WATER POWER, Gerard Damiano (1976); Uncut Composite DVD-r (Rare)
$45.00
WATER POWER, Gerard Damiano (1976); Uncut Composite DVD-r (Rare)
DVD-r, Uncut Composite (the ‘cut’ scenes have been sourced from video, and are not digital quality as the rest of the film)
Three intervening decades have done nothing whatsoever to blunt the impact of this notorious roughie, ripped from then current headlines about one Michael Kenyon alias the Illinois Enema Bandit who raped and forcefully, er, cleansed at least two dozen women between 1965 and 1975. Charged with assault and battery, he served a mere six years behind bars, only to be paroled in 1981 after which he wisely faded into well-deserved obscurity. While a TV movie of the week (starring Cameron Mitchell perhaps, think TOOLBOX MURDERS) might’ve been a tantalizing proposition, the counterculture seemed a more likely candidate to process this peculiar court case. It served as inspiration for Frank Zappa’s song “The Legend of the Illinois Enema Bandit” and, for better or worse, this interesting but still extremely hard to take adult film long attributed to Gerard Damiano of DEEP THROAT and DEVIL IN MISS JONES fame.Though his name has always been prominently displayed in both credits and all publicity material, Damiano has repeatedly gone on record claiming he was supposed to do it, but didn’t. Most sources henceforth agree that it was our old friend Shaun Costello at the helm, a theory supported by the familiar soundtrack choices (Bernard Herrmann’s VERTIGO soundtrack has once again been extensively plundered to set the mood) as well as the director’s brief appearance as an extra in a police station sequence. If indeed so, this truly stands as his most disturbing effort since 1972’s FORCED ENTRY and it’s a far better produced work to boot.
