tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308863662024-03-12T17:22:14.339-04:00I'M IN A JESS FRANCO STATE OF MINDRobert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.comBlogger1117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-75638284160448927542024-02-26T19:10:00.241-05:002024-03-12T17:21:42.653-04:00DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN (Jess Franco 1972) Severin Films Blu-ray Review.<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwgGLaQgaBabm-xQ2R-xp3cMbF5DdHl3NW0bqkzEsjC9339_Z5CVWcPIWSFJ8az7CgGgA6uXraf2uZu6yr7xMSWligWixaHCc3NGuCfLrx9e2acQKmys4xdDFq6R0uORJgBM6T1vu4z7q_C1i5rxRAgMsC4xuIw5HifUj_NdAqGUZF_qrVWDPDLA/s2048/428699860_10224539194534390_1472501988538216552_n.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1627" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwgGLaQgaBabm-xQ2R-xp3cMbF5DdHl3NW0bqkzEsjC9339_Z5CVWcPIWSFJ8az7CgGgA6uXraf2uZu6yr7xMSWligWixaHCc3NGuCfLrx9e2acQKmys4xdDFq6R0uORJgBM6T1vu4z7q_C1i5rxRAgMsC4xuIw5HifUj_NdAqGUZF_qrVWDPDLA/s320/428699860_10224539194534390_1472501988538216552_n.jpg"/></a></div>
DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN is 100 proof Jess Franco. It unfolds at a rapid clip thrusting the viewer into a magical dimension of Franco's creation, somewhere between a fumetti and a Gothic cartoon. The plo,t is a highly compressed fantasia of the Universal Pictures horror classics DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, only shot in lurid color on a dollar store budget. Filmed in 1971, along with at least 5 other films, it attempts to cram as many classic monsters as possible into a hectic mise-en-scene. The paucity of dialoge (there isn't any for the film's first quarter hour), the rumbling Bruno Nicholai score imported from Franco's previous EL CONDE DRACULA and JUSTINE, the proliferation of zoom shots from the very first image onward, all combine to creater an overwhelmingly onieric atmosphere. Dr. Seward (Alberto Dalbes) stakes the sleeping Dracula (Sartana in the German version) turning the Count into a dead bat. Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price) appears with his assistant Morpho (Spaghetti Western regular Luis Barboo), revives Dracula to his original form, and also recharges the dormant Frankenstein monster. There's also a vampire woman (Britt Nichols) and a werewolf (Brandy, who would stunt double for Paul Naschy's werewolf character in THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI) who join in the final monster bash. Dr. Seward races to Castle Dracula to stop Dr. Frankenstein's mad plan of world domination via classic monsters. The final fight between the Frankenstein monster and the wolfman owes a lot to Universal's FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. Part of the magic of Franco's treatment of these cine-mythologies is that he adds such surreal touches as having his 19th Century villains drive around in 1970 model hearses and sedans, something that the Universal and Hammer studios would never allow. Howard Vernon's Dracula may be a long way from the the Bela Lugosi and Christoper Lee incarnations of the character and would return in the more conventional follow up, LA FILLE DE DRACULA (1972). DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN is purely Jess Franco's unapologetic take on the iconic characters. Fernando Bilbao's silver skinned Frankenstein monster would return in the outrageous 1972 EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN.
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The 2006 IMAGE DVD of Franco's minimalist monster-rally DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (onscreen title) was a disappointment. This no-budget 1972 French Spanish coprodcution was one of Franco's personal favorites and, depending on your critical perspective, a film you'll either embrace or be sorely disappointed with. Just compare it to his EL CONDE DRACULA, made for Harry Alan Towers with Christopher Lee in the title role, and notice the difference in treatment. Of course this isn't at adapting Bram Stoker's "Dracula", it's Franco's termite version of Universal's HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945), only in color and scope. And that's where this DVD fails both the film and the viewer. The image is consistently soft throughout, the colors murky and it's all misframed at 1.85:1. The PAL 2003 Divisa DVD is also misframed with similar color and sharpness issues. One advantage of the Divisa release is that it's the only home video release so far to include an opening text, credited to "David Klunne" (another Franco beard), which recontextualizes the monster tale into Franco's own arcane personal dimension.
Franco told me when I interviewed him in 2005* that he shot this film in Techniscope to achieve a multiplane perspective, he wanted the right, left and center fields to be of equal importance and to have a flow of action within and across each area. This strategy, along with an agressive use of the telezoom, ONLY works when the film is seen in its correct 2.35:1 Techniscope ratio. Seen fullscreen or partially letterboxed it looks clumsy and compositionally confusing. And it's not. It's one of his most carefully composed and visually experimental works. Once again, comic book panels were a major inspiration while Bruno Nicolai's score (recycled from EL CONDE DRACULA-1970) along with use of animal noises (cf Luis Bunuel's THE MILKY WAY-1969) are used as much as possible to replace exposity dialogue with a completely stylized sound environment. Franco's comments were very specific, "for some films, like DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN, I preferred Techniscope. I liked it because it literally gave you more 'scope', you can show more of the castles, the landscapes. It can be beautiful and gives a mysterious look to everything. You can show more on the sides of the [main] action. But shooting in scope can be more expensive because of the anamorphic lenses. It's more expensive to shoot and edit in scope."
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The previous Blu-ray of this title, DIE NACHT DER OFFENEN SARGE from Germany's Colosseo Film, was correctly frame at 2.35:1 but had a dark, unsharp image quality with damp, desaturated colors. Severin's new 4K scan from Spanish, French and German release prints finally restores the film to what Franco intended. The 2.35:1 compositions are sharp, detailed and as color saturated as possible given the low budgeted production on Portuguese, Spanish and French locations. It's also the first disc release to allow the extended end music to fully play out rather than abruptly cut off.
Special features include an interview with Franco author Stephen Thrower, Part 10 of In The Land of Franco, with Alain Petit and Thrower, the alternate Spanish opening credit sequence with the aforementioned "David Klunne" text and a deleted scene from the English language version which features a reading from Dr. Frankenstein's diary post produced by English language dubber Richard McDonald and written by David Mills. This post-production insert goes all the way back to the fullscreen WIZARD VIDEO VHS release, THE SCREAMING DEAD. A 3 minute 20 second trailer, "Master of Black Horror", is also included.
*"Truth Will Out: A Final Audience With One of Cinema's Greatest Visionaries, Jess Franco." By Robert Monell
ART DECADES magazine: December 2017, Issue # 13.
Thanks to Kit Gavin for arranging the interview with Jess Franco.
(C) Robert Monell, 2024
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-33302254590161424082024-02-14T11:45:00.004-05:002024-02-14T12:12:59.618-05:00LILIAN ( LA VERGEN PERVERTIDA) (Clifford Brawn/Jess Franco, 1983)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRWMNv6UTtxNprzvzgVOVqD0TQwmN6rxLTRVeu5d4p8bdARiS-rcdToJD-zZBKhhJNrLFPlnYhzf1vU8uCwispM76sEwgkr-DEf5R9QpRtG8-aY_9k30uPK7930faU17AdsNcX1hksemzLiy5UgX_8Gk6yHZ5sUYC_OncxNBIB1THUGaqXfBHFNw/s428/80586%20%281%29.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRWMNv6UTtxNprzvzgVOVqD0TQwmN6rxLTRVeu5d4p8bdARiS-rcdToJD-zZBKhhJNrLFPlnYhzf1vU8uCwispM76sEwgkr-DEf5R9QpRtG8-aY_9k30uPK7930faU17AdsNcX1hksemzLiy5UgX_8Gk6yHZ5sUYC_OncxNBIB1THUGaqXfBHFNw/s320/80586%20%281%29.jpg"/></a></div>
An image which sums up the hard-boiled dimension inhabited by Al Pereira (Antonio Mayans). Cigarettes, a gun, a few drinks, suggesting a minimalist pattern of a gritty life and a story which ends with Al executing the club owner (Emilio Linder) who drugged, raped, and turned out Lilian (Katja Bienert).
In the opening scene of this neo-noir the young, naive Lilian opens a door to the upscale villa in which she is staying and confronts a hardcore scene between Lina Romay and Jose Llamas. That perfectly sums up the issue with this project, which began as Clasificada "S" thriller which had to be upgraded/downgraded to a hardcore feature, necessitating the removal of some 20 minutes of the original's runtime (84m). The reason was a Spanish law which had been suddenly imposed restricting the showing of "S" product in Adult houses. Jess Franco had to scramble and add this footage since his film would not be playable in more mainstream locations.
I assume the film did reasonably well, probably due to those grudgingly added hardcore scenes, and may disappoint those who look for something more than another Franco hardcore.
LILIAN... tells the downbeat story of a young woman (Katja Bienert) who collapses while staggering though a desert-like area. She has been drugged, held prisoner and forced to be the abused party in an S&M show staged for the edification of the local police official (Daniel J. White) who is supposed to be leading investigations. Instead he takes detective Al Pereira off the case when he gets too close to the truth.
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Al has discovered the comatose Lilian, who recounts her terror in a delirium at the residence of retired cop and friend Bernardo (Jess Franco), who counsels Al to forget it. He doesn't.
Corruption is endemic here as in LES EBRANLEES (1972) and BOTAS NEGRAS, LATIGO DE CUERO (Golden Films Internacional, 1982), two very similar Al Pereira episodes. As in those films, Al Pereira is depicted as a hotheaded, high minded loser who will ultimately trigger his own exile from the human race.
The villains, the drug lord (Emilio Linder) and his wife (Lina Romay). who fetches him party girls and druggies at her nightclub, are oh-so-chic, part of the local glitter scene. Franco shoots this as a 1980s Film Noir, a virtual encyclopedia of noir references and visual quotes.
Using long takes and wide angle lenses in the style of Sam Fuller (UNDERWORLD USA) and Robert Aldrich (KISS ME, DEADLY), but also incorporating his personal favorites THE KILLERS (Robert Siodmak version) and Howard Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP in the flashback structure of the former and the opening credits of the latter, which are recreated in the penultimate scene when the camera lingers on a pack of cigarettes (American, of course), two whiskey glasses and a pistol on a table. The drug lord had just been sitting there having a drink when Al Pereira burst in and summarily executed him, Dirty Harry style. Al leaves his pistol as a calling card, knowing the police will trace it to him. Then he quickly hops into his car and drives away into a future life of assured damnation.
One evil bastard is done away with, but the corporate evil of the big combo will continue under the averted attention of the corrupt police official. And the principled avenger and seeker of justice Al Pereira will suffer the punishments of our sinful, fallen world.
The film has a brutal, nihilistic tone which is mediated by one of Daniel J. White's most breathtaking scores, incorporating a kind of funk theme and an ethereal line. Some of these cues can also be heard in the director's 1985 Jungle adventure, L'ESCLAVA BLANCA, a Manacoa production.
If one can forgive or fast forward the hardcore scenes there's a good film in there. Franco and Antonio Mayans are superb as the world weary receivers of Lilian's sad story. This element of delirious confession to authority figures evokes EUGENIE DE SADE (1970) and Sade's theater piece, DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PRIEST AND A DYING MAN (1782).
The Spanish "kiosk" DVD version was screened for this review. It has very good video quality, sharp and colorful with acceptable Spanish only audio. This version lasts approximately 73 minutes.
We're left with a moral vacuum, set in the glitter scene, which is made into a sexual hell by the insertion of much routine hardcore footage, taking advantage of Spain's newly liberalized censorship. With strong performances by Lina Romay, Jess Franco as the retired cop and frequent Franco composer-actor Daniel J White as the corrupt police official. The opening escape by the delirious heroine staggering across a beach is indicative of Franco's ability to throw the viewer into a scene's atmosphere quickly, efficiently and without any dialogue or context. This was released on Spanish VHS before appearing as a "kiosk" DVD.
Filmed on locations in Madrid and Huelva.Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-90258878425625793282024-02-08T17:57:00.001-05:002024-02-08T18:20:54.453-05:00LA ESCLAVA BLANCA (1985)<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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la esclava blanca
1985 87 MINUTES Video Search of Miami (U.S. import) DIRECTED BY "CLIFFORD BROWN" (JESS FRANCO) WITH: JOSÉ LLAMAS, MABEL ESCAÑO, MIGUEL ROS, AUGUSTÎN GIL, LINA ROMAY, CONCHI MONTÉS
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Of the eight other films Franco made in 1985 (half of them hardcore porno features), this very low budget adventure stands out because of an absorbing, multi-layered script by ace Spanish screenwriter Santiago Moncada. Besides writing Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON, THE BELL FROM HELL, and THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER, Moncada has written and produced screenplays for a variety of European genre directors (Manuel Cano's SWAMP OF THE RAVENS, TARZAN'S GREATEST CHALLENGE, and VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST were all based on Moncada scripts).
牋牋 In LA ESCLAVA BLANCA, Moncada gives us three separate stories that gradually interweave and come together in the final scene. The first story seems to based on Macbeth. A weak-willed jungle guide is manipulated by his domineering wife into committing a series of crimes. During a safari, he leads a honeymoon couple (José Llamas and Conchi Montés) into a trap laid by the Tobongas, a Stone Age tribe that worships a giant lizard god. The bride is tied to a sacrificial altar for later sacrifice.
牋牋 The second story starts out in the city, where a karate student and two of her instructors accidentally discover the secret of the Tobonga. In the third story, two expeditions make their way back to the Tobonga camp.
One of these groups includes the original guide, who has been abducted by the karate instructors (they have also killed his wife). The other consists of the husband of the abducted woman and the female karate student (Lina Romay) who has split off from the school. During the long trip back, the guide has a change of heart and decides to repent, turning against his captors and helping the people he originally betrayed.
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牋 The climax of the film, expertly shot and edited despite the budgetary restrictions, may remind some viewers of a miniature version of the final scene in THE WILD BUNCH. The very last scene, in which the Tobonga gold is thrown away, echoes THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE. Franco's film, of course, is a lot less ambitious than those two classics, but maybe that's why it works so well. The massacre at the Tobonga camp, the abduction scene, and the opening safari are as well-staged as anything Franco has ever done. There's also an amusing dose of voodoo dancing thrown in for good measure. The film has no artistic pretensions. It is simply a programmer, made for showings at Spanish grindhouses or low profile mainstream houses. The fact that it's entertaining pulp illustrates Franco's realization that he's making a film for a certain audience in a certain marketplace.
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Daniel White's pulsating drum and vocal score is familiar from some of Franco's other jungle adventures, but this is by far the best of the lot. Miguel Ross and Mabel Escaño are both very effective as the safari guides from hell.
With its karate scenes, voodoo rituals, adventure story, literary and film references, LA ESCLAVA BLANCA seems typical of Franco's 1980's output (minus the XXX sex material). It's good fun while it lasts. It might be compared to a Saturday afternoon adventure matinee with Franco's encyclopediac knowledge of cinema built into its unassuming, carefully crafted mise-en-scene.
(C) Robert Monell 2024Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-68477385223213817442024-01-25T17:25:00.003-05:002024-01-25T17:40:17.009-05:00LOS BLUES DE LA CALLE POP-AVENTURAS DE FELIIPE MARLBORO, VOLUMEN 8<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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los blues de la calle pop
1983 80 MINUTES Galan Video (Spain) European Trash Cinema (U.S. import) DIRECTED BY JESUS FRANCO WITH: ROBERT FOSTER, CANDY COSTER, TRINO TRIVES, MARY SAD, JOSÉ LLAMAS
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(a.k.a. AVENTURAS DE FELIPE MALBORO, VOLUMEN 8)
Today it's easy to find a recent film with a popular hero/anti-hero based on a vintage comic book, cartoon, television show or film. Jess Franco beat them all out of gate with this amusing 1983 neo-noir based on one of his own creations, the hapless PI Felipe Marlboro. Franco, being a legendary smoker, not only names his lead character after a well known brand, he also shows up as Sam Chesterfield in a signficant role as the piano player in a sleazy club with punk clientele.
Felipe Marlboro, gamely incarnated by Franco mainstay Antonio Mayans ("Robert Foster"), is a seedy private investigator who takes up a missing person case in punk infested Shit City. All the men seem to hang out in a smoky bar decorated with posters of Bogart and Mae West, waiting for trouble to erupt.
The residents of this corrupt town all look like they base their fashion sense on MTV. The men look like either Sid Vicious or a member of A Flock of Seagulls, and the women sport the slutty attire and pouty sexuality of Robert Palmer's back-up vocalists in the music video of "Addicted to Love." Likewise, (as the visual style of the film is a whacked-out array of colors and weird camera angles. The film's stylized locale, Shit City, also anticipates Robert Rodriguez's SIN CITY.
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The plot has Marlboro enlisting the aid of piano player Sam Chesterfield (played by Jess Franco himself) in an all out effort to bust the town's drug and dirty money kingpin Saul Winston (Trino Trives).
