Jess Franco's XXX Files #1: The Architecture of Porn in the realm of lethal desire. A Hardcore Sampler.

Lina Romay is the nameless object of interest of the voyeur in the apartment block across from her highrise. EL MIRON Y LA EXCIBICIONISTA is Jess Franco's sharply essay focused on the dynamics of pornographic cinema and the mise en scene which it entails. This under 60 minute hardcore actually ended up being sold in DVD format at newstands along with a flood of other once banned titles after intitally being screened in 1980s era Spanish fleapits. It opens with telezoom high angle views of residents of a high rise relaxing by a large swimming pool, recalling similar telezoom shots of a hotel pool in the 1973 FEMALE VAMPIRE.

Franco himself sometimes appears as a voyeur in his own films as in the above image from his 1975 hardcore DE SADE'S JULIETTE, which was lost after being re-edited by Italian porn king Joe D'Amato. On the other hand there's the 1976 DAS BILDNIS DES DORIANA GRAY aka DIE MARQUISE VON SADE, a film of exqsuitely composed images of refracted light and ugly hardcore porn close-ups. Art lies in the balance between "an eternal to-and-fro from lethal boredom to wild desire" or something which can't be evaluated by conventional journalist prose. In the softcore cut of the film the hardcore footage is replaced with oneiric images of Doriana smoking opium and repeatedly walking down a spiral staircase while clutching a large flower. "Nude Descending a Staircase" comes immediately to mind. Producer Erwin Dietrich claims to have never seen the hardcore cut.

DORIANA GRAY, in any of its editions, is overlain with a visual elegance which far exceeds its template LA COMTESSE NOIRE (1973), a poetically inclined film which is also titled FEMALE VAMPIRE, and which also has a longer version with hardcore inserts. The longest version of LA COMETSSE NOIRE was released as a hardbox DVD by X Rated Kult. Reflecting the lifetime cigarette habit of the director, the most interesting scenes in the 1978 hardcore COCKTAIL SPECIAL, a XXX version of EUGENIE, THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970) are scenes of the main characters sitting around smoking cigarettes. a favorite Jess Franco pastime. The nothing gained by watch the crassly filmed hardcore material except that this version ends with Eugenie having sex with her father. That outcome is presented as a "happy ending" in the otherwise fetid proceedings. This was Franco's final film for producer Robert De Nesle, who passed away the same year.

By the time the 1980s unfolded and hardcore became legal in Spain Franco was there again as director and voyeur in UNA RAJITA PARA DOS (1984), featuring micro-close ups of scat playing spies at a highrise hotel. Scenes of the cast relaxing by the swimming pool are the only relief from the relentless hardcore close ups.

Returning to hardcore with EL MIRON Y LA EXCIBICIONISTA in the mid 1980s the architecture which surrounds the hardcore close-ups is more of interest than the close-ups of genitalia. Lina Romay's exhibitionist lives in a cement apartment block fitted with huge windows through which the voyeur watches her from his adjacent cement apartment block. The architect was not Ricardo Bofill this time, but the asethetic and perceptual distance between characters. After all, Franco himself once suggested his films were about the "distance" between people.

Thanks to Francesco Cesari for sending the rare "Spanish kiosk DVD" of Jess Franco's 1985 ENTRE PITOS ANDA EL JUEGO, a delightfully airy, witty and self reflexive hardcore feature con "Candy Coster", directed by "Lulu Laverne", produced by Fernando Vidal Campos' Fervi Films. It's obvious that Franco took these micro-budgeted hardcores as seriously as his non-erotic, more mainstream, linear mid 80s Fervi Film projects. The erotic film, even hardcore, is another legitimate genre for him. A brief (approx. 70 m) venture, this is a minimalist (by necessity), almost Godardian take on the demands of Spanish hc consumers in that era. The telezoom images of high rises over Alicante [?] under the credits remind me of similar images in Godard's TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (1966), also about sex, architecture and is the kind of film snobs hate. The same kind of snobs who jeer at Demofilo Fidani "westerns" and Jess Franco hardcore assignations. And remember, Orson Welles also worked on at least one hardcore film late in his career.* And it's always good to see "Mona Lisa"*... . Obviously, I take a certain attitude as a default mode when dealing with Franco's hc portfolio, and this is one that bears the scrutiny.

The ever-active telezoom is used to focus on the architecture of the highrise across the plaza from the XXX action. Franco is quoted in OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO (who also list this item as a Lina Romay film "with Franco's collaboration"; I think, "ghosted" by JF) as saying at Cannes '92 that, "This film has one of the best comic sequences in the history of pornographic cinema...." Jess could never be accused of false modesty in guiding potential customers through his sideshow of hardcore.

The Agfacolor DVD print is really nice. Good luck in finding one! Stay tuned for more Jess Franco XXX Files! (C) Robert Monell,2023

DEVIL HUNTER (1980): Notes on Jess Franco's Cannibal Apocalypse.

DEVIL HUNTER/Mandingo Manhunter/The Man Hunter'El Canibal (Blu-ray) 1980--France-Germany-Spain; Severin Films Blu-ray--104m; Trans-World Entertainment (U.S. Video). DIRECTED BY "Clifford Brown" (Jess Franco) WITH: Al Cliver, Ursula Buchfellner, Robert Foster (Antonio Mayans), Antonio Da Cabo, Werner Pochath, Muriel Montossey (woman on boat). ======================================= Features Reviews Video Resources Links Credits (a.k.a. SEXO CANNIBAL; IL CACCIATORE DI UOMINI; JUNGFRAU UNTER KANNIBALEN; THE DEVIL HUNTER; MANDINGO MANHUNTER)

Franco's most notorious venture into cannibal cinema, while not as extreme as Umberto Lenzi's CANNIBAL FEROX or Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, registers as a definite gross-out, deliberatey so, as well as a ripe example of the director's cynicism. Is he satirizing the cannibal genre and films like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1979), or is he just executing a commercial delivery of a product filled with sexual violence and graphic gore? This 1980 co-production clearly represents Franco's ability to deliver on demand a commercially viable, if crudely crafted sex and violence exploitation adventure and something which he can infuse with his own style. One can picture the director, machete in hand, cutting his way through the Portuguese "jungles" to find locations for a film about a mercenary hired by a sleazy producer to rescue his contracted sex star from ruthless kidnappers. The plot is lurid and unimaginative: A sexy starlet (Ursula BuchFellner) is kidnapped by ruthless criminals in a European city (Alicante) and whisked away to a tropical island. On the island, the kidnappers torture and molest the terrified woman until help arrives. This takes the form of hero type Peter Weston (Al Cliver, aka Pierluigi Santi) and his Vietnam vet sidekick (Antonio Mayans, credited as Robert Foster). The starlet manages to escape before the heroes arrive. She runs straight into the arms of a local native tribe, who are intent on sacrificing her to their living god. Weston puts an end to the the cannibal's bloody rampage by pushing him off a cliff. He sails into the sunset with the topless starlet. Plotting is not high on Franco's skill set nor is it a personal priority in his multiverse. As in Bunuel's Mexican melodramas a happy ending can signify its opposite as a character arc can be a detour leading nowhere. It's another element in the cycle of exploitation which is mapped out by the producers and the art directors on board for home video releases. The actual on-set "Art Director" was longtime Eurocine hack Pierre Chevalier (ORLOF AND THE INVISIBLE MAN, PANTHER SQUAD).

