'Eugenie' is also known as 'Marquis de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Boudoir'' and 'De Sade 70'. Based on the perversion of de Marquis de Sade, directed by Jess Franco and guest starring Christopher Lee, 'Eugenie' has to be a horror film. Doesn't it? Few were more surprised at the film's content than Lee himself, who had agreed to record a number of brief scenes as Dolmance, ostensibly a narrator of events. When viewing 'Eugenie', he found that scenes filmed after he had left the set were more explicit than he was lead to believe. Rather than being affronted, he seemed quite philosophical and even amused in subsequent interviews. Immaculate in a velvet smoking jacket (worn in his Sherlock Holmes outings), he wrings every last drop of enunciation from the words he is reading.20 year-old star Marie Liljedahl (playing 15 year-old Eugenie) was uncomfortable filming some of the more extreme scenes, although this isn't noticeable from her performance. Perfectly exuding a kind of naïve sensuality, of someone desperate to grow up but not sure how to, she is immersed slowly into a world of sex and cruelty and is convincing throughout (one of the most interpretative scenes involves her wandering, skimpily dressed, into a room full of danger – and a hanging corpse – whilst clutching a child's doll for comfort). In fact, all the cast are exemplary – regulars Jack Taylor and Maria Rohm in particular, never seem to turn in less than impressive performances.The film contains various horrific moments and eventually emerges as a true horror story - Eugenie's plight is distasteful and awful indeed (we are treated once again to the dubbing of the sound of hollow wind over scenes of scorching sunlight to indicate – quite effectively – the remoteness of the location). Rather than being the cut-price skin-flick one might expect, this is actually very evocatively filmed by Franco, suggesting more time (and possibly budget) available than usual, to do justice to his 'vision'. It looks sumptuous, possibly due to the involvement of Producer Harry Alan Towers, who by this time had skipped bail for charges involving operating a vice ring, but still pursued a long-running career in films.

Marquis de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' starts as a married man named Mistival (Paul Muller) secretly meets up with his mistress Madame Saint Ange (Maria Rohm) who convinces him to let his teenage daughter Eugenie (Marie Liljedahl) spend the weekend with her on her private island in exchange for some steamy sex, Mistival agrees & both parties seem happy. Madame Agne invites Eugenie to her island & she accepts the invitation, along with her gardener Augustin (Kaplan) & creepy brother Mirvel (Jack Taylor) they are alone on the island. All is not as innocent as it seems though as Madame Agne & Mirvel both belong to an order of people who live out the works of notorious author the Marquis de Sade & Eugenie is set for a starring role in an orgy or depravity & violence...This Spanish & German co-production was directed by Jesus Franco who I consider to be just about the worst filmmaker in cinematic history so maybe this review will be a little bit biased as I really despise the majority of the crap I have sat through that he has been responsible for, retitled to Eugenie... the Story of her Journey into Perversion for it's US release this was indeed based on the novel 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' by the Marquis de Sade. As I said, I hate Franco & his crappy low budget arty films that are as dull as dishwater to sit through & this is no exception despite many claiming it to be his masterpiece. A really boring pace that makes the thing feel like it's on for hours, a lack of proper character's & dialogue doesn't help neither does the limited location which confines the 'action' to about two rooms. The sleaze levels aren't up to scratch either with some full frontal female nudity but little else, the sex is as soft as it comes while the violence is tame. I don't know, I just don't get Franco or his boring films that his fans try to claim are arty surreal masterpieces but to me look like amateurish rubbish with limited stories so Franco has to end up filming random objects just to pad it out a bit. I only saw this yesterday & I can't really say I remember that much about it other than the pedestrian twist ending that in a better director's hands might have been effective but Franco drags it out & ends up boring everyone.The great Christopher Lee has a small role in this & has gone on record as saying he didn't know anything about the soft-core sex scenes & that they were added later without his knowledge. I guess that makes Franco a liar as well as a bad director. The location looks nice enough but what's with the constant whistling wind sound effect? This looks quite colourful & has a few scenes tinted in red for some reason, it's just a shame Franco doesn't know how to shoot a scene. The sex & violence really is tame, there's nothing here that you wouldn't see on late night telly these days.Filmed in Spain the locations look nice enough but Franco never uses them to any great effect. The acting is alright, Christopher Lee obviously stands out but otherwise there aren't that many other people in it.Marquis de Sade's 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' or under whatever title you see it under is crap, I'm sorry but I just don't get Franco or his boring amateurish films. Franco later remade this as Eugenie (Historia de una perversión) (1980) or Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie as it was released in the US.

