La venganza del sexo aka The Curious Dr. Humpp (1969) Argentine Sexploitation Sci-Fi Horror Noir

"An Amazing / Weird Science, Gritty, Noir Sleaze Fest" (Noirsville)

In the Nightmare Noir Universe we all love, this might be a film showing in a theater in some Noirsville city, and it is exactly the kind of warped film you'd know would be condemned in 1930's France as a Film Noir. 

This film is right off of the sleazy covers and content of Pulp Fiction magazine and Comic Books  - i.e.,  Mad scientist abducts women for unmentionable experiments... , type covers.

Many comics were banned in the 1950s. During the era of McCarthyism, comic books became a threat, causing a panic that culminated in a Senate hearing in 1954. The result was the Comics Code  Much like the MPPC for films. "Good had to triumph over evil. Government had to be respected. Marriages never ended in divorce. And it was in publishers' best interests to remain compliant." read all about it here.

Get the idea? 😎 

The film is also an example of Jo Gabriel's quote: 

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

Contributing to the outré nightmarish quality of the film are the extra additional sexploitation inserts that were filmed in the US by Jerald Intrator (director of Satan In High Heels).  

La venganza del sexo was originally written and directed by Emilio Vieyra. The Cinematographer was Aníbal González Paz (El vampiro negro, Aroused (credited as Gideon Zumbach)). The Composer was Víctor Buchino. 

The film stars Ricardo Bauleo as Horacio Funes (George), Gloria Prat as Raquel (Rachel), Aldo Barbero as Dr. Zoide (Dr. Humpp), Susana Beltrán Enfermera (Nurse), and Héctor Biuchet as Inspector Benedict.

Ricardo Bauleo as George ( originally Horacio Funes in Argentine version)

Gloria Prat as Rachel (Raquel in Argentine release )

                                Aldo Barbero as Dr. Humpp (Dr. Zoide in Argentine release)

Susana Beltrán as Nurse (Enfermera)

Héctor Biuchet as Inspector Benedict.

The film of course wasn't the type of material the local Argentine critics approved of, take that with a grain of salt. Forbes-Unistar got the U.S distribution rights figuring they could cash in on the exploitation grindhouse market by dubbing into English and adding inserts. They hired Jerald Intrator to add more abduction scenes to up the sexploitation factor. Note bene, back in 1969 all it took for an exploitation film to to make back all its production money was to run two weeks in a Times Square grindhouse. The opening credits are in English so obviously the U.S version, how the original version started is unknown

The Story

It's night. 

Under the U.S credits and eerie sound effects we see what looks like large metal sneakers shuffling through grass. So we'll call this guy Metal Sneakers. The stride is somewhat labored and unnatural. We see two lovers kissing in embrace they appear to be sitting on a bench. 

A strange looking hairy hand with almost claws for fingernails holding a piece of cotton wool, apparently soaked in ether, comes slowly and quietly into the frame. The cotton is pressed into the faces of the lovers and they immediately lose conscience. We see their unconscious bodies loaded into what looks like a morgue wagon /ambulance by hooded helpers. 

The credits end  when they start the ambulance and drive it away with no lights. It's the 1.5 minute mark and we cut to an Intrator insert of two women in a room having a lesbian encounter. 

One woman is leaning over the chair the other is sitting in. She is passionately kissing the sitting woman's neck while undoing her top from the top with her hands. The sitting woman is undoing her top from the bottom. She removes her top stands and both women unsnap her garter belt.

This striptease is intercut with the original film showing a shot of the ambulance from the credit sequence, back to the women, both are seated and the woman being stripped is removing her stockings, Then we cut to a shot of Metal Sneakers walking on a sidewalk. 

Back to the room has the almost nude women again standing. The seated women removes the standing women's panties and she is now nude. 

The clothed woman stands and embraces the nude woman and they again kiss. We cut to quick shots of the door handle turning, the door opening, and reaction on the faces of both women to the bizarre face of Metal Sneakers, who we see for the first time, which resembles a Native American carved mask with distorted features.

We cut to a man wearing a striped shirt and obviously drunk leaving a bar and walking unsteadily down a street. A shadow of a hand appears coming closer, Its metal sneakers with his ether soaked cotton wool anesthetizer. Another victim for the meat wagon. 

We cut to beefcake pin-ups of various nude men taped and pinned to a wall by a bed where a naked blonde is fondling her breasts. She is well into the preliminaries of getting herself off, while looking at more nude men in a magazine. 

