The Flesh and Blood Show (1972) dir. Pete Walker

Logline: A tale of sex, madness, and murder in London's theatrical scene. A ragtag group of swinging actors are beckoned to an old, abandoned pier-side theater by a mysterious producer to begin rehearsals for a new show. Between all the squabbling and fornicating, is it any wonder that these hot singles start popping up with their heads lopped off? These murders set off an investigation that reveals the theater's bloody, histrionic history alongside the "pleasures of the third dimension." It's all enough to make you exclaim, as one of the film's victims does, "this bloody theater's got a feeling of doom and death!"

Well, it's certainly a Flesh Show. Pete Walker's second (and first genuine) horror film, The Flesh and Blood Show, is more beholden to his early days in cheeky skin flicks than you might figure. Once our assorted young and randy actors assemble at the creepy theater and realize there's no other adequate lodging in town, we are witness to much leering, stripping, undressing, heavy petting, caressing, fondling, and other sundry sexy stuff. In retrospect, perhaps my most perceptive note was "This is a film about the unclasping of bras." This isn't exactly a gripe, because the film is fun in the same way most of the tamer '70s sexploitation films are: it's a jovial celebration of nubile human bodies at rest, at play, and perpetually shirking bad clothing decisions. The horror elements, when they kick in quite a ways into the film, are far less developed and assured than in Walker's later attempts. All of the murders (and there aren't many) occur off-screen, and the aftermaths we witness are pretty far from gruesome. Again, it feels like Walker is testing the horrific waters, making an earnest go of the genre but not yet having a feel for its extravagant nuances. Nonetheless, the film makes up for this lack in sheer dopey '70s sleaze appeal. The film's best moments are the fleeting glimpses we receive of the gang's avant garde theatrical improv sessions in preparation for their big London opening, one of which is best described as "a caveman dance party" and another as "an erotic yoga workout." One honestly can't find this sort of trash anywhere else.

As a mystery it's bunk, considering that the killer-- a local Shakespearean actor who has spent decades under the assumed identity of a solitary and overly friendly man named Major Bell (Patrick Barr)-- telegraphs his guiltiness early on by being the only possible suspect outside of the core group of actors and spouting out Obvious Psychopath give-aways like his comment that the town sure has been "cheered up by having young people" around. Yet, the film still manages to find some amusement in this clunker of a reveal by coating it with a thick layer of recursive winking-at-one's-self-in-the-mirror shenanigans. Once the reveal happens we're treated to a black and white flashback (in 3-D, no less!) in which Bell-- then a famed actor named Sir Arnold Gates-- takes his coal-faced, full-garbed rendition of Othello backstage by attacking (and eventually "Cask of Amontillado"-ing) his adulterous wife and her lover after a performance in which they all starred (they having literally stepped out of their costumes as Desdemona and Cassio for a post-curtain call tumble in the old dressing room). So, that's a cute little nugget of self-aware, metatextual goofiness, as are the repeated fake-out death gags in the first half and this beauty of a line uttered by one of the survivors during the exposition overload that serves as the film's resolution: "if it wasn't so bloody tragic and horrible it could almost make a movie script (wink)!"

In another bit of metafictional self-evaluation, our killer's motivation and the film's tacit refusal to affirm that motivation help illuminate the uniquely supportive appraisal of sexual freedom that's being presented here in re: the film and stage productions of a sexier, more loosely censored 1970s England. Major Bell has orchestrated the events of the film in order to take revenge against a group that he sees as a wealth of cultural "scum," "excrement," and "sex-crazed jackanapes": namely, actors. His actress wife's infidelity has led him to extrapolate her actions and come to the conclusion that "all actors are lecherous harlots" who can be found "flaunting their thighs and breasts" without moral qualms. To be sure, there is much flaunting of thighs and breasts to be found perpetrated by the actors of The Flesh and Blood Show (both from a fictional standpoint and from our voyeuristic perspective as viewers), but does the film's sexually liberated La Ronde-style liaisons have an honest-to-goodness detrimental effect on the world, either within the film or outside of it in reality?

