Two Red Lips & a Sex Charade

Going back to my week of re-watching Jess Franco flicks, I was excited to revisit Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me Monster, as I'd had the new-er Blue Underground DVD set sitting around for a while. I used to own the old Anchor Bay releases from the early 2000's, but those had been full-frame and the video wasn't actually all that good. To my utter dismay, I found that the films weren't really all that great, either - the memory of the films in my mind were far more exciting than the films were to me now, a dozen years after I'd first seen them. I did revisit them back in '07 or '08 or '09 sometime, too, when I was writing the "Immoral Tales" series here. The films, which are comic-strip James-Bond-esque comedy-thrillers about two gorgeous female amateur detectives who have to go undercover to solve the various crimes and conspiracies, sounds a lot more fun as I'm writing this -- but even at 79 minutes per film, they run out of steam. There are great dance/strip/jazz performances in the middle of both films that inject some energy and titillation halfway through, and overall, the movies are definitely not without their charm... there is always something to look at, the costumes, the locations, the cheesy yet sexy sight-gags. Perhaps part of my growth away from these two films, which had played such an important role in my initial access to Franco's movies, is that I think I've gotten into a more surrealistic mindset when delving into Franco's films over the last few years (or as he's describes it, esoteric), and right now Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me Monster are a little too cutesy-poo and broad-humoured for me. The former sees the pair going undercover as art swindlers in order to catch a bizarre serial killer who photographs his victims and then sells the prints at art galleries (as I said, the films are not without their charm), while the second one goes into some convoluted Euro-hopping conspiracy plot that... well, in all honesty, I was distracted by all the cages and whipping, I can't remember the flimsy plot of that one, but there are definitely a lot more car chases in it. Of course, the main assets are, and have always been, Rosanna Yanni and Janine Reynaud, who play the dynamic duo and carry the weight of both films on their shoulders. They are sweet to watch, I must say.

At any rate, with my slight disappointment in this current re-watch (although I should mention that the Blue Underground DVDs were far superior to the Anchor Bay ones, and both films were anamorphically enhanced, and include great interviews with Jess Franco), I decided to finally pop in that Nightmares Come at Night blu-ray that's been sitting on the living room coffee table (yes, still there). Only I didn't watch the movie. Instead, I watched the 20-minuted documentary titled "Eugenie's Nightmare of a Sex Charade", hoping that it might solve a long-gestating cinema mystery for me. To set this mystery up, I will copy an excerpt from one of my earliest posts on this blog, circa 2006...

{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.}

The documentary on Redemption's blu-ray release of Nightmares has several European film historians interviewed, along with Jess Franco himself, who all confirm that Sex Charade was indeed its own film, and that it did co-star Soledad Miranda. (Interview European film historians! Why didn't I think of that?) Although too many years have passed now to recall the original essay I'd referred to in that above excerpt (I'd thought perhaps it was from that tome of Immoral Tales by Tohill & Tombs, but on a re-read I couldn't verify that -- although the book does not mention Nightmares Come at Night, either), but the information in that essay regarding the number of Franco-Miranda collaborations there had been, was wrong. Not six, but seven, if you include Sex Charade... but should we include it? It seems nobody has seen this elusive film - well, I should say not really, even as admitted by one of the film historians in the Redemption blu-ray documentary. As well, the Tohill-Tombs book Immoral Tales describes the film in the same way the film historian does - as sort of a non-film. On the documentary, tales are told of lost negatives, strange midnight screenings, Frankenstien-cuts using leftover footage, and the archivist at the Paris Cinematheque who thought they had pristine copies of Nightmares Come at Night and Sex Charade, and who was about to sell them to the DVD market (at least this solves the mystery of why Shriek Show had first announced the DVD, then retracted it) -- only to find the Sex Charade prints missing. Or were they never there in the first place? I would say more, but the documentary is just too damn fascinating, and it's also imperative viewing on a very important but underrated trilogy in Jess Franco's filmography and artistic career - Sex Charade, Nightmares Come at Night, and Eugenie De Sade, all of which were from the late sixties/early seventies period with Soledad Miranda, prior to the two major collaborations - Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy.

As I don't want to say much more about the "Eugenie's Nightmare of a Sex Charade" documentary, I'll taper this off by getting back to Janine Reynaud and Rosanna Yanni and the whipping and sexy distracting go-go numbers from last night's Red Lips Double Feature...