Immoral Tales:  European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984


Reviewed By-Sean Patrick Dolan
Authors:  Cathal Tohill, Pete Tombs
Year: 1995
Publisher: Primitive Press (Great Britain); St. Martin's Griffin (New York)



"During the 1960's and '70's, the European horror film went totally crazy.  It began to go kinky- creating a new type of cinema that blended eroticism and terror.  This heady fusion was highly successful, causing a tidal wave of celluloid weirdness that was destined to look even more shocking and irrational when it hit countries like England and the USA."

In IMMORAL TALES, Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs thoroughly document nearly thirty years of European sex and horror films from the period of 1956 to 1984.  The Introduction talks about the genesis of the European sex/horror film, from the role of censorship in Europe and its inevitable breakdown, to influential early works like George Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE and Jess Franco's THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF, to the massive American porn boom in the '70's and the subsequent shift from straight horror to exploitation flicks which followed.  There are also general essays on themes such as "Dreamers and Decadents"- which focuses on sexual horror in the earlier print media and in the early film era- and the self-explanatory "Sex, Cinema, and Surgery". Also included are articles on the individual styles and themes of the four "main culprits" in this cinematic movement- "Italian Style", "Germans on Top", "French Undressing", and "Spanish Customs".  Each of these section is followed by a small but representative series of reviews of films from the respective nations. 

This is followed by the real meat of the book, extensive critical analyses of the entire careers of each of the following directors, with their own provocative titles:  Jesus Franco "The Labyrinth of Sex",  Jean Rollin "Back to the Beach", Jose Larraz "Symptoms", Jose Benazeraf "The Cry of the Flesh", Walerian Borowcyzk "A Private Collection", and Alain Robe-Grillet "Playing With  Fire".  These are long, well thought out critiques of the directors' entire careers up until the early eighties, with mini reviews or at least a few sentences of commentary on every film they made.  In the case of the more prolific directors, Franco and Rollin, these pieces are over fifty pages in length, and each one is followed by the director's complete filmography.  There is a wealth of information packed into this 250 page book, and I have yet to read it from cover to cover.  It definitely provides a very extensive list of films to check out as well as a great introduction for those not yet familiar with directors like Franco or Rollin.  Two separate Indexes, one of movie titles and another of names of actors and directors are a great help in finding information quickly.  This book is packed with pictures, both from the films themselves and from movie posters from around the world, but most of them are in black and white- the exception being a twenty page glossy, full-color insert in the middle of the book.  My only complaint with IMMORAL TALES is that it stopped short in the year 1984!  I hope the authors soon put out a revised edition of this book bringing its scope up to the present day.  European sex and horror films are alive and kicking, quite possibly as popular now as ever- the recent DVD releases of numerous films as well as the presence of websites such as Cinema Nocturna and the great number of fans like you, the reader, who visit them are a testament to this.     

I give this book 4.0 Bitch Slaps. It is still in print and can be ordered from Amazon.com and other Internet retailers, for a surprisingly reasonable price. 
Highly recommended.

 

4 Bitch Slaps

 

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