Franco Files: She Killed in Ecstasy (1970)

VIEWING NOTE: As per my review of ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, the screenshots above originate not from the blu-ray edition mentioned in the text, but from the 2000 Second Sight DVD.

AKAs: Crimes dans l'extase [France & Belgium], Misdaad in Extase [‘Crime in Ecstasy’ / Belgium (Flemish title)], Lubriques dans l'extase [‘Lewd in Ecstasy’/ French poster title], Mrs. Hyde / Dr Jekyll & Miss Hyde [German working titles].

Like its companion piece Vampyros Lesbos, ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ is a film that didn’t impress me much on first viewing. I chiefly recalled it as being sleazy, sloppy, ugly and implausible, but, revisiting it via Severin’s recent blu-ray edition, I found a lot more to enjoy here than I had anticipated.

Though still a poor sister in comparison to the simultaneously shot ‘Vampyros..’, with an under-cooked narrative and abrupt conclusion that betray the haste with which it was produced, SKIE (if you will) is nonetheless a fine slice of vintage Franco, incorporating a swathe of florid and unforgettable imagery, great performances from several of Franco’s best-loved cast members and – believe it or not – some quite good writing in its first half.

Basically a simplified rehash of The Diabolical Dr. Z (itself heavily indebted to Cornell Woolrich’s perennial ‘The Bride Wore Black’), ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ begins with rugged young research scientist Dr Johnson (Fred Williams) receiving the academic equivalent of a right kicking, as the boorish and self-righteous members of the ‘medical council’ not only reject his requests for further funding, but proceed to lay into the methodology and morality of his work (which from what little we see of it comprises some Frankensteinian business involving pickled embryos and brightly-coloured test tubes) with a vengeance.

So virulent is the council’s hostility that Johnson (who seems just a *bit* thin-skinned, to be perfectly honest) is reduced to a state of catatonic depression. Seeing no way forward for his work – and apparently oblivious to the restorative charms of his beautiful island villa and devoted and no less beautiful wife (Soledad Miranda) – Johnson eventually takes his own life.

Devastated by her loss, Mrs Johnson (her character is never gifted with a first name at any point in the film, unbelievably) becomes a single-minded instrument of her dead husband’s vengeance. At you might well anticipate at this point, the life expectancy of the members of the aforementioned medical council (comprising a Franco dream-team of Howard Vernon, Paul Muller, the director himself and Ewa Stromberg from ‘Vampyros..’) just took a turn for the worse, and a synopsis of what happens during the remainder of the film is largely surplus to requirements.

From the perspective of a first world democracy, the manner in which Dr Johnson’s treatment by the medical council is played out in SKIE seems exaggerated to an almost comical extent, and indeed, that was certainly my impression when I first viewed the film. Rather than simply rejecting his request for funding on ethical grounds and calmly moving on to their next item of business, the learned gentlemen (and lady) of the council are apparently so outraged by Johnson that it is implied they break into his home, and, “raging like madmen” according to the English sub-titles, proceed to destroy his laboratory and rough up his wife, before calling a press conference specifically in order to denounce him as a monstrous charlatan.

And for Dr Johnson’s part meanwhile, rather than shrugging off this shabby treatment and making efforts to find support for his research elsewhere, he immediately seems to collapse into a state of complete despair, as if the possibility of his continuing his work through channels other than those overseen by this conclave of grumpy old naysayers is completely inconceivable.

Admittedly, a minor disagreement over professional ethics in medical research wouldn’t have provided much meat for a decent exploitation movie, but still, the hysterical over-reaction of both parties as we approach the tragedy that catapults Miranda’s character onto a path of obsessive vengeance initially seems absolutely ridiculous - until that is, we remember that Franco did *not* make this film in the context of a first world democracy.

Although it was financed internationally (as were just about all of his films from the mid ‘60s onwards), ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ was still conceived and shot within a totalitarian state, in which the excessive treatment meted out to Dr Johnson by the medical council more than likely *did* reflect the attitude of the regime toward outbursts of progressive or controversial thought, whether in the fields of science, culture, or indeed cinema.

Viewed within this context, the portrayal of Johnson’s destruction by the establishment – though still painted with what might generously be termed ‘broad brushstrokes’ – actually becomes quite harrowing, and, if the circumstances that led to his suicide are still somewhat unconvincing (hey dude, it sucks that The Man’s put a nix on yr research, but you’re still living in a space-age bachelor pad with Soledad Miranda and some of grooviest shirts ever created – there’s a lot to live for), the anger that lies behind this tale of a man’s dreams being senselessly crushed by vindictive bureaucracy was no doubt still something that Franco and his fellow countrymen could feel very keenly whilst Spain was still under the thumb of his namesake’s corrupt and hateful regime.

Key to selling us on the more familiar revenge movie tropes of the movie’s second half meanwhile is a characteristically excellent performance from Miranda – surely the best of her tragically brief career, alongside ‘Vampyros Lesbos’. Whilst, as noted, the circumstances of her husband’s death still seem slightly contrived, her portrayal of the loss and desolation that consume his wife is entirely convincing, whilst her mental disintegration as she transforms herself into a single-minded instrument of vengeance is definitely one of the better realisations of this over-familiar motif in the annals of b-cinema.

Basically, the sheer force of Soledad’s presence in this role is quite a thing to behold. A brief scene in which she stands alone, staring out to sea after her husband’s death and reciting a strange litany of romantic desolation (“I am searching for you my love, even if it is only your dream caressing me..”), is extremely affecting, distantly recalling the breathtaking beachside excelsis of Francoise Pascal in Jean Rollin’s La Rose de Fer, whilst the sheer depths of burning contempt in her coal-black eyes as she subsequently contemplates her vengeance rivals that of the great Meiko Kaji in her numerous similar roles.

Also worthy of praise here is Howard Vernon, whose terrifically hateful characterisation renders him the most fleshed out and genuinely dislikeable of Soledad’s victims. Though still anchored firmly in comic book villain territory, it’s great to see Vernon taking the opportunity to essay a role with a little more nuance than the mad doctors and vampire overlords he more frequently provided for Franco.

