In a career that spanned seven decades, Jess Franco achieved over 200 directorial credits in numerous genres, with the quality of his output varying wildly from inspired surrealism to entertaining sleaze to almost unwatchable garbage (with the majority tending to veer towards the latter). However, although Franco's skill as a film-maker was questionable, his ability to get hot Euro-totty to strip off in front of a camera and do whatever he asked was never in doubt, and large doses of frequent female nudity frequently made his movies more bearable.

Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion is a prime example of an otherwise rather dull (despite the lurid subject matter) and not particularly well directed movie made more enjoyable largely thanks to Franco's remarkable way with women. His two female stars in this film—regular Franco actress Maria Rohm and Swedish sex-bomb Marie Liljedahl—regularly disrobe, give each other rub-downs, and indulge in all manner of kinky activities, all of which helps the time pass a lot less painfully.

Stylistically, the film is fairly typical of Franco's work from the 60s and early 70s, when his films reflected the fashion and mood of the times, exploited the liberated attitudes of the young and incorporated psychedelic visuals to enhance the hallucinatory vibe. Nudity aside, the groovy music by Bruno Nicolai is probably the films greatest strength, his jazzy score really adding to the creepy, decadent vibe. The film is also notable for it's cameo by Christopher Lee, who doesn't get involved in the saucy action, but is still probably not all that proud of his involvement.

5.5 out of 10, happily rounded up to 6 for the lovely Marie Liljedah, who almost rivals Christina Lindberg in the major Swedish babe stakes.

It is not difficult to understand why this languorous Franco ero-drama caused quite the controversy when released in 1970. It is sexually frank and throws in incest, lesbianism and interracial kissing with gleeful abandon.

Today, it seems very tame from a graphic point of view, but its sexual politics are way ahead of the ultra-conservative (sexual) climate the film industry currently operates in.

This is not an el cheapo Franco flutter shot on a castle set with bad lighting and hit-and-miss focus. It is beautifully shot by Manuel Merino and, as always, Bruno Nicolai delivers a rich, evocative score.

Eugenie's "journey" into perversion encompasses light lesbianism, a little rough intercourse and some soft whipping of her tender breasts. She emerges more lost and confused than liberated and ends up wandering nude for several minutes on an island; this sequence, the film's strongest, is quite surreal.

Marie Liljedahl, who plays Eugenie, is not Soledad Miranda, and is quite bland in her leading lady role.

Jack Taylor is suitably oily as Maria Rohm's lust-filled brother and Rohm makes the most of her role as Eugene's corrupter.

I like EUGENIE DE SADE quite a bit more than this and find it far more erotic, but this is worth a look, if not high praise.

The idea of making a narrative film of de Sade's philosophical dialogue Philosophy in the Bedroom is an attractive one, and certainly any adaptation would have to (if it were to have any dramatic life at all) take liberties with the original text. Jess Franco's 1970 adaptation Eugenie… the Story of her Journey into Perversion takes the basic situation and the characters and transforms them into a quite different Sadeian tale. For my money, the original offers more interesting aspects, with the complete seduction of the young heroine into Dolmance's libertine lifestyle and the murderous abjection of the mother at the end.

Franco's film has Eugenie, a young middle-class girl invited by swinging Madame de St. Ange and her pervy step-brother (a dilution of Sade's incestuous siblings) and falling prey to an elaborate plan of Madame's to set the girl up as a sacrificial victim as a punishment for taking the step-brother's love. Dolmance becomes a side-figure, appearing to help with Madame's scheme but turning it on her in the end, getting his twisted pleasure out of seeing everyone come to ruin. The most intriguing feature of this is the tacked-on revelation that the action has all been Madame's dream, a fantasy in which she is tricked out of her life – that a woman should have such fantasies is certainly provocative.

The anti-Christian, republican and homosexual aspects of Sade's book are jettisoned. What we get in their place is a lot of softcore nudity and brittle upper-class decadence. The film is certainly creepy, although the creepiness is second hand, the idea of dreams which turn out to be real a direct lift from Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. Franco certainly knows how to direct the camera, although it is hard to tell whether the often out-of-focus camera-work was deliberate or not (a case could be made that it is, and behoves the dream that the film's action is). The pace is very slow.

This is not a bad film about decadence, Sadism and being driven mad by sex, but there's surely a better narrative to be extrapolated from Sade's extraordinary book.