Page 193 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

something like 'Cover Girls in Torture Chamber', given that such material is not exactly alien to
Euro-exploitation? The film is much less 'unconscious' about homoeroticism than it is made to
sound, even if it is ultimately homophobic. Travis' sexuality is fairly explicit - 'Don't touch me!'
be shrieks at Edith when she attempts to do precisely that, and the bloated, poisonous arachnid
menacing Kinujo offers some Freudian clues as to why he fled her in the first place. 'A woman's love
would have destroyed me', he tells Edith, and she informs Rick that Travis has 'always been a little
strange, even with me - he seemed so cold'. There is clearly a place, however, for other muscular
men in his life - Johnson wonders about 'the natute of the relationship between Anderson and his
costumed servants'.34 That is not to say that the film does not display some other anxieties of its own,
not least about the very process of male bodybuilding.

A BODYBUILDER IS BEING BEATEN

According to Mark Simpson in Male Impersonators (and what is Travis if not a male impersonator?),
bodybuilding typifies the 'flux of masculinity', the way that 'everytime men try to grasp something
consolingly, stutdily, essentially masculine, it all too easily transforms into its opposite'. 35 If
bodybuilding ostensibly phallicises the male body, it also feminises it - overuse of steroids can create
male 'breasts' or 'bitch tits' and genitals have a way of shrivelling (don't throw away that padding,
Mickey!).36 But already, by the 1960s, there were concerns about all this obsessive interest in male
perfection - the image of bodybuilding was of something 'indecent' and 'perverse'.37 Wardell B.
Pomeroy's Boys and Sex (1968) spells out exactly the scenario of Bloody Pit of Horror - if boys obsess
over their own bodies, they're already a short step away from getting intetested in other male bodies.
Bodybuilding, Simpson suggests, is about becoming one's own object of desire,38 but Bloody Pit of
Horror explicitly connects this to 'another' body - Travis' self-love is inextricably linked to his desire
for the Crimson Executioner's 'perfect body'.
Where do the 'Cover Girls' fit into all this? The film's original English title, A Tale of Torture,
gives us a clue, because bodybuilding itself is usually a tale of torture, self-improvement enacted
within a matrix of discipline and self-punishment. Simpson calls the gymnasium a 'hi-tech dungeon
whete the weak flesh is punished by the willing/willful spirit'.35 It is not such a huge leap from this
to seeing Travis' torture chamber as a kind of inverted gym, the women's suffering mirroring his
own acquisition of a supposedly perfect, but as it turns out, all too vulnerable body. The rack stands
in for weights machines, icy water for cold showers, the knives 'trim' excess flesh; toned, muscular
bodies are often referred to as being 'cut'. In addition, these are the scenes where we really see
Hargitay's muscles 'working' as he operates his instruments of torture. In A Child is Being Beaten',
Freud analyses children's fantasies of being beaten both as punishment for incestuous desires for
the father and a pleasurable substitute for that desire. As a further disguise/displacement, a third
party is often substituted for the subject - it is someone else being beaten.40 We do not need to look
very far for the desired 'Father' of Bloody Pit of Horror. Travis gazes longingly at the facsimile of the
Crimson Executioner - 'created ... in his own image', an omnipotent Super Ego - and subsequently
is possessed' by him. But if Travis substitutes for the Executionet, someone needs to substitute for
Travis, which is where the Cover Girls stand in for the Cover Boy.

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