EL COLECCIONISTA DE CADAVERES - 1967

Not thought of as a "Spanish horror movie," EL COLECCIONISTA DE CADAVERES, otherwise known as BLINDMAN'S BLUFF and CAULDRON OF BLOOD, is certainly one, with a Spanish director, Santos Alcocer (using Edward Mann as a signature for the export prints) and a Spanish production behind it. American money was also pumped into the film, via Robert D. Weinbach Productions.

Of course, under its generally known English titles EL COLECCIONISTA DE CADAVERES (literal translation: THE COLLECTOR OF CADAVERS) is chiefly recognized as being one of the last films to star Boris Karloff and suffers in reputation as a movie not much better than the ill-regarded quartet of Mexican horror films that Karloff made toward the end of his life. This is unfortunate, as the film has a superb textural performance by the Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors (playing the dominatrix wife of the crippled and blind Karloff character, Franz Badulescu) and moments of truly grotesque and disturbing horror.

The plot idea of using recent dead cadavers for a work of art is nothing new in film, but the central axis of EL COLECCIONISTA is Tania Badulescu (Lindfors), who is compelled by her dysfunctionalism to further the career of her sculptor husband and add to the money pot she is collecting for herself. This is Lindfors' film, and she puts on a dramatic acting show throughout, with Karloff merely around for splendid window dressing. (Claude Rains was originally considered for the Karloff role, but was too sick to take it on.)

There are several delicious moments. Every scene inside the basement cave that contains "the cauldron of blood" (actually an acidic vat meant to fizz away meat from its bone) is sharp with creepy atmosphere and suspense, and the entire sequence involving Elga (played by Polish sex kitten Dianik Zurakowska) inside the Badulescu house is handled with a successful manipulation of suspense and subtle kinkiness.

Not that the film is without problems. Director Santos Alcocer manages to make the first thirty minutes rather difficult to sit through, as he changes the film's mood every two minutes or so before settling in to tell his story. There is also very temporary and unusual change of framing and quality, as if a VHS was used momentarily, but it could be merely budget needs at that point. The very 1960s-style musical score by Ray Ellis is inconsiderate and even harmful, except in a few romantic passages, where it becomes pleasingly haunting. I'm not sure if this score was actually a replacement used for the English-language version, as another composer, Jose Luis Navarro, is listed on Spanish production notes.

Below are two ad mats from the U.S. The film was not released stand-alone here but usually with another Karloff film, CRUCIBLE OF HORROR and, maybe, another film as well.
 

The film has now a Blu-Ray release from Olive Films, released October 14, 2014, which is the best way to see the film.

Below: Lindfors in KING OF KINGS, also shot in Spain. 

UNA BRUJA SIN ESCOBA - 1967

A blonde witch from the 15th Century travels to the 20th Century and falls in love with an American professor teaching at the University of Madrid. Not proficient in the art of sorcery, she chaotically bounces herself and the professor about time, making unannounced and embarrassing entries into times Medieval, Roman and pre-historic. By mistake she sends the professor for a solo outing into the future (1999), by which point humanity has destroyed itself, leaving behind just seven women who are most eager to find a man for procreative purposes. The dismayed witch seeks the aid of her father, Wurlitz the Wizard (!), to help her out of her mess and stop the professor's appetizing mission to save humanity.

At times amusing, but mostly innocently silly, UNA BRUJA SIN ESCOBA is chiefly of interest for its cast. Maria Perschy has never looked more adorable (blonde hair color elicits an extra sweetness to her face), and the various attires she models, including a bikini get-up in animal skin similar (though not as revealing) to Raquel Welch's fantasy-inducer in Hammer's ONE MILLION B.C., decorate her figure deliciously.  If you're a Perschy fan, get this film.

By the time UNA BRUJA was made, American actor Jeffrey Hunter was already familiar with shooting in Spain.  Seven years earlier he achieved his greatest international fame for his performance as Jesus Christ in the Samuel Bronston production of KING OF KINGS, helmed in various Spanish locales. (Incidentally, Hunter met the future Paul Naschy, Jacinto Molina, on the set of the film, and the two became friends during its production.)  For UNA BRUJA, Hunter was engaged by producer Sidney Pink, who, following Samuel Bronston's lead, had established co-productions in Spain since 1962 with THE CASTILIAN.

