2nd Review by MARS posted 11/26/10
RGE's Alexandra Wolfe plays the queen and passes sentence from her throne on the chambermaid, in front of the princess and the girls who witnessed the truth. Silly court jesters and courtiers look on with demonic glee, because they know where she is headed and they will be able to tag along and watch.
The young, tall, thin, attractive pigtailed brunette maid is carried, literally kicking and screaming, to her fate in the punishment room, a drab barren burlap walled enclosure. The girl's reluctance, combined with this dreary dungeon-like setting, increases the tension of the pre-punishment ritual, an RGE device no other film producer has ever matched. Several men have gathered to witness the festivities.
The maid is ordered to undress, which she resists. Off-camera, she is stripped by one of the attendants, her clothing tossed piece by piece on-screen into a pile. We next see her cowering in a simple shift, which is promptly ripped partially off, exposing some of her nakedness.
She kneels on a whipping platform, her wrists fastened with rough hemp chest high to a post, her knees and ankles tied and cinched down. This humilating bondange simply increases the tension. Her tattered shift covers her modesty, her bottom bare. One of the attendants startles her (and us, because it is off-camera), with the woosh of the cane and we begin.
The attendant canes wildly, as if this were new to him. Nasty marks ripen well above her buttocks. She screams and rattles her bindings, extremely erotic. Another attendant points to her lower buttocks--this is where more strokes need to fall. Excellent filming from all angles, and the results on her bottom are what you wold expect from RGE.
The maid is taken back to the queen, where her bare bottom is presented to the group in the throne room. But the queen wasn't fooled by the princess. She is going to be caned also and is ordered to the punishment room. The young, attractive blond princess, actually wearing a little gold crown, is defiant and superior before the proletarian staff she must submit to. She raises her skirts and offers to be caned on her bloomers, but the senior powdered/wigged courtier is not giving up this golden opportunity and demands she take off her clothes.
After a moment of delicious hesitation, she begins stripping, removing the complicated and seemingly authentic Victorian clothing item by item, as the men in the room and we watch and wait. she pulls down the top of her undershirt to expose girlish juvenile breasts. After the removal of several layers of waist-tied underskirts, there is almost an audible drum roll as she pulls down her bloomers--no underpants. She stands nude, in just white thigh-length stockings, high heels, and the little Burger King crown. She cocks her hips, hands on her waist, full frontal nude, and says defiantly, we guess at the translation----"Good enough? Satisfied?"
The princess is tied to the stake, her little gold crown the proverbial icing on this eye-pleasing cake. Her caning is also wild and careless, acutally worse. Some reviewers have observed those faded, telltale marks in this actress' later work. She screams and throws herself around under the cane about as dramatically as we have ever seen. Severe marks and some blood.
When she is released she climbs down from the platform stiffly and gingerly, the way we would imagine it to be. She does not bound off and stand or sit at the side, like some actresses who have just been caned.
The final scene--another audience with the queen. Both caned bottoms are displayed. The queen is a sorcerer and magically conjures up the smashed vase back to completeness. Too bad for the two bottoms, but a lot of entertainment was provided.
Reviewed by Ludwig (first published at Ludwig's Rohrstock-Palast http://rohrstockpalast.blogspot.com/) Posted to SPReview on 1/23/09. 2nd review for this title.
Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:
Maid and princess punished for breaking vase
Victim Appeal:
Two lovely Czech ladies are soundly caned in this old Rigid East film. Both of them have also starred in early installments of the "Headmaster's Study" series. One of the victims is the blonde who plays the signature-forging schoolgirl from "A Note for Absence" (actually, you can still see marks from the thrashing she takes here in the headmaster video). In this fantasy story, she is cast as a typical fairy tale princess. Well, the difference between her character and other fairy tale princesses I can remember is that we see her naked and whipped, of course - but fairly typical otherwise! As I noted in my review of her other movie, I quite like the girl. She is cute, has a pretty face and expressive eyes, and she is also interesting as an actress. With a performance that ranges from meek and sheepish to haughty and indignant, she hits all the right notes as the spolit, but ultimately humbled princess.
The other victim, who plays her chambermaid, is dark-haired and also quite pleasant to behold. She is attractive, but with a somewhat more down-to-earth look fitting the role, and she shows some decent acting. Overall, even though there are only two spankees, this is one of the more memorable old Rigid East titles for me in terms of victim appeal, in a fine example of quality over quantity.
