"It's the most fascinating game: life, death," says Lucio Fulci. "What is more intriguing than death defied? The dead stay dead in police films and TV shows, but the dead returning from the grave are a beautiful mystery all religions have somehow contemplated. I'm not talking about the slaves of Haiti or some magical tradition, I'm taking about God and religion.
"You have examples of living dead in the Bible or the Koran; stories about spirits returning to their own world, as if refusing whatever future lies beyond death." (Shock Masters of the Cinema, ed. Loris Curci, Fantasma Books, Key West, FL, 1996, p. 68.)
Lucio Fulci's 1981 film, (...E Tu Vivrai nel Terrore!) L'Aldilà is about a hotel in Louisiana under which is one of the seven doorways to hell. Liza (Catriona MacColl) has inherited the hotel from her wealthy and estranged uncle and she is determined to fix the old hotel up and make it a commercial success. The doorway to hell, unfortunately, is going to be a hindrance.
The beauty and creativity of L'Aldilà are hidden behind its commercial veneer which often comes dangerously close to obscuring it. Its flaws are legion. As with his previous Zombi 2 (1979), for example, L'Aldilà suffers from an extremely inefficient use of exposition. L'Aldilà begins with a beautifully-shot, monochromatic flashback sequence (photography by Sergio Salvati), set sixty years prior to its present day. During this sequence, an artist living in the hotel is lynched by the locals for being a warlock. He begs for mercy as he warns also of the hotel housing a doorway to hell. His corpse is sealed in the basement. During this opening flashback sequence, a woman is also glimpsed in one of the hotel rooms reading from the Book of Eibon (readers of fantastic fiction should be aware of this allusion), and the book describes the doorway to hell. This woman character later reappears in the present day setting, having not aged at all and now completely blind. Her reappearance is one Fulci's most audacious and powerful compositions: set on one of the long bridges going over Lake Pontchartrain, the young woman stands with her dog, blocking Liza's vehicle from proceeding. [Incidental note: I've just recently driven on the new expressway, erected after Hurricane Katrina, connecting Slidell, La. to New Orleans. I must have driven across this same stretch where this sequence was shot hundreds of times since my youth. Why this shot is so disorienting is during the myriad times traveling it, it has never been empty of cars. The bridge is vast and expansive and is often a bustling thoroughfare. Free from cars, the bridge appears desolate and ominous. The composition of the young blind woman and her animal make them appear as gatekeepers at a crossing. Bridge imagery is very powerful in Fulci's work.] However, the young woman's reappearance is seriously undercut, because of Fulci's poor treatment of her character during the flashback sequence: her face is often obscured behind a book or she is arbitrarily framed in a shot. The only real link to identifying her character are her eyes: from the hazy, monochromatic shot of actress Cinzia Monreale's beautiful eyes to her new ones, totally opaque. As a character's reappearance, the sequence is haunting; but to an initial viewer, it is difficult to see her character as actually reappearing.
David Warbeck plays Dr. John McKay and his character suffers from an annoying flaw typical to horror cinema. As a physician, his character must be exclusively logical and rational in his thinking. Typically, at some point in the film, the character in the horror movie who keeps insisting that there is a rational explanation for escalating horrific events, eventually accepts the source of the horror (as in L'Aldilà , yes, there is a gateway to hell and yes, it is blown wide open.) Warbeck's character goes way beyond the threshold of acceptance: almost until the end of the film, he still is incredulous, despite everyone, including the viewer, seeing otherwise. Not to forget to mention the pacing in L'Aldilà : Warbeck's character has plenty of time to investigate the odd goings on, because the overwhelming majority of the film is one long build-up to its ending, punctuated at times by a seriously over-the-top gore scene. As a piece of traditional horror cinema, L'Aldilà is clearly daft and clumsy and fails at several levels (exposition, characterization, and pacing.)
But I rarely see films this way. Here is Fulci's description of L'Aldilà :
"You have examples of living dead in the Bible or the Koran; stories about spirits returning to their own world, as if refusing whatever future lies beyond death." (Shock Masters of the Cinema, ed. Loris Curci, Fantasma Books, Key West, FL, 1996, p. 68.)
