A Forgotten Euro-Gothic Double-Bill: ‘Tomb of Torture’ and‘Cave of the Living Dead’ (1963)

This month, I’ve been busy reading Jonathan Rigby’s new book ‘Euro Gothic’ – a fairly self-explanatory follow up to the author’s previous surveys of British and American horror - and enjoying it greatly. Whilst fans will no doubt have a few bones to pick vis-à-vis the choices of coverage within, Rigby’s concise and sardonic summation of about eight decades of continental fantastic cinema remains a joy.

From my own point of view, one of the most welcome aspects of the book, and one that I think more than makes up for the author’s occasional omissions, is the extent to which exhaustive research into production and release schedules (matched by an equal dedication to actually tracking down and watching the bloody things) has allowed Rigby to shine a light on numerous films that have been almost entirely forgotten by today’s euro-cult fan base.

Some of these seem to have proved quite rewarding discoveries, and are allotted comparable coverage to the expected ‘classics’ of the genre. Others however… not so much so.

For instance, did you know that, in 1964, noted transatlantic producer and horror enthusiast Richard Gordon acquired the rights to two European productions of the previous year, one Italian (‘Metempsyco’, directed by Antonio Boccaci) and one German (‘Der Fluch der Grünen Augen’ [The Curse of the Green Eyes], directed by Ákos Ráthonyi), and sent them out as a ready-made double-bill in both the US and UK, redubbed for English-speaking audiences and respectively retitled as ‘Tomb of Torture’ and ‘Cave of the Living Dead’?

Until I read about this in Rigby’s book, I had no idea, and knew nothing of either of these films. Frankly, one suspects that Gordon’s offer of two rather threadbare, black & white ‘shockers’ didn’t attract a great deal of interest from cinema owners or sub-distributors during the great push toward colour in the mid-‘60s, and as a result the films have remained little seen and largely unremarked upon in the English-speaking world, even whilst copies of the prints Gordon prepared have circulated in the bootleg/grey market domain for years.

It is by such means that I made the happy discovery that I actually had copies of both films sitting unwatched in my collection. As such, I thought it might be nice to put an evening aside and recreate what audiences venturing into this long-lost double-feature may have experienced back in 1965 (that being the copyright date given on both prints).

Beginning with ‘Tomb of Torture’ then, Rigby actually gives this one an absolute kicking in his book, deeming it “dismal in the extreme”, alongside other bon mots.

As an avowed advocate of ridiculous pulpy nonsense, I believe I enjoyed it at least a *bit* more than Rigby, but nonetheless I’m sad to report that I can offer little evidence to contradict his conclusions.

Following a credits sequence that I’m guessing was thrown together entirely by Gordon – featuring a regrettably anglicised cast list, floating disembodied chess pieces, a nifty ‘spookshow’ font and some close-ups of a rather fetching rotting skull-face with (sadly static) hypno-wheel eyes - Antonio Boccaci’s sole directorial effort actually begins on a pleasantly Jean Rollin-esque note, as two rather heavily made-up “schoolgirls” enter stage left and, with no further ado, decide to go snooping about in the scary castle on the hill (the same one previously used by Renato Polselli in The Vampire and the Ballerina, if I’m not mistaken).

Whereas Rollin’s totemic twins however usually accepted their initiation into the netherworld of vampiric weirdness with a sense of silent, angelic resignation, this pair by contrast make a right fuss about things, adopting a fairly tiresome investigator-vs-scaredy-cat routine that continues even after they’ve bumped into the castle’s apparent owner – a sour-faced, middle-aged lady who understandably instructs them to clear off. For some reason though, she fails to enforce this edict, leaving the girls to continue their wanderings unmolested until they find themselves accosted by some kind of leering, paper-mache-faced hunchback(?) creature.

(In fairness, I’m not sure this creature is actually supposed to be a hunchback, but I’m damned if I can of anything else to call him within the recognised lexicon of horror movie types – I suppose he’s more of a “deformed, dungeon-dwelling psycho” sort of deal really, but that’s a tad long-winded, so henceforth let’s just call him the ‘monster’.)

Anyway, one shriek of terror later, and the brunette half of the schoolgirl duo awakes to find herself – now wearing nowt but a flimsy night-gown – being strapped by the monster onto one of those X-shaped cross-beams last seen in the 1932 ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, down in the castle’s obligatory torture dungeon. (1)

Soon the creature tires of this though, and lugs her over to the rack for a brief but surprisingly intense sequence of mildly-eroticised torment that serves to ensure that those who paid to see ‘Tomb of Torture’ can no longer legitimately ask for their money back, regardless of whatever follows.

One abrupt cut later, and a coach conveying some kind of doctor and his daughter to the same castle is waylaid by the discovery of the bodies of the two girls, who have been unceremoniously dumped by the side of the road. Incredibly, the local comic relief idiot policeman insists that the girls have died from natural causes, in spite of the blood on their faces and (we must assume) sundry other evidence of the monster’s depredations.

Seemingly unconcerned about this ghastly turn of events, the doctor restricts his disagreement with the policeman’s diagnosis to a bit of disapproving tut-tutting, and otherwise devotes his attentions to chatting with another man on the scene – a chap named Ramon, whose brown-face make-up and turban are presumably supposed to identify him as some kind of Hindu, although, as with every single other character in this film, any further insight into his background is denied to us. (Ramon, incidentally, is played – rather stiffly, it must be said – by the film’s director, in his only screen appearance.)

Apparently, Ramon and the doctor know each other of old, and both used to live in the castle in some context before moving away. Ramon is subsequently astonished to discover that the professor’s daughter (Anna) is the spitting image of the castle’s deceased Countess Irina, to whom he was engaged when she disappeared under mysterious circumstances some twenty years previously. (2)

It seems that Anna’s father is bringing her to the castle on the pretext that the relaxing atmosphere will help her with some bad dreams she has been having(?!), but it soon becomes clear that he harbours a hidden agenda, believing that his daughter’s dreams are in fact some kind of psychic visions which will allow him to discover what happened to the Countess, and, more pertinently, the location of the legendary stash of treasure that may or may not have disappeared along with her.

If all this sounds rather puzzling, well, it is – and it certainly doesn’t become any less so as things go on. Mere sketchy plotting however has nothing on the level of sheer bewilderment soon to be induced by the lengthy dream sequence that follows these events.

As Boccaci wheels out the old “wobbly screen” effect to signal that we’re now entering Anna’s “dream-time”, she finds herself down in the dungeon, reclining on the same torture instrument we saw the monster making enthusiastic use of a few minutes earlier.

In short order, a static, cowled skeleton pops up like some escapee from a ghost train, and a clawed monster with a wispy bearded, clay face somewhat reminiscent of the creature from Cocteau’s ‘Le Belle et la Bete’ (or perhaps one of the denizens of Kenneth Anger’s Pleasuredome?) has extracted itself from a tomb and commenced lumbering about, menacing our heroine in a vague sort of fashion.

