Immoral Tales

Four erotic tales, three set as period pieces, the fourth (actually the first episode in the film) is set in the present day. A young man researches and puts into action a plot to trap his 16-year-old female cousin into giving him head by isolating her on a stretch of beach cut off by the ocean at high tide. The problems are several. The girl obviously doesn't need to be trapped and is more than willing to explore her own sexuality so the cousin's plot is completely unnecessary. She also demonstrates that she's a good swimmer, so she isn't really trapped. He also seems to be kind of short sighted since Borowczyk's cuts from close ups of the girl's face to her vagina demonstrate her curiosity at his limited objectives. Silly really.

'Therese Philosophe' concerns a pious girl punished for something by being locked in her bedroom "for three days", she seems intent on biding her time putting a cucumber to a non-digestive use while reading. This was the most disappointing episode for me because the only reason I tracked down and bought the DVD was because I saw the wonderful erotic potential of Charlotte Alexandra in "Une vraie jeune fille". She's wasted here.

'Erzsebet Bathory' is a sixteenth-century countess who travels to various villages setting up job fairs to recruit young girls into service in her household. Her pitch is that she pays more than the king. That her recruiters have to drag the young girls from their homes kicking and screaming might bear testament to the fact that none of her previous 'employees' were ever seen again. She also seems to have bizarre bathing habits.

'Lucrezia Borgia' chronicles Pope Alexander VI's pursuit of family values by swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool with his daughter Lucrezia and her brother Cesare. Everyone lives happily ever after (except that heretic Savonarola). This was actually the most erotic of the four, but I'd rather watch Debbie do anybody...or Miss Elizabeth Bennet for that matter!

The only thing noteworthy about this film is that supposedly it was the first porn flic to rise above the miasma onto the radar screens of the mainstream media. Actually I would have guessed that that distinction would have fallen to a Radly Metzger film, but my love of baseball statistics and trivia doesn't extend to porn films so I won't bother to look it up.