Paroxismus (1969)

... aka: Black Angel
... aka: Venus in Furs

Directed by:
Jesus Franco

Filmed in Italy, Spain and Turkey with a multitude of investors each seeming to want something different, the genesis of this movie began with a conversation Franco had with jazz trumpeter Chet Baker one evening in a Paris nightclub. Baker had told the director that once you're in the zone while performing it's almost as if you've left reality: a three-minute solo can seem like it lasts for an eternity as your whole life and all your desires flash before you. For anyone who's played a musical instrument for years, getting lost in the music isn't a difficult concept to grasp. The trumpet, in particular - which requires mastery of breath control and the ability to focus through a haze of light-headedness - is an instrument especially in key with withdrawal and fantasy. From that basic concept, Franco came up with a tale about an aged black musician who starts a unreal love affair with a beautiful white woman who's only a figment of his imagination. Writing the first treatment with Harry Alan Towers (titled "Black Angel"), Franco soon got word that the producers refused to do a movie featuring a romance between a black man and white woman. However, a reverse relationship was perfectly fine with them. From there, the script was retooled to feature a white musician (whom Franco partially based on Baker) with a black 'real life' lover and a white dream lover.

Given a short list of actors for the lead, Franco eventually settled on James Darren because he liked him on the TV series The Time Tunnel and he had experience playing the trumpet. Instead of the story he'd already planned and penned, AIP then insisted Franco adapt the novel "Venus in Furs" by Leopold van Sacher-Masoch. He said sure thing and went about shooting the retooled script as planned anyway, throwing in a few shots of star Maria Rohm in a fur coat to please them and for use on the poster and advertising materials. The end result - for better or worse - was Venus in Furs. It's a slow, ponderous little fantasy that induces wonder and sleep in about equal measure: the very definition of uneven. And apparently a pretty polarizing one. One of Franco's most-watched endeavors, the reviews tend to be either glowingly (IMO, overly) positive or completely (IMO, unfairly) scathing. The truth - as with many other things - lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. There are elements of brilliance here, but they've been laced into an otherwise tedious film. So given the obstacles he faced to even get this made, Franco hasn't quite made lemonade from lemons. He's made lemonade from a frozen concentrated tube of lemon-flavored juice drink.

Darren is sullen Jimmy Logan, a man who lives for his music: "A guy like me without a horn is like, well, a man without words." He unearths his trumpet from under the sand on an Istanbul beach before pulling the corpse of a dead but still beautiful young woman - Wanda Reed (Rohm) - out of the Black Sea. He recognizes her from a party he played at not long ago. There, a trio of kinky jet setters; millionaire playboy Ahmed Kortobawi (Klaus Kinski), art dealer Percival Kapp (Dennis Price) and fashion photographer Olga (Margaret Lee), had gotten together to rape and murder the poor girl. Feeling somehow connected to Wanda, Jimmy decides to escape to Rio de Janiero during Carnivale. He's not even sure why he decided to flee in the first place, uttering the prophetic words "How can you run from a dead person unless you're dead yourself?" While getting romantically involved with patient and understanding singer Rita (Barbara McNair), Jimmy is haunted by visions of Wanda, who soon becomes his lover and tells him she doesn't even know who she is. She does however know that she has a murder to avenge. Her own.

Much of this is imaginatively presented in the director's usual style with sometimes novel use of out-of-focus shots and, most especially, several wonderful slow motion sequences utilizing a grainier film stock. The scenes bookmarking the film on the beach in Istanbul are especially haunting. The jazzy soundtrack (much by Manfred Mann, who also can be seen performing in the film) alternates between eerie and grating: Every time Wanda kills one of her murderers the soundtrack screams out "Venus in furs will be smilin'!" over and over again. Kitschy! There's almost no narrative thrust and very little dialogue, just lots of cryptic narration from the lead actor. Ultimately, the director's refusal to humanize most of the characters results in one of those "And I'm supposed to care about all this, because...?" type of feelings, though this seems like the kind of movie that might grow on one with repeat viewings. Rohm (fast becoming one of my favorite Euro actresses from this era) and Kinski both have the look and natural charisma to pull off their blank, enigmatic roles, though the other actors are less successful.

In an interview on the DVD, Franco himself doesn't seem completely pleased with how the film turned out, and says it was reedited in a "gratuitous" way after he'd finished his final cut. Not to be confused with at least two other movies with the same title - Joseph Marzano's Venus in Furs (1967) and Massimo Dallamano's Devil in the Flesh (1969) aka Venus in Furs - released around the same time. It was originally rated X, but would easily be an R today.

