The Films of Jess Franco

The Escapees: or, a women-in-a-mental-asylum triple-feature

2012-01-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

It all started a few months ago when I had the opportunity to watch John Carpenter's new flick The Ward and it has come around to a little-known (to me, anyway) Jean Rollin flick called The Escapees, when I came across the Salvation UK DVD quite unintentionally in a little place off of Charing Cross Road in London. Not only was I not looking for this particular DVD, I actually had no idea the film even existed. I was intrigued, but not quite enough to delve into a blind purchase. Well, not immediately, anyway.

It was early this November when I saw Carpenter's The Ward, and it was a decent enough experience. After the disappointing Ghosts of Mars (his last actual feature film) and the completely unrecognizable-as-Carpenter Pro-Life, I went into The Ward with an understandable amount of trepidation. What was interesting, right off the bat, is that this is the first John Carpenter flick I can remember seeing that wasn't shot in Cinemascope. Nope, this sucker was 1.85:1. That seemed alright to me because the last thing of Carpenter's I'd seen and enjoyed was his Masters of Horror television episode Cigarette Burns, and what the opening scenes of The Ward felt like to me was that he was capturing the more intimate, smaller-aspect feeling of Masters of Horror. However, it did not end there... The story of The Ward is basically about a young woman (Amber Heard) who is committed to an insane asylum where some pretty strange goings-ons are transpiring amidst an alarmingly lengthening list of missing female patients. Set-up as a horror mystery, this turns out to be one of Carpenter's best films of recent times – certainly since the killer In the Mouth of Madness (which is, oddly enough, another flick about people going insane). There are some truly inspired scenes in The Ward, even evoking such Carpenter classics as The Thing and Halloween. However, before I get too carried away, The Ward won't be for everyone. Even as it evokes classic Carpenter is isn't classic Carpenter, it's an amiable enough effort that some people (myself excluded) might find predictable and somewhat by-the-numbers. I thought it was a good take on a classic Ten Little Indians scenario. Of course, the sub-plot of the film is leading lady Amber Heard trying to get the fuck out of there. Much like the opening premise of Jean Rollin's The Escapees...

And this is basically the only plot-thrust in Zack Snyder's otherwise completely plotless Sucker Punch, which I had the pleasure of viewing just this December. After reading some horrendous reviews of his first self-penned directorial effort, I steered clear of this sucker for ages. So what changed my mind? Well, that was thanks to discovering the existence of The Escapees, of course. I couldn't get it out of my head that this overblown Hollywood mega-budgeted film had essentially lifted the plot from a little old Jean Rollin flick from the early eighties. I'd say Snyder's flick is even more exploitive than Rollin's, at least Rollins has a gorgeous dreamlike narrative that swings it into the usual realm of arthouse fantasy. Snyder's film, for all its cold awesomeness, is pure exploitation fantasy as a handful of forgettably-written young female characters spend the entire film swinging from one reality to the next in order to ultimately escape the mental asylum they've all been committed to. It's a non-linear symphony of war machines, burlesque performances and fetishistic Bedlam narratives, intertwined with no real purpose other than eye candy. The film exists as a video-game puzzle, and while it is mostly cool to sit through, it's a puzzle that exists only because it is a puzzle (with eye candy), with no satisfying characters, plot or conclusion. In fact, the conclusion not only does not make sense, but it fails to justify the entire film. Still, I might give this one a second chance in the future. In the meantime, there area better things to experience...

Like Rollin's film, where two girls committed to an asylum decide to escape. This actually happens pretty much immediately, so this isn't quite the girls-trapped-in-a-mental-asylum adventure I had been expecting. However, much like Rollin's earlier (and highly awesome) Requiem for a Vampire, this is a two-girls-on-the-run odyssey. After fleeing the asylum, they hook up with a band of traveling musicians/strippers who put on stripping road-shows behind railroad tracks. They eventually befriend some of the biker audience members, and the two girls, whose personalities clash and are extremely at odds when the road adventure begins, become friends. That's really it, there's not much more to say about this subtle, mature and surprisingly sweet story. The Escapees is not bizarre like Requiem for a Vampire, it's actually a straight-ahead road story about the two girls' growing friendship. In fact, there's barely even any nudity in this Rollin picture, and the brief scenes of sex are mild and non-exploitative, serving to contribute to the characters and the story. And in fact, this might be Rollin's best work. It's an engaging film and wonderfully shot. At nearly an hour and fifty minutes, one of Rollin's longer flicks (ignore the printed running time on the back of the Redemption DVD box 'cause it's wrong), the time really just flew by as I wallowed in the lushness of the movie. At the end, in true Rollin genre style, it does get wacky as a botched lesbian rape attempt (featuring Rollin regular babe Brigitte Lahaie) turns into an all out machine-gun shoot-out with an army of cops, and somehow, winds up with the two girls walking into the sunset. I'd have to say that this is probably the best acting I've ever seen in one of Rollin's films as well. I'd like to call The Escapees a minor gem, but to me, it's much more than minor. A hidden gem, or a criminally neglected gem, seemingly forgotten about in Rollin's usual catalogue of the fantastique. But a real gem. I urge Rollin fans to check it out.

-V.

Behind Convent Walls

2011-12-18T04:47:00.000-08:00

..Is Walerian Borowczyk's simple nunsploitation film worth writing about? What could I say that isn't going to be said better on the special features of the most recent DVD release (uncut from Nouveaux Pictures)? Well, nothing critical, really. But yes, the film is worth talking about, for several reasons, and there are things to say.

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Something on the more interesting side of this erotic showpiece (besides the erotic showpieces, I mean) is the film's narrative structure, which for nearly the first two-thirds is purely nunsploitation, though arguably this is the fetishistic sub-genre at its finest. Because thankfully, Walerian Borowczyk is a master at cinematic eroticism; he knows what to shoot, how to shoot it, and has it play like true erotic cinema, never cheap pornography. He and Tinto Brass are probably the only two filmmakers with this deeply embedded talent of bringing charged sex to the cinema screen on such an affecting level, something to give Eyes Wide Shut a run for its money. Walerian's films are not slick, yet they have that same commercial quality that comes from talent rather than textbook, much like the early films of Scorsese or Romero. In fact, Behind Convent Walls even has a slight documentary feel to it, in spite of the fact that the last 40 minutes actually moves from its zone of sheer sexploitation to suddenly delve into a comic-book story of corruption, church politics, and Catholic repression, and that it seems a perfectly natural transition in Walerian's film, which makes it appear that this story shift had been the intention all along. Cinematically, much like Mean Streets or Martin, the film otherwise feels somewhat improvised.

At the end of the day, this film, like others of Walerian's and Brass', is really a joyous celebration of sex and the human condition. And as a storyteller, his feature films, like Convent or The Beast, are far more successful than when his talents are put out towards shorter anthology segments (as in Immoral Women). Borowczyk's talents shine in longer contexts, where as a filmmaker, his satirical voice is much more confident instead of purely jokey in his shorter narratives. Conversely, fellow erotic filmmaker Tinto Brass generally displays the opposite talent when it comes to narrative length.

The funny thing is that generally, when it comes to cinematic erotica, these aren't really the types of films that I bother to commit characters' names to mind. Either they stand out visually (The Frightened Woman) or they blend into the group shenanigans, and that is especially true here, where the story concerns an entire convent of nuns who are all dressed –or undressed— the same way. And what goes on behind those convent walls is slightly distracting, as well...

Much like The Beast (and even Immoral Women, which was a little too cutesy-poo for my liking) the erotica is true and beautifully handled, the camera movements in Convent specifically, while docu-esque, was handled by none over than the cinematographer of Suspiria, giving Walerian's film a gorgeous voyeuristic personality.

And speaking of gorgeous, check out this convent...(!) The beautiful nuns serve not only the film's eroticism, but manage to bring this flick into the realm of pure fantasy and nunsploitation while maintaining its verisimilitude, exactly where it wants to be.

.-V.

Lorna the Exorcist (1974)

2011-12-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

Well, after some build-up, I finally had the chance to watch Jess Franco's Lorna: The Exorcist. Okay, now, where to start...? Perhaps I should mention – then again, perhaps it goes without saying – that there is nary an exorcist to be found in the film. Nor any attempt at an exorcism. There is a Lorna, however, and we first see her in a ten-minute lesbian romp with Franco muse Lina Romay (as Linda). We soon discover that this is some sort of lesbian fantasy on Linda's part, and as the plot thickens, we find that Lorna is capable of bodily possession. The first clue to this comes from the poor girl who spends the film half-naked in a hospital for the insane, locked in a room and watched over by a doctor played by none other than Jess Franco himself, in scenes that could have been lifted from a handful of other Franco films. The insane girl rants her nights away calling for Lorna. Lorna, we find out, has a direct connection to Linda and her parents in the film, and Lorna soon appears in the flesh to Linda (in yet another lesbian scenario, the third one between the pair at this point) while somehow placing a curse on Linda's mother. Lorna then doesn't so much jump from body to body as she does lesbian encounter to lesbian encounter. And there is plenty of heterosexual scenarios, too, as Linda's father Patrick has more sex in twenty-five minutes than most of us have had all week. As watchable as all these shenanigans are, sadly, this is not one of Franco's more elegant nor graceful efforts. The camerawork is sloppy (okay, no surprise, right?) and the editing is just grating (again, not a big shock), but this is a real shame because Lorna (the film) boasts some of the finest locations Franco has ever filmed at, both exterior and interior. With more care, this could have been a gorgeous entry in the euro-smut genre, and possibly a minor gem. As it is, there are far too many technical distractions, even for a Franco film, as the subject matter, as well as the performances portraying the plot, are not nearly as charming or kitschy as some of his more famous efforts. That being said, the one thing that does make the film worthwhile is Lina Romay herself, who has rarely seemed more sensuous on screen. If nothing else, Franco certainly knows how to shoot a girl.

-V

A Lady Above Suspicion, A Frightened Woman.

2011-11-08T03:40:00.001-08:00

About a week ago I went down to London's Roxy Bar & Screen for Filmbar 70's presentation of Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. Although I consider myself a fan of Luciano Ercoli's films, I had not seen this one in particular, dispite having owned the Blue Underground DVD since 2006. This was one of those “lost in the collection:” titles. Strangely enough, I did bring a digital copy of it along with me to London this summer, but when I saw that Filmbar 70 would be hosting a big-screen presentation of this giallo, I saved my first viewing for this event. I was a little surprised to see actress Susan Scott (Nieves Navarro) take second fiddle in this arthouse-giallo, as she's the typical (if not the epitome) giallo female, and as I'd first seen her having lead roles in husband Luciano Ercoli's latter films, Death Walks at Midnight and Death Walks in High Heels. That being said, her role in Forbidden Photos is definitely striking and even, dare I say, slightly more memorable that Dagmar Lassander's lead performance (though she's pretty awesome, too), in this Lenzi-esque early giallo entry. The idea for Forbidden Photos relies on the trendy sixties-style Italio thrillers, where corrupt people try to drive each other insane with twisted, convoluted plots – films which were far more influenced by Les Diaboliques than any of the later gialli from the seventies, which focused more on sex and flamboyantly bloody murders (see again, Death Walks at Midnight). But even with the earlier giallo entry, Luciano Ercoli displays a profound flair for bringing in a cheap thriller disguised as stylish art, something that I'm coming to have more of an appreciation for each time I watch his films.

Strangely enough, I'd come across leading lady Dagmar Lassander a second time in as many weeks when I finally took a couple of hours to watch The Frightened Woman. On the surface (or rather, the DVD cover), Piero Schivazappa's film looks like a pseudo-psychedelic sixties sado-masochistic sex romp devoid of plot and drama. Boy, was I wrong. Sure, there's plenty of sexual (not sex) set-pieces and the entire design of the film is pretty effin' groovy, like Danger Diabolik if it had been designed for early Penthouse, but dammit if this film didn't actually have a story, and it was sincerely engaging. Okay, so chalk this one up to the surprise of the week.

I'm excited now to revisit, or discover, some of Dagmar's other works now that she's in the front of my mind. I must've seen her in Fulci's The Black Cat or Bava's Hatchet for a Honeymoon, but to see this Prague actress really kick some ass, you can't do better than Forbidden Photos and The Frightened Woman. Or possibly Werewolf Woman.

-V.

The cause of being erratic

2011-10-19T12:18:00.001-07:00

I do have to apologize for the erratic (read: not too damn many) postings this summer, and now fall. It wasn't my fault! No, actually, it was my damn fault, I just wanted to say that while picturing John Belushi on his knees in a tunnel begging for his life to a pissed-off AK-47 swinging post-princess-leia Carrie Fisher. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you likely need to sort that out immediately and quit reading this blog. Okay, for those of you still with me, again, my apologies. I intend to dedicate far more time to this blog in the coming months and to expand the dialog to some other filmmakers as I had with the Immoral Tales retrospective many moons ago. Upcoming, I'm intending a thorough re-examination of She Killed in Ecstasy and as well we'll have an exclusive look at Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion as screened by Filmbar 70 at London's Roxy Bar & Screen. That's later this month. As for now, with Brivido Giallo, we're in the midst of principal photography on a new experimental Euro-thriller feature film, to be wrapped by November 5th and starting post-production later this year, or early January.

-V.

Scala Forever season in London

2011-08-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

Or: "A look at some London culture by someone from somewhere else".

In London, 2009, I was hunting around an HMV store when I found a Blu-ray release of Richard Stanley's "Hardware" I've always been strangely attracted to this film, something about it's post-punk, post-apocalyptic attitude, I guess. I didn't pick it up immediately as we were about to be heading back to Vancouver in a couple of weeks. I checked it out on the internet and found that Severin Films was set to release this gem a few months ahead, anyway, so I waited. (incidentally, this is one of the few titles I'd seen on VHS, and then was never able to track it down again until the Blu-ray release - totally skipping a whole media generation!) When I did finally get to watch Hardware again, I was excited all over again, it had been a long time. What was great was that Severin had also included a documentary on the days that Richard Stanley had worked at The Scala theatre at King's Cross in London. This was the first time I'd ever heard of it, and it seriously changed my life.

Unfortunaly, after this prompted some further wikipedia searching which unearthed some sad news. The Scala had never re-opened after a string of bad luck, starting with the suing by Warner Brothers at Stanley Kubrick's insistence, in 1993. Now it was just a night club.

Two years later, June 2011: I find myself back in London. Somewhat indefinitely, I guess you could say. After six days of re-orienting myself, I made it down to the Roxy Bar & Screen where a couple of amiable fellas named Justin and Adam, who run the Filmbar 70 screenings in London, started chatting with me as I hung out at one of the tables outside the front doors on Borough High Street with a pint. Adam told me that they were going to be launching a massive six-week screening schedule for something that they were calling "Scala Forever". I knew what The Scala was, or had been, and I'd thought I'd heard him incorrectly, so I asked him if he could spell it while I made a note of it. S-C-A-L-A ..."Oh, Scala!?!" "Yeah," he said, "Scala Forever." I asked if The Scala had re-opened as a theatre, my voice surely filled with hope and excitement, and he told me no, that the screenings were in honour of the old Scala, which had indeed come to a finalizing demise in '93.

August 23, 2011: I went to my first of the Scala Screenings (the whole schedule is now about a week and a half in) and London writer David L Hayles was talking about the old experiences there, and his experiences with Russ Meyer. We were about to watch a double-feature of Meyer films, Mondo Topless and the classic post-sixties-culture-shocker Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It was at this screening I met, for the second time only, a friend-of-a-friend named Tony. Turns out Tony used to run the Psychotronic store inside the old Scala and now has a store up in Camden, where you might be able to catch him once in a while. The man is a huge Jess Franco fan. He's been to Jess Franco's house, watching Franco's own flicks with him, and had dinner made for them by Lina Romay. He told me a lot of other stories, too, and with us both having an affinity for whacked-out sixties culture, we were able to quickly chat the time away until our other friends arrived and the screening began.

When I visit Tony and his Camden shop, at some point in the near future, I plan to give a full report on his seemingly immense collection of worldwide Jess Franco paraphernalia (depending on if I can get some good photographs or not). He's been collecting Franco's films since the 80's, and has acquired some strange titles on foreign videotape. These I would like to see!

But until then-- well, I don't know what. I'll try to survive more of the Scala Forever season. And I do mean survive. There are some screening sets that run from seven at night until eight the next morning. I'm going to give the 80's all-nighter a try.

-V.

Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden

2011-06-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, alright, this is a.k.a. “Succubus”, and I know I wrote about this flick upon my first re-discovery of it a few years back when Blue Underground re-released this sucker on DVD. If any Jess Franco film is primed to be re-released in HD it's this one. A lot of the cinematography is soft, but it's also lush. Actually, a lot of the photography in this film, right from the start of the opening credits (over various shots, some repeated, of various artworks), is pretty tongue-in-cheek. It's like a sexy psychedelic comedy of perversions.

