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Category: feminism

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Plot: mysterious femme fatale plots to take over the world. Debonair playboy intervenes.

Leave it to the Italians to produce a spoof of a spoof. Argoman, the Fantastic Superman spoofs the Superargo movies with Giovanni Cianfriglia, themselves sendups of the more popular Eurospy exercises of the day. In Italy it was released as Come rubare la corona d'Inghilterra (or How to Steal the Crown of England) and there it was subject of a nifty promotion campaign that passed it off as a traditional Eurospy adventure romp while promotion at a later date focused on the superhero and fantastical aspect. Argoman takes a lot after the peplum Revolt Of the Praetorians (1964) and the spaghetti western The Colt Is My Law (1965), both from master hack Alfonso Brescia, wherein a debonair character doubles as a masked avenger. There was a time and place for Argoman, the Fantastic Superman and that was in the late sixties. It is the sort of production that has to seen to be believed. It’s exactly as crazy as it looks – and it never makes any qualms about what it is. Fun is first and only objective that Argoman, the Fantastic Superman sets for itself and it succeeds with flying colors even when it falters in other aspects. At heart Argoman, the Fantastic Superman is a children’s movie but one clearly meant for more grown-up, adolescent audience. This is pure male wish fulfillment.

Like many of his contemporaries director Sergio Grieco was a journeyman who dabbled in every popular genre under the sun. Be it adventure, swashbuckler and sword and sandal epics to Eurospy and poliziottesco. In the mid-sixties Grieco directed a string of Eurospy romps with Agent 077 Mission Bloody Mary (1965), Agent 077 Operation Istanbul (1965) and Password: Kill Agent Gordon (1966). These led him directly into Argoman, the Fantastic Superman, a semi-comedic curiosity that crossed the Eurospy with the fumetti. In the 1970s Grieco would direct The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine (1974) and write the screenplay for action specialist Enzo G. Castellari’s World War II epic The Inglorious Bastards (1978), famously remade by Quentin Tarantino in 2009 with a slightly altered title. Before there was Supersonic Man (1979), before Infra Man (1975) – there was Argoman, the Fantastic Superman (just Argoman hereafter).

The fumetti were Italian comic books for adult audiences and are generally considered the precursor to today’s graphic novels. In the late sixties and early seventies they served as the basis for a number of masked superhero productions. The fumetti craze led to memorable productions as Kriminal (1966), Barbarella (1968) with Jane Fonda, Diabolik (1968), Satanik (1968) and Sadistik (1968) (originally named Killing in Italy, but popularly known under its French name). Another prime example of the fumetti was the The Three Supermen (1967-1970) franchise. Argoman had the good fortune to capitalize on both the fumetti and the Eurospy craze in the wake of the early Bond movies with Sean Connery becoming a worldwide phenomenon. That it was released the same year as The Million Eyes Of Sumuru (1967) and pushed a similar message of women’s liberation and feminist empowerment is just another happy coincidence. That it is certifiably insane by any metric you choose to employ helps in no small part too.

When the Royal Crown of England is stolen in broad daylight from the Tower of London inspector Lawrence (Nino Dal Fabbro, as Richard Peters) from Scotland Yard is left to investigate a case he can’t possibly crack. He calls upon suave English playboy Sir Reginald Hoover (Roger Browne), a gentleman-criminal of considerable repute who lives in a opulent French villa on a remote island, to help locate a prime suspect in the case. In his palatial abode Hoover senses the presence of Regina Sullivan (Dominique Boschero) and guides her to her coastal bachelor pad through telekinesis. Hoover challenges Sullivan to target shooting contest. If she wins she’ll get a brand new Rolls-Royce and a box of precious stones. If he wins, he’ll get her for the remainder of the day. After consummating his relationship with Sullivan, Hoover confides in his turbaned butler Chandra (Eduardo Fajardo, as Edoardo Fajardo) that he loses his ESP abilities for 6 hours after each sexual encounter. Meanwhile the real thief of the Royal Crown, criminal mastermind Jenabell declares herself ‘the Queen of the World’ (Barbarella wouldn’t claim the title of Queen Of the Galaxy until a year later) and her henchmen led by her trusty enforcer Kurt (Mimmo Palmara, as Dick Palmer) returns the Crown of St. Edward to its rightful owner with the promise of a demonstration of her real power.

