The Girl From Rio AKA Future Women is precisely the sort of loopy nonsense that we cult movie fans find absolutely fascinating: it has an outlandish espionage plot, born of the feminist movement yet still managing to exploit women at every turn; it stars familiar performers Shirley Eaton (Goldfinger) and George Sanders (All About Eve) camping it up like there's no tomorrow; there's crazy kitsch 60s fashion a go-go; and director Jess Franco (R.I.P.) ensures that the film is imbued with a strangeness and technical ineptitude of the kind guaranteed to keep his loyal followers happy, despite the whole affair being far more light-hearted than many of his other movies.
Eaton stars as lesbian megalomaniac Sunanda who is hell-bent on dominating the world with the help of her all-woman army of men-haters (which in itself should be more than enough to pique most trash movie fans' interest). Building a vast fortune by kidnapping the world's wealthiest people, the power-hungry women's libber has built her own city, Femina, from which she plans to launch her attack on mankind.
Sunanda's latest target is playboy Jeff Sutton (Richard Wyler), who is rumoured to be carrying $10million cash with him in his briefcase; also interested in the money is Sunanda's rival, Rio crime boss Masius (Sanders). In reality there is no money, the briefcase being used as bait to reel in Sunanda, Jeff having been hired to locate missing heiress Ulla (Marta Reves) who he believes is being held captive in Femina.
With this three-way of Sunanda, Masius and Sutton established, all Franco is left to do is pad out his movie to feature length with assorted nonsense, which includes gangsters in creepy masks, lots of Rio carnival padding (including a one-legged reveller busting moves in the street), some torture via Sunanda's craptastic microwave ray, Eaton wearing a lacy body stocking, hilarious dialogue ('Don't be nasty—daddy doesn't like it'), more leggy totty than you can shake a stick at, and several silly showdowns, Jeff narrowly escaping on most occasions thanks to his incredible martial arts skills (a karate chop here, a judo throw there) or his trusty pistol (for use only when his chopping hand is feeling sore). When he's not kicking bad guy butt, Jeff's weapon of choice is his irresistible charm, with which he lures women—even dedicated man-haters—into bed with ease (thus allowing Franco to easily meet his quota of female nudity).
Ultimately, Femina is stormed by Jeff and Masius, who form an alliance to ensure continuing male superiority, their assault on the city resulting in a barrage of badly edited fake gunfire and an amateurish assault of unconvincing stock footage explosions. In a suitably silly final scene, Sunanda is shown to have survived the attack, despite having supposedly blown herself up with a self-destruct device inside her gold vault.
