Dug up from the archives...

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

Romina Power is Justine

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

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 Basterds 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

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

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

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

“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!

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”)

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.