A delightfully hypocritical and smarmy, yet still somehow charming, creation, your blood will fairly boil as Vernon’s Professor Walker sits at a hotel bar feeding a credulous young female journalist some fatuous rubbish about the morality of young people being warped by mind-bending drugs and sexual license, before he immediately sidles over to Soledad’s table following the journalist’s departure, his cocktail-boosted ego blinding him to both to the obvious hatred in her eyes, and to her identity as the widow of the man whose career he so recently ruined, as he sets in on what is obviously his favourite pre-scripted playboy seduction routine (“excuse me, but have we met somewhere before? Buenos Aires? Montevideo?”).

I bet the dusty old goat can’t believe his luck when his tired lines actually appear to work, and, presently, his self-deluding insistence upon saying his prayers before letting his casual pick-up get into bed with him adds the perfect crowning note to this most craven and despicable of characters. Played out by performers of the caliber of Miranda and Vernon, Walker’s subsequent bloody demise is both the most satisfying and most violent of Mrs Johnson’s assorted acts of vengeance. (1)

Though it doesn’t quite reach the same grisly heights, our heroine’s lesbian seduction of Ewa Stromberg’s Dr. Crawford is nonetheless a masterpiece of kitsch. Bonding over a copy of John LeCarre’s ‘A Small Town in Germany’, the pair’s feigned jetsetter ennui is almost comical, whilst their awkward slide into Sapphic groping within the stark, mod interior of the Bofill buildings reaches a climax of grotesque hilarity as Soledad (wearing an unflattering blonde wig for the occasion) suffocates Ewa with a transparent op-art plastic cushion. (2)

It’s difficult to imagine a more exquisite ‘euro-trash’ moment, and indeed Franco plays up the camp for all it’s worth. Nonetheless though, he still somehow manages to unexpectedly crow-bar in a curious exchange of dialogue between the two women that, whether consciously or otherwise, seems to function as a perfect vindication of the director’s particular approach to cinema; “What does it mean?” asks Stromberg, discussing one of the paintings that adorn the walls. “Whatever you see in it”, Miranda replies. “It’s just a composition, a play of colours, nothing more. But I love it.” (3)

Whilst I don’t want to go entirely against the spirit of the point being made here by over-thinking things, the placement of these statements is curious, thrown randomly into the middle of what is arguably one of Franco’s more thematically engaged works.(4) Likewise, it is interesting that, assuming Franco can actually claim responsibility for the dialogue that ended up in the most widely seen German language versions of the films, both ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ and ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ contain brief passages of considerably more heart-felt and accomplished dialogue than is usually encountered in Jess Franco films (control of the precise words spoken by his characters being an element of filmmaking that was pretty much precluded by the sketchy and dilettante-ish working methods that the director began to embrace shortly after these films were completed).

In terms of additional attractions, Hübler and Schwab’s delirious psyche-rock lounge act is still in full effect on the soundtrack (the fact that its sunny disposition is entirely out of keeping with the maudlin storyline is outweighed for me personally by the fact that it’s just so damn fun to listen to), and I’m pretty sure there’s some distinctive Bruno Nicolai sitar twanging and choral melancholy creeping in here and there too.

Meanwhile, the astonishing La Manzanera buildings near Calpe in Southern Spain, designed by experimental architect Ricardo Bofill, are exploited to their full potential by Franco, beautifully framed in queasy, wide-angle compositions that lend much of the film a beautifully way-out, modernist vibe, similar to that provided by the La Grande-Motte complex in Lorna the Exorcist, whilst that big rock near Alicante (now finally identified thanks to Stephen Thrower’s Murderous Passions as the Penon de Ifach, also in Calpe) makes yet another prominent appearance too. (5)

With all this to play for, it is a shame that SKIE’s potential is to some extent squandered by the obvious haste with which it was produced. Even by Franco standards, the plotting here is wafer-thin, with all attempts to develop (or in some case even name) the characters left entirely to the cast, whilst the film’s ending – in which Mrs Johnson, her mission of revenge completed, apparently decides to immolate herself in a car crash – is so rushed that it gives the impression the movie simply ground to a halt when the final reel of film fell out of the camera; an unsatisfying conclusion to the personal journey that Miranda’s excellent performance has drawn us into over the preceding 70-something minutes, to say the least.

Additionally, viewers unaccustomed to Franco’s, shall we say, ‘emblematic’ approach to special effects may find themselves feeling cheated by the laughable shoddiness of the film’s ‘gore’ effects, in which a thin sliver of stage blood across Vernon’s neck is used to represent a sliced jugular, whilst other acts of violence conveniently take place off-screen. Filming mostly in hotel rooms and borrowed apartments, it’s easy to believe that Franco and his crew were simply worried about making too much of a mess if they started throwing blood around, but, regardless of how indulgent us fans may be of such shortcomings, it’s hard to deny that this approach does put a bit of a damper on the visceral pleasures of Soledad’s murderous rampage.

For all these reasons and more, ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ is too slap-dash and under-developed to really make the grade as one of Franco’s best films, but I have to admit upon that upon re-visiting it for the first time in a while, nuggets of the director’s personality and unique vision nonetheless shine strongly through its ragged surface. Wedged in between the film’s more obvious failings are passages of meditative reflection, self-conscious pop art excelsis and primal catharsis that, like the more fully formed ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, make it absolutely essential viewing for Francophiles, and a curiously compelling item for anyone with an open-minded interest in marginal and, in its own way, challenging cinema.

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Kink: 4/5
Creepitude: 2/5
Pulp Thrills: 3/5
Altered States: 2/5
Sight Seeing: 4/5

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(1) Vernon gains even more respect for the extent to which he was obviously willing to commit to the warped vision of his good pal Jess. Not only does the venerable actor briefly go full frontal here, he also subsequently appears as a corpse, stretched out naked with an unconvincing gore effect covering his ‘castrated’ genitals – not an indignity many middle-aged veterans of films by Melville and Truffaut would have consented to, one supposes. [Vernon’s admirer’s should note that whilst it appears on the Severin blu-ray edition, this grisly shot appears to have been trimmed from the older UK DVD from which I took my screen-grabs.]

