Tattoo

R 5.3
1981 1 hr 43 min Drama , Horror , Thriller

Karl Kinsky, an unbalanced tattoo artist, becomes obsessed with Maddy, a model he meets when he is hired to body-paint several women for a photo shoot, making the women look like they have large tattoos. As Kinsky grows more obsessed with Maddy, he becomes increasingly determined that Maddy should bear his "mark" -- forever.

  • Cast:
    Bruce Dern , Maud Adams , Leonard Frey , John Getz , Cynthia Nixon , Trish Doolan , John Snyder

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Reviews

Comwayon
1981/10/09

A Disappointing Continuation

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Aubrey Hackett
1981/10/10

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

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Jonah Abbott
1981/10/11

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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Billy Ollie
1981/10/12

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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mjk42784
1981/10/13

The following review contains a few spoilers.Tattoo is a little out of distressed heroins, and the book of the collector. A man becomes obsessed with a woman after painting fake tattoos on her body. ,he kidnaps her and gives her real tattoos all over her body. Very good acting the plot and script could have been better but overall not a bad watch In that he only draws gives her tattoos on her body and does nothing else to her. PG13 erotic no hardcore sex scenes. A few erotic scenes and Maud Adams does walks around in the nude for a little while. If you like erotic kinky movie with damsels in distress than this movie is worth watching. The only DVD version is Pal 2 so you have to watch it on a computer. I think they should do a remake, with a better script. If done right it can be an erotic thriller, maybe straight to DVD, because it won't be everyones cup of tea.

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allison-aa
1981/10/14

I've watched this movie three times and find it to be a quite extraordinary; an homage, with a twist, to Beauty and the Beast perhaps? Whilst I can understand the distaste of some reviewers for the subject matter it was, for me, both very well executed and engrossing and I thought that both leading characters played their respective roles very well. Reviewing a movie such as this is complicated. The fact that it elicited such visceral reactions is, in my view, a tribute to its success in deeply involving the viewer in the story-line. How one reacts to that involvement is, of course, a purely personal response; but shouldn't the review of a movie reflect the extent to which it involves its audience, for better or for worse rather than the subject matter?

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MARIO GAUCI
1981/10/15

I watched this both as part of my ongoing Luis Bunuel retrospective (it was written by his daughter-in-law Joyce) and in tribute (comprising what are possibly his two oddest films) to star Bruce Dern's recent – belated but well-deserved - induction into the "Hollywood Walk Of Fame".The film under review is a maligned one: often described as "sleazy melodrama", plotwise it is quite similar to the superior Oscar-nominated THE COLLECTOR (1965; a theatrical rendition of which, coincidentally, has just been staged locally) but, while kidnapping as an extension of butterfly-collecting makes sense, it doesn't follow naturally from tattoo-painting! Dern has often played wackos on the screen, but this rare leading role was certainly his most extreme example: he believes in what he does as if it were a religion and, after falling for model Maud Adams, tries to convert her to his way of thinking; his obsession with her leads him to ignore an attractive young employee of the modeling agency who, on the other hand, seems to be quietly infatuated with him.However, the protagonist's overt prudishness – which, frankly, is laughable – alienates the model soon enough (even putting down an annoying acquaintance of hers in a restaurant with the classic tough-guy retort, "When I don't like someone, I don't hurt them, I kill them!"); eventually, the artist decides to take matters into his own hands: retreating to his old beachside house with the (unwilling) girl in tow, whom Dern keeps sedated until he is able to complete his ultimate achievement in body-painting. As often happens with this type of film, the victim ends up succumbing to her captor's wiles – in a genuinely weird scene as the undulating bodies are completely covered in Japanese art – before regaining her senses and breaking free definitively from his hold.In conclusion, Bob Brooks' former career as a TV commercial director is evidenced by the plot's over-reliance on chintzy modeling sessions; it is ironic, then, that the film works best during its first half!

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now_its_dark
1981/10/16

My trusty Video Movie Guide 2001 dubbed this 'the most vile, reprehensible, sexist, and misogynistic piece of tripe ever released under the guise of a mainstream film.' Naturally, I went out and rented it right away. Frankly, I don't understand what the fuzz is all about. It's just another character study, albeit not a very good one: given their respective situation, both the kidnapper and his victim exhibit rather unbelievable behaviour. There are hints of both 'Psycho' and 'The Collector', but 'Tattoo' lacks the tension of the first and the insight in character of the latter. I understand the ending caused quite some commotion in it's time: I thought this was the strongest scene in the whole film. I won't give the ending away, let me just say the scene was at the same time erotic and disturbing

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