Killer Barbys (1996)

From http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G9788WMCL.jpg

Dir. Jesus Franco

Reviewing this, it may actually cause more damage to the film if I suddenly tried to use film studies glossary terms of 'style' to describe my enjoyment of it. This'll be a circumvention on myself since there is always a danger of defending one's enjoyments against imaginary detractors. Shame as it's called too, but there's no reason for it to exist. Can't I just admit I enjoyed the film? Why not for once? Admit to being turned on by the female nudity? I'm a heterosexual male so why not admit it? Admit to liking the goofy special effects and cheapness compared to other Jess Franco films? Yes, and say that it's still a Franco film despite this. There is of course this issue of celebrating something like this subconsciously to rebel against good taste, politically correct films. But taste's subjective, I've loved films both progressive and far more so than more celebrated politically correct films, and even the idea of what is politically correct is questionable when it doesn't always work in what it was intended to do. The only shame that exists for me is that the British DVD I viewed it on was English dub only. While its amusing, it's not seamless to the static noise of the original film, and is completely awful. Enjoyable so, but embarrassing for the film's sake. As for the film itself, I feel no shame enjoying it on this viewing. Honestly, while Killer Barbys is a drop down from Franco's best, is still memorable and considerably better than a lot of films like it from other directors.

(Real life) pop punk band Killer Barbys, name modified here because of Mattel, find their Mystery Van dying on them in the middle of nowhere. Their trademark are Barbie dolls tied up as van decorations, and on microphone stands, in improvised tape bondage gear, and the red haired, scantily clad lead female singer to wave a chainsaw around. She's the heroine, sometimes dressed in a Spiderman crop top. Two male members, the first with a beard and long hair, the other, the closest to another key character, with clean shaven features and has a higher pitched voice in the English dub. Both of them always go on about sex, the dialogue more ridiculous in the dubbing. The final two members, a male member and a female dancer, prefer to stay in the van and actually have sex continually rather than merely talk about it, to the point of seemingly staying the entire night there in coupling. A mysterious older man, who passes by the van, says he can get a toll truck for them by the next morning, and that they can all stay at the castle that he is servant of, that of a Countess who may be over a hundred years old or more. As established before the titular band are introduced, staying in this castle is probably a very bad idea, Lady Bathory reasons why it's so.

A very slim, simple plot - a common trait of a Franco film - the director concerning himself with mood, violence and sex. Mood, as with the best work of the director, is all encompassing. Characters, like the main heroine in this film by the end, find themselves wandering adrift in corridors and open areas, and very long camera takes are done that feel longer then they should be. This is my first from the winter period of the late director, divisive even amongst his fans, where it's said there was a considerable decline. A period, as co-funded European horror cinema was dissipating, where Franco was being helped financially by his own fan base. The lower production quality and, if translated accurately from the original audio track, dialogue do show this is a bit of a drop from Vampyros Lesbos (1971) or Succubus (1968). But despite these problems, it's a film like this that shows me how good Franco was. The band are picked off one-by-one, leading to the lead singer having to get out of the castle as the Countess makes her appearance. Along with the servant, there's another man living in the back, who prepares (clearly rubber mould) corpses for the Countess to drink the blood of and who has two dwarfs, both genders, as "children" who help and get the spoils, human ears to those dolls hanging up in the Mystery Van. The plot has very few twists and turns within it in terms of the events I've described going any further from this. What's more important is the content surrounding this thin plot. Sexual pleasure and blood are the main plot momentums, as is the case with other Franco films.

