One of the most obscure Franco's i've had the privilege to see. Or rather see the first hour of because after that the frame just freezes on my (very murky) copy, leaving the confused viewer to wonder what the hell happened. OK, I admit it, I didn't understand a thing but it seems to be some kind of perverse, kinky, black comedy/ironic family-drama/soft porno? Only in the mind of Jess Franco... A family is living together on an isolated island and the family idyll is sometimes disrupted by PC stuff like the daughter masturbating in front of her father (i'd say a good third of the film consists of Lina jacking off),the mother forcing her children to take part in S/M games or Lina giving her retarded sister a handjob. "We're a happy family, we're a happy family hey mum and daddy", as the Ramones song goes. There's a lot of lot of seemingly misplaced, mindless chattering (which I didn't understand of course) during all the weird and sick stuff going-ons, so I would guess the film is wittier and more intelligent than first seems (much like The Inconfessionable Orgies of Emmanuelle I guess, in which the dry, sarcastic tone got lost completely in the language barrier until the subtitled DVD release revealed a much better film than thought at first). But all in all it's safe to say that this no budget wonder is for francophiliacs only. I don't know whether I should consult a film buff or a psychiatrist, but why the hell did this film somehow remind me of a perverted Douglas Sirk?

Desdemona (Lina Romat) lives on an isolated island with her father Mario (Antonio Mayans),her stepmother Dulcinea (Carmen Carrión) and her mentally handicapped sister Paulova (Asunción Calero). What's there to do on such an island? Well, beyond Desdemona's onanistic acts on the beach, getting whipped by her mother and using her hand on her sister, she's been trying to sleep with her father, so when a stranger (Tony Skios) enters the film, things are looking up pun unintended.

The House of Lost Women is just one of thirteen movies Franco made in 1983 but this soap opera is sure strange, as we demand, and quite pervy, as we probably demand as well.

Man, is this another Jess Franco Cinematic Universe theme? Disgraced men that have taken their entire family to an island where all there is to do is dream of escape and have sex wit oranges? Is this island close to the one in Muñecas Rojas? Could you swim over and be attacked by the sirens of Bahia Blanca? Or are we so very close to Hot Nights of Linda?

Watching too much Franco makes you either confused or feeling as if the onion is peeling back to show you the multiple realities and versions of these characters, all yearning for orgasmic bliss but trapped with one foot on the bed and the other in the void.

At this stage in his career, the one thing you can be fairly sure about is that there is far too much sex in the films of prolific Spanish director Jess Franco. This fact alone negates much of his work, and the early 1980s are a prime example of this. I am pretty sure that even the most ardent fan of the intimate finds this endless succession of sex acts gruelling. If it's pornography you're after, why complicate it with an ongoing story-line - and vice versa?

Yet, this is the world of Franco, and it was a finely carved out, well-oiled machine by this stage. His films were becoming more difficult to distribute and so I can only guess the sex was there to spice things up - and with his long-time muse Lina Romay on board, it certainly does that. It's everywhere! True, this story features the most disturbingly dysfunctional family you're likely to see this side of a Texas chainsaw, but more depth given to the characters would have been a good thing.

That's my negativity done with. This is one of Franco's weirder efforts, and it is clear he and his regular cast and crew were doing exactly as they wished by this stage. Actor Antonio Mayans' luck seems to have run out here. Usually, the opening credits have barely finished rolling before he is cavorting intimately with the female star of the show - often Romay. Here, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, so to speak. He plays, very effectively, Mario, who is a failed actor, and shies away from his promiscuous daughter Desdemona (Romay, billed here as Candy Coster),even though she openly flirts with and desires him. His unfulfilled wife Dulcinea (Carmen Carrión) is disappointed in him because the rumours of his perverse and nefarious activities turn out *not* to be true - so she seemingly has issues of her own (to distance her from her unsavoury relationship with Desdemona, Franco has ensured Dulcinea is her step-mother - as if the lack of any physical relationship makes her actions less unpalatable). Then we have Paulova (Asunción Calero),the mentally challenged sister, who also gets her own lessons in self-pleasure to idle away the hours. They all live in a modern-looking home on an island paradise they have clearly become bored with. Solitary, their food is shipped in from elsewhere.

Such an isolated family life could be fascinating. A similarly perverse and outcast (step) father-and-daughter relationship was explored far more interestingly in Franco's 'Eugenie' ten years earlier. But here, the director is not so keen simply to imply what is going on, he prefers to lay it on with a trowel. Several trowels.

When it works, it works very well. It's a punishing story. Evil Dulcinea finds a happiness she doesn't deserve, whilst everybody else (apart possibly from Paulova) is resigned to one form of misery or another.

The whole thing is filmed in such a way that every blemish or shadow on the actors' skin is laid bare, much like the actors themselves much of the time. Every slight bruise and pimple adds a very visual extra dimension of un-sophistication to a film that straddles many tones at once. But then, with 80's Jess Franco, that is a common issue. The truth is, the director seems to know exactly what sort of film he is delivering. My score is 5 out of 10.