Antena Criminal: Making a Jess Franco Movie

Antena Criminal: Making a Jess Franco Movie (2002)

*** (out of 4)

Interesting documentary from Brian D. Horrorwitz about the making of BLIND TARGET, the Jess Franco movie from One Shot Productions.

ANTENA CRIMINAL is mainly going to appeal to fans of Jess Franco who want to see everything they can on the Spanish master. I say that because, as a documentary, there's really nothing here that's going to appeal to someone not familiar with Franco and I should also point out that there's really not too much focus in the picture so someone new to the director really isn't going to learn anything. With that said, what I did enjoy about the picture is that it gave you a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like for Franco to shoot these extremely low-budget movies.

A lot of the scenes here we just see the shooting of the picture but the most interesting moments are when Franco is either talking about something or in one sequence going off about an actress not being able to remember her lines. In fact, I'd say this scene is probably the highlight because you can just see Jess growing more and more frustrated before finally losing his cool. It's a side of Franco you don't normally see but I can't say I blame him. Other highlights include a segment where Franco talks about Orson Welles and why people loved working with him. Linnea Quigley is also on hand and asks Franco a few questions about his AIP days. Another good moment comes from a brief clip at a horror convention that was showing some trailers to Franco's work.

ANTENA CRIMINAL: MAKING A JESS FRANCO MOVIE isn't a masterpiece and there are certainly some flaws throughout. Whenever Franco is speaking English there are English subtitles available but whenever he's directing he speaks in Spanish and there are no subtitles, which is too bad because it would have been nice to understand what he was saying. Still, fans of Franco will want to check this out and there's even some nice scenes with Lina Romay.