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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE LAUGHING WOMAN (1969)

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Femina ridens, AKA The Frightened Woman

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This is the first in a limited series by Pete Trbovich entitled “Pete’s Perverted Pix,” examining the kinkier side of cinema.

DIRECTED BY: Piero Schivazappa

FEATURING: Philippe Leroy, Dagmar Lassander

PLOT: A wealthy aristocrat (and psychopathic sadist) kidnaps a woman and keeps her as his personal torture toy, until she turns the tables on him.

Still from The Laughing Woman (1969)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Even though the story is almost elementary, and 90% of the time it involves just two characters, you can’t take your eyes off the screen thanks to the psychedelic sets, ridiculous dialogue, and all-in committed performance from two very watchable actors. Far from typical Eurosleeze fare, by the end you know that The Laughing Woman has something to say, even if that message is just a harsh judgment on male-female politics dressed up in clown makeup.

COMMENTS: Every now and then, a movie throws you on first watch. The first time I saw The Laughing Woman, I dismissed it as exploitative Eurotrash aspiring to, but just missing out on, artistic redemption.  Act 1 left a sour taste in my mouth, which acts 2 and 3 tried, but failed, to wash away. Then I looked up what others thought, and to my surprise, I could hardly find one bad word that anyone has to say about this movie. But I did find reviews which breathlessly called it every kind of weird and a masterpiece. Some even drew comparisons to Death Laid an Egg.

So after a while, I gave it another try. Now that I knew where the film was ultimately going, I could appreciate little jokes I didn’t catch the first time, the mondo set pieces reminiscent of the village from TV’s “The Prisoner,” the deliberately turgid dialogue, and the sweet soundtrack tying it all together. While I still say this is a film with a nasty central idea, I have to admit that it is artistically framed and slyly dishes out a satire of sexual relations as it pulls the rug on the viewer. Perhaps the weirdest thing about this movie is how it forces you to admire it even while almost daring you to hate it.

Described variously as either an erotic thriller or a very dark comedy, the movies’ two titles (is the woman laughing, or frightened?) give you a hint that we’re in for an ambiguous time. Except for the bookending opening and closing scenes, the whole movie is focused solely on our lead characters. Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy) is a big shot rich guy with a powerful position in some organization, and Maria (Dagmar Lassander) is a reporter who needs to get in touch with him to research a story. They meet and immediately have an argument about the story she’s writing, but Sayer directs Maria to stop by his home anyway to pick up her research files. No sooner is she lured into his parlor to admire his art collection than the doctor drugs her drink. A Cosby-on-the-rocks knocks her out, and Maria awakes in Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE LAUGHING WOMAN (1969) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UP THE CATALOGUE (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Alastair Siddons

FEATURING: Lyndsey Marshal, John Macmillan, Morgana Robinson, Anastasia Hille

PLOT: Hailey, the lead presenter for a shopping network, is forbidden from suspending her performance on a set where it’s always still morning.

Still from "Up the Catalogue" (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Hailey’s journey to the end of the film is by turns comical, confusing, and surreal, culminating in a quick-but-profound moment of “hmm.”

COMMENTS: Judging from the dreams I suffered after watching this, I’ll advertise that angle first. An eager makeup artist preps protagonist Hailey for broadcast, interrupted by odd exchanges with an unseen Dave who runs hot and cold: snippy one moment, flattering in the next. “Forever Bread,” the invention of a gruff fellow in military-style fatigues, is among the never-fully-explained items for sale on 4QTV (quality, quantity, quintity, and never any Q’s), and we learn of Hailey’s aversion to bread mold and of her son, whose name she can’t quite remember. Derek—a regular caller, it seems telephones and goes on to confess his fear of dying (not unreasonably for a nonagenarian). Quick break, and on to the next item.

Alastair Siddons skewers one of television’s more ridiculous and unsettling genres, home shopping programs, through a ridiculous and unsettling little film. Up the Catalogue never goes anywhere; first Hailey’s is unable to leave the production set, then the building, and the finale is an extended pursuit down a repeated cycle of stairwell. Her boss, Dave, is the hellish counterpart of a Chris Morris TV producer, dangling the promise of implied freedom in front of Hailey only if she agrees to the terms of the rent-to-marry companion owl, Maureen, who used to be the network’s star hamster.

Up the Catalogue left me with a feeling of “Whelp, that just happened”, followed thereafter by a none-too-restful bit of sleep. The film cruises along the comedy-cringe line in true British fashion, adding a hearty dose of cramped infinity-space as the story unfolds within an endless backstage labyrinth. By the end, I wanted out as much as Hailey did, and I was relieved that my visit to this world wrapped up in only a little over an hour. That said, I strangely enjoyed the distressing journey—a sentiment which leaves me as confused as the climax did.