Meanwhile, a man in evening dress whom we’ve not met before descends the stairs and begins calling the name of “Countess Irina”, only to find himself bloodily dispatched by an animated suit of armour wielding a broadsword (the horror of his demise is somewhat undermined by some rather comical “oooooh, aaaaaagh” type noises on the English dub). The spectral knight then slices the string holding back the bolt on a giant medieval siege crossbow, causing the projectile to fly free and bloodily impale Anna straight through her chest!

All of this is just as jaw-dropping as it sounds, and once again, if you’re holding out for a rational explanation of some of the more outré elements of Anna’s dream, you will be left disappointed. Up to this point in fact, ‘Tomb of Torture’ has seemed less like a film in its own right, and more like the kind of footage that might have been created for use in a sequence in another film in which the characters go to a cinema to watch a horror movie – if you get my drift. A mindless, near plotless parade of horror-type imagery, devoid of either artifice or artistry, its sheer, cheap preposterousness actually puts me in mind of nothing so much as Andrea Bianchi’s ‘Burial Ground’ (‘Le Notti del Terrore’, 1981), a similarly unglued artefact from the opposite end of Italian horror’s golden age.

At least Bianchi though had the good grace to ensure his film remained uproariously entertaining throughout its duration, whereas Boccaci, having blown his load in opening half hour described above, unfortunately leaves us to fend for ourselves through a further fifty minutes of run time devoid of almost any interest whatsoever.

It pains me to come down so hard on a film this adorably crazy, but seriously folks - as soon as we’re back in the waking world with Ramon, the doctor, the hunchback-monster and the sulky woman who owns the castle, ‘Tomb of Torture’ really is a dead loss.

Little of the crazy/fun stuff from Anna’s dream ever reappears, as assorted characters wander aimlessly, conversing at length on matters that we likely wouldn’t care about even if they made any sense, whilst supposedly ‘suspenseful’ scenes in which the monster chases people around are repeatedly botched by means of amateurish direction that sees the participants trudging through the static long-shots, evidencing very little sign of alarm. A slide trombone soundtracked ‘comedy’ sequence in which Anna is introduced to her made-to-order intrepid journalist boyfriend whilst skinny-dipping meanwhile is simply unspeakable.

I suppose you could say that the moody photography of the closing ten minutes gives us some nice dungeon atmos and a touch of melodramatic grandeur, but the marginally novel idea of having the castle’s rats gradually gnaw their way through the restraining rope on the aforementioned bolt-thrower during the climax is rather ruined by the decision to use hamsters – quite fluffy, cute-looking ones at that – in lieu of actual rats, and regardless, it’s all too little too late for this turkey. (3)

In spite of a few truly bizarre passages and a uniquely eccentric approach to production design, it is difficult to recommend ‘Metempsyco’ / ‘Tomb of Torture’ as anything more than a minor curio for gothic horror completists, and even in that capacity, my word-to-the-wise would be to gleam whatever kicks you can from the opening few reels, then shut it off and do something more useful with your time. Ah well – one down, one to go.

In stark contrast to the wildly uneven, slapdash qualities of the Italian half of tonight’s double-bill, it is difficult not to fall back on national stereotypes as we turn to our German offering, which, as it turns out, takes a similarly hackneyed set of genre elements and somehow fashions them into a thoroughly satisfactory exemplar of accomplished b-movie craftsmanship.

As ‘Der Fluch der Grünen Augen’ / ‘Cave of the Living Dead’ gets underway, we are swiftly introduced to our male lead, in the form of future Jess Franco collaborator and the producer/director of ‘Castle of the Creeping Flesh’ (1968) and ‘Mark of the Devil’ (1969), Mr Adrian Hoven.

After more than a decade playing romantic leads in German features, the forty year old Hoven seems at this point in time to have been transitioning toward character parts, and here we find him essaying the role of a smirking, eyebrow-arching Interpol agent – exactly the kind of off-the-peg protagonists that became ubiquitous in European movies in the wake of the early James Bond films in other words (although in this case, I’d imagine an equal debt is owed to Joachim Fuchsberger’s roles in the early Rialto krimis).

In a set-up reminiscent of Franco’s The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus from a year or so earlier, Hoven’s vacation (spent eyeing up a leggy blonde in a cocktail lounge, naturally) is interrupted when he is called back to base by his superior officer, who informs him that he is being dispatched on an undercover assignment to a remote village (famed for its “grotto”, apparently), where he is ordered to single-handedly crack the case of a series of mysterious slayings of young women that has thus far left local law enforcement baffled.

Upon his arrival at the village’s ramshackle, rustic inn, Hoven doesn’t have to wait long before getting down to business, as, conveniently, the comely maid occupying the room next to his falls victim to the vampiric killer that very night.

Though an almost shot-for-shot quotation from ‘Nosferatu’, this shadow-based nocturnal assault is nonetheless a striking sequence, with the combination of eerie electronic noise on the soundtrack and the fact that the clawed monster appears to be wearing some kind of gauze-shrouded body-suit momentarily creating the impression that the village’s female populace might actually be falling prey to some sort of space-monster.

A Yugoslavian co-production, I’m guessing ‘Cave..’ may also have been shot there too, but wherever it was lensed, ‘sense of place’ is definitely strong here, with the film’s locations conveying a convincing sense of poverty-stricken, rural isolation.

Though the exact location or nationality of the ‘village’ in which the action takes place is never made clear, it is a realm of rough stone interiors, roaring open fires, flickering shadows, mouldering wood piles, freezing fog, and an almost palpable shadow of benighted primitivism just waiting to descend, whenever the locale’s few, shaky signifiers of modernity withdraw.

Speaking of which, one of the most curious aspects of the ‘Cave..’s storyline arises from the fact that, each time the vampires – who are soon revealed to be of a pretty much common or garden variety, incidentally - make an attack, the village’s electricity supply pre-empts their arrival by shorting out, in a manner sufficiently widespread that it apparently affects the battery in Hoven’s car as well as the mains.

Whilst no explanation is ever offered for these power cuts, they nonetheless provide a beautiful metaphor for the film’s central theme of atavistic superstition reasserting its power over scientific rationalism – a theme that, thinking about it, renders the lack of a sign-posted explanation entirely appropriate.

Already hip to the notion that there is something a little peculiar going on here, Hoven’s character begins his investigation in time-honoured fashion by butting into the lives of the locals, revealing them to be as curious and suspicious a bunch as you could hope for.

After acquainting himself with the somewhat Walter Matthau-esque inn-keeper, the surly and uncooperative doctor and a hulking, mute brute who always seems to be hanging around, looking well up for of a strangling or two, Hoven follows up on the suggestion that he should pay a visit to the local witch / wise-woman - referred to in the English dub simply as “Nanny” - to get the low-down on the vampire threat.

