Las flores del vicio

A decrepit little Spanish village is the setting for this terribly overlooked artsploitation gem, wherein a diverse grouping of screwball characters begin to serially meet mysterious and violent ends...among them, a faded Old-Hollywood bombshell, a poetry spouting drug fiend, a stuffy WWll vet and his unstable wife, a couple of muscular gigolos, a bitter, mincing queen, and two waifish young girls.

Prepare yourself for mind bending surrealism, gore murders, cryptoglyphic metaphors, and a standout scene which may be the most politically incorrect in any film made after the Great Depression. Stir in some gay sex and dead animals for good measure, and voilà...an indescribable head-trip that fans of freak cinema won't want to miss. It's surprisingly well mechanized in most technical aspects, and the off-kilter characters are aptly effectuated by an appropriately eccentric cast(Baker, de Santis, and Hopper, most notably).

6/10...recommended.

Lovers of gonzo movies must sooner or later stumble across the wild and wonderful career of Dennis Hopper. His most interesting and "out there" period is also his least discussed. The so-called "lost decade" from roughly The Last Movie to Apocalypse Now. During this time he wasn't constantly working but he did make movies like Kid Blue, Tracks, Mad Dog Morgan and The American Friend, all due for reassessment. For my money the great lost Hopper performance can be found in Bloodbath (aka The Sky Is Falling), an obscure but worthwhile Spanish horror film. I use the term "performance" loosely because when watching his demented behaviour here you often get the feeling that much of what's on screen was probably similar to your typical day-in-the-life of Dennis in the Seventies! Hopper as Chicken hallucinates frequently, mumbles, rambles, freaks out, shoots up, makes love, quotes Hassan I Sabbah, and terrorises a poor girl by breaking a raw egg in her face and making her sing "Shortening Bread". Yup, it's that good. There are also some nice supporting roles from the zany ex-pats, especially the lovely Carroll Baker (Hopper's costar in Giant!) as a sad, faded Hollywood beauty queen still waiting for "that call" from the Studio.

A bunch of jaded Anglo-Americans are hanging around a dusty, seaside rural Spanish village for some reason. There is a religious festival going on, but the self-absorbed characters are oblivious (and equally oblivious to the daily tragedies happening around them like a child in a well or a retarded youth being trampled during a parade). Each of these tourists hooks up with a local object of sexual attraction. The washed-up expatriate American glamour actress (well played by washed-up, expatriate American glamour actress Carroll Baker) goes off with a young white "muscle man". Her camp gay friend finds an African-American stud. A British WWII vet ditches his drunken, embittered wife for a young Asian-looking girl. And a junkie played by Dennis Hopper gets together with a young blonde Spanish girl (Inma DeSantis).

This Spanish-Italian co-production could be considered a giallo I guess as the characters all meet their comeuppance in what (sometimes) appears to be foul play, but who is killing them or why is kind of beside the point. It's kind of just instant karma or the "flowers of vice" (as this is called in Spanish) coming to fruit. This movie kind of reminded me of Alberto Cavallone's deranged surrealistic masterpiece "Man, Woman, and Beast" (which was also set during a rural religious festival) or one of those late 60's/early 70's drugged-out "head" movies like Dennis Hopper's own "The Last Movie" where the people behind the camera were no doubt consuming more pharmaceuticals than the people on screen.

Carroll Baker is surprisingly good (even if her role here is obviously not much of a stretch) and Dennis Hopper could always do this kind of stuff pretty well no matter what substance was in his bloodstream. It's also nice to see the ethereally pretty Spanish actress Inma DeSantis, even if she got rewarded for her presence here by getting to do a long, nude sex scene with a VERY sweaty, pre-detox Hopper (who French kisses a cough drop out of her mouth in a scene that is either very erotic or very disgusting, I'm not quite sure). This is a very strange movie, but I actually kinda liked it

BLOODBATH opens with a woman walking the world's ugliest pig. No, really, you've got to see this thing! Next, a woman pulls the head off of a chicken. We get the immediate impression that something wonky is going on here, since none of the locals seem to have been born with the ability to smile. That is, unless they happen to be leering maniacally.

In total contrast to this, a very non-twelfth century-looking woman appears, dressed in groovy threads. She enters a building where western music plays. Her name is Susanna (Alibe Parsons), and she's met by the heroin-filled, racial slur-spouting, Chicken (Dennis Hopper). They're part of a misfit group of expatriates, living together in this tiny, ultra-religious village in Spain, and they stick out like ballerinas in a bowling alley.

These two groups are set against each other, as scenes of a religious festival is intercut with the hedonistic frivolity of the foreigners. Does anyone see a catastrophic culture clash coming?

Enter the fun-loving ex-movie star, Treasure Evans (Caroll Baker). She's sort of a younger version of Nora Desmond, and another part of this oddball bunch of bananas, that includes an aging WWII General and a mega-flamboyant gay man. They're a family, clinging together in order to be themselves, in spite of their increasingly oppressive surroundings. We get the impression that none of them could survive alone.

When these exiles gather for a Good Friday celebration, their drunken revelry flies in the face of the solemn procession going on beside them. Things have been tense and creepy all along, and the atmosphere gets really thick from here on out!

Soon, the darkness, religious insanity, and death take over completely.

This is one of those wonderfully weird, disturbing films that could only have come out in the 1970's. Filled with bizarre situations and an overhanging sense of gathering, unstoppable doom, the horror bubbles up like a corpse in a bog!

Mr. Hopper is as good or better here than in many of his outings, playing it natural, and letting it fly! For those who've never seen him go absolutely berserk, well, he certainly does that here!

SOME NICE TOUCHES: Watch for the red telephone! And, what's up with the pregnant woman with the umbrella?...

A junky (Dennis Hopper), a retired Hollywood actress (Carroll Baker) and several other misfits live in a run down Spanish village. Suddenly they begin turning up dead! A strange and violent film, almost like an Italian "giallo" as if it were directed by Andy Warhol! I dug it!