(2) The appearance of the LeCarre book (in English, no less) is a good example of what I take to be Franco’s occasional habit of throwing whatever paperback he happened to be reading at the time into a movie; also see Barbed Wire Dolls and Mil Sexos Tiene La Noche.

(3)If the extent to which Mrs Johnson seems to have prepared for her seduction of Dr Crawford – renting a spacious apartment and developing an elaborate back story as a jet-setting itinerant artist – seems unlikely, well… it is, I suppose. Don’t look at me, I didn’t write the bloody thing.

(4) It addition to SKIE’s possible political dimension, it’s also worth noting in passing that it is the only Franco film I can think of to include a significant amount religious imagery. In addition to the black humor of Professor Walker’s pre-adultery prayers, Franco’s camera lingers extensively over ornate Catholic iconography, both in the flashback to the Johnsons’ wedding, and also during the scene in which she hooks up with Muller’s character during a service at the same church. Barbed commentary on the Church’s collusion with the Generalissimo’s regime, or just a way to make some potentially boring scenes is bit more visually interesting? Your call.

(5) One of the most distinctive locations used in Franco’s ‘70s films, the unmistakable La Manzanera went on to provide the primary location for ‘Countess Perverse’ (1973), along with fleeting appearances elsewhere through the early ‘70s and beyond. Interestingly, both ‘Countess Perverse’ and ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ go to great lengths to create the illusion that the buildings are located on an island, rather than on the coast of the mainland. For fans out there who enjoying pondering the theory of different Franco films taking place within the same fictional universe, it is fun to speculate that perhaps the villainous Count and Countess Zaroff in the later film moved into the house previously occupied by the Johnsons…?

Franco Files: Vampyros Lesbos (1970)

VIEWING NOTE: Although the review below was written after a viewing of the (excellent) 2015 Severin blu-ray of ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, the screenshots above are by necessity taken from the (perfectly serviceable) 2000 Second Sight DVD.

AKAs:

In addition to variations on its most common title (extended in the film’s original West German release to ‘Vampyros Lesbos: Die Erbin des Dracula’), IMDB also currently lists the following, mostly without further details: ‘El Signo del Vampire’, ‘The Heiress of Dracula’, ’The Heritage of Dracula’, ‘The Sign of the Vampire’, ‘The Strange Adventure of Jonathan Harker’, ‘The Vampire Women’, ‘City of Vampires’. The substantially different (and substantially less good) Spanish version went by the name ‘Las Vampiras’, and German language working titles are listed as ‘Das Mal des Vampirs’, ‘Im Zeichen der Vampire’ and ‘Schlechte Zeiten für Vampire’.

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First of all, some background. I know I have claimed elsewhere that ‘Kiss Me Monster’ was the first Jess Franco film I watched, but actually, I’m pretty sure ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ beat it to the punch. In fact, I saw ‘Vampyros..’ well over ten years ago, long before the director’s name meant anything to me. For a variety of reasons (in particular, the heavy cult rep garnered by the film’s soundtrack in the late ‘90s and the mainstream-friendly packaging of Second Sight’s DVD release), ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ was by far the most high profile Franco title available to UK viewers in the early ‘00s, reaching an audience that expanded beyond the learned euro-horror cognoscenti to eventually include even clueless young rubes such as myself, who happened to see its magnificent title (surely one of the best in exploitation movie history) on the shelves of a high street chain store, noted the heavily discounted price, and thought, “well, *that* looks like a good evening’s entertainment”.

Fateful words indeed. Predictably perhaps, my initial reaction to ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ was pretty negative. Basically I think, I just wasn’t ready for it. Largely unschooled in the ways of continental horror, I was probably expecting either a more traditional gothic horror movie or some sort of kitschy softcore sex flick, and needless to say, I got neither. With a field of reference that mainly consisted of British and American horror films, the idea of making vampire film full of bright sunshine, swimming pools and seaside hotel rooms just seemed absurd to me. Rather than recognising this as a conscious choice and an established part of Franco’s aesthetic, I assumed that the film’s crew must have been busy sunning themselves down in the Med, and simply couldn’t be bothered to inject any proper gothic atmosphere into their movie.

This impression was only exacerbated by the film’s technical shortcomings (yes, the zooms), its repetitious use of seemingly random footage, and the almost total lack of a conventional storyline. An utterly disconnected plot strand in which Franco himself seems to be torturing women in a hotel basement like some kind of sordid gnome didn’t exactly do much to win me over (I had ‘standards’ back in those days, y’see), and by the time a confused looking Dennis Price turned up, muttering bewildering litanies of vampire lore whilst staring into the middle distance in some cheap looking guesthouse, the film just seemed pathetic to me – a shameless cash grab from some cynical hack, whose apparent determination to avoid censorship issues by teasing on explicit sexuality and graphic violence without actually delivering a satisfactory quantity of either proved the final nail in the coffin of my attention span. *Fuck this Franco guy*, I thought, not for the last time in my early days of horror movie fandom.

How things change. Watching the film today, it’s difficult to comprehend why my reaction was so negative, as ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ now strikes me as a hugely enjoyable work, packed with stuff that, even in my youthful ignorance, I should surely have appreciated. The stark, stylized mise en scene and dissociative, almost psychedelic editing rhythms? The raging sitars of Hübler and Schwab? The neo-gothic elegance of Countess Carody’s costume and décor and the deep, dark eyes of Soledad Miranda? Man, I should’ve loved this shit! Why couldn’t I see it? What was I thinking?

Whereas on first viewing I remember dismissing ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ as a whole film cobbled together around Soledad’s iconic opening striptease act (that being the only bit that much impressed me), nowadays I think I actually find that scene to be one of the *least* interesting parts of the film – which is saying something, given that the sight of Ms Miranda prostrating herself beneath a mannequin in her full fetishistic finery whilst ‘Vampire Sound Incorporated’ go mental on the soundtrack must surely rank amongst the finer experiences life has to offer.

