Private Collections (1979)

** (out of 4)

Three erotic film directors come together to make an anthology and like most films of this type the end results are rather mixed. Jaeckin's "Island of the Sirens" borrows heavily from the Robinson Cursoe story and has a sailor fall off his boat and wash up on what he thinks is a deserted island. Within days he comes across a beautiful woman (Laura Gemser) and her sisters. At first it's all pleasure with non-stop sex and food but then the sisters change form. Terayama's "The Glass Labyrinth" has a young man searching for a missing part of his childhood, which centered an a poem his mother told him about a nymph who lost her mind while waiting for her true love. Borowczyk's tale centers on a lonely man who walks into a brothel and offers a woman twice her salary if she's stay the night with him so that he can forget his loneliness. All three stories contain high and lows but in the end the film is just too uneven to really work. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to pick the best one then I'd go with the first story since it does have a little charm, non-stop nudity and a rather funny ending, which seems to have been influenced by Joe D'Amato. Not to mention we get Gemser and a very nice and erotic scene by a waterfall. The second story is perhaps the weakest because it tries so much in its running time and the final project just becomes confusing and really doesn't make too much sense. Borowczyk's story comes last and that's probably a good thing because I think a lot of people will enjoy it the least. There really isn't too much nudity and the film is overly talky with some no-so-good dialogue. There's a twist in the film but I'm sure most will pick up on it rather early. The cinematography in this episode really sticks out as does the handsome costume design.