The Bloody Judge 1969 / The Demons 1973 / Doriana Grey 1976 / Lorna the Exorcist 1974 / Sexy Sisters 1977 / Sinner - Diary of a Nyphomaniac 1973

I'm really in the last string of major Franco titles to review. These are particularly darker and more trying films from his more depressive and destitute days. I don't enjoy them as much, but they fit my current mood and reveal more of Franco's character and inner battles.

The Bloody Judge is some prime Franco. It could be the best work but maybe not the best film from his soaring commercial career in the late 1960s. Its just as disturbing yet alternately beautiful. Its smart and not at all exploitative. It feels sincere to its historical influences and you can measure it favorably to Hollywood of the period or this current age. Its plot-themes are very pressing: a psychotic conservative authoritarian and probable secret society member who is persecuting the impoverished population he presides over. Scary stuff. This and the other Franco roles are Christopher Lee at his most effective as an actor and a scary "horror movie" presence. Highly recommended!

The Demons follows the same vein but its made for a much sleazier producer with cheaper resources and questionable tastes. Robert de Nestle replaces Harry Allan Towers, which is not a totally skewed trade-off. Its so tawdry and lurid, you can't help but admire it. And a stoned Franco does a great job on damage control. I think this is probably the most tightly plotted and classically shot of de Nestle's time with Franco. It could be the most polished overall and its one of the most erotic and aren't Franco's film supposed to be erotic primarily? The film has some surreal, absurd, camp and kitsch treats as usual. Jess was really in a free-form mood with some impressive resources to bounce off of.

Doriana Grey fits the 70s definition of a porno. You can't quite interpret it the same as the traditional commercial narrative film or even the arthouse experiments or even the sleaziest softcore movies. But it can have the same value. Doriana Gray has the loosest of loose stories about twin Linda Romay's who are soul mates and need to make lesbian love... and maybe its all a dream. Its some heavy, artful, technically brilliant stuff to prop up a lot of graphic sex scenes. And it works. I wasn't thrilled by plot or character because thrills weren't the goal. I find the sex scenes alluring in concept and cathartic and beautifully staged. Pornographic cinema has always had its place and been an influential genre steeped in important cultural art. Franco channels something ancient in these erotic period pieces of the 1970s. I favor this to some more narrative but less erotic films.

Lorna the Exorcist came out earlier (another de Nestle film). Again, the plot is small and lifted essentially from merging Eugenie with other shit, Rumpelstiltskin perhaps (Faust is mentioned). This film sets the stage for following explicit sex films by Jesus Franco: hotels, long takes of scenery, extended love scenes and very obtuse but effective dialogue and minor action. Actually, Franco's Other Side of the Mirror led to this mini-genre in its X-rated cut. Lorna has a wonderfull psychedelic rock/electric jazz score and otherworldly photography and the performances are sharp. Its plot is more strange than anything that precedes it, but maybe more easy-to-follow than what follows it. This is not for everyone but Francophiles will rank it highly.

Sexy Sisters is one of many films where blonde actress Karine Gambier is masochistically tied up and abused mentally and physically by a brunette. I very much enjoy the film Franco made for producer Erwin Dietrich but apparently he stunted Franco's experimental camerawork. Their collaborations are always minimalist, polished and focused on erotica over statements or creativity. Thats fine. Sexy Sisters is one of the weaker of their films but it has decent dramatic plot, performances and great design on a dime.

Sinner is probably the biggest slam dunk out of this batch of reviews. It integrates an original story structure, haunting music, nightclub atmosphere, feminist romance and melodramatic tragedy. And it remains classy by rejecting the hardcore sex or sadism you might expect. This is more of a personal statement or responsible professional job. And it has that rare kind of Franco ending that is so open-ended that it drives you mad and forces you to meditate on the story's reality and its metaphors. I like when Franco's films are personal and still can easily convince the mainstream of his genius. I hope this film was a grindhouse smash because its one of the purest examples of drive-in aesthetics you can find. It might have been too sexy and unadulterated for most suburban drive-in's though.

Love Camp / Tropical Inferno / Women Without Innocence / Kiss Me Monster / Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun

All of the Jess Franco films I'm reviewing have a feminist edge and the first 3 are all produced by Erwin Dietrich, a Swiss who focused his productions on political subtext, extreme sexual content and moody, lavish locations. He's possibly my favorite producer Franco had in the 1970s as all of their collaborations have been strong so far.

1977's Love Camp tells the story of women abducted to be concubines for a communist rebel army. Most of the girls don't really care but our protagonist becomes torn in her heart between her bourgeois husband at home and the brutish but idealistic freedom fighter who rapes her. The film, if taken literally, will offend feminists but its merely an ironic satire of 1970s political movements, especially feminist and communist hypocrisy. Its brisk but heavy and entertaining.

