332. Future Women

332. Future Women aka Rio 70 aka Die sieben Männer der Sumuru (1969)
Director: Jesús Franco
Writers: Harry Alan Towers based on characters created by Sax Rohmer
From: Sci-Fi Invastion (only 1 remains!)

A spy has to infiltrate the matriarchal Femina to rescue a kidnapped girl, but finds himself becoming the center of an even larger plot.

In some undefined future period, the battle of the sexes has been won in one nation, Femina, by women who have turned it into a fascist matriarchy. In writing that sentence, I’ve gained 100,000 YouTube subscribers and many generous Patreon backers even though I have neither a YouTube nor Patreon.

A spy is on the run after having stolen $10 million dollars. However, as the manicurist he hooks up with reminds him, the easiest thing to steal is stolen money, so he decides to leave town. They flee to the airport, but are pursued by agents of a crime lord who wants the money. At the airport, the manicurist is kidnapped by the crime lord’s agents and the spy is kidnapped on the plane by Feminians, Feminines, Feministaniskis… obvious plants. He’s kidnapped by obvious plants since everyone on the plane except him is a woman wearing thigh-highs and black rubber bibs that don’t cover their tits.

Not gonna lie, folks, this one’s pretty strange.

So he’s taken to Femina, a place, as its leader Sumitra says was built with the labor and money of men. 1969 and it’s the same talking points MRA’s are trotting out today. Why won’t anyone debate you? Because your shit is 50 years old and tired. It ain’t convinced anyone in half-a-century and it ain’t gonna.

Anyway, he’s been kidnapped because Sumitra wants his $10 million. Only he doesn’t have the money. It’s all a front so he can rescue the daughter of a rich man who’s being held for ransom. Sumitra’s agents use torture to try to extract the information from him, and when I say “torture,” I mean “orgy,” but, curiously, it doesn’t work. When they threaten the girl, he spills the beans.

Inevitably, he escapes with the girl and gets captured by the crime lord. The crime lord wants the spy’s help invading Femina since the spy is the only person to ever escape the country and Femina has all sorts of money. Sumitra comes to the mainland, kidnaps the spy, the girl, and someone else, takes them back to Femina, which is then invaded by the crime lord. The spy and the women with him escape again, meet the manicurist (who was working for Femina), and she joins them as well. The crime lord confronts Sumitra, but she decides to blow up the country instead of letting men control it. Heroes escape, villains die, and Femina explodes.

Cut to a cruise liner being boarded by a line of women all in black. The woman at the head of the line lifts her veil revealing, I think, Sumitra? I’m not sure. This is one of those flicks where all the women intentionally all look alike, but that seems like the kind of twist this movie would have. Right? Oh yeah, and THE END. The closing credits end with a title card with “Mothers of America” in big letters underneath something I can’t read.

Wait, what? I... what? Is this a bit?

I don’t get this movie. I can try offering some background, but I’m not sure it would help. Sumitra is actually the character Sumuru created by Sax Rohmer, a pulp novelist most famous for his character Fu Manchu. Sumuru is the kind of villain you’d expect from cranked-out pulp novels of the early to mid-twentieth century: megalomaniac with globe-spanning plans that always end up thwarted in the end. Her plan is to have a world ruled by women. This movie is a sequel to The Million Eyes of Sumuru (which was riffed by Mystery Science Theater 3000 on local station KTMA) where Sumuru’s plan was to have her women infiltrate various governments, kill their heads of state, and take over. In this movie, her plan is to kidnap wealthy people and steal all their money.

Honestly, that’s fine for a plot. Our hero has to infiltrate the city to rescue someone being held for ransom and you have a criminal force trying to rob Femina as well. These all sound like the right ingredients for a campy 60’s spy thriller. The movie should just be silly.

Instead, it feels like it’s a hair’s breadth away from being a surrealistic sci-fi piece. The movie has a lot of downtime, strange shots and angles, and the pieces never come together. To make matters worse, my copy had a strange rising and falling buzz throughout most of it, and I don’t know if that was intentional. The movie is that kind of strange.

So I don’t recommend it. I feel like I should be saying something more, but this movie, as a final product, just leaves me confused. I’ve given you all the plot points, I’ve made reference to the strange costumes (think Barbarella meets latex-fetish), I haven’t mentioned the torture scenes. I mean, I mentioned one that’s just an orgy. All the others involve people laying on black plastic platforms and writhing. Yeah. It’s a movie that makes you say, on more than one occasion, “Am I watching someone’s fetish? I think I’m watching someone’s fetish.” While I did laugh out loud at several points in the movie, it was not, overall, funny or fun.

It’s a weird, boring flick, folks. Give it a pass.