La Chica de las bragas transparentes / PICK-UP GIRLS (1980)

A Luz Internacional Films S.A. Production 

Filmed in the Canary Islands

Al Crosby (Antonio Mayans, here credited as "Robert Foster") is a sleazy private eye (cf Franco's Al Pereira) who is hired by a hood to meet up with another hood but ends up getting involved with two stripper-hookers (Lina Romay and Doris Regina) who take compromising photos of him. Rosa Valenty, playing the sex change Robert Bressac, who keeps his/her member in a jar for nostalgia sake, enters the muddy picture, getting Al further involved with blackmail, murder, political corruption and more. It's a lot of fun for the audience, but not for the PI.

A loose remake of the director's 1972 LES EBRANLEES, a  Robert De Nesle produced sexy mystery in which Howard Vernon played the sleazy PI Al Pereia, this one of the director's 1980s Classificada S films which features a familiar Pablo Villa (Franco and Daniel J. White) hot jazz score. It's a toss up if this is more explicit than the 72 film but times have changed as it relates a twisting tale of white slavery, personal corruption and sexual identity. It's really about audience expectations and how Franco approaches the Spanish Adult film market which was a good decade behind the French market. Just look at the very first image: a small panel opens within a door to a secret casino/bar/strip club. We see the framed face (and he will indeed be framed) of Al reciting the pass code. He's facing the camera, the viewer, the focal plane, looking into what should be the "fourth wall." In effect he's asking our permission to enter our space, our consciousness. Entering the club, which features tropical plants and tree branches amid lounge furniture against a black background, it appears we are in an interior which wants to be an exterior , much like the plot which is reluctant to clarify,  proceed or reveal character's intentions.  This offers a more shifting, interactive matrix than the 1972 film. The opening set-up already places us in the casino interior, we become implicated in the "plot," part of the lie, part of the deception. The dancing girls are placed so it's not clear if they are really there or mirror reflections. Spatial integrity is immediately subverted. Somehow we feel involved in something more than just another sexy thriller. It's not just about the fate of Al Crosby. It's also about our position as the prejudiced, awaiting audience, after all. 

The English dub PICK-UP GIRLS deploys "Americanisms" and a New Jersey Gangster delivery while attempting to mask the Canary Island settings with references to the US. But it's obviously not the States. It's an 1980s approximation of Film Noir with lurid colors and full nudity in a tropical surreality. Mayans looks the part with his off-the-rack wardrobe, burnt-out demeanor and regulation mustache while Rosa Valenty conveys a magnificently bitchy mystique as the sex change, the girl with the not-so-transparent sexual identity.

The English language version is missing about 5 minutes of (sexual?) footage according to the review in OBSESSION. THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO.

(C) Robert Monell - 2012

New Jess Franco Films!

Nuevas películas de Jesús Franco

cerebrin.wordpress.com

A sus 83 años, ni la edad ni el reciente fallecimiento de su esposa y musa Lina Romay parecen haber puesto freno al irreductible Jess Franco. Por lo que nos cuentan, 2012 va a 

Nuevas películas de Jesús Franco

cerebrin.wordpress.com

A sus 83 años, ni la edad ni el reciente fallecimiento de su esposa y musa Lina Romay parecen haber puesto freno al irreductible J

s Franco. Por lo que nos cuentan, 2012 va a 

Coming on Blu-ray

Celestine   [THANKS TO SIN-ART]

Tris par : Titre - Genre - Zone - Prix - Délai de livraison

Celestine - Mädchen Für Gewisse Stunden (variante A : Combo Br+dvd) Jess Franco - 1974 Célestine bonne à tout faire Erotique Sortie le 23/06/2012 Editeur: Edition Tonfilm | Europe La police fait une intervention dans un bordel. Deux filles parviennent à fuir. Parmi elle, Célestine se cache dans une étable où elle reçoit l'aide de deux serviteurs dans une très belle maison de campagne. Grâce à l'aide de ses deux nouveaux amis, Célestine va devenir bonne. Mais dans le même temps, elle cherche à retrouver son ancien soutenir afin de prévoir un vol avec lui. Langues: Français, Allemand Sous-titres: Allemand Délai livraison: Approvisionnement en cours Cliquez ici pour réserver cet article Prix: 38 € Prix: 36.10 €   Ajouter au caddie

