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Roberta Findlay once speculated that, had her late husband not been able to channel his anger and misogyny into his art, he may very well have become the exact type of violent criminal depicted in his films. And it’s in that spirit that Spectacle proudly presents to our loyal audience of perverts and weirdos the Ultimate Degenerate’s own magnum opus, Michael Findlay’s “Flesh” trilogy.
The trilogy begins with what was originally intended as a one-off sexploitation “roughie” in THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH (1967), about a cuckolded New York City arms dealer named Richard (played by Findlay himself) who goes on a murderous rampage targeting all women he deems to be “immoral”. But following the film’s unexpected success, noted for its at-the-time unique blend of graphic sex and graphic violence, Findlay quickly got to work on a pair of sequels.
The two follow-up films, THE CURSE OF HER FLESH (1968) and THE KISS OF HER FLESH (1970), doubled and tripled down on the perversity and experimentation of the first entry. Where TOUCH featured a fairly straightforward proto-slasher narrative interspersed with sequences of striptease and bondage play, the two sequels take the opposite track, arguably acting as showcases for go-go dancing, BDSM, paraphilia & kinks of all kinds, sexual uh… contraptions, stag films-within-a-film, and a truly applaudable amount of wordplay around one victim’s insatiable “pussy” (referring to her pet cat… get your minds out of the gutter…), rounded out with strands of plot detailing Richard’s quest for vengeance against his wife’s lover and promiscuous women at-large.
But apart from Findlay, the real “star” of the series is none other than his co-writer, cinematographer, and spouse, Roberta, whose work on the trilogy extends the material well beyond the grindhouse and into the arthouse. Each film is its own masterclass in economical filmmaking, thanks in large part to Roberta Findlay’s incredibly crisp and nimble black-and-white photography that adds a visual dynamism to every act, no matter how perverse, and accentuates the curve of each blade and bosom. So even if rampant misogyny and sexual violence isn’t really your thing, we can guarantee that the visual feast each film presents is worth the price of admission alone.
Special thanks to Muscle Distribution, Distribpix, and Something Weird Video.