After the artwork the first actual shot of the film is star Janine Reynaud in a sado-masochistic sexual performance set-piece (dressed in black vinyl whipping a semi-nude blonde strapped to a wooden X), something Franco would repeat several times throughout his career in the far more famous “Vampyros Lesbos”, and far more explicitly, in “Exorcism & Black Masses”. This may have been pretty controversial in the swingin' sixties (maybe) but it really just comes off as cutely-sexy now. Of course, the fact that the scene cuts away to an applauding audience just contributes to the fun side of this flick.

Janine Reynaud had a sexual androgynous look, but she's definitely filled with sex appeal. Jack Taylor walks in on her lounging on his couch:

“What are you doing here?”

“I was bored, so I came to your apartment, do you mind?”

“No.”

To which she then gyrates into a semi-tease dance in front of the record player. Pretty awesome. And she definitely had a set of legs on her. She can be a real heartstopper even when she's not actually taking her clothes off, and I know I've said this before, but Franco really knew how to shoot the best of his attractive actresses. His leading ladies were often (fuck that, ALWAYS) the best asset his films had. Even within the Ed Wood-esque “realism” of Franco's cinematic world, the leading actresses shone out like bright diamonds and gave most of his films a timeless charm. Reynaud does eventually disrobe, but then that's where the melodrama seems to start – while the movie retains it's initial tongue-in-cheek quality. Around this time (we're about 13 minutes in at this point) the film also veers off into its intercutting of beautifully soft psychedelic photography. Almost a cinematic rambling by Franco, it's nevertheless hard to peel the eyeballs away from the screen, thought it might be out of sheer campy curiosity as opposed to any kind of driving narrative, but that, what would one else expect? It's these sequences, actually, that really give Succubus a life and identity of its own, which is actually somewhat important for a film contained in a director's repertoire that is as vast as Franco's. Like Euginie De Sade, however, I feel like this movie would've benefited greatly from a driving soundtrack as opposed to the running voice-over narrative during these lengthy psychedelic sequences. But the, that might've been too artsy even for Franco. It's within this narrative we learn more of the association of the idea of the film to it's original title: Necronomicon. And while the film's original title in an obvious Lovecraft reference, leave it up to Franco to inject the idea of Marquis De Sade into his story, clearly making it more about the sexual than the satanic. (Yet there's even reference to Poe's works later on in the film).

In Succubus, Janine Reynaud seems like an all-in, assured, and confident actress exuding her hypnotic charm throughout, whether doing a strip tease, wandering through a psychedelic fog, or crawling around on the floor in the midst of a partly in her panties while the other guests intimidate her like a (literal) pack of crazy dogs. But she's also a commanding presence, easily commandeering the viewer's attention in spite of the terrible English over-dubbing and seemingly in the face of the film's sporadic overt cheesiness – or at least until we get two-thirds in where we get to some heavy and far-out Twilight Zone territory, with the requisite trippy/groovy soundscape. This is all sort of a Jess Franco allegory on the sixties drug/fear-of-drugs culture that was also portrayed in several American Roger Corman productions circa the same era. And amazingly, there's a shot at the hour-mark that's actually been aped by Luc Besson in “Subway”, and re-aped for Spielberg's “Minority Report”. Though I could never say with complete confidence this was at all intentional aping.

By the end of the film, we wind up back where we started (in a manner of speaking) with Janine Reynaud lying in Jack Taylor's pad, where he finds her sprawled out on some cushions following her psychedelic journey that may or may not have at some point turned homicidal. Succubus is actually quite a charming and clever little gem of a film.

Janine Reynaud is best known for this Franco film, as well as his “Two Undercover Angels” and “Kiss Me Monster” back-to-back female-Bond-esque kitschy comedies; and for Sergio Martino's “Case of the Scorpion's Tale”, and she appears to have quit acting somewhere around 1975-1978. There is a vague rumor that she had married an American millionaire and retired to Texas. Not much else is known about this sometimes stoic and always alluring talent.

Here's to you, Janine Reynaud! And to what is, for the moment, my favorite Franco film.

-V.

De Sade 2000

2011-05-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

With a title likely derived from Radley Metzger's Camille 2000, this vivid Franco opus is otherwise known as Eugenie De Sade. This film, along with Franco's She Killed in Ecstasy, are my tip-top two absolute favorites of the small cannon starring his first significant muse, the stunning Soledad Miranda.

De Sade 2000 / Eugenie Sex Happening / Eugenie De Sade opens up with a short lesbian scene involving Miranda, filmed in a brief series of gorgeous hand-held and somewhat candid-looking shots intended to emulate a kind of snuff film, which Franco, appearing here as an actor, is viewing in a private theater.

This is the opening to yet another Franco riff on the writings of the Marquis De Sade (which is evident even in the title). This time, the story is more straight-forward and nowhere near as meta-fictional as the earlier Eugenie... The Story of her Journey into Perversion (shot one year previously, in 1969). And this time, Franco wrote the screenplay himself. Somewhat unfortunately, however, in place of the former film's meta-fictional aspect we now get some stilted and slightly boring off-camera narration to help the cohesiveness of the story along, which is being told to Franco's character by Miranda's character in a flashback set-up while she lies dying in a hospital bed. It reminded me of the horrible Blade Runner voice-overs Harrison Ford had done in an effort to intentionally sabotage the whole narration idea. Yeesh. At any rate, the stilted narration is actually not much of a distraction as it's running over some beautiful exterior shots and the gorgeous Miranada, who is captivating both in and out of her clothes. She was a true gem in Franco's films, and his photographers (Manuel Merino this time) certainly knew how to shoot her – though I have a suspicion that filming Miranda was sort of like shooting exterior locations in Europe – it's kind of hard to take a bad shot. Now if only she had a better English voice-over actress.

While the Miranda/Franco collaborations Vampyros Lesbos and The Devil Came from Akasava might be the more famous cult items, part of both of those films' infamy and popularity, I'm sure, are partly due to the rushed/cheap filmmaking and nearly inept editing that make them so-bad-they're-awesome pieces of kitsch. And without a doubt, the soundtracks to those films are the best in Franco's career. A jazz fanatic, Franco unfortunately used that inspiration only at sporadic moments in Eugenie De Sade (most overtly near the finale when the film intercuts to and from a jazz bar), this film is scored by Bruno Nicolai, who also scored Eugenie... The Story of Her Journey into Perversion & 99 Women in the sixties. I may have misworded something there, because Nicolai's score for De Sade is also awesome, especially during the third striptease/lesbian murder... it's just that... well, hell, it's no Vampires' Sound Incorporation.

Like “Lesbos”, this Franco outing revels in a type of excess only Franco could really achieve. Lurid, but not altogether sleazy, and there is plenty of nudity and what's been dubbed “soft-gore” by Christopher Null of filmcritic.com. Not as kitschy as “Lesbos”, “Akasava” or “She Killed in Ecstasy”, it's not nearly as inept, either, and in fact I'd say De Sade is one of Franco's most accomplished works of his entire career. Although that's not to say De Sade is not without a little kitsch of its own – check out the awesome nude photography/murder set piece thirty minutes in.

Franco plays a writer in this flick who tends to act more like a stalker, though that's not really unusual when it comes to his on-screen presence. Also creepy is Paul Muller, who plays Miranda's father and accomplice to the murders. At the end she lures one of the jazz musicians from the club, presumable for the final perfect murder, but she actually ends up becoming attached to the trumpet player – of course, all of this comes to a head in the midst of obsession and jealousy, and hence, Miranda's character winding up in a hospital bed. Obsession does play a significant role here, much as Franco himself was obsessed with the writings of Marquis De Sade since he'd started his cinematic career.

Eugenie De Sade was only one of six films Franco shot with Soledad Miranda in 1970 – a year in which he also directed three other non-Miranda projects. And while he would go on to find decades worth of inspiration through his next muse, Lina Romay, the Miranda projects seem like they will always be the focal point of his insanely prolific career, and I'd have to say, deservedly so.

-V.

Eugenie... The Story of her Journey into Perversion

2011-05-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, how's that for a title? I'd say it's in competition alongside some of Sergio Martino's gialli from the seventies!

I started thinking about Franco again while planning the move to the London, something I'd read about the man years ago that had stuck with me – how he would often choose directing jobs based on the food in the region the project would be filming.* Yes, he allowed the food to be the deciding factor. And I say, completely without facetiousness, I believe he had his priorities straight off the bat. Although I'm not sure how far he traveled to shoot Eugenie, from what I've gathered from the trusty internet (okay, that was facetious) he shot this sucker around Barcelona. Of course, Franco being from Spain, I have a hunch he may have been familiar with the territory.

This tribute to Marquis De Sade's “Philosophy of the Bedroom” is a meta-fictional take on his work, where the characters refer not only to De Sade himself, but to his actual works of fiction within this work of fiction. Which is why I would lean more on calling it a tribute to his works, though from what I've read this story is closely based on the slightly absurd tongue-in-cheek style of his writings, much like Philip Kaufman's “Quills”.

This one stars one of my favorite cult/Fraco actresses, Maria Rohm, and she looks the best in this film. Never more stunning, though her on-screen vampiness was probably put to better use in “Venus in Furs”, the photography of her form and actions in Eugenie is some of the best. If not the best. But speaking of vampiness, I think to one of the set-up scenes in Euginie where she smacks her bitch-servant across the face, to which her co-star Jack Taylor asks, “Was that wise?” Rohm retorts: “You don't love me for my wisdom.”

Okay, maybe that called for a spoiler alert because that was pretty much the best line in the whole flick. The rest of Eugenie, as a film, pretty much relies completely on the lushly photographed women in various stages of nudity and sexual situations. And the term 'sexual situations', though a well-worn and thrown-around term of the MPAA's, was never more apt than in the context of a Marquis De Sade adaption.

Narrating some of these situations, during he more lurid goings-on (though the psycho/sado-sexuality is a bit lite by today's standards) is Christopher Lee, whose scenes weave the whole meta-fictional aspect through Eugenie's cinematic reality... and while he spouts De Sade soliloquy, there are naked women being stabbed on the same stage. (Yet in an on-screen interview present on the Blue Underground DVD, Lee claims to have had no knowledge of the content of this flick until he screened the finished product. I dunno... what exactly did he think he was watching from behind the curtain? And what about that girl who was getting on her knees in front of his--)

Anyway, as far as Franco's cannon goes, Eugenie has been one of my favorites for a long time now. As much as Franco seems to loath his own work, even he claims (again, on-screen) this Eugenie is the film of his that he hates the least. Trust me, it's at least better than that. But it doesn't surprise me that an artist would find his own work hard to take joy from, I've heard others say similar things about their own work. Sometime you have to look past the WIP flicks, as entertaining as they are, to see that Franco really was an artist at times. Eugenie was no accidental film, Franco has made many other films that boast lush photography and an intelligent sense of humour. And sometimes a dumb sense of humour, too. Personally, I think the fact we're still talking about these films decades later speaks for itself.

On a side note, when I was looking up some info for this post, I inadvertently discovered that producer/writer Harry Alan Towers (who took credit under the pseudonym Peter Welbeck, the same name he used for 1975's And Then There Were None, which also co-starred his wife Maria Rohm) had passed away in the summer of 2009 in Canada – the same year Jess Franco won the Goya award (Spain) for Lifetime Achievement.

Harry Alan Towers also produced a few works for director Tobe Hooper later in their careers. One, which I hope to revisit soon, was Tobe Hooper's Night Terrors (again loosely based on De Sade) starring a young actress named Zoe Trilling, whose star, to my honest surprise, never really shot out.

*From the book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs

-V.

Best Poster for a Jess Franco Film... ever?

2011-05-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

More posts to come in the next couple of weeks... (In seemingly complete contradiction to my last post).

-V.

All packed up

2011-04-16T17:20:00.001-07:00

Well, looks like anything that might me posted here over the next six months or so will have to be strictly from memory, as all of my Franco DVDs have now been packed away in various liquor boxes and piled into the corner of the nearly-empty living room. Next week, the boxes won't even be there at all. I'm making a big move over to London, England for an indefinite period of time. I am of course hoping to find some kick-ass region-2 releases, a few titles I may not have had the chance to come by in North America...

Other than the prospect of new and exciting film/video purchases (I already have a few Argento and Fulci blu-rays in the queue), I am certainly looking forward to the Big Move into new surroundings and inspiration. Hell, a new continent! However, the worst-case scenario for this blog is that I won't have a chance to post anything of the next few months until we've settled in and I have some new Franco discs in my possession.

That's alright, it's only a small piece of collateral damage in the huge task of uprooting the ol' mundane/secure/day-to-day life for the sake of continued inspiration (in other words, I got some ants in my proverbial pants).

So, here's to the future and to Franco in region 2! Hopefully I'll be back to the blog sooner rather than later.

Cheers.

-V.

99 Women

2011-03-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

I had my second look at Jess Franco's "99 Woman" last night, out of sheer curiosity I'd purchased Blue Underground's French x-rated version of the film. In a way, I'm glad I did -- all of Franco's wonderful actresses including Maria Rohm , Maria Schell, and Rosabla Neri have been dubbed into French, which amps up the alluring quality of these European starlets. The downside is that the film is continually interrupted at inexplicable intervals with hard-core pornography. The first time I watched this it came off as more of an amusing curio, but the second time around it was actually slightly annoying. The pornographic inserts are not sexy or erotic, they're instead abysmally perfunctory. These inserts have absolutely nothing to do with the characters in the film, nor are the actual actress used - nor is it even edited in a way to make it appear as though the actresses/characters have been used. I'd heard that Jess Franco was unaware that these pornographic clips had been inserted into 99 Women. Er, pardon the pun. However, the use of the zoom lens (especially in the first lesbian hardcore insert) just screams Franco's style. Well, maybe he shot it, but it wasn't intended for 99 Women. At any rate, by the end of the evening, I'd sort of wished I had purchased the director's cut of this flick.

As for the film itself (minus the inserts) it's actually a really well-constructed, nicely shot piece of exploitation mayhem. The entire women-in-prison theme (99 of these women, as is stated in one of the opening scenes) is exploited here with confidence and gusto, which makes the film totally work on a sheer-entertainment level. So much so, I was reminded of some of the best of the sub-genre, namely, the Corman-produced Pam Grier/Sid Haig WIP flicks of the early seventies. Of course, that being said, this Jess Franco/Harry Alan Towers production had actually come out in 1969, beating Corman out by a couple of years. While Roger Corman may have perfected this sub-genre, it was Towers and Franco that really got it going (you can also see it in Franco's almost-as-entertaining Barbed Wire Dolls). Had Franco continued directing films in this exploitation sub-genre, I seriously think these films could have become minor classics. As it were, Franco wound up becoming more known for his infamous Ilsa series, the Nazi Women-in-Prison sub-sub-genre of exploitation filmmaking.

For what it is, 99 Women has all the right WIP ingredients in all the right places -- the synopsis on the back of the DVD box is simply: ...an island prison where abused yet luscious young lovelies surrender to their own depraved desires.

Pretty much says it all.

-V.

Franco HD may be far into the future yet.

2011-03-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

I've been catching up on some of my stockpiled Blue Underground Blu-ray releases. Manic, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Toolbox Murders, etc. I had been holding out hope over the last year that if any company would start putting out Franco in an HD format it would've been these guys. However, it seems they're more interested (and I can't honestly say wrongfully so) in releasing Dario Argento's catalogue over the next six months. Commercially, and especially for a low-budget/high-end HD distributor, this move makes way more sense. It's just a shame, as they have the lush Venus in Furs, Eugenie de Sade and Eugenie... the story of her journey into perversion.

However, I have serious doubts that the mere popularity of Argento's films is the sole reason holding up these releases. After all, there are other distribution companies that are releasing Blu-rays now who hold the rights to some of Franco's massive catalogue. (Image and Anchor Bay UK, possibly?) Another reason could be the rights licencing has expired... but really, what I fear is that it was the digitally technical aspect that allowed the Franco films to be restored onto DVD in the first place that's going to bite HD fans in the ass.

After watching some of the behind-the-scenes on the Anchor Bay UK box-set release of his films, I was witness to an extremely informative documentary on the restoration process of some of these Jess Franco titles. It broke down like this:

They transferred the film to digital media (in other words, they digitized the films). Creating mpeg2 standard-definition files from this digitization, the restoration thus began -- on the mpeg 2 files themselves. Hence, the digital restoration on Franco's films were attributed solely to the standard-definition DVD files they were going to be using to author the DVDs themselves. In order to go back to do a restoration for Blu-ray, they would have to do this entire process over again, starting with the original film prints.

Does it seem likely that these companies would take the time, under current economic circumstances, to do such a thing? Once again, I have my doubts. Still, I'm hoping Blue Underground or Image, who would appear to have some success with commercial Blu-ray releasing, will at some point get to these titles sitting at the back of their catalogues and throw dogs like me a bone.

So here's to patiently waiting...

-V.

Dug up from the archives...