It's the Spanish cast that is of interest here for folks who visit this site. Perla Cristal (THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF, FURY OF THE WOLFMAN) is her usual enticing and spicy self as the sexually voracious Octavia.  Lord, how I love this woman!  Producer Pink must have loved her too, as he would employ her in a couple of other productions, including A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, a 1968 movie in which a pre-Naschy Jacinto Molina appeared. (The man got around.)

Other Spanish familiars make welcome appearances: Frank Brana (GRAVEYARD OF HORROR, RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD), actor and future director Julio Perez Tabernero (CANNIBAL TERROR), Angel Menendez (LA MARCA DEL HOMBRE LOBO, THE LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE).... A non-Spaniard, the fearsomely ugly Al Mulock (TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE; THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY), is still distinguishable under a long beard as the Wurlitz the Wizard, a role he must have been thankful for since it gave him relief from playing venomous, crazed characters.  (Not enough relief, however, as a year later, Mulock would commit suicide during the production of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.)

There's a brief exterior shot of a castle that may be the one that turns up in Carlos Aured's CURSE OF THE DEVIL as Waldemar Daninsky's residence, but otherwise the 1967 film comes up nil as a showcase of Spain's film locations, though it remains a moderate delight for those having a fun time spotting the Spanish thespians of the day.

EL CONDE DRACULA - 1969

EL CONDE DRACULA started as a high concept--relatively so, as we are speaking of a horror film made at the tail end of the 1960s when major studios did not pay much attention to the genre. The idea was to make a film that would be true to the Stoker novel and employ some of the best talents in horror to make this a reality. Christopher Lee, the Dracula of the time, was solicited, and guided by his dream of making a definite Dracula film, true to the Stoker novel, he accepted the role. Horror magazines reported the possibility of Vincent Price appearing as Dracula's nemesis, Van Helsing. This tantalizing casting never happened, unfortunately, and the role was taken by Herbert Lom, a good actor but whose range was no match for flashiness and wicked undercurrent that Price could have brought to the role.

The choice of Franco as director, however, was a signal even then that something was amiss.  Though he had secured a decent reputation beginning with THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF in 1961, by 1969 many horror fans were already familiar with the evolving sloppy journeyman aspect to Franco (and his growing need for using zoom shots), an aspect set in motion by such Harry Alan Towers productions as the final Fu Manchu pictures (THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU and THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU), which are perhaps Franco's worst films from the 1960s. That Franco was one of the chief forces behind this film did not bode well for it, though a hopeful candle was burning.  After all, assurances were made that the film would be true to the Stoker novel (not necessarily a good thing) and that Lee was going to be playing the title role with fidelity to the character Stoker had created, adorning his generally clean-shaven face with a droopy mustache and dying his hair white for a gradual transformation to black.

Once the film was seen, however, that candle was extinguished, to be used for a better day and a better film. Critics and fans were not kind, and thirty-plus years later certain deficiencies remain evident, despite the potent upgrading of the print element in recent times. Even one of the film's most lauded sequences, the coach ride to Castle Dracula, is marred by hasty decisions and mistakes. Jets of fake fog gush their streams unnaturally and obtrusively from the ground, the worst use of a fog machine (if that's what was responsible for those jets) I have so far seen in film. Furthermore, German Shepherds do not threatening wolves make. Adding to these distractions is the reflection of camera lights off the coach.  More mistakes are to come, the worst being the on-screen shadow of a camera that follows Klaus Kinski in the tight space of his padded cell as he tries to memorialize a performance of the Renfield character.  There are some outré theories of cinema that can dismiss these gaffes and turn them into pluses, but back in 1969 (or rather a couple of years later when the film received theatrical exhibition in the States) these very obvious errors elicited groans, and now they still remain disheartening, even on a small TV monitor.

