The Alcove (1985)

Redundant and unnecessary.

One of my all time favorites.

From my favorite movies..

Absolutely the worst movie.

I observe that it's dubbed chiefly because most of these inexpensive imports -- and all the imports from the 1950s in their ENTIRETY -- seem to be dubbed by the same half-dozen people. They're vaguely British, very precisely articulated, and overemphatic. The men seem to be aiming for a particular image: a brute of a construction worker with a coffee-grinder voice, although if he is a gentleman he may sound more like a pouf. The women's voices show less differentiation. Mostly, they sound like some winsome lady behind the check-out counter at the local library, sweet with efficiency and all set to help you find that book on Mycenaean pottery.I don't know how much the story is worth bothering with. It's early in World War II, a young Italian aristocrat returns to his majestic villa with a gift from an Abyssinian chief, namely his daughter. According to the local customs, she is now his slave. The aristocrat is drained by his snooty wife and enters a refractory state on his first night home. Little does he know that in his absence, his wife has been getting it on with the pretty young secretary. Now you've got three women and one man. The women are either getting it on with one another or jealous. Make a mental note. You cannot have more than one woman dominant in a household. I refer you to the work of the anthropologist S. F. Nadel, who discovered that in a polygamous society, when the wives live in the same huts, witchcraft accusations soar. If the wives live in separate huts -- no witchcraft. Q. E. D.Anyway -- will someone help me down from this pulpit? My shoe seems to be stuck. Thank you. Anyway, all kinds of emotional tangles develop, not really worth explaining.What DOES need explaining is how an Italian aristocrat can return to his luxurious mansion with a native girl, shed his uniform, and decide to become a writer overnight. What do you do, just quit Il Duce's Army when you feel like it? In wartime? What the hell kind of an Army do you call that? How come I couldn't do it, not even in peacetime? No wonder Il Duce managed to lose every colony he had, including Italian Salamiland.But to get to the important part, there is an abundance of female nudity, frontal, dorsal, medial, proximal, distal, sagittal, coronal, transverse, external, and internal. In particular, you get to know Lilli Carati's nipples on a first-name basis. You can even discern the seventeen lactiferous ducts opening onto each one. There is a good deal of simulated sex in this ménage but most of it is cunnilingus or an approximation of it. It's a shame that the film aims so low because there's a lot of potential in the plot. I'm not think so much of "Lady Chatterly's Lover" as I'm thinking of Joseph Losey's "The Servant." It's masterfully done, while this one is mostly junk.

Following a successful campaign in Africa, soldier Elio De Silveris (Al Cliver) returns home to his wife Alessandra (Lilli Carati) bearing all manner of exotic souvenirs, the most unusual being Zerbal (Laura Gemser), an Abyssinian princess presented to him as a slave in return for saving the king's life.At first Allesandra is hostile to Zerbal, as is Elio's sexy secretary Wilma (Annie Bell), with whom Allesandra has been having a lesbian affair in her husband's absence; but when ownership of Zerbal is transferred to Allessandra (in a strange ritual that entails plenty of licking), the lusty wife's attitude does a 180 degree turn and she takes the dusky maiden for her lover, putting Wilma's nose severely out of joint. Soon, scheming Zerbal becomes the domineering force in the household.This mid-career effort from prolific Italian sleaze merchant Joe D'amato sees the seasoned exploitation director tentatively entering Tinto Brass territory, delivering plenty of 1930s period charm, an atmosphere of constant sexual tension, loads of lush cinematography, and, of course, oodles of soft-focus, soft-core coupling with the emphasis on lesbianism. No stranger to capturing smut on camera, D'amato masterfully handles the steamy action, concentrating his attention on the sensuality of the lovemaking, although one can sense that the director is yearning to go further, his camera permanently on the prowl for even the slightest glimpse of snatch.Eventually, Joe just can't help himself and sneaks in some genuine hardcore filth and old school exploitation during the film's final act: the graphic sex arrives in the form of a (genuine?) vintage stag flick screened by Elio, who intends to raise some much needed cash by making similar films, with his three women as his stars. Amazingly, the ladies agree to the project, but when the camera begins to roll, in true D'amato style, events turn decidedly nasty: Wilma is bound and abused by Allesandra and Zerbal, and raped by Elio's eager gardener Pepe (who has been planning to tend to her bush ever since spying it in the garden). After the ordeal is over, an understandably upset Wilma vows to make them pay for what they have done to her.From an exploitation fan's point of view, this lurid rape/revenge scenario is a great way to end matters, and narrowly saves The Alcove from being just another vapid mid-eighties piece of Euro-erotica. Not essential D'amato, but not entirely worthless either, I rate The Alcove a reasonable 5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

