04 August, 2006

What's missing from BU's SUCCUBUS?

SUCCUBUS-COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: What I didn't realize at the time is that I wouldn't be seeing SUCCUBUS again for nearly 20 years (via a grey market dealer). And it would take more than another decade for it to come out on legit US video/dvd, via Anchor Bay's flawed, fullscreen transfer, which would be the only game in town until now. One element both the AB transfer and the superior BU transfer lack is the original ending which I viewed theatrically in 1969 at the aforementioned Riviera theater and later on a very dodgy 16mm element. And what's missing may or may not be the work of Jess Franco, as there were a number of export versions prepared for international distribution, as noted previously, by co-producers Adrian Hoven and Pier A. Caminecci. More on the dubious Caminecci later...
The cover posted above is, of course, from my 1998 AB VHS (the AB DVD is reportedly quite rare), which reprints a fascinating, and rather positive review from THE NEW YORK POST on the flip side, dated Saturday, April 26, 1969. Yes, that's right, a mainstream US newspaper gave a Jess Franco film a good notice in its original theatrical run! The review mentions "lovely scenes" and "artistic interiors" years before another generation of mainstream reviewers (Leonard Maltin onwards) would step in to remind the world that it's NOT OK to like Jess Franco films... The review ends by noting that Janine Reynaud "might give Count Dracula serious competition" on a certain street. In terms of my own personal history, it would be Franco's 1969 Count Dracula film, EL CONDE DRACULA with Christopher Lee, which would turn me off to Franco as much as SUCCUBUS turned me on...

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