From http://www.imcdb.org/i292847.jpg

Some of his key trademarks are not at their best. The usually exceptional music score is replaced here by a funny but horrifically dinky keyboard sound - you'd think synthesisers from the seventies and eighties Euro horror films, ignored for nineties sounds, could've been relocated, dusted off and used but apparently not. Location use and creating environments from what he had for his films however is still strong here. Despite the small plot, what's really of enjoyment is a lurid journey from one moment of sex or horror to another, and the distinctness of the castle location helps make the film stand out. Using it as part of his usual dream logic, where characters are adrift in rooms and almost sleepwalking along predestined routes, it exists here too. Mist covered hill, near the river, are still powerful to see even in a weaker film like this. Creepy stuffed animals, with boggle eyes or made to be like people are lingered over as is the decorations of the castle's rooms. The abattoir at the back, despite the rubber bodies, is a sparse and messy space that's riddled with blood everywhere. When it gets to the point of the heroine finding out what's going on, the film fully becomes what I love about Franco as a she wanders the hidden rooms of the castle, a literal chess room with giant chess pieces and matching black and white tiles, to a room of various body parts and curiosities in jars. This doesn't last long, but from it the tone of the film is shown, even with the plot's junky schlock, to be a dreamy one of previous Franco films even if the style is not completely the same as the before ones.

Regardless of the film's failings, it's still in my thoughts as a memorable viewing experience. Once I get past the cheesiness, although I liked the (overused) songs by the band, I still felt an atmosphere that is shared with the best of Jess Franco's work and is rarely done in other horror films. The special effects for the blood and gore were absurd but befitting, the film never taking on a serious tone that would've been deflated by the obvious failings. The sexuality was honestly appealing too; admittedly I didn't find a female character running from a man with a scythe while completely naked titillating, instead seeing it as lurid on purpose, but the rest of the sexual nature of the film, while also schlocky, was enticing. And it's worth baring in mind that, for all the criticisms Franco has had levelled at him for this, the fact that the actress playing the Countess, when she appears to the band, is not just a beautiful woman but a beautiful older woman suggests that, perversely, Franco may have had a more progressive view of sexuality and gender than many other apparently 'progressive' directors. The luridness and the few failings are probably why I had to start this review as I did, although I give up keeping any un-biased mask on and admit to having completely enjoyed Killer Barbys. It could be argued to have a cop-out ending - that its revealed to have been merely fiction with an improvised music video for the band taking place - but personally it was an emphasis that this was Franco trying to make a fun film. And it was fun to view. He still had the talent despite the big drawbacks in production of this compared his sixties and seventies work. I could care less any more about trying to write intelligent, good taste reviews and I thank Killer Barbys, and my enjoyment of it, for reminding me that individual taste has completely influenced everything I've written on this blog. That I've covered many Franco films from before this pretty much says that I've really found enjoyment in his work even here.

From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/richardsplash/blog6/killerbarbys_04_zpsa9a9067a.jpg

Two Films From Jess Franco...

From http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/2709/264577-devilakasava_dvd_large.jpg

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 plot, meant that this is prevented in his films already.

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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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Videotape Swapshop Review: The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962)

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-a/awful_dr_orlof_poster_07.jpg

Dir. Jesús Franco

Another Videotape Swapshop review, and more Franco. Like a reliving high, I can jump back to reviewing another of his films and always find something of interest. Only my own inconsistency with using Jesús and Jess for his first name is going to give me grief one day if I don't get a consistence first name moniker for him in my writing, especially when I'm LONG before ever getting through a quarter of his work. I was thinking about starting on another director, next year, that I felt I had barely seen work from and wanted to compensate for the embarrassment, but I had to choose a director whose filmography is over the hundreds as the first, meaning I'll be with Franco for a while at the same time. Its damn great to be watching his works which is the thing I'll be going to in my mind every time I think this, and I only wish I started becoming a fan of his while he was still alive. But as I watched this early work of his, I can say fully that he left a vast library of work that expands when you think you've pinned the late Spaniard down fully in tropes.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/18154/the-awful-dr-orloff-1962-director-jesus-franco/

From http://www.mondo-digital.com/awfulorlof4big.jpg

Representing France: Two Orphan Vampires (1997)

From http://images.moviepostershop.com/two-orphan-vampires-movie-poster-1997-1020492359.jpg

Dir. Jean Rollin

It's a delightful surprise that this film doesn't feel like a nineties horror movie at all. As much as I'm obsessed with the nineties, one of the reasons I'm obsessed with it is the tackiness of the era as well as the positives. Not a lot of horror films from that decade are celebrated, as compared to other eras, for this reason.  Jean Rollin didn't make a tacky film in the autumn/winter of his career here, thankfully making a very interesting one instead. It's very much an art film, against other films of his I've seen, which must be beared in mind. It's amazing too that I can compare this film to the work of fellow French director Eugène Green, of The Portuguese Nun (2009), with his long, almost Bressionian moments of dialogue, dangerously near the precipice of pretentious but ultimately charming and rewarding in being a bit more freer to let scenes play out as far as needed for mood and effect. This is the same for Two Orphan Vampires. I will openly admit it's going to be a difficult film for people to digest, including those who like Rollin films. I will also admit that I've developed a taste for films that could be seen as "difficult", with small fan bases, but this one works completely for what it intended.

