JESS FRANCO, or THE MISFORTUNES OF VIRTUE
John Exshaw
El sueño de la razon produce monstruos
(The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters)
Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Los Caprichos, plate 43, (1797-1798)
In his book, Jess Franco: El sexo del horror, the Spanish film historian Carlos Aguilar closes a chapter with the following remark: “It is really true that, in his own way, Jesus Franco represents a damn peculiar case . . .” (1) That Jess Franco can produce such a perplexed (and exasperated) response in a compatriot who was, after all, engaged in writing a book-length biographical and critical overview goes some way to illustrate the difficulties encountered in trying to come to grips with Jesús Franco Manera, a director whose staggering output of something like 180 films in forty-five years contrives to make words like ‘maverick’, ‘obsessive’, ‘enigma’, or even ‘deranged’, seem sadly inadequate.
Some might question whether it is worth “coming to grips” with Franco at all. His detractors are legion, and, despite the publication of three serious studies (2) and a veritable host of admiring magazine articles, it is fair to say that Franco and his films still fly well below the radar of respectable critical attention; considered, when considered at all, to be beneath both notice and contempt.
In part, of course, this attitude is simply a hangover from what might be termed ‘La Plus longue nuit des auteurs’, the Cahiers du Cinéma-inspired revolution which, having done sterling work in elevating the importance of the Seventh Art, then proceeded, like an earlier French Revolution, to overstay its welcome, descending into a kind of intellectual Terror in which certain directors of genre films were elevated to the Pantheon (particularly if they laboured in the more obscure depths of the Hollywood system) while others (mainly European) were simply ignored. It is only relatively recently, after all, that mainstream critics on both sides of the Atlantic have been forced to concede, albeit grudgingly and with reservations, the importance of such genre directors as Sergio Leone, Mario Bava, and Dario Argento, despite the fact that their films are often self-evidently as much about cinema itself – what Leone called “cinema cinema” – as any homage-laden chef d’œuvre of the nouvelle vague.
To a substantial degree, however – and there is no way of riding around this – Franco’s reputation and critical neglect also stem from the fact, freely admitted by both his admirers and the man himself, that many of his films are simply awful. And yet even the most stringent and fastidious proponent of the auteur theory would find it difficult to deny that Franco meets all the requirements of authorship: in addition to directing, he also writes, edits, and acts; he is frequently his own cameraman, and often composes or co-composes the scores. Franco’s universe is distinctly his own, to put it mildly – an oneiric witches’ brew of eroticism, fetishism, voyeurism, and Sadean impulses, all stirred together with recurring motifsof vampires, mind control, morbidity and decay, before being presented for consumption with a true jazz aficionado’s disregard for the niceties of linear development and narrative convention. Some might reply that much the same could be said of Edward D. Wood, Jr., whose mastery of mise-en-scène in Plan 9 from Outer Space is certainly unique to him and unlikely to be confused with that of, say, Ingmar Bergman in The Seventh Seal. And while this may be true, it perhaps says more about the shortcomings of the auteur theory than it does about the validity of any claims to authorship made on Franco’s behalf.
For anyone raised to regard Universal and Hammer films (by-and-large shot in a classical style, with well-defined heroes, villains, and monsters) as the horror film norm, Franco’s movies can prove quite a shock to the system, and it cannot be over-emphasised how necessary it is to adjust one’s expectations if one is derive any enjoyment or meaning from his work. Many reviewers, over the years and up to today, have proved either incapable or unwilling to make this adjustment. Franco has been derided as talentless and unimaginative, his films as lurid, incoherent potboilers distinguished only by a combination of shoddiness and salaciousness. The director’s over-fondness for zoom shots during the international phase of his career has resulted in more brickbats than even Michael Winner has had to sustain on that account. Not all of this criticism is unjust, at least where the films themselves are concerned, but at the same time it is clear that Franco is a film-maker possessed of many virtues, of which independence, tenacity, loyalty, consistency of vision, a love of cinema, and a stubborn anti-authoritarianism are not the least admirable. These virtues have not always stood to Franco’s advantage – his marginality in terms of European genre film-making is a direct consequence of his own desire for independence – but they suggest that, at his best, he deserves to be considered as a serious voice in the tradition of European horror and the fantastique.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Franco’s film career proper may be said to have begun with his fifth feature film, Gritos en la noche (‘Screams in the Night’, henceforward referred to by its best-known title, The Awful Doctor Orlof, itself derived from the French title, L’ horrible Dr. Orlof), made in 1961. Not only was it Franco’s first horror film, it was also Spain’s first horror film; and in making it Franco paved the way for future directors such as Amando de Ossorio, José Larraz, Jorge Grau, and Eloy de la Iglesia, in much the same way as Riccardo Freda did in Italy for Bava, Argento, et al., when he made that country’s first horror film, I vampiri (The Devil’s Commandment) in 1956.
Shot in black-and-white and set in France in 1912, The Awful Doctor Orlof tells the story of the eponymous surgeon’s quest to restore his daughter’s beauty with skin drafts taken from the faces of various unwilling members of the demi-monde. In this he is assisted by his blind and mute servant, Morpho. Opposed to him is one of the thickest policemen on celluloid, whose fiancée, fortunately, is very bright and brings about the doctor’s undoing. (N.B. All the nominal heroes, policemen or otherwise, in Franco’s films are irredeemably stupid and virtually peripheral to events.)
The film, a co-production with France, was also Franco’s first to receive widespread distribution, and it is worth considering the reaction it provoked abroad. The British Film Institute’s Monthly Film Bulletin reported that, “This film is at once appalling and unique, so bad as to be almost enjoyable for its ludicrous qualities, so singular that curiosity hunters are likely to look at it agog. An occasional shot or two is worthy of James Whale or Epstein, but it is the soundtrack which provides the film’s most bewildering aspect, containing as it does the weirdest collection of quasi-musical noises. The ramshackle plot is Les Yeux Sans Visage, plus a blend of Frankenstein and Dracula, represented by the demon doctor and his monster slave respectively; the brave heroine is worthy of the utmost admiration. A singular film . . . really most extraordinary.” (3)
The sense of bafflement expressed by the reviewer would remain a constant in critical reactions to Franco’s films (and finds a later echo in Aguilar’s “damned peculiar case” phrase), as would Franco’s employment of unusual soundtrack devices and frequent referencing of earlier works in the horror genre. The assumption that Franco helped himself to the plot of Georges Franju’s 1959 classic, Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face/The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus) is widespread, though interestingly, Franco himself denies he had seen it before making his film.
