Directed by: Marvin J. Chomsky
Actors: Anne Heywood, Donald Pleasence and Robert Vaughn
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Secret Yearnings, The Shaming, The Sin, Relazioni disperate
Description: An abusive sexual relationship between a white spinster schoolteacher (Anne Heywood from Nun and the Devil and Nun of Monza) and an young black janitor in 1956 Kansas complicates her struggle to come to grips with her sexuality and emotions.
Anne Heywood plays a schoolteacher who is slowly going insane (literally) because she has never had sex (!). A doctor tells her, “Nature intended us to use our bodies—if we don’t, they dry up!” Shortly afterwards, she is brutally raped by a “grinning black thug”, a character who seems to have walked right out of a racist Ku Klux Klan brochure. Instead of calling the cops, she starts a lurid sexual affair with her attacker, and in the end, she is run out of town by the local rednecks.
The film is “politically incorrect”, borderline racist, and morally reprehensible, BUT having said that, the film actually is somewhat engrossing and compelling on that level, just as long as you know what you are getting into before you watch it. Okay? “Name” actors appear in cameos, and they probably didn’t know the details of the film. Supposedly based on a story by William Inge—I wonder how faithful it is?
