Xavier Mendik - Julian Petley (Editors) - Shocking Cinema of The 70s-Bloomsbury Academic (2022)

Shocking Cinema of the 70s
i
ii
Edited by Xavier Mendik and Julian Petley
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks

of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2022
Copyright © Xavier Mendik and Julian Petley, 2022
Xavier Mendik and Julian Petley have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. ix–x constitute an extension

of this copyright page.
Cover design: Charlotte Daniels

Cover image: Death Weekend poster, 1976 (Courtesy Everett Collection / Mary Evans)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for,
any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in
this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher
regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased
to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mendik, Xavier, editor. | Petley, Julian, editor.
Title: Shocking cinema of the 70s / edited by Julian Petley and Xavier Mendik.
Other titles: Shocking cinema of the seventies
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021017159 (print) | LCCN 2021017160 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781350136311 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350194489 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781350136298 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350136304 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures--History--20th century. |
Sensationalism in motion pictures. | Motion pictures--Production and direction. |
Motion picture industry--History.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.S284 S56 2021 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.S284 (ebook) |
DDC 791.4309—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017159
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017160
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-3631-1

ePDF: 978-1-3501-3629-8
eBook: 978-1-3501-3630-4
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
iv
Contents
List of Figures vii

Acknowledgements ix
Introduction New Shocks to the System: An Introduction to

Shocking Cinema of the 70s Julian Petley and Xavier Mendik 1
Part 1 International Visions of the Extreme
1 Walerian Borowczyk: Seventies Sexploitation Through

Sublimation Aga Skrodzka 35
2 A Woman’s Grudge: Figuring Female Resentment in Japanese

1970s Grindhouse Cinema Laura Treglia 51
3 Rethinking Representation, Race and Rape in the 1970s

Women in Prison Movie James Newton 71
Part 2 From the Vigilante to the Violated
4 Death Wish: A Vigilante’s Journey, an Urban Tragedy

William Gombash 91
5 Rough Justice: Lone Cops, Vigilantes and Penal Populism

Julian Petley 111
6 Small Screen Shockers: Rape-Revenge Narratives in the Made-

for-TV Movie Jennifer Wallis 139
Part 3 State Sponsored Shocks
7 Tax Shelter Terrors: Cinépix and the Hidden History of 1970s

Canadian Horror Cinema Xavier Mendik 161
v
vi Contents
8 Shocking Canadian Cinema of the 70s: An Interview

with William Fruet Xavier Mendik 189
9 ‘You miserable, no good, dirty sons of bitches!’: Queer(y)ing

‘Canuxploitation’ Revenge Narratives in the Films of John
Dunning and André Link Robin Griffiths 201
Part 4 Family-sploitation and Threats to the Family
10 Family Entertainment: Psychotic Slaughter in the 1970s

Charles Manson Movies Bill Osgerby 221
11 The Peter Pan Syndrome: Murder as Child’s Play in Four

1970s Films T.S. Kord 245
Part 5 Porno Chic, Porno Shock
12 ‘They’re Not There Just to Fuck’: Sensibility, Cultural

Provocation and 1970s American Hard Core Pornography
Darren Kerr 271
13 Hardcore and Rough on the Outside: Evaluating Femmes

de Sade and Water Power Neil Jackson 287
List of Contributors 313

Index 317
Figures
1.1 Immoral Tales: The fetishistic portrayal of the female body.

Screengrab under Fair Use/Fair Dealing. 36
3.1 Django (Sid Haig) performs a fake seduction of prison guard

Rocco (Vic Diaz) in The Big Bird Cage. Screengrab under
Fair Use/Fair Dealing. 81
3.2 Rocco is raped by the escaping prisoners in The Big Bird Cage;
‘You’ll finally get to use that thing for what it’s made for.’
3.3 Prisoner Alcott (WiP regular Roberta Collins) attempts to

get Harry (Haig again) to rape Miss Dietrich (Christiane
Schmidtmer) as an act of revenge in The Big Doll House.
5.1 Joe: Cross-class collaborators: Joe Curran (Peter Boyle), Bill

Compton (Dennis Patrick) and Joan Compton (Audrey Claire).
Image courtesy Everett Collection Inc./Alamy Stock Photo. 118
5.2 Joe: Joe Curran holds forth in the American Bar. Image
courtesy Everett Collection Inc./Alamy Stock Photo. 118
6.1 The hunting of Amy in Revenge for a Rape. Screengrab under

Fair Use/Fair Dealing. 150
7.1 André Link (L) and John Dunning (R) of Cinépix. 169
7.2 Cashing in on the Quiet Revolution: Valérie. 172
7.3 You should know how good this film is: Cinépix responds to the
Shivers controversy. 176
7.4 Narratives of containment: social and moral order collapse in

Shivers. 177
vii
viii Figures
7.5 Contemplating siege scenarios: John Dunning (L) and David

Cronenberg (R) on the set of Rabid. 178
8.1 Real life road encounter as fiction: director William Fruet on

Death Weekend. 193
8.2 Canada’s first action heroine? Brenda Vaccaro in Death Weekend. 195
8.3 Phallic conflicts: masculine tensions in Death Weekend. 196
8.4 Country encounters: tropes of rural depravity in Death Weekend. 197
9.1 The embodiment of ‘monstrous masculinity’: Don Stroud as

archetypical ‘brute’ Lep in William Fruet’s Death Weekend. 204
10.1 Constructing the counterculture’s dark side: Charles Manson and

Life magazine. Author’s personal collection. 227
10.2 Manson-themed thrill seekers on wheels: Al Adamson’s Satan’s

Sadists. Author’s personal collection. 234
13.1 Femmes de Sade advertising. 294
13.2 The sex community as threatened by Rocky De Sade (Ken

Turner). Screengrab under Fair Use/Fair Dealing. 295
13.3 Rejecting the Sadeian male: Rocky at the climax of Femmes de

Sade. Screengrab under Fair Use/Fair Dealing. 299
13.4 Sadism lurking in the urban expanse: Jamie Gillis in Water Power.
13.5 Advertising for the 1977 Water Power premiere at the Kearny
Cinema in San Francisco. 301
13.6 Sculptures prefigure the dehumanization of female victims in

Water Power. Screengrab under Fair Use/Fair Dealing. 305
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all of the writers who contributed so much
hard work to Shocking Cinema of the 70s. We offer additional thanks to these
authors for their continued patience and commitment to the volume over the
long course of its development.
Shocking Cinema of the 70s is based on a prior concept that Xavier Mendik
initially developed for Noir Publishing in 2002. Both Xavier Mendik and Julian
Petley therefore wish to express their thanks to Andy Black from Noir
Publishing for allowing us to revise this original concept into the new volume
for Bloomsbury Academic. In terms of its current publication team, we wish
to specifically thank Rebecca Barden and Veidehi Hans from Bloomsbury
Academic for all their invaluable support and assistance in helping us complete
this new version of Shocking Cinema of the 70s.
Beyond our publishers, we also offer sincere thanks to a number of film
industry colleagues who facilitated the interviews that appear in this volume.
Specifically, we wish to thank director William Fruet, content producer Philip
Escott and Greg Dunning of the Cinépix Inc. Estate for the provision of
interviews and the related publicity materials included in the book.
The images from Joe used in the chapter ‘Rough Justice: Lone Cops,
Vigilantes and Penal Populism’ are courtesy of the Everett Collection Inc./
Alamy Stock Photo archives. The image of André Link and John Dunning
of Cinépix Inc. reproduced in the chapter ‘Tax Shelter Terrors: Cinépix and
the Hidden History of 1970s Canadian Horror Cinema’ is courtesy of Greg
Dunning and the Cinépix Inc. estate. Additionally, the image of André Link’s
written response to the Shivers controversy is also from Mr Dunning’s
collection. Further, the images from Valérie and Shivers are also courtesy of Mr
Dunning and the Cinépix Inc. estate, as is the production still from Rabid
reproduced in the same chapter. The editors wish to thank Greg Dunning for
his generosity and support in proving visual materials for several chapters
contained within Shocking Cinema of the 70s. In addition, we further thank
ix
x Acknowledgements
Mr Dunning for providing access to the images from Death Weekend that
appear in the chapter ‘Shocking Canadian Cinema of the 70s: An Interview
with William Fruet’. The image of director William Fruet reproduced in the
same chapter is from Xavier Mendik’s 2020 documentary The Quiet Revolution:
State, Society and the Canadian Horror Film and is courtesy of the author’s
personal collection. The chapter ‘You miserable, no good, dirty sons of bitches!’:
Queer(y)ing “Canuxploitation” Revenge Narratives in the Films of John
Dunning and André Link’ also uses an image from Death Weekend which is
courtesy of the Cinépix Inc. estate, and again we offer further sincere thanks to
Greg Dunning for allowing us to reproduce it here. In the chapter ‘Family
Entertainment: Psychotic Slaughter in the 1970s Charles Manson Movies’, the
magazine image of Charles Manson is courtesy of the author’s personal
collection, as is the poster of Al Adamson’s Satan’s Sadists. In the chapter
‘Hardcore and Rough on the Outside: Evaluating Femmes de Sade and Water
Power’, the promotional images for Femmes de Sade are courtesy of the author’s
personal collection, as is the advertising for the 1977 screening of Water Power
at the Kearny theater in San Francisco.
The rest of the images contained within this book remain the property of
the production and distribution companies concerned. They are reproduced
here in the spirit of publicity and the promotion of the films in question.
Xavier Mendik dedicates this book with much love to Caroline and Zena.
Julian Petley dedicates it to Mary with much love and gratitude.
Introduction
New Shocks to the System: An Introduction to
Julian Petley and Xavier Mendik
This collection was originally intended as a second edition of Shocking Cinema

of the 70s,1 which was published in 2002 and edited by Xavier Mendik. In the
original volume, contributors discussed a wide range of films that Mendik
bracketed around three core themes: ‘Hollywood on the edge’, ‘the ethnic other
in action’ and ‘seventies horrors’. Under these general headings, some of the
topic areas that the authors considered included the 1970s disaster film,
Michael Winner’s films as emblematic of the era, American conspiracy cinema
as reflective of the decade, blaxploitation horror cinema within wider ethnic
contexts, Hong Kong cinema’s constructions of the mutilated kung fu hero,
Hammer co-productions of the 1970s, dystopic reflections of society in the
cinema of George A. Romero and conflicting constructions of contemporary
London across a range of 1970s British horror films.
Upon the book’s recommissioning, it had been the intention of both editors
to retain the full contents of the original volume, and to complement these
with new chapters where appropriate. However, in the course of its long
gestation, the new edition of Shocking Cinema of the 70s has become an entirely
new book. There are a number of reasons for not reproducing any of the
chapters from the first edition of the volume, despite the innumerable merits
of the individual contributions. Central to this decision is the fact that since
the volume’s original release in 2002, a number of monographs and edited
collections have been published which have further recuperated many of
the subjects discussed in the first edition, thus rendering them no longer
particularly shocking or marginal. For instance, an invaluable primer on 1970s
cinema and society such as Lester D. Friedman’s edited collection American
1
2 Shocking Cinema of the 70s
Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations2 offers revised considerations of

disaster film cycles and blaxploitation cinema formats alongside a further
consideration of ‘disreputable’ horror entries such as The Texas Chain Saw
Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974). Friedman’s publication is itself complemented
by other recent works that include Barbara Jane Brickman’s New American
Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in 1970s Film,3 which provides an
updated reading of Hooper’s film in the context of wider discussions around
1970s teen movie constructions. Such publications have been complemented
by more sustained studies on key topic areas covered in the first edition of
Shocking Cinema of the 70s that have been undertaken by the original
contributors themselves. These include Leon Hunt, whose chapter ‘One-Armed
and Extremely Dangerous: Wang Yu’s Mutilated Masters’ was then expanded as
part of his wider book-length study Kung Fu Cult Masters,4 while Linnie Blake’s
contribution ‘Another One for the Fire: George A. Romero’s American Theology
of the Flesh’ provided the basis for an extrapolation into her volume The
Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema Historical Trauma and National Identity.5
The proliferation of such works indicates that the majority of the subject
areas covered by the first edition of Shocking Cinema of the 70s can no longer
be considered as case-studies that require further review and reclamation,
possible exceptions being The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972) and
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, even though newer studies in the field have
helped both now achieve ‘classic’ status in the horror genre. Equally, some of
the films had ceased to be shocking even by 2002 when Shocking Cinema of the
70s first appeared. However, one of the purposes of the original volume was to
analyse why it was that films that were found shocking were being produced in
the 1970s, particularly in the US, and why they were found shocking at the
time of their release. Mendik notes that:
In the light of Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, political and civil unrest, the
construction of the Hollywood narrative altered to reveal a much more
pessimistic and downbeat tone. Indeed, it is noticeable that dominant cycles
of the era (such as the thriller, western and horror genres) seem dogged by
moral ambiguity.6
That the horror genre looms large in the first edition is not simply because of
its obvious shock-producing potential but also because it was one of the most
New Shocks to the System 3
popular genres of the decade, and, as Robin Wood7 in particular has argued,
represents a form of ‘American nightmare’ in which the dominant fears and
tensions of the decade were laid bare, albeit in frequently sub-textual forms.
Thus, the corruption of the civic body and the degeneration of communal
bonds are explored via three Romero films: The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977)
and Dawn of the Dead (1978). Moral ambiguity, the evil of the everyday and an
absence of authority are the subject of the chapter on The Last House on the
Left. And the chapter on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, following Wood, uses
the film to explore the collapse of established definitions of good and evil,
normality and monstrosity.
However, all this is by now familiar territory thanks to Wood and the
numerous scholars of cult and exploitation cinema who have, in different ways,
built upon the foundations which he laid in the 1970s. Thus, we decided not to
re-visit it here.
In addition to considering the diminished shock value that many of
the contributions from 2002 now generate, both editors also reflected on the
sectional nature of the original volume, which was primarily concerned with
American cinema, both in its mainstream and independent iterations. The few
non-American films considered are the Italian L’anticristo/The Antichrist
(Alberto De Martino, 1974); the British Dracula A.D. 1972 (Alan Gibson,
1972), Death Line/Raw Meat (Gary Sherman, 1972) and Theatre of Blood
(Douglas Hickox, 1973); the Wang Yu vehicles The Chinese Boxer/The Hammer
of God (Hong Kong, 1970), One-Armed Boxer (Taiwan, Hong Kong, 1972) and
The Man from Hong Kong/The Dragon Flies (Australia, Hong Kong, co-directed
with Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1975); and the UK-Hong Kong co-production
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (Roy Ward Baker, 1974).
In this new edition, the transnational net has been cast much wider. Aga
Skrodza-Bates’s chapter on Walerian Borowczyk encompasses works by a
Polish director made in France and Italy; Laura Treglia explores Japanese
‘pinky violence’ films; and three chapters examine the still rather neglected
area of ‘Canuxploitation’. However, given their global dominance in the 1970s,
American films still inevitably loom large, although we have attempted to
move further into the margins. In industrial terms this involves a turn to TV
in Jennifer Wallis’s study of rape-revenge tele-films, and also to the more
independent end of the film production sector in James Newton’s chapter on
the women in prison movie and Bill Osgerby’s study of Manson Family movies
(which also features a TV production). And in terms of subject matter, Darren
Kerr examines hard core pornography’s move from the margins (and back
again), whilst Neil Jackson analyses a form of hard core that could never be
anything but marginal and shocking.
We did, however, decide to stick with the title of the original edition, and it is
important in particular to try to explain why we retained the word ‘shocking’. We
wanted the new collection to focus on films from a variety of countries, and
from the marginal to the mainstream, which, by tackling various ‘difficult’
subjects, have proved to be controversial in one way or another. Although some
of the films have become cult objects, others have not, so Cult Cinema of the
Seventies was out. Likewise, although some belong to the realm of ‘cultural
detritus’ labelled ‘paracinema’ by Jeffrey Sconce,8 others are mainstream, such as
Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974), Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971) and the
tele-films mentioned above. So Paracinema of the Seventies wouldn’t work either.
Consequently, as most of these films have proved shocking at some point or
have retained their power to shock, we decided to retain the original title. In
so doing, we have also expanded upon the division of core themes that
distinguished the 2002 original, but have amended them to fit the revised focus
of the contents of the current volume. The headings under which we now
review the 1970s as a shocking decade of cinema can be identified as:
‘International Visions of the Extreme’, ‘From the Vigilante to the Violated’, ‘State
Sponsored Shocks’, ‘Family-sploitation and Threats to the Family’, and ‘Porno
Chic, Porno Shock’.
Importantly, we also need to make it clear that via this expanded focus on
cinematic shock, we see nothing necessarily ‘progressive’ or even subversive in
unsettling or distasteful content. From approaches to the cinema inflected
by Surrealism, for example Ado Kyrou’s Le surréalisme au cinéma,9 to works
emerging from the US counterculture and underground, such as Amos Vogel’s
Film as a Subversive Art,10 through to certain aspects of cult criticism, there is
a certain tendency to identify films which manage to épater les bourgeois with
progressive or even radical potential. As Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton point
out: ‘Cult cinema’s modes of reception are informed by debates around how
they break boundaries of morality and challenge prohibitions in culture, how
they dispute common sense conceptions of what is normal and acceptable, and
how in doing so they confront taboo.’11 However, the shocks delivered by some
of the films discussed in this book are of a very different kind – shocks to
liberal sentiment courtesy of the reactionary values of Death Wish and Dirty
Harry, and to certain strands of feminism in the women in prison movies
discussed by Neil Jackson and in the hard core roughies by Darren Kerr
(although it should be added that the latter contain scenes that would shock
almost anyone). We will return to this subject when we discuss their individual
chapters below.
Shocking Cinema of the 70s: the chapters
Opening the section ‘International Visions of the Extreme’ is Aga Skrodzka-

Bates’s chapter on Walerian Borowczyk, which considers how shocked many
critics were that the director had ‘abandoned his background in prestige art,
only to take up entertainment films featuring explicit sexual content’. It is also
worth adding that such films, namely Contes immoraux/Immoral Tales (1974),
La bête/The Beast (1975), Interno di un convento/Behind Convent Walls (1978)
and Les héroïnes du mal/Immoral Women (1979), were shocking enough to run
into considerable censorship difficulties in numerous countries. For example,
in the UK both Immoral Tales and The Beast were banned outright by the
British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), while additionally Behind Convent
Walls and Immoral Women were cut. Skrodzka-Bates also identifies another
critical ploy used to deal with the shocking content of Borowcyk’s films, namely
to argue that his form of erotica is a ‘classy’ one that does so much more than
titillate. Thus, she notes that:
It has frequently been claimed that there is always more to it, and that the
‘more’ has an authentic artistic, even philosophical, value. Unsurprisingly,
Borowczyk’s early reputation as an award-winning experimental film-maker
lends his sexploitation fare the kind of credibility that prompts certain critics
to group him with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel and Nagisa Ôshima.
However, whilst not denying his qualities as ‘an experimental animator, a

surrealist artist, a philosopher of sexuality, a cultural iconoclast and a technical
innovator’, Skrodzka-Bates also wants to claim him as a financially successful
exploitation film-maker, and one with affinities with Russ Meyer, Jess Franco
and Ken Russell. Her chapter explores the reasons why the sexploitation
framework is frequently pushed out of Borowczyk criticism, and brings it back
in. In doing so she situates the films firmly in the 1970s, when western Europe
was experiencing a widespread cultural and political liberalisation, the rise

of consumer capitalism, a series of youth rebellions against the status quo,
the growth of gay and women’s rights movements, and, most importantly,
the arrival of the sexual revolution. As such, the films both speak of and react
to the nexus of transformations (political, economic, and cultural) that
shaped Borowczyk’s new French milieu. They also speak of the commodified
desire that the 1970s mediated and put on display to an unprecedented
degree.
While directors such as Walerian Borowczyk shocked the sensibilities that

imbued European ‘quality’ cinema during the 1970s, Laura Treglia’s chapter on
‘pinky violence’ (pinkī baiorensu) films provides another international
rendition of the extreme. Specifically, the inclusion of a number of references
to Japanese 1970s films in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003) exposed a global
audience to the (then) virtually unknown world of Japanese exploitation
cinema of the period, which is now referred to as ‘pinky violence’. These films
featured action and eroticism as their main selling points, and, Treglia argues,
are best examined as a diverse set of thematic cycles that play with a multitude
of generic conventions, in particular those genres involving erotia, gangsters,
swordplay, horror, detective stories, comedy and melodrama. She focuses in
particular on the second film in the Joshū Sasori/Female Prisoner Scorpion
series (1972–3), Dai 41 zakkyo-bo/Jailhouse 41 (Itô Shun’ya, 1972), taking it as
an example of Japanese grindhouse cinema of the early 1970s that

prominently features figurations of violent, rebelling femininities in ways
that give them an empowering energy and at the same time contain their
gender anomalies. The films achieve this by manipulating, parodying and
reproducing action film conventions as well as archetypes of female non-
conforming characters.
Treglia locates the qualities of the pinky violence films that unsettled
contemporary Japanese mores as consisting in the way that their female
protagonists transgressed state-sanctioned, official ideologies of gender
propriety. These construct domestic and nurturing roles as ‘proper’ to women’s

identities and have long been supported in Japan by various institutional
policies and corporate business practices, but they were also ‘relayed through
mainstream cinema articulations of a virtuous, industrious and enduring
femininity, acting in deference to social norms and patriarchal authority’.
However, nothing could be further from this image of the ideal Japanese woman
than the violent, non-conforming, anarchic protagonists of the pinky violence
films. As Treglia makes clear, though, these female protagonists are represented
in a decidedly ambiguous manner. On the one hand, they have definite agency:
These unruly young women – street hoodlums, bikers, pickpockets,

swordswomen and gamblers – live by their wits and fight back against (male)
oppressors, who are typically embodied by evil gangsters, representatives
of state authority and coercive power (policemen, wardens, teachers), and
figures generally endowed with higher social, political and economic capital.
But, on the other hand, they are ‘mostly dropouts, they do not pursue education,
do not look forward to marrying or securing a job, and live away from their
homes and families, wanting only to indulge in leisure activities and a carefree
life’. Thus, from a conventional point of view the lifestyle of the pinky violence
girls is socially unproductive, and they
represent the epitome of irresponsibility and self-interest, and are thus

marked in the various series as in some way delinquent. Film titles, for
example, usually include the words ‘bad,’ ‘delinquent,’ ‘poisonous’ and
‘terrifying’ (furyō, zubekō, dokufu, kyōfu); in this way, figurations of female
non-conformity, independence and violent agency are always-already
marked as outlaw, gone-bad, criminal and pathological. Such clear
demarcation is one of the devices adopted to disavow the non-normative
feminine subjects constructed within the films, while at the same time they
are championed by the narrative.
Such contradictions and ambiguities are typical of exploitation cinema in

whatever national culture it is found, as is confirmed by James Newton in the
final contribution to this section of the volume.
Newton’s chapter focusses on a group of women in prison (WiP) movies
made in the early 1970s, in order to explore the subversive and transgressive
qualities claimed by a number of theorists for the cycle. In doing so, he refers
back to an early piece by Pam Cook on Stephanie Rothman and exploitation

films in which she argued that ‘bad acting, crude stereotypes and schematic
narrative’ synonymous with exploitation cinema exposed the ‘ideological
structures embedded in the form itself ’.12 This resulted in contradictions and
‘shifts in meaning which disturb the patriarchal myths of women on which the
exploitation film itself rests’.13 Newton also quotes Henry Jenkins on Rothman’s
women in prison film Terminal Island (1973) which, Jenkins claims, ‘negotiates
between . . . two competing discourses’ that can illuminate ‘the ideological
fault-lines within popular cinema.’14
So far, so familiar. But Newton then goes on to raise a series of new questions
that are pertinent to this book as a whole, which is why it is worth discussing
his chapter in some detail. Not least: ‘What is the purpose of revisiting shocking
movies from the 1970s when, over the following, decades they have been
superseded by work which is far more violent, more shocking, and more
directly engaged in presenting marginal spaces, ideas, or identities?’ And this is
true not only of the cinema, since mainstream TV series such as The Walking
Dead (AMC, 2010– ) and Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011–19 ) feature content
that would most certainly have been censored, particularly in the UK, had it
appeared in feature films in the 1970s. Violent women are now quite
commonplace across cinematic genres such as horror, crime and action films,
and the WiP genre made its way onto TV as early as 1979 with the Australian
series Prisoner: Cell Block H (Grundy Television Productions/Network Ten)
which ran until 1986. More recent WiP series include Wentworth
(FremantleMedia Australia, 2013– ) and Orange is the New Black (Netflix,
2013–19). The once-disreputable WiP film is now celebrated as radical even in
a newspaper as liberal as the Guardian, with Noah Berlatsky arguing that Mad
Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) borrows a good deal from the WiP
movie but is less bold in its treatment of women of colour and is guilty of
‘straightening out WiP’s queerer dynamics’.15
On the other hand, though, Newton points out that ‘the one-time claims for
the “feminism” of WiP films have come to be seen by some as contradictory
and untenable’. By virtue of the period in which they were made, they, like
other exploitation films of the period, often contain content which bristles
against contemporary liberal Western values – including images of sexual
objectification, humour based on negative stereotypes, and content which
might now be seen by many as ‘politically incorrect’. Films of the kind discussed
in this chapter would be unlikely to face censorship today, at least in the US
and UK, but censure is quite another matter. It is thus unsurprising, then, that:
Scholarship on exploitation cinema which is still concerned to highlight the

positive or progressive elements of the cult film at the same time feels the
need to explain, put into context, mitigate or disown its negative elements,
such as its perceived racism or misogyny.
In fact, this is very much in line with the approach taken by Cook and Jenkins,
namely reframing the films and creating a viewing context in which they can
be understood in a way that mitigates their disreputable content (in this case
by showing how they counterpoint mainstream Hollywood representations).
But, Newton argues:
Such an approach suggests that the WiP film is suitable only when viewed
through the prism of intellectual enquiry or a feminist quest for transgressive
female role models . . . The critic takes on the role of guardian or teacher,
‘educating’ the ‘untutored’ viewer on how to understand, interpret and enjoy
such films, but also on when to stop taking pleasure in them and to start
critiquing any problematic representations.
It is Newton’s contention that to focus simply on the ‘feminism’ of the WiP

cycle is to ignore the films’ principal selling points, namely depictions of sex
and violence, with the two mixed up together in ways which may be distinctly
uncomfortable to certain contemporary sensibilities. In his view, such films
can, and should, be considered as simultaneously transgressive and stuck in
stereotypical and regressive representations – what Cook refers to as ‘patriarchal
myths’ and ‘ideological structures’. The films can still be seen as subversive,
but ‘identifying their subversive qualities involves going beyond a surface
interpretation and relies on an acceptance of their cruder side’.
As noted earlier, films that shock can disturb both conservative and liberal
sensibilities. This contradictory set of reactions to unsettling content is taken
up by the second strand of Shocking Cinema of the 70s: ‘From the Vigilante to
the Violated’.
The seventies gave rise to a prolific cycle of films, beginning with Dirty
Harry and Death Wish, that thoroughly disturbed liberal sensibilities. There
have been attempts to recuperate the former, but very few efforts have been
made in the case of the latter, save the chapter contained in the first edition of
Shocking Cinema of the 70s. This no doubt has a great deal to do with the
different authorial reputations of Don Siegel and Michael Winner, but
it surely has to be admitted that Death Wish is now generally deemed as
irrecoverable, which is why we decided to devote a chapter to it here. However,
there is another reason for our focus on vigilantes in this strand of the
collection, and that is because, to a greater extent than any other US films of
the seventies, their spirit appears to imbue the ideology of many of Donald
Trump’s supporters (indeed of Trump himself) and we are interested in the
parallels between the two. It simply cannot be a coincidence that Death Wish
was remade in 2018. But it should also be noted that, in the case of the UK, it
is not exactly difficult to locate the echoes of Death Wish in Harry Brown
(Daniel Barber, 2009) and in the representation of young members of the
‘underclass’ in the films that Johnny Walker characterizes as ‘hoodie horrors’.16
William Gombash’s chapter examines how Death Wish relates to the subject
of law and order in America in the 1970s, noting how at the time of its release,
the film
powerfully resonated with a disgruntled white middle class that feared crime
and felt that the traditional means of protection and justice – the police and
the courts – had become for some the problem and not the solution as far as
crime in America was concerned.
His chapter seeks to provide answers to the question:
What were the social and political variables that allowed Death Wish to
touch a section of the public that had become so disillusioned with the
system of law and order that they cheered a vigilante hero fighting the battle
that they wished they could wage themselves?
That Death Wish shocked liberal sensibilities is clear from Vincent Canby’s
review in the New York Times, 4 August 1974, headed ‘Death Wish Exploits
Fear Irresponsibly’. This stated:
It’s a tackily made melodrama but it so cannily orchestrates the audience’s

responses that it can appeal to law-and-order fanatics, sadists, muggers, club
women, fathers, older sisters, masochists, policemen, politicians, and, it
seems, a number of film critics. Impartially. Its message, simply put, is: KILL.
TRY IT. YOU’LL LIKE IT’.
And Canby’s review shows that the cheers mentioned by Gombash were by no
means simply metaphorical ones:
Its powers to arouse – through demonstrations of action – are not unlike

those of a pornographic movie . . . If you allow your wits to take flight, it’s
difficult not to respond with the kind of lunatic cheers that rocked the Loew’s
Astor Plaza when I was there the other evening. At one point a man behind
me shouted with delight: ‘That’ll teach the mothers!’
But Death Wish also shocked other sensibilities. Although it was originally
released to cinemas uncut with an R and an X certificate in the US and UK
respectively, when it was submitted to the British Board of Film Classification
(BBFC) on video in 1987, the Board’s director, James Ferman, indicated that
he was not prepared to pass the film with the rape scene intact. However, as it
was impossible to cut the scene effectively, and as the narrative would be
damaged by removing it altogether, the video would be refused a certificate.
Thus the distributor withdrew their submission and the video joined that
select list of films that the Board hadn’t actually banned but remained
unavailable on video for years – other notable examples being The Exorcist
(William Friedkin, 1973) and Straw Dogs (Sam Pekinpah, 1971). It was
resubmitted in 1999, after Ferman’s retirement, and passed with twenty-nine
seconds of cuts at 18 (the successor to the X). It was finally passed uncut in
2006. The examiner’s comment on the 1987 video submission is interesting in
that it reveals that standards of what is considered shocking, at least
by some, by no means always change over time in the direction of greater
liberalization:
What is clear on re-viewing is that it’s way beyond the current standards of
sexual violence to women that we’re currently using at the Board, even in the
adult category. I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’ve tightened up on
sexual assault and violence to women in the last ten years.17
Further proof of the fluid and changeable nature of the shocking is offered
by the fate of Death Wish II (1982), also directed by Winner. When the cinema
film was submitted to both the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) and the BBFC, its rape scenes were heavily cut in order to achieve an
R and an X respectively. Various videos of the film were submitted to the BBFC
from 1986 onwards, and those which used the original BBFC cinema version
were passed at 18 without further cuts. In 2006, the R-rated version was
submitted, and lost a further twenty-seven seconds, but from 2012 videos
using the R-rated version were passed without further cuts. This does mean,
however, that all the rated versions of both the film and the video circulating
today in the US and UK are still heavily cut.
In his chapter on Rough Justice, Julian Petley explains the context of right-
wing reaction against the liberal values of the 1960s in a number of 1970s films
about both cops and civilians taking the law into their own hands. But whilst
noting the elements in Dirty Harry which very clearly critique the workings of
‘due process liberalism’ in the field of law enforcement, he also argues that not
every lone cop in subsequent 1970s crime films is necessarily a vigilante nor
thwarted in his duties solely by due process liberals – the more common causes
are actually apathy and corruption in both the police force and at City Hall
level. Indeed, there is even a sense in which Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood)
himself in Dirty Harry is not a vigilante, in that, unlike Paul Kersey (Charles
Bronson) in Death Wish or John Eastland (Robert Ginty) in The Exterminator
(James Glickenhaus, 1980), he is not involved in an ongoing campaign of
vigilante ‘justice’ but is obsessively pursuing one particular criminal, albeit by
increasingly illegal means. Indeed, the point is made, admittedly not entirely
convincingly, by pitting Callahan against a group of actual vigilante cops in
Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973). However, in so far as these films featuring
rough justice tend to endorse the cathartic effect of violence and ‘unofficial’
retribution as an alternative to legally sanctioned methods, they can be seen as
symptomatic of, if not necessarily endorsing, the Nixonite ideological climate
of the 1970s. This, in ways which are now becoming ever clearer, can be seen
as prefiguring the values of the Tea Party and Donald Trump, as well as of
reactionary populist regimes elsewhere.
The final entry to this section shifts the focus from the marginal figure of
the vigilante to the violated survivor through Jennifer Wallis’s contribution.
This chapter closely examines four TV movies from the 1970s dealing with the
rape-revenge theme in order to consider how contemporary discussions of
violation and its punishment were played out on the small screen. As Wallis
notes, rape-revenge movies such as I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) or
Ms.45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981) have been widely covered by those interested in
cult and exploitation fare, and many interpretations of these films emphasize
their feminist potential, with women carrying out the punishment of their
rapists independently and outside the official legal channels. However, as
Wallis points out, although this is frequently forgotten in these debates, the
1970s TV movie provided an outlet for films that dealt with ‘difficult’ subjects,
such as homosexuality, alcoholism and rape, which might have been box office
poison at the cinema. It was also geared towards a predominantly female
audience, reflected in evening scheduling that fitted in well with housewives’
free time. Wallis observes that the basic plot of many TV movies
tended to revolve around the disruption of comfortable suburban domestic

life and confronted audiences at home with fictive lives that were very
similar to their own. The target audience for the made-for-TV movie were
women in their twenties to fifties who were relatively engaged with
contemporary social and political issues. It was not surprising, then, that so
many TV movies relied on a woman-in-peril motif to capture the attentions
and emotions of their audience.
And from here it was but a short step to narratives dealing specifically with
rape, particularly as the 1970s coincided with both a renewed concern about
crime in the US, and with second-wave feminism.
As Wallis points out:
Tackling rape was high on the political agenda with the establishment of
institutions such as the National Center for the Prevention and Control of
Rape, growing efforts to debunk rape myths and to highlight the pervasiveness
of victim-blaming within the legal system, and the increased reporting of
individual rape cases in the press.
However, the prejudices of jurors and judges continued to stand in the way of
widespread reform, and it was barriers such as these that constituted the major
theme of those made-for-TV movies with a rape-revenge narrative. Many of
these were based on specific highly publicized cases, and the use of a personal
story to explore wider social or legal problems clearly resonated with second-
wave feminism’s motto that ‘the personal is political’. But whilst admitting that
TV movies were an important platform for female directors and actresses who
might have been less able to find work elsewhere, and that they offered the
possibility of feminist-inflected scripts tackling issues that were being discussed
at the time, such as sexual assault, street harassment and rape law, Wallis argues
that ‘their social, political or personal impact was often limited, as any explicitly
feminist messages were constrained or rendered less forceful’ and that they
were ‘especially careful to contain rape and other women’s issues within the
generally conservative discourse typical of the format, emphasizing women’s
roles as mothers and wives and the dangers attendant upon independence’. For
these reasons she concludes that she finds the TV movies’
messages about rape and the responses to it much less empowering and
much more morally suspect than those articulated by films such as Ms. 45.
The rape-revenge narrative of the made-for-TV movie was frequently an
impersonal one, less concerned with the suffering of the individual victim
than with rape as an act prompting broader societal change, ‘revenged’ via
legal channels and rarely by the victim herself.
The third key strand of the volume is entitled ‘State Sponsored Shocks’ and
considers the controversies that surrounded the films that emerged from
Canada’s government-backed film schemes during the 1970s. Some of these
films, too, involved vigilantes and victims of assault (although these violations
came often from both human and inhuman aggressors). Indeed, one of the
more shocking horror debuts of the 1970s was David Cronenberg’s Shivers
(1975), which revealed the inhabitants of a plush condominium as vulnerable
to violation from a strain of venereal parasites that were infecting the building.
Cronenberg’s film was one of the first of a number of controversial films to
emerge from such an unexpected quarter of the film world as Canada. Xavier
Mendik’s chapter analyses the social and economic structures that facilitated
this decade-long development, linking the shocking impact of a new wave of
erotic and horror productions to Canada’s tax shelter subsidy scheme that
underpinned their creation.
When the government launched the Canadian Film Development
Corporation in 1968, and then cemented its commitment to film production
through the Capital Cost Allowance Act in 1974, it was intended to herald a
‘golden age’ of national cinema funded by state subsidy and private investment.
However, the ribald and visceral nature of the films that emerged from the
scheme provoked condemnation, parliamentary discussion and even requests
for its film-makers to be deported. Shivers was, in fact, one of the earliest targets
of protest after it was violently condemned by Robert Fulford (writing as
Marshall Delaney) in an article in the magazine Saturday Night, September

1975, headed ‘You Should Know How Bad This Film Is. After All, You Paid For
It’, in which he called it ‘the most repulsive movie I’ve ever seen’ and ‘an atrocity,
a disgrace to everyone connected with it – including the taxpayer’.
Mendik begins by outlining some of the controversies in which these tax
shelter schemes became embroiled, and then goes onto explore these with specific
reference to the Montreal-based company Cinépix Films. Created in 1964 by
John Dunning and André Link, Cinépix became closely associated with these
subsidies, and the scandals surrounding them, as they used them to fund over
seventy feature films between 1969 and 1984. Through these releases, Cinépix
also launched the international careers of not only Cronenberg but also Don
Carmody and William Fruet, and the latter’s recollections of working with the
company are presented as a separate chapter that follows Mendik’s study.
However, despite its prolific output, Cinépix has largely been written out of
the leading academic accounts of Canadian national film. Here, critics have
frequently rejected the types of populist productions that Cinépix created in
favour of those titles that confirm existing conceptions of Canadian national
cinema as either documentary realist or experimental in orientation. In order
more fully to situate Cinépix productions within their wider social and political
contexts, Mendik’s chapter analyses the company’s startling Québecois sex
comedies as reflective of social and gender transitions occurring as part of the
‘Quiet Revolution’ of the late 1960s. It concludes by considering the medical,
military and home invasion thrillers that Cinépix created as being directly
traceable to 1970s fears about the activities of terrorist cells such as the Québec
Liberation Front (FLQ).
In a further elaboration of the volume’s ‘State Sponsored Shocks’ strand,
Robin Griffiths continues the exploration of the aspects of Canadian cinema
that dismayed many of the country’s inhabitants. Here, Griffiths examines the
so-called ‘Canuxploitation’ productions of Dunning and Link, and specifically,
those works that
presented a vision of 1970s Canada that was anathema to the nation-

building, egalitarian utopianism of the era encapsulated by the ‘Just Society’
rhetoric of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. They were films that, at the
time, were seen to constitute a collectively shameful period in the country’s
production history.
However, as the author notes, researchers such as Paul Corupe have observed
that the Dunning/Link era was in fact a crucial period during which ‘Canada
first revealed itself to be an exceptional breeding ground for innovative,
challenging and surprisingly Canadian horror films’.18 Leading on from this
observation, Griffiths himself argues that works such as Shivers, William Fruet’s
rural revenge thriller Death Weekend/House by the Lake (1976) and the
Dunning-inspired siege drama Blackout (Eddy Matalon, 1978)
emerged as crucial points of reference in characterising a nation, and a

cinema, struggling to cope with the pervasive effects of social division,
sexism and bigotry at a time of immense cultural and political upheaval.
These proffered an interesting insight into archetypical depictions of
postcolonial ‘Canuck’ masculinity that were common to a number of related
English-Canadian films of the tax shelter era.
For Griffiths, these films function as ‘ “cognitive maps” that delineate the
anxieties, paranoias and fantasies of Canadian society at a time of immense
socio-political change as a result of the transition to Trudeau-era neoliberalism’
and ‘collectively constitute an invaluable repository of Canadian culture,
cinema and identity at a time of immense transformation, the implications of
which thus extend well beyond the confines of the texts themselves’.
The author also argues that ‘the overly intense obsession with hegemonic
masculinity in crisis that was so characteristic of these films (despite being
resolutely heterosexist in intent), in retrospect lends itself quite readily to the
subversive re-imaginings of the contemporary queer screen theorist’. His
chapter thus critically ‘re-views’ these key Canuxploitation texts ‘in order to
explore the transgressive potential that they still hold’. Drawing on Thomas
Waugh,19 he notes that Canadian cinema’s marginal status both at home and
abroad, its apparent lack of a significant commercial production history and,
accordingly, its lack of uniquely English-Canadian forms of cinematic cultural
representation, position it as ‘already outside the prescriptive imaginary norms
of the industrial mainstream’ and thus as continually receptive to what Waugh
terms the ‘romantic possibilities of transgression’. He locates a ‘symptomatic
queerness that identifiably circulates around those shifting and anxious forms
of masculinity that emerge in Canadian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s’, and
concurs with Waugh that:
It is those local and more regional forms of Canadian cinema (and, in

particular, low-budget genre film-making that was deliberately designed to
exploit the fears and desires of its audiences) that have engaged more queerly
with the complexities of identity than have the big budget imports of the
North American mainstream. The Canuxploitation canon’s propensity for
constructing narratives that expound the more transgressive realms of
the national body has thus functioned as a far more productive means for
shaping the social imaginary.
The fourth strand of the new edition of Shocking Cinema of the 70s is entitled
‘Family-sploitation and Threats to the Family’, and considers real-life and
fictional 1970s figures that threatened conventional familial structures and the
very fabric of the social order during the decade.
Arguably, one of the most shocking figures to emerge from the late 1960s
was Charles Manson, whose ‘Family’ murdered eight people on 9–10 August
1969, one of whom was Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, who was eight-
and-a half months’ pregnant at the time. Inevitably, films and television
programmes about the Family began to proliferate immediately after this
horrendous crime, but, as Bill Osgerby shows, they encompassed a wide range
of genres and approaches. He argues that understanding
the proliferation of ‘Family’ films during the 1970s demands attention to

both the historical context and the economic circumstances in which they
were produced. In historical terms, Manson and his acolytes enthralled the
media because their character and crimes captured the mood of the times.
They seemed to personify the downfall of the counterculture, capturing the
moment the sun set on the Summer of Love and the sixties hippy scene
turned sour and seedy. More than this, though, the Manson cult was the
object of media fascination because it served as a symbolic focus for a
broader climate of unease. Configured by the media as America’s ultimate
bogeyman, Manson was projected as the embodiment of evils that seemed
to threaten the fabric of the nation as the US faced convulsive social and
cultural transformations . . . The war in Vietnam was escalating, political
assassinations were rocking America and movements for progressive change
faced growing repression and violence.
It is no surprise, then, that what Osgerby calls a ‘sense of dread’ pervades Helter
Skelter, a gripping and serious-minded TV docudrama based on the Manson
case. Directed by Tom Gries and originally screened on the CBS network over
two nights in 1976, it is based on the 1974 bestseller of the same name by
Vincent Bugliosi, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Family. Of course,
Manson and his murderous gang are portrayed highly unsympathetically, and
quite justifiably so, but, as Osgerby observes, the film is ‘rooted in the fairly
conservative codes and conventions of mainstream Hollywood’ and ‘reproduces
the period’s reactionary “law and order” discourse through its simplistic
depiction of the Family as a group of deranged Others menacing the decency
and rectitude of “straight” society’.
Osgerby then goes on to show how very different film-making traditions
informed another documentary: Manson (Robert Hendrickson and Laurence
Merrick, 1973). This is a patchwork of interviews with figures from the Manson
case – including Bugliosi, Manson himself, and Family members recorded
after Manson’s arrest – but it also contains footage of the group taken between
late 1969 and 1972 at the Spahn Ranch and their Death Valley hideout. Osgerby
argues that these sequences result in a view of the Family that is nuanced and
complex, and that this looser, more open-ended portrait is ultimately more
unsettling than that provided by Helter Skelter. But he also notes that Manson’s
publicity campaign was decidedly more salacious than Helter Skelter’s, with
posters promising audiences: ‘YOU WILL ACTUALLY SEE each member of
the Manson family and HEAR their horrifying philosophy of sex, perversion,
murder and suicide.’ He thus concludes that: ‘With this combination of
disconcerting chills and lurid titillation, Manson is squarely located in the
traditions of exploitation cinema’.
The rest of Osgerby’s chapter is devoted to the various ways in which the
Family feature, both directly and indirectly, in 1970s exploitation cinema.
The gruesome nature of their crimes made them ideal subject-matter for
independent film-makers keen to take advantage of more relaxed censorship
standards in order to push back the boundaries of taste. He also makes the
point that many of them, like Al Adamson, who directed the biker movie
Satan’s Sadists (1969),
had an ambivalent relationship with the media furore surrounding the

Family. Superficially, many of the Manson movies echoed the general disgust
at the killers’ appalling crimes. But, at the same time, they also revelled in the
spectacle of the Manson murders and the circus of outrage that surrounded
them . . . Like classic exploitation cinema, the 1970s Manson movies savoured
tweaking the tail of conservative sensibilities by delighting in all that was
shocking, liminal and taboo.
The author then demonstrates how the Manson murders provided fresh
inspiration for film-makers who traded in topical sensationalism in a wide
variety of genres: in particular biker, mondo and horror movies. Like other
writers on exploitation movies in this book, he is particularly interested in the
ambivalence of such films. Thus, on the one hand, the bikers in Satan’s Sadists,
led by Manson stand-in Anchor (a deranged Russ Tamblyn), are painted as the
irredeemably malevolent underside of hippiedom and appear to reproduce
the stock stereotypes propagated in the right-wing backlash against the
counterculture, as mentioned above. But, on the other, they partake in what
Osgerby calls the rich carnivalesque seam that also ran through ‘Family-
sploitation’. As he puts it:
While the films may not have been ‘radical’ in a conventional political sense,
they nonetheless effectively satirised and undercut the shrill anxieties
proliferating in the media by appropriating the demonic stereotypes and
magnifying them to proportions that were incredible and simply outlandish.
Moreover, the films’ sheer enthusiasm for the shocking and the controversial
flouted conventional tastes. Their brazen pageant of the lurid and the taboo
spurned orthodox sensibilities and represented an unruly presence at a time
when the ‘law and order’ bandwagon of ‘Nixonland’ . . . was attempting to
foreclose dissent, pre-empt dialogue and preclude contradiction.
Osgerby also notes the influence of the Manson killings on what he calls
murder vérité films such as The Last House on the Left. But it was the release of
Snuff (Michael Findlay, 1976) that added a new element of controversy to the
Manson movie mythology. The term ‘snuff film’ had actually originated in Ed
Sanders’ book The Family (1972), in which he had reported hearsay that the
Family were responsible for hitherto unknown murders which had been
filmed, and the incriminating reels buried in the desert. The release of Snuff
seemed, at least to the credulous, grim proof that the rumours were true and
that ‘real’ murder movies did, indeed, exist.
Another shocking family figure to emerge in the 1970s, albeit in fiction of
one kind or another, was the murderous child. In point of fact, such a figure
had first featured in a Hollywood movie in 1956, namely Mervyn Leroy’s The
Bad Seed, but it was The Exorcist which was the real progenitor of the ‘evil child’
movie cycle in the 1970s, and by no means only in Hollywood. This has already
given rise to a very considerable literature, which is usefully referenced by
Susanne Kord in her chapter on this phenomenon, in which she examines the
question of whether narratives featuring children murdering adults can be
interpreted as a playing out the child’s unconscious and symbolic rejection of
his or her own future adulthood, an attack on the concept of adulthood itself:
this is the so-called ‘Peter Pan syndrome’.
Kord examines this question through the low-budget horror movies
Peopletoys/Devil Times Five (Sean MacGregor and David Sheldon, 1974), Kiss
of the Tarantula (Chris Munger, 1976) and The Child (Robert Voskanian, 1977),
and the more upmarket and hard-to-define The Little Girl Who Lives Down the
Lane (Nicholas Gessner, 1976). Three of these films cast the child’s act of killing
adults in the metaphor of child’s play, and Kord offers two possible
interpretations of these killing games:
The first is to read them as constituting ‘assimilation’ in Piaget’s sense, namely

subordination of the environment to the self, and therefore as self-
constituting and self-asserting acts. The second is to understand them as
symbolic expressions of the Peter Pan Syndrome, that is, a vision of childhood
as an end rather than a means, or even a wholesale rejection of adulthood as
the child’s future.
In her view, Piaget’s definition of play as the child adjusting its surroundings to
its own benefit is applicable to all of these films, but is most clearly enacted in
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Here, Jodie Foster, in her first top
billing role in a non-children’s movie, plays a quite remarkably assured child
who will go to any lengths, including murder, to safeguard the solitary life
that she has established for herself in her deceased parents’ house. And since
the other films focus on either the child’s refusal to grow up, or to do so in the
manner dictated by adults, Kord argues that the Peter Pan syndrome holds
for all of them.
However, she comes up with a third possible reading, one which is perhaps
less obvious because much more disturbing. She notes that David Elkind in
The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally20 offers the simplest answer
to the question: ‘Why do children play?’, namely that it’s fun and comes
naturally. She then considers the scandalous consequences of applying Elkind’s
insight to 1970s movies in which the murder of adults is actually visualized
as child’s play. Why do children murder adults? Because it comes naturally.
Because it’s fun. As she points out, Peopletoys is certainly capable of such a
reading, its narrative revolving around five children who escape from a bus
taking them to a mental institution and terrorize the inhabitants of a holiday
lodge. Indeed, the reading is encouraged by the film’s very title.
As Kord argues, certain murderous child movies of the 1970s throw adults
a bone of reassurance by assigning a child’s murder of an adult (or adults) a
logic that works in the adult world, as in the case of The Little Girl Who Lives
Down the Lane. This is particularly so where the adult in question is a
paedophile. However, she concludes, other films
are busily chipping away at such grown-up reasoning. The wound to the
adult self-image that these films inflict is threefold: the first cut is the
sneaking suspicion that a child’s development may be influenced less by
adult modelling than by autonomous experience gained through games.
There follows the hammer blow of realisation: children don’t need adults to
develop, they need only to play. And the final twist of the knife: not only are
adults no help at all, they are, in many cases, an actual hindrance to the
child’s development.
If we accept these three premises of certain murderous child films, then we

uncover their neat logic. Their objective is
the elimination of adverse (and that means adult) interference with the
child’s world, and the device through which this is achieved is, cogently
enough, the most fundamental means of child development: child’s play. In
this way, we can read certain 1970s shocker films not only literally – as
interesting insights into the games children apparently enjoy the most – but
also figuratively and symbolically: as documents deriding the conclusions of
much child developmental psychology, which, in a colossal inflation of adult
self-importance, demotes the entire world of children to boot camp for
adulthood.
Closing the new edition of Shocking Cinema of the 70s is the strand
‘Porno Chic, Porno Shock’, which features two chapters which analyse the
impact of explicit sexual representations across 1970s cinema and society.

Indeed, one of the most striking, and to some, shocking, features of 1970s
American cinema was hard core pornography’s move from the margins to the
mainstream. This is discussed in Darren Kerr’s chapter, which offers an account
that details the value of recognizing the wider cultural sensibility that paved
porn’s path into the mainstream during the period. But for those less familiar
with the topic it might be useful here to sketch in the legal developments which
made this move possible – and those that put an end to it. In particular, it
shows how the relaxation of legal restraints on material found shocking by
some is not a one-way process of liberalization and is quite capable of being
reversed.
The most obvious example of hard core’s trajectory from margins to
mainstream is Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano, 1972), which, although unrated
by the MPAA, grossed $1 million ($6.1 million today) in its first seven weeks
of release, and went on to make a then-record $3 million ($18.3 million today)
in its first six months. Other, more professionally produced, films soon
followed, including Behind the Green Door (Artie and Jim Mitchell, 1972) and
The Devil in Miss Jones (Gerard Damiano, 1973), and in the New York Times, 21
January 1973, in an article headed ‘ “Hard-core” Grows Fashionable – and Very
Profitable’, Ralph Blumenthal coined the soon-to-be-ubiquitous term ‘porno
chic’.
Such a development would have been utterly impossible in the UK, of
course, thanks to its strict obscenity laws and film censorship. And, in fact, in
the States too it was pretty short-lived, thanks to a change in the law in 1973
resulting from the famous Miller v. California case, as we shall see.
In 1957, Roth v. United States redefined the Constitutional test for
determining what material could be constituted as obscene and thus
unprotected by the First Amendment. Up until then, legal authorities had
applied the same ‘deprave and corrupt’ test as used in the UK, but the new
definition laid down by Justice William Brennan argued that a work could
be found obscene only if ‘to the average person, applying contemporary
community standards, the dominant theme of the material as a whole appeals
to prurient interest’. In his view, ‘all ideas having even the slightest redeeming
social importance – unorthodox ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing
climate of opinion – have the full protection’ of the Court.21 But, in Brennan’s
view, obscenity fell outside the realm of ideas and was not nor was ever
intended to be ‘within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press’.22
The definition of obscenity was still pretty vague (as indeed is the ‘deprave and
corrupt’ test) but it did represent a significant move towards establishing
national obscenity criteria.
This was taken a step further in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964, in which Brennan
refined his earlier definition of obscenity by arguing that a work cannot be
proscribed unless it is utterly without redeeming social importance and goes
‘substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or
representation’.23 But, more significantly, he also pointed out that the
‘ “contemporary community standards” by which obscenity is to be determined
are not those of the particular local community from which the case arises, but
those of the Nation as a whole’.24 This did a very great deal to protect cinema
owners from local bans and film seizures, although of course it infuriated
those concerned to protect states’ rights, including certain members of the
Supreme Court.
In 1966, the Court agreed to hear an appeal against a ban on the sale of John
Cleland’s book Fanny Hill (1748–9) by the state of Massachusetts. This is
known by the short title of Memoirs v. Massachusetts. The case is important for
building on the Roth and Jacobellis standards, Brennan arguing for the majority
opinion that all three elements mentioned in the previous tests ‘must coalesce’.
As Jon Lewis explains:
For a book to or film to be found obscene, Brennan wrote, the work taken as
a whole must appeal to a prurient interest in sex, the material must be
‘patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards’,
and the material must be utterly without ‘redeeming social value’.25
By making it difficult for local bans on films to be enforced whilst simultaneously

facing increasing difficulties and disagreements in trying to define obscenity
in any hard and fast way, the Supreme Court clearly played a role in helping to
pave porn’s path from the margins to the mainstream. But it would soon be
moving in the opposite direction.
On 20 January 1969, Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the thirty-seventh
President of the United States, and, in the present context, a key move was his
rapid realignment of the Supreme Court. The resignation of Chief Justice Earl
Warren enabled Nixon to replace him with the US District Court of Appeals
Judge Warren E. Burger, a hard-line law-and-order Republican. This marked
the start of a significant shift to the Right at the Court which, by the end of
1971, contained four Nixon appointees. (Exactly the same process took place
in the Trump years.)
The effects of this shift were particularly evident in the key Miller v.
California case in 1973. In convicting Marvin Miller, a seller of erotic books, of
obscenity, the California courts had used the California criminal obscenity
statute, which was similar to, but nonetheless stricter than, that elaborated by
the Supreme Court in Memoirs. This was the subject of Miller’s appeal to the
Supreme Court, which was heard in January and November 1972. In effect, the
Court upheld the lower courts’ original verdicts by a majority of five-to-four
(a very familiar ratio in the Nixon era). Writing for the majority, Chief Justice
Burger established a new, three-part test for juries in obscenity cases:
Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards,

would find that the work taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual
conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and whether the work,
taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.26
The ‘utterly without redeeming social value’ test articulated in Memoirs was
rejected as a constitutional standard, and juries were permitted to judge issues
of prurient appeal and patent offensiveness by the standards that prevailed in
their own communities.
Decisions in four other Supreme Court obscenity cases were announced on
the same day, 21 June 1973. In respect of films, the most important was Paris
Adult Theater 1 v. Slaton, which ruled that adults-only admission policies at
hard core cinemas were not enough to protect their owners or managers from
local prosecutions. Variety, 27 June, announced: ‘The impact of the new rulings
will have to be assessed in the months ahead, but the market for pornography
should be effectively reduced almost at once’.27 And so indeed it was, with Deep
Throat rapidly falling prey to local bans across the country. From now on, the
ability to view hard core films in cinemas would very much depend on the
attitudes of local authorities, and very few were prepared to permit such
screenings. As Lewis concludes:
With the exception of a few venues in a few major cities, the public, theatrical
exhibition of hard core was pretty much eliminated nationwide by the end
of 1973. Hard-core features have since made a comeback on home video, but
between 1973 and 1983 or so, between the Supreme Court’s retrenchment
and the emergence of home video, the studios have had the theatrical market
to themselves. An they have taken full advantage of the opportunity.28
Rather than focus solely on the screen industries and their products, Kerr
offers an account that details the value of recognizing the wider cultural
sensibility that paved porn’s path into the mainstream during a period steeped
in a culture of provocation, not just in countercultural politics but also in the
wider landscape of cultural production and activity. He argues that the move
from margins to mainstream was not just the result of a series of pragmatic,
economic, legislative and industrial influences but was an act of production in
itself – constructed, produced and performed. Pornography and sexually
explicit materials of the time were not just describing or dramatizing sex but
were producing sex and doing so in a time often understood as a golden age –
something that involves as much cultural forgetting as it does cultural
remembering. The result, Kerr claims, is that the move into the mainstream
was epiphenomenal – in other words it was a secondary effect caused by wider
shifts in cultural feeling, perceiving and understanding.
For the final entry to the volume, Neil Jackson’s chapter focuses on two
pornographic films which would undoubtedly have shocked many of those
who flocked to the kind of films described as ‘porno chic’. Indeed, they would
still be considered shocking by many people today. These are Femmes de Sade
(Alex De Renzy, 1976) and Water Power (Shaun Costello, 1977), which fall into
the category of ‘hard core roughies’. ‘Roughies’ developed out of the ‘nudie
cutie’ in the first half of the 1960s and are aptly described by the Grindhouse
Cinema Database as ‘a more aggressively lurid subgenre of classic Sexploitation
cinema. These films injected violence and sadism into the standard, rather
innocent, softcore mix. They featured stories dealing with S&M, kidnappings
and sexual abuse’.29 Seemingly inevitably, most of the violence was directed by
men at women. As Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris put it: ‘In a roughie, lust led
to violence: women were abused, men erupted in jealous rages. The action is
angry, brutal, and simpleminded. Storylines followed the old “morality play”
formula – warning audiences of the dangers of depraved behaviour while
depicting it in detail’30. Early examples include Scum of the Earth (Herschell

Gordon Lewis, 1963), Olga’s Girls (Joseph P. Mawra, 1964) and The Defilers
(Lee Frost and David F. Friedman, 1965).
Hard core roughies, however, took things a great deal further, and Jackson
describes them as films whose relentless focus upon sexual practices generally
regarded as aberrant and abhorrent at the time marks them out as ‘an
indigestible strand of an already despised cultural form that rendered them
resistant to “porno-chic” appropriation during their theatrical circulation in
the 1970s’. It is thus unsurprising that despite their generic roots in the softcore
sexploitation film and, to an extent, the crime film and even the horror film,
the hard core roughies have remained segregated from their relatives in both
the mainstream and exploitation sectors. Jackson notes that Linda Ruth
Williams has argued that ‘pornography is the genre that dare not speak its
name’31 and has commented on its absence from most scholarly overviews of
the cinematic field. However, he observes that:
Even a cursory glance at some of the more accomplished hardcore films of

the ‘golden age’ – such as The Devil in Miss Jones (Gerard Damiano, 1973),
The Opening of Misty Beethoven (Henry Paris, 1976), Through the Looking
Glass (Jonas Middleton, 1976), The Story of Joanna (Gerard Damiano, 1977)
and Sex World (Anthony Spinelli, 1978) – reveals conventions of melodrama,
romantic comedy, horror, science fiction and psycho-drama. All of these
elements are inflected very specifically by the demands of hardcore,
suggesting that porn films function not just as isolated generic outcasts but
as shadows of and adjuncts to their mainstream genre counterparts.
And as far as the hard core roughie was concerned, burgeoning awareness in
the 1960s and 1970s of the serial sex criminal was instrumental in defining its
parameters. These films thus stood in close historical proximity to horror films
foregrounding dystopian breakdown and sexually dysfunctional male
monsters, such as Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960), Psycho (Alfred
Hitchcock, 1960) and The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968), the last
two of which were based on real-life cases, albeit to different extents.
Thus, as with any development in cinematic genres, hybridization is
fundamental to a deeper understanding of the hard core roughie. Jackson
here draws on Linda Williams’ observations on the relationship between
pornography, melodrama and horror, in which she identifies them all as ‘body
genres’ whose primary function is to affect bodily and emotional (as opposed
to intellectual) responses in the spectator. The roughies often mingle these
body genres, thereby reinforcing Williams’ argument that ‘pornography today
is more often deemed excessive for its violence than for its sex, while horror
films are excessive in their displacement of sex onto violence’.32 Jackson argues
that:
In this sense, both Femmes de Sade and Water Power (and many other
roughies too) confound generic Categorization, questioning the point at
which pornographic convention either departs from or fuses with its horrific
content. Nevertheless, although sexual violence may have been present as a
narrative feature of many hardcore feature films, it was relatively uncommon
for it to be the defining element.
However, it most certainly is in the case of the two films under examination here,
which is enough to expel them beyond the critical pale. Although Femmes de
Sade is replete with traces of a countercultural zeal and defiance, Jackson argues
that ‘neither it nor Water Power make enough concessions to a sustained,
identifiable project that would make for easy appropriation by even the most
tolerant and liberal academic discourse’. Admittedly each film does tackle the
exercise of male power and subjectivity that became so central to radical feminist
critiques of pornography and its broader popular cultural manifestations, and
each does so in different ways, pursuing distinct and divergent paths through
their use of porno shock-horror tactics. However, they have to be understood
from the outset, Jackson states, as ‘wilful incitements to revulsion, shock and
bemusement’, and his discussion of them ‘constitutes neither defence or
justification’. But although the discussion does focus primarily on the films’
strategies of representing sexual violence, Jackson argues that they contain
elements that allow critical discourse to develop beyond the mere articulation of
transgressive content. In his view, these elements, taken together,
can help enhance our understanding of graphic, often alarming, depictions of

sexual violence within the stylistic norms of cinematic pornography, which
might in turn be sensibly accommodated in ongoing debates about realist
horror films produced within both the exploitation and mainstream sectors.
Jackson’s point about using these decidedly maudit films to develop critical
discourse and to engage in ongoing debates about certain kinds of contemporary
horror films echoes some of our own intentions in compiling this collection.
We wanted not simply to cast a critical light on a series of controversial films
which had been variously maligned, misinterpreted or just plain ignored, but
also to assess how their production values, narrative features and critical
receptions can be linked to the wider historical and social forces that were
dominant during this decade. Furthermore, we wanted to explore how these
films resonate in our own historical moment – replete as it is with shocks of all
kinds. Many of these – and in particular ecological catastrophe and societal
breakdown – are clearly prefigured in films from numerous different societies
in the seventies, and we would contend that it is the films from the margins of
the cinema industries in these societies that, even now, still retain the greatest
power to shock.
Julian Petley and Xavier Mendik

May 2021
Notes
1 Xavier Mendik (ed.), Shocking Cinema of the 70s (Hereford: Noir Publishing,
2002).
2 Lester D. Friedman (ed.), American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations,
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007).
3 Barbara Jane Brickman, New American Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in
1970s Film (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012).
4 Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters (London: Wallflower, 2003).
5 Linnie Blake, The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema Historical Trauma and
National Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).
6 Mendik, Shocking, p. 11.
7 Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Regan . . . and Beyond (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003); Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected
Essays and Reviews, Barry Keith Grant and Richard Lippe (eds) (Detroit, MI:
Wayne State University Press, 2018).
8 Jeffrey Sconce, ‘ “Trashing” the academy: taste, excess, and an emerging politics of
cinematic style’, Screen, 36/4, Winter 1995, pp. 371–93.
9 Ado Kyrou, Le surréalisme au cinema (Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1963).
10 Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1974).
11 Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, Cult Cinema (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011), p. 97.
12 Pam Cook, ‘Exploitation films and feminism’, Screen, 17/2, Summer 1976, p. 125.
13 Ibid., p. 127.
14 Henry Jenkins, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture
(New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 103.
15 Noah Berlatsky, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road is less radical than its B-movie influences’,
Guardian, 26 May 2015.
16 Johnny Walker, Contemporary British Horror Cinema: Industry, Genre and Society
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 85–108.
17 Quoted in Stevie Simkin, ‘Wake of the flood: key issues in UK censorship, 1970–5’,
in Edward Lamberti (ed.), Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from
the Silver Screen to the Digital Age (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 84,
note 77.
18 Paul Corupe, ‘(Who’s in the) driver’s seat: the Canadian brute unleashed in Death
Weekend’, in Gina Freitag and André Loiselle (eds), The Canadian Horror Film:
Terror of the Soul (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), p. 91.
19 Thomas Waugh, The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities,
Nations, Cinemas (Montréal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006).
20 David Elkind, The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally (Philadelphia,
PA: Da Capo, 2007).
21 Quoted in Jon Lewis, Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship
Saved the Modern Film Industry (New York: New York University Press, 2000),
p. 239.
22 Quoted in ibid.
23 Quoted in ibid., p. 242.
24 Quoted in ibid.
25 Ibid., p. 246. Emphases in original.
26 Quoted in David L. Hudson Jnr, ‘Miller v. California (1973)’, in The First
Amendment Encyclopedia. Available at https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/
article/401/miller-v-california
27 Quoted in Lewis, Hollywood p. 260.
28 Ibid., pp. 265–6.
29 ‘Roughies’, The Grindhouse Cinema Database. Available at https://www.
grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Category:Roughies
30 Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris, Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of “Adults Only”
Cinema (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 95.
31 Linda Ruth Williams, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 38.
32 Linda Williams, ‘Film bodies: gender, genre and excess’, Film Quarterly, 44/4
Summer 1991, p. 2.
Bibliography
Berlatsky, Noah, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road is less radical than its B-movie influences’,
Guardian, 26 May 2015.
Blake, Linnie, The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and
National Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).
Brickman, Barbara Jane, New American Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in
1970s Film (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012).
Cook, Pam, ‘Exploitation films and feminism’, Screen, 17/2 (Summer 1976), pp. 122–7.
Corupe, Paul, ‘(Who’s in the) driver’s seat: the Canadian brute unleashed in Death
Terror of the Soul (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 91–107.
Elkind, David, The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally (Philadelphia,
PA: Da Capo, 2007).
Friedman, Lester D. (ed.), American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations
(New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2007).
Grant, Barry Keith and Lippe, Richard (eds), Robin Wood on the Horror Film:
Collected Essays and Reviews (Detroit, MI : Wayne State University Press, 2018).
Hudson, David L. Jnr, ‘Miller v. California (1973)’, in The First Amendment
Encyclopedia. Available at https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/401/
miller-v-california
Hunt, Leon, Kung Fu Cult Masters (London: Wallflower, 2003).
Jenkins, Henry, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture
(New York: New York University Press, 2006).
Kyrou, Ado, Le surréalisme au cinema, (Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1963).
Lewis, Jon, Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the
Modern Film Industry (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
Mathijs, Ernest and Sexton, Jamie, Cult Cinema (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011).
Mendik, Xavier (ed.), Shocking Cinema of the 70s (Hereford: Noir Publishing, 2002).
Muller, Eddie and Faris, Daniel, Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of “Adults Only”
Cinema (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1996).
Sconce, Jeffrey, ‘ “Trashing” the academy: taste, excess, and an emerging politics of
cinematic style’, Screen, 36/4 Winter 1995, pp. 371–93.
Simkin, Stevie, ‘Wake of the flood: key issues in UK censorship, 1970–5’, in Edward
Lamberti (ed.), Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver
Screen to the Digital Age (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Vogel, Amos, Film as a Subversive Art (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1974).
Walker, Johnny, Contemporary British Horror Cinema: Industry, Genre and Society
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016).
Waugh, Thomas, The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities,

Nations, Cinemas (Montréal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006).
Williams, Linda, ‘Film bodies: gender, genre and excess’, Film Quarterly, 44/4,
Summer 1991, pp. 2–13.
Williams, Linda Ruth, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
Wood, Robin, Hollywood from Vietnam to Regan . . . and Beyond (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003).
32
Part One
International Visions of the Extreme
33
34
1
Walerian Borowczyk: Seventies Sexploitation

Through Sublimation
Aga Skrodzka
Introduction
Not quite as famous as other purveyors of European exploitation cinema, such

as Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Dario Argento or Mario Bava, Walerian Borowczyk
worked hard to compete with his contemporaries to earn his reputation, in
some quarters, as a peddler of artistic smut. But his professional journey is
fascinating and it is well worth documenting, in particular, the film-maker’s
tendency to cross cultural, geographical, stylistic and generic boundaries. The
trajectory that emerges shows Borowczyk’s strategic transition from his
rigorous early training in the academic arts, through the successful stage
of making experimental animation, to his mature preoccupation with the
sexploitation genre.
Born in the village of Kwilicz, Poland, on 21 October 1923 (and not 2
September 1932, as he would later claim in his official biography), Borowczyk
studied painting at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (where
Andrzej Wajda was also briefly a student) before becoming a lithographer,
specializing in poster art, and an animator. His father, a railway worker, was an
amateur painter, who is said to have inspired his son’s early artistic inclinations.
While carrying out his classical training in drawing and painting at the
academy, Borowczyk acquired a 16mm camera and began his filmic
experiments, soon making his first shorts Sierpień /Mois d’août/August (1946),
Głowa/The Head (1949) and Tłum/Crowd (1950). Around this time, he met
Ligia Brokowska, who soon becomes his wife and professional partner. Under
the pseudonym Ligia Branice, she acted in many of Borowczyk’s early projects.
35
In his post-graduation animation work, Borowczyk collaborated with Jan

Lenica (and later Chris Marker), producing animation that pioneered the
collage technique (later popularized by Terry Gilliam) and used non-
synchronic sound in aural/visual counterpoint to satirical effect. His most
notable animated films were Byl sobie raz/Once Upon a Time (1957), Dom/
House (1958), Szkola/School (1959), Les astronautes/The Astronauts (1959),
Renaissance (1963), Les jeux des anges/The Games of Angels (1964) and Théâtre
de Monsieur & Madame Kabal/The Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal (1967). After
a number of trips to the West, mainly to acknowledge the accolades bestowed
upon his experimental films by various festival juries, Borowczyk and his wife
settled in France in 1959. Under a five-year exclusive contract, he made
commercial shorts as well as experimental animation films for Les Cinéastes
Associés, Jacques Forgeot’s animation company. Although his experimental
animation continued to be appreciated at festivals and on art house circuits,
Borowczyk gradually transitioned into live-action sexploitation film.
In the 1970s he made seven low-budget co-productions, many of which
become instant box-office successes. Goto, l’île d’amour/Goto, Island of Love
(1968) was his first full length live-action feature, and although not a
sexploitation film per se, it contains certain sexploitation elements (such as
scenes of voyeurism, and the fetishistic portrayal of the female body) that
would be deployed, albeit in various ways and to differing degrees, in his
Figure 1.1 Immoral Tales: The fetishistic portrayal of the female body.
Walerian Borowczyk 37
subsequent films: Blanche (1972), Contes Immoraux/Immoral Tales (1974),

Dzieje grzechu/The Story of Sin (1975, his only feature film made in Poland), La
bête/The Beast (1975), La marge/The Margin (1976), Interno di un convento/
Behind Convent Walls (1978) and Les heroines du mal/Immoral Women (1979).
During this decade, Borowczyk earned a scandalous reputation among film
critics as someone who had abandoned his background in high art only to take
up entertainment films featuring explicit sexual content. However, his work
during the 1980s exploited sexual content to an even greater degree: Lulu
(1980), Docteur Jekyll et les Femmes/Dr. Jekyll and His Women (1981), Ars
amandi/The Art of Love (1983), Emmanuelle 5 (1987) and Cérémonie d’amour/
Love Rites (1988). In some quarters, these films earned him the label of
pornographer. While certain producers wanted to capitalize on this and
increasingly pushed him to make soft core pornography, he resisted, and,
eventually, was forced to walk away from some of his more compromised
projects, such as Emmanuelle 5. Tired and disillusioned, Borowczyk withdrew
from the film industry and devoted his last years to writing, painting and
animation. Soon after his death of heart failure at a Paris hospital, on 2 February
2006, at the age of eighty-two, Borowczyk’s posthumous autobiography, What
Do I Think When I See a Polish Woman in the Nude, was published. Its salacious
title and challenging content reaffirmed his status as a master of exploitation.
The battle over Borowczyk’s good name
The cinema of Walerian Borowczyk entices as it offends. Every offence, typically

staged as a sexual transgression, is carefully framed within a highly choreographed
artistic spectacle, often using art objects to decorate the sexual content. In this
sense, Borowczyk curates as he exploits. This strategy allows him to circulate
graphic sexual images under the guise of artistic contemplation. The exhibition
of art objects that so often punctuates his exploitation material functions in
such a way as to enlighten and educate the viewer, thus resonating with Eric
Schaefer’s theory of exploitation cinema’s origins in ‘respectable films made with
the alleged “good intentions”’.1 Critics have argued, and continue to argue, that
Borowczyk’s ‘classy erotica’ does much more than titillate (although I have
argued elsewhere that it successfully titillates the female viewer by engaging her
gaze2). It has frequently been claimed that there is always ‘more to it’, and that the
‘more’ has an authentic artistic, even philosophical, value. Not surprisingly,
Borowczyk’s early reputation as an award-winning experimental film-maker
lends his sexploitation fare the kind of credibility that prompts certain critics to
group him with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel and Nagisa Ôshima. Yet,
Borowczyk’s 1970s films, which are the topic of this chapter, also have an affinity
with the work of Russ Meyer, Jess Franco and Ken Russell. So why is the
sexploitation framework frequently pushed out of Borowczyk criticism?
Since his death in 2006, the director’s work has been re-appraised critically
and continues to receive scholarly attention as his films are restored and
re-released. For example, in 2008, Jeremy Mark Robinson published his
monograph, Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams; Pascal Vimenet
and Alberto Pezzotta have each edited volumes of collected essays on the film-
maker; Bertrand Mandico, Marina and Alessio Pierro, and Daniel Bird have
made films about Borowczyk: Boro in the Box (2011), Himorogi (2012) and
Obscure Pleasures (2014). In 2014, Arrow Films released a box set of six of
Borowczyk’s greatest films, entitled Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk
Collection. A plethora of exhibitions, books, retrospectives, documentaries and
blogs have since celebrated Borowczyk as an experimental animator, a surrealist
artist, a philosopher of sexuality, a cultural iconoclast and a technical innovator.
While he undoubtedly deserves these labels, he was also a financially successful
exploitation film-maker, an identity which is consistently and compulsively
denied in the new accounts.
Many of the most recent critical texts are commemorative and adulatory in
tone, disproportionally focused on Borowczyk’s experimental works, and
written within the framework of auteur theory (often by self-proclaimed life-
long fans of Borowczyk). For example, books like Boro, L’Île D’Amour (edited by
Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and Michał Oleszczyk) or Kuba Mikurda and Jakub
Woynarowski’s Corpus Delicti focus overwhelmingly on Borowczyk’s artistic
influences and his investment in the European cultural heritage, particularly
surrealism. Marcin Giżycki, whose essay appears in Boro, L’Île D’Amour, attempts
to rehabilitate Borowczyk’s oeuvre ‘so that the obvious erotic traits of it don’t
overshadow its other, noteworthy aspects’.3 This determination to elevate
Borowczyk above and beyond his commitment to exploitation and entertainment
is especially symptomatic of Polish film critics and scholars, who have reclaimed
the expatriate Borowczyk as a Polish film-maker aligned with the venerable

tradition of art cinema. This tradition, situated in opposition to commercial and
genre cinema, reflects the specific value system that Polish film scholars continue
to apply when evaluating film according to the paradigm inherited from the
communist cultural production model, which divided cinema between serious
works of art (often with anti-communist political implications) and communist
propaganda (tendentious films of socialist realism). Within this paradigm,
adopted by film-makers and critics alike, very little room is ever left for
commercial or genre films whose primary goal is to entertain (with the sole
exception, perhaps, of politically engaged comedy). This art cinema tradition is
a variant of what Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau call in their discussion
of European popular cinema the ‘high white tradition’ of the modernist canon,
a tradition used to devalue popular cinema.4 This concept was later referred to
by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik as a tradition that continues to ‘restrict
European cinema to a modernist taste-economy’.5
Yet, Borowczyk’s best known and commercially most successful films fall
squarely within the category of popular entertainment. They were produced in
the 1970s, during the era when Western Europe, continuing trends that started
in the later 1960s, was experiencing a widespread cultural and political
liberalization, the rise of consumer capitalism, a series of youth rebellions
against the status quo, the growth of gay and women’s rights movements, and,
most importantly, the sexual revolution. As such, the films both speak of and
react to the nexus of transformations (political, economic and cultural) that
shaped Borowczyk’s new French milieu. They also speak of the commodified
desire that the 1970s mediated and put on display to an unprecedented degree.
In her history of twentieth-century European sexuality, Dagmar Herzog
describes 1960s and 1970s Western European sex culture thus:
Public nudity, premarital sex, marital infidelity, strip clubs, specific sexual
techniques that intensified pleasure: all were suddenly fodder for media and
public discussion, indeed for obsessive preoccupation. Sex was endlessly and
everywhere promoted as the most desirable thing on the planet.6
It is this contemporary cultural context, I insist, that must be considered when

approaching Borowczyk’s 1970s films, alongside Borowczyk’s obvious
indebtedness to surrealism, Georges Bataille or the Marquis de Sade.
Not all in good taste
While it is agreed that Borowczyk’s 1970s cinema embraced the sexual

revolution by enthusiastically engaging with explicit sexual content, in order to
push against the codes of propriety through its outrageous scenes of bestiality,
infanticide, interracial rape and incest, many critics have also commented on
the discerning and tasteful way in which the shocking content is framed by the
film-maker.7 For example, Mark Robinson argues that ‘Walerian Borowczyk’s
is a highly cultured cinema, a cinema of (for) connoisseurs – eclectic, subtle,
stylish, mysterious and haunting.’8 This tactic of displacing the shock effect,
which is a common critical practice, relies primarily on pushing the
sexploitation spectacle into a faux antique art space that grafts something akin
to the Benjaminian ‘aura’ onto the otherwise profane characters and situations.
What is consistent about Borowczyk’s sexploitation feasts is that they are
placed in the past, and, as Jonathan Owen notes:
In Borowczyk’s films desire seems to speak exclusively in the past tense. In

literal terms the past designated is generally the historical past, abbreviated
and remodeled as cloistered libertine fantasias that exploit the sensuality of
antique décor and the fabled transgressions of real historical figures: Lucrezia
Borgia and the ‘bloody countess’ Erszébet Báthory featured in the film
Immoral Tales.9
This antique framing provides an alibi for Borowczyk, whose sensibility was
shaped both by his Catholic and communist upbringing and formal education,
both of which were sexually repressive.
Sensibility meets sensuality in Immoral Tales
In their study of the upsurge of the heterosexual imperative in post-communist

Poland, Tomasz Kitlinski, Pawel Leszkowski and Joe Lockard state that
‘Communism was not only secular, but also prudish.’10 The Communist Party
viewed eroticism as nothing more than a symptom of capitalist debauchery.
Although ideologically at odds with communism, the Catholic Church of
Borowczyk’s childhood and young adulthood shared a negative view of
eroticism with the official communist line, albeit via a much older and more
entrenched tradition of repression.
It is, therefore, not surprising that, while diving headfirst into the throes of
the sexual revolution in 1960s and 1970s France, and producing there a series
of sexploitation films, Borowczyk was nevertheless restrained in the manner in
which he entered the liberatory Western discourse (a discourse that must have
been quite a shock to the recent immigrant from the European periphery).
One quickly notices that the desire that permeates Borowczyk’s erotic
visions is often censored. It appears to be controlled by prohibitions of all
kinds: the strictures of religious institutions (the Vatican in Immoral Tales and
The Beast, a convent in Behind Convent Walls); taboos rooted in class, family
or racial constraints (Grozo’s desire for Glossia in Goto, the incestuous
relations of the Borgias in Immoral Tales, the interracial sexual violence in the
‘Marceline’ episode of Immoral Women); or the physical confines of restricted
space (the room in which Thérèse is imprisoned in Immoral Tales, Glossia’s
room in which she is put under house arrest in Goto, or the Countess Báthory’s
‘blood chamber’ in Immoral Tales). By staking out these boundaries in
many recurring ways, Borowczyk creates an intensely stifling erotic hothouse
where sex is always dirty, no matter how aesthetically pleasing the images
might be.
This inhibited erotic environment has more affinity with the bourgeois
boudoir than the surrealist brothel or the Swinging Seventies scene, thus
putting in question the frequent critical claims about Borowczyk’s radicalism
and the transgressive nature of his blend of eroticism.11 In many ways,
Borowczyk’s assaults on the bourgeois sense of decorum seem to be proscribed
by this sense itself. Thus, it is possible to see them as actually a reaction to the
1970s sexual milieu, when, according to Dagmar Herzog, it was market forces
that were the key catalyst in changing sexual mores:
Certainly, the rise of consumer capitalism played its part in making the
revolution happen. So too did the media and the advertising industry. The
supersaturation of the visual landscape with ever more risqué images, along
with the increasing space taken up in mainstream periodicals by
sensationalist reportage on sex-related matters (an especially good way for
magazines and newspapers to increase sales among all age groups but also
and especially to reach that new lucrative market of postwar youth, a
generation with more spending money than any that had gone before)
certainly helped to wash away the old culture of hypocrisy and taboo.12
Finally, the exaggeratedly racist and sexist patriarchy that organizes social
relations in Borowczyk’s erotic universe discloses not only the film-maker’s
conformist views on race and gender, but, more importantly, his deliberate use
of exploitation cinema’s conventions, which seduce the viewer through
outrageously offensive and politically incorrect spectacle. In their introduction,
the editors of the most recent collection of essays on Borowczyk argue that ‘his
art is not easily classifiable as progressive, since it’s so completely isolated from
any traces of queer sensibility – Boro’s erotic utopia is almost exclusively
heteronormative’.13 However, the editors then proceed to explain away the
film-maker’s chauvinism and racism as ‘pre-modern’ and the result of a creative
choice to reach beyond individual motivation and psychology, instead
concentrating on analysing a cinematic universe that is ‘intensely focused on
processes and objects that surround and envelop individuals’.14 In the course of
this interpretation, the retrogressive social and interpersonal relations that
exist among Borowczyk’s characters are dismissed as insignificant in the light
of the grand, yet vaguely defined, vision of the surrealist master who operates
under the principles of abstraction and fragmentation.15
Collecting and consuming
In Une collection particulière/A Private Collection, Borowczyk’s short film from

1973, released between Blanche and Immoral Tales, the viewer watches a
collector present his assemblage of erotic objects. His identity is never revealed,
even though his personal collection is presented to the camera by his very own
hands. Similar montages of prized objects appear in the sexploitation features
as decorative interludes that interrupt the narrative in the form of bizarre art
gallery contemplations. In the 1973 short, we see in close-up a pair of male
hands present, manipulate and deploy a series of rare sex toys, items of vintage
pornography, erotic lithographs, antique peepshow boxes and various wind-up
contraptions depicting erotic scenes. According to different accounts, the items
in the collection are said to have been inherited by Borowczyk from his friend
the surrealist writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues,16 or hand-crafted by
Borowczyk himself,17 with most critics arguing for a combination of both.