Franco’s veracity generally has been called into question, most notably by Aguilar (who also cites the Franju film as a source) and who writes bluntly that Franco, “from his earliest interviews has loved to lie and contradict himself, to invent and misinterpret.” (4) This may well be true, but it seems worth noting that in the interviews included on the U.S. DVD releases of Franco’s films, the director comes across as both honest and self-critical. Perhaps in the past, Franco tended to follow the example of his hero, Orson Welles (whom, it will be recalled, liked to tell people he knew Bram Stoker, despite being born three years after the author’s death), but, with regard to Franju’s film, one feels obliged to take his word, not least because, apart from the basic plotline common to both, the handling of the material could hardly be more different.
Where Franju’s film is a Gothic parable for modern times, cold and detached in its depiction of Dr. Génessier, lyrical in its treatment of his daughter’s plight, Franco’s is a riotous mélange of over-ripe clichés in which the director is clearly having a whale of a time riffing on his favourite themes from earlier works. The doctor’s name is taken from the 1939 British adaptation of Edgar Wallace’s Dark Eyes of London in which Bela Lugosi played the sinister Dr. Orloff, complete with blind henchman. Franco uses tilted camera angles both for aesthetic reasons and as a reference, via the character of Morpho, to Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and other Expressionist classics, while the “mad doctor” storyline recalls any number of Hollywood horror movies. To all this, Franco adds his own visual motifs: nightclub scenes, women in chains, nudity, and cats and owls (which tend to crop up quite a bit in his early films). There are some beautifully filmed night scenes on a river, and a memorable long shot of Orlof and Morpho in silhouette, carrying a coffin. And, as the Monthly Film Bulletin noted, Franco’s unusual choice of soundtrack only adds to the unsettling effect of many of the visuals.
.
not as cheap titillation, but as an illustration of Orlof’s psychological make-up, undercuts the charge, so often leveled against him later, of being merely a purveyor of “smut”. At his best, Jess Franco was always much more than that.
Franco’s handling of his actors is (and would continue to be) wildly erratic. On the one hand, Howard Vernon is outstanding as Orlof, his gaunt features and aloof, sinister mien perfectly suited to the role, and Diana Lorys is fine as the intrepid Wanda; on the other, Conrado San Martín, an otherwise accomplished actor, deals with the thankless part of the policeman as best he can, while the background cast can most accurately be described as enthusiastic.
The Awful Doctor Orlof is still considered by some to be Franco’s best film, but while it is certainly entertaining and often impressively staged, it is perhaps too derivative to be considered a genuine classic. Franco may have been having fun when he made it, but there are not enough original twists on the old themes and conventions to mark it out as a decisively original or revolutionary work, in the sense that Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964) may be said to have redefined the Western. Its importance, however – apart from launching the Spanish horror film, and the international careers of Vernon and Franco himself – lies in it being one of the first genre films to consciously cite earlier works, a post-modernist trend which up till 1961 had largely been the preserve of the enfants terribles of the nouvelle vague. And, consciously or not, Franco was also placing himself at the heart of the European tradition of horror and the fantastique, a lineage stretching back, in cinematic terms, to Georges Méliès and on through Wiene, Paul Wegener, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Benjamin Christensen, Paul Leni, Rex Ingram, G.W. Pabst, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Terence Fisher. (6)
Franco’s next excursion into the horror realm was The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus (La mano de un hombre muerto/Le sadique Baron Von Klaus, 1962), another Spanish-French co-production shot in black-and-white. After a spate of killings in a small German town, suspicion falls on the present Baron von Klaus (played by Howard Vernon), whose progenitor had apparently been rather partial to a spot of recreational butchery. The story appropriated many of the elements of the then hugely popular German series of Edgar Wallace adaptations known as krimi – black-garbed and hatted killers silhouetted in windows, characters isolated and stalked in empty spaces, crazy plot twists and improbable dénouements – which would, two years later, in Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l’assassino), give rise to the Italian giallo thriller. Indeed, while it is impossible to know whether or not Bava saw Franco’s film, it is worth noting that the Germanic town setting and the torture chamber both prefigure Bava’s own Baron Blood (Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga), made in 1972.
Surprisingly leisurely paced, The Sadistic Baron von Klaus is an effective chiller, shot in a classical style. Franco’s decision not to focus on any one particular character makes the Gothic potboiler plot seem more interesting than it really is, even though the characters are strictly stock. The most original scene, perhaps unsurprisingly, occurs in the torture chamber. Having overpowered a girl, the villain places her on a bed before heating up an assortment of sharp implements in a brazier. He then begins to kiss and undress his still-unconscious victim. When she wakes, they exchange a few words before he begins to perform an act still not legal in certain American states. Then, without warning, he gets up, grabs a whip and begins to flog her. When she has passed out, he suspends her from the ceiling and begins applying the red-hot treatment. The sex act aside, there would seem to be nothing too remarkable going on here, but it is only when the villain begins whipping the girl that we realize that Franco has cut all sound from the scene, bar the music. We are left to imagine the sound of the whip on skin, the girl’s screams, the clanking chains, and the hiss of burning flesh. It’s a remarkably original and effective device, one which adds an uncomfortable intensity and nightmarish quality to a scene which would otherwise be merely gruesome or even unintentionally funny.
Franco’s next horror project, Dr. Jekyll’s Mistresses (El secreto del Dr. Orloff/Les maîtresses du Dr. Jekyll, 1964), had nothing to do with Robert Louis Stevenson and not much more to do with Dr. Orlof, who (not played by Howard Vernon) expires in the first few minutes, leaving the responsibility to be fiendish in the hands of an inadequate substitute named Fisherman. It’s another story of mind control and murder, with Hugo Blanco giving his best Conrad Veidt impression, but the film is hampered by numerous plot deficiencies. As these may be due to cuts (the current DVD runs for 85 minutes but Aguilar lists the original running time as 99 minutes), it would perhaps be best to refrain from further comment until a fuller print becomes available.
