It has been a while since I saw this film (at the now gone Cinéma Du Nord in Brussels) but I do remember as one of the most radical and beautiful adult film experiences of my entire life. The huge theater, nearly empty but for myself and a few other lost souls, was forever shrouded in darkness, even when the lights came on, a few dim bulbs right at the entrance which somehow managed to leave most of the area in comforting obscurity. How fitting for this downbeat masterpiece dealing with the darkness within man's soul to be screened here.
The credited director, Richard Mahler (HER NAME WAS LISA and MIDNIGHT HEAT are additional porn classics to his name), is actually Roger Watkins as has recently been revealed in both magazines and on the net, the man responsible for the ultra-disturbing LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET. It somehow figures...
Genre stalwart Jamie Gillis heads the cast as a man involved in a business deal with some very shady mafia types who will not hesitate at threatening or hurting both his family and friends to assure his full cooperation. He enters a seemingly disused building where he is guided through a number of color-coded rooms, witnessing some pretty strange goings-on. Some of these things are decidedly sexual in nature yet devoid of love or any recognizable human emotion. Like the viewer, Gillis is drawn in, fascinated by the coldly erotic display, wondering what it all means. His no good lowlife brother (the late Bobby Astyr in a career best performance) seems at least in part responsible for the deterioration of his perfect, successful life. His wife's sexy young sister (the radiant Kelly Nichols) is kidnapped, subsequently raped, or is she ? The last tableau at the old building is a necrophilia number, the ultimate fusion of love and death, Eros and Thanatos. There are no answers, easy or otherwise...
If this summary comes across as disjointed, then this is both because I don't want to give too much away and because that is actually pretty much how the film progresses. Think David Lynch in LOST HIGHWAY mode. Though Watkins has since established a link between Wagner's RHEINGOLD and this movie, this still leaves the field for interpretation wide open. Unique for an adult film, this is the kind of cinematic experience that would require a blowtorch to be erased from the mind's eye. Every single indelible image is perfectly composed. Music is employed hauntingly. This is the Underworld, where even sex offers no refuge. Enter at your own peril...
