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The Devil Came From Akasava (1971)
Dir. Jess Franco
Another Franco film. Different from the others yet very familiar like
siblings. The same key is used with a different melody. There is a stone that
is able to turn base metals into gold in ...Akasava.
It also assaults the person who has contact with it without a protective suit on
with radiation that kills you instantly. A paradoxical item of harm and lust, a
Mcguffin if there ever was one which can yet effect the small narrative further
because it can be implemented as a murder weapon too. Making it useful to use
against people trying to claim it. Even then there are multiple groups who'll
kill each other off the normal way, leading to secret agents and Scotland Yard
having to get involved.
Small, limited sets are broken
down into pieces of edited sequences. To Franco
it's not the narrative that is of the most importance but the moments and the
mood of them. The erotic dancing that a female secret agent (Soledad Miranda) does in a cover is of
as much importance as a chase scene, lingered over for prolonged minutes until it's
as much of the position of being there as well as the titillation that is of
importance. It's too pronounced how Franco
stretches out eroticism and violence in his films to say that they're just
sluggish genre films, but a clearly disarming tone to them that encapsulates
how much of this is very unreal cinema. The characters here are trapped in plot
circumstance and twists that have taken place before, many times before, and
the arbitrary nature of this actually makes the genre clichés fresh and
entertaining. So close to being aesthetic messes, even though people may be
divided with Franco's work, that they
are completely unpredictable. Always abrupt when someone does turn the tables
on another, but some moments, like the disposal of a body, actually show the
director could as much make great scenes through conventional scene structure
too. Suspicious people are actually working on the same side. Old women are not
what you perceive them to be. The clichés of the sci-fi and thriller, despite
the clear budget restrictions, stand out because the restricted tone prevents Franco from padding the twists out until
they lose their effect. Although even then his cinematic style, mood before
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A lot of his great virtue is
that, looked down on for his apparent sloppiness and disregard of structure, it's
clear he was concerned for the structure of his films, but in terms of
everything else but the plots. They are transitions. He cared about the
sexuality of the human body. The sharp shock of a death. Films improvised on
the huff. Contrivance like the reality has been drastically changed, even if
this was not even considered by the director. ...Akasava doesn't really repeat any plotting from the films I have
seen, and actually stands out as a unique film so far in viewing his work,
somewhat fittingly ironic because in another person's hands this is insanely
generic material. In his hands he was clearly obsessed with the cinematic image
inherently as it was. Plot moments suddenly happen in his work, jarring you
because the scenes before were so languidly paced. His obsession with the
female body, possible contentious opinion on a male director's gaze on feminity
notwithstanding, was as much about canvassing the screen in the female body
(the breasts, lips, skin, pubic hair, all) in close-ups that at least showed
the whole female body as part of real woman and belonging to her fully. Rather
than parade a questionable attitude of putting women behind a glass screen and,
while letting you look, seeing it as an abstraction of titillation. Instead of
what Franco did and made it matter of
fact even in a softcore tone. And he at least had women who were in control of
their sexuality, in both films covered here in Soledad Miranda, than mere images, even if the characters were one
dimensional pulp. Of course these films were exploitation. Of course Franco could show complete apathy with
some of his films. Of course some of them fail miserably or purport tedious
schlock. But with the ones I've tries to defend there is always a sense, even
if it was sordid or made of tired conventions, that he impassioned and wanted
to bring the viewers into them with his overload of incredibly long scene
times, of characters wandering through rooms and corridors trapped in a haze,
stuck in the environments on repeat by this point in his films, and sexuality less
of a quick porno but a long, lingering sensation.
In having made as many films as Franco did, they start to meld together,
not into pointlessness of their existence, but connecting and reflecting each
other. They are very much genre films sold for their nudity and (hastily
composed) action in closed hotel rooms and buildings, cut off from the rest of
the world, but viewing as many of them as I have has introduced me to a slowly
building universe. Happy to see Howard
Vernon appear, a distinct face that, while he never got to work in Universal horror films from the thirties
sadly, he did get his own world of horror films through Franco and to work with Jean-Luc
Godard on Alphaville (1965). Introduced
again to Franco's trademark of
extreme zooms from afar. How isolated those interior locations actually are,
and how even the exterior ones are cut off from all in their secret narrative.
Films whose stories drift along. The fact that it's difficult for me not to
repeat myself with these reviews is not a detriment to the late director but
the sense of films which easily splice together into a single, self referential
and formed entity. When you end one Franco
film, you can transition into another and continue the atmosphere of the films
in the next one....