In fact, after revisiting the film, I think I’m apt to echo the general consensus that ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ is one of Franco’s all-time best, and certainly an essential cornerstone of the unique cinematic world he would go on to built for himself over the next fifteen years. Necronomicon and Venus In Furs may have seen him branching out beyond straight genre cinema toward the churning waters of psycho-sexual delirium, and the previous year’s self-financed and barely released ‘Nightmares Come At Night’ may have seen him jumping in at the deep end for the very first time, but ‘Vampyros..’ is where it all comes together into a wholly successful, tonally consistent, 100% proof example of everything we now mean when we say “a Jess Franco film”.

(If nothing else, the opening strip-tease certainly provides the definitive example of such a scene – the benchmark against which the innumerable similar scenes Franco filmed over the years must be measured against and inevitably found wanting.) (1)

Fans often talk about Franco films “casting a spell” over them, but rarely is this feeling as palpable – or as literally applicable – as it is in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’. Working (as usual) from almost nothing vis-à-vis budget or production design, Franco drags us down with him into an unfamiliar milieu that soon becomes completely intoxicating, ditching almost entirely the concessions to cinematic convention that kept ‘Venus..’ and ‘Necronomicon’ to some extent anchored in late ‘60s picture-house reality, and surrendering fully to the drifting currents of his own strange, sensualist vision.

As in several later films (including 1981’s partial remake Macumba Sexual), Franco here almost seems to be practicing a form of primitive, improvised magic through his camera lens. All it takes is a few disconnected ‘trigger’ images, presumably shot on the fly as they wandered into the director’s vision (a red kite flying through the Istanbul sky, a scorpion prowling the bottom of a swimming pool, a thin trickle of blood dripping down a glass windowpane, a fishing boat heading out to sea at sunset) and Ewa Strömberg’s Linda (our nominal protagonist / Jonathan Harker stand-in) is forcibly thrust beyond the threshold of her already somewhat hazy reality as the film’s magic circle closes around her, and, by extension, around us.

The repetition of these images as signifiers of supernatural / psychic influence is reiterated to such an extent during the first half of ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ that it starts to recall the ‘visual spells’ of Kenneth Anger’s magic(k)ally charged cinema. Whilst the notional ‘symbolic’ meaning of each image is a little blunt in view of the film’s storyline, Franco’s emphatic, montage-like repetition suggests that these images are intended to function less as ponderous thematic commentary, and more like subliminal flash-cards, marking a gateway from one realm of consciousness to another.

(In keeping with the film’s obvious debt to ‘Dracula’, it also occurs to me that these trigger images seem perhaps like some weird variation on the ritualistic pattern that signifies the journey toward the supernatural in so many more conventional vampire movies – the benighted inn, the coach-ride, the castle door etc.)

The idea of a powerful character’s will roaming far and wide beyond her (or his?) body is a notion that obviously runs rampant through most of Franco’s filmography - indeed, the slightly goofy idea of the seducer repeatedly whispering her victim’s name across some psychic breeze (“Linnnnn-da..”) would surely be one of the first things a parodist would pick up on if making some hypothetical ‘Carry On Franco’ project. This rather nebulous concept is rarely expressed quite as convincingly as it is in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ though, as Jess allows the oneiric, melancholic headspace of Miranda’s Countess to gradually consume the film’s landscape completely, impacting the behaviour even of secondary characters (Andrea Montchal as Linda’s hapless boyfriend, or Franco’s psycho-sadist hotel porter) to such an extent that the fact we too are under her spell must be obvious to even the most dim-witted of viewers by the halfway point, without the need of any explanatory babble about ‘psychic powers’ or somesuch.

“I bewitched them; They lost their identity; I became them”, the Countess says of her victims during her confessional monologue in the film’s second half, which explains things succinctly enough, even as the fate she describes could easily be extended to the film itself, and its viewers.

Once you’ve grasped it, I think that this idea of seeing the world through the lens of a ‘supernatural’ character’s perspective is one that proves helpful in understanding whole swatches of Franco’s best cinema. From ‘Necronomicon’ onwards, when we watch one of the director’s more personal sex-horror films (as opposed to his straight genre efforts), what we are often seeing is a vision of events as filtered through the subjective viewpoint of an altered or entirely non-human consciousness – a consciousness that, as Stephen Thrower notes in the essay that opens his new book, often mirrors the heightened sensation and temporal drag of sexual arousal. Such is certainly the case in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, as the dreamlike pace of the Countess’s languorous, vampiric half-life gradually intoxicates every aspect of the film’s style.

This sense of seeing the world through the distorting mirror of a sluggish yet sensually heightened being – whether a vampire, a witch, an avenging spirit, or whatever – is something that went on to inform most of Franco’s excursions into ‘other’ consciousness, reaching its apex perhaps in the disturbing sci-fi abstractions of 1977’s alienating ‘Shining Sex’

The feeling that ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ is drawing us into some kind of esoteric ritual – or at the very least, the deliberate conjuring of a very particular, pungent atmosphere – is only enhanced by the Countess’s curious use of untranslatable vampiric incantations (“kovec nie trekatsch”, anyone?) as she attempts to ‘turn’ her victims, and the rambling occult blather given voice by poor old Dennis Price as the ubiquitous Dr. Seward (a function he also fulfilled a few years in Franco’s two oddball Frankenstein films, of course)

Tying ‘Vampyros..’ in to some extent with these occasional comic book ‘monster bash’ flicks (Dracula: Prisoner of Frankenstein and ‘The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein’ foremost amongst them), I’m not sure whether Jess just banged all this stuff out off the top of his head during shooting, or whether it improvised later by the dubbing crew, but either way, the lack of context and sheer strangeness of all this vampiric claptrap, together with Price’s zonked out, affectless delivery, inadvertently works wonders vis-à-vis creating the suggestion of hidden depths of psychic / magical intrigue. (2)

To the uninitiated, Price’s scenes will no doubt seem extraordinarily shoddy, but for those of who have already crossed the Franco threshold, their mystifying oddity proves quite charming – a familiar part of the director’s world, and a wonderful example of bizarre logic and warped humour that runs through his work.

