A ★★★½ review of Call of the Blonde Goddess (1977) (2025)

Call of the Blonde Goddess (AKA Voodoo Passion) is a more coherent Nightmares Come at Night, with less gauzy dreaminess, and a whole lot more voodoo. And, in many ways, it's a lot of fun. I will never not love the wide array of bodies and looks among the women in Jess Franco's films, and this one is a perfect example of his eager embrace of everyone, from the mysterious, statuesque Vicky Adams, to the fleshier Ada Tauler, to the voluptuous Karine Gambier. Despite his fixation on icon figures like Soledad Miranda and Lina Romay, Jess genuinely welcomes all types, and this movie is full of wildly varied bodies of varied races and genders.

Tangentially related to the racial mix of the film, it's enormously gratifying to see the white man who lectures everyone who comes within earshot about 'true voodoo' get his brutal comeuppance — from people actually educated in the religion, no less. Not only does he puff out his chest and claim a complete understanding of a faith that is not his, but he also presumes to use the religion for his own, very secular needs, seeking to blame it for violence that he himself is causing. In that way, the movie reminded me of a giallo: the conniving man who assumes everything and everyone acts according to his will violently finding out otherwise, with women witnessing, if not guiding, his punishment.

As Stephen Thrower correctly points out, however, despite the film's broadly enlightened, anti-colonialist narrative, Franco nevertheless features a seemingly white woman as his lead Haitian, and limits Black actors to the status of bodies, with only one man speaking a line. Intended or not, the effect is to marginalize the very people he's theoretically centering, turning them into nothing more than props for his very white narrative.

If one can stomach the whitewashing her presence entails, Vicky Adams, who plays Inés, the "half-Haitian" voodoo princess of Susan's (Tauler) dream, is truly breathtaking. No one has ever been more perfectly cast in a position of authority, as seeing her stride into any space immediately puts her in command of it, and her inherent grace and power are as mesmerizing as they are frightening. She looks like a Bond villainess in the best way possible (if you told me her name was Xenia Onatopp, I would not be surprised), except even more potent and with a simpler, more matter of fact control.

⏩ Jess Franco, ranked