FORTY GUNS (1957, 20^th Century Fox, 80 min.), a subversively entertaining Western set in a surreal dreamscape in which nothing is motivated by natural laws. Fuller had to sacrifice his original title, WOMAN WITH A WHIP, for FORTY GUNS, but he kept everything else – from Barbara Stanwyck’s black leather dominatrix gear to the film’s naked gun lust (Her: "May I feel it?" Him: "It might go off in your face."). "It’s not really a Western – I don’t know what it is …FORTY GUNS doesn’t care."

The movies of director Sam Fuller are celebrated in a monthlong retrospective beginning at 7:30 tonight at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood with ``Forty Guns,'' the 1957 classic starring Barbara Stanwyck in a brand-new 35mm Cinemascope print. A subversive paean to naked gun lust, the movie was originally titled ``Woman With a Whip'' and featured Stanwyck as a dominatrix in black leather.

Barry Sullivan plays a legendary ex-gunslinger who's packed away his pistols and taken up office as a wandering US marshal. His decade-long resistance to the quick draw is sorely tested when he rides into a frontier town on official business. The community is run by ranch-owner Barbara Stanwyck, a withering dominatrix who will stop at nothing to protect her own. So when home and family are threatened by Sullivan's authority, she starts cracking the whip. Samuel Fuller's extraordinary B-western slaps you in the face and leaves you begging for more. Already a brutal essay in passion, honour and violence, the central relationship between Stanwyck and Sullivan adds a searing sexual tension, boosted by Fuller's raw expressionism.

Of course, the movie Double Indemnity was Hollywood's answer to Cain. If the moral conventions of the time wouldn't allow John Garfield and Lana Turner (or Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange more than three decades later) to truly inhabit Postman's Frank and Cora, somehow censors were no obstacle to Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis, a golden dominatrix lashing Fred MacMurray in the service of her homicidal machinations. For that matter, the casting of shlub MacMurray over other candidates like tough guy George Raft and Alan Ladd, who had just made his mark as a psychopathic killer in This Gun for Hire, was its own brilliantly counterintuitive coup. Double Indemnity was as dark a piece of mainstream entertainment as Hollywood had made to that point, at a rare historical moment—the last years of World War II—when good and evil truly were as clear-cut as our current political leaders would like us to believe they are now. Even Cain was impressed. "The only picture I ever saw made from my books," he confessed, "that had things in it I wish I had thought of."

there are movies that shouldn't work, that have no right to work, movies that are in many respects asinine and ridiculous and clumsy and superficial - yet they do work, and the thanks is due to the presence of actors with alchemical charisma, capable of transmuting lost causes into "riveting psychological studies" on the pure power of personality. imagine any other actor than sharon stone delivering those supremely corny lines in "basic instinct." it's her eerie confidence that allows you to "suspend you disbelief" even though you actually saw her commit the crime in the first scene. the more outrageous the propositions she can cajole you into accepting, the more exhilerating the ride.

this is exactly why "the last seduction" is so successful a film. the script couldve been written by a slightly precocious and masochistic high school kid. if you wrote down the dialogue and read it back silently you'd swear you'd just transcribed some godforsaken hbo b-movie. well, you would have. even hbo gets lucky occassionally. in this case, they ought to have thanked the cinematic gods for linda fiorentino. she not only rescues "the last seduction" from complete imbecility - she elevates it to a "near-masterpiece of the neo-noir spider-woman canon", as roger ebert might (and probably did) say. remember barbra stanwyck in "double indemnity"? you won't after you see this. in fact there is really no comparison in film. bridget (aka "wendy") describes herself - while slamming her fists against the roof of her jeep astride her boyfriend - in terms that i can't employ on amazon, but it rhymes with "trucking witch", and nobody is going to disagree with her. she is capable of anything and everything up-to-and-including murder, on a whim, for convenience's sake, without the slightest hint of remorse, and she's thoroughly capable of getting away with it. her single human emotion is greed. since her greed is focused on conventional ends - sex, money, power - we can all relate; what's shocking is the utter ultimacy of her greed, and her uncanny ability to exploit her situation, however doubtful it seems, using the most vile and heartless methods conceivable, and come out smelling like a rose. of course, that's where the plot strains our imagination; but the burden is on the actor. if she fails to radiate an aura diabolical enough to convince us of her complete mastery of her environment, we'll notice the fact that the plot is illogically propped up on all sides to support her, and the whole spell of the movie will be broken. needless to say, that's not a problem here. our first glimpse of bridget finds her barking orders at a sweatshop full of telemarketing scammers as they hawk "commemorative coins" at dumb old ladies in jersey. prowling around like a dominatrix, taunting them with a stack of bills, she is totally convincing in her power; she's a being to be reckoned with not because of anything you know about her - nothing yet - but because of her presence, one of authority and emotional detachment with a bias towards menace. later she plays with a guy who hits on her in a bar (quite literally), decides to have sex with him on a whim purely for pleasure, just as a man would do; and then when he, taking the traditionally "female" role in response, extends himself to her emotionally, she exploits his gullability in sundry creative ways, ultimately convincing him to kill for her as part of an insurance scam. now that's classic noir. he's even characterized as a small-town country boy, and she swoops in on him from the big bad city and destroys him, in a recapitulation of a classic motif from the original 40's films noir - the metropolis as eroder of ethics and values and the patriarchal order. as bridget snarls at one point:"spare me your brainless countrified morality!" you've just got to see her in action. fiorentino's performance is a flawless gem in a meagre setting, but that's enough - that's what makes a movie.

