Diary of a Rape
(1971)
This movie, also released as Exposed
and Exponerad, still lives in
my mind as having one of the all-time hottest GIMP-ish scenes I have
ever seen. I saw it for the first time at a drive-in, back when the
various exploitation movies were making the rounds. Christina Lindberg
was mesmerizingly beautiful, made even more so by either her inability
to act or her carefully understated performance, whichever it was. I
remember absolutely nothing about the movie except the 9-minute bondage
rape scene near the end. Sadly, since the only copy I ever managed to
obtain was a VHS tape without subtitles, even after re-watching it for
this review I still know very little about the movie, except that it
involved Christina Lindberg's character, Lena, going from sexual
encounter to sexual encounter with strange passive-aggressive partners.
The movie begins with Lena (Christina
Lindberg) posing for nude photos, involving full-frontal nudity
and, standard for the period, a heavy 70s bush. By the way, I think
there is a striking resemblance between Christina Lindberg (below left)
and Lexis Lane (below right) of Powershotz fame, so if you like
Christina, you might check out Lexis. (You're welcome, Steve.)
I will skip the plot details and simply highlight the naughty bits,
most of which are just non-GIMP sex and nude scenes. One of the
confusing aspects of this movie is that Lena frequently fantasizes
about things happening to her, and we get to see the fantasy,
distinguished from reality by a faded cinematic color palette.
1:30 minutes. Lena meets her
wussy blond Scandinavian boyfriend, Jan, in a field. They talk. He
slaps her. Lena fantasizes about him slapping her repeatedly until she
falls to the ground, then straddling her and slapping her more. It goes
for about 20 seconds.
5:30 minutes. Lena hitchhikes,
and has a fantasy about the guy driving off the road to a secluded spot
and trying to rape her. He gets her partially unclothed and she fights
back, trying to stop him. All good rape fantasies should involve the
girl fighting back, even though she is the one fantasizing about being
raped in the first place. The scene ends after a minute, without any
actual fantasized forcible sex occurring. Even so, Lena has some nice,
dark fantasies.
13:30 minutes. Lena fantasizes
about she and Lars (half of a swinging couple who gave her a ride)
going off into the woods and being caught by Lars' wife, Ulla, who
chases Lena to a precipice and pushes her over, presumably to her
death. No sex or nudity, just a violent fantasy.
14:00 minutes. Naked Lars and
Ulla frolic in in the lake. Ulla has a dark tan except where her bikini
normally would be, and a huge 70s bush as well. (Lars does too, by the
way.) Then they lounge naked in front of the fire, then make out. Lena
surreptitiously watches them, then flashes back on herself posing nude
for snapshots. Sex and nudity for Lars and Ulla. Nudity for Lena.
21:45 minutes. Lars, Ulla and
Lena bask naked in the sunshine on the dock.
25:00 minutes. Lena fantasizes
about fleeing from boring boyfriend Jan with Lars and Ulla in their
car. When Jan gives chase, the car overturns and explodes, killing
Lars, Ulla and Lena. In actuality, she gets in Jan's car and he drives
her back to town.
31:00 minutes. Flashback to
Lena at a swingers party where she meets sociopath playboy Helge. The
voyeuristic Helge watches Lena having sex with a random dude, after
which the nude photos from the pre-titles sequence were taken. Nice
Lena topless nudity as she rides up and down on the random guy.
37:00 minutes. Flashback again,
and Lena and some random gal are encouraged by Helge to have a make-out
session while he watches. There's an altercation when an older guy
shows up and Lena flees. Nice Lena topless nudity.
43:00 minutes. Lena and Jan
make out under the kitchen table, manage to half-disrobe, then move
into the bedroom. About a minute's worth of Lena topless nudity
followed by another minute of Lena and Jan full frontal nudity.
51:15 minutes. An
ever-so-brief flashback of Helge having sex with a sweat-covered Lena.
55:00 minutes. We watch
excerpts from a B&W Tarzan movie involving Nazis with Tarzan and
Sandra (Sandra? Does Jane know
about this?) rope tied to pillars--and Boy rope tied on a bed--until
Tarzan's chimp helps Tarzan escape his bonds. (Well, it was bondage.)
1 hour 10:00 minutes. The
beginning of a relatively suspenseful but slow-moving sequence where
Helge the sociopath is gaining entrance to Lena's apartment. It finally
comes to fruition three minutes in, when Helge walks into Lena's room
with her sitting expectantly on her bed, in her ankle length nightgown.
He tosses a paper sack on the bed, which has ropes in it. Lena slowly
reclines passively on the bed as Helge parts her legs and slowly ties
first one foot and then the next to the foot of the bed. Then he moves
onto the bed and ties her wrists to the headboard so that she is in a
moderate spread-eagle. He takes a knife out of the bag and slowly cuts
her nightgown down the center, parting it to reveal her naked
body. He slowly undresses and slowly works his way up and down
her bound helpless torso as she timidly lies there. He fucks her and as
he reaches climax she stabs him in the back with his own knife and he
dies. The portion of the scene in the bedroom takes about 8-1/2 minutes, and I think
it is the best 8-1/2 minutes I've ever seen. The careful, almost
obsessive act of tying, stripping, exploring and fucking Lena is fairly
intense, and Lena's timid, uncertain and vaguely victimized attitude is
exciting.
SUMMARY: Lena is roughly
slapped repeatedly in a field, Lena is assaulted and half-stripped in a
car while hitchhiking, and Lena is slowly and methodically tied to a
bed, stripped naked, and fucked while bound in a spread-eagle position.
There is a lot of other incidental sex and nudity, plus a rope-bound
B&W Tarzan, Boy, and Sandra excerpt (WTF).
For me personally, this movie is a nice remembrance of the
anything-goes sexploitation flicks and the twilight of the drive-in
theater experience. But the lengthy climactic scene where Lena is tied,
stripped and raped--even though she is not screaming and fighting the
entire time--remains one of my All Time Favorite scenes, and gets an
enthusiastic A. I
never get tired of watching it.
|