From http://admin.highdefdigest.com/picture/original/32953

The titular vampires are two girls, Louise (Alexandra Pic) and Henriette (Isabelle Teboul), living in an orphanage ran by nuns, blind in the day, but able to see at night when they go out to feast. Immediately distinct in their identical clothes and white canes, the two are sympathetic in that, while they need to feed on the living, they are clearly close, engaging in their ponderings on existence, and obsessed with books on Aztec culture and magic while they believe they are reincarnations of the Aztec gods. The film is a series of events, ones from their previous lives, able to come back to life after being killed, as well as ones from their new life, as a doctor adopts them and they continue to explore the world around them. They do encounter other supernatural entities - a ghoul, a werewolf and so forth - but they are women too; in fact, baring the doctor, there are no male characters in the film baring extras or minor, one scene roles. (An interesting tone for the film in that it's a world framed entirely around women who have the discussions on the meaning of life as well as the small dramatic plots.) Its brief story is more of an engaging character piece, of characters doomed to repeatedly die despite their happiness, both girls concerned that they'll eventually never come back to life again at some point. Its abstract in a way that could frustrate people, but baring in mind, digging deeper with what Rollin was obsessed by, this is a waking dream of a film crossed with the kind of aesthetics of book illustrations that look exceptional when used in the opening and end credits of the film

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It doesn't look cheap either. I suspect it was shot on celluloid. It has an atmosphere, like the best films covered in this series of reviews, where from the first scenes it already sets up the mood immediately with the look and use of the locations and the space in them. The bright, vast locations of the day time to the blue lit environments of the night time scenes. His obsession with sexuality and sensuality is still there slightly in the vampires' relationship, including the sexual nature of how vampires bite a victim's neck that has always existed in the mythology, but barring two moments or so of nudity, this is quite a chaste film more concerned with friendship, and the bonding of Louise and Henriette, at times like teenage girls onscreen, other times very wise and adult in their reflections of the world around them. The film's mind is more on magic and supernatural creatures than carnality of other films of his I've seen. Probably the biggest reason why people could be put off Two Orphan Vampires if they're not prepared for it is because this strips away the blood and nudity in Rollin's films and leaves the unconventional plotting, where two vampires get bored of their predicament and do whatever they desire to escape it, presented not as a conventional three act narrative. For me it's nice to go through such an abstract, dreamlike film that paces itself well. The dialogue is all of interest even if its unconventional at times. It's an interesting take on vampires that doesn't compromise the mythology while adds new things for its own depiction. The two lead actresses are very charismatic as their characters, to the point that their potential ego in believing themselves to be gods is actually sweet natured and understandable pride in their existence than despairing their "curse". The distinct age fluctuation in their appearance in fact adds a strange air to the proceedings which makes their characters more interesting. The directions the film takes make sense - a world of supernatural beings who are methodical and languid, none of the hectic tone of, say, the Twilight films, and most horror films, where two vampires can kill time as best friends for most of the running time. Nothing feels contrived in the film in what happens, anything odd feeling appropriate for the dreamlike tone. It feels like spending a week with these characters in their immortal lives only with a few deaths at their hands taking place, and the danger they will be discovered and killed themselves adding dramatic tension. It looks good, and even if the score is dated synth, it feels like it's actually from the eighties, the depth of that era's music here to and adding to the material. There is nothing in Two Orphan Vampires that feels amiss, and that Rollin made a film completely against what is expected with these genre tropes is admirable, more so in that he succeeded for me.

