Works, By Title: A-F (113)

Total: 462 works

Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny/Unholy Love

Her name says it all: Alraune gots that old hoochie-cooch root in her. Plus, her Mama used to slang poontang like it ain't no thang, and her “Papa” sports a mean right eyebrow that just don't quit. So with that DNA and upbringing you'd expect Alraune to be the ultimate femme fatale. But instead she's merely a cock-teaser, not cock-slayer, with no apparent nefarious intent other than vanity - leaving us to wonder who wussed out: novel or film?

To be fair, the film is incomplete, and the subtitles are often confusing. Still, knowingly or not, the story flies in the face of the eugenics movement, which was enthroned just a year before with US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr's infamous decision supporting forced sterilization, that argued that “unfit” only breeds more of its kind and therefore should be prevented from reproducing:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind”.

And a few years later, the Nazis came to power in Germany and took this thinking to the next level. But in this story, the offspring of “unfit” is incapable of murder, while the highly respected scientist was ready to slash that white trash in a flash - suggesting who is the real “degenerate”.

American Aristocracy

Douglas Fairbanks, barely past his first year of movie-making, not only rolls, climbs a tree, jumps fences/cars/benches, climbs onto a moving car then jumps off and hangs from a wire, and gratuitously does every other animal act trick (other than roll over and beg - that's the one he used to get this gig), but also spanks and kisses his servant, pole dances, endlessly swaggers like an ape with a broomstick up its ass, and generally works hard to be overconfident, overbearing, and terribly annoying - i.e. the embodiment of the imagined ethos of early twentieth century white American maleness. A comedy, minus the laughs, more like news from home - which is, a title card tells us, generally bad.

An Interesting Story

A cautionary tale for smartphone addicts.