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Lust
For Frankenstein
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4 |
Tender
Flesh
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6 |
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SNEAK
PREVIEW
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DVD Release Date: Jan.
24, 2006
Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
The
1990s saw a rebirth of sorts for the controversial
Spanish director Jess Franco. Long a controversial
figure among film buffs — reviled by many, idolized
by others — he entered into collaboration with
fan-turned-producer Kevin Collins for a series
of shot-on-video sex and horror films. This collaboration
would prove to be, at best, a double edged sword
for Franco — on the one hand, Collins would allow
the director to do pretty much as he wanted, provided
the usual quota of sex was on display, but on
the other the production resources were so limited
that it would tax the creativity of any filmmaker
to deliver something respectable. This double
feature highlights two of the better films Franco
would make for Collins' aptly named One Shot Productions,
but even they give solid indication of why Franco
would do better to try and find backing elsewhere...
Since Lust
for Frankenstein was previously covered
by Eccentric Cinema in June of 2001 (you can read
Brian's review of the 'stand-alone' edition HERE),
we'll start off with the Disc 2 feature, Tender
Flesh.
A perverted
Count and Countess (Aldo Sambrell, Monique Parent)
lure people to their isolated home with the intent
of killing and eating them...
The latest of Franco's many
variations on the short story The Most Dangerous
Game, Tender Flesh
is far and away the most accomplished of his many
One Shot films. The story may be familiar, but
the director works in some excellent touches and
the film feels less impoverished than the ones
that would follow. There's a sense of enthusiasm
to the film that one simply does not get in his
subsequent projects for One Shot, suggesting that
the promise of creative freedom would soon dissipate.
Sensibly,
Franco plays the story for laughs. Lacking the
production facilities to really do the story justice,
the director focuses on farcical and erotic vignettes,
aiming for flat-out bad taste (nowhere so evident
as in the scene wherein Analía Ivars urinates
on camera —
this could have been faked, of course, but it
certainly looks real). Luckily, the cast
is appealing. Spaghetti Western veteran Aldo Sanbrell
(Once
Upon a Time in the West) and Franco's muse
Lina Romay (cast as a sort of procurer for the
evil Count and Countess) make for a nicely theatrical
pair of villains. Though the direct English sound
makes their heavy accents a bit of a chore to
decipher, one can tell they are enjoying themselves,
and they are successful in making their villains
interesting and compelling to watch. Luscious
Amber Newman – by far the most striking of Franco's
new 'fetish' actresses —
makes a solid impression as the doe-eyed innocent
lured into a trap; she's not the world's greatest
actress, but she handles the role well enough
and embodies an erotic presence that's beneficial
to the film. The remainder of the cast is little
more than serviceable, but luckily there is little
of the utterly atrocious thesping that would ruin
the likes of Incubus
or Vampire Junction.
It's
probably a sad indication of the depths to which
Franco has fallen since the glory days of the
'60s, '70s and early to mid '80s that this seems
like such a good film when compared to
the ones that soon followed, but taken on its
own terms, Tender Flesh
is a reasonably entertaining addition to Franco's
ever-swelling filmography.
Lust
for Frankenstein:
Moira Frankenstein
(Lina Romay) revives a lovelorn female monster
(Michelle Bauer) created by her late father...
Franco's
'comic book' Frankenstein films of the 1970s —
Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein
(1971) and The Erotic Rites
of Frankenstein (1972) —
proudly wore their allegiance to the Universal
'monster rally' pictures of the '40s on their
sleeve, while also working as kitschy, eroticized,
deeply personal updates of popular filmic conventions.
Rough around the edges, like so much of Franco's
work, they nevertheless had style and imagination
—
qualities often lacking in this particular title.
A frequently interminable mishmash of borderline
hardcore sex and dated psychedelic effects, Lust
for Frankenstein has a few touches that
point to its director's personality, but overall
it's a tough film to sit through in its entirety.
The
character of the sexually-charged but lonely female
monster recalls elements from Franco's earlier
Frankenstein pastiches, but overall the impression
is of the director going through the motions,
tossing in occasional bits of self-reference in
desperation. For all the nudity and groping, the
film is seldom erotic. In some of Franco's earlier
'sexy' titles, this seems to be a deliberate approach,
a means of playing with the conventions of the
sex film; here it seems out of step with what
the film is actually trying to achieve. Much of
the would-be titillation simply drags on and on,
with only Bauer's portrayal of wanton lust registering
as truly committed. Amber Newman, the stunning
starlet featured in Tender
Flesh, makes a welcome appearance as an
exotic dancer who succumbs to Moira's experiments,
but her role is much too small. Franco's continued
focus on Romay's raw sensuality is, in a sense,
a touching testimonial to how central the actress
has become to his very existence, but she simply
no longer has the physique to really pull off
(no pun intended) the various erotic interludes
in which she participates.
Nevertheless,
amid all the repetitious groping and sub-par hallucinogenic
imagery, there are some nuggets of inspiration
to be found. Franco's depiction of the lovelorn
monster is interesting while keeping in step with
Mary Shelley's original concept. The laughable
makeup job recalls the impoverished look of the
monster in Franco's earlier Frankenstein pictures,
thus placing the creature in a comic book context.
Bauer's performance ably captures the creature's
pent-up sexual frustration, and if the makeup
obscures her glamorous image, she still conveys
a palpable sense of the erotic. Franco's relentlessly
experimental direction creates some striking images,
but he overdoes the digital effects mercilessly;
if viewers of his earlier films found his use
of the zoom lens objectionable, it is here replaced
by a relentless use of these digital effects,
distorting the image and painting the frame with
hyper-stylized splashes of color. The impression
is one of extreme experimentation, some of which
works, most of which doesn't. Flawed as the film
is, however, it at least has some points of interest,
something that can't necessarily be said of the
One Shot productions that would follow.
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Shock-O-Rama Cinema's upcoming double feature
release of Lust for Frankenstein/Tender
Flesh essentially ports the same single
disc editions into an affordably-priced two-disc
set. The transfers look as good as the source
materials will allow. Both films were shot on
digital video, and neither is especially well
photographed, but the mastering is satisfactory
save for some occasional pixelation issues. Both
films are completely uncut. Censorship and/or
re-cutting don't seem to have affected Tender
Flesh, but a shorter U.S. version of Lust
for Frankenstein was previously made available
here in the States. This edited version essentially
cuts away a lot of the film's excess fat, but
completists will want to have the full-length
version. Shock-O-Rama have provided both cuts,
however, leaving it up to the viewer to decide
which version they would rather watch. The stereo
English soundtracks were crudely recorded on set,
and the heavy accents are sometimes hard to make
out; the instances of English looping often utilize
inappropriately florid English accents and stand
out in booming relief against the tinny on set
sound recording. The tracks are inevitably limited
by the crude technology used to create them but
are otherwise in good shape, with music coming
through loud and clear. Extras include a most
welcome photo shoot with Newman, behind the scenes
footage of Franco at work on both films, a Michelle
Bauer interview, and incisive liner notes by Scooter
McCrae.
1/10/06
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