The Alcove

"We must begin with a story which is cruel, real and... very cruel" mumbles the director while he and his slave prepares his latest film, The Mysteries of the Inquisition, in which a young actress is tied up, raped and humiliated only for the sake of art. "You must suffer, if you suffer it helps you to act with more conviction" shouts Mother Superior before she gets on with raping the helpless girl, cheerfully encouraged by the caretaker. The director himself has already fallen asleep behind his rolling camera.

Whether the above film-within-a-film is the result of a remarkable self-irony or if it's just D'Amato's way of critizice the hypocrisy of the Chatolic Church is anyone's guess. Accurately the actress humiliated for art subsequently gets her revenge by, accidentally but still, putting her rapist on fire, watching her burning to death as the end-credits roll. Either way opportunist filmmaker D'Amato for once takes his chosen subject with a healty dose of irony and rather than being some sort of weird "artistic statement" it seems more likely that it's just a matter of the director revelling himself blind by the commericial potential of the controversial subject - the rapist being Mother Superior. And he must have had some point I guess. The Alcove is his by far most sold title on video.

The main plot takes place in 1936 and concerns the intrigues that occurs when super-fascist and spare-time amateur filmmaker Elio (Al Cliver) comes home from the war. With him he has brought a beautiful slave named Zerbal (Laura Gemser) as a gift to his suspicious wife Alessandra (Lilli Carati) and her housemaid Virna (Annie Belle). Virna has been Alessandra's object of affection while her husband has been to war. The newly arrived Zerbal proves to be not only extremely beautiful but also evil. Carefully she plays the parts against each other.

As opposite to the other films - Lust, Peep Show, Prison Dancer and The Pleasure - shot around the same period, using mostly the same actors and the same sets, The Alcove (written by the now also deceased Ugo Moretti) at least manages to make the drama moving while keeping the erotic scenes erotic. Leading man Al Cliver has never been especially good at playing characters (he plays just one; the mumbling huggy-bear), but apart from him the acting is above average around with a special hat off to Annie Belle (also in House at the Edge of the Park and Absurd) as the abused maid. And the above film-within-the film (about ten minutes in its uncut form) remains the most "interesting" part of this or any other film from this period and for it alone The Alcove deserves its place in any collection. It is one of the movies Joe D'Amato should be remembered for. It was remade, however, in an even naughtier fashion in 1994 as L'Alcova dei Piacere Proibiti, starring Julia Chanel and Simona Valli, but somehow I don't think that version is up to pair.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.