Said power comes from a prized diamond ("Muradoff A IV" is its technical designation) and with the diamond, through the sun’s energy, Jenabell and her legion of automatons (a slave race of humanoid robots) is able to dissolve steel and thus the French currency is under threat of devaluation. The second part of her scheme involves robbing the Bank of France with an army of her leatherclad henchmen in tow and littering the streets of Paris with francs and banknotes as a distraction. The crime leaves inspector Martini (Edoardo Toniolo, as Edward Douglas) puzzled. Hoover uses his glamorous girlfriend Samantha (Nadia Marlowa) to distract Jenabell’s forces and changes into Argoman as he takes on her goons. Argoman possesses sonar, telekinetic and magnetic powers of unknown origin that make him practically invincible – and his only known weakness seems to be beautiful women. Argoman allows himself to be abducted to Jenabell’s fabulous art-deco subterranean lair. Jenabell gives him the choice to either be her consort or her slave. After briefly being distracted by Jenabell’s constant costume changes (the attire includes a black widow, a snake bikini, a queen from outer space and a tinfoil fright wig) Argoman decides to save Samantha, who as per third act convention has been kidnapped, from the advances of a behemoth metallic robot and safeguard the world from Jenabell’s dominion of terror. The Queen of the World seeks to replace all men of power with identical clones doing her bidding. Fighting off goons and clones alike Argoman is able to stop Jenabell from escaping by destroying her plane.

To its credit at least Argoman realizes how silly it is. The costume alone makes Juan Piquer Simón’s Supersonic Man (1979) look as a paragon of good taste and restraint in comparison. The Argoman costume consists of a yellow body stocking, black mask with a red psychedelic spiral on it, a red cape with red velvet lining and flashlight visor eyes. In other words, Argoman looks suspiciously like a candy-colored, psychotronic version of Gort from the Robert Wise science-fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). True to his European standards Argoman is the designated nominal hero of the piece but that doesn’t stop him from killing without scruples, compulsively talking his way into bedding whatever woman strikes his fancy and/or stealing riches from whichever evildoers he’s been fighting. Argoman is often on the right side of the law but, true to anti-hero tradition, he isn’t afraid to bend or break the law if it involves personal gratification or - enrichment. Where Argoman’s sonar, telekinetic and magnetic powers come from is never explained nor why he loses said abilities after doing the horizontal mambo with any of the many women. Argoman was prescient where the commedia sexy all’italiana was headed was by having Nadia Marlowa stroll down a street in nothing but lingerie, stockings and boots. Almost ten years later Gloria Guida could be seen cavorting around in nearly identical attire in the so-so The Landlord (1976). The retro-future production design inspired by The Giant Of Metropolis (1961) is just icing on a cake already brimming with wall-to-wall insanity. As a bonus it lifts a pivotal plotpoint wholesale from the brilliant The Million Eyes Of Sumuru (1967).

The star of Argoman is Roger Browne, an American actor that lived in Rome from 1960 to 1980. Browne was a fixture in peplum and later seamlessly transitioned into the Eurospy genre. Like any working actor Browne appeared in many different productions, among them, Vulcan, Son Of Jupiter (1962) (with Bella Cortez), Samoa, Queen of the Jungle (1968) (with the delectable duo of Edwige Fenech and Femi Benussi), Emanuelle in America (1977), and Alfonso Brescia’s The War of the Robots (1978). Dominique Boschero is best described as a lesser Eurocult queen and Nadia Marlowa was a relative nobody. Boschero has credits dating back to 1956 and include such illustrious titles as Secret Agent Fireball (1965), the gialli The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971) from Riccardo Freda and All the Colors of the Dark (1972) (with Edwige Fenech), as well as the Laura Antonelli drama Venial Sin (1974). Mimmo Palmara was a peplum regular that appeared in Hercules (1958), Hercules Unchained (1959), The Trojan Horse (1961) and later in a supporting part in the Gloria Guida comedy That Malicious Age (1975). Eduardo Fajardo was a monument in Spanish cinema even at this point making his appearances in drek as Umberto Lenzi’s pandemic shocker Nightmare City (1980) and in the original Spanish version of Eurociné’s nigh on incoherent shambler Oasis of the Zombies (1982) all the more lamentable.