2011-02-26T09:55:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, I found this article buried deep in the recesses of my hard drive as I was updating the Creepy Six Films site. This is an ancient article I'd written (and had posted on that site) to try to get people into the sexy femme fatales of the sixties & seventies European horror/thrillers I was (and still am) into. Re-reading the article, it made me cringe. I sounded as if I knew about things of this nature better than anyone else. Jeez, what a pretentious knob. I even wrote it under a pseudonym! What the hell was I thinking? Anyway, thought it might be fun to re-post it, warts and all (it hasn't been touched or re-written), and if anything, at least the crappy low-res stills I'd tracked down across the internet (back when it was properly spelled Internet) might provide some mild entertainment. Yes, feel free to skip over the entire article to get to them, too.

-V.

Eurochicks

Article by Ricky Laazar

Some of Europe’s thrillers and exploitation-genre pictures have managed to survive obscurity after several decades thanks mostly to the DVD revolution, and the independent studios that take the time to restore and re-release these films to fans and seekers of decidedly non-mainstream cinema. Most of these films come with a cult following attached, and a lot of the reasons for that are the uniquely beautiful actresses that have graced the celluloid of these foreign features. This article is dedicated to them.

Soledad Miranda (aka Susan Korda, Susann Korda) is best-known for her collaborations with Spanish director Jess Franco. After casting Soledad as “Lucy” along side Christopher Lee and Klause Kinski in Count Dracula, Franco obsessively cast her in a string of feature films to follow, including Nightmares come at Night, Euginie de Sade, The Devil Came from Akasava and the infamous Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy. Soledad also appeared in several other features, including the American-produced 100 Rifles with Burt Reynolds & Raquel Welch, where she performed a topless cameo. Her features and on-screen presence are nothing short of utterly captivating, making Franco’s often dire films compulsively watchable. Sadly, just as Soledad was about to sign a five-picture studio contract with a German company, she lost her life in a car accident – the day she was to sign the contracts - cutting her career and her life short at the age of 27.

Barbara Bouchet is probably my favorite, a stunning (and I’ll only use this word once more in the course of this article) strawberry-blonde who actually has quite an extensive Italian filmography. North American viewers will be most familiar with the films Amuck! – a sex/revenge picture that made it into U.S. theatres in the 70’s, Don’t Torture a Duckling – Italian cult director Lucio Fulci’s infamous thriller where she has a lead role (and she’s featured in a very sexy early scene), and finally in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, where she has a small role. Most of Barbara’s films were produced in Italy in the 70’s, but she also appeared in the American publication of Playboy magazine in a nude pictorial in the 70’s.

Okay, this is where I use that word for the second time – the absolutely stunning brunette Edwige French, an Italian actress that has had showy rolls in Italian thrillers of the 60’s & 70’s such as The Case of the Bloody Iris and the famous director Mario Bava’s 5 Dolls for an August Moon. When Edwige French is on the screen, she rules the scene with her beauty, energy and playful approach to her acting (referring to the 5 Dolls film). Of all the actresses, Edwige is probably the least known, appearing in several lesser-known Italian thrillers including Sergio Martino’s Your Vice is a Closed Room and Only I Have a Key.

British actress Suzy Kendall is also no stranger to Italian films, taking the lead rolls in several pictures including Circus of Fear, Tales that Witness Madness, Dario Argento’s Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Umberto Lenzi’s Spasmo and Sergio Martino’s Torso. She’s appeared in several films in America and Britain, and she is an excellent leading lady. The characters she plays are often intelligent and quick-witted. She’s definitely pretty, and one unusual thing (for genre actresses) is that I’ve yet to see her in a film where she performs nude or partially nude. (As a note, I have not seen all of her films).

Susan George, the quintessential blonde cutie of the 70’s. Fans of 70’s drive-in cinema would know her best. This is one actress where if she’s in a film, I’ll watch it (and as a rule, I’m not one to watch a film simply because of the star), though I’ve found that generally, her films (both British & American) are quite good. Not afraid to show her assets, she still emanates an appealing innocent sexuality on screen even when playing a roll without sex or nudity. Susan’s usually cast in lead or main co-starring roles with films like Venom, Die Screaming Marianne, Fright, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (my personal favorite) and Sam Peckinpah’s controversial 70’s shocker Straw Dogs. She is a fabulous actress with a presence that can be both commanding and care-free.

Marisa Mell – Groovy, baby! Her most well-known movies are probably the Umberto Lenzi thriller Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972) in which she had a co-starring roll as twin sisters, and the 1967 pop-comic adventure Danger: Diabolik directed by Mario Bava, in which she was chosen for the lead female roll over Catherine Denuve for her decidedly more “comic book” look. She’s a fun actress who gained her highest cult notoriety with the Diabolik role, though she’d appeared in a slew of Italian sexploitation films in the 70’s and had continued working steadily as an actress and model throughout the eighties and nineties, until her sudden and untimely death in 1992 (due to throat cancer). She still has many fans worldwide.

Asia Argento, daughter of internationally-acclaimed Italian director Dario Argento and one of the most high-profile European actresses of the new millennium. Getting her start in her father’s films when she was just a teenager (The Church, Trauma), she broke out of strictly-Italian cinema in her twenties when she began taking rolls in artsy/independent productions like B Monkey and New Rose Hotel before hitting it big in XXX with Vin Diesel (2003). She continued to work with her father through the 90’s, taking the leads in his films Phantom of the Opera and The Stendhal Syndrome. Interested in following in her father’s footsteps, Asia began to write, produce and direct her own short & feature-length films independently. And despite her move behind the camera, she still finds time to act in her own films as well – including the self-exploitive Scarlet Diva.

Rosalba Neri is another Italian cult starlet from the films Lady Frankenstein, Amuck! (with actress Barbara Bouchet), Slaughter Hotel and the Roger Corman-produced Arena (with Pam Grier) – all produced in the early seventies. She has over 98 film titles in her acting resume up until 1985 when she quit acting - though ironically, her bigger claim to fame is her daughter, actress Francesca Neri, who began acting in 1987 and has appeared in Hannibal and the Arnie-actioneer Collateral Damage.

And to close off this little tribute, we have the voluptuous horror actress Ingrid Pitt, who has starred in a slew of 70’s gothic horror films produced (at the time) by British horror studio HAMMER. The red-haired actress’s horror filmography includes many cult classics like The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula, The Wicker Man and The House that Dripped Blood. She’s also a writer, authoring books about Hammer horror films and cinema vampires. A talented actress and intelligent woman, Ingrid has worked with several highly-regarded British film directors, and she is always a pleasure to watch - naked or clothed.

(from May 2004)

Jess Franco Movie Poster Sunday Special

2011-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

Romina Power is Justine

2010-11-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

Romina Power, daughter of Tyrone Power, plays the titular character in Jess Franco's adaptation of the Marquis De Sade's story. If “Die Nonnen von Clichy” is Frano's nunsploitation masterpiece, "Justine" is undoubtedly his De Sade masterpiece. Filled with insane zoom-shots and a kinetically impulsive racking of camera focus, at least this time Franco's creation was expertly edited so that all of this cinematographic insanity comes across with the semblance of artistic intent. Which marries well with the actually artistically shot erotic elements of the movie - and believe me, there is quite of a bit of that. Too bad the movie seems padded with lingering exterior shots which only serve to extend the running time to a surprising two hours and four minutes. Well, I guess that's why god made fast-forward buttons (but I suggest you only use that power after you've seen the film at least once, if you don't know what to expect it is rather nicely shot). Rumor has it that Romina Power was only sixteen when she shot this film, mostly nude (and involved with simulated torture), the back of the Blue Underground DVD box clearly states she was indeed 18, yet the date of release states 1968... with Romina having been born in '51. Sounds like sixteen to me, considering they would've shot the film prior to the actual release. Curiously, if you research "Justine" on the internet, there you will unearth not one, but two different release dates for the film, depending on which site you come across. Some say 1968, some say '69 (which would somewhat more conveniently make Romina 17 or 18 when she did the picture).

Alas, should this controversy get away from me, it should not be forgotten that this is a solid film based on De Sade's work, from any filmmaker. Philip Kaufman went and created a story based on the man himself in a version called "Quills" with Kate Winslett, the same year a Canadian film was released directly to video, simply called "Sade". This latter videotape was released while I was still working at a local Blockbuster video. It made it to the new release shelf for 2 days before all the Blockbuster stores received a memo... to pull it from the shelves. End of story. These tapes sat in the back room of Blockbuster for months, before they were finally ordered destroyed.

Ironic, as Marquis De Sade faced the same fascist censorship with his writings, no...?

-V.

A post on-the-fly

2010-07-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

I'd mentioned in the last series of posts (the "Immoral Tales" series, and by the way, thanks for the comments about that) that I was looking forward to seeing some hi-definition Franco soon. Well, here I sit, still waiting, though I admittedly do still have more to literally spew about in my current collection -- a collection that is, at this point in my life (as in this summer), taking much of my time and efforts out of me. I have realized, much to my chagrin, that my one-bedroom apartment is only so big and the constant accumulation of stuff, as exuberantly cool as said stuff might actually be, is not going to fit forever in this pad. I just finished reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and if I also had a wall that could defy the laws of earthly physics and heed my ever-expanding cinematic collection, I would be indeed a happy man. My wife would argue that I owned over one thousand movies (on various formats). I always disagreed, thinking it was likely half of that at most. When I did switch to the newer Blu-ray format, I became a member of a website, a community of blu-ray enthusiasts (blu-ray.com if you're interested) and on this site you are able to track your blu-ray inventory. It's easy to track if you start right away, because obviously one would start with a handful of films, and grow from there at usually small increments at a time. I was actually quite surprised to see that in only 18 months, and mind you this is including a six-months hiatus on purchasing anything tangible as I was doing an anti-consumerism self-experiment from September 2009 till spring of this year, that my blu-ray collection had somehow multiplied while my back was turned. It went from the beginning handful to nearly three hundred titles. I remember watching Tarantino's Inglourious Basterd in the theatre where during some Sam Jackson narration it's said that the lead character Shoshonna had a collection of 300 films in her cinema. I figured that was a good-sounding number to have tagged to a collection. So, I thought, with the ever-decreasing space in our digs (stupid walls obeying the laws of physics), it might be time to relieve myself of some of the older-format titles. In effect, some of my DVDs.

Now before anyone cries "Crazy Person", and to which side of the coin you may cry this I care not so much, I will say I never intended to purge my collection of ALL the DVDs. I figured I'd keep 100 DVD titles, and with 300 hi-def titles, that sounded like a good round number to me, too. And then everything would actually fit on my shelves, to boot, instead of having our apartment look like it's inhabited by some obsessive cinematic artistic schmuck with pretensions of cinematic intelligence, or something as soul-staining as the like, at least. "No, no, I'm too busy to consider placing those titles on actual shelves, who do you think I think I am?" Okay, so that might be a bit of a charcter exaggeration, plus it's super-hot out right now and I'm quite sure I'm developing some form of heat stroke as I'm typing away.

Okay, so I couldn't get it down to 100 DVD, despite my best efforts. But I got it down to 200. Which means I got rid of four-hundred & thirty (plus/minus) DVDs. So, let's take a second to tally here:

Wife's guess: 1,000 movies owned by moi. My own guess, based of having actually bought all of the films (and watched most of them - and a lot of them more than twice) -- 500.

And the actual amount... 200 DVD kept in collection + 430 sold + 258 blu-ray titles =

888.

And yes, I just used the calculator for that. Evidently, the scorching heat affects simple mathematical calculations in my brain as well.

Anyhoo, my current collection is now a much-more simplified 458 titles, and I figure that's a good-sounding number. Of course, this will be fluctuating, but as I buy I also intend to sell. However, I have not yet let go of any of my Franco titles. Or Luis Bunuel, or George Romero, Dario Argento, Michele Sovai, Lamberto Bava or his brilliant father, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, and I still have most of my Criterion, Blue Underground, half my original Anchor Bay collection, and you can clearly see by now why it was so tough (impossible, actually) to hold only 100 DVDs. Considering the size/amount of what I'd owned, I think I did pretty well. And whichever way it is you might consider me a Crazy Person (having started the collection in the first place, letting it get out of control, or selling half of it outright), I can say with all sincerity that dumping half of my collection was actually a relief. Trust me, don't start getting possessed by your possessions.

That being said, I'm still on the hunt, the journey, the epic walk to find some hi-def Franco. Hell, I'd love to see one of his films in the theatre, translated or not, I wouldn't actually care. Until then, this little exercise has given me some new-found appreciation for the part of my cinematic collection I've held onto, and I'm more likely now to re-discover gems like "Justine" and "99 Women".

To be posted soon...

-V.

Immoral Tales, The Final Chapter: Eva Stromberg

2010-06-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

So, I’ll finish off this mini-series of Immoral Tales with one of Franco’s most recognizable actresses, Eva Stromberg (or Ewa), most notable for being Solidad Miranda’s lesbionic vampyros sidekick in the infamous Vampyros Lesbos (see one of the most famous VL stills on the left sidebar, featuring Stromberg’s blood-splattered face). Like Miranda, Stromberg was involved with a slew of Franco’s production from the late sixties to early seventies (and most of the along side of Miranda), including She Killed in Ecstasy (in which her death scene happens to be one of my all-time Franco faves), the Devil came from Akasava, and the Miranda-less X312 – Flight to Hell and Dr. Mabuse; before she slipped quietly out of the Franco spotlight, likely when Franco turned to doing the many (read: insane amount of) Erwin Dietrich/German productions in the mid-seventies. Actually, not long after leaving the Franco spotlight, she left the cinema spotlight altogether following a couple of sexploitation flicks for director Hubert Frank (Virgin Wives and Wedding Night Report, both circa 1972, and neither of these films have I seen or heard much about). With her striking features and on-screen presence, it’s hardly a wonder that she’s stuck in my mind all these years since discovering the wonder world of Franco films, it’s actually somewhat of a disappointment that she was relegated to the supporting roles in the light Franco’s muse’s presence. Not that Miranda didn’t deserve her spotlight – on the contrary – I only wish we’d had an opportunity to see Stromberg shine in her own leading role. At any rate, I’m glad we got what we got of this attractive German actress, and at least she made a small dent for herself in the anarchic cult cinema of the era.

-V.

Immoral Tales 7: More Spanish Insanity

2010-06-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

Within the lengthy introductory pages of Immoral Tales, there is a striking image from a film that years ago I had never heard of. The image in the Immoral Tales book stayed with me for years; the film in question was Accion Mutante, by a director I'd also never heard of until just last year, when one of my neighbors was over at our place visiting and he asked if we'd ever heard of “Day of the Beast” by a Spanish filmmaker named Alex De La Iglesia. I told him I hadn't. Evidently most of this guy's films were at one time in print and available on DVD in North America, though that time appears to have long passed. Keeping this in mind, I kept an eagle's eye out for any of this filmmaker's movies in the UK last year, and lo and behold if I didn't find Accion Mutante and Dance with the Devil on the bargain racks at a London HMV. I picked them up immediately and when I got back home the first ine I watched was Day of the Beast. This was a strange and awesome film about a pair of homicidal devil-worshiping (and Federally wanted) kidnappers – Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem (from No Country for Old Men) – who take a couple of young white kids hostage and subject them to torture, rape and bloodletting while taking them on a cross-country roadtrip as they're being chased down by James Gandolfini (who did his best non-Sopranos work right here, in my opinion). Laden with sex and devilishly dangerous shenanigans, this was something I can honestly say I've never quite seen before... or since... until I threw in Accion Mutante just last week in the interest of continuing with this Immoral Tales blog series.

Like Dance with the Devil, Accion Mutante explores the themes of kidnapping, torture and The Stockholm Syndrome not only head-on, but wildly over-the-top. Set in the future (and in space and on another planet) Accion Mutante is about a group of militant freaks and cripples who kidnap the daughter of a wealthy company owner for ransom, staple her mouth shut, cuff her to a chair and take off in a spaceship with her. Aboard the ship, mutiny abounds when the crew finds out their fearless leader has lied to them about the amount of the ransom they're to receive when they arrive at the meeting place (on another planet). To combat the mutiny, the leader then begins murdering his lackeys in such a way to ring in flashbacks of Peter Jackson's gorifying comedy “Braindead”, and then pinning the murders on each of the other lackeys, creating an atmosphere of comedic paranoia. Of course, the only person on the ship who knows that the real traitor is el capitan himself is the kidnapped heiress, but her mouth's been stapled shut. Awesome. And if you think I've given anything away here, think again – this is only the first third of the nutzoid movie! Although the unfortunate lack of any graphic sex makes me wonder why it was even brought up in Immoral Tales – but the over-the-top mayhem more than makes up for anything that might be lacking – though lacking might not exactly be the right word for a film so entertainingly insane...

I'm seriously going to have to find a copy of Day of the Beast, and PDQ.

-V.