Edwin Carels claims that ‘just like Duchamp so often did, Borowczyk alternates
in A Private Collection authentic, found objects with emulations and
appropriations.’18 The viewer cannot tell the difference between the authentic
antique items and Borowczyk’s props as they make their appearance on screen:
the combination of the ritualistic handling (the collector’s hands manipulate
the objects lovingly and carefully), high art framing (the series includes a
Rembrandt sketch and a close-up of Rembrandt’s signature), vintage textures,
intimate lighting and measured tempo lends a decidedly antiquarian gaze to
the explicitly pornographic content (the uncut version ends with what looks
like a vintage pornographic home movie of a woman having intercourse with
a dog).
In this way, A Private Collection captures Borowczyk’s sleight of hand and
brings into focus his strategy of exploiting erotic images through formal
sublimation by associating them with high art. The exploiter becomes the
curator, who transforms mechanically reproduced erotic film images created
for mass entertainment into images that pose as works of art for serious
contemplation. The staging of the erotic art spectacle works to endow
Borowczyk’s pornographic visions (whose use value is defined by their ability
to facilitate sexual arousal) with what Walter Benjamin would call their pre-
mechanical ‘ritual function’ and their ‘cult value’, defined by their existence in a
particular time and space.19
Critical interpretations of A Private Collection attest to Borowczyk’s success
as the exploiter-curator. Most accounts discuss the film in terms of its artistic
value and high art influences, and not of its erotic content. Comparing
Borowczyk’s collection to the glass cases and boxes of Joseph Cornell, Edwin
Carels argues that the film, with its emphasis on the personal touch, speaks of
the film-maker’s ‘love for pre-modernist craftsmanship’ and his ‘scepticism
about the industrialized society that achieved both mass production and mass
slaughter’.20 Marcin Giżycki reads the film as a work of surrealism in the light
of the surrealists’ well-theorized interest in ordinary objects and the technique
of defamiliarization, drawing parallels between Borowczyk’s passion for
objects and those of Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and André
Breton.21 Kamila Wielebska frames A Private Collection within the context of
Victorian surrealism,22 while in his analysis of the ‘curatorial, classificatory, and
acquisitive impulses that haunt Borowczyk’s cinema’, Jonathan Owen points

out an affinity between Borowczyk and the Left Bank Group’s experimental
film-makers such as Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet.23
Elsewhere, Owen sees the ‘vintage erotic mechanisms, scandalous joujous and
onanistic fancies’ of A Private Collection situated in juxtaposition to ‘the self-
conscious contemporaneity and polemical urgency of sexual revolution, 1970s
style’.24
Against this last assessment, I wish to argue that A Private Collection, despite
its nostalgic and glaringly anachronistic nineteenth-century feel, is a product
of its time, a product of the 1970s fascination with the erotics of commodities.
The culture of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s in Western Europe was
shaped by the consumerist and hedonistic lifestyles of the prosperous middle
classes. The post-Second World War economic boom manifested itself in terms
of higher wages, reduced working hours, increased social mobility, wide access
to luxury consumer goods and conspicuous consumption (until the events of
the mid-1970s precipitated a deep recession). The era’s leisure and consumption
habits also included ‘porno chic’ – the mainstreaming of pornographic imagery
into fashion and popular culture, as analysed elsewhere in this volume.
A Private Collection foregrounds the link between material objects,
possession and eroticism. This connection is also articulated in Borowczyk’s
feature films from the same decade. In the short film, Borowczyk can be
understood as commenting on the acquisition and accumulation of consumer
goods, if one agrees that the objects in the collection have both use and
exchange value as sex toys, even if the collector assigns to them a rarefied fetish
value. Additionally, in films like Behind Convent Walls, we see women produce
their own pleasure objects (dildos whittled out of wood, and pornographic
illustrations). These objects are then circulated in the convent’s economy,
gaining specific exchange value: thus, the nun who produces pornographic
images accepts jars of honey as payment.
The early writings of Jean Baudrillard, especially The System of Objects
(1968) and The Consumer Society: Myth and Structure (1970), may be the most
helpful in theorizing Borowczyk’s impulse to showcase material objects
alongside his human characters in such a way that the objects take on dramatic
significance while the characters (almost always female) morph into passive
props. This foregrounding of the material through the filmic portrayal of
objects and humans, aligned side by side as playful things to be manipulated,

collected, arranged into series, displayed and endlessly consumed, resonates
with late capitalism’s processes of reification, whereby humans become thing-
like through the standardization and homogenization of social life. Baudrillard
analysed the mechanisms of reification in the context of mediation. Through
his focus on the consumption of objects and signs, Baudrillard extended the
traditional Marxist critique focused on modes of production and labour
relations, and focuses instead on consumption and the consumer subject and
their submission to the seductive power of objects, signs and technologies.
In the chapter of The System of Objects devoted to collecting, Baudrillard
discusses the symbolic value of object accumulation and its role in the modern
subject’s constitution as a possessor:
An object no longer specified by its function is defined by the subject, but in
the passionate abstractness of possession all objects are equivalent. And just
one object no longer suffices: the fulfilment of the project of possession
always means a succession or even a complete series of objects. This is why
owning absolutely any object is always so satisfying and so disappointing at
the same time: a whole series lies behind any single object, and makes it into
a source of anxiety. Things are not so different on the sexual plane: whereas
the love relationship has as its aim a unique being, the need to possess the
love object can be satisfied only by a succession of objects.25
Borowczyk’s films can certainly be analysed as a reflection on the ‘project of

possession’ that characterized 1970s culture. The arty things that Borowczyk
incorporates into his celluloid collections are objects of consumption: the
female erotic objects, which often extend the series of collected art objects (as
those very objects in turn enhance the series of female fetishes), are also objects
of consumption.
Consuming becomes quite literal in Borowczyk’s exploitation films when
the camera focuses on the preparation and consumption of food and drink,
which become eroticized not only through association with sex but also via
enticing presentation (known as ‘food porn’ in today’s consumer culture).
Borowczyk’s scenes of delectation are often prefaced by scenes of food
preparation that function as gustatory foreplay, and, as such, they echo Marco
Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe (1973). In Behind Convent Walls, images of food
enter the pornographic register in the opening sequence. Huge slabs of meat,
carried by a delivery boy into the convent’s pantry, are framed through carefully
composed shots which enhance the sensual appeal of the food and eroticize it.
In numerous scenes, hot cocoa is prepared and served in beautiful porcelain
dishes, and the camera lingers in close-up as the stream of dark liquid is poured
into dainty translucent cups. In the ‘Margherita’ episode of Immoral Women,
glamour photography is used to frame cherries and bonbons as delightful
objects of desire, their consumption conflated with sex scenes. In ‘Marceline’,
meat hangs off the butcher hooks and the adolescent nymphomaniac consumes
her pet rabbit, a sex accessory in an earlier scene.
Once again, Borowczyk strategically curates as he exploits. Many of his food
images look like copies of the still lifes of food associated with the seventeenth
century Dutch Baroque. The chiaroscuro, the folds of opulent fabric and the
antique containers serve as art history references, meticulously constructed
details that deploy a heritage discourse. It takes the viewer a moment to realize
that Borowczyk’s portraits of foodstuffs come from an era of conspicuous
consumption very similar to that of the Dutch Baroque, when the wealthy
commissioned paintings of food in order to titillate their desires for more
consumables.
Notes
1 Eric Schaefer, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films,
1919–1959 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
2 Aga Skrodzka, ‘Woman’s body and her pleasure in the celluloid erotica of Walerian
Borowczyk’, Studies in European Cinema, 8/1 (2011), pp. 67–79.
3 Marcin Giżycki, ‘Borowczyk’s Kunstkamera’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda,
Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), p. 49.
4 Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Popular European Cinema (New
York: Routledge, 1992), p. 2.
5 Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik (eds), Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and
Exploitation Cinema Since 1945 (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), p. 3.
6 Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 134.
7 For examples of this approach, see Jeremy Mark Robinson’, Walerian Borowczyk:
Cinema of Erotic Dreams (Maidstone: Crescent Moon Publishing, 2008), pp. 15–43.
8 Ibid., p. 34.
9 Jonathan Owen, ‘An island near the Left Bank: Walerian Borowczyk as a French
Left Bank filmmaker’, in Ewa Mazierska and Michael Goddard (eds), Polish
Cinema in a Transnational Context (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press,
2014), p. 224
10 Tomasz Kitlinski, Pawel Leszkowicz and Joe Lockard, ‘Poland’s transition: from
Communism to fundamentalist hetero-sex’, Bad Subjects: Political Education for
Everyday Life, 72 (2005). Available at https://www.academia.edu/3840817/
Polands_Transition_From_Communism_to_Fundamentalist_Hetero_Sex
(accessed 3 June 2007).
11 For a nuanced discussion of Borowczyk’s treatment of sexual transgression, see
Jonathan Owen’s ‘Avant-garde exploits: the cultural highs and lows of Polish
émigré cinema’, in Kamila Kuc and Michael O’Pray (eds), The Struggle for Form.
Perspectives on Polish Avant-Garde Film, 1916–1989 (London: Wallflower Press,
2014).
12 Herzog, Sexuality in Europe, p. 134.
13 Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and Michał Oleszczyk, ‘Introduction’, in Boro, L’Île
D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015),
p. 7.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., pp. 1–12.
16 Edwin Carels, ‘Immoral toys: on Borowczyk’s A Private Collection (1973)’, in
Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda, Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The
Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), p. 103.
17 Kuba Mikurda, ‘Boro: escape artist’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda, Michał
Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2015), p. 26.
18 Edwin Carels, ‘Immoral toys’, p. 105.
19 Walter Benjamin, ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, in
Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 217–51.
20 Edwin Carels, ‘Immoral toys’, pp. 106–7.
21 Marcin Giżycki, ‘Borowczyk’s Kunstkamera’, p. 49.
22 Kamila Wielebska, ‘Laugh in the doll house: on Victorian surrealism in the films of
Walerian Borowczyk’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda, Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro,
L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015),
p. 122.
23 Jonathan Owen, ‘An island near the Left Bank’, p. 226.
24 Jonathan Owen, ‘The beach, the bubble, and the boudoir: the meeting spaces of
Walerian Borowczyk and André Pieyre de Mandiargues’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba
Mikurda, Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian
Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), p.148.
25 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 1995), p. 92.
Bibliography
Baudrillard, Jean, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 1995).
Baudrillard, Jean, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (London: Sage, 1998).
Benjamin, Walter, ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, in
Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 217–51.
Carels, Edwin, ‘Immoral toys: on Borowczyk’s A Private Collection (1973)’, in Kamila
Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of
Walerian Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), pp. 103–10.
Dyer, Richard and Vincendeau, Ginette (eds), Popular European Cinema (London:
Routledge, 1992).
Giżycki, Marcin, ‘Borowczyk’s Kunstkamera’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and
Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), pp. 48–53.
Herzog, Dagmar, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Kitlinski, Tomas, Leszkowicz, Pawel and Lockard, Joe, ‘Poland’s transition: from
Communism to fundamentalist hetero-sex’, Bad Subjects: Political Education for
Everyday Life, 72 (2005). Available at https://www.academia.edu/3840817/
Polands_Transition_From_Communism_to_Fundamentalist_Hetero_Sex
(accessed 3 June 2007).
Kuc, Kamila, Mikurda, Kuba and Oleszczyk, Michał, ‘Introduction’, in Boro, L’Île
D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).
Mathijs, Ernest and Mendik, Xavier (eds), Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and
Exploitation Cinema Since 1945 (London: Wallflower Press, 2004).
Mazierska, Ewa and Goddard, Michael (eds), Polish Cinema in a Transnational
Context (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014).
Mikurda, Kuba, ‘Boro: escape artist’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and Michał
Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2015), pp. 13–47.
Owen, Jonathan, ‘An island near the Left Bank: Walerian Borowczyk as a French Left
Bank filmmaker’, in Ewa Mazierska and Michael Goddard (eds), Polish Cinema in
a Transnational Context (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014),
pp. 215–35.
Owen, Jonathan, ‘Avant-garde exploits: the cultural highs and lows of Polish émigré
cinema’, in Kamila Kuc and Michael O’Pray (eds), The Struggle for Form:
Perspectives on Polish Avant-Garde Film, 1916–1989 (London: Wallflower Press,
2014), pp. 93–116.
Owen, Jonathan, ‘The beach, the bubble, and the boudoir: the meeting spaces of
Walerian Borowczyk and André Pieyre de Mandiargues’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba
Mikurda and Michał Oleszczyk (eds), Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian
Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), pp. 148–58.
Robinson, Jeremy Mark, Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams (Maidstone:
Crescent Moon Publishing, 2008).
Schaefer, Eric, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–
1959 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
Skrodzka, Aga, ‘Woman’s body and her pleasure in the celluloid erotica of Walerian
Borowczyk’, Studies in European Cinema, 8/1 (2011), pp. 67–79.
Wielebska, Kamila, ‘Laugh in the doll house: On Victorian surrealism in the films of
Walerian Borowczyk’, in Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and Michał Oleszczyk (eds),
Boro, L’Île D’Amour: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (New York: Berghahn
Books, 2015), pp. 118–31.
50
2
A Woman’s Grudge: Figuring

Female Resentment in Japanese 1970s
Grindhouse Cinema
Laura Treglia
Introduction
The inclusion of a number of visual, structural and thematic references to

Japanese 1970s films in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003) exposed a global
audience to a (then) virtually unknown kind of Japanese exploitation cinema of
the period, which is now referred to as ‘pinky violence’ (pinkī baiorensu). Even the
theme songs of two of the pinky violence series that are most popular in the West
– Shurayuki-hime/Lady Snowblood (1973–4) and Joshū Sasori/Female Prisoner
Scorpion (1972–3), both starring 1970s iconic Japanese actress Kaji Meiko – have
been included in Kill Bill’s soundtrack. In particular, the theme song from the
Female Prisoner Scorpion films, which is entitled ‘Urami Bushi’ and translates
roughly into English as ‘Grudge Song’, would work perfectly as an alternative title
for this chapter. The lyrics concern the burning, everlasting resentment of women
who have been deceived by men, and convey a sense of pity for and reproach
towards those women who allow themselves to be duped by men.
In this chapter, I shall address the second film in the Female Prisoner
Scorpion series, Dai 41 zakkyo-bō/Jailhouse 41 (Itō Shun’ya, 1972), as an
example of Japanese grindhouse cinema of the early 1970s that features
powerful visions of women’s rebellion and retributive fury. The films imbue
such figurations with an empowering energy while simultaneously culturally
accommodating their anomaly, which resides at the intersection of gender,
sexuality and social status. This is achieved by re-adapting earlier action film
51
conventions and archetypes of female non-conforming characters, as well as

through an original style of direction cinematography and editing. Before I
analyse Jailhouse 41, however, an introduction to pinky violence cinema in its
socio-historical and industrial contexts is necessary.
Cult contexts: pinky violence cycles
The phrase ‘pinky violence’ was created in Japan more than twenty years after
the films to which it now refers were first released. In its strictest sense, it
identifies Tōei film company’s original cycles made approximately between
1968 and 1975 and their peculiar combination of action, raunchy humour and
sleaze (as opposed to the more conventional softcore style of Nikkatsu roman
poruno films, for example). The phrase immediately associates them with
earlier independent adult productions called ‘eroduction’ (erodakushon) or
‘pink films’ (pinku eiga),1 which the studio sought to imitate in order to survive
the financial crisis that swept the industry during this period. Pinky violence
films were thus used to fill slots in multiple bill programmes that usually had
gangster films as their main features.
The films can be loosely categorized in subcycles according to the main
motif or scenario, which can involve anything from travelling female gamblers
to spring resort geishas and battling all-girl gangs. They all present the typical
traits defining exploitation cinema worldwide: censor-sensitive subjects, such
as sex and violence, which were suitably hyped up in titles, trailers and
advertising materials; ‘camp’ aesthetics often resulting from hasty and on-the-
go writing and production; a multiple-bill exhibition style; and the transgressive
spoofing of traditional generic codes.2
Also central to any pinky violence film is the performance of gender and
sexuality, specifically the articulations of femininity that were to be read – via
a convenient cautionary tale mode – as other with respect to the gender doxa
of the time. These films were released in the wake of a decade of high economic
growth, culminating in 1960, during which ‘technologies of gender’3 promoting
gendered ideals that would support such growth became part of ad hoc
institutional policies and corporate business practices. These ideals were, for
example, those of the professional housewife and the salaryman, who would
A Woman’s Grudge 53
form the core of the post-war nuclear family in Japan. Official and media-wide
discourses that construed house- and family-bound roles as women’s preferred
identities have also been cyclically supported in Japan through the relay of TV
and mainstream cinema articulations of a virtuous, industrious and enduring
femininity, acting in deference to social norms and patriarchal authority.
Bearing this in mind, pinky violence films flaunt women’s non-conforming
behaviour as an attractive yet intimidating spectacle. Plots typically see
beautiful and proud girls surviving on their wits and hunting down those who
have wronged them. The villains here are always represented by men in power,
together with their cronies and henchmen, who dwell in the underworld as
well as in politics, the government and corrective institutions, such as reform
schools and penitentiaries. On the other hand, pinky violence protagonists fall
into the subaltern position of underprivileged subjects, both socially and
economically. Mostly dropouts, they do not look forward to living a happily
married life or securing a job, but live away from their homes and families
instead, wanting only to indulge in leisure activities and a carefree life.
Therefore, from a conservative perspective at that time, pinky violence girls’
lifestyle is seen as unproductive for the state and society, representing the
epitome of irresponsibility and self-interest. Consequently, they are marked in
the various series as ‘bad,’ ‘delinquent’, ‘terrifying’ (furyō, zubekō, kyōfu). In this
way, figurations of female nonconformity, independence and violent agency are
always already marked as outlaw, gone-bad, pathological, thus making for the
perfect exploitation film subject. Such clear demarcation is one of the devices
that make the non-normative feminine subjects who inhabit the films
undesirable if not utterly abject. At the same time, however, the narratives allow
these (anti-)heroines to bring forward the action – quite literally – and settle
the score whilst getting away almost always unharmed. Moreover, the retributive
justice that they administer is justified by their previous brutalization, thereby
making the stories fall within the realm of the avenging women films.
Structures of revenge
Pinky violence films often manifest the two-phase structure typical of rape-
revenge films. Rape, murder or other forms of abuse are therefore recurring
plot elements in the case of the main female character or an innocent person
close to her, and provide the trigger for the girls’ revenge. The severity of the act
is conveyed by the references to the victims’ trauma and its impact on their
lives. The tragedy, however, is made to reside in the stigma implied to be
attached to the victims as the result of such an event. Their shaming is
unproblematically acknowledged in the films, as sexual abuse is depicted as
defiling a woman’s respectability in the eyes of society, apparently paving the
way for her moral downfall. Even worse, rape is uncritically employed in the
films as a means of punishment (at the hands of women and men alike) for
unruly behaviour and is often made grotesque or eroticized. For example, in
Jailhouse 41 the protagonist is punished by the guards in just such a heinous
way; however, her fellow inmates blame her for being abused in front of
everybody without killing herself in shame.
Female Prisoner Scorpion is usually ascribed to the ‘women-in-prison’ (WiP)
subset of exploitation films, but it will become clear in the course of this
chapter how the second film in particular sits uncomfortably with this label –
save for the interspersion of nudity and prison tropes. It cannot be said to be a
typical example of the rape-revenge film either, although the focus is decidedly
on payback. Rape is a narrative device and a theme insofar as it is defined in
feminist terms: the crudest gendered expression of all forms of violent
oppression, a subjugating and overpowering tool. In Jailhouse 41, rape
symbolically subsumes all the vile acts perpetrated by men against women that
justify women’s retaliatory violence. The protagonist avenges much more
than just her or her fellow inmates’ rapes, but all violence against women
as it is interconnected with other forms of social and state-sanctioned
oppression.
While akin to contemporaneous genre trends from overseas, this film shows
the influence of domestic traditions and includes multiple genre conventions
(horror, crime film, kabuki and manga imaginaries). Vendetta tales and moral
heroes hark back to folk legends and their stage versions, and feature in horror
stories, period dramas (jidaigeki eiga), samurai and gangster films alike.
Moreover, period and gangster films were two core genres of Tōei studio,
which explains the recurring manipulation and fond caricaturing of chivalry
film conventions in many pinky violence films.4 On the other hand, it has
been noted how genre hybridization – with a penchant for horror and action
codes – and parodic dynamics often feature in exploitation cinema subgenres

worldwide, especially rape-revenge films.5
The leitmotif of ‘protecting the weak and crushing the evil’ (kanzen chōaku)
typical of much Japanese action cinema underpins the protagonists’ retributive
actions against their oppressors and enables a transition of the type envisioned
by Jacinda Read,6 that is, from a ‘feminine’ position to a ‘feminist’ one in the
filmic discourse – or a parody of it, as Walters points out with reference to a
famous WiP American film.7 The male agents of the oppression and sexual
exploitation of the women end up exposed, ridiculed or killed, the heroines
wind up victorious, and it is implied that they continue roaming the streets
unscathed.
As I have pointed out elsewhere,8 pinky violence heroines, similar to the
avenging women analysed by Jeffrey A. Brown in stripper B movies and Read’s
erotic female avengers in 1990s American cinema, expose themselves to the
gaze in their overpowering sexual allure, while at the same time using their
eroticism and sexuality to upend patriarchal authority and its power to
punish. However, such heterodox performances of femininity in the films are
probably not meant always to inspire sympathy or awe in the viewers – at least
not squarely or consistently so. On the contrary, pinky violence pictures’
heroines – in particular Ochō (Ike Reiko) in Furyō anego den: Inoshika Ochō/
Sex and Fury (Norifumi Suzuki, 1973), Matsu/Sasori (Kaji Meiko) in Female
Prisoner Scorpion and Yuki (Kaji Meiko) in Lady Snowblood – have an uncanny
if not outrightly terrifying appearance when carrying out their bloody
retributions, which involve impaling, stabbing and blinding their male
enemies. Specifically, the films’ ways of construing the bodies of their heroines,
and, on many occasions, the conflation of the erotic spectacle of their disrobing
with aggressive action against their male enemies, link back to the climactic
performances of other female foes in earlier films, such as the temptress
(yōfu) 9 in swordplay period films of the silent era (jidaigeki eiga) and the
avenging creatures in 1930s monster-cat films (bakeneko eiga).10
The latter are a subgenre of Japanese ghost/horror films that first saw their
heyday in the 1930s before disappearing during the war years and then making
a comeback at the beginning of the 1950s. The most popular of these films in
the West is Shindō Kaneto’s Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko/Black Cat (1968). Such
films revolved around revenge stories, in which the resentment of women who
died violently and unjustly revived in the form of uncanny spirits (visibly
female but evoking cat-like behaviour) who then set out to exact bloody
retribution.11 These represent a small part of a host of ghost tales (kaidan)
originating from Japanese folklore and featuring unorthodox female-coded
figures, and over time they have been reworked and adapted as literary,
theatrical and cinematic works.12 Many ghost stories, such as Kaidan Botan
Dōrō (Ghost Tale of the Peony Lantern) and Yotsuya Kaidan (Ghost Tale of
Yotsuya), share with ghost-cat tales and the horror films derived from them an
emphasis on the traumatic and tragic events in women’s lives before their
death.13 The theme of animals, demons or other supernatural creatures shape-
shifting from or back into women is especially popular in folklore and is closely
connected to passionate emotions such as jealousy, hatred and obsession.
These, in turn, are often triggered by unrequited love or a man’s betrayal, and
usually result in a relentless quest for revenge. Renowned archetypes of women
bearing deadly grudges never cease to haunt the memory of viewers as their
stories are handed down and cyclically remade. Among these is Lady Rokujō
in the literary classic Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), whose jealous
‘living spirit’ causes the death of Genji’s wife. Another is Kiyohime, whose
legend is featured in a medieval collection of Buddhist didactic tales, Konjaku
Monogatarishū (The Collection of Tales from the Past ), and tells of how, having
been deserted, she turns into a serpent that pursues and kills her former lover,
the monk Anchin, by burning him alive with the intensity of her passion. Last
is the mythical figure of the yamanba (or yamauba), a sort of mountain hag
who can disguise herself as an animal or a beautiful woman and feeds on male
travellers.
The supernatural and the scorpions: Jailhouse 41
The second film in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, Jailhouse 41, makes
consistent reference to the atmosphere of Japanese ghost-cat and horror films
rather than to the conventions of action and gangster films. Ghost films tended
to be screened in the summer, the season of obon festivals that honour the
dead in Japan. New Year’s releases were reserved for sure-fire hit productions
and traditional stories such as those about the 47 rōnin.14 The Female Prisoner
Scorpion films oscillated between such release seasons, the second instalment
being expected to repeat the success of its predecessor. This contrasts with
conventional appreciations of WiP and exploitation genres in terms of
expectations regarding their quality. Even Tōei executives initially disliked the
way in which the director conceived the films, both aesthetically and thematically.15
Moreover, the filming of Jailhouse 41 was an extremely arduous task as it
coincided with disputes between the labour unions and Tōei’s management. It
could be said that an acute anti-establishment drive was already at the heart of
the series, particularly in this film. More to the point, I would argue that the film’s
narrative structure, formal elements and intertextual thematic references all
work towards emphasizing power reversals in favour of deprived subjects, but, at
the same time, curb their disruptive, anti-authoritarian thrust.
The original Female Prisoner Scorpion series consists of four films (1972–3),
all starring Kaji Meiko (the stage name of Ōta Masako) in the lead role of a
female jail inmate called Matsushima Nami, aka Matsu, then nicknamed ‘the
scorpion’ (sasori in Japanese). The story is based on a 1970s manga by Shinohara
Tōru, and, although there have been many attempts to revive the Scorpion saga
through remakes, it is the original trilogy, directed by Itō Shun’ya, that has now
achieved cult status, bewitching audiences with its distinctive style and
aesthetics. While maintaining key exploitation elements such as violence and
suggestive sexual imagery, Itō’s Scorpion films combine these with bizarre
settings, symbolic use of contrasting lights and colours, and odd camera angles
and shot compositions, all of which produce (especially in the second film)
surreal, manga-like effects. At the same time, the films slip through the usual
exploitation and women in prison film tropes important elements of social
critique concerning violence against women, sexual exploitation, and the
brutality of institutional apparatuses of social control and law enforcement,
as well as society’s discrimination against and dehumanization of non-
conforming subjects.
Although each Scorpion instalment may be considered as an independent
film with its own self-contained plot, the main character and her desire for
revenge, as well as recurrent sequences such as prison breakouts, riots, tortures,
love-making or fighting among women, all work as linking threads throughout
the series. The plot is simple and revolves around a young woman, Matsushima
Nami who, having been set up and betrayed by her lover, Sugimi Tsugio
(Natsuyagi Isao), a corrupt police detective, sets about exacting revenge, first
against him, then against the male guards and gangsters who try to crush her
in prison and outside while on the loose.
The central focus of the series is the metamorphosis of Nami into ‘the
scorpion’, a relentless murderer who transforms from victim into avenger in a
typical rape-revenge pattern. Japanese scholars have observed the centrality of
this shift. For example, Mana Yaeko16 notes how Itō’s symbolic use of colours
and other effects, such as Kaji’s hair standing up straight in the first film’s rape
scene (and, I would add, in the woodland scene in the second film), mark this
transformation. Washitani Hana17 endorses the association of Nami’s
metamorphosis with Barbara Creed’s18 concept of the femme castratrice, a
version of the castrating monstrous woman in horror films. As Rikke Schubart19
first observed, Creed’s notion seems apt here, given the instances within the
films in which Sasori as well as her terrifying companions threaten to, or
actually do, harm men through genital mutilation, and obliterate the other
main source of sexual objectification in feminist film theory, the male gaze.20
Indeed, a conspicuous link of the Scorpion films’ representation of the
female avenger is with earlier monster-cat films, as Washitani also notes, which
were introduced in the former section. They clearly mimic past horror and
ghost films’ techniques in order to signal the supernatural, mainly through the
use of colours and other stylistic choices in cinematography and set design
that evidently reference Japanese traditional kabuki plays. One of the most
remarkable sections of the film in this sense is when, during the prison break,
the fugitives discover in the rubble of a house a deserted old woman, who
continuously mutters the curse: ‘Damn you, I’ll kill you’ (norotteyaru . . .
koroshiteyaru), while wielding a large knife. She is brought back by the group
to a shack which the women use as night-time refuge. There follows one of the
many oneiric sequences in the film, which is openly theatrical in style. Behind
a row of flames placed in the foreground of the shot, the seven women sit
wearing white kimono. In deep focus above them is the purple-coloured figure
of the knife-wielding old lady, who sits at the pinnacle of an imaginary pyramid.
It is presumably the old lady’s hollow, chanting voice that reveals the runaways’
past crimes, saying that all the women were driven to commit crimes by the
violent or unfaithful behaviour of fathers, husbands and lovers. Through this
device, the film tries to make sense of the outlaw women and ‘dangerous’
femininities that it visualizes, exposing the range of gendered oppression and

abuse they have experienced. However, in this way it also reproduces age-old
sexist tropes that pathologize women’s violent actions and recuperate their
unconventional behaviour through cultural explanations which focus on their
alleged inability to control their emotions – passion, jealousy, love, hatred.
The old lady and her knife may be seen as allegories of the grudges and the
desire for revenge passed along generations of wronged women. The film’s
following sequence and closing scenes would seem to support such a reading.
After the fugitives leave the shack and flee from the police through the woods,
the old woman collapses and disappears under a mound of red leaves, after
having first handed her knife to Sasori. Then a whirlwind magically sweeps
away the old lady’s body, the brilliant red of the leaves turns into glacial
tonalities of white, blue and grey, resembling the Snow Woman (Yuki Onna)
section in Kobayashi Masaki’s Kaidan/ Kwaidan/Ghost Stories (1964). Sasori
stands up holding the knife in her hands, and a medium close-up fixes her
again as a witch: she stares at the camera while the wind blows her hair up, and
menacingly slices through the air. The very same knife reappears at the end of
the film when it is passed around among the female prisoners. These last scenes
develop from an extreme close-up of the prosthetic eye of the warden, who is
finally killed by Sasori. Still in their jail uniforms, Sasori and the other women
burst into laughter and start running free through the streets.
Many other examples may be cited that associate the Scorpion films’ fantasy
with the iconography of Japanese folklore about the world of spirits and the
supernatural (yōkai). In an interview, director Itō recalls boasting during the
film’s production that he would make a witch haunt Tōei screens on its New
Year’s release.21 In many scenes, Sasori is made to project a bluish-purple light,
something that indicates a ghostly presence in Japanese kabuki theatre and
horror films. Moreover, a fixture of Kaji’s interpretation as Sasori is her frightening
stare at her torturers (and, importantly, the camera) out of her jet-black hair,
which cover the rest of her face, frequently leaving only one eye visible. As I have
mentioned elsewhere,22 these elements combine to evoke classic modes of
visualization of Japanese vengeful she-ghosts (Yotsuya) and one-eyed creatures
of scary tales. The terrifying gaze and stalking crawl of Sadako in Nakata Hideo’s
Ringu/Ring (1998) can thus be seen as but a very recent re-elaboration of classic
Japanese (and Asian-wide) archetypes of supernatural wrath.
Female bodies, non-human transformations,

fantasies of insurgency
Another important element that marks the spectacle of Sasori’s transformation

into a victim-avenger, while linking it back to domestic lore about supernatural
creatures and the ghost-cat films, is the symbolic association with animals,
starting from Sasori’s nickname ‘the scorpion’. The association of women with
wild animals in these films refers not only to the loss of human dignity due to
their suffering and the grudge which they bear, but also evidences an ideological
designation of women’s counter-violence as utterly repulsive and horrific. Such
links to feral creatures work, therefore, as a cautionary containment, except
that, in the Scorpion films, this is produced not just through costumes and
make-up (as it was in the earlier ghost-cat films) but is consistently suggested
on other levels too (visuals, dialogues, acting). As mentioned above, Matsu’s
nickname ‘the scorpion’ signals this association, as do the words used by prison
director Gōda (Watanabe Fumio) when referring to her (‘bitch’, ‘biting’ and
the like). Visual and verbal references to non-human states are, however,
throughout the series extended to the other female convicts and wretched
characters appearing in the films. This is conveyed by the way in which the
group of female prisoners lives and behaves while on the run: they are dirty,
hungry, move in a pack and hunt other animals. It is also contained in the very
title of the series’ third instalment, Kemono-beya/Beast Stable (Itō Shun’ya,
1973), and in the landscapes in which the action is set (deserted places, woods,
landfills, and a sewer in the third film). Finally, Matsu’s swift movements when
she attacks her targets similarly suggest animal-like behaviour. For example, in
Jailhouse 41 she tries to stab Gōda in the eye and then crouches back like a
trembling dog. During her brutalization in a pit, she bites her aggressors’ faces,
moving her chest and head back and forth like a cobra. This particular sequence
is also key to another important aspect of this film, that is, the dynamic of the
gaze.
As noted earlier, after a botched riot attempt in the courtyard triggered by
Sasori’s assault on Gōda, she is gang-raped by the male guards in a quarry,
while the other detainees are made to watch in order to avoid her becoming a
symbol of insurrection. Subjective camerawork, low-angle rotating pans and
muted soundtrack show the action from Sasori’s perspective, while the male
rapists are depersonalized through their grotesque appearance: they wear

monk-like habits and nylon stockings on their faces, thus erasing their
individual features and rendering them repulsive. In a series of shot-reverse-
shots, Sasori is shown looking straight back at her assailants with her eyes wide
open, anticipating her violent revenge while they rape her. As mentioned
above, Sasori’s fierce stares directed at the camera constitute a consistent
feature of the series, so much so that they completely upstage the stock WiP
elements. Rikke Schubart23 and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas24 rightly emphasize
this aspect as Kaji’s hallmark. This is hard to miss, especially in Jailhouse 41,
which is all about gazing – and gazing back – between characters. The whole
film revolves around the power battle first between Sasori and prison director
Gōda and, to a lesser extent, between Sasori and the other inmates, especially
Ōba. Her struggle is symbolically played out on an optical plane too: Gōda’s
sadistic gazes are confronted by Sasori’s, who dares to look back and act
silently.25 Virtually all the types of gaze theorized so far are present in this
sequence. From the top of the pit the other prisoners and the prison governor
look on; one inmate cannot bear the sight and looks away, while Sasori
witnesses her own violation reflected in the governor’s sunglasses. Furthermore,
Sasori challenges her tormentors not just by looking back but also by turning
her eyes away from them and onto the camera, as if to question the onlooking,
extra-diegetic audience. By watching, viewers are in on the act and thereby
interpellated by a chilling, silent stare from the victim. The same happens in
the dungeon sequence that opens the film. Here, camera angles, framing and
chiaroscuro heighten the perpetrator-victim power divide and highlight the
top-down trajectory of the gaze that flows from the faceless guards towering
above a hogtied Sasori, and on to the viewers via her. The latter, together with
other narrative as well as stylistic choices, elevates the original Sasori trilogy
(and Jailhouse 41 in particular) above run-of-the-mill studio exploitation to an
experimental mix between pop and avant-garde sensitivities.
Power reversals, for example, are underlined in Jailhouse 41 through its
peculiar structure, which features a chain of carnivalesque, dreamlike
sequences, the style of which typically signals an inversion of order and power
balance (for example via the use of camera angles, shot composition, and
muting the audio track). However, by encoding depictions of othered subjects’
revolt as surreal, uncanny and also temporary, the film defuses and contains
their energy and inscribes the difference of woman (particularly if it is a

violent, resisting woman) not only at the level of visuals and language, but also
at the level of its actual narrative structure. This structure then underpins the
ambivalence of the film’s discourses about rebellious femininity and its
counteracting violence.
The first of such sequences begins right after the opening section set in the
dungeon, when Sasori is let out into the courtyard for the superintendent’s visit
to the jail. The man notices her resentful glare and tells her they ‘don’t hate
[her] personally’. Sasori then tries to stab Gōda in the eye, missing it by a hair’s
breadth. At this sight, a terrified superintendent wets his pants and, after a
chain of choreographed freeze-frames, a brief riot ensues. This sequence is the
first of several throughout the film that cross over to a bizarre, oneiric style
reminiscent of the ambience of Federico Fellini’s I clowns/The Clowns (1970).
The convicts burst out laughing at the terrified inspector, surround him and
take off his pants to reveal soiled underwear. An inmates’ band scatters around
playing a merry tune while the other prisoners throw their straw sandals into
the air. In a dissolve shot, uniform hats are superimposed over the sandals, and
then the scene cuts to the guards’ bayonets against the backdrop of crossed
rising sun flags – an element common to other avant-garde film and visual art
of the time. The sequence ends with another freeze-frame-like scene indicating
that the turmoil has come to an end, as the director orders the guards to punish
everybody.
The brief carnival of detainees introduces cinematographic elements that
signal an inversion of order and induce a sense of discomfort and confusion in
the viewer. These are then resumed in the film to introduce similar situations.
Another such sequence involves the hijacking of a sightseeing tour bus by the
fugitives on the run from the police, which follows the rape and murder of the
youngest prisoner by three bus passengers. This act is by no means eroticized
and is conveyed in all its violence and brutality, with the men depicted as
odious and grotesque. The fugitives witness them ditching her body down a
chute and, enraged, capture the men and return to the bus. Once inside, they
terrorize the passengers, reserving particular humiliation and violence for
those responsible for the rape and death of the girl. The employment of similar
filming techniques to those in earlier carnival-like sequences (oscillating
camera and distorted angles) and the use of identical music on the soundtrack
alerts the viewer to another breakdown of order, an upending of the normal

state of things, which is thereby questioned. The relations between the torturers
and their victims, in this case between ostracized people and ‘law-abiding’
ones, are switched. The female prisoners stomp on the three culprits, who are
forced to lie prone on the bus floor and made the butt of ridicule.
Finally, the sequence suggests a powerful analogy via a rare and barely
veiled critical reference to the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against
Manchurian civilians during the Second World War. Prior to the rape, the three
bus passengers are seen cheering on an old man who is bragging about having
raped a Chinese woman at gunpoint during his time as a soldier in the occupied
territory of Manchuria. Adding to this, the bus has the words ‘Tōa Sightseeing’
(Tōa kankō) written on its sides. The word ‘Tōa’, which translates as ‘East Asia’,
forcefully evokes the wartime propaganda expression ‘Greater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere’ (Daitōa Kyōeiken), which euphemistically referred to those
territories that Japan aimed to preside over according to its aggressive
expansionist politics of the time. After the group of female convicts hijacks the
bus, the old man is forced by the most violent and deranged of the fugitives,
Ōba (Shiraishi Kayoko), to shout ‘Banzai’ (‘Long live the Emperor!’) while
threatening to shoot him in the groin.
The crimes of Japanese soldiers have long been a taboo topic in the official
narrative of the Second World War. However, the criticism expressed in this
sequence was in tune with the widespread anti-militarist and anti-imperialist
sentiments during the 1960s and 1970s, especially within various oppositional
circles such as the far left student militants and the radical feminist movement
(ūman ribu). I would propose that there is a convergence between the views
expressed by the film in this sequence and 1970s Japanese radical feminist
politics. The film clearly makes a link between the Japanese young men taking
advantage of the female convict’s vulnerable status and the former soldier
priding himself on his wartime sexual crimes. The brutalization of a prisoner/
fugitive and the rape of a woman in an occupied country by a soldier of the
invading forces share intersecting kinds of subordination: in both cases the
victims of violence are women, both of whom have been forced to undergo
state-sanctioned subjugation. Radical Japanese feminist activists of the time
openly declared their solidarity with the women of poorer East Asian countries,
who bore the brunt of Japanese capitalism’s aggressive policies in the Pacific
area, which included sex tourism on the part of Japanese men. Moreover,
radical feminists were among the few at the time openly to denounce Japanese
imperial troops’ use of ‘comfort women’ during the war, and to offer their active
support to such women. Indeed, in one of her works, leading ribu feminist
activist Tanaka Mitsu discussed the imperialist logic underpinning both the
soldiers’ sexual exploitation of ‘comfort women’ and Japanese men’s patronage
of the Pacific sex industry.26
Referring to US 1970s female rape-revenge films, Peter Lehman27 observes
how their diegetic world is full of two-dimensional male characters who are
always already villainous, and thus easy to despise. However, in Jailhouse 41,
the implication that every ordinary man may change into an abuser is much
more clearly articulated as a discourse in the film. Chibi’s rapists are average
salarymen on a trip who first cheer on the former soldier’s past crimes and
harass the female bus hostess amidst a seemingly entertained crowd (including
giggling middle-aged ladies), then attack and kill Chibi during a stopover.
Thus, even the sequences before and after the bus hijacking weave in a strong
critique of Japanese men and middle-class society as perversely sexist,
hypocritical and discriminatory. As one of the prisoners remarks in the bus
sequence, the passengers judge themselves to be superior and think that they
can freely determine the fugitives’ lives. Thus, the crime committed by the
three men is associated with the violence exerted by society and the state, as
the brutalization of the outlaw women is all too literally equated with gendered
violence against other discriminated against marginal subjects. Through
Sasori’s eyes and thoughts, director Itō counterpoints the hijackers’ violence
on the bus with imaginative sequences that borrow from Japanese theatre and
depict the bus travellers and law-abiding citizens as rabid lynch mobs ready to
condemn and batter the women. In such fantasies, Sasori is the only one able
to free herself with her knife.
In conclusion, it is clear how all of the above render Jailhouse 41 difficult to
gauge in terms of ordinary WiP films. In this chapter, I have tried to show how
various formal devices and narrative structures in pinky violence, and in
particular this film, may work in ambivalent ways so as both to foreground
discourses of gendered violence and interconnected structures of subordination
and revolt against them, and to curb their potential for the viewer’s cathartic
identification. The performances of their female protagonists, evoking past
figurations of revenge and aggressive femininities such as the vamp and the
ghost-cat, involve ways of representing the female body that, by showing
it capable of engaging in counter-actions, shifts it away from a position of
disadvantage. This passage often suggests fantasies of trans-species
metamorphosis, evoking a rich folkloric background in Japanese culture in
which women are often associated with demons or animals. The films may
thus be aligned with Read’s understanding of rape-revenge films as tales of
transition and transformation towards a feminist position. However, since this
transition implies the inversion of several interconnected social binaries and
the crossing of established gender norms, these figurations also represent a
threat which tends, at the textual level, to be stigmatized and contained. This is
accomplished through depicting them as terrifying and non-human, which
outlaws, others, pathologizes and clearly criminalizes the (counter-)actions of
women at the moment of their vendetta.
The intertextual resonances that pinky violence films present may work as
empowering as well as restructuring devices. The same consideration applies to
the films’ narrative structure. Finally, the system of carnivalesque sequences in
Jailhouse 41 showing the women’s empowering shift as well as power reversals
does briefly celebrate their mutinous, emancipatory impulse, but only to suggest
that revolt is just an evanescent hallucination. The lingeringly uncomfortable
feeling engendered by the film comes from Sasori’s inquisitive gaze, crawling
silently out of the screen – as Sadako would do decades later – and making the
audience realize its own collusion with the violence of so-called normality.
Notes
1 Donald Richie, ‘The Japanese eroduction’, in A Lateral View: Essays on
Contemporary Japan (Tokyo: Japan Times, 1991), pp. 156–69; Roland Domenig,
‘Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga’, Far East Film Festival – IV edition.
2002. Available at: http://194.21.179.166/cecudine/fe_2002/eng/PinkEiga2002.htm
(accessed 12 May 2011); Abé Mark Nornes (ed.), The Pink Book: The Japanese
Eroduction and Its Contexts, 2nd edn, Kinema Club, 2014. Available at: http://
kinemaclub.org/pink-book-japanese-eroduction-and-its-contexts (accessed 18
March 2016).
2 Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, Cult Cinema (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
2011); David Church, ‘From exhibition to genre: the case of grind-house films’,
Cinema Journal, 50/4 (2011), pp. 1–25, available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/

article/449687 (accessed 6 February 2014); Pam Cook, Screening the Past: Memory
and Nostalgia in Cinema (London: Routledge, 2005).
3 See Teresa De Lauretis Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction.
(London: Macmillan, 1989)
4 Laura Treglia, ‘From myth to cult: tragic heroes, parody and gender politics in the
1960s–1970s “bad girls” cinema of Japan’, in Blais Guarné, Artur Lozano-Méndez
and Dolores P. Martinez (eds), Persistently Postwar: Media and the Politics of
Memory in Japan (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019), pp. 103–21.
5 Suzanna Danuta Walters, ‘Caged heat: the (r)evolution of women-in-prison films’,
in Martha McCaughey and Neal King (eds), Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the
Movies (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 106–23; Jeffrey A. Brown,
‘If looks could kill: power, revenge, and stripper movies’, in Martha McCaughey
and Neal King (eds), Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 52–77.
6 Jacinda Read, The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-revenge Cycle
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
7 Walters, ‘Caged heat’.
8 Treglia, ‘From myth to cult’, and Laura Treglia, ‘Mondo-ing urban girl tribes: the
boom of 1960s–70s erotic cinema and the policing of young female subjects in
Japanese sukeban films’, Film Studies, 18/1 (2018b), pp. 52–69.
9 The bad temptress (yōfu) often acted as the antagonist to the male hero in period
films. The western ‘vamp’ was grafted onto a pre-existing ‘bad woman’ role (akujo
yakugara) typical of Japanese theatre. Such a character used her beautiful body and
sexual allure as a weapon with which to assault and defeat men.
10 Miyoko Shimura, ‘Vanpu Joyū Ron’, in Kenji Iwamoto (ed.), Jidaigeki Densetsu:
Chanbara Eiga no Kagayaki. Nihon eigashi sōsho (Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2005),
pp. 191–219; Washitani Hana ‘Satsueijo jidai no “josei akushon eiga” ’, in Inuhiko
Yomota and Washitani Hana (eds), Tatakau Onnatachi: Nihon Eiga no Josei
Akushon (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2009), pp. 20–55.
11 According to legend, if a cat licks the blood of somebody who has died an
unfortunate and violent death, this person’s grudge passes on to the animal. The
cat, as if possessed by the resentful spirit of the dead, then carries out its revenge.
12 Colette Balmain, Introduction to Japanese Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2008); Jay McRoy (ed.), Japanese Horror Cinema (Edinburgh:
13 Washitani, ‘Satsueijo jidai’, pp. 33–5.
14 Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer, ‘Introduction’, in Japanese Cinema: Texts and
Contexts (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 7; Isolde Standish, A New History of
Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film (New York: Continuum, 2005),

pp. 116–17.
15 Initially planned to be another female version of a yakuza film series, Sasori ended
up being something very weird in the eyes of Tōei executives. Luckily the films
were a commercial success, which probably saved Itō from Suzuki Seijun’s fate
when he shot Branded to Kill (1967) for Nikkatsu.
16 Mana Yaeko, ‘Kedakaki Rashin no Musumetachi – Tōei Pinkī Baiorensu’, in
Inuhiko Yomota and Washitani Hana (eds), Tatakau Onnatachi: Nihon Eiga no
Josei Akushon (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2009), p. 46.
17 Washitani, ‘Satsueijo jidai’, p. 49; p. 55, note 18.
18 Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London:
Routledge, 1993).
19 Rikke Schubart, Super Bitches and Action Babes: the Female Hero in Popular
Cinema, 1970–2006 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), pp. 111–16.
20 Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, in Laura Mulvey (ed.),
Visual and Other Pleasures (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 14–26. I have also
touched upon the relevance of Kaji’s 1970s female avenging characters to
discussions of monstrous feminine and gaze theories in Treglia, ‘From myth to
cult’, p. 113 and 115, and in ‘Sexing up post-war Japanese cinema: looking at the
1960s/1970s “pinky violence” films’, in Katherine Harrison and Cassandra A.
Ogden (eds), Pornographies: Critical Positions (Chester: Chester University Press,
2018a), p.146.
21 J-Tarō Sugisaku, ‘Shunya Ito interview,’ in J-Tarō Sugisaku and Takeshi
Uechi (eds), Tōei Pinkī Baiorensu Rōman Arubamu (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten,
1999), p. 140.
22 Treglia, ‘From myth to cult’, p. 113.
23 Schubart, Super Bitches.
24 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2011).
25 It is known that Kaji, on studying Shinohara’s manga, refused to utter any of the
obscenities attributed to her character that were at first retained in the script. Itō
agreed that Sasori’s feelings could be conveyed through her eyes and other visuals
rather than through dialogue. Indeed, dialogue is shrunk to a bare minimum and
almost replaced by gazing between characters. As in the case of other rape-
revenge film protagonists such as Madeleine and Thana, Sasori does not speak: she
first haunts with her eyes, and the opening credits sequence is the best
manifestation of the grudge-fuelled resilience of the series’ protagonist.
26 Setsu Shigematsu, Scream from the Shadows: the Women’s Liberation Movement in
Japan (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), p. 247.
27 Peter Lehman, ‘ “Don’t blame this on a girl”: female rape-revenge films’, in Steven
Cohan and Ina Rae Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in
Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 108–9.
Bibliography
Balmain, Colette, Introduction to Japanese Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2008).
Brown, Jeffrey A., ‘If looks could kill: power, revenge, and stripper movies’, in Martha
McCaughey and Neal King (eds), Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies
(Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 52–77.
Church, David (2011), ‘From exhibition to genre: the case of grind-house films’,
Cinema Journal, 50/4 (2011), pp. 1–25. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/
article/449687 (accessed 6 February 2014).
Creed, Barbara, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London:
Routledge, 1993).
Cook, Pam, Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema (London: Routledge,
2005).
De Lauretis, Teresa, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction
(London: Macmillan, 1989).
Desjardins, Chris, Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).
Domenig, Roland, ‘Vital flesh: the mysterious world of Pink Eiga’, Far East Film
Festival – IV edition. 2002. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/200211190912
33/http://194.21.179.166/cecudine/fe_2002/eng/PinkEiga2002.htm (accessed 12
May 2011).
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra, Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (Jefferson, NC :
McFarland, 2011).
Lehman, Peter, ‘ “Don’t blame this on a girl”: female rape-revenge films’, in Steven
Mana, Yaeko, ‘Kedakaki Rashin no Musumetachi – Tōei Pinkī Baiorensu’, in Inuhiko
Yomota and Washitani Hana (eds), Tatakau Onnatachi: Nihon Eiga no Josei
Akushon (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2009), pp. 179–216.
Mathijs, Ernest and Sexton, Jamie, Cult Cinema (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
McRoy, Jay (ed.), Japanese Horror Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2005).
Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, in Laura Mulvey (ed.), Visual
and Other Pleasures (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 14–26.
Nornes, Abé Mark (ed.), The Pink Book: The Japanese Eroduction and Its Contexts, 2nd
edn, Kinema Club, 2014, available at: http://kinemaclub.org/pink-book-japanese-
eroduction-and-its-contexts (accessed 18 March 2016).
Phillips, Alastair and Stringer, Julian, ‘Introduction’, in Japanese Cinema: Texts and
Contexts (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 1–24.
Read, Jacinda, The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-revenge Cycle
Richie, Donald, ‘The Japanese eroduction’, in A Lateral View: Essays on Contemporary
Japan (Tokyo: Japan Times, 1991), pp. 156–69.
Schubart, Rikke, Super Bitches and Action Babes: the Female Hero in Popular Cinema,
1970–2006 (Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2007).
Shigematsu, Setsu, Scream from the Shadows: the Women’s Liberation Movement in
Japan (Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
Shimura, Miyoko, ‘Vanpu Joyū Ron’, in Kenji Iwamoto (ed.), Jidaigeki Densetsu:
Chanbara Eiga no Kagayaki. Nihon eigashi sōsho (Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2005),
pp. 191–219.
Standish, Isolde, A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film
(New York: Continuum, 2005).
Sugisaku, J-Tarō, ‘Shunya Itō interview,’ in Jeitarō T. Sugisaku and Takeshi Uechi
(eds), Tōei Pinkī Baiorensu Rōman Arubamu (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1999),
pp. 138–42.
Treglia, Laura, ‘Sexing up post-war Japanese cinema: looking at the 1960s/1970s
“pinky violence” films’, in Katherine Harrison and Cassandra A. Ogden (eds),
Pornographies: Critical Positions (Chester: Chester University Press, 2018a),
pp. 141–66.
Treglia, Laura, ‘Mondo-ing urban girl tribes: the boom of 1960s–70s erotic cinema
and the policing of young female subjects in Japanese sukeban films’, Film Studies
18/1 (2018b), pp. 52–69.
Treglia, Laura, ‘From myth to cult: tragic heroes, parody and gender politics in the
1960s-1970s “bad girls” cinema of Japan’, in Blai Guarné, Artur Lozano-Méndez
and Dolores P. Martinez (eds), Persistently Postwar: Media and the Politics of
Memory in Japan (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019), pp. 103–21.
Walters, Suzanna Danuta, ‘Caged heat: the (r)evolution of women-in-prison films’, in
Martha McCaughey and Neal King (eds), Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the
Movies (Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 106–23.
Washitani, Hana, ‘Satsueijo jidai no “josei akushon eiga” ’, in Inuhiko Yomota and
Hana Washitani (eds), Tatakau Onnatachi: Nihon Eiga no Josei Akushon (Tokyo:
Sakuhinsha, 2009), pp. 20–55.
70
3
Rethinking Representation, Race and Rape

in the 1970s Women in Prison Movie
James Newton
In the 1970s, a new cycle of Women in Prison (WiP) films emerged from the
United States, updating a formula that had existed in some form or other since
the 1930s. Films such as The Big Doll House (Jack Hill, 1971), Women in Cages
(Gerado de Leon, 1971), The Big Bird Cage (Jack Hill, 1972), The Hot Box (Joe
Viola, 1972), Black Mama, White Mama (Eddie Romero, 1973) and Caged Heat
(Jonathan Demme, 1974) were action pictures with extra amounts of sex and
nudity, and recurring narratives of incarcerated women organizing to fight
against, and subsequently escape from, the patriarchal prison structures that
contained them. They were made at a time when the movements for women’s
liberation were growing in prominence and also coincided with burgeoning
feminist film criticism, characterized by work such as Claire Johnston’s
Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema (1973) and, of course, Laura Mulvey’s
‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975).
Pam Cook turned this feminist criticism towards the exploitation cinema of
Stephanie Rothman, who directed several films for Roger Corman, as well as
the WiP movie Terminal Island (1973). Cook claimed that the ‘bad acting,
crude stereotypes and schematic narrative’ synonymous with exploitation
cinema exposed the ‘ideological structures embedded in the form itself ’.1 This
resulted in contradictions and ‘shifts in meaning which disturb the patriarchal
myths of women on which the exploitation film itself rests’.2 Terminal Island,
according to Henry Jenkins, ‘negotiates between . . . two competing discourses’
that can illuminate ‘the ideological fault-lines within popular cinema’.3 Both
Cook and Jenkins recognize that while the cycle was superficially transgressive
because it presented violent women, its subversive value also lay in the manner
71
in which it exposed conventions which were perceived to enforce patriarchal

ideology through a narrow set of representations and formal constructions.
Exploring the subversive and transgressive qualities claimed by some for
the WiP cycle is the focus of this chapter.4 Subversion in cinema is one of the
main reasons that the scholarship that surrounds cult films exists. Critics of
cult cinema typically examine films’ potential for subversion through their
critique of societal structures and/or cinematic conventions. Thus, Amos
Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art defines subversion as that which challenges
‘existing values, institutions, mores, and taboos’.5 He claims his book is about
‘scepticism towards all received wisdom (including its own), eternal truths,
rules of art, “natural” and man-made laws, indeed whatever may be considered
holy’.6 Within this framework, Vogel considers everything from the avant-
garde through to pornography and Nazi propaganda. But in his history of
subversive cinema’s first seventy or so years, among the ‘fantasies of lust,
violence, ambition, perversion, crime and romantic love’,7 Vogel makes no
comment on the likes of Roger Corman, Herschell Gordon Lewis or Doris
Wishman.
To find subversion in these cultish, trashy areas of cinema, rather than in the
areas that Vogel privileges, means that the critic is not only looking at cult
cinema, but is engaging in cult criticism. They are deliberately seeking out that
which has been discarded or which is traditionally regarded marginal.8 But
what is the purpose of revisiting shocking movies from the 1970s when over the
following decades they have been superseded by work which is far more violent,
more shocking and more directly engaged in presenting marginal spaces, ideas,
or identities? Even the once much-derided WiP film is no longer regarded as
transgressive, and violent women are now quite commonplace across cinematic
genres such as horror, crime and action films. Furthermore, the one-time claims
for the ‘feminism’ of WiP films have come to be seen by some as contradictory
and untenable. To focus on the ‘feminism’ of the cycle is to ignore their principle
selling points: among the films mentioned above, there are depictions of rape,
sexualized torture and molestation, whipping and forced prostitution – what
director Jack Hill says was ‘basically exploiting women sexually’.9
Mattias Frey, in his study of contemporary ‘extreme cinema’, refers to the
‘international production trend of graphically sexual or violent “quality” films
that often stoke critical and popular controversy’.10 Moviegoers today no longer
Representation, Race and Rape in the Women in Prison Movie 73
need to turn to exploitation and schlock from the 1970s for sex and violence,
but instead can rely on contemporary cinema, and especially art cinema, for
some of the most shocking content available.11 Indeed, as Frey puts it, the new
‘extreme cinema’ seeks to offend the ‘culturally inscribed boundaries between
art and exploitation’.12 In today’s cinematic landscape, there is a perennial sense
of controversy whereby ‘no major festival passes without headlines about
a controversial art film’.13 Subversively violent and sexual content is now an
expected part of modern film culture. Furthermore, it is now a feature of
mainstream television. Programmes such as The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010– )
and Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011–19) feature content that would have resulted
in censorship had it appeared in feature films in the 1970s or 1980s.
Vogel writes that cinema’s subversive potential makes it the ‘target of the
repressive forces in society – censors, traditionalists, the state’.14 But these
‘repressive forces’ no longer exist in the same forms. Censorship of violence
and sex no longer happens in the same way, nor on the same scale.15 By virtue
of the period in which they were made, 1970s shockers often contain content
which bristles against contemporary liberal Western values – including images
of sexual objectification, humour based on negative stereotypes and content
which might be seen by some as ‘politically incorrect’. However, much of the
growing scholarship on exploitation cinema is concerned to highlight the
positive or progressive elements of the cult film whilst at the same time
explaining, putting into context, mitigating or disowning its negative elements,
such as its perceived racism or misogyny.
Bev Zalcock’s analysis, for example, is generous in finding positive moments
across the WiP film, but dismisses the elements that make them primarily a
collective ‘wet dream’ aimed at ‘hormonal young men’.16 Cook, Jenkins and
Zalcock high-mindedly reframe the films and create a context by which
they might be understood in a way that mitigates their disreputable content
(in this case by showing how they counterpoint mainstream Hollywood
representations). But such an approach suggests that the WiP film is suitable
only when viewed through the prism of intellectual enquiry, and that there is a
way to enjoy these films as women looking for transgressive role models, and
absolutely not as ‘young hormonal men’.
This is not to criticize such interpretations – they simply have different
motivations from mine – but it is to make a comment on the way that
scholarship on the cult film frequently maintains a distance between the

radical subversion contained in a set of movies, and its own analysis. A look at
the critical stance on three exploitation cycles from the 1970s can illustrate this
point. The biker movie, for example, was largely countercultural in its imagery
(pot smoking and other facets of drop-out culture) and presented visions of
individual freedom. But it is also contained homophobia and traded on racist
imagery.17 The rape-revenge film demonstrates female agency in its incarnation
of violent women, what Jacinda Read calls the ‘refusal of the woman to be
killed off ’.18 But this violence is justified only by the violation of these women,
often depicted in graphic imagery which the critic has to contextualize. The
slasher film frequently centres on sexual ambiguities, but its core iconographical
image is the point-of-view shot of women being stalked and murdered.19
Clearly, I am painting the scholarly reception of these cycles in very broad
strokes, and deliberately so. But the point here is that they can be considered as
simultaneously transgressive yet also stuck in stereotypical and regressive
representations – what Cook refers to as ‘patriarchal myths’ or ‘ideological
structures’. Often the most dangerous elements of the cult text from the past
are mitigated and put into a context which ‘contains’ or dismisses the
embarrassing moments. The critic takes on the role of guardian or teacher,
‘educating’ the ‘uncultured’ viewer on how to understand, interpret and enjoy
such films, but also on when to stop taking pleasure in them and to start
critiquing any problematic representations. This, I would argue, not only
reduces the subversive impact of a cult text, it also means that the scholarship
surrounding these films tends to become very conservative. The scholar in
these instances is certainly discussing cult films, but they are not engaging in
cult scholarship. That is, they are not providing a critical voice which is itself
marginal, unruly or subversive.
When the WiP film can now be celebrated in the mainstream press as being
radical, then scholars of cult film need to examine the purpose of looking back
to the past.20 If it can be eulogized in a newspaper as relentlessly liberal as the
Guardian, can the WiP cycle any longer be seen as radical? Are such films now
useless to the cult critic or to those interested in subversive cinema?
I do not believe that this is the case. In my view, they are still subversive,
but identifying their subversive qualities involves going beyond a surface
interpretation and relies on an acceptance of their cruder side. In The Anarchist
Cinema (2019), I argue for the WiP film as a prominent example of political
anarchism on screen – in their mix of intersectional politics and in their
recurring representations of patriarchal prison institutions being overthrown
and destroyed. But furthermore, this anarchy manifests itself in the way that
the cycle agitates against its own narrow conventions through its frequently
unruly formal constructions. An analysis of their form reveals that they subvert
not only mainstream narrative conventions and stereotypes of women, but
also their own rigid set of conventions and codes. It makes them uncontainable,
resistant to any singular interpretation. And, in terms of content, the WiP film
still comes with a warning because it shows no regard for sensitivity towards
subjects that dominate the contemporary culture wars, with its often deeply
challenging attitudes towards women, sex, race and rape. This is the inherent
contradiction of the ‘politics’ of the WiP film laid bare: they are both progressive
and reactionary. It is in these contradictions, the total inconsistency of message,
that the cycle remains relevant. It still has much to teach us, not only about
exploitation film culture of the 1970s, but also about how to challenge attitudes
and methods of artistic expression in film today. The cycle’s often alarming
combinations of ‘politically incorrect’ jokes, situations and characters means
that it is still dangerous, it is still unruly, it is still, for the cult critic, worth
studying – accepting these moments as part of their appeal.
This approach could, of course, put the cult critic on dangerous ground. Is it
possible to condemn racism, sexism and homophobia, while also celebrating
the fact that these films retain their subversive power precisely because they
portray these things? Certainly, my discussion of these moments in the cycle is
not an endorsement of these attitudes in real life. Instead, I like to think that
any audience that the cycle attracts would understand the multiple and varying
contexts of the ‘non-PC’ material. I should also make it clear that I consider
subversiveness to be inherently interesting, usually positive, and necessary.
In her study of lesbian representation, Clare Whatling writes of a ‘nostalgia
for abjection’,21 where she re-contextualizes the stereotypical and oppressive
depictions of lesbians by acknowledging the pleasures they can contain (that
is, for Whatling at least). While I am not claiming that the way WiP films depict
rape, homosexuality and race necessarily provides viewing pleasure, the way in
which they have the potential for continuing to keep the cycle abject does
afford me both enjoyment and critical interest. Zalcock also acknowledges this
possibility, claiming that images of women being socially transgressive ‘can, for
the female spectator, be quite inspiring’.22 This assumes a gendered difference
in the reception of the cycle, and if this claim is true, and that the cycle ‘feeds
male fantasies’,23 then one of the reasons why we can see it as subversive and
worthy of study today is precisely because of the casual manner in which it
does so.
Mattias Frey sees a more sombre approach to such subject matter as a
characteristic of the new extreme cinema, whose directors frequently defend
their work by claiming they are taking a serious approach and challenging
audiences’ enjoyment of such material.24 This defence, as summarized by Frey,
claims that ‘disturbing violence is moral violence . . . artistic, rather than
exploitative’.25 In opposition to this rather pretentious position on the part of
such directors, I would argue that it is the so-called ‘exploitative’ violence or sex
on screen that is the more subversive treatment of the subject, precisely because
it takes such a superficial approach to material that we are told, by ‘serious’
film-makers and critics, should be treated with utmost respect and handled
with the greatest care.
Reconsidering ‘objectfication’ and other hot topics
The WiP cycle invites discussions around the objectification of women and the
‘feeding of male fantasies’ through its casual and abundant onscreen female
nudity. But within these scenes there is evidence of an acknowledgment of the
complexity of issues surrounding voyeurism and scopophilia, revealing an
awareness about looking that complicates the simplistic ways in which the
objectification of women in the cycle is often considered. In Black Mama,
White Mama a sadistic lesbian guard, Matron Densmore (Lynn Borden), spies
on and masturbates over showering inmates. The voyeurism of the scene is
explicitly foregrounded in the shot selection and editing. The camera switches
between the women in the shower, Densmore illuminated via the hole through
which she is looking, and the hole itself, with its border framing the showering
women. In Caged Heat, the male prison doctor photographs a drugged inmate
prior to sexually assaulting her. This process of on-screen voyeurism, where
the audience is watching the voyeur taking part in a photographic process,
demonstrates a sophisticated awareness of the dynamics between film-maker,

