Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Scott LeBrun Martine Flety plays the title character, the owner / proprietor of an adults only club in swinging Paris. There are plenty of attractions on the main floor, but in the basement is where things really happen. Rita and her bevy of babes imprison various men, torturing them and stimulating them to the point of madness. It's all in the name of extracting money and information out of these hapless chumps. Little does Rita know that Interpol is taking a keen interest in what goes on in her club.Jesus "Jess" Franco strikes again with another exercise in stylish sleaze. Viewers will be pleased to note that there is lots of female nudity (in fact, one of the very first shots shows some full frontal) and a little bit of sex. (There is some male nudity as well.) But what makes this stand out a little from the many trash epics that Franco made in the 1970s is the fact that he's melding exploitation with the espionage genre, with a touch of 70s era psychedelia. The visual approach is quite striking, as Franco and his crew go with some gorgeous gold and pink colour schemes. The music by Walter Baumgartner is quite groovy, to boot.The performances are generally amusing from all concerned. Luscious brunette Sarah Strasberg was a particular favourite for this viewer, as she plays the role of a heavy named Franchesa. Dagmar Burger is appealing as an entertainer named "Sun". Eric Falk is a hoot as a "boxer" targeted by Rita and her minions. And Flety is quite watchable in the lead.You add a funny fight scene, and a VERY funny death scene, to the proceedings, and it amounts to a pretty good time for exploitation fanatics.Seven out of 10.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Das Frauenhaus" or "Blue Rita" is a co-production between Switzerland and France that resulted in a German-language film back in 1977, which means this one will have its 40th anniversary next year. The writer and director is the incomparable Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco and if you know him, you also know what to expect here: namely a seemingly ambitious plot that gets lost in bad writing and story-telling and instead it ends up being all about the sex scenes and nudity. Or does it really? It may be true that Franco includes sensual and aesthetic sex scenes with stunning women, but not so in this one really. I must say I found the sex scenes in here really unpleasing to watch and a lot of it may have to do with the lights and colors Franco used here. I read in another review that they called his approach psychedelic and this is exactly the perfect word. Watching this film made me think that Franco really wanted to leave a creative note in here, but it really all went wrong unfortunately. The only somewhat appealing thing was the purple wig one of the girls (maybe actually the only hot one because of it) was wearing. I cannot say I am familiar with any of the cast members here and Martine Fléty, who plays the title characters, also was/is fairly unknown compared to other women Franco cast as leads in his films, such as the wonderful Soledad Miranda or Lina Romay for example. As a whole, this film was not working from any perspective. Instead it was really cringeworthy how Franco failed with the use of colors that added little to the story that was already elaborated on pretty badly anyway. I highly recommend to stay away from this movie. Don't watch.

tiemewoudstra During the 70' Jess Franco made lots of exploitation films with different success. Blue Rita is one of Jess Frano's finest efforts, because of Franco's great cinematography with many colorful scenes and carefully created atmospheric sets. Many of the scenes have a psychedelic touch and the music score is great.The storyline is kind of absurd, which should be expected by fans of Jesus Franco, involving soft erotic club performances combined with secret agency's and creative torture methods. Somehow the style feels like a combination of Succubus and Ilsa and the Wicked Warden, without the pseudo philosophy of Succubus, focusing on the atmosphere.For me this feels like one of Franco's most inspired movies and belongs to his best efforts. The overall rating may be lowered because of the many soft erotic scenes and the hard-to-follow / incoherent storyline, but for those who seek great original atmosphere like only Jess Franco could, this is a must see. The German spoken version should be preferred.

pikhal020 This film seems very much like a largely improvised affair to get from one soft-core nudity scene to the next. Some of the dialogue scenes, as one example, have the characters' mouths intentionally obscured, undoubtedly to maximize flexibility in dubbing in lines when that part of the script was actually written later on! The FX are also quite laughable, even for the time. Yet the whole experience has a strange allure to it partly due to the surreality of the semi comprehensible plot and partly due to some truly dazzling psychedelic visuals. The scenes in the jazzy strip club are just amazing, as is the costume design! The naked flesh on display is sumptuous.