Introduction"I'm a jazz musician who makes films." The preceding quote from Jess Franco, the controversial, hyperactive Spanish maverick responsible for films good, bad and atrocious, are key to understanding the rough and ready nature of his oeuvre. After a promising start as a slick commercial craftsman, Franco attained some international recognition with the release of his horror picture The Awful Dr Orlof (1962). The film's knowing fusion of moody black and white expressionism and contemporary shock tactics marked him as a potentially serious horror film auteur along the lines of Britain's Terence Fisher, America's Roger Corman and Italy's Mario Bava. A rabid film buff, Franco differed from many of his contemporaries by being one of the first true film buffs to step behind the camera and make films of his own - appropriately, The Awful Dr. Orlof worked not only as a modern horror film, but as a paean to the Universal horrors of the 1930s and 40s, films he has often gone on record as feeling to be among the best the genre has to offer.
As such, it is perfectly true to say that many of his films don't quite cohere. Yet, for Franco, the process of creating and improvising is far more important than the finished result. This is not to say that Franco is a careless hack - say, rather, that his is a chaotic, reckless sensibility, sometimes given to self-destructive impulses. This, ultimately, is the basic principle of jazz - getting lost "in the moment," going off on elaborate tangents and experimenting within the structure of a performance piece. In essence, those who are willing to go off on these tangents with Franco find it a rewarding experience; those who simply can't adapt themselves to this admittedly unusual method of filmmaking/storytelling often react with violent distaste and disdain. Ultimately, there is nothing more pointless than a debate between Franco fans and detractors - his fans embrace his work, as well as the man himself for having such audacity, while the detractors can't see past the chaotic exterior and point to him as one of the world's foremost hacks. There isn't much in the way of a middle ground, either - while there are differing points of view within both extremes (there will always be the fans who are inclined to justify everything the man does, while there are inevitably some detractors willing to concede that the man has made a good film or two) it is pretty much a "love him or hate him" kind of scenario. With all this in mind, it's something of a thankless task to undertake an appreciation of Franco's work. Quite simply, those who love the man's work already have their minds made up, and the same can be said of the detractors. The best one can hope for is to inspire either side to take another look and perhaps open their minds to a few new ideas about the man's work. Beyond that, it essentially boils down to a matter of preaching to the converted. More so than any other so-called "EuroCult" filmmaker - be it Mario Bava and Dario Argento in Italy or Amando De Ossorio in Spain or Jean Rollin in France - Franco's work continues to be a source of constant debate, and there is good reason for this. No matter whether one admires them as artists, there's little debate as to the technical prowess of Bava and Argento; the Blind Dead films of De Ossorio may have moments of Ed Wood-ian ineptitude, yet they deliver where it counts; and Rollin has been known to bridge the chasm between art house enthusiasts and soft core thrill seekers. In short, even the weakest offering from any of these men at least has the appearance of a "real movie." The same cannot always be said of Franco. Depending on your starting point, it's entirely possible to see Franco as an incompetent purveyor of smut and general poor taste. It is therefore instructive to sample highlights from the various stages of Franco's career, ranging from the explosive creativity of his French films of the 1970s to the creative hell of his recent shot on video productions for the aptly named One Shot Productions. Viewers looking for consistency really need not apply here - with Franco, you simply have to take the good with the bad, the inspired with the irredeemably awful.
The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962) A deranged scientist (Howard Vernon) kidnaps and mutilates women with the aid of a blind, mute sidekick named Morpho (Riccardo Valle)… For some viewers, this is the definitive Franco movie. For Franco himself, it is "a museum piece." Franco's distaste for the film is perhaps understandable - seen today, The Awful Dr. Orlof is a rather quaint affair. Its plotting is formulaic and overly indebted to earlier films like The Lodger (1945), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and, in particular, Eyes without a Face (1959), from which Franco cribbed the whole skin grafting angle. Its charm lies in some of its particulars - Howard Vernon's smoothly sinister portrayal established himself as a valid continental alternative to Boris Karloff and Vincent Price; the moody black and white photography is frequently stunning; the experimental, atonal soundtrack, full of crashing sounds and bizarre effects gives the film a hallucinatory quality. On the other hand, the sequences detailing the police's attempt to capture the killer are interminable - a lengthy scene, played for would-be comedy, in which the addled inspector (Conrado San Martin) gathers several witnesses to one of the abductions and has them describe a composite image of the assailant seems to go on forever. Nevertheless, Franco proves to be adept at handling scenes of mood and suspense, and the film retains its fascination every time Vernon appears on screen. For Franco, working with Vernon would become a regular thing - he'd ultimately appear in literally dozens of Franco films, thus damaging, for some, a distinguished career that included films for the likes of Fritz Lang (The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse), Jean-Luc Godard (Alphaville), John Frankenheimer (The Train) and Woody Allen (Love and Death). Simultaneously more polished and less engaging than some of Franco's quirkier works, The Awful Dr. Orlof is a seminal work in his career and, as such, is essential viewing. Recommended DVD release: Image (R1): Though flawed by the inclusion of some clumsy nude inserts, filmed by Franco himself for the French release, this offers a nice transfer in its original 1.66 aspect ratio.
