cinema history class: the wild pussycat

Session: Wild, Wild Films From a Wild, Wild World, Week 4
Movie: The Wild Pussycat (1969)
Directed by Dimis Dadiris

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A woman seeks to avenge her sister who committed suicide after her abusive boyfriend kicked her out. So she locks him in a room and forces him to watch her having sex. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Well, isn't this quite the little sexploitation flick...In many ways it's an exercise in nudity (mostly female) masquerading as a morality tale. We see a man explicitly paying for his acts of cruelty, and it's very eye-for-an-eye. Well, not an eye actually, but you get the idea. There are additional elements of the punishment fitting the crime, since Mihalis (the torturee) had devoted a lot of energy to forcing his old girlfriend into sex with other men. Sadly, the end is somewhat perplexing and anticlimactic. There are ways it could have been done better, though I will refrain from going into detail here because I really don't want to spoil it in case you're inspired by this post to run out and see this film.

Of course, the plot is secondary when we're talking about movies of this sort -- everything is an excuse to see some nudity. And it's actually kind of quaint to realize that this was actually pretty shocking when it came out. Of course, if you're into the whole woman takes revenge on a creep -- and make no mistake, it's an understatement to call Mihalis a creep -- then you might get a kick out of this.

The one thing that really annoyed me was the soundtrack. The overbearing loud jazz music was too much ... well, too much. The movie would have been better with less.

Ratings:

Me: 5.5
Christina: 8
Ethan: 6
Sean: 1 out of 4