Imagine, if you will, that Barbarella got a head injury, lost her luggage, and wandered into a knockoff Bond film directed by someone who learned filmmaking by watching shampoo commercials on acid. That’s The Girl from Rio, Jess Franco’s 1969 camp catastrophe—a psychedelic pulp disaster dressed up in go-go boots and gold lamé, slathered in soft focus and disco sweat.
The film is allegedly based on the pulp stories of Sax Rohmer—yes, the same guy responsible for the Fu Manchu series that aged like milk in a sauna. Here, Franco gives us another of Rohmer’s femmes fatales: the luscious but lethal Sumuru, played by Shirley Eaton, who you might recognize as the gold-painted corpse from Goldfinger. This time, she’s not dead—just dead behind the eyes.
Sumuru runs a secret all-female dictatorship called Femina, located in the fictional land of—wait for it—“Femina.” It’s a utopia for man-hating supermodels who wear matching metallic bikinis and operate a government built entirely out of lazily repurposed airport lounges. Franco apparently thought “feminist dystopia” meant “half-dressed extras lounging in mod chairs, smoking long cigarettes and occasionally pressing buttons that shoot lasers.”
Sumuru’s mission? World domination via seduction and electroshock. You see, the women of Femina lure corrupt men to their deaths through the ancient feminine art of standing around and looking vaguely annoyed. If that sounds empowering, don’t worry—it’s not. These women couldn’t conquer a salad bar, let alone planet Earth. They mostly just take baths, glare at each other, and kill time until Jess Franco zooms in on someone’s thighs again.
Opposite them is Jeff Sutton, played by Richard Wyler, who looks like a man who’s spent the last 20 years eating protein powder and speaking in monotone. Sutton is supposedly a “hero,” but he spends most of the film getting knocked unconscious, tied up, or leered at. He’s about as dynamic as a sandbag with biceps. His mission? Something about stolen money. Or maybe he’s just lost. Either way, he ends up stuck between Sumuru and a mustache-twirling villain named Masius (George Sanders), who acts like Blofeld’s accountant and speaks with the weary resignation of a man who regrets every decision that led him to this paycheck.
Let’s talk about Shirley Eaton for a moment. This was her swan song—her final film before she left acting forever—and after watching this, you can understand why. She struts around like a bored dominatrix forced to manage a failing casino, barking orders to her bikini-clad henchwomen and frowning at monitors that flash like a thrift-store lava lamp. She’s supposed to be commanding and seductive, but most of the time she looks like she’s trying to remember what movie she’s in.
And the direction—sweet merciful god, the direction. Jess Franco shoots everything with the detached indifference of a man filming a dentist appointment. He’s got color to play with, sure, but he uses it like a child with a broken crayon set. Neon greens, sickly yellows, bloodless reds—each scene feels like it was lit by a malfunctioning jukebox. And the zooms, oh the zooms. Franco zooms in and out like a pervert testing the lens for nipple proximity. Sometimes he zooms in on nothing at all—just a wall, or someone’s elbow, or a chair that hasn’t been relevant for three scenes. It’s like the camera’s drunk and looking for meaning.
The sets, meanwhile, appear to be cobbled together from whatever furniture was lying around a condemned airline terminal. Control panels are made of cardboard and Christmas lights. Futuristic doors are clearly made of painted plywood. There’s one “high-tech” chamber that looks suspiciously like a tanning bed next to a disco ball. And yet, everyone acts like they’re in a Kubrick film, solemnly delivering pseudo-scientific gibberish while dressed like rejected contestants from The Price Is Right.
But the real villain here isn’t Sumuru, or Masius, or even Jess Franco—it’s the editing. Scenes cut randomly, conversations don’t match, and half the film plays like it was stitched together using a blindfold and a jar of Vaseline. Characters teleport across continents with no explanation. Dialogue gets swallowed by music so loud and obnoxious you’ll swear someone’s attacking your ears with a synth and a shoehorn. The soundtrack, incidentally, is what happens when you lock a jazz band and a funk group in a sauna with a drum machine and let them fight to the death.
And let’s not forget the plot, which unravels faster than a dollar-store bikini. The whole movie is one long, meandering fever dream about nothing in particular—men getting seduced, women pretending to be in control, and Franco’s camera bouncing around like it’s searching for a point. There are subplots introduced and abandoned like stray cats. At one point, Sutton escapes by climbing out a window and stealing a boat, and the film treats it like a dramatic turning point. Then he’s just captured again five minutes later. It’s like narrative whack-a-mole, but with less excitement and more polyester.
What’s baffling is how Franco tries—tries—to inject eroticism into the proceedings. But it’s all so clinical, so bored. The film is a parade of women in thigh-high boots and zero personality. The sex appeal is flatter than the sound mix. Even the lesbian undertones are shot with the enthusiasm of a tax audit. It’s as if Franco wants you to be aroused but can’t be bothered to remember what arousal looks like.
By the time the film ends, with Sumuru’s empire reduced to rubble and everyone vaguely shrugging about the experience, you realize you’ve just watched 90 minutes of absolutely nothing. No tension, no resolution, no entertainment. Just a haze of missed opportunities, cultural clichés, and eroticism so lifeless it needs mouth-to-mouth.
The Girl from Rio could’ve been a stylish, subversive pulp fantasy—a psychedelic Bond pastiche with feminist fangs. Instead, it’s a half-naked nap. A lazy, culturally tone-deaf mess. A film that mistakes colored lights for style and skin for substance.
Verdict: Skip it. Unless you’re writing a thesis on failed European co-productions, or you just enjoy watching actors try to keep their dignity while wearing metallic leotards and spouting lines like, “Welcome to Femina, where men are obsolete.” In that case, pour a drink. Make it a double. You’re gonna need it.
