Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Ruthless Madame Arminda (ably played with lip-smacking wicked relish by the luscious Lina Romay) runs a high end brothel called the Pagoda, where abducted women are drugged and tortured. Decadent millionaire Amos Radeck (a gloriously disgusting portrayal by the rotund Vitor Mendes) tries to get his socialite daughter Martine (yummy blonde Martine Stedil) back from the Pagoda. Director Jess Franco keeps the engrossingly sordid story moving at a quick pace, maintains a suitably seamy tone throughout, and delivers oodles of tasty bare female flesh along with a smattering of fairly graphic and sleazy carnality. Romay really sinks her teeth into her rare juicy villainess role and throws herself into her obligatory nude and sex scenes with trademark scorching uninhibited abandon. Franco acquits himself well in a sizeable part as Radeck's sadistic henchman. Erwin C. Dietrich's tough script offers a doozy of a surprise grim twist at the end. Both Peter Baumgartner's lush cinematography and William Baumgartner's groovy jazz score are up to par. One of Franco's better films from the mid-1970's.

"Die Sklavinnen" or "Die Sexhändler" or "Slaves" is a German-language movie from 1977, so this one will have its 40th anniversary next year. It is a work by successful Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco who is known for his sexploitation films and here we have one example of the genre. This is a Swiss production and it's far from the only German movie by Franco. He was prolific all around Europe. But this 75-minute film is also an example of how bad he was on many occasions. The plot and acting in here are absolutely cringeworthy. The topic may be somewhat similar compared to some other 1970s crime-themed films, but that's the only parallel. The only thing this film is about is depicting as many female women as possible. Some of them are attractive, some are fairly hideous. Among the more attractive ones is definitely Franco's longtime companion Lina Romay, who is in her early 20s here. I personally am not a fan of the looks of Martine Stedil, but I guess they had to include one for those who love blondes and one for those that love brunettes. As a whole, absolutely nothing about this film stays memorable. It's really only a good watch if you're horny and even then you should turn it off quickly. Not recommended, glad it was so short.

Swedish Nympho Slaves (1976) *** (out of 4) Also known as DIE SKLAVINNEN, this Franco production was one of many produced by Erwin C. Dietrich, which would allow the director a larger than normal budget. The film centers around a father and his goon (Franco himself) who paid five-million dollars for the return of his kidnapped daughter. The daughter was never returned so they kidnap a whorehouse (Lina Romay) owner who might know where the missing girl is. I've always said that this era of Franco films are among my favorite as the bigger budgets allowed him better cinematography, great scores and some better than average stories and best of all were the beautiful tropic locations. This film here pretty much has all of that stuff with the expected amount of sleaze, sex and non-stop nudity from various beautiful women. I really found the story here to be a lot more entertaining than many of the director's films because I actually began to care about the mystery of what happened to the girl and I must admit that I really enjoyed Vitor Mendes in the role of the father. I found him to be pretty good in the role but so was Franco playing his typical type of character, which means he spends most of his time slapping around Romay. Speaking of Romay, she's as hot as ever and has no problem slipping into her role. Martine Stedil plays the kidnap girl and she's easy on the eyes as well. Eric Falk has a small role here as well. Walter Baumgartner did the nice music score and his brother Peter was in charge of the cinematography, which once again featured the trademark Franco zooms. I'm sure those who hate Franco will continue to do so but fans of pure sleaze should find plenty to enjoy here. With a running time of 75-minutes, the film goes by at a fast pace and it's trashy enough from start to finish to make it worth viewing.

We all the know the Jess Franco template for this mid-period run of his films: plenty of nudity, over use of Lina Romay (who must always be nude), re-used vaguely tropical sets and an element of blatant sexploitation.Well Die Sklavinnen fits all those requirements. If you think you have seen the film before, then you probably have. We have seen it all (with the same cast) in Ilsa the Wicked Warden, Women in Prison or Barbed Wire Dolls.There is in fact only one slave, Martine Stedl, who is taken hostage and sexed and drugged up by Romay. Drama is provided by her implausibly fat father who apparently wants her back. Romay is the baddie and gets tortured a little, but it is all pretty tame. Reasonable amount of FFN, but we wouldn't like it any other way.So, one of the lesser Franco outings. Don't expect wall to wall confinement or an outbreak of mass slavery. But hey, I still don't get bored of these early films, so who cares?