WICKED MEMOIRS OF EUGENIE (1980)

  Director Jess Franco had already made a few Eugenie films with similar plotlines throughout the 70s. This includes 1970's EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION and then EUGENIE in '73. While Uncle Jess was no stranger to reusing plots it seems to me that oftentimes his original versions were better than his rehashes. In this one you get Lina Romay as the slave of a rich couple who thinks she's a dog(does this count as bestiality? or is it just being a furry but without the costume?). There's a staircase that almost looks like that one in that M.C. Esher painting which I guess adds to the psychedelic feeling of it all. There's, of course, lots of nudity and sleazy components. Our Eugenie here, Katja Bienert, is only 15 years old if you go by her IMDB birthdate so let's hope that is not correct(this was 70s Europe though so who knows?) since she's pretty naked for a lot of this. Sadly most of this is pretty slow and snooze-inducing though so check out his earlier Eugenie's first. AKA EUGENIE...HISTORY OF A PERVERSION and EROTISMO

SHINING SEX (1976)

 Glitter kills! Lina Romay gets abducted by a female being from another dimension(Evelyne Scott) and her human slave(Raymond Hardy, who was Lina's real-life husband at the time, in some cool shades) then is sent around to kill anyone who knows too much. She accomplishes this by getting rubbed with some lotion and then turning progressively more sparkly(thanks to all the glitter on her body) and becoming deadly to the touch. Director Jess Franco shows up as a professor who explains what the hell is going on. Light on plot and long on taking it's time to do anything at an hour and 45 minutes it is a bit of a rough watch. It does feature long closeup shots of Lina's shaved bare vagina so if that's your thing give it a sleazy glare. 

 There are shorter cuts of this including the French one with hardcore footage and an animated title sequence. 

EUGENIE...THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970)

 Not to be confused with director Jess Franco's later EUGENIE movie or his even later WICKED MEMOIRS OF EUGENIE, from 1980, this Eugenie helped kick off the sleazier era of Franco's filmography by telling the story of a young girl(Marie Liljedahl) corrupted by a couple of pervy rich jerks(Jack Taylor and Maria Rohm) who really dig the writings of the Marquis De Sade. Some whipping, murders and perviness ensues. Christopher Lee shows up for a couple of brief scenes(he claims he didn't know how "adult" this film was going to be when he agreed to be in it) and lots of Eurobush is on display.  A fairly tame film for the subject matter but much more hardcore sleaze was to come from Franco in this decade! AKA DE SADE 70

SHE KILLED IN ECSTACY (1971)

  This one is a pre-Lina Romay film by director Jess Franco. Instead of her we get Soledad Miranda running around killing off doctors to get revenge for her dead husband(Fred Williams). These doctors were all on a board that didn't approve of experimenting on fetuses and stripped this Frankenstein-ish fellow of his medical license which then leads to the drastic measure of taking his own life. I've seen some folks argue there's a pro-choice message in this but I think that might just be wishful thinking since, as with many of Franco's movies, the narrative is not all that clear in the morality department. What is clear is that Franco is certainly a master of mixing the sleazy with the stylish and that is on display here quite a bit. You get Miranda in lots of sexy outfits, Howard Vernon's peen on full display, Franco himself as a rather slimy-looking doctor, castration, death by an inflated pillow and a really snazzy jazzy soundtrack!   

 This would sadly be Soledad's 2nd to last film(EUGENIE DE SADE would be the last) as she would die in a car accident in the same year this was shot.

Ladies and gentlemen I present "the world's smallest subtitles!!":

HORRIFYING EXPERIMENTS OF S.S. LAST DAYS(1977)

  Best known as THE BEAST IN HEAT this is one those nazisploitation flicks that came out in the wake of ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE S.S. and it might be one of the sleaziest of the bunch. Macha Magall, who seems to have specialized in sleazy Italian cinema is our Ilsa stand-in and she spends pretty much the whole movie torturing various captives. This includes castration, water torture, ripping off fingernails and being eaten alive by some pretty calm-looking guinea pigs among other things. Of course the main focus is on Salvatore Baccaro as the title character who has been experimented on in order to become a raping/cannibalistic monster. His hobbies include pubic-hair eating and generally not being very nice to vaginas. There is the expected comeuppance dealt out at the end but still not the most feel-good film. Definitely memorable in it's debauchery though. AKA SS HELL CAMP and SS EXPERIMENT LOVE CAMP 2(making this a sequel to Sergio Garrone's 1976 Nazi movie)  