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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

Representing Finland: The White Reindeer (1952)

From http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c187/TStatic/polish_white_reindeer_linen.jpg

Dir. Erik Blomberg

Falling in love and marrying, the wife of a hunter enquires about a ritual to make him fall in love with her even more, hesitant since he is continually out for long periods to hunt. The ritual however leads to disastrous consequences of her continually turning into a white reindeer, which entices hunters to try and catch her, only for her to turn back with fangs and kill them. As people in her village die, slowly it leads to tragedy. The film is not that long, brisk in its running time, and tells this story with immense amount of engagement. The different environment, of the snow covered Finnish lands, adds a freshness to this film, seeing the country's traditional culture through this supernatural tragedy and being able to appreciate it. Erik Blomberg uses the environment to its full advantage too. The village community is very close knit, small, where increasing amounts of death from sinister causes would bring anxiety to them more so, and the vast white landscape is isolating, able to be lost in it or pulled away from other people to die alone within it.

From http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/206/247/206247843_640.jpg

Aside from this, it's just an alright film. It's no way near the best take on this idea, of love broken by the curse of bestial transformation, but The White Reindeer is still good. This does actually make it difficult to write a lot about the film because of how small it is, so rigidly concentrated it is on just depicting its story. It could be a flaw of the film that it leaves little space for tangents that stand out, or a flaw in me for being unable to go into more detail about the virtues that are there. Probably the biggest flaw with the film is that it does so well in merely telling the story that it loses out on the potential elaborate artistry that could have made it a great film too. But as the Finnish entry for this series, the obsession with using supernatural and horror cinema to look back on traditional culture and folk law has always revealed itself in films defined by various countries, including my own, and it's very interesting and distinct with the better examples like this. The ominous aspects, the bestial aspects having a physical affect on the heroine's appearance, the shrine she conducted the ritual at littered around with reindeer skulls and bones, mix with the basic aesthetics of the period of the clothes, the everyday activities of the people and the relationships with fascinating effect. You can probably learn more about a country through films like this than other mainstream entertainment or news documentary. The White Reindeer, melancholic and ultimately sad by its end credits, shows a great deal of Finland, even if the film's short and to the point, and makes you wish you could see more.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/the-white-reindeer/w448/the-white-reindeer.jpg?1301729719

Representing Portugal By Way of Spain: Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Tombs_of_the_Blind_Dead_Poster.jpg

Dir. Amando de Ossorio

The most entertaining thing from the viewing experience of Tombs of the Blind Dead wasn't anything in the film; needing a drink to get through it part of the way through, it was the beer upon opening it exploding in a fountain of golden ale foam and not seeming to end that was more entertaining. It made a mess of the kitchen top, but it was of more interest than the disappointment when, viewing this highly regarded horror film, the first in a whole series of them, I find it to be such a complete failure in what I was hoping for. The beginning of film's series, Tombs of the Blind Dead touts a cultish space in European horror cinema in depicting undead Templar Knights on horseback with swords on a rudimentary level, a potential for adding historical and mystical material to familiar horror tropes. It's a long wait before you even get to the knights as the first twenty minutes or so is an incredibly dull drama, ending with a woman jumping off a train, in the middle of nowhere, when her boarding school friend gets too close to her boyfriend (and her) for comfort. Its plodding dramatic scenes you have to put up with. And it may just say something about me, but up to viewing this film at the moment I did, I had more enough depictions of lipstick lesbians already so that the risqué twist shown here was enough to make me oversaturated to it. It actually shows how clunky and arbitrary this kind of material can be presented though, lurid or with depth or both, when comparing it to other works that don't seem to have crowbarred it in without any sense of nuisance or entertainment in it, and this sense of cheapness runs through other aspects of the whole film.