The slipshod nature of the production becomes more evident when one begins to realize that several of the major actors probably never saw each other on the set, as they never share frames in the footage. Forget seeing Kinski interact with Lee: Kinski just rants, raves, gazes wistfully out his padded cell, and eats captured vermin. He's there, does his bit, then he jumps out of a window and dies, never meeting the undead lord who commands him from afar.  Herbert Lom shot his scenes separately from Lee, and although a false attempt is made to merge the two in one scene, the battling duo of Van Helsing and Dracula do not appear together in a single frame.  Worse, the pivotal Van Helsing character is kept out of the action for the finale of the film, no doubt due to the budget deficiency of employing Lom for only a limited amount of time.

Many familiar faces highlight the landscape of this film, a who's who cast of Euro and Spanish horror, in fact: Soledad Miranda, Teresa Gimpera, Emma Cohen, Paul Muller, Jack Taylor, Fred Williams, Maria Rohm. Regrettably, Franco makes himself a part of his acting ensemble.  As the coach-driver/servant, he is awful here: self-aware, perhaps appearing as an in-joke; his Spanish sensual face and body, already fleshing out with dissipation, can be perfect for a film like EXORCISM, but in EL CONDE DRACULA they are at odds with the crisp Victorian nature of the original source material.  Perhaps Michael Ripper (or Victor Israel) was unavailable.

As for Lee's performance as Dracula, it is subdued and carries none of the melodrama that was invested in his Hammer outings as the Prince of Darkness. His interpretation here can be a commendable, if not brave, yet a part of me wishes, because of the overall lack of gusto of the film, that Lee had let himself loose and gone for, pardon, the jugular. He seems to be inhabiting another picture, one better suited toward his temperament and artistic goals. The Franco film, with its financially-induced sloppiness and lack of clarity and creative concentration, simply does not support his performance.

Which is not to say that the film is worthless outside of its performances. As with almost every disappointing film that Franco has made, there is something to be found within that exposes the natural talent of the man, some say his genius. This "something" is not the aforementioned coach sequence, but the few minutes in which Lucy (Soledad Miranda) is seduced by Dracula's coaxing voice to leave her room and meet him under dark archways of nearby building, while her concerned friend, Mina (Maria Rohm), follows her in secret. These minutes offer a superb, thrilling evocation of mood, sensuality, mystery, release and awe. Everything merges into brilliance here--Franco's atmospheric, instinctual direction, Manuel Merino's luminescent cinematography, Bruno Nicolai's insistent and hypnotic music. This sequence is so perfect that one nearly forgives the misguided rest and returns to these precious moments to imbibe in them as one would divine nectar and a sampling of a dream never meant to be.

Had this level of inspiration and skill been attained throughout, EL CONDE DRACULA would have been a masterpiece, and while the film is sprinkled with bursts of energy and inspiration, it lacks the creative filament and monetary resources that would have made the entirety memorable or, using a different operational basis, it lacks the freedom that Franco needed to let his personal obsessions take over.  Indeed, Franco is not satisfied with the film precisely because he had to follow the source material, and rightly evaluates his subsequent foray into the Dracula myth, DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (1971), as a much better and more personal work and, in an interesting bit of opine, Howard Vernon as a better Dracula. 

Much better, too, is VAMPIR, the documentary shot by Pedro Portabella while EL CONDE DRACULA was being made. In stark black-and-white, the film is a non-judgmental cinematic journal and meditation on the Franco film and the dark Gothic world it attempted to inhabit.  Most cherished are the behind-the-scenes views of Christopher Lee (we actually see him clown around and smile broadly a few times--he really seemed to be enjoying himself) and an end-bit of Lee reading a concluding passage from the Stoker novel in his dressing room.  It is telling and sad that Lee's reading provides more thrills and artistic grace than much of the film that Franco was trying to craft from the meager resources at his disposal.

LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR - 1969

Called in Spain, LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR (English translation: THE MONSTERS OF TERROR) and in Germany DRACULA JAGT FRANKENSTEIN, this film marked the second official return of Waldemar Daninsky, the cursed werewolf created by Paul Naschy for his first wolfman film, LA MARCA DEL HOMRE LOBO.

