When the Ocean swallowed our earth's earliest civilisation, Atlantis,
several of the women of Atlantis have made an escape to a paradise island,
where they have become known as the gluttons, as they are insatiable in
bed and usually shag all their men to death. But now evil Parka (Kali
Hansa) and her helper Caronte (Robert Woods) want to steal the treasure of
Atlantis, which would lay waste to the gluttons' island paradise ... so
famed magician Cagliostro (Howard Vernon) summons legendary strongman
Maciste (Wal Davis) to save the island of the Atlanteans. Maciste is happy
to help of course but once on the island he finds the inhabitants so
irresistible that he shags and shags and shags, starting with the queen
(Alice Arno) but not leaving out one of her subjects, either ... and he
never tires. Parka is not entirely happy about this, so she has an
Atlantean woman in love with her and her sister shag Maciste in an effort
to tire him out and then kill him, but Maciste just shags and shags and
wears the girls out. Ultimately, Parka catches the queen and wants to
sacrifice her in a black mass to summon the demons of the sea, but Maciste
intervenes, chases away the demons, and even though Parka manages to kill
the queen, the ritual hasn't been fulfilled and it's up to the queen's
favourite subject (Lina Romay) to kill Parka while Maciste kills Caronte,
to then take the rest of the Atlanteans to find a new home for them. Of
course, Les Gloutonnes is as absurd on film as it sounds in
writing, and of course it's mostly an excuse to show naked girls and
(simulated) sex, and of course it's not a good film in the traditional
sense of the word, and not even one of director Jess Franco's better ones
- but still, one can see it's a Jess Franco film quite clearly, and I mean
this in the most positive sense of the word, as it has a very delirious
quality to it that Franco's known for, both in his eccentric camerawork
and in the weirdness of the story, much of the film is clearly meant
tongue-in-cheek, without the whole thing being a comedy, and there's
nudity abound of course, even in scenes that not require any. All that
said, this is a film that probably only fans of the director (like myself)
will really enjoy, it's too weird for fans of mainstream erotica, and
unlike the best work of Jess Franco it doesn't go for the artistic, it
just is what it is ... fun still!
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