What follows is a surprisingly compelling scene whose pungent atmosphere could almost have been pulled from some ‘Haxan’-esque film of the silent era. “Look how enticingly they dance..”, Nanny opines as a super-imposed coven of naked witches are briefly shown shimmying around the flames beneath her cauldron. (Hoven’s “did I really see that?!” reaction shot is a winner.)

After identifying Hoven as the man whose destiny is to put down the evil afflicting her community, Nanny gifts him with a silver crucifix (an artefact whose significance in this film seems curiously detached from Christianity, which otherwise goes entirely unmentioned) and a magical powder for use in reviving victims of a vampire bite, “..ground from the thorns of mountain roses, which on Walpurgis night are in full-bloom, the night when the witches’ fires burn on the mountains”. The English dubbing team did a great job on this scene, needless to say.

Returning to the more down-to-earth side of his investigations, Hoven also calls in on the castle (of course there’s a castle), where he has been invited to take up residence by the reclusive Professor who has recently taken possession of what we are told was formerly a ruin.

That the Professor is played by Wolfgang Preiss – an actor best known to contemporary German audiences for his appearances as Dr Mabuse in the series of updates of the character instigated by Fritz Lang’s ‘The 1,000 Eyes of..’ in 1960, and probably best known to you and I as the go-to-guy for Nazi officers in countless Hollywood WWII movies – suggests that our hunt for the perpetrator of the killings may well have reached a premature conclusion.

And, even if you didn’t pick up Preiss’s background as a sort of honorary German ‘horror man’, the Professor’s nifty array of bad guy accoutrements (skulls on pedestals, circles of gigantic black candles, apparent powers of clairvoyance) should leave viewers in little doubt that any pretense the film entertained toward being a whodunit is very much dead in the water by this point.

Though his screen time is sadly limited (it seems likely the production only had him on board for a couple of days), Preiss brings a quiet, understated menace to what could easily have been played as a fruity ‘master vampire’ role, but, given that he proves as reclusive to viewers of the film as he does to the villagers, it is the members of his staff who ultimately prove more interesting.

A striking looking actress with a New Wave-ish blonde bob, Erika Remberg plays the Professor’s research assistant / Hoven’s obligatory love interest, and, as with most of the characters in this movie, she’s given enough of a twist to transcend blandness. Sick of running pointless experiments for the Prof (she summarises his research interests as “anything and everything to do with blood”), she seems thoroughly bored of the whole remote village/scary schloss business, icily telling Preiss at one point that her three week contract has come to end, leaving him looking rather glum at the realisation that his aristocratic charm has failed to convince her to stay on and become his vampire mistress (or whatever). (4)

Even more noteworthy is the Professor’s black man-servant, John, who, in contrast to the way one might have expected such a character to portrayed in a contemporary British or American horror picture, actually turns out to be quite an agreeable fellow, disassociating himself from his employer once he realises he’s up to no good, and subsequently becoming Hoven’s chief ally in the fight against the vampires.

More pertinently, this character also allows Ráthonyi’s film to open up a sub-plot exposing the prejudice and petty cruelty of the rural villagers, who make no bones about distrusting John purely on the basis of skin colour, covertly blaming him for the murders, and, in one particularly blunt demonstration of small town racism, physically ejecting him from the inn when he naively drops in in search of a drink and some company. (He even offers to buy everyone a round before the pushing and shoving begins, the poor chap.)

You could say that this theme is explored in pretty heavy-handed fashion, and that John Kitzmiller’s performance as John is rather lacking in subtlety (his occasional lapses into Maitland Moreland-esque comedic facial expressions are somewhat regrettable), but nonetheless - even choosing to address such subject matter makes ‘Cave..’ / ‘Der Fluch..’ pretty much unique in my experience of early ‘60s horror films. (5)

By lining up this extensive cast of characters (certainly a more varied bunch than your average gothic horror) and kicking things off as an off-beat murder mystery, ‘Cave..’ seems, almost inevitably for a German genre film of its era, to be drawing to some extent from the krimi template. Indeed, you can see from the German poster reproduced below that the film was sold as such domestically, with no hint that it is actually a supernatural horror movie.

Happily though, such advertising proves to be entirely misleading, and in fact, what I loved most about ‘Cave of the Living Dead’ is that, whereas you might expect a story in this vein to drop hints of supernatural goings-on before wrapping them up into a quasi-scientific explanation, this film instead does precisely the opposite. Early suggestions of a scientific rationale for the vampire threat (the power cuts, the Professor’s ‘experiments’, Hoven’s attempts to take a blood sample from one of the vampires) are never followed up, whilst “Nanny”s witchy profanations are meanwhile revealed to be as solidly reliable as the wooden stakes and mallets that Hoven and his allies eventually use to ‘crack the case’ the old-fashioned way.

Functioning as a no-nonsense vampire movie by the time it hits its final act, ‘Cave..’ doesn’t really bring anything new to the table in this regard, but nonetheless acquits itself rather well, providing enough empty coffins, seductive, fanged beauties and dramatic stakings to satisfy most aficionados of the form, with some eerie, lantern-lit excursions into the appropriately atmospheric caves promised by Gordon’s retitling proving a particular highlight, with the filmmakers even managing to incorporate an apparently genuine swarm of bats at one point.

Though it eventually turns out to be assembled the same sort of loosely bolted together genre clichés that comprised ‘Tomb of Torture’, I for one found ‘Der Fluch..’/ ‘Cave..’ to be quite a rewarding little film, far exceeding my (relatively low) expectations. More detailed and imaginative scripting than most European gothics were graced with lends the story a rare sense of thematic consistency, whilst Ráthonyi keeps the screen stocked with enough interesting stuff to capture our attention throughout, and the uniquely atmospheric setting and unusually good performances from most of the cast seal the deal.

Whilst ‘Der Fluch der Grünen Augen’s unpretentious, programmer level ambitions mean it perhaps doesn’t quite scale the heights achieved by Europe’s very finest gothic horror productions, it nonetheless compares favourably with any of the second tier efforts emerging from Italy or the UK at around the same time, and as such is well worth tracking down. Even after suffering through eighty minutes of turbaned Antonio Boccaci and his hunchback-monster with only an interval ice cream to look forward to, I still think I would have left that cinema in 1965 feeling pretty satisfied.

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(1)Interestingly, the next film I recall seeing these iconic X-shaped frames in is Jess Franco’s Necronomicon (1967) -- which was co-produced by Adrian Hoven, star of ‘Cave of the Living Dead’. Pure speculation here of course, but do you think it possible that Hoven could have checked out the Gordon double-bill at some point to see how ‘Cave..’ played out in English, and, noting these cool-looking frames in the co-feature, might have suggested them to Franco when planning his own horror film a few years later...? If so, that could even be ‘Metempsyco’/’Tomb of Torture’s main claim to historical posterity, given the number of erotic/horror films that subsequently used these frames in the ‘70s.

