The Movie:

A French-Spanish co-production released by trash film mavens Eurocine in 1976, Devil's Kiss (which is also known as The Wicked Caress Of Satan, the title that appeared on the print used for Something Weird Video's VHS release from back in the day) is, in a word, goofy.

Essentially what was, when it was made, an attempt to update the classic Italian gothic horror films that proved popular in the sixties, the film takes place, of course, at an old ornate castle conventionally located in the middle of nowhere. Duke de Haussemont (José Nieto), the man who owns the joint, brings in a medium named Claire Grandier (Silvia Solar) to hold a séance in the old building as part of the entertainment required for a fashion show that he's involved with. She arrives with Professor Gruber (Olivier Mathot), a scientist involved in some bizarre experiments who also happens...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Written and directed by Christian Marnham in 1981 and set in the rural English town of Kent in 1966, The Orchard End Murder follows a pretty and very ‘mod' looking young woman from the suburbs named Pauline Cox (Tracy Hyde) who, when we met her, is making out with her cricket playing boyfriend in an apple orchard. When her boyfriend cuts the make out session short so that he can get back to the team, she wanders away from the match down the road a bit where she spies a quirky garden full of gnomes and funny little statues. The garden surrounds the house of the town's hunchbacked station master (Bill Wallis), who invites her in to have a look and then to stay for a cup of tea.

The conversation gets odd when he insists that she touch his hump for good luck, and odder still when his behemoth of a lodger, a simple-minded handyman type named Ewan (Clive Mantle), thrusts...Read the entire review

It seems every time I review a movie directed by Jess Franco, a boilerplate preface of sorts is in order. In recent years some critics have become enamored of the late filmmaker's prodigious output, some 160-200 features (no one seems to know for sure) which began as an assistant director in Spain in the mid-1950s and lasted until his death in 2013, with his final work, Revenge of the Alligator Ladies, released posthumously. For the last dozen or so years of his life Franco had been reduced to features shot on video rather than film, titles like Dr. Wong's Virtual Hell and The Killer Barbys vs. Dracula, genre exploitation sometimes bordering on porn, the kind of thing Ed Wood would likely have been making were he still around.

But even long before that, Franco's career trajectory seemed to be going in the opposite direction of most filmmakers. Most great directors start out well...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Movie:

Jess Franco's 1996 film Killer Barbys introduces us to a punk band called The Killer Barbies and their manager Mario (Charlie S. Chaplin) who are on the way to their latest show. They decide to take a short cut and, of course, their van breaks down. How could it not? With nowhere else to go, they head towards the creaky old castle that lies not too far away. Here they meet Arkan (Aldo Sambrell), the assistant to the castle's resident, Countess Olga Fledermaus (Maria Angela Giordano). He invites them in to stay for the night.

Flavia (Sylvia Superstar) and her boyfriend Rafa (Carlos Subterfuge) accept the hospitality, as does Mario while Billy (Billy King) and Sharon (Angie Barea) decide to better use their new found alone time to get more intimately acquainted with one another in the back of the van. Not surprisingly, the band members quickly learn that all is not a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As Jess Franco's 1972 film La fille de Dracula (or, if you prefer, Dracula's Daughter) opens, we're told by way of some narration that Castle Karlstein was once the home of none other than the notorious Count Dracula himself. When some murders take place in the surrounding town, Inspector Ptsuschko (Alberto Dalbes) ignores the locals, most of whom seem to think that the murders tie into the castle's history. Coincidently enough, around the same time that these murders occur, a beautiful young woman named Luisa Karlstein (Britt Nichols) arrives, to take up residence in the castle and visit her mother, Baroness Karlstein (Carmen Carbonell), who is not long for this world. As the last direct descendent Count Karlstein (Daniel White), Luisa is all set to inherit the castle and all of the secrets that it holds! As such, the Baroness gives Luisa the key to the family ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Today's lesson is "You can't judge a book by its cover," or more aptly: "You should make sure to Google a few details about a movie before you take on the assignment of reviewing it."

