A Virgin Among The Living Dead

A Virgin Among The Living Dead directed by Jess Franco, Starring Jess Franco (1973).

In Florida, there was a convenient store that played a huge part in my journey from adolescence to manhood. It all happened at the corner news stand, where I used to purchase all my porn mags. This was in the dark ages or possibly the last thread of sanity before every chucklehead had a social media soapbox to blab about their opinions on the Internet and everyone craved their dopamine fix on a second by second basis plus no internet porn yet. Ahhh--how I long for a massive unplugging, me being a die hard Luddite and all (who typed this out on his labtop,SHHHHH). Corner News stand had a little video store section of big box videos like the H.G. Lewis ones, random Eurotrash and that’s where I first saw the cover art for this Jess Franco turd, this may have been the beginning of my repulsion or accidental enjoyment of this director’s catalog. Franco and Naschy fans have the same kind of touchy sense of humor and take this shit waay too seriously. I mean it's goofy monsters and lesbian vampires, lighten up people! The Deep Red catalog had a couple of titles featured and usually they were begrudgingly recommended in a snickering way, which I totally understand.  

There was an article in Fango most likely penned by Tim Lucas that peaked my interest, mainly because there were some scantily clad babes and that magazine kept it pretty squeaky clean. This was back in the days where you had to really be an underground hardcore trader to see his work and pay a shit load for a VSOM copy or get super lucky to have an off the beaten path video store that served your cult movie needs. I was in none of these categories and come to think of it still too young to buy adult reading material, but years later I would return.

the grill marks mean extra batin'.

The first time I laid eyes on this Jess Franco pile of shit with an epic big box cover art showing a gruesome assortment of horn dog corpses that looked Bernie Wrightson-esque (RIP Bernie) and Michael Jackson’s "Thriller" as well. They were all exploding with lust to defile one chick! Now even Weng’s Chop or Tim Lucas (aka Thee Franco-fanatics) would be hard pressed to tell you that what’s inside lives up to this cover art! Actually they most likely will but I’m not convinced. According to VHS Collector Paul J. Zamarelli, the Wizard box cover art was done by Spataro. I couldn't find that much on the subject of this artist but I did notice Charles Band is selling autographed posters of the Wizard artwork, what gives him the right to claim ownership over something he didn't paint? What else is new with that guy though?

Franco's work gives me that feature of opening a can of SpaghettiOs and thinking for nostalgia's sake that I might enjoy this and sometimes it happens, but I immediately regret this decision. Nothing in my mind has lived up to his witch burning sacrilegious shit like Love Letters or The Bloody Judge. I use this site as a PSA against "the unwatchables" (to coin the Greg Goodsell term), so you don’t have to bother suffering. If you're a Franco-holic though you are a glutton for punishment.

you know I added the horse meat balls to Franco-American Spaghetti in a can, right?

Instead of Lina Romay and her fuzzy vagina, we get to see Christina von Blanc's pubic hair in see through panties--excited yet? She takes a little road trip to a creepy castle where Uncle Howard Vernon (starring as himself apparently) is banging out tunes on a piano. He's rocking a 70's coked out disco shirt and mussed hair look. Britt Nichols is pretty hot though as the perpetually smoking blond, she has that greased up look of the Fassbinder James Mansfield-esque actress Barbara Valentin, who was also in Horrors of Spider Island.

I'm so ganked up on krell!

After lots of zoom ins of people smoking and one girl keeling over and dying, von Blanc takes a dip in a lily pad covered pond that looks like the one featured in Zombie Lake (I'm already feeling the effects of PTSD from that shit flick). A bunch of old pervs drool over her and seem to be geriatric zombies or cannibals. If she was surrounded by old dudes on the cover leering with their pants down I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place, I blame that god damn video cover art that drew me in like a stupid moth to a bug zapper. Some of the cemetery villagers are played by Paul Muller, who later showed up in Dog Lay Afternoon and Antonio de Cabo who has the hugest unibrow I've ever seen. This actor later showed up in Mandingo Manhunter and stopped acting in 1983.

I love our new urban forest cannabis dispensary. 

I get the feeling that they gave Franco the skeleton key to a cool castle, he suckered some babes to roll around in melted crayon blood splatter and he cobbled this into some incoherent sleaze. For some reason it works for me when Jean Rollin does it. I wasn't expecting much from the lucky chicken egg director (don't know what I'm talking about read my review for Faceless http://www.theaterofguts.com/2014/06/faceless.html).

