A psychotronic sleaze-noir-dcore roughie plucked from the mixed and varied oeuvre of exploitation lynchpin Lee Frost (Love Camp 7, Chrome and Hot Leather, Policewomen, The Black Gestapo).

I'm going out on a bit of a limb to presume Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse had some sort of involvement with the production as they both appear at different moments in uncredited roles.

Starring: I. William Quinn (credited as Jason Carns), Angela Carnon (credited as Gloria Jane Medford), Starlyn Simone (credited as Linda Harris), Betty Childs, Cindy Taylor (credited as Mary Tomkins), and Uschi Digard (credited as Sally Martin).

Eddie (Quinn/Carns) is a lowlife security guard and worse - a wannabe cop, who can't make the force because of his short stature. Instead, he spends his evenings sticking decals on his car and roaming the night pretending to be an LAPD officer, picking up and sexually abusing prostitutes. A real stand up guy and a credit to society - yeah right. Well, everything changes for Eddie one morning when he witnesses a woman (Carnon/Medford) shoot her husband and Eddie decides she must be met with his own brand of morally righteous punishment.



Enticed by the intriguing, though admittedly sleazy, noir-ish premise, I quickly found the character of Eddie to be singularly fascinating. He's tragic, but he's not a character you can entirely sympathise with; certainly not by way of Frank Zito in Maniac (1980), or Mark Lewis from Peeping Tom (1960), and observing his gradual unravelling throughout the run time is like watching a psychological study of a degenerate sex-maniac caught in a power struggle.

Interestingly, director Lee Frost employs the occasional use of an inner monologue/voiceover of Eddie dictating his gutter thoughts about the homicidal housewife, predating those of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver by two years. It's an effective way to engage the audience with Eddie, his growing psychopathy, and his consuming obsession with a woman spawned from an act of voyeurism.



Another example of the first hand audience-exposure to Eddie's id is through the use of dream sequences. Creatively shot and accompanied by colourful hues of red; David Lynch, this ain't, while they are artfully photographed, they're still oozing an aura of scuzz.
First seen when he coughs up for a $5 massage (11am to 5pm, or so the sign advertises). After an obligatory sex scene Eddie falls soundly asleep, but he begins to feverishly sweat as he's tormented by a dream-flashback, in sepia and slow-motion, of the fracas between the husband and wife. The dream then changes, supplanting the husband with Eddie in his cop uniform, disarming the wife he forcibly grabs her and attempts to sexually assault her, only for her to suddenly have the weapon again (hey dream logic!), levelling the revolver at him and pulling the trigger several times.

Eddie returns to the woman's home and watches, voyeuristically, through her window as she makes love to man in her living room. Visibly sexually frustrated he retreats to his apartment, sets up a projector, and starts jerking it to an anal sex-centered loop. This short scene precipitates another dream sequence in which the fantasy, now much more violent, sees Eddie handcuff the woman to his "squad car", giving her a lashing before violating, and strangling her.

Determining what one could interpret as Eddie's fixation on not just the housewife, but also on the danger she represents. A twisted dichotomy of power forms; the woman becomes more than an object of desire for Eddie, she becomes an obsession. But, as much as she excites him, he's troubled by her and appears afflicted with an overwhelming sense of angst and horror.
Perhaps then it's Eddie's unconscious self-preservation, or intuition, alerting him that his all-conusming sexual obsession with this mysterious woman may lead to his untimely death, exemplifying his internal combat and worsening mental decline.

Needless to say, Eddie eventually confronts the housewife, has a total breakdown, and attempts to keep the woman a prisoner in her own home, subjecting her to sexual violence, including a rather vicious whipping scene.



A Climax of Blue Power is a character-driven kinky thrill ride through the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles in the backseat of a phoney squad car, and I must confess I unabashedly dig this one.
I'd be tempted to say that this would slightly benefit from a soft cut, removing the hardcore scenes, as it deserves to be received by a wider audience and I know how much of a turnoff the porn stuff is for folks. Ironic, eh?

The movie looks brilliant, a credit to the Frost's cinematography; the colourful hues and sepia during the dreams and flashbacks are a really nice touch. The pacing is slick and the finale careers into full-tilt psychotronic nightmare territory with Eddie inexplicably dressing as a woman and giving the murderous housewife he's been menacing a bubblebath, prior to assaulting and attempting to despatch her. I don't know if it was a humorous creative choice, or if it's actually there to further emphasise Eddie's spiralling degeneracy/psychopathy, but the sheer unpredictability of it makes the ending thoroughly memorable and all the more entertaining.