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Valable jusqu'au 10 février 2014
- Le miroir obscène - 2 DVD - Les inassouvies - Sumuru, la cité sans hommes - La comtesse perverse - Célestine, bonne à tout faire - Plaisir à trois - Venus in furs |
03 March, 2014
01 March, 2014
EL MISTERIO DEL CASTILLO ROJO (1972)
Thanks to Michelle Alexander for drawing my attention to this still from an unfortunately incomplete zombie film started by Jess Franco in 1972. Looks like it could have been very interesting and the presence of the stunning Kali Hansa is always welcome. This appears to have been partially lensed at the striking Ricardo Bofill designed structures in Southern Spain. This was Franco's first project for his Manacoa production company and feature the director himself as a mad scientist. The book OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO suggests that the film was meant to be more in the comedic vein that straight horror. Of course, Jess Franco rarely made "straight" anything...
EROTISMO: Caliente Video MDVC vintage VHS
26 February, 2014
THE REVENGE OF THE ALLIGATOR LADIES (2014) Jess Franco & Antonio Mayans
Below is a link to a trailer for THE REVENGE OF THE ALLIGATOR LADIES, a film, which when released will constitute the very last film of the late Jess Franco. The film is reportedly made up of footage shot during the making of AL PEREIRA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES (2012) with new footage shot after the director's death by actor/production manager and longtime Jess Franco colleague, Antonio Mayans aka "Robert Foster."
Jess Franco will reportedly appear in the film along with Mayans, Carmen Montes, Paula Davis, Irene Verdu, Debbie Logan and other cast members of the first ALLIGATOR LADIES film. This will presumably be in the same erotic comedy-neo noir vein. Music by Pablo Villa [Jess Franco]. Ferran Herranz, the producer, has indicated that this new film will premiere in Spain this coming April.
If possible, I'll attempt to screen it and publish a review here asap.
Jess Franco will reportedly appear in the film along with Mayans, Carmen Montes, Paula Davis, Irene Verdu, Debbie Logan and other cast members of the first ALLIGATOR LADIES film. This will presumably be in the same erotic comedy-neo noir vein. Music by Pablo Villa [Jess Franco]. Ferran Herranz, the producer, has indicated that this new film will premiere in Spain this coming April.
If possible, I'll attempt to screen it and publish a review here asap.
24 February, 2014
UNA RAJITA PARA DOS (Lulu La Verne, 1982)
The one Jess Franco film you must NOT see if you are easily grossed out. If I moved my camera 1/2 inch to the right you would understand. The above image was taken by the cellphone off a Spanish VHS dub. These 1980s hardcore films, many produced by FERVI films, are actually rather interesting oddities which I'll be looking at here in the future. UNA RAJITA.... trends toward the scatological...
Jess Franco's Una Rajita para dos - xHamster.com
This one seems to be the first FERVI Films hardcore series, with a production date of 1982 give in OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO p. 154. FERVI was the company of producer Fernando Vidal Campos. The direction of this film is credited to Lulu Laverne, which usually indicates that Lina Romay and JF collaborated in the scripting and directing. Lina also appears in the lead female role under that name. The late Jose Llamas, frequent 80s era JF production manager/actor Antonio Mayans as a flaming gay Russian spy, "La Loca," and steals the show. He is quite amusing as he performs his over-the-top antics. Llamas and Mayans appear under the "dirty" beards, "Johnny Poyales" and "Tommy Proculi", gross sexual puns which the director obviously thought were funny self-satire. The director also is seen as the hotel's official peeping tom, another amusing JF cameo which also satirizes his position as a clandestine director of the bases hardcore possible in this context. Romay and co. are female agents assigned to retrieve microfilm from the rectum of an enemy agent! Yes, that's the "plot." Set in a Costa Del Sol hotel, most of the runtime is taken up by hardcore antics in various rooms (probably also the production headquarters). A cheap way to make profitable no-budget hardcore. Not much style or imagination here and rather tedious at 80 m or so. Franco's best hardcore FERVI effort was EL MIRON Y LA EXHIBICIONISTA (1985). A few of these have actually surfaced on Spanish DVD in surprisingly good video quality. (C) Robert Monell 201415 February, 2014
EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION (1980)
EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION (1980) Red lips close up in an extended, delirious montage of eyes, lips, clouds, reflections in this version of Sade's PHILOSOPHY IN THE BEDROOM. This version is very different in style and focus than the 1970 EUGENIE, THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION. Once again illustrating that Jess Franco tells the same stories over and over, but in a different style and with an alternate emphasis each time.
