Franco's 80s actors: JOAQUÍN NAVARRO

The juvenile lead of La isla de las virgenes aka El lago de las virgenes did no further work for Jess Franco and, indeed, very little film acting for others. His filmography comprised the years 1981-83 and his only leads were in Franco’s film and Carlos Aured’s quasi-bloodless slasher flick Atrapados en el miedo (1983, released 1985).






Other than that, he is listed as part of the respective casts of Mariano Ozores’s ¡Qúe gozada de divorcio! (1981), a comedy vehicle for Andrés Pajares; and Bésame tonta (1982), a now-forgotten vehicle for the Orquesta Mondragón music group. To these one should add José María Zabalza’s ultra-weird softcore film Bragas calientes(1983), with Navarro was the youthful owner of the mysterious house around which much of the action revolves. Franco’s movie appears last in his filmography due to its having been released in 1987, although it’s really a 1981 production, signifying that it was among the first of the actor’s films, or maybe even the very first.

Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen

Franco's 80s actors: FLAVIA HERVÁS

Jess Franco was one filmmaker who would use whatever elements or persons were available to him at the moment, making it unsurprising that he should give roles to set technicians – or as in the case of the child actress Flavia Hervás , to the daughter of his lead actor / production manager, Antonio Mayans, and the director’s regular make-up artist, Juana de la Morena.

Antonio Mayans had the habit of taking along his whole family along for shoots, meaning that his three daughters were regularly around on set, as was the dog. Eventually, the daughters were themselves given various assignments, whether it be acting roles or, as in the case of the oldest of the three, Regina Mayans, the job of assistant director in Jungle of Fear (1993, unfinished).


Of the three sisters, the youngest, Flavia Mayans de la Morena was the most conspicuous. Billed in films as Flavia Hervás (after Antonio Mayans’s mother), she was born in Cantabria c. 1977 and appears to have made her debut in Camino Solitario (1983), playing the daughter of her real-life father, a role she essayed again in Sola ante el terror (also 1983). The presence of the three girls gave Franco the idea of making children’s films, such as En busca del dragon dorado (1983), starring Flavia alongside her sister Ivana, both of whom could also be seen in uncredited roles during the titles of ¿Cuánto cobra un espía? (1984). Franco, most audaciously, even entertained the idea of using the sisters in a musical!


Flavia Hervás’s career ended soon, at the age of seven, due to her parents’ concern about her missing classes at school. She disappeared from Franco’s universe until she had turned 19, when she was offered the female lead, named Flavia, in the film that was eventually to be titled Killer Barbys (1996). Unsure of her acting abilities and unwilling to do nude scenes, she turned down the offer, and the project finally became a vehicle for the Killer Barbies rock band. Hervás’s return to acting came about in Ángel Mora Aragón’s shot-on-video The Snuff Game (2000), with Antonio Mayans in the cast, playing a seedy drunkard, and Hervás as the woman being stalked by the lonely murderer that is the film’s central character. Both father and daughter were obviously being iconically cast, even if the bearded, graying Mayans and, more especially, Flavia Hervás, now in her early twenties, were a far cry from what they looked like in the early eighties. That same year, as Flavia Mayans, she also appeared in an episode of the slob TV sitcom Manos a la obra, in the very brief role of a hooker.


On discovering she didn’t like acting, she took to other show business concerns, emerging as a lighting technician for the stage. In 2010, she and José Mora were nominated for a Max Award (the Spanish equivalent to the Tony) for their lighting design of the play Sueño Lorca o El sueño de las manzanas, a theatre production written and directed by María Caudevilla.


Poster of En busca del dragón dorado. Flavia Hervás is the girl wearing overalls.



Flavia Hervás in The Snuff Game



Flavia Hervás in the TV sitcom Manos a la obra



Production of the play Sueño Lorca o el sueño de las manzanas, lighting by José Mora and Flavia Hervás.

(Most information has been drawn from the interviews with Antonio Mayans and Flavia Hervás conducted by Ferrán Herranz and Fracesco Cesari and included in the book Il caso Jesús Franco, 2010, edited by Cesari).

Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen

Franco's 80s actors: VERÓNICA ARECHAVALETA

Call her Verónica Arechavaleta, Arezchavaleta, Arizchvaleta, Areschavaleta or, the most un-euphonic among several contenders, Arecnavaleta …I have settled for the more probable Verónica Arechavaleta as the proper moniker of this actress who was billed under several variants of the same name. Arechavaleta is, after all, a surname a Basque person or someone of Basque origin could have, whereas the weird-sounding Arecnavaleta registers as the mistaken typed transcription of some handwritten text with low aitches.



