5/10/11

A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine (1966)

This movie is essentially about the dangers of being a cock tease. Stacey Walker plays Sharon Winters, a tempestuous sex pot who gets her kicks by luring men (and women) into thinking she's going to go all the way with them. The movie begins with a hot and heavy make out session in a car that's about to take a turn for the penetrative. She's nude, he's aroused and suddenly she starts telling him to stop. He won't, he's too worked up for that. There's a struggle then right as the title appears Sharon pops up and screams "RAPE!". This opening sequence is a very memorable one, and a wonderful introduction to our main character. A cop comes to her aid and the boy gets arrested and is sentenced to several years in a boot camp. My first thought at this point in the movie is that this will be her decent into whorishness.

Earlier in the David F. Friedman marathon they had shown a trailer for A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine where she is repeatedly referred to as "the worst kind of woman". The men in the audience are warned to avoid women like Sharon Winters, and the women are urged to see what she is so that we can be glad we're not like her. The trailer goes on to state the debauchery we're to bare witness too, and we're shown examples with scenes of Miss Winters being whipped while chained up in a dark room and performing fellatio on a coke bottle. I basically expected her to be the biggest slut ever. Boy was I wrong...





















After the trial Sharon seems unscathed and quite pleased with herself. She lays half naked on her bed and talks to her lesbian roommate in a very suggestive conversation which dances around the subject of desires for one another. Sharon goes on to tell her roommate that she has a date with a boring guy from the office and that she's in for an uneventful night. When her date arrives, you can immediately see he's uncomfortable with her forth rightness. He's a fuddy duddy and brings a nice little gift for Sharon, who's wearing nothing but a bathrobe. She pours him a giant tumbler full of rum and invites him upstairs so he can "talk to her" while she takes a bath. Cleverly positioned, we can see her undressing slowly for the camera in the mirror. He's becoming more and more uncomfortable. She gets out and lays on her bed asking him if he's ever made love to a woman. He's timid but ultimately accepts her forward invitation. After all of this prolonged stimuli you're kind of ready for them to have sex, but sure enough, what happens? "Stop it! I'm a virgin, stop! RAPE!". The first scenario left a lot to speculation but after this poor sap you begin to see that she's kind of just a crazy bitch. She laughs as he runs for the door, never to be seen again.























Her next victim is her own roommate who's been lusting after Sharon for a long time. She obliges her in some girl on girl touchy-feely time but invariably reacts the same way when things get a little too steamy. This scene ends with the famous line "I may be a bitch, but I'll never be a butch", with her kicking her roommates ass to the curb.






















The next victim is my favorite. A new co-worker, Lowell Carter, a handsome all around good guy. He's instantly attracted to her and they begin to date. She plays it cool at first, obviously wanting to extend her fun. Long kisses at the end of the night, and he's very respectable. He takes his blue balls and leaves in peace. Then he begins to have very salacious and quite violent dreams about Sharon. This is where most of the trailer footage comes from. Her being chained and whipped by him, and then the reverse, her with devilish make-up in sex black undies whipping him. My favorite scene is in one of these dreams. He's sitting at a bar, shaky, smoking a cigarette while she's stripping coming at him from the other end of the long stretch. She takes off her top and we see these ridiculously huge pasties that look like giant black nipples. The look on his face really sums up our feeling watching all of this go one. At that point you're pretty much ready for Sharon to just screw someone, and who better than poor Lowell. He's been so nice and I actually started to believe that he meant it when he said that he was falling in love with her. Her manipulative games planted this ugly seed of aggression in his mind, eventually bringing out his violent urges which explodes on screen in a way I'll resist from mentioning as to not engage in too many spoilers.






















Lowell was an ok guy, and that was the most extended tease yet. After he's out of the picture, how could we go on? Well, let's just say she meets her match and her life is altered, forcibly, and in a very ironic way. If not so comically fitting, it's bruteness could be mistaken for chauvinistic. You can't really think in those terms as far as sexploitaton movies go, or David F. Friedman for that matter. Sharon Winters really could be considered "the worst kind of woman" but not for the reasons I would have automatically assumed. This is a very erotic and stylish film. I was pleasantly surprised by it's steady incline of tension and the amusing outcome. This was my favorite movie in this film fest of the ones I had not already seen (stay tuned for my review of Blood Feast) and was a perfect choice for the middle slot, as it perked me up for the remaining films. Stacey Walker was charming, funny, had a great/bad laugh and teetered between being sexy and skanky perfectly. She spends most of the movie being naked or half dressed and yet there is relatively no sex at all. This is a very special roughie, possibly my all time favorite of the genre and I give it my utmost recommendation! I'll be buying my own copy very soon!





















Stick around, there's more to come in this David F. Friedman marathon. Next we take a break from sex and focus on what made the Godfather of Gore infamous in BLOOD FEAST <3

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