The characters seem to have a jolly good time sleeping around with one another and we (the audience) enjoy the harmless ogling. Things only get prickly when a stodgy old man from a previous generation catches wind of the "the temptations of the flesh" being presented on stage and, failing to recognize that the cultural values surrounding sex have changed, starts up some murderin'. But he's not a hero for this: he's a lost and befuddled geezer, stuck in the long-gone past and easily bested by his own faultless victims. The film aligns itself with the actors, who are not the transgressive teens deserving punishment of countless future moral slasher flicks, but consenting young adults living their considerably more liberated lives for our vicarious enjoyment. Considering the film's penchant for internal metacommentary, it would be easy enough to read its events as symbolic of the BBFC's cultural war against nudity and sex in the cinemas. It's a hysterical dramatization of everything the censors feared: seeing flesh will make us crave flesh, and possibly cause violence in order to acquire it! Making the flesh-affected person in question not a participant or audience member (Bell never sees their production) but a person equivalent to a moral censor deflates any such claims by demonstrating that the only people harmed by all that sex on screen are those people fretting over it to begin with. Although flesh and blood were to be increasingly aligned over the next two decades in film (particularly in Pete Walker's own work), it remains true that Flesh need not beget Blood. The Flesh and Blood Show's structural overemphasis on the first component might be one bit of evidence that Walker and his film believe that being audience to a little more erotic yoga than gruesome decapitation is basically good for the soul.

Die Screaming, Marianne (1971) dir. Pete Walker

Logline: Marianne (Susan George), a psychedelic suntanned bikini dancer, has spent the last six years fleeing across Europe in order to evade her father, mysteriously known only as The Judge (Leo Genn), and whatever nefarious plans he has for her and her approaching inheritance. When she shacks up with her new accidental husband, Eli (Barry Evans), and finds that her association with him is putting his life in danger, Marianne resolves to confront The Judge and her estranged sister, Hildegarde (Judy Huxtable), at the family estate in Portugal. But Marianne must take care, for someone there wishes to see her die screaming...

English director Pete Walker's first hesitant toe into the pool of horror cinema, Die Screaming, Marianne has the lousiest reputation of any of his major films. Scouring the web for reviews leaves one with the general consensus  that it's a bore, a thriller minus the thrills, and a creaky bit of mod sexploitation. Honestly, the film fits that consensus, but not necessarily to its detriment: sometimes gazing at a weird, snail-paced moddish thriller is precisely how one wishes to spend one's lazy afternoon. And it's not as if the film is a chore to sit through, coming equipped as it does with whiffs of style (split screens! those opening credits!), scenic location shooting (beaches! canyons!), and some competent and appealing acting (particularly from a young and ever-feisty Susan George, though Judy Huxtable-- as Marianne's smirkingly deranged half-sister-- is no slouch either). Moreover, to focus too much attention on those perceived flaws of Die Screaming, Marianne is to ignore its intriguing code-switching between genres and its atypical construction of its female heroine.

The abrupt, muddy transitions between genres throughout are the film's defining characteristic. Marianne neither sits still nor focuses on any one genre in particular over the others; it seems as if it would rather have them all in equal measure. A woman-on-the-run thriller cuts to a swinging '70s sex comedy which then bleeds back over into a thriller (with assassins!) before becoming a romance and then an incestual family inheritance drama and then eventually settling in as a sort of coastal Gothic suspense film. The film shifts between these different genres (and their attendant tones and styles) as if it wasn't asking much of the audience to follow along. It's a wonder that the film feels as unified as it does; usually, these sort of shifts leave the audience feeling disconnected and adrift from the main narrative. The presence of some strongly realized characters helps anchor us, of course, but probably a bigger factor in our continued engagement in the film is Walker's clear skill in employing each of these genres. Though you'd imagine them being weird thrust up together (and they are weird, sort of), disparate scenes coexist peacefully because Walker directs and edits with the confidence that they will. Some small moments, like Marianne's not-quite-bashful flirtation with her new husband and Eli's slow realization that the men in his apartment are there to kill him, are fantastically crafted and hint that Walker would have been equally adept in genres outside of horror. (Early in his career, Walker did in fact experiment with other genres like sexploitation and crime, in films such as School for Sex (1969) and Man Of Violence (1971), before dedicating himself wholly to horror. Having not seen any of these early oddities, I can't comment upon whether or not he pulled off their respective genres with grace, but Marianne certainly suggests the possibility.)

