User Reviews

Something Weird Video has made a name for itself by resurrecting forgotten exploitation films from the 50's, 60's, 70's and releasing them in restored prints for a modern audience. More than simply b-movies, these films are the most outrageous of the bunch, with one of the most interesting being "The Curious Dr. Humpp," released in its native Argentina under its original title "La Venganza Del Sexo" ("The Vengeance Of Sex"). Part science-fiction, part adult film, part morality tale, this is certainly a curious film that is surprisingly entertaining despite several rather distracting flaws.

In the middle of the night, a hideous monster has been kidnapping people engaged in amorous activities, including a couple making out in a park, a lesbian couple, a quartet of hippie orgiasts, a nymphomaniac, a young man exiting a gay bar, and the beautiful stripper Rachel (Gloria Prat). Ambitious reporter George (Ricardo Bauleo) suspects something the authorities do not, and soon he is investigating the estate of the curious Dr. Humpp (Aldo Barbero) himself. Here he finds the doctor engaged in mad experiments and guided by a disembodied brain kept active in an electrically charged solution. Dr. Humpp believes the secret to eternal life lies in the chemicals produced by the body during sex, and he's been using it to keep himself alive. George is captured, and he must find a way out with Rachel before they become slaves to the doctor's whims.

The film's premise is absurd, yet somehow it manages to sustain itself well given the film's tone and feel. The visuals certainly help, but not in the way you'd expect. While the cast, particularly the leads, are all quite attractive, it's the way the picture is filmed and not the flesh that makes it exciting. Writer/director Emilio Vieyra films the entire picture in a very lovely chiaroscuro that heightens and deepens the black-and-white imagery to levels of art. The direction itself is above average, with a few scenes -- most notably the oddly poetic image of Dr. Humpp's monstrous servant serenading Rachel with a lute -- being quite memorable.

Where the film falls apart has nothing to do with the director, the stars, or even the picture itself. When the film was picked up by an American distrbutor, over 17 minutes of sex-and-nudity footage was inserted into the film not only to pad the length, but to ostensibly heighten the adult-film quotient. These scenes add the lesbians, the hippie orgiasts, and the nymphomaniac to the cast, as well as some highly erotic sexual imagery added during a telepathic copulation between Prat and Bauleo (as part of one of the doctor's experiments). While the scenes fit well in that they aren't too far off from the original's look to be distracting, they often add unnecessary sex to a film that's more interested in other things, such as the ramifications of the doctor's work and the societal attitudes toward sex.

In addition to the scenes being extraneous, they often have the side effect of being unintentionally funny, which also distracts from the main thread of the film. The hippies, in particular, are quite humorous, especially with the exaggerated voice over work common of many erotic films of the time. The entire film has a serviceable, if not above average, English dub (the original was in Spanish) that works more often than it doesn't, at least in terms of language. To the American distributor's credit, the additional scenes are added quite well, and the dub is used quite skillfully to explain their presence.

Despite these flaws, the film is visually entertaining, which is one of the best things one can say about b-movies of this caliber. Definitely one of the finer entries in Something Weird's catalog, alongside classics like "Satan In High Heels" and "Mantis In Lace", and definitely one for b-movie and vintage exploitation enthusiasts. Others may not find as much to enjoy, and for those, I suggest you get in the front row with the robots and start your mocking. So, something for everybody. 6 out of 10.

If you're not into bizarre cinema, you're best off staying away from this cult film; but if you are into cult cinema...you might find something here. The adjective in the title is extremely apt for this film, as it features a plethora of odd and mostly illogical ideas; all of which are at least somewhat 'curious'. This helps the film in a way as there's always enough going on to keep it ticking over; but on the other hand, sometimes there's just too many things going on at the same time, and since not a great deal of it makes sense; the film can be somewhat annoying. That being said, the plot focuses on sex, deformity and very mad science and so it's entertaining throughout, at least. The plot centres on a scientist researching sex. He kidnaps people and feeds them aphrodisiacs so that they'll have sex. He needs them to do so that he can drain some fluid from them, as Dr Humpp is actually a monster and he needs this fluid to stop himself being transformed. You might wonder how all this stuff ended up coming together, but there's a simple explanation for all of it; the doctor is being directed by a talking disembodied brain in a jar!

Despite being silly and not making a lot of sense, the film is very technically competent and the cinematography looks great. The film was obviously shot on a low budget, but the crystal clear black and white picture helps to mask this; which is a very good thing. The set design is good, if a little bare in places; but that's not all that important. There is a lot of sex in the film, which is sure to please anyone with a mind to see a film like this; and the script is fantastic at providing a lot of memorable quotes such as "Sex dominates the world!". The 'monster' that the doctor becomes looks rather silly, but the film ensures that you can just about buy into it as everything is so completely mesmerising. The atmosphere is surreal throughout, and director Emilio Vieyra ensures that it always benefits the tone of the movie. The film doesn't flow too well, as once the basic plot is laid out; we don't get much elaboration on it, but you can't expect too much from a film like this, and for what it is; The Curious Dr Humpp is sure to delight fans of cult cinema that don't mind too many inconsistencies in their films.