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KIDNAP LOVER (1976)

  This is the other film directed by the guy who made AXE(Frederick R. Friedel) in the 70s(he would resume directing in the 2000s with 2 films, including one called BLOOD BROTHERS which is an attempt to combine his two 70s films into one cohesive narrative(I'm not sure how successful that is but I have my doubts)). This one starts out really good with a great gritty feel and some nasty shootings involving a crotch and an asshole before kind of meandering to a weird conclusion. It kind of seemed to me like a 70s version of BUFFALO '66 in some ways but with a tougher lead actor. While I wouldn't put this quite up there with AXE, which is one of my all-time favs, in terms of bizarreness it does have a certain artsy flair to it mixed with a sleazy grindhouse sensibility that I think fans of this decade's cinema would appreciate. AKA DATE WITH A KIDNAPPER and KIDNAPPED COED

SUCCUBUS (1968)

  I know Eurosleaze director Jess Franco is a big fan of jazz music and this movie feels like it might be the closest of his films to a jazz song in that it's basically a bunch of scenes, many with jazz playing in them, with not a whole lot of rhyme or reason in a linear sense but more thrown together to set a general tone. S & M stage shows, brainwashing, murder, dreamlike set pieces and lots of oddball/artsy elements. Figures of Godzilla, Frankenstein and a few other monsters show up to aid in the sexy psychedelic ambience. Franco regulars Jack Taylor and Howard Vernon appear supporting star Janine Reynaud who was a model and not really much of an actress but that seems unnecessary for this role anyway as it's mostly just changing outfits and being nude from scene to scene. Recommended more for the arthouse fan than the more typical lowbrow Franco trash-lover. 

                                                     Released in Italy as DELIRIUM:

Known in a few countries(including France apparently) as NECRONOMICON: 

THE WOMEN OF INFERNO ISLAND (1980)

 A bunch of prostitutes are kidnapped and sent to an island prison. There's not much more of a plot than that but there is almost wall-to-wall nudity to look at so that's something. There's also a pretty lame gang-rape scene featuring a very young-looking girl which you'd think would be a difficult thing to make in a non-disturbing fashion. Besides being the most naked women-in-prison film that I think I've ever seen this one straddles that line between hardcore porn and softcore. There is not hardcore sex but there is a lot of full frontal vagina on show and fingers in said orifices.
 This seems like a less thought out version of a Jess Franco film(which is saying a lot!) and that's due to it featuring a few of his frequent stars Karine Gambier (from VOODOO PASSION and SEXY SISTERS etc.) and Erik Falk (from BLUE RITA and BARBED WIRE DOLLS etc.) among others. It was also directed by Franco's frequent producer Erwin C. Dietrich giving it that familiar Eurosleaze look. A good time for the very non-discerning perverts out there. AKA CAGED WOMEN, PRISONERS OF WAR, ISLAND WOMEN and WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY VII(making this part of a series of women-in-prison films that had nothing to do with each other but were just re-titled when released onto VHS. For what I think is a complete list of these click here.)

 Someone made a video featuring the rare non-nude scenes in the movie. Why, I'm not sure but the leather warden(Gambier) is nice!:

BLUE RITA (1977)

 Probably what stood out the most to me about this Jess Franco-directed sex flick is the amazing looking sets on view. In what is probably Uncle Jess' most attractive-looking film we are told a yarn about some spy shenanigans involving a strip-club run by our man-hating title character(whose hair seems to be more purple than blue but whatever). There's also an absurd fight scene involving Eric Falk (who all good exploitation film fans should recognize as one of the main baddies in the great MAD FOXES), tons of full nudity, sex with gas-masks, magical green slime that turns men into nymphomaniacs and a fairly absurd plot to hold it all together.