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She Killed In Ecstasy (1971)
Dir. Jess Franco
Same year as the first film
covered. Same universe. Maybe happening in the same time frame or another
reality where these people lived completely different lives from the ones in
the other film. A young doctor is barred from his career by four other doctors
for an experimental that, despite intending to extend the lifespan of humanity,
used human foetuses as guinea pigs. He loses his mind and eventually kills
himself. His wife (Soledad Miranda
again in a different personality) goes about taking revenge on the four
doctors. It is a small film, only seventy or so minutes, and manages to be
immensely economical in structure and yet retain the trademark prolonged,
languid mood Franco made his
trademark, abstracting scenes by their length and keeping the camera on moments
longer than most directors. What makes this film stand out is that its brisk
length allows the film to never sag, yet it's still intentionally slower paced,
pulling you into the film fully if you can engage with Franco's (usually) erotic horror cinema.
As the gorgeous Miranda stalks the screen getting her
revenge, the film like his best for me so far (eg. Succubus (1968)) is thick in mood and also with real visual
richness. At his distinct, Franco
could still make exploitation films, quickly, that stood out in a clear
auteurist style, despite being a director-for-hire in his style and hundred
plus filmography, and significantly different in their presentation and said
style even if work was dismissed as rudimentary. The music, having seen a lot
of films, and listened carefully to the soundtracks, in these films are
memorable or legitimately great, especially jazz and world music used. The
films, lurid horror and erotica, are constructed around simple plots but their
concerns are the sense of everything but that plot except to get to the new
twist, Franco more obsessed with the
decor, the naked flesh, the sense of time passing. Even the compromised aspects
of these films and his working habits, having to moved through numerous
countries in co-productions and making countless ones within the same year,
added special traits to them that are noticeable despite only seeing twenty or
so films from a hundred film catalogue. The closed, limited interior sets,
usually memorably well decorated, add a real sense of claustrophobia, tight
reality for these characters, especially as Miranda's
character becomes much more of a stalker in a prolonged sequence of her
following a doctor she wants to take revenge on. Since Franco, in the sixties and seventies at least, had a tendency to
cast the same actors, many recognisable to me now despite not remembering their
names, it makes the films like a reoccurring dream. The same beings repeating
cycles of revenge, erotic death and horror, especially as the films repeat plot
points and narratives in different presentations. She Killed In Ecstasy is a reinterpretation of Venus In Furs (1969), of a woman using her sexual body to seduce
people and kill them. Even if sadly her life was drastically cut short in real
life, Miranda, as a woman who
transforms into a being of sexual desire who can seduce both genders, was able
to be a prescience onscreen immortalised in how Franco idolised her, the same with The Devil Came From Akasava where she is seen as an employee for a
spy group who can switch between the alias of a prostitute and an erotic dancer
and yet seem above them in her sexuality and beauty. Howard Vernon is able to become this recognisable face in the
director's work, and since Franco
cast himself in secondary roles countless times, he himself became a distinct
face immortalised in these films too. It's also befitting he's in his own work,
making himself as much a creation of his own films, while significantly, not
using them as an excuse to be a lead, but always the interesting minor
character in physical appearance and behaviour, and not afraid of killing
himself off with his own stories.
Together with The Devil Came From Akasava, these
films' minimalist attitude to plotting actually make plot swerves and twists,
even ones usually cliché, become different because they are made into
unexpected moments within the long sequences of the film. The plot in She Killed In Ecstasy is slight, but if
you can gauge with the atmosphere led presentation, you'll engage fully with it.
Both films co-exist within the same type of filmmaking context that is clearly
distinct to Franco only. Even a
director like Jean Rollin, who
crossed paths with him in taking over Zombie
Lake (1981), who also mixed the erotic with the languid, and are put
together within the same part of Euro genre cinema, has a clear difference to Franco in presentation. Contrary to the
appearance given to him even by cult viewers who see him as only a schlock
filmmaker, Jess Franco if he is still
to be a schlock filmmaker was yet clearly his own, distinct of a filmmaker in how
he presented his material and in how many of films interlink very clearly
together. At this point the films are now going to be intentionally melded
together by myself because, despite the difficulties a hundred film or more
career in terms of trying to find it all let alone complete, I cannot look at
these films without them being part of one giant concept that connects fully in
their mirroring of each other. The virtues I've stated for these films can be
said for others I've seen, and they all befit each other if the director's work
was treated like this fully.
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