My first foray into the work of erotic horror master Jesus/Jess Franco is not a total disappointment but I feel it could have been better.Here Franco adapts one of the better known works of the infamous Marquis De Sade, "Philosophy in the Boudoir/Bedroom", which follows the attempts at corruption of the titular Eugenie, by a group of Libertines.The film is competently made and quite stylish, and the cast performs admirably enough, but flaws seem to lie with the script.An overemphasis on creating an "erotic" work, combined with somewhat restrictive cinematic values of the late 1960's as sexuality and violence in cinema were only beginning to truly emerge, prevents it from capturing the nasty spirit of De Sade's work, despite technically having more violence than his novella. Rather it feels like a breezy sex film with some dark undertones. *Spoilers* The other major flaw comes in the under use of the novels antihero Dolmance. Dolmance, never presented as a villain, but spectacularly repulsive, stands as one of the great characters of classical literature. Here he is played by Christopher Lee, who is a great choice for the role, but unfortunately (likely due to Christopher Lee only being used for two days of filming and not knowing the nature of the film until he later saw the scenes he was edited into) the character only appears briefly and serves primarily as a narrator. *Spoilers over*The pacing of the film is also not perfect and at times it seems to drag on rather than moving towards the core aspects, though this does create a bit of effective tension once a That said overall the film is well made, stylish, and probably a must see for fans of soft-core porn/sexploitation, it just lacks the nasty edge that the work of the Marquis should be presented with.

"Eugenie" is a scandalous story from the Marquis de Sade about a naive young girl who is sold by her father into the servitude of a married pair of depraved libertines who proceed to seduce and debauch her. Not surprisingly, it has not received a lot cinematic treatment (and could probably not even be made these days). Even the incredibly prolific and repetitive Jesus Franco only made two versions of the story, this and one in the early 80's called "Erotismo" ("Eugenie de Sade", made a year later with Soledad Miranda, is also based on a De Sade story, but is about a very different character also named Eugenie).This is no doubt the better version. It was made at a time when Franco had access to plenty of a money through producer Harry Allen Towers and quality international stars, not only Maria Rohm and Jack Taylor as the libertine couple, but even Christopher Lee (who apparently had no idea what he was getting into) as the leader of the strange sex cult the pair belong to. As the title character Eugenie, Swedish actress Marie "Inga" Lillejahl is a typical Franco actress of the period--not as talented as some Franco collaborators like Soledad Miranda or Rosalba Neri, but very beautiful and classy unlike many of his later actresses (including his wife Lina Romay, who beautiful as she was, had a bad tendency of indulging the director in his most tasteless cinematic fantasies). Lillejahl, I might also add, was older than the character she played, and it turns out it's much better to cast a twenty year old as a fourteen year in a fairly explicit role than an actual fourteen year old as he did in "Erotismo" (Katja Beinert, who ironically could have easily passed for twenty), not only for moral reasons but also artistic ones--just as a drunk is best played by someone who is not actually drunk, a naive innocent is most effectively played by someone who is NOT actually a naive innocent.The beautiful, dream-like style of the movie also does a lot to mitigate the inherent sleaziness of the subject matter. The scenes of Lillejahl stumbling naked along barren sand dunes with lots of phallic jutting rocks as the morning sun comes up are very memorable (even if they don't make a lot of sense). The repetitive opening and closing sequences Franco uses is a hoary device that goes all the way back to the British classic "Dead of Night", but it is quite effective and really adds to the dream-like atmosphere. One of the "good" Franco movies.