The Diabolical Dr. Z (Miss Muerte/Dans les griffes du maniaque), made in 1965, marks the end of what can be called the first horror phase in Franco’s career. With a larger budget than his previous features and a first-rate cameraman in Alejandro Ulloa, the film looks wonderful, and is, on the whole, an entertaining variant on the mind control theme. When the title character dies after having his scientific experiments on personality change denounced in public by the medical council, his daughter plots her revenge on those responsible. After faking her own death, she uses her father’s ‘personality machine’ to gain control over a slinky nightclub performer, who, her long nails dipped in poison, is sent to eliminate the offending members. Although most of Franco’s fixations are on view, there is something pedestrian in his handling of the story, which plods along its generic course to its expected conclusion. Even his handling of Estella Blain’s exotic nightclub routine with a mannequin lacks the voyeuristic intensity Franco would later achieve in Vampyros Lesbos, and the revenge plot, borrowed from Cornell Woolrich’s 1940 novel, The Bride Wore Black, would also find more powerful expression in his later She Killed in Ecstasy.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Succubus is an astonishing piece of work. Whether one finds it convincing, pretentious, or ridiculous is entirely beside the point (it is quite possibly all three), but there is no denying the skill with which Franco handles his material, blending the fantasy/reality threads of his narrative in a way that is both utterly confusing, yet strangely satisfying. More importantly, it marked the complete abandonment of traditional genre film-making in favour of an oneiric, jazz-inspired, improvisational approach that would come to characterise his best work. At the same time, however, Franco managed to retain and incorporate, and even expand, the visual and thematic motifs which were already his trademark And yet, for all its apparent aspirations to an art-house style, it seems quite clear that Franco is also having a sly dig at the likes of Antonioni, Fellini, and Godard – it’s not every film that includes references to alienation and La dolce vita together with images of Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, Godzilla, and the Frankenstein monster – as if he’s saying, “You people at the Cahiers du Cinéma want narrative experimentation? I’ll show you narrative experimentation!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There would, however, be precious little room for experimentation in the next phase of Franco’s career, which saw him join forces with the ex-patriate British producer, Harry Alan Towers, in a disastrous partnership from which Franco’s reputation never recovered. Their first collaboration
be said for The Castle of Fu Manchu (El castillo de Fu-Manchu/Die Folterkammer des Dr. Fu Manchu/Il castello di Fu Manchu, also 1968), which is an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. Franco himself is not immune to criticism in this instance, as we shall see, but the real problem with this and other films of the partnership is Towers himself, or rather his work methods. As far as can be determined, his (Faustian?) pact with Franco went something like this – “I will give you exotic casts and locations, plus worldwide distribution, and you can film the works of some of your favourite authors. But, you have to do it all on a budget of twenty-five pounds. Just sign here; in blood, if you please.”
Towers’ penny-pinching approach meant that while Franco’s movies were indeed widely distributed, they were usually received with howls of derision. The principal responsibility of a producer is to produce an adequate budget, but Towers’ penchant for complex co-production deals (which involved basing his company in Liechtenstein for tax purposes) resulted in erratic cash flow and the need for Franco to make do as best as he could. It is no coincidence that Franco’s reputation as an incorrigible zoom-hound can be traced back to the Towers partnership; if one doesn’t have the time or money for basic camera set-ups, then zooming is a cheap (in both senses of the word) way of cutting costs.
Towers’ shortcomings as a producer are not intended as an excuse for the poor quality of Franco’s work in their films, merely as a reason for it. For instance, it is hard to imagine that it was Franco’s bright idea to insert stock footage (from Roy Ward Baker’s A Night to Remember and what appears to be Ralph Thomas’ Campbell’s Kingdom) into The Castle of Fu Manchu in order to pad out its running time, to say nothing of saving money. Even allowing for the budgetary limitations, however, this is still a shoddily-constructed film, for which Towers, as scriptwriter ‘Peter Welbeck’, is also to blame. Continuity and logic are frequently absent; for example, in one scene Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion Crawford) announces that the missing Dr. Herakles is in Turkey, then in his next scene both he and Nayland Smith are amazed to hear from another character that Dr. Herakles is . . . in Turkey! And then there is the scene in which the Turkish gangster, Omar Pasha, is surprised to learn that Fu Manchu is in the governor’s castle, when earlier he and his men had helped him capture it. But the worst thing about The Castle of Fu Manchu is that, with even a smaller degree of professionalism (and someone other than Greene as Nayland Smith), it could at least have been a perfectly acceptable entry in the series, rather than sounding its death knell.
As for Franco’s direction, it frequently appears amateurish. Fu Manchu’s attack on the castle is a prime example: guns are fired but none of the other guards seem to hear them, despite the fact that Franco’s spatial direction gives us every reason to suppose they are within earshot. He seems to have no grasp of how to shoot action scenes involving more than three people, let alone a band of Turkish extras dressed up as dacoits. And there appears to be a ‘civilian’ wandering through the back of the reverse-angle shot down the staircase. Even if these infelicities might be excused by budgetary shortcomings and the resultant need for speed, his own entrance scene (he plays a Turkish copper), is particularly ineptly composed and shot. By placing the camera behind himself, he gives a mysterious import to his character that is totally unjustified by his entirely peripheral and expository contribution to the narrative.
This seems as good a place as any to deal, briefly, with Franco’s own appearances in his films, of which the most polite thing that can be said is that they are frequent. It’s hard to know whether his predilection for playing grotesques is simply a case of amusing himself or a desire to save a few hundred pesetas on a supporting actor’s fee; quite possibly both. But whatever the reason, it is hard to escape the feeling that Franco’s films would have been better served, especially given his restrictive budgets, if he had busied himself more behind the camera than in front of it. On the other hand, of course, this would have deprived Franco and world cinema of what one can state with some confidence must be another ‘first’ (and hopefully, ‘last’): the spectacle of the director himself being buggered by a large black man in his 1981 women-in-prison opus, Sadomania.
As alluded to previously, The Castle of Fu Manchu marked the end of Towers’ Devil Doctor series (it should also be noted that Franco and Towers managed to terminate, with extreme prejudice, Sax Rohmer’s other creation, the female mastermind, Sumuru, with the execrable The Girl from Rio/La ciudad sin hombres/Die sieben Männer der Sumuru, also 1968). Bearing in mind Towers’ greater responsibility for these disasters, as outlined above, one can only marvel at the following anecdote from the producer himself: “I hate to put it this way but the project deteriorated with the remakes, and when we made the fifth one, that was the last one. And I think I said to Jesús when I’d viewed the print, I said, oh, you’ve done something that was impossible: you’ve successfully killed Fu Manchu.” (7) If Towers really had the nerve to say that, one can only assume that Franco’s presumably poor grasp of English at the time saved Towers from a richly deserved death of Fu Manchu-like fiendishness.
