Touches You

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Austrian aristocrat Kurt Von Sepper (Richard Burton) is a celebrated WWI pilot with a striking blue beard and connections to the fledgling neo-Nazis. He's a real ladykiller. He meets and marries American vaudeville performer Anne (Joey Heatherton). After moving into his castle, she makes disturbing discoveries including his seeming inability to consummate their marriage. He gives her the keys to the castle with a golden key which leads to a freezer filled with his murdered former wives. He recounts to her the story of each wive and their faults which led to him murdering them. Anne plots her escape as she listens to his tales of horror.This is sold as an erotic thriller with an international cast of beauties such as Raquel Welch. Joey Heatherton has a sincere bouncy cuteness which fits the sincere vaudeville role. However, she is not the best of actresses. She has to be both inwardly horrified and outwardly placating the crazed killer. Her inconsistencies only add to the camp of this movie. Richard Burton is still a powerful actor but the material is strictly B-level. There are some very memorable kill scenes like the elephant tusk chandelier and the hawk. The erotic thrills are fleeting and the horror is old style weak. Most of it is in flashbacks which takes away any intensity. It is still a memorable camp classic.

In the past, I’d watched three other versions (four, if one includes Charles Chaplin’s variation MONSIEUR VERDOUX [1947]) about the famous fictional serial killer Landru – the 1944 Edgar G. Ulmer/John Carradine and 1963 Claude Chabrol/Charles Denner BLUEBEARD and the W. Lee Wilder/George Sanders BLUEBEARD’S TEN HONEYMOONS from 1960.Actually, this one is best approached as “Euro-Cult” (what with its flashes of nudity from a bevy of international beauties) rather than a historical piece – BLUEBEARD, incidentally, was a production of the Salkinds, soon to enjoy critical success with Richard Lester’s “Three Musketeers” films and, eventually, the money would come pouring in with the “Superman” franchise. Besides, the tone is unsurprisingly one of black comedy – with the titular ladies’ man revealed as an impotent who’s forced to kill a succession of spouses so as to keep this embarrassing fact a secret! Incidentally, it also transpires that events as depicted on-screen may well be fabricated since the real reason for the killings only emerges towards the end: “Bluebeard” – a WWI air ace – recounts his romantic misadventures to his latest conquest, a young American showgirl, after she’s cajoled by her husband towards the discovery of a secret passage leading to the vault wherein all the bodies of his former wives lie frozen! The treatment is somewhat heavy-handed (with obvious predatory symbols, for instance): its connotations to Nazism, too, prove unnecessary – and, consequently, Bluebeard’s demise/come-uppance seems fateful when it should have been slyly ironic. All of which results in an uneven film with a tendency towards camp – though undeniably abetted by the overall handsome look (“Euro-Cult” regular Gabor Pogany is the cinematographer) and a typically imposing score by Ennio Morricone; incidentally, I had used portions of a funereal motif from the soundtrack of this film for my final short during the NYFA course I took in Hollywood a couple of years back! Individual contributions by the star cast, then, are also variable: to begin with, Richard Burton’s thespian skills were often misused during this particular period – lending his services to interesting but often ill-advised ventures (three more of which I watched only recently, namely DOCTOR FAUSTUS [1967], CANDY [1968] and THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY [1972]); in this case, he sports a silly colored beard (the script having interpreted the title all-too-literally, but which might actually be an indication that it shouldn’t be taken seriously) and looks alternately bored and exasperated throughout! The ladies are all easy on the eyes but also surprisingly willing, with Joey Heatherton as the stunning current bride getting the lion’s share of the running-time. The others – in order of appearance – are Karin Schubert (when Burton’s deficiency, excused at first by a period of convalescence ostensibly suffering from a war wound, can no longer be concealed, she threatens to expose him to public ridicule and this triggers off his homicidal ‘urge’!); Virna Lisi (enjoying herself as she drives Burton to distraction with her incessant singing of corny love songs!); Nathalie Delon (a model whose inexperience in love leads her to take lessons from prostitute Sybil Danning, but the two become instant lovers!); Raquel Welch (a nymphomaniac who attempts to stifle the habit by, ahem, donning it i.e. she becomes a nun!); Marilu' Tolo (again, fun as an outspoken feminist – who even kicks Burton where it hurts! – but who also turns out to be a closet masochist); and Agostina Belli (as an outwardly-innocent but actually spoilt child-bride).Going back to that “Euro Cult” comment, BLUEBEARD may have been influenced by the giallo work of Mario Bava – with its set of glamorous female victims (as in BLOOD AND BLACK LACE [1964]) and the novel methods of assassination (in the wake of A BAY OF BLOOD [1971]). Still, amid its forced Hitchcock references (the embalmed mother from PSYCHO [1960] and the falcon attack a' la THE BIRDS [1963]), it appears that Burton & Co. were consciously emulating the previous year’s success THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971) – a low-budgeted but stylish vehicle for horror icon Vincent Price. Of course, one can’t forget to mention the film’s affinity with the classic Ealing black comedy KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949) in its nonchalant, inevitably comical attitude to murder.

I never thought I'd see a movie featuring the likes of Richard Burton and Virna Lisi be stolen by the likes of Joey Heatherton, but here it is. BLUEBEARD, directed by the venerable hack Edward Dmytryk, has some fun things in it, but Burton as the legendary wife killer is not one of them. Is he Welsh? German? French? Who knows? His wives appear to come from every corner of the world --- his latest being Heatherton, as a showgirl on a European tour. She uncovers his secret and is soon acting like Nancy Drew in a mini skirt even though the film is set shortly after WWI. Some of this is amusing, none of it is very good and Burton is very bad. With Raquel Welch as a nymphomaniac nun and Nathalie Delon, who names her breasts (it's that kind of movie).

BLUEBEARD is an oddly beautiful film with beautiful sets, beautiful costumes, beautiful European women, and Richard Burton's beautifully blue beard. The film is a retelling of the "Bluebeard" story that takes place in an "almost" Nazi Germany. The Nazi uniforms are not really Nazi uniforms and the swastika is not really a swastika, but this helps add to the fantasy aspect of the film. The idea of watching a pseudo-erotic, black comedy about real Nazis would be a little tacky even for BLUEBEARD, which is abundant in tackiness.The movie is about sex and sadism, but never goes far enough with either the sex or the sadism, even by 1972 standards. Baron Von Sepper (Richard Burton) attracts and is attracted to a series of beautiful women, whom he courts and then marries. Once married to the various objects of his obsession, the sticky part of consummating the marriage rears its ugly head (or fails to, more precisely). An Oedipus complex, a plane crash, and some kind of chemical reaction, that has turned Von Sepper's beard blue, have all combined to render the poor Baron impotent. To save himself from embarrassment, Von Sepper must kill off his wives once they discover his inability to perform. This is where the film is remarkably realistic with its examination of the lengths a man will go to hide that he is not a functional man.I bought Richard Burton as the reserved Nazi baron who is incapable of accepting his shortcomings. He is funny in the scenes where he is trying not to have sex. The many failings of the movie are the fault of the director, Edward Dmytryk. From the incredibly slow pace to the un-dramatic use of flashback right after flashback, the film alternates between the boring and the beautiful. The director also annoys the viewer with an obvious correlation between the sadism of Nazi Germany and the sadism of Bluebeard. Anyone familiar with history knows that the Nazis were sadistic. No one needs this movie to try to drive that point home.