UNA VERGINE TRA I MORTI VIVENTI CD

Bruno Nicolai is perhaps our favorite composer of movie soundtracks for European genre films of the 1960's and 1970s, from his charming uprhythms for Eurospy adventures like UPPERSEVEN (1965), to his rumbling, ominous atmospheres for EL CONDE DRACULA and THE BLOODY JUDGE(both 1970), to his soaring Spaghetti Western soundscapes. One of his most compelling scores was for Jess Franco's 1971 horror oddity A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD, with its driving percussion beat, soulful arias and clashes of turbulent instrumentations and lyrical interludes (he reused some its distinctive cues in his score for the 1972 giallo THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS).

Nicolai's UNA VERGINE TRA I MORTI VIVENTI is finally available on CD on Oct. 31 from http://www.digitmovies.com/.

Thanks to and check out the Bruno Nicolai site: http://brunonicolai.homestead.com/nicolai.html

Commentary Copyright Robert Monell: 2006

OPALO DE FUEGO: Assignment for a Female Spy

Working as a mostly uncovered undercover agent for a US Senator (Olivier Mathot), Lina Romay takes time out from her job as a stripper in a Canary Islands resort to gather incriminating evidence against an international crime ring in Jess Franco's OPALO DE FUEGO (1978), now out on Manga DVD in Spain. This is the alternate Spanish language version of a film also known as TWO FEMALE SPIES IN FLOWERED PANTIES!

Several screencaps from the DVD, including the one above, can be viewed on the Francomania board of www.bloodyplanet.com . The video quality looks certainly better than the old video dupes of this I've been watching for decades! Spanish language only with no English language option or subtitles.

The English language dialogue on the TWO FEMALE SPIES... version is a hoot and Franco probably didn't have anything to do with it. It seems that coproducer Eurocine had the final say on this version, which is the English dubbed export of the French version. That's why the Spanish version may more closely reflect JF's intentions, if he indeed had any beside making another sexploitation item.

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LEON KLIMOVSKY SPEAKS!

Alex Z., a regular reader and contributor to this blog has kindly provided some very interesting excerpts from his 1993 interview with the legendary Leon Klimovsky, a prolific filmmaker from Argentina who moved to Spain in the 1950s. After directing numerous melodramas, thrillers, musicals, comedies and Eurowesterns, Klimovsky, at an age when most men are a few years into retirement, became one of the prime movers of the 1970s Spanish horror boom with his 1970 LA NOCHE DE WALPURGIS, scripted by and starring Paul Naschy. (RM)

The entire interview was published in "2000 Maniacos" #14, 1994; Ed. Manuel Valencia. Excerpts translated by Alex Zinefilo from his interview with Leon Klimovsky.


On Horror films and Paul Naschy:
"I was afraid of making horror films, of not being qualified enough to reach the level of my favourites horror movies, but Paul Naschy encouraged me to do LA NOCHE DE WALPURGIS, he was sure if I do that script I would be successful"

On Patty Shepard:
"Patty Shepard didn't want to do Walpurgis until the very end, she said that wasn't worth it"

Influences:
"My influences came very much before Hammer Films, I would say Caligari, Vampyr, Epstein, Murnau's Nosferatu..."

Favorite films and Spaghetti Westerns:
"My favourites are "La Noche de Walpurgis" and "La saga de los Dracula". The ones I like less are the spaghetti westerns, I did those just for the money."

Author's comments:
He was very old when I talked to him, very soft spoken, quiet and nice. I think of him as a very professional craftsman, but also very refined and intelligent. I guess he would love to do another kind of film, more "serious", but in any case [didn't regret] any of his movies. He was also a musician.

Thanks again to Alex for providing and translating these selections from his interview for this blog.

COPYRIGHT ALEX ZINEFILO: 2006.

EL SEXO ESTA LOCO: THE SHOW

Inside a spacecraft from the planet Argoyos, the "audience" applauds a live sex show featuring Lina Romay getting impregnated by a group of silver skinned aliens!

Jess Franco has said that it's enough for him to put on a good show, an "entertainment" which will take the audience out of the quotidian. EL SEXO ESTA LOCO is perhaps the most extreme example of immersion into pure Cinema. There is no reality which has any kind of connection to the world outside the film, just a series of dreams, one after another, linked by the dreamer who shuffles characters and fantasy events around as in Bunuel's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE or THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY. We meet Franco playing "the director" who sometimes appears in mirrors filming the "action" with his camera crew. We're not talking French Deconstructionism here, it's the director having fun and giving us a look at the show behind the Show...

Commentary COPYRIGHT Robert Monell:2006

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EL FRANCO ESTA LOCO

Uncle Jess enjoys a cigarette and confers with other cast members of the film-within-a-film in his wild and crazy EL SEXO ESTA LOCO, which is now available on Spanish DVD [Manga: 1.33:1; 4:3; R2-PAL; Dolby; Spanish language only]. I believe this is the first time on DVD for this rarely seen, Godardian mixture of science fiction, comedy and series Z experimentation from the outer limits of cinema where Jess Franco lives and breathes.

The scene begins as our dreaming heroine (Lina Romay) tracks her fellow "actor" and lover (Tony Skios) into the Club Europa where Jess and friends smoke, drink and play poker. She is captured, tied to chair and tortured by a couple of nude dancers! During this activity the "reality" of the scene presentation is constantly questioned by showing the clapboard thrust into the frame, technicians entering the scene, and the "director" gesturing and shouting instructions from the card table. Keep talking and smoking, Jess!

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Be at Jack Taylor's 70TH Birthday Party tonight!

Jack Taylor (background-left) checks out Lorna's transgressive act in Lisbon...

Or is it Berlin? Time and place are as shifty as Identity in SUCCUBUS (1967).

A good, solid actor (rn: George Brown) who worked (sometimes as "Grek Martin") in US TV during the 1950s, then in Mexican horror features (NEUTRON CONTRA DR CARONTE), Eurowesterns (BILLY THE KID), spy films (AGENTE SIGMA 3: MISSIONE GOLDWATHER), until Franco tapped him in 1966 for NECROMONICON. Franco would again find signficant roles for him in NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT, EUGENIE, HER JOURNEY..., EL CONDE DRACULA, SEX CHARADE (still unavailable but we're hoping...), FEMALE VAMPIRE, TENDER AND PERVERSE EMANUELLE, and others. He also did a damn good job as the art director on THE BLOODY JUDGE (1970). He went on to become one of the most prominent leading men in Spanish horror films of the 1970s (THE MUMMY'S REVENGE, NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS, THE GHOST GALLEON, ORGY OF THE VAMPIRES, etc.). He's still active (check him out in the Francoesque THE NINTH GATE) and has some interesting things to say in Uwe Huber's documentary BACK TO BERLIN on BU's recent SUCCUBUS DVD.

Effective as the "Mickey Spillane" type in SUCCUBUS, TENDER AND PERVERSE EMANUELLE and his Eurospy adventures, a good Quincey Morris in EL CONDE DRACULA, but I think my favorite Jack Taylor performance is as the charming and chilling psychopathic brother of Madame St. Ange (Maria Rohm) in EUGENIE, HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION. The melancholy poet who succumbs to the loves of Irina in LA COMTESSE NOIRE would be a close second.

What's your favorite Jack Taylor performance?

Happy Birthday, Jack. Hope to see you in more Jess Franco and other films in the future.

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL 2006.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DIANA LORYS!

The seductive ballerina in Jess Franco's first horror film GRITOS EN LA NOCHE (1961) was born 66 years ago today. Franco also cast the smoldering actress as a femme fatale in his underrated Eurospy affair RESEDENCIA PARA ESPIAS (1966), one of Lord Jeffries' "witches" in THE BLOODY JUDGE (1970), and, perhaps most memorably, the pathetic victim of a criminal conspiracy in NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT (1969). Other Spanish horror roles followed, such as a buxom vampire woman in Amando de Ossorio's first horror film, MALENKA (1969). She was also excellent in Carlos Aured's 1973 Paul Naschy vehicle HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN as the embittered, deformed spinster who was a sympathetic witness to the wretched fate of Naschy's hounded criminal. She also appeared in several Spanish westerns.

Kit Gavin informed me that she had moved to Germany after that, continuing to act in local theater. There have been reports that she returned to Spain in recent years. A striking woman and one hell of an actress. Her very, very, very, very slow striptease in NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT is one of her, and Franco's, most exquisitely erotic and affecting scenes.

Diana Lorys, wherever you are, Happy Birthday!

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL 2006.

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Klaus Kinski was born 80 years ago today...

In Gdansk/Danzig, Poland. The rest is, as they say, history. But what a history! Some say he was mad! Crazy like a fox may be more like it since he knew that taking the money while he could was the way to go, especially for a child of extreme poverty. If he were still around it's likely that he'd be performing in some capacity.

Along with his Werner Herzog-directed triumphs there was his career in European war movies (FIVE FROM HELL, A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE, HEROES IN HELL) where he often played a Nazi, ironically since he spent some of his early years in a concentration camp, Spaghetti Westerns (his soft spoken villain in the Sergio Corbucci masterwork IL GRANDE SILENZIO is indelible), krimis (THE AVENGER, THE CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND), Italian gialli (DOUBLE FACE, SLAUGHTER HOTEL), and four roles for Jess Franco: The Divine Marquis in JUSTINE; the playboy killer in VENUS IN FURS; Renfield in EL CONDE DRACULA; the title character in JACK, THE RIPPER. Franco wisely cast him as these very human monsters probably knowing that he would manage to move inside their tortured psyches and reveal the primal fear behind their madness.

