Several years ago I watched the film in which this is a sequel to, namely Sadisterotica (1969). I remember distinctly finding it to be fairly atrocious on the whole. To my pleasant surprise, a fellow, very kind IMDb user sent me a copy of its sequel; so what of Kiss Me, Monster? Well, it has to be said upfront that both movies do sport somewhat cool titles and the basic idea behind them is a pretty encouragingly good one. But from what I can fathom, this sequel is pretty much of a similar standard to its earlier equivalent. And this is not especially a good thing on balance.
Once again, it focuses on two slinky female detectives, played once more by Janine Reynaud and Rosanna Yanni. They set out to investigate a new case in which song lyrics from the hand of a dead man leads to an island where a scientist has been creating muscle-bound mutants in red posing pouches. In order to get close to their adversaries, the two women go undercover as an erotic nightclub act. Various people are killed along the way and, well, we get to the finale somehow.
In this film, stuff happens. That's as good a way of describing events as any, as the style that has been used to tell the story makes it a little hard to follow at times. Like most films from director Jess Franco, this one has pacing problems. Except in this case the problem is the exact opposite of what it usually is, in that unlike the slow pace of most of his other features this one is paced far too fast for its own good. When the main story thread got underway, it took me some time to realise that it wasn't a flashback I was watching such was the rapidity of events depicted – a bloke pitches up, is killed and the ladies are off and quickly encounter many characters in quick succession. In order to tell this particular plot-driven story Franco would have been better putting the brakes on here and there. Consequently, we hurtle through the narrative in a fast and haphazard fashion, meaning it's not easy to keep fully engaged with events. Similar to Sadisterotica this one also sports dubbing of the bottom of the barrel variety. I don't mind dubbing generally but this stuff just sounds like voice-overs too upfront in the mix that only vaguely connects to the characters on-screen.
I couldn't pretend to say I found this to be a good film but it does have definite Euro cult value and its general bizarreness does count for something at least. I reckon though if you need to see a Franco effort in the spy genre then The Girl from Rio (1969) is for me the best he has executed of this type. The very fact that Jess knocked out all three of these spy movies I have mentioned in this review in one year (plus a whole bunch of other flicks also) probably gives you a good idea why the likes of this one seems a little
rushed.
