A Week of Wonders

A Week of Wonders.

Roaming the short aisles of a small local video retail store, I came across a new copy of The Criterion Collection's blu-ray release for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Noting that the price sticker reflected the same numbers as what the disc was currently on sale for at Amazon (I know, this is a bad motive for purchase, I should've just outright supported this local independent video store – a treasure nowadays), I asked the clerk (and casual acquaintance) if he'd seen the film. 

"No," he tells me, "but everybody says that I have to watch it!".

I totally understand – for years now, a good friend of mine has urged me to watch this movie. It's one of those things where there is sporadic opportunity to watch this film, and I could have always called my friend up and asked, "Hey, can I swing by and watch your European-import DVD of that movie?", but as opportunity sits there gathering dust, the accessibility of the movie is what remained in my mind, not so much (or in fact replacing) the urgency to watch it – even though for years Valerie and Her Week of Wonders was not readily available to most people in North America (specifically, Vancouver).

Finally with a more direct opportunity to watch the film – as I now personally owned the new Criterion blu-ray – I wasted no time (this time, years after being introduced to the existence of this film) in placing the disc in my blu-ray player and giving it a literal spin. My old friend, knowing that I was a huge fan, cinematically speaking, of lush visuals and somewhat hallucinogenic and non-linear storytelling, was right in trying to turn me onto this film, practically since I'd first met him. But would I have received the film with the same sense of joy and excitement years ago? I can't say; though my subconscious tells me, probably not. The timing in which one receives a film is nearly as important as the work itself. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a nearly indescribably film in its emotional sense, and in the experience of its visuals and dreamlike plotting; and I mean this in a very subtle sense. Somehow, and paradoxically, it's one of the few subtly earth-shifting films I've had the pleasure of watching. 

Incredibly, on the Criterion blu-ray, stored within the few special features available on the disc, there are direct comparisons of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and Jess Franco's kitschy/dreamlike Vampyros Lesbos; they include imagery from Franco's film to illustrate the comparisons, as well. Of course the influence of this gorgeous film can be seen beyond Franco's work and into the likes of Tony Scott's The Hunger , Baba Yaga, and even some of the more hallucinogenic Italian giallo films. After experiencing Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, not only is it now sitting in my top-six list, it has shifted my perspective on the odd stories of weird, dreamlike European films.

As I write this essay I'm traveling on a bus on the way to work, unbeknownst to me, I'm about to see another film this evening that has also been obviously influenced by Valerie and Her Week of Wonders – Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room. This film is a languid trip, full of pop culture and cinematic references played up for laughs in what is essentially an experiment in non-linear comedy and the multiple sub-genres of the fantastique. 

 

I had read a review of The Forbidden Rom – unusual for me; I aggressively avoid reading reviews and watching trailers for films that I'm interested in – I don't like anything given away (or anything to feed into expectation, really). The review (reviewer) I read happened to have missed the whole structure of this ebbing & flowing plot altogether. He writes that he agonizes over where (or whether) the film is taking him somewhere, or anywhere; in fact, this reviewer has missed the whole idea that the plot is meant to flow in and out like the tide of the ocean, and the deeper it goes, it eventually takes you back to the shore, to the anchor plot-point of the film – which is a submarine crew that is stuck aboard without air. From this story point, the movie takes us into the realms of vampires, films noir, jungle exploitation cinema, and strange stories of brain surgery and murder. It is, in a word, amazing, and not at all disjointed as the reviewer of the review had interpreted it. In fact, I could draw the plot right here: ^ /\ ^ (little wave, big wave, little wave). And the more you allow the three waves of the plot to take you into its depths and back again, at some point trusting the filmmakers, our storytellers, knowing that they will bring us back to the anchor point safely, it becomes not at all about trying to follow the plot, but simply allowing the plot and story to lift us on its waves and allow us to float serenely above the unknown ocean under our backs. It did take me until act three (the third wave) before I trusted Guy Maddin enough to let him take my conscious for the ride (or: how I learned to stop worrying about trying to remember the string of vignettes that led to the current imagery I was experiencing). 

 

And speaking of allowing one's self to experience a narrative – going back to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, this film's broken narrative structure is that of a more common non-linear storytelling – experimental, but within a single moving direction, no matter how wild the tangent becomes – not out to the depths and back again like The Forbidden Room. But the visuals are strikingly incomparable between these two very specific films, influences and cinematic references notwithstanding. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders does definitely have more in common, visually, with Jess Franco's Vamyros Lesbos (as well as some of his other films) and the experimental vampire films of Jean Rollin. Much like The Forbidden Room, though, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders uses genre tropes to stylize the sequences that stray from the anchored narrative, whereas on the flipside, Franco's films (like Vampyros Lesbos) remain fully in their own strange, often kitschy world. 