In a way, he was the perfect Jess Franco actor who, as the director has pointed out, was an attention commanding presence, yet managed to find sympathy for the Devil.

One of my prize possessions is a rare 1988 hardcover edition of his long-withdrawn autobiography "All I Need Is Love", which was later republished in a toned-down, retitled version. This original version names famous names and is a chock full of all kinds of actionable material, a high powered attorney's dream come true. Everyone who Kinski came into contact with during his long film career, from Herzog to Billy Wilder to Pasolini to Margaret Lee, gets axed or ratted out (Kinski loved to detail the hidden sex lives of the rich and famous). His only comment on his Franco work is that JACK THE RIPPER was "trash" which he filmed in 6 days betweens rounds of tennis!

What is your favorite Klaus Kinski performance?

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: Copyright 2006

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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR

 

 

One of Jess Franco's key films in the rather obscure 1973 production, AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO, a harrowing psychodrama of the downward spiral of a young woman (Emma Cohen) into madness and murder. Brilliantly acted, scored and directed it was defiled by Franco himself at the behest of French coproducer Robert de Nesle, who prevailed upon the director to shoot sex inserts which distort the form of the original and shatter its spectral mood. This was finally released under the French title, LE MIROIR OBSCENE, and should be avoided as much as AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO should be sought out. The final scene when the mirror is shattered and a vortex of evil is unleashed is reminiscent of one of the most famous sequences in a certain film by Orson Welles (whom Franco collaborated with on CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT and the unfinished TREASURE ISLAND). If Welles' cinema, starting with CITIZEN KANE, is one of smoke and mirrors, the central image of Jess Franco's filmography is the mirror which becomes a window into a secret, parallel world: The World of Jess Franco.

 

MISS MUERTE, NECRONOMICON, EUGENIE DE SADE,  LORNA THE EXORCIST, NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT, SHINING SEX, and many more of his films have key scenes where the female protagonist confronts her reflected reality in a mirror resulting in the kind of instantaneous consciousness-altering frisson which is a kind of Franco trademark. Just as his later films reflect his previous works and he returns to the same characters, themes, stories and images over and over and over, there is no vanishing point in the films and career of Jess Franco. A dangerous passage though a hall of mirrors from which there is no easy exit. 

 

We hope that someday AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO will get the kind of deluxe DVD presentation which it deserves.

 

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: Copyright 2006

Born 100 Years Ago Today, This Director...

 

Played a rather important role in the career of Jess Franco and in the history of Spanish Horror.

 

Who is he?

FU MANCHU: From Karloff to Franco

The Mask of Fu Manchu

Having just seen Boris Karloff as Dr. Fu Manchu in the new, must-have Warner Brothers 6 movie HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS OF HORROR COLLECTION's DVD presentation of THE MASK OF FU MANCHU, I finally have found MY Fu Manchu. Maybe not yours, but mine.

I never really liked Christopher Lee's take on the character, expecially in the two Jess Franco versions. I know he's going for iconic aloofness but after seeing Karloff I just don't really care if I ever see him or anyone else in the role. But let's leave aside the ridiculous and consider the sublime. I had never seen Charles Brabin's 1932 film and it was a  treat to have it served up in a new transfer from original camera negatives. Now that all the controversial racial material, along with the sexual-sadistic elements, has been fully restored, I'll let others argue about that. Yes, it's dated and policitally incorrect but it seems to me that this Fu Manchu gives as good as he gets. Consider his outrageously camp exhortation: "Kill the white man and take his women!" Brabin (THE RAVEN-1915) may be too dull to be considered any kind of auteur but Tony Gaudio frames Cedric Gibbon's deliciously detailed sets with style. Consider the introduction of the bad doctor in a distorting mirror or the many secret chambers, trapdoors, reptile filled grottos, torture implements, which are all filmed with the intensity of a fetishist (Luis Bunuel, anyone?). The coup de grace for me was Kenneth Strickfaden's Death Ray, which does get a work out at the climax. If Karloff and the sets weren't enough, Myra Loy's very naughty daughter of Fu Manchu is a show within the show. Her delight at the various tortures ("Harder...faster") is the central erotic attraction within the delirious mise en scene. There have been several "Daughter of Fu Manchu" films including Jess Franco's 1987 ESCLAVA DEL CRIMEN.

 

Karloff is the polar opposite of his previous role, the silent, hulking monster in FRANKENSTEIN. As the often avuncular Dr. of Philosphy, Law and Medicine he elegantly beholds the tortures and seems to want to pet his agonized victims. It's a sensuous, hypnotic transformation for an English gentleman.

I did watch Jess Franco's final Fu Manchu, THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU directly after MASK and it really could be considered the death knell of the legend, leaving aside the Peter Seller's parody, etc... . Franco inserts miles of stock footage, from previous Fu Manchu films, other films, explosions, etc, and himself into the action as the Turkish police inspector, but he's only present as an ironic observer, a witty tour guide who has fun with his color gel lighting, his only remaining signature from a project which he knew would be edited by others and thrown to the dogs. But even Jess Franco probably cannot kill Fu Manchu and he has revisited the oriental-villain ethos with his more recent DR WONG'S VIRTUAL HELL.

The above image depicts an earlier video presentation, not the DVD from the Warner Brothers boxset.

I have the feeling the world will hear from Dr. Fu Manchu again, until then this lavishly appointed new DVD presentation (which comes with an expert commentary and 5 other 1930s horror rarities) is highly recommended.

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006

FRIDAY THE 13TH JESS FRANCO QUIZ

In what Jess Franco film is someone murdered in Room 13?

 

 If you answer correctly by 11:PM EDT OCT 13th there will be a prize mailed to you at our expense (US destinations only, please).

 

 You will even get a choice of prizes, all of which you may turn down

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAHLIA LAVI

 

Every so often we'll digress from the topic of Jess Franco to consider other cinematic wonderments, like Dahlia Lavi, who was born 66 years ago today in Palestine. A sultry, mysterious, spectral beauty, whose singular presence suggests a repressed passion which when aroused will certainly spiral out of control. The imbd lists 32 film and TV roles, some in series, between 1955 and 1997. No features after 1969's SOME GIRLS DO.

 

Her long absence from feature films is perhaps indicative of changing market values and a loss to some of us. She has an indefinable appeal in terms of the ability to project eroticism and there's something of a Threat in her manner. A Class Act but impenetrable, with a mystique which maybe you don't want to behold for too long. I imagine she's well known in Europe for her TV roles over there and probably best remembered for TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN, LORD JIM and as The Detainer in that irresistably bloated Eurospy spoof CASINO ROYALE (1968). Any hope that she'll have a cameo in the upcoming version?

 

Her indelible characterization of the murderously masochistic Nevenka in Mario Bava's 1963 THE WHIP AND THE BODY is the one that continues haunt us. An equisitely subtle performance and a definitive study of the progression from victim to perpetrator. She illustrates a masochism which is not the polar opposite of sadism but the shadow of it. Her Nevenka exists in a kind of trance state which erupts into an all-consuming, perverse rapture under the blows of the whip. It's a profoundly disturbing, somewhat terrifying performance with full fledged tragic resonance.  Probably because WHIP was an obscure, B budget Italian horror film she didn't win any awards or significant critical attention at the time. She did seem to find some success in the Hollywood and European mainstream as an actress and singer but she will always be remembered as Nevenka, first and foremost, as far as we're concerned. Wherever you are Dahlia Lavi, Happy Birthday!

 

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006

THE VOYEUR AND THE EXHIBITIONIST

 

Having been dismayed by the most recent effort of Brian DePalma (sometimes referred to as "the American Argento") we managed to catch up with the recent Anchor Bay DVD of Dario Argento's 2005 telefilm TI PIACE HITCHCOCK? and are happy to report it's a bracing and pleasantly surprising experience. Certainly his best work since the eternally underrated THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, a decade ago. Argento is, of course, often referred to as the "Italian Hitchcock" and the difference between him and DePalma is between being creatively inspired by an artist and blind imitation. DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? could be the title of a Brian DePalma biography. It's a small scale masterwork. A just-about perfect 93 minutes of pure cinema. It's drenched in the kind of joyful cinephilia that reminds us of the topic of our blog here: Jess Franco

 

The obsessions of Argento's voyeur (Murnau's NOSFERATU, Fritz Lang) are also the masters of Jess Franco who always announces the Murnau classic as his all time favorite film followed by Lang's silent MABUSE epic. Argento's primary source may be REAR WINDOW but it allows us to discuss here an obscure Franco hardcore from 1985 which strikes us as one of his most polished (on no budget) considerations of voyeurism, exhibitionism and cinema. The film is EL MIRON Y LA EXHIBICIONISTA, which has been released as a Spanish newstand DVD. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to appear on any US label.

