Kiss Me Monster

This is an appalling movie by most people's standards, but I totally loved it. A must for anyone with a weakness for camp 60s psychedelia (of the Barbarella/Modesty Blaise/Diabolik variety) this Jess Franco film regales us with the further adventures of the 'Red Lips' gals - Diana (Janine Reynaud) and Regina (Rossana Yanni) who last brightened our lives in the still-more-outrageous Sadisterotica.

Two sexy undercover agents on the trail of a mad doctor and his race of Frankenstein-style monster hunks, Reynaud and Yanni strut about in deliriously over-the-top high-fashion outfits. Bicker back and forth like Edina and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Reduce any unfortunate male who crosses their path to a pool of helpless mush. Oh, and they even find time to perform a transvestite nightclub act on saxophones. Now that's what I call style!

As for the 'plot'(if there is any) I've seen this movie twice and still can't fathom it. Something about a tropical island, animatronic muscle men, whip-wielding lesbians, feathered cabaret outfits, effete and sinister scientists and a mystical secret sect who sit around in black Ku Klux Klan hoods and crimson robes and struggle (vainly, it turns out) to explain what is going on. The continuity is even more abysmal than in most of Franco's oeuvre - so much so that the girls seem to be driving a different car in every shot!

Yet as an introduction to this mad genius and his deranged and surreal style of movie-making, you could do a lot worse than Kiss Me Monster. At least in the version I saw, there's almost none of the lurid blood and sex that was standard in Franco's later work. The one truly nasty moment here is a brief-but-gruesome surgery scene. Otherwise, it's all good, clean, campy, psychedelic fun. Everyone on and offscreen seems be in a drug-induced haze. Well, it WAS the 60s after all!

This amusing but failed flick results to be a campy , sexy private eye fun from Jesús Franco . This film is starred by two lovely ladies of the 'Red Lips' detective agency , both of whom are on the track of missing objects . "Red Lips" are two female agents (Janine Reynaud as Diana and Rosanna Yanni as Regina) attempting to find a red box from Doctor Beltran . Two tough as well as scantily dressed detectives , both of whom are real knockouts . They are the most dazzlingly female spies , including their lipstick kiss as their trademark . At the end takes place a twisted surprise about the mysterious box .

Colorful but below average rendition about European spy sub-genre , an usual genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously ; being realized in similar style to famous strip-cartoon thrillers as ¨Modesty Blaise¨ , ¨Diabolik¨ and ¨Barbarella¨ . A loopy and illogical screenplay that is not much easy to follow , some crazy villains, secret societies , pointless but light nudism , and gorgeous girls . There's nonetheless a good-natured quality evident throughout which makes the whole thing an entertainingly goofy diversion . This very campy picture contains thrills , action , phantasmagoria , tongue-in-cheek , absurd situations , but being lousily developed and including some enjoyable though brief moments . A real campy hoot , slight but little watchable comic book style spy picture that was made by the time in which Franco directed nice movies such as ¨The sadistic Baron Klaus¨ , ¨Rififi En La Ciudad¨ , ¨Miss Muerte¨ or ¨Diabolic Doctor Z¨ , ¨Necronomicon¨ and ¨Gritos en la Noche¨ , developing a consolidated professionalism , as his career got more and more impoverished in the following years , but his endless creativity enabled him to tackle films in all genres, from "B" horror to erotic films . The main and support cast -with everyone having fun- is passable , but they are really wasted . The best of the interpretation results to be Adrian Hoven -also producer- as suspect Interpol agent . And a sympathetic Manolo Otero , he was a Latin lover as well singer , early deceased , who married Eurotrash goddess Maria Jose Cantudo . And other actors in brief appearances are Chris Howland , Marta Reves ,Barta Barri , many of them ordinary in Franco films . And , of course , brief acting by Jess Frank as a spy rapidly eliminated . Atmospheric original music by Jerry van Rooyen hits the groovy spot , including jam session , disco music and a catching leitmotif . Evocative cinematography by Jorge Herrero being filmed on location in Manga Del Mar Menor , Murcia , Cabo Roig , Alicante , Marbella and Munchen .

