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

Marquis de Sade's "Justine" (1968)

... aka: Deadly Sanctuary
... aka: Justine
... aka: Justine and Juliette
... aka: Marquis de Sade: Justine

Directed by:
Jesus Franco

Just as its nubile protagonist deals with her own 'misfortunes of virtue,' director Franco also met similar misfortunes on the set of this Marquis de Sade adaptation; his first of many attempts at bringing the controversial author's work to life. For starters, Franco's preferred choice to play Justine (Rosemary Dexter) was overturned by the producers. Instead, he had inexperienced 17-year-old Romina Power, the daughter of ill-fated Hollywood star Tyrone Power, imposed upon him at the last minute while Dexter was relegated to a minor supporting role. While Powers' wooden performance (the director would later compare her to a piece of furniture in interviews) certainly doesn't help matters as she's unable to either elicit much sympathy for Justine nor bring any real dimensions to the role, in this context she doesn't actually do that much damage. The character is supposed to be clueless and extremely naive, and there's a certain earnestness to Power's amateurism that is actually far less offensive than several of the big name, scenery-chewing guest stars who later show up in the film. However, Franco would blame the casting change for the backers' insistence that he tone down the material, though that might actually have more to do with censors snooping around on the set and shutting down the production several times before it was completed than Powers being added to the cast.

Despite all of the above issues, and despite the fact that this is far from his best work, the film would go on to become one of Franco's best-known and most-viewed efforts, likely because of the cast and the production values. Franco had a much higher budget here than in any of his other films, and this is evident in the cinematography, costumes, art direction and location work (all about on par with any big budget studio film of the time), as well as the large amount of extras during some scenes.

Set in France in the 18th Century, things begin with a delirious flurry of images as de Sade himself (Klaus Kinski) is carted off to prison where, in an imaginatively presented series of fades, blurs, zooms and jerky camera movements, he begins to write the story we are about to see.

Because their parents have fled the country, virtuous and virginal Justine and her wicked sister Juliette (Maria Rohm), polar opposites in both look and demeanor as the narrator informs us, are given a small pension and are kicked out of their convent home. Juliette immediately heads to a brothel and tells Justine that if she doesn't like it, she'll have to go elsewhere. Justine wanders off, encounters a priest who steals her money and then ends up at the home of miserly weirdo Mr. Du Harpin (Akim Tamiroff), who spies on her changing clothes, sells her dress and has her working as his maid dressed in rags. Du Harpin's neighbor Desroches (Gustavo Re) unsuccessfully comes on to our heroine and after his advances are rebuked he frames Justine for stealing a broche and has her arrested. She's given the death sentence, is taken to prison and ends up meeting teeth-grinding murderess Madame Dusbois (Mercedes McCambridge) who decides to enlist Justine's aid in escaping. The two ladies manage to get out of there with help from four of Dusbois' henchmen, but like in most of Justine's other nihilistic misadventures, things end in another attempted rape.

Justine flees from them and ends up at the home of kind artist Raymond (Harald Leipnitz). Because of how she's been treated by everyone she'd encountered thus far in her travels, Justine is wary of Raymond and what his intentions may be despite his compassion. Before the relationship can develop any further, the authorities show up looking for her and she's forced to run off yet again. She then encounters the decadent Marquis de Bressac (Horst Frank), who is having a rendezvous with a male lover in the woods when she first bumps into him. He agrees to hire her as a maid in exchange for something he's not quite ready to reveal. That something turns out to be poisoning his wife (Sylva Koscina), who's grown close to Justine the few months she's been employed there. Justine warns her about the husband's intentions, but he finds out about it, kills her instead, frames Justine for the murder and then brands an "M" on her chest before sending her on her merry way. Justine then ends up at a monastery of 'pleasure-in-pain' freaks headed over by a grotesquely overacting Jack Palance, whom Franco claimed was drunk the entire shoot. (Not surprising when you get to see his bizarre performance!) Barely making it out of there alive, a weak and injured Justine ends up back in the city, where she's re-captured by Madame Dusbois and her gang, who force her to exhibit herself naked in front of a leering crowd.

Every once in awhile, the film cuts away from Justine back to the brooding de Sade writing away or to her sister Juliette, who's busy indulging in a sinful - though even emptier - life. Juliette and her lover, fellow prostitute Claudine (this is the role Baxter ended up with), murder the whorehouse madam and one of her tricks, raid her safe and take off on a thieving / murder spree, for which the two become wealthy. After Juliette murders her partner in crime, she ends up settling down with a wealthy nobleman (Gérard Tichy) and finally crosses paths with her sister again during the last few minutes.