For some reason in the early to mid 80's Italian director Joe D'Amato stopped making his swinging 70's "Black Emanuelle" films and/or his gut-munching cannibal/zombie films and started trying to make the kind of classy softcore erotica more commonly associated with his fellow countryman, Tinto Brass. None of these films was entirely successful, but this one might have been the least unsuccessful. A military veteran (Al Cliver) returns from a WWII military campaign to his rural villa in Italy bringing with him an Abyssinian slave (Laura Gemser), who had been sold to him by her father. Although she starts out as timid and demure Arab woman in a burka it isn't long before she is (quite unbelievably) sun-bathing in the nude and seducing the bisexual lady of the house, the military man's second wife (Lili Karati). Soon she is running the entire household and it is up to a female servant/spurned lesbian lover of the wife (Annie Belle) and the military man's grown son to try to stop her.The cast is a little weak since they are all softcore porn stars. Al Cliver was never much of an actor and since he is all of about thirty here, is none too convincing as a middle-aged veteran with an adult son. Laura Gemser was also not a great actress, but she was somewhat underrated and gives one of her more game performances here. Unfortunately, an Indonesian actress really has her work cut playing a North African character, and one goes who through some absolutely unbelievable changes in such a short movie. The real surprises here though are Lili Karati and Annie Bell. Karati started out as a Miss Italy runner-up and ended up in hardcore porn, but she was a modestly talented actress who gave a few decent performances (perhaps the most famous perhaps in Fernando DiLeo's "Being Twenty"). She acquits herself pretty well here. Annie Belle was simply not an actress. In her 70's roles like "End of Innocence" and "Laure" she allegedly played herself--a hardly legal Lolita with a bleach-blonde pixie cut who couldn't keep her clothes on for five minutes and would jump on anything with genitalia. (She was Al Cliver's real-life lover and the not-particularly-reliable David Hess claims to have had real sex with her during their scene in "House by the Edge of the Park"). Anyway, in this movie her pixie haircut and adolescent body are gone and she seems to be genuinely ACTING for once.D'Amato gets as-good-as-can-be-expected performances from his porn star cast and as always his cinematography is above par (cinematography was D'Amatos first specialty and one he perhaps should have stuck with). He was also well known for his generally fast-moving sex scenes and his incredible lack of political correctness and good taste. Unfortunately, the sex scenes here are very LONG and the kind of standard, mostly tame lesbian stuff that manages to make even the impressive bodies of Gemser, Karati, and Belle seem pretty boring after awhile. There is SOME tasteless politically incorrect violence thrown into the mix, but not until the very end unfortunately (when the typical audience member would have long since shot his wad and fallen asleep). Of course,some do consider this one of D'Amato's better films. If you like his Tinto Brass-type stuff you might like this, but for me it could have really used some gut-munching cannibals or something.

An English soldier (Cliver) returns home from the Zulu war with the daughter of a tribal king (Gemser) as his slave (a gift that he was given for "saving" the kings life). The spoils of war, ya know? While he's been gone, his wife has been having an affair with the female housekeeper (Belle). Not at all pleased with being a slave, the Ebony princess notices the mistress of the house engaging in a quick bit of foreplay with the housekeeper and plots her revenge starting with the seduction of the mistress. Jealousy spreads like wildfire and before you know it, she has turned the household into a lustful frenzy of sex and hatred. I can't give away too much more or it would ruin the story, but there are plenty of little twists along the way. Speaking of twists, this film is actually far more twisted than it sounds. One of the more disturbing moments being a sequence about the filming of an inquisition-themed porno that turns into the sadistic rape of a lesbian / virgin by the filthy and none too bright gardener. Sporting tons of full-frontal nudity, simulated lesbian and straight sex and some hard-core (as seen in an old stag film), this has the sleazy goods to go along with the D.H. Lawrence-ish setting and atmosphere, and is definitely recommended for fans of such.