The motion picture was middlingly directed by Stajanovist Jesus Franco , best known for his nearly two hundred underground, "exploitation" films and it was filmed along with ¨El Caso De Las Dos Bellezas¨ shot back to back with similar casting and technical team . These films are admittedly pretty mild and innocuous stuff compared to Franco more racy and explicit movies . However , here he doesn't use his trademarks , as he pulls off a traditional narration , without zooms , neither sickening pace . As the picture belongs to Franco's first period in which he made passable flicks . Jesus signs under pseudonyms , he used to utilize usual marks such as zooms , nudism , foreground on objects , filmmaking in ¨do-it-yourself effort¨ style or DIY and managing to work extraordinarily quickly , realizing some fun diversions, and a lot of absolute crap . His oeuvre included about 200 films, among them The White Slave, The Sexual History of O, Macumba Sexual, , Emmanuelle Exposed, Vampyros Lesbos, The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll, and White Cannibal Queen. Many pictures had nice photography , full of lights and shades in Orson Welles style , in fact , Franco was direction-assistant in ¨Chimes at midnight¨ and edited ¨El Quijote¨ by Welles . He often used to introduce second , third or fourth versions , including Hardcore or Softcore inserts or sexual stocks many of them played by his muse Lina Romay . In many of the more than 200 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer, cinematographer and editor. His first was "We Are 18 Years Old" and the second picture was "The Awful Dr. Orlof" (1962) , the best of all them , it's followed by various sequels such as El Secreto del Dr. Orloff (1964) aka "The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll" , " Orloff y el hombre invisible (1970) aka "Dr. Orloff's Invisible Monster" and finally "Faceless" (1987) . He also directed to the great Christopher Lee in 4 films : "The Bloody Judge" , ¨Count Dracula¨, ¨The Blood of Fu Manchu¨ and ¨The castle of Fu Manchu¨ . Jesús's influence has been notable all over Europe . From his huge body of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless directors of Spanish cinema and often releasing several titles at the same time. Many of his films have had problems in getting released, and others have been made directly for video. More than once his staunchest supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one or more of his older films . Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when most of his colleagues tried to please the government administration. He broke up with all that and got the independence he was seeking. He always went upstream in an ephemeral industry that fed opportunists and curbed the activity of many professionals . This Underground Sex and Euro-Horror Director reviled by Catholic Church, even was Goya Winner . But time doesn't pass in vain, and Jesus' production has diminished since the 90s ; however he went on shooting until his recent death .

Unfortunately the version of 'Kiss Me Monster' I watched was the 75 minute, badly dubbed version. I'm blaming most of the movie's inadequacies on that. I enjoyed 'Sadisterotica' as a change of pace for Jess Franco - a campy spy thriller rather than his more typical erotic nightmares on film - but this is nowhere near as good.

The 'Red Lips' detective team (Janine Reynaud and Rosanna Yanni) return, as do a few Franco regulars. The plot this time around is paper thin. Some sheet music leads the girls to an island where a missing scientist has been experimenting on people. They pose as saxophonists (!) while they investigate the mysterious goings on there, which somehow involve a secret cult. There's all the usual double crosses, plot twists, skimpy outfits, and a totally gratuitous go-go dancing sequence, but the emphasis this time around is more on humour ("humour" - it isn't the least bit amusing) rather than action. Not Franco's best effort, and certainly not a good introduction to his oeuvre. 'Vampiros Lesbos' and 'Succubus' are still the best way for newcomers to begin.

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.

I'm gonna keep this review short and sweet (like the movie).

KISS ME MONSTER is nothing but fun. It's campy, it's surely a product of it's time (the late 1960's Europe), and if you like Eurospy spoofs and Jess Franco, you won't really be disappointed here.

The plot is whacky, (like it's predecessor, "Two Under Cover Angels", aka "Sadist Erotica"), but this movie really isn't about the plot. What makes it fun is the sharp fast paced witty dialog between the two leads. It comes off almost like a sitcom, paced with a jab or joke almost every other line.

So, that's about all there is to it, if you like these kinds of movies, and just want something very light and campy, check it out.