Curiously, ‘Dr Seward’ – the only character in ‘Vampyros..’ whose name is carried across from Bram Stoker - went on to become a bit of a recurring player in Franco’s own personal mythology; having already cast Paul Muller in the role in his adaptation of ‘Count Dracula’ a year earlier, Franco seems to have developed a bit of a fascination for the character.

Whilst the good doctor’s appearance in the form of Alberto Dalbes in the marginally Stoker-derived ‘Dracula: P of F’ and its sort-of sequel ‘Erotic Rites..’ seems understandable enough, he continued to lurk in the corners of the Francoverse long after vampiric subject matter had departed, his appearances usually coinciding with the director’s weird fixation with dubious mental institutions in which tormented, writhing women display a psychic connection to whatever unpleasantness is transpiring in the respective film’s main plot – an idea that we might suppose to be loosely inspired by the behavior of Seward’s patient Renfield in some iterations of Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. (3)

Quite what these scenes brought to the films, or why Franco so obsessively reiterated them, remains a mystery, but for what it’s worth, the Dr Seward of ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ seems to provide the model for all the dubious seekers into the mystery that followed, just as the film as a whole provides a handy index of so many of the other themes and techniques that Franco would continually revisit through the ‘70s and ‘80s.

As has often been remarked, Soledad Miranda’s performance in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ is magnificent. Exuding a kind of primal charisma and commitment to her role that more than matches her legendary beauty, she is utterly convincing as the predatory Countess Carody, her mesmerizing, inky black gaze conveying depth of experience that could well hold centuries of undead torment. Comparable to Barbara Steele’s equally iconic turn in ‘Black Sunday’, her very presence on screen is enough to leave horror fans speechless.

What particularly got under my skin upon revisiting the film is the Countess’s confessional monologue to her servant (named Morpho of course, and played here by José Martínez Blanco). Staring upward from a kind of futon in a red-hued, curtained room as the camera roams around her, she describes her initial encounter with Count Dracula (“Was it a hundred years ago, or maybe two hundred? I was young and all alone..”) amid an outbreak of violent looting that saw her family home sacked by soldiers in some unspecified war, and her brutal initiation into the ways of vampirism, as the Count ‘saved’ her from gang rape before taking the place of her attackers himself.

Franco films are rarely celebrated for their dialogue, but this soliloquy is both evocative and tragic, allowing Miranda’s character to attain a depth that is rarely given voice in Franco’s narratives. In fact, it manages to cut right to the heart of the kind of vampiric angst that writers like Anne Rice would make a career out of without sinking to the level of whinging self-pity, and in giving real form to the tragedy underlying all of Franco’s supernatural female predators, it in particular casts a whole new light on Miranda’s fellow Countess in 'Vampyros Lesbos’s semi-sequel ‘La Comtesse Noire’ / ‘Female Vampire’ (1973). (4)

As the Countess describes her domination by Dracula and the way he ‘turned’ her following her ordeal, the implications of childhood abuse and the cycle of dysfunction it can inspire in adulthood are hard to miss, even buried under layers of pulp gothic cushioning. Even whilst the waters are muddied somewhat by a rather unnecessary “..and that’s why I hate all men” comic book lesbian twist, this is neither the first nor last time the shadow of such issues can be found lurking in Franco’s better films, ensuring that, beyond all the sexadelic tomfoolery, there is a crushing sense of sadness and emptiness at the film’s core.

In fact, a big part of the film’s atmosphere – injected subtly, and easy to miss at first – is its overwhelming feeling of melancholy. Whilst part and parcel of any vampire story that invites sympathy toward its monster, this is an element that would grow increasingly prominent in Franco’s sexual domination narratives as the years went on, reaching a crescendo of gut-wrenching despair in films like Lorna the Exorcist and Doriana Gray. At this stage though, that darkness simply shimmers on the horizon - a delicious, bitter undercurrent beneath the film’s luscious, multi-hued surface.

Given what an excellent vehicle Dracula-derived storylines provided for Franco’s exploration of sexual domination and mind control, it’s surprising how few vampire films he actually made. Not counting his ‘90s/’00s shot-on-video projects, I count only five films centering on vampirism in his core filmography, and of those, two (the aforementioned ‘Dracula: Prisoner of Frankenstein’ and 1970’s ‘Count Dracula’) feature more traditional villainous male Counts and largely eschew the story’s sexual angle, leaving only a central trilogy of erotically charged vampire movies, within which ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ stands preeminent alongside ‘Female Vampire’ and the somewhat lesser known ‘Daughter of Dracula’ (1972). (5)

As per the inexplicable proliferation of Dr. Sewards, this relative neglect of vampiric subject matter in the Franco canon remains a mystery, as all three of the above mentioned films reveal Jess to be a perfect chronicler of such tales, whose unknowable, ennui-ridden sexual predators not only provided him with endless opportunities to ruminate upon his preferred themes and scenarios, but also a solid base of box office appeal.

Maybe, as with so many other things, he just got bored. Whilst his far more numerous DeSadean stories and crime/mystery focused sex dramas usually found ways to try to put a new spin on the material, perhaps he realised, with particular reference to his oft-expressed distaste for the crusty old gothic horrors many of his contemporaries were still knocking out, that there was only so much he could do with a menu of fangs, blood and candelabras, and quit whilst he was ahead.

When taking about this kind of euro-horror movie, myself and other writers are constantly abusing the term ‘dream-like’, whether in reference to filmmakers who deliberately seek such an effect, or those who merely stumble upon it, but it is rare that either Franco or any of his contemporaries achieved a mood that was so literally dream-like as that of ‘Vampyros Lesbos’.

It is the kind of film from which, if you lower your guard and let it wash over you, you will emerge ninety minutes later as if waking from a coma. Its cracked logic and intriguing non-sequiturs, its blurred contours, hypnotic repetitions, random drifts of intangible emotion and the strange hints of unseen significance lurking beneath its tides of  light and shadow… ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ is an exploitation movie as dream machine that richly deserves its reputation as one of Franco’s finest works, and as one of the cornerstones of ‘70s euro-horror in general. It is recommended without reservation, and if you don’t like it, well, I dunno… try coming back in ten years.

