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Marquis de Sade's Justine

Marquis de Sade's Justine

List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $17.96
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fun seeing Jack Palance soused --
Review: As director Jesus Franco says in an accompanying interview, Jack Palance would start guzzling red wine at 7 in the morning the days his scenes were to be filmed, and BOY, can you tell it in the finished product! There are lots of pretty scenes, photography, costumes, people, etc., but it's mostly a bore. I recommend EUGENIE DE SADE for anyone dipping their toe into Franco ....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good b-movie
Review: Blue underground has done some magic with this DVD. The transfer is superb - it looks better than many movies today. The soundtrack is clear and live despite being mono. The voices seem dubbed at times - but I assume that's a fault with the original movie. The short (20min) review with the director & producer - is one of the best I've seen.

The movie itself is interesting at most times, with some boring (not too many) scenes. The movie is quite intriguing - although not to everybody's taste. ...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Fast forward review
Review: For sex sleaze fans, any more sleaze on the DVD than on the tape? Nope, sorry, same scenes. The quality is very nice, so you'll never see the hankerchief-sniffing branding scene looking so good.

One thing I noticed in fast-forwarding through this awful thing (nice DVD advantage there), is that aside from the "M" scene there's really not much. The sixteen year-old Romina is stunningly cute, and you can clip the pictures of her hanging from a chain leaking poor quality Franco fake blood and doing a "Pretty Baby" couch turn, but the green and red lighting is actually not very erotic.

Most other sexploitation flicks have a lot more graphic nastiness, but the branding scene is a must, there's no question about that. One star for that, and one star for brief lolita Romina nudity, that's it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Pretty Poor
Review: If you are expecting an S&M feast, you will be dissapointed. I fast forwarded through most of this movie. Granted the lead actress is very atractive, but the "good" scenes are shrowded in this annoying green and red light. not worth it to be honest.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Pretty Poor
Review: If you are expecting an S&M feast, you will be dissapointed. I fast forwarded through most of this movie. Granted the lead actress is very atractive, but the "good" scenes are shrowded in this annoying green and red light. not worth it to be honest.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Crime and virtue
Review: If you're not strong, you won't be able to see this film. Nudity and sadistic violence are present in the memorable story of two sisters, Justine and Juliette, adapted from a novel by Marquis de Sade. Living in a convent, they stood apart when their mother dies. Hopeless and without money, they take different ways. Juliette seeks pleasure and soon learn how to murder, to cheat, to do everything in order to get rich and powerful. Justine, on the other hand, lives a life of pain, despair, but keeping a virtuous behaviour. Throughout the film we are invited to answer a very delicate question: is it worth to be virtuous and suffering all the time instead of being wicked but happy at all? The answer remains on our minds, on our deepest values. Anyway, it's a good movie with a fine score by Bruno Nicolai.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A restrained treat
Review: Of course this film is not explicit by current standards- it was released in 1968. If blatant expliciteness is what you want, you're looking at entirely the wrong decade. I still find this to be a most erotic movie. Romina Power is really very cute. The scenes of her chained and naked have given me quite a lot of pleasure. Depending on who you believe, she was either 16, 17 or 18 when this film was made. Whatever her age, in this film she had the most delightfully pert and un-enhanced late teen breasts. I've not seen a pair like it in real life or the media for ages. Ah, the memories! Nice close-ups of her bare feet, too.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Innocence in trouble
Review: Romina Power as Justine is lovely innocense to look at, and I enjoyed what otherwise is a trite sadistic movie just to see her charms.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: complete loser....not erotic or interesting at all
Review: Simply save your money...this film is not erotic...its just simply rotten. Nothing worth looking at...not worth wasting any more time reviewing for you...I wish I had not bought it...simple as that! Would be rated PG-13 by today's standards...if you are thinking kinky sex flick...think again!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Mediocre at its best
Review: The first thing that struck me about this DVD was the very poor opening sequence, featuring Klaus Kinski in the role of the infamous Marquis. Yes, this movie will soon be 40 years old, but still, the technique is amateurish and uninteresting.

As for the rest of the movie, it fails to capture the novel's spirit. De Sade's characters are satyrical due to their extreme, impossible cruelty and depravation. Franco's are silly, whimsical, and they fail miserably to amuse or arouse me at all.

Power is indeed a sweet-looking, beautiful young girl, but a limited actress, and the rest of the cast is just plain dull. Except for Palance, who delivers a rather strange performance that, once again, betrays the spirit of the book.

In short, the movie is a big disappointment. While De Sade's novel was a harsh criticism of the morals of his time (which greatly benefited him), the movie, with its happy ending, is a rather short soap opera where the heroine endures some tribulations, but gets her reward in the end.


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