#plot of fear

One of my micro-obsessions, which must stay shrimpy because it doesn't have a lot to feed on, is Paolo Cavara. Best known as one of the three MONDO CANE creators, Cavara split from the group following a car crash involving himself and Gaultiero Jacopetti that killed the latter's paramour Belinda Lee. A thinly-veiled version of that story is contained in THE WILD EYE (1967), a hybrid shockumentary and tawdry drama that Cavara made seemingly just as a big, expensive way to say "Gaultiero Jacopetti is a fucking asshole." With their history in mind, it is utterly fascinating, and I think mandatory for anyone seeking a really complete picture of the Mondo story. On his own, Cavara is most famous for the extremely salacious (even for the genre) giallo THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, which uses documentary footage of a parasitic wasp to explain that the killer is gutting his victims and fucking the hole. But the movie he made that shocked me beyond compare is certainly PLOT OF FEAR, which I discovered this fall and which I have now seen several times just to try to wrap my mind around it. It is also known as BLOODY PEANUTS.

A pervert resembling a computer science teacher in a silk caftan is strangled by an angry hooker, who then boards a bus and is promptly beaten to death by someone with a huge wrench. Later, another sex worker is ambushed in a park and burned alive. These are just a few of the murders attributed to the Cartoon Killer, who leaves at the scene illustrations from the disturbing children's book Shock-headed Peter. The case must be cracked not by Tom Skerritt, who pops in and out just to scream senselessly at his colleagues, but by Michele Placido as the intolerable Inspector Lomenzo. Much screen time is devoted to Lomenzo's icky romantic problems -- I know it seems silly to say "This giallo protagonist is a misogynist!" but he really is a walking bundle of red flags -- and meanwhile, we slowly learn the story of the Wildlife Friends Club, a group of rich and powerful scumbags being targeted by the Cartoon Killer.

To say more would be to spoil the many shocks of this film, which takes the viewer from "What?" to "WHAT?" to "WHAT?!" Pornographic cartoons, perverts cavorting with tigers and chimpanzees, people randomly fucking on the side of the highway, and a smattering of Mondo-flavored nonsense makes PLOT OF FEAR the movie that has it all. Sometimes it's a little more John Waters and other times it's a little more Pier Paolo Passolini, and at times I wondered whether it was supposed to be a comedy, but I think it's too angry and vile for that to be entirely true. Genre probably matters less to Paolo Cavara than just taking depraved potshots at the aristocracy. I considered writing a version of this review that really breaks down every revolting minute of this crazy movie, and maybe some day I will since I can't seem to stop watching it!, but in the meantime I wanted to preserve its totally disgusting impact for the uninitiated viewer -- and hopefully I've done a good job of enticing you.

Actually, let me make a suggestion: For those who have tired of trotting out the same old National Lampoon comedies and chaste Hallmark romances every Thanksgiving, why not spice up your family affair with PLOT OF FEAR? The kiddies will love the animated adventure of a sex slave whose iron snatch demolishes a giant, uh, drilldo, and detective Eli Wallach's advanced voyeurism technology will send dad straight to the Sharper Image catalogue with plenty of Christmas inspiration. Just tell grandma that's Tom Selleck gaslighting his Black girlfriend about the new nymphomaniac he's banging in her hideously tacky apartment -- one mustache is as good as another at her age -- and if you need to scare your teenage terrors straight, nothing takes the excitement out of an orgy like the Wildlife Friends Club's mystery blowjob game. PLOT OF FEAR truly has a little something for everyone, and it just might be your family's new holiday tradition.