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The Hand of Pleasure (1971)

Dir: Zoltan G. Spencer

London.
Agent 502 of the CIA is in trouble.
He has already had to give up his weapon (described as a ’Magnum sniper pistol’! Whatever the hell that is) and he is now trapped in the world’s best furnished cell (yes we have bars, but come on…the well made-up double bed and nice red carpet would make anyone feel at home) and at the mercy of mysterious super villain Dr. Dreadful (the man himself Zoltan G. Spencer), “We’re going to teach you Yankee agents not to fuck around with the ‘Hand of Pleasure’! Take him girls”!
With those words two totally naked, screeching like cats, henchwomen launch themselves onto the helpless Agent (“AH! NO! AGHH! GOOD GOD! NO! AGGHH”) as Dr. Dreadful, in his mask and silly fedora style hat, listens through a pipe.
What dastardly fate has befallen this poor sap? Well according to the Coroner, when the Agent’s corpse is found, is that he was “Sucked to death”!

Department 5 of British Intelligence.
A posh old English detective proceeds to relate the strange and baffling case that is unfolding..
It turns out Agent 502 was just one of many London based (why!?) CIA operatives who have been turning up ‘sucked’ after being kidnapped, very easily, by our naked Dr. Dreadful assassins (though in public they do try to blend in and look natural by wearing shimmering short silken dresses and glitter-covered eye masks).

It turns out that Dr Dreadful has a diabolical plan, using his ‘Hand of Pleasure’ organisation, to turn women into men destroying sex robots and to turn men into ‘The Village People’ by means of his ‘gender bending device’!

With no Agents left to stop the mad fool the authorities have the good luck to rope in an antique connoisseur named Joe (William Howard, “Terror at Orgy Castle”) to stop Dr. Dreadful, when he is unwittingly thrust into the plot by one of the doomed Agents.
Our hero teams up with a ‘sex research’ college student (a natural decision in times of peril) named Jill (Terri Johnson) and in-between playing ’hide the salami’ with each other (as you would of course do in times of dastardly threat) they attempt to put paid to Doc Dreadful’s plans….

 

Made almost back to back with his equally trashy “Terror at Orgy Castle”, Director Zoltan G. Spencer has taken the then popular ‘spy’/super villain’ formula and used it as the weakest of skeletons to hang as much sex and nudity on as the short running time allows. But there is also much (often unintentional) camp fun to be had.

By God, there are just so many moments of joy to be had here in fact.
How about the woman with one breast hanging out who is chained to the same wooden cross Zoltan used in “Terror at Orgy Castle” (hey, these things aren’t cheap you know!) as Dr. Dreadful zaps her brain with his ‘metal bowl with knobs on’ device until she pulls expressions of such terror and pain that they almost reach the heights of ‘looking slightly drowsy and bored’?

Or how about our two lovely, and oh so naked, assassins growling and screeching at us from their cell just before one of them does a naughty bite at the other that results in many playful smiles from ourr lethal lovelies?

Or how about the quaint stock footage of 70’s London antique markets, complete with “the more bizarre London types” which include a guy in a fez hat, stripy nightshirt and no trousers pretending to do a snake charming act (with a bit of old cloth connected to his little flute) while performing a silly dance?

Or how about the hysterical greatness that spills forth (so to speak) when one of the CIA agents can’t take anymore oral torture (no, I don’t know what’s meant to be so bad about it either) and suddenly screeches out random nuclear secrets , while pulling at the chains that hold him to the bed as the head’s of our assassins bob vigorously up and down around his hairy groin?
You see? Wonderful moments. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore folks.

Whereas the aforementioned ‘tourist style’ stock footage of London is dull (especially a comedy music backed visit to the horse races!) and very obviously used to pad out the running time, the night-time segments are actually a great slice of history, and will be of interest in general to those who live in London or visit regularly, and to Exploitation fans in particular because it takes in much of 70’s Soho (basically a red light/adult entertainment area) and its cheap and trashy, razzle dazzle delights.
We also have a very entertaining narration over this footage by our posh English detective; “Returning once more to Soho by night, here can be found almost all the vices of modern man. Gambling clubs, curious book stores, shops that specialise in items best spoken of in whispers. Everything from the most lavish nightspots to the meanest of striptease shows”.

Talk of strip shows of course offers up the chance to re-create some of these extravaganzas with the $5 from the budget Zoltan obviously had left.
Thus the sight of a (well passed her prime) stripper (Roxanne Brewer) with humongous hair, equally humongous breasts and frighteningly bad make-up doing a tacky, groin thrusting, striptease un-spools before us.
And if the stripper was not a crazy enough looking sight for you, the strip club set will be.
Zoltan seems to have chosen a bathroom for his exotic backdrop (complete with red carpet encased bath tub) that sports creased gold wallpaper, a truly grotty day-glow green washbasin and fluffy crimson and leopard-skin rugs!
But wait, the bathroom set is not just a moment of creative madness! Because to finish off her act our stripper actually sits in the tub and soaps up her massive melons…‘till they shine!

Another sophisticated bit of set design is Dr. Dreadful’s lair, which is basically just one blue-painted corner, with a cardboard door set in a cardboard ‘brick’ wall at the side, that would not look out of place in a school play. It’s as gloriously cheap and tacky as such Exploitation quickies should look, and quite frankly I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Zoltan also happily splashes around abundant male and female full-frontal nudity , and as this is the 70’s the women all have delightfully full and fluffy pubic hair. Bliss!
The sex itself is in your face softcore, as huge amounts oral and penetrative sex is simulated at great and robust length, with as many chances taken to show off genitals as possible (although William Howard’s flaccid penis - no erections allowed people - is probably not the best thing to constantly show when his character is meant to be in the middle of hot sex).

There is also an unintentionally funny blow job scene where Terri Johnson makes it rather too obvious it’s all fake because her head is halfway up Howard’s chest! Either that or ‘Antique Joe’ has a hell of length!
The idea that Jill is partly having all this varied sex with Joe because of her chosen college ‘sex’ course is also used to add some pretty amusing humour (as opposed to the more frequent unintentional humour) when Jill takes notes in the middle of a bit of hairy arse whipping!

The sex basically stops the ‘Mad Doctor Dreadful’ plot stone dead though and it even gets to the point where you wonder if Joe has completely forgotten about what he‘s meant to be doing and will in fact spend the rest of the film screwing the nubile Jill.
As it is the ‘spy’ plot, even during the hurried finale, is little more than an afterthought which exists solely to get as much naked flesh and campy (though extremely vigorous) simulated humping onto the screen as possible.
In fact the finale is almost all sex and is one of the most energetic, pubic mound baring, floppy testicle wobbling, fine breast shaking, hairy arse thrustingly crazy sequences that you will ever see in Sexploitation.

So then what do we have? Well we have a movie that in no way can be classed as ‘good’ film making. It’s trashy, cheap, badly paced, sloppily scripted and just plain dumb. But many of these traits work in its favour if you are a Grindhouse fan and there is just so much camp hilarity and out and out sexploitation shoved into this flick that you just can’t help but enjoy it. Hell, just for the rampant, totally open and free attitude it has to nudity it’s worth celebrating.