78's Tropical Inferno is another Women in Prison film, this being the most brutal. The plot is a reworking of 99 Women, Sadomania and other Franco WIP films, with innocents and political radicals being oppressed by a fascist couple (a lesbian & male surgeon, naturally). But Franco is unleashed in this newest rendition, sparing no detail of gory torture or sexual manipulation. This is one of the most serious Franco films I've seen. Zero humor and the performances are as human as the production level can allow.

From the same year comes Women Without Innocence. Its the strongest WIP film of the trio with a tight, unorthodox and detailed plot, plus a supremely impressive performance from Lina Romay (who is absent from the other films). She plays a mental patient being triggered to remember details of a murder she witnessed. There's lots of bizarre subplots and very gorgeous cinematography, even for Franco. Most surprising is the unrealistic Romantic ending that the film receives. With the other 2 films it creates a satisfying dialectic where Franco delivers 3 vastly different worldviews of the same basic narrative.

The more I watch his films, the more impressed I am with this idea of "syncopated cinema" (a term coined in Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco). He returns again and again to themes, plots, characters, even locations to play jazz with broken expectations and new, biographic detail. He's not just creating new work but commenting and critiquing his old work. Its deconstructionism, self-analysis and creating a totally personal grammar of cinema from taking as little outside influence as possible. Its so much more authentic emotionally than most so-called postmodernists like Tarantino or De Palma who crib from other actors but don't actually bring much to it but fanboy or film critic commentary. Thats how Franco started out as a maker of mainstream exploitation films, but he quickly outgrew that while proudly retaining or parodying his roots in cheap mimicry. He parodies the parody he once was.

Kiss Me Monster from 1969 is evidence of this. After directing a couple decent Bond-esque spy films, Franco returned to the more liberal, hipster, feminist films he started his career with. His 2nd film ever followed the Red Lips detective agency, two cute Spanish girls who are prototype Mary Sue's, but who are so flippant and self-aware that the film becomes cute satire. KMM resurrects these characters as more mature post-oo7 super spies with a mean sense of humor and enormous sexual identity. The plot is thin and convoluted so we can have early touches of minimalism, long takes, expressionist lighting, cartooned gags and nifty dialogue. A lot of it is lost in the bland English dub, unfortunately. Still this film is worth a watch and sets up much better films. The film doesn't shy away from exposing assassination, secret societies, corrupt government officials and institutional abuses of power by elites and bottom feeders.

8 years later, Jess releases Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Amazing how much less money he's allowed but how much more creative freedom and experience he attained. This is why you can't down this director for working on small projects so frequently. And while Nuns isn't a masterpiece, its high above the quality of most grindhouse of what was the golden age of B-movies. Barring some heavy nods to Ken Russell & Roman Polanski and the basic theme of his own films Justine and The Bloody Judge, Nuns is a beautiful, tasteful, non-exploitative and respectful study of victimhood. Franco takes serious meditation in showing the hypocrisy of the Catholic church and decosntructing the inherent Satanic qualities of Christianity, while condemning dark occultism and libertine sadism. This film too ends with a Romantic and implausible ending, but Franco intended to show his own spiritual beliefs in karma and justice prevailing.

Apparently, Love Letters is a remake of his film The Demons. Expect a review soon! As that is a Robert De Nestle production, I'm sure its heavier on Gothic design and horror tropes. Dietrich as a producer gives Nun a polish, a cold calculated design, a sincere parallelism with Nazism that gives the film undertones of high art. This wasn't just S&M porn for German audiences. This was anti-fascist propaganda and medicine to cure the hearts and minds of survivors of institutional terror. That brave assault on German white nationalism is why this period of Franco's oeuvre ring so loudly today. He was one of cinema's great moralists and, as a villain says in Faceless, a "deep sentimentalist" underneath his spooky, sex-loving mystique.

Nightmares Come At Night (2nd review) 1970 / The Girl From Rio 1969

Nightmares Come At Night was one of my early favorites when I'd only seen a handful of Jess Franco films. I'm still rather impressed but its clearly 2nd tier Franco, more of an experimental film than a big personal work or radical storytelling. But it IS quite shocking, moving and timeless as I stated in the first review. But this time I was more aware of how the film has Franco really juggling his familiar tropes in a big departure. This film explores his usual dark vixens as victims of oppressive Aryan so-called feminism. He subverts and deconstructs the subtly racist "Betty and Veronica" tropes in Western media, as David Lynch would much later and Hitchcock had already done to a more conservative degree. Franco pulls no punches in exploring the sexual intimidation and systemic degradation by white Europeans to their Latin brothers and sisters. Around this period Jess moved further to a so called "primitivism" and tribal art. The film is full of African and Eastern sounds and shapes and our heroine has a Hindu ceremony before transcending her bleak situation. I imagine Franco was deeply moved by Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese Buddhist who set himself on fire famously in 1963, and is lampshading his sacrificial suicide with this film's climax.

