Beyond Love and Evil (1970)
Cinema de Bizarre
Web: http://www.cinema-de-bizarre.com
Beyond Love and Evil
aka De Sade 76 and The Philosophy of the Bedroom is a
marvellously outré cult sex film which is loosely based on the hedonistic
vision of the Marquis De Sade with a large dose of Sixties psychedelia
and the occultism of Aliester Crowley. It was Directed by Jacques Scandelari.
Yalo (Fred Saint-James) is the master of a
great French castle where he runs a community based on free love. He rejects
the bourgeois morality and religious peccadillos of the outside world and
trains his disciples in the way of passion. He encourages his initiates to
explore all manner of pleasure, rejecting both “godliness and diabolism” and
using the flesh as his point of reference. His “cult” is marked by unusual
rites and ceremonies and a celebration of all manner of decadence, from the
playful to exploring the limits of pain and pleasure. As the film progresses we
come to experience his communities’
exploration of sex through orgies, food sex, bondage and discipline, sado-masochism, a naked conga-line, lesbianism, sex with a
squid (an especially unusual scene) and
a range of other fetishes. There is even a wild man named Varlac
who is kept locked in the basement and only occasionally let out for a wild sex
hunt. All are presented with a uniquely Euro style matching excellent
cinematography with eroticism, scored with a Jazzy Sixties soundtrack.
Yalo has met a beautiful young woman named
Xenia whom he slowly trains to be free of her taboos and enter into his
cult as his wife. However, a previous lover, Zenoff (Lucas
de Chabanieux), soon arrives on the scene and with
the voice of morality and tradition stands against the perversions on show.
Soon, however, he realizes that Xenia is happy with her lot. Frustrated by what
he sees, he tries to get Xenia to escape and when lost in the forest, loses control and ravages on her wedding night. They
return and she is married to Yalo in a pagan wedding
rite accompanied by a ritualistic orgy. Xenoff won’t
give up and in a fit of fury kills Yalo, but he does
not realize that Xenia has been liberated from her puritan ways and certainly
won’t be going back to the staid life of a subservient woman.
Now
in charge of the cult, she decides to not only continue Yalo’s
work but to take things further with whippings, brandings, birchings
and discipline; the initiates will not certainly get their fill of pain with
their pleasure but if Zenoff wants to love her the
cost will be rather high.
Beyond Love and Evil
is a fascinating cult cinema romp filled with all sorts of weird sexual set-pieces
ranging from horny fox hunts to an erotic rub-down with squid. It has a
well-developed plot which combines a call to hedonism with a pan-sexual pagan
worldview which is also notable for its quirky philosophical dialogues.
The
outfits are suitably late Sixties with everyone looking like Hippies with wigs
and wild make-up; there is a sense of play and humour which makes even the most bawdy scenes more fun rather than exploitative.
Many
see Beyond Love and Evil as a
significant work of cinema since it was the forerunner of the erotic cinema of
France in the Seventies. It is very difficult to find a copy, luckily Cinema de
Bizarre have a very good quality DVD-R available.
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