Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

Film: House of Whipcord
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!.

There was a time in the 1960s when a particular brand of movie fan wanting a thrill looked for a particular genre known as the “nudie cutie,” which is exactly what you think it was. Those who didn’t get enough of a thrill from basic titillation went for the similar but different subgenre known as “roughies,” which featured all of the nudity with a lot more violence. What we get in a film like House of Whipcord is essentially a roughie with a lot less nudity. The plot, though, is essentially a “beautiful women behind bars” story, but without the sex. After all, we still need to be mildly respectable for the British public.

House of Whipcord will be about the plight of Ann-Marie Di Verney (Penny Irving), a At a gallery showing, she is shocked to discover that her photographer boyfriend is displaying a photo of her being arrested for public nudity, a crime for which she had to pay a small fine. Embarrassed by this, she dumps her boyfriend, but then immediately finds herself attracted to another partygoer, a guy named Mark (Robert Tayman).

Family (and) History

Film: House of the Long Shadows
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

So, I’m back. Last year for Christmas, my siblings and I decided to get our mom a trip that she’s always wanted. Three of us, including me, went with her to the coast of Maine, where it was very cold and a bit more expensive than I was prepared for. But, it was a nice trip and she enjoyed herself, which is really what was most important. That has meant that I haven’t been around—haven’t even looked at this blog—for almost two weeks, and also haven’t watched a movie in almost two weeks. That changed last night when I caught up with House of the Long Shadows.

This is one of those movies that attempts to pack in as many stars of the genre as it can. The classing House of Dracula did this with monsters; we got Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman, etc. House of the Long Shadows does this instead with classic actors of the Gothic horror genre and Hammer films. We’re going to get Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, John Carradine, and Christopher Lee stomping across the screen, and that in and of itself is enough to recommend the film. It’s a little sad, though, that they are doing this in service to Desi Arnaz Jr.

This is Why I Don't Trust the Clergy

Film: House of Mortal Sin (The Confessional)
Format: Internet video on the new internet machine.

I love when a movie or show seems to be prescient. I recently watched the Watchmen television show, which came out in 2019. Everyone in the show wears masks, and at one point, someone literally says the words, “Masks save lives.” So much of that show feels like it actually came out this year. House of Mortal Sin, also known as The Confessional has a bit of prescience in it as well. While it’s not the first film to have a wayward and cruel member of the clergy, it does very much feel like the first film to feature a clergyman who is both the villain of the story and who is clearly motivated by sexual frustration.

The film opens with the evident suicide of a young woman. We then meet Jenny Welch (Susan Penhaligon) almost being run down in the road by her old friend, Bernard Cutler (Norman Eshley). It turns out that Bernard is now Father Cutler and has been placed in this parish. Later that day, Jenny heads to the church, hoping to find Bernard in the confessional. Instead, the confessional is manned by Father Xavier Meldrum (Anthony Sharp). Jenny, unwilling for whatever reason to tell him the real reason she is there, instead confesses to problems with her boyfriend, and also to having had an abortion in months prior.