During approximately the second reel of PAT, I thought this Baron Corvo movie closely resembled the slapdash, in-your-face experimental porn exercises of Alberto Cavallone. Sure enough, checking IMDb for the credits it turns out to be one of Cavallone's final efforts.
Heavily political in content (most of the time), Cavallone was clearly an underground filmmaker thumbing his nose at the establishment in Italy. For latter-day Video Era audiences (this includes me, as his work was never imported to America during his lifetime), it is the outré, no-limits nature of his work that appeals -the weirdness rather than any cinematic quality.
Since PAT is hardcore porn it permits Cavallone to stretch himself further than usual. It's a companion piece to his notorious BEING CAPTURED/BABY SITTER (with many of the same actors), a film that circulates in several different video versions with a minor cult following. Cavallone did a two for one -making two films at once, with PAT resembling a 1-day wonder and making CAPTURED look almost professional by comparison.
SPOILERS ALERT:
PAT will have a much harder time gathering any fans, because it is so relentlessly anti-entertaining. At once a XXX precursor of THE CRYING GAME (more on that later) and fake-snuff movie, it is so poorly put together, with the production values of a backyard movie (resembling the Ray Dennis Steckler homemade short subjects of the early '60s rather than his crude '70s porn), that it is easy to reject in toto. I sat fascinated by the awfulness of the "Baron's" poor technique and idiotic ideas.
Film opens with a floral setting, though it's supposed to be a Middle Eastern scene in a desert, with a sheik deflowering a belly dancer, joined for a threesome by the dwarf Petit Loup from BEING CAPTURED. The sheik chokes her to death and buries her.
A tall blonde filmmaker is shooting this, styled as a snuff film. The visuals are relentlessly ugly, a Cavallone trademark. Oddest touch is the absence of any gore.
Second vignette has the dwarf concocting and then imbibing a magic potion which turns him into Frank, the actor who played the sheik. He's the creep who appeared as the chauffeur in BABY SITTER, and IMDb has him credited as 1-shot "Marc Aletti" in its CAPTURED cast list, but I'm matching him to Joseph Fine/Franco Coltorti instead.
Frank has sex with a sleeping beauty as the familiar classical music from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" plays. Oddball use of classical themes is favored by Cavallone throughout the film, often humorously, perhaps to indicate to the viewer not to take anything too seriously. The dwarf reappears and has sex with her too.
Film's piece de resistance occurs mid-way through when the blonde filmmaker has sex with a blond stud, and in a freeze-frame (plus his astonished response), camera pans down to reveal that she is a chick-with-dick. She's slim with very pretty nipples, so the audience (and stud) are properly fooled, a la THE CRYING GAME a full 10 years later. Instead of revulsion, the stud engages in 69 with she/he Pat, which comes off as convincingly over-the-line, as Cavallone intended.
Next sequence is scored with the song "Lili Marlene" as Pat pretends to be a Marlene Dietrich type in an overly cheap and unatmospheric fake cabaret sequence, with a piano player wearing a pith helmet for no apparent reason. There's more she/he sex.
An attractive brunette Monica (Sabrina Mastrolorenzi, title star of BABY SITTER) has joined the little movie troupe and is cast as a nurse, having sex with Frank, all bandaged up. He chokes her to death, but instead of burying her hides her out in a shack, still alive, defying the snuff premise.
Cavallone at this point seems to freak out, as Monica dances around the backyard nude while the dwarf in a monster mask plays pan pipes. After this no-budget "lyrical" pageant blows over, Monica is electrocuted by a dildo, more snuff action, but with poor continuity she's soon back in the shack, unharmed.
Lovely Dominique St. Claire shows up for the next vignette, in which Frank wears a cape as a road company Dracula type, and extremely poor special lighting effects accompany an intended sex/horror sequence in a spooky, cobwebbed house. With the dwarf as cinematographer, Frank stabs Dominique in the chest after sex, more snuff action, and her corpse is buried outside.
Monica manages to escape Frank's clutches, while the dwarf is photographing more he/she Pat and the stud having sex. Film's finale is beyond cheap: we hear the police sirens and a voice-over indicates they've arrived but Cavallone fails to stage this "you're under arrest scene" at all. Final shot is of Pat and her gay boy still smooching.
Perhaps Cavallone was merely ahead of his time, as nearly 30 years later no-budget videos pretending to be films are all the rage, made as crudely and artlessly as his movies. Was he a trailblazer in "cinema de crap"? I prefer to place him in film history in the dubious "pretentious but thoroughly inept" camp.