It seems almost unfathomable that Argoman didn’t in some major way have an impact on director Juan Piquer Simón’s gaudy pastel-colored vistas for Supersonic Man (1979) and the candy-colored excesses that were part and parcel in Luigi Cozzi's amiable StarCrash (1979), Hercules (1983) and The Adventures Of Hercules (1985). It’s the best kind of kitsch. It’s pure camp. Argoman never takes itself seriously (neither should you) and it pushes all the right buttons as a spoof of the Eurospy and superhero genre . Sometimes it’s able to overcome its limitations, budgetary and otherwise, and sometimes not. It goes by the old adage that anything goes as long as there are pretty girls to look at. Dominique Boschero is godly as Jenabell in her crazy costumes and Nadia Marlowa has one scene forever seared onto the retina of cult fans everywhere. Eduardo Fajardo provides the prerequisite comedic note whereas Roger Browne is as wooden as ever. Whatever the case Argoman, the Fantastic Superman is a 60s curiosity that works best as a pastiche of the two genres it pays homage to. It has no reason to work but it somehow does. Argoman is one part Batman (1966-1968) with Adam West and prescient of where Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981) would take science-fiction in the following decade all while pushing camp to whole new levels and remaining strangely enjoyable through out. Too bad it was produced amidst the fumetti craze and remains somewhat of a forgotten gem.

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Plot: abused woman is impregnated by alien and becomes its murderous host.

France was absolutely the last place you’d expect to find a genuine horror gem at the dawn of the decade that all but killed the genre. A simple concept can go a very long way when executed properly. Baby Blood might very well be the French horror classic from the 1990s that revived the genre domestically. As unbelievable (and unlikely) as it may sound Baby Blood does, and did, just that. It might not look like much but once Baby Blood gets down to business it packs a mean little punch. Armed with an enchanting lead actress and a trio of hungry special effects craftsmen about to go places Baby Blood is a triumph of creativity and ingenuity over more practical restrictions in time and budget. Plastered with gratuitous wall-to-wall nudity and enough gore to satiate the inhuman cravings of any gorehound Baby Blood is nothing if not an unsung classic. Alain Robak directed (and co-wrote) what just may be the best David Cronenberg body horror that David Cronenberg never made. It well deservedly won the jury price at the 1990 Festival international du film fantastique d'Avoriaz (Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival), or the precursor to the current (and still running) Festival international du film fantastique de Gérardmer (Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival) in Gérardmer in the Vosges, France.

If nothing else Baby Blood looks and feels like a composite of some of the best body horror and slashers from the two decades preceding it. It merges the central premises of Rabid (1977) and Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage (1988) and has a snake-like alien creature enter its host the same way it did Barbara Steele in Shivers (1975). Said serpentine creature has similar motivations as the alien in Ciro Ippolito's Alien 2: On Earth (1980) and filters that through a sobering, clutter-free character study on the model of William Lustig’s Maniac (1980). Baby Blood is visually informed by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and Bad Taste (1987) and alternates that with a detached, almost documentary-style of filming reminiscent of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and a distinct feminist undertone not unlike Abel Ferrara’s evergreen Ms .45 (1981). Like Alien 2: On Earth (1980) before it Baby Blood is custodian to some of the most outrageous, over-the-top splatter effects of the decade being surpassed only by Peter Jackson’s laugh-a-minute gorefest Brain Dead (1992) some two years later. On an interesting side-note both Gary Oldman and Jennifer Lien lend their voice talent to the international English cut. Oldman was but two years away from the Francis Ford Coppola big budget gothic horror throwback Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and Luc Besson's Léon (1994) two years after that. Lien would become a staple in US television.

Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou, voiced by Jennifer Lien in the international version) is a 23-year-old performer for Le Cirque Lohman currently touring all across Northern France. Hers is a life of disenfranchisement, lack of opportunity and social mobility in a male-dominated field rife with every imaginable sort of discrimination. Her current lot as the reluctant mistress of Lohman (Christian Sinniger), the circus manager/ringmaster, affords her some stability but at the price of her well-being. She’s preyed upon not only by Lohman but by seemingly every man. She’s conscious about her weight and neurotically documents her findings each and every day. On top of her body image issues Yanka desperately looks for any and all opportunities to escape her present situation. Lohman is a loathsome, bovine weakling of a man prone to sudden fits of physical - and verbal violence. One morning while Yanka is coming out of the shower a delivery truck arrives custodian of the latest addition to the circus bestiary, a leopard from Equatorial Africa. While the deliveryman (François Frappier) tries to get an eyeful of her form the tamer (Thierry Le Portier) notices how restless the creature is. That night the leopard is reduced to minced bloody chunks and immediately Lohman organizes a canvas of the perimeter to apprehend the culprit. While the men conduct the search a snake-like parasite crawls into Yanka’s uterus. Not feeling her usual self she hops onto the scale and it dawns upon her that she might be pregnant.

Coming to grips with the realization that a carnivorous parasite has taken up residence in her uterus Yanka has no choice but to relent to its demands for the duration of her pregnancy. The creature (voiced by Alain Robak and Gary Oldman in the international version) communicates with her telepathically and keeps her subservient by triggering severe cramps whenever she does not comply. As the unwilling host (and reluctant incubator) to the alien creature Yanka’s subordinate to the will of the malevolent parasite and forced to relate to her fellow human beings only as predator to prey. Her first (and obvious) victim is one of convenience, the contemptible waste of flesh Lohman. In the nine months that follow Yanka adopts the nomadic lifestyle of a vagrant drifting from town to town, job to job, living where she can while seducing and exsanguinating hapless marginalized men to satisfy her uterine passenger’s hunger. The parasite informs Yanka that in five million years it will replace man as the dominant species on the planet and that once carried to term it must be released in the ocean. The parasite allows Yanka to carve a better path in life for herself by literally carving her way through all abusive men she encounters. As Yanka completes her journey of self-actualization and self-realization she exerts her newfound independence by expelling the hostile creature from its corporeal confines.

In place of casting an established name Robak instead decided upon an unknown, more or less. What other way describe Italian-Greek Emmanuelle Escourrou other than that she was all milk and cookies? Another would be to calll the impossibly proportioned 21-year-old the French answer to Debora Caprioglio or Serena Grandi. Is Emmanuelle related to Pierre-Marie Escourrou from Eurociné debacle Zombie Lake (1980)? Who knows, it’s entirely within the realm of plausibility. According to Escourrou’s official biography she accepted the role on merit of Baby Blood being the first French gore film, which isn’t entirely true, and it posing a challenge. Even as a female-centric splatter film it was preceded by Night Of Death! (1980) a decade earlier and the grand père of the entire subgenre is probably Jean Rollin and his The Grapes Of Death (1978). None of which dilutes from Emmanuelle rising so wonderfully to the occasion, wide-eyed and dripping with vigor, in a demanding role that required very physical acting as well as extensive partial and full frontal nudity, a challenge she readily accepted and even moreso desired.

