Sumuru, la cité sans hommes

Sumuru , Shirley Eaton, is a gorgeous but evil woman who plans world domination by having her sexy all female army to eliminate male leaders. Her main purport is to replace them with her female agents, and eventually the male people to be used as slaves, while propagating the female genre . Along the way an allegedly swindler named Jeff Sutton , Richard Wyler , carries a suitcase with 10 million dollars , and a nasty ganster : George Sanders , as well as Sumuru , want to take it . Shorly after, Sumuru kidnaps Sutton and brings them to her headquarter : Femina. Then , the villain enemy with his local army invade the quarters in a modern Río de Janeiro . She is the most sadistic...diabolic..woman who ever lived!. She rules a palace of pleasure ...for women ! Where men are used in a diabolic plot to destroy civilization !.See this daring motion picture , never before exhibited ¡ A Carnivale of Sex and Violence from the director of Vampyros Lesbos and Eugenie . These are the future ..

Based on a series of cult novels by Sam Rohmer, who also wrote Fumanchu, about a magalomaniac femme fatal who wants to rule over the World. This is the sequel to "The Milion Eyes of Sumuru" 1967 directed by Lindsay Shonteff with Shirley Eaton, George Nader , Frankie Avalon, Klaus Kinski, Wilfrid Hyde White , and followed many years later by "Sumuru" 2003 by Darrell Roodt with Alexandra Kamp, Michael Shanks . All of them were produced by British producer Harry Alan Towers who married to Austrian Maria Rohm , usual actress in his films and occassionally producer . This follow-up "The seven secrets of Sumuru" also has a good cast , being a British/Spanish coproduction here appears Brits as Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler , and Spaniard players as Elisa Montes and Marta Revers . Again Shirley Eaton as the ruler Sumuru who schemes remove all the men who are currently in power and replace them with her army of beautiful women . Shirley reprised this role for amusement , as she said : I did enjoy being the wicked Lady in two rather bad movies , which I had not had the chance to be before , however, retiring from performing shortly afterwards . She is well accompanied by a lot of young girls , most of who are shown in skimpy mini skirls , light dresss and bikinis and they can all perform complex tasks . Stars the mediocre actor Richard Wyler who starred some Spaghetti Westerns , here he plays a roguish hero who turns a pawn in a confrontation between two nasty contenders while frees the damsel in distress .

Regularly directed by Jesús Franco or Jess Frank with his usual tics , brands and botcher style . It contains a colorful and sunny cinematography by Manuel Merino shot on location in Museum Arte Modern Río Janeiro, Brazil, Barcelona, Catalonia and La Manga del Mar Menor, Murcia , Spain . As well as thrilling and peculiar musical score with strange sounds by Daniel White , Franco's regular . This is a run-of-the-mill Jess Frank made in medium budget with his common elements , such as erotism, nudism, masochist scenes , perversion, prisoners locked in glass cages and habitual zooms.

Since I recently watched Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik, I had an urge to see some other, lesser known spy movies. This is Jess Franco's attempt at the genre and he almost pulls it off. If it weren't for some lapses in action (and logic) this one would have been very good. But far too often, nothing much of interest is going on. In a typical James Bond movie, there are many instances where the action stops to further the plot. In The Girl from Rio, these stops in the action do nothing to advance the story. They are just there.

Franco probably had one of the bigger "name" casts in The Girl from Rio that he ever worked with. Shirley Eaton, from Goldfinger, is the villainous Sumuru. George Sanders, who I always get a kick out of watching, is very funny as the equally villainous Sir Masius. The biggest problem with the casting is Richard Wyler as the films hero. He's not interesting enough to carry the part.

Having watched a few Franco movies over the past few years, The Girl from Rio is decidedly tame. While the movie has its moments, the usual Franco sleaze is not evident. Too bad - it might have made some of the non-action moments more tolerable.

Girl from Rio, The (1969)

** (out of 4)

Coming from the same era as his FuManchu pictures, this European spy-caper comes from Jess Franco and actually is fairly decent as long as you don't expect too much from it. In the film, which is basically a take-off on Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK, former Bond girl Shirley Eaton plays Sumitra, the leader of a female gang who plan on taking over the world by turning all the men into their slaves. The girl gang must try and fight a couple evil men (one played by George Sanders) who plan to try and stop them. There's no question that this isn't a very good film but at the same time it's actually better than you might expect it to be. The biggest problem is with the screenplay that really doesn't offer up anything overly original or entertaining as the film's pacing is always at a stop-go motion that ends up killing the film. We get a lot of funky visuals as there's no question this is one of those psychedelic pictures that I'm sure many potheads might enjoy. You've got a pretty good soundtrack, some decent cinematography and it's good to see some familiar names showing up. Sanders was certainly slumping at this point of his career but he manages to be mildly entertaining here. Eaton also manages to turn in a decent performance and it really does appear as she's into everything going on and having a good time playing pretty much a female James Bond. She's certainly chomping away at the dialogue and appears to be having a blast. I think those unfamiliar with the work of Jess Franco might find themselves enjoying this because they're not really sure what they would normally be seeing from the director. Franco worked a few films into this genre but I'm personally not a fan of any of them so in the end this is a decent effort but there's just not enough soul here for me. I prefer his 70s output, which featured more bizarre and poetic films.

