Love After Death Movie Review
Notes While Rewatching the Sexploitation Film Love After Death as Hurricane Isaias Approaches as a Cat 3, Only Hours out in the Gulf near Pensacola: A Watchalong Movie Full Spoiler Review
The most shocking thing to me about Love After Death is that you can find it on YouTube. I wouldn't generally expect to find softcore pornography on YouTube, but there it is. My girlfriend stumbled on this movie and thought of me, oddly enough, and we ended up watching it together. We thought it was a hoot.
I'm supposed to be writing more movie reviews for the website (Daydream Misfit), and I meant to get to writing up Love After Death, but I kept running out of time because I have so many other projects vying for my attention. But today is an unscheduled day off. I'm not doing delivery driving tonight because Pensacola is more or less shut down due to the approach of Hurricane Isaias. So I have no excuse to not be productive. Trigger warning: sexual assault, camp.
Starting the movie now.
Love After Death is a black-and-white movie from 1968, filmed in New York and dubbed in English over Spanish. The film opens on a wake (of a body, not of a storm, where is my mind exactly?), but the eyes of the "corpse" are blinking. The paralyzed man looks up at the attendees peering into his coffin, a woman, Sofia, and his best friend, and a doctor he knows by name, and a couple of thugs, and pleads that he is only having a cataleptic fit and to please not bury him. "Who cares?" says Sofia. They close the casket, and the man, Montel, is buried alive.
Isaias had tracked exactly up Escambia Bay for the first several days that the hurricane was developing in the Gulf of MEXICO. The models have gotten really good, I have to say. In the end, they underestimated its intensity, but got the landfall almost perfect. The storm has tracked slightly East and looks like it will now hit Navarre, but you never know, these things can shift at the last moment.
Things are getting rough outside the living-room window. It's grey, and the rain is persistent, and the wind is rising, and all I want to do is eat and sleep, even though I've already eaten and slept. The atmosphere is laden with tension, but I have this movie to distract me.
Montel is buried, but soon we see he is digging himself out of the loose soil of his grave. How he managed to get the lid off his coffin isn't clear, but we're suspending our disbelief here… He's not a zombie, but he sure looks like a zombie and staggers like a zombie, and the theremin music is selling the notion that he's a zombie.
At this point, I have to search up whether Night of the Living Dead (amazon affiliate link) was released early enough to have been an influence on this "staggering through the graveyard" scene. Turns out Night of the Living Dead was first, but only by a few weeks, so they're contemporaries.
I feel like we're safe. These old apartments are brick and made in the 80s, so they've survived many big storms already and are on high ground. The worst-case scenario is probably that a tornado rips the roof off, but that could happen any old Saturday it rains. On the West side of the storm, the hurricane winds have to travel over land before hitting us from the North, so most of the tornado action should be distant from us. But if this review abruptly stops, you'll know what happened.
A hilarious dramatic flourish as Montel stumbles along and spots a -- SQUIRREL. DUN-DUN-dun-DUN. Our little cataleptic then summits the steps to a castle, where we get a flourish of brassy horn intro and cut to some gratuitous cleavage, as inside(?) unbeknownst to Montel, the doctor is getting a handful of Sofia. "You know? I'm young, and a virgin," she says. The doctors' thugs enter the room and hang out, watching. Sofia announces that during their six months of marriage, Montel and she never consummated, but that she and the doctor sure can, if he just puts a ring on it.
Montel emerges from the castle looking sharp in a white suit and coat and white turtleneck and immediately starts stalking strange women on the street. Death makes you horny! Although you almost can't blame him because those black boots he's pursuing are smoking hot. Montel emerges and pulls the blonde woman into a hallway, where she screams and faints. A tiny older woman hears and opens her door to see what's the commotion. Montel shoves her back into the room then drags the unconscious blonde onto the couch and starts undressing her. Spoiler: this is the movie.
