Sadisterotica is a great title for a film. Sadly, the title is more or less the only good thing about this effort. This is a real mish-mash of ideas. It's part horror, comic-book hero, comedy, sexploitation and mystery. And really, it doesn't do justice to any of these genres! The plot follows a couple of women investigating a series of murders connected to a mysterious artist.

This is a Jesus Franco film, so expectations have to be lowered accordingly. The man has made some decent flicks such as Vampyros Lesbos and Count Dracula but he's also made an awful lot of dreck. This baby fits into the latter category I'm afraid. Technically it's terrible with a succession of badly photographed scenes roughly edited together. The actors are unappealing and the storyline dire. The version I watched also happened to have truly diabolical dubbing which did not exactly help matters.

The comedy is hopeless, the horror completely unscary, the nudity unerotic, the mystery uninvolving; the only positive I can offer is that it is pretty weird. Other than that I'm really struggling to think of anything kind to say about this. Franco is an acquired taste and this is not one of his best.

Crafty Diana (ravishing redhead stunner Janice Reynaud) and ditsy Regina (lovely blonde knockout Rosanna Yanni) are a couple of sexy super sleuths known as the Red Lips. The gorgeous gals go after perverted pop artist Klaus Tiller (a nicely sinister turn by Adrian Hoven),who's killing various models, actresses and exotic dancers for the sake of his extreme art.

Director/co-writer Jess Franco relates the eventful plot at a steady pace and maintains a cheerfully silly tongue-in-cheek tone throughout. Reynaud and Yanni make for gorgeous and appealing leads; their natural and unforced easy'n'breezy chemistry keeps the picture humming. The rest of the cast is likewise solid, with nifty contributions by Chris Howland as gallant British detective Francis McClune, Marcelo Arroita-Jauregui as the bumbling Inspector Tanner, Manolo Otero as dashing Italian playboy Vittorio Freda, and Michel Lemoine as Tiller's freakish werewolf-like henchman Morpho. The delicious Dorit Dom burns up the screen with a couple of sizzling hot striptease set pieces at a swinging nightclub. The polished cinematography by Jorge Herrero and Franz Hofer gives the film an attractive vibrant look. Jerry van Rooyen's robust jazzy score hits the groovy spot. While this flick is admittedly pretty mild and innocuous stuff compared to Franco's more racy and explicit movies, there's nonetheless a good-natured quality evident throughout which makes the whole thing an entertainingly goofy diversion. A real campy hoot.

Despite its salacious title, Sadist Erotica is actually one of Franco's less extreme movies, a kitsch '60s detective caper in the style of Modesty Blaise or Danger Diabolik.

The film's heroines are detectives Diana (redhead Janine Reynaud, who looks like Jane Fonda's less attractive sister) and Regina (Rosanna Yanni, a blonde with a great body),who go by the name of 'Red Lips'. Their mission: to find out what has happened to missing model Lida (María Antonia Redondo, a cracking brunette, sexier than either of the main actresses, in my opinion). The guilty party is eye-patch wearing artist Klaus Thiller (Adrien Hoven),who sends his inexplicably hairy assistant Morpho (Michel Lemoine) to abduct beautiful women, the painter believing that his victims' deaths make his work everlasting.

In the right hands, this colourful exercise in comic-strip camp could have been a lot of fun, but Franco's direction here is leaden and his script seems to have been made up on the fly. For much of the time, not a lot of interest happens, with very little in the way of the expected Bond-style action. It's all very tongue in cheek and frivolous, and if it wasn't for some topless nudity, the film would be suitable for the whole family - not what most fans expect from good old Jess! Redondo in her underwear (in the opening scene) and Rosanna Yanni in a few sexy outfits aside, I found the whole thing very tedious, and longed for some Franco excess to spice things up.