4DK “quotation marks rule” of Mexican comic relief is in full effect).


The makers of La Guerrera Vengadora attempt to counterbalance the rape of the brother’s girlfriend, which is about as vile and protracted as they come, with a later scene in which Rosita blows away a would-be rapist in mid rape attempt. This only makes the film an even more crystalline exemplar of how, in female-driven revenge films, the act of violence that sends the heroine on her path to vengeance always has to have some kind of sexual component to it. After all, we don’t need to see Charles Bronson’s dick attacked in order for his righteous rampage to be justified. This, of course, may be due to the idea that all masculine perception is channeled through the penis, giving any real or perceived affront the force of an emotional crotch blast.

Anyway, in the wake of her brother’s murder, Rosita turns to the authorities, who—given the fact that all of the police in this movie’s universe are either bumbling or corrupt—are no help whatsoever. Perhaps the most corrupt of all of these is Comandante Trevino, who is played by Mexican B movie stalwart David Reynoso with unctuous relish. Perhaps the least corrupt is Rosita’s detective boyfriend, played by Chagoyan’s frequent co-star Rolando Fernandez, who is so overwhelmed by righteous fury that he spends much of his screen time yelling at people indignantly.


Trevino, we soon learn, is in partnership with the sharp-suited Mr. Big who gives the biker gang their marching orders. This gentleman is an effete product of the dissolute upper class who tinkles away on a grand piano while enjoying the adoring gaze of his musclebound strongman Noel in a scene evocative of that Liberace movie with Michael Douglas. La Guerrera Vengadora, in fact, has a number of gay references, among them a member of the biker gang named El Gato (Alfonso Zayas Jr.) who likes to nuzzle up to his male victims, paralyzing them with homophobia, before he plunges his knife into their throats (watch out, men, the gays can smell your fear!)

There are a lot of things about La Guerrera Vengadora that I might’ve understood better had it featured English subtitles. For instance, I might be able to tell you why Rosita, a school teacher, has a flashy, rocket-firing stunt cycle stowed away inside her apartment, along with a bitchin’ Evel Kneival style jumpsuit and a sawed-off shotgun. These things all seem to have a lot of sentimental value for her, as she caresses each lovingly as she carefully unpacks them. This might lead me to conclude that La Guerrera Vengadora was a sequel of sorts, but no; that would be La Guerrera Vengadora 2, which came out three years later, in 1991.


Rosita’s strategy for revenge involves her using her own hot bod as bait. Dolling herself up in her most boob-accentuating outfit, she hits the streets and discos of whatever town this movie takes place in, where every single man reacts to her as if he has never seen a woman before. Soon she is luring the members of the gang one-by-one to their doom; a doom that involves lots of motorcycle stunts and cars that explode as if they were made entirely out of dynamite.

Though mostly a delivery system for automotive hijinks and boobs, La Guerrera Vengadora is not without its artistic aspirations. It in fact includes its own version of the Odessa Steps Sequence, in which a wheelchair-bound disable girl is plunged down a steep stairway during a key battle between Rosita and the gang. Rosita, of course, manages to rescue the girl, though the rules of La Guerrera Vengadora necessitate that she do so without leaving her motorcycle.


Rosita’s ravages soon come to the attention of Mr. Big, who instructs his men to stage a violent, slow motion siege upon her isolated country home. This leads to her tearing around on her supercycle, executing sweet jumps and wheelies with dwarf sidekick in tow, as countless stunt men and dummies go through the elaborate death throes that only bullets and RPGs coated with pure Mexican vengeance can provoke. And it is with this scene that I forgave all of La Guerrera Vengadora's many, many flaws, because I am truly an awful person.



Because human beings are complex, Rosita has a mixed reaction as she watches Mr. Big plummet to his death from the top of a parking structure at La Guerrera Vengadora’s conclusion (SPOILER). She laughs, she cries, and then stares pensively into the middle distance. There are just so many things you can feel while someone is falling in slow motion from a building several stories high. Then, both it and her having given us everything they have, La Guerrera Vengadora goes to freeze frame.

And I quite honestly find myself wishing that I had picked up the DVD of the sequel.

Friday's best pop song ever

Pop Offensive returns this Wednesday!

