Le malizie di Venere

'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 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.

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.

Pretty to look at with marvellous lakeside, mountain, woodland, seashore settings and not forgetting the delectable, Laura Antonelli. But that's pretty much all the plus points. The Leopold von Sacher-Masoch tale is a difficult one to get across at the best of times but the choice of lead actor is crucial and here Regis Vallee appears to not even understand his own role, let alone convey to us his feelings. It's not all his fault, the terrible jingly muzak doesn't help and nor does the slow pace. I guess it must have seemed a good idea to have voice over for passages from the book but when they are so inappropriately spoken over glossy clichéd scenes, it detracts and even, for me, denigrates the original work itself. Antonelli does her very best, ever ready to be seductive, loving, hateful and even violent but we just don't buy it. Jess Franco's movie of the same name that came out the same year is better but then it's Venus in Furs in name only! For anyone keen enough to try again with the theme, I recommend the 1994 film of the same name by Seyforth and Nieuwenhuijs.

If the sight of a big floppy horse's dobber dribbling spunk isn't enough to convince you that by this point Italian cinema had discarded restraint and headed off for 'pushing boundaries' territory, then I don't know what will. Except maybe the other bits of this film that don't involve horse porn.

Severin is some sort of messed up guy who can't get over the time he was spying on a maid doing the nasty with some guy, getting caught, getting slapped around, and then being held between the maid's boobs (I'm not sure if that part was strictly legal in 2017). Now an all grown up messed up pervert, he finds himself spying on attractive model Wanda, who likes to dress up in furs and do a bit of invisible banjo playing - and she knows Severin is watching!

Eventually these two hook up and Severin wants Wanda to sleep with other guys in front of him and beat him up and all sorts of crap and at first Wanda seems to think this is the ultimate freedom until she starts getting second thoughts (right about the time Severin gives her a letter that would serve as an alibi should Severin end up dead during their crazy sex games!).

But is she really fed up or is her rage and beatings part of some elaborate game? And what about the lesbian house maids? Or the bizarre fantasies of Severin. Or the last ten minutes? No really? What was that all about? Was it her or some other chick?

If you like boobs, pubes, short-changed dudes and lesbian interludes you'll like this one I guess. I can't believe I actually paid money for this! Or an HMV voucher - something like that.