This notorious trilogy is The Lord of the Rings for perverts. And part of the 60s exploitation films called “roughies,” which were black and white melodramas that reveled in sex and violence. Films like Joseph P. Mawra’s Olga’s House of Shame; Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go to Hell and David F. Friedman’s The Defilers were tawdry classics of this disreputable genre. But the husband and wife team Michael and Roberta Findlay (under pseudonyms “Julian Marsh” and “Anna Riva”) turned out three of the most enjoyably demented films of all during this period with The Touch of Her Flesh (1968), The Curse of Her Flesh (1968) and The Kiss of Her Flesh (1968). They were just released in a handsomely packaged Blu-ray set from Distribpix Inc. & Something Weird. Scanned in 2K from their original camera negatives, courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome, they are as foul and fascinating as they come. And a perfect Thanksgiving treat for the whole family (if your siblings are psychopaths).
The Touch of Her Flesh stars Michael Findlay (who also wrote, produced and directed the film under the name “Julian Marsh”) as weapons dealer Richard Jennings, heading to a gun convention in Boston, who forgets his speech back at his NYC apartment. He returns home only to find his wife Claudia (Angelique Pettyjohn) in bed with another man and runs wildly out into the street where he is struck by a car. The doctor explains, when he wakes in the hospital, “Your legs will be paralyzed for a while but it looks as if it won’t last for long. You lost one of your eyes. I’m terribly sorry.” Richard hides out in a seedy room in his wheelchair, wearing an eyepatch, drinking Old Crow whiskey and fuming about all women-kind. “There is only one escape- the only true escape for any man trapped in the sexual vortex of the female being: it is to destroy her and all who act like her. To take the girl who strips herself, in public, and kill her naked, in public. To lay the prostitute back upon her pillows, and as she opens to you strangle the filthy beast so that those gates of flesh shall never open again.” Yes- this kind of florid, misogynist, stream-of-consciousness goes on for nearly an entire reel. His murders are truly bizarre. He sends a single rose to a go-go dancer and when she pricks her finger on the thorn, she dies from the poison he dipped the flower in. He wheels into a burlesque club and secretly slips a blowgun out of his jacket and shoots a poisoned dart into the neck of a stripper. He finds out where his artist wife Claudia is hiding out with her model friend, “at a woodwork studio in Oyster Bay,” and fiendishly chases both women down with a crossbow. Roberta Findlay was the co-producer and the black and white cinematographer (under the name “Anna Riva”), and the extra on this disc is a nearly hour-long “Master Class with Roberta Findlay,” where she is interviewed on stage at the Offscreen Film Festival in 2019.
The Curse of Her Flesh has Richard Jennings still hell-bent on revenge. This time it’s the man he caught in bed with his wife- Steve Blakely (Ron Scardera), an alcoholic actor set to inherit a great deal of money. Jennings goes after everyone associated with Steve- girlfriends, his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, his girlfriend’s girlfriends. And once again the killings are uniquely sick- cat’s claws dipped in poison, a deadly trick dildo, poisoned G-strings. The ingenious credits in the film are graffiti on a men’s room bathroom stall. The dialogue is riper than the first. In one scene Richard’s looking down at a stripper nude on a bed with a cat in her lap. “That’s a nice little pussy you have there.” “Thank you. Everyone who sees my pussy likes it.” “Is it friendly?” “Oh yes, sometimes I play with it for hours.” “Does it ever get tired?” “No, it never gets enough. Sometimes the girl next door comes over and brings her pussy and puts it with mine.” David Mamet it’s not, but it is wonderfully warped. The film ends with Jennings wielding a machete and cackling like a madman, and the final credits include the age-old question: “Will this end the bloody career of Richard Jennings? Don’t fail to see The Kiss of Her Flesh coming soon to this theater.”
The Kiss of Her Flesh begins with a large-breasted woman walking alone on the beach who is struck and knocked unconscious by Richard with a tire iron, dragged back to his house, tortured with a lobster claw and electrocuted by her own earrings (don’t ask). He’s also ranting again, “All you pigs are the same- like my wife Claudia was. They’re all like that. Filthy, dirty, slimy creatures using their femininity to attack the unsuspecting victim. I do a service to all mankind with each Jezebel I kill.” (Oh Richard, shut the fuck up!) Mercifully this one is about a female avenger- feisty little Maria (Uta Erickson), whose friend gets murdered by the fiendish Jennings. She is determined to put an end to the sadistic beast and convinces her cute boyfriend Don (Earl Hindman) into helping her by popping some anal beads in his ass while they have sex. She takes the train to her sister Dora’s house in New England and hops into bed with her too. “No one but you can satisfy me, Maria,” her sister moans. Richard Jennings impersonates a doctor and comes to the house giving Dora’s girlfriend Mona an acid douche and seducing Dora into giving him a blowjob in front of the fireplace. But then she begins writhing in deadly agony. “My poison semen should take care of you,” Richard cackles. Maria and Don finally capture Jennings, ties him to a chair with a shotgun aimed at his crotch and attached to a string which will pull the trigger if he accidentally gets a hard-on. That’s when Maria and Don wildly strip down in front of him and start passionately making love, driving Richard wild. The credits in this one are written on little cut-out paper lips strategically placed across a naked body.
According to Something Weird’s Lisa Petrucci, in the informative booklet including with the Blu-rays, Michael & Roberta Findlay, “after seeing Joe Sarno’s psychosexual potboiler Sin You Sinners…decided that they too could easily make an arty adult motion picture.” Lisa goes on to say Roberta, in many interviews, said that Michael “was burdened with Catholic guilt which left him with many personal demons and hang-ups (that clearly insinuated into his art and creative process).” Michael was hired to beef up Satan’s Bed (1965) which starred Yoko Ono (!) He added this subplot about sadistic junkies terrorizing women. The Sin Syndicate (1965) followed, which was about prostitutes testifying before a Senate committee. Take Me Naked (1966) was about an obsessed bum who spies on a woman (Roberta Findlay) fond of walking around her apartment naked. And, then, the infamous “Flesh” trilogy. The Findlays are probably best known for Snuff, which was a film they made in South America under the title The Slaughter about a Manson-like cult, bikers and a producer trying to make a movie that sat on the shelf for years before an enterprising producer (Allan Shackleton) tagged on an ending which made it look like a cast member was actually being murdered. Michael Findlay also went on to direct the bonkers bigfoot shocker- Shriek of the Mutilated. He was tragically decapitated in a freak helicopter accident on the roof of the Pan Am building in 1977 while he was on the way to France with the prototype for a new 3D camera. Roberta Findlay went on to have her own career directing uniquely offbeat horror and action films. But this “Flesh” trilogy is not like anything else, and, re-watching the films after many years, I’d forgotten how delightfully depraved they are.