 

The central metaphor is the same: a man armed with binoculars obsessively spies on the sensual adventures of a woman occupying an adjacent high rise. The intrigue in Franco is mainly erotic whereas Argento presents a more prosiac, if delightfully twisty, mystery a la Cornell Woolrich (who, of course, was the author of the source story for REAR WINDOW). In OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO the director identifies Simenon as an inspiration for EL MIRON... and Franco is an ace detective of the female form in an deliriously erotic environment. Both films are about the pleasures and dangers of "watching." The protagonists use a visual aid as a sex substitute, although the sex is far more graphic in EL MIRON... while Argento is still finding startling, artful ways to stage bloody murder. Hitchcock spoke of REAR WINDOW as being influenced by the pure cinema of the Russian montage experimenters (Pudovkin) of the silent era. EL MIRON...(credited to "Lulu Laverne", it was generated from idea by the featured Lina Romay and it is sometimes said she directed it, but Franco has claimed it as his own) is a coolly assured, gracefully composed and magnetically edited study of a casual obsession, silent complicity and clandestine release on the Costa de Sol. HITCHCOCK, placed in modern Turin after a Primal Scene set in 1990, can also be described in those exact same terms (although I have witnessed flame wars between the admirers of both auteurs). It  could also be read as Argento's wickedly amusing commentary on a present subculture where obsessively watching cult movies alone in the dark on your HD monitor is the foreplay for the action which often occurs on Internet Message Boards (something we can certainly relate to).

 

We hope you search out EL MIRON Y LA EXHIBICIONISTA, but the prospects aren't good that you'll find it. We also recommend that instead of expecting TI PIACE HITCHCOCK to be another DEEP RED or INFERNO (it may end up being seen by more people than both put together) you will be able to enjoy it for what it is.

 

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006

THE BLACK DAHLIA, The De Palma X-Ray, Jess Franco & Me, Alan Ladd's birthday...

As I watched Brian DePalma's maddening THE BLACK DAHLIA last night I kept wishing I was watching George Marshall's 1947 THE BLUE DAHLIA, from a screenplay by Raymond Chandler. The REAL deal, but a Dahlia of a different color. I most wished that DePalma had the guts to forego color altogether, even the slightly stylized scheme he employs and filmed it all in b&w instead of just the nudie reels the cops keep running over and over and over...

 

When I asked Jess Franco who his favorite directors were he immediately said "Orson Welles." No surprise there. Then he said "Brian DePalma" and I smiled to myself. But I understood what possibly attracted him to the director of BLOW OUT, SCARFACE and BODY DOUBLE, the last DePalma films which I felt had something exciting in terms of style. And what is Brian DePalma without STYLE? Decadence, voyeurism, Hollywood. My mainstream film going has gone down to maybe two or three times a year since the turn of the century. Why? I simply no longer enjoy the experience mainly because I don't like being trapped in a black box and forced to watch 25 minutes of of obnoxious previews played at FULL BLAST for movies I have no intention of seeing and then struggling to HEAR a film over those inevitable audience members who always seem to be seated directly behind me and are certain they are at home in front of their monitor and can chat their silly heads off. Stadium seating and Digital Sound? Thanks, but no thanks. When I do go it's just to get out, be with friends and discuss the movie we have just seen. In other words, to socialize rather than see a specific movie.

 

The reason I went to see THE BLACK DAHLIA is that my friends had heard it was so bad that it just had to been seen to be believed. As a die-hard Ed Wood fan that was reason enough for me to join them. And I made sure I brought ear plugs for the previews. When my friend nudged me to signal that the feature had started I opened my eyes to behold a neo-Wellesian crane shot down a 1947 Hollywood street set and was hoping the director would keep it going a la TOUCH OF EVIL. But then he cut. Knowing that the film had been chopped by an hour on studio orders and that it was a German coproduction partially filmed in Bulgaria [!], my last hope was for a kind of alternate universe epic of Le Bad Cinema and I wasn't disappointed. I have not read the James Ellroy novel on which the film is based, am no longer a DePalma fan and care little about the actual Black Dahlia case, which remains unsolved. What I did do was prepare myself by visiting the IMBD message boards for the film, which make the war in Iraq seem tame in comparison. People either love this film or HATE it. There's simply no middle ground to be found anywhere. I even posted there after seeing it.

 

I noted a prominent shot of a movie marquee for THE BLACK ANGEL, an actual 40s noir and the original title of Franco's VENUS IN FURS. I haven't seen THE BLACK ANGEL but it's based on Cornell Woolrich, a very important writer in understanding the evolution of Jess Franco's career. It has always seemed to me that his monochrome MISS MUERTE is more Woolrichian than Truffaut's direct Woolrich adaptation, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, which seems rather tepid Hitchcock in comparison. And while DePalma hasn't returned Franco's salute it also seems that he's now regularly referencing Dario Argento rather than Alfred Hitchcock. A Hollywood exec once confided to me that Franco's SUCCUBUS has been screened more than a few times by a number of high powered Tinseltown writers and directors for outre inspiration. So it's understandable that Argento is a European "cult" filmmaker whom an Italian-American stylist like DePalma would turn to when another screening of CITIZEN KANE or VERTIGO would be just too much. I was also reminded that Jess Franco also made a kind of Hollywood mystery in his latest, SNAKEWOMAN, which references femme fatale Marlene Dietrich (TOUCH OF EVIL) and also has b&w porno loops from a bygone era at its center.

 

I found a kind of Zen relief in the fact that THE BLACK DAHLIA makes no sense. Understandable, considering that the studio knife descended. But will the inevitable "Director's Cut" DVD clear anything up? I also took considerable solace in the numerous phantom ladies laid out for display like glittering, slutty prizes. There is no "story" in this film, no "acting", no direction and yet it has way too much plot (and not enough), completely over-the-top histrionics performed by players who seem as clueless as we are, while DePalma now seems to be able to use his camera as a kind of X-Ray which doesn't so much photograph things as see through them. If he's abandoned direction to become an X-Ray technician that actually may be a good sign.

 

While our homicide detective protagonist is little more than an animated mannequin around whom the "action" plays like the last frenetic scenes in Godard's ALPHAVILLE when the image keeps going into negative as the very Noirish Eddie Constantine escapes the technological city. It's not really a film noir, it's something else altogether. Perhaps a fractured critique of Hollywoodland and its deliciously corrupt legacy of illusions. After all, we're all decadent voyeurs obsessed with Hollywood murder mysteries, aren't we?

 

Then next time I talk with Jess Franco I'll have to remember to ask him what he thought about THE BLACK DAHLIA.

UPDATE: I never got that chance to speak again with Jess. Since writing this non-review a decade ago I am again a De Palma fan and noted with a smile that Godard extensively quotes from THE FURY in his HISTORIE(S) DU CINEMA. I resumed my fan status while watching his much abused DOMINO (2019) VOD. I found it fascinating and De Palma had his X-Ray camera in full control. Hey, it's also a European Trash Cinema movie.  Everybody else seemed to hate it because it didn't cost a half billion dollars to produce and was under 90 minutes instead of the excruciating 2hours 30 minutes most "important" films now last.

 Jess Franco has since left us, it's the birthday of Alan Ladd, and it's the wild card year of 2020.

 

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006 [New Version 2020]

DVD REVIEW: MANSION OF THE LIVING DEAD

Jess Franco's iconoclastic blending of jet black comedy, commentary on the BLIND DEAD series, uncredited adaptation of the tales of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and post-modern consideration of the lingering effects of the Spanish Inqusition, LA MANSION DE LOS MUERTOS VIVIENTES  is one of 12 [!] features he made in 1982 for Emilio Larraga's Golden Films Internacional.

 

Candy (Lina Romay) and three of her friends, German waitresses who have saved all year for a vacation on Las Palmas, one of the Canary Islands, arrive off-season at a deserted International resort hotel to be greeted by the remote Carlos Savanorola (Antonio Mayans) who, like Norman Bates in PSYCHO, has more than a few things to hide. Like the fact that he keeps his sex-slave wife (Eva Leon) chained to the wall in one of the rooms and leads nightly ritual sacrifices of abducted women who are brutally raped and murdered by his secret sect (the Brotherhood of Cathar) inhabiting a nearby 18th century monastery.

 

I once termed this a Blind Dead film without blind dead, but it's not part of that series of 1970s films. Franco inverts the imagery, filling his film with transgressive humor as the "undead" rape, torture and murder Candy's scantily clad companions. But nothing is as it seems in this subversive burlesque of Spanish Horror. It's not even a zombie film per se(as Franco points out in the documentary interview THE MANSION JESS BUILT). It's an 100% Spanish (as Franco describes it) enterprise which wildly fluctuates between neo-Gothic imagery (the MANSION is the monster, to paraphrase Roger Corman's explanation of his 1960 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER to AIP executive Sam Arkoff), sex comedy (the amusing Albino Graziani, dubbed by Franco himself, is the crazed hotel gardener who sings arias to his flowers and is always attempting to peep at the lesbian antics of Candy and her semi-dressed girlfriends)and interludes of graphic sexual violence. This is the only film I can think of, with the possible exception of Hitchcock's FRENZY, which plays the extended rape-murder of a screaming woman for humor [!?]. Perhaps it's Franco's take on the macho attitudes of the modern Spanish male or the sexual hypocrisy of the Spanish Inquisition (Savanorola!) and that legacy in Catholic Spain of the post General Franco era ( the director hints at both in his interview). Some will condemn it as vile sexploitation. The absurd plastic Halloween fright masks worn by the sect (who describe themselves as those who wear white habits to cover their "black souls") will certainly invites nervous laughter, and perhaps that's exactly what Franco intended.