She never gets down to her "little man in a canoe," the quaint euphemism my wife's wild granny taught her, because Metal Sneakers causes masturbation interruptus. We get a quick cut to the back door of meat wagon closing. 

Another room. Hippies smoking a joint, getting high, naked, and having a "love in," which starts to devolve into a cluster fuck, but metal sneakers shows up to put the kibosh to the proceedings. 

We cut to what looks like either a corner of a piazza of a sleepy Argentine town, or an al fresco - nightclub where a dance couple is doing a dance routine. With a little jazz combo providing the tunes. The bartender "chin whiskers," looks like aredhead with a chin curtain beard. You know, the kind you first probably saw on Bluto on the old Pop-eye cartoons.

Surrounding the dance floor are various patrons, couples either watching the dance, having a drink, or making out. A few are over at the bar. 

The female dancer, Rachel, begins her striptease routine after her male partner assists, in only the act of partially pulling down the zipper of her dress. He then splits. 

At this point, the bartender, even though he's probably seen her many times, rests his arms on the bar, and is eyeballing her every move. There's cutaways also, to a sax player who looks awfully familiar, his facial expressions as he watches Raquel, are hilarious, they made me chuckle. 

Rachel's Striptease

The un zip beginning

 Chin Whiskers 

Sax Player

Towards the end of the dance we cut to Metal Sneakers coming into the nightclub or piazza and sitting down. Nobody really notices him because all eyes are on the raven haired vixen. I guess after a hard days work kidnapping victims for a med scientist even a monster has got to unwind. 

This time we get a longer look at him. At the top of his head there is a blinking light. It apparently turns out to be a libido detector / peter meter. Metal Sneakers is looking at the dancer and liking what he sees. The light at the top of his head is flickering. 

Here we cut to an office. Two policemen. One is Inspector Benedict, and they are discussing the kidnappings of the people in the last ten days. Into the office strides George a newspaper reporter. 

The reporter tells Benedict that the public wants to know the facts. George reminds Benedict of a very similar case in Italy 30 years ago, of a mad scientist who kidnapped young men and women for use in his experiment to extend life. The doctor theorized that the sexual energy of the libido was the key to extending life. He figured out a way of stealing their what you could call their "mojo."  Benedict gets a brief call, then tells George to bring him the news file he has on the case.

We cut to the hearse / ambulance driving up to a large villa like mansion. In a lab, we hear lots of bubbling sounds. Here in his lair, we first meet Dr. Humpp. He's sitting at his desk writing in an open journal. 

He looks to be in his early 40s, and has a receding hairline. He's wearing what looks like bathrobe style  wraparound lab coat. 

The desk also has, a lamp, a Plexiglas box with two white mice, a requisite skull sitting atop a pile of books, and a graduated cylinder. The desk is surrounded by the expected mad scientist / chem lab doodads, a blackboard, test tubes, a scale, graphs, charts, etc. 

He pours some fluids from two brown apothecary bottles into the cylinder, when he tips the content of a test tube into it, it starts to boil. The cylinder he brings over to a work bench with more apparatus and spritzes a kicker into the cylinder which he then pours into a drinking glass. He lifts it to his lips and drinks.

He walks back to a hand controller which he uses to turn on a TV surveillance system. Flipping channels to the different bedrooms of his "patients." He stops when he sees his nurse with a patient. he shuts off the TV and leaves the lab. 

We cut to Humpp entering the room where he spotted his nurse. He walks over to the brunette patient and checks her pulse. It's Raquel the stripper, another capture by Metal Sneakers.

Raquel is conscious but seems to be in a drug daze as she stares at Humpp. Humpp releases her wrist and  tells the nurse...

Humpp: It's not time yet, I'll have to build her desire.

Humpp and the nurse leave the room on their rounds to to visit the next patient. 

Humpp: A hippy, put all the hippies together in one room and let them keep their grass, they will be easier to handle, and put the lesbian's in a room together also, I want to observe them. 

[Humpp puts a dosage cup up the the mans lips] This one will need more stimulation, I've increased the aphrodisiac dosage.

They visit two other woman patients the first one gets excited at the doctors touch, he tells the nurse to prepare her. The final patient they see in the blonde who likes to masturbate to photos of naked men. She is writhing in excitement. Humpp tells the nurse we'll see how she does with a man.

