Lust For Frankenstein/Tender Flesh

Shock-O-Rama Cinema Double Feature

An unapologetic, irreverent, and energetic if erratic filmmaker, Jess Franco is a one man definition of exploitation. A highly skilled, individualistic visionary, his life has been as fantastic as his creations -- small wonder from a man who has made a career out of zoom-shots of Lina Romay's bush, cum-sucking vampires, virgins among the living dead, and whorish spirits seeking vengeance from the men who love them. Renowned as much by his devoted fans and followers as he is reviled by mainstream critics, his work confuses and irritates in equal measure, entertaining with over-the-top visual excess, fetish imagery, and nightmarish dream logic. Sometimes there is no attempt at logic period, with Franco breaking free from the traditional narrative role of the storyteller and becoming instead a painter, a director of emotions and images, scattered like mind-fields and slammed into our brains like shards of glass. Sometimes, it may even seem as if he doesn't care. Thankfully, even in these moments the searing if uneven chaotic brilliance of his madcap mind creates excessively erotic, bold and bloody examples of grindhouse. Franco's best work is a mad, sleazy poetry attached to the land and soil and sexuality of the women he knows best. His worst efforts are called trash. Trash they may be, but sexy, perverted, entertaining trash it is!

When you set down to a Franco film, you know you're in for something different. Something unique. Something that will stand out and thumb its nose at convention. Franco's taboo crushing, cum-dripping, blood gushing excursions into sex, death, and madness have justly became legendary in a time when the horror genre has became as safe as its sponsors demand, courting public opinion of housewives and crusading politicians. Franco, more often reviled or unknown as revered, was still a relative unknown even among casual fans of horror and exploitation cinema until the advent of DVD. It took this new technology and such home-grown grass-roots efforts as Subversive Cinema to free from their rusty-lock prisons some of the weirder, lesser known works of Franco's career.

Love him or hate him, understand his work or unwilling to even try, one thing you cannot do with Franco is ignore him. How does one ignore the bold insanity of his shocking, schlocky cinema? How does one critically approach a filmography as erratic and uneven as it is numerous? If Franco has over 150 movies to his name (and countless pen names), these films themselves have just as many different styles, themes, and approaches. One thing they all have in common is the desire to shock and horrify, titillate and repulse. A poet of the perverse not content to rehash or champion intellectually lazy intimations of conservative morality in either his films or his personal life, his movies reflect an adventurous, untraditional, horrifying yet fascinating - yes, even liberating - approach to life and the art/entertainment through which we see it.

More to our point, his movies are delirious blends of sex, violence, depravity, and style - an excess of style dripping off the frame and form the lovely, bare, bleeding skin of experienced, sensuous women who may or may not be alive or human. Women in prison, women in chains, men in women, women on men, women in women; sex, pain, death, and blood-shine; women-in-prison films, slasher-giallos, gothic odes to style, and stylish ménages of eroticism and the supernatural: Franco has left few genres or approaches untouched. From the visual beauty of the moodily photographed, surprisingly well written (if poorly paced!) Awful Dr. Orloff, the film which won him early recognition and shows just how good a director Franco can be both when given ample budget, and the graphic viscera of Faceless, one of his many unofficial sequels to Orloff, the earlier film, to the run-with-the-money charm of his video output in the 1990's, Franco has never been content to play it safe in terms of content, style, or theme.

Tender Flesh and Lust for Frankenstein are no exceptions, bringing both the distinctive faults and skills of a highly personable man of vision. While certainly lacking the intensity of theme or kinky wonder of such early works as Vampyre Lesbos or the surreal quality of minor classics Venus in Furs or Virgin Among the Living Dead, these films, attractively presented and with wonderful extras by Shock-O-Roma Cinema, are undeniable successful as exploitation films, exactly what Franco wanted them to be. Works of entertainment in which such themes as lust, hatred, power-lust, and sexual appetite struggle with, and in turn feed off, one another. More importantly, they continue to represent the grand old man of Spanish horror and exploitation, ushering his twisted approach to sex and terror into a new century.