DVD PAL Zone 2

Celestine - Mädchen Für Gewisse Stunden (variante B) Jess Franco - 1974 Célestine bonne à tout faire Erotique Sortie le 23/06/2012 Editeur: Edition Tonfilm | Europe La police fait une intervention dans un bordel. Deux filles parviennent à fuir. Parmi elle, Célestine se cache dans une étable où elle reçoit l'aide de deux serviteurs dans une très belle maison de campagne. Grâce à l'aide de ses deux nouveaux amis, Célestine va devenir bonne. Mais dans le même temps, elle cherche à retrouver son ancien soutenir afin de prévoir un vol avec lui. Langues: Français, Allemand Sous-titres: Allemand Délai livraison: Approvisionnement en cours Cliquez ici pour réserver cet article Prix: 36 € Prix: 34.20 €   Ajouter au caddie

BLURAY Zone B

Celestine - Mädchen Für Gewisse Stunden (variante C) Jess Franco - 1974 Célestine bonne à tout faire Erotique Sortie le 23/06/2012 Editeur: Edition Tonfilm | Europe La police fait une intervention dans un bordel. Deux filles parviennent à fuir. Parmi elle, Célestine se cache dans une étable où elle reçoit l'aide de deux serviteurs dans une très belle maison de campagne. Grâce à l'aide de ses deux nouveaux amis, Célestine va devenir bonne. Mais dans le même temps, elle cherche à retrouver son ancien soutenir afin de prévoir un vol avec lui. Langues: Français, Allemand Sous-titres: Allemand Délai livraison: Approvisionnement en cours Cliquez ici pour réserver cet article Prix: 36 € Prix: 34.20 €   Ajouter au caddie

BLURAY Zone B

Celestine - Mädchen Für Gewisse Stunden (variante D : Big Buchbox Combo Br+dvd) Jess Franco - 1974 Célestine bonne à tout faire Erotique Sortie le 23/06/2012 Editeur: Edition Tonfilm | Europe La police fait une intervention dans un bordel. Deux filles parviennent à fuir. Parmi elle, Célestine se cache dans une étable où elle reçoit l'aide de deux serviteurs dans une très belle maison de campagne. Grâce à l'aide de ses deux nouveaux amis, Célestine va devenir bonne. Mais dans le même temps, elle cherche à retrouver son ancien soutenir afin de prévoir un vol avec lui. Langues: Français, Allemand Sous-titres: Allemand Délai livraison: Approvisionnement en cours Cliquez ici pour réserver cet article Prix: 48 € Prix: 45.60 €   Ajouter au caddie

DVD PAL Zone 2

LE COMTESSE PERVERSE: A Jess Franco & Mondo Macabro Masterpiece

If a DVD presentation can be termed a masterpiece that the new MONDO MACABRO DVD of Jess Franco's LE COMTESSE PERVERSE (1973) deserves that title simply because it presents this previously unavailable version in HD video and sound quality that allows those, like myself, who've seen alternate versions many times for many years, to see what the director envisioned with new eyes. It's also highly recommended for those who have recently discovered the fascinating enigma which is Jess Franco. Every color sings its own song (just compare the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean during the boat trips to the island of Countess Zaroff) and the image is suffused with a glorious luminosity which showed me detail I had missed for over decades.

Leaving on the cutting room floor the humorous wraparound, which Robert De Nesle forced the director to shoot  for a re release a year after the film was made, the film now opens and ends with rhyming images of optically enhanced voyeurism, visual quotation marks: now the very first image presents Bob (Robert Woods) peering through binoculars toward the coast in search of female prey to bring to the decadents whom employ him. The very last image is a close up of Count Zaroff (Howard Vernon) looking intently through his expensive designer glasses at his next meal, his dead wife. From the camera angle in both cases we get the uncomfortable sense that these gazes are also taking the viewer into their field, implicating us in the cycle of cannibal desire and breaking the traditional "fourth wall" of cinema. Earlier versions obscured this effect by having it brush up against "comedy" scenes and letting us off the hook. Franco didn't want to do that. He never does. He wanted to consider our expectations and responsibilities as viewers of exploitation cinema. Now his original agenda speaks for itself. That's just one of numerous examples how this presentation gives us new meanings and ways to watch and enjoy the film. 