Lucio Fulci's 1981 film, (...E Tu Vivrai nel Terrore!) L'Aldilà is about a hotel in Louisiana under which is one of the seven doorways to hell. Liza (Catriona MacColl) has inherited the hotel from her wealthy and estranged uncle and she is determined to fix the old hotel up and make it a commercial success. The doorway to hell, unfortunately, is going to be a hindrance.
The beauty and creativity of L'Aldilà are hidden behind its commercial veneer which often comes dangerously close to obscuring it. Its flaws are legion. As with his previous Zombi 2 (1979), for example, L'Aldilà suffers from an extremely inefficient use of exposition. L'Aldilà begins with a beautifully-shot, monochromatic flashback sequence (photography by Sergio Salvati), set sixty years prior to its present day. During this sequence, an artist living in the hotel is lynched by the locals for being a warlock. He begs for mercy as he warns also of the hotel housing a doorway to hell. His corpse is sealed in the basement. During this opening flashback sequence, a woman is also glimpsed in one of the hotel rooms reading from the Book of Eibon (readers of fantastic fiction should be aware of this allusion), and the book describes the doorway to hell. This woman character later reappears in the present day setting, having not aged at all and now completely blind. Her reappearance is one Fulci's most audacious and powerful compositions: set on one of the long bridges going over Lake Pontchartrain, the young woman stands with her dog, blocking Liza's vehicle from proceeding. [Incidental note: I've just recently driven on the new expressway, erected after Hurricane Katrina, connecting Slidell, La. to New Orleans. I must have driven across this same stretch where this sequence was shot hundreds of times since my youth. Why this shot is so disorienting is during the myriad times traveling it, it has never been empty of cars. The bridge is vast and expansive and is often a bustling thoroughfare. Free from cars, the bridge appears desolate and ominous. The composition of the young blind woman and her animal make them appear as gatekeepers at a crossing. Bridge imagery is very powerful in Fulci's work.] However, the young woman's reappearance is seriously undercut, because of Fulci's poor treatment of her character during the flashback sequence: her face is often obscured behind a book or she is arbitrarily framed in a shot. The only real link to identifying her character are her eyes: from the hazy, monochromatic shot of actress Cinzia Monreale's beautiful eyes to her new ones, totally opaque. As a character's reappearance, the sequence is haunting; but to an initial viewer, it is difficult to see her character as actually reappearing.
David Warbeck plays Dr. John McKay and his character suffers from an annoying flaw typical to horror cinema. As a physician, his character must be exclusively logical and rational in his thinking. Typically, at some point in the film, the character in the horror movie who keeps insisting that there is a rational explanation for escalating horrific events, eventually accepts the source of the horror (as in L'Aldilà , yes, there is a gateway to hell and yes, it is blown wide open.) Warbeck's character goes way beyond the threshold of acceptance: almost until the end of the film, he still is incredulous, despite everyone, including the viewer, seeing otherwise. Not to forget to mention the pacing in L'Aldilà : Warbeck's character has plenty of time to investigate the odd goings on, because the overwhelming majority of the film is one long build-up to its ending, punctuated at times by a seriously over-the-top gore scene. As a piece of traditional horror cinema, L'Aldilà is clearly daft and clumsy and fails at several levels (exposition, characterization, and pacing.)
But I rarely see films this way. Here is Fulci's description of L'Aldilà :"What I wanted to get across with that film was the idea that all of life is often really a terrible nightmare and that our only refuge is to remain in this world, but outside time. In the end, the two protagonists' eyes turn completely white and they find themselves in a desert where there's no light, no shade, no wind...no nothing. I believe, despite my being Catholic, that they reached what many people believe to be the Afterworld.