VOODOO PASSION (1977)

 This Eurotrash sleazefest, directed by the great Jess Franco, starts out with some Haitian ladies twerking for our amusement. This would be repeated several times throughout the film to remind us we're indeed in Haiti. Now for some reason Haiti is pronounced "Ha-E.T." by whoever dubbed this thing(also Haitian is pronounced "High-Asian" which seems equally strange to me) but what do I know, I've never been there. Then we settle into a pretty slim plot about a lady(Ada Tauler) who comes to Haiti(hey, that rhymes if you pronounce it correctly!) to live with her husband(Jack Taylor). When she gets there she meets his nutty nymphomaniac sister(Karine Gambier) who immediately tries to seduce her because, of course, this is a sleazy Franco film. From there a mysterious voodoo doll of Robert Smith from the band The Cure shows up and people start dying. Is our confused married lady under a voodoo zombie spell that makes her kill people? Well I don't want to spoil it but I will say that weird espionage plot to kill the president is shoe-horned into the end of the movie to try and make sens of everything that goes on.
 Of course the real reason to watch this is for all the rampant nudity on display, full vagina shots, gross incest and jazz soundtrack (complete with voodoo drumbeat for island authenticity). SO give it a shot if you're freaky Franco eurosleaze fan. AKA PORNO SHOCK and CALL OF THE BLONDE GODDESS

                              I assume Germans know how to pronounce "Haiti"!:

 

LOST SOULS (1980)

 This might be one of the roughest Shaw Brothers movies I've seen yet. In fact I didn't think they ever got this grimy. It's basically a pretty intense women-in-prison movie except there's also men in prison and they're not even really actual prisons but these shitty makeshift barns/hovels that they're being held captive in and they're all illegal immigrants. So I guess there's some kinda political message in here also about how shitty illegal immigrants were treated in Hong Kong. But regardless of all that what you get is a lot of beatings and raping with women being thrown around like rag dolls and then sold into a life of forced-prostitution, pissy cow dung thrown in the face, various tortures including some candle-wax to the privates and hanging people upside down from poles. And, so as not to leave the men out, there's even a pretty graphic man-on-man rape scene which doesn't end up very well for anyone involved. This sleazy film was directed by Mr. Ten Fei Mou who was also responsible for the depressing classics MEN BEHIND THE SUN and  THE NANKING MASSACRE and that's not hard to see as this one gives off a similarly downbeat and hopeless vibe as those two. Check it out for some sleazy action but you will probably need a good shower afterwards.



That is one strange lobby card but it would certainly get me in the theater!:

MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE (1969)

An over long meditation on the positives and negatives of living a life of selfless virtue and purity versus a materialistic life of corruption and crime played out by two sisters of opposite temperament. Klaus Kinski is kind of wasted since we never even get to hear his lovely German voice. Jack Palance does some bizarre line readings reminiscent of William Shatner on some type of strong medication. I think the final message is supposed to support the idea of being forthright and honest but if not for the greedy selfishness displayed by the more evil sister I don't see how innocence would be rewarded in any way. It is also possible that I misinterpreted the message.  Overall an O. K. Jess Franco film but I think that a shorter version might have conveyed the message in a better fashion.

                                                 Spanky time in 4K!:

ISLAND OF DEATH (1975)

This movie from Greece is like a highlight reel of random violent scenes strung together with barely a plot. The highlights, or low-lights depending on your point of view, consist of a goat getting fucked and then killed, a golden showers scene, a woman being decapitated by a bulldozer and various other silly murders. Plus you get multiple rapes, incest, a crucifixion and a weird caveman-like character who's also a rapist but also sort-of the hero. It's all very confusing.  The killers are moralizing ass-hats so that gets grating really quick. Plus none of the victims through most of the movie even lift a finger to fight back against getting killed when they clearly could and would. What the fuck? It's worth watching once if you're into violent 70's cinema but there's not much else going on to recommend it.

THE CANDY SNATCHERS (1973)

THE CANDY SNATCHERS is an awesome slice of 70's sleazy drive-in cinema and if you like that sort of thing, this is the movie for you. It's kind of like a slightly less malevolent version of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. There's rape and there's misogyny but it's not quite as offensive. Maybe that's because David Hess just adds that extra bit of repulsiveness to his character. There's a retarded kid who sorta becomes the hero of this piece which is a neat thing.  Besides him and the main victim, Candy, there aren't many people you feel sympathy for in the movie. There's plot twists and craziness.  One of my all time favorites. I've re-watched this disc several times since I bought it.