IslandGuru Who payed the critics

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Leofwine_draca THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH is a typical cheap and sleazy sexploitation film from the US of A. This one's black and white, like the rest, and very cheap in terms of staging. However, it's also better-plotted than expected, with a storyline involving a guy who finds his wife in bed with another man, causing him to have a car accident and then become a psycho and going on a murder spree. This film reminded me of the work of H.G. Mikels in places but the genuine plotting is outweighed by the endless strip routines and bedroom small-talk. As ever, the version available on Amazon Prime is heavily censored.

Woodyanders Weapons expert Richard Jennings (a creepy portrayal by writer/director Michael Findlay) catches his faithless wife Claudia (voluptuous eyeful Angelique) in bed with another man. Jennings blows a mental gasket and embarks on a vicious misogynistic killing spree in which he tortures and murders all women that he deems to be irredeemable scarlet harlots. The almighty sleaze cinema duo of Michael and Roberta Findlay come through with an on the money unremittingly harsh and scummy aesthetic: Plentiful tasty distaff nudity, steamy soft-core sex, buxom go-go gals shaking their stuff on stage (cue the fantastic R&B tune "(I Got) The Right Kind of Love"), lots of great footage of 60's New York City in all its seedy splendor (the scenes at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in particular are absolute gold; bet that stuff was shot sans permits!), a dazzling array of trashy underwear, and jolting moments of sadistic violence that pack one hell of a wicked punch (a beheading by buzz saw rates as a definite brutal highlight). The stark black and white cinematography provides a cool noir look. The deliberate pacing proves to be oddly hypnotic. Noted soft-core auteur Joe Sarno's fetching brunette wife Peggy Steffans is memorably sexy as a hooker victim. Best of all, the whole rough'n'ready upfront style of this fabulously fetid flick gives it an extra seamy (and discomfiting) edge. Essential viewing for hardcore grindhouse movie aficionados.

jpilkonis The perfect ten rating I gave this film has nothing to do with its technical merits. It's not a particularly well-written film at all. The acting, for the most part, is wooden (with one BIG exception). The music is strictly canned library music. But it's still at ten. It's a ten because, as a cinematic experience, there is nothing else quite like watching the work of Michael and Roberta Findlay. Nothing else compares. And if the goal of cinema is to take you into another world, this is the film that will do it, albeit a sick, claustrophobic, dirty one which will leave you drained and in desperate need for a shower.Other reviews cover the plot of this film sufficiently. What I'd like to focus on is the way this movie feels. Like other low-budget but truly inspired masterpieces - "Last House on Dead End Street" comes to mind as the perfect example - this film's technical flaws add to its creepiness. This film has no gloss with which to reassure us, and its starkness makes it that much more compelling.The standout performance I mentioned at the outset of this review is, of course, that of Michael Findlay. The fact that he stars in this film is no coincidence. In fact, nobody else could have done it, since what we're seeing in this film - as in most of the Findlay collaborations - is a very, very personal vision, a celluloid representation of the dark demons haunting one man's mind. While no one is suggesting that Findlay was anything like the obsessed monster of a man he portrays on the screen here - there is much evidence to the contrary, in fact - there isn't any doubt that Findlay wasn't exorcising demons from his own psyche with these films, which, for me, is what makes them so compelling. On screen, Findlay's hammy, bloated performances would be laughable if you didn't know you were watching someone acting out of the depths of his mind, which makes them both disturbing and compelling at the same time.An interesting experiment in watching these films is to compare it to similar, contemporary films, such as "Saw." While the violence in the latter movie is much more graphic, there's an intensity in Findlay's work which it can't even come close to.I say all these things only to the special few with the capacity to digest film this way, and I don't expect that to be a particularly large group. You know who you are. And you'll see this film for what it is.

Vince-5 Possible minor spoilers.First came the nudies--harmless fluff flicks with the cast bouncing around in various stages of undress. Then came the roughies--rape, dominations, whippings, BD/SM. And then...there were the ghoulies. And no one did the ghoulies better than Michael and Roberta Findlay, the all-time king and queen of the New York grindhouse circuit. I must say that this Flesh surprised me. I expected some shaky, cheap-thrill blood-guts-and-boobs epic...and I got a surprisingly professional, highly personal endeavor that comes dangerously close to the realm of Art. I am not kidding!Michael is Richard Jennings, a middle-class man with the archetypal Madonna-whore complex. When his wife turns out to be the latter, crippled Richard seeks vengeance against the sex industry and the women who populate it; viewed today, it eerily predicts how Bully Boy would destroy much of the vibrant, seedy world that allowed for the creation of this film. In a fantastic psychedelic discotheque sequence, a cute black go-go girl receives a poison rose and after some lengthy topless gyrations (go-go fans take note), drops dead in mid-freakout. A stripper slithers around in what turns out to be her last show. But the ultimate target is unfaithful wife Claudia (Claudia Jennings? Is this where the drive-in queen got her inspiration?), a busty blonde dubbed in Roberta's distinctive New Yawk tones.This is a steamy, seamy walk on the wild side from the people who did it best. Michael (as Robert West) turns in an excellent performance as the star psycho. The dialogue is minimal and dubbed (quite well in Richard's case); some of it is very funny--"My dear Claudia! Let me see those breasts of yours! Those breasts that he was fondling!" With a little gore, plenty of female skin, and an atmosphere thick with gritty vitality. Sadly, the film is a time capsule of a by-gone era. The Findlays are gone now (Michael has passed on, may he rest in peace; Roberta has disappeared from sight); the seedy vitality of Times Square has been replaced by soulless corporate fiberglass. If your mindset is outside the mainstream...if you think that sleaze is not necessarily a bad thing...you owe it to yourself to see this hour of monochrome madness. We miss you, Mike.