Les chattes se mouillent

It looks like "A Clockwork Orange"(1971) made in Bloemendaal, North Holland, two years later. Of course it's different and it's not even close to Kubrick's masterpiece, although the scene of collective rape is very well done. I wanted to see it due to the presence of the beautiful Alexandra Stewart. And, I had the surprise to see also Sylvia Kristel in one of her first roles.

In what seems to almost come out of today's headlines.....a group of rich boys decide to rape and terrorize people for a goof.

They rape middle-aged women in their own house while forcing their husbands to see it all. All this while destroying their personal property. You see paintings get slashed, furniture get ripped up, and personal items smashed just for the fun of it. And these are valuable items. And the rape scenes may be hard to watch for some.

Then we get a police drama. The inspector in question targets the group for imprisonment. We see a lot of technical details about police work. Euro-flicks like to do that it seems. (Remember "Man on the Roof?") These bits almost play like a documentary.

The pace seems to get slower as we move on, but the intriguing characters keep it in focus. And the culprits are almost likable despite their sliminess.

This film is hard to find. But worth a look. The director Fons Radermakers (spelling?) later won a Foreign Film Oscar for "The Amateur."

In an opening scene redolent of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), six masked youths vandalise the property of a wealthy married couple; when the owners arrive home to discover the hoodlums still at work, the husband is forced to watch as his wife is stripped and gang-raped. Uncompromising Amsterdam detective Van der Valk (Bryan Marshall) investigates the case, and comes to suspect a group of privileged teenagers called The Ravens, whose search for kicks has led them to be exploited by a Charles Manson-style svengali.

Because Of The Cats is a little sluggish at times, but its gritty realism will most likely keep fans of Euro-crime films and '70s exploitation more than happy. The initial sexual assault is graphically depicted in all of its ugliness, there's a smidgen of violence, and, with this being a Dutch film, we also get full frontal nudity from both sexes. Eagle-eyed viewers might even recognise Sylvia Kristel of Emmanuelle fame as one of the 'Cats', the elite girls who associate with The Ravens, and who provide the film with its most memorable scene, a spot of night-time skinny dipping that turns to murder.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

A gang of six wealthy hoodlums break into a married couple's house and rape the wife while forcing the husband to watch. Thus begins a dogged investigation by a determined detective who quickly finds that their cult-like solidarity can be a serious obstacle to breaking them. Here's another little oddity that's been particularly hard to track down. This was originally released in the US with an X rating and was later re-edited for an R. All of the rips I have seen are 94 minutes, but the IMDb run-time for the film is 98 minutes. Thats a big discrepancy, even allowing for different frame rates. I will just have to keep looking for that illusive 98 minute cut.

This is a rather good drama, very much of its time, that begins with a graphic gang rape, becomes a meandering cop story before hurtling us into the sex and violence underbelly of communes cum cults cum dogmatic nihilism. For the most part naturalistic and frank, which in part means we get the cop full frontal as well as all the girls (including a very early appearance from Sylvia Kristel) but also a feeling that we are witnessing nothing too forced. Only the later glimpses of the darker activities with the psychedelic edge hint at anything particularly stylish, but the film is none the worse for that. All performances are fine and even the scenes with the 'posh' kids and their parents are well done. A film that could not be made today and an intelligent look at counter culture of the day.