The Girl From Rio is a film I can watch endlessly. Its a James Bond-sploitation film that finds its star in "Goldfinger" actress Shirley Eaton who plays a villain more clever, cruel and human than Blofeld. The narrative concerns a Feminist revolution standing in the way of our generic male lead and his useless MacGuffin. In the end, the women triumph and its the greedy nationalist agency that suffers. Its a great plot that luckily has a budget to allow lots of toys for Jess to play with. The film is full of gags, action, setpieces, powerful compositions and elaborate staging. Here he is allowed to run wild into pure surrealism and create a phantasmagorical experience of the cinematic world. This was a major break for him. He never again got a budget to make anything so visually explosive or epically designed, but this solidified his hallucinogenic trademarked style. Maybe he knew this was his final big commercial work and decided to go out with a bang and abuse his budget to make a film as challenging and stylistically daring as possible, career be damned. And he never looked back.

I can't believe these films were made a year apart. That year shows everything Franco gave up and everything he gained. And in short he did it to be the feminist director that was not yet tolerated in mainstream world markets. Two films in two different arenas and decades but both baring the same bold genius.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? 1969

There have been plenty of films about dancing and the worst seem to be about dance contests, but here is the anti-"dance contest movie". Apparently the USSR would show this film in schools as anti-capitalist propaganda. And thats what it was meant as. Its a very pessimistic, brutally honest study of the shady human nature inherent in exploitation. It uses the early days of Hollywood as a backdrop for the story's angry frustration and tears. Its a feminist story mostly. How women, youth, patriotism, blacks, the working class and anyone who believes the American Dream is pimped and gutted by the lawless governing system of money-driven entertainment. The protagonists are literally teased with hopes of success and artistic expression to become consumable meat puppets for the local bourgeoisie.

I can't recommend this any more without giving away important plot details and spoiling things. This is a great film from Sydney Pollack based on a Great Gatsby-esque novel and Jane Fonda kills it acting-wise. Keep in mind that this perfectly reflected the countercultural mood in post-Vietnam, anti-hippie America. Its just as bleak as Bonnie and Clyde or Easy Rider but with a bitter, ironic Old Hollywood style. Brilliant stuff.

Venus In Furs 1969 (2nd review)

Writing reviews this year has opened up my appreciation of cinema and I've learned a lot. Much of that credit belongs to Jess Franco, the obscure Spanish surrealist/grindhouse director I covered for the first half of 2017. Studying his work properly introduced me to tons of concepts & artistic grammar that I was only fuzzy about. Postmodernism, Dada, Existentialism. These themes perfectly reflect the dark crises Earth is handling now. I'm a totally different viewer after this harsh year and my outlook has widened tremendously.

I can admit I'm now embarrassed by one of my early reviews. Rewatching "Venus in Furs" last night, the film was a richer, more clear experience and it deserves a new review. But I will not erase my initial, less informed opinion. We should all give things an educated perspective.

https://hollyweedbabylon.blogspot.com/2017/01/venus-in-furs.html

Now Venus is a case like Blade Runner or Night of the Demons where a young ambitious artist made a deeply existential work of art and producers interfered to make it more commercial, thus losing a lot of the intended power. Funny how all 3 of these films revolve around the concept of perception, an essential component of cinema but maybe the least understood or examined.

I wrote off Venus as a clunky, sexy supernatural slasher like Franco's later work because thats what it is on the surface. Even on first viewing I could tell the film was heavily inspired by Vertigo, Carnival of Souls & Dr. Caligari, as its a dream narrative with dream logic and heavy political symbolism. Franco's film is a uniquely Spanish work examining themes of chauvinism/feminism, racism/colorism, sadism, schizophrenia, memory and probably LSD. The sex & supernatural is only a hook for audiences, but the producers re-edited the narrative to highlight these elements at the expense of any meaning. The film can seem convoluted if you aren't keenly aware of the lyrical storytelling that is mostly intact.

One of my favorite writers of the film blog era, Jeremy Richey of "Moon in the Gutter", detailed a connection between Franco's Venus and Lynch's Lost Highway. I originally thought he was off-base but now the similarities are glaring. The way Franco uses surreal photographic techniques and jazz scoring to highlight the dreaminess and artificiality of certain plot points. Franco gives clues and absurdist touches the way Lynch would after him. There's also the shared sensibility in ghostly, unreal femme fatales, unholy affluent boules and a confused, jazz playing spectator to all of the violent insanity who is oblivious to his role in everything. Franco & Lynch both imply that the world's depravity is at the heart of our sick culture, not a byproduct or separate fringe entity. You have to seriously ask if David Lynch, a monolithic American artist of our times, is a fan of this totally ignored cult director.