From http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/2865460697_bded6df2db_o.jpg

When the Blind Dead do make their appearance, it's clear I was in a place where the film would never get good. The idea of Templar Knights and the fact that, blind, they have to use sound to find their prey is great, but they're never threatening or scary. The image dashed, in my head for all these years before finally seeing this, was of an atmospheric film, very misty or fog covered, an occult or threatening edge to make the Templar even more unsettling when they arrive on horseback or rise from their graves. It doesn't turn out that way. Its men in costumes slowly lumbering along, occasionally swinging a sword. There is no sense of dreading mood, even though its set around an abandoned medieval  village where the Templar rest. The whole film is really cheap, sluggish horror. It tries to bring in zombie infection briefly which never goes anywhere, and drags the narrative into a different location without any reason. Characters are pointlessly introduced, and in complete tastelessness, there's an abrupt rape scene near the end where, after being forced to the ground, the female character just buttons her shirt back up with no sense of a negative reaction to it. Say what you want of a director like Lucio Fulci, even if someone bring up The New York Ripper (1982) to question this point I'm about to make, but something like this scene for me is an actual case of something incredibly sexist and morally objectionable. I don't use the word 'misogyny' because my definition of the word, the complete hatred of the whole female gender, means it should only be used in extreme cases, but a scene like this in Tombs of the Blind Dead is a prime candidate for foul gender depictions and more so for how slapdash its depicted. A director like Fulci, for an example of someone accused of objectionable content, comes off as a misanthropic nihilist, and more importantly from what I've seen of his, even if he lingers luridly on something it still feels extremely painful and horrifying when he shows something horrible. Here, its sexual violence which happens with no sense of the director making it painful to sit through even in the context of an exploitation film, and its worse because its quickly forgotten and is incredibly pointless in its placement there. A film that was already terrible shows how poor it is further with a moment like this because, despite the scene not being that explicit, it shows that it clearly has no sense of care and thought in how it was put together. That a film can do something this cack-handed, without taking into account how offensive it truly is, shows how sloppy the movie is more so with a moment that digs its own grave the viewer would have made to kick it in after the end credits.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4rgS5z_NBYJT16YoBwQDDJzNkoJElpxS118ucrUtqA275BfsGSv17D6lgmIdXFUiO3ekvFVoPBi2ABjzOhX56lDdKoq4rmIEGXxl7CfetCdwPstA5qaAwKnu0D_pjUx9px_C1S826RlM/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-10-23-19h20m03s201.png

And I realise how head and above a critically maligned director like Fulci viewing this. Even Jess Franco is above this by many, many tiers in his lowest. Directors like them, even if they could fail miserably, had the ability to create potent moods and tension with even hack material. Zombi 2 (1979), Fulci's film, is art in a legitimate sense next to this, completely in a different world in the construction and what is shown onscreen in images and tone. In comparison there's a decided lack of artistry here, a squandered potential. There's nothing entertaining about it even as just a junky zombie film. The later films in this series could redeem the experience of this one, but as I fall in love with European horror films of the seventies and early eighties, I may defend less than good ones occasionally but I'm also incredibly picky with them too. Just red paint blood and people screaming is not enough unless its well made, effecting or completely insane, and this has none of the above.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhADM6Y511MY7mhyMlOxfN1pLodal8RCGnhGTTfHjm3yZIYfpJthEf3uKy-Hykj_w2yzh7nrLK2qDJKI_qC2RYXoEzxnIyhgiKUD0xo5UTttTKFVknjdhbouwBRyjYrvsJdb_lRLrqwFG4/s1600/blind+dead+mannequins.jpg

Another Italian Entry, Babbling Incoherently: Black Magic Rites (1973)

Original Title
From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkHrB8V66rOzLuwN7nyT6pa0FIvhcqE3QYbnr_5x0Qck_DUolMaytiSRWbVsOSQ4T39AYLcZRNzgMYaTW4b-EWGKEtzpW2wHhRbj_UObL4Vq00mmhTXjbB9_s0OAsh89Kz907X_vKMkFUN/s1600/Black+Magic+Rites_005.jpg

