The Diabolical Dr. Z

The Diabolical Dr. Z
Original title: Miss Muerte
Directed by: Jess Franco
Spain/France, 1966
Horror, 84min
Distributed by: Mondo Macabro

Repeated viewing of Jess Franco movies will (or should, if you are paying attention) result in the recognition of certain patterns, threads and themes that reoccur in many of his works. The Diabolical Dr. Z is one such movie where familiarity is found, more specifically the avenging woman theme with the most famous possibly being Sie tötete in Ekstase (She Killed in Ecstasy) 1971. On both movies Franco used a ”woman out for vengeance” plot most likely influenced by Cornell Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black, a novel that not only inspired Jess Franco, but also the likes of Umberto Lenzi, Hitchcock and Truffaut.

A criminal, Hans Bergen, aka The Sadist Strangler [Guy Mariesse] escapes from death row – the papers report of his breakout and flight warning locals to be on the lookout. Safe inside his mansion, Doctor Zimmer [Antionio Jiménez Escribano who also starred in Franco’s first feature, the comedy Tenemos 18 ãnos (We Are 18 Years Old) 1959] reads of the daring getaway of this sinister criminal for his daughter Irma [Mabel Karr] and their servant Barbara [Lucía Prado]. Before you can say juxtaposition, the doorbell rings and they all freeze… But if you where expecting Bergen to enter the house and hold the Doctor and family hostage you got another thing coming, because here the tables are turned and Bergen becomes one of Dr. Z’s laboratory specimens.

In front of the board at the International Neurologist Congress Dr.Z presents his research and proclaims that he can manipulate the brain and make the most violent animal the most gentle – and vice versa – and that the time has come to take his research to a new level and experiment on humans. Not mentioning that Bergen the Sadist Strangler already has been cured. Obviously the board strike down upon him as Howard Vernon’s Dr. Vicas ridicules and rejects Dr. Z’s request! Crushed by their reaction Dr. Z suffers a fatal heart attack and with his dying breath, he begs Irma to take over his research… the ball is set in motion.

Dr. Philippe Brighthouse [Fernando Montes – who also starred in Gritos en la noche (The Awful Dr. Orlof) 1962] comforts Irma in her grief and also takes the advantage of bedding her in her weak condition - something I’ll get back to later on. The two go to the obligatory Franco nightclub scene and watch an erotically charged act featuring Miss Death [Estella Blain] and a mannequin. Irma takes the first steps towards claiming her revenge, and whilst trading places with a hitchhiker she’s just killed, she is hideously disfigured when the flames of the car she’s trying to torch flare up in her face.

The fancy robotic operating table of Dr.Z comes back into action as Irma and her slave Bergen turn Barbara one of her puppets, They then take to reconstructing Irma’s burned face on which she impressing enough operates on herself. It’s another obvious referent to Franco’s breakthrough feature The Awful Dr. Orlof and there are several others to be found if you are keeping count, and yes Bergen is the Morpho of The Diabolical Dr. Z. With her new identity, Irma kidnaps Nadja – Miss Death’s real name – who has become romantically engaged with Dr. Brighthouse! As Nadja is strapped to the table and has her brain manipulated by Irma she too becomes a mannequin of death and Irma can start to claim her vengeance on the men who ridiculed and drove her father to his grave. It is time to unleash Miss Muerte!

Like many Franco movies The Diabolical Dr. Z is closely related and intertextually linked to The Awful Dr. Orlof. There’s several nods to that important movie, like the operation mentioned above, there also great one when Dr. Zimmer goes to the International Neurologist Congress and declares that he, just like Dr. Orloff and his former research, is also about to take a grand step forward if only… and that’s one of the big brass keys to Franco’s movies set in this niche. The “if only”, if only the board would have accepted his request to expand his research into human subjects then there wouldn’t have been any problems and the world would most likely have ended up a better place. But instead we find a bitter daughter determined to make the men who ridiculed her father pay, pay with their lives. It’s the same with She Killed in Ecstasy, if only they had let Dr. Johnson [Fred Williams] continue his experiments, he wouldn’t have become so depressed, wouldn’t have snuffed himself and Mrs. Johnson [Soledad Miranda] wouldn’t have had to kill them all.

I really like The Diabolical Dr. Z., I find it to be one of the best early Franco works. It's in there among his so called Pop-Art movies and it's easy to understand why. I love discovering small details that find their way into these early movies. Not just intertextual referents, but also small details like the members as the International Neurologist Congress where the American representative has a patch over his eye – just like Europeans had been portrayed in US movies, here the Yanks get a poke with the stick.