But more so than its unlikely coherence, Marianne is the film's main appeal. She's not the usual sort of heroine that you find in ostensible thrillers like these, which generally feature multiple parties conspiring to kill or drive crazy a helpless innocent female who is severely limited in both the available thought and action open to her. Take for example, the young heiress of two film versions of The Cat and the Canary (1939; 1978) that I watched recently: in both, the heroine sat by, meekly, as all the film's men either tried to kill her or save her. The same cannot be said for Marianne. Upon her first recognition that her father and sister were up to no good with regard to her future and inheritance, Marianne split and spent the next six years on the lam, providing for herself while depending upon no one else (especially men) for anything other than small favors. Marianne displays a fierce independence throughout the proceedings, like when she refuses to be tied down in marriage to the weaselly Sebastian (Christopher Sandford) when he insists by intentionally screwing up the marriage license and quickly moving out when he gets angry, offering him some choice words in return: "Look, mate, I've looked after myself for the last six years, and believe me yours was the most amateur attempt yet." She chooses her own lovers, feels empowered dancing around in a bikini, and literally evades patriarchal authority personified in the character of her father, The Judge, a figure whose symbolic significance couldn't be more obvious if he'd been named, say, "The Man" instead.

Besides these welcome signs of a developed and complex female character, Marianne also fulfills the traditionally male role of rescuer at the film's climax: when locked in a deadly hot steam room by her wicked sister, Marianne is forced to rescue herself and gather enough strength in order to mount a final face off against the conspirators out to kill her (which she does, aptly, with a little help from a menacing butler). During her predicament, Eli-- her knight in shining polyester-- was off somewhere being a corpse and providing no help at all. Gender roles successfully inverted. However, the film isn't content to proclaim that Marianne's status as an empowered woman is unambiguously good for her: the film's bleak final message for Marianne (surrounded as she is by the dead bodies of everyone she knows) is that her independent lifestyle, though perhaps the only way to shield herself physically and psychologically from the sleazeballs and would-be murderers of the world, dooms her to loneliness. As the theme song says, "Love's not for you, Marianne," and that's unfortunate. 

April 2013's Footstones

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Meltdown 08: Francophilia (Part IV)

Count Dracula 

(El conde Drácula) 

(1970)

What begins as a slavishly faithful, po-faced, and stylish adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel eventually devolves into something, well, less than that, but for a movie that credits its editing to Bruno Mattei, hey, we're lucky it even resembles a motion picture. Credit where credit is due: unlike any other adaptation up to 1970, El conde Dracula makes a serious go of adapting the source material with proper reverence (and it predates Coppola's "Bram Stoker's" label of "authenticity" by over two decades). These novelistic aspirations are most noticeable in the film's fantastic first act, which depicts in minute detail Jonathan Harker's visit to the Count's castle in Transylvania (down to the baby-eating). Christopher Lee's performance of Dracula in this film is a wild divergence from his previous portrayals of the character in the series of Hammer films from decades previous. Here he's an intentionally isolated racist, lonely and angry at the world. He's defined through his hunger for power, even if that power can only be the small physical power he wields over those in his vampiric thrall, and not that power implicit in possessing the same mighty conquering military force of his ancestors. In this sense, this incarnation of Dracula is (much like the novel's, but maybe even more so than the novel's) a pathetic figure: dangerous-- surely-- but ultimately ill-equipped for the realities of the modern world. Moreover, he sports a killer 'stache. (Of course, Lee was still playing Dracula for Hammer at this time, so imagining this Dracula alongside the bloodsucker of, for instance, Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) is a draining mental exercise.) Otherwise, the cast is a Who's Who of European genre stars (Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, Paul Muller, Maria Rohm, Jack Taylor, Emma Cohen, and Franco's early muse-- Soledad Miranda-- in their first major collaboration together), and though they all do fine in their parts, the stoic tone of the film prevents all but Kinski from standing out. (Kinski is Renfield, naturally, and his mute scenery-chewing at one point earns him the title of "Soup Bowl Pollock.") 