"it was Barbara as the gutsy, smart Victoria Barkley which captured my interest in my youth and gave me a role model, when it seemed that most of the women on television were ditsy or dependent on a man. Audra was an idiot, and I could never figure out how they could pass her off as Victoria's daughter.  Maybe she was switched at birth? I can't believe no one else has commented on this show..."

One orgasm a week. That's it, guys. More than one and you just might have to be sent to bed without supper or, if you're really lucky, diapered and made to sit in the corner. It's the only way to remind you that "male gratification is a privilege and must be earned," according to the authorities at WhAP! - Women Who Administer Punishment - magazine.

In fact, authority is what this magazine is all about - feminine authority.

"I think women should rule, men should obey and that there should be trouble otherwise," says editrix Keri Pentauk (that's Ms Pentauk to you, boys!) from L.A., where she started the mag three years ago. (It's named after "the musical sound that plays when open female palm meets bare male buttock.")

"Modern men need to be taken down a peg. They're no longer the primary breadwinners, but they still don't do a lick of work around the house, much less share responsibility. I'm telling women that if their men don't pull their weight around the house, they should punish them, plain and simple."

Hey, she's the boss. Just ask her hubby. "I'm happily married to an exemplary, though imperfect, WhAP! guy," explains the thirtysomething Mother-May-I. "When he acts up or when there's an undue rise in his testosterone level, he finds himself being whisked off for a trip across my lap. I spank him with either my hand or hairbrush and that usually restores order. When necessary, we spend a little time in his punishment nursery. There he might be put into diapers, dressed up in sissy wear or reacquainted with my strap-on teaching tool."

And exactly what kind of male behavior would warrant such punishment, Ms Pentauk? "Men who put their own sexual gratification over their woman's, men who cheat, men who indulge in porn, men who lack control in coitus. Then, of course, there are the men who think housework is women's work. They make my arm twitch!"

Unlike your standard leather-clad, whip-wielding dominatrix, a WhAPster, Pentauk explains, is a traditionally-attired woman (think June Cleaver meets Betty Page) with a wooden hairbrush in her purse (in fact, why not make it the Official WhAP! Hairbrush?). "To a WhAPster, fetish gear could be as simple as a tapered business suit for her to a pair of disciplinary panties for him," she says.

The whole '50's-housewife/feminist combo leaves me a little perplexed. When I mention it strikes me as a little regressive, Pentauk sets me straight.

"I don't think so at all. When I think of the post-war mom, I see a certain manifestation of pre-feminist, matriarchal power, not a repressed housewife," she explains. "There are quite a few people, men in particular, who view these and other traditional female icons - the businesswoman, the school teacher, for example - with what I would call submissive reverence. The idea is that these are women who are to be respected and obeyed. That's what the magazine is playing upon. We just did a feature on Barbara Stanwyck. To me, she was female power personified." Ms Page and Evita are also among those revered by WhAP!

The quarterly mag includes everything you need to know to run your household with a firm hand. Sample features include, "The Care Of Your High-Heeled Shoes," "Friday Night Is Punishment Night," "Why I Diaper-Punish My Husband" and "Another Disciplinary Dilemma: My Husband Has a Potty Mouth!"

Some advice for that last little problem: "Start saving your soap slivers; they make an ideal lozenge for the foul-mouthed husband. Keep at least one soap sliver in your purse at all times. When he curses, feed him a soap sliver. Allow him to spit out the soap when he's ready to apologize. His vocabulary is sure to become sparkling clean." And every issue includes a punishment assignment. For example, why not get him to write an essay while he's in his diapers on "Why I'm Being Punished" or "An Apology for My Baby Behavior."

You can't help but giggle ("how could you not laugh at the idea of a man being forced to clean house in a maid's outfit, or a naughty husband being spanked over his wife's lap, or an inadequate male lover being punished with diapers and a bonnet?" agrees Pentauk). But she insists the premise is very serious. There are WhAP! households scattered across every suburb in America, Pentauk says, and the magazine enjoys a worldwide readership - of men and women.

And not just perverts looking for some kinky thrills. In fact, Ms Pentauk has no tolerance for this kind of interest. A warning on the magazine's cover makes this perfectly clear: "Men using this publication for onanistic purposes may be made subject to the disciplinary measures described within."

Pentauk insists WhAP! men (whom she allows to call her Aunt Keri - "they're like my nephews") are smart, modern guys who "know they are getting away with murder in today's society. WhAP! guys are the ones who want to right this wrong and begin their penance by having justice restored in their own homes. Many of our single male readers would make ideal husbands. They're loyal, doting and respectful to women. They are lawyers, doctors, accountants, professors - professional men who are aware of their shortcomings and want to be taught how to please a woman. Who wouldn't want to marry an outwardly virile lawyer who cleans the bathroom and gives great foot massages?"

Who wouldn't, indeed. Will any hairbrush do? WhAP! is on the Web. For a sample issue of WhAP! send $7.95 (US) to Retro Systems, P.O. Box 69491, Los Angeles, Calif. 90069. And remember, says Aunt Keri, "if you don't order this magazine, you're going straight to bed without any supper!"