For this film, Paul Naschy was contacted by Ramon Planas, the assistant of Jamie Prades. Prades had been associated with the legendary Samuel Bronston, for whom Naschy, as an extra, had made a couple of films early in his career. Prades wanted Naschy to write a monster film that would outdo Naschy’s previous monster effort. Naschy locked himself in his office and wrote a script about an alien from the planet Ummo who comes down to earth and assembles all the classic monsters with the notion of ruling mankind with these monsters and their duplicates. At this point, the film was going to be called, THE MAN WHO CAME FROM UMMO.  Julio Coll (PYRO) was going to direct, but he presented absurd suggestions that went against Naschy’s idea, and so director Hugo Fregonese was chosen instead.

Fregonese was ideal as he spent not only time in Spain, but helmed various American actors, including Lex Barker and Robert Taylor.  Taylor, in fact, was interested in playing the role of the alien, and even had a meeting with Naschy, but Prades had already secured Michael Rennie. As one of the stars of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, Rennie would bring a special gravitas to the role and play an alien again. Yes, Rennie had health issues, like Taylor, but despite his asthma, he could work and complete the picture.

Things were looking very positive. But then the troubles began.  Naschy’s big-name actress, Maria Perschy, had  to exit the film before it started. Current boyfriend troubles, the rumors go.  She was replaced by Karin Dor, but the other actress in the film, Helga Geissler,  got jealous and verbally attacked Dor, claiming that she, Geissler, was going to be a big star while Dor was already a has-been.

Then there was the bane of many films: money.  The delay over funding and searching for more funds to complete the film lasted six months.

The flying saucers that were built in the courtyard of the Conde Duque barracks were maliciously destroyed by their workers when payment was not forthcoming. Unfortunately, no photos were taken of the space ships.

While Michael Rennie was waiting and waiting to get all the monies he was promised, the film’s director, Fregonese could wait no more and headed out of the country with his new love, leaving about 30% of the film still undone. At which point, director Tulio Demichelli completed the film. Like Fregonese, Demicheli had been born in Argentina, and had a long list of credits to his name, so the change was not unwelcome. The Spanish director Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi (THAT MAN IN ISTANBUL) was called in to assemble the final cut, which was finally called LOS MONSTROS DEL TERROR.

 Because Molina the screenwriter did not want to upset any copyright laws, the name of Dracula is not used in the film but rather Count Janos de Mialhoff, a character who had previously appeared in LA MARCA DEL HOBRE LOBO. This time he was not played by Julian Ugarte, but by Manuel de Blas, the husband of actress Patty Shepard, whom he had met on an earlier film.

 Born in South Carolina, Patty Shepard went to Spain with her military father and became rapidly sought by the Spanish film industry while pursuing a modeling career. Obviously, she spoke English, and her presence added extra American element to any film she appeared in.  A couple of years later, she played  Wandesa Darvula de Nadasdy, to become a Spanish horror legend thereafter. The film was WEREWOLF SHADOW and its major star was Paul Naschy.

For Naschy, the money problems of LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR influenced other areas.  As he wrote in his memoirs, translated into English by Mike Hodges: “I had many things in the script that we were not able to do for lack of money, for example, the appearance of the Golem. I also had the bad luck of having to count on the worst make-up man of my entire career, Rafael Ferrer, who defrauded us all. The only good make-ups were those done by the assistants.”

 Despite this, Gene Reyes’ make-up as the mummy is superlative and the battle between his mummy and Naschy’s wolfman is one of the highlights of the film. But certainly the film’s worst makeup goes to the Italian actor, Ferdinando Murolo, playing the Frankenstein Monster, called in some versions, Farancksalan.  And truthfully, Naschy himself looks diminutive and lost around all these monsters. His name as an actor is even left out of the Spanish credits. One would hope that this absence is just a mistake and nothing more.

Aside from Michael Rennie and the main German female leads, mention must be made of Craig Hill, who played Inspector Tobermann. His rugged, lean looks and amused expression were well suited for whatever B-film or TV show he appeared in. He was married to Spanish actress Teresa Gimpera and settled in Spain, dying in Barcelona in 2014.

