Films of Jess Franco PDF
Preview Films of Jess Franco
Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress .wayne .edu General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University Advisory Editors Robert J. Burgoyne University of St. Andrews Caren J. Deming University of Arizona Patricia B. Erens School of the Art Institute of Chicago Peter X. Feng University of Delaware Lucy Fischer University of Pittsburgh Frances Gateward California State University, Northridge Tom Gunning University of Chicago Thomas Leitch University of Delaware Walter Metz Southern Illinois University Wayne State University Press Detroit © 2018 by Antonio Lázaro- Reboll and Ian Olney. Published by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. ISBN 978- 0- 8143- 4316- 6 (paperback) ISBN 978- 0- 8143- 4493- 4 (hardback) ISBN 978- 0- 8143- 4317- 3 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging Number: 2018942076 Wayne State University Press Leonard N. Simons Building 4809 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan 48201- 1309 Visit us online at wsupress .wayne .edu Contents An Editorial Note on Film Titles and Dates vii Introduction: The Many Faces of Jess Franco 1 Antonio Lázaro- Reboll and Ian Olney Part I: Franco in Context 1. Before and After The Awful Dr. Orlof: Constructing a “Respectable” Jess Franco 41 Andy Willis 2. Sleaze and Cinephilia: Jess Franco in the Sixties 64 Ian Olney 3. “Hallo, hier spricht Jess Franco”: How Franco Recoded the Krimi 88 Nicholas G. Schlegel Part II: Horror and Eroticism in Franco 4. Latent Durability in Jess Franco’s Films: His “Horrotica” 113 Tatjana Pavlović 5. Transgressive or Maladjusted? Nymphomania, Frigidity, and Lesbianism in Franco’s Gothic Sexology 140 Glenn Ward 6. Vampires, Sex, and Transgression: Jess Franco’s and Jean Rollin’s “Countercinema” 168 Aurore Spiers 7. Elective Affinities: Another Sade of Jess Franco 186 Alberto Brodesco v Part III: The Cult Reception of Franco 8. Scream Queens and Queer Dreams: The Politics of Monotony and Zoning Out in Franco’s Direct- to- Video Productions 211 Finley Freibert 9. Endless Re- view: Jess Franco in Video Watchdog and Eyeball 242 Antonio Lázaro- Reboll 10. (Re)born Again: When Jess Franco Met the Indies 265 Vicente Rodríguez Ortega and Rubén Romero Santos 11. She Kills in Ecstasy and Drives at Dangerously High Speeds: The Death Cult Stardom of Soledad Miranda 290 Xavier Mendik Conclusion: Finding Franco: A Quixotic Filmography 314 Will Dodson Acknowledgments 337 Contributors 341 Index 345 vi Contents An editoriAl note on Film titles And dAtes As readers familiar with the director will already know, Jess Franco’s filmography is famously tangled and hotly contested. Apart from there being no consensus about the total number of movies he made, there is little agreement about the official titles and release dates of many of his films. And no wonder: some of them have been released (and rereleased) in a variety of different cuts, under disparate titles, in diverse markets, and on assorted formats over the years. The reasons for this— including Franco’s fast and loose working methods and the fly- by- night nature of the European exploitation film industry within which he operated for much of his career— are examined in more detail in the introduction. The challenge such uncertainty poses for a volume like ours is obvious. Which titles and dates should we and our contributors use when referring to Franco’s films? How can we ensure that readers are able to track the discussion of his films across the essays that make up this book? For the sake of consistency and clarity, we have adopted the approach outlined here. Each time a Franco film is introduced in the chapters that follow, it will be with its original title and release date. In cases where the movie has received an American release, either theatrically or on home video, the title under which it is most widely known or available in the United States today will also appear. All subsequent references to the film will be made using this American title. In cases where a Franco film has received vii no American release, the original title will be used throughout. We have elected to use the original titles and release dates listed in the three- part filmography included at the end of Stephen Thrower’s authoritative (if not definitive) Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco (2015), supplementing it where necessary with information found on the Internet Movie Database. This system is far from perfect— especially since some of the director’s films are better known outside the United States under titles other than the American ones we favor—b ut it does lend a sense of shared focus and uniformity to the essays that follow, creating a thread we hope will help readers find their way through the labyrinth of Jess Franco’s cinema. viii An Editorial Note on Film Titles and Dates introduCtion The Many Faces of Jess Franco Antonio Lázaro- Reboll and Ian Olney David J. Khune. Clifford Brown. Candy Coster. Jess Franck. Man- fred Gregor. Frank Hollman. Lulu Laverne. Franco Manera. A. L. Mariaux. Dave Tough. Over the course of his astonishing fifty- year career as a director of popular European cinema, Jesús Franco (1930–2 013) worked under dozens of assumed names, including the one by which he is most widely known today: Jess Franco. Adopting these aliases was largely a matter of practical necessity; indeed, in Franco’s heyday many Western European filmmakers used Anglicized pseudonyms as a production and marketing strategy. As a Spanish filmmaker working in genres that for much of his career were widely considered “non- Spanish” both in Spain and abroad—h orror, science fiction, noir, pornography— his foreign- sounding pseudonyms gave his movies a credibility (and bankability) they would have otherwise lacked. As a transnational filmmaker working in countries across Europe, rechristening himself “Jess Franck” in Germany or “Franco Manera” in Italy enabled him—a nd his independent producers—t o avoid taxes levied against non- native directors and enhance the appeal of his movies for local audiences. And as an exploitation filmmaker working at a frenetic pace— turning out more than half a dozen movies a year at the peak of his productivity in the 1970s, when he reportedly developed the strategy of shooting two or more at the same time (though he later 1
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