fertilecelluloid Review of Femmes de Sade

Femmes de Sade (1976)

Classic porn roughie that gets better with every viewing

[9/10 · 8 October 2006]

Excellent and erotic porno "roughie" from master filmmaker Alex de Renzy, who was one of the few 70's skinflick directors who knew how to make something resembling a real film. This is both erotic and grotesque. When Joey Silvera gets out of jail, he heads home to bang his girlfriend and, for some crazy reason, agrees to take recently released jailbird, Rocky de Sade (Ken Turner), with him. Once Silvera is through banging his girl, Turner assaults him and rapes her, thus beginning a vicious and repulsive rape spree. Meanwhile, John Leslie, who manages a porno bookstore, fantasizes about the pretty women who wander into his store. One fantasy, set on a boat, features Leslie and a couple of greasy cohorts engaging in wild, oily sex in the boat's engine room. The only sound accompanying this volcanic sequence is the vessel's churning engine. De Penzy has a great eye and ear for the erotic and delivers some sizzling hot material in this film. He cuts between the hideous Turner abusing and raping various women and Leslie's wild fantasies. Eventually, Turner wanders into Leslie's bookstore and the two plots finally converge. A reasonably infamous film, it features Turner sucking his own penis, Turner getting urinated on, and Turner being defecated on and being smeared with the stuff. The auto-erotic scene is a jaw-dropping experience and more bizarre than the famous scene in "Fascination" in which Ron Jeremy also swallows and ministers to himself. The film's final sequence is an orgy that is everything "Eyes Wide Shut" was not and surely influenced the work of Rinse Dream ("Cafe Flesh") and Greg Dark ("New Wave Hookers", "Sex Freaks"). Well shot, skilfully directed, and featuring some of porn's most stunning women, "Femmes de Sade" earned and has retained its holy place in the pantheons of porn.