Two Undisciplined Girls Do EVIL in the Netherlands! “My Nights With Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 28, 2019

After years with struggling with fame, Susan finds solace in an idyllic and solitude Netherlands’ farmhouse near the waterfront. Her peaceful lodging transforms in a youth hostel as she welcomes three refuge women – Sandra, Olga, and Julie – and one man – Albert – into her life and in exchange for a place to stay, Susan embraces the company after her entanglement with loneliness. Despite Sandra and Olga’s sex-crazed psychopathy and an unhinged Albert’s voyeuristic habits, Susan has been able to maintain an even keel quality of life. That’s until the handsome Anton shows up. His arrival stirs the nest of sexual desires and has Susan questioning her reclusive lifestyle. Anton’s presence also riles up Piet, a crazed women living in a shed on the outskirts of the farmhouse. To make matters more complex, Anton becomes mixed into a murder mystery involving a dead American. Was it the mischievous sexual delinquents Sandra and Olga? Or did the wild Piet finally snap her moral conscious?

During the height of the 70’s sexual revolution, the Dutch seize the opportunity to piggyback their own free love films. Pim de la Parra’s 1978 “My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie is an epitome example of the Dutch sex wave genre that shares the tantalizing groping, succulent squeezing, fornicating spooning, and …well, you get the idea. Originally titled as the longwinded My Nights with Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet, & Sandra (whew), this film is the last production of Pim de la Parra’s Scorpio Films from a script co-authored between Parra, Harry Kumel from Belgium, David Kaufman from America, Charles Gormley from Scotland, and Carel Donck from the Netherlands in a melting pot of cultural creativity. “My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie” sizzles the screen with nudity in characters just walking around or riding on a child’s rocking horse stark naked that’s ostensibly organic for a story beginning with cold blooded, arbitrary murder.

Before partying the circumstantial matron of a youth hostel, Netherlands’ Willeke van Ammelrooy was Eva in “Frank & Eva,” another film by Pim de la Parra. She was also Alicia in “Blue Movie” director Wim Verstappen’s “Alicia” and also played Mira in Fons Rademakers’ “Mira.” As the evidence provides, Ammelrooy is very experienced as the leading lady role, portraying three titular characters from 1971-1974 by post-humorously acclaimed Netherland directors. Yet again, Ammelrooy plays a titular character in Susan, a country cloistered luminary seeking to be a forgotten face, but Ammelrooy steely performance of a woman pretending not to be hiding secrets is a fascinating insight into a character’s personal shielding; however, when Anton, “Wet Dreams’” Hans van der Gragt, their hot and cold dynamic creates a formidable hard love rigidity influenced by forces internal to Susan and external forces from those her immediate life at the farmhouse. Olga and Sandra have more intoxicating behaviors that run the story amok and what’s more interesting about the actresses, Franulka Heyermans and Marja de Heer, is that they’re amateur actresses according to Pim de la Parra. Cold and, yet, lively, Heyermans and Heer have mountainous ration and serve Parra genuinely. Marieke van Leeuwen, Serge-Henri Valcke, Jerry Brouer, and Nelly Frijda round out the small cast.

Pim de la Parra’s influences stem heavily from Alfred Hitchcock. The filmmaker implements voyeurism and the wrongfully accused that are essential to the Hitchcockian style. I also find it hard to believe that on the first day of shooting on Hitchcock’s birthday, August 13, that Pim de la Parra’s first scenes are that of birds on a beach. Coincidence or a little salute to the master of suspense, either way, the now retired filmmaker unifies a harrowing score with birds and a beach to not only by respects to Hitchcock, but also sets the tone of the film of an erotic thriller with blotches of dark comedy strewn in.

Cult Epics proudly releases “My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie” onto a new high definition two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo set. Presented in a widescreen, 2.35:1 aspect ratio, in a 1080p transfer from the original 35mm print, preserved by the Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam. The original print is nearly pristine with a palatable amount of stock grain and with only a minor amount of film wear. No observations of border enhancing or sharpening that would dilute the bona fide quality. The Dutch DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio track nicely accompaniments the film with depth and range and the Dutch dialogue upfront and present and the very Hitchcock-esque soundtrack by Elisabeth Lutyens (“The Skull”) provided a perfect suspense drive score in her last composer post. Supplements includes an introduction by Pim de la Parra, poster and photo video gallery, Scorpio Films’ shorts that includes “Heart Beat Fresco,” “Joop,” and “Joop Strikes Again,” and Scorpio Films’ theatrical trailers. Cult Epic’s region 1 DVD and the all region Blu-ray release favors another Dutch sex wave cinema flavor with just modernization of an intertwinement of erotically charged lust and lives with repulsive and deadly temperaments and with Pim de la Parra at the helm, you’re going to get primo framing and angles sure to captivate.

