#FF – Franco Friday (part 2)

Okay, so I do love the film writings of Roger Ebert. I love his book “Your Movie Sucks” and some of his film reviews – specifically for Eyes Wide Shut, Blow-Up, and 2010: The Year We Made Contact, helped me to understand the multiple sub-levels of cinema and its beautiful language, and how that language is used to communicate, and at times, to mess with an audience. But I was, admittedly, slightly dismayed when I inadvertently came across a review Roger Ebert had written on Umberto Lenzi's 60s giallo-thriller Paranoia, in which he describes Lenzi's film as the “second worst film” he'd seen that year – the film in first place for worst of the year...? Jess Franco's Succubus. Okay, also admittedly, I could see where Ebert might have been coming from at that point in time, and at that place in the cinema culture of Chicago's movie theatres... Ebert had stated that “Only the haunting memory of 'Succubus' prevents me from naming 'Paranoia' the worst movie of the year... 'Succubus' was a flat-out bomb. It left you stunned and reeling. There was literally nothing of worth in it. Even the girl was ugly. The color looked like it had been scraped off the bottom of an old garbage boat. The acting resembled a catatonic state. The script (ha!) had the flair of a baggage tag. It was possibly the worst movie of all time. So no wonder it's in its fifth week in neighborhood theaters, after rolling up record grosses in its first run. No matter what the censor board thinks, the Chicago proletariat knows what it likes.”

I would think that given some time to reflect back on this review (impossible now), that the usually intelligent and insightful critic would cringe at his remarks on the “ugly girl” starring in Succubus, who happened to be the androgynous and striking beauty Janine Reynaud (Two Undercover Angels; Kiss Me, Monster!). Also, clearly lost on the cinematically critical mind of a young Roger Ebert in the 1960s was the whole idea and cinematic concepts of European arthouse genre cinema; which is striking unto itself, although I'm admittedly reflecting on this with the distance of decades of swimming and rippling changes in cultural and artistic representations and acceptances that have come between the now and the original American release of one of Jess Franco's artistic masterpieces. 

#JessFrancoFriday

#FF – Franco Friday (part 1)

In the spirit of sharing something on #FrancoFriday(s), I'll contribute the minor fact that while I've been pretty good at keeping up-to-date on Redemption's / Kino Lorber's Blu-ray releases of this mad genius' work, I have found myself at a sever lack for time. Sitting in waiting are two classic Franco films, the re-working of the Countess Bathory legend as a Rock-Horror opus (featuring the titular band in starring roles), the Killer Barbys. To me, this was hands-down the most accessible film in gaining entry into Franco's bizarre world of nearly indefinable cinema (and for me this was back in the early 2000s), and Killer Barbys still holds a nostalgic place in my heart to this day, despite its repetitive shots and extended scenes of nothing-really-happening which are intended to pad out the running time. At least the shot repetition is set to an energetic pop/rock soundtrack. The other cool Kino Lorber/Franco release is the Diabolical Dr. Z, Franco's wildly stylish black-and-white pre-make/predecessor to his more-adored She Killed in Ecstasy... but this crazy and kitschy original is without a doubt well worth a look. I'm looking forward to these two films being my own double-feature Franco retrospective, which will be happening as soon as I have the chance to carve out some time in the next week or so. Damn it, what's happened to all of my time?! #JessFrancoFriday

 

Cannibal Double-Shot – Jess Franco-style.

Taking on Eurocine's cannibalistic double-feature initially seemed like a momentary impulse in midnight lunacy, however, I came away with the three-hour-and-ten-minute experience with a smile. Serevin Films brought the two Eurocine features, “Devil Hunter” (Jess Franco, 1980) and “Cannibal Terror” (Alain Deruelle, 1981) to a double-feature bu-ray for fans of the cannibals-in-the-jungle (or “gut-muncher”) Euro-horror subgenre. Of course, “Devil Hunter” has the added attractions of A) being a Jess Franco movie, and, B) being miles better than “Cannibal Terror”, although the latter does boast some entertaining exploitation aspects, as well as some familiar in-front-of-the-camera talent from Franco's movies – not surprising as both of these movies were produced by Eurocine in the same time period.

