Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion is a 1970 British sexploitation horror film by Jesús Franco, starring Maria Rohm, Marie Liljedahl, Jack Taylor, and Christopher Lee. A modern adaptation of de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), it follows a teenage girl who accepts an island vacation with a woman and her brother and becomes the focus of disturbing sexual “experiments.”
Franco’s Sade Cycle
It was Franco’s second de Sade film after Marquis de Sade: Justine (1969). Viewers constantly confuse it with the later, more explicit Eugenie de Sade (filmed 1970, released 1973)—from “Eugénie de Franval,” with Soledad Miranda—because both are nicknamed Eugenie. Franco adapted Philosophy in the Bedroom again as Eugenie (Historia de una perversión) in 1980.
Production, Release, Home Media
Lee replaced George Sanders. The film opened in Los Angeles on 5 August 1970. Anchor Bay issued a UK DVD; Blue Underground released North American DVD in 2002, a 2015 three-disc set (Blu-ray, DVD, soundtrack CD), and a standalone Blu-ray in 2020. Further reading: Thrower & Grainger, Murderous Passions (2015). Related topics: Sade in popular culture, Franco sexploitation, and the tangled Eugénie filmography.