"I'd like to emphasize that I wanted to make a completely Artaudian film out of an almost inexistent script by Sacchetti and working with me was the same crew that had done Zombi 2 and which did my other five so-called 'historicized' films: Salvati as director of photography, Franco Bruni as cameraman and Lentini as architect. An extraordinary crew! Also, we got on marvelously with Fabrizio De Angelis, a producer from the Fulvia film Company, who concerned himself solely with how to sell the film in the best possible way. He never came bothering us and left us free to do what we wanted; that's why I was able to make this Artaudian film, harking back also to an old western of mine: Le colt cantarono la morte e fu: tempo di massacro, a western that went beyond time and space." (from Spaghetti Nightmares, ed. by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta, Fantasma Books, Key West, FL, 1996, p. 60.)
Perhaps not lost in L'Aldilà is Fulci’s sensitivity to detail with his creativity. The film truly begins with a painting. The artist, holed up in the hotel until the lynch mob descends upon him, is putting the finishing touches on his canvas. It is only during the final sequence of the film that the viewer recognizes the landscape in the painting. Also, it only becomes clear during the final sequence of the film what happens to the characters when they witness this landscape. The artist in the initial sequence, however, seems untouched by what he is recreating with his painting (this is an amazingly provocative yet obscure concept towards artists). There is a scene when the young blind woman, who reveals herself to Liza as Emily and is portrayed by Cinzia Monreale, senses the painting near her. She cannot see it but is aware of what it depicts; and when she touches it, her hands begin to bleed. A warning? A brilliantly creepy scene follows later when Emily is confronted by visitors out of the doorway to hell. A hellish stigmata? A symbol for those who have been touched by the doorway (Liza’s hands begin to bleed also later in the film.)? The painting is a mystical and cryptic motif, not easily digestible. Rarely is supernatural and fantastic cinema so subtle and sensitive in this respect.
Less subtle yet equally sensitive is the focus that Fulci puts upon his characters’ eyes. Everyone is familiar with the saying that “the eyes are the window to the soul,” and this sentiment resonates throughout L'Aldilà . In fact, Fulci prefers close-ups on his characters’ eyes more than on their faces. What is focal is absolutely not what these characters are seeing--there is a wonderfully-rendered manipulative sequence in a cemetery with a child. When she opens her eyes at the end of the sequence, Fulci’s intentions are revealed.
Fabio Frizzi delivers another amazing score for a Fulci film. As it plays over the credit sequence, it creates such emotion and is more affecting than any gore or scare scene. Cinzia Monreale easily gives the most emotional performance and her character is the most intriguing and attractive. (In fact, Catriona MacColl as Liza is the main character of Dardano Sacchetti’s traditionally-scripted narrative. I prefer to see Monreale’s Emily as the main character of Fulci’s “Artaudian film.”) Interestingly, the violent, gore scenes really show Fulci’s sadistic side: the lynching during the beginning is extremely brutal, punctuated by zoom shots on the wounds. Not to forget to mention that Warbeck’s character hits a crack shot with his pistol to the head of a child--easily the most repellent and violent scene in L'Aldilà ’s final act.
By the way, there are zombies in L'Aldilà . I first saw this film well over twenty years ago on a dupe of a Japanese VHS. I purchased a DVD from EC Entertainment (from where these screenshots are from) over a decade ago. Much better DVD versions have followed in the ensuing years with more supplements and better audio and video. I decided to give the old disc an spin and expected to revisit an old gore classic. L'Aldilà is still that, but over the years, I’ve never appreciated Fulci’s artistry, his contradictions, and his depth and sensitivity. Seeing L'Aldilà today is a totally different experience.
"I'd like to emphasize that I wanted to make a completely Artaudian film out of an almost inexistent script by Sacchetti and working with me was the same crew that had done Zombi 2 and which did my other five so-called 'historicized' films: Salvati as director of photography, Franco Bruni as cameraman and Lentini as architect. An extraordinary crew! Also, we got on marvelously with Fabrizio De Angelis, a producer from the Fulvia film Company, who concerned himself solely with how to sell the film in the best possible way. He never came bothering us and left us free to do what we wanted; that's why I was able to make this Artaudian film, harking back also to an old western of mine: Le colt cantarono la morte e fu: tempo di massacro, a western that went beyond time and space." (from Spaghetti Nightmares, ed. by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta, Fantasma Books, Key West, FL, 1996, p. 60.)
