Woodyanders Wealthy businessman Count Boris Zaroff (a creepy portrayal by writer/director Michel Lemoine) gets his sick kicks from seducing beautiful young women prior to hunting them down like animals and killing them.While Lemoine does use the compellingly twisted premise as an opportunity to offer a hallucinatory cinematic meditation on the duality of human nature by presenting the main character as a highly troubled person with a fragile grip on both reality and his own sanity (the guy keeps seeing his deceased wife all over the place), he nonetheless still delivers the basic satisfying sleazy goods thanks to some perverse sexuality and a pleasing plethora of hot naked women. Moreover, Lemoine also makes nice use of the opulent castle location and maintains a blithely seedy'n'surreal tone throughout. Howard Vernon acquits himself well in a juicy supporting part as Zaroff's evil and manipulative servant Kurt. Guy Bonnett's funky-throbbing score hits the get-down groovy spot. Philippe Theaudiere's bright cinematography provides a stylish sparkling look. Recommended viewing for fans of oddball exploitation fare.

ferbs54 Michel Lemoine's 1974 offering, "Seven Women for Satan," is easily one of the weirdest movies that I have ever rented; right up there with Jess Franco's "Venus In Furs" and Jaromil Jires' "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders." In the Lemoine film, the writer/director himself plays Count Boris Zaroff, son of the original manhunting count from the Richard Connell short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (1924), famously filmed in 1932 (never mind that Zaroff was a Russian and his son in this film is as Gallic as can be). When we first meet him, Zaroff, Jr. has just purchased an enormous château, in which his butler, Karl (played by cult Eurostar Howard Vernon), in fulfillment of a promise he made to Karl, Sr., the original count's butler, is training Boris in the ways of sadism and torture. To complicate matters, Boris seems to be haunted by the spirit of a beautiful woman who died in the year 1912. I say "seems" only because the dividing line between fantasy and reality here is a thin one at best. To add to the disorientation, Lemoine utilizes odd camera angles, fish-eye lenses, dreamy soft-focus photography and some truly bizarre discourse between the film's principals. The picture treats us to a fun torture chamber sequence and features the phoniest-looking dog attack scene ever (especially when compared to the 1932 film) and an excellent score by Guy Bonnet. It is only 84 minutes long, yet still feels padded with nudie-girl segments and assorted topless dancing and writhing (nice padding, granted!). Banned in its native France and yet the Silver Medal winner at the Sitges (near Barcelona) Film Festival, the picture, surreal and trippy as it is, should have been a midnight movie staple back when, as was "El Topo." Like the Jodorowsky film, it is a real stoner treat, and a must for the lysergically enhanced mind. A true rarity, but certainly not for all tastes....

gerard_bechard To the unaware and on the surface, this film may seem like a 70's exploitation film but it has deeper meanings. This film is almost unknown and has never received wide distribution. It was banned in France -- it's country of origin. It is one of the few "real" horror movies to come out of Europe.In this film, Boris Zaroff, initially represents the new France of business and corporate take-overs but has fallen under the spell of the old world via a portrait of the dead Anne De Boisreyvault -- a former inhabitant of the château. If Boris is to be kept on the true and narrow, schooled as a true Zaroff, he must reject this misty-eyed romantic view of turn of the century France. It is no accident that the dead woman under whose spirit Zaroff has fallen was buried in 1912 -- just before the onset of the Great War -- the war that destroyed the leisured lifestyle of the aristocrats of old France.Unknown to many is that this movie is said to be an unconscious archetype: it derives much of its power from one of Europe's oldest and most potent myths, the ancient story of The Bride of Corinth. The tale tells of a young man who visits the family of his intended. He finds the house empty and everyone seemingly gone away. He decides to stay and that night his bride visits him, only to tell him that she is already dead.The story was first recorded in the 2nd century AD in Phlegon's Marvels. It was popularized in the 18th century by Goethe who made the woman a vampire.In it's purest form, the story is actually about the death of the old gods, the end of nature and the triumph of the new European order -- rational, anti-pagan Christianity.Likewise Boris falls in love with the spirit of the dead Anne De Boisreyvault -- fallen in love with the ghost of a world long gone.The background and music fit this film well.There is also one scene with a Negro. It's not your typical Hollywood Negro character, IE The Hero. He represents the dark unconscious mind of a white woman's unrestrained sexual drive.

goblinhairedguy Michel Lemoine's glassy-eyed face is well known to Eurocult fans, as he spent years appearing in almost all genres, including several striking, if little-known titles, like "Sex on the Beach" and "Death on the Fourposter". As a director, he made several softcore erotic features (including the noteworthy Les Desaxées) before drifting into hardcore. But he had an irresistible urge to dabble in the fantasy genre, although it was generally frowned upon in France -- and this title is the result. His directorial stylings imitate those of his mentors -- Franco, Benazeraf and Rollin -- naive, dreamlike, disorienting -- but he lacks the idiosyncratic, iconic style of his betters, making many of his sequences risible in their pretentions. In fact, Peter Tombs claims in his notes for the DVD that the intention was generally parodic (or at least something of an homage). To most eyes it will play as a rather crass, but sumptuously enjoyable, wallow in exploitation tropes, lacking narrative logic or thematic consistency, but delivering the naked and the absurd in spades, along the lines of Polselli or Brismee.