Franco's “Devil Hunter”, however, was also surprising in several regards: firstly through the clever and humourous use of match-cutting in opening sequence between a female victim of the head cannibal in the jungle with the introduction of a young movie starlet somewhere off the jungle island. Of course, very quickly the starlet finds herself on the island and embroiled in danger from the cannibals and a group of kidnappers. But soon, a pair of fellas get themselves to the island via a helicopter and armed with guns and a bag of fake money (the ransom fake-out) in order to lure out the kidnappers and rescue the starlet. And of course, everything goes totally wrong. The second surprise here being that this is the second Jess Franco film in a row that I've had the good pleasure of experiencing that features a helicopter action set-piece and a resulting shoot-out. Once the helicopter goes down in a ball of flames, the two fellas get back to the island only to leave again, get to a boat manned only by one topless woman, knock her out, then enlist her (naked) help, get back to the island once again and re-attempt the initial (and hitherto unsuccessful) rescue mission. By this time, of course, our starlet has had several opportunities to appear is many states of undress, from a torn pink dress to full-out nudity as she's continually attacked and dragged across the jungle island in order to fulfill a final cannibalistic ceremony held by the island natives to appease the bizarre devil-cannibal. Franco criss-crosses these crazy genre plots with stunning ease in his own special exploitation style, making for one of his far more entertaining efforts, especially from this post-seventies time period.

The second feature, “Cannibal Terror” appears to somewhat lack its own panache, and with the handful of slightly despicable and slightly annoying characters presented to us in the first half hour, I found myself hoping for a good, decent cannibal attack after a slightly meandering and somewhat lengthy set-up centered around some failed attempt at financial extortion. At any rate, our protagonists aren't exactly the types of characters we'd find ourselves rooting for. Almost more annoyingly, it's the least-annoying character that is the fist victim of the movie's cannibals. Following this there is (thankfully) more lurid exploitation, which goes on for a little while before starting to peter out past the halfway mark, until the film brings us back into its promised cannibal territory, and things gleefully proceed into some downright weird mayhem. Director Alain Deruelle and the entire cast made the film with such a charming exuberance that it's nearly impossible to dislike this almost inept exercise in low-budget exploitation, which keeps the film trucking right along. The plots of both “Cannibal Terror” and Franco's “Devil Hunter” are essentially the same thing, and when it was all over it occurred to me that Eurocine may have actually hired Franco just to remake Deruelle's slightly flaccid cannibal flick in his own style, which definitely turned out to be wildly better.

At the end of the night, even the more-than-three-hour session of the bizarre flesh-eating double feature, the films never actually left me worn out at any point in time, their zeal and energy more than enough to keep my eyes stuck on the screen and they unfurled before me, releasing their own special kind of cinematic insanity and charm. 

--V.

 

“Buddy Cop” movies – Jess Franco-style.

Okay, so Jess Franco never really did a “buddy cop” movie, but what he did give us was a handful of dual-female-agents defying the odds stacked against them and using their sexuality to flirt and striptease their way through a sabotage of heists, corruption, and conspiracy through a low-budget series of Bond-esque sexy/comedy films in the late sixties. The most famous of these types of Jess Franco's films are, of course Two Undercover Angels (aka Sadisterotica) and Kiss Me, Monster!, released to home video over fifteen years ago on VHS and DVD through the original incarnation (pre-Starz-owned) Anchor Bay Entertainment, which were released alongside Franco's gorgeous Succubus (also late-sixties), which also starred the strikingly beautiful and androgynous Janine Reynaud. Since the Anchor Bay releases, Blue Underground has re-released an upgraded double-feature of the two titles on DVD.

