Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion

It seems I thought even more of this when first seen and I felt it, 'Absolutely sublime.' and 'Faultless' but now I feel maybe 'Venus in Furs' is even better. Beautifully made with sumptuous set design and costumerie and performances including a menacing one from Jack Taylor, are all fine. Featuring one of Bruno Nicolai's better scores this maintains an eerie sexiness throughout and thanks to Christopher Lees' central performance as narrator/De Sade all is most satisfactory. I think on this second viewing I was left feeling that it could either have been a little tougher and/or a little sexier but maybe it just caught me in the wrong mood and another viewing will have me purring with delight as before.

I bought this DVD a few years ago when my appetite for old obscure films was in full swing, and I was spending entire paychecks on DVDs. I bought this not knowing at all what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised all around. Eugenie is the story about the defiling and corruption of an innocent girl, by a step-brother/step-sister love-couple who are members of a sadistic cult, a cult which has the goals of re-enacting the works of De Sade using the flesh of young female virgins. The whole film has an air of dreamy, drugged hallucination, and Franco was on top of his game when he made this. Everything seems to fit together with this film better than other Franco films of the same era. It's best counterpart would be Venus in Furs, my other candidate for favorite Franco film. The soundtrack and scenery from 1970 now serve as a time capsule, excellently crafted and executed, along with copious amounts of full frontal female nudity, a trait still in it's infancy at the time. If you like films from the early days of the Ratings system, and like Franco-style exploitation films, than this is the perfect treat for you.

The idea of making a narrative film of de Sade's philosophical dialogue Philosophy in the Bedroom is an attractive one, and certainly any adaptation would have to (if it were to have any dramatic life at all) take liberties with the original text. Jess Franco's 1970 adaptation Eugenie… the Story of her Journey into Perversion takes the basic situation and the characters and transforms them into a quite different Sadeian tale. For my money, the original offers more interesting aspects, with the complete seduction of the young heroine into Dolmance's libertine lifestyle and the murderous abjection of the mother at the end. Franco's film has Eugenie, a young middle-class girl invited by swinging Madame de St. Ange and her pervy step-brother (a dilution of Sade's incestuous siblings) and falling prey to an elaborate plan of Madame's to set the girl up as a sacrificial victim as a punishment for taking the step-brother's love. Dolmance becomes a side-figure, appearing to help with Madame's scheme but turning it on her in the end, getting his twisted pleasure out of seeing everyone come to ruin. The most intriguing feature of this is the tacked-on revelation that the action has all been Madame's dream, a fantasy in which she is tricked out of her life – that a woman should have such fantasies is certainly provocative. The anti-Christian, republican and homosexual aspects of Sade's book are jettisoned. What we get in their place is a lot of softcore nudity and brittle upper-class decadence. The film is certainly creepy, although the creepiness is second hand, the idea of dreams which turn out to be real a direct lift from Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. Franco certainly knows how to direct the camera, although it is hard to tell whether the often out-of-focus camera-work was deliberate or not (a case could be made that it is, and behoves the dream that the film's action is). The pace is very slow. This is not a bad film about decadence, Sadism and being driven mad by sex, but there's surely a better narrative to be extrapolated from Sade's extraordinary book.

EUGENIE: THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION sounds like an extreme and exploitational Jess Franco movie but it's really not. Instead, this plays out as an extremely long-winded sexploitation drama, as the main character winds up on an island with various deviant characters and indulges in various sexual escapades. It's another excuse for Franco to shoot boring and repetitive sex scenes and line his film with * actresses, but it's very boring. It has almost nothing to do with Marquis De Sade and Christopher Lee's appearance - amounting to some brief narration and a cameo in a couple of scenes - is a real waste of time.

I am not ashamed to say I bought this entirely for the lead. She is incredible throughout. I was quite surprised to find myself enjoying the film, but it's certainly not very deep and it's all very silly. If you like Jess Franco films, he described this as the film he "hates the least". That might be an endorsement. I'm not sure. Interesting film, probably not worth watching unless you have the hots for the girl on the cover - something which lead to me picking up the box repeatedly until I eventually bought it. The film otherwise has its moments - some scenes reminiscent of Polanski and Lynch - only bloated and confused. Enjoyable enough if you like Hammer Horror films, etc. I wish she was in more films though.

