Secret Desire

Date 6-09-2021, 17:23

Secret Desire is one of the better-known pornographic roughies that Alpha Blue Archives have included on this box set. The film itself elicits long forgotten infantile memories of darkened attics; spooky-looking men that your parents warned you about, and the ubiquitous warnings of “don’t go in the house!” Secret Desire is a very enjoyable adult roughie that actually attempts to harness the aura of frightening houses and utilizes it into creating disturbing atmosphere of dread.The film begins with the idyllic view of what appears to be the hills of Northern California, a place of golden and tranquil beauty and incessant sunny days, attesting to the huge increase in population during the 1970’s. A narrator introduces the beginning of Secret Desire by paying complementary sentiment to this glorified US state. After all, California has something for everyone: a temperate climate all year round; a massive metropolis that caters to the aspirations of every man and woman striving for fame and fortune across the globe; mountainous scenery and sandy beaches packed with Baywatch-type women; farms and citrus groves that employ underpaid migrant workers from Mexico; and money leaving trails of stink on Rodeo Drive. But, of course, California has a darker side that the gullible people of this planet refuse to acknowledge; either that or we secrete this tenet of information from our conscious minds in fear of having that dark side of California erasing our utopian views of what we want to believe this golden state is like. This dark side is never mentioned in brochures. Who would want to advertise some of the world’s most notorious serial killers such as the Freeway Killer, the Koreatown Slasher, the Southside Slayer, the Candlelight Killer, the Sunset Slayer, the Trash Bag Killer, the Night Stalker, and the Orange Coast Killer, etc? Oh, and one cannot forget the shocking and horrific homicide of The Black Dahlia; cut completely in half with her mouth slashed from ear to ear and dumped beside an suburban sidewalk back in 1947. No official study has been able to explain the disproportionate number of serial killers attestable to the secreted dark side pertaining to this wonderful state. William Bonin and Vernon Butts, Fernando Cota, Harvey Glatman, The Manson family, Patrick Kearney, Thor Christiansen, Randy Kraft, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, all invoke terrible nightmares that are still felt today. California is often described as the psychopath central of the world, or at least it was back in the 70’s. That this part of the world is actually accountable for at least 10% of the world’s identified serial killers between the years 1950 and 2000 is nothing short of incredible. Monsters do exist, and these legendary serial killers are the evidence.The bipolar perception that one conjures in regards to California is expressed so succinctly in the narrated introduction of White Slavers. After the narrator brings an end to his short introduction, we are hit across the face with the musical score from Psycho. The score is accompanied with a black-haired female tied to the top of the table inside an attic with her exposed back receiving the ferocious whipping dispensed by a grey-haired psychopath. The psychopath keeps asking where his daughter is. The tied victim is then raped from behind and forced to give fellatio against her will. This sex scene sets a nightmarish precedent when the ejaculation of the psychopath is accompanied with the jabbing violin score of Janet Leigh stabbed to death in Psycho.Disturbing stuff indeed. Secret Desire invokes the sensation of a horror film.The psychopath’s daughter is called Mary. Mary is a very innocent young woman who is presently courting a mature and blonde gentleman called John. Mary laments to John why she is living in absolute terror and fears going back home to live with her father. Her father is evidently an abusive individual (as we saw in the very first scene of this film), and Mary is desirous of running away from him.John takes Mary to visit one of his friends; Bob is his name and he shares the house with his blonde girlfriend who lounges in bed all the time begging for a male organ to suck on. Bob consoles Mary by reassuring her that she can live with him and his girlfriend until she finds a place of her own. Mary is ecstatic and finally has the courage to face her father and collect her belongings.Mary walks home. She enters her house and discovers nobody there, but when she curiously climbs the staircase leading to the attic after hearing a female voice, she discovers the fully deranged criminality of what her father is capable of. There in the darkened recesses of the attic is a naked woman tied with her hands above her head and bearing the red marks of protracted abuse. Mary rushes to free the vulnerable female from the clutches of bondage suspending her from the roof beams, but her father spoils the proceedings by ambushing her from behind. Mary is taken hostage by her own father and raped inside the black attic.Back at Bob’s house, the jovial atmosphere is strained at the length of Mary’s absence. Bob sends his girlfriend in search of Mary and when she too doesn’t return, the two men go searching.Secret Desire is imbued with haunting images of naked females tied up in bondage inside a madman’s attic. The score accompanying our bleak descent into the darkened corners of the Californian state heightens the dread that oozes like slime from our television screen. The sex is dirty with sweat and grime, and the pulsating darkness inside the attic elicits infantile fears of the dark that were once long forgotten in antiquity.
Peni Burk, Joe Kado, Kay Louis, Sam Torn