Once the film exits back through the Borgo Pass and returns to London, the adaptation starts playing fast and loose, and this is where the film probably becomes problematic for most viewers. While some changes make sense in light of a need to condense narrative (the collapsing of Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris into one character) and others are most likely due to actors' availability (Van Helsing's "slight stroke"), still others appear arbitrary and so less meaningful (like Dracula's death by torch rather than by bowie knife to the heart). Unarguably the most arbitrary and absurd moment in the film is when Van Helsing, Seward, and Morris enter the Count's home with some slaying in mind and are confronted by a room full of snarling, sentient taxidermied animals. It's a more of an, uh, intense stare-off with constant quick edits and zooms, but it's an enlivening dose of batshit Franco spectacle in an otherwise perhaps too staid film. Being Franco, the film does make sure to put extra emphasis on the erotic component of Dracula's vampirism (an emphasis easily conveyed by Soledad Miranda's constant subtle expressions of ecstasy), but-- more interestingly-- it also highlights the unnerving near-glee that our would-be vampire hunters take in bloodily slaughtering sleeping vampire brides (their once beloved Lucy included), adding layers of gender dynamics and human barbarity into the picture. Count Dracula is a fine film earnestly made, but not at all what the typical Franco admirer would expect, nor exactly what the admirer of standard issue classic horror would hope for. It's an unloved mutt, stuck somewhere between past cinematic horrors and the erotic brew that Franco was soon to stir, with no clear place in the world of its time. Kind of like the Count himself.

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein 

(Dracula contra Frankenstein) 

(1972)

Call me batty, but I find Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (perhaps more commonly known by the literal translation of its misleading original Spanish title, Dracula vs. Frankenstein) to be a fascinating exercise in updating the performance style and visual language of classic silent horror filmmaking for the 1970s. Moreover, the film simultaneously expresses a cynical contempt for its audience that's unmatched in Franco's filmography. If Count Dracula was an earnest but flawed attempt at portraying a classic literary monster on the silver screen, Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein messily demonstrates how dissatisfying those same monsters can become when commodified as defanged puppets in money-grubbing Hollywood monster mashes. Of course, that's precisely what happened with Universal's stable of monsters when its members were demoted from starring in the artistic successes of Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and James Whales's Frankenstein (1931) to kindergarten cash-ins like House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), and the unabashed farce of Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). I can only speculate, but the notion that there might have been commercial pressure on Franco to produce a monster team-up film after the success of Count Dracula doesn't seem unreasonable. And if that was the case, it's easy to read the resulting film as a visual essay on exactly how lightweight that concept is. After all, how powerful, how menacing are our cinematic monsters when they're teamed up like superheroes and expected to execute pratfalls? 

Not very, is what Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein posits. Its monsters are mind-controlled, blank-faced props, mutely enacting the bidding of Dr. Rainer von Frankenstein (Dennis Price). At the climax of the film, when Dr. Frankenstein has decided he no longer has any use for them, he slaughters his primary monsters with nary a tussle: Dracula (a perpetually snarling Howard Vernon) fails to stir from his slumber as he's staked, and Frankenstein's Creature (Fernando Bilbao, in a Boris Karloff costume less convincing than the one your dad wore when you were seven) meekly and willingly shuffles into the electricity-producing box of his doom. The film's title and opening text almost guarantee a monster brawl, but the film seems pleased with itself for almost completely denying any such thing as it wraps up. Besides the anticlimactic deaths of its main baddies, the only monster-tussling provided is a brief scrap between the Creature and a Wolf Man, who enters the film out of nowhere and just as soon departs from it. Did the Creature kill him? We're neither told nor shown, and so again the film is rubbing our faces in what it sees as juvenile expectations for cross-monster encounters: they fought, you got what you came for, does it honestly matter who won? The film's cynicism materializes through both its critique of these sort of commercial horror ventures and its self-awareness of its own production of pure, incompetent schlock.

One might argue that the incompetence of this schlock was not at all a desired feature, and, sure, that's possible, but underestimating Franco always seems a losing proposition. As it so happens, Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein is fascinating on a technical level, despite whatever intentional or unintentional narrative deficiencies it possesses. It's virtually a silent film, with almost no dialogue whatsoever in its opening twenty minutes and very little after that (so little that it all could have easily fit on a few intertitle cards). The narrative is communicated through the actors' broad performances and the emotional tenor through its orchestral score (like the score for Count Dracula, another Bruno Nicolai effort) and ADR'd sound effects. This stylistic choice is pulled off with surprising skill (no other film of Franco's feels quite like this one) and creates the curious juxtaposition of a trite commercial horror premise in the mode of a film from horror's silent, earnestly horror-minded origins. It's as if the film is trying to show us what it would be like-- and how dreadful it would be-- if halfway through Nosferatu (1922) a Wolf Man jumped out of the bushes and clawed at Count Orlok's elongated face.

