Any Body... Any Way

As one can derive the plot from the many previously posted messages here, I'll not address it in this post. Perhaps it's a girl/girl thing, or maybe I've just watched too many Harry Novak "classics," but I have to say that I found Joyce Danners to be the 'erotic anchor'of this film. I chose to watch this flick on the strength of her presence in the trailer. This red-headed vixen steals the movie with her measured speech and the deft way she somehow manages to blink under those hefty-looking false eyelashes. She's my hero-again, probably just a girl/girl thing. Though the rape scene and the character's subsequent reaction to being violated make this movie irritating at times, you gotta' love the fact that the lesbian character (joyce danner) 'takes care of her own business' after her advance are spurned. Danners could definitely benefit from the enhancement surgeries of today. Still, she's got a definite sex appeal, if you go for that sort.

This ultra-rare 1969 sex/thriller/horror film deserves immediate re-release and high-profile exposure. Directed by Charles Romine BLD is a tale of a spooky old house, the two girls who are trapped there, and the weirdos who inhabit it. "A palace of PLEASURE or a pit of PERVERSION?" screamed the voice-over, while two women who looked like they'd failed the audition for Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! were subjected to various tortures by a psychotic middle-aged brother and sister combo.

Behind Locked Doors is the tale of two female "swingers", Ann (Eve Reeves) and Terry (Joyce Denner). They go to parties, held in out-of-the-way barns apparently, and dance to bad lounge music. It is at one of these parties that they encounter gate-crasher Mr Bradley (Daniel Garth), an unattractive tubby man with thick glasses and a posh accent. He saves Ann from being raped in a hayloft, and later offers hospitality to the girls when their car mysteriously won't start.

My favourite character in the film is Mrs Bradley - a sadistic house-keeper with short greying hair who makes Mrs Danvers from Rebecca seem like Mother Theresa. Many of the film's best moments come from lingering close-ups of Mrs Bradley's evil face, Mrs Bradley listening at doors, Mrs Bradley with her whip! We want more Mrs Bradley!

The muscle-bound handyman (played by Ivan Hager) is one of the least perverted characters in the film - and that's saying something. And as this is a Harry Novak presentation, we have a lesbian subplot involving the two main characters and quite a bit of nudity, including a few unneccesary shots of Mr Bradley rubbing baby oil onto his lardy body (stop the horror!). He's been conducting these strange "experiments" you see, and like it or not, Ann and Terry are about to be recruited as his latest subjects. And if they make a fuss, they'll end up like the previous victims in the cellar...who in many ways are better actresses than our heroines - even though they aren't supposed to move or speak. I think that Mr Bradley is a good representative of this film's potential audience, where no doubt it was shown at the "Pussycat" or other similarly named flea-pit, where unattractive, bespectacled men fiddled for mints under their raincoats throughout the whole film. But oddly, this is more than simply sexploitation. Plot appears to be central, and little nudity is present. The majority of the violence is off-screen too. The film does have an interesting sound-track and occasionally makes good use of lighting. However, it seems a little short on props. Various bits of furniture keep turning up in different rooms, as the budget is stretched to its limits.

I also like the clothes that the girls wear throughout the film. Ann is dressed in a tacky black and white leopard print top with frills down the front, while Terry is forced to wear an ugly brown patterned sweater that's right out of a 1970s knitting pattern. No wonder the poor things keep taking their clothes off at every opportunity - you would too! Actually, the lesbian subplot is handled almost delicately (or perhaps I've just been desensitised by watching too many adverts for other Harry Novak films), and although it's clearly just there for a little bit of extra titillation for the raincoat brigade, at least it's resolved in a gentle way. Terry was not "punished" in the storyline for being attracted to Ann, and it's suggested that she's in a relationship with another woman at the end of the film. Ann, on the other hand seems content to go back to the man who wanted to rape her at the beginning. Rape isn't really handled very sensibly in the film. Both Terry and Ann are subjected to unwanted sexual encounters, which while they find rather distressing, they both seem to take a rather matter-of-fact attitude to it all. It's a case of "oh well, now it's my turn. I suppose you'd better get it over with if you must," beforehand. And then "Well, that wasn't much fun was it?" afterwards. Germaine Greer was probably not consulted on the script.

