BLUE RITA/DAS FRAUENHAUS Blu-ray; 2 Disc SE

DANCE, GAS, KIDNAP, TORTURE... REPEAT.

BLUE RITA SE: Full Moon. This kinky, visually dazzling Eurospy fantasia is one of Franco's most unique films and a personal favorite of the features he made for Erwin C. Dietrich. 2 Disc- Blu-ray+DVD. BLUE RITA/DAS FRAUENHAUS, filmed in Paris and featuring Martine Flety (COCKTAIL SPECIAL) and Pamela Stanford (LORNA, THE EXORCIST) as leaders of a criminal organization of female seductresses and spies. The visual style of this Erwin Dietrich-Robert De Nesle production, deploys a lot of colorful costumes, color gel lighting, dutch camera angles, smoke, mirrors and eye catching filter effects. The women are a bisexual, sadistic, and exhibitionist lot who make a lot of trouble for a Russian spy (Eric Falk) and an undercover female Interpol agent sent to break up the operation, hidden behind a high class stripi club in Paris. Opening with a strip performance lit by a crimson spotlight the performance scenes give Franco ample oppurtunity to display his fetish stylistics with full aesthetic splendor.

This all plays as a more stylish reconsideration of the plot and style of Franco's Harry Alan Tower's produced THE GIRL FROM RIO (1969). It's much less conventional and more infused with Franco's unique personal style than Towers allowed. Dietrich was a more supportive producer who gave Franco permission to be himself. That means what we have here is a wild eyed action painting, a million light years from a tepid Bond imitation. The Paris exteriors and sci-fi interiors give the film a look and vibe quite different from the other Erwin Dietrich productions.

The much less supportive Robert De Nesle was co-producer and was very much in attendance during the Parisian shooting according to an interview I did with Pamela Stanford on her work with Franco. She remembered De Nesle literally rushing the cast from location to location between scenes and making sure no time was wasted. He always considered Franco a reliable employee who would deliver a profitable product. Dietrich respected Franco as an artist who would deliver a personalized work in his own time so didn't bother interfering. The French language track here, with English subtitles included, give the proceedings an Art-Exploitation quality; the English dub is included on the DVD disc and unfortunateAly gooes against the film's aesthetic grain. Also included on the Blu-ray is a photo gallery and an interview with Franco enthusiast-director Peter Strickland. The color gel lighting effects and fetishistic props really pop, shimmer and shake in HD and the more appropriate French soundtrack make this a much more enjoyable experience than FULL MOON'S previous DVD release.

(C) Robert Monell, 2023 Product details Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.48 x 5.31 x 1.18 inches Director ‏ : ‎ Jess Franco, Jesus Franco Media Format ‏ : ‎ Anamorphic, NTSC, Widescreen Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 15 minutes Release date ‏ : ‎ December 12, 2023 Actors ‏ : ‎ Esther Moser, Olivier Mathot, Erik Falk, Pamela Stanford, Sarah Strasberg Studio ‏ : ‎ Full Moon Features ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CF39WB42 Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2 Best Sellers Rank: #15,181 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV) #1,669 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs

Revisiting LES GLOUTONNES

Revisiting Jess Franco's LES GLOUTONNES recently I was struck by how its radical changes in tone and basic incoherence (the latter courtesy of "comedy" inserts insisted on by Robert de Nesle) don't completely destroy its stylistic charm. Once a "somber", according to Alain Petit, erotic adventure becomes a take-off on the peplum genre complete with slapstick antics by Bigotini (Patrick de Conninck), the servant of Howard Vernon's return as Cagliostro, and wise cracking voices coming out of the abyss. The one hardcore insert, featuring Alice Arno performing fellatio on a nude actor and receiving a squirt of white fluid which may or may not be male semen, is absurd and unerotic as possible. In my interview with featured American actor Robert Woods, he confirmed that no hardcore was shot while he was around during the shoot sometime during the Summer of 1973, back to back with YUKA, shot with the same cast on the same settings on the island of Madeira.

Directed under his French nom de plume Clifford Brown, this is a fascinating mess due to the fact that Robert de Nesle, or somebody, took a supposedly "serious" film and made it into a delirous collage of peplum, adventure, comedy, erotic and fantasy motifs. It's Wal Davis as Maciste vs. Robert Woods as the evil Caronte who attempts to overthrow and kill the Queen of Atlantis, played by Alice Arno. Maciste prevails with the help of "the gobblers" the women of Atlantis. Howard Vernon makes an appearance as Cagliostro (cf. LA MALDICION DES FRANKENSTEIN), who observes the antics with his horny attendant, played by the puckish Rick Deconninck/Bigitoni. A very interesting, eclectic score by Robert Viger [?] is an atmospheric bonus.

Mark Forest was supposed to play Maciste, according to Franco.* The opening shot, panning down a misty valley, and the first view of the stormy coast of the remnants of Atlantis, are outstanding images, but unless you are a Franco completist or a peplum enthusiast you the ragged montage of this film rather tying. Franco also made YUKA/MACISTE CONTRE LA REINE DES AMAZONES (also 1973 with Davis/Waldemar Wohlfaart and Robert Woods playing the male leads opposite Alice Arno and the Queen of the Amazons in another erotic "peplum" set in the Middle Ages.

What we have left as of this writing are VHS dupe level DVDs/DVDRs of this film and YUKA, both damned to the lowest levels of home video. Without any HD restorations in sight it is what it is, they are what they are. Softcore knockoffs made to be exhibited in theaters in tenderloin districts of whatever metropolis you lived in or near in the 1970s. Fans of le bad cinema, genre anarchists or those interested in quasi-experimental cinema hiding beneath a Z budgeted porn package might provide some interest and amusement. They both are exercises in unconscious mise-en-scene existing in the absence of conventional genre respectability or "art" film pretension. A favorite scene features the emergence of white shrouded beings during a ritual sacrifice staged by Caronte and Parka (Kali Hansa).

Given the poverty of means, the lack of reliable representation of its proposed world and the intrusion of "comedy" interludes this porno-peplum establishes itself on a bizarre wavelength. Most of the main cast, sans Emma Cohen, is also featured in Franco's unabashedly emotional masterpiece, AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO (1973), also largely shot on Madeira but infused with realistically sketched characters caught up in an other-worldly murder mystery. The power of that film is in being drawn into the destruction of an attractive, vulnerable, relatable person as she conducts a murder spree on all the men who enter her web. But is the web woven by her, or the toxic spirit of her dead father? We're never sure. That ambiguity is the film's strength. We're struck by how good the performances by Emma Cohen, Howard Vernon and the supporting plays are at creating credible people in the midst of an eerie tragedy. There's none of that in LES GLOUTONNES, its interest lies in its cinema-degree-zero mise-en-scene with its often cubist compositions and its absurdist tone, which replaces the reportedly "somber" tone of the original cut. Every zoom shot is strangely compelling and seem somehow necessary. At the end its suggested to all be an erotic fantasy of Alice Arno, who lies in bed, overseen by a skull, lost the daydream which is LES GLOUTONNES.

(C) Robert Monell, 2023