A decade after making Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me Monster, Jess Franco shot a reworking of the premise titled Two Female Spies in Flowered Panties. As the title might suggest, this latter entry in the double-female-spy arena was a lot more explicit than its PG-style sixties counterparts, and quite frankly, I'd never actually even heard of this Jess Franco film until Severin Films saw fit to give it an HD transfer and release it onto Blu-ray last year. This time, Franco's wife Lina Romay (Female Vampire) takes the lead alongside Lynn Monteil (Sadomania – not to be confused with Sadisterotica) playing a pair of prisoners who are released by the government on the condition that they act as double-agents to foil the plot of a sex-slave ring. Of course, many sexual encounters and shenanigans leap from this concept, and while Jess Franco obviously intended to keep some of the inherent humour attached to the somewhat ridiculous (yet entertaining) plot turns, at on point everything actually gets a little intense, when Romay is captured and tortured with cigarettes. Well, it seemed intense to me, anyway, because I actually liked Romay and the quirky character she was portraying in Franco's otherwise lighter-hearted spy/sex spoof. Following this scene of flesh and embers, however, the film goes wildly off-track and the humour and enthusiastic playfulness starts to shine through again, as Romay's character continues to run around wreaking sexy havoc with the inclusion of a somewhat flabbergasting helicopter chase and subsequent pistol shootout. Even writing this now I have the sudden urge to go back to the movie for a second viewing.

Severin Films included two different cuts of Two Female Spies in Flowered Panties on their blu-ray release, Franco being no stranger to several versions coming out of his movies. Ultimately, fans of Franco's female-spy-spoofs of the late sixties should have a lot of fun with this darker, more exploitive turn on the charming scenario, which works very nicely in the context of this niche sub-genre in the director's own canon.

--V.

 

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The Non-Christmas Christmas Epics of Cinema Past...

Christmas cinema is a tradition in our household, each year's repetitive cinematic celebration consisting of the usual genre classics (and you probably know exactly which films these are). Once every few years, however, I become compelled to delve into the decidedly non-classic Christmas cinema (who decided this I can't rightly recall, but nevertheless I feel safe in saying the film I'm about to talk about rarely make people's traditional must-watch list), some are set specifically over Christmas while some of these films merely allude to the fact that they take place around the yuletide time of year. One of my absolute favourite of the former camp is one of the top masters of cinema's last film, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Clearly set in the days right before Christmas, the movie opens up with married couple (Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, who were married in real life during the filming of this movie) getting ready to go to a lavish Christmas party. As insecurities insidiously winds their way through the couple's sexual consciousness, Tom Cruise seemingly falls into a gritty, and at times very intense, sexual odyssey, without every actually engaging in any sexual acts for the entire film – after initially sleeping with his own wife (Kidman) after the first scene of the movie; the night of the Christmas party. As Cruise's odyssey ramps up in intensity, things go from intriguing to anxious to vaguely violent and very possibly dangerous, as a secret sex society that cruise accidentally stumbled upon appears that they may do anything to keep their raging orgies firmly in the realm of the clandestine. Kubrick's catalyst for making this film, conceived with a friend years before it was actually made, was to create a “mainstream porno”, as he stated in his own words at one point, decades ago. In doing this, however, Kubrick intentionally utilized the cinematic construct of a classic thriller – with all the requisite scene of a noir-style thriller falling in exactly all of the right places, which gives Eyes Wide Shut that edge of imminent danger, when really nothing of the sort is actually happening on-screen during Cruise's odyssey. So it then comes back around that the anxiety of the entire film must hearken back to the sexual anxiety of our leading couple, and their marriage.

What's really interesting is that Eyes Wide Shut plays out like an entirely different genre film than the genre it's supposed to be representing – in other words, it's an erotic movie (or a “mainstream porno”), and an epic one at that, masquerading as a thriller. (Incidentally, film critic Roger Ebert wrote an amazing piece on this in 1999 when the film was first released). The next two non-Christmas Christmas films have exactly this stylish masquerade in place, covering their own inherent genres under the guise of other genres. Following Eyes Wide Shut is another genre epic, Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. This film alludes to Christmas only when one of the characters, one of the eight trapped in an out-of-the-way haberdashery, quietly plays an out-of-tune Silent Night on the haberdashery's long-forgotten piano. Tarantino's movie, which is really just a blown-up version of the film that put him on the map 25 years ago (Reservoir Dogs), is turned into a romp disguised as John Carpenter's The Thing complete with the same star of that film – Kurt Russell – and music from the great Ennio Morricone; and it even features a few blatant touches of the Italian giallo genre (which Morricone was extremely active in for decades). The Hateful Eight successfully utilizes Tarantino's obsessions with Italian genre films (giallo, spaghetti western), to muddy the fact that his epic is ultimately a remake of one of his own films, and through this patchwork of genre celebration he manages to create a very engaging and impressive film in and of itself, if you can make it through the three-hour running time. As Eyes Wide Shut is also nearly three hours long, I wouldn't recommend programming these films back-to-back for your crazy Christmas double-feature, unless you feel like sitting yourself in for a long winter's night.

And if you find yourself up for more following these epics, then there's one more in store. Jess Franco's Eugenie De Sade. Firstly, this is an important film in the Jess Franco cannon, as it stars his once-muse, Soledad Miranda, along with other beauties from his early-seventies repertoire. Taking place in Berlin in the middle of winter, Eugenie De Sade at no time states that it takes place during the Christmas season, but the lush photography creates a dreamy and alluring winter wonderland for the story to take place in. And much like Stanley Kubrick's mainstream-porno-opus (yes, I'm just about to make this comparison between filmmakers), Jess Franco hides his softcore and alluring thriller behind the masque of the more perverse Marquis De Sade, lending the Marquis' name to his offering. And while this might be one of his less-famous films, there should be no contention that Eugenie De Sade is not as interesting, or as amazing, as Jess Franco's more famous offerings – quite the contrary, in fact. Soledad Miranda provides her uncanny beauty in her dependent (and defiant) stoic-muse persona to the best affect in this films, the absolute best out of her six with Franco (in my opinion, despite the beauty of Vampiros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy)... This in itself could be considered a fantastical Christmas gift to Soledad Miranda fans. Eugenie De Sade is in actuality more of an Italian-style surrealist-thriller, and with everything Franco thrown into the sink here, including go-go-dancers, fashion photography, jazz, stand-up comedians, and of course all sorts of sex, one would be fair in dubbing this Jess Franco's masterpiece. Franco's sex & death in Berlin quite possibly could have been more the film Stanley Kubrick had in mind for Eyes Wide Shut. Nevertheless, both films end up presenting themselves to cinematic audiences – along with The Hateful Eight, as well – as films other than they actually are. Mind-blowingly, this all works to the advantage of all three of these utterly fascinating snowbound and Christmas-set films. So following this, all I can say is go down the Christmas rabbit hole and discover (or re-discover) these films and engage yourself in a very merry, off-kilter, bizarre, cinematic Christmas!!

-V.

 

 

 

Rolls Royce Baby vs. Cecilia

Face value: Both Rolls Royce Baby and Jess Franco's Cecilia look like they might have been cut from the same cloth coming from (or inspired by) the internationally-successful Emmanuelle trilogy of erotic films. Structurally, all of these films share a very basic similarity, which is that they feature the exploits of the sexual-adventures of a female protagonist as portrayed in an energetic vignette-style plotting, taking us from sexual escapade to sexual escapade, usually with a single through-line based on the changing morals or personal discovery of said protagonist. But, as I first discovered both of these Jess Franco films in the last couple of months, there is no hiding that there are drastic and fundamental differences between the two Franco erotic-cinematic offerings. The first and most notable is that Jess Franco did not even direct Rolls Royce Baby, which starred his wife Lina Romay in the leading and titular role, as an experimental and adventurous nymph who is a photographic model-by-day; yet it was Franco himself who is rumored to have really directed many of the scenes within the film, which was directed by collaborator Erwin C. Dietrich. Rolls Royce Baby was more of a direct and immediate cinematic-response to Emmanuelle than the seven-years-later Cecilia, and Rolls Royce Baby shows the considerably more fun side of those erotic films. Also, Rolls Royce Baby does go into some full hardcore scenes, yet everything is consistently kept light and comedic, and it's overtly more interested in maintaining the voyeuristic aspect as an engaging plot characteristic as opposed to the character depth offered in Cecilia.

