Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Robert J. Maxwell I observe that it's dubbed chiefly because most of these inexpensive imports -- and all the imports from the 1950s in their ENTIRETY -- seem to be dubbed by the same half-dozen people. They're vaguely British, very precisely articulated, and overemphatic. The men seem to be aiming for a particular image: a brute of a construction worker with a coffee-grinder voice, although if he is a gentleman he may sound more like a pouf. The women's voices show less differentiation. Mostly, they sound like some winsome lady behind the check-out counter at the local library, sweet with efficiency and all set to help you find that book on Mycenaean pottery.I don't know how much the story is worth bothering with. It's early in World War II, a young Italian aristocrat returns to his majestic villa with a gift from an Abyssinian chief, namely his daughter. According to the local customs, she is now his slave. The aristocrat is drained by his snooty wife and enters a refractory state on his first night home. Little does he know that in his absence, his wife has been getting it on with the pretty young secretary. Now you've got three women and one man. The women are either getting it on with one another or jealous. Make a mental note. You cannot have more than one woman dominant in a household. I refer you to the work of the anthropologist S. F. Nadel, who discovered that in a polygamous society, when the wives live in the same huts, witchcraft accusations soar. If the wives live in separate huts -- no witchcraft. Q. E. D.Anyway -- will someone help me down from this pulpit? My shoe seems to be stuck. Thank you. Anyway, all kinds of emotional tangles develop, not really worth explaining.What DOES need explaining is how an Italian aristocrat can return to his luxurious mansion with a native girl, shed his uniform, and decide to become a writer overnight. What do you do, just quit Il Duce's Army when you feel like it? In wartime? What the hell kind of an Army do you call that? How come I couldn't do it, not even in peacetime? No wonder Il Duce managed to lose every colony he had, including Italian Salamiland.But to get to the important part, there is an abundance of female nudity, frontal, dorsal, medial, proximal, distal, sagittal, coronal, transverse, external, and internal. In particular, you get to know Lilli Carati's nipples on a first-name basis. You can even discern the seventeen lactiferous ducts opening onto each one. There is a good deal of simulated sex in this ménage but most of it is cunnilingus or an approximation of it. It's a shame that the film aims so low because there's a lot of potential in the plot. I'm not think so much of "Lady Chatterly's Lover" as I'm thinking of Joseph Losey's "The Servant." It's masterfully done, while this one is mostly junk.

Michael_Elliott Alcove, The (1984) ** (out of 4) Interesting tale from D'Amato about a Captain (Al Cliver) returning from a battle in Africa where he was given a slave, Zerbal (Laura Gemser) as a gift for saving a tribal leader. Back at home his wife (Lilli Carati) is having an affair with her secretary (Annie Belle) but soon Zerbal begins to come between them but it might be more than just your typical lesbian affair. I was really surprised with this film because it's actually very well-made and features a pretty good story. One is probably going to walk into this thing expecting nothing but a sex romp and while there is a lot of sex it really never takes center stage over the story being told. D'Amato made a very long career out of sex movies so this one here is certainly a lot different than many of the items he was releasing around this period. What really stands out is the actual production. The film takes place during the 1940s so we've got the older cars, costumes and set design, all of which is extremely good looking. Another plus is the cinematography from D'Amato, which to me is his greatest aspect (a lot better than his directing). All of this makes for a pretty interesting atmosphere and most of the sex scenes are quite erotic (though some enter a camp level). The film also benefits from an fun Euro-cult cast with Gemser leading the way as the obvious sex object to everyone. If you've seen any of her films with D'Amato then you should know what to expect. Belle really stands out and delivers a fine performance as does Carati. Cliver, God bless him, is his usual fun self. What keeps the movie from being even better is its rather slow pacing and it also goes on a tad bit too long at 93-minutes. I think a good ten minutes could have been cut out and we really wouldn't have lost anything story-wise. The film is pretty straight-forward and is well-made but at the end of the day this here is still going to be for D'Amato completest only.

