Save your money for something good and enjoyable

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Four tales from various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenth-century countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope.Such a crazy film. From the very plot synopsis, you might think this was something like Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted To Know". I mean, heck, these are vignettes about unusual sexual practices, right? But the intent is clearly different. Allen was being funny and not all that risqué.This film, on the other hand, has almost no humor and seems to be made for one purpose: to put as many nude women in one film as humanly possible. Granted, it is still a good film in some ways and has an artistic merit. It is not pornographic. But seeing as a similar film could have been made with only a fraction of the nudity, it is clear what the intention was.

All 4 stars are for the boobs. I took points off for the dangling penises and for the overall crap-level of the movie. This is, after all, much like a Pasolini offering, only slightly less daft and a tad less amateurish.1st story: a dweeby Frenchman has oral sex with his cousin on a beach.An aunt leaves her daughter and her nephew alone in a large house – finally. But what does the nephew do? Would you think he is smart enough to take this unique opportunity to be with his cousin? Hell no: the one time when the house is finally empty, he takes his 16 year-old cousin to climb around a rocky beach instead, where he robotically/unemotionally instructs her to perform fellatio. The guy has the passion of a dry umbrella; they might as well have hired an android to play him. There is a disgusting scene that lasts an entire minute (trust me, an eternity), in which the camera closes up on his filthy finger making circles around her mouth. (I had to fast-forward that.) She gets naked, does the deed – while he babbles on and on about tides – and then the story ends. Yes, it's that kind of crap. Romance/drama? I think not.2nd story: a religious girl visits a church and then inserts a cucumber up her triangle.With barely any dialogue, the 2nd story starts off with a beautiful blond who sees little difference between religion and pornography. She is in a church, but far from being in a praying mood, she is all but ready to explode with sexual tension. Every fresco, painting, drawing and statue make her swoon with delight, the loony, ungratified creature. God isn't exactly helping matters by insinuating that He too is getting horny, which only makes the girl lose it even more.Eventually she leaves the church (without having climaxed, the poor thing) and returns to her farm(?). An old woman runs with her through the property; they seem to be both enjoying themselves. Alas, it turns out they're not so much running gaily as it's really about the old woman actually chasing the girl; the old bag looks angry. So why did she look happy just moments ago? (These are soft-porn/erotic-flick actors so obviously one can't expect them to actually make an effort to act; that would be asking too much.) What is grandma angry at? It isn't clear, but the punishment is being locked up "three days and three nights" in a room: a room containing a pornographic book, and a couple of large cucumbers. It seems grandma is either totally daft, or she left those on purpose, for whatever bizarre reason. Is she perhaps the director of this film? Not being one to disappoint the wannabe "art crowd", who watch this film – mouth watering - while convincing themselves that this is a profound drama, the blond prepares for the much-anticipated and rather predictable cucumber insertion. Before she does it, though, she wastes about 10 minutes of precious screen time on swooning over a bunch of drawings, and fondling paintings. Bo-ring. She finally undresses (as the cucumber would have wanted, had he a mouth to utter demands with), and then - apparently with God's own words as encouragement - she sticks the green object inside. Here is the troubling bit; the director seemed to be more focused on filming the cucumber in all its incredibly fascinating greenish detail than filming the blond. Was this story intended for veggie-fetishists? Or did the director simply assume that half of his audience consisted of sexed-up cucumbers. In the end, she finally climaxes, as all women that had just returned from church and are then shoved into a room with a penis-like object do, and then escapes with ease through the window. Apparently, her tearful pleas to grandma were a fluke. She must have known she can leave the room as soon as the last cucumber had been violated (or is that the wrong word?).3rd story: A couple is doing it in a barn. A very young girl watches them, then goes to milk a cow. (How symbolic; eat your heart out, Antonioni!). A rooster shags a chicken; he is done after 3 seconds, so we cut next to Countess Bathory. She is visiting this village in order to (predictably) find some virgins whom she can slay in order to use their blood for an eternal-youth bathing session. The foolish woman obviously knew nothing about young teen virgin girls; instead of having her henchmen round them up forcibly, she could have hired a boy-band to do that, and she would have ended up with thousands instead of dozens.One question: why would a woman as homely as this want to live forever? It just makes no sense.Except of course if the REAL Countess didn't look anything like Picasso's daughter Paloma who was cast here for her very obvious talent and immense charisma – which is exactly why her movie career took off like a rocket after this film. Would Pablo have approved of this movie? Why wouldn't he; he loved crap.4th story: Lucy Borgia, her brother, and the Pope. Guess what happens in this one.You think you know? The Pope shows her pornographic drawings of horses and then tickles her breasts with a bird-feather. Now that's the stuff of cinema legend.Some of the naked females appear to be underage. Did the French police commence an inquiry into this seedy matter? Yes, they probably did: the cops spent an evening with the director, looking at nude outtakes of the minors in question. They were offered wine by their gracious host, and then went back to the station where they filed a fictional report.

Walerian Borowczyk is best known for his 1975 sleaze flick 'The Beast', and with that film in mind; I don't think I was unjustified going into this one expecting some bizarre pornography. However, it turns out that isn't what this film is at all; it's actually 'erotica', which is unfortunately not so interesting. Sure there's plenty of hot female nudity, but it's all really slow and barely erotic in the slightest. As the title suggests, this film depicts 'tales' which are immoral; and there are four in total. The first is very simple but nicely put together. We follow a pair of cousins stuck on a beach together by the tide. The older and more sexually experienced of the pair sees it as an opportunity to teach the younger a thing or two. This story is not particularly impressive on the substance front; it's very short and not a lot happens, but it is really beautifully shot and anyone that appreciates good looking cinema will surely find something to like about it.I figured the first tale would be just a taster since it is so short, but unfortunately things go downhill from there and the second tale is the worst of the four. It takes on a period setting and basically just follows a young woman locked in her bedroom. Again, the cinematography is nice (though none of the locations are anything like as good as the beach in tale one) but the tale itself drags on too long to approaching anything like what I would call 'erotica'. The film is slightly redeemed by tale number three; which is by far the best of the bunch. Elizabeth Bathory has featured in cinema a few times; though not often enough. This tale again is slow and beautiful but the story actually holds some interest and Paloma Picasso's perfect naked figure emerging from a bath is blood is likely to be the only thing I will go on to remember about this film. I figured that if the fourth tale could match the third then the film would be a success overall; but unfortunately it's a turgid affair and doesn't compliment the penultimate story as well as I'd hoped. Split into four we have one good story, one decent one and two weak ones...not enough to recommend the film for unfortunately.

Even by 1999 standards, there are moments in this film that would still be considered fairly controversial. Unfortunately, once you get past a few surprising scenes and the FREQUENT nudity, this is just a so-so movie at best, with several dull stretches. There just wasn't enough going on to keep me interested after a while, especially during the first and last segments, which were heavy on the dialogue but not the least bit entertaining. Don't waste your time on this one.