Perhaps not lost in L'Aldilà is Fulci’s sensitivity to detail with his creativity. The film truly begins with a painting. The artist, holed up in the hotel until the lynch mob descends upon him, is putting the finishing touches on his canvas. It is only during the final sequence of the film that the viewer recognizes the landscape in the painting. Also, it only becomes clear during the final sequence of the film what happens to the characters when they witness this landscape. The artist in the initial sequence, however, seems untouched by what he is recreating with his painting (this is an amazingly provocative yet obscure concept towards artists). There is a scene when the young blind woman, who reveals herself to Liza as Emily and is portrayed by Cinzia Monreale, senses the painting near her. She cannot see it but is aware of what it depicts; and when she touches it, her hands begin to bleed. A warning? A brilliantly creepy scene follows later when Emily is confronted by visitors out of the doorway to hell. A hellish stigmata? A symbol for those who have been touched by the doorway (Liza’s hands begin to bleed also later in the film.)? The painting is a mystical and cryptic motif, not easily digestible. Rarely is supernatural and fantastic cinema so subtle and sensitive in this respect.
Less subtle yet equally sensitive is the focus that Fulci puts upon his characters’ eyes. Everyone is familiar with the saying that “the eyes are the window to the soul,” and this sentiment resonates throughout L'Aldilà . In fact, Fulci prefers close-ups on his characters’ eyes more than on their faces. What is focal is absolutely not what these characters are seeing--there is a wonderfully-rendered manipulative sequence in a cemetery with a child. When she opens her eyes at the end of the sequence, Fulci’s intentions are revealed.
Fabio Frizzi delivers another amazing score for a Fulci film. As it plays over the credit sequence, it creates such emotion and is more affecting than any gore or scare scene. Cinzia Monreale easily gives the most emotional performance and her character is the most intriguing and attractive. (In fact, Catriona MacColl as Liza is the main character of Dardano Sacchetti’s traditionally-scripted narrative. I prefer to see Monreale’s Emily as the main character of Fulci’s “Artaudian film.”) Interestingly, the violent, gore scenes really show Fulci’s sadistic side: the lynching during the beginning is extremely brutal, punctuated by zoom shots on the wounds. Not to forget to mention that Warbeck’s character hits a crack shot with his pistol to the head of a child--easily the most repellent and violent scene in L'Aldilà ’s final act.
By the way, there are zombies in L'Aldilà . I first saw this film well over twenty years ago on a dupe of a Japanese VHS. I purchased a DVD from EC Entertainment (from where these screenshots are from) over a decade ago. Much better DVD versions have followed in the ensuing years with more supplements and better audio and video. I decided to give the old disc an spin and expected to revisit an old gore classic. L'Aldilà is still that, but over the years, I’ve never appreciated Fulci’s artistry, his contradictions, and his depth and sensitivity. Seeing L'Aldilà today is a totally different experience.
Imagine a spiral staircase. It is a powerful symbol for both time and space. Imagine the bottom of the stairs as the origin of a specific time and imagine its top as the ending with its climbing stairs as time’s progression. The concept as a whole can be seen by viewing the stairs from the side; however, by looking down upon the stairs from above, one only sees its top circle. How many actual steps there are remain hidden. Finally, imagine the spiral staircase collapsing upon itself: several circles of stairs lay in close proximity, almost jumbled. This collapsed spiral staircase, now as a symbol for both time and space, to put it in an understated manner, causes time and space to become jumbled. This is the shock labyrinth, serving as Shimizu’s narrative technique for his film (also a powerful visual motif within). 
Ken (Yûya Yagira ), now in his early twenties, returns to his childhood village. He reunites with his friends Motoki (Ryo Katsuji) and Rin (Ai Maeda). It begins raining. An unexpected visitor arrives, another childhood friend, Yuki (Misako Renbutsu). Ken’s exit from the village was known: his mother died which prompted his father to move the child away; and his return was expected by Motoki and Rin. No one knows where Yuki has been for several years or why she decided to return on that particular evening. 