This witty and visually striking neo-noir parody is one of Franco's personal favorites, and it's easy to see why. Almost every shot in the film is a loving homage to 1940s private eye cinema (such as THE MALTESE FALCON and THE BIG SLEEP) filtered through a 1980s MTV-style lens. Franco has stated that he attempted to create a sustained comic-book look, and he has totally succeeded in that while creating his most entertaining film since his amusing 1967 spy spoof LUCKY THE INSCRUTABLE. Antonio Mayans is the perfect fall guy in Franco's off balance world of pimps, whores, killers, and thugs. Sexy Analia Ivars makes for a perfect lean and mean femme fatale.
Franco stages all the standard private eye cliches in his usual off-kilter fashion. For instance, when Marlboro gets a beating for asking too many questions, the guy who kicks the living daylights out of him is a flashy flamenco dancer who performs his dance steps in between each punch and kick. Most amusing of all is the twisted ending, which finds Marlboro seduced by the woman who has set him up for extinction.
The a quick-paced editing style, color gel lit locations shot through diffusion lenses and a rousing New Orleans style jazz score by Fernando G. Morcillo make LA BLUES DE LA CALLE POP a continual delight to see and hear. Franco's experimental deployment of colored filters is especially interesting (as in the similar ESCLAVA DEL CRIMEN) and makes me wonder why he didn't continue in this style.
(C)Robert Monell, 2024Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-15346803525861656722024-01-17T16:58:00.005-05:002024-01-17T19:05:49.825-05:00MIDNIGHT PARTY (1975)<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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aka La Coccolona (Italian release), Heisse Beruhrungen (German version). LADY PORNO (Spanish version) Directed by Tawer Nero (Julio Perez Tabernero) for Titanic Films.* This is a sexy spy film once directed by Jess Franco in just a few days at a hotel in Southern France. A typical Franco strategy. Around the same time, he shot two other films there (Le Grand Motte) with the exact same rooms, casts and crews (DE SADE'S JULIETTE, SHINING SEX).
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The version under consideration here has the onscreen title Lady Porno, a Spanish variant of Franco's original MIDNIGHT PARTY. Julio Perez Tabernero, an actor turned producer-director (he can be seen in Franco's own SADISTEROTICA/Two Undercover Angels)acquired it for his Titanic Films (Julio, your company needs a new handle!) and reconstructed it as an "American-Belgian" co-production. It's very amusingly redubbed and rescored with lewd comments, bawdy music and direct-to-the-viewer takes. --Sylvia is a very hot stripper who carries on an affair with a cheap detective, Al Pereira (Olivier Mathot) behind the back of her longtime squeeze Red Nicholas. This is not really another of Franco's Al Pereira episodes, as he is mainly a player in Sylvia's story.
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This is kind of like a live action cartoon (cf LUCKY, THE INSCRUTABLE) with Lina Romay giving it all she has as the resourceful Sylvia. This might actually be my personal favorite of her performances, she mercilessly teases the viewer directly as the interactive approach allows her to pose, stick her tongue out, and make alluring remarks to the audience before turning back to the scene and players at hand, resuming in the traditional fourth wall mode. It's all a lot of good natured fun. Except that the subject is torture. Torture that really hurts! Sylvia is taken by Radeck/Agent 008 (Jess Franco himself), a spymaster and professional torture mogul who takes his business very seriously indeed. Look at the way he abuses poor Sylvia: after being stripped and sexually abused by henchpersons Monica Swinn and Ramon, she's poked, punched and cigarette burned by the ingrates under the very close supervision of Radeck. They take her to the "torture clinic" which, this being a Jess Franco shoot, merely means another hotel room (or the same hotel room slightly redressed and shot from a different angle). Choosing a metal tool they try pulling out her toenails, as Radeck is beginning to lose his patience. At this point one of my favorite moments in Franco's monumental filmography occurs, and it only last a few seconds--Radeck simply puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. That's it! The exact way which actor Jess Franco jabs the smoke into his mouth and fires it up has to be experienced first hand. It's a grand bit a business, something small made into something very special by a seasoned professional.
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Radeck drops the pose at the end, as Sylvia and Al are escaping he faces the camera and admits to us that it was all an illusion. We have been spectators. But what are we doing at this venue? Of course, that question is implied rather than asked. Alain Petit is very droll as the Marxist jazz singer, Nicholas. Billed as "Charlie Christian" (cf JUSTINE, the 1979-80 Joe D'Amato composite where he is likewise billed as his footage here is rolled over with scenes from SHINING SEX into a unique reedit) he performs his infamous "La Vie est une Merde", also heard in a blues rendition during Franco's 1982 EMMANUELLE EXPOSED and in Petit's documentary THE MAKING OF TENDER FLESH (1997). The Spanish language version which was screened for this review (subtitled in English) is very much in keeping with the joker/trickster impulses which frequently bubble to the surface of Franco's work. The finale, a shootout with the cops (a minimalist debacle) followed by shots of birds flying in the distance as our couple floats away on a pleasure craft, is post-ironic in the sense that it delivers on expectations which Franco obviously considers bogus while gleefully curving past the generic demands of representational, grade B sexploitation production methodology. In other words: don't worry, be happy, it's only a movie.
*The longest version of this film is the 90 English language cut, which is around 15 minutes longer than the Spanish language LADY PORNO.
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(C) ROBERT MONELL (Updated 1/17/24)Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-73865022346451917662023-12-16T17:47:00.018-05:002023-12-21T12:44:18.013-05:00BEST OF 2023: Jess Franco releases. The Best, and most revelatory, Jess Franco related release of 2023 was Severin Films' comprehensive 4 disc, 4K UHD-Blu-ray set of Jess Franco's 1970 COUNT DRACULA, directed for Harry Alan Towers in November 1969. The world UHD premiere and the Blu-ray have spectacular video and sound quality, scanned in 4K from recently discovered, uncut camera negatives. The elements are virtually pristine. There's over 5 hours of bonus features, a highly informative commentary track by horror historian David Del Valle and Franco actress Maria Rohm, and much more.
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I have to admit that I've never been a big fan of this film, either as a Dracula film or a Jess Franco film. It seemed cheap, rushed, deeply flawed and not as true to the Bram Stoker novel as it claimed to be. I had been c onditioned by the two previous Dracula features Hammer had already made with Christopher Lee in the title role, HORROR OF DRACULA and DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKENESS (1965), both more than capably directed by Terence Fisher. Of course there were the commanding presence of Lee and the magesterial musical score by Bruno Nicolai to savor. But that was not enough in my view when I first saw the film on local television broacast in the early 1970s. Something was missing, I felt. What was missing were the carefully lit compositions of exteriors and general lighting design, both restored now in 4K. The interiors, at least, look gorgeous, bathed in color gel lighting and arranged with care. Franco did his job, but it didn't turn out to be a passion project. As Maria Rohm points out in her commentary, both Franco and Towers knew the game was over and that this would be their last collaboration.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiB6KG8xzWsyib9THnQNplWAwFY4IznUTE4MVF4ca9EI-iwDlzU0P8u5_3rgIcp-TEfHEC9Jp8REWQsqq4LdGHd0OKyLd65Qujfj5I6VTyL_WYJKLE_nUTNktA1PzeuciyvG-5Ncxgtp7-3NgtyNjjHzdChkBG-OrzlhBjToag/s2048/409536102_10224243995674603_5964442908359050172_n.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1299" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiB6KG8xzWsyib9THnQNplWAwFY4IznUTE4MVF4ca9EI-iwDlzU0P8u5_3rgIcp-TEfHEC9Jp8REWQsqq4LdGHdSeverin Films' new 4K-UHD COUNT DRACULA may be my favorite Jess Franco related release of 2023. It's not as interesting a film as VAMPYROS LESBOS (1970), another stunning Severin HD release this year, but seeing it in HD lets us see it as never before possible. An overriding fact for me is the US Home Video debut, also in HD, of Pere Portabella's experimental making of documentary, filmed during the late 1969 Barcelona shoot, is also being released by Severin, along with Portabella's equally experimental essay film, UMBRACLE (1972). Followers of Spanish genre cinema, Dracula adaptations, horror film history, international experimental cinema and the parallel careers of Jess Franco and Portabella are given a convenient way to compare and contrast two very different works by two very different filmmakers on the same subject.<br />
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Franco and Producer Harry Alan Towers set out to make a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous late 19th Century novel. With an enthusiastic Christopher Lee, Hammer's Dracula, on board everything should have went right. But what remains is problematic as a "Jess Franco film", a horror film, a DRACULA adaptation. As horror historian David Del Valle notes in his detailed commentary, Franco "did" DRACULA with the later VAMPYROS LESBOS, a supposed adaptation of another Stoker story.* For my taste, both DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN and LA FILLE DE DRACULA (1971), featuring Howard Vernon as a shriveled, cartoon Dracula, are closer to the mark. Why is this?<br />
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My introduction to the film was via a local television broadcast in the mid 1970s. I was a confirmed fan of the Hammer Dracula's, especially HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) and DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1965), which also featured Lee as a much more athletic Count than he is in Franco's film. I had already heard of Jess Franco by reading a men's magazine article in the late 1960s about his notorious X rated (in America) SUCCUBUS [NECRONOMICON] (1969). But it would be at least another decade before I would see that on a poor VHS dupe. After viewing COUNT DRACULA I wasn't anxious to see another Jess Franco film any time soon. It started with those damn German Shepherds standing in for wolves of Transylvania, first seen during the coach ride where Dracula drives Jonathan Harker (Fred Williams) to his castle. That everything was painfully out of focus didn't help. It seemed a poorly photographed, rushed, cheap production, carelessly planned and, at best, routinely directed. And it didn't follow the promise of the title card that the story would be told exactly as Stoker did. Sometimes exact faithfulness is not the way to go. NOSFERATU (1922), the classic silent version directed by F.W. Murnau, is most interesting in the way it departs from the novel. Max Schreck as Count Orlok looks nothing like the king vampire described in Stoker's prose. Orlok resembles a rodent which has someone taken on human shape. That look is continued with the appearance of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake, although the actor adds considerable pathos to the character. The full title of the Murnau film, NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR correctly states its tone, pacing and texture. It's a piece of melancholy music suffused with dread, illustrated by Expressionist compositions. Tod Browning's 1931 DRACULA, based on the hit stage play, is as static as an over rehearsed theater piece, but Bela Lugosi is hypnotic in the lead, even though the second half trails off into soporific dialogue scenes. It too has a musical quality, struck in the opening strains from Tchaikovsky's SWAN LAKE. Browning may have had a more suggestive, subtle cinematic work in mind if one considers some of his later statements, and Universal recut the picture, shortening it. Jess Franco, working with Lee in the title role, worked with producer Towers, to stay with the novel's description of the Count, and he's a rather sad antique, albeit a deadly one, who talks nostalgically of the history of his family and homeland. His white hair and moustache in the early scenes conform closely to Stoker's original description and as the film proceeds the hair turns black as he gorges on a series of victims. The blood is the life and reverses the aging process. But he's never as menacing as <br />
Schrek, Lugosi or the swashbuckling Dracula in the Hammer films starring Lee. Severin's HD presentation gives the film greater sharpness and more enriched color than all previous home video releases. The high definition detail is extraordinary and focuses attention on the very artificial looking cobwebs seen throughout the castle, the overhead wire mechanism which drives the bats and makes the suddenly revived stuffed animals which the heroes encounter at one point seem less menacing than ever.<br />
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Franco's famous crash zooms seem to be utilized for mere convenience, to avoid the time it would take to do additional set-ups, rather than the space-collapsing devices which give such films as DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN a compellingly abstract, almost post-modern quality.The jarring telezooms into coffins, landscapes and objects seem to announce a personal stylistic choice in that film rather than a cost and time saving measure, although they probably were also used for that reason. Hammer's Dracula films always looked lush and more well resourced than they actually were, EL CONDE DRACULA looks rather tattered in comparison. The obviously fake boulders thrown onto the gypsy caravan and the burning of Dracula in his coffin throw us out of the movie at a crucial moment. The film ends in a flurry of more shaky telezooms.<br />
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The brooding, symphonic, urgent Bruno Nicolai score creates most of the atmosphere throughout and makes up for the visual awkwardness of many key scenes. The living dead girl manner of Soledad Miranda is electrifying in the scenes she shares with Lee and provide memorable frissons. Franco himself seems rather dispirited in his appearance as the clinic employee. Perhaps that's because the director himself was becoming deeply disillusioned with his work for Towers, the film's co-writer and co-producer. Franco was obviously becoming frustrated and bored as an employee of the Towers film factory. Just compare his energized presence as the inquisitive writer in EUGENIE DE SADE (1970), made just after this film and without Towers overseeing the production as writer-producer. It comes as no surprise that COUNT DRACULA would be Franco's final directing job for Towers.<br />
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The factory process of commercial filmmaking in Spain during the horror boom would become an even more interesting subtext in Portabella's intriguing experimental documentary on the making of EL CONDE DRACULA.<br />
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Franco struggled to make a personal film while remaining true to the source material, but Portabella's unique film deconstructs both the final product and workaday production of it. Franco did bring considerable artistry to the final product but CUADECUC-VAMPIR, opens up the actual shoot, infuses it with an eerie, abstract poetry and provides another subtext, that of making a commercial horror film on an iconic subject in late 1960s Spain still ruled by the dictator Francisco Franco. Spain welcomed international film productions in the 1960s as a way of increasing cultural exchange, boosting an uncertain economy and bringing foreign investment in the national coffers. Parts of DR. ZHIVAGO and Sergio Leone's wildly successful Spaghetti Westerns used Spain's desert and mountain regions as a ready made exotic backdrop. Costs were low there and the locals were grateful to get steady work on US, Italian and other co-productions. Portabella, who had produced Bunuel's notoriously banned (in Spain) VIRIDIANA (1961) had already rattled the authorities there, and he was much more subversive in every regard than EL CONDE DRACULA's director at the that time, although when Franco later cut himself loose he would evolve into a master of subversive genre cinema from the 1970s onward.
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Portabella shot his film in high contrast black and white, sometimes the image goes into negative, creating a further sense of unreality, projecting the footage of the shoot into an alternate dimension. It chronicles the shoot in roughly sequential order but selects key scenes and then shoots them simultaneously to the actual production from different camera angles, sometimes revealing the cast and crew (including Jess Franco) as they go about their work. Soledad Miranda looks directly into Portabella's camera and flashes a demure, somewhat chilling smile. Christopher Lee mugs for the camera and seems to be having a good time on the set as he reaches out toward Portabella's camera as if to grab it while a jarring sound is heard on the soundtrack. Most importantly, Portabella, like Murnau, understood that the story of Dracula was best told without words, the stumbling block in the Lugosi version. The best moments in the Hammer Dracula's were the wordless moments of menace just before and during the appearances of Lee's Count. It should be noted that Franco's DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN contains no dialogue during its opening scenes and most of of its runtime. What dialogue there is is functional, delivered with dispatch and minimized by the director and actors. Of course, the big difference there is that Franco cast longtime collaborator Howard Vernon as a very unique, fumetti style Count Dracula.
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The use of sound is quite unusual and distinctive. Most of the footage is either silent or appears with music, loud crashing sounds, creating a soundscape which operates in counterpoint to the images. Footsteps are heard but they don't quite synch up with the footfalls in the scene, a train is heard but it doesn't seem to be the modern one seen suddenly cutting across the screen. The arrival of Harker by coach in Transylvania is here scored with disturbing crashing sounds while the arrival a 1960a black American sedan, delivering Maria Rohm on set clad in a stylish floppy hat, leopard skin coat and movie star sunglasses is accompanied by dreamy jazz.
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The black and white images have a very grainy texture, enhanced by the 1080 HD resolution. A very different version of the novel unfolds in Portabella's footage, one which somehow is much closer to the tone of the original prose than Jess Franco's finished version. Capturing a sense of dread between the shots of the actors in informal groupings or preparing for an imminent shot. The final scene bursts into synchronized sound as Lee reads the final lines of the novel, in which the destruction of Dracula is described. Set in the actor's dressing room, he addresses the audience directly, speaking of the economy of the prose and notes some of the descriptive details. The destruction of Dracula in the is, of course, quite different, replacing it with the burning of the Count in his coffin after which the body is dumped over the castle walls. The staging, shooting and editing of the scene leave much to be desired and one is struck by how simple and superior the actual ending is as Lee reads them in his resonant voice. He then closes the book and stares into camera for an unnervingly long time before Portabella is heard calling, "cut!". Those few lines are really all that is needed to make an effective closing scene. Lee and Portabella obviously had a much better sense of the what made the novel so haunting and memorable than did the writer and director of EL CONDE DRACULA. That's why these new HD release of both films is so essential for those interested in the novel, the history of Dracula films, Spanish horror, experimental cinema and the career of Jess Franco.<br />
This fully loaded package also has two discs of Special Features, some ported over from the previous Severin Blu-ray. Probably the most interesting of the new features is a 90 minute 2017 Documentary on the making of both COUNT DRACULA and CUADECUC-VAMPIR, with Dr. Alex Mendibil. The inclusion of the full Bruno Nicolai's magesterial score should please both fans of the composer and European cult movie scores. It adds tremendously to what impact the finished product has both as a horror film and a Jess Franco film.
