Color, 1977, 86 mins. 53 secs.
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring Pamela Stanford, Jack Taylor, Karine Gambier, Kurt Meinicke, Esther Moser, Eric Falk, Marianne Graf, Mike Montana
Delirium Home Video (Blu-ray) (US RA HD), Ascot Elite (Blu-ray & DVD) (Germany R0 HD/PAL), Full Moon (DVD) (US R1 NTSC), Anchor Bay (DVD) (UK R0 PAL) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)

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At the height of his long-running '70s partnership with Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich, Jess Franco was churning out at least five or six films a year just in an official capacity-- and almost all of them are fascinating. Though it was difficult to see outside of German VHS or the bootleg market until the late '90s, 1977's Satanic Sisters (Die teuflischen Schwestern, also circulated on gray market video as Sexy Sisters or Devilish Sisters) is one of the erotic thriller variants from that period about a small cast of characters dabbling in backstabbing and sexual mania (a la Voodoo Passion, Blue Rita, etc.). Though it features regular uninhibited force of nature Pamela Stanford as one of its stars, the show is really stolen here by platinum blonde Dietrich regular and future French adult film staple Karine Gambier who comes close to Lina Romay intensity here.

After eying each other at a nightclub featuring topless masked performers, Joe (Meinicke, another future hardcore name) goes home with wealthy raven-haired Edie Luise von Stein (Stanford) where they're waited on intimately by housemaid Sarah (Moser). However, there's another surprise in the house: Milicent (Stanford), Edie's sex-crazed little sister who stays locked up and shackled in her bamboo-themed bedroom. As it quickly turns out after Joe wakes up dazed in his car the next morning, Milicent is being perpetually drugged into a state of nymphomania by her sister, Edna, and the scheming Dr. Barnes (Taylor, of course), for reasons that will eventually become clear via a convoluted Diabolique-style scheme. Mayhem involving rectal thermometers, childhood sexual trauma, naked beach frolicking, and brutish male visitors Eric Falk (also of course) and bodybuilder Mike Montana complicate matter while Joe snoops around trying to find out what's really going on.

Clearly not one of Franco's higher budgeted films, Satanic Sisters (which has no Satanism of any kind in it) is an entertaining piece of softcore madness with lots of feverish characters and ridiculous plot twists as you'd expect. It's always good to see familiar faces in films like this, making it feel like something of a greatest hits package for the Dietrich period including another wildly unconvincing upbeat ending a la Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. The music score is a particularly odd one here, with sitars and drums drifting in and out of the film at will which does give it a hypnotic vibe after a while.

Never released theatrically in the U.S., Satanic Sisters turned up on DVD and Blu-ray in 2013 from Dietrih's VIP (Ascot Elite) "Jess Franco Golden Goya Collection" under the Sexy Sisters title, featuring DTS-HD MA German 5.1, English 5.1, French 2.0 mono, and Spanish 2.0 mono audio options with Japanese subtitles. The film is dubbed no matter how you watch it, though most will probably find the German one the most audibly convincing (and the English one the funniest). A trailer and photo gallery are the sole extras. Image quality is fine if obviously cobbed together from at least two different sources, with a handful of the more intense moments clearly taken from a weaker print. The same source was halfheartedly premiered in the U.S. on DVD in 2015 from Full Moon featuring English audio. As usual, it also hit U.K. DVD from Anchor Bay but suffered from BBFC cuts.

In 2026, Delirium Home Video bowed the film on American Blu-ray featuring an identical transfer as the German Blu-ray, which is fine as it still looks quite nice, featuring the English track in DTS-HD 5.1 or 2.0 mono options with English SDH subtitles. A new commentary by Dennis Daniel starts off noting the major cast members but mainly focuses on Franco's career and artistry in general, including a rundown of his favorites and a lengthy recitation of an interview he conducted with Franco and Romay (with a highly questionable accent!) including a lengthy bit about his work on Orson Welles' Don Quixote. In "Twins of Evil" (22m30s), the always essential Stephen Thrower covers the familiar dwelling used in several Franco-Dietrich films (which doesn't really pass for a wealthy family's house), that unmistakable titular vehicle from Rolls Royce Baby looking a little ragged here, the censored U.K. release under the title Swedish Nympho Slaves (not the only Franco film with that name), the trends within the Dietrich-Franco cycle with some films reflecting one of them more than the other, and the running theme of substances causing sex madness in Franco films. The theatrical and home video trailers are also included plus bonus promos for Barbed Wire Dolls, Doriana Gray, Love Camp, and Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

Delirium Home Video

VIP

Reviewed on May 2, 2026