The Ultimate Degenerate

From the ever dependable Michael Findlay comes this 72 minute exercise in sadism and perversion. Uta Erickson stars as Maria Curtis, bored with her life despite her regular routine of "putting on a show" for a neighbour. She answers a personal ad, and takes off to become part of a troupe of girls that similarly "put on shows" for demented, crippled sicko Spencer (who's played by director Findlay). They're required to indulge in all manner of freakish activities, and the other girls mostly take it in stride. Maria, however, begins to wonder what she's gotten herself into.

It's interesting what Findlay does with this one. It's extremely trashy, of course, with a great deal of the required nudity and sex for this genre. Performances are adequate all the way down the line. Findlay himself delivers a crazy eyed performance; Erickson is reasonably engaging in the lead. It's also quite intriguing to see Earl Hindman here in the supporting role of Spencers' scheming right hand man Bruno. In later years, Hindman became quite recognizable for his roles on 'Ryan's Hope' and 'Home Improvement', and almost assuredly tried to forget that he ever appeared in this sort of thing. The ladies are good sports, given what's required of them. Findlay shoots all of this in the most stark manner possible, with very striking black & white cinematography by Findlay's wife / filmmaking partner Roberta. It's almost like a combination of a grindhouse and an art house film. The action builds to an incredibly surreal and haunting finish, complete with madness and murder.

Fans of the Something Weird catalogue will want to give this one a look.

Seven out of 10.

Starts out as if this is going to be one of Findlay's better efforts and certainly the performances are bright enough and the voice over/lip sync works well enough, this just loses it about two thirds through. I don't know whether it was the umpteenth use of whipped cream or the over enthusiastic use of corn on the cob, but after being fairly well paced and well shot with decent sexy action, this treads water as if everyone had run out of ideas or possibly a certain someone had a penchant for the aforementioned activities and wanted nothing else. It's a shame because the first use of the cream being spurted over the nude psychedelic dancers is most effective as was the initial dealings with the phallic vegetable. Lots of oddities and some really good moments just spoiled by the over indulgent final quarter or so.

This dreadful film has some of the worst dialog replacement I've ever heard. In fact, I don't think any sound was recorded during the filming. The oddest thing, and if the movie had been seen by more than a few pervs it might have cost the producer some money, is the fact that at 1:09:35 the music is Miklos Rozsa's "Rowing of the Galley Slaves" from the MGM "Ben-Hur" album. I sincerely doubt that the producer licensed the use of Oscar winning music for this awful movie.

Most of the cast used pseudonyms in the credits, and it's completely understandable why. The producer/writer/director and his wife used pseudonyms as well. Maybe they got famous later and this film wouldn't be a scab on their mutual resumes. Bad as it is, I couldn't stop watching it until its eagerly awaited end.

The Ultimate Degenerate (1969)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Wanting to break away from her lesbian lover and fulfill her sexual desires, Maria (Uta Erickson) takes a job for the bizarre cripple Spencer (Michael Findlay) who has a wide range of women living in his home. His allows them to live there and get all the sexual desires they want but Spencer also has a few dark secrets.

Underground filmmaker Findlay also wrote and directed this film, which was the last roughie that he ever made. I will freely admit that the entire roughie genre isn't my favorite but there's no question that this here is a rather bizarre film that manages to mix sex, violence and desires quite well. The best thing the film has going for it is the atmosphere created by Findlay and this comes through due to the nice cinematography and music score.

I also think a big reason for the film's entertainment comes from Erickson who appears in nearly every scene and she certainly manages to hold your attention. The film was made just before hardcore scenes started to take over but it was able to feature a lot of full frontal nudity, which adds to the sexploitation nature. The film also manages to have a pretty wicked finale, which I obviously won't ruin.

THE ULTIMATE DEGENERATE isn't a masterpiece as there are still way too many scenes that really don't go anywhere and I'd argue that even at just 71-minutes the film seems long at times. Still, the movie is entertaining for what it is.

Now, this is the first sexploitation/grindhouse film that I thought worth paying money to see.

I can imagine a whole theater full of men in white overcoats getting a thrill from this feature which had full frontal throughout the entire 70 minutes.

Nude dancing and lesbian activity would have thrilled them for the first 60 minutes, then the film, which had a noir overtone, turned darker with sadistic encounters and even death.

This is the best Michael Findlay sexploitation film I have seen, and it certainly beats his video nasty Snuff.