Astute viewers may recognize an uncredited Barbara Capell,  who would have a major role in WEREWOLF SHADOW. In this film, however, she had a small scene as a prostitute who gets killed by Daninsky when he is the wolfman. But wait...  Capell is not mentioned by name but the mysterious Barbara Muller is.

“She confessed that she belonged to a sect of Devil worshipers who met in a secret place to make diabolical invocations,” Naschy wrote in his autobiography. The actress’ German apartment, hashish and marijuana, and one would assume some physical intimacy, presaged a meeting of the worshippers at a secret location, complete with a sacrifice and blood. The disturbing incident compelled Naschy to seek a priest to expiate his sins.

LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR is certainly wacky, but charming.  Its multiple monsters, its international actors, its Spanish and West German locales (including the San Martin castle where the first Daninsky film was partly helmed), make it uniquely interesting. The current Blu-Ray, certainly in the best quality that we have seen, assures us that, while not the epic envisioned in Naschy’s mind, the film is a heartfelt homage to the monsters we know and love. And about that “night of Satan” in West Germany with Barbara “Muller,” perhaps the less said, the better....

(The two Blu-Ray captures of ASSIGNMENT TERROR are courtesy of Don Cunningham. The new awesome Blu-Ray is available from RoninFlix)

PYRO - 1963

 

One of the Spanish-helmed films produced by the American Sidney Pink (1916-2002), a director, writer and independent producer who had a varied career in the film business. Pink started out working as budget manager with Grand National Pictures in Hollywood. Eventually, he co-produced the first 3D film, BWANA DEVIL. Thereafter, other films followed. ANGRY RED PLANET, REPTILICUS, JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET, to name a few. For a while, Pink resided in Madrid, and that's when he made this film among others.

Pink brought over to Spain a couple of American actors: Barry Sullivan, Martha Hyer and Sherry Moreland. The director was the Spaniard Julio Coll, and most of the cast and crew were Spanish. Soledad Miranda has a role later in the film. Originally the film was going to be called PHANTOM OF THE FERRIS WHEEL and star Vincent Price, but a year later, in 1962, Barry Sullivan was going to star in the film, which was still called PHANTOM OF THE FERRIS WHEEL. Then a title change: COLD WIND FROM HELL. But by the time the film was released and the pressbook printed, the title was settled: PYRO. The film premiered in America in December 1963, proving that once again the IMDB is wrong on these dates. They list 1964 as the year of the film's American premiere.

In the film, attention is paid to the clothes worn. When the married Vance Pierson (Barry Sullivan) first meets the kleptomaniac and pyromaniac Laura (Martha Hyer), she is wearing red and in a couple of scenes thereafter. Very soon, perhaps too soon, Vance begins an affair with her, disregardful of the consequences. Laura's daughter, whom we see later, also wears red. Laura escapes from the vengeful and horribly disfigured Vance to a far-away location in Spain. And, amid these calm surroundings, the daughter, a product of incest, is seen gleefully starting a fire in the bushes! Hmm....

Added to this, the Miranda character has a father fixation with the elder Vance, when he makes his escape from a hospital and establishes himself as a helper in a circus.

Passion rules several lives, it seems. And life is like a Ferris wheel, and that wheel fascinates Vance...

Given these plot nuances and hints, the ending should have been more uncompromising than it is. An interesting film, certainly, but not a classic, though it could have been given a more artistic temperament. Temperament, not temperature.

EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE - 1966

Most will be seduced to see this film for the two young actresses who would later become horror genre's "scream queens" when that term was still not tarnished with overuse and inconsequence: Soledad Miranda and Ingrid Pitt.  Soledad Miranda was barely into her twenties when the movie was made, a film veteran with over ten movies to her credit, but several years away from her appearances in Jess Franco's films (notably, VAMPIROS LESBOS), which have garnered for her cult myth status in recent times. In EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE she appears rather anorexic, yet her sweet, hurtful and luminescent eyes are in their glory, and do not fail to ignite a man's eagerness to take home this wounded bird and provide her with love and vitamins. For Ingrid Pitt, this was her first film and made before future surgeries would transform her bust into a cathedral of two fearless mounds and her aquiline nose into a pert upturned affair that seemed more Scandinavian than her actual Polish-Jewish roots would have naturally allowed. As the girlfriend of one of the lesser characters, Pitt has the least significant role, but does exude the impatient sexuality so much in evidence in her better known films (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, COUNTESS DRACULA) and, frankly, does Miranda one better in a dance contest that implies, in the scene, a different result.

