User Reviews

This was the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life and I am sorry I paid money to buy the DVD that I will throw in the trash. Erotic - NO Female nudity - Technically yes about 1 minute in total Sex - NO For practical purposes this was NOT based on the novel by the Marquis de Sade; in fact in the interview the writer admits he rewrote the story to accommodate Tyrone Power's daughter who could not act. So there is no Black Mass or anything of the original book except the two sisters originally being taught by nuns in a convent. This was a shear waste of money on the part of Franco that could have been his masterpiece with the expensive sets and costumes that were absolutely splendid. Jack Palance was totally miscast, even if he were sober it would have made little difference. The same was true with Klaus Kinski because his performance was too remote and did not narrate the story all the way through. Franco said he asked Orson Wells to play the part of the Marquis de Sade, again totally wrong if you are going to make a porno movie. I have no idea what he was thinking. The story was so confused that it failed to make real sense because it deviated from the original novel so much. This movie was not a porno or anything else, it was just a big nothing.

The opening scenes are like a parody. Klaus Kinski, imprisoned, dreams of shackled, naked girls in a flurry of out-of-focus zoom-ins courtesy of Director Jess Franco, with a thumping, grandiloquent musical score that quite defies the fact that nothing of any merit is actually happening. It is as if Bruno Nicolai's soundtrack has swept in from some spectacular epic to accompany these scenes; a towering presence Kinski undoubtedly was, but even he doesn't merit such extravagance when he is, in effect, doing nothing.

Adding the usual spice to the cast are Franco friends Maria Rohm, Howard Vernon and a seemingly inebriated Jack Palance. The performances here are larger than life, and such a style befits this a huge, expensive looking, ribald romp full of exotic characters and costumes and locations, where everyone we meet could conservatively be described as 'heightened' – except, perhaps understandably, for Romina Power (daughter of Tyrone), who gives a very grounded performance as Justine. Rather unkindly, Jess Franco has made it clear her casting was forced on him and that he would have chosen someone else. Charisma she may lack compared to the extravagance of those around her, but for the sake of contrast if nothing else, her performance just about works. "Most of the time (Power) didn't even know we were shooting," Franco is quoted as saying.

As for Kinski's appearances, they are silent and they do not integrate with anyone else. The possibilities between the eccentricities of Kinski and Franco were never fully realised, it seems to me. The closest we have come to realising the meeting of these two greats comes together in 1976's 'Jack the Ripper', but despite how enjoyable that film was, one would have hoped for a less restrained team-up.

'Justine…' film has been heavily censored for some releases, not for reasons of graphic nudity or gore (at least, I don't think so – it is very tame on that score), but probably because the 124 minute version I have seen is way, way too long to justify the character of Justine falling into one mishap after another, which is the story-line in a nutshell.

My favourite Franco take on this idea is 'Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir' (1970), which seems much more low-budget, but condenses the tale more successfully.

Nearing the end of the ICM poll for the best films of 1969,I decided it was time to look at one of the credits from that year of auteur Uncle Jess Franco. Speaking a few years ago to fellow IMDber melvelvit-1 after seeing the operatic excess of Roger Vadim's fun Vice and Virtue (1963-also reviewed),I was told that Jess had done his own version of the story. Standing out on his credits for '69,I decided it was time to at last meet Justine and Juliet.

View on the film:

Made during his Harry Alan Towers era, director Jess Franco works with his largest ever budget, (and longest run time?) to conjure up a sleazy kitsch historical Horror epic, with Uncle Jess and cinematographer Manuel Merino layering neon colours over the naked horrors inflicted on Justine.

Even when working with a bigger budget, ole Uncle Jess thankfully keeps his major themes intact with Bruno Nicolai's playful Jazz score actually finding (some) sense of the epic, and Jess's unique zoom-ins marking out each humiliation Justine experiences.

Producing and writing this adaptation of Marquis de Sade's novel, the screenplay by Harry Alan Towers suffers from being thinly spread over the 2 hours, with sequences where the horror hits the heart of Justine, (such a stylish exchange of poison wine and a dead dog!) that are undermined by Justine then being lost in the wilderness,with little time given to build the relationship between Juliet and Justine.

Cut-down by Uncle Jess as acting like a window dummy, Romina Power lacks the daydream daze of Jess's usual leading ladies, but makes up for it with a tempting jail bait innocence over the punishment of Justine.

The only reason I gave this film two stars was for all the hot babes showing T&A throughout the movie. It really seemed like a tease though I was expecting it to be far more proactive It was way too long and just a weird meandering waste of time. The only reason I finished watching it was to see Justine naked. The description on amazon and the movie box cover made it seem like it was a shocking and salacious exotic erotic thriller yet in reality it was just an aimless and at times annoying film and I'd like to get those two hours and four minutes of my life back. Spoiler alert: it never shows Justine get pounded.