Mentored by a disembodied brain suspended in a jar of bubbling liquid, mad scientist Dr. Humpp (Aldo Barbero) instructs his monstrous automatons to kidnap highly sexual men and women for use in his diabolical experiments. With the help of sexy blonde assistant Enfermera (Susana Beltrán), Humpp doses his helpless victims with aphrodisiacs, using the strength of their passion to create a serum to nourish his body and increase his lifespan.

Reporter George (Ricardo Bauleo) investigates the case, but is captured and finds himself the subject of one of Humpp's experiments, forced to experience heightened sexual pleasure with beautiful brunette Rachel (Gloria Prat). Is there no end to Humpp's cruelty?

A sex movie with horror overtones, The Curious Dr. Humpp is packed with nudity and nookie from the get-go, the mad scientist shenanigans merely the catalyst for numerous scenes of softcore rumpy-pumpy. All of the romping and humpping soon becomes rather tedious, but the plot is just about daft enough to still make this late '60s trashfest fairly entertaining for those who enjoy offbeat cinema.

This particular viewer found the kidnapped hippies hilarious, couldn't help but be amused at the idea of a monster paying a visit to his local drugstore, and perked up every time the lovely Ms. Prat was on screen and unclothed.

Quizzical and somewhat painful Argentinean softcore porn flick has the good quality of being one of the few competent unions of exploitation with mainstream genre film. In this case, sci-fi, and see _Flesh Gordon_ if you have any doubts about how difficult a genre fusion of this kind can be. The movie drags at times, but at others is fabulously bizarre, probably because of the tortured logic Vieyra has to use to establish the (relatively) intricate plot without compromising the explicit scenes. Humpp's legendary sequence -- a weird, mutated critter playing an unidentifiable lutish instrument while people mill about a foggy courtyard -- is strange beyond description.

All over town, people are engaging in aberrant sexual acts. It's all fun and games until they cross the path of Dr. Humpp, a mad scientist who is determined to use the libido power of human beings for his own purposes. As he says: sex dominates man, so he must dominate sex! Along with his sexy nurse assistant and hideous monster henchmen, he tries to do just that.

The film opens up with a variety of sex acts: lesbian sex, female masturbation, an orgy and a woman who strips nude in the middle of a jazz club. There's also a sailor standing outside a bar doing nothing unusual at all (unless you watch the trailer, where it's explained that the sailor suit is a visual cue for us to know he's a flagrant homosexual). The first twenty minutes come off as more of a softcore pornography than anything with a plot. Buttocks, breasts, groping hands and more are all you'll be seeing for a while. If this sounds like your cup of tea, you've picked the right film because it just keeps going from there! Really, when you boil this down and take out the scenes of people screwing like teenage catgirls in heat, I'd estimate you're left with maybe six minutes of actual plot, largely revolving around the newspaper reporter who is trying to uncover the mystery of the town's disappearances. Although, since the people just keep on humping in the laboratory as if they were in their own bedrooms, they don't seem all too upset about having been kidnapped.

We also have the long-standing tradition continued in this movie of having a foul, evil henchman. The monster here is more than just a little deformed. Sure, Humpp could send his sexy nurse out to do his bidding or even do it himself. But for some reason it just makes more sense to try and sneak up on couples copulating when you're a large, freakish beast. Or the drug store scene: Why go through your medical connections to get aphrodisiacs when you can sent a murderous monster into the local drug store to pick up the Spanish fly? That certainly won't draw any attention by the police! There is one downer to the sex scenes (besides the fact you might actually get bored with them after an hour -- according to horror historian and "Basket Case" director Frank Henenlotter, twenty minutes of nudity was actually added, not removed, for the American version). The film is in black and white, which causes hair to stand out against pale, alabaster skin (no blacks or Latinos in Argentina, apparently). I know some guys who love hair, especially 1970s porno hair -- Gary Busey, this means you -- but for me if you're going to have it, you should at least try to play it down. Tufts of hair are cool if you're into that natural thing, but I don't want Buckwheat caught in a headlock between anyone's thighs if it doesn't serve a purpose.

And what's up with George and Rachel? After experimenting on Rachel, Dr. Humpp has transformed her into a nymphomaniac. George becomes alarmed. Rather than welcome this new development, he can't help but wonder if Dr. Humpp plans to use Rachel's nymphomania against them. Poor, sweet George and his one-track mind. All he ever thinks about is getting screwed... by Dr. Humpp.

