EROTISMO (MDV VHS) Caliente Video/EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION-1980/Filming at La Muralla Rojo

EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION (1980), is another Franco adaptation of Sade's PHILOSOPHY IN THE BEDROOM (1795), previously filmed in 1969 as EUGENIE, THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION, featuring Christopher Lee, Maria Towers and Jack Taylor. This would also be filmed by the director as a Robert De Nesle financed project, the hardcore COCKTAIL SPECIAL, a 1978 production which appears to have been the last film JF made for the prolific French producer, who died that year. This is one of my favorite versions of the text, which the director would remake several times. Not to be confused with Franco's version of Sade's 1788 "Moral Tale" EUGENIE DE FRANVAL [EUGENIE DE SADE-1970]. Filmed mostly in two of the outstanding Ricardo Bofill structures in Calpe, this is one of Franco's most assured, and personal, responses to Sade. Bofill(1939-2022), a friend and collaborator with the director, sadly expired in 2022, a victim of COVID-19. He was more than an architect but he will be remembered for his innovative, visionary designs for living.

Bofill's mind boggling structures tease the eye, he is often compared with M.C. Escher, and stimulate the mind. Jess Franco obviously found a place where his other-worldly tales could be told so that the available decor would enhance his film. A work of art being created within a work of art. They become ideal settings for the onieric ambience of the film. Relativity, M.C. Escher (1953)

The exterior and swimming pool (installed on the roof for tenants of the apartment complex) of "The Red Wall" are impressive and the structure immediately captures the attention of the eye even at significant distances. Since Eugenie.... is primarily a visual essay on the relationship between madness, crime, and artistic creation what better place to stage it than in the presence of a visionary structure. Franco had had full permission from the achitect to film in his buildings since the late 1960s, when Muralla was still being designed. The nearby Bofill housing complex Xanadu is also used, especially in the film's second part. It's basically a compilation of cubes accessed by stone staircase. Fortress comes to mind when describing the structure's unique shape. Both buildings overlook the Mediterranean.

LA MURALLA ROJO, Calpe (1973) d Daniel J. White) and one by Gerhard Heinz https://youtu.be/y_HvfPlNGJI The Franco-Villa score succeeds better at capturing the state of mind of Alberto De Rosa (Antonio Mayans), the homicidally disturbed maker of sand women whom adorn his beach and predict his future crimes. Research has indicated that some psychotics see/experience reality in different ways than non-psychotic individuals. Given the environmental context of the Bofill structures, along with the contradictory jazz sonics of the Franco Villa score this film offers a complete sensory overload of alien sights and sounds, alien in the sense that the approximate the mindset of the insane killer. Cues from the Heinz score can be heard of this CD collection.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE BEDROOM is a Sade novel from 1795, which Franco and Harry Alan Towers filmed with remarkable fidelity in 1969, featuring Maria Rohm as Madame St. Ange and Jack Taylor as her depraved brother. Christopher Lee guests stars as the Sadean narrator Dolmance and he is quite effective as a dry master of ceremonies, looking like a dandy in his red smoking jacket. Marie Liljedahl is Eugenie, the character who is targeted by St. Ange and her brother but who ends up undoing both of them. A rather glossy production for Jess Franco, despite some out of focus cinematography courtesy of the busy Manuel Merino. Leaving aside the strictly minimalist (due to budget constraints), EROTISMO/EUGENIE STORY OF A PERVERSION is probably the personal adapatation of the story in regards to Franco's stylistic development. Much of the film has the effect of watching things through the binoculars used by Alberto in his voyeuristic mode. Watching is always a dangerous thing is a Franco film. It incoropates the watcher into the scene being watched in a way which can't be disconnected. It leaves open a question: why are you watching this? Sade also seeks to ensnare the reader into the sado-erotic scenes which are being detailed. The film opens and closes on the beachfront focusing on Alberto's sand people. He is the sort of mad artist who replaces the mad scientists which often frequent Franco's horror films, Dr. Orloff being the one which comes to mind first since he's the protagonist of the director's first horror film. By the mid 1970s the protagonist villain would be Franco himself playing a serial killer who haunts the area around the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The killer is also a writer, like Franco himself, and he writes for a sadomasocthistic publication just as Jess Franco was by that time making films or variants for the hardcore market (SEXORCISM-1975). At the very end Eugenie (Katia Beinert) destroys the sand sculputes which represent Alberto's mad internal world. In the 1970 EUGENIE... the heroine also ends up on a beach finding some measure of freedom from her parent's world and the world of Dolmance (Christopher Lee) and his sadistic cult. As with Fellini, or Rollin, the beach is often the setting of a final scene which represents a ritual of transformation where one communes directly with a natural element, the sea, without human interruptions. I'm not aware of this being released on Spanish VHS, but it has been released on a US Spanish language VHS label*. It was rated CLASIFICADA S for its Spanish theatrical release *EROTISMO:Caliente Video MDVC-MIllion Dollar Video Company

(C) Robert Monell, 2023