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Au Pair Girls (1972) Directed by Val Guest



Show me a '70's sex comedy that's actually a good one. I have yet to see one, since this one is just as trashy, random, simplistic and unappealing as all of the other ones, that I have seen so far.

I actually know Val Guest as a pretty respectable director. He was one of the first directors to take the science-fiction genre serious with his 'Quatermass' movies. Never knew he did movies such as this one as well, later in his career. Oh well, guess everybody needs to eat and pay the bills, so it isn't all that strange or uncommon for him to work on a sex comedy as well, seeing how popular these type of movies were, back in the '70's. And it's not like these type of movies come close to porn or anything. They are more harmless and silly than anything else really. That doesn't mean that they are good to watch as well though.

All of these movies are basically the same and all that they are about are about a bunch of people who are constantly busy trying to get into each others pants. It's all very random and silly to watch silly and all of the different plot lines are hardly connected at all and none of them are very well written. It's all too simplistic and predictable to watch, despite of its randomness.

Besides, not all of the characters are really likable enough and yes, it's also a pretty offensive movie toward women, especially in today's perspective of course. In order to advance in life and achieve things, all of the female characters in this movie have to use their sexuality and the male characters in this movie also happily use them as sex objects. Not exactly a female empowering movie but then again, I doubt many females are going to have much interest in this movie in the first place. It's clearly aimed toward men and it uses every opportunity to show some female nudity.

But really, it's not like this is a very graphic movie, with hot steamy sex scenes in it. Most of the sexuality actually still comes from all of the movie its sexual innuendos and believe me, the movie is movie is filled to the brim with it, from pretty much the first minute till the last.

While some of its comedy is good, most of it is actually quite lame and unfunny. It has everything to do with the fact that the movie is such a predictable one and you can see the punchlines coming from miles away already.

Too random, trashy, silly, simplistic for my liking.

4/10

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Mangiati vivi! (1980) Directed by Umberto Lenzi



(Review originally written at 22 March 2007)

This is a pretty decent attempt to mix horror with adventure. The story itself is quite solid and interesting but the way it is told at times really doesn't make this the best movie in its genre.

The movie begins promising and it takes its time to build up things. The movie remains perfectly mysterious until it becomes clear that this is a movie about cannibalism. The gloves are off then and the story rapidly becomes sillier and sillier.

The movie gets an extremely bad story-flow and some sequences just don't add up to each other. It provides the movie with some many silly laughable bad moments. Nevertheless the movie still has more than enough redeeming qualities to consider this a decent one.

The cannibalism sequences are pretty brutal and graphic to watch, though they same very random and perhaps also a bit too forced in the movie but its definitely enough and good enough all the please the fans. There also are many gruesome scene's involving animals eating each other or getting cut open by the locals. Also many of the other Italian genre elements are present, including next to its graphic sequences, lots of nudity and sex

The acting isn't much good and the dubbing is even worse. Robert Kerman thinks that he is the new Indiana Jones. Also the characters must have looked interesting on paper but don't ever fully work out in the movie, including its main villain played by Ivan Rassimov, that really showed some potential.

The settings are quite nice and they know to create a good atmosphere for the movie. Surprising to see that this movie was filmed at places all over the world (Niagra Falls, New York City, Sri Lanka). Surprising because normally Italian horror movies aren't known for having an high budget. The music on the other hand is horrible, which we are accustomed to from the genre.

Watchable enough but obviously for genre-fans only.

6/10

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