Daughter of Dracula 

(La fille de Dracula) 

(1972)

If I were told I was the last living descendant of Count Dracula, I know I'd probably spend my undead afterlife rolling about all day and night with the lovely Anne Libert and her massive hair, much like Britt Nichols does in this film. Released in the same year as Dracula, Prisoner of Darkness, the more typical Daughter of Dracula falls in line with Franco's other erotic lady vampire films like Female Vampire (1973) and Vampyros Lesbos (1971). While failing to create the stylish and melancholy excellence of those superior films, Daughter of Dracula nonetheless survives with the help of a bleeding vampire heart of its own. The main narrative (when the film chooses to stick with it, which is not all that often) concerns the jealous, possessive love that our Dracula daughter, Luisa Karlstein (Britt Nichols), has for her adorable and devoted cousin, Karine (Anne Libert), which evolves into awkward passion before exploding into if-I-can't-have-you-then-no-one-can vampire violence set to a second cousin of the Merrie Melodies tune. Karine's tragic fate (she wasn't even considering leaving the irrational Luisa!) provides a coherent emotional anchor for the film, but even then its often crowded out by all the other stuff going on over the film's brief running time. There's a police investigation (naturally), an occult expert,  the nearly inexplicable basement appearance of the stone-stiff ancestral vamp, Count Karlstein (Howard Vernon, reprising his non-performance from Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein), and a series of voyeuristic (read: eyeball zooms!) stalkings and slashings by a giallo-esque killer. That last bit is especially odd:  for reasons entirely unclear, most of Luisa's vamp attacks occur when she's decked out in a fedora and trenchcoat. This visual association with the giallo film-- at its peak in 1972 and always resplendent in leering, maladjusted peeping toms and janes-- lends some emphasis to Luisa's psychosexual issues, but it also results in the film feeling confused: our villainess trades out a straight razor for a pair of fangs, and we haven't a clue as to why. But this one's undeniably a quickie for the exploitation crowd. Not convinced? Peep the conclusion of Karine's emotional death scene, in which the camera, nonplussed, pans from a close-up of her lifeless face to a close-up of her pubic hair. Classy, Jess.

Revenge in the House of Usher 

(El hundimiento de la casa Usher)

(1988)

Well, one supposes Franco's declining reputation in the 1980s wasn't spurred for no reason whatsoever, and Revenge in the House of Usher is pretty good reason. Though purporting to be based upon the similarly titled E. A. Poe novella, the film is nonetheless another thinly veiled Orloff variation set in a house that crumbles at the conclusion. Howard Vernon returns to familiar territory as Dr. Usher, a hermetic mad scientist with an assistant named Morpho and a daughter with a bizarre, incurable disease named Melissa. Melissa's affliction has led Orloff to commit sundry murders in her name, as the only temporary relief from her debilitating illness comes from complete neck-to-neck blood transfusions by way of nubile lasses. Unlike the Orloffs of past films, Dr. Usher displays a certain intriguing uniqueness by admitting that he's an unremitting sadist who discovered that he enjoyed every scream that his killing for "a larger purpose" produced. This is an explicit dimension of the Orloff personality only hinted at in previous films. Previous films like, say, The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), which Revenge in the House of Usher helpfully reminds us of by dedicating its entire second act to replaying the greatest hits from that landmark film. Yes, unfortunately, this film is one of those lazy footage recyclers, in the tradition of spendthrift classics like Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (1987), Boogeyman II (1983), and much of Jim Wynorski's filmography. It's a shame, because what's here apart from the roughly twenty minutes of padding is a moderately intriguing film that interests not due to the ways in which it adheres to the Orloff formula, but rather through its divergences (like the icky ghost of Usher's dead wife who haunts him and desires to drag him down to hell with her; Lina Romay's devoted assistant character, who appears to be supernaturally trapped by the house and who messily makes out with a member of Menudo; and of course the crumbling Usher mansion, the shaky existence of which is tied to the grim fate of its owner). Alas, all of this original material plays a far too minor role in what emerges as a basic retread with rotted foundations begging to give way.