It’s odd when you go back to older Franco movies like The Diabolical Dr.Z, because they sometimes - especially this one - make me appreciate what a great director he really was [is] and where he could have gone with his career. Not that the direction his career went was a bad one, but there’s a bitter sense that there was yet more great masterworks in there if only he’d had the funding which it required. Then again this would indefinitely have resulted in us loosing all those low budget masterpieces of sleaze, trash and surreal Franco moments.

Franco fans will know that Jess Franco likes to cast himself in his own movies. The Diabolical Dr. Z is no exception and here he gives a great performance as Inspector Tanner - a police inspector depraved of sleep due to his infant children at home - really brings some classic Franco quirk to the part. The older detective, Inspector Green, is Daniel White who you know as the composer of oh so many Franco scores. There’s like a genuine comedic quality to his reoccurring parts. In many ways it’s like watching a twisted Woody Allen portrayal, where he’s plagued with some neurotic fetish, rambling back and forth through the narrative. Just keep an eye on what he has on his desk in the first police station scene… Looking at the movies Franco shot at the same time period its perhaps no surprise that there’s a comedic element to his performance, both the Sci-Fi flick Cartes sur table (Attack of the Robots) 1966 and the spy action movie Lucky, el intrépido (Lucky the Inscrutable) 1967 as they both feature heavy spoofish and comedic takes on the two genres, and as I mentioned early on, his first feature was a comedy toned movie.

The camerawork & lighting of D.P. Alejandro Ulloa - who also shot stuff like Lucio Fulci’s Una sull’altra (One on Top of the Other) 1969, Sergio Corbucci’s Vamos a matar compañeros (Companeros) 1970 and Luciano Ercoli’s Le foto prohibite di una signora per bene (The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion) 1970 to mention a few – is absolutely outstanding. The entire sequence on the train as Nadja seduces and finally murders Dr. Vicas [Howard Vernon] is textbook stuff. It should be lifted from this movie and shown to aspiring filmmakers for all eternity. The lighting, the tension, the atmosphere, the fragility of him slowly disrobing her as she gently prepares to strike him down with her poison laden fingernails… it’s a magic moment.

The murders are really a treat. Not only the above mentioned train sequence, but also the splendid capture and gassing of Dr. Moroni [Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui] as Bergen wears a creepy mask and mocks Moroni as he suffocates in the back seat. Then the final one, Dr. Kallman [Cris Huerta] who is lured into trouble as Nadja lies in the middle of the road. He stops, picks her up and then flips the table on both her and Irma when he reveals that he knows all about the brainwashing robot and techniques that go into creating the puppets, because he’s studied Dr. Z’s research… I won’t spoil how it goes, but it is riveting stuff!

Looking at the storytelling angle of The Diabolical Dr. Z, there are several things that stand out. This is Franco using his David Kuhne pseudonym and Jean-Claude Carrière (who went on to become one of the most acknowledged French screenwriters ever) at their finest - well it’s all objective isn’t it, and for me as a Franco fan, this is a fine moment – and here we find storytelling crafts coming into use. After the death of Dr. Z a short amount of time is spent creating empathy for Irma, she doesn’t want to go back to the old house as it will be “lonely in the big house without him”, Dr. Brighthouse backtalk’s the other members of the congress – which helps us take sides with Irma, and then when she pulls back out of her bedroom, startled by the empty wheelchair of her father we can understand her sadness. Instead she takes refuge in the arms of Dr. Brighthouse, which leads right into the next splendid little trick. By having him be a double-dipper being entangled with both Irma and Nadja, it creates a neat little triangle drama and builds a tension that we take with us into the final act, as we know Irma, Nadja and Dr. Brighthouse will have to come head to head before it’s all over. Great stuff and a delight to watch unfold.

Two last comments on the final moments of the movie. It would be fair to say that the quick fix is a trait of Jess Franco; he doesn’t waste time when the end is reached. The Diabolical Dr.Z plays exactly but that trait, the moment after the police settle the score the movie ends, but for one final quirk. The ending where Inspector Tanner, who miraculously after a good nights sleep away from the children who have been depriving him of sleep figures it all out and arrives on the scene of the crime at the exact right moment to set it all straight, certainly rings of a certain humour just like I mentioned previously. The final scene of the film, an open question, a last provocation, a last shock if you wish, as Nadja is consoled by her lover Dr. Brighthouse she raises her hand to his cheek and we will never know if she strokes his cheek lovingly or if those poison claws take one final victim. It’s a fantastic ending to a fantastic movie.

