The Curious Dr. Humpp (1969)

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Mentored by a disembodied brain suspended in a jar of bubbling liquid, mad scientist Dr. Humpp (Aldo Barbero) instructs his monstrous automatons to kidnap highly sexual men and women for use in his diabolical experiments. With the help of sexy blonde assistant Enfermera (Susana Beltrán), Humpp doses his helpless victims with aphrodisiacs, using the strength of their passion to create a serum to nourish his body and increase his lifespan.Reporter George (Ricardo Bauleo) investigates the case, but is captured and finds himself the subject of one of Humpp's experiments, forced to experience heightened sexual pleasure with beautiful brunette Rachel (Gloria Prat). Is there no end to Humpp's cruelty?A sex movie with horror overtones, The Curious Dr. Humpp is packed with nudity and nookie from the get-go, the mad scientist shenanigans merely the catalyst for numerous scenes of softcore rumpy-pumpy. All of the romping and humpping soon becomes rather tedious, but the plot is just about daft enough to still make this late '60s trashfest fairly entertaining for those who enjoy offbeat cinema.This particular viewer found the kidnapped hippies hilarious, couldn't help but be amused at the idea of a monster paying a visit to his local drugstore, and perked up every time the lovely Ms. Prat was on screen and unclothed.

A reporter and a detective try to figure out who is behind a series of kidnappings of young couples making out. Their only clue is a hulking monster seen around town picking up girls and pharmacy orders (oddly, no one freaks out about when they see it). The man behind the mysterious abductions is Dr. Humpp, a mad scientist who is hellbent on turning humans into "veritable sex machines" to increase physical and mental performance. Wait, why is he a bad guy? Well, he also has the talking brain of an old Italian doctor in a bottle and uses fluid from his prisoners' libido (huh?) to keep himself young. This softcore T&A horror flick from Argentina is curious indeed. If you took out all the sex scenes, you might have a 25 minute movie. Lots and lots of shots of naked bodies (the first real line of dialog isn't until about 12 minutes in). This import does have some really nice B&W photography though and you'll be surprised at how expertly dubbed it is.

Dr Humpp(Ricardo Bauleo) has almost perfected the formula for eternal youth and it's source derives from the removed libidos of those engaged in passionate sex. A newspaper reporter, George(Aldo Barbero), is on his trail, soon finding his hidden fortress, kidnapped, and forced into becoming a sexual subject, attempting to not only escape but help those captured as well. This plan won't be easy because Humpp has his secret estate/society surrounded by monsters, hideous human experiments which went awry, now robotic servants obeying his command. Humpp also is guided by his dead mentor whose alive brain(..kept in a jar with fluid)motivates him to continue on what seems like a potential success. Humpp's actually an elderly man using the extracted libidos to remain young, aided by his nurse(..and lover) Enfermera(Susana Beltrán). George soon falls in love with a sultry captive, Rachel(Gloria Prat)and desires to rescue her from their prison. Meanwhile the police attempt to trace George's steps before he went missing also following leads tipped to them by several witnesses who reported a brute with a ghastly face before they were killed by him. Humpp needs certain pharmaceutical items and his henchman is sent out to fetch them, soon having to kill the pharmacist who contacts the police based on a sketched facial diagram of a suspect provided to them by a bartender(Justin Martin). That monster also burns the human subjects once they are drained of their libidos and has a particular fondness for Rachel.Basically a bizarre concoction of the mad scientist genre and soft-core pornography. I personally found most of the sex scenes tedious, unerotic, performed rather zombie-like, and repetitive. The frank sexual dialogue is often so unbelievably blunt, it's almost hard to accept that the performers had the ability to say their lines without bursting into laughter. I think what makes THE CURIOUS DR HUMPP such a delirious experience is how serious the tone and performances really are. Bauleo is incredibly intense as the scientist, quite fanatical at times when anyone attempts to defeat his purpose behind using folks' passion as a means to remain young. Features a delicious striptease by Prat before she's kidnapped, and Beltrán is scrumptious as Humpp's assistant yearning for his affections. The sex scene between George and Enfermera is so odd because it occurs when she's drugged and he was about to attempt an escape, yet they just go at it without abandon. It's so surreal to see the kidnapped subjects just embracing each other as if they were elsewhere, not captured and doomed to perish. The sets are really cheap as is the monster's rubber mask, hairy gloves with claws, and black costume. This will all appeal to a certain audience who find such lo-fi junk entertaining. Veritably wall-to-wall sex with lengthly screen time devoted to people disrobing each other. Not short of trashy dialogue either while couples are engaged in their tawdry exercises. Frequent lesbianism which I normally fancy is so blandly performed I had a hard time staying awake. Luridly photographed in B&W photography, often quite voyeuristic as if an invited peeper with a camera was recording folks up close and personal. Director-writer Emilio Vieyran is less concerned with the police procedural aspects as he is with showing naked flesh gyrating in a state of supposed ecstasy.

To my surprise, "The Curious Dr. Humpp", got some really positive reviews, which makes me believe that maybe I just didn't get it or it's simply not my kind of movie after all. I would incline myself to the second option, actually. I was never really a big fan of sexploitation films and as a consequence, I never paid them too much attention in the first place. Nevertheless, I desperately needed to check "The Curious Dr Humpp" (aka "La venganza del sexo"), since it was a national horror film and there aren't many of those out there. I actually wanted to like this film very bad for what it was. I had read many positive reviews and had some really high hopes that ended up shattered.In "The Curious Dr. Humpp", a mad scientist under the name of Dr. Zoide, starts kidnapping young couples while they're having sex, or simply lusty boys and girls having fun by themselves. It appears that this mad scientist takes some kind of fluid that is segregated only by people with sexual appetite. With these fluids, Dr. Zoide becomes more and more powerful and as a consequence, young boys and girls begin to disappear in the streets of Buenos Aires. No one seems to know what is going out there, but a journalist named George starts taking care of the situation individually, until he finally comes across the awful truth about Dr. Zoide, the talking brain and the clumsy creature.While I appreciate Mr Vieyra's noble effort of making a national sexploitation film throughout the sixties (although it was released in the early seventies), I will not say that I enjoyed this movie just out of courtesy. On the other hand, I support this film in a way, because it seems like it was some kind of way to mock the other national movies that came out all through that period of time. Back then, there was a large number of silly movies that included high voltage scenes, filled with breasts and unnecessary sex. I believe Mr. Vieyra's creation, was a way to poke fun at those films without actually falling into harsh criticism and why not use a monstrous avenger for that?. So basically, while I appreciate the mocking wink to the other sexploitation films back then, I'm still not a big fan of this film. "The Curious Dr. Humpp", basically offers 85 minutes of nonsense that personally, I didn't find very amusing, although it seems like many other folks did. I'm not entirely convinced about a film that for the most part contains lots of naked guys and girls everywhere, some unintentionally amusing scenes in which we see a stiff creature walking around clumsily, an evil talking brain inside a jar, catchy music and laughable acting from the beginning until the end. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who actually wants to see a horror movie.