Retail Price: $14.95

Reviewed by:

Ian Jane on March 10, 2003

Produced by IIP, Female Animal is an decent, albeit, slow moving sex film that's foreshadowed by the interesting history behind it. 

Angelique is a European peasant girl on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean. She makes her living as a prostitute, selling herself to the local men. One day, a wealthy man with a shipping business named Count Medici pays her a visit and becomes enraptured with her beauty.

He gives her a respectable job as a servant at his mansion, but then begins to shower her with gifts and money and hopes to be able to buy her love. 

But when a love triangle erupts between Angelique, Count Medici, his son Alain and his mistress named Francesca all three of them lay claim to her and try to win her over once and for all. The heated tensions in the household and the bizarre situation that she's found herself in causes her to question what she really wants out of her life and soon it will be time to make a decision that will affect the rest of her life.

While some of the concepts are interesting, Female Animal was just a bit too long. If it had been trimmed of maybe 15 minutes or so, it would have been a pretty solid sleaze film, but that extra running time cause it to slow down and bring the film down a notch or two.

The cast are great though, and Angelique is more than enough fun to look at. Likewise, the locations and interiors used in the film add a certain amount of charm to it as well.

Like the other releases for the Retro-Seduction Cinema line, there are quite a few trailers included on the disk. There is also a shorter remake included on the DVD entitled 'Master's Plaything' starring Seduction Cinema favorite, Misty Mundae and co-starring Ruby LaRocca. Shot on vide with some sort of intentional grain filter applied, it looks almost like a 70s production and I'm sure that's the look that they were going for judging by the fashions. It's not a bad short, and it will hold your interest especially if you're a fan of Ms. Mundae.

The real gem on this disc though, is the commentary with producer Sam Sherman from IIP. Sam seems to have a memory like an elephant and it's fascinating to hear him narrate over the feature and explain the marketing tactics that they used to sell this U.S. film as an import by making the credits in a different language and releasing it as 'La Mujer Del Gato.' The commentary is very much worth listening to and was the highlight of the disc.

While I found the film a bit slow, the commentary track more than makes up for it and the other extras included on the disc are nice as well. Fans of vintage sex films could do a lot worse than adding this to their collection.

To order this disc, check out www.xploitedcinema.com

Jerry Gross

Misty Mundae, Ruby LaRocca, Arlene Farber, Vassili Lambrinos