(2) “Countess Irina” of course offers another Franco connection, should you wish to make it. You probably don’t.

(3)I suppose perhaps you could posit ‘Tomb of Torture’s roving hamsters as a knowing tribute to the inexplicable armadillos in Todd Browning’s ‘Dracula’, but… it would be pushing it, to be honest.

(4)Historians of horror movie sleaze may be interested to learn that Remberg also delivers an *almost* nude scene in this film, when, in a shamelessly gratuitous sequence, we see her stripping off to go to bed, with merely her casually raised wrist hiding her nipples from full view. Pretty envelope-pushing stuff for ’63 (although Franco had already gone further with the French cuts of ‘..Dr Orloff’ and ‘..Baron Von Klaus’), and I’m inclined to believe this shot alone could have been responsible for gaining the film the British ‘X’ certificate proudly displayed on the print I watched. (I’m surprised they let it through at all to be honest, given how timid UK censorship was in those days.)

(5)An American actor primarily based in Europe, Kitzmiller also appeared as that-black-guy-who-gets-killed in ‘Dr No’, before playing the title character in the 1965 adaptation of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ – a role which was sadly his last, as he died in Rome the same year.

FRANCO FILES SPECIAL: Necronomicon (1967)

By designating this entry in the series as a ‘special’, I simply mean that it’s quite long, so be prepared. Unless stated otherwise, all background info and quotes are extrapolated either from the interviews accompanying the Blue Underground DVD release of ‘Necronomicon’ (under the title ‘Succubus’), or from Tohill and Tombs’ ever-reliable ‘Immoral Tales’, pp. 93-95. Much of the poster art reproduced below is borrowed from Wrong Side of the Art.

AKA:

Initially conceived as a low budget horror under the name ‘Green Eyes of the Devil’, this film was eventually shot under the title ‘Necronomicon’, and first screened in West Germany as ‘Necronomicon: Geträumte Sünden’ (that’s “Dreams of Sin” or somesuch). Perhaps most widely known by its American release title ‘Succubus’, IMDB informs us that it also went by ‘Delirium’ in Italy, ‘Paroxysmos’ in Greece and ‘Sex: Lidenskab og Fantasi’ in Denmark, reverting to its original ‘Les Yeux Verts du Diable’ for screenings in France.

Context:

Whatever you choose to call it, ‘Necronomicon’ certainly marks an important turning point in the career of Jess Franco, and arguably a pivotal moment in the development of European horror/exploitation cinema in general.

Artistically speaking, it was the first film that allowed Franco the freedom to move beyond the pulpy genre shockers he had worked on up to this point, and it certainly must have proved a bit of an eye-opener for those in the industry and who knew him primarily for The Awful Dr. Orlof. Basically, ‘Necronomicon’ sets the template not just for Franco’s own future work, but for that of many of his contemporaries too, as affordable colour photography, the lure of ‘edgy’, counter-culture informed material and a demand for stronger sexual content all pointed the way forward. If you’re looking for the genesis of the kind of art-damaged / psychedelic / horror-infused erotic thrillers that dominated a certain kind of cinema through the early ‘70s, and that Franco in particular specialised in, well… it all starts here.

Commercially, ‘Necronomicon’ is said to have done more business at the box office than any Franco film before or since(1), and it also netted him just about the only taste of mainstream critical interest he attracted in his entire career, making waves at the 1968 Berlin Film Festival and apparently eliciting praise from no less a figure than Fritz Lang, who is said to have called it “the first erotic film I've seen all the way through, because it is a beautiful piece of cinema”.(2)

Long before all that though, ‘Necronomicon’ began life as a run-of-the-mill horror project (the aforementioned ‘Green Eyes of the Devil’), planned by Franco in collaboration with Austrian actor/producer Adrian Hoven, and overseen by Franco’s usual backer at the time, Karl-Heinz Mannchen. After Franco and Hoven began scouting locations and shooting initial footage in Spain and Portugal however, Mannchen’s finances fell through, leaving things in limbo. Scrabbling around for a solution, Hoven put in a call to a friend of his, a dilettante would-be producer named Pier Maria Caminneci, offering him a free ticket to Lisbon if he wanted to fly in and check things out.(3)

As Franco recalled in later years, Caminneci proved to be a refined and affable character, though “sometimes insufferable because of his pretentious airs”, and the two quickly bonded over their shared love of jazz. More to the point, Caminneci was also extremely rich, well connected, and completely smitten with leading lady Janine Reynaud. A deal was done.(4)

Insofar as I can tell, Caminneci’s input (both creative and financial) seems to have altered the nature of the proposed film considerably, expanding its scope from a modest b-horror into a sprawling feast of daring ‘60s Euro-chic decadence, aimed just as much at an art-house crowd as the horror/sexploitation circuit. Accompanying this change of direction, it was Caminneci who helped give the project its new title too, with “Necronomicon” apparently being chosen after Franco spied what he insists was a copy of the forbidden grimoire of Abdul Al-Hazrad sitting on Caminneci’s shelves during a record listening party at the latter’s pad.(5)

Quite how the ravings of the Mad Arab fed into either Franco’s thin tale of ghostly sex n’ violence or Caminneci’s rambling, Fellini-esque script is anyone’s guess, but regardless, things continued apace. Franco was already friendly with French actor/producer Michael Lemoine, and had already offered the film’s lead role to his wife, the aforementioned Janine Reynaud, after a chance meeting in Rome. The ever-wonderful Jack Taylor was soon cast opposite her as the male lead (much to the chagrin of Hoven, who apparently wanted the part for himself), and Caminneci, Hoven, Lemoine and (of course) Howard Vernon were soon all fixed up with supporting roles. With Karl Lagerfeld on board to design Reynaud’s wardrobe (one suspects Caminneci’s connections may have helped out here), and some suitably eye-popping locations identified in Lisbon and Berlin, shooting began again in earnest.

Further upping the ‘class’ factor, celebrated pianist and classical/jazz innovator Friedrich Gulda was brought in to record a full orchestral score (Caminneci and Franco were both big fans), and, as previously mentioned, the film eventually made its debut in Berlin, picking up a number of international distribution deals (including a plum American contract from (s)exploitation specialists Trans-American Films), and went on to play theatrically in various parts of the world right through to the early ‘70s, cementing the names of all concerned in at least *some* people’s minds, and, we assume, making a tidy sum in the process.

Content:

One of those films that you can sit through multiple times and remember nothing beyond a few strange, shining images and the general impression that you quite enjoyed it, ‘Necronomicon’ is yet another Franco effort that doesn’t easily lend itself to textual analysis or summation. The notes I scribbled down during a late night viewing in April, convinced that I’d got a lead on some singular insights, now read like garbled nonsense, the indecipherable ravings of a sleep-deprived drop-out [No comment – ed.].

