Representing Belgium and The French Language: Female Vampire (1973)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Female_Vampire.jpg

Dir. Jesús Franco

First of all, hopefully I'll be able to pick up from the few days I missed. The least expected thing - technical malfunction out of my hands and nothing to do with my computer - delayed the final stage of the season. It will have to run into November to make up for thirty one films I wanted to write reviews of. A conclusion for the series will have to be written in November or part of the next Month In Review too. To compensate today, I present a review of another Jess (Jesús) Franco film and the first in a group of reviews I wrote for Videotape Swapshop  to tie both places I write for together into this blogathon. 

It made sense, since I was diving into the director at the beginning of the year, going through his filmography slowly, to cover a film or two for this season. Considering how many co-productions he made, including for countries with no other horror films expect his to truly represent them, its befitting and also says a lot about how diverse his career was. And I have barely scrapped a body of work that's over a hundred films not including the re-edited versions. There could have been three of his films covered already, but Bloody Moon (1981), his West German slasher film, is one of the few legitimately awful films of his I've encountered. I rather champion Female Vampire. Merely poking the air next to the catalog of the late man, deciding to view his work when he sadly passed away this year, I can be thankful that its quite a solid series of films I've seen baring those couple of bad ones. Even something like Oasis of the Zombies (1982), which I reviewed on this blog, is no way near as bad as some of the films I've seen. I'm late to the party with reviewing Franco's films, with other blogs devoting themselves to his, but as a person who only saw a handful of his films before and barely had any primary knowledge of what his films were like, there's a potential for a really interesting chronology in these reviews, as the director gets the most tags to his name so far in the labels section for filmmakers, where I slowly get to know more and more about his style as I watch more films. I could be digging at his work for years, which means I may have to use other director seasons as mini-diversions, their thirty or so films a puddle next to the ocean of Franco's, and there's stuff by Franco, like his porn films, that are going to be difficult to find. Here at least I got to one of the first of his films I heard of, and I'm glad for what I saw. I only wish an available DVD wasn't very out-of-print in Region 1 or 2 as of yet. 

Also of importance, looking back on this film, is that Lina Romay deserves her own label in the Actors section of my site. Even if a lot of Female Vampire is near-explicit titillation, she was clearly more than mere window dressing in this film, turning the movie into something more sensual and interesting with her clear interest in how she presented herself. Its worth making this review link a moment of my own applause for both her and her husband Franco together. 

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/17244/female-vampire-1973-director-jess-franco/

From http://images.dead-donkey.com/images/bscap1924wl3.jpg

Representing Switzerland: Jack The Ripper (1976)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Jack_the_Ripper_FilmPoster.jpeg

Dir. Jesús Franco

The Ripper (Klaus Kinski), a doctor, is prowling the streets of fog covered London, a Euro-specific version where everyone is speaking German and the world shown is built from German-Swiss construct, killing prostitutes because of an internal psychosis. However the police are slowly closing in on him, with the love of one detective (Josephine Chaplin) willing to gamble with her life to drag out the killer. Even if it could be the influence of the producers and crew on this film, a higher budget film from the director, this is not the only film from Jess Franco this atmospheric and very well made. With a career that has travelled numerous countries co-producing the work, the late director was very talented at his best, and Jack The Ripper is reminiscent of the British co-productions in their lavish looks. Unlike the British co-productions, this German co-production feels far more lenient to allowing Franco to express his more lurid, trangressive side along with mood. Far from the most lurid of Franco's work, far from the most violent or sexually explicit film ever released on British DVD, and definitely not the most violent or sexually explicit take on Jack the Ripper with the original graphic novel of Alan Moore's From Hell (1999 collected) in existence. But there is still things in this that, even with obvious prophetic effects, still cause one to wince with what is shown or implied, while still not overdoing for the sake of shock. Mixed with the mood the film has, expansive sets and darkly lit streets, it works together very well.

From http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4037/4317835170_08ba0ec4d3.jpg

Some may have issue with how most of the film is slow paced and has quite a few dialogue scenes, but maybe it's my personal taste here, but even with the plot reaching its obvious conclusion with or without the scenes, the dramatic and police investigation sequences were immensely engaging. Probably because, unlike an awful Franco film Bloody Moon (1981), these sequences are actually of interest for characterisation, plot or just detail. It was great that there's a side character, a blind man, whose amplified sense of smell and sound would ultimately doom the killer, in the beginning, to at least escaping the police by the skin of his teeth. That from the beginning he's going to be found out quickly, Kinski's character more desperate than calculated. That he's shown to actually be a person as well as a killer as a doctor. That there's comedy with bickering amongst the police and witnesses, and the witnesses themselves. That the cliché reason behind the killer's psychosis gets distorted through two very distinct scenes, the first through visual manipulation, the second a two person dialogue sequence played out through extreme close-ups of Kinski's face, showing that even if off-screen he was a reprehensibly being, he was still compelling onscreen in genre films like this. That, even if she becomes the per usual potential victim, Chaplin's character has a more calmed relationship with her detective boyfriend and gets involved with tracking the killer down entirely on her own initiative. The film, while possible to dismiss as perverse gloss, has far more subtlety than most films in this genre. Altogether its one of the better of Jess Franco's films. Not one of his best, but at least rearing the silver tier. It proves the work of Franco has quality to it, its graphic content mixed with a tense sense of tone. 

From http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2436/4317100987_12a8d5bab3.jpg