Susan (Ada Tauler) arrives in Haiti to live with her diplomat husband
Jack (Jack Taylor), but in their bed she finds not him but his sister
Olga (Karine Gambier), who desperately tries to seduce her, and later,
when she hears Susan having sex with Jack, pleasures herself with a
champagne bottle. Soon though, Susan finds herself having weird dreams
of her participating in voodoo rituals performed by her servant Ines
(Vicky Adams), who claims to be black, even though she quite visibly is
not. & soon, it's not just weird rituals but Susan also has sex with
& then kills some people in a state of trance. But is it for real or
a nightmare, as Jack, Ines & the weird psychiatrist Dr. Barri (Vitor
Mendes) want to make her believe ? In her fight for her own sanity she
though finds an unexpected ally in Olga, who not only finally has sex
with her but claims she smells foul play & is piecing together
elements of a murder mystery involving Jack on her own. Soon though,
Susan falls under the voodoo-spell again & prepares to kill Olga -
until Ines intervenes, her really having been the voodoo-priestess, but
sex with Olga made her reconsider whose side she is on. Soon Ines's
co-conspirators capture Jack - who is not a diplomat after all but a spy
for some secret seervice, & furthermore not Olga's brother but lover
- & Dr. Barri, the real culprits of the whole murder mystery, &
use them as human sacrifices in their next voodoo ceremony. Even
though director Jess Franco is toying with many of his favourite topics
once more - eroticism, horror, nightmares & slight surrealism - for
some reason this time round it doesn't work all that well: Instead of
just improvising on these themes in an off-beat manner - that way Franco
mande his best movies - everything is squeezed into the way too
straightforward but at the same time highly ridiculous framework of a
voodoo murder-mystery, preventing the much needed spontaneity, &
furthermore, despite appropriately vulgar dialogues, the sex is fairly
tame. It's not Franco's worst, many scenes are still a hoot, but it's
far from his off-beat best as well. |