Immoral Tales Interruptis

2010-05-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

I was seriously, seriously intending to write the For-Real next installment of the Immoral Tales series (concentrating on another Spanish filmmaker and his infamous Accion Mutante, so that's obviously been unceremoniously postponed for the next post) when the series of articles came to to a sideways skid into a roadside telephone pole after I decided to take ten days off of work to “catch up” on a few things. Ironically, one of those things was supposed to be my intake of films and books. But unfortunately, instead of Exorcism & Black Masses or Accion Mutante or even the requisite Vampyros Lesbos re-watch, my catching-up has involved the likes of Snakes on a Plane and Schwarzenegger's Red Heat. This Wednesday morning in particular I found myself with a little more time than I'd expected to have between reading the Dark Tower novels in the waiting rooms of passport offices and performing script overhauls at the local pubs, and I happened to throw on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – a good thing too, as it reminded me that I should be keeping up with my own self-imposed journalistic responsibilities, pretentious as they may be. At any rate, I can't get back to the pub right now anyway, as it's not even eleven in the A.M. yet. But I'm not going to talk about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, obviously, this is a Jess Franco blog, and as of late I've been stretching the thematics of that nearly to the breaking point already. I did, however, have a chance to check out a couple of my own immoral tales that have been sitting by the DVD player collecting dust for the last few months, the first being the Megan Fox horror vehicle Jennifer's Body, the other one being a Shriek Show-produced in-house exploitation horror flick Wicked Lake. I thought at least this last one would be somewhat thematically linked to the main focus of this blog (Jess Franco, lest I forget) as this distribution company (Shriek Show) has has the great fortune (both good and bad) to have released Franco's most commercially accessible films, being Faceless and Killer Barbys; as well what have to be two of Franci's most perfunctory efforts ever: Diamonds of Kilimanjaro and Golden Temple Amazons, these last two being nothing more that ultra-light naked-women-romping-through-the-jungle exploitation flicks with absolutely nothing to set them apart from any other sort of mundane dreck by any other filmmaker. Honestly, they're a waste of time. However, I'm sure at some future point in time I'll be talking more about Faceless and Killer Barbys (although I'd recommend you don't spend too much time seeking out its shot-on-video sequel, The Killer Barbys vs. Dracula – you ask anyone who's seen it). Getting back to the waste of time, allow me now to save you some of that expense: Forget about Jenifer's Body (unless you're a 20-year-old East Coast hipster, in which case you might dig it) the only thing it had going for it was Megan Fox explaining how she was no longer a “back-door virgin”. Other than that, this was strictly for the Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist crowd, only drunk and possibly not quite as educated. It's a movie that wants to make fun of it's own exploitation genre, only it's not funny, clever, or very satisfying overall, as it shies away from its own all-out exploitation (I have the feeling Jennifer's Body is a film that thinks it's too good to have to stoop to that level). If you like your exploitation pretentious, then by all means... The next one on this exploitation double-feature , however, was completely free of pretension. Unfortunately, it was also free of a good script, good acting, good editing and good directing.

“Look over there... there's two women fucking a polar bear!”
“Don't tell me these things right now.”
-Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

The one and only thing Wicked Lake did have going for it was the first forty minutes where the four leading female romp around naked. In their house, at the lake, in the lake, with each other, in an art class... but at the end of the day, it was all for naught, as Wicked Lake was ultimately boring, boring, and then boring some more. Completely unlike Shriek Show's other in-house features Flesh for the Beast, Shadow Dead Riot or Machine Girl. If you weren't going into Wicked Lake ready to compare that to these other (far more entertaining and way better) films, then I'd have to wonder how Wicked Lake ended up in your DVD player in the first place. I wanted to end this blog on a higher note, which is actually why I brought up these other Shriek Show productions, and it's my hope that the company goes back to producing these entertaining exploitation productions without dangerously sacrificing their scripts with the thought that sheer exploitation alone would make up (or cover up) for the otherwise sever lack of story planning. And as Shriek Show gets into releasing more of their titles on the Hi-Def Blu-Ray format, we can hope that some of their Franco films like Faceless makes its way to this better format. Unfortunately, the next Hi-Def release on Shriek Show's slate is their own Wicked Lake this summer. Trust me, you can skip it.

-V.

Immoral Tales 6: Immoral Women

2010-05-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

“Immoral Women” is actually not one of my favorites of Walerian Borowczyk's erotic cinematic repertoire – though it does the job well enough, it is definitely erotic and his retains that cutesie-amusing way Borowczyk has about his films. Immoral Women is actually an anthology, and while the fairy-tale style of the medieval erotic stories have been copied by American low-budget film producer Charles Band for his own erotic anthology (Fairy Tales) the result is pretty low-brow, a little more sleazy (while simultaneously being less explicit!) and not nearly as charming as Borowczyk's sure-handed and lighthearted style, and the way he handles the beauty, nudity, naughtiness (sometimes extreme naughtiness) and erotic qualities with verisimilitude. It's these qualities that actually make a Borowczyk film worth watching.

(Okay, how many times can you say “erotic” in one paragraph, right? I think we all get the idea)

My favorite of Borowczyk's films is without a doubt “The Beast” (La Bete), and small-time distribution company Cult Epics releases such a great edition a few years ago, a three-disc spectacular packaged in a black box with awesome front-cover artwork, this was the first Borowczyk film I'd ever seen at all – which brings me around to another observation (/opinion):

I believe that as good as Borowczyk's sex-shenanigan films are, it's really the first one you see that's going to stick with you (if you have a place in your mind – or perhaps somewhere else – for his films). All his films are of upper-quality production value, which makes it seem even more like your watching a piece of erotic cinema, not just a low budget T&A flick (see the Charles Band film if that's more your slant). This juxtaposes severely with the type of eroticism seen in Jess Franco's films, in my opinion. In Franco's films, the sex and nudity appear to be there simply because it's the central visual themes for his film, they're there because they're there, and without it there would be no film at all. Borowczyk's films are far more lush, and I'm not entirely convinced it's merely because he might have had bigger budgets to work with (although judging by the look of his films, that may well be the case), however, Borowczyk's films, or rather the eroticism within his films, appear to have much more of an artistic purpose for being committed to celluloid, which is actually sort of funny because we all know damn well there's as much artistic purpose behind it as Franco's intentions with his sex films. But when it comes down to it, Franco's sex films (or the sexual scenes in his films, however you want to look at it) seem stuck on some perfunctory level of film-making. The sex is there, well, because it is, and that's it. Borowczyk seems much more interested in showing us something genuinely erotic, something that will illicit some sort of response with his audience, which will forever elevate his cinematic erotica above the rest of the crowd, making everyone else's erotica seem like cheap exploitation.

Not that cheap exploitation is a bad thing.

Funny, I really was going into this blog to yak about the “Immoral Women” film – I suppose I got away from myself there talking about the director. Anyway, check it out, check out all of his films, and enjoy.

-V.

Immoral Tales 5: Kiss Me Monster!

2010-05-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

This title always reminds me of the best nudie-cutie in the world; Peter Perry's “Kiss Me, Quick!” Truthfully, if I had to choose one of these two films to be stuck on a desert island with, it would be the latter one. Years ago, when I was first getting into Jess Franco's extensive (massive) filmography, I started out with Franco-Lite, this pair of secret-female-agent films were among the first five of Franco's films I'd seen, and I immediately took to them the quickest. Now, I think there are far better films in the Franco cannon, and definitely more entertaining ones, those it isn't for lack of trying on the parts of these film (Kiss Me Monster and it's sister-production, Sadisterotica). And back then, so many years ago, I found I'd enjoyed Sadisterotica a lot more than Kiss Me Monster, the one I'd initially found slightly more boring than the other – now, I find my opinion reversed. I actually found Kiss Me Monster (now eleven years after the initial discovery) to be a lot more fun that its predecessor, but having said that, and even with the inclusion of some bubbly cartoonish Jekyle-and-Hyde-style lab experiments, Janine Reynaud's boobies in a “naughty” peek-a-boo stage number, and some relatively harmless Pit of Bloody Horror-type sadomasochism-lite (all of which brought back thoughts of Perry's “Kiss Me Quick”) this pair of Franco flicks fails to live up to their own kitsch and go-go- sensibilities. Put another way, the idea of these cute flicks far outweigh the actual results. Re-watching these films admittedly felt somewhat like a waste of time, but it was also a somewhat amusing waste of time. Again, this entry stars the two loveably sexy goofball female detectives, played by Rosanna Yanni and Janine Reynaud.

Rumor has it that Janine Reynaud was married when she did Franco's films, but slept with the financier in order to help secure the film's budget and keep him pacified during the production. Not only was she a trooper, but her husband, one of the actors in these films as well, understood that she was doing it for the sake of the film. To him, it was just good business. Those Europeans are so damned artfully minded! Puts us to shame. Reynaud was in one of Franco's best films (in my opinion, obviously), the lush 1969 slice of psychedelic cinema called Succubus, which evidently was Franco's biggest claim to fame as it was arranged for Fritz Lang to see the film at a European film festival screening, where he publicly proclaimed the film to be some kind of erotic arthouse masterpiece (you can read more about that in the Immoral Tales book under Franco's chapter). And while Reynaud would act in at least a couple of dozen films in her decade-long career between the late sixties and the late seventies, her three Franco films and her stint with Sergio Martino in his Italian giallo “The Case of the Scorpion's Tale” (which came out the year before “Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key” – I love Giallo titles!) are probably the most notable genre offerings she participated in. There is something about this statuesque androgynous beauty.

(Last still from “Succubus”)

-V.

Immoral Tales 4: Two Undercover Angels (aka Sadisterotica, or, “The Much Cooler Title”)

2010-05-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

Sadisterotica is one of a pair of Franco films in which a pair of sexy female detectives give it their all to crack the hard cases. In this particular cutesie-poo flick the case concerns some stolen art and a string of models who go missing (i.e. kidnapped by some sort of wolfman who might be right at home in a sixties' Scooby-Doo episode) and wind up in an assortment of bloody photographs. The models, not the wolfman. Starring as the lead investigators are Janine Reynaud, no stranger to Franco films, and Rosanna Yanni. Oh, and also, Jess Franco himself has some artsy-fartsy art stolen from his pad, for which he calls on the police. And then Rosanna Yanni steels a sculpture herself. I can't remember exactly why, but she ends up dragging it halfway across Europe with her as they're trying to track down the model killer. That, actually, is pretty amusing. But for all this go-go murder/art heist-mystery, the film ends up, at best, as simply cute and rather inoffensive. At worst, even the quick 80-minute running time can get a little long as the humour that draws the script out is so lighthearted it's often a tad on the boring side. It may sound like I'm putting it nicely, but with this film, that's the only way to put it. The film has its moments, here and there, and there is some cool go-go dancing to be seen (and some of it naked, too) and the usual Franco-inspired kitsch décor is always good for a decent distraction, if that's what you're after. That's probably what you should be after, as the “jokes” get kinda old kinda fast. Although the lead actresses are nice to watch, too. Alas, the best part of this one is the poster art. I hate it when that happens.

One might be wondering where else they could see Rosanna Yanni (she is quite captivating – she's the blonde one), whose only other Jess Franco appearance that I'm aware of was Sadisterotica's companion film “Kiss Me Monster”, though she did also act in Paul Naschy's films and Tombs of the Blind Dead director Amando De Ossorio's “Fangs of the Living Dead”, a film which she also co-produced according to Allmovie.com.

-V.

Jose Larraz' Vampyres

2010-04-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the “Immoral Tales” miniseries of blarticles, this week I decided to take a look at the first (and only thus far) HiDef release of any of the Immoral Tales directors' films. While I'm happy that Larraz' erotic and violent vampire film has made it to Blu-ray (in what's actually a beautiful grainy transfer from Blue Underground) I can't say I'm not just a little disappointed that we're still waiting on something Jess Franco to be released in this new-ish format. Keeping tabs on what's coming out in the near future, it doesn't seem that Franco's films are even on the horizon, yet I remain optimistic that his films are still somewhere on the radar of the smaller distribution companies. Even Lloyd Kaufman is putting his films out on the HiDef format as of this year, so I do hold out hope that Blue Underground will get a couple of its Franco titles to Blu-ray sometime, before the format changes yet again and we have to watch them in seizure-inducing 3-D.

Not to take away from the celebration of Larraz' minor masterpiece, mind you. His film Vampyres would appear on the surface to be another low-budget exploitation piece of its era (circa 1974, I believe), and there is abundant nudity and some good, bloody shock scenes (in this uncensored release, anyway), but watching this film now for the third time in my life, I really had a chance to appreciate it for the gem it really is. Not only is Vampyres one of the epitomized example of erotic horror, not only is it oozing with gothic tone, not only is it surprisingly well-edited, tantalizingly structured, sumptuously shot, not only... well, I hope you get the idea because I've run out of things to describe the reason it's picked up a cult following since Anchor Bay first released it onto DVD years ago. A well-deserved cult following, I should say, too. Director Larraz had no illusions as to what his film was about: a pair of bisexual female vampires, sexual and violent. On the surface, again, it seems like the mere description of an number of exploitation films. And that's where Vampyres throws its cult audience for a loop. Other than a couple of awkward shots where the lead actresses seem a little hesitant to fully entangle each other's tongues together, for the most part, the eroticism is genuinely... well, erotic. The violence and editing are nicely shocking and jarring when the film calls for it, while at times the film and the camera movements seem to wallow in the gothic aesthetic (and sometimes just the sheer creepiness of it all), in many instances evoking the gothic feel of the classic vampire films that have preceded it. As much as Vampyres could have fallen into camp, it's the verisimilitude of all the performers that help keep the film set firmly in the erotic horror sub-genre, creatively ensuring that the film retains its intended tone throughout. That's not to say, of course, that Vampyres is without humour. There is plenty of dark humour permeating the proceedings, though not through the scripted dialog, per se, but rather by the way the film's plot is constructed. (More on that in a minute). Put another way, it's all done without grabbing for explicit guffaws, and in my opinion a lot of the darkly humorous tone (when it appears) is kind of unsettling (sort of in the way American Werewolf in London was able to distort its humour within its horror) – which then keeps it from going camp. The big difference between Vampyres and American Werewolf (other than the obvious) is that the dark humour in Vampyres comes more from the situations and the intercutting of parallel scenes than from intentionally scripted jokes (as in American Werewolf) that are verbally intended for the actors. No, in Vampyres, not one actor actually cracks a honest to goodness joke, yet there are scenes that are played out with such sublimely sure-handed ridiculousness that you're almost mercilessly forced to enjoy what's happening. As in the scene when a wine connoisseur playboy is invited to the mansion by one of the vampiresses, and he hears their captor screaming in the night, she turns and tells him, “Oh, that's just Fran's boyfriend. He gets like that when he's drunk.” Yeah, I hate getting like a screaming bloody captive when I've had a few too many beers, too.

But I have to say, getting back to the Blu-ray format that Blue Underground had released, one of the most enjoyable things is actually the main menu, where a veiled loop of the Vampyres' shenanigans is set to the pounding title soundtrack. So cool, I could've kept the menu playing for half an hour and been severely entertained.

But don't do that. Watch the movie. It's good. Really.

-V.

Jean Rollin II

2010-04-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

I feel inspired to continue on with this “Immoral Tales” series through this blog, and fully in the spirit of doing just that, I had my first look at Jean Rollin’s “Iron Rose” last night, a little tale circa 1973. I was pleasantly surprised by this film, it’s not quite like the artistic and erotic aesthetics of Lips of Blood or Fascination, but is has a solid attraction and beauty all of it its own.

The story opens up on a beach where along the tide, a young girl is mesmerized by a black iron rose that has washed up on the edge of the rocky shore. Rollin shoots a lot on the beach, and the beginning of this film looks like it could’ve picked up mere moments after the finale of The Nude Vampire. As we follow this young woman, we begin to get into a surprisingly mundane (for a Rollin film, anyway) aspect of her life, in a school classroom, where she is being wooed by a not particularly handsome fella. I suppose he has his own charms, and hey, he is European and it's the seventies. He finally talks her into going on a bike ride with him, and they wind up at a gorgeous country cemetery, one of the kind you’d really only be able to fully appreciate in Europe, and Rollin does a mesmerizing job of bringing the beauty of the cemetery to the screen. As you might have been able to tell from the description thus far, this film is very deliberately paced, Rollin is far more concerned with cinematic aesthetics than with creating any kind of intricate plotting. The plot itself, from this point, is simple – boy wants to fuck around, talks the girl into it, they get stuck/lost in the cemetery after dark, they get in a fight, and ultimately she goes mad – yet the plot possesses the power to hypnotize, and the deliberation of the plot (or really, it's the deliberation of the characters' actions – as in walking around aimlessly, hopping over gravestones, etc. – while the plot is pretty much put on hold altogether) is nearly completely overshadowed by the simple fluidity of the film itself. None of the physical meanderings ever seem like they're in place to stretch time, rather the meandering of the characters through the film's timeline seems to be exactly what the film is about. It is a gorgeous sight to behold, in a slightly bizarre sort of way.

The visuals, especially towards the last third of the short 75-minute movie, evoked for me thoughts of the French new wave films from the mid-to-late sixties, the beautiful handheld camerawork and the juxtaposing cutting, and the whole sure-handed execution of the entire thing really started to give The Iron Rose the feeling of a sort of new wave horror film.

