This is the slickest Jess Franco film I have seen. In fact, the difference in production values between this and something like 'Dracula Contra Frankenstein' is so staggering, they seem like the work of two different directors. The actors, including a wild-eyed Klaus Kinski and a shifty-looking Dennis Price, look immaculate. Only the over-used footage of the Rio carnival betrays the less shiny quality of its spliced-in origins.James Darren plays Jimmy Logan, a jazz musician who becomes obsessed with beautiful Wanda (Maria Rohm), whom he finds dead on a beach in Istanbul (this scene opens the film, with swathes of backstory told in flashback, narrated in film noir-ish style by Darren). We are then treated to a swirling, delirious cocktail of sex and horror intrigue, often threaded through with the image of a girl in furs who looks like a mannequin – there is one lengthy scene where she appears to seduce, torture and kill Price's Percival Kapp whilst alternating between dream and reality. It is very weird, intoxicating and even more impressive because the fantasy is played without any dialogue.One of my favourite characters here is the least complex. Rita (Barbara McNair) makes no secret of the fact that she adores Jimmy in spite of his infatuation with Wanda. McNair's expressions of forlorn longing and subsequent dejection when she realises she has lost her love, are powerful, and we are relieved for her when she finally musters up the sense to make a dignified exit. However, she literally has the last laugh, as it is Rita who sings out the title song over the end credits, full of life ad gusto, which is more than can be said for her ex.For such a delirious, jazzy cocktail of a film, it is Franco's restraint that makes it work so well. His trademark zoom-ins are here, but used sparingly, and only to enhance a mood. Filtered camera effects also abound, but only in tone with what is revealed to be going on. I enjoyed 'Venus in Furs' very much for its consistent storyline (the twist at the end doesn't make much sense, alas) and atmosphere. I also very much enjoy Franco's tatty, less acclaimed works for opposite reasons.

Despite the fact that the gorgeous Maria Rohm is naked through much of "Venus in Furs", it manages to be a very boring and glacially slow film. What makes this worse is that the story idea was excellent and SHOULD have worked. The problem is not just the pacing but the style of the film--which tries to be artsy but which comes off as cheap. An odd combination indeed.The story has very little dialog and is practically a silent movie with voice-over by the leading man, James Darren. However, it is MUCH slower-paced than a silent film. If you speed up a silent film, everyone looks funny as they move about wildly. If you speed up "Venus in Furs" it STILL looks very slow in places.It begins with Darren working as a musician at a fancy party. When he takes a break, he sees a weirdo foursome--with a woman and two men torturing and drinking the blood of a gorgeous blonde. It seems, despite everything, consensual and Darren leaves them to their weird sex revelries. Soon, however, he's walking on the beach and finds this same blonde dead! Darren leaves Turkey where all this occurred and goes to Rio. There he sees the dead woman very much alive. Well, not exactly. Although they have a lot of sex (though often it's out of focus or focuses on anything but the titillating parts), the woman is almost zombie-like through much of the film. However, periodically, she disappears and appears at the homes of the three who killed her. Then, she gets naked and kills them all--one by one.While this sounds like an interesting and sexy idea, it certainly isn't. Too many pieces of what appear to be stock footage used as filler, too many LONG and silent and seemingly meaningless montages, too many seemingly random edits, too many periods where there was no editing whatsoever yet there should have been LOTS and too little dialog or life make this seem like a French art film merged with "Night of the Living Dead"--but with far, far, far less energy. Overall, a completely boring film that seemed to drag on forever. This isn't art, this isn't soft-core porn and this isn't horror--it's just a dull and artless waste of time.

Jimmy Logan (James Darren) finds a dead girl named Wanda on the beach. He also realizes she was killed by Percival (Dennis Price), Ahmed (Klaus Kinski) and Olga (Margaret Lee). Don't ask me HOW he knows--this movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Later on he has a girlfriend named Rita (Barbara McNair) and is happy--but then he sees a girl that looks just like Wanda...and becomes obsessed.I should have known better. Director Jesus Franco's movies are little more that soft core porno full of beautiful naked women. This is no exception. The plot makes little to no sense and its moves at a snails pace. With the sole exceptions of Darren and McNair the acting is just terrible (and badly dubbed). The "script" is thoroughly predictable and full of dialogue that makes little or no sense. Franco just seems interested in getting as much female nudity on the screen as possible--it doesn't seem to matter if it fits the plot! Also why he didn't he show any nudity on Darren? He's an attractive young guy and he IS the main character! This gets a 2 solely for Darren and McNair but this basically a boring soft core porno movie.

As likely to be heralded in certain circles as a preeminent figure of stylish erotic Eurohorror as he is to be dismissed as a hack-of-all-trades and purveyor of Eurotrash, often both at the same time given his gargantuan and largely uneven filmography and depending where your affections lie, Jesus Franco if nothing else at least can't be brushed aside easily. If Oasis of the Zombies gives valid claim to the second, Venus in Furs does the same with the first.A jazz player discovers the body of a woman washed up in a beach in Istanbul. Weirdness ensues. Not really 'meaningful' weird, the kind of weird that suggests a certain insight to be gleaned from closer inspection, but 'captivating' weird, 'hallucinogenic' weird, the kind of weird where you buy the ticket and are happy to be simply swept along for the ride. The movie seems disjointed at first, haphazard, low-key voice-over narration transporting us through time and space back and forth until plot and story cease to exist in any one given level. Yet it doesn't take long for a sort of inner rhythm and flow, jazzlike and hypnotic, to emerge. Suddenly we're in a ritzy party and Klaus Kinski is peering wide-eyed into the camera. The dead woman is now alive, scantily dressed and being flogged in a dimly lit basement by Kinski and two of his friends. From Istanbul to Rio back to Istanbul, the strange woman seems to be exacting some kind of revenge while she keeps a love affair with the horn player on the side.For all the casual languid randomness, Franco seems to know what he's doing. Not narrative speaking so much as in terms of atmosphere and overall ambiance. The camera constantly zooms back and forth, the movie pulsating with a jazz vibrato. Shots from the primary narrative (the actual story) are later repeated inside a flashback (fantasy? reverie?) making the boundaries between present and past tense blur hopelessly, turning the linear into cyclical. Something which is further compounded by the bizarre ending where I think Franco reaches for more than he can grasp and comes up mostly with straws. That combined with the little epigraph superimposed over the screen brings the movie down a notch because it reduces the heady surreal noir that precedes it into a "so it was all..." conclusion. By openly stating what we've been suspecting, that everything exists in someone's head and adheres to the fragmented laws of dreams and memory, Franco robs us of the pleasure of understanding for ourselves.Thirty years down the line Venus in Furs is more likely to appeal to fans of Alain Robbe-Grillet and David Lynch than Eurohorror hounds, the emphasis here being on mysterious rather than grotesque.