Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death

Largely unwatchable, apocalyptic, movie with unidentified people on motorcycles or in yellow gowns running around with gas masks kiling people.

Why they need gas masks when they freely take them off to speak is never discussed.

Some hot girls in these see thru bubble structures, naked doing stuff is the only saving grace. In fact, I only sat thru this to see Uchi Digard who had the be the hottest woman on Earth back in the 70's.

The Something Weird version I saw was only 58 minutes long. A blessing in a way in that the movie really stinks.

The writing is horrible. The acting just dismal and the direction -- well let's just say the guy who directed this directed only two movies. You can tell why.

The many sex scenes are completely gratuitous and not very sexy. I said earlier I sat thru this just to see Uchi Digard -- all 30 seconds worth. Big let down. She should have been the star.

Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death (1973)

** (out of 4)

Set in the year 2062, this post-apocalyptic tale shows a group of survivors who don't have much to do except have simulated sex.

That's the only plot description I'm giving this low-budget softcore film because, well, to be honest, there's really not much of a plot. With that said, director Antony Weber deserves a lot of credit for at least trying to do something fresh and original with the material. You see, this isn't your typical softcore film as this one here tries to be science fiction and you know what, it actually looks very good for that type of thing.

One must remember that this here was years before MAD MAX and the various other rip-offs that followed. This film has a very low-budget but at the same time you can tell that there was at least some thought and imagination put into the wasteland and the various "futuristic" items that we see throughout the picture. Even if the film is only a "C" quality I'd still give it an A+ for effort.

The cast has a few familiar faces including Uschi Digard who appears towards the later end of the film. Plot wise there's really nothing ground-breaking here but that's not overly important since these types of films really didn't have much plot anyways. Some of the simulated sex scenes are laughable and especially a sixty-niner between a couple ladies where you can clearly see one woman's face far away from her "target" point.

Some sort of environmental disaster has occured, the end of man is imminent, and small patches of survivors are required to live in plastic bubbles, replete with bean bag chairs! Add copious amounts of simulated sex(?!).

Only from Something Weird's vaults comes a movie like Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death, a rather gloomy dystopian, post-apocalyptic flick, punctuated by long bouts of naked bodies.

I've got a 71-minute Blu-ray version with no ending, though I've read the final reel was damaged beyond repair. As it stands, I feel like this movie is ultimately an exercise in futility. I'll admit a couple things (out of countless things they tried) worked for me. There is a palpable sense of doom in this... uh, hampered by the fact that, past maybe the 15-minute mark, no one but the roving nomads on cheap dirt bikes wear their "required" masks outside. So much for the environmental threat. Now's a good time to point out that there's a certain percentage of inaudible dialogue. I'm guessing they gave up on the masks when they realized you couldn't hear dialogue through them.

I also dug the character of Keisha (Dianne Bishop), the sketchy, desperate deaf/mute traveler, who can't be touched... unless you want to be at the receiving end of some hilarious kung-fu moves! Sporting a number of braided pigtails and some sort of ridiculous swimsuit, it was a joy to watch her kick ass. Naturally a pack of roving marauders gun her down. Well, this movie had my interest for a couple minutes.

The dialogue sucks, there's not much of a sense of character or community, and well, there's no story. S#!t happens. The guard's uniforms are these hideous yellow and orange (apropos of 1973, anyhow) drapes/mumus, that looked knit to me! (I could be mistaken, the film's print is pretty rough). Also, they sample and loop a segment of Ringo's drum solo from "The End." TWICE!

There IS a sense of doom and desperation, which I'd consider this movie's strong suit, but it's offset by a real excess of softcore skin. Good enough for four stars, I guess.

{There is no spoiler alert, because there's no story to spoil}. Its not long into this well-worn post-apocalyptic tale of the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) when the bare chests (both genders) emerges for some pointless nudity, of the jiggly type, that runs pretty much til the end. Among the many things lost in the film aside from clothing, was: a story line, plot, cohesive editing, acting ability, budget, set design, credible foley work, continuity, and above all original music. I focus on the music because it's so blatantly misused. Kubrick and Tarantino , IMO, have mastered the usage of pre-published music to be used as underscore. Someone from this mess (it may have been USCHI because sadly her and her 2-breasts friends have limited appearance) had the time to dig-up Bela Bartok's masterpiece "Music for Percussion, Strings and Celeste" and fly-it-in the movie's audio track. This composition has 4 movements: 2 adagio, and 2 allegro.

If you were watching this film and were not too focused on the jiggles, and you had a higher education, you may not have only noticed this piece of music, but you may also have remembered hearing it in the Kubrick masterpiece "The Shining" of which the 2 adagio movements are prominent. The difference here is that Stanley perfectly placed the music's tonal and dynamic changes to synchronize with the visual as well as support the mood of the scenes. In Cries of Ecstasy, one of the allegro movements and one of the adagio movements are just haphazardly flown in without any care to relevance. The allegro movement gets over-used to death and its random and perforated placement makes absolutely no sense with the visual. Some obscure free-jazz would have been better, or possibly Yoko-Ono vocals. This piece is now public domain so they don't have to pay anything for usage, leaving Bela to turn in his grave yet he may find some comfort in the afterlife knowing the producers or the people in charge of titles/credits had the good taste to not credit the music at all. 3-stars for Bela's bare breasted allegro!

100 years in the future the earth is ravaged by (pollution, nuclear tests, rockets, etc.) and the remaining people live in bubbles out in the desert under the auspices of some kind of police state.

From 1973, this may be the first post-apocalyptic-dystopian-society-in-the-desert-with-crazy-vehicles-and-outfits. So this film is truly groundbreaking. There were plenty of grim sci-fi tales from the early 70s, but this could be the first in that desert landscape.

Although obviously low budget, the sets and costumes are well thought out and work well given the limitations. The location is also chosen well, and the color of the outer robes makes sense when you see the rest of the film. Everyone needs to wear a breathing mask outside (army surplus, but it works) or after a (never really determined) period of exposure you'll die.

Under the robes, the women wear exceptionally sexy stringy things, when they wear anything, and the men wear only tight pants, when they wear anything. There's a lot of sex, violence, and post-apocalyptic doom and gloom, along with some well choreographed martial arts by both male and female characters. The fight scenes are really well done. The sex and violence (which are not too graphic) work into the plot given who are "good guys" and "bad guys" although there's also an underpinning of a totalitarian society.

It's thin on plot but does a good job of creating an overall sense of despair. The motivations of the characters in the bubbles (especially the sex) makes sense and there isn't always a bright line between "good guys" and "bad guys."

Sandy Carey and Uschi Digard are mostly known for porn/sexploitation, but this does transcend that genre. It clocks in a 75 minutes. There could be missing footage, but it seems complete enough. The stock footage of cityscapes, rockets, and nuclear tests is more distracting than helpful.

EDIT: the version shown on Tubi is cut by about 25 minutes and it adds the stock footage. It still works truncated like that.