THE WILD PUSSYCAT (1968)/THE DESERTER (1970) Blu-ray
Director(s): Dimis Dadiras, Christos Kefalas
Mondo Macabro

Mondo Macabro's "Greek Collection" makes a leap to Blu-ray with volume three's double feature of THE WILD PUSSYCAT and THE DESERTER.

THE WILD PUSSYCAT is blonde hedonist Maria ("the Greek Brigitte Bardot" Gisela Dali, PASSION BEACH), just returned from America upon learning of the suicide of her sister Vera (Kaiti Ibrohori, THE COLOURS OF IRIS) who was thrown out by her lover Nick (Kostas Prekas, A WOMAN'S FATE) in favor of another woman when she became pregnant. Vera's landlady sells Maria her sister's diary from which she learns of Vera's desperate love for Nick who used it to pimp her out and inveigle her into various perversities for paying customers. Deeply moved by her sister's plea for some kind of punishment for her lover, Maria starts stalking Nick, drawing him in and alienating his new woman with her very presence. She then invites Nick to her house and drugs him, chaining him up in a hidden room and forcing him to watch her seduce various strangers, male and female, from behind a "magic mirror" before doling out one final vicious punishment.

Shot in sensuous black and white and feeling very much like an American roughie of the sixties, what THE WILD PUSSYCAT most calls to mind is actually Joe D'Amato's EMANUELLE'S REVENGE (1975) in which Rosemarie Lindt (WHO SAW HER DIE?) traps George Eastman (ANTHROPOPHAGUS) in a cell with a false mirror for coldly casting aside her sister. That color effort upped the perversion considerably – throwing in some drug-induced cannibalism hallucination and champagne bottle rape – but it is perhaps the nudity and sexual situations seem less tame here than they really were because of the considered monochrome lensing in contrast to the more technically dodgy and garishly colorful Greek sexploitation films of the seventies (including Kostas Karagiannis' TANGO OF PERVERSION which also makes use of a false mirror for perverse ends). The content was evidently too strong for Greek audiences in 1968 because it was only in the export version that much of the film's salacious content was seen. Greek viewers instead got HOT REVENGE in which Inspector Liapis is approached by Nick's (or rather, Mihalis') father out of concern for his criminal lifestyle. Liapis is too busy tracking down a drug ring to look too far into the case until he discovers Mihalis' photograph (the very same one his father gave the detective) in the pocket of one of the dealers who is shot dead in a gunfight. Mihalis' partners are also wondering what has become of him and decide to use his disappearance as an opportunity to redistribute the wealth and thin out the number of partners. While Greek viewers may not have known just how much sex and nudity they were missing – the Greek version cuts most of the nudity and virtually all of the sex down to just enough for the viewer to ascertain that they are going to have sex but does surprisingly retain a full nude shot of Prekas in the shower early on while Dali gets a peekaboo shot emerging from a bubble bath – they surely must have noticed the Al Adamson/Sam Sherman-like patchwork nature of this version in which the two storylines never truly intersect and have no bearing on each other. Although director Dimis Dadiras had been directing since the fifties, the real auteur behind the film was likely Greek-American producer James Paris who proved extremely adaptable during the Greek Junta period of the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies in which Western cinema and popular culture was not deemed damaging to the government.

Paris was also the producer of THE DESERTER is Alexis (Hristos Politis, HELL IN THE AEGEAN), a Greek soldier traumatized by the cruelty of war who runs away from his unit, tosses his helmet, rifle, and boots into a lake. Witnessing this spectacle is Lisa (singer Alexandra Kyriakaki), a shy and simple young woman who works on a nearby farm and is subject to molestation by a half-witted farmhand (Giorgos Oikonomou, FLESH ON FIRE). Alexis approaches Erminia (Franca Parisi, THE TEN GLADIATORS), the sexually-frustrated younger wife of the farm's owner Yiannis (Stephanos Stratigos, TO THE LAST MAN) who spends his days away trying to make money selling bootleg alcohol to the soldiers and his nights snoring away in bed. She hides Alexis in the loft above the house which unfortunately offers a peeping tom view of the marital bed. At first ashamed, Erminia soon gives into her lust for the younger man whenever her husband is away. Seeking respite from the farmhand, Lisa discovers Alexis' hiding place and in his arms. Jealousy soon sparks between the two women but they have just as much to lose as Alexis should the soldiers or the police discover they have been harboring a deserter. Believing Erminia to be a "rabid woman" setting herself upon Alexis, Lisa goes to the witch Esperanza (THE WILD PUSSYCAT's Gisela Dali) for a potion to protect him and to ensure his fidelity. Lisa and Alexis resolve to run away together, but her discover that the spell does not seem to have worked sets the stage for tragedy.

