With more than 200 movies written and directed, the resume of Jésus Franco is without a doubt one of the most prolific and impressive ones to find here on IMDb. Of course, once you deep-dive into Franco's repertoire, it quickly becomes less astounding. I'll be the first person to admit that Jésus "Jess" Franco made a handful of great movies ("Bloody Moon", "Faceless", "Night of the Skull", "The Sadist Baron Von Klaus", "Diabolical Dr. Z"), but for every half-decent effort he has made a dozen of terrible and downright insufferable films.
Another one of Franco's trick to reach such impressive numbers was constantly recycling his own previous movies by adding extra (XXX-)footage or via remakes. There exist three versions of "The Sadist of Notre Dame", for instance, and this "Alone Against Terror" is basically just a bottom-of-the-barrel remake of Jess' 1973 movie "The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff". Oh, and don't get me started on the "Orloff" franchise! Franco never stopped exploiting the lead character's name of his first successful movie. "Alone against Terror" has nothing to do with the original "The Awful Dr. Orloff", but even here there is even a doctor named Orloff. Actually, he is named Orgaff. And if he's really a doctor, he should urgently prescribe himself a diet.
In "Alone against Terror", Franco's partner and muse Rina Romay puts on a ridiculous blond wig in a desperate attempt to look 20 years old. She stars as the mentally traumatized Melissa, who watched her beloved father die at young age and has been paralyzed from the shock ever since. One night, daddy starts reaching out to Melissa in her dreams and instructs her to murder the people who so cowardly killed him. Daddy gives Melissa the power to walk again and leads her to her victims, but they - surprise, surprise - turn out to be her beloved family members.
This inconspicuous and by-the-numbers early 80s Franco effort is mediocre and completely unmemorable, but at least it never angered me like some of his other movies did. "Alone against Terror" is never boring, it's not stuffed with pointless padding footage or irrelevant porn, and the supportive cast - notably Carmen Carrión and Mabel Escaño - give good performances as the greedy and wicked aunts.
