HOW TO SEDUCE A VIRGIN (PLAISIR A TROIS) 1973

Plaisir a trois 1973 85 MINUTES: MONDO MACABRO (Blu-ray; Jess Franco Triple Bill); European Trash Cinema (U.S. import) DIRECTED BY "CLIFFORD BROWN" (JESS FRANCO) WITH: ROBERT WOODS, ALICE ARNO, TANIA BUSSELIER, HOWARD VERNON, ALFRED BAILLOU, LINA ROMAY --------------------------------------------------------------------

(a.k.a. HOW TO SEDUCE A VIRGIN) In 1973, Jesus Franco directed at least 12 movies. PLAISIR A TROIS stands out for its clever plotting, above-average performances, and carefully constructed visual style that takes an almost Cubist approach to imagery. For instance, in the first scene Alice Arno's character, Martine Bressac, departs from a mental hospital. As she is debriefed by the head psychiatrist note how her bright green bandana and rectangular shapes of the windows behind her head result in a disturbingly, off balance cubist composition which subtly signals us of the woman's dangerous tendencies and mental imbalance. These type of compostions recur throughout the film.

There's a game going in throughout the course of this film. A game created by the Marquis de Sade, played by the four main characters. It's kind of a 3D chess game, a game of Life and Death. The winners take all, the loser dies a horrible, extended death. Who is the loser? Who are the winners? They won't be who you think they are. The plotline here, adapted from a story in Sade's Philosophy in the Boudior, has been used in many other Franco projects. Martine is an artist who paints impressionist style nudes. Her hidden occupation, though, combines art, perversion, murder and a secret torture chamber underneath her villa. Women she has seduced, tortured, and murdered are arranged in sado-erotic poses as living dead sculptures. Arno's spine-chilling performance give this "horrors in the wax museum" scenario considerable psychological depth. She is the embodiment of pure, selfish lust. Arno (real name: Marie-France Broquet) was one of Franco's best performers, but she disappeared from the Euro-exploitation scene sometime in the mid 1970s. Robert Woods, veteran of countless spaghetti westerns, has a good role here as Arno's double-dealing husband. Howard Vernon is amusing as a smug chauffeur, and diminutive Alfred Baillou plays a snooping gardener who seems somewhat deranged.

ABOVE:Producer Robert De Nesle C.F.F.P. Paris**** PLAISIR A TROIS does not concentrate on the story's horror element. The basement of women frozen in poses of death has been done in such films as MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM, HOUSE OF WAX and MILL OF STONE WOMEN (1960), it instead follows a potential victim (Tania Busselier) into Arno's unholy lair. A handful of stylized sex scenes between Busselier, Arno, Woods, and Lina Romay (as Arno's slightly deranged slave) sets up a surprising twist (but very Sadean) ending, in which Martine becomes a victim of her own sick escapades. Once again a hermetically sealed world is created by the use of an 18mm lens range to shoot the interiors of the villa which the scheming protagonists inhabit. This lens was often used by Orson Welles to open up claustrobic spaces in such films as TOUCHE OF EVIL and THE TRIAL. He also uses some fairly elaborate lateral tracking shots, as when the basement chamber of horrors is first introduced or to subtly distort the distances between characters. After all, Franco himself has said his films are about the distances between people.

In addition, Franco offers a consistently perverse and obsessive world within Arno's villa -- Rooms bathed in red light, strip teases using mannikins, slow-moving sex action, and his trademark voyeuristic motifs. Busselier's midnight bedroom antics (spied on by Arno and Woods through a telescope) are some of the most erotic scenes Franco has filmed, without becoming overly explicit.

The reveiwed print contains some very brief XXX shots, but they are handled with an unusual grace and discretion, considering Franco's more graphic forays into hardcore sex movie terrain. The Franco biography, Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco, lists the running time of this film as 80 minutes, but some U.S. mail order companies offer a French language version which runs approx 87 minutes, as does the highly recommended MONDO MACABRO Blu-ray. The colors, seen in HD, are richly saturated and often display clashing, but gorgeous, patterns. The color of the 1950s melodramas Douglas Sirk directed at Universal come to mind.**** BELOW: Douglas Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE (1959)****

****ABOVE: Clifford Brown (1930-1956)**** Given the number of versions Franco made of this story, this once again underlines that the style he uses to tell the same stories over and over is always completely different than the previous iterations. His style is constantly, gradually evolving as he moves on to different locations, casts and budgets. He's like a pianist or a jazz trumpeteer usuing different keys, notes and tempos to play the same tune, each time renewing it for his audience. Clifford Brown, the jazz trumpet stylist used a specific "approach pattern" on the notes he played to arrive at his unique sound. It's no accident that this film, as many other Franco films, is credited to "Clifford Brown", one of the director's favorite beards and musicians. (C) Robert Monell, New Version--2023