Les week ends maléfiques du Comte Zaroff

This is barely worth it's given rating but despite the slow pace, the nonsense story, the pretentiousness and the dialogue I liked it. I guess the well shot nudity helped but also the slightly odd angle (to call it surreal would be far too flattering) and surprising jolts of violence amid the sleepiness. The way the Count turns upon his first victim is a real shock and the couple trying out the historic torture instrument certainly get a surprise, as do we. Hard to recommend though because it is hardly quality stuff and certainly does not live up to Mr Lemoine's claims for the film. But then if you are not expecting too much and know something of the genre you could do worse. It's certainly as good as many of the below par and over rated Jess Franco movies.

Seven Women for Satan (1976)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Bizarre French film is a sequel to The Most Dangerous Game. In this film, Count Boris Zaroff (Michel Lemoine), the nephew of the psycho from the first film, has sexual fantasies dealing with him seducing women and then murdering them. Because the screenplay allows it, several women soon fall into his hands and sure enough he begins to make the fantasies real. I'll admit that this is a pretty strange film from start to finish and there are some pretty good moments scattered throughout but sadly things run out of gas around the half-way mark and things never pick up. The bizarre thing is that the film goes for a Luis Bunuel like feel where the viewer never knows if he's watching something that's really happening or if we're in some sort of strange fantasy or dream sequence. The movie has a rather nice atmosphere and we get all sorts of sleaze from countless naked women to some strange death scenes. We also get some laughable death scenes including one early on when Zaroff attacks a woman. She takes off running and he begins to chase her in his car. There are woods all around and all she would have to do is duck in them and she'd be safe but instead she just keeps running through this open field. This scene certainly made me laugh as did another one where the woman is attacked by a dog. There is one gruesome scene where a couple goes to their death in a torture chamber that is quite effective. Director Lemoine gives himself the leading role and I thought his performance wasn't decent if nothing overly good. He fits the role just fine but it's clear no one is going to mistake him for Brando. Howard Vernon plays his servant and gives his typical performance. Nothing great but it's always fun to see him. The film's biggest flaw is certainly it's screenplay as the weirdness eventually runs out and we're not left with much of anything.

Michel Lemoine's glassy-eyed face is well known to Eurocult fans, as he spent years appearing in almost all genres, including several striking, if little-known titles, like "Sex on the Beach" and "Death on the Fourposter". As a director, he made several softcore erotic features (including the noteworthy Les Desaxées) before drifting into hardcore. But he had an irresistible urge to dabble in the fantasy genre, although it was generally frowned upon in France -- and this title is the result. His directorial stylings imitate those of his mentors -- Franco, Benazeraf and Rollin -- naive, dreamlike, disorienting -- but he lacks the idiosyncratic, iconic style of his betters, making many of his sequences risible in their pretentions. In fact, Peter Tombs claims in his notes for the DVD that the intention was generally parodic (or at least something of an homage). To most eyes it will play as a rather crass, but sumptuously enjoyable, wallow in exploitation tropes, lacking narrative logic or thematic consistency, but delivering the naked and the absurd in spades, along the lines of Polselli or Brismee.

Michel Lemoine's 1974 offering, "Seven Women for Satan," is easily one of the weirdest movies that I have ever rented; right up there with Jess Franco's "Venus In Furs" and Jaromil Jires' "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders." In the Lemoine film, the writer/director himself plays Count Boris Zaroff, son of the original manhunting count from the Richard Connell short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (1924), famously filmed in 1932 (never mind that Zaroff was a Russian and his son in this film is as Gallic as can be). When we first meet him, Zaroff, Jr. has just purchased an enormous château, in which his butler, Karl (played by cult Eurostar Howard Vernon), in fulfillment of a promise he made to Karl, Sr., the original count's butler, is training Boris in the ways of sadism and torture. To complicate matters, Boris seems to be haunted by the spirit of a beautiful woman who died in the year 1912. I say "seems" only because the dividing line between fantasy and reality here is a thin one at best. To add to the disorientation, Lemoine utilizes odd camera angles, fish-eye lenses, dreamy soft-focus photography and some truly bizarre discourse between the film's principals. The picture treats us to a fun torture chamber sequence and features the phoniest-looking dog attack scene ever (especially when compared to the 1932 film) and an excellent score by Guy Bonnet. It is only 84 minutes long, yet still feels padded with nudie-girl segments and assorted topless dancing and writhing (nice padding, granted!). Banned in its native France and yet the Silver Medal winner at the Sitges (near Barcelona) Film Festival, the picture, surreal and trippy as it is, should have been a midnight movie staple back when, as was "El Topo." Like the Jodorowsky film, it is a real stoner treat, and a must for the lysergically enhanced mind. A true rarity, but certainly not for all tastes....

Wow - this is one of those early 1970's European sleazy sex flicks warped in a "horror" film - there IS plenty of gore and also lots of nudity but the true joy of this dubbed version we saw was the unbelievably unintentionally hysterical dialogue. After the "Count" has run over one of his chippies with his car "Rebecca, you are broken. My poor little rag doll." Man oh man. The lead actor also "wrote and directed" and you can tell he really thought he could fool people that this was "Euro Cinema Art For Adults" but it mainly looks like an excuse for him to have nude scenes with various busty French chicks and oh yes, there;s this silly mundane plot to move along - actually at the end when there's supposed to be this "shocking: moment" - it is so lame, a high school play could put together a better skeleton - anyway, this film is good for a laugh with friends if you like to watch the European sleaze horror genre but a lot of it is awful and of course, sexist - hello - it's France in 1974 - what are you expecting - Julia???