Meltdown 08: Francophilia (Part III)

Jack the Ripper 

 (Der Dirnenmörder von London) 

(1976)

A variation on the Orloff theme, Jack the Ripper replaces one wide-eyed European genre star (Howard Vernon) for another, even wider-eyed European genre star (the incomparable Klaus Kinski) and throws him into much the same situation faced by his his predecessor in The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962). The similarities the films share are less in theme or tone than in explicit narrative structure: once again we have a respected doctor of high society who murders women after wining and dining them; we have a lengthy scene documenting how the ongoing police investigation is aided by a composite sketch of the suspect, drawn from various eyewitness reports; and we even have the chief inspector's gal-pal, a ballerina (another one!), who decides on a whim to involve herself in the investigation, without prompting, as disguised bait for the killer. Befitting of its 1976 pedigree, Jack the Ripper is a whole heck of a lot sleazier than the already-quite-sleazy Orlof, with Kinski's Jack suffering through some debilitating "Mommy Was a Whore" issues that result in him being more likely to stab his female victims half to death before beginning his clumsy, impotent sexual assaults. There's some interesting symbolism (Kinski's predatory owl-like gaze is contrasted with the benign old man's blindness) and a bit of effective, perception-shifting frame composition (Kinski's near murder and rape of Lina Romay's burlesque singer is filmed from a distance in a static shot, replacing the expected leering quick cut closeups that would typically grace such a visceral scene with some distance that creates a disquieting pathos for both victim and perpetrator). Speaking of Lina Romay, she gleams like never before in her cutesy and frivolous song and dance number that winds up as the chief highlight of the proceedings. In a film full of wide eyes, she pulls the widest.

Mansion of the Living Dead 

(La mansión de los muertos vivientes) 

(1985)

Yet another example of Franco still possessing cinematic chops in the decade of mullets and denim is his ghosts-and-girls-on-vacation romp, Mansion of the Living Dead. The film is a romp in part, certainly, but we'd be equally as apt describing it as a funeral procession, and one not too dissimilar from the melancholy cinematic dirges of a certain like-minded genre arthouse pioneer. Although Franco and his French brother in arms, Jean Rollin, spent (by all reports) the entirety of their careers having little to do with one another, it would be foolish to proclaim they weren't familiar with each other's work. Mansion of the Living Dead is proof enough of this familiarity, as it's the closest Franco ever came to luxuriating in the same moody supernatural romance elements that Rollin filled his filmography with. What makes the film more curious than a direct theft of Rollin's milieu is that Franco deftly blends the brooding romance with his standard cheeky sleaze and nutty sadism. Four near-middle-aged Spanish lesbians (stock Franco characters if ever there were ones) arrive at a perpetually windy abandoned seaside resort hotel. While they wonder where all the other guests are and writhe around together in the nude, clues like a knife that has been chucked at the ladies by unseen forces and the discovery of the creepy concierge's flower-eating wife chained to a bedpost by the neck provide hints that all is not well in paradise. (Well, to us, anyway. The girls assume the best, asking themselves, rhetorically, "who would want to murder four hotties like us?") From there the Franco and Rollin sensibilities commingle all over the place, allowing scenes of Exorcism-esque torture and sexual sadism to butt up against breathless whispers about reincarnated princesses and the loneliness of being a ghost. These frequent transitions between disparate tones and styles (including playful eroticism, moody romance, sleazy mystery, and occult sadism; one brief moment, concerning the concierge and a desk redirection gag, is more or less a truncated Monty Python skit) are indeed jarring, but this is a film whose villains' motivation rests on a bewildering contradiction ("Bless you and damn you"), so one can't help but feel that the structural chaos is appropriate. Mansion of the Living Dead is thick with atmosphere and ideas (arguably too thick with each), but it's one of the best of Franco's later years and an undeniable treat for the initiated.

The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus 

(Le mano de un hombre muerto) 

(1962)

Despite having the snazziest poster of any Franco film, The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus might be his dreariest. Gosh, what a slog it is, and what a let down after such a promising premise! The premise is this: the OG Sadistic Baron lived 500 years in the film's past, and after having tortured and murdered a young girl from the nearby village he disappeared into the swamps surrounding his property, becoming-- as legend would have it-- a ghost eager to possess his descendants and urge them towards continuing his slaughter of the innocents. That's more or less standard horror stuff, sure, but it's aided (at least momentarily) by a cozy backwoods Gothic atmosphere (this spooky set-up is revealed to us through a hushed conversation at the village's musty bar, for example, with talk of vampires(!), bats (!), and ghosts (!)). But to expect an opulent tale of horror would be to set yourself up for disappointment: The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus falls more squarely into the contemporaneous krimi movement in European mystery cinema-- which often placed flamboyant horror film baddies in the confines of procedural murder mysteries-- than it does into the Gothic horror genre. That  distinction doesn't make it a bad film by default, as krimis are often delightful, but Baron Von Klaus is almost entirely  concerned with its procedural elements, and considering that our not-so-mysterious killer can only be one of two possible suspects, it takes us merely as long as it takes to explain the film's premise for us to have the case solved. The film has a nice jazzy score accompanying it and there's an amusing bit at the climax in which the killer, finally revealed and fleeing from the police, submerges himself into the swamp water, muttering "I am the swamp man!" Baron Von Klaus came out in the same year as The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), and even though both films hunker down in similar narrative and aesthetic territory, it's no mystery why the latter is held up as one of the key foundational components of European horror and the latter is only remembered for a brief shot of a lady's sideboob.

