Rating: *
Review Date: 5/8/16
Alternate Titles: "Rio 70", "Future Women", "Mothers Of America",
"The Seven Secrets Of Sumuru", "The City Without Men"
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler, Maria Rohm, George Sanders,
Marta Reves, Elisa Montés
Simply awful. Having somehow survived the destruction of her island fortress in "The Million Eyes Of Sumuru" (1967), Shirley Eaton dons her black wig again as the man-hating villainess, Sumuru (dubbed as Sumanda, Sumitra, or Electra in the various international versions), and relocates her operation to Rio de Janeiro. Sumuru and another villain named Masius (George Sanders) both have an interest in an American playboy named Jeff Sutton (Richard Wyler), who has just arrived in Rio with a suitcase full of ten million dollars. Sumuru's all-girl army gets to him first, but he somehow manages to escape and reluctantly ends up working with Masius to take out Sumuru's headquarters.
Everything about this low budget film is embarrassingly bad. Maria Rohm, Marta Reves, and Elisa Montés are gorgeous and playfully sexy, but that's hardly a good enough reason to suffer through this cinematic mess. Shirley Eaton has fun with her wicked role, but she appears distant and uninterested, and most of her scenes look as though they were shot in isolation for a completely different film. The action scenes are pathetic and the camera work is terrible. However, the hearses they have in Rio are extremely cool. Director Jess Franco attempts to liven things up with psychedelic sex, nudity, and torture, but it comes across as crude and amateurish. To make matters even worse, the film includes an unbearable amount of gratuitous filler footage shot during Carnival. It's a disappointing production on every level, and it comes as no surprise that it was the last film Ms. Eaton made before retiring.