Women Behind Bars (the film, not the sub-genre -- okay, the sub-genre, too)

Jess Franco's Women Behind Bars... what can I say other than, well, that was fun! Lina Romay looks curvy and gorgeous in this, her first leading role for director Jess Franco. Her looks and charisma pretty much carry the entire film, and while her performance isn't exactly expert, it's still magnetic. Franco shot this women-in-prison movie thinly disguised as a heist film one the coast of France -- in Nice, in fact. The film also co-stars Martine Stedil from Franco's Barbed Wire Dolls, another of Franco's WIP flicks (and after watching this movie, I also learned that Women Behind Bars, Barbed Wire Dolls, and 99 Women makeup a somewhat loose trilogy of Franco prison films). Blue Underground's DVD also includes a really nice feature on the shooting locations (you catch the pun there?) I'd have to say that this is certainly one of Franco's most fun films, but of course this is hugely a matter of taste. If you think Lina Romay looking gorgeous and prancing around nude, the occasional whipping, prison lesbianism, horribly staged murders, and some utterly terrible double-crosses over a jewelery heist is fun, then this is a pretty good way to pass a brisk 80 minutes. Oh, and those locations are lush, too. A word of warning: avoid the trailer until after the film (on the Blue Underground release) because it gives away one of the several twists in the last few minutes of the movie. Not that you'd be watching this movie for the plot twists, but, well...

My wife had to pull the DVD out of the player so she could watch her show, and asked me what the hell I'd been watching. Of course she'd been kidding around, but still, this came from a woman whose favorite show is Orange is the New Black -- but I guess if your prison lesbianism, rock-in-a-sock pummelings, backstabbings, sex and abuse by prison guards, and gratuitous nudity and muff-munching by over-sexed self-absorbed millennials is all glossy and Hollywood, then that's okay.

On a completely other note, Severin Films' Bloody Moon blu-ray was released last week. I think I'll throw my old Severin DVD in the player this afterlunch and see if I might want to upgrade. The stills on Severin's website make it look pretty tempting.

Have a happy weekend!

Cuadecuc - Vampir

It was about a week ago I'd come across a fairly recent article talking about Jess Franco, the making of Count Dracula, and the tandem film project that was being shot simultaneously - Cuadecuc Vampir, by the underground Spanish filmmaker Pere Portabella. Looking more into this, I found out that Franco and Portabella were firends, and they had constructed the idea of this dual-project together. Funnily, Portabella's Cuadecuc is a completely experimental film, juxtaposing one of Franco's most straight-forward cinematic efforts. Of course, the straight-forwardness of his Dracula film is exactly what Christopher Lee liked about it - at the time, Lee had felt that the Hammer Dracual films were straying a little too far off the mark, and he welcomed the chance to play the Count in Franco's far more literal adaptation. Unfortunately, this didn't make for a better Dracula film, but even after-the-fact Christopher Lee stood up for it, saying that at least they gave the novel adaptation a good shot.

On the flipside, Pere Portabella was shooting Cuadecuc Vampir on grainy black-and-white film. The article 

Dracula in the Avant-Garde, or, How Jess Franco got into MOMA discusses the film in a way that makes it seem like a mixed-up of half-Dracula, from an alternate point of view, and half making-of documentary. I don't think this is entirely accurate (and this is purely opinion), because I don't think Portabella's film is a making-of documentary at all. To me, it is entirely an alternate rendering of Count Dracula within the context of an unusually engaging experimental film. It can't really be called a documentary as it's clear that the actors involved in Jess Franco's version are also playing to Portabella's camera, creating a skewed fiction for Caudecuc, one that is edited with some very candid, and yes, behind-the-scenes footage. But even the behind-the-scenes footage seems put-on, the actors know they're being filmed, and are still playing to the camera. The only truly candid footage is where Potrabella is showing us scenes actually being directed in Count Dracula, where the cast and crew's energies are focused towards Franco's direction, and Portabella's camera is acting more like a fly-on-the-wall, but because there is no location soundtrack for any of these shots, it ceases to be any sort of functianl documentary -- and this is to Cuadecuc's benefit, mind you -- to me this collection of footage serves to create a film that is also about the art of film, it's an experimental form of what would later in the 1990's be coined a bio-pic. Yet there's no dialog at all, the film runs over a sometimes hypnotic soundtrack. 

Because Cuadecuc Vampir was not exactly easy to track down, and because I think it's amazing in its own way, you can watch the movie here, until someone asks me to take it down.  

