Horror Movie Reviews
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Title: Private Parts (1972) |
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Review of Private Parts
Private Parts is just plain weird. A teen named Cheryl who is a runaway teen is trying to put her life together. She decides to shack up in the King Edward Hotel. She doesn't realize that she will be staying in a freak show. There are the likes of murders, fetishism, peeping toms and a mad man who sleeps with a blow up doll with Cheryl's picture as it's face. If you like weird then pick up this movie asap.
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Comments for Private Parts
- Posted on 2008-10-02
Unfamiliar and anxious
This is a bizarre one. Somewhere in here is a very disturbing, very good movie. The traces of it are so strong, it must have just left the room, and it's almost as though if we hurried we could catch it. But we got distracted in this room full of perversities that we're stuck here only with a sickening sensation deep in our stomach. In other words, I can't really tell if this movie was successful at what it was trying to do or not. The back of the DVD box promised "camp", but there's something different going on here.
Basically, this movie fits smack-dab in the middle of Psycho and Peeping Tom conceptually. A sexually frustrated young woman, escaping from her abusive roommate, goes to stay in her aunt's hotel. This hotel is filled with various unsettling characters, including a gay priest, a half-dead alcoholic, and a obsessed photographer. It's a Wonderland without an Alice--and quite literally, a character named Alice is alluded to, a woman who inhabited the hotel but is already dead. Without Alice we're given Cheryl as our protagonist, but herein lies a problem: Cheryl is just about as insane and perverse as the other people in the hotel are, meaning there's very little real sanity to be gleaned from this movie.
Now, there's this whole theory about storytelling that says you can only have a sane person in insane situations or insane person in sane situations, but not both. I'm not too sure I really agree with that philosophy, but this movie makes a good case-study for comparison. The thing is, Cheryl is a believable character by all means--remember that one woman who married the stalker who almost killed her? These things do happen. But she's NOT relatable, and so its hard to really understand what we're supposed to get from this movie. Her relationship with George is disturbing, sure, but to what purpose? And I'm not really getting the point of the transgendered twist.
I think the filmmakers had watched precisely those movies Psycho and Peeping Tom, along with other sexploitation and horror movies of the time, and decided to make their own exploration into sexual anxiety. However, I'm not entirely sure what they were to have discovered and revealed, here. There is, however, the lingering sensation that they were attempting SOMETHING. At any rate, neither am I too sure I want to know what that is, either.
--PolarisDiB
Score: 2
- Posted on 2008-06-16
I'M GETTING A TATTOO OF THIS MOVIE
Favorite film of all time. Yep. It is. I can't say enough about it. I first saw it a few years back as a result of me buying it because it looked interesting and weird. After the first time I saw it, I knew that was it. This is truly an awesome film.
Seedy, not sure if you should laugh or be scared or be disturbed or all of the above, very unnerving at times, very interesting at times, very artsy at times, very "real?" at times, sensual, psycho, violent, sexy, mysterious, 42nd street seedy, hotel, very bizarre characters, SHOCKING ending, amazing score.
I am in the process currently of making a documentary on this film and am trying to get into touch with the cast (that's still alive!). If you look them up, you'll see that most of them haven't been acting in a long time. So much mystery surrounds this film. Even the writers haven't written anything since it. And Paul Bartel (director) is now dead.
HERE'S A SECRET ABOUT GETTING THE SCORE: look under Hugo Friedhoffer and it will be a double movie score cd. or you can get it on vinyl used. look for it on amazon too. amazing.
If any of you have any other information on this film, please let me know asap.
I even rented out a theater to screen it a couple months ago!
bye
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-04-27
Not the Howard Stern movie.
Sex with blow up dolls filled with water(that lead to murder) Fantastico! Young girl lost in life looking for her place leads her to a hotel filled with weirdos,just genius.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2007-06-20
Artsy and Bizarre
Plot: Teenage runaway Cheryl moves out of her best friends place after being caught 'spying' on her friend and boyfriend. She heads for Downtown La to her Aunt Marthas Old Hotel. After talking to her a little she says she can stay but she has to not get too involved with the guests in the hotel. On the way up to her room some good looking guy is standing there who happens to be 'George', for the time being the viewer and Cheryl just know hes a photographer, just one of the tenants yet identity is still kind of unknown,. Soon someone starts leaving weird notes and stories in her room, lingerie, etc .. she goes investigating and from there it just gets weirder and weirder.. it involves a disapearance of a model named 'Alice', George, a blow up doll and blood in a needle 'really odd' part and then the outrageous ending..It could have been somewhat better but overall it was a pretty good movie. The only part i was a little confused and disapointed on was the ending.
This is one of those movies where you wont forget it. The weirdness and the odd imagery is something that will stick in your head. It feels dirty, bleak and just morbid. George's room is something else. The way he tries to interact with women and the way he lets it out is so bizarre youre almost like what the hell was that? I have to say the 'suprise ending' was really a suprise considering the way George looked. Ive never seen something so bizarre. Psycho with a twist. Id give this 3.5-4 stars.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2006-05-21
Pleasant Surprise
Young runaway, Cheryl seeks refuge in her prudish aunt's highly peculiar San Francisco hotel, and in spite of her aunt's warnings, she soon finds herself swept up in the perversions of it's sorted clientèle.
Though a tad more conventional (and polished), Bartel's work usually fits in comfortably with that of Paul Morrissey and John Water's. I found the quirky nature of Private Parts pretty captivating, and Bartel manages to portray some fairly off-color goings on, which in more mean spirited, or less skilled hands would have been hard to sit through.
You have to hand it to Warner for putting the late Paul Bartel's Private Parts out on DVD (and a nice looking DVD at that). It's by no means a "big" cult favorite, but a pleasantly surprising little cult favorite that might of easily have languished in vault. I don't know what made them choose it, but I'm glad they did.
Score: 4