Rolling again in Five-Four-Q-Two-Action!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Up the Catalogue is unquestionably weird, offbeat and surreal right out of the gate. There’s a palpable awkwardness and Alastair Siddons builds a great atmosphere of intrigue.” — Rebecca Cherry, Film Carnage (contemporaneous)

Up the Catalogue [DVD]

Up the Catalogue [DVD]

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SENSUELA (1973)

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DIRECTED BY: Teuvo Tulio

FEATURING: Marianne Mardi, Ossi Elstelä, Mauritz Åkerman, Ismo Saario

PLOT: A young Sámi woman abandons her life of reindeer herding for the big city when she falls in love with a Nazi pilot/photographer.

Still from Sensuela (1973)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Sensuela is a difficult film to describe. A remake of Finnish director Teuvo Tulio’s own melodrama Cross of Love (1946), which itself was inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 short story “The Stationmaster,”  though neither film closely follows the text. In his updated version of a prodigal daughter’s journey, Tulio mashes together the modes of ethnographic documentary, commercial advertising, and softcore porn. All incongruously set to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, the result is ultimately unclassifiable.

COMMENTS: Did you know the Sámi geld reindeer by biting off their testicles? Neither did I, until I watched this movie. I don’t know if this is actually true in the real world, but in the world of Tulio it’s a fact, and one which proves shockingly relevant to Sensuela‘s loosely plotted narrative. Like and other low-budget outsider auteurs, Tulio clearly pursued his own cinematic vision, with relentless disregard for prevailing taste or convention.

Sensuela opens during WWII with three fighter pilots in the midst of battle, but this isn’t war as seen in any other movie. Painted backdrops of snowy mountains provide the landscape and cartoonishly simple sets, barely recognizable, represent the plane cockpits. To the sound of gunfire, two of the pilots collapse on their instrument panels, but the third survives.

Hans parachutes out of his damaged plane into the Arctic landscape below. Laila, a Sámi girl, crossing the tundra in her reindeer sled, discovers him and brings him back to her father’s yurt. While she nurses him back to health, they fall in love, but the war forces Hans to flee Finland once he recovers.

In the first of many confusing transitions, the characters reunite after what must be about twenty years (though neither one has visibly aged). Hans whisks Laila away to Helsinki where he works as a photographer and she becomes his hottest model. The novelty of the relationship wears off when Laila refuses to swing with the ’60s. They break up, but she continues telling her father she and Hans intend to get married.

What seems like a harmless white lie proves to be Laila’s undoing. After many trials and tribulations, she takes a job in a warehouse, falls in love again, and becomes engaged to one of her co-workers. Meanwhile, Laila’s father happens across her nude photographs and sets off for the city in a rage. After roughing up her roommate, he decides to go after Hans. The roommate warns Laila, who manages to reach Hans just before her father’s arrival.

Happy to see Laila again, Hans, surprisingly, agrees to go along with the deception. They’ll tell her father they’re still planning to marry, thinking he’ll leave once they calm his indignation. Instead, dad insists on remaining in the city for the wedding.

Laila and Hans decide to hold a fake marriage ceremony. They almost pull it off—until Laila’s actual fiancé crashes the “wedding” party and all hell breaks loose. In a classic over-the-top Tulio climax, emotions run hard and fast, and love turns to hate in the blink of an eye. Her fiancé renounces Laila, but Hans suffers the brunt of her father’s anger.

Unfortunately, it’s not all sex, drugs, and castration. Sensuela is honestly a train wreck, but it’s difficult to look away, as one can’t help but wonder what randomness will happen next. Stock footage pads the already overlong 104 minute runtime with gratuitous scenes of carnival lights, saunas, and loudly chirping birds. Even more -esque moments appear, with conversations taking place over static close-ups of a coffee table.

Tulio frames sex scenes from such awkward angles they detract from the sensuality implied by the title. Other scenes have such a contrived, stagey feel they can hardly be taken seriously. In a scene of Sámi watching a reindeer race, the crowd jumps and applauds in unison (especially unsettling because they also dress identically). The editing of the fight choreography has a strange, staccato rhythm, like the skips between comic book panels. This would work in an actual comic book adaptation, but in the context of Sensuela, it just adds to the film’s erratic quality.

Some film scholars categorize Sensuela as camp, citing Tulio as a forerunner of , Pedro Almodovar, and even . Others stress the director’s distinct lack of humor and jouissance, which work against his camp aesthetics. Sensuela echoes the grim morality of Tulio’s earlier melodramas, despite the hippy orgies. Laila’s look always retains an out-of-place 1940s glamour. With her buttoned up trench coat, high-heels and red lips, she looks like she wandered onto the wrong set from a film noir. This speaks to the film’s deep weirdness: Sensuela exists in its own world, without any concern for linear time or standard genres.

