Venus im Pelz

Massimo Dallamano's adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's controversial literary work presents a visually sumptuous yet emotionally hollow exploration of obsession and psychological manipulation. The film succeeds in creating an atmosphere of decadent luxury, with rich cinematography that luxuriates in textures of fur, silk, and flesh, but struggles to find coherent emotional grounding beneath its beautiful surface.

Laura Antonelli delivers a commanding performance as the enigmatic Wanda, wielding her sexuality with calculated precision while maintaining an air of mysterious detachment. Her presence dominates every frame she occupies, transforming what could have been mere exploitation into something approaching genuine psychological complexity. Régis Vallée provides adequate support as the tormented Severin, though his portrayal occasionally feels more reactive than truly engaged with the character's deeper psychological wounds.

The production design deserves particular praise, creating environments that feel both opulent and suffocating. Dallamano's camera work lingers on details - the way light catches on velvet, the interplay of shadows across skin - building a visual language that speaks to the film's themes of voyeurism and desire. However, the pacing frequently stumbles, with moments of genuine tension interrupted by sequences that feel more concerned with aesthetic display than narrative momentum.

While the film tackles mature psychological themes with some sophistication, it never quite transcends its exploitation origins. The exploration of trauma and its manifestation in adult relationships shows promise but lacks the depth needed to make the more disturbing elements feel genuinely necessary rather than merely provocative.

This movie combined the overrated novel of Leopold Sacher-Von Masoch (who gave us the word 'masochism'), the talent of underrated Italian director Massimo Dallamano, and the physical charms of European sex diva Laura Antonelli. It has often been confused with the identically titled Jesus Franco movie released about the same time. It is not quite as good as Franco's surreal masterpiece or Dallamano's own follow-up "What Have You Done to Solange?" (which was easily better than ANY Franco movie). Still it is certainly not a waste of time and it does adhere pretty faithfully, perhaps too faithfully, to the banal source novel.

The movie tells the story of a jaded cad who meets a beautiful young woman (Antonelli) and falls in love in love with her after spying on her showering, masturbating, and having sex with strange men. The problem is that she also reminds him of a maid who relentlessly teased him as a adolescent by having sex with the butler while he watched. The woman falls in love with him, but her love quickly sours into contempt when he insists that she beat him and openly cheat on him with various men. This is one of those movies like Godard's "Contempt" or Polanski's "Bitter Moon" where you want to jump onto the screen and slap the protagonist for scorning the adulation of the kind of beautiful woman who most mortal men will never enjoy (but then this guy would probably like that).

Antonelli would go on to be one of Italy's biggest female stars after she went from taking all her clothes off in movies like this to taking all her clothes off in more arty, big-budget fare. This movie is fairly unpretentious at least. Antonelli has her hair dyed blonde and is nearly unrecognizable (at least, until she gets undressed for the first time), but her performance, though regrettably badly dubbed into English, is quite passable. Dallamano also delivers a lot of the superior visual style he would demonstrate in later films like "Solange?". Fans of "Eurotica" who want to venture beyond established auteurs like Franco, Jean Rollins, Walerian Borowzyx, and Jose Larraz would be well advised to check this one out.

The 1969 "Venere in pelliccia" could have been Laura Antonelli's big break, had it been released in Italy. It would have predated "Malizia" by four years, but due to censorship problems, it came out in other European markets only. Finally, in 1975, in Italy as well – but in a heavily edited and changed version. More on that later.

The lake Tegernsee in Upper Bavaria: Writer Severin's leisure is interrupted when the gorgeous model Wanda arrives at his hotel. He can spy on her through the wooden wall between their rooms, and quickly falls in love with her. After a rather old-school advance, they get together. Severin then discloses his sexual fantasies: In his view a man is defined by his childhood experiences and traumas. For him, this means he has to suffer in a relationship, both physically and mentally. Wanda on the other hand is used to cheat on her partners, but she falls in love with Severin and agrees to play along in his games. This means for her to have sexual encounters with other men, enforced and watched by Severin. But after a couple of weeks, during their honeymoon in Spain, Wanda is sick of it and the relationship spirals downwards into disaster…

This may sound very plot- and dialog- driven, but it actually isn't. Characterisation and motivations are explained very quickly and mostly through thoughts (in voice-overs). It's up to the viewer to interpret the rest, although there are instances where this doesn't work out completely. Especially regarding Wanda's actions I was not convinced throughout. At one point she is obviously sick of it all, beats Severin down and we see him hurt and bruised. But in the next scene, the bruises are gone (some time must have passed) and they are back in their role playing. Why would she stay with him after that, given that she is a nymphomanic, self-confident dream girl and can do whatever she wants? But maybe that's just me who can't see that, as said, it's up to the respective viewer. A little bit of explanation would have helped, especially since this is a rather short film, not reaching the 90 minutes mark.