12 February, 2014
Je Brule de Partout (1978) Spoken opening credits....
- Thanks to David Z. for uploading...
Spoken credits to Je brûle de partout (Jess Franco) - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=26GF...
YouTube
JE BRULE DE PARTOUT (1978) MHVF Archived Review
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This one, discussing the 1978 JE BRULE DE PARTOUT, was published in May, 2000. This may have been the very last film Jess Franco directed for prolific producer Robert De Nesle, who died that same year.
Review: I'M BURNING-UP ALL OVER (1978)
Posted by Robert Monell  , May 01,2000,18:00 |
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aka JE BRULE DE PARTOUT. Directed by Jess Franco (credited as Jacques Aicrag).
Jenny Goldstone (Susan Hemingway) is abducted after a night at a popular discotheque. She is the most recent victim to fall into the hands of an international white slavery cartel. The point person is the beautiful, blond Lorna (Brigitte Lahaie/Van Meerhaegue), whom along with her henchmen bundle the girls aboard a ship fitted with an orgy room into which a sedating "love drug" is piped. They are transported to a brothel in Portugal where one of Jenny's customers will turn out to be her own father, ironically the financier behind the ring.
This was shot in less than a week and really looks it. The "love drug" sequences are represented by some smoke being forced through crudely cut rubber tubes. The love drug concept also turns up in Franco as early as SUMURU 2 (1968), and is also prominent in CAPTIVE WOMEN (1980) {see the self-explanatory still on p.143 of OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO to get a taste of the latter title}.
Lahaie apparently quarreled with Franco on set and she doesn't look like a happy camper, but she does look terrific! Franco would later give her better roles in DARK MISSION and FACELESS (1988), both much higher budgeted productions than this no-budget erotica. My favorite part was the opening, set in a glittering disco. Franco pans up from Lahaie's black leather boots to the blinding colored-light show and you immediately know you're in Jess Franco territory (despite the use of one of his rarer pseudonyms during the amusing spoken credits). Franco even tries to work in his trusted Al Pereira private eye character, but Jean Ferrere's thug-like visage is no match for the more ambiguous mug of Antonio Mayans. Daniel J. White's moody trumpet score adds a dash of much needed atmosphere. This women-in-peril oddity was one of three hardcore quickies produced by the late Robert de Nesle and directed by Franco in 1978, one of the director's less than favorite years.
--modified by Robert Monell at Mon, May 01, 2000, 18:04:23
09 February, 2014
EROTISMO: MILLION DOLLAR VIDEO CORP. VHS PLASTIC BOX
Once again, the film itself is the 1980 EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION, another version 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.
More views of the box and images from the film to come. This is one of my favorite versions of the text, which the director would make again and again. Not to be confused with Franco's version of Sade's 1788 "Moral Tale" EUGENIE DE FRANVAL [EUGENIE DE SADE-1970].
08 February, 2014
EROTISMO VHS/EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION (1980)
In the 1980s and 90s a series of Spanish language VHS cassettes were marketed as Adult films by Caliente Video and Million Dollar Video Corp. A Dali image from EUGENIE, HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION/EROTISMO-VHS title. More to come in future blogs!
01 February, 2014
ARTUS FILMS Jess Franco 7 DVD Collection
COLLECTION JESS FRANCO - 7 DVD
28 January, 2014
Outrageous Jess Franco music video!