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Kink: 4/5
Creepitude: 4/5
Pulp Thrills: 3/5
Altered States: 5/5
Sight Seeing: 4/5

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(1)I sort of like the idea that the reclusive Countess Carody emerges from her sun-blessed island lair to perform exotic strip routines in seedy bars. Her pastime is never mentioned by the characters outside of these sequences, perhaps implying that Linda – watching with vacant, glazed eyes is simply hallucinating the whole thing – a vivid premonition of the sexual obsession she will soon be initiated into by the Countess - whilst her boyfriend, adopting a leering smirk, is enjoying an altogether more conventional sleazy floor-show (until later in the film of course, when it is his turn to be similarly be-witched).

(2)I’ll try to refrain from saying anything unkind with regard to Dennis Price’s widely documented alcoholism, but let’s just say that if you were to tell me he’d been submerged in a barrel of brandy for several hours prior to each of his appearances in Franco films, I’d certainly believe you. He’s still a trooper though, delivering his absurd dialogue with admirable decorum, and, given that he appeared in a number of films for Franco over several years, spanning both the reasonably budgeted Harry Alan Towers productions and some ultra-cheap quickies that presumably only offered the very slimmest of pay cheques, we can at least hope he was a good sport and enjoyed the experience, rather than considering such work a stain upon his rapidly diminishing dignity, or somesuch.

(3)For examples of this, see for instance ‘Lorna the Exorcist’, where the doctor’s questionable establishment features gaudy wallpaper and plush interiors extremely similar to Price’s rather squalid HQ in ‘Vampyros..’, and the utterly surreal ‘Shining Sex’, wherein Franco’s wheelchair-bound doctor seems to be running his experimental psychiatric research unit from the upper floors of an Alicante resort hotel!

(4)Watching the two films in close succession, it’s difficult not to get the impression that Miranda’s Countess Nadine and Lina Romay’s Countess Irina are in some way sisters, cousins, or in some way different manifestations of the same character, both wrestling with the same back story, the same compulsions and inner loneliness. It’s a shame they never got together for the ultimate Jess Franco slash fiction team-up, but maybe it’s for the best… poor Jess might have suffered a heart attack right there behind the viewfinder.

(5)I know, I know – only when referring to Jess Franco could you claim that a director had limited interest in a subject on the basis that he only made five films about it! But nonetheless, it’s interesting to reflect that, despite often being pigeonholed for years as “one of those lesbian vampire guys”, Franco actually probably made more movies about people getting lost in the jungle than he did about vampires.

FRANCO FILES: The Devil Came From Akasava (1970)

AKA:

According to IMDB, original shooting title for this one was ‘Hüter des Steines’ (“Guardian of the Stones”). Upon release, most territories went with a variation on the English ‘..Akasava’ title, although Greece opted for ‘Aorati apeili’ (“Phantom Menace”?), and Italian viewers were offered the chance to enjoy ‘Una Venere Senza Nome per l'ispettore Forrester’ (“Inspector Forrester and the Nameless Venus”..!?).


Context:

Just speculation on my part really, but at several points in his career, Jess Franco seems to have used a quick spy or detective film as a kind of ‘chill out zone’ during particularly heavy periods of filmmaking. I'm not sure why these genres were singled out for such treatment, but perhaps their pulpy and predictable architecture proved a bit more relaxing for Franco than the risqué sex and horror themes of his better-known work – the equivalent of a quiet week by the pool for this relentlessly prolific director, perhaps?

1975’s ‘Downtown’ and 1966’s ‘Residencia Para Espías’ both fit this pattern, but ‘The Devil Came From Akasava’ is perhaps the most definitive example of the phenomenon, emerging mid-way through the brief but extremely busy period that Franco spent working for German producer Arthur Brauner’s company CCC Films. (According to the chronology presented in ‘Immoral Tales’, Franco began work for CCC in late 1969, and in addition to '..Akasava', had completed ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’, ‘Jungfrauen Report’, ‘La Venganza del Doctor Mabuse’ and ‘X312: Flight To Hell’ for them by the end of 1970).

Quite why the decision was taken to make a spy film at this particular juncture - long after the Euro-spy cycle had faded away, and during a rather troubled/transitional phase in the James Bond franchise – is something of a mystery, but at a guess, maybe it was Brauner himself who had a preference for these bland, slightly outmoded genre thrillers? (After all, ‘X312’ and the Dr. Mabuse film are hardly your usual Franco fare, and his final film for CCC the following year was a very-late-period krimi, ‘Der Todesrächer von Soho’ (aka ‘Death Packs His Bags’), with Brauner himself co-writing.)


Content:

Hang on, the devil came from WHERE..? No, me neither. Well apparently, Akasava is fictional African nation, and it there that our “adventure” begins, as we see some kind of super-precious stone being dug out of the wall of a mine-shaft by a bloke in a radiation suit. The stone is subsequently sealed in a lead-lined briefcase and, despite the radiation suit bloke being able to casually take his helmet off as he cradles it in the opening scene, it now gives off a prodigious radioactive glow, sufficiently powerful to vaporise anyone in the immediate vicinity when the case is opened, just like in ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ (or ‘Repo Man’, or ‘Pulp Fiction’, depending on your age and level of hip-ness).

Various haggard-looking gentlemen and a few ladies are of course after this stone, and in pursuit of their goal, they walk back and forth between places a lot. Sometimes they drive jeeps between the places, and sometimes they even take aeroplanes. Whilst they are in the places, they natter on incessantly about nothing of particular import, and occasionally die, in a not terribly exciting fashion.

So yes, basically what we’ve got here is a singularly dull reworking of ‘60s Euro-spy cliché, in which everyone seems pretty laidback and nothing particularly interesting happens, and that both opens and closes with footage of some salty characters shooting at each other with pop-guns whilst running around a complex of off-season holiday chalets.

Some familiar faces are amongst their number: Franco himself, Howard Vernon, Alberto Dalbés, Ewa Strömberg (a blonde actress who appeared in most of Franco’s CCC productions) and the ubiquitous Paul Muller. Krimi regulars Walter Rilla and Horst Tappert are also on hand, adding to the feeling that ‘..Akasava’ was in some sense intended as a vague tribute to the Edgar Wallace cycle.

