Secrets of Sex

This DVD is worth having for the two short films included on it that director Anthony Balch did with William Burroughs. As for the feature, well. . ."Bizarre" is yet another British anthology, but definitely one of the strangest ones you're ever likely to see. It's narrated by a mummy (the Egyptian kind, not the English). The common theme in vignettes the mummy introduces is supposedly the battle between the sexes. (Why the mummy is supposed to be an authority on this subject frankly eluded me). The vignettes do manage to combine horror, sex, and comedy pretty well. The first two include some straight-on female-on-male sexual cruelty and some female-on-male medical/science fiction-related cruelty. Despite a healthy dose of black humor, they are both pretty disturbing. Then there is strange, very British skit (set during the WWII air raids for some reason) where a man catches a sexy female burglar in his house, so he showers with her, rolls around on his bed with her while shoving the phone down the back of her panties(kind of anticipating the strange fetishes of Jesus Franco films), before finally doing to her what any red-blooded Englishman would do to a sexy female burglar in a silly British sex comedy. Of course, she eventually gets the upper hand.

In the last two vignettes it is the males who prevail. One of them called "Lindy Leigh" is a comical spy parody apparently based on a comic strip in Mayfair magazine (the British version of Playboy). The title character, Lindy Leigh, is a female spy who is so stupid that she makes Playboy's "Little Annie Fannie" look like James Bond. She crawls around in her panties a lot and ends up locked in a safe with a bunch of other topless bimbos. The last vignette completely beggars description, so I'm not even going to try. Then the movie ends back where it started with dancing, some tame sexual groping, and a lot of naked people handling automatic weapons and, very literally, rolling around in the hay (by the way, I don't know Balch's personal sexual orientation, but I think this movie would probably appeal to bisexuals a lot as the men are just as naked and often almost as attractive as the women). During the scant running time of this movie I was occasionally aroused, even more occasionally amused, pretty frequently horrified, but mostly just perplexed. Really though this thing has to be experienced first-hand to be believed.

Since I'm on a roll with the anthology movies right now, i'm going to post about what is probably the weirdest British anthology film out there and definitely one of the oddest things I have ever seen in my life.

This movie has a lurid title that you might feel slightly embarrassed about renting from the video store (or maybe not eh?). It's called Secrets of Sex, but it also goes under the less provocative and more mysterious title "Bizarre", which describes the movie's style and character really well without saying a thing about it.

So, this is basically an anthology depicting stories revolving around the theme of "The battle of the Sexes". This was a really popular theme in the 60s and 70s, given that feminism was on the rise and a lot of men especially were left scratching their heads and wondering what the hell was going on. The results were a lot of movies and TV shows and books based on this concept, most of which seem pretty outdated today. But I can say without a shadow of the doubt that I've never seen anything quite like this. Nothing I can really say is going to prepare you for it and I'm not going to sit here trying to describe the stories, because jeez...

Essentially, Valentine Dyall (The haunted, City of the Dead, the famous Man in Black on radio, and the Black Guardian in Doctor Who!) plays an ancient mummy, an egyptian king who once trapped his lady and her lover and sent them to the bottom of the ocean, or something. He has been resurrected because he has spent thousands of years observing the interaction of human beings, and is delighted to find that in all this time, not much has really changed. Lovers are still trapping each other in all the devious and twisted ways that they can. So, this is the framing device. Before the stories begin there are parades of all kinds of weird stuff of the type you might see in an italian mondo movie, but a lot funnier. There is some repetitive stuff in here but it's not bad and actually lulls you into a nice little trance. I should say that taking drugs with this movie is almost mandatory.

once the stories proper begin, we are treated to a crazy, unbelievable mix of horror and comedy vignettes. There's everything here from body horror to spy spoof to unbelievable fake rubber dinosaurs. it's both arty and trashy at the same time, and yes, I can probably say without my usual hesitation that this is, in some respects, a really bad movie, but it's also incredibly entertaining on almost every level. My jaw was on the floor almost throughout and I could not stop laughing. I feel, too, that most of the laughs are absolutely intentional. Rather surprisingly, some of this comes out seeming a lot cleverer than you might think at first glance. it's also even-handed, with some of the stories featuring the women coming out "on top", while others depict a solid victory for the men-folk. I thought the last story showed the film running out of steam a bit as it ends pretty abruptly, almost like the film crew were on the clock. I don't recognise any of these performers other than valentine Dyall, by the way, and I don't think any of the cast really stand out. Some of the stories do, however. The horror tale about a woman giving birth to a genetically stunted son just to get revenge on the husband she hates is genuinely disconcerting.

