L'uomo, la donna e la bestia - Spell (Dolce mattatoio)

Alberto Cavallone was a scatter-brained filmmaker, latterly of interest merely because of the shock effects he employed (which naive film buffs associate with the avant-garde). In his heyday his work was not innovative nor well-crafted to the level of interesting film festival programmers, nor was it stimulating enough to make hay on the porn circuit, where its content was headed.

MAN, WOMAN AND BEAST is more professional a movie than his later work, especially the idiotic genre stuff he made in the '80s or his bottom-of-the barrel porn signed "Baron Corvo" such as PAT UNA DONNA PARTICOLARE. But it is still slapped together drivel, a melange of half-baked ideas.

He covers the required basis of Italian cinema: the Church, politics and sex. His protagonist is a collage artist (appropriately) who's a communist, but other than showing the red flag, photos of Lenin and a brief comment or two the political content is virtually nil here. A young priest is another key character, involved in religious processions, but his role is merely functional. Sex ranges from incest and masturbation to an odd touch of heroine Clara placing a cow's eye in her vagina. It is studiously anti-erotic, apart from a softcore interlude involving French kissing.

Cavallone's musical score is banal, ranging from a dull rock concert to repeated use of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and even "Inner Sanctum" style library music for suspense.

What matters to Cavallone is tossing in as many elements as time will permit into the stew and then dumping it on the viewer, symbolized by the inevitable scatological scene involving defecation (it established an entire career for John Waters, so why not?). I found his positing the bizarre behavior of his characters against a realistic backdrop of small-scale village life boring rather than the intended "exposé" approach some fans seem to love.

Recurring image is a tight closeup of a chicken's eye, signaling the usual animal abuse that marks a "no holds barred" director in some folk's eyes.

When he was active there were many provocateurs on the scene, notably Thierry Zeno with WEDDING TROUGH and Jens Jorgen Thorsen with QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY. Today we have Gaspar Noe filling this niche. They are mere poseurs, whose films appeal to a generation that confuses the notion of being open-minded to that of being empty-headed, the latter a leftover from the "everything is everything" philosophy that reared its ugly head during the Flower Power period of the '60s.

Yes, it is quite possible to go with the flow and fill one's mind with Cavallone's brutal images, in vague hopes of them coalescing into something meaningful. Like so many nihilistic artists, his rough-cut film artifacts play more like homework assignments than finished features.

This extraordinary film came my way with the title 'Spell', although the film itself bears the title, Man, Woman & Beast and appears to be the uncut re-edit released, in however a small way, under that title. A most appropriate title it is too, where in a small Italian village where everyone knows everyone and they all life very close indeed to nature. The main character is a communist artist who has a deranged wife, who can become very violent, and spends his days doing collage, in which he has a penchant for slapping images of internal organs over recognisable pictures. There is also a butcher who gets off with the meat hanging in his cold store, a young girl who's mother finds is pregnant - by her father and many more fun figures. There is much sexual activity, barely simulated, much exchange of body fluids, including a particularly harrowing finale and along the way a surreal, hypnotic, visceral and existentialist ride, like no other. Actually, having said that it precedes by a year the same director's Blue Movie, which is of a similar tone but less successful. Strong stomachs and non addiction to narrative flow essential should you even be tempted to seek this out.

Man, Woman and Beast is one of those specific types of movies that there seemed to be a few of in the 70's which straddled the art and exploitation film genres. It's a wilfully strange experience with little overall plot. Its events take place in a small Italian town during the preparations for a religious festival. But the best way to look at it is by thinking of it in terms of characters. We have a possibly psychotic butcher who lusts after the young women of the town but knowing he can never have them, retreats to the back of his shop and has sex with beef carcasses; there's a teenage girl who instigates a sexual liaison with her father at her granddad's funeral, resulting in her pregnancy; there's a knuckle-headed farmhand who treats his long suffering wife like a slave; there's a communist artist who creates collage pieces that include combinations of drawings of internal organs with the heads of fashion models, he has a mute wife who is insane and is prone to violent episodes; there's a young hooker who makes a her living next to a chicken farm, her clients include the upholder of the law, a sleazy policeman; and in the background is an outsider, a nameless enigmatic young man who sexually services the local women, while becoming a hero of the local children.