Seekers of watching well-known femmes in obscure films typically wind up drugging through the film itself, but this should not prove the case with EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE.  Director Jose Antonio Nieves Conde and his cast and crew knew well that they were making a B movie, "without pretensions," and set to work with a good-natured spirit of adventure and the invigorating employment of their craft.  Conde, who had been directing films since 1946, was new to horror, but opined years later that: "All directors like to film this type of story because it creates technical problems that can be only be solved with the help of genius, like in the very early days of cinema." (JOSE ANTONIO NIEVES CONDE, EL OFICIO DEL CINEASTA by Francisco Llinas, Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid, Valladolid, 1995. Translation: Mirek.) 

After unusual and effective opening credits that seem intended for an ersatz art film, the story begins in a cave, which is already a major plus for me, as caves (man's primordial sanctuary, home and arena for both dreams and nightmares of the outside and inner world) are the ancestral source for the movie theaters I used to go to: dark and cavernous and musty with well-earned age, palaces of fictions and possibilities, the places where we, too, as young ones, could take in dreams and receive nightmares so real in our imagination as to make them viable and compellingly dangerous. No horror film is as good as the one you saw as a child in such a theater, and damn the contemporary multiplexes with their antiseptic design and curtainless screens and the continual barrage of commercials and quizzes before the show begins. The sacrament of movie going has been tarnished, and your children and the progeny of the future will never know what has been lost.  We are left to recreate some of these charms at home. My palace is my home is my cave now....

Back to the review:

The screenplay voices the concerns of older men, edging closer to their own natural mortality, who wish for one last chance at the spice of life by finding the treasure that had been hidden away in the cave of their soon-to-be undoing.  War veterans, these sympathetic men find themselves facing a horror more menacing and frightening than Nazis: an invisible monster awakened by their explosives work in the cave, a supernatural being, some prehistoric animal, who gives off an awful piercing sound, the sound of horror, at the moment of attack.  Conde secures as much suspense and unease as possible from the plot and handles his duties professionally and without reproach.

The male leads--Arturo Fernandez, Antonio Casas, James Philbrook, Jose Bodalo, Francisco Piquer--are particularly solid and believable, and the venerable, craggy-faced Lola Gaos, instantly recognizable to fans of Paul Naschy's LATIDOS DE PANICO, is a welcome presence of wry folk-tale wisdom and good visual counterpoint to the beauteous duo of Miranda and Pitt.

 EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE was shot on a small budget of three million pesetas with American investment, spearheaded by Sam X. Arbarbanel, a Jersey City-born writer and producer (PREHISTORIC WOMEN, THE GOLDEN MISTRESS) who would follow the lead of Samuel Bronston and head to Spain to seek the fame and fortune that eluded him in America. Most of the special effects in the film where handled during its shooting and not in post-production, mirrors being chiefly employed to perform delusions of invisibility. (Conde claims all the effects were done on camera, but I have my doubts.) Location shooting occurred in the La Cabrera region of Madrid, and for the interiors cast and crew worked in Madrid's Samuel Bronston Studios. The musical score, important to Conde, was handled by Luis de Pablo, who at the time was investigating the sonic dimensions and emotional possibilities of electronic music.

Just a note: Several years after EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE, Nieves would helm another Spanish horrors: MARTA, a 1971 psycho thriller starring Stephen Boyd and Marisa Mell.  And keep your eye out for his far lesser known (okay, unknown) CASA MANCHADA, another effort with actor Stephen Boyd, made in 1975, which just may have horror overtones, though of the more subtle kind.

