The Sex of Angels (1968)

The Sex of Angels (1968). 1h 50m | X

“Ugo Liberatore pioneered in the art of scenic, globe-hopping porn, with films visiting Bora Bora, Bali, the Pitcairn Islands, and even giving merry olde England an ethnographic slant in perhaps his best pic MAY MORNING, about weird though time-honored rituals at Oxford. THE SEX OF ANGELS is a subpar effort set on the rocky coast of Yugoslavia.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThree beautiful young girls are vacationing on a magnificent yacht (belonging to the daddy of one of them), along with a stud acquaintance they bring along for obvious reasons. Centerpiece of the film is their experimenting rather disastrously with LSD, as the stud, listlessly played by Bernard De Vries, wakes up from a bad trip with a bullet hole mysteriously in his side.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFrom that point on the film dwindles away in unsatisfying fashion, perhaps a victim of the u0026quot;hippy-dippyu0026quot; era in which it was made. The girls fail to see properly to their friendu0026#39;s wound and all sympathy with the characters evaporates, long before the film mercifully concludes.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI watched a German-language version of this co-production, which is probably on a par with the Italian one, since it was scripted by a top German writer-producer Franz Seitz, who contributed to many classic films including Volker Schlondorffu0026#39;s THE TIN DRUM and Max Schellu0026#39;s THE PEDESTRIAN. Unfortunately the action here is strictly pedestrian.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe beautiful stars take their tops off, making this briefly a marketable art film in 1969 from United Artistsu0026#39; Lopert subsidiary, which at the time was playing off numerous Ingmar Bergman films during his Max/Liv era. I found Laura Troschel, as a token lesbian, the most interesting of the three, having seen both Rosemary Dexter and Doris Kunstmann previously in far better roles -latter memorable playing Eva Braun opposite Alec Guinnessu0026#39;s Hitler.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn its best moments SEX OF THE ANGELS captures a little bit of that rare u0026quot;daylit horroru0026quot; mood that in film history has been nailed most successfully in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and PURPLE NOON. But mainly it is just Ugo doing his standard skin flick thing as prettified as could be, setting the stage for EMMANUELLE and endless Euro trash softcore sex films shot in exotic settings, of which I still think Hubert Franku0026#39;s VANESSA was the pinnacle.”