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Girl Slaves Of Morgana Le Fay
Language: French w/ English subs .srt

Gespot in alt.binaries.sleazemovies

Morgane et ses nymphes
Directed by: Bruno Gantillon
Written by: Jacques Chaumelle
Produced by: Gisele Rebillon, Catherine Winter
Cinematography by: Jean Monsigny
Editing by: Michel Patient
Music by: Cisco El Rubio
Cast: Domninque Delpierre, Mireille Saunin, Muchele Oerello, Regine Motte, Alfred Baillou
Year: 1971
Country: France
Language: French 
Color: Color
Runtime: 86 minutes

 
In the bastion of EuroTrash cinema precious few names are given any true weight. Of the names that are, those of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco are most respected by the underground for their societal commentary and revered for their total disregard of mainstream acceptance.   The rest, are disciples, men and women who came along after the fact in an effort to bankroll their raptures of the flesh on the new wave of sapphic cinema.  Most of the films that followed Rollin and Franco were trite and uninspired filled with disjointed storylines that only served as segues from one pointless sex scene to another.  So, much like the myriad of rubbish that pops up everyday on sagging neighborhood video shelves and late night cable networks, they were predestined to be forgotten long before 90 odd minutes of tape unspooled.  

Amongst those hundreds of lost sex-gore shockers there must have been a few that slipped through the ***s and begged for rediscovery. Well my friends, Mondo Macabro has unearthed one of these seminal guilty pleasures.  “Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay” has no preconceived aspirations of grandeur but ultimately transcends the genre all the same. 

The plot is deceptively simple; two beautiful young girls headed off for a weekend getaway are trapped in the fantasy castle of the infamous witch Morgana Le Fay (Let's just assume you all know your Arthurian Legend here).  Once inside they have only two choices, either join Morgana’s harem of magnificent slave girls, living a life immortal or grow old and perish in the palace dungeons.  “What’s a girl to do?” one might ask, well, I’ll tell you this much, you can bet its going to involve a lot of sheer clothing, a few regal dinners, some group bathing and one creepy dwarf with a serious attitude problem, who spends much of the film wandering around in what looks suspiciously like castoffs from the wardrobe department of “A Man for All Seasons”.

With all that in mind, what makes “Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay” so much more than your run-of-the-mill Eurosleaze opus is that the film plays out beautifully in an almost dreamlike state. Additionally, the execution of what might be considered stilted dialogue at best is often wickedly funny.  Another thing that stands this film apart from the rest of the legions of Rollin-esque sycophants is that it viciously avoids the pitfalls of the genre.  That is to say, that the film is erotic with out ever once being gratuitous.  Indeed even the final climatic (sorry, I just had to say it once) orgy sequence is much more “Eyes Wide Shut” than it is “Caligula”.  That is as high a compliment as any I can fathom giving an early 1970’s sapphic erotic fantasy.  

Overall “Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay” simply by virtue of its passionate filmmaking and restrained sexual exactitude, displays all the makings of a true diamond, trapped in the steep cliffs of a long forgotten and highly ill reputed genre of world cinema.