After The Blood of Fu Manchu, producer Harry Alan Towers and Jess Franco wanted to make a more adult film and this movie was the result, made with a million dollar budget, which isn't much for some people but would be one of Franco's largest budgets.

There were still some issues, like how Rosemary Dexter (Eye in the Labyrinth) was supposed to play the lead, yet she was moved to the smaller role of Claudine when Romina Power was chosen by a Hollywood money man to play the lead. Franco was unhappy with her in the movie, saying "most of the time she didn't even know we were shooting" and that he had to rewrite the story and move away from DeSade as she was so hard to reach.

Justine and Juliette (Maria Roma) are sisters who live in a convent, a place they're taken from when he dies and leaves his gold behind. While Juliette goes to stay at Madame de Buisson's (Carmen de Lirio) house of ill repute, learning the skills of the oldest business, her sister Justine goes to the church, where a priest introduces her to du Harpin (Akim Tamiroff), who hires her on as a maid, but it's all a scheme to steal from his master and use her as a stooge, yet Justine escapes prison thanks to Madame Dubois (Mercedes McCambridge, can this movie have more great actors in it? Yes, it can.).

While all this is going on, Juliette and another prostitute named Claudine (yes, Rosemary Dexter who was supposed to be the lead) kill their boss and a client, stealing gold and going on the run all the way to Madame Dubois. The men there end up trying to assault her more innocent sister, as she runs to the home of an artist named Raymond (Harald Leipnitz) before being caught in the murderous games of the de Bressacs (Horst Frank and Sylva Koscina), which ends up getting her branded with an M - for murderess - on her breast.

I kind of love that every decision that Juliette makes is stuff like killing people and drowing her crime partners while Justine ends up trapped in all manner of Little Annie Fanny situations like being kidnapped by Father Antonin (Jack Palance) and his order of ascetics. Instead of studying and meditating, they're making filthy love to anything that moves. When Father Antonin offers to free Justine from this world by making her a sacrifice, but she escapes yet again, finally finding her way back to her sister.

Meanwhile, the Marquis de Sade (Klaus Kinski) has hallucinated this all while stuck in prison, obsessed as always with female flesh. I mean, when Rosalba Neri is in the story you're imagining, wouldn't you? Also - just as a warning - Rosemary Dexter was 16 when she made this. Fair warning.

People often ask me, "What's the one Jess Franco movie I should watch?" Depending on how well you can handle this material, this would be the best produced of his movies, filled with gorgeous settings, period perfect costumes, a wonderful Bruno Nicolai score and perhaps the most focused Franco I've seen, despite the fact that he wasn't getting to make the movie that he wanted to make. And if you're a maniac, I have a bunch more to tell you about.

Spanish smut-meister Jess Franco was finally granted the funds by recently deceased globe-trotting film financier Harry Alan Towers to fully indulge his avowed admiration, running as an undercurrent throughout his entire freak filmography, for the literary endeavors of the unfortunate Marquis de Sade and the results should have been dirty movie devotee nirvana. So what went wrong ? Well, one aspect careening out of control was definitely the compromise that comes with any international production, the phenomenon disrespectfully if often accurately described as "Europudding" ; another reason seems more endemic to Franco and similar cinéastes whose bark is much worse than their bite, screaming at the top of their lungs how they would be able to realize their potential if only ignorant money men would wise up and bankroll their pet project. Another of the director's "what if ?" achievements, his JACK THE RIPPER (paid for by Swiss movie mogul Erwin C. Dietrich at the behest of the provenly persuasive filmmaker), was to generate a comparably underwhelming response.

Not even the best of Franco's admittedly glossy and perhaps as a result somewhat generic collaborations with Towers, an honor split down the middle between EUGENIE and VENUS IN FURS, JUSTINE on the surface probably comes about as close to the mainstream as either movie maven ever has and that's not necessarily a good thing. Framed by scenes of an incarcerated Marquis (madman Klaus Kinski putting in another strictly debt-allaying gig) furiously scribbling away while plagued by blood-soaked female phantoms emanating from his fevered mind, the film traces the road from comparative riches to rags and back again followed by sisters Justine (Romina Power) and Juliette (Maria Rohm, Mrs. Towers at the time) as their parents' self-inflicted demise when business turned sour leaves them destitute and as a direct result rather uncharitably cast out of the convent by the sisters whose piety's clearly limited to the amount of Francs pouring into their coffers. While Juliette becomes the original happy hooker and quickly gathers a small fortune through lewdness, thievery and worse, her God-fearing sibling desperately clings to her virtue with all the ensuing sad consequences readers of the novel or, more likely, viewers of any of sexploitation cinema's myriad movie renditions are familiar with.

