She Killed in Ecstasy (1971), Blu-Ray review

She Killed in Ecstasy (Sie tötete in Ekstase) is one of the films Jess Franco made with the extraordinary Spanish actress Soledad Miranda. Sadly, by the time the film was released in 1971 she was dead, killed in a car accident at the age of 27. She Killed in Ecstasy was made at the same time as Vampyros Lesbos (also starring Miranda) and it makes an interesting contrast. Vampyros Lesbos is a typically hypnotic dream-like Franco film in which reality is exasperatingly elusive. She Killed in Ecstasy is much more conventional, perhaps as close a Franco came in this period to making a relatively straightforward non-supernatural horror film. Dedicated Francophiles tend to prefer his more experimental films in which dream and reality are impossible to disentangle. She Killed in Ecstasy is a useful reminder that Franco was perfectly capable of making more conventional films.

She Killed in Ecstasy still has plenty of characteristic Franco touches. And of course with Soledad Miranda as the star there is plenty of steamy eroticism.

She Killed in Ecstasy is a kind of variation on an earlier Franco film, The Diabiolical Dr Z.

Dr Johnson is a brilliant young scientist who has pushed his experiments to the limits of what is permitted, and then gone well beyond that point. He is working in what today would probably be called the field of posthumanism. His experiments have landed him in a lot of trouble, he has been disgraced and struck off the medical register and he kills himself in despair.

His beautiful and devoted young widow (Soledad Miranda) now has only one thing to live for - revenge. She intends to destroy the four prominent doctors whom she blames for hounding her husband to his death. What weapon can a young woman on her own use to destroy four powerful establishment figures? The answer of course is sex.

This is a type of serial killer movie. It’s definitely a horror movie, albeit definitely non-supernatural. There is a slight hint of science fiction - there are elements here of the mad scientist movie (which links it to Franco’s Dr Orloff movies). Most of all it’s a female revenge movie. If a woman seeking vengeance for wrongs done to her is dangerous a woman seeking vengeance for wrongs done to someone she loves is infinitely more dangerous. This is the kind of story that the great Greek tragedians would have understood - they were familiar with the terrifying power of female vengeance. Mrs Johnson sees herself as a kind of avenging angel, a righteous avenger. She cares nothing for the law - she is seeking a much more primitive, much more primal, kind of justice.

Jess Franco was fascinated by the awesome power of female sexuality but in this film he is dealing with the even more awesome power of female love, and female love when it turns to hate.

While this movie has a fairly conventional narrative structure it does still deal with a favourite Franco theme, the blurring of the liner between reality and dream. When her husband died Mrs Johnson (we never find out her Christian name) lost all connection with reality. She now lives in a fantasy world in which she is going to save her husband and then they will go off together and be happy again. His death is something she simply cannot accept. She cannot let go of him. Literally. She preserves his body.

It can be difficult to judge an actress’s performance when her voice is dubbed, as Soledad Miranda’s was in the original German language version, but that’s no problem in this case. She does her acting with her eyes and she really is extraordinary. There is so much pain and so much anger in her eyes. It’s a riveting performance.

Howard Vernon is excellent as the first of Mrs Johnson’s victims, a pompous moraliser who enjoys being sexually humiliated. He’s so odious that her contempt and her rage are easy to understand. Franco himself plays one of the victims, and gets himself tortured. One of the doctors targeted by Mrs Johnson is a woman but as luck would have it Dr Crawford (played by Ewa Strömberg) is a lesbian so Mrs Johnson can use sex against her as well. The murder with giant plastic inflatable pillow is pretty bizarre but pretty memorable as well.

Franco’s genius for finding locations is well to the fore. In this case it’s a modernist housing complex and Calpe in Spain and for the first time we see Xanadu, the extraordinary house that features in several Franco films (most notably Countess Perverse).

The level of violence is much milder than you might expect from the subject matter. In fact it’s extremely restrained. Perhaps too restrained but on the other hand that restraint does work in a way - it puts the focus entirely on Soledad Miranda’s performance. The real violence takes place in her eyes as she kills.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release offers a lovely transfer with quite a few extras (interviews with Franco and Franco maven Stephen Thrower plus a fascinating featurette on Soledad Miranda’s career). The soundtrack is in German with English subtitles provided.

She Killed in Ecstasy might not be one of Franco’s major films but it does feature an utterly magnificent performance by Soledad Miranda which is enough to make it a must-see. Highly recommended.