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You know, there's no accounting for taste. Either you like awesome music or you don't... and suck. For those of you who do, there is Pop Offensive, which streams live this Wednesday at 7pm Pacific time on 9thfloorradio.com. Thrill along as Jeff Heyman and I spin a dazzling mix of pop, dance and film music from around the world and across the decades, melding the pop of the J, the Italo, and the Swe with the beats of the Mersey and the freak, the girl groups and Group sounds, the souls Northern and funks Bolly, the dances electro and Euro, the garage and the House, the mod, the bubblegum and more. You get the idea.

If you do tune in, be sure to tweet your feedback (even if it's something along the lines of "YES-S-S-S!!!!!!!! BLARGHHH!!") to us at @PopOffRadio. And if you don't, avoid living forever in shame and regret by downloading or streaming the episode from the Pop Offensive Archives. We've got you covered!

Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958)

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My reviews of films from Egyptian cinema's golden age have a tendency to momentarily class things up here at 4DK. Cairo Station should prove no exception, as it is a recognized classic from one of Egypt's most celebrated directors. Formal attire may be appropriate.

Cairo Station looks to the bustling train station of its title--which also serves as the film's sole location--as a portal into the world of Egypt’s working poor, ignoring the thousands of commuters, tourists, and travelers who pass through its gates daily in favor of the various porters, hacks and vendors who keep its gears turning. Front and center among these is Qinawi, played by director Youssef Chahine, a newspaper hawker who lives in a lowly shack on the station grounds; this thanks to Madbouli, the kindly newsstand proprietor who rescued Qinawi from the streets. Gimp-legged, slow witted, and oddly passive, Qinawi is an easy target for bullying and ridicule by the calloused bunch who are his fellow workers.


Qinawi has developed a fixation on Hanouma (Hind Rostom), one of a number of unlicensed female juice vendors who make up part of the underground economy that has grown up around the station. A boisterous troublemaker, Hanouma teasingly encourages Qinawi's crush, even though she is engaged to marry Abu Serih (Farid Chawki), a burly porter who is engaged in an uphill struggle to unionize the station’s workers. Hanouma’s flirting inspires delusions in Qinawi that, once shattered, send him spiraling into madness, at which point Cairo Station takes a very dark turn indeed.

In terms of its cast, Cairo Station packs a lot of star power. “Egypt’s answer to Marilyn”, Hind Rostom (Ebn Hamido, Sleepless) imbues Hanouma with an almost savage sensuality while at the same time maintaining the hard, cynical edge one would expect from a character attuned to a life of scrabbling. As Abu Serih, Farid Chawki (Oh, Islam!, Antar The Black Prince), demonstrates the same brute physicality that made him one of Egyptian action cinema’s biggest stars and earned him the nickname “The Beast” among his fans.


The standout among the cast, however, is Chahine, whose Qinawi is alternately pathetic and sinister, sympathetic and repellent. Deprived of human touch, Qinawi can only look, and look he does. The walls of his shack are plastered with pictures of pinup girls, which, it is intimated, he spends most of his time clipping out of magazines and whacking off to. We are repeatedly shown close-ups of his eyes as he looks at the chests and legs of female passersby, and at Hanouma in particular. As wanton and free as Hanouma may seem, Chahine won't let us forget that she is nonetheless a prisoner of Qinawi’s tyrannical gaze.

Cairo Station was rightly praised by critics in its day, but Egyptian audiences-- accustomed to the frothy, Hollywood-style entertainments of Egypt’s studio system—gave it a much less cordial welcome. After all, while many films had at that point covered the topic of loneliness, few if any—especially in the Arab world--had addressed the issue of sexual frustration with such frankness. And it is indeed sexual frustration that sends Qinawi on the path to madness and murder, essentially turning him into a monster. Once he realizes that Hanouma’ s acceptance of his marriage proposal was only made in jest, he savagely knifes a friend of hers, Hawwalitum, thinking it is her, and stuffs her body into a trunk meant for Hanouma’ s trousseau, after which he attempts to frame Abu Serih for her murder. Hawwalitum, however, survives, and Qinawi, realizing he has avenged himself against the wrong girl, sets a desperate trap for Hanouma.


