Terrifying Confessions of a Captive Woman (Review)

Terrifying Confessions of a Captive Woman

aka Teufelscamp der verlorenen Frauen aka The Angel and the Beasts aka Triangle of Lust

1977
Starring
Patricia Adriani as Susan Murphy
Bárbara Rey as Sophie
José Antonio Ceinos as Beardo
Miguel Ángel Godó
Manu as ???
Eric Wedekind as ???
José Luis Alexandre
Directed by Hubert Frank

From Germany we get a piece of cinema trash known by many names. Terrifying Confessions of a Captive Woman. The Angel and the Beasts. Triangle of Lust. They are all one and the same. And that same is exploitation junk. Luckily, the movie throws us a bone by delivering more full frontal nudity than you can shake a stick at. Even two sticks. I’d even go so far as to say you could shake 7 1/4 sticks at the full frontal nudity in this movie and still require more shaking. Plus, there is violence, biker gangs, airplanes, and an ending to confuse the bejesus out of you. Thanks to the wonders of dubbing, we get characters totally overacting, under acting, and sounding bored during dramatic moments. There is also a few lines that are so over the top they’re back down on the bottom again. It all combines to an odd combination, which fails to work on many levels. If there was no nudity, this would be one of the worst films of all time. Only because it’s specifically designed to be full of nudity is it safe for human eye consumption. Even then, it’s best to take it in doses, as a full amount could give you a lethal brain hemorrhage. TarsTarkas.NET will not be held responsible for any loss of brain cells after viewing the movie. Sit back, relax, and experience the ride, from the safety shield of the Recap Machine, as we warn you and future generations of the dangers of Terrifying Confessions of a Captive Woman.

The story of a woman who refuses to wear clothes and the couple she terrorizes begins during the opening credits. That’s basically what is presented, as a nice old rich couple is going about their day when a mirror is reflected into their condo. It’s being shined by their neighbor, a firm young early-twenties brunette who can’t be bothered to wear clothes. She’s actress Patricia Adriani, and is playing Susan Murphy, though we will never be told her name and I only got it from the back of a VHS cover. Most of these characters have no names, and IMDB is no help. Her clever plan to shine light into her neighbors’ condo seems to be paying off, as they are familiar with her shenanigans. Susan signs the number “three” in a subtle message to meet her at three. I hired a crack team of codebreakers to give you that information. They took a break from NSA spying on you, so hopefully we don’t get a terrorist attack in the next week or so. Tom is the name of the old man, he looks like Salvadore Dali bred with Pete Postlethwaite and created the ultimate 55 year old rich Italian. His wife disapproves of his method of meeting Susan. I guess Susan is too dense to notice that being blaringly obvious that you are communicating with a rich Italian guy isn’t the height of subtlety. The wife wants Susan out of the picture, and as she seems to be running the life of Tom, that’s what she’ll get.