Blinking in the harsh light of day, I suppose what is chiefly notable about Necronomicon’s paper-thin storyline is the way that it forms a blueprint for the film Franco would proceed to re-make dozens of times over the following decades: a woozily paced trek through picturesque locations with a glamorous, tormented woman as she alternately seduces and kills a series of victims in her sleep/dreams/fantasies, en route to complete mental collapse, and/or some essentially empty consummation. Sound familiar..? Reynaud’s Lorna is a dry run, not just for innumerable future Lorna’s, but for Maria Rohm’s Venus and Lina Romay’s Doriana Grey too – the quintessential Franco protagonist in her first full-bloom.

Whilst Franco may have later described ‘Necronomicon’ as the first film on which he enjoyed complete creative freedom though, its difficult production background means that it actually plays as more of a collaborative effort than most of the films that followed – a circumstance that, in my opinion at least, doesn’t always work to its advantage. Franco is said to have shot most of the film on the fly, inventing scenarios from one day to the next, but Caminneci nonetheless takes sole credit for the screenplay (on the English version of the film, at least), and the attempts therein to reinvent the minimal horror plotline as an all-singing, all-dancing avant pop-art spectacular meet with mixed success at best, as vast swathes of discursive dialogue, intrusive voiceovers and unconvincing inter-character scenes all take their toll, making for trying viewing at times.

Not helped much by a distractingly glib, ‘arched eyebrow’-style English dub (the only language option available on the DVD under review, sadly), the script’s psychoanalytical and post-modern diversions are often pretty clunky and play, frankly, as pretentious garbage – chucklesome on the one hand, but unbearable on the other; cringeworthy attempts to lend the film some faux-hip intellectual credibility, handled so naively that they ironically make it seem far stupider than many of Franco’s straight up sex/horror films.

We cannot be 100% sure that this stuff is all the work of Caminneci I suppose (it seems likely that everyone threw ideas in here and there), but the tone is certainly a perfect match for the character sketch Franco provided for him, and it is notable that such content is entirely absent from subsequent Franco films, which, I would contest, demonstrate their psychological complexity and culturally-informed sensibility in a rather more subtle manner, without the need to throw in sophomoric shout-outs to Sigmund Freud and The Rolling Stones every five minutes.

That said, there are definitely some moments when Franco and Caminneci’s respective aesthetics come together to wonderfully goofy effect. For instance, it's hard not to love the scene in which Lorna visits ‘The Admiral’ (Vernon), the pair sitting in a bar playing some contrived word association game that Caminneci obviously saw as scaling dizzy heights of cross-cultural sophistication (“Henry Miller?” “Birds in winter”, “Charlie Mingus?” “Anger”, “The unconscious?” “Marquis de Sade”, and so on), as naked pretty boy bartenders stir cocktails with only upturned top hats protecting their modesty, and stock accordion music blares. Such a ridiculous assemblage of elements that for a moment all is forgiven, especially when Howard starts chewing pebbles(?!) out of his Dr. Orloff top hat, mere inches away from some fella’s junk.

Indeed, perhaps the best course of action all the way through Necronomicon is to try to ignore the top-heavy babble of the script, to treat any semblance of plot as entirely coincidental, and to just enjoy the film as a pure aesthetic object – a level upon which it never fails to please.

Kink:

Whilst actual sexual content here is far less explicit than what would become the norm for Franco productions post-1970, ‘Necronomicon’ is still pretty strong stuff for 1967. In fact as far as whacked out pop-art erotica goes, it remains kinky as hell, with violent S&M themed stage acts, aristocratic lesbian seductions and even some borderline male homoerotic moments, all overseen a leading lady who clearly has no qualms about showing off everything bar the you-know-what for the camera at the drop of a (top) hat.

Janine Reynaud, though considerably older than your average sex film starlet, smoulders all the more for her evident, um, experience, bringing an energy to her portrayal of a domineering sex fiend femme fatale, that, if it perhaps doesn’t quite reach the level of intensity achieved by Lina Romay a few years later, is certainly in the same ballpark.

Reynaud brings a mixture of sophistication and cynicism to her character that might well have eluded a younger actress, and if some chauvinist horndogs in the audience might have felt wary about the idea of lusting after a star who was pushing forty at the time of filming, you can be damn sure they had little to complain about after getting a good look at her assets in the hotel room striptease that occurs a few minutes into the film. At the risk of joining their unsavoury ranks for a moment or two, Ms Reynaud is *hot*, and none but a corn-fed fool would deny it.

Moving swiftly on, I believe ‘Necronomicon’ also marks the first of the numerous occasions on which Jess Franco chose to open a film with a scene of fantastical S&M violence that is subsequently revealed to be a stage performance in some only-in-the-mind-of-Jess-Franco nightclub, where a crowd of elegantly attired men and women clap enthusiastically. A quintessential Franco ‘primal scene’, variations on this little number are repeated in more films than I could possibly bother listing, but the one in ‘Necronomicon’ is particularly striking, with Reynaud licking the wounds of a shackled strong-man before slicing up her tomboy-ish female lover, and it also perhaps marks the genesis of Franco’s subsequent fixation with tying his characters to ‘X’-shaped wooden crosses (see ‘The Demons’, ‘Exorcism’, etc.).

More generally speaking, Caminneci’s bankroll and high-falutin’ aspirations give ‘Necronomicon’ the kind of playboy atmosphere that Franco was rarely rarely able to afford in later years, and it’s safe to say he made the best of it, with the cast & crew’s real life extravagance (“We ate well, we stayed in the best hotels,” Jack Taylor recalled, before noting that he still had to provide his own costume) perhaps spilling over into the film itself, as a general feeling of over-ripe, end-of-the-decade decadence predominates, honing in on the more erotically-fixated end of Fellini’s oeuvre with relentless efficiency.

The wild LSD party chez-Caminneci that occurs mid-way through the film is, in particular, a shameless Fellini rip, complete with the requisite transvestite, the dwarf butler, the animalistic degeneration of the pampered attendees, the whole nine yards. This fantasy of a decadent, doomed 1960s, in which designer clothes could be torn off any minute, where strange drugs and indescribably new experiences lurk round every corner, is cannily used by the filmmakers, contributing greatly to the tingly erotic frisson that permeates every frame of ‘Necronomicon’.

4/5

Creepitude:

Though gifted with a title and opening scene that make it seem very much like a gruesome horror film of some kind, as soon as the camera pans out for the big reveal in the introductory night-club sequence (Franco’s winking dismissal of his horror past, perhaps?), the tone chances drastically, and ‘Necronomicon’s violent and supernatural elements are thereafter pushed firmly into the background.

