Some Movies

I tried to watch an old movie on Netflix called "Those Redheads from Seattle."

My family has a thing for old movies, probably because we only had a VCR growing up (no tv) and our mom would rent old, silly movies so as not to warp our morals.  Fat lot of good.  But in spite of us now practicing all manner of heathenry, she did manage to instill in us a love for old, cheesy films and their accompanying soundtracks.

The description was mildly intriguing:

Determined to reunite her scattered family, Mrs. Edmonds moves her daughters north to the Yukon to be with their father.  But the man's been murdered, and now the penniless women must make ends meet while finding the killer.

It sounded a little noir-ish with the twist of a mainly female cast.  But it's a damn musical.  And it's horrid.  They are going to find their father's killer and do a very modest can-can, exclaiming all the while about how daring they are to let anyone catch a glimpse of their bulky pantalettes.  I haven't finished the movie, and I doubt I will, but I have no doubt the killer will be drawn in some way to those bulky pantalettes.  They always are, you know.

Which brings me to another movie I watched earlier today.  It was a very stupid French film called "Emmanuelle."  I'd never heard of it, but I feel certain it is well known among connoisseurs of early 70s erotica.

Not being a connoisseur of early 70s or any other kind of erotica, I'm not sure what I was thinking.  I thought it would be stylish, I guess. But it wasn't. It was about a wealthy, hedonistic band of white people upholding the dignity of their respective countries by screwing around Thailand; and Emmanuelle, the nice French girl they wanted to corrupt for their own gratification.  For a film which contained a sex act in nearly every scene, including a young girl masturbating to a picture of Paul Newman, and a flexible Asian chick lighting a cigarette with another cigarette from the part of her anatomy you'd expect her to light it with if you were in Thailand, it was boring as hell.

The last quarter of the movie had Emmanuelle, at the insistence of the hedonists, being escorted around Bangkok by a patriarchal old pervert attempting to rid her of her inhibitions and convince her to accept the tenants of eroticism by making her smoke opium, having her forcibly taken by natives in the opium den, offering her as the prize to the winner of a very lame Thai boxing match (which the winner, remarkably free of bruises or cuts, gleefully accepted on all fours in front of the entire gathered assembly), and then giving her a new dress.  All the while, the pervert remained clothed in a dark, somber suit, and lectured constantly as to what she should be thinking.  It was like being raped to a sermon.

I guess it was supposed to do something for you, or at least make you uncomfortably sure that you'd be heaped with scorn by the sexual sophisticates for thinking Emmanuelle looked kind of silly with her skirt over her head for most of the film.  Mostly what I took away is that hedonists are just as humorless about sex as puritans.