Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

To be perfectly honest, the best thing about 9 Lives of Wet Pussy is its title. While it may cause one to blush when saying it out loud or even typing it out (speaking for myself here, despite my consumption of these movies I'm actually a bit of a prude in real life), there's no denying it's a great title for a porno movie. I've seen it listed sometimes as 9 Lives of a Wet Pussycat, and that last syllable is a cowardly half measure. (The original intended title before the producers forced a change was Nothing Sacred, which gives the movie too much credit for any transgressive qualities it might have, and is also not nearly as good. Sometimes the money men are right.) This is also notable for being the feature film directorial debut of Abel Ferrara, who is joined by his recurring collaborators Nicholas St. John (who wrote the screenplay and plays a chauffeur) and Joe Delia, as well as Francis Delia (who would go on to direct Nightdreams, one of my favourites in the genre) as director of photography.

The movie itself is executed with a certain amount of style and has a great, eclectic soundtrack by Joe Delia and some nifty sound design, but rarely achieves the dreamlike quality it seems to be aiming for, and doesn't feel a whole lot like Ferrara's better known (and better) work. In that sense, it invites comparisons with The Violation of Claudia, the surprisingly elegant directorial debut of William Lustig, another director best known for grimy, pre-clean-up violence-filled hellhole New York movies (Maniac, Vigilante). I think Lustig's movie is quite a bit better, as it has a nicely sympathetic Sharon Mitchell performance at the centre, seems a bit more inspired in the conception of its sex scenes, and has an actual narrative and character arc holding it together. Here, the movie is basically a string of sex scenes recounted by the heroine (played by Ferrara's girlfriend at the time, Pauline LaMonde, who has no other credits on IMDb) to her jealous lesbian friend through some extremely descriptive letters. If there's supposed to be some sort of tension or narrative momentum here, I must have missed it, although I suppose if I was getting unsolicited stories of sexual encounters via snail mail from my friends, I'd be pretty annoyed too.

I was indifferent to most of the sex scenes, but I want to bring two of them up, and not positively. There's one especially ugly scene involving the heroine's black girlfriend, a Nigerian princess, introduced disparagingly by the lesbian friend, is raped in a stairwell. I understand that '70s pornos can have a tenuous relationship with the idea of consent even outside the roughie genre, but I was a bit disquieted that the movie reserved its most demeaning treatment for the most prominent black character. The other one is a scene featuring Ferrara himself, who claims he had to step in front of the camera after the original actor apparently couldn't perform. (The scene is shot in way where it's unclear if it's really him in the more explicit footage.) Ferrara plays the Polish immigrant great grandfather of the heroine, desperately trying to hide his thick Noo Yawk accent and ending up with some weird Brando imitation in the process. Likely realizing his performance was lacking credibility, Ferrara wisely spends the rest of the scene unconscious while the heroine's grandmother and her sister take advantage of him. Incest is another trope in Golden Age porn that I find bafflingly widespread, but this is definitely the funniest example I've seen.

__________________

Cowards!

On a side note, I rewatched King of New York this week.





R.I.P. King Tito, who was killed over a can of soda.

I understand that Miracles was Jackie Chan's attempt at prestige picture, gunning for the Hong Kong Film Awards he felt he'd been overlooked for in the past. When we think of the Hollywood equivalent, it brings to mind some unfavourable associations, suggesting a leaden, self important quality. But that couldn't be further from the truth here, as Chan displays a lightness of touch totally absent from the worst examples that come to mind when one brings up prestige pictures. I'd previously assumed that Lau Kar Leung was largely responsible for the relative tonal cohesion of Drunken Master II, as Chan's other efforts I'd seen up to now felt more concerned with individual moments than in how they complemented each other, but based on this, I suspect Chan had a bigger hand in devising the overall tone of that film than I'd previously given him credit for.

The story starts off Jackie narrowly avoiding death after buying a rose for good luck from a poor flower seller and unintentionally becoming a mob boss after getting caught in a gunfight. Mob-related shenanigans ensue, until Jackie decides to help the flower seller by setting up an elaborate con to impress her daughter, her daughter's fiance, and his father. (And yes, I'm now calling him Chan when speaking of him as a director and Jackie when speaking of him as a performer. It's too confusing otherwise.) Because this is a comedy, the con threatens to go awry at every possible opportunity, and much of the humour comes from the thuggish methods Jackie's goons employ (kidnapping, intimidation) to essentially carry out this good deed. Playing a '30s gangster, Jackie gets to wear a lot of fancy suits and does most of his fight scenes in suspenders, and sports maybe his best haircut ever (or at least one of his only good ones). There's plenty of classic Jackie shtick, although I winced a bit more frequently as the period-appropriate props getting destroyed looked more expensive than usual, but a lot of the fun comes from the well balanced cast. Joining Jackie for the fun are Anita Mui as the underappreciated nightclub singer whose expensive-looking dress Jackie tears systematically while pleading with her to stay, Wu Ma as Jackie's advisor who gives him highly questionable advice at every opportunity, Bill Tung as the inveterate ripoff artist employed to play the flower seller's husband, and Richard Ng as an incompetent cop who has a series of near mishaps in Jackie's office in one of the funniest sequences in the movie. There are also a ton of cameos, including even the "fried rice" guy from A Better Tomorrow II. If one must quibble with a casting choice, it's that the movie stars Lieh Lo but doesn't let him fight Jackie at the end.

