Diamonds of Kilimanjaro 1983

More Jess Franco madness. This is less madness and more maddening. This was co-directed by someone, but 90% of it felt like Franco. There's very little that feels personal, or commercial for that matter. I don't know how anyone thought this would make a return investment. I guess it was an early example of these quick movies sold by an awesome VHS cover and title that overpromised. But it has interesting merits and its not totally unwatchable. This is near the bottom of the barrel for Franco but still has those qualities that make it preferable to a Pixar movie, in my humble opinion.

So the story focuses on a white jungle princess and her hilariously Scottish father who rule over a (voodoo?) tribe of black "savages". Her mother (a 70+ year old woman played by the 40ish Lina Romay) sends a thoroughly unlikable and uncharismatic team of people to find the jungle girl before the mom dies of illness. There's some subplot about diamond treasure that is given maybe 30 seconds of screen time. The film lack the mood or bizarro characterization of the usual Franco piece, but it does have some startling images and lots of hypnotic power. "Diamonds" is full of filler, stock footage, poor editing and lots of unnecessary dialogue, but there's a semi-good story buried in this. If you edited it down to 45 minutes, you would have something. But this was low budget commercial trash and Franco was too old to bother himself dressing it up or making any fun, pretentious experiments with this, which is a shame. Had he handled this in '73 we would've gotten something more memorable. But he squeezed a lot of blood out of this stone. The script, cast, budget, EVERYTHING is pitiful , but Franco can't not inject his genius in-between the seams. Amateur filmmakers should study his staging and use of lighting in films like this, where he had literally nothing else promoting the film.

The film is rescued by a classic Franco ending that is both upsetting and appropriate, as the unlikeable greedy white people who dominate the story are killed, their black savage antagonists are triumphant and the white natives side with their jungle family. This is what takes the film from stupid jungle adventure territory into Franco's antifascist, darkly humanistic world. Its as if he made a film he hated with the bargain that he gets to tack on whatever ending he wanted. Before the last 5 minutes, I thought "Diamonds" was just a lowbrow, stupid, racist movie with zero morality. Then the ending comes and puts everything back into balance and puts Franco's mastery into focus. Shit, I actually want to rewatch it and see what I've missed. On further meditation, the lone white male protagonist who is killed half-way through for his having empathy might be some kind of placeholder for Jesus himself. And I mean the director and the maryr.

So this is only for the hardcore Franco fans or the really masochistic lovers of bad film. There's some treasure waiting to be unearthed here, but finding it isn't easy. Its funny how thematic messages like this are stated in the actual watching of Franco films and not plainly delivered within the text. So, as bad as it is, Diamonds of Kilimanjaro is as Franconian as can be.