It’s interesting to note that Thriller: A Cruel Picture, a film that would help make “Swedish” a byword for sexploitation, was released in the same year. No such trend occurred in Finland. Sensuela would be Tulio’s last movie; after it bombed, the director retired into seclusion, rarely granting interviews about his life or forty-year career. Finnish cineastes continued to value realism and restraint, and Tulio’s films were always, very consciously, the exact opposite.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…best described as a psychedelic, Alice in Wonderland-like journey that has ample amounts of Brechtian melodrama. – Michael Den Boer, 10K Bullets [Blu-ry]

3 X Teuvo Tulio: Sensuela + Cross

3 X Teuvo Tulio: Sensuela + Cross Of Love + Restless Blood

  • A trio of surreal melodramas from Finnish director Teuvo Tulio including CROSS OF LOVE, RESTLESS BLOOD and the notorious SENSUELA

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: RESURRECTION (2025)

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Resurrection is available to purchase on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: 

FEATURING: Jackson Yee, Shu Qi

PLOT: We follow five dreams of a “Deliriant,” a man who chooses to dream despite a futuristic ban on the practice.

Still from Resurrection (2025)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Bi Gan dreams better than you do.

COMMENTS: According to Resurrection, the secret to immortality is to stop dreaming. Dreamers, the prologue explains, “bring pain to reality and chaos to history.” Yet despite the obvious benefits of ceasing to dream, some rebels—“Deliriants”—continue to do so, secretly. They are tracked by “the Big Others,” agents who can see through illusions, enter dreams, and gently bring the Deliriants back to reality (i.e., death). Resurrection tracks the dreams of one such Deliriant, who somehow hides inside film, and the Big Other who gently guides him towards fatal reality.

Our Deliriant’s dreams glide through movie history. After intertitles explaining the premise, Resurrection opens with the viewer traveling through a hole burning through a celluloid membrane, that opens onto a cinema whose occupants stare in wonder at us intruders until policemen roughly usher them out the exits. The line between us and the dreamer thus blurred, we travel through five dream stories. Each is organized around a different sense, and each is set in a different cinematic era, floating from silent movies to film noir and ending in 1999’s millennial panic. Some (especially the first) are exceedingly strange. As we travel we will encounter opium addicts, hard-bitten theremin-playing detectives, former monks, con men, gangsters, and vampires, with opening and closing doses of the mysterious Big Other and her esoteric rituals. It’s like a universalized version of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, and less uneven than most anthology films. Bi Gan’s style benefits from shorter formats. His previous slowcore stories sometimes drifted too far from their narrative anchors, but with the longest entry here being only about 30 minutes, it’s easy to focus on each tale in its entirety before resetting our attention on the next.

But we do not watch Bi Gan movies for the stories anyway. We watch them for the masterful visuals and the “how’d he do that?” camerawork. Although each installment has its own charm, the director puts the fireworks right up front, with a mysterious cinematic prologue which, like the opening of Holy Motors, nods at the movieness of it all. It segues seamlessly into the first dream: having spied an opium poppy hiding in the Deliriant’s eye when examining at his photograph through a microscope, the Big Other wanders silently down Caligari stairwells and past Metropolis machinery and through a storeroom with a Méliès moon until she uncovers the Deleriant, looking like Max Schreck suffering from the plague, offering up a plate of poppies that bloom in stop-motion. Stylistically, this sequence is more avant-garde than anything Gan has tried before: by way of . The other fantastic sequence comes in the last dream, which is another of the director’s celebrated, complicated single takes, following two lovers from a harbor through busy rain-slicked city streets into a karaoke bar and then back to the harbor, where they board a boat and sail off to sea. The shot takes up 30 minutes of screen time, but there’s a time lapse inside the sequence that means the camera actually filmed for much longer.

When is a dream not a dream? When it is a metaphor. Bi Gan’s dreams in Resurrection are metaphors, most obviously, for cinema; the Deliriant’s reveries progress chronologically through different cinematic eras. But falling deeper into them, they are also a complex symbol of the human spirit, that spirit of individualism, imagination, and chaos that opposes religion, politics, and often good sense, yet remains essential to our being. Resurrection is a quiet act of rebellion. Nothing in it directly challenges the status quo, so it is not only acceptable to the ruling party, but even useful as a global prestige item. But the Deliriant’s tragic soul is forged in defiance. And though he must die for it, even the Big Other must honor that spirit.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a cavalcade of strange images that take the language of cinema into [Bi Gan’s] sleeping fantasies and bring it back more vibrant than ever.”–Richard Whittaker, The Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

Resurrection (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

Resurrection (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

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    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CAT SICK BLUES (2015)

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    Recommended

    DIRECTED BY: Dave Jackson

    FEATURING: Matthew C. Vaughan, Shian Denovan, Meg Spencer, Jeni Bezuidenhout

    PLOT: A former Internet celebrity whose life revolved around her cat’s  viral video performances and a fellow with a fetish for defiling and murdering women while dressed as a cat meet at a pet-loss support group. This is not a love story.

