Mondo Keyhole

Think of this as more of a sexy art film rather than an erotic sexploitation sleaze fest. Howard Thorne (Nick Moriarty) manages Art Products Inc., a Los Angeles producer of BDSM magazines and stag movies. (The company logo is a parody of Botticelli's Venus wearing a corset, stockings, and holding a whip.) Having lost interest in his sexy wife Vicki (Adele Rein), he has become a serial rapist who can barely control his compulsion to stalk and attack women. Haunted by nightmares and visions about these assaults, the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. Several surreal, quasi-documentary segments attempt to explain his slide into madness and his obsession with the "eternal cruel female".

This is the first film to take us inside the adult underground industry. As Howard makes his rounds, we see the printing of adult materials and an artist doing Eric Stanton type drawings. He watches an 8mm fetish film being shot with two dominant women caressing and flogging a bound man. Whether by accident or design, the director bears an uncanny resemblance to B- movie director Ed Wood.

Howard answers a classified ad listed by Carol (Carole Baughman) seeking a "tough guy". He ties her up and whips her with his belt before raping her. Carol then enlists Cathy (Cathy Crowfoot), a man-hating karate instructor, to help her get revenge. There are some wonderfully surreal dream-like interludes as Howard's nightmarish fantasies gradually become a reality leading up to an appropriately ironic ending.

Director Jack Hill went on to make other offbeat but less creative exploitation films like ''The Big Doll House'' (1971), and ''The Big Bird Cage'' (1972).

This film starts off with a young woman screaming while she is being raped by a serial rapist by the name of "Howard Thorn" (Nick Moriarty). When he gets home he finds that his attractive but love-starved wife, "Vicki" (Adele Rein) wants to get intimate. But he wants none of it. For him the thrill is in the brutal conquest. As a result, Vicki turns to heroin while he becomes more and more reckless. Anyway, while I expected a risqué film of sorts, I never expected something produced in 1966 to feature as much violence and nudity as this one did. In black and white, no less. Be that as it may, what was also unique about it was that it took a rather crude plot and did a remarkable job of displaying it in an artistic manner. In that respect it was artistic--yet crude at the same time. In any case, while this movie might be interesting to some it is hardly something that will please a general audience. Definitely for mature audiences only.

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.