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Switzerland
/ 1977
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring
Pamela Stanford
Martine Flety
Eric Falk
Color / 79 Minutes / Not Rated
Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC)
VIP Entertainment
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Dialog
from the film
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I
Need A Woman!
MP3 format - 1.0 MB
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6
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
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"Blue
Rita", a celebrated stripper and night club owner, also
works for several crime syndicates and secret service agencies
on the side. In the attempt to secure some information for her
bosses, she kidnaps several suspected agents and tortures them
sexually in the attempt to find out what they know. But when
she kidnaps a more resourceful agent, Blue Rita gets more than
she bargained for...
Spanish director Jess
Franco — Uncle Jess to his fans and "the worst director ever"
to his detractors — channels his love of comic books and pulp
fiction to create one of his most wacky projects in Blue
Rita (Das Frauenhaus). One of over a dozen films
he shot for Swiss sexploitation specialist Erwin C. Dietrich
in the mid-to-late 1970s, it works better in sequences than
it does as a whole. Franco does a terrific job of concealing
the film's low budget by emphasizing the kitsch costume and
production design and employing over the top colored lighting
to maintain a fumetti (sexy Italian comic book) feel.
On a visual level, it's one of his most distinctive and stylishly
realized works. Viewers who chafe at his use of the zoom lens
will be pleased to find this technique very much under control,
and the images are striking for both their aesthetic and trash
film qualities. Where the film goes wrong is in its overly garbled
screenplay — it starts off well enough, with all the appropriately
nutty spy film clichés trotted out and sometimes turned
on their heads (Rita's technique of torture is to expose her
victims to a special potion that makes them unbearably horny,
for example), but by the midpoint the narrative starts to meander
and become confusing. The ending is especially rushed and perfunctory,
with one twist piled on another to a distracting degree. It
also has to be noted that, Franco is simply not suited to the
action genre. While most of the film works well and shows off
his impeccable ability to stage night club routines and sexual
peccadilloes, a fight scene between beefy Eric Falk and several
baddies looking to get the jump on him is embarrassingly bad.
One can actually see the performers pulling their punches! Though
not enough, in itself, to ruin what is otherwise a fun (if ultimately
incoherent) comic book romp, the sequence is bad enough to dock
the finished work a point.
The cast includes
some familiar faces from other Franco films: in addition to
the aforementioned Falk (also seen in several of the Dietrich/Franco
films, including Ilsa The Wicked Warden),
there are appearances from Pamela Stanford and Guy Delorme,
both memorably featured in his delirious Lorna
The Exorcist (1974), and from Olivier Mathot (Exorcism,
1973). Martine Flety makes a good impression in the title role,
as a kinkily dominant femme fatale who seldom wears a stitch
of clothing and sports wildly dyed purple hair. It may not be
in the top tier of Franco's work, but Blue
Rita is sure to entertain those with an affinity for
his uniquely personal brand of cinema.
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| VIP's
release of Blue Rita continues the
standard of excellence seen in their other Jess Franco Collection
entries. Completely uncut and restored from the original negative,
the film looks absolutely first-rate. The 1.85 framing looks just
right, and print damage is minimal;
the image is enhanced for widescreen TVs. Though the DVD allows
one access to the original German track, monolingual English viewers
will have to make do with the newly created English track as there
are no subtitles for the other audio options. Both tracks are
clear and free of distracting defects, but the English dubbing
leaves a lot to be desired —
in particular, the vocal performances during the 'torture' scenes
are amateur theater at its very worst. That being said, the poor
dubbing doesn't interfere with what is ultimately a tongue in
cheek romp nearly so much as the disastrous English track for
Doriana Grey (1976), for example.
Extras include the same behind-the-scenes documentary included
on all the VIP releases (lots of comments from Dietrich, focusing
mostly on Jack The Ripper), a theatrical
trailer, cast and crew bios, and an extensive poster/still gallery.
7/16/04 |
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