Spermula (1976)
aka L’amour est un fleuve en Russie
Article 5208 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-18-2016
Directed by Charles Matton
Featuring Dayle Haddon, Udo Kier, Francois Dunoyer
Country: France
What it is: Adult art film

A secret society that developed supernatural powers concerned with the “Rapture of Being” vanished in 1935, only to return to the world many years later where they possess the women and use the men. However, have they returned too soon…?

Quite frankly, I expected porn, and given the title, can you blame me? I was very surprised when a copy of this one showed up on YouTube, of all places, and that was a big tip-off to me that this movie didn’t quite fit that pigeonhole. Granted, there are several versions of this movie out there (and I hear tell that the English language version is very silly), but the French version I saw, while still clearly an adult film of sorts, is more stylistically surreal than openly erotic; even when the sex shows up, I was more entranced than aroused. It’s not an easy movie; much of it is confusing, and it takes a bit of work to sort through the characters, but it did catch my interest enough that I think it might be worth revisiting. Now if only the title wasn’t so crass; the French title translates as “Love is a River in Russia”, a line from the movie.