DVD Release
Severin Films serve up some more Euro-trash from the ever dependable, Jess Franco. Devil Hunter is his second, and to date final, entry into the popular eighties cannibal cycle; after the dribble that was Cannibals. Luckily for us, Uncle Jess has been given a little (and I mean A LITTLE) bit of money and a half-baked script to work with; one that has thankfully remembered to include a pace!
Peter Weston (Al Cliver, who was also in Franco’s Cannibals) is sent into the green inferno by a wealthy producer who’s blonde bombshell actress (Ursula Buchfellner) has been kidnapped and is being held to a six-million dollar ransom. Little do the bad guys know, the area they’ve decided to lamb-it in is property of the titular Devil Hunter! A buffed-up native, with ping-pong balls for eyes and a taste for human flesh… naked, female human flesh! Continue reading »
DVD Release
Severin Films double-Franco-whammy continues with his infamous video nasty, Bloody Moon! The tale of a Spanish school of language that, as luck would have it, has a killer on campus that has an eye on the school’s attractive female populace and a penchant for thinning out their numbers; be it by knife, fire or a huge mill-saw! Welcome to the slasher genre, a la Jess Franco.
Bloody Moon has finally arrived in its HD glory, the beautiful Spanish scenery is full of vibrant colors that match that of it actors dreadful fashion sense. Problem is, the film isn’t any good. Sure it has plenty of boobies and ‘that’ saw scene, but aside from that? It’s an exercise in boredom. The music is as easy on the ear as a cat in heat, to be fair one theme works well, the actors all do a great job at looking confused and all share a sense of “whose line is it?” Continue reading »
U.S. DVD Release
Some more Eurocine cannibal crapiness courtesy of Severin Films! Cannibal Terror, once a video nasty here in Britain, is very much of the Jess Franco school of filmmaking – get it done, get it done fast, get it done cheap. If that shakes your stick, then you will no-doubt be all over this already. For the rest of ya’ll, here’s the skinny: Dumb-ass criminals kidnap the daughter of a wealthy couple and head to the hills too wait out before collecting their ransom money. Unfortunately for them, the place happens to be covered with cannibals who have a affinity for face paint! When one of the goons rapes the wife of the landowner, he and his wife decided to get a little pay back and inform the child’s parents of their daughters whereabouts… as well as feeding the Continue reading »
DVD Artwork
Marquis de Sade’s Justine (1968)
R0 / NTSC DVD
Blue Underground / 2004
Director: Jess Franco
Writers: Harry Alan Towers & the Marquis de Sade
Cast: Romina Power, Mercedes McCambridge, Klaus Kinski & Jack Palance
Review by James Garfield
Justine (Romina Power) and Juliette (Maria Rohm) are two sisters in pre-revolutionary France who get kicked out from their convent when their mother dies. Juliette immediately seeks out employment in a whorehouse; Justine, committed to following the path of virtue, strikes out on her own and finds the virtuous life to be a miserable one. Throughout the course of her wanderings she meets up with a criminal gang, demented noblemen, and sex-crazed monks. She gets robbed, abused, branded with a hot iron, and falsely accused of theft and murder and imprisoned. Checking back with Juliette, we see that she has progressed from whoring to robbery and murder, and is now living in prosperity. Continue reading »
Groovy Lesbians!
Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
R1 / NTSC DVD
Image Ent. / 2000
Director: Jesus Franco
Writer: Jesus Franco & Jaime Chavarri
Cast: Soledad Miranda (as Susann Korda), Ewa Stromberg, Andres Monales, Dennis Price
Review by Ted Phipps
Jess Franco was supposedly at the top of his game when he directed this flick, which is kind of disappointing because it’s merely good, not the masterpiece I was expecting. As usual, Franco tells this story with a series of highly stylized and disconnected segments, full of beautiful scenery and interesting camera angles. The substance is secondary to the style, which means you’ll have to work a bit at times to figure out just what it is that’s going on.
Soledad Miranda gives a scorching performance as the aristocratic vampire with a taste for female companionship. She absolutely owns this movie with her incredibly erotic dance numbers on a small club stage. The rest of the cast are acceptable, with nobody really exceptionally good nor bad. You’ll recognize character actor Paul Muller in yet another doctor role. Continue reading »
Just...Awful.
While traveling down river one day, Dr. Jeremy Taylor and his family are ambushed by bloodthirsty cannibals! Taylor’s wife is eaten alive in front of him and he and his daughter are kidnapped and brought back to the cannibal camp. Jeremy loses an arm to the cannibals but manages to escape, forced to leave his daughter behind!
Years later he secures financing and heads back out to the tropics in an effort to locate his daughter and bring her home. Unfortunately for Dr. Taylor and his party, the cannibals are prepared to war with the white man at any cost…even if it means losing their lives! Continue reading »
DVD Artwork
Eugenie…
(Blue Underground / R1 NTSC DVD)
Review by James Garfield
Spanish director Jess Franco has made a couple hundred films, many of them judged plain unwatchable by fans and enemies alike. Those prone to kindness to Franco will usual single out a string of films Franco made in the late 1960s with British producer Harry Alan Towers as examples of Franco’s best work. Towers was willing to invest enough money in the films so that Franco could achieve a much more elegant and upscale look than usual, and knew many big actors (such as Christopher Lee) whom he could convince to appear in the films. Several of Towers’s and Franco’s collaborations drew on the work of the Marquis de Sade for source material, with Sade’s novel Philosophy in the Bedroom serving as the basis for Eugenie (1969). Continue reading »
U.S. DVD Release
How do I express my love affair with “Women in Prison” films? How can I possibly describe the aching I feel in my pants when I see Lina Romay topless? For every bruise on her darling little bottom, my heart does a backflip. Every jiggle of her full breasts sends my brain into a fever. To see Romay and a women’s prison together in the same film is like meeting your first love after thirty years and still feeling that puppy love spark fiercely burning in your heart. It’s kismet. W.I.P. cinema and I are destined to continue meeting one another in my dark bedroom while my fiancée slumbers prudishly.
Jess Franco has made a pervert of me I suppose. Say what you will about the man but don’t waste my time with it Continue reading »
DVD Release
The most shocking part of this package is the interview with Jess Franco in the extras. I have no idea when the interview took place, but the man looks like Aqualung incarnate. Moldy and toothless and splotchy, his body is worn out even as his mind remains sharp. It’s a good interview (in heavily accented English) as he focuses on his professional relationship with actress Soledad Miranda, who appears here in a minor part. But damn, the man looks like an undead child molester.
Anna (Diana Lorys) is an erotic dancer under the spell of a model named Cynthia (Colette Giacobine). She’s having terrible dreams in which she murders people, and her girlfriend and doctor (played by the ubiquitous Paul Muller Continue reading »
Sleaze Masterpiece
I’ve finally worked my way to the third and final disc included in the ILSA box set! Don’t get me wrong…nobody was twisting my arm. For those of you that don’t know, this film is actually an unofficial sequel in the ILSA series. Euro-sleaze filmmaker, Jess Franco, originally shot this film under the title, Greta, the Mad Butcher.
It would appear the ILSA title was slapped on the cover so the disc could be included in the series. The actual official third and final entry into the series, ILSA, the Tigress of Siberia, has never Continue reading »