The more I sit with this simple film, the more I think it might be creeping up there with my tip-top Euroshock favorites.

-V

Actually, Jean Rollin.

2010-03-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

I thought long and hard before writing this post, after years (it’s been since 2006!) of posting exclusively on Jess Franco and his amazing –from various points of view- films, I never, ever waned to post something of another filmmaker on this site in a way that takes a diversion from Jess Franco. I believe this does not fall into the category of diversion, rather, after having just seen The Nude Vampire, I think that Jean Rollin shares a special place along side of Jess Franco, and I’m not just talking about the time they co-directed that horrifically abysmal “Zombie Lake”!

To further this train of thought, I also own a comprehensive and nearly encyclopedic essay on the films of Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, José Ramón Larraz and three other European directors who were extremely prolific in the Euroshock and erotic sub-genres. The book in question, before I forget to mention it, is “Immoral Tales”, and I’m sad to say it’s been out of print for a while, as far as I know. I was lucky enough to find a copy at a mere 25% of (not off) the cover price at a local bookseller who was (also sadly) going out of business a few years ago. This is actually the book that got me into both Jess Franco and Jean Rollin in the first place. (When it came to Jose, I’d have to credit Anchor Bay for releasing his kick-ass 1974 flick “Vampyres” as the means to my introduction to this director.) At any rate, as these fine European directors share space (whole chapters, in fact) in Immoral Tales, I have thus found it fitting, not contradictory, to include some words about them once in a while on this platform. I hope, as much as I’m sure, Jess Franco wouldn’t mind.

And after finally seeing Rollin’s The Nude Vampire last night, which showcases the talents of a young French actress who bares a shocking resemblance to Miley Cyrus (did I even spell that right?), I could see the erotic influences here that were also evident in Franco’s Blue Rita and She Killed in Ecstasy, as well as… hold on, here… Francis Ford Coppola’s envisioning of Dracula. Yes, as soon as I watched The Nude Vampire, I knew exactly where I’d seen those sheer pastel dresses wrapped around our vampiresses' naked bodies while they ran around the exterior sets. And although the wardrobe choices in The Nude Vampire (as with many others of Rollin’s films) were much more transparent than the ones worn by Winona Ryder or Sadie Frost in Dracula, at least Coppola had the good sense to soak the actresses in rain as they ran around their nineteenth century hedge maze.

Granted, The Nude Vampire seems burdened with being one of Rollin’s earlier works, as he seems to have not quite ironed out the fluidity, eroticism and groovy arthouse presentation his later (even in the more immediate sense) films achieved. The Nude Vampire is pretty swell, sure, but for myself, even being a little familiar with Rollin’s work, it just made me think back in the first time I saw Fascination, Night of the Hunted and Requiem for a Vampire. Even his themes of Vampirism in The Nude Vampire are needlessly heavy-handed and create too many expository scenes, especially at the end, giving this movie more the feeling of American b-movie than French arthouse eroticism. Do I still think it’s worth a look? Surely I do. It is fun to watch. Then again, would we expect anything less than that from a movie titled The Nude Vampire?

-V.

2. The Die Nonnen von Clichy Xrated Nunsploitation Series #5 (Spine 90)

2010-01-12T21:54:00.000-08:00

“Die Nonnen von Clichy”

(or: Jess Franco’s “Les Demons”)

Well, the back of the box for this X-Rated Kult DVD release promised a German dialog track with English Subtitles, or an alternate Spanish track. What I got, very much to my chagrin, when I popped the DVD into the player was one German dialog track with NO subtitles and one French track with GERMAN subtitles. Ach! No Englisch Untertitel! After realizing the reality of my situation, I proceeded with the film nonetheless, intending to simply fast-forward to the sexy bits, and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that some of the more artistic aspects of the film caught my eye and kept my finger off of the FF button. Indeed, this is without a doubt Mr. Franco’s undisputed nunsploitation EPIC. Running in at just a few minutes shy of a full-on two hours, I was witness to a lengthy plot (if only by my eyes, as my ears are not formally trained in German and my French is a tenth-grade failure at best – and that was well over 20 years ago) concerning a high-society man/woman couple who arrive at a convent equipped with a sprawling torture dungeon used by the Spanish Inquisition. In this dungeon, there is a brunette female prisoner who manages to escape and find sanctuary in the arms of a high-society artist, who paints portraits of nude models. The brunette is discovered and re-captured and brought back to the torture dungeon where the high-society man becomes seduced by her. Meanwhile, the high-society woman (who had spent her days wallowing in the voyeurism of the torture sessions) is seduced by another high-society girl, only this girl used to be a nun until she was fucked by an intruder in her bedroom and visited by, and then possessed by, the ghost of a condemned witch who had been burned at the stake at the beginning of the movie. Contrary to X-Rated Kult DVD’s nunsploitation classification of this Jess Franco gem, the nunsploitation element is abruptly dropped halfway through when one of the sisters dives off the convent balcony. But you hardly notice the transition from true nunsploitation to sumptuous period-piece sexploitation in the midst of all the sexually-demonic, Spanish Inquisition goings-on. Amusingly, Franco-regular Howard Vernon (The Awful Dr. Orloff) has a role here too, though I can’t comment on the import of this role as I was unable to understand any of his German-dubbed dialog. Still, Les Demons was seriously fun, if a little too un-gory at the most inopportune times. But hell, it’s Franco, right? If you’ve seen Vampyros Lesbos you’ll expect nothing less, and truthfully, you’ll probably get a little more.

-V.

The Jess Franco Marathon part 9: final words.

2010-01-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

I can’t believe it took two months to run and review The Jess Franco Marathon; I was off to such a rollicking start I though this would be a single-week session, and over before I knew it. But before I could say “Exorcism and Black Masses” one week turned into two, and soon I was sure all I’d need was three weeks, tops. Then three and a half. By the time December rolled around, I got a fire under my Franco-loving ass and figured, well, five and a half weeks ain’t so bad…

Needless to say now, it’s all done up eight weeks later and I finally got some closure on the box set in review, and here it is only a technical decade after I’d started the damned project. I’m stilling reeling a little over the fact that it’s 2010. In the meantime, the last eight weeks has shown me that this self-proclaimed cinefile can’t survive on Jess Franco alone, just as I’d love to be able to survive on nothing but beer, it ain’t gonna happen. I do have a healthier respect for Franco’s repertoire, and the massive injection of his films has nicely counterpointed the other cinematic fair I’ve alternately ingested, both foreign and domestic, both recently produced and those with solidified cult stature, and also those in-betweens that may or may not be waiting to achieve such cult status. In the midst of discovering Martyrs, Timecrimes, and the hard-to-find semi-cult achiever Massacre at Central High, Hollywood’s The Perfect Getaway and Tony Scott’s Taking of Pelham 123 remake, the classical Last Year at Marienbad, and my most recent and highly pleasing re-discovery of Richard Stanley’s awesome freshman film Hardware (and all the while trying to FORCE myself into liking Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds*), I have found Franco’s input into cinematic culture more important than I’d previously imagined, along with the likes of Jean Rollin and Alex “Day of the Beast” De La Iglesia. As usual, I completely digress, so now I’ll interlude with a recount; super-quick-like:

Barbed Wire Dolls **1/2
Blue Rita ***
Ilsa the Wicked Warden ***1/2 (and the undisputed masterpiece of this collection)
Jack the Ripper ***
Love Camp **
Love Letters from a Portuguese Nun **1/2 (reminding us why the Catholic Church might’ve been so freaked about Franco the filmmaker)
Sexy Sisters **1/2
Voodoo Passion (pretty damned entertaining but no further scoring applied by this guy)

As for the rest of 2010, I might be inclined to review the likes of a Killer Barbys double-feature, and perhaps a rediscovering of 99 Women could be in order. But for the first year of this millennium’s second decade, I’m particularly excited to see which Franco classic might be the first to make its way into the hi-def world via the blu-ray format. Time will tell…

-V
(*Still hasn’t happened)

The Jess Franco Marathon, 8 of 8

2010-01-06T12:32:00.000-08:00

“Voodoo Passion”

I had just finished watching the Mila Jovovich/ Steve Zahn thriller The Perfect Getaway prior to throwing in this Franco cult item, unwittingly subjecting myself to a double-feature of exotically-located mayhem. The Perfect Getaway was surprisingly not too shabby. And, neither was Voodoo Passion; though other than being set on a beach in the heat of the summer, the two films were obviously as artistically far apart from each other as one could get. While I felt slightly disappointed at the “artistically” obscured nudity of The Perfect Getaway, Franco’s own artistic romp down exploitation alley more than made up for that.

Voodoo Passion kicks off with a four-minute naked voodoo ritual dance on an open beach (supposedly in Haiti) under the morning sun and over a scorching jazz score. In fact, throughout the whole film I think this is one of the best Franco scores laid down. After the enjoyable jazz/voodoo dance intro, we see a couple of white girls (or ladies), one of them dressed deliciously in super-high cut-off short-shorts. Being a Franco film one is comfortable with the assumption that the short-shorts would sooner or later give way to bare flesh. Sure as shizzles, that happened almost immediately. Girl 1 arrives at house where girl 2 lies naked in bed. Girl 1 is waiting for her boyfriend, but before he arrives, Girl 1 and girl 2 have already taken a bath together. After Boyfriend arrives, girl 1 and boyfriend fuck while girl 2 watches and masturbates with a champagne bottle. There’s a lot of fucking going on. Which is why I was slightly confused as to why girl 1 would need to be led through the jungle by girl 3 (also naked) into a daylight naked voodoo ritual that apparently was intended to make girl 1 even hornier than she already was. Everything, after we see girl 1 arriving at the house on the edge of the jungle/beach at the beginning of the movie, happens completely in the buff. (That is, save for one brief dinner scene that occurs about forty-two minutes in) I’ve honestly never, ever witnessed a legit feature film play out almost entirely in the nude by every man and woman in the cast. Save for the high heel shoes that girl 1 wears in nearly every scene, even while she’s sleeping in her bed under the covers as well as when she’s later sleepwalking naked through the jungle. Girl 3, who meets her in the jungle prior to the voodoo ritual, is also naked but for wearing high heels. Guess that’s the way they roll in the Haitian jungles.

If you haven’t gathered yet, if you like naked people, you will dig this movie. This Franco flick actually had the feeling of some of those Italian “Mondo” documentary-style films of the sixties, and mixed with the killer jazz score, somehow this unfortunately made me think this could be some fantasy voodoo-exploitation opening sequence to The Cosby Show in a crazy alternate universe.

72 minutes into Voodoo Passion’s 80-minute running time, Franco throws us a curveball through the plot concerning some kind of British Special Ops double-cross… but seriously, if you’ve made it this far already, it isn’t for the wanting of a deeper plot point.

While I definitely can’t bring myself to score this feature on its merits as a legitimate foreign film release, I can say that the exploitative elements (i.e. the whole thing) made it one of the most compulsively watchable Franco flick I’ve reviewed. I wonder, also, is it coincidence that this appeared to be the highest-quality DVD transfer in the whole set of films from this collection? Hmm…

The Jess Franco Marathon, 7 of 8

2009-12-03T16:30:00.001-08:00

“Sexy Sisters” **1/2

As much as I might be embarrassed to admit this, I have to say that the lengthy sex and abundant nudity was actually starting to get boring. There is a story in here somewhere, but like Love Camp, Barbed Wire Dolls and Blue Rita, the emphasis is on the explicit sex – only without the kitschy art dec of Blue Rita, the camp of Love Camp, or the charming fallibilities of filmmaking in general from Barbed Wire Dolls, and without Lina Romay. So what’s left for Sexy Sisters? Not much that we haven’t seen before…

That is, however, until Sexy Sisters finds its own groove more than halfway through. That’s when an actual story starts to pop up (pardon the pun – or don’t), and we see a little low-brow double-cross in the works. The story is about three sisters, two of them trying to screw over the third by forcefully twisting her sanity (by turning her into a hallucinating nymphomaniac, of course) and hence making her ineligible to receive a huge inheritance when she turns twenty-one. As her caretaker, the oldest sister would then receive the inheritance, with which she intends to use for herself and her doctor/lover. There are actually a slew of characters involved in this plot, and a few of them have their own double-crosses going on, and it’s at this point in the film where things actually start to get interesting, and Sexy Sisters begins to play out like one of those old sixties drive-in cheapo paranoid thrillers (think William Castle on heavy aphrodisiacs). It takes Franco only twenty minutes to tell the story of this convoluted heist; the rest is left to flesh and sex. Much, much sex. But it’s obvious that the intention of the whole thing is good fun – interesting then, that the back of the DVD keep-case warns us of “shocking scenes of horror”, and if they meant the hilarious scene where a gigolo has a heart attack while fucking the nymphomaniac sister, then there’s not much to brace for. Otherwise, I can (and will) assume that the warning was a misprint, probably copied over from one of the other Anchor Bay DVD covers.

I’ll make a new admission, embarrassingly or not this time (and I suppose that one’s up for speculation), that in the end Sexy Sisters had me charmed.

All puns intended.

-V.

The 2009 Jess Franco Marathon, Part 6 of 8:

2009-11-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

“Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun” **1/2

...Well, I guess it can’t be all Jess Franco all of the time. It was a longer delay between Franco installments than expected, though I’d tried to give “Love Letters” a spin earlier last week, but alas, was interrupted by other cinematic going-ons. I did manage to get the gist of the plot-thrust, nevertheless… A young man and young woman are frolicking innocently through the woods when a mean old Catholic priest from St. Vincent's happens to take offense at witnessing such frolicking. He takes the girl back to her mother and basically manipulates the mother into giving consent for her daughter to be taken to the St. Vincent's nunnery, and then he proceeds to try to extort a “dowry” for the church’s inconveniencing. When it’s clear the mother is too poor to pay, he then threatens her with action from the Inquisition. He gets his way and the girl is off to become a nun, where she’s immediately subjected to a highly suspect examination of her virginity. It’s there, all right… but for how long…?

Things inevitably go from bad to worse as the young virgin discovers that St. Vincent's Catholic Church is actually just a cover for wholly Satanic goings-on and copious amounts of nudity and Earthly masochism. While this all might sound like a truckload of fun in its Euro-Nunsploitation context, and the inclusion of some off-kilter humour not withstanding, the whole thing nosedives into completely predictable melodramatic boredom with half an hour of the running time left to go, and it's at about this point the sex and nudity tapers off, too, leaving nothing much to keep the doldrums from setting in. Too bad, because this was the first Franco film I'd experienced where I thought he'd really have something socially subversive to say; Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun initially looked like it was one of those infamous films that caused the Catholic Church to declare Franco one of “the most dangerous filmmakers” to Catholicism. It's undeniably blasphemous, almost more so than the demon from The Exorcist, but perhaps the church should've watched this one all the way to the end.

Till next time...

-V.

The 2009 Jess Franco Marathon, Part 5 of 8:

2009-11-09T18:51:00.000-08:00

“Love Camp” **

This exploitation quickie opens up with two working girls who must've stolen their boots from the Blue Rita set; they're minding their own beeswax when they're suddenly taken captive. This scene is immediately followed by the kidnapping of another half-naked girl, right out of her own bed, and quickly thereafter a fourth victim, a bride on her wedding night, is stolen right out of her hotel room from in front of her husband! After the re-digitized opening credits we see a team of soldiers towing a line of tied-up gals through the jungle terrain, where one of the women asks, “Where are we going?” and the soldier retorts, “You'll find out soon enough!” I suppose we will...

The female prisoners are led into a room where the “Number 1” soldier is waiting to greet them and to explain the reason behind their abduction, presumably for both the girls' and the audience's benefit. It appears they're there to volunteer their services to the soldiers of the revolutionary army. “Well, we should soon see an improvement in our men's morale!” Number 1 exclaims. And the plot thickens... “They need the the kind of relaxation only a woman can provide!” Well, there's nothing like a straight-forward storyline.

Unfortunately, the voice-over actor handling the dubbing duties on Number 1 sounds like he's reading the pages on the fly. Thankfully, though, this introductory/exposition scene is promptly followed by the obligatory group female shower scene.

Post-shower scene, we have yet another introductory scene, this time it's the lioness blond Directress of the “Camp” spewing a 'Welcome to the Revolution' speech to the new girls. Mid-speech, one of the girls tries to make a break for it, the Directress springs into action and the girl is swiftly decapitated (below the bottom of the frame – I guess the production was unable to spring for a severed head or two). At this point in the film, I think it's fairly safe to assume the new girls now know exactly what they're in for.

As a side-note, the actress who played the Nazi-loving warden in Barbed Wire Dolls is on the other end of the stick in this film, playing one of the prisoners. She actually does quite a good job here as one of the more (loosely) complex sympathetic characters, quite the antithesis to her campy domineering warden character from the first movie. Now that the new girls are all safely locked up in their cell, it's time for Number 1 to make his re-entrance in search of his nightly “entertainment”, swaggering into the prison cell looking like a jungle version of Zap Brannigan and checking out the girl in the bed closest to the cell door: “There's nothing entertaining about that skinning kid! I need a real woman!” ...And believe me, there's way more awesomeness where that came from.