    Still from Cat Sick Blues (2015)

    COMMENTS: Within the first five minutes, Cat Sick Blues had already checked all my boxes for my favorite kinda horror movie: sick, dark humor on the /Full Moon spectrum (check), faithful adherence to horror movie protocol that the first two characters we meet die in minutes (check), a punk rock/screamo soundtrack that evokes the nihilist spirit of the story about to unfold (check), smirky social satire (check), a roller-coaster pace where you can’t possibly predict the next swerve (check), and a camera shot (pictured) with a head on a table, perfect to add to your decapitation scrapbook alongside Frankenhooker (check-a-roonie). By the time the first victim’s head had bounced gaily down the stairs, the movie had already bounced purring into my lap. Cat Sick Blues takes turns affectionately nuzzling your face and playfully clawing you hard enough to draw blood. Just when you think you can let your guard down, it bites your hand again, lest you get too comfortable. Many will be turned off by it, but for the rest of us horror/sicko freaks, this is our cup of catnip tea.

    Claire (Shian Denovan) is the owner of Imelda, a fluffy white cat whose videos have taken on a viral life of their own. Sadly, Imelda’s fandom is a little too fanatic, as one obsessed fan shows up at her door and bluffs his way inside, only to summarily murder her cat and rape her. Broken, Claire ends up at a support group for bereaved pet owners (if you liked Fight Club’s satire of support-group culture, here’s another dose of that). There, she meets Ted (Matthew C. Vaughan), a towering and imposing fellow who’s also shy and antisocial. Ted is going through some things, to put it mildly. He has sought a support group way too late in life, having already converted himself by night into a serial killer in a cat mask. He even enlists the help of a local leather-crafter to fashion a set of sharp-clawed gloves, and a monster-sized strap-on spiked dildo to complete the ensemble. In this costume, he dispatches victims and, more than once, has a very dramatic orgasm while doing so, spasming on the floor in his cat mask and floppy dildo. All of this turns out to have a second purpose for Ted: he is collecting the blood of victims in a bucket in anticipation of re-animating his own dead black cat, Patrick. (Note to A Bucket of Blood: this is what a whole bucket of blood looks like!)

    Claire and Ted hook up, after Ted makes a whirlwind cleaning tour of his apartment to hide the serial killer paraphernalia and trophies. So the question becomes, will Claire figure out that she’s dating a killer before Ted fulfills his body count? What happens from here becomes less clear as the story proceeds, until act three, where the director decides to let the story-logic slide into territory, with dream sequences and hallucinations clouding the narrative enough that we can pick our own ending. The one thing that’s clear is that this movie will have no shortage of indelible images right up to the end credits, including some genuine gross-outs.

    For a small budget picture, it’s a pleasure seeing such attention to detail. The chaos is sharply filmed, framed, and hemmed in by a tight production all around. The set is filled with familiar cat-themed gift shop kitsch like cat mugs, cat T-shirts, and cat bongs. One scene has Claire sorting through her mail; the pile of envelopes has some custom-printed mailers relevant to the plot, with text you’ll want to freeze-frame so its carefully spread satire may be read and appreciated in full. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene has Ted visiting a rave where teenagers in glowing jewelry wave their phones in the air and the DJ raises a squirt-gun to his lips. Most impressive of all, Cat Sick Blues was released in 2015, and yet has not aged a single day. We’re still a culture obsessed with Internet fame and cats, wallowing in bizarre fetishes and shallow morals. Claire’s fans, adoring the content yet lacking empathy for its creator, flock to ridicule her situation, or steal clicks by posting reaction videos to her plight.

    It’s remarkable that this film isn’t better known (or at least didn’t cross our radar sooner), but we can chalk that up to an Australian production by a director who seems to live entirely at film festivals down under. Reading the IMDB reviews, I see commenters practically coughing up hairballs as they remark how upsetting, offensive, and disturbing this movie is. Let the poor little kittens lap their safe milk. For us fans of feral film, Cat Sick Blues is the kitty that roars like a lion.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…sometimes movies just leave you completely confused and unsure of what it is that you just watched. That basically sums up how I felt once I had finished watching the bizarre Australian horror film, Cat Sick Blues.”–Chris Coffel, Bloody Disgusting (DVD)

    (This movie was nominated for review by Bradley, who called it “one odd movie.”. Suggest a weird movie or two of your own here.)

     

     

    Cat Sick Blues

    Cat Sick Blues

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