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Through the Looking Glass (1976)

Dir: Jonas Middleton

Catherine (Catherine Erhardt) is rich and glamorous. She resides in a grand villa with her Husband Richard (Douglas Wood) and her pretty teenage Daughter Jennifer (Laura Nicholson).
Life should be good.

But Catherine is strangely cold and distant, emotionally ignores her Daughter and has little time (let alone sexual feelings) towards Richard, who she openly shows disappointed in for his lack of interest in the 'finer things' in life or her Family's history.

Catherine spends more and more time in the attic room where she finds herself drawn towards an ornate, full-length mirror. She sits in front of it and talks to herself as her dead Father, arousing herself before masturbating.
Her obsession with the mirror grows; soon she is seeing visions of herself as a young woman with her Father, as she fantasises about what she wished had happened sexually between them.

But there is something dwelling in the mirror…A Demon.
When she returns to the mirror the Demon (Jamie Gillis, the sadly late prolific actor in, and producer of, porn), speaking as and looking like, her Father lures her into the mirror where it appears in different forms to seduce her and show her sexually decadent sights.

Meanwhile Catherine's Daughter's sexual awakening and slowly growing recognition of her maturing body will lead to greater dangers as the Demon attempts to permanently seduce Catherine into it's realm…..

Without question one of the true classics of hardcore, "Through the Looking Glass" is yet another perfect example (like "Café Flesh" or even "Thundercrack") of how porn can be used to craft and/or embellish a film so it works as erotica as well as a legitimate movie.
Also released in a highly successful 'R' rated version, without the hardcore sex, "Glass" is a genuinely engaging and nightmarish supernatural/possession story with some superbly crafted sequences.
The film is just alive with decadence and taboo, eroticism and depravity.

The effective music score, of harpsichord ditties and female harmonies, is co-credited to Harry Manfredini of all people, who would go on to do the classic "Friday the 13th" score.
And this period sounding music works perfectly in highlighting the decadence of the movie. Much as a similar score worked so well, in the same way, in "La Bete".

From a sexual standpoint (some unflattering 70's tan lines are most unwelcome it has to be said) the highlights are many…
A blow job scene between Catherine's Maid and Chauffeur, as the Chauffeur spies on Catherine using her douche on the toilet (an example of how the movie mixes the clinical with the decadent in it's attitude to sex), is the films only non-supernatural sex scene and it's a saliva dripping treat.

The first Demon encounter is a bizarre and shocking sequence as the Demon's arms reach out from the mirror and snake their way between Catherine's legs, it's finger entering her, as we switch to an eye popping gynecological POV camera shot that literally enters into Catherine, snaking (like the Hellish fingers) into her vagina and through her body. Again, clinical in the extreme.

Catherine's first foray into the 'Mirror World' sees her seduced by the Demon in the form of a woman who rubs oil into her before performing oral sex, as they roll around on silver sheeting enclosed within silver drapes.
This 'room' leads to a decadent garden party where extravagantly clothed and made-up Libertines pleasure each other. A woman is on all fours on a table full of fine foods and has a banana placed in her pussy to be eaten. Oral, lesbianism or group sex, all is indulged in as the sequence climaxes with semen gathered into a golden goblet and drunk like fine wine.
This is a classic example of an almost Fellini/Pasolini look to the proceedings as surreal ideas, like a chiming Grandfather clock on a lawn, disembodied talking and laughing, and a man slowly sinking into a Lillie covered pond, are mixed into the heady sexual brew.
But Middleton is always making sure that, during the seemingly free-spirited and joyous sex, there is an underlying danger and cruelty to the proceedings.

Catherine's hallucination of her younger self and her Father is a taboo but bitingly erotic sequence where she slowly undresses for her Father, before the same ornate mirror, while he teachers her to masturbate before finally ejaculating into her mouth. The subject is shocking, the execution perfect.

Violence rears it's head during an extreme, sweat coated, sequence where the Demon attacks Catherine during a storm, with the sexual assault lit by lightning flashes as Catherine's screams mix with deafening thunderclaps.

Away from actual sex the film still weaves a disturbing spell. A truly unnerving scene sees Catherine looking at her Daughter's body (clothed) and whispers to her about how much she has matured and how she will soon have a body like her Mother's.
It's genuinely creepy and uncomfortable, and is played to perfection by both actresses.

But the tour-de-force is the nightmarish sequence in a desert/slag heap Hell, filled with red tinted perversity and deviant delights.
The fancy Libertines are now the sexually damned. Ragged, filthy, dirt smeared and crazed. Ranting beasts of wanton lust, mad creatures that scratch, shriek and bite.
Catherine is now hollow eyed, her glamorous mask taken away and replaced with a damned visage.
As she journey's through this literal Hell more dark sights assault her and the viewer;
The bottom half of a man cooks over a spit, bodies lie half-buried in the sand, straight, gay, oral, group sex and masturbation (including a man bent over with his head between his legs ejaculating on his own face) takes place in the red hued dunes, a grotesque harpy in a tacky bejewelled head dress bathes in filth as her maid urinates into her mistresses bath tub.
These are just some of the unforgettable sights, all backed with ominous strings that burst into a deranged cacophony as they mix with obscene exhalations and mocking laughter, which Middleton expertly crafts.
It's a truly mesmerising and nightmarish portrayal of sex as a wanton, unapologetic pleasure and yet at the same time something that is a sanity destroying, soul shredding wallow in purgatory.

Even without this unforgettable sequence "Through the Looking Glass" would be a gem in the crown of 70's porn, but with this sequence the movie becomes not only a bizarre and nightmarish supernatural film in it's own right, but also one of the most powerful and unusual hardcore films ever to be produced, and as such is nothing less but essential viewing for any fan of Exploitation, and extreme Underground cinema.