The score is pretty uneventful by the usually superb Bruno Nicolai, it sounds like the Tobe Hooper Chainsaw pots and pans over the quiet noodling parts of Moonchild by King Crimson.
There's some hideous looking dudes to look forward to, snaggly teeth, caterpillar brows--a regular fugg-fest! Interested? Go on get out of here ya weirdo!

AVAILABLE ON SHUDDER.

The Female Vampire

The Female Vampire (Erotikill, Bare breasted Countess, The Loves of Irina) Directed By Jess Franco (1973). 

Lina Romay (Franco's main lady and protagonist) sure knows how to accessorize--I mean that Dracula cape, boots and belt-- is a fashion statement that could really turn heads this Halloween! So yeah-- Jess Franco, one of my least favorite directors is back here on TOG! Why may you ask am I bothering to review The Female Vampire, because in the catalog under the title Erotikill (which I fondly remember seeing as a big box at my favorite video/convenient store in Florida). Chas promises "spunk sucking vampire perverts", which sound as repulsive as you'd imagine. What obligated me to watch it, was that it's available on Netflix instant and its high time I subject myself to more Jess Franco torture (even thought I suffer from Franco-phobia)!

Aubrey Plaza in This Ain't Parks and Rec XXX.

   You can't ask for a better opening (pun intended) than a furry vampire lady crotch thrust into the camera--am I right? As inviting as those luscious lips may appear, whatever you do, don't let her suck your dick, because she will gnaw it off and you will instantly die!
  

   Erotikill, as it is called in the catalog or The Female Vampire is the tale of Irina, a bloodsucking lesbian mute connected to The Karnstein legacy. Carmilla by Sherdan Le Fanu is very influential on some of the most gore soaked and sexually explicit Hammer Films and Blood Spattered Bride (which I've previously reviewed). It's kind of silly how they spell it Karlstein with an "L", maybe they didn't get permission or something. Franco and Rollin basically owe their entire careers to that filthy little lesbian vampire novella and always draw from the same well. 

OK we're here for the audition Mr. Abrams

   Lina Romay has one fuzzy bikini line and doesn't wear pants for most of the film--excited? If I were a twelve year old discovering this on late night Skin-A-Max, I would be beside myself. I just imagine Franco peddled this movie to different lurid producers by pulling them aside and offering his wife's cooch as part of the deal and by the end of this flick, you may never want to see it again!

BURP....Why did I eat 40 hotpockets before this scene?

   Jess shows up in one of his famous cameo roles as an Inspector, for some reason his disheveled pudginess reminds me of a beatnik Paul Williams. He mentions how Countess Karlstein blew the chickenplucker and murdered him in that bizarre fashion.

Lina's fuzzy pussy is shown off so much, it should have gotten a separate acting credit! 

   Inspector Franco ventures to Maderia where a blind fellow who looks like a collegiate version of Lemmy from Motorhead helps him solve the mystery of the pantless crotch biter.

There's scene toward the end where he grabs a hairy handfull of squawk and solves the mystery right then and there. For a vampire flick, this is a drip dry bloodless affair. Even though there's barely a plotline, its oddly fascinating in its shear stupidity.

Get me my agent (says the vagina)!

   The Countess has a crush on her journalist friend Anna and begins to haunt her. Anna's body has pock marks and weird veiny nipples-its pretty gross! In fact the sex scene they both participate in is hideous (seminal fluid dribbles from Lina's mouth)!

   Sometimes the jazzy music sounds like Vincent Guaraldi- the Charlie Brown guy.

A John Holmes looking fellow played by Jack Taylor (Pieces, Conan The Barbarian), periodically shows up through out the film want to know the secrets of being a vampire. 

He gets that fatal crotch bite soon enough. 

   An abrupt scene with butch sadomasochists happens that doesn't really add much to the film (unless you like to see ugly women have gross sex). I've read that there exists a hardcore porn insert version, which I'd imagine projectile vomiting as soon as I popped the cassette into the VCR!

Pay no attention to those fart bubbles

   It all ends with the Countess taking a Bathory type red bath while bobbing her merkin up and down as the camera gynecologically zooms in and out. This movie is completely idiotic, very trashy, has no redeeming qualities and yet it still kind of works. I have no idea, why I enjoyed the film, its really dumb but I know Franco-philes will love it. It's reprehensible unabashed garbage! Watch it now before Netflix figures out they are carrying erotica. Fandor is aware of what they carry and is behind this kind of content, they are the cult film Netflix.