The Diabolic Dr.Z is a fantastic Franco movie. It’s possible that due to it being shot in black and white or the lack of required nudity and sleaze inhibit it from being recognised for the masterpiece that it is. For it is a masterpiece of a movie. A movie that is more of a Horror Noir with Gothic elements than the stuff we associate with Jess Franco. If anyone asked for a crash course to the movies of Franco, then The Diabolic Dr. Z would definitely be amongst my top five must-see titles for any one boldly entering the world of Jess Franco.

Image:
Black & White – Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:
Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0, optional English or French dialogue, with English subtitles

Extras:
Mondo Macabro usually fill up their discs pretty damned well. This one is no exception as the disc contains the Jess Franco episode of Eurotica, an alternative opening sequence, Trailers, Galleries, production notes and stills. Finally there are the mandatory trailers for other Mondo Macabro titles.

She Killed in Ecstasy

She Killed in Ecstasy
Original Title: Sie tötete in Ekstase
Directed by: Jesus Franco
West Germany / Spain, 1971
Thriller / Horror (barely)
Distributed by: Synapse films

I get the feeling that every Jesus Franco DVD released contains the ”Franco’s finest film” on the shallow synopsis on the back of the cover. Quite possibly it’s true, as Franco certainly is an eccentric jack-of-all-trades who goes with the flow, working with a multitude of producers and almost reinventing his style for each collection of titles directed for the various production houses. It is an impressive amount of movies he's churned out, and when financed appropriately by the varied producers he's come up with some classic movies. Some gave him larger means, other lesser, but Franco always makes the most of it and gives his best to deliver what is expected.

She Killed in Ecstasy is a pretty straightforward movie during its 73 minutes and continuous zooming in and out of the compositions, as the beautiful Soledad Miranda [here billed as Susann Korda – who starred in eight of Franco’s movies] who is happily married to Dr. Johnson [Fred Williams – also a Franco regular]. But after Johnson’s research and experiments on human embryo’s is rejected and he’s exiled from the medicinal world, he goes insane, finally committing suicide… The grief ridden Mrs. Johnson goes on a killing spree to make the committee responsible for her husband's death pay with their lives. The committee, a bunch of Franco regulars, consisting of Professor Jonathan Walker, [Howard Vernon], Dr. Franklin Houston [Paul Muller], Dr. Crawford [Ewa Strömberg – a Swedish actress who started out in Pippi Långstrump director Olle Hellbom’s 1959 classic Raggare! and also starred in Arne Mattsson’s fantastic Mördaren – En Helt Vanlig Person 1967] and Dr. Donnen [Franco himself]. Mrs. Johnson stalks, seduces and kills all four of them and for good measures Franco has thrown in Horst Tappert as the police inspector not only investigating the death of Mr. Johnson, but also the killings of the other doctors. But it’s not much of an investigation as he merely participates in a few scenes, not really giving the impression of investigating at all, but asking the question: "What kind of maniac would commit these kinds of murders?" Just in case we hadn’t grasped that Mrs. Johnson was crazy.

Soledad, flirts, seduces and kills her way through the lot of them, in a rather dull fashion, apart from the murder of Dr. Crawford who she first enjoys a little lesbian flirt and romp with before killing with a plastic see through cushion. A great little scene as the camera stays in a master shot only to intercut the close-ups of Strömberg suffocating through the plastic. Finally Mrs. Johnson’s work is done, and she is reunited with her dead hubby in death as she drives her car over a cliff… an profoundly ironic scene as the seductive and tender Soledad Miranda herself would die all to young in a tragic car accident herself in 1970.

She Killed In Ecstasy is one of the more familiar movies of Franco’s, possibly because he claims Miranda’s performance to be one of his own personal faves. Strangely Franco, just like Amanda de Ossorio, supposedly doesn’t like his own movies at all. It’s sad, because there are a few gems in there. Unfortunately She Killed in Ecstasy is a shambles of a movie, almost completely lacking of suspense, filled with terrible zooms back and forth, poor editing, corny dialogue, really lame scenes of seduction and sex scenes that are about as erotic as taking the trash out, but it does have a great soundtrack and Soledad Miranda.

She Killed in Ecstasy is more or less a reworking of one of his previous movies: The Diabolical Dr. Z 1965 based on a novel by David Kuhne, which for the uninitiated is one of Franco’s several pseudonym names. Although Franco in his turn probably based The Diabolical Dr. Z, or the much more attractive original title Miss Muerte on Cornell Woolrich’s novel the Bride Wore Black which also sees a young woman track down a bunch of strangers and kill them one by one after they accidently killed her husband.

