Justine and the Whip (1979)

Around the late ‘70s, Joe D’Amato got his paws on three Jess Franco films and, with editing help from Bruno Mattei, combined separate footage from each film into a single film called Justine and the Whip, starring Lina Romay, with Alice Arno receiving top billing. The dialogue from the original films was changed and redubbed in Italian, and the soundtrack was reworked. 

The reasons for why a patchwork movie like Justine and the Whip exists aren’t clear. Some have said that it was because D’Amato was salvaging an unfinished film from Franco that was originally intended to be another version of De Sade’s Justine. But I read in Stephen Thrower’s The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco: Volume Two that the original film was called Julietta 69 and was completed and actually had a 1976 French cinema release before becoming inaccessible.* It’s speculated that Jess Franco sold Julietta 69 to an Italian production company, and D’Amato and Mattei were eventually commissioned by Franco Gaudenzi to make the mashup Justine and the Whip. Thrower also points out that D’Amato claimed in an interview from Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut (1999) that they were trying to make Franco’s films more “usable”,* but the result here is an incoherent mess that seems quite unusable, at least by comparison to what the completed Julietta 69 must have been like. Maybe by “usable” D’Amato meant more commercially appealing for the time by possibly increasing the number and frequency of love scenes in the film.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

There’s no other experience quite like Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, or even the alternate clothed Spanish version Las Vampiras. I recall coming across the DVD of this film on the shelf in the foreign-film section at (the now defunct) Hastings Entertainment, and, being a newborn Jess Franco fan at the time, I knew I wanted it. I had just come off of Jess Franco’s Macumba Sexual (1983) and was ready for more. Only problem was I remembered being a little too self-conscientious about looking like a weirdo bringing a film called Vampyros Lesbos up to checkout, but I bit-the-bullet and proudly made my purchase. 

To tell you the truth, I’d like to relate my first-time experience watching Vampyros Lesbos, but I honestly cannot seem to remember a lot about it, other than that I noticed some similarities to Macumba Sexual. I do remember that afterwards, I quickly picked up Jess Franco’s She Killed in Ecstasy (1971), which was made around the same time and also starred the sultry Spanish beauty Soledad Miranda in another arousing but also sympathetic role. 

While re-watching Vampyros Lesbos more recently, despite seeing it several times before, I noticed that I had forgotten a lot of specifics to the storyline, but I still remembered my favorite parts quite well while also realizing new favorite parts. It just seems to become more enriching upon each viewing, opening itself up further each time I revisit it. It never feels old, overwatched, or stale. Basically, it’s a real keeper that should be kept close and revisited at least once a year. Every scene is worth savoring.

Macumba Sexual (1983)

For me, going back to Macumba Sexual is going back to my Jess Franco origins, as it was the second Jess Franco film I ever saw, the first being Mansion of the Living Dead (1982). I came across both Severin DVDs of these films at a video store in 2007 and took a chance with Mansion first even though I was expecting it to be terrible (I had heard of Jess Franco and a not so revered zombie movie by the name of Oasis of the Zombies (1982)). At the time, I was desperate for something new, and I was sort of fascinated by the cheap looking blind dead Templar rip-offs on the DVD cover (Diet Tombs of the Blind Dead?). My expectations were low, but it turned out to be a funny, sexy, ultra-weird, and surprisingly atmospheric horror movie with a captivating lead actress, Lina Romay (born Rosa Maria Almirall). I shortly went back to the store for Macumba Sexual and, despite some frustrations, have been hooked on Jess Franco ever since (thanks Severin!).

Daughter of Dracula / La fille de Dracula (1972)

Jess Franco filmed Daughter of Dracula back to back with the preceding film Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972). These two films seem similar and for me were sometimes easy to confuse with one another, but after reviewing them both back to back, I realize they are quite different in many ways. Unlike the previous film, the eroticism is amped up this time around, particularly with the love/feeding scenes between Franco regulars of the era Anne Libert and Britt Nichols. It isn’t necessarily the monster mashup like the previous film since for monsters we just have Dracula, a femme vampire, and a mystery killer. Perhaps it’s more of a Eurocult genre mashup, as this one has a reputation for being confused as to whether it wants to be an erotic vampire horror film or a giallo-like murder mystery.

