Invitation to Ruin

Saw this with a friend in high school at the famous Olympic Drive-in in St. Louis MO. (Obviously management wasn't too concerned about minors getting in). Don't remember this being the title, though, but who could forget Mama Lupo. Friend and I used to pass the drive-in every day on our way to Normandy High School on the bus. Two award-winning titles I remember were "Sexus" and "Ouija Broad". We always got a big laugh. The view of the screen from the road was blocked by huge plastic tarps which inevitably were blown down or shredded in strong winds, permitting a peak at the action as you drove by.

Although the filming is inept and the post-facto addition of a framing device is disorientingly clumsy, this picture slowly reveals itself to be a fascinatingly repellent "roughie" (or perhaps a "ghoulie"). Mama Lupo's dungeon sequences feature naked writhing bodies in bare rooms being whipped and prodded with nasty instruments, not unlike the "Olga" series or the Findlay's "Flesh" cycle. For equality's sake, the grotesque Mama herself gets to strip down for action, as does a corpulent "shiek" availing himself of the girls' services (Mama must have really trained them well to go for this guy). At times the dialogue is played for laughs, but the melodramatic elements unravel with conviction. As they say, "they don't make 'em like this anymore".

This film is one very good example of the types of "nudie-roughies" that were produced not for the strength of the characters or storyline, but for its ability (or blatant attempt to) shock the audience. Like others of the genre, such as "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS", which spawned its own line of sequels, this movie used a basic plot as a mechanism to show women-in-merciless-peril through depictions of drug abuse, torture, and white slavery. Two of the actresses - Kathy Williams and Julia Blackburn - went on to have a bit of career with these sorts of films, more often than not ending up naked, suspended, and whipped, as Blackburn does in this film and Williams does in "The Ramrodder", another noteworth entry in the "nudie-roughie" genre. In fact, this film would most likely have ended up in the Lost Films black hole had it not been for Blackburn's performance as the white slave Karen, who is strung up naked in a dungeon, whipped, and tortured with a smoldering wooden log by the overseer Mama Lupo. That scene gave the film a bit of a cult following in the erotic underground, which no doubt led to sales of the film, which is exactly what the producers were hoping would happen when the film was made. Had the producers contrived a way for both Williams and Blackburn to end up suspended and whipped, no doubt this film would've been preserved in much better condition. As it is, most surviving examples are copies of copies, which are never as sharp as the original, but at least the film still survives in some form.

Cheap grindhouse films like this one are few and far between, owing largely to MPAA and federal "decency" standards which have fractured the film industry and its distribution channels. Some day this film may be remade to more evolved standards that shock and titillate, but that day hasn't come yet. In the meantime, put on your best sportcoat, pour yourself a glass of Scotch, and sit back while Blackburn hangs suspended in Mama Lupo's dungeon of horror.