A Woman's Torment (1977)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Somewhat notorious hardcore film from director Roberta Findlay is pretty much a take-off on Roman Polanski's REPULSION. In the film, the mentally disturbed Karen (Tara Chung) is left home alone and soon begins to have hallucinations that slowly drive her insane and forces her to attack several people that she comes into contact with. When I say attack, that includes both sexually and in a more violent nature. A WOMAN'S TORMENT has a small cult following thanks in large part to the director's whose own popularity seems to be growing more in the digital age but the film is also known for some rather bizarre and violent moments. I'm not going to sit here and call this a "good" movie but at the same time it's somewhat refreshing seeing Findlay trying to more than your typical 70's bump 'n grind film. This one here certainly tries to be something more than that and I give the director credit because there are some pretty good things here and especially her directing skills. I thought the scenes involving the woman's slow breakdown were shot extremely well and I also thought that the director did a good job at showing this woman coming undone. The sound effects were actually good, the editing from reality to the hallucination was very good and overall I thought the film had a pretty good atmosphere. The best thing about the movie was Chung who was at least believable in the role even though she never gets good enough to where you'd buy her as a real performance (or something that you'd see in a non-hardcore film). With that said, there are a few problems with the film and the biggest is the lack of story. After a while we just get one sex scene after another and anything dealing with a plot or character development just stops. Still, this is certainly a better than average picture that fans of the director will want to check out.
