To Ride a Tiger

‘To Ride a Tiger’ is a 59-minute long S&M documentary produced by the House of Milan (HOM Productions) in 1984.  It is available from www.hotmovies.com.

I have a list of movies that I have been trying to find for years.  I was on Hotmovies.com not too long ago and for some reason I decided to check for some of those movies and I found two of them.  The first was ‘To Ride a Tiger’, a 1984 documentary featuring Lynn Paula Russell (who also performed as Paula Meadows) and Dutch dominatrix Monique Von Cleef who is often known from her autobiography ‘The House of Pain’.  ‘To Ride a Tiger’ was directed by David Foster and produced by the House of Milan (HOM Productions). 

Lynn Paula Russell is an English artist, author, model and actress.  She appeared in at least 10 adult films between 1981 and 1991 but until now I had only seen two: ‘You’ll Love the Feeling, (1984) and the George Harrison-Marks film ‘The Kane Assignment’ (1991).  Ms. Russell was a model for Janus appearing in in four photostories (Janus 13, 21, 29 and 38) and three retrospectives (Janus 117, 149 and 163) as well as an illustrator.  Her entire body of work for Janus is reviewed in the 1996 book ‘The Janus Collection”.  Spanking for Pleasure launched a magazine called Fessee in 1989 and they hired Paula to be its editor.  In 1994 SfP co-founder Christian Fennington took over as editor of Janus and a sister publication called ‘Februs’ was created with Ms. Russell as its Editor.  She remained with Februs for its entire run producing a total of 48 issues over the magazines’ 10-year lifetime.  Februs was intended to concentrate on the spontaneous and erotic aspects of spanking, rather than its use as punishment as Janus did and this seems to have provided the transition to Ms. Russell’s later career as an author and/or illustrator of over 30 books including the erotic novels ‘Beatrice’, ‘Sabrina’ and ‘The Young Governess’; collections of her art such as ‘Painful Pleasures: The Erotic Art of Lynn Paula Russell’ and ‘The Illustrated Book of Corporal Punishment’ and illustrated guides for couples including ‘Sexcitement’ and ‘Masterclass: Going Down’.

Monique van Cleef (born Mara Bernandina Mohr in 1925, died 2005) was a Dutch dominatrix.  She became a professional dominatrix in Holland in the 1950s and then moved to New York in the 1960s.  She became most famous for creating the 'House of Pain' in Newark, NJ which operated peacefully for several years until it was raided by the Newark Police in 1967.  She was eventually deported from the US and she returned to Amsterdam where she created the second 'House of Pain' which serves as the setting for 'To Ride a Tiger'.  She returned to the US (illegally because of her earlier conviction and deportation) between 1990 and 1996 but eventually returned to Holland.  She continued working until near the end of her life.Ms. von Cleef wrote an autobiography called 'The House of Pain'.  The first edition was written before her arrest and deportation (and it is currently available as an ebook) and a later edition that is no longer available was published in 1973.  An online biography is available at http://www.dominafiles.com/voncleef.html.

‘To Ride a Tiger' opens with a crawl that reads:

“In the summer of 1983, English artist Lynn Russell finally went face to face with an aspect of herself that she had always kept firmly at arms length – total submission to someone else’s will.  She had tried it before with friends and it hadn’t worked.  Now, with Monique van Cleef it very definitely worked.  HOM’s documentary cameras were there.  This is real.”

The movie follows Paula to Amsterdam where she meets professional dominatrix Monique van Cleef.  Paula begins by showing Monique some of her artwork, including the painting of a naked woman riding a tiger that is shown during the title sequence. Soon the two women’s discussion of Paul’s paintings is being interspersed between scenes of Paula in Madam Monique’s dungeon. Near the halfway point of the film the movie shifts entirely to Madam’s playroom.  Paula is blindfolded and lead into the playroom on a collar and leash.  She is first restrained on a gynecological examination table where she is shaved.  Next, she is turned over Madam Monique’s knee for what turns out to be a lengthy hand spanking. 

Finally, after some time spent examining a selection of canes and whips, she is given a serious flogging; first while she is bent over a bench and later while she is suspended arms over head with her feet barely touching the floor.  The movie ends with Paula giving a final voice over as she returns to England on a ferry.

I was surprised to find that this movie really is a documentary, although one that you probably won’t see on PBS any time soon, and an interesting one at that.  Although I have sampled some of the S&M classics like de Sade’s ‘Justine’ and Sacher-Masoch’s ‘Venus in Furs’, and liked them, I don’t normally consider myself as having much interest in S&M.  Despite that, I liked this movie and I learned something from it but I wouldn’t want a steady diet of this type of film.  The movie does suffer from some technically flaws.  My biggest complaint is the sound; there is both traffic noise (even though it is filmed indoors) and distortion which sometimes makes it difficult to understand what is being said.  Some scenes are dark and a few are filmed in a mirror which is disorienting. Finally, there is also some color fading due to the age of the videotapes that were digitized to make this copy of the movie.