Rent Blue Rita (1977)

Spoilers follow ... - Blue Rita review by NP

Of all Jess Franco/Erwin C. Dietrich collaborations during the mid to late 1970s, this is the most bizarre. The two prolific auteurs here turn the tables on the ‘women in prison’ dramas for which they are collectively best known, by making ‘respectable’ men very much the prisoners, and seductive, glamourous women are in charge. Blue Rita (Martine Fléty) demands total obedience, sexual and otherwise, of her female co-horts, and their various forms of indoctrination are dwelt upon in typically lingering scenes of softcore lesbian activity. Franco achieves some haunting compositions with these scenes – which serves as a precursor for the kind of thing he did, more explicitly, in his latter-day One-Shot Productions – with many liaisons filmed through a fish-tank, and with misty disorientation within the sci-fi love/torture parlours.

The look of this film is very different from the usual perception of an Uncle Jess film. No swaying palm trees or majestic, sun-drenched beaches. Instead, we have Parisian walk-ways, exotic, bustling streetways and picturesque city-scapes. Interiors are confined – or perhaps that should be unconfined – to chambers that wouldn’t look out of place in ‘Barbarella’ or ‘Logan’s Run’; spacious and featureless, less like a sensuous boudoir and more like a set for an early music video, complete with dry ice.

The characters are not massively well-defined, lost somewhat beneath the impressive and heavily stylised visual trappings, but my favourites include the briefly known Moira (Vivky Masmin) and the apparently naïve Sun (Dagmar Bürger).

Regular musician Walter Baumgartner excels with a mad fusion of gurgling electronica, tribal and jazz, with a repeated brass section track that sounds like the theme to Coronation Street. It might be his most eccentric musical concoction.

The story involves Rita, who hates men as a result of former abuse, and her female brigade, who kidnaps and tortures wealthy men and male ‘spies’ and makes them talk by sexually stimulating them to the point of insanity. This espionage nonsense is interspersed with Franco-favourite sleazy club scenes that are elevated by garish costumes, purple wigs and pink walls. Interesting use is made of colour, infusing every scene with a kind of garishness that provides a palpable contrast to the ‘ordinary’ world ‘on the outside.’ That contrast, I think, is my favourite element in this film. You really don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.