Director
Jess Franco
Cast
Muriel Montosse………Cecilia
Olivier Mathot
Pierre Taylou
Anthony Foster
Richard Darbois
Christian Dragaux
France Jordan
DVD Release Date: January 29, 2008
Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 105 Minutes
The Movie
Cecilia is a beautiful young woman that is taken for a ride one day in more ways then one by the family chauffeur. She teases him from the back seat and he stops by his brothers’ house so that they can jump into the back of the car and rape her. Cecilia goes home that night and tells her husband all about what happened and how horrible it was. Yet she didn’t find it so horrible and ended up liking it more then anything. It turned her onto sex with her husband once again but also made her want to go and experience as many different sexual encounters as possible.
This film is nothing more then a softcore porn film trying to somehow have a storyline in it. The acting is bad as you would expect it to be considering everyone in it was chosen for their looks so that the sex scenes would seem more appealing. They failed in that respect too as there are some incredibly unattractive people litter throughout the entire duration. Every five minutes or so there is simply more sex being shown so that it can fill in the different holes in the supposed plot.
If you’re thinking of checking out Cecilia simply for its erotic nature and not the story it tries to have, then I’d suggest you look elsewhere. When it comes time for sex to happen, which is quite often, it isn’t anything that you can’t see on either Cinemax or Showtime after 10 PM. Perhaps this was an extremely shocking film for the time period in which it came out (1982), but it wouldn’t be seen on the store shelves of even the sleaziest adult stores.
Director
Jess Franco
Cast
Soledad Miranda………Eugenie Radeck de Franval
Paul Muller………Albert Radeck de Franval
Andrew Monales………Paul
Greta Schmidt………Kitty
Alice Arno………Photo Model
Jess Franco………Attila Tanner
DVD Release Date: January 29, 2008
Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 91 Minutes
The Movie
The film actually begins with Attila Tanner sitting next to a bloodied Eugenie lying on a bed. He wishes to write a book based on the life of her father and understand exactly the way he lived. She promises to tell him everything if he swears to end her life when she’s done. Attila agrees and Eugenie starts her story.
She was a young girl who lived with her stepfather Albert. Her mother died after giving birth and he now watched over her. He was a famous author that wrote some of the best erotic novels to be found. When Eugenie stumbled across one of his books; she not only became entranced with what she read but also with her stepfather for possessing the mind that created such genius. Albert sees the interest his stepdaughter has in his work and therefore he introduces her to his world showing her the different phases of pornography and that there are no limits to how far it can go. Eugenie soon realizes there is a lot more to what her stepfather dwells in then just lust.
Eugenie de Sade actually does a much better job of putting together a true plot and pornography into a film. It dwells past the nudity and sex scenes to show a really dark side of that sort of life which many people don’t even know about. Franco does a good job of incorporating the plot more so then in Cecilia, but the film still just seems too romantic novelish to me. There are times when the narration by Eugenie sounds as if she is reading straight off the pages of a novel that has two people entangled in shredded clothing on the front cover. It is better, but still nothing to write home about.
The Video
The films are shown in 1.66:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and look decent. Maybe it is just the age of the films, but there is a weird hue or haze seen throughout both of them that gets rather bothersome. Other then that they look fine.
The Audio
The films are heard in Dolby Digital Stereo Sound and this comes through rather well. All of the music, dubbed voices, and moans can be heard in all their true glory. English subtitles or badly dubbed voices can be used to view the films. As for the special feature interviews with director Jess Franco? Those are in English but have subtitles because you can barely understand a word that comes out of his mouth.
Special Features
Sexual Aberrations Of Cecilia – This is a seventeen minute interview with director Jess Franco in which he explains that Cecilia doesn’t really exist because the original title of the film was Sexual Aberrations Of A Housewife. The name needed to be changed because only “hot titles” were wanted at the time. He seems to contradict himself a bit so I’m not sure what he was getting at. Franco also discusses the filming locations they shot in such as Portugal and others, but nothing too exciting.
Franco de Sade – Here is a twenty minutes interview with Franco that actually has a spoiler warning before viewing it. I do believe he did both of these interviews at once even though they are on separate DVDs because he’s wearing the same outfit in both. Again he talks about the film, censorship, and filming locations. Nothing much.
Theatrical Trailers
The Inside Pulse
Jess Franco is one of those directors that has been a part of close to a hundred films in his lifetime and knows his work well. There is certainly an audience for these types of films and perhaps I’m just not it. Not to sound gross here but I got no excitement from them which is surely what is intended to some respect. I also didn’t get much out of them in a film capacity because there isn’t much depth to either of them. While Eugenie de Sade is the far superior film of the two; it’s not something that will get any repeated viewing in my household. Strangely enough though both films include a special features section with the trailers and interviews from Franco. They don’t reveal much but are short enough to check out without considering your time wasted. There isn’t much of a way to recommend seeing either of these films unless you want an artsy-type softcore pornography film that tries to be more then it is. If you aren’t looking for that exact type of time spent, then pick up anything else.