Matters of correct spelling apart, little is known about Arechavaleta, whose film career was confined to the early eighties, except for rumours that she was born in Uruguay. At the end of her brief filmography, she was among the pioneering actresses of Spanish hardcore, working for the likes of Ismael González and Manuel Mateos, all of whom operated within homegrown porn in its earliest stages before it was brought to a temporary halt by heavy taxation. Prior to the legalisation of hardcore, Arechavaleta had appeared in, you guessed it, softcore movies, memorably as the reformatory governess in Ricardo Palacios’s Mi conejo es el major (1982).



Her occasional billing as “Mae Monroe” brings a stark contrast between the associations of this pseudonym and the hard, sub-nosed appearance of Arechavaleta herself. Not a pretty actress by common standards, she lent herself easily to evilly domineering types, such as those she played in at least two Jess Franco films, as in Sangre en mis zapatos (1983), partnered with Daniel Katz, and Furia en el trópico (1985), aka Mujeres acorraladas aka Orgasmo perverso, where she was once again seen as a prison governess. Neither her name nor its variants are anywhere to be seen in the credits of Furia en el trópico: she could well be the “Verónica Seeton” who shares a screen credit with Palacios.

Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen

Franco's 80s actors: EDUARDO FAJARDO

On returning to Spain in the late 70s, Jess Franco came more and more to rely on either his stock players or assorted obscurities to people his casts, obviously in accordance with his ever-dwindling budgets. Now and then, however, some old-timer of Spanish cinema might turn up in a film of his. The reasons for them appearing in such down-market productions were presumably various. One assumes that Fernando Rey was available to fill in time between assignments when appearing in La bahía Esmeralda (1989), and that it was personal friendship with Franco that brought Manuel Alexandre into the cast of Las tribulaciones de un buda bizco (1989). As for the case of Lola Gaos and Barta Barri, their appearances in, respectively, La isla de las virgenes (1987) and the aforementioned Las tribulaciones obviously bore on the declining careers of these aging, once-prominent character actors.

Of all these actors, Eduardo Martínez Fajardo, with three Franco films to his credit, worked most prolifically in the director’s later output. The squarely-built, distinguished-looking Galician was born in either 1918 or 1924 (sources disagree on this point) and his collaboration with Franco coincided with a period of career decline in the early eighties, which paradoxically preceded what may have been his greatest popular success. Soon he was to appear in a major role in the TV series Tristeza de amor (1986), taking over from the recently deceased Alfredo Mayo, which brought Fajardo more familiarity than he had ever enjoyed before, although now, of course, he is chiefly remembered for his numerous villainous roles in Spaghetti Westerns.

Having started his acting career in 1942 as a dubber, providing the Spanish voice of Charles Boyer in Franz Borzage’s History Is Made at Night (1937), he was later to supply the voice of Orson Welles’s Othello. Concurrently, he was appearing onscreen as a contract player for the powerful CIFESA. Following a long fifties period working in Mexico, he settled in Spain once again and it is then that he embarked on his long series of international coproductions. During this period, most controversially, he was also active in the National Show Business Syndicate of the (Francisco) Franco regime. At the time he was making films for Jess Franco, he was appearing in much TV and had resumed his old trade as a dubber, his velvety bass voice being heard in anything from episodes of Starsky and Hutch to films such as Absence of Malice (1981).

As for his roles in Jess Franco films, he was given a very good starring role as the drunken fisherman in El lago de las virgenes (1981, released 1987). As he gives his teenaged grandson a crude but sound sex-education monologue, one cannot help remembering the very different, less welcome instructions he had earlier given as the onscreen lecturer in Manuel Esteba’s El despertar de los sentidos (1974), an outrageously repressive sex-instruction docudrama in the manner of Erich F. Bender’s Helga (1967).



Franco gave Fajardo another role in the replacement Spanish scenes of Oasis of the Zombies (1983) in which he and Lina Romay took over from the two French actors used in the initial Eurociné version. Finally, he appeared in the supporting role of a millionaire in the adventure film Bangkok, cita con la muerte (1985).



