PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*
Defenders
of the Spanish director Jesus Franco have sometimes championed the
“oneiric” quality of certain films. I wouldn’t deny that a few
of his horror-films capture this quality, however erratically. But as
far as I can tell, Franco had no similar feel for the
adventure-genres. Not unlike Joseph Losey on MODESTY BLAISE,
Franco shows a basic contempt for the genres by simply filming a lot
of exotic locations while his actors walk around spouting inane
dialogue.
SADIST
EROTICA and KISS ME MONSTER were shot back-to-back with two starlets,
Rosanna Yanni and Janine Reynaud, playing a couple of sprightly lady
detectives, sometimes called “the Red Lips.” Following a very
loose approximation of the hardboiled genre, there’s no real
detection here. Either the girls bop around to clubs, where their
suspects eagerly seek them out, or people get murdered on their
doorstep and furnish some vague clue to follow.
There’s
not much to choose from either flick, though SADIST EROTICA is a
little more organized in terms of Franco recycling his influences—a
henchman named Morpho (after the one in Franco’s breakout film
AWFUL DOCTOR ORLOFF), or having Reynaud dress up in a Diabolik-like
outfit for nearly no reason. The opponent in this one is a mad
sculptor who kills women and encases them in plaster. KISS ME MONSTER
pits the lady dicks against a cult of sexy girls who (I think) are
trying to steal a formula that makes zombies from another cult of
masked men. I watched these things twice, and I think they made even
less sense the second time through.
It’s
almost hard to term these flicks “combative,” since the girls
never get in a real rough-and-tumble fight. But they both know how to
shoot down evildoers, and their favorite schtick is to have one of
them kiss up to some malcontent while the other missy karate-chops
him from behind, so I guess they qualify. If a viewer ever wanted to
see what the Matt Helm films would look like if they were made for no
money, here’s the answer to that question.
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