I think this film gained a growing popularity (though, judging by how unknown it remains, not much of one) thanks to its Rob Zombie connection. One line ("use my body to keep you alive") has now been immortalized in one of Zombie's radio singles. That is also most likely how the man who passed this film on to me stumbled across it, as he also gave me a copy of "Spider Baby" with Sid Haig. Will Zombie fans love "Dr. Humpp"? I think they might. It comes much closer to the kind of film we expected from him prior to "House of 1000 Corpses".

Is "The Curious Dr. Humpp" a great film? Of course not. It' s a low-budget sexploitation film. But if you're into the low budget, 1970s sexploitations films where monsters attack fornicating couples with a bottle of ether, this film is for you. (Some have asked how one rag of ether can knock out a whole room of people doing the orgy thing... I say ask not what the ether can do for the orgy, ask what the orgy can do for this movie!) For a journey into the unknown and, frankly, rather bizarre, this is one film you'll want in your collection.

Argentinian sexploitation/horror flick has a crazed young doctor interested in examining the libido of sexually active humans. He sends his personal guitar-playing monster and assorted henchmen out to kidnap young couples while involved in the act, and then keeps them prisoner at his laboratory. There he induces them to have more sex so he may extract a serum to help him dominate sex, since sex dominates the human race (or some such nonsense). He also has a talking rubber brain in a jar that deflates and inflates while it speaks. This is a foreign black and white sexploitation flick, with tons of nudity and all sorts of random sexual activity -- group orgies, lesbianism, female masturbation... Nothing out of the ordinary for this type of combo horror/softcore sleaze offering. For those who know what they want and what to expect, you know the deal. ** out of ****

I was disappointed by this film. The idea of an Argentinian horror flick was an engaging one- bound to be something different I thought. The main plotline is suitably absurd (mad brain in a jar etc), but the whole exercise is ruined by the softcore inserts which periodically appear.

As such it is neither fish nor foul. The original film contains little nudity and is a standard B&W mad scientist effort. The softcore inserts have their attractions- but jar and should be in a different film altogether. As such I was just left baffled and confused.

Basically the film doesnt work, but is an admirable novelity piece. At least "Something Weird" video do things differently...

I purchased this movie on DVD just for the heck of it. At the time, the DVD was pricey and I bought just because I like Something Weird DVDs and thought the title sounded awful enough to be one of those "it's so bad it's good" movies. Wrong. The movie (or I should say the "movies"), is just plain bad. Some trash distributors found this very cheesy Argentinian horror film, then inserted extremely unsexy sex scenes to the first said movie and the result is pitiful. The two separate productions are completely incongruous. For instance, the B&W cinematography are different and clash. The final result is not entertaining on any level.

There are a couple of moments that do live up the "curious" part of the title but they're so brief and, in the end, forgettable that those scenes do not overcome the crappyness of the rest of the "film". If those scenes ever end up on Youtube, they'd be fun for a few laughs but they're not worth going through the trouble of purchasing this or even renting it, if you can find a place to rent it, of course.

Check out THE GIRL AND THE GEEK (aka PASSION IN THE SUN) instead, which is provided by Something Weird as well, and is everything DR HUMP is not: totally zany nudie that's unforgettable.

"The Curious Dr. Humpp" certainly is one of the craziest movies I ever saw and it excellently shows just how low exploitation-filmmakers in the 70's were prepared to sink in order to blend gratuitous sleaze with nasty horror premises. The story is utter nonsense but it really is great fun to see how deranged this film is. Dr. Humpp is a mad scientist who kidnaps people whilst experiencing any form of sexual pleasure (couples making out, masturbation, orgies, lesbians, strippers…) and he surgically steals their libidos! You see, he needs the virility in order to stay alive! He has an army of horribly deformed accomplices (medical experiments gone wrong) and a nurse who constantly begs him to physically abuse her. If all this isn't odd enough for you just yet, we'll throw in a talking brain in a jar that rants about world-domination! This movie is exclusively meant for avid cult-collectors, since it features nothing but weirdness and cheese. Tons of nudity and poorly filmed violence is all it has got to offer; yet I had a great time watching it. The make-up on the 'monsters' is rather cool and the jazzy musical guidance works too. If it weren't for this movie, I never would have known that Argentina was active in the 70's exploitation industry as well. If you like bizarre, check out this flick!