The Wife disabled a parachute on Tom’s private plane, and marked it with a red stripe. It will be given to Susan so she’s killed abandoning the plane. Tom will then fly the plane back to shore, and act like they had engine trouble, then it fixed itself seconds after she jumped. I don’t think anyone would buy that story, but it’s the best we can come up with. Maybe his rich status will allow him to buy a few police officers. What does happen is Susan is taken on a buggy ride by Tom, where she asks if he’s going to spend the night with her. He’s like “Muh-uh!” and is acting pretty cold to her, but she seems to be blissfully unaware. They head off into the air in the private plane, and Susan takes this time to recite some terrible poetry in a voiceover. This poem would be neat if it had something to do with anything except serve as a device to make the movie more dull. Instantly afterwards, she implies she wants to fool around in the plane, but Tom is being a sourpuss. Susan mentions is would be neat to die while having the sex, and that seems to spur Tom into action. Tom is a pretty weird guy. Tom sets on the autopilot and starts trying to get his groove on, but there is engine trouble! The worst kind, fake engine trouble! The motor is stalling! Tom makes Susan put on her parachute as the plane falls, and basically shoves her out of the door of the plane when she refuses to go. Tom says he’ll try for an emergency landing, to explain why he’s not jumping ship as well. Tom does give her the non-red shoot, and we understand everything is just fine as she washes up on the shore very much alive, as Tom flies off. She’s on an island, not an uncharted one, but one of the many Mediterranean Islands that litter the Mediterranean Sea. She’s quickly noticed by a guy with a machine gun. He’s got a beard and puts the gun to her head, and is about to shoot her when she’s saved by another woman, one who looks like Janice Rand from TV’s Star Trek if Janice Rand was a lesbian. She’s actress Barbara Rey playing Sophie. Special trivia, Barbara Rey’s birth name was María García García, and she went on to work in a circus after acting. Beardo searches Susan, copping a few feels as he does. He then questions her on who she is, but Susan is too preoccupied with asking about Tom’s plane to answer his questions. His name is either Henn or Hino, but we’ll keep the Beardo name, because we have nothing better to do.

Enough of that, two random people are having sex in the jungle. Who are they? Why are they there? We don’t need to know at this point. They guy wears glasses and is known by Winn, and the girl looks like Darryl Hannah meets Loretta Swit, and if she’s given a name it’s never mentioned. Yeah, so they get it on, and after a few minutes of that, we return to the story. Beardo won’t let Susan leave, as he knows she’ll talk “LIKE ALL WOMEN!” (he unnecessarily yells a lot.) Both Beardo and Sophie seem worried about the cops coming, which gives people the impression they’re up to no good. Hey, remember those two lovebirds doing the beast with two backs? They stroll into camp with Beardo and Sophie, and thus begins an argument about Susan. An overheard radio report mentions a gang of robbers, described as a bunch of amateurs. There is no news of a plane crash, so Tom is probably safe and sound. Susan runs off at this point, and Beardo catches her. He wants to teach her a lesson…a rape lesson! Interrupted by Winn before he can start, the two men then begin to have a long fistfight all the way back to camp, and keep going after the women notice. The women talk to each other, with Sophie stating “Soon they’ll be exhausted and then we’ll be able to screw them to death!” Well. The fight only ends when Sophie starts dancing around the two men, as she’s wearing a see-thru shirt they get distracted. I think that’s why they stop. Oh, well, so the two couples pair up and start the getting it on again. Wait, Sophie tries to bite off the wangdoodle of Beardo! It’s a lighthearted romp of manhood chomping! Ha. Ha. Ha. I guess an attempted rapist having his bait and tackle almost bitten off is just desserts, but it’s not the hilarious romp of the ages the movie tries to make it.

That’s where I gave up at the first viewing. That might not seem like much, but we are 25 minutes into this film, and I’ve only written 10-15 minutes of recaps. That much dragging and padding is going on, that every action takes twice as long to complete as it would in a normal movie.

Motorcycles! Camels! Stock shots of a castle! The movie is picking up! Or not. A guy wearing a motorcycle helmet uses a payphone, as ominous music plays. He tells someone where to leave the money. Well, THAT was informative! What the heck? The audience shouldn’t have to be explained who the mysterious helmeted guy is, he just fits into the existing story so seamlessly. Well, he would, were he supposed to be a commercial playing during a TV airing, too bad for us he’s part of the plotline. Somehow.

Back on the island, the four are still bickering, as they will be doing the entire movie. Winn is arguing with Sophie, for some reason. Oddly enough, it’s not because he’s jogging naked, because that would by why I would get into a fight with him. Still naked, he walks into the room where Susan is kept, while Sophie picks a fight with Beardo. Soon afterwards they are sexing each other up on the beach. Movies like this don’t have to make sense or go anywhere, as the guys in raincoats seeing this film in the theater have all left by now, currently replaced by a new batch of rain coated guys who will be finished in 15 minutes or so. Now that I’ve contaminated your mind with THAT visual, we can jump back into the film. The wife of Tom is complaining to Tom that the police haven’t found Susan’s body, suspecting he didn’t kill her but let her go. This interlude should be very short, but it’s mixed in with radically different footage of a woman walking around a building, complete with totally off the wall music. The girl sees some guy named Mark photographing top secret documents, but is blissfully unaware. The girl is Susan.