To say that Emmanuelle literally lets it all hang out would be putting it mildly. Comme disent les Français, “Elle a de gros lolos.” Her derrière is worth a mention too. A lot of retrospective reviews over the years and decades since apparently make a big deal about the fact that Escourrou has a gap-tooth but they conveniently forget that this is something very French. Aren’t (and weren’t) Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Muriel Catalá, the Isabelles, Adjani and Huppert; Béatrice Dalle, Vanessa Paradis, Emmanuelle Béart, and Audrey Tatou beloved for exactly that reason? Nobody ever seemed to raise a complaint about them over such a triviality. For her performance she won the second ever Michel-Simon award, given to her by British director Terry Gilliam, at the Parisian Festival Acteurs à l'Écran (Screen Actors Festival) in Saint-Denis. Had things gone any differently (or had Brass cared to look outside of his native Italy) Escourrou could have been in Paprika (1991). Possessing both genuine acting talent and the body of a goddess it’s no wonder that Escourrou almost immediately legitimized herself in the mainstream and became a monument of French cinema in her own right.

To understand the historical significance of Baby Blood one should look at the beginnings of the French Extreme some ten years earlier. Night Of Death! (1980) laid the groundwork and set the standard for the French Extreme. The growing movement was bolstered bolstered by equally linfamous no-budget splatter epics as Ogroff (1983), Devil Story (1986) and The Return of the Living Dead Girls (1987). Baby Blood begins where Night Of Death! (1980) ends or only dared hint at. It may not be the originator of the form or even the first of its kind, but time hasn’t dulled any of its inherent shock value. Also not unimportant is to remember that it was released in 1990, at the dawn of a decade characterized by horror collapsing into either slapstick comedy or slightly darker thrillers. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) was most directly responsible for the change but in hindsight it was Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) that was eerily prescient for the decade and for the direction of horror at large. With no other direction to go the genre instead resorted to poking fun at itself, futilely at that. In other words, the 90s was the decade of irony and marked by a dearth of any significant real horror.

Baby Blood, consciously or otherwise, is a different beast entirely. In truth Baby Blood reinvigorated a cycle that had commenced a decade earlier and set a historic precedent and established the pattern that has more or less been followed since then. The French Extreme seems to renew itself (and pushing itself to new extremes every time the cycle repeats) about every decade as Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s Fuck Me (2000) ushered in what would later be dubbed the New French Extreme. Other historical entries into the New French Extreme include Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible (2002), High Tension (2003) from Alexandre Aja, Inside (2007) and Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008). No doubt the Francophone (but not geographically/culturally French) Calvaire (2004) from Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz deserves to be recognized as part of the same movement. Not bad for unassuming little splatter epic shot over five weeks in Paris and Nanterre for next to nothing. If Emmanuelle Escourrou isn’t able to sell Baby Blood to you with her divine figure and acting, the special effects from Benoît Lestang, Guy Monbillard, and Jean-Marc Toussaint in all likelihood will.

Does Baby Blood says something about social security and the treatment of immigrants, the working poor and the systematically disenfranchised in France and the larger Parisian metropolitan area? Does it comment on male entitlement, machismo/sexism and toxic masculinity in a decade when such words didn’t have the traction they have now? Can Baby Blood be considered a feminist manifesto and enpowerment wish fulfillment fantasy? Mais oui, it probably has a thing or two it begs to share on all three and whether that’s a good or bad thing is entirely within the eye of the beholder. If you are here to see Emmanuelle Escourrou bare her gros tetons and twirl around in the nude, Baby Blood has you covered (and her too a good portion of the time). If you’re here for outrageous splatter effects, there’s that. For everyone else this is just some great body horror in tradition of early David Cronenberg with that uniquely French opaque dream-like atmosphere and quality. The spirits of Jean Rollin or Michel Lemoine might not dwell here but that doesn’t make Baby Blood any less fantastique or fantastic. Whichever way you want to slice it, Baby Blood is quintessential French horror and every bit the classic it’s made out to be. Not even the very belated sequel (it only took 18 years!) Lady Blood (2008) (with a returning Escourrou) can diminish from what Alain Robak accomplished here.