Partly undertaken in an effort to sell the film to a different (wider?) audience, this laissez-faire approach to genre also seems to have chimed with the director at the time of production. Despite having initially planned the movie as a straight horror, Franco appears to have been rather fed up with the restrictions of genre cinema at this point, later claiming that ‘Necronomicon’ was his first attempt to “broaden the scope of the horror film”, instead creating what he described as a “pure psychological film”, delivering a “clear, precise study of the symptoms of paranoia”.

Make of that what you will (if clinically diagnosed paranoia made the world look like this, I think we’d all be giving it a shot), but reminders of ‘Necronomicon’s b-horror origins nonetheless remain visible throughout, poorly disguised by the thin coat of art-house gloss. Some rather cheesy ‘horror-y bits’ give the game away quickly enough - check out the shock zoom on Howard Vernon’s slightly unconvincing ‘corpse’ (stabbed in the eye with a hat pin!), or the hilariously inept ‘killer mannequins’ scene - and the subsequent mixture of Euro-art vibes with blatant drive-in horror elements stands out as pure Franco, even if his usual ratio is more or less reversed here.

3/5

Pulp Thrills:

Not much doing here I’m afraid. Within the grand narrative of Franco’s career, ‘Necronomicon’ can easily be framed as the director’s big attempt to break away from the pulp traditions that he’d been tied to during the preceding decade, and even the amusing intrusion of plastic figurines of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and Godzilla, during a brief skit about Michael Lemoine’s character assuming a new role within the pantheon of horror icons, does little to change that. These inanimate cameos occur in a contrived, self-aware environment that acts as pure kryptonite to the pulp spirit – more Lichtenstein than Sax Rohmer, and a big thumbs down from this category’s judges.

Of course, some may argue that the whole ‘60s Euro-decadence thing constitutes a valid pulp aesthetic in its own right, and then there’s the whole Necronomicon tie-in, but, hmm, I dunno…

2/5

Altered States:

Perhaps realising that this was his opportunity to make his mark as a visionary, risk-taking director, Franco uses the combination of creative freedom and relatively lavish budget available to him here to turn in something truly special. Whatever you think of ‘Necronomicon’s content and intentions, in terms of attention-grabbing cinematic style, it is off the scale - perhaps the most visually arresting movie Franco ever made.

Most notably, much of the film is absurdly overlit. And I don’t just mean “it’s a bit too bright”, I mean the kind of thing that would give any trained cinematographer forty fits: often the screen is completely saturated with blinding white glare, blurring the image or hiding the figures onscreen entirely, giving characters a kind of ghostly halo and distorting bright patches of colour into grainy, fuzzed out blocks. Even now, nearly fifty years later, it still looks astonishing – challenging, disorientating and often extremely beautiful.

This technique gives the film’s exteriors an unearthly, disintegrating quality – a sort of coldly angelic feel, one step away from total oblivion, even as the bold primary colours (like the assorted passions on display) ring out red hot. At a push, perhaps this whole lighting scheme could be seen as a reflection of Lorna’s precarious state within the story: beyond the realm of the living, yet consumed by human desires. Or something. It looks pretty cool anyway, that’s what I’m trying to say.

Even random, in-car travelogue footage shot in the rainy Berlin suburbs looks quite compelling (shades of ‘Female Vampire’?), and many individual shots in the Lisbon sections in the film look quite incredible, the extreme lighting effects lending the compositions a semi-accidental painterly quality that takes the breath away. Just try freeze-framing the oddly composed long-shot at around the 15-minute mark, of Reynaud in the red dress, walking towards her Cadillac, with the Gaudi-esque monastery in the background. It’s like one of David Hockney’s LA paintings reimagined by Salvador Dali. Extraordinary.

Whilst I can’t speak for the input of credited “cameramen” Jorge Herrero and Franz Lederle, this technique strikes me as a great demonstration of Jess Franco’s off-the-cuff genius: taking a glaring in-camera ‘mistake’ that most filmmakers would have corrected immediately, and instead deciding to build the look of his whole film around it, giving ‘Necronomicon’ a highly distinctive style that I’ve never seen replicated elsewhere. (Even Franco’s own happy-go-lucky approach to photography in his later films rarely adopts this ‘light-bombing’ technique to anything like the extent seen here.)

During darker, less saturated scenes, quality varies (as per usual with Franco) between richly detailed, deep focus tableaus and totally random, slapdash stuff that looks like it was shot in someone’s apartment with about five minutes notice. Examples of his oft imaginative camerawork are easy to spot – a static scene focusing on a table in a bar with action filling both the foreground and background to Bruegel-esque effect, a love scene where the camera pans back and forth across back of participants’ heads, the good ol’ ‘sex scene shot through a fish tank’, and so on - but it is the blinding white light that will stick most strongly in the viewer’s mind after this one.

5/5

Sight-seeing:

Officially registered as a Spanish/West German/Italian co-production, ‘Necronomicon’s shooting locations were determined more by financial and political necessity than by choice: ducking out of Spain to avoid government censorship, the production’s main shoot took place in Lisbon, before the principals decamped to Berlin to pad things out and fill in the gaps.

Once again incorporating random circumstances into his artistic agenda, Franco claims that he thus conceived the idea of a film split between “two different worlds”, contrasting the Latin/Catholic traditionalism of Southern Europe with the secular, modernist vision of post-war West Germany. The extent to which this contrast can really be identified within the garish overload of the finished film is questionable, but either way, some of the scenery along the way is certainly worth a visit.

In Lisbon, we find some splendid hilltop vistas over the city, sea views, a delightful funicular railway, a ruined Moorish palace, some incredible Rococo interiors and - perhaps the film’s visual highlight - an absolutely jaw-dropping, gravity defying fairytale castle [actually a 16th century coastal fort, the Torre de Belém - see comments], within which Lorna supposedly dwells. It sure looks like a beautiful city. I’d love to visit sometime.

Meanwhile, Berlin offers drizzle, grey skies, and a vast traffic intersection overseen by a multi-storey carpark and gigantic, faceless skyscraper. A metallically decorated beatnik bar privides a backgrop for the finale, and vague John LeCarre vibes can be felt when Taylor and Lemoine share a conspiratorial moment atop a busy pedestrian overpass, as a nearby cinema billboard advertises ‘Dr. Shivago’ in 70mm.

Standing amid all this, dominating the background of many shots, is a picturebox medieval church – another example of Franco’s keen eye for disconcerting architectural clashes, exhibiting a mixture of modernist and gothic iconography that, whilst wholly accidental more likely than not, suits the aesthetic of this film very well indeed.

