Sexual healing — ‘The Curious Dr. Humpp’ (Film Review)
There’s nothing demented bad guys hate more than young people having sex. And in the case of Emilio Vieyra’s The Curious Dr. Humpp, the demented bad guy also happens to be a mad scientist hell-bent on harnessing the power of the libido to advance the human race — at least that’s what he keeps saying. Dr. Humpp’s (Aldo Barbero) curiosity only goes as far as tuning into his own personal pay-per-view channel to watch kidnapped couples get it on.
The doctor’s real trouble happens to be that he’s rotting to death, and chugging the derived sexual essence from horny hippies and lusty lesbians has the added advantage of reversing his encroaching decrepitude. No copulating couple is safe as long as Dr. Humpp’s mindless zombies are on the loose, roaming the countryside in their Humppmobile ready to haul away unsuspecting fornicators and orgyists back to the Humpp compound for a prompt sex draining that renders the women nymphomaniacs, and the men shriveled into more of the curious doctor’s mindless minions: “The girl can; she’s still strong enough. That poor man’s got nothing left.”
A good 13 minutes at the beginning of this film are entirely devoted to deft exposition strictly in the form of coitus interruptus, as a pair of lesbians, a randy foursome, and a lonesome nympho with a power tool are put upon by googly-eyed zombies who halt their throes of passion for the advancement of science and the sake of Dr. Humpp’s well-being. Ultimately, no one cares until a local stripper named Rachel (Gloria Prat, who could give Edwige Fenech a run for her money) is accosted by one of these bi-pedal, man-sized raisins and the authorities are called in to investigate. And of course, along with the authorities comes the press and here comes George Farran (Ricardo Bauleo) from the newspaper ready to crack this thing wide open.
George has done his homework, revealing that similar occurrences have cropped up involving an Italian scientist, and George, a man who seeks only to expose the truth, is more than willing to endure a little collateral damage sex to connect the dots.
After one of Dr. Humpp’s wrinkly weirdos murders a pharmacist while trying to obtain aphrodisiacs, the good doctor is duly scolded by the real guy in charge — you guessed it: a trash-talking brain in a jar named Dr. Puntangnello (yes, you read that right). You know, what you really want in a talking, pickled brain is an adroit ability for trash-talk. Anyway, Dr. Humpp’s infirm condition is a result of being the first victim in this diabolical string of sexual experiments, and there’s not enough sexual juju in the world to stave of the imminent rot that is surely to consume Dr. Humpp who in spite of his unfortunate state, has worked tirelessly to “turn humans into veritable screwing machines.”
Made in Argentina in 1966, The Curious Dr. Humpp was originally La venganza del sexo (The Revenge of Sex), and Dr. Humpp was Dr. Zoide, and the film contained fewer naked hippies and lesbians. Once the film made it to the United States in 1970, sexploitation films were raging like one of Dr. Humpp’s nymphos, and American filmmaker Jerald Intrator capitalized on the fad turning La venganza del sexo into The Curious Dr. Humpp, adding more debauchery to Vieyra’s original film to the tune of 17 minutes. Anytime you see the hippies, the lesbians, or the blonde nympho, you’re seeing the uncredited work of Intrator who used sexploitation regulars and shot the scenes in New York City. Aside from being unusually long in a film that has a fairly steady narrative, the added scenes are pretty much seamless, hardly disrupting the pace of the film.
And why is Dr. Humpp curious? Why, because of the controversial popularity of the contemporary Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), of course. If there’s one thing you could count on in sexploitation aside from the lack of grooming, it was the consistency to hitch its wagon to anything else that made money or press.
The movie really picks up speed once George follows the Humppmobile back to the sex compound and is kidnapped by Dr. Humpp’s robot-minded, sex-drained zombies in the midst of infiltration. Once George gains consciousness he finds he’s paired with Rachel the stripper but has to sex up Dr. Humpp’s nurse, which turns out to be no problemo since she’s a sex-deprived nympho with a major crush on the doctor who is incapable of putting out. That’s okay, because she’s so horny she hallucinates George as Dr. Humpp, and this is where George is called upon by the integrity of his craft to do his due diligence and sex his way out of captivity and towards the truth.
By the final act, Dr. Humpp has wired George and Rachel’s brains together to keep an endless cycle of mental sexual mojo on tap without the hassle of pesky physical foreplay, allowing him to mainline libido juice to stave off the zombie rot cursed upon him by that trash-talking pickled brain, Puntangnello. Dr. Humpp turns out to be a man ahead of his time, and he attempts to turn sex into a lean manufacturing machine. “Sex dominates the world! And now I dominate sex!” Not so fast, Caligula.
I really dig the jazzy score that delightfully glides us through the sex, and the wiggly weird-beard soundtrack that indicates when Dr. Humpp’s sex-inducing serum kicks in. Director of Photography Anibal Paz cuts a gothic visage the likes of which could be compared to something from a Mario Bava flick.
I also enjoy the often sober, convicted delivery of dialogue that otherwise would give our inner adolescent a chuckle, like this exchange between George and Rachel:
George: “They’ve made you into a nymphomaniac.”
Rachel: “You shouldn’t care about that. It means that you can get it whenever you want it.”
In a very non-sexploitation way, George cares about stuff like, you know, Rachel’s feelings and is concerned about her well-being. He even tells her, “I don’t like you always being in heat,” — also stated with sober conviction.
I found myself slightly sympathizing with Dr. Humpp. I mean, he never asked to be in the position of impotently rotting to death, so you can hardly blame him for using his credentials to save himself. And at what cost? More, if not endless sex for anyone involved in his recovery. How could you not feel a little sorry for the guy? But to quote that old Vulcan proverb, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” and really this ol’ world just isn’t cut out for the doctor’s higher designs, and as the film reveals, neither are we humans.
This is one of those movies your mother tells you you shouldn’t be watching even though at its core is a very moral message about the dangers of excess, but it also plays to our own curiosities about sex, perhaps making us part of the experiment. The Curious Dr. Humpp winds up being a sexploitation movie with an anti-sex message, where the hero of the film wholesomely uses sex to prevent more sex which would most likely be too much sex that would result in single-minded nymphomania and parched virility — one hell of a doomsday scenario if you ask me. Bravo, George Farran; you’ve done a man’s job.
Four stars.
Available on blu-ray from the American Genre Film Archive and Vinegar Syndrome.