Woolrich’s novels have provided inspiration for several others during the years, Rendezvous in Black provided the basis for Umberto Lenzi’s fascinating Giallo Seven Blood-Stained Orchids 1972, The Bride Wore Black for Francois Truffaut’s 1968 film of the same name and It Had to be Murder for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window 1954.

Reusing previous successful plots is also a frequent Franco attribute, his breakthrough feature, The Awful Dr. Orloff 1962, uses the template - mad scientist attempting to recreate his wife/girlfriend/lovers disfigured face with the faces of innocent victims, loosely based on Franju’s Eyes Without a Face 1960, and acted as the stencil for many of his films including the terrific Faceless 1987, and the wife/girlfriend/lover out for revenge after a death of a loved one was also one of his key models to work from.

In all honesty it’s easy to list the personal favourite dozen of good movies over the almost two hundred movies he’s directed, but it’s almost impossible to write that list of the ”best” Franco titles without offending other fans of the man, as the beauty of Franco is in the eye of the beholder, be it the surrealism, the eroticism, the nudity, the many muses, the period pieces, the sado/masochistic decadence, the imagery, or simply the fantastic jazzy, funky soundtracks that propelled the movies forth. Soundtracks that Franco, a highly talented musician too, often played on himself.

Each fan of the remarkable Jesus Franco has their own little niches of Francomania that they prefer. I know mine and you probably know yours!

But even with the low percentage of decent films of choice, you have to respect Franco, he filmed, edited, scored, wrote, directed, produced to keep the movies coming, and I find that in even the shittiest of his productions there’s always that one little nugget; a scene or a image, or a glimpse of magic that makes it all worth while. This is what lays the foundation for my complex relationship to him and his movies. At one point in time I had somewhere close to ninety Franco movies on VHS (I used to work in two video store’s, one a shop that rented out UK imports, and the other that concentrated on imports from Holland, Greece, Germany, Japan, Usa etc, so there was always a new Franco film on the shelves to watch. Which reminds me, one of our customers was such a Franco buff that he went to Spain, found Franco and became involved in several of his films during 2001 – 2005, acting, editing and filming you name it. I still think that Peter is one of the coolest mohtherfuckers ever for actually making that happen in his life.) Anyhow, I used to watch so many of his movies that just fell right out of the VCR into the voids of oblivion. But some of them had that one damned little sparkle that made them worth hanging onto. On one occasion, I think it was the 1983 flick Cries of Pleasure that was incredibly tedious and slow, but then suddenly, during a Franco mandatory lesbian makout scene, this one on a boat, the camera circled the boat two or three times (obviously making the most out of the shot), and the ocean surrounding the boat is still completely blank. That one little scene surprised the heck out of me; it got me excited, engaged, and enthusiastic. (The movie didn’t get any better after that scene though.) I couldn’t for the life of me understand how he’d managed that shot. I’ve seen and shot enough helicopter scenes of my own to know that the rotors of the chopper at that distance would have had water spraying all over the place, the shot couldn’t have been taken from a second boat as the rest of the ocean still was crystal blank. I started imagining some sort of pole extended from the mast with the camera attached to that spun round the boat, filming the minge munching actresses, and that’s still how I think he pulled it off. By using his creativity and coming up with something that his tight budget wouldn't have allowed him to do. And that’s Franco in a nutshell, which also leads to one of the most persistent rumours and comments that people will state when mentioning his name – Franco the zoom king.

Actually Franco didn’t really use the zoom as much as one would think, but during certain time periods, and due to tight budgets, zooming in and out of faces, items and scenes made the need for counter shots and cut always unnecessary, less set-ups where needed and valuable time was saved.

Such was the case with the films Franco directed for German producer Artur Brauner, tight budgets, forced Franco into situations where to make the most out of the movie relied of the zoom gimmick and reusing most of the casts from previous movies he’d directed there.

That’s why you almost have all the ensemble from Vampyros Lesbos 1971, The Devil Came From Akasava 1971 returning in She Killed in Ecstasy, which by the way was one of the four films Franco directed in 1971 - X312 – Flight to Hell being the fourth.

The movies of this time period also saw Franco collaborating with musicians Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab, who worked with him on She Killed in Ecstasy, Vampyros Lesbos and The Devil Came from Akasva. The result - three fantastic soundtracks that still are enjoyable today, and where featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown 1997. Filled of psychedelic, sitar/funk/jazz they are truly three amazing soundtracks that are possibly the best thing about the movies of this period. If you are lucky you can still get your hands on the limited release 3 Films by Jess Franco CD released by Lucertola Media back in 1995 – it will perk any party, that is for sure.