Marquis de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' starts as a married man named Mistival (Paul Muller) secretly meets up with his mistress Madame Saint Ange (Maria Rohm) who convinces him to let his teenage daughter Eugenie (Marie Liljedahl) spend the weekend with her on her private island in exchange for some steamy sex, Mistival agrees & both parties seem happy. Madame Agne invites Eugenie to her island & she accepts the invitation, along with her gardener Augustin (Kaplan) & creepy brother Mirvel (Jack Taylor) they are alone on the island. All is not as innocent as it seems though as Madame Agne & Mirvel both belong to an order of people who live out the works of notorious author the Marquis de Sade & Eugenie is set for a starring role in an orgy or depravity & violence... This Spanish & German co-production was directed by Jesus Franco who I consider to be just about the worst filmmaker in cinematic history so maybe this review will be a little bit biased as I really despise the majority of the crap I have sat through that he has been responsible for, retitled to Eugenie... the Story of her Journey into Perversion for it's US release this was indeed based on the novel 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' by the Marquis de Sade. As I said, I hate Franco & his crappy low budget arty films that are as dull as dishwater to sit through & this is no exception despite many claiming it to be his masterpiece. A really boring pace that makes the thing feel like it's on for hours, a lack of proper character's & dialogue doesn't help neither does the limited location which confines the 'action' to about two rooms. The sleaze levels aren't up to scratch either with some full frontal female nudity but little else, the sex is as soft as it comes while the violence is tame. I don't know, I just don't get Franco or his boring films that his fans try to claim are arty surreal masterpieces but to me look like amateurish rubbish with limited stories so Franco has to end up filming random objects just to pad it out a bit. I only saw this yesterday & I can't really say I remember that much about it other than the pedestrian twist ending that in a better director's hands might have been effective but Franco drags it out & ends up boring everyone. The great Christopher Lee has a small role in this & has gone on record as saying he didn't know anything about the soft-core sex scenes & that they were added later without his knowledge. I guess that makes Franco a liar as well as a bad director. The location looks nice enough but what's with the constant whistling wind sound effect? This looks quite colourful & has a few scenes tinted in red for some reason, it's just a shame Franco doesn't know how to shoot a scene. The sex & violence really is tame, there's nothing here that you wouldn't see on late night telly these days. Filmed in Spain the locations look nice enough but Franco never uses them to any great effect. The acting is alright, Christopher Lee obviously stands out but otherwise there aren't that many other people in it. Marquis de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' or under whatever title you see it under is crap, I'm sorry but I just don't get Franco or his boring amateurish films. Franco later remade this as Eugenie (Historia de una perversión) (1980) or Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie as it was released in the US.

It is not difficult to understand why this languorous Franco ero-drama caused quite the controversy when released in 1970. It is sexually frank and throws in incest, lesbianism and interracial kissing with gleeful abandon. Today, it seems very tame from a graphic point of view, but its sexual politics are way ahead of the ultra-conservative (sexual) climate the film industry currently operates in. This is not an el cheapo Franco flutter shot on a castle set with bad lighting and hit-and-miss focus. It is beautifully shot by Manuel Merino and, as always, Bruno Nicolai delivers a rich, evocative score. Eugenie's "journey" into perversion encompasses light lesbianism, a little rough intercourse and some soft whipping of her tender breasts. She emerges more lost and confused than liberated and ends up wandering * for several minutes on an island; this sequence, the film's strongest, is quite surreal. Marie Liljedahl, who plays Eugenie, is not Soledad Miranda, and is quite bland in her leading lady role. Jack Taylor is suitably oily as Maria Rohm's lust-filled brother and Rohm makes the most of her role as Eugene's corrupter. I like EUGENIE DE SADE quite a bit more than this and find it far more erotic, but this is worth a look, if not high praise.