The Diabolical Dr. Z 

(Miss Muerte) 

(1966)

A madcap, pseudo-scientific revenge thriller with all the fine trimmings of Gothic horror, The Diabolical Dr. Z stands as one of the best of Franco's first decade of filmaking, and-- barring Succubus (1968)-- probably his early weirdest. We find the visual content and narrative concerns of the film both looking forward to future films of Franco's (there's the seeds of images and ideas that would later blossom into Vampyros Lesbos (1971) and Venus in Furs (1969) present here) and backwards to what had already worked in the past (the notion of mind-controlled zombies who desire to defy their master is straight out of Dr. Orloff's Monster (1964). In fact, Dr. Orloff himself is even name-dropped by the diabolical doc). What begins with a serial killer's dark and stormy prison break ends with a man who is being restrained by robot arms bracing for the pain of the giant knitting needles his mind-controlled girlfriend in a mesh spider-patterned bodysuit is about to skewer him with. How these two points of interest join together involves (if you haven't guessed) a few twists and turns. Fortunately, every one of them is a loopy pleasure to watch. The film is scored with skittish jazz and features striking cinematography that's a cut above that of many of Franco's later films while still relishing the sloppy trademarks of days to come (catch those quick zooms!). It sounds smooth, looks delectable, and feels like a knitting needle through the skull. It's one to cherish.

And to make it even sweeter, The Diabolical Dr. Z also sports one heck of a complicated lead villain. One sort of assumes that the titular Dr. Z would be the first Dr. Z introduced to us, a Dr. Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano), who claims to have discovered the physical capacities for good and evil within the brain, but this isn't the case. In order to eliminate evil entirely, Dr. Zimmer asks a board of his peers for permission to begin experiments rehabilitating violent criminals, and when the other doctors not only deny him this but also call him a Nazi monster for even suggesting it, Dr. Zimmer immediately plops down dead of shock and distress. The adjective of the film's title is then earned by his wicked daughter Irma (Mabel Karr), who is also an accomplished amateur doctor of a sort (she's so tough, she performs facial reconstruction surgery on herself), who fakes her own death (rather disastrously)  in order to carry on her father's work in secret, with the sole aim of using his work to punish the men who she feels are responsible for his death. There's a really interesting dimension-- or, rather, lack of dimension-- to Irma's character: she's a woman who literally and figuratively surrenders her own identity in favor of the identities of others. This aspect of her character is first discernible in both of the film's most common titles (The Diabolical Dr. Z title has her adopting and sullying her father's professional title, while Miss Muerte refers directly to brainwashed dancer Nadja's stage name but more accurately describes the willfully murderous Irma). But this eradication of self is present in Irma's actions throughout the film, too: Irma drops everything in her own life to achieve revenge for her father's death and to continue his work; she callously murders her double (a random woman who closely resembles her) and symbolically burns the body, burning her own face in the process (go figure!) and, in a sense, the most recognizable part of her own identity; she dons disguises throughout the film, concealing her identity from those suspicious parties; and, moreover, she shifts all of the physical responsibility for the revenge murders off onto another woman (who she also vaguely resembles), keeping her own nonexistent hands clean but also denying her the catharsis of doing the deed herself. Irma becomes a sort of nefarious ethereal presence, always machinating from behind the scenes but physically subsumed by her father's ambitions and unable to become even the deadly feminine black widow she must be in order to take revenge for herself. She's diabolical-- naturally-- but also a little bit sad.

Last up: Count Dracula (1970), Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972), Daughter of Dracula (1972), & Revenge in the House of Usher (1988).