Rather astonishingly, though a lightness of tone might conceivably have been imposed in order to reach as wide an audience such a costly endeavor (by Towers' standards anyway) would warrant to recoup its investment, Franco plays most of Justine's trials and tribulations almost strictly for laughs. This only serves to make poor Romina Power, daughter of Hollywood heartthrob Tyrone and a subsequent pop sensation with husband Al Bano in '80s Italy, look ridiculously naive to the point of certifiable brain damage, perhaps a deliberate move on the director's part as she was imposed by the producer as an eleventh hour replacement for his own choice of Rosemary Dexter, now relegated to supporting duty playing Juliette's sister in slime Claudine. An early section with debt collector Du Harpin (hammed to the hilt by legendary character actor Akim Tamiroff) comes off worst as he even sells off the girl's few garments, leaving her hanging around his boarding house dressed in nothing more than a barely buttock-covering men's shirt, a sight sure to raise some eyebrows in 18th century France ! Much better is the sequence involving the devious Marquis de Bressac (popular German actor Horst Frank, known primarily to Euro horror aficionados for appearing in Armando Crispino's underrated THE ETRUSCAN KILLS AGAIN), whose pan-sexuality is considerably more downplayed than it was in Claude Pierson's astonishing JUSTINE DE SADE a mere three years later, scheming to poison his wealthy spouse (the always welcome Sylva Koscina, once again baring almost all for her art) with or without Justine's help, threatening to let her take the fall if she refuses to comply.

Along the way, it soon becomes obvious that the "big name" actors attracted to the production because they had fallen on hard times financially - a slumming Mercedes McCambridge and Jack Palance among them - are the ones behaving most unprofessionally while it's the modest second stringers saving the day. Refuting all accusations of nepotism, ravishing Rohm acquits herself well as usual, remorselessly amoral as Juliette, and Kraut matinée idol Harald Leipnitz (who prominently figured in several of the frothy FRAU WIRTIN a/k/a SEXY SUSAN Terry Torday sex comedies) makes the most out of Justine's insipid love interest Raymond because, yes, adding insult to injury, Franco and/or Towers saw fit to tag on an illogical if allegedly crowd-pleasing true love conquers all happy ending to boot ! Talk about taking the sting out of a scorpion's tail. Even our hapless heroine's ordeal at the hands of an order of lascivious libertine monks fails to generate much in the way of shock value, shot in the foot by Palance over-acting on a level that even Dennis Hopper might have considered beyond the pale. Left to her own devices, the unseasoned Power barely seems to register anything that goes on around her. As for production values, this picture paradoxically ranks among their creators' sterling achievements, spectacularly shot by veteran DoP Manuel Merino and superbly scored by Bruno Nicolai, then at the top of his game just as he was starting to branch out from Spaghetti westerns.

Sisters raised in a convent, Justine, naive & virtuous innocent, and Juliette, wholeheartedly prepared for any wiles of carnal desire the world has to offer, are sent out after the loss of their parents and finances run out. While Juliette dives in head first without a second thought into a wicked world, embracing it to the fullest, Justine is almost like a rabbit tossed into a den of lions. Her trust in people leads to being taken advantage of, penniless, destitute, on the run for crimes she didn't commit, and facing perilous situations towards her life and virginity, seemingly always able just to escape by the skin of her teeth through fate and happenstance. Meanwhile, Juliette, commits the very atrocities Justine is accused of, and rises through society living lavishly, but never emotionally fulfilled. All the while the film returns to the Marquis De Sade(..the always powerful Klaus Kinski, showing a very tormented man seething with agony like an imprisoned zoo animal longing to escape his misfortune), behind a jail cell, alone and haunted by his muses, the very creations of Justine and Juliette as their story unfolds.

Essentially a series of (mis)adventures as Justine seeks shelter from a world that wants to devour her..nearly every possible sanctuary from harm seems to hold someone(..or multiple someones)with sinister intent. Just when you think Justine might've finally escaped the evils of the world around her, someone hostile spoils her happiness. While one is branded a thief and murderous who is not guilty of the crimes against her, the other does commits these deeds and reaps the benefits substantially..perhaps the Marquis sees the world through a different pair of eyes, as in his story those who take to committing wicked and carnal acts are rewarded while virtue and innocence leads to mistreatment and cruelty. Or, in order to survive in such a harsh and barbarous environment, one must succeed and triumph by being ever more treacherous, sadistic and savage...obviously the examples of Madame Dusbois(Mercedes McCambridge, living it up in her role as one of those devouring lions who poses a major threat to Justine, even after the poor girl helps her escape prison and a certain hanging for a list of deeds committed against mankind)and Juliette work in this line of reasoning's favor. Yet, by the end, Justine is justified for hanging tough and enduring each and every hardship faced along life's way. Juliette sees that the lifestyle she has lived leaves her an empty void yet unfilled despite being where she is, and Justine, having found love through a kind, handsome artist, has come full circle understanding the world for what it is.