 

Crafty weekend

...or, "Make your own damned Jess Franco Prints". I got the idea after trying to purchase the Vampyros Lesbos poster online - which is actually designed with a slightly stretched image of Soledad Miranda. A lot of buyers wouldn't notice, but I found it rather annoying. So instead I found some high-res images on the internet and used Gimp to mess with the contrast and lettering, and made them into high-res 5x7 prints. Smaller than a poster, sure, but I like having Soledad over the computer desk. I swiped a sheet of white card stock from my wife's crafting bookcase and printed on that. Sorry about the crap photo, taken with a horridly outdated iPhone 3.

Severin's Hot Nights of Lina... I mean, Linda!

I've had Severin Films' triple blu-ray/DVD combo in my possession for a while now -- at least a few months -- and I finally gave the set a spin this week and sat my ass down and watched it.

So, why did I wait many months before checking out The Hot Nights of Linda in hi-def? Easy, I thought it was a simple exploitation picture. I usually prefer my Jess Franco on the surreal or kitschy side. What I hadn't noticed before, was that Hot Nights pairs up starlette Alice Arno with Lina Romay once again, and as I've recently been enjoying this erotically dynamic duo in other films like Countess Perverse and How to Seduce a Virgin, I suddenly had more of a motive to check out this Franco curio.

Surprisingly, the film, in its featured form (and I'll get back to this in a minute), is not actually all that exploitative. For a Franco film, I'd say it's midway on the scale between drama and sleaze. There is ample nudity, to be sure, but was really stunned me was how Hot Nights of Linda actually played out more like an Italian giallo, with flavors of Jean Rollin thrown in. Some of the scenes were highly stylized and the camerawork was energetic. Even the on-screen title screamed out giallo -- "But Who Raped Linda?" -- that's right, seems this is actually the official English-translated title. The last scene of the movie ends up wrapping right back to the first scene of the film, again lending it that giallo quality. There's even a sub-plot involving a male cop and a female reporter who are spying on the sexual shenanigans going on at the villa across the way, where our lead actresses are cavorting with each other and with the servants. This distracting sub-plot is a device Franco's used before, as in Nightmares Come at Night, but this time there is a better payoff in the end after someone ends up dead.

I absolutely loved this film! The main reason I found this movie of Franco's so attractive was that I've never seen a Jess Franco giallo before. I suppose you could throw Bloody Moon into that category, but the style of that film was more influenced by the trend of 80's slashers of its time period. Hot Nights of Linda was more of an honest, mid-seventies experimental mystery. A giallo.

Going back a little to the nudity and the cavorting, I must mention (confess?) that the erotic performances by Lina Romay in this film are now, by far, my favourite. Certainly, she falls back on her characteristically tried-and-true naked bed-writhing, but this time the camera captures a far more honest erotic energy from Lina, more so than my previously-favorite erotic showcases of hers, which up until now had been Exorcism, Female Vampire, and Lorna the Exorcist.

I'll go back to where I'd said I'd get back to -- where I'd mentioned that the version of The Hot Nights of Linda spoken about on this page was in its "featured form" from the Severin blu-ray. Evidently, someone found this film print in a Barcelona bordello (how cool is that?) and the film was restored, mostly, and transferred in hi-def to this wonderful blu-ray. Amazingly, you can see where they've literally had to glue the film back together. This is the version with the on-screen title But Who Raped Linda? appearing in the opening credits. Severin has also included, in this limited 3-disc release, a version of the film on DVD called Les Nuits Brulantes. Severin labels this DVD as the "Alternate Banana Version". Anyone who's seen their cover-art for this new blu-ray release can guess that there's a scene of Lina Romay blowing a banana -- and they'd be right to guess that, although the scene is pretty tame. So I had to assume, from Severin's "Alternate Banana Version" labeling, that the banana scene would go father in this "rare" version. Well, in what is a videotape transfer of Les Nuits Brulantes, there is no banana blowjob at all. There is, however, banana lesbian sex. There is also no sight of the cop-and-reporter spying sub-plot (which was actually a shame, because the actress playing the reporter was absolutely lovely), but there is, instead, plenty of hard core sex, nearly all of it featuring Lina Romay throughout. There are some very nice extended scenes featuring Romay and Alice Arno together, but other than that, I'd have to say that the featured, HD version, The Hot Nights of Lina (aka But Who Raped Linda?) is by far the better of the two versions, for many reasons.

Go ahead, pick up Severin's cool-ass blu-ray and check them out and see! Before their "limited edition" is all gone. Highly recommended.

