Labyrinth of Sex (1969)

Labyrinth of Sex (1969) aka Sexual Inadequacies, is a pretty typical late sixties 'Mondo'.  In an attempt to maintain the attention of audiences, the format increasingly moved toward focusing on a single topic in a film, rather than the more free-wheeling format of the original entries in the genre, such as Mondo Cane, which simply highlighted general weirdness.  consequently, Labyrinth of Sex tries to pass itself off as a serious documentary about sexual deviation - complete with 'actual footage' (ie, recreated with actors) of various perversions and is presented by a supposed expert in the field.  It is all patently fake, though and while it teases the audience with the prospect of lurid depictions of the sexual deviances under discussion, it actually shows very little.  Even the climactic, so to speak, sequence of a couple actually having sex under laboratory conditions in the name of medical science, is laughably coy.

The film is very much of its era in its characterisation of the various 'sexual deviances' - all are given cod psychological 'explanations'.  Indeed, from the outset, the film makes clear its central thesis that all such sexual perversions have their origins in childhood, infancy even.  Also typically in line with its era, Labyrinth of Sex includes homosexuality, transvestism and transsexuals together as types of sexual deviancy, ignoring the fact that each is a very different condition.  In keeping with its central thesis, the film persists in trying to explain each of them in terms of childhood trauma, (a lack of maternal attention, for instance, results in a girl becoming a lesbian in order to find the female affection she was denied as a child), or, in the case of transsexuals, in terms of physical deformities that can be remedied via surgery.

While back in 1969, particularly in Italy, the film's supposedly frank discussions of sexual deviancy might have seemed daring, by today's standards, its presentation of the subject seems decidedly tame.  As far as I'm aware, Labyrinth of Sex was prolific director Alfonso Brescia's only 'Mondo', although he dabbled in just about every genre of Italian exploitation films, including a long series of science fiction movies cashing in on the Star Wars boom of the late seventies.  While all 'Mondo' movies present themselves as pseudo documentaries, Labyrinth of Sex deploys this format in a very restrictive way, its attempt to pass itself off as a 'legitimate' sexual instruction film straight-jackets its style, resulting in the sense of true outrageousness that permeates the best of the genre.