★★1/2

Horror of Frankenstein, The (1970)

Directed by:
Jimmy Sangster

After a decade-and-a-half run of successful costume horrors usually featuring more mature protagonists, Hammer decided to start specifically catering some of their output toward a younger audience with stories centered around more youthful protagonists. So no, Peter Cushing (who headlined all of Hammer's previous Frankenstein films) wasn't invited to this particular party. Instead we get Ralph Bates in the central mad doctor role. Bates had just made an impression playing the dashing, aristocratic black magic practitioner who helped to resurrect the Count in TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1969) and, while no spring chicken here at 30 years old, adequately fills the role of an evil, unfeeling medical school student. His Victor is a brilliant, smarmy sociopath with a truly pompous attitude who always seems to be pissing someone off. He kills indiscriminately: If you get in his way, you're toast and that's that. When Victor's rich father, who's carrying on an affair with the underage housemaid, Alys (Kate O'Mara), refuses to spring for him to go to a more prestigious university, Victor simply rigs his hunting rifle to explode and kill him.

Now with the title of Baron, a huge castle and a considerable amount of money all at his disposal, Victor decides to go to Vienna to further his studies. During his time there, he manages to knock up the dean's daughter, but tells him not to worry: Now that he has medical training, he'll just give her an abortion. The dean refuses and says he'll arrange for the two to be married. Victor decides to flee for the summer instead, with no real intentions of going back, and invites his classmate Wilhelm (Graham James) to come along with him to aid in his experiments. Away from town six years, Victor is promptly reunited with several former classmates. One of them, the sweet Elizabeth Heiss (Veronica Carlson, a real stunner), is still in love with Victor after all these years and has denied many potential suitors awaiting his return. Too bad for her, but he could care less and never has really liked her, anyway. He much prefers his no-strings-attached arrangement with Alys, who's still working as housekeeper in the castle and promptly becomes his lover.

After successfully reviving a dead turtle, Victor arranges for a sleazy grave robber (Dennis Price) and his wife to provide him with fresh body parts so that he can construct a human. The grave robber is able to acquire six whole bodies after an avalanche and when Wilhelm questions the ethics of all this and threatens to report Victor to the authorities, he's promptly electrocuted to provide even more parts. Now needing a brain, Victor poisons Elizabeth's professor father (Bernard Archard). Because of his debt, Elizabeth loses her home and is forced to come stay in Castle Frankenstein, where Victor plans to make her the new maid and decides to rid himself of Alys when she attempts to blackmail him. After stitching it all together, Victor's human creation (muscleman David Prowse) is revived by thunder. It immediately escapes and chops a villager up with an axe. Victor feeds it raw meat, attempts to teach it basic skills like sitting down and obeying his orders and is eventually able to make it kill for him. The obligatory police detective (Jon Finch), another of Victor's childhood friends, is on to him, though. Much use is made of an acid pit - convenient for eliminating evidence - in the meantime.

Director Sangster, who's better known as a script writer (and co-wrote this one as well), fails to inject much life into this entry, visually or otherwise. Perhaps strangest of all is his inability to really make good use of the lavish costumes, props and sets which were clearly at the studio's disposal. Some of the more talented of Hammer's production people seemed to be on hiatus when this was made, as the photography and music score - while competent - are also a bit lackluster. As scripted, the young mad scientist in this outing seems a bit one-dimensional, as well. The main problem however lies in the pacing. Because over an hour is spent leading up to the monster's creation, the concluding scenes seem rushed, leading up to a truly pathetic and anti-climactic final scene.

On the plus side, O'Mara manages to bring some real verve to her supporting role (which is very much appreciated, especially considering how bland most of the rest of the cast is) and veteran actor Price seems to be having a ball in his small role and has the film's most amusing scene sitting in a cemetery eating sausage and crackers while making his pregnant wife dig up a grave for him! The film provides some effective black comedy here and there (as well as some rather juvenile moments), and the monster design is pretty good. Mr. Prowse would also play the creature in FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1974); Hammer's last Frankenstein film.

Like many of the studio's other titles, this has been well-serviced over the years, enjoying frequently television airings that continue to this day, as well as wide distribution on VHS and DVD (Warner in the UK; Anchor Bay in the U.S.).