(C) Robert Monell, 2023****
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-68883037166852921202023-12-16T16:12:00.003-05:002023-12-16T16:25:40.761-05:00<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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BLUE RITA/DAS FRAUENHAUS Blu-ray; 2 Disc SE
DANCE, GAS, KIDNAP, TORTURE... REPEAT.></iframe>
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BLUE RITA SE: Full Moon. This kinky, visually dazzling Eurospy fantasia is one of Franco's most unique films and a personal favorite of the features he made for Erwin C. Dietrich. 2 Disc- Blu-ray+DVD. BLUE RITA/DAS FRAUENHAUS, filmed in Paris and featuring Martine Flety (COCKTAIL SPECIAL) and Pamela Stanford (LORNA, THE EXORCIST) as leaders of a criminal organization of female seductresses and spies. The visual style of this Erwin Dietrich-Robert De Nesle production, deploys a lot of colorful costumes, color gel lighting, dutch camera angles, smoke, mirrors and eye catching filter effects. The women are a bisexual, sadistic, and exhibitionist lot who make a lot of trouble for a Russian spy (Eric Falk) and an undercover female Interpol agent sent to break up the operation, hidden behind a high class stripi club in Paris. Opening with a strip performance lit by a crimson spotlight the performance scenes give Franco ample oppurtunity to display his fetish stylistics with full aesthetic splendor.
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This all plays as a more stylish reconsideration of the plot and style of Franco's Harry Alan Tower's produced THE GIRL FROM RIO (1969); a turnaround from his Captive Women portofoio of Women-in Prison/Peril epics. It's much less conventional and more infused with Franco's unique personal style than Towers allowed. Dietrich was a more supportive producer who gave Franco permission to be himself. That means what we have here is a wild eyed action painting, a million light years from a tepid Bond imitation. The Paris exteriors and sci-fi interiors give the film a look and vibe quite different from the other Erwin Dietrich productions.
The much less supportive Robert De Nesle was co-producer and was very much in attendance during the Parisian shooting according to an interview I did with Pamela Stanford on her work with Franco. She remembered De Nesle literally rushing the cast from location to location between scenes and making sure no time was wasted. He always considered Franco a reliable employee who would deliver a profitable product. Dietrich respected Franco as an artist who would deliver a personalized work in his own time so didn't bother interfering. The French language track here, with English subtitles included, give the proceedings an Art-Exploitation q along; the English dub is included on the DVD disc and unfortunateAly gooes against the film's aesthetic grain. Also included on the Blu-ray is a photo gallery and an interview with Franco enthusiast-director Peter Strickland. The color gel lighting effects and fetishistic props really pop, shimmer and shake in HD and the more appropriate French soundtrack make this a much more enjoyable experience than FULL MOON'S previous DVD release.
(C) Robert Monell, 2023 Product details Product Dimensions : 7.48 x 5.31 x 1.18 inches Director : Jess Franco, Jesus Franco Media Format : Anamorphic, NTSC, Widescreen Run time : 1 hour and 15 minutes Release date : December 12, 2023 Actors : Esther Moser, Olivier Mathot, Erik Falk, Pamela Stanford, Sarah Strasberg Studio : Full Moon Features ASIN : B0CF39WB42 Number of discs : 2 Best Sellers Rank: #15,181 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV) #1,669 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray DiscsRobert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-31689555279448406382023-12-05T23:54:00.010-05:002023-12-07T17:44:07.093-05:00SEXUAL STORY OF O (Jess Franco, 1981)<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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<i>Historia Sexual de O</i>
1981 86 MINUTES European Trash Cinema and Video Search of Miami (U.S. import)/Severin Films Blu-ray. DIRECTED BY JESS FRANCO WITH: ALICIA PRINCIPE, CARMEN CARRION, DANIEL KATZ, MAMIE KAPLAN, MAURO RIVERA
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Features
Reviews*
One might think of another S&M tinged Franco film while watching SEXUAL STORY OF O. That would be the 1982 BLACK BOOTS, LEATHER WHIPS. Both films deal with sadomasochism gone beyond a recreational form of sex. That film was a Jess Franco Neo-Noir with a downbeat ending. SEXUAL STORY OF O is even more downbeat and nihilistic.
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Odile (Alicia Principe), a beautiful but naive young woman vacationing in Spain, attracts the attentions of a voyeuristic couple who live across from her hotel. The couple spy on her as she lounges around naked, and when they invite her over for a session of grou sex, Odile gives in immediately. Odile's fate is telegraphed with reading from Norman Mailer's downbeat war novel, THE NAKED AND THE DEAD.
After spending days enjoying this menage a trois, the couple take Odile to the villa of the wealthy Wanda Von Karlstein (Carmen Carrion), where the sex continues. Wanda's sadistic husband (Daniel Katz) drugs Odile's drink and rapes her. When she awakens, Odile is chained to a bed, and her captors have sado-erotic torture and death in mind. One of her abductors has a sudden attack of remorse after finding her mutilated body, murders the Von Karlsteins, and walks into the ocean carrying Odile's dead body, shades of the ending of the Val Lewton-Jaques Tourneur masterwork, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE.
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HISTORIA SEXUAL DE O is quite a bit better than some of Franco's rather tedious sex-a-thons of the 1980s. The flowery, tropical locations and gorgeous cinematography offers a counterpoint to the downbeat melodrama. A melancholy female vocal sets a sombre tone throughout, which Franco maintains until the very last shot of the blazing sun beating down on the aftermath of violence and death.
There are many effective visual and aural touches throughout, which amplify the theme of corrupted innocence. For instance, Odile is first seen wandering in an idyllic garden reading excepts from Norman Mailer's gritty World War II novel, "The Naked and the Dead," literally foreshadowing her own fate. It is also significant that her voyeuristic abductors use Beethoven's famous chorus from his Ninth Symphony to seduce her attention, underscoring the theme of Old World decadence preying on Odile's gullibility.
As Odile, Alicia Principe (a.k.a. Alicia Pedreira) offers sensuality and modernity with a tragic ignorance of the brutal ways of the world. Exotic looking Carmen Carrion and the gaunt, sinister Daniel Katz are well-cast as the wealthy tormentors. Katz's impotent freak-out while raping Odile is especially blood-curdling. There is also a subtle sociological subtext similiar to the situation in Franco's 1973 THE PERVERSE COUNTESS, wherein upper caste villains use a financially struggling lower-class couple to provide victims for their bloodlust. This inequity creates a further irony in which a henchman turns on his vicious employers. The final sequence is shot with filters which spectacular light halations, colorful erutions of primary color patterns over images of torture and murder. With the players masked up and costumed for predatory S&M, it moves the action into a surreal plane, a taboo dimension as in a sequence from Sade's writing. If it uses the context of a snuff film, it's one made by a poet, elegantly shot, edited and scored, with a palpable emotional impact. Franco had blended S&M imagery with horror as far back as his early 1960's Gothics such as THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF and THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS and he would continue into his post 1990s digital era, with films such as FLOWERS OF PERVERSION.
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Scenes and images from earlier Franco films are recycled throughout but in altered contexts, such as the scene in which the only survivor of the massacre carries Odile's body into the ocean, reenacting the end of THE PERVERSE COUNTESS. The long, excruciating sequence detailing Odile's torture and death is painful to watch, as chains, whips, and studded medieval-style weapons are used. Franco encourages us to become emotionally engaged with Odile, often taking her point of view, which ratchets the level of intensity even higher.
The stuff of a sex tourist's nightmares, HISTORIA SEXUAL DE O is highly recommended.
(C) Robert Monell 2023
=======================================Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-27333442637957832532023-11-25T16:46:00.008-05:002023-11-25T18:01:26.055-05:00LES DEMONS: X RATED KULTThis 2004 R2 two-disc set was for its time, now 20 years ago, the best ever presentation of a Jess Franco project, the 1972 French Spanish co production, LES DEMONS
<br />Three different international versions
114 m, longest vintage version.
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<br />101m, "Director's cut" this is the 2003 Jess Franco remix.
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<br />85m, the vintage German language version [looks about 2.50:1].
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<br />16:9 anamorphic 2.35:1; DD 2.0: Code 2.
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An elderly woman tortured and burned as a witch hurls a curse at Lord Jeffreys (Cihangir Gaffari) promising that she will be avenged by her daughters. Kathleen (Anne Libert) and Margaret (Britt Nichols) are convent bound young women whom Lord Jeffreys is informed are the spawn of the exectuted witch. He sends out Lady de Winter (Karin Field) and Renfield (Alberto Dalbes), the girl's real father, to find them and bring them back to face the Inquistion.
More nudity, lesbian interludes and torture than Franco's first film about Lord Jeffreys, THE BLOODY JUDGE, LES DEMONS is now available on an essential 2 disc box set from X RATED KULT DVD. Disc 1 contains the longest 114 minute version with German and French language options, original trailer, alternate scenes and other bonus materials. This version, presented in a colorful 2.35:1 transfer finally reveals the films as the Sadean epic that it is: post-modern erotic Fantastique which comments on the Inquisition and nunsploitation genres of that era (cf THE DEVILS). Franco's use of the widescreen ratio is simply stunning, with an impressive use of multiple fields of action and the colors are gorgeous. All the sex, nudity and violence is present in this uncut print.
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In a way, THE DEMONS could be considered a remake of Jess Franco's 1970 THE BLOODY JUDGE, also featuring a witchburning judge played by a very different actor, Cihangir Gaffari, here credited as John Foster, whose interpretation of the role. In an inteviewed included on the 2023 Mondo Macabro disc of THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN, Gaffari complains that Franco, as Spanish co-producer of the film just disappeared at the end of shooting, forgetting to pay the actor for his performance. This was after Gaffari had already donated some of his own money to the film's production!
Disc 2 contians a new "Director's Cut", reedited and rescored by Franco in 2003. He replaces the t Franco himself dubbing Howard Vernon's character! At 101 minutes it cuts Doris Thomas' masturbation scene in the long verions (over 3 mn!) to 1mn and also loses some expository scenes but still has an epic scope. The print looks slightly crisper and more colorful than the longer 114 mn version but the Spanish dubbing is technically limited and somewhat hollow with a "studio" ambiance. As with many Franco "alternates", it consistutes a separate new film in itself. Onscreen title: LAS POSEIDAS DEL DEMONIO.
Finally, there is the Original German 85 minute version, which censors some of the sex, nudity and torture. English language option included. This is the only version with the original credit sequence intact, the other two have new video generated fonts. The video quality of this print can only be described as "Grindhouse" and the directed is credited to Franco's "Clifford Brown" beard. As noted above the aspect ratio appears to be closer to 2.50:1 on playback. The score by Jean Bernard Raiteux can only be described as early 1970s "prog rock" in style and is perfectly anachronistic and likely the idea of post production editor Gerard Kikoine. Franco would criticize this score in later interviews, missing the point.
All three versions are letterboxed at 2.35:1 and have multiple language options. The oversized box is lavishly and lasciviously illustrated with four potential covers.
"The X-Rated Nunsploitation Series 5" Available from Xploited Cinema.
"Sex und Gewalt hinter Klostermauern" is emblazoned on the back cover over a close-up of a male nipple being clipped off and full frontal nude shots of female characters masturbating and stretched out on a torture rack. I guess one would term this 2004 release a collectors item. R2
(C) Robert Monell: New Version.Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-87158994355117543082023-11-19T21:31:00.007-05:002023-11-20T21:47:22.334-05:00WOMEN BEHIND BARS (1975) BLUE UNDERGROUND DVD: "BAD GIRLS BEHIND BARS" 5 Women-in-Prison film set.
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Directed by Jess Franco (credited to Rick DeConninck). Cast: Lina Romay (Shirley Fields), Roger Darton (Milton Warren), Martine Stedil, Ronald Weiss, Ramon Ardid(Perry Mendoza), Denis Torre, Jess Franco (Bill, a hitman). aka: UNA SECONDINA IN UNA CARCERE FEMMINILE (Italian version). --Perry Mendoza, a smalltime hood, orders a raid on the yacht of millionaire Rufus Hackerman. His men escape with a cache of diamonds. Mendoza eliminates his associates and keeps the diamonds for himself. When he returns to his club, girlfriend Shirley Fields (Romay) summarily executes him and immediately turns herself in to the police.
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This is a legendary Franco title, not so much for what it is, but for how it supposedlycame into being. While shooting FRAUENGEFANGNIS (BARBED WIRE DOLLS) for Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich's Elite Film, Franco decided to clandestinely shoot another WIP film simultaneously utilizing some of the same cast members and sets. The story was that he simply shot the alternate film as slightly different takes, using short ends and leftovers of the film he had been allotted. He then cut it together and sold it to Italian producers to whom he owed money behind Dietrich's back. What actually happened was Franco shot a totally different film, using some cast members from FRAUENGEFANGNIS, which was a considerable success for Dietrich. When the producer discovered Franco's subterfuge he managed to forgive him, while deciding to keep a closer eye on the wayward director during future shoots. However, both films have totally different stories and characters. Also there are no alternate takes or short ends or footage from BARBED WIRE DOLLS. The main location was down the coast from the fort where FRAUENGEFANGNIS was shot. A small town on the Southern coast of France where people who can't afford Nice congregate. A number of exposition scenes are set in the low rent Hotel De Gregorio, which was obviously a convenient production center for this termite Women-in-Prison affair.
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WOMEN BEHIND BARS is as amusing as the tale behind its production. A kinder, gentler version of Franco's previous WIP formulae; it's a breezy parody of Euro grade Z crime films. The opening raid on the Chinese junk by masked gunmen is indicative of what is to come-- a wild montage of fitful zoom shots of the bandits running in and out of compact cars, down stone steps onto a beach where a hastily staged shootout occurs. Everything looks like it was filmed in single takes, and probably was. The prison sequences mostly consist of sado-sexual encounters between Lina Romay (looking trim and tricky here), the catlike Martine Stedil, and the oafish Ronald Weiss (the philosophical warden who ends up getting shot by Franco himself, appearing as a nervous hitman). There are all kinds of odd visual details here which continue to register after viewing, like an oversized telephone in Weiss'office, or the electric torture device used on Romay, which looks like a soundboard hijacked from the editing studio. Roger Darton turns in a droll performance as Milton Warren, a corrupt insurance investigator sent to get back the diamonds. His dry narration gives the rather predicatable storyline a much needed ironic spin.
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My favorite sequence is a minimalist prison break which begins with Romay teasing Weiss to distraction, then marching him out past his heavily armed guards with his own gun pointed at his head. It's a sexual variation on the classic breakout scenes from the old Warners prison dramas. Daniel J White's elegant, modulated piano and organ score (which was recycled for some 1980's Franco productions) keeps the action percolating, providing atmosphere and versimultitude to a venture which seems mostly have been shot in a hotel room and a prison cafeteria set. Nonetheless, this is an enjoyable trifle which may actually make you want to rush off and check in at the Hotel Don Gregorio.
Note that prolific English language dubber and Rome based dubbing director Richard McNamara voices the hit man played by Jess Franco. McNamara was also responsible for the English language dub of Franco's 1971 DRACULA PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN>
Reviewed by Robert Monell (New Version: 2023)Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-10609167554451051622023-11-15T18:03:00.022-05:002023-11-28T19:03:06.429-05:00The Sinister Dr.Orloff --Blu-ray<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.ca></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFxjKljXC2swBuZPq84rvLQ-kQOGSuSkhVHzLKGqpUifTHFOOv-ZzS_32uOh1vmxjBcwqzOsbeuAoxHeGQ10rsAfs1X1Y14ltVUciXeKRefEK_mkxzXuffqVPXRvKCtgZqHsFWPMMdxWCl2GI49Y2PbhC1zds4kq6R0e3T1kams_fg61EGXc-r6g/s2048/402174116_10224163806869933_1725781542868440352_n.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFxjKljXC2swBuZPq84rvLQ-kQOGSuSkhVHzLKGqpUifTHFOOv-ZzS_32uOh1vmxjBcwqzOsbeuAoxHeGQ10rsAfs1X1Y14ltVUciXeKRefEK_mkxzXuffqVPXRvKCtgZqHsFWPMMdxWCl2GI49Y2PbhC1zds4kq6R0e3T1kams_fg61EGXc-r6g/s320/402174116_10224163806869933_1725781542868440352_n.jpg"/></a></div>
This 1982 Golden Films Internacional Production is my personal favorite of Jess Franco's Dr. Orloff series. It replaces the heavy Gothic look of GRITOS EN LA NOCHE (1961) (the Spanish version) with a glittering, full color semi sci-fi look. EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF (1964) looks more like an Alfred Vohrer Krimi and the Gothic element is more reserved. THE EYES OF DR ORLOFF (1972), the first in color, totally eliminates the Gothic look and has a much more realistic look and feel, sort of more like a typical 1970s Spanish Giallo. By the early 1980s Franco's style has again morphed into something quite different than those monochrome thrillers of the early 1960s.
