An immediate sequel to the same year’s Two Undercover Angels, Jess Franco’s Kiss Me Monster again stars Janine Reynaud (The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail) and Rosanna Yanni (Hunchback of the Morgue) as the Paul Newman-lusting Diana and Regina, the striptease-cum-detective duo known as The Red Lips. As is the case with its spy-spoofing predecessor, prepare for the monster-free Monster to make zero fucking sense.
Also prepare to be perfectly okay with that.
While in some glamorous Spanish city to perform their act, which involves playing the saxophone while clad in costumes right out of Bob Fosse’s cocaine dreams, Diana and Regina run into murder, spray-can narcotics, cool jazz, leisurely swims and bad guys clad in cloaks that, in the dark, could be mistaken for KKK uniforms. But please don’t ask me to relay the plot, because story points are, unlike most Franco starlets, impenetrable.
An occasional spurt of exposition fills in more blanks than are gained by actually watching that action take place, e.g., “I was taken prisoner by a group of queer virgins and was put in a cage. One of them worked me over with a whip. Then they let me out again, then they gave me a funny kind of whistle or something as a farewell present.”
You’ll just have to take the ladies’ word for it. Since both are beautiful (although at some angles, Reynaud channels Peg Bundy), Franco assumes (rightly) that the average male viewer will accept said word at face value. Because what lovely faces! What exotic locales! What colorful compositions! What outlandish scenarios! What the hell just happened!?! —Rod Lott