From Severin Films comes a rerelease of two films made by Spain’s infamous Jess/ Jesús Franco in the early 1970s, both starring Soledad Miranda: Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy.
Franco, who directed somewhere around 180 films, depending on how one counts, is an acquired taste – to put it lightly, known for his films’ langorous pacing, impenetrable plotting, promiscuous use of camera zooms and overall Surrealist mood. He’s been called the Spanish Ed Wood, for whatever that’s worth, although Wood’s trashy melodrama has a high-camp quality to it that makes the comparison to Franco’s literary and artistic pretension less than useful.
Vampyros Lesbos, a loose, lesbian-themed modern retelling of Dracula, is sometimes held up as Franco’s masterpiece. It doesn’t really rise above the inherent limitations of its director’s style – it’s just as off-kilter, curiously dull, and desperately unsexy as anything else Franco has produced – but it does feature an absolutely ace score of sleazy psychedelic lounge that became a UK hit in the 1990s and was borrowed for one cue in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.
The more ambitious, and better, of the two – which isn’t saying much – is the less famous She Killed in Ecstasy, the necrophiliac tale of a young woman (Miranda) whose doctor husband’s unethical medical experiments with foetuses fail to meet with the approval of an ethics committee, causing his suicide. Thus, the wife goes on a revenge spree, following a repeating pattern in which she finds, seduces, and then kills each member of the ethics committee.
Some of these murders don’t exactly seem like they should work – wouldn’t a large inflatable pillow be incapable of actually covering an airway? – but then again the actors playing corpses are unable to hide their breathing and Franco is unwilling to conceal it from the camera, so perhaps none of these characters really died after all. Certainly the husband, Fred Williams’, “corpse” should have decomposed at least a little bit over the course of the film’s events.
But there are plenty such quibbles that could be made – and most of Franco’s films operate on the same kind of dream logic navigated by Dario Argento and later, David Lynch. The purpose of these films is not to create story, but mood. That creation of mood is successful only fitfully, though – these are horror films that aren’t scary and erotica that isn’t erotic.
Since Franco’s films are among those that are more fun to read about than to actually watch, likewise the extras here are more entertaining than either of the films. Vampyros Lesbos gets two commentaries, one by Kat Ellinger whose enthusiasm for Franco’s filmography is evident; and another, more casual but equally enthusiastic, by Aaron AuBuchon with John Dickson and Will Morris of Oscarbate Film Collective.
Meanwhile the remaining extras, housed on the Blu-Ray disc, include a number of interviews. Franco himself gives a fairly short, yet detailed interview in English (with subtitles on account of Franco’s thick accent), “Interlude in Lesbos”, which is followed by a lengthy analysis by Franco expert Stephen Thrower, entitled “Fever Dracula”. Joining the other Franco appreciators is a bona fide celebrity, Sean Baker, director of Tangerine, The Florida Project and the Best Picture-winning Anora. Baker speaks about his history with Franco’s films and their influence on his work – in particular, Anora – in a short feature entitled “The Red Scarf Diaries”. Thrower returns to present a guided tour of some Franco filming locations – this is part 12 of In the Land of Franco, an ongoing series of features included with Severin’s Franco releases, but he is in Paris and the locations visited mostly have to do with Franco’s The Sadist of Notre Dame, so this feature, especially, is only of interest to the Franco completionist. Next is “Sublime Soledad”, an appreciation of the film’s ill-fated star by Amy Brown who runs Miranda’s website. “Jess is Yoda” is a short section left out of “Interlude in Lesbos”, in which Franco reacts to a Christmas ornament of the Star Wars character. Then there are the German-language opening credits, only available in VHS quality, and a trailer which is also available on the UHD disc.
For She Killed in Ecstasy, we get a broadly similar set of extras, although there is no commentary. Stephen Thrower returns for another discussion, “Ecstasy in Rage”. There is another In the Land of Franco episode, the 13th, and another Franco interview, this one entitled “Jess Killed in Ecstasy” and from the looks of it, shot on the same day as “Interlude in Lesbos”. Both Franco interviews are enjoyable but this one is better, particularly towards the end when Franco dismisses the career awards he began to win towards the end of his life. Also interviewed, briefly, is Franco collaborator Paul Muller in a segment simply entitled “Paul Muller on Jess Franco”. “Sublime Soledad” appears on both discs, and finally there is a She Killed in Ecstasy trailer.
It’s an impressive set on extras, especially for Vampyros Lesbos. Quite apart from the analysis offered by these various critics, you have to respect them simply for having the patience to sit through these Franco films. There are plenty of legendarily bad films – Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, James Nguyen’s Birdemic just for a start – but these are both genuinely entertaining watches, and are more or less one-offs. Green never directed another film. Wiseau and Nguyen did, but they became self-aware and failed to recapture their earlier cult success. Ed Wood was tireless, but Plan 9 occupies a special place in his filmography (witness how Tim Burton’s Ed Wood makes Plan 9 its centrepiece). Franco by contrast made 180-odd films and none of them distinguishes itself above the others. That’s a lot of hours of tedious trash to sift through, but that’s how seriously these academics are willing to take even the most bottom-of-the-barrel of 70s sleaze, and that’s a valuable service.
In the end, it’s difficult to know whether to recommend these releases or not. If for whatever reason you’re a Franco fan these will be indispensable. The special features are superb. The 4K presentation is great. But why would you want this?