But the trouble really starts when Number 1 and the pep-talking Directress both fall for the same female prisoner. And when the counter-revolutionary doctor tries to smuggle a communique into the camp via the female prisoner's vaginal “examination”, he too becomes the subject of yet another off-screen decapitation!

And just like that, the first sixty-five minutes of Love Camp has flown by in a blur of female nudity and lesbian sex with the occasional disciplinary whipping, with a scant ten minutes left to introduce new plot turns and wrap the whole thing up in a pretty amusing finale. Fun? Yes. Funny? You bet. Worth the seventy-five minutes? If you can appreciate non-stop female nudity, then absolutely! A good movie? Well... I guess that would really be a matter of taste, or turn-ons, or some kind of non-cinematic consideration... A good movie compared to say, The Godfather? No, not really. Compared to Barbed Wire Dolls, or She Killed in Ecstasy? Well, close, but truthfully, no cigar here, either. Love camp was fun for what it was – Camp, plain and simple. I'd still recommend it even if you're mildly curious. Hell, it's a Jess Franco film! As Texan film critic Joe Bob Briggs would say, Check it out!

Till later this week...

-V.

P.S. Yes, the documentary on this DVD was again a repeat of the earlier ones. I'm going to just go ahead and assume that the rest of the DVD documentaries are likewise, and will now cease to comment on them unless something different is otherwise discovered.

The 2009 Jess Franco Marathon, Part 4 of 8:

2009-11-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

“Jack the Ripper” ***

Jack the Ripper is the fourth DVD in this Edwin C. Dietrich-produced Jess Franco Collection, and the fourth – and last one – that Franco's both written and directed.

In the documentary on the “Blue Rita” DVD, Dietrich surmised that Jack the Ripper was one of Franco's lengthier cinematic obsessions, he believed that Franco had wanted to bring this story to the screen for some time before he'd approached Dietrich with the concept. This would make this something of a more personal obsession for the Spanish filmmaker. Dietrich also mentioned that most of Franco's fans find Jack the Ripper atypical of his body of work, but I'd counter that these fans might not have had the chance to appreciate the likes of Ilsa, Blue Rita, Venus in Furs, or The Blood of Fu Manchu.

But on the atypical point of view, Jack the Ripper opens with a very Argento-esque murder scene. A prostitute leaving a popular pub exchanges a few words with a blind street person before winding through the labyrinth of foggy back-alley streets (it's actually Zurich dubbing for London, but it looks quite good), and ultimately falling victim to the Ripper, and witnesses by the blind man who was hiding back in the shadows. Surprisingly, the following scene has Jack bringing his kill to Frieda, the female janitor of the botanical gardens, who asks Jack, “Is this my doll?”. Without a doubt, this is going to be Franco's own twisted vision of the ripper legend.

And in that vain, a lot of this film was populated with female characters to be seen as symbols of the ripper's mindset. In this, Franco's Freudian character study of the famous serial killer, we have Frieda, playing the ignored companion, The Lovely Whore, The Overbearing and Degrading Mother, and even Lina Romay's cliché Female Victim, which may provide more emotional subtext that one might see at first glance. (At the very least her death is the most spectacular).

While the whole of Jack the Ripper is competently shot and directed, there's a lot that was presented without much flare, and the film ultimately is not what it could have been. But there were still more than just a few impressive moments, and those at least appeared consistently throughout half the film. As examples, there's a memorably humorous scene where a fisherman visits the leading Inspector of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad with his catch of the day – and earlier in the film, we have an inspired kaleidoscopic dream sequence featuring the image of Jack's prostitute mother, taunting him in his dreams and memories. This nightmare actually prompts Jack to go out into the night for a little more stalking and slashing, when he's suddenly caught and subverted by his chatty (female) medical assistant who also happens to have a crush on him – and so here's another example of the pivotal roles the female characters are plying in this film, underlying the mind of the killer/leading man. When Jack finally manages to get away from his assistant and her unappreciated advances, his next victim is the aforementioned Lovely Whore.

The film really does pick up its rhythm after the first half hour, and by the time we get into the third act, the style of Franco's film is heading back into Hitchcockian/Argento territory again, with another Aregento-esque plot turn that has the Scotland Yard Inspector's dancer-girlfriend taking it upon herself to go undercover as a prostitute in London's underbelly in order to help the Inspector catch his killer, especially as the Inspector has been receiving public criticism for not having been able to snare the ripper yet.

As he did with “Ilsa the Wicked Warded”, Jess Franco has provided another solid script with which to base his direction from, and Jack the Ripper is indeed revered by a lot of his fans as some of his best work. But as solid as this film, Ilsa, and Blue Rita all were, I find myself yearning, just a little bit, for the wild imperfections of “Barbed Wire Dolls”; it was films like that that really exuded a cinematic charm that only Jess Franco had, but only in the midst of the competent filmmaking can we see the joy and entertainment in those (so many) imperfect films of Jess Franco.

I'm very curious to see what the next four films in the collection have to offer, “Love Camp” will be the first one Franco collaborates his directorial efforts with another script writer, Manfred Gregor (who is credited with writing the last four films in the set).

Like the earlier DVDs, Jack the Ripper's boasted documentaries are actually repeats of the ones displayed on Barbed Wire Dolls and Blue Rita. A shame, but I have hopes for the next couple of films, regardless. I'm such an optimist.

Till next time...

-V.

The 2009 Jess Franco Marathon, Part 3 of 8:

2009-11-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

“Ilsa the Wicked Warden” ***1/2

Pre-Viewing Note: Although there are three or four entries in this Nazi-female-exploitation series of films, this will be the first one I've seen. In North America, Anchor Bay Entertainment released an “Ilsa” box set a few years ago. I saw the box set at a slashed price in a Virgin Megastore in San Francisco, and I was afraid that the severely reduced price was indicative of the titles going on moratorium. My concerns were soon proven to be correct, only a couple of weeks later the titles were no longer available to purchase. As the titles have all gone out of print in Canada and the US, I have since found them released not-quite-legally online, and I did download copies of them (for my personal and educational use, of course), but I never did wind up watching them, fearful only of the reduced quality in which I'd be watching them. So far, the DVD transfers in the Anchor Bay UK Collection of Franco's films appear to be pretty tip-top, so I'm happily going into this viewing with some positive anticipation. I guess we'll see what's in store.

(Eighty-seven minutes later...)

Post-Viewing: Well, this was it, the original bona fide cult classic starring Dyanne Thorne, Lina Romay and Jess Franco himself. What year was this baby shot, anyway? The opening-scene jailbreak and subsequent hunt through the jungle totally reminded me of Raiders of the Lost Ark! Then again, maybe it was the three beers I'd have for lunch... At any rate, the jungle scene leads us into the house of Dr. Arcos, a political humanitarian, played by Jess Franco and overdubbed by some French-accented voice actor, which leads into some entertaining off-screen narration. This then logically leads into the plot proper, concerning a young woman (Tina Busselier) who gets Dr. Arcos to fraudulently sign her into the prison so that she might undo the Wicked Warden (Dyanne Thorne) and uncover the truth about her sister, who went missing from the prison. Turns out the young lady was ill-prepared for the corruption, torture and degradation behind the prison walls. There's time enough near the beginning of the story for a couple of choice Franco one-liners, like just before the young lady is hosed down upon her entrance into the prison, “I'd rather remover my blouse myself,” to which the stocky female guard retorts, “I'd rather you kept your mouth shut!” And then post-hosing-down: “I'd like to have some panties,” and again, the stocky guard: “Not here, you don't! Go bare-assed!”. Sweet.

Again, I'll have to put the kidding aside, because this is actually one of the best Franco films I've seen so far. Indeed, Ilsa lived up to my anticipation and expectations. Deceivingly, Ilsa almost doesn't seem as explicit as Franco's “Barbed Wire Dolls”, but I believe that's because Ilsa is more in the style of Johnathan Demme's own exploitation classic “Caged Heat”. I think, also, that this is probably one of Franco's most professionally presented and confidently shot films. Even the writing is good, with extremely well-drawn characters played by Thorne, Romay, Franco, and Busselier. Yes, without a doubt, this is by far one of the best films (if not the best) in Franco's impressive repertoire.

This classic example of seventies exploitation, more than deserving of its own cult status (and then some), leads up to a third act that is surprisingly inspired by the likes of the old EC comics and comes to a pretty show-stopping finale. I'm definitely going to be giving this disc a second spin in the near future.

There's a documentary included on this disc as well, but disappointingly, it's a repeat of the film restoration doc on the Barbed Wire Dolls DVD! I guess the documentaries were designed for the single-disc releases, not the inclusive box set. Too bad.

Till the next one...

-V.

The 2009 Jess Franco Marathon, Part 2 of 8:

2009-11-05T21:43:00.000-08:00

“Blue Rita” ***

I was knocked right back in the first few seconds with the funky, porno-chic opening of Blue Rita, a film which also boasts some of the best music in a Jess Franco soundtrack since Vampyros Lesbos.

Paris exteriors not withstanding, Blue Rita is without a doubt one of Franco's most visually striking and cinematographically appealing films, despite a lot of it being shot in mid-to-close-ups (which in fact works well with the movie and its off-the-wall color scheme... and yes, there's a color scheme). Blue Rita also has just the right amount of weirdness (a lot) to go with its kidnapping and extortion/revenge plot – not to mention the global spy-network James Bond-esque subplot and its sci-fi overtones.

Alright, I know, enough about the damned plot and the cinematography, what about the sleaze factor? (Or, pardon me, the erotic factor). Once again, amidst classic dialog like “I told you the green magic potion would make him hornier than ever before!” there are a number of erotic scenes that do work on various levels: art, erotica, sleaze, set dec (and speaking of set-dec, this one's as kitschy as ever!), this could very well be Franco's “Barbarella”.

The film is dazzled with science-fiction art dec and costuming, but the plot is not exactly all-out sci-fi (except for the magic green sex potion, of course). The plot concerns Blue Rita, obviously the title character, who is running a brothel/strip-joint/nightclub and is simultaneously entertaining her notions of vengeance against the intelligence organization who had sent out a couple of thugs to mutilate her womanhood with a “hot iron”. (I don't know, her pussy looked perfectly fine to me). Ironically, the new girl Blue Rita has just hired happens to be an undercover Interpol agent, and she turns out to be a real fly in the ointment concerning Blue Rita's plans for revenge. Counterpointing the plot thrusts are the signature Franco girl-writhing-on-floor performance art, which in this case is more explicit than either of the dance numbers from “Diabolical Dr. Z” or, more famously, “Vampyros Lesbos”. The man definitely has a fetish for naked women squirming about themselves on the floor, as much as he does with transparent inflatable furniture, it seems... But getting back to the cinematography, this 16x9 anamorphic transfer actually look a little tight at the top – I think maybe this film would've been happier with a 1.66:1 transfer instead.

Watch to the end to hear who the undercover Interpol agent is sent off to meet next. After the movie, there's another great documentary included on this disc; I though it was going to be another film restoration piece, but instead we have producer Edwin C. Dietrich paying tribute to Franco and the fifteen films Franco shot for Dietrich's production company throughout the seventies and early eighties. Dietrich is really an engaging and genuine-sounding speaker, making the half-hour segments a breeze to watch (he also had a lot of input in the Barbed Wire Dolls restoration documentary). And the film Blue Rita only goes to prove one of his more hilarious points regarding Jess Franco: “Each film is different, not all of them are blurred... In some, he even used a tripod!” Awesome.

And I myself may jest, but I truthfully jest with genuine affection. Till the weekend...

-V.

The 2009 Jess Franco Marathon, Part 1 of 8:

2009-11-04T19:12:00.000-08:00

“Barbed Wire Dolls”

(aka Frauengefangnis) **1/2

I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce the German title of this Franco film, let alone know what it means by translation...

It's Night One of The Cracking of the UK Franco Collection, and held within the shrink-wrapping we have eight of Franco's German-shot productions. Since the DVDs in this Anchor Bay UK Collection are packaged in alphabetical order, that's exactly how I'll proceed...

Barbed Wire Dolls starts off like any old 1970's drive-in WIP-flick, so right off the bat you know you're going to be in for some kind of exploitation extravaganza. As per the norm, this one stars Lina Romay, Franco's muse (who came along after the upsetting death of Soledad Miranda circa 1970). Shot in the German language and absolutely hilariously dubbed into English, we North Americans are now privy to such smacking dialog as, “Sign here... for your shock treatment!” and “Your clothes... Remove them!” This, only moments after the Nazi-ish female warden of the prison camp enters the front office to greet the new arrival (Romay) wearing her appropriately German-esque monocle and her crack-pinching super-short-shorts. Of course, this is how female prison wardens would likely dress, so our suspension of disbelief hasn't quite been strained to the breaking point, and we can sit back and enjoy the ride.

Much like the “Female Vampire” R1 DVD, “Barbed Wire Dolls” looks to be a specifically non-X-rated version of a possibly longer (pornographic) cut of the film. My suspicions on this are based solely on one strange cut that occurs near the beginning of the story, in which a sex scene looks conspicuously about to head into explicitly X-rated territory before cutting to a mirror, then abruptly to an already-out-of-focus shot. Of course, this is a Franco film, so strange cuts can by no means be considered hard evidence of anything. But all rumors aside, this monikered “Director's Edition” still has plenty enough skin and raunchiness on display, and some of it stylishly so (though a lot of the stylish flare is confined mostly to the scenes of Lina Romay's shock treatment). None of the female cast members wear any pants at any point in this film, and again, much like “Female Vampire”, there are plenty of zooming muff shots to go around. Before I even got past the ten-minute mark of this puppy, I couldn't imagine, even in the slightest, that Jess Franco was making this movie with any kind of serious consideration. It was all just too looney tunes! Of course, my theory completely juxtaposes the seemingly intentional tone of doom and torture and serious political dialog. (Or would that mean that my theory would ironically compliment the tone...? Ach, my head hurts. That's what you get for tying to dissect a German grindhouse flick from the 70's).

Truthfully, it took about 25 minutes (or one-third of the actual running time) before I found myself completely involved with the shenanigans, which was about at the point where the warden was kicking back in her high heels, immersing herself in a paperback of which I can only assume would be translated as The Power of the Third Reich. There's a jaw-dropping dream sequence soon after, which tells the backstory of why Lina Romay is in prison in the first place – and the whole sequence is ACTED in slow motion! ACTED in SLOW MOTION! It was too ludicrous to accurately describe the giddy confusion I was feeling at watching the sequence play out – I guess Franco's DOP didn't mention that they could have just SHOT the scene in slow-mo by speeding up the film. And there's really so much more... rubber rats, cheesy plot twists, the constant re-usage of the exterior footage (same shot!) of the prison guards, which I guess was to make them look busy and extremely focused.

But crazy filmmaking aside, each of these Anchor Bay discs includes a pretty lengthy documentary on the restoration of these particular Jess Franco films, and I have to say I was stunned. It looks like the movies went through a Star Wars-like cleanup & restoration process, and it appears that Jess Fracno's films are far more revered in Europe now.

Till tomorrow...

-V.

The off-the-top-of-my-head list.

2009-10-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

My favorite post-summer Franco flicks...

1. Exorcism

2. Nightmares Come at Night

3. Eugenie de Sade

4. Killer Barbys

5. Female Vampire

6. The Diabolical Doctor Z.

On an interesting note, while compiling this list, I finally discovered (infinite thanks to allmovie.com) that "Nightmares come at Night" and "Sex Charade" are in fact two entirely different films, despite my earlier suspicions to the contrary.

I'll tell you, that is a load off my mind!

-V.

Post-Halloween, 2009...

2009-10-26T14:11:00.001-07:00

I love the fall. As much as summer reminds me of a good Jess Franco flick, the fall does as well. That frosty leave-falling void between Halloween and the guilt-infused family Christmas get-togethers is perfect for the likes of Killer Barbys or Eugenie de Sade.

This fall, I'm going to finally get through The Jess Franco collection Volume 2 if it freakin' kills me.

Unfortunately, I've seen some of my recently purchased PAL DVDs through my component set-up to the television set, and it's a blurry, mashy mess. Ugh. I would've loved to have watched Álex de la Iglesia's Dance with the Devil in some kind of clear version, but I assume that was not meant to be.

Perhaps the Jess Franco films will fare better as they've been released by Anchor Bay UK, so we'll see. I'll be getting on this one as soon as the Halloween Marathon has come to a close, and I'm hoping for the best...

-V.

