In 1970, Spanish director Jesús Franco released Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion, a British sexploitation horror film. It is a modern adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), and Franco’s second Sade film after Marquis de Sade: Justine (1969). Maria Rohm, Marie Liljedahl, Jack Taylor, and Christopher Lee star. The novel has sexual material about young characters. What follows sticks to the adult cast, the release history, and where the film sits in Franco’s cycle, not those scenes.
Christopher Lee replaced George Sanders. The film opened in Los Angeles on 5 August 1970. Viewers keep mixing it up with Eugenie de Sade, another Sade adaptation, this one from “Eugénie de Franval,” starring Soledad Miranda. That film was shot in 1970 and not released until 1973. Both are often just called Eugenie. In 1980 Franco adapted Philosophy in the Bedroom again as Eugenie (Historia de una perversión).
Anchor Bay put out a UK DVD. In North America, Blue Underground released a DVD in 2002, a three-disc set in 2015 (Blu-ray, DVD, and a soundtrack CD), and a standalone Blu-ray in 2020. Thrower and Grainger’s Murderous Passions (2015) is the further reading on Sade in popular culture, Franco’s sexploitation films, and the tangled Eugénie filmography.
