The Toy Box | 1971 | USA | Ronald Victor Garcia

Directed by the cinematographer of both Abducted and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, this insanely off-kilter sexploitation obscurity is an eyebrow-raising footnote in Ron Victor Garcia’s copybook. Sleazy Ralph and his very open-minded lover Donna are gearing themselves up for a visit to the mysterious Uncle, a rich eccentric who promises gifts to those who can perform eroticised sexual fantasies for his viewing pleasure. The performers and the fantasies become increasingly more peculiar, eventually culminating in some vicious violence. Ralph’s enthusiasm wanes, just in time for the corpse-like Uncle to reveal the zany truth of the enigmatic ‘toy box’. Most audiences would be more perplexed at the dizzying mix of kink, fantasy and psychedelic aesthetics but the scenes of a woman being stabbed whilst performing fellatio, a necrophiliac fantasy and a man having a pitchfork plunged into him by a zombie set off panic at the DPP’s office.