In the nineties, Fajardo went to live in Mojacar, Almería, where he has a street named after him, and since 2001 has been mainly involved in giving acting lessons to disabled people. He now lives in Huércal, Almería. He is also occasionally active on the stage, having performed a monologue written by himself in 2009. All in all, he has appeared in some 2,000 television programs, 180 films and 75 plays.



An extract of Fajardo’s voice in Tulio Demicheli’s Tequila (1973):

http://www.4shared.com/audio/bxeqXjYu/fajardo.html

An extract of Fajardo’s voice in the Spanish-language soundtrack of Norman Jewison’s And Justice for All (1979), dubbing a supporting character:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/1eDjksaB/fajardo5.html

An extract of Fajardo’s voice in El lago de las virgenes:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/qByJU-gK/fajardo2.html

Imdb entry:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0265761/

Spanish Wikipedia entry:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Fajardo

A list of some of his dubbing jobs:

http://www.eldoblaje.com/datos/FichaActorDoblaje.asp?id=18068



An early image of Fajardo, during his CIFESA period, in a brief role in Rafael Gil’s Don Quijote de la Mancha (1948)

Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen

Franco's 80s actors: ÁNGEL ORDIALES

You’ve seen that full scraggly beard, sharp nose, long dark hair and receding hairline in several Jess Franco films from the director’s period of association with Antonio Mayans. A stills photographer and assistant to DP Juan Soler Cózar, Ángel Ordiales was, like Soler Cózar himself, willing to perform on both sides of the camera: it figures that both men were cast as filmmakers in Oasis of the Zombies (1981). Ordiales’s other roles include one of two rapists in Las orgías inconfesables de Emmanuelle (1982), the randy gardener in the ridiculous El hotel de los ligues (1983), a dying man in Sangre en mis zapatos (1983), Perico “El Bosé” the beggar in El siniestro Dr. Orloff (1984) and “Beardo” the fisherman in El lago de las vírgenes (1987). According to Antonio Mayans, Ordiales “went on to become a dentist and died at a very young age”.

(Mayans’s statement is taken from the interview with the actor conducted by Ferrán Herranz and Francesco Cesari and published in the 2010 symposium book Il caso Jesús Franco, coordinated by Cesari).



Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen

Franco's 80s actors: RICARDO PALACIOS

The Cantabrian-born, Madrid-based actor Ricardo López-Nuño Díez, better known as Ricardo Palacios, may be familiar to many from numerous Spaghetti Westerns, as well as much of Franco’s output from the early eighties. Born in 1940, he was a personal favourite of Antonio Margheriti, who used him in several films, even when there was no Spanish co-production involved, but it was Jess Franco, however, that gave him his first key role, as the bandit chief in The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968). This was the last time Franco and Palacios were to work together in a long time.

About a decade and a half later, Palacios’s close friend Antonio Mayans wheedled him into acting for Franco at the time when Mayans had become the filmmaker’s main assistant. During this period, Franco roles played by Palacios include that of the big mobster in Juego sucio en Casablanca (1985), the militarist prison warder in Furia en el trópico (1985), and Dr. Orgaz (a Hispanised Orloff) in Sola ante el terror (1986), a remake of Los ojos siniestros del Dr. Orloff (1983). Prior to this, his growling voice had appeared, minus his bulky presence, dubbing the butler in El hundimiento de la casa Usher and narrating Los blues de la calle Pop (both 1983).

Palacios had graduated in both acting and directing at the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía (EOC) but it was not until precisely his spell as a Franco regular that he also realized his dream of taking up directing. His directorial debut, Mi conejo es el mejor (1982), was an S/M softcore film, in which Franco had no participation, although the leads were Lina Romay and Emilio Linder (taking over from the originally intended Mayans) and the supporting cast included Carmen Carrión. His next, more ambitious project was the Civil War comedy ¡Biba la banda! (1987), which was produced by Franco (who also did second-unit work) and featured Juan Soler Cózar among the actors, along with Mayans (also the film’s production manager) in a bit role. Palacios himself drifts in and out of the film, in the unresolved character of a Valencian landowner, one of several details suggesting that the film’s troubled history affected the final result. Palacios is on record as blaming Franco and Mayans for the production problems it encountered, although actors Alfredo Landa and José Sancho are agreed in finding Palacios himself somewhat disorganized.