Purchase by Clicking the Blu-ray Cover!

Undercover. Underwear. Whatever Defeats Evil Sex Trafficking in “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 23, 2017

Cecile and Brigitte have served two of their twelve month sentence for inappropriate sexual acts involving prostitution and stripping. International authorities, including an American Senator, remove the two ladies of the night from their incarcerations and have them audition a private and provocative dance routine that will spring them from prison life and place them into a contract for hire that the pair of beauties find difficult to refuse. Cecile and Brigitte use their God-gifted talents to slip undercover as a pair of lesbian dancers in order to spy on Mr. Forbes, the Flamingo club owner on the Canary Islands who moonlights as a sadistic sex trafficker. Forbes kidnaps, rapes, and then, with the help of his wife Irina Forbes, hypnotizes well-known and famous women to be the ever faithful lovers of Mr. Forbes wealthily clients and to stop the egregious trafficker, any smoking gun evidence must be photographed for the international police to make a move on an arrest.

Jess Franco is the maestro of guilty pleasure shlock and the 1980 violently erotic, crime drama “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties” is no different inventoried with ubersleaze spiced in folly comedy and tense sadism. The sort of mixed bag genre film only writer-director knew, and understood, how to achieve on a minuscule budget level in hastily conditions, but “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties,” whether designed or by chance, stemmed from the combination of old and new footage, re-edited out of the original title, “Ópalo de fuego: Mercaderes del sexo,” and told a slightly different tale with slightly rearranged character backgrounds and graphic scenes, and featured two different locations that were later labeled Las Palmas of the Canary Islands to tie it all together. Severin has included both versions on a limited edition Blu-ray (“Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties”) and DVD (“Ópalo de fuego: Mercaderes del sexo”) release to experience both versions.

Franco’s long time common law, then legal in 2008, spouse Lina Romay, under pseudonym Candy Coster stars as Cecile in really a non-seductive, non-promiscuous, and only pinched with erotica role. Unlike Romay’s “Bare Breasted Countess” (aka “Female Vampire”) role, Cecile undercuts the erotic tone with more gratuitous comic and threatening nudity. Relishing into a staple of erotica are all of Romay’s supporting cohorts consisting of “Zombie Lake’s” Nadine Pascal, “Women Behind Bars'” Joëlle Le Quément, Susan Hemingway of “Love Letters from a Portuguese Nun.” Interesting enough, Hemingway isn’t credit in either version of the film. Pascal offers playful dilly-dally while practically be nude throughout whereas Quément slips into a deeper carnality with an unhinged relationship with her sex trafficking husband Mr. Forbes while Hemingway just provides a taken-advantaged vessel to plunder her dignity, soul, and body for easy money. Surrounding the gorgeous vixens are ruthless, dirtbag men played by Claude Boisson as the club owning sex trafficker and “Elsa Fräulein SS’s: Olivier Matthot as the sleazy American Senator Connelly. The role with the most opaqueness between the two versions of the film goes to Mel Rodrigo as Milton, the club’s gay artist organizer with an existential crisis and a quick to rebel attitude.

Though charming in its own delectable unchaste ways, Jess Franco deploys a haphazardly glued story inflamed with by chance moments shrouded with psychosexual tendencies. Sexually ostentatious and manic, “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties” wildly pivots like an out of control sprinkler, spitting lustful filth, jovial comedy, and menacing suspense everywhere while still, by way of only Franco can accomplish, accurately hitting the intended mark of downright Eurotrash entertainment. A shocking, yet hardly noticeable, factor of the director’s is his film withholds any large amounts of blood or gore; in fact, gore is absent and the blood is sparse, especially during the girls-on-girl torture scenes involving bondage, a switchblade near the hind parts, and a cinder-weaponized cigarette, but the element that sparks gritty fortitude in those same said scenes, shot intently with fraught close-ups and well positioned shadows, could culminate a subversive tone that ultimate could convey a scene without words.

