Vixen 1968

For better and worse, Russ Meyer was the original Quentin Tarantino. He was a smooth talking hipster who made loud, funky movies that were immensely popular with a generation of young people because he embraced the sleaze and bad attitude they desired. But like Tarantino, Meyer didn't have much to say on anything. His films have no philosophical or political or even genuinely emotional or sexual wisdom to share. Cynically but cleverly disguised, their films are about pissing off the censors in hopes for shock value.

Vixen is incredibly well-produced and edited in an upbeat way that still plays easily. But its also a string of pointless (and dated) scenes of sex & violence with lame ass hipster lingo stitching it together. That makes its moronic and offensive kitsch seem like high, even arty camp when its not.

The plot of Vixen is that this spoiled, untamed, proud white trash republican chick has no sexual taboos. She cheats on her husband, has a lesbian fling and even seduces her brother, but she won't have sex with black people. Her racism is accepted and she doesn't really grow out of it or see error in it. Her enemy is the black boy her brother brings home. She insults, demeans and humiliates him throughout the film until he decides to sell her and all of his white "friends" to join the Communist Party. Racism is mean but communism would be evil. Russ Meyer has some ludicrous long dialogue where Cuba is modeled as a true picture of communism and only rich white men prosper because their fascism is somehow the same as Russia's?! Keep in mind that Meyer never once explains how capitalism is better and he foolishly identifies the opposite of socialism to be "democracy". The entire film comes from this embarrassing, delusional, dated rightwing macho patriotism that seeded today's so-called Libertarian Party in the United States. Most ironically is that Vixen only works as a film because of the furious editing techniques cribbed from Soviets.

I respect Russ Meyer for making some interesting, entertaining and sometimes insightful gems while on the outskirts of Hollywood, but he was a bigoted idiot just exploiting the hippie and feminist waves of filmmaking for pussy and dollars. Not my comrade.

Death Laid An Egg 1968

I told myself while watching this, "this is one heck of a movie".

I was usually so caught up in the impeccable camerawork or stunning use of montage to make sense of the plot. But I think I understand it: a man is driven insane from the numbing experience of working at a chicken farm with 2 women who are fighting over him. The plot is extremely loose and a bit absurd but its full of clever metaphors for the social factors in his breakdown.

 Gian Piero Brunetta, author of The History of Italian Cinema, considered the film to be "worth remembering", comparing it to the works of Luis Buñuel and Michelangelo Antonioni. Brunetta felt the film held several thematic undercurrents, dealing with the conditions of farm labourers and the changing social attitudes towards the class system in Italy

I want to compare it to the work of Jess Franco because its so jazzy, surreal, sexy, psychological and obtuse... yet commercial. Its actually more polished and entertaining than the typical Franco film by a long shot and has the added poetics, social commentary and New Wave sensibility of maybe a Jean Rollin film. But this baby doesn't come from Spain or France. Its Italian. One of the most extreme Italian films I've seen from the period. Its somewhere between a Fellini & Bava, art & exploitation. Its a beautiful experiment in contrasts. A marriage of high and low art. Aesthetically and politically its very similar to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so that details its pedigree.

Essentially you want to see this if you love giallo AND "acid cinema". I imagine it was inspired by the radical commercial experimentation in the previous year's "Bonnie & Clyde", but "Death" manages to outdo it in sheer stylish lunacy.

Succubus 1968

The deeper I travel down the rabbithole that is Jess Franco's filmography, the more I find films connecting with others, fracturing off and reassembling in new films. With Succubus I find the origin of many themes and styles and a kind of synthesis of different sub-genres.

Quickly, Succubus is about a mysterious and seemingly evil performer in a Marquis de Sade-inspired stage show. She is in love with a man who suspects she kills people in her sleep, after seducing them in her waking hours. Or something like that. Midgets and Satan arrive. Its a real headtrip because its so loose and surreal, even for Franco. Yet its one of the more classical, professional and naturalistic films he made. As his first film made outside of Spain and its censors, I would say it was quite personal to him and reflects his opinion on women at the time. Succubus feels like the first poetic Franco movie, something beyond a commercial job. We watch him slip into his comfort zone and throw away the rulebook and its very exciting to discover.

Watching this, it dawned on me that Franco was offering female characters to actresses and audiences that no one had seen before. His women are usually protagonists, strong, intelligent, sexual, manipulative, violent, often evil and always in control of themselves or others. This always pulled a memorable and visibly liberating performance from his starlets. Its no surprise women agreed to play in his films multiple times. And its also fun that his audience seems equally male, female, gay, straight. His films are feminist and egalitarian in that way.

Succubus laid the blueprint for Venus in Furs, Other Side of the Mirror, Nightmares Come At Night, was remade as Incubus and I'm sure it inspired Lorna The Exorcist as the main character in this film is named Lorna. But this is closer in tone to the early Orloff movies. Its more playful with narrative, more excited about playing with composition and you can feel Franco and the crew's giddiness about capturing the exploration of sex. Apparently critics didn't like it but audiences did. Its probably exploiting the success Rosemary's Baby, which came out a few months later. While that film is way scarier and appealing, you have to credit Succubus for its then-daring sensuality and surrealism. It willfully artificial and the fact that its downer ending isn't shocking is the sly point of it all. Its a study of evil in this world from a more street level.