Specific imagery within the film holds the key to its understanding--at first, disorienting and ridiculous: a child's backpack. This particular backpack is a stuffed bunny wherein its belly a child's keepsakes are found. Two straps connect the bunny's shoulders to its hind legs, and a child can wear it on his/her back. An endearing image, perhaps, but seeing the backpack absent from a child is just ridiculous: this item belongs in the world of adolescence, and it holds no particular significance to any adult. However, imagine a different association with the item: what if the stuffed-bunny backpack was associated with a specific person linked to a moment in childhood? When Ken, Motoki, Rin, and Yuki reunite this image has a specific association, tied to an incident that occurred during their childhood. This incident is returning to them in a powerful recall during the present night. Seeing events through these characters' eyes is deftly crafted by Shimizu. On this level, The Shock Labyrinth is a narrative and visual mystery.
The Shock Labyrinth is a haunted house in an amusement park where the main characters visited as children. Now as young adults, they revisit the place. The Shock Labyrinth where the events and players of the past literally meet the players of the present to create an ending for each. 
The Shock Labyrinth was filmed and presented in 3-D (which adds an incidental (?) layer of meaning to the film). Unfortunately, I suffer often from baggy eyes and never had the inclination to view the film in that format (coupled with having little interest in the format). However, it is available in a two-disc set from Taiwan. It is English-subtitled and contains both a disc for the 3-D version (with glasses) and the non-3-D version. The set is encoded Region 3 and can be purchased 
Shivers, written and directed by David Cronenberg, is set almost wholly in Starliner Towers, only twelve minutes away from Montreal, on Starliner Island in isolation. A slide-show sales pitch plays behind the credits, detailing the amenities which the apartment complex has to offer. It is a small world unto itself. Janine (Sue Petrie), a Starliner resident, is experiencing marital problems with husband Nicolas (Alan Migicovsky) who has grown extremely distant and cold towards her. Meanwhile on a upper floor, an older man assaults a very young woman in an apartment. The older gentleman is fixated upon her stomach. He opens it and burns the young woman's insides with acid. The police arrive to investigate the death. Doctor Roger St. Luc, Starliner Towers' resident physician, discovered the young woman's corpse. Dr. St. Luc was summoned to the apartment by his old teacher at medical school, Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein). Hobbes is the older gentleman who attacked the young woman. He has killed himself, as well. 
"Roger," says Lynn Lowry's character, who plays Roger's nurse and lover, "I had a very disturbing dream last night. In the dream, I found myself making love to a strange man. Only I'm having trouble, you see, because he's old...and tiny. And he smells bad, and I find him repulsive. But then he tells me that everything is erotic. Everything is sexual. You know what I mean? He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh. Disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. Even dying is an act of eroticism. That talking is sexual. That breathing is sexual. And even to physically exist is sexual. And I believe him. And we make love beautifully." 
Shivers is Cronenberg's debut feature-length film as a professional filmmaker. Despite the film being thirty-five years old, it undoubtedly is still very much shocking and provocative. From the idyllic modern setting of Starliner Towers, its residents present the diversity of civilized folks of both genders in a wide range of ages, living in harmony, together. The original title of the film was "Orgy of the Blood Parasites" (35)--a wholly apt yet deceptive description. In the brief set-up which I detailed for the film above, all psychological and physical problems, abnormalities, manifestations, etc., all result from the presence of a parasite. As the parasite infects one resident that resident infects two who infect two more and etc. Their actions become violent, perverse (-ted), and sexual. David Cronenberg offers his insights: 
Roger's old teacher (and perhaps mentor) Dr. Hobbes has a wonderfully allusive name which hides much of the film's philosophical background. Cronenberg, a serious court jester of cinema, is not content with just exploring philosophical ideas but contrasting them: those with a cursory knowledge of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche will see quite a bit of his philosophy, as well. The film is by far not totally cerebral: it's quite organic. Cronenberg presents philosophical ideas and questions or rejects them. The genesis for the creation of the parasites is a wonderful perverse joke which reflects this. 
