Barbed Wire Dolls

After causing her father's death Maria (Lina Romay) is tried and in spite of somewhat mitigating circumstances – he was trying to molest her – found guilty.

Something about Maria's case prompts the wardress (Monica Swinn) of a specialist clinic to suggest a therapeutic treatment would be preferable to hard labour in the state prison.

This being a Jesus Franco WIP movie, it soon emerges that the wardress's motives aren't exactly altruistic. For starters, she's a perverted sadist who runs the clinic as her own private feifdom, subjecting the patients to electric shock treatments, starvation, and even rape at the hands of the burly guard Nestor (Eric Falk) whenever they displease her. Worse, she has a personal interest in Maria's case, being the secret lover of Maria's father and in fact the one responsible for his murder when she discovered he had cheated on her…

The first of some 15 or so films directed by Jesus Franco for Swiss producer Erwin C Dietrich, Barbed Wire Dolls shows just how much mileage the Spaniard can get out of some sparse sets, uninhibited performers who don't mind a lot of nudity and softcore couplings and, above all, a somewhat twisted imagination.

Unfortunately while containing plenty of sleaze and sadism to appeal to the WIP devotee – and, given its being the third highest grossing film in (West) Germany on its 1975 release, more mainstream audiences as well – it isn't that interesting otherwise.

Sure, Franco's camera darts around plenty and as per usual pays more attention to the pudenda on show than minor details like keeping things in focus, but his direction here largely comes across as uninspired and merely going through the motions.

A flashback sequence that sees Maria's father – a typically amusing, self-deprecating cameo from Franco himself – falling in fake slow motion and clearly being seen to break his fall with his arms is unintentionally amusing.

The performances do, however, offer something by way of compensation.

Tackling the part with an admirable lack of camp and irony, Swinn is genuinely scary as the monocle wearing governess with a penchant for reading about the Third Reich in her time off.

Paul Müller brings a surprising degree of subtlety to his role as the clinic's doctor whose carnal desires invariably get the better of his more humane side and make him into a helpless pawn in his mistress's schemes, always anxious that their abuses will come to the authorities attention.

Romay and the other prisoners, meanwhile, gamely suffer through the governess's – and director's – torments for our amusement…

Walter Baumgartner's score with its combination of unsettling minimalist pieces to create a mood and consciously inappropriate baroque tinged pieces to accompany the worst abuses of power – is another plus. The film would, alas, be better off without (what one takes to be) Daniel White's occasional easy listening contributions.

Really, however, all analysis and criticism is probably irrelevant. This is, after all, a Jesus Franco WIP movie. If you've seen one you'll either want to see them all or never want to see another as long as you live. "Once a philosopher, twice a pervert" as it were…