Most notably though, the legendary Soledad Miranda is here too, portraying a glamorous British secret service agent (or glamorous Interpol person, or something - it’s kind of unclear), in one of only three lead performances she supplied to Franco films prior to her untimely passing.

Kink:

So, look, I’ll level with you. There is only one reason for anyone to bother watching this film: Soledad Miranda. Admittedly, she’s not given a great deal to do here (nobody in this film really gets much to do), but, as has been widely acknowledged, the sight of Soledad Miranda lounging around looking bored is roughly equivalent to that of most screen performers unicycling across a tightrope over an active volcano. So fair enough.

Given that the time Franco was able to spend working with this extraordinary actress was cut so tragically short, it seems an dreadful shame that he stuck her in pictures as gloomy as this one and ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’, but whatcha gonna do? No one knew what the future held, so there is little blame to be placed.

Anyway, it goes without saying that she looks spectacular here. As with any great ‘sex symbol’ type movie actress, Miranda has charisma and energy to match her beauty, usually standing out as by far the most exciting thing on screen, regardless of one’s sexual preferences. And, this being a Jess Franco film, she does at least get to strut her nigh-on elemental stuff here in several obligatory night-club striptease scenes.

Obviously close cousins of the iconic night-club scenes in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, with the same black backdrop and the same ‘Sexadelic’ library music going into overdrive, these performances are a little more conventional perhaps, with no candelabras or mannequins anywhere in sight, but still, those enchanted by the equivalent scenes in the earlier film will definitely want to check them out. Certainly, there are few actresses who could look as beguiling whilst straddling a red-upholstered bar chair, clad head to foot what looks like long strips of used cine-film, as Miranda does here.

3/5


Creepitude:

Few horror elements, or any atmospheric touches suggesting such, are to be found here, although there are a couple of decidedly un-thrilling violent slayings to enjoy(?).

1/5


Pulp Thrills:

Allegedly based on an Edgar Wallace story (though no one seems sure which one), you’d expect to get a fair old dose of pulpy shenanigans from this tale of triple-crossing secret agents, dodgy African doctors, gun-toting strippers and psychotic butler-assassins. But once again, ‘Akasava’ comes up short. Too poverty-stricken for any of the glitz or visual stimulation found in the earlier euro-spy cycle (or even in Franco’s earlier ‘Red Lips’ movies, for that matter), and with a pitifully small allowance of action and intrigue, things play out in a workaday TV movie sort of fashion that largely fails to capitalise on the potentially fun ideas presented by the story.

Though rambling and childishly illogical as you please, the plot-line is also extremely dry, almost entirely lacking in the kind of wit and invention that might have made it work. I’m perfectly happy to watch a thriller in which we don’t really know what’s going on, but when we simply don’t CARE what’s going on, that presents a bit more of a problem, y’know?

2/5

Altered States:

‘Akasava’ largely finds Franco in a“bored / get it done”, point-and-shoot sort of mood. It was movies like this one that helped make his abuse of the zoom lens a running joke, and indeed he takes this time-saving ‘technique’ to unhappy extremes here, never once pausing to set up a new shot when circumstances instead allowed him to get away with wobbling left or right, hitting the zoom and refocusing a few times instead.

When it is used to deliberately disorientating or psychedelic effect (as in Dracula: Prisoner of Frankenstein for instance), I like this style a great deal, but when applied to the hum-drum material found here it is simply irritating – precisely the kind of abuse of cinematic space that the anti-zoom lobby complain about.

Also much in evidence here is the other bug-bear of Franco detractors, his lugubrious pacing. We’ve spoken a lot about this in earlier reviews, and I think the crux of the matter is that, when a Franco film creates a world that’s fun to get lost in, I’m more than happy to indulge him and take my time. But in an ostensibly ‘plot-driven’ film such as this one, when things meander on endlessly whilst we’re watching, say, some people hiring a car at an airport, or discussing the whereabouts of their cousin in a hotel breakfast room, the boredom that results is simply excruciating.

Thankfully, things are at least propelled along by some GREAT music. Unfortunately for those of us who have already seen ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ and ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’ though, it is mostly the same music, all pulled off Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab’s legendary ‘Vampire Sound Incorporated’ library LPs, ‘Sexadelic’ and ‘Psychedelic Dance Party’. (Much of the music used in these three films was re-issued on CD in the ‘90s as Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party, and I’d guess that if you’re reading this, there’s about a 75% chance that you already own it and listen to it with obsessive regularity. As well you should.).

Usage of the Vampire Sound material in ‘..Akasava’ concentrates mainly on just one or two primary cues, which are looped in teeth-grindingly repetitious fashion, but in the film’s favour is the fact that this pre-existing soundtrack allowed at least some scenes to be cut to the music, upping the pace somewhat and allowing some sequences to manifest a (largely accidental) sense of style and purpose, particularly during the slightly more eventful final half hour.

There are occasional nice shots, particularly in Soledad’s scenes, with mirrors, reflections, objects d’art etc. used to good effect, and a couple of instances of surprisingly good lighting. Mildly sexy bits featuring Ms Miranda seem to be scattered at roughly 15 minutes intervals through the finished film, and these bits, as per usual when Franco’s eye is in the viewfinder, tend to be the best bits, cinematically speaking. But nonetheless, it is a bland, ‘down-time’ feel that largely predominates.

2/5


Sight-seeing:

If there’s one thing even a sub-standard Jess Franco spy movie should be able to deliver, it’s some groovy locations, but disappointingly, most of Akasava seems to resemble an off-season Iberian holiday camp.

“Beautiful country, isn’t it?”, Franco’s character proclaims as we’re shown some non-descript mud-flats during a boat ride to… somewhere. Not sure where this bit was filmed, but it looks like some kind of appropriately impoverished third world harbour. Brief shots of Moorish architecture rather suggest Turkey, leading me to think that perhaps this footage was shot whilst Franco & co were over there for ‘Vampyros Lesbos’?