I don't know where these extreme images come from. It seems very straightforward and natural and obvious to me as it happens. Often they come from the philosophical imperative of a narrative and therefore lead me to certain things that are demanded by the film. I don't impose them. The film or the script itself demands a certain image, a certain moment in the film, dramatically. And it emerges. It's like the philosophy of Emergent Evolution, which says that certain unpredictable peaks emerge from the natural flow of things and carry you forward to another stage. I guess each film has its own version of Emergent Evolution. It's just like plugging into a wall socket. You look around for the plug point and, when you find it, the electricity is there--assuming that the powerhouse is still working. That's as close to describing the process as I can get. (41) 
Shivers is driven by raw energy from an extremely fertile and creative mind; and the film runs with subversive, perverse, and wicked themes and imagery. (Imagery at times is evocative of Pasolini's Salo, made and released around the same time.) Subtle sexual imagery like Lowry getting rebuffed by a preoccupied Roger only to disrobe in front of him while he handles an important phone call to the taboo--Roger opens the door to witness an older man who introduces a young woman as his daughter who then embrace. In another brilliant brief sequence, Roger encounters a man and a nude woman tussling in the hallway. He points his revolver at the couple but he cannot discern whether one or both is infected; whether they will lose interest in each other and attack him; or whether they're having kinky fun. Roger's reaction is ambiguous but interesting. It's an at-times rough-looking film but also has some very creative compositions. Indisputably, Shivers is one of the best horror film debuts, ever. 
All parenthetical numbers that follow facts or quotes represent page numbers from Cronenberg on Cronenberg, edited by Chris Rodley, Faber and Faber, London, 1992.
The director, Takashi Shimizu, is talented. Interestingly (and perhaps ironically) upon its first viewing, the narrative of Marebito is compelling (screenplay by Chiaki Konaka from his novel), and it is easy to surrender to the story and watch it unfold. During a second viewing, it is easier to become detached and watch how the film is constructed. Masuoka doesn't just capture footage with his video camera but he reviews it at the end of the day. At his work deck with multiple monitors and equipment, Masuoka is able to slow, freeze, and replay the events. If Masuoka walked the streets of Tokyo every day and captured the events with only his eyes, then all his critical review would have to come from memory. With his video footage, Masuoka can apply a much more critical eye. During the suicide subway footage, Masuoka is able to capture one frame of a split second, a quick glance by the man down the hallway of the subway. Viewing this one frame during this split second, Masuoka becomes obsessed with what terrified the man and he wants to replicate the experience. Marebito is about the perception and construction of reality. What the eye sees, what the mind perceives and what video captures creates the film.
Most of the scenes away from directly advancing the narrative seem innocuous. In one telling sequence, Masuoka is walking the streets and holding his camera near his waist. The footage that he is capturing is fuzzier than the primary film footage which Shimizu is using as stock for Marebito. In Shimizu's footage, the faces of street people are blurred, but there is no blurring in Masuoka's footage. A man in a suit walks past Masuoka, and as he turns into a tunnel, Masuoka is confronted by the passing man. Were you recording? he asks. Masuoka lies and says no. The man presses him again and demands the tape in Masuoka's camera. Did you do something bad? asks Masuoka. The man doesn't answer that question, and Shimizu offers no evidence whatsoever for the viewer to speculate upon the question. The blurring/no-blurring footage from Masuoka/Shimizu juxtaposed with Masuoka's encounter with the man (Masuoka gets beaten for his cassette) leads to no discernable, rational answer. Maybe, however, that some people just do not like being captured on camera.
