Count Dracula 1970 / Night Has a Thousand Desires 1984

Christopher Lee played Dracula many times for Hammer Studios but famously disliked their treatment of the character. Franco directs Lee's single non-Hammer Dracula film and, because of its faithfulness to the plot and tone of the source material, this became Lee's favorite outing as the count. And its easy to see why. Lee shows off some fearsome acting that brings a deadness and evil that is lacking in his more famous roles. The entire film is modestly budgeted, but the minimalism serves the foggy atmosphere and Gothic staging. This is one of Franco's finest examples of restrained directing. His touch is evident in the moments of extreme horror (like Dracula's brides eating a baby) and his excellent use of inner montage through zooms and understated motion. The highlight of this impeccable production is probably the fine casting, including Soledad Miranda in her first vampire role. From the get-go, she is as elegant and seductive as possible. Her tragic aura was never more pronounced and useful to a film and you can see Franco slowly falling for her beauty. This film is an important step in Franco's career as he finds a special muse and gravitates to truly tonal, disturbing horror and away from the simpler, poppier horror stylings of his Orloff films.

I revisited "Other Side of the Mirror" and it feels like a tone poem to Soledad's abrupt death and the dashed romantic feelings he held for her. Its interesting how that film is the rare example of Franco indulging in realism and overt dialogue about philosophy. I bring that film up to highlight that Franco's spacey minimalist indulgence in imagery was a concentrated style that he could break away from if he desired. That helps process his more extreme explorations in style. He knew exactly what he was doing.

NHATD is the most extreme work of cinematic style Franco ever gave us. It makes Diabolical Dr Z look like a Dragnet episode. Its essential in understanding Franco's aims and roots as an artist. The entire experience is not dependent on its thin plot for anything but visual tone and a physical stage for his actor subjects. Almost nothing of incident or attraction happens. I'm blanking on anything happening at all besides some love-making and a 30 second shot of Lina Romay walking slowly towards frame. How is this the most beautiful film I've seen? Because its almost pure documentary of reality except for Franco's experiment with time and editing. All actors are shown lifeless, tranced, ghostly, subjected. Are they in a dream or a ghost world? By simply erasing the action, cutting and sounds we expect, Franco uses our expectations against us and lets our imagination create its own sense of dream space. Its comparable to the effect of Charleton Heston spending reels of "The Omega Man" wandering alone through a psychological warzone to minimalist jazz. But this is way more radical. Franco doesn't give us any surreal or supernatural reason for this affected realism. Its simply his darkly romantic vision of life.

My theory is that Franco's entire aesthetic derives from Soviet montage theorists like Eisenstein and Pudovkin. Franco, perhaps more than any director ever, synthesized their unique views into a style of montage adaptable to any and all narratives. His entire career is practice in applying his profound knowledge of montage to as many films as possible but as economically as possible. NHATD is maybe the culmination of a lifetime of craft and his analysis of the very hypnotic effect of cinema itself. He is asking "What is cinema"? At the depths of finance and obscurity, he finally has the courage to make a film that is anti-commercial and only interested in exploring the power of the camera. And it is triumphant & transcendent.

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.

The Priest's Wife 1970 / Marriage Italian Style 1964 / Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 1963

Bam! 3 Sophia Loren & Marcello Mastroianni films to review. Thanks, TCM.

I started with Priest's Wife, a very unusual rom-com which starts on a slapstick note and gradually winds down to a somber ultra-realistic reflection of human casualty. Its obvious that Sophia & Marcello were very game to push boundaries with their electric screen chemistry. They give audiences the darker, more obscure sides of male/female relationships. This one explores bureaucracy, fundamentalism, sexual experience, maturity levels & intense personal differences. While it is very mature and even tragic, its somewhat hopeful and vague. The filmmakers were respectful enough to let the viewer decide on the ending they want. Of course, the film is beautifully arranged, decorated and shot too courtesy of director Dino Risi.


Vittorio De Sica directs the screen couple in the next two films and wins a "Foreign Film" Oscar with Marriage. Its an excellent, theatrical piece of work where both actors flex light and dark sides of their souls. Its so much fun to watch them play off each other in various games of roleplay. The plot is fairly elaborate, operatic & testy. This was the 2nd (but earlier) film I've watched of theirs to use domestic abuse as a moment of high emotional bonding or romantic pretext. And very interesting that Scorsese would explore this in his films as well. Italians don't have a monopoly on abuse, but they don't shy from representing it in cinema. Its that touch of neorealism, that brooding and violent rejection of judgmental American artifice, that frees this subculture to address the uglier and steamier sides of human romance. The frankness of this film must have been so radical and yet its so commercial without selling out its Italian roots.

Yesterday is even earlier and even more radical. First, its an anthology rom-com that plays the same actors as very unsavory but human roles. This film studies the class difference of couples and the struggles that brings. Its all the most subtle and realistic of comedy with a very muted and mellow seriousness. One excellent touch is how De Sica personalizes the aesthetic of each short film. Story to story he toys with camerawork in the 3rd, lighting in the 2d and staging in the 1st. There are lots of other subtle distinctions to savor and analyze.

This was a big exposure to me. I'm very familiar with low rent grindhouse from Italy and I'm growing a huge appreciation for Italian arthouse, but hadn't found the big budget middlebrow productions like these rom-com's or what Sophia Loren was surprised to learn are called romantic "drama-edies". These films were meant to rival Hollywood's sanitized cheesecake films starring Doris Day & Lana Turner. They are not rip-off's but reactions, reversals and rejections. The spirit of Italian cinematists was more jaded and unwilling to repress or reproach from pressing psychological, emotional and sexual issues in home life. And we must thank them for it. These films played with the medium in less restrained or commercialized ways. They established a technical style highly influenced by theater and photography of Italian nature, fashion and still life. You can feel the exuberance the filmmakers had in just putting these films out into the global market while representing & speaking to their country primarily.

The films have aged nicely and they were beautiful to begin with. This is important & influential stuff and you revel in the fact that it still plays as relevant, immediate and sensual as it was then.

Nightmares Come At Night 1970

This isn't a popular movie but I think its one the most mature film Jess Franco ever worked on. This was the film that made me search deeper in his catalogue as it showed me there was more than just a wild stylist and undervalued technician. Nightmares Comes At Night reveals an artist with his finger on the pulse of disregarded humanity.

Its the story of a woman being abused psychically by another woman. There is no supernatural element and the lesbian relationship serves more purposes than being titillating or dramatic. While definitely having his visual stamp, Franco reigns himself in and uses a more classical and realistic approach to capturing these moments. He very clearly empathized with the core of the movie and showed as much respect for this film as he did any other. There is never a moment where camp or indulgence or cynicism creeps into the filmmaking.

The themes presented here demand a rock solid performance from everyone involved. Suicide, mental illness, manipulation, obsession, sexual agony. Things that rarely left Germany and Sweden at the time! I can't put it as high as those arthouse staples because this is film uses some carnie plot elements to keep it broad and commercial, but you must respect that Franco put so much intelligence into something that was probably sold as "psycho lesbians must die!".

The cast is also wonderful and elevate this. Colette Giacobine delivers as the hypnotic and cold antagonist/love interest of the piece. She has to be the most physically endowed Franco actress next to Alice Arno. Soledad Miranda has a minor part and shines every moment, practically begging to drive her own film. And Diana Lorys, who appeared in the original Dr Orloff, returns as the lead. She has an Elizabeth Taylor quality. Vulnerable, doughy, regal and a little melodramatic, she's perfect as the crazed and sympathetic star.

If you like your Franco with more class AND A LITTLE ASS, Nightmares is perfect.