Saturday, July 30, 2011

Camille 2000

A child of the sixties sexual revolution, beautiful, sensuous Marguerite (Daniele Gaubert) is addicted to sex and money. She is kept by a wealthy man, has a string of young lovers and hosts wild orgies in her luxurious villa. When she falls in love with the handsome bachelor Armond (Nino Castelnuova), he insists in absolute fidelity. Known by her reputation, Armond’s controlling father soon intervenes, triggering a tragic turn of events.


From the erotic master mind of Radley Metzger cums this " veritable orgy of suggestive architecture, stylistic art direction & directorial flourishes"(Slant Magazine) that only he can provide. This man has created some of the best "softcore" feature films as well as "hardcore" films in my opinion. Camille 2000 fits squarely in the middle of his filmography, not that he has done a bad movie, only not as good as he is capable of doing. With Camille 2000 you can see he is being more adventurous with his set pieces, the way he scrips the visual tapestry of the sex scene's is on the psychedelic side & the pay off is quite erotic. There's a great scene that has Marguerite(or Camille as she is also called) climaxing as the camera pans in & out between her & a vase filled with Camille flowers, making the flowers look as though they are also climaxing, just brilliant.


Being as this film was released in 1969 the sex is quite timid compared with what we have today, but for the day it was scandalous. You can also see the darker side of Metzger starting to surface with all manner of S&M, bondage, orgies & their ilk, that would come to be in some of his more taboo shattering efforts like The Image or Score then of course his straight up hardcore features. The films score is what you would expect, a loud psychedelic tribal/jazz core that gets the heart pump'n......it's really quite fantastic, I'll be looking for a copy. The movie was filmed in Italy so you should be able to imagine all the amazing cinematography that would be employed. The vista's & Mansion are simply gorgeous & a testament to the fact that only in the 60's through the early 80's could a movie such as a sexploitation film, be made on such a budget but look top notch.



The acting may be on the stiff side of things, but I don't enter one of these films with that being criteria #1, that belongs to nudity & while Camille 2000 offers quite abit of skin, it's not as much as I would have hoped for.
In the end Camille 2000 is a great time waster but far from the erotic master piece I was hoping for.
7/10

It's been awhile!!!

Well folks it's been quite some time since my last entry here. Life just seems to get in the way sometimes. I've watched a shit ton of films to be sure, just didn't have the drive to blog about them, I'm going to change that pronto. I've come to realize that I will forever be connected to films in one way or another. My love of them will never die, might get cloudy from time to time, but will endure like a marriage that has gone on for to long but can't seem to brake ties.
I'd love to do a recap of the films I have watched but that would most likely take me years to write my way through so I'm going to start anew so to speak. I'm going to try & be weekly with movie reviews & try & be daily with other tid bits such as photo's of old movie houses, posters, standee's, press books...ect.

 I'll start with a slice of theatre greatness. Old school theatre lovers rejoice, the HUMBER is back in operation. After nearly 10 years laying dormant a couple of young bucks have sprung into action to bring back a little movie going flair. From the retro looking outfits to the sweat your ass off no A/C(a problem that I've had a tiny hand in helping restore) these guy's set out to do it right. I was there working on the A/C when the latest Harry Potter film was playing, these guy's rent a truck, had banners strapped to the sides & drove up & down streets drumming up business, with help of an air horn as well. They only have one screen open right now, originally there were two(upper & lower). The lower screen is having a restoration job ongoing as these guy's are installing 2 screening rooms, a move I suspect to try & grab some TIFF attractions. They play first run films with what I hope will be some kind of retro night playing older films to come, & I do mean FILM. That's right these guy's are doing it old school, no digital projection(at least not yet). It was a special treat walking through the projection booth seeing the film spooled & running, not to mention the feel of watching a movie on film, just awesome.