Another day, another round of online store additions. Today’s slate consists of three titles from Britain’s Arrow Video, including Mario Bava’s horror anthology “Black Sabbath” and a pair of early Woody Allen pictures: “Bananas” and “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask.”
Released in 1969, David Reuben’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)” was a runaway success, topping the best-seller list in more than 50 countries according to publisher HarperCollins. To call Woody Allen’s film with the same name as the famed sex manual an adaptation would be a bit of a stretch, though. The picture is comprised of seven segments, each based on one of the titles from the book’s chapters. For instance, the first segment, “Do Aphrodisiacs Work?,” is about a court jester who attempts to woo a queen with the help of a magic elixir. Stylistically, it could be seen as a test run for Allen’s 1975 send-up of Russian novels, “Love and Death” (as could the film’s final segment, “What Happens During Ejaculation?” be considered a precurson to Allen’s next feature, “Sleeper”).
Alas, Reuben was reportedly not a fan of the film, saying, “I didn’t enjoy the movie because it impressed me as a sexual tragedy. Every episode in the picture was a chronicle of sexual failure, which was the converse of everything in the book.”