WATCH ON NETFLIX INSTANT

OR ON FANDOR

Faceless

Faceless Directed By Jess Franco, starring Telly Savalas (1987).

If you've read enough of this blog then you may be able to tell, I don't like Jess Franco (you might say I suffer from Franco-phobia). I mean he produces some major boring shit and it's a miracle if I can stay awake through any of his films. My distaste for his work started with Vampyros Lesbos (1971), I thought there may be something wrong, there's that ultra groovy score, hot lesbian babes, so why am I so bored out of my mind? An inner struggle began that led me to believe I had probably started out with the wrong entry into the Jess Franco mythos. So I attempted to watch The Awful Dr. Orloff with similar sleep inducing results, but I finally hit paydirt with The Bloody Judge, Skunkape over-sold Bloody Moon (which I half liked) and Portuguese Nun (which was an excellent film). There's so much output in the Franco cannon that even a jaded narrow minded snob like me is bound to find a lucky egg in the chicken vending machine!

  

    It took me 5 tries before I was able to stomach Faceless, I would eventually succumb to a Franco induced fit of narcolepsy--his movies have that effect on me. I'm still not sure if I really enjoyed this very erotic French version of The Bold and The Beautiful with Telly Savalas and Caroline Munro, but it sure was entertaining and smothered in a copious layer of sleaze!

   It opens with the cheesiest George Michael ripoff stylings of Vincenzo Thoma, his abysmal tune "Destination Nowhere" is played so much throughout the film that it makes you want to go under the knife for a lobotomy.

OK Liz Renay I hope you enjoy your new face

   Helmut Berger (Beast with a Gun, Salon Kitty) is the mad surgeon "Orloff" archetype, Dr. Flamand. Franco has remade his own Orloff film so many times it's hard to tell if he's stealing from himself or Georges Franju's Eyes Without A Face. While in a parking garage, Frank (Berger), his wife (Christiane Jean) and Nathalie (played by the stunningly attractive Jean Rollin regular and former porn star Brigette Lahaie) get attacked by a disfigured former patient. Acid is thrown at the doctor but it narrowly misses him and splashes onto his wife's quickly dissolving face! This becomes the major plot device of Faceless, which involves a musclebound brow-less henchman carrying a high powered brain drill, kidnappings and former Nazi's goose stepping in to help the wacky Doctor's wife achieve a full blown face transplant.

Do you know if this office has a bathroom?

   Telly Savalas's fashion model daughter played by Caroline Munro is captured by Flamand's helper Nathalie, who lures the sexy drug-fiend into her limo with cocaine. Munro ends up in a rubber room and gets raped by Gordon (Gerard Zalcberg), a brainless lunkhead with no eyebrows. One patient at the clinic gets a hypo shoved into her eyeball, I was scratching my head as to how they achieved that effect, it looked very realistic!

She was like that when I got here

Chris Michum (who has his father's exact werewolf hairline and forehead) is sent on the case to track down Telly's daughter. I'm always glad to see Robert Michum's sons appear in the most decked out euro-trash, Chris's brother was even in Amir Shirvan's Hollywood Cop. 

   Howard Vernon makes a cameo appearance like he does in every Franco film, playing--who else--but Dr. Orloff! He tips them off to a Nazi surgeon who will perform the operation. There are some hidden nods to art-house fare sluicing around in this pile of flashy grime. The Nazi surgeon is played by the Anton Diffring from the 1960 classic Circus Of Horrors, which is a deliberate bit of inspired casting!

They pay me in Bologna sandwiches and Coffee off the craft services table

   It all ends on a sour note as all the Aryan surgeons rip through innocent facial tissue and toss the used female corpses away like Der Weinerschnitzel wrappers.
   We've reviewed another film, Mansion Of The Doomed that basically reinvents the Eyes With Out a Face plotline. I won't say I liked that one more than this, but at least the criminals were given their just desserts! The ending in Faceless is pretty hardcore and very cynical, all the guilty surgeons toast to their own success and get to celebrate! The people that attempt to shutdown the Nazis ultimately fail and Franco leaves it open ended, but don't look for Faceless 2: The Search for more Cocaine anytime soon!
   The Shriek Show Dvd looks flawless and vibrant compared to the third generation dupe I had to suffer through in the 90's. This film was meant to be seen with all its high glossiness intact. I enjoyed it for what it was this time, a trashy slick piece of entertaining schlock.