Some of this plays even worse than it sounds. The most effective part is the opening, in which Franco cross-cuts a cannibal tribe pursuing a victim to paparazzi descending upon Buchfellner at her hotel. The sense of actors waiting for direction is pervasive and the early scenes set in the hotel and beach are filled with background extras who all stare directly at the camera. The jungle scenes, filmed largely in Portugal, do contain layers of humid atmosphere along with buckets of blood.

Franco doesn't seem to give a damn here about the 1970s trend of Italian cannibal films which heavily loomed at that time. He knew his intended audiences. It's difficult to locate any gestures toward his personal obsessions and his sometimes imaginative use of low-budget filmmaking techniques. The order of the day on this Italian-French-Spanish-German co-production seems to have been to jump on the cannibal bandwagon, pull 'em into the theatres and rip 'em off. Even the graphic gore scenes are uninteresting. More interesting is the way they are edited into the action in blood dripping close up, like gore inserts suddenly inseretd in a comic strip jungle adventure.

The only character seen practicing cannibalism is played a seven-foot tall black actor (a local Portuguese gymnast according to Franco) with absurdly bulbuous eyes, credited as "Burt Altman". He wanders around a questionable jungle setting bare-assed, and eats most of the cast. Whenever the cannibal eats flesh, we see him endlessly chew on what appears to be bits of cold cuts dipped in fake blood. It's sickening and somewhat laughable at the same time. Such gratuitious details are also immediately laughable and immerse the view into a realm of delirious jungle fever. There only performance worth mentioning in this macabrre jungle adventure is Werner Pochath's nervous kidnapper who always seems on the verge of an anxiety attack, although one wishes that the always nice to look at Muriel Montosse had more to do than show-up in two brief scenes and get nude before she is eaten by the cannibal demon.

The first time I saw this, on a Blockbuster Video VHS, it seemed that almost every scene was in some way technically inept. The photography was the most dismal I had seen in a Franco production. At least half of the movie seemed out-of-focus, under-exposed, or over-exposed. An atmospheric background vocal created by Carlos Perlata (Carlos Franco), Franco, and Daniel White adds a sinister ambience in the right places. Seen decades later in HD, the Juan Cozar compositions are much more interesting, dense with local flora and other detail. Cozar has since become a noted still photorgrapher of natural scenes. Some film writers (The Aurum Horror Encyclopedia) have labelled the native scenes and the cannibal zombie as racist representations. One thinks of the 1960 German Krimi, THE AVENGER/DER RACHER, featuring future Jess Franco player Klaus Kinski in one of his first Edgar Wallace roles. Its depiction of a black African servant, a feral raised, hair covered hunchback suspected of severing heads wasn't as risible then as it would be today. Then there's the Wallace written KING KONG (1933), especially viewing the vertical climb of Cliver up a 90 degree cliff to save the white heroine from yet another monster of color. It's certaingly crass exploitation of basic civilized fears of ravishment by the Other. That's the way things are represented in Franco's civilization free universe, entertainment value aside. I guess to the 2023 non Franco fan this would all seem fairly abysmal, the serious Franco collector would not pull it off the shelf to entertain party guests.

The now ultra-rare TWE (Trans World Entertainment) video version is presented in full-screen format, but the gore scene close-ups are letterboxed at varying ratios. Wizard Video reportedly released this version in the U.S., as well. The more recent Blu-ray versions are definitely the way to go for optimal video and audio quality of film which has often been screened via unwatachable presentaions. The Spanish language tracks are the recommended options, since the vintage video English language voice casting is bottom of the barrell. CUT TO-- 2017 archival notes: Credited to "Clifford Brown" this German, Spanish, French and Italian coproduction features Al Cliver [Pier luigi Conti], most familiar from Fulci's ZOMBIE, as a mercenary hired to bring back a starlet [Ursula Buchfellner] who has is being held for ransom on a tropical island. The only interesting performances are given by the intense, late Werner Pochath and Antonio de Cabo as nasty and increasingly frantic criminals. Conti/Cliver looks as bored as usual while German starlet Buchfellner looks almost anorexic and spends most of her screentime tied up nude to a tree getting abused by the criminals and a giant black cannibal. Watching Europeans like Claude Boisson as the cannibal chief is a real hoot and the film in unconvincing in just about every department. Note the equipment and details in the film producer's office; everything in this film looks cheap or bogus. A junk aesthetic. But it's Franco all the way in terms of out-of-focus shots both from the marauding cannibls POV and other images, mismatched filmstock (the film was reportedly begun by TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD auteur Amando De Ossorio), and editing between events which looks like it was meant to mean something (the paparazzi and the fashion show are intercut with the jungle pursuit of another nude female victim who is later tied to a tree, gutted and disgustingly cannibalized). Totally incomptent on the FX level, the cannibal is shown chewing on bloody meat scraps in extreme closeup, this will give no competition to the other Euro cannibal films of that era (cf CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST). It's pure exploitation for very desperate audiences. There is an interesting primitivist score by Franco himself (and Daniel J. White) with a delirious male vocal by Carloto Perla (Carlos Franco), heard in other 1980s Franco films. The stalking, bug-eyed, giant black nude cannibal has to be one of the most blatantly racist images in the history of horror cinema or a tip of the hat to the zombie in Val Lewton's more aftful I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. (C) Robert Monell 2017-2023

VIDEO ASIA DETOUR: The Video Asia DVD of this, coupled with Manuel Cano's VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST (1972), is possibly the worst digital presentation of a Franco film yet. The opening credits are removed and the film starts in the middle of the first scene. There is digital censoring of the copious male and female nudity of the original, some extreme gore is cut and the bottom third of the image is masked presumbly to hide the presence of Japanese subtitles, video quality is significantly inferior to the more complete old TRANSAMERICA VHS: THE MAN HUNTER. I believe that this was indeed sourced from a Japanese video or disc and booted over here. The somewhat racist cover artwork reads TERROR TALES FROM THE HOOD SPECIAL EDITION VOLUME 4. BLACK VOODOO EXORCIST (sic) plus THE GRUESOME SHOCK OF: THE DEVIL HUNTER. A 1970s style Afro coiffured female poses in a collage with a glowing eyed gravedigger, green hands emerging from graves holding cigarettes [!], etc. The back features more dated jungle nonsense including some stills and amusing promo notes ("The long banned masterpiece...[!]"). But for under 10 dollars it may be an outre collector's item for some. (C) Robert Monell 2017-2023