When I saw the moody black-and-white cover art for Mai-chan's Daily Life: The Movie -- Bloody Carnal Residence and saw that it was being put out by the Redemption label, I figured it must be some strange artsy/sexy/violent flick from the '60s or '70s like so much of what the label puts out. Not so. Mai-chan's Daily Life is a brand-new adaptation of Waita Uziga's infamous (not famous, infamous) 2004 manga within the ero guro or "erotic grotesque" sub...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Crimson (also known as The Man With The Severed Heard, Rats Come Out At Night and Crimson: The Color Of Terror and Crimson: The Color Of Blood), was directed by Juan Fortuny in 1973 for notorious European trash cinema house Eurocine. Those familiar with Eurocine's output (which includes films like Zombie Lake and A Virgin Among The Living Dead to name only two of their better known films) will have a rough idea of what to expect here.

The film stars Spanish horror stalwart Paul Naschy as Jack Surnett who leads a small but tough gang of thieves on a break and enter at a fancy jewelry store in Paris. Things quickly head south when one of his crew, Karl (Victor Israel) makes a mistake that will quickly prove fatal. The crew makes a run for it with the cops in hot pursuit and shortly thereafter, Jack gets shot in the head. The r...Read the entire review

When you review over a hundred films in a year, it's inevitable that you will see films you're indifferent to, dislike, or even hate (in fact, I just saw a bad film for review on the day that I write this, aside from the films in this set). Still, other than films where a negative reaction is more ideological than aesthetic, or those where the characters make agonizingly stupid choices (generally causing one to yell at the screen in frustration), the absolute worst kinds of films are the ones you're simply bored to tears by, the ones where each passing moment is another few feet in an ocean of tedium you're trying your best to swim across.

I did not know who Pete Walker was before taking this set. Now, I've reviewed films from the Redemption line by directors such as Read the entire review

British Director Pete Walker (b. 1939) is remembered today primarily for the sadistic horror movies he made during the 1970s, during and after once-thriving companies like Hammer, Tigon, and Amicus had all but stopped making slightly more classical pictures. Walker's, with titles like Die Screaming, Marianne (1971), House of Whipcord (1974), House of Mortal Sin (1976), and Schizo (1976), were famously sleazy despite some obvious intelligence behind them.

It comes as a surprise then that, despite a title suggestive of the sexploitation films Walker made earlier in his career, Home Before Midnight (1978) is in fact a fairly serious, even ambitious drama, though it does make some concessions to the marketplace as it features a few gratuitous sex scenes and a fair amount of female nudity.

Mostly though, Home Before Midnight is an interesting, engrossing film ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Pete Walker, after leaving sexploitation for horror, made a few memorable shockers in his time before going into early retirement at the age of 41 in 1982 and while maybe Frightmare and The House Of Whipcord are his best remembered, few are as well made as The Confessional (how it was released on DVD years back by Media Blasters), better known under its alternate title, The House Of Mortal Sin (how it's been reissued now that it's with Redemption/Kino).

The film follows one Jenny Lynch (Susan Penhaligon) who heads out to an ornate old Catholic Church one day to meet up with Father Bernard (Norman Eshley), who she has been friends with for years, and to give confession. When she arrives, she finds that Bernard is out and so instead she winds up giving her confession to Father Xavier (Anthony Sharp). During her confession she admits to having some...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet and released theatrically in 1970, Eden And After is one of the stranger films in the filmmaker's already bizarre filmography. The beginning of the film is centered around the appropriately titled Eden Café, a coffee house that attracts a crowd of art students who seem to appreciate its anti-social sensibilities. A sign hangs on the wall encouraging patrons to ‘drink blood' which contrasts with the Coca-Cola symbols painted across the glass windows. Here these students indulge their base desires and play ‘games' with names like ‘poison' and ‘rape.'

An interruption in their oddly ritualistic playtime occurs when a man known only as The Dutchman (Pierre Zimmer) enters the café intent on teaching them a game that he learned himself during his travels to Africa. First he has a one of the art students pick up deadly s...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The third feature film written and directed by French auteur Alain Robbe-Grillet (and made the year after the success of his classic Trans-Europ Express, 1968's The Man Who Lies once again reunites the director with leading man Jean-Louis Trintignant. Though he's shot in the opening credits sequence that takes place during the Second World War, we soon meet him as Boris, a man who has returned to the small French village where he tells anyone who will listen that he bravely fought in the Resistance. The villagers already have a war hero of their own, however, and that would be Jean Robin (also played by Trintignant), a man who was killed by the Germans during the occupation.