Problems like these are easily forgiven, as this is a fantastic film to watch. The visuals are incredibly well- made, every single scene is shot perfectly. The locations are beautiful, too, especially the lake and meadows of the first half. The score supports the plot perfectly. A fascinating mix of 60ies lounge-piano and wild, psychedelic flower-power feel.

And oh boy, this movie is hot. Incredibly hot. For the time of production, it goes surprisingly far, but this is still the time when you couldn't show all and had to be creative. The amount of nudity (including full frontal) and sex scenes performed by Laura Antonelli is absolutely incredible, and the director and camera knew what they were doing. Tasteful and absolutely arousing.

Speaking of the actors, Régis Vallée performs decently and is convincing, although he may seem a little bit too passive towards the end of the film. Laura on the other hand puts her heart and soul into her role. She steals most of the scenes with Vallée, and definitely not just for appearances.

Now let's speak of the Italian version of 1975. You can see by the way it was made that the censors have had problems with two things: The sado-masochistic aspect of Severin wanting to suffer, and some of the sex scenes were too explicit. So they brought in Vallée to shoot a background story: Severin is in jail (and later in court), being accused of the murder of that guy Bruno (they shot some extra scenes with that actor, too). Severin tells the story of his relationship to Wanda and how it could come to the murder. It is terribly boring. The 1969 scenes are arranged differently (mixing Bavaria and Spain scenes at random), and strongly edited. The voice-overs, all the "suffering" dialogs, all gone. It's not true the sex scenes were all cut, many are completely intact. Others were shortened, for the scene at the lake, when Severin satisfies Wanda orally, they even added a filter on the right side of the picture in order to cloak what's going on. And the horse sex scene is gone, too, luckily. The film was re-dubbed completely and shows Severin as a normal guy who falls for Wanda, who is the one to openly cheat on him and cause them to break up which leads to the murder. Anyway, the 1975 one is a total waste of time and should you decide to watch it, you should do it before you watch the 1969 version.

Overall, this is a very good film and an absolute must-see for fans of Laura Antonelli (although I didn't like her dyed hair and the strong make-up too much). The sexual liberality is surprising, sometimes shocking, clearly the film was way ahead of the times. Superb cinematography and soundtrack, convincing actors and a controversial subject – but go for the 1969 version please.

'Venus In Furs' is a surprisingly good movie version of Sacher-Masoch's erotic classic of obsessive love. Updated to the present, which is obviously the 60s, director Massimo Dallamano (also responsible for the Helmut Berger 'Dorian Gray') manages to be quite faithful to the original story, and setting it in swinging Europe works very well. The beautiful Laura Antonelli (Fulci's 'The Eroticist') is well cast as the sensuous Wanda who is urged by her masochistic husband Severin (Regis Vallee) on to greater and greater heights of betrayal and sadistic game playing. Their passionate relationship takes them both to places they never anticipated and the movies final scene is neither predictable nor unsatisfying. This is an above average movie of its type. Fans of Eurosleaze like Franco's 'Succubus' and Berruti's 'Killer Nun' will dig it the most. I enjoyed it a lot.

This is an Italian adaption of the book of the same name. I haven't actually read the book myself, although I am very familiar with the seminal song 'Venus in Furs' by The Velvet Underground. So I had a basic idea that this story is about a sadomasochistic relationship between a couple – Severin and the 'whiplash girl-child' (Wanda). The song is of course a bona fide untouchable classic, the film somewhat less so. Nevertheless, it's still a stylish and effective slice of Eurotica.

It tells a tale about Wanda (Laura Antonelli) who is driven by her masochistic husband Severin into sexually dominating him. This entails her being blatantly unfaithful and treating him contemptuously. As time progresses he struggles with his own rules.

The movie benefits from the sure hand of director Massimo Dallamano who was responsible for two excellent later films the giallo What Have You Done to Solange? and the giallo-poliziotteschi crossover What Have They Done to your Daughters? Venus in Furs isn't in the same bracket as those but then it is a very different type of film. It's pretty playful tone-wise for the most part, with a cheerful lounge soundtrack. It also looks pretty good with some decent locations, while Antonelli is great to look at as well. It is fairly erotic with a lot of classy nudity but be warned it does also contain a pretty notorious moment where we are treated to the sight of a couple of horses banging each other. Its horses for courses if you can excuse the pun.

Overall, though, this is a pretty good erotic drama. Also it should not be confused with the Jesus Franco film of the same name, also from 1969, which is similarly impressive but has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel Venus in Furs.