Dir. Renato Polselli

For anyone who has seen Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio (2012), this exactly the kind of Italian horror film he was channelling when he created the film-within-a-film, The Equestrian Vortex, that is heard but not seen. Made like a profound art house film but all about the gore, baring of female flesh, and various kinds of titillation. It's also completely off-the-rails in terms of tone and plotting, probably one of the oddest entries in seventies Italian genre cinema for me to see in a while. I thought I was in the groove for this area of cinema by now, but then this comes up and wobbles me off said groove. Even how I came about it and how it came to be on my To-Watch list is a mystery. Like the occult and Satanist shenanigans in the film, Black Magic Rites itself just materialised into existence. Attempting a cohesive take on the plot itself could be difficult. Not because it's very complicated and abstract, but like quite a few of these European horror films, the very simplistic plots are used more for mood and you can have the rules flipped by the creator wanting to introduce a new plot twist into it even near the end. Call it Jess Franco Logic, where nothing is to be expected from even well worn material, and if you're lucky the results are rewarding intentionally and/or unintentionally. An engagement celebration takes place in an ancient castle, only for the dark secrets to make a beeline for the women, especially virgins, in the spare rooms. A witch was burnt centuries before, and not only do Satanists want to resurrect her with female donors, but reincarnation and vampires are involved too. Don't attempt to guess the point. Right from the bat, with its swirling colour wheel opening credits, and a woman being sacrificed on a ritual table, this is a complete masala of influences, of various different ideas crammed together. What you gain out of it is up to you.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhvunEDo_50RgU9Dg647P2tk7aQEIojxe79QrgiTRndwrEgrr8dvE-v99ygD799530cbVZDxWyWwMk9zFa3P-L40pv-qLlip8dZVuqAk0KCFHgQYYFb_DhpXeb-0g_y1cvB6wObjXEWChn/s1600/Black+Magic+Rites_006.jpg

Its every obsession within European horror, from the psychedelic to the erotic, and unlike a Jean Rollin film or other Italian made films of the time with a measured pace, this is a tonal mess that's compelling for this reason. It writhes with titillation and fake paint red blood, but acts like a prog rock filled art house film, and unlike a Jean Rollin film, it's not a measured atmospheric pace being presented to cohere it together. Its diffusion of time and reality, right to the end, is a mass of chaotic moments that suddenly happen. People being in two places at the same time. Random village folks attack two women suddenly for being witches. Random comedy moments take place. Said comedy moments involve Steffy (Stefania Fassio), who fully evokes the bizarre nature of the film; a thin brunette who is over exaggerated in her behaviour, always falling over, and completely impervious (and blissfully ignorant) of the gothic horror events around her in favour of romping around in a bed with a blonde female friend and her boyfriend with an excessive facial tick. The film around is as oblivious to its content as these characters, a series of non-sequiturs, as exaggerated and ridiculous as her. Almost every actress onscreen is seen topless. No idea, such as a trap involving a crushing door mechanism with knives on it, is rejected for not making sense for that moment. It ends as one expect the story to, but how it gets there is a tangent in on itself, flighty and very camp to the point of being ridiculous.

From http://admin.highdefdigest.com/picture/original/33010

It works as it belongs to that rare breed of films that cannot be called "so-bad-they're-good" because there is a silver of real virtue to them to put them above being incompetent. Black Magic Rites has a few at least. With its music, and its willingness to go completely dreamlike to the bafflement of this viewer, it will stay on the mind for at least a while where other better made films wouldn't. A highlight is when a character is buried alive, but what's great about it is that I haven't spoilt the weirdly compelling convolutions that set it up or how the scene plays out. It would have been great if there was some control or focus to the material, but it has virtues in its mess. As for its unintended effects, it redeems a slow start quickly. A pointlessly long flashback moment nearly killed my interest in the film, but its cheesy peculiarities eventually intermingle with its erratic tone and gets interesting quickly. Is it a good film? To be honest no, but it's not bad either. It has goodness in how it is so removed from dull, plodding horror films made from the same period that sadly outbalance the good ones. There is so much to gain from just watching a film so unruly, so unpredictable, that you can't guess obvious plot points or how they have gotten there in the story. And unlike films that are random for no point, chasing after this crazed film's tone is rewarding because everything does have an effect. Randomness if done badly, or trying too hard, becomes predictable and dull, why intentional attempts at something like this fail miserably. This sort of film itself is speaking a new language and someone like me gets a high from its atonal mutterings that feel fresh as well as ridiculously silly.