I have found myself over the last two days recommending The Forbidden Room to anyone who will listen to my rants about it. Usually the phrase "This film is nutballs" naturally works its way in there.  

On a final note, I can't remove from my brain the idea that when Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room makes its way to home video, my opportunity to present myself a mindbending triple feature will be at my very fingertips. And that would certifiably be going into the depths of a cerebral and visual ocean of some unknowable cinematic significance. 

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (and the Erotic Double Feature)

I have been looking forward to re-watching Jess Franco's The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein since the Redemption Blu-ray went up for pre-sale on Amazon this spring. I had been dying to give this movie a second look since the Image (R1) DVD had been released several years ago (now long out-of-print). In what seemed like a well-timed coincidence, I also received Hammer's Countess Dracula in the mail at the same time, also sporting a phenomenal new Blu-ray edition thanks to Synapse Films. I sat down last night to watch this impromptu Euro-erotic-horror double feature. Both film are a little on the lagging side of pulling the plot along, Countess Dracula more obviously so, as it doesn't quite have the quirkiness of Franco's "horror" style to keep it as utterly weird. Hammer's film, Countess Dracula, is a retelling of the Elizabeth Bathory legend (a Countess who killed virgin girls and bathed in their blood in order to retain her own youth), and a lurid as this might sound there is only one real reason to watch (and in this case, re-watch) Countess Dracula -- Ingrid Pitt. On the other hand, Jess Franco's The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is about a half-bird woman (with blue feathers glued to her naked body) who waders about a castle scaring naked lesbian nymphs and setting up fatal sado-sexual games to unsuspecting guests all in an effort to create a race of super-humans my mating Frankenstein's monster with an engineered super-female. Franco's film is so voyeuristically bonkers that you don't really mind the fact that every single shot and scene is probably a little longer that it really needs to be, even at a cool 74 minutes.

 

I was first intrigued by The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein when I first came across a review of the movie while researching Jess Franco nearly fifteen years ago. I'd heard about Franco through the book Immoral Tales and was keen on discovering some of his works. After some research, I'd compiled a list of films I was eager to see: Vampyros Lesbos, Female Vampire, She Killed in Ecstasy, and The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein. At the time it had been easier to track down the first three titles, all had just been released onto DVD by Synapse Films and Image. Eventually, Image would also release a DVD of Erotic Rites, but sadly, it was cut of all the nudity; Image had used an international censored print for the transfer. Somewhat more annoyingly, some of the nude and more kitschy sexual and voyeuristic shots had been compiled in a small special feature on Image's DVD, and I wondered why they hadn't bothered to restore those shots into the film.

Seeing now Redemption's fully restored blu-ray of Franco's film, I really wonder how the original Image DVD, and the international print, for that matter, ever really had a chance. There was for more that had been cut out of the film than those DVD special features could even indicate, and at 74 minutes uncut, it is no surprise that I was never fond of that first DVD version of Franco's wild film. The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is no masterpiece of  Franco's, but f9inally, now that we have this newly restored version from Redemption, the movie can finally sit comfortably with Vampyros Lesbos and A Virgin Among the Living Dead. 

New Severin Releases...

Earlier this month, Severin Films released two of Franco's most well-known and best films from the early seventies, Vampyros Lesbos (most well-known) and She Killed in Ecstasy (best film), in limited-number blu-ray editions. While I wait anxiously on this BC Long Holiday Weekend for the post office to re-open tomorrow to find out if my online pre-orders actually arrived or not, merely two weeks since these blu-rays' official release, Vampyros Lesbos is already out-of-print/no longer available in Canada. At a print run of 7,500 copies for Vampyros Lesbos, for it to have already out-sold the still-available She Killed in Ecstasy at its even more limited print run of 4,000 (nearly half that of VL!) is something of a crime worthy of the vengeance of Soledad Miranda. Severin's Vampyros Lesbos blu-ray set does also include the "bootleg" Spanish DVD Las Vampiras, and the She Killed in Ecstasy set includes the Vampires' Sound Incorporation official soundtrack (the music was also utilized to awesome effect in The Devil Came from Akasava); but the inclusion of the generally-available soundtrack isn't going to make or break the SKIE collector's set; and yet while VL is certainly more notorious of the two films released, She Killed in Ecstasy boasts the better plotting, scenarios, scenery, and even sex. Coupled with the amazing soundtrack, this dazzling cut-and-run flick hits the viewer like it's overscored psychedelic revenge jazz track intends it to, and in a way that Vampyros Lesbos, for all its own awesomeness, can't. I mean, really, where else are you going to see a nude woman smothered by kitschy inflatable late-sixties euro-furnishings at the hands of another nude woman (Soledad Miranda) in a fur-lined apartment?

While Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy, and The Devil Came from Akasava were entirely produced on back-to-back and overlapping schedules in the early seventies, the promotional materials from all three films were alternately used to promote, and were henceforth more so associated with, Vampyros Lesbos (also sometimes spelled Vampiros Lesbos); which became something of the flagship film of this unique (if unintended) loose trilogy in Franco's repertoire. The flagship film was the first one that came to my attention, as well, back in the early days of niche genre market VHS releases when Redemption/Salvation distributed it on videotape in the UK (I discovered this VHS tape while traveling around Europe in 1997), and then again when Synapse Films released the same two films Severin just released -- on non-anamorphic DVD in 2002.

It was during a re-watch of this very same Synapse DVD just last year that the personal status of She Killed in Ecstasy easily cemented itself in the top spot of my favourite Jess Franco films, and in fact, one of my favourite films of all-time. SKIE is a brilliant jazz symphony of all things catchy and quirky, kitschy and engaging, and simply beautiful within its gorgeously rough edges. Get it now, before it's gone. Missing out on She Killed in Ecstasy would be an unfortunate regret.

 

 

Duke of Burgundy

In on of the new March articles from the BFI / Sight & Sound in the UK, Duke of Burgundy director Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio) lists the cinematic influences on his brilliant new film, a tale of lepidoptery and lesbian sadomasochism set in an all-female world -- and Jess Franco's A Virgin Among the Living Dead is listed as #2!

There are other fantastic articles this month on Strickland's film, plus the 2013 retrospect on Jess Franco (1930-2013)

The Renato Polselli interruption

I can't believe it's been three months since the last post -- and I'd been doing so well! I've got the amazing-looking blu-ray of Franco's The Demons sitting on the buffet in my apartment -- still wrapped. This fall has been fully and more incomprehensibly busy than I'd imagined it would be. In the meantime, it's not that I've been doing without the watching of European cult cinema -- in fact, I'd just re-watched Italian director Renato Polselli's awesomely surreal giallo/experimental/exploitation flick Delerium (from the 1970s), which is actually pretty amazing in a low-brow arthouse-giallo way, doing away with the traditional murder-mystery narrative and instead playing the whole idea of the giallo sub-genre in a dreamy, surrealistic presentation that's filled with blood and nudity and general craziness. I remember when I first discovered Delirium, it was back in 2003 when a local Vancouver video store called Reel-Horror was moving locations and selling of part of their DVD stock in an effort to make the move slightly easier and more economical -- I purchased this Anchor Bay DVD with four or five other titles, and this was one of the first ones I put on later that week - and it always stuck in my mind. Recently, on this Delirium re-watch, I was reminded that not only did I have a copy of Redemption's Demons blu-ray sitting on the buffet waiting to be opened and watched, I also had a copy of Poleslli's Black Magic Rites -- aka The Reincarnation of Isabelle -- sitting there, purchased from Amazon a good month and a half before Franco's The Demons. High on the mind-bending and energetically colorful exploitative after-effects of Delirium,  I threw Black Magic Rites into the blu-ray player.

On Redemption's Black Magic Rites blu-ray packaging, there's a quote from TV Guide (of all places) -- "Demonic and sexually depraved... keeps one watching in dazed astonishment."  Okay, that doesn't even begin to cover it. Everything in that blurb is true -- but what TV Guide doesn't tell you is how absolutely crazy Black Magic Rites is. Formerly titled The Reincarnation of Isabelle, the films opens up with said reincarnation through a black-magic ritual involving the devil and several naked folks and a lot of chanting. As we watch the film and its many scenes of satanic rituals and witch-burnings and sexual encounters, we are forced to learn that the plot is not just about reincarnating a burned-at-the-stake witch -- oh, no, what the plot is actually trying to deliver is the superbly convoluted supernatural idea of an ever-occurring reincarnation of a witch who has, throughout hundreds of years, been tricked into vampirism and inadvertently mistaken as a witch, double-crossed and burned alive, and the man double-crossing her had also simultaneously been double-crossing another one of their friends, tricking that man into thinking he was insane, in one of his many re-incarnations over the same hundreds of years. At one point, in the last few minutes of the film, the villain, who is explaining all of this, tells the other characters (and us), "You will never understand this." No, of course we won't. The gleefully over-complicated plot drives full-speed ahead without any concern given to the plot whatsoever other than delivering us wicked twists, kaleidoscopic visuals, and as much genre-based exploitative elements as it can possibly contain in its surrealistic vision of erotic horror and witchcraft. In short, this movie is awesome. It is without a doubt one of the most hallucinogenic, insane concoctions of  Euro-horror that I've ever seen, and I can both recommend it while also advising that you might not exactly experience it in the same light -- but hell, I did not put on Black Magic Rites expecting to get any sane, traditional horror narrative out of it. Enjoy at your own risk. 

