The Girl From Rio

10th April 2013

The Girl from Rio is a campy spy thriller that was directed by the late Jess Franco and originally released in March 1969. It stars Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler, George Sanders and, inevitably – given that this is a Harry Alan Towers production, Maria Rohm. Ostensibly a sequel to Lindsay Shonteff’s 1967 effort The Million Eyes of Su-muru, Franco’s film continues the story of the man-hating megalomaniac lesbian villainess Sumuru (Eaton), although inexplicably she’s called Sunanda in the script and, equally inexplicably, Sumitra in the end credits.

Whatever you choose to call her, she’s now based in Femina, her women-only city located somewhere outside Rio de Janeiro at what looks suspiciously like an empty airport. She’s heard that supercool master criminal Jeff Sutton (Wyler) is in town with ten million dollars in stolen cash and dispatches sultry manicurist / undercover feminist Leslye (Rohm) to bring him in. However, ex-pat English mobster Masius (Sanders) also fancies getting his hands on the cash and sets his own goons on Sutton’s tail.

I think what Franco was aiming for with this film was the look and feel of those two self-consciously camp Bulldog Drummond films of the late 1960s which starred Richard Johnson. Unfortunately, as was always the case with Franco, his ambition went further than his reach and what we actually get is a pretty grubby adolescent fantasy about female domination. Franco certainly knows how to frame an image but it’s the poverty of the imagination as much as of the budget which lets him down.

Nothing in the film, be it the extras, the sets or the costumes, looks quite as good it should; it’s as if Franco put the minimum amount of thought into the design, which is the crucial element in films of this type. So we end up with Sumuru’s chief henchwoman wearing a costume which is literally made out of black gaffer tape and a really cruddy sequence set during the Rio carnival which consists almost entirely of stock footage, none of which matches with the rest of the movie.

To cover up for this general lack of quality, Franco relies on his traditional fall-back strategy of copious nudity. Not from Shirley Eaton of course who has far too much sense and taste to get involved in anything like that but rather from her ‘army’ of sullen-looking extras and of course Maria Rohm whose function in her husband’s films is almost that of naked troubleshooter.

Franco’s films always feature music very heavily and The Girl from Rio is no exception. Sadly, what is usually one of the best executed elements in his oeuvre is actually rather disappointing this time out. Most of the soundtrack is terribly dated bossa nova lift music and the theme song, specifically its lyrics, has to be heard to be believed. “The girl from Rio” croons the chanteuse, “dangerous and cool as ice / She plays with men / just like a cat plays with mice.” Under normal circumstances you’d hear lyrics like that and immediately realise you were watching a Spinal Tap-style spoof but I think it would be crediting Franco further than he is due to say that’s what he was intending.

Casting-wise this is a cut above Franco’s usual standard but the acting itself is a bit of a mixed bag. George Sanders looks old and bored but his voice was a thing of pure delight and the magic was still very much there. Shirley Eaton isn’t called upon to do much more than wear a succession of revealing (but not too revealing) outfits and say things like “Fools!” a lot, but she’s a good-looking girl and I reckon she deserved the few leading roles that came her way. Richard Wyler was a much more interesting man that he was an actor and it’s difficult to shake off the realisation that he’s about as suave as the man in the Imperial Leather commercials. Which he was.

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