So, conversely then, Cecilia, which was made by Franco seven years later in 1982 for the Eurocine film company, is a much more serious affair, delving into the character's motivations and sexuality and even their insecurities as motivations for their sexual escapades. This film concerns a well-to-do housewife who finds a sexual reawakening after engaging in a somewhat uncomfortable threesome with her next-door-neighbour brothers. It's quickly revealed that the action that took place was actually a story she was relaying to her husband, with the confession that she found him even more sexually attractive after the incident; which leads them on a journey of sexual exploration through different partners. Played up with the aforementioned more serious tone, Cecilia as a piece of erotic cinema is nevertheless far more successful than the more cutesy-poo Rolls Royce Baby; and, in my opinion, even more successful than Emmanuelle. There are two reasons that struck me with this conclusion as I watched what I'm gladly willing to call Jess Franco's erotic masterpiece: the first is the previously-uncharted depths that Franco, as an erotic filmmaker, was willing to plunge into in so many aspects of the story – the characters, the photography and locations (the locations are just as striking as those used for the backdrops of his films She Killed in Ecstasy, How to Seduce a Virgin, and Countess Perverse), and the ramifications of the characters' actions in the story. The second most striking thing about Franco's Cecilia is how closely the photography and the plot resembles the amazing work of Franco's favourite erotic artist, the late Guido Crepax (whom incidentally created his own graphic-novel adaptation of the character of Emmanuelle and one of Jess Franco's other explored subjects, Venus in Furs). To watch Cecilia is to experience, as a viewer, the most cinematic and literal insight into Franco's own inspirations (of Crepax's works). As erotic slices of the cinematic world, both Cecilia and Rolls Royce Baby are very successful, although each maintains its own personality – and to be fair (or at least to clarify some production information), each of these films was produced in a different decade and close to ten years apart. But while both films succeed in the erotic-film arena, it's Cecilia that really knocks it out of the park as Jess Franco held his artistic inspirations firmly throughout the film and managed to deliver it with confidence, creating sexually-charge surreal set-pieces while expertly maintaining an engaging and believable down-to-earth framework.  

 

The Naschy/Franco Mondo Macabro Double-Feature

The Mondo Macabro retro-DVD distributor may have come late to the game in the Blu-ray arena, but when they arrived, it was with fanfare and fireworks for fans of the nearly ultra-niche genre film world. Knocking it out of the park with their The Fan and Symptoms blu-rays and their Greek-giallo double DVD releases, lately, Mondo Macabro have gone back to focus on a pair of utterly epitomic Euroshock filmmakers – I'm (obviously) talking about Paul Naschy and Jess Franco. For the latter, Mondo Macabro released onto blu-ray one of his lesser-known 80s sleaze-thrillers entitled The Night Has a Thousand Desires, which stars Franco's then-aging starlet-wife as a psychic who through several sexual encounters is the erotic and fetishistic vehicle for a story involving an elaborate con/scam that ultimately winds up being incredibly cheesy, although not for lack of trying – one can clearly see Franco's passion for telling this heist-sex-comedy story (perhaps unintentionally comic?) even though really, and in true Franco fashion, none of these thematic expectations, other than the sex, pays off successfully, and the whole affair ends up culminating in a barely-more-than-amusing conclusion. While it's clearly evident that Franco had loftier ideas for the film and the story, the gorgeous cinematography and Franco's affection for kitschy and vibrant set designs, and his hardwired knack for filming his muses in sexually explicit situations, all contribute to the memorable visual content of this nearly-lost minor gem. Overall, it's a curio-run-amuck in Franco's immense catalogue of films, and despite the fact that it's no Female Vampire, it's well worth checking out, especially for die-hard fans of the lovely Lina Romay.

 

Following this release, Mondo Macabro also saw fit to unleash a film from another prolific Spanish filmmaker, Paul Naschy – Inquisition – to my knowledge, this had been one of Naschy's harder-to-come-by films with an early DVD release relegated to the country of origin, Spain, and some evidence of an earlier European box-set release. But Naschy's 1976 film holds the same engaging tributes of his (in my opinion) most successful films, like Panic Beats and Dracula's Great Love – which is to say that Inquisition is brimming with unfolding plot and story elements, creating a twisty maze of double-crosses and doublebacks as it goes along, and hence elevating what could have been a generic revenge-scenario plot by placing it in the politically volatile world of religion and leadership politics of the Spanish Inquisition. Exploitation soars (with loads of nudity with women at the peril of the tortuous witch-hunt inquisition) while the movie's plot twists and an inspired defiance of genre convention and expectation propel one of Naschy's most under-appreciated genre films to the top of his prolific canon. Huge kudos to Mondo Macabro for digging this one up and unleashing it (and The Night Has a Thousand Desires) out into the sadly diminishing hardcopy jungle of North America.

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