PERVERSE FASCINATION

Ready Arno, here she comes.

Above you see a poster for the exploitation flick La comtesse perverse, which we decided to watch because it was directed by Jesús Franco, and his films have only two outcomes, both entertaining—they’re either cult gems or total train wrecks. La comtesse perverse was originally French made, is known in English as Countess Perverse, and stars Robert Woods, Howard Vernon, and Alice Arno, the latter of whom we last saw in an issue of the tabloid Rampage. The poster gets the idea across effectively: it’s a human hunt movie, a type of exploitation that goes back to 1933’s The Most Dangerous Game, and which has been explored in films like the The Suckers, as well as various women-in-prison entries such as Frauen für Zellenblock 9—coincidentally one of Franco’s craziest efforts.

Here you get a group of people lured to the island house of a countess, played by Arno, who happens to be cannibal. We don’t mean a wild cannibal cooking hanks of dripping meat over an open fire. We mean a gourmet cannibal. A genteel wine-drinking cannibal. A Hannibal cannibal. The guests are first treated to a dinner at which they unknowingly eat human flesh, then the bad news drops that they’re the star attractions in an organized hunt. Arno is not the type of minor royalty who lets others do all her work. She’s the main hunter, dispatching prey with her trusty bow and arrows. And we sort of misspoke earlier. She’s genteel, yes, but she later goes on the hunt stripped to the skin. So she’s wild too.

Her house, by the way—and this will be a long digression—is actually a real place, an apartment building named Xanadu, located on Spain’s central Mediterranean coast, near the city of Calp. It was designed by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, who created some interesting buildings, but architecture is about context as well as design, and in this case he defiled a beautiful rocky point with an Escheresque monstrosity. It’s an epidemic here in Spain, the ruining of pristine spots. Casa Xanadon’t has nice views of Calp, but seen from the opposite direction—which nobody has a choice about—is a monument to ugly excess and an insult to people who care about beauty, nature, sharing the environment, and forging a sustainable future. That it’s central to a horror movie makes perfect sense.

Franco can likewise be said to be a maverick of ugly excess, but in the unobtrusive medium of film. With Xanadu’s exteriors and a couple of other mindbending locales to help set the mood, he revels in his favorite indulgences—everything from transgressive violence to full frontal bushes. Lina Ronay, Tania Busselier, Arno, and the other performers give Franco the total commitment he needs to make his masturbationpiece, and once again present a final product that will leave viewers divided. Do you love cheap cinema in the grindhouse vein? Then you’ll love La comtesse perverse. Do you hate undeniably shoddy cinema that people seem to adore anyway? Then stay as far away from this one as you can. Which group do we fall into? Guess. La comtesse perverse premiered in France today in 1975.

Wow, check out that house. It gives off very inviting vibes, don’t you think?
 
Here come our dinner guests. Should we just pan sear them like usual or get ambitious and put them in a paella?
 
As you can see, I’ve done all the stairwells in slaughterhouse red. I consider it a very livable color.
 
Usually I’m too shy to frolic nude, but I felt more body confidence after the Countess said we had barely enough meat on us to make a meal.
 
Is this Kobe beef?
 
No, but it’s a very high quality protein.
 
Oh, there they are. Clever girls. I almost didn’t see them. They were hiding behind their own bushes.
 
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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