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The new Blu-ray from MONDO MACABRO further enhances those colors and aesthetic choices of Franco which distinguish this from all his previous Dr. Orloff (Orlof, with one f, in GRITOS EN LA NOCHE) films. SINISTER could be titled The Son of Dr. Orloff. Antonio Mayans plays the mad doctor's biologist son as a sexual psychopath who kidnaps local women in Alicante, Spain to restore the comatose body of his mother through an electronic form of soul transfer. His brother (Raf Smog) is a blind beast with skin grown over his eyes, a victim of young Orloff's unethical experiments.The film details the monstrous looking hulk stalking and kidnapping young, attractive women for the macabre expriments of Alfred Orloff. This iteration of a favorite Franco character definitely earns its Classification "S" rating.
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Some of the stalk and kidnap sequences are shot-by-shot reconstructions of similar scenes in GRITOS EN LA NOCHE. The final experiment of young Orloff is sabotaged by Orloff Sr. (Howard Vernon), repeating his role in GRITOS EN LA NOCHE, only playing a wheelchair bound, elderly version of the mad scientist, now wiser and reprentant for his sins. He is aware of Alfred's sexual sadism and questions his scientific motives. It all ends in complete scientific and criminal disaster with everyone either dematerialized or the wrong soul going into the wrong body. Only the sarcastic laugh of the senior Orloff resonates as the end credits roll. <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRCMmgZ0hxxaHr4Qrp3QoRD8ABDP_8dm92K2vzMPJjUv2CROParq84Y5Gc2vEI46aRF-ecpyatpmBq_d8FMUsiMwgq_PlSush1Da743jfeqiP_-HvZMSGD1CDCEf3NigYzOAR6E9lEChTxLBekBvw8i05Ou5NBHVVTD9luhNb0v8If1j8kXAqdIg/s480/GetAttachment.aspx.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRCMmgZ0hxxaHr4Qrp3QoRD8ABDP_8dm92K2vzMPJjUv2CROParq84Y5Gc2vEI46aRF-ecpyatpmBq_d8FMUsiMwgq_PlSush1Da743jfeqiP_-HvZMSGD1CDCEf3NigYzOAR6E9lEChTxLBekBvw8i05Ou5NBHVVTD9luhNb0v8If1j8kXAqdIg/s320/GetAttachment.aspx.jpg"/></a></div>
Or is that Jess Franco laughing?
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmlgVm8RQ0WFdW4AfEbfoRAS0w0HhpoL1LBQwXnhQnqZ-FlF5G_5dfp5Rawm908BnRU21IQOT8io7RXvGNhbidvqeGO6SBYZEgYIAh6gnwtsIfTJAIEeXfEOedDQZSBfZUhO7axe7QUrM4jG30W3WuLyRZaXVF-GmJZCgQc3Zuixu4erzbQzr6iw/s3264/IMG_20220317_233227136_HDR.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmlgVm8RQ0WFdW4AfEbfoRAS0w0HhpoL1LBQwXnhQnqZ-FlF5G_5dfp5Rawm908BnRU21IQOT8io7RXvGNhbidvqeGO6SBYZEgYIAh6gnwtsIfTJAIEeXfEOedDQZSBfZUhO7axe7QUrM4jG30W3WuLyRZaXVF-GmJZCgQc3Zuixu4erzbQzr6iw/s320/IMG_20220317_233227136_HDR.jpg"/></a></div> ABOVE: Frequent Jess Franco composer and actor, Daniel White.****
BONUS/VIDEO/AUDIO:
Beside the audio commentary (see below) and a Stephen Thrower talk on the film, a visit with frequent Franco collaborator Antonio Mayans is included. He speaks fondly of his experiences on this film and other Franco productions over the four decades they worked together, depicting the director as a trickster who would complete two films in four weeks alloted for one film and flee shooting locations just ahead of the landlord. The film is a revelation in HD, with bold colors and layered reflections which give it a cyber-punk aesthetic at times. With a fascinating soundscape by Jess Franco himself, wildly interpreting the Pablo Villa score on a Profeta-5 synthesizer, a versitale five-voice polyphonic synth, used by Kraftwerk and other popular bands in the 1980s to create unique sounds. It's a film with a unique soundscape and look, which at times recalls his futurist styled BLUE RITA (1976) or the ultra- dimensionality of his sci-fi-sex-satanic-spy fantasia, EL SEXO ESTA LOCO (1980).
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We should also consider in future blogs such Orloff related films as ALONE AGAINST THE TERROR (1983) and FACELESS (1988), both of which have a Dr. Orloff character and deal with psychological and scientific transgressions.
This region free release is the US premiere of the film and its worldwide Blu-ray debut.
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DISC FEATURES
Region free
1080p presentation from a new 4K restoration of the film
In Spanish with optional English subtitles
Brand new interview with Antonio Mayans
Brand new interview with author Stephen Thrower
Brand new audio commentary by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson
LIMITED EDITION FEATURES
20 page full color booklet by Francesco Cesari and Roberto Curti; reversible sleeve with new and original art; 1500 numbered copies in the usual red case
(C) Robert Monell,2023
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-47320167093194898552023-11-02T21:33:00.017-04:002023-11-03T20:43:02.795-04:00HOW TO SEDUCE A VIRGIN (PLAISIR A TROIS) 1973
Plaisir a trois
1973 85 MINUTES: MONDO MACABRO (Blu-ray; Jess Franco Triple Bill); European Trash Cinema (U.S. import) DIRECTED BY "CLIFFORD BROWN" (JESS FRANCO) WITH: ROBERT WOODS, ALICE ARNO, TANIA BUSSELIER, HOWARD VERNON, ALFRED BAILLOU, LINA ROMAY
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(a.k.a. HOW TO SEDUCE A VIRGIN)
In 1973, Jesus Franco directed at least 12 movies. PLAISIR A TROIS stands out for its clever plotting, above-average performances, and carefully constructed visual style that takes an almost Cubist approach to imagery.
For instance, in the first scene Alice Arno's character, Martine Bressac, departs from a mental hospital. As she is debriefed by the head psychiatrist note how her bright green bandana and rectangular shapes of the windows behind her head result in a disturbingly, off balance cubist composition which subtly signals us of the woman's dangerous tendencies and mental imbalance. These type of compostions recur throughout the film.
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There's a game going in throughout the course of this film. A game created by the Marquis de Sade, played by the four main characters. It's kind of a 3D chess game, a game of Life and Death. The winners take all, the loser dies a horrible, extended death. Who is the loser? Who are the winners? They won't be who you think they are. The plotline here, adapted from a story in Sade's Philosophy in the Boudior, has been used in many other Franco projects. Martine is an artist who paints impressionist style nudes. Her hidden occupation, though, combines art, perversion, murder and a secret torture chamber underneath her villa. Women she has seduced, tortured, and murdered are arranged in sado-erotic poses as living dead sculptures.
Arno's spine-chilling performance give this "horrors in the wax museum" scenario considerable psychological depth. She is the embodiment of pure, selfish lust. Arno (real name: Marie-France Broquet) was one of Franco's best performers, but she disappeared from the Euro-exploitation scene sometime in the mid 1970s. Robert Woods, veteran of countless spaghetti westerns, has a good role here as Arno's double-dealing husband. Howard Vernon is amusing as a smug chauffeur, and diminutive Alfred Baillou plays a snooping gardener who seems somewhat deranged.
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ABOVE:Producer Robert De Nesle C.F.F.P. Paris****
PLAISIR A TROIS does not concentrate on the story's horror element. The basement of women frozen in poses of death has been done in such films as MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM, HOUSE OF WAX and MILL OF STONE WOMEN (1960), it instead follows a potential victim (Tania Busselier) into Arno's unholy lair. A handful of stylized sex scenes between Busselier, Arno, Woods, and Lina Romay (as Arno's slightly deranged slave) sets up a surprising twist (but very Sadean) ending, in which Martine becomes a victim of her own sick escapades. Once again a hermetically sealed world is created by the use of an 18mm lens range to shoot the interiors of the villa which the scheming protagonists inhabit. This lens was often used by Orson Welles to open up claustrobic spaces in such films as TOUCHE OF EVIL and THE TRIAL. He also uses some fairly elaborate lateral tracking shots, as when the basement chamber of horrors is first introduced or to subtly distort the distances between characters. After all, Franco himself has said his films are about the distances between people.
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In addition, Franco offers a consistently perverse and obsessive world within Arno's villa -- Rooms bathed in red light, strip teases using mannikins, slow-moving sex action, and his trademark voyeuristic motifs. Busselier's midnight bedroom antics (spied on by Arno
and Woods through a telescope) are some of the most erotic scenes Franco has filmed, without becoming overly explicit.
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The reveiwed print contains some very brief XXX shots, but they are handled with an unusual grace and discretion, considering Franco's more graphic forays into hardcore sex movie terrain. The Franco biography, Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco, lists the running time of this film as 80 minutes, but some U.S. mail order companies offer a French language version which runs approx 87 minutes, as does the highly recommended MONDO MACABRO Blu-ray. The colors, seen in HD, are richly saturated and often display clashing, but gorgeous, patterns. The color of the 1950s melodramas Douglas Sirk directed at Universal come to mind.**** BELOW: Douglas Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE (1959)****
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****ABOVE: Clifford Brown (1930-1956)****
Given the number of versions Franco made of this story, this once again underlines that the style he uses to tell the same stories over and over is always completely different than the previous iterations. His style is constantly, gradually evolving as he moves on to different locations, casts and budgets. He's like a pianist or a jazz trumpeteer usuing different keys, notes and tempos to play the same tune, each time renewing it for his audience. Clifford Brown, the jazz trumpet stylist used a specific "approach pattern" on the notes he played to arrive at his unique sound. It's no accident that this film, as many other Franco films, is credited to "Clifford Brown", one of the director's favorite beards and musicians.
(C) Robert Monell, New Version--2023Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-84049135918189005632023-10-12T19:22:00.001-04:002023-10-12T19:28:35.899-04:00I'M IN A JESS FRANCO STATE OF MIND: Women In Peril: JE BRULE DE PARTOUT<a href="https://robertmonell.blogspot.com/2007/06/women-in-peril-je-brule-de-partout.html?spref=bl">I'M IN A JESS FRANCO STATE OF MIND: Women In Peril: JE BRULE DE PARTOUT</a>: Happy Birthday to Brigitte Lahaie! I was lucky enough to score one of now OOP LE Blu-rays of Jess Franco's rarely seen crime drama, [Click above to continue]<iframe class="BLOG_video_class" allowfullscreen="" youtube-src-id="mef0WGIARyg" width="320" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mef0WGIARyg"></iframe>Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-4233772273585236182023-09-28T16:49:00.007-04:002023-12-14T13:24:09.405-05:00BLUE RITA/DAS FRAUENHAUS Blu-ray; 2 Disc SE DANCE, GAS, KIDNAP, TORTURE... REPEAT.
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BLUE RITA SE: Full Moon. This kinky, visually dazzling Eurospy fantasia is one of Franco's most unique films and a personal favorite of the features he made for Erwin C. Dietrich. 2 Disc- Blu-ray+DVD.
BLUE RITA/DAS FRAUENHAUS, filmed in Paris and featuring Martine Flety (COCKTAIL SPECIAL) and Pamela Stanford (LORNA, THE EXORCIST) as leaders of a criminal organization of female seductresses and spies. The visual style of this Erwin Dietrich-Robert De Nesle production, deploys a lot of colorful costumes, color gel lighting, dutch camera angles, smoke, mirrors and eye catching filter effects. The women are a bisexual, sadistic, and exhibitionist lot who make a lot of trouble for a Russian spy (Eric Falk) and an undercover female Interpol agent sent to break up the operation, hidden behind a high class stripi club in Paris. Opening with a strip performance lit by a crimson spotlight the performance scenes give Franco ample oppurtunity to display his fetish stylistics with full aesthetic splendor.
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This all plays as a more stylish reconsideration of the plot and style of Franco's Harry Alan Tower's produced THE GIRL FROM RIO (1969). It's much less conventional and more infused with Franco's unique personal style than Towers allowed. Dietrich was a more supportive producer who gave Franco permission to be himself. That means what we have here is a wild eyed action painting, a million light years from a tepid Bond imitation. The Paris exteriors and sci-fi interiors give the film a look and vibe quite different from the other Erwin Dietrich productions.
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The much less supportive Robert De Nesle was co-producer and was very much in attendance during the Parisian shooting according to an interview I did with Pamela Stanford on her work with Franco. She remembered De Nesle literally rushing the cast from location to location between scenes and making sure no time was wasted. He always considered Franco a reliable employee who would deliver a profitable product. Dietrich respected Franco as an artist who would deliver a personalized work in his own time so didn't bother interfering. The French language track here, with English subtitles included, give the proceedings an Art-Exploitation q along; the English dub is included on the DVD disc and unfortunateAly gooes against the film's aesthetic grain. Also included on the Blu-ray is a photo gallery and an interview with Franco enthusiast-director Peter Strickland.
The color gel lighting effects and fetishistic props really pop, shimmer and shake in HD and the more appropriate French soundtrack make this a much more enjoyable experience than FULL MOON'S previous DVD release.
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(C) Robert Monell, 2023
Product details
Product Dimensions : 7.48 x 5.31 x 1.18 inches
Director : Jess Franco, Jesus Franco
Media Format : Anamorphic, NTSC, Widescreen
Run time : 1 hour and 15 minutes
Release date : December 12, 2023
Actors : Esther Moser, Olivier Mathot, Erik Falk, Pamela Stanford, Sarah Strasberg
Studio : Full Moon Features
ASIN : B0CF39WB42
Number of discs : 2
Best Sellers Rank: #15,181 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
#1,669 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-86896629130691791502023-09-12T17:58:00.013-04:002023-09-21T15:32:41.194-04:00Revisiting LES GLOUTONNES <!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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Revisiting Jess Franco's LES GLOUTONNES recently I was struck by how its radical changes in tone and basic incoherence (the latter courtesy of "comedy" inserts insisted on by Robert de Nesle) don't completely destroy its stylistic charm. Once a "somber", according to Alain Petit, erotic adventure becomes a take-off on the peplum genre complete with slapstick antics by Bigotini (Patrick de Conninck), the servant of Howard Vernon's return as Cagliostro, and wise cracking voices coming out of the abyss. The one hardcore insert, featuring Alice Arno performing fellatio on a nude actor and receiving a squirt of white fluid which may or may not be male semen, is absurd and unerotic as possible. In my interview with featured American actor Robert Woods, he confirmed that no hardcore was shot while he was around during the shoot sometime during the Summer of 1973, back to back with YUKA, shot with the same cast on the same settings on the island of Madeira.
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Directed under his French nom de plume Clifford Brown, this is a fascinating mess due to the fact that Robert de Nesle, or somebody, took a supposedly "serious" film and made it into a delirous collage of peplum, adventure, comedy, erotic and fantasy motifs. It's Wal Davis as Maciste vs. Robert Woods as the evil Caronte who attempts to overthrow and kill the Queen of Atlantis, played by Alice Arno. Maciste prevails with the help of "the gobblers" the women of Atlantis. Howard Vernon makes an appearance as Cagliostro (cf. LA MALDICION DES FRANKENSTEIN), who observes the antics with his horny attendant, played by the puckish Rick Deconninck/Bigitoni. A very interesting, eclectic score by Robert Viger [?] is an atmospheric bonus.
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Mark Forest was supposed to play Maciste, according to Franco.* The opening shot, panning down a misty valley, and the first view of the stormy coast of the remnants of Atlantis, are outstanding images, but unless you are a Franco completist or a peplum enthusiast you the ragged montage of this film rather tying. Franco also made YUKA/MACISTE CONTRE LA REINE DES AMAZONES (also 1973 with Davis/Waldemar Wohlfaart and Robert Woods playing the male leads opposite Alice Arno and the Queen of the Amazons in another erotic "peplum" set in the Middle Ages.
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What we have left as of this writing are VHS dupe level DVDs/DVDRs of this film and YUKA, both damned to the lowest levels of home video. Without any HD restorations in sight it is what it is, they are what they are. Softcore knockoffs made to be exhibited in theaters in tenderloin districts of whatever metropolis you lived in or near in the 1970s. Fans of le bad cinema, genre anarchists or those interested in quasi-experimental cinema hiding beneath a Z budgeted porn package might provide some interest and amusement. They both are exercises in unconscious mise-en-scene existing in the absence of conventional genre respectability or "art" film pretension. A favorite scene features the emergence of white shrouded beings during a ritual sacrifice staged by Caronte and Parka (Kali Hansa).
