All ladies Do It

It's the DVD Purgatory weekend crew here again, and today we're talking about asses. And no, I'm not referring to sebastian and his review of Rob Zombie's "Halloween". Today we are here to talk about auteur, and bottom devotee, Tinto Brass. Brass (who also directed the infamous Caligula) is kind of like a grimier, hairier, less politically correct, Italian version of Russ Meyer... if such a thing is indeed possible.

On a base level, both men make very similar films, almost solely dedicated to their love of the female form. And each have their own quirks and preoccupations. For Meyer it is obviously breasts, the bigger the better. For Tinto Brass, the camera tends to focus at lower level (as the cover pictured above might suggest). It may be seen as somewhat dismissive or unfair to boil down all of Brass' cinematic creations to this singular level but, it is actually also fairly apt. Wikipedia claims, quite rightly, that Brass’ films often accentuate women's buttocks and hairy armpits, almost to the point of fetish, and that many of his films include unsimulated sexual acts, with the male actors usually using prosthetic penises. And who am I to question the validity and accuracy of anything in Wikipedia?

All Ladies Do It is the story of a good wife gone bad (or bad wife gone good, depending on your perspective). Diana (Claudia Koll), 24 and married for four years, writes to a magazine about her sexual adventures. And it all goes rather predictably from there. The film is a throwback to the great sleaze of the seventies, but fails to do much beyond making you furrow your brow at exactly what is going on. One reviewer likened Brass' work in theme (but almost certainly, not in design) to countryman Joe D'Amato's Emmanuelle series with Laura Gemser. That actually seems like unfair or unwarranted praise to me. It could just as easily be said his films are also reminiscent of that kid from school that used to tell you, in great detail, about the movies he'd heard his older brother talking about, or he'd caught glimpses of on SBS late at night.

Although occasionally titillating and (non-intentional) guffaw inducing, it's probably best left for historians and desperate fetishists only.