Here are some brief reviews of several films NOT directed by JF but sometimes attributed to him:
THE HOUSE OF THE LOST DOLLS (1974): Pierre Chevalier actually "directed" this Eurocine composite under the name Peter Knight. This used to be listed by VSOM as a "Jess Franco" film in their old 1990s era catalogues. I fell for it and purchased one to discover footage from a 1967 Italian spy film featuring Jack Taylor AGENTE SIGMA 3: MISSIONE GOLDWATHER mixed in with footage from a French film about white slavers operating in Paris and Marsielles, presumably a Chevalier directed effort, title as yet unknown. BOTH of these feature Sylvia Solar as a femme fatale! So, it all gets very confusing. Sandra Julien also appears as an undercover agent. There also appears to be footage from a third unknown film in here of agents raiding a cargo ship. It all adds up to a supersleazefest with music by Daniel J. White and uncredited cues from Bruno Nicolai's great score for EUGENIE DE SADE (1970). Footage from this composite was later mixed with scenes from an actual JF film, OPALO DE FUEGEO (1978) and was rereleased with newly shot footage by "John O'Hara" as OASE DER GEFANGENEN FRAUEN, at least that's the title of the German language version which was released on DVD a few years ago by KULT DVD. The French version is L'OASIS DES FILLES PERDUES. The new footage features Francoise Blanchard, probably best know as the title character in Rollin's LA MORTE VIVANTE (1982).
SABOTAGE (1979): Actually a film directed by Luigi Batzella/Paolo Solvay credited onscreen as Ivan Kathansky. Richard Harrison appears as a secret agent who parachutes in to destroy an oil installation in a rebellious Arab republic. It's all very cynical and, once again, populated with Eurocine sleaze regulars like Olivier Mathot and Claude Boisson/Yul Sanders. It's unmitaged junk all the way, but not unentertaining. For instance, much of the footage was "flipped", printed backwards! They hoped you wouldn't notice. Original title: STRATEGIA PER UNA MISSIONE DI MORTE aka BLACK GOLD/BLACK GOLD DOSSIER/POUR UN BARIL DE PERTOLE (thanks were due to Sergio Leone!)/LORNA, LA LIONNE DU DESERT (after the heroine, Florence Cayrol, who patrols the desert in the nude!)/SQUADRATA D'AZIONE ORA ZERO/LA GUERRE DU PETROLE, VSOM took this last title and presented it as Jess Franco's GASOLINE WARS in one of their catalogues! Let's just call these Franco-related here. We'll look at more films mistakenly attributed to JF in the future.
3 comments:
Terrific site, Robert. Keep up the great work. I've got this bookmarked!
Years ago there were a number of bootleg video catalogs that listed Satanico Pandemonium as a Jess Franco film! A few years later, they were claiming that he hadn't directed it but was involved in some way on the production side. Now that this film has been released on a very nice DVD by Mondo Macabro (which I have yet to pick up) perhaps we can finally now if any of this is true (I dobut it.)
Welcome to the blog, Flynn. I doubt if Franco was involved in this film. But he did tell me that he worked in Mexico on at least film in the mid 1950s. But which one?
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