The Genius of Jess Franco

As I mentioned earlier, I spent part of my holiday last month catching up with some old films. The most bizarre of these was a double-bill of early 1970s weirdness from prolific Spanish hack Jesus Franco. Variously described as both a 'genius' and 'the world's worst film director', sometimes in the same breath, Franco spent most of the sixties and seventies grinding out ultra low-budget international co-productions, many of them 'erotic' horror flicks, released in different versions (and under different titles) in various markets. In the past the English-language versions would sometimes turn up in the all-night TV schedules of ITV and Channel Four, and I'd caught up with the likes of The Nude Vampire (aka The Bare Breasted Countess), Vampiros Lesbos and Blood of Fu Manchu (truly one of the most hilariously inept films I have ever seen). Now, I'm the first to admit that these encounters did nothing to endear Franco to me - indeed, The Nude Vampire was so boring it forced me to do something hitherto unthinkable: fast-forward through a film featuring a naked woman writhing about on a bed and doing suggestive things with the bolster. However, there was always one title in the Franco ouevre which intrigued me: The Erotic Experiences of Frankenstein. For many years I had only synopses and the odd still in books and on websites to whet my appetite for this bizarre Franco-Spanish concoction. So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that this sleaze 'classic' had been released (under its alternative title Curse of Frankenstein) on DVD on a double bill with the slightly earlier Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein.

Although my previous experiences of Franco had taught me to fear the worst, I actually found these two films - watched back-to-back over a Bank Holiday weekend with several cans of beer and a packet of prawn crackers - surprisingly enjoyable, in a perverse sort of way. In fact, I was left feeling that Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein is a neglected surrealist classic. In what appears to be a deconstruction of those old Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s, Franco cunningly deploys various apparently familiar elements - Dracula (Howard Vernon), the Frankenstein Monster (Fernando Bilbao), a werewolf, gypsies and a spooky old castle - in a delirious 'narrative' which confounds expectations and defies all logic. Dracula - the all powerful supernatural villain of Bram Stoker's novel is ironically reduced to a mere puppet in the hands of Baron Frankenstein (Dennis Price), enslaved by the latter's science. The pagan gypsies - usually portrayed as sinister figures - heroically storm the castle with Seward to deploy Christian iconography against the vampires. The sense of dislocation is heightened by various anachronistic elements: whilst the hero Dr Seward (Alberto D'Albes) rides around in a horse-drawn buggy, Frankenstein prefers a late 1960s Mercedes saloon. Dialogue is kept to a minimum. In fact, Frankenstein never utters a word - his thoughts instead being conveyed via voice over (with a jarring American accent in the English language version). Just to spice things up, a touch of necrophilia is added to the mix when Frankenstein's grotesque assistant (Luis Barboo) gives the body of club singer, drained of her blood to revive Dracula, a bloody good groping before cremating her. The ending, with Frankenstein escaping after destroying Dracula, leaves you with the reaction: "What the hell was that?" As I said before, a neglected surrealist classic. Or maybe its just a shoddily made low budget horror/sex flick and I'm just spouting bollocks!

I must admit, that some aspects of the film still have me baffled. Where did that werewolf come from and why did it attack the monster? Who was that blonde vampire woman who killed Frankenstein's assistant? And, most crucially, why did Frankenstein stake Dracula, his voice over intoning something about the Count betraying him (he hadn't)? These nagging details aside, I cannot deny that I found Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein's surreal lunacy quite exhilarating. Indeed, after watching it, I found the film I had actually bought the DVD to watch - Erotic Experiences - far less satisfying. Not that it isn't surreal. Frankenstein (Price again) is murdered in the first reel by a naked bird woman and his monster (Bilbao again - this time covered in silver paint) kidnapped. Mind you, that isn't the last we see of Frankenstein - various people keep reviving him to try and get him to tell them who killed him. It transpires that the evil Cagliostro (Vernon in a strange beard) wants the monster as a mate for his 'perfect woman' he is building out of bits of kidnapped girls. Frankenstein's daughter gets co-opted into his scheme whilst trying to avenge her father's death, and is subjected to naked whipping, administered by the monster. Alberto D'Albes is also back as Dr Seward and, assisted by Inspector Tanner (who seems to be close relative of Dennis Hoey's cretinous Inspector Lestrade from the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films), saves the day again. Sadly, the film never achieves the heights of delirium achieved by its predecessor - perhaps Franco was just trying too hard. Perhaps because it is shot in a more conventional style, maybe because there is more dialogue than before (much of it highly repetitive), or even because the plot almost makes sense, Erotic Experiences just wasn't quite as enjoyable as Dracula. That's not to say that it isn't perversely entertaining - it certainly is, but just not weird enough.

Curiously, whilst the fact that Frankenstein escaped at the end of the first film and he is played by the same actor in the second implies that Erotic Experiences is a sequel, this doesn't seem to be the case. Whilst the Frankenstein of the first film is Baron Ranier von Frankenstein, in the second he is Dr Albert Frankenstein. Also, Dr Seward doesn't appear to be the same character, the second time around he's a friend of Frankenstein's, rather than his foe. Also, Erotic Experiences is clearly set in Victorian times - no Mercedes limos, sadly - another factor which prevents it from taking full lunatic flight. Nevertheless, this double bill has forced me to revise my opinion of Jess Franco, the lost genius of surrealism!