Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		2.5

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 3, 2017

It seems only logical to begin a review of a Jesús Franco film with a famous quote from St. Thomas Aquinas: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Tweaking that inimitable pronouncement slightly to make it more contextually appropriate, one might reasonably say “To one who has seen a Franco film, no explanation is necessary. To one who has not seen a Franco film, no explanation is possible.” There’s a reason that critic Stephen Trower, who contributes a remarkably rational analysis of Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties in one of the supplements Severin has adorned this Blu-ray release with, called his summary of Franco’s works Flowers of Perversion: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco, for any given Franco film, whether his unapologetic pornographic offerings or his supposedly relatively more mainstream films (many if not most of which feature at least soft core leanings) are both arguably perverse and inarguably delirious. Both of those proclivities are well on display in Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties, a film whose very title indicates its completely peculiar ambience. Franco’s longstanding infatuation with “Women in Love” (so to speak) continues with this film, which (in its unedited version — more about that later in the supplements section, below) begins with two females who have been convicted of stripping in public taken to a club where they’re forced to perform their routine by an arrogant sort who seems to be a government type. This guy repeatedly berates the pair for their spectacularly unerotic dance moves (it doesn’t help that they’re in pretty dowdy prison garb), but then somewhat hilariously turns to an acolyte and says, “They’ll do.” It turns out the two are being recruited (again, hilariously) in a plot conceit that is equal parts The Dirty Dozen and Mission: Impossible, to travel to the Canary Islands, where they will pose as strippers while the smarter of the pair, Cecile (Franco mainstay Lina Romay), spies on a house across from their apartment, utilizing her apparent photography skills to document who’s entering and exiting the domain. This basic setup is already at least somewhat reminiscent of Franco’s 1969 effort Two Undercover Angels (originally released as Sadist Erotica), but Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties is arguably even more gonzo-tastic than “typical” Franco, if that’s possible. The film will be a hard sell (“no explanation is possible”) to those not already attuned to Franco’s completely distinctive style, but will most likely be enjoyed to the hilt (“no explanation is necessary”) by those who have come to love the wacky combo platter of low grade sleaze and unintentional (and, frankly, sometimes intentional) comedy that Franco films typically offer.

There’s probably no greater example of Franco’s “delirious” tendencies than the fact that after Cecile and her partner Brigitte (Lynn Monteil) give their little performance, and Cecile is beckoned over to hear a “deal” one of the government operatives has which will get the two out of prison immediately, Cecile politely listens to the offer with her boobs hanging out of an unbuttoned cloak for all the world to see. In Franco’s universe, this is perfectly “normal” behavior, and certainly doesn’t come close to some of the more salacious scenes offered later that deal with a sex trafficking ring run by a guy named Forbes (Claude Boisson) and his wife Irina (Joëlle Le Quément). Irina comes equipped with an apparently magical opal ring (hence the film’s Spanish language title) which allows her to hypnotize initially unwilling victims to become the sex slaves of both her and her husband. (I should note that virtually all of the aforementioned actors in this film, as well as Franco himself, worked under pseudonyms, with credited names not matching their real names.)

A number of provocative scenes feature the latest victim of the pair, a young woman named Adriana Rinaldi (Susan Hemingway), who is chained naked to a bed and forced to submit to all sorts of intrusive activities by both of the Forbes, but there are other interstitial scenes with just the Forbes that leave little if anything to the imagination. Just in case these elements don’t give enough opportunity for scantily clad (if clad at all) women running around wreaking sexual havoc, Cecile and Brigitte also “tease” their supposedly gay workmate Milton (Mel Rodrigo), though Milton himself turns out to be something of a repeated Deus ex Machina throughout the film.

Things just get downright surreal as the film trots along from sexual vignette to sexual vignette, though the bizarre highlight of the film's non- titillating material might be a helicopter chase with one character dressed in what looks like a rejected costume from either Queen of Outer Space or some long forgotten Esther Williams opus. That sequence is probably matched in weirdness by the whole subplot dealing with a gang of hippies who live in caves, something that plays out like a warped version of one of Roger Corman’s “trippy” films from the mid- to late sixties. And we haven’t even gotten into the part with a senator named Connolly (Olivier Mathot), who is trying to crack the human trafficking case himself and who gets sucked into the strippers’ orbit.