Gratuitous Sadism:
In addition to the princess (who also has two sisters, played by twins) and the maid, the movie features a variety of other stock fairy tale characters: a regal and strict queen, a chamberlain with white wig and powdered face, a rugged stableman, and a court jester who narrates the entire story to the audience and leads us from one location to the next, introducing the scenes.
Here is the plot in a nutshell: while playing blind-man's bluff with her sisters, the blonde princess accidentally knocks over one of her mother's precious vases. She gives the maid, who has witnessed the whole episode, a gold coin for her silence. Needless to say, the queen is not amused when she discovers that the vase is broken, so she summons everyone before her. But the maid refuses to give the name of the culprit, so the queen orders her to be beaten until the girl finally talks. Then, as you can imagine, it is the turn of the princess to get a taste of the cane - not just for destroying the vase, but also for lying to her mother. In this fairy tale, royal blood is no safeguard from a thrashing!
The CP is carried out in a barn, where the bearded and burly stablehand canes the victims under the supervision of the glib, powder-faced chamberlain. The two of them make for a rather funny duo of torturers, high in contrast. While the chamberlain plays the assiduous, grovelling servant in front of the queen, he has a hidden sadistic streak and clearly enjoys seeing the girls in pain.
During their ordeal, the spankees are tied to a wooden pillory. They kneel on the platform with their bodies in an upright position. I like the device and the pose - there is nothing fancy about it, but it looks sexy and is not something you see in too many spanking films, actually. The maid gets 32 strokes until she finally cracks and tells her interrogators what happened with the vase. In the second action scene, the princess receives 33 strokes for her comeuppance (one more than the chambermaid). In typical Rigid East fashion, the canings are severe, producing dark purple welts and beautiful screams. The spanker isn't the most accurate in the world and some of the hits land a little high, but he does a solid job overall. Good, sadistic fun.
Best Reactions:
The princess really steals the show here. While her reactions to the caning itself aren't all that different from the maid's (hollering at the top of her lungs, basically), it is her simmering, indignant rage and her proud defiance that make the scene special. From the beginning, she makes it obvious how she despises the chamberlain and the stablehand, who are after all well below her in status. But they are the ones who get to chastise her on her mother's orders, so the young lady has to go along with it, and she hates every minute of the punishment - the humiliation (by these people!) even more than the pain.
The actress nails the part pefectly. Watch as she has to strip naked in front of her tormentors, seething underneath her calm haughtiness, casting cold, angry glances at the men like bolts of lightning. It's a glorious sequence, intense, well-acted and well-paced. There is a nice moment during the caning, when they give her a short break after the tenth stroke and the chamberlain approaches her with a handkerchief - ostensibly to wipe away the lady's tears, while his real intention is of course to ogle her suffering. She knows it, too, and angrily turns her head away. Even as the caning gets harder and harder, her shrieks louder and more desperate, until she is sobbing uncontrollably and her ass is covered in vicious welts, the princess never quite loses that spark of defiance. Which, as you should know by now if you have followed my reviews, is the kind of spirit I like.
Best Line:
"Once upon a time..."
Nice Psychological Touch:
In a word, I loved to see the princess caned. Not only because it's a hot scene and the girl is interesting, but most of all because it simply tells us: princesses get caned, too! Being a young lady of noble standing, even a member of the royal family, does not protect you from a thrashing if you misbehave. I must say, that is something I really like about this fairy tale universe here. I may be an elitist intellectual snob who names himself after a crazy Bavarian monarch and writes mini-essays about Shakespeare and kink - but when it comes to corporal punishment, I have a firm egalitarian streak. So it was magnificent, wicked fun to watch her royal highness get her just desserts.
Rigid East make the most of the scenario by staging it cleverly. Seeing the maid whipped first and then the princess creates an augmentation "in terms of class", and a sense of anticipation followed by the satisfaction of our desire for justice - the loyal, innocent chambermaid has suffered for her mistress, so now we want the real culprit to suffer.
Moreover, the film emphasises the ambivalent power dynamics behind the chastisement of the princess in a most humorous manner. When the exalted young lady is lead to the barn, the chamberlain holds the door open for her and bows deeply. All the time, he treats her with unfailing, stressed politeness and fawning subservience, which of course only underlines the man's barely concealed glee about her shameful ordeal. The actor does a fine job and the results are hilarious to watch. I also liked how, in another twist of irony, they made the princess strip her clothes off, but let her keep the tacky little crown on her head. When the caning is over, both the chamberlain and the stableman bow graciously to their victim before untying her.
How Good Is It Really?