One of the happier outcomes of the Franco-Towers partnership was the opportunity for the director to finally bring to the screen the writings of the Marquis de Sade, an author whose presence can be said to lurk in most of Franco’s films, if sometimes only in the iconography of chained and whipped women that abounds from The Awful Doctor Orlof onwards. Whereas the Sadean references in earlier works often seemed imposed and artificial (there because Franco wanted them there rather than to forward the narrative in any meaningful way), in the Marquis de Sade’s “Justine”/Justine and Juliet/Justine, ovvero “Le disavventure della virtù” (1968, again), one really gets a sense of a meshing of director and subject. Given the fact that de Sade, as written, is virtually unfilmable (some would say unreadable as well), Franco can be said to have captured more or less the right tone in his adaptation (for which Towers, as scriptwriter, also deserves credit): that slightly kitsch, fetid atmosphere with provocative underpinnings that one gets from even the most nominal attempt to read de Sade.
Indeed, Franco and de Sade are very obviously kindred spirits: both push the boundaries of acceptability to the breaking point and beyond, for which they can and should be admired, while both, due to the sheer relentlessness and chaos of their narratives, are often difficult to approach. Franco’s thoughts on the Marquis are both instructive and revealing: “The fact is that De Sade [sic] fascinates and grips me. I keep going back to him, although it would be more correct to say that he never leaves me. He is an excellent source of inspiration. He was probably a raving madman, but he got over his madness by writing these stories, solving difficult situations, exaggerating, provoking and digressing in the most unusual manner. I love his morality plays, very moral may I say. [. . .] His way of being lubricious and evil was simply fantastic.” (8)
Alas, however, such identification does not mean that Marquis de Sade’s “Justine” is a good film. Despite having a large budget for once (by Towers’ standards, at any rate), Franco had to contend with the imposition of Romina Power (daughter of Tyrone, Jr.) as Justine; when it became clear that the reluctant actress was not capable of playing the role as he intended, Franco was forced to adapt it. In a bizarre way, though, Power’s non-performance works quite well, in that the audience is forced to impose its own interpretation on the blank canvas of her personality. The outstanding performance in the film (in a positive sense) is that of Klaus Kinski as the Marquis – one fevered genius playing another – who is absolutely riveting in his few silent scenes as the imprisoned author. The other guest stars are quite a different matter: Mercedes McCambridge, while less obviously under the influence than in her previous Franco-Towers appearance (as the power-crazed prison warden in 99 Women/99 mujeres, also, would you believe, 1968) still turns in another scenery-chewing turn, while Akim Tamiroff seems just plain drunk. But the outstanding performance in the film (in a negative sense) is that of Jack Palance as Brother Antonin, a display so jaw-droppingly deranged – Palance doesn’t just deliver his lines, he howls them – so far beyond the power of any mere intoxicant, as to be worth the price of admission by itself. Apt to be lost in the background of such epic gurning is the film’s only other positive aspect, the beautiful score by Bruno Nicolai.
Undeterred, Franco and Towers returned to de Sade the following year with Marquis de Sade’s “Philosophy in the Boudoir”/Die Jungfrau und die Peitsche, better known as Eugénie…the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion and De Sade ’70. While Franco acknowledges that de Sade’s story could not be filmed as written even today (or perhaps that should read, in these politically correct times, “especially today”), let alone in 1969, that does not alter the fact that Towers took rather too many liberties in his adaptation. The point of de Sade’s story is that, through her suffering, Eugénie is liberated from the conventions of her matriarchal upbringing – not, as in Towers’ version, merely abused to no end and turned into a “monster”. The satirical element - indeed the whole point of the original, is entirely absent from the film. Marie Liljedahl, as the put-upon heroine, displays a rather weak screen presence, while Christopher Lee, drafted in for box-office purposes, may be said to have rather too much, in what is essentially a minor role as on-screen narrator. In the other parts, Maria Röhm is effective as Mme. de Saint-Ange, while Jack Taylor, as Mirval, is his usual creepy and effete self. Nonetheless, despite its shortcomings, the film does capture much of the nightmarish and repetitive nature of de Sade’s writing, and may be considered a more successful attempt at conveying the spirit of his work than its predecessor.
Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz/Paroxismus, 1969) was perhaps the most satisfying result of the Franco-Towers partnership, an oneiric journey of discovery by a young jazz musician who finds the body of a woman he believes to have been murdered in Río de Janeiro washed up on a beach in Turkey. Is he being haunted by his past? Is he, in fact, dying? Has the woman, Wanda, returned from the dead to wreak vengeance on her killers? Or is it all just a dream or metaphorical nightmare? While Franco likes to recall a conversation he had with the jazz trumpeter, Chet Baker, as the inspiration for this story, its original title, Black Angel, reveals it to have been an unofficial adaptation of Cornell Woolrich’s 1943 novel, The Black Angel, in which a very-much-alive woman hunts down those responsible for framing her husband for murder. Interference from the American distributors led to the title change (despite Franco’s protests that his story had nothing to do with the 1870 novel of that name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch), as well as the casting of baby-faced James Darren as the protagonist. While nobody’s idea of a tortured artist, Darren was an accomplished trumpeter, and his blandness can be said to work in much the same way as that of Romina Power, mentioned previously. Maria Röhm is unconvincingly cast as the angel of death, while Klaus Kinski as an Arab is different – but not a success. The glossy, lurid look of the film is a distraction, as are some of the more gimmicky optical effects, and Franco’s composition occasionally leaves a lot to be desired. Overall, though, the film remains the most personal of Franco’s pictures for Towers, and for that reason the most interesting.
The Bloody Judge (El proceso de las brujas/Der Hexentöter von Blackmoor/Il trono di fuoco, 1969), on the other hand, was a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968), and as such is of only passing interest. The main strength of the film, and also its weakness, is the casting of Christopher Lee as Judge Jeffreys, the seventeenth-century British judge notorious for his brutal condemnation of prisoners in the aftermath of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. On the one hand, Lee is in fine form, dominating every scene; on the other, he is left to act in a vacuum. Unlike Reeves’ film, in which Vincent Price’s Matthew Hopkins is balanced out by his henchman, John Stearne (Robert Russell), Lee has no one to oppose him, except perhaps Leo Genn, but the latter’s character is too vaguely drawn to be effective in this regard. Maria Schell appears, for no discernable good reason, as a benevolent witch, but Howard Vernon has fun as the chief executioner, his costume designed to evoke memories of Boris Karloff in Rowland V. Lee’s Tower of London (1939). The battle scene (a double charge of cavalry through trees towards an artillery position) is competent, but nothing more (the suggestion in the U.S. DVD’s liner notes that this scene proves that Franco was responsible for the glorious mud-and-blood battle in Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight/Campanadas a medianoche,1965, on which the Spaniard was second-unit director, seems unfeasible, as any comparison will quickly demonstrate).
