The Lickerish Quartet (1970)

The important thing to remember while watching Radley Metzger's The Lickerish Quartet is that anything is possible. In other words, you do not have to look for a logical explanation of everything that takes place on the screen. The moment you start doing so the film's magic disappears.

A beautiful castle owned by an aristocratic family somewhere in Europe. The father (Frank Wolff, Elia Kazan's America, America, Once Upon a Time in the West), mother (Erika Remberg, Vienna, City of My Dreams) and son (Paolo Turco, Bread and Chocolate) gather around a large projector. They watch a stag film and then head to a nearby carnival. There they meet a gorgeous girl (Silvana Venturelli, Camille 2000) who looks very much like one of the girls in the film. Curious to find out whether she was in the film, they invite her for a drink.

The father turns on the projector and they begin watching the film again but immediately discover that all of the close-ups with the girl's face have disappeared. Confused and annoyed, they rewind and watch the film again but this time other parts disappear. The father is convinced that his son is behind the mix-up, while the mother speculates that her husband might have replaced some of the reels. They invite the girl to spend the night in the castle and she agrees.

During the next couple of days the father remembers a young prostitute he met years ago who apparently looked exactly like the beautiful girl. Eventually, realizing that he is attracted to their guest, his wife confronts him and later on confesses that she no longer loves him as much as she once did. Meanwhile, the son goes out for a walk with the girl at the end of which they kiss.

Fantasy and reality constantly overlap in the film but there is a way to figure out how to separate the two – watch for a string of clues that appear after the family welcomes their guest in the castle. The altered scenes in the stag film also serve a purpose.

The "real" erotic sequences during the second half of the film are used to reveal more about the main protagonists and their strengths and weaknesses. After the girl literally unlocks their desires just about everything in the film begins to make sense.

There isn't a lot of full frontal nudity in the film. The most explicit scenes are in fact in the black and white stag film the family watches before and after they meet the girl. The seductions are beautifully filmed, with a terrific emphasis on detail.

Shot on location at the famous Castle of Balsorano in Italy's Abruzzi Mountains (now a big tourist attraction), the majority of the film features breathtakingly beautiful panoramic vistas. The costumes and dresses seen in the film, all of which were apparently picked up by the great Enrico Sabbatini (Vittorio De Sica's Sunflower, The Mission) are also notably stylish (Remberg, in particular, wears a terrific sexy outfit early into the film and a striking black dress later on).

It is Venturelli, however, that makes this film an unforgettable experience. Every single scene with her oozes style and sensuality. Unfortunately, she made only one other film after The Lickerish Quartet before disappearing into obscurity.

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