Jesus "Jess" Franco, 1930-2013

Diana Lorys in Gritos en la noche (The Awful Dr. Orloff), 1964.

Shirley Eaton in The Girl From Rio, 1969.

Janine Reynaud in Succubus, 1969.

Dennis Price and Maria Rohm in Venus In Furs, 1969. 

Howard Vernon in Countess Perverse, 1973.

Lina Romay in Lorna The Exorcist, 1974.

"Not an untalented man, by the way," Christopher Lee said to me apropos Jess Franco, whose name I had the mild temerity to bring up when I was interviewing Lee for TV Guide back in 1993 or so. (Of all the interview tapes I've ever lost, the one with Lee is the one I regret the most, as it also contains Lee regaling me with an impersonation of Foghorn Leghorn, in the context of a description of how he and his pal Peter Cushing used to entertain each other on set.) Lee's compliment seems overtly backhanded, but given Franco's relative ill-repute in the realm of straight-arrow cinephilia, it wasn't as insulting as it sounded. He really had little way of knowing I was a fan. 

I met him, and his soulmate/collaborator/eventual wife Lina Romay (whose death last year makes Franco's own passing rather less surprising than it might have been), back in 1997, at a Chiller Theatre Expo in Secaucus that I'd convinced Premiere to allow my pal Jewel Shepard, who in her role as a soon-to-be-former-Scream-Queen would be signing at a table there, to write about. It was the same Chiller at which Russ Meyer upbraided, in profane and definite terms, my photographer for trying to shoot him with a fish-eye lens. They were at a table near Jewel's, and neither of them looked quite their best, and they were kind of disoriented due to both jet lag and the intensity of the reception they were getting. Given the crush and the fact that their English wasn't all that hot, I wasn't able to convey much to them aside from admiration, but my photographer and I paid homage by turning up a few nights later at CBGB for a set by Killer Barbys, a Spanish post-punk combo featured in a recent Franco picture of the same name. 

Read the obit by my brother in Francophilia (among other things), Tim Lucas, who in fact really outstrips me in the pertinent department. As readers of this blog are aware, I'm currently consumed with other work (it's coming along nicely and some resurfacing in this space is imminent), but I'm hoping the above images convey a sense of my regard for the filmmaker. Not just "not untalented," but, in my estimation, a genuine artist. 

Comments

[The Siren]

That top screencap is gorgeous.

[Ed Hulse]

Ah, Jess, we hardly knew ye.

I just found out about his death from Maria, who posted an obit link -- but nothing else -- on her Facebook page. I suspect she'll have more to say, though.

[Oliver_C]

The Takashi Miike of 60s/70s Europe, might we say? I confess I've barely seen enough of either director to judge.

'Countess Perverse' is the sole Franco I own -- kudos to Mondo Macabro, whose magnificently-mastered DVD renders its depravities most palatable.

[george]

"The Bloody Judge" (1970), with Lee, is the best Franco film I've seen, and the only one I own on DVD. For once he had a decent budget, and he made the most of it. Looks great in widescreen, and makes a fun double bill with Michael Reeves' "Witchfinder General."

Only real flaw: the sex scenes shot without Lee's participation, although we're supposed to believe a pair of hands in certain shots belong to Lee. They obviously don't. Lee claimed he had no knowledge of these scenes until he saw the film.

[Jeff McMahon]

I've seen maybe a dozen Franco films and none of them have done it for me - can someone suggest the titles that best make the case for him as an artist?

[Tim Lucas]

Thank you for the mention, Glenn.

I recently came into possession of the German alternate cut of SUCCUBUS, with English subtitles, and it's an appreciably richer experience than the American version: a combination art film, art film spoof and a portfolio of his influences in film and music. With this version, one can better understand why Fritz Lang would have said it was the first erotic film he'd seen that was also a beautiful piece of cinema when he saw it at a Berlin screening. The frame grab you chose really captures the spirit of the film, which at the time Franco was hoping would usher in a new era of dark adult fantasy in cinema. Then Wes Craven peed in the pool by associating adult horror with heightened realism in THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and changed the gameplan entirely. Franco wasn't allergic to sadism, but he prefered Sade.

Franco's filmography is less about individual titles than about the continuum produced by the whole, the way the films inform and interact the others. But VENUS IN FURS and FEMALE VAMPIRE were the ones that unlocked the door for me (admittedly, I was running a high fever at the time). My favorites, though, are probably THE DIABOLICAL DR Z, EUGENIE DE SADE, LORNA THE EXORCIST and a very hard to see one called BAHIA BLANCA -- unlike anything else he ever made, a revenge story but like a samba set to film, with a lot of wamrth and heart. My friends at Redemption have looked into releasing it but it's tied up at the moment in some legal nightmare.

[Not David Bordwell]

I've been trying to place where I'd seen Dennis Price recently, and then, holy crap! It was TWINS OF EVIL on BluRay!

Quite a career for that guy.