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Given the poverty of means, the lack of reliable representation of its proposed world and the intrusion of "comedy" interludes this porno-peplum establishes itself on a bizarre wavelength. Most of the main cast, sans Emma Cohen, is also featured in Franco's unabashedly emotional masterpiece, AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO (1973), also largely shot on Madeira but infused with realistically sketched characters caught up in an other-worldly murder mystery. The power of that film is in being drawn into the destruction of an attractive, vulnerable, relatable person as she conducts a murder spree on all the men who enter her web. But is the web woven by her, or the toxic spirit of her dead father? We're never sure. That ambiguity is the film's strength. We're struck by how good the performances by Emma Cohen, Howard Vernon and the supporting plays are at creating credible people in the midst of an eerie tragedy. There's none of that in LES GLOUTONNES, its interest lies in its cinema-degree-zero mise-en-scene with its often cubist compositions and its absurdist tone, which replaces the reportedly "somber" tone of the original cut. Every zoom shot is strangely compelling and seem somehow necessary. At the end its suggested to all be an erotic fantasy of Alice Arno, who lies in bed, overseen by a skull, lost the daydream which is LES GLOUTONNES.
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(C) Robert Monell, 2023Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-61680668965809933182023-08-19T14:24:00.025-04:002023-09-09T20:23:09.132-04:00Jess Franco's XXX Files #1: The Architecture of Porn in the realm of lethal desire. A Hardcore Sampler. <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcB4jkE7hV_uHiDdDH5hbv-7_StrtTz0Qv1y1Vu9miYLP2ovcUipc7EqRr7g6ZiPd_t-8fcqo0092EL2qjj0ygtDk3XNzxAFIKEWqREMQBNtbA5jUfhoHXwrMQbKdcOQxpHcpPq8zd6YyvI1QYdoCqVnaF_9BIC1wECQk0bob_UBB0DUjdhft2A/s150/8566883629905177561.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="78" data-original-width="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcB4jkE7hV_uHiDdDH5hbv-7_StrtTz0Qv1y1Vu9miYLP2ovcUipc7EqRr7g6ZiPd_t-8fcqo0092EL2qjj0ygtDk3XNzxAFIKEWqREMQBNtbA5jUfhoHXwrMQbKdcOQxpHcpPq8zd6YyvI1QYdoCqVnaF_9BIC1wECQk0bob_UBB0DUjdhft2A/s320/8566883629905177561.jpg"/></a></div>
Lina Romay is the nameless object of interest of the voyeur in the apartment block across from her highrise. EL MIRON Y LA EXCIBICIONISTA is Jess Franco's sharply essay focused on the dynamics of pornographic cinema and the mise en scene which it entails. This under 60 minute hardcore actually ended up being sold in DVD format at newstands along with a flood of other once banned titles after intitally being screened in 1980s era Spanish fleapits. It opens with telezoom high angle views of residents of a high rise relaxing by a large swimming pool, recalling similar telezoom shots of a hotel pool in the 1973 FEMALE VAMPIRE.
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Franco himself sometimes appears as a voyeur in his own films as in the above image from his 1975 hardcore DE SADE'S JULIETTE, which was lost after being re-edited by Italian porn king Joe D'Amato. On the other hand there's the 1976 DAS BILDNIS DES DORIANA GRAY aka DIE MARQUISE VON SADE, a film of exqsuitely composed images of refracted light and ugly hardcore porn close-ups. Art lies in the balance between "an eternal to-and-fro from lethal boredom to wild desire" or something which can't be evaluated by conventional journalist prose. In the softcore cut of the film the hardcore footage is replaced with oneiric images of Doriana smoking opium and repeatedly walking down a spiral staircase while clutching a large flower. "Nude Descending a Staircase" comes immediately to mind. Producer Erwin Dietrich claims to have never seen the hardcore cut.
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DORIANA GRAY, in any of its editions, is overlain with a visual elegance which far exceeds its template LA COMTESSE NOIRE (1973), a poetically inclined film which is also titled FEMALE VAMPIRE, and which also has a longer version with hardcore inserts. The longest version of LA COMETSSE NOIRE was released as a hardbox DVD by X Rated Kult. Reflecting the lifetime cigarette habit of the director, the most interesting scenes in the 1978 hardcore COCKTAIL SPECIAL, a XXX version of EUGENIE, THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970) are scenes of the main characters sitting around smoking cigarettes. a favorite Jess Franco pastime. The nothing gained by watch the crassly filmed hardcore material except that this version ends with Eugenie having sex with her father. That outcome is presented as a "happy ending" in the otherwise fetid proceedings. This was Franco's final film for producer Robert De Nesle, who passed away the same year.
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By the time the 1980s unfolded and hardcore became legal in Spain Franco was there again as director and voyeur in UNA RAJITA PARA DOS (1984), featuring micro-close ups of scat playing spies at a highrise hotel. Scenes of the cast relaxing by the swimming pool are the only relief from the relentless hardcore close ups.
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Returning to hardcore with EL MIRON Y LA EXCIBICIONISTA in the mid 1980s the architecture which surrounds the hardcore close-ups is more of interest than the close-ups of genitalia. Lina Romay's exhibitionist lives in a cement apartment block fitted with huge windows through which the voyeur watches her from his adjacent cement apartment block. The architect was not Ricardo Bofill this time, but the asethetic and perceptual distance between characters. After all, Franco himself once suggested his films were about the "distance" between people. <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3RRaQ1AqmJ6iTYR6mi15K3XzQJapN5p2CNx88fwFCZ34RmsmhvKp9rgNsyMQORRwmqrDgvjJqlpp6S5MEKjv2NWHJzO85Mk3XiMqcZIN7jOLGLQqwZpUaToAa7Ulw9BlWr1NwbfwpXpFno-GDLmC9yi9nkHL9lioKPU7H_H7TBW4rBj0zGzPAuw/s217/ADJSH65v4b.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3RRaQ1AqmJ6iTYR6mi15K3XzQJapN5p2CNx88fwFCZ34RmsmhvKp9rgNsyMQORRwmqrDgvjJqlpp6S5MEKjv2NWHJzO85Mk3XiMqcZIN7jOLGLQqwZpUaToAa7Ulw9BlWr1NwbfwpXpFno-GDLmC9yi9nkHL9lioKPU7H_H7TBW4rBj0zGzPAuw/s320/ADJSH65v4b.jpg"/></a></div>
Thanks to Francesco Cesari for sending the rare "Spanish kiosk DVD" of Jess Franco's 1985 ENTRE PITOS ANDA EL JUEGO, a delightfully airy, witty and self reflexive hardcore feature con "Candy Coster", directed by "Lulu Laverne", produced by Fernando Vidal Campos' Fervi Films. It's obvious that Franco took these micro-budgeted hardcores as seriously as his non-erotic, more mainstream, linear mid 80s Fervi Film projects. The erotic film, even hardcore, is another legitimate genre for him.
A brief (approx. 70 m) venture, this is a minimalist (by necessity), almost Godardian take on the demands of Spanish hc consumers in that era. The telezoom images of high rises over Alicante [?] under the credits remind me of similar images in Godard's TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (1966), also about sex, architecture and is the kind of film snobs hate. The same kind of snobs who jeer at Demofilo Fidani "westerns" and Jess Franco hardcore assignations. And remember, Orson Welles also worked on at least one hardcore film late in his career.* And it's always good to see "Mona Lisa"*... . Obviously, I take a certain attitude as a default mode when dealing with Franco's hc portfolio, and this is one that bears the scrutiny.
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The ever-active telezoom is used to focus on the architecture of the highrise across the plaza from the XXX action.
Franco is quoted in OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO (who also list this item as a Lina Romay film "with Franco's collaboration"; I think, "ghosted" by JF) as saying at Cannes '92 that, "This film has one of the best comic sequences in the history of pornographic cinema...." Jess could never be accused of false modesty in guiding potential customers through his sideshow of hardcore.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe class="BLOG_video_class" allowfullscreen="" youtube-src-id="fLt510Ee-j8" width="320" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fLt510Ee-j8"></iframe></div>
The Agfacolor DVD print is really nice. Good luck in finding one!
Stay tuned for more Jess Franco XXX Files!
(C) Robert Monell,2023
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-33763978010528779552023-07-31T23:51:00.019-04:002023-08-17T19:28:27.328-04:00DEVIL HUNTER (1980): Notes on Jess Franco's Cannibal Apocalypse. DEVIL HUNTER/Mandingo Manhunter/The Man Hunter'El Canibal (Blu-ray) 1980--France-Germany-Spain; Severin Films Blu-ray--104m; Trans-World Entertainment (U.S. Video). DIRECTED BY "Clifford Brown" (Jess Franco) WITH: Al Cliver, Ursula Buchfellner, Robert Foster (Antonio Mayans), Antonio Da Cabo, Werner Pochath, Muriel Montossey (woman on boat).
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Credits
(a.k.a. SEXO CANNIBAL; IL CACCIATORE DI UOMINI; JUNGFRAU UNTER KANNIBALEN; THE DEVIL HUNTER; MANDINGO MANHUNTER)
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Franco's most notorious venture into cannibal cinema, while not as extreme as Umberto Lenzi's CANNIBAL FEROX or Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, registers as a definite gross-out, deliberatey so, as well as a ripe example of the director's cynicism. Is he satirizing the cannibal genre and films like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1979), or is he just executing a commercial delivery of a product filled with sexual violence and graphic gore? This 1980 co-production clearly represents Franco's ability to deliver on demand a commercially viable, if crudely crafted sex and violence exploitation adventure and something which he can infuse with his own style. One can picture the director, machete in hand, cutting his way through the Portuguese "jungles" to find locations for a film about a mercenary hired by a sleazy producer to rescue his contracted sex star from ruthless kidnappers.
The plot is lurid and unimaginative: A sexy starlet (Ursula BuchFellner) is kidnapped by ruthless criminals in a European city (Alicante) and whisked away to a tropical island. On the island, the kidnappers torture and molest the terrified woman until help arrives. This takes the form of hero type Peter Weston (Al Cliver, aka Pierluigi Santi) and his Vietnam vet sidekick (Antonio Mayans, credited as Robert Foster). The starlet manages to escape before the heroes arrive. She runs straight into the arms of a local native tribe, who are intent on sacrificing her to their living god. Weston puts an end to the the cannibal's bloody rampage by pushing him off a cliff. He sails into the sunset with the topless starlet. Plotting is not high on Franco's skill set nor is it a personal priority in his multiverse. As in Bunuel's Mexican melodramas a happy ending can signify its opposite as a character arc can be a detour leading nowhere. It's another element in the cycle of exploitation which is mapped out by the producers and the art directors on board for home video releases. The actual on-set "Art Director" was longtime Eurocine hack Pierre Chevalier (ORLOF AND THE INVISIBLE MAN, PANTHER SQUAD).
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Some of this plays even worse than it sounds. The most effective part is the opening, in which Franco cross-cuts a cannibal tribe pursuing a victim to paparazzi descending upon Buchfellner at her hotel. The sense of actors waiting for direction is pervasive and the early scenes set in the hotel and beach are filled with background extras who all stare directly at the camera. The jungle scenes, filmed largely in Portugal, do contain layers of humid atmosphere along with buckets of blood.
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Franco doesn't seem to give a damn here about the 1970s trend of Italian cannibal films which heavily loomed at that time. He knew his intended audiences. It's difficult to locate any gestures toward his personal obsessions and his sometimes imaginative use of low-budget filmmaking techniques. The order of the day on this Italian-French-Spanish-German co-production seems to have been to jump on the cannibal bandwagon, pull 'em into the theatres and rip 'em off. Even the graphic gore scenes are uninteresting. More interesting is the way they are edited into the action in blood dripping close up, like gore inserts suddenly inseretd in a comic strip jungle adventure.
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The only character seen practicing cannibalism is played a seven-foot tall black actor (a local Portuguese gymnast according to Franco) with absurdly bulbuous eyes, credited as "Burt Altman". He wanders around a questionable jungle setting bare-assed, and eats most of the cast. Whenever the cannibal eats flesh, we see him endlessly chew on what appears to be bits of cold cuts dipped in fake blood. It's sickening and somewhat laughable at the same time. Such gratuitious details are also immediately laughable and immerse the view into a realm of delirious jungle fever. There only performance worth mentioning in this macabrre jungle adventure is Werner Pochath's nervous kidnapper who always seems on the verge of an anxiety attack, although one wishes that the always nice to look at Muriel Montosse had more to do than show-up in two brief scenes and get nude before she is eaten by the cannibal demon.
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The first time I saw this, on a Blockbuster Video VHS, it seemed that almost every scene was in some way technically inept. The photography was the most dismal I had seen in a Franco production. At least half of the movie seemed out-of-focus, under-exposed, or over-exposed. An atmospheric background vocal created by Carlos Perlata (Carlos Franco), Franco, and Daniel White adds a sinister ambience in the right places. Seen decades later in HD, the Juan Cozar compositions are much more interesting, dense with local flora and other detail. Cozar has since become a noted still photorgrapher of natural scenes. Some film writers (The Aurum Horror Encyclopedia) have labelled the native scenes and the cannibal zombie as racist representations. One thinks of the 1960 German Krimi, THE AVENGER/DER RACHER, featuring future Jess Franco player Klaus Kinski in one of his first Edgar Wallace roles. Its depiction of a black African servant, a feral raised, hair covered hunchback suspected of severing heads wasn't as risible then as it would be today. Then there's the Wallace written KING KONG (1933), especially viewing the vertical climb of Cliver up a 90 degree cliff to save the white heroine from yet another monster of color. It's certaingly crass exploitation of basic civilized fears of ravishment by the Other. That's the way things are represented in Franco's civilization free universe, entertainment value aside. I guess to the 2023 non Franco fan this would all seem fairly abysmal, the serious Franco collector would not pull it off the shelf to entertain party guests.
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The now ultra-rare TWE (Trans World Entertainment) video version is presented in full-screen format, but the gore scene close-ups are letterboxed at varying ratios. Wizard Video reportedly released this version in the U.S., as well. The more recent Blu-ray versions are definitely the way to go for optimal video and audio quality of film which has often been screened via unwatachable presentaions. The Spanish language tracks are the recommended options, since the vintage video English language voice casting is bottom of the barrell.
CUT TO-- 2017 archival notes:
Credited to "Clifford Brown" this German, Spanish, French and Italian coproduction features Al Cliver [Pier luigi Conti], most familiar from Fulci's ZOMBIE, as a mercenary hired to bring back a starlet [Ursula Buchfellner] who has is being held for ransom on a tropical island. The only interesting performances are given by the intense, late Werner Pochath and Antonio de Cabo as nasty and increasingly frantic criminals. Conti/Cliver looks as bored as usual while German starlet Buchfellner looks almost anorexic and spends most of her screentime tied up nude to a tree getting abused by the criminals and a giant black cannibal. Watching Europeans like Claude Boisson as the cannibal chief is a real hoot and the film in unconvincing in just about every department. Note the equipment and details in the film producer's office; everything in this film looks cheap or bogus. A junk aesthetic.
But it's Franco all the way in terms of out-of-focus shots both from the marauding cannibls POV and other images, mismatched filmstock (the film was reportedly begun by TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD auteur Amando De Ossorio), and editing between events which looks like it was meant to mean something (the paparazzi and the fashion show are intercut with the jungle pursuit of another nude female victim who is later tied to a tree, gutted and disgustingly cannibalized). Totally incomptent on the FX level, the cannibal is shown chewing on bloody meat scraps in extreme closeup, this will give no competition to the other Euro cannibal films of that era (cf CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST). It's pure exploitation for very desperate audiences. There is an interesting primitivist score by Franco himself (and Daniel J. White) with a delirious male vocal by Carloto Perla (Carlos Franco), heard in other 1980s Franco films. The stalking, bug-eyed, giant black nude cannibal has to be one of the most blatantly racist images in the history of horror cinema or a tip of the hat to the zombie in Val Lewton's more aftful I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. (C) Robert Monell 2017-2023
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VIDEO ASIA DETOUR:
The Video Asia DVD of this, coupled with Manuel Cano's VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST (1972), is possibly the worst digital presentation of a Franco film yet. The opening credits are removed and the film starts in the middle of the first scene. There is digital censoring of the copious male and female nudity of the original, some extreme gore is cut and the bottom third of the image is masked presumbly to hide the presence of Japanese subtitles, video quality is significantly inferior to the more complete old TRANSAMERICA VHS: THE MAN HUNTER. I believe that this was indeed sourced from a Japanese video or disc and booted over here. The somewhat racist cover artwork reads TERROR TALES FROM THE HOOD SPECIAL EDITION VOLUME 4. BLACK VOODOO EXORCIST (sic) plus THE GRUESOME SHOCK OF: THE DEVIL HUNTER. A 1970s style Afro coiffured female poses in a collage with a glowing eyed gravedigger, green hands emerging from graves holding cigarettes [!], etc. The back features more dated jungle nonsense including some stills and amusing promo notes ("The long banned masterpiece...[!]"). But for under 10 dollars it may be an outre collector's item for some. (C) Robert Monell 2017-2023
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There would be more jungle adventures to be created during the 1980s, DIAMONDS OF KILAMANDJARO (1983), GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS (1984), THE WHITE SLAVE (1985), all infusing Franco's Saturday Matinee adventure mode with his unique Primitivism. He seemed to get the jungle dieties out of his system with TENDER FLESH, in which the threats were civilized flesh owning class. Cannibalism is an oral fixation in Franco's universe, rather than a dietary choice and, a signifier of class, of the upper class devouring the lower classes at their leisure. These signs would be reintrepted in his final digital period.