Daughter of Dracula doesn’t quite reach its potential, but it’s nonetheless a relaxing Gothic horror with a captivating modern ‘70s setting in an old-world location that provides the right ambiance us Eurocult fans can’t get enough of.

Howard Vernon reprises his role as his own odd, unique, near-lifeless version of Count Dracula from Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein. He’s even less active here, but Britt Nichols and Anne Libert get more to do this time around, even if Nichols’ vampire scenes may’ve soared a little more in the preceding movie.

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein / Dracula contra Frankenstein (1972)

Jess Franco had already covered Dracula by directing a movie adaption of Bram Stoker’s seminal Gothic horror vampire novel from 1897 a couple years prior. So, what does Jess do next when returning to make another Gothic Count Dracula movie?... Take the Universal route and throw Dracula in with other classic monster figures, like Frankenstein and The Wolfman, to have a go at it and see who would win in a fight.

With Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein, the familiar monster mashup style gets the Jess Franco treatment, which is essentially Classic Universal horror in color with Franco’s flavor of visual and hypnotic storytelling, yet for a Jess Franco film, the eroticism is quite tame, with no nudity to be found. It adapts certain elements from Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the Dracula angle, but the Frankenstein angle borrows more from Franco’s own The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962) and less from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Curiously, the opening text, credited to David H Klunne (a Franco pseudonym), is pretty much a poetic and short synopsis of the film, rather than some sort of backstory setup to get viewers up to date, like an opening Star Wars crawl. That’s OK, because there isn’t really a whole lot to spoil, since the experience of the film, in this case, is a little more important than the story, which I think isn’t necessarily hard to follow, but it doesn’t really sink in either since there is a lot of visual depth, atmosphere, and cool ideas in what is a slow and thin plot.

S & M: Les Sadiques (2016)

It seems like only yesterday when we were checking out The Devil of Kreuzberg (2015), a respectably accomplished modern gothic horror film directed by Alexander Bakshaev that’s gotten a lot of due praise, and now, seemingly out of nowhere, Alex and the great folks involved follow it up with a killer Jess Franco tribute S & M: Les Sadiques.

I had viewed a lot of compelling images of this film when it was in production, and one of the images, which did not end up in the cut of S & M that I watched, displayed lead actor Nadine Pape channeling an iconic image of late ‘60s, early ‘70s Franco lead Soledad Miranda, and I thought it looked cool. It captured the original spirit but also had a different energy about it that was trying to impart a new vision, something that’s not only a great tribute but also works on a number of other levels, which is something that could also be said about the overall film.

Night of 1,000 Sexes / Mil sexos tiene la noche (1984)

Despite there being a finite number of Jess Franco films, it virtually feels like I won’t ever run out of Franco movies to choose from, since there are so many (over 200) and from many different eras (from the ‘50s up to 2013). I’ve explored and hunted for Jess Franco films for close to a decade now and still have quite a journey ahead of me, which will probably only end for me if I ever lose interest. The selection pool is deep enough to be a lifelong endeavor, especially if you plan on really absorbing, studying, and digesting most of them. I’ve got my favorites that I return to when I can, but more frequently I always get an itch for a new one, but the list is long, which is equal parts comforting and overwhelming.

When it comes to the large selection of erotic Lina Romay featured Franco titles, it can be difficult to make a selection. You want something that goes beyond just lengthy porn scenes; you want something worth keeping, something that’s erotic but also dark, ethereal, metaphysical, with a dreamy ambiance, emotion, and artistic merit. Well, if you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re looking for a sweet Jess Franco and Lina Romay fix, the film I’m pulling out for you tonight, Night of 1,000 Sexes, will meet your demands.

