White Elephant Blogathon: The Tenth Victim

I'd like to first thank Rufus and Ben over at Lucid Screening for inviting me to participate in their Third Annual White Elephant Blogathon. I couldn't pass up an opportunity to write about second-rate movies, and if nothing else I'm hoping it'll help motivate me to get back in the habit or writing on this thing regularly.

For those that are unfamiliar with the rules of this event, the idea is simple: everybody submits the title of a terrible movie, the titles are thrown into a hat, and each person is assigned one of these cinematic failures to watch and review. I, for the record, submitted 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (the last and presumably worst of the franchise, IMDB rating = 2.1). In return I got Elio Petri's 1965 cult classic sci-fi exploitation flick, The 10th Victim (IMDB rating = 6.8). It's like going to your office's Secret Santa gift exchange with a Hickory Farms cheese log and getting an iPod. I can't help but feel a little guilty. Of course, this is not to suggest that The 10th Victim is a great film, or even a good film, but it's at least something that I don't feel dumber for having watched. On the bad movie spectrum with patronizingly stupid action movies and frat comedies on one end and unwatchably bizarre art films on the other, The 10th Victim falls squarely on the latter. It's the kind of film that art students will claim is one of their favorites while secretly wishing they were watching Beerfest every time they actually watch it. When I showed the movie to Erin, she recalled it being a favorite of the now defuct East Village dive Rififi to put on a big screen for hipsters to watch as they dance to eighties synth pop and drown away the misery of their own jaded indifference to the world. And like all good hipster obsessions, it's a film that's much cooler in theory than it is in practice.

The premise of The 10th Victim is unquestionably awesome. Set in a future where all mankind's aggression is chanelled into a legally sanctioned cat-and-mouse game in which participants are alternately assigned to be either the hunter or the victim and each tries to kill the other in front of a television camera in hopes of cashing in on product endorsement deals, the film is sort of like an Italian art deco version of The Running Man with a smaller budget and less professional wrestler cameos. The film opens with a go-go dancing Ursula Andress (post-Dr No, pre-Casino Royale) eighty-sixing her intended hunter with a pair of guns improbably hidden in the cups of her bra. And it's pretty much all downhill from there. Following this victory, she gets dispatched to Rome to hunt her next victim, played by none other than Marcello Mastrioanni (who, according to the rules of the game, would actually be her 5th victim, but never mind). The film mostly consists of Andress awkwardly trying to seduce Mastrioanni and convince him to go to the Roman temple that her television crew is waiting at. Ultimately the film ends up being more of a romantic comedy than action movie. Mastioanni's character, who has just gone through the six-year process of getting an annulment and divorcing his first wife, spends most of the film beating off the advances of both Andress and a woman who is supposed to be his mistress (but that he apparently hates). Predictably Mastrioanni and Andress eventually fall in love and the film digresses into some sort of weird allegory about the disintigration of marriage in modern society. The film is loaded with what I assume is poignant social commentary that would make sense to me if I lived in Italy in 1965, but probably just amounts to the pretentious, drug-addled musings of the director. The acting in the film runs the gamut from bad to awful, with the exception of Mastioanni, who essentially plays the same cool-middle-aged-guy-in-existential-crisis that he does in 8 1/2 (which, let's be honest, I'm really never gonna get tired of seeing). The organ-infused bossa nova soundtrack is definitely awesome, though the slick modern design of the film often crosses the line between cool and creepy, as exemplified by the robotic pet dog that is ostensibly Mastroianni's only true companion in spite of its being the most terrifying thing this side of a Herbie Hancock video.

This film certainly deserves it's place in the pantheon of schlocky B sci-fi movies alongside Barbarella and Plan 9. Though I will say I was a bit disappointed in the overall amount of sex and violence in the thing. For an exploitation flick I could have done with a few more over-the-top gun fights and obligatory T&A, but I do have to give the film credit for combining the two so well as it does with two simple guns and a bra.