DEVIL HUNTER is hardly Franco's answer to Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, which ended by asking its audience to wonder whom the real cannibals were, the exploitative media or the anthropological cannibals. The class contrast between the wealthy cannibals and working class procurers and prey is not as elegantly stated as in LA COMTESSE PERVERSE (1973) or like the game show format of TENDER FLESH. There is irony in this film but there is no message. It was a way for him to continue to work and participate in a trending genre.
(C) Robert Monell 8/4/2023Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-72753749888611257932023-07-13T12:01:00.018-04:002023-08-01T21:25:57.095-04:00Jess Franco's Digital Apocalypse: Part 1
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Jess Franco's final period of filmmaking lasts from the the second part of the last decade of the 20th Century until his death in 2013. OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO doesn't cover it at all, being that it was published in 1992, still situated in the analog age. There seems to have been a generalized dismissal of this last batch of films, some remakes of earlier films, such as INCUBUS, BROKEN DOLLS, which revisit the plots and characters of two of his best films, LORNA, THE EXORCIST (1974) and ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN. More about those later.
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LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1998)
Written, Produced and Directed by Jess Franco, US/Spain.
With Lina Romay, Analia Ivars, Carlos Subterfuge, Michelle Bauer, Amber Newman, Robert King.
93min. A One Shot Production.
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While LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN may evoke memories of B movie icon William Beaudine's final feature film, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1965), it's nonetheless a good place to begin a survey. This 1998 remake of a classic of the director's Robert De Nesle portfolio is sometimes visually astounding, obsessively personal, ultra-bizarre, morbid, perverse and maddening, terms which come immediately to mind while or just after watching this most recent entry into the Frankenstein file of Jess Franco. Earlier drafts include such grade Z mixes of horror, sexploitation and experimentation as THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN (THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN -1972 ) and DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN filmed with the same cast, crew and sets the same year. The monsters in those films, played by Fernando Bilbao as a silver skinned, moronic killing machine, have nothing on Michelle Bauer in this new version. Casting the American scream queen in this legendary role was a stroke of genius, as her always nude (except for combat boots!) creature is a riveting, pathetic creation as the lover-slave of sex-starved scientist Moira (Lina Romay), the frustrated daughter of Dr. Frankenstein.
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The plot is minimal, as usual in Franco's post 1980's work, narrative elements are pushed to very edges of what can best be described as a nonstop barrage of digital delirium delivered at full metal intensity to the eye, ear and libido. The violent nightmares of Moira include bloodly visions of Dr. Frankenstein and his female composite. The monster (whom may or may not be Moira's erotic fantasy) shows up, becomes her lover and her instrument of revenge, killing everyone else in the cast. They end up in bed together at the end, as Moira wonders if it all really happened. The action (or non-action) begins and ends with a famous quote from Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940), an Academy Award winning classic and one of the numerous direct and indirect references to films made by others as well as Franco's own previous work (Romay is seen wearing T-Shirts with logos from SUCCUBUS and THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA- late 1960's thrillers featuring - respectively - Janine Reynaud and Soledad Miranda, two legendary and hypnotic sex stars the likes of which we will probably never again experience). We are a long way from Franco's earlier adaptations of James Whale's classic THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and Franco has undergone a radical stylistic evolution by this time. This wasn't going to compete with memories of Warhol's FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1974), which had platters of dripping guts, 3D, Joe Dellasandro, Udo Kier and the Warhol name attached, but neither is it Richard Cunha's 1958 monochrome trashterpiece, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, which was targeted for a certain profit point on the American Drive-in circuits.
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The lack of a sustained/coherent plot is likely to deny many access to the visual/aural delights which abound as is the obsessive focus on sex (nothing new for Franco). What is new here is the fact that the production has the unmistakeable DNA of video and is layered with what seems like miles of digital effects courtesy of the director's collaboration with the technicians at the Centro de Tecnologia de la Imagen-University of Malaga, Spain. Imagine the "Beyond the Infinite" final passage of Kubrick's 2001... redone by Salvador Dali, Charles Manson and the Marquis de Sade, on a budget of next to nothing, and you get some kind of idea what is in store. The digital imaging appears in virtually every scene and many shots have numerous layers of highly saturated colors, incongruent forms, jarring video noise, floating structures, playing over the erotic encounters between the scientist, the monster, a dominitrix from hell (the white-hot Analia Ivars) and everyone else in sight.
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Add to all this a throbbing, jacked-up neo-heavy metal score by Mikel Sagues and Franco himself and you have the ingredients for a mind reeling spiral which forever seems on the verge of spinning out of control, but somehow seeming to occur at the rate of events at the bottom of the ocean floor. Welcome to the parallel universe called Jess Franco, digital style. "Why has it taken you so long to get here?" the film seems to ask as it commences.
More on Franco's video-verse in Part 2.
Orignally published and d(C) by Robert Monell at Thu, Dec 09, 1999, 12:08:07; New Expanded Version (C) 2023, All Rights Reserved.Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-8662964335548825762023-05-08T21:43:00.018-04:002023-05-09T17:41:22.188-04:00MIDNIGHT PARTY/LADY PORNO (1976-1982)
Review: MIDNIGHT PARTY (1975)/LADY PORNO version
Posted by Robert Monell , Apr 02,2000,09:56 post reply top message newest index
New Version (2023) (C) Robert Monell
aka Porno Pop, La Partouse de Minuit, Sylvia le Basleuse, Sexy Blues (Production/prerelease titles), La Coccolona (Italian release), Heisse Beruhrungen (Erwin Dietrich/Swiss version). LADY PORNO (76 minute Spanish version) Directed by Tawer Nero (Julio Perez Tabernero) for Titanic Films. "A Belgian-Spanish co-production" is credited onscreen in this Spanish language cut. The longest (94m) cut is presumably Franco's own preferred cut and listed as a French-Belgian production.
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This is a sexy spy film once directed by Jess Franco in just a few days, at least it looks like a few days, mostly at a hotel in Southern France (some exteriors of the astral pyramids of La Grande Motte are glimpsed). A typical Franco strategy. Around the same time, he shot two other films there (Le Grand Motte) with the exact same rooms, casts and crews (DE SADE'S JULIETTE, SHINING SEX). The version under consideration here has the onscreen title Lady Porno, a Spanish variant of Franco's original MIDNIGHT PARTY. Julio Perez Tabernero, an actor turned producer-director (he can be seen in Franco's own SADISTEROTICA/Two Undercover Angels)acquired it for his Titanic Films (Julio, your company needs a new handle!) and reconstructed it as an "American-Belgian" co-production. It's very amusingly redubbed and rescored with lewd comments ("I'd like to fuck her in the ass!"), bawdy music and direct-to-the-viewer takes. --Sylvia is a very hot stripper who carries on an affair with a cheap detective, Al Pereira (Olivier Mathot) behind the back of her longtime squeeze, Red Nicholas (film historian-critic-actor-musician-screenwriter-Franco friend, Alain Petit). This is not really another of Franco's Al Pereira episodes, as he is mainly a player in Sylvia's story. This is kind of like a live action cartoon (cf LUCKY, THE INSCRUTABLE) with Lina Romay giving it all she has as the resourceful Sylvia. This might actually be my personal favorite of her performances, she mercilessly teases the viewer directly, the interactive takes allow her to pose, stick her tongue out, and make alluring remarks to the audience before turning back to the scene and players at hand, resuming in the traditional four wall mode. The longest version of this film opens with Romay in full interactive mode, addressing the viewer as she twists and turns in erotic self pleasure.
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It's mosty a lot of good natured fun for the initiated, except that the subject of interest is torture. Torture that really hurts to watch! Sylvia is taken by Radeck/Agent 008 (Jess Franco himself), a spymaster and professional torture mogul who takes his business very seriously indeed. Look at the way he abuses poor Sylvia: after being stripped and sexually abused by henchpersons Monica Swinn and Ramon Ardid, she's poked, punched and cigarette burned by the ingrates under the very close supervision of Radeck. They take her to the "torture clinic" which, this being a Jess Franco shoot, merely means another hotel room (or the same hotel room slightly redressed and shot from a different angle). Choosing a metal tool, they try pulling out her toenails, as Radeck is beginning to lose his patience. At this point one of my favorite moments in Franco's monumental filmography occurs, and it only last a few seconds: Radeck simply puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. That's it! The exact way which actor Jess Franco jabs the smoke into his mouth and fires it up has to be experienced first hand. It's a grand bit a business, something small made into something very special by a seasoned professional, Franco, the actor, is much more flamboyand here than Franco, the director. Radeck drops the pose at the end, as Sylvia and Al are escaping he faces the camera and admits to us that it was all an illusion. We have been spectators. But what are we doing at this venue? Of course, that question is implied rather than asked. It's a comedy of torture, after all.
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Alain Petit is very droll as the Marxist jazz singer, Nicholas. Billed as "Charlie Christian" (cf JUSTINE, the 1979-80 Joe D'Amato composite where he is likewise billed as his footage here is rolled over with scenes from SHINING SEX into a unique reedit) he performs his infamous "La Vie est une Merde", also heard in a blues rendition during Franco's 1982 EMMANUELLE EXPOSED and in Petit's documentary THE MAKING OF TENDER FLESH (1997).
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The Spanish language version which was screened for this review (subtitled in English) is very much in keeping with the joker/trickster impulses which frequently bubble to the surface of Franco's work. The finale, a shootout between Petit, the villains and the cops (a minimalist debacle of dutch angles and snap zooms accompanied by light-hearted jazz,) followed by shots of birds flying in the distance as our couple floats away on a pleasure craft, is post-ironic in the sense that it delivers on expectations which Franco obviously considers bogus while gleefully curving past the generic demands of representational, grade B sexploitation production methodology. In other words: don't worry, be happy, it's only a movie. Franco places the absurd action as film within a film within a role play since the party itself turns out to be a spy game. When the director-actor breaks the fourth wall again to dismiss the concocted reality he has just created he's getting the last laugh and word, reminding us that his films represent nothing but meditations on represention.
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It's especially interesting to watch this "comedy" lon a double bill with the intense, morbid SHINING SEX, made the same year, with the same main cast, on the same locations in Southern France, sometimes using the same hotel rooms, shot from the same camera angles. There is a perverse atmosphere of toxic sexuality, perhaps anticipating Franco's unreleased SIDA, LA PESTE DEL SIGLO XX (1986), a sci-fi/drama about the dissemination of an AIDS like plague. The secret agents in SHINING SEX are extra-dimensional invaders investigated by a paranormal scientist, played Jess Franco again. A truly mind-bending experience would be to view both and then JUSTINE, which composites footage from SHINING SEX, MIDNIGHT PARTY and Franco's lost JULIETTE DE SADE into one Sadean blow-out, courtesy of post-production producer-editor, Joe D'Amato.
REVIEWED BY ROBERT MONELL
NOTES: MIDNIGHT PARTY was released in Germany on January 23, 1976, in France on December 7th, 1977; LADY PORNO carries a 1982 Spanish copyright date.
The IMDB lists Brussels Belgium, Madrid, Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana Spain and Cote Bleue, Bouches-du-Rhone France as additional locations.
(C) Robert Monell--2023 NEW VERSIONRobert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-52150871901019963432023-05-01T20:51:00.022-04:002023-06-16T21:58:35.995-04:00THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA (aka DER TEUFEL KAM AUS AKASAVA) 1970Directed by Jess Franco.
With Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams, Jess Franco, Howard Vernon.
A Spanish-West German co-production.
Available from European Trash Cinema.
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My initial reaction to this 1970 film was negative. I have since reevaluated it. I first experienced it as totally inept rush-job, a belated cash-in on the Edgar Wallace franchise. It was, sadly, Franco's last collaboration with the legendary Soledad Miranda. She would die in a car accident shortly after the completion of this supposed Edgar Wallace adaptation. The plot evokes some of the later Edgar Wallace films from Germany as the series was on a downward spiral, generic eurospy cliches strung end to end with the only interesting aspect being Miranda's participation. A more interesting was to view it as a "Jess Franco" iteration of pulp material. I haven't read the Wallace novel which I understand is quite different than the film. British Agent Jane Morgan (Miranda) joins forces with a Scotland Yard investigator (Fred Williams) to locate a stolen mineral which has the capacity to transform base metal into gold. The downside is that it emits rays which turn all those who come into contact with it into mindless zombies.
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After a trip to the tropical country of Akasava, where the stone was discovered, the agents discover two eminent physicians (well played by Franco regulars Paul Muller and Horst Tappert) have secured the element and are planning to sell it to a corrupt philanthropist. The men are murdered by a counteragent (Howard Vernon), who is blown up along with the stone in a plane crash while attempting to flee the country. It's obviously from the opening, a flurry of zoom shots in and out of a flock of flamingos in a tropical grotto, that Franco is more interested in the environment than plot. The seeminly compulsive use of zoom shots would continue until the end of the film. Would another director have suddenly panned away from the action to zoom up to the tops of the local palm trees? The point is this is a Jess Franco film. He's shouting at us to look up to something were taking for granted, those towering palms. He's in full tourist guide mode here. <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJN2S2XbepgNAZEFNdmooitPm1w2EWxYKBmufF9rKTO2pmonAYEPlOuSDaOzHdsnBkQQfrZtPtIEOAEdB9vH0WLbBXQgR-IQAE2MQsPpEYvxB8ATr-BGirqJyTGRBa806Z4wkCEfFVedv_gTuTibblgZIRt7uS9sqROGRFY-nITrlS-LWf7KY/s125/1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="96" data-original-width="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJN2S2XbepgNAZEFNdmooitPm1w2EWxYKBmufF9rKTO2pmonAYEPlOuSDaOzHdsnBkQQfrZtPtIEOAEdB9vH0WLbBXQgR-IQAE2MQsPpEYvxB8ATr-BGirqJyTGRBa806Z4wkCEfFVedv_gTuTibblgZIRt7uS9sqROGRFY-nITrlS-LWf7KY/s320/1.jpg"/></a></div> and the viewer is the tourist.
Miranda's participation in this enterprise is highly erratic — she pops in and out of the story and her main role is to provide a romantic interest for the hero, indifferently played by German actor Fred Williams, a handsome, rather dull performer, who spends most of the film limping around in a debilitating leg cast and crutches. He has a winning smile and an easy going nature but never manages to engage with the other actors or his role. He may as well been playing a waiter. Miranda doesn't really get a chance to project the obsessed sensuality which burned up the screen in her stunning turns in VAMPYROS LESBOS and EUGENIE (both 1970). She does get to perform some abstract strip teases during which she barely moves and doesn't even remove any clothing. No strip and a lot of tease, which might leave her fans feeling somewhat disappointed and ripped off. She is simply miscast in a role any actress could have done, and she never turns on that mysterious aura of narcotic eroticism which surrounds those indelible performances. Howard Vernon and Franco himself appear in small roles as agents and lighten up the proceedings with some humorous asides. The film does lack the esoteric qualities of Franco's earlier collaborations with Miranda. One can only imagine what her career would have been like if she had lived past the age of 27.
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What saved the film for me were the whirlwind vocal and brass score by Manfred Hubler and Siegfried Schwab (available on CD) and Franco's frenetic camera style and pacing. The director really goes over the top with the zoom lens here (as many critics have complained), moving in and out of the action (or non-action) or suddenly zooming up to the top of palm trees and back down again for no particular reason. These rather desperate directorial moves become kind of amusing to watch for the sheer unpredictabilty of what Franco is going to focus (or unfocus) on next. The wild camera work is accenuated by the fast paced editing (unusual in a Franco film from this period) and heady music. Franco obviously knew he was involved in a lost cause and at least produced film with a few of his personal touches, a Eurospy quickie which his longtime fans can laugh at while regretting the fate of the doomed Miranda.
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Franco would return to the world of Edgar Wallace in the 1980s with two questionable "adaptations." VAIJE A BANGKOK: ATAUD INCLUIDO is a rarely seen spy adventure set in the Far East. cult seen through Asian pottery, curtains and smoke and mirrors. A closer looks reveals an uncredited source, Franco's own 1966 Eurospy epic starring Eddie Contantine, ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS (CARDS ON THE TABLE). Despite a lackluster performance by can't be bothered Constantine that did have some good scenes detailing the creation of human cyborgs in a giant test tube (see Below).
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Produced by Jess Franco/Manacoa Films--Directed by Jess Franco--Screenplay by David Khunne (Jess Franco), based on a novel by Edgar Wallace--DP: Joan Soler/Juan Soler Cozar--Music: Dennis Farnon/Jess Franco (Ed. Harmony, Madrid)--Asst. Dir: Rosa Maria Almirall (Lina Romay), Carlos Aguilar-- Editor: Rosa Maria Almirall (Lina Romay)--Art. Dir: Carlos Spitzer--Ma: Juana de la Morena--Production Asst: Angel Oriales, Enrique Diaz--Prod. Mgr: J. Antonio Mayans--92m. Eastmancolor. Widescreen. Locations: Alicante, Canary Islands. Spain. 1985.