Merely one day after experiencing Polselli's Black Magic Rites (which I should note utilizes most of the same cast from Delirium), I came across a top-ten Jess Franco film list on the internet, written for an internet journal back in 2012. While I didn't particularly agree with most of the author's selection of top Jess Franco flicks, it did make me realise that I've been neglecting this blog for far too long. And in celebration of Jess Franco, here's my own current top-ten Franco Flick list (probably much different than the lists I myself have made over the last few years, but I like to think that I continue to watch these movies as I become a different person throughout my life. Mainly by drinking more beer). Here's to 2014:

Top Jess Franco Films:

1. She Killed in Ecstasy

2. Euginie De Sade

3. Succubus

4. Countess Perverse

5. How to Seduce a Virgin

6. Exorcism & Black Masses

7. Female Vampire

8. Eugine... The Story of Her Journey into Perversion

9. Justine

10. Vampyros Lesbos

Although I have to say I also quite enjoyed the recently-released Hot Nights of Linda. So that gets a special mention.

-V.

Soledad Miranda: July 9, 1943 - August 18, 1970.

The lovely Soledad Miranda has been on my mind all week, I will assume that subconsciously I had somehow retained the fact that she's passed away this week, 44 years ago at the age of 27. Consciously, I can honestly say I didn't remember that at all, or at the very least, the fact that this was the week of her death was nowhere near the front of my mind. Certainly not one of Franco's more prolific muses, due only to her horribly untimely death in 1970, Soledad Miranda nonetheless remains likely the most remembered of his actresses. Having done bit parts in American film productions in the 1960's, it's her work with the late Jess Franco that she will forever be widely associated with. Their collaborative efforts were standouts not just for Miranda's magnetic beauty and mystery, but also for the kitschy, dreamy, surreal and gorgeously erotic qualities these collaborations brought to the world of Jess Franco's cinema in a short period of time.  

I had stated, a few posts ago, that I was considering  -- in fact, looking forward to -- a re-watching of Vampyros Lesbos, which is probably the pair's most famous creation together. And I certainly did give it a re-watch; however, only to discover that my own imagination had built this film up into an (understandable) iconic representation of the Miranda/Franco collaborations... when in fact, I think now that while still enjoyable, it ranks as one of the lesser-realized of the collaborative efforts. The abundance of potential was ultimately exhibited in far more creative, engaging ways, in their other works together.

That being said, nearly all of the Miranda/Franco films have remained steady personal favourites of mine within Fracno's enormous film repertoire. It cannot be denied that the man easily knew how to film the most of one of his favourite subjects... Soledad Miranda.

Personal favourite #1: She Killed in Ecstasy ...This was also a fairly recent re-watch for me, solidifying its place in my heart and mind as my all-time favourite Franco film, and in actual fact one of my favourite films ever made. Soledad's best performance, and some of the best surreal cinematography in Franco's career. Amazing locations and highly kitschy sets, to boot.

Favourite #2: Eugenie De Sade (De Sade 2000) ...Truthfully, another one of my top favourites overall, lush cinematography and it really felt like Soledad Miranda was starting to own these films. It's a lurid little thriller set in the wintertime. 

#3: Nightmares Come at Night ...Although this was at the beginning of the Miranda/Franco cycle, and so the actress was relegated to a very minor supporting role in this erotic/heist/double-cross dream-thriller, she often easily outshined her leading costars. Very sexy and less reveling than in her other Franco films, Miranda is really the reason I hold such a high regard for this movie -- although the erotic-surreal plot is pretty engaging, too. Pieces of this film were cut into another Franco/Miranda/Eurocine collaboration under a three-picture deal the trio was putting together, which included Sex Charade and De Sade 2000. Sex Charade is a film steeped in rumour and mystery -- historically speaking, there was a release of this film, which was rumoured to be nothing more than a re-edit/mash-up of previous footage shot for Eurocine, a practice the production company would become notorious for in the following decades (70's and 80's). The Paris Cinematheque has claimed to film historians (See the "Nightmares Come at Night" Blu-ray) to have a pristine print of Sex Charade, yet it has to this day never actually been seen or confirmed by anyone -- perhaps because it really was just a money-grab release using recycled footage and outtakes of other Franco films, but perhaps, too, because it was never really intended to exist (or to be remembered, and therefore, exist) -- it is not listed in the Eurocine catalogue.

