{"id":3912,"date":"2011-12-12T02:12:32","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T07:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3912"},"modified":"2011-12-12T02:12:32","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T07:12:32","slug":"dvd-exotic-malice-sesson-nero-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3912","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Exotic Malice \/ Sesson Nero (1980)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>E<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Weak \/ DVD Extras: Standard<\/p>\n

Label: One 7 Movies\/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 2, 2011<\/p>\n

Genre: Erotic \/ Adult \/ Drama<\/p>\n

Synopsis: With a week left before genital cancer claims his life, a career womanizer returns to the island where he met and lost his first love.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Deleted Scene (3:12)<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Although made cheap and billed (according to the box art) as \u201cthe first official hardcore outing of Italian cinema,\u201d this Joe D\u2019Amato film is a peculiar, schizophrenic work that flips between porn, earnest drama, and (very, very<\/em> mildly) giallo, although exactly how earnest the dramatic elements were meant to be remains exclusive to the film\u2019s screenwriter, George Eastman, the giant, over-acting hulk best known for playing the sleazy, rape-hungry monster in Mario Bava\u2019s Rabid Dogs <\/strong>(1974).<\/p>\n

Eastman\u2019s script is surprising affecting in spots, but half the credit goes to porn actor Mark Shannon, who manages to carry the film quite well, playing \u2018Mark Lester,\u2019 an American diagnosed with terminal genital cancer, and who heads to the island where he romanced his first wife Marja (Annj Goren) to find some peace before the disease rapidly claims his life.<\/p>\n

Eastman and D\u2019Amato keep several things vague \u2013 Mark Lester\u2019s condition isn\u2019t specified, for example, but he\u2019s given a handful of pain-killing syringes for when things become unbearable \u2013 but as the story progresses, his second \/ current wife Lucia (Lucia Ramirez) arrives to convince him it\u2019s worth undergoing the radical surgery (castration) to save his life, and not leave her alone.<\/p>\n

Mark soon disappears on a drunken binge, worsened by what appears to be the ghost of Marja, who committed suicide more than a decade earlier. After watching her pleasure a \u2018boyfriend,\u2019 Mark is filled with self-loathing, drinks, hallucinates, and encounters a shocking revelation (well, sort of ) reminiscent of elaborate gialli.<\/p>\n

As a director, D\u2019Amato tackled many genres, but he developed a strange interest in combining porn with graphic horror, and although there are some graphic moments in the film \u2013 a medical operation, and the finale \u2013 D\u2019Amato avoids details in the film\u2019s predictable areas: he doesn\u2019t bother with a flashback of Marja\u2019s suicide or a killing that happens off-screen, and even the graphic finale remains true to the core story of a self-loathing womanizer who confronts mortality with the same rage he inflicts upon his conquests.<\/p>\n

Eastman\u2019s dialogue, as translated into English, is pretty decent and emotionally honest, and there are many character moments which seem uncharacteristic for a film ostensibly designed to be a porno. The adult scenes are less prolonged, as though D\u2019Amato sought to legitimately balance the two genres, and Shannon\u2019s scenes are allowed to unfold in a natural tempo.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a misogynist streak running through the film, but it leads in and out of the porn interludes, such as one man\u2019s abuse of another\u2019s spouse, which mandates \u2018payback\u2019 from the other\u2019s wife. There\u2019s also a strange scene where Marja gives Mark a \u2018Mexican mushroom pill\u2019 (which he accepts without delay) that soon freezes his legs and intensifies his emotional reactions – making it doubly unpleasant to watch the love of his life service another man.<\/p>\n

The DVD from One 7 Movies (who also released D’Amato’s Sex and Black Magic<\/strong>) features an uncut print that appears to have been matted to 1.66:1, noticeably chopping off Shannon\u2019s head in an early consultation scene with a doctor. Colours are stable, and the production has aged well, largely due to the use of simple two-piece outfits and off-white colours.<\/p>\n

Digital noise reduction sometimes runs high, scrubbing away heavy print grain, whereas the mono sound mix is fairly standard. The English subtitles move a bit fast, but they\u2019re pretty much locked to the fast dialogue delivery by the actors. Nico Fidenco\u2019s score is mildly dramatic, often relying on slight yet repetitious theme variations, whereas a more Muzak style dominates his cues for the porn sequences (which overwhelmingly consist of women handling male timber-trunks).<\/p>\n

Although the DVD\u2019s supposed to contain several deleted scenes, there\u2019s only one \u2013 a woman pleasuring herself that\u2019s likely taken from a longer, mushy-looking VHS source \u2013 and the cover art of a woman drawing blood from the leg of a sunbathing beauty might be alluring, but it has absolutely no connection whatsoever with the film proper. If this was part of the film\u2019s original art campaign, with the exception of the beach location, it is all a lie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reportedly filmed in 1978, Sesson Nero <\/strong>was also released as Orgasmo Nero III<\/strong>, perhaps as a faux tie-in with D\u2019Amator\u2019s Orgasmo Nero <\/strong>(1982), also known as Sex and Black Magic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Eastman, who also contributed to Enzo Castellari\u2019s Keoma <\/a><\/strong>(1976) and Michele Soavi\u2019s Stage Fright <\/strong>(1987), also wrote Hard Sensation <\/strong>(1980), Antropophagus<\/strong> (1980), Erotic Nights of the Living Dead<\/strong> (1980), Porno Holocaust<\/strong> (1981), Absurd<\/strong> (1981), Caligula 2: The Untold Story<\/strong> (1982), and Anno 2020 \u2013 I gladiatori del futuro <\/strong>for D\u2019Amato. The two collaborators also appear in Roger Fratter\u2019s two-part documentary, Joe D\u2019Amato Totally Uncut<\/strong> (1999), filmed a year before D\u2019Amato\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Most of the actors had worked with D\u2019Amato before, and the film was part of a cluster of films the director made within a two-year period, although Shannon continued to act in several of D\u2019Amato\u2019s films until 1988.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a> — Composer Filmograph<\/a>y<\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0E<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ E . Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Weak \/ DVD Extras: Standard Label: One 7 Movies\/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 2, 2011 Genre: Erotic \/ Adult \/ Drama Synopsis: With a week left before genital cancer claims his life, a career womanizer returns to the island […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[936,933,932,935,934],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-116","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3912"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3923,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912\/revisions\/3923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}