From http://cdn-3.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/clp/105073-4749-clp-720.jpg

"They're coming from the sandwiches here!" (Oasis of the Zombies (1982))

From http://d3gtl9l2a4fn1j.cloudfront.net/t/p/w1280/zjmlP0M4hqtPEKJUD0OFYd2e36s.jpg

Dir. Jess Franco

Oasis of the Zombies is not a good film. But it's not as bad as its reputation suggests. It probably shows something dead in myself that I can think of plenty of films worse than this, not including controversial choices, but this film has virtues in it that just become lost in the final movie. The oasis is a place in the African Sahara where, during a skirmish in World War II, a large bullion of Nazi gold was lost in the ground. For anyone who is going to the oasis however - treasure hunters, the son of a British soldier who was at the original skirmish - they will encounter the living corpses of the Nazi soldiers who come up from the sand at night and kill those within the vicinity. The film still retains virtues of the late director Jess Franco, and plenty of aspects that are always there with an auteur, celebrated or a cult one, whose filmography shuffles between personal work and director of hire films that someone could still hide their ideas in and blur the lines between the two sides. It does look great at points visually despite its very low budget and the print quality of the version I viewed. It shows Franco had an exceptional visual eye when he allowed it to be used, reinforced by his better work like Succubus (1967), images of the silhouettes of zombies on top of sand dunes in the dusk and the sun blazing down upon them standing out for what was said to be an atrocious film when I was going into viewing it. For a generic zombie premise, it's a hell of a lot better than some of the ugliest, cheapest looking horror films I've managed to see, especially as it still had the virtue of actually being shot on celluloid than a cheap digital camera. I also have to appreciate the composer, or at least whoever was stuck playing the synth keyboard playing the same two notes. It'll put off a lot of people, but I have a fathomless passion for electronic and synth music, including most examples of the tackiest songs and scores ever made for films, and it felt like the keyboard player was trying their damndest to bring tension to the visuals onscreen when the film is dragging its feet. No matter how cheesy the zombie makeup looks, it's clear they were going to try and get the viewer to react to it in some way, and I have to applaud their attempt.

From http://www.mondo-digital.com/oasis3big.jpg

It's a typical Euro-horror film, an acquired taste, whose English dub provided me with the hilarious misheard quote that titles the review and comes off as incredibly ridiculous. The zombie makeup - pop eyes zombies who've come from a Guinness World Records attempt to have the furthest out a dislocated eye can be, a zombie with the head of the mask from George A. Romero's Bruiser (2000) - is silly, the set up for their attacks rudimentary and all of it coming off as very amusing. It's enjoyable if you can find this kind of bad horror filmmaking charming, sat from a distance looking at these actors having to raise out of the sand and lumber about, and engaged seeing the characters be attacked by the zombies in the tone of a b- or  c-movie. It's surprisingly chaste for a Jess Franco admittedly; there is some sex and violence, but it's very discrete, which is why the film's ended up with a 15 certificate in Britain. This is not the problem though with the film, very much adding to the peculiar nature of the movie. No, the problem with Oasis of the Zombies, that has likely been the reason why its viewed with such hatred justifiably, is because it has no sense of pace but just slogs along. For a film only eighty minutes long, it feels much longer. Moments, such as the prelude to the climax as zombies drift towards the protagonists' camp, show how the film's slow pace can be effective, but in the middle it's just laborious, with the sense of speed as a comatose snail. There is still plenty to like about the film around this, but this pace issue is a mood killer that damages the viewability of Oasis of the Zombies completely, spoiling the joyful moments with how dull it can be.

From http://www.avmaniacs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/oasis-two.jpg

This prevents the film from being a cheesy but fun minor entry in Franco's filmography. People would still hate it for its failings, but it would have been schlock with some merit and things to amuse one's self about. The pace disrupts the final film however and makes it difficult to enjoy it fully. The result is fascinating as a failure in Franco's CV, both that is, to be honest, a job for hire that could have still been entertaining, and a film still containing his distinct voice, but it cannot be ignored how tiresome it gets when its going nowhere in the middle section. It would be amusing schlock if it was better, but it's a mess as it is even if I've subjected myself to worse.

From http://unobtainium13.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/oasis-of-the-zombies.jpg?w=540