Secrets of Sex

You would expect Antony Balch, who collaborated on some experimental short films with William Burroughs, to make a weird horror film. And it is indeed pretty kooky, though doesn't often strike one as experimental.

Some of the more experimental, or at least odd touches include: a voice-over saying "Imagine yourself having sex with this girl. Imagine yourself having sex with this boy. Imagine yourself having sex with this girl." etc. for some time, with images of mod young people in various states of undress. It then repeats with slight variation, "Imagine this girl having sex with you" etc. In another segment, there are shots of planes taking off and landing intercut throughout. It's unclear if they're meant to represent sex, or the threat of the man's wife coming home, or that the man's house is under a flight path, or if they're simply filmic non-sequiturs.

The movie has a mummy narrating, telling about the battle of the sexes. The segments all have to do with men and women at odds with each other in various ways, sometimes fatal. The opening segment has an Arabian judge who believes his wife may have a lover hidden in a trunk. He has the trunk buried without opening it. This is perhaps the origin of the mummy (though how he comes to be mummified would be a mystery, but the producer on the commentary track indicates we should not give it that much thought).

There are women photographing a male model in various states of torture. There's a sexy spy who's supposed to find secrets in a foreign embassy. There's a young man with a strange fetish rooted in a childhood incident.

Offbeat, and definitely for those that like that. It was quite well-received at the time! Now, it does seem awfully 1960s, but that lends it a new sort of charm.

Since I'm on a roll with the anthology movies right now, i'm going to post about what is probably the weirdest British anthology film out there and definitely one of the oddest things I have ever seen in my life.

This movie has a lurid title that you might feel slightly embarrassed about renting from the video store (or maybe not eh?). It's called Secrets of Sex, but it also goes under the less provocative and more mysterious title "Bizarre", which describes the movie's style and character really well without saying a thing about it.

So, this is basically an anthology depicting stories revolving around the theme of "The battle of the Sexes". This was a really popular theme in the 60s and 70s, given that feminism was on the rise and a lot of men especially were left scratching their heads and wondering what the hell was going on. The results were a lot of movies and TV shows and books based on this concept, most of which seem pretty outdated today. But I can say without a shadow of the doubt that I've never seen anything quite like this. Nothing I can really say is going to prepare you for it and I'm not going to sit here trying to describe the stories, because jeez...

Essentially, Valentine Dyall (The haunted, City of the Dead, the famous Man in Black on radio, and the Black Guardian in Doctor Who!) plays an ancient mummy, an egyptian king who once trapped his lady and her lover and sent them to the bottom of the ocean, or something. He has been resurrected because he has spent thousands of years observing the interaction of human beings, and is delighted to find that in all this time, not much has really changed. Lovers are still trapping each other in all the devious and twisted ways that they can. So, this is the framing device. Before the stories begin there are parades of all kinds of weird stuff of the type you might see in an italian mondo movie, but a lot funnier. There is some repetitive stuff in here but it's not bad and actually lulls you into a nice little trance. I should say that taking drugs with this movie is almost mandatory.

once the stories proper begin, we are treated to a crazy, unbelievable mix of horror and comedy vignettes. There's everything here from body horror to spy spoof to unbelievable fake rubber dinosaurs. it's both arty and trashy at the same time, and yes, I can probably say without my usual hesitation that this is, in some respects, a really bad movie, but it's also incredibly entertaining on almost every level. My jaw was on the floor almost throughout and I could not stop laughing. I feel, too, that most of the laughs are absolutely intentional. Rather surprisingly, some of this comes out seeming a lot cleverer than you might think at first glance. it's also even-handed, with some of the stories featuring the women coming out "on top", while others depict a solid victory for the men-folk. I thought the last story showed the film running out of steam a bit as it ends pretty abruptly, almost like the film crew were on the clock. I don't recognise any of these performers other than valentine Dyall, by the way, and I don't think any of the cast really stand out. Some of the stories do, however. The horror tale about a woman giving birth to a genetically stunted son just to get revenge on the husband she hates is genuinely disconcerting.

This is something for the real freaks, for people who revel in the tasteless and have a weird love of things they can't quite explain. It's simultaneously uproariously funny and awkward as hell and I think the guy who created it was actually really smart to do it in this way. Watch late at night, preferrably with some amenable company and the addition of your psychotropic substances of choice.

Around the time this film was being made, there was a shift being made in consciousness which sparked many attempts to explain scientifically the new beliefs of the age and usher in not only of the new decade, but a new mindset.

This mindset was a marrying of Science, and Spirituality. The sexual revolution had begun, and out of that came a deeper understanding of sexual acceptance, but the power of sex and social norms. Always at the height of these schools of thought was the journey of the soul.

Now being a relatively new school of thought in the west, they never seemed to go too far beyond the superficial, but were more a means of making tangible the experience of the soul, desire, and bring it all into a context of the natural world.

That is what this movie then is.

A mummy narrates sexual vignettes concerning the endless struggle of the sexes, and the bizarre displays of human behavior in the pursuit of satisfaction.

A very fascinating movie, thoroughly enjoyable, and a remarkable milestone for the western mind sprouting in the soil of new knowledge.

What happens when you combine British portmanteau films, William S. Burroughs cut-up techniques, 1970's philosophy, British men's magazines like Mayfair and throw in a mummy? You get a sheer burst of pure insanity like Bizarre.

Also known as Secrets of Sex, the film starts with the story of a king who found his wife's lover and trapped him in a chest. This theme of trapping lovers carries on throughout the film.

But never mind all that. Let's meet our narrator — a mummy voiced by Valentine Dyall (The Haunting, Bedazzled and the voice of Count Karnstein in Lust for a Vampire). He's here to tell us all about the battle of the sexes. Just listen to his words, as half-naked women and men fill the screen, one at a time: "Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine you were making love to this girl. Imagine you were making love to this boy. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine this boy was making love to you. Imagine this girl was making love to you. Imagine the consequences."

We're then on the front row of this battle, with women in underwear facing off with me grasping machine guns. The women have vegetables thrown at them as the men advance. One of the women, a blonde, stares down the men, who fall to her beauty before she removes a straight razor from between her legs.

Alright — let me be perfectly honest. Your ability to enjoy this film totally depends on the amount of drugs in your system, how late you're watching it and your tolerance for 1970's experimental filmmaking. If you're been reading this site for any length of time, you know that this movie was pretty much made for me and sent forward 47 years into the future.

An ancient mummy voiced by Valentine Dyall hosts a succession of wacky vignettes which explore the theoretical battle of the sexes. Uncommonly eccentric and retro-hip sexploitation features an attractive cast, and devotes every second of its duration to kinky, campy, unchained absurdity. The expounded stories run a gamut of erotic situational weirdness, ranging in tone from gruesome and unsettling to giddily whimsical.

This is a distinctly British cult item, and a unique concoction from Antony Balch(one of the more unduly ignored outsider personalities of sixties underground cinema). He is, perhaps, better known for his short film collaborations with iconic writer/poet William S. Burroughs.

Though it clearly has limited appeal, it's worth investigating...I personally found it highly enjoyable and refreshingly original nonsense.

5.5/10