Succubus (aka, Necronomicon) (1967) A beautiful woman (Janine Reynaud) loses herself in the twilight world between reality and violent fantasy… Described by Franco enthusiast Tim Lucas as the first of Franco's true forays into "horrotica," a stylized blending of horror and erotica, Succubus has the feel of a dream about a nightmare. For the first time in his career, Franco tackles what could be defined as an "art film," fueled by allusions to Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and his general love of jazz and cinema. Too surreal to be enjoyed by casual viewers, not explicit enough to draw in diehard horror buffs, and a shade too kinky to appeal to the art house crowd, Succubus is a unique experience destined to appeal to a small audience. More so than Dr. Orlof, it lays the groundwork for much of Franco's later work - its obsessive melding of sex and death, distilled into an enigmatic and unobtainable femme fatale, has its precedents in earlier Franco films like The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966), but here it is filtered through a different sensibility. The end result is done with much more polish and care than much of the director's later output, but the refusal to adhere to conventional narrative techniques gives the film a hazy, hallucinogenic quality. The various scenes of pseudo-intellectual discourse and elaborate word association games have a gently tongue in cheek quality, as if Franco is seeking to take some of the steam out of the art house hits of the day, but the film does ultimately attain a somewhat pretentious vibe. Nevertheless, the dreamy, over-exposed cinematography, coupled with the enigmatic beauty of the almost androgynous Reynaud (put to much better use here than in Franco's two preceding vehicles, the fun if insubstantial James Bond spoofs Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me, Monster), give the film a powerful allure that puts it near the top of the director's output. Recommended DVD release: Blue Underground (R1). There has been much speculation online about longer European editions, but it would seem that this edition is basically complete, save for some exit music included in the theatrical print. The transfer is topnotch, and there are excellent interviews included with Franco and co-star Jack Taylor.
Venus in Furs (1968) A stoned jazz musician (James Darren) obsesses over a mysterious blonde (Maria Rohm) who may or may not be an avenging angel… Playing very much like a variation on Succubus, Venus in Furs - or as Franco likes to call it, Black Angel - is the director's masterpiece. If Succubus laid the groundwork for Franco's forays into adult fantasy films, Venus in Furs represents the perfection of his style. The film contains the passion and pathos that was lacking in the earlier film while also avoiding its occasional lapses into pretentious self-indulgence. The end result is an almost perfect blend of mystery, horror, dreamy fantasy and eroticism. Produced as part of Franco's problematic affiliation with British exploitation maven Harry Alan Towers, the film is clearly the standout effort of their collaboration - of their other films, only the Sade adaptation Eugenie The Story of Her Journey into Perversion and his first woman in prison (WIP) drama 99 Women come close to matching its impact. All the benefits of working with Towers are amply on display, with none of the compromise that plagues such efforts as Count Dracula (1970) or The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968) - given total creative reign as a reward for the success of their earlier films, Franco makes inspired use of the resources at his disposal, as well as an above average cast that includes former teen idol Darren, as well as more interesting performers like Dennis Price and Klaus Kinski, both of whom enjoyed working with Franco so much that they'd return for several more outings.
The whole experience is glued together by a fantastic music score by Bruno Nicolai, with contributions from the jazz musician Manfred Mann. Franco is actually seen playing with Mann's band, reminding one that the inspiration for the story supposedly came from a story told to Franco by the jazz legend Chet Baker in a Parisian nightclub. Given the film's intimate ties to jazz - both in its inception and in its depiction of a jazz musician protagonist - it is perhaps not surprising that it comes together as well as it does. This was clearly a very personal project for Franco, and his passion and enthusiasm for the material is writ large over the entire picture. Recommended DVD release: Blue Underground (R1) Blue Underground's release of Franco's finest film is, mercifully, one of the best Franco DVD releases to date. The transfer looks and sounds superb, and there are terrific supplementary interviews with Franco and Rohm.