Severin’s limited edition 2-disc release of the Eurocine produced “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties” has rightfully been graced with the Blu-ray treatment. The release also has the Spanish edit version of “Ópalo de fuego: Mercaderes del sexo.” The Blu-ray is a 1080p encoded AVC transfer presented in a near stand definition aspect ratio format from a restored into HD, uncut print. The overall color palette appears fairly washed with only some segments, especially peering out over the water or inside tight quarters, stand out with rich color. Darker scenes are heavily splayed with turquoise that, again, give the washed overlay, but the richness of the shadows with grindhouse print grain is stellar. Franco’s struggle with focusing, as part of technical self embattlement or as part of an against-the-grain auteur, are prominent throughout. The two LCPM 2.0 tracks are dubbed only in English or French and while not tracked in the native Spanish, either track will serve as a palpable substitute despite the English track being transcribed awfully cheesy and the French track with consistent hiss. Bonus material includes “Two Cats in the Canaries: An Interview with Jess Franco” is an undated interview with Franco recalling his love for the Canary Islands and being a genre maverick. There’s also a 1993 interview with long time Franco composer Daniel White conducted by “Cannibal Hookers'” Donald Farmer, a thorough analyst of Franco and “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties” by Stephen Thrower, location outtakes, and a theatrical trailer. While “Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties” is not the best example of Jess Franco’s credits, the vicious erotic thriller is arguably ambitious and epitomizes the style of the legendary filmmaker with sultry, fringed performances and an unforgettable narrative lined up in a one-two punch package from Severin Films!

Revenge is an Evil Dish Best Served Cold! “Gelosia – Vendetta D’amore” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on February 15, 2017

After Thomas’ voluptuous wife’s immaculate beauty falls victim to a horrifying and scarring fiery car accident, the sex-addicted womanizer, fueled by a constant stream of strong alcohol, dumps his maimed wife and obsessively hops from one unchaste woman to next, but in the darkest shadows lurks a hidden danger toward his newfound, unrestricted fast and loose lifestyle. A sinister plot of revenge against him begins to quickly unravel and Thomas’ stretch of unscrupulous carnal behavior is about to be ‘cut’ short because, as the ancient saying goes, “hell has no fury like a woman scored.”

Alberto Barone’s vengeful sex-thriller “Gelosia: Vendetta D’Amore” is a short film laced with irrepressible desires and consequences, doused in pure hatred and nihilism, and packaged as a vibrant grindhouse homage garnished with a tightly-knotted black bow. Milton Welsh stars as Thomas, a man on a bulldozing sexcapade, and with Welsh’s raspy, baritone voice and slick back, greasy hair makes him, on screen, the perfect, middle-aged creep, hooking up with the shameless, uninhibited women. The German born Welsh has indistinguishable looks and talents with the impeccable “Doom” and Rob Zombie “31” actor Richard Brake that brings a lot of despicable enjoyment to not only the performance, but also with the monologue by Welsh throughout the short film. Welsh’s previous credits include the 2011 remake of “Conan the Barbarian,” “Aeon Flux,” and, one of my personal favorite Norman Reedus films, “Antibodies.”

Welsh’s performing cohorts makeup solely of very well-endowed, very offensive-embracing women that include a porn star, a dominatrix, and a couple of veteran genre actresses starting with the Southern France born Manoush (actress in Marian Dora’s “Cannibal,” “Philosophy of a Knife,” and, most recently, “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein”) as Heidi, Thomas’ discarded wife. This dominating role didn’t feel quite right, slightly forced, from the possibility of this role not being in Manoush’s native tongue, constraining the gushes of violent emotions that should be exploding from within the character outward. Manoush directly interacts alongside “German Angst’s” Kristina Kostiv, as a very seductive Eastern European escort girl in a manner that blurs the motivations of the characters, but we’ll discuss that later in this review. Rest of the cast fills every man’s, sometime woman’s, prominent fantasy with sacrilegious Nunspolitation and naughty nerd girl scenario roles, respectively donned by Tara Rubin and German porn star Lana Vegas. Both Rubin and Vegas steal from “Gelosia’s” root message with their provocative performances that leave almost nothing to the imagination. Tattoo model Alexa van Unique gets kinky in a brief scene of dominance that’s short and sweet and gets the message across.

“Gelosia” is Italian for Jealousy, but Alberto Barone’s written and directed film doesn’t hit hard with one of humanities irrational and vile attributes. More in line with the subtitle of “Vendetta d’Amore,” aka Revenge of Love, Barone tells two-stories: One of the monologuing, sex addict that objectifies women more than he wishes to understand them and a vengeful wife with a dastardly plot of deadly retribution against him. I just don’t see jealousy as the major player this short film is titled after and that, at least for me, dilutes much of the radical content supporting the story including the naked women, the gruesome violence, and the admirable cinematography.

“Gelosia: Vendetta d’Amore” is sexy with shock value. Produced by Ingravisione, the exploitation thriller seeks to debut in late 2017! Overall, Barone’s ultra-exploitation leaves an indifferent residue with me as I’m still hung up on a few difficult to ignore hiccups, but I love the short’s perverse freedom as a whole that’s vivid and modern while staying classic in style. “Gelosia: Vendetta d’Amore” is starting to hit festivals as I type this, bringing all the castrations and sex to an arthouse theater near you!