Sadomania starts with newly weds Michel (Angel Caballero) & Olga Gordon (Uta Koepke) taking a little detour on the way to their honeymoon & ending up in the middle of a place called 'Hacienda Blanca' which just happens to be a rehabilitation camp for delinquent women, Franco's description not mine... It quickly turns out that they are trespassing on private land, they are quickly arrested by topless gun-wielding female guards & taken to the camps sadistic warden, Magda Urtado (Ajita Wilson, a transsexual & porn star born Goerge Wilson). Michel is told to bugger off & never come back while his unfortunate bride Olga is taken prisoner & after having her top removed is thrown in the cells where she meets some of the other topless inmates & the topless guards. Poor Olga is made to work in the blazing sun, topless of course, & Olga quickly discovers that 'Hacienda Blanca' is a hell hole where the inmates have no rights, the officials are corrupt & everyone is constantly topless! Governor Mendoza (Antonio Mayans as Robert Foster) shows up & picks a woman for a hunt, a hunt in which an inmate is given a one minute (one minute? Thanks for nothing!) head-start before she is shot, sounds fair to me. Governor Mendoza is impotent & his wife Loba (Gina Janssen) isn't too happy about it so she has lesbian sex with inmates like Tara (Ursula Buchfellner) whom she then sells to Mario (Otto Retzer) who in turn sells her to Lucas (director Jesus Franco) who forces Tara to work in his brothel. Inmates like Conito (Andrea Guzon) are forced to fight to the death in gladiatorial combat with the guards, topless of course, & if they survive these tortures the Governor's pet Alsatian dog is ready for some loving...
This Spanish West German co-production was co-written & directed by notorious Euro sleaze peddler Jesus Franco & considering I usually loathe Franco & his films I found Sadomania somewhat entertaining. The script by Franco & Gunter Ebert certainly isn't boring like most of Franco's sorry attempts at film-making, in fact it moves along at a nice pace & something is always happening to keep most Euro exploitation fans happy. There are hunts which end in the target being shot & then eaten by crocodiles, gladiatorial combat between topless women, an Alsatian dog rapes a tied up woman, lesbian sex, someone has a pin stuck in their nipple, women are beaten, groped, raped, humiliated & generally treated like dirt which is where my biggest problem with Sadomania lies. I simply dislike the overall tone & feel of Sadomania, my best friend at the moment is a 23 year old girl & I simply take no pleasure in seeing females treated like they have no feelings, treated like they are only on Earth to sexually please & nothing else & I found it a little hard as a male to enjoy all this depravity. Yes, I know it's only a film & as a film I liked it & even though it's a little longish at over 100 minutes it passed the time painlessly enough. There is no real story in Sadomania just a collection of incidents which lead up to the eventual prison break & rather abrupt ending. Characters just come & go, Sadomania never really focuses on any particular one, it dishes the nastiness out evenly! If it's nudity your after then Sadomania is a dream come true, I don't think I've ever seen another film with so much nudity in it, just about every sequence has nudity of some sort. The violence is far more restrained with a few whippings, a few fights, a needle piercing a nipple & a few gunshot wounds but none of these are what I would call particularly graphic. The acting is as good as one would expect, transsexual Ajita has a real screen presence & is pretty intimidating as the obligatory sadistic warden. Technically Sadomania is cheap, very cheap. Shot on location the cinematography is OK & there is a nice scene when two women have a fight against a purple blueish setting sun in silhouette. Overall I disliked the tone & derogatory attitude towards women but at the same time I found myself enjoying Sadomania for what it was. I'm in two minds about it, I've given it an above average 6 because when all said & done I'd probably watch it again. Also, I bet Franco saved a fortune on the costumes...
This Spanish West German co-production was co-written & directed by notorious Euro sleaze peddler Jesus Franco & considering I usually loathe Franco & his films I found Sadomania somewhat entertaining. The script by Franco & Gunter Ebert certainly isn't boring like most of Franco's sorry attempts at film-making, in fact it moves along at a nice pace & something is always happening to keep most Euro exploitation fans happy. There are hunts which end in the target being shot & then eaten by crocodiles, gladiatorial combat between topless women, an Alsatian dog rapes a tied up woman, lesbian sex, someone has a pin stuck in their nipple, women are beaten, groped, raped, humiliated & generally treated like dirt which is where my biggest problem with Sadomania lies. I simply dislike the overall tone & feel of Sadomania, my best friend at the moment is a 23 year old girl & I simply take no pleasure in seeing females treated like they have no feelings, treated like they are only on Earth to sexually please & nothing else & I found it a little hard as a male to enjoy all this depravity. Yes, I know it's only a film & as a film I liked it & even though it's a little longish at over 100 minutes it passed the time painlessly enough. There is no real story in Sadomania just a collection of incidents which lead up to the eventual prison break & rather abrupt ending. Characters just come & go, Sadomania never really focuses on any particular one, it dishes the nastiness out evenly! If it's nudity your after then Sadomania is a dream come true, I don't think I've ever seen another film with so much nudity in it, just about every sequence has nudity of some sort. The violence is far more restrained with a few whippings, a few fights, a needle piercing a nipple & a few gunshot wounds but none of these are what I would call particularly graphic. The acting is as good as one would expect, transsexual Ajita has a real screen presence & is pretty intimidating as the obligatory sadistic warden. Technically Sadomania is cheap, very cheap. Shot on location the cinematography is OK & there is a nice scene when two women have a fight against a purple blueish setting sun in silhouette. Overall I disliked the tone & derogatory attitude towards women but at the same time I found myself enjoying Sadomania for what it was. I'm in two minds about it, I've given it an above average 6 because when all said & done I'd probably watch it again. Also, I bet Franco saved a fortune on the costumes...