Great footage of the BART opens this fun, Frisco-shot mix of sex and Satanism, as a young university student heads into the city to find a place to work on his writing. Turns out the guy is crafting a treatise on devil worship and other arcane religious rituals, and coincidentally enough, he just happens to rent a room with a bona fide Satanist!
Zenobia (Helen Madigan) is quite the hostess, which our hero discovers as he overhears her getting it on with her familiar, a young lady Zenobia transforms from feline to female for a lengthy bout of catlike tongue action. This scene is a doozy, featuring mind-blowing gynecological close- ups that transform Ms. Madigan's vulva into a pulsating nightmare of flesh and fluid. Whether or not this is actually supposed to turn anyone on is beyond me, but it certainly held my interest, acting as a weird form of almost avant garde Cronenbergian body horror.
The next morning, Madigan finally decides to make a move on our poor hero, revealing a grotesque Satan tattoo on her abdomen in the process. The tattoo is a fascinating piece of body art that incorporates her pubis as a beard, which leads to the unforgettable sight of our protagonist effectively fornicating with Satan himself. Still, despite the free lay, the young guy is otherwise surprisingly resistant to Zenobia's Satanic overtures. Summoning the powers of darkness, she zaps him with a strange, unexplained crystal ball (a great low-fi effects scene featuring a wonderful use of negative-scratching to indicate the ball's power) before whisking him away to a Satanic orgy where he's ravished by several beautiful devil worshipers while tied to a St. Andrew's cross. Can the poor guy continue to resist their advances and escape with his soul intact?
(SPOILERS)
Unfortunately, the film can't seem to decide on an answer to that question, opting for a pretty limp cop-out that finds him back on the train – the classic exploitation non-ending of "Was it all a dream, or a vision of things yet to come?"
(END SPOILERS)
Still, despite its lack of a satisfying conclusion, DAUGHTERS succeeds overall and marks a great storefront (re)discovery from the folks at Exploitation.TV. Previously released in a severely truncated version on the Something Weird Video disc of Harry Novak's (completely unrelated) WHAM BAM THANK YOU SPACEMAN, DAUGHTERS has finally been resurrected in its full hardcore glory. Effectively mixing sex and horror often proves a tough trick for pornos, which frequently get too bogged down in scenes of fornication to build much atmosphere, but DAUGHTERS strikes a perfect balance, keeping the plot moving at a brisk enough pace – and incorporating just enough spooky genre touches – to sustain interest. It's not a particularly ambitious film, but it proves a fun enough way to kill an hour, and should make for a solid bit of Halloween viewing with the right crowd.
Zenobia (Helen Madigan) is quite the hostess, which our hero discovers as he overhears her getting it on with her familiar, a young lady Zenobia transforms from feline to female for a lengthy bout of catlike tongue action. This scene is a doozy, featuring mind-blowing gynecological close- ups that transform Ms. Madigan's vulva into a pulsating nightmare of flesh and fluid. Whether or not this is actually supposed to turn anyone on is beyond me, but it certainly held my interest, acting as a weird form of almost avant garde Cronenbergian body horror.
The next morning, Madigan finally decides to make a move on our poor hero, revealing a grotesque Satan tattoo on her abdomen in the process. The tattoo is a fascinating piece of body art that incorporates her pubis as a beard, which leads to the unforgettable sight of our protagonist effectively fornicating with Satan himself. Still, despite the free lay, the young guy is otherwise surprisingly resistant to Zenobia's Satanic overtures. Summoning the powers of darkness, she zaps him with a strange, unexplained crystal ball (a great low-fi effects scene featuring a wonderful use of negative-scratching to indicate the ball's power) before whisking him away to a Satanic orgy where he's ravished by several beautiful devil worshipers while tied to a St. Andrew's cross. Can the poor guy continue to resist their advances and escape with his soul intact?
(SPOILERS)
Unfortunately, the film can't seem to decide on an answer to that question, opting for a pretty limp cop-out that finds him back on the train – the classic exploitation non-ending of "Was it all a dream, or a vision of things yet to come?"
(END SPOILERS)
Still, despite its lack of a satisfying conclusion, DAUGHTERS succeeds overall and marks a great storefront (re)discovery from the folks at Exploitation.TV. Previously released in a severely truncated version on the Something Weird Video disc of Harry Novak's (completely unrelated) WHAM BAM THANK YOU SPACEMAN, DAUGHTERS has finally been resurrected in its full hardcore glory. Effectively mixing sex and horror often proves a tough trick for pornos, which frequently get too bogged down in scenes of fornication to build much atmosphere, but DAUGHTERS strikes a perfect balance, keeping the plot moving at a brisk enough pace – and incorporating just enough spooky genre touches – to sustain interest. It's not a particularly ambitious film, but it proves a fun enough way to kill an hour, and should make for a solid bit of Halloween viewing with the right crowd.