There would be more jungle adventures to be created during the 1980s, DIAMONDS OF KILAMANDJARO (1983), GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS (1984), THE WHITE SLAVE (1985), all infusing Franco's Saturday Matinee adventure mode with his unique Primitivism. He seemed to get the jungle dieties out of his system with TENDER FLESH, in which the threats were civilized flesh owning class. Cannibalism is an oral fixation in Franco's universe, rather than a dietary choice and, a signifier of class, of the upper class devouring the lower classes at their leisure. These signs would be reintrepted in his final digital period. DEVIL HUNTER is hardly Franco's answer to Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, which ended by asking its audience to wonder whom the real cannibals were, the exploitative media or the anthropological cannibals. The class contrast between the wealthy cannibals and working class procurers and prey is not as elegantly stated as in LA COMTESSE PERVERSE (1973) or like the game show format of TENDER FLESH. There is irony in this film but there is no message. It was a way for him to continue to work and participate in a trending genre. (C) Robert Monell 8/4/2023

Jess Franco's Digital Apocalypse: Part 1

Jess Franco's final period of filmmaking lasts from the the second part of the last decade of the 20th Century until his death in 2013. OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO doesn't cover it at all, being that it was published in 1992, still situated in the analog age. There seems to have been a generalized dismissal of this last batch of films, some remakes of earlier films, such as INCUBUS, BROKEN DOLLS, which revisit the plots and characters of two of his best films, LORNA, THE EXORCIST (1974) and ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN. More about those later.

LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1998) Written, Produced and Directed by Jess Franco, US/Spain. With Lina Romay, Analia Ivars, Carlos Subterfuge, Michelle Bauer, Amber Newman, Robert King. 93min. A One Shot Production.

While LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN may evoke memories of B movie icon William Beaudine's final feature film, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1965), it's nonetheless a good place to begin a survey. This 1998 remake of a classic of the director's Robert De Nesle portfolio is sometimes visually astounding, obsessively personal, ultra-bizarre, morbid, perverse and maddening, terms which come immediately to mind while or just after watching this most recent entry into the Frankenstein file of Jess Franco. Earlier drafts include such grade Z mixes of horror, sexploitation and experimentation as THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN (THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN -1972 ) and DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN filmed with the same cast, crew and sets the same year. The monsters in those films, played by Fernando Bilbao as a silver skinned, moronic killing machine, have nothing on Michelle Bauer in this new version. Casting the American scream queen in this legendary role was a stroke of genius, as her always nude (except for combat boots!) creature is a riveting, pathetic creation as the lover-slave of sex-starved scientist Moira (Lina Romay), the frustrated daughter of Dr. Frankenstein.

The plot is minimal, as usual in Franco's post 1980's work, narrative elements are pushed to very edges of what can best be described as a nonstop barrage of digital delirium delivered at full metal intensity to the eye, ear and libido. The violent nightmares of Moira include bloodly visions of Dr. Frankenstein and his female composite. The monster (whom may or may not be Moira's erotic fantasy) shows up, becomes her lover and her instrument of revenge, killing everyone else in the cast. They end up in bed together at the end, as Moira wonders if it all really happened. The action (or non-action) begins and ends with a famous quote from Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940), an Academy Award winning classic and one of the numerous direct and indirect references to films made by others as well as Franco's own previous work (Romay is seen wearing T-Shirts with logos from SUCCUBUS and THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA- late 1960's thrillers featuring - respectively - Janine Reynaud and Soledad Miranda, two legendary and hypnotic sex stars the likes of which we will probably never again experience). We are a long way from Franco's earlier adaptations of James Whale's classic THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and Franco has undergone a radical stylistic evolution by this time. This wasn't going to compete with memories of Warhol's FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1974), which had platters of dripping guts, 3D, Joe Dellasandro, Udo Kier and the Warhol name attached, but neither is it Richard Cunha's 1958 monochrome trashterpiece, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, which was targeted for a certain profit point on the American Drive-in circuits.

The lack of a sustained/coherent plot is likely to deny many access to the visual/aural delights which abound as is the obsessive focus on sex (nothing new for Franco). What is new here is the fact that the production has the unmistakeable DNA of video and is layered with what seems like miles of digital effects courtesy of the director's collaboration with the technicians at the Centro de Tecnologia de la Imagen-University of Malaga, Spain. Imagine the "Beyond the Infinite" final passage of Kubrick's 2001... redone by Salvador Dali, Charles Manson and the Marquis de Sade, on a budget of next to nothing, and you get some kind of idea what is in store. The digital imaging appears in virtually every scene and many shots have numerous layers of highly saturated colors, incongruent forms, jarring video noise, floating structures, playing over the erotic encounters between the scientist, the monster, a dominitrix from hell (the white-hot Analia Ivars) and everyone else in sight.

Add to all this a throbbing, jacked-up neo-heavy metal score by Mikel Sagues and Franco himself and you have the ingredients for a mind reeling spiral which forever seems on the verge of spinning out of control, but somehow seeming to occur at the rate of events at the bottom of the ocean floor. Welcome to the parallel universe called Jess Franco, digital style. "Why has it taken you so long to get here?" the film seems to ask as it commences. More on Franco's video-verse in Part 2. Orignally published and d(C) by Robert Monell at Thu, Dec 09, 1999, 12:08:07; New Expanded Version (C) 2023, All Rights Reserved.

MIDNIGHT PARTY/LADY PORNO (1976-1982)

Review: MIDNIGHT PARTY (1975)/LADY PORNO version Posted by Robert Monell , Apr 02,2000,09:56 post reply top message newest index New Version (2023) (C) Robert Monell aka Porno Pop, La Partouse de Minuit, Sylvia le Basleuse, Sexy Blues (Production/prerelease titles), La Coccolona (Italian release), Heisse Beruhrungen (Erwin Dietrich/Swiss version). LADY PORNO (76 minute Spanish version) Directed by Tawer Nero (Julio Perez Tabernero) for Titanic Films. "A Belgian-Spanish co-production" is credited onscreen in this Spanish language cut. The longest (94m) cut is presumably Franco's own preferred cut and listed as a French-Belgian production.

This is a sexy spy film once directed by Jess Franco in just a few days, at least it looks like a few days, mostly at a hotel in Southern France (some exteriors of the astral pyramids of La Grande Motte are glimpsed). A typical Franco strategy. Around the same time, he shot two other films there (Le Grand Motte) with the exact same rooms, casts and crews (DE SADE'S JULIETTE, SHINING SEX). The version under consideration here has the onscreen title Lady Porno, a Spanish variant of Franco's original MIDNIGHT PARTY. Julio Perez Tabernero, an actor turned producer-director (he can be seen in Franco's own SADISTEROTICA/Two Undercover Angels)acquired it for his Titanic Films (Julio, your company needs a new handle!) and reconstructed it as an "American-Belgian" co-production. It's very amusingly redubbed and rescored with lewd comments ("I'd like to fuck her in the ass!"), bawdy music and direct-to-the-viewer takes. --Sylvia is a very hot stripper who carries on an affair with a cheap detective, Al Pereira (Olivier Mathot) behind the back of her longtime squeeze, Red Nicholas (film historian-critic-actor-musician-screenwriter-Franco friend, Alain Petit). This is not really another of Franco's Al Pereira episodes, as he is mainly a player in Sylvia's story. This is kind of like a live action cartoon (cf LUCKY, THE INSCRUTABLE) with Lina Romay giving it all she has as the resourceful Sylvia. This might actually be my personal favorite of her performances, she mercilessly teases the viewer directly, the interactive takes allow her to pose, stick her tongue out, and make alluring remarks to the audience before turning back to the scene and players at hand, resuming in the traditional four wall mode. The longest version of this film opens with Romay in full interactive mode, addressing the viewer as she twists and turns in erotic self pleasure.

