Bezenby This is basically a two character battle of the sexes film that's presented in a very groovy way.Dagmar Lassandar is the press officer in a large company who happens to require some files from the boss himself, played by concertina headed Philipe Leroy. After discussing Leroy's portraits of various diseases, he drugs Dagmar and the fun begins.Turns out Leroy is crazy macho and reckons that the female species half of the human race is trying to eradicate the male side and in order to redress the balance he's got to kill women all the time for kicks, and Dagmar is next!This all sounds rather straightforward, but this film is totally off- kilter from the start. Leroy kidnaps Dagmar and such like, but then goes on to have a rubber scale model of himself sexually attack Dagmar! His entire house is freaky-weird, from his half-room that opens up onto Dagmar's to his faux-dominatrix dummies and voice-over star sign analysts, this Leroy is like one of them rich playboys who don't realise what you can do with an unwilling woman you can do with yer hand, and a wummin can make her own choices, right?This is also a bizarrely feminist film if you can stand to watch it all the way through, although the bit where Dagmar gives Leroy a chewie while a train load of women playing saxophone etc sails by may be layering on the imagery a bit heavy. It's a good film, this one. It doesn't have to be strange, to be strange.

jadavix "The Frightened Woman" is a boring title for a boring movie. It's really only worth watching for some striking, surreal imagery, like the giant molded legs with the doorway in the middle. Who can forget the moment where the doorway shuts from both sides, forming teeth?Indeed, the filmmaker seems to be throwing around a bunch of psycho sexual ideas about men and women, and perhaps the fear men have of women and the attraction women have to powerful men.Either way, the movie makes no real statement of interest, we get the aforementioned striking image here and there but it is hard to care less about the characters, and the conclusion at the end was so predictable it only left the question why we had to wait so long for it to arrive. But then, at an hour and twenty six minutes, the movie felt at least twice that long.I'd seen this one before, and coming back to it, all I could remember was the main guy's hair, which is sort of red-blonde. I have seen this referred to as "sexploitation", but there's basically no sex, and very little nudity.

christopher-underwood It could not have come from a different country nor from a different time. This movie simply oozes psychedelia influenced late 60s Italian cinema. So, pseudo serious and sexually free. Sumptuous settings and dreamy music make this a visual and aural delight. Plus we get the lovely Dagmar Lassander, surely at her very best looking. The kinky goings on make for a wild ride and if the romps amidst the Mimosa towards the end seem overlong it is but another rather charming trait of the time. You were probably expected to split those few minutes between the screen and your girlfriend and it does of course herald a twist in the proceedings. It might have been better if Philippe Leroy didn't look quite so odd with his fraying red hair and twisted facial expression. He does well though and has many silent moments where Dagmar is cavorting and he has to show a mixture of love and hate. Not an ordinary narrative film by any means but for those who like that something different, this is certainly that.

lazarillo A young journalist, kind of a tame 60's Euro version of a feminist, finds herself kidnapped by a deranged male artist. He shows her photographs of a number of a women he claims to have killed, and promises to do the same to her when he's finished having his way with her. She seems to develop a case of Stockholm syndrome and soon becomes his willing playmate. But at the end neither of the them turns out to be what they initially appear (to give you just a hint, this movie is alternatively called either "The Frightened Woman" and "The Laughing Woman"). The plot of this movie resembles both the earlier film "The Collector" and the later "The Story of O", but it is very different from either. It also somewhat resembles the contemporary Japanese "pinku" movies, but is much more tame. Like other Italian movies released by Radley Metzger's Audobon Films (i.e. "La Matriarca)it kind of resembles one of Metzger's own films as well, but it is really its own unique creature.With the possible exception of Metzger's "The Punishment of Anne" (which I've never seen) this might be the best version of a B-and-D/S- and-M film. (Granted, that's not saying much). This movie works as a B-and-D fantasy because it really explores the relationship and the ever-shifting nature of power between the dominant and submissive partner, and also because, even more importantly, it STAYS at the level of fantasy. In America they are so nervous about this subject for some reason that it is actually illegal to tie someone up in a hardcore porno movie. This may not be such a bad thing though because in countries like France and Germany, which have no such compunctions, the introduction of a hardcore footage into a B-and-D plot creates a jarring realism so at odds with the psychosexual fantasy that the whole thing, far from being exciting and disturbing, is mostly just silly and stupid. (There are also, of course, plenty of people who actually live this "lifestyle", but the less said of them the better).The much more subtle, even tame approach really works here (for me). I especially enjoyed the pop-art set design and the kind of Freudian obsessions that were big in those days (i.e. one of the artists sculpture's looks like giant vagina dentata). The movie really doesn't get much more racy than Dagmar Lassender dancing around in an unraveling paper dress (but then again you ought to SEE Dagmar Lassender dance around in an unraveling paper dress), or more violent than some of the slide photographs the artist shows of his previous murder victims(which may not be genuine). I'm sure this arty and rather mild movie will disappoint both the serious porn addicts and the truly perverted S-and-M/bondage freaks, but for all of us curious (but not THAT curious) Euro movie fans it's a pretty decent way to go.