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Das Frauenhaus (1977) One of Jesus Franco's better softcore films, if only for its brief
running time and the comparative brevity of its sex scenes. It also
has a certain minimalist, mod style and a fairly amusing supercool spy
plot. It opens with a pan from the Statue of Liberty (small version)
to the Eiffel Tower, establishing the Parisian setting, then homes in
on the eponymous bar where jaded sophisticates watch minimalist striptease
acts to music that sounds like a mix of The Man From UNCLE theme
and Green Onions. Blue Rita (Martine Flety), who wears a purple
wig (and has been frigid with men since she was raped with a hot poker
during torture, though she's taking a cream lovingly applied in the
hope of curing this), runs a counterspy organisation which consists
of chic, apparently lesbian-inclined women (and infiltrating Interpol
agents); their m.o. is to seduce men - on see-through inflatable furniture
in an all-white room - and gas them unconscious, then keep them chained
in a cell while dripping bright green aphrodisiac onto them and strutting
naked on top of the bars as they are driven into a lustful frenzy until
they give up their secrets. The plot is amazingly intricate, with false
and real betrayals, and competing spy organisations intermingling, but
still nothing much happens as these blankly beautiful people do the
traditional Franco dances (a pigtailed schoolgirl writhing on a classical
naked statue) or have minimal sex (sapphic trysts seen through a large
goldfish tank) while posing semi-naked (silver boots feature extensively)
in pop art futurist sets. Among the women: Betty Laure as the undercover
girl from Interpol, Sarah Strasberg as an Indian Princess, Pamela Stanford
as the Aryan blonde front-woman taken to be a traitor. Sort of hypnotic.
Among the stranger fetishes indulged is one for gas-masks: Laure puts
one on to have sex in the cage with the chained, hulking supposed Eastern
European boxer (Eric Falk) who turns out to be a Communist spymaster. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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