De Sade 70

Jess Franco - smut king with talent. Maybe not at his best in this film, but worth buying for de Sade's writings flung into (what was then) present day, as an innocent girl gets seduced by a pervy couple and goes to stay with them upon her father's agreement. She gets sucked into a perversion story before becoming the perversion herself, when violent things naturally happen.

The sex is very restrained for a Franco film, and Chris Lee looks vaguely ashamed in a limited role. But Lee's comments on the DVD about finding himself in a film showing in porn cinemas in Soho, entirely to his surprise, are worthy of purchase alone. He also praises Franco, as he should - the guy has vision, but don't ask me what that vision is!

To see Jess Franco at his erotic best, buy Female Vampire. For Franco completists, and fans of: quirky genre films, the forgotten roles of Christopher Lee, or mildly spicy filmic delights - get to see Eugenie!

Franco fans like to hold up EUGENIE as proof of his technical prowess. In fact, it only stands as further testament to his ineptitude. Okay, so Franco had access to the crane on this one... and so excited is he that he uses it again and again, with no imagination or purpose. The cinematographer was clearly a bit more accomplished than usual too, in fact the budget is clearly higher than your average Franco pic. But don't worry, his amateurism shines right through. Ridiculous casting (Liljedahl is way to old and tarty to play an 'innocent young girl'), lame dialogue, bad acting, inappropriate and clueless use of the camera, lame attempts at surrealism, un-erotic soft porn sequences... all the usual Franco 'trademarks' are here in abundance. If you want to watch porn, then buy the real thing. If you want to watch a movie, don't waste your time here.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Jess Franco achieved over 200 directorial credits in numerous genres, with the quality of his output varying wildly from inspired surrealism to entertaining sleaze to almost unwatchable garbage (with the majority tending to veer towards the latter). However, although Franco's skill as a film-maker was questionable, his ability to get hot Euro-totty to strip off in front of a camera and do whatever he asked was never in doubt, and large doses of frequent female nudity frequently made his movies more bearable.

Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion is a prime example of an otherwise rather dull (despite the lurid subject matter) and not particularly well directed movie made more enjoyable largely thanks to Franco's remarkable way with women. His two female stars in this film—regular Franco actress Maria Rohm and Swedish sex-bomb Marie Liljedahl—regularly disrobe, give each other rub-downs, and indulge in all manner of kinky activities, all of which helps the time pass a lot less painfully.

Stylistically, the film is fairly typical of Franco's work from the 60s and early 70s, when his films reflected the fashion and mood of the times, exploited the liberated attitudes of the young and incorporated psychedelic visuals to enhance the hallucinatory vibe. Nudity aside, the groovy music by Bruno Nicolai is probably the films greatest strength, his jazzy score really adding to the creepy, decadent vibe. The film is also notable for it's cameo by Christopher Lee, who doesn't get involved in the saucy action, but is still probably not all that proud of his involvement.

5.5 out of 10, happily rounded up to 6 for the lovely Marie Liljedah, who almost rivals Christina Lindberg in the major Swedish babe stakes.

"Eugenie" is a scandalous story from the Marquis de Sade about a naive young girl who is sold by her father into the servitude of a married pair of depraved libertines who proceed to seduce and debauch her. Not surprisingly, it has not received a lot cinematic treatment (and could probably not even be made these days). Even the incredibly prolific and repetitive Jesus Franco only made two versions of the story, this and one in the early 80's called "Erotismo" ("Eugenie de Sade", made a year later with Soledad Miranda, is also based on a De Sade story, but is about a very different character also named Eugenie).

This is no doubt the better version. It was made at a time when Franco had access to plenty of a money through producer Harry Allen Towers and quality international stars, not only Maria Rohm and Jack Taylor as the libertine couple, but even Christopher Lee (who apparently had no idea what he was getting into) as the leader of the strange sex cult the pair belong to. As the title character Eugenie, Swedish actress Marie "Inga" Lillejahl is a typical Franco actress of the period--not as talented as some Franco collaborators like Soledad Miranda or Rosalba Neri, but very beautiful and classy unlike many of his later actresses (including his wife Lina Romay, who beautiful as she was, had a bad tendency of indulging the director in his most tasteless cinematic fantasies). Lillejahl, I might also add, was older than the character she played, and it turns out it's much better to cast a twenty year old as a fourteen year in a fairly explicit role than an actual fourteen year old as he did in "Erotismo" (Katja Beinert, who ironically could have easily passed for twenty), not only for moral reasons but also artistic ones--just as a drunk is best played by someone who is not actually drunk, a naive innocent is most effectively played by someone who is NOT actually a naive innocent.

The beautiful, dream-like style of the movie also does a lot to mitigate the inherent sleaziness of the subject matter. The scenes of Lillejahl stumbling naked along barren sand dunes with lots of phallic jutting rocks as the morning sun comes up are very memorable (even if they don't make a lot of sense). The repetitive opening and closing sequences Franco uses is a hoary device that goes all the way back to the British classic "Dead of Night", but it is quite effective and really adds to the dream-like atmosphere. One of the "good" Franco movies.

Eugenie is a film that shocked 1969 audiences, with interracial kissing, woman-to-woman fondling, and brother-sister sex games. It is beautifully filmed, sublimely acted (within its cult pedigree), and has reams of coolness, which makes it a good bet for modern audiences. If you get bored watching Connery drive his Aston Martin to a romantic rendezvous for some witty repartee, Eugenie will likely bore you. If you prefer graphic to simulated, you might find it lame. But if you can buy into the characters and appreciate the care of the filmmaking, Eugenie is a rewarding, disturbing piece of celluloid. In the interview, Franco states "Of all my films, it is the one I hate the least." If you know Franco and his staggering body of work, that's saying something.