A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine

Some of us, Paul-a, would rather fight than switch.

A cocktease named Sharon Winters has developed allure to a fine art and her ways of giving hope to the guys who date her, only to shut down as things get heated up thrives within her. This is what she lives for.

We all find certain things titillating. Ways a woman or man (in my case, woman) strutts her stuff and gets your attention…provoking a response. She’s pure evil. Cries rape and giggles when a frightened guy she allowed to watch her bathe and dress before him (he doesn’t even want to, really, and she basically insists he sits and watches) flees. This is how she gets her jollies and kicks. Her soul black, and in need of thrills, Sharon will manipulatively use her seductive feminine wiles to get a man’s total attention, then when things get heated pull away, immediately barking about how he was trying to rape her.

                                             Paula, I may be a bitch, but I’ll never be a butch.

She does the same thing to Paula, potentially offering lesbian sex, letting her perform massage therapy while both are naked, snuggling under the covers, then putting on the brakes. She even threatens to have her committed for being who she is.

Here’s the thing; unless she is stopped, Sharon will continue to use her sexual prowess to harm others. What I found fascinating about this bit of sleaze and tease is that steadily, with each date, she loses more and more control. At the beginning, she dictates everything, but with each consecutive suitor, her power slips, until she lands a singer who lays down the smack, tells her he’s in charge, and we see her submit.

To me, the film really gets down and dirty when she involves herself with *the new guy* and he turns out to be a deviant. He is yet another fellow led up to the moment where her bra is off and he’s groping, she puts on the brakes, and he’s left suffering. He has a psycho-sexual fantasy about her tied to a wooden pillar, all for his abuse, as he rips her clothes, pulls out a knife and cat o’nine tails. He soon has a fantasy where he is tied to the same pillar but she is the one with the knife, soon castrating him. He later is denied again, goes out to find another more willing girl to screw, finds a woman walking, grabs her while she enters her apartment, begins to rape her, and is shot dead by this potential victim’s beau. It proves that Sharon casts a poisonous spell that infects and infests. A man previously never returned to the company Sharon worked because he was warned she’d accuse him of rape. This guy is dead. The next, the aforementioned singer, will not be so inclined to allow Sharon to treat him as others before him. By the end, she’s no longer the hunter but has become a willing servant to the male. I’m curious how such an ending will cause feminists to react; and what is this ending saying?

Stacey Walker. Not exactly a blisteringly powerful performance. But, boy oh boy can she perform a striptease. When she goes into a fake fit, with all the “rape, you rapist, you pervert!!!!”, bobbing her head and wiggling it, applying a villainous giggle; this is all more than a bit overripe. Sometimes, though, overripe can be a bit fun to watch. I must admit, I enjoyed Walker here because she’s such a scumbag. Sometimes, I “guiltily” (well, not really) relish such a performance/character as this because she is so repulsive and psycho. I love a strong, subtle performance, but sometimes I just get a kick out of wild, gonzo acting that has not a lick of restraint. There’s no middle ground for Walker. She raises an eyebrow, spits vinegar, has a toxic personality yet still seduces guys because “all we have on our minds is sex”, and just ruins lives. I mean lives in this film fall apart before our eyes. It’s like she leads a horny horse to water and denies his thirst. Yea, that’s it.

This was my first ever Something Weird Video purchase and it was solely because of A Smell of Honey, A Swallow Brine. It was written and produced by the late David F Friedman, known for his association with HGL and those notorious gore movies, and I always wonder if his scripts have a lot of those long, drawn out scenes like where characters stare and salivate (even Walker’s Sharon has scenes where her libido seems to be working overdrive, like when she watches a singer’s crotch jiggle as she gets it on with the long neck of a Coke bottle) or if this is the director’s own idea to shoot it this way. I was even curious if he intended to leave a message regarding the downfall of a trollop who pushes the boundaries of how far she can push men without allowing them to seal the deal.

Sam Melville as Lowell has perhaps the most developed character of the film and he seems to have certifiable acting chops, showing this man literally bursting at the seams because of Sharon’s lustful power over him. It’s like seeing a man at the mercy of Sharon and if she doesn’t fulfill his desires eventually, Lowell will go insane. It’s an interesting development because before him, it was repetitive *seduce and deny* scenes; I think Lowell’s character is the film’s catalyst in Sharon’s eventual downfall because before him she’s got it all figured out. She’ll just toy and play with these guys, drop them like a bad habit, and move on to the next. After Lowell’s disruption of this formula, her time as this evil seductress who can leave men groveling at her feet are numbered.

The battle of wills between the lounge singer and Sharon is a mixture of camp and discomfort. He slaps her around, holds her arms down, tells her that she’s not about to deny him his pleasure, even punching her (well, he punches the pillow next to her, faking it rather badly, the camera pulling away from the action as to hopefully alleviate the fact he’s not actually hitting her), but it is all so over the top and overacted, there’s a lack of emotional impact. Plus, once she’s subdued and at his mercy, it’s hard to feel sympathetic She sort of places herself in this position. I’m not about to condone rape. Please don’t think that. Once she says stop he should have. But if you keep driving into the heart of a revolving tornado, how long will it be before the vehicle (and you) are caught up and torn to shreds?