< La Frígida y la viciosa

• Frigid Fantasies UK, 57 mins, English language cut version

• Andrea Guzon plays Paula
• Sara Mora plays Celia

Males -

• Alfredo Calles plays Fernando
• Unidentified actor plays the role of a driver (voice only)

The voice of Fernando in the English-language version is dubbed by Howard Vernon (uncredited).

Plot Synopsis -

The marriage between Paula and Fernando has been unhappy because of her frigidity. Things change when the mysterious Celia enters Paula’s life. The two women become friends and soon Celia takes up quarters in the couple’s house…

Some remarks –

The English-language version differs from the Spanish original in its title scenes. In the original, the credits appear as the camera pans over wallpaper before settling on the image of Paula in bed and slowly zooming back until we see her in the context of the bedroom. The English version, instead, prints its credits on a neutral red background. The same happens during the final credits roll, originally against the image of Paula bound by a collar and chain in the manner of a dog, which is once again replaced by the same red background.

The UK version, known as Frigid Fantasies, is severely cut down to 57 minutes, obviously for censorship reasons bearing on scenes of female humiliation. The cuts initially affect a scene of domestic rape starting before and finishing after the ten-minute mark. From this point onwards the film is left untouched until the long final segment of Paula’s degradation to the status of a “dog”, beginning approximately around minute 72, after which point the rest of the film is almost entirely eliminated. In this case, the action of the censors has been not to simply delete individual moments and shorten the film but actually change the narrative in its final stages. Right after the scene between Celia and Fernando in the car, the film, as censored, cuts straight to the shot of Paula sleeping on the floor outside the ajar bedroom door while Celia and Fernando are in bed together, after which the end credits roll. This moment in the Spanish version does not constitute the end and occurs over a minute before the credits roll. Thus, Paula’s degradation not only remains unseen but actually disappears from the story, the implied different ending being that Celia has merely taken over from Paula as Fernando’s partner.

At one point in the Spanish dialogue, the character of Fernando, while seated at the dinner table, quotes a line from Hamlet (“Doubt thou the stars are fire…”). In the English-language version, the same line is simply translated straight from the Spanish, obviously with no previous reference made to the original Shakespearean text.

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