Les gloutonnes (1973)

With the French productions The Lustful Amazons (1973) and Les gloutonnes, Jess Franco wrote and directed two brazenly erotic takes on Italy’s own Hercules counterpart Maciste, a recurring cinematic hero from the peplum genre with respectable origins dating back to the silent film era, starting with Cabiria (1914). A different character altogether, Franco’s Maciste, played by Wal Davis, is more of a medieval playboy, adventuring to new lands full of sex hungry Amazons, randy mythical queens, and horny Atlanteans, saving the day, satisfying entire tribes, and living to tell about it.
  
The Lustful Amazons contains some of the most entertaining comedic sex scenes, with top tier Franco babes Alice Arno, Kali Hansa, and Lina Romay, that are quite arousing to watch, and they manage to keep an otherwise underwhelming film lively enough to sit through with a minimal level of enjoyment. On the other hand, the longer sex interludes in Les gloutonnes manage to drag down what is actually an intriguing erotic fantasy/adventure film. The settings for some of the more detached porn scenes, seemingly edited into the film, are dark and surreal (done with Franco’s tendency for up-close body worship) but couldn’t be more unnecessarily drawn out, even in a Jess Franco film, where I’m usually conditioned for such lengthy interludes.

Succubus / Necronomicon (1968)

During an interview included on the 2006 Blue Underground release of Succubus, Jess Franco spoke of a sixteenth century book he had come across on a bookshelf entitled Necronomicon that had belonged to a wealthy actor and film producer Pier A. Caminnecci, who had invited Jess over to his house to indulge in his extensive jazz collection, as the two were mutual jazz fans. Jess read a short story from this particular book that was so extraordinary he had to make it into a movie. Of course, this incarnation of the Necronomicon was most likely an imitation since this popular mythical tome came entirely from HP Lovecraft’s imagination in the early twentieth century, but it’s still fun to think that Jess may’ve been influenced by the actual ‘book of the dead’ written by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred. Jess blended the material from the book with a script for a horror movie he had previously worked on, and the result is one of his most provocative films.

Female Vampire / La comtesse noire (1973)

If you haven’t noticed, female vampires in movies have been a long-running theme I’ve enjoyed exploring with this blog. It’s an appealing aspect of fiction to me, and I just can’t get away from the archetypical idea of the vampiress: her gothic image, seductive power, hidden feral side, and deadly sexuality. Some time ago, around the time I reviewed The Blood Spattered Bride, I finally gave Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla a read and wasn’t too surprised at realizing how much Carmilla’s influence is felt in a large number of cult female vampire films. Although, there seems to have been a bit of a debate as to whether or not the perceived erotic subtext in Le Fanu’s novella has been misinterpreted by non-Victorian readers, yet many filmmakers have nonetheless taken the subtext at face value, taking whatever supposed eroticism is there in the writing of the book out of the implicit and into the explicit; and, for its time, Jess Franco’s Female Vampire (a.k.a. La comtesse noire, Bare Breasted Countess, Erotikill, and many more) has to be the most erotic lady vampire piece, even more so for the XXX version Lüsterne Vampire Im Spermarausch. (On the opposite end of the spectrum is perhaps, and also recommended, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death — a Carmilla influenced movie that hardly features any eroticism).

The Other Side of the Mirror / Al otro lado del espejo (1973)

Jess Franco could film movies faster than I can write reviews for them. His films can sometimes have an overwhelming low quality feel to them, making them difficult to digest for the majority. The natural location shots, haunting tone, memorable and well-chosen female actors (Franco definitely had an eye for female leads that just seemed to resonate with the camera lens), and Franco’s brand of bizarre surrealism and eroticism don’t seem to be enough to save the films for many, but they are nonetheless a huge hit for others. Al otro lado del espejo contains all of the aforementioned elements and yet has a higher-than-usual quality feel to it, most likely due to the terrific acting and screen presence from its leading lady (Emma Cohen of Horror Rises from the Tomb and Night of the Walking Dead) and a believable tragic story.

Jazz pianist/singer Ana (Cohen) is profoundly affected by her father’s (Howard Vernon) suicide shortly after her engagement. After calling off the wedding, Ana leaves her homeland on Madeira Island only to undergo several failed relations when she intermittently becomes hypnotically driven to kill any man that becomes close to her.

