Girl from Rio, The (1969)
** (out of 4)
Coming from the same era as his FuManchu pictures, this European spy-caper comes from Jess Franco and actually is fairly decent as long as you don't expect too much from it. In the film, which is basically a take-off on Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK, former Bond girl Shirley Eaton plays Sumitra, the leader of a female gang who plan on taking over the world by turning all the men into their slaves. The girl gang must try and fight a couple evil men (one played by George Sanders) who plan to try and stop them. There's no question that this isn't a very good film but at the same time it's actually better than you might expect it to be. The biggest problem is with the screenplay that really doesn't offer up anything overly original or entertaining as the film's pacing is always at a stop-go motion that ends up killing the film. We get a lot of funky visuals as there's no question this is one of those psychedelic pictures that I'm sure many potheads might enjoy. You've got a pretty good soundtrack, some decent cinematography and it's good to see some familiar names showing up. Sanders was certainly slumping at this point of his career but he manages to be mildly entertaining here. Eaton also manages to turn in a decent performance and it really does appear as she's into everything going on and having a good time playing pretty much a female James Bond. She's certainly chomping away at the dialogue and appears to be having a blast. I think those unfamiliar with the work of Jess Franco might find themselves enjoying this because they're not really sure what they would normally be seeing from the director. Franco worked a few films into this genre but I'm personally not a fan of any of them so in the end this is a decent effort but there's just not enough soul here for me. I prefer his 70s output, which featured more bizarre and poetic films.
