For Eurocult filmmaker Jess Franco, bless him, the opposite seems true. Some of his earliest films, such as The Awful Doctor Orloff (Gritos en la noche, 1962) and especially The Diabolical Dr. Z (Miss Muerte, 1966), are fairly interesting, kind of sub-Mario Bava exercises in Continental horror. By the end of the 1960s, during his higher-profile association with producer Harry Alan Towers, Franco's direction suddenly seemed to get much worse. Films like The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968) are irredeemably shoddy, incompetent and incomprehensible, notable for their restless - and frequently out-of-focus - zoom shots, sloppy editing, and baffling compositions. By the turn of the century the prolific Franco, now inching toward 200 feature credits since making his debut in 1957, has fallen so far creatively that his work is indistinguishable from run-of-the-mill porn. If his earliest films resembled Bava on an off day, then his recent work barely rises above that of bottom-feeder Ron Ford (Deadly Scavengers, May Day). Faint praise indeed.

All this leads to a kind of confession: This reviewer snapped up the chance to review Snakewoman after looking the title up on Amazon, where it's still (as this review was posting) listed as a 1961 production. Figuring Early Franco=Fair-to-Good, Late Franco=Awful-to-Unwatchable it seemed like a safe bet. But, alas, Amazon was wrong: Snakewoman is practically brand-new, a 2005 straight-to-video production that's about as much fun as a hot poker in the eye.

Shot in his native Spain, Snakewoman's "plot" most closely resembles that singularly Indonesian sub-genre of Snake Woman movies, though stories about sexually alluring woman with snake-like characteristics is common to many cultures, and it's used here merely as an excuse for long and allegedly erotic soft-core scenes of lesbian sex laced with something like horror. Carla (Carmen Montes?) works at a publishing house and on assignment to secure the rights to '40s Hungarian actress-singer, only to come face-to-fangs with the Snakewoman (Christine Levin), nude save for requisite Dracula cape.

The technical innovations of digital camcorders, which now enable even the most inept amateur videographers to keep shots stable and in focus have barely impacted director Franco, who still manages to make Snakewoman look far worse than it need be. The video is very dark with bad contrast, so that the dark-haired Carla's face is barely discernable in some shots. Franco's love affair with the zoom lenses remains unabated, though the automatic zoom button does result in steadier zooms than those found in his older films. The story moves at a glacier pace; everyone seems to walk in slow-motion, and Franco's penchant for meaningless cutaways turns up here in the form of endless shots of migratory birds.

Some dialogue was obviously looped in post-production, while other scenes use live sound that's just awful.

Video & Audio

Snakewoman is presented in its original full frame format with non-removable yellow subtitles (co-written by Franco regular and collaborator Lina Romay). As mentioned earlier the photography ranges from fair to awful, and overall the video seems dark but this seems to be deliberate on the part of the filmmaker, not the result of a bad transfer. The audio is amateurish.

Extra Features

Supplements include a Still Gallery featuring a handful of equally dark production photographs, and Trailers for two other Sub Rosa titles.

Included is an entire second feature, also directed by Franco, the aptly-named Dr. Wong's Virtual Hell (1999) which, incredibly, is even worse than Snakewoman. This reviewer cried uncle after just 13 minutes.

Parting Thoughts

Those who champion Jess Franco as some great auteur should be stranded on a desert island with this misbegotten double-bill. Fortunately, the rest of us have the option to Skip It.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.