Made two years later but still lensed in black and white, THE DESERTER feels more like a serious drama not so much for its anti-war opening and closing montages as the manner in which the exploitative scenario of a man on the run caught between two unstable women is played out. Erminia has lost a child and is sexually frustrated, her nightly prayers for guidance unanswered, while Lisa seems childlike and hides any notion of her adult sexuality lest she bring unwanted attention upon herself (as she packs to run off with Alexis, we see some magazine photographs of beautiful women she mimics that have been hidden amongst her belongings). For a man on the run, Alexis may be playing fast and loose with the affections of two desperate women but it is rather ambiguous as to how much of his affection for both is genuine and how much is based on his dependence on their silence. Much of the film is played naturalistically – apart from the hallucinatory witchcraft sequence – but the seedy dramatics are given a touch of class by the score credited to music supervisor Giorgios Paris but consisting of library tracks including pieces by Alessandro Alessandroni from the same recording sessions as THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE, jazzier, less psychedelic versions of the same themes probably selected by Italian editor Bruno Mattei (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) who reportedly claimed to have directed much of the film and released a re-edited, possibly reshot version – other than Parisi, the rest of the cast list is different and consists of Italian names who have other feature credits – in Italy titled ARMIDA, A BRIDE'S DRAMA credited to Mattei's earlier pseudonym Jordan B. Matthews. Presumably this was the version that was dubbed in English as THE HOT DESIRE which renamed the characters Sever (Alexis), Duda (Lisa), Mica (Erminia), and Dobre (Yiannis). Director Christos Kefalas had been assistant director on the Greek-lensed, well-cast but shoddy-looking OEDIPUS THE GREEK (1968) and is credited as director on the German version of the Italian/Greek/German thriller ORE DI TERRORE (the Italian version of which is credited to screenwriter Guido Leoni which may just as likely be a quota credit as Kefalas possibly being deployed to hide the Italian component of the production).

While some of the later Greek exploitation films that were widely distributed in other territories tended to be Italian or German co-productions or ones that were picked up by German distributor Atlas International, THE WILD PUSSYCAT was one of the earlier films to make it stateside with Crown International distributing the English-dubbed version (84:42) mostly seen here in this 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen presentation. The negative, unfortunately, was not complete, requiring roughly twenty-five minutes of footage to be patched in from an extremely rare 35mm print while one flashback had to be ported from the Greek version with English subtitles while the remainder of the English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track is unsubtitled. Other than this scene, the composite nature of the presentation is not particularly noticeable until the transition from one source to another. Both elements look very clean with the print having slightly higher contrast. Most of the scratches seem to have occurred in camera. It is easy for the viewer to grow accustomed to the look before each switch. The Greek version (85:59) is of only slightly lesser quality. That version's Greek DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track is accompanied by full subtitles. THE DESERTER's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer generally looks very clean, also apparently derived from the original negative, and generally more consistent than the composite for THE WILD PUSSYCAT. The only audio here is the Greek track in DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 with optional English subtitles (in which the witch refers to Alexis as Alessio possibly suggesting that she is meant to be Italian or Spanish since IMDb lists her as Esperanja).

Although a now out of print limited edition red case edition included a booklet with a detailed essay on what is known of both films as well as a reversible cover with newly-created artwork by Justin Coffee on one side and original art from THE DESERTER on the other side, eight double-sided full color reproductions of original art from the Italian release of THE DESERTER backed with a selection of Italian and U.S. posters created for the export releases of Greek films, the retail edition covered here features carries over only the video extras starting with an English Promo Trailer (2:03) for THE WILD PUSSYCAT, a publicity material mini movie (5:03) – a slideshow of worldwide promotional materials for the film including posed lobby card stills and the Japanese pressbook which titles the film THE WILD PUSSY – and the More from Mondo Macabro (13:30) clip reel. (Eric Cotenas)

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