 

There's more than a little cinematic skill in the visual and aural presentation of the windswept locations, where palms gently sway in the midnight breeze, the rustling never quite drowning out the victim's screams of horror. Credited as an adaptation of a novel by "David Khunne"[?!] this is a gorgeously shot film which only reveals itself after repeat viewings, if then. The citron color scheme is based on available light and is quite beautifully, ironically entrancing considering the grotesque, sadistic events within Franco's well-appointed mise en scene. The aforementioned rape-muder of Mabel Escano and the rat-poisoned final meal of the starved Eva Leon are especially difficult to watch. Everything else becomes subtext and trivial in comparison.

 

The new SEVERIN FILMS DVD presentation is definitive, finally giving the film its visual and audio due, which is crucial in a film where everything depends on the deceptive way things look and sound. The tolling of the mission bell, the eerie midnight windstorms, the distant chanting of the Templar like sect have never been more effective heard in Dolby Digital Mono and the 2.35:1 Techniscope transfer from crisp, clean and remarkably colorful elements is enveloping. As in any good horror film it's hard to look away from the screen even during the excruciatingly detailed rape scenes and the spectral light of the Canary Island locales is atmospherically rendered. It's also a film where empty spaces inhabit the Techniscope frame for extended periods and this unique compositional strategy (a suspense technique also familiar from Hitchcock) can finally be fully appreciated.

 

THE MANSION JESS BUILT is an information packed interview with Jess Franco and Lina Romay, who reveal that Jess' numerous covers like J.P. Johnson, Clifford Brown and Dave Tough were hommages to American Jazz musicians who had a specific artistic appeal to Franco (graphics of the Jazz artists are helpfully provided). Jess also comments on the zombie films of George Romero ("Primitive") and reveals that the long sought-after "novels" of "David Khunne", the credited sources for this film and the classic GRITOS EN LA NOCHE (1961), never existed. So much for that myth. Franco really seems to enjoy coming clean about all this.  He also admires the first BLIND DEAD film while pointing out the source for inspiration here was not Amando de Ossorio but the 19th Century poet Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870), a writer of Romantic-Fantastique tales who is considered to be the Spanish Poe. Becquer's "Leyendas"--"La Cruz del Diable", "El Miserere", "El Monte de los Animas" were adapted by Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy for John Gilling's 1975 LA CRUZ DEL DIABLO, a project Naschy later denounced after he was fired as the lead actor and his script altered. Both MANSION... and LA CRUZ... feature marauding Templar-like sects and a lot of sexual mayhem, although Franco never mentions the specific Becquer story which inspired him. But all this is fascinating background information and sheds new light on the history of Spanish horror and MANSION... in particular.

 

This deluxe presentation of one of Franco's most outlandish creations is a must-have. David Gregory and his colleagues have done a terrific job with this and their MACUMBA SEXUAL disc. We  hope more of Franco's rarely seen Golden Films Internacional titles will get this kind of quality presentation in the future. MANSION OF THE LIVING DEAD will be available from SEVERIN FILMS on Oct. 31st.

 

Thanks to Mirek Lipinski for his help in the background research for this review.

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006

MACUMBA SEXUAL: The Severin DVD Review

 



"I'm an unspeakable dream. I'm everything that's forbidden, that's shameful...a black woman with undefined sexuality...shameless and irresistable." Princess Tara Obongo

Bahia Feliz, Canary Islands: Princess Tara Obongo (the late, legendary Ajita Wilson)is the living dead "mirror of evil" warns Meme (Jess Franco), capable of possessing her victims through a sinister form of sexual voodoo. Her most recent targets are tourists Alice Brooks (Lina Romay), a real estate agent, and her husband (Antonio Mayans), who is working on a new novel. Their vacation at "Happy Bay" is interrupted when Alice's employer calls to ask if she can locate the wealthy local resident Tara Obongo and offer her a property in Atlantic City. Tara eventually seduces and sexually enslaves the couple , but each time they believe they have escaped her erotic snares another level of the nightmare begins. Is it all an obsessive, macabre sex fantasy, a premonition, one of her novelist husband's stories coming to life, or something else altogether?

Ever have a nightmare from which you couldn't awaken? You know it's only a dream but each time you think it's over another chapter starts. MACUMBA SEXUAL (1981) opens in the midst of one of Alice's serial erotic fever-dreams and ends with her encountering an omnipresent voodoo fetish signaling the onset of yet another hallucinatory state. And it all seems willed by Tara, a Black Athena who invades the Unconscious without having to leave her perch atop a sand dune under the blazing tropical sun. The disturbing fetish (which resembles a shriveled up Donald Duck!) keeps appearing as a kind of warning. There is no escape from the psycho-sexual curse according to Meme.  Every time Alice sleeps Tara takes control, thrusting her into totally alien reality: sexually magnetic, terrifying and rich in ancient African symbols.

One of Franco's most delirious films, MACUMBA SEXUAL is a mind warping, sex-drenched shocker set on the sun baked Canary Islands where the landscape and architecture evoke Mother Africa. For Jess Franco, who wanted to reclaim his Spanish cultural identity after decades abroad, it is a milestone and probably the most representative of his Horror y Sexo Golden Films Internacional period: made with total creative freedom, almost dialogue free, nearly hard-core and driven by the moaning, eerie voodoo rhythms credited to "Pablo Villa", a name which usually indicates the composing team Daniel White and Jess Franco. These synth-driven voodoo chants are  just about perfect in their uncanny ability to establish the locale and create a sense of floating dread.  They greatly enhance a film that immediately puts the viewer in an altered state mind which lingers long after the final chilling image. Lina is in her prime scream-queen mode, wearing a blonde wig, running around in a skimpy bikini or totally nude. Franco's own bit as the babbling Meme is a way over the top reprise of his role as Memeth in the similar VAMPYROS LESBOS (1970), his first appearance amidst a collection of petrified subaquatic life forms is a jaw dropper worth the price of admission. Franco amusingly discusses how much he enjoys playing mentally defective characters in the accompanying documentary interview.

Note that a "Lorna Green" (the name of the main character in SUCCUBUS) is credited as a supporting actress, this is actually Genoveva Ojeda, who, along with Jose Ferro, appears as one of Tara's nude, dog-collared sex slaves. Ajita Wilson is absolutely hypnotic in the role she was born to play. Her overwhelming presence, the nightmarish music and visuals of this exotic chamber piece are far more effective than the minimal narrative, which is obviously derived from Franco's 1970 Soledad Miranda vehicle, VAMPYROS LESBOS. All these elements are finally given a proper chance to perform their magic in Severin Films pristine, luminously colorful DVD, which presents the film in 2.35:1 OAR, is 16X9 enhanced, DD Mono and offers the original Spanish language soundtrack with correct, optional English subtitles. For a film which is essentially Pure Cinema and so dependent on location, mood and music, seeing this DVD was like seeing it for the first time after having to suffer a fullscreen, fuzzy VHS mailorder dupe which was our only alternative until now. One of Franco's most carefully composed films, the compositions are stuffed with pertinent details--the African sculptures, the primitive local architecture, the geometric arrangements of the actors in the numerous group sex scenes can all now be fully appreciated, along with the almost phosphorescent hues and blinding sun devils.

 

Equally revelatory is David Gregory's excellent documentary VOODOO JESS, during which Jess and Lina Romay discuss the question of Ajita Wilson's transexuality (Jess says he wasn't sure while Lina, who also had numerous hardcore scenes with the late performer in Carlos Aured's 1981 APOCALIPSIS SEXUAL, confirms it); why Wilson was so right for the role (Jess calls her "a presence... a force of nature" and compares her to Christopher Lee; the creative challenges of making such a film with a miniscule budget (Franco notes that he had to use such local elements as the Ghost Galleon tour ship and the African wood sculptures as free but very effective props) and uncanny occurences which haunted the set (Jess tells of a day when there was a mysterous  onset incident where the atmosphere suddenly seemed to explode, breaking glass and injuring a technician). It's all fascinating commentary.

Essential Franco and an essential new DVD presentation available from Severin Films on Oct. 31st.
COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006

FIRST LOOK AT THE SEVERIN JESS FRANCO DISCS...

We've waited for over twenty years for decent home video releases of MANSION OF THE LIVING DEAD and MACUMBA SEXUAL,  Jess Franco's unique and delirious early 1980s Horror y Sexo  zombie epics. Filmed on Las Palmas, the exotic Canary Islands locations can now finally be seen in all their eye-popping glory. Having just spent the afternoon luxuriating in Severin Films brand new 2.35:1 transfers of these titles we are pleased to report that they are simply gorgeous. With necessary, helpful English subtitles and finally in their Techniscope OAR, the time for appreciating these previously obscure titles is at hand.