Nightmares Come at Night in HD and Deconstructed

So I finally watched that actual film on the Redemtion/Kino blu-ray last night, only to be reminded that Nightmares Come at Night is still most definitely one of my favorites. The movie, if you need some background on it, is actually more of an experimental dream-thriller about a double- and triple-crossing heist. All of the characters seem to be in on the plot for their own financial ends, save for our leading lady Diana Lorys (The Awful Dr. Orloff) in her first erotic lead, who is basically being mind-fucked by her friend and her psychiatrist, with a large sum of ill-gotten money dangling as the motivation. Soledad Mrianda, in her small role, is simply lovely, she was entirely magnetic even in her early collaborations with Franco. She and her boyfriend are watching the three-way situation progress from across the property, and they seem to be waiting for the main trio to fuck themselves over so that they can steel the money from a jewelery heist for themselves. The plot is reminiscent of some of Umberto Lenzi's mind-fuck thriller from the late sixties, but Franco really puts a dreamy spin on his take on the erotic thriller.

The opening credit sequence is a brilliant montage of freeze-frames, giving the movie and arthouse lean. What's fantastic about a lot of Franco's films, and I think this is evident in Nightmares as well, is that they seem to be a deconstruction of exploitation thrillers. Instead of hiding scenes of eroticism, they are played out in extremely long sequences that almost juxtapose the thriller/heist plotline. It's almost as if he's telling us that since he went out to make an erotic thriller, he's going to give us exactly that in broken-down genuine terms. I don't think Franco's deconstruction of film genres are intentional, or intentionally artsy or critical of the genres, the deconstruct actually comes out of a basic honesty and directness of the material he's filming - the material he wants to film. And I agree with him -- hell, if you're going to do an erotic thriller, might as well have most of the expositional dialogue rattling off while the actors are naked, or dressed in transparent clothing, right? I think the man was an honest genius, sometimes.

Like so many of his films (Two Undercover Angels, Vampyros Lesbos, Exorcism) it's almost the deconstructed scenes that veer away from the plot that fans remember the most - and they do stick out the most. The slow striptease of Nightmares, the stripping caged go-go-dancer in the silver knee-high boots from Two Undercover Angels, and of course, Soledad Miranda's famous mannequin and candelabra dance-art performance that encapsulates Vampyros Lesbos.

Redemption's blu-ray is amazing. The picture looks fantastic, and they didn't touch the films dirt or scratches - which I love. Personally, I think it's one of the best-looking films, next to Female Vampire. I think I'm going to check out one of Kino's Mara Bava releases next. I have Whip and the Body sitting on the living room coffee table, now.

Thanks to Rock! Shock! Pop! rockshockpop.com for some of these photos!

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...

The Seduction of She Killed in Ecstasy (Sie tötete in Ekstase)

So, after several years (a few too many, in fact), and right out of the blue, I'd decided to re-watch "She Killed in Ecstasy" last night. This, despite the fact that my just-arrived and still-wrapped brand new Nightmares Come at Night blu-ray is sitting on the coffee table in the living room. That's alright, we'll get to that one later. Now, I never did purchase that nice anamorphicly enhanced second DVD release that Image put out a few years after the Synapse Films version... Nope, I still have that first DVD release. Well, still have...?

To tell this story properly, one would have to recall, or imagine, the far-away time of 2002. It was near the end of my four-year employment at Blockbuster Video and I'd owned a DVD player for about a year and a half at this point, and I'd had an internet connection for not much longer than that. I don't exactly remember what the catalyst was, though it was probably the Immoral Tales book I'd been toting around from apartment to apartment for the previous 5 years and still hadn't read all the way through (this book now, by the way, is one of the more cherished possessions in my library) -- but whatever it was that ignited my sudden interest, I found myself suddenly obsessed with the idea Jess Franco and his films. I wanted to find out as much as I could about him, and I looked up anything I could find on the man and his movies on the internet, printing several of the pages off. I also photocopied pages from that Immoral Tales tome so I could highlight the shit out of it. And Soledad Miranda... Oh, my. The beauty, and the mystique that surrounded her -- the mystery and terrible coincidence around her tragically young death -- and the idyllic thoughts that Jess Franco could have so much loyalty to his reciprocally loyal muses, more so that I'd ever witnessed from any auteur at that point... I was enthralled. I also immediately began researching Jess Franco titles and available DVDs - which were, in fact, not all that easy to come by in North Vancouver back in 2002 - well, there was one store called Tom's Video that stocked a copy of Vampyros Lesbos to rent, but by the time I got to it the disc was scratched to shit and I couldn't watch it. However, I did find a couple of titles at a wholesaler DVD warehouse in Vancouver, but I decided, ultimately, to go through the catalogue distributors that supplied the Blockbuster Video I was working at. After all, I was a manager, I could order videos. I found, recently, that I still have that order confirmation sheet.