Like its namesake, Cairo Station contains multitudes, both narratively and in terms of genre. The primary story of Qinawi, Hanouma and Abu Serih is periodically pushed aside to focus on Abu Serih’s battle against his union-busting superiors, as well as a mostly silent story about a young girl who is waiting at the station to say goodbye to her apparently indifferent boyfriend. Stylistically, it combines gritty neo-realism with moody Film Noir atmospherics.

The film also, to some extent, works as a Hitchcockian thriller, albeit one that undermines its own suspense somewhat by playing havoc with audience sympathies. For example, it is still possible to feel sorry for Qinawi while at the same time fully appreciating the threat he poses to the women around him. Hanouma, meanwhile, is as cruel to Qinawi as she is kind, and Abu Serih, while unequivocally heroic in his efforts to establish a union, is also seen beating Hanouma mercilessly simply for dancing to rock and roll music. In short, there are victims here, but no heroes. The cumulative effect of that is that Cairo Station’s violent denouement, when it arrives, comes across as much more preordained and tragic than it does horrific.



The hostility toward Cairo Station on the part of Egyptian audiences resulted in it being banned in its home country for twenty years. When it was later rediscovered by more appreciative filmgoers, some claimed that it was the greatest Egyptian film ever made. I do not know whether that is true or not (I have not seen every Egyptian film ever made), but I would certainly recommend it. It is a well-crafted work of considerable risk taking, marked by both a clear-eyed vision of the human condition at its most humble and debased and an uncommon compassion.

Friday's best pop song ever

The offenses keep piling up

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Last night's Pop Offensive, the first to be recorded entirely underwater (or so the above photo would have you believe), once again delivered an eclectic mix of danceable ditties from across the globe, bouncing from Oslo to Saigon, Sarajevo to Tokyo, Rome to Dublin, and back again to the good old USA. If you'd like to hear for yourself, the episode is now available for streaming from the 9th Floor Radio site. You can also peruse the playlist on the Pop Offensive Facebook page. Enjoy!

This Tuesday: The Kommissar's in town--and the 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down has him!

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The Kommissar X films stand out from the vast ocean of 1960s Eurospy films by just being a whole lot of goofy fun. Keith of Teleport City and I share an obsession with them that has resulted in us reviewing near every damn one of them. And now I'm proud to announce that Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill, the first of the Kommissar X films, will be the subject of this week's upcoming Monthly Movie Shout Down. Join us on Twitter, using the hashtag #4DKMSD, at 6pm PT sharp to tweet along to this colorful concatenation of femmebots, space age lairs, sharp suited sharpies, outlandish stunts, and diabolical gadgets. Oh, and lots of grade 'A', 60s secret agent smarm, as the trailer below demonstrates.



Tonight! The 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down goes spy high with KISS KISS, KILL KILL!

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There is nothing I could say about Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill, or the Kommissar X series of Eurospy films, that this poster doesn't say already. Seriously, you can literally smell the awesome. Or, well, some of us can smell it. If that's you, I beseech you to join the Shout Down crew and I tonight at 6pm PT to tweet along to this gem using the handy YouTube link below. Don't forget to use the hashtag #4DKMSD.

We laughed, we loved, we kissed, we killed.

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Last night's tweet-along to Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill ushered the 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down crew into a whole new world; a world where a woman's hair could only be either purple or margarine yellow, where unctuous innuendo stood in for charm, and New York policemen lead ravaging armies of milkmen across the capitals of Europe. To gauge our reactions for yourself, simply refer to the Storified transcript linked below.

The 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down: Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill on Storify

Friday's best pop song ever

Friday's best pop song ever

The Virgin Goddess (Argentina/South Africa, 1974)

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Helmed by Dirk De Villiers, a South African director of prolific output but little renown outside his home country, The Virgin Goddess is proof that Argentinian sex bomb Isabel Sarli was more than just a buxom puppet in the hands of her director paramour Armando Bo. Don’t assume, however, that Bo was not close at hand. He shares a co-production credit on the film and also appears in a supporting role. Furthermore, his son, Victor Bo, plays the male lead. Victor, I should mention, would go on to give Armando Bo a grandson, also named Armando Bo, who would grow up to share screenwriting credit on Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Oscar nominated film Birdman. And thus is a membrane-thin veneer of contemporary relevance laboriously attained.