In keeping with the generally lacklustre nature of this production though, it’s hard to really get a sense of place, with cast & crew rarely bothering to venture much beyond their hotel rooms. In fact, if non-descript, early ’70s budget hotel interiors and airport corridors are your thing, you will see sights in this movie that will carry your soul to new heights of reverie. And for the rest of us - well, it could be worse I suppose, but I’m not about to book my ticket to Akasava just yet.

Requisite attempts at some spy movie ‘globe-trotting’ also take us to London. You could probably write a book about German commercial cinema’s obsession with setting films in unconvincing versions of ‘London’, but, surprisingly, I get the feeling parts of this film may actually have been shot there. The inevitable faded establishing shots of Tower Bridge may not bode well, but the location of a secret rendezvous between Soledad and a middle-aged police inspector – supposedly a London brothel, with a sign outside reading ‘Chez Jackie’ – DOES have a convincingly shabby British look to it.

Just a hunch, but could this be the same down-market Paddington hotel where Pete Tombs met Franco in the early ‘90s..? (See this blog post for details.) According to Tombs, Franco said that he discovered the hotel whilst working for Harry Alan Towers in the late ‘60s, and that he subsequently stayed there whenever he visited the city. Though he was no anglophile and rarely shot in the UK, JF clearly liked the feel of this “run-down Edwardian flophouse”, and it doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility that he might have done it over as an unconvincing “brothel” for one of his films.

(In a disorientating shot / reverse shot arrangement during this sequence, the inspector, standing in a spacious hotel lobby with a grubby carpet, appears to be conducting a conversation with a dressing gown-clad madam ensconced in what looks like an upstairs bed-sit with a wood-panelled kitchenette in one corner and the rest of the room masquerading as a café, with several small tables and a jukebox. A bizarre moment of low budget cognitive dissonance that I very much enjoyed.)

2/5


Conclusion:

The number of these kinda pulpy thrillers and spy films Jess Franco made during the ‘60s, you’d think he’d be able to knock one out in his sleep by this point. Unfortunately, ‘The Devil Came From Akasava’ very much gives the impression that he called our bluff and did actually direct it in his sleep.

Aside from Soledad Miranda, and the awesome music (which most fans have probably already heard in several other films, and own on CD), I honestly can’t think of any reason to bother watching this film. But having said that, I can’t really say that I disliked it either. In fact I found it’s sheer, inoffensive aimlessness quite soothing. If I were a fugitive criminal who’d been instructed by his boss to go and hide out in the cinema all day until the heat was off, I think I’d be very satisfied if a film like this was playing on a loop.

I could mull over my predicament, plan and scheme and lament my sorry state, without ever being overly distracted by the brightly coloured people walking around, talking about whatever and occasionally dying up there on the screen. It’s like an ambient movie - a vaguely pleasing, background kinda thing. The vintage genre cinema equivalent of one of those Brian Eno albums, perhaps. Could that be a first? Maybe. Let’s assume it was deliberate and chalk it up as another great idea from Jess Franco Ltd!

Youtube film club: Cuadecuc: Vampir

A bit of a strange one, this.

In 1970, Jess Franco, bankrolled by the ubiquitous Harry Alan Towers, made his own version of Dracula, featuring a Euro-cult dream cast of Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Jack Taylor, Klaus Kinski and Maria Rohm. If the film that emerged is somewhat less than a classic, I don’t think it’s half as bad as people sometimes make out – it’s an honest attempt to film Bram Stoker’s novel at least, and it certainly has it’s moments.

But anyway - working on Franco’s Dracula in some capacity was a young Catalan documentary maker named Pere Portabella. For reasons best known to himself, Portabella seemingly hi-jacked a bunch of outtake and rehearsal footage from the movie (whether or not he had Franco’s blessing, I’m unsure) and mixed it up with the prodigious amount backstage footage he’d shot himself, processing the whole lot in high contrast black & white to create his own film – ‘Cuadecuc: Vampir’.

The result is difficult to describe. Not quite a documentary and not quite a horror film, it’s more like an avant garde exploration of gothic horror imagery, and perhaps an attempt to capture the underlying spirit of the strange moment in which Franco’s film was created.

When OkOk posted the link to the ‘Cuadecuc’ on Found Objects a while back, they advised that “..this film marvellously evokes the dark, eternal caverns of the unknown. Pure Gothic Ecstasy.” Whilst I can’t claim to have shared this level of reverie during my own viewing of the film, it certainly has much to recommend it to fans of haunted/unheimlich cinema.

The extreme contrast, degraded filmstock and disjointed, unsettling soundtrack all serve to invoke the spirit of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” and Dreyer’s “Vampyr”, inviting us to draw comparison between the gothic horrors of the 1920s and their survival into the 1970s, whilst fourth wall breaking interjection revealing the details of lighting, make-up and cheesy cobweb/bat effects provide a silent commentary on how flimsy the barrier separating transcendental gothic splendour from tawdry reality can be. The ‘vampire film within a vampire film’ conceit is fascinating in itself, and the backstage glimpses of the principal actors (minus Kinski, whose scenes were maybe shot by second unit or something?) slipping in and out of character will be worth the entry price alone for some of us weirdos. In particular, candid footage of Soledad Miranda hanging out and preparing for shots will be much treasured by her fans.

Some commentators (by which I mean guys on IMDB) have suggested a political interpretation of the film, implying the Portabella intended to present Franco’s film set as a microcosm of the crumbling regime of the director’s dictatorial namesake. A brief cameo by Jess himself, goofing around in an unfortunate side parting & moustache get-up that makes him look a bit like Hitler, would seem to rather crudely suggest as much. Geographically and temporally removed as I am though from the subtleties of Spanish politics circa 1970, this isn’t really an interpretation I can get much out of.

But whatever; however you choose to read this film, chances are you knew by the end of the second paragraph whether or not it’s the kind of thing you need in your life.

Those noble souls who are nodding affirmatively can stream or download from here.




A reminder of some previous Youtube Film Clubs you might have missed:

Mindbending Russian Animation
Witchcraft ‘70
Penda’s Fen
Saxana
Fantomas & Les Vampires
Harry Smith
Meshes of the Afternoon