Tender Flesh, one of his many thematic spin-offs of "The Most Dangerous Game" plot/theme, is an explosion of sexual depravity, deception, and painful to watch (yet easy to enjoy) orgies, lesbian love, sensationalistic violence and everything else the exploitation monger has wet dreams over. While not as atmospherically filmed as his early work, and suffering a bit from cheaper production values than even Franco often uses, the cheapness of approach and technology merges with the bare bones acting, the nudity, and the erotically charged jungle-like scenery to make the film if not always believable than at least believably sexy and dangerous. Paula (Amber Newman), a sexually charged young actress is convinced by her treacherous new lover that a wealth of pleasure and liberation await her at an island of sexual fulfillment. In response to a fake casting call, she finds herself headed towards a hidden tropical island villa and certain hell, where she will be brutalized, tortured, humiliated, abused, and sexed up in customary Franco glee. Before long, generous amounts of blood, sweat, and skin are peeled off, hunted down, and shown to the loving sadistic eye of the lens as she finds she's trapped on the island with a group of wealthy, savage sophisticates with an appetite for sex, death, and sport.

The acting here ranges from laughable to standard. The real characters are the events and perversions on proud display, Franco appearing to purposely focus more on events in the storyline and murderous, action-packed set pieces than on character development. This said, keep a look out for the kinky and sexy Baroness (Monique Parent), whose hunger for violence and domination is only matched by her craving for petting smooth female flesh.

While not his most perverse entry into the exploitation sweepstakes, nor the sleaziest, this torrid slice of horror, babes, and blood easily holds its own. Especially enjoyable in its grim ironies, morose themes, cruel presentations of reality, and all-too-inhuman human behavior, Franco's movie is a welcome return back to his heyday (in subject matter and themes if not in style) as king of the unmentionable - which he not only mentions but shows in loving voyeuristic detail. Fans will be quick to spot similarities between this movie and The Perverse Countess and such women-in-prison roughies as 99 Women and Barbed Wire Dolls. To be commended for its downbeat ending (which takes balls, particularly in today's so very incorrect 'politically correct' social and cultural environment, and a sense of tension that mounts with the body count as our heroine is chased like an animal through the island jungle, Tender Flesh is anything but tender. Instead, it is harsh, cruel, and untamed. It is this raw ferociousness that compensates for its meager budget.

In just one of a handful of attempts to resurrect the Frankenstein monster of literature and film, albeit with his unique perspective of sexual enticement, exploitation, and fetishes, Franco in Lust for Frankenstein (1998) once again turns to his life partner, lover, and frequent collaborator Lina Romay to provide both inspiration and sexual excitement. Moira Frankenstein, haunted by the vengeful ghost of her long-dead father, the scientist who gave birth to a legend, is instructed to resuscitate the beast. In this case of course the beast, keeping true to Franco logic (and love of the female form, often captured in organic, earthy detail by the zoom lens) is an immortal female. Why? You may ask, not that it really matters. For plot is again secondary -- not a bad thing when there is so much to see and experience visually, and when certain approaches to the horror/exploitation genres themselves are admittedly more concerned with visual and stylistic logic than any textual sense. But according to the specter, he wants her to clear the good Frankenstein name. It seems that this monster's sex drive awakens with its resurrection, and the lady just has to have it! Hungering for penetration, Goddess, the erotically charged yet hulking monster attempts to make none other than Moira her bedmate. Ah, Franco! Moira's is having none of it, engaged in her own lesbian affairs until in a fit of rage and passion Goddess begins to slaughter her mistress's lovers. Attempting to keep with the original sensibility of the story (just a tad), Franco has Goddess soon learn to despair of herself and her nature, and, regretting her hateful impulses and her very existence, similar to the monster of the Whale version of the film, pleads for oblivion . . .

Looking rather good, the presentation, color, and framing are nicely handled in this attractively packaged double feature from Shock-O-Roma. While the productions themselves were obviously hampered by budgeting restraints, they look as good as one could expect. The extras, while not overwhelming, are satisfactory, and give a working man his money's worth. Tender Flesh includes a Behind the Scenes segment and a nice if short Amber Newman gallery. Lust for Frankenstein sports an alternate version, another Behind the Scenes look, and a Michele Bauer Interview. A full color booklet rounds out this attractive set of films whose very raw-edged violence, crass cheapness, and mean-spirited violence could only come from the mind of a man who once casted himself as a perverted, blood-crazed zealot slaughtering sluts in the name of God. Ah, Franco, we love ya!

Review by William P. Simmons