Then there's the sophisticated dialogue, spiked with gallows humor and subtle irony which the new translation ably and finally captures. Fan subbed variants and cult movie mail order subtitles of the past, and I've seen them all, will now be history. And rightfully so. As Count Zaroff says, "Reject nothing that gives pleasure." A line which neatly encapsulates the Sadean undercurrent of the proceedings. Shortly after the Count considers the prone figure of Silvia (Lina Romay), who has just passed out in terror after witnessing the Zaroff's attempted mutilation of a recent victim, and exclaims "She's dim, but she's certainly juicy!" in joyous anticipation of a coming cannibal feast. It's a lol line. 

I'm really glad all the hardcore is gone, the stuff added by Franco and others (avoid the Italian SEXY NATURE version like the plague!) as well as the soft core doubling. Franco's original has all the eroticism, transgression and nudity it needs. There's surprisingly little actual blood and gore on display, unlike the disgusting slow motion gut chomping of Franco's later CANNIBALS and SEXO CANIBAL (both 1980). It's not missed. The cannibalism here tilts toward the metaphorical rather than literal.

Given how the original version comments on class inequity and how the owning class uses the middle class (Bob and Moira) to use up/devour/exploit/eat the underclass, Franco's vision is more relevant than ever. It doesn't preach its theme but gives it a gentle, droll nudge here and there. So, thank you Jess Franco and thank you Mondo Macabro for finally giving us the masterpiece Jess Franco made almost 40 years ago.

Thanks to Eric Cotenas. 

(C) Robert Monell 2012

3 NEW JESS FRANCO FILMS!

Thanks to Jess Franco blogger Alex Mendibil for informing me about three new Jess Franco films going into production soon to be produced by Ferran Herranz with the help of Antonio Mayans as producer. Alex includes these details:  "One is an Edgar Wallace adaptation "El caso de la guiri asustada" or "El caso de la señorita asustada" (titles are not definitive) and Mayans has also one of the main roles. The other one is called (by the moment) "Sor Vampiria" and it is more like an experiment in the Paula-Paula style. Principal shooting was scheduled on this month. Mayans is, of course, a longtime Franco actor (MACUMBA SEXUAL) and production manager. 

Alex will also be involved in a Jess Franco documentary produced by none other than Eurocine! According to Alex, "The documentary in which I'm working as scriptwriter is produced by Eurociné and directed by Pedro Temboury. It is a feature film (maybe 70-80 minutes) with lots of interviews, HD remastered footage by Eurociné and a little fictionalized story around it."

The Edgar Wallace adaptation seems to be the long planned Franco presentation of the novel, "The Case of the Frightened Lady" which was last filmed in Germany in 1963 as THE INDIAN SCARF. That film features Klaus Kinski as one of the suspects among relatives vying for an inheritance by staying in a haunted house during a storm. I've seen the film. It's not bad but nothing to go out of your way to see. There are much better Wallace films including Franco's own THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA (1970). It will be interesting to see what he does with this. It's bracing to hear he's going ahead with new projects. 

Thanks to Alex and don't forget to visit his essential EL FRANCONOMICON   EL FRANCONOMICON

COUNTESS PERVERSE: The Mondo Macabro DVD is here!

Bob (Robert Woods) resists the offer of a cannibal meal, defying The Perverse Countess (Alice Arno). The new MONDO MACABRO DVD presentation of this key 1973 Jess Franco film is both visually stunning and finally gives us a look at the long lost director's cut. A must have!

Thanks to Eric Cotenas for the screencap.