For those with a tolerance for Franco’s unapologetic excesses, there’s a fair amount of fun to be had with Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties, even if it has to be admitted that Franco’s over the top sexual depictions are going to be squirm worthy for some, maybe even some with those aforementioned tolerances. The film is simply a lunatic frenzy of weird, colliding elements, and like many of Franco’s films, what it lacks in logic and presentational acuity, it at least occasionally makes up in simple, unbridled enthusiasm.

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.32:1. Severin isn't offering a lot of information about the provenance of the elements used for this transfer, stating only that "this EuroSleaze rarity [is] now restored uncut in HD". There are some deficits in this transfer, including the fact that it's framed near Academy Ratio when I doubt it was screened that way (I can't find any authoritative data — if anyone has some, message me and I'll update the review), so I'm wondering if this is a dated master prepared for (one would assume cable, considering the content) tv showing. The best thing about this transfer is the palette reproduction, which is quite fresh looking and which pops surprisingly well in the many outdoor sequences. Colors are vivid and fairly natural looking, though some isolated scenes, like the "playful" vignettes involving Milton, have a kind of curious yellow (no pun intended) tone. The deficits begin with the opening sequence, which have some odd stairstepping on things like the edge of the car window behind the girls. The opening several moments of the film offer low contrast and low detail levels, as well as what looks like filtering, given the near absence of grain in some very dark moments. Image quality, including grain structure, improves once Adriana is introduced, but here new problems arise, including some frame instability and occasional warping. Grain is also suspiciously minimized at several later junctures in the film, not necessarily just the (many) dark sequences where one might imagine things could have gotten noisy looking, leading to some digital manipulation. There are numerous (admittedly quite tiny at times) scratches and other signs of age related wear and tear. Despite these issues, Franco loves extreme close-ups, and detail levels are actually pretty good, all things considered, in these moments. Franco's long documented challenges with focus pulling are very much in evidence throughout this film, meaning that sharpness is also somewhat variable at times. Compression issues also occur on occasions, with some chunky yellowness (see screenshot 19, which is not an optical) and other odd looking variability in backgrounds that can add an almost swirling look.

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties has LPCM 2.0 tracks in both English and French, and while neither is going to win any audiophile awards, they each get the job done within certain boundaries. Both tracks have damage, with occasional pops, cracks and similar sounds intruding, but the English track sounds just slightly brighter to my ears, with a clearer high range. Dialogue and the actually kind of cool sounding electric piano tinged score make it through the gauntlet relatively well, though occasional cues sound slightly distorted.

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Two Cats in the Canaries: An Interview with Director Jess Franco (1080p; 10:28) finds Franco in typical raconteur mode, talking about what sounds like a "party hearty" atmosphere in the Canary Islands as the film was being shot. He also has some kind of trenchant observations about being a so called "genre" specialist. "Life is a genre!" he exclaims at one point.


• Filmmaker Donald Farmer Interviews Longtime Franco Composer Daniel White (1080p; 11:51) is from a 1993 session conducted in Paris.


• Stephen Thrower on Two Female Spies (1080p; 28:46) is an excellent overview of not just the film, but of its place within the overall context of Franco's career.


• Outtakes (1080p; 8:50)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:07)

Additionally, the first 3000 copies of the Blu-ray include a Bonus DVD with a presentation of Opalo de fuego (480p; 1:30;15), also known as Opal of Fire, Merchants of Sex, the Spanish language edited version of the film. This is a manifestly different film despite sharing at least some of the same content. Several scenes are evidently from alternate takes, and there are whole missing segments here, including the opening sequence of Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties giving their little "audition". The video quality here is somewhat poorer than the main feature, not necessarily due only to the difference between standard and high definition resolutions.

Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're one of those "no explanation is necessary" types, you'll probably want to check this release out, despite some technical limitations, since the title is so rare and Severin has included some excellent supplements. If you're one of those "no explanation is possible" types, just look into my opal fire ring and let me help you forget you read this review.