Whirlpool (1970)

Thanks for the memories!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A diplomatic person might call this an erotic thriller. Diplomacy is for diplomats, and no amount of tact can gloss over it. This low budget film is not total rubbish, but only if you like lesbian sex, simulated rape and the odd murder, and these are odd murders.A woman lives in the country with her ersatz nephew who is also her bedmate, well, they do it on the floor. Sonny boy is a photographer, naturally he likes photographing attractive young ladies, and, you guessed it, frightened young ladies. Before the film starts, a girl has already been murdered - we see a flashback of that later. The lady of the house is apparently ignorant of his murderous proclivities, but someone is suspicious, namely the sugar daddy of the first girl, who gets a bit too nosey for his own good.The man with the camera also has an ad hoc accomplice who provides the sexual assaults while he takes the pictures. What more do you need to know? The film is atmospheric, but it is very slow in places. Thankfully, justice is done at the end, although we don't actually see it, and of course it comes too late for his next victim.

Talking to a fellow IMDb'er recently about Euro 'genre' movies,I was asked if I had seen any titles by writing/directing auteur Jose Ramon Larraz.With having heard of,but never seeing any of Larraz work,I decided to take advantage of my discussion with the fellow IMDb'er,by finally taking Larraz debut, (which was believed lost for decades) off my shelf,and excitingly getting ready to enter the whirlpool. The plot:With the mysterious disappearance of Rhonda having put a stop to her fun'n'games and her nephew Theo's amateur photography,kind aunt Sara decides to pay a visit to the London,in the hope of catching the eye of an up and coming fashion model.Sneaking into a fashion shoot,Sara is taken aback by the glamorous appearance of a new model called Tulia.Introducing herself,Sara tells Tulia that she would really like to take her back to the country house that she resides in,so that her nephew Theo can do an outstanding photo shoot which Tulia can place in her portfolio.Delighted at receiving such attention,Tulia jumps in sweet aunt Sara's car,and begins to look forward to her special photo-shoot.Arriving at the country house,Tulia discovers that instead of taking part in a photo-shoot,that aunt Sara and Theo are going to make Tulia take part in seduction,and murder.View on the film:Despite the only known edition to exist being a timecoded Video version,co-writer/ (along with Sam Lomberg) director Jose Ramon Larraz is able to break out of the viewing constriction's by displaying an expert eye in creating an incredibly murky atmosphere,with Larraz using the country house setting to to build a real mood of isolation,thanks to Larraz making the endless row of tresses by a sign to Tulia, (played by the stunning Vivian Neves) that there is nowhere for her to run away from Sara, (played with a wonderful battle axe bite by Pia Andersson) and Theo's, (played with a chilling smirk by future Larraz collaborator Karl Lanchbury) games.Along with the creeping atmosphere in his directing,Larraz and Lomberg give their screenplay a strong swipe of crawling sleaze,with Larraz and Lomberg gradually taking their time to fully place Tulia in Sara and Theo's games, which leads to the writers delivering an excellently ruthless ending,as Tulia starts to fear that she will never be able to get out of this deadly whirlpool.

This is the first film of the cult Spanish expatriate director Jose Larraz (which was lost until very recently). It is far more amateurish than his later (and better) films like "Symptoms", "Vampyres", and "The Coming of Sin", but it has the same basic themes--omnivorous sexual perversity played out against a background of haunting natural beauty. A Swinging London era fashion (played by Vivian Neves, who was a, um, Swinging London Era fashion model)is lured to an isolated country estate by a creepy older woman to meet her even creepier photography-obsessed nephew. She doesn't seem too perturbed to learn that a previous female model that went there has disappeared without a trace, nor does she find it strange that her first night there the aunt and nephew get her drunk and engage her in perverse game of strip poker. She almost has sex with the nephew (while his aunt secretly watches) but he isn't able to, uh, rise to the occasion. The next day he takes her into town and pays a friend to rip her clothes off and nearly rape her while he takes pictures. This doesn't seem to bother her either because soon she's involved in another bisexual three-way sex/photography session with the aunt and nephew. There is also an allusion to the old Bluebeard story--the model has been forbidden to enter the nephew's mysterious darkroom. Hmmmm. Guess what she does?This movie was written off as a cheap sex movie when it was released, even though it doesn't really contain any more sex than any other Larraz movie. The problem is that just isn't very good. It kind of reminded of the sexy Italian giallo "Amuck!" released a few years later, but it lacks both the strong acting and the directorial flair of that movie. It's also hard to muster much sympathy for the protagonist as she is unbelievably stupid. And there's no doubt from the beginning that the villainous couple are the worst kind of creeps (and the actors that play them might as well be twirling their mustaches). You can see the ending coming from a mile away--the tagline and the alternative title pretty much give it away. There is also a really lame voice-over coda before the end credits, which was no doubt added to ameliorate the censors. Still this IS a J.R. Larraz movie, so it is not entirely uninteresting and worth seeing if you're a fan of the director like I am.

The sexy nature of this picture made it an erotic winner, and the ending death scene where the girl is stabbed with her boots on led to its release with that title. Excellent. Sorry it isn't available on video!