Stick It In Your Ear AKA Vortex (1970) - Charles Morgan-Erotica Films

23/10/18

Stick It In Your Ear AKA Vortex (1970) - Charles Morgan

SYNOPSIS: A long-haired, bearded young man mysteriously wakes up in the ruins of an abandoned Gothic church and can't remember who he is or where he's been. He wanders around town, trying to find anybody who knows or recognizes him and can tell him who he is. He then disappears into a world of far-flung psychedelia, where he takes drugs, partakes in swinging sex, runs into hippies, drug dealers and anti-war protesters, and experiences flashbacks of Vietnam. Eventually, he's hired as an assassin while he searches for his identity.

John Harrison, The Graveyard Tramp wrote:
Picked up by HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS as a cheap second feature to play with Lewis’ The Gore Gore Girls in 1972, the ultra-obscure Stick It In Your Ear (aka Vortex) would have to rank as one of the more bizarre and off-kilter films to be associated with the Godfather of Gore - which is certainly saying a lot. An anti-establishment / counterculture film of the highest order, Stick It In Your Ear has a style which both reflects the earlier Carnival of Souls (’62) and anticipates the later Last House on Dead End Street (77)....

David (GUIDO CONTE), a scruffy young man, wakes up in an old, decrepit Gothic church with no memory of who he is or how he got there. His only clue is a piece of paper in his pocket with a phone number and the name Barbara on it. After arriving at Barbara’s house and indulging in some clumsy free love -- "Don’t you remember how to do anything anymore?" - David spends most of the film wandering through the streets in a haze, searching for his lost identity. He observes hippies throwing a low rent Woodstock at the local park, and ends up at a party where the entertainment is a stag film featuring a Che Guevara look-alike!

But when David is manipulated into becoming a hired assassin, he ends up sleeping with his intended victim, then finds himself targeted by the organization that hired him!

The whole strange scenario climaxes in a cemetery - complete with some borderline necrophilia: a horny hit man starts to molest a naked woman after shooting her! - before David starts having flashbacks to the killing of innocent peasants in a village over in Vietnam, which provides an insight into his current confused state of mind.... (In a precursor to the opening scenes of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, we hear the voice over of a drill sergeant as he proclaims, "My rifle is my best friend! It is my life! We only teach the art of killing!")

Filmed in Boston by the makers of Kitten in a Cage, Stick It In Your Ear is perhaps the single most psychedelic film ever to be lensed in black & white. It also has one of the best lines in sexploitation cinema: When a man approaches David on the street and asks, "Do you wanna buy some dirty pictures?" David replies, "No thanks. I’m in one."

From the 35mm wax-free negative.