 

Franco's Golden Films Internacional period  is quite different from his other work and these DVDs, from crystal clear, luminously colorful vault elements reveal layers of visual and thematic detail which just wasn't available in all previous presentations. Jess Franco and Lina Romay are also on hand with more surprising revelations, finally confessing the true identities behind Jess' many pen-names, the circumstances of production, Franco's evaluation of George Romero's zombie films, the truth about the "novels' of David Khunne and much, much more. David Gregory has proven over the years to be in a class by himself at producing quality supplementary interview documentaries and the ones here illustrate that he continues to improve-- stuffing as many facts, new revelations, compelling questions, appropriate graphics and a sense of humor into a breezy package that one wishes were even longer.

These discs will be must-haves for all serious fans of Jess Franco. Detailed reviews of both discs and the accompanying documentaries will soon follow. Stay tuned...

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: COPYRIGHT 2006

DEPARTED 2006: Renato Polselli

 

I don't know where Renato Polselli is right at this moment, but I have the feeling he's having a laugh at the world he left behind at the age of 84 last weekend. The most underrated and least understood of all the Italian directors of popular genre films of the 1950s, 60s and 70s he kept hoping to make yet another film right up until his death. Holding a degree in Philsophy his films would become increasingly structured as a series of dialogues, presentational rather than representational in style and emphasizing ideas through images. He was different than his colleagues Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda and Antonio Margheriti in that he disdained even low-tech special effects, continued to embrace the Italian Neorealist aesthetic which they broke away from, and in his first horror film recontextualized through satire and irony the Gothic stylistics which are now revered by fans of that era.

A wonderfully dubious pleasure, L'AMANTE DEL VAMPIRO (1960), which beat Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY to the post as the first modern Italian vampire film (Freda's 1957 I VAMPIRI had no vampires, only a blood-draining scientist), is a film in which one shares its author's amusement with its wacky characters and atmosphere. It never takes itself too seriously and like the Cheshire cat, leaves its smile behind. Perhaps RP took his cue from Ernesto Gastaldi's script, but vampirism in that film is presented as a an evolutionary perversion, a kind of codependency practiced by Walter Brandi's marauding blood bank which is visited for regular withdrawls by the Countess. Quoting Fisher's DRACULA, Dreyer's VAMPYR and Fernando Mendez's Mexican brace, IL VAMPIRO and its sequel (also quoted in Polselli's even more outrageously avant-garde IL MOSTRO DELL OPERA (1964), Polselli also created another genre mutation: the horror-musical. Brandi's unique, ugly vampire in L'AMANTE... and Giuseppe Addobatti (someone should write some kind of study on this great, neglected actor) in IL MOSTRO...are like no other vampires before or since. The slutty "ballerinas" of the former and the trashy ballet of the latter provide the sleaze for boxoffice while Polselli presents his horror scenes from one stunningly original camera angle after another. There's also a sense self reflexive humor and an incongrously light, breezy tone to the affairs alternating with the thunderously scored vampire attacks.

 

Polselli totally did away with linear story telling with the jaw-dropping RITI..., best known as THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL, which begins in the middle of its tale of a burned witch's vengeance (shades of Bava's BLACK SUNDAY again) and the true origins of the legend of Count Dracula. Not an easy film to watch or comprehend for even those who are receptive to its almost Godardian attempts to force the viewer to abandon Aristotilean poetics and genre templates and reconsider what cinema can be if one is willing to leave all preconceptions behind. It's also chock full of nudity, blood, gore and tortured performers screaming Polselli's consciousness-cracking theorems.

 

A mention must also be made of the even more extreme DIABOLIQUE-like giallo LA VERITA SECONDO SATANA (1972), in which the late Isarco Ravaioli (whose 1984 death was reported on the internet recently) finds 1001 ways to mentally, sexually and physically torture Polselli's favorite scream queen, Rita Calderoni (who also appears in DELIRIUM, RITI..., and the 1979 TURIN, HEADQUARTERS OF VICE for Polselli, appearing increasingly stressed and aroused by the sadomasochistic excesses she's called upon by RP to perform, and she always performs them with courage and passion). Mickey Hargitay wondered on the DELIRIUM DVD's making-of documentary whatever happened to Rita Calderoni and one can only speculate, but she must have been some gutsy lady to endure this series of films which such dignity and class. She was a trouper.

LA VERITA... doesn't tell the gospel truth at all, ironically, but is a series of "lies" which add up to a version of the truth: Ravaioli stages his murder as kind of the ultimate sexual/emotional revenge only to get caught in his own dialectic, finally getting a much desired and deserved real death the second time around, leaving the murderess to phone the police on herself. This is all interrupted by Ed Wood-style orgies (cf TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE) orchestrated by a wildly enthusiastic black actress with VERY big hair. She's a joy to behold. This film also has one of the most hauntingly beautiful female vocals lines we have ever heard.

Interestingly, the final image of LA VERITA..., or at least the version we consulted, is exactly same as one the opening shots of OSCENITA: the film's heroine posed nude in a stylized posture on a table as pulsating colored lights play over her body.

 

Even crazier and more experimental (although the forced alterations by the Italian censor may account for the discontinuity this time out) is the category-defying OSCENITA, filmed in 1973 and finally released in an redubbed version in 1980. Once again Ravaioli stars, but this time as an questionably enthusiastic sociologist who moderates a therapy session of a group sex addicts whose symptomatic behavior is illustrated by mondo-style flashbacks (or are they flash-forwards or sideways? It's hard to keep track of timelines in the mad world of RP). This film features every transgression under the sun and then some. If you can imagine it, it's here. Polselli may have had a modern day DECAMERON in mind, but this is far, far away from the mainstream or any other stream on Planet Earth.

Filmed at Gordon Mitchell's legendary Cave Filmstudio there are everal hardcore and softer versions of OSCENITA, all of which are nearly impossible to see except through 9th generation bootlegs. This was made, according to Polselli, to illustrate the abuse of the female of the species in a socio-historical context. Some will damn it as vile sexploitation. Opening scene: a man forces himself on a female patron in a cinema playing a film featuring Dean Stratford (Dino Strano) ripping off the clothes of the female lead in OSCENITA which becomes a Catch-22 style structural conundrum as our screaming heroine flees Stratford's assault by flagging down a passing motorist only to be sexually assaulted by the equally brutish driver who pulls her out of the car, begins to rape her but is elimated by some guys who pop out of the bushes only to continue their own attack upon our heroine, who is eventually rescued by Stratford after he has finally caught up with the action. But we never get a similar chance to "catch up" to the increasingly frenetic and always sexually explicit action as Polselli's wildly swish-panning camera, blinding lighting design and free-associative montage is designed to barrage the retina, tease the Unconscious and outrage the moral majority in all of us.

 

 Every single object in this film is fetishized and becomes an erotic component of Polselli's obsessive, macabre mise-en-scene.  He always frames actors as objects viewed through anthropomorphic screens such as statuary, furniture, grates and miscellaneous architecture. His wildly unfettered use of zip-zooms in and out of figures and space makes Jess Franco's notorious telezoom-asthetic look conservative in comparison. Once again, this is not an easy viewing experience and some of the images depict very ugly events. Although it's never clear, and when it is it's always disturbingly subversive, Renato Polselli had SOMETHING to say and created a boundry breaking style to say it with.

 

COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006

BRING ME THE HEAD OF CHANO URUETA

Nacimiento: 1895
 (Chihuahua, M?xico )
Fallecimiento: 1978
 (M?xico D.F., M?xico)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have a correct answer for our trivia question: In what two Sam Peckinpah films did the veteran Mexican director Chano Urueta (THE WITCH'S MIRROR; THE BRAINIAC) appear and what were the roles he played? See the comment section below.

 

Jess Franco has claimed in interviews that he worked with Chano Urueta on at least one production. We would like very much to know what the title is since even Jess couldn't remember the last time we talked with him. Given that it was in the vicinity of 50 years ago and considering Franco's gargantuan output since, that's understandable.

 

When we return we'll take a close look at select films by this obscure Mexican auteur and consider how they might have influenced the work of Jess Franco.

 

In the meantime, if you are a fan of Mexican horror you won't to miss the excellent CasaNegra DVD's of Urueta's THE WITCH'S MIRROR and THE BRAINIAC.

SINFONIA EROTICA on DVD

 

From Manga DVD: Spain. This 1979 Spanish-Portuguese coproduction, a gorgeously lensed Sadean melodrama, is finally available on DVD.

This is an elegant tone poem based on the same Sade story Franco filmed as 1973's PLAISIR A TROIS and as GEMIDOS DE PLACER in 1981. Martine de Bressac (Lina Romay) the wife of wealthy Marquis Armando returns from an asylum after suffering a breakdown. She finds the Marquis involved with his male lover and a runaway nun. Complications arise. Franco and his expert DP Juan Cozar flood the images with light and the camera often wanders away from the twisted characters to the distances between them, a favored Franco theme according to the man himself. The images of the statues, architecture, lakes and foilage of the estate are photographed in the style of Resnais LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. A lush period piece which illustrates Liszt's piano sonata, which Franco adapted himself into a score part Romantic-part Gothic horror. But this is not a horror film per se.

This can be ordered through www.dvdgo.com. It's PAL R2, 1.66:1, 4:3, Dolby 2.0. In Spanish language only and reportedly uncut at 84m. The liner notes are by Franco expert Francesco Cesari.

COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2006

NASCHY'S DRACULA RIDES AGAIN

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: My favorite Spanish Dracula film, Javier Aguirre's EL GRAN AMOR DEL CONDE DRACULA (1972)in my opinion beats out Jess Franco's strained EL CONDE DRACULA (1969) and Leon Klimovsky's parody LA SAGA DE LOS DRACULA (also 1972) in terms of personal vision and idiosyncratic atmosphere. Written by and starring the legendary Paul Naschy (rn: Jacinto Molina), it presents an original, detailed and alternate mythology for the Count Dracula character and has as much to do with local ethnology, Molina's subterranean positioning as a genre historian and 20th Century history as Bram Stoker. In other words, I take it seriously. Perhaps too seriously. I really can't be happy with the new DVD, hosted by "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark!", which presents this fascinating and macabre work as of secondary value to the popular 1980s TV scream queen. This is yet another fullscreen 83 mn version which some references list as originally over 90m. I'm not here to argue that point. Aguirre, who also had a career as an experimental filmmaker, creates one coup de image after another and much of the bold visual quality, a unique mood drenched in a fantastique that is at once 19th Century, 1972 Spain and eternal, is lost when seen panned and scanned. Even the entrance of Molina's Dracula is elided offscreen.

I actually almost purchased this at a local Best Buy before regaining my senses. Something told me to WAIT. There was a 2002 fullscreen DVD from an I.S.Filmworks/Yes Video: "Totally uncut! Nudity." Is that all there is to this? No. It's a rather important film not only in the career of Molina/Naschy but in the chronology of Spanish horror and in the catalogue of cinematic Draculas. One sales site for this new DVD categorizes it as either HORROR or CAMPY. It becomes an object of ridicule and an automatic "bad" movie in our present popular culture, which is obsessed with appearances and labels. I have no interest in lining the pockets of this disc's makers and distributors and while I don't want to deny the lady a living her "humor" and appeal are totally lost on me. Some might even enjoy it playing in the background of a loud party at 4am. All well and good. Maybe I'm out of touch but I find it an intense, poetic film.

Some hope is given on the Latarnia Forum's Paul Naschy topic area where Mirek Lipinski reports that a new commentary has been recorded in Spain including Molina and Aguirre and that it could be a future R1 release from the BCI label. I hope. In the meantime, I bet the Elvira DVD version will have more than healthy sales.

COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2006

DE SADE

Louis (Deke) Heyward

AIP's DESADE, which I saw at the local Adult theater THE RIVIERA circa 1969 is a film I wish that Deke Heyward had assigned to Jess Franco. AIP's biggest budgeted project to that date, they made the fatal error of casting Kier Dullea in the title role, at least Franco had the sense to cast Klaus Kinski as the "Divine Marquis" in JUSTINE. Unfortunately, they put Cy Enfield (ZULU) in the director's chair. Eventually Roger Corman had to be called in to sex it up ("Sam, we've run into a hitch on this DE SADE thing. Do you think Roger could fly over to Berlin to help us out?"). Future Franco producer Artur Brauner (VAMPYROS LESBOS, THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA, X-213: FLIGHT TO HELL) provided the German cofinancing and arranged the entire shoot at his heavily guarded CCC facility in Berlin. The estimable Richard Matheson talks on the DVD about how his original script for DESADE was in the style of Robbe-Grillet's LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD but was rejected by the powers-that-be, presumably led by Deke. According to Heyward's CV (up at his ASK DEKE site), he was the head writer on the TV classic, THE ERNIE KOVACS SHOW, which introduced me to surrealism in the dark and distant 1950s. As Head of European production for AIP from 1963 to 1973 he was involved in the writing and production of such interesting films as Michael Reeve's WITCHFINDER GENERAL and the Lovecraft adaptation THE CRIMSON CULT.

Jess tells an amusing story on the 99 WOMEN DVD how Heyward told him he'd never work in Hollywood after viewing Franco's cut of that film only to invite him to dinner and congratulate him after it topped the VARIETY boxoffice charts a few months later. Heyward was also responsible for the US versions of Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and DR GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (in which he appears in a small role as a General). To his credit he attempted to set up a Mario Bava directed version of Lovecraft's THE DUNWICH HORROR which unfortunately fell through. He employed Vincent Price in the Harry Alan Towers-Eurosleaze item HOUSE OF 1000 DOLLS, which would also have benefited from the Franco touch as opposed to the terminally dull direction of Jeremy Summers, whom Franco would proceed to replace on Towers' THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU.

Deke has been dead and buried for four years now and maybe he wasn't fully to blame but DE SADE, given Matheson's original conception, could have been Franco's masterwork...

LA MANSION DE LOS MUERTOS VIVENTES

 

Absurd, grotesque and a total put-on this is Franco's commentary on sexual hypicrosy, specifically related to the Inquisition and the twisted rituals carried on by mad monks who inhabit a monstery near a resort in the Canary Islands. I once termed this a blind dead film without blind dead, but it's not part of that series of 1970s films. Franco inverts the imagery and finds jet black humor as the "undead" rape, torture and murder the scantily clad friends of Lina Romay. But nothing is as it seems in this subversive burlesque of Spanish Horror.

 

Based on a novel by "David Khunne"[?!] this is a gorgeously shot film which only reveals itself after repeat viewings, if then. We very much look forward to the upcoming DVD from Severin Films which restores the film to its 2.35:1 OAR, most important in a mise en scene where objects and spaces gradually displace conventional narration, dialogue and character. We'll be previewing this much anticipated presention in detail soon...

MICKEY HARGITAY: 1926-2006

 

 

Most Eurogenre enthusiasts will remember him as Travis Anderson aka The Crimson Executioner in THE BLOODY PIT OF HORROR, a Sadean exercise in high camp directed with style by Massimo Pupillo in 1965. Others will first note that he was the husband of Jayne Mansfied and the father of Mariska Hargitay. Fans of bodybuilding will remember that he was MR. UNIVERSE 1955. Mickey Hargitay was called a "magnificent individual" in a tribute by Gov. Arnold who credited him as an "inspiration" in that Hargitay was an unknown immigrant who made good in the worlds of international body culture and Hollywood. The former performer in Mae West's 1950s revue was remembered by Ms West as the man who stole her show and gave it to "that woman". That woman, Jayne Mansfied, would star alongside Hargitay in several mainstream Hollywood films like WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? and PROMISES! PROMISES! and the Italian peplum THE LOVES OF HERCULES. But Mickey survived Jayne and went on to his own career in European cult films like VENGEANCE OF THE GLADIATORS, STRANGER FROM SACREMENTO, THE SHERIFF DON'T SHOOT (an obscure Renato Polselli western I would really like to unearth), CJMANGO, WANTED: RINGO, SEVEN GOLDEN WOMEN VS 2,007, LADY FRANKENSTEIN, and again for Polselli, DELIRUM and THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL, those final two mindspinning Italian horror projects revealing him an actor capable of a surprising range of emotion. I wish he had continued to make more films after that but he went into the contracting business in California. Appearing on a making of documentary of Anchor Bay's DELIRIUM DVD, he showed an engaging sense of humor and perspective about his colleagues on that film and his career in general. Just before he died, Gordon Mitchell wrote to me that Mickey Hargitay was a longtime loyal friend who stood by him in his darkest days. Now Mickey Hargitay's time has come. I was saddened to hear of his passing but will remember him for the high spirited enthusiasm with which he threw himself into roles like The Crimson Executioner and DELIRIUM's lounge-lizard/forensic scientist/tormented husband/pscyho-killer Herbert Luytak. Many thanks Mickey for the many hours of pleasure you provided with your distinctive presence in the above mentioned films and the dedication you showed to your friends and fans. Adios!

DETOUR, JIM THOMPSON, ORSON WELLES & THE NOIR CONNECTION...

 

 

 

 

   

Watching Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 minimalist noir DETOUR always reminds me of just how much can be done with so little. A man, a woman and a telephone cord were Ulmer's tools, imparting a sense of Greek Tragedy to his B-scenario of a piano player on the long road to Hell.  The scene involves the kind of plan-sequence, a crazy pan shot going and in out of focus as it represents the delirium the protagonist, which anticipates the rack-focus aesthetic (or anti-aesthetic) of numerous post 1970 Jess Franco projects. Try watching it on a double bill with GEMIDOS DE PLACER (1981). Franco often talks of his debt to Robert Siodmak (who was the codirector with Ulmer of the 1930 City-Symphony, PEOPLE ON SUNDAY) but Ulmer, the workhorse of PRC who shot DETOUR in just a few days with pitiful resources, was a Poverty Row Expressionist has always seemed to me to the Hollywood director (along with Sam Newfield and Alan Dwan) whom one can most profitably compare Franco with.  I hope they never do a big-budget remake of DETOUR but Franco himself would have been the perfect director and lead (Jess is always the piano man) for my fantasy remake.

I had the chance to discuss film noir with Jess some time ago and found he was a fellow JIM THOMPSON enthusiast. Thompson (1906-1977) was an obscure crime novelist who connects with Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah and Orson Welles.  Jess told me that Welles talked with him about turning Thompson's disturbing novel  THE KILLER INSIDE ME (1952) into a film.  We'll be discussing Thomspon, Kubrick, Welles, Franco and the NOIR connection in the future. In the meatime read Robert Polito's excellent, Edgar Award winning Thompson bio SAVAGE ART (Vintage Books, 1996).

COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2006 

ALBERTO DALBES: Franco's Dr. Seward

Alberto Dalbes is the madman behind Le Rayon Infernal in DANGER! DEATH RAY, one of the numerous Eurospy adventures he appeared in during the 1960s. Between 1970 and 1973 this busy Argentinian actor worked on at least 12 Jess Franco projects before disappearing into minor roles in Spanish features. He died in 1983 at the age of 61 from a heart attack.

 

 Dalbes really made the rounds after numerous film roles in Argentina from the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s. Relocating to Spain he found steady work in Spanish coproductions. Franco cast him as Dr. Seward in DRACULA PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN and CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. He was also "Renfield" in THE DEMONS. Jess Franco got a lot mileage out of character's names from Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" which he fimed, ineptly, in 1969. Dalbes is a reasonably believable hero in these monsterfests and is effective in his villainous roles in such titles as TENDER AND PERVERSE EMANUELLE, LA NOCHE DE LOS ASESINOS (both 1973 thrillers directed again by Franco), THE HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE, where he played the Dr. Frankenstein role, sending hunchback Paul Naschy in search of body parts, and the ambiguous convict in CUTTHROATS NINE (1972).

 

According to the IMBD, Dalbes appeared in 69 feature films.

BLOODSUCKING NAZI ZOMBIES

 

The Nazi undead arise in the North African desert to attack a several groups seeking Hitler's gold. This Spanish version, LA TUMBA DE LOS MUERTOS VIVIENTES, featuring Eduardo Fajardo and Lina Romay, is superior to OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (the French cut dubbed into English), which is now out on at least two different US DVDs including the 50 movie box set, CHILLING CLASSICS. This budget disc has terrible video quality, is fullframe and is not recommended.

  A favorite alternate title of this project, BLOODSUCKING NAZI ZOMBIES [!], which in the late 1980s was a Mom and Pop video store stalwart. It's better than Jean Rollin's Spanish-French Nazi zombie film, ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), which Franco was at one time set to direct from his own story. Several years ago I had the oppurtunity to interview the talented M. Rollin. He winced when I mentioned ZL and and laughed uncomfortably. Other Nazi zombie films are SHOCK WAVES and Lucio Fulci's GHOSTS OF SODOM.

Your best bet in terms of video quality is the IMAGE OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES disc which also features a French audio option (sans Eng. subtitles) and is at least letterboxed. LA TUMBA... has yet to appear on R1 DVD but is available on the Spanish DIVISA label.

 

 

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL
COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2006

THE FILMS OF SUMURU

3 FACES OF SUMURU: FUTURE WOMEN/THE GIRL FROM RIO/SUMURU 2

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: THE GIRL FROM RIO was never theatrically released in the US. It ended up as a direct to TV release with the somewhat more appropriate title, FUTURE WOMEN. This main title is printed over a freeze frame of Beni Cardoso (a live-action shot in both THE GIRL FROM RIO and the German version, DIE SIEBEN MANNER DER SUMURU/SUMURU 2, a complete recut with different musical cues and at least one action scene not in the English language versions) watching the torture of a male agent from behind one of the plexiglass barriers within the walls of the all female city of Femina. This scene is part of a precredit sequence in both THE GIRL FROM RIO and the German version which was dropped from FUTURE WOMEN. 

This was just one of many changes executed by editor Alan Morrison for this TV version. Others include the removal of all nudity and numerous images of erotically charged torture and sexually suggestive dancing in the streets of Rio by scantily clad female participants in the 1968 Rio Carnival. Inserts of footage from another, still unidentified film of military installations and aircraft exploding were added to support the footage Franco shot of the final assault on Femina. These poor-resolution images were originally shot in desert locations which obviously clash with the tropical Rio environment! It's more than a bit ironic that Franco's director credit is missing from the shortened opening credit sequence. FUTURE WOMEN runs approximately 79m, while the 2004 BU DVD of THE GIRL FROM RIO clocks in at 94m making it the longest, but still incomplete, version. We'll explain why in a future blog...

 COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2021

COMING IN OCTOBER

[ESP, PORT] ?palo de Fuego: Mercaderes del Sexo , 1980

Pr?ximamente DVD Cine, Varios Comedia, Comedia Espa?ola, Thriller Espa?ol

9,99 eur / Dto 5% -0,43 eur

Precio 9,49 eur

0,17 eur bonus pts coste de env?o

Stock ?Pr?ximamente!

Lanzamiento 18/10/06

Click on some of these links for more information on this coming Spanish DVD presentation. It will be a PAL R2 release in Spanish language only, unfortunately without English subtitles. A plus will be informative liner notes by Jess Franco expert Francesco Cesari.

LAS VAMPIRAS vs VAMPYROS LESBOS

COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL: The white hot stripteases performed by the Countess Korody (Soledad Miranda) with a living "mannequin" were heavily suppressed in the Spanish version of VAMPYROS LESBOS. The famous  Hubler-Schwab score was also replaced by cues written by Franco himself, under his David Khunne cover. Released in Spain to in 1973, LAS VAMPIRAS plays and sounds quite differently, but it's a nonetheless fascinating artifact and contains some footage (the Countess standing in a boat; some shots of her dance) not in VL. Franco's score is in some ways even less conventional and stranger than the more familiar Hubler-Schwab cues, which remain more immediately listenable and propel the images with a tremendous pace while creating an outre atmosphere which hasn't dated at all. There have been two US DVD's of VL, but the DVD presentation we would include the version with the onscreen title VAMPYROS LESBOS-ERBIN DES DRACULA. We'll outline the reasons when we return to this subject...

COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2006

SOLEDAD MIRANDA LIVES!

I was in Borders yesterday to purchase the new DVD of my favorite 1950's sci-fi film, THIS ISLAND EARTH. On my way to the checkout the recent DVD of the 1969 Spanish-lensed US western 100 RIFLES caught my eye. I looked at the back cover and got a quick chill from being greeted by an image of the late, great Soledad Miranda in bed with one of the film's stars, Burt Reynolds. At this time both Reynolds and Miranda were working their way up the ladder to international stardom. The film's leads are Jim Brown and Raquel Welch, around whom most of the publicity was centered. But I was immediately reminded that Soledad could match Miss Welch, who was already a Superstar due mainly to her ONE MILLION YEARS BC poster, in sex appeal and acting chops anyday.

 

Even a quick glimpse of her image through the shrink wrapping on a DVD cover conveyed something of her ferocious erotic intensity which would be exploited to the maximum in a series of films to be directed by Jess Franco in early 1970: EUGENIE DE SADE, VAMPYROS LESBOS, SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY, THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA. We're still anxiously awaiting the appearance of the ultra-rare SEX CHARADE on DVD. These 1970 features became both the foundation and the heritage of her short career as she was tragically killed in an automobile accident in August 1970.

 

We'll be returning soon to talk about Soledad Miranda in the two different versions of a Franco project shot under the title, THE SIGN OF THE VAMPIRE: VAMPYROS LESBOS and LAS VAMPIRAS. We'll also be getting back to our series on the three versions of Franco's SUMURU project.

THE FILMS OF SUMURU: THE MILLION EYES...

Poster for the film.
The first Harry Alan Towers produced SUMURU film was 1967's THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU, released by AIP. It was not commercially or critically successful, but Towers went on to produce Jess Franco's SUMURU 2 [FUTURE WOMEN, THE GIRL FROM RIO] the next year. Towers retained the rights to the Sumuru character and produced yet another version in 2003, see blog below, featuring Alexandra Kamp in the title role. THE MILLION EYES...was filmed on location in Hong Kong, Franco's version was lensed in Spain and Rio locations, the 2003 project was shot in South Africa with Maria Rohm, who played supporting roles in the first two Sumurus, acting as an associate producer.

SUMURU LIVES!

Towers of London (Sumuru) Ltd. presented a German financed production featuring Sax Rohmer's creation and forming a trilogy (with Lindsay Shonteff's THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU and Jess Franco's THE GIRL FROM RIO) of SUMURU films produced and scripted by Harry Alan Towers (aka "Peter Welbeck") over a period of 36 years.

This 2003 epic was lensed in South Africa and brought the character into the 21st Century. The title character was embodied by former model Alexandra Kamp (probably not a coincidence that CAMP was the term most reviewers who saw this futuristic romp used to describe it). Where's Shirley Eaton when you really need her?!

 

 

 

 

THE FILMS OF SUMURU

   

 

  

 

  

 

 

The female FU-MANCHU created by Sax Rohmer was featured in a RADIO SERIAL, NOVELSand several feature FILMS . There is a rather confusing array of versions of Jess Franco's SUMURU project, best known as THE GIRL FROM RIO, which finally appeared in DVD from Blue Undergound. It's certainly the longest we know of and the video quality sparkles. But the path to the truth about the various versions is a long and twisting one...

