Deviation

Jose Larraz is a very skilled filmmaker. His SYMPTOMS (1974) is among the most atmospheric and best of horror pictures. It boasts a miasma of nuanced menace that is not unlike Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW (1973). Immediately after "Symptoms" Larraz made the stylish but sleazy VAMPYRES, and thence charted a course of exploitation films.

DEVIATION is one of his earliest films. In terms of quality it falls somewhere in between "Symptoms" and "Vampyres". The intense, unsettling, fabulously edited pre-credits sequence, replete with a pulse-pounding score by Stelvio Cipriani, had me prepared to proclaim Larraz one of the pre-eminent horror directors. The following 20 minutes or so are also very good, as the story follows a young couple that becomes stranded in the middle of nowhere and is offered overnight refuge in a large English manor. The male half of the duo senses something is wrong and investigates. He is quickly despatched, and the house's inhabitants, a sadistic brother and sister, turn their lascivious attentions to the female boarder, who is blissfully unaware of any peculiarities.

Sadly, the middle section of the film, involving a tiresome succession of drug orgies and couplings, isn't nearly as strong. Larraz's command of the cinematics, however, remains consistently excellent. He has an innate ability to craft scares and suspense, but it is sometimes simply supplanted by his predilection for (fairly innocuous) sex scenes.

Despite the unevenness, "Deviation" is well worth seeking out.

Larraz proved himself remarkably adept at creating macabre, off-beat, evocatively shot erotic psychodramas, deservedly lauded for his genuinely unsettling mini-masterpiece 'Symptoms'. The prodigiously gifted Iberian genre filmmaker creates an equally skewed vibe with his dope-raddled, spectacularly smutty beatnik boff-fest 'Deviation'. Following an late night automotive mishap, a blandly bickering couple are offered succour in a distinctly doomy domicile by openly hedonistic, morbidly oversexed taxidermist, Julian (Karl Lanchbury) and his erotic con-conspirator, the strikingly sinister strumpet, Rebecca (Sibyla Gray).

Shaken by the accident, the querulous couple swiftly discover that their horny hosts are an unusually gregarious pair, uninhibitedly holding wild, chemically-enhanced sex orgies within their eerily isolated mansion. Wonderfully warped, and wickedly lascivious in equal measure, Larraz's deliciously degenerated, off-kilter exploitation gem is ripe for rediscovery. Not without missteps, the goofy hippy patios is hilarious, and there's rather more soft-core shunt than grue, but, Larraz is an estimable, uniquely stylish perpetrator of far out fleshly phantasmagoria, and 'Deviation' remains a tantalizingly lurid trip into THC-soaked 70s saturnalia.

If you're a fan of director Jose Larraz, you probably won't find this obscure early effort as good as "Vampyres" or "The Coming of Sin" (both of which, unlike this one, have been released on legitimate DVD), but it's better than his recently unearthed (and somewhat disappointing) first effort "Whirlpool",and it's definitely better than most of his later work.

A middle-aged man and his young mistress crash their car and end up in the eerie country estate of a creepy young man (the same actor from "Whirlpool"), his sultry sister, and a bed-ridden aunt who seems to be alternately psychic and psychotic. Not surprisingly, the young man is an amateur taxidermist with an interest in tattooed flesh, and the sister turns out to be a crazed sex killer. Strangely though, Larraz doesn't play up the incest angle like he did in "Whirlpool". He also throws in a couple sex orgies with the brother's hippie friends that are pretty gratuitous and really detract from the eerie isolation of the estate. Still this movie has a lot more atmosphere than "Whirlpool" and it has acting that, while certainly not good, does not take away from the plot at least. Probably the he oddest thing about this movie is the sexual coupling of some very unattractive middle-aged and elderly men (including a hilariously horny druggist)with very attractive young women. (If I ever become bald and paunchy and sprout a pair of bad pork-chop sideburns, I think I'll relocate to the English countryside where all the action apparently is).

This is probably not the best place to start if you're not already a fan of Jose Larraz, but those already familiar with this offbeat director will no doubt find it pretty entertaining.

A black-clad woman with raven black hair running through a forest, a man frantically nailing planks across the door. The wind is howling, the woman is running among the trees, and the young man, hammer in his hands, nailing the door shut. These two scenes alternate several times. Why is she running that way? Why is he so keen on closing that room?

Next we see them in London. The man is Julian (Karl Lanchbury), a taxidermist, and the woman is Rebecca (Lisbeth Lundquist), his sister.

He enters a shop and is given a new task by the shop's owner: to stuff a recently deceased dog. He speaks briefly with the shop's owner about the work to be done. Rebecca is waiting outside in the car. On the surface everything looks normal - Julian's youthful looks and civil demeanor are belied by something weird lying behind his facade, and Rebecca, in spite of her groovy 70s looks, looks like a beautiful witch just come from a sabbath. Where ever does Larraz find these exotic women that appear in his films?

The next scene show us a couple driving through a road at night - Paul (Malcolm Terris) and Olivia (Sibyla Grey). They drive slowly through the woods, the night is dark. Paul swerves to avoid a indistinct figure in a white poncho and hits something. No harm is done, but the car is stuck. Help is offered to them by - guess whom - Julian and Rebecca that live in a house nearby.

This house is used by a hippie sect for their ceremonies. There they play their games, smoke their pipes of peace and indulge in their sexual orgies (but they are not concerned about Satan). Remember, this is early 70s England!

Paul and Olivia, the new couple, accidentally(?) arrived in this house, will discover (for good of for bad) the goings-on. And love, repulsion, jealousy and madness will play their hands in what will happen.

"Deviation" is a sensory trip difficult to translate into words. Larraz' world is unique - landscape, people and sensuality blend harmoniously in his films. He's a good actor's director that can extract natural performances from his actors even when they are at their most bizarre.

"Deviation" could be labeled as an atmospheric psycho-horror film - from the very beginning we enter a realm of weirdness and fantasy.

Those of you that have a weak spot for the early 70s and swinging England should check out this film. See the hippie happenings in "the Refuge". And Rebecca teaches us how to smoke the pipe of peace. All this underlined by the beautiful prog rock score by Stelvio Cipriani.

Super, spirited and sexy tale from the master of sex and witchcraft in the English countryside, even if he is Spanish. See also, Black Candles, Symptoms and Vampyres if you like this as much as me. Larraz was very good at catching that brief period in England when it seemed that little rich kids could do just about anything they wanted. And what a lot wanted to do was sex and drugs and play with the paranormal. In this instance we start out with a tale of taxidermy but somehow that gets forgotten and we have a more usual tale of pretty suburban girl lured into posh kids den of iniquity. Lisbet Lundquist is stunning as the vampire like lady with a penchant for the perverse, and worse and her accomplice, Julian is played most effectively by Karl Lanchbury. Its all very believable, the orgy and drug scenes are exceptionally well done and as for the seduction of the elderly chemist by aforementioned vampire like lady, well do see for yourself, if you can find a copy.