Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Piero Schivazappa
Starring: Dagmar Lassander, Philippe Leroy, Lorenza Guerrieri, Varo Soleri
In the 1970s, catching whiff of the increasingly pervasive smell of
burning bras, exploitation filmmakers began to inject superficially
feminist themes into their work, giving us a slew of female avengers.
Italian writer/director Piero Schivazappa was ahead of the curve
in 1969 when he made The Frightened Woman, which gives us a vengeful heroine and a male villain so insecure when
it comes to female progress he makes Jordan Peterson look like a male
feminist ally.
The heroine is Mary, a journalist played by giallo regular
Dagmar Lassander. Mary is working on a story about male
sterilisation in India, which sets her at odds with Doctor Sayer (Philippe Leroy), a proto men's rights activist who runs a philanthropic institute and
argues that the male seed must be protected at all costs. Resembling a
nightmarish cross between a Scottish prison warden and a German
competitor at the 1936 Olympics, Sayer is convinced that women are
plotting a future where men will be unnecessary, where women can select
test tubes of sperm as easily as "buying gloves."
Despite holding up more red flags than the crowd at a China vs Morocco
football match, Sayer convinces Mary to come to his villa to pick up
some papers she needs for her research. Sayer's home screams 1969
Europe, filled with chic but uncomfortable furniture and impractical
accoutrements. He does have a nifty walk-in body dryer in his bathroom
though. Oh, and a room devoted to S&M. Oh, and a dungeon.
It's no surprise when Mary finds herself drugged and waking up chained
in said dungeon. Sayer takes the opportunity to spout his conspiracy
theories, which worryingly aren't all that different from the sort of
nonsense you'll find on today's incel forums. Sayer claims he kills his
female victims at the moment of climax, and treats Mary to a slideshow
of photos of his previous victims. Can she escape this modernist
madhouse?
It turns out Sayer is easily manipulated. Having witnessed two
scorpions make love as a child, Sayer has spent his life convinced that
if he ever has sex with a woman he will immediately die, a reversal of
the premise of Ari Aster's recent
Beau is Afraid. Hoping it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mary uses her feminine allure
to seduce and destroy the mad doctor.
Everything about The Frightened Woman betrays it as an
early example of a male filmmaker trying to wrap their head around this
new concept of feminism. Much of it is played for black comedy, but it's
also so cheesily naïve that there are plenty of unintentional laughs to
be had. Perhaps the comic highlight comes when Sayer breaks out a
replica doll which he forces Mary to make love to in his place. Or maybe
the playful montage of Sayer and Mary frolicking in the outdoors and
posing for photos.
As you might expect of an Italian movie of this period, much of
The Frightened Woman is downright bizarre. There's an
obligatory dwarf when Sayer and Mary visit a castle for lunch, a
sequence which also includes a baffling interaction between the doctor
and a waiter. There's a massive sculpture of a pair of spread-eagled
female legs with a gaping vagina from which emerges a skeleton. There's
a creepy bloke with an eye-patch who steals some gold lettering at the
start of the film and then promptly disappears. There's a girl group
performing on a train cart in the middle of nowhere. You can try to
decipher meaning from such images, but it's probably best to put it down
to "hey, it was 1969."
Of course, being an Italian movie of this period means we also get some
genuinely striking sequences. None more so than a dance number in which
Mary, clad in bandages like Milla Jovovich in
The Fifth Element, performs the most 1969 dance moves imaginable while grooving to a
fantastic psychedelic score by the great Stelvio Cipriani.
The climactic (pun intended) swimming pool seduction is staged like the
final shootout of a spaghetti western, with Cipriani laying on the
Morricone-esque trumpets as Sayer edges towards his fate.
Very much a 1969 time capsule in both its ideas and aesthetics,
The Frightened Woman can be viewed as an early attempt to
wrestle with changing gender norms. Or as an excuse to watch Dagmar
Lassander prance around in bandages.