The real Susan is trapped on the island still, tied up while Beardo throws knives at her. He calls her a “lustful kitten” and tries to kiss her, but the other women stop him, and then threaten him. They also speak of unknown and unseen men on the beach asking questions. Beardo warns them “Listen, baby, whenever I want to screw a broad, you don’t stop me!” and then kicks Sophie. Sophie yells back, and they keep fighting. We find out she’s a former prostitute from North Africa. Hey, enough of that, the Motorcycle Guy is back! He goes to drop off something to someone we don’t see. Exciting. Thank you, Motorcycle Guy, the most interesting guy in the film.

Back at the island, Winn and his girl are frolicking naked on the beach, while also watching Susan. Winn tells her she’ll have a better time swimming naked, so Susan complies. It’s just that easy. Winn stares at Susan far too much, ignoring his own woman. This is interrupted as Tom flies over the island searching, but somehow manages to miss seeing three naked people on a beach with dark black sand. Sophie is dressed, and knocks out Winn’s girl and runs off. While she’s running, Motorcycle Guy is motorcycling somewhere. Susan finds a pipe sticking out of the ground, providing air to someone buried alive. She digs him up, and he’s found out to be Marcus Billinger, who was kidnapped. His dad is a rich bank president. Beardo catches both of them, and is joined by Winn’s girl and Winn himself, who is dressed like Motorcycle Guy! What is going on? Well, they never really explain, and both Winn and Beardo are dressed as Motorcycle Guy at times, even at the same time. What did they do to my Motorcycle Guy? Waaaaaaaaaah! The only thing saving them from death is Winn pointing out that two hostages are worth more than one. Though it would be zero had Beardo gotten his way.

We cut to what looks like the Gobi Desert, as TWO Motorcycle Guys wait. They are Winn and Beardo. Winn goes by the codename Hunter now, and calls “Refuge” which is what the base back on the island where the two girls are at is called. The girls are told to take the boy out, and some sort of aerial drop happens as a plane drops a package. Beardo goes to get the drop, which is supposed to be $1 million. Okay, they are on an island in the Mediterranean, but it have varied terrain, a major Roman city, and a desert. Very odd small island. Back at the camp, the girls find the dead bodies of the previous owners of the houses they are staying at. They realize the men are crazy, and may kill them as well. While this is going on, Sophie and her new friend Marcus plan their escape, the girls having not bothered to bring him out. Bring him out where and for what reason, anyway? It’s like the dubbers where just filling random dialogue and didn’t care if it made sense. The guys have stopped answering the calls from the girls, which is unnerving them. Soon gunfire is heard in the distance. The two men are shooting at someone, revealed to be the police, who are never shown. It’s like the police on the beach asking questions, they are mentioned but never seen. Maybe they’re like adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon, never seen because they’re always off camera. Or Italian policemen are all invisible. The two make it back to the camp, shot up but still alive. There, Winn reveals he killed the people, not Beardo the crazy guy. The girls greet him with guns, and he says “Surely you thought you could betray us so you’d be better treated in Hell!” This situation is about to diffuse, when Susan and Marcus arrive, Marcus just having found an abandoned Machine Gun. He uses it when Beardo comes running toward him, gunning him down and killing Winn as well. Bullets fly at Susan and Marcus, but not shot by the girls, it’s by someone off camera, the invisible police. They shoot Sophie as she runs toward the dead men, and she joins the corpse party. We get a close-up of the wedding rings of Beardo and Sophie, which is supposed to be emotionally impacting or something.

