She Killed in Ecstasy

She Killed in Ecstasy (Sie Toete in Ekstase) (1971)

Runtime: 80 minutes

Directed by: Jesus Franco

Starring: Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams, Paul Muller, Ewa Stromberg, Howard Vernon

From: A few different Spanish & German companies 

A movie I was happy to have finally seen; thanks, Eternal Family. It's been in my mind to do so for years—problem was, a streaming copy unedited w/ English subtitles was nigh impossible to track down, even in the Bowels of the Internet-I'm not someone who torrents, before anyone asks. Thankfully, the esoteric platform Eternal Family added it to their collection, making a viewing a reality.

Concerning Jesus Franco, I know he has many fans but out of the five films I've seen from him, the best were 60's horror early in his career: The Diabolical Dr. Z and The Awful Dr. Orloff weren't nonsense like A Virgin Among the Living Dead and Nightmares Come at Night were. Ecstasy wasn't the most logical picture either-including the dumbest police detective in cinematic history-and the ending made me guffaw in a bad way as it for certain contained the worst depiction of a certain event in cinematic history. It was also quite the decision to have a main plot thread centered on a doctor being banished from the profession because his experiments on bettering humanity and eradicating diseases centered on... human embryos. No comment on that. I will comment that for those who know Franco often used his male muse Howard Vernon in his films—yes he does have a role in Ecstasy.

This Dr. Johnson “unalived himself.” Thankfully for the viewer, his wife Soledad Miranda decides to kill the quartet of doctors who rejected her late husband in revenge, psychosis, and yes ecstasy. She was a highlight, and no, not for her beauty or her frequent full-frontal nudity. Rather, it was the performance-and how she was in anguish due to her husband's death-which was compelling. What a tragic death she had-only a month after the filming of Ecstasy concluded, she perished in a car wreck at only the age of 27.

On a lighter note, I really dug the score, even if at least on one occasion it seemed at odds w/ the action on the screen. Nevermind that, the music from Bruno Nicolai, Manfred Hubler & Sigi Schwab was quite entertaining, featuring more sitar than what I was expecting. The sunny scenery in Spain was also delightful. While the constant zoom-ins and zoom-outs were amusing, it was Miranda & the score which did plenty of heavy lifting, making me like the movie despite all the demerits. I also have to give Franco credit for some interesting shots/shot compositions.

I shouldn't write him off entirely—he made almost 200 films, after all, and he did more than horror. It might be a hoot to check out his “less popular” movies. As for She Killed in Ecstasy, despite not being as entranced by it as many have been these past 55 years, it's a relief to have finally tackled it after all these years.