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The second of nine films made by director Jess Franco and writer-producer Harry Alan Towers over the course of only two years, The Girl from Rio is their jazzy, featherweight riff on the spy-fi genre, a heady blend of international intrigue and semi-science-fictional elements, popular (especially in Europe) in the wake of the James Bond films. It’s also a sequel of sorts to Towers’s earlier film The Million Eyes of Sumuru, directed by Lindsay Shonteff, based on the exploits of the Sax Rohmer super-villainess. Though in this film, for some inexplicable reason, the character is regularly referred to as Sunanda (obviously and not very convincingly dubbed in post) and listed in the credits as Sumitra. Blame it on Rio!

Like many a Franco film, The Girl from Rio opens with a protracted erotic dance routine: Clad only in a webbed body stocking, Yana (Beni Cardoso) does her number for a recumbent man,...

The Girl From Rio

Stars: Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler, George Sanders, Maria Rohm, Herbert Fleischmann, Marta Reves, Elisa Montés, Walter Rilla, Beni Cardoso, Valentina Godoy | Written by Franz Eichhorn, Bruno Leder, Harry Alan Towers | Directed by Jess Franco

There is an argument that films that are described as “so bad they are good” aren’t actually good, they are just bad. What about films though that are bad, they should be seen as bad but you still like them? The Girl from Rio is a film that I can see is bad, I can list ways it just fails yet I will still say I honestly like it. I’m can’t say I’ve seen that many films directed by Jess Franco (though I may have unwittingly seen more than I realise) but the more I see the more I realise the man turned exploitation into an art form,...