Spinning Off From The Love-Go-Round

DAISY CHAIN is a bizarre sex comedy anthology with a tangled history, which, truth be told, is a big part of its fascination. It was produced in Germany where it was released in 1965 as Das Liebeskarussell ("The Love-Go-Round"), clearly from its title intended as a contemporary variation of Max Ophuls' La Ronde (1950). It was given an English export title (WHO WANTS TO SLEEP?), so an English version of its original cut was likely prepared; however, it ended up falling into the hands of producer Joe Juliano, who worked with screenwriter Ed Marcus to give the film's four stories a framework. They ended up hiring actor Steve Eckart to portray (get this) Dr. Royce Druthers, a psychologist specializing in sexual matters, who sits in Paris cafés and flirts with a very German-looking receptionist in nurse garb, preening over his own insights about the battle of the sexes whilst pissing away patient confidentiality. I'm not sure when (the IMDb says 1980, which can't be right), but DAISY CHAIN was distributed in the USA by Intercontinental Films Inc. with a new animated title sequence and theme song (by Juliano) attached. The film's direction is credited to Ralph Olsen and Ralph Thiel, though the original segments were in fact divided amongst GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES FOR ADULTS director Rolf Thiele (who did the "Sybil" and "Angela" segments), Axel von Ambesser ("Lolita") and Alfred Weidenmann ("Dorothea"). Everything about this movie -- the animated titles, the segmented construction, the structural debt to a classic art film -- evokes the memory of Mario Bava's similarly interesting, similarly shaky FOUR TIMES THAT NIGHT (1969).

This movie stars Curd Jurgens and Nadja Tiller ("Sybil"), Gert Fröbe and Catherine Deneuve ("Angela"), Anita Ekberg and Peter Alexander ("Lolita" -- which has nothing to do with the Nabokov novel), and Johanna von Koczian and Peter Alexander ("Dorothea") -- making this one of the rare films to star two James Bond villains (Fröbe and Jurgens). It also features Letitia Roman in a small role, so small it's hard to imagine she had played the lead in Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH just two years before. This film was made the same year she made Russ Meyer's FANNY HILL, also in Germany. All the stories shared with us by Dr. Druthers are less about sex than about the fact and dread of infidelity. "Sybil" is about a woman who uses a female passerby to save her reputation when her husband nearly catches her in bed with a celebrated symphony conductor; "Angela" is about the young wife of an older man who feigns sleepwalking to meet her lovers; "Lolita" is about a model whose plumbing problems while preparing to take a bath attracts a male neighbor in pajamas and a difficult scenario to explain to her sugar daddy; and "Dorothea" is the old hide-under-the-bed story as a married woman's tryst is disrupted by her husband's premature homecoming.

The movie would be much easier to dismiss as trash if not for the "Angela" segment. Fröbe is wonderful, injecting some real pathos into a comic role, and Catherine Deneuve -- filmed just before or after REPULSION -- is radiant with a knowing, sly quality I've never seen her tap in any other performance. The segment also contains one of those images whose wonderment makes the whole thing worth sitting through: After one of Angela's lovers eludes discovery by jumping from a window onto a pile of pillows, sending goose feathers everywhere, Fröbe follows his beloved Angela as she "sleepwalks" in her white nightgown along a rooftop back to their room, goose down everywhere against the night sky like the flakes in a snow globe.

I watched the Televista DVD, which is fairly poor quality -- nothing at all so lovely as the image I've Googled to illustrate this report. I understand Das Liebeskarussell is available on DVD in Germany at a shorter running time. This suggests to me that the import doesn't contain any of the Dr. Royce Druthers nonsense and thus might hold up better as entertainment and time capsule; however, I'm not sure whether an English track is provided. On the trivial side of things, I noticed one of Jean Rollin's famous Castel twins -- Marie-Pierre or Catherine -- sitting behind Dr. Druthers at the Paris café and walking through one other scene as an extra. Her hair is black, as it was in 1970's THE NUDE VAMPIRE... and 1969-70 sounds about right, considering the LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE influence seen in the comedy vignette blackouts that Druthers uses to pepper his sagacity.