One of the most wonderfully peculiar films I've ever seen. Black and white, semi-porn, cheesy Argentinean horror. Dr. Hump, for reasons never explained, must kidnap people and turn them into nymphomaniacs in order to obtain their "secretions" during orgasm in order to, what, stay alive? They never really say. Except that he is being ordered to do all this by one really p****d-off brain. He also has a "monster" to do his dirty work, a paper-mache' headed guy with a blinking light in his forehead, who's duties include, besides kidnapping and murder, serenading the sex-crazed hippies and lesbos during their orgies with a strange, guitar-like instrument. This one's going straight to "The Brainiac" hall of fame in my book!

One of the weirdest movies ever made focuses on a mad scientist kidnapping people and making them have sex, which he believes to be humanity's life blood, in the hope of finding a way to help people live forever. And he does all this under orders from a brain that he keeps alive.

It's easy to think that the person who came up with the plot of "La venganza del sexo" ("The Curious Dr. Humpp" in English) had too much time on his hands, but it's actually a pretty interesting movie as exploitation flicks go. I've only seen the US release, which I understand added a bunch of footage of people having sex. Indeed, there are whole sequences that show nothing except people undressing and copulating.

I could see that all the writing in the movie was in Spanish, but I had no idea which country made it. It turns out that "The Curious Dr. Humpp" is from Argentina. That means that one third of all the Argentinian movies that I've seen is an exploitation flick. I'll have to see if I can find any more work from the people who made this. Presumably I can only find it from Something Weird Video.

This is the kind of film which is more entertaining to read about than to actually experience: while reviews I've read mention several irresistibly bad moments, the actual feature is a bit of a chore to sit through!

Its endless scenes of experiments (of a sexual nature) performed on a variety of young people (of all persuasions - given that here we find junkies, lesbians, strippers and nymphomaniacs) reminded me of Jose' Mojica-Marins' (that's Coffin Joe to you!) equally delirious if slightly more earnest AWAKENING OF THE BEAST (1969). The film was originally much shorter, as the U.S. version was spiced up with 17 more minutes of nudity - though this only served to render the whole even more boring!

The reviews had actually described it as being a well-made film, but I didn't see anything special about its look or the techniques used. As a matter of fact, it practically quashed what interest I had in Vieyra's (apparently equally goofy) vampire flick, BLOOD OF THE VIRGINS (1967), released on DVD by Mondo Macabro! That said, some of the film's more bizarre images - the perpetually irritated talking brain(!) of the titular doctor's mentor (which he keeps in a jar in his lab), his rubber-faced monster assistant turning up at a nightclub (with the intention of procuring yet another girl for his master's experiments) and at a pharmacy (carrying a prescription by the doctor) as if it were the most natural thing in the world and is later even seen strumming on an unusually-shaped guitar(!!) - not to mention the howlers found in the script (Dr. Humpp spouting his crackpot credo or the orgasmic moans of the drugged but impatient maidens) yield some undeniable pleasures...even if only of the guilty kind!

An extremely strange film in that it is ten times better than it had any right to be. The script and story is usual b-movie rubbish, and the acting is adequate at best (the dubbing is of course terrible), however some genuine talent behind the camera make this watchable throughout. Eschewing the usual b-movie tricks like ludicrous music, fast zooms and an indulgence of s**t acting to advance the story, the director concentrates instead on extended set pieces (in one case a strange lute playing sequence) which he stages extremely well. It reminded me of the French horror movies of Rollin, where extended scenes, slow, languid camera work and a healthy dollop of sex play a large part.

Obviously this is still a b-movie, and when the plot has to kick in at the end it is predictably terrible. They do have a dig at their own crap effects with someone mistaking the monster for a man in a mask, but it's not clear if this was deliberate or just a case of bad scriptwriting. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but significantly better than the average, usually unwatchable, exploitation film.

The word 'weird' doesn't begin to come close to describing this bizarre Argentinian exploitation movie.

Much of its content consists of couples (and groups) in softcore shenanigans, the monotonous nature of these scenes quickly sending the viewer into a coma

The intricate plotting, and bad American dubbing, do keep you awake long enough to see the fantastically bad makeup of the 'automatons', and lots of unintentional laughs ensue.

Worth seeing for the banjo scene.

A reporter and a detective try to figure out who is behind a series of kidnappings of young couples making out. Their only clue is a hulking monster seen around town picking up girls and pharmacy orders (oddly, no one freaks out about when they see it). The man behind the mysterious abductions is Dr. Humpp, a mad scientist who is hellbent on turning humans into "veritable sex machines" to increase physical and mental performance. Wait, why is he a bad guy? Well, he also has the talking brain of an old Italian doctor in a bottle and uses fluid from his prisoners' libido (huh?) to keep himself young. This softcore T&A horror flick from Argentina is curious indeed. If you took out all the sex scenes, you might have a 25 minute movie. Lots and lots of shots of naked bodies (the first real line of dialog isn't until about 12 minutes in). This import does have some really nice B&W photography though and you'll be surprised at how expertly dubbed it is.