DVD review: MARQUISE DE SADE (1976)

MARQUISE DE SADE  (a.k.a. THE PORTRAIT OF DORIANA GRAY)
Written & Directed by  Jesús Franco  (a.k.a. Jess Franco)
Distributed by Full Moon Entertainment

  That crazy Jess Franco, he has some wild movies for sure.  No matter if you are a Franco fan or not, you can't deny he was one of the hardest working film directors ever.   He made his first film at age of 27 and never stopped until his last film in 2013, the year of his death at the age of 82.  That is over 200 directing credits in a 55 year career.   That averages to almost 4 movies a year!  In fact, in 1976, the year he made MARQUISE DE SADE, he also made 9 other films.  I honestly don't see how that is possible!     While I could go on forever about this man's career, I'll try to focus on my current review.  Here is the main plot from the Full Moon Direct website:

 Lust, Sex and Death…Sisters Share Everything!
A lonely aristocrat Miss Gray has a twin sister who's in an asylum. They share a strange bond. Miss Gray is rational but frigid while her sister is insane yet feels sexual pleasure for both of them. Soon, a female reporter arrives at the mansion - Miss Gray possesses vampire like qualities and lives alone when new reporter comes to do a story on her. It appears Doriana needs to suck the life out of various men and women - in a sexual way, in order to stay young. However, she gets no sexual feelings or pleasure out of it. Those ‘feelings’ go to her TWIN sister who is locked up in an asylum. There she goes through various sexual ‘violent and sexual fits’ whenever Doriana is pleasing and killing.

  I have seen a lot of Jess Franco movies before, and I have to admit they all seem to have a common theme, and that is a lot of sex and female nudity.  While some of his films have some good story lines, a lot of them feel as if the plot is just there as an excuse to show the sex scenes.   That is how I felt with this film.   The plot here is pretty simple,  a woman has sex and her twin sister feels the sensation and pleasure from it.   This amounts to sex scenes where the woman is having sex, and then we see her twin sister flailing around in her bed as she experiences the feelings and then pleasuring herself because of these feelings she is getting.  

  Now I know some of you might be saying....but that sounds AWESOME!  Ha!  Well, I have to admit that it is for a the first few scenes, but after that it becomes kind of pointless without any more of a story line to back up these sex scenes. 

  From a technical standpoint, this film is one of the better made Franco films I have seen  (although with over 200 film credits, I have to admit I've only seen a handful of his work).   It had some great scenery and camerawork, and the main star Lina Romay is undeniably beautiful to look at.  If you are a fan of Jess Franco's work, then you know what to expect here.  If you like his other films, I'm sure you'll like this one as well. 

  MARQUISE DE SADE is presented here in a fully UNCUT form, which is good news for Franco fans.   Full Moon has released this DVD as the latest part of their Jess Franco Collection, this being #7 in the series.  If you collect all 10 DVDs, they will form a portrait of the late Jess Franco when the spines are lined up together (see photo below).   This makes for a very cool collectible set.  

  MARQUISE DE SADE is available now from the Full Moon Direct store.  Click the link below to get your copy today!

CLICK HERE to purchase the DVD