Secrets Of Sex
Director: Antony Balch

Cast: Richard Shulman, Janet Spearman, Dorothy Grumbar
Review by Brian M. Sammons

It’s not what you think … not at all

I got this sent to me the other day and I scratched my head when I saw it. Was someone sending me soft-core porn to review now? Not that I would complain too loudly, but that’s not the kind of movie I usually review. Then I read the back of the DVD box and saw words like “mummies,” “undead,” and “erotic horror cult classic” and I decided to give it a look. And when the movie was over I was still confused as hell.

Secrets Of Sex, also known under the more appropriate title of Bizarre, is a late 60s English anthology film so at first I thought it might like the old Avco-Embassy flicks like Vault Of Horor and Tales From The Crypt but with more boobies. But then it starts with pictures of naked men and woman while an Egyptian mummy, your narrator and host of this film, asks repeatedly, “Imagine making love to this girl, imagine making love to this boy, imagine making love to this girl, imagine making love to this boy, imagine making love to this girl…” and on and on.

Then some girls dance around in their panties and some guys show up with Tommy guns and I’ve got W.T.F. stuck on repeat in my mind. Then, after this overly long intro, the stories begin. The first one shows some promise as goofy, nudie, horror fun with a S&M photo shoot taken to the extreme, but after that there’s a whole lot of pointless nothing. A lonely man catches a cute girl breaking into his house so they have sex and then … noting. No twists, no real point, that’s the whole of the story. Another one has a weird guy ordering up a call girl so they can do it while his pet iguana watches. Another has a woman having sex with an old man even though she knows she can’t have a normal baby. I could go on and on with these, but already I am forgetting these silly, rather pointless, and thoroughly non-horrific stories, so why bother?

That said, I did kind of enjoy this movie in a weird way as a quasi-historical document. It was so completely 60s-licious, with the clothes, bright colors, and truth be told, cute all natural girls, that as a curious artifact of a long lost era I kind of dug it. For those reasons alone I can recommend film, but it’s not scary, not funny, only sort of sexy, but it does have a nice weird vibe to it. So if you’re into strange 60s skin flicks then Synapse Films have put out a pretty good DVD for you. The picture looks clear and sharp, there’s audio commentary with the producer and film historian, an interview with the writer of the movie, and a couple of short films directed by the director of this movie and featuring notorious author William S. Burroughs.

If you are looking for a slice of 60s naughty English cinema then this is the movie for you. However if you want some horrific fun then look elsewhere because despite having a mummy as your host, this movie is about as scary as Pee Wee Herman abusing himself in porno theater. Wait, it’s not even that scary.

About Brian M. Sammons

Brian M. Sammons has penned stories that have appeared in the anthologies: Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Deepest, Darkest Eden and others. He has edited the books; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu and Flesh Like Smoke. He is also the managing editor of Dark Regions Press’ Weird Fiction line. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can check out his infrequently updated webpage here: http://brian_sammons.webs.com/ and follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons.

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