The most common complaint I've seen brought up about this is the runtime. At 127 minutes, it's longer than any of his other movies that I've seen. It also isn't as action packed as some of his more beloved efforts, but Chan makes up for it with some pretty ambitious comedy direction. The movie takes place in Hong Kong in the '30s, which it depicts with meticulous art direction and a sense of controlled chaos. It has the feeling of a living, breathing setting, as opposed to the more stagey mise-en-scene of Shaw Brothers productions set in the same period. (Not a knock on the latter as I quite enjoy those, but I think of them less in terms of their specific settings than an overarching studio aesthetic.) The camera moves are increasingly complex, a mixture of bold steadicam work (Chan apparently insisted on learning how to operate the rig himself) and elaborate crane moves (he imported the equipment from Hollywood as it wasn't available in Hong Kong). Are these for showmanship? Probably a little (and a few of the steadicam shots bring to mind the famous one from Goodfellas, if without the same thematic resonance), but they're also marvels of visual storytelling and comedic staging. Take one crane shot through a nightclub under renovation and see how many comedic asides Chan sneaks in, using the movement of the camera to complement the timing. Or notice the way the moving camera ties into the beats of the lavishly staged musical montage. And lest you think he's forgotten about the action, Chan caps off the movie with a maddeningly complex fight set in a rope factory, featuring the usual fast-paced Jackie-vs-everybody-and-all-props-are-fair-game dynamic but in a set that moves like a giant Rube Goldberg machine. I understand that Miracles is Chan's favourite of his own efforts, and it's easy to see why.

Is there a message here? I think so, and it's surprisingly cynical. Hong Kong is depicted as a corrupt, unkind place, with Jackie getting immediately ripped off as soon as he arrives. What good is done in the film is largely achieved through lies and corruption, while law enforcement is either incompetent or undermined from above. But I'd hate to make this seem like a downer. This is a complete delight from beginning to end. These days I think a lot about spending time in movies as opposed to getting through them, and with the delicate comedic tone and intricate direction, this is a great example of that concept. Is it a little long? Sure, but that just means more time to hang out with Jackie and friends.

A bit of a personal milestone: I had a short piece about Jess Franco's
Doriana Gray published in an online magazine. I've never had anything
get published in the past so I'm pretty excited that I was able to do
this. Hope you enjoy.

https://inthemoodmagazine.com/issue-3-film-diaries/

Good job!

Congratulations! I haven’t gotten around to any Franco films yet, but he’s been on my radar for awhile.

Tread cautiously. He's got a couple of semi-legitimate (and fairly good) films in the beginning. And then the wheels fall off (which is where it actually gets kind of interesting, but mostly really really terrible)

Congrats, Rock!

Thanks guys!

Crumb's advice is sound. I think Vampyros Lesbos is probably the best place to start, as it features his best qualities in a relatively slick package. The Soledad Miranda performance helps too. Doriana Gray is probably not an immediate priority (for one thing, it's quite a bit more explicit) but worth checking out once you've dipped your toes in a little.


That being said, the best way to approach his career as a whole is to understand that he returns to a handful of themes and images almost obsessively, making most of his films variations on each other. Think of how Napalm Death's first two records repurpose the same handful of riffs, tweaking them slightly each time, so that they complement each other when taken as a whole. Obviously watching his entire filmography is a big undertaking, but he's one of those directors who is easier to appreciate the more you see from him. The difference between a good and bad Franco is less in terms of craftsmanship than in how they move (the good ones are nice and fluid, the bad ones are leaden and static), at least from my experience. I am far from an expert though (I am taking the tortoise approach of getting through his work; also some of it looks unwatchable so will probably avoid a big chunk of his filmography).



I came across an article summarizing his different eras and the highlights from each, will share it if I can dig it up.

9 Lives of a Wet Pussy is on Mubi. Lol

LOLOLOL


(It's not even that good, tbh.)

Found it.



And while I'm at it, I'll recommend the episodes on Franco from the Important Cinema Club, where the hosts use Stephen Thrower's books as a guide for their own exploration. I listen to this podcast fairly regularly and these are two of their best episodes.



Episode 1


Episode 2

Oh, no! And I cancelled my trial. *tear*

Don't worry guys, it's still available on other... "streaming services"...

Also on a Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. Doing the Lord's work.

That's where I started and everybody knows I'm a fan.

I need to give Jess Franco another shot. I can't even remember what films of his that I watched, only that my impression of was that he was like if Jean Rollin couldn't keep his camera focused.