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How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) - Mondo Macabro (DVD)

Theatrical Release Date: France, 1974
Director: Jesús Franco
Writers: Jesús Franco, Alain Petit
Cast: Alice Arno, Robert Woods, Howard Vernon, Tania Busselier, Alfred Baillou, Joaquín Blanco, Lina Romay

Release Date: October 8th, 2013
Approximate Running Time: 86 Minutes 36 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 Aspect Ratio
Rating: NR
Sound: Dolby Digital Mono French
Subtitles: English
Region Coding: Region 1 NTSC
Retail Price: OOP

"The beautiful Countess Martine de Bressac is released from the expensive asylum where she was incarcerated after castrating her former lover. She returns to her luxurious villa on the coast and goes at once down into her private underground dungeon. It's here that she indulges herself in the perverse sexual practices that give her life meaning, surrounded by the bizarre human statues of her previous victims." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 3.5/5

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, "Brand new transfer from film negative."

How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) comes of a dual layer DVD.

Disc Size: 6.8 GB

The source looks great; debris and other imperfections are cleaned up. Colors are nicely saturated, image clarity is good, and black levels are strong. Also, compression is very good, and there are no issues with digital noise reduction. That said, for an 11-year-old DVD, this transfer looks very good.

Audio: 3.5/5

This release comes with one audio option, a Dolby Digital mono mix in French with removable English subtitles. The audio sounds clean, clear, and balanced, and the range is very good.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a Mondo Macabro preview reel, an interview with author Stephen Thrower the author of Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco (21 minutes 28 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an interview with screenwriter Alan Petit (11 minutes 52 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo French with removable English subtitles), text bios for Robert Woods, Alice Arno, Tania Busselier, Howard Vernon, Lina Romay, Alfred Baillou and Alan Petit, and an essay about How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois).

Summary:

Jess Franco, with How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois), returns to familiar ground: the literary works of the Marquis de Sade. This influence is most noticeable in the way he depicts the decadent aristocratic character, a countess, who is hell-bent on seducing a young woman by exposing her to the carnal delights that she has so far repressed.

Other influences include borrowing from his own films, as Jess Franco once again brings back motifs and characters that have appeared in numerous of his other films. The most obvious reference to his cinematic past is a sequence that involves women dancing and making love to mannequins. This sequence also starts off with his trademark use of bathing the image in red light.

The narrative, like most of Jess Franco’s narratives from this era of his career, is just the bare essentials to get the characters from one moment to the next. What characters say is not as important, since visuals in Jess Franco films play a significant role in the story that unfolds. In fact, this film has one of the most remarkable moments to appear in any Jess Franco film. In the scene in question, the countess and her current lover are spying on the young woman they plan on seducing. This moment inadvertently exposes the fourth wall of the cinema when the countess' lover pushes her out of frame.

Of course, this would not be a Jess Franco film if there wasn’t any sex or at least a hint of sexuality, and in this regard, How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) excels, and then some. In fact, for this era of his career, How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) is one of his strongest examples of how he could effortlessly jump between sexually and non-sexually content. This is simply not a case of having sexually related content for the sake of having it, since everything in How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) plays an integral role in the story at hand.

Those who are even remotely familiar with Jess Franco’s other films will quickly notice many recognizable faces. Most of the cast would go on to work with Jess Franco on his next film, Countess Perverse. Tania Busselier's portrayal of Cécile, aka the virgin, is the most memorable performance. She does a great job in the role of the object of desire. Lina Romay (Female Vampire) delivers another scene-stealing performance. Ultimately, How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) is a classic example of how Jess Franco could take the most basic ingredients and create something that is well beyond the sum of all of its parts.

Mondo Macabro's How to Seduce a Virgin (Plaisir à trois) gets a solid release, highly recommended.