It's mosty a lot of good natured fun for the initiated, except that the subject of interest is torture. Torture that really hurts to watch! Sylvia is taken by Radeck/Agent 008 (Jess Franco himself), a spymaster and professional torture mogul who takes his business very seriously indeed. Look at the way he abuses poor Sylvia: after being stripped and sexually abused by henchpersons Monica Swinn and Ramon Ardid, she's poked, punched and cigarette burned by the ingrates under the very close supervision of Radeck. They take her to the "torture clinic" which, this being a Jess Franco shoot, merely means another hotel room (or the same hotel room slightly redressed and shot from a different angle). Choosing a metal tool, they try pulling out her toenails, as Radeck is beginning to lose his patience. At this point one of my favorite moments in Franco's monumental filmography occurs, and it only last a few seconds: Radeck simply puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. That's it! The exact way which actor Jess Franco jabs the smoke into his mouth and fires it up has to be experienced first hand. It's a grand bit a business, something small made into something very special by a seasoned professional, Franco, the actor, is much more flamboyand here than Franco, the director. Radeck drops the pose at the end, as Sylvia and Al are escaping he faces the camera and admits to us that it was all an illusion. We have been spectators. But what are we doing at this venue? Of course, that question is implied rather than asked. It's a comedy of torture, after all.

Alain Petit is very droll as the Marxist jazz singer, Nicholas. Billed as "Charlie Christian" (cf JUSTINE, the 1979-80 Joe D'Amato composite where he is likewise billed as his footage here is rolled over with scenes from SHINING SEX into a unique reedit) he performs his infamous "La Vie est une Merde", also heard in a blues rendition during Franco's 1982 EMMANUELLE EXPOSED and in Petit's documentary THE MAKING OF TENDER FLESH (1997).

The Spanish language version which was screened for this review (subtitled in English) is very much in keeping with the joker/trickster impulses which frequently bubble to the surface of Franco's work. The finale, a shootout between Petit, the villains and the cops (a minimalist debacle of dutch angles and snap zooms accompanied by light-hearted jazz,) followed by shots of birds flying in the distance as our couple floats away on a pleasure craft, is post-ironic in the sense that it delivers on expectations which Franco obviously considers bogus while gleefully curving past the generic demands of representational, grade B sexploitation production methodology. In other words: don't worry, be happy, it's only a movie. Franco places the absurd action as film within a film within a role play since the party itself turns out to be a spy game. When the director-actor breaks the fourth wall again to dismiss the concocted reality he has just created he's getting the last laugh and word, reminding us that his films represent nothing but meditations on represention.

It's especially interesting to watch this "comedy" lon a double bill with the intense, morbid SHINING SEX, made the same year, with the same main cast, on the same locations in Southern France, sometimes using the same hotel rooms, shot from the same camera angles. There is a perverse atmosphere of toxic sexuality, perhaps anticipating Franco's unreleased SIDA, LA PESTE DEL SIGLO XX (1986), a sci-fi/drama about the dissemination of an AIDS like plague. The secret agents in SHINING SEX are extra-dimensional invaders investigated by a paranormal scientist, played Jess Franco again. A truly mind-bending experience would be to view both and then JUSTINE, which composites footage from SHINING SEX, MIDNIGHT PARTY and Franco's lost JULIETTE DE SADE into one Sadean blow-out, courtesy of post-production producer-editor, Joe D'Amato. REVIEWED BY ROBERT MONELL NOTES: MIDNIGHT PARTY was released in Germany on January 23, 1976, in France on December 7th, 1977; LADY PORNO carries a 1982 Spanish copyright date. The IMDB lists Brussels Belgium, Madrid, Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana Spain and Cote Bleue, Bouches-du-Rhone France as additional locations. (C) Robert Monell--2023 NEW VERSION

THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA (aka DER TEUFEL KAM AUS AKASAVA) 1970

Directed by Jess Franco. With Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams, Jess Franco, Howard Vernon. A Spanish-West German co-production. Available from European Trash Cinema.

My initial reaction to this 1970 film was negative. I have since reevaluated it. I first experienced it as totally inept rush-job, a belated cash-in on the Edgar Wallace franchise. It was, sadly, Franco's last collaboration with the legendary Soledad Miranda. She would die in a car accident shortly after the completion of this supposed Edgar Wallace adaptation. The plot evokes some of the later Edgar Wallace films from Germany as the series was on a downward spiral, generic eurospy cliches strung end to end with the only interesting aspect being Miranda's participation. A more interesting was to view it as a "Jess Franco" iteration of pulp material. I haven't read the Wallace novel which I understand is quite different than the film. British Agent Jane Morgan (Miranda) joins forces with a Scotland Yard investigator (Fred Williams) to locate a stolen mineral which has the capacity to transform base metal into gold. The downside is that it emits rays which turn all those who come into contact with it into mindless zombies.

After a trip to the tropical country of Akasava, where the stone was discovered, the agents discover two eminent physicians (well played by Franco regulars Paul Muller and Horst Tappert) have secured the element and are planning to sell it to a corrupt philanthropist. The men are murdered by a counteragent (Howard Vernon), who is blown up along with the stone in a plane crash while attempting to flee the country. It's obviously from the opening, a flurry of zoom shots in and out of a flock of flamingos in a tropical grotto, that Franco is more interested in the environment than plot. The seeminly compulsive use of zoom shots would continue until the end of the film. Would another director have suddenly panned away from the action to zoom up to the tops of the local palm trees? The point is this is a Jess Franco film. He's shouting at us to look up to something were taking for granted, those towering palms. He's in full tourist guide mode here.

and the viewer is the tourist. Miranda's participation in this enterprise is highly erratic — she pops in and out of the story and her main role is to provide a romantic interest for the hero, indifferently played by German actor Fred Williams, a handsome, rather dull performer, who spends most of the film limping around in a debilitating leg cast and crutches. He has a winning smile and an easy going nature but never manages to engage with the other actors or his role. He may as well been playing a waiter. Miranda doesn't really get a chance to project the obsessed sensuality which burned up the screen in her stunning turns in VAMPYROS LESBOS and EUGENIE (both 1970). She does get to perform some abstract strip teases during which she barely moves and doesn't even remove any clothing. No strip and a lot of tease, which might leave her fans feeling somewhat disappointed and ripped off. However, I found this miminalist "dancing" rather erotic. It's more erotic posing than actual dancing. Acting wise, she is simply miscast in a role any actress could have done, and she never turns on that mysterious aura of narcotic eroticism which surrounds those indelible performances. Howard Vernon and Franco himself appear in small roles as agents and lighten up the proceedings with some humorous asides. The film does lack the esoteric qualities of Franco's earlier collaborations with Miranda. One can only imagine what her career would have been like if she had lived past the age of 27.