Whatever the truth, Franco was fired from his own production and Palacios ceased to be on speaking terms with Franco or Mayans. The head of the Arcofón sound studios took over as producer and the film, despite all the trouble, opened to a good response. A sequel was intended but failed to take off, as did another film project of Palacios’s dealing with the Civil War. Palacios, however, found himself much in demand as a writer and/or director on Spanish TV. Ten years after the making of ¡Biba la banda!, the film served as the basis for La banda de Pérez (1997), a comedy TV series written entirely by Palacios and directed between himself and Josetxo San Mateo. At this point, Ricardo Palacios had largely abandoned his career as a screen actor, mostly concentrating on his work as a dubber and, especially, as a TV writer and director. This activity was enough to earn him enough money to gradually withdraw from show business in the wake of health problems he encountered in the late nineties, to the extent of necessitating surgery. There appears to be no information on film or TV work of his after the year 2002. He appears to be retired and still living in Madrid.


On the whole, he has acted in dozens of feature films and TV shows, performing under the direction of people as disparate as Roberto Rossellini, León Klimovsky, Ignacio F. Iquino, Paul Naschy, Juan Antonio Bardem, José María Zabalza, Juan Logar, José María Forqué, Richard Lester, José Luis Merino, Eugenio Martín, Sergio Leone, Rafael Gil, Juan Bosch, José Antonio Nieves Conde, Jaime Chávarri, Pedro Lazaga and Vicente Aranda. As for his work as a dubber, he can be heard as the voice of a sailor in Amando de Ossorio’s Serpiente de mar (1984) and that of Michael Berryman in the Spanish-language version of Sylvio Tabet’s Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991).

Most of the above information is taken from Carlos Aguilar’s valuable book Ricardo Palacios. Actor, director, observador (2003), a lengthy interview in which the actor talks about his life and career. The son of a prison governor, he spent much of his childhood in expensive boarding schools (which he hated), and later, in his adulthood, following a spell with the right-wing Carlists, he subsequently joined the Spanish Communist Party. Roberto Rossellini, Eddie Constantine, Fernando Sancho, Juan Logar and Ignacio F. Iquino do not come off too well in the account he gives of his encounters with several notable people; Rafael Gil, Nieves Conde, Bardem, Lazaga, Frank Braña, Klimovsky, Margheriti, Leone and Merino are viewed more favourably. He also talks about his film interests: his favourite director is John Ford.

Regarding Franco and his 80s films, he says: “I went through outrageous situations during that period. For instance, I was left behind as a hostage in a hotel, along with the rest of the crew, because the money had run out and Franco and Mayans had gone to Madrid to look for more”. Regarding the man himself, his words are: “One thing I can say about Jess is that he’s got this wonderful capacity for ignoring what’s right and what’s wrong if it serves the purpose of making his film. Jess Franco is neither a good nor a bad person, he just wants things to be done his way and couldn’t care less about the rest of the universe”.



Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen

Favorite Jess Franco Dr. Orloff Movie

 
This is a slightly expanded version of a topic I already posted on www.cinemadrome.yuku.com/ . I moved it over here to get some feedback from the blog readers. There are already two votes for EL SINIESTRO DR. ORLOF...

There are four "official" Jess Franco Dr. Orloff films: GRITOS EN LA NOCHE (1961), EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF (1974), THE EYES OF ORLOFF (1972) and, my personal favorite, EL SINIESTRO DR. ORLOF (1982). I like it so much because even though it has similar characters and plot to the original GRITOS (which was, after all heavily influenced by Georges Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE-1959) it has a visual style and mood all its own. Very oppressive ambiance highlighted by the Pablo Villa/Jess Franco score which the director himself performs on a synthesizer. Long deep, Goth organ chords which are synthed into shrieks not unlike the hookers kidnapped and experimented on by the SON of Dr. Orloff, effectively played by Antonio Mayans.

Franco's early 60's German-style Expressionism in such films as GRITOS..., EL SECRETO..., LA MANO DE UN HOMBRE MUERTO aka THE SADIST BARON VON KLAUS is indebted to early Fritz Lang, Murnau's NOSFERATU and John Brahm's THE LODGER. But by the early 80s the director had developed a new style highlighted by garish colors, reflections within reflections, telezoom-plan sequences and a tendency to pattern actors within a highly artificial mise-en-scene. One scene in EL SINIESTRO... features a shot of the elderly, wheelchair-bound Orloff (Howard Vernon) whose aging, vulture-like head is haloed by a bright green tropical plant leaf as he argues with his son, making a silent visual comment on the old man's vegetative but tenacious physical state. Then there's another Franco "red room" in which the victims are strapped nude to a floor level table and disintegrated by the younger Orloff's ray only to be re integrated into the shell of his beloved mother, Melissa (Rocio Fexias (GEMIDOS DE PLACER has a ambiguous sensuality in her double role). Tony Skios (Antonio Rebello) and Juan Soler Cozar (the film's DP) are amusing as they have fun with their Inspector Tanner and Malou roles.

