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Attraction (Nerosubianco)
Directed by Tinto Brass
Released: 1969
Starring Anita Sanders, Terry Carter, Nino Segurini, Umberto Di Grazia
Running Time:
DVD Studio:
Cult Epics
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Barbara (played by Anita
Sanders) is dropped off in the park by her husband where she encounters a
black man (Terry Carter) who attempts to seduce her. What follows is a
psychosexual fantasy where Barbara’s fears and dreams come to life.
Remember that scene in
Taxi Driver where
Travis Bickle takes Betsy to a dirty movie? Well, this isn’t that movie
but it is pretty damn close. Let’s just say that my reaction to
Nerosubianco
was very similar to Betsy’s: revulsion. This is one of those unsexy sex
films that tries to show you how beautiful sex is by bashing you over the
head with textbook jargon and crude (or absurd) representations of sex
acts.
As you probably already noticed, this really isn’t my cup of tea. In order
to get through
Nerosubianco (also
known as "The Artful Penetration of Barbara" (!)), I had to pretend I was
watching a really long nightmare sequence from a giallo. And what a
nightmare it is. Hidden in this phantasmagorical hippie rigmarole are some
very disturbing images from stock footage of slaughterhouses, wars, and
violent newsreels. Though some it was probably written down on paper, most
of the dialogue is limited to ads for sexual devices, text lifted from
naughty books, and other seemingly random sources.
Anita Sanders (Rome
Come Chicago) and Terry
Carter (Abby)
make for great leads but the film gives them very little chance to act in
the traditional sense of the word. I imagine the direction on a typical
day on this shoot went something like this: “You! Look pretty! And you!
Put your hand on her ass! Now run towards the camera. No! No! No! Smiling!
Big smile! Hey you, hippie! Not you, the one with the painted face. No,
you! Idiot, look like you are high! No, higher! You look sober to me.
You’re fired!”
Okay, okay, the film isn’t all that bad. Overall, it feels like a
collection of rock music videos (provided by the band Freedom) with some
loose connecting material in between. There are moments of breathtaking
beauty and moments of tiring psychobabble-driven tedium. I loved the
experimental editing which, at times, feels like an amphetamine-driven
drum solo. So if you’re looking for a grimy experimental rock and roll
unsexy sex film with violent overtones that probably showed up in the
grindhouse theaters back in the day, then give
Nerosubianco
a try. I much prefer Tinto Brass’s comic book noir giallo
Deadly Sweet but that’s only because of
my art allergies. Dang hippies!
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DVD Stuff
Cult Epics
presents Attraction (Nerosubianco)
in anamorphic widescreen with some grain, scratches, and other print
damage but it hardly matters. This is how the film probably looked when it
played back in the day as it got bounced from distributor to distributor.
Audio is okay with loud bright music but muffled quiet dialogue which
doesn’t really matter since the script is all gibberish anyway. Instead of
scene selection, there is “song selection” which takes you to different
parts of the film. For extras there is a lobby card gallery, the film’s
trailer, and a trailer for Brass’s
Deadly Sweet. Unfortunately, there are no
interviews with the director, crew or cast, no audio commentaries, and no
supplementary liner notes to help put this thing into any kind of
perspective.
Quotes
“If I could turn you on, if I
could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you, I would
let you know!”
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