Max Pecas is perhaps the finest of the many French sex film directors, and had considerable success in the U.S. with exports of his films, notably early Elke Sommer starrers right through to XXX FELICIA. TORMENT is more standard fare, but well-made and entertaining.
The formula is the usual crime stuff, which reached its peak in the work of Jean-Pierre Melville, and loaded with pretty girls in states of semi-undress. Screenwriter Jean-Patrick Manchette went on to script many notable genre films for top directors (including Chabrol) and one of my favorite tongue-in-cheek (and frankly screwy) Alain Delon vehicles LE CHOC.
TORMENT is about Kim, a lovely (if stiff acting-wise) girl having trouble with step-mom Linda and gangster Rico (played by the smoothie of vintage French soft porn, Claude Cerval). Rico wants to blackmail her dad, and meanwhile the bald villain Joe Darian (sounds like a U.S. porno director moniker!) is taking advantage of Kim's aspirations to be a model. Darian rapes her and incriminating photos seeming to show her & Linda in a compromising clinch (not so) are taken by Rico, furthering his blackmail aspirations. Stolen diamonds in Darian's possession figure prominently in the plot.
There are many twists and turns, with most of the characters (all of the males) of dubious morality, leading to a climactic shootout. Setting of Joe's modeling studio provides an endless stream of beautiful girls going topless, in fairly strong sex-tease footage for 1967, when the picture made it to the States. My favorite sex-tease scene has a Nordic blonde posing practically nude playfully in the studio with a Snowman, as THE THIRD MAN style zither music plays.
English dubbing is adequate, though they were careless in not properly replacing background and incidental sound. This is most apparent in a scene of Linda giving herself a thrill with an old Joe Sarno-style massager gadget: presented silently by mistake. Photography, as usual for Pecas, is excellent, with great chiaroscuro black & white shadow-play for interior scenes.
The unidentified baldie Darian (he's compared to Yul Brynner at one point) is the most memorable character, upstaging Cerval for a change. Actresses are merely decorative, but that was the point of the exercise.
