Sadomania (1981)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

With 'Sadomania', director Jess Franco has deftly created yet another cinematic masterpiece, while at the same time he completely blows the lid off of the shadowy underworld of topless female slave camps. (Not surprisingly, this gem was completely ignored by the snooty snobs on the Oscar committee!) The film also exposes just how easy it is to assemble a bevy of attractive young 'actresses' in the middle of nowhere and convince them to degrade themselves for an entire film. A young newlywed couple is honeymooning along a desolate, rocky, section of the Spanish coastline, (why?!), when they are suddenly hijacked and taken prisoner by the sadistic warden of a local slave camp and her, topless, female armed guards. The husband is quickly released and ordered to never return, (oh, O.K.!), while his hot wife remains captive. She is placed with the other slaves and forced to crack rocks along the coast, beneath the blazing sun, and under the watchful eyes of the guards. Their uniforms consist of 'Daisy Duke' short shorts and sneakers. In fact, there is not a bra in sight for the entire film. These poor wretches aren't even provided with some basic sunscreen! Enter the 'Governor', a man who lacks any morals, nor, apparently, any blood flow to his penis. He and his warden like to kill prisoners for sport. One blond hottie soon gets in a fight with one of the guards, and the warden orders that they fight to the death to settle their differences. The fight scene which follows is of such complexity that it clearly took seconds to choreograph. Blondie finally dispatches her adversary, but her skill, and body, have caught the attention of the Governor. He has her brought to his home, where he devises a perverted plan which will finally allow him to successfully pork his smokin' hot wife. Enter 'Panzer' the Wonder Pooch, (I just made that name up). Panzer is a large German Shepard with a fondness for hot, blond, slave chicks. As the Governor and his wife watch, Panzer is set loose upon the naked and shackled slave chick. He dives into humping slave girl with gusto. (Surprisingly, Panzer chooses the missionary position over doggy style!) This sick display of bestiality is enough to finally give the Governor a stiffy, and he is able to successfully pork his wife to completion. (Panzer later won the award for 'Best Dog on Blond Chick Sex Scene' at the Cannes de Alpo awards.) Next, the Governor's wife decides to sell slave girl to another slaver, and she drives her to a local wharf to make the deal. Following the sale, the evil slaver locks slave girl in the cargo hold of his boat and sets sail for.....who knows? As expected, his own horniness soon gets the better of him, and he begins raping slave girl. She spots his gun in his belt and sees an opportunity for escape. She uses her feminine charm to convince the slaver to unshackle her, and when he does she quickly snatches the pistol from his belt. Now with the upper hand, she displays a moment of sheer stupidity. She holds the gun a mere few inches from his face and upraised hands and orders him not to move. Of course, he immediately swats the gun from her grasp, and then proceeds to continue dry humping her into submission. The viewer is treated to the sight of his hairy ass rising and falling between her thighs. At this point, my curiosity has been more than satisfied, and I decide to extricate myself from this sucking vortex of suckiness. Sorry, if you want to know how it all ends you'll have to waste an hour and a half of your own life. 5 stars given only for the wealth of gratuitous topless and full frontal nudity. Show less

I am a fan of Jess Franco's bizarre style, and a lover even of his trashier films, and my personal opinion is that he has, besides several very entertaining movies, also created a few masterpieces, such as the brilliant "Paroxismus" aka "Venus In Furs" of 1969, for example. It is, however, an undeniable fact that the 180+ movies this highly prolific filmmaker has directed in his career, also include a bunch of big time stinkers. "Sadomania" of 1981 certainly is one of these stinkers, just an utterly bad and plot less movie with the ability to bore the hell out of you in spite of constant sleaze and nudity.Sure, the constant nudity will keep you entertained for 20 minutes, but since it keeps going on and on like that one is pretty likely to get bored after a short time. The only thing that really kept me watching this was the intensity of the sleaze which is, generously spoken, slightly amusing.After couple of newlyweds get lost in the desert on some island, they are stopped by a bunch of topless women carrying guns, wardens of a local prison camp. While the husband is banished from the island, the wife is taken to the prison camp, a place of torture and sexual humiliation, reigned by the sadistic nymphomaniac Magda and an extremely perverted governor. The prisoners are, of course, entirely hot chicks, most of them blondes, the wardens are entirely topless women carrying rifles.The plot, if one can call it that, is extremely stupid of course, but who is going to watch this for a good plot anyway. The (only) interesting thing about "Sadomania" is the high level of exploitation, even for a 'Women In Prison' film. There are probably two short scenes in the movie where we see a woman actually wearing a top, the sleaze contains all kinds of sexual perversions from rape to bestiality, and some of the torture scenes are really nasty.It is amazing that a film with this extreme level of sleaze, however, can still be so boring. The sleaze will keep you watching in the beginning, but after the first 45 minutes I actually had a hard time not to fall asleep. It also makes me wonder why, out of all pornstars, Jess Franco chose Ajita Wilson, who was, according to most sources, a transsexual who had been born a man (well, maybe for exactly that reason). If you really want to watch this, make sure you have enough beer at home to sit through it and watch it for the sleaze and exploitation only (and maybe for the slight unintentional fun factor). Don't expect to be highly entertained, however, it is almost unbelievable how a movie with such a high sleaze level can be so boring. I am a Jess Franco fan and I always will be, but "Sadomania" is just bad. 2/10

I can't help thinking that this is Franco's 'hamage' to the Marquis de Sade's "One Thousand Days of Sodom". People (in this case women) abducted to serve as slaves to a privileged elite? Check. Kinky sex? Check. Torture including whipping? Check. Victims chosen at random to be killed? Check.Thank goodness Franco didn't go the whole hog and introduce cinema audiences to the delights of coprology (and indeed coprophagy), another perversion that crops up repeatedly in de Sade's tediously long and disgusting saga.I rather hoped that this film would fall into the 'so bad it's good' category. But even the acres of naked flesh and numerous sexual encounters didn't make up for the dismal dialogue, dreadful acting, elusive plot and - just to put the tin hat on it - dubbing AND English sub-titles (a belt and braces approach missing from the women's costumes). The Alsation gave a very professional performance though.Of course I could be wrong about the de Sade angle. After all, I failed to realise that the actor playing the head warden at the 'prison' was a trans-sexual. I must pay more attention to the size of people's hands in future.According to another reviewer, the film was banned in the UK. Well it clearly isn't any more, though I fancy that the nipple-needling scene was cut to satisfy the censors. On the DVD I watched, it was only clearly visible on the Spanish trailer (which, in case you're wondering, I watched to compare it with the English one).The DVD also features an interview with Jess Franco, though you'll need better Spanish than mine to understand it. Unless I'm much mistaken it's neither dubbed nor sub-titled. And it points out that the person sodomising the character played by Franco is Ajita Wilson disguised using a moustache. Kind of ironic, given that (s)he had had the requisite appendage surgically removed.

OK, no one will confuse this with Citizen Kane but you've got to love a movie where the women are always topless. There are a few catfights and some kinky sex as well. On the other hand I hope they didn't overpay the guy who wrote the dialogue. Here's a prime example. After one of the captive girls dies: "This is terrible. It reminds me of the day Zenobia died" "A relative?" "No, my favorite cow." I guess they saved some money on the script and blew it on great special effects like that plastic crocodile. I will say that it took me three sittings to make it through this fine work of art, never a good sign. I guess that's what happens after a while when everything looks the same. I hope the folks waiting to rent it next didn't get too impatient. Don't worry folks, it's on it's way.