Spoilers herein.
I approach Franco films as something more than sleazy exploitation. Much of my mail and even some of my colleagues are against me on this: they feel I read too much into them.
I have a special place in my imagination that current Spanish-speaking filmmakers can reach and tickle. I think they are the most clever filmmakers working today, and I suspect Franco had something to do with it.
Yeah, yeah, we get some breasts here, some mild (amazingly mild compared to 'Ilsa') suggestion of sexual torture and lots of huffing and puffing simulation. What we also get is an allegory of filmmaker as pimp, not quite a worn out idea in 1981. Franco himself plays the pimp. Unless I am wrong, this time he does not feature a lover as the girl, instead just hired a passel of 'models.'
What makes this an extraordinary film is one character, the sadist of the title: the black mistress who is captain of the guards - a stark lesbian. This actress is in fact a transgendered man. She has an appearance and manner that are strange and disturbing.
The fact that the story is obviously bogus adds to the mystery in a sort of Soviet-newspaper way. What we are told is going on is discounted as thin fiction. That leaves us to suspect that the real world is ever so more ambitiously dangerous.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
I approach Franco films as something more than sleazy exploitation. Much of my mail and even some of my colleagues are against me on this: they feel I read too much into them.
I have a special place in my imagination that current Spanish-speaking filmmakers can reach and tickle. I think they are the most clever filmmakers working today, and I suspect Franco had something to do with it.
Yeah, yeah, we get some breasts here, some mild (amazingly mild compared to 'Ilsa') suggestion of sexual torture and lots of huffing and puffing simulation. What we also get is an allegory of filmmaker as pimp, not quite a worn out idea in 1981. Franco himself plays the pimp. Unless I am wrong, this time he does not feature a lover as the girl, instead just hired a passel of 'models.'
What makes this an extraordinary film is one character, the sadist of the title: the black mistress who is captain of the guards - a stark lesbian. This actress is in fact a transgendered man. She has an appearance and manner that are strange and disturbing.
The fact that the story is obviously bogus adds to the mystery in a sort of Soviet-newspaper way. What we are told is going on is discounted as thin fiction. That leaves us to suspect that the real world is ever so more ambitiously dangerous.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.