So you have to hand it to the guy, as Franco has directed an impressive amount of movies, worked with Orson Welles after he was highly impressed with Franco’s craftsmanship, was requested to come visit Buñuel after the two of them where declared the most dangerous filmmakers by the Catholic Church, has a reputation for staying within budget and keeping his projects on time, and during the glorious eighties had three films on the infamous Video Nasties list in the UK and to finally recognize his importance, he was rewarded with the Goya (Spanish Academy Awards) Lifetime Achievement Award last year for his contributions to celluloid history.

Image:

1.66:1

Audio:

German dialogue, English subtitles optional

Extras:

There really should be a re-release of this title to flesh out the extras because the only thing the disc offers is the original theatrical trailer.

Here's some of that great soundtrack for you, and a suave six minute version of the flick.

French Sex Murders

French Sex Murders
Aka; Murder in Paris, The Bogeyman & the French Murders, The Paris Sex Murders

Original Title; Cass d'appuntamento
Directed By; Ferdinando Merighi,

Italy / West Germany, 1972
Giallo / Thriller / Mystery, 83min [hybrid print 88min]
Distributed by Mondo Macabro

Story:
Inspector Pontaine [Robert Sacchi], a Humphrey Bogart look-a-like detective investigates a series of strange murders that started with the killing of a prostitute at Madame Colette's [Anita Ekberg] bordello. Main suspect Antoine [Pietro Martellanza] is killed in a freak accident, but when Professor Waldemar [Howard Vernon] performs an autopsy into Antoine's brain, the killings continue in a weird and mysterious way.

Me:
Sweet and sleazy giallo, which doesn't quite make the push over hill and roll into the suave settings, music and atmosphere that most classic gialli capture in one way or another. Perhaps it's no mystery as this movie was produced by US cheap-and-cheerful producer Dick Randall, who preferred more to make a few bucks than to make an impression. But there are a few things that stick out to make it a memorable movie even though comparing it to Gialli of the Italian standard exposes the flaws and makes it come off pretty weak. It all starts off promising with a chase up the Eiffel tower, and a leap to certain death before cutting back to the start of the violent tale to be told. From there on it just gets freakier and freakier, red herrings, sudden plot twists, killers being caught and escaping, prime suspects suddenly getting killed just to throw us off track once we have our minds made up of who could be the culprit, all the way up to the opening scenes again. The casting of Sacchi is so far out and brilliant that it makes the movie worth the while. Sacchi moves around in his trench coat and does a Bogart impression that makes the rest of the cast look great. But it's all a good laugh, what with Euro icons like Howard Vernon, Rosalbana Neri, Barbra Bouchet, and Anita Ekberg, cheesy special effects (even one eye gouging they claim to be a tribute to Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou), really lame acting, including a cameo appearance by Dick Randall as a sleazy sheik visiting the bordello, a Jazz club scene that could have been ripped right out of a Franco movie, and last but definitely not least, a rather decent Bruno Nicolai soundtrack make it a memorable movie you'll love trying to forget you ever saw!

Image:
Well it claims to be a new anamorphic 1.66:1 / 16:9 transfer, which it obviously is, but at some times you can see that it defiantly is a hybrid print [meaning that they have taken elements from several versions of the film to achieve the absolute version] as there are shifts in quality in some scenes, but not to worry there are worse examples of this out there on DVD. Some of the scenes feel to be a bit overexposed, but this could also be due to the hybrid print.

Audio:
Nothing too surprising, Dolby Digital, mono, but there are a few disturbances here and there, but once again, it's probably because of the hybrid print, and nothing that takes anything away from the film. There's no subtitle options as the print is the english dubbed version.

Extras:
Released as the first volume of the Dick Randall Collection, Mondo Macabro actually manage to pull this one of thanks to the fascinating extras. Where as they could have made things easy for themselves and reused the Documentary on Italian Gialli from their previous release for Ercoli's Death Walks at Midnight, they dedicate half an hour to the Wild Wild World of Dick Randall, an truly enjoyable half hour portraying Randall's wide and, truly wild career. There's an essay on the movie, including an explanation about the hybrid print, Mondo Macabro are regularly very frank and honest about their prints, which makes up for eventual disappointments in audio and visual faults in the movie. There are two deleted/alternate scenes with explanatory texts to why they where not included in the hybrid, a still gallery, and a great other titles from Mondo Macabro promo included on the disc.