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Jesús Franco's camera doesn't need much to feast on, a single image will do, Soledad Miranda in a purple cape dashing through a Mediterranean villa is more than enough to kick off a poetic fever. The heroine is married to a medical researcher (Fred Williams), in her metallic pasties she nods dutifully as he explains revolutionary experiments involving embryos in jars. "Doctors and humanists" cry blasphemy, hubby's findings are destroyed along with his sanity, thus Truffaut's La Mariée était en noir through a degenerate zoom, "my revenge will be cruel." The first victim (Howard Vernon) pontificates at length on social order and youthful rebellion until from the corner of his eye he notices the black widow, unfolding her legs by the bar—at the hotel he craves degradation, she provides it and for good measure throws in the dagger in her garter belt. Next she's a tawny exile reading Le Carré, her target (Ewa Strömberg) calls her "delicate like porcelain and lively like a waltz," the avenger prefers a painterly comparison: "It's just a composition. A play of colors, nothing more," she says before obscuring half the screen with a glass of sherry. (Undressing each other in semi-silhouetted long-shot, the women meld with the modernist décor of the apartment.) Guises and blades comprise the seduction, a tender art. One last glimpse of Miranda the grindhouse Adjani, teary in church then gimlet-eyed circling her prey, vivid as a Modigliani nu. "Are you scared of a woman?" "Yes. Very scared. Very." The director himself plays the final victim, as is his wont strapped to and pricked by fatal beauty. With Paul Muller and Horst Tappert.
--- Fernando F. Croce |