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The movie opens with a fairly awkward sex scene while the ballgame is playing on TV. It looks a tad one-sided, to put it tactfully, something confirmed moments later when the woman corrects the man when he tries to cheer her up. They didn’t make love, she insists, “you just masturbated inside of me.” Ouch. The man and woman are husband and wife. The wife suspects the husband is having an affair. The husband, a psychiatrist, is eager to get to a party, the host of which is his close friend, whose wife with whom he is indeed having an affair. (Or was. “An affair is not like a marriage. It ends.” This is said moments after he calls her a “cock-stirring sight.”) This husband, on top of being a lousy friend and lousy husband, later wears a denim sportcoat, is audibly disgusted when crab meat and sour cream is served as hors d’oeuvres, announces that he’ll be delivering a lecture on breasts, and eventually declares himself as the world’s worst psychiatrist when he tells someone “Right now I think you need a man’s body next to you, more than all the therapy in the world.” Anyway, back at the party, his friend tries to talk him into offering his services to his wife’s stepsister, who’s been staying with them for weeks but hasn’t said a peep. This character, played by Tara Chung, is the main character.
Indeed, this character doesn’t say a word until around a third into the movie. After the party, she packs up and retreats to a beach house, where she spends the rest of the movie. She’s not the only one here. A repairman (Michael Gaunt) shows up, initially as a sympathetic presence, although things don’t pan out. A nosy neighbour drops by, alarmed that all the lights are on (”Haven’t you heard about the energy crisis?”), but her presence is not well received. A couple spots the house from a boat and thinks it would be a great location for a tryst ( “It looks like all the lights are on.” “No, no, that’s just an optical illusion.” “I’ve never made love in a deserted house before.” “It is rather kinky, isn’t it?”) and…let’s just say if I found strangers ****ing in my house, I’d be pretty pissed too. In between all of this, we cut back to the two couples, who drunkenly sing “Beer Barrel Polka”, fight, ****, and worry about the poor stepsister all alone in that beach house. Eventually, the psychiatrist decides to drop by to check in on her, and I won’t spoil what happens exactly, but let’s just say it involves an ashtray resting on one’s navel while wearing a speedo, as well as the marvelous advice I mentioned above.
A Woman’s Torment is a pretty strange movie. On one hand, it’s pretty obviously a pornographic take on Repulsion. On the other hand, it keeps cutting back to the domestic squabbles, which play like a sitcom about bad marriages or a parody of a soap opera. It’s an odd fit conceptually, and Roberta Findlay’s direction is not the smoothest, but the contrast between the film’s different textures makes it cinematically compelling. I was unimpressed by the one other film I’d seen by Findlay, The Oracle, but while this shares a similar artificiality in style and crude scenes of horror (candy red blood and disjointed editing figure in both), the notes of soap opera and pornographic content make this feel dynamic in ways that movie didn’t. This also has the benefit of an evocative location in the coastal beach house setting, which provides an eerily calm counterpoint to the violence, sex and melodramatics. It brings to mind the use of similar locations in such films as J.S. Cardone’s The Slayer and Agnes Varda’s Documenteur, and the three films might make an interesting triple feature.
The movie gets much of its power from Tara Chung’s performance. It’s not a good one, exactly, but her presence is ungainly and distinct enough to carry the movie. If it feels more like a disjointed collection of tics than a complete performance, that’s because Chung ran off with a gaffer in the middle the production, leaving Findlay to stitch together her character from the available footage and even stepping in to put on a dress and a wig and play the role during a murder scene. I don’t think the movie is worse off as a result, and Walter Sear’s soundtrack, full of distorted voices and dissonant sounds, also helps put us in her fraught, unstable headspace. There’s also some comic relief courtesy of Jake Teague as the psychiatrist and Marlene Willoughby as the neighbour, who go all in on the respective bozo and dowdy qualities of their characters. I’ve said enough about Teague’s character, but my favourite moment of Willoughby’s is when he takes off her shoes and dumps sand all over a table and then chastises the main character for being a poor housekeeper. (“You’re not very neat, are you, dear?”) This is after stealing a lightbulb.
The film exists in both softcore and hardcore versions. I suspect the former is Findlay’s preferred cut, as she notably found shooting hardcore sex scenes to be distasteful. (Her trick for getting through them? Grab a telephoto lens, find a halfway interesting angle and move the camera up and down until you’ve eaten enough runtime.) Some of the sex scenes here are indeed shot in a pretty perfunctory manner, and the softcore version also has the benefit of added story elements and dialogue scenes, the highlight of which in my opinion would be a moment where Robert Kerman discusses Fellini in a brief cameo. (I’m beginning to develop a similar affection for golden age hardcore that I have for Italian horror, where the mere presence of certain regulars brings me some joy. Kerman benefits doubly given his work in both industries.) Yet I can’t deny that the explicitness of the hardcore footage gives the themes of sexual repression a certain charge, and Chung’s scenes in particular carry a real tension thanks to the instability of her performance. The ideal version of this movie would keep her sex scenes in their full, explicit form and trim the others (and of course keep the Kerman dialogue). As is, either version is still well worth your time.
