The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll

It's sometimes hard to keep your faith in Jess Franco when you've seen so much of his by-the-numbers horror and sleaze crap like I have... This notorious Spanish director made over 180 films in approximately 40 years. That's an average of more than four films each year, so it shouldn't be a surprise that really a lot of his movies are carelessly filmed and poorly edited routine jobs. However, his older films (let's say, everything released before 1972) are definite cinema classics and particularly the black & white Gothic horror try-outs of the early 60's are highly listed among my personal favorites. "Dr. Jekyll's Mistresses" is some sort of sequel to Franco's biggest success "The Awful Dr. Orloff", even though it mainly introduces new characters and an entirely different storyline. The uncanny castle setting was maintained, however, and so were the sinister atmosphere and inventive camera angles. Beautiful young orphan Melissa spends Christmas with her drunk aunt and scientist uncle up in their old, ramshackle castle. The uncle, Dr. Conrad Jekyll, can't dedicate much time to her as he inherited the secret formula of his tutor Dr. Orloff, which causes the dead to walk again and their actions can by controlled by ultrasonic noises. Jekyll resurrects his own dead brother (whom he killed for having an affair with his wife) and uses him to strangle random strip-bar dancers and prostitutes. Deceased Andros slowly begins to develop his own will again when he finds out that his poor and defenseless daughter stays at the castle. The script leaves too many questions unanswered (does Jekyll has anything against strippers or are they just test cases for his experiments?) but it's more coherent than most of Franco's other movies and there's a constant tension surrounding the film. Many sequences are stunningly beautiful and almost poetic, like when the "zombie" visits his own final resting place at the graveyard or when he pays nightly visits to his daughter's bedroom to look at her. The sound effects during the murder sequences are quite disturbing and the acting performances are overall very adequate. Even the dialogues are professionally written and that truly proves that "Dr. Jekyll's Mistresses" is one of Jess Franco's absolute finest achievements. Recommended!

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Jesus Franco; Produced by Marius Lesoeur, released on American television as "Dr. Orloff's Monster" by American-International TV. Screenplay by Jesus Franco; Photography by Alfonso Nieva; Edited by Angel Serrano; Music by Daniel White. Starring: Hugo Blanco, Agnes Spaak, Perla Cristal, Magda Maldonado and Pepe Rubio.

Spanish horror sequel to director Franco's "The Awful Dr. Orloff" which is even crummier than the first outing, as Orloff's human-like robot minion terrorizes pretty babes again. Featuring white nightgown action.

In THE MISTRESSES OF DR. JEKYLL (aka: DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER), the demented title character kills, then turns his cheating wife's lover into a remote control zombie robot. He then sends his new zombot out to slaughter various ladies of the night.

Enter the Doctor's niece, who arrives for a visit. Unbeknownst to her, it's her dad that's now a reanimated murderer!

Director Jesus Franco has really made a great horror film here. It's dark and bizarre, and the method used to facilitate the killings is ingenious! There's a macabre atmosphere and many genuinely creepy moments. The finale is also quite satisfying...

The second "Orloff" movie is apparently unrelated to the first (a re-acquaintance with which will follow): in fact, this name is omnipresent throughout Franco's filmography; anyway, it is more or less on the same level of THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS (1962) – even if I watched ORLOFF in English rather than French (or, for that matter, the original Spanish language). Again, Franco shows to be fairly adept with genre conventions and even manages to blend them relatively easily with a modern-day setting – still, he cannot help being himself and resist incorporating nightclub performances (in fact, this rather lazily makes the artistes themselves the victims so that we get a song every 20 minutes or so!) and, inevitably, erotic overtones.

Incidentally, Howard Vernon (the actor most associated with the Orloff role) is sorely missed here – the character himself is only of secondary importance and appears very briefly – but the memorable Morpho figure, a disfigured zombie-like creature obeying its master's will (not unlike Cesare from the German Expressionist landmark THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI {1920}), is now assumed by Andros. The latter – played by Hugo Blanco, the villainous latest member of the Von Klaus family and whose brooding good looks suit his mute stalker here – is perversely turned into a monster (hence the title, though the print actually bears the absurd moniker DR. JEKYLL'S MISTRESSES - which would, in any case, have better suited Walerian Borowczyk's masterful 1981 film, DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES!) by his own scientist brother (Vernon's bearded, rather gruff replacement and saddled with the peculiar surname of Fisherman) when he catches him in bed with his own wife (she, of course, also pays for her infidelity by being driven to the bottle).

However, the plot this time around is decidedly contrived: we never learn why Andros (who sleeps upright in a class cage, as Cesare himself did albeit in a wooden-box) is sent on a murderous rampage – after being revived, and subsequently controlled, by sound-waves – every once in a while (most effectively when he nonchalantly moves through a crowded nightspot following yet another attack). The "Digitally Obsessed" website review suggests the reason for the various killings is because Fisherman wanted to get even with his spouse…but this is hardly EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), is it?! Similarly, the heroine – the monster's daughter, whom she believed was dead and buried (at one point, he even visits his own grave!) – turns up to stay with the central family only so that we get the obligatory damsel-in-distress and add an admittedly refreshing touch of pathos to Andros' condition; Agnes Spaak, sister of the more famous Catherine(!), appears in this part. On the other hand, the girl's bland male counterpart is extremely annoying, and the presence of the Police basically only serves to keep the audience abreast of the villains' eventual apprehension.

Dr. Orloff's Monster (1964)

** (out of 4)

Jess Franco's sequel to The Awful Dr. Orloff is more of a remake than anything else. I watched the French version under the title The Mistress of Dr. Jekyll and this version features more nudity than the versions released in Spain and America. In the film. Dr. Fisherman (Marcelo Arroita Jauregui) kills his brother (Hugo Blanco) when he learns that he is having an affair with his wife. The doctor eventually brings his brother back as a zombie like creature to kill various women for him. I've never really been a fan of Franco's earlier period of Gothic horror films but you can certainly see that he has talent with these films. While I prefer his 70s work he does give this film a lot of style, which is something missing from those later films. The performance Blanco is pretty good but Jauregui comes off very boring and certainly can't fill the shoes of Howard Vernon from the previous film. The film is beautiful to look at and features a very nice score from Daniel White but in the end the film left me looking at my watch too much. The movie's pace is quite slow and all the stuff dealing with the police comes off boring. You can spot Franco during one scene. The DVD features some of the alternate scenes from the American and Spanish version of the film. I think I prefer the French scenes with the nudity as it makes the film stand out from countless other Gothic films of this period.