Bloody Moon

2009-06-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, although I'm finally reviewing this glorious Spanish slasher, it's been nearly a year since I've actually watched it. Seriously, it's been that long, not only since I've watched a Jess Franco film, but also since I've really had any time to blog. I'm thankful to Severin Films for making this available on R1 DVD, though it's not Franco's best film, it's pretty bloody and entertaining. It's mostly what one would expect from a Franco slasher, and also some one wouldn't expect. There is a a fairly standard 80's slasher-style prologue that kicks the films off, and it becomes something of a coda father down the plotline. As acceptably requisite as this storytelling technique is, the sheer competency of it is actually a bit of a drawback in this Franco film -- Franco's at his best when it comes to sex and exploitation, and rest assured, there are those scenes in Bloody Moon, along with some awkwardly-executed yet much appreciated violence (another Franco trademark), and though it might be redundant to delve further into the plot of a slasher film (a string of nice-looking girls get murdered one by one until the reason for the serial killings are revealed at the end -- see? -- redundant.) all in all it's a successfully entertaining flick from the man who just received the lifetime achievement award from the Spanish film industry's Goya Awards (Spain's version of the Oscars), and with Penelope Cruz cheering him on, no less!

-V.

On Another Note...

2009-06-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

I've been visiting the UK for the last couple of weeks, specifically on the search for more Franco and Rollin flicks that might not be available in the region 1 area. I couldn't believe it when I came across Anchor Bay UK's eight-disc Franco box set in HMV for £15 - I nearly died. Of the eight discs, I actually didn't own any previously, the set included Blue Rita, Ilsa the Wicked Warden, Barbed Wire Dolls, Love Camp, Sexy Sisters, Jack the Ripper (with Kinski) -- utterly rad. Speaking of Kinski, both of the Anchor Bay (UK) Herzog and Herzog/Kinski box sets were also around £15. With the currently high Canadian dollar, that's about $23.00 -- and the tax is included in those prices, so there's no additional charge. I also saw tons of Italian, Spanish, Japanese, R1 Criterion and exploitation DVDs (region 2, mind you) for £5 to £10, £10 to £20 for the box sets. I started to wonder yesterday if we were completely getting screwed over through retail pricing in Canada. I've paid well over $25 for several of those titles from Blue Underground and Shriek Show. Ah, well, what's done is done, and I have eight new Franco flicks to play with now. On top of that, I've been on the hunt for Blu-rays unavailable in our home region, as well -- and I did find a few, including the previously-reviewed "Welcome to the Jungle". Purchasing this little gem, it got me thinking about the counter-Hollywood style of the film's writing and execution (by Die Hard 3 scripter & Punisher writer/directer Jonathan Hensleigh). A hell of a lot of chatter and getting-to-know-you intermittent with some building suspense up to a gory, bloody third act. Much in the style of the Italian cannibal-horror sub genre, with films like Cannibal Holocaust and Man from Deep River (to name only a slight few). In addition, this got me thinking that Tarantino's own Death Proof more closely followed this writing format, and I actually consider it now closer to the Italian Cannibal genre as opposed to the Tarantino-described slasher genre (Tarantino even credits Dario Argento at the end of Grindhouse -- maybe it should have been Umberto Lenzi). Yes, I'm comfortable with viewing Kurt Russel's death proof machine as an allegory for a tribe of Cannibalistic mountain natives, the sets of girls only lost wanderers in the jungle. Regardless, when I get back to Canada, it's going to be all Wicked Wardens and London rippers for this kid. Eight discs is a thick stack to conquer. But first, I must visit Bloodbuster in Milan as the travels and the search for more Euro treasures continue.

-V.

Erotic winter and that bloody, Bloody Moon

2008-10-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Man, have I ever neglected this blog – and there have actually been things to revere from Franco’s persistently released repertoire. Great things from Blue Underground, yet I’m waiting, waiting for that damned Bloody Moon release from Severin Films… The Franco slasher I’ve yet to see. Being both a Franco fan and a slasher fan, I’m trying hard to keep my expectations in check and let that first viewing experience speak for itself. Anyhow, I digress as usual, and what the hell am I bitching about, anyway, I still haven’t written about that killer Eugenie de Sade DVD Blue Underground released last spring! Now, that was some kind of treat – one of the best Euro-erotic thrillers I’ve seen, and while Faceless will probably remain Franco’s most skilled cinematic outing (Eugenie does have its raw, rough edges – and what was with the editing in the death scene?), I would certainly go so far as to say Eugenie de Sade is his best film. Yes, there, I said it. I’m comfortable with that. Eugenie de Sade is the sexiest, most classically erotic and one of the most compelling stories Franco’s put to celluloid. While some of the sexual shenanigans come off as a bit kinky (not a bad thing), the goings-ons never really reach a feeling of full-on exploitation, despite its likely otherwise intentions. It’s constructed like a thriller, if I may be so bold to say, in an atypical way as Eyes Wide Shut is also a thriller, though the ideas are more of exploring the sexual beings of the film(s). Setting the film across a winter backdrop, whether by design or by serendipitous accident (no pun intended), was probably the main advantage for the gorgeous photography. But at the end, that little bit of climactic bloodshed was honestly a few seconds of utter crap that could have easily been fixed with some minor editing. Which brought me to think about films like Female Vampire, where vampiress Lina Romay walks towards the camera in the opening shot, closer, closer, closer, until we see her physically bump into it. Why not cut that shot a few frames earlier? I have a creeping suspicion that the flaws in many of Franco’s works are editorial (not to take anything for the directorial effort, mind you), but they are things that could have been fixed, and were not. Was this a decision by director Franco? The producers? The editor? Who exactly had final cut here? Judging by the plethora of “official” versions of Vampyros Lesbos, probably nobody. It’s not to be unexpected that Franco would have speedily left his films in the dust on the word wrap, as he dashed from project to project, creating what is probably a world-record Filmography.

Check out below – a representation of the original out-of-print DVD cover released by Blue Underground (white), and the current official and inexplicably switched cover (black). Note that the black cover actually utilizes a still from the film The Devil Came from Akasava, not Eugenie de Sade. --V.

Summer Style

2008-06-15T16:45:00.000-07:00

After much rain and record-low temperatures, it finally looks like summer’s come overdue to the city. Bright, sunny days like this, walking around and staring appreciatively up into the sky brings many pleasurable images flashing through my melding-pot mind, and of course, being the obsessive cinema maniac that I am, a lot of the pleasing images that are melding with the ocean, beaches, bikinis, beers on open patios and ex-smoker’s reminiscences, are scenes from some of my favorite films. When I was younger, I took a two-week visit to the Kaman Islands and most of the hours in my day were splashed with mental clips of Romero’s Knightriders and Argento’s Tenebre (which Argent self-described as his only “sunny” film). Today, years later, I am surprised that the images that flash through the overworked grey matter in my skull (or overcooked, depending on your disposition) were from Blade Runner and John Carpenter’s short Cigarette Burns. The latter made a little bit of sense to me, at least, as it was shot around the neighborhood where I live. The former, I suppose, came to mind as last week I’d caught a few minutes of Blade Runner on Showcase, and then was reminded of it in the opening pages of this month’s Rue Morgue magazine, and then coming across a novel-length book on the making of Blade Runner at the local Chapters yesterday, which prompted my to finally pick up the most recent “final cut” DVD, which I popped into the player last night. So, I can only surmise that this would be why such a dark and stylishly brooding post-modern film noir would be flashing crazy imagery through my brain on such a wonderfully warm and sunny nearly-summer morning.

Now, what the hell would all this have to so with Jess Franco, one would sanely be pondering; and what the hell is it doing hanging out on a Jess Franco fan blog? Well, blame it on this summer Sunday if you will, or the laid-back attitude of the West Coast, but trust me, I am getting to the point, just in a possibly annoyingly and leisurely way. As we (I) speak, the sun is still slashing through the apartment windows and I’m staring at a gorgeous view of the lush-green University property across the wavy water, so pardon me if life seems a little leisurely at the moment. However, one thing that has always reminded me of summer in this city - and as well, this city’s sunny days have reminded me of - are a few of the more funky films from Jess Franco. The sunny and kitschy She Killed in Ecstasy and Vampyros Lesbos, specifically – but also to a lesser degree Two Undercover Angels, The Devil Came from Akasava, The Girl from Rio, 99 Women and Euginie also come to mind. I remember sitting an apartment in the city a couple of summers back, blasting the sounds of the Vampyros Lesbos soundtrack (or: the Sexadelic Dance Party) through the window and over the balcony while the sun slowly descended in it’s distinctively Canadian way and the rays turned golden on the street below, reminding me vividly of the images filmed for Vampyros Lesbos, and the exquisite Solidad Miranda. In 2004, this was doubtlessly the inspiration that would become realized in the short film Sex & Death: 1977 one year later. I don’t know if it was the way the film stock looked, the raw practical daylight filming, the European locales, or the style and kitsch coupled with Miranda’s beauty that would forever cement these images as associations to summer in the city, the beaches, and the ocean -- but whatever the genesis, beer on an open patio, bikinis and Vampyros Lesbos will always have a warm and sunny place in that overworked grey matter of mine.

While Euginie de Sade still (sadly) sits unopened on my living room bookshelf and Bloody Moon awaits its release this very summer, there is more Franco for me to discover in the hot days to come. So here’s to sunny days and the Sexadelic Dance Party. (Crack beer open now)

-V.

Welcome to the Jungle

2008-02-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

I’m constantly amazed at the quality and consistency of Blue Underground’s Franco output on affordably-priced DVDs. I’m so looking forward to next month’s release of one of the Miranda-Franco collaborations I’ve yet to see – Eugenie De Sade. But in the meantime, BU has treated us fans to a slightly oddball Franco flick. (I realize “slightly oddball” could be taken as a completely redundant understatement in reference to Franco’s catalogue raisonné, but bear with me here…)

Cannibals, a 1980 film where Franco delves into the typically-Italian horror sub-genre of jungle survival in the face of man-eating headhunting tribes, is not so much the in-your-face gorefest one would expect when seeing the names “Franco” and “Cannibals” on the same DVD box, instead, this is a surprisingly restrained and quick-paced search & rescue adventure half-baked with a lot of cheese, where a university professor leads an expedition (with the help of his lover played by Franco’s wife Lina Romay) into Cannibal territory to save his daughter who was kidnapped by the tribe several years ago and is now hailed as their White Goddess. Only problem is that when he finds her, she doesn’t want to go back with him. There are just enough charming exploitation elements to keep things interesting and the finale does boast some amusing and well-executed gore set pieces. Sabrina Siani, the actress paying the white goddess, doesn’t say much and is at times charmingly awkward, but is actually very magnetic in her role; and the whole affair, overall, comes of as a satisfactory and more-than-amusing entry in this bizarre sub-genre.

I was surprised to see that another and far more recent movie by Hollywood filmmaker Jonathan Hensleigh (The Punisher, Die Hard 3) takes the Cannibal Holocaust idea and brings it kicking and screaming into the digital age. Welcome to the Jungle (or “Cannibals”, as it’s known internationally) is an extremely well-written adventure suspensor that is, in my opinion, miles beyond what The Blair Witch Project was trying to do ten years ago. (Shit, I’m getting old). Don’t be surprised if the sight of any flesh-eating jungle tribes eludes you for the first fifty-five minutes, but clocking in at just under 80, Hensleigh’s film is extremely well-paced and the characters are impressively rounded and amiable, even when they’re at each other’s throats. Of course, the finale pulls out all the stops and there are some damned impressive effects on display.

And if jungle adventure’s your game, then I might also suggest Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, an eye-popping story of courage, survival, and a prison break in the middle of the enemy’s jungle.

Till next time, with Eugenie…

-V.

Six Franco flicks that changed my life.

2007-06-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

I just finished posting a blog on my MySpace page…
http://myspace.com/vincedamato
…Where I’d listed 20 movies that changed my life (or at least somewhat changed my outlook on Cinema and/or its various genres). So to that end, I thought it might be appropriate to list off a few infamous Franco flicks that had some kind of profound reworking on my psyche… for better or for worse. Well, here goes…

1. She Killed in Ecstasy – This is, I believe, where I fell in love with Soledad Miranda. It took me a while to warm up to both this film as well as Vampyros Lesbos, but I have to say it was the lesbian-death-by-inflatable-pillow that slam-dunked this one.

2. Succubus – I have to admit, I didn’t get much out of this one until Blue Underground’s new film transfer/DVD reissue. Definitely the best rediscovery of the lot.

3. Venus in Furs – Another Blue Underground DVD release, this one starring Maria Rohm (love her too) in a twisty jazz-laded psychedelic supernatural romp along the beaches of Spain. Also stars Klaus Kinski!

4. Two Undercover Angels (Sadisterótica) – Boasting one of Franco’s favorite explorations; two women in a campy Bond-esque entanglement. For more of the same, you can also check out Kiss Me Monster, with the same two lead actresses, and the same go-go striptease in the middle of the film(s).

5. Exorcism (Exorcism and Black Masses) – A trippy, raw, voyeuristically clunky Catholic-based murder-mystery that involves a sociopathic Priest and a female newspaper reporter (Lina Romay) who moonlights as a stage performer who puts on sarcastic presentation of black mass ritualistic murders, grand guignol style. This is purportedly one of the films that got Franco into hot water with the Catholic Church in Europe, prompting them to label the sleaze auteur one of the most dangerous filmmakers to the Catholic Church. Go figure.

6. Female Vampire – I hated, hated this movie when I fist saw it. Then I didn’t hate it so much, after letting it fester for a while, and then even later I came to find it rather charming… It’s so inept and overtly voyeuristic, how could you hate this movie? Of course, it’s so inept and graceless, how could you love it? Or not love it? Ah, just find yer own copy and decide. (And by the way, it’s a way better deal to get the Jess Franco box set that includes this flick plus three others, for about the same price as this one DVD back on the original DVD release.)

-V.

Doom, Gloom & Zoom

2007-03-08T19:59:00.000-08:00

Jess Franco’s Count Dracula is nothing of not strikingly faithful to Bram Stoker’s original material. Is it a good movie? Well, it lingers somewhere between great and okay, but good…? There are certainly good points. Point number one: Incredible casting. The classic Christopher Lee as the titular baddie, Herbert Lom as Van Helsing, Franco femme fatale Maria Rohm as Mina, Klaus freakin’ Kinski as the whacked-out Renfield, and the seminal role for cult icon Soledad Miranda as Miss Lucy Westenra.

As outlined in the DVD essay on Dark Sky Film’s new reissue of this Franco twist, Count Dracula was an extremely important film for Soledad Miranda’s performing career, having launched her into a brightening spotlight. And if sordid auteur Franco knows anything, he knows how to shoot this woman. She’s stunning, and Franco’s loving close-ups (mostly while she’s being bitten in the neck by Lee) exude a quiet and hypnotic ecstasy that is unlike anything else I’ve seen. What’s slightly peculiar is that the casting really works having Maria Rohm playing the heroine as opposed to the more captivating Miranda. (Maria Rohm is good, no doubt, though her role may serve musings of her other, better leading roles – like in Venus in Furs). Meanwhile, Kinski is the real scene-stealer in this outing, playing up the soul & mind-tortured Renfield, locking in his padded cell and eating flies while going madder with homicidal cerebral intrusions by the Count.

Adapting Bram Stoker’s sexually-charged piece of horror fiction would at first glance appear to be right up Jess Franco’s alley. Strange, then, that he would shoot the story as a mostly conversationally-motivated motion picture (a tad tedious in the first half hour as this takes place inside a drab castle decked with bricks and empty walls), and aside from the amorous close-ups of Miranda’s eyes and lips, there is no flesh or fetish on display at all in this Euro presentation. This being said, it is still of much higher quality and far, far more attractive than Franco’s luridly-titled “Killer Barbys meet Dracula”. (And not to worry too much, it does pick up after the initial half hour).

I remember years ago finding a clam-shelled VHS copy of Count Dracula in a ma-&-pa video store that was closing out. I purchased the tape with another Franco-on-VHS titled “Against All Odds” – which was actually a black-and-white version of The Blood of Fu Manchu – and how weird is that, to actually desaturate the color from a movie for the North American release? Anyway, I got these movies home, and wile I watched Count Dracula right away, I actually never watched the desaturated Franco movie, ever, finally watching Blood of Fu Manchu when it was properly released (in full color) on DVD. But those years back, the Dracula film had left me somewhat unimpressed. I actually didn’t really expect to like Dark Sky’s fancy new DVD a whole lot either, but after it was all said and done, I have to say that the fantastic film and audio transfer made a world of difference. I still can’t say the film is great while retaining a clear conscience, but I will say that the new DVD is indeed a great package from Franco collectors.

Check it out!

-V.

Wicked Women

2006-12-16T01:33:00.000-08:00

I was reading this month’s issue of Rue Morgue, and somewhere hidden inside I saw an advertisement for the new triple-DVD sets coming out from Shriek Show (Media Blasters) right around Christmastime. Now, if you’re a fan of cult/horror movies and you don’t know about Shriek Show’s recent foray into multi-packaging, then I suggest you do some cramming on the subject – they’re retailing these triple-packs for about one quarter of what the original (and individual) DVDs cost as separate purchases. I know this, because I saw that the MSRP for the “Wicked Women” set was about 19 bones, and I hauled out close to 68 bucks total for each of these suckers when they were released only around eighteen months ago. Anyway, this Wicked Women Triple-Pack features the Italian exploitation flick Werewolf Woman, a surprisingly sexy little flick disguised as a horror movie – but it’s a really well-shot slice of Euro-sleaze. The next one is the Shriek Show-produced Flesh for the Beast, which is also fairly erotic (but this time it really is also a horror movie), though it’s nothing more than a very entertaining spin on an old premise – a group of paranormal researchers spend a night in a haunted mansion. The last one in the set is Jess Franco’s Nightmares Come at Night, which includes the participation of the gorgeous Soledad Miranda – and despite the top-billing, it’s really more of a glorified cameo. Out of the three films, I actually remembered Franco’s film the least. I remembered that Miranda was not in it that much – I remembered the print looked pretty bad – and I remembered it was some kind of heist-thriller, though I couldn’t recall the particular details of the entire affair.

