COUNTESS PERVERSE (aka LA COMTESS PERVERSE, THE PERVERSE COUNTESS, & LA CROQUEUSES, 1974)

Directed by Jesus Franco.
Written by Jesus Franco, Elisabeth Ledu de Nesle.

Not that I don’t like watching naked women running around, but when I sit down for a horror film, I usually want a bit more depth. But with a title like COUNTESS PERVERSE, at least I can say that I got what the title suggests here. Though I can understand the appeal of this film to those who simply want to see women with jiggly jumblies frolicking through beaches and grasslands, ultimately, I found this film to be a boring exercise in restraint for my fast forward finger.

COUNTESS PERVERSE is a derivation of Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” in which a group of people hunt the most dangerous game in the wild—-man. Here man is woman and that woman is naked. In fact, most of the women seem to have a strong aversion to clothing in this film and for most of this shoot, the wardrobe department was given the week off. A gorgeous beauty washes up on the shore of Countess Ivanna and Count Rabor Zaroff’s island condo. They take the beauty in and soon she finds herself in the middle of a game of cat and mouse as rich socialites hunt down naked women for sport and then serve them as dinner at their posh parties.

As horrific as that sounds, the gore is at a bare minimum here and only suggested. The kills consist of arrows stuck into the armpit of the victims and the horrific dinners are prepared to look like Salisbury steak or chipped ham. It’s not nearly as bloodbathy as it all sounds.

Really, this is a film made to showcase naked women making love, naked women running from other naked women with bows and arrows, and naked women doing other things nakedly. The premise alone suggested that this would be a perfect fit for the horror genre, but it falls more so into the category of the cinema of the weird. Jesus Franco offers up some nice atmosphere with some surreal architecture, and the scenes all look good, as do the naked women, but scares and gore are at a minimum here. Only those who relish classic weird cinema seem like the target audience for COUNTESS PERVERSE.