   "Female Vampire DVD": $35.99

   "She Killed in Ecstasy DVD": $49.99

The prices were nuts, but I ordered them anyway and then just sold them to myself at Blockbuster's computer-default DVD pricing, which was $29.99 per title. Plus my employee discount, which was 10 or 20 percent - I can't remember anymore, it's been too long. I do remember being so excited to watch these movies, I was ready to blow open my mind to the Jess Franco experience, and by the time the DVDs arrived at the store I'd found another spot downtown Vancouver called A&B Sound that had stocked three Jess Franco DVD titles from Anchor Bay. So I bought the original Succubus DVD release as well.

2002, that was. I was not ready for Jess Franco. I watched all three films, and I think my jaw was touching the floor (or at least it was by the end of the third movie). My reaction was not a good one to seeing the likes of Lina Romay walking directly into the camera (even bumping it!), the strange jump-cuts and shots that began out-of-focus or zoomed it, slightly missed their target, and re-adjusted. Plus the video on all of the DVDs were full of dirt, scratches, sound-pops. What the hell??? No thank you, sirs and ma'ams, I was definitely not ready for Franco. I actually went and returned all three DVDs to my store for a full (or perhaps inflated, for my troubles) refund. Even the Succubus DVD that hadn't even come from my store in the first place (we used the same video distributor to A&B Sound, anyway, so they did give me a Return Authorization Number for all three). Good thing we had a shrink-wrapping machine in the store. I was left reeling from that cinematic experience. I remember thinking that each Franco disc I put would be better - had to be better! But the aesthetics looked similar, the stories too damned dreamy and the narratives too disjointed.

Well, if you're reading this, then you've obviously seen what this blog is about - and so you know my initial shock at Jess Franco's films eventually wore off, and not so long after turned to something of a curious appreciation. A couple of years went by and the more accessible Franco films like Two Undercover Angels (Anchor Bay), Exorcism (Synapse), and soon, Vampyros Lesbos (I bought the Image re-release that had just come out - I would have stuck with Synapse, but I seriously couldn't find a copy at that time for less than 45 bucks!), well, they began to grow on me. And I kept trying different films, kept dipping my toes into his world. And looking back, I seriously think (scratch that, I know) that Soledad Miranda, or at least the ideaof Soledad Miranda, was what kept me going back to those waters to dip my toes in. I had no idea how deep those waters were at that time... 

Eventually, when the stars aligned, I came across that Synapse DVD of She Killed in Ecstasy at a second-hand shop that is now long gone from Granville Street & Robson in the heart Vancouver. Image Entertainment had already, by now, re-released that film, but somehow I needed to reconnect myself with that original one. Plus it was $14.99, pretty cheap back then. Female Vampire came back to me via a friend who had also purchased it somewhere along the way, and disliked it, and then that copy was replaced once again by the 4-film Jess Franco Collection from Image, and then finally to be replaced by the recent Blu-ray from Redemption. So I've ended up owning that damned film four times! I didn't replace Succubus until Blue Underground re-released it a couple of years after that (we're around 2006 now, for those of you trying to keep track). I obviously have a good amount of love for all of these films now, and often they just keep getting better with each viewing.

And now, we're at last night, and I was putting that old Synapse DVD into the player for the third time in my life (and my third player, too -- but that DVD is still the same old one from 2005). No, it didn't magically turn anamorphic sitting there in my box of European DVDs, but it was magical, anyway, as I got sucked right back into the locales of that the film (that seriously rival those amazing locations of Countess Perverse and How to Seduce a Virgin), and fully engaged with the amazing on-screen charisma of Soledad... That camera loved her as much as Franco did. Or perhaps, Franco's camera did, anyway. After this third viewing of She Killed in Ecstasy I'm reminded and reaffirmed as to why it has a place at the very, very tip-top of my all-time favorite Jess Franco movie (where there remains a spot for Succubus to share, as well). With each repeat viewing the magic of Franco's unique eye and Soledad's performance, almost like a artistic dancer of the cinema, seems to be getting even more potent. So no, I was not ready for Franco in 2002.

And I suppose that now, it's high time for the Vampyros Lesbos re-watch.

Special thanks to soledadmiranda.com