It isn’t just enough to say that Ana is haunted by images of her dead father in the mirror. She doesn’t just see him, but she finds herself at times in the mirror, in Franco’s looking glass world. It can also be viewed as Ana’s mental reflection on her emotional trauma. The memory of her father’s suicide driven by his stubborn disapproval of her marrying and leaving him is intertwined with Ana’s psyche, manifesting itself when she murders any man that shows any sexual interest in her. Ana’s traumatization, spurned the moment of her outcry into the mirror, yields a malediction that could either be viewed as some sort of curse or spell from her father’s ghost or played off as the result of a kind of posttraumatic stress disorder. If taken at face value, the goose bumps inducing ending, made more dramatic with church bells signifying the wedding that never was, reveals which one happens to be the case.

Jess Franco's Count Dracula (1970)

As a kid, my earliest understanding of Count Dracula came from The Monster Squad (1987), Count Chocula, Sesame Street, and a mythical final boss I could never get to in the Nintendo game Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest. None of which was the proper way to get to know The Count, of course. And so, I remained ignorant of the real legend of Count Dracula until fairly recently when I was instilled with a desire to read Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), following a pleasurably short read from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872). Thanks to Stoker’s novel, I’ve been on quite the Dracula kick lately, watching a lot of films based on the novel, such as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), Dracula (1931), Horror of Dracula (1958), Count Dracula (1970), Nosferatu: The Vampyre (1979), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and Dracula 3D (2012).

I really think we would’ve had a near-perfect adaptation with Francis Ford Coppola’s version from 1992, if it weren’t for the love story between Dracula and Mina thrown in, and I don’t think Lucy was supposed to seem so promiscuous, either. I’m actually not offended by a soft Dracula that could genuinely fall in love with a living woman without wishing her any harm; just don’t shoehorn it into an adaptation of Stoker’s novel. A lot of people who haven’t read the book will probably think it was a romance novel. I actually thought it was an interesting idea in Count Dracula’s Great Love (1974), where Paul Naschy created and portrayed, for the first time, Count Dracula as a romantic softie.

Venomous Vixens: Britt Nichols

Born in Guarda, Portugal, May 29th, 1951, the delectable and very statuesque Britt Nichols (born Marìa do Carmo da Resurreição de Deus) has enjoyed a successful fashion modeling career in Argentina for over 35 years under her more common name Carmen Yazalde, and, looking better than ever, she continues to model to this day, hosting cable TV shows and appearing frequently in the media.

A former Miss Portugal, Nichols married an Argentinian soccer player on July 16th, 1973, European Golden Shoe winner Héctor Yazalde, and moved from Portugal to Argentina in 1977 and has stayed there ever since.

When reading articles about the fashion model Carmen Yazalde on the web, as far as I could tell, there didn’t seem to be any mention of her cinema career in the early ‘70s. As I have found on a thread from the Latarnia Forums, she apparently does not wish to discuss that period of her career but claims to still be proud of the films she has been in; the bulk of which consists of films directed by the late, great Jess Franco. She also appeared in Amando De Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead and a giallo by Juan Bosch, The Killer with a Thousand Eyes.

Nichols left cinema behind shortly after getting married, but her relatively small body of work in film is fondly remembered and embraced by Eurocult movie fans. She is commonly seen in Franco films with Anne Libert (our favorite woman-in-black) and is perhaps heavily remembered as the sapphic vampire lead in Daughter of Dracula and more so as the bizarre, living-dead bombshell haunting the ancestral castle of the title character in A Virgin Among the Living Dead.

Faceless (1987)

Faceless is a rather unscrupulous, but not entirely tasteless, splatter film from Jess Franco that is a loose addition to his long running Dr. Orloff series that began in 1962 with The Awful Dr. Orloff. It’s got a bigger budget than the usual Franco film, thanks to French producer Rene Chateau, and it shows. Being more a fan of Franco’s ‘no-budget’ erotic surrealist horror from the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, it was interesting for me to see him do the gory ‘80s thing rather adequately. The cast is also a treat for genre-fans, as it includes several fan favorites who are all great in their parts, like Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie, Telly Savalas, Caroline Munro, Lina Romay, and Howard Vernon as Dr. Orloff, who, like Romay, is only here for a brief but memorable cameo.