What saved the film for me were the whirlwind vocal and brass score by Manfred Hubler and Siegfried Schwab (available on CD) and Franco's frenetic camera style and pacing. The director really goes over the top with the zoom lens here (as many critics have complained), moving in and out of the action (or non-action) or suddenly zooming up to the top of palm trees and back down again for no particular reason. These rather desperate directorial moves become kind of amusing to watch for the sheer unpredictabilty of what Franco is going to focus (or unfocus) on next. The wild camera work is accenuated by the fast paced editing (unusual in a Franco film from this period) and heady music. Franco obviously knew he was involved in a lost cause and at least produced film with a few of his personal touches, a Eurospy quickie which his longtime fans can laugh at while regretting the fate of the doomed Miranda. ************************************************************************************************************************* Franco would return to the world of Edgar Wallace in the 1980s with two questionable "adaptations." VAIJE A BANGKOK: ATAUD INCLUIDO is a rarely seen spy adventure set in the Far East. cult seen through Asian pottery, curtains and smoke and mirrors. A closer looks reveals an uncredited source, Franco's own 1966 Eurospy epic starring Eddie Contantine, ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS (CARDS ON THE TABLE). Despite a lackluster performance by can't be bothered Constantine that did have some good scenes detailing the creation of human cyborgs in a giant test tube (see Below).

Produced by Jess Franco/Manacoa Films--Directed by Jess Franco--Screenplay by David Khunne (Jess Franco), based on a novel by Edgar Wallace--DP: Joan Soler/Juan Soler Cozar--Music: Dennis Farnon/Jess Franco (Ed. Harmony, Madrid)--Asst. Dir: Rosa Maria Almirall (Lina Romay), Carlos Aguilar-- Editor: Rosa Maria Almirall (Lina Romay)--Art. Dir: Carlos Spitzer--Ma: Juana de la Morena--Production Asst: Angel Oriales, Enrique Diaz--Prod. Mgr: J. Antonio Mayans--92m. Eastmancolor. Widescreen. Locations: Alicante, Canary Islands. Spain. 1985. Based on "novel" by Edgar Wallace... But what novel or story?A brainwashed assassin breaks into a diplomatic reception, cuts the throat of the British Ambassador and is quickly shot down. The aging but still sharp M1 agent, Colonel Daniel J. Blimp (Howard Vernon) arrives to conduct an inquiry. He is joined the a younger, brash Australian agent, Philip Sanders (Jose Llamas) and the victim's daughter (Helena Garret)  in uncovering a strange cult under the mental domination of the blind Professor Tao (Albino Graziani). More terrorist style murders of political figures occur but Blimp's trusty cane and trick tobacco pouch save the day, along with bursts of machine gun fire directed by the young Sanders. Basado en la novela de Edgar Wallace according to the poster, this is actually an on-the-fly remake of CARTES SUR TABLE (1966), with Howard Vernon playing the Eddie Constantine role. Without sex, nudity or significant action scenes this looks like a by the numbers reboot of an earlier low-budget film on an even slimmer contract which doesn't have a significant female foil like Francoise Brion or Sophie Hardy in the template. Like CARTES SUR TABLE it's an uneasy, highly personal blend of rushed looking action scenes, Jess Franco in-jokes (the Ambassador is named after the editor of several Harry Alan Towers-JF collaborations), but the Romantic intrigue just isn't there nor are the charmingly dog eared scrap ups. What is here are some strikingly composed sequences set in the hidden lair of the "cult of ultimate knowledge" executed by mere clever placement of a few vases, geometric blocking along with typical Jess Franco smoke and mirrors effects. The "robots" look more than mid 1980s lounge lizards than Manchurian Candidates. The robot killers are controlled by a sinister cult. Jess Franco has a throwaway cameo as a hotel clerk.

Spanish film historian Carlos Aguilar, who would eventually write several books on the director, was assistant director, and appears in a small role as the hotel clerk. The name of Sanders appears to be the main element taken from the work of Edgar Wallace. Jess Franco, looking somewhat bored, appears as an inquisitive hotel agent. Nevertheless, it's a sometimes fun trifle, features some amusingly inept Kung Fu interludes and German actor Christian Bork (Bork Gordon) from the somewhat similar Golden Films Internacional no-budget action epic BANGKOK, CITA CON LA MUERTE(1985), which was made in an overlap with this film according to the director* Actually, the best shot in the film is in the first scene where the diplomatic reception is reflected in the sunglasses of the robot-assassin who is lurking in the night just outside the window.  Jess Franco, when up against it, is sometimes better at making scattered memorable images like this than he is at writing original stories or compelling characters, but he obviously was more concerned this time in making yet another film and moving on to the next. The secret code of Jess Franco lives on in even obscure commercial knocks offs. The director would return to hardcore in 1985-1987, with such tiles as EL MIRON Y EL EXCIBICIONISTA, EL OJETE DE LULU and ENTRE PITOS ANDA EL JUEGO. This film was preceded by the 1983 SANGRE EN MIS ZAPATOS, a fast-paced actioner supposedly based on Edgar Wallace's SANDERS COME FROM THE RIVER [!], a book I have never read, so I can't testify to its faithfulness to the credited source. This one features Howard Vernon as an absconding Soviet scientist who has fled his homeland with a high-tech nuclear homing device. An International espionage would be thriller which has numerous amusing scenes involving a duo of agents played by Antonio Mayans and Lina Romay. It all ends with a NORTH BY NORTHWEST style air to ground pursuit where the couple are bombed by an airborne menace. An unusual and very welcome action-adventure turn by the director, with a lot of subversive humor, personal touchstones and a musical code. Released on Spanish video-Basic Home Video S.A., according to OBSESSION THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO. This film also had Internet broadcast on a Spanish site some time ago and looked to be in good shape.

(C) Robert Monell (New Version) 2023.