Its a hard argument for those uninitiated to Franco because Lynch is so quiet about his influences, unlike Franco in his day. Also Lynch fans are a bit dogmatic in praising Lynch's originality and genius. How can that great unique savant be compared to an inconsistent director of lesbian vampire pornos? As I've tried to argue in the past, Franco was a true auteur and genius and I'm sure his infamy is well-known to enormous film fans WITHIN the directing field. Jess Franco's films predicted so much because they were so structuralist and eventually post-structuralist. By "Venus", every shot is a reversal of the expected. Its a totally fresh experience despite its debts to other films. Because Franco, a super movie buff, was combining all of the radical ideas of his contemporaries (Godard, Antonioni, Bunuel, Welles, Fellini) and boiling them down to a level Spanish & American teenagers could even understand. Following these postmodern directors, it could be argued Franco was the original major post-postmodern & remodernist director like De Palma, Tarantino, Rodriguez and so many later.

I see now how seminal this film is to Franco's oeuvre, even if it wasn't the career gateway he wanted. It really summarizes his aesthetic well and explains the frustrated vision of his later, cheaper work. Many times he tried to execute the misunderstood mysticism of Venus in different terms. Some more mature (Other Side of the Mirror), some more juvenile (Virgin Among the Living Dead). I think Venus is more successful and watchable. But maybe Franco's best and most original take on this type of film poetry was "Succubus". But Venus is right next to it as Franco's attempt at a Roger Corman-esque drive-in mindblower. And to be honest, its a perfect hybrid of Corman's LSD and Gothic horror films, but better than both.

Venus in Furs 1969

A less than spectacular, but far from forgettable erotic horror film with lots of 60s camp, beautiful female flesh and Klaus Kinski.

This started very strong with excellent cinematography and action that hooks you in (don't all Franco films?) and while the wheels never fall off, it turns into more half-baked Franco funny business. Lots of pointlessly long takes, dry characterization, illogical and dimwitted plot construction and an ending that made no sense (in a charming way). I could say the same for the exhilarating and fun Faceless, but the better Franco films play against the shabbiness of the production by experimenting or injecting Franco's psyched out humor. "Venus" is very competently made and even lavish at times, but the whole thing is retarded from rising above mediocrity by its boring and predictable script. Actually, it has everything else going for it; from the cast to the soundtrack to the costumes to the locations to Jess Franco's directing. But let me vent on the frustrating script. This is the story of a man who watches a beautiful woman's murder by some evil bourgeoisie types only to find her returning for revenge and sex, sometimes at once. Its a fantastic setup even if it was common during the years of Barbara Steele curios and Corman's Poe movies. But any of those films would have believable storytelling and characters you invest in. Franco handled this script, so the fault lies in his lap.

There's no question Franco is an underrated and important director and a true auteur, but he was not a good screenwriter. He wrote because he needed work, not because he had much to say. But he could visualize his thin plots beautifully. All of the characters are insanely stupid and the twist ending, even though it makes zero sense and still able to illicit a "WTF!?", is still telegraphed too much. "Venus" is the type of cliche B-movie that you watch just to see will they actually commit to the obvious and played climax or surprise you with something better. While half of the movie is just Eurotrash that doesn't help Jess' reputation, the other half is quite effective. Its not as boring or dumb as other Franco films and it has Franco engaging in his excesses: jazz, young women, love-ins, melodramatic lovers, gorgeous exterior shots and extreme close ups of fantastically flawed faces. You just wish Franco found more producers who reigned him in from the overly long takes and robotic performances and commissioned better rewrites and editing. Perhaps he knew the story was weak so he glossed it with so much dream logic that he could write it off as surrealism. And it does work as a bizarre sensual dream. But its out of necessity and not out of any artistic merit. So this film is a great example of Franco as a craftsman.

I sound like I hated it, but I just saw more potential in this film as its a favorite for Francophiles. Its a cousin to movies like Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls and The Monkees' vehicle Head, but lacking the trippiness and genuine passion that those films have and Franco would unleash gloriously in the 1970s. Imagine how great this movie would've been with many, many minor tweaks. I guess "Venus" is best viewed as a transitional film or a campy crossover work, but nothing too major in his arsenal.

* My opinion has softened since I reviewed this. It has stuck with me: the soundtrack, the strong casting and the mix of horror with sunny exotic locales and jazzy interiors. I've come to expect that Franco's characters don't behave realistically and the plots are cliche. And this films allows the viewer to chalk it up to a literal dream logic and not shallow storytelling.

While "Venus" is weaker in these departments than other Franco films, it is special. It remains a unique experience but sets up the exotic jazzy horror of Vampyros Lesbos, Virgin Among the Living Dead, Other Side of the Mirror and the like. It could've benefited from some sex and explicit violence, but it was 1969. I'm really smitten with it because Maria Rohm is such a perfect Franco female and makes it all work.