Il sesso degli angeli

I recently watched the Italian crime thriller 🇮🇹 The Sex of Angels (1968) on the Full Moon app on Prime. The storyline follows three stunning Italian women who, after a night of indulgence with an Italian playboy, decide to take him on a ride where his wealth and freedom are at stake.

Directed by Ugo Liberatore (Bora Bora), the film stars Bernard De Vries (Erika), Rosemary Dexter (Eye in the Labyrinth), Doris Kunstmann (Funny Games), Giovanni Petrucci (Death Rides a Horse), and Laura Troschel (The Blind Fly).

This is one of those films that you hope will be more creative than it turns out to be. Yes, the women are beautiful, and the Mediterranean backdrop is undeniably gorgeous. The setup of the plot had potential, but there are some cheesy elements throughout. The "Virgin" subplot felt especially corny. Surprisingly, there wasn't as much nudity as one might expect from a film of this nature. The portrayal of LSD use and its effects, were hilarious. The ending, unfortunately, was too straightforward and predictable.

In conclusion, The Sex of Angels aims for cleverness but misses the mark. I'd score it a 4/10 and recommend skipping it.

Il sesso degli angeli (1968), also known as The Sex of Angels, is a visually striking Italian thriller that promises more than it ultimately delivers. While boasting an intriguing premise and gorgeous cinematography, the film struggles to maintain its momentum, resulting in a somewhat uneven viewing experience.

The film's strongest asset is undoubtedly its lush, sun-drenched visuals that capture the allure of the Adriatic coast. Director Ugo Liberatore, making his feature debut, demonstrates a keen eye for composition and an ability to create an unsettling, dreamlike atmosphere through clever camerawork and lighting. The jazzy score by Giovanni Fusco also adds to the film's seductive, yet ominous tone.

Unfortunately, the narrative itself fails to live up to its provocative setup. What begins as a tantalizing psychosexual thriller about three wealthy women who kidnap a stranger for a drug-fueled weekend loses its way in the second half. The pacing slows to a crawl, and the characters' motivations become increasingly muddled and implausible. The performances are solid, with Rosemary Dexter as the unhinged ringleader making a particularly strong impression, but they can't fully compensate for the script's deficiencies.

While far from a complete misfire, Il sesso degli angeli never quite capitalizes on its intriguing premise or stylistic flair. It remains a fascinating cult curiosity from the psychedelic era and an interesting early entry in Liberatore's filmography. However, its inability to sustain its initial sense of dread and eroticism relegates it to the ranks of a flawed, though visually arresting, minor giallo/thriller.

Ugo Liberatore pioneered in the art of scenic, globe-hopping porn, with films visiting Bora Bora, Bali, the Pitcairn Islands, and even giving merry olde England an ethnographic slant in perhaps his best pic MAY MORNING, about weird though time-honored rituals at Oxford. THE SEX OF ANGELS is a subpar effort set on the rocky coast of Yugoslavia.

Three beautiful young girls are vacationing on a magnificent yacht (belonging to the daddy of one of them), along with a stud acquaintance they bring along for obvious reasons. Centerpiece of the film is their experimenting rather disastrously with LSD, as the stud, listlessly played by Bernard De Vries, wakes up from a bad trip with a bullet hole mysteriously in his side.

From that point on the film dwindles away in unsatisfying fashion, perhaps a victim of the "hippy-dippy" era in which it was made. The girls fail to see properly to their friend's wound and all sympathy with the characters evaporates, long before the film mercifully concludes.

I watched a German-language version of this co-production, which is probably on a par with the Italian one, since it was scripted by a top German writer-producer Franz Seitz, who contributed to many classic films including Volker Schlondorff's THE TIN DRUM and Max Schell's THE PEDESTRIAN. Unfortunately the action here is strictly pedestrian.

The beautiful stars take their tops off, making this briefly a marketable art film in 1969 from United Artists' Lopert subsidiary, which at the time was playing off numerous Ingmar Bergman films during his Max/Liv era. I found Laura Troschel, as a token lesbian, the most interesting of the three, having seen both Rosemary Dexter and Doris Kunstmann previously in far better roles -latter memorable playing Eva Braun opposite Alec Guinness's Hitler.

In its best moments SEX OF THE ANGELS captures a little bit of that rare "daylit horror" mood that in film history has been nailed most successfully in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and PURPLE NOON. But mainly it is just Ugo doing his standard skin flick thing as prettified as could be, setting the stage for EMMANUELLE and endless Euro trash softcore sex films shot in exotic settings, of which I still think Hubert Frank's VANESSA was the pinnacle.

This little gem here has nothing to do with sexploitation or exploitation in general. The title is absolutely inappropriate and misleading. It's a very subtle psychological drama, with little or no T&A. Maybe the most approriate way to describe it would be Euripides "Bacchae" on LSD. The other parallel would be Roman Polanski "Knife in the water" but with a guy and three girls insted of a guy, young woman and an older man. Girls are gorgeous, music is terrific, Adriatic sea is beautiful. The only significant low point is an episode in a yugoslav pharmacy, which is corny to say the least. Some people here have complained about the ending, but it works perfectly fine for me.

Director, Ugo Liberatore's first film of only half a dozen or so and I have been meaning to watch his 1970 May Morning but its about bullying at oxford and I've been putting it off. This, however, is very much 1968 and has been quickly slipped into my 'Acid Erotica' list. Not that there is much skin on display here. The girls seem almost paranoid about revealing anything and are very careful how they slip their bikinis off and on. This is partly because the story seems to have them less than worldly and it seems very odd that whilst we have an LSD trip depicted (well, set up and the consequences thereof depicted) the girls do express real anxiety regarding loss of virginity. Almost the entire film takes place upon Daddy's yacht and has been mentioned by another, is reminiscent of Top Sensation and Interrabang, two superior films. Pleasant enough and whether the girls were told to act and look at each other so strangely or thats just the way they are, I don't know but it is rather unsettling at times.