that movie poster's a goddamn lie
1974’s Countess Sadistica’s Satanic Castle of Orgies
BEHOLD THE NIGHTMARE REALITY PROPHESIED BY THE MARQUIS DE SADE!!!
a comic book illustration of a fanged’n’smiling tall, willowy, pale-skinned, red-haired, and red-eyed vampire queen,
twirling a whip over her head,
diaphanous see-through lingerie wind-tossed in all directions,
a line of girls in chains kneeling before her-brunette, raven, blonde,
whilst a vampire hunter in pilgrim-looking attire twists and howls as he is impaled upon a steel spike by a hooded executioner,
a look of supreme agony upon the face of the wannabee Van Helsing,
a wooden stake slipping out of his grasp at the moment of death
-no scene that outrageous, bloody, or cool ever occurred within the body of the film
its connection to the works of the Marquis de Sade is notional at best
the actual contents consisted of a dry-as-a-collegiate-production-of-Chekhov knockoff of a Hammer Films style Van Helsing vs. Dracula thriller with a bunch of Americans doing fakey British accents
shot in somebody’s parents rather nice house somewheres upstate if the three archived professional reviews from the era are to be credited
-nor was it banned in 36 countries
it only had a brief theatrical run in American coastal cities
where it was met with a half-dozen or so lukewarm reviews
distributed by the unlamented Metropolitan Distributors’ Association,
two other films released under their banner,
both forgotten porno flicks,
(one-Kentucky Ken’s Orgy-a clip job of three separate, unfinished hillbilly-themed bang-out scenarios,
the other titled Holly’s Secret Door-no synopsis, stills, or footage survive)
rose to the surface
ever so briefly
then sank
only the poster remains
a damned lie beyond all statistics
a deceptive piece of anti-evidence
of a fever dream that never was
I mean,
the poster IS pretty cool
so I'm glad they made the movie
so I can have it on my wall and everything
too bad about the director, writer, cast, and crew
whose careers went nowhere
didn’t even show up in any other exploitation flicks of the era
just a group of friends browbeaten into some ill-conceived vanity opus for all we know
dig that poster tho'
-August 2020