5/5

Conclusion:

As the dust clears and the white light fades, your final analysis of ‘Necronomicon’ very much depends I think on the angle from which you approach it. From the high-minded cinéaste point of view to which the film sometimes aspires, it could no doubt seem an abysmal failure: a garish disasterpiece of bad taste and frivolous excess, in which a gang of cynical exploitation producers trample toward the Fellini/Godard dollar with cruel and sloppy abandon, with any good moments that result arising largely from pure chance and technical ineptitude. From an exploitation fan’s POV meanwhile, it is liable to generate the usual litany of complaints: pretentious, incomprehensible, slow, with weak laughably weak horror elements, not enough skin, no story and so on and so forth.

Hit that magic sweet-spot somewhere between the two approaches though – a place where I hope most readers of this blog prefer to dwell – and ‘Necronomicon’ becomes something of a qualified triumph: a loopy, over-reaching slice of perfect pop-art erotica that finds Jess Franco’s visual imagination firing on all cylinders, with a cabal of like-minded freaks ready to write the cheques and do all the necessary heavy-lifting to help him realise his vision, however cracked and inconsistent it may turn out to be.

An essential rite of passage for any Franco fan, and a key component in piecing together an understanding his work, ‘Necronomicon’ hopefully remains a solid enough piece of cinema to prove intoxicating viewing for any open-minded fan of strange, stylish, way-out film-making, regardless of their opinion on the big JF.

(1) Whilst ‘Necronomicon’ is often referred to as Franco’s biggest success, personally I find it hard to believe it raked in more dough than, say, ‘Faceless’ or ‘Bloody Moon’ in the VHS era, never mind his ‘70s WIP epics (which reportedly made a ton in Europe), or even ‘The Awful Dr. Orlof’ (which played extensively in US cinemas through the early ‘60s). Anyway, with no reliable figures to work from, it’s a bit of moot point.

(2) Oft-repeated by Franco fans and supporters, the Lang quote should perhaps also be taken with a pinch of salt. The story goes that Howard Vernon overheard Lang’s remark after a screening, passed it back to Franco, and… well I’d like to believe it was 100% accurate, but you know how these things go. Lang never publically mentioned the film to anyone subsequently, as far as I know.

(3)  Caminneci had worked with Hoven on two previous films made in Germany, ‘The Killer With The Silk Scarf’ (1966) and ‘Death on a Rainy Day’ (1967). His sole directorial effort – entitled ‘How Short is the Time for Love?’ – appeared in 1970, with Hoven, Reynaud and Lemoine all on board. Insofar as I can tell, no one with access to the internet has ever seen it.

(4) According to Tohill & Tombs, Reynaud’s husband Michael Lemoine was aware that his wife was engaged in an affair with Caminneci during the production of ‘Necronomicon’, but “..stayed in the background, because it was good for business”. Beyond dutifully repeating that, I’ll try to leave any further speculation as to the private lives of these individuals similarly out of the spotlight.

(5) For those coughing and spluttering at this assertion, rest assured I have a follow-up post in the works specifically looking at Franco’s claim that he read a copy of the ‘Necronomicon’ at Caminneci's place.

Jesus on the Mainline: Learning to Love Jess Franco.

Back in the early days of this blog, when I was still pottering about on the outskirts of the big, humid jungle that is weird European cinema, I made a few derogatory remarks about the work of Jesus ‘Jess’ Franco - remarks that I now largely regret, and would like to withdraw.

Sorting out my DVDs and VHSs prior to moving house last month, I discovered that I have no less than twenty two movies directed by Franco on my shelves – more than I own by any other filmmaker by a considerable margin. (Jean Rollin probably comes second, with about 17 titles not includes duplicates – I know, I’m a walking cliché.) Given that I probably acquired around half of these films whilst I was still under the impression that Franco was about the shoddiest, most consistently disappointing director in the business, an examination of the strange phenomenon of Franco Fandom is surely called for.

I still probably wouldn’t list Franco in the top rank of my favourites directors – the number of his movies I own is more a reflection of the vast number of movies he MADE than anything else. I’m sure if Orson Welles or Fellini or whoever had banged out ten features a year through their careers, they’d probably be giving Jess a run for his money re: distribution of my disposable income. But all the same, I have grown very fond of his films.

I’m sure at least some of you will be able to relate to way that Franco exerts an influence upon cult film fans similar to that exercised by the irresistible supernatural seductresses who populate so many of his movies, leading on hesitant victims against their better judgement, luring them ever deeper into his strange and fascinating realm – an island principality cut off from all the norms of conventional cinema, functioning according to its own set of primitive laws. Beyond the barriers of kitsch, beyond the limits of boredom…

Unlike the on-screen seductresses, he hopefully doesn’t end this initiation into exotic new pleasures by KILLING US, but what can ya say, it gets pretty close at times.


Back in 2009, I began my review of Rino Silvestro’s ‘Werewolf Woman’ (a review I’d pretty much wholly like to disown, btw) by foolishly vowing that I would give up watching Jess Franco films. The existence of this post tells you how well that particular resolution went. In that review, I singled out the 1969 flick Kiss Me Monster for particular scorn, recalling how my first viewing, on comfortingly crappy Redemption VHS, annoyed the hell out of me, prompting the kneejerk “well fuck THIS guy!” reaction that Franco neophytes are sure to experience at least on their first, ooh, six or seven times out the gate.

Nowadays, I can tell you in a flash that ‘Kiss Me Monster’ is one of the so-called ‘Red Lips’ films, two light-weight efforts Franco knocked out in collaboration with producer Adrian Hoven to capitalise on the notoriety that lead actress Janine Reynaud had gained in 1967’s far more elaborate Necronomicon (aka ‘Succubus’) - perhaps the closest Franco ever came to critical/arthouse recognition (which probably wasn’t THAT close, but hey, it caused a bit of a rumpus on the festival circuit and presumably made a ton of cash). Even by Franco standards, the ‘Red Lips’ films (the other is Sadisterotica) are slipshod, opportunistic affairs that must have served to completely undermine whatever cineaste cred he’d temporarily acquired from ‘Necronomicon’. Beginning as broad spoofs of the then fading Euro-spy genre, the movies introduce Reynaud and co-star Rosanna Yanni as a pair of ditzy secret agents involved in comic book-style espionage capers, but swiftly degenerate into a typically Franco-esque mass of blathering, inexplicable nonsense, essentially functioning as extended injokes/laff-fests for Franco, Hoven and their pals.

Back when I picked up the VHS though, I didn’t know any of this. All I knew was that it was called ‘Kiss Me Monster’, and had a picture of a woman in a tuxedo and fishnets playing a saxophone on the front. Maybe I’d heard the name Jess Franco bandied around, but I didn’t really know anything about him – so let’s throw this on and see what he can do, eh? Next thing I remember is sitting there 70 minutes later, thinking, what the hell just happened?

