Rio 70 (1969)
"Die sieben Männer der Sumuru" (original title)

Sumuru, the beautiful leader of the all-female kingdom of Femina, plans to use her women to take over the world.

Director:

Jesús Franco

Writers:

Sax Rohmer (characters), Harry Alan Towers,

Stars:

Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler, George Sanders

Cast

Credited cast:
Shirley Eaton	...	Sumuru
Richard Wyler	...	Jeff Sutton
George Sanders	...	Sir Masius
Maria Rohm	...	Leslye
Herbert Fleischmann	...	Carl
Marta Reves	...	Ulla Rossini (as Martha Reves)
Elisa Montés	...	Irene (as Eliza Montes)
Walter Rilla	...	Ennio Rossini
Beni Cardoso	...	Yana Yuma (as Beny Cardoso)
Valentina Godoy	...	Amazon
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Geraldo José Torres Camargo
Maria de Lourdes
Yuma Duarte
Cornélio dos Santos Farias
Alberto Land

Storyline

Jeff Sutton arrives in Rio de Janeiro with a suitcase with 10 million dollars, and the powerful mobster Sir Masius sends his henchman Carl with his gangsters to follow Jeff and get the money. Jeff has one affair with the manicure Leslye and succeeds to escape from Sir Masius' mobsters. Meanwhile, Sumuru, the leader of the women of the City of Femina that wants to defeat the men and take over the world, captures Jeff and brings him to Femina expecting to get the money. Sumuru has several prisoners locked in glass cages, including Ulla Rossini, who knows Jeff Sutton. Jeff discloses to Ulla that his arrival is part of a plan to save her from Sumuru. Jeff Sutton becomes a pawn in the middle of the war between Masius and Sumuru.

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Plot Keywords:

bare breasts | femme fatale | female female kiss | summary execution | dead women in uniform | 

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

West Germany Spain USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 March 1972 (Spain)

Also Known As:

Future Woman

Filming Locations:

Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

Box Office

Gross:

ESP 8,159,021 (Spain)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Ada Films, Terra-Filmkunst, Udastex Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

As of 2013, last acting role to date for Shirley Eaton.

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Goofs

After the assault helicopters land, three women guards are shot dead and drop onto the pavement outside of a building, as the invaders go inside of the building. When the invaders come back out out of the building, the bodies of the women are gone.

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Quotes

Sumuru: [after the execution of one of her soldiers] My army is trained to kill efficiently.
Jeff Sutton: Themselves?
Sumuru: If one of my girls isn't perfect, she must die.

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Connections

Follows The Million Eyes of Su-Muru (1967)

User Reviews

Rio de JessFranco.

The Girl From Rio AKA Future Women is precisely the sort of loopy nonsense that we cult movie fans find absolutely fascinating: it has an outlandish espionage plot, born of the feminist movement yet still managing to exploit women at every turn; it stars familiar performers Shirley Eaton (Goldfinger) and George Sanders (All About Eve) camping it up like there's no tomorrow; there's crazy kitsch 60s fashion a go-go; and director Jess Franco (R.I.P.) ensures that the film is imbued with a strangeness and technical ineptitude of the kind guaranteed to keep his loyal followers happy, despite the whole affair being far more light-hearted than many of his other movies.

Eaton stars as lesbian megalomaniac Sunanda who is hell-bent on dominating the world with the help of her all-woman army of men-haters (which in itself should be more than enough to pique most trash movie fans' interest). Building a vast fortune by kidnapping the world's wealthiest people, the power-hungry women's libber has built her own city, Femina, from which she plans to launch her attack on mankind.

Sunanda's latest target is playboy Jeff Sutton (Richard Wyler), who is rumoured to be carrying $10million cash with him in his briefcase; also interested in the money is Sunanda's rival, Rio crime boss Masius (Sanders). In reality there is no money, the briefcase being used as bait to reel in Sunanda, Jeff having been hired to locate missing heiress Ulla (Marta Reves) who he believes is being held captive in Femina.

With this three-way of Sunanda, Masius and Sutton established, all Franco is left to do is pad out his movie to feature length with assorted nonsense, which includes gangsters in creepy masks, lots of Rio carnival padding (including a one-legged reveller busting moves in the street), some torture via Sunanda's craptastic microwave ray, Eaton wearing a lacy body stocking, hilarious dialogue ('Don't be nasty—daddy doesn't like it'), more leggy totty than you can shake a stick at, and several silly showdowns, Jeff narrowly escaping on most occasions thanks to his incredible martial arts skills (a karate chop here, a judo throw there) or his trusty pistol (for use only when his chopping hand is feeling sore). When he's not kicking bad guy butt, Jeff's weapon of choice is his irresistible charm, with which he lures women—even dedicated man-haters—into bed with ease (thus allowing Franco to easily meet his quota of female nudity).

Ultimately, Femina is stormed by Jeff and Masius, who form an alliance to ensure continuing male superiority, their assault on the city resulting in a barrage of badly edited fake gunfire and an amateurish assault of unconvincing stock footage explosions. In a suitably silly final scene, Sunanda is shown to have survived the attack, despite having supposedly blown herself up with a self-destruct device inside her gold vault.