My Nights With Susan, Sandra, Olga & Julie

I was attracted to this low budget 1975 film because it was the last feature that British composer Elisabeth Lutyens wrote music for. Her contribution doesn't disappoint. It is a tense atonal music for what sounds like a large chamber orchestra that definitely augments the strange milieu of the film.The film itself is uneven, but builds some strong suspense in its best moments. Directed by the Indonesian-Dutch Pim De La Parra with an all Dutch cast, it can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a Hitchcockian thriller or a soft core porn romp ! (The Lesbian sex scenes are pretty graphic.) The director gets his cast naked way (!!!) too frequently, and that distracts from the suspense. (For some it might be the other way around, the suspense getting in the way of the nudity !)The film is not a "who done it" as the killers are revealed in the first scene. The Susan of the title is a former actress or model who runs an unofficial halfway house for people in emotional distress. She doesn't realize that two of her guests, a lesbian (or bi-sexual) couple specialize in seducing men and then killing them. Add a psychotic neighbor woman whose motivations seem to stem from jealousy and you have the basic setup. The plot really begins when a handsome young man who is a friend of a friend of Susan shows up. His sexual attractiveness to the two killers and his innate curiosity put him in immediate danger.The film is well photographed. Some of the dialogue is extremely lewd, even more than the visuals. The film can't decide if it wants to scare or to arouse.

As expected. Maybe a little less than expected