There are bad movies, and then there’s Wicked Women — Jess Franco’s 1978 effort to redefine the erotic thriller as a genre where absolutely nothing thrilling happens, and the eroticism has the heat of a lukewarm shower in a retirement home. Originally released under a flurry of alternative titles (Women Without Innocence, Frauen ohne Unschuld, Jess Franco’s Ongoing Tax Problem), this is a movie that should come with a warning label: “Caution — prolonged exposure may result in loss of will to live, libido, and respect for cinema.”
Plot? Ha. That’s adorable. The movie tries to convince you that it has one, but that’s just Franco gaslighting us through voiceover. The story centers around a woman named Maria (Muriel Montossé, aka Victoria Adams), a so-called “fallen woman” with the backstory of a Greek tragedy and the screen presence of a tranquilized swan. After being released from prison for killing her lover (or maybe his horse? The details are unclear), she’s taken in by an older, supposedly respectable couple who offer her a place to stay and a job.
Naturally, this “kindness” devolves into a swamp of seduction, manipulation, and emotional blackmail — all filmed with the urgency of someone filming a turtle nap. The couple’s own relationship is a mess of jealousy, boredom, and dead-eyed softcore fumbling. Everyone wants to sleep with Maria. Maria mostly wants to stare into the distance while piano music plays. There’s a hint of mystery, a whiff of noir, and a full dump truck of Franco’s favorite trick: pretend something’s happening, when really you’re just zooming into an actress’s kneecap again.
Let’s be honest: calling Wicked Women “erotic” is like calling wet cardboard “hydrated.” The sex scenes are slow, mechanical, and deeply sad. People touch each other with the enthusiasm of DMV employees sharing a goodbye hug. Muriel Montossé spends roughly 78% of her screen time nude, but it’s not titillating — it’s oppressive. Franco’s camera lingers on her like it’s trying to crawl into her pores. There’s no passion here, just endless slow-motion caressing while saxophones weep in the background.
The cinematography is Franco on autopilot: soft focus, harsh zooms, and a color palette that makes everything look like it’s been soaked in nicotine and regret. Every scene seems to take place in a different lighting dimension. One moment it’s candlelit gloom, the next it’s overexposed daylight with no transition. Franco’s use of mirrors and gauze filters would be avant-garde if it weren’t so clearly meant to disguise the fact that they were filming in someone’s furnished basement.
As for the dialogue? Franco’s script reads like it was translated from Spanish into French into German and then finally into English by a haunted typewriter. Characters speak in cryptic aphorisms like:
“Love is just the ghost of pain… wearing perfume.”
“She was wicked, but in a soft way — like poisoned honey.”
“We all have prison walls. Some are made of stone. Others… of thighs.”
It’s the kind of writing that makes you feel like you’ve suffered a minor concussion, but no, that’s just Franco trying to be profound with a thesaurus and a hangover.
And let’s talk about pacing — or rather, the lack thereof. Wicked Women drags like a cigarette at a funeral. Scenes go on for eternities. There’s one shot — I swear — of Maria walking across a room, sitting on a bed, standing up, lighting a cigarette, and walking back… that takes nearly four minutes. For no reason. It’s less storytelling, more cinematic hostage-taking.
Characters appear and disappear without warning or explanation. Subplots are introduced and never resolved. There’s a psychiatrist, a detective, possibly a ghost, and someone’s mother — or lover — who may or may not be dead. Every time the movie threatens to introduce an actual twist, it gets distracted by the sight of a naked woman brushing her hair or crying silently into a velvet pillow.
The music — oh, the music. It’s the same five-note piano theme repeated over and over again like a broken music box left in a swamp. Occasionally, a dissonant jazz flute will shriek in the distance, just to make sure you’re still awake. The soundtrack is less a score and more of an emotional diagnosis: chronic melancholy with bursts of confusion.
And the acting? Montossé tries, bless her, but she’s stuck playing a character who only exists to be ogled and emotionally dismantled. Everyone else floats through their scenes like ghosts in a perfume commercial. The male characters are uniformly awful — predatory, pathetic, or both — and the women aren’t much better, existing solely to enable the plot’s endless cycle of seduction and betrayal. Nobody talks like a human being. Nobody moves like they’ve read a script. It’s like Franco cast his friends, handed them a bottle of wine and a vague concept, and told them to “feel the shadows.”
By the time we reach the film’s “climax” — a sort-of murder, a flashback within a flashback, and one last emotionally dead sex scene — you’ll be too emotionally numb to care. The final twist is supposed to be tragic and poetic. Instead, it’s just one more layer of fog in a movie already drowning in its own pretensions.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5 wandering sax solos
Wicked Women is Jess Franco doing what he does best — and by “best,” I mean meandering through an aimless mess of nudity, nihilism, and nonsensical art-house ennui. It’s not sexy. It’s not scary. It’s barely even a movie. It’s a half-hearted whisper of a thriller that gets lost in its own bathrobe.
Watch it only if you’re a Franco completist, a masochist, or conducting an experiment on the long-term effects of European softcore cinema on brain activity. For everyone else, leave these wicked women to wander the VHS bargain bin where they belong — preferably wrapped in crime scene tape and labeled do not resuscitate.