audience and character that foreshadows aspects of the famous analysis
undertaken by Mulvey.
The cycle’s relationship to objectification becomes more complex when
considering the preponderance of scenes of women being paraded, scenes in
which women have to walk or stand in groups for the benefit of prison
authorities. They are either naked in showers or stripping for inspection, fully
clothed filing on and off prison buses, or standing to attention in one form or
another. This is the use of women’s bodies as mise-en-scène, as set decoration –
standing in lines, sitting in cages, standing watching a fight or moment of
torture. For example, in The Big Doll House the film pauses to show women
looking at another prisoner trapped in a bamboo cage. Such moments result in
a doubling of the ‘gaze’: the audience is asked to watch women looking at
women, it is asked to survey the surveyors. In Caged Heat, there is an extended
scene in which two prisoners perform a series of comic routines in a show for
other inmates. The camera switches between the show (mainly in long shots)
and multiple shots of the audience watching, laughing and jeering (in mid
shots and close-ups) in order to encourage closer identification with the
‘watchers’. In this scene, we perceive the two tendencies, women looking, and
women being looked at. Objectification is taking place regardless of whether
there is sexual content or not.
Such scenes are a convention of the prison movie (male or female) because
of the realities of prison life.26 But in the WiP genre these moments dominate
the rhythm of the films, developing a sense of the order from which the
characters eventually break free. This rhythm, and part of the spectacle the
WiP film offers, lies in watching women work, talk and simply stand around,
as much as it consists in watching them fight or have sex. So, while casual
discussions of the cycle consider the actions of the female characters, the films
frequently make a spectacle out of their inaction. And it is in these moments of
inaction that the films extemporize on topics such as race and homosexuality.
The WiP film afforded prominent roles to Black female actors such as Pam
Grier, Carol Speed, Ella Reid, Juanita Brown and Ena Hartman. Grier became
the biggest and longest enduring star associated with the cycle, and later one of
the icons of Blaxploitation. It was in this respect that the cycle made overtures
towards being ‘about’ racial issues. Black Mama, White Mama’s selling point is
its cast’s racial coupling, and it emphasizes the blackness and whiteness of the
prisoners in line with other contemporary Blaxploitation titles. Terminal
Island’s marketing also makes a selling point of its racial and gender mix.27 But
this injection of race only gestures towards the intricacies of the social reality
of 1970s America, while the Blaxploitation film offered a far more meaningful
connection to black experience.28
Black Mama, White Mama is based on an updating of the central conceit of
The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958), where one black and one white prisoner
are handcuffed together and learn to overcome their animosity during an escape
attempt. Yet, the enmity between white revolutionary Karen (Margaret Markov)
and black hooker Daniels (Pam Grier) derives from Karen’s acquiescence to sex
with the aforementioned Densmore. Conflict arises out of her collaboration with
a guard rather than through any racial conflict. Karen’s middle-class revolutionary
background implies that she is knowledgeable about various different activist
causes, and so she appeals to what she assumes would be Daniels’s own activism
based on her race: ‘You’re Black, don’t you understand?’ She is met with Daniels’s
response: ‘Some jive-ass revolution don’t mean shit to me.’ What results is the de-
politicization of the black woman, whilst the activism and intellectualism is
transposed almost entirely onto the middle-class white woman. There is thus a
softening of the black character’s motivation, reducing the racial threat that she
poses. Yet the film does not portray Karen as entirely honourable. Daniels
demonstrates more integrity by resisting the advances of Densmore, whereas
Karen makes the decision to have sex with Densmore with little thought. Nor is
she punished for this decision, and it proves a throwaway moment.
Grier moves from ex-hooker to guard in Women in Cages but is still given
the backstory of rape at the hands of a white man. This time her character,
Alabama, demonstrates anger motivated by racial injustice, but that rage is
turned on the inmates rather than into coherent political action. When
horrified prisoners are shown a field they have to work, she asks them teasingly:
‘Don’t it make you pine for those cane fields in the South?’ Alabama claims that
she escaped the States (for the Philippines, where the film is set) because of its
racism, and that she learnt her brutal behaviour in Harlem. While she claims
her anger is a result of racial mistreatment, the film negates the political
implications of this by making it about her (perceived) personal defects, and
synonymous with her predatory lesbian instincts.
In The Big Bird Cage, Grier portrays a character who, as part of an interracial
couple (with WiP regular Sid Haig), leads a gang of Filipino men towards an
unspecified revolution. But within this, the issue of race is not a motivating
factor, nor is there any consideration of the idea of solidarity across political
concerns (which Karen suggests in Black Mama, White Mama). This de-
racializing of the issue is reflected in the animosity between Grier and the
black inmate Mickie (Carol Speed). The racial epithets familiar from
Blaxploitation (‘Nigga!’) are almost exclusively thrown back and forth between
these black characters, which has the effect of divorcing the struggle from
racial politics.29 There is no solidarity between characters of similar racial
backgrounds; instead, the white man and black woman are the leaders of a
revolutionary group in a foreign country, and the group’s motivations are un-
explored. Furthermore, when asking for water, Haig refers to one of his Filipino
gang as ‘Gunga Din’, a reference to the Indian water carrier of Kipling’s poem
that demonstrates a clear lack of racial sensitivity towards the people of the
country for which they are allegedly fighting.
However, in the cycle’s defence Bev Zalcock makes the claim that, in the
WiP movies set in the Philippines, ‘the cast is predominantly black’.30 This is
not really accurate unless one stretches the definition of ‘black’ to include
Asians, but such revisionism about race is nonetheless insightful because it
signifies the extent to which the Philippines and its people are side-lined in
favour of race issues seen exclusively in terms of black and white skin colour.
Little attention is paid to the Filipino cast members who fill out many of the
locations in the background as essentially set dressing. Filipino women
populate the locations as guards and prisoners, and males act as assorted
heavies. In The Big Bird Cage’s comic interludes, Filipinos act mostly as an
audience for Haig’s tomfoolery. Again, the audience watches people watching,
with shots of gangs of Filipinos looking bemused or amused by the actions of
white people. In one scene in Black Mama, White Mama, topless Filipino
women massage a villain, as assorted bad guys stand and witness a white
woman being tortured by having electrodes attached to her breasts. Across the
cycle, white topless women are all given speaking roles and dominate centre
frame, whereas the Filipino women remain silent and at the margins of both
the narrative and the screen. The cycle undoubtedly allows us to see and hear
black voices, but the lack of politicization of the black characters and the
dismissive attitude towards the Filipino cast means it wavers between racism
and something more progressive in this regard.
Across the cycle there are also prominent examples of same sex relationships
amongst and between both guards and inmates, relationships which are
frequently exploitative in terms of their power imbalances. While there is some
acceptance of fluid and ephemeral sexualities, there is also a ridiculing of
‘dykes’ or men who are ‘not naturally inclined’.31 As epitomized by Grier’s
portrayal of Alabama in Women in Cages, the lesbian in the WiP cycle is
synonymous with the sadistic and the predatory. In Black Mama, White Mama,
Matron Densmore exchanges favours for sex, but is also made pathetic and
weak by her desires. Densmore is aggressive, slapping prisoners freely, but is
ineffectual in front of her boss, a stronger and more sober heterosexual guard.
Densmore cries in front of her, begging to be left alone and not confronted
about her behaviour. The predatory lesbian is an historic cinematic stereotype,
yet Clare Whatling also talks of the figure’s ‘transgressive power,’32 although
noting that the transgression prompted by such depictions of lesbians are
nearly always ‘recuperated by the end of the film’.33 However, in the WiP cycle,
the predatory lesbian is resurrected in some form, but, like the racial
characteristics and the ‘revolutionary’ ideals, male and female homosexuality is
only a shallow performance, a device that allows something to happen within
the narrative but lacking consideration of any deeper consequences. No matter
what happens in one film, they simply reappear as motivations for the next
(nearly identical) storyline.
The male homosexual, however, is treated far more harshly. The homophobia
displayed by the prisoners is because they are (often justifiably) anti-men, and
homosexuality is seen as a variant of negative male behaviour and a form of
masculinity that is defective. In The Big Doll House, one prisoner has been
incarcerated because she killed her adulterous husband after his affair with the
houseboy. Rocco (Vic Diaz) in The Big Bird Cage is one of two camp and openly
gay (and sadistic) guards. To infiltrate the camp, Django (Sid Haig) performs a
fake seduction of Rocco in the toilets. Rocco stands beside him to admire his
penis, staring down and clearly impressed. Django affects a swishy voice
throughout this gay pantomime, and offers an exaggeratedly limp handshake,
presented in close-up to make the point clear. Rocco and the other guard react
to Django’s arrival by putting on even more affected mannerisms and voices,
Figure 3.1 Django (Sid Haig) performs a fake seduction of prison guard Rocco (Vic
Diaz) in The Big Bird Cage.
Figure 3.2 Rocco is raped by the escaping prisoners in The Big Bird Cage; ‘You’ll finally
get to use that thing for what it’s made for.’
arguing and referring to each other as ‘bitches’ as they fight for Django’s
attention. These performances blatantly call up the ‘sissy’ stereotype identified
by Vito Russo which dominated Hollywood depictions of homosexuality in its
first seventy years.34
When an escapee is raped at knifepoint by a gang, Rocco laments that
‘nothing like that ever happens’ to him, and, as an ironic denouement to this
thread, during the final battle he is gang raped and murdered by the female
inmates. One of the female characters makes him erect through some off-
camera and unspecified oral technique, then as she lowers herself onto him he
is told mockingly that he will ‘finally get to use that thing for what it’s made for’.
His hysterical screams are silenced by another prisoner sitting on his face.
The cycle uses rape as humour and a justified or ironic punishment in
response to perceived sexual misdemeanours (be they homosexuality or
criminal or exploitative action). Jokes about rape are delivered equally by male
and female characters, and the women are just as likely to use rape and the
threat of sexual assault. In The Big Bird Cage, the prisoners sneer at a rape
victim when she is too traumatized to reveal the details of her ordeal, on the
grounds that ‘you owe it to us’, and ‘she has no right not to tell us, she’s the only
one around here who ever gets any and she won’t even tell us about it’. Django,
the closest the film has to a male ‘hero’, announces to Terry (Anitra Ford), after
he has kidnapped her on behalf of his ‘revolutionary’ gang, that he is going to
rape her, to which she responds: ‘You can’t rape me, I like sex’. In The Big Doll
House, Collier (Judy Brown) is internally examined by a female guard but is far
more receptive to being examined by a male doctor, and even shows signs that
she will enjoy the intrusive attention. Earlier in the same film Harry (Haig
again) denies he intends to rape an inmate, saying: ‘I ain’t gonna rape one of
them, one of them is gonna rape me.’ Later, he is allowed an extended grope of
Grear (Pam Grier) through the bars in exchange for passing her a smuggled
letter. Once again, this is represented with the inclusion of shots of other
inmates watching. Those looking on, and Grear herself (despite supposedly
being a lesbian within the narrative), enjoy the action. It is then revealed that is
has been a deception and that the letter was not even addressed to Grear. Later,
she attempts to bribe Harry to supply her with heroin by inviting him to grope
her again, although this time she traps his fingers in her vagina and refuses to
let him go.
In the course of The Big Doll House, women are routinely sexually tortured
(whipped while topless, having electric devices attached to their breasts), in a
prison presided over by the governor, Miss Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer).
At the climax she is taken hostage and Alcott (WiP regular Roberta Collins)
strips Harry to his underwear at gunpoint and attempts to force him to rape
Dietrich in the back of a truck. His main objection is that the act will take place
in front of other people, and his inability to perform it is the result of
embarrassment and performance anxiety rather than moral rectitude. In
keeping with the cycle’s attitude towards the homosexual, the film caricatures
the idea of the ‘right’ kind of man as one who can get it up for a woman on
demand. Within these moments we see sexual assault as frivolous, a game in
which one can cheat, a joke, a test of manhood and a justifiable form of revenge.
As Harry is cajoled at gunpoint, the film emphasizes shots of Dietrich, her
blouse ripped open by Alcott, looking aghast. That only mid shots of her are
those of her crying ‘no’ means that a distance is maintained from the potential
horror of the situation. This distance is also maintained by the humiliating
predicaments in which Harry finds himself. Being trapped by Grear’s genitals,
and forced to strip and engage in sexual activity, mirrors the abuse endured by
the women throughout the film (and across the entire cycle). But even this
reading of the scene is usurped when Harry, after molesting Dietrich’s breasts
(through her clothes), finally finds himself aroused and sets about enjoying his
task. The assault is curtailed by the arrival of the army, which signifies the start
of the final shootout – where the film switches back to the trope of violent
women going out in a blaze of glory, for which the cycle is famous. Dietrich
dies in an explosion during the final shootout, and despite the alarming nature
of the near rape, she avoids the ironic fate of Rocco in The Big Bird Cage and
Alabama in Women in Cages, who is sexually assaulted and then drowned by a
gang of Filipino men.
That Harry, who, during the course of the film, has joked about acting out
rape, duped a woman into letting him grope her and is about to commit an act
of revenge rape on behalf of someone else, is referred to by Chris Nashawaty as
a ‘sympathetic smuggler’35 reveals the depth of revisionism in popular writing
Figure 3.3 Prisoner Alcott (WiP regular Roberta Collins) attempts to get Harry (Haig
again) to rape Miss Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer) as an act of revenge in The Big
Doll House.
about the WiP cycle. It is easy to forget these moments in the films’ general
high camp tone, but it is in such scenes and fragments that the cycle retains its
relevance as subversive cinema.
Conclusion
This chapter is clearly not a comprehensive analysis of the WiP cycle. Instead,
I have used certain 1970s WiP films as a template and starting point to rethink
approaching cult texts from the 1970s, and in particular to rethink the
difficulties of studying a cycle in which contradiction is so prevalent. There is
no clear moral or ethical quandary at their centre. They lack any signposting of
their moral stance. Characters show kindness, but then spout racist insults.
They are sexually abused, but then tolerate, or even attempt to enact, the sexual
abuse and rape of others. They are presented as weak, but also sadistic. They are
given motivation for their bad behaviour, but that doesn’t prevent them from
falling victim to ironic forms of justice. The innocent die or remain trapped
(Women in Cages ends with a heroin addict forced into a brothel) while the
guilty go free. It is for viewers to decide their own moral position in relation to
such depictions and representations. But they are highly relevant to today’s
cinema culture, with its debates around minority and female representation,
and the use of terms such as ‘whitewashing’.
To broaden my study so that it is relevant to the 1970s cult landscape as a
whole, one could argue that the biker film was once subversive because it
depicted the core ethos of the counterculture. It is subversive now because it
promotes the violent reactionary outlaw adorned with Nazi imagery. The rape
revenge film was once subversive because it demonstrated the raped woman’s
refusal to be killed off. It is subversive now because it forces us to confront
prolonged scenes of sexual violence. The slasher film was once subversive
because it depicted ambiguous gender roles. It is subversive now because it
glorifies voyeuristic violence. The WiP film can be approached in the same way,
in that it has a superficial, but nonetheless consistent, relationship to feminist
politics. Yet these films are disrespectful, distasteful, violent and semi-
pornographic. They lack a coherent message, are endlessly divisive and
confusing, and trade on a sense of continual disorder. But it is precisely this
which makes them subversive. In a media universe of HD and 4K imagery, an

academy built on Western liberal values, and culture wars provoked by the
topics explored in this chapter, these films subvert our understanding of what
constitutes ‘quality’, the progressive and the culturally important precisely
because of their obnoxious and dysfunctional elements.
Bev Zalcock argues that: ‘Dubious and prurient they may be, the WIP cycle
has consistently provided images of women at the centre of their narratives.
These images may not be positive but they are always dangerous and this
is more than other Hollywood genres can offer’.36 These films are worth
re-visiting precisely because they are dubious, prurient and frequently wallow
in what we might call ‘negative’ representations. By embracing the uglier side
of these films, by accepting them as inevitable and vital to our understanding
of them, the cult critic can maybe take a step towards being as subversive and
transgressive as the films they describe.
Notes
1 Pam Cook, ‘Exploitation films and feminism’, Screen, 17/2, Summer 1976, p. 125.
2 Ibid., p. 127.
3 Henry Jenkins, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture
(New York University Press, 2006), p. 103.
4 In doing so, I will be considering the cycle as a whole, adopting Peter Stanfield’s
methodology of analysing repetition and recurrence associated with serial
production. See Hoodlum Movies: Seriality and the Outlaw Biker Film Cycle,
1966–1972 (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018).
5 Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974).
6 Ibid., p. 9.
7 Ibid., p. 9.
8 See Greg Taylor, Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), for the nuances of an audience
or critic seeking out the discarded film. Also, Jeffrey Sconce, ‘Trashing the
academy: taste, excess, and an emerging politics of cinematic style’, Screen, 36/4,
Winter 1995, pp. 371–93.
9 In Chris Nashawaty, Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses:
Roger Corman: King of the B Movie (New York: Abrams, 2013), p. 109.
10 Mattias Frey, Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film
Culture (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), p. 7.
11 Of course, there is a long history of the relationship between trash and art cinema.
See Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant Garde
(Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
12 Frey, Extreme Cinema, p. 7.
13 Ibid., p. 3.
14 Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art, p. 11.
15 I acknowledge that I am taking a very Western-centric focus here, and that
censorship culture in other parts of the world is still often very oppressive.
16 Bev Zalcock, Renegade Sisters: Girl Gangs on Film (London: Creation Books, 2001),
p. 32.
17 See Bill Osgerby, ‘Sleazy riders: exploitation, “otherness”, and transgression in
the 1960s biker movie’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 31/3, 2003,
pp. 98–108.
18 Jacinda Read, The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 33.
19 See Carol Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror
Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
20 In an article in the Guardian, 26 May 2015, entitled ‘Mad Max: Fury Road is less
radical than its B-movie influences’, Noah Berlatsky begins by speculating why
Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t normally considered a WiP film (probably because it
hasn’t got a prison in it) and then goes on to sing the praises of progressive
representations in the WiP cycle.
21 Clare Whatling, Screen Dreams: Fantasising Lesbians in Film (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 80.
22 Zalcock, Renegade Sisters, p. 34.
23 Ibid., p. 28.
24 Frey, Extreme Cinema, p. 26.
25 Ibid., p. 26.
26 Variations of this tendency can be found, minus the nudity, in male prison films as
diverse in tone as Scum (Alan Clarke, 1979) or Porridge (Dick Clement, 1979).
27 The poster’s tagline specifies: ‘Men and women . . . black and white’.
28 Peter Stanfield writes that the politics of Blaxploitation is divorced from the
specificities of the black liberation movement, instead focusing on representing a
version of black inner city street life. In doing so however, Blaxploitation films
offer a far more meaningful relationship to black experience in American than the
WiP movie. See ‘Walking the streets: black gangsters and the “abandoned city” in
the 1970s blaxploitation cycle’, in Lee Grieveson and Esther Sonnet (eds), Mob
Culture: Hidden Histories of American the Gangster Film (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2005), pp. 281–300.
29 Exceptions include Anitra Ford’s character being called a ‘skinny honky’ by Grier.
Ford also remarks that an Asian prisoner is ‘a good looking dish, if you like chop suey’.
31 This comment is spoken by Ford’s character in The Big Bird Cage.
32 Whatling, Screen Dreams, p. 79.
33 Ibid., p. 80.
34 Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
35 Nashawaty, Roger Corman, p. 112.
Bibliography
Berlatsky, Noah, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road is less radical than its B-movie influences’,
Guardian, 26 May 2015. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/
may/26/mad-max-fury-road-less-radical-exploitation-influences (accessed 22
June 2018).
Clover, Carol, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
(Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1993).
Cook, Pam, ‘Exploitation films and feminism’, Screen, 17/2, Summer 1976, pp 122–7.
Frey, Mattias, Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film Culture
(Rutgers, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2016).
Hawkins, Joan, Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant Garde (Minnesota,
MN : University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Jenkins, Henry, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture
(New York: New York University Press, 2006).
Johnstone, Claire, ‘Women’s cinema as counter-cinema’, in Claire Johnston (ed.), Notes
on Women’s Cinema (Society for Education in Film and Television: London, 1973).
Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 16/3, Autumn 1975,
pp 6–18.
Nashawaty, Chris, Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger
Corman: King of the B Movie (New York: Abrams, 2013).
Osgerby, Bill, ‘Sleazy riders: exploitation, “otherness”, and transgression in the 1960s
biker movie’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 31/3, 2003, pp 98–108.
Read, Jacinda, The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle
Russo, Vito, The Celluloid Closet (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
Sconce, Jeffrey, ‘Trashing the academy: taste, excess, and an emerging politics of
cinematic style’, Screen, 36/4, Winter 1995, pp. 371–93.
Stanfield, Peter, ‘Walking the streets: black gangsters and the “abandoned city” in the
1970s blaxploitation cycle’, in Lee Grieveson and Esther Sonnet (eds), Mob Culture:
Hidden Histories of American the Gangster Film (Rutgers, NJ : Rutgers University
Press, 2005), pp. 281–300.
Stanfield, Peter, Hoodlum Movies: Seriality and the Outlaw Biker Film Cycle,
1966–1972 (Rutgers, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2018).
Taylor, Greg, Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism
Vogel, Amos, Film as a Subversive Art (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974).
Whatling, Clare, Screen Dreams: Fantasising Lesbians in Film (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1997).
Zalcock, Bev, Renegade Sisters: Girl Gangs on Film (London: Creation Books, 2001).
Part Two
From the Vigilante to the Violated
89
90
4
Death Wish: A Vigilante’s Journey,

an Urban Tragedy
William Gombash
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the film Death Wish (1974) as it
relates to the subject of law and order in America in the 1970s. The specific
focus will be on the urban landscape; theories of revenge; the historic context
of the American vigilante films of the 1970s; and the relevance of race and the
civil rights movement to these subjects.
Over forty years after its release, Michael Winner’s Death Wish has seemingly
disappeared as a significant statement regarding crime and punishment in
America. Lacking the iconic catchphrases of Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1972)
or the cinematic dynamism of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), Death
Wish has faded into becoming a relative afterthought of the subgenre of
vigilante cinema. However, at the time of its release Death Wish powerfully
resonated with a disgruntled white lower and middle class that feared crime
and felt that the traditional means of protection and justice – the police and
the courts – had become for some the problem and not the solution as far as
crime in America was concerned. This was a group of citizens who in the mid-
1960s increasingly voted for candidates who took a tougher stance on law and
order, railed against Constitutional reforms to protect the rights of accused
criminals and were part of a backlash against civil rights legislation.1
So what were the social and political variables that allowed Death Wish to
touch a section of the public that had become so disillusioned with the system
of law and order that they cheered a vigilante hero fighting the battle that they
appeared to wish they could wage themselves?
91
The analysis in this chapter explores the narrative of Death Wish on three
levels. First, as a film about location, where the tragedies associated with the
alleged failures of the American judicial system are played out as a form of
guerrilla warfare in the arena of a dangerous American urban landscape.
Second, as a film about motivation, in this case the factors which motivate the
protagonist, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), to become a vigilante, as well as
the reasons why certain audiences identified with and cheered on his actions.
Finally, it explores Death Wish itself, which was produced at the beginning of
the post-civil rights movement in America, as a decidedly narrow, white man’s
view of justice without regard for complex demographically based problems
associated with crime in American cities.
Landscapes of injustice
‘It is sometimes said that American texts are about trying to find oneself in
the landscape’2.
The themes of American cinema are often firmly planted in a landscape right
from the establishing shot. Whether it be the panoramas of the Texas Panhandle
in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), the dystopian Hades of futuristic
Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), or Monument Valley in any
number of John Ford westerns, each gives credence to the concepts that
‘settings are not merely backdrops for the action, but symbolic extensions of
theme and characterizations’.3 Likewise, Death Wish is heavily predicated on
the significance of setting. More specifically, it focuses on the thematic contrasts
between the chaos and criminality of the urban versus the tranquil bliss of the
rural rooted in nostalgia for the American past. Significantly, this tale of urban
vigilantism does not begin in the mean streets of New York City but in the
tropical tranquillity and isolation of Hawaii. In the opening scene, Kersey and
his wife are enjoying the pastoral splendours of Hawaii in total isolation. There
is no one on the beach apart from them. Even the sunset is reserved for Kersey
and his wife alone. At a luau the happy couple watch the islanders perform for
them, amused by what they apparently regard as the quaintness of the dancing,
food and other native customs. ‘Paul, I don’t want to go back home,’ Joanna
Death Wish 93
Kersey (Hope Lange) wistfully tells her husband. And who indeed would want
to do so? The cinematic projection of the Hawaiian paradise is very far removed
from the crime and decay that affected the urban centres of mainland America
in 1974. However, the ‘Hawaii’ in Death Wish is a construct, looking like a
travelogue of what only a tourist would see, complete with friendly natives,
luaus and sandy beaches. The socio-economic reality behind this construct is
never revealed to the moviegoer.
From the pastoral splendour of the islands, the film cuts to an establishing
shot of New York. Traditionally, cinematic establishing shots of the city would
include views of the epic skyscrapers like the Chrysler and Empire State
Buildings rising above a teaming metropolis glistening with reflected sunlight
or illuminated by the magnificence of the lights from the buildings themselves.
At the beginning of the age of the skyscraper – some seventy or so years before
the release of Death Wish – these elements of the urban landscape were
represented as essentially modern and as aesthetically pleasing wonders. As
was written of New York at the time: ‘Atmospheric conditions have rendered
the skyline beautiful; its great dimensions have been softened by the lighting
and the fog. The skyline appears picturesque and welcoming.’4
But Winner does not provide the moviegoer with such aesthetically pleasing
images of this city. There are no shots of the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset or
Central Park on a beautiful Sunday in May, nor does George Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue play on the soundtrack. This is not Woody Allen’s Manhattan
(1979), which opens with a glorious montage of the iconic symbols of the city
from the Empire State Building to Yankee Stadium, leading to a final musical
crescendo with a glorious firework display against an evening skyline. Allen
was born and raised in New York, and thus his sense of the visual poetry of the
city is understandable, but, by contrast, Death Wish was a nightmare of almost
gothic horror proportions, because, according to The New York Times film
critic Vincent Canby, it was ‘produced by tourists’5 including an Italian
producer, an English director and a screenwriter from Los Angeles.
Winner’s vision of New York is far from beautiful, picturesque or welcoming.
This particular New York, with its sunrise emerging out of what looks like a
nuclear winter and its distorted music track sounding like something from a
post-modern horror film, is in stark contrast with the lilting sounds of the
indigenous music heard in the previous scene at the Hawaiian luau. The city is
grey and stark and the subway cars are covered with the urban grime and
graffiti of a modern American metropolis. This same toxic dust also covers the
slow-moving traffic. The Kerseys’ yellow taxi remains stationary in the traffic,
caught in the inertia of the civilization represented by the decaying
infrastructure of New York. Is it any wonder that Joanna Kersey did not want
to go home? Who could possibly want to live in an environment drained of
colour and sunlight? New York City is a corpse: the city as represented by
Winner has taken on the characteristics of a victim of a vampire that has
drained the life both from it and its citizens.
In his 1968 acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention,
Richard Nixon referred to America’s urban centres, racked by crime and social
discontent, as the ‘Valley of Despair’ and promised that ‘the long dark night for
America is about to end’.6 Although Nixon’s negative vision of America’s cities
is never specifically referenced in Death Wish it is clearly replicated in the
aforementioned establishing shots and in many of the scenes that follow.
Upon Kersey’s return, Sam Kreutzer (William Redfield), one of his co-
workers, greets him with the latest murder statistics. ‘There were fifteen
murders the first week and twenty-one last week in this goddamned city’, Sam
remarks. Regardless of whether these statistics are meant to scare Kersey or the
audience, they lack context (a frequent media ploy where statistics are
concerned). For example, we are not told how many of those murders were on
the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where people like Kersey and Sam are
more likely to live, or in the bombed-out slums in the Bronx, Brooklyn or
Harlem. Two years prior to the release of Death Wish, The New York Times
analysed crime statistics in New York City and found that ‘the slum precincts
were found to have far higher rates of crime and violence than the more
affluent precincts’.7
Sam suggests that all ‘decent people’ should run away from the city, thus
presumably leaving New York to the ‘indecent’ people. However, not only does
Kersey not want to run away from the city, but he has empathy for the
disenfranchised who cannot afford to do so. Sam accuses Kersey of being a
‘bleeding heart liberal’ and Kersey acknowledges that his ‘heart does bleed a little
for the underprivileged’. Sam retorts that ‘the underprivileged’ are ‘beating our
goddamned brains out.’ Sam then offers a chilling solution to crime in New York
City: ‘Stick them’ he suggests – apparently meaning the under-privileged – ‘in
Death Wish 95
concentration camps’. Kersey does not react to Sam’s reference to concentration

camps, not even blinking, and his lack of reaction makes it difficult to gauge
what is intended by Sam’s remark. Is he intended to be so ridiculous that people
are supposed to laugh at this ludicrous statement – made only about thirty years
after the end of the Second World War and the revelation of the horrors of the
camps? But if his reference is a joke, then who is supposed to laugh? Or is Sam a
kind of Cassandra, warning people that if our democratically elected officials
will not deal with law and order then people might look to a dictator to reduce
crime and make Americans feel safe?
Later that same day, Kersey’s boss, Ives (Chris Gimpel) asks him: ‘How does
it feel to be back in the war zone after Hawaii?’ But if New York is indeed a war
zone, then who is the enemy? In this case it is not an external occupying force
but is represented as coming from within, taking the form of young, sometimes
minority ethnic, criminals preying mostly on white people.
But what Kersey does not know at this particular moment is that the terrors
alluded to by Sam and his boss are nearer than he realizes, and that his return
has set in motion events that will cost the life of his wife, the sanity of his
daughter, and his own soul. The stage has been set, and the props are in place
to begin the tragedy of Paul Kersey and his quest for revenge. It does not take
long for the ‘war’ to come to Kersey and his family.
Vengeance by proxy
While Kersey is at work, three young men identified in the credits as Freak 1
(Jeff Goldblum), Freak 2 (Christopher Logan) and Spraycan (Gregory Rozakis)
spot his wife and their daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan) in a local grocery store.
After they have found the address to which the groceries are to be delivered,
one of them knocks on the door of the Kersey apartment, pretending to be the
delivery man. When Carol opens the door the three men break in, murdering
Joanna and raping Carol, leaving her in a catatonic state. When Kersey talks to
the police about the crime it immediately becomes obvious that he will never
achieve justice. He asks a police detective about the probability that the men
who murdered his wife and raped his daughter will be caught, but the response
is simply a rather impotent: ‘Just a chance. In this city, that is the way that it is.’
Encapsulated in that single quotation is the overarching message of Death

Wish, namely that the American legal system is a failure. The men who stole
the lives of his wife and his daughter, and even his own life – if life can be
defined as more than a beating heart but a faith in life as well – will never
be arrested, tried or punished. The visceral appeal of Death Wish lies within
Kersey’s desire to act, to become a vigilante, and the way in which it encourages
audiences to identify with him and cheer him on as he assumes a role in which
the police have failed and which some in the audience would like to take on
themselves.
In his review of the film, Vincent Canby declared that Death Wish ‘exploits
very real fears and social problems and suggests simple-minded remedies’.8
And according to Pauline Kael:
During the sixties and seventies, with war in Vietnam, political assassinations,
and the rise of urban crime, violence became part of our everyday life. Inevitably,
the movie screen became bloodier, and while movies about bad guys and
antiheroes were still popular, vigilante films became equally successful.9
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a vigilante as ‘a member of a volunteer

committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the
processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly: a self-appointed doer of
justice’.10 However, this definition is insufficient in order to understand what
motivates Kersey to act and, in turn, sections of the audience to identify with
him. When he finally hits the streets armed with an old western six shooter it
is not just about justice deferred, it is about revenge. In addition, this revenge
involves more than punishing the criminals that Kersey suspects the law will
never touch: this is revenge against the state and the system of law and order
that failed to protect Kersey’s family.
What is revenge? According to Ian McKee and N.T. Feather: ‘The desire for
revenge often appears to be a central motive in responses to a perceived
injustice.’11 Research in the field of human behaviour indicates that there is a
greater propensity to engage in acts of revenge if one or more of the following
conditions are met: ‘The offense caused permanent injury, there was malicious
intent or gross negligence on the part of the perpetrator, the perpetrator did
not apologize or express remorse, and the perpetrator was wholly responsible
for committing the offense that led to dire consequences.’12
Death Wish 97
For Paul Kersey, his wife is dead and his daughter is in a permanent catatonic
state. He has lost two of the dearest things in his life because of the premeditated
acts of three assailants who will never apologize because they never will be
caught. So, Kersey’s revenge has to be revenge by proxy. Although he can never
achieve satisfaction for the loss of his wife and daughter, he can act as an
avenger for other citizens. By taking to the streets as a vigilante he can create a
sense of balance for his fellow New Yorkers, many of whom now believe that
justice is not being served, because when the state fails to achieve justice for
one citizen, all citizens are victimized.
The justice system, the state, will try to stop Kersey not because what he is
doing is illegal or immoral but because he is an embarrassment to the state.
Anytime that Kersey kills a mugger on the subway he is a public relations
nightmare for the state. As a result, every time that Kersey commits an act as a
vigilante, he is taking revenge not just against the criminal, he is taking revenge
against the state for its perceived failures to catch and punish criminals.
Paul Kersey is represented as someone who takes the law into his own hands
in order to restore balance or redress the imbalance caused by those who have
done harm to society and who will not be punished by the state for their crimes.
Therefore, Kersey’s violent acts of retribution offered a type of catharsis for
certain filmgoers in 1974 who felt that the legal system had become unbalanced
because the guilty could apparently get away with murder. This relates to the
manner in which revenge can be seen as ‘as a way to restore justice and reinstate
balance that was disrupted by the original offense’.13 The imbalance created by
the original offence may also be perceived as an attack on one’s position or status,
and revenge as ‘concerned with the quest for status, in particular, the reassertion
or establishment of one’s status when it has been diminished, or one believes that
it has been diminished, by the actions of another’.14 For Kersey, and those who
cheered for him, that status as an American who was entitled to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness could be redressed only by vigilante justice.
Traditionally, in revenge tragedies, ‘revenge is perceived as the only means
to address wrongs at multiple levels’.15 These multiple levels are exemplified in
Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, which ‘represents Hieronimo’s revenge
which is partly that of a grieving father and partly that of a political scourge
[as] a terrible cleansing of a corrupt state’.16 Death Wish works at both levels in
relation to the revenge of the grieving father and the revenge of a citizen
against a state that he perceives as corrupt. Kersey is the literal grieving father
seeking revenge against the criminals who caused him harm. The greatest
reminder of the harm done to him is perhaps his daughter who, although still
living, is no longer psychologically stable. Kersey’s status as a father is called
into question in his own mind because he was not there to protect her. But his
father’s guilt is further amplified when the doctors who are taking care of
Kersey’s daughter tell him that seeing his daughter could release additional
painful memories associated with her assault. As a result, for Kersey his
daughter’s psychological condition is a constant reminder that he failed and
continues to fail as a father. Worse still, he cannot achieve justice for his
daughter. That is why Kersey feels that he must take to the streets to protect the
daughters of other fathers. To this end, the assault on Kersey’s daughter had to
be presented not just as a criminal act against one person but also as a social
act representing a threat to all daughters.
White fears, hard justice
The gang rape of Kersey’s daughter is filmed in exacting detail which fully
bears out its sadistic nature. Although Kersey does not witness the rape,
the audience must observe this innocent, wide-eyed young white woman
apparently forced to commit unspeakable acts. Although none of the assailants
are black, one of them, who wears a bandana similar to those frequently worn
by members of street gangs, carries a can of spray paint that he uses not only
to vandalize Kersey’s home with graffiti but also to spray his daughter’s buttocks
with red paint. This symbolic act of sodomy goes beyond the assault on one
young woman. Kersey’s daughter is not just a young white woman, she is all
young white women. In the large cities of the 1970s, the can of spray paint was
often represented not just as a symbol of vandalism but of all urban crime.
Death Wish encourages the audience to identify with the victim on a personal
and social level: Kersey’s daughter is being sodomized not just by a young
deviant identified as ‘Spraycan’ in the closing credits but also by the permissive
social system that created him.
Graffiti was a symbol of the urban blight in the late 1960s and 1970s. The
New York Times in 1972 referred to graffiti and the decaying of the subways
Death Wish 99
and the public transit infrastructure as an ‘epidemic’.17 In 1973, the New York
mayor, John Lindsay, stated that graffiti was both a demoralizing influence on
the residents of the city as well as a safety hazard, and the writer of the article
described those who defaced public property with cans of spray paint as ‘graffiti
addicts’.18 A letter to the editor of The New York Times by Staten Island resident
George Jochnowitz in 1973 postulated that graffiti, left unchecked in urban
centres like New York City, might bring about an end to civilization and thereby
‘New York will become a backwater’.19
The association of graffiti with the crimes of rape and vandalism was thus
part of a wider ideological discourse about criminality. But what is being
implied here? That those who spray graffiti are likely to be, or to become,
rapists and murderers too? That graffiti spraying should be punished by
vigilante action? Such arguments clearly lack context and are fallacious, but in
the dark light of a movie theatre, with graphic depictions of unspeakable acts
against young women, who has the stomach for logic?
Rhetorical manipulation in cinematic terms is a powerful means of affecting
the attitudes of an audience. For example, Steven Spielberg in Munich (2005)
deliberately manipulates ‘the model of victimhood so as to expose the underlying
trauma that supports it’.20 The narrative of films that focus on victimhood
‘encourage identification with victimhood, and thus indirectly, extreme acts of
retaliation and aggression’.21 In D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), Ben
Cameron (Henry B. Wallthal) seeks revenge against Gus (Walter Long),
described in the credits as ‘A Renegade Negro’. According to Griffith’s
interpretation of the history of Reconstruction after the American Civil War,
the South Carolina State Legislature, with its overwhelming black representation,
passed a law that allowed for the intermarriage of blacks and whites. Gus,
emboldened by this new law, asks Cameron’s younger sister Flora (Mae Marsh),
to marry him. Flora violently rebukes Gus and runs away from him in terror.
Gus, not to be denied, chases after her. As Melvyn Stokes puts it ‘According to
The Birth of a Nation, the privileging of social equality encouraged black men to
begin pursuing white women in order to “marry” them (marriage in this sense
acting as a metaphor for rape).’22 Rather than be raped by Gus, Flora commits
suicide by throwing herself off a cliff before he can catch her. To exact his
revenge and redress his version of law and order in the South of the post-Civil
War Reconstruction era, Cameron creates the extra-legal vigilante group the Ku
Klux Klan. Cameron and the Klan catch and then lynch Gus because Cameron
sees himself, Flora and the South as a whole as victims of a legal system that
protects the rights of criminals above the rights of law-abiding citizens. Thus,
the rape of Kersey’s daughter encourages the audience to identify with Kersey,
the grieving father, in the same way that the attempted rape and the suicide of
Flora encourages the audience to identify with the father figure, Cameron,
with Kersey and Cameron represented as generalized American citizens
betrayed by a legal and social system that will not give them justice.
Thus, the vigilante Kersey in Death Wish and the Ku Klux Klansmen in The
Birth of a Nation represent the attitude of victimhood that has historically
motivated all vigilantes. In the United States, the belief in a system of vigilante
justice is almost as old as the Republic itself. The efficacy and acceptability of
seeking justice as an individual right, bypassing the larger, official justice
system, which is often perceived as politically motivated, is well rooted in
American history. Richard Nixon, who in 1968 would run for president in part
on a campaign to restore law and order, wrote in 1967: ‘Our judges have gone
too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces. Our
opinion-makers have gone too far in promoting the doctrine that when a law
is broken, society, not the criminal is to blame.’23 When individuals believe that
the formal system of law and order has become incapable of protecting the
individual safety rights of segments of American society, then certain
individuals come to believe that it is their inalienable right to take the law into
their own hands. They choose this path to ‘law and order’ because they feel that
the government and its associated law enforcement organizations are too far
removed from the community to be able effectively to enforce the laws and
protect the community. Traditionally, the vigilante works within the narrow
parameters of a small community and not a larger central governmental entity.
As a result, from the perspective of the vigilante, as in the case of Kersey, the
capture and punishment of a criminal by the vigilante is an expression of ‘the
will of the community rather than the power of a distant and alien government’.24
Although the crimes in Death Wish take place in an eastern urban setting,
in many ways the film draws from the tropes of the Western. Traditions of
American justice in the hands of those without a lawman’s badge are more
akin to the legends of the Old West than to the more ‘civilized’ areas of the East.
On the western frontier of America, west of the Mississippi, law-abiding men
Death Wish 101
protected their farms, ranches and homesteads – their small part of Manifest
Destiny – with a Colt six shooter or a Winchester repeating rifle. The westerns
of Anthony Mann, including Winchester 73 (1950) and The Man from Laramie
(1955), as well as John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), work within the archetype
of revenge as a means of justice wrought by a protagonist who is not a lawman.25
The Fritz Lang westerns, The Return of Frank James (1940) and Rancho
Notorious (1952), work within this archetype as well.26 The narrative of Death
Wish provides an ample, if not simplistic, counterpoint to what many perceived
as the weak values of law and order of the eastern urban centres of America,
and indeed western society in general, in the latter half of the twentieth century,
where, even in modern suburbia, a man can still take the law into his own
hands to protect what is his.
As Death Wish progresses, Kersey is sent by his boss to Arizona to design a
new housing development. The trip is intended not only to get him out of New
York City but to also help him to focus less on the tragedies in his life. Just as
Hawaii is framed as a tropical paradise still unblemished by the crime of the
urban centres on the mainland of the United States, so Arizona is represented
as remaining locked in the myth of an earlier time, framed as a place where
criminals fear to tread because frontier and vigilante justice is still alive and
the bad guys know it. ‘Can’t own a gun in New York’, Kersey tells Aimes Jainchill
(Stuart Margolin), a prosperous Arizona land developer and unapologetic gun
owner. ‘Here, I hardly know a man who doesn’t.’ Jainchill replies. ‘And unlike
your city, we can walk our streets at night and feel safe. Muggers out here, they
just plain get their asses blown up.’
The carefully created image of ‘Arizona’ explicitly frames it as a place that
has continued to adhere to the traditional American values of criminal justice.
This is a place that Wyatt Earp – frontier lawman, gunfighter and an alleged
hero of the gunfight at the OK Corral – would have recognized had he still
been alive in 1974. The citizens of 1974 Arizona may have given up their horses
for motorized transport but this is still a time when men carry guns and the
righteous enforce swift justice with those guns. At least that is the way Arizona’s
reality is framed in Death Wish, and it is certainly nothing like the film’s New
York City.
Winner does not show the desert wastelands of Arizona, only the stage
show frontier western town where fake cowboys put on a law and order act for
the tourists, and a brand new suburban community financed and designed by
a white man. The film does not address, acknowledge or even show the original
inhabitants of Arizona, the Native Americans or Hispanics, and in particular
avoids any mention of clashes of culture between them and the incomers. Like
the film’s Hawaii, Arizona is represented in a selective, picture postcard, two-
dimensional fashion, as the perfect straw man in comparison to the violent
New York City.
However, an examination of crime statistics of both Arizona and Hawaii
reveal that the postcard image is in fact a fraud. A 1978 report from the Arizona
State Justice Planning Agency, entitled Update on Crime in Arizona, found that
at about the time of the release of Death Wish, ‘the Arizona crime rate rose
sharply from 1972 to 1974’.27 Even Hawaii, that pristine tourist pleasure garden
so lovingly presented in the opening of Death Wish, bears little resemblance to
reality. Thus, according to a 1986 study by the University of Hawaii, an
examination of the crime statistics from the 1970s ‘found a statistically
significant relationship between tourism and murder/homicide, robbery, rape,
and burglary’.28 Such facts rob Kersey’s vigilante tactics of much of the
justification that the film is at pains to provide.
Regardless of the veracity of the Old West tropes in Death Wish, vigilantism in
the United States is part of the historic fabric of the nation.29 In San Francisco in
the 1850s, a period of the nineteenth century in which the vigilante movement
was particularly active, there were significant vigilante movements that had a
profound impact upon the society and politics of the city. During a particularly
violent two-year period, vigilante committees led by nativist businessmen
attacked primarily Irish-Catholic immigrants as a means of exercising political
and social control of a city that the vigilantes believed had descended into chaos
and rampant crime.30 This, along with the actions of the Ku Klux Klan mentioned
earlier, demonstrates how vigilante activities in American history have served as
political and social means of forcing the will of one social or ethnic group on
another. Vigilantism has been closely associated with racists in particular. By
contrast, the creators of Death Wish have constructed the film’s narrative in order
to try to avoid seeming to frame crime and vigilantism as a racial issue. The acts
of the vigilante in Death Wish are not represented as being motivated by fears of
nativism or ‘miscegenation’ but by the failure of law enforcement to clean up
crime in the streets of New York City, something that impacts all races equally.
Death Wish 103
To reinforce the non-racist framing of Death Wish, the film-makers have

racially ‘balanced’ both the victims and perpetrators of the criminal acts
depicted. The police officer who first talks to Kersey about the crimes against
his family is a sympathetic black man working hard on the front lines of what
is presented as a war zone while white detectives sit back in the relative safety
of their offices. The three assailants of Kersey’s wife and daughter are white, as
are the first two victims of his acts of vigilantism. One of the men who attack
Kersey on the subway is a white man wearing a leather jacket with an American
flag sewn on the back, and his clothes cause him to resemble Wyatt, the
cocaine-dealing hippie played by Peter Fonda in Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider
(1968). The symbolism here may relate more to intertwining the evils of drugs
and crime as opposed to addressing the more complex socio-economic issues
associated with crime and the city. The first man that Kersey kills is later
identified as a drug addict. In 1968, during his acceptance speech at the
Republican National Convention, presidential candidate Richard Nixon
pledged to declare a war on drugs that would pursue the ‘narcotics peddlers
who are corrupting the lives of the children of this country’.31 However, Nixon’s
‘war on drugs’ was predicated on his contention that there was an ‘epidemic’ of
drug abuse, particularly among the youth, but this was based on faulty data
and motivated by his need to ‘fulfil his anti-crime agenda’.32 Thus it appears as
if Nixon’s false narrative regarding drugs and crime became part of the false
narrative of Death Wish.
After the vigilante tactics of Kersey make him a folk hero in New York City,
there is a scene in which a television station is interviewing a woman who fended
off her assailants with a hat pin. The character is Alma Lee Brown (Helen Martin),
an elderly black woman who is portrayed as feisty, a strong fighter and inspired
by Kersey. And yet, in certain ways, Brown’s character harks back to a racial
stereotype long prevalent in American cinema: the ‘Mammy’.
Brown as a ‘Mammy’ character perfectly represents the fallacy of the appeal
to tradition and seems to fit nicely into the stereotypical image of the safe and
reliable older domestic black woman that begins with The Birth of a Nation. In
that film, the servants were referred to as the ‘Good Souls’, people who were
willing fight side by side with their former masters in order to ensure the
protection of white folks and their property against laws that were enacted to
help the freed slaves. Almost twenty-five years later, former slaves would once
again be defending their former masters against Yankee ‘oppressors’ in Victor

Fleming’s Gone with the Wind (1939). ‘Mammy’ in Gone with the Wind may
have been played by a real black actor (Hattie McDaniel) and not a white one
like Jennie Lee, who wore blackface to play the likewise named ‘Mammy’ in
The Birth of a Nation, but the stereotypical qualities that motivated both black
characters to act in accordance with the norms of white audiences remained
the same in both films. ‘People all over the country knew the black woman as
Mammy, the reliable servant. The Mammy we first thought of was the steadfast
housekeeper in Gone with the Wind (1939),’33 who fought the invading Yankees
with the same passion as any Confederate soldier.
Thirty-four years after Gone with the Wind and fifty-nine years after The
Birth of a Nation, Alma Lee Brown may have been played by a Black actor, and
she may now have had a proper name of her own, but to what extent was she
still depicted as a servant representing the interests of white citizens over black
ones? The ‘Mammy’ of 1974 was still fighting both Reconstruction and the civil
rights movement. Unfortunately, for almost 100 years, particularly in the
South, the law was not enforced, and black citizens still suffered the indignities
of Jim Crow and the violent injustice of lynching. It was not until the 1950s
and 1960s, when the United States Supreme Court began to overturn the
injustices brought on by segregation and a lack of due process in cases involving
black people, that the tide of institutional racism began to turn. The issues in
the cases involved may not have always had to do with crime in the cities but
they were invariably tied to justice and race.
It is not that racism is not addressed in Death Wish, it is that the approach
to the issue is both confusing and disturbing. For example, there is a scene at a
party that Kersey is attending that seems to mock the progress America was
trying achieve through the civil rights movement. Two of the guests, a white
man and a white woman, discuss the vigilante killer and whether or not he is a
racist. The former says: ‘Tell you one thing. The guy’s a racist. He kills more
blacks than whites.’ The latter responds: ‘More blacks are muggers than whites.
What do you want to do? Increase the number of white muggers so that we
have racial equality among muggers?’ ‘Racial equality among muggers?’ the
white man asks laughingly, ‘I love it.’
Indeed, this is another instance of the narrative of Death Wish – the first being
the ‘stick them in concentration camps’ line – creating a curious social disconnect
Death Wish 105
regarding the struggles of people of colour against racism and white people’s fear
of crime. Conflating affirmative action, a series of legal measures enacted to
redress hundreds of years of racial discrimination, with the racial balance of
criminals is not only patently false but also begs the question: what is the point
of the joke? Is the audience supposed to laugh at its obvious absurdity and to
dislike the white man and woman? Or is the audience supposed to see it as a
legitimate attack on an ‘enemy’: black people who allegedly not only receive
preferential treatment in employment and education but who are also more
likely to mug you in the streets, thus making the speakers appear not as racists
but simply as commentators on the social climate in the United States in 1974?
During the Second World War when the Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny
were mocking Hitler, Germany was a legitimate enemy and a real threat to
America and its freedom. The jokes were meant to mock the fascists. However,
in Death Wish, the use of humour takes on a much darker hue. Regardless of
the point of the joke, it is essential to note that it is not Kersey, the vigilante
hero, who makes these remarks, but a bunch of smug, racist and rich white
people at a cocktail party who have never felt the stinging losses that he has
suffered. By contrast, Kersey is clearly not a racist. He is a victim, but he will
not hide behind locked doors and will not allow himself to remain a victim for
long. He addresses the problems of law and order in his own way to help
prevent others from becoming victimized – not just by the criminals but also
by a system of law and order apparently so trapped in its own inertia that it
cannot provide for the general welfare of American citizens.
At the conclusion of Death Wish, the New York Police Department has
caught up with Kersey. Although they are wise to the fact that he is the famous
vigilante, they do not wish to deal with the problems associated with arresting
and trying a man who is considered by many in New York City an urban hero.
Detective Lieutenant Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) tells Kersey that ‘we
want you to get out of New York . . . permanently’. ‘By sundown?’ Kersey asks,
in a nod to the Western and with more than a hint of satire. Both smile at the
joke.
Exiled to Chicago, on his arrival at the station Kersey notices four young
men harassing a young girl who is approximately the age of his wounded
daughter. Nobody in the station seems to notice or to care about what is
happening to the girl, with the exception of Kersey who walks over and helps
her with the packages the group have scattered on the ground. He stares at the
five young men, and in response they mock him and three give him the finger.
Kersey continues to look at them, then raises his right hand and points his
index finger at them as if it is the barrel of a gun. This is Kersey’s ‘fuck you’, not
just to the punks but to a justice system that is incapable of stopping crime and
has forced him to make the tough decisions and take the drastic actions that
few others are prepared to do. For Kersey, his journey as a vigilante is not over.
Like the United States itself, he is caught in a feedback loop. The clear suggestion
here is that unless the American justice system is willing to fight crime as
relentlessly and as punitively as a vigilante, then urban violence will continue
unabated.
Notes
1 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of an American President and the Fracturing of
America (New York: Scribners, 2008), pp. 340–1.
2 Patrick Webster, Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from
Lolita to Eyes Wide Shut (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011).
3 Paul Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 13th edn (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2014).
4 Mona Domosh, ‘Those “sudden peaks that scrape the sky”: the changing imagery
of New York’s first skyscrapers’, in Leo Zonn (ed.), Place Images in Media:
Portrayal, Experience, and Meaning (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990),
pp. 9–29.
5 Vincent Canby, ‘Death Wish exploits fear irresponsibly’, The New York Times, 4
August 1974.
6 Richard Nixon XXXVII ‘President of the United States’ 1969–1974, Address
Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in
Miami Beach, Florida, 8 August 1968. Available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.
edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-republican-
national-convention-miami (accessed 5 May 2016).
7 David Burnham, ‘A wide disparity is found in crime throughout city’, The New York
Times, 14 February 1972.
8 Vincent Canby, ‘Screen: Death Wish hunts muggers’, The New York Times, 25
July1974.
9 Pauline Kael, ‘Foreword’, in Reeling: Film Writings 1972–1975 (Boston, MA:
Warner Books, 1976), pp. 13–17.
10 Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Available at http://www.merriam-webster.com/
dictionary/vigilante (accessed 12 March 2016).
Death Wish 107
11 Ian R. McKee and N.T. Feather, ‘Revenge, retribution, and values: social attitudes
and punitive sentencing’, Social Justice Research, 21/2 (2008), pp. 138–63.
12 Noah Milgram, Miri Stern and Shelly Levin, ‘Revenge versus forgiveness/
forbearance in response to narrative-simulated victimization’, Journal of
Psychology, 140/2 (2006), pp. 105–19.
13 Arlene M. Stillwell, Roy F. Baumeister and Regan E. Del Priore, ‘We’re all victims
here: toward a psychology of revenge’, Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 30/3
(2008), pp. 253–63.
14 Theodore M. Benditt, ‘Revenge’, Philosophical Forum, 38/4 (2007), pp. 357–63.
15 Joy McEntee. ‘“I’ll give you acts of God”: God, the father, and revenge tragedy in
three Billy Connolly movies’, Literature-Film Quarterly, 37/1 (2009), pp. 49–71.
16 Ibid.
17 ‘Nuisance in Technicolor’, The New York Times, 26 May 1972. Available at https://
www.nytimes.com/1972/05/26/archives/nuisance-in-technicolor.html (accessed
5 May 2016).
18 Murray S. Schumach, ‘At $10-million, city calls it a losing graffiti fight’, The New
York Times, 28 March 1973. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/28/
archives/at-10million-city-calls-it-a-losing-graffiti-fight-lindsay-decrying.html
(accessed 5 May 2016).
19 George F. Jochnowitz, ‘Graffiti: offenses against public space’, The New York Times,
19 April 1973. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/19/archives/
letters-to-the-editor-war-on-youth-the-dual-minimum-wage.html (accessed
5 May 2016).
20 Roy Brand, ‘Identification with victimhood in recent cinema’, Culture, Theory &
Critique, 49/2, October (2008), pp. 165–81.
21 Ibid., p. 165.
22 Melvyn Stokes, ‘Race, politics, and censorship: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a
Nation in France, 1916–1923’, Cinema Journal, 50/1, Fall (2010), pp. 19–38.
23 Richard Nixon, ‘What has happened to America?’, The Reader’s Digest, October
1967, p. 50.
24 Steven F. Messner, Eric P. Baumer and Richard Rosenfeld, ‘Distrust of government,
the vigilante tradition, and support for capital punishment’, Law & Society Review,
40/3 (2006), pp. 559–90.
25 Martin M. Winkler, ‘Tragic features in John Ford’s The Searchers’, in Martin M.
Winkler (ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford: Oxford
26 Scott W. See, ‘Nineteenth-century collective violence: toward a North American
context’, Labour/Le Travail, 39, Spring (1997), pp. 13–38. doi:10.2307/25144105,
p. 18.
27 Update on Crime in Arizona: A Report from the Statistical Analysis Center Arizona
State Justice Planning Agency, July 1978. Available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/
pdffiles1/Digitization/48817NCJRS.pdf (accessed 12 February 2016).
28 Meda Chesney-Lind and Ian Lind, ‘Visitors as victims: crimes against tourists in
Hawaii’, reprinted from the Annals of Tourism Research, 13/2 (1986), pp. 167–91.
Available at http://ilind.net/images_2005/visitors_as_victims.pdf (accessed 12
February 2016).
29 Scott W. See, ‘Nineteenth-century collective violence: toward a North American
context’, Labour/Le Travail, 39, Spring (1997), pp. 13–38. doi:10.2307/25144105, p. 18.
30 Jon Jeffrey Walker, ‘The Intellectual Grounding of the San Francisco Committee
of Vigilance of 1851’. Unpublished MA thesis, Portland State University, 1993.
Available at https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.
cgi?article=2276&context=open_access_etds (accessed 1 March 2015).
31 Richard M. Nixon Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech Republican National
Convention Miami Beach, Florida, 8 August 1968. Available at https://www.
presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-
the-republican-national-convention-miami (accessed 5 May 2016).
32 Kevin Yuill, ‘Another take on the Nixon presidency: the first therapeutic
President?’, Journal of Policy History, 21/2, April (2009), pp. 138–62. doi:10.1017/
S089803060909006X, p. 144.
33 Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jeremy Salter, The 101 Most Influential People Who
Never Lived (New York: Bristol Park Books, 2006).
Bibliography
The American Presidency Project, Richard Nixon XXXVII President of the United
States 1969–1974 Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican
National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, 8 August 1968. Available at https://
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-
nomination-the-republican-national-convention-miami (accessed 5 May
2016).
Arizona State Justice Planning Agency, Update on Crime in Arizona, July 1978.
Available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/48817NCJRS.pdf.
Benditt, Theodore M., ‘Revenge’, Philosophical Forum 38/4, (2007), pp. 357–63.
Brand, R., ‘Identification with victimhood in recent cinema’, Culture, Theory &
Critique, 49/2, October (2008), pp. 165–81.
Burnham, David, ‘A wide disparity is found in crime throughout city’, The New York
Death Wish 109
Canby, Vincent, ‘Screen: Death Wish hunts muggers’, The New York Times, 25 July
1974.
Canby, Vincent, ‘Death Wish exploits fear irresponsibly’, The New York Times, 4 August
1974.
Chesney-Lind, Meda and Lind, Ian, ‘Visitors as victims: crimes against tourists in
Hawaii’, Annals of Tourism Research, 13/2 (1986), pp. 167–91. Available at http://
ilind.net/images_2005/visitors_as_victims.pdf (accessed 12 February 2016).
Domosh, Mona, ‘Those “sudden peaks that scrape the sky”: the changing imagery
of New York’s first skyscrapers’, in Leo Zonn (ed.) Place Images in Media:
Portrayal, Experience, and Meaning (Savage, MD : Rowman & Littlefield, 1990),
pp. 9–29.
Giannetti, Paul, Understanding Movies, 13th edn (Boston, MA : Pearson, 2014).
Jochnowitz, George F., The New York Times, 19 April 1973. Available at http://search.
proquest.com.db29.linccweb.org/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/119593064/fulltextP
DF/4151BC59C78141DBPQ/1?accountid=45777 (accessed 15 May 2016).
Kael, Pauline, Reeling: Film Writings 1972–1975 (Boston: Warner Books, 1976),
pp.13–17.
Lazar, Allan, Karlan, Dan and Salter, Jeremy, The 101 Most Influential People Who
Never Lived (New York: Bristol Park Books, 2006).
McEntee, Joy, ‘ “I’ll give you acts of God”: God, the father, and revenge tragedy in three
Billy Connolly movies’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 37/1 (2009), pp. 49–71.
McKee, Ian R., and Feather, N.T., ‘Revenge, retribution, and values: social attitudes
and punitive sentencing’, Social Justice Research, 21/2 (2008), pp. 138–63.
Messner, Steve F., Baumer, Eric P. and Rosenfeld, Richard, ‘Distrust of government, the
vigilante tradition, and support for capital punishment’, Law & Society Review,
40/3 (2006), pp. 559–90.
Milgram, Noach, Stern, Miri and Levin, Shelly, ‘Revenge versus forgiveness/
forbearance in response to narrative-simulated victimization’, Journal of Psychology
140/2 (2006), pp. 105–19.
Nixon, Richard, ‘What has happened to America?’, The Reader’s Digest, October 1967,
pp. 49–54.
Perlstein, Rick, Nixonland: The Rise of an American President and the Fracturing of
America. (New York: Scribners, 2008).
Schumach, Murray S., ‘At $10-million, city calls it a losing graffiti fight, The New York
Times, 28 March 1973. Available at http://db29.linccweb.org/login?url=http://
search.proquest.com/docview/119631705?accountid=45777 (accessed 5 May 2016).
See, Scott W., ‘Nineteenth-century collective violence: toward a North American
context’, Labour/Le Travail, 39, Spring (1997), pp. 13–38, doi:10.2307/25144105.
Stillwell, Arlene M., Baumeister Roy F. and Del Priore, Regan E., ‘We’re all victims
here: toward a psychology of revenge’, Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 30/3
(2008), pp. 253–63.
Stokes, Melvyn, ‘Race, politics, and censorship: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation
in France, 1916–1923’, Cinema Journal, 50/ 1, Fall (2010), pp. 19–38.
Walker, Jon Jeffrey, ‘The Intellectual Grounding of the San Francisco Committee of
Vigilance of 1851’, unpublished MA thesis, Portland State University, Department
of History, (1993). Available at https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_
etds/1277/ (accessed 1 March 2015).
Webster, Patrick, Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita
to Eyes Wide Shut (Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2011).
Winkler, Martin M., ‘Tragic features in John Ford’s The Searchers’, in Martin M.
Winkler (ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford: Oxford
Yuill, Kevin, ‘Another take on the Nixon presidency: the first therapeutic President?’,
Journal of Policy History, 21/2, April (2009), doi:10.1017/S089803060909006X,
pp. 138–62.
5
Rough Justice: Lone Cops, Vigilantes

and Penal Populism
Julian Petley
Introduction: the emerging Republican majority
Most of the chapters in this book are concerned with films which, at the time
of their making, tackled taboo-busting subjects of one kind or another, and, in
doing so, frequently shocked conservative sensibilities. In this chapter, however,
I want to examine a number of films which shocked liberal sensibilities in the
1970s because of the manner in which they dealt with the issues of law, order
and justice. Foremost amongst such films are Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
and Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974), but as William Gombash has dealt
with the latter in his chapter, I will concentrate on analysing the elements in
the former that outraged liberal opinion.
First, however, it is necessary to sketch in a certain amount of historical
context, and in particular to focus on the roots of the right-wing reaction
against 1960s liberalism in the States.
Writing in 1969, Kevin Phillips, who at that time worked for the new
Republican administration of Richard Nixon, argued that the ‘great political
upheaval’ of the 1960s was not
Senator Eugene McCarthy’s relatively small group of upper-middle-class
and intellectual supporters, but a populist revolt of the American masses
that have been elevated by prosperity to middle-class status and conservatism.
Their revolt is against the caste, policies and taxation of the mandarins of
Establishment liberalism.1
This may be to understate the extent of liberalism’s spread and influence in the
first half of the 1960s, but it is nonetheless the case that President Lyndon B.
111
Johnson’s Great Society programmes, civil rights reforms and War on Poverty
led many Democrats, particularly those hostile to the anti-war movement and
the whole counterculture phenomenon, into the arms of the Republicans.
However, the Republican party itself was changing, as a new right which
had developed within it began to push against the ‘Modern Republicanism’
exemplified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and in the direction of its own
brand of populist conservatism. In Phillips’s words, this was a ‘popular upheaval’
which spanned ‘Middle America – from sharecroppers and truckers to the
alienated lower middle class’ and which would ‘do far more for the entire
nation than the environmental manipulation, social boondoggling, community
agitation and incendiary promises of the Nineteen-Sixties’.2 What he called the
emerging Republican majority
spoke clearly in 1968 for a shift away from the sociological jurisprudence,
moral permissiveness, experimental residential, welfare and educational
programming and massive federal spending by which the Liberal (mostly
Democratic) Establishment sought to propagate liberal institutions and
ideology.3
Culture wars
This new right viewed American electoral politics as an arena of primarily

cultural warfare. Whereas many conventional Republicans understood political
alignments chiefly in class or regional terms, the new right grasped the
centrality of ethnicity, religion and national origins in shaping political
allegiances. Thus, they set out to build grass-roots coalitions across existing party
lines and to mobilize new groups around various single issues and causes –
particularly ones which concerned apparent threats to the ‘American way of
life’. As Gillian Peele argues:
Almost all Americans will react to campaigns which mention the ‘destruction
of innocent life’, the control of pornography, the defence of the family, and,
in a slightly different sphere, the issues of law and order and busing. And
indeed it was in the very reluctance of the two regular parties to use these
issues that the new right found a vacuum to be filled, because new-right
spokesman have argued that it is precisely on these issues that the legislative
Rough Justice 113
elite and the mass public are at odds and that the public most needs to make
its voice heard.4
Law and order issues proved particularly fertile for the new right, and
especially for its claim that the liberalism of the 1960s, whether in its Democratic
or Republican iteration, had turned away from the interests and values of the
broad mass of the middle and working classes. In the 1960s, crime rates had
risen, detection rates had fallen and suspects had been given new rights on
account of the Miranda and Escobedo judgements (both of which are mentioned
in Dirty Harry). In 1966, in Miranda v. Arizona, the US Supreme Court
established the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their right
to consult an attorney and of their right against self-incrimination before police
questioning. Failure to do so would mean that the prosecution could not use in
court any statements made by the accused during interrogation. And in 1964, in
Escobedo v. Illinois, the Court ruled that, under the Sixth Amendment, criminal
suspects had a right to counsel during police questioning.
Crime, along with civil unrest, such as anti-Vietnam war demonstrations,
thus became ‘wedge’ or ‘cut through’ issues in the 1960s. The Republican Barry
Goldwater made lawlessness and crime in the streets a major issue in the 1964
presidential campaign, as did George Wallace of the Independent Party in the
1968 campaign. The political establishment was initially wary of Wallace’s
rhetoric because it was so closely linked with his stance on race, but it proved
so popular, particularly with those outraged by levels of street crime, that
Richard Nixon made the law and order theme central to the Republican
campaign in 1968 in an overt attempt to wrest the issue from Wallace. This had
been a key aspect of his notable article for The Reader’s Digest in October 1967,
entitled ‘What Has Happened to America?’, in which he complained of ‘the
decline in respect for public authority and the rule of law in America’ and
bemoaned the fact that ‘our judges have gone too far in weakening the peace
forces as against the criminal forces’.5
In the event, Nixon won the campaign, but nonetheless more than 9.9 million
people voted for Wallace, representing 13.5 per cent of the total vote. Nixon was
inaugurated on 20 January 1969 and having repeatedly been highly critical of
the Escobedo and Miranda judgements throughout his campaign, immediately
declared war not only on crime but also on ‘elite groups’ and the ‘Establishment’.
His appeal was squarely aimed at what he had called in a speech on 16 May 1968
‘the silent center, the millions of people in the middle of the American political
spectrum who do not demonstrate, who do not picket or protest loudly’,6 and in
his address on 8 August 1968 on accepting the presidential nomination ‘the quiet
voice in the tumult and shouting . . . the voice of the great majority of Americans,
the forgotten Americans – the non-shouters and non-demonstrators’.7 He was
also to use the better-known term the ‘silent majority’ in a television broadcast
on 3 November 1969 (although it was not original to him, having first been used
in a conservative political context in 1919 during Calvin Coolidge’s campaign
for the 1920 Republican presidential nomination). And in his State of the Union
Address on 22 January 1970, he reinforced his conservative crime control
message, pledging to create ‘respect for law rather than lawlessness’. In comments
directed squarely at what were known as ‘due process’ liberals, Nixon argued:
We have heard a great deal of overblown rhetoric during the sixties in which
the word ‘war’ has perhaps too often been used – the war on poverty, the war
on misery, the war on disease, the war on hunger. But if there is one area
where the word ‘war’ is appropriate it is in the fight against crime. We must
declare and win the war against the criminal elements which increasingly
threaten our cities, our homes, and our lives.8
Significantly, the issue of Time published on 5 January 1970 named Middle

Americans as their Men and Women of the Year. It stated:
Everywhere they flew the colours of assertive patriotism. Their car windows
were plastered with American-flag decals, their ideological totems. In the
bumper-sticker dialogue of the freeways, they answered MAKE LOVE NOT
WAR with HONOR AMERICA or SPIRO IS MY HERO. They sent Richard
Nixon to the White House and two teams of astronauts to the moon . . . While
the rest of the nation’s youth has been watching Dustin Hoffman in Midnight
Cowboy, Middle America’s teen-agers have been taking in John Wayne for the
second or third time in The Green Berets.9
‘Patriotic insurgents’
Quite clearly, then, major political, ideological and cultural changes were afoot.
Meanwhile, civil unrest of various kinds continued unabated. For example, on
Rough Justice 115
15 October 1970, in an eerie prefiguring of the events of 6 January 2021, some

