User Reviews

The ostensible (professed) theme of FADE TO RED (aka DEVIATES IN LOVE) is secret desires, though the thing most repressed by the film is narrative coherence. Cobbled together out of a bunch of stock footage and credited to one "Max Miller" (at least in the version I saw), it bears all the hallmarks a Ray Dennis Steckler atrocity.

The film starts out strong with footage of a sexual torture session that the narration ascribes to the Inquisition. The Inquisition, the voice intones, was largely attributable to an overly repressive church seeking outlet for its repressed desires via alternate, sadistic means. The images onscreen depict women bound to tables being whipped and forcibly penetrated, with a surfeit of ejaculations suggesting the footage was culled from a different source, probably a racy European loop.

Unfortunately, after this promising intro, things settle into tedium. The narrator goes on, informing us that sexual repression continues into the modern day, and that people throughout society seek unorthodox outlets for their carnal urges. The main focus of the narration - delivered by what turns out to be a psychologist - is Claire, who harbors secret voyeuristic tendencies rooted in repressed lesbian inclinations. This sets up a loop-carrier structure featuring a young woman walking around a suburban neighborhood, peeking into windows and "watching" insert footage of couples fornicating. For anyone familiar with PERVERTED PASSION, PEEPING TOM, or any of Ray's other umpteen treatments of the subject, this should prove awfully familiar.

Far more interesting than the film itself are its competing versions. The one I first saw, released on the Video Home Library label as FADE TO RED, contained the full opening with the Inquisition footage and the commencement of the doctor's narration. A competing, film-sourced release from Alpha Blue Archives, under the title DEVIATES IN LOVE, offers a clearer picture but unfortunately lops off the first 5 minutes, presumably due to print damage. Completely omitted is the entire torture scene as well as Claire's first experiment with voyeurism. Despite this truncation, however, this version also offers one interesting extension - a lengthy urination scene, referenced by reviewer _lor, that is completely missing from the VHL release. The film's narration makes a big deal of this final encounter being stupendously degrading, so it proves quite confusing when all we see is vanilla sex in the VHL version. The Alpha Blue copy makes good on this promise, featuring gushing waterworks from both parties and qualifying as one of the more jaw-dropping pee scenes I've ever witnessed. A truly uncut composite would probably run around 62 minutes, though given that the urination is about the only interesting thing in the film, the 53-minute version should work well enough for anyone curious. Honestly, the missing 9 minutes is only time you'd regret wasting anyhow.