I would rank it as one of Jess Franco's best and certainly most important. You get the scope, pacing, production value, acting caliber, emotional substance, phenomenal lighting and unique directing of the greater Franco films with more restraint and classical touches. All of his films are sexy, violent and strange. Its just a question of where it fits on the spectrum. Succubus hit a sweet spot for me. Not quite softcore porn. Not quite experimental. Not quite a horror movie. Its one of those films that only he could make and make work.

The Girl From Rio 1968

This is a sequel to The Million Eyes Of Sumuru by Lindsay Shonteff, one of the directors who best cashed-in of James Bond-mania at its peak. Rio stands on its own but you should check the original out.

So Franco was hired by Harry Allan Towers to shoot a sequel to his oo7 knock-off based on Sax Rohmer's Sumuru pulp villainess. Sax Rohmer wrote the original Fu Mancu stories and Franco had worked on a Fu Manchu film and would work on another (and would use the template later for Dr. Wong's Virtual Hell). Rio is not very popular with online critics, but I think its far from a bad movie, a very good display of Jess Franco in his prime and very important film in his legacy.

Ok., somethings don't work. It doesn't have much on surprises. Its low on dialogue and music, so of course Franco's casual fans will find it "boring". And it would be reworked with much more control and gusto as Blue Rita.

But so much does work. The premise has great novelty as a feminist terrorist group plot to control the world and make men their slaves. This is an exploitation of Pussy Galore's all girl assassin group in Goldfinger, which explains the presence of Shirley Eaton (who is fantastic here!). Jean-Paul Belmundo starred in a 1964 international hit called The Man From Rio and Girl From Rio does a good job casting a lookalike actor. For me personally, the cast is made complete with Maria Rohm, the future star of Venus In Furs. She has the face of a doll, the body of a goddess and she gets to do so much more in this film.

By why you should really check it out is Jess Franco's directing. He is working with a much bigger scope and budget here. Costumes, locales, a big cast of gorgeous women and decent male actors, guns and props. He is starting to find his psychedelic style here with the vibrant colors (he was fresh from shooting B&W) and he is mastering his signature zooms, pans and lingering takes. Now either you find Franco's style tedious or gripping, idiotic or ironic, childish or adsurdist, crude or economical, awkward or surreal. Some films veer into the negative classing, but Rio is closer to art than it is to trash. Thankfully its a happy mix of high and low art. P.S. This is the rare Franco movie that has a Hollywood happy ending!

From the poster and title, I thought Rio would be my cup of tea and I was not disappointed. It exceeded my expectations with all the bad-mouthing its gotten. It might alienate some because its delightfully dated and its weirdness is not so extreme as other movies. It good middle-of-the-road Franco. I would recommend it to anyone who just likes good James Bond tribute.

Danger Diabolik 1968

Purchasing the dvd for Danger Diabolik as a high school freshman introduced me to a lot of different worlds: the psychedelic director Mario Bava, the flamboyant producer Dino De Laurentiis, a subgenre of 60s pop-art genre films and all of the weirdness in between.

This film has aged better than expected. Hadn't watched in 10 years and since then the movie world has adopted so many of Bava's techniques - by way of Nicolas Winding Refn (by way of Dario Argento) - and the world market is saturated with kinetic comic book action thrillers. Certainly films of this type are better written today and certainly given bigger budgets, but they aren't produced as lavishly or directed as creatively. And I don't even think any recent Marvel successes have castings the caliber of Marissa Mell or John Phillip Law. And a score by Ennio Morricone?! The components all fit tightly and raise the source material, which wasn't a bad place to begin with. And, in that rare instance where being dated actually benefits the work, the social politics of a swingin' '60s Italian culture gives the film so much flavor. It has a genuine criminal antihero, a straight up terrorist as the protagonist and it revels in the colors, sounds, fashions and sexual expressions of a newly liberated generation and country. This is a very unique film that is truly lightning in the bottle.

Its hard to expand on why this film is good without delving into the academics of Bava's directing or the funky wonder of what Dino assembled, so lets focus on the bizarre collaboration of these two pillars of world cinema, who would go on to influence most of what Hollywood does today. Isn't it poetic that their brief partnership spawned a film that is everything 2017 Hollywood tries to produce? This was a transitional period for both men as Bava was leaving Horror and Dino was trying desperately to break into the world of Hollywood Epics. Mario said that the pressures of big budget international filmmaking was too much for him while Dino forged ahead into more outrageous successes, with Barbarella being the first after Diabolik (using much of the same crew and aesthetic). I like to think they both learned a lot from each other and I know the tiny taste of this magical meshing influenced a lot of people within movies AND comics. The images of half-naked Marisa Mell rolling around in space age sets juxtaposed with cartoonish characters and stylized action violence directly inspired the James Bond series (Tim Lucas points out a scene that Diamonds Are Forever flat-out duplicated). I wouldn't be surprised if Jess Franco, Menahem Golan and maybe Renny Harlin were big fans of Diabolik.

So this a huge recommendation. Its dated but I think there's plenty for young audiences to enjoy and it stands as a mammoth achievement as a low budget film (by today's standards) and as a commercial foreign film. As much ingenuity as it took to make this movie equals the high ecstasy it gives when you watch it.