3,000 police officers from forty-four states massed on the steps of the Capitol,
attacking institutions such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the
Supreme Court, and again Escobedo and Miranda were singled out for specific
criticism. In May 1971 (when Dirty Harry was in production), 7,000 anti-war
protestors were arrested when they attempted to march on the Pentagon: 5,000
police, reinforced by 1,500 National Guardsmen and 10,000 soldiers, including
paratroopers, were involved in the largest such operation in US history. The
killing of protesting students at Kent State and Jackson State universities by
National Guardsmen and police in 1971 marked increasing intolerance of
dissent on the part of the authorities. And in the 1972 presidential election,
the Nixon campaign painted the Democrat candidate, the liberal George
McGovern, as the representative of the three As: abortion, acid and amnesty
(for draft resisters).
Nixon was duly re-elected on 7 November 1972. Significantly, in a manner
common to right-wing incumbents in both the US and the UK, members of
the administration presented themselves exactly as if they were in opposition
– what J. Hoberman aptly calls ‘patriotic insurgents’.10 As Theodore H. White
points out, there was a considerable culture gap, not to say war, between the
Nixon administration on the one hand, and, on the other, not just the
McGovern camp but the whole Washington environment:
They were talking from the cultures of two entirely different Americas; style,
purpose, values – all separated them. The McGovern people were always
more sure of themselves and their rhetoric; the White House people were
always defensive. The McGovern people were expansive, trusting, romantic;
the White House people were wary, never quite sure that they weren’t being
lured into ridicule, contempt or exposure. Though they controlled the
government of the United States, the White House staff men regarded
Washington as a hostile place.11
Their wariness extended to the media too:
The men and the White House were, at once, shy and cold; life in the capital
had made them gun-shy of the vocalizers. The predominant idiom of
Washington journalism was not their idiom, and the White House staff saw
the gap in communications and dialogue as positively hostile, if not
conspiratorial.12
In this respect, White quotes Victor Gold, then press secretary to Vice President
Spiro Agnew, as complaining that ‘they own the word factory, they make the
words. The White House tries to argue it out with them in their words – but
they own the ammunition dump.’13 Agnew himself was a vocal critic of the
media, bemoaning the fact that its commentators
reflect an urbane and assured presence, seemingly well-informed on every

important matter. We do know that to a man these commentators and
producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of
Washington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Renton terms
‘the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States’. Both
communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. We
can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their
political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly
to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared
viewpoints.14
And on the social front, Nixon’s special assistant, Pat Buchanan, observed
resentfully:
This hasn’t been our own town. They live in Georgetown, with their parties;
they never invited us; they ignored us. We were the vanguard of Middle
America and they were the liberal elite. It’s a schism that’s cultural, political,
social, emotional.15
The parallel with the Trump administration raging about the ‘swamp’ and ‘fake
news’ is too obvious to need labouring.
Joe: the New Republican infantryman
Hollywood cinema of the 1960s being a largely liberal institution, it was rare
to see the right-wing values of the emerging Republican majority lionized
or endorsed – The Green Berets (John Wayne, 1968) being an exception that
proves the rule. When they did appear, particularly in the then fashionable
youth-oriented movies, they tended to be embodied in the kind of rednecks
who harass, and eventually murder, the bikers of Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper,
1969). However, with the turn of the decade came a film which placed these
Rough Justice 117
values centre stage. This was the independently-produced Joe (1970), directed
by John G. Avildsen and written by Norman Wexler, who were both unknown
at the time, although the former would later direct Rocky (1976) and the latter
write Saturday Night Fever (1977). Significantly, the film was released just a
couple of months after what came to be known as the Hard Hat Riot, when
helmeted construction workers waving enormous American flags and chanting
‘All the Way, U.S.A.’ tore through an anti-war demonstration in Manhattan’s
financial district.16 This was just a few days after the killing of four students
by National Guardsmen during a peaceful protest at Kent State University,
Ohio.
After Melissa Compton (Susan Sarandon) has overdosed on amphetamines
and nearly died, her father, Bill (Dennis Patrick), an advertising executive,
beats to death her drug-dealing boyfriend, Frank Russo (Patrick McDermott).
Taking refuge in a local bar after the murder, he meets Joe Curran (Peter
Boyle), a racist, hippy-hating factory worker, and tells him what he’s just done.
At first Joe thinks he’s joking, but after the death is reported on television, he
contacts Bill and tells him how much he admires him. Subsequently they meet
up again and become friends. When Melissa leaves hospital, she discovers what
her father has done, runs away and seeks refuge amongst the hippies in
Greenwich Village. Bill and Joe search for her there, and end up participating
in a hippie party, during which their wallets are stolen. Armed with guns from
Joe’s considerable collection, they track the thieves to a commune in the
countryside. Joe kills one of the hippies, and, so that there will be no living
witnesses to the murder, they embark on killing the rest. However, in the course
of the shooting spree, Bill unwittingly kills his daughter.
The film’s plot reads almost as if it was intended to illustrate Phillips’s thesis.
Joe is from lower-middle-class Queens and Bill from upper-middle-class
Manhattan. As Peter Lev points out, they are
unlike in speech, dress, and income, but alike in conservatism, patriotism,

and their definition of masculinity. Both fear social change and demonize
the Other – in this case, hippies and drug dealers. Both rely on subordinate,
compliant women but allocate to themselves a realm of masculine freedom
(drinks after work, sex with hippie women). Both are willing to use violence
to ‘protect’ freedom – their own freedom, not necessarily the freedom of
others.17
Figure 5.1 Joe: Cross-class collaborators: Joe Curran (Peter Boyle), Bill Compton
(Dennis Patrick) and Joan Compton (Audrey Claire).
Figure 5.2 Joe: Joe Curran holds forth in the American Bar.
Rough Justice 119
When we first meet Joe, who Hoberman aptly calls the ‘infantryman’ of the
emerging Republican majority (2003: 284), he is engaging in a long, drunken
monologue in the nudgingly-named American Bar. Almost the first word we
hear him utter is ‘niggers’:
The niggers are getting all the money. Why work? You tell me, why the fuck
work when you can screw, have babies and get paid for it? Welfare – they’ve
got all that welfare money, they get free rubbers. Think they use ’em? Hell no,
the only way they make money is making babies. They sell the rubbers, and
then they use the money to buy booze.
Next up in Joe’s demonology are social workers: ‘The ones in welfare, how
come they’re all nigger lovers? You ever noticed that? All those social workers
are nigger lovers. You find me a social worker who ain’t a nigger lover and I’ll
massage your arse for you – and I ain’t queer.’ Then rich white young people:
They’re the worst. Hippies. Sugar tit [dummy] all the way. The cars, the best
colleges, vacations, augies [sic]. They go some place like a fancy resort and
have augies. Easter augies! The day Christ rose they’re all screwing one
another. And the poor kids, the middle-class kids, they’re all copying the rich
kids. They’re all going the same goddam screw America way.
And, finally, students:
The college kids, they’re acting like niggers. They got no respect for the
President of the United States. A few heads get bashed and the liberals
behave like Eleanor Roosevelt got raped, The liberals – 42 per cent of the
liberals are queer, and that’s a fact. Some Wallace people took a poll.
Such sentiments are absolutely calculated to shock liberals, but although the
film does give Joe a convincing background which shows why he is as he is
(greatly aided by Peter Boyle’s disturbingly credible performance, which made
his name), it does not endorse his point of view, and is not as ‘incoherent’ as
Lev suggests.18 The film’s plot is sparked off by one of its two main protagonists
dishing out rough justice (Bill killing Frank) and culminates in both of them
committing mass murder. Along the way, Joe’s racist bigotry is revealed as
being complemented by his oppressive chauvinism in the domestic sphere and
his outright hypocrisy in participating in the hippy ‘augy’. However, it’s
important to note that although the film was a considerable hit, audiences were
deeply divided between those who did indeed read it as a critique of the values
represented by Joe and those who cheered him on.19 Boyle himself certainly
saw the film as an attack on blue-collar conservatism but was equally concerned,
for differing reasons, that both hardhats and liberals would identify Joe’s values
with his own.20
‘I’m all broken up about that man’s rights’
Joe concerned rough justice meted out by ordinary citizens, but Dirty Harry
sees it administered by a cop. Briefly, the film concerns Inspector Harry
Callahan (Clint Eastwood) of the San Francisco Police Department who has
earned the nickname ‘Dirty Harry’, partly because, in his own words, he gets
‘every dirty job that comes along’ and partly because of his tendency to bend
the rules of police and legal procedure. As the film progresses it focuses
increasingly on Callahan’s pursuit of the serial killer, Scorpio (Andy Robinson),
which becomes absolutely relentless after he kidnaps and then murders a
young girl, Ann Mary Deacon (Debralee Scott). In his efforts to locate her
before she is killed, Callahan captures and tortures Scorpio; as a result he does
learn where she’s being held, but his methods render inadmissible all the
evidence against him which he had extracted. Scorpio is released, Callahan
shadows him and eventually shoots him before throwing away his police
badge.
Dirty Harry was a film that absolutely outraged liberal opinion, which saw
it as not only endorsing Callahan’s illegal methods but also pouring scorn on
the legal establishment and the liberal principles by which it operated. In this
respect it’s important to note that Dirty Harry is very specifically a San
Francisco film, as were its successors. At the time the city absolutely epitomized
the liberal culture, and indeed counterculture, that conservatives regarded as
‘permissive’ and one of the major causes of crime and disorder.
Chief amongst its liberal critics was Pauline Kael, herself from San Francisco,
whose review in the New Yorker, 15 January 1972,21 sharply sums up the main
points in the liberal critique of the film, which she calls a hard-hat version
of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. In her view, ‘Dirty Harry is not about the
actual San Francisco police force; it’s about a right-wing fantasy of that police
Rough Justice 121
force as a group helplessly emasculated by unrealistic liberals’. Harry Callahan

himself is a
Camelot cop, courageous and incorruptible and the protector of women and
children. Or at least he would be, if the law allowed him to be. But the law
coddles criminals; it gives them legal rights that cripple the police. And so
the only way that Dirty Harry – the dedicated troubleshooter who gets the
dirtiest assignments – can protect the women and children of the city is to
disobey orders.
Those, she argues, are the terms of the film, and because it is so skilfully and
effectively constructed, it is admittedly difficult not to want to see
the maniac get it so it hurts . . . It has such sustained drive toward this
righteous conclusion that it is an almost perfect piece of propaganda for
para-legal police power. The evil monster represents urban violence, and the
audience gets to see him kicked and knifed and shot, and finally triumphantly
drowned. Violence has rarely been presented with such righteous relish.
However, the scene which particularly shocked liberal sensibilities was

not one involving violence inflicted by Callahan on Scorpio, but that in the
District Attorney’s office after the arrest. Here the D.A. (Josef Sommer) tells
Callahan:
You’re lucky I’m not indicting you for assault with attempt to commit
murder. Where the hell does it say that you’ve got a right to kick down doors,
torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel? Where have you
been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of
the Fourth Amendment. What I’m saying is – that man had rights.
To which Callahan replies: ‘Well, I’m all broken up about that man’s rights’,
before being informed that Scorpio will be freed as soon as he’s well enough to
leave hospital, as there is no evidence against him that can be presented to a
court and ‘I’m not wasting half a million dollars of the taxpayers’ money on a
trial we can’t possibly win.’ Told that, under the law, the evidence against
Scorpio is inadmissible, Callahan retorts: ‘Well, then the law’s crazy.’ At this
point, the D.A. introduces Judge Bannerman (William Paterson) of the
Appellate Court, who also holds classes in Constitutional Law at Berkeley, and
asks his opinion. As Kael notes:
Such a perfect touch for the audience. Anyone who knows San Francisco
knows that in the highly unlikely circumstance that a law professor were to
be consulted, he would be from the University of San Francisco, a Catholic
institution closer in location and nearer in heart to the S.F. Police Department
– or, if not from there, from Hastings College of the Law, a branch of the
University of California that is situated in San Francisco. But Berkeley has
push-button appeal as the red center of bleeding-heart liberalism; it has
replaced Harvard as the joke butt and unifying hatred of reactionaries.22
One might also note that in the 1960s Berkeley had been the site of numerous
student uprisings and home to the Free Speech Movement. During his 1966
gubernatorial campaign Ronald Reagan repeatedly promised to ‘clean up the
mess at Berkeley’, which included ‘sexual orgies so vile I cannot describe them
to you’.23 Joe Curran must have been listening.
All too predictably, then, Bannerman tells Callahan that ‘the search of the
suspect’s quarters was illegal. Evidence obtained thereby, such as that hunting
rifle, is inadmissible in court. You should have gotten a search warrant.’ Harry
responds that there wasn’t time because he was concerned that the kidnapped
girl’s life was in danger, to which Bannerman replies that a court would have to
recognize the police officer’s legitimate concern for the girl’s life, ‘but there is
no way they can legitimately condone police torture. All evidence concerning
the girl, the suspect’s confession, all physical evidence, would have to be
excluded’. He also tells Callahan that ‘the suspect’s rights were violated, under
the Fourth and Fifth, and probably the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments’, to
which he replies: ‘And Ann Mary Deakin? What about her rights? I mean, she’s
raped and left in a hole to die. Who speaks for her?’
Even though the D.A. and the judge are not represented as caricature liberals
– the former telling Callahan that ‘I’ve got a wife and three kids, I don’t want
him on the streets any more than you do’ – the film clearly plays in such a way
that the spectator is encouraged to share Callahan’s extreme impatience with
and incredulity at the legal situation which is explained to him here and to
want to see Scorpio apprehended by any means possible. And in this sense, the
film can indeed be read as a critique of ‘due process’ and rights-based liberalism
and as supporting its antithesis, namely a crime control model of justice. As
noted earlier apropos Nixon’s policies on law and order, at a time when lawyers,
judges and legal academics were committed to using due process to regulate
Rough Justice 123
police behaviour and to ensure that suspects’ rights were respected, many lay
people, and especially conservatives, were more concerned with the effective
apprehension and punishment of criminals, which they regarded as a ‘common
sense’ matter of substantive justice.
Harry Callahan meets John Locke
It does need to be pointed out, however, that Callahan is not represented as being
engaged in a concerted campaign of organized vigilante action, like the rogue
cops in Dirty Harry’s sequel, Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973), to which we will
turn shortly. Indeed, when asked at one point why he stays in the job, he replies:
‘I don’t know. I really don’t,’ and the film doesn’t provide any answers either. His
motivation remains largely inchoate, although a clue may lie in his remark that ‘I
don’t know what the law says, but I do know what’s right and wrong.’ But, via
Callahan and his travails with the legal system, the film can convincingly be read
as suggesting that when that system is weak or compromised it is permissible to
act against the law of the land in the interests of ‘natural justice’.
Such an idea stems from the contract theory of government which originated,
albeit in differing ways, in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) and John Locke’s
Second Treatise of Government (1689). According to this theory, individuals
living in society consent to surrender some of the freedoms that they once
enjoyed in the state of nature and agree to submit to some form of higher
authority in exchange for the protection of their remaining rights and the
maintenance of the social order under a system of laws. Among the rights that
individuals surrender is their right to prosecute or punish criminal acts, and
they do so in exchange for the government assuming responsibility for providing
public safety. But citizens retain the right to take the law back into their own
hands if the government is unwilling or unable to provide public order, safety,
or justice. Thus, in section nineteen of his Second Treatise of Government, Locke
argues quite explicitly that in situations where the official forces can’t or won’t
do their jobs it is permissible for people to take the law into their own hands.24
As Timothy Lenz argues, Dirty Harry challenges liberal assumptions about
the efficacy of law as an instrument of justice, and when Callahan threw away
his badge
he symbolically threw away the law that had effectively disarmed society by
forgetting that law was just a means to an end, that due process was the
means to achieve justice rather than an end in itself . . . Callahan is outraged
that rights and law were actually frustrating justice, and he is willing to
violate both to do justice. Dirty Harry voices the conservative belief that due
process liberals have misplaced priorities insofar as they treat law and justice
as equal values. In fact, conservatives consider law an instrumental value
that can be dispensed with when necessary to achieve other, more important
values.25
One of these is social order, and Callahan is represented as acting against

existing laws but in the interests of social order. But this would appear to be an
order of a distinctly conservative kind, as conventionally encapsulated in the
phrase ‘law and order’. As Rebecca Solnit states:26 ‘ “Law and order” as a right-
wing slogan means that they are the law, and they impose their version of
order. Authoritarianism is always an ideology of inequality: I make the rules,
you follow them.’
Dirty Harry also raises the issue of the relationship between law and
violence, and, in particular, as Lenz puts it,
directly challenged the prevailing liberal orthodoxy that violence was an

atavistic impulse that needed to be controlled by law . . . Liberals tended to
measure human progress by law’s displacement of violence as an instrument
of social control. Dirty Harry portrays violence as a legitimate solution to the
problem of too much law, and advocates the justice and social utility of
violence.27
Of course, none of this is to argue that the screenwriters (Harry Julian Fink,
Rita M. Fink and Dean Riesner, along with the uncredited Terrence Malick,
Jo Heims and John Milius), director Don Siegel and star Clint Eastwood
deliberately embarked on making an all-out attack on due process liberalism,
still less one that would be excoriated as fascist and advocating vigilantism.
Action movies such as this are, after all, not legal tracts, but, on the other hand,
they are most certainly capable of being read through a legal lens. But, whatever
the case, the criticism from Pauline Kael and others clearly hit home, as the
sequel to Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, pits Callahan against a group of cops
who really are vigilantes.
Rough Justice 125
‘Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right

people get shot’
Callahan is still on the San Francisco force, even though he threw away his
police badge at the end of the previous film. Here he investigates the murders
by unknown assailants of a number of San Francisco criminal suspects who
have been found not guilty by the courts on various technicalities. At first he
suspects a fellow officer and friend, Charlie McCoy (Mitchell Ryan), who
appears to be going over the edge because of the strains of the job, but eventually
discovers that the killers are a group of rookie traffic cops who were once
Army Rangers together and have now formed themselves into a vigilante force
within the police. Eventually they confront Callahan and ask him to join them,
telling him:
We’re simply ridding society of killers that would be caught and sentenced
anyway if our courts worked properly . . . It’s not just a question of whether
or not to use violence, there simply is no other way. You of all people,
Inspector, should understand that.28
But Callahan refuses, and then finds his life in danger. He tells his superior,
Lt Briggs (Hal Holbrook) what he has discovered, but it then transpires that
Briggs is actually the leader of the vigilantes and is intent on killing Callahan
now that he has discovered who the murderers are. However, in the course of
a lengthy pursuit, Callahan manages to dispatch both Briggs and the vigilantes.
In his commentary on the Warner Home Video Blu-ray of Magnum Force,
John Milius, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Cimino, calls the film
‘the flipside of the coin of the first one’ and states that it shows
what happens when you take vigilantism too far, when people start to abuse
the power of the vigilante and they say ‘we are going to clean up society and
we know what is best for society.’ And so there’s a curious line, and the idea
that that line is difficult and fuzzy.
In Dirty Harry, Callahan obsessively pursues one particular criminal, but he is

not involved in a deliberate campaign of vigilante action, as are the traffic cops
in the sequel. Nor is he thwarted here by over-cautious superiors and due
process liberals. On the contrary, his immediate boss is himself a vigilante.
As he says to Callahan in defence of his actions: ‘A hundred years ago in this
city people did the same thing.29 History justified the vigilantes. We’re no
different. Anyone who threatens the security of people will be executed. Evil
for evil, Harry. Retribution.’ In response. Harry explains why he himself has not
joined the vigilantes:
That’s just fine, but how does murder fit in? When the police start becoming
their own executioners, where’s it going to end? Pretty soon you’ll start
executing people for jaywalking, then executing people for traffic violations,
then you end up executing your neighbour because his dog pisses on your
lawn.
Here, in contrast to his position in Dirty Harry, Callahan states that he believes
in upholding the law, to which Briggs responds: ‘What the hell do you know
about the law? You’re a great cop, Harry, you had a chance to join the team but
you’d rather stick with the system,’ to which Callahan angrily retorts: ‘I hate the
goddam system. But until someone comes along with some changes that make
sense, I’ll stick with it.’
However, this isn’t exactly convincing, as, earlier in the film, in a scene in the
city morgue filled with the bodies of the vigilantes’ victims, when Callahan is
told by Captain Avery (Joe Miksak) that ‘someone’s trying to put the courts out
of business’ he responds: ‘So far you’ve said nothing wrong,’ later adding:
‘Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot.’ It becomes
even less convincing when the film is read through Milius’s commentary.30
Thus, after a series of murders by the vigilantes, Milius says: ‘So far you haven’t
got a lot to quarrel with these guys,’ and at another point he actually assigns
this attitude to Callahan:
Harry is obviously still sympathetic to the [vigilante] idea . . . In fact, they’ve

done nothing wrong, they’re just serving out justice, even though it’s not the
system’s justice. It’s what this movie is about. The whole Dirty Harry idea is
the questioning of modern justice – otherwise why do we have a vigilante?
The whole idea of the vigilante cop is that we need him. And there is another
side to it, I mean, how far can you go? The moral ambiguity was in the idea
that you had to draw a line and that was what made all of this stuff interesting
. . . Where is it that you go bad, where is it that this stuff starts to come apart?
The answer appears to be: when the vigilantes kill a fellow cop, as happens in
the case of Charlie McCoy.
Rough Justice 127
Having established the identity of the killers, Callahan tells his sidekick,
Earlington ‘Early’ Smith (Felton Perry), that the death squads in Brazil should
serve as a warning of what could happen in the US. He doesn’t indicate why he
thinks that this might happen, but Milius himself is in little doubt:
It’s not too hard to understand how this could happen nowadays, the way
things are . . . The whole Dirty Harry concept comes from people are sick of
the fact that the law doesn’t work, and I have to say that things haven’t gotten
any better. That’s why these films, the idea of the vigilante cop, always works.
In the final 1970s chapter, The Enforcer (James Fargo, 1976), Callahan’s
superior, Captain McKay (Bradford Dillman), transfers him to personnel
because of his use of excessive force in a hostage situation but soon reinstates
him to homicide when he and the mayor (John Crawford) become concerned
about a particularly violent crime wave engulfing San Francisco. This they are
convinced is the work of the black militant organization, Uhuru, when in fact
the ‘People’s Revolutionary Strike Force’ is behind it. However, the radical-
sounding name is simply a cover for a purely criminal gang, as the Uhuru
leader, ‘Big Ed’ Mustapha (Albert Popwell) enables a grateful Callahan to
discover. Indeed, a grudging respect develops between the two, as the following
exchange shows:
Mustapha Callahan, you’re on the wrong side.

Callahan How do you figure that?
Mustapha You go out and put your ass on the line for a bunch of dudes
who’d no sooner let you in the front door than they would me.
Callahan I’m not doing it for them.
Mustapha Who then?
Callahan You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
Thus, the mystery of Callahan’s real motivation is usefully spun out for further
sequels, but the important point here is that after the police arrest the Uhuru
members and try to pin the crime wave on them, the mayor and McKay
arrange a public commendation for Callahan and his new partner, Inspector
Kate Moore (Tyne Daly), for their alleged role in the operation. In particular,
they are hopeful that the commendation of a female officer will impress
the electorate. However, they refuse to take part in this charade, and McKay
suspends Callahan. After the mayor is kidnapped by the ‘Strike Force’, who
demand $5m for his release, McKay tries to enlist Callahan’s help in negotiating
with them (shades here of Dirty Harry), but he refuses to co-operate. However,
by interrogating a priest, Father John (M.G. Kelly), who used to give
rehabilitation seminars on Alcatraz, he and Moore discover that the gang is
holding the mayor on the island, where its leader, Bobby Maxwell (DeVeren
Bookwalter), was once imprisoned. By the time McKay arrives to pay the
ransom, Callahan and Moore have killed the gang, but the latter has paid with
her life. Callahan frees the mayor – who offers him yet another letter of
commendation.
Penal populism
As Milius sees the Dirty Harry cycle:
The captains are forces of civilised law and order, and they always represent
the liberal, bureaucratic morass that we all live in. They are the Gordian knot
and Harry has to cut that knot all the time. Harry has to go through to get to
justice always by semi-illegal means, otherwise he ain’t Harry.
The problem with this formulation, however, is that of the 1970s Dirty Harry
films, only the first one specifically critiques liberalism per se. In the second,
although Briggs initially earns Callahan’s scorn when he reveals that he’s never
unholstered his gun in his life as a cop, he turns out to be anything but a liberal,
and Briggs’s superior, Captain Avery, is merely over-cautious and over-
burdened by procedure rather than hamstrung by liberal principles. Finally, in
The Enforcer, Captain McKay and the mayor appear to be motivated primarily
by PR concerns, namely protecting and burnishing the image of the San
Francisco police. Anti-liberalism does admittedly raise its head briefly in
Father John’s seemingly naïve and misguided belief in the powers of
rehabilitation, and at first seems to be present in the fact that Moore is promoted
because the powers-that-be want the police to be seen to be more diverse, as
well as in Callahan’s initial hostility towards her. However, she proves herself to
be extremely able and he ends up treating her as an equal. Finally, McKay’s
payment of the ransom money is largely a matter of political expediency in the
Rough Justice 129
face of a campaign of crime that has made the police look hopelessly out of
their depth.
It is indeed true that Dirty Harry sparked off a series of films in which police
officers had to take the law into their own hands in order to fight crime, but for
the most part this was because they were stymied not by due process liberalism
but by either apathy or corruption, or both, within their own ranks and also at
City Hall level. Systemic police corruption is almost the entire subject of
Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973), based on the real-life events which led to the
setting up of the Knapp Commission31 in April 1970, which delivered its final
report in December 1972, but it also hinders the ‘good’ cops in carrying out
their duties in films such as The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971),
The Supercops (Gordon Parks Jr, 1973), Busting (Peter Hyams, 1973) and McQ
(John Sturges, 1974). One might also note a number of films in which civilians
have to take the law into their own hands because the forces of law and order
are, for various reasons, unable or unwilling to help them. These include
Gordon’s War (Ossie Davis, 1973), Walking Tall (Phil Karlson, 1973), Framed
(Phil Karlson, 1974), Vigilante Force (George Armitage, 1975), Fighting Mad
(Jonathan Demme, 1976), Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977), Delirium (Peter
Maris, 1979) and The Exterminator (James Glickenhaus, 1980). But insofar as
the protagonists of all of these films are forced to step outside the law in order
to achieve justice – albeit of an extremely rough kind – the films do fit within
the Dirty Harry/Death Wish mould, even if shorn of these two films’ overt
critique of due process liberalism.
What these films ultimately express, albeit to different degrees and in
different ways, is a form of penal populism. As John Pratt explains, this
speaks to the way in which criminals and prisoners are thought to have been
favoured at the expense of crime victims in particular and the law-abiding
public in general. It feeds on expressions of anger, disenchantment and
disillusionment with the criminal justice establishment. It holds this
responsible for what seems to have been the insidious inversion of
commonsensical priorities: protecting the well-being and security of law-
abiding ‘ordinary people’, punishing those whose crimes jeopardize this.32
From this perspective, elites of various kinds within the criminal justice system
are seen as standing in the way of the more legitimate demands of the public
at large, or, in populist parlance, ‘the people’. To quote Pratt:
Penal populism attempts to reclaim the penal system for what it sees as the
oppressed majority and harness it to their aspirations rather than those of
the establishment, or those of liberal social movements that pull in the
opposite direction to which it wants to travel. When rights are referred to in
penal populist discourse, it is usually the rights of the public at large to safety
and security, and the withdrawal of rights from those very groups
(immigrants, asylum seekers, criminals, prisoners) on whose behalf other
social movements are campaigning for. In these ways it claims to represent
the rights of the general public, not fringe groups or minorities, against what
is perceived to be the privileged, highly educated, cosmopolitan elite whose
policies have put its security at risk.33
Redemptive violence
From such a perspective, it becomes easier to understand why audiences who

in real life might well have found themselves on the receiving end of the rough
justice meted out in these films enjoyed them so much. As Pauline Kael noted
in her review of Dirty Harry:
The movie was cheered and applauded by Puerto Ricans in the audience, and
they jeered – as they were meant to – when the maniac whined and pleaded
for his legal rights. Puerto Ricans could applaud Harry because in the movie
laws protecting the rights of the accused are seen not as remedies for the
mistreatment of the poor by the police and the courts but as protection for evil
abstracted from all social conditions – metaphysical evil, classless criminality.34
Equally, the anti-authority elements of these films, limited and compromised

though they are, could well have an appeal to such audiences. As Eric Patterson
argues, Eastwood’s crime films, and the Dirty Harry films in particular,
tap a widespread and deep reservoir of resentment against existing forms of

authority, but their effect is ultimately repressive rather than progressive
since they channel this feeling, which potentially could precipitate radical
structural change, in directions which will not lead to disruption of existing
structures.35
Patterson usefully draws on Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man to back

up his point. In this at one time highly influential book, first published in 1964,
Rough Justice 131
Marcuse notes that modern societies offer people a degree of sexual freedom
which helps them to accommodate themselves to the otherwise repressive
conditions under which they live. Marcuse calls this a form of ‘repressive
desublimation’ which serves as ‘a prop for the status quo’.36 But although he
concentrates almost entirely on sexuality, he also suggests briefly37 that the
dominant culture allows a similar liberation of aggressiveness, and to similar
ends, thus unleashing violent impulses in a selective manner, releasing the
frustration and hostility generated by the existing order in ways which pose no
serious threat to that order. Building on this insight, Patterson suggests that
films such as Dirty Harry
depict a reality close enough to the lives of the audience to allow them an
intensely satisfying imaginative experience, but far enough from them that
the true locus of economic, social and political power never is identified or
questioned. The audience is allowed a fantasy of revolt, a dream of recapturing
autonomy, but no general critique of authority is made and no call for its
transformation is issued.38
Violence is frequently redemptive or regenerative in conservative crime films,

which serves only to endorse the cathartic effect of vengeance as an alternative
to law. As Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner argue, films which depict the
failure of liberal solutions to the problem of crime and disorder portray more
accurately than liberal films the real exercise of force that constitutes the
manner in which the problem is conventionally dealt with. And in their view,
in the absence of measures that
address the structural sources of the problem in the capitalist maldistribution

of wealth, only conservative solutions to crime will succeed politically,
precisely because they offer images of power and just punishment to people
rendered fearful, insecure, and resentful by the same unstable social and
economic conditions that fuel crime.39
Priti Patel meets Harry Callahan
At a time when liberalism in general, and due process liberalism in the legal
sphere in particular, is in retreat, films such as Dirty Harry and Death Wish still
have considerable resonance. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Death Wish was
re-made in 2018 (by Eli Roth). During his time in office, Donald Trump
repeatedly and violently castigated judges and court judgements that he
regarded as overly liberal,40 and his more than 200 appointments to the federal
judiciary moved it heavily to the right.41 His three appointments to the Supreme
Court also shifted its centre of gravity considerably to the right by giving
conservatives six of the nine seats. The most controversial of these was the
ultra-conservative Judge Amey Coney Barrett, who, in highly controversial
circumstances, replaced the well-known and highly regarded liberal Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death.42
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary
appointed by Boris Johnson in July 2019, has made a specialism of attacking
due process liberalism, taking aim in particular at legal professionals defending
migrants to the UK. For example, this gem taken from her speech to the Tory
party conference in October 2020:
No doubt those who are well-rehearsed in how to play and profit from the
broken system will lecture us on their grand theories about human rights.
Those defending the broken system – the traffickers, the do-gooders, the
lefty lawyers, the Labour party – they are defending the indefensible.43
The same sentiments were expressed by Johnson himself at the conference,

and these and other similar remarks resulted in over 800 former judges and
senior legal figures publishing an open letter44 in which they accused the prime
minister and home secretary of undermining the rule of law and effectively
risking the lives of those working in the justice system. Given that this is the
same government which wants to limit judicial review, weaken the Human
Rights Act 1998 and quite possibly withdraw altogether from the European
Convention on Human Rights, it is all too clear that the matters raised by films
such as Dirty Harry and Death Wish are still of very considerable concern on
both sides of the Atlantic.
Notes
1 Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
2 Ibid., xxxiv.
3 Ibid., 552.
Rough Justice 133
4 Gillian Peele, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1984), p.72.
5 Richard Nixon, ‘What has happened to America?’, The Reader’s Digest, October
1967, pp. 49–54. Available at https://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_
sources/nixon_1967.htm.
6 Richard Nixon, ‘Remarks on the CBS Radio Network: “A new alignment for
American unity” ’, 16 May 1968. Available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
documents/remarks-the-cbs-radio-network-new-alignment-for-american-unity.
7 ‘Address accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National
Convention in Miami Beach, Florida’. Available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.
edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-republican-
national-convention-miami.
8 ‘State of the Union Address: Richard Nixon (January 22, 1970)’. Available at https://
www.infoplease.com/primary-sources/government/presidential-speeches/
state-union-address-richard-nixon-january-22-1970.
9 Quoted in J. Hoberman, The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the
Sixties (New York: The New York Press, 2003), p. 268.
10 Ibid., p. 329.
11 Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1972 (New York, Harper
Perennial Political Classics), p. 219.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., p. 220.
14 Spiro Theodore Agnew, ‘Television news coverage’, speech to a Midwest regional
meeting of the Republican Party, Des Moines, Iowa, 13 November 1969. Available
at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm.
15 Ibid.
16 Jefferson Cowie, ‘The “Hard Hat Riot” was a preview of today’s political divisions’,
The New York Times, 11 May 2020. Available at https://www.nytimes.
com/2020/05/11/nyregion/hard-hat-riot.html. See also David Paul Kuhn, The
Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-class
Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press).
17 Peter Lev, American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions (Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 2000), p. 25.
18 Ibid., p. 24.
19 Ibid., pp. 24–5; Hoberman, Dream Life, pp. 286–7.
20 There is a distinct parallel here with the British television series Till Death Do Us
Part (BBC, 1966–75), which its creator, Johnny Speight, intended as a critique of
the bigotry of its central character, Alf Garnett (Warren Mitchell), but with which
many viewers actually identified. The US version of the show, All in the Family
(CBS, 1971–9), which elicited similarly varied readings, was set in Joe’s locale,
Queens.
21 Pauline Kael, ‘Dirty Harry – Saint cop’, originally published in the New Yorker, 15
January 1972. Available at https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/12/28/dirty-harry-
saint-cop-review-by-pauline-kael/.
22 Ibid.
23 Quoted in Jonathan Kirsch, ‘At the head of his class’, Los Angeles Times, 16 March
2003. Available at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-16-bk-
westwords16-story.html.
24 The relevant passage is as follows:
Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth,

without authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But
force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is
no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is
the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an
aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I
cannot harm, but by appeal to the law for having stolen all that I am worth, I
may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the
law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure
my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits
me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because
the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision
of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of
a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without
right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not,
a common judge. (John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 280–1). The italics are in the
original, although I have not followed Locke’s use of capital letters.
25 Timothy O. Lenz, ‘Conservatism in American crime films’, Journal of Criminal

Justice and Popular Culture, 12/2 (2005), p. 122.
26 Rebecca Solnit, ‘The violence at the Capitol was an attempted coup. Call it that’,
Guardian, 6 January 2021. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2021/jan/06/trump-mob-storm-capitol-washington-coup-attempt.
27 Lenz, ‘Conservatism’, pp. 122–3.
28 Significantly, the vigilante cops are heavily fetishized here, with their white
helmets, black leathers, powerful bikes and dark glasses. The scene is like an
enlargement of that in which Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is woken up by a
highway patrolman in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). As the screenplay’s
Rough Justice 135
co-writer, John Milius says in his commentary on the Warner Home Video Blu-ray
of the film: ‘I like that. That’s a good scene, seeing them like that. They really look
frightening . . . They make good villains . . . These guys in their Nazi outfits with
their helmets and everything, they do make a good force to oppose him’.
29 What Briggs is referring to here is the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, a
vigilante group formed in 1851 and re-formed in 1856. It was a response to the
rampant crime and corruption in the city which followed in the wake of the massive
population growth consequent on the discovery of gold in 1848. The legal authorities
were quite unable to deal with the situation, and hence the formation of the vigilante
force. This hanged eight people and forced several elected officials to resign.
30 It has to be said that if Warners was looking to clean up Callahan’s image, the
choice of Milius to co-write the screenplay was an odd one, since he has always
delighted in not being part of what he regards as Hollywood’s cosy liberal
consensus. As he put it apropos the outraged reaction in certain quarters to his
Communists-invade-USA movie, Red Dawn (1984):
I’m really an extreme right-wing reactionary. I’m not a reactionary – I’m just a
right-wing extremist so far beyond the Christian-identity people like that and
stuff, that they can’t even imagine. I’m so far beyond that I’m a Maoist. I’m an
anarchist. I’ve always been an anarchist. Any true, real right-winger if he goes
far enough hates all form of government, because government should be done
to cattle and not human beings.
Interview in Film Threat, 8 March 1999. Available at https://filmthreat.com/

uncategorized/joy-in-the-struggle-a-look-at-john-milius/.
31 Tony Ortega, ‘What Frank Serpico started: the Knapp Commission report’, Village
Voice, 1 March 1973. Available at https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/04/18/
what-frank-serpico-started-the-knapp-commission-report/.
32 John Pratt, Penal Populism (Abingdon: Routledge 2007), p. 12.
33 Ibid., p. 21.
34 Kael, ‘Saint cop’.
35 Eric Patterson, ‘Every which way but lucid: the critique of authority in Clint
Eastwood’s police movies’, Journal of Popular Film & Television, 10/3 (1982), p. 94.
36 Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society
(London: Sphere Books, 1968), p. 71
37 Ibid., pp. 72–3.
38 Patterson, ‘Every which way’, p. 103.
39 Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of
Contemporary Hollywood Film (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1990), p. 95.
40 Brennan Center for Justice, ‘In his own words: the President’s attacks on the courts’,
5 June 2017. Available at https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/his-own-words-presidents-attacks-courts.
41 Rebecca R. Ruiz, Robert Gebeloff, Steve Eder and Ben Protess, ‘A conservative
agenda unleashed on the federal courts’, The New York Times, 14 March 2020.
Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/trump-appeals-court-
judges.html.
42 Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, ‘Trump selects Amy Coney Barrett to fill
Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court’, New York Times, 25 September 2020.
Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/amy-coney-barrett-
supreme-court.html.
43 Harriet Grant, ‘Home secretary’s “dangerous” rhetoric “putting lawyers at risk” ’,
Guardian, 6 October 2020. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2020/oct/06/home-secretarys-dangerous-rhetoric-putting-lawyers-
at-risk.
44 Owen Boycott, ‘Lawyers call for apology from Johnson and Patel for endangering
colleagues’, Guardian, 25 October 2020. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/
politics/2020/oct/25/lawyers-ask-johnson-and-patel-to-apologise-for-
endangering-colleagues.
Bibliography
Admin, ‘Joy in the struggle: a look at John Milius’, 8 March 1999. Available at https://
filmthreat.com/uncategorized/joy-in-the-struggle-a-look-at-john-milius/.
Agnew, Spiro Theodore, ‘Television news coverage’, speech to a Midwest regional
meeting of the Republican Party, Des Moines, Iowa, 13 November 1969. Available
at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm.
Baker, Peter and Haberman, Maggie, ‘Trump selects Amy Coney Barrett to fill
Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court’, The New York Times, 25 September 2020.
Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/amy-coney-barrett-
supreme-court.html.
Boycott, Owen, ‘Lawyers call for apology from Johnson and Patel for endangering
colleagues’, Guardian, 25 October 2020. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/
politics/2020/oct/25/lawyers-ask-johnson-and-patel-to-apologise-for-
endangering-colleagues.
Brennan Center for Justice, ‘In his own words: the President’s attacks on the courts’, 5
June 2017. Available at https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/his-own-words-presidents-attacks-courts.
Rough Justice 137
Cowie, Jefferson, ‘The “Hard Hat Riot” was a preview of today’s political divisions’, The
New York Times, 11 May 2020. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/
nyregion/hard-hat-riot.html.
Grant, Harriet, ‘Home secretary’s “dangerous” rhetoric “putting lawyers at risk” ’,
Guardian, 6 October 2020. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2020/oct/06/home-secretarys-dangerous-rhetoric-putting-lawyers-
at-risk.
Hoberman, J., The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties (New
York: The New York Press, 2003).
Kael, Pauline, ‘Dirty Harry – Saint cop’, originally published in the New Yorker, 15
January 1972. Available at https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/12/28/dirty-harry-
saint-cop-review-by-pauline-kael/.
Kirsch, Jonathan, ‘At the head of his class’, Los Angeles Times, 16 March 2003. Available
at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-16-bk-westwords16-story.
html.
Kuhn, David Paul, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White
Working-class Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press).
Lenz, Timothy O., ‘Conservatism in American crime films’, Journal of Criminal Justice
and Popular Culture, 12/2 (2005), pp. 116–34.
Lev, Peter, American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions (Austin, TX : University of
Texas Press, 2000).
Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge
Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society (London:
Sphere Books, 1968).
Nixon, Richard, ‘What has happened to America?’, The Reader’s Digest, October 1967,
pp. 49–54.
Nixon, Richard, ‘Remarks on the CBS Radio Network: “A new alignment for
American unity” ’, 16 May 1968. Available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
documents/remarks-the-cbs-radio-network-new-alignment-for-american-unity.
Nixon, Richard, ‘State of the Union Address: Richard Nixon (January 22, 1970)’.
Available at https://www.infoplease.com/primary-sources/government/
presidential-speeches/state-union-address-richard-nixon-january-22-1970.
Ortega, Tony, ‘What Frank Serpico started: the Knapp Commission report’, Village
Voice, 1 March 1973. Available at https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/04/18/
what-frank-serpico-started-the-knapp-commission-report/.
Patterson, Eric, ‘Every which way but lucid: the critique of authority in Clint
Eastwood’s police movies’, Journal of Popular Film & Television, 10/3 (1982),
pp. 92–104.
Peele, Gillian, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1984).
Phillips, Kevin, The Emerging Republican Majority (Princeton, NJ : Princeton
Pratt, John, Penal Populism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).
Ruiz, Rebecca R., Gebeloff, Robert, Eder, Steve and Protess, Ben, ‘A conservative
agenda unleashed on the federal courts’, The New York Times, 14 March 2020.
Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/trump-appeals-court-
judges.html.
Ryan, Michael and Kellner, Douglas, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of
Contemporary Hollywood Film (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana
Solnit, Rebecca, ‘The violence at the Capitol was an attempted coup. Call it that’,
Guardian, 6 January 2021. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2021/jan/06/trump-mob-storm-capitol-washington-coup-attempt.
White, Theodore H., The Making of the President, 1972 (New York: Harper Perennial
Political Classics, 2013).
6
Small Screen Shockers: Rape-Revenge

Narratives in the Made-for-TV Movie
Jennifer Wallis
Introduction
A forest in summer. A bright blue sky, swaying pine trees, birds singing in the
distance. A young woman stands outside a tent. Cut. Three hunters stalk
through the forest. A hand brandishes a shining hunting knife. A burly arm in
a red plaid shirt pushes branches aside. Inside the tent, the woman reads a
paperback novel. A shadow against the canvas – the outline of a man in a
hunting cap – before the knife plunges through the fabric. Screams, the sound
of a shirt ripping, fingers grabbing and pulling, a hand over her mouth. Another
scream.
Though it may sound like a scene from a horror or exploitation film, the
above is taken from a 1976 made-for-TV movie, one of several such movies to
focus on rape and its subsequent revenge. The rape-revenge movie, typified by
I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) or Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981), has
been analysed by a number of scholars in recent years, most notably Alexandra
Heller-Nicholas, Claire Henry and Jacinda Read.1 Often beginning with a
graphic depiction of sexual assault, rape-revenge films follow their female
protagonists2 as they violently wreak their revenge, rejecting legal apparatus to
dispense their own form of gory justice. Although these films have attracted
the ire of some film critics for their unflinching focus on female suffering,3
several writers have highlighted how they films encourage viewers (male and
female) to identify with the victim. In I Spit on Your Grave, for instance, the
rapists’ ‘refusal to recognise [the victim’s] rights as a human being make them
seem monstrously inhuman’.4 Going further, Carol J. Clover notes that many
139
rape-revenge films ‘repeatedly and explicitly articulate feminist politics’:5

women seek (and get) revenge independent of other individuals or agencies
and abusive, credulous men are punished for their actions. I Spit on Your
Grave’s Jennifer Hills entices her rapists to her secluded cabin – exploiting the
naïve belief that each has aroused an intense desire in her – before brutally
mutilating and mangling them in various ways.
Alongside classic examples like these from the horror and exploitation
genres, there are a number of made-for-TV movies of the 1970s that pursue a
rape-revenge narrative. In analysing these films, I am in agreement with Read’s
assertion that ‘rape-revenge is best understood not as a genre, but as a narrative
structure’.6 Rape-revenge films are not the product of a particular era or the
preserve of a discrete cinematic category but exist across genres, adapting and
transforming themselves in line with contemporary social and political
concerns.7 Like Read, I am interested in ‘the culturally and historically specific
function of narratives’ – rape-revenge not as a sub-genre of horror cinema, but
as a more broadly pervasive narrative that has evolved across genres following
its intersection with second-wave feminism in the 1970s.8 In Henry’s work, the
boundaries of the rape-revenge ‘genre’ are similarly called into question in her
analysis of contemporary art-house cinema. Identifying a renewed interest in
rape-revenge in post-2000 cinema, Henry argues that films such as Peter
Strickland’s Katalin Varga (2009) destabilize rape-revenge conventions by
‘questioning the morality and effectiveness of revenge as a response to rape’.9
As this chapter will show, a similar questioning can be seen several decades
earlier, too, in TV movies of the 1970s.10 Paying closer critical attention to
these television portrayals, then, further tests the boundaries of the rape-
revenge genre/narrative, also providing support for Read’s assertion that rape-
revenge is a historically – rather than generically – specific trend.
In focusing on rape-revenge narratives in the American made-for-TV
movie, I also wish to explore Read’s point that we should not assume a clear
division, or clear points of difference, between ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’
depictions of rape on screen.11 Many made-for-TV ventures coincided with
bigger-budget counterparts and drew on similar themes and tropes.12 The
rape-revenge TV movie shared some key features with films in the exploitation
and horror genres, including the deliberate stalking of female characters and
home invasion motifs. It differed in several respects, however, partly by virtue
Small Screen Shockers 141
of its intended audience. It is doubtful how far I Spit on Your Grave or Ms. 45
were specifically targeted at a young male audience by filmmakers and
distributors,13 but the TV movie was explicitly geared towards a female
audience and scheduled in a way that capitalized on housewives’ free time.
With these differences in mind, then, how did the TV movie represent rape
and its revenge?
In Rape on the Public Agenda, Maria Bevacqua offers two cultural
conceptions of rape: a ‘public agenda’ and a ‘feminist agenda’. The ‘public agenda’
constructs rape as a heinous crime, urban, infrequent, committed by strangers,
and something that threatens ‘our’ women. The feminist agenda sees it as an
expression of broader patriarchal norms: pervasive, committed by any man,
and something that curbs women’s freedom.14 Generally, the TV movie
corresponds closely to Bevacqua’s ‘public agenda’ while films such as Ms. 45
tend to conform to the ‘feminist agenda’. The rape-revenge narrative in the
made-for-TV movie was frequently an impersonal one, less concerned for the
individual suffering of the victim than for rape as an act prompting broader
societal change that would protect American women; it was ‘revenged’ via legal
channels and rarely by the victim herself. In this chapter, I focus on four
American TV movies of the seventies – The Sheriff (ABC, 1971), The Bait
(ABC, 1973), A Case of Rape (NBC, 1974) and Revenge for a Rape (ABC,
1976) – to explore how contemporary discussions of rape and its revenge
played out on the small screen.
Putting rape on TV
The 1970s are often identified as the golden age of the TV movie in America,
as networks invested more heavily in the format and sought content tied to
contemporary issues. Made-for-TV movies have received limited attention
from film scholars, however, despite their abundance.15 The made-for-TV
movie was pioneered by NBC in 1964 with the chase film See How They Run,
directed by David Lowell Rich, and was an alternative to paying big bucks for
studio pictures. Networks were charged high rates for screening rights, with
Hollywood’s leasing price for its ‘blockbusters’ increasing by a whopping 250
per cent between 1965 and 1970.16 TV movies instantly did away with this cost
and were also able to use the talents of producers and directors already working
for a network. Despite their lack of Hollywood production values, made-for-
TV movies could be big audience draws, especially at a time when there were
only three or four major TV networks for viewers to choose from:17
Although a telefilm can’t make the same Nielsen killing as an AIRPORT or

a GODFATHER, in most cases it ranks consistently higher than the regular
theatrical movie broadcasts. THE GRADUATE, which drew the sixth
largest TV audience of any theatrical film last year, was still outranked by
NBC’s topper, A CASE OF RAPE.18
In 1974, 130 new ‘telefilms’ were aired on American TV compared to 118

theatrical feature films broadcast for the first time.19 The large number of TV
movies being produced, though, was reflective of the fact that many had a
limited shelf life – viewing figures for re-runs tended to be poor. The TV movie
relied on current, newsworthy topics for its success, ‘draw[ing] large audiences
by presenting social issues in an audacious manner’.20 Screened as one-off
productions, TV movies carried a sense of urgency,21 and it is perhaps this
speedy, functional approach to production that has divided critics on their
worth. Todd Gitlin notes that their brief, strictly time-bound, appearance on
television ‘leav[es] who knows what traces in the consciousness of our time’.22
The topics covered by TV movies were often far from forgettable, though, as
one critic wrote in 1975: ‘The[ir] big advantage . . . is that they provide the
outlet for films which die at the box office. Subjects like rape, homosexuality,
and alcoholism can be treated with relative honesty, and the networks can’t
lose.’23
The growing popularity of the TV movie in the 1970s coincided with a
renewed focus on crime in the United States, and with second-wave feminism.
Tackling rape was high on the political agenda with the establishment of
institutions such as the National Center for the Prevention and Control of
Rape, efforts to debunk rape myths and highlight the pervasiveness of victim-
blaming within the legal system, and the reporting of individual cases in the
press. One such example was the ordeal of singer Connie Francis, who was
raped at a motel in 1974 and sued the motel chain for failing to provide
adequate protection; a jury awarded her $2.5m and – according to The New
York Times – awarded her husband $150,000 for ‘the loss of his wife’s services’.24
As the perspectives of rape victims like Francis received greater media

coverage, the public became increasingly aware of ‘sneering police officers,
judgmental medical staff, reluctant prosecuting attorneys, sex-biased judges,
procedural difficulties in courtrooms, impossible legal standards of proof, and
general lack of support from the community’.25 Such challenges were made
abundantly clear in the campaign against Wisconsin Judge Archie Simonson,
who lost his position following comments he had made about the rape of a
schoolgirl by three boys in 1977. Simonson’s remark during sentencing, that
one of the boys had merely been ‘reacting normally to relaxed cultural attitudes
about sex and the recent fashion of more-revealing clothing for women’, was
not a lone instance; in the same year a court sitting in the case of a woman who
had been raped while hitchhiking declared that women who hitchhiked should
expect sexual advances.26 Despite outraged responses to such episodes, as well
as public education efforts like 1971’s Speak Out on Rape campaign and the
1975 resolution of the American Bar Association calling for reform of rape law,
the personal prejudices of jurors and judges were recognized as barriers to
widespread reform.27 It was these kinds of barriers that constituted the major
theme of those made-for-TV movies that used a rape-revenge narrative. The
fight to overthrow the culture of victim-blaming was fought not only in
the legal arena, but also found its way into media depictions of rape – with
television networks more willing to give progressive messages airtime.
Television became a campaign and consciousness-raising space, with the
screening of documentaries and news specials such as The Rape Victims (ABC,
1977) and The Lonely Crime (WRC-TV, 1972). Beyond the documentary
format, a special episode of popular CBS sitcom All in the Family in October
1977 included the attempted rape of character Edith Bunker and the subsequent
efforts of her family to help her get over the attack.28
Edith Bunker’s experience was clearly a fictional representation, but the
transformation of real-life rapes into small-screen spectacles could blur the
lines between news, public education and entertainment. In 1984, CNN
screened trial coverage of the Big Dan’s case, in which a young woman had
been raped by several men in a bar while others looked on but did not
intervene; the case was later dramatized in the 1985 TV movie Silent Witness
(NBC), directed by Michael Miller. This ‘re-writing’ of rape stories via trial
coverage or film dramatizations, a process that Lisa Cuklanz sees as an effective
way of emphasizing the long-term impact of rape, has tended to take place on
the American talk show in recent years.29 The Oprah Winfrey Show, for example,
has interviewed several rape victims. Discussing one of these interviews,
Elspeth Probyn identifies the various ‘levels’ of reality in operation when a real-
life case is discussed on a talk show – itself presented as entertainment – which
is then interrupted by advertisement breaks that disrupt the narrative: ‘We are
dealing with at least three levels of “reality” here: the familiar real world of
consumption, the true tale of a rape, and the actual situation of women and
television at home.’30 The television audience – as Helen Wheatley notes in her
discussion of the ‘model viewer’ – is an integral part of the overall performance;
their emotional response to the stories on screen is as much a part of the tale
as the account of the victim.31
Both Probyn and Wheatley speak to the uncanniness of television. This is
particularly relevant to the TV movie, within which the basic plot tended
to revolve around the disruption of comfortable suburban domestic life,
confronting audiences with fictive lives similar to their own. The target
audience for the made-for-TV movie were women in their twenties to fifties,
relatively engaged with contemporary social and political issues. It was not
surprising, then, that so many TV movies relied on a woman-in-danger motif
to capture the attention and emotions of their audience. ‘To have . . . female
appeal,’ wrote Nancy Schwartz in 1975, ‘a telefilm must have a central suspense
situation: immediate jeopardy, often involving a woman, which is resolved as
ninety or more time-bomb minutes tick away. These softcore gothics comprise
the bulk of Made-for-TV movies.’32 The TV movie’s penchant for ‘homely
trauma’,33 and its tendency to depict people inspired or led by a single
individual,34 leant itself well to rape plot lines. The use of a personal story to
explore wider social or legal problems also resonated with second-wave
feminism’s rejoinder that ‘the personal was political’. Many of the rape-themed
TV movies of the 1970s were either based on individual highly-publicized
cases or presented as broad representations of the contemporary legal
environment. Both approaches chimed with the TV movie’s espoused
commitment to authenticity, and rape was used in several network productions
from the 1970s through to the 1990s – at which point the focus of many
networks shifted towards child abuse in the wake of the McMartin preschool
case and concerns about so-called Satanic ritual abuse.
Some commentators have seen the TV movie as holding out great possibility
for presenting divergent, even controversial, viewpoints35 – and certainly they
were an important platform for women directors and actresses who may have
been less able to find work elsewhere. We might expect the TV movie, then, to
offer a variety of feminist-inflected scripts tackling issues that were being
earnestly discussed at the time: sexual assault, street harassment and rape law.
But whilst many TV movies engage closely with these debates, the social,
political or personal impacts of these films were often limited or complicated.
The restrictions of the format led to many of the more confrontational aspects
of 1970s feminism being rendered less forceful, as networks sought to present
stories that would not be too radical or alienating for their broad-based
audiences. In more than one instance, TV movies left viewers with the
impression that women who were raped could expect little in the way of justice
should they pursue conviction, sometimes even seeming to caution against
legal action, and occasionally perpetuating the very rape myths that
contemporary feminism was attempting to deconstruct.
Revenge for a Rape
The made-for-TV movie that comes closest to the horror or exploitation rape-
revenge is Revenge for a Rape, directed by Timothy Galfas, a scene from which
opens this chapter. The happy couple we meet at the beginning of the movie,
Travis (Mike Connors) and Amy (Tracy Brooks Swope), are living the American
dream, about to spend a relaxing break in the mountains and eagerly
anticipating the birth of their first child (Amy is two-and-a-half months
pregnant). When Travis leaves their camping spot to go fishing, Amy is raped
by the three men they had encountered on an earlier visit to the local market.
Amy loses the baby and, while she lies recovering in hospital, Travis sets out to
seek revenge, tracking the men through the woods and picking them off one
by one. The film plays on the backwoods yokel trope, with Amy’s rape occurring
during the hunting season. The unrestrained masculinity that is indulged by
the hunting of deer also finds its outlet in sexual assault, as implied by the
apathetic response of the local Sheriff (Robert Reed) who tells Travis, ‘Your
wife got raped at a bad time,’ and sighs that the town has ‘nothing but trouble’
during hunting season. Revenge for a Rape’s rural landscape is a place where
men run amok, where brutal rape is positioned as just one aspect of the
unrestrained masculinity of backwoods America.
The film’s rural location, its gang rape and its methodical, bloody slaying of
the rapists, suggests a film closely aligned with I Spit on Your Grave or Death
Wish (Michael Winner, 1974), the latter of which it is clearly heavily indebted
to. By the film’s close, however, it has become a strange hybrid, more akin to the
‘legal rape-revenge’ film that suggests that violent solutions are futile.36 As we
watch Travis lose himself to his own primitive instincts, hunting the three men
through the forest, we are also offered occasional glimpses of Amy in her
hospital bed – this is not her revenge, but her husband’s, and indeed his words
suggest that his actions are on behalf of his unborn child rather than his wife
(‘You killed my son’). In conversations between Amy and the local police, it is
finally revealed that Travis has been hunting and killing the wrong men. In the
confused melee of a small town during hunting season, Amy’s initial
identification of the culprits was mistaken, and it is only when the three
genuine aggressors are placed beneath her hospital window in a casual ID
parade that she comes face-to-face with her rapists. Revenge for a Rape, then,
suggests that the victim’s testimony may be unreliable, also emphasizing the
serious consequences of vigilante action. It is the police who secure the arrest
of the guilty men, not Travis, and certainly not Amy, who takes a back seat
within the narrative as soon as her rape has provided the impetus for the
ensuing action.
A Case of Rape
More typical than the backwoods setting in the rape-revenge TV movie is the
urban or suburban environment. One of the most successful of all made-for-
TV movies – indeed, the eighth most popular telefeature between 1964 and
199037 – was A Case of Rape, directed by Boris Sagal, aired in February 1974
by NBC. Starring Elizabeth Montgomery as victim Ellen (‘a middle-class
housewife on the fringes of swimming-pool suburbia’),38 A Case of Rape
addressed a number of rape myths head on and perpetuated some others.
Ellen is a wife and mother, and it is the impact of rape on those around her –
more so than on Ellen herself – that forms the crux of the film. When she is
raped in the family home by a friend from evening class who has asked to use
the phone, the camera quickly moves away from the scene, settling instead on
her young daughter’s bedroom door. (In contrast to the graphic rape scenes of
films like A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), TV movies tended not
to depict the act of rape itself in any detail, usually fading to black before
presenting the viewer with the aftermath of the act.) Mothers are infrequently
presented as rape victims so it is significant – if not unsurprising, considering
TV movies’ imagined audience – that both A Case of Rape and Revenge for a
Rape situate mothers or mothers-to-be as victims, emphasizing that rape victims
may be from any demographic group.39 Ellen’s independence, however – her
attendance at evening classes and socializing with (male) classmates –
perpetuates the myth that the victim has somehow encouraged the rape.
Ellen is dissuaded from immediately reporting the assault by the aggressive
manner of the police officer on the phone; it is only when she is raped for a
second time by the same man that she is moved to take action. This heralds the
beginning of a set of painful personal and legal battles. Ellen is interrogated by
police who ask her if she wears a bra and whether she perhaps found the idea
of force exciting; her husband becomes suspicious of her complicity in the act
given that she didn’t report the first rape, blaming her for the impact on the
couple’s sex life (‘It was done to both of us’). The most explicit articulation of
Ellen’s personal and bodily suffering occurs in a medical examination scene in
which the horror of rape is encoded in Ellen’s scratched and bruised body (one
publicity shot for the film depicted an apparently naked, bruised and wide-
eyed Montgomery, photographed from behind as though anticipating another
attack).
Given its sustained focus on Ellen’s legal team’s efforts to get her rapist
convicted, A Case of Rape offers an unexpected conclusion to the audience: the
rapist is found not guilty. The police admit that some of the laws they are
working with are over 100 years old and ‘don’t make much sense anymore’, and
Ellen’s lawyer bemoans poorly-educated and prejudiced juries. Although it was
not presented as drawing on a single true-life case, A Case of Rape clearly
positioned itself as an accurate rendering of contemporary legal experience,
apparently based on various reports from a District Attorney’s office.40 The
opening credits of the film recited statistics on rape, and the epilogue added a
similarly pseudo-factual air with its report that Ellen’s rapist was caught fleeing
the scene of another assault shortly afterwards, and that Ellen and her husband
later divorced. A Case of Rape does not offer ‘a red, white and blue message
about things working out’,41 but in its epilogue suggests that bringing Ellen’s
rapist to court has added to a stock of evidence that will be useful in the future,
if not immediately. Ellen has come to embody – and to do a service for – good,
law-abiding society, but only at great personal cost.
The Sheriff
The Sheriff, like A Case of Rape, takes a courtroom battle as its main focus. In
contrast to A Case of Rape’s white suburban housewife, the victim in The
Sheriff, directed by David Lowell Rich, is a young black college student, Janet
(Brenda Sykes), who is raped by a white insurance salesman, Larry Walters
(Ross Martin) visiting her home. As the film’s title suggests, her rape is less
about her than a plot device allowing for an exploration of small-town racism.
Local sheriff, James Lucas (Ossie Davis), believes that pursuing the case to
court will prove his own point about the double standards and ‘quiet racism’ of
his suburban California town. Rape is thus ‘structured as a scene through
which a multitude of conflicts are staged’,42 within which the personal suffering
of the victim is just one aspect. As in Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) or A
Time to Kill (Joel Schumacher, 1996), the black victim is presented as incapable
of seeking redress herself, instead relying on others whose intervention ensures
that she is disempowered at the same time as she is victimized.43
The conviction of Janet’s rapist is only secured by a middle-class white
neighbour whose testimony represents a personal triumph over her own racial
prejudice. In contrast to Revenge for a Rape, Janet’s inability to (initially)
remember what her rapist looked like is rather more clearly articulated as
being a result of shock than as a means of questioning her reliability as a
witness: ‘I was with him all that time and I can’t remember what he looked like.’
Nevertheless, this serves to establish her as an unreliable witness who is unable
to pursue justice on her own. Further, whilst the film introduces ideas that play
upon racial stereotypes of black hyper-sexuality, these are presented in an
ambiguous way that may allow the audience to read them as either refutation
or confirmation of those stereotypes. During the trial, Walters tries to present

himself as a victim due to ‘the way that girl carries on . . . I was black and blue
for three whole days’. Janet is re-Othered even as she achieves justice; the white
neighbour who provided vital testimony remains unable to comfortably
interact with Janet at the trial’s close.
The Bait
The Bait, directed by Leonard Horn, situates rape within a bustling urban
environment that has its gaze firmly fixed on the female form. A newspaper
seller asks a doorman for the name of the ‘nice pretty girl’ he serves each day.
Cut to a scene of our heroine, single mother and undercover cop Tracy Fleming
(Donna Mills). Out on an assignment, she confronts a man harassing two
young girls on a bus – an intervention that earns her a reprimand from her
boss who complains of her taking her eye off the man she was trailing to deal
with ‘hypothetical nastiness’. Tracy’s commitment to combatting sexual assault
and harassment takes a perversely personal slant when she positions herself as
‘bait’ for a rapist and murderer. The final scenes of the film see her alone with
rapist Earl Stokey (William Devane) in her apartment, which he has broken
into. Complicating the basic home invasion narrative, however, the apartment
becomes a dangerous site for both parties after Tracy sends a coded message to
her young son, calling for back-up, and aims to keep Stokey in her home until
help arrives. During their time in this domestic space, he is revealed to be an
unhinged individual with a fierce hatred of any woman he perceives to be
‘loose’. It is one of few instances in the TV movie in which the psychology of
the rapist is explicitly explored, and which plays into the myth – often seen in
pre-1970s rape-revenge narratives – that rapists are ‘insane’,44 also suggesting
that rape is a crime typically committed by strangers (as in Bevacqua’s ‘public
agenda’).
No rape actually occurs in The Bait, but the film positions Tracy as a kind of
proxy revenger for the local female population who have suffered at the hands
of Stokey. Although The Bait is notable as a film that allows the female character
to pursue ‘revenge’ on her own, Tracy’s actions are only permissible due to her
role within the police force, where she is backed up by male colleagues.
Throughout the film, Tracy’s attractiveness is emphasized, as her boss

comments that she has the ‘best legs on the force’. Tracy herself perceives rape
as an act dependent on a woman’s appearance: when she fails to be immediately
attacked after making herself ‘the bait’, she jokes that she’s ‘not as irresistible as
[she] thought’. It is a neat illustration of the tendency that Mary Buhl Dutta
identifies in the television soap opera, which ‘while paying lip service to the
feminist stance, actively popularizes the rape myths of patriarchal culture’.45
This tension between condemning rape myths and using them as narrative
devices is evident in other films discussed in this chapter, as is the situating of
the victim as the object of a voyeuristic gaze. The opening credits of A Case of
Rape recite statistics on the number of women raped each year over black and
white images of women going about their business at work or in the street,
positioning the viewer as voyeur. Focusing in on Ellen, the voiceover announces
‘This woman is about to become a statistic. She’s going to be raped’ – a statement
that may be read as both a warning and a perverse promise. The ‘self-aware’
spectatorship of films such as The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988) can also be
seen in those made-for-TV movies where the viewer shares the rapist’s point
of view.46 In Revenge for a Rape we see Amy framed through a pair of binoculars
as she is watched by her rapists, a viewpoint that makes the hunting analogy
explicit as well as putting the audience in the voyeur’s position.
Figure 6.1 The hunting of Amy in Revenge for a Rape.

The shock of the small screen
Contradiction and ambiguity – condemning some rape myths while

perpetuating others, for instance – were common features of the TV movie.
Though they may have had the freedom to address social issues in a more
specific and immediate way than theatrical releases, that freedom was limited
by network guidelines about sexual and violent content as well as financial
constraints. In addition, the issues that TV movies dealt with had to be
articulated in a language that was palatable to the conservative tastes of middle
America, gently prodding at audience perceptions without alienating them in
the process. The TV movie was careful to situate rape within the generally
right-wing discourse typical of the format, emphasizing women’s roles as
mothers and wives and the dangers that could come with independence. Their
narratives matched those of prime-time television more generally, working to
‘contain rather than enlarge discussions about power and violence’.47
In choosing to present stories that were drawn from real life, and which
often revolved around legal battles,48 TV movies also tended to present
multiple viewpoints to the audience. Although we may see this as a virtue of
the format, it was a practice that could lead to the watering-down of feminist
politics even as films professed to challenge rape myths and victim-blaming.
Though not discussed in this chapter (primarily because it is a film meriting a
chapter of its own), Cry Rape (CBS, 1973), directed by Corey Allen, begins
impressively, following the humiliation of a rape victim as she is shuttled
between bored doctors and bored policemen. Then, midstream, the plot
switches directions and settles on the plight of a young man falsely accused of
the crime. Both stories may have been legitimate, but the combination and
sequencing of the two narratives seemed to cast doubt on the woman’s story
and warn victims against pressing charges.
The desire to fit a variety of angles into a format with strict time constraints
(around 90 minutes) led Cry Rape to present an unwieldy tangle of questions
to the viewer that were unlikely to be resolved before the credits rolled. In a
similar way Rape and Marriage (CBS, 1980), directed by Peter Levin – a
dramatization of the Rideout trial which was the first case of marital rape to be
tried in the US – presented several stories to the audience as a court would to
a jury, giving viewers room to question the accusations being made (and,
interestingly, to encourage them to identify with jurors rather than with the
victim).49 In most TV movies, then, discussions about rape were contained
within, and articulated via, legal frameworks. Discussing the theatrical film
The Accused, which was loosely based on the Big Dan’s case, Clover notes:
If something gets gained in this most civilised version of the rape-revenge

story, something also gets lost. There is a sense in which the third party, the
legal system, becomes the hero of the piece: focus has in any case shifted
from the victim to her lawyer, from questions of why men rape and how
victims feel to questions of what constitutes evidence, from bedroom (or
wherever) as the site of confrontation to courthouse.50
As Read notes in her critique of Clover’s work, the ‘legal revenge’ of The Accused
has to be understood with reference to the changes taking place within liberal
institutions in the early 1980s.51 In a similar way, I do not necessarily see the
TV movie’s pursuit of ‘revenge’ through (ineffective) legal channels as an
intentional repudiation of a feminist stance, but rather as a reflection of
evolving contemporary discourse as well as the practical constraints of the
format. It is understandable that the TV movie would present audiences with
a discrete and identifiable problem – a loophole in legal apparatus, for instance
– to explore broader systemic injustice or ingrained cultural misogyny, rather
than attempt an in-depth exploration of such injustices within ninety minutes.
The downbeat conclusion of A Case of Rape was a result of the TV movie’s aim
to present realistic, rather than idealized, pictures of the topics at hand. The
1970s was a period of transition as the courts, police, media and the public got
to grips with new conceptions of sexual assault, harassment and rape; the sense
of uncertainty surrounding such change was reflected in the TV movie. The
conception of rape as part of a spectrum of behaviours entrenched in
patriarchal society, for example, was an idea articulated in The Bait, but one
that was counteracted by the film’s simultaneous unquestioning use of rape
myths.
Like the ‘women in peril’ thrillers of 1970s Britain studied by Peter
Hutchings, the rape-revenge TV movie was the product of a ‘transitional
moment in culture’, as long-standing cultural preconceptions, personal
prejudices and ugly social realities came up against a drive to transform public
attitudes.52 In consequence, both the British women in peril thriller and the
American rape-revenge TV movie found it difficult to offer a concrete,

satisfactory conclusion to viewers. Indeed, many productions played upon this
instability to great effect, unsettling their audience’s worldview by suggesting
that, though there may be justice in the world, it was by no means guaranteed.
As such, despite their hesitancy to adopt a particularly radical political stance,
we might still see films like A Case of Rape as part of the consciousness-raising
efforts of the 1970s women’s movement: although some viewers may have
come away with the impression that legal action was futile, others may have
been moved to become more involved with campaigns for legal reform.
In her analysis of post-2000 rape-revenge films, Henry points to ‘the versatility
and durability of the rape-revenge genre’.53 Within rape-revenge scholarship, the
made-for-TV movie has received modest attention, yet it is testament to the
versatility that Henry describes, and a further illustration of Read’s point that rape-
revenge is not a narrative restricted to one or two genres. However, in contrast to
the rape-revenge horror or exploitation film that presented the audience with the
‘repressed’54 – female power and violence – the rape-revenge TV movie was
produced within a largely conservative structure that had to balance audience
expectations with strict time constraints. In consequence, the TV movie rarely
granted its female characters the crusading power of Jennifer Hills.
Notes
1 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2011); Claire Henry, Revisionist Rape-Revenge: Redefining a Film Genre
(Basingstoke: Palgrave 2014); Jacinda Read, The New Avengers: Feminism,
Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2000). Also see Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the
Modern Horror Film (London: British Film Institute, 1992); Peter Lehman, ‘ “Don’t
blame this on a girl”: female rape-revenge films’, in Steven Cohan and Ina Rae
Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema
(London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 103–17.
2 There are films depicting male rape victims. See for example Kelly McWilliam and
Sharon Bickle, ‘Re-imagining the rape-revenge genre: Anna Kokkinos’ The Book of
Revelation’, Continuum, 31/5 (2017), pp. 706–13. Two made-for-TV movies – It
Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Guy (ABC, 1974) and The Rape of Richard Beck (ABC,
1985) – are notable for their focus on male victims.
3 See for example Gene Siskel, ‘Most frightening horror of I Spit On Your Grave is its
mainstream America audience’, Chicago Tribune, 14 July 1980. Cited in Marco
Starr, ‘J. Hills is alive: a defence of I Spit On Your Grave’, in Martin Barker (ed.), The
Video Nasties: Freedom and Censorship in the Media (London: Pluto Press, 1984),
p. 48.
4 Starr, ‘J. Hills is alive’, p. 52.
5 Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws, p. 151.
6 Read, New Avengers, p. 25.
7 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, ‘Fair games and wasted youth: Twenty-five years of
Australian rape-revenge film, 1986–2011’, Metro Magazine, 170 (2011), p. 87.
9 Claire Henry, ‘Challenging the boundaries of cinema’s rape-revenge genre in Katalin
Varga and Twilight Portrait’, Studies in European Cinema, 10/2–3 (2013), p. 136.
10 Read has analysed three TV movies from the 1980s and 1990s in New Avengers,
pp. 208–36.
11 Ibid., p. 29.
12 Heller-Nicholas, Rape-Revenge Films, p. 65.
13 On this see Heller-Nicholas, Rape-Revenge Films, p. 8; Lehman, ‘ “Don’t blame this
on a girl” ’; Read, New Avengers, pp. 34–5.
14 Maria Bevacqua, Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual
Assault (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2000), p. 134.
15 A notable exception is the recent volume edited by Amanda Reyes, Are You in the
House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium 1964–1999 (Oxford: Headpress, 2016).
16 Gary Edgerton, ‘High concept, small screen: reperceiving the industrial and
stylistic origins of the American made-for-TV movie’, Journal of Popular Film and
Television, 19 (1991), p. 117.
17 Reyes, Are You in the House Alone? pp. 3–4.
18 Nancy Schwartz, ‘TV films’, Film Comment, 11/2 (1975), p. 36.
19 Ibid.
20 Sujata Moorti, Color of Rape: Gender and Race in Television’s Public Spheres
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 187.
21 Stephen Hilgartner and Charles L. Bosk, ‘The rise and fall of social problems: a
public arenas model’, American Journal of Sociology, 94/1 (1988), pp. 53–78; Laurie
Jane Schulze, ‘ “Getting physical”: Text/context/reading and the made-for-
television movie’, Cinema Journal, 25/2 (1986), p. 37.
22 Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (London: Routledge 1994), p. 157.
23 Schwartz, ‘TV films’, p. 38.
24 Bevacqua, Rape on the Public Agenda, p. 129.
25 Ibid., p. 124.
26 Ibid., p. 131.
27 Moorti, Color of Rape, p. 51.
28 Bevacqua, Rape on the Public Agenda, p. 126.
29 Lisa M. Cuklanz, Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual
Violence (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 8.
30 Elspeth Probyn, ‘Television’s unheimlich home’, in Brian Massumi (ed.), The Politics
of Everyday Fear (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 279.
On TV adverts see Elayne Rapping, ‘Made for TV movies: the domestication of
social issues’, Cineaste, 14/2 (1985), pp. 30–3.
31 Helen Wheatley, Gothic Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2006), p. 19.
32 Schwartz, ‘TV films’, p. 37.
33 Wheatley, Gothic Television, p. 1.
34 Jane Feuer, Seeing Through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism (London: British
Film Institute, 1996), p. 22.
35 See for instance Moorti, Color of Rape, p. 186; Schwartz, ‘TV films’.
37 Edgerton, ‘High concept, small screen’, p. 125.
38 John O’Connor, ‘TV: Fiction sticks close to fact in A Case of Rape’, The New York
39 TV movies from the 1980s onwards often depict mothers as ‘avengers’. See Read,
New Avengers, pp. 205–40.
40 O’Connor, ‘TV: Fiction sticks close to fact’.
41 Rapping, ‘Made for TV movies’, p. 33.
42 Tanya Horeck, Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film (London:
Routledge, 2004), p. 5.
43 See Read, New Avengers, p. 234.
44 Ibid., p. 96.
45 Mary Buhl Dutta, ‘Taming the victim: rape in soap opera’, Journal of Popular Film
and Television, 27/1 (1999), p. 35.
46 Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New
York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 116. Cited in Despoina Mantziari,
‘Sadistic scopophilia in contemporary rape culture: I Spit On Your Grave (2010)
and the practice of “media rape” ’, Feminist Media Studies, 18/3 (2018), p. 399.
47 Moorti, Color of Rape, p. 113.
48 The TV movie did not have a monopoly on the courtroom drama rape-revenge
film, of course – see for instance Lipstick (Lamont Johnson, 1976).
49 Melissa Ann Bazhaw, ‘For better or for worse? Media coverage of marital rape in
the 1978 Rideout trial’, Communication Theses, 35, Department of Communication,
Georgia State University (2008), available at https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/

viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=communication_theses, p. 94.
50 Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saws, p. 147.
52 Peter Hutchings, ‘ “I’m the girl he wants to kill”: the “women in peril” thriller in
1970s British film and television’, Visual Culture in Britain, 10/1 (2009), p. 68.
53 Henry, ‘Challenging the boundaries’, p. 143.
54 Carol J. Clover, ‘Getting even: rape and revenge in I Spit on Your Grave and The
Accused’, Sight & Sound, 2/1 (1992), p. 18.
Bibliography
Bazhaw, Melissa Ann, ‘For better or for worse? Media coverage of marital rape in the
1978 Rideout trial’, Communication Theses, 35, Department of Communication,
Georgia State University (2008). Available at https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=communication_theses.
Bevacqua, Maria, Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual
Assault (Boston, MA : Northeastern University Press, 2000).
Clover, Carol, J., ‘Getting even: rape and revenge in I Spit on Your Grave and The
Accused’, Sight & Sound, 2/1 (1992), pp. 16–18.
Clover, Carol, J., Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
(London: British Film Institute, 1992).
Cuklanz, Lisa M., Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence
(Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).
Dutta, Mary Buhl, ‘Taming the victim: rape in soap opera’, Journal of Popular Film and
Television, 27/1 (1999), pp. 34–9.
Edgerton, Gary, ‘High concept, small screen: reperceiving the industrial and stylistic
origins of the American made-for-TV movie’, Journal of Popular Film and
Television, 19 (1991), pp. 115–27.
Feuer, Jane, Seeing Through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism (London: British
Film Institute, 1996).
Gitlin, Todd, Inside Prime Time (London: Routledge, 1994).
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra, ‘Fair games and wasted youth: twenty-five years of
Australian rape-revenge film, 1986–2011’, Metro Magazine, 170 (2011), pp. 86–9.
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra, Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (Jefferson, NC :
McFarland, 2011).
Henry, Claire, ‘Challenging the boundaries of cinema’s rape-revenge genre in Katalin
Varga and Twilight Portrait’, Studies in European Cinema, 10/2–3 (2013), pp. 133–45.
Henry, Claire, Revisionist Rape-Revenge: Redefining a Film Genre (Basingstoke:

Palgrave, 2014).
Hilgartner, Stephen and Bosk, Charles L., ‘The rise and fall of social problems: a
public arenas model’, American Journal of Sociology, 94/1 (1988), pp. 53–78.
Horeck, Tanya, Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film (London:
Routledge, 2004).
Hutchings, Peter, ‘ “I’m the girl he wants to kill”: the “women in peril” thriller in 1970s
British film and television’, Visual Culture in Britain, 10/1 (2009), pp. 53–69.
Lehman, Peter, ‘ “Don’t blame this on a girl”: female rape-revenge films’, in Steven
Mantziari, Despoina, ‘Sadistic scopophilia in contemporary rape culture: I Spit On
Your Grave (2010) and the practice of “media rape” ’, Feminist Media Studies, 18/3
(2018), pp. 397–410.
McWilliam, Kelly and Bickle, Sharon, ‘Re-imagining the rape-revenge genre: Anna
Kokkinos’ The Book of Revelation’, Continuum, 31/5 (2017), pp. 706–13.
Moorti, Sujata, Color of Rape: Gender and Race in Television’s Public Spheres (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 2002).
O’Connor, John, ‘TV: fiction sticks close to fact in A Case of Rape’, The New York
Probyn, Elspeth, ‘Television’s unheimlich home’, in Brian Massumi (ed.), The Politics
of Everyday Fear (Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, 1993),
pp. 269–83.
Rapping, Elayne, ‘Made for TV movies: the domestication of social issues’, Cineaste,
14/2 (1985), pp. 30–3.
Read, Jacinda, The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle
Reyes, Amanda (ed.), Are You in the House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium
1964–1999 (Oxford: Headpress, 2016).
Schulze, Laurie Jane, ‘ “Getting physical”: Text/context/reading and the made-for-
television movie’, Cinema Journal, 25/2 (1986), pp. 35–50.
Schwartz, Nancy‚ ‘TV films’, Film Comment, 11/2 (1975), pp. 36–8.
Starr, Marco, ‘J. Hills is alive: a defence of I Spit On Your Grave’, in Martin Barker (ed.),
The Video Nasties: Freedom and Censorship in the Media (London: Pluto Press,
1984), pp. 48–55.
Wheatley, Helen, Gothic Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
158
Part Three
State Sponsored Shocks
159
160
7
Tax Shelter Terrors: Cinépix and the Hidden

History of 1970s Canadian Horror Cinema
Xavier Mendik
The tax shelter’s failure to fit within the critical community’s definition of

acceptable Canadian film practice has resulted in their continued obscurity
within Canadian film scholarship.
Benjamin Wright ‘Canada’s Great Shame: Canada’s Great Shame: Tax
Shelters, Nationalism, and Popular Taste in Canadian Cinema’1
The above quotation by Benjamin Wright provides a pertinent opening

observation through which to consider some of the social, historical and
cultural contradictions that governed the national reception of Canadian
horror cinema during the 1970s. In a volume dedicated to films that revelled in
their ability to shock and offend cultural commentators and cinemagoers alike,
the marginalization of such images may at first seem unsurprising. However,
what remains significant about the Canadian horror films surveyed in this
chapter is that they have actually suffered from a process of double negation.
Here, concerns about nationally produced examples of the extreme merged
with wider condemnations around the state subsidies and government
funding that motivated an explosion of horror, erotic and exploitation
productions during this period. Whether defined by the body horror
experimentations of Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975) and Rabid (David
Cronenberg, 1977), the home invasion terror tactics of Blackout (Eddy Matalon,
1978), the grisly concentration camp exposés of the Ilsa cycle (1975–7), or the
gratuitous excesses of ‘slasher’ film entries such as My Bloody Valentine( George
Mihalka, 1981), Canadian horror films of the 1970s became isolated from
national and cinematic orthodoxies through their association with a set
161
of controversial government incentives that became known as the tax shelter

scheme.
Indeed, when Wright uses the concept of ‘Canada’s Great Shame’ as the title
of his 2012 study, he is referring less to a clutch of extreme and distasteful films
from the likes of David Cronenberg, William Fruet and Ivan Reitman, and
more to the introduction of state funded schemes which facilitated their early
forays into cinema production. To further explore how such criticisms of these
finance initiatives can be linked to the wider production of marginal horror
narratives in 1970s Canada, this chapter will do two things. Firstly, I will outline
the controversies that surrounded the tax shelter scheme before concluding by
profiling the output of Cinépix Inc. (aka Cinépix), the Montreal film company
that became closely associated with the excesses that the scheme generated.
Situating the tax shelter controversy in Canadian cinema
Firstly, it is important to note that despite the tax shelter film controversies
identified by Wright’s study, the scheme cannot be divorced from wider
attempts to establish a national cinema that could withstand the hegemonic
dominance of the Hollywood industry. The author here draws on debates from
British film studies, and in particular the work of Andrew Higson, who has
predicated the conception of national cinema on a process of distinction from
other competitor nation states.2 In the case of Canada, notions of national
cinema carried with them a ‘clear sense of urgency’3 in relation to its proximity
to the USA. As with the UK case studies that Higson and others have discussed,
Canada invested in the documentary realist tradition as the basis of a nationally
distinct ‘quality’ cinema, with both cultures drawing heavily on the influence of
the British documentary film-maker John Grierson in the development of
these trends.4
Through his work at Canada’s National Film Board, Wright argues that
Grierson cultivated a documentary tradition that sought to promote the
nation’s ‘civic interests’5 both domestically and to the wider world, with actuality
film-making ‘championed . . . over narrative features as a means of avoiding the
commercial completion with . . . Hollywood.’6 Whilst this realist focus proved
pivotal in developing a distinct documentary agenda within the nation, it
Tax Shelter Terrors 163
evolved at the expense of fictional film production, resulting in what Wyndham

Wise has defined as the ‘lost generation’7 of Canadian feature film-makers
forced to travel internationally due to limited opportunities. State funded
schemes of the 1960s and 1970s therefore sought to prevent a further exodus
of creative talent, as witnessed by two waves of investment into cinema
production. The first of these government interventions came with the 1967
launch of the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC), which
sought to address the chronic under-expansion of feature film production
through the provision of a $10 million government fund dedicated to
supporting new film-makers with a distinctive national vision. Under the
leadership of the Corporation’s original director Michael Spencer, producers
could bid for funding with a ceiling of up to $300,000 for productions that
demonstrated definable Canadian elements (either through their content, or
their creative personnel).
Between 1968 and 1974, the CFDC spearheaded a range of innovative
projects from emerging new talents that also spoke to key concerns and
aspirations of the Canadian mindset. Writing in the article ‘Canadian Cinema
from Boom to Bust’, Wise has identified some of these early CFDC critical
successes as including Donald Shebib’s melancholic crime fiction Goin’ Down
the Road (1970).8 The film charted the downfall of two rural misfits who travel
from the Maritimes seeking a new life of opportunity in Toronto. Shebib’s
acclaimed production was written by William Fruet, whose own directorial
debut of Wedding in White (1972) proved another critical success for its CFDC
backers. In this second narrative Donald Pleasance is cast as an overbearing
patriarch who forces his own daughter into marriage following a rape that
threatens the family’s fragile reputation. The psychological tensions implicit in
Wedding in White were themselves matched by another CFDC-backed entry:
Peter Pearson’s 1973 drama Paperback Hero, which details the psychological
decline of a Saskatchewan hockey player who begins to believe that he is in fact
a wild west gunfighter. Although these releases generated positive appraisal
(with Paperback Hero going on to receive Best Canadian film awards for
editing, cinematography and sound), they suffered the fate of poor distribution
that beset many other Canadian Film Development Fund projects during this
era. Unable to complete with higher budget American products that continued
to dominate the domestic exhibition circuit, these releases remained very
much state-funded minority fare, confirming Benjamin Wright’s view of the

