A HD Jess Franco Double Bill from Vinegar Syndrome: Review.

Some screenshots from the recent 2022 Vinegar Syndrome release of two late 1960s Jess Franco oddities looking better than ever is lustrous HD.

(Above) Jess Franco producer/colleague Adrian Hoven, a then famous German actor and future producer of the notorious MARK OF THE DEVIL films, and French actor-director Michel Lemoine as a Pop Art werewolf created through psychotropic drug therapy. SADISTEROTICA is does indeed contain many Pop Art images. A twisted S&M tinged romp which dovetails into a Eurospy adventure featuring Franco's "Red Lips" female spies, played by Janine Reynaud (SUCCUBUS) and Rosanna Yanni (COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE), who are on the trail of a mad artist (Hoven) creating photos, paintings and installations of real murders which he engineered. 

The Red Lips team originated in the director's 1960 noir, LABIOS ROJOS and would return in future Franco features.

The other film in the set has even more of a Eurospy bent. KISS ME MONSTER, was also made by the Aquila Films-Montana Films consortium co-financed by actor-producer Adrian Hoven. The "Red Lips" female espionage team is joined by an Interpol agent (Adrian Hoven again) to locate a formula for creating artificial humans and the rogue scientist who created the monstrous concoction. This film contains more musical numbers, the girls have a saxophone duet (see above video), do a striptease to piano accompaniment, among other absurd adventures. 

Absurd is the key adjective here. The action is frenetic in the style of slapstick comedy and the director bends over backward to not take the goings-on too seriously. There's also an "esoteric" quality as Franco explains in an interview in the Special Features material, including a musical code which solves the mystery of the formula's whereabouts. As in TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS Jess Franco appears as a buffoonish character who is killed off by the artificial freaks.

(Below) CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH

Four Franco-related feature films were financed by Hoven's Aquila company. The first being NECRONOMICON/Succubus, one of the director's most arcane horror adventures built around the dream life of a possessed S&M performer. This was Franco's first film which was not filmed in Spain. It had to be shot in Portugal and Berlin to get around the strict Spanish censorship of the era. 

 

The fourth and final film of the Franco-Aquila quartet, which is out on Blu-ray from Severin Films, was the Gothic sex-horror period epic, CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH (1968, English language title). By this time Jess Franco had left the company and producer Hoven took over as director. The production was filmed in a castle in Germany's Black Forest with Janine Reynaud, Michel Lemoine and Howard Vernon in the leading roles. Some sources credit Franco with the film's story. The plot concerns a medieval curse which plagues a local Baron. It's a fun example of Le Bad Cinema. Hopefully NECRONOMICON (1967), the first and best Aquila production, will see a much needed HD upgrade in the near future.
 

This is a fully loaded HD package containing six different ways to view these two delightful Jess Franco concoctions. One can watch both films in their German, English and Spanish versions, with alternate title sequences available; video and sound quality is top notch on both. Restored in 4k from 35mm negative elements, color, detail and definition are very impressive.  

 

Both of these Spanish-German productions close the first, very important decade of Franco's feature film career. The second stage would be a step upward to find him under the financial wing of British money man Harry Alan Towers, making bigger budget films (but still in the B-Cult category) with American and international movie stars whose names help sell the films to global audiences. Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray duet is both a good place for Franco beginners to start as well as a collectable item for longtime fans and Franco scholars.

(C) Robert Monell, 2022