Susan and Marcus escape, and are climbing by a cliff when suddenly Marcus just randomly falls to his death in the sea. It’s hilarious, he just suddenly drops and is out of the film! Susan keeps walking, and thus gets sexually harassed by two biker gang members who hang out alone in the Italian Island woods on their motorcycles. They want to move up to rape but she escapes. This island is infested with motorcycles! Susan then reminisces about her childhood, something that makes her take off all her clothes and put them on the clothesline outside an abandoned house she just walked by. She heads inside and struts around naked. Why? Who knows, who cares. Did we end the normal movie and now wander into the blender mixed tape of extra movie pieces for the remaining twenty minutes? At least she’s naked, I’ll give it that. Otherwise this movie would be a dangerous weapon. The two bikers return, calling her “Red Riding Hood.” They are about to get their rape on when Marcus returns! With a shotgun! He saves her, and the bikers run off, threatening them as they go. How the heck did Marcus survive, unless this universe of invisible cops also has people immune to death by falling into the ocean, which would be why Susan is still alive. They kiss, they have sex on a dirty mattress left behind in the abandoned house. Ew, ew, ew! Why aren’t they leaving, anyway? This turns out to be a disastrous move, as the motorcycle gang returns in force, and dozens of members rid outside. The heroes are too busy having sex that causes you to have flashbacks of previous movie scenes upon orgasm.

Marcus starts shooting the gang members, but doesn’t have a lot of bullets, despite being very accurate at long range shots while wielding a shotgun, usually good for only close-range blasts. Marcus runs out of shells, and then starts crying. The gang enters the building, and we heard a loud and agonizing scream.

Cut from that to Tom and his wife back in Italy. They are in their condo again, and Tom says he’ll go mad if he doesn’t find out what happened to Susan. His wife still thinks he didn’t drop her out of the plane. She tells him that she didn’t mess with the marked parachute, but she messed with the non-marked one! This means that Susan’s parachute worked, because Tom’s wife didn’t trust him. That mystery is solved, just in time for an even bigger one: light shines into the room, reflected from a mirror like in the beginning of the film. Susan is back! She’s somehow just fine, and sunbathing naked back in the patio! What the heck? Wasn’t she horribly gang raped by a biker gang? Shouldn’t she be in massive therapy if she’s still alive, probably not due to the death of gang members? This doesn’t make any sense at all, unless the confession is all a lie. Which I think it was. This whole movie was nothing but a big hoax. A hoax on the viewers, who thought they’d be seeing a movie with some sort of redeeming value. A movie that made sense, even if it’s plot was ridiculous. You don’t need much of a plot for these films, but somehow this film manages to eliminate even that small step with it’s partial plots. It seem like someone took an aborted script for an hour long TV show, and tacked on a biker gang rape at the end. Just imagine any hour long TV show suddenly tacking on an extra half hour where the main characters are menaced by bikers after one falls to his death only to be resurrected without explanation. Then gang rape. Makes ER worth watching again, and I’m sure nude Agents Mulder and Scully would have driven up The X-Files‘s numbers.

Hey, if you were wondering whatever happened to the other girl, the one that was sleeping with Winn, then you are not alone, but the movie never tells us. She’s just dropped from the film after the others are killed. I like to think she escaped only to be trapped in an Italian Sword and Sandal movie.

IMDB was no help on identifying many of the actors, nor was Google, though it did peg José Antonio Ceinos as Beardo, who’s movie character’s name may or may not be something like Henn, but is said to garbledly to be for certain. He went on to do a voice in the Spanish dub of the Harry Potter video game. Just think about that.

Rated 2/10 (Motorcycle Guy!, Some Sort of Dramatic Ring)


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One thought on “Terrifying Confessions of a Captive Woman (Review)

  1. you have underestimated the acting abilities of P.A.
    Also you have not seen the picture in context of political events of Spanish speaking world of 1977.

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