StunnaKrypto
Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.
RyothChatty
ridiculous rating
Spidersecu
Don't Believe the Hype
SteinMo
What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.
mallaverack
Normally, when scanning my newspaper weekly TV guide, in order to decide on which movies to watch, I am attracted to titles which may indicate the genres which interest me. Dramas, thrillers and biographies are at the top of my list of favoured genres."She Killed in Ecstasy" looked promising when the following rating advice accompanied a brief description of the plot:"Adult themes; Nudity; Sexual references; violence."Knowing only that the plot centred on the revenge killings of those who rejected a woman's much loved husband's medical experiments, I was somewhat startled by the psychedelic music and pop art graphics with which the film opened. Not that long into the story it was evident that the inanity of the dialogue, the director's excruciating use of the zoom lens and the completely inappropriate sound track might be less irritating, being alleviated somewhat by the introduction of 'soft porn' when the nubile Soledad Miranda began to burrow her face into the groin area of her now prostrate and demented husband, played by Fred Williams. But even this titillation was short lived as the promise of a 'classic erotic horror movie' all but evaporated under the weight of unflinching mediocrity of characterisation, ludicrous dialogue, absence of logic and kitschy direction of one, Jesus Franco. The accompanying reviews on this site have proved far more entertaining than the film. Oh, and how people do take things so seriously! I care not a fig how many films Mr.Franco has accumulated in his CV over the years or whether other of his projects have been dubbed cult classics. This movie, apart from its kitsch qualities (lowbrow taste, lacking in style, so false as to engender comical reactions, etc) is so slow, so boring, so childishly predictable, so lacking in atmosphere or characterisation has achieved the effect of my resolution to avoid any other of Mr.Franco's contributions to film. Watch this and cringe!
Flixer1957
A young doctor experiments with fusing animal and human embryos, which incurs the wrath of the ruling medical board. They humiliate him and banish him; he then goes berserk and kills himself. After a decent interval of mourning, his widow–-played to the sultry hilt by Soledad Miranda–goes all-out for revenge. She's determined to wipe out all those bad doctors–male and female–who did her hubby wrong.Most of the killings involve Miranda using her (considerable) womanly wiles to seduce her victims before slashing or stabbing them. (One scene, however, would have us believe that it only takes 20 seconds to smother someone to death.) Once the slaying starts–about 30 minutes into the movie–things move along at a rapid clip. (Possibly a bad choice of words considering what our Black Widow does to her male victims afterward.) In any case, this rampage gives us many shots of Miranda's beautiful bod. Female viewers, meanwhile, can enjoy the scenes of Jess Franco shirtless and Howard Vernon in the buff. And everybody can amuse themselves by counting the spelling errors in the English subtitles, or relaxing to a music score better suited to a nightclub than a horror movie.The tired old "crime does not pay" ending involves some of the worst deductive reasoning I've heard on-screen. It's also oddly prophetic, considering what happened to Soledad Miranda in real life.
ferbs54
You never know what you're going to get with a Jess Franco film; whether it's going to be a well-done horror picture ("The Awful Dr. Orloff"), a trippy head scratcher ("Venus In Furs"), an ineptly put-together adventure movie ("The Devil Came From Akasava"), vile and sleazy garbage ("Ilsa The Wicked Warden") or stylish, good-looking junk ("The Girl From Rio"). Having over 140 (!) films to his credit, this slapdash director is certainly a dicey proposition at best. "She Killed In Ecstasy" (1970), I feel, falls into that last category. A German-language film that was shot in Spain, it is yet another filmization of Cornell Woolrich's "The Bride Wore Black," which had been excellently brought to the screen by Francois Truffaut just two years earlier. But Franco is no Truffaut, to put it mildly, and he seems to have only a single trick in his director's kit--zoom in, zoom out; zoom in, zoom out...and that gets tiresome very quickly. Soledad Miranda (here credited as Susann Korda, for some reason) plays the widow seeking murderous vengeance on the quartet of doctors who denounced her husband's embryo experiments (an even touchier subject today!) and led to his suicide, and gorgeous as she is, she's no Jeanne Moreau. (She may do lesbian, but she sure ain't a thespian!) The seductions of the four doctors (one played by Dr. Orloff himself, Howard Vernon; another by Franco; and still another by a beautiful blond woman) are well done, but the homicides themselves are fairly lame and unconvincing, and a funky, sitar-laced, completely non sequitur soundtrack does not help matters one bit. The film doesn't wrap up after 80 brief minutes so much as suddenly stop and fade; very strange. On the up side, "She Killed In Ecstasy" features some striking sets and gorgeous scenery, and the DVD that I just watched from Image is one of the crispest-looking I've ever seen; an absolutely lustrous, first-rate transfer. By the way, I can almost imagine a 21st century updating of this film's classic story line; call it "She Killed ON Ecstasy"!
jriddle73
A naively idealistic scientist engaged in fetal research he hopes will offer tremendous benefits for mankind instead finds himself scandalized, his work condemned as ethically abominable (how's that for a timely premise?). Distraught, he eventually kills himself, and his horrified lover (Soledad Miranda), psychologically broken by it all, sets out for revenge against his persecutors--one by one, she hunts them down, seduces them, and kills them.The film's most astonishing sequence features beautiful Soledad consumed by grief to the point of insanity--as she confronts the horror of it all, Franco zooms into her face and seems to zoom into her soul. We see her thoughts and memories of her previously happy life, and their effect on her. We witness the point at which the madness finally consumes her--we almost experience it ourselves. A breathtaking sequence, and far from the film's only moment of brilliance.Like all Francos, the movie is, unfortunately, plagued by obvious budgetary shortcomings--the final suicidal plunge, in a car, off a cliff was reduced to a rough drive down a somewhat steep embankment. In such cases, the viewer just has to let his imagination more properly fill in the details.