CFDC as having to maintain ‘a precarious position’, by ‘trying to turn a profit
and also satisfy the nationalist . . . mandates of politicians, critics and media
scholars’.9
Writing in the article ‘Canadian Cinema from Boom to Bust’, Wyndham
Wise has further revealed that only two feature films from a total of 101 CFDC-
backed projects managed to gain widespread distribution and Canadian
broadcast coverage between 1969 and 1974.10 As a result, when the government
renewed its financial commitment to the Canadian Film Corporation in 1974,
it did so with an increased focus on commerciality and the export market as
mechanisms to recoup initial production costs. While film-makers were still
able to bid for CFDC funding, this could either be supplemented or replaced
by a new capital cost allowance (CCA), or system of tax shelter investment
schemes derived from private finance. As embodied by the 1974 Capital Cost
Allowance Act, finance brokers, lawyers and investment houses were now able
to negotiate a patchwork of private investment in film productions that would
result in higher budgets and further export potential. The scheme specifically
targeted middle-class and professional investors by offering them the ability to
recoup 100 per cent of the costs for their cinema investments, with the
opportunity to defer profit payments on their annual tax returns. The capacity
to reclaim funds on films deemed unprofitable, or on titles that failed to proceed
from development to final production, provided additional incentives to
investors. For Wise, the sanctioning of tax deductions for productions that
were never released exposed the scheme to potential financial abuse, which the
author sees as being facilitated by the new legion of lawyers, accountants and
taxation advisers tasked with the administering the scheme. As he notes:
This tax loophole brought into play a new type of film entrepreneur – the tax
lawyers and accountants who could make their way through the complicated
tax laws and ‘lever’ such investments on the basis of the original down
payment . . . This new breed of producer . . . were adept at legally exploiting a
grey area over which there was very little regulation and no substantive
government policy directive.11
The capital cost investment scheme also evidenced a governmental transition

from viewing film as a mechanism of cultural expression towards seeing it
more as a vehicle for commercial exploitation within a transnational

marketplace. This alteration in outlook was very much embodied by the
installation of Michael McCabe as the new head of the CFDC in 1978.
Although McCabe lacked the cinematic knowledge of predecessor Michael
Spencer, his existing skillset within the investment industry perfectly matched
the more corporate approach to film production that the tax shelter period
came to embody. As Wise reflected:
His knowledge of Canadian film was limited but he understood the

investment community very well. He set about to exploit that financial base
for the benefit of the new-style producer/entrepreneurs.12
Under his reign, it is undeniable that McCabe oversaw a dramatic expansion of

Canadian cinema, which accelerated from four releases in 1974 to forty releases
in 1978, jumping again to seventy film completions in 1979.13 Not only did
1979–80 mark the peak period of tax shelter productivity, it also evidenced a
dramatic climb in budgets. To sustain the public’s interest in film investment,
project development and optioning remained highly populist in orientation,
often backed by the participation of minor or fading international stars to
bolster the export potential of the projected releases. This increased focus on
international markets also led to an over-reliance on pre-existing international
(read American) film templates, with the anonymization of Canadian
landscapes and other national markers accompanying this commercialization
process. This process (often referred to as ‘Hollywood North’) confirms Donato
Totaro’s assumption that:
Many films made during the CCA period were . . . genre films (teen films,
horror, comedy) and usually camouflaged their Canadian location for a
generic “American” sense of place because they were marketed to a North
American rather than an exclusively Canadian audience.14
Although it would be reductive to presume that horror films were the only
beneficiary of Canada’s tax shelter fund, it is undeniable that under the scheme
‘there were so many genre films made because the “business” investors (in
many cases lawyers, doctors, dentists, architects . . .) knew little about film
therefore it was more likely they would invest in films that followed in a
tradition that they would be familiar with’.15 Indeed, a cursory glance at some
of the key titles released between the peak 1979 to 1980 period does reveal the
highly generic orientation to tax shelter funded projects:
Title Director Key Star(s) Marketing/Tagline

The Brood (1979) David Cronenberg Oliver Reed ‘They’re waiting . . .
Horror (Canadian) (British) for you!’
Samantha Eggar
(American)
The Changeling Peter Medak George C. Scott ‘How did you die,
(1980) Horror (Canadian) (American) Joseph? Did you die
in this house? Why
are you still here?’
Death Ship Alvin Rakoff George Kennedy ‘Those who survive
(1980) Horror (Canadian) (American) the ghost ship are
Richard Crenna better off dead.’
(American)
Meatballs (1979) Ivan Reitman Bill Murray ‘The summer camp
Comedy (Canadian) (American) that makes you
untrustworthy,
disloyal, unhelpful,
discourteous,
unkind, disobedient
and very hilarious.’
Prom Night Paul Lynch Jamie Lee Curtis ‘If you’re not back by
(1980) Horror (UK-Canadian) (American) midnight . . . you
Leslie Neilson won’t be coming
(Canadian) back!’
Terror Train Roger Jamie Lee Curtis ‘Don’t waste money
(1980) Horror Spottiswoode (American) on a return fare . . .
(UK-Canadian) Ben Johnson you won’t be coming
(American) home.’
As the above table indicates, key titles released between 1979–80 emphasized a
formulaic focus on horror and gross-out comedy whilst also foregrounding
the sensationalist styles of marketing and promotion associated with such
cycles. Further, the focus on Canadian (or dual-national) directors was often
overshadowed or submerged by the multi-national nature of the headline cast,
confirming the tactic of disguising the national markers of the production that
Donato Totaro has identified.
While the increasingly salacious orientation promoted by such titles
alarmed Canada’s cultural elite, it was the unsustainable trend towards over-
inflated budgets for films that were either difficult to sell on completion, or
never even made it to completion, which began to destabilize faith in the tax
shelter scheme. Commenting on the ill-fated CFDC campaign for the 1980
Cannes Film Festival which stated ‘Canada Can and Does’, Wyndham Wise has
argued that the reality was in fact that ‘Canadian films couldn’t and didn’t’,16 as
was revealed when the festival became dominated by the critical rejection of a
number of funded titles in competition. The poor reception of a clutch of tax
shelter titles at this prominent event compounded a raft of unsold pictures that
Canada’s banks and public had effectively bankrolled. For Wise, this effectively
signalled that ‘after 18 months of intense activity, the bubble had burst’.17
Writing in the article ‘From Boom to Bust: The Tax Shelter Years’, Wise notes
that following the Cannes debacle, between $40–70 million of film shares on
offer to potential investors remained unsold, with the tax shelter scheme
eventually being wound down in 1982. The later rebranding of the Canadian
Film Development Corporation as Telefilm in 1984 also signalled a cultural
shift away from film as commerce and back to cinema as arthouse production,
with a focus on projects that spoke more clearly to issues of national heritage.
For Benjamin Wright, Telefilm’s new focus effectively signalled a return to
more conventional values associated with state funded projects, namely ‘more
Royal Canadian Mounted police, fewer serial killer flicks’,18 with this move
further confirming an end to the generic focus of the tax shelter era.19
Although the so-called tax shelter period effectively lasted for only eight
years, its ignominious reputation for the production of unpalatable, overtly
commercial and economically unsustainable films means that even forty years
after its demise, the scheme is still seen, in Wright’s words, as a ‘failure . . . within
the critical community’s definition of acceptable Canadian film practice’.20 The
author’s observations are confirmed by the negative reception of the scheme
amongst not only media commentators and national cinema scholars but even
policymakers such as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who in 1980 stated: ‘It is
amazing what tax laws can do. There are now many Canadian films. But there
aren’t that many good ones, are there?’21
For Peter Urquhart, the negative statements by Trudeau and other detractors
evidence the ‘repetition of received wisdom’22 that passed from one review of
the tax shelter scheme to another. These circulating critiques initially centre on
the figure of the entrepreneur producer who emerged during this period to
exploit the fund for purely commercial purposes by constructing narratives

that are not deemed as ‘good’ or worthy of national recognition. These
condemnations then expand to implicate the CFDC policy makers who
supported this initiative, before coming to settle on the productions themselves.
Here, titles are clustered together on the basis of their funded/economic
origins, rather than possible generic roots or authorial intent, with presumed
deficiencies in quality being expanded to critique these works for lacking the
conventional markers of Canadian national cinema. Indeed, the absence of
sustained critical reviews of the tax shelter appears confirmed by Christopher
E. Gittings’s volume Canadian National Cinema. This important book devotes
fewer than two pages to the tax shelter era, using much of this space to rerun
existing objections to the scheme and its productions as outlined above. For
Gittings, the only real benefit of the fund can be found at a craft rather than
creative level in that it helped ‘to develop a cadre of skilled technicians and
crews’23 within the wider national film scene.
However, for writers such as Urquhart, the through line of bias against the
tax shelter movies has less to do with the entrepreneurial figures that drove
the trend, or even the kinds of titles that they perpetuated. Rather, it was the
unconventional body of work that the tax shelter scheme created which
strained accepted notions of Canadian film, thus ‘rendering films invisible’24
from sustained critical reappraisal. Because the tax shelter productions departed
from accepted definitions of Canadian national cinema they were deemed
‘insufficiently artsy, angsty, or auteurist’,25 and have therefore been ignored in all
major critical accounts of cinema following the demise of the scheme.
In his attempts to revaluate the derided tax shelter phenomenon, Urquhart
discusses a series of case-studies of previously marginal texts that he argues
demonstrate clear authorial intent, an incisive understanding of the historical
tensions between the Québecois regions and English-speaking Canada, and
even provide a self-reflexive commentary on their contested creation under
the derided tax shelter scheme. As the author provides a brief analysis of the
Cinépix film Hot Dogs (Claude Fournier, 1980) as part of this revaluation of
tax shelter productions, the company’s output is worthy of a closer consideration.
Not only were Cinépix a noted exponent of the CFDC and tax shelter funding,
but they used these schemes to create a sizeable body of controversial work
that can be linked to the social and cultural tensions of 1970s Canada.
A quiet revolution: Cinépix and 1970s Canadian horror
Canada has its own studio which makes money producing and distributing
shock, horror and sex-related features. That studio is called Cinepix and it’s
located in Montreal.
Anthony Maulucci, ‘Montreal’s Cinepix Turns a Profit on Torture’26
Created in 1962 by Québec-based exhibitor John Dunning and the Hungarian

émigré André Link, Cinépix quickly became a key distributor within the
province, and between 1964 and 1968 developed a reputation for importing
European films into the region in order to compensate for the lack of feature
film production activity in Canada at that time. Based on the seamless synthesis
of Link’s business acumen and Dunning’s creative flair, the company came
to prominence through its ability to harness the social, economic and
gender transitions associated with the so-called Quiet Revolution of the
early 1960s.
Figure 7.1 André Link (L) and John Dunning (R) of Cinépix.
As a term, the Quiet Revolution became closely associated with the

premiership of Jean Lesage (1960–6), who pursued a mandate to liberate the
province from the repressive influence of his conservative predecessor Marcel
Duplessis. Specifically, the Lesage administration sought to redress the
dominance of the Catholic church that Duplessis had helped cultivate,
replacing religious dogma with educational reform, cultural interventions and
a drive towards industrialization and independence. As film critic Paul Corupe
has noted, such social transitions were well suited to the types of cinematic
activity distributed by Cinépix because:
Québec emerged from the strict morality of Catholicism in the sexually

permissive 1960s and early 1970s with a newly discovered sense of self . . .
Nowhere were these insurgent notions of free love and political sovereignty
better set to collide than in local movie houses, and Cinépix was just the
company to harness the spirit of the Quiet Revolution.27
Cinépix initially responded to the spirit of the Quiet Revolution by importing

a range of explicit international film titles into the province which circulated
between ‘artistic’ and ‘sensationalist’ content, thus feeding a growing
permissiveness associated with the transitions being enacted by the Lesage
administration. Cinépix then moved into cinema production and between
1969 and 1984 created over seventy feature film releases which were notable
for employing both CFDC and tax shelter funding to exploit a growing
audience fascination with explicit, horrific and unconventional material. These
releases circulated across a range of popular film cycles, but focused on
Québecois sex comedies, body horror narratives, unsettling home invasion
thrillers, sadistic concentration camp exposés, violent slasher films and ribald
teen comedies.
In so doing, Cinépix not only revolutionized the production of horror
content (for both local and international audiences), but also helped mentor a
new generation of prolific Canadian film-makers that included David
Cronenberg, William Fruet, Don Carmody and Ivan Reitman. Although
Cinépix became synonymous with ‘exploiting’ Canadian state funding to create
horror and sex cinema, their tactics were mirrored by other production outlets
such as Quadrant Films (under the guidance of David Perlmutter), as well as
Harold Greenberg’s company Astral Films (aka Astral Bellevue Pathé) and
Film Plan International (headed by Pierre David and Victor Solnicki), all of
which also used government support to create horror productions. What
distinguished Cinépix from other outlets was not only their existing footprint
in film distribution, but also their ownership of regional cinema chains,
which provided a secure exhibition platform for their titles. In her detailed
production-based study of Cinépix, Mary Arnatt has argued that
while other production companies had to depend on government funding

and private investments, Dunning and Link were able to produce films using
CCA and CFDC funds, private investments, and by investing their own
money that they made in distribution and exhibition, ensuring that Cinépix
could consistently produce a large number of films that had relatively high
production values.28
Although the company’s sizeable body of work has largely been excluded from
key theoretical studies of Canadian film (due to both its content and
associations with funding controversies), it can be argued that their films did
reflect a number of significant factors within Canada between the late 1960s
and 1970s.
Revelling in the Quiet Revolution: Cinépix and

Quebec sex cinema
Cinépix’s move from film distribution into cinema production came with
Valérie (Denis Héroux, 1969), which also coincided with the launch of the
Canadian Film Development Fund. Befitting the CFDC’s remit to fund
striking new visions of Canadian identity, it seems appropriate that Valérie
embodies what Bill Marshall has termed as Québec’s emergent cinema of
modernization. This term references the ability of cinema narratives from the
region to function as direct reflections of the social and cultural transitions
that accompanied the Quiet Revolution. Writing in the volume Québec
National Cinema, Marshall notes that the installation of Lesage’s liberal
government in the province effectively displaced dominant Catholic principles
in favour of a process of technological modernization and industrial
nationalization, as well as the expansion of welfare and education for citizens.
For Marshall, this collapse of ‘religious belief and practices’ was accompanied
by a liberalization of sexual attitudes, which he argued were often annexed to

the new ‘norms of consumption, suburbanisation . . . and the mass media’.29 It
is very much within this framework of social and sexual transitions that Valérie
can be located.
The film charts the sexual evolution of a naïve teenager (Danielle Ouimet),
who in the charged opening scene rides out of a convent astride her lover’s
motorbike in a clear renunciation of religious restrictions. The heroine’s
subsequent odyssey includes encounters with the 1960s counterculture, as well
as a period of prostitution, before she finally accepts the role of maternal
substitute to her emancipated male suitor and his son. Despite the film’s
salacious reputation, Paul Corupe has identified a paradoxical drive to Valérie
whereby the heroine’s ‘final redemption serves primarily as a justification for
the film’s uninhibited sexuality, an astute dramatization of the newfound
freedom that Québecois audiences felt at the time’.30
Cinépix very much mobilized the currency of the Quiet Revolution in the
promotion of the film, while its ending (contrasting the couple’s final union
Figure 7.2 Cashing in on the Quiet Revolution: Valérie.

with images of Québec’s flags proudly unfurling) reiterates a contemporaneous

outlook via references to ongoing debates about independence in the region.
Through its narrative concerns Bill Marshall has argued that Valérie ‘lives in
legend’,31 not only as Québec’s first pornographic film, but also as a populist
narrative that effectively captured wider social and cultural transitions from
the era. The sustained influence of the production can be further confirmed in
economic terms: it generated more than $1 million in revenues upon initial
release and maintained an unrivalled box office position from 1969 until the
mid-1980s.32
It was the financial success of Valérie that led Dunning and Link to
commission further socially reflective erotic releases between 1970 and 1973.
These so-called ‘maple syrup porn’33 titles included L’Initiation (1970), which
further sought to harness what Marshall has defined as ‘the new shocks and
stimuli of modernity’ occurring across French Canada. L’Initiation reunited
director Denis Héroux with actress Danielle Ouimet, using her emergent
erotic star status to punctuate a narrative about another young heroine
(Chantal Renaud), who embarks on a complex relationship with an older
married writer. In so doing, this film further indicated the company’s interest
in challenging the ‘impasses of Québec masculinity’34 through an exploration
of the new value systems confronting female subjectivity in the region.
While L’Initiation’s sex and social commentary formula replicated the box
office success of Valérie, its critical reception also highlighted the company’s
divergence from the official Canadian cinematic orthodoxies of the period.
Several press reviews questioned the creative merits of L’Initiation (which
Marc Gervais dismissed as ‘candy-coated skin trash’),35 or else probed the
legitimacy of the Canadian Film Development Corporation’s support for such
erotic-themed projects. Indicative of these commentaries was the appropriately
titled ‘Wouldn’t you know that the first Canadian to make money making
movies would turn out to be the WALT DISNEY OF SEXPLOITATION’,
from the Saturday Night review of August 1970. Here, Peter Desbarats considers
how the economic success of Valérie led to CFDC support for subsequent
Cinépix erotic productions. However, given that Valérie had previously been
dismissed for its ‘banal’ plot and ‘undistinguished’36 camerawork, Desbarats
questioned the cultural value of L’Initiation, which he references as being ‘even
worse than Valérie’.37 The author does, however, then confirm that L’Initiation
‘has the distinction of being the first film not only to pay back the Canadian
Film Development Corporation, but to start earning money for it’.38 The
paradox of state funded sexploitation cinema as a profitable commodity was
further explored in the separate article ‘How the taxpayer gets a slice of skin
flicks’, published in The Globe and Mail on 21 September 1970. This considers
another Cinépix film, Love is a 4 Letter Word (John Sone, 1970), which depicts
countercultural sensibilities as the trigger for sexual disruptions within a
bourgeois household.39 Betty Lee’s review of the film also focuses on its CFDC
funding, whilst also postulating that four future releases will follow in 1971, ‘all
of them apparently available as investments for Canadian taxpayers’.40
While such press coverage reveals Cinépix as operating outside the accepted
parameters of Canadian national cinema, it is important to acknowledge how
the company’s business structures and market strategies also harnessed such
notoriety to further promote the shock value of their releases. Indeed, Mary
Arnatt attributes the success of Cinépix to its ‘model of a vertically-integrated
adult film company’.41 This format challenged the limits of critical acceptability
by seeking CFDC funding for softcore sex dramas whilst simultaneously
screening more explicit hardcore content through the company’s chain of
cinemas in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.42 Through
these activities, Arnatt argues, ‘Cinépix fostered a public image of a fun,
youthful, and sexy studio, rejecting the conventional discourse of Canadian
cinema as dramatic, serious, and documentarian.’43
Medical, military and militant fears: from Shivers to Ilsa
If their early sex releases helped position Cinépix as the ‘fun and youthful’
embodiment of the Quiet Revolution, it was their later horror film releases
with directors such as David Cronenberg that generated wider exposure and
condemnation. When the CFDC’s head Michael Spencer greenlit Cronenberg’s
feature film debut Shivers (Orgy of the Blood Parasites/They Came From Within)
as a Cinépix horror title, the resultant production provoked a national media
controversy, and even sparked official parliamentary debate upon its release in
1975. The film focused on the activities of Dr Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein),
an alienated male scientist who impregnates genetically modified venereal
parasites into his androgynous teenage lover, leading her to infect the middle-
class dwellers of a plush condominium through a series of illicit sexual liaisons.
Shivers’ explicit scenes focused on the widespread contamination of previously
‘civilized’ apartment residents, whilst outlining the murderous, polymorphous
and even incestuous drives associated with Hobbes’s regime of infection. The
film’s visceral imagery provoked further outrage when it was revealed that
Cronenberg’s extreme visions had effectively been funded by the state.
The most prominent critic of Shivers was Robert Fulford (writing as
Marshall Delaney), whose infamous review of the film was published under
the title ‘You Should Know How Bad This Film Is. After All you Paid for It’.
Here, the author criticized both the film-makers behind Shivers and also the
CFDC, whom Fulford argued was responsible for financing a production that
was ‘a disgrace to everyone connected with it, including the taxpayer’.44 While
the negative reception of Shivers quickly extended from Fulford’s review to
other newspaper outlets (such as the Montreal Gazette and The Globe and
Mail),45 it also attracted theoretical critiques (notably from adopted Canadian
academic Robin Wood, who located Shivers in horror’s ‘reactionary wing’ for
its equation of ‘sexual disgust’ with female and queer images of liberation).46
But the film’s controversy extended far beyond media coverage, provoking
governmental discussions on the future funding of Canadian cinema. Some
officials even called for Cinépix producers Don Cormody and Ivan Reitman to
be deported as non-nationals,47 while Cronenberg was himself evicted from
his home for participating in the film, after his outraged landlady read Fulford’s
review.48 As Arnatt has noted, as a consequence of the backlash against the
film:
Cronenberg, Dunning, and Link prepared a pamphlet that contained both

sides of the argument and sent it to governmental officials, such as R.W.
McDonald, the Director of Film Classification, and Stephen Lewis, the
Ontario Leader of the New Democratic Party.49
This response was contained in the pamphlet entitled ‘Is There a Place for
Horror Films in Canada’s Film Industry?’. Here the company reproduced the
Fulford/Delaney critique of the Shivers, and contextualized this against cultural
and industrial defences of the film, as well as providing direct commentaries
from the Cinépix owners themselves:
Figure 7.3 You should know how good this film is:
Cinépix responds to the Shivers controversy.
Despite the considerable controversy that Shivers generated, the film

actually replicated Cinépix’s earlier ‘maple syrup’ formula of notoriety as a
means of ensuring box office success.50 Equally, as with the company’s prior sex
sagas, it is also possible to read Shivers as directly reflecting social and political
concerns in Canada at that time. Specifically, James Burrell has highlighted the
film’s focus on Dr Hobbes’s deviant surgical interventions as referencing a long
history of Canadian medical abuse which had currency at the time Shivers was
released. These infamous cases included ‘2,822 Albertans . . . subjected – either
unknowingly or against their will – to eugenically inspired sterilisation’,51 with
these physical interventions continuing as late as 1972. Other reported
malpractices extended to the Québec scandal surrounding the so-called
‘Duplessis Orphans’, namely ‘over 3,000 children in Québec Catholic

orphanages . . . falsely declared to be developmentally disabled: a number of
them were put into straightjackets, exposed to electroshock therapy . . . and
even sexually abused by staff members.’52
While this theme of culturally specific ‘bad surgery’ was often lost in the
negative press coverage that Shivers generated, the film retains further
Canadian relevance for reflecting the 1970s political tensions that emerged
when the Quiet Revolution mutated into violent revolt. Here, terrorist cells
such as the Québec Liberation Front (FLQ) waged a long and bloody campaign
of bombings, kidnappings and urban insurrection to further a separatist
agenda that departed from the parliamentary tactics advocated by the Lesage
administration. Within this context, Shivers forms part of a wider Cinépix
cycle of medical, military and militant home invasion dramas that reflected
these terrorist fears.
Indeed, when Shivers is viewed as a narrative of containment, its opening
visual montage advertising the Starliner Tower as structurally separate from
Figure 7.4 Narratives of containment: social and moral order collapses in Shivers.
the disruptions and uncertainties associated with the Montreal sphere takes on
a particular significance. This promotional film even references the building as
a ‘division of General Structures Incorporated’, with the inference that these
‘structures’ segment and protect the condominium dweller from the chaos
associated with wider city life. (This capacity to limit the inhabitants’ exposure
to violence is later confirmed by a Starliner security guard, who boasts that he
has never had to remove his security pistol from its holster during his tenure
at the complex.) By contrast, it is noticeable that in Shivers, radio and TV
broadcasts reference the widespread chaos and criminality of the urban sprawl
as a backdrop to the security offered by the tower. It is therefore significant that
the final shot of the film depicts the now infected middle-class inhabitants
leaving the Starliner to travel towards this already-conflicted urban space so as
to spread further chaos within Montreal’s territories.
If Cinépix horror films of the 1970s do reflect the wider social and political
turmoil that afflicted Québec society during this era, then the siege drama
Figure 7.5 Contemplating siege scenarios: John Dunning (L) and David Cronenberg
(R) on the set of Rabid.
narrative trope was even more evident in Cronenberg’s next collaboration

with the company: Rabid. This film again used CFDC funding towards its
completion, generating controversy for its visceral scenes of infection, as well
as for Dunning and Link’s insistence on casting the hard core porn actress
Marilyn Chambers in the leading role. As with Cronenberg’s earlier film, it is
pertinent that Rabid also emphasizes the role of medical malpractice as the
basis for social decline. Here, the source of contamination is Rose (Marilyn
Chambers), a young protagonist who unwittingly infects a range of Montreal
city dwellers after being subjected to a botched operation. Her treatment at the
hands of the misguided Dr Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) not only confirms James
Burrell’s view that ‘many of Cronenberg’s fictional medical procedures are
performed on vulnerable members of society’,53 but also highlights that ‘it is
the devastating results of the doctors’ actions on society . . . that are of
significance’.54
Indeed, Cinépix’s original marketing for the film employed the tagline of a
‘shocking story of a city in panic’,55 which extends beyond themes of medical
malpractice to bring in wider conceptions of the violated urban space
attributable to contemporaneous FLQ activities. The group’s violent manifesto
of insurrection culminated in the 1970 October Crisis, which centred on the
abduction of British ambassador James Cross on 5 October, followed by the
kidnapping (and later murder) of employment minister Pierre Laporte on 10
October. These actions prompted the infamous 1970 War Measures Act,
enforced by the national Canadian government. As Bill Marshall has noted,
this resulted in the ‘Canadian army in control of the province and civil liberties
suspended, more than 500 people . . . were interned without trial as suspected
“FLQ sympathizers” ’.56 Marshall has identified a number of complex
consequences of the government’s authoritarian response to the FLQ threat,
whereby ‘the main damage of the October Crisis is seen to be a kind of national
self-surveillance for Québec’.57
This component of state sanctioned repression effectively encased Montreal
in a siege scenario, subjecting its citizens to a regime of sustained military
containment. Rabid perfectly captures the ‘geography of violence’58 that Jason
R. Burke has identified in his analysis of the October Crisis, with state
surveillance being enacted in spatial terms through a military occupation that
seeks to contain Rose’s contagious body from spreading across the differing
zones of the city. Beyond the example of Rabid, later Cinépix productions such
as Blackout further annex this geography of violence to enforced containment,
detailing how an urban gang headed by a charismatic countercultural
mastermind terrorizes the inhabitants of an upmarket apartment block during
a power cut.
While Cinépix’s work with David Cronenberg highlighted its controversial
deployment of state funding, many of the company’s more notorious films
from the 1970s relied on private finance, and often eschewed definable
Canadian markers in order to disguise their true nationalistic origins.
Specifically, the Ilsa films (1975–7) represent what Paul Corupe has defined as
‘the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughter of the Canadian film industry’.59
The series comprised three releases that detailed the grisly and sexually explicit
misadventures of a sadistic female prison camp warden/governess played by
Dyanne Thorne. According to Corupe, the cycle was initially inspired by the
company’s ‘success distributing Love Camp 7 (Lee Frost, 1969), an American
sexploitation film that takes place in a Nazi stalag’.60 This influence was most
evident in the initial Cinépix entry, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (Don Edmonds,
1975). This film detailed the violent activities undertaken by Thorne’s character
at a Nazi medical sex centre before she is herself tortured and executed in the
film’s closing scene. Although the film was scripted by John C.W. Saxon, a
University of Toronto professor, Mary Arnatt has noted that ‘almost the entire
production team filmed using pseudonyms, including Dunning and Link, who
were not “officially” involved with the film upon its release’.61 Despite the
controversies that surrounded the film’s exploitation of concentration camp
imagery, the theatrical success of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS facilitated further
Cinépix sequels that revived and relocated Thorne’s character to the Middle
East (Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks [Don Edmonds, 1976]), before her
misadventures in contemporary Montreal (Ilsa: The Tigress of Siberia [Jean
LaFleur, 1977]) exposed the genuine Canadian origins of the series.
Despite the ambiguous national markers that accompanied the Ilsa films,
the series still evidenced a component of national trauma through its extreme
scenes. For Corupe, these Canadian anxieties are most visibly marked through
the fetishization of torture imagery and paraphernalia (such as electric shock
treatments) which dominate the cycle. These instruments effectively evoked
the medicalization of authoritarianism associated with the Duplessis regime
that the liberal mood of 1960s Quiet Revolution displaced.62 Equally, through
Thorne’s construction of Ilsa as a libidinally voracious character,63 Corupe
indicates that the series also expanded upon the successful ‘sex as freedom’64
formula that Dunning and Link had initiated with their early Québecois
‘maple syrup’ releases.
For reviewer Anthony Maulucci, the Ilsa films represent a Cinépix cycle that
‘the CFDC would definitely not want to finance because their subject matter
makes them strictly taboo for the government agency’.65 However, the company
did return to state subsidies at the end of the decade to create some of the final
horror and comedy titles associated with the tax shelter boom. Firstly, they
provided significant entries to the Canadian ‘slasher’ cycle that emerged
between 1979 and 1982 as a direct consequence of the Capital Cost Allowance
fund. These Canadian slasher entries were frequently dismissed as ‘Hollywood
North’ derivations, with these productions seen as seeking to conceal their
national origins in an appeal to transnational audiences. For instance, Andrew
Dowler lambasted the Cinépix slasher entry My Bloody Valentine as ‘yet
another in the seemingly endless stream of murdering-masked-maniac movies
and is a typical example of the genre. Which is to say, terrible.’66 However, the
reviewer did concede that, unlike other Canadian slasher entries, Mihalka’s
film did reveal its distinctive national components that included ‘unmistakable
Nova Scotian locations’ as well as ‘a Canadian flag flying in one shot’.67 However,
for Dowler, these prominent national markers, as well as the film’s atypical
economic motivations for the killer’s backstory failed to ‘push My Bloody
Valentine beyond the level of trite hackwork’.68 Dowler’s reservations regarding
Mihalka’s film were echoed by other reviewers such as Sid Adilman, who
objected to the explicit gore of My Bloody Valentine, concluding that ‘Officials
at the Canadian Film Development Corporation should wipe the blood of
their hands’, rather than invest funds in an ‘exploitive, gruesome and bloody
violence flick’.69
As Adilman’s comments indicated, the reception of any progressive potential
inherent in later Cinépix horror releases were diminished by the convergence
of the slasher and Canadian teen comedy cycles with the tail end of a state
funded film boom, which was increasingly seen by reviewers as declining in
both cultural and economic value. For Benjamin Wright, the Cinépix comedy
Meatballs (Ivan Reitman, 1979) actually reversed many of the stereotypes of
tax evasion that dogged the Capital Cost Allowance scheme, to the extent that
investors ‘were actually disappointed that their investments turned into a
sizeable profit, which resulted in higher capital gains fees’.70 However, the fact
that Meatballs seemed to eschew established Canadian film traditions in favour
of a ‘familiarity with Hollywood norms and conventions – particularly those
found in comedies’71 gives some indication why the film’s status as a legitimate
example of national cinema remains disputed.
Following the collapse of the Capital Cost Allowance fund, John Dunning
and André Link continued to produce cult and horror titles, before returning to
their former careers in distribution. Cinépix was eventually amalgamated into
the emergent Canadian production and distribution outlet Lions Gate
Entertainment Corporation in 1997, with Dunning eventually leaving the new
incarnation of the company prior to his death in 2011. Although the work of
Dunning and Link remains largely neglected by key accounts of Canadian
cinema, Ben Wright argues that the output of those creators working through
the tax shelter scheme should not be rejected as ‘a hiccup in the national discourse
on cinema practice’.72 By annexing cinema industry trends to the wider social,
political and military horrors of the era, these Cinépix releases provide a crucial
insight into Canada’s isolated culture of terror during the 1970s.
This chapter employs materials from the Cinépix Inc. estate that were used for
the documentary The Quiet Revolution: State, Society and the Canadian Horror
Film (2020). I wish to thank Greg Dunning for his assistance with this project
and for facilitating the use of these resources in this volume.
Notes
1 Ben Wright, ‘Canada’s great shame: tax shelters, nationalism, and popular taste in
Canadian cinema’, Spectator, 32/2 (Fall 2012): p. 23.
2 See Andrew Higson, ‘The concept of national cinema’, Screen 30/4 (Autumn 1989),
pp. 36–47.
3 Wright, ‘Canada’s great shame’, p. 21.
4 For further information on John Grierson’s influence on Canadian film culture
through his work at the National Film Board see ‘Producing a national cinema’, in
Chris Gittings, Canadian National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 76–103.
See also ‘Realism and its discontents’, in Jim Leach, Film in Canada (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 11–35. Additionally, see Peter Morris, ‘After
Grierson: The National Film Board 1945–1953’, in Seth Feldman (ed.), Take Two:
A Tribute to Canadian Film (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1984), pp. 182–95.
6 Ibid.
7 Wyndham Wise, ‘Canadian cinema from boom to bust’, Take One (Winter 1999),
p. 18.
8 Ibid.
10 Wise, ‘Canadian cinema’, citing Peter Pearson, p. 18.
11 Ibid., p. 19.
12 Ibid., p. 21.
13 Data cited in ibid., p. 22.
14 Donato Totaro, ‘A “taxing” incentive: the capital cost allowance films’, Off Screen,
12/2 (February 2008). Available at https://offscreen.com/view/a_taxing_incentive
(accessed 25 October 2019).
15 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
16 Wise, ‘Canadian cinema’, p. 23.
17 Ibid.
19 Although private finance initiatives continued in Canadian cinema following the
demise of the tax shelter scheme, they operated at a greatly reduced levy of
financial compensation for the investor, reducing from 100 per cent to 30 per cent
reduction levies by 1987. For further information see Michael N. Bergman, ‘Bye
bye tax shelter’, Cinema Canada (July–August 1987), pp. 6–7.
21 Pierre Trudeau cited in Jay Scott, ‘Burnout in the great white north’, in Seth
Feldman (ed.), Take Two: A Tribute to Canadian Film (Toronto: Irwin Publishing,
1984), p. 29.
22 Peter Urquhart, (2003) ‘You should know something – anything – about this
movie. You paid for it’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies 12/2 (Fall 2003), p. 69.
23 Christopher E. Gittings, Canadian National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002),
p. 97.
24 Urquhart, ‘You should know’, p. 66.
25 Ibid., p. 67.
26 Anthony Maulucci, ‘Montreal’s Cinepix turns a profit on torture’, The Saturday
Gazette, 16 April 1977, p. 37.
27 Paul Corupe, ‘Sin and sovereignty: the curious rise of Cinépix Inc’, Take One,
13/49 (March-June 2005), p. 17.
28 Mary Arnatt (2008), ‘We must be burning film like mad’: Exploring Canadian
Production Cultures at Cinépix, 1976–1986. Unpublished MA thesis, University of
Calgary, p. 53.
29 Bill Marshall, Québec National Cinema (Montreal: McGill-Queens University
Press, 2001), p. 47.
30 Corupe, ‘Sin’, p. 18.
31 Marshall, Québec, p. 65.
33 Ibid., p. 19.
35 Marc Gervais, ‘Monumental trash and sheer magnificence’, The Montreal Star,
10 October 1970. Available at on https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/
uploads/2018/07/Initiation-Montreal-Star-October-10-1970.pdf (accessed 25
October 2019). Gervais’s rejection of L’Initiation is particularly significant when
contrasted with the reviewer’s praise for other CFDC funded releases such as Goin’
Down the Road. By defining Shebib’s film as ‘so rich in its feel for reality’, Gervais
confirms socially-realist criteria as a ‘quality’ marker within Canadian cinema.
36 Peter Desbarats, ‘Wouldn’t you know that the first Canadian to make money
making movies would turn out to be the WALT DISNEY OF
SEXPLOITATION’, Saturday Night, August 1970, p. 29. Available at: https://
www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Love-in-a-4-Letter-World-
Saturday-Night-Magazine-November-1970.pdf (accessed 25 October 2019).
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p. 30.
39 Betty Lee, ‘How the taxpayer gets a slice of skin flicks’, The Globe and Mail, 21
September 1970, p. 7. Available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/
uploads/2018/07/Love-in-a-Four-letter-World.-Globe-and-Mail.-1970-09-21.-
How-the-taxpayer-gets-a-slice-of-skin.pdf (accessed 28 October 2019).
40 Ibid.
41 Arnatt, ‘We must be burning film like mad’, p. 53.
42 Ibid., p. 8.
43 Ibid, p.79.
44 Marshall Delaney, cited in Wright, ‘Canada’s great shame’, p. 20.
45 Cited in Ernest Mathijs, ‘The making of a cult reputation: topicality and
controversy in the critical reception of Shivers’, in Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lazaro
Reboll, Julian Stringer and Andy Willis (eds), Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural
Politics of Oppositional Taste (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013),

p. 113.
46 Robin Wood, cited in Mathijs, Defining Cult Movies, p. 117.
47 Cited in Wright, ‘Canada’s great shame’, p. 20.
48 See David Cronenberg, ‘The night Attila met the antichrist, she was shocked and
he was outraged’, The Globe and Mail, May 14 1977, p. 14. Available at: https://
www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/E-Shivers-Cahiers-du-Cinema-
P.-15.pdf (accessed 28 October 2019).
50 According to Greg Dunning of the Cinépix Estate, the CFDC recouped its entire
‘25 per cent financial participation within Shivers in the three weeks that followed
its theatrical release.’ Correspondence between author and Greg Dunning, 10 May
2021.
51 James Burrell, ‘The physician as mad scientist: a fear of deviant medical practices
in the films of David Cronenberg’, in Gina Freitag and André Loiselle (eds), The
Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2015), p. 241.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid., p. 143.
55 See Rabid Cinepix marketing materials, available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/
wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rabid-Milan-Foreign-sales-market-one-sheet-.pdf
57 Ibid., p. 42.
58 Jason R. Burke, ‘Conflict in cities and the struggle for modernity. Toward an
understanding of the spatiality of the October Crisis’, Géographies de la Violence.
53/150 (December 2009), pp. 335–49.
60 Ibid., p. 20.
63 Although few academic studies have been conducted on Cinépix as the creators of
the Ilsa films, a number of important accounts of subversive gender constructions
in the series have been published. See Rikke Schubart, ‘Hold it! Use it! Abuse it!
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS and male castration’, in Rikke Schubart and Anne Gjelsvik
(eds), Femme Fatalities Representations of Strong Women in the Media (Göteborg:
Nordicom, 2004), pp. 185–203.
64 Ibid., p. 20.
65 Maulucci, ‘Montreal’s Cinepix’, p. 37.

66 Andrew Dowler, ‘My Bloody Valentine’ (review), Cinema Canada, May 1981, p. 67
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Sid Adilman ‘CFDC has no business investing in horror flick’, in Toronto Star,
16 February 1981. Available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/
07/My-Bloody-Valentine-Toronto-Star-1981-02-16-CFDC-by-Sid-Adilman.pdf
70 Wright, ‘Canada’s great shame’ (citing the film’s producer Don Carmody), p. 24.
Greg Dunning of the Cinépix Estate has confirmed Carmody’s observations,
noting that the film’s investors ‘promptly moved from recoupment to profit for its
participation in the film and continues to receive royalty payments from
Paramount to this day’. Correspondence between author and Greg Dunning,
10 May 2021.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., p. 22.
Bibliography
Adilman, Sid, ‘CFDC has no business investing in horror flick’, in Toronto Star, 16
February 1981. Available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/
My-Bloody-Valentine-Toronto-Star-1981-02-16-CFDC-by-Sid-Adilman.pdf.
Arnatt, Mary, ‘We must be burning film like mad’: Exploring Canadian Production
Cultures at Cinépix, 1976–1986. Unpublished MA thesis (University of Calgary, 2008).
Bergman, Michael N., ‘Bye bye tax shelter’, Cinema Canada, (July–August 1987), pp. 6–7.
Burke, Jason R., ‘Conflict in cities and the struggle for modernity. Toward an
understanding of the spatiality of the October Crisis’, Géographies de la Violence.
53/150 (December 2009), pp. 335–49.
Burrell, James, ‘The physician as mad scientist: a fear of deviant medical practices in
the films of David Cronenberg’, in Gina Freitag and André Loiselle (eds), The
Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2015), pp. 231–48.
Corupe, Paul, ‘Sin and sovereignty: the curious rise of Cinépix Inc’, Take One, 13/49
(March–June 2005), pp. 15–21.
Cronenberg, David, ‘The night Attila met the antichrist, she was shocked and he was
outraged’, The Globe and Mail, 14 May 1977, p. 15. Available at: https://www.
cinepix.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/E-Shivers-Cahiers-du-Cinema-P.-15.pdf
Desbarats, Peter, ‘Wouldn’t you know that the first Canadian to make money making
movies would turn out to be the WALT DISNEY OF SEXPLOITATION ’,
Saturday Night, August 1970, pp. 29–30. Available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/
wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Love-in-a-4-Letter-World-Saturday-Night-
Magazine-November-1970.pdf.
Dowler, Andrew, ‘My Bloody Valentine’ (review), Cinema Canada, May 1981, p. 67.
Feldman, Seth (ed.), Take Two: A Tribute to Canadian Film (Toronto: Irwin
Publishing, 1984).
Gittings, Chris, Canadian National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002).
Gervais, Marc, ‘Monumental trash and sheer magnificence’, The Montreal Star, 10
October 1970. Available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/
Initiation-Montreal-Star-October-10-1970.pdf.
Higson, Andrew, ‘The concept of national cinema’, Screen 30/4 (Autumn 1989),
pp. 36–47.
Leach, Jim, Film in Canada (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Lee, Betty, ‘How the taxpayer gets a slice of skin flicks’, The Globe and Mail, 21
September 1970, p. 7. Available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/
uploads/2018/07/Love-in-a-Four-letter-World.-Globe-and-Mail.-1970-09-21.-
How-the-taxpayer-gets-a-slice-of-skin.pdf.
Marshall, Bill, Québec National Cinema (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press,
2001).
Mathijs, Ernest, ‘The making of a cult reputation: topicality and controversy in the
critical reception of Shivers’, in Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lazaro Reboll, Julian
Stringer and Andy Willis (eds), Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of
Oppositional Taste (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp.109–26.
Maulucci, Anthony, ‘Montreal’s Cinepix turns a profit on torture’, The Saturday
Gazette, 16 April 1977, p. 37.
Morris, Peter, ‘After Grierson: The National Film Board 1945–1953’, in Seth Feldman
(ed.), Take Two: A Tribute to Canadian Film (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1984),
pp. 182–95.
Rabid Cinépix marketing materials, available at: https://www.cinepix.ca/wp-content/
uploads/2018/07/Rabid-Milan-Foreign-sales-market-one-sheet-.pdf.
Schubart, Rikke, ‘Hold it! Use it! Abuse it! Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS and male
castration’, in Rikke Schubart and Anne Gjelsvik (eds), Femme Fatalities
Representations of Strong Women in the Media (Göteborg: Nordicom, 2004),
pp. 185–203.
Scott, Jay, ‘Burnout in the great white north’, in Seth Feldman (ed.), Take Two: A
Tribute to Canadian Film (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1984), pp. 29–35.
Totaro, Donato, ‘A “taxing” incentive: the capital cost allowance films’, Off Screen, 12/2
(February 2008). Available at https://offscreen.com/view/a_taxing_incentive
Urquhart, Peter, ‘You should know something – anything – about this movie. You paid
for it’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 12/2 (Fall 2003), pp. 64–80.
Vatnsdal, Caelum, They Came From Within: A History of Canadian Horror (Winnipeg:
Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2004).
Wise, Wyndham, ‘Canadian cinema from boom to bust’, Take One (Winter 1999),
pp. 17–24.
Wright, Ben, ‘Canada’s great shame: tax shelters, nationalism, and popular taste in
Canadian cinema’, Spectator, 32/2 (Fall 2012), pp. 20–5.
8
Shocking Canadian Cinema of the 70s:

An Interview with William Fruet
Xavier Mendik
The work of William Fruet is referenced in two submissions included in this

revised edition of Shocking Cinema of the 70s. Not only does Fruet’s work
feature centrally in Robin Griffiths’ analysis of gender patterns in Death
Weekend, but the production company behind this film is extensively discussed
in my own contribution on the controversial 1970s output of the Montreal-
based production outlet Cinépix Inc. Because of this multiple coverage of
Fruet’s work, it seems more than appropriate to include an interview with the
director in the volume.
Born 1933 in Alberta, he remains one of the true pioneers of 1970s
‘Canuxploitation’ or Canadian cult cinema, as well as being an acclaimed
auteur of more ‘realist’ national cinema entries. Having received formal film
training at the Canadian Theatre School, he first came to public attention as
the writer of Donald Shebib’s gritty drama Goin’ Down the Road (1970). This
feature film followed the bittersweet quest of two drifters moving from the
Maritimes to try to secure a brighter future in the changing Toronto landscape.
Fruet’s script provides not only socio-economic allusion, but also an incisive
gender commentary, which he would more fully explore in his own 1972
directorial debut Wedding in White. This compelling family drama featured an
edgy performance from Carol Keane as a teenage girl who is molested by her
brother’s army friend, only to face the wider injustices of a conceited older
patriarch (Donald Pleasance) who refuses to let the incident of rape ruin the
family’s reputation.
Wedding in White garnered critical acclaim, even winning the Best Canadian
Feature Film award for the year. However, when Fruet transposed a similar
189
thematic of violent male conceit into the realms of genre cinema with Death
Weekend/The House by the Lake (1976), the resulting film provoked controversy
and condemnation. Made in collaboration with the prolific Canadian producers
John Dunning and André Link through their outlet Cinépix Inc., Death Weekend
featured a spirited heroine (played by Brenda Vaccaro), who is forced to use her
intellect and physical prowess to outwit the brutal gang of thugs who invade her
weekend retreat. Although the film’s scenes of violence led to outrage at the time
of its release, this notoriety obscured an intelligent drama from a director who
continued to cast a forensic eye over wider social and sexual traumas with his
later cult entries. For instance, Search and Destroy (1979) fused the topical themes
of returning Vietnam troops within a vigilante narrative, creating a suspenseful
thriller that details a murder spree enacted against alienated army veterans.
With the 1980 production Funeral Home, Fruet adapted contemporary
slasher film tactics to focus more fully on the horror of the ageing female body
in a narrative that featured a killing spree undertaken by the owner of a former
funeral parlor. Although Fruet’s 1982 film Trapped/Baker County USA is often
dismissed as one of the final and most derivative entries in the infamous tax
shelter craze, the film exceeds both Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972), and the
wider ‘hicksploitation’ template with which it has widely been associated.
Instead, Trapped offered some interesting observations on both the structures
of maternal power and the sublimated racial conflicts that exist within such
depicted rural communities. The film was also notable for drawing out a
chilling performance from former Hollywood heavy Henry Silva, who was
cast as the vengeful and duplicitous hillbilly clan leader Henry Chatwill. It was
Fruet’s ability to garner convincing performances from iconic and often
difficult film personalities that was further confirmed by his later 1983
production of Spasms, which ranged cult actors Peter Fonda and Oliver Reed
against a monstrously oversized snake with ESP capabilities.
The decline of the Canadian tax shelter system and the funding streams that
it provided saw Fruet further diversify his productions as the 1980s progressed.
For example, Bedroom Eyes (1984) paired the filmmaker with prolific Canadian
producer Robert Lantos for an erotic thriller that unpacks the masochistic
perils implicit in male voyeurism. Towards the end of the 1980s he turned to
television, further evidencing his ability to adapt and a desire to generate more
mainstream appeal. One of his most impressive achievements here was his
Shocking Canadian Cinema of the 70s 191
teen anthology Goosebumps, which ran to twenty-eight episodes between 1995

and 1998, and was itself the subject of a 2015 Hollywood remake.
In the following interview William Fruet reflects on both the controversies
that surrounded the release of Death Weekend, as well as how his wider output
from this era can be situated within Canada’s shocking decade of cinema.
Xavier Mendik How would you introduce yourself as a film-maker?

William Fruet I was the writer, not the co-writer of Goin’ Down the Road, and
I was the writer/director of Wedding in White, two early films from the seventies.
Why do you think both Goin’ Down the Road and Wedding in White proved so
significant to Canadian cinema culture during the 1970s?
We didn’t have much film here before those two films came out. I think that
probably one of the first commercial features we had was Ivan Reitman’s
Cannibal Girls [1973]. He made it all on his own, and he went to Cannes as I
recall, and he outsold all of the Canadian product. That was a beginning, we
could see that we could possibly have an industry. There were some features
being made, but they didn’t reach any kind of notoriety that I know of. Goin’
Down the Road was a real breakthrough film, I guess a lot of people identified
with it in some way. It was a Canadian story, definitely.
How would you assess your contribution to the production of Goin’ Down
the Road?
Well, first of all I was the writer, I wrote the script, so it’s my script. Don [Shebib]
worked on the story, but he wasn’t a co-writer. I think a lot of people could identify
with that period of time. There were a lot of Maritimers coming here, and Don
and I actually sat down and talked with them. We saw their living conditions, the
kind of things they were going through. These were a lot of the same things I had
gone through. From working in a bottling factory or bowling alley, just to get by
and just to go to school. Because I had come from the west, which was just the
same as coming from the Maritimes, as there was no film-making out west.
How do you think changes to 1970s funding structures impacted on the

productions you were undertaking at that time?
Goin’ Down the Road as you know was made with $80,000 and reversal film, it
was kind of a lark really! Wedding in White was made for $250,000, so you can
see what it is: it’s money. And we had a hard time getting that money. The
Canadian Film Development Council had just arrived, and we had a wonderful
gentleman Michael Spencer at the time who was running it. He was a film man
as I understand it, from the National Film Board. But he was in charge of
things and he made the choices, and then it started, it really started. It was
certainly Michael who was responsible for a lot of it, I think.
Prior to the release of Death Weekend you were seen as one of the new lights in
serious Canadian filmmaking. Do you think your involvement in Death Weekend
damaged your reputation as a serious filmmaker?
Well [laughs], serious film-makers don’t make a lot of money in Canada. I
realized this fairly soon after I made Wedding in White. I got of great reviews, a
lot to be proud of, and I was. But I didn’t have people coming up to me saying
they wanted to make a film like that again. So I decided that I could probably
get a genre film going, or a horror film, as they were starting to come in, and
that was Death Weekend.
How did you come to work with Cinépix on Death Weekend?

Well, Cinépix stepped in and acted as executive producers on Wedding in
White, those were the conditions I got to get to make it. They were very good.
They let me do my thing, and they never interfered at any time. So, it was a very
good experience working with them. I hadn’t started out to make horror films,
but I had to finally make the move. With Death Weekend, I had no money left,
and it was an old script I had put aside. I got it together very quickly. Cinépix
liked it, so I was able to pay the rent!
With Death Weekend you worked with Cinépix head John Dunning. What are
your memories of this collaboration?
I didn’t work a lot with John. It was actually Ivan Reitman who produced the
film hand on hand with me. But the times that I did meet John, I found him a
very humorous man. He saw a lot of fun in things.
What contribution did other Cinépix creatives such as Don Carmody and Jean
LaFleur make to Death Weekend?
Well on that film, Don was a production manager, and as far as I remember he
was always busy, which was a good sign! Jean LaFleur of course edited the film
Figure 8.1 Real life road encounter as fiction: director William Fruet on Death
Weekend.
and I was very impressed because I had come out of editing and had done
some drama. But I thought he was really good. . . and fast.
Death Weekend was apparently based on a real life incident you experienced.
Can you say more about this motivation?
Well, I had started writing this a few years earlier, and then Straw Dogs came
out. And I thought ‘oh-oh, this is very close’ and so I just shelved it. And in
desperation I later went back to it, ripped it down and changed a lot of things,
but kept the essential thing of a woman surviving on her own. I guessed that it
was time for a woman to crawl through the mud and survive through a gritty
experience, just like men had been doing. I think Lipstick (Lamont Johnson,
[1976]) had also just come out, which was another film where a woman took it
upon herself to settle a score, so that shift was coming. How this linked to the
real life incident you brought up is that when I returned to finish the script for
Death Weekend, I remembered an incident that had happened earlier in
Alberta. A friend and I were driving way out in the countryside where you may
not meet another crossroad for miles. And suddenly, along came this souped-
up car beside us, and they started heaving beer bottles at us. So, they were in
front of us and we couldn’t get around them. We finally did, my friend was a
very good driver, and he actually outdid them. But I remembered the incident.
It was quite terrifying because we knew there were no other roads, and if we
turned around they are only going to come back, we are in the middle of no-
where. And I thought, ‘I like this, I am going to recreate this for the beginning
of Death Weekend, but with a woman in the role.’
Cinépix was one of the most prolific proponents of the Canadian tax shelter
system. How important was this funding scheme to productions like Death
Weekend?
At the time it was a gift, we really needed that . . . even though it was really
about tax shelter more than it was about film! People like me wouldn’t have
gotten an opportunity to make films without the fund. We didn’t have producers
that could find the kind of money to finance films without this type of support.
People had to gather their resources together to go into production, and these
little bits of money coming in started the whole thing for people to be able to
make their films.
Coming after the critical acclaim of Wedding in White, it seemed a risky

proposition to undertake Death Weekend.
This was my second film, and I was having a lot of fun, I have to admit,
compared to Wedding in White which is a very sombre thing. I was getting to
play with all the bells and whistles, lots of blood around, and I took advantage
of it, I was learning a lot on this film too. And as far as the rape scenes went, if
people notice I don’t dwell on anything but their faces. There is a rape scene in
Wedding in White, but it’s only on faces. I am not trying to exploit rape. It’s the
result of rape and what causes rape with men. That was the only thing on my
mind with that.
What are your memories of the critical reception of Death Weekend at the time
of its release?
Well, I got a lot of flak for doing Death Weekend after doing Wedding in White.
‘How could you?’ they would say. My reply was ‘To earn a living!’ I quickly
turned to a genre film, though I didn’t see it as a horror film at the time. I was
accused of hating women. That was the analogy of some critic in Ottawa who
runs the film libraries, which of course is ridiculous.
Figure 8.2 Canada’s first action heroine? Brenda Vaccaro in Death Weekend.
Despite the controversy surrounding its scenes of sexual violence, Death Weekend
actually featured one of Canadian cinema’s first action heroines. Would you agree?
I think it was. This girl had to think for herself. She had to do all of the things
that you had only seen men doing up to this point. And that is what really
clicked. I thought ‘This is good, it’s time.’ And it was. The film was very successful.
It’s still a cult film today, and I still get the occasional phone call asking me who
has the rights to Death Weekend as people want to remake it. So, I feel good
about that.
Is the film more about masculine tensions than female victimhood?

Well, we cast her male co-star [Chuck Shamata] as a professional man who was
deliberately taking her out to the country for a weekend of pleasure. She had
misinterpreted the situation and didn’t want to go along with this suggestion
when she got out there. Then the bad guys arrived, and it became a different
story. So, there certainly is a quality of male nervousness and masculinity being
shoved around. The men in the film are creating the conditions of victimization
and end up featuring in this role more prominently.
Figure 8.3 Phallic conflicts: masculine tensions in Death Weekend.
At the time, Death Weekend was seen as a very violent and shocking example of
seventies Canadian cinema.
Most of the films I made at that time had a little more substance to them than
just ‘slice and dice.’ There are some scenes of violence in Death Weekend that
were seen as over the red line at the time. If you wanted to have a specific vision
of a Canadian horror film, that was the closest one I had ever done. It was sort of
a landmark film for the content. Like, you mention rape, you just don’t have
rapes in film at that time. Leslie Halliwell, who every year put out a guide to films
and rated them, actually called Death Weekend pornography, but there’s certainly
nothing pornographic about it. So things were quite a bit different then.
As well as being a controversial film, did Death Weekend prove to be a

difficult shoot?
Well, we had an actress who didn’t want to be in it, after she got in it, that
became a big problem. She had just been nominated for an Academy award
and offered a series and she was asking herself ‘What am I doing in this film?’
It was hard squeezing a performance out of her after that, and we had to work
around her a lot with a double. Fortunately, I had Ivan Reitman at the time
acting as a producer on the set, and Ivan is a real filmmaker, he helped out a lot,
we worked things out together.
Especially under its export title of The House by the Lake, many critics have
submerged Death Weekend into the pre-existing rape and revenge cycle,
initialized by Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972). Did you draw any
inspiration from these American home invasion narratives?
I didn’t set out to make a film about home invasion particularly. I have never
seen The Last House on the Left, I have heard that it is similar to my film,
somewhat. No, my aim specifically was about the female. It was time to put the
female out there and make her a hero, but in a realistic way. So, I think Death
Weekend and the films I was making in the seventies were not sort of copycatting
others. I think some of the home invasion films that were done were using a very
specific kind of formula that had already been trialled a number of times before.
These had been highly successful, so I could understand why they were doing
that. But I don’t think my films were following that formula, I felt mine had a
good decent storyline so that it wasn’t just an excuse to have a bloodbath!
Figure 8.4 Country encounters: tropes of rural depravity in Death Weekend.

Death Weekend also explores themes of rural debasement, especially through

both the antagonists and secondary characters. What interests you about the idea
of rural depravity?
These characters were based upon real characters that I had seen out in the
country. Living in an old streetcar and drinking all day. I actually went out there
with somebody who would look after this gentleman’s property, just like in the
movie. And he would bring them a big gallon of alcohol mixed with juniper berry
or something that would make it taste like gin. And they would get smashed out
of their heads, just like the moonshine drinkers down South. There pretty much
the same kind of characters. This was again a recollection of several years earlier.
At the tail-end of the tax shelter craze you made the killer snake film Spasms
with celebrated cinematographer Mark Irwin. What are your memories of
working with on this production?
Well, he did a great job shooting it. Basically, this was a low budget movie, but
it had a big production look to it, and a lot of that was Mark’s contribution. I
worked with Mark on three films and I can’t say enough good things about
him, he made up for my shortcomings if you will.
You also worked with Mark Irwin on Trapped and Baker County USA , which
very much functions as a Canadian version of Deliverance.
Yes, it just so happens that it was shot exactly where Deliverance was also
filmed. There were actually characters who had been in Deliverance who were
also in our film. We actually built a town within a little trailer camp in the area.
Friday night would be the big church occasion and all the women would get
into their prom dresses that they had saved for all the years, and you would see
them all walking off in a group going to church that night. We were right in the
heart of it! And it did represent what I had earlier seen in Ontario when I first
came here to go to school. And I referred to it earlier, the characters in Death
Weekend, the country folk were also very close to the people you see in Trapped.
Beyond the issue of rural folk, another point of comparison between Death
Weekend and Trapped resides in its representations of female power. I am
thinking of the pivotal figure of Miriam Chatwill (Barbara Gordon) in Trapped,
who acts as a female corrective to the debased male power represented in the film.
Well, that was the script, and I had a very powerful actress and I think what
she represented was quite normal for that situation. She did indeed have
power as she was a sister of the leader. She performed it just as it was written,
she was a strong woman in the community. It made for good drama too.
I thought there were some very good performances in a film that wasn’t much
to begin with.
Having worked so prominently in the Canadian tax shelter system, what features
do you think led to its decline?
I don’t even know when the tax shelter ended, but that money was being
funnelled into construction. That drew a lot of the film finance away. I lost a
film because of that. It looked like we were going to go into production and the
money raiser suddenly turned around and said ‘Oh no, it’s now real estate. We
can make much more money with real estate’. Again, a lot of it was all about the
tax shelter business, what was going on. As a result, I switched to television
quite early on because it gave me a more organized life, and I enjoyed doing it
too. I just wanted to shoot stories.
How should we view the contribution that Cinépix made to Canadian cinema
culture?
I think they made a big, big contribution. I think we owe a big debt to Cinépix
because it was a leader, it took chances, and a lot of people got an opportunity
from them. They made their films very cheaply, but they were people giving
people an opportunity. Again, a lot of the subject matter was questioned too,
but it was a start. It was the start for . . . well, for David Cronenberg. I am a great
student of Mr Cronenberg, I think he is brilliant, the material he’s come up
with. But in those days when we first started up with Cinépix, I saw some
critics try to crucify him and they never should have. This is film!
How do you think contemporary Canadian genre films differ from those made
during the 1970s?
Today I am seeing horror films advertised on television, but they have a lot of
texture and lighting to them. Everything is done on a much larger scale. In
those days, it was more just ‘Get it out, get done fast, don’t fool around with it
because there’s no time and no money to do it.’ So, I guess realism was the most
convenient way to make our point in those stories.
Do you have any final thoughts on the significance of Canada’s contribution to

shocking 1970s cinema?
Well, the seventies were a very special time, no question about it, and I was so
fortunate to be a part of it. A lot of important things happened in cinema, it
wasn’t just horror films, they were only prominent because of the budgets we
could shoot those kinds of productions with. The genre has opened up to
women now here in Canada and there are a lot of female directors. We have
made a lot of strides since the seventies, and I think that some of our cinema
now is second to none. It’s definitely Canadian, but I am happy it stands out
that way.
***
The interview data provided above was derived from the 2020 documentary
production The Quiet Revolution: State, Society and the Canadian Horror Film.
The production and promotional materials from Death Weekend are courtesy
of the Cinépix Inc. estate. I would like to thank Greg Dunning for allowing me
to reproduce them to illustrate this chapter. The image of director William
Fruet is from Xavier Mendik’s 2020 documentary The Quiet Revolution: State,
Society and the Canadian Horror Film.
9
‘You miserable, no good, dirty sons of bitches!’:

Queer(y)ing ‘Canuxploitation’ Revenge
Narratives in the Films of John Dunning
and André Link
Robin Griffiths
The so-called ‘Canuxploitation’ productions of Canadian cinema’s most

notorious ‘odd couple’ – John Dunning and André Link – presented a vision of
1970s Canada that was anathema to the nation-building, egalitarian utopianism
of the era encapsulated by the ‘Just Society’ rhetoric of then Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau. They were films that, at the time, were seen to constitute a
collectively shameful period in the country’s (albeit to date rather uneventful)
production history; because as critic Robert Fulford (writing in the Canadian
broadsheet Saturday Night) bluntly proclaimed in response to the government-
funded Cinépix release of David Cronenberg’s notorious debut feature Shivers
(1975): ‘You should know how bad this film is. After all, you paid for it’.1
However, in more recent attempts to revisit, and in the process to reassess, the
importance of this contentious period in Canadian film history, researchers
such as Paul Corupe have observed that, contrary to such historically negative
perceptions, the Dunning/Link era was, on reflection, an undeniably crucial
period wherein ‘Canada first revealed itself to be an exceptional breeding
ground for innovative, challenging and surprisingly Canadian horror films’.2
In particular, works such as Shivers, William Fruet’s rural revenge thriller
Death Weekend/House by the Lake (1976), and the Dunning-inspired siege
drama Blackout (Eddy Matalon, 1978), emerged as crucial points of reference
in characterizing a nation, and a cinema, struggling to cope with the pervasive
effects of social division, sexism and bigotry at a time of immense cultural and
201
political upheaval. These proffered an interesting insight into archetypical

depictions of postcolonial ‘Canuck’ masculinity that were common to a
number of related English-Canadian films of the tax shelter era.
Moreover, the overly intense obsession with hegemonic masculinity in crisis
that was so characteristic of these films (despite being resolutely heterosexist in
intent), in retrospect lends itself quite readily to the subversive re-imaginings of
the contemporary queer screen theorist. For as a number of recent studies3
have demonstrated, a nostalgic turn to the past can function as a particularly
useful critical tool for dismantling the construction of cultural memory and
representation through film that has consistently disavowed more alternative
(or ‘problematic’) readings and/or manifestations of identity. This chapter will,
therefore, critically ‘re-view’ these key representational texts of 1970s
Canuxploitation cinema, in order to explore the transgressive potential they
still hold as subversive ‘polaroids’ of a much broader ‘zone of trouble and
definitional crisis’.4 As queer film historians like Thomas Waugh contend,
Canadian cinema is, to all intents and purposes, already queerly-inflected due
to its marginal status both at home and abroad. Its apparent lack of a significant
commercial production history and, accordingly, lack of uniquely English-
Canadian forms of cinematic cultural representation, thus position it as already
outside the prescriptive imaginary norms of the industrial mainstream. For
that reason, it is continually receptive to what Waugh terms the ‘romantic
possibilities of transgression’.5 In fact, the symptomatic queerness that
identifiably circulates around those shifting and anxious forms of masculinity
that emerge in Canadian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s has, to a certain extent,
helped to shape a number of public discourses around the intersections of
gender, sexuality, nationhood and more troublesome configurations of Canuck
identity. Because as Waugh maintains, it is those local and more regional forms
of Canadian cinema (and, in particular, low-budget genre film-making that
was deliberately designed to exploit the fears and desires of its audiences) that
have engaged more queerly with the complexities of identity than have the big
budget imports of the North American mainstream. The Canuxploitation
canon’s propensity for constructing narratives that expound the more
transgressive realms of the national body has thus functioned as a far more
productive means for shaping the social imaginary. And it has thereby
articulated the fundamental in-between-ness that characterizes the psychological
‘You miserable, no good, dirty sons of bitches!’ 203
configuration of English-Canadian subjectivity, or in Waugh’s view, the innate

queerness of the Canadian nation.
‘Is there something wrong with my driving?’
Initially co-founded at a time of intense social, cultural and political

transformation for the region as a result of the so-called ‘Quiet Revolution’ of
Jean Lesage’s reformist Liberal government, the Montreal-based Cinépix Film
Properties as it was then known (later sold to the US-based Lions Gate
Entertainment Group in 1997 and renamed ‘Lionsgate Films’) was at the outset
renowned – rather salaciously – as Canada’s leading producer of ‘maple syrup
porn’. The establishment of the Canadian Film Development Corporation in
1968 (now Telefilm Canada), with a remit to create an internationally-
recognized feature film industry for Canada, had seen many ‘B’ movie
distributors of the era (such as Astral or Quadrant) start to expand their
operations to include film production. And the unprecedented domestic
success of Cinépix’s inaugural release, the seminal sexploitation classic Valérie
(Denis Héroux, 1969), from a story idea by Dunning about religious repression
and sexual awakening, quickly established the duo as ‘the most prominent
Canadian movie moguls most people had never heard of ’.6 And, more
importantly, it provided an invaluable platform for the subsequent careers of
Canuxploitation cinema’s most notorious enfants terribles, William Fruet and
David Cronenberg (of whom Cronenberg is reported to have exclaimed that
they were ‘the unacknowledged godfather[s] of an entire generation of
Canadian filmmakers . . . Cinépix [was] my film school’). The indiscriminate
production boom of the tax shelter period of the mid-1970s to early 1980s (the
result of an initial loophole that enabled a 100 per cent capital cost allowance
write-off on all Canadian film investment) may have, in hindsight, represented
what Fruet himself describes as a ‘deeply ignoble’ time in Canadian film history
in which ‘everybody was making films of every piece of junk that got rejected
in the United States’.7 However, it was also an era which produced a significant
canon that had considerable purchase on the collective Canuck imagination.
And more importantly, it mapped out an unquestionably ‘alternative’
historiography of cinema in Canada.
In fact, Fruet’s 1976 rural revenge thriller Death Weekend raises some
interesting questions about 1970s masculinity and identity when re-viewed
through a decidedly queer lens. Because in spite of its initial dismissal as an
inferior rip-off of earlier US home invasion thrillers like Straw Dogs (Sam
Peckinpah, 1971) and The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972), the
Dunning/Link-produced film (in collaboration with the latest additions to the
Cinépix family, Ivan Reitman and Don Carmody) not only became an
influential precursor to such definitive US rape-revenge shockers as I Spit on
Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978), but, more importantly, as Corupe insists, it
was ‘uniquely Canadian’ in terms of how it articulated the nuanced complexities
underpinning notions of gender, sexuality and class at the time.8 Recounting
the harrowing story of an affluent young urban heterosexual couple who are
terrorized by a gang of local louts while on a weekend vacation in rural Ontario,
the film was inspired by an incident that Fruet had himself experienced a
number of years earlier while out driving in the backwoods of Alberta with a
Figure 9.1 The embodiment of ‘monstrous masculinity’: Don Stroud as archetypical

‘brute’ Lep in William Fruet’s Death Weekend.
friend, when a gang of youths had attempted to run them both off the road. A
frightening event that, according to film historian Caelum Vatnsdal, left Fruet
pondering, with a rather surprising post-Deliverance naiveté, ‘what might have
happened if he’d been with a woman and the rednecks had caught them’.9 But
while Death Weekend epitomized many of the tropes associated with the rape-
revenge subgenre, on closer inspection the film presents a much queerer
meditation on the theme of ‘monstrous masculinity’ that was such a cornerstone
of many exploitation narratives of the era. Its fixation with the disturbing
possibilities of more ‘deviant’ configurations of gender and with a
contemporaneous homosocial fear of/acquiescence to effeminization, in
particular, emerged as an identifiably unique focus for Fruet’s cinematic
treatise on 1970s ‘Canuck’ male identity.
In fact, the film features a number of representational archetypes previously
identified by critic Robert Fothergill in his contentious, yet oft-cited, essay,
‘Being Canadian means always having to say you’re sorry: The dream-life of a
younger brother’.10 In what was essentially a rather sweeping critical lament on
the ‘radical inadequacy’ of on-screen portrayals of masculinity in English-
Canadian narrative cinema (which, in his view, was indicative of the nation’s
much broader sense of cultural emasculation or ‘lack’), Fothergill was able to
detect three distinct (and rather derogatory) representational categories that
were identifiable across a number of key home-grown films of the period,
including Fruet’s earlier critically acclaimed collaboration with iconic film-
maker Don Shebib, Goin’ Down the Road (1970). These were what he termed
the bully, the coward and the clown. This so-called ‘loser paradigm’ was, as
Fothergill explained, part of an all-encompassing inferiority complex, or
‘younger brother syndrome’, in which the low self-image that Canada (and
Canadian cinema more specifically) seemingly had of itself – and which was
synonymously mirrored by these consistently negative onscreen male
representations – was the psychosomatic product of being long overshadowed
by a greatly superior older sibling just south of the border, by comparison with
whom Canada was always seen to be significantly lacking. Nevertheless, what
was unique to Death Weekend’s take on this psychological configuration of
internalized masculine identity crisis was the more fluid and nihilistic level of
sadistic violence and destruction of which these men were capable in the film,
and which, more significantly, went beyond anything that had been previously
seen in Canadian cinema. It thereby constituted a stark departure from

Fothergill’s more measured model, to which Fruet had seemingly appended a
fourth, and much more extreme, version of the established bully archetype:
namely what Corupe terms the hyper-violent brute.11 But while this subversive
new brute archetype functioned as an effective cipher for Fruet’s vision of the
gender, class and rural/urban divisions and disparities that so sharply
characterized 1970s Canada, the one archetype conspicuously missing from
this model was that of the ‘queer’. This Canadian archetype of polymorphously
perverse masculinity didn’t really appear in more concrete terms cinematically
until the so-called ‘perversion chic’ era of the 1990s, in which the rediscovery
of the male body’s erotic potential in films such as Cronenberg’s Crash (1996),
for example, was transgressively merged with a ‘simultaneous rethinking of
once taken-for-granted ideas about what it means to “be a man” ’.12 However, in
Death Weekend it is an invisible yet pervasive presence that inevitably haunts
such homosocial displays of inherently conflicted masculinity, and it is
especially evident in relation to the film’s two primary character archetypes:
the coward as manifested in the form of wealthy urbanite Harry (Chuck
Shamata), and the brute as epitomized by local redneck Lep (Don Stroud).
Because, in spite of the ugly misogyny and violent abuse meted out to Diane
(Brenda Vaccaro), the only female member of the rather hysterical male
universe that Fruet depicts, the principal focus of the film’s prolonged set-piece
of torture, humiliation and metaphorical rape (in stark contrast to the later I
Spit on Your Grave) is Harry himself.
The countryside, as always, functions as both a setting and a character
within the rural revenge scenario, inevitably shifting from benign pastoral
backdrop to isolated space of ever-present threat. Its geographical remoteness
and sparsely populated, economically-deprived backwoods communities thus
convey a metaphorical social wilderness that typically exploits sub/urban fears
of the unruly provincial dangers lurking beyond middle-class control. Within
such contexts, the ‘base physicality’ of the rural redneck is consistently
positioned, by virtue of his class status, geographical location and resistance to
sub/urban values, as ‘outside of middle class social and sexual constraints’.13 He
exists not only beyond the regulatory force of heteronormative values and
capitalism in such narratives of rural otherness, but also embodies a fluidly
performative machismo that can, without such constraints, manifest both
violent and deviant desire – therefore representing the fantasies and nightmares
of the sub/urban imaginary. Furthermore, theorists such as John Moran
propose that the hyper-masculinity of the redneck male ‘is itself “queer” and
non-normative’ by nature of both its defiantly non-conformist, marginalized
social standing and its animalistic excess.14 The ‘deviant redneck’ was, therefore,
a typical antagonistic mainstay of many rural/urban exploitation films of the
1970s, in order, as Alexandra Heller-Nicholas argues, to ‘expose the problematic
mechanics of masculinity that seeks to privilege urban, middle-class white
men by Othering women and the lower class through a language of sexual
violence’.15 However, the binary tensions underlying such representations of
hegemonic masculine crisis and threat were markedly different when played
out within Canuxploitation rural revenge narratives. This was because, unlike
the nameless and one-dimensional violent rednecks that populated US hillbilly
horror films such as Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972) or I Spit on Your Grave,
the Canuck rednecks of films like Death Weekend were, by contrast, noticeably
more complexly configured. As Corupe16 explains, what makes these films
distinctive is the fact that they were ‘more character and story focused than
their American counterparts’, and by drawing influence from Canadian social
documentaries of the 1950s, they ‘present[ed] concepts of individuality,
community and morality’ that are far more revealing of ‘how Canadians
interpret themselves’, functioning as quite deliberate attempts to distance
themselves from American popular representations. Lep’s hyper-masculine
and phallocentric male persona, with its associated misogyny and general
aggression towards women and others beyond his social class (ably embodied
by macho 1970s icon Stroud), no doubt typifies many of the tropes associated
with the cinematic redneck archetype. But as a product of the so-called ‘loser
paradigm’, his characteristically Canadian sense of heightened inferiority and
association with a fundamentally feminine rural sphere simultaneously
emasculate him and reveal an underlying sense of internal conflict and
impotence. In fact, cultural analysts such as Janice Kaye have argued that
Canadian cinema’s cultural roots in the iconic North Woods melodramas of
the past (with their overly masculine preponderance of rugged Mounties and
rural lumberjacks who function as the stereotypical embodiment of everything
Canadian) have led Canuck film-makers to become, more than most,
‘historically and culturally preoccupied with the landscape as an important
psychic symbol of its identity’.17 As a result, this has displaced its central
characters into a distinct feminine/masculine and nature/culture set of
binaries. In such filmic constructions, the rural male antagonist is more often
than not ‘allied with the female space, that is the rural environment/community
of which they are a part’ – and he is ‘thereby feminized’.18 These characters
therefore exhibit a fundamental lack, and, as a result, their position in the
stable binary systems of female/male, nature/culture and, inevitably,
homosexual/heterosexual, hence becomes much more problematic. This is
because, as Jan Peterson Roddy explains, ‘the words “country” and “queer” used
in conjunction identify a territory of otherness where individual and collective
identity, based on class, gender, sexuality, race, geographic region, and
relationship to modernity is contested or at lease complicated’.19
This is a condition highlighted in extremis in Death Weekend, when Lep
finally gets an opportunity to teach Diane a lesson by ‘ramming that super-
charger up her ass’ in return for the earlier humiliation she caused him by
running his phallic ‘muscle-car’ off the road. But what should have been a
violent scenario of enforced masculine dominance that typified the 1970s
rape-revenge narrative takes a rather unexpected turn when Lep finds, to his
horror, that he is unable to ‘perform’ after Diane (realizing that Lep is aroused
only by her fear and resistance) decides to stop fighting his sexual advances
and instead to comply with his ‘view of women as passive creatures that must
be dominated’.20 This is an unexpected turn of events that serves to draw
attention to his underlying impotence and apparent inability to engage in a
relationship with a woman; as a result, this triggers a fluid shift in his obsessive
and resentful sexual fury away from the more threatening Diane and onto the
similarly feminized Harry (perhaps recognizing something of himself in the
queerly impotent urbanite). The subsequent scene of humiliation and abuse
to which Harry is thus subjected by Lep and the ‘bunch of animals’ that
constitute his gang, during which they not only taunt him about his own
apparent sexual ‘lack’ but systematically set out to destroy all of his material
possessions – the symbolic trappings of his status and class identity – as he
helplessly looks on, therefore acts as a metaphorical substitute for the spectacle
of Diane’s public humiliation and rape that Lep’s apparent impotence failed to
deliver earlier.
The scene reaches its similarly metaphorical climax when Lep kills Harry by
‘shooting a load’ into his back (after forcing the archetypical ‘coward’ to flee for
his life) in what amounts to an unexpectedly suggestive act of enforced
masculine dominance and submission, after which a now satisfied Lep lights up
a cigarette in a symbolic moment of post-coital bliss (having seemingly ‘rammed
it up’ poor Harry’s ass instead). The use of violence and degradation to gain
control over women that was such a key aspect of the rape-revenge film is thus
queered by its redeployment to a feminized male substitute. In spite of the film
concentrating on exploring Diane’s struggle for survival as she fights back
against her aggressors following her own rather awkwardly configured sexual
assault, she is in many ways the least developed character because as, Corupe
observes: ‘Although Diane is a strong, proactive character, more of the script is
devoted to developing and clarifying Lep and Harry’s motivations’ than hers.21
And unlike later rape-revenge films that go to great lengths to align us with the
perspective of the female victim, Fruet instead ‘pulls the camera away from the
supposed protagonist, Diane, to tell the story from the male character’s
perspective’ and thereby forces the audience ‘to identify with [their] impotence’
in what Fothergill22 had already established as a common ‘Canadian’ approach.
Death Weekend, therefore, takes the well-established gender tropes of the genre
and queerly ‘reframes’ them in a way not previously seen in Canadian film. It
thus bears out Judith Butler’s point that hyper-masculine forms of gender
identity and sexuality reveal much ‘about the fantasies that a fearful heterosexual
culture produces to defend against its own homosexual possibilities’.23
In many ways, the materialistic Harry, who exclaims that he wants ‘the
biggest and the best of everything’, including the interchangeable trophy
girlfriends he wishes to possess, represents the stereotypically feminized nature
of modern urban middle-class masculinity that was typical of a number of
‘Canuxploitation’ films of the era. This was an archetype that was effectively
personified in Shivers by the ‘effete’ tones of Ronald Merrick (played by openly
gay actor Ronald Mlodzik), the obsequious manager of the eponymous
Starliner Tower Apartments, whose narration on the benefits of ‘exclusive
urban living’ accompanies the film’s opening title sequence. The suggestive
queerness of such urban male identity was a typical device in these narratives,
which was used to play upon the inherent class/identity conflicts, bigotries and
resentments underpinning the rural/urban polarity of the genre, or, as Carol J.