The little old dark-haired lady sits in a chair and watches Montel grope the passed-out blonde, seemingly upset but not, you know, leaving or calling the cops or doing anything about the sexual assault happening in her living room. Montel strips the younger woman down to her lingerie. This seems to give the older woman a headache and makes her massage her temples, but she doesn’t go anywhere. She likes to watch, apparently. Those are indeed buttocks, right here on YouTube, and we're off. Montel kisses the woman's near-naked body, and the older lady is getting into it.
Now completely naked, with puffy breasts and pubic hair all the way up to her belly-button, the blonde awakes and decides she's in the mood to moan as she gets raped by a stranger. But Montel panics! He leaves the woman writhing on the couch, unsatisfied. The blonde asks the older lady if she'll finish her off, but she claims she's "too old for that."
I'm not about to get into the morality of all this. Be disgusted. Be nauseated. Be amused. You're the one watching the movie. "I know I can! I feel I can! I'm afraid! I'm afraid!" agonizes Montel.
Meanwhile, a detective shows up to inform the doctor and Sofia that Montel's body has disappeared from the graveyard and that surely, the doctor had performed an autopsy.
I should have gotten some cinnamon rolls. I'm stress-eating, and now I'm craving sweets. The lights are flickering, and we'll surely lose power at some point.
Cut to a nightclub, where a raven-haired showgirl dances while lascivious men eyeball her. Montel is there, nodding along and getting all horned up. After a long dance number, the dancer retreats to her dressing room and does a little strip for an Asian woman waiting there. Montel hides in the curtains and watches. What a creep.
The Asian lady is titillated as she watches the tease. Grooming wasn't as big a deal back in the day, as revealed by the photographic evidence of bare thighs. As the brunette completes her strip, she removes her top and reveals herself to be a male. Surprise, audience! Surprise, Montel! Montel poo-poos in disappointment and exits.
In 1985, Helene, the storm that walloped Apalachicola, my granddad had a little restaurant, and we holed up there. I would have been 14 or so. There was one of those roadside "arrow" signs with plastic letters, and we had to remove the yellow, ribbed panels from it so they didn't crack. They were plastic, as big as a piece of plywood, and they caught the wind like a kite, and the gusts were so intense that by the time I'd carry one across the parking lot, I'd be at the other end of the restaurant. After the storm, the highway in front of the restaurant was flooded. The firemen caught a confused 4-pound bass in the middle of the street with their hands. They had it stuffed, and it hung in city hall for a long time. This was also the storm after which I wrote a short-story which was accepted to an atheist magazine. It was about a group of people huddled during a storm, praying that it won't hit them. It doesn't, but it destroys the next town over. Thank God!
We cut again, this time to a lesbian interlude in a hotel room. A mousy blonde and a brunette meet up and start making out. More stripping, more caressing, more breasts. That appears to be a vagina. Now more creepy Montel. As the couple kiss each other's bodies on the bed, Montel sneaks in and hides in a closet. Montel is a heat-seeking missile with unerring erotic radar but no payload.
The brunette gets up from the bed to get something from the closet and discovers Montel. As women do in this film, she starts seducing the strange man who's been hiding in their room and invites him to join in the lovemaking. It was the 60s, maybe it’s just how people rolled before AIDS. She removes Montel's tie and unbuttons his shirt. When she has him down to his underwear, he switches gears again, shoves her onto the bed, and storms out. Montel is Montel's own living cockblock, traveling from one missed erotic opportunity to another. I can't understate what a creepy little worm he is. But I'm not mad at the movie. It's hard to judge something this unashamedly sexist and horny as a post-post-modernist.
