LA ESCLAVA BLANCA (Jess Franco, 1985)

LA ESCLAVA BLANCA (Clifford Brown/Jess Franco. 1985)- source: Video Search of Miami (Spanish VHS-U.S. import) DIRECTED BY "CLIFFORD BROWN" (JESS FRANCO) WITH: JOSÉ LLAMAS, MABEL ESCAÑO, JOSE MIGUEL GARCIA MARFA, AUGUSTÎN GIL, LINA ROMAY, CONCHI MONTÉSa, JAMES TALL. 87 minutes Of the eight other films Franco made in 1985 (half of them hardcore porno features), this very low budget adventure stands out because of an absorbing screenplay, if you're in the mood for Saturday afternoon jungle adventures, by ace Spanish screenwriter Santiago Moncada. Beside writing Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON, Claudio Guerin Hill's THE BELL FROM HELL and Juan Antonio Bardem's THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER, Moncada has written and produced screenplays for a variety of European genre directors. Manuel Cano's SWAMP OF THE RAVENS, TARZAN'S GREATEST CHALLENGE and VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST were all based on Moncada screenplays along with the ultra-violent Spanish western CUTTHROATS NINE (1972). LA ESCLAVA BLANCA was co-produced by Moncada and Franco's Manacoa company.

Above: Prolific Spanish screenwriter Santiago Moncada As for Jess Franco, 1985 wasn't his best year, but it was a busy one, offering a variate of micro-budgeted genre projects. In LA ESCLAVA BLANCA, Moncada gives us three separate stories that gradually interweave and come together in the final scene. The first story seems to have elements of MACBETH and B movie programmers. A weak-willed jungle guide is manipulated by his domineering wife into committing a series of crimes. During a safari, he leads a honeymoon couple (José Llamas and Conchi Montés) into a trap laid by the Tobonga, a Stone Age tribe that worships a giant lizard god. The bride is tied to a sacrificial altar for later sacrifice. The second story starts out in the city, where a female karate student (Lina Romay and two of her instructors accidentally discover the secret of the Tobonga. In the third story, two separate expeditions make their way back to the Tobonga camp. One of these groups includes the original guide, who has been abducted by the karate instructors (they have also killed his wife). The other consists of the husband of the abducted woman and the female karate student (Lina Romay) who has split off from the school. During the long trip back, the guide has a change of heart and decides to repent, turning against his captors and helping the people he originally betrayed.

The climax of the film, shot and edited with dispatch despite the budgetary restrictions, may remind some viewers of a miniature version of the final scene in THE WILD BUNCH. The very last scene, in which the Tobonga gold is abandoned by the survivors, echoes THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE. Franco's film, of course, is a lot less ambitious than those two Hollywood classics, but maybe that's why it works so well. The massacre at the Tobonga camp, the abduction scene, and the opening safari are as well-staged as anything Franco has ever done. It's as if everything were contained in quotation marks. Franco took everything he shot, no matter how rushed or threadbare, will equal seriousness. The intention is to locate a method of representation. No message, that's for Western Union. There's also an amusing dose of voodoo dancing thrown in for good measure. He takes it all seriously, even though it's bascially juvenile comic-strip pulp. But, then again, Jess Franco had a life long passion for comics and pulp fiction. That doesn't mean, however, that there's not an encoded intent which often emerges as his trademark brand of sly humor as he immerses the viewer in genre cliches.

Daniel White's pulsating drum and vocal score is familiar from some of Franco's other jungle adventures (MACUMBA SEXUAL, DEVIL HUNTER), but this is the most unpretentious of the lot, never breaking out of its generic tropes. Jose Miguel Marfa and Mabel Escaño are both very effective as the safari guides from hell. With its karate scenes featuring Lina Romay, voodoo rituals, adventure story, literary and film references, LA ESCLAVA BLANCA seems like a kind of boundary marker in Franco's multiverse. Lerger budgeted projects like FACELESS and his eventual digital era were in sight. If one can get past his sometimes sub-standard jungle/cannibal fare (cf WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN), this one definitely provides 90 solid minutes of undemanding entertainment. As Franco investigators we must keep in mind, though, that there are numerous ways to read his extensive filmography. As facts become more accessible there is also the tendency to do qualitative classifications, "best" and "worst" lists and create misleading arcs. What I have intended to do here in this blog, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, is to do a quantitative survey, free of conventional standards which don't really apply to the kind of artist Freanco was. He deliberaty defies and discourages conventional analysis. He has often stated that he only wants to entertain audiences. Implying that he has no "messages" or hidden agendas. But there are layers of hidden agendas throughout his twisting career. LA ESCLAVA BLANCA perhaps becomes more interesting in relation to his uncompleted JUNGLE OF FEAR (1993), based on Poe's THE GOLD BUG. Then there are other iterations of that story (LA NOCHE DE LOS SEXOS ABIERTOS), There are threads and threads within threads. One just has look and look again to perceive the entanglements which may be partially or totally invisible to first time viewers.

I would be pleasantly surpised if this forgotten mid 1980s programmer showed up on a Blu-ray release, but stranger things have happened. I had some behind the scenes photos of the shoot supplied by Senor Marfa but haven't yet been able to transfer them here. The Spanish "jungle" locations will be very familiar to serious Jess Franco collectors. I put jungle in quotation marks because everything which he filmed at this point in his career is surrounded by imperceptible quotation marks. It's like studying a foreign language with its own inflections, pronunciations and notations. (C) Robert Monell