I am a Nymphomaniac is a 1970 French erotica film that is very light on eroticism. Sandra Julien plays the main character (Carole) who suffers a head injury and suddenly starts craving sex. While she is a beautiful woman, the movie keeps sabotaging itself and destroying any sensuality by having the main character feel shame and guilt for her behavior. The movie will depict a three-way between her and another couple and then spend twenty minutes with Carole seeking out doctors and priests to cure her. She’ll wallow in self-pity and recriminations before repeating the process. It is really hard to find the adult scenes exciting when the audience just watched Carole torturing herself with the guilt. In terms of directing, there were some shot compositions that left me perplexed as to whether the cause was incompetence or an attempt and being artistic. The picture and audio quality did not impress me or offend me. I did notice one little thing while switching between English and French audio tracks; the English seemed to be louder. Overall, the first film did not impress.

The 1972 follow-up, “I am Frigid…Why?”, is on the same disc and also stars Sandra Julien. This movie starts out with a rape which several website synopses euphemistically describe as “forcibly initiated”. Traumatized by the encounter, the main character cannot derive pleasure from sex. Throughout the movie, she continues to try, and like the first film, all eroticism is sucked out of the movie. It’s really hard to portray sexiness when the star lays there looking, at best, bored. When the main character goes to a doctor and tells him her story, being forced to admit that she had a crush on the male assailant (Eric) before the “forcible initiation”. The doctor responds with “The rape is not such a big thing. Eric was probably aware of your feelings for him.” My eyebrows shot up in surprise, and (MASSIVE SPOILER AHEAD) she ends up with Eric and lives happily ever after. Then the movie abruptly ends with a cut to the credits that comes out of nowhere. In general, the editing is jarring and disjointed.

The case has a stylishly rendered painting of an iconic image from the first film, and I have to give credit to the box art. The special features contain two missing scenes from “I am Frigid…Why?” that were removed from some version of the film. Unfortunately, they were transferred from VHS copies and look rough on a 4k TV. The only other special feature is a 25-minute documentary about the career of Max Pecas. The interview is enlightening with quotes from Pecas such as “They call me the king of crap, but at least I am a king of something.” I feel like that is a good representation of both films. I feel bad about bashing Mondo Macabro’s release because a lot of work went into preserving these films, but I just did not enjoy either film. There was no sense of fun about all of the sexual exploits, but the movies also failed to be dramatic enough to satisfy in that regard as well.