I was looking at THE COTTON CLUB, trying to find a cute shot I remembered of Diane Lane, figuring I could probably find something to say about it when I did. But that led me to look at RUMBLE FISH, another Francis Ford Coppola outing also featuring the transcendentally lovely and apparently ageless Lane. I grabbed the above image, part of a series of erotic daydreams Matt Dillon has about his girlfriend during the course of a day.
Then by chance I found another sexual fantasy image, the same evening, in NUDE FOR SATAN, a barmy 70s Italian sex-horror nonsense case, featuring gratuitous cod-Wellesian angles, mattressfuls of pubic hair, and a fake giant spider seemingly made from black felt and pipe cleaners. In this image a sinister gent undresses the heroine with his eyes — almost literally. I’m surprised and disappointed that director Luigi Batzella didn’t have the guy’s eyes pop out, turn into Residents-style eyeball-men, and rip Rita Calderoni’s knickers off. It would have been quite in keeping with the insane literal-mindedness of his bottoms-up cut a few minutes later on in the film. I shall elucidate ~
Calderoni is handed a glass of wine by a spooky butler. She drinks. As she raises the glass, Batzella zooms in on its base and lets the shot go soft. Jump cut to a big bare arse, also slightly out of focus. Pull into focus, zoom out, and proceed with the unmotivated lesbian softcore.
These things should, for some reason, come in threes, so here’s a bizarre fantasy apparently occurring in the mind of Keith Carradine in Sam Fuller’s STREET OF NO RETURN, an odd adaptation of David Goodis’s The Blonde on the Street Corner, a two-time-loser pulp noir typical of its author.
Valentina Vargas, from THE NAME OF THE ROSE, is gorgeous, and deserved more of a career. She’s still acting, and still beautiful, so maybe it’ll happen.
STREET OF NO RETURN is nearly very good, with an impressive opening riot, and Fuller’s sudden interest in naked girls is tolerable — it could easily become embarrassing, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. What’s a little embarrassing is the obvious European locations (Portugal), as the movie tries to pass itself off as American. If the movie had embraced its setting more, and been a little more carefully edited, it could have marked a return for Fuller.
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