Jess Franco certainly liked to get the most out of a story: he reused the basic premise for his 1962 film The Awful Dr. Orloff (which borrowed heavily from Les Yeux Sans Visage) for several more movies, and She Killed in Ecstasy has virtually the same plot as Miss Muerte (1966), which itself was inspired by Cornel Woolrich's 1940 crime novel The Bride Wore Black.
Fred Williams plays Dr. Johnson, who is expelled from the medical association for his unethical experiments, mixing animal and human hormones in the embryonic stage. Being branded a criminal and a charlatan by his peers drives Johnson mad and he takes his own life, leaving his beautiful young wife (Soledad Miranda) to take revenge.
Mrs. Johnson uses sex to lure those she holds responsible to their fate: Prof. Jonathan Walker (Franco regular Howard Vernon) has his throat slit and his penis severed and Dr. Franklin Houston is stabbed in the neck with scissors; Dr. Crawford (Ewa Strömberg) is a lesbian, which means that she too is able to be seduced (Franco loves him some sapphic sex), before being smothered by an inflatable pillow. While this sounds like good sleazy fun, it all becomes rather tiresome -- seduce, kill, repeat -- and no amount of nudity from Miranda can make up for the lack of imagination (or the lack of gore, the kills being really tame).
Thankfully, the film is quite short.
3.5/10, rounded down to three for the fact that Franco couldn't be bothered to reshoot the scene where a fly lands on the actor's forehead, and for the daft ending, where Mrs. Johnson kills herself by driving her car down a slight incline.
Fred Williams plays Dr. Johnson, who is expelled from the medical association for his unethical experiments, mixing animal and human hormones in the embryonic stage. Being branded a criminal and a charlatan by his peers drives Johnson mad and he takes his own life, leaving his beautiful young wife (Soledad Miranda) to take revenge.
Mrs. Johnson uses sex to lure those she holds responsible to their fate: Prof. Jonathan Walker (Franco regular Howard Vernon) has his throat slit and his penis severed and Dr. Franklin Houston is stabbed in the neck with scissors; Dr. Crawford (Ewa Strömberg) is a lesbian, which means that she too is able to be seduced (Franco loves him some sapphic sex), before being smothered by an inflatable pillow. While this sounds like good sleazy fun, it all becomes rather tiresome -- seduce, kill, repeat -- and no amount of nudity from Miranda can make up for the lack of imagination (or the lack of gore, the kills being really tame).
Thankfully, the film is quite short.
3.5/10, rounded down to three for the fact that Franco couldn't be bothered to reshoot the scene where a fly lands on the actor's forehead, and for the daft ending, where Mrs. Johnson kills herself by driving her car down a slight incline.