Thursday, May 24, 2012

Scorpio Nights (1985)


Its rare that movies with a sexual component are both interesting on the human level and interesting on the sexual level. Most directors seem to crank out indifferent stories that are merely excuses for bad soft core sex. Scorpio Nights on the other hand is completely different it has hot encounters and more importantly people you care about.

Set in an apartment house in Manila where no one has any real privacy. The rooms are small and the construction is such that you can often see into your neighbors homes. A young tenant notices the activities of his down stairs neighbors through a hole in the floor. Smitten he watches the nightly routine of the husband coming home, eating dinner and then crawling into bed with his sleeping wife. It isn't long before he's managed to work his way into the heart of the woman below and started a torrid affair.

Well done across the board this is the type of story that could have been over done, instead its all played very real (In an interview the director said that he's been stopped by many people over the years who said that he manged to get the details of their affair right)

Truth be told as steamy as the sex is the really erotic moments are the ones either before the sex or the ones where sex isn't possible. There's a moment where the woman looks up at the ceiling with desire, yearning for her lover, he sees this and pushes his fingers through the holes in the boards. She then reaches for his fingers with an almost unearthly hunger...so he opens up a small door in the floor and extends his arm... Who needs graphic sex?

Best of all its not sexy because its sex, its sexy because its two real characters who we know and understand. These are two characters who could be us so we're compelled to continue watching. Actually the strength of Scorpio Nights is the interaction of the characters, they are real people with real problems and desires. The story is driven by them instead of driving them.

Lets hope that some one is smart enough to get a really good edition of this out on DVD in English.

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