Along with the copious gore candy, a major strength here is the addition of numerous well-acted villains. It’s like a gathering of abhorrent human monsters that are all a representation of the darker, evil side of human nature and therefore realistic, but there’s also a fantasy angle, too, with the beauty restoration operations and the youthful look of Dr. Orloff’s elderly wife (Romay) bringing Faceless into the realm of Cinema Fantastique. The surgical operations are the most gruesome element; the way the eyes still move from the still conscious, drugged victims after their faces have been surgically removed is extremely disturbing. The man in charge of the real dirty work of disposing the bodies of the captured girls, Gordon (Gérard Zalcberg), brings on the gore, too, and is also the most outwardly monstrous creation of the bunch (I can’t help wishing that he was called Morpho, to keep up with a Franco tradition for these types of characters).

Rochelle, Rochelle

Of all the fake movies referenced in several Seinfeld episodes, one in particular Rochelle, Rochelle is one that actually looks interesting to me. I usually get a chuckle from some of the silly fake movie titles mentioned in the series like Checkmate, Sack Lunch, Chunnel, and Prognosis Negative, but Rochelle, Rochelle appeals to the inner cult movie fan in me, and I just can’t help wishing that the movie was real and directed by someone like Jess Franco. The tagline: “A young girl's strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk” reminds me of Franco’s Eugenie… the story of her journey into perversion, and it also brings to mind Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle Around the World. Could it be that the writers of Seinfeld had these types of films in mind when coming up with the Rochelle, Rochelle gag? In the series, the movie is referred to as foreign and apparently generated a lot of hype, but the general response ended up being that the plot was unbearable, and it was just the nudity that made it revered. Now I absolutely love this kind of stuff (especially if there are horror elements fused in), so you usually won’t find me making such remarks.

What do you think? Is there more to most foreign erotic movies than just the sex and nudity?
  

Venomous Vixens: Kali Hansa

Kali Hansa, born Marisol Hernández, sort of put a spell on me with her role as Tunika in Amando de Ossorio’s THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS. I would have dreams that were kind of like my own imagined sequel to the film, where, in a sickly state, I would travel to the African forest where this film took place. Knowing my time was running short, due to some sort of terminal illness, I would travel up a mountain and to a place where I knew I would find Tunika, in her vampire form. Longing to end my suffering, I would find her in a shallow moonlit river where she would welcome me, and through an act of vampiric intercourse, she would make me like her, curing me, making me immortal, and also inflicting her curse upon me. 

Thus is the effect her presence in THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS had on me. With her constantly lingering in my mind, I eventually viewed several more films that she was in, sometimes credited as Gaby Herman or Kali Hansen. I was slightly saddened to find out that she was usually just a supporting/minor character and had an acting career that didn’t really take off, and it seemed to have ended circa 1976 after shooting a hardcore porno for Jess Franco, WHITE SKIN BLACK THIGHS and an erotic comedy, GIRLS IN THE NIGHT TRAFFIC. Despite usually having small roles and frequently being killed off, she visually stood out the most amongst other characters and gave off an ‘Oh-wow, who’s-that?’ impression. She apparently vanished after filming her last movie. She is from Cuba and was the girlfriend of Alberto Dalbes.

(Rumor bin: According to Jess Franco she moved back to Cuba to use her exceptional strength to fight against Fidel Castro!!!) 

For this tribute to Kali Hansa, and possibly a new series for AT THE MANSION OF MADNESS (Venomous Vixens), I’ve organized a few thoughts and images from a selection of some of her films.

She Killed in Ecstasy (1970)

What decides when to move forward with experimentation that may be considered unethical or taboo but could better humanity? Debates on the ethics and consequences of the research are usually conducted. But what of the consequences of the idea being turned down? One possible answer to this is provided in Jess Franco’s SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY, where a physician, who believes his experiments hold the key to making humanity far more resistant to disease, is condemned, on moral grounds, by his colleagues, insulted and has to endure his precious documents being ripped and thrown aside.