Daniel J. White Centennial Today

The great composer of memorable music for numerous Jess Franco films (FEMALE VAMPIRE, MISS MUERTE) was born 100 years ago today near Paris, France. He also composed music for other director's films including CRIMSON (1975) and other Eurocine coproductions. He was heavily influenced by Debussy and could compose for orchestra, piano, other instruments (listen to his trumpet score for MISS MUERTE) and the human voice. The haunting female vocal accompanied by a piano piece in FEMALE VAMPIRE may be his signature film composition. He began composing film music in 1950 and was a key Jess Franco collaborator for over 30 years.

He also played in supporting roles in Franco's MISS MUERTE (as a police inspector), LA FILLE DE DRACULA (1972), THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN, REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER, among others. The best image of him I could find is included above, shot from behind playing the piano as a Nazi officer in Eurocine's ELSA: FRAULEIN SS (1977).

He also composed the jazzy score for Eurocine's CRIMSON, a 1973 film featuring Paul Naschy, among other projects.

The IMDB credits him with composing the scores for 134 films and appearing in 17 as an actor. 

LES DEMONS (1972): Vintage Lobby Cards

Here are some vintage lobby cards for Jess Franco's 1972 nunsploitation epic LES DEMONS/SHE DEMONS/THE DEMONS/DIE NONNEN VON CLICHY. I recently revisited the long 112m 59s. version, the longest extant cut of the film, and it looks stunning on the 2.35:1 X-RATED KULT DVD. It's an excellent print with luminous colors and good sound quality (German language only). You also get the "Director's Cut" (with English and Spanish language options) from 2003 with new music added (not too fond of this edition) and a grindhouse quality German print *85m. I tend to prefer this version of the Judge Jeffries story to the 1968 Harry Alan Towers produced THE BLOODY JUDGE, which has a quality performance by Christopher Lee as the Judge, a higher budget but sometimes "stars" and higher budgets inhibit the director's inspiration.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JESS FRANCO!

I Hope You Have A Wonderful Day!

CINEMADROME

CINEMADROME

CINEMADROME - HORROR RISES FROM SPAIN - Slugs: The Movie (1988) Slugs, muerte viscosa (original title)

CINEMADROME - HORROR RISES FROM SPAIN - Slugs: The Movie (1988) Slugs, muerte viscosa (original title)

QUIZ: In which JESS FRANCO movie does Patty Shepard appear? Follow the above link for a review of JP Simon's 1988 Spanish-US horror hoot featuring Patty Shepard and some other Jess Franco veteran actors.

Orson Welles-Jess Franco TREASURE ISLAND project site

http://www.western-locations-spain.com/andalucia/almeria/playa_sombrerico/index.htm

Above is a link to an interesting website about the vessel on which the Orson Welles-Jess Franco 1964 film version of TREASURE ISLAND was shot. Unfortunately, it was never completed but some scenes were shot in the Alicante harbor. 

I've always wondered what happened to the footage they shot. Was it destroyed or even printed? Is it stored somewhere? I also question if any of it was used in the 1972 Andrea Bianchi directed TREASURE ISLAND, also with Welles. 

It would have been fascinating if they had completed it. We'd have an Orson Welles film directed by Jess Franco! 

Franco's 80s actors: TRINO TRIVES

Among Jess Franco’s actors, the background of Trino Martínez Germán, known as Trino Trives, is similar to that of Antonio de Cabo. Though not primarily an actor, he was nonetheless a man of the stage who additionally gave acting performances in films by Franco – indeed, exclusively in Franco films as he appears to have worked for no other filmmaker in his life. In the world of theatre, while he did occasionally act, he mainly busied himself with direction, set design and the translation into Spanish of plays, not to the exclusion of some poetry translating. In 1998, when his career had lapsed into obscurity, he was cited in the newspaper ABC as one of the most relevant theatrical figures in Spain, where he is essentially remembered as the man who, as a translator and stage director, introduced many Spaniards to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugène Ionesco during the sixties, notably with productions of such Beckett plays as Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days.

The Valencian-born Trives also served, for a while, as the director of the National Theatre in Spain, but he was mostly active either abroad or working in the fringe. It may be that an openly gay man like him had limited chances in the Spain of General Franco, or it might simply have borne on a personal penchant on his part. Whatever the case, he alternated his activity in Madrid with work in Paris, not to mention Portugal and Brazil, both of which were also frequented by his fellow theatre professional Antonio de Cabo, with whom he thus became acquainted; it could well be, in fact, that one of these two men recommended the other to Jess Franco. 