“Over fifty years ago Bram Stoker wrote the greatest of all horror stories. Now, for the first time, we retell, exactly as he wrote, one of the first – and still the best – tales of the macabre.” (Prologue to Count Dracula, 1969)
Lom’s frankly laughable exposition scenes. And it is presumably his fault that Lom seems so uncomfortable in a role for which, even if he was not the first choice, he should have been well-suited (mind you, the idea of flabby Dennis Price as Van Helsing is even worse than the reality of Lom’s discomfort). Lee, of course, does his best, but it’s clear after the opening scenes that he’s fighting a losing battle. Yet again in a Franco film, the best performance comes from Klaus Kinski in a virtually non-speaking role. The movie is also a curiously bloodless affair, with even the stakings appearing slapdash and absurd. And whose bright idea was it to kill Dracula by setting him on fire and shoving him over a wall . . . ?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The only positive outcome from Count Dracula was the reunion between Franco and actress Soledad Miranda, who had played an uncredited role in the director’s third film, La reina del Tabarín/Mariquita, la belle de Tabarin, made in 1960. Her part as Lucy in Count Dracula required her to do little other than look wan and blood-drained, which she did perfectly adequately and without giving the slightest indication of the transcendental effect she was about to have on Franco’s cinema. Up till this point, it would be hard to single out any great performances in Franco’s films, with the exception of Howard Vernon’s career-defining Dr. Orlof. Christopher Lee came close on a couple of occasions but was undermined by extraneous factors, while Klaus Kinski’s own genius, rather than anything likely to have been inherent in either script or direction, probably explains the manic intensity and depth he was able to convey in his essentially silent roles as de Sade and Renfield. But with Soledad Miranda everything was to change, if only briefly.
Not the least remarkable fact of the Franco-Miranda collaboration is how Miranda appears to have arrived fully formed in Franco’s films, the ultimate embodiment of his erotic and morbid obsessions. To describe their relationship in standard terms of “artist and muse” would be a mistake; theirs was a symbiotic relationship in which the creative and interpretive roles were mutually rewarding, the benefits to each self-evident. There seems to have been no obvious period of adjustment for either actor or director; the camera rolled and Miranda breathed life into parts that could not be accused of being overwritten, that on paper must have seemed no different from Franco’s earlier fusions of desire and death in such characters as Estella Blain’s Nadia in The Diabolical Dr. Z or Janine Reynaud’s Lorna in Succubus. But where those parts were largely emblematic – remote, even robotic, icons controlled by others – Miranda was able, through a combination of intelligence, intensity, and sheer belief in what she was doing, to invest very similar characters with an emotional depth that previously had been absent from Franco’s work. Such happy alchemy cannot be explained, nor perhaps should it, though a pertinent parallel may be drawn with the example of G.W. Pabst and Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora, 1929) and, to a lesser extent, Diary of a Lost Girl (Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, also 1929), in which the director’s vision was stunningly realised by an actress who, up till then, had largely been seen as romantic decoration.
Franco’s filmography has proved a well-known source of despair to anyone trying to unravel it (different titles and different versions being only the most obvious difficulty), and there seems to be no agreement among those who might know as to the order, either of production or release, of Franco’s seven films with Miranda, all of which, Count Dracula excepted, are dated 1970. That being so, we shall consider them mainly in order of their achievement.
Sex Charade is, according to Tohill and Tombs, a portmanteau film of erotic episodes “pieced together using left-overs from other projects” (9), presumably similar in type to those so popular in Italy, but which, according to Aguilar, “ is practically impossible to find” (10). Nightmares Come at Night (Les Cauchemars naissent la nuit) tells the story of Anna, a stripper in “a sleazy Zagreb nightclub” who falls under the control of a woman called Cynthia. Installed in the latter’s villa, she starts to suffer nightmares in which she kills people. Is she really a murderess or is it all a highly improbable plot by Cynthia, in cahoots with a Dr. Lucas (Paul Müller), to divert attention away from their own crimes? A rather dreary effort, with shades of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1954), the film provided a starring role for Diana Lorys, whose last significant work for Franco had been in The Awful Dr. Orlof. Lorys emotes well enough, but there is just too much of it, and far too much use of voice-overs; it’s all very French, and not in a good way. The plot, such as it is, is poorly executed, and Müller’s volte-face at the end is only one of many implausibilities. Miranda shines briefly as the girlfriend of one of the co-conspirators, a remarkably well-nuanced performance, achieved largely through attitude and gesture, in what is essentially a “nothing part” (and a small “nothing part” at that). And indeed, her character gets to deliver the verdict on the film when she observes, “This is boring.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Eugénie (Eugénie de Sade/De Sade 2000) saw Franco return to the Marquis de Sade, this time without the distractions of unnecessary or drunken guest stars, and it proved to be his most satisfying adaptation, or rather interpretation, of the author’s works. The film opens with a writer, the splendidly named Attila Tanner (played by Franco himself in what must be considered, in his terms, a normal role), watching a home movie of what appears to be standard soft-core frolics between two young women but which abruptly turns into a vicious murder. Tanner then visits the seriously-injured Eugénie in hospital. She agrees to tell him her story on condition that he will kill her when it is told. Tanner agrees.
Brought up in a large, lakeside house outside Berlin by Albert Radeck (Paul Müller), a man she has believed to be her father but who is actually her stepfather, Eugénie has developed what she calls “an almost obsessive admiration” for Radeck, an author who supports himself by writing
The next day, they attend a cocktail party at the offices of Albert’s French publishers. Eugénie finds herself jealous of the female attention Albert is receiving, but when Tanner introduces himself and asks her to arrange an interview, she gladly obliges. At his apartment, Tanner expresses his admiration for Radeck’s writing on eroticism and questions him about his philosophy, which proves to be a disagreeable blend of Sadean and sub-Nietzschian elements. Tanner voices his impression that “father and daughter” are lovers, which they do not deny. The tension between Radeck and Tanner is aggravated by the latter’s stated determination to “keep a close watch on you and what you do. I’m very much interested in your progress.” On their drive back to Germany, Radeck dismisses Tanner but Eugénie is worried by his curiosity. Needless to say, the Belgian police are making no progress in their search for a sartorially-challenged couple. But Eugénie is haunted by the face of their victim; when she cannot sleep, she cuddles up naked with Albert.