When Ivan hit Pensacola in 2004, my son was one year old. We went to stay at the University shelter, and they tried to turn me away. I had gone back to school for my Bachelor's, but, I guess I didn't look like a student at 33. So they stopped a man with a wife and a baby because we might be "the general public." My ID got us in, and we stayed overnight on blankets on the floor. The building shook all night. Surprisingly, the internet stayed up long into the evening, and I was able to watch the storm come ashore on radar. When we left the next morning, we had to retrace and zigzag to get home, there were so many trees down. We were without power for days. First, it gets humid, then it gets hot. There's a reason Florida was considered uninhabitable before air-conditioning.
The detective is wandering around doing detective stuff... Montel discovers the doctor and Sofia together... he looks a little like Robert Blake in Lost Highway, except unfuckable. He promises revenge.
But first... he runs into a woman with a long nose and heavy makeup on the street who invites him up for tea. Montel is the center of the pornographic universe. He shakily puts the key in the keyhole, probably not symbolizing anything. Montel is mute, but this woman is understanding. This is the one, alright, the woman who can work with Montel's -- inability -- that Sofia hinted at. This is gripping, psychological, and deep, really reflecting the struggles of men in the modern world lol. Actually, in fact, I'm shocked to learn that the writer, director, and star aren't the same guy in a role he wrote for himself so he could squeeze a lot of different chicks’ buttocks.
Montel is making some progress with his perving as he's actually naked in bed with the new woman, and they're kissing. Her back is almost as hairy as his arm. I'm not hung up on hair, I promise, it just really stands out in black-and-white. We have some editing hinting at cunnilingus and successful intercourse. "Now they can't say that I'm sick! Now, I'm a man!" Real dialogue that all men say when the ED meds kick in. Our poor granddads and their no-Viagra having weenuses.
Then there was Hurricane Dennis in 2005. It's not remembered as much, but it was also a Category 3, and we lived right on the Western edge of its path, so we took some damage and lost power again. It also hit East of Pensacola, and it only affected the very Eastern edge of town, and now we're on the Westside, so we're hoping it won't be so bad here. My girlfriend is in Milton, though, about to get it good and hard. Which in the context of this movie should mean I want to hide in a closet and watch. But that's not it.
We visit Sofia and the doctor discussing Montel. "He deceived me! He married me knowing he was SICK. That's why I took pleasure burying him alive and taking his fortune!" Men, keep your women serviced or they'll start having thoughts of revenge and end up burying you alive. “Give me peace, love, and a hard cock.”
Now it's revealed that Sofia is hooking up with the doctor's thug, Arturo, who plots to kill the doctor. She's a bad, bad girl. She tempts the doctor with the fruit of her loins. They sink down out of the shot because below the camera lens is where the naughty stuff happens.
The lights in the bathroom were flickering. And then the light in the breezeway. Wind is cold and picking up strength. Still a few hours from landfall. Rain is driving sideways outside the window, and I’m starting to hear unidentifiable snaps and clunks out there.
Showdown between the thugs and the detective in the park where he wanders around with his detective hat on looking for clues. Stalk stalk. Bang! Bang! The dick is wounded! Weird edit where he rolls down the hill and shoots the approaching thug, who falls to the ground, then is standing again, approaching menacingly, then is dead on the ground again. Arturo steps on a twig and the detective hears. He shoots Arturo, who comically rolls down the hill for 6 seconds. The detective shakes his head with a "kids these days" expression.
A random naked blonde is in a bedroom with some previously unmet drunk and quite hirsute dude. I saw his testicle in his boxers. Montel does what Montel does, hides in the bathroom and watches as they caress and make out. The saxophone tells us how to feel: sexy! The guy's ass-crack is pretty hairy, too.
Bigfoot gets up to use the bathroom and Montel surprise! appears from behind the shower curtain and takes dude out with a karate chop. He starts to undress, knowing what movie he's in and that other guy has the woman in bed all warmed up for him. He kisses her breasts and hips and stomach as she writhes with her eyes conveniently closed. He strips off his tighty-whiteys and mounts her while a guitar gently weeps. When she opens her eyes and realizes she's been fucking Montel, she pushes him off the bed, and he runs away. If you haven't figured it out yet, this movie is basically the writer's barely disguised fetishes.
Hurricane Sally hit in 2020 when I lived in Myrtle Grove. It moved very slowly and dumped endless rain. At about 6:00 in the morning at our house, we heard a loud thud. An oak tree out front had fallen and crushed our fence and front porch. We were lucky because there were people in beds in the front rooms, and a few feet either way and somebody might have gotten hurt. So began a long and ugly period of repair and humiliation which I'll document some other time. I will note, though, that our lone chicken was nesting on the porch at the time and survived, shocked and with a damaged wing, but alive, only to be eaten by a hawk a few weeks later.
Sofia stands at a dresser mirror and opens a note, which she looks at and faints. It's a cool drawing of zombie Montel! Montel, master of hiding, appears from behind a curtain where he's been hiding like a master hider. He leaves Sofia unconscious on the bed, which is out of character from what we know about this guy and women he finds lying around.
He spies the doctor on the rooftop enjoying his pipe. He approaches like a neon ninja with squeaky shoes on and stabs the doctor repeatedly with a knife.
He returns to find Sofia awake. Agh! EXTREME CLOSEUP of probing tongues and wet mouths. Montel's rapey ass gets down to business, but as usual his victim is totally into it. He's clothed and she's naked up against the wall. There's some slapping. Montel looks all cocky, but it's implied he couldn't get it up again? I don't know what's going on.
She flees to the elevator, wrapped in a sheet. Here he comes down the hall. It's all very exciting. Onto the stairs. He's the Terminator. She runs. He saunters. She's cornered on the roof. He approaches slowly. They're up against the railing with the city street below. He reaches his hands to her throat and begins to squeeze. She collapses gently. Montel's revenge is complete. He gets in one last squeeze of her boobs, then lifts his head to the sky.
Oh, here's the detective. He reaches for Montel and takes his jacket by the collar. But Montel is magically gone in a blink! The detective is left holding only a jacket. Was Montel a ghost all along? The ghost of a zombie of a not-dead man in a cataleptic state? It all makes sense now.
I think Love After Death has a lot to say about men' s role in the sexual world, just nothing you should listen to. Product of its time? Was sexism so overt before the sexual revolution? Was it legitimate to just fantasize about raping any woman you came across because of course they all want it? Surely this was awkward even in its time. Maybe this is best thought of as some kind of Lynchian fever dream in which Montel is trapped in some purgatorial nether-dimension between life-and-birth and it's all a dream-memory. Not unlike any other movie, then, a fantasy. A demented, weird, uncomfortable, funny, your-grandad-was-a-chauvinist-titan-stomping-across-the-American-sexual-landscape black-and-white fantasy.
It's dark, and the lights continue to flicker. I may not have long now. Why do hurricanes want to make landfall after sunset? I want to stare this one in the face. I say, bravely. Have I left the apartment today? I took out the trash. It sounds like the low growl of an enormous beast out the window, pawing and lapping gently at the walls. In the end, all we can do is wait until it gets us or isn't hungry anymore.
I remember when I was a teenager, and there was a storm in the Gulf. I was at the beach, and the waves were massive, and I stood for an hour in water up to my waist and chest letting the waves batter me. I enjoyed the power and pulse of them, every few seconds a deep new swell, leaning my chest into it, letting it smack me full and hard, then another, standing up to the relentless until I was physically exhausted and sore all over, and sleeping deep that night.
So I may. When the electricity goes out finally, I'll put on my hoodie and go outside and stand in this noise and wind and rain for a while, like a young man. Let it toss me around a little. There's something to be said for letting yourself feel small.
(Epilogue: The power went out for 4.5 days and cleanup of downed trees continues nearly 2 weeks later. We weren’t spared on the West side of the storm due to a rare “sting jet”)
Neil Oldman
It was a crazy find and even weirder watch.
my goldfish died