Immoral Tales (1974)

Powerful

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

All 4 stars are for the boobs. I took points off for the dangling penises and for the overall crap-level of the movie. This is, after all, much like a Pasolini offering, only slightly less daft and a tad less amateurish.1st story: a dweeby Frenchman has oral sex with his cousin on a beach.An aunt leaves her daughter and her nephew alone in a large house – finally. But what does the nephew do? Would you think he is smart enough to take this unique opportunity to be with his cousin? Hell no: the one time when the house is finally empty, he takes his 16 year-old cousin to climb around a rocky beach instead, where he robotically/unemotionally instructs her to perform fellatio. The guy has the passion of a dry umbrella; they might as well have hired an android to play him. There is a disgusting scene that lasts an entire minute (trust me, an eternity), in which the camera closes up on his filthy finger making circles around her mouth. (I had to fast-forward that.) She gets naked, does the deed – while he babbles on and on about tides – and then the story ends. Yes, it's that kind of crap. Romance/drama? I think not.2nd story: a religious girl visits a church and then inserts a cucumber up her triangle.With barely any dialogue, the 2nd story starts off with a beautiful blond who sees little difference between religion and pornography. She is in a church, but far from being in a praying mood, she is all but ready to explode with sexual tension. Every fresco, painting, drawing and statue make her swoon with delight, the loony, ungratified creature. God isn't exactly helping matters by insinuating that He too is getting horny, which only makes the girl lose it even more.Eventually she leaves the church (without having climaxed, the poor thing) and returns to her farm(?). An old woman runs with her through the property; they seem to be both enjoying themselves. Alas, it turns out they're not so much running gaily as it's really about the old woman actually chasing the girl; the old bag looks angry. So why did she look happy just moments ago? (These are soft-porn/erotic-flick actors so obviously one can't expect them to actually make an effort to act; that would be asking too much.) What is grandma angry at? It isn't clear, but the punishment is being locked up "three days and three nights" in a room: a room containing a pornographic book, and a couple of large cucumbers. It seems grandma is either totally daft, or she left those on purpose, for whatever bizarre reason. Is she perhaps the director of this film? Not being one to disappoint the wannabe "art crowd", who watch this film – mouth watering - while convincing themselves that this is a profound drama, the blond prepares for the much-anticipated and rather predictable cucumber insertion. Before she does it, though, she wastes about 10 minutes of precious screen time on swooning over a bunch of drawings, and fondling paintings. Bo-ring. She finally undresses (as the cucumber would have wanted, had he a mouth to utter demands with), and then - apparently with God's own words as encouragement - she sticks the green object inside. Here is the troubling bit; the director seemed to be more focused on filming the cucumber in all its incredibly fascinating greenish detail than filming the blond. Was this story intended for veggie-fetishists? Or did the director simply assume that half of his audience consisted of sexed-up cucumbers. In the end, she finally climaxes, as all women that had just returned from church and are then shoved into a room with a penis-like object do, and then escapes with ease through the window. Apparently, her tearful pleas to grandma were a fluke. She must have known she can leave the room as soon as the last cucumber had been violated (or is that the wrong word?).3rd story: A couple is doing it in a barn. A very young girl watches them, then goes to milk a cow. (How symbolic; eat your heart out, Antonioni!). A rooster shags a chicken; he is done after 3 seconds, so we cut next to Countess Bathory. She is visiting this village in order to (predictably) find some virgins whom she can slay in order to use their blood for an eternal-youth bathing session. The foolish woman obviously knew nothing about young teen virgin girls; instead of having her henchmen round them up forcibly, she could have hired a boy-band to do that, and she would have ended up with thousands instead of dozens.One question: why would a woman as homely as this want to live forever? It just makes no sense.Except of course if the REAL Countess didn't look anything like Picasso's daughter Paloma who was cast here for her very obvious talent and immense charisma – which is exactly why her movie career took off like a rocket after this film. Would Pablo have approved of this movie? Why wouldn't he; he loved crap.4th story: Lucy Borgia, her brother, and the Pope. Guess what happens in this one.You think you know? The Pope shows her pornographic drawings of horses and then tickles her breasts with a bird-feather. Now that's the stuff of cinema legend.Some of the naked females appear to be underage. Did the French police commence an inquiry into this seedy matter? Yes, they probably did: the cops spent an evening with the director, looking at nude outtakes of the minors in question. They were offered wine by their gracious host, and then went back to the station where they filed a fictional report.

Bathory (the Countess not the black metal group) gets a doing here.And doing she gets.She lives among her naked ladies of the castle as they serve her in every way possible.The story was hard to follow despite the many points it made. And I do agree, it says a lot about today as well.The art direction and cinematography were both excellent. But the pace crept a bit too slow. It seemed as if they were padding it out as much as possible.But the young lasses looked FABulous naked. And they were naked most of the time too.Great looking film, but if you get more out of it, good on you.

Overall, this film is quite boring. There are 4 unlinked segments, with only the third likely to keep you awake.This is the familiar tale of Countess Elisabeth Bathory. Bathory is a historical character who apparently used to favour blood taken from naked virgins.This scenario is an exploitationers delight, and we get to see room loads of young girls running round in the buff.But even so, this story seems to head nowhere, and much is left to your imagination.

Even by 1999 standards, there are moments in this film that would still be considered fairly controversial. Unfortunately, once you get past a few surprising scenes and the FREQUENT nudity, this is just a so-so movie at best, with several dull stretches. There just wasn't enough going on to keep me interested after a while, especially during the first and last segments, which were heavy on the dialogue but not the least bit entertaining. Don't waste your time on this one.