★★

Ten Little Indians (1965)

...aka: Agatha Christie's 'Ten Little Indians'

...aka: And Then There Were None

Directed by:

George Pollock

The second big screen version of Agatha Christie's famous tale follows the popular 1943 stage play, René Clair's classic 1945 film version (AND THEN THERE WERE NONE), as well as several TV adaptations. While not as good as Clair's version, and almost completely missing that film's wit and subtlety, this one is still miles better than most of the later films based on the same novel. Producer/writer Harry Alan Towers would back no less than three of these, including versions in 1974 (which takes place at a Middle Eastern hotel) and 1989 (which takes place during an African safari). This one also has a location change, a few character alterations and a different ending, but at least two of these changes work fairly well, and the cast is full of talented and familiar veteran character actors who keep the film highly watchable despite the flaws. Ten people are invited to a dinner party by Mr. U.N. Owen, who lives atop a mountain in a huge mansion accessible only by cable car. Once they arrive and start settling in, they discover that none of them has actually met their mysterious unseen host before. However, an audio tape (voiced by an unbilled Christopher Lee) is played during dinner accusing each and every one of the ten guests of being a murderer, rightfully so in most cases, and from then on out the guest start dropping like flies in a variety of different ways.

Everyone's a suspect. Hugh Lombard (Hugh O'Brien) is an engineer who caused the death of a pregnant former lover. Ann Clyde (Shirley Eaton), lured under the auspices of a secretarial position, killed her sister's fiancé. Obnoxious young singer Michael Raven (Fabian) killed someone during a drunk driving accident. Glamorous actress Ilona Bergen's (Daliah Lavi) heartless behavior led a former husband's suicide. Gen. John Mandrake (Leo Genn) took an undeserved promotion after accidentally getting five men killed. Det. William Henry Blore's (Stanley Holloway) testimony sent an innocent man to prison, where he was later murdered. Judge Arthur Cannon (Wilfrid Hyde-White) sentenced an innocent man to death. Dr. Edward Armstrong (Dennis Price) killed a patient while operating on her drunk. Hell, even the hired help; Joseph (Mario Adorf) and Elsa Grohmann (Marianne Hoppe) had previously killed a wealthy, elderly employer. Any of these people might be the killer and the only way to really check any of them off your list is when they turn up dead. And even that's a maybe.

Speaking of turning up dead, this version (unlike the Clair version) actually visualizes most of the murders. The real standouts are two excellent set pieces that both take place outdoors. The first involves a cable car falling and crashing over a cliff. The second involves one of the characters attempting to climb down the mountain, having their rope cut and then tumbling down a rocky embankment. Other murders are committed with a knife, a gun, a syringe and poison. How each of the victims find themselves alone long enough to be murdered (as well as how the killer manages to frequently sneak off to actually murder them) relies on a high amount of sheer luck and it's this ridiculous level of coincidence that hampers the film the most. I also didn't care much for the music score, which seemed too lightweight and elevator-esquire for this material.

Cast-wise, the old pros on the roster (Genn, Price, Hyde-White and Holloway) clearly provide the best moments in this film, while the younger cast are around solely to inject some sex/youth appeal into the proceedings, as clearly evidenced by Eaton's frequent clothes changing scenes. Since he does both in this film, Fabian proves he was just as awful as singer in one fell swoop, but he's really not around long enough to cause any major damage. The rest of the actors was adequate, if not good, in their roles. So for the cast, the setting and some good set-pieces (plus an effective surprise ending), this is worth a look. It's nicely shot in black-and-white, too.

★★1/2

Horror Hospital (1973)

...aka: Computer Killers

...aka: Doctor Bloodbath

Directed by:

Anthony Balch

We're off to a good start here with the great tag line... "The operation is a success... when the patient dies!" And in my opinion any movie with a sneering, gloriously overacting Michael Gough is automatically worth checking out. You know he'll own it. Obnoxious, smug and irritating Mick Jagger wannabe Jason Jones (Robin Askwith, from all those awful "Confessions" British sex comedies) decides to get away from the pressures of the music biz at "Hairy Holidays," a country health spa for the under 30s. On the train ride over he hooks up with bright (not in the cerebral sense) young thing Judy (Vanessa Shaw) and the two venture on to their destination only to discover it's actually an unorthodox mental hospital where the evil Dr. Christian Storm (played by Mr. Gough, of course) gleefully experiments with lobotomies, zombification and decapitations of unwilling patients. This house of horrors comes complete with helmeted guards on motorcycles, blue-faced zombies, blood-gushing faucets, a slow-witted dwarf (Skip Martin), a head-chopping automobile and a mutant monster. It's a gory, trashy, unapologetic sleaze romp cluttered with assorted nonsense, but colorful presentation and appropriate straight-faced camp acting from the trio of baddies (Martin, nurse Ellen Pollock and especially, Gough) give it a lift. Dennis Price also appears in a small role as a flamboyant travel agent. Bringing the film down somewhat are the young leads, who are terrible and seriously grate on the nerves after awhile.

Though this movie can be hard to track down these days, it's been shown on cable TV here in the States, re-mastered and letterboxed.

★★