Singapore Sling : The Man Who Loved a Corpse (1990) Surreal Black Comedy Noir Nightmare

(Greek: Singapore Sling: Ο Άνθρωπος που Αγάπησε ένα Πτώμα) 

Written & Directed by Nikos Nikolaidis. 

Cinematography by Aris Stavrou, Music was by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Giaches de Wert, Glenn Miller, and Julie London.

The film stars Meredyth Herold as Daughter, Panos Thanassoulis as Detective Singapore Sling, and Michele Valley as Mother.

Meredyth Herold as Daughter

Michele Valley as Mother

Panos Thanassoulis as Detective Singapore Sling

Close your eyes and enter a dementedly bizarre, erotic, and grotesque Film Noir from the Twilight Zone.  

Night. Rain. Falling like tiny silver needles. A real soaker. A lush tropical garden. An estate somewhere in Noirsville. 

Two women wearing raincoats over disintegrating lingerie. They are digging a hole. They are splattering mud. We get peek-a-boo flashes cleavage, inner thighs, and pubic hair as they shovel and scoop. 

The diggers - cleavage

The diggers - bush how Noir of Nikolaidis

Near a parked 65 Chevy a man in a trench coat lays with his feet out and his back against the car. "Singapore" Sling. Private detective. His left hand is clutching a bottle. 

The Chevy

We see small drip lines of blood running out from under his sleeve and down to his fingers. He is watching the ladies dig. He begins a voice over.

Singapore Sling [Voice Over]: It was late at night and I was leaning on a car, conversing with the leftovers of a bottle without caring about the spring storm, that was coming in from the North. 

I figured, that in the state I was in things couldn't get any worse. I was the broke, homeless, and friendless sort of guy...who, chases after lost causes with female names, which lead, nowhere. Mine was called Laura and I met her many years ago. My world was a sick and pitiful world... where trouble with a girl like that, had to happen. It's been three years since I lost her. Every time I smell jasmine on a passing girl, I think of her and start looking for trouble again. 

That's how I got here. Only here is a bit strange because in the garden and around an open pit, two women are doing things which would have stirred me once. But with a bullet hole in ones shoulder, one can't do much....

[Singapore opens the rear door of the Chevy and crawls into the back seat V.O.]

 Anyway the interiors of cars turn me on, especially on nights like this, one appreciates them even more. The rain beating on the hood... it lulls you away until you see Laura once more. 

[Singapore V.O. continues]

It was these things, as well as the hunch that the girl I'm looking for has been long dead... thus I'm in love with a corpse... that made me put off my entrance and get in the car, and pass out in peace.

Smoke break

Dead Man

When the two women get the pit deep enough they stop working. They climb out. One lights a cigarette. One grabs the feet of the body of a man and drags it out of the bushes. 

entrails

When they get it near the side of the pit the shirt of the man bursts open and his entrails spill out into the hole. They push the guts back into the body, and rebutton up the shirt. I guess the want to give him somewhat of a proper burial.

Stuffing the guts back in

But then they unceremoniously dump him in the grave. They are both somewhat cute but obviously demented. They start to shovel the mud back in. The man's hand shoots out of the grave and grabs one of the woman's rubber boots. 

Dead mans hand

He's still alive. The other women still holding a shovel smacks the man in the head with it. They finish burying him alive and walk off.

Daughter's fireside chat (the racoon appearance is from the mud on her face and goggles she wore in the rain)

We cut to a fireside chat from Daughter. Whether she really is the daughter or whether it is role playing is left to the imagination. Daughter tells us that their chauffer who they just buried didn't die  easily. He was strong. Mommy had to to stab him in the stomach several times and that he bled everywhere when he ran through the house with a knife sticking out of his chest.

Daughter then explains that this wasn't their first murder. Daddy was their mentor, and he killed all of the servants, and raped her at age eleven. 

Daughter keeps Daddy's mummified corpse in the attic where she can still have sex with it

However Daddy died and they wrapped him up like a mummy and put him up un the attic. Daughter tells us that she still has sex with the corpse. Daughter next informs us that the first murder that Mommy and her committed was to a girl named Laura who showed up for and interview in answer to an ad for a secretarial job. 

Laura Role Play

Mother and Daughter recreate the murder in role play. We see Daughter dressed as Laura in interview clothing, entering the mansion. 

Daughter as Laura arrives

She is carrying her suitcase. She puts it down and approaches Mother who is sitting in a chair. Mother is in the Waldo Lydecker role tells Laura to come closer. 

Laura puts down the suitcase and approaches Mother as Waldo. Waldo asks Laura if she is a good girl. Laura replies yes, and that if she was a bad girl she'd have lots of money. Mother Waldo tells her to get down on her knees. Laura does so.

 

Mother Waldo now begins to slowly pull up her skirt up over her knees. When it slips up over her crotch it reveals that Mother Waldo is wearing a strap on dildo.

Laura's mouth flies open and Mother grabs her head and pushed her mouth towards the dildo. Mother flips the skirt back down and we see Laura's head bobbing up and down under the skirt. Mother then raises her legs and of course the subtext is that Laura is now giving Mother oral sex. Great family. 

Mother then forces Laura over the top of the piano and with the strap-on takes Laura from behind. 

over the piano

After doing the deed Mother forces Laura into the kitchen where she slices through her belly with knife thrusts. We get another avalanche of entrails into the kitchen sink. It's a good thing that this was filmed in Black & White, lol.

The next day Singapore recovers some strength leaves the Chevy and rings the Mansions doorbell. When Daughter answers the door he collapses at the threshold. She drags him in and both she and Mother search him for any clues he may have in his possession. In a note book in the mans pocket is the recipe for a cocktail a Singapore Sling. That's the name that is now bestowed upon the stranger.  Daughter is ecstatic that they have another man to play with. Of course it goes even more dysfunctionally Noirsville.

Noirsville

The recreation of Laura at the police interrogation

Nikos Nikolaidis creatively uses the basic storyline of Film Noir Laura as the roux and mixes that into a dark gumbo of various other references, quotes. and homage. The beating rain recalls the end of The Public Enemy, the beginning of  Appointment With Danger & other Hollywood Noir. The blood, guts and violence from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dail's Un Chien andalou, The Grand Guignol, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, and Peter Greenaways - The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her over. Eating food from Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence, Sergio Leone's food orgy from Duck You Sucker's Omnibus passengers, and from Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe, and yet again Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. The Mother & Daughter story and the mansion they live in has shades of the Miss Havisham character from various adaptations of Dicken's Great Expectations, and a bit of the family dynamic vibes of Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened To Baby Jane & Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte - there are also hints of the Betty Paige bondage images of Irving and Paula Klaw. The captivity of Singapore recalls 1965's Transitional Sexploitation Roughie Noir The Defilers.  

Laura's theme, Glenn Miller, and Julie London keep recalling the Classic Hollywood Noir era mood during brief interludes.

Meredyth Herold and Michele Valley play there roles with great enthusiasm, they inject bodily twitches and spasms throughout the film. Meredith is also sort of a nympho she makes use of whatever is available to achieve orgasm, even a lucky peach gets a turn.  Panos Thanassoulis recreates Joan Crawford's catatonic character in Possessed (1947) for much of the film.

Metaphorically you could interpret Singapore Sling : The Man Who Loved a Corpse as Nikolaidis' deviant love letter to the "corpse" of Film Noir. He buries himself in the style.

Caution, this film like X rated Sexploitation Roughie Noir Forced Entry will definitely not be for everyone. 7/10