This Japanese poster was made for Dany la ravageuse, a French sexploitation movie known in English as Dany the Ravager, which premiered in Japan today in 1972. Is it just us, or does Dany the Ravager sound like the name of a Marvel character? Well, Sandra Julien as the titular Dany certainly has a super effect on those around her. She hitchhikes from Paris to the Côte d’Azur and gets into a series of adventures. In one, a driver fantasizes about getting naked and netting butterflies in the woods with her (we have some brilliant production photos of that below). In another, she spends quality naked time lakeside with another woman. In the next she’s picked up by two fugitive gangsters who soon turn on each other over her. And in yet another she meets a couple of hustlers in Monaco who pull the ole switcheroo in the dark so Julien ends up in bed with the wrong guy. It’s played for laughs, but still, it’s rapey.
Overall, the movie is brainless sexploitation, but not of the most pleasant variety, exemplified by a backseat sexual assault in the fugitives episode that turns into mutual attraction. It’s always jarring to experience cinema made before any form of social change took hold, whether change around what consitutued rape, or changes around portraying people of color, or changes around humor and ableism. Our favorite movies from the sexploitation genre feature women in control of their fictional adventures. However, on the opposite side of the social change coin, Dany la ravageuse is unflinching in its approach to male frontal nudity, so in that respect it was well ahead of its time. We think it’s worthy of deeper discussion academically, but as pure entertainment, unless you adore Julien or want to see a lot of French countryside, you can take a pass.