‘Kiss Me Monster’ indeed! Not only was there no monster, I don’t think there was even any kissing. In fact there wasn’t much of anything. It wasn’t a horror film, it wasn’t a sexploitation film, it wasn’t a spy film, it certainly wasn’t an ‘art’ film in even the vaguest sense of the term, it seemed to be aiming for comedy but wasn’t very funny - it was just… nothing. The whole thing fell out of my mind, like a dream too dull to bother remembering. A day later, I probably couldn’t tell you a single thing about it, other than that it made me feel like I’d been clubbed on the head and knocked out cold for an hour or so. What a bunch of crap. Who does this guy think he is, throwing together this random pile of leftover footage, calling it a movie and expecting us to pay to see it?


Fast forward to late 2010, when I decided to revisit ‘Kiss Me Monster’ to see if it was really as bad as I remembered – a key moment in my indoctrination into the cult of Franco. Essentially my reaction was very similar to the first time round – I still sat there dumbfounded when ‘FIN’ abruptly popped up, barely able to remember, let alone understand, what had just transpired. The difference is: this time I loved every minute of it. The random, improvisatory drift of the film, the wacky laziness and sly, garish humour – sitting there on the sofa with a whisky cocktail, I had an absolute blast. The wonky, cut & paste jazz soundtrack? The scene where the characters drive to some sort of shack on the edge of a cliff, discover a dead body, laugh uproariously, and indulge in terribly choreographed kung-fu with some kind of villain? The bit where one of the leads gets gassed and wakes in up in cage, slave to some sort of lesbian crime boss who seems to live in a greenhouse, but actually she doesn’t really mind cos she’s kinda into that? Suddenly it all made sense. I had entered a Jess Franco State of Mind, as the name of a weblog dedicated to the man’s work would have it. Like any higher state of consciousness, entry took some effort, but I’d cracked it.

In trying to explain the singular appeal of Franco films, I will inevitably find myself falling back on the same handful of arguments that his supporters have been using for years. Foremost amongst these is the idea that there is no *definitive* Franco film. Although his work maintains a stylistic & thematic consistency that marks him out (for better or worse) as an ‘auteur’ in the classic sense, he is a director who has never made a masterpiece. Even his very best films are flawed and erratic, usually giving the impression of being frustratingly incomplete. There is no one Franco flick I could pull off the shelf to try to turn someone into a fan – to the neophyte, watching pretty much any of his films will prove a confusing, disappointing experience. Watch enough of them however, and you’ll start to realise that these films are less stand-alone artefacts, more like additions to the vast river of imagery that comprises Franco’s artistic legacy – theme, genre, tone and quality ebbing and flowing across the decades like the tide.


Through generations of Film Studies text books and critical consensus, we’ve been taught to accept the idea the ‘auteur’ whose films are carefully constructed, deliberate statements, reflecting his/her artistic intentions. An appreciation of Franco’s oeuvre, however, involves throwing that notion outta the window from the outset, and preparing instead to enter the headspace of a director who basically doesn’t seem to give a damn about the final product of his labours, never mind the form in which they’re eventually placed before an audience.

Of course, Franco is far from alone in the ranks of directors who seem to make films for their own personal gratification, indulging their passions to the n-th degree and hoping an audience will share them. But whilst most classically ‘indulgent’ directors (from Fellini to Tarantino to whoever) presumably extract the most pleasure from assembling and evaluating their work in the editing room, or from witnessing the initial reactions of an audience in the screening room, Franco instead seems solely concerned with the act of filming itself. Like some weird voyeur or instigator of practical jokes, his satisfaction lies wholly in capturing what’s unfolding before his camera… when that’s over, he’s done with it. All he wants to do is film the next thing, and he wants to do it NOW.

Collaborators speak of Franco directing with an almost AAD-afflicted sense of constant forward momentum – a style that no doubt allowed him to thrive within the world of marginal, DIY productions, where such flippancies as retakes, coverage and continuity are laughed off as pointless luxuries. It also presumably helped him to maintain his prodigious work rate, which seemed to reach critical mass during the early-mid ‘70s, when he was churning out something like a dozen feature films per year, each of them splattered across the grimier end of the international film circuit in with so many alternate titles, in so many alternate versions, that a team of archivists could keep themselves busy for all eternity trying to assemble a comprehensive Franco filmography.

Accounts of how much input Franco had into post-production work on his films seems to vary depending on who you ask, but simply from watching them, it’s easy to get the impression that he just flung the raw footage at whoever was footing the bill and tore off to some other far-flung Mediterranean holiday resort to start filming his next onslaught of languorous, irrational lechery, leaving sleazebag producers and their aides to sellotape the results into a viable 80 minute programmer.

It is this ‘film and be damned’ approach that I think leads to the schizophrenic inconsistency that afflicts all Franco product. Even within the same film, a clear distinction can often be drawn between the scenes Franco was interested in (the sex, the violence, the decadent nightclub scenes and the strange, atmospheric location shots), and the tiresome stretches necessitated by the token adherence to script and continuity, about which he clearly couldn’t give a shit (character introductions, plot exposition, that sort of thing). The former can often explode with stylistic invention and emotional intensity, even as the latter showcase some of the most soul-witheringly dull filmmaking you’ve seen in your life.

Multiply this through the possibility that many of these films have been pieced together by people with little understanding of, or sympathy for, the director’s intentions, and then most likely censored, uncensored, porno-ised, unporno-ised, recut and generally buggered around with by hands unknown for years to come, and the result is a bumpy ride for all concerned.


But isn’t that, in effect, what remains so fascinating about Franco films? Every one of them is like a safari into the unknown. The general shape of his strange world will remain familiar, but the combination of elements within it could literally go anywhere, turning on a dime to leave you by turns baffled, exhilarated, horrified, angry, aroused, bored to tears, actually asleep, disgusted, awestruck, strangely moved or just insensible with laughter. Whatever happens, you’ll be insensible with *something* by the end, that’s for sure.

As such, writing a review of a single Franco film, assessing its relative worth as a discreet viewing experience, seems a pretty futile exercise. Far better I think that I should ramble on much as the maestro himself tends to do, drifting from film to film as the mood takes me, throwing in more general observations on his work wherever they occur to me.

I started writing this post with the intention of making it kind of ‘Franco overview’ precisely along those lines. But seeing as I’ve written over 2000 words already and barely even got started, I don’t think that’s gonna happen in ONE post. So… I guess maybe I’ll start doing a series of posts following particular aspects of his films in some form or other, and we can continue our voyage of discovery in part 2, part 3 etc? How does that sound to you? Good? No? Well ok, I’ll do it anyway. Maybe not immediately (there are plenty of other films I want to find time to write up first), but soon.

So get ready for jazz, machine guns, holiday resorts, Howard Vernon, generalised sexual delirium and lots of naked ladies, soon as I can be bothered to hit the typewriter. And in the meantime, at least I can relax in the knowledge that no one’s gonna stumble over this site’s archives and get the impression I hate the guy.