Clover puts it, ‘the confrontation between haves and have-nots’.24 More
problematically, however, it functioned as representational shorthand that was
most visibly manifest in the ‘authentic’ and ‘deviant’ dichotomies and rankings
of masculinity that these films characteristically presented.
In fact, Cronenberg’s highly controversial earlier film (once again a Dunning/
Link/Reitman/Carmody co-production), was a much more transgressive
exploration of 1970s notions of gender and identity than Fruet’s Death Weekend,
and quickly became a symbol of everything that was perceived to be wrong
with this new Canadian popular film industry. For its body horror qualities
allowed for a greater emphasis on the instabilities of our most intimate
structures: identity and agency, with the transgressive urban male body itself
functioning as the metaphor par excellence for an increasingly consumption-
driven middle-class Canada of the 1970s. As Scott Wilson put it: ‘It is a nexus
point at which the disciplinary activities of society [and masculine identity]
intersect and are played out’.25 The invasive, deliberately phallic parasite enters,
and thus feminizes, the male body by disrupting the ‘sacred’ borders of
heteronormative male subjectivity. As a consequence, it produces a dangerous
and relentless form of queer desire in its upwardly mobile urbanite hosts
(symbols of ordered normality that have become ‘perverted’, irrespective of
gender or sexual orientation) that metaphorically exploits similar social fears
about the threat posed by more modern notions of gender and sexual identity
in the increasingly liberal political climate that was characteristic of 1970s
‘Trudeau-mania’.
But rather than exploit the concomitant class conflicts that were so ubiquitous
in the rural revenge genre, Cronenberg instead reconfigures the gendered body
as ‘the visible representation of the social disciplinary order of which Starliner
Towers is a microcosm’, and the film’s subsequent movement from the ‘orderly’
to ‘transgressive’ male body ‘plays out as social disruption’,26 thus enabling
Cronenberg to illustrate the arbitrary nature of such disciplinary controls and
restrictions on identity. His aim with Shivers was, therefore, in a surprising
foreshadowing of 1990s queer theory, to reveal that ‘we are part of a culture, we
are part of an ethical and moral system, but all we have to do is take one step
outside it and we see that none of it is absolute . . . It’s only a human construct,
very definitely able to change and susceptible to change and rethinking’.27
‘The night the power failed’
It is this fear of change, and its attendant instabilities of social status, identity
and morality that, therefore, underpins both the body horror and rural revenge
subgenres of 1970s Canuxploitation cinema. And it is a pervasive narrative
motif in John Dunning’s subsequent siege drama, Blackout, which in effect
combined a number of key tropes from both Fruet’s and Cronenberg’s
formative texts in order to construct a thematic hybrid, in that while it
transposed the ethos of the rural-revenge narrative to the laissez-faire environs
of a cosmopolitan New York apartment complex, it still embodied the same
divisive social binaries and configurations of deviant masculinity of ‘le
condition canadien’ that were so typical of earlier Cinépix cinema. Inspired by
the real life blackout that had affected the city the previous year, with its
inevitable lawlessness and social disorder, this Dunning/Link/Reitman/
Carmody-produced film (from an original story idea by Dunning himself)
explores the fictional aftermath of a similar climactic event wherein a city-
wide electrical failure enables an assorted gang of ‘weirdos, loonies and rapists’
that have escaped from a prison transport van to terrorize the middle-class
sub/urban residents of a New York City apartment complex (with the urban
sprawl of Montreal masquerading as 1970s Manhattan).
Loss of power, both literally and figuratively, is inevitably a central theme of
Dunning’s story, as the gang, led by a sociopathic anti-corporate terrorist with
‘Daddy issues’ called Christie (Robert Carradine) and a pony-tailed so-called
‘fruit’ named Chico (played with a similarly ‘camp’ sensibility to that of his
earlier performance as redneck gang member Stanley in Death Weekend by
Canadian actor Don Granberry) capitalize on the criminal opportunities that
the blackout has facilitated. Meanwhile, the authorities desperately scramble to
restore power. However, in a similar vein to the feminized country rednecks of
the rural revenge film, Christie’s gang is likewise ‘queered’ by the nature of their
criminal class status outside the values of normative middle-class society,
which also manifests itself in an obsessive drive to dismantle or subvert
corrupt(ed) forms of paternal-masculine power, identity and authority. But in
contrast to Death Weekend, Christie’s implicit middle-class origins position
him on the opposing side of a quite distinct body/intellect binary, since his
physical inferiority to Lep’s brutish excess of masculinity forces him to rely
upon his twisted ability to manipulate the lower-class members of his gang
into submitting to becoming the substitute muscle that he needs to achieve his
subversive aims. Christie and his gang have emerged from an exterior urban
space that is now characterized by moral fluidity and social chaos as a result of
the blackout, and therefore pose an invasive threat to the ordered interior
hierarchies that the apartment complex now comes to represent as a result of
the reconfigured outside/inside (as opposed to country/city) binary that these
events have imposed. The building is populated by a generally white assortment
of wealthy middle-class Jews, homosexuals and elderly celebrities (played by
an array of regular Cinépix supporting actors), who are of course meant to
represent a similar microcosm of urban high society to the inhabitants of
Shivers’s phallocentric Starliner Towers, with Christie’s socially disaffected
gang of ‘deviants’ to all intents and purposes mirroring the invasive parasites in
Cronenberg’s film as they menacingly and methodically infiltrate the
apartments on each level of the isolated building. Rather tellingly, however, the
first victims of the gang are a stereotypically effeminate, cross-dressing gay
couple, who, after salaciously pondering what exciting effect the blackout may
have had on their local bathhouse, are mockingly forced (back) into a closet by
the gang as they proceed to ransack their gaudily decorated home. And like the
‘effete’ persona of Ronald Merrick that frames the image of modern feminized
urban modernity in Shivers, the introduction at the outset of such gay
stereotypes performs a similar function in terms of establishing the underlying
‘deviance’ of the interior spaces of the urban building and thereby frames the
rather problematic politics of gender and sexuality that these narratives
covertly address.
Christie’s real motives for the siege, in fact, start to surface when the gang
subsequently encounters another queerly suggestive character in the form of
lonely ‘bachelor’ Henri (played by iconic French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont), an
ageing celebrity magician who desperately surrounds himself with the dusty
memorabilia of his past. He is the first true victim of Christie’s desire to punish
these privileged, feminized men for the alleged crimes of his own abusive
father, who he reveals was ‘an exploiter too . . . except he specialised in people’.
The plan to rob the wealthy inhabitants of the apartment block is, of course,
merely a pretext, as Christie instead exploits the powerlessness of their situation
in order to enact his own brand of violent justice and retribution for what
these men for him represent. For example, after randomly switching off the life
support machine of one elderly male resident, he exclaims that he’s the one
who gets to decide who breathes or not. The socially disruptive chaos of the
blackout scenario thus functions as the perfect opportunity for the film to
address the same thematic tropes of class, gender and crisis explored by earlier
1970s Canuxploitation cinema. These reach their narrative apotheosis in
Blackout when Christie and his gang force their way into the antique-adorned
abode of wealthy art dealer Richard Stafford, played with typically defiant
patriarchal arrogance by screen legend Ray Milland. The ‘miserable, no good,
dirty sons of bitches’, as he refers to them, subsequently subject him to the
same humiliation and metaphorical rape that Harry suffered in Death Weekend.
And in a scene that even more clearly recalls Fruet’s film, particularly given
Don Granberry’s camply maniacal participation in both films, Stafford’s
feminine materialism is revealed as his true weakness. This is because while
earlier threats of torture and violence aimed at his long-suffering wife had
failed, he finally submits to the demands of the gang to give them the
combination of his safe after Christie threatens to destroy the one thing that is
clearly of more value to him: a rare Picasso painting. It is a moment that
references Lep’s taunting of Harry in Death Weekend for caring more about his
material possessions and ‘crap house’ than he does for Diane’s wellbeing, and
which subsequently triggers the same destruction of such feminized
configurations of masculinity when the gang, much to Stafford’s dismay,
destroy the painting and set about his apartment in a mindless spree of
vandalism and arson as he (like Harry) is forced to look on powerlessly.
In a similar vein, then, to Fredric Jameson’s analysis28 of 1970s American
conspiracy cinema, the films in the Cinépix canon likewise function as
‘cognitive maps’ that delineate the anxieties, paranoias and fantasies of
Canadian society at a time of immense socio-political change as a result of the
transition to Trudeau-era neoliberalism. But the conflicted, deviant antagonists
of Death Weekend and Blackout were also, in many respects, symbols of a much
more pervasive under-culture that was resolutely resistant to the break from
traditionalist values, social hierarchies and identities that characterized the
1970s more broadly beyond national borders. Lep, Christie and their respective
redneck gangs inevitably pay with their lives for such violent social non-
conformity, but unlike those imbricated moments of self-realization that were
characteristic of US rape-revenge narratives (where the antagonists are very

much aware that they are paying the price for what they have done), these
Canuck men in the end ‘die without ever fully realizing the error of their
ways’.29 For there are no easy solutions offered within these narratives to the
general social malaise that characterized the ‘alternative’ picture of 1970s
Canada that the Canuxploitation oeuvre problematically presents. But what is
crucial in terms of these films’ importance to the history of Canadian cinema
(in contrast to popular opinion concerning the value of these government-
funded pieces of commercial ‘trash’) is that, as Corupe concludes, they
demonstrate that ‘it is possible to reflect nationalist themes in a genre film
context’.30 And by drawing upon the very real discourses of alienation and
identity that underlie the overt violence and low-budget exploitation aesthetics
which characterized this ‘quintessentially Canadian’ zeitgeist, these Dunning/
Link-produced films collectively constitute an invaluable repository of
Canadian culture, cinema and identity at a time of immense transformation,
the implications of which thus extend well beyond the confines of the texts
themselves. These are films that embody a space of indeterminacy that is
simultaneously normative and transgressive, inside and outside, centre and
periphery. In short, they were scandalous by dint of their very ‘in-between-
ness’ as embodiments of the many contradictions and paradoxes that exist
at the heart of normative national narratives and identities. And thereby
they inscribe a sense of transgression that once again brings us back to
the view that, as Thomas Waugh maintains, Canada is a very ‘queer’ nation
indeed.
Notes
1 Robert Fulford, ‘You should know how bad this film is. After all, you paid for it’,
Saturday Night, September 1975, p. 83.
2 Paul Corupe, ‘(Who’s in the) driver’s seat: the Canadian brute unleashed in Death
Terror of the Soul (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), p. 91.
3 For example, Gilad Padva, Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tamara de Szegheo Lang, ‘The demand
to progress: critical nostalgia in LGBTQ cultural memory’, Journal of Lesbian
Studies, 19/2 (2015), pp. 230–48.
4 Thomas Waugh, The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities,

Nations, Cinemas (Montréal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006), p. 9.
5 Ibid.
6 Bill Brownstein, ‘John Dunning, champion of the Canadian film industry, dead at
84’, National Post, 27 September 2011. Available at http://news.nationalpost.com/
arts/greg-dunning-champion-of-the-canadian-film-industry-dead-at-84.
7 Caelum Vatnsdal, They Came from Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema
(Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2014), p. 119.
8 Corupe, ‘(Who’s in the) driver’s seat’, p. 102.
9 Vatnsdal, They Came from Within, p. 110.
10 Robert Fothergill, ‘Being Canadian means always having to say you’re sorry: the
dream-life of a younger brother’, originally published in 1973, reprinted as
‘Coward, bully, or clown: the dream-life of a younger brother’, in Seth Feldman and
Joyce Nelson (eds), Canadian Film Reader (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Ltd,
1977), pp. 234–50.
11 Corupe, ‘(Who’s in the) driver’s seat’.
12 Lee Parpart, ‘Cowards, bullies, and cadavers: feminist re-mappings of the passive
male body in English-Canadian and Quebecois cinema’, in Kay Armatage, Kass
Banning, Brenda Longfellow and Janine Marchessault (eds), Gendering the Nation:
Canadian Women’s Cinema (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), p. 268.
13 J.W. Williamson, cited in Jan Peterson Roddy, ‘Country-queer: reading and
rewriting sexuality in representations of the hillbilly’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke and
Luisa Orza (eds), Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), p. 53.
14 John Moran, ‘ “Queer rednecks”: Padgett Powell’s manly South’, Southern Cultures,
22/3 (Fall 2016), p. 95.
15 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (Jefferson NC:
McFarland and Company, 2011), p. 53.
16 Paul Corupe, Canuxploitation, ‘Canuxploitation: the primer’ (1999). Available at
http://www.canuxploitation.com/article/primer.html.
17 Janice Kaye, ‘Perfectly Normal, eh?: gender transformation and national identity in
Canada’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 3/2 (1994), p. 69.
18 Ibid., p. 66.
19 Jan Peterson Roddy, ‘Country-queer: reading and rewriting sexuality in
representations of the hillbilly’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (eds),
Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008),
p. 37.
21 Ibid., p. 104.
22 Fothergill, ‘Being Canadian’.

23 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London:
Routledge, 1990), p. 87.
24 Carol J. Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 126.
25 Scott Wilson, The Politics of Insects: David Cronenberg’s Cinema of Confrontation
(New York: Continuum, 2011), p. 40.
26 Ibid.
27 Cronenberg quoted in ibid., p. 41.
28 Fredric Jameson, ‘Cognitive mapping’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg
(eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 1988), pp. 347–57.
30 Ibid., p. 107.
Bibliography
Brownstein, Bill, ‘John Dunning, champion of the Canadian film industry, dead at 84’,
National Post, 27 September 2011. Available at http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/
greg-dunning-champion-of-the-canadian-film-industry-dead-at-84.
Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London:
Routledge, 1990).
Clover, Carol J., Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film,
Corupe, Paul, Canuxploitation, ‘Canuxploitation: the primer’ (1999). Available at
http://www.canuxploitation.com/article/primer.html.
Corupe, Paul, ‘(Who’s in the) driver’s seat: the Canadian brute unleashed in Death
Terror of the Soul (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 91–107.
Feldman, Seth and Nelson, Joyce (eds), Canadian Film Reader (Toronto: Peter Martin
Associates Ltd, 1977).
Fothergill, Robert, ‘Being Canadian means always having to say you’re sorry: the
dream-life of a younger brother’, originally published in 1973, reprinted as
‘Coward, bully, or clown: the dream-life of a younger brother’, in Seth Feldman and
Joyce Nelson (eds), Canadian Film Reader (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Ltd,
1977), pp. 234–50.
Freitag, Gina and Loiselle, André (eds), The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).
Fulford, Robert, ‘You should know how bad this film is. After all, you paid for it’,
Saturday Night, September 1975, p. 83.
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra, Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (Jefferson NC :
McFarland and Company, 2011).
Jameson, Fredric, ‘Cognitive mapping’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds),
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, IL : University of Illinois Press,
1988), pp. 347–57.
Kaye, Janice, ‘Perfectly Normal, eh?: gender transformation and national identity in
Canada’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 3/2 (1994), pp. 63–80.
Lang, Tamara de Szegheo, ‘The demand to progress: critical nostalgia in LGBTQ
cultural memory’, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 19/2 (2015), pp. 230–48.
Moran, John, ‘ “Queer rednecks”: Padgett Powell’s manly South’, Southern Cultures,
22/3 (Fall 2016), pp. 95–122.
Ogonoski, Matthew, ‘Queering the heterosexual male in Canadian cinema: an analysis
of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo’, Synoptique: The Journal of Film and Film Studies,
(13), February 2009. Available at http://www.synoptique.ca/core/articles/
ogonoski_leolo/.
Padva, Gilad, Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014).
Parpart, Lee, ‘Cowards, bullies, and cadavers: feminist re-mappings of the passive
male body in English-Canadian and Québecois cinema’, in Kay Armatage, Kass
Banning, Brenda Longfellow and Janine Marchessault (eds), Gendering the Nation:
Canadian Women’s Cinema (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999),
pp. 253–73.
Roddy, Jan Peterson, ‘Country-queer: reading and rewriting sexuality in
representations of the hillbilly’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (eds),
Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008),
pp. 37–52.
Vatnsdal, Caelum, They Came from Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema
(Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2014).
Waugh, Thomas, The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities,
Nations, Cinemas (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006).
Wilson, Scott, The Politics of Insects: David Cronenberg’s Cinema of Confrontation,
New York: Continuum, 2011).
218
Part Four
Family-sploitation and Threats to

the Family
219
220
10
Family Entertainment: Psychotic Slaughter in

the 1970s Charles Manson Movies
Bill Osgerby
Screening ‘human garbage’
Released in 1970 and with a promotional tag-line that promised ‘Human

Garbage – In the Sickest Love Parties!’ Satan’s Sadists was a career highpoint for
schlock-movie master Al Adamson.1 Producer/director Adamson’s tale of an
unremittingly malevolent motorcycle gang who leave a trail of rape and murder
through the Mojave Desert was, in many respects, typical of the slew of low
budget and gratuitously violent movies depicting the exploits of marauding
bikers that had been a staple of the grindhouse circuit since the mid-1960s. But
Satan’s Sadists added something new to the stock biker movie mayhem.
Adamson’s gang were hardly typical hoodlums. Tripping on acid and with a
boundless thirst for brutality, they were altogether more nasty. And the evil was
made all the more unsettling because Adamson’s characters had a clear affinity
with reality. With its portrayal of a charismatic but deranged leader directing a
gang of homicidal pseudo-hippies, Satan’s Sadists had unmistakeable parallels
with Charles Manson and his feral band of followers, the ‘Family’.
The depraved character of their murders, combined with the celebrity of their
victims and their own perverse worldview, ensured the Manson Family were a
major news story throughout the 1970s. From their arrest in 1969, through to
their conviction in 1971, and beyond, Manson and his cult were the focus for a
torrent of books, magazine features and television documentaries. A stream of
movies also followed. Films such as The Other Side of Madness (Frank Howard,
1971), Manson (Robert Hendrickson/Laurence Merrick, 1973) and Helter Skelter
(Tom Gries, 1976) directly represented the Manson crimes, but many more were
221
clearly inspired by the Family’s butchery. Alongside Satan’s Sadists there came,
for example, Gabrielle (Arlo Shiffen, 1970), I Drink Your Blood (David Durston,
1970), Sign of Aquarius (Robert Emery, 1970), Sweet Savior (Robert Roberts,
1971), The Night God Screamed (Lee Madden, 1971), Deathmaster (Ray Danton,
1972) and, most infamously, Snuff (Michael Findlay/Roberta Findlay, 1976).
To understand the proliferation of Family films during the 1970s demands
attention to both the historical context and the economic circumstances in
which they were produced. In historical terms, Manson and his acolytes
enthralled the media because their character and crimes captured the mood of
the times. They seemed to epitomize the downfall of the 1960s counterculture,
capturing the moment the sun set on the Summer of Love and the carefree hippy
scene turned sour and seedy. More than this, though, the Manson cult was the
object of media fascination because it served as a symbolic focus for a broader
climate of unease. Configured by the media as America’s ultimate bogeyman,
Manson was projected as the embodiment of evils that seemed to threaten the
fabric of the nation as the US faced convulsive social and cultural transformations.
But Manson’s screen success was also indebted to changes in the American
film industry. The grisly nature of the Family’s crimes made them ideal subject-
matter for film-makers who, through the relaxation of censorship, were newly
able to push back traditional boundaries of taste. And, in doing so, many – like
Al Adamson – had an ambivalent relationship with the media furore
surrounding the Family. Superficially, many of the Manson movies echoed the
general disgust at the killers’ appalling crimes. But, at the same time, they also
revelled in the spectacle of the Manson murders and the circus of outrage that
surrounded them. In this relish for the grotesque and the marginal, the 1970s
Manson movies harked back to the carnivalesque aesthetics of classic
exploitation films of the 1930s. Like classic exploitation cinema, the 1970s
Manson movies savoured tweaking the tail of conservative sensibilities by
delighting in all that was shocking, liminal and taboo.
Helter Skelter
The story of Charles Manson has become the stuff of popular mythology. A
drifter and petty criminal, Manson rolled up in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco’s
Family Entertainment 223
countercultural epicentre, in 1967. Touting himself as a hippy guru, he began

picking up a following of young drop-outs with a philosophy that cast his
hangers-on as a reincarnation of the original Christians and himself as the new
Messiah. During the summer of 1967, Manson and his clan – mostly young
women – hit the road in an old school bus. When he arrived in Los Angeles,
Manson’s pop music ambitious were fanned by a short-lived association with
Dennis Wilson (the Beach Boys’ drummer) and record producer Terry Melcher
(the son of Doris Day). The relationship, however, ended acrimoniously, and in
August 1968 an embittered Manson took his growing troop to live at the Spahn
Movie Ranch in the dusty hills outside LA. The ranch had once been used as a
set for Western movies and TV shows but it had become dilapidated and the
owner, eighty-year-old George Spahn, allowed Manson and his entourage to
stay in return for doing chores around the property.
An expert in devious mind-games, Manson dominated the quasi-commune
through his manipulation of sex and drugs, his intimidating menace and his
deranged, messianic rants. Manson’s apocalyptic visions drew significantly
from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation, but also from the Beatles, with
whom Manson was obsessed. For Manson, the group’s White Album (released
in December 1968) was full of coded messages and allusions to an imminent
race war that would erupt between blacks and whites. Manson dubbed the
chaos that would ensue ‘Helter Skelter’ – a term taken from the title of a Beatles’
song – and he prophesized that the triumphant blacks would ultimately turn
to himself and his Family for leadership.
Manson and his group were, in some respects, unexceptional. Among the
myriad protest movements and spiritual sects of the late 1960s they typified the
vein of what David Felton and his colleagues termed ‘acid fascism’.2 Born of
boredom, loneliness and disillusion, ‘acid fascism’ saw vulnerable youngsters opt
for a life of servility in LSD-fuelled cults headed by authoritarian leaders. Victor
Baranco, for example, was the domineering head of the Lafayette Morehouse
commune in California, while Mel Lyman controlled the Fort Hill Community
in Boston, a dysfunctional and disciplinarian commune exposed by Rolling
Stone magazine in 1971. For Felton, such leaders were archetypal ‘mindfuckers’,
people who ‘have made it their business to fuck men’s minds and to control
them. They’ve succeeded by assuming godlike authority and using such
mindfucking techniques as physical and verbal bullying and group humiliation.’3
Manson was another classic ‘mindfucker’. But what set him apart was his
trail of murder in summer 1969. The spree began with attacks on two of
Manson’s former associates who had fallen foul of the cult leader. Bernard
Crowe was shot (although not killed) by Manson himself. Gary Hinman,
meanwhile, was tortured and stabbed to death under Manson’s orders by
Family members Bobby Beausoleil, Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins who,
aping the radical sloganeering of the day, used Hinman’s blood to daub the
words ‘Political Piggy’ over the body. The murder was grisly, but it was the
group’s subsequent killings that made national headlines.4
For months Manson had been preparing for the Armageddon that he
proclaimed was imminent. The Family had stolen several dune buggies and
planned a getaway to a bolthole in Death Valley. Then, possibly as a way of
igniting the carnage of Helter Skelter (or possibly as a way of settling old
scores), Manson directed four acolytes – Charles ‘Tex’ Watson, Susan Atkins,
Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel – to go to the luxury home of Terry
Melcher and kill everyone there. If Melcher was the intended target, Manson
would be disappointed, as the record producer had moved out some weeks
previously. Instead, the new residents were the film director Roman Polanski
and his heavily pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate. When the killers broke
in, on the night of 8–9 August, Polanski himself was working in London. But
the rest of the household were less fortunate.
The next morning, the maid found bloody bodies strewn about the house
and grounds. Steve Parent (a friend of the caretaker) had been ambushed as he
left the property. He had been slashed with a knife and shot four times in the
face. Inside, the occupants had been herded into the living room. A tussle broke
out, and Wojciech Frykowski (an aspiring screenwriter) was shot twice, stabbed
fifty-one times and bludgeoned with a pistol butt. His girlfriend, Abigail Folger
(heiress to the Folger coffee fortune) was stabbed so many times that her white
dress appeared crimson. Meanwhile, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring (a hairdresser
to the stars) were tied together around their necks with a rope stretched over a
high ceiling beam. Sebring was shot in the face and stabbed seven times. Tate
was stabbed sixteen times. Later it was revealed that, as she was attacked, Tate
had begged for the life of her unborn child. But, in response, Atkins had
screamed back: ‘I don’t care about you or your baby.’ And, on the outside of the
front door, the word ‘pig’ was left scrawled in Tate’s blood.5
The following night the slaughter continued. This time Manson himself
accompanied six Family members – the previous evening’s attackers, plus
Leslie Van Houten and Steve ‘Clem’ Grogan – to the upscale neighbourhood of
Los Feliz where they broke into the home of Leno LaBianca (a supermarket
executive) and his wife Rosemary. The couple were tied up and Manson left the
house but told his followers to kill the pair and to leave something ‘witchy’. The
next day LaBianca was found with twelve knife wounds and an additional
fourteen injuries caused by a large serving fork, left protruding from his throat.
The word ‘war’ was also slashed into his flesh. His wife was found with a bloody
pillowcase pulled over her head and a lamp cord tied around her throat. She
had been stabbed forty-one times. And, as a macabre calling card, the words
‘rise’ and ‘death to pigs’ were written in blood on the walls, while the phrase
‘Healter Skelter’ (apparently Patricia Krenwenkel’s misspelling) was smeared
on the refrigerator.6
The murder spree, however, did not last. Following a series of tip-offs, the
cops collared Manson and his accomplices and in December they were charged
with the killings. The horrific nature of the crimes and the celebrity of the
victims ensured huge press coverage, and the furore continued as the trial itself
became a circus of the weird and the creepy. Family members loitered
menacingly outside the courthouse, while the accused regularly disrupted
proceedings. At one stage Manson was wrestled to the ground after attempting
to attack the judge. Later he appeared with a freshly cut, bloody ‘X’ carved on
his forehead. And as Manson gave evidence – explaining that ‘the music is
telling the youth to rise up against the establishment . . . Why blame it on me?’
– his female disciples stood up and began a sinister Latin chant. Despite the
interruptions, however, the trial reached its conclusion, and in 1971 Manson
and his followers were convicted and sentenced to death, although in 1972 the
sentences were commuted to life imprisonment after the California State
Supreme Court abolished the death penalty.
The dark side of Aquarius
The gruesome features of the Manson murders ensured that they were a
massive media draw. But the Family’s cultural cachet was also indebted to the
crimes’ powerful symbolic dimension. They captured the mood of the moment.
The war in Vietnam was escalating, political assassinations were rocking
America and movements for progressive change faced growing repression and
violence. It was a time when the optimistic rhythms of the 1960s were fading
and the counterculture struggled with a sense of failure and foreboding. John
Lennon announced that ‘the dream is over’ and Bob Dylan sang of the ‘day of
the locusts’ as the soaring highs of the 1960s gave way to a melancholic
comedown.
For many, the Manson murders crystallized the shift precisely. In 1970, for
example, Rolling Stone devoted a twenty page feature to Manson as part of its
‘continuing coverage of the apocalypse’, dubbing the killer ‘the most dangerous
man alive’.7 And, in one of the first authoritative accounts of the Manson
saga – 1971’s The Family – long-time countercultural luminary Ed Sanders
wrestled with a hippie cult that seemed to be a grotesque mirror of his
own utopian ethic of love and free expression. The ‘Aquarian Age’, Sanders
reflected ruefully, had not been simply a story of peace and love, but a
scene where vicious predators cloaked themselves in the countercultural
vibe in order to stalk a vulnerable prey: ‘The flower movement was like a
valley of thousands of plump white rabbits surrounded by wounded
coyotes. Sure, the “leaders” were tough, some of them geniuses and great
poets. But the acid-dropping middle-class children from Des Moines were
rabbits.’8
The Manson case also coalesced more conservative concerns. As historian
Michael Flamm observes, by the late 1960s the liberal hopes raised by President
Kennedy’s ‘Great Society’ had stalled. Instead, the 1968 election had returned
the archly right-wing Richard Nixon to the White House on the promise of a
tough stand on law and order. With a campaign that played upon the pervasive
sense that America was coming apart, Nixon peddled a political rhetoric that,
Flamm argues, ‘enabled many white Americans to make sense of a chaotic
world filled with street crime, urban riots, and campus demonstrations’.9 It was
a worldview into which the spectre of Manson fitted neatly, and the cult leader
was habitually presented as the bête noire of civilized society: the embodiment
of a monstrous nightmare lurking behind the counterculture’s groovy façade.
For example, Manson’s fierce eyes stared out from a 1969 cover of Life, as the
magazine profiled ‘The Love and Terror Cult’.
Figure 10.1 Constructing the counterculture’s dark side: Charles Manson and
Life magazine.
According to Life, Manson represented ‘the dark edge of hippie life’, and the
Family’s crimes were emblematic for a much wider set of ills menacing the nation:
Long-haired, bearded little Charlie Manson so disturbed the American

millions last week . . . that the victims of his blithe and gory crimes seemed
suddenly to have played only secondary roles in the final brutal moments of
their own lives. The Los Angeles killings struck innumerable Americans as
an inexplicable controversion of everything they wanted to believe about the
society and their children – and made Charlie Manson seem to be the very
encapsulation of truth about revolt and violence by the young.10
The same sense of dread pervades Helter Skelter, a gripping TV docudrama

based on the Manson case. Directed by Tom Gries and originally screened on
the CBS network over two nights in 1976, the film is based on the 1974
bestseller of the same name written by Vincent Bugliosi, the District Attorney
who prosecuted the Family. Featuring Steve Railsback as Manson and George
DiCenzo as Bugliosi, the film sticks fairly closely to the prosecutor’s book –
opening with the murders and then moving on through the investigation, the
arrests and the court case. And there is certainly much to commend in Gries’s
film. It does an excellent job of showing the piece-by-piece case that Bugliosi
developed against Manson and his co-defendants. Additionally, despite being
rather dated by its 1970s zoom-shots and melodramatic freeze-frames, the
film constructs a compelling sense of realism via its handheld camerawork,
bleached-out cinematography, location shooting on some of the actual crime
scenes, and courtroom dialogue taken straight from the legal transcripts. The
haunting score (by veteran TV composer Billy Goldenberg) also ratchets up
the tension nicely, while a wonderfully raw version of the Beatles’ ‘Helter
Skelter’ (credited to Silver Spoon) accompanies the film’s opening credits.
Nevertheless, although Helter Skelter offers an absorbing version of events, its
viewpoint is distinctly conservative.
Clearly, Helter Skelter’s unsympathetic portrayal of the murderous Manson
and his noxious cronies is wholly justified. But the film reproduces the period’s
reactionary, ‘law and order’ discourse through its simplistic depiction of the
Family as a group of deranged Others menacing the decency and rectitude
of ‘straight’ society. The movie’s portrayal of Manson won plaudits,
but Railsback plays the part less as a charismatic mindfucker and more as a
madcap nut-job. He regularly stares with fiery-eyed intensity into the camera,
and his nonsensical babbling is interspersed with maniacal cackles. And, while
Nancy Wolfe puts in a good performance as baby-voiced sociopath Susan
Atkins, for the most part Manson’s followers appear as stock hippies-gone-bad
stereotypes – running around Spahn Ranch half naked, shouting weird phrases
at inappropriate times and preaching about the wonders of orgies and LSD
trips.
Bugliosi, on the other hand, appears as the bastion of order and convention. At
the film’s beginning, the character stands in front of the Hall of Justice – a pillar of
the establishment with his three-piece suit, side-parting and briefcase. Addressing
the camera, the DA introduces the case as ‘surely one of the most bizarre chapters
in the history of crime’, and throughout the picture his authoritative voice-over
intervenes in order to define the action and its meanings. And at the movie’s
conclusion, as Manson sings crazily in his prison cell, Bugliosi’s narration
maintains the paranoid ‘law and order’ discourse of the time. Society, the attorney
warns sombrely, is still menaced by the diabolic forces that Manson symbolizes:
With Charles Manson in jail, does an era of madness now come to an end?
Or will the social compost heap from which he sprang produce other,
perhaps more virulent, strains of Mansonism? Are there many more?
Perhaps hundreds, or even thousands, of young Mansons germinating in the
same hotbed that gave birth to Charlie. And will they be more anti-social,
more aberrant than the original?
Helter Skelter, then, was rooted in the fairly conservative codes and conventions
of mainstream Hollywood. Very different film-making traditions, however,
informed the documentary Manson. Originally released in 1973 and directed
by Robert Hendrickson and Laurence Merrick, the film is a patchwork of
interviews with figures from the Manson case – including prosecuting attorney
Bugliosi, followers who quit the Family before the Tate-LaBianca slayings, and
Manson himself, talking to hippie activist Jerry Rubin. But most interesting are
the conversations with Family members recorded after Manson’s arrest, together
with footage of the group taken between late 1969 and 1972 on the Spahn Ranch
and at their Death Valley hideout. Shot by Hendrickson at Manson’s request, the
sequences give a view of the Family that is nuanced and complex. Documenting
their daily lives, Family members are shown skinny-dipping, sewing clothes,
dumpster-diving for scraps of food and preparing meals, as the voiceover raises
awkward questions about the disaffection of kids who, rather than being
monstrous outsiders, were often the products of cosy suburbia:
They lived in the ramshackle, broken-down movie sets, panhandled, hustled,

stole, shovelled manure and ate garbage. But the obvious discomforts of life
with Charlie were far more desirable to these runaways than their parents’
comfortable homes. . . . The establishment smugly dismisses the Mansons as
an oddball phenomenon. These kids came from our own schools, our own
neighbourhoods, our own homes.
Compared to Helter Skelter, then, Manson gives a looser, more open-ended –

and ultimately more unsettling – portrait of the Family. And while both films
clearly sought to capitalize on the notoriety of the case, the publicity campaign
for Manson was decidedly more salacious, with posters promising audiences
‘YOU WILL ACTUALLY SEE each member of the Manson family and
HEAR their horrifying philosophy of sex, perversion, murder and suicide.’
With this combination of disconcerting chills and lurid titillation, Manson is
squarely located in the traditions of exploitation cinema.
‘Family-sploitation’ and mondo Manson
The roots of exploitation film-making lie in the 1920s and 1930s. The original
exploitation pictures, as film historian Eric Schaefer argues, embraced a variety
of sub-genres – nudist and burlesque films, sex hygiene films, drug films, vice
films, exotic and atrocity films – but all shared a common preoccupation with
‘some form of forbidden spectacle that served as their organizing sensibility’.11
Screened in seedy flea-pit cinemas, exploitation films were akin to a gaudy
sideshow, offering audiences an exhibition of the astonishing and the
outrageous. In this respect, Schaefer contends, exploitation films were
characterized by qualities of the carnivalesque.
Ideas of the carnivalesque derive from the work of the Russian literary
scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Writing during the 1920s and 1930s, Bakhtin depicted
the carnivals of pre-industrial Europe as spaces where the forbidden and
fantastic suddenly became possible. The carnival, Bakhtin argued, was an
explosion of emotion and bodily pleasure that saw normal social hierarchies
ritually inverted. In these episodes of exuberant misrule, prevailing systems of
morality gave way to an eruption of the vulgar, the irreverent and the grotesque.
Obviously, the original moments of carnival are long defunct, but Bakhtin’s
ideas have been embraced by many social theorists in their analyses of more
recent cultural phenomena.12 And, for Schaefer, they are especially suited to an
analysis of exploitation cinema. Exploitation films, Schaefer concedes, were

‘politically ambiguous’ and ‘often espoused a very conservative ideology,
particularly with regard to individual pleasure’.13 But, he argues, they also
possessed distinctly carnivalesque qualities in the way they ‘privilege[d] the
“lower body stratum”, overturn[ing] a classical aesthetics based on formal
harmony and good taste’,14 thereby presenting a ‘challenge to the system of
orderly presentation of material to well-mannered spectators that was
encouraged by Hollywood’.15
By the 1950s, the classic forms of exploitation cinema charted by Schaefer
had largely disappeared, but the foundations for new exploitation traditions
were provided by significant social and economic shifts. In particular, the
growth of the youth market during the 1950s and 1960s was a boon to
independent film studios, who cashed-in on youth spending with a wave of
exploitation pictures geared around youth culture. American-International
Pictures (AIP) led the way with films such as The Cool and the Crazy (William
Witney, 1958) and Riot on Sunset Strip (Arthur Dreifuss, 1967). Superficially,
these ‘youth-sploitation’ movies purported to preach against the ‘evils’ of
reckless adolescence but, beneath this veneer, the films gloried in their spectacle
of the daring and the sensational, and much of their box-office pull lay in the
way they offered young audiences the vicarious thrills of delinquent rebellion.
Simultaneously, a liberalization of censorship allowed film-makers to lure
audiences with the promise of greater shocks and astonishment. By the mid-
1960s, Hollywood was finding it virtually impossible to enforce the system of
regulation set up by the 1934 Production Code, and in 1968 it was finally
abandoned and replaced by a new – more liberal – ratings system that allowed
for more explicit visual possibilities. Again, the exploitation brigade quickly
seized upon the new opportunities, creating a wave of movies characterized by
greater levels of sex and violence. The trend was exemplified by a crop of biker
movies that capitalized on the contemporary notoriety of motorcycle gangs
such as the Hells Angels. The cycle had been kick-started in 1966 by the success
of AIP’s Wild Angels (Roger Corman), but the changes to censorship gave the
genre a new lease of life and there followed a wave of more visceral and violent
biker movies such as Run, Angel, Run! (Jack Starrett, 1969), Naked Angels
(Bruce Clark, 1969) and The Cycle Savages (Bill Brame, 1969). By the 1970s the
biker genre was running out of road, but the Manson murders provided fresh
inspiration for film-makers who traded in topical sensationalism. A media

spectacle brimming with sex, drugs and violence, the Manson case was ideal
exploitation fodder and, as Mikita Brottman observes, ‘hippies, hippie leaders,
drugs, communes, and murder became essential ingredients in every
exploitation picture made between 1969 and 1975’.16
Hendrickson and Merrick’s Manson was an exploitation movie in the
mondo tradition. Taking its name from the Italian documentary Mondo Cane
(Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi, Paolo Cavara, 1962), the mondo genre
comprises movies that are voyeuristic anthologies of scenes depicting spicy
sexual display, bizarre tribal rituals, gruesome animal cruelty and stomach-
turning violence – all spliced together in a pseudo-documentary style.17
During the late 1960s, the weird and wonderful counterculture provided a rich
seam of mondo material, and a slew of mondo movies chronicled the freak
outs and love-ins of the hippy scene – for example, Something’s Happening
(Edgar Beatty, 1967), Mondo Mod (Peter Perry, 1967) and It’s a Revolution
Mother (Harry Kerwin, 1968). Manson’s co-director, Laurence Merrick, was
already well established in the exploitation market (having directed the 1970
biker flick Black Angels) and in Manson he gave the Family the full mondo
treatment. The film traded on boasts that it offered a taste of the ‘real deal’ and
it wrung as much mileage as possible from its authentic Family footage.
Additionally, former Manson associates Brooks Poston and Paul Watkins
provided the movie’s soundtrack, supported by background songs from
assorted Family members – including a version of ‘Helter Skelter’ recited
creepily by Steve ‘Clem’ Grogan.
Mondo-esque touches also featured in other Manson pictures of the period.
Most obviously in The Other Side of Madness/The Helter Skelter Murders/The
Manson Massacre (Frank Howard, 1971). Put together while the Manson trial
was still underway, the film is an oddball blend of pseudo-documentary
footage and re-enactment scenes. Its first half comprises a disjointed mix of
‘real life’ sequences intended to give a jolt of gritty authenticity – with footage
ranging from an urban riot to hippies smoking hash and freaking out at a rock
festival. And additional edges of mondo realism are delivered via scenes shot
at Spahn Ranch and Manson himself warbling his song ‘Mechanical Man’ on
the soundtrack. But while the mondo elements are intriguing, the re-enactment
sequences of the film’s second half are more compelling, especially the
genuinely difficult to watch re-creation of Sharon Tate’s murder. Overall,

however, the movie drags. Indeed, the sparse dialogue and lingering shots of
desolate landscapes and inanimate objects are suggestive of an art-house
experiment rather than exploitation cinema’s trademark sensationalism.
But shocks came aplenty throughout the early 1970s as a welter of other
exploitation pictures milked Manson’s topicality and chilling associations.
Quick off the mark was Gabrielle (Ron Wertheim (as Arlo Shiffen), 1970),
which sees a traumatized Gabrielle (Elaine Trop) hospitalized after she is raped
by her fiancé. Falling under the spell of the sinister Dr Matson she joins his
family of followers and embarks on a binge of murder and sexual excess. The
year 1970 also saw the more hippie-infused Sign of Aquarius/Love
Commune/Ghetto Freaks (Robert J. Emery). Filmed on location in Cleveland,
the movie’s rudimentary plot concerns Guru Sonny (Paul Elliot), a manipulative
hippie leader who entices pretty ingénue Donna (Gabe Lewis) to his commune.
But the picture’s main concern is to grandstand the hippies’ ‘way-out’ lifestyle
with a procession of scenes in which they protest against the Vietnam War, get
hassled by the cops, drop acid, dance about naked and preach their philosophy
of liberation to bemused passers-by.
Manson was more explicitly referenced in Sweet Savior/The Love Thrill
Murders (Robert Roberts, 1971). Although the action is moved from California
to New York, the film is clearly a thinly veiled re-telling of the Manson saga and
stars former 1950s heart-throb Troy Donahue as Moon, a charismatic cult
leader who keeps female acolytes tethered to his will via a combination of sex,
acid and trippy pseudo-philosophy. And carnage ensues as bored socialite
Sandra Barlow (Renay Granville) invites the gang for a night of wild partying
at her mansion. An equally murderous, Manson-styled cult also featured in
The Night God Screamed (Lee Madden, 1971). The film sees the Christ-like
Billy Joe Harlan (Michael Sugich) and his fanatical disciples convicted of the
grisly crucifixion of an itinerant preacher, following which they escape and
take terrible revenge on the judge, jury and the preacher’s helpless wife.
Other exploitation movies mixed Manson themes with tropes from the
world of horror. For example, I Drink Your Blood/Phobia (David E. Durston,
1970) sees a group of Satanic hippies led by the Manson-esque Horace Bones
(Bhaskar Roy Chowdry) wreak havoc in a rural town. After a girl is raped by
the cult, her grandfather goes after them, but is beaten-up and force-fed LSD.
Incensed, the girl’s younger brother gets even by selling the evil hippies meat pies
infected with blood from a rabid dog. Turning into maddened beasts, the hippies
then attack one another in a bloody frenzy. Equally lurid, Deathmaster (Ray
Danton, 1972) stars Robert Quarry as Khorda, a mysterious, Manson-like hippie
who draws together devoted followers in a local commune. However, he proves
to be none other than Dracula and, rather than showering the Beautiful People
with peace and love, the vampire count’s more sinister plans soon become clear.
The motif of ‘drugged-out hippie thrill-killers’ also filtered into biker movies
of the period. For example, both Wild Riders (Richard Kanter, 1971) and The
Takers (Carlos Monsoya, 1971) feature pairs of vicious pseudo-hippies-cum-
bikers who break into suburban homes and launch into LSD-fuelled sprees of
Figure 10.2 Manson-themed thrill seekers on wheels: Al

Adamson’s Satan’s Sadists.
torture, rape and murder. But it was Al Adamson who gave the theme its most
outré treatment in Satan’s Sadists.
The movie centres around a sleazy motorcycle gang – ‘The Satans’ – who
wander rootlessly through the desert, led by the malevolent Anchor. As played
by Russ Tamblyn (a former Hollywood star fallen on hard times), Anchor is a
charming but chilling hippy-gone-bad wearing a floppy, hillbilly hat and
round, purple-tinted glasses. The movie’s minimalist plot sees him lead his
ragtag band on a heinous rampage. They rape a girl amid perverse laughter,
then murder the victim and her boyfriend. Descending upon an isolated diner
they brutally rape a customer and, turning to face the camera, Anchor delivers
a hippy-inflected tirade (penned by Tamblyn himself) giving twisted
justification for his cruelty – ‘You’re right, I am a rotten bastard’, he sneers to
the audience, ‘I admit it’:
But I tell ya something. Even though I got a lot of hate inside, I got some
friends who ain’t got hate inside. They’re filled with nothing but love. Their
only crime is growing their hair long, smoking a little grass and getting high,
looking at the stars at night, writing poetry in the sand. And what do you do?
You bust down their doors, man. Dumb-ass cop. You bust down their doors
and you bust down their heads. You put ’em behind bars. And you know
something funny? They forgive you.
Executing their captives, Anchor’s gang then take to the desert hills. Stumbling
across a trio of female campers, they force their unwelcome attentions on the
luckless threesome. Ultimately, however, the villains meet their own gruesome
end at the hands of a chisel-jawed Vietnam veteran.
Costing only $65,000 and shot in just ten days, Satan’s Sadists characterized
the low budget, rough-and-ready style of exploitation cinema. Nevertheless, it
proved a major money-spinner, grossing around $20 million. The success lay
in the way Adamson’s picture captured the flavour of the time. While Satan’s
Sadists was completed before the Manson trial, the film adeptly cashed in on
the media-driven stigma that was already developing around the counterculture.
Tripping on acid, decked out in pseudo-psychedelic paraphernalia and with a
deep-seated hatred of ‘The Man’, Anchor and his followers are painted as the
irredeemably malevolent underside of hippiedom. And a number of eerie co-
incidences also linked Adamson’s picture with the Manson killings. For
example, Manson himself reputedly repaired some of the vehicles used in
Satan’s Sadists, and several of the film’s scenes were actually shot at the
Spahn Ranch – a connection that was eagerly signposted in the movie’s
publicity.
Of course, there were clearly conservative dimensions to Satan’s Sadists and
the other Manson exploitation films. Their misogyny was often pronounced,
and their caricatures of ‘evil hippies’ seemed to reproduce stock stereotypes
propagated in the right-wing backlash against the counterculture. At the same
time, however, a rich carnivalesque seam also ran through ‘Family-sploitation’.
While the films may not have been ‘radical’ in a conventional political sense,
they nonetheless effectively satirized and undercut the shrill anxieties
proliferating in the media by appropriating the demonic stereotypes and
magnifying them to proportions that were incredible and simply outlandish.
Moreover, the films’ sheer enthusiasm for the shocking and the controversial
flouted conventional tastes. Their brazen pageant of the lurid and the taboo
spurned orthodox sensibilities and represented an unruly presence at a time
when the ‘law and order’ bandwagon of ‘Nixonland’, as historian Rick Perlstein
terms it,18 was attempting to foreclose dissent, pre-empt dialogue and preclude
contradiction.
Manson and murder vérité
The Manson murders remained a thematic influence on movies throughout

the 1970s. As Jim Morton observes, their imprint can be found in ‘home
invasion’ pictures such as the unremittingly nasty The Last House on the Left
(Wes Craven, 1972) and visceral horror movies such as The Texas Chain Saw
Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977).19
Critics also made obvious connections between the Manson killings and the
gore of Macbeth (1971), the first film made by Roman Polanski after the murder
of Sharon Tate. But it was the release of Snuff in 1976 that added a new element
of controversy to the Manson movie mythology.
Snuff is, for the most part, the meandering tale of a South American hippie
cult. Led by the mesmeric guru Satán (Enrique Larratelli), the cult comprises
beautiful biker girls who willingly rob and murder at their leader’s behest. But
it was the movie’s conclusion that sparked uproar. As the narrative suddenly
breaks, the viewer sees what appears to be ‘real’ behind-the-scenes footage. The
film crew departs and the director turns his amorous attention towards a
young woman. As his kissing turns aggressive, the woman struggles. More men
then emerge to hold her down and different camera angles cover the violence
as her fingers are cut off with shears; she’s then stabbed and graphically
disembowelled. Then, just as the film reel runs out, the soundtrack catches the
cameraman confirming that he ‘got it’
The scene seemed to be confirmation of the dark rumours circulating since
the early 1970s that real murders were being filmed and distributed among a
shadowy clientele. Indeed, the term ‘snuff film’ itself originated in Ed Sanders’
1972 chronicle of the Manson clique, the author reporting hearsay that the
Family were responsible for hitherto undocumented murders which had been
filmed, with the incriminating reels buried in the desert.20 The release of Snuff
seemed grim proof that the rumours were true and that ‘real’ murder movies
did, indeed, exist. As a consequence, the film met with storms of protest.
Feminist groups in particular were outraged. Activists such as Beverley LaBelle
argued the movie represented ‘the ultimate in woman-hating’,21 and across
America screenings attracted protests at the film’s purported imagery of real
sexual violence. Snuff, however, was not all it seemed.
Snuff had started out as a threadbare gore film that sought to cash-in on the
Manson hysteria through its depiction of a hippie murder cult. Originally
titled Slaughter, it was directed by exploitation veterans Michael and Roberta
Findlay and had been filmed in Argentina for just $30,000. Low-budget
distributor Allan Shackleton took on the film, but, doubting its potential,
shelved it for four years. Then, inspired by the snuff film rumour, the wily
huckster came up with a money-spinning angle. Unbeknownst to the original
film-makers, he removed the movie’s credits, grafted a few minutes of additional
‘shocking’ footage onto the end, and released the re-jigged picture as Snuff.
And, in true exploitation style, he stoked the film’s notoriety with a deliberately
provocative ad campaign, which announced that the film was ‘made in South
America . . . where life is cheap!’
Snuff proved a big earner for Shackleton, but his ruse was short-lived. The
number of camera angles and the careful editing made it perfectly obvious that
the added footage was faked. And, despite exhaustive searches, no commercially
produced snuff movies have ever been uncovered.22 Rumours, however, persist,
and snuff films have become an urban legend. Indeed, snuff movies and
Charles Manson have both become modern myths that serve as motifs of
monstrous malevolence. They are such powerful emblems of depravity because
both function as touchstones for a wider sense of chaos and crisis and possess,
as Brottman puts it, the capacity to ‘conjure up demons of legendary dimensions
that possess all kinds of unholy powers: the power to corrupt innocent youth,
the power to instigate bloodshed and butchery, the power to make myths and
rumours come true’.23 Indeed, both Manson and snuff films have endured as
mythologised embodiments of evil, representing hateful repositories of
society’s murkiest fears.
The enduring Family
Still synonymous with murder and mayhem, Manson remains a potent symbol
in popular culture, and, since the 1970s, Charlie and the Family have populated
a succession of books, magazines and movies. Throughout the 1980s, for
instance, Manson remained the model for hippie-cult villainy in cheapo
exploitation pictures such as Thou Shalt Not Kill . . . Except/Stryker’s War (Josh
Becker, 1985) and 555 (Wally Koz, 1988), while the blurring of Manson myth
and reality was explored in both Manson Family Movies (John Aes-Nihil, 1984)
and Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson (Raymond Pettibon, 1989).
Meanwhile, Charles Manson Superstar (Nicholas Screck, 1989) interspersed
segments of the director’s interview with Manson in San Quentin Prison with
scenes from the Spahn Ranch and other archival footage in a revisionist
documentary that recast Manson as a misjudged fall-guy.
The 1990s were leaner times for Manson pictures, but the early twenty-first
century saw a mini-boom in Family-inspired material. In 2004, Jeremy Davies
remade Helter Skelter, this time with less attention to the investigation and trial
and more focus on the relationships between the cult followers and Manson
(played quite convincingly by Jeremy Davies). The fortieth anniversary of the
Tate-LaBianca murders brought a burst of interest in the form of the British-
made docudrama, Manson (Neil Rawles, 2009) and the feature Manson, My
Name is Evil (Reginald Harkema, 2009). Subsequent years saw the story tackled
from a variety of angles in, for example, House of Manson (Brandon Slagle,
2014), Life After Manson (Olivia Klaus, 2014) and the Lifetime Television
movie Manson’s Lost Girls (Leslie Libman, 2016). And in 2015 Aquarius
premiered on the NBC TV network. Created by John McNamara, the period
drama series mixes reality and fiction as LAPD detective Sam Hodiak (David
Duchovny) pits his wits against a sly Manson, played with a creditable degree
of measure by Gethin Anthony. Renewed for a second season in 2016, Aquarius
was a prestige repackaging of the Manson story for the DVD box-set
generation.
But it was Jim VanBebber’s The Manson Family, released in 2004, that came
closest to the gusto of the 1970s Manson movies. The film was a labour of love
for the cult horror director, who had struggled for over a decade to finish the
picture, which had to run as a rough-cut at film festivals under the title Charlie’s
Family until video distributors Blue Underground agreed to finance its
completion. Blending meticulous docudrama with a brutal fictional narrative,
the movie concentrates on Manson’s early days on the Spahn Ranch as he
collects his followers and shapes them into the Family. A framing narrative,
dated 1996, sees TV presenter Jack Wilson (Carl Day) researching a Manson
documentary, and the film proceeds through an array of faux news clips and
archive material, together with reproductions of interview scenes from
Manson, the 1973 mondo movie. These are intercut with dramatic
reconstructions of the Family’s murders – portrayed with a level of graphic
violence that some critics found hard to stomach.
In its form and style, then, The Manson Family clearly evokes the feel of
1960s and 1970s exploitation pictures. More than this, though, VanBebber’s
movie is also a consummate updating of exploitation cinema’s transgressive
aesthetic. Like the movies of Al Adamson – the meister of 1970s exploitation
– The Manson Family takes no prisoners as it deliberately pushes at the
boundaries of taste. Extending the exploitation tradition, the film appropriates
the Manson mythology, conjuring with over-the-top images of the grotesque
and the offensive in a carnivalesque challenge to the conservative, the
mainstream and the turgidly orthodox.
Until his death in 2017, Manson himself mouldered in prison for decades.
Routinely denied parole, his occasional media interviews sparked periodic
flurries of publicity until protracted illness brought his death, aged eighty-
three, in November 2017. The Manson myth, however, survived. Not least at
the cinema, evidenced most obviously with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood in 2019. Written and directed by Tarantino,
the movie is set in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969 and follows fading
screen star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth
(Brad Pitt) as they contend with the rapidly changing landscape of the
American film industry. And, as the plot unfolds, Dalton and Booth cross paths
several times with Manson’s motley hippie entourage. Played by Damon
Herriman,24 Manson himself is a sinister background presence, and tensions
build inexorably towards the horrific Tate-LaBianca murder spree.
Tarantino’s ninth movie, Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood features all the
maverick film-maker’s trademarks – non-linear storylines, extended dialogue
scenes, stylized violence, flights of eloquent profanity and a bombardment of
pop culture references. Indeed, the film brims with allusions to the cinema, TV
and music of the 1960s and early 1970s – the formative era of Tarantino’s
imagination – and the movie can be seen as the director’s affectionate homage
to Hollywood’s last golden era. It is an ardour that ultimately swerves the film
out of ‘real-life’ history into an alternate, ‘fairy-tale’ universe. Rather than
attacking the Polanski household, the Manson Family members change plans
and raid the home of Polanski’s next-door neighbour, Rick Dalton. And,
confronted by the fading star and his stuntman buddy, the hippies’ murderous
mission is scotched and they are brutally dispatched. This, then, is Tarantino’s
fictional ‘correction’ of a horrific reality. Tate’s murder is both averted and
avenged, and the Manson Family are left as contemptable failures.
A critical and commercial hit, Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood both
challenges and is, itself, constituent of the Manson mythology. On one level,
Tarantino’s fictitious ‘happy ending’ elaborates a version of events that affirms
a ‘better’ world in which Manson and the Family are stripped of the dark power
that they wield over the popular imagination. At the same time, however, the
movie is also testament to the enduring character of this power. Released to
coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca killings, Once Upon
a Time . . . in Hollywood and its box office success were clear evidence of
the continuing symbolic resonance of Charles Manson and his murderous
Family. As Ed Sanders mordantly observed on the film’s release: ‘Some
important people and events fade with time. . . . But some events last and last
and last’.25
Notes
1 For a full account of Adamson’s distinctive oeuvre, see David Konow, Shlock-o-
Rama: The Films of Al Adamson (Los Angeles, CA: Lone Eagle Publishing, 1998).
2 David Felton, Robin Green and David Dalton, Mindfuckers: A Source Book on the
Rise of Acid Fascism in America, Including Material on Charles Manson, Mel
Lyman, Victor Baranco, and Their Followers (San Francisco, CA: Straight Arrow
Publishing, 1972).
3 Felton et al., Mindfuckers, p. 12.
4 The most exhaustive accounts of the Manson case remain Vincent Bugliosi and
Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (London:
Bodley Head, 1974) and Ed Sanders, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s
Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (New York: Dutton: 1971).
5 See Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, pp. 1–33; Sanders, The Family, pp. 251–73.
6 See Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, pp. 33–54; Sanders, The Family, pp. 285–96.
7 David Felton and David Dalton, ‘Charles Manson: the incredible story of the most
dangerous man alive’, Rolling Stone, 25 June 1970, pp. 24–48.
8 Sanders, The Family, p. 34.
9 Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of
Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 11.
10 Paul O’Neil, ‘The monstrous Manson “family” ’, Life, 19 December 1969, p. 22.
11 Eric Schaefer, ‘Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!’: A History of Exploitation Films,
1919–1959 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1999), p. 5.
12 See, for example, John Fiske, Reading the Popular (London: Routledge, 1989) and
Robert Stam, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
13 Schaefer, ‘Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!’, p. 134.
14 Ibid., p. 122.
15 Ibid., p. 134.
16 Mikita Brottman, Offensive Films (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press,
2005), p. 91.
17 A thorough historical survey of the mondo genre can be found in Mark Goodall,
Sweet and Savage: The World Through the Mondo Film Lens (London: Headpress,
2018).
18 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
(New York: Scribner, 2008).
19 Jim Morton, ‘Manson movies’ in Jim VanBebber (ed.), Charlie’s Family: An
Illustrated Screenplay to the Film by Jim VanBebber (London: Creation Books
1998), pp. 164–84.
20 Sanders, The Family, p. 211. No evidence supporting such claims was ever found.
Police, however, did discover movie equipment and unexposed film reels when
they raided Spahn Ranch.
21 Beverly LaBelle, ‘Snuff: The ultimate in woman-hating’, in Laura Lederer (ed.), Take
Back the Night: Women on Pornography (New York: Morrow 1980), pp. 272–8.
22 For complete surveys of the ‘snuff movie’ phenomenon see Stephen Milligan, ‘The
Bloodiest Thing That Ever Happened in Front of a Camera’: Conservative Politics,
‘Porno Chic’ and Snuff (London: Headpress, 2014); Neil Jackson, Shaun Kimber,
Johnny Walker and Thomas Joseph Watson (eds), Snuff: Real Death and Screen
Media (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).
23 Brottman, Offensive Films, p. 9.
24 In 2019 Herriman also portrayed Manson in the second season of Mindhunter, a
Netflix TV series.
25 Ed Sanders, ‘Why pop culture still can’t get enough of Charles Manson’, The New York
Times, 24 July 2019. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/movies/
charles-manson-family-hollywood-tarantino.html (accessed 2 October 2020).
Bibliography
Bugliosi, Vincent and Gentry, Curt, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson
Murders (London: Bodley Head, 1974).
Brottman, Mikita, Offensive Films (Nashville, TN : Vanderbilt University Press, 2005).
Felton, David and Dalton, David, ‘Charles Manson: the incredible story of the most
dangerous man alive’, Rolling Stone, 25 June 1970, pp. 24–48.
Felton, David, Green, Robin and Dalton, David, Mindfuckers: A Source Book on the
Rise of Acid Fascism in America, Including Material on Charles Manson, Mel
Lyman, Victor Baranco, and Their Followers (San Francisco, CA : Straight Arrow
Publishing, 1972).
Fiske, John, Reading the Popular (London: Routledge, 1989).
Flamm, Michael, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of
Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
Goodall, Mark, Sweet and Savage: The World Through the Mondo Film Lens (London:
Headpress, 2018).
Jackson, Neil, Kimber, Shaun, Walker, Johnny and Watson, Thomas Joseph (eds),
Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).
Konow, David, Shlock-o-Rama: The Films of Al Adamson (Los Angeles, CA : Lone
Eagle Publishing, 1998).
LaBelle, Beverly, ‘Snuff: The ultimate in woman-hating’, in Laura Lederer (ed.), Take
Back the Night: Women on Pornography (New York: Morrow, 1980), pp. 272–8.
Milligan, Stephen, ‘The Bloodiest Thing That Ever Happened in Front of a Camera’:
Conservative Politics, ‘Porno Chic’ and Snuff (London: Headpress, 2014).
Morton, Jim, ‘Manson movies’ in J. VanBebber (ed.), Charlie’s Family: An Illustrated
Screenplay to the Film by Jim VanBebber (London: Creation Books, 1998),
pp. 164–84.
O’Neil, Paul, ‘The monstrous Manson “family” ’, Life, 19 December 1969, pp. 20–31.
Perlstein, Rick, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
(New York: Scribner, 2008).
Sanders, Ed, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion
(New York: Dutton, 1971).
Sanders, Ed, ‘Why pop culture still can’t get enough of Charles Manson’, The New York
Times, 24 July 2019. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/movies/
charles-manson-family-hollywood-tarantino.html (accessed 2 October 2020).
Schaefer, Eric, ‘Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!’: A History of Exploitation Films,
1919–1959 (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1999).
Stam, Robert, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (Baltimore,
MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
244
11
The Peter Pan Syndrome: Murder as Child’s

Play in Four 1970s Films
T.S. Kord
Introduction
Developmental psychology has had much to say about the question of why
and how children play: to expend superfluous energy,1 to train for survival in
the adult world,2 to acquire new skills with the assistance of adults,3 or for
experiential reasons of their own, also known as having fun.4 Freud famously
offered a more sinister analysis of the male child’s development in The Ego and
the Id, when he defined, under the heading of the Oedipus Complex, desires to
remove (murder) the father as a normal part of the son’s psychosexual
development. Freud tempered this disturbing scenario with the good news
that the potential killer is merely the son’s Id, part of the child’s unconscious
mind and not the child himself. ‘Normal’ development into adulthood involves
resolving the Oedipus Complex in a process in which the purely instinctual Id,
which wants to eliminate the father, is vanquished by the far more reasonable
Ego – like the Id, part of the unconscious mind – which recognizes the father’s
superiority, turning him from a potential victim into the object of idolisation
and identification.5 All of these assessments of child’s play and child
development are motivated not by the world of children but by that of adults.
Developmental psychology commonly views childhood as a preparatory
rather than an intrinsic phase, as a path rather than a destination.
Can these theories help us to interpret cinema narratives of children
murdering adults? If childhood is, as developmental psychology
overwhelmingly claims, merely the path to adulthood, and if the most
significant steps on this path are taken, as Freud has asserted, by the unconscious
245
rather than the conscious mind, one interpretation that readily springs to
mind is the child’s unconscious and symbolic rejection of his or her own future
adulthood – what experts on emotional disorders have termed the ‘Peter Pan
Syndrome’.6 And yet, when children kill adults, in the movies7 or in real life,8
the act is surprisingly rarely assigned this or any other symbolic meaning. The
most common explanations for such acts emerging from journalists’ keyboards
and judges’ decisions, ranging from revenge for or self-defence against child
abuse to cult, gang and thrill killings, pathology, or violence on TV, to name
just a few,9 remain firmly grounded in the literal world of milieu, mechanisms
and motivations. Rarely, if ever, is a child’s killing of an adult seen figuratively,
as an attack on the concept of adulthood, rather than literally, as an attack on a
specific adult. The figurative interpretation would also be severely at odds with
the psychological literature’s firmly positivistic view of adulthood as not
only the inevitable but also the appropriate and desirable outcome of childhood.
To assign a symbolic value to the act of murder – or, for that matter, to child’s
play – seems to re-assess the act as an end in and of itself, rather than a
means to an end, such as thrill-seeking (in the case of murder) or training
for adulthood (in the case of child’s play). Jean Piaget, for example, may
have gone half-way down this disturbing path when he described children’s
play as ‘assimilation’, the transformation of the environment to meet the
requirements of the self, and contrasted it with work, which he defined as
‘accommodation’ or the transformation of the self to meet the requirements of
the environment.10
Four films, all hailing from a decade that is now commonly perceived as
horror’s heyday, would appear to have taken Piaget’s ideas a step further:
Peopletoys (Sean MacGregor, David Sheldon, 1974), The Little Girl Who Lives
Down the Lane (Nicholas Gessner, 1976), Kiss of the Tarantula (Chris Munger,
1976) and The Child (Robert Voskanian, 1977).11 Three of the four cast the
child’s act of killing adults in the metaphor of child’s play. I would like to offer
two experimental interpretations of these killing games. The first is to read
them as constituting ‘assimilation’ in Piaget’s sense, namely subordination of
the environment to the self, and therefore as self-constituting and self-asserting
acts. The second is to understand them as symbolic expressions of the Peter
Pan Syndrome, that is, a vision of childhood as an end rather than a means, or
even a wholesale rejection of adulthood as the child’s future.
The Peter Pan Syndrome 247
Not so imaginary friends: kids and their pets
Both The Child and Kiss of the Tarantula begin with a gender reversal of the
Oedipal paradigm: the homicidal child is female, not male; her murderous
rampage against adults is initiated not by a desire to remove the father, but by
the death of the mother. In both films, the child’s killing of the parent is itself
prompted by that parent’s actual or suspected murder of the other parent. In
Kiss, little Susan (Suzanna Ling) kills her mother to prevent her murdering her
father; in The Child, Rosalie Nordon (Rosalie Cole) expresses her suspicion
that her father murdered her mother. The wholesome two-parent family as a
model for adulthood is removed early on in both films and replaced with
surroundings that symbolize not growth, development and life but death and
decay. Susan, whose father is a mortician, grows up in a mortuary; Rosalie
spends all of her playtime in the cemetery immediately adjacent to her house.
Both girls have chosen unusual pets or playmates, deadly tarantulas for Susan,
zombies for Rosalie. Both girls are cast as children by virtue of their accessories
but look and behave years older. Rosalie, supposedly eleven, looks every bit of
fifteen but clutches her teddy-bear like a four-year-old in virtually every scene
in which she does not cavort with zombies.
Susan, who performs her pioneer killing – that of her mother – as a child,
plays out the rest of her murderous career as a teenager. While Susan, with her
long hair, long fingernails and sophisticated clothing could easily be mistaken
for a well-groomed college girl, she too is frequently shown playing with
stuffed toys. Indeed, this visually confusing mix of cuddly toys in the hands of
fledgling adults may point to the most profound trauma that the girl killers are
trying to address, because – as we shall see – both explicitly reject the idea of
becoming women.
In The Child, hints that Rosalie is a problematic child are advanced early
and linked to the trauma of her mother’s death. Mrs Whitfield (Ruth Ballen),
the Nordons’ kindly elderly neighbour, issues the initial warning to the naïve,
young and improbably named Alicianne Del Mar (Laurel Barnett), who is
about to begin her employment next door as Rosalie’s nanny: ‘Rosalie’s always
been strange – worse since her mother’s death.’ Rosalie’s mother, as it turns out,
spent most of her life in a mental institution and died young of unexplained
causes. Rosalie, as described by Mrs Whitfield, has inherited her mother’s
strangeness, including her predilection for wandering the cemetery at night,

and has ‘played tricks’ on Mrs Whitfield’s boarders, tricks apparently nasty
enough to prompt them all to move. Thus, Rosalie is presented from the outset
as rather more than ‘strange’: she is pronounced guilty of both ruining Mrs
Whitfield’s business and isolating her (that this is very much Rosalie’s intention
is borne out when she instructs her zombies to make off with Mrs Whitfield’s
beloved pet dog, followed by her spookily delivered comment: ‘Now she’ll be
all alone’). Alarm bells should be emphatically ringing in Alicianne’s head, but
she remains blissfully unaware of any ominous undertones, instead
sympathizing with Rosalie, to whom she feels instantly linked by her own love
of the outdoors and the loss of her own mother as a young child. ‘I’m sure
Rosalie and I will get along just fine,’ she chirps, thus establishing herself early
on as Rosalie’s surrogate mother and model for adulthood.
Much of the film visualizes the fairy-tale theme of the little girl getting lost
in the woods, the little girl, in this case, being not little Rosalie but adult
Alicianne. Accompanied by eerie, twelve-tone, plucked strings or hysterically
tinkling piano, Alicianne, reduced to walking through the woods because her
car has stalled, fights her way through what looks like a mix of a Vietnam-style
jungle and the Brothers Grimm’s forest that has swallowed up children without
number. The fairy-tale nature of these woods is already anticipated by Mrs
Whitfield’s incessant warnings: ‘Stay on the path . . . Don’t wander off into the
woods . . . Hurry, you’d better hurry . . . there is something . . . I hear them
calling to one another at night.’ Wafts of fog obscure Alicianne’s vision, her
hapless stumbling and constant squinting indicating clearly that she is utterly
lost, whereas Rosalie, who is shown several times in the same setting, always
knows exactly where she is going. Once Alicianne has finally traversed the
misty woods and the fog-shrouded cemetery, she enters a house that doesn’t
seem much safer: the vast, darkly wood-panelled and completely unlit mansion
evokes less a country house than Dracula’s castle, and the welcome she receives
from her new employer, Nordon (Frank Janson), is eerily frosty.
Alicianne’s new charge, Rosalie, is almost entirely defined through her
identification with her mother, her recognition of Alicianne as surrogate
mother, the trauma of losing the original one and the fear of losing her
replacement. Initially identifying with Alicianne because she too lost her
mother early, Rosalie is cloyingly possessive of her. When Alicianne takes an
hour off to go horseback riding, Rosalie flies into a tantrum: ‘I thought she was
supposed to take care of me. I want her here. NOW !!!’ Things become even
more ominous when Rosalie draws pictures of her mother’s funeral, carefully
crossing out the people she plans to kill – including her father and adult
brother Len (Richard Hanners) – and holds secret conversations with her dead
mother: ‘Mommy, I know Daddy’s sorry, but I promise that whoever did this
will be sorry too.’ Throughout the film, numerous passages link Rosalie with
her mother (a recurring remark is that ‘Rosalie is like her mother’) and her
mother with severe abnormality. Len informs Alicianne that Rosalie’s mother
‘used to read a lot of books about the mind. She said the mind was a secret
world, a place nobody had explored yet.’ This exchange hints at Rosalie’s
immense mental powers, presumably inherited from her mother, and
specifically the power to control her zombie friends to commit murder at her
bidding. Add to this an unhealthy obsession with death – her nightly cemetery
walks; her hysterical laughter when discussing her mother’s death; her
delighted giggles at a story her father tells at the dinner table about a mass
poisoning, which escalate into uproarious laughter when he gets to the punch
line: ‘Killed every one of ’em! Died like flies!’ – and we seem to have a kid ready
for carnage.
And yet, after the film has dangled this enticing possibility in front of the
audience, it seems to take it all back. Rosalie is set up as the killer kid with a
playful approach to murder, as the trailer trumpets: ‘Some girls play with dolls.
Rosalie plays with Zombies! Let’s play hide and go kill!’ But this is not quite
borne out in the film, where all the evil deeds are committed by the zombies in
Rosalie’s absence, her involvement being limited to spooky little hints that she
has ‘friends’ who ‘do favours for me’. Rosalie herself gets her hands bloody only
once, shooting the Asian groundskeeper, whom she – understandably, given
that she has caught him in his cabin fondling her mother’s jewellery – accuses
of her mother’s murder (the Asian man confirms our suspicions about the
mother’s state of mental health by crying out: ‘Mama crazy! Mama crazy!’ right
before Rosalie shoots him in the stomach). Thus, the only killing directly
involving Rosalie herself can easily be dismissed as an understandable act of
vengeance. The truly disturbing deeds, including the apparently unmotivated
elimination of Rosalie’s entire family, are committed by Rosalie’s ‘friends’: these
are verbally linked to Rosalie, but visually separate from her.
Moreover, the film seems strangely uninterested in the colourful killings of

