BY HANK REINEKE
Though I’m generally not wishy-washy in my assessment of…
well, practically anything, I admit to holding a decidedly middle-ground
opinion on the work of Jesus “Jess†Franco. There are some films by this
controversial Spanish director that inspire me to become more intimate with his
work. Conversely, there are others that actually discourage me from seeking out additional titles. His films, particularly those from 1972-1973
following, have proven to be polarizing to cineastes. Though he attracted notice in the early 1960s
with such more or less traditionally-mannered horror films as The Awful Dr. Orloff and The Diabolical Dr. Z (both shot in
atmospheric black and white and both quite entertaining), Franco was a restless,
creative soul eager to push the envelope.
By the mid-70s Franco had attained a reputation as a competent
and bankable director of exploitation features. Even his detractors – and there are many – cannot argue that the
director had an ability to bring a film to market both quickly and under-budget. Beginning in the early-1970s, he would controversially
begin to introduce elements of soft-core pornography within the framework of
otherwise more conventional horror or historical-period films. Some find these films artful and intriguing;
others see them as sadistic, lurid celebrations of sexual violence. These controversial films would often be seen
as pandering to an audience that four-time Franco collaborator Christopher Lee
would later deride as the “raincoat crowd.†Whether you found Franco’s films as artful unabashed celebrations of the
female form or as unrelentingly sordid cinema that’s unapologetically
misogynistic in construction… Well, this would all depend on your own moral compass.
Blue Underground has just released two of Franco’s earliest,
most notorious – and, to be fair, occasionally artful – films on Blu-ray. Both films originate from the era that
historians perceive as the controversial director’s transitional period: Eugenie… the story of her journey into
perversion (1970) and Justine (1969). Both films were inspired by the works of the
notorious eighteenth century French novelist the Marquis de Sade, an author for
whom Franco clearly shares an affinity.
Jesus Franco’s Eugenie… the story of her journey into
perversion (1970) is tangentially based on de Sade’s notorious 1795 novel La philosophie dans le boudoir (“Philosophy in the Bedroomâ€). Franco describes de Sade as “an extraordinary writer†in one
supplement, and offers Eugenie as “the story of a poor girl who drowns
in a hemorrage of sin in the discovery of love.†If this is truly Franco’s perception, his interpretation
is a bit at odds with de Sade’s own conception of the title character. In de Sade’s novel, Eugenie is a young girl already
unredeemingly infused with decadent and depraved impulses. In Franco’s film, the young girl is portrayed
as a victimized ingénue, an innocent misued and brutalized by elders and
authority figures for their own lurid pleasures. In de Sade’s novel Eugenie is a willing
participant in acts of near-unspeakable debauchery. In his own version of the
wicked novel, Franco almost entirely removes this component from the scenario,
portraying the young girl as an unfortunate hostage to predators who manipulate
her through a combination of mind control and drugs.
Though his name is offered on publicity materials as one
of the film’s two stars (the other being the gorgeous Swedish actress Marie
Liljedahl), Christopher Lee recalls Eugenie
as the only motion picture in his career that he was moved to ask his name
being struck from advertising. The
distinguished British actor has long told a tale that, a mere six months
following his work on the film, a friend tipped him off that the final cut of Eugenie
was not playing in the usual cinemas in and around London. Quickly following
up on his friend’s observation, Lee was reportedly horrified upon discovery the
film had been relegated to the sordid “blue†cinemas of Compton Street in the
city’s Soho district. He was especially
troubled by a scene where a completely nude woman, surrounded by a gaggle of
Sadists, was strapped to a table in the background of one of his shots. In the early 1980s, Lee dismissively told
Robert W. Pohle Jr. and Douglas C. Hart, authors of The Films of Christopher Lee (Scarecrow Press, 1983), “that I was
entirely ignorant of what was going to take place behind my back after I had
finished the comparatively innocuous scenes I appeared in.â€
In the eighteen-minute and informative supplement Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of
Jesus Franco (also included on this Blue Underground release) film
historian Stephen Thrower suggests that Lee might have been somewhat
disingenuous with his claim of being unaware of the debauch scene playing out
behind him. As Lee was a self-acknowledged worldly and literate man of
the arts, the author suggests that it would be highly unlikely that the actor
would have not been at least partly familiar with the writings of de Sade. Surely this cultured English gentleman would
be well aware of what sort of film this was to be? Having suggested this,
Thrower nonetheless admits willingness to accept Lee’s victim-hood at face value;
he acknowledges neither Franco nor producer Harry Alan Towers were the type to suffer
moral ambiguities in the countenance of such deception.
In any event, and regardless of his excised headline
billing, Lee is hardly a main player in the production. The actor recalls the “bits and pieces†in
which he was involved were shot on a Barcelona sound-stage in all of two
days. In his single primary scene, the
actor was even made to supply his own wardrobe: a red velvet smoking jacket he
had appropriated following the shooting of the East German-French-Italian
co-production Sherlock Holmes and the
Deadly Necklace (1962). What is
certain is that Lee would not work with the director again. Though belated release dates on the continent
and in the U.S. might suggest otherwise, Lee collaborated on four films with
Jesus Franco from late 1968 through mid-1969. Along with Eugenie, there were
The Castle of Fu Manchu (1970), The Bloody Judge (1970), and Count Dracula (1972).
If Lee harbored any lasting hard feelings for Franco’s
perceived betrayal of his trust, it apparently wasn’t long-lasting. In
one supplement Lee magnanimously describes the Spaniard as “a much better
director than he’s given credit for.†He suggests the filmmaker was handicapped
not by any lack of talent in his craft, but by tight schedules (most of Franco’s
films were given three to four weeks of photography at a maximum) and shoestring
budgets. If this is Lee’s genuine
appraisal of Franco’s talents, it’s not one shared by the director himself. The filmmaker is surprisingly dismissive of
his own work, only acknowledging with dispassion, “of all my films [Eugenie is] the one I hate the least.â€
Though not a neat break from his past oeuvre, historians
of continental film are of the mind that Eugenie
was more-or-less a transitional movie for Franco, a pivotal catalyst for the
director’s turn from more traditional movie-making forms to a more seamy and
steamy catalog of cult-films. In the
final analysis, Eugenie was a
difficult film to market in 1970 as it had a cinematic foothold in two
disparate worlds. U.S. distributor,
Jerry Gross, didn’t even want the final product as he found the film too artsy
and tame and wanted to see more flesh on-screen. Franco would defend the finished film as
“erotic but not pornographic.†Depending on where one draws the line between
art and pornography, I suppose this is a somewhat truthful self-assessment on
Franco’s part. It took no fewer than
three attempts to market the film in Germany due to censorship issues, and in
the U.K. there was no general release.
Though no
less exploitative than Eugenie, Franco’s Justine is actually a visually
softer and more lavish production. It’s
a moody costume-drama set in the time of de Sade’s world, a time replete with
castles, and lush gardens, and baroque music. The film is also mounted in a more traditional format, the many sordid indignities
suffered by the title character recounted in an unrelenting episodic
style. Like Eugenie, Justine (the beautiful
Romina Power, the eighteen-year old daughter of screen-legend Tyrone Power) is degraded in equal measure by religious figures, criminals, noblemen, and low
caste boarding house tenants. Also as in
Eugenie, the young girl is savaged with moral disregrad by both predatory
men and women. The film voyeuristically drifts
from episode to episode as Justine endures a series of humiliations. The film is unrelentingly grim, and the
filmmaker’s almost casual depictions of sexual violence rarely pauses a moment
so one can catch a breath.