Nevertheless, Boris makes his way into the stately castle where Jean's father lives and works as a servant. Here he meets three beautiful women: the late soldier's widow, his sister and t...Read the entire review

The Movie:
There's nothing quite like a good gothic movie, with its eerie atmosphere, lush sets, hints of melodrama and scandal. Hammer was the exemplar as far as studios that put this out, but other folks did too. One slightly less well known example, re-released by Redemption, is The Black Torment, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis.

The film starts off in high gear, with a young woman running through the woods in terror, pursued by a murky figure. It turns out later that she was raped and murdered, and called out a name before she died. That name was Richard Fordyke (John Turner), though he claims he was days away from the family estate, in London, with his new bride Elizabeth (Heather Sears) at the time of the killing. Nevertheless, when he returns a few weeks after the death, the locals are very suspicious of him.

Richards's father, Sir Giles (Joseph Tomelty), has suffered a ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

For 1967's loopy Trans-Europ-Express, the French novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet constructed a self-referential thriller with Jean-Louis Trintingnant (Amour) as a brooding drug-runner obsessed with a) trusting no one, and b) beautiful women in bondage.

Arriving a bit late for the French New Wave party, Trans-Europ-Express nevertheless stands out for its playful film-within-a-film structure. In addition to writing and directing, Robbe-Grillet cast himself onscreen as a movie director discussing with his colleagues what the Trintingnant character ought to do. As such, it could be considered a copy of a parody, or an homage to a tribute. Whatever it is, Redemption Films' sharply presented home video edition of Tra...Read the entire review

A woman, known only as The Prisoner (Anicee Alvina) is held by an unconventional authority figure, known only as The Judge (Michael Lonsdale), in a room not like any other prison cell -- a spacious sort of room with four white walls, a large vanity, a cast-iron bed, and four bars. The Prisoner and The Judge are discussing the murder of The Prisoner's roommate, Nora (Olga Georges-Picot), who was found lying in their somewhat similar cast-iron bed, in an apartment somewhat similar to The Prisoner's cell, with a pair of scissors sticking out of her heart. The pair debate the existence of another man who might have done the deed, what The Prisoner and her roommate were doing before her roommate was killed, and many other strange and important questions, in this surreal thriller written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet (screenwriter of Last Year at Marienbad).

There is no type of movie I would...Read the entire review

The Movies:

Kino bundles together four of their previously released special edition Blu-ray releases of Jean Rollin's cinematic oddities, reissuing them as a boxed set under the banner The Cinema Of Jean Rollin: The Vampire Collection. The discs in this set are identical to the previously released individual film releases that came out a couple of years ago, but this is still very much a worthwhile collection for anyone who doesn't already own those discs. Here's a look at what is contained underneath that slick color box are…

The Rape Of The Vampire:

The first feature film made by the late Jean Rollin was 1968's The Rape Of The Vampire, a bizarre black and white ‘melodrama in two parts' (according to the on screen text that appears at the beginning of the movie, and it does have two distinct parts) that was originally intended to be nothing more than a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Conformist's Jean-Louis Trintignant and Moonraker's Michael Lonsdale are confusingly top-billed on the home-video art for writer-director Alain Robbe-Grillet's oddball murder story from 1974, Successive Slidings of Pleasure. Star billing surely belongs instead to the lesser-known talents of Anicée Alvina (1971's Friends) and Olga Georges-Picot (The Day of the Jackal, Love and Death), whose frequently blank faces and frequently nude bodies are the main subjects of the film.

