are—should elicit satisfied grunts from prurient- minded patrons, but this glossily-photographed, mindless sex spoof is definitely no “art” picture, and bleak word-of-mouth can be expected from sophisticated audiences. Nicolo Ferrari and Ottavio Lemma’s dull-witted
screenplay has the demure, newly-widowed Miss Spaak shocked to discover that her husband kept an elaborate, mirrored Fornicatorium, where he in- dulged his somewhat offbeat sexual proclivities. “It’s incredible,” she gasps. “I lived three years with a sex maniac and didn’t even know it!” Fed up with her pious image and a little put out that she was never invited to any of her husband’s sessions, she takes to reading Krafft-Ebbing, interspersed with the se- duction of as many men as possible, including a suave sadist, an overweight masochist, an uninter- ested tennis player and the family dentist, among others. Finally she meets and falls in love with quiet radiologist Jean-Louis Trintignant, remarking that “At last things are beginning to happen, slowly but surely”—which about sums up the entire picture. Directed with a heavy hand by Pasquale Festa
Campanile, the sluggishly paced events are seldom amusing and never funny. Further hampered by a tiresome use of voice-over, with Miss Spaak inces- santly anticipating the other characters’ next moves, the film plods doggedly on, through her attempts to prove she’s not good enough for him, on to his destruction of her sex lair and spanking her to con- vince her to marry him, and finally to the revelation of Miss Spaak’s own ultimate hang-up: she finds her thrill from having Trintignant play “horsie” for her, riding her around on his back. The arty pro- duction veneer and Alfio Contini’s slick photogra- phy only detract from what was obviously intended as a sexploitation item, and it takes a lot of wading through shots of out-of-focus foreground objects to get to the steamy parts, while the attempt at a humorous approach is mostly only embarrassing. Although there are a few incidental felicities, such as a huge macro-lens close-up of a bejeweled beetle crawling across Miss Spaak’s nipple, the net effect is one of tedium, making THE LIBERTINE essen- tially a diversion for the most patient sexploitation audiences. English dubbing of the version under review is passable. The film is also available in a subtitled version. Color processing is variable.
1969. La matriarca. Audubon Films. Eastman Color [1.85:1]. 90 minutes. Catherine Spaak, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Luigi Proietti, Fabienne Dali. Produced by Silvio Clementelli. Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile.
We reviewed First Run Features’ domestic VHS release of THE LIBERTINE in VW 45:14. It has since been issued by the same company on DVD.
16
NO BLADE OF GRASS
Nightmarish chiller depicts state of world when virus spreads famine and terror, with people killing to survive. Overdone, but nonetheless powerful. With strong sell, this can be exploited to lure both thinking and action-minded audiences. Rated R.
This is the bleakly plausible premise of NO
BLADE OF GRASS, an unrelentingly grim, ulti- mately harrowing “warning” about the conse- quences of a near-future ecological disaster: a strange virus destroys the crops of the world; starv- ing millions in populous centers succumb to wide- spread looting, murder, anarchy and even cannibalism; desperate governments declare martial law and some go so far as to drop nerve gas on cities to contain the rioting and reduce the population, merely provoking more panic and distrust in outlying areas. The subject could hardly be more timely, or more grippingly portrayed, and the British-made MGM release holds considerable potential for the aware audience, young and old, while also featuring enough raw violence and hor- rific sensationalism to register as a first-rate ex- ploitation entry for action and sci-fi fans. Hard-sell of the topical-thriller aspects could produce tre- mendous response nationally. That in the end this nightmarish item seems
thoughtful and disturbing, rather than simply bru- talizing, is largely due to the obvious sincerity of producer-director Cornel Wilde. Although NO BLADE OF GLASS nearly falls victim to the melo- dramatic overkill that marred his anti-war BEACH RED, and despite an unnecessarily tricky approach combining flashbacks, montages, narration, fran- tic zoom shots and negative images, Wilde’s film succeeds as an impassioned message picture. Its logical progression of events is so inherently pow- erful that the occasional stylistic crudities and constant repetition of shots of dead animals, purple water and belching smokestacks eventu- ally work to the film’s advantage, lending a straight- forward doomsday air to the proceedings. As British society begins to crumble, London
architect Nigel Davenport sets out with his family (wife Jean Wallace, schoolboy son Nigel Rathbone, teenage daughter Lynne Frederick and her bio- chemist boyfriend John Hamill) to reach his brother’s isolated north country farm. Early on, the wife and daughter are violently raped by ma- rauding looters and Davenport shoots them on the spot, with Miss Wallace stonily blasting one of
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