Thanks to Francesco Cesari
Click on video title/youtube link below image. This is one Politically Incorrect video directed by Jess Franco and discovered by Alain Petit and Francesco Cesari. I didn't know he directed music videos, although KILLER BARBYS and KILLER BARBYS VS DRACULA both have music video elements, as do other Jess Franco films. This certainly wouldn't make if on MTV because of the debate about gun violence in America at the present time. But Jess Franco never was "politically correct" and filmed his vision no matter what.
Click on video title/youtube link below image. This is one Politically Incorrect video directed by Jess Franco and discovered by Alain Petit and Francesco Cesari. I didn't know he directed music videos, although KILLER BARBYS and KILLER BARBYS VS DRACULA both have music video elements, as do other Jess Franco films. This certainly wouldn't make if on MTV because of the debate about gun violence in America at the present time. But Jess Franco never was "politically correct" and filmed his vision no matter what.
21 January, 2014
UNE CAGE DOREE
Does anyone know, or can anyone confirm, if Jess Franco directed any scenes in this very sleazy Eurocine composite? It's a crime film set in Hong Kong and featuring a lot of erotic performances in a nightclub fronting for a white slave brothel. Jess appears as "Mr. Caramelis." None of the scenes seem to bear his mark or have much of his usual iconoclastic style. The director of credit "A.M.F. Frank" is a beard usually used by Eurocine founder Marius Lesoeur. There's a lot of footage from other films on display, including Eurocine's Paul Naschy vehicle, CRIMSON (Juan Fortuny, 1973). Please post any information in the comment section.
09 January, 2014
The Jess Franco Zoom Effect
Jess Franco has often been criticized for using and overusing the zoom/telezoom lens in his films, especially those from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s, all low-budget productions compared to his earlier work in Spain and for mega-producer Harry Alan Towers. The zoom is considered by some critics to be a lazy director's tool for saving the work of setting up and breaking down shots and saving effort in the editing room. Well, a man who made nearly 200 films is not lazy and Franco often did use the zoom to save time and money for the producers for whom he was working. But he also began to find a way to develop the zoom into an aesthetic tool with which he could explore spatial relationships, create cubist and other style compositions, compress and expand interior locations, atmospherically scan exotic exteriors (see FEMALE VAMPIRE as an example of his telezoom explorations of the magical isle of Madeira), collapse foreground into background and create a kind of personalized "negative space" which would become his signature.
The main title is printed over an elaborate zoom shot which makes its way through the Parisian traffic. We have entered the Jess Franco Zone.
For instance, the incessant zooming in and out from the very first to very last shot of THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA (1970) create a kind of furious internal pacing which drive the formulaic script directly into Jess Franco territory. Not at all a personal project, AKASAVA becomes compulsively watchable if only because of the frantic zooming. It may be the fastest paced of his films. DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (1971), made the next year, was an even more extreme example of the unfettered use of the telezoom, from the opening shots zooming up the hill toward Dracula's castle to the final zooming back from the castle at the resolution. LA COMTESSE NOIRE (Female Vampire) is a case in itself and will be covered in a separate blog on this ongoing series.
Let's look at a few shots from THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA (1973) to illustrate what could be termed the Jess Franco Zoom Effect. *
The opening credits begin with a slow zoom shot back into a Parisian street, following Marie France (Alice Arno). After several more telezooms of Paris, the sequence ends with a slow zoom past her as the credits end. But the zoom continues to a rack-focus conclusion, going out of and into focus, revealing a blurred image of frozen tree branches which come into focus to further reveal a sharper image of some Parisian landmarks in the distance. Why did the director do this? He didn't have to. He could have just cut away as she left the frame. But Franco, as always, seems as interested in what surrounds the characters, the periphery, the total environment, the seen and the unseen.
My colleague Francesco Cesari has suggested that his use of the zoom lens in this shot creates a kind of musical effect/commentary, a flourish at the end of what could be an unexceptional shot at the end of the credit sequence. I agree.
Zooming into an out-of-focus image breaks all the rules of "good cinematography"
In the above grab we can barely make out the thin branches in the foreground.
Rack-focus, a frequently seen effect in 1970s low-budget cinema, changed the focal length without the use of a track in or out of the image. Franco used it on a regular basis from the mid 1960s onward to create startling, often curiously artful moments which would become his signature.