Based on "novel" by Edgar Wallace... But what novel or story?A brainwashed assassin breaks into a diplomatic reception, cuts the throat of the British Ambassador and is quickly shot down. The aging but still sharp M1 agent, Colonel Daniel J. Blimp (Howard Vernon) arrives to conduct an inquiry. He is joined the a younger, brash Australian agent, Philip Sanders (Jose Llamas) and the victim's daughter (Helena Garret) in uncovering a strange cult under the mental domination of the blind Professor Tao (Albino Graziani). More terrorist style murders of political figures occur but Blimp's trusty cane and trick tobacco pouch save the day, along with bursts of machine gun fire directed by the young Sanders.
Basado en la novela de Edgar Wallace according to the poster, this is actually an on-the-fly remake of CARTES SUR TABLE (1966), with Howard Vernon playing the Eddie Constantine role. Without sex, nudity or significant action scenes this looks like a by the numbers reboot of an earlier low-budget film on an even slimmer contract which doesn't have a significant female foil like Francoise Brion or Sophie Hardy in the template. Like CARTES SUR TABLE it's an uneasy, highly personal blend of rushed looking action scenes, Jess Franco in-jokes (the Ambassador is named after the editor of several Harry Alan Towers-JF collaborations), but the Romantic intrigue just isn't there nor are the charmingly dog eared scrap ups. What is here are some strikingly composed sequences set in the hidden lair of the "cult of ultimate knowledge" executed by mere clever placement of a few vases, geometric blocking along with typical Jess Franco smoke and mirrors effects. The "robots" look more than mid 1980s lounge lizards than Manchurian Candidates. The robot killers are controlled by a sinister cult. Jess Franco has a throwaway cameo as a hotel clerk.
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Spanish film historian Carlos Aguilar, who would eventually write several books on the director, was assistant director, and appears in a small role as the hotel clerk. The name of Sanders appears to be the main element taken from the work of Edgar Wallace. Jess Franco, looking somewhat bored, appears as an inquisitive hotel agent. Nevertheless, it's a sometimes fun trifle, features some amusingly inept Kung Fu interludes and German actor Christian Bork (Bork Gordon) from the somewhat similar Golden Films Internacional no-budget action epic BANGKOK, CITA CON LA MUERTE(1985), which was made in an overlap with this film according to the director*
Actually, the best shot in the film is in the first scene where the diplomatic reception is reflected in the sunglasses of the robot-assassin who is lurking in the night just outside the window. Jess Franco, when up against it, is sometimes better at making scattered memorable images like this than he is at writing original stories or compelling characters, but he obviously was more concerned this time in making yet another film and moving on to the next. The secret code of Jess Franco lives on in even obscure commercial knocks offs. The director would return to hardcore in 1985-1987, with such tiles as EL MIRON Y EL EXCIBICIONISTA, EL OJETE DE LULU and ENTRE PITOS ANDA EL JUEGO.
This film was preceded by the 1983 SANGRE EN MIS ZAPATOS, a fast-paced actioner supposedly based on Edgar Wallace's SANDERS COME FROM THE RIVER [!], a book I have never read, so I can't testify to its faithfulness to the credited source. This one features Howard Vernon as an absconding Soviet scientist who has fled his homeland with a high-tech nuclear homing device. An International espionage would be thriller which has numerous amusing scenes involving a duo of agents played by Antonio Mayans and Lina Romay. It all ends with a NORTH BY NORTHWEST style air to ground pursuit where the couple are bombed by an airborne menace. An unusual and very welcome action-adventure turn by the director, with a lot of subversive humor, personal touchstones and a musical code. Released on Spanish video-Basic Home Video S.A., according to OBSESSION THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO. This film also had Internet broadcast on a Spanish site some time ago and looked to be in good shape.
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(C) Robert Monell (New Version) 2023.Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-59646056038072052502023-04-06T23:23:00.020-04:002023-04-12T21:23:59.575-04:00Review: LES GRANDES EMMERDEUSES (Clifford Brown, 1974)<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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Review: LES GRANDES EMMERDEUSES (1974)
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After a few glimpses of the Paço dos Duques de Bragança, Franco zooms up to a window. Inside a lavish bedroom chamber Lina Romay and Pamela Stanford romp in the nude giving the director a chance to employ his infamous vaginal zoom. The remainder of the film is set in what look like budget Portuguese hotel rooms and a few images of attractions on the Atlantic beach resorts. It's difficult to believe there was an actual full screenplay for this Eurospy comedy-adventure, financed by the ever cost conscious Robert (Grandpa) De Nesle.
This is a delightfully sleazy Jess Franco romp, and I use the word "romp" with no irony intended. Jess directed under his "Clifford Brown" beard. White watching it one gets the sense that he probably forgot about it the day after shooting was completed. It all looks like it was shot in two and a half days in some hotel where the film crew were probably hiding out from the cops. Lina Romay and Pamela Stanford (Lorna, the Exorcist herself!) jiggle their merry ways through this sleek put-on concerning two almost always naked diamond smugglers (guess where they hide the diamonds) who travel to Istanbul where they hope to fence the jewels. Hot on the trail are a pair of bumbling Interpol agents (Franco regulars Bigotini and Ramon Ardid), who are introduced being bawled out by an Interpol official played by Jess Franco himself, a cameo that was probably dictated by lack of a casting budget. The female hot operators at the center of the action aren't the Red Lips detective team from Franco's second feature, LABIOS ROJOS (1960), or such follow ups as SADISTEROTICA and KISS ME MONSTER (1968). They're definitely on the wrong side of the law. Girls out to have fun. It's more like let's go to Cascais and make a sexy comedy, screenplay not included.
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The women manage to elude their pursuers but run into the massive Radeck (amusingly incarnated by the spherical Victor Mendes) a sort of gangster-mad scientist who has developed a hairy montrosity to whom our heroines will be fed if they don't deliver. It's all wild and crazy fun filmed with little or no budget, with plenty of those trademark zooms and without even the bare basics of a camera tripod or lights. The exteriors are mostly shot from a moving car and one can imagine the director hanging out the window with his hand held camera, zooming in and out of every object which caught his attention- a tree here, a bridge there, and so forth. All this will probably drive those insisting on the "well made film" up the proverbial wall, but I loved every minute of it.
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Lina and Pamela seem a lot more comfortable nude than most actresses do fully clothed, having a ball running around like jerks, playing sexy tricks on the villains and donning bizarre disguises (Stanford has an outrageous wrap-around cat mask which she puts on before going into action). Franco provides a circular, interactive structure by beginning and ending with the ladies assuming sexy poses, teasing the viewer by looking directly into the camera and telling us of how their latest adventure went down. I was particularly amused by a scene of the elephantine Radeck attempting a melancholy tune at the paino in his castle. This is a typically obscure in-joke which only those thoroughly immersed in Franco's alternate universe will catch on to. Others will stare in wordless amazement that this bleary trifle has even survived. We'll overlook the "Durenstein" monster, who is played by a remarkably ugly shirtless actor.
Immediately interactive and stubbornly lacking any obvious serious subtext, it's easy to overlook that it's Franco challenging viewers to believe how little he can do and still make a deliverable film. No sets, no costumes (except for the cat mask), no plot, and totally dependant on the talents of Lina Romay and Pamela Stanford. Even the earlier Red Lips film such as KISS ME MONSTER and SADISTEROTICA look lavish compared to this. It's just women having fun at the expense of male characters, and actresses having fun making a film. A trip to sunny Portugal. In a sense it's similar to Polanski's erotic cartoon comedy, WHAT?, made the previous year, which presented an always nude sex object eluding sexual assault, including gang rape, from obnoxiously horny European men. In that case the horny guys were embodied by Marcello Mastrioanni and Polanski himself. By the way, Polanski rang up Franco and inquired about getting Britt Nichols for the lead.
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Outside of my current and previous thoughts on this all nude, fun-in-the-sun spy farce, I could continue to talk about this as yet another example of female empowerment through having more fun and intellectual control than any women in most Eurospy films, including the James Bond series. But that would spoil the fun. It's not a coincidence that Franco's very last completed film AL PEREIRA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES, also features two frequently nude muses having a ball at ridiculing the self involved maleness of Fanco's favorite law enforcement representative. A few bullet points:
Having written about this in 1999, for MHVF, and later for my blog, my thoughts have evolved. But looking beneath that seemingly lightweight comedy surface this is inevitably another example of what I term Franco's "Cinema, Degree Zero". Quickly, recklessly filmed it nonetheless has its unique artistic rigor embedded in it's frenetic mise en scene. One can hope for a 2 or 4K HD release to reveal more about that obsessive mise en scene in even the most dire of circumstances. That release is unlikely to occur anytime soon.
Seeing this nearly a decade later made me appreciate Franco's sheer creativity in the face of dire poverty all the more. It looks like this was shot in Super 8mm, or maybe just regular old 8mm! But it was a 35mm shoot.
My most recent viewing a further decade on notes Jess Franco looks really spaced out or hyped up on something in his appearance, pacing around yet another sleazy hotel room. Did he ever sleep during this workaholic period?
Willy Braque (Guy Peraud), a familiar face from a number of Jean Rollin films (DEMONIACS; LIPS OF BLOOD), is even stranger looking than Jess Franco! This guy looks like he hasn't had a decent meal in his life. In other words, he's perfectly credible as the "connection" Kashfi.
My final bullet point is a question: Who will dare do a restored HD release of a film whose title roughly translates The Big Pains in the Ass?
Thanks to Monica Swinn.
(C) Robert Monell 2023
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-8748529268152204062023-03-22T17:26:00.015-04:002023-03-23T12:34:10.555-04:00Jess Franco's XXX Files. Falo Crest (1987)<!-- Site Meter XHTML Strict 1.0 -->
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(C) Robert Monell, 2023
Alternate title: CAPRICES SADOS POUR SALOPES DU PLAISIR/Producer: Phalos Films, Madrid/Director: Lennie Hayden [Jess Franco & Lina Romay]/Screenplay: Lennie Hayden, Lowel Richmond [J. Franco & L. Romay]/DP: Terry de Corsia [Jess Franco]/Music: Daniel J. White/Edited by Rosa Maria Almirall [L. Romay]/Agfacolor/Approx. 80m. Widescreen.
Cast: Jane Morgan (Marzan) [Lina Romay], Gina Corrington, Andre' White, Brenda Haven [Elisa Mateo], John First [C.Gonzalez Ordi], Mel Power [A. Bartos Velasco], Linda Ewing [M. Fernandez Moreno, Sado Summers [Jose Miguel Garcia Marfa, Carlos Quiroga. Also listed in adverts: Fess Parker [!], Lola Falona, Twin Welamy, Wendy Cano, Andrew White, Sigurney Grant. Shooting locations: Benidorm, Alicante.
*Bluray.com; Alex Mendibil.
Release dates (Spain):
May 4, 1987
August 10, 1988
One of two parodies of 1980s hit US television series, this one taking off from FALCON CREST. On the same wavelength but slightly superior to PHOLLASTIA, which parodied DYNASTY. There's not as much characterization here and the settings aren't as "upscale" as the other but a nonstop torrent of bitchy, sometimes amusing dialogue, which only Jess Franco could have written, saves this from being just another boring fuck and suck fest.
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The intentionally ridiculous "plot" involves the Channing's ongoing conflict with the Carrington family. Both hot to trot families are attempting to gain the rights for aphrodisiac fruit which grows on the inherited Channing estate. Franco has a lot of fun with the upscale families restorting to low down affairs and hostile business strategies. The hostess dreams that her guests will drink her mixture of wine and semen. Everyone ends up imbibing and a lengthy orgy ensues. Twosome, threesome, and moresome encounters rule the evening until everyone is drunk on sex and more sex. We've seen this disgusting drink prepared and consumed in Franco's 1978 COCKTAIL SPECIAL, one of the last film productions of Robert De Nesle and a hardcore variant of Sade's PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOURIOR.
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The action unfolds in "real" time before and during the party on the Channing properties. Melissa Channing hosts the affair with zest and a clever plot to get the rights signed over to her without any hitches. The orange drink is mixed with "delicious" semen and drunk like champagne as a wife remarks, "It's so embarrassing to see my husband shoot cum in public!" as another woman drinks the spent semen out of a Phallo Crest wine glass. More witty Franco dialogue ensues until the company collapses into a heap of sweaty flesh. Lots of gynecological close-ups of sex acts make up most of the runtime here. Lina Romay's brisk editing does keep things moving....
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Neither of the two hardcore spin offs of popular American TV shows became profitable due to the miscalculation of spending too much on professional hardcore actors and the costs of the productions themselves. When they were finally sold the price barely covered the costs and there wasn't a huge audience for what must have seemed like a clever marketing idea.
It should be noted that Angela Channing in the original FALCON CREST TV series was played by Jane Wyman, the former wife of Ronald Reagan, who was President of the United States during most of the series run.
Falcon Crest (TV Series 1981–1990) - IMDb
*1980s era Spanish VHS covers. No DVD releases.
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It's a long way from Sade to 1980s American television...
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Script sample, likely for English language subtitles, to give an idea of the verbal tone:
Oh dear! You've no idea what
Angela Channing is capable of!
Don't waste your time with
those auctions. Sell! Sell! Sell!
You'll evaporate in my hands like lightning.
The lightning of my power,
my intelligence and my cunt.
Yes Julia, yes..
You were my favourite until
sex and drugs destroyed you.
You were the most intelligent.
But now you're worthless like all the others.
But you're still not as
bad as the rest.
Don't answer!
Let me.
- Don't answer it!
________________________________________________________________________________Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-34514152430843117032023-03-08T15:10:00.014-05:002023-03-16T17:05:13.985-04:00LA CASA DE LAS MUJERES PERDIDAS (1982)LA CASA DE LA MUJERES PERDIDA (1982)
Most of Jess Franco's films are built around protagonists who are either trapped within or escaping from a dysfunctional real or extended family. The family is often a real or symbolic prison with a punishing mother/father figure, brothers and sisters in suffering communion and the psycholgical and existential weight of that specific situation. In the director's final film AL PERIERA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES the father figure is Jess Franco himself, the aged, demanding director, confined to a wheelchair but free to play with the apparatus of cinema and the representations of those within his mirror-enclosed mise-en-scene.
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THE HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN went into production during a typically busy year for Jess Franco. He was involved in shooting, editing, preparing and doing post-production on at least 9 films in 1982. It was shot in late Summer/early Fall of 1982, probably toward the end of September, and completed post-production on October 18th, 1982. It was viewed by the Spanish ministerial commission which rated the film with a Clasificada "S" (sensitive material not suitable for viewers under 18 years old and even adults who might be offended). Theater workers checked that customers had ID that they were over 18. A film could be rated S for violence also, as was DAWN OF THE DEAD in Spain at that time. Filmed in coastal areas in the provinces of Murcia and Malaga, most of the action takes place in the seaside house of actor Mario Pontecorvo, played by Jess Franco regular Antonio Mayans. It opens with Desdemona, played by LIna Romay, walking along the beach and thinking in voiceover about her loneliness. There are no other residents on the island beside the dysfunctional Pontecorvo family. There is a tone of macabre, dark humor in the way the family is represented. We’ll be aware of this tone all through the film.
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Fetishism, family style....
The film opens with shots of waves crashing on the island’s shore. We then listen to Desdemona’s thoughts as she walks along the beach. She’s lonely and frustrated as she watches the passenger jets fly overhead toward international destinations. She senses she will never leave the island and feels trapped. Her physical nudity represents her emotional nudity and vulnerability. She spends most of the film pleasuring herself, her only escape from the grim reality of her family life. These scenes of the island and the seashore were filmed along the coastal regions of Murcia and Malaga, mostly Malaga, two provinces in the southeast and south of Spain. The coast line of Murcia is seen in the first shots in Franco’s 1973, A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD. Some shots were filmed on the coastal area near the city of Benidorm, which is near Alicante, to the north of these other areas. Once again, Jess Franco is using various fragments taken in different regions of the Spanish landscape to create his own unique alternate reality.
Lina Romay’s character is named Desdemona while Mario’s second wife is Dulcinea, both names of characters in famous Shakespeare tragedies. It should be emphasized that The House of Lost Women is a tragedy. The behavior of the head of the family, Mario, who could best be described by as a legend in his own mind, is that of a pathological liar. He claims to be from Argentina, where he was a leading stage presence for years until he had to leave the country due to a sex scandal. He constantly reminds the other family members that he in is permanent hiding and lives in fear of being found and arrested by Interpol agents and returned to stand trial.