This is an film which is based on the book "Philosophy in the Boudoir" by the Marquis de Sade. Originally written in 1795, it is perhaps the most representative of all the Marquis de Sade's works. The script very cleverly adapts the original story for the modern time (that is 1970). Dialog is brilliant (Christopher Lee is mostly reading the original text by de Sade). Music is excellent. Acting is superb by all actors, most notably Maria Rohm, Jack Taylor and Christopher Lee. Marie Liljedahl is very convincing as the innocent young girl (she was just 19 while shooting). I don't like the idea to have an even younger actress for the part (like some other comment here seems to advise)! The cinematography fascinatingly uses the space on screen in focusing (and sometimes not focusing) different aspects of the image. But I must admit that this technique works much better on the big screen. Luckily I had the possibility the see this amazing piece of art in a theatrical screening. The film is highly recommended if you like the work of Luis Bunuel, Orson Welles, Douglas Sirk, Roman Polanski, Perdo Almodovar or David Lynch. That all said, avoid the film if your just looking for a cheap skin flick. You won't find it here. Go to your next videostore and rent something else: "If you want to watch *, then buy the real thing" (like one other reviewer said). This one has absolutely nothing to do with *. If you never heard of de Sade and if you have no interest in art and an experimental approach of film-making, you will find this film boring, stupid and you won't understand what's it about.

"Eugenie" is a scandalous story from the Marquis de Sade about a naive young girl who is sold by her father into the servitude of a married pair of depraved libertines who proceed to seduce and debauch her. Not surprisingly, it has not received a lot cinematic treatment (and could probably not even be made these days). Even the incredibly prolific and repetitive Jesus Franco only made two versions of the story, this and one in the early 80's called "Erotismo" ("Eugenie de Sade", made a year later with Soledad Miranda, is also based on a De Sade story, but is about a very different character also named Eugenie). This is no doubt the better version. It was made at a time when Franco had access to plenty of a money through producer Harry Allen Towers and quality international stars, not only Maria Rohm and Jack Taylor as the libertine couple, but even Christopher Lee (who apparently had no idea what he was getting into) as the leader of the strange sex cult the pair belong to. As the title character Eugenie, Swedish actress Marie "Inga" Lillejahl is a typical Franco actress of the period--not as talented as some Franco collaborators like Soledad Miranda or Rosalba Neri, but very beautiful and classy unlike many of his later actresses (including his wife Lina Romay, who beautiful as she was, had a bad tendency of indulging the director in his most tasteless cinematic fantasies). Lillejahl, I might also add, was older than the character she played, and it turns out it's much better to cast a twenty year old as a fourteen year in a fairly explicit role than an actual fourteen year old as he did in "Erotismo" (Katja Beinert, who ironically could have easily passed for twenty), not only for moral reasons but also artistic ones--just as a drunk is best played by someone who is not actually drunk, a naive innocent is most effectively played by someone who is NOT actually a naive innocent. The beautiful, dream-like style of the movie also does a lot to mitigate the inherent sleaziness of the subject matter. The scenes of Lillejahl stumbling naked along barren sand dunes with lots of phallic jutting rocks as the morning sun comes up are very memorable (even if they don't make a lot of sense). The repetitive opening and closing sequences Franco uses is a hoary device that goes all the way back to the British classic "Dead of Night", but it is quite effective and really adds to the dream-like atmosphere. One of the "good" Franco movies.

Jess Franco - smut king with talent. Maybe not at his best in this film, but worth buying for de Sade's writings flung into (what was then) present day, as an innocent girl gets seduced by a pervy couple and goes to stay with them upon her father's agreement. She gets sucked into a perversion story before becoming the perversion herself, when violent things naturally happen. The sex is very restrained for a Franco film, and Chris Lee looks vaguely ashamed in a limited role. But Lee's comments on the DVD about finding himself in a film showing in * cinemas in Soho, entirely to his surprise, are worthy of purchase alone. He also praises Franco, as he should - the guy has vision, but don't ask me what that vision is! To see Jess Franco at his erotic best, buy Female Vampire. For Franco completists, and fans of: quirky genre films, the forgotten roles of Christopher Lee, or mildly spicy filmic delights - get to see Eugenie!