'Shock Treatment' is the quoted translation at the start of this Alain Delon flick, part of the Alain Delon 'Screen Icons' box-set. The title used by IMDb stinks of Carry On innuendo as it belittles a popular sort of subject when it was made in 1973.
Rejuvenation and cosmetic beautification and its perceived ramifications were subjects handled quite a bit by the likes of Michael Crichton and this rather strange brew of beauty and savagery quite neatly stitches these two aspects together.
Annie Girardot plays the retail executive out to get some posh spa treatment at the exclusive resort run by the sinister Dr Devilers (Delon). Amongst the carrot juice cocktails and seaweed scrubs are life- affirming injections, whilst the ever rotating staff of illegally working Portuguese young male staff are despondent for some reason. A fellow patient mysteriously commits suicide and so Girardot goes on the prowl and does some investigating.
The explicit nudity was indeed an eye opener as I was only aware beforehand that it was cert 15 but of course all that frivolity, naturalness and freedom comes at a price. It all becomes nicely sickening the more we know as to how the clinic works and how it gets its medical "powers".
All in all, it's quite fun, suspenseful and macabre but please don't think that it's a cheesy comedy that's only out for cheap laughs that its popular title conveys.
Rejuvenation and cosmetic beautification and its perceived ramifications were subjects handled quite a bit by the likes of Michael Crichton and this rather strange brew of beauty and savagery quite neatly stitches these two aspects together.
Annie Girardot plays the retail executive out to get some posh spa treatment at the exclusive resort run by the sinister Dr Devilers (Delon). Amongst the carrot juice cocktails and seaweed scrubs are life- affirming injections, whilst the ever rotating staff of illegally working Portuguese young male staff are despondent for some reason. A fellow patient mysteriously commits suicide and so Girardot goes on the prowl and does some investigating.
The explicit nudity was indeed an eye opener as I was only aware beforehand that it was cert 15 but of course all that frivolity, naturalness and freedom comes at a price. It all becomes nicely sickening the more we know as to how the clinic works and how it gets its medical "powers".
All in all, it's quite fun, suspenseful and macabre but please don't think that it's a cheesy comedy that's only out for cheap laughs that its popular title conveys.