Mrs Whitfield, Rosalie’s father, and finally Len, which appear as no more than
a drearily routine fulfilment of the gore quota owed to the schlock horror
genre.12 All three are killed in a visually identical manner: the zombies’ standard
operating procedure is to gouge out one eye and flay the face. There is no
amplification of action, length of exposure, or amount of gore from one scene
to the next. The visual repetitiveness and the distinct lack of progression
indicate that the important aspect of these scenes is not the murders themselves
but what they symbolize, namely the removal of the family unit and all adult
role models for Rosalie. Symbolically speaking, then, the real crime of which
the film accuses her is not murder but refusing to grow up. She does this
initially by rebuffing adult advice and admonishments, indeed verbal
communication of both kinds: ‘I don’t have to tell you anything,’ she tells her
father, closely followed by ‘I won’t listen to you anymore, old man!’ Verbal
rejection is followed by physical rejection of adults, taking the form of the
moderately messy removal of three successive family generations:
grandmother-surrogate,13 father, and finally brother.
Perhaps most significantly, Rosalie rejects not only adults but more generally
the very idea of adulthood. At the dinner table, her surrogate mother figure
Alicianne offers to show her how to bake doughnuts, following a recipe passed
down to her from her own mother. Rosalie is thus explicitly cast in a line of
little girls who, instructed by their mothers, become mothers (adults)
themselves. Rosalie responds to this by pulling a disgusted face, saying
‘Doughnuts?’ in a voice dripping with disdain. At this point Len chimes in:
‘Sure, you wanna know how to bake stuff. When you get married you wanna be
a good wife to your husband, dontcha?’ a sentiment Rosalie greets merely with
another contemptuous glance.
So where does that leave Rosalie as a child playing the killing game? Read
literally, as the story of a child offing adults by proxy, the film merely replicates
the visuals – flayed face, missing eye – without building appreciably on them.
However, read as a figurative rejection of adulthood, with the doughnut scene
as perhaps the most significant one in the film, The Child shows progression:
the development of a child through murder as a game, evolving steadily from
the verbal rejection of adult advice to the physical rejection (elimination) of
adults, on the one hand, and the figurative and symbolic rejection of the entire
concept of adulthood on the other. Rosalie is a true victim of the Peter Pan
Syndrome: she does not want to grow up. It is thus only logical that the film
spares her this fate by having Rosalie’s surrogate mother Alicianne murder the
child with an axe at the end of the film. But let the viewer beware of thinking
that this means that the adult world has ‘triumphed’. Alicianne, the only one to
escape the slaughter (or does she?), ends the film exactly as she began it: the
closing credits roll over a freeze-frame of Alicianne next to a stalled car, her
fixed contemplation of the car seeming to express her awareness that if she
wants to escape, she’ll have to hoof it through a scary landscape teeming with
zombies.
Like The Child, Kiss of the Tarantula, a film sporting a virtually identical
theme – a girl murders adults through mental control of a proxy, in this case
spiders – also confronts us with a similar rift between what the trailer
announces and what the film delivers. Over sweet scenes showing a five-year-
old blonde cutie walking through green sun-dappled woods and fields which
abruptly cut to darkly lit images of teenagers writhing in agony in a car, the
trailer’s voice-over informs us:
To all the world, this is the face of a child of innocence and beauty. But
behind this sweet mask of purity, there dwells a tormented mind filled with
the most horrifying imagination. A mind bent and twisted, seething and
crying out for revenge, as she sends her playmates, the deadly tarantulas, out
to execute her insane desires for death.
The trailer ends with a close-up of the little girl smiling menacingly into the
camera. Here, it seems, viewers are promised a movie about a child playing her
deadly game of killing adults. In the film itself, however, the little girl of the
trailer plays hardly any part at all. And whereas the trailer announces the
inexplicable – the unmotivated and playful deadly acts of an unfathomably
evil kid – the film shows us a well-motivated teen who kills to defend first her
father and later the permanence of her own childhood.
Little Susan (played by Susan Eddins at age five and Rebecca Eddins at age
ten), daughter of the mortician John Bradley (Herman Wallner), is shown in
flashback from the perspective of the teenage Susan (Suzanna Ling) as she is
abused by her mother Martha (Beverly Eddins) in ever-intensifying ways.
Susan’s mother begins by slapping her, screaming at her and forbidding her to
play with her beloved spiders; she then traumatizes the child by killing her
favourite pet spider and tops it all off by cheating on her husband with his
brother Walter (Eric Mason), with whom, moreover, she plots her husband’s
murder. Susan, overhearing the plan, kills her mother by putting a huge
tarantula into her bed, causing her to die of a heart attack. The rest of the film
shows us Susan as a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, who, although looking
every bit of eighteen and sporting long, manicured fingernails, nevertheless
desperately clings to childhood, surrounding herself with teddies, duckies and
dolls – and her beloved pet spiders.
The film’s real horror is the dilemma of growing up: several scenes establish
the trauma of ever-changing life in direct contrast to the comforting
permanence and immutability of death. In one scene, in which Susan
compliments her father for making a classmate’s corpse look beautiful, he
declares that once the girl’s coffin is sealed airtight, ‘she’ll look this lovely for
years’.
While death holds no terrors for Susan, life – the essence of which is change,
development and growth – clearly does. The horrible necessity of her own
development and growth are foregrounded early on in a conversation in which
she explains that she does not seek contact with anyone other than her father.
When she tells him that she has no friends because of his weird profession, he
reassures her in adult terms, clearly mistaking her message: ‘You are a very
attractive young lady. You’ll have plenty of friends.’ Making ‘friends’, a thinly
veiled allusion to growing up and embarking on sexual adventures, is cast as a
series of increasingly traumatic episodes. The first is the harmless friendship
with her school friend Joe Penny (Mark Smith), who is nice but unceremoniously
(and oddly, given Susan’s obvious interest in him) dropped from the film after
two scenes totalling about sixty seconds. The second involves her near-rape by
a gang of classmates whom she surprises when they break into her basement,
trying to steal a coffin for a Halloween party. The third and last focuses on her
slimy uncle Walter, who tells her that ‘you’re as lovely as your mother was’, slaps
her on the rump, fondles her, plies her with non-avuncular kisses at every
opportunity and finally propositions her directly. If adulthood is identified as
sexuality, the latter is – with the exception of the inexplicably truncated Joe-
episode – defined as trauma in the form of either rape or incestuous rape. In a
gender-reversal of the Oedipal story similar to that portrayed in The Child,
sexual trauma begins with the mother’s death: by removing her mother, Susan
replaces her as the target of Walter’s desire.
Susan defends herself against the horror of adulthood by setting her spiders
on her sexual attackers. Like the scenes of sexual threat, her killings come in
threes. All are presented as motivated, even partly excusable. After murdering
her mother to save her father’s life, she inserts tarantulas into the car of her
sexual attackers at a drive-in movie theatre. This, by far the most elaborate
killing scene in the film, is alleviated in two ways. One is the clear suggestion
that Susan intended merely to scare the teens in the car, not to kill them,14 as
illustrated by her shocked exclamation ‘Oh my God!’ when she returns to
collect her spiders and finds three corpses and one catatonic survivor. Second,
the entire episode is shot not as a horror scene but as a spoof on horror, by
virtue of its absurd, outrageous, eye-winking disregard for any principles of
verisimilitude.
In a manner that recalls The Child, this final murder is cast as Susan’s direct
response to the prospect of having adulthood forced upon her. Whereas Walter
merely issued sickening sexual invitations, the scene in which Susan kills him
is preceded by a more serious proposal: he has come to discuss ‘your future
and mine. Our future’, condensed as: ‘We can be together now.’ As did The
Child, Kiss features a dinner table scene during which Walter praises Susan’s
expert cooking, hinting ominously that her childhood will end soon by saying:
‘That was a fine dinner, Susan. You’ll make a fine wife for someone.’ Susan’s
father instantly takes up the hint: ‘She will indeed. [To Susan:] Are you still
seeing Joe Penny?’ Whereas Susan has previously never been at a loss for words,
even in the face of direct sexual attack, this seemingly harmless banter makes
her feel uncomfortable enough to leave the table. Growing up, being someone’s
wife, is the ultimate horror. In the final scene, having buried the prospect
(Walter) for good, the alternative is encapsulated by showing Susan in bed,
surrounded by her toys and dolls, reading a book entitled Eliza (could this be
the story of Eliza Doolittle, that other little girl in training to become someone’s
‘fine wife’, who responds to such treatment with thoughts of murder?15). Daddy,
just back from work, looks in on her. Her bright and cheery: ‘Hey, Dad!’
followed by a sigh of contentment after he closes the door, signify the happy
restoration of her childhood, preserved as a competent mortician might
preserve a beautiful corpse.
Unlike Rosalie, Susan survives, but the permanence of childhood is, as in

The Child, linked with death.
Peers but no pressure: kids and their toys
Peopletoys/Devil Times Five/The Horrible House on the Hill features a team of

killer children whose games include interacting with and imitating adults
before doing away with them. Fifteen-year-old Sister Hannah (Gale Smale), so
called because she appears in a nun’s habit, is the leader of the little troupe,
consisting of thirteen-year-old vain and beautiful David (Leif Garrett), twelve-
year-old soldier boy Brian (Tierre Turner), pyromaniac Susan, who looks
about fourteen (Tia Thompson) and four-year-old cutie Moe (Dawn Lyn). The
Fearsome Five are pitted against a group of adults in a snowed-in holiday
chalet: arrogant and overbearing patriarch Papa Doc (Gene Evans) and his
entourage consisting of his daughters Julie (Joan McCall) and Lovely (Carolyn
Stellar), Julie’s partner and Lovely’s ex Rick (Taylor Lacher), Papa Doc’s
disgruntled employee Harvey (Sorrell Brooke), Harvey’s alcoholic wife Ruth
(Shelley Morrison) and the mentally challenged Ralph (John Durren), who
serves the guests as handyman, cook and general dogsbody. Once the children
are taken in by the adults, the rest of the film is given over to a predictable
series of gory slayings.
Two distinguishing aspects of the film are its explicit visualization of all
killings as child’s play and the doubts it casts on the definition of ‘childhood’ as
a phase leading inexorably and appropriately to adulthood. If in The Child and
Kiss the idea of killing adults as a child’s favourite game is lost somewhere
between conceptualisation in the trailer and the reality of the film, Peopletoys
enacts the idea with great relish. The children entrap and kill Papa Doc with
the help of an elaborate contraption such as only a child could devise: a chair
swinging from the ceiling with a long, sword-like stabbing instrument attached
to its seat. Immediately after his death, David and Brian quarrel about who
deserves credit for rigging the murder weapon. Later, the children place Papa
Doc outside in a sitting position and build a snowman around his corpse.
Harvey is killed – presumably for beating David, an exquisitely sore loser, at
chess – while showing David how to chop wood and belittling his swing, but,
as things turn out, it is more than sufficient to chop through Harvey’s neck.
Pyromaniac Susan sets Ruth on fire after Brian and David have set the stage by
pouring petrol over her; afterwards all the children dance merrily around the
screaming and twisting bonfire that is Ruth. Little Moe, upbraided by Lovely
for playing with her make-up, kills her with Hannah’s help as she is taking a
bath: Hannah holds Lovely’s head under water while Moe pours Papa Doc’s pet
piranhas into the tub, gaily giggling at Lovely’s death throes.
Almost all the killings are collaborative, the result of elaborate contraptions
and planning, giving the impression of childish problem-solving akin to
building a Lego castle or putting together a model kit. Spur-of-the-moment
play, such as dances around burning people or snowmen built around corpses,
develops spontaneously post-mortem. The final scene shows all the kids with
their corpses, their ‘peopletoys’, assembled in the living room, the corpses
arranged in a circle the way a little girl might arrange dolls for a tea party. The
children interact with them as a child interacts with dolls, with the child
speaking both the lines assigned to the doll and his or her own. When finally
the decision is made to move on—‘Game’s over,’ Susan announces bossily –
little Moe cries inconsolably, wailing: ‘I don’t want to leave Julie!’ but Hannah
soothes her with the timeless parental classic: ‘We’re gonna have some brand-
new toys soon.’ Mollified, Moe pecks dead Lovely on the cheek with a cheery
‘Bye, Lovely!’ in exactly the way that a little girl would kiss a favourite doll
good-bye when Mummy puts her foot down: No, you can’t take your doll into
the bathtub. The play-theme is so elaborately enacted that it practically trumps
the terror that the scene seeks to create. There is an ‘Aaaawwwww, how cute’
quality about it that contrasts absurdly with, but also quite overpowers, the
visual reminders of the awful reality behind the game – gaping wounds, Ruth’s
charred face, blood everywhere.
Oddly, the film makes absolutely no distinction between these deadly games
and ‘normal’ kid behaviour. Although we must assume, particularly given the
ending’s talk of going in search of new toys, that the children fully planned to
kill everyone the minute they set foot in the house, all the killings are apparently
motivated by anger at situations that are part and parcel of every child’s life –
such as being shouted at for playing with things you’re not supposed to touch,
being belittled, being beaten at a board game. The film portrays no qualitative
difference between these normal tantrums and gory killing. Murder is cast as
normal interaction not only among children, but also between adults and
children. Significantly, most of the children are ‘assigned’ an adult: Hannah
latches onto Ralph; Susan willingly submits to Ruth’s mothering; David plays
chess with Harvey and wants to be his friend; Moe develops a very cuddly
relationship with Lovely. But if this seems to imply, at least initially, a normal
child-adult relationship, with the adult in authority over the child and the child
in training to become an adult, the viewer is soon disabused of this idea. All the
men in the film are defined by careerism and greed: Papa Doc, the film’s Alpha
Male, brags tirelessly about his own ‘achievements’ and riches, whilst the other
men are cast as little more than circling sharks, jockeying for position and
hoping for offal from his table. Almost all the adult relationships in the film are
fraught and shallow: Harvey resents Papa Doc for withholding his promotion;
Rick hates Papa Doc’s overbearing nature; Julie and Lovely cat-fight for Rick’s
affections; Lovely tries to seduce retarded Ralph, who does not cooperate
because he simply doesn’t understand what she wants; the drunken Ruth
rejects Harvey’s increasingly desperate sexual advances in favour of her love
relationship with Jim Beam. All women are defined by sex: the wanton (Lovely),
the willing (Julie) and the frigid lush who replaces sex with booze (Ruth).
There are no adults in this film who could serve as role models for children. If
these characters are as good as it gets, adulthood richly merits rejection.
Home alone: on (not) playing their game
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane16 is called Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster).
She has just turned thirteen and lives in a large house in the woods with her
father, or so she claims, although he is mysteriously unavailable whenever
adults come to call. Such visits are frequent and always portrayed as home
invasions. The most benign visitor is Officer Miglioriti (Mort Shuman), who
checks on Rynn frequently, suspecting that she lives all alone and merely
upholds the fiction of living with her father. More annoyingly, Rynn’s landlady
Mrs Hallet (Alexis Smith) marches into the house without knocking, re-
arranges the furniture, snoops around and threatens to report Rynn to the
School Board because Rynn is home-schooled. And even more disturbingly,
Cora’s son Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen), a known paedophile, keeps barging in,
sexually harassing and brutalizing Rynn: in one scene, he burns her beloved
pet hamster with a cigarette, crushes it to death and contemptuously flings it
into the fireplace.
Until Rynn’s poisoning of Frank in self-defence in the final scene, she does not
actually kill intentionally, although the corpses certainly pile up in her basement.
There is her mother, who died, like Frank, of poisoning by potassium cyanide,
which Rynn, thinking it was medicine, innocently administered in her tea. There
is nosy Mrs Hallet, who, going down into the basement to snoop, is hit on the
head by the accidentally falling trapdoor and expires on the stairs. Rynn’s fifteen-
year-old disabled boyfriend Mario (Scott Jacoby) turns out to be a lifesaver by
getting rid of all the nosy adults – the town cop by impersonating Rynn’s father,
and Rynn’s mother and the town gossip by helping Rynn to bury them next to the
house, where we can safely presume that they will be joined by the town creep. In
the end, nothing, and above all nobody, stands in the way of Mario and Rynn
living happily (meaning relatively free from adult interference) ever after.
This too is a film about a child getting rid of adults (the body count at the
end stands at a respectable three), but there are no fun and games involved. In
fact, the entire film is about Rynn’s refusal to play games. Visually, there is not
a single scene in which she plays a game or behaves like a child. On the contrary,
she leads a soberly adult life. At the bank, she informs the bank teller, who
hesitates to allow her to cash a cheque because she is only thirteen, that the
cheque is drawn on a joint account with her father. At home, she asserts a
tenant’s right to privacy when Mrs Hallet barges into the house. Her vocabulary
is more advanced than that of all adults with whom she interacts, and she
displays an impressive knowledge of the history of disturbed poets from Poe
to Plath (her father, or so she claims, being one of them). She is shown studying
(learning Hebrew from a tape), reading (Emily Dickinson poems), listening to
music (Frédéric Chopin’s piano concerti), in all cases revealing rather
sophisticated tastes for a thirteen-year-old, but never playing.
Game playing in this film is linked not with children but with adults, in the
sense of nasty, manipulative or coercive behaviour inflicted on children. The
only lesson Rynn has ever taken from an adult, her dying father, is to refuse all
further game playing:
He whispered to me in a very soft voice that I wasn’t like anybody else in the
world, that people wouldn’t understand me, they’d order me around, tell me
what to do and try to make me into the person they wanted me to be. Since
I was only a kid, I couldn’t say anything . . . Don’t give in and play their game.
Fight them any way you have to. Survive. That’s what he said. Then he kissed
me and walked off into the trees and down the lane. In that room I found
charts of tide tables and waters in the Sound and the ocean. He’ll never be
found.
Rynn’s father ensures her survival not only in word but in deed, by killing her
mother from beyond the grave. Astutely predicting that the mother, who
abandoned the family when Rynn was little, would come back after his death
to reclaim her, he handed Rynn a little flask of white powder, instructing her to
put it in her mother’s tea if she ever came to visit, telling her that it was medicine
that would make her mother calmer, less aggressive. Of course, it turns out to
be potassium cyanide, but Rynn, equally unfazed by her act of involuntary
matricide and the technicalities of body disposal, takes her father’s fib as his
loving legacy intended to ensure her continued autonomy. Her own declarations
of independence reproduce her father’s advice down to the wording: ‘I’m not
going to play their game. The game is protected, you know? It’s like going
through the motions of living without really living.’
Little Girl can, in many ways, be read as the precise opposite of 1970s
sch(l)ock horror films in which kids play the game of murdering adults. It is
not a horror film: there is only one intentional murder, the little girl is never
shown at play, and ‘games’ are motivated only verbally, as adult manipulation
sure to thwart the child’s development. The Peter Pan Syndrome, the refusal to
grow up, is here replaced with a distinct eagerness to do so, expressed through
the portrayal of Rynn’s life as that of an adult: refusing to play games in either
sense of the term, managing her own affairs, drinking wine at dinner and
having sex with Mario. Of all the films discussed here, Little Girl is the only one
that projects a future for the child, rather than merely the repetition of a game
(Peopletoys) or preserving childhood in the present tense (Kiss). And yet, Little
Girl is a shocker in its own right, linked to other kiddie horror films of the age
by its most central theme: its explicit rejection of adults.
In fact, Little Girl takes this theme a step further than the films already
discussed by making this proposition seem defensible, even rational. The
shock of the film is contained in its suggestion that children might not have
any need of or use for adults at all. The good parent is the father who voluntarily
removes himself from his child’s life, who walks into the woods, never to return
and never to be found. The bad parent is meddlesome Mommy, narratively cast
as Rynn’s mother but visually cast as Mrs Hallet, who bosses Rynn around in
the same way, snoops around the house in the same way and suffers the same
fate. Or abusive ‘father figures’ like Frank, the paedophile creep. Or Mario’s
mother, who is directly responsible for his disability because she neglected to
have Mario inoculated against polio (Mario explains that she had so many
children that she forgot which of them had not had their shots). So long as
there is shelter and money, the film seems to argue, kids are really better off
without adults. If Mario is portrayed as the victim of bad parenting, Rynn is a
shining example of juvenile self-sufficiency. Despite the constant defensiveness
into which interaction with adults forces her, and despite quite a few traumatic
events including accidental matricide, the nocturnal interment of two corpses
and her killing of a paedophile in self-defence, Rynn is portrayed as cheerful,
content, competent and well adjusted.17 Eschewing schools (‘Schools are
stultifying,’ she pronounces with adult authority and vocabulary), she is
nevertheless getting a good education; in fact, she is described as ‘brilliant’
several times throughout the film. Mario vastly prefers Rynn’s life over his own
troubled family life. The implication is obvious: what kid, given a choice,
wouldn’t? Rynn, home alone, is doing just fine, and would be getting on even
better were it not for the constant necessity of ‘surviving’, here defined as
keeping adults off her body, out of her house and out of her affairs.
Final horrific reflections
Returning for a moment to the background of child psychology, the rejection

of adults and adulthood in all of these films is severely at odds with its most
central developmental theory, developed by among others by Groos, Montessori
and Vygotsky, namely that children’s games prepare them for their future lives
as adults. Piaget’s definition of play as the child adjusting its surroundings to its
own benefit of itself seems, at least in the portrayal of these films, closer to the
mark. Such subordination of the surroundings to the self is most clearly
enacted in Little Girl, in which all the events engineered by Rynn – her self-
education, the furnishing of her house, her insistence on her rights despite her
age, her acts of corpse disposal and murder – fall into this category. In the
horror films, too, environmental engineering – carefully placing spiders, luring
people to places where zombies can attack them, rigging elaborate murder
contraptions – is an important part of the killing game. Similarly, the Peter Pan
Syndrome holds for all films. All focus either on the child’s refusal to grow up
or to grow up in the manner dictated by adults. Within the films’ logic, the
murder of adults seems fully justified by the simple fact that adults are a waste
of space – useless, annoying, derisive, neglectful, abusive, or simply in the way.
So far, so obvious.
What is perhaps less obvious – maybe because it is one of the most disturbing
ideas voiced by these films – is another link that we might make between
playing games and killing adults. In The Power of Play: Learning What Comes
Naturally, David Elkind has offered the simplest answer of all to the question:
‘Why do children play?’ Because it comes naturally. Because it’s fun. So let us
consider, for a moment, the scandalous consequences of applying Elkind’s
insight to shocker movies of the 1970s in which the murder of adults is
visualized as child’s play. Why do children murder adults? Because it comes
naturally. Because it’s fun.
There is, in fact, a fair amount of evidence for this. Particularly in Peopletoys,
the children’s joy is clearly visualized through cheery dances around burning
people, happy giggles while building snowmen around corpses, or in the
simple sense of achievement when a complicated murderous contraption
turns out to work exactly as planned. But the joy of killing is not only a diegetic
issue. The fact that children experience the killing of adults as a fun game turns
out to be a major issue for makers of and adult actors in horror films that
feature children killing adults. Interviews with adults involved in the making
of such films tend to focus on intense antagonism, to the point of physical
violence, on the set, and to link this implicitly or explicitly with the violence
portrayed in the film. In 2006, Peopletoys’ producer Michael Blowitz reported
that he and the film’s first director, Sean MacGregor, clashed so badly at a
production meeting that ‘he took a swing at me and I put him through a plate
glass window’.18 Dawn Lyn, who played little Moe, remembered over thirty
years later that, according to her mother, she fought with her brother more
than usual while making the film. Her mother attributed this increased
aggression ‘to the negativity of the roles we were playing, being murderers’,
although Lyn herself denied both fighting with her brother or being in the least
disturbed by the role she was playing. For the adults involved in making the
film, the diegetic violence was clearly traumatic to the point where it leaked
out into the extra-diegetic world. But what of the children? Thirty-two years
after the film first aired, they still remembered how much fun they had. ‘It was
like a vacation for us,’ remembers Tierre Turner who played soldier boy Brian,
‘we were having a great time.’ Disturbingly, all the ‘fun’ mentioned by the then-
child actors is directly linked with the murders, seen either as a great lark or
even, in Piaget’s sense, as exercises in autonomy. Turner, for example,
remembered that ‘I was the person who set out and devised all the murders; I
was the person who made everyone else whack everybody else up, and I did
this with great pleasure at twelve years old’ (the film, interestingly, portrays all
the killings as communal efforts and assigns no such leadership role to Brian).
And Dawn Lyn described, her eyes shining, the truly Freudian situation of
killing Lovely (played by her real-life mother, Carolyn Stellar) by pouring real
(albeit dead, or presumed dead) piranhas into her bathtub, one of which
actually latched onto her leg and wounded her.
Such radically diverging perceptions of violence – distinctly traumatic for
adults, a hoot for kids – permeate the interviews of cast and crew members of
other horror films as well, including films separated considerably from
Peopletoys by time, space and cultural context, such as the British film The
Children (Tom Shankland, 2008), in which a virus of unknown origin turns the
children assembled for a New Year holiday into killers of adults. Post-
production interviews with adult actors reveal both that they experienced
severe trauma watching scenes in which the kids killed adults and presumed a
similarly traumatic experience on the part of the children. Actor Jeremy
Sheffield, who played the first father figure dispatched, describes that
considerable effort went into minimizing such trauma for the children: ‘We
went through different games, exercises, play [. . .] to make it very clear to the
kids that it’s a game, it’s not real, whatever happens is not real, no matter how
real it seems, it’s not.’19 But Eva Birthistle, who played the last mother standing,
seemed aware that such caution was unnecessary: ‘Their confidence just grew,
like in the first week, then they were sort of . . . delighted that they were gonna
kill us all [giggles].’ Jane Karen, Child Wrangler on the set, confirms this
impression with reference to a particularly traumatic scene:
There’s a little girl who has to stab her mother in the eye with a pencil, and
she really likes it. She’s been really . . . good at that. They’re just much better
at the kind of bang-bang you’re dead!-kind of games than you imagine,
they’re quite gory in their playing, and so it’s not a big leap for them, whereas
as adults we get very sensitive about [gasps] ‘How do you, you know, explain
this,’ and those kids go: ‘Oh yeah, I’m covered in blood, aren’t I, because I just
stabbed Mum Di . . .’
Like the films themselves, the interviews document a strange rift between the
verbal and the visual. While the statements themselves come very close to
admitting the scary truth, the gasps and the giggles indicate that this is not a
truth with which adults can live.20 Horror films in which children kill adults
turn child psychology on its head. They take the entire idea of normalisation
out of the hands of adults who, diegetically, uphold their fondest illusions of
control by severely underestimating murderous children as ‘a little strange’,
and, extra-diegetically, are at a loss to explain why playing at killing adults is so
much fun. The quite desperate-sounding incantations that these murders are
‘not real, whatever happens is not real’ may be soothing for adults but are
apparently completely wasted on kids. Adults need the distinction between
game and reality – children don’t.
Sometimes, 1970s shockers throw adults a bone of reassurance by justifying
a child’s murder of an adult, assigning to the act a logic that works in the adult
world, particularly in cases where, as happens in Kiss and Little Girl, the adult in
question is a paedophile. Other films, however, are busily chipping away at such
grown-up reasoning. The wound to the adult self-image that these films inflict
is threefold: the first cut is the sneaking suspicion that a child’s development
may be influenced less by adult modelling than by autonomous experience
gained through games. There follows the hammer blow of realisation: children
don’t need adults to develop, they need only to play. And the final twist of the
knife: not only are adults no help at all, they are, in many cases, an actual
hindrance to the child’s development. Once we accept these three premises of
the kind of shocker film discussed in this chapter, we uncover its neat logic. Its
objective is the elimination of adverse (and that means adult) interference with
the child’s world, and the device through which this is achieved is, cogently
enough, the most fundamental means of child development: child’s play. In this
way, we can read certain 1970s shocker films not only literally – as interesting
insights into the games children apparently enjoy the most – but also
figuratively and symbolically: as documents deriding the conclusions of much
child developmental psychology, which, in a colossal inflation of adult self-
importance, demotes the entire world of children to boot camp for adulthood.
Notes
1 Herbert Spencer, Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects (London: Dent, [1816]
1911).
2 Karl Groos, The Play of Man, trans. Elizabeth L. Baldwin (New York: Appleton,
1901); Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood (Chennai: Orient Longman, 2004).
3 Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).
4 David Elkind, The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally (Philadelphia:
Da Capo, 2007).
5 Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id (Seattle, MA: Pacific Publishing Studio, 2010).
6 Commonly viewed as a psychological disorder, the Peter Pan Syndrome is defined
as affecting ‘people who do not want or feel unable to grow up’ and is blamed,
perhaps predictably, on overbearing parents. See ‘Overprotecting parents can lead
children to develop “Peter Pan Syndrome” ’, Science Daily, 3 May 2007. Available at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070501112023.htm (accessed
3 January 2016).
7 Murderous, evil or otherwise monstrous children in horror film, long the red-
headed step-children of scholarship, have attracted an extraordinary amount of
attention recently. Early headway was made by Julian Petley in ‘The monstrous
child’, in Michelle Aaron (ed.), The Body’s Perilous Pleasures: Dangerous Desires and
Contemporary Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 87–107,
and William Paul in chapters of Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror
and Comedy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Recently, horror’s evil
children have arrived on the scholarly scene in grand style. See the following
works: Karen J. Renner (ed.), The ‘Evil’ Child in Literature, Film, and Popular
Culture (London: Routledge, 2013); Dominic Lennard, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors:
The Child Villains of Horror Films (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014); Markus P.J.
Bohlmann and Sean Moreland (ed.), Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters:
Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015); Andrew Scahill,
The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); and T.S. Kord, Little Horrors: How
Cinema’s Evil Children Play on Our Guilt (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016). Parts
of the current chapter, particularly those concerning The Child and Peopletoys, are
adapted from material in chapters 3 and 8 of Little Horrors.
8 On this scenario in films and a number of real-life cases, see Julian Petley, ‘The
monstrous child’. For a number of real-life cases and their ‘explanations’ in the
public realm, see Katherine Ramsland, ‘The unthinkable: children who kill’, Crime
Library: Criminal Minds and Methods. Available at http://www.trutv.com/library/
crime/serial_killers/weird/kids2/index_1.html (accessed 27 March 2014).
9 For example: Frederic Wertham, MD, ‘Battered children and baffled adults’,
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 48/7, August 1972, pp. 888–98;
Ronald Burns and Charles Crawford, ‘School shootings, the media, and public
fear: ingredients for a moral panic’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 32, 1999, pp.
147–68; Carl C. Bell and Esther J. Jenkins, ‘Community violence and children on
Chicago’s South Side’, Psychiatry, 56, February 1993, pp. 46–54; Maaike Kempes,
Walter Matthys, Han de Vries and Herman van Engeland, ‘Reactive and proactive
aggression in children: a review of theory, findings and the relevance for child and
adolescent psychiatry’, European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 14/1, 2005,
pp. 11–19; Carl Byree, James D. Robinson and Joseph Turow, ‘The effects of
television on children: what the experts believe’, Annenberg School for
Communications Departmental Papers (1985), pp. 149–55.
10 Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child, trans. Marjorie Gabain (Glencoe, IL:
The Free Press, 2004). Available at http://archive.org/details/moraljudgment
oft005613mbp (accessed 23 October 2014).
11 For useful background and contextualization of 1970s horror and cult horror, see
Xavier Mendik (ed.), Necronomicon Presents Shocking Cinema of the 70s
(Hereford: Noir, 2002); Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider (ed.),
Underground USA: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon (London:
Wallflower Press, 2002); Xavier Mendik and Graeme Harper (ed.), Unruly
Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics (Guildford: Fab Press, 2000).
12 How boringly routine the killings appear on screen has been noted by at least one
critic: ‘Not exactly thrilling stuff. [. . .] The film manages to generate some interest
with a decent make-up effect of a victim’s half-torn-up face, but it’s too little too
late.’ Glenn Kay, ‘The Child (1977),’ Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (Chicago:
Chicago Review Press, 2008), pp. 88–9.
13 Mrs Whitfield is clearly established as a fairy-tale grandmother-figure by virtue of
her incessant and unheeded warnings to both Alicianne and Rosalie not to stray
from the path through the woods.
14 One participant in the near-rape in the basement, a boy named Bo (Jay Scott),
who is meant to be her age but could easily pass for thirty-five, escaped carnage at
the drive-in. Susan later mops up by sending her spiders after Bo into a narrow
crawlspace where he is trying to repair a pipe. This killing is clearly presented as

intentional but motivated by her feeling of betrayal: Bo apologized for his
participation in the earlier attack, only then to press his unwanted sexual advances
on her, again at the drive-in movie theatre. For the purpose of this discussion, I am
considering this episode, while presented as a separate incident in the film, as an
integral part of the second of Susan’s three killings.
15 The musical My Fair Lady was originally performed in 1958, but experienced an
unprecedented revival on Broadway in 1976, the year Kiss of the Tarantula opened,
and won that year’s ‘Outstanding Revival of a Musical’ award. See ‘1975–1976 22nd
Drama Desk awards’. Available at http://www.dramadeskawards.com/ (accessed 3
January 2016).
16 Brief interpretations of the film are offered in the following sources: Jill Nelmes,
An Introduction to Film Studies (London: Routledge, 3rd ed. 2003), pp. 179–80; Jim
Cullen, Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions (Oxford: Oxford
17 Cullen in Sensing the Past gives interesting expression to the difficulty of both
assigning a genre to the film and a character to its heroine: ‘Little Girl is a strange
hybrid of a movie, combining elements of the horror and thriller genres while
somehow leading you to suspend your judgment about a protagonist who
probably should be viewed as a monster’, p. 188.
18 This and all following quotations are taken from ‘Interviews’, supplementary
materials on the 2008 Code Red Peopletoys DVD.
19 This and following citations are taken from The Making of The Children,
supplementary materials, DVD-release of The Children (Tom Shankland,
2008).
20 Whether facetiously or seriously, Terry Eagleton has toyed, in his book On Evil,
with this idea when commenting on the British public’s horror at the 1993 murder
of toddler James Bulger at the hands of two then ten-year-old boys: ‘Why the public
found this particular murder especially shocking is not entirely clear. Children, after
all, are only semi-socialised creatures who can be expected to behave pretty savagely
from time to time . . . In this sense, it is surprising that such grisly events do not
occur more often. Perhaps children murder each other all the time and are simply
keeping quiet about it’ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, p. 1).
Bibliography
Bell, Carl C. and Jenkins, Esther J., ‘Community violence and children on Chicago’s
South Side’, Psychiatry, 56 (February 1993), pp. 46–54.
Bohlmann, Marcus P.J. and Moreland, Sean (eds), Monstrous Children and Childish
Monsters: Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors (Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2015).
Burns, Robert and Crawford, Charles, ‘School shootings, the media, and public fear:
ingredients for a moral panic’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 32 (1999),
pp. 147–68.
Byree, Carl, Robinson, James D. and Turow, Joseph, ‘The effects of television on
children: what the experts believe’, Annenberg School for Communications
Departmental Papers (1985), pp. 149–55.
Cullen, Jim, Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions (Oxford: Oxford
Eagleton, Terry, On Evil (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
Elkind, David, The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally (Philadelphia, PA :
Da Capo, 2007).
Freud, Sigmund, The Ego and the Id (Seattle, MA : Pacific Publishing Studio, 2010).
Groos, Karl, The Play of Man, trans. Elizabeth L. Baldwin (New York: Appleton, 1901).
Kay, Glenn, ‘The Child (1977)’, Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (Chicago, IL :
Chicago Review Press, 2008), pp. 88–9.
Kempes, Maaike, Matthys, Walter, de Vries, Han and van Engeland, Herman,
‘Reactive and proactive aggression in children: a review of theory, findings and the
relevance for child and adolescent psychiatry’, European Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, 14/1 (2005), pp. 11–19.
Kord, T.S. Little Horrors: How Cinema’s Evil Children Play on Our Guilt (Jefferson,
NC : McFarland, 2016).
Lennard, Dominic, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Films
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014).
Mendik, Xavier (ed.), Necronomicon Presents Shocking Cinema of the 70s (Hereford:
Noir, 2002).
Mendik, Xavier and Harper, Graeme (eds), Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its
Critics (Guildford: Fab Press, 2000).
Mendik, Xavier and Schneider, Steven Jay (eds), Underground USA: Filmmaking
Beyond the Hollywood Canon (London: Wallflower Press, 2002).
Montessori, Maria, The Secret of Childhood (Chennai: Orient Longman, 2004).
Nelmes, Jill, An Introduction to Film Studies (London: Routledge, 3rd edn, 2003).
Paul, William, Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
Petley, Julian, ‘The monstrous child’, in Michelle Aaron (ed.), The Body’s Perilous
Pleasures: Dangerous Desires and Contemporary Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
Piaget, Jean, The Moral Judgment of the Child, trans. Marjorie Gabain (Glencoe, IL :
The Free Press, 2004). Available at http://archive.org/details/
moraljudgmentoft005613mbp (accessed 23 October 2014).
Ramsland, Katheriner, ‘The unthinkable: children who kill’, Crime Library: Criminal
Minds and Methods. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20100326133038/
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/kids2/party_8.html
(accessed 27 March 2014).
Renner, Karen J. (ed.), The ‘Evil’ Child in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture
(London: Routledge, 2013).
Scahill, Andrew, The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer
Spectatorship (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Spencer, Herbert, Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects (London: Dent, [1816]
1911).
Vygotsky, Lev, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes
(Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1978).
Wertham, Frederic, M.D., ‘Battered children and baffled adults’, Bulletin of the
New York Academy of Medicine, 48/7 (August 1972), pp. 888–98.
268
Part Five
Porno Chic, Porno Shock
269
270
12
‘They’re Not There Just to Fuck’: Sensibility,

Cultural Provocation and 1970s
American Hard Core Pornography
Darren Kerr
In one of the few books on pornographic films published during the 1970s,
Kenneth Turan and Stephen F. Zito’s Sinema: American Pornographic Films
and the People Who Make Them (1974) laid claim to a series of firsts: the first
definitive study, the first set of interviews with porn stars and the first to
examine industry practice. Turan and Zito, a journalist and AFI theatre
programme planner respectively, offer observations on proto-fandom, a
chapter dedicated to gay male porn and, quite rarely for such a book, an
account of a porn shoot as it happens. Neither an academic text nor an
extended piece of journalism, Sinema is a book of its time written in the
vernacular of the period, published by Praegar as a general interest work, and
a valuable record of popular thinking concerning porn screen culture and
practice at the time.
Turan and Zito’s book is listed by the Library of Congress Catalog in the
category Erotic Films – History and Criticism and is held in just over 200
university, public and county libraries in the U.S.1 As an historical document,
the book betrays an awareness of and speculative liberalism towards the porn
film’s place on mainstream screens and in public discourse. Matters of politics,
culture and identity inform their approach, which also gives a voice to those
previously not heard from: the people central to industry practice. The book
speaks to a history of bold, variable and exploratory porn film practices and of
a time unfolding as it was being written. The most significant point of note,
however, is how it can be seen as an historical document that in and of itself
captures a cultural moment and navigates a period of sexual cultural history
271
that has long since been consumed by two equally divisive and reductive
rhetorics: that of golden age nostalgia and the ‘porn wars’.2 Importantly it is
perhaps best read for its fleeting illustrations of culturally provocative
challenges to popular perceptions hinted at through observations on the films,
the film-makers and other people encountered. Turan and Zito note that the
motivation to write the book was in part down to the people they met who
challenged the oft-held perception that the porn industry was ‘a seamy
monolith populated exclusively by greasy men with big cigars and pimply
heroin addicted actors and actresses’.3 While they don’t shy away from
references to the industry and its associations with organized crime, they
positively note people’s diversity, openness and honesty towards sex forming ‘a
very legitimate slice of Americana, as deftly revealing in its way about the type
of country the United States has become as any group you can name’.4 Of the
films themselves they indicate a notable point about their affective qualities:
There are those moments, bright electric moments where it all works, when
the film on the screen by some accident of luck and talent, transcends itself,
becoming simultaneously drama, eroticism, and cinema and producing a
sexual sequence of riveting emotional intensity.5
This assertion of value in hard core is echoed in Turan and Zito’s interview
with film-maker and distributor Radley Metzger, who said of his approach to
sex in his films: ‘They’re not there just to fuck . . . It’s a question of whether you
want to make a sex picture or take a feeling or an attitude or an emotion in
which sex is involved. I think that might be the difference.’6
There are two observations to make regarding Metzger’s point. The first is
that positive value judgements are largely absent from popular cultural
discourses on sex in cinema, let alone pornographic cinema. This is, of course,
hardly surprising when pornography in all its forms has been historically
understood through regulation and repression as well as viewed as being
entirely monolithic, or as Wicke notes, as ‘one singular phenomenon’. 7 Textual
and aesthetic qualities (be they good or bad), and understanding pornographies
as having their own histories and cultures of production, distribution and
consumption have been left mainly to academia and activism while largely
ignored by the press and policy makers of one kind or another. The second
observation, which I will be focusing on in this chapter, alludes to sensibility.
‘They’re Not There Just to Fuck’ 273
The often intangible qualities of sensibility have an important place in the

discussion of hard core porn’s place in the mainstream during (and beyond)
the 1970s, and they also go some way towards getting beneath the already
documented accounts of the porn film industry in the period. This was a
period that actively fostered social critique, engendered the desire for political
transformation and encouraged marginalized voices in cultural production.
While I am not preoccupied here with producing a history of the adult film
industry, I am however drawn to the contradictions and co-existing
complexities of the period which suggest that porn film’s time in the mainstream
was an affirmative consequence of changing cultural sensibility.8
Metzger’s point is uncannily close to Timothy O’Leary’s account of
sensibility, which he defines as determined by ‘feeling, perceiving and valuing
[which are] in constant mutual interaction’.9 Whilst acknowledging how starkly
ephemeral sensibility is, O’Leary does point out its influence on the very
transformative qualities of critique. To extend and consider sensibility as
critique intimately links it to acts of cultural production which both influence
and are influenced by personal politics and social spaces, and can account for
co-existing contradictions and positions within individuals and the wider
society.
Arguing that sensibility is what underpins the means by which hard core
porn films came to occupy a place in the 1970s might be thought of as a near-
futile exercise in revisionism and academic pondering. And yet sensibility is
deeply connected to audience studies, explorations of material cultures and
also textual analysis. It is worth noting that porn and its attendant sexual
cultures have simply always been with us, hidden or revealed, and, like many
denigrated forms and voices, it came to share a cultural-critical platform that
took root in the 1970s.
It comes as absolutely no surprise that films reflect the times in which they
are produced. This period in porn film history, though, has since come to be
more often understood through subsequent discourses – debates dominated
by nostalgia about the golden age and especially the porn wars – much of
which was published in the early 1980s and then widely reflected on in the
1990s and 2000s. The porn wars marked a gender-based socio-cultural battle
much more than a socio-cinematic one. This period is often perceived through
the enduring legacies of radical feminism, the critical examination and
explanations of male power validated in sexual activity, and an imagined

female sexuality being intrinsically linked to cultures of rape and abuse.
Phallocentric and misogynistic ‘regimes of representation’ in porn justify such
an argument and leave no space for the idea of porn as unstable, varied or
capable of soliciting alternative readings.10 Equally the period has suffered
from being a touchstone for many subsequent anti-porn social, cultural and
political debates into which porn in all its forms is drawn. The twin doctrines
of nostalgia and the golden age also often overlook the complexities and
contradictions of the period, especially regarding the sexual, where the idea of
liberation was still steeped in the realities of persistent patriarchal inequalities,
limited rights, oppressive treatment and legislative ignorance. This period of
porn has come to be defined metonymically because of its associations with a
later time, context and history. This displaces the 1970s cultural climate in
which its mainstreaming took place. It is thus unsurprising that porn scholars
are now re-evaluating sex, porn and screen practice through material cultures.
The cultural climate of the 1970s might best be illustrated by Lester D.
Friedman’s observation that this was a time when ‘symbols of America’s strength
and power were goliaths struck down by schoolboys flinging stones’.11 The
youthful revolt here references the cultural disruptors of their day dismantling
received wisdom, contesting generational certainties and creating – not just
addressing – social and political challenges. This took place against the backdrop
of a poorly performing economy, violent uprisings, the scandalous politics of
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, reaction to environmental issues, and activism
in the fields of civil rights, youth culture, gay culture and women’s rights. At the
same time, legislative interventions raised the plight and the profile of marginalized
individuals and featured in a range of landmark cases that aimed to address
systemic issues relating to race, ethnicity, sex, gender and identity.12 As is evidenced
by the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972, such legislation may be passed but is
not always adopted nor ratified across the country. The period, therefore, was not
just about a media-reported ‘sexual revolution’ or ‘free love movement’ nor was it
the culmination of the previous decade’s Summer of Love leading to a celebrated
liberation. Instead, cultural, civic and political space was being opened up and
created for cultures of sexual identity and representation to enter and occupy.
These examples of social unrest did not represent a series of successes or a
sense of progress in any in a linear sense – that is a historical assessment made
in later years. The experiential qualities of the period are better understood as
moments of antagonism, frustration and intervention that were driven by
activist and oppositional voices. Campaigns for change questioned
conventional values and were met with powerful opposition, with claims for
rights being contested and occasionally won. Such successes do not happen in
isolation however but come with their opponents, their failures and their
contradictions.
An illustration of this process is provided by an episode of The Dick Cavett
Show which aired in 1970 on ABC.13 Introduced as members of the Women’s
Liberation Movement, Sally Kempton and Susan Brownmiller join Cavett,
psychologist Rollo May and Hugh Hefner, who was globally recognized at this
point and whose Playboy was a notable success in spite of its detractors. While
the fight for women’s rights frames this period as a critically progressive one,
this episode of mainstream television highlights just how the notion of women
defending women was framed as complex and conflicted at the time. Cavett’s
typically affable style opens the segment with sincerity by addressing the
television audience: ‘Maybe we can find out what the women are all upset
about,’ he says. Kempton and Brownmiller then say that appearing on such
shows is political, highlighting the need for a change in education, for men to
give up power and privilege, and point out the conspiracy to deny women’s
rights. Brownmiller’s comment on men – ‘they oppress us as women, they
won’t let us be’ – is accompanied by studio silence until a fleeting reference to
Hefner as her enemy and a playful intervention from Cavett tells the audience
it’s okay to laugh and join in. The audience even appear to cheer when
Brownmiller interrupts Hefner, who has referred to them as ‘girls’, saying:
‘Women, women. Yes, I’m thirty-five.’ Towards the end of the segment singer-
songwriter Grace Slick joins the conversation and turns to Kempton and
Brownmiller to state:
Some of them look at you like a sex object so fine, you [audio is cut] them. I
don’t see where the problem is. It’s just maybe ’cause I don’t see what you’re
talking about yet. But I don’t see the problem, yet.
The repeated ‘yet’ says something of a cultural moment that is still in

development, and the studio audience applaud Slick’s point that the right to
fuck a man is as important as the right to reject him. But the audience also
applaud Brownmiller’s feminism and take-down of Hefner at the same time as

they welcome Cavett’s comfortably conservative humour. Hefner himself goes
on to recognize the history of women’s oppression and to reiterate the necessity
of progressive rights, but he also refuses to see how Playboy perpetuates any
problems, citing women reading the magazine and also choosing to do bunny-
work. Brownmiller and Kempton exchange an exasperated glance at this point
(and, we can assume, words of solidarity) but then also articulate their own
differences of opinion on women’s rights. The segment captures the complexities
and contradictions of the time for women’s rights and indeed for other voices
often rendered marginal by the media. The position that Kempton and
Brownmiller present is clearly both well-informed and contentious but
rendered in the moment uncertain. The complexities that they present often
hang in moments of silence while more simple and direct comments hit home
in what was a head-on intervention on the mainstream screen.14
This is part of a wider sense in which sensibility contributes to mainstreaming
the marginal but still lacks clear measures of success or the hope of progress.
Porn cinema is perhaps the best exemplar here. The mainstreaming of social
and cultural difference, as well as of otherness, illustrates the way in which
practices of knowledge are interrupted, adapt and become evident in wider
culture. It is worth noting that this is not about the linearity of history but of
cultural sensibility – of feeling, perceiving and valuing – oscillating between
past legacies, current influences and the social impact of the 1960s into 1970s
and back again. The influence of history, time and experience was, in other
words, just as spatial as it was temporal.
The contradictions of the time created new spaces arising from the visibility
and circulation of cultural ideation that had emerged at a time when traditional
values were becoming displaced and newly reconfigured. Interested in the
spatial as much as the temporal, Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja and Martina
Löw have all at various times explored how the relational qualities of space are
comprised and constituted by social agency.15 Soja’s concept of a ‘third space’
moves beyond the physical to the idea of space as the result of action relating
to a range of external factors, including legislation, existing social lives, the
impact of the economy, and, of course, cultural values. For Löw, ideation
constitutes cultural space in societal structures, and she acknowledges the
complexities of co-existing and competing discourses, oppositional ideologies
and contradictory positions. Of the many critical, cultural and creative spaces
to which this relates, film and the cinema of the period are particularly apposite.
Cinematically, the time is notable for the emergence of post-classical
Hollywood, a period recognized for its divergent approaches to film form,
content and independence from producer-led studios. Friedman’s account of
post-classical characteristics presents a picture of the kind of material that was
drawn in from the margins and mainstreamed before the return and revival of
studio products towards the end of the decade. These qualities parallel many of
those from porn films from the period, too, and include not only a revisionist
approach to narrative storytelling and genre but also the foregrounding of
subjective experiences in character-driven narratives which put anti-heroes
and outcasts centre stage. They are cynical, critical and suspicious of political
institutions and American society, and display overt antagonism towards
authority and previous generations. Finally, they are not just more explicit in
exploring sex, race, ethnicity, gender and class politics but are intentionally
provocative too.16 Post-classical Hollywood, like the hard core porn of the
time, is, however, just one example of the creative-cultural interventions that
made their mark but also struggled to maintain their place as the decade
unfolded.
The unravelling of America, the emergence of religion-baiting guilt-free sex
and the rejection of traditional roles can actually all be found prior to the
1970s across such varied works as Sylvia Plath’s poetry, notably Ariel (1965),
the ‘new journalism’ of Joan Didion collected in Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(1968) and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), which
became the first sci-fi novel to make The New York Times bestseller list.
Confrontational art in Valie Export’s Action Pants – Genital Panic (1968), Judy
Chicago’s Dinner Party (1974–9) and Dorothy Iannone’s ‘ecstatic unity’ series
all engage with ideas about identity, the body and the self, seeking to normalize
difference, expose the hidden and voice the unspoken – much like the
photography of Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe.17 Modes of explicit
rejection informed the early hippy and later punk movements of the time,
while the sensational politics and excesses of disco in New York clubs such as
Studio 54 and CBGBs regularly attracted cultural luminaries and informed
fashion, performing arts, film, television and music. Discordant and divisive
interventions could similarly describe the now seminal publication of Helen
Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine
Mystique (1963), books which would remain highly influential in the 1970s. In
spite of Brown and Friedan’s differences, sex and gender, class, power and
systemic inequalities underly these works which are credited as igniting the
women’s movement, second wave feminism and the sexual revolution. The
cultural disruptions continued with Beverly Johnson becoming the first African
American on the cover of Vogue in August 1974, Barbara Walters being appointed
as the first woman to co-anchor for a major network (NBC) in 1974 and Billie
Jean King winning in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ tennis match in September 1973.
Reflecting on her win, King noted the damage that a loss would do to ‘all women’s
self-esteem’.18 These examples of the creative and cultural landscape mark out
moments that confidently impose upon the mainstream, come to dominate the
sexual politics of the time and politicize visibility.
In the sex and dating advice available in the 1970s, topics such as self-fulfilment,
gender politics, women’s pleasure and sex and inequality were often framed in
such a way as to encourage men to think differently about sex and pleasure. Anna
Ward has shown how women were encouraged to explore themselves, their
bodies and identities at a time when ‘lesbian and gay inquiry into sex and sexual
politics’ was also more visible and more widely discussed through sex activism
from feminist and queer voices.19 Importantly, though, she also notes the lack of
any sense of intersectionality, with one the most celebrated publications of the
time, The Joy of Sex (1972), continuing ‘the troubling practice of using slang for
sexual positions and acts based on racial, ethnic and national identities’.20
This was also the time of Betty Dodson’s workshops and her book Liberating
Masturbation: A Meditation on Self Love (1974), as well as the publication of
Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden (1973). Greg Tuck has highlighted the
cultural and creative value of autoeroticism as a driver of new technologies,
new media and new voices asserting that ‘we are a profoundly self-pleasuring
society at both a metaphorical and material level’.21 Having been introduced in
1968, the Hitachi Magic Wand was now part of the popular sexual imagination,
and this was closely associated with the commercial growth of sex shops, as
Lynn Comella’s Vibrator Nation (2017) brilliantly illustrates. Reflecting on
Dodson’s work Comella explains that:
Whatever inroads had been made in the 1970s around carving out more
space in the culture for women to talk openly about sex and make their
sexual pleasure a priority had been hijacked by the anti-pornography

movement. Sex was no longer seen by the feminist establishment as a
potentially liberating force, but a danger zone’.22
It is not difficult to draw conclusions about the paradoxes of this period of

cultural, creative and discursive liberation. Tuck also draws attention to an
embedded paradox at the centre of self-pleasure, where satisfaction and
autonomy meet self-isolation and separation. In the broadest sense, he
conceives of masturbating as exactly the kind of ‘moment of pure consumption
required by capitalism’, but since it is not exactly ‘productive’, this activity
ensures that we are both ‘encouraged and condemned for enjoying ourselves’.23
For Ruth Rosen, the period has been defined as ‘arguably the most
intellectually vital and exciting time for American women, producing an
amazing array of revelations and changes in social, political and public thought
and policy’.24 And yet the backdrop to these changes was a persistent political
backlash against demands for social change. The 1968 presidential election
produced a landslide Republican victory, and the strength of the right
continued throughout the 1970s. The visibility and demands of the
counterculture along with ‘the proliferation of gay and straight bathhouses and
clubs [and] the new sexual scripts created by feminism, gay liberation and a
new permissiveness’25 were met with what Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer
describe as ‘a vast shift toward social and political conservatism’.26 Cultural
divisions persisted and the political landscape was steered towards neo-
conservatism. On the other hand, the American family was changing, the
number of people unmarried and co-habiting increased and approximately
half of the population was now under twenty-five. America was at this time a
‘symphony of different colors, voices, and customs that demanded to be
heard’27 in a time ‘alive with contradictions that ultimately shaped modern
America’.28
Hard core porn films are one such contradiction, and represent much more
than some utopian moment in the liberalization of sex on screen. A short
survey of what are regarded as successful and canonical golden age films
summarizes these tensions and contradictions, whether or not presented
intentionally. Porn film’s cause célèbre, Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano, 1972),
finally paid attention to the clitoris only to present women’s pleasure as male
pleasure or barely pleasure at all. Behind the Green Door (Artie and Jim
Mitchell, 1972) uses a narrative of sexual numbers to challenge the male gaze
in favour of female pleasure and yet persists as a rape fantasy whose most
memorable scene is an extended psychedelic and valedictory cum shot. The
Devil in Miss Jones (Gerard Damiano, 1973) is a record of culturally constructed
repression being defeated but also a sex-negative indictment of female desire
left unchecked. The Resurrection of Eve (Jon Fontana and Artie Mitchell,1973)
presents a guilt-free picture of gay, straight and interracial sex but also frames
the idea of the sexually liberated woman as the solution to remedying
childhood sex abuse and a coercive adult relationship.
Perhaps the most interesting and confrontational of the widely recognized
golden age films is The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (Radley Metzger,
1974) which, like Green Door and other lesser-known films, playfully reflects
on the audience’s desire for and consumption of such films. Private detective
Frank (Eric Edwards) is hired by Mr Mann (Alan Marlow) to film, present and
analytically explain to him the sexual encounters enjoyed by psychotherapist
Pamela Mann (Barbara Bourbon). These include sex with a stranger, a patient
who is a prostitute and a double sexual assault by a female radical (Darby
Lloyd Rains) and her partner (Jamie Gillis). The private detective explains that
Pamela’s sexual desire relates to her arrested development prior to the age of
consent, elaborating to her husband that ‘she needs a cock down her throat the
way another woman, well, needs a chocolate cake down her throat’. Over the
course of the investigation he continues analytically to explain her needs, her
drive and her insecurities, which find release in promiscuity and forced sex.
Eventually the sexual encounters are revealed to be staged for Pamela and her
husband’s pleasure, intercut with and fuelling the final sex sequence between
them. The film clearly invests in and reflects on the perceived sensibility of the
time, invoking contentious fantasy and role play and acknowledging that
sexual pleasures are not always comfortably aligned with conservative,
progressive or comfortably liberal politics. Its mockery extends to the
intermittent appearance of a young woman, credited as Poll Taker (Doris
Toumarkine), who questions Mann on several occasions:
Poll Taker Do you think the Welfare State is still viable considering the
inability up to the present of the system to reconcile the isolation of the
poor with the assimilation into the system of relatively well-to-do hierarchy
of government administrators, corporate functionaries and executives and
the other white collar elite who are the necessary benefactors of these
poor?
Pamela No.
Poll Taker Thank you.
The poll taker returns throughout the film with questions about disaffected
youth, colonialism, the bourgeoisie and evolutionary politics before being
asked by Pamela’s husband ‘Who’re you?’ to which she replies, ‘Oh, I’m here to
give the film socially redeeming values.’ The film not only capably demonstrates
its awareness of the political climate but also comedically displaces it – as
opposed to erasing it.
There are of course more provocative examples of hard core beyond this canon
that equally have a role in illustrating cultural sensibility alongside the contentious
politics of the time. The Dirtiest Game in the World (James Bryan,1970) is a vicious
satire in which a politician Titus Moore (Titus Moede) infiltrates a hippy group to
secure their vote. The film begins with documentary news footage of rioting and
civil unrest and ends in violence and slaughter as Moore’s plan falls apart. His
replacement, pot smoking Jean Stone (Jean Stone), is introduced at the end before
the credits close on a Nixon quote: ‘Everything I stand for is what they want.’ The
impact of political scepticism, threat and cynicism on personal politics continued
to inform numerous hard core films throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s
including Waterpower (Shaun Costello, 1976), Femmes de Sade, (Alex De Renzy,
1976), Sweet Captive (Lee Frost, 1979) and Reel People (Anthony Spinelli, 1984),
this last being a film that is recognized as the first hard core pro-am porn film,
thus ushering in reality porn. The sexual provocations presented in these hard
core films are often reactionary and not all uniform in intent or approach. They
were simultaneously progressive and offensive, misogynistic and celebrated,
exploitative and liberal, and were part of an industry that is closely affiliated to the
paradoxes and contradictions of 1970s society.
Writing about porn during the period that precedes the 1970s, David
Church notes how we cannot simply observe it as detached historians but
should acknowledge porn films’ allure, appeal and ‘present-day capacity to
viscerally resonate with viewers’ while at the same time recognizing that
‘cultural forgetting’ is just as important as recognizing ‘cultural remembrance’.29
For the move into the mainstream this cultural forgetting involves the
marginalizing of a vast archive of porn in the 1970s whose discomforting

social, moral and political ingredients remain a significant part of the period
and subsequently inform exploitation and sex film histories with their own
gendered frameworks and representational strategies.
Porn films’ presence in the 1970s was not the result of a valiant achievement
but based on the uncertainty and instability of the time. The critical and
creative culture of the 1970s exhibited a sensibility that was informed by the
co-existing complexities and contradictions of the period. The composition of
that sensibility goes some way towards exploring and explaining the more
challenging question of why porn appeared in the mainstream rather than
how it did so. Sensibility, for O’Leary, unquestionably comprises ‘sensation and
emotion’, ‘systems and practices of knowledge’ and ‘moral and aesthetic
appraisals’, all of which played a part in the positioning of hard core in the
1970s.30 Political provocation and revised modes and methods of creative
engagement and cultural critique ensure the active, perceptive and discerning
qualities of sensibility are galvanized in order to foster critique, encourage
change and recognize difference from the norm. Porn’s place in the 1970s was,
then, epiphenomenal, determined by a confluence of interventions, challenges
and contradictions. This was, after all, the way that America signified its sexual
self in the period through a combination of conflicting, contesting and
challenging ways that were free and entrapped, exploratory and troubling,
enlightened and affronting. Consequently, the move into the mainstream was
not just the result of a series of pragmatic economic, industrial and legislative
opportunities but was culturally produced. Creative and cultural organizations,
with their associated political activism, plus the attendant conservative
backlash, provided the platform, as well as the screens, upon which porn
appeared in the 1970s.
Notes
1 According to WorldCat.org Turan and Zito’s book is currently located in 231
libraries. Thirty of these are outside the US. For full details see https://is.gd/
cOPVWa (accessed 6 April 2020).
2 Extensive accounts of the ‘porn wars’ can be found in a range of publications
including Lynn Segal and Mary McIntosh, Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the
Pornography Debate (London: Virago, 1992); Avedon Carol, Nudes, Prudes and
Attitudes: Pornography and Censorship (Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 1994);
Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 1995); and Laurence O’Toole, Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire
(London: Serpent’s Tail, 1999).
3 Kenneth Turan and Stephen F. Zito, Sinema – American Pornographic Films and
the People Who Made Them (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. xi.
4 Ibid., p. xi.
5 Ibid., pp. x–xi
6 Ibid., p. 74
7 Jennifer Wicke, ‘Through a gaze darkly: pornography’s academic market’, in
Pamela Church Gibson (ed.), Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power (London:
BFI, 1993), p. 79.
8 The mainstreaming of porn in the period from the perspectives of industry and
genre can be found in, for example Lawrence O’ Toole, Pornocopia; Susanna
Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa ‘The golden age of porn’, in Susanna Paasonen,
Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa (eds), Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in
Media Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 23–32; Carmine Sarracino and Kevin M.
Scott, The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture, What It Means and Where
We Go from Here (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008). It has also been fictionalized
in film and television ranging from Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997),
Inside Deep Throat (Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, 2005) to Rated X (Emilio
Estevez, 2000) and The Deuce (HBO, 2017–19).
9 Timothy O’Leary, ‘Sensibility’, in Mercedes Bunz, Birgit Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele
(eds), Symptoms of the Planetary Condition – A Critical Vocabulary (Lüneberg:
Meson Press, 2017), p. 150
10 For more see Berkeley Kaite, Pornography and Difference (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1995), which highlights how porn transgresses rather
than reinforces normative masculinity and femininity.
11 Lester D. Friedman, American Cinema in the 1970s: Themes and Variations (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), p. 7.
12 Such landmark cases include Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) on the right to
contraception for unmarried couples, Roe v. Wade (1973) on abortion rights, and
the Equal Rights Amendment (1972) which was passed but failed to be ratified in
a number of states.
13 See https://is.gd/vazlfm for an extract from the show.
14 Time Magazine went on to produce a special issue on feminism on 20 March 1972
titled ‘The American Woman’, and a ‘Women of the Year’ edition on 5 January 1976
whose cover story opening line is: ‘They have arrived like a new immigrant wave
in male America’. Available at https://is.gd/S392zV
15 See Martina Löw, ‘The constitution of space: the structuration of spaces through
the simultaneity of effects and perceptions’, European Journal of Social Theory’,
11/1 (2008), pp. 25–49; Susan J. Smith, ‘Society and space’, in Paul Cloke, Philip
Crang and Mark Goodwin (eds), Introducing Human Geographies (London:
Arnold, 1999), pp. 18–23.
16 See Friedman, American Cinema, p. 21.
17 Balthus’s notoriously explicit Guitar Lesson from 1934 had never been publicly
exhibited until appearing at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York in 1977.
18 Billie Jean King Enterprises, ‘Battle of the sexes’. Available at
https://is.gd/9ZPW08
19 Anna E. Ward, ‘Sex and the me decade: sex and dating advice literature of the
1970s’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 43/3–4 (2015), pp. 120–36.
20 Ibid., p. 132
21 Greg Tuck, ‘The mainstreaming of masturbation’, in F. Attwood (ed),
Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture (London: I.B. Tauris,
2009), pp. 77–92.
22 Interview with author published on ScreeningSex.com. Available at https://is.gd/
ThRIVk
23 Tuck, ‘Mainstreaming’, p. 86.
24 Ruth Rosen cited in Friedman, American Cinema, p. 14.
25 Brian Greenberg and Linda S. Watts, Social History of the United States: The 1900s
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc), 2009, p. 161.
26 Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer, ‘Comment: swinging too far to the Left’, Journal
of Contemporary History, 43/4 (2008), pp. 689–93.
27 Friedman, American Cinema, p. 12.
28 Ibid., p. 16.
29 David Church, Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornography and the Material Legacies
of Adult Cinema (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), p. 2. Church firmly
locates this concept in the appeal of vintage materials but his book is also valuable
in considering how it informs nostalgic and ‘golden age’ thinking on porn films.
30 O’Leary, ‘Sensibility’, p. 150.
Bibliography
Carol, Avedon, Nudes, Prudes and Attitudes: Pornography and Censorship
(Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 1994).
Church, David, Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornography and the Material Legacies of
Adult Cinema (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016).
Friedman, Lester D., American Cinema in the 1970s: Themes and Variations (New
Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2007).
Greenberg, Brian and Watts, Linda S., Social History of the United States: The 1900s
(Santa Barbara, CA : ABC-CLIO, 2009).
Jacobs, Meg and Zelizer, Julian E., ‘Comment: swinging too far to the Left’, Journal of
Contemporary History, 43/4 (2008), pp. 689–93.
Kaite, Berkeley, Pornography and Difference (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University
Press, 1995).
Löw, Martina, ‘The constitution of space: the structuration of spaces through the
simultaneity of effects and perceptions’, European Journal of Social Theory’, 11/1
(2008), pp. 25–49.
McElroy, Wendy, XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1995).
O’Leary, Timothy, ‘Sensibility’, in Mercedes Bunz, Birgit Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele
(eds), Symptoms of the Planetary Condition – A Critical Vocabulary (Lüneberg:
Meson Press, 2017), pp. 149–54.
O’Toole, Laurence, Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire (London: Serpent’s
Tail, 1999).
Paasonen, Susanna and Saarenmaa, Laura, ‘The golden age of porn’, in Susanna
Paasonen, Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa (eds), Pornification: Sex and
Sexuality in Media Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 23–32.
Sarracino, Carmine and Scott, Kevin M., The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture,
What It Means and Where We Go from Here (Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 2008).
Segal, Lynn and McIntosh, Mary, Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate
(London: Virago, 1992).
Smith, Susan J., ‘Society and space’, in Paul Cloke, Philip Crang and Mark Goodwin
(eds), Introducing Human Geographies (London: Arnold, 1999), pp. 18–23.
Tuck, Greg, ‘The mainstreaming of masturbation’, in F. Attwood (ed.), Mainstreaming
Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 77–92.
Turan, Kenneth and Zito, Stephen F., Sinema – American Pornographic Films and the
People Who Made Them (New York: Praeger, 1974).
Ward, Anna E., ‘Sex and the me decade: sex and dating advice literature of the 1970s’,
Women’s Studies Quarterly, 43/3–4 (2015), pp. 120–36.
Wicke, Jennifer, ‘Through a gaze darkly: pornography’s academic market’, in Pamela
Church Gibson and Roma Gibson (eds), Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power
(London: BFI , 1993), pp. 62–80.
286
13
Hardcore and Rough on the Outside:

Evaluating Femmes de Sade and Water Power
Neil Jackson
Introduction
Critical engagement with some of the more outré cinematic artefacts obliges
us immediately to relinquish any claims to moral or social fortitude on the part
of their authors. Therefore, the ensuing discussion of Femmes de Sade (Alex De
Renzy, 1976) and Water Power (Shaun Costello, 1977) constitutes neither
defence or justification of the films, accepting them from the outset as wilful
incitements to revulsion, shock and bemusement. However, while this chapter
will focus primarily on their strategies of representing sexual violence, there
are several layers of interest aside from the purely sensational, allowing critical
discourse to develop beyond the mere articulation of transgressive content.
Taken together, these can help enhance our understanding of graphic, often
alarming, depictions of sexual violence within the stylistic norms of cinematic
pornography, which might in turn be sensibly accommodated in ongoing
debates about realist horror films produced within both the exploitation and
mainstream sectors. Emerging at a time when hardcore films were still
wrestling with uncertainties regarding their cultural value and legal status
alike, they are fascinating test cases for any insistence on both pornography’s
dangerous debasement and its non-value as an object of critical inquiry.
Each film was directed by a key figure in the development of American
pornography: Alex De Renzy produced and directed Femmes de Sade in the
wake of pioneering work conducted from his San Francisco production base,
while Shaun Costello made Water Power having established himself as one of
New York’s most prolific pornographic film-makers, an enterprise supported
287
by his affiliation with local mobsters. The films are set in the respective locale
of each director, and the connotative value of these west and east coast urban
centres is also key to understanding the ideological undercurrents of each film.
Moreover, their relentless focus upon sexual practices widely regarded as
aberrant at the time defines them as seminal examples of the hardcore ‘roughie’,
an indigestible strand of an already despised cultural form that rendered them
resistant to ‘porno-chic’1 appropriation during their theatrical circulation in
the 1970s. Their distribution afterlife has been patchy, often appearing in
unauthorized DVD editions which vary in both length and image quality,
presentational shortcomings which are the result of everything from post-
production interference to archival neglect and censorial intervention.2
Crucially, while each film showcases frequently startling instances of sexual
violence and deviation, they communicate directly with the predominant
cultural antipathy to violent pornography, evincing significant levels of self-
awareness and formal sophistication, but pursuing distinct and divergent paths
through their use of porno shock-horror tactics.
Much radical feminist thinking has defined all pornography as an assault
upon female liberty and subjectivity. Diana E.H. Russell distinguishes between
‘male heterosexual pornography’ and ‘erotica’, defining the former as ‘the abuse
or degradation of females in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or
encourage such behaviour, and the latter as a rejection of ‘sexism, racism and
homophobia . . . [with respect for] all human beings and animals portrayed’.3
While founded in arguments for social and cultural parity, this distinction is
less than helpful to any film scholar hoping to trace the generic modulations
and diversity of feature-length pornography. The more cynically minded
feminist film or cultural theorist might easily counter that violent pornography
merely gave overt expression to the sadistic gaze which Hollywood films
had regularly indulged, and Susan Gubar has argued that ‘the proliferation
of violent pornography since 1970 is part of a male backlash against the
women’s liberation movement’.4 However, the ground-breaking work of Molly
Haskell, Laura Mulvey and E. Ann Kaplan5 ignored the varied conceptual and
aesthetic qualities of pornography (indeed, the groundwork for such an
approach barely existed in the 1970s), concerning itself largely with a popular
classical form seen to be moulded by a dogmatically patriarchal mode of
production.
Hardcore and Rough on the Outside 289
Instead, the dominant feminist voices in pornography debates emerged

through the oppositional and politically engaged radical wing. Andrea
Dworkin argued that ‘the major theme of pornography as a genre is male
power’,6 denying female selfhood through economic dominion, exercise of
terror and ownership, and control of language. She identified the Marquis de
Sade as the pivotal cultural-historical figure in this process, dismissing the
intellectual tradition which venerated his work. In her view, his work did not
propose an anarchic liberation from social constriction but merely bestowed
spurious philosophical legitimacy on it, ‘pioneering what became the ethos of
the male-dominated sexual revolution’.7 And in partnership with Catharine
Mackinnon, she further defined all pornography as ‘the graphic, sexually
explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words’.8 From this
perspective, Femmes de Sade and Water Power might easily be construed as
narrative refinements of, and perhaps even outlets for the gender hatred thus
envisioned by Dworkin. In both films, representatives of a disenfranchised
male underclass recklessly indulge perverse pleasures which Georges Bataille
observed were usually the province of de Sade’s ‘sovereign man’,9 whose social
status and moral privilege denied reason, absolved responsibility and celebrated
an excess which aspired to ‘a transcendent pleasure . . . no longer confined to
the senses’.10
The hardcore roughies have their origins in a strain of 1960s softcore
sexploitation films, which Tania Modleski has suggested ‘contain some of the
most disturbing depictions of male violence against women ever filmed’,11
although they may seem relatively chaste compared to the objects under
consideration here. A sense of degraded sexuality is built into the very titles of
White Slaves of Chinatown (Joseph P. Mawrwa, 1964), Scum of the Earth
(Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963), The Defilers (Lee Frost, David F Friedman,
1965), Bad Girls Go to Hell (Doris Wishman, 1965), The Animal (Lee Frost,
1968), The Ultimate Degenerate (Michael Findlay, 1969) and The Ravager
(Charles Nizet, 1970).
Robin Bougie offers another useful definition encompassing both soft and
hardcore variants: ‘Narrative based sex films which have a specific focus on
forced sex and/or sexualized degradation . . . Human relationships are base,
primal and characterized by exploitation.’12 Bougie’s emphasis upon narrative
form, tonal abrasiveness and specific character conventions helps to distinguish
the feature length roughies from short form stag films or ‘loops’, defining them
as dramatizations of rather than mere renditions of sexual atrocity. They
should also be distinguished from the niche area of short, consensual S&M
films which, as Linda Williams points out, are predominantly ‘non-genital’, but
whose tropes would spill over into several prestigious softcore and hardcore
films of the 1970s such as The Story of O (Just Jaeckin, 1975), The Image/The
Punishment of Anne (Radley Metzger, 1975) and The Story of Joanna (Gerard
Damiano, 1977).13
Seventies and the roughie
Despite their generic lineage, the hardcore roughies have remained segregated
from their relatives in the mainstream and exploitation sectors. However, films
such as Forced Entry, (Shaun Costello, 1972) A Climax of Blue Power (F.C. Perl,
1975), Unwilling Lovers (Zebedy Colt, 1975) and Sex Wish (Tim McCoy, 1976),
usefully expanded cinematic depictions of the lone sex criminal, an archetype
present within prior, frequently fact-based mainstream features. These
included Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), Peeping Tom (Michael Powell,
1960) The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968), 10 Rillington Place
(Richard Fleischer, 1971) and Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972), and soon came
to include globally distributed exploitation films such as Deranged (Bob Clark,
1974), The Toolbox Murders (Dennis Donnelly, 1978), Don’t Answer the Phone
(Robert Hammer, 1980), Maniac (William Lustig, 1980) and Henry: Portrait of
a Serial Killer (John McNaughton, 1986).
Other notable hardcore roughies, such as The Defiance of Good (Armand
Weston, 1975), Winter Heat (Claude Goddard, 1976) and The Taming of
Rebecca (Phil Prince, 1982) foregrounded group abduction and institutional
abuse rather than solitary criminal activity, but all featured varying degrees of
rape and sexual degradation. A Dirty Western (David Fleetwood, 1975) grafted
an abduction and rape scenario onto the conventions of the western genre,
while the blaxploitation-inflected Hot Summer in the City (Gail Palmer, 1976)
mirrored contemporaneous exploitation trends, conflating already contentious
sexual violence with racial unrest. Such structural and iconographic emphases
readily call to mind more widely distributed examples such as The Last House
on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972), and it is certainly worth noting that film’s
original conception as a hardcore feature, with trace elements remaining
through its casting of pornographic actors Fred Lincoln and Lucy Grantham.
Ironically, limited distribution of the hardcore roughies outside of specialist
outlets meant that their unchecked extremes were subjected to less opprobrium
than either Craven’s film or other exploitation and mainstream counterparts, a
phenomenon which reached its apex with demonstrations against Dressed to
Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980) by organizations such as Women Against Violence
Against Women and Women Against Violence and Pornography in the
Media.14
Joseph Slade concluded that most pre-1970s stag films displayed a
suspension of ‘the basic truth that all social and political order is founded on
force’,15 and instead expressed ‘the primacy of affection and respect’.16 Of the
1,333 stag films that he studied at the Kinsey Institute, only five per cent used
rape or even the mildest form of violence, infusing banal, clichéd and often
comedic scenarios with cursory dramatic conflict. Even by the late 1960s the
predominant trend was for ‘sappy romanticism, fed by a flower-child mentality
. . . The so-called sexual revolution [which] appeared to validate the central
dynamic of the pornographic film [emphasised] the sexual desire of women
and their obligation to fulfil it with equally liberated men.’17 Slade notes that,
until the 1970s, films depicting sadomasochism, fetishism, coprophagia,
bestiality and paedophilia remained rare. However, despite acknowledging the
presence of problematic violence in porn features after 1970, he does not
elaborate greatly on its nature, linking its proliferation to the hybridization of
feature-length pornography with conventional melodrama, in which violence
and heightened emotional interplay was a primary generic factor. However,
while he notes that an ‘articulate discourse of violence’18 influenced the form
and iconography of feature-length pornography, Slade does not allude to a
distinct sub-cycle.
Linda Ruth Williams argues that ‘pornography is the genre that dare not
speak its name’,19 noting its absence from most scholarly overviews of the field.
However, even a cursory glance at some of the more accomplished hardcore
films of the ‘golden age’ – such as The Devil in Miss Jones (Gerard Damiano,
1973), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (Henry Paris, 1976), Through the
Looking Glass (Jonas Middleton, 1976), The Story of Joanna (Gerard Damiano,
1977) and Sex World (Anthony Spinelli, 1978) – reveals conventions of

melodrama, romantic comedy, horror, science fiction and psycho-drama. All
of these elements are inflected very specifically by the demands of hardcore,
suggesting that porn films function not just as isolated generic outcasts but as
shadows of and adjuncts to their mainstream genre counterparts.
Therefore, as with any development in cinematic genres, hybridization is
fundamental to a deeper understanding of them. Williams has noted the
relationship between pornography, melodrama and horror, identifying them
all as ‘body genres’20 whose primary function is to affect bodily and emotional
(as opposed to intellectual) responses in the spectator. The roughies often
conjoined these constituent body genres, giving credence to Williams’s
argument that ‘pornography today is more often deemed excessive for its
violence than for its sex, while horror films are excessive in their displacement
of sex onto violence’21. In this sense, both Femmes de Sade and Water Power
(and many other roughies too) confound generic categorization, questioning
the point at which pornographic convention either departs from or fuses with
its horrific content. Nevertheless, although sexual violence may have been
present as a narrative feature of many hardcore feature films, it was relatively
uncommon for it to be the defining element. However, Williams at least gave
credence and credibility to the very notion of pornography as a genre,
emphasizing its structural and iconographic components by arguing that ‘just
as we expect to see monsters in horror films, guns, suits, and hats in gangster
films, and horses and cowboys in westerns, so in a porno do we expect to see
naked bodies engaging in sexual numbers’.22
Femmes De Sade and Water Power do indeed include extended ‘sexual
numbers’, but only occasionally are they founded in displays of mutual pleasure.
Eugenie Brinkema has noted that Linda Williams’s approach allowed for a
limited definition of rough or violent sexuality, embodied principally through
playful sadomasochistic ritual, female rape fantasy, and rape as ‘nodal negative
against which good affirmative sex is positioned’.23 Neither Femmes de Sade
nor Water Power depict murder: instead, it is the prolonged depiction of rape
and sexual sadism which become the structural bedrocks of each film, a
pornographic variation upon the ‘seriality’ of crime narratives which Richard
Dyer argued ‘play on the mix of repetition and anticipation, and indeed the
anticipation of repetition that underpins serial pleasure’.24 Burgeoning
awareness in the 1960s and 1970s of the serial sex criminal was instrumental
in defining the parameters of the hardcore roughie. As noted above, these films
stood in close historical proximity to several realist horror films foregrounding
dystopian breakdown and sexually dysfunctional male monsters, but also to
the real life cases of Albert DeSalvo (aka the Boston Strangler), Kenneth
Bianchi and Angelo Buono (aka the Hillside Stranglers), and Ted Bundy.
However, despite their general observation of certain structural norms, neither
film adheres to a common formula. Thus Femmes de Sade favours the final
narrative catharsis of revenge, linking it to the cycle of films in which victims
administer retribution for their own violation, exemplified by titles such as
Rape Squad (Bob Kelljan, 1974), Lipstick (Lamont Johnson, 1976), I Spit on
Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) and Ms.45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981), while Water
Power favours an open-ended denouement that denies neat narrative
resolution, aligning much more comfortably with the nihilism which
characterizes Maniac and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Seventies porno chic and its Other: Femmes de Sade
Released in February 1976, Femmes de Sade premiered at the Presidio movie

theatre in San Francisco when ‘porno chic’ was on the verge of its mid-decade,
creative apex.
It unfolds on genuine sex industry locations, encompassing the worlds of
prostitutes, hustlers, buyers and business proprietors, a community exhibiting
an affectionate, sex-positive solidarity suddenly threatened by the dangerous,
recently released sex offender, Rocky de Sade (Ken Turner).
Joseph Lam Duong argues that San Francisco’s ‘oppositional politics was a
key component of the pornographic film industry in the 1970s’,25 and this is
supported by the film’s simple structural opposition between the youth and
vitality of the sex industry, and the ageing, violently aggressive interloper,
whose physical appearance (almost seven foot tall, grizzled features, flabby
torso, grey and unruly balding hair) serve as outward manifestations of his
porno-otherness.
From the outset, Rocky is defined as a disruptive, freakishly transgressive
presence, emerging from the infamous San Quentin prison which looms
Figure 13.1 Femmes de Sade

advertising.
ominously through its geographical situation north of San Francisco. His

freakish status encompasses an ability to auto-fellate and lick his own semen.
Turner is thought to have appeared in just two hardcore films, his unfamiliarity
among already established or up-and-coming adult film performers
accentuating his incongruity and otherness. His weirdness is set against the
charm, good looks and toned physical fitness of Johnny (John Leslie), whose
porn cinema/book store business (actually San Francisco’s Kearny Cinema)
serves as an ad hoc community centre for sex industry denizens, as well as an
object of curiosity for a string of couples and sensation-seeking Asian tourists,
whose female coterie also become the object of Johnny’s active fantasy life. In
contrast to the equanimity of this community, Rocky loiters menacingly
Figure 13.2 The sex community as threatened by Rocky De Sade (Ken

