FRANCO FEBRUARY: BLACK BOOTS LEATHER WHIP (1983) ** ½

Robert Foster stars as a washed-up private detective who is about to go on the lam to get away from some pesky loan sharks when he’s hired to by a sexy femme fatale (Lina Romay) to retrieve her purse from a junkyard in exchange for a big payday.  He gets more than he bargained for when he goes to get the bag and is jumped by two goons.  Naturally, he kills them in self-defense, but the cops come looking for him anyway.  He changes his appearance, and eventually gets embroiled in a scheme to rub out his new lover’s enemies.

Jess Franco’s Black Boots Leather Whip starts out like a sexy version of a private eye movie before slowly morphing into a hitman drama.  The film’s best scenes are its early ones where Romay (ideally cast as the femme fatale in a bad blonde wig) is luring Foster into her web of deceit.  The ensuing sequences of Foster setting up Romay’s husband’s underworld associates to be murdered are less effective, although there are some decent moments along the way.  (Like the scene where a dominatrix gets the upper hand on Foster.)

Black Boots Leather Whip is surprisingly progressive for an exploitation movie in 1983.  Romay’s husband in the film is trans, and one of his illicit businesspeople is a blind woman.  That doesn’t necessarily make it “good”, but it makes it memorable.  

Lina is sexy as always and is the main draw.  Her best scene comes when she performs in a live sex show and runs Christmas tinsel all over her partner before blowing him.  I think my favorite moment though is when our hero changes his identity so the cops won’t find him, and he goes from looking like Magnum P.I. to a secret agent in a ‘60s spy movie.  I have to wonder since the hero’s appearance and the plot changes so drastically after the first act if this was actually two unfinished movies loosely stitched together.  

Like all the movies featured for Franco February, Black Boots Leather Whip has plenty of scenes where the camera wanders aimlessly around and zooms in on seemingly inconsequential things.  It’s also yet another film where Romay is saddled with a terrible blonde wig.  Of Franco’s usual stock players, Romay and Foster are the two most notable names yet again.