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The Curse of her Flesh (1967)

Dir: Michael Findlay

Richard Jennings is back!!

The second of Roberta and Mike Findlay's "Flesh Trilogy" (with Roberta, as 'Anna Riva', on camera and Mike handling the Directing, as 'Julian Marsh') has our hammy, one eyed, psycho (Mike again as 'Robert West') seemingly recovered from the arrow in the chest that ended his wheelchair bound killing spree in "The Touch of Her Flesh" and ready for action again.
This time it's Steve, the lover of his late Wife (who he shoved onto a circular saw at the end of "Touch"), that Jennings has set his sights on.

As in "Touch", we are treated to a unique titles sequence. This time, instead of "Touch's" bits of paper stuck to a naked lady, we have the credits scrawled on a theatre's toilet walls (along with various smut and 42nd Street in-jokes) accompanied by the sound of a man urinating!

Steve is a (very) bad actor in a bizarre strip club where he waxes lyrical about the bleakness of life while two Women strip and Go-Go Dance to those ever-present funky soul tunes.
The club is run by one 'Joe Davison'. Davison is a bit strange, and wears an eye-patch, and that can mean only one thing. Davison is really Jennings!
Stuck in a wheelchair no longer, he uses the club to seduce the strippers and gain information on Steve. Information he plans to use to destroy Steve's life (taking in the chance to bump off some naked ladies along the way) before the final kill…….

Obviously getting together a bit more money this time, the Findlays' have been able to shoot "Curse" with sync sound. It makes for a more satisfying, and professional viewing experience and gives them the chance to deliver some choice dialogue like this delightful exchange between Jennings and a soon to be victim of his murderous desires.
As our poor, naked, stripper lies on the bed, with her cat sprawled between her legs (its paws dipped in poison in a typically bizarre Jennings' scheme), he looks down at her;
"That's a nice little pussy you have there".
"Thank you everyone who sees my pussy likes it".
"Is it friendly"?
"Oh yes, sometimes I play with it for hours, it never gets enough".
Give me 'Grindhouse' over Shakespeare any day!

But where the technical aspects have improved, the structure of the film has fallen apart this time, creating a disjointed surrealism to the whole enterprise.
Where the first film was a basic psycho plot strung between extended undressing and topless dancing scenes, here it's strip/sex acts and cheesy kiss and fondle sessions that take up most of the films running time, with the actual revenge/murder story so sidelined and then confusingly rushed when it appears.
Jennings has the unnerving habit of simply appearing from nowhere, doing a quick nasty deed, and then vanishing again to make way for another bit of kinky sex action.
It's almost as if all and any connecting sequences between key scenes have been removed.
Jennings also has two eyes in some sequences, but this is never explained and we have to assume he has acquired a glass eye.

This, what seems, disinterest in anything other than the sex/strip performances (on which we shall dwell more) is carried over to the murders as well. Like in "Touch", most of the killings are executed (haw haw) poorly, even if the quirky ideas behind them are wonderfully barmy. In the case of a double murder, the victims are last seen in perfect (and very naked) good health doing a '69' lesbian stage act, only, in the very next scene, to turn up as two blanket covered bodies.
But if the attitude to the killing is throwaway, they are at least given a fantastically kinky death. It turns out their G-Strings had been impregnated with poison, resulting in one of the comically unrealistic Cops delivering the jaw dropping line "They died of something they ate'!
The most outrageous demise (but sadly yet again made very confusing in its slip-shod execution) is via a strap on dildo. Stella the stripper is shocked when during her 'manly' thrusts her female partner suddenly screams and dies. Turns out Jennings set up the dildo with a hidden knife blade! Sadly we are never shown the dildo at all, in fact it's only via one line of dialogue said before the sequence we even know the dildo exists.
This coyness (that was also noticeable in "Touch") was mostly due to what could be shown at the time, and means we get no full frontal nude shots either! Sad but true.

But it's in the clubs staged sex acts, that the film starts to deliver the Grindhouse goods.
It's most famous sequence is an S/M act involving an underwear clad Woman tied between two poles and whipped (complete with bloody lash marks) by another Woman, also in her underwear, who then takes a flick knife and cuts off the tied Woman's bra, who is then whipped again across her breasts and even the face.
The Dom then licks the wounds, removes the Subs panties and her own bra and, as the Bongo drum music goes all funky, the tied Woman whispers "more, more". It's obvious the marks are just some paint, but it's still a highly effective, erotic set piece.
Other acts include the aforementioned '69' scene where the two Women, in semi-darkness, untie the ropes that bind them together with their teeth, as a porn loop is projected onto their naked bodies. The care shown here is in direct contrast to the murder scenes.
A less classy act is a Woman with big hair, grinding on a chair and sticks her open legs up in the air, revealing a G-string that barely covers anything.

The 'real' sex scenes are less effective and involve nothing more than a lot of kiss and fondle action. Although one sequence (cleverly shot to make it more explicit than it actually is) involving a phallic shaped squash is perfect in it's squalidness.

Performances are up to the usual standards, and what low standards they are. But it's Grindhouse cinema and professional performances are most definitely not welcome anyway!
Findlay, yet again, does wonderfully bad, and yet brilliant work as the increasingly deranged Jennings, delivering during the essentially crazy machete wielding finale, one of the most over the top, completely insane laughs ever to rip across a Deuce Theatre's rickety sound system.
And, it's a finale that gives us one last bit of fine dialogue as Jennnings screams "I've been waiting to chop the ugly penis from your body"!

This dialogue also represents the thing that saves "Curse of Her Flesh" from being swamped by it's messy, confused structure and tagged on psycho plot. But the other thing is its love of the bizarre and the down right filthy. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is also why we love Grindhouse Cinema!