Throwing this over-expensive disc into the player for a little memory jog, this is what I’ve concluded – That Soledad Miranda is indeed as gorgeous as I’d thought, though she’s in the film far less than I’d remembered. The print itself is better than I’d thought. Actually, the Shriek Show film transfer is pretty good – it’s the camera lens that appears to be the actual culprit here. Not surprising for a Franco film shot back in the late 60’s, the cinematography is filled with soft lights and softer focus. In the dark scenes, the lens actually looks dirty and reflective and there’s a relentless L-shaped scratched on the left side of the frame – probably from having to continually wipe all the Vaseline off the lens. Anyway, I got a re-grip on the plot, which is basically a stripper named Anna (Diana Lorys) and her female lover/roommate (played by Colette Giacobine, something of an economy-style Brigitte Bardot) and Anna’s doctor, caring for her as they suspect Anna has something of a mental condition that needs to be treated – she awakes in the middle of the night from sexually hallucinogenic night terrors, imagining that she’s murdered one of her lovers. She then confronts the doctor about this, and the first hour of the film segues into a flash-back telling of the story up to the point of the murder, which is really just an excuse for several sexual encounters while Lorys performs the majority of the scenes (both sexual and expository) in the buff. The subsequent half hour (where we finally see a couple of nice scenes with actress Miranda) turns the whole thing into a straight-forward thriller with a murder/robbery plot, an impressive corkscrew twist and a somewhat shocking finale. All in all, not too shabby. I even liked the freeze-frame opening credits, which really sets the mood as an erotic thriller – and one of the most elemental Franco films I’ve had the pleasure of watching.

Upon further reflection, I recall that Shriek Show had announced the release of Franco’s “Sex Charade” back in the summer of ’04, and then it was suddenly dismissed from their slate only days before the release date. Merely a couple of months later, they released Nightmares Come at Night. I have suspicions that these two films are one in the same – though I can’t find any information online to support or denounce this theory. The only clue I had to go on was that I’d (years ago now) read an in-depth essay on the works of Franco and Soledad Miranda, where it was revealed the pair had produced a total of six completed feature films together: “She Killed in Ecstasy”, “Vampyros Lesbos”, “Eugenie de Sade”, “Count Dracula”, “Devil Came from Akasava” and “Sex Charade”. No mention whatsoever of Nightmares Come at Night, and in fact, I’d never even heard of this movie until Shriek Show released it... Two months after the aborted Sex Charade release... Both of which were originally produced in French in 1969 and started Soledad Miranda, both crediting her with the stage name Susan Korda. Hmm…

-V.

Jack Palance, RIP

2006-11-13T21:39:00.000-08:00

Sadly, Jack Palance passed away this last Friday. Being a kid of the late seventies and eighties, I remember first seeing this acclaimed actor as the host of the quirky Ripley’s… Believe it or not “reality” television series. As time went on, of course, I became more familiar with Jack Palance as I saw him as the bad guy in Tango & Cash and the mean cattle rustler in City Slickers. He always had a great screen presence and was able to make any character he played an absolutely memorable one – and in some cases, making his character the most appealing one in the entire film, as in both of the aforementioned movies. While this great actor had this kind of Hollywood schlock to deal with, I never thought I’d see him in the kind of schlock titled Deadly Sanctuary – a film I discovered in the foreign section many years ago when I was working at a Blockbuster Video store… Believe it or not. I still remember it was packaged in one of those over-sized cardboard VHS boxes. He shared star credit with Klaus Kinski, and I was immediately curious. Taking it home that night, I made it only part way through the murky pan & scan print of this censored hack job that had rendered a perfectly good exploitation film incomprehensible. Of course, it would be several years before I realized that this was indeed a perfectly good piece of exploitation filmmaking…

Reissued on DVD a couple of years back as Marquis de Sade’s Justine on Blue Underground’s gorgeous DVD, I was finally able to rediscover this Franco classic in all its glory. And Jack Palance does do a fine job, though it is admittedly somewhat unnerving to see him in this kind of film, where he plays a twistedly sadistic monk… However, since the release of Justine, I’d discovered that Jack Palance was no stranger to either European or American schlock (including Spaghetti Westerns), having witnessed performances in films like The Sensuous Nurse, an Italian sex comedy from the 60’s which also starred bond girl Ursula Andress, and the stunningly effective (and underrated) 80’s horror-slasher Alone in the Dark. Scores of his even lesser-known credits, according to the IMDb, include Without Warning, Gor, Cocaine Cowboys, Hawk the Slayer, Angels’ Brigade, Mr. Scarface, Welcome to Blood City, and A Bullet from God.

RIP, Jack. The only 87-yer-old who still looked like he’d kick your ass.

-V

The Diabolical Dr. Z and the sensuous Killer in Ecstasy

2006-10-03T00:43:00.000-07:00

Jess Franco’s comic book stylized The Diabolical Dr. Z is a very weird, oblique essay in revenge, where mad scientist Dr. Z succumbs to a fatal heart attack after being lambasted by his peers for his unorthodox experiments in mind control through spinal surgery. With the fire of vengeance in her belly, his daughter, played by actress Mabel Karr (who could be a precursor to the Ilsa character later directed by Franco in The Wicked Warden chapter of the cult WIP* series) goes about exacting her revenge on her father’s scientific peers, and she makes no bones about going about it the long way, which entails her killing a female hitchhiker and burning the corpse in her car in order to fake her own death, becoming disfigured by the fire she’d set and then having to perform cosmetic surgery on herself (!) before kidnapping and performing the mind-controlling surgery on an innocent go-go dancer named “Miss Death” so that she may use the dancer to seduce men into her murderous trap – wherein Miss Death proceeds to slash the victims across the neck with her two-inch-long fingernails while intermittently slinking through the film in various see-through costumes – and despite the fact that Dr. Z’s daughter already has a housemaid and a serial killer under her cerebral control. Huh. This needlessly complex revenge scenario become a little ridiculous even for Franco, but the great thing is that the whole thing almost comes off looking like Russ Meyer got a hold of a Hitchcock script that had been re-worked by Wile E. Coyote somewhere along the way.

*Women in Prison

I should also mention that Miss Death’s spider-dance performance sequence (opposite a mannequin) seemed the obvious basis for a re-working into Soledad Miranda’s famous Vampyros Lesbos mannequin striptease dance five years later (1971). Within that same time period, actress Miranda would also star in Franco’s own remake of Dr. Z - 1970’s She Killed in Ecstasy…

Conversely, in this much-pared-down remake, the adored Soledad Miranda stars not as the mad scientist’s daughter, but rather as his wife; who this time goes on her own vengeful rampage, essentially letting what sparse bloodletting there is splatter on her own hands (and don’t get too excited, I’m just being figurative - there’s not really any red to speak of in these films). She Killed in Ecstasy has two major points going for it; first of all, there’s a lot of nudity and eroticism from our leading lady, and secondly, the story is really a hell of a lot tighter and to-the-point with Miranda doing her own dirty deeds here. Gone are the endearing comic-book sensibilities of Dr. Z, and in is the overloading of full-color Euro kitsch, which this film boasts almost to the point of absurdity! This, in all honesty, is just another reason this particular Franco film is so endearing.

Unusually, there wasn’t any of that on-screen nudity in The Diabolical Dr. Z, even for the time it was produced (1966) Franco usually displayed a little female flesh in his cinematic forays. But Dr. Z from a technical standpoint looks far superior. Part of the accumulated kitsch that makes up She Killed in Ecstasy comes from Franco’s signature overuse of the zoom lens and utilization of long, sketchy camera movements in place of actual coverage and competent editing, which was pretty much his standard filmmaking technique in the early 70’s. Not to say She Killed in Ecstasy is a bad-bad movie (well, it is if you don’t like bad movies), in fact I find it a lot more charming than the earlier black & white Dr. Z version - though speaking of Dr. Z, the final showdown between Miss Death’s boyfriend and the daughter’s personal serial killer is pretty cool, and the conclusion is weirdly James Bond-esque. But what makes She Killed in Ecstasy special is the leading femme fatale in this one, though she’s considerably more sexy than menacing.

The Re-Issues…

While Image Entertainment has more recently re-issued She Killed in Ecstasy with a reportedly much finer print transfer (2004), and as much as I do love this film, I felt that my scratchy, efficiently bare-bones Synapse Films version (2000) was just fine for this movie. On the other hand, the Mondo Macabro release of The Diabolical Dr. Z showcased some amazing extras, including a kick-ass 15-minute Franco documentary and comprehensive and insightful biographies on the talent.

-V.

A Virgin Among the Living Dead

2006-09-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

Jess Franco’s low-budget zombie erotica is one of his most interesting works, as technically speaking, it sits oddly somewhere in the void between his stunningly competent (Eugenie) and his loveably trashy and inept (Vampyros Lesbos, Female Vampire)

And as if this wasn’t enough of an anomaly unto itself, Virgin Among the Living Dead goes further into the inexplicable as it’s from the very era that produced Franco’s most famous works and his most famous actresses/muses, such as Soledad Miranda, Maria Rohm and Lina Romay. However, Virgin stars none of these Franco favorites, instead, the leading lady is played by Christina von Blanc, who’s only other Franco credit (as far as I could find) was his sex flick The Virgin Report. Christina von Blanc does, however, make for a very appealing and sexual lead, playing it up with a refreshingly innocent girl-next-door flair. In fact, the actress manages to carry the entire film on her own shoulders, especially through the lackluster horror sequences that are interspersed between the far more alluring scenes of lesbian sex, vampiric fetishes and the female solo rolling-around-on-the-carpet nakedness.

The zombie and often laughable “horror” (or fetishistic) sequences actually aren’t all that terrible; often reminding me of another Spanish zombie flick called The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (a.k.a. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) – and I know that hardcore zombie fans of Manchester Morgue are probably going to want to kill me for even mentioning this film in the same essay as Jess Franco – but come on, Manchester Morgue was certainly no Night of the Living Dead, despite all of its bloody (and somewhat uninspiring) coattail-riding intentions. But that being said, Virgin was no Manchester, either, if you’re going to compare strictly on a zombies and grue basis.

But Franco’s film indeed has an interesting cultish-mystery spin as our heroine goes about trying to figure out if her bizarre hallucinations are really happening of if the mansion she’s just inherited is somehow haunted, which simply by its own plot construct also gives Franco the chance to exploit some of the visual sexual-psychedelics he’s so familiar with. The zombies act more like ghosts than traditional gut-munchers or brain-eaters, and really only appear near Virgin’s conclusion, where the far more entertaining nude Satanic sacrifice is also about to unfurl.

The charming Virgin Among the Living Dead eluded my Franco library for a while because I couldn’t find it around town for less than $35.79 for the single DVD release! Last year, Image Entertainment released the four-disc Jess Franco Collection box set, which includes the Virgin DVD, and I unexpectedly found it at the Future Shop for a mere thirty-four bucks brand new. Well recommended!

-V.

*Note: This retrospective pertains to the R1 preferred “Director's Cut" version, which does not included the "added" zombie sequences in the middle of the film.

Maria Rohm

2006-08-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

Maria Rohm is the unsung heroine of Jess Franco, appearing (and often starring) in several of his countless productions throughout the sixties and seventies. Baring a slight resemblance to the blonde German actress Ewa Stroemberg, who co-starred along side the infamous Solidad Miranda in She Killed in Ecstasy and Vampyros Lesbos, Maria Rohm actually starred in more Franco films than either of her more famous colleagues. Regardless, the quality of the Rohm/Franco catalogue showcases director Franco at his most stylistic, mature, and despite the accomplished eroticism, his least salacious (with the exception of the X-rated version of 99 Women). Maria Rohm as an actress commands both a kind of screen discipline and undeniable attractiveness - making the often erotic ventures even more pleasing to the viewer. Some of their best and most highly regarded (or at least highly sought-after) collaborations have thankfully been made available on DVD (in North America) in the last couple of years - most often thanks to DVD mavericks Blue Underground. Of these selected films, Venus in Furs is possibly the best; it's certainly got the most to show-off. Here, Maria Rohm has the lead role as mysterious beauty Wanda Reed, and she gets a chance to play off a talented cast in conjunction with a slightly bizarre, psychedelic, but yet surprisingly tight script disguised as a supernatural thriller (of sorts). Aside from this leading role, however, most of Maria Rohm's contributions to Franco's cinematic world has been as part of an ensemble cast or in a co-starring slot. Nevertheless, even as she portrays these characters, her screen presence often arises over even the top-billed leading ladies (as in 99 Women, and to some extent, Euginie). Blue Underground has released Venus in Furs, 99 Women (in two versions), Euginie: The Story of her Journey into Perversion, and Justine (a.k.a. "Marquis de Sade's Justine"), all boasting nearly astounding film transfers - or, astounding compared to the old VHS copies previously available - if you were lucky enough to find them at all - and all of these films definitely focus heavily on themes of eroticism, yet with entirely different backdrops. Euginie and Justine were both based on the works of De Sade, the somewhat kinky Venus in Furs was loosely based on the book by Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, and 99 Women is a women-in-prison genre offering. Aside from the sex, all four films are about as diverse as you'll find in Franco's vast filmography, and all were produced within a relative short time span (Justine was 1968 while the other three films were all produced in 1969 - with 99 Women being produced on location during one of Franco's "Fu Manchu" shoots, I believe – consequently, Maria Rohm also co-starred in Franco’s The Blood of Fu Manchu). As much as I love them all, I honestly can't say which of these is my favorite. As a showcase for Maria – Venus wins, hands down.

As a side-note, all of the Blue Undergroud DVDs include in-depth and entertaining interviews with director Franco, Venus also includes and audio interview with Rohm.

-V.

Succubus

2006-08-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

I received the new Franco release from Blue Underground (via Amazon) about ten days ago - his 1969 psychedelic romp entitled Succubus. I've seen that this one has been getting some pretty good reviews on the internet - my first experience with this movie (as is the case with many fans) was Anchor Bay's original 2000 full-frame DVD release (the new Blue Underground version presents an enhanced 1.66:1 transfer). Back at the time the AB DVD was released, I not only purchased this one, but also Anchor Bay's Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me Monster (all purchased from a local DVD retailer) as well as ordering Female Vampire and She Killed in Ecstasy - and back in those days, I was a manager for Blockbuster, so I had access to special orders from our Canadian distributors, as well as receiving employee discounts on all purchases. Well, six years ago, my Franco fanaticism was just being birthed, and I had not yet acquired the full-bodied palate required to fully appreciate these masterpieces of pure kitsch genius (as accidental as that genius may or may not have been). After viewing this slew of titles over roughly more than one week, I promptly returned Female Vampire, She Killed in Ecstasy and yes, even Succubus to my place of employment, where I re-wrapped them, returned them (at a slightly inflated refund, you know, for my troubles), and then shipped all of them back to the Canadian video distributor. (I retained my copies of Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me Monster - but we'll talk about those movies down the road). Needless to say, over the last two years or so, I've been trying to recoup my losses, so to speak. Sure, I made a bit of a profit with my video store exploits and managerial shenanigans, but at what cost...? Succubus was soon to go out of print, with She Killed in Ecstasy dangerously close to falling into those footsteps of cinematic oblivion once again, and our local Virgin Megastore was now selling Female Vampire for over 40 dollars! (I quit working for Blockbuster in 2002, so I would've had to go full-price again). Luckily, I managed to track down one of those titles at a used DVD shop downtown for under 10 bucks, while a good friend of mine insisted I take his copy of Female Vampire off his hands for free! (I guess he's in the same boat I was a few years ago). That left Succubus...

When I saw that Blue Underground was set to release it, I couldn't wait. I was like a kid waiting around for Christmas! I pre-ordered it - and getting home from work to find it crammed into my apartment mailbox by a perfunctorial postal employee - I was ecstatic! And as if to thwart the face of any disappointment head-on, I found that was not only Succubus well worth the wait, not only was it so much more enjoyable now that I'd allowed a few years from my palate to acquire the taste of Cinema Franco, not only was it just as kitschy, entertaining, ludicrous and absolutely sexy as any of Franco's best works - I re-discovered that this, Succubus, could indeed be his best work - arguable, okay - but it's certainly now in high consideration for my favorite Franco of all time. No small order, that one.

-V.

P.S.
I'm going to try to do a new post every Saturday - we'll see how that goes for a while.
v.