Mondo Keyhole

Nick Moriarty plays Howard, the owner of Arts Products, a mail-order service that specializes in adults-only films, pictures, art-work and even records like Punishment in Hi-Fi! Always dressed in a stuffy buisness suit with stuffy job and coming home to his depressed junky wife, Howard seems bored with his life so he goes out and rapes women. A man-hating lesbian blackbelt finds out eventually and has her revenge.

MONDO KEYHOLE has become virtually unknown after being deleted from the Something Weird Video collection which is a pity because it's a really interesting film and on top of that it was written and co-directed by Jack Hill! It goes against the porn industry with it's narration describing Howard as having committed "the worst crime of them all - RAPE!" which all leads to his job. There are also some suprisingly very funny depictions of these adults-only films and their directors ("I've put my heart and soul in to this one!") and if you look carefully you'll spot Dave Friedman's name written in big letters inside an open magazine. Despite it's extremely low budget, KEYHOLE features some terrific, mind-boggling effects and sequences (some using a negative print) including a skull lighting up in flames and a watch swinging back and forth during the opening scene. Also during a wild dress-up party everyone freaks out after drinking the punch spiked with LSD.

This definately for accuired tastes. It's very weird, arty and dosn't end up making much sense, but is still a visual delight. I only wonder what Jack Hill thought of it....

Legendary cult filmmaker Jack Hill is screenwriter, editor, cinematographer, and co-director of this particularly striking sexploitation drama. Nick Moriarty stars as Howard Thorne, operator of a mail-order business that deals in everything from adult films to torture soundtracks on vinyl. He's also a serial rapist, who goes after any attractive young woman who catches his fancy. Meanwhile, at home his wife Vicky (Adele Rein) tries everything that she can think of to get him sexually interested in *her*.

With John Lamb ("The Mermaids of Tiburon") serving as co-producer and co-director, "Mondo Keyhole" is an interesting adults only entertainment. It plays as if somebody like Bergman made a soft core film. This is because the film is not only sleazy but stylishly moody and effectively surreal as well. The music by The Psychedelic Psymphonette merely adds to the strange atmosphere. It has a somewhat linear narrative for a while, getting more and more bizarre towards the end, with a "vampire" (Christopher Winters / imitation Bela Lugosi voice by trailer narrator Ron Gans) serving as Vicky's guide to the latest in human debauchery. The human salad bar is an especially memorable set piece. One of the hooks to the film is the whole "is it fantasy or is it reality" approach to the storytelling.

The acting is passable for this sort of thing. Amusingly enough, the voice of Vicky is provided by cult actress Luana Anders, who's recognizable for her work with Corman and Coppola in the 1960s.

Worth a look for followers of the sexploitation genre.

Seven out of 10.

The dream sequence seems to suggest this is where he picked up his perverse tastes, but never expands on it. There of course was sex crimes committed by allied forces there in the 2nd World War.

I watch films about murder all the time, but seldom see a modern film about rape. Its taboo in a way that murder is not on film. I see plenty of films with rapes in them, but its seldom the central crime, or theme of the movie. The Japanese movie for example-your sitting there wondering when is the rape going to happen almost, but when it does it usually takes up less than a minute of screen time. I find those ones more uncomfortable to be honest lol.

First thing that struck me from the rapists voice over is we are getting a rapists MO. It seems Jack Hill did his background work, as it all seemed perfectly plausible.

Kinda like in American Psycho, the killer is someone who visually fits in, a man who women are attracted to.

Its his perversions and motives which lead to his crimes. It is not the lack of sex, or the fact he cant get it any other way.

I found my self thing Harvey Weinstein 50 years earlier caught on film, except he wasn't handsome.

There was many other directors and films that also sprung to mind. 1st up Joseph Sarno's Sins in Suburbia 1964, a film I also quite liked. I seen a lot of exploitation moves from 70 and 80s, but not so many this early.

The theme with the masked sex party does seem like an American suburbian cultural thing from the 1960s, and you feel like a voyeur looking in to the sex lives of people who could be your grand parents.

Eyes Wide Shut is a more modern movie that centers around these parties.

That brings me to Cronenberg's Video Drome and Tarantino's Death Proof. I kept thinking of them, and wondering if they seen this movie. It is certainly the type of movie that influenced these movies, I felt there were a lot of similarities.

I mean, it also feels a bit like the origin of the rape revenge movie. I am not sure what preceded it, but this movie must be one of the earlier ones, and it comes across as a movie a head of its time in those genres.

Jack Hill may just be a exploitation film director, but he made some of the best ones of the 70s for sure.

Like some other films of the time it is sexualised in a trashy way, and dare I admit it I even found it quite funny for the most part. Should they make sexualised films that are partly comedy about such a serious subject matter, I do not know: but they did it here.

Partly why I found it so watchable, as these movies, they don't play by the rules. Its less cliched than most movies.

Of course this film does not deserve the full ten star rating because it is one of the greatest films ever but simply because it achieves completely what it sets out to do and them some. Clearly Jack Hill's brief was to make a sexploitation 'roughie' and this he does with great style but then, the director of Spider Baby can't stop there and this develops into sexploitation-noir and plays with drug taking and psychedelia before a character doing a passing interpretation of Lugosi's Dracula leads us to the end of the world. Along the way we have plenty of sexy action, though beautifully shot and not overlong, and some great party scenes, possibly the best ever with lots of skin and masks. There is also a lady in a large glass of champagne (which is shared by many) and a naked lady covered in salad with much French dressing (which is also shared by many). If you don't think you will like this you probably won't but if you just think you might, you'll love it.

MONDO KEYHOLE (1966) * (D: Jack Hill, John Lamb) Black and white sleaze film about a husband who ignores his wife and winds up a rapist. Cheap, but contains some artsy dream sequences; ultimately unsatisfying - and no skin - for what it's worth.