Even Jess Franco himself likely never thought he would the subject of three books released in roughly a year’s time, and yet, here we are, with Kristofer Todd Upjohn’s Jess Franco: The World’s Most Dangerous Filmmaker released last January, Stephen Thrower’s Flowers of Perversion due come Valentine’s Day, and now Wayne State University Press’ The … Continue reading The Films of Jess Franco
Barbed Wire Dolls (1975) — Probably Franco’s best women-in-prison film, which features all the genre clichés: rampant lesbianism, the butch warden, the pivotal male prison doctor, the inmate who’s already cracked, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Franco is one of those directors who uses nudity as a wardrobe choice. No point in going into the plot; … Continue reading 6 Sexy, Sleazy and Stupid Jess Franco Films
After announcing her engagement, the sheltered Ana (Emma Cohen, Horror Rises from the Tomb) is shattered to learn how her widowed father takes the news: by squeezing his head through a noose and taking one giant leap off a chair. (Dramatic much, Pops?) Given the dead dad is played by the bug-eyed Howard Vernon (Revenge … Continue reading The Other Side of the Mirror (1973)
No doubt Famous T and A proved an enormous VHS hit for Charles Band back in 1982. Hell, it probably paid for an L.A. divorce or a Romanian castle. Now, a full four decades later, the exploitation film legend finally gives it something his 2006 movie Evil Bong already has seven of: a sequel. What … Continue reading Famous T and A 2 (2022)
When people talk trailers, someone inevitably scoffs, “They show all the good parts.” As if that’s a bad thing? It certainly isn’t in the world that exists underneath mainstream motion pictures. From blaxploitation to sexploitation with a whole heap o’ horror in between, Film Trauma’s Only the Good Parts dishes out a feature’s worth of … Continue reading Only the Good Parts (2015)