Daddy (1973)

A fantasy about a woman’s attempts to exorcise the influence of her sexually domineering father.

“What began as a documentary on sculptress Niki de St. Phalle finished up as a fantasy about a woman’s attempts to exorcise the influence of her sexually domineering father. It provides an excuse for a whole ragbag of Freudian neuroses, six-foot phalluses in coffins, nubile girls in nun’s habits stripping in front of altars, masturbation, some obvious jokes, pretty photography, abysmal acting, and a commentary that reads and sounds like a Home Service children’s story for adults” (Chris Petit, Time Out)

“A psycho-therapeutic collaboration with sculptress Niki de St. Phalle and the closest Whitehead ever got to making a fictional movie. Daddy is a garish, uninhibitedly relentless assault on the Law of the Father, in which a daughter (de St. Phalle), returning to the French chateau of her childhood, re-lives and re-imagines a series of erotic taboos and transgressions visited on the hapless daddy (Rainer von Dietz) featuring herself, her mother and a pubescent convent girl (Mia Martin) … Deliberately vulgar and tasteless, with a level of non-acting that achieves a certain kind of awful brilliance. Watch out for a few glimpses of Whitehead uncredited as Daddy’s falconer” (Entropy)