The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Of all Jess Franco/Erwin C. Dietrich collaborations during the mid to late 1970s, this is the most bizarre. The two prolific auteurs here turn the tables on the 'women in prison' dramas for which they are collectively best known, by making 'respectable' men very much the prisoners, and seductive, glamourous women are in charge. Blue Rita (Martine Fléty) demands total obedience, sexual and otherwise, of her female co-horts, and their various forms of indoctrination are dwelt upon in typically lingering scenes of softcore lesbian activity. Franco achieves some haunting compositions with these scenes - which serves as a precursor for the kind of thing he did, more explicitly, in his latter-day One-Shot Productions - with many liaisons filmed through a fish-tank, and with misty disorientation within the sci-fi love/torture parlours.The look of this film is very different from the usual perception of an Uncle Jess film. No swaying palm trees or majestic, sun-drenched beaches. Instead, we have Parisian walk-ways, exotic, bustling streetways and picturesque city-scapes. Interiors are confined - or perhaps that should be unconfined - to chambers that wouldn't look out of place in 'Barbarella' or 'Logan's Run'; spacious and featureless, less like a sensuous boudoir and more like a set for an early music video, complete with dry ice.The characters are not massively well-defined, lost somewhat beneath the impressive and heavily stylised visual trappings, but my favourites include the briefly known Moira (Vivky Masmin) and the apparently naïve Sun (Dagmar Bürger).Regular musician Walter Baumgartner excels with a mad fusion of gurgling electronica, tribal and jazz, with a repeated brass section track that sounds like the theme to Coronation Street. It might be his most eccentric musical concoction.The story involves Rita, who hates men as a result of former abuse, and her female brigade, who kidnaps and tortures wealthy men and male 'spies' and makes them talk by sexually stimulating them to the point of insanity. This espionage nonsense is interspersed with Franco-favourite sleazy club scenes that are elevated by garish costumes, purple wigs and pink walls. Interesting use is made of colour, infusing every scene with a kind of garishness that provides a palpable contrast to the 'ordinary' world 'on the outside.' That contrast, I think, is my favourite element in this film. You really don't know what goes on behind closed doors.

"Das Frauenhaus" or "Blue Rita" is a co-production between Switzerland and France that resulted in a German-language film back in 1977, which means this one will have its 40th anniversary next year. The writer and director is the incomparable Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco and if you know him, you also know what to expect here: namely a seemingly ambitious plot that gets lost in bad writing and story-telling and instead it ends up being all about the sex scenes and nudity. Or does it really? It may be true that Franco includes sensual and aesthetic sex scenes with stunning women, but not so in this one really. I must say I found the sex scenes in here really unpleasing to watch and a lot of it may have to do with the lights and colors Franco used here. I read in another review that they called his approach psychedelic and this is exactly the perfect word. Watching this film made me think that Franco really wanted to leave a creative note in here, but it really all went wrong unfortunately. The only somewhat appealing thing was the purple wig one of the girls (maybe actually the only hot one because of it) was wearing. I cannot say I am familiar with any of the cast members here and Martine Fléty, who plays the title characters, also was/is fairly unknown compared to other women Franco cast as leads in his films, such as the wonderful Soledad Miranda or Lina Romay for example. As a whole, this film was not working from any perspective. Instead it was really cringeworthy how Franco failed with the use of colors that added little to the story that was already elaborated on pretty badly anyway. I highly recommend to stay away from this movie. Don't watch.

Say what you like about old Jess, but he knew what he wanted from a film, and very often got it. Like with Blue Rita, barely enough budget to cover all the doors in tin foil or make the night club look very different from a waiting room, he got the girls, he got them to take off their clothes and he used lights and what props he had to make a ravishingly attractive piece of nonsense. Here is the most elegant of soft core movies that also includes the torture (albeit with green paint and promise/denial of sex) of gents in chains. Whole scenes are shot through fish tanks and although there is some sort of spy plot-line,it makes no sense so can be completely ignored.

"Blue Rita" is more or less what you'd expect from a Jess Franco film: very explicit - very kinky - very strange - very incoherent - very bad. The plot, as far as I could say, is about some Parisian strippers who double as secret agents: they kidnap enemy (whose enemy? Never mind) spies and use sexual torture methods to make them "talk". To give Franco credit, the production design is colorful and the cinematography is often striking. But the editing is incompetent and the pace is deadly. What puzzles me is how Franco convinced so many young women in his films to bare everything and be treated as pieces of meat by the camera, but I guess the men don't come off much better either. Still, if you just want to stare at naked women on the screen "Blue Rita" will do the job....but so will many other AND better films. (*1/2)