Eugenie De Sade (1970) A young woman (Soledad Miranda) and her father (Paul Muller) embark on an odyssey of incest and murder… Towards the end of his tenure with Harry Alan Towers, Franco cast the young Portuguese actress Soledad Miranda as Lucy in his ill-fated adaptation of Count Dracula (1970). The hauntingly beautiful actress made a profound impression on her director, who proceeded to build a series of films around her ethereal presence. While the German-made Vampyros Lesbos (1970) is, for many, the definitive Soledad Miranda vehicle, my personal preference is for Eugenie De Sade. Based on De Sade's short story Eugenie De Franval, it tells of a naïve young woman perverted by her worldly father who willingly enters into a pact of incestuous sex and thrill-killing. Clearly shot on a painfully low budget on real locations - some of the locations look to be hotel rooms, for example - it provides Franco with a perfect template to exorcize his demons. The cold-blooded narrative is given a genuine emotional charge by Miranda's touching performance - her take on Eugenie is consistent with Franco's vision of willful self-destruction, but she is crucially capable of conveying the character's emotional dependence on her father and underlying naïveté. Paul Muller, one of Franco's favorite character actors (he previously appeared as the effeminate night club owner in Venus in Furs), excels in what is possibly his best screen role. A fine actor often relegated to minor supporting roles, here he takes center stage and gives a chilling portrayal of intellectual corruption and cruelty. The dynamic between the two characters - Muller initially corrupting his innocent daughter, and the daughter ultimately pushing him even further - gives the film a perverse charge that remains shocking to this day. Probably the most accomplished of Franco's many stabs at adapting De Sade, Eugenie De Sade is perhaps too cold and calculating to appeal to the flesh market crowd, and too sleazy and perverse to appeal to the art house clique, thus making it a key Franco work. Recommended DVD release: Oracle (R2): This UK release from Oracle offers a slightly improved transfer when compared to the R1 release from Wild East. Given the film's ultra low budget origins, it's unlikely we'll ever see a really stunning release of this title, but this edition gets the job done. It also includes the original French track, with optional English subtitles, which was replaced by the inferior English track on the R1 disc.
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1971) A young woman (Christina Von Blanc) returns to her ancestral home, only to be greeted by weird relatives and even weirder fantasies… One of Franco's most popular titles, A Virgin Among the Living Dead was also, for many years, one of his most badly represented works. Franco's original film played very much like an art house parody with horror film elements, but was ultimately recut and reshaped by Eurocine distributors into a rather dismal skin flick before transforming it, yet again, into an even more dismal zombie film. The addition of insert footage by Jean Rollin, depicting a horde of pasty faced zombies menacing a bad body double for leading lady Christina Von Blanc was tantamount to cinematic graffiti, and this was the version that many Franco fans first encountered. The reconstruction of Franco's original cut merely served to confirm what many of us suspected - that lurking beneath the wreckage of Eurocine's reconstruction, there lurked a genuinely good film. Closest in tone to Succubus, Virgin plays like a particularly strange dream. Bruno Nicolai's excellent soundtrack gives the film something of a drugged out vibe, while the performers perfectly reflect the unnatural vibe of the material. In her only Franco film appearance, Von Blanc makes for a suitably doe-eyed and photogenic heroine, while the remainder of the cast is loaded with Franco regulars: Howard Vernon is a scene stealer as the morbid Uncle Howard, Britt Nichols and Anne Libert are stunningly beautiful as a lesbian cousin and the Angel of Death, respectively, Paul Muller shows up in visions as Von Blanc's dead father, and Franco himself has a field day as a retarded servant with a fondness for playing with matches. The look of the film is typical Franco of the period, alternating beautifully accomplished imagery (the shots of Muller's spirit gliding through the forest, accompanied by Nicolai's soundtrack, is hard to beat) with more rough-edged zoom shots. Recommended DVD release: Image (R1): While Franco's authentic 1971 cut of the film is lost to the mists of time, Image's reconstruction follows the trail-blazing release from Redemption and offers an improved picture quality. Franco has gone on record to say that this cut is as close as possible to his original intention and, all things considered, the image quality is pretty impressive. A Franco interview would have been appreciated, but the inclusion of scenes from the retooled versions make for interesting comparative viewing.