EL SONIDO DE LA MUERTE is now available as a DVD from Alpha Video under its English title and dub, SOUND OF HORROR. (Theatrically, the U.S. distributor of the film, Europix International, paired it with Mario Bava's KILL BABY KILL.) The picture quality is murky and tape-sourced, robbing the film of textures and subtlety, though such visual finesse is not important to the somber, claustrophobic mood of this film.  SOUND OF HORROR has never been available on video in good quality, so I'm thankful that this budget presentation allows others to easily view the film and appreciate it as a solid entry in the legion of atmospheric minor shockers meant to fill out double-bills in cities and towns around the world, once upon a time.

EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF - 1964

 It is becoming apparent that despite the increasing appearance of rare Jess Franco films on DVD and Blu-Ray, the cinematic world of this controversial Spanish director is going to remain somewhat elusive, even in a medium that prides itself on uncut prints and the possibility of supplements assembled from the cutting room floor. With various countries contributing finances to the small money pots that generated Franco films, a variety of hands felt free to add or subtract from these films, at times without his approval or contribution to the alteration. These days, we are seeing the release of variants of Franco’s vision, scattered parts of a larger picture that will probably always remain stubbornly uncontrolled and never fixed, much like talent that shaped it.
 
Image’s newest Jess Franco release, DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER, is a good example of this situation. Using elements provided by Eurocine, the print is actually the French variant titled, oddly, LES MAITRESSES DU DR. JEKYLL (THE MISTRESSES OF DR. JEKYLL). This version contains two problematic nude inserts, and bastardizes by their insertion the mood and emotional impact of the original—-or what may be the original, as the Spanish version, EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF, has never received a video release. To figure out what EL SECRETO probably is or was, we have to head over to the video shelf and retrieve Something Weird’s out-of-circulation tape, DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER, sourced from an American television 16mm print, English-dubbed, and obviously and unfortunately full-framed.
 
The first nude insert begins with an dreary nightclub strip by an embarrassingly Ruebenesque dancer, who is then strangled in her make-up room by the android Andros, not because of an uninspired performance, but rather because she is a sinful woman upon whom Dr. Jekyll (Dr. Fisherman in the original version) wishes to exact a cuckold’s revenge on womankind for his wife’s sexual intimacy with his own brother. The instrument of Jekyll’s vengeance is Andros, the brother, who was murdered by Jekyll and is one of the living dead now, made mobile only through Dr. Orloff’s “secret,” passed on to Dr. Jekyll at the beginning of the film. The Argentinean actor Hugo Blanco, last seen in Franco’s previous horror entry, THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS, plays Andros, but this nude insert sloppily reveals another actor reflected in a mirror, giving direction to the actress (no less!) or cursing at her, it is unclear which. Nothing of this sequence is to be found in the American DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER and one assumes in the Spanish EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF. Here, Andros audaciously enters the nightclub and wombed in its darkness and noise strangles a woman at the bar who has been designated by Dr. Fisherman for death. It is a much more effective and shocking scene than the distracting insert and unfortunately not present on the Image disc except in hasty snippets found in the two foreign trailers provided in the supplements.
 
The second nude insert distracts even more, as it disrupts the cause and effect flow of two important emotional peaks. In one, Melissa (Andros’ daughter, who doesn’t know the details of her father’s death) first sights the crusty face of her andriod father, and her screams of horror result in his frantic escape from the Fisherman house. The other emotional highpoint, a direct result of the first one, has Andros either seeking understanding or a reclamation of his true state of death, as he stands over his own grave, the backdrop of which is an expansive landscape of solitude and eternal regret, and a silent companion to the feelings of despair and suffering that are released in the tears welling in Andros’ eyes. In the French version, however, Andros somehow finds his way first to a house where a man at a piano (Franco, sans glasses and looking a bit paunchier than he did in an earlier nightclub scene) sits playing. The piano player’s girlfriend heads upstairs to take a bath and provide more visuals of female flesh uncovered. A few quick shots of a gazing Blanco are intercut here, but tellingly the Argentinean actor doesn’t share a frame with the actress, though a double does. This disruptive scene has simply no reason for being, aside from giving pleasure to the raincoat crowd that may have filled dingy movie houses in the mid-sixties when the film was theatrically shown.
 