The clever marketeer is he is, Jess Franco naturally also cashed in on the huge temporarily success of psychedelic spy movies like Mario Bava's ultimately sensational "Danger: Diabolik!". Franco is the ideal man to shoot a similar film, as he could freely insert as much sleaze, kitschy scenery and absurdly grotesque plot twists as he wanted to. And he partially understood this very well, as "The Girl from Rio" revolves on a man-hating organization, led by a funky dressed lesbo, that plots to turn all men into obedient slaves! Unfortunately (for them, at least), the diabolical plans conflict with the daily business of a feared crime syndicate boss, played by George Sanders. All the right ingredients are well-presented, yet this is a surprisingly weak and unsatisfying adventure movie. The plot is rich on imagination, but seemingly only on paper, as the action is quite tame. The film is also very colorful...but not too bright and especially shocking was the total lack of vicious sex. There's a bit of nudity, sure, but too few according to normal Franco standards. All the characters are sick in the head, so the least I expected (or hoped for) were more perverted undertones or frenzied themes. Franco obviously had a bigger budget as usual to work with, and I must say he spends that money well on more convincing set pieces and talented cast members. Particularly the veteran actor George Sanders ("Village of the Damned", "Psychomania") is one of the best players ever to appear in a Franco production. Too bad even he can't save "The Girl from Rio" from being a huge letdown. A legendary Euro-smut filmmaker like Jess Franco could and should have done more with this concept. Shame, shame, shame...

The Girl From Rio AKA Future Women is precisely the sort of loopy nonsense that we cult movie fans find absolutely fascinating: it has an outlandish espionage plot, born of the feminist movement yet still managing to exploit women at every turn; it stars familiar performers Shirley Eaton (Goldfinger) and George Sanders (All About Eve) camping it up like there's no tomorrow; there's crazy kitsch 60s fashion a go-go; and director Jess Franco (R.I.P.) ensures that the film is imbued with a strangeness and technical ineptitude of the kind guaranteed to keep his loyal followers happy, despite the whole affair being far more light-hearted than many of his other movies.

Eaton stars as lesbian megalomaniac Sunanda who is hell-bent on dominating the world with the help of her all-woman army of men-haters (which in itself should be more than enough to pique most trash movie fans' interest). Building a vast fortune by kidnapping the world's wealthiest people, the power-hungry women's libber has built her own city, Femina, from which she plans to launch her attack on mankind.

Sunanda's latest target is playboy Jeff Sutton (Richard Wyler), who is rumoured to be carrying $10million cash with him in his briefcase; also interested in the money is Sunanda's rival, Rio crime boss Masius (Sanders). In reality there is no money, the briefcase being used as bait to reel in Sunanda, Jeff having been hired to locate missing heiress Ulla (Marta Reves) who he believes is being held captive in Femina.

With this three-way of Sunanda, Masius and Sutton established, all Franco is left to do is pad out his movie to feature length with assorted nonsense, which includes gangsters in creepy masks, lots of Rio carnival padding (including a one-legged reveller busting moves in the street), some torture via Sunanda's craptastic microwave ray, Eaton wearing a lacy body stocking, hilarious dialogue ('Don't be nasty—daddy doesn't like it'), more leggy totty than you can shake a stick at, and several silly showdowns, Jeff narrowly escaping on most occasions thanks to his incredible martial arts skills (a karate chop here, a judo throw there) or his trusty pistol (for use only when his chopping hand is feeling sore). When he's not kicking bad guy butt, Jeff's weapon of choice is his irresistible charm, with which he lures women—even dedicated man-haters—into bed with ease (thus allowing Franco to easily meet his quota of female nudity).

Ultimately, Femina is stormed by Jeff and Masius, who form an alliance to ensure continuing male superiority, their assault on the city resulting in a barrage of badly edited fake gunfire and an amateurish assault of unconvincing stock footage explosions. In a suitably silly final scene, Sunanda is shown to have survived the attack, despite having supposedly blown herself up with a self-destruct device inside her gold vault.