Successive Slidings is a hodgepodge of absurd comedy, gothic horror, Euro softcore, and dream-logic storytelling that in some ...Read the entire review

Who says art films never make a buck? French "New Novel" author Alain Robbe-Grillet partnered with Alain Resnais on the screenplay for definitive opaque art picture Last Year at Marienbad and apparently caught the filmmaking bug in a big way. His 1963 L'Immortelle earned some prestigious festival awards, and for a follow up he concocted Trans-Europ-Express, a self-reflexive crime tale. Anyone expecting a normal show will be surprised to find a thriller about the construction of a thriller. We're given what to some degree looks like an assembly kit for a movie, with both the filmmakers and some filmmakers-within-the-film rewriting the details as it goes along. How did the show become a substantial European box-office hit? Well, star Jean-Louis Trintignant had ju...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Director Jess Franco was the quintessence of an auteur. He insisted on making movies on his own terms, often with very low budgets, and hence low production values and quick schedules. His films are obsessed with sex, beautiful women, mind control and death. In short, he's an acquired taste. And, if one has not already acquired that taste, Nightmares Come at Night, long thought to be lost, is probably not the place to start.

Anna (Diana Lorys) is a mentally unstable ex-stripper, living in a mansion with her girlfriend, the manipulative Cynthia (Colette Giacobine). Anna suffers from recurring nightmares involving her killing people, she believes she might be losing her grip on reality. Her friend Dr. Lucas (Paul Muller) tries to treat her, but worries that she may become violent. Meanwhile, two curious strangers (Andres Monales and Soledad Miranda) keep watch over Anna an...Read the entire review

THE FILM:
The best way to describe the career of the late, lamented Jess Franco is that he clearly believed in that resilient rule of try and try again thumb, to wit, you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Put another way, with over 150 films to his name, ranging from straight ahead horror to out and out sleaze (and many motion picture stops somewhere in between), he managed a few fascinating films among the otherwise ordinary (and often, quite awful) celluloid pile he left behind. Not every movie he made was a masterpiece. In fact, it's safe to say that he never helmed a legitimate "classic." Instead, in the subgenre he worked in, a mesmerizing mash-up of fright film elements, erotic wantings, and enigmatic European sensibilities, he fostered more curdled flops than cinematic fine dining experiences. One of his best (though he might argue otherwise) is 1973's A Virgin Among th...Read the entire review

When director Jesús Franco Manera, Jess Franco, died this past spring at the age of 82, the outpouring of grief surprised, even startled many of us who've long regarded him as a prolific and intelligent but essentially talentless charlatan. Stop-motion animator and producer Ray Harryhausen, the giant of his field, passed away around the same time yet on the Internet, at places like the invaluable Classic Horror Movie Board, comments mourning Franco outnumbered Harryhausen three-to-two.

Jesus Franco was a name familiar to genre fans, if only because he had his fingers in so many pies. Indeed, he seemed to have his finger in every pie. (He made nearly 200 films over 55 years.) He claimed to be pals and collaborators with the likes of Orson Welles and Jean-Pierre Melville, but was also a producer-director-writer-cinematographer-actor whose credits include hard-core porn. Thirty years ago...Read the entire review

Following the sudden death of her estranged father (Paul Muller), Christina (Christina von Blanc) travels from London to Spain in order to be present at the reading of her father's will. Christina has never met most of her extended family before, knowing them only through photographs, so it is a shock to meet Uncle Howard (Howard Vernon), a man who alternates between cold and jovial, playing the piano even as his sister / Christina's step-mother inches toward her own death. The house is also occupoed by Uncle Howard's mysterious blonde companion Carmencé (Britt Nickols), and a mumbling, brain-dead servant (director Jess Franco himself) who spends most of his time giggling to himself. Moments before Christina's step-mother dies, she warns her to leave, a request echoed in the locals' insistance that the valley with her father's home is dead and deserted, but Christina stays, allowing the nightmare to d...Read the entire review

Thought to be lost for almost 35 years, Nightmares Come at Night was probably of great interest to Franco fans when it was discovered in 2004. Shot in the middle of Franco's rise to infamy, and featuring his late first muse Soledad Miranda, it's an intriguing curiosity in theory. Sadly, viewed today, it's not a great film: it's experimental to the point of tedium, lacks a strong protagonist for the viewer to associate with (not necessarily relate to, but just someone to follow), and relies too heavily on gorgeous naked women without any intrigue or interest to go with them (yes, some of us need more than eye candy).

After an opening credit sequence made up of stills of the film's plentiful nude scenes, the viewer is thrown right into the action. Anna of Istria (Diana Lorys, The ...Read the entire review