I discovered a TV-channel that specializes in broadcasting old, obscure, and long-forgotten movies from my home country Belgium. As a patriot and a fan of non-mainstream cinema, this is obviously pure gold, but I must also acknowledge that many of these movies are obscure and forgotten for a very good reason. "Exit 7", for instance, initially felt like a genuine cult discovery, but it's honestly one of the most embarrassingly worst and dullest films I ever sat through.
At the time of its release, I reckon "Exit 7" must have been quite a prestigious project with international ambitions. The poster proudly exclaims the name of Laura Gemser, the gorgeous cult starlet who was world-famous back then for starring in numerous "Black Emanuelle" exploitation movies, and even more so for walking around without any clothes in all her films. But even though she exposes her beautiful assets, Gemser's role is rather insignificant and just as dull as the rest of the movie. The plot introduces architect Marc Dumont who, at the start of the story, is held hostage aboard of a plane by two aggressive hijackers whose objectives are never really made clear. Is Marc special compared to the other passengers on the plane? Is his background worth telling? Absolutely not, but that is nevertheless the focus of what happens next. Long, boring, and pointless flashbacks about how Marc falls madly in love with a Polish girl at an antique shop and gradually decides to leave his family and run off with her to Rhodes.
Some of these flashback sequences are incredibly irrelevant (like a whiny dining scene with a caterer) or even downright uncomfortable (like when Marc takes his 12-year-old son to a spa and they both sit there naked). The brief - TOO brief - moments aboard the plane are the only remotely interesting parts, thanks to a topless Laura Gemser and an early role from Johnny Voners as hostile hijackers. Voners was popular (in Belgium) for playing the heavily drinking but totally incompetent goalkeeper of an amateur football team in "FC De Kampioenen". It's funny to see him in an early villainous role, even though it's an awful film.