jaibo D'Amato comes over all Tinto Brass in this tale of fascism and twisted passion set in 1930s Italy. A faded aristocrat military officer returns from the Abyssinian war with a dusky slave girl as a prize; at first, his bisexual wife and his secretary (who is also the wife's lover) dislike the girl intensely, making racist comments about her skin colour and "smell." But soon the girl charms her way into the mistress' affection, supplanting both secretary and husband. This causes jealousies to fester.The aristocrat has other problems. He tries to make a career as a writer but this doesn't bring in enough cash to pay off his debts, so he buys a movie camera and decides to make stag films as a means of income. Of course, wife, secretary and slave are supposed to star in the film. The two strands of the story come together in a film within the film, as the secretary is sexually humiliated on camera by the two other women and a grimy old gardener. At this point in the film, the slave girl seems to be gaining ascendance, but the secretary brings in her ally, the master's cadet son, and they put the Other to death in flames, holding hands as she burns in a perfect picture of that alliance between the middle classes and militarism which was political fascism.The film has many intriguing features. The slave's rise from household toy to manipulative mistress is a Steerpike-like climb which ultimately does her no good – suggesting that colonised people who play the white man's game will ultimately be undone in their European ambitions as the priggish right-wing white middle classes wreak their revenge. The aristocratic man's trajectory is also compelling, from "great white god" (as the secretary describes him) through failed literary gent to pornographer – almost the trajectory of European society since the war (which makes the film possibly a prophecy of the future as much as a vision of the past).The film is measured and plays out like a classy piece of eroticism, but the drama continually brews away with shifting alignments and eruptions of desire always around every corner to keep the narrative moving. The film offers no succour to either liberationists nor liberals, as it predicts the failure of individual identity politics alongside a portrait of permissiveness as terminal decadence. D'Amato's own gradual slide into pornography was in process as the film was made and with his muse Laura Gemser as the Abyssinian slave, one could also take the film as a kind of mordant and resigned comment on his own career, a cultured and privileged European male dragged down into a mess of pornographic pottage by his own financial needs and his putting before his own society a beautiful black Emanuelle.

The_Void The Alcove pairs Joe D'Amato with Laura Gemser and sees both of these cult icons at their sordid and sleazy best! Joe D'Amato made a hell of a lot of sleaze films; and while I do consider myself a fan of his, it has to be said that a large proportion of his output is rather rubbish...but not so with this film. The Alcove is as good a porn flick as it is a character study, and that's what puts this film at the very top of the director's filmography - by not focusing on the sex, when we do get to see it - it means so much more. The plot line is actually really good, too. We focus on a country house where the house Mistress, Alessandra, is sharing a sordid affair with the secretary Wilma while her husband is away fighting Zulus. He returns from the war bearing gifts for the women; and he also brings home a slave girl named Zerbal, whom he was given for saving the life of her father. The slave soon starts to get used to life in the house and decides that she doesn't want to be the slave anymore. After noticing the two women having sex, Zerbal decides to worm her way into the Mistress' affections...This film absolutely could not have been made today and the reason for that is the inherent racism running throughout it. Laura Gemser's character gets all manner of vicious insults thrown at her throughout; though it doesn't really make for uncomfortable viewing given Gemser's obvious beauty. Her role here is somewhat different from the strong Emanuelle character we're more used to seeing her as; although the role does become more like what we're used to as the film progresses. The film becomes an expose of sexual desires between five different people all pulling different ways and it makes for fascinating viewing; the fact that sixty percent of the main cast is made up of beautiful women doesn't do it any harm either! The jewel in the crown is Gemser, of course, but her co-stars Lilli Carati and Annie Belle are very easy on the eyes too! Being a D'Amato film you can expect plenty of sex and he doesn't disappoint. There's not quite as much quantity compared to some of his other opus', but this is more than made up for in quality as the sex scenes are very well filmed; particularly those between Lilli Carati and Laura Gemser. Overall, this really is an excellent film that I would class as a must see for anyone who enjoys sleazy Euro-porn. It's a rare one, but finding it is very much worth the effort!