Color, 1976, 79 mins. 3 secs. / 72 mins. 22 secs.
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring Lina Romay, Monica Swinn, Raymond Hardy, Peggy Markoff, Martine Stedil, Andrea Rigano
Delirium Home Video (Blu-ray) (US RA HD), Ascot Elite (Blu-ray & DVD) (Germany R0 HD/PAL), Full Moon (DVD) (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)

After exploring the Doriana Grayouter reaches of morbid sexuality in the horror genre with his muse Lina Romay in Female Vampire and Lorna the Exorcist, Doriana Graydirector Jess Franco pushed things even further on an even tinier budget in 1976 with a quickie project during his numerous mid-'70s work with Swiss producer and distributor Erwin C. Dietrich. Primarily seen at first in its German-language version as Die Marquise von Sade but also given a French release, the film now best known as Doriana Gray -- at least in its uncut 79-minute form -- embraced the explicit sexuality that had graced some of his earlier films in a limited capacity (not counting the reworked XXX versions of a handful) to a degree he never really would again, with his much later mid-'80s hardcore work eschewing horror almost entirely.

Here the fixation on Romay's uninhibited screen presence really takes advantage of her ability to display sexual mania even more than before by casting her in two roles, the jaded Lady Doriana Gray who wanders her estate and can't feel sexual satisfaction regardless of her partners, and her twin sister in a mental institution who lives in a constant state of orgasmic mania. On top of that, echoing her previous iconic Irina role for Franco, Doriana's lovers all die at the height of passion, a fate that could befall men or women including a reporter (Franco regular Swinn) who comes for an interview session or Doriana's servant (Hardy a.k.a. Ramon Ardid, Romay's husband at the time) and his girlfriend (Stedil).

That's pretty much it for the Doriana Grayplot, with the bulk of the film consumed by Franco's usual fever dream wanderings and extensive, woozy sex scenes. Naysayers who dislike Franco for his tics like hazy plotting and use of the zoom lens will find plenty of ammunition here, but that Doriana Grayalso means it's pure catnip for those who have developed a taste for his more distinctive and outrageous tendencies that started during this decade. It's also a rare foray into the purely explicit for his prolific Dietrich period which also included films like Jack the Ripper, Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, and Barbed Wire Dolls. Obviously Romay is the real star of the show here, and she gives it her all with another ferocious performance climaxing in another of her fatalistic bathing scenes.

Impossible to see in watchable quality for decades, Doriana Gray underwent a nice restoration from Dietrich's Ascot Elite / VIP label in 2003 for a DVD release and got an even better Blu-ray edition in 2015 (as part of the amusing "Jess Franco Golden Goya Collection" tying in with his recent honor in Spain) featuring both the complete cut and a softcore edit removing two entire hardcore sex scenes and a few other explicit shots totaling about seven minutes. The original, perfectly good German and French tracks are included on that release (DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono) with optional Japanese subtitles, plus a truly awful newly-created English dub commissioned with clunky voice actors a la other Dietrich-Franco releases around that time like Blue Rita. Extras include the original trailer, a 20-image photo gallery, and an 11m17s interview featurette with Dietrich and Franco (more on that below). In 2017 Full Moon released it on DVD as Marquise De Sade Doriana Gray(uncut and in English), with a Doriana Grayheavily edited 69-minute version offered for streaming (as usual per their practice of butchering titles like Giallo in Venice).

That brings us to 2025 with the debut Blu-ray from Delirium Home Video, an offshoot of Delirium magazine. As expected it comes from the same excellent restored source as the European Blu-ray and contains both cuts, defaulting to the uncut one on playback with the soft cut in the extras. For some inexplicable reason the uncut version only has the English dub (DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono or a 5.1 option) with optional English subtitles, while the soft one is Germany only (DTS-HD MA 2.0 or Dolby Digital mono) with optional English subtitles. The uncut version also comes with a new audio commentary by Troy Howarth who ably sifts through the morass of body hair to discuss the film's place in Franco's career, his up and down professional relationship with Dietrich, the question of whether this qualifies as a porn film, the delirious connections to the filmmaker's other work and its clear melancholy streak, the teeny tiny crew with Franco himself operating the camera, the breakup of Romay's marriage, and lots more. Also included are the English home video and European theatrical trailers (the latter in German with burned French and Italian subs), plus the Franco-Dietrich interview featurette now a bit longer at 11m46s to incorporate a little bit with Romay herself as they all talk about shooting in Zurich, the supposedly covert creation of this as a bonus movie handed to Dietrich when it was done, the lack of appreciation shown to it at first, and its eventual rise in critical and fan assessment.

Reviewed on December 14, 2025