The film is essentially a running dialogue between Orloff Senior and son Alfred on medical ethics and hidden motives. Alfred admits to being stimulated by the cries of his victims, the "gritos en la noche" are music to his twisted consciousness.
Andros (Raf Smog=Rafael Cayetano) is now a burly, leather jacketed figure who looks like he might be a bouncer in the local disco but behind his sunglasses he's eyeless and as helpless a victim as the women he captures. This has a completely delirious visual/audio atmosphere which overwhelms the derivative plot and familiar characters. As Franco's comment on the denizens of the disco age and the hedonistic "new democracy" (which Franco himself parodies as the flaming gay "witness") of early 1980's Spain. Once again, style becomes content. The synth theme MELISSA was written by Franco and Rebecca White.

The opening aerial images of the smog choked city of Alicante are a kind of late twentieth century counterpart to the foggy 1912 streets of Hartog in GRITOS... . And the ending is rich is irony, with Vernon's chilling laugh. Not on DVD anywhere that I'm aware of, this needs a R1 presentation.

There's a Spanish video version of this retitled EXPERIMENTOS MACABROS [Aper Video] which was subtitled by a US gray market company.

EL SINIESTRO DR. ORLOF is not tier one Franco, but I would place it high in tier two. It should have been part of the "ORLOFF COLLECTION" released on DVD some years back, instead of THE INVISIBLE DEAD, which has Dr. Orloff as a character (played by Vernon), but is not a Jess Franco film. The character of Dr. Orloff resurfaces again and again throughout the director's vast filmography.

I'll be discussing the equally obscure EYES OF DR. ORLOFF here in the near future.

I would be interested in knowing which JF Orloff films are personal favorites.

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JESS FRANCO'S CUBIST DE SADE

Cubism: n. An early 20th century school of painting and sculpture tending through geometrical reduction of natural forms to establish independence of all imitative intention. [THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE]

I have about 20 dictionaries in various languages on hand at any time and that was the nearest. So I grabbed it and got the above paperback dictionary defintion of CUBISM, one of my favorite styles of painting, sculpture and architecture. Maybe that's why I've always had a special appreciation for the films of Fritz Lang, Edgar G. Ulmer and Jess Franco. Their films almost always have a cubist infrastructure. I've been discussing Franco's Sade adaptations and his much criticized use of the telezoom in previous blogs, but allow me to submit for your approval a brief examination the way cubism has influenced his style . Or at least in the period from 1970 to the early 1980's, wherein he discovered the architectural structures of Ricardo Bofill [SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY; THE PERVERSE COUNTESS: EUGENIE, UNA HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION] and purified his earlier Expressionism (see GRITOS EN LA NOCHE) into a kind of personal rough-hewn cubism. Also see Godard's LE MEPRIS, featuring Lang himself, as an extended excursion into cine-cubism. But Franco spent more than a decade delivering cubist canvases on film.

A good example of this is the above image from PLAISIR A TROIS [can you name the actors?], which I think is my second favorite Franco Sade adaptation. The action and actors are always crowded into a tightly formed triangulation within the box of the frame: the mental institution, the villa, the basement of horrors and even the garden seen above, although an exterior, is a trap. Everything in Sade is a kind of trap, especially Language, and Jess Franco's language is the cinema and in this film he reaches a new level of visual sophistication in composing an image, or series of images, of the Sadean trap. There are two separate plots summed up in this image, two of the characters are plotting the demise of the other while a third assumes a solution to the mystery. Only one of the three assumptions is correct. But which one?

This is actually the best quality image I have ever seen from this very painterly film, my own VSOM antique is poor quality at best. I have since been able to speak with the director, author and a a lead actor in the film and have learned a lot about its making. But it's the finished product which I find fascinating, cubism in motion. Franco would develop his cine-cubism throughout the 1970s and 80s until the point of GEMIDOS DE PLACER (1982) a remake of this film, in which dialogue and plot exposition are almost entirely dispensed with in favor of extended plan sequences/pure cinema.

