Tag: sadomasochism

• szamanka

  1996. Poland/France/Switzerland

  Alternative title: Chamanka

  Andrzej Zulawski’s Szamanka is an explosive return to the hyper-intense emotionalism of Possession, aided in no small part by the primal performance of 18-year-old first-time actress Iwona Petry.

  Petry plays a character known only as ‘The Italian’ who embarks on a violently sexual relationship with an anthropology professor named Michael (Polish superstar Boguslaw Linda) who abuses and humiliates her, only feeding her increasing sexual obsession with him.

  As she acts with abandon – flailing, spitting, regurgitating food – she disavows the commonality of language in favour of physical expression (like Anna in Possession).

  When Michael’s anthropological team discovers the bog-body of an ancient shaman in a nearby construction site, he begins to formulate a connection between the respective mysteries of the shaman and The Italian – believing that The Italian is a succubus depleting his life-force.

  January 19, 2026

  andrzej zulawski, boguslaw linda, chamanka, horror movies, iwona petry, kier-la janisse, sadomasochism, succubus, szamanka, the house of psychotic women

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• the whip and the body

  1963, Italy/France

  Original titles: La frusta e il corpo; Le corps et le fouet

  Alternative titles: Night Is the Phantom; What!; The Whip and the Flesh

  Foregoing the modern giallo in favour of a return to the Gothic terrain of his breakthrough film Black Sunday (1960), The Whip and the Body is very likely Bava’s best and most complex film.

  The film opens with prodigal son Kurt (Christopher Lee) returning to the family estate after several years of (allegedly debauched) wandering.

  Hardly welcomed with open arms, he is faced with resentment from every angle: over the suicide of a maid with whom he’d had an affair; over abandoning his invalid father; and most of all from his younger brother Christian, who has in the meantime been married off to a woman (Daliah Lavi) he knows to be in love with Kurt.

  When Kurt besets upon Nevenka with her own riding crop, eliciting moans of delight, it is revealed that their previous relationship had been one of sadomasochistic pleasures that have proven a source of great shame to Nevenka.

  When Kurt is mysteriously murdered, Nevenka starts to have visions of Kurt’s ghost, whipping her more violently than ever before.

  When the patriarch is suddenly murdered as well, Christian believes the ghost of his recently-departed brother to be responsible, but finds that it is in fact Nevenka, dressed in Kurt’s clothing.

  With the death of her beloved, she had to assume his identity in order to keep him alive, and thus satisfy unconventional sexual desires without guilt.

  January 19, 2026

  bdsm, christopher lee, horror movies, italian horror, mario bava, night is the phantom, s&m, sadomasochism, the whip and the body

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