I don’t know much about the movie’s director, Bruno Gantillon, but this seems to have been his only foray into this genre.
Two girls, Françoise (Mireille Saunin) and Anna (Michèle Perello), are on a motoring trip. They stop at a gloomy inn. There’s a slightly sinister-looking dwarf giving them the eye. We will later learn that his name is Gurth (Alfred Baillou). The landlord advises the girls to leave at once, and not to go through the village.
The girls drive through the forest and get hopelessly lost. They start to get worried when they realise they’ve driven past the same landmarks half a dozen times. It’s the middle of the night and they’re running out of petrol. They take shelter in a dilapidated barn. It’s all a bit miserable and it’s cold but they cuddle up together, and the cuddling gets a bit intense and you know what happens next.
Next morning Anna has disappeared. Françoise is very upset. The sinister-looking dwarf tells her to follow him. He’ll take her to her friend. Instead he takes her to a lake where a boat, apparently propelled by magic, takes her to a castle. Apart from the dwarf the inhabitants of the castle are all female. And all young and pretty. Morgane (Dominique Delpierre) seems to be in charge.
Gurth seems to have a very enjoyable time watching the sapphic cavortings of Morgane’s girls.
We assume that Morgane is some sort of witch. She appears to have some magic powers. She seems to be able to manipulate time, or at least she can manipulate a person’s perceptions of time.
Gurth is her faithful servant, or at least that’s what appearances suggest. He might of course be a sorcerer. His position is rather ambiguous.
Morgane has her three girls, her love slaves - Yaël, Sylviane and Sarah. How they feel about Françoise’s arrival is yet to be seen. There’s the potential for jealousies.
And what of Anna? What has become of her? Her fate will be important.
And where do the old women fit in? Morgane’s queendom is a queendom of youth and beauty.
As you might expect Françoise’s arrival leads to turmoil. There were perhaps power struggles already simmering but if Françoise is to become Morgane’s favourite there will certainly be trouble.
This is not really a horror movie. It has some affinities to Jean Rollin’s movies of the same period but many of Rollin’s movies are not actual horror movies either (movies such as The Iron Rose or The Escapees). Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay definitely belongs to le cinéma fantastique (as do Rollin’s movies). It’s a movie that takes place in a different reality, the world of faery for want of a better word. Morgane’s queendom is a faery queendom. It’s not evil, but it’s not like our world. The rules are different. It can seem cruel. It is a world of beauty, love and sex. It may seem shallow, but maybe Morgane’s world is concerned with things that really matter while our world is concerned with trivia. It just depends on your point of view.
Morgane is not evil, but she is cruel and capricious and she simply does not operate according to human rules.
So it’s not a horror movie in the sense of dealing with overtly terrifying or horrifying things, but it is a disturbing movie.
The sense of otherworldliness is achieved quite effectively. We are constantly tempted to judge Morgane and Gurth and Yaël, Sylviane and Sarah but then we find ourselves reminded that human judgments are simply irrelevant in the world of faery.
This is also very much a world of women, a world of female passions and female jealousies.
This is one of those movies that offers classy arty softcore erotica. Beautiful women engaging in low-key lesbian love play, with hints of perversity. There’s a lot of nudity. I don’t think any of the nudity is gratuitous. It’s a fantasy movie but it’s an erotic fantasy movie. The nudity is essential (not that I have a problem with gratuitous nudity anyway).
The acting is quite good. We do feel that these are characters from a dark fairy tale rather than from the real world, which is as it should be. Dominique Delpierre as Morgane and Alfred Baillou as Gurth are particularly good, giving performances that are wonderfully ambiguous.
The movie enjoyed modest success in France but was never released in the U.S. or Britain. It was therefore entirely unknown in the Anglosphere until Mondo Macabro released it on DVD some years back. Their excellent DVD release should have rescued this movie from obscurity but unfortunately it still remains almost unknown.
Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay is a movie that does not deserve to languish in such obscurity. It’s a hypnotic subtly disturbing dream-like movie shot in a wonderful 15th century castle. It’s a superb example of le cinéma fantastique.
Mondo Macabro’s DVD release can still be found at a reasonable price and it offers an excellent transfer.
Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay is very highly recommended.
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