Heavily political in content (most of the time), Cavallone was clearly an underground filmmaker thumbing his nose at the establishment in Italy. For latter-day Video Era audiences (this includes me, as his work was never imported to America during his lifetime), it is the outré, no-limits nature of his work that appeals -the weirdness rather than any cinematic quality.
Since PAT is hardcore porn it permits Cavallone to stretch himself further than usual. It's a companion piece to his notorious BEING CAPTURED/BABY SITTER (with many of the same actors), a film that circulates in several different video versions with a minor cult following. Cavallone did a two for one -making two films at once, with PAT resembling a 1-day wonder and making CAPTURED look almost professional by comparison.
SPOILERS ALERT:
PAT will have a much harder time gathering any fans, because it is so relentlessly anti-entertaining. At once a XXX precursor of THE CRYING GAME (more on that later) and fake-snuff movie, it is so poorly put together, with the production values of a backyard movie (resembling the Ray Dennis Steckler homemade short subjects of the early '60s rather than his crude '70s porn), that it is easy to reject in toto. I sat fascinated by the awfulness of the "Baron's" poor technique and idiotic ideas.
Film opens with a floral setting, though it's supposed to be a Middle Eastern scene in a desert, with a sheik deflowering a belly dancer, joined for a threesome by the dwarf Petit Loup from BEING CAPTURED. The sheik chokes her to death and buries her.
A tall blonde filmmaker is shooting this, styled as a snuff film. The visuals are relentlessly ugly, a Cavallone trademark. Oddest touch is the absence of any gore.
Second vignette has the dwarf concocting and then imbibing a magic potion which turns him into Frank, the actor who played the sheik. He's the creep who appeared as the chauffeur in BABY SITTER, and IMDb has him credited as 1-shot "Marc Aletti" in its CAPTURED cast list, but I'm matching him to Joseph Fine/Franco Coltorti instead.
Frank has sex with a sleeping beauty as the familiar classical music from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" plays. Oddball use of classical themes is favored by Cavallone throughout the film, often humorously, perhaps to indicate to the viewer not to take anything too seriously. The dwarf reappears and has sex with her too.
Film's piece de resistance occurs mid-way through when the blonde filmmaker has sex with a blond stud, and in a freeze-frame (plus his astonished response), camera pans down to reveal that she is a chick-with-dick. She's slim with very pretty nipples, so the audience (and stud) are properly fooled, a la THE CRYING GAME a full 10 years later. Instead of revulsion, the stud engages in 69 with she/he Pat, which comes off as convincingly over-the-line, as Cavallone intended.
Next sequence is scored with the song "Lili Marlene" as Pat pretends to be a Marlene Dietrich type in an overly cheap and unatmospheric fake cabaret sequence, with a piano player wearing a pith helmet for no apparent reason. There's more she/he sex.
An attractive brunette Monica (Sabrina Mastrolorenzi, title star of BABY SITTER) has joined the little movie troupe and is cast as a nurse, having sex with Frank, all bandaged up. He chokes her to death, but instead of burying her hides her out in a shack, still alive, defying the snuff premise.
Cavallone at this point seems to freak out, as Monica dances around the backyard nude while the dwarf in a monster mask plays pan pipes. After this no-budget "lyrical" pageant blows over, Monica is electrocuted by a dildo, more snuff action, but with poor continuity she's soon back in the shack, unharmed.
Lovely Dominique St. Claire shows up for the next vignette, in which Frank wears a cape as a road company Dracula type, and extremely poor special lighting effects accompany an intended sex/horror sequence in a spooky, cobwebbed house. With the dwarf as cinematographer, Frank stabs Dominique in the chest after sex, more snuff action, and her corpse is buried outside.
Monica manages to escape Frank's clutches, while the dwarf is photographing more he/she Pat and the stud having sex. Film's finale is beyond cheap: we hear the police sirens and a voice-over indicates they've arrived but Cavallone fails to stage this "you're under arrest scene" at all. Final shot is of Pat and her gay boy still smooching.
Perhaps Cavallone was merely ahead of his time, as nearly 30 years later no-budget videos pretending to be films are all the rage, made as crudely and artlessly as his movies. Was he a trailblazer in "cinema de crap"? I prefer to place him in film history in the dubious "pretentious but thoroughly inept" camp.