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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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4
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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With
Sexy Sisters (Die Teuflischen
Schwestern, "The Devilish Sisters"), profligate
Eurosleaze maestro Jess Franco again indulges his penchant for
the sexually provocative and perverted, only this time without
the sadomasochistic torture of the many Women In Prison films
he made during this same period. Here the cruelty inflicted
is strictly mental rather than physical.
Bleach-blonde heiress Millicent "Millie"
von Stein (Women in Cellblock
9's Karine Gambier) stands to inherit millions when she
turns 21, though she's completely ignorant of her late parents'
will and what it contains. Such is not the case with older sister
Edie (Pamela Stanford), executor of the family estate she's
been controlling the finances for a few years now and wants
to keep it that way. A clause in the will stipulates that all
money and property will pass to Millie unless she's declared
mentally incompetent, in which case Edie gets everything. If
Millie dies, however, the entire fortune will be turned over
a charitable foundation.
To maintain control, Edie schemes with her lover, the corrupt
"Dr." Barnes (who may not even be a real physician), to drive
poor, naοve Millie stark raving mad. As part of Millie's "therapy"
they keep her confined to the family mansion, chained naked
to her bed in a sort of gilded cage complete with golden manacles.
Barnes (Female Vampire's Jack
Taylor) regularly injects Millie with drugs which cause her
to hallucinate and become insatiably horny. Because of these
drugs and the twisted mind games played upon her by her own
sister, Millie
whose 21st birthday is fast approaching
is on the brink of total mental breakdown. As a form of torture,
Edie has lesbian sex with the maid in front of her captive sibling;
she also invites strange men to ravage Millie in an effort to
drive her over the edge. (A psychiatrist, unaware of Barnes'
special "treatment", recommends that Millie be given prolonged
periods of rest with no sexual activity whatsoever, including
masturbation.) Edie takes perverse delight in implementing her
plan... After having her own fun with the one night stands and
male prostitutes she brings home for Millie's "consumption",
she voyeuristically enjoys the show as sex-crazed little Sis
is rogered six ways from Sunday. One of the men brought to the
mansion is the same brute who raped Millie when she was only
12 years old
and because of the Spanish Fly that's continually pumped into
her, she actually enjoys having sex with him. To complete
the mind-fuck, Millie is told that such incidents are merely
bad dreams.
In a house where everybody is screwing everybody else
Edie and the maid; Edie, the maid and the rent-a-studs; Barnes,
the maid and Edie; Barnes and the live-in nurse; the nurse and
Millie; Millie and the rent-a-studs, etc.
something is bound to go haywire. Sure enough, a monkey wrench
is thrown in the works when a guy Edie picks up in a bar for
her sister ends up falling in love with Millie after sleeping
with her. Awakening disoriented the next morning in his car,
in another part of town (was it all a dream?), the man
later locates the house and begins spying on the von Steins
in hopes of finding a way to free his captive sweetie. In the
meantime, a leather-jacketed gigolo (Eric Falk, Barbed
Wire Dolls) is brought home to service Millie but
drops dead of a heart attack during the act. Millie's truly
freaked out now, and Edie has a corpse or her hands... Or
does she?
Sexy Sisters is a fairly professional-looking
film compared to a number of Jess Franco's contemporary works
there are no wobbly
shots and everything's actually in focus. Yet there's no doubt
you've entered the "Franco Zone" when the flick opens
in a nightclub, an avant-garde stage performance featuring two
nude masked women in progress. He attempts to give the numerous
sex scenes an artful flair (shooting
some of them through swaying bead curtains, for example) rather
than resort to simple, and ultimately boring, bump and grind
antics. He also accentuates (celebrates?) the unabashed kinkiness
of the Edie character, all the more to contrast her decadent
Sadean behavior with that of the innocent, victimized Millie.
It is Edie, not Millie, who's the real nymphomaniac. She doesn't
need drugs to remain voraciously horny. A few of the scenes
with Stanford creep right up to the line of hardcore pornography
but never cross it. Actually, had Franco decided to go all the
way and make this an X-rated film it could've been a pretty
damn good one.
As an envelope-pushing softcore feature, however, the film is
continually undermined by the ludicrous, laughably silly English
dubbing. I almost awarded the flick EC's "Extra Cheese"
icon just on that basis.
A typically monolingual American, I have no idea if the German-language
script is any better in terms of dialog, but it does at least
sound better in German. Some of the English dialog is
so goofily performed "Ah,
my little tigress. I'll stick you so hard you won't have the
breath to scream. Gimme your ass!"
you might just be
laughing too much to ogle Karine Gambier's voluptuous bod. (She's
buck naked 99% of the time.)
In addition to the
cheesy dub job, the film's rushed, abrupt ending is easily the
worst I've ever seen in a Franco film to date. I didn't know
whether to laugh or be pissed off.
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The
Region 0/NTSC edition of Sexy Sisters
is generally on a par with the other titles we've looked at from
VIP Entertainment's Jess Franco Collection, but with a
few caveats. Visually, the transfer (1.85:1 widescreen, 16x9 enhanced)
isn't quite as vibrant as that of Doriana
Grey or Barbed Wire Dolls, coming
off a tad darker and less colorful in spots. Given VIP's exemplary
track record with the Franco films produced by company honcho
Edwin C. Dietrich (working from original vault materials), this
is likely the best Sisters is ever
going to look. So it's a minor quibble, really; the transfer is
more than satisfactory. As for audio, four different language
tracks are offered: English, French, Spanish and the original
German. The English track, for all its inherent goofiness, is
crisp and clear as a bell. It's just a shame that VIP doesn't
bother with English subtitles. The acting fares a bit better in
German, appearing less stilted, and even the coital moaning and
groaning sounds sexier. ("Ja... Ja! Mein Gott! Ja!" and
so on.)
Extras
are on the slim side in comparison to the Doriana
Grey and Barbed Wire Dolls
DVDs. The same documentary on the filming of Franco's Jack
the Ripper (1976) that was included on those discs is also
featured here, but there are no interviews with Franco, producer
Dietrich or any of the actors specific to Sexy
Sisters. You do get two image galleries of production stills
and promotional materials, along with the usual array of wild,
nudity-filled VIP trailers (in German, with burned-in French subtitles)
for such films as Mad Foxes and Rolls
Royce Baby. Interestingly, the preview for Sexy
Sisters reveals that Franco must have employed multiple
cameras at some time on the set. A scene shown in the trailer,
shot in close-up Stanford pulling down Falk's underwear is
lensed from much farther away in the film itself. I'd swear it's
the same take.
A
blurb on the packaging reads: "Warning! This film contains
scenes of shocking horror." This is utter nonsense unless
you're terrified of full frontal nudity. 3/05/04 |
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