Desdemona also lives in a fantasy world while her sister Paulova is developmentally disabled and confined to a wheelchair. Both sisters are verbally, physically and emotionally abused by Mario’s second wife, played by the late actress Carmen Carrion. Mario’s wife also verbally humiliates him for being impotent in their sexual relations. Mario ignores all this and sits all day reading aloud from various magazines about such famous celebrities such as Margaret Thatcher and actors in classic movies. This is one of Antonio Mayan’s best roles and performances. He has to play a character who is never all in reality, but slides in and out of it. He’s self-absorbed to the point where he can no longer function normally, he lives in a plane somewhere between neurosis and psychosis. The late actress Carmen Carrion is also well cast as Mario’s dissatisfied wife. Some may remember the actress from Jose Larraz’s BLACK CANDLES. She’s very skilled at playing brooding, manipulative characters. Besides acting she worked in the garment industry and was a nightclub entertainer as well. Paulova is played by the actress Ausunscion Calero, who acts under the name Susana Kerr, and the character of the hunter/journalist is played by actor Tony Skios (Antonio Rebollo). Both actors appeared in other Jess Franco films around this time, including THE SINISTER DR ORLOFF.
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One element to listen for on the soundtrack are the constant chatter of radio and television commercials for skin creams, food products, coffee, automobiles and an advert for the Spanish version for the 1980s American television hit DALLAS, which features a character named JR. Even the isolated, depraved world of this island bound family is invaded by the commercial entertainment world. Perhaps this is Jess Franco’s comment on his own position as a commercial Spanish director in the 1980s. He told me when I interviewed him in 2005 that “I was not free” when discussing his Spanish films in the 1960s and 70s, that the Spanish censorship only allowed him to make certain films which would be later censored of material the commission found offensive. He later gained a degree of creative freedom when in the 1980s the Spanish censors of the Francisco Franco regime had disappeared and there was a healthy soft-core sex film industry in Spain. He could deal with explicit themes and show things which were once forbidden in Spain.
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1974 Eurocine composite, despite the presence of Franco veterans Jack Taylor and Olivier Mathot, not to be confused with THE HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN
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THE HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN, was made in total freedom which he was give by Spanish producer Emilio Larraga, who owned Spain’s GOLDEN FILMS INTERNACIONAL, for which Franco made films from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. The only limitation he had was money. “They were very poorly resourced” he told me. He had micro-budgets and unlimited creative freedom. This film has only 5 or 6 characters and most of it takes place in a small house. There were no big expenses incurred by a large cast, sets or travel. What he delivered with this film, as with his similar Bahia Blanca, was a very serious, personal project without an artificial plot, clichéd characters, generic demands. This wasn’t a spy film, a horror film, a neo-noir, a comedy, an action film, it was a film about real people trapped in a painful existence. The alternate Spanish title Perversion en la Isla Perdida highlights its existential placement in the “S” film marketplace of the era. It's set on island where we visit a hermetically sealed, closed world outside of the boundaries of reality. In that sense it's similar to such films as FEMALE VAMPIRE, COUNTESS PERVERSE, A VIRGIN AMOND THE LIVING DEAD,99 WOMEN, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR, MACUMBA SEXUAL and many of his WIP films, an off shore off-world built from the ground up by Jess Franco.
What’s important to consider about LA CASA… is that if fulfills the commercial requirements of an “S” film, crafted for that market, while at the same time taking a deep dive into collective insanity. He remade this film almost 20 years later with BROKEN DOLLS (2000), which is also very much worth seeing. It’s done in a different style, using a different technology, a more experimental film, as most of his 21st Century digital films were. Both films are 100 percent Jess Franco.
Thanks to Ismael Fernandez, Alex Mendibil and Francesco Cesari for additional information.
© Robert Monell, 2023
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-71780609094093235672023-03-07T18:18:00.020-05:002023-03-08T23:57:53.801-05:00RESIDENCIA PARA ESPIAS (1968)
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpd5NGnUtasUFfOPCuJREqn-8Fe3ihl18kdpn8aomqnqZiSNVXPxs24wYKOBbS-BPTtrQTBd8NQDM8nOOOqLFcxXXlMacGBQ2Bzq9D-D57V_4_OAkbodYGvsjcHX2lzRrebVT2E_TMSY3UGkCmUmrod66qttws6tZJ7Tw3Dgjck7yBnVSkmh0/s3264/IMG_20190805_224204037_HDR.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="2027" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpd5NGnUtasUFfOPCuJREqn-8Fe3ihl18kdpn8aomqnqZiSNVXPxs24wYKOBbS-BPTtrQTBd8NQDM8nOOOqLFcxXXlMacGBQ2Bzq9D-D57V_4_OAkbodYGvsjcHX2lzRrebVT2E_TMSY3UGkCmUmrod66qttws6tZJ7Tw3Dgjck7yBnVSkmh0/s320/IMG_20190805_224204037_HDR.jpg"/></a></div>RESIDENCIA PARA ESPIAS
1968-90 minutes/European Trash Cinema and Video Search of Miami (U.S. import) Directed by JESS FRANCO; From a novel by Michael Loggan Cast: EDDIE CONSTANTINE, DIANA LORYS, OTTO STERN, ANITA HOFFER, TOTA ALBA, MARIA PAZ PONDAL, CRIS HUERTA, DINA LOY, Howard Vernon, Wolfgang Preiss (alternate version)/A Spanish-West German co-production.
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Reviews DARK WATERS; Robert Monell's EUROSPY FILES<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLHTUHgneqCD5juRrkzzeNeeXVFx4oDSrOeTG9fCa1ChYdibuCybu_1nKWwnQ8PflY3mgEgD6ji1Z4yGvDZ_xKUCRjVPLi6VjYRFTuFvUGBZWHoHbGLezjPPj_YuXMMdB2pcx25jMw9T-WSLSEeI-RLbyHQO8rCw_bMGCEl2gZGtizaQKjjg/s720/residencia%20espias%20car%202.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLHTUHgneqCD5juRrkzzeNeeXVFx4oDSrOeTG9fCa1ChYdibuCybu_1nKWwnQ8PflY3mgEgD6ji1Z4yGvDZ_xKUCRjVPLi6VjYRFTuFvUGBZWHoHbGLezjPPj_YuXMMdB2pcx25jMw9T-WSLSEeI-RLbyHQO8rCw_bMGCEl2gZGtizaQKjjg/s320/residencia%20espias%20car%202.jpg"/></a></div>
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(a.k.a. ÇA BARDE, CHEZ LES MIGNONNES; DAN CHEZ LES GENTLEMEN; LES MIGNONNES)
This obscure title, one of two Jess Franco spy films starring Eddie Constantine, the other being the much better known ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS (a.k.a. CARTES SUR TABLE), also features the charmingly rough-hewn actor-singer as a smarter-than-he-looks secret agent. In RESIDENCIA PARA ESPÍAS, his character is named Dan Leyton, but the part is a virtual carbon copy of the Al Pereira spy in CARTES SUR TABLE.
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As usual Franco composes his film with layered imagery which challanges the viewer to really watch the film in order to "see" it; there is a difference between watching and seeing in the Franco galaxy. The above image tells us a lot about the plot and a major character in the film, but we have to look into the image, instead of just at it, to the picture on the wall, to "see" the revelation which will not be fully understood until the final scene. Once again, we are prisoners of appearances as is Dan Leyton in his journey toward a truth which will further disillusion him and provide an ironic twist. The story, which is not as original or interesting as the one in CARTES SUR TABLE, has Constantine trying to ferret out a traitor to American military interests in Istanbul. After an extensive investigation and many false leads, it turns out that a high-ranking official is leaking information with the help of someone close to Leyton. The key to the mystery has been hiding in plain sight. Constantine, as low-key as ever in this rather cut-and-dried role, is mostly seen wandering around in a spiffy military uniform while dodging fists and femme fatales. The movie maintans interest due to the exotic locales -- the mosques, bazaars, and back alleys of Istanbul -- which Franco spends a lot of time recording with an overactive zoom lens. One welcome factor is that the film is in color, which enhances the exotic locations. The black and white cinematography in CARTES SUR TABLE was competent but didn't boost either the aesthetic or commercial value.
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RESIDENCIA PARA ESPÍAS offers some nicely understated moments of erotic frisson provided by the usually scantily-clad Diana Lorys, who played the female lead in Franco's first horror film, THE AWFUL DR ORLOFF. I found the film fascinating but somewhat talky, especially in untranslated Spanish. It works best as a relaxed travelogue with an occassional chase or fight thrown in for good measure. Eddie's reactions to the various women populating the film, especially a dominating female officer, are quite amusing. There's even a bizarre rendition of the song "When the Saints Come Marching In," done by an all-female chorus, with Leyton playing the keyboard.
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The best parts of this are when it upshifts into Eurospy action gear as in a ferocioius fight, staged in a chicken coop, between the protagonist and some rough local agents. Leyton survives the attack by his ability to shift into a mode which is as nasty as his attackers. Istanbul is an amoral place for a Western agent, no matter how experienced, as it is pleasantly exotic for the innocent European tourist trade. At the end Leyton finds out that his closest friends there are betraying him and his country. He allows his friend (Otto Stern) the dignity of suicide before walking away with the bitter recognition that it's a dirty job in a corrupted world. This is in marked difference to the silly slapstick which concludes Franco's other Eddie Constantine Eurospy CARTES SUR TABLE (ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS, 1966). The point is that Leyton has been behind the curve despite his spy movie machinations.
For the Franco fan, these minor diversions (which also includes a lively jazz and Turkish score by Odon Alonso) make this unpretentious entry easy on the eyes and ears. Franco would return to Istanbul for further atmospheric location shooting on THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU and VENUS IN FURS (1969). At this point the filmmaking skirts on the edges of the avant garde into which the director would make a deep dive with NECRONOMICON (1967).
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Wolfgang Preiss, actor famous for portraying villains in numerous films, including the legendary title character in the final film of Fritz Lang, DIE TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR. MABUSE (1960).
Unfortunately, this review is based on a truncated Spanish-language version from an old TV broadcast (in bootleg form) on video. It is watchable but runs about 15 minutes shorter than the 90-minute running time listed in some reference books.
As a final note, it would be interesting to see the French version of this film which reportedly contains additional inserts featuring Howard Vernon and Wolfgang Preiss (Doctor Mabuse in Fritz Lang's DIE TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR. MABUSE!), filmed during the 1966 preparations for the shooting of NECRONOMICON! That legendary item, though, may be a version once offered by the various, defunct grey market dealers. It would also be interesting to read the source novel, <i>Leyton et les Chatelaines</i>. An attack by thugs on Radeck (Howard Vernon) does remain in the Spanish VHS I consulted for this review. RESIDENCIA PARA ESPIAS is certainly interesting enough to deserve a full-scale HD restoration with all the trimmings.
The rather extensive shoot took place between June and August 1966. It was released in Turkey in 1968. Locations included Alicante; Comunidad Valencia, exteriors, including Jardin des Abril; Estudios CEA, Cuidad Lineal, Madrid; Bosphorous, dock exteriors, sunset; Istanbul, exteriors, including the Blue Mosque; Lisbon, Portugal, elevator de Santa Justa (scene of attack on Howard Vernon).
(C) Robert Monell [New Version, 2023]Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30886366.post-24143212678908233732023-02-12T00:14:00.020-05:002023-02-17T20:44:45.963-05:00EROTISMO (MDV VHS) Caliente Video/EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION-1980/Filming at La Muralla Rojo<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOB6ggfQPgRZBWN5iKi1VUmMXi2SJQVaE4MnFT6_HYiReiDCaiKnZg2paF2EUoR73m5QRfh7Nr9CQtQXBAYXuQWwVjpbr8_mM64jrTA9B53bhPVqHc_jF1uUhP_jOOk_DZ86U5jARLiQtrLwFqhN6wI9zRcOv5jPa1rqENfCUTe6c5n4Wpx_M/s475/152113.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOB6ggfQPgRZBWN5iKi1VUmMXi2SJQVaE4MnFT6_HYiReiDCaiKnZg2paF2EUoR73m5QRfh7Nr9CQtQXBAYXuQWwVjpbr8_mM64jrTA9B53bhPVqHc_jF1uUhP_jOOk_DZ86U5jARLiQtrLwFqhN6wI9zRcOv5jPa1rqENfCUTe6c5n4Wpx_M/s320/152113.jpg"/></a></div>
EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION (1980), is another Franco adaptation of Sade's PHILOSOPHY IN THE BEDROOM (1795), previously filmed in 1969 as EUGENIE, THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION, featuring Christopher Lee, Maria Towers and Jack Taylor. This would also be filmed by the director as a Robert De Nesle financed project, the hardcore COCKTAIL SPECIAL, a 1978 production which appears to have been the last film JF made for the prolific French producer, who died that year. This is one of my favorite versions of the text, which the director would remake several times. Not to be confused with Franco's version of Sade's 1788 "Moral Tale" EUGENIE DE FRANVAL [EUGENIE DE SADE-1970].
Filmed mostly in two of the outstanding Ricardo Bofill structures in Calpe, this is one of Franco's most assured, and personal, responses to Sade. Bofill(1939-2022), a friend and collaborator with the director, sadly expired in 2022, a victim of COVID-19. He was more than an architect but he will be remembered for his innovative, visionary designs for living.
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Bofill's mind boggling structures tease the eye, he is often compared with M.C. Escher, and stimulate the mind. Jess Franco obviously found a place where his other-worldly tales could be told so that the available decor would enhance his film. A work of art being created within a work of art. They become ideal settings for the onieric ambience of the film.
Relativity, M.C. Escher (1953)
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The exterior and swimming pool (installed on the roof for tenants of the apartment complex) of "The Red Wall" are impressive and the structure immediately captures the attention of the eye even at significant distances. Since Eugenie.... is primarily a visual essay on the relationship between madness, crime, and artistic creation what better place to stage it than in the presence of a visionary structure. Franco had had full permission from the achitect to film in his buildings since the late 1960s, when Muralla was still being designed. The nearby Bofill housing complex Xanadu is also used, especially in the film's second part. It's basically a compilation of cubes accessed by stone staircase. Fortress comes to mind when describing the structure's unique shape. Both buildings overlook the Mediterranean.
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LA MURALLA ROJO, Calpe (1973)
d Daniel J. White) and one by Gerhard Heinz
https://youtu.be/y_HvfPlNGJI
The Franco-Villa score succeeds better at capturing the state of mind of Alberto De Rosa (Antonio Mayans), the homicidally disturbed maker of sand women whom adorn his beach and predict his future crimes. Research has indicated that some psychotics see/experience reality in different ways than non-psychotic individuals. Given the environmental context of the Bofill structures, along with the contradictory jazz sonics of the Franco Villa score this film offers a complete sensory overload of alien sights and sounds, alien in the sense that the approximate the mindset of the insane killer. Cues from the Heinz score can be heard of this CD collection.
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PHILOSOPHY IN THE BEDROOM is a Sade novel from 1795, which Franco and Harry Alan Towers filmed with remarkable fidelity in 1969, featuring Maria Rohm as Madame St. Ange and Jack Taylor as her depraved brother. Christopher Lee guests stars as the Sadean narrator Dolmance and he is quite effective as a dry master of ceremonies, looking like a dandy in his red smoking jacket. Marie Liljedahl is Eugenie, the character who is targeted by St. Ange and her brother but who ends up undoing both of them. A rather glossy production for Jess Franco, despite some out of focus cinematography courtesy of the busy Manuel Merino. Leaving aside the strictly minimalist (due to budget constraints), EROTISMO/EUGENIE STORY OF A PERVERSION is probably the personal adapatation of the story in regards to Franco's stylistic development. Much of the film has the effect of watching things through the binoculars used by Alberto in his voyeuristic mode. Watching is always a dangerous thing is a Franco film. It incoropates the watcher into the scene being watched in a way which can't be disconnected. It leaves open a question: why are you watching this? Sade also seeks to ensnare the reader into the sado-erotic scenes which are being detailed.
The film opens and closes on the beachfront focusing on Alberto's sand people. He is the sort of mad artist who replaces the mad scientists which often frequent Franco's horror films, Dr. Orloff being the one which comes to mind first since he's the protagonist of the director's first horror film. By the mid 1970s the protagonist villain would be Franco himself playing a serial killer who haunts the area around the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The killer is also a writer, like Franco himself, and he writes for a sadomasocthistic publication just as Jess Franco was by that time making films or variants for the hardcore market (SEXORCISM-1975). At the very end Eugenie (Katia Beinert) destroys the sand sculputes which represent Alberto's mad internal world. In the 1970 EUGENIE... the heroine also ends up on a beach finding some measure of freedom from her parent's world and the world of Dolmance (Christopher Lee) and his sadistic cult. As with Fellini, or Rollin, the beach is often the setting of a final scene which represents a ritual of transformation where one communes directly with a natural element, the sea, without human interruptions.
I'm not aware of this being released on Spanish VHS, but it has been released on a US Spanish language VHS label*. It was rated CLASIFICADA S for its Spanish theatrical release
*EROTISMO:Caliente Video MDVC-MIllion Dollar Video Company
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(C) Robert Monell, 2023
Robert Monellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06309327472702575547noreply@blogger.com1