 

THANKS TO: www.violetbooks.com

THE EUROSPY FILES: YPOTRON

A favorite example of the 1960's Eurospy genre, this 1967 item casts Janine Reynaud, the star of Jess Franco's SUCCUBUS, as a sexy blonde secret operative out to put the make on Super Agent 077 Luis Davila, credited as "Luis Devil" on the English language print. This is a high octane, tongue in cheek medley of amusing gadgets, bikini clad sirens, exotic tropical locations and prominent Jess Franco character actors such as Alfredo Mayo (ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS), Jesus Puente (EL CONDE DRACULA), Alberto Dalbes (EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN; it's a kind of Pop Art action painting powered by Nico Fidenco's delightful Ventures-style surf score. Remember The Ventures?...

Michel Lemoine

Actor-Director Michel Lemoine appeared in the four Franco-related Aquila Film Enterprises coproductions of 1967: NECRONOMICON, ROTE LIPPEN, BESAME MONSTRUO and IM SCHLOSS DER BLUTEN BEGIERDE. He was married to featured actress Janine Reynaud at the time and they reportedly are still friends after all these years. Lemoine later become a compelling filmmaker in his own right, directing smooth and stylish erotica such as SEVEN WOMEN FOR SATAN and DESIRE UNDER THE SUN, among many others. He has never really gotten the recognition he deserves as a director. One of his most memorable performances is as the deadly alien Branco, whose touch turns humans into skeletons, in the Italian sci-fi thriller PLANETS AGAINST US. Thanks to Adam Williams for the image.

CANNIBAL TERROR!

 

THE WORST CANNIBAL FILM EVER? IT COMES PRETTY CLOSE. ONE OF SEVERAL CANNIBAL FILMS PRODUCED BY EUROCINE IN 1980, THIS IS NOT A FRANCO FILM BUT DOES CONTAIN NATIVE DANCING FOOTAGE FROM HIS OWN WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN. Z BUDGET GORE...

MISION LISBOA: THE FRANCO DOSSIER

REVIEWED BY ROBERT MONELL [Thanks to Alex for finding this poster and to Mirek for technical assistance]:


O77 INTRIGUE A LISBONNE (Fr); MISION LISBOA (SP)ESPIONAGE IN LISBON (GB); AGENTENFALLE LISSABON (WG)
Directed by Tulio Demichelli It/Sp/Fr
CAST: Brett Halsey (Agent 077), Marilu Tolo, Fernando Rey, Jeanne Valerie, Daniel Ceccaldi, Alfredo Mayo, Francesca Rosano.
P: Frederic Aycardy Hesperia Films-Madrid; Terra Film-Rome; Speva Films-Paris
Sc: David Khunne (Jess Franco)*, Jose Byones, Juan Cobos, Monica Felt, Tulio Demicheli
DP: Angelo Lotti-Techniscope-Eastmancolor
M: Daniel J. White
83 mn
More than a simple rewrite of LA MUERTE SILBA UN BLUES as "Obsession-The Films of Jess Franco" notes,** this is more of an elaboration, an indication of things to come
which offers a sharp contrast in directorial styles between Franco and Demicheli and an example on how a scriptwriter can dominate a film and become its true auteur.

First and foremost, and as always with Jess Franco, there is the element of music. The Jazz melody "Terrado Blues" first heard played by a musician (a future murder victim who appears with saxophonist Jess Franco in the Whisky Jazz Club Band) on his trumpet during a gig in LA MUERTE SILBA UN BLUES, is also employed as a motif here, but where it had a certain emotional resonance in LA MUERTE... here it's just a signal, part of a secret musical code which the villains use to communicate and the protagonists follows as a lead to a further musical code, an Italian folk song, the notation of which contains the directions to the location of a formula which is being smuggled out of the country by foreign agents. Using an elaborate musical code as a sort of musical compass would be a key plot element in such later Franco Eurospy flavored items as KISS ME, MONSTER (1967) and LA NOCHE DE LOS SEXOS ABIERTOS (1981), LA NOCHE... would also reuse some of Daniel White's cues which make up some of the background score for INTRIGO... . A more surprising musical cross reference comes during the scene where 077 ignites a smoke device during a fashion show, the runway peformance is accompanied by a musical theme heard in one of the cabaret shows attended by Doctor Orlof in the Franco directed classic, GRITOS EN LA NOCHE (1961). Was this a nod to Franco added by White without Demicheli's knowledge, a kind of musical in-joke which would become so prevalent in so many later Franco-White collaborations?

There are also some visual resonances. Some of the Lisbon locations would appear in the later Franco directed NECRONOMICON (1967), note that the rocky point on the Lisbon shoreline in one of INTRIGO's scenes is where Lorna Green would have a fateful rendezvous with a doomed blonde. Other exterior locations would appear in Amando de Ossorio's first "Blind Dead" title, LA NOCHE DEL TERROR CIEGO (1971).

What INTRIGO shares with LA MUERTE... is the main plot situation of agent 077 (Brett Halsey here, looking in very fit form) teaming up with a female singer (the voluptuous Marilu Tolo is quite a contrast to the more delicate Dannick Pattison of LA MUERTE...) to track down a master criminal. The sting in the tail of LA MUERTE... was that Ms Pattison would be the one to destroy the all powerful Radek (a name which would resonate throughout Franco's subequent career), and Ms Tolo is just as resourceful, but it comes as no surprise that she also has a hidden agenda and can take care of business. In his first appearance in a Franco related project, the chief villain here is played by Spanish acting heavyweight Fernando Rey (VIRIDIANA;TRISTANA;THE FRENCH CONNECTION), who is just as adept at projecting a dapper sense of evil as Georges Rollin was in LA MUERTE... . Rey would also play a villain in the Franco directed Eurospy CARTES BOCA ARRIBA (1966) and pop up in roles in the Franco scripted ANGEL OF DEATH (1986) and the Franco directed ESMERALDA BAY (1989).

Most of INTRIGO is played for laughs and fast paced action, with Demicheli (ASSIGNMENT:TERROR; THE MEAN MACHINE; JUEGO SUCIO EN PANAMA***)proving quite up to the job at hand, but there is nothing personal or particularly interesting about his style except that he keeps things moving quickly and colorfully, whereas Franco in LA MUERTE... is doing a distinct riff on Robert Siodmak's THE KILLERS and Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL, complete with backlit figures scurrying down sinsiter alleyways viewed from titled camera angles. It's what Franco called during one of our conversations on noir the "Jazz style", citing the midnight Jam session in Siodmak's PHANTOM LADY (1943). Demicheli's film is closer to the many Pop Art Eurospy Bond imitations of the mid 1960s. A lot of fun but instantly forgettable.****


Notes:
*Some prints, the Spanish one consulted for this review, only credit "David Khunne" with the story.
** p. 52
***The Santiago Moncada script for JUEGO SUCIO EN PANAMA (1972) would later became the template for Franco's 1984 thriller JUEGO SUCIO EN CASABLANCA, with an updated script also credited to Moncada.
****Franco really has fun placing a lot of Bond style gadgetry in the action, but with his own edge: see the mannequin which comes equiped with a secret communication device. Mannequins and radio controlled robots will play an important role in numerous future Franco titles, including CARTES BOCA ARRIBA, NECRONOMICON, VAMPYROS LESBOS and LA VENGANZA DEL DR MABUSE.

Copyright by Robert Monell (C) 2006: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

contact the author of this post @ monell579@hotmail.com

THE EUROSPY FILES: THE FRANCO DOSSIER

aka ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS; JAMES CLINT SFIDA INTERPOL

(Thanks to Adam Williams for the poster)

Jess Franco's CARTES BOCA ARRIBA/CARTES SUR TABLE/ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS will be reviewed in a future blog. Above is a sample of some vintage poster art!

NECRONOMICON: THE SENSUAL EXPERIENCE OF 1969

NECRONOMICON was shot in the Fall of 1966 {many thanks to Ewe Huber for that information}, that's coming up on 40 years ago, and the new BU DVD proves that it still lives and breathes. It's an utterly charming time capsule of a bygone era, the likes of which we will never see again. It was a film which changed the map. The first X rated horror film to earn good notices in the mainstream press, even Vincent Canby had some good things to say about it in his review in THE NEW YORK TIMES, it was a product which could be sold as a horror film, an adult fim or an art film. The success of the film, released in the US as SUCCUBUS, would propel Jess Franco into an association with the high profile producer Harry Alan Towers and American International Pictures, which would partially finance and distribute the films he would make starting with THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU.

WILLIAM SHATNER IS COMANCHE BLANCO!

                                                  

 

Since we didn't have a poster of the ultra-bizarre 1968 Spanish western COMANCHE BLANCO (WHITE COMANCHE) we thought this "classic" album cover would do. Shatner plays both the titular White Comanche, Notah, a peyote-soaked renegade, and his twin brother, a milder mannered gunfighter. Shatner has a ball in this turkey shoot while former Mercury Theater player Joseph Cotton is there to witness his career on the downslide. Franco scream queen Perla Cristal (GRITOS EN LA NOCHE; EL SECRETO DEL DR ORLOFF) has a supporting role, along with future legend Soledad Miranda. The problem is I can't find Soledad in the film! Can anyone enlighten us to her presence here? This deservedly obscure Eurowestern is bad fun but the Plantinum DVD version on their THE GREAT AMERICAN WESTERN compilation Vol. 20, from what looks like the equally dire old video, is  a remarkably ugly, watermarked, washed-out, fullscreen abomination! And we REALLY want the above Shatner album, along with the Bruno Nicolai soundtrack for LUCKY THE INSCRUCTABLE.