One day, Eugénie, whose mother died shortly after her birth, asks Albert how her mother died. Albert tells her that, after waiting for her to give birth to Eugénie, he had killed her, and asks Eugénie, “Does that horrify you?” Faced with that almost impossible line, Miranda shows a maturity beyond her years in her playing of the response, replying after a perfectly timed pause, “I just wanted to know. Had I known her it might have been different.” Albert explains that she had been unfaithful to him and that he “can’t bear treason.” Eugénie asks him, “If I was unfaithful to you, would you kill me?” “I would do worse. But then I would kill myself because nothing would matter to me anymore.” Sensing the conversation has become a tad sombre, Albert starts to talk about their next escapade. “Let’s do something different this time, and have fun doing it,” he suggests brightly.
They pick up a hitch-hiker named Kitty (“She was Austrian, a student and very stupid.”) and bring her to the house. Eugénie creates a bond with the girl by lending her clothes for dinner, after which Albert proposes a drinking game. When that has run its course, he suggests “playing dead”. Eugénie demonstrates, lying still while the others try to make her laugh, and then paying the penalty, suggested by Kitty, of a striptease when she loses. Next, it is the inebriated student’s turn. Albert and Eugénie start to caress and undress her, then Albert places a handkerchief over her face and pours whiskey over it. Eugénie holds her down while she suffocates. Afterwards, still aroused by the murder, Eugénie falls into Albert’s arms and they kiss, before going to her bedroom where she fellates him before they make love.
In voice-over, we are told that the hapless Kitty was dumped into the lake, followed by eight others, five girls and three boys. On a rare trip to Berlin, Eugénie and Albert are approached by Tanner, who says he knows they are responsible for two murders, and warns Albert that one day he will outwit himself. Naturally, the couple admit nothing, but later Eugénie reflects that, “Tanner’s words had made an impact on me. Had we gone too far? How was it all going to end?” Albert, who clearly doesn’t consider eleven murders to be “going too far”, tells her not to worry; they will try “a brand new game”, which he will film while Eugénie acts as bait.
Albert proceeds to target Paul (André Montchall), “a mediocre musician who plays the trumpet in a trendy club band”, because he appears to be unattached and naïve. He will be, “Our masterpiece. He lives as a fool and will die a fool.” Albert is becoming more fascistic with every murder while Eugénie is beginning to have her doubts. But she will continue to do as he asks. The pair go to the club where they make sure that Paul sees Eugénie. The next night, she allows him to pick her up, and then seduces him. As they continue seeing each other, Eugénie comes to realise that, behind his “tough guy attitudes”, Paul is “highly sensitive”. He begins to fall in love with Eugénie, who is also changing. Nonetheless, she keeps to Albert’s plan and engineers a break-up with Paul. Albert intends her to keep away from Paul for a few weeks but Eugénie misses him, and realises that she is in love with him. One night, she sneaks out to meet Paul – “For the first time, I went against my father’s wishes. The first time I felt I was betraying him.”
But the next day, Albert happens to see them. Eugénie tells Paul how she was meant to keep away from him but not why. She tells him she loves him and asks for his help. Later, after making love, she tells Paul, “I lived in a void, all because of him. But now I feel free and liberated.” They make plans to go away, unaware that Albert has come into the flat. He hears her tell Paul that she loves him. After she has left, Albert approaches the dozing Paul and slashes his throat with a penknife. As he hurries back to his car, he is once again accosted and taunted by Tanner. Eugénie is understandably nervous about telling Albert of her decision to leave. She goes home, followed shortly by Albert. He throws her onto the bed, tries to rape her, then stabs and slashes her with a scissors (the final blow, we can assume, being thrust into her vagina). He then dons evening dress and commits hara-kiri, as he had earlier said he would do. Having finished her story, Eugénie reminds Tanner of his promise. He tells her she is dying anyway, and shortly thereafter she passes away.
Eugénie is one of Franco’s best films, with outstanding performances from both Miranda and Müller, and a groovy score by Bruno Nicolai. Under no obvious budgetary constraints, Franco is able to let the story unfold at its natural pace; presumably the small cast and intimate nature of the story helped in this regard. The bleak, wintry setting of the exteriors is an effective visual counterpoint to the increasingly unhealthy, hothouse atmosphere of the Radeck household, and even Franco’s use of zooms are acceptable, being employed with restraint both normally and in reverse. Miranda’s playing is both subtle and intense, and one need only compare it to that of the unfortunate Romina Power to see that this is an actress who fully understands, and is in tune with, both the spirit of de Sade and that of his cinematic adaptor and equivalent, Jess Franco. Müller, too, gives an impressively understated performance, only gradually allowing the fascist underpinnings of Radeck’s “philosophy” to become apparent; indeed, it is by some way his finest performance for the director.
Perhaps the most important things to consider when looking at Franco’s adaptations of de Sade is, firstly, the context and, second, the intent. De Sade had become something of a cinematic flavour-of-the-month in the late 1960s, with one attempted biopic and two adaptations following on from Peter Brook’s adaptation of Peter Weiss’s play, Marat/Sade in 1966 (11). But Franco’s interest in, and admiration for, the works of de Sade was long-standing and sincere, not some passing fancy dictated by fashion. If the Towers’ adaptations were less than successful, it was inevitable that Franco would return to the Marquis as soon as circumstances permitted (which, as it happened, was within a year of the end of his partnership with Towers). When one watches Eugénie today it is important to ask who else was making films like this in 1970? What other films were dealing openly with subjects such as sadism, incest (practical if not biological) and thrill-killing? The nearest equivalent might be Leonard Kastle’s independently-made The Honeymoon Killers in 1970, although the real-life murderers in that film were killing for profit rather than pleasure. There may be other examples before John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in 1990 (in which the killers film their crimes) or Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers in 1994 (which features thrill-killing as public spectacle rather than private pleasure), but none that immediately come to mind. (The Italian gialli, though liberally infused with sex and violence, never pretended to be saying anything significant about the darker aspects of the human condition.)