This is something for the real freaks, for people who revel in the tasteless and have a weird love of things they can't quite explain. It's simultaneously uproariously funny and awkward as hell and I think the guy who created it was actually really smart to do it in this way. Watch late at night, preferrably with some amenable company and the addition of your psychotropic substances of choice.

An ancient mummy voiced by Valentine Dyall hosts a succession of wacky vignettes which explore the theoretical battle of the sexes. Uncommonly eccentric and retro-hip sexploitation features an attractive cast, and devotes every second of its duration to kinky, campy, unchained absurdity. The expounded stories run a gamut of erotic situational weirdness, ranging in tone from gruesome and unsettling to giddily whimsical.

This is a distinctly British cult item, and a unique concoction from Antony Balch(one of the more unduly ignored outsider personalities of sixties underground cinema). He is, perhaps, better known for his short film collaborations with iconic writer/poet William S. Burroughs.

Though it clearly has limited appeal, it's worth investigating...I personally found it highly enjoyable and refreshingly original nonsense.

5.5/10

You would expect Antony Balch, who collaborated on some experimental short films with William Burroughs, to make a weird horror film. And it is indeed pretty kooky, though doesn't often strike one as experimental.

Some of the more experimental, or at least odd touches include: a voice-over saying "Imagine yourself having sex with this girl. Imagine yourself having sex with this boy. Imagine yourself having sex with this girl." etc. for some time, with images of mod young people in various states of undress. It then repeats with slight variation, "Imagine this girl having sex with you" etc. In another segment, there are shots of planes taking off and landing intercut throughout. It's unclear if they're meant to represent sex, or the threat of the man's wife coming home, or that the man's house is under a flight path, or if they're simply filmic non-sequiturs.

The movie has a mummy narrating, telling about the battle of the sexes. The segments all have to do with men and women at odds with each other in various ways, sometimes fatal. The opening segment has an Arabian judge who believes his wife may have a lover hidden in a trunk. He has the trunk buried without opening it. This is perhaps the origin of the mummy (though how he comes to be mummified would be a mystery, but the producer on the commentary track indicates we should not give it that much thought).

There are women photographing a male model in various states of torture. There's a sexy spy who's supposed to find secrets in a foreign embassy. There's a young man with a strange fetish rooted in a childhood incident.

Offbeat, and definitely for those that like that. It was quite well-received at the time! Now, it does seem awfully 1960s, but that lends it a new sort of charm.

What happens when you combine British portmanteau films, William S. Burroughs cut-up techniques, 1970's philosophy, British men's magazines like Mayfair and throw in a mummy? You get a sheer burst of pure insanity like Bizarre.

Also known as Secrets of Sex, the film starts with the story of a king who found his wife's lover and trapped him in a chest. This theme of trapping lovers carries on throughout the film.

But never mind all that. Let's meet our narrator — a mummy voiced by Valentine Dyall (The Haunting, Bedazzled and the voice of Count Karnstein in Lust for a Vampire). He's here to tell us all about the battle of the sexes. Just listen to his words, as half-naked women and men fill the screen, one at a time: "Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine the consequences."

We're then on the front row of this battle, with women in underwear facing off with me grasping machine guns. The women have vegetables thrown at them as the men advance. One of the women, a blonde, stares down the men, who fall to her beauty before she removes a straight razor from between her legs.

Alright — let me be perfectly honest. Your ability to enjoy this film totally depends on the amount of drugs in your system, how late you're watching it and your tolerance for 1970's experimental filmmaking. If you're been reading this site for any length of time, you know that this movie was pretty much made for me and sent forward 47 years into the future.