The branches are now visible in sharper focus as seen in this grab, the conclusion of the rack-focus effect which occurs at the end of the zoom shot which ends the opening credit sequence....
The End.... The final shot is also a slow zoom shot into the "novel" being read by Alice Arno, which has the same title as the film we have just seen, written by "David Khunne" the well known nom de plume of Jess Franco. The use of the slow zoom actually creates both suspense, we can't make out the exact title until the shot concludes in close-up, and a kind of self-satire.
*screencaps taken off my monitor from the recommended Severin Special Edition Blu-ray presentation, THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA.
Further installments to come on Jess Fran and the Zoom....
Text (C) Robert Monell 2014
The main title is printed over an elaborate zoom shot which makes its way through the Parisian traffic. We have entered the Jess Franco Zone.
For instance, the incessant zooming in and out from the very first to very last shot of THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA (1970) create a kind of furious internal pacing which drive the formulaic script directly into Jess Franco territory. Not at all a personal project, AKASAVA becomes compulsively watchable if only because of the frantic zooming. It may be the fastest paced of his films. DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (1971), made the next year, was an even more extreme example of the unfettered use of the telezoom, from the opening shots zooming up the hill toward Dracula's castle to the final zooming back from the castle at the resolution. LA COMTESSE NOIRE (Female Vampire) is a case in itself and will be covered in a separate blog on this ongoing series.
Let's look at a few shots from THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA (1973) to illustrate what could be termed the Jess Franco Zoom Effect. *
The opening credits begin with a slow zoom shot back into a Parisian street, following Marie France (Alice Arno). After several more telezooms of Paris, the sequence ends with a slow zoom past her as the credits end. But the zoom continues to a rack-focus conclusion, going out of and into focus, revealing a blurred image of frozen tree branches which come into focus to further reveal a sharper image of some Parisian landmarks in the distance. Why did the director do this? He didn't have to. He could have just cut away as she left the frame. But Franco, as always, seems as interested in what surrounds the characters, the periphery, the total environment, the seen and the unseen.
My colleague Francesco Cesari has suggested that his use of the zoom lens in this shot creates a kind of musical effect/commentary, a flourish at the end of what could be an unexceptional shot at the end of the credit sequence. I agree.
Zooming into an out-of-focus image breaks all the rules of "good cinematography"
In the above grab we can barely make out the thin branches in the foreground.
Rack-focus, a frequently seen effect in 1970s low-budget cinema, changed the focal length without the use of a track in or out of the image. Franco used it on a regular basis from the mid 1960s onward to create startling, often curiously artful moments which would become his signature.
The branches are now visible in sharper focus as seen in this grab, the conclusion of the rack-focus effect which occurs at the end of the zoom shot which ends the opening credit sequence....
The End.... The final shot is also a slow zoom shot into the "novel" being read by Alice Arno, which has the same title as the film we have just seen, written by "David Khunne" the well known nom de plume of Jess Franco. The use of the slow zoom actually creates both suspense, we can't make out the exact title until the shot concludes in close-up, and a kind of self-satire.
*screencaps taken off my monitor from the recommended Severin Special Edition Blu-ray presentation, THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA.
Further installments to come on Jess Fran and the Zoom....
Text (C) Robert Monell 2014
01 January, 2014
HAPPY 2014!
I want to wish the readers of this blog a Happy and Healthy 2014. It promises to offer a bounty of Jess Franco films on Blu-ray and DVD from all over the world. Severin's THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA has officially won the blog poll for Favorite Jess Franco Blu-ray/DVD of 2013. Redemption's Blu-ray presentation of A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD and Mondo Macabro's HOW TO SEDUCE A VIRGIN have tied for second place. Thanks for voting!
28 December, 2013
2013: The Year of Jess Franco--THE GOYA COLLECTION
Here's a partial round-up of Ascot-Elite's highly recommended Blu-ray/DVD releases of the past year. All restored from vault materials, the restorations were supervised by the original cinematographer on most of these films, Peter Baumgartner.
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