Because of the highly variable acting and writing (producer Harry Alan Towers also scripted as "Peter Welbeck"), the film is dramatically uneven throughout, with some ill-fitting attempts at broad comedy along the way, but it has its moments. Despite a run time in excess of two hours (the original U.S. video release titled Deadly Sanctuary was trimmed of about 30 minutes), the film stays so busy there's no real time to be bored. The material is colorfully presented by cinematographer Manuel Merino and it also boasts a truly beautiful score from Bruno Nicolai. As per the director's usual, he's filled the film with many beautiful, naked women, including Rosalba Neri (who'd also appear in Franco's women-in-prison opus 99 WOMEN). Howard Vernon (as one of the monks) also appears briefly.

Still, I'd be amiss not to point out that several of Franco's other de Sade adaptations; EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1969) and EUGENIE DE SADE (1970; released 1974) - though much lower-budgeted - pack more of a wallop. They're also much more in tune with the dark tone of de Sade's writings than this one. However, this film does drive home the real point of de Sade's source novel: How can a just higher power allow someone good and virtuous to suffer while simultaneously allowing the wicked to prosper?

★★1/2

El asesino no está solo (1975)

... aka: Killer is Not Alone, The
... aka: Murderer is Not Alone, The

Directed by:
Jesús García de Dueñas

A young man picks up a prostitute and cuts her throat with a wire. The killer, dubbed "The Wire Strangler" by the press, is a lonely, shy, timid, well-mannered young man named Julio (David Carpenter), who comes from a well-to-do family, likes frankfurters and rhinocerus' and suffers from some sort of childhood trauma (which we get flashes of throughout the movie) that prevents him from being intimate with women (and leads him to murder those who want to be intimate with him). His parents are, and presumably always have been, too preoccupied with work and travel to pay him much mind and he was often left in the care of others growing up. Julio runs off to Madrid to try to start over again after his latest murder, and goes to stay at a hostel run by Dolores (Lola Flores), a single mother and flamenco dance teacher. The other residents at the hostel are a pretty ecclectic bunch. There's a mystery novel writer, a skirt-chaser who sits around reading girlie magazines at the dinner table and likes to spy on one of the women undressing, an elderly retired doctor, a woman who secretly works as a prostitute and others, and they often sit around discussing the killer and his crimes; hypothesizing about what might be making him kill.

Dolores' gorgeous teenage daughter Mónica (Teresa Rabal), who's getting a bit frustrated by her mother's controlling and sheltering ways plus the fact she has to work long hours to supplement the family income, begins hanging out with Julio on a regular basis. The two share some common interests (she particularly likes the fact he doesn't talk too much) and a romance starts to blossom, which means she's inadventently putting herself in peril. Dolores frowns upon the union, but primarily because she suffers from empty nest syndrome and doesn't want to be left alone. Meanwhile, David's father Enrique (James Philbook) starts to worry about his son and travels to Madrid to try to hunt him down.

Compared to other European serial killer tales from this time, this takes an interesting approach to the material, though it has obviously been heavily influenced by the 1944 classic The Lodger. It's much more interesting seeing an absentee father investigating his own son than some random detectives. He finds out that his son's best friend Ernesto (Antonio Mayans) hadn't actually seen his son for two years, that Julio degraded a girl (María José Cantudo) who liked him and that a woman he entrusted to take care of him while he and his wife were away in Japan all summer may have been the one to traumatize him. There are obtuse flashbacks involving the sound of bells, close-ups of hair and someone kicking over a model train, plus lots of religious imagery (it takes place during some kind of religious ceremony / parade, where people are dragging crosses through the streets and such). There are also some artistic fantasy sequences of Julio in bed with various women (and a mannequin) and an appropriately melancholic score.

All of the actors do a decent job in their respective parts. Co-star Maria Rohm is interestingly cast playing three different characters; the opening murder victim, the prostitute living at the boarding house and Julio's childhood babysitter (and sports a different hair color in each role; red, blonde and mousy brunette, respectively). Rohm was of course best known for her evocative performances in the Jess Franco films VENUS IN FURS (1968) and EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1969). Though a fine actresss (and a very attractive one), her career only lasted about ten years. In fact, The Killer is Not Alone would end up being her final genre film appearance before she retired. Rohm was married to producer Harry Alan Towers until his death in 2009 and would go on to help produce some of these films herself, including the sleazy Anthony Perkins vehicle Edge of Sanity (1989) and Pact with the Devil (2001) with Malcolm McDowell. Fans of Rohm will certainly want to hunt this title down.

The boyishly handsome Carpenter (born: Domingo Codesido Hernández) also appeared in Eloy de la Iglesias' MURDER IN A BLUE WORLD (1973), got to play Tarzan in a 1974 film which also featured Nadiuska and Paul Naschy and retired from film altogether in 1979. He passed away in 2006. Philbrook had starred in Sound of Horror (1966) and this turned out to be his final film. Flores was best known as a dancer and singer. There are many familiar Spanish character actors (José Vivó, Ángel Menéndez, Luis Ciges, etc.) in smaller roles. It was a very atypical film for the director, who mostly made documentaries.

Never released in America; theatrically or on a home viewing format, this solid psycho-drama would make for an interesting and worthy DVD release.

★★★