The suspension of (dis)belief is required throughout the film. Although much of the action is supposed to happen at night, it is always day outside. Are we really supposed to believe that the two girls wouldn't be able to get away from a fat middle-aged man and his frail-looking sister? Why are their attempts at escape so pathetic? Why does Ann seem in denial about the danger she's in one minute, and the next pushing Terry into making a run for it? And for that matter, why does she appear so sexually naive? If she's not going up into a hayloft with a potential rapist, she's suggesting to Terry that they undress to their underwear and get into bed together. Talk about mixed messages. And as for the final scenes - well, even you're able to discount all of the above, there are still a few suprises left, which defy explanation...

Still, for all its (many) flaws, this one goes under the genre of camp/cult classic. I'd like it to be revived, with audiences shouting the lines back at the screen, dressing as the central characters and acting out key scenes.

Having seen the Trailer for this film on other DVD releases from Something Weird, and knowing that the trailer usually has the best scenes from a film, I didn't have high expectations when I finally broke down and purchased the DVD. While far from a perfect film, it is competently made technically, which makes it watchable despite the glaring gaps in logic and the weak storyline. What really sells the film, though, is Garth's creepy portrayal of the wacko 'scientist' Dr. Bradley. I don't think he personally looks like Henry Kissinger, but if you ever had a itch that you could only scratch by imagining good ol' Henry rubbing his bare torso down in oil and getting his groove on, this is the place to look!

This film is long overdue for rediscovery! Apparently titled ANYBODY ANYWAY until Harry Novak got his hands on it, by any name it smells as sweet. The barn sequence at the beginning with its twenty minutes of grade "A" film library/go-go music (some of it recognizable from H.G.Lewis movies) is worth the price of admission alone. This is one politically incorrect film. From the adenoidal Mr. Bradley and his "love experiments" to the jaw-dropping "happy" ending, trash fans can not go wrong with this one. The tone is perfect--not too self-parodic, but definitely impossible to take seriously as it catalogs the various clichés of male fantasies that invariably appear in softcore films.

For a zero-budget indie film, "Behind Locked Doors" isn't half bad. The basic plot--about two city women who are abducted from a swinger's party in the country to become unwilling sex slaves-is actually pretty good.

The film's first 14 minutes get things rolling pretty fast: A group of 20-somethings dance and mingle in an abandoned barn deep in the middle of nowhere. One by one, the couples pare off and get it on in various haylofts. This sexy opening reaches its crescendo when the hottest guy at the party takes an interest in permanent virgin, Ann. Sequestered in a loft, he puts the moves on her but she resists hard enough to make Doris Day proud. This leads to a not-bad rape scene, which is interrupted when the film's weakest link, a bird-watching Henry Kissinger clone, arrives and whacks the poor stud with a pitchfork.

Having established himself as a good guy, the Kissinger clone leaves and then orders his hunky handyman (who gives off a major porn star vibe), to drain the gas from Ann's car, so she'll be forced to walk to his house and ask for help. This Ann does, along with her lesbian friend, which leads us to the film's dullest segment: a 20-minute sequence where we get to know the Kissinger clone (who is a mortician) and his improbable sister, while Ann and her pal get comfy in their room. Finally, the plot kicks in again, as the girls realize why the Kissinger clone tricked them into staying the night. Things pick up from there, with a couple of tame rape scenes and some genuinely creepy scenes in the spooky, cadaver-filled dungeon.

It's a shame the producer made some decisions which detract from the film's impact: casting a portly old Kissinger clone as a serial rapist, adding the wildly unlikely character of his sister helping (and even watching him) performing the rapes and a clumsily handled climactic scene in the dungeon. With just a few changes, this could have been a major underground classic. Imagine if instead of a bird-watching old mortician, you had a ruggedly handsome ex-con. If the little old lady sister character had been replaced by a two more cons who had escaped with the lead con and killed the inhabitants of the house, taking it for their own. If all three cons were having their ways with the captive women, before offing them. Much stronger, scarier and sexier!

It is what it is though, and it's not all bad. I enjoyed this film and others who like '60s ephemera, grindhouse films, underground indie works, etc. Will probably "dig it" as well.