I think the story of these two sisters is perfect material for a director like Jesús Franco who operates without restraint working with more of a budget. While I believe many will find the film frustrating as Franco uses zoom and often toys with focus(..although, I think it works to great advantage in the opening as we see De Sade moving throughout his jail cell while the characters of Justine and Juliette take shape in his mind while also presenting themselves "in person"), I think this is one of his best films, using the locations at his disposal to full effect, actually having the ability to establish time and place thanks to period costumes and lavish sets. I think many will find his cast rather average to hammy. I relished McCambridge and LOVED how Franco introduces her. The camera moves with her in frame as Dubois exposes the joy of being who she is..through McCambridge we can see that she basks in the lifestyle she has led up until this point, not expecting to die. I thought Dubois was one of the most entertaining characters in the film, far more lively and ferocious than Romina Power as Justine, whose performance never dramatically cuts the mustard(..it almost appears as if she's about to crack a smile, even as her character faces dangerous situations, remaining fresh-faced and bubbly like a school girl). Franco mentions in an interview that he wanted Rosemary Dexter(who plays Juliette's murdering cohort and lover)for the role of Justine, who could display the pleasures that were starting to form through the agonies occurring to her. I think one can see in her opening scene in the Paris brothel that this would've been more ideal casting..just the way she lies in a room presents something unique and interesting. Maria Rohm fits her seductive role as Juliette, this type of casting works because she has the type of look the character needs. I did think Romina Power had this precocious child-like spirit that Franco elicits for the character of Justine, and she certainly is a gorgeous creature, young with a "post-card" beauty which photographs well, but there's not an iota of depth. Franco admits that he often even shot Power's scenes as Justine when she had no idea they were for the movie! Fans of Jack Palance will revel in his deranged portrayal of a "minister", who operates a sect of monks who use females left behind by the world as examples of their doctrines of pleasure through pain..often almost a drunken buffoon spouting gibberish as if he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, this might also leave some who have seen Palance elsewhere burying their heads in their laps in embarrassment. I'm not sure if this is the user comment to read because I thoroughly enjoyed the film despite it's various weaknesses. Sure, I agree that Franco doesn't tap into the beast as he could(..because it's certain that there's room for some serious exploitation and brutality that goes unfurled), but I found this film stylistically inspired, specifically his use of color, camera-work, and setting. I do wonder what the film could've been if Franco had been able to use his choice for Justine.

Derived from a novel by the Marquis De Sade, this is a prime example of Jess Franco having a chance to do something good and outrageous–and blowing it altogether.

Sisters Justine and Juliette (Romina Power, Maria Rohm) go their separate ways after the death of their parents. Juliette spends her life chasing degradation and growing rich. Justine pursues virtue only to suffer at the hands of one pervert after another including Jack Palance who gives the overacting job of his career–and for Palance that covers a lot of territory. She also crosses paths with Mercedes MacCambridge as a whore-mistress imprisoned for murder. Franco regular Howard Vernon hams it up in one scene. Akim Tamiroff, Sylvia Koscina and Rosalba Neri also co-star in this mess. Franco himself appears as an emcee in what passed for a strip joint in the 18th Century. He may be flawed as a director but here, he manages to out-act most of the cast.

Up to a point, DEADLY SANCTUARY is accurate in terms of its dim world-view. Crime DOES pay, good guys DO finish last and if the good don't die young, it's only so they can put up with a ton of crap while they're still alive. The preaching at the end, about how Juliette's life is empty but Justine will get her reward in heaven, is an unfortunate carry-over from the novel JUSTINE itself.

Good news: Klaus Kinski plays the Marquis De Sade. The bad news is that his screen time is brief. He's taken to prison in a four-minute prologue, and the rest of the movie is punctuated by shots of him scrawling with a quill pen and expounding, in badly-dubbed voice-over, on the misfortunes of virtue. His visions of bondage and torture in the prologue are the most enthralling parts of the film. Most people who had Kinski under contract as France's favorite nobleman would have written a whole film around him, turned him loose and let him do some real damage. Not ol' Jess and producer Harry Alan Towers–and some fool even misspelled Kinski's last name in the end credits.

Redeeming qualities include rousing (for Franco) crowd scenes, a violent prison break, eye-catching costumes and a great Bruno Nicolai score. However, despite outbursts of sadism and occasional shots of nipples the size of hob-nails, the main effect of this flick is to cure insomnia. And it's not even Franco's worst...