Agony of Love/Girl With the Hungry Ey

Rating:
Summary: Top-heavy Twosome
Review: The talents of Pat Barrington and the late actor/director William Rotsler are on display in this latest Something Weird double feature, with Barrington making the greater impression. She's perfectly cast in "The Agony of Love" (1966) about a lonely housewife who takes to hooking while her neglectful husband is away at work--sort of a low-rent "Belle du Jour." Barrington looks appropriately classy when she needs to, and when her clothes come off she looks sensational. She's definitely got presence. Barrington even does a halfway decent job of projecting her character's inner turmoil, which is a bit more acting skill than I would've expected from her. (OK, I wasn't expecting any acting skill at all.) Too bad the post-dubbed dialog makes everyone sound like they're in cheap cartoon. "The Agony of Love" is also director Rotsler's best movie, or at least the best one I've seen so far. Unlike many of his other films ("Mantis in Lace," or this disk's second feature) this one seems less padded. His script allows for some character development (not that they're incredibly deep characters, but still...), and the continuity errors that pepper his other movies are minimal. He appears in the movie as well (billed as Shannon Carse), as Barrington's "beatnik" lover who slaps her around.

Rotsler's writing and directing skills take a nosedive on the second feature on this disk, 1967's "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." Reportedly this was Rotsler's attempt to cash in on the success of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" While "Hungry Eyes" features vicious lesbians, large breasts and fast cars, Rotsler forgot the other elements that made "Faster Pussycat" so much fun, namely the un-flagging action and the total outrageousness. "Hungry Eyes" has a promising opening in which snarling lesbian Tiger Cat and her girlfriend Kitty give a ride to a guy stranded on the roadside. Kitty offers the guy a different kind of ride, and this doesn't sit too well with Tiger Cat, who soon bashes his head in with a rock. Kitty (played by Vicky Dee) gets over the shock of seeing a man murdered before her very eyes by taking a shower. A very looooong shower, long enough to include 20 minutes of Vaseline-on-the-lens flashbacks to her more heterosexual past. Director Rotsler appears on screen (again under his Shannon Carse moniker) as the true love of her life, and we know he's her true love because they spend five full minutes wandering around a park, looking at trees, looking at a bubbling brook, kissing, then checking out those trees again.... Pat Barrington perks things up when she appears at Kitty's all-lesbian birthday party, treating the girls to a bit of topless go go dancing. This, too, ends in tragedy, with Kitty running away and director Rotlser throwing continuity to the wind. He even recycles a few snippets of film from "The Agony of Love" to help pad out this movie's final act. In fact, much of "Hungry Eyes"'s running time is padded out, stretching what should have been an hour-long movie, tops, into a patience-trying 80 minutes.

Extras include a couple shorts featuring Pat Barrington (this time as a blond), as well as another short billed simply as "A Lesbian Hooker Turns a Trick." There are also trailers for such movies as "Cool it, Baby," "Venus in Furs," "Diary of a Swinger" and "Free Love Confidential," as well as the two movies featured on this disk. I'd recommend this disk for "The Agony of Love" alone, or to any hardcore Pat Barrington fans.