Jess Franco's EUGENIE is his more personal follow-up to the long-unavailable (until Blue Underground's 2002 release) of his scope PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOUDOIR adaptation EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION. Soledad Miranda (billed as Susan Korday - a variation on her Susan Korda pseudonym used in roles requiring nudity) plays Eugenie who begins an incestuous and sadistic affair with her stepfather Paul Radeck, a writer whose work has not met with the success it deserved. They embark on a series of thrill-killings (one of the victims is future Franco starlet Alice Arno in her first role for him). Their next intended victim is a sensitive jazz musician (Andre Montchall) but Eugenie falls in love with the artist and incurs the wrath of her stepfather.

There is no version called EUGENIE DE SADE. There are posters that have the title EUGENIE in large letters and "DE SADE" under it but that is an authorial credit (appropriately so since Franco and his actors reportedly improvised using the book "Eugenie de Franval" as the basis). The title is used to distinguish it from Jess Franco's EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (released abroad as DE SADE '70 and PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOUDOIR) as was EUGENIE 80 aka EROTISMO which was another variation on "Philosophy in the Boudoir" (as were Franco's SEXUAL STORY OF O and TENDER FLESH). With a lower budget than the Harry Alan Towers-produced EUGENIE, Franco convincingly modernizes De Sade's story while dropping the moral framing inviting the audience to judge for themselves the actions and motivations of the protagonists and their tragic end. In addition to the remarkable performance of Soledad Miranda (in the fourth of eight collaborations with Franco before her tragic death), Paul Muller is equally captivating in one of his few lead roles for Franco (he also played the duped father to Marie Liljedahl's Eugenie in Franco's adaptation of "Philosophy in the Boudoir" but had little screentime in that film). Director Jess Franco plays critic Atilla Tanner who is not so much hunting and persecuting the actions of the Radecks so much as studying them. This bit of self-casting adds another layer to the film as he has both directed it and his character visualizes the story proper in flashbacks are told to him by Eugenie.

This is without a doubt Franco's finest adaptation of Sade (his "Philosophy in the Boudoir" is a highly recommended visual and aural delight that is let down by Harry Alan Towers' scripting which may be why Franco has reworked the basic framework of that Sade tale in the more erotically effective subsequent works listed above).

Eric Cotenas