Eurocine’s association with this EL SECRETO DEL DR. ORLOFF is not clear. In the interview that ends the BIZARRE SINEMA book dedicated to his films, Franco doesn’t mention Eurocine at all when he speaks about the production difficulties of EL SECRETO and his annoyance at the “penniless” producers, “a cooperative society which wanted to get into cinema.” So poor were these producers, Franco goes on, that he wasn’t able to acquire the services of Howard Vernon; the airfare from France was that expensive for them. I suspect Eurocine grabbed up the distribution rights some time after the film was made, and added these inserts with what seems the assistance of Franco, as his framing is chiefly evident in these scenes and he himself appears in the second insert. Franco’s apparent willingness to indulge Eurocine and mar his own work is unfortunate and speaks to a lassitude of will that sabotages integrity and determined artistic independence.

Added to the annoyance of these inserts, the French and English audio tracks vary at a few critical points. The French one calls Dr. Fisherman “Jekyll,” of course, as it must to be true to the French retitling, which prompts unintentional humor whenever such a notorious name is mentioned and no one bats an eye or does a double take. More importantly, Andros’ last line, so vital for an insight into his inner turmoil, is strikingly different in both versions!
 
What of the film, then? A worthy member of Franco’s monochrome quartet of macabre frissons (THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF, THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS, and MISS MUERTE being the other films), DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER contributes much texture to the pain and blood motif of Franco’s overall body of work, in this case the blood being one of familial and marital relationships. Given expression are the unvoiced links of the soul between father and daughter, brother and brother, husband and wife. Franco pays attention to the seemingly incomprehensive stares behind which these characters wait for some understanding, while fixated in miseries and horrid memories that can be only jolted from their stop-motion framework by a horror, swift and savage, or the eruption of painful memory deeply buried. (Ironically, all these convergences and outbursts take place during Christmastime, a time when family is traditionally a source of warmth and security and happiness.) And in Andros, that automaton so simpatico, we possibly have modern horror’s first Cesare, updated with existential bafflement and a pity for his own condition—-Andros, a victim of the age-old emotions of lust and possessiveness and the modern scientific forces that can be used as weapons of crazed retribution.
 
DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER is listed as being presented at an aspect ratio of 1:66, but on my non-anamorphic system the framing looked closer to 1:85, with the French opening credits tellingly touching the top frame border a few times. Still, the ratio used is aesthetically pleasing and presents far more image than the old SW video, so I’m not complaining. The monochrome print is in fine shape, except for the nude inserts with their occasional jitter and frequent lines. Only now, with the precise lucidity of the print and extra width was I able to recognize that the main hall of the Jekyll/Fisherman residence would turn up, with little change, as Waldemar Daninsky’s own main hall in LA MARCA DEL HOMBRE LOBO, made four years later. I suspect that further study will bring up other such links as well.
 
Uncredited liner notes by Tim Lucas once again achieve the incisive and knowledgeable clarity that hallmarks his work, though many trustees of Classic Universal Horror will undoubtedly disagree with the flattering parallel Lucas offers between Blanco’s performance as Andros and Boris Karloff’s as the Frankenstein Monster.
 
DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER was never a masterpiece, but it came close enough to the possibility of being a masterpiece, a dream of what might have been, the reveries of which can spark more fascination and yearning that any polished and perfect product. The climatic ending, a must-see for anyone serious about international horror, is a graceful tour de force of direction and cinematography at the service of a perfectly delineated idea, and can be watched again and again with no diminution in impact or feeling. This exhilarating sequence of fate and existential ache proves that when Franco has a good script and tries, he is a director of the first order. All the more regrettable his general descent in the 1970s and thereafter into the less controlled territory of voyeuristic sexual fixations, petty pulp stories and off-the-cuff hallucinogenic imagery, mandated in part by poor financing and five-page scripts. It is ironic that Jesus Franco produced some of his best work, like DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER, when the other Franco, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, kept him in line, at least in Spain. Too much freedom can sometimes be a bad thing.


Added: The Blu-Ray of this title is an embarrassment. More soon.