Female Animal

On the surface, this looks like one of those erotic 60s art-house flicks which were imported by American entrepreneurs solely for their sex content. It even possesses the de rigueur subtext exposing the moneyed class for its decadence and its exploitation of the naive masses. However, it's all a scam -- it was intentionally made in Puerto Rico by these self-same American entrepreneurs to resemble a European flick -- and quite successfully so.

The film is well enough constructed and filmed to be watchable, with plenty of nudity, though it's overly melodramatic and dully predictable for long stretches. As well, there are a couple of psychedelic sequences for Swinging Sixties buffs. The star Angelique is quite a dish and is not averse to shedding her threads at the least provocation. At the same time, the filmmakers strive to offend conservative viewers (in true pseudo-Euro style) by including a lascivious hypocritical priest among the sordid proceedings, by using a soda bottle as an erotic device, and by being a bit unsubtle about Angelique's relationship with her housecat.

Having being orphaned earlier in her life, "Angelique" (Arlene Farber) has grown up into a beautiful young woman who easily attracts all the men around. Her main problem, however, is that her foster parents don't treat her very well and, after a heated argument, she is thrown out of the house to fend for herself. But as luck would have it, just days before the argument, she just happened to get into an accident while driving her bicycle and was offered both a job and a place to stay by an extremely wealthy businessman named "Count Orestes Medici" (Vassili Lambrinos). Naturally, having nowhere else to go, she decides to accept his offer, even though she fully realizes he wants her to fulfill more than just her duties as a maid. The problem, however, is that Count Medici has an adult son named "Alain" (Andre Landzaat) who thoroughly detests him and is determined to have Angelique for himself. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I initially thought that this was either an Italian or Spanish movie but, after some brief research, discovered that it was simply a low-budget American production which was intentionally masquerading as a foreign film instead. Since the reasons aren't exactly clear to me, I won't speculate any further. What I can say, however, is that this film contained quite a bit of nudity along with several scenes of a sexual nature--none of which were that particularly erotic, in my opinion. To be sure, Arlene Farber was definitely quite attractive and performed reasonably well, all things considered. It's just that these scenes were too generic and lacked the necessary chemistry or passion to really capture my attention. Of course, others may disagree and that's perfectly okay with me. In any case, I wasn't very impressed with this movie and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.