Despite the fact that the gorgeous Maria Rohm is naked through much of "Venus in Furs", it manages to be a very boring and glacially slow film. What makes this worse is that the story idea was excellent and SHOULD have worked. The problem is not just the pacing but the style of the film--which tries to be artsy but which comes off as cheap. An odd combination indeed.
The story has very little dialog and is practically a silent movie with voice-over by the leading man, James Darren. However, it is MUCH slower-paced than a silent film. If you speed up a silent film, everyone looks funny as they move about wildly. If you speed up "Venus in Furs" it STILL looks very slow in places.
It begins with Darren working as a musician at a fancy party. When he takes a break, he sees a weirdo foursome--with a woman and two men torturing and drinking the blood of a gorgeous blonde. It seems, despite everything, consensual and Darren leaves them to their weird sex revelries. Soon, however, he's walking on the beach and finds this same blonde dead! Darren leaves Turkey where all this occurred and goes to Rio. There he sees the dead woman very much alive. Well, not exactly. Although they have a lot of sex (though often it's out of focus or focuses on anything but the titillating parts), the woman is almost zombie-like through much of the film. However, periodically, she disappears and appears at the homes of the three who killed her. Then, she gets naked and kills them all--one by one.
While this sounds like an interesting and sexy idea, it certainly isn't. Too many pieces of what appear to be stock footage used as filler, too many LONG and silent and seemingly meaningless montages, too many seemingly random edits, too many periods where there was no editing whatsoever yet there should have been LOTS and too little dialog or life make this seem like a French art film merged with "Night of the Living Dead"--but with far, far, far less energy. Overall, a completely boring film that seemed to drag on forever. This isn't art, this isn't soft-core porn and this isn't horror--it's just a dull and artless waste of time.
The story has very little dialog and is practically a silent movie with voice-over by the leading man, James Darren. However, it is MUCH slower-paced than a silent film. If you speed up a silent film, everyone looks funny as they move about wildly. If you speed up "Venus in Furs" it STILL looks very slow in places.
It begins with Darren working as a musician at a fancy party. When he takes a break, he sees a weirdo foursome--with a woman and two men torturing and drinking the blood of a gorgeous blonde. It seems, despite everything, consensual and Darren leaves them to their weird sex revelries. Soon, however, he's walking on the beach and finds this same blonde dead! Darren leaves Turkey where all this occurred and goes to Rio. There he sees the dead woman very much alive. Well, not exactly. Although they have a lot of sex (though often it's out of focus or focuses on anything but the titillating parts), the woman is almost zombie-like through much of the film. However, periodically, she disappears and appears at the homes of the three who killed her. Then, she gets naked and kills them all--one by one.
While this sounds like an interesting and sexy idea, it certainly isn't. Too many pieces of what appear to be stock footage used as filler, too many LONG and silent and seemingly meaningless montages, too many seemingly random edits, too many periods where there was no editing whatsoever yet there should have been LOTS and too little dialog or life make this seem like a French art film merged with "Night of the Living Dead"--but with far, far, far less energy. Overall, a completely boring film that seemed to drag on forever. This isn't art, this isn't soft-core porn and this isn't horror--it's just a dull and artless waste of time.