Review: LES GRANDES EMMERDEUSES (Clifford Brown, 1974)

Review: LES GRANDES EMMERDEUSES (1974)

After a few glimpses of the Paço dos Duques de Bragança, Franco zooms up to a window. Inside a lavish bedroom chamber Lina Romay and Pamela Stanford romp in the nude giving the director a chance to employ his infamous vaginal zoom. The remainder of the film is set in what look like budget Portuguese hotel rooms and a few images of attractions on the Atlantic beach resorts. It's difficult to believe there was an actual full screenplay for this Eurospy comedy-adventure, financed by the ever cost conscious Robert (Grandpa) De Nesle. This is a delightfully sleazy Jess Franco romp, and I use the word "romp" with no irony intended. Jess directed under his "Clifford Brown" beard. White watching it one gets the sense that he probably forgot about it the day after shooting was completed. It all looks like it was shot in two and a half days in some hotel where the film crew were probably hiding out from the cops. Lina Romay and Pamela Stanford (Lorna, the Exorcist herself!) jiggle their merry ways through this sleek put-on concerning two almost always naked diamond smugglers (guess where they hide the diamonds) who travel to Istanbul where they hope to fence the jewels. Hot on the trail are a pair of bumbling Interpol agents (Franco regulars Bigotini and Ramon Ardid), who are introduced being bawled out by an Interpol official played by Jess Franco himself, a cameo that was probably dictated by lack of a casting budget. The female hot operators at the center of the action aren't the Red Lips detective team from Franco's second feature, LABIOS ROJOS (1960), or such follow ups as SADISTEROTICA and KISS ME MONSTER (1968). They're definitely on the wrong side of the law. Girls out to have fun. It's more like let's go to Cascais and make a sexy comedy, screenplay not included.

The women manage to elude their pursuers but run into the massive Radeck (amusingly incarnated by the spherical Victor Mendes) a sort of gangster-mad scientist who has developed a hairy montrosity to whom our heroines will be fed if they don't deliver. It's all wild and crazy fun filmed with little or no budget, with plenty of those trademark zooms and without even the bare basics of a camera tripod or lights. The exteriors are mostly shot from a moving car and one can imagine the director hanging out the window with his hand held camera, zooming in and out of every object which caught his attention- a tree here, a bridge there, and so forth. All this will probably drive those insisting on the "well made film" up the proverbial wall, but I loved every minute of it.

Lina and Pamela seem a lot more comfortable nude than most actresses do fully clothed, having a ball running around like jerks, playing sexy tricks on the villains and donning bizarre disguises (Stanford has an outrageous wrap-around cat mask which she puts on before going into action). Franco provides a circular, interactive structure by beginning and ending with the ladies assuming sexy poses, teasing the viewer by looking directly into the camera and telling us of how their latest adventure went down. I was particularly amused by a scene of the elephantine Radeck attempting a melancholy tune at the paino in his castle. This is a typically obscure in-joke which only those thoroughly immersed in Franco's alternate universe will catch on to. Others will stare in wordless amazement that this bleary trifle has even survived. We'll overlook the "Durenstein" monster, who is played by a remarkably ugly shirtless actor. Immediately interactive and stubbornly lacking any obvious serious subtext, it's easy to overlook that it's Franco challenging viewers to believe how little he can do and still make a deliverable film. No sets, no costumes (except for the cat mask), no plot, and totally dependant on the talents of Lina Romay and Pamela Stanford. Even the earlier Red Lips film such as KISS ME MONSTER and SADISTEROTICA look lavish compared to this. It's just women having fun at the expense of male characters, and actresses having fun making a film. A trip to sunny Portugal. In a sense it's similar to Polanski's erotic cartoon comedy, WHAT?, made the previous year, which presented an always nude sex object eluding sexual assault, including gang rape, from obnoxiously horny European men. In that case the horny guys were embodied by Marcello Mastrioanni and Polanski himself. By the way, Polanski rang up Franco and inquired about getting Britt Nichols for the lead.

Outside of my current and previous thoughts on this all nude, fun-in-the-sun spy farce, I could continue to talk about this as yet another example of female empowerment through having more fun and intellectual control than any women in most Eurospy films, including the James Bond series. But that would spoil the fun. It's not a coincidence that Franco's very last completed film AL PEREIRA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES, also features two frequently nude muses having a ball at ridiculing the self involved maleness of Fanco's favorite law enforcement representative. A few bullet points: Having written about this in 1999, for MHVF, and later for my blog, my thoughts have evolved. But looking beneath that seemingly lightweight comedy surface this is inevitably another example of what I term Franco's "Cinema, Degree Zero". Quickly, recklessly filmed it nonetheless has its unique artistic rigor embedded in it's frenetic mise en scene. One can hope for a 2 or 4K HD release to reveal more about that obsessive mise en scene in even the most dire of circumstances. That release is unlikely to occur anytime soon. Seeing this nearly a decade later made me appreciate Franco's sheer creativity in the face of dire poverty all the more. It looks like this was shot in Super 8mm, or maybe just regular old 8mm! But it was a 35mm shoot. My most recent viewing a further decade on notes Jess Franco looks really spaced out or hyped up on something in his appearance, pacing around yet another sleazy hotel room. Did he ever sleep during this workaholic period? Willy Braque (Guy Peraud), a familiar face from a number of Jean Rollin films (DEMONIACS; LIPS OF BLOOD), is even stranger looking than Jess Franco! This guy looks like he hasn't had a decent meal in his life. In other words, he's perfectly credible as the "connection" Kashfi. My final bullet point is a question: Who will dare do a restored HD release of a film whose title roughly translates The Big Pains in the Ass? Thanks to Monica Swinn. (C) Robert Monell 2023

Jess Franco's XXX Files. Falo Crest (1987)

(C) Robert Monell, 2023 Alternate title: CAPRICES SADOS POUR SALOPES DU PLAISIR/Producer: Phalos Films, Madrid/Director: Lennie Hayden [Jess Franco & Lina Romay]/Screenplay: Lennie Hayden, Lowel Richmond [J. Franco & L. Romay]/DP: Terry de Corsia [Jess Franco]/Music: Daniel J. White/Edited by Rosa Maria Almirall [L. Romay]/Agfacolor/Approx. 80m. Widescreen. Cast: Jane Morgan (Marzan) [Lina Romay], Gina Corrington, Andre' White, Brenda Haven [Elisa Mateo], John First [C.Gonzalez Ordi], Mel Power [A. Bartos Velasco], Linda Ewing [M. Fernandez Moreno, Sado Summers [Jose Miguel Garcia Marfa, Carlos Quiroga. Also listed in adverts: Fess Parker [!], Lola Falona, Twin Welamy, Wendy Cano, Andrew White, Sigurney Grant. Shooting locations: Benidorm, Alicante. *Bluray.com; Alex Mendibil. Release dates (Spain): May 4, 1987 August 10, 1988 One of two parodies of 1980s hit US television series, this one taking off from FALCON CREST. On the same wavelength but slightly superior to PHOLLASTIA, which parodied DYNASTY. There's not as much characterization here and the settings aren't as "upscale" as the other but a nonstop torrent of bitchy, sometimes amusing dialogue, which only Jess Franco could have written, saves this from being just another boring fuck and suck fest.

The intentionally ridiculous "plot" involves the Channing's ongoing conflict with the Carrington family. Both hot to trot families are attempting to gain the rights for aphrodisiac fruit which grows on the inherited Channing estate. Franco has a lot of fun with the upscale families restorting to low down affairs and hostile business strategies. The hostess dreams that her guests will drink her mixture of wine and semen. Everyone ends up imbibing and a lengthy orgy ensues. Twosome, threesome, and moresome encounters rule the evening until everyone is drunk on sex and more sex. We've seen this disgusting drink prepared and consumed in Franco's 1978 COCKTAIL SPECIAL, one of the last film productions of Robert De Nesle and a hardcore variant of Sade's PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOURIOR. 

