Sadomania
(Anchor Bay Region 0 PAL DVD)
(1981)
review by Blackgloves

A newly married couple are driving through a remote and desolate part of Spain -- but after ignoring a "No Trespass" sign, they find themselves held at gunpoint by two topless female guards! They are taken back to an all female prison run by sadistic warden, Magda Urtado (Ajita Wilson). She lets the groom go, but imprisons the female alongside the rest of her inmates (which consist entirely of naked, blonde lesbian beauties). What follows are a series of depraved incidents instigated by Warden Magda, the prison's impotent governor (Antonia Mayans billed as Robert Foster), and his lesbian wife. The threesome use and abuse the women prisoners in various ways for their own sick pleasure and amusement (that's when the inmates aren't using and abusing each other for their own sick pleasure and amusement). Meanwhile, the husband tries to organise an escape bid for his wife -- but when he is again captured by some of the topless totty that guard the place, he finds himself forced into "servicing" the insatiable lusts of warden Magda!

This is another daft but amusing exploitation romp from Jess Franco, with very few redeeming qualities! The strange, poetic ambience of the director's best work is nowhere to be seen. Instead, dear viewer, you will be treated to 102 minutes of pure -- but good-spirited -- filth! No real artistic merit is apparent here at all... well, thank Gibson for that!!

As you will already have gathered, "Sadomania" is an entry in the 'Women In Prison' (W.I.P.) genre -- a sub-genre of exploitation flicks which Franco pioneered and seems especially fond of. The director has made many W.I.P. flicks over the course of his career, probably because they offer endless opportunities for the sex and sadism scenarios he loves! This particular film seems to consist of little else but sex and sadism -- with the wafer-thin story simply a means of connecting one lustful lesbian sex-romp to the next! Although it contains several infamous sequences (which we'll come to in a moment), it isn't really particularly disturbing or even hugely distasteful. Modern movies such as "Visitor Q" and "Irreversible" outdo it by a country mile when it comes to the portrayal of shocking scenes of excess. Really, "Sadomania" just comes across as a sly piece of camp sleaze, in poor taste, yes -- but lots of fun!

Franco was trying to emulate the style of the sexually graphic Italian comic-books known as 'fumetti", which surely explains the light-hearted approach, the over-the-top characters and ridiculous situations featured in the film. The whole idea of a prison camp run by naked female guards with machine-guns is a preposterous conceit to begin with, and the film is full of deliberately daft ideas like this. The women guards use obviously toy guns, and escapees are eaten by a blatently plastic crocodile! Things reach a fever pitch of silliness when we get to Franco's role as a gay slave trader! Franco -- game for anything as always -- treats us to his first ever (and only) gay sex scene! Although his "partner" in the scene is really the film's main star and Italian trans-sex symbol, Ajita Wilson -- with her hair slicked back and sporting a fake moustache!

It's a typical Franco irony to use a transsexual (who's womanly appearance is completely persuasive) to play a man! Wilson is the reason for the film's existence, since Franco's producers wanted to make a Greta/Isla style film with her in the lead role. In fact, she provides most of the on-screen entertainment with her performance -- which is full of gleeful menace and sadistic delight. Whether enthusiastically taking part in some extremely frank sex-scenes, or enjoying inflicting suffering on her sex-bomb charges (sticking needles in nipples for instance!) - hers is always a compelling presence; she joins a small army of starlets who have emboldened Franco's cinema with their slightly tarnished screen auras.

"Sadomania" was Franco's response to the end of Generalissimo Franco's conservative rule in Spain. With the death of his namesake, Franco was able to return to his homeland, film with a cast of fifty naked women, and watch with satisfaction the authorities who were now powerless to stop him! Perhaps some of the more outrageous scenes were also a mischievous thumbing of the nose to conservative censorship in Spain; in particular the bizarre bestiality scene in which a naked woman is strapped to a chair and forced to copulate with an extremely enthusiastic Alsatian! No need for PETA to get excited though: it's obviously faked, although the dog is definitely one of the more convincing actors in the film!

When Blue Underground originally released their disc of this sleaze classic, it instantly became their most controversial release to date. The main reason for this was down to the fact that there was a massive blunder concerning the film's transfer included on the initial pressing. The final part of the film is very obviously meant to take place at night. Franco filmed using day for night filtering but, somehow, the filtering was left off when BU came to create their transfer, which meant that all of the night-time exteriors appeared to take place in broad daylight on their disc! This becomes particularly apparent when the night-time interiors were inter-cut with the daylight exterior scenes. However, Franco scholars have also taken exception to the transfer as a whole, since they feel that the original aesthetic of the film has been lost during BU's digital cleanup and colour correction -- and that this has resulted in the film's look being "standardised".

The mistake with the day for night filtering was later corrected in subsequent pressings of the Blue Underground disc and Anchor Bay UK -- who have used the same transfer for their UK release -- have also included the correct versionI Interestingly, although the UK disc does seem to utilise the same transfer, some indoor scenes also look much darker than they do on the US disc. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing and it may be that these scenes were also meant to look this way. As for the other complaints about the transfer -- I have never seen the film before so I can't really comment on them, other than to say that, in terms of clarity and quality of image, this looks well up to BU's usual standard. There is a Dutch release which is said to retain the original look of the film, although without the clean crisp image of the BU/AB UK transfer we see here.

It's up to the buyer to make their own decision on this -- personally, I find this version quite acceptable. This is not the end of the story though. Both the BU and AB UK discs contains the atrocious English audio dub, while only a couple of scenes that were cut from the English speaking release are included with the much better Spanish audio track and English subtitles. The Spanish audio in these scenes really peps up the film, and gives us a taste of the original adult comic-book feel Franco was trying to create instead of the tacky kitsch tone one gets from the English audio. Also, the soundtrack score of the original Spanish version was quite different from the one included on this English audio track. The original Spanish audio would obviously have been a better option for this release; the small audience that this disc will attract would obviously prefer that. In fact, as a recent German release of one of Franco's early seventies film's has just revealed, the more soundtrack options one can make available for a Franco film the better -- as they often seem to be quite radically different from each other. The end result is often akin to watching several, entirely different films with each audio option!

This Anchor Bay UK disc features different animated menu screens to the US release, and they've also added one of their 5.1 Surround Sound with DTS option audio mixes (somebody must like these because they continue to add them to every disc they release!) to supplement the original mono mix. Unlike the US disc, we also have English subtitles for the hard of hearing as an extra bonus. The Anchor Bay UK release also has the thorny problem of the BBFC to deal with. There was a time when this film was simply banned outright; now it is almost unhampered with apart from one scene which involves a needle being inserted into a nipple, where seventeen seconds have been snipped. The cuts are hardly noticeable (and consequently, really not worth the effort) and will only be an issue for complete purists.

When it comes to extras though, BU are well up to their usual standard and the UK disc from AB UK duplicates the same extras. The highlight is an eighteen minute interview with Jess Franco: "Sadomaniac". Franco remembers his admiration of Ajita Wilson and, among other things, discusses his own personal morality. An extensive gallery of poster art and production stills; several fine biographical sketches of Franco and Ajita Wilson; and International and Spanish trailers round off the collection.It is up to the consumer to decide what to make of this flawed release; in many ways, it is as good as anything BU have done before. I suspect that recent Euro-sleaze fans, who have never seen the film before, will have no real problem with it, while more seasoned veterans of the genre will be sticking to their prized, blurry VHS Spanish dubbed versions on principle for the time being!