Ψυχεδελικός Ερωτισμός

Callisto1.0

Albert Zugsmith RankedHere are the descriptions from letterboxd and youtube (don't watch on youtube; the quality is terrible):A young man lies by a highway with a rifle, shooting people in cars. As the police close in, he kills himself. In flashbacks, his girlfriend explains why it all happened.Bizarre sleaze from Producer-Director Albert Zugsmith about a repressed young man's sexual fetish with his rose garden. His lusty neighbor tries to seduce him, but unfortunately things go wrong, very wrong.The above descriptions do not prepare you for what you are about to see. It's a wild ride right from the beginning. It's definitely his best camerawork as well. All driving is done without any use of any background projection, and he films the car scenes in such a way like cinematic poetry. The score by Joe Greene is also the best I've heard. If you thought Funeral Parade of Roses was weird but still want to check out rose-related films, then check out Psychedelic Sexualis, aka On Her Bed of Roses!For black-and-white cinematography, this has to be one of my favorites. Everything looks white but the contrast looks so good. It gives it an avant-garde surreal look to everything. Albert Zugsmith is now among my favorite directors of all time. What a visionary! Unfortunately this one has some boring tendencies despite being interesting overall. It could have been slightly shorter, but hey, I'm just glad this exists and available to watch. It started as 5★ and slowly got worse. Bummer.

calum4.0

Writer / director Albert Zugsmith piles lunacy, fetishes, Electra and Oedipal complexes on top of each other in an intriguing thriller that sees mother-fixated Stephen (Ronald Warren) going gun-crazy after meeting father-obsessed nymphomaniac Melissa (Sandra Lynn) and her sex-crazed mother, Joanna (Barbara Hines). Unctuous psychiatrist Lee Gladden is on hand to try and makes sense of it all. Zugsmith's film would have been improved by some judicious editing, but despite some rambling sequences, the central theme of dysfunctional parents emotionally damaging their children shines through. The story is absorbing with some tremendous black-and-white photography, an avant-jazz score and some decent acting performances, including a small belly dancing turn by the ever-groovy Pat Barrington. The opening 15 minutes are a tour-de-force of psycho story-telling.

pkazee3.0

Albert Zugsmith may be best known to some of my friends as the producer of Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL and Douglas Sirk's WRITTEN ON THE WIND. Others might know him as either the producer of THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, or as the director of CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER. And then there are those oddball few who know him as the director of films such as SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE, VIOLATED!, and... this one!PSYCHEDELIC SEXUALIS (aka ON HER BED OF ROSES) opens with a young man in a haze crushing a thorny rose in one hand until blood runs over it. He then loads an upright bass case into a car and drives like a maniac up to a vantage point where he pulls a rifle out of that case and go all Charles Whitman on the drivers of passing cars. He then turns the rifle on himself.Next we meet the troubled fella's next door neighbor, a looney and lustful young woman with a serious hard-on for her father, her shrink, and any man she can manage to claim before her horrifically competitive mother does.And then there's some topless belly dancing and groovy sexcapades.Eventually, the young woman's sessions with her shrink lead her to claiming to be responsible for the death of the boy next door, and multiple flashbacks later, we learn why it is that she thinks that to be the case.Sadly, as insane as her conversations with her shrink are, they begin to grow tiresome after the first hour of this 101 minute movie. Had Zugsmith cut 15-20 minutes, he'd have certainly had a higher-rated film on his hands.