Does that make is Art? Perhaps not. But it's something to consider the next time you see a Jess Franco film.

(C) Robert Monell, 2007

Satan is Coming, Make Mine a Double!

I asked for Eurotrash and they gave me Eurotrash. Two Eurotrash obscurities served up on a low priced platter garnished with a number of vintage trailers for such 70's and 80s drive-in material as THE PICKUP, PRIME EVIL, DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE and the Asian Trash epics SISTER STREETFIGHTER and LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI. Also included are those blaring OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION notices in appropriately scratchy condition just as they were in this project's template, the feature film GRINDHOUSE, released earlier this year to mostly good notices and sharply disappointing box office results. You can see from the images above that the DVD's producer's also based their cover art on the film's garish poster, designed in basic black and blood red. But where the poster for the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino GRINDHOUSE is eye-fetchingly packed with amusing detail, hyperbolic text and graphics the DVD cover is laid out in a rather clumsy, overcrowded fashion. In fact, the actual DVD looks even worse in hand as the bright reds have turned into color faded, smudgy lettering against what reproduced as a muddy background. The copy on the back, especially the film's specs, are difficult to read and need to be held under a light. Intentional? Maybe. But for me this is the ugliest DVD cover of the year.

Now, I'm not going to trash the entire enterprise, since I did want both of these on DVD and EVIL EYE turns out to be quite a nasty and compelling slice of mid 1970s paranoia fueled satanism. The price is certainly right. I just wonder about the wisdom of piggybacking on a notably unsuccessful project, at least in its brief US theatrical run, although GRINDHOUSE may turn a tidy profit on its coming DVD. In the previous blog we discussed our preferences concerning the popular brandings EUROTRASH vs EUROCULT. These films definitely cry out to classed as the former, despite the fact they both feature very aggressive satanic cults. WELCOME TO THE GRINDHOUSE is the kind of product which invites off-the-rack impulse purchases but I've yet to come across a copy after visiting numerous retail locations. Hopefully, the people behind this will sort things out and maybe there will be a couple of other Eurotrash items they'll be releasing which might find their way into this blog.

EVIL EYE (both films are presented in 1.85:1 widescreen ratio) is a very welcome and watchable transfer of Italian hack Mario Siciliano's 1974 Mexican-Italian-Spanish giallo-horror combo MALOCCHIO aka EROTICOFOLLIA. I would have preferred the latter title onscreen but EVIL EYE is the correct English translation. The late Siciliano (1925-1987) directed a number of Spaghetti Westerns before his career burned out with a series of low-budget porno items (ORGASMO ESOTICO). EVIL EYE is presented in a rather grainy print which looks like it was taken directly from a film element rather than a negative, which is just fine, since the film quality rather suits the subject matter and delirious style, and the film does have a style, even if it's mostly provided by the mid 1970's wardrobes and porkchop sideburns which most of the male actors sport. It looks like one of those post EXORCIST horror films which jump back in time to late 1960's psychedelic aesthetics with a crude attempt to make it all hang together using trendy flash forwards, crossing cutting, odd camera angles and an assortment of tricks which don't really work. But that's part of the fun.

Mexican hunk Jorge Rivero is a bizarre casting choice for American millionaire playboy Peter Crane who is tormented by dreams of being driven to murder by a mysterious sect who perform rituals with oversized candles while wearing the required red and black hoods or jump around in the nude screaming into wide angle lenses. When the dreams seem to start becoming reality Crane consults his psychiatrist (THE GODFATHER's Richard Conte) as he is tracked by a suspicious police detective (THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE's Anthony Steffen). It will all end badly for Peter and incomprehensibly for the viewer. I wouldn't have it any other way. Value added extras include a delightfully "groovy" score by maestro Stelvio Cipriani and a wildly eclectic Italian-Spanish supporting cast including Luciano Pigozzi (THE WHIP AND THE BODY), Lone Fleming (TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD) and Eduardo Fajardo (DJANGO) as Crane's proper English butler who ends up vomiting toads just like Elke Sommer in HOUSE OF EXORCISM. Conte looks somewhat uncomfortable with his involvement while Steffen appears to be having fun while picking up his paycheck. This made me want to see Siciliano's THE SATANIC MECHANIC (you have to love that title!) featuring Lee Van Cleef in a script by sometime Jess Franco scribe Santiago Moncada.