As to intent, if one accepts, as one must, that Franco is sincere in his interest in de Sade, and that, as suggested earlier, the centrality of the sex urge is essential for any understanding of Franco’s cinema, then it becomes clear that Franco can, to a significant extent and in his best work, be absolved of the charge of prurience or salaciousness that is often levelled against him. If one intends to make a film centred on the sex urge then it follows that said film will contain nudity and sex. This self-evident fact never seems to have bothered Franco (quite the opposite, in fact), but it has certainly bothered his critics, whose reactions to his films have often betrayed a puritanical objection to the whole idea of making sex the mainspring of a film. In this regard, it may be said that whereas Hollywood has often rightly been accused of selling sex in a blatantly dishonest (and prurient) fashion, Franco’s attitude has been refreshingly honest and, paradoxically (given his interest in the more outré aspects of human sexuality), healthy. His sincerity is on display in a film like Eugénie which, for all its fevered eroticism derived from its source material, is not shot in an exploitative way. Indeed, Franco rarely includes nude or sex scenes gratuitously; they nearly always make a point about the characters’ psychology (as in the above-mentioned example from The Awful Dr. Orlof) or serve to advance the narrative (as in Eugénie), unlike the too-many-to-mention Hollywood films of relatively recent times in which a heavy-breathing scene, with perhaps a soupcon of nipple or a dash of pubic hair, is included for no good reason other than to reinforce the masculinity of a lead actor or to market (i.e., exploit) the desirability of a female one.
Present-day viewers of Franco’s films, particularly those of a feminist bent, may well look at a film like Eugénie or others in the Franco-Miranda canon, and see only that Miranda spends a large amount of screen time wearing very little. This is undeniable, and it would be wrong to suppose that Franco does not intend us to find her desirable (being Franco, he would expect both men and women to do so), but that it not to say that she is being exploited, unless one follows the hard-line feminist approach which decrees that any display of female nudity is tantamount to exploitation, and little short of rape. Indeed, in Miranda’s case, where her entire being may be said to inhabit the character she is playing, it is quite clear, both from the internal evidence of the films, and from one’s own responses to them, that Miranda’s nakedness and what it embodies is not just there, as the joke has it, because it is “essential to the plot” – it is the plot, the very core of Franco’s best films, and what makes them distinct from, say, the lamentable work he produced in collaboration with Erwin C. Dietrich in the mid-1970s. In fact, it is possible to make the case that Franco himself, though doubtless knowingly, has been exploited by producers and distributors who market his films solely on the sex content (as an illustration of this, it is instructive to watch Eugénie and then compare it to the trailer included on the DVD). In any event, and whatever one’s views on the matter, one still returns to the question, how does one make a film about sex without sex?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
She Killed in Ecstasy (Sie tötete in Ekstase/Mrs. Hyde) opens with several shots of Mrs. Johnson (Soledad Miranda) running down steps from a large, multi-level modern house to the seafront. She is wearing a black dress and a flowing, purple woolen wrap. At the water’s edge, she stops
Dr. Johnson is attending a preliminary hearing of the Medical Council. He is aghast to hear his research condemned as “inhuman” and himself denounced as a “charlatan”. Donen (Jess Franco) tells him, “Your plan to alter the human organism with the aid of hormones is, in our view, a crime.” Professor Walker (Howard Vernon) adds that his research is a violation of the Hippocratic oath and that the Council will be recommended to stop him practicing medicine. “Don’t you understand? It’s not about the Hippocratic oath. It’s about mankind, a better existence,” Johnson protests. The female member of the board, named Crawford (Ewa Strömberg), then says, “Dr. Johnson, I have here reports about your embryo experiments. You have denied human embryos the possibility of life. I would call that a criminal act, and a blasphemy.” “Blasphemy? What kind of a world do you live in? Only one thing counts: to help people, regardless of morals.” The last member of the Council, Dr. Huston, tells him that he is ordered to discontinue his experiments, and finally, Donen tells him to burn his research papers.
Johnson returns to his laboratory to find it destroyed, and his wife huddled in a daze on the floor. She tells him an angry mob broke in, threatening to kill him. Johnson stares round at his destroyed life’s work and breaks down. After that, he begins to lose his grip on his sanity, ranting and raving in the night. His wife calls Dr. Huston, but he refuses to come to Johnson’s aid. Mrs. Johnson, in voice-over, then tells us how she took him from the city to their house on an isolated island. “The house [the same one as seen in the opening shots] was like a dream. A labyrinth where the steps echo, where words rebound and return, again and again.” But Johnson’s condition does not improve, and he alternates between lying in a stupor or rambling on about the Council’s decision.
Mrs. Johnson attends an open meeting of the Medical Council, where Prof. Walker is haranguing the audience on the need for the medical profession to protect itself from “dreamers”, “charlatans”, and “unscrupulous criminals”. The chairman thanks Walker and refers to the “damnable actions” of Dr. Johnson. “At our request, the Medical Council has struck him off the register.” (Note: it is never entirely clear which body actually constitutes the Medical Council.) Mrs. Johnson gets up and leaves, watched by Dr. Huston. Outside, she runs into a police inspector (Horst Tappert), whom she met after the destruction of the laboratory. When she suggests angrily that he finds the men who destroyed her husband’s life, the inspector is unaccountably jaunty: “Who knows? I might just do that.” He goes into the meeting, where now Donen is busily denouncing Johnson, and exchanges pleasantries with Huston, who is surprised he knows him.
Johnson, now out of his mind, is oblivious to his wife’s words and her attempt to arouse him. Later, when she is asleep, he wakes, still haunted by the Council’s words. He goes into the bathroom and cuts his wrists with a razor. When his wife finds him, he is dead.
We then see her on the seafront, as at the beginning. She says she cannot live without him nor without avenging him. “My revenge will be cruel. The price for our destroyed lives can only be death.”
Mrs. Johnson waits for Prof. Walker in a bar, where he is busy propounding his disagreeable views on “the young” to an interviewer. (“They have their reservations and don’t want to carry out orders.”) When he has finished, he comes over and starts to chat her up. She lets him believe she is a prostitute and suggests they go to his hotel. In his room, Walker reveals himself to be even more unpleasant than he is in public. He stops Mrs. Johnson kissing him, saying he cannot stand that kind of thing, which makes him nervous. In bed, he pauses for a brief prayer (presumably along the lines of St. Augustine’s “Give me chastity and continency – but not yet!”) before telling her to degrade and abuse him: “I need that.” “Yes, because you are impotent,” observes Mrs. Johnson, before obliging him with a few slaps in the face. She then pulls out a knife, slashes his throat and stabs him in the groin. Across the hall, Donen, hearing a noise, wakes up and opens his door. He sees Mrs. Johnson outside Walker’s room. She hurries away. Donen goes into to Walker’s room. There is an abrupt cut to:
Dr. Huston waiting by a coin-operated telescope on the seafront. He is joined by Crawford; both have them have received letters from Donen. When he arrives, he tells them about Walker, whose throat had been cut and his penis severed, and about seeing (though not recognising) Mrs. Johnson. He then hands them a note which he had removed from Walker’s room before the police arrive. It reads: “This was the first. There’ll be three more. J.”