You see what I mean? There is a lot going on purely in terms of characters in this one. When it comes to serious Italian cinema (I guess this one qualifies as serious although some may disagree!) I often find that I struggle to understand what the overall point being made actually is. It's possibly because I don't understand Catholic culture all that well and miss something in the translation. Well, this film is certainly another case in point, as while the themes seemed to involve religion and sex it wasn't necessarily obvious what the overall point actually was. Certainly, there appears to be a contrast between the outwardly public morally good religious festival that everyone is involved in and the decidedly different set of morals that these people actually practice behind closed doors. But whatever the ultimate meaning, I don't think it matters too much as this is definitely a memorable bit of cinema. The characters are strange and varied and visually it is arresting with odd editing and sections depicting weird dreams. Much of the visual side, though, is very visceral and quite clearly not for everyone – we have copious amounts of fairly explicit sexual material, including the decidedly unique image of a cow's eye ball in a vagina. There's a graphic scene showing a cow giving birth, with the odd sight of the cow actually sucking its own udder as part of the process! While, the grand finale includes a scene so disgusting you really have to see it for yourself. In other words, this is a bit of an eye-popping slice of bizarre cinema. You need to have a tolerance for both quite excessive content as well as art-house sensibilities to get anything out of this one. It's a one off that's for sure.

This is a very well made movie, but definitely NOT for everyone (like observant Catholics, for instance). It's like Luis Bunuel film, but with even more extreme imagery--for instance, where Bunuel simulated cutting open a woman's eyeball, in this film a woman actually DOES insert a cow's eyeball into her vagina (whatever THAT is supposed to symbolize). This movie may at times approach the arty sleaziness of Pier Paolo Passolini's notorious film "Salo", but I haven't personally seen that. Of the movies, I HAVE seen it reminded me of "Viva la Muerte" with its use of often grotesque animal imagery, and "The Highest of Skies" with it's combination of religious iconography and extreme scenes of sexual/bodily degradation.

The main character is one of those weird European Communist/modern artist types (Stalin, of course,being a great appreciator of modern art). He has a wife who is very much and very dangerously insane (she drinks out of the toilet and at one point tries to cut off the nipples of her nurse/maid), yet he leaves her untreated perhaps as part of some "art" project (there are shades here similar to Lars von Trier's more recent art-house outrage "Antichrist"). Meanwhile, there is some kind of religious festival taking place in the local town. The younger townspeople are using the occasion for a drunken, naked bacchanal the saints would probably not approve of. The virginal teenage boys are doing their damnedest to get in the panties of the virginal teenage girls. A lonely young butcher gets so turned on staring at the breasts and asses of the local girls that he has to go graphically hump a side of beef. A bunch of younger kids are wandering around engaging in street fights. A prepubescent boy meets a slightly older pubescent boy who has been injured in a street fight, and takes the injured youth to the villa of the artist and the insane woman. Eventually, we learn why it is NOT a good idea to perform analingus (look that up in a dictionary if you need to)on an insane woman while her weirdo artist husband watches (not that most people WOULD do that. . .)

This movie does get pretty outrageous, but it is well made and definitely worth seeing if you're not too easily offended. I'm not exactly sure the point of all this religious imagery, animal imagery, and general human debauchery and degradation, but it's definitely all presented in an interesting manner. And it's definitely not boring.

Wow! What a movie! It's about... about... who knows? It follows a group of Italians: a school child, a murderous nymphomaniac, an artist who makes collages of beautiful women and medical textbooks, a drunken communist wife-beater, a beautiful young man christ-stud, a butcher who... er... LOVES his meat, and much more. The plot in incoherent. The visuals stunning. The acting... acting?

I've never seen anything like this. But I want to see more. This director is an Italian softcore porn Ed Wood. Amazing.

--KR