When the algorithms at Netflix suggested The Curious Dr. Humpp, I didn't think much of it - old monster movie, creepy face on the box art, and the description "Mindless automatons and a curious-looking monster abduct drug-addled hippies, lesbians, and a stripper and deliver them to the manor of demented Dr. Humpp in this bizarre sci-fi horror flick." Sign me up, I guess? What would have been nice is if I had known how porny it is. I mean, the main story is a doctor who abducts people and gives them drugs to make them have sex all of the time, so he can get some eternal life serum, or something. And *after* the fact, I looked it up on imdb and found it had an X-rating. Now, I'm not saying this would have kept me away from it, but it would have at least changed how I approached it. Mid-afternoon is not the best time to watch an X-rated movie, you know?
So yeah, a lot of sex in this movie. And apparently, the English version (the one I saw) has even more than the original, as the American distributors decided to toss in some more random sex scenes (to the tune of 17 minutes!) to, uh, pad the film. And this movie is only about 85 minutes long. If you took out the sex scenes, you'd probably end up with a 40-45 minute movie.
But that movie is good! Or at least fun in a really bizarre way. Dr. Humpp is a mad scientist who is on the verge of discovering the secret to eternal life via his experiments on people he has kidnapped. Basically, the key is some sort of libido juice that he extracts from his subjects mid-coitus. Or something - unsurprisingly science is not the strong suite of The Curious Dr. Humpp. He's got these really rad-looking "robots" to do his bidding (they keep calling them that, but I think they are actually former victims of Humpp who have been lobotomized). Although sometimes they just do weird stuff like hang out in a field and play guitar:
Anyways, after a bunch of kidnappings in town a reporter smells a good story and tries to figure out what is going on. After getting a little too close, Humpp abducts him and gets him involved with his devious sexual experiments. The reported falls in love with not one but two ladies at the lab, and tries to figure out a way to escape and take Dr. Humpp down. (And if you think "being kidnapped and forced to have sex all of the time" doesn't sound all that bad, Humpp kills the people once he's drained them of their libido juice. Or turns them into melty-faced automatons like the one in picture above.)
So it's an interesting movie to say the least. It's actually a really nice looking film - the black and white photography and cinematography are solid, it's well shot (I loved the disorienting opening scene where the robots are kidnapping people), and overall it'ss more well-crafted than you would expect from a softcore exploitation flick. The sex scenes occasionally semi-artfully shot as well. I'm certainly no pornography historian, but I would imagine this is pretty much in line with what was around at the time. Lots and lots of asses and breasts and some full frontal female nudity, but mostly just writhing around and some suggestive placements of heads/hands. It's definitely pornographic, but nothing like the graphicness that you are just a few clicks away from at any given time nowadays.
Horror-wise? It's never a really scary movie... the monsters are kind of creepy looking, and a couple of the kidnapping scenes are a little disturbing. But really, what makes it a horror movie is Dr. Humpp's lab. He's a pretty classic mad scientist, and has lots of fun equipment and what not in his lab - lots of bubbling beakers, a brain in a jar - you know, the usual stuff. And I guess you do see him operate on one of the automatons, which is kind of gross.
I also really liked the soundtrack. There is some pretty solid jazzy space age pop music going on here. It certainly doesn't make things any more ominous (and it detracts from the horror side of things), but it adds some fun to the overall feel of the film.
So... it's kind of weird to recommend an X-rated movie. I mean, before I knew what it was rated, my notes just said "this is pretty porny." And it certainly is. So buyer beware, you're getting some softcore stuff here. But the non-porn stuff is really pretty fun and bizarrely entertaining. The Curious Dr. Humpp looks really nice, has an enjoyable mad-scientist vibe, and a serviceable enough story (easy when there is only about 40 minutes of time to fill sans sex scenes). If you are into outlandish exploitation cinema, it's worth a watch.
I would recommend this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment