Review: Auf euren Hochmut werde ich spucken / I spit on your Grave. Yes. 1959 The movie that killed its author

Life is stranger than fiction. And so here we have a 1959 big budgeted french movie  - with some obvious help by German distributor UNION Film who sent over their biggest stars out of their endless series of SITTENFILME (Vice/Crime movies), the Serbian Maria Petrova and the East-Prussian Renate Ewert. And yes, Italian company SIPRO/CTI/Del Duca (whoever) is also in there and they had to have Antonella Lualdi in it too.

The movie is based on the novel J'irai cracher sur vos tombes by famous French novelist, multi-talented Boris Vian who embodied french culture in the late 1940s. To make it really big, Vian was even hired to write the script as he was deeply concerned that his disturbing tale of "negro-revenge" in the United States would not be dealt with care.

He left the set,  being annoyed that the actors - who all came from French colonies - clearly do not look like the descendants of the american slaves.

On the night of the premiere, Vian got so upset about the movie that he suffered from a heart attack in the theater and died on the way to the hospital. This must be a really impactful movie. Add to that the involvement of UNION who really tried to lower every possible standard with movies like "Caverns of Vice" and the complete boycott of the movie in Germany by the church, and you get me hyped. And when we here get our hands on the original 35mm German movie print, you can imagine how full of excitement we were. WERE. 

Oh man. I'd rather have a heart attack.

Ok. Let's hear about the plot.

Christian Marquand (whose acting career spans multiple decades, with big time movies from "Flight of the Phoenix" to "Apocalypse Now," if you can believe it). Is a white-looking African-American in Memphis. His absolutely not-white-looking brother has an affair with a white girl and gets lynched. White-looker decides to go up north to get his revenge on the whites. 

He gets a job at the local bookstore in a town close to the Canadian border. That town, however, is disintegrating as a gang of bikers has found a way to blackmail the righteous citizens by luring them into "adventures" with their "dolls" and making candid photos of it. The bookstore owner does the development of the photos for them and has a drinking problem. Nevertheless, he agrees that White-looker can take over all his businesses as he desperately wants to leave this town.

The girls in this town have yearned for a man like White-looker, an they all pile up to get laid. That's what he does. That's his revenge on the guys from Memphis that hanged his brother. Smart.

Petrova is actually quite good in this

Finally he works his way up to two high-society sisters, Ewers and Lualdi. Lualdi is promised to the real man behind the motorcycle gang but falls in love with Whitey and Ewers is in love with the real man behind the motorcycle gang but goes of Whitey to - well -that's what sisters do. 

Topless strangulation scene

At a party at their estate (which looks suspiciously like a chateau and could - if at all - pass as southern property but never as one in the Boston area), they all come together, and he falls in love with Lualdi too and dumps Ewert in a nice shower scene in front of her friends.

Ewert trying to seduce our hero.

Real man behind...(you know) decides to team up with Whitey and suggests that they marry both sisters and then do the swinging thing because he is only after the heritage and finds Ewert much more juicy than Lualdi.

That is fine with White-loooker (WL) but then both of them go downtown to a mean blues bar. And in the backroom Real man (RM) shows what he is really into: heavily underage black girls - and being their first time customer. WL goes berserk, and RM is pissed. He abducts and tortures the old bookshop owner to get any information about WL. After some long and heavy waterboarding, the old bookshop onwer confesses that he knows that WL is actually black.

RM now runs to Ewert to tell her that she had somethin' goin' with a not-so-white-boy and persuades her to lure NSWB into a trap to kill him.

In comes Lualdi who sacrifices her future and herself and tries to flee with NSWB across the border to Canada.

Will they make it? Do you care?

On a blank sheet of paper, this movie got it all, fine JD scenes with topless bathing and rock-and-roll-dancing. Underage prostitutes. Wet T-shirt nipple-slips. Fistfights. A stud. Girls, Girls, Girls. A never-ending assembly of sensationist tittilation.

But no, this is such a boring and sad affair. And it's not even that the camera-work is bad or that the production values are bad, but it is all so lame. It feels like a deranged version of "Cat on Hot Tin Roof" without any of the artistic input.

Go see it for yourself if you want to, but man, this was not funny at all. Why could not UNION film produce that, right after "In the Den of Vice" - which is a completely different film from "Caverns of Vice" all together. When exactly UNION film pulled out the production is not clear, they distributed the movie in Germany and it sold respectable 2.000.000 tickets.

Petrova and Ewert were then shoved back to Germany where they entertained the Krimi-crowd. About Ewert you can read all in KRIMI! #0 and Petrowa went to the US and married actor Roy Jenson. Her son Sasha Jenson starred in Halloween 4.  

Antonalla Lualdi being interviewed

..and starred in the bonkers 
proto Giallo "Sex Party" about 
an occult sex party with 
murders in it. Yes.
It's even worse than this one here.