The action unfolds in "real" time before and during the party on the Channing properties. Melissa Channing hosts the affair with zest and a clever plot to get the rights signed over to her without any hitches. The orange drink is mixed with "delicious" semen and drunk like champagne as a wife remarks, "It's so embarrassing to see my husband shoot cum in public!" as another woman drinks the spent semen out of a Phallo Crest wine glass. More witty Franco dialogue ensues until the company collapses into a heap of sweaty flesh. Lots of gynecological close-ups of sex acts make up most of the runtime here.  Lina Romay's brisk editing does keep things moving....

Neither of the two hardcore spin offs of popular American TV shows became profitable due to the miscalculation of spending too much on professional hardcore actors and the costs of the productions themselves. When they were finally sold the price barely covered the costs and there wasn't a huge audience for what must have seemed like a clever marketing idea. It should be noted that Angela Channing in the original FALCON CREST TV series was played by Jane Wyman, the former wife of Ronald Reagan, who was President of the United States during most of the series run. Falcon Crest (TV Series 1981–1990) - IMDb *1980s era Spanish VHS covers. No DVD releases.

It's a long way from Sade to 1980s American television... ***************************************************************** Script sample, likely for English language subtitles, to give an idea of the verbal tone: Oh dear! You've no idea what Angela Channing is capable of! Don't waste your time with those auctions. Sell! Sell! Sell! You'll evaporate in my hands like lightning. The lightning of my power, my intelligence and my cunt. Yes Julia, yes.. You were my favourite until sex and drugs destroyed you. You were the most intelligent. But now you're worthless like all the others. But you're still not as bad as the rest. Don't answer! Let me. - Don't answer it! ________________________________________________________________________________

LA CASA DE LAS MUJERES PERDIDAS (1982)

LA CASA DE LA MUJERES PERDIDA (1982) Most of Jess Franco's films are built around protagonists who are either trapped within or escaping from a dysfunctional real or extended family. The family is often a real or symbolic prison with a punishing mother/father figure, brothers and sisters in suffering communion and the psycholgical and existential weight of that specific situation. In the director's final film AL PERIERA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES the father figure is Jess Franco himself, the aged, demanding director, confined to a wheelchair but free to play with the apparatus of cinema and the representations of those within his mirror-enclosed mise-en-scene.

THE HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN went into production during a typically busy year for Jess Franco. He was involved in shooting, editing, preparing and doing post-production on at least 9 films in 1982. It was shot in late Summer/early Fall of 1982, probably toward the end of September, and completed post-production on October 18th, 1982. It was viewed by the Spanish ministerial commission which rated the film with a Clasificada "S" (sensitive material not suitable for viewers under 18 years old and even adults who might be offended). Theater workers checked that customers had ID that they were over 18. A film could be rated S for violence also, as was DAWN OF THE DEAD in Spain at that time. Filmed in coastal areas in the provinces of Murcia and Malaga, most of the action takes place in the seaside house of actor Mario Pontecorvo, played by Jess Franco regular Antonio Mayans. It opens with Desdemona, played by LIna Romay, walking along the beach and thinking in voiceover about her loneliness. There are no other residents on the island beside the dysfunctional Pontecorvo family. There is a tone of macabre, dark humor in the way the family is represented. We’ll be aware of this tone all through the film.

Fetishism, family style.... The film opens with shots of waves crashing on the island’s shore. We then listen to Desdemona’s thoughts as she walks along the beach. She’s lonely and frustrated as she watches the passenger jets fly overhead toward international destinations. She senses she will never leave the island and feels trapped. Her physical nudity represents her emotional nudity and vulnerability. She spends most of the film pleasuring herself, her only escape from the grim reality of her family life. These scenes of the island and the seashore were filmed along the coastal regions of Murcia and Malaga, mostly Malaga, two provinces in the southeast and south of Spain. The coast line of Murcia is seen in the first shots in Franco’s 1973, A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD. Some shots were filmed on the coastal area near the city of Benidorm, which is near Alicante, to the north of these other areas. Once again, Jess Franco is using various fragments taken in different regions of the Spanish landscape to create his own unique alternate reality. Lina Romay’s character is named Desdemona while Mario’s second wife is Dulcinea, both names of characters in famous Shakespeare tragedies. It should be emphasized that The House of Lost Women is a tragedy. The behavior of the head of the family, Mario, who could best be described by as a legend in his own mind, is that of a pathological liar. He claims to be from Argentina, where he was a leading stage presence for years until he had to leave the country due to a sex scandal. He constantly reminds the other family members that he in is permanent hiding and lives in fear of being found and arrested by Interpol agents and returned to stand trial. Desdemona also lives in a fantasy world while her sister Paulova is developmentally disabled and confined to a wheelchair. Both sisters are verbally, physically and emotionally abused by Mario’s second wife, played by the late actress Carmen Carrion. Mario’s wife also verbally humiliates him for being impotent in their sexual relations. Mario ignores all this and sits all day reading aloud from various magazines about such famous celebrities such as Margaret Thatcher and actors in classic movies. This is one of Antonio Mayan’s best roles and performances. He has to play a character who is never all in reality, but slides in and out of it. He’s self-absorbed to the point where he can no longer function normally, he lives in a plane somewhere between neurosis and psychosis. The late actress Carmen Carrion is also well cast as Mario’s dissatisfied wife. Some may remember the actress from Jose Larraz’s BLACK CANDLES. She’s very skilled at playing brooding, manipulative characters. Besides acting she worked in the garment industry and was a nightclub entertainer as well. Paulova is played by the actress Ausunscion Calero, who acts under the name Susana Kerr, and the character of the hunter/journalist is played by actor Tony Skios (Antonio Rebollo). Both actors appeared in other Jess Franco films around this time, including THE SINISTER DR ORLOFF.

One element to listen for on the soundtrack are the constant chatter of radio and television commercials for skin creams, food products, coffee, automobiles and an advert for the Spanish version for the 1980s American television hit DALLAS, which features a character named JR. Even the isolated, depraved world of this island bound family is invaded by the commercial entertainment world. Perhaps this is Jess Franco’s comment on his own position as a commercial Spanish director in the 1980s. He told me when I interviewed him in 2005 that “I was not free” when discussing his Spanish films in the 1960s and 70s, that the Spanish censorship only allowed him to make certain films which would be later censored of material the commission found offensive. He later gained a degree of creative freedom when in the 1980s the Spanish censors of the Francisco Franco regime had disappeared and there was a healthy soft-core sex film industry in Spain. He could deal with explicit themes and show things which were once forbidden in Spain.

