YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

John Seal My God. I've been trudging through the Jess Franco DVDs in chronological order for quite some time now and had become somewhat inured to the ingredients: lots of nudity, lots of lesbianism, a cameo appearance by Franco, the old zoom in zoom out, and some attractive and well-shot location footage. Put it all together, and you've got yourself an exploitation flick! The films vary in quality but almost all clock in at the 70-80 minute range, meaning even the worst of them (I'm looking at YOU, Voodoo Passion) aren't long enough to get boring.And then there's Sadomania. Why Franco and producer Julio Parra decided to pad this one out to an engorged, Tolstoy-esque 102 minutes I can't imagine. Happily the length is not entirely reliant on repetitive bumping and grinding, but it is still a bit of a chore to sit through. However, it's worth it to see Franco and star Ajita Wilson partake of a little simulated gay sex. I guess.

MoosikLuva OK, no one will confuse this with Citizen Kane but you've got to love a movie where the women are always topless. There are a few catfights and some kinky sex as well. On the other hand I hope they didn't overpay the guy who wrote the dialogue. Here's a prime example. After one of the captive girls dies: "This is terrible. It reminds me of the day Zenobia died" "A relative?" "No, my favorite cow." I guess they saved some money on the script and blew it on great special effects like that plastic crocodile. I will say that it took me three sittings to make it through this fine work of art, never a good sign. I guess that's what happens after a while when everything looks the same. I hope the folks waiting to rent it next didn't get too impatient. Don't worry folks, it's on it's way.

tedg Spoilers herein.I approach Franco films as something more than sleazy exploitation. Much of my mail and even some of my colleagues are against me on this: they feel I read too much into them.I have a special place in my imagination that current Spanish-speaking filmmakers can reach and tickle. I think they are the most clever filmmakers working today, and I suspect Franco had something to do with it.Yeah, yeah, we get some breasts here, some mild (amazingly mild compared to 'Ilsa') suggestion of sexual torture and lots of huffing and puffing simulation. What we also get is an allegory of filmmaker as pimp, not quite a worn out idea in 1981. Franco himself plays the pimp. Unless I am wrong, this time he does not feature a lover as the girl, instead just hired a passel of 'models.'What makes this an extraordinary film is one character, the sadist of the title: the black mistress who is captain of the guards - a stark lesbian. This actress is in fact a transgendered man. She has an appearance and manner that are strange and disturbing. The fact that the story is obviously bogus adds to the mystery in a sort of Soviet-newspaper way. What we are told is going on is discounted as thin fiction. That leaves us to suspect that the real world is ever so more ambitiously dangerous.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Bogey Man Sadomania is the infamous Women in Prison flick by the king of ultra low budget exploitation films, Jesus Franco, Spain. He has made many immortal films like Love Letter of the Portuguese Nun (nunsploitation, 1977) and Bloody Moon (ultra-gore, 1981), and even though some of his films are worse and not-so-ambitious, he definitely has a talent and is noteworthy film maker. His greatest masterpiece of the films I've managed to see is Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), the black and white horror classic with Howard Vernon. Sadomania is among his dirtiest films and not without a reason.The ridiculous plot has a newly wed young couple, who is kidnapped during their journey as they drive their wedding car somewhere in Spain. They are taken to the nearby women prison, led by sadistic lesbian warden (the late Ajita Wilson) and some sleazy governor and his wife, and despite the fact that the prison girls/women work hard there, their real reason to be there is to satisfy these leaders' bottomless sexual desires and perversions. Poor women are raped and abused, in the guaranteed Franco style, but it all ends happily for the protagonists and evil and horny sadists meet their fate, again Franco style.This film is okay if one happens to like these kind of "guilty pleasures" with huge amount of nudity and love making. The sleaze-o-meter is taken as high as possibly when considered the fact that the head warden Wilson was originally born man, but changed his sex to female, and the close ups of this attractive black lady show that her hands and some parts of the body are definitely male and thus her attractiveness tones down a bit (for hetero sexual man), but still, she is very sensual here, albeit her role character is more than repulsive. The other actors are more or less amateurs, but also talented ones. Beautiful females get naked a lot, and that's the thing Franco has always been able to do. Perhaps every frame of the film "once it gets going" involves at least one naked human being, usually female.The "message" of this film seems to be that of what hides under our "civilized" surface and what kind of animals we are deep inside. Franco uses plenty of segments without a dialogue and some symbolic scenes (like the knife-fight-to-the-death scene), which show and depict the wild beast psyche what hides inside every human being, but in many cases un-active. Another thing is, that the sadists in the film are totally insatiable and hungry for sex, which is perhaps the strongest instinct in human nature and psyche. Sadomania shows us the faces of human nature we wouldn't necessarily want to face, but as we think about the state of the world and what kind of things take place, Franco's thoughts are more than true and serious. The fact that this film is mostly exploitation oriented doesn't mean that the film couldn't have any artistic merits, and Franco definitely wants most of his films to be more than mere exploitation.Sadomania is noteworthy piece of Franco cinema, and shot with his usual zooms and beautiful images of nature, stained only by the presence of the film's ugly and evil protagonists. Sadomania has also some interesting elements in its soundtrack, which is supposedly composed by the director himself. I give Sadomania 7/10 rating, but that's only possible if one can watch these films and appreciate them despite their many filthy scenes and characters.