RECOMMENDED FOR SLEAZY TRASH HOUNDS ONLY! 

He's a sleep farter, it's a major problem

Once you date Joe Spinell, you're ruined for life 

the illegitimate son of Jason Alexander and Lou Ferrigno

Scrape up these meat trimmings and sell them to Arby's 

BUY HERE
      

Requiem For A Vampire

Requiem For A Vampire (Caged Virgins) Directed By Jean Rollin, Starring Marie-Pierre Castel (1971).

The perfect way to start off your French vampire movie is with a clown shoot out car chase, but of course what can you expect from an accomplished professional like Jean Rollin, I mean the guy is no slouch. There's a huge debate among Eurotrash horror fanatics who pit Jess Franco and Rollin against each other (As you'll read, I almost despise Franco and it's a miracle if I'm able to stay awake during his bullshit). This film was sold in the U.S. as Caged Virgins because the distributor thought "Requiem, what the fuck is that"? Call it something different!

Eat a dick, Marcel Marceau

   It begins with two female clowns, who burn up their car with gasoline and head off to the "water chateau" which is what their partner in crime croaked just before his death.

Rollin has a style of tranquility and foreboding that registers as interesting, unlike Franco, whose tedium always makes want to turn off the T.V. and go to sleep.
   The ladies wipe off their makeup and ride off on a motorcycle, there's clumsy jump-cuts of the grease paint hitting the water. Bad mojo starts following the girls in the form of giant vampire bats, open graves and a mysterious castle. There's about two sentences of dialogue, but its all fun to watch and I can't explain why, it's just a fondness that I have for Rollins work. The girls enter the same ominous cobblestone castle from all of the director's films.

get used to this shot, you'll be seeing it alot

   They strip and make out on a blue shag quilt that looks as if it's made from muppet hair and

for split second they bump into creepy shit, like a severed arm poking out of wall and a funky lady vampire playing a pipe organ.

Dime store magic effects put to epic atmospheric use

   The girls are both armed (because apparently they are seasoned criminals) and waste alot of bullets never hitting any targets! Haven't they seen any Hammer films? The undead are immune to conventional weapons, I'm not an avid Rollin watcher and can't remember if he uses all of the entrapments associated with vampire destruction, this guy makes his own laws concerning Nosferatu lore. 

   The ladies flee in disgust, but have unfortunately attracted the satanic sect (who were always lurking in the dark forrest) and are followed into the graveyard.

This is the only sort of being laid Mr. Roper could ever enjoy, away from Mrs. Roper

   A mop-topped vampire shrouded in green light appears, it seems implied that he's the leader (but there's no dialogue to convey this) he looks like Mr. Roper from Threes Company!

 Some non vampiric, ogre-like henchman molest nude girls in chains as real giant bats hop around, one even attaches itself to a vagina!

Sorry we soiled this official Sesame Street Grover skinned quilt 

 
As a groovy organ number plays, there are tons of shots with the two girls looking into the camera as it pans in, there's an essential CD of all of Jean's soundtrack songs put out by finders keepers called The B-Music Of Jean Rollin.

 

Ooga chaka Ogre finally got some hair pie

 
   Another vampire boss tells the girls to lure in victims with their virginal qualities and that eventually they will not be able to withstand the sunlight, it will soon burn them like a typical creature of the night.

You're the coolest Marc Bolin

 
   I thought they were being cute when they described the two girls as virgins (because they were seen having lesbian sex, which doesn't count apparently in France). But Ok, I'll go with this inaccuracy for the sake of the plot, because one girl disturbs the entire operation by sleeping with a man. I guess the aspect of sleeping with a man registers as a textbook non-virgin, there's too many semantics going on for me to over analyze it. I always thought that sex period, equals non virgin, but what the hell do I know?

Second Amendment Right Three's Company

 
   This act of betrayal causes her lover and partner to whip her to get information on where the man is hidden. Also it causes the vampire sect to lose interest in continuing the cycle of their blood line using the two girls and they are able to escape, but obviously their friendship and companionship is strained.  
   This was close, but nothing will top my favorite film of his career, Living Dead Girl. That may be because it was the first one I ever saw and there were arial sprays of blood, I thought Shiver of The Vampires was amazing too.

That's pretty harsh and not very glitter rock!

