Robin Gammell, an actor known for his roles in cult cinema, appears in Sweet Movie (1974), Lipstick (1976), and The Haunting of Julia (1978). His performances in these films highlight the provocative and often unsettling themes of the 1970s, a decade that embraced the avant-garde and the experimental. In Lipstick, he navigates the complexities of a psychological thriller, while in The Haunting of Julia, he contributes to the eerie atmosphere that defines the film. Gammell's work in these titles cements his place in the realm of exploitation and horror cinema.
Sweet Movie
Miss Monde’s promised fairy-tale marriage collapses into humiliation and exile. Her journey unfolds beside that of Anna Planeta, a revolutionary sailing a candy-filled ship toward equally grotesque consequences. One narrative follows Miss Monde 1984/Miss Canada, who wins a contest of the "most virgin"; her prize is the marriage to a milk industry tycoon. However, following his degrading puritanical introduction to intercourse, she vents her intention to leave to her mother-in-law who, at that point, nearly has her killed. The family bodyguard takes her away, further humiliates her, and finally packs her in a trunk bound for Paris. She finds herself on the Eiffel Tower, where she absently meets and has intercourse with a Latin singer, El Macho. The sexual act is interrupted by touring nuns who frighten the lovers into penis captivus. In her post-coital shocked state, she is adopted into an artist community led by Otto Muehl, where she finds affectionate care. The commune practices some liberating sessions, where a member, with the assistance of the others, goes through a (re)birth experience, cries, urinates and defecates like a baby, while the others are cleaning and pampering him. Later she is seen acting for an obscene advertisement, in which she is naked, covered in liquid chocolate. The second narrative involves a woman, Anna Planeta piloting a candy-filled boat in the canals of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with a large papier-mache head of Karl Marx on the prow. She picks up the hitchhiking sailor Potemkin, though she warns him that if he falls in love, she will kill him. He ignores her many suggestions for him to leave and their relationship evolves. Eventually, in the state of love making, she stabs him to death in their nidus of sugar. She also seduces children into her world of sweets and revolution. She is eventually apprehended and arrested by the police who lay down plastic sacks containing the children's bodies on the side of the canal, implying they too have been killed by Planeta. The film ends with the children, unseen by the others, being reborn from their plastic cocoons. After winning the "most virgin" contest, Miss Canada is married to a rich milk tycoon. But she quickly flees the marriage to experience the world around her, full of sweetness and anarchy.