Together with "Wild Party" and its sequel, this is probably my favourite among the old Rigid East films. In terms of story and wit, it is better than the other two, and the severity is pretty decent, too. Although short (26 minutes only), it is also one of their more elaborate early projects, with nice costumes, good technical craftsmanship and frequent use of background music (except during the beatings, of course) - actually, with the setting and the characters, the whole thing plays almost like a mini-opera.
Given its subject matter, "The Fairy Tale" does not have the oppressive and pleasantly disturbing feel of some of the other RGE / Lupus movies. It's a different kind of gem, a light-hearted fantasy romp full of fun and eye-twinkling humour. Mind you, the beatings are as hard as ever, just packaged differently, and sadistic viewers will definitely be satisfied. Nice cast, nice atmosphere, nice victims (I'm in love with the princess), nice story-telling... In summary, a highly recommended CP video.
What You Learned:
Some fairy tales are definitely not for children, but all the more interesting for kinky adults.
The suspension of disbelief which has to be invoked when we view the, frankly unlikely, spectacle of a present-day secretary bending, bare bottomed, over her boss's desk, a teenager over her uncle's knee, a young woman thrashed in the fantastic penitentiary of a producer's imagination, etc., etc., is redundant here. Fairy Tale is set at a time when the application, or receipt, of a sound whipping, or two, was a natural everyday experience.
In the tale, a princess's twin sisters (played by a pair of strikingly attractive, but naughty, girls who deserve a starring role in future productions) trick her into breaking an expensive vase. Fearing her mother's wrath the princess bribes her maid to clear up the mess and conceal the crime. In this the maid is unsuccessful. She is sentenced to a severe whipping in the palace cellars which is applied by a powerful executioner under the lascivious eye of a puffy- faced old Court lecher. Thirty strokes later the maid is happy to tell all. In the interests of fair play, the Queen decrees that her daughter should endure the same fate.
Therefore, despite the title, so far no magical fantasies (unlike Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc., where the whole thing occurs in an unreal world). The only resort to the supernatural comes near the end when, to the princess's chagrin, the vase is magically restored to its old self. Displeased that she has been whipped for nothing the princess throws a tantrum, demonstrating that, if her behaviour is to be fully corrected, she could do with another dose (which the actress does indeed receive when, reincarnated in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she plays the schoolgirl in Note For Absence).
In the cellar we are introduced to a method of restraint which is unique in the genre but thoroughly authentic for its period. This consists of a wooden box set on a solid base on which the culprit kneels, with a stout vertical pillar to which her waist is tied. Knees and ankles are bound to the base, and hands to a ring at the front of the pillar. The studio's attention to detail is demonstrated by their use, in pre-production planning, of a Barbi doll secured to a miniature of the whipping block. (Barbi does not appear in the video: if she had, there is little doubt the fatuous glam grin would soon have been wiped off her face.)
This means of restraint, with the body straight from the knees up, also fuels the connoisseur's speculation: is a caning more, or less, painful when applied to a stretched bottom (as in the traditional bent-over posture, with the increased risk of cutting the skin) than when applied, as here, to one which is more compressed, with the nerves tightly packed under the stroke?
As it happens these young women get the worst of both worlds: the strokes doled out to the maid and her mistress, albeit in the upright position, are sharp enough to break the surface anyway (evidenced by some splendid close-ups including flecks of blood on the maid's blouse). When we see them again in the Headmaster series we confirm too that the underlying bruises lasted for months.
We also enjoy a better revelation of diversity in physical reaction. Apart from the flimsy back-to-front blouse on the maid, both young women are naked from the knees up. As the whipping reaches its climax the maid hunches forward, clasping her bound hands to her face, and wraps her breasts round the pillar; with the princess, on the other hand, the head and shoulders are thrown back, fully revealing rampant nipples, while the mound thrusts forward, bouncing off the pillar, at first in response to the strokes as they fall, but eventually between them too, at a higher frequency, impelled by the stinging buttocks which set up their own orgasmic rhythm. Lucky pillar! In each case too we are probably witnessing a real-life first-time whipping as each actress (initially) presents a beautifully smooth and unblemished rump to the cane.
This is a splendid video of a European fairy tale. Made in Europe by a European studio, it is free from the schmalz, or disneyfication, we normally endure when Hollywood plunders our heritage. Fairy Tale is so different from the usual run, and so authentic and convincing that it must form part of any collection however small or selective. Let up hope that Rigid East, having opened up a fresh seam, will harvest it assiduously, albeit now under the direction of Lupus Pictures.