A Woman's Torment (Findlay, 1977)
The movie opens with a fairly awkward sex scene while the ballgame is playing on TV. It looks a tad one-sided, to put it tactfully, something confirmed moments later when the woman corrects the man when he tries to cheer her up. They didn’t make love, she insists, “you just masturbated inside of me.” Ouch. The man and woman are husband and wife. The wife suspects the husband is having an affair. The husband, a psychiatrist, is eager to get to a party, the host of which is his close friend, whose wife with whom he is indeed having an affair. (Or was. “An affair is not like a marriage. It ends.” This is said moments after he calls her a “cock-stirring sight.”) This husband, on top of being a lousy friend and lousy husband, later wears a denim sportcoat, is audibly disgusted when crab meat and sour cream is served as hors d’oeuvres, announces that he’ll be delivering a lecture on breasts, and eventually declares himself as the world’s worst psychiatrist when he tells someone “Right now I think you need a man’s body next to you, more than all the therapy in the world.” Anyway, back at the party, his friend tries to talk him into offering his services to his wife’s stepsister, who’s been staying with them for weeks but hasn’t said a peep. This character, played by Tara Chung, is the main character.
Indeed, this character doesn’t say a word until around a third into the movie. After the party, she packs up and retreats to a beach house, where she spends the rest of the movie. She’s not the only one here. A repairman (Michael Gaunt) shows up, initially as a sympathetic presence, although things don’t pan out. A nosy neighbour drops by, alarmed that all the lights are on (”Haven’t you heard about the energy crisis?”), but her presence is not well received. A couple spots the house from a boat and thinks it would be a great location for a tryst ( “It looks like all the lights are on.” “No, no, that’s just an optical illusion.” “I’ve never made love in a deserted house before.” “It is rather kinky, isn’t it?”) and…let’s just say if I found strangers ****ing in my house, I’d be pretty pissed too. In between all of this, we cut back to the two couples, who drunkenly sing “Beer Barrel Polka”, fight, ****, and worry about the poor stepsister all alone in that beach house. Eventually, the psychiatrist decides to drop by to check in on her, and I won’t spoil what happens exactly, but let’s just say it involves an ashtray resting on one’s navel while wearing a speedo, as well as the marvelous advice I mentioned above.
A Woman’s Torment is a pretty strange movie. On one hand, it’s pretty obviously a pornographic take on Repulsion. On the other hand, it keeps cutting back to the domestic squabbles, which play like a sitcom about bad marriages or a parody of a soap opera. It’s an odd fit conceptually, and Roberta Findlay’s direction is not the smoothest, but the contrast between the film’s different textures makes it cinematically compelling. I was unimpressed by the one other film I’d seen by Findlay, The Oracle, but while this shares a similar artificiality in style and crude scenes of horror (candy red blood and disjointed editing figure in both), the notes of soap opera and pornographic content make this feel dynamic in ways that movie didn’t. This also has the benefit of an evocative location in the coastal beach house setting, which provides an eerily calm counterpoint to the violence, sex and melodramatics. It brings to mind the use of similar locations in such films as J.S. Cardone’s The Slayer and Agnes Varda’s Documenteur, and the three films might make an interesting triple feature.
The movie gets much of its power from Tara Chung’s performance. It’s not a good one, exactly, but her presence is ungainly and distinct enough to carry the movie. If it feels more like a disjointed collection of tics than a complete performance, that’s because Chung ran off with a gaffer in the middle the production, leaving Findlay to stitch together her character from the available footage and even stepping in to put on a dress and a wig and play the role during a murder scene. I don’t think the movie is worse off as a result, and Walter Sear’s soundtrack, full of distorted voices and dissonant sounds, also helps put us in her fraught, unstable headspace. There’s also some comic relief courtesy of Jake Teague as the psychiatrist and Marlene Willoughby as the neighbour, who go all in on the respective bozo and dowdy qualities of their characters. I’ve said enough about Teague’s character, but my favourite moment of Willoughby’s is when he takes off her shoes and dumps sand all over a table and then chastises the main character for being a poor housekeeper. (“You’re not very neat, are you, dear?”) This is after stealing a lightbulb.
The film exists in both softcore and hardcore versions. I suspect the former is Findlay’s preferred cut, as she notably found shooting hardcore sex scenes to be distasteful. (Her trick for getting through them? Grab a telephoto lens, find a halfway interesting angle and move the camera up and down until you’ve eaten enough runtime.) Some of the sex scenes here are indeed shot in a pretty perfunctory manner, and the softcore version also has the benefit of added story elements and dialogue scenes, the highlight of which in my opinion would be a moment where Robert Kerman discusses Fellini in a brief cameo. (I’m beginning to develop a similar affection for golden age hardcore that I have for Italian horror, where the mere presence of certain regulars brings me some joy. Kerman benefits doubly given his work in both industries.) Yet I can’t deny that the explicitness of the hardcore footage gives the themes of sexual repression a certain charge, and Chung’s scenes in particular carry a real tension thanks to the instability of her performance. The ideal version of this movie would keep her sex scenes in their full, explicit form and trim the others (and of course keep the Kerman dialogue). As is, either version is still well worth your time.