Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977)

I once read that according to the Catholic church the two most dangerous filmmakers during the seventies was Pier Paolo Pasolini and Jesus Franco. While I personally think Pasolini had a lot of Catholic guilt to deