It was a normal Wednesday afternoon. I went on another one of those pointless shopping sprees, where I purchased a number of cheap videos. A few of them were purchased at Blockbuster, and the others were purchased at a pawn shop. While the other videos appeared to have had some merit, there was one video I knew upon purchase (for only three dollars) would show utter lack of promise.

This movie was called Melody in Love. The box suggests that this will be a cheesy, erotic adventure.... but the movie is much worse. I have the pleasure of introducing to you... the worst movie in my esteemed collection!

The movie is about Melody, a young woman who visits her older cousin in what appears to be some sort of exotic island, but god knows where. Right away the subject is about sex, in which Melody says that she doesn’t think she’d want a man, except for the cousin’s husband, of course. This doesn’t bother the cousin, however.... she just thinks that Melody could use another man to pass the time. In fact, she had already arranged that at the film’s beginning when she gives her address to a stranger at the airport.........

Melody has sex with the guy a few times, and it’s only by a lack of courage that the screenwriter didn’t introduce a threesome, since the cousin surely wants to share. (the guy and the cousin are making out long before he gets it on with Melody) There’s also an idiotic subplot of a young school girl who for some reason wants to hunt down her schoolteacher while he’s on vacation -- this naturally (naturally!!!) results in her seducing a private investigator on his private boat, taking a nude swim in the ocean, and getting rescued from sharks by a man who turns out to be the husband of Melody’s cousin. Suddenly the schoolteacher is forgotten and she gets to have sex with the husband, which is okay since the wife and the husband have a very open relationship (the wife gets to have her own fun with a man at the local resort). The movie plods along to the end.

This film fails on every single level. In crude terms, this picture is not erotic. Actually, the film looks censored, although it’s so poorly edited that perhaps it was just an unhappy accident. While we are allowed to see naked women, we aren’t allowed to see too much sex..... everything is short, and choppy.

The acting could be judged, if it weren’t for the fact that this film is dubbed! This is clearly a Grade-Z Euro-trash film, and the people this film targets wouldn’t want to read subtitles. (Melody in Love isn’t exactly Cries and Whispers, you know.) The dubbing, as always, is terrible.. so at least we can judge the dubbers’ performances. Dreadful.

The storyline is utterly devoid of urgency. One scene dissolves to the next without any rhyme, reason, or purpose. There are many water scenes involving the husband, who gets involved in underwater battle with sea creatures (he gets involved in shots ripped-off from Jaws, as well). For about two seconds, he seems to be in danger, but the film treats this, as it does every other shot in the film, as throwaway. There’s also talk about the volcano that threatens to destroy the island..... and, yes, the volcano does erupt for the finale (actually, it’s stock footage, but whatever....). Melody and her boyfriend would seem at risk, but they end up having sex, and survive the volcano.. nothing more is made of it. And, in a shocking moment, Melody is witness to a slaying! A man suddenly pulls her off the street, as if to assault her, but then another guy jumps in, and engage in badly staged martial arts before one guy pulls out a switchblade and stabs the other to death. (We get the dramatic pullback of the camera, revealing the disgrace of the dead body and Melody’s attempt at silent horror and contemplation) There’s a brief moment later on where Melody thinks she sees the killer.. but except for that one second, this attack is not referred to for the rest of the film.

You’ll notice that the two fighters are of Oriental descent, as if only stereotypical Orientals would ever get into a street fight. Other forms of racism in this film include the depiction of the schoolgirl, who is described as Creole. She flashes the schoolteacher, who responds by making a demeaning sexual remark about Creoles. Later on, she dances nude in front of a statue, as if she were practicing voodoo. Yes, the woman looks great naked, but other than that, she seems to be exploited due to her race.

The title song is really bad. For one thing, it’s really bad 70’s syrup, sung by a non-singer. Secondly, the lyrics are funny. I forgot most of them...except for the first few lines: “Melody in love/you’re growing!!!!/Melody in love/in LOVE!!!!” That pretty much sums up the intelligence of the songwriter.

An erotic movie about uninhibited people is not a bad thing.... no plot is inherently worthless. A movie about a woman who gets involved in the sexual craziness of her cousin and husband could still be a good movie, even if it involved the wife and husband swapping partners. It’d at least be good for a few laughs. But this movie is so poor that it gives us laughs in spite of the plot, not necessarily because of it. The movie doesn’t know how to tell its story, how to make us feel for the characters, or even how to make its material lurid enough for us to watch, in grotesque fascination.

The film’s vintage might explain everything. During the 1970’s, mainstream theaters would have been pretty unwilling to show anything too explicit, while porno theaters would have not shown anything that was too soft. Melody in Love tries to go the middle ground, but it fails, because it’s too soft for anyone. Even people who just want to see softcore would be disappointed -- we see naked bodies, but the sexiness is muted. I might sound crude, but the honest truth is that a movie like this has to go almost all the way, visually, psychologically, etc., for it to be effective as a cheap sex movie.

As well, back in those bad old days, it was easier to make a genuinely bad, cheap, incompetent piece of junk and get decent distribution. The video I have is an old edition, but it’s still a CBS/FOX video edition. While there’s all kinds of crap being made now, I seriously doubt that anything playing in a major theater would live up to the sorts of things that played in theaters, and, most often, drive-ins across the world, back in the days when exploitation movies thrived.

Who would watch this film today? Who would bother to watch it, rent it or even purchase it? Why, only people like me, of course, who spend three dollars at a pawn shop, hoping to be satisfied by the notion that this could be the worst movie of all time. Other than that, Melody in Love is absolutely worthless. Actually, I’ve discovered a possible use for this movie. You always hear people say that certain movies either confuse or anger them, usually because they’re different, controversial, or, most likely, old, foreign, or low-budget. Well, pop this movie into the VCR, and those people of little taste will most likely reevaluate their values. Even they’d see right away the difference between something unusual and something incompetent.



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above