Emmanuelle had no idea they made shorts that short.

Emannuelle is a cheesy but beautifully shot light-hearted seventies soft-porn film, the first to draw a mainstream crowd, et cetera ad infinitum yadda yadda. According to a lot of professional reviewers. But if it’s so light-hearted, why does the film leave me so depressed? Has the whole world missed the point of this movie? Or am I making another movie up in my mind?
Let’s start with the Netflix synopsis, which I think is as laughably inaccurate as it’s always been:

See, if we all kneel down, we don’t have to hire midgets.

With this review we welcome Conundrum, another recruit to the Anvil and Sprocket Movie Review ranks. She’s agreed to take on another Misty Mundae film because — let’s face it — Sprocket and I have reviewed far too many of them. Anvil

You know what I like to do for fun? Go to the Ren Faire with a bunch of hot chicks and some not-so-hot guys, then head out to the woods afterwards, have everyone take off their clothes, and mock LOTR while pretending to have sex with each other. Okay, maybe not. But I get the impression that that’s what happened in this particular case.

Yeah, sex is messy.

I’ll answer the question first: yes, there is nudity in this movie. No, it’s not Caligula level, just some naked women and simulated sex. If you’re looking for porn, this is not for you.

Director and “actor” Jess Franco explains motivation to a chicken head.

I know I’ve spilled a lot of pixels already on Jess Franco films (Eugine, Female Vampire), but look at it this way: many directors only direct a handful of films. Brian De Palma (_Carrie_, Bonfire of the Vanities) has done about thirty-six. A respectable number. But Franco has somewhere around two hundred — he directed seven in 1974 alone. So reviewing Franco just takes more work. Hence my recent purchase of the Jess Franco DVD collection creatively called The Jess Franco Collection. I don’t want to drag this out any more than you do, so let’s just touch on the contents fairly briefly.

Apparently not afraid of sunlight.

As the opening credits of Jess Franco’s Female Vampire fade in and out on the screen, Lina Romay strides towards the camera — wearing nothing but an open cloak and a wide, black belt. Franco slowly zooms in on Irina’s face, then pans slowly down, past the breasts, past the navel, lingering on Irina’s naughty bits. Then the camera glides back up, and — reaching her face again — zooms back out. This is not just lascivious seventies film making. Well, OK. It is. But more importantly, it’s also Jess Franco taking advantage of newly liberalized French obscenity laws. So it’s historic lascivious seventies film making.

Psycho killer, qu?est que c?est.

Young red-head Mikura and blond punk-boy Harada live with their author friend and former police man Kurokawa in a converted bus. Kurokawa left the force to write a tell-all book (which the police didn’t appreciate). Now the three of them take odd jobs to support themselves. Very odd jobs, actually — and unquestionably illegal. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad people. The really bad people are gangster Momoi and his daughter Moname. And the good bad guys meet up with the bad bad guys when enigmatic guy Amoko shows up and hires the Kurokawa clan to kidnap Momoi.

Here, let me light that fright wig for you.

The most precious thing in the world is love. What happens to us if we don’t get it? Or — worse — if we get it but it stays at arm’s length? We start substituting things. Sometimes people drown their woes in bourbon or shoe purchases. Sometimes people meddle in other people’s private lives. Frequently there are affairs. But if you’re spoiled-rich-girl Barbara in Agony of Love, there is only one option: become a prostitute.

Here, let me light that fright wig for you.

The most precious thing in the world is love. What happens to us if we don’t get it? Or — worse — if we get it but it stays at arm’s length? We start substituting things. Sometimes people drown their woes in bourbon or shoe purchases. Sometimes people meddle in other people’s private lives. Frequently there are affairs. But if you’re spoiled-rich-girl Barbara in Agony of Love, there is only one option: become a prostitute.

Ah, biology lab. My favorite.

Lust for Dracula tries to blend conventions of artsy independent cinema with the conventions of the B-Movie genre. The results are unsurprisingly mixed, and the film suffers significantly from obvious budgetary and talent over-reach. In the end it’s a muddle of a film that occupies the strange territory between joyless soft-core pornography and overly-earnest student film.

Ah, biology lab. My favorite.

Lust for Dracula tries to blend conventions of artsy independent cinema with the conventions of the B-Movie genre. The results are unsurprisingly mixed, and the film suffers significantly from obvious budgetary and talent over-reach. In the end it’s a muddle of a film that occupies the strange territory between joyless soft-core pornography and overly-earnest student film.

“Hey, Bob – remember the other day when you asked me for an example of ‘mixed signals?’”

“The motion picture that follows is a fable,” reads the opening declaration of The Monster of Camp Sunshine. “In it there are many nudists but only one monster. In life, it is generally the other way around.” Immediately following that statement comes the offbeat clip-art animation opening titles by S. Eek, featuring scientists twisting and manipulating animals in the lab, nude men falling past skyscraper windows, and an enigmatic pelvis-thrusting (fully-clothed) man. By now, you should know that you’ve just bought a ticket for a very strange ride.

“Nothing like a smoke after a good, hardcore kidney transplant.”

There are lots of different kinds of bad movies. There are bad movies that know they’re bad, and share in that knowledge with the audience – turning their badness into an asset by never taking themselves seriously. There are bad movies that don’t know they’re bad, and thus become riotously funny. There are bad movies that don’t know they’re bad and are just so serious that they become painful. And there are bad movies that are so complete in their absolute incompetence that you wouldn’t show them to your worst enemy. The Beast That Killed Women is none of these.