A reclusive countess (Lina Romay), unable to experience sexual sensation, leads a lonely, self-destructive existence… Leave it to Franco to transform Oscar Wilde's literary favorite into an arty porn movie. Shot during the height of his productivity for producer Erwin C. Dietrich in Switzerland, Doriana Gray was - like Venus in Furs for Towers - something of a reward for a job well done from his producer. Given total creative freedom, Franco improvised this dark, twisted, oddly poetic take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, casting his newly found muse, and real-life lover, Lina Romay in the central role(s). While earlier Franco films implied dark sexuality, throughout the 1970s the director became more and more explicit in his approach. Yet, whereas the XXX rated cuts of such as Female Vampire (1973) and La Comtesse Perverse (1973) were not initially conceived as hardcore films, here the director determined to introduce hardcore sex into the mix from the get-go. The concept is a simple one - twin sisters have each have something the other one lacks: Doriana is frustrated by her inability to achieve orgasm, while her deranged sister is hyper-sexual, climaxing on an almost hourly basis. The linkage between sex and death is explicitly drawn as Doriana, unable to cum herself, literally drains her lovers to death. The concept is similar to Franco's earlier oral horror film Female Vampire, which also cast Romay as a lonely countess whose fellatio abilities are deadly, but the end result is more accomplished. The film is disorienting in the extreme - sequences drag on and on to an almost irritating degree, whether it be sexual interludes or sequences of characters wandering about in a daze, but the effect is oddly effective.
Recommended DVD release: VIP (R0): Dietrich clearly knows the value of Jess Franco on the home video market, as he has spent considerable time and money remastering the films he produced for the director, loading them with extra features, and presenting them as somewhat pricey but nicely rendered DVD packages. If his releases have a single failing it's not providing English subtitle options for the original German tracks, preferring instead to create new English tracks for the films, many of which were never dubbed into English in the 1970s (barring more popular titles like Jack the Ripper, of course). The English dubbing of this film is pretty dismal, but luckily there's more moaning than talking, and the picture quality is top notch.
A hypnotist uses an exotic dancer (Lina Romay) to kill his enemies… A sexually explicit variant on the story that yielded The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966) and She Killed in Ecstasy (1970), Mil sexos tiene la noche - English translation: Night of 1000 Sexes - is one of the director's most resolutely experimental works. The story doesn't have any surprises when compared to the earlier films, but Franco's use of protracted set pieces, disregard for conventional pacing, and emphasis on sordid eroticism give the film a peculiar fascination. The film came out of a flurry of creativity shortly after the director's return to his native Spain - he had left owing to the censorship of the Franco dictatorship, and returned with the promise of renewed creative freedom. He found this freedom but also entered into a dire period of half-hearted sex flicks, many of which lacked the vigor and energy to be sufficiently entertaining. Mil sexos, on the other hand, fits neatly into his oeuvre with its melding of horror, perverse sexuality and pulp fiction. Lina Romay is again the object of Franco's fetishistic gaze, and she makes for an intoxicating presence. Ultimately, what sets this film apart from the other films of this period is a fairly remarkable sustained sequence depicting a drugged out orgy. The scene seems to last an eternity, alternating between spaced out lounging as sitar music blares on the soundtrack to enthusiastic groping from the participants, and attains a remarkable intensity from its complete and utter dislocation of time from the narrative. Scenes such as this aptly sum up the appeal of Franco, or lack thereof - viewers who don't succumb to its dreamy spell are surely in for a very tedious experience. Recommended DVD release: None: Sadly, few of Franco's key Spanish films of the period have received a DVD release as of yet. While inferior titles like Bloody Moon (Franco's mediocre stab at a slasher flick) and Sadomania (a lesser woman in prison extravaganza) have received proper releases, Mil sexos - together with standout items like Macumba Sexual and Eugenie (1980) - languishes in obscurity.
