Martine Flety plays the title character, the owner / proprietor of an adults only club in swinging Paris. There are plenty of attractions on the main floor, but in the basement is where things really happen. Rita and her bevy of babes imprison various men, torturing them and stimulating them to the point of madness. It's all in the name of extracting money and information out of these hapless chumps. Little does Rita know that Interpol is taking a keen interest in what goes on in her club.Jesus "Jess" Franco strikes again with another exercise in stylish sleaze. Viewers will be pleased to note that there is lots of female nudity (in fact, one of the very first shots shows some full frontal) and a little bit of sex. (There is some male nudity as well.) But what makes this stand out a little from the many trash epics that Franco made in the 1970s is the fact that he's melding exploitation with the espionage genre, with a touch of 70s era psychedelia. The visual approach is quite striking, as Franco and his crew go with some gorgeous gold and pink colour schemes. The music by Walter Baumgartner is quite groovy, to boot.The performances are generally amusing from all concerned. Luscious brunette Sarah Strasberg was a particular favourite for this viewer, as she plays the role of a heavy named Franchesa. Dagmar Burger is appealing as an entertainer named "Sun". Eric Falk is a hoot as a "boxer" targeted by Rita and her minions. And Flety is quite watchable in the lead.You add a funny fight scene, and a VERY funny death scene, to the proceedings, and it amounts to a pretty good time for exploitation fanatics.Seven out of 10.

During the 70' Jess Franco made lots of exploitation films with different success. Blue Rita is one of Jess Frano's finest efforts, because of Franco's great cinematography with many colorful scenes and carefully created atmospheric sets. Many of the scenes have a psychedelic touch and the music score is great.The storyline is kind of absurd, which should be expected by fans of Jesus Franco, involving soft erotic club performances combined with secret agency's and creative torture methods. Somehow the style feels like a combination of Succubus and Ilsa and the Wicked Warden, without the pseudo philosophy of Succubus, focusing on the atmosphere.For me this feels like one of Franco's most inspired movies and belongs to his best efforts. The overall rating may be lowered because of the many soft erotic scenes and the hard-to-follow / incoherent storyline, but for those who seek great original atmosphere like only Jess Franco could, this is a must see. The German spoken version should be preferred.

Say what you like about old Jess, but he knew what he wanted from a film, and very often got it. Like with Blue Rita, barely enough budget to cover all the doors in tin foil or make the night club look very different from a waiting room, he got the girls, he got them to take off their clothes and he used lights and what props he had to make a ravishingly attractive piece of nonsense. Here is the most elegant of soft core movies that also includes the torture (albeit with green paint and promise/denial of sex) of gents in chains. Whole scenes are shot through fish tanks and although there is some sort of spy plot-line,it makes no sense so can be completely ignored.

"Blue Rita" is more or less what you'd expect from a Jess Franco film: very explicit - very kinky - very strange - very incoherent - very bad. The plot, as far as I could say, is about some Parisian strippers who double as secret agents: they kidnap enemy (whose enemy? Never mind) spies and use sexual torture methods to make them "talk". To give Franco credit, the production design is colorful and the cinematography is often striking. But the editing is incompetent and the pace is deadly. What puzzles me is how Franco convinced so many young women in his films to bare everything and be treated as pieces of meat by the camera, but I guess the men don't come off much better either. Still, if you just want to stare at naked women on the screen "Blue Rita" will do the job....but so will many other AND better films. (*1/2)