Sexuality | Cagey Films

Murder, mayhem, sex and madness from Arrow

Posted on July 27, 2022July 26, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

The respectable doctor finds ecstasy in unrestrained violence in Gérard Kikoïne’s Edge of Sanity (1989)

Two new Arrow releases – and one older one – plunge into sexual confusion, insecurity, violence and romantic longing: Robert Day’s TV movie The Initiation of Sarah (1977) riffs on themes from Stephen King’s Carrie; Gérard Kikoïne’s Edge of Sanity (1989) gives Anthony Perkins a chance to unleash his inner demons in a career-topping dual performance as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and Kathleen Turner is fearless as a businesswoman who moonlights as a prostitute inspires romantic passion in one man and murderous passion in another, the latter another ferocious, jittery performance from Anthony Perkins.

The low-budget art of Edgar G. Ulmer

Posted on July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Enid Elliot (Margaret Field) has a close encounter in Edgar G. Ulmer's The Man from Planet X (1951)

A pair of recent Blu-rays from Kino Lorber bookend the career of “King of the Bs” Edgar G. Ulmer, who began his off-Hollywood career with a social issues drama about syphilis called Damaged Lives (1933) and ended it with a pair of cheap sci-fi movies, The Amazing Transparent Man and Beyond the Time Barrier (both 1960), with one of the highlights between being The Man from Planet X (1951), the latter three included in KL’s Edgar G, Ulmer Sci-Fi Collection triple-bill.

Early winter viewing, part 2

Posted on January 12, 2022January 9, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

A Chinese demon possesses a New York businessman in Barry Rosen's Devil's Express (1976)

I continue my cold-weather plunge into the cheap, cheesy and outre depths of exploitation, finding a few gems among the dross of low-budget horror, science fiction, fantasy and comedy, ending up with an unsettling documentary about someone who devoted his life to filmmaking at the expense of everything including his identity.

Early winter viewing, part 1

Posted on December 29, 2021December 26, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Mrs. Johnson (Soledad Miranda) stalks and kills the people she blames for her husband's death in Jess Franco's She Killed in Ecstasy (1970)

As the winter turns cold, I take another plunge into the depths of horror, exploitation, sex and death with a range of releases which vary widely in style and nationality. I just can’t stay away from this stuff – maybe I need therapy?

Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on September 29, 2021September 28, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Martin von Essenbeck (Helmut Berger) provides entertainment at a family gathering in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969)

Criterion’s new Blu-ray presents Luchino Visconti’s darkly perverse The Damned in a new 2K restoration whose dense colours emphasize the gloom hanging over a powerful German industrial family collapsing under the weight of its own decadence as the Nazis consolidate their political power in the early 1930s.

Sex in Movies: narrative interruptus

Posted on August 10, 2016July 20, 2019 by Kenneth George Godwin

Michael feels a crushing weight of sadness in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa (2015)

Sex runs through the history of the movies as both spectacle and disrupter of narrative; Russ Meyer reveled in it, while Charlie Kaufman finds in sex poignant emotional depths.

The pleasures of transgression

Posted on June 8, 2016November 18, 2020 by Kenneth George Godwin

Ewa Aulin on display in coy good taste in Christian Marquand's Candy (1968)

Two recent disks present transgressive sexuality from very different perspectives: Christian Marquand’s Candy is a glossy big budget production packed with star power, while Curt McDowell’s Thundercrack! is a scrappy underground epic.

The Lure of Paradise

Posted on January 15, 2014March 26, 2016 by Kenneth George Godwin

If I had watched Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy a few weeks earlier, these three films would have made it into my year-end post as one of 2013’s highlights. I first encountered Seidl’s work (the documentary Animal Love and drama Dog Days) around the same time I came across Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher and Time […]

Tag: Sexuality