A demented surgeon (Helmut Berger) performs illegal skin grafts while attempting to reconstruct his lover's beauty… Sounds familiar, huh? Franco's bloody updating of Dr. Orlof is often reviled by enthusiasts for being "too commercial," as if this is somehow a bad thing. Unfolding very much like a slick, sick Lucio Fulci gore epic, it is recognizably a Franco film. The story recalls the director's earlier medical horrors, there are touches of perverse sexuality sprinkled throughout, and in-jokes abound. Shot on a larger budget than anything the director had made since the Towers period, and with an actual crew to boot, it is a far more slickly assembled film than usual for the director. Fans who've embraced the rough and ready aesthetic of the director's other films of the period tend to look down on the film for this reason, but this is ultimately a hollow argument against the film. Taken on its own terms, the film is a lot of fun, with a first rate cast and some nasty highlights. There is a slightly wistful, nostalgic vibe to the proceedings, as if Franco is acknowledging his past while accepting the reality that his brand of cinema has changed irrevocably in a period dominated by special effects wizardry. Alas, the director is let down by the makeup effects, some of which are shoddy enough to spoil a few shock moments - a needle to the eye effect is too plainly performed on an immobile dummy, for example, to be truly effective. Even so, Franco has fun with the narrative, which mixes the private eye conventions of his Al Pereira or "red lips" adventures with the medical horrors of his earliest successes. The cast is one of the finest Franco ever assembled, including Chris Mitchum, Caroline Munro, Helmut Berger, Telly Savalas, Lina Romay, Howard Vernon in his last appearance as Dr. Orloff (the spelling of the character's name changed quickly after the first installment),, and the great German character actor Anton Diffring in his last film appearance. Apart from a distasteful, unfunny scene in which Mitchum gets into a brawl with a fey fashion designer and his boy toy security guard (Franco is not a homophobic filmmaker, but this scene simply doesn't work), the film works very well as entertainment and shows that, even at this late stage in the game, the man still knows how to put together a well crafted picture. Recommended DVD release: Shriek Show (R1): Shriek Show's special edition offers a nice, uncut transfer that's stuffed to the gills with extras, including a commentary track (in French, with English subtitles) featuring Franco and Romay.
A perverse countess and her depraved husband lure young people to their secluded home for the purpose of hunting and cannibalizing them… Long a favorite of Franco's, Richard McConnell's short story The Most Dangerous Game (filmed by Irving Pichel in 1932, among various other incarnations) serves as a loose template for this late period Franco offering. The first of an ongoing string of films shot by Franco for producer Kevin Collins' One Shot Productions, Tender Flesh is a much more engaging effort than most of the films that have followed. Working for One Shot has been, at best, a mixed blessing for the director - on the one hand, Collins actually gives him an opportunity to work in a loose creative environment; on the other, the means at his disposal are so pathetically threadbare that they would hinder the most resourceful of filmmakers. It would be unfair to say that Franco's entire One Shot output constitutes a waste of time and talent, but neither is it an entirely off-the-mark statement. Though clearly under-funded, Tender Flesh still has better production values than 99% of the One Shot films that have followed. It also has a reasonably engaging narrative, some likable performers and a good sense of pacing and humor - elements sorely lacking in most of these titles. Romay and Spaghetti Western favorite Aldo Sanbrell make for an enjoyably theatrical pair of villains, there's some fabulous eye candy courtesy of Amber Newman, and there's a memorably audacious sequence in which Analia Ivars urinates on camera (the effect may have been faked, but it's rumored to be the real deal). Unlike most of the One Shot films, Tender Flesh shows that Franco is remembering to engage and entertain his audience. Though not exactly high art, it makes for fun, sleazy entertainment and has enough inspired moments to remind one of what the director is capable of. Recommended DVD release: Seduction Cinema (R1): Like all of Franco's recent efforts, this one was lensed for the video market, so a decent DVD release is a given. Extras aren't exactly copious or ground-breaking, but it's a solid release of a worthwhile latter day Franco title.
There's no sign that Franco is slowing down. So long as producers like Collins are willing to give him a camera and enough money to put something - anything! - on film, the grand maverick of EuroCult sleaze cinema is going to keep working. As his friend and one-time actress Monica Swinn once put it, "if [Franco] doesn't have a camera in his paws, he feels quite ill." (Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco, page 224) It seems likely, alas, that the best days are now behind him - his recent shot on video work, as indicated above, is mostly shoddy and forgettable - but it is perhaps unfair to write him off. With adequate resources, it seems likely that he's still capable of delivering something worthwhile. Whether this will actually happen or not is up in the air, but as for now there's more than enough Franco to go around. Having directed over 150 titles - and with many of these available in multiple incarnations, thus bedeviling the true completists - there's plenty for fans to catch up with. Ultimately, the best argument for and against Franco's work is the work itself. As a body of work, it's too chaotic, too slipshod and too erratic to be appreciated as one big continuous masterpiece - but, warts and all, it comprises one of the most eclectic and unusual bodies of work in contemporary cinema. This, perhaps, is the ultimate testimonial to his skill: love him or hate him, you have to admit that there's nobody else quite like him.
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Article written by Troy R. Howarth |