#4. The Devil Came from Akasava ...Well, this hurt me, just a little, to place this in ranking order over Vampiros Lesbos. It is not a better film -- but for the intents and purposes of this list (namely Soledad Miranda), I was forced to push it over Vampyros Lesbos simply because Soledad Miranda's screen presence in this one is simply to melt over. As the French like to say in English, You'll die a little. If De Sade 2000, Nightmares Come at Night, and Sex Charade was the Franco/Miranda trilogy for Eurocine, well, Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy, and The Devil Came from Akasava are certainly a trilogy of their own, as well -- all three latter films were shot back-to-back and feature the same amazing jazz score of The Vampires' Sound Incorporation.

#5 Vampyros Lesbos ...Of course, this film was still going to be on the list, while it might not be the best of stories (probably just slightly better than Devil Came from Akasava) -- and ranking lowest in the still-perfectly-mentionable section of the list -- we can absolutely not ever forget the human mannequin and candelabra & mirror fetish stage show that is really the feature of this whole film, with Soledad Miranda showing us her erotic, bizarre, hypnotically charming moves. The stage show is the film, if you're going to watch this one for any reason at all, the other scenes pale easily in comparison. Luckily for us Jess Franco knew exactly what to exploit in these movies.

 

Return to the Bloody Moon

So, I went back to Bloody Moon - the DVD from Severin Films - merely a couple of evenings ago if only to judge if the movie/DVD would be worth an upgrade to Severin's freshly-released Blu-ray -- and while this may sound like a plug, well, it is and it isn't. It isn't mostly because I don't ask them for any free swag (i.e. Blu-rays), so there is absolutely no silently contractual obligation to plug anything one way or another. However, this non-plug may be indicative of Severin's meticulous authoring when it comes to their products... as Samuel Jackson said to Vin Diesel in "XXX", "You're a victim of your own success." But in the interest of keeping one duly annoyed, I'll get back to this later...

Okay, so Bloody Moon the film, is definitely worth a re-watch -- and I'm specifically speaking to those of you (perhaps like me) who may have quickly labelled Franco's Bloody Moon a mere Franco-slasher in the midst of a quick and brief cinematic assessment during the watching/devouring/learning of the extensive body of this man's work. But it's not just a slasher, nay... Also a disco-slasher. A Euro-slasher. A giallo. In fact, Bloody Moon has for more in common with the films of Lucio Fulci than Friday the 13th, despite what the easy, broad descriptions of this movie may imply. It really does resonate within the style of an Italian Lucio Fulci gialli, filled with a surprisingly confident style depicting a more dream-like slasher/thriller narrative and abundant sexuality, fully appreciative of the female form and the leading characters' magnetism. Actually, the entire film is surprisingly stylistic and engaging -- for those who may have thrown this aside as a mere slasher -- previously. One could easily pair this film up with a double-feature featuring Fulci's Murder Rock or New York Ripper. Or City of the Living Dead, of you're really into electric circular power tools. Also, it springs on us a double-double twist ending that you won't see coming, as you'll likely have been distracted by stylish photography, bizarre acting, bad special effects, and naked people.

Okay, but, a new upgrade to blu-ray? Unfortunately... I don't know. The cheesy special effects will be even cheesier in a 2K BRD re-release... but of course, so will other assets of the film become clear(er). Take, for instance, the scene wherein three young women are sitting at a public outdoor pool-side table, all topless, watching a tennis match. Topless. How unconditionally Euro-artsy, indeed. We would never be witness to such a thing in an American slasher, because hell, in North America, that just wouldn't make sense! In a Jess Franco film it makes all the sense in the world, which is why we adore this bloody genius. I suppose that the importance a blu-ray upgrade, in the end, would ultimately depend entirely on the pickiness, the fickleness, the completist within the individual Franco fan. Does Severin's Bloody Moon actually need the upgrade? No. The DVD is pretty damned vibrant and clear already, and seriously, how much of an overhaul is a Jess Franco release going to receive from an American company who has already done an HD film-transfer to a perfectly well-encoded DVD that is only a couple of years old? I'm going to guess not much. -- at least, that's gamble I'm going to keep my twenty-five-and-change firmly in my pocket over. Newcomers? By all means, go for the blu-ray. And enjoy. Topless tennis-watching, among many, many other shenanigans.