1974 Eurocine composite, despite the presence of Franco veterans Jack Taylor and Olivier Mathot, not to be confused with THE HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN, was made in total freedom which he was give by Spanish producer Emilio Larraga, who owned Spain’s GOLDEN FILMS INTERNACIONAL, for which Franco made films from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. The only limitation he had was money. “They were very poorly resourced” he told me. He had micro-budgets and unlimited creative freedom. This film has only 5 or 6 characters and most of it takes place in a small house. There were no big expenses incurred by a large cast, sets or travel. What he delivered with this film, as with his similar Bahia Blanca, was a very serious, personal project without an artificial plot, clichéd characters, generic demands. This wasn’t a spy film, a horror film, a neo-noir, a comedy, an action film, it was a film about real people trapped in a painful existence. The alternate Spanish title Perversion en la Isla Perdida highlights its existential placement in the “S” film marketplace of the era. It's set on island where we visit a hermetically sealed, closed world outside of the boundaries of reality. In that sense it's similar to such films as FEMALE VAMPIRE, COUNTESS PERVERSE, A VIRGIN AMOND THE LIVING DEAD,99 WOMEN, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR, MACUMBA SEXUAL and many of his WIP films, an off shore off-world built from the ground up by Jess Franco. What’s important to consider about LA CASA… is that if fulfills the commercial requirements of an “S” film, crafted for that market, while at the same time taking a deep dive into collective insanity. He remade this film almost 20 years later with BROKEN DOLLS (2000), which is also very much worth seeing. It’s done in a different style, using a different technology, a more experimental film, as most of his 21st Century digital films were. Both films are 100 percent Jess Franco. Thanks to Ismael Fernandez, Alex Mendibil and Francesco Cesari for additional information. © Robert Monell, 2023

RESIDENCIA PARA ESPIAS (1968)

RESIDENCIA PARA ESPIAS 1968-90 minutes/European Trash Cinema and Video Search of Miami (U.S. import) Directed by JESS FRANCO; From a novel by Michael Loggan Cast: EDDIE CONSTANTINE, DIANA LORYS, OTTO STERN, ANITA HOFFER, TOTA ALBA, MARIA PAZ PONDAL, CRIS HUERTA, DINA LOY, Howard Vernon, Wolfgang Preiss (alternate version)/A Spanish-West German co-production. ======================================= Features Reviews DARK WATERS; Robert Monell's EUROSPY FILES

Video Resources (ETC VIDEO) Links Credits (a.k.a. ÇA BARDE, CHEZ LES MIGNONNES; DAN CHEZ LES GENTLEMEN; LES MIGNONNES) This obscure title, one of two Jess Franco spy films starring Eddie Constantine, the other being the much better known ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS (a.k.a. CARTES SUR TABLE), also features the charmingly rough-hewn actor-singer as a smarter-than-he-looks secret agent. In RESIDENCIA PARA ESPÍAS, his character is named Dan Leyton, but the part is a virtual carbon copy of the Al Pereira spy in CARTES SUR TABLE.

As usual Franco composes his film with layered imagery which challanges the viewer to really watch the film in order to "see" it; there is a difference between watching and seeing in the Franco galaxy. The above image tells us a lot about the plot and a major character in the film, but we have to look into the image, instead of just at it, to the picture on the wall, to "see" the revelation which will not be fully understood until the final scene. Once again, we are prisoners of appearances as is Dan Leyton in his journey toward a truth which will further disillusion him and provide an ironic twist. The story, which is not as original or interesting as the one in CARTES SUR TABLE, has Constantine trying to ferret out a traitor to American military interests in Istanbul. After an extensive investigation and many false leads, it turns out that a high-ranking official is leaking information with the help of someone close to Leyton. The key to the mystery has been hiding in plain sight. Constantine, as low-key as ever in this rather cut-and-dried role, is mostly seen wandering around in a spiffy military uniform while dodging fists and femme fatales. The movie maintans interest due to the exotic locales -- the mosques, bazaars, and back alleys of Istanbul -- which Franco spends a lot of time recording with an overactive zoom lens. One welcome factor is that the film is in color, which enhances the exotic locations. The black and white cinematography in CARTES SUR TABLE was competent but didn't boost either the aesthetic or commercial value.

RESIDENCIA PARA ESPÍAS offers some nicely understated moments of erotic frisson provided by the usually scantily-clad Diana Lorys, who played the female lead in Franco's first horror film, THE AWFUL DR ORLOFF. I found the film fascinating but somewhat talky, especially in untranslated Spanish. It works best as a relaxed travelogue with an occassional chase or fight thrown in for good measure. Eddie's reactions to the various women populating the film, especially a dominating female officer, are quite amusing. There's even a bizarre rendition of the song "When the Saints Come Marching In," done by an all-female chorus, with Leyton playing the keyboard.

The best parts of this are when it upshifts into Eurospy action gear as in a ferocioius fight, staged in a chicken coop, between the protagonist and some rough local agents. Leyton survives the attack by his ability to shift into a mode which is as nasty as his attackers. Istanbul is an amoral place for a Western agent, no matter how experienced, as it is pleasantly exotic for the innocent European tourist trade. At the end Leyton finds out that his closest friends there are betraying him and his country. He allows his friend (Otto Stern) the dignity of suicide before walking away with the bitter recognition that it's a dirty job in a corrupted world. This is in marked difference to the silly slapstick which concludes Franco's other Eddie Constantine Eurospy CARTES SUR TABLE (ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS, 1966). The point is that Leyton has been behind the curve despite his spy movie machinations. For the Franco fan, these minor diversions (which also includes a lively jazz and Turkish score by Odon Alonso) make this unpretentious entry easy on the eyes and ears. Franco would return to Istanbul for further atmospheric location shooting on THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU and VENUS IN FURS (1969). At this point the filmmaking skirts on the edges of the avant garde into which the director would make a deep dive with NECRONOMICON (1967).

Wolfgang Preiss, actor famous for portraying villains in numerous films, including the legendary title character in the final film of Fritz Lang, DIE TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR. MABUSE (1960). Unfortunately, this review is based on a truncated Spanish-language version from an old TV broadcast (in bootleg form) on video. It is watchable but runs about 15 minutes shorter than the 90-minute running time listed in some reference books. As a final note, it would be interesting to see the French version of this film which reportedly contains additional inserts featuring Howard Vernon and Wolfgang Preiss (Doctor Mabuse in Fritz Lang's DIE TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR. MABUSE!), filmed during the 1966 preparations for the shooting of NECRONOMICON! That legendary item, though, may be a version once offered by the various, defunct grey market dealers. It would also be interesting to read the source novel, Leyton et les Chatelaines. An attack by thugs on Radeck (Howard Vernon) does remain in the Spanish VHS I consulted for this review. RESIDENCIA PARA ESPIAS is certainly interesting enough to deserve a full-scale HD restoration with all the trimmings. The rather extensive shoot took place between June and August 1966. It was released in Turkey in 1968. Locations included Alicante; Comunidad Valencia, exteriors, including Jardin des Abril; Estudios CEA, Cuidad Lineal, Madrid; Bosphorous, dock exteriors, sunset; Istanbul, exteriors, including the Blue Mosque; Lisbon, Portugal, elevator de Santa Justa (scene of attack on Howard Vernon). (C) Robert Monell [New Version, 2023]