Check out this super dirty trailer for exploitation classic PRIVATE VICES PUBLIC VIRTUES.
World exploitation film imprint Mondo Macabro has been digging up and dusting off international awesomeness for well over a decade (see our review of their release of German shocker DER FAN here) and today, they announced a lulu of a lurid gem, primed and ready for Blu-ray release.
Hungarian director Miklos Jancso made a major name for himself with his 1966 film THE ROUND UP, a hit at the Cannes Film Festival and a movie that astonished audiences everywhere. His mix of music, fluid camera work and nudity blended blended with his desire to use cinema as allegory and metaphor, making a series of amazing movies in his native country.
But when the 60s became the 70s, Jancso moved to Italy and embraced the more permissive, sexual and explicit style that was coming (ahem) out of that country. By the time he made 1975’s PRIVATE VICES PUBLIC VIRTUES, he was delightfully indulgent.
Here’s more from the official Mondo Macabro press release:
PRIVATE VICES PUBLIC VIRTUES is based on the famous Mayerling incident where Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria was found dead beside his 17 year old lover in an apparent joint suicide. However as with his earlier productions, the director only used history as a jumping off point. The film is pure Jancso. The long tracking shots are there, the horses are there, the naked bodies are there, as are the snatches of folk music and group singing.
The main difference between this film and his more acclaimed earlier works is that it features a host of increasingly bizarre sexual incidents. When it screened as an official entry in the 1976 Cannes Festival and viewers caught on to some of the shocking things that it contained … well, let’s just say that it caused a scandal and in some ways Jancso’s reputation never recovered. Like Borowczyk before him, he was almost written off as a one time great film maker who had strayed too far into porn and lost his artistic mojo.
In fact PRIVATE VICES PUBLIC VIRTUES now plays like an overlooked masterpiece. There really is nothing like it in world cinema. The controversy long behind us, we can see that this is one of those rare erotic productions where the point of the film lies in its excess. There’s nothing gratuitous about it. Known in Germany as THE BIG ORGY (Die Grosse Orgie), this amazing piece of subversive 70s cinema has never been well treated on home video – pirated, cut and generally not given the respect it deserves.
Mondo Macabro will release the film later this year, an HD transfer taken from the original negative.
More on the release as we get it.
In the meantime…
Here is the TOTALLY NOT SAFE FOR WORK, penis-riddled trailer! Hide the kids!