Like so many jungle adventures before it, The Virgin Goddess begins in a modern city, that pinnacle achievement of man in all of his so called “civilization” (but are we really so civilized… ARE WE?). Here, a flinty adventurer—appropriately named Flint and played by director De Villiers himself—regales a table full of sophisticated gentlemen with the story of his latest adventure—in a manner so putatively captivating that, before he is done, the entirety of the patrons and wait staff of the bar they are in has gathered around their table.

Interestingly, Flint’s tale requires a preamble that starts in 1495. It seems a certain, beautiful, monster-titted noblewoman (Sarli) was making a treacherous passage by schooner when a violent storm lead to her being washed up in picturesque dishabille on the shore of some unknown African land (the film was shot in Kruger Park, one of South Africa’s largest game reserves). Because everything that gets left in the jungle—cigarette lighters, old copies of the New Yorker, Jell-O molds—ends up being elevated to the level of a deity, the natives waste no time in scooping Sarli up and making a goddess out of her. And it is at this point that we get the first of many, many travelogue style scenes of natives dancing around and chanting. This provides for lots of National Geographic style nudity, which takes the onus off Sarli, who apparently had some kind of Amy Yip clause in her contract.


Sarli is taken under the wing of the village witch doctor, Makulu (Jimmy Sabe) who acts as her Henry Higgins in terms of teaching her the ins and outs of being a rain goddess. Soon her fevered undulations bring rain. The crops thrive and the village prospers. Meanwhile, Makulu himself has become hoodoo’d by Sarli’s overflowing charms and demands that she become his bride. She refuses, and he puts a curse on her: she will live forever, as will he, as long as she remains a virgin. Makulu, it seems, is running the whole show here, and does so with an iron fist. When a young warrior named Gampu (Ken Gampu) attempts to assassinate him, he ends up being run out of the village and goes into hiding.

The Virgin Goddess is an odd film. Its dialogue is a mix of both spoken and dubbed English and Swahili (and to add to the linguistic chaos, the version I watched had Spanish subtitles). It also, especially in comparison to what Armando Bo—whose mania for Sarli’s attributes seemingly robbed him of all restraint—might have done with this kind of material, comes across as sort of… sedate. The pace is slow but measured, and there is an overall hush that reminds one of those old documentaries where the filmmakers spoke in whispers for fear of riling the natives or causing a rhino stampede. It doesn’t help that, whenever De Villiers cuts to a shot of the surrounding wildlife, the animals appear as if they are about to collapse from boredom.


Like her animal co-stars, the usually lusty Sarli also appears anesthetized, laying back complacently as the natives worship her and carry her around on a palanquin—admittedly, as she well might. It takes the intervention of civilized man, that notorious ruiner of everything, to finally bring her back to her old self. This comes in the form of an exploration party comprised of Flint, handsome devil Mark (Victor Bo), financier Hans (Armando Bo), and Eric (James Ryan), a mustached Chuck Negron look-alike who provides the gratuitous folk music.

The Virgin Goddess does not do a very good job of letting us in on when it has transitioned from the 15th century to the present day, so it comes as a bit of a surprise when Gampu, the outcast warrior previously seen only in flashback, steps forward to offer his services as guide to the explorers. From here, the standard retinue of jungle perils and treacheries commences, as naggingly familiar as the morning alarm clock. Eric reveals himself to be the coward of the group and is killed by a leopard while making an ill-advised run for it. Hans is the backstabbing turncoat, and is fatally bitten by vigilant cobras while trying to steal the tribe’s treasure for himself. Mark is handsome, and immediately falls for Sarli once he spies her fondling her own boobs in the local watering hole. This fateful encounter sets the stage for the cataclysmic fuck that will end the film in a hail of volcanic ash and toppling huts (spoiler).


The Virgin Goddess is not boring, even though it feels as though it should be boring. It is instead mesmerizing; mainly for the oddly somnolent approach it takes to material that, in other hands, would provide for a lot of bombast. Dirk De Villiers, it must be said, is no Armando Bo—and I am startled to find myself admitting that Bo’s over-the-top approach was missed here. Because of that, I will deem The Virgin Goddess a must-see only for Sarli completists, of which the desire-perverting tendencies of the internet guarantees there are some. Others, looking for an introduction to this unique star/director combo, would do best to check out the previously reviewed Fuego. Now that’s a picture, people!
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