   Goat Scrote and I recently had a serious discussion about Franco and Rollin and it boiled down to basically there are two camps of horror fans, you either love one lesbian vampire director or the other.
Franco vs. Rollin, the debate will continue, I can't honestly explain why I don't want to pull my hair out at the end of a Jean Rollin film and I can't justify the boredom either. As for Jess Franco, I must be either heavily intoxicated or it's just a goddamned entertaining film that wins me over (two cases featured on this site are Mandingo Manhunter and Eugenie: Sex Happening).

Fun for a typical Lesbian Vampire movie

Mandingo Manhunter

EL CANNIBAL (Devil Hunter, Mandingo Manhunter) Directed by Jess Franco Starring Al Cliver (1980).

If I can get through a Franco flick, it must be good, because most of his work I find as enjoyable as eating a liverwurst and sardine sandwich! I have no idea whether this is his first cannibal film or not, but you never start in the jungle and rapidly intercut to Western civilization (or in this case badly dubbed ear splittingly loud pseudo Americans). You have to enter the Amazon jungle by way of the concrete one, that's the pattern that most of the "Jungle Adventure series" follow. Franco decides to chuck caution out the window and go backwards. Everything is bright and sunny, so I chose to review this over shot on shitt-io fare that I had on my "to watch later" list. 

   A blonde model named Laura Crawford (Ursula Buchfellner) goes through her daily casual lifestyle as savages putter around in their domain, will both world's collide, most definitely! 

Me and Kermit the Frog have the same ping pong eyesballs

   A googly-eyed African zombie, skulks around the green brush as the sexy blonde takes a bubblebath. He watches as tribesman get to business, over by a comically goofy tiki statue that looks like it would be on sale at Big Lots. The bugged eyed African makes overly breathy noises, like Darth Vader with crippling asthma. 

Gwyneth Paltrow hostage crisis

   All becomes diarrhea in a relaxing tub, as the Barbie doll is abducted by men in nylon face masks with knock-out spray. Meanwhile in the jungle, the big "wobbly eyed" kahuna is busy biting chunks out of girl flesh and gnashing his teeth straight into the camera.

   One character named Chris (Werner Pochath) comically swears, ("Flower shit!) while he clenches his teeth, he always plays an effeminate loose cannon in Italian horror in such films as Terror Express and Ratman. He emotes like Butch Patrick crossbred with Jim J. Bullock  and isn't above carving up the trapped model (who miraculously shows up in the jungle, did she teleport)???

   Peter Weston is played by the thick mustachioed Al Cliver (but is unfortunately not voiced by his usual guy, Ed Mannix). He needs to pay a ransom to make sure his model gets out of the jungle in one piece.

I'm here to class up the joint, everybody can relax now!

   Pete brings a helicopter with a blubbering Nam Vet who whimpers in a phony gangster voice, that he's having flashbacks, he seems like a perfect jungle helper to bring along to an ambush, right? His voice actor sounds like he recorded his muffled dialogue wearing a frogman mask! Sometimes the screen looks hazy for no apparent reason. They fire at Al  and he does a series of somersaults in the same shooting range over a pile of rocks that never seem to affect him. 

there's a melted fruit role-up stuck to my face!

   There's a bunch of jungle filler and one dude freaks out after he finds a severed head, that falls on him. Pete and his pal (who's voice gets more cartoonish) find a topless babe on a boat, who tells them about the cannibals on the island. It turns out that they are just as crooked as the abductors and only care about money, not Laura's safety. Some of the voice actors sound like Lancelot Link Secret Chimp!

We gotta start the Evolution Revolution

   After Laura is knocked out, the natives start to get her ready for a mating ritual and molest her a bit, then comes the best part of any Jess Franco film, a huge beaver shot!

   The cannibal with the protruding oculars, climbs on the boat then snaps the neck of Al Cliver's buddy, the noise sounds like a socket wrench. He also pulls the intestines out of the boat babe and feasts on them, like they are covered in barbecued sriracha! The final fight between Cliver and the cannibal (who has one of the worst cases of micro-phallus) is pretty hilarious!

Who you callin tiny johnson?

   As retarded as the movie was, it totally works and was surprisingly fun, it needed those flaws to elevate it above a typically painful Franco trash-fest! I'm glad I stuck it out and thankfully, there were none of the usual bit players that pollute his other efforts (like his wife, or Howard Vernon)! Cliver and many of the characters with ridiculously over the top voice actors really made it worth while!

   I remember seeing the scantily clad blonde in an issue of Fangoria about the director, that was pretty exciting back in the scrambled Playboy channel days of my youth.

Highly Recommended for a terrible movie that's more fun then you'd expect!

WATCH HERE