Maidens of Fetish Street is the only film directed by Saul Resnick himself; in addition, he was involved in numerous bizarre American exploitation films during the 1960s. His film is a gem of sexploitation, blending mondo (a fake, sensationalist documentary style) with an experimental approach (Resnick was primarily a visual technician) and the inevitable striptease and erotic scenes. It represents a pinnacle of sexploitation, where the nocturnal city—in this case, Los Angeles—becomes a labyrinth of sin and depravity, and the “amoral” characters live out their fantasies and obsessions under the watchful, voyeuristic, yet moralizing eye of the camera. As in many sexploitation and mondo films, the viewer is morally reassured by the narrator’s voice-over, which creates a certain distance from the debauched scenes that the viewer can then willingly continue to watch.

In Bilbao, the voice-over belongs to the protagonist, giving access to his inner thoughts. Here, we find all the elements of the aforementioned film, but with a Latin approach far removed from American puritanism. We follow the protagonist in his obsession with the stripper Bilbao and during his nocturnal wanderings, which immerse us in a disturbing gray zone. Just as in Caniche or Anguish, Bigas Luna presents us with a traumatizing and fascinating experience, strongly reminiscent of the morbid and erotic tendencies of the giallo genre…