Invitation to Lust

Just as David Lynch was beginning his career this soft porn film was released, and I like to think he may have seen it (very, very doubtful). I was fortunate to accidentally (although my programming is often subconsciously astute) watch it the same day as absorbing Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE, and was more than ready to make the obvious connections.

INVITATION TO LUST was written & directed by an unsuccessful filmmaker, Ron Wertheim, better known for his next movie, the not-so-hot THE SPY WHO CAME. Looking up his credits, I see he wrote my favorite Damiano film MEMORIES WITHIN MISS AGGIE, so I'm giving him some overdue praise. ITL is very typically an underground/experimental film of the '60s, styled into the soft-porn genre and marketed as such. Its value over 40 years later is to film buffs of a structural bent, like myself, and despite obvious failings, is rewarding on that level.

The filmmakers are frankly incompetent in many areas: poor sound recording, unbelievably lame racking of focus which causes many scenes to have been shot (and printed, and left in the final cut!) out of focus; poor repetition of footage (as if flash-backing but just badly done), and stilted performances that would have been rejected in the most B of 1930s B westerns. Second camera and other duties were handled by Joao Fernandes (AKA Harry Flecks), who later emerged as the Nestor Almendros of porn movies, photographing most of Damiano's best work. But he can't be proud of this one, on a technical level.

Looking beyond the obvious flaws, ITL emerges as something of a Rosetta Stone for unlocking the key elements to not only David Lynch's more recent work, but "experimental" narrative cinema in general. That's because by working at such a basic level, without access to the multi-million dollar bag of tricks that a Lynch (or an Alain Robbe-Grillet) can use in the meticulous creation of surrealism via sets/sound/EFX, the structure is more easily discerned.

Nominal story enacted by a cast unfortunately not matched to their character names has tall blonde German professor Dr. Mannheim (presumably Jeanne Casked, who gets an "introducing" opening credit) experimenting with an aphrodisiac and accompanying cult ritual, to make scientific breakthroughs for the benefit of mankind. Her beautiful (but short -Mannheim towers over her by at least a foot) blonde assistant helps out, as does a seedy-looking anthropology professor. The resulting orgiastic dance sequence by cult members, lesbian scene and final orgy are predictable in soft porn terms, but the way they're filmed and executed is FAR OUT!!! I literally laughed out loud at some of the craziness early in the film, before it devolves into more standard "all-sex" format. The first reel or two were shot MOS, with the assistant providing heavy narration, and the overall feel suggests the popular porn of Michael & Roberta Findlay from this period, particularly their durable "Flesh" trilogy. However, Wertheim's stylization is strictly experimental, using strange lighting and odd in-camera effects (perhaps the old standby of smearing Vaseline on the lens?) to create a very eerie overhead shot of Grand Central Station that opens and closes the movie quite effectively. The cult ritual has all the participants wearing loincloths that look like "merkins" (SEE: Viva Bianca in SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND for a brand-new throwback to this archaic method of hiding while simulating pubic hair), and both their movements and the action in the final orgy is dance-like, not the usual sex simulation.

Prof. Mannheim, who looks a little bit like my favorite Fassbinder trouper Irm Hermann from exactly the same period of time as when this was made, makes love to herself via a mirror in the film's strangest & funniest scene midway through, which has cutaways to closeups of the planter-shaped urn containing the aphrodisiac -editing that explains away the strangeness of not only Lynch (circa ERASERHEAD) focusing on inanimate objects, but so many similar shots/edits in the underground work of Ed Wood Jr., Doris Wishman and others. It ain't cryptic -it's just de rigeur "cutaway" technique, on experimental steroids.

The awkward dialog scenes in the middle of the film are some 40-plus years later less competently done than any amateur film you can name, including backyard productions. This level of carelessness helped to contribute to ITL's obscurity, back when it was released and even now, more than a decade after Something Weird unearthed it.

On the negative side, the scenes presented wholly or often partially out of focus are not stylization but merely blundering. On the plus side, Dave Herman's jazz score, with an avant garde bent, is spectacularly good, especially in context. One recurring flute with electric piano theme has the same mood as Joe Henderson's classic "Black Narcissus", not recorded till a year later.

The bottom line is that INVITATION TO LUST effortlessly (and I do mean that little effort was expended!) demonstrates that the strangeness that David Lynch and others so painstakingly aim for in their experimental works cannot be manufactured or made-to-order. It is the accidental surrealism, the true strangeness of primitive works like this one that are truly suggestive and astounding to watch. Many, many shots and goofy scenes in INVITATION TO LUST are pearls that Lynch could never aspire to re-create. The analogy would be the clumsy Zelig-style footage seen in so many modern films, where an attempt is made to simulate earlier cinema techniques, sometimes with the footage degraded (scratches and lines and dirt added) for effect. It never looks right or real, and couldn't fool anyone with a sophisticated knowledge of cinema. Wertheim, through sheer ineptness, has created some fabulous imagery which I suspect would surprise even himself if we were to gaze at the SWV DVD-R of his opus.