ThiefHott Too much of everything

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

unbrokenmetal The young and idealistic Dr Johnson (Fred Williams) proudly presents his work with human embryos, but has his expectations crushed by 4 experts (Howard Vernon, Paul Muller, Ewa Strömberg and Jess Franco himself) who ridicule the work of his lifetime and destroy his experiments. Dr Johnson commits suicide, and his widow (Soledad Miranda) decides she will kill the 4 enemies of her husband - in interesting ways. Meanwhile she keeps the body of the doctor and continues to talk to him as if he were still alive...A thriller with a remarkable straightforward story for a Jess Franco movie. Soledad Miranda is scorching the screen, the director gives her plenty of opportunity to stare with her dark eyes at her future victims. Not even a silly blond wig can damage her maniacal presence. The jazzy lounge music contributes a lot to the freaky atmosphere, but also the locations near Alicante/Spain are beautifully chosen. The only weak point to me is the role of the police inspector (Horst Tappert), because he seems to do a really lazy and sloppy investigation, considering there are several murder cases. Oh, and maybe it's the only time in cinema history that a car falls down a cliff and just breaks apart, it doesn't explode like it's full of dynamite - movie cliché avoided. Most likely it were only the costs which mattered, though.

MostafaJamal She Killed in Ecstasy is a sort of sister film to another Franco-Miranda production I've already reviewed, Vampyros Lesbos. It has a handful of the same actors and is also a Spanish-West German production. Hueber and Schwab, the musicians who composed the amazing score for Vampyros Lesbos, also scored this film. And like Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy has a meandering, nonsensical narrative structure, but works on the strength of Soledad Miranda's performance, charisma, and visual appeal.A doctor (the sexy Fred Williams, a Franco regular) is criticized and alienated for his experimental research that involves human fetuses, which leads to his suicide. His wife, very much in love with him and driven a little insane by his death, gets bloody vengeance on the team of doctors who drove him to death. Unsurprisingly, she dons a number of paltry disguises and seduces the men (and one woman), hypnotizing, deceiving, and then killing them. There is some random necrophilia, which is effectively creepy and also sadly sweet. The death scenes are completely implausible, but it doesn't matter within the loosely surreal narrative world of Franco's film.As with many of Franco's films, this is a rehashing of familiar themes and includes elements from his enjoyable Venus in Furs with Klaus Kinski. He reused much of the same crew from Vampyros Lesbos, which explains the similarly robust (and very '70s) sense of style. I don't think this was a direct influence on Franco, but lately I've been reading a lot of Cornell Woolrich novels, particularly his "Black" series and its themes of obsessive love and murder. Woolrich has several characters who lose a loved one (the death is usually accidental) and then going a killing spree to get revenge for his/her death. Truffaut adapted the first of these – The Bride Wore Black – and She Killed in Ecstasy has a similar, if campier and more exploitative feel.

Flixer1957 A young doctor experiments with fusing animal and human embryos, which incurs the wrath of the ruling medical board. They humiliate him and banish him; he then goes berserk and kills himself. After a decent interval of mourning, his widow–-played to the sultry hilt by Soledad Miranda–goes all-out for revenge. She's determined to wipe out all those bad doctors–male and female–who did her hubby wrong.Most of the killings involve Miranda using her (considerable) womanly wiles to seduce her victims before slashing or stabbing them. (One scene, however, would have us believe that it only takes 20 seconds to smother someone to death.) Once the slaying starts–about 30 minutes into the movie–things move along at a rapid clip. (Possibly a bad choice of words considering what our Black Widow does to her male victims afterward.) In any case, this rampage gives us many shots of Miranda's beautiful bod. Female viewers, meanwhile, can enjoy the scenes of Jess Franco shirtless and Howard Vernon in the buff. And everybody can amuse themselves by counting the spelling errors in the English subtitles, or relaxing to a music score better suited to a nightclub than a horror movie.The tired old "crime does not pay" ending involves some of the worst deductive reasoning I've heard on-screen. It's also oddly prophetic, considering what happened to Soledad Miranda in real life.

Scarecrow-88 A wife in mourning(Soledad Miranda, in her final screen performance)molds into a lady executioner out for vengeance towards those she holds responsible for not only destroying her husbands dreams, but being the reason for his suicide.Dr. Johnson(Fred Williams)is holding out hope that the medical council will grant him permission to further continue in his research and experiments in the altering of the human organism with the aid of hormones(culled from animal and infant embryos). Deemed a charlatan by the four main voices on the council, Professor Walker(Howard Vernon), Dr. Huston(Paul Muller), Dr. Crawford(Ewa Strömberg) and Dr. Donen(Jesus Franco)he is scorned for an infringement on the Hippocratic oath. He will be discontinued from the practice of medicine and rejected by the medical community as a criminal for using human embryos from fetuses. He claims that his research is for saving lives and that their claims of his being such a monster are false. But, their voices are stronger than his and Dr. Johnson's career is finished which, within time, slowly drives him mad. The ringing of the medical council's hurling insults at his character rattle in his mind without ceasing..to the point that even his wife(Miranda), nakedly pursuing a sexual embrace, can not seduce him from his mental plight. With the rejection of his peers, Dr. Johnson sees no other alternative but suicide. Mr. Johnson's demise will drive his wife to seek retribution against those who took away her beloved.The film's rub is the exposing of those four founding members of the medical hierarchy where we see the cloak of their morality stripped away through the acts of seduction from Mrs. Johnson who is able to break down their barriers into hedonism. Mrs. Johnson's feminine wiles are too irresistible for the first three, with only Donen getting his comeuppance through other means.When Mrs. Johnson embraces a target, we see visions of her warm loving moments with her husband..these memories add extra incentive towards finishing the kill.Tailor-made role for Soledad Miranda where she is center-stage as both seductress and assassin. The film isn't that violent..most of the murderous acts are shot in a way to avoid explicit gore. But, Miranda shows the skin..that's a guarantee I can give you loudly. Lingerie and naked, Miranda's lady-of-vengeance will do whatever it takes to bring her victims into a compromising position so that they can meet their maker. I thought she was good. Damn good. Great scene towards the end showing Miranda crouched in the corner of a couch going insane as she thinks about the memories of her husband before his being "put on trial." And, no one is as sexy smoking a cigarette as she was.