Venus in Furs is a 1969 film directed by Jess Franco, starring James Darren, Maria Rohm, Barbara McNair, Dennis Price, Margaret Lee, and Klaus Kinski, and featuring music by Manfred Mann.
In İstanbul, Jimmy Logan (Darren), a troubled jazz trumpeter in the midst of a creative slump, ventures onto the beach and discovers a dead woman in the surf. He recognizes her as Wanda Reed (Rohm), whom he saw being abused by three people (Price, Lee, and Kinski) at a party the night before.
Jimmy travels to Rio de Janeiro for Carnival. There, he reconnects with his girlfriend Rita (McNair)—until he encounters a woman identical to Wanda. Jimmy leaves Rita in order to return to Istanbul with this Wanda.
Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to Jimmy, Wanda (who actually is a revenant) has been tracking down the three people responsible for her death, seducing them, and killing them. When the police come after her, she and Jimmy flee—and the film promptly turns into a Mind Screw.
This was one of two 1969 films titled Venus In Furs; the other was directed by Massimo Dallamano and is a somewhat more faithful adaptation of the novel. An alternate cut
of the Franco film, titled Paroxismus, differs significantly from the version discussed here. Among other changes, it omits both the Rio interlude and the twist ending.
This film provides examples of:
- Accomplice by Inaction: Jimmy witnesses three people assaulting and murdering Wanda, and does nothing. His monologue suggests that this is something more than Bystander Syndrome—he considers himself somehow simpatico with the killers. Given that he dies, and Wanda's relationship to him has visual parallels with her relationship to another of the killers (Olga), it's likely that Wanda considers him complicit as well.
- Bath Suicide: Olga dies by slitting her wrists in the bath.
- Chase Scene: Jimmy and Wanda flee from the police in a fairly perfunctory (but nicely scored) car chase.
- Dead All Along:
- Near the end of the film, Jimmy finds Wanda's tombstone, which seems to make him finally accept that the woman he's just gotten involved with was not a lookalike, but the dead Wanda herself.
- Soon afterward, Jimmy finds another corpse on the beach. It's Jimmy himself, and he realizes he's been dead all along.
- Driven to Suicide: Olga dies by slitting her wrists in the bath. She is the only one of the three murderers who expresses remorse, the only one who survives sex with Wanda (instead of going Out with a Bang), and the only one whose manner of death is made perfectly clear.
- Drowning My Sorrows: When Jimmy first arrives in Rio (before he becomes seriously involved with Rita), he's shown drinking in a rather mechanical and pleasureless manner in response to his complicity in Wanda's death and his (possibly related) inability to play his trumpet.
- Epigraph: The film ends on a quotation from John Donne:I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday - Everybody Smokes: It's the '60s, and it's a European film. Everybody smokes.
- Fanservice Extra: Ahmed's role-reversal fantasy includes a selection of nameless, half-naked women standing at the edges of the shots.
- Feet-First Introduction: The first shot begins on Wanda's feet, then pans up her stockinged legs.
- Foreshadow: Early in the film, Jimmy's monologue narration alludes several times to his feeling like he is dead. This could read as
Wangst—right up until the end, when it is shown to be literally true. - Green-Eyed Monster:
- Rita tries, but fails, to suppress her jealous resentment of Wanda. Eventually she leaves Jimmy over it.
- Jimmy sees Wanda making out with Olga at a party. He drags Wanda away in a jealous rage.
- The Hedonist: Wanda's three killers—and Ahmed in particular—are implied to have been blinded by their desire for sexual pleasure.
- Hemo Erotic: Ahmed cuts Wanda and, with evident pleasure, tastes her blood.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: When the disguised Wanda appears to him, then abruptly disappears, Kapp responds by shakily pouring himself a brandy.
- In Name Only: The only things this film has in common with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs are a character named Wanda who appears Naked in Mink and some sexual goings-on that could be described as "sadomasochistic." The plot is completely original, and the novel is not even credited as source material.
- It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: When Jimmy arrives in Rio de Janeiro, it happens to be during Carnival.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Olga is a long-haired, makeup-wearing lesbian who is explicitly attracted to the equally feminine Wanda. Downplayed (perhaps even averted by the standards of the day), since during one significant love scene they are both wearing "masculine" pantsuits.
- Millionaire Playboy: Ahmed, who is explicitly described as a playboy, is a sharp-dressed, sexually perverse hedonist.
- Naked in Mink: Wanda appears topless in a fur coat during the murder scenes.
- Out with a Bang:
- Ahmed and Kapp die in the midst of hallucinatory sexual encounters with Wanda. Since she inflicts no visible violence, the impression is that she literally sexes them to death.
- Olga narrowly averts this, as Wanda sleeps with her but then lets her survive long enough to die by suicide.
- Overcrank: Drastic slow-motion is used in several shots of Jimmy pursuing Wanda. This serves both to create a dream-like effect and to show off James Darren's beautiful running gait.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: When Wanda appears to her killers after her death, she disguises herself to varying degrees with a different hairstyle. (Her hair was originally long and blonde.)
- To Kapp, she appears with short red hair. He doesn't seem to recognize her until she gives him a vision of her dead body.
- To Olga, she appears with short blonde hair. Olga does seem to associate her with the original Wanda, though it isn't clear whether she realizes they are the same person.
- To Ahmed, she again appears with short red hair. He does seem to recognize her.
- To Jimmy, she appears with short blonde hair. Like Olga, Jimmy does seem to associate her with the original Wanda. In later scenes with Jimmy, Wanda ditches the disguise and wears her hair long as she did in life.
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy:
- Played for dark drama when Kapp, Olga, and Ahmed break away from one of Ahmed's jet-set parties in order to sexually assault Wanda in a side room.
- Played more conventionally later in the film, when Wanda seduces Olga at a wild party while Fanservice Extras cavort in the background.
- The Peeping Tom: Jimmy spies on Kapp, Olga, and Ahmed sexually assaulting Wanda, then walks away without intervening. His monologue suggests that his inaction is because he latently sympathizes with their perversion."Maybe I split because I was just as sick as they were but couldn't face up to it."
- Psychosexual Horror: Visually, the film is soft-core erotica, advertised as "A Masterpiece of Supernatural Sex." Plot-wise, it's a revenge film in which several characters are seduced as a prelude to being punished for a horrific sex crime.
- Rape and Revenge: A variant: Wanda returns from the dead in order to get revenge on the people who lustmurdered her.
- The Scourge of God: The theme song, especially the version heard in full at the end of the film, positions Venus as an agent of divine retribution, wreaking justice upon the depraved.
- Stocking Filler: Wanda typically appears wearing thigh-high stockings.