Trives’s first recorded collaboration with Jess Franco came with his work as production designer for Rififí en la ciudad (1963), where he is credited as Trino Martínez-Trives. This was during his period  of greatest prominence in the world of theatre. By the time he returned to Franco’s cinema, in the eighties, Trives’s career was drifting towards a marginal position, in which he was engaged in acting teaching and in fringe, non-profit theatrical productions, with much of his income coming from the royalties of his translations. Franco, for his part, saw possibilities in his appearance, bald and with a Van Dyke beard, and cast him in several roles, often villainous, as in Los blues de la calle Pop and Viaje a Bangkok, ataúd incluido.  

However obscurely, Trino Trives remained active as a stage director towards the end of the century, gaining a 1998 award in Japan for his production of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. Interviewed in 2002, Jess Franco said of Trives: “I’ve lost track of him but we’ve always been very, very good friends” (1). Trives, at the time, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and returned to his hometown, namely Orihuela, Alicante. In the summer of 2003, he refused to give an interview, saying: "Forget it. Those who've tried to rehabilitate my name by writing about me have merely screwed up. Anyway, with no sex and no work, death is a relief" (2). He died on 28 September 2003. His ashes lie buried in Montparnasse Cemetery, in Paris.  . 

 Los blues de la calle Pop (Aventuras de Felipe Marlboro, volumen 8) (1983)

                              En busca del dragón dorado (1983)

                                           Bahía blanca (1983)

                          Viaje a Bangkok, ataúd incluido (1985)

                           La chica de los labios rojos (1986)

Dark Mission: Flowers of Evil (1988)

Trino Trives's imdb entry:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0873205/ 

(1) http://members.fortunecity.es/francomania2/entrevista.html

(2) http://www.orihueladigital.es/orihuela/puntos/puntos_2_131003.htm

Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen (Special thanks to Ricard Reguant)

CINEMADROME - FAVORITE ACTORS/CULT MOVIE ACTRESSES - VOICES

CINEMADROME - FAVORITE ACTORS/CULT MOVIE ACTRESSES - VOICES

Follow this link and listen to Soledad Miranda's real voice!

THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF

GRITOS EN LA NOCHE/THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962): Following up a Georges Franju centenary visit with LES YEUX SANS VISAGE (1959) with Jess Franco's first horror project, which has a very similar mad plastic surgeon storyline and characters but a totally different tone and aesthetic. I think what really makes THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (one F) unique is the jarring, abstract music score by J. Pagan and A. Ramirez Angel. Two of the most influential films of the era and both in glorious black and white.

The awful Dr. Orlof (Howard Vernon) obsesses over his disfigured daughter (Diana Lorys).

I'm also looking for the Spanish version of this GRITOS EN LA NOCHE with English subtitles available, if possible. The Image DVD contains the French version with no English subtitles and the English language track. 

AN INTERESTING COMPARISON. EL COLECCIONISTA DE CADAVERES

CAULDRON OF BLOOD aka BLIND MAN'S BLUFF

MIL SEXOS TIENE LA NOCHE

EL COLECCIONISTA DE CADAVERES, a Spanish-US coproduction was shot in 1967 by Santos Alcocer (ORGIES OF DR. ORLOFF aka Solo un Ataud) in Southern Spain. Note that the plot point of a sculptor who uses the skeletons of murdered women as armatures (cf MYSTERY OF THE WAS MUSEUM, HOUSE OF WAX, BUCKET OF BLOOD, CRUCIBLE OF TERROR) is the same as Jess Franco's ROTE LIPPEN/TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS filmed the same year and that it was shot using what appears to be the same villa near Malaga which was the setting of Franco's 1982 thriller MIL SEXOS TIENE LA NOCHE, sometimes utilizing the same camera set ups. An interesting double bill, ultimately in Jess Franco's favor. Thanks to Francesco Cesare for sending an excellent quality DVD-R of EL CASO DE LAS DOS BELLEZAS which is about 10 m longer than the English language version, TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS and has a different musical score.