Turner).
among the adult bookstores, peep shows, movie theatres, massage parlours and
brothels, exploring the dense neon thicket of the pornographic city. Beyond
their simple diegetic function of establishing this milieu, these nocturnal
images also serve in retrospect as quasi-documentary renditions of what
David Church has called the ‘deviant place’, an urban expanse of pornographic
indulgence which has since disappeared only to be reconstituted and imagined
through nostalgia and second-hand memory.26
Rocky is released from prison alongside Joe (Joey Silvera), whose youth and
fresh optimism is boosted by a monogamous relationship with Ellen (Abigail
Clayton). Their reunion outside the jail is almost immediately interrupted by
Rocky’s bullying insistence that they drive him into San Francisco, leading to
the first sexual assault of the film. Rocky initially taunts and humiliates Joe by
intimating that he was raped by other inmates, implying a possible trauma
behind Joe’s outward positivity. Joe’s tenderness with Ellen is contrasted with
Rocky’s grunting frustration and resentment, their sexual reconciliation
intercut with images of Rocky contemptuously tossing aside a beer can and
urinating against a tree.
Obviously, Rocky’s surname flippantly evokes the Marquis de Sade, although
while the film’s title translates literally as ‘Women of Sade’, this might imply
both proprietorial control of and acquiescence by the eponymous females. This

is certainly redolent of de Sade’s class and gender based sense of entitlement,
but mockingly belies Rocky’s low social status. The featured female players are
presented quite explicitly via a masculine gaze, but it becomes uncertain and
unfocused through the contrasting points of view of Rocky and Johnny.
Although the title implies physical and emotional victimization, the women in
the film emerge as a stable and cohesive collective, embodied by the prostitutes
that congregate in Johnny’s business premises. They eat pizza, compare client
stories and offer jocular support to each other, exhibiting normalizing behaviour
marked by loose, improvisatory exchanges which contrast with the controlled
intensity of the sex sequences, displaying a feminine energy which anchors the
oppositional masculinity of Rocky and Johnny.
Clear aesthetic markers establish a dual rendition of the Sadeian male,
contrasting the physical assaults of Rocky and the carnal imaginings of Johnny.
While the former’s deeds are defined explicitly in terms of victim trauma, the
latter’s frequently venture into a perversity contained securely as interior
fantasy. These boundaries and gradations of domination and submission
engender a neat formal symmetry, encompassing three assaults by Rocky, three
fantasy sequences depicting Johnny’s imaginary world, and a climactic orgy
which brings these two worlds into collision. The duration and visual detail of
this denouement obliterates the earlier dual masculine subjectivities, taking
the film into a different realm of sexual spectacle in which Rocky is punished
in a form of poetic justice shaped and enacted by his female victims.
Rocky’s aberrations range from the forced bondage and vaginal rape of
Ellen (accompanied by the sexual humiliation and beating of Joe), the spinal
injury of a nameless prostitute (Melba Bruce), caused by forcing her to attempt
auto-cunnilingus in replication of his own physical gymnastics, and the
beating, cigarette burning and anal rape by bottle neck of another prostitute,
Royce (Monique Starr), who is also Johnny’s partner. These sequences lack
accompanying music, a stylistic choice steeped in a realism eschewing aural
cues which might intensify the depiction of sexual violence. Rocky’s physical
characteristics prompt the female actors to improvise comments on the size of
his penis, their struggles to stimulate and fellate him lending another layer of
performative spontaneity. However, Rocky’s contemptuous insults, ranging
from aggressive grunts, demands and fractured exclamations of ‘cunt’ and
‘bitch’ are steeped in misogyny. The freedoms exercised by the young female
coterie merely amplify his sense of exclusion from post-sexual revolution
social formations, thus providing a specific object of resentment for his
perversions. In fact, he embodies the very problem that Dworkin herself
identified in her assaults upon the porn industry and its consumers, but the
film proceeds to enact a critique of her position by following up its graphic
visualization of sexual violence with a systematic rejection and neutralization
of its perpetrator.
Johnny’s fantasies involve role play and group sex activity, whose nominally
transgressive elements include a gynaecologist/nurse/patient scenario, a gang
bang in an industrial boiler room, and an inter-racial threesome, all defined
clearly by expressions of mutual pleasure and approval. His self-awareness as
somebody in ‘the business of selling fantasy’ is characterized by humorous
interaction with his customers, distancing him from the social alienation
exhibited by Rocky. The contrast is underlined by gentle taunts from Royce to
the effect that he will soon have difficulty separating phantasmic from material
desires, which is developed as a running joke in which he becomes so immersed
in fantasy that his friends repeatedly have to coax him out of it. Furthermore,
his tender relationship with Royce, untouched by a sense of ownership, fuses
his interior world to her place within the sex community, equalizing his
objectifying gaze and the women who serve as its collective focus.
The formal excess of these fantasy sequences accommodates audio-visual
experimentation and allusive jokes, further relieving any obligation to accept
them as literal or realistic beyond the obvious authenticating images of arousal
and ejaculation. For example, in the gynaecologist fantasy, the use of scissors
for the cutting of hosiery and undergarments, along with the spectacle of a
vagina opened up widely and impersonally by metallic instruments, draw clear
parallels with the overt violence of Rocky’s attacks. However, all of this is offset
by moans of female pleasure, comic dialogue, the audible pulse of a heartbeat,
discordant electronic music and the visual pun of dildos placed alongside
other instruments on the operating table, establishing a tonal emphasis quite
distinct from that of the rape sequences.
Alternatively, in the boiler room fantasy, the visuals are underscored entirely
by the repetitive clanks and hisses of industrial hardware, aural textures which
stray into the realms of the avant-garde, literally amplifying the detached,
mechanical nature of hardcore conventions. The sexual aggression

demonstrated by actress Leslie Bovee as she encounters three men counters
any notion of vulnerability, providing her nameless character with an
intensified sense of purpose and energy. Here, the ostensible object of display
is endowed with proactivity, assertiveness and fervour, the participants’ bodies
glistening in the oils and liquids of the industrial setting.
Finally, Johnny’s vision of himself as an ancient Chinese nobleman tended
by two concubines is preceded by his gentle ribbing of a group of East Asian
customers, introducing them to the various sex toys for sale in a bid to amuse
his female friends. Within the fantasy itself (although a threesome, it is the
film’s most conventional sexual encounter), Johnny’s mocking of trans-global
sexual attitudes and practices is rendered farcical by the make-up applied to
alter John Leslie’s ethnic features and exoticized by the projection of an
obedient ‘eastern’ femininity. It also becomes unavoidably informed by
retrospective awareness of Leslie’s star status within the industry, in which
white males dominated in terms of ethnic visibility.
To some degree, all of Johnny’s fantasies offer aesthetic ripostes to male
violence and domination. A sense of mutuality is set up before and after each
instance of fantasy by the exchange of looks, winks and smiles between Johnny
and the female foci of his gaze, defining them as scenarios which might also
occupy the fantasy imaginings of the objectified women. Nevertheless, the
sudden transitions back to the film’s diegetic ‘reality’ always emphasize Johnny’s
subjectivity, the Chinese fantasy being halted abruptly by the sight of Rocky as
a disgruntled, impatient customer, the pivotal point at which these co-
representatives of the Sadeian impulse come into physical contact.
The climactic ‘Blood and Mother’s Milk 1st Annual Leather Ball’ sequence
brings these worlds of fantasy and violence into direct confrontation. Its
publicity poster welcomes ‘whores, pimps, queens and queers, sadists and
masochists, slaves and masters’, a pan-sexual, multi-ethnic, consensual,
libertarian celebration of orgiastic activity outlawed by social orthodoxies.
This includes inter-racial encounters, inverted bondage, infantilism, spanking,
branding and even mild bestiality. However, the sequence also tips the film
into the realization of its rape-revenge narrative. Following Rocky’s debasement
of their world, the sex community becomes a natural corrective for the violence
of the male monster, their retribution actually an expression of cross-gender
Figure 13.3 Rejecting the Sadeian male: Rocky at the climax of

Femmes de Sade.
collectivism. Rocky arrives at the orgy uninvited, his mediaeval executioner’s

costume rendering him utterly ridiculous, and this sets up the film’s ultimate
rejection of the Sadeian male that he embodies.
Amid the party chaos, he is cajoled and duped into a shackled, submissive
role, inverting his earlier methods of subjugation and humiliation. He is
sodomized by a large dildo (recalling his earlier taunts to Joe and his actual
anal rape of Royce), before a procession of female guests urinate and then
defecate on his face and torso, the faeces smeared contemptuously over his
flesh. This emphasis upon the corporeal desecration and violation of the now
supine, helpless sadist is the final symbolic rejection of Rocky, vengeance
defined not through murder (a convention often central to the rape-revenge
cycle) but as a ritual humiliation. The re-appearance of Joe at the party, snarling
that Rocky will soon be heading back to San Quentin, suggests that street
justice will be followed by justice administered through conventional legal
channels. Nevertheless, this finale remains rooted in the carnivalesque, as the
dancing partygoers enact one final performative gesture, encircling Rocky as
they sing the band’s mocking refrain: ‘Bye Rocky, that’s what you get. Bye
Rocky, you’re full of shit!’
The erotic and the obscene: Water Power
Water Power also foregrounds a sexual sadist, Burt (Jamie Gillis), lurking amid
an urban expanse exhibiting outward signs of sexual revolution gone haywire.
He is visualized repeatedly against the nocturnal backdrop of Manhattan’s
sex district, a historical snapshot of what Wheeler Winston Dixon calls ‘the
ultimate domain of the unreal . . . the phantom zone of eternal play and perpetual
unease’.27 One brief shot ironically frames him standing before a movie theatre
screening Rape Squad, whose self-determining female avengers remain
resolutely absent from the world of Water Power. Indeed, the film’s ideological
underpinnings are very distinct from Femmes de Sade, most notably through
the subjective channelling enabled by devices such as point-of-view shots and a
voiceover in which the protagonist attempts to explain the principles underlying
his attempt to ‘cleanse’ any female he deems unworthy of his twisted morality.
Burt’s weapon of choice recalls those horror films in which a monster is defined
partly through his use of an iconic weapon, in this case a rather unwieldly
enema kit which facilitates his deluded quest to ‘purify’ his victims but lends a
sense of outrageous farce fundamental to the film’s jet black comic elements.
Figure 13.4 Sadism lurking in the urban expanse: Jamie Gillis in Water
Power.
Figure 13.5 Advertising for the 1977 Water Power premiere at the Kearny Cinema in
San Francisco.
Jack Sargeant has argued that the film refuses to settle into any comfortably
defined category, stressing its heterogeneous status as ‘hardcore pornography,
cult movie, and roughie classic . . . unable to truly align itself with any genre,
being both too specialized in its fetishism and too sexually vicious for many
audiences’.28 Financed by murderers and extortionists, the film has its origins as
a Mafia investment, adding another layer of cultural transgression, with
Costello working at the behest of Star Distributors, effectively the porn wing of
the DeCavalcante crime family, which would eventually be absorbed by the
Gambino family. It premiered in February 1977 at the Kearny Cinema, San
Francisco (the location used as Johnny’s business premises in Femmes de Sade),
and Costello has stated retrospectively (and there is plenty in the film to support
this) that the only feasible approach was to construct an outrageous comedy
about its own excess, ‘a parody of itself . . . the funniest movie I ever made’.29
Its commercial prospects were restricted in the USA, but Costello has stated
that it was successful in European territories such as Holland and Germany,
circulating in the latter under the knowing title Spritz.30 However, Costello’s
name has never appeared on any of the various versions of the film (which
originally played without opening titles and credits), his investors deeming it
prudent to re-release it in the USA with a title sequence and poster design
crediting the film to Gerard Damiano, whose Deep Throat (1972) and The
Devil in Miss Jones came, paradoxically, to epitomize the self-same porno chic
ethos that Water Power systematically sought to dismantle.
In the context of porn consumption, the very title Water Power evokes a
certain range of negative connotations, not least the notion of patriarchal
control and domination so fundamental to Dworkin’s argument. But it also
alludes directly to the nature of Burt’s attacks, its hint at the film’s perverse
conceit lending an immediate linguistic level of abjection and disgust which
compounds what we actually see onscreen. Moreover, it works as a variation
on what Robin Wood called ‘the excremental city’, a 1970s cinematic trope that
was a culmination of ‘the obsession with dirt/cleanliness that recurs throughout
the history of the American cinema’,31 and a recurrent theme in the sexually
threatening urban environments of Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976),
Looking for Mr Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) and Cruising (William
Friedkin, 1980). It draws particular inspiration from Taxi Driver through the
unauthorized use of Bernard Herrmann’s music, images isolating Burt in his
stark apartment room and the use of diary entries read as voiceover. Use of
other Herrmann music from Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973), Michel Polnareff ’s
score for Lipstick, and of Herbie Hancock’s from Death Wish (Michael Winner,
1974) reveals further indebtedness to, and expansion upon, mainstream
explorations of human monsters as the product of urban despair and psycho-
sexual disturbance. However, Gillis’s deadpan delivery of the voiceover –
exemplified by the line ‘if this is to be my life’s work . . . I can’t just stick tubes
up their asses and hope for the best. An enema is more meaningful than that’
– consolidates the comic aspect and mocks the thematic project of Taxi Driver.
In this light, one needs to consider only the function of the brothel location in
each film: for Travis Bickle it becomes the locus of his drive towards personal
catharsis and the blood sacrifice of his criminal victims, whilst for Burt it
becomes host and witness to his psycho-sexual epiphany, whereupon
conventional pleasures are rejected in favour of wanton, heedless libertarianism.
The film also draws superficially upon traditions of true-crime drama,
complete with shock-horror newspaper headline inserts and an opening
written statement (underscored by a sinister synthesized drone) informing the
viewer that the ensuing events ‘could have happened anywhere or to anyone’.
Indeed, it draws loosely on the case of Michael Kenyon, the ‘Illinois Enema
Bandit’ whose sex crimes in the 1960s and 1970s also inspired a song by Frank
Zappa, although it is the scandalous premise rather than forensic attention to
human pathology from which the film derives its energies. In contrast to
Femmes de Sade, it provides merely perfunctory counterbalances to its set-

piece sex-horror moments, consisting primarily of the narrative device of a
police investigation, introduced after forty minutes as if grudgingly to frame
criminal misdeeds within moral parameters. Although this temporarily
relieves the film of Burt’s oppressive subjectivity, there are none of the counter-
cultural forces which fuelled the resistance to the monster of Femmes de Sade.
Instead, there is a cynical indulgence of a burgeoning American nightmare,
evident from the very first sequence, improvized location footage in which
Burt aimlessly traverses the streets in a city celebrating the nation’s 1976 bi-
centennial. His awkward pose for a photographer in front of a stars and stripes
backdrop establishes him within precise geographical and socio-historical
contexts, linking constitutional principles of individualism and enterprise
with a wayward libertarianism corrupted into a criminality defined by sexual
dysfunction.
Jamie Gillis’s presence in the film is crucial. Unlike Femmes de Sade’s Ken
Turner, Gillis was a prolific, familiar presence in adult films, noted for a
willingness to explore sadistic and often unpalatable areas of sexual expression.
Awareness of both star persona and personal predilection compounds the
film’s formal rhetoric, in which Gillis occupies and interacts with the seedy
interior and exterior locations. He has commented that much of his
characterization was improvized, motivated by a Method-like attempt to ‘get
into his head the best I could . . . I was being the Enema Bandit’.32 This immersive
approach adds co-authorial weight to his characterization,33 and unlike in
Femmes de Sade, the sex criminal is given a home space, used initially to
express his obsessive voyeurism. Here, the iconography of the pornographic
city bleeds into domestic realm-reading matter with titles such as ‘Wide Open
Teenagers’ and ‘Baby Oil Girls’ is listlessly consumed, while apartment walls are
festooned with carelessly pinned magazine pages, the chief splashes of colour
on the stark, exposed brickwork. This space will be abandoned as he proceeds
later to invade the domestic dwellings of his victims.
Burt’s voyeurism drives the early section of the film, characterized by his
spying upon and photographing a female neighbour, a telescope becoming his
first exploratory, invasive tool. The spying takes a crucial turn when he observes
an enema administered during a highly theatrical and ritualized session in a
local brothel, whereupon the enema kit becomes his favoured weapon of
choice. While Gillis’s unabashed performance and Costello’s stylistic choices

invite subjective attachment (encouraged repeatedly through the guiding
voice-over and a visual schemata that typically privileges Burt’s point of view),
this descent into the maelstrom is not presented wholly uncritically. Preceding
his initial spying session, a brief rack focus shot (accompanied by a synthesized
musical sting) shifts attention from the foregrounded – and visually fetishized
– telescope to the background figure of Burt, glancing directly into the camera.
Such stylistic devices are not belaboured in the film, but this direct gaze at the
complicit viewer demonstrates a self-reflexive awareness of the excess that it
will proceed to indulge remorselessly. Indeed, the film provides latent
commentary upon both the fetishizing and sadistic gaze so fundamental to
Laura Mulvey’s famous thesis. It seems deliberately to provide hyperbolic
confirmation of the anti-pornography movement’s worst fears, the construction
of rape sequences as gross-out comic set-pieces constituting the absolute
antithesis of liberal-minded decency and radical-feminist thought. To
strengthen further this crass defiance of such positions, the film then proceeds
mockingly to endorse the argument that immersion in pornography culminates
in a desire not just for harder, more extreme material but that it inevitably
spirals into active rather than vicarious participation. Burt’s bored perusal of
standard porno magazines is initially supplanted by an enthusiastic
consumption of specialist enema publications before his disenchantment with
conventional relationships (he has a regular partner) and standard sex worker
transactions is replaced by the missionary zeal of his sexual assaults.
The pivotal narrative incident occurs in a brothel called the ‘Garden of Eden’,
crudely locating Burt’s transformation from voyeur to rapist outside of any
pathological compulsion and within an Old Testament ethos of original sin. As
he enters the premises, an immediate visual juxtaposition of Burt and a headless
female sculpture prefigures the dehumanization of his subsequent victims.
However, its sex workers, Eve (Sharon Mitchell) and ‘The Nurse’ (Marlene
Willoughby), treat the ridiculous demands of the male clientele with either
amused resignation or mocking superiority. Eve reads Jacob Bronowski’s The
Ascent of Man in between her client sessions, a throwaway visual joke at the
expense of both the sexual and intellectual development of the human male.
However, the serpent in this libidinous paradise is defined specifically as
female: its madam (Gloria Leonard), reclining imperiously on a hammock, her
Figure 13.6 Sculptures prefigure the dehumanization of female victims

in Water Power.
painted lips occasionally rendered in extreme close-up as she seizes upon

Burt’s initial reticence. Her menu of so-called ‘specials’ – ‘B&D, S&M, fantasy
fetishes, whippage, across the knee like momma used to do, emasculation,
infantilism, showers (golden and brown), obedience training, cross dressing,
high colonic and panty worship’ – fuels his latent interest in the ‘high colonic’
option as the route to fulfilment. Feminine allure thus becomes both temptation
and motivation for Burt, his uncertainty in the madam’s assertive presence
occluded later by his repeated blaming of his victims for the pain and
humiliation that he visits upon them.
Burt’s tryst with Eve is defined largely by boredom, its mechanical processes
(‘I will suck you, you will fuck me’) accentuated by Mitchell’s faltering delivery
and the intercutting of frantic preparations by ‘The Nurse’ and Pamela (Jeanne
Silver) for an outlandish session with a seasoned enema fetishist (Eric
Edwards). This client enhances his experience through role play as a doctor,
affecting insight into and knowledge of intricate medical procedure. Burt’s
observation of this process through a windowed partition marks the
transitional point at which his voyeuristic tendencies coalesce with a
masturbatory enthusiasm for his newly discovered compulsion. Furthermore,
his presence embellishes the fantasy of the other brothel client, with Burt
casually adopting the role of a ‘medical student’ as the fantasy scenario unfolds
before him. Thus, there remains throughout this sequence a pronounced focus
upon a perverse but performative spectacle, its mechanics emphasized through
extreme close-ups of nozzles, tubes, lubricants, gags and restraints, essential
tools in a specialized and, this time, physically invasive, practice. The client
verbally endorses clinical sanitary procedures, thus prefiguring Burt’s later
self-declared role as moral cleanser of victims he deems guilty of impure
action. In this theatre of the perverse, the doctor fantasy feeds a masculinized
ideal of interpersonal and professional dominion, Gillis and Edwards playing
the scene respectively as a delirious sexual epiphany and a highly exaggerated,
mannered comic display, culminating in the intercutting of their orgasmic
grimaces and ejaculating penises with the watery anal expulsions of Pamela.
Thus, the scene pursues a standard porno trajectory, but is inflected by
expressions of body horror and farcical gross-out comedy. The final
performative gesture of Willoughby provides a self-reflexive coda to the whole
brothel episode: as the profiled rear end of Pamela expels brown liquid in the
foreground, Willoughby concludes the facial cum shot by visibly breaking into
a fit of giggles as the image fades to black.
However, for all of its gross, confrontational verisimilitude, Water Power
very obviously resorts to fakery in particular moments, with tubing visible and,
during the attack on the sisters, even the arm of a crew member protruding
into shots depicting the spray of brown, faecal liquid. This exposes the crude
mechanics of low budget film-making, an unintentional visual rejoinder to
other, authenticating macro-close-ups of Burt’s activities. The faecal expulsions
of Burt’s victims may elicit corporeal disgust, betraying hard core’s principal
role as a visual rendition of pleasure, but they are embellished to the point at
which some of their most disgusting details must be assessed as clumsy special
effects. The film not only denies the ‘frenzy’ of visible female pleasure, it also
occasionally falsifies its articulation of the abject. Literally and metaphorically,
this is a film which wallows in the shit its protagonist professes to wash away
but fabricates the very bodily material that lies at the heart of its gross-out,
comic-horror spectacle.
Unlike Femmes de Sade, the film does not provide a narrative catharsis of
apprehension and punishment, closing on an image of Burt’s face illuminated
by the vivid, pulsing red light of a police car. Just as he did earlier in the film,
he again gazes directly into the camera, his threat underlined by a brief
onscreen statement emphasizing the lack of lawful closure in sexual assault
cases. But this is as much a taunt as a cautionary coda, a glib, unspoken
admission that the film is exploiting a burgeoning social problem for maximum
sensational effect. Where Femmes de Sade allowed a natural street justice to
unfold, Water Power leaves its monster unpunished, lurking in the night
shadows, preparing for his next attack and engulfed in a crimson hue suggestive
of a Hell on Earth, one final visual joke wholly appropriate for a journey whose
key turning point was played out in a New York whorehouse mockingly trading
as the Garden of Eden.
Conventional criticism will almost certainly continue to expel De Renzy’s
and Costello’s films to a place beyond the ideological pale. Although Femmes
de Sade is replete with traces of a countercultural zeal and defiance, neither it
nor Water Power make enough concessions to a sustained, identifiable project
that would make for easy appropriation by even the most tolerant and liberal
academic discourse. Each film tackles the exercise of male power and
subjectivity that became so central to radical feminist critiques of pornography
and its broader popular cultural manifestations, but each adopts a radically
different position on the fears generated by the unfettered Sadeian male in the
modern American metropolis. Femmes de Sade ultimately pits its monster
against a pan-sexual, cross-gender collectivism that rejects and overcomes his
threat, but does so while still espousing a libertarian impulse which keeps its
distance from both radical feminist and mainstream sexual attitudes; Water
Power allows its lone monster to embody all that pornography’s detractors see
as repugnant and dangerous in the form, relishing its status as a cinematic
provocateur that literally smears its female cast in (albeit faked) excremental
fluid and denies punishment of its unrepentant protagonist. Thus, when
viewed together, these films demonstrate how the relationship between
pornography, violence and male power is made complex and contradictory
according to the very specific handling of common tropes and conventions.
These films continue to startle and offend a whole range of sensibilities, yet
neither makes concessions to their potential detractors, revealing contradictory
impulses at the outer limits of 1970s cinematic excess. Moreover, as additions
to the gallery of rough-hewn human monsters that adorned the decade, Rocky
de Sade and Burt the Enema Bandit may yet prove to be the roughest of
them all.
Thanks to Martin Brooks, Laura Helen Marks, Phil Marson, Tony Richards, Joe
Rubin and Johnny Walker.
Notes
1 This term was coined by Ralph Blumenthal in The New York Times, 21 January
1973, and then used by Bruce Williamson in Playboy, August 1973.
2 A French DVD of the mid-2000s paired the films as a thematically integrated
double bill, revealing that the negatives had been preserved in a condition
conducive to contemporary digital standards. Joe Rubin, whose company Vinegar
Syndrome holds US distribution rights to Femmes de Sade and is the owner of
Water Power (despite its supposed ‘public domain’ status), has indicated that the
latter in particular would be legally problematic in the twenty-first century, not
only on account of its sexually violent content, but also its use of unlicensed music
(email correspondence, July 2016).
3 Diana E.H. Russell, ‘Introduction’, in Diana E.H. Russell (ed.), Making Violence
Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography (Buckingham: Open University Press,
1993), p. 3.
4 Susan Gubar, ‘Representing pornography: feminism, criticism, and depictions of
female violation’, in Susan Gubar and Joan Hoff (eds), For Adult Users Only: The
Dilemma of Violent Pornography (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1989), pp. 47–67.
5 See Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies
Second Edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Laura Mulvey,
‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 7/3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6–18; and
E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (London: Methuen, 1983).
6 Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (London: Women’s Press,
1981), p. 24.
7 Ibid., p. 98.
8 Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New
Day for Women’s Equality (Minneapolis, MN: Organizing against Pornography,
1988), p. 36.
9 Georges Bataille, Eroticism (London: Marion Boyars, 1987), pp 164–76.
10 Ibid., p. 173.
11 Tania Modleski, ‘Women’s cinema as counterphobic cinema: Doris Wishman as

the last auteur’, in Jeffrey Sconce (ed.), Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of
Taste, Style and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 50.
12 Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer, Volume 5 (Godalming: FAB Press, 2015), p. 132.
13 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 184–229.
14 See ‘Dressed to Kill: a discussion by Giovanna Asselle and Behroze Gandhy’,
Screen, 23/4, September 1982, pp, 137–43.
15 Joseph Slade, ‘Violence in the hardcore pornographic film: a historical survey’,
Journal of Communication, 34/3, Summer 1984, p. 154.
16 Ibid., p. 154.
17 Ibid., p. 161.
18 Ibid., p. 162.
19 Linda Ruth Williams, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 38.
20 Linda Williams, ‘Film bodies: gender, genre and excess’, Film Quarterly, 44/4,
Summer 1991, pp. 2–13.
21 Ibid., p. 2.
22 Williams, Hardcore, p. 128.
23 Eugenie Brinkman, ‘Rough sex’, in Tim Dean, Steven Ruszczycky and David
Squires (eds), Porn Archives (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014),
pp. 264–5.
24 Richard Dyer, ‘Kill and kill again’, in Sight & Sound, 7/9, September 1997.
25 Joseph Lam Duong, ‘San Francisco and the politics of hardcore’, in Eric Schaefer
(ed.), Sex Scene: Media and the Sexual Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2014), p. 314.
26 David Church, Grindhouse Nostalgia: Memory, Home Video and Exploitation Film
Fandom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. 73–118.
27 Wheeler Winston Dixon, ‘Night world: New York as a noir universe’, in Nicole
Solano and Michael Pomerance (eds), City That Never Sleeps: New York and the
Filmic Imagination (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), p. 243.
28 Jack Sargeant, ‘In celebration of going too far: Water Power’, in John Klein and
Robert G. Weiner (eds), From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse: Highbrow and
Lowbrow Transgression in Cinema’s First Century (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,
2010), p. 85.
29 Shaun Costello’s Blog. Available at https://shauncostello.com/2010/10/11/
waterpower-3/ 9 accessed 8 August 2016.
30 Ibid.
31 Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986), p 51
32 Jack Sargeant, ‘In celebration’, p. 91.
33 This is especially pertinent when considered against his later, clandestinely
circulated home movies – known commonly under titles such as The Walking
Toilet Bowl and Brown on Ebony – that were genuine BDSM and scatological
scenarios with San Francisco prostitutes. These films remain difficult to access, but
are transcribed in Jamie Gillis and Peter Sotos, Pure Filth (Port Townsend, WA:
Feral House, 2012).
Bibliography
Asselle, Giovanna and Gandhy, Behroze, ‘Dressed to Kill: a discussion by Giovanna
Asselle and Behroze Gandhy’, Screen, 23/3–4, September/October 1982,
pp. 137–43.
Bataille, Georges, Eroticism (London: Marion Boyars, 1987).
Blumenthal, Ralph, ‘ “Hard core” grows fashionable – and very profitable’, The New
York Times, 21 January 1973. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/21/
archives/pornochic-hardcore-grows-fashionableand-very-profitable.html.
Bougie, Robin, Cinema Sewer, Volume 5 (Godalming: FAB Press, 2015).
Brinkema, Eugenie, ‘Rough sex’, in Tim Dean, Steven Ruszczycky and David Squires
(eds), Porn Archives (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2014), pp. 262–83.
Church, David, Grindhouse Nostalgia: Memory, Home Video and Exploitation Film
Fandom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015).
Dixon, Wheeler Winston, ‘Night world: New York as a noir universe’, in Nicole Solano
and Murray Pomerance (ed.), City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic
Imagination (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), pp. 243–58.
Duong, Joseph Lam, ‘San Francisco and the politics of hardcore’, in Eric Schaefer
(ed.), Sex Scene: Media and the Sexual Revolution (Durham, NC : Duke University
Press, 2014), pp. 297–318.
Dworkin, Andrea, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (London: Women’s Press, 1981).
Dworkin, Andrea and MacKinnon, Catherine, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New
Day for Women’s Equality (Minneapolis, MN : Organizing against Pornography,
1988).
Dyer, Richard, ‘Kill and kill again’, Sight & Sound, 7/9, September 1997, pp. 14–17.
Gillis, Jamie and Sotos, Peter, Pure Filth (Port Townsend, WA : Feral House 2012)
Gubar, Susan, ‘Representing pornography: feminism, criticism, and depictions of
female violation’, in Susan Gubar and Joan Hoff (eds), For Adult Users Only: The
Dilemma of Violent Pornography (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press,

1989), pp. 47–67.
Haskell, Molly, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, 2nd
edn (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Kaplan, E. Ann, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (London: Methuen, 1983).
Modleski, Tania, ‘Women’s cinema as counterphobic cinema: Doris Wishman as the
last auteur’, in J. Sconce (ed.), Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style
and Politics (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 47–70.
Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 16/3, Autumn 1975,
pp. 6–18.
Russell, Diana, E.H. (ed.), ‘Introduction’, Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on
Pornography (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993), pp. 1–22.
Sargeant, Jack, ‘In celebration of going too far: Water Power’, in John Klein and Robert
G. Weiner (eds), From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse: Highbrow and Lowbrow
Transgression in Cinema’s First Century (Lanham, MD : Scarecrow Press, 2010),
pp. 85–94.
Slade, Joseph, ‘Violence in the hardcore pornographic film: a historical survey’,
Journal of Communication, 34/3, Summer 1984, pp. 148–63.
Williams, Linda, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley,
CA : University of California Press, 1989).
Williams, Linda, ‘Film bodies: gender, genre and excess’, Film Quarterly, 44/4, Summer
1991, pp. 2–13.
Williams, Linda Ruth, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh:
Williamson, Bruce, ‘Porno chic’, Playboy, August 1973.
Wood, Robin, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986).
312
Contributors
Robin Griffiths is an independent film scholar, writer and lecturer with over
twenty years’ experience of teaching film and media studies in UK higher
education. His work over the years has been funded by both the British
Academy and the AHRC, and he has contributed to a number of edited
collections and academic journals. His books include British Queer Cinema
(Routledge, 2006) and Queer Cinema in Europe (Intellect, 2008).
William Gombash is a professor of communications at Valencia College in

Orlando, Florida. Among his publications is a chapter in A Critical Companion
to Stanley Kubrick (Lexington Books, 2020). His major areas of interest in film
studies include American vigilante cinema during the 1970s as well as films
about the First World War and American naval aviation.
Neil Jackson is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Lincoln

and is a co-editor of Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media (Bloomsbury
Academic, 2016). He recently contributed a chapter to Grindhouse: Cultural
Exchange on 42nd Street and Beyond (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and an
article on Forced Entry (1972) to the journal Porn Studies. He has also
contributed an article on the cultural significance of the pornographer to The
Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality (Routledge, 2018). He is
currently preparing a monograph for Bloomsbury entitled Combat Shocks, a
study of the representation of the Vietnam War in exploitation cinema.
Darren Kerr is Associate Professor of Sexual Cultures and Head of the School
of Film and Television at Solent University, Southampton. His publications
include Hard to Swallow: Hard-core Pornography on Screen (Wallflower, 2012)
and Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversions (I.B. Tauris, 2017). He is series
editor for Edinburgh University Press’s Screening Sex book series, co-director of
screeningsex.com and a member of the editorial board of the journal Porn
Studies.
313
314 Contributors
Susanne Kord is a Professor at University College London and the author of

eleven books and dozens of articles on literature and film. Her last project was
a book on The Cabin in the Woods (Liverpool University Press, 2012).
Xavier Mendik is Professor of Cult Cinema Studies at Birmingham City

University, from where he also runs the Cine-Excess International Film Festival
(www.cine-excess.co.uk). He is the author/editor/co-editor of nine volumes on
cult cinema traditions, including Bodies of Desire and Bodies in Distress: The
Golden Age of Italian Cult Cinema (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015),
Peep Shows: Cult Film and the Cine-Erotic (Wallflower Press, 2012) and The
Cult Film Reader (Open University Press, 2008). He has also completed a
number of documentaries on cult film traditions including Tax Shelter Terrors:
The Real Story of Canadian Cult Film (2017), That’s La Morte: Italian Cult
Cinema and the Years of Lead (2018) and The Quiet Revolution: State, Society
and the Canadian Horror Film (2020).
James Newton is Lecturer in Media Studies and Film at the University of Kent.
He is the author of The Anarchist Cinema (Intellect, 2019) and The Mad Max
Effect: Road Warriors in International Exploitation Cinema (Bloomsbury
Academic, 2021). He is also a film-maker, and runs the Newton Talks podcast.
Bill Osgerby is Emeritus Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at

London Metropolitan University. He has published widely on British and
American cultural history. His books include Youth in Britain Since 1945
(Blackwell, 1998); Playboys in Paradise: Youth, Masculinity and Leisure-style in
Modern America (Berg, 2001); Youth Media (Routledge, 2004); Youth Culture
and the Media: Global Perspectives (Routledge, 2020); and American Pie: The
Anatomy of Vulgar Teen Comedy (Routledge, 2019). He has also co-edited
numerous anthologies, including Action TV: ‘Tough Guys, Smooth Operators
and Foxy Chicks’ (Routledge, 2001); Subcultures, Popular Music and Social
Change (Cambridge Scholars, 2014); and Fight Back: Punk, Politics and
Resistance (Manchester University Press, 2015).
Julian Petley is Professor of Journalism at Brunel University London. He has

written widely about censorship, horror cinema and pornography but in recent
years has increasingly turned his attention to a critique of journalism in the
UK, and in particular of how the national press covers other media. His most
Contributors 315
recent book is the second edition of Culture Wars: The Media and the British
Left (Routledge, 2019), co-written with James Curran and Ivor Gaber. He is
member of the editorial boards of the British Journalism Review and Porn
Studies, and one of the principal editors of the Journal of British Cinema and
Television.
Aga Skrodzka is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Clemson

University, South Carolina. Her book Magic Realist Cinema in East Central
Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) examines the link between
peripherality, socio-economic changes and magic realism in post-Wall cinema
of the region. She is the lead editor of the interdisciplinary Oxford Handbook
of Communist Visual Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2020). Her research
interests include visual politics, gender, feminism, sexploitation cinema and
post-communist studies.
Laura Treglia is presently an independent scholar lecturing and researching

on gender, film and Japanese cultural studies. She holds a PhD in Gender
Studies and an MA in Japanese Studies from SOAS, University of London, and
has taught in British and Qatari universities as Visiting Lecturer and Visiting
Assistant Professor. Her research interests mainly revolve around feminist film
and media theory, world genre and cult cinema, Japanese society and culture,
and exploitation dynamics in reality TV. Her research has appeared in Film
Studies and in edited volumes published by the University of Chester Press,
Wiley-Blackwell and Berghahn Books.
Jennifer Wallis is a lecturer at Imperial College London in the Centre for

Languages, Culture and Communication and a teaching fellow in Imperial’s
Faculty of Medicine. Her research interests include nineteenth-century culture,
the history of psychiatry and 1970s film and television. Her most recent book
is the co-authored volume Anxious Times: Medicine & Modernity in Nineteenth-
Century Culture (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).
316
Index
Numbers in italic refer to Figures
10 Rillington Place 290 Barber, Daniel 10

555 238 Barnett, Laurel 247
Bataille, Georges 39, 289, 308 n.9
ABC 275 Báthory, Erszébet 40–1
Accused, The 152 Baudrillard, Jean 44–5, 48 n.25
Action Pants – Genital Panic 277 Bava, Mario 35
Adamson, Al x, 18, 221–2, 234, 235, 239, Beach Boys, The 223
241 n.1 Beast, The 5, 37
Aes-Nihil, John 238 Beast Stable 60
Agnew, Spiro 116, 133 n.14, 274 Beatles, The 223, 228
All in the Family 133 n.20, 143 Beatty, Edgar 232
Allen, Corey 151 Beausoleil, Bobby 224
Allen, Woody 93 Becker, Josh 238
American-International Pictures (AIP) Bedroom Eyes 190
231 Behind Convent Walls 5, 37, 41, 44–5
Animal, The 289 Behind the Green Door 22, 279
Anthony, Gethin 239 Berlatsky, Noah 8, 29 n.15, 86 n.20
Antichrist, The 3 bête, La, see Beast, The
Aquarius 239 Bevacqua, Maria 141, 149, 154 n.14,
Arbus, Diane 277 154 n.24, 155 n.28
Argento, Dario 35 Bianchi, Kenneth 293
Ariel 277 Big Bird Cage, The 71, 79–80, 81, 82–3,
Ars Amandi, see Art of Love, The 87 n.31
Art of Love, The 37 Big Doll House, The 71, 77, 80, 82, 83
Ascent of Man, The 304 Birth of a Nation, The 99–100, 103–4,
Astral (company) 170, 203 107 n.22
Astronauts, The 36 Birthistle, Eva 261
Atkins, Susan 224 Black Angels 232
August 35 Black Cat 55
Aumont, Jean-Pierre 212 Black Mama, White Mama 71, 76–80
Blackout 16, 180, 201, 211–13
Bad Girls Go to Hell 289 Blade Runner 92
Bad Seed, The 20 Blake, Linnie 2, 28 n.5
Bait, The 141, 149, 152 Blanche 36, 42
Baker County USA , see Trapped Blowitz, Michael 260
Baker, Roy Ward 3 Blumenthal, Ralph 22, 308 n.1
Bakhtin, Mikhail 230 Boorman, John 190, 207
Ballen, Ruth 247 Borden, Lynn 76
Baranco, Victor 223 Borowczyk, Walerian 3, 5–6, 35–49
317
318 Index
Boston Strangler, The 26, 290, 293 Carradine, Robert 211

Bougie, Robin 289, 309 n.12 Case of Rape, A 141–2, 146–8, 150, 152–3,
Bourbon, Barbara 280 155 n.38
Bovee, Leslie 298 Cavara, Paolo 232
Brame, Bill 231 Charles Manson Superstar 238
Branice, Ligia, see Ligia Brokowska Charlie’s Family, see Manson Family, The
Brennan, William 22–3 Chicago, Judy 277
Breton, André 43 Child, The 20, 246–7, 250–4
Brickman, Barbara Jane 2, 28 n.3 Children, The 261
Brinkema, Eugenie 292 Chinese Boxer, The, see The Hammer of
British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) 5 God
British Board of Film Classification Chopin, Frédéric 257
(BBFC) 11, 29 n.17 Chowdry, Bhaskar Roy 233
Brokowska, Ligia 35 Church, David 65 n.2, 281, 284 n.29, 295,
Bronowski, Jacob 304 309 n.26
Bronson, Charles 12, 92 Cinéastes Associés, Les 36
Brooke, Sorrell 254 Cinépix (company) 161–88, 189–200, 201,
Brooks, Richard 302 203–4, 211–13
Brottman, Mikita 232, 238, 241 n.16, Clark, Bob 290
242 n.23 Clark, Bruce 231
Brown, Jeffrey A. 55, 66 n.5 Clayton, Abigail 295
Brown, Juanita 77 Cleland, John 23
Brown, Judy 82 Climax of Blue Power, A 290
Brownmiller, Susan 275–6 Clockwork Orange, A 147
Brownstein, Bill 215 n.6 Clover, Carol J. 86 n.19, 139, 152, 153 n.1,
Bruce, Melba 296 154 n.5, 156 n.50, 156 n.54, 210,
Brunner, Mary 224 216 n.24
Bryan, James 281 Clowns, The 62
Bugliosi, Vincent 18, 228–9, 241 nn.4–6 Cole, Rosalie 247
Buhl Dutta, Mary 150, 155 n.45 Collection of Tales from the Past, The 56
Bundy, Ted 293 Collins, Roberta 82, 83
Bunker, Edith 143 Colt, Zebedy 290
Buñuel, Luis 5, 38 Comella, Lynn 278
Buono, Angelo 293 Connors, Mike 145
Burger, Warren E. 24 Contes immoraux, see Immoral Tales
Butler, Judith 209, 216 n.23 Cook, Pam 8–9, 29 n.12, 65 n.2, 71, 73–4,
85 n.1
Caged Heat 71, 76–7 Cool and the Crazy, The 231
Canadian Film Development Corporation, Corman, Roger 71–2, 231
The (CFDC) 163–5, 167–8, 170–1, Cornell, Joseph 43
173–5, 179, 181, 184 n.35, 185 n.50, Corupe, Paul 16, 29 n.18, 170, 172, 180–1,
186 n.69, 192, 203 184 n.27, 184 n.30, 184 n.32, 185 n.59,
Canby, Vincent 10–11, 93, 96, 106 n.5, 185 n.62, 201, 204, 206–7, 209, 214,
106 n.8 214 n.2, 215 n.8, 215 n.11, 215 n.16,
Cannibal Girls 191 215 n.20, 216 n.29
Canuxploitation x, 3, 15–17, 189, 201–17 Costello, Shaun 25, 281, 287, 290, 301, 304,
Carels, Edwin 43, 47 n.16, n.18, n.20 307, 309 n.29
Carmody, Don 15, 170, 186 n.70, 192, 204, Crash 206
210, 211 Craven, Wes 2, 197, 204, 236, 291
Index 319
Crazies, The 3 DeSalvo, Albert 293

Creed, Barbara 58, 67 n.18 Devane, William 149
Cronenberg, David 14–15, 162, 166, 170, Devil in Miss Jones, The 22, 26, 280, 291,
174–5, 178, 179–80, 185 n.48, 185 n.51, 301
199, 201, 203, 206, 210–12, 216 n.25, Devil Times Five, see Peopletoys
216 n.27 Diaz, Vic 80, 81
Crowd 35 DiCaprio, Leonardo 240
Crowe, Bernard 224 DiCenzo, George 228
Cruising 302 Dick Cavett Show, The 275
Cry Rape 151 Dickinson, Emily 257
Cuklanz, Lisa 143, 155 n.29 Didion, Joan 277
Cycle Savages, The 231 Dinner Party 277
Dirtiest Game in the World, The 281
Dai 41 zakkyo-bō, see Jailhouse 41 Dirty Harry 4–5, 9, 12, 91, 111, 113, 115,
Damiano, Gerard 22, 26, 279–80, 290–1, 120–1, 123–32, 134 n.21
301 Dirty Western, A 290
Danton, Ray 222, 234 Dixon, Wheeler Winston 300, 309 n.27
Davies, Jeremy 238 Dodson, Betty 278
Davis, Ossie 129, 148 Don’t Answer the Phone 290
Dawn of the Dead 3 Donahue, Troy 233
Day, Carl 239 Donnelly, Dennis 290
Day, Doris 223 Dr Jekyll and His Women 37
Days of Heaven 92 Dracula A.D. 1972 3
De Lauretis, Teresa 66 n.3 Dragon Flies, The 3
de Leon, Gerado 71 Dreifuss, Arthur 231
de Mandiargues, André Pieyre 42 Dressed to Kill 291, 309 n.14
De Martino, Alberto 3 Duchamp, Marcel 43
De Palma, Brian 291, 302 Duchovny, David 239
De Renzy, Alex 25, 281, 287, 307 Dunning, John ix–x, 15–16, 169, 169, 171,
de Sade, Marquis 39, 289, 295 173, 175, 178, 179–82, 190, 192, 201–17
de Szegheo Lang, Tamara 214 n.3 Durren, John 254
Death Line 3 Durston, David 222, 233
Death Weekend x, 16, 189–98, 200–1, Dworkin, Andrea 289, 297, 302, 308 n.6,
204–11, 213, 214 n.2 308 n.8
Death Wish 4–5, 9–10, 12, 91–110, 111, Dyer, Richard 39, 46 n.4, 292, 309 n.24
129, 131–2, 146, 302 Dylan, Bob 226
Death Wish (2018) 131
Death Wish II 11 Easy Rider 103, 116
Deathmaster 222, 234 Eddins, Beverly 251
DeCavalcante (crime family) 301 Eddins, Rebecca 251
Deep Throat 22, 24, 279, 301 Eddins, Susan 251
Defiance of Good, The 290 Edwards, Eric 280, 305–6
Defiant Ones, The 78 Elkind, David 20–1, 29 n.20, 260, 263 n.4
Defilers, The 26, 289 Elliot, Paul 233
Delaney, Marshall (Robert Fulford) 15, Emery, Robert 233
175, 184 n.44 Emmanuelle 5 37
Deliverance 190, 198, 205, 207 Equal Rights Amendment (1972) 274,
Demme, Jonathan 71, 129 283 n.12
Deranged 290 Ernst, Max 43
320 Index
Evans, Gene 254 Furyō Anego Den: Inoshika Ochō, see Sex
Exorcist, The 11, 20 and Fury
Export, Valie 277
Gabrielle 222
Faris, Daniel 25, 29 n.30 Galfas, Timothy 145
Feather, N.T. 96, 107 n.11 Gambino (crime family) 301
Fellini, Federico 62 Game of Thrones 8, 73
Felton, David 223, 241 n.2, 241 n.3, Games of Angels, The 36
241 n.7 Gardenia, Vincent 105
Female Prisoner Scorpion 6, 51, 54–7 Garrett, Leif 254
Feminine Mystique, The 278 Genji Monogatari, see The Tale of Genji
Femmes de Sade x, 25, 27, 281, 287–311 Gessner, Nicholas 20, 246
Ferman, James 11 Ghost Stories 59
Ferrara, Abel 12, 139, 293 Ghost Tale of the Peony Lantern 56
Ferreri, Marco 45 Ghost Tale of Yotsuya 56
Findlay, Michael 19, 222, 237, 289 Gibson, Alan 3
Findlay, Roberta 222, 237 Gilliam, Terry 36
Flamm, Michael 226, 241 n.9 Gillis, Jamie 280, 300, 302–4, 306, 310 n.33
Fleetwood, David 290 Gitlin, Todd 142, 154 n.22
Fleischer, Richard 26, 290 Giżycki, Marcin 38, 43, 46 n.3, 47 n.21
Fleming, Victor 104 Goddard, Claude 290
Folger, Abigail 225 Goin’ Down the Road 163, 184 n.35, 189,
Fonda, Peter 103, 191 191, 205
Fontana, Jon 280 Goldblum, Jeff 95
Forced Entry 290 Goldenberg, Billy 228
Ford, Anitra 82, 87 n.29 Gone with the Wind 104
Ford, John 92, 101 Goosebumps 191
Forgeot, Jacques 36 Gordon, Barbara 198
Foster, Jodie 20, 256 Goto, Island of Love 36
Fothergill, Robert 205–6, 209, 215 n.10, Granberry, Don 211, 213
216 n.22 Grande Bouffe, La 45
Francis, Connie 142–3 Grant, Barry Keith 28 n.7
Franco, Jess 6, 35, 38 Grantham, Lucy 291
Frenzy 290 Granville, Renay 233
Freud, Sigmund 245, 263 n.5 Grier, Pam 77–80, 82–3, 87 n.29
Frey, Mattias 72–3, 76, 85 n.10, 86 n.12, Gries, Tom 221
86 n.24 Griffith, D.W. 99, 107 n.22
Friday, Nancy 278 Griffiths, Robin 15–16, 189, 201–17
Friedan, Betty 278 Grogan, Steve ‘Clem’ 225, 232
Friedkin, William 11, 129, 302 Groos, Karl 259, 263 n.2
Friedman, David F. 26, 289 Guardian, the 8, 74, 86 n.20
Friedman, Lester D. 1–2, 28 n.2, 274, 277, Gubar, Susan 288, 308 n.4
283 n.11, 284 n.16, 284 n.24, 284 n.27 Gurley Brown, Helen 278
Frost, Lee 26, 281, 289
Fruet, William 162–3, 170, 189–200, 201, Haig, Sid 79–83
203–6, 209–11, 213 Halliwell, Leslie 196
Frykowski, Wojciech 224 Hammer of God, The 3
Fulford, Robert 14 Hammer, Robert 290
Funeral Home 190 Hancock, Herbie 302
Index 321
Hanners, Richard 249 Ike, Reiko 55

Harkema, Reginald 238 Image, The 290
Harmenszoon van Rijn, Rembrandt 43 Immoral Tales 5, 36, 40–2
Harry Brown 10 Immoral Women 5, 37, 41, 46
Hartman, Ena 77 Interno di un convento, see Behind Convent
Haskell, Molly 288, 308 n.5 Walls
Head, The 35 Irwin, Mark 198
Hefner, Hugh 275–6 It’s a Revolution Mother 232
Heinlein, Robert A. 277
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra 61, 67 n.24, Jacobs, Meg 279, 284 n.26
139, 153 n.1, 154 n.7, 154 n.12, Jacoby, Scott 257
154 n.13, 207, 215 n.15 Jacopetti, Gualtiero 232
Helter Skelter (1976) 17–18, 221, 228–30 Jaeckin, Just 290
Helter Skelter (2004) 238 Jailhouse 41 6, 51–2, 54, 56–61, 64–5
Hendrickson, Robert 18, 221, 229, 232 Jameson, Fredric 213, 216 n.28
Henry, Claire 139–40, 153, 153 n.1, Janson, Frank 248
154 n.9, 156 n.53 Jenkins, Henry 8–9, 29 n.14, 71, 73,
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 290, 293 85 n.3
héroïnes du mal, Les, see Immoral Jochnowitz, George 99, 107 n.19
Women Johnson, Beverly 278
Héroux, Denis 171, 173, 203 Johnson, Lamont 155 n.48, 193, 293
Herriman, Damon 240, 242 n.24 Johnston, Claire 71
Herrmann, Bernard 302 Joshū Sasori, see Female Prisoner Scorpion
Herzog, Dagmar 39, 41, 46 n.6, 47 n.12 Joy of Sex, The 278
Hickox, Douglas 3 Judgement Day Theater: The Book of
Hill, Jack 71–2, 81, 83 Manson 238
Hills Have Eyes, The 236
Hinman, Gary 224 Kael, Pauline 96, 106 n.9, 120–1, 124, 130,
Hitchcock, Alfred 26, 134 n.28, 290 134 n.21, 135 n.34
Hooper, Tobe 2, 236 Kaidan, see Ghost Stories
Hopper, Dennis 103, 116 Kaidan Botan Dōrō, see Ghost Tale of the
Horn, Leonard 149 Peony Lantern
Horrible House on the Hill, The, see Kaji, Meiko 51, 55, 57
Peopletoys Kanter, Richard 234
Hot Box, The 71 Kaplan, E. Ann 288, 308 n.5
Hot Summer in the City 290 Kaplan, Jonathan 150
House 36 Karen, Jane 261
House by the Lake, see Death Weekend Kasabian, Linda 224
House of Manson 238 Katalin Varga 140, 154 n.9
Howard, Frank 221, 232 Kaye, Janice 207, 215 n.17
Hudson, David L. Jnr. 29 n.26 Keane, Carol 189
Hunt, Leon 2, 28 n.4 Kelljan, Bob 293
Hutchings, Peter 152, 156 n.52 Kemono-beya, see Beast Stable
Kempton, Sally 275–6
I Drink Your Blood 222, 233 Kennedy, John F. 226
I Spit on Your Grave 12, 139–41, 146, Kenyon, Michael 302
154 n.3, 155 n.46, 156 n.54, 204, Kerwin, Harry 232
206–7, 293 Kill Bill 6, 51
Iannone, Dorothy 277 King, Billie Jean 278, 284 n.18
322 Index
Kinsey Institute 291 Life (magazine) 227

Kiss of the Tarantula 20, 246–7, 251, Life After Manson 239
265 n.15 Lincoln, Fred 291
Kitlinski, Tomasz 40, 47 n.10 Lindsay, John 99
Klaus, Olivia 239 Ling, Suzanna 247, 251
Kobayashi, Masaki 59 Link, André ix, 16, 169, 171, 173, 175,
Konjaku Monogatarishū, see Collection of 181–2, 190, 201–17
Tales from the Past, The Lions Gate Entertainment Group, see
Koz, Wally 238 Lionsgate
Krenwinkel, Patricia 224 Lionsgate 203
Kubrick, Stanley 147 Lippe, Richard 28 n.7
Kuc, Kamila 38, 46 n.3, 47 n.11, 47 n.13, Lipstick 155 n.48, 193, 293, 302
47 n.16, 47 n.17, 47 n.22, 47 n.24 Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, The
Kwaidan, see Kaidan 20–1, 246, 256
Kyd, Thomas 97 Lockard, Joe 40, 47 n.10
Kyrou, Ado 4, 28 n.9 Logan, Christopher 95
Lonely Crime, The 143
L’anticristo, see The Antichrist Long, Walter 99
LaBelle, Beverley 237, 242 n.21 Looking For Mr Goodbar 302
LaBianca, Leno 225 Love Rites 37
LaBianca, Rosemary 225 Löw, Martina 276, 284 n.15
Lacher, Taylor 254 Lulu 37
Lady Snowblood 51, 55 Lustig, William 290
LaFleur, Jean 180, 192 Lyman, Mel 223, 241 n.2
Lam Duong, Joseph 293, 309 n.25 Lyn, Dawn 254, 260–1
Lang, Fritz 101
Lange, Hope 93 Macbeth 236
Lantos, Robert 190 MacGregor, Sean 20, 246, 260
Larratelli, Enrique 236 McCall, Joan 254
Last House on the Left, The 2–3, 19, 197, McCoy, Tim 290
204, 236 McDaniel, Hattie 104
Lefebvre, Henri 276 McKee, Ian 96, 107 n.11
Left Bank Group 44 McNamara, John 239
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, The 3 McNaughton, John 290
Lehman, Peter 64, 68 n.27, 153 n.1, Mad Max: Fury Road 8, 29 n.15, 86 n.20
154 n.13 Madden, Lee 222, 233
Lenica, Jan 36 Malick, Terrence 92, 124
Lennon, John 226 Man from Hong Kong, The 3
Leroy, Mervyn 20 Man from Laramie, The 101
Lesage, Jean 170–1, 177, 203 Mana, Yaeko 58, 67 n.16
Leslie, John 294, 298 Manhattan 93
Leszkowski, Pawel 40 Maniac 290, 293
Levin, Peter 151 Mann, Anthony 101
Lewis, Gabe 233 Manson (1973) 18, 221, 229–30, 232, 239
Lewis, Herschell Gordon 26, 72, 289 Manson (2009) 238
Lewis, Jon 23–4, 29 n.21, 29 n.27 Manson Family 4, 18, 221, 230, 240
Liberating Masturbation: A Meditation on Manson Family Movies 238–9
Self Love 278 Manson Family, The 239
Libman, Leslie 239 Manson, Charles x, 17–19, 221–43
Index 323
Manson, My Name is Evil 238 Munich 99

Manson’s Lost Girls 239 My Secret Garden 278
Mapplethorpe, Robert 277
Margin, The 37 Nakata, Hideo 59
Margolin, Stuart 101 Naked Angels 231
Marker, Chris 36, 44 Nashawaty, Chris 83
Markov, Margaret 78 National Film Board 162, 182 n.4, 192
Marlow, Alan 280 Natsuyagi, Isao 58
Marsh, Mae 99 NBC 141–3, 146, 239, 278
Martin 3 New York Times, The 10, 22, 93–4, 98–9,
Martin, Helen 103 142, 277
Martin, Ross 148 Night God Screamed, The 222, 233
Mason, Eric 252 Nixon, Richard 23–4, 94, 100, 103, 106 n.6,
Matalon, Eddy 16, 180, 201 107 n.23, 108 n.31, 111, 113–16, 122,
Mathijs, Ernest 4, 28 n.11, 39, 46 n.5, 133 n.5, 133 n.6, 133 n.8, 226, 274, 281
65 n.2, 184 n.45, 185 n.46 Nizet, Charles 289
Mawrwa, Joseph P. 289
Melcher, Terry 223–4 O’Leary, Timothy 273, 282, 283 n.9, 284 n.30
Mendik, Xavier ix–x, 1–31, 39, 46 n.5, Oleszczyk, Michał 38, 46 n.3, 47 n.13,
161–88, 189–200, 264 n.11 47 nn.16–17, 47 n.22, 48 n.24
Merrick, Laurence 18, 221, 229, 232 Olga’s Girls 26
Metzger, Radley 272–3, 280, 290 Once Upon a Time 36
Meyer, Russ 6, 38 Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood 240
Middleton, Jonas 26, 291 One-Armed Boxer 3
Mikurda, Kuba 38, 46 n.3, 47 n.13, Opening of Misty Beethoven, The 26, 291
47 nn.16–17, 47 n.22, 47 n.24 Oprah Winfrey Show, The 144
Milland, Ray 213 Orange is the New Black 8
Miller, Marvin 22, 24, 29 n.26 Ōshima, Nagisa 5, 38
Miller, Michael 143 Ōta, Masako, see Kaji, Meiko
Mills, Donna 149 Other Side of Madness, The 221, 232
Mitchell, Artie 279–80 Owen, Jonathan 40
Mitchell, Jim 279
Mitchell, Sharon 304–5 Padva, Gilad 214 n.3
Mlodzik, Ronald 209 Palmer, Gail 290
Modleski, Tania 289, 309 n.11 Parent, Steve 224
Moede, Titus 281 Paris, Henry 26, 291
mondo 19, 230, 232, 239, 241 n.17 Parpart, Lee 215 n.12
Mondo Cane 232 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 5, 38
Mondo Mod 232 Peckinpah, Sam 204
Monsoya, Carlos 234 Peeping Tom 26, 290
Montessori, Maria 259, 263 n.2 Peopletoys 20–1, 246, 254–5, 258, 260–1,
Montgomery, Elizabeth 146–7 263 n.7, 265 n.18
Moran, John 207, 215 n.14 Perl, F.C. 290
Morrison, Shelley 254 Perlstein, Rick 106 n.1, 236, 241 n.18
Ms. 45 14, 139, 141 Perry, Peter 232
Muller, Eddie 25, 29 n.30 Peter Pan Syndrome 20, 245–67
Mulvey, Laura 67 n.20, 71, 77, 288, 304, Pettibon, Raymond 238
308 n.5 Pezzotta, Alberto 38
Munger, Chris 20, 246 Piaget, Jean 246, 264 n.10
324 Index
pink films 52 Resurrection of Eve, The 280

pinku eiga, see pink films Return of Frank James, The 101
Pitt, Brad 240 Revenge for a Rape 141, 145–8, 150, 150
Plath, Sylvia 257, 277 Rich, David Lowell 141, 148
Playboy (magazine) 275–6 Ring, see Ringu
Pleasance, Donald 163, 189 Ringu 59
Polanski, Roman 17, 224, 236, 240 Riot on Sunset Strip 231
Poston, Brooks 232 Robbe-Grillet, Alain 44
Powell, Michael 26, 290 Roberts, Robert 222, 233
Power of Play: Learning What Comes Robinson, Jeremy Mark 38, 46 n.7
Naturally, The 20, 29 n.20, 260, 263 n.4 Robinson, Mark 40
Prince, Phil 290 Roddy, Jan Peterson 208, 215 n.13,
Prisoner: Cell Block H 8 215 n.19
Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, The Rollin, Jean 35
280 Rolling Stone (magazine) 223, 226
Private Collection, A 42 Rollo May 275
Probyn, Elspeth 144, 155 n.30 Romero, Eddie 71
Prosperi, Franco 232 Romero, George A. 1–3
Psycho 26, 134 n.28, 290 Rosen, Ruth 279, 284 n.24
Punishment of Anne, The, see The Image Rothman, Stephanie 8, 71
Rozakis, Gregory 95
Quadrant (company) 170, 203 Rubin, Jerry 229
Quarry, Robert 234 Run, Angel, Run! 231
Quiet Revolution: State, Society and the Russell, Diana E.H. 288, 308 n.3
Canadian Horror Film, The x, 182, 200 Russell, Ken 6, 38
Russo, Vito 81, 87 n.34
Railsback, Steve 228
Rains, Darby Lloyd 280 Sagal, Boris 146
Rancho Notorious 101 Sanders, Ed 19, 226, 237, 240, 241 nn.4–8,
Rape and Marriage 151 242 n.20, 242 n.25
Rape Squad 293, 300 Sargeant, Jack 300, 309 n.28, 310 n.32
Rape Victims, The 143 Satan’s Sadists x, 18–19, 221–2, 234, 235–6
Ravager, The 289 Saxon, John C.W. 180
Raw Meat, see Death Line Schaefer, Eric 37, 46 n.1, 230–1, 241 n.11,
Ray, Man 43 241 n.13
Read, Jacinda 55, 65, 66 n.6, 74, 86 n. 18, Schmidtmer, Christiane 82, 83
139–40, 152–3, 154 n.6, 154 n.8, School 36
154 n.10, 154 n.13, 155 n.36, 155 n.39, Schubart, Rikke 58, 61, 67 n.19, 67 n.23,
155 n.43, 156 n.51 185 n.63
Redfield, William 94 Schumacher, Joel 148
Reed, Oliver 166, 190 Schwartz, Nancy 144, 154 n.18, 154 n.23,
Reed, Robert 145 155 n.32, 152 n.35
Reel People 281 Sconce, Jeffrey 4, 28 n.8, 85 n.8, 309 n.11
Reid, Ella 77 Scorsese, Martin 91, 302
Reitman, Ivan 162, 166, 170, 175, 181, Scott, Ridley 92
191–2, 197, 204, 210, 211 Screck, Nicholas 238
Renaissance 36 Scum of the Earth 26, 289
Renaud, Chantal 173 Search and Destroy 190
Resnais, Alain 44 Searchers, The 101, 107 n.25
Index 325
Sebring, Jay 224 Speed, Carol 77, 79

See How They Run 141 Spielberg, Steven 99
Sex and Fury 55 Spinelli, Anthony 26, 281, 292
Sex and the Single Girl 278 Starr, Monique 296
Sex Wish 290 Starrett, Jack 231
Sex World 26, 292 Stellar, Carolyn 254, 261
Sexton, Jamie 4, 28 n.11, 65 n.2 Stone, Jean 281
Shackleton, Allan 237 Story of Joanna, The 26, 290–1
Shamata, Chuck 195, 206 Story of O, The 290
Shankland, Tom 261, 265 n.19 Story of Sin, The 36
Shebib, Donald 163, 184 n.35, 189, 191, Stranger in a Strange Land 277
205 Straw Dogs 11, 193, 204
Sheen, Martin 256 Strickland, Peter 140
Sheffield, Jeremy 261 Stroud, Don 20, 206–7
Sheldon, David 20, 246 Studio 54 277
Sheriff, The 141, 148–9 Sugich, Michael 233
Sherman, Gary 3 Sweet Captive 281
Shiffen, Arlo 222, 233 Sweet Savior 222, 233
Shindō, Kaneto 55 Swope, Tracy Brooks 145
Shinohara, Tōru 57 Sykes, Brenda 148
Shiraishi, Kayoko 63
Shivers ix, 14, 16, 161, 174–8, 176, 177, Takers, The 234
184 n.45, 185 n.48, 185 n.50, 201, Tale of Genji, The 56
209–10, 212 Tamblyn, Russ 19, 235
Showgirls 148 Taming of Rebecca, The 290
Shuman, Mort 256 Tarantino, Quentin 6, 51, 240
Shurayuki-hime, see Lady Snowblood Tate, Sharon 17, 224, 233, 236, 240
Siegel, Don 4, 10, 91, 111, 124 Taxi Driver 91, 302
Sign of Aquarius 222, 233 Telefilm, see Canadian Film Development
Silent Witness 143 Council, The
Silva, Henry 190 Terminal Island 8, 71, 78
Silver, Jeanne 305 Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The 2, 236
Silvera, Joey 295 Theatre of Blood 3
Simkin, Stevie 29 n.17 Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal, The 36
Simonson, Archie 143 Thou Shalt Not Kill . . . Except 2238
Sisters 302 Through The Looking Glass 26, 291
Slade, Joseph 291, 309 n.15 Time to Kill, A 148
Slagle, Brandon 238 Tōei 52, 54, 57, 59, 67 n.15
Slick, Grace 275 Toolbox Murders, The 290
Slouching Towards Bethlehem 277 Toumarkine, Doris 280
Smale, Gale 254 Trapped 190, 198
Smith, Alexis 256 Treglia, Laura 3, 6–7, 51–69
Smith, Mark 252 Trenchard-Smith, Brian 3
Snuff 19, 222, 236–7 Trop, Elaine 233
Soja, Edward 276 Trudeau, Pierre 15–16, 167, 183 n.21, 201
Something’s Happening 232 Trump, Donald 10, 12, 24, 116, 132
Spahn, George 223 Tuck, Greg 278–9, 284 n.21, 284 n.23
Spanish Tragedy, The 97 Turan, Kenneth 271–2, 272 n.1, 283 n.3
Spasms 190 Turner, Tierre 254, 261
326 Index
Ultimate Degenerate, The 289 Wheatley, Helen 144, 155 n.31, 155 n.33

Unwilling Lovers 290 White Album 223
Update on Crime in Arizona 102, 108 n.27 White Slaves of Chinatown 289
Wicke, Jennifer 272, 283 n.7
Vaccaro, Brenda 190, 195, 206 Wielebska, Kamila 43, 47
Valérie ix, 171–3, 172, 203 Wild Angels 231
Van Houten, Leslie 225 Wild Riders 234
VanBebber, Jim 239 Williams, Linda 26–7, 29 n.32, 290, 292,
Vatnsdal, Caelum 205, 215 n.7, 215 n.9 309 n.13, 309 n.20
Verhoeven, Paul 148 Williams, Linda Ruth 26, 29 n.31, 291–2,
Vibrator Nation 278 309 n.19, 309 n.22
Vimenet, Pascal 38 Williamson, J.W. 215 n.13
Vincendeau, Ginette 39 Willoughby, Marlene 304, 306
Viola, Joe 71 Wilson, Dennis 223
Vogel, Amos 4, 28 n.10, 72–3, 85 n.5, Wilson, Scott 210, 216 n.25
86 n.14 Winchester 73 101
Vogue (magazine) 278 Winner, Michael 1, 4, 10–11, 91, 93–4, 101,
Voskanian, Robert 20, 246 111, 146, 302
Vygotsky, Lev 259, 263 n.3 Winter Heat 290
WiP, see Women in Prison
Walker, Johnny 10, 29 n.10, 308 Wishman, Doris 72, 289
Walking Dead, The 8, 73 Witney, William 231
Wallner, Herman 251 Women in Cages 71, 78, 80, 83–4
Wallthal, Henry B. 99 Women in Prison 4–5, 7–8, 54–5, 57, 61,
Walters, Barbara 278 64, 71–88, 83
Walters, Suzanna Danuta 55, 66 n.5, 66 n.7 Women’s Liberation Movement 275, 288
Ward, Anna 278, 284 n.19 Wood, Robin 3, 28 n.7, 175, 185 n.46, 302,
Washitani, Hana 58, 66 n.10, 66 n.13, 310 n.31
67 nn.16–17 Woynarowski, Jakub 38
Watanabe, Fumio 60 WRC-TV 143
Water Power x, 25, 27, 287, 289, 292–3,
300–9 Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko, see Black Cat
Watkins, Paul 232 Yotsuya Kaidan, see Ghost Tale of Yotsuya
Watson, Charles ‘Tex’ 224 Yu, Wang 2–3
Waugh, Thomas 16, 29 n.19, 202–3, 214,
215 n.4 Zalcock, Bev 73, 75, 79, 85, 86 n.16,
Wedding in White 163, 189, 191–2, 194 86 n.22, 87 n.30, 87 n.36
Wentworth 8 Zappa, Frank 302
Wertheim, Ron, see Shiffen, Arlo Zarchi, Meir 12, 139, 204, 293
Weston, Armand 290 Zelizer, Julian E. 279, 284 n.26
Whatling, Clare 75, 80, 86 n.21, 87 n.32 Zito, Stephen F. 271, 282 n. 1, 283 n.3

Xavier Mendik - Julian Petley (Editors) - Shocking Cinema of The 70s-Bloomsbury Academic (2022)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Xavier Mendik - Julian Petley (Editors) - Shocking Cinema of The 70s-Bloomsbury Academic (2022)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Shocking Cinema of the 70s

Edited by Xavier Mendik and Julian Petley

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks

First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Xavier Mendik and Julian Petley, 2022

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. ix–x constitute an extension

Cover design: Charlotte Daniels

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-3631-1

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

List of Figures vii

Introduction New Shocks to the System: An Introduction to

Part 1 International Visions of the Extreme

1 Walerian Borowczyk: Seventies Sexploitation Through

2 A Woman’s Grudge: Figuring Female Resentment in Japanese

3 Rethinking Representation, Race and Rape in the 1970s

Part 2 From the Vigilante to the Violated

4 Death Wish: A Vigilante’s Journey, an Urban Tragedy

5 Rough Justice: Lone Cops, Vigilantes and Penal Populism

6 Small Screen Shockers: Rape-Revenge Narratives in the Made-

Part 3 State Sponsored Shocks

7 Tax Shelter Terrors: Cinépix and the Hidden History of 1970s

8 Shocking Canadian Cinema of the 70s: An Interview

9 ‘You miserable, no good, dirty sons of bitches!’: Queer(y)ing

Part 4 Family-sploitation and Threats to the Family

10 Family Entertainment: Psychotic Slaughter in the 1970s

11 The Peter Pan Syndrome: Murder as Child’s Play in Four

Part 5 Porno Chic, Porno Shock

12 ‘They’re Not There Just to Fuck’: Sensibility, Cultural

13 Hardcore and Rough on the Outside: Evaluating Femmes

List of Contributors 313

1.1 Immoral Tales: The fetishistic portrayal of the female body.

3.1 Django (Sid Haig) performs a fake seduction of prison guard

3.3 Prisoner Alcott (WiP regular Roberta Collins) attempts to

5.1 Joe: Cross-class collaborators: Joe Curran (Peter Boyle), Bill

6.1 The hunting of Amy in Revenge for a Rape. Screengrab under

7.2 Cashing in on the Quiet Revolution: Valérie. 172

7.4 Narratives of containment: social and moral order collapse in

7.5 Contemplating siege scenarios: John Dunning (L) and David

8.1 Real life road encounter as ﬁction: director William Fruet on

8.3 Phallic conﬂicts: masculine tensions in Death Weekend. 196

8.4 Country encounters: tropes of rural depravity in Death Weekend. 197

9.1 The embodiment of ‘monstrous masculinity’: Don Stroud as

10.1 Constructing the counterculture’s dark side: Charles Manson and

10.2 Manson-themed thrill seekers on wheels: Al Adamson’s Satan’s

13.1 Femmes de Sade advertising. 294

13.2 The sex community as threatened by Rocky De Sade (Ken

13.3 Rejecting the Sadeian male: Rocky at the climax of Femmes de

13.6 Sculptures preﬁgure the dehumanization of female victims in

This collection was originally intended as a second edition of Shocking Cinema

Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations2 oﬀers revised considerations of

Shocking Cinema of the 70s: the chapters

Opening the section ‘International Visions of the Extreme’ is Aga Skrodzka-

However, whilst not denying his qualities as ‘an experimental animator, a

was experiencing a widespread cultural and political liberalisation, the rise

While directors such as Walerian Borowczyk shocked the sensibilities that

an example of Japanese grindhouse cinema of the early 1970s that

propriety. These construct domestic and nurturing roles as ‘proper’ to women’s

These unruly young women – street hoodlums, bikers, pickpockets,

represent the epitome of irresponsibility and self-interest, and are thus

Such contradictions and ambiguities are typical of exploitation cinema in

back to an early piece by Pam Cook on Stephanie Rothman and exploitation