Back at the Newspaper office George is busy typing away at the kidnapping story, when he is interrupted by a visit from Chin Whiskers the bartender at the outdoor nightclub. The bartender informs George that he and his wife saw a big guy wearing a mask intently watching the stripper before she disappeared. 

His wife thinks he may be the kidnapper. George calls Inspector Benedict. At police headquarters the bartender and the police sketch artist draw the face he saw. George informs Benedict that in the Italian case the doctor involved created human zombies to abduct known nymphomaniacs and other sexually active people, to use for his experiments. Benedict tells George to put the sketch in the paper. 

Back at Humpp central, we see the doctor in the lab writing in his note book, and then he starts watching his various  patients on his TV having sex. Suddenly we see the doc gabbing his throat and apparently having some type of seizure.

One of his hands seems to be decaying. We soon see the nurse rush in with a glass of the latest fresh "squeezin's" of libido juice. The doc knocks it back and puts his decaying hand up to his face, we see it transform back to normal.

Humpp tells the nurse that the effects are wearing off 10 minutes faster now than they used too, and that he needs to increase the dosage. When the doc asks about the patients the nurse informs him that the woman is fine but the man is done.

The nurse is obviously in love with the Doc. She embraces the Doc and  tells him he can use her as much as he needs to. 

Nurse: Oh, please...use my body to keep you alive!

The Doc is oblivious to her love and pushes her away she lands on the floor. 

Hump goes over to his radio controls and has metal sneakers take the man out to the incinerator. The kidnapped stripper wearing a see through nightie watches metal sneakers from a balcony.

We get a sequence of Humpp slicing into the temple of Metal Sneakers head. He's adding an electrode to his brain. While he's operating he gives us his warped cockamamie theory of using the libido serum to give immortality to the human race. 

Dr. Humpp: Sex dominates the world! And now, I dominate sex!

We cut to Metal Sneakers again walking. He walks into a pharmacy. He has a prescription, in his hairy hand which he gives to the startled pharmacist. 

The pharmacist excuses himself to go back into his office to look at the police sketch in the newspaper. It's Noirsville so I guess he's got to make sure it's the right monster. He picks up the phone to call the police. 

The druggist is found dead, but the monster left the note with the list of drugs needed for the experiment. Benedict and George stake out the other two nearby pharmacies. 

It's George who gets lucky when Dr. Humpp himself wearing sunglasses arrives to pick up the same drugs, so George follows the hearse / ambulance to the Dr's secret lair.

However it all goes Noirsville after George is surrounded by the doctor's zombies (called automatons in the film) and wakes up in a patient room.

Noirsville

 

This is a weirdly entertaining, shlocky, film, exploiting everything they could under the evolving US obscenity laws in the late1960s. 

The effect was that those exploitation films produced in 1968 and not yet released were re-edited with inserts showing as much nudity as the laws allowed. In 1969 Full frontal female nudity was allowed, so inserts were added to give the grindhouse crowd what they were laying down money for. Distributors bought Foreign film rights (like this one) for US distribution and were also re-edited with inserts. You had a ready to go product that just needed a few inserts to get it up to snuff with US exploitation films from 1969. 

One of the weird unintended consequences was, that since full female nudity was allowed there were, percentage wise, a lot of lesbian sex scenes in a lot of the 1968-68 exploitation films. The old MPPC, Legion of Decency censors can be blamed for that, lol.

The other unintended consequence was, since nudity was banned in U.S. Films from the early 1930s to the early 1960s, when the obscenity laws finally allowed nudity in films again, US filmmakers didn't know how to present it. It was like turning kids loose in a candy story, they over indulged in it. The simulated scenes of sex just go on too long. Instead of casually and naturally fitting nudity into scenes they linger too long. In this film, you could leave all the inserts filmed by Jerald Intrator and cut them down to 3 or 4 second sequences and not change the film one iota. 

Compare this with say French Films which have been displaying what you could term as non sensational, non exploitive nudity in their films since the 1930s.   

La venganza del sexo was shot in an interesting Visually Noir manner and it phototropic-ly stimulates the tale, and as a bonus you will see real how real woman's bodies circa 1960s looked like, (its not the creepy prepubescent look that is predominant today). 

So you then you can just imagine how the Classic Hollywood Noir cinematographers (Alton, Musuraca, Howe, Guffey, etc., etc.) may have depicted Noir nudes if the MPPC and the Legion of Decency hadn't arrested artistic development in the 1930's It's a 6/10