Film director Zalman King has died at the age of 69, and I'm sad to report the world got just a little less sexy with his passing.
I really can't claim to be a longtime fan of Mr. King. In fact, the first time I heard his name, it was in connection with the film 9½ Weeks, which he produced and is a movie I less than affectionately refer to as a perfume ad for date rape. This is not because it involved consensual bondage with a dominant male; rather, because it offered up several sequences in which the heroine did not know or consent to everything that was happening to her. Yep folks, it doesn't matter how sexy the lead actor is or how smoky the jazz music is that's playing in the background, lack of consent is lack of consent. So while the film's soundtrack (featuring songs by my idol John Taylor from Duran Duran, Bryan Ferry and Annie Lennox) was hot — I still listen to and draw inspiration from it today — I detest the movie itself.
When I heard that King had directed the film Two Moon Junction, an erotic drama starring Richard Tyson and Sherilyn Fenn, I was very reluctant to give him a second chance. Yet something just kept drawing me back to that video box. Oh, OK, it was Richard Tyson's hair and abs. Finally, they just mesmerized me into renting the damn movie.
Two hours and a half box of popcorn later, I was even more mesmerized by the film itself. As Southern potboilers go, it's no Gone With the Wind. But it was everything that 9½ Weeks should have been, as well as being the type of film that was very scarce on the video market at that point. In this film, a beautiful Southern belle goes to the right schools and gets engaged to the right man, then risks it all by having a smoking hot, liberating affair with a gorgeous carnival worker.
Finally, we had a film in which the camera focused just as much on the male as the female (King's head-to-toe shot of a semi-naked Tyson was previously unheard of in straight smut). As an added bonus, a woman gets to enjoy her sexuality without being punished in some way. And in the end (SPOILER ALERT), she gets to keep both the cute, proper husband and the hunky, uninhibited lover. Yeah, that's what Meg's talking 'bout!
I'm one of the few who enjoyed the movie's sequel, Return to Two Moon Junction (which King produced), as much as the original. In fact, I liked it a little more. After all, in Two Moon Junction, April (Fenn) is engaged to someone who seems like a nice gent, if just a bit stuffy and boring; I felt a bit sorry for her fiancé. In Return, scream queen Melinda Clarke (who screams for a good reason this time) is the cheating victim, and she gets some spicy revenge with hunky sculptor John Clayton Schafer.
And it is King's Delta of Venus that I consider to be an erotic feminist masterpiece. Based on a story by Anaïs Nin, this historical romance was written for the screen by feminist erotica author Elisa Rothstein (creator of the Showtime series Women: Stories of Passion).
Indeed, in the creation of his films, King had a lot of powerful women in his corner, including wife and screenwriter Patricia Knop. And while he wouldn't necessarily be called a feminist director, Zalman King certainly did give us ladies some nice things to dream about. May he rest in peace.
TWO MOON JUNCTION was a staple of my adolescence. A large part of it has to do with my sister being in love with Richard Tyson. But also, more importantly, I was hormonally obsessed with Sherilyn Fenn from TWIN PEAKS, the greatest TV show of all time.
So for TWO MOON JUNCTION alone I mourn the loss of Zalman King. My adolescence would never have been the same without that movie.