One of the oddest quirks that Masuoka has is filming his apartment while he is gone. During the course of Marebito, he finds a dweller in the underground and houses her there. Footage is shown of Masuoka purchasing a surveillance camera, designed, as the salesperson describes, to monitor your pets, like a cat, when the homeowner is absent. Masuoka is able to monitor his houseguest from his cellular phone via remote from the camera. However, Shimizu shows his viewer the point of view from the remote camera in Masuoka's apartment before he discovers the dweller in the underground. Why would Masuoka want to film his apartment then, seemingly unoccupied? Perhaps the answer is in the question, as "seemingly unoccupied" is the phrase which hides Masuoka's fear. At the end of a day at his work desk, Masuoka reviews his house footage from the remote camera. He watches his house guest move around and notices in the footage that she is alerted by something/one. The footage blacks out and for twelve seconds, Masuoka has no idea what happened. His house guest is traumatized, and presumably, what caused her distress occurred during the twelve-second blackout. Masuoka is distressed, but the flaw in his plan to capture the world around him is revealed (or the world that he wants to capture/perceive): he cannot completely create his own reality, regardless of his methods.
Marebito has more layers. Quite a few jokes are made at the media's expense, and Masuoka also has a mental condition, which may or may not be clouding his perception of reality. In any case, Shimizu's sensitive portrait certainly deserves sensitive viewing. Few films like Marebito are so meta yet so organic that for this reason alone, Marebito is worth viewing. With films like the original V-cinema Ju-on, Reincarnation, and this one show that Shimizu's cinema is often top-shelf and extremely provocative.
While Deodato's first statements regarding his Vortice Mortale (The Washing Machine) (1993) seem straightforward and clear, his second statement, "it's a very intimate movie and should have had well-known actors," is cryptic. By "intimate," one can assume that Deodato means that The Washing Machine is a film with few actors who are burdened with carrying the film's plot. This is true: The Washing Machine really has only four principal actors: Philippe Caroit, who plays Inspector Alexander Stacev; and his character becomes entangled with three sisters, Maria (Ilaria Borrelli), Vida (Kahia Figura) and Ludmilla (Barbara Ricci) in a murder case. By qualifying "actors" with "well-known," perhaps Deodato is also insinuating that better actors were needed to carry the film.
Just speculation on my part. The Washing Machine is carried by the eroticism of its three actresses, and the kinky fun that their director has with their characters. 
In the film’s best visual sequence, Alexander has gone to a museum to see Maria. Maria, in addition to her giving music lessons, spends her free time with the blind. On this particular day, the museum is closed to the public, so Maria and the group of blind patrons are allowed to touch and feel the sculptures while Maria gives commentary. Enter Alexander, who by this time in the story is well-seduced by the three sisters, especially Maria. She walks over to Alexander, feigning blindness. She disrobes and allows Alexander to feel her, much like the blind patrons are doing to the sculptures. The fear of getting caught heightens their excitement, as one of Maria’s wards comes dangerously close to discovering the two. Deodato reserves his relish for his actresses--a tight close-up of a handcuff hitting a railing or a high heeled shoe propping up or a skirt sliding up or a dress falling down. Claudio Simonetti’s score (one of his better later pieces) feels oddly out of place accompanying sex instead of violence; yet this is where the excitement is within The Washing Machine. 
Luigi Spagnol’s script is familiar. Alexander is the cop who in the course of an investigation becomes seduced with his suspect(s). During the course of the investigation, twist and turns ensue, and his obsession towards his suspects leads him astray (as the director attempts to lead his viewer astray from obvious clues in the mystery). A lot of the relevant sequences to the mystery are through hearsay: Alexander questions one of the sisters, and she tells her version. Deodato renders each story visually, so each sister’s credibility is always an issue. Personally, I could care less how the story ended, as most plots usually end with the most ludicrous result imaginable. How The Washing Machine actually ends remains hidden for the curious viewer. 
The Washing Machine loosely portrays the three sisters like traditional witches; so when Alexander, against better judgment, continues deeper into his obsession, the metaphor, he is under their “spell” is oddly appropriate. Other visual motifs like Maria’s black cat and the titular washing machine substituting for a cauldron are also present. It’s a very creative touch and strongly felt throughout the whole film. Deodato is a brilliant visual stylist with a unique eye; and he really captures the beauty and atmosphere of the Budapest setting. It’s a lot more fun watching the three sisters have their way with Alexander than watching him stumble through an investigation. Obscure.