Crawford is at a coastal resort complex. In the bar is Mrs. Johnson, disguised with a short blonde wig. Crawford initiates conversation and Mrs. Johnson offers to lend her some books. They go to her apartment, where Mrs. Johnson gives her to understand that she is a painter. Crawford begins to seduce Mrs. Johnson on the floor. There is a brief cut to the Dr. and Mrs. Johnson embracing on a sofa. Then Mrs. Johnson leads Crawford into the bedroom. They undress each other and embrace for some presumed Sapphic frolics, which are rudely terminated when Mrs. Johnson presses an inflatable black-and-white cushion over Crawford’s face and smothers her. She then pins a note on her chest which reads: “You are the second pig. J.”
Mrs. Johnson approaches the corpse of her husband, laid out on the bed in their island house, saying that she has killed two of his murderers.
Mrs. Johnson is in a church (the one where she and Johnson were married), wearing widow’s weeds and a different wig. She is watched by Dr. Huston, who follows her outside when she leaves. When he approaches her, she tearfully tells him that her husband is terminally ill. Huston offers to help, but when he mentions his name she runs away.
Huston is telling Donen of the incident in a restaurant: “When I said my name, she was as scared as if I was the devil.” He says he is certain it was Johnson’s wife, but Donen tells him to stop talking nonsense. Mrs. Johnson appears, sans disguise, and sits at the next table. Donen says that she looks familiar and goes to ask the waiter who she is, but when he turns to point her out, she has gone.
Dr. Huston visits the inspector and, having outlined his fears of being a revenge target, demands police protection. The inspector is polite but firm – not until he is in serious danger.
Huston walks into Donen’s hotel and tries to relax in the lobby. Mrs. Johnson appears, again without disguise, and Huston becomes agitated, finally getting up to confront her. She asks for a light. He tells her to leave him alone, and walks out. She follows him into a bar – “Do you have a light now?” With shaking hands, he lights her cigarette. When she asks, “Don’t you want to talk to me?” he says no and again tells her to leave him alone before rushing out of the bar. As Huston walks up the flights of stairs to his apartment, he realises he is being followed by Mrs. Johnson. He starts to run, and she gives chase.
Inside his darkened apartment, the light is suddenly switched on to reveal Mrs. Johnson lying on the bed, wearing a black bra, suspenders and tights, blue fishnet knickers, and the blonde wig she wore for Crawford. She tries to allay Huston’s fears, and kisses him. There is a brief cut to the Johnsons kissing, then back to her and Huston, then another cut to the Johnsons and back. As Huston slavers over her, Mrs. Johnson stares glassily at the ceiling. This is paralleled with a shot of the dead Dr. Johnson’s eyes staring upwards. Then Mrs. Johnson stabs Huston in the base of his neck, before opening his trousers and cutting off his penis.
Mrs. Johnson is sitting in the dark on a sofa, naked except for her purple wrap, staring at her husband’s body on the bed, remembering when they were together. Drawing the wrap around her, she approaches the bed, lets the wrap fall, and embraces her dead husband, saying that it is all over now, and that they will go away together. Then she bites his chest.
Donen leaves his hotel and gets into a taxi. Much later, back in his apartment, he finds his wife lying in the hallway, her throat cut. As he passes out, Mrs. Johnson descends the stairs, crosses over to him and lifts his head up.
In a hospital room, the inspector pulls back a sheet from Crawford’s body. A medic tells him that she was suffocated and her body scratched. Then an orderly announces that the professor’s body has been brought in – “He has multiple stab wounds. The body’s a mess.” The inspector remarks, “Now only Dr. Huston survives. We’ll have to watch him closely.”
Donen is tied to a chair in the apartment in which Crawford was killed, his pink shirt torn open. Mrs. Johnson watches him from the bed. As he regains consciousness, she gets up, and approaches him. “You will have to suffer.” She caresses him and then starts slicing his chest with a knife. She drops her wrap, slides up his body, then slaps him, saying, “My husband will rest easier after your death.” She then kills him with a thrust to the groin.
Mrs. Johnson gets into a car, her husband’s body in the passenger seat. She tells him they will be reunited, and then drives the car over a precipice. The inspector arrives and solemnly intones, “A dead man was held responsible for these crimes. I believe it to be the truth. Mrs. Johnson was a normal woman. If it wasn’t for her husband’s death she wouldn’t have committed these crimes.”
Despite good photography, a great score, and another standout performance by Miranda, She Killed in Ecstasy, another reworking of The Bride Wore Black, proves a disappointment in comparison with either Eugénie or Vampyros Lesbos, though still much better than the ridiculous The Devil Came from Akasava. As can be seen from the above synopsis, there are far too many holes in the plot and it seems clear that the script was put together hurriedly and with little concern for logic. How, one wonders, does Mrs. Johnson get into Huston’s apartment, and when did she effect her disguise? And why did she run away from him at the church if her purpose (deduced from her disguise) was to get close to him? The scene with the inspector in the hospital makes absolutely no sense; when Huston visited him he was told that the policeman was working on the Walker and Crawford cases, yet in this scene he’s acting as if the murders had only just happened. And why does the orderly come in and pronounce on the state of the professor’s body? It’s two murders ago since Donen called the police, and even if the inspector does not yet know of Huston’s demise, this hardly qualifies as news. And why does the inspector assume that only Huston is still alive? Surely he must know of Donen, who initially contacted the police and who has not, in fact and as far as the inspector is aware, been killed at that point.
All of this might be less of a problem if Franco was experimenting with narrative structure again, or constructing an oneiric revenge story like Venus in Furs, but there is nothing in the film to suggest that the events are unfolding in anything but a straightforward manner and in ‘real time’. Indeed, She Killed in Ecstasy may be said to perfectly demonstrate two of Franco’s shortcomings: the tendency to rush into production before a script is finalised, and his reported enthusiasm for completely rewriting scenes overnight or imp