   

With Jess Franco, I don’t necessarily think it's a simple matter of taste but more a matter of acquired taste. I mentioned a while back in my write-up for A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD that I wasn’t too impressed with Franco at first. In fact, I started watching his movies just to see if they are as bad as some people say they are. But the impulse to continue to explore his works stayed with me, and I’m glad I didn’t lose interest, otherwise, I really would’ve missed out on some gems, like this one.

A married couple lives a blissfully happy existence together, until the husband’s controversial research on human embryos results in him being expelled from his occupation by the medical association. He is driven to suicide, and his wife swears revenge on those she believes to be responsible.

This story contains no real surprises, and it ends up being easy to see where everything is going, and so, it instead becomes more important that we at least enjoy our time in the world that the film creates for us and the company of its lead character. The pleasant company in SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY is Soledad Miranda, who I’d like to describe as being like a fragile doll with enticingly dark features and doughy eyes that stare seductively. In a room full of people, she stands out like a beautiful black rose in a garden of weeds.

Jess Franco's The Rites of Frankenstein (1972)

The greatest mystery in life is perhaps life itself. The answer to this mystery has constantly been sought after through the ages, and as we progress ever closer to the truth the question arises as to what to do with it once it has been found. 

Jess Franco’s film plays upon a controversial notion that synthetically creating life is unethical or more appropriately in the case of Dr. Frankenstein, played by Dennis Price, evil and maddening. This is the understanding one gets when witnessing the regretful facial expressions of Frankenstein’s lab assistant Morpho, Franco himself, reluctantly flipping the switch to give life to Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, a silvery almost robotic looking monster, played by Fernando Bilbao (the brutal axe wielding giant from THE VAMPIRES’ NIGHT ORGY). The Doctor’s deeds, as he claims, are for the sake of science and progression, which is an admirable motivation. However, the immediate arrival of 2 thieves in the night, Anne Libert and Luis Barboo, sabotaging the project and stealing the corpse goes to show that not everyone will have such pure intentions. The overall message here is that Dr. Frankenstein’s creation is not inherently evil, but it becomes evil in the wrong hands, and the wrong hands in this case is Cagliostro, Howard Vernon, a mad and evil warlock with bigger plans. 

Even though the Frankenstein monster is the headline of this film, Anne Libert steals the show as a blind cannibalistic harpy named Melisa, much the same way she steals the show as lady death in Franco’s A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD. Libert’s delirious performance here is amusing and way over the top, and I salute her for it. She was entirely enigmatic and silent as the lady in black in AVATLD, but she is very verbal here and even squawks like a bird of prey with grin inducing overdubs of what sounds like a falcon. Given Libert’s ability to just own every scene she’s in, I honestly think that she could be thought of as another Barbara Steele, albeit much more erotic. 

Jess Franco's A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1971)

To have never met or even known one’s own family is a sad thing indeed, but to finally be reunited with your relatives only to discover that you’d have been far better off never knowing them is truly the saddest thing of all. A young ladies first time discovery of her bizarre and outlandish relatives in a homecoming from Hell is the subject of tonight’s film review for a Belgian, Italian, and French financed film shot in Portugal that was written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco (wait don’t leave!), known as A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD. 

The film follows Christina (Christina von Blanc) travelling home from a boarding school in London, in order to visit her relatives at the Castle Monteserate and to attend the reading of her father’s Will. Odd thing is she has never known her father or even met her relatives, and according to an Innkeeper and the village locals, the castle she is headed for is apparently abandoned. But nonetheless, Christina continually insists and believes that her whole family lives there. 

During the intro credits, the film illustrates Christina’s Journey to the village with travelling shots of very normal and mundane location visuals that clash with the dissonant and creepy music that is being heard. This for me suggests that danger can be nearby at even the most unexpected instances and reminds us that we live with the constant risk of heading into treacherous perils without even knowing it. This is definitely the case for Christina, who is most unsuspecting of the threat that awaits her back home… A threat in the form of a seductive lady in black, guiding her to the ultimate destination in life…