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Dom Robinson reviews
Severin Films
- Cert:
- Running time: 92 minutes
- Year: 1977
- Pressing: 2008
- Region(s): 0, NTSC
- Chapters: 15 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo)
- Languages: English (dubbed from German)
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 1.78:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £14.99
- Extras:Trailer, “High Life in Hong Kong” – interviews, “Vanessa Revealed” – Behind-the-scenes featurette
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Director:
- Hubert Frank
(Catherine Chérie, Ceylon My Love, Disco Fever, Escape to Paradise, Has Anybody Seen My Pants?, Island of 1000 Delights, Melody in Love, Melody of Passion, Patricia, The Story of the Dolls, Terrifying Confessions of Captive Women, Vanessa)
Screenplay:
- Joos De Ridder
Music :
- Mathilde Basedow and Gerhard Heinz
Cast :
- Vanessa: Olivia Pascal
Jackie: Uschi Zech
Cooper; Anton Diffring
Adrian: Günter Clemens
Clé: Eva Eden
Living in a convent, Vanessa(Olivia Pascal) is told that her last surviving relative, Uncle Richard, is brown bread, but the plus side is that she’sabout to take a trip to Hong Kong following an inheritance – an inheritance of a chain of bordellos.
Upon arrival, Jackie (Uschi Zech), a girl living at the mansion to where Vanessa’s been summoned, tells her that shehas an amazing bust while Vanessa’s been bathed by two oriental girls – yes, you can see the way this film’s heading already.An older woman called Kay tells her that sleeping with men gets so tiring, because they’re mostly useless, that the women therejust end up sleeping with other women.
Of the daft soft-porn scenes here, one of the most amusing is of a Chinese girl dancing naked under a split bag of rice asthe contents fall onto her. Then, along comes Mr Macho who shoots his gun at further bags and she has more rice under which todance. Sadly, he starts to strip off as well – no longer interesting.
This is the kind of film that’ll be only worthy to conossieurs of arthouse soft-porn and not any man looking for a quickfive-knuckle shuffle or a curious woman looking for a tempting frig, as you can get stronger stuff by typing “Heather Mills porn”into Google Images. In fact, I got more enjoyment from one lesbian convent scene from the fact that the music within wasa great piece of classical music.It might’ve been worth it had these scenes actually followed through with what they appeared to promise, but hey ho.
The film also features a mad woman servant using a voodoo doll with a vagina to cause pain to Vanessa and there’s more titson display than an accident in a Chris Moyles clone factory.
Oh, and yes, there’s more bad dubbing here than one of those funny TV adverts in the ’80s and ’90s like the chewing gum one where someoneasked their mate who was awaiting the arrival of his girlfriend, “You’re eating onions?”. Now, aside from the fact thatonions stink and WHO in their right mind would JUST order a plate of chopped onion from the restaurant – whether or not theirgirlfriend was coming, none of the words spoken matched their lip movements.
Quality-wise, the picture is presented in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen but certainly shows the problems you’d expect of a30-year-old soft-porn picture with its soft appearance and frequent but brief picture anomolies.
For extras, there’s a Trailer (2:50), also in anamorphic 16:9, which includes an unseen scene of convent girls staringat a book full of penis pictures; High Life in Hong Kong (28:10), interviews with director Hubert Frank and director ofphotography Frank X. Lederle, presented in 16:9 and subtitled in English; and Vanessa Revealed (16:08), abehind-the-scenes featurette which is just footage set to background music and no commentary or narration.
The main menu contains music from the film with some sepia-tainted footage. There are no subtitles on the disc which is a shameand the disc contains 15 chapters which is okay but still a bit short on what I’d prefer (I work on a policy of one everyfive minutes).
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.