BLACK CANDLES (1982) is another story. The English language equivalent of Jose Ramon Larraz's LOS RITOS SEXUALES DEL DIABLO, bears a 1980 date and his name on the title of the print, which is alternately over and underexposed with somewhat faded colors. It's actually credited to Joseph Braunstein, one of the Spanish director's Anglo beards and the rest of the cast also get similar name changes. The English dubbing is annoyingly out of synch and voice cast with mid Atlantic accents which I also found irritating. Poor Helga Line was nearing 50 when she agreed to strip off and perform in numerous autoerotic and orgy scenes in this dubious enterprise. Still trim and fit, she proved a trouper. Born in 1932 as Helga Lina Stern in Berlin, she fled Germany and wound up acting in Spanish and Italian dramas, horror (THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER), spy films (OPERATION POKER), westerns (HANDS UP DEADMAN, YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!) and still appears on Spanish TV. She was one of the Queens of Spanish horror in such titles as HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB and THE VAMPIRES NIGHT ORGY (both 1972). She's fine here as the "bitch in heat" who is a Player in the satanic cult hidden away in rural England and the only performer in the cast who appears to know how to act. The hapless supporting cast includes Vanessa Hildago and Carmen Carrion, who also appeared in Jess Franco's much better SEXUAL STORY OF O around the same time. The plot is an unimaginative rehash of ROSEMARY'S BABY and the 1965 INCUBUS, without the skillful direction of the former or the gothic atmosphere of the latter. The ending is recycled from the classic DEAD OF NIGHT. Larraz seems to have been going for a soft-focus elegance but comes up empty handed. There are a lot of extended sex scenes, none the least bit erotic, including a notorious one involving a goat (that one is also lifted from INCUBUS). The director has since rejected the film as a hopeless project which he used as a way to stay afloat at the time. Larraz and Line would also work together on ESTIGMA (1982). Missing from this print are approximately two minutes of exit music where Marcello Giombini's score (lifted from 1974's THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW) played over a black screen. It was the only thing which I found effective about the film, since it gave the familiar proceedings an oneiric spin and a long goodbye which cleared the mind. Larraz will be remembered as the talented director of a series of 1970's horrotica, including DEVIATION, SCREAM AND DIE, SYMPTOMS, EL MIRON, and VIOLATION OF THE BITCH, which are all excellent and really need proper DVD presentations. His WHIRLPOOL, EDGE OF THE AXE, DEADLY MANOR and REST IN PIECES are also worth seeing and notably absent on DVD.

*To access my review of the movie GRINDHOUSE type in the title in the SEARCH function at the top of the blog.

(C) Robert Monell, 2007

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANDROS!

Born in Chaco, Argentina in 1937, today is the 70th birthday of Hugo Blanco, probably best known to Jess Franco fans as Andros, the radio controlled zombie who is DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER [US title of EL SECRETO DEL DR ORLOFF-1964]. Blanco is perhaps even more impressive as the tormented killer Ludwig Von Klaus in Franco's 1962 THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS.

Blanco subsequently appeared in a number of Italian-Spanish westerns such as UP THE MCGREGORS, TEXAS ADDIO and THE UGLY ONES. He projects a very intense, unsettling presence, at least in the few Spanish genre films in which I have seen him.

According to the IMBD, his last film role was in 1991.

A variation on Morpho (Ricardo Valle), Dr. Orlof's surgically created robot in GRITOS EN LA NOCHE/THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1961), Andros would return, played by different actors, in LA VENGANZA DEL DOCTOR MABUSE (1970) and EL SINIESTRO DR. ORLOFF(1982), lumbering through the the 1970s and 80s as the director's favorite mindless henchmen of mad scientists. Other variations on the Morpho/Andros characters can be found assisting more mad scientists in Franco's SADISTEROTICA (1967)and FACELESS(1988), respectively played by Michel Lemoine and Gerard Zalcberg.

Although these later films borrow heavily from the earlier b&w Orloff films they illustrate the evolution of Franco's style as he recycles the same characters and plot situations in compeletly different aesthetic environments, moving from German Expressionism (GRITOS...) to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE era stylization (LA VENGANZA...) to the tropical delirium of his Golden Films Internacional period (EL SINIESTRO...). Who says all Jess Franco films look the same?

LA VENGENZA DEL DOCTOR MABUSE and EL SINIESTRO DR. ORLOFF are not presently available in R1 DVD presentations with multiple language options. Let's hope that changes in the future.

(c) Robert Monell, 2007