(1983)
1.5
Donald Guarisco
Black Venus is a vintage example of the kind of smutty fare that filled the late night hours of pay cable channels during the early 1980s. Despite its basis in a story by Honore de Balzac, no one will confuse this for Masterpiece Theater fare: the story plays out in a ludicrously contrived manner, the acting is ripe and Claude Mulot's direction stays firmly focused on delivering a sex scene every reel. That said, Black Venus offers plenty of campy fun for a cult film fan in the right mood. The acting is bad enough to be genuinely entertaining, with starlet Josephine Jacqueline Jones indulging in the kind of melodramatic antics that would embarrass the average soap opera actor and Jose Antonio Ceinos giving a performance so wooden one fears they'll get splinters from watching it. Better yet, the script anchoring these performances piles on the melodrama and smut in equal measure and Mulot gives it a tight pace. In short, Black Venus is trash, but fans of exploitation cinema's sexier side will find it to be entertaining trash.
Black Venus on AllMovie
Black Venus (1983)
