Tag Archives: 2019

RIP Latsploitation queen Isabel Sarli (1935 – 2019)

Isabel Sarli was an Argentinian model and actress known for her risqué films. As such, she was the Latin American Brigitte Bardot. The first film to show her nude was Thunder Among the Leaves (1957) which has her skinny-dipping from 50:09 to 51:38. There are also nude indigenous females (26:34 and subsequent scenes).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il6JYLiWfm0&t=4093s

Thunder Among the Leaves (1958)

If you are more into the wackier films like I am, there is Carne (1968) with Isabel Sarli as Delicia, a worker in a meat-packing factory; Fuego (1969) with Sarli as a nymphomaniac; and Fiebre (1970) in which Sarli falls in love with a horse when she sees a stallion mounting a mare.

Carne (1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tbFpPyluLs

Fuego (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GPa1ff-ImY

Fiebre (1970)

Searching for “Isabel Sarli”, “sexploitation” and “Latsploitation” brings up snippets such as “generally boring sexploitation film about one of those favorite characters in male reveries, a nymphomaniac.” ([on Fuego] in Cue – Volume 40, Issues 1-13 – Page 67 (1971)); “Isabel Sarli breasting her way through further south-of-the-border sexploitation affairs. […] There’s never been a nudie movie queen more amply endowed than Argentina’s Isabel Sarli who simply has to shed her clothing to make things like story and characterization seem irrelevant.” (Film Bulletin – Volume 39 (1970)); “Woman and Temptation is zero as art, but the talents of the buxom Isabel Sarli make this a top sexploiter entry.” (Filmfacts – Volume 12 (1969)) and “While we cannot claim that Sarli’s films would adhere to a feminist agenda …” (Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinemas, and Latin America (2009)).

RIP Sylvia Miles (1924 – 2019)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFM_0tc2MMA

Actress Sylvia Miles died. She was 94. I discovered her via the book Cult Movie Stars (1991) which I bought the year it came out. It describes Miles as a “quirky, funny, busty blonde New York character actress.”

The 1990s was the time of video rental stores and I after I had read Cult Movie Stars from cover to cover I scoured Antwerp looking for old films. So I saw a handful of Miles’ films including Heat (1972) [above], as well as many other Warhol films. Heat opens with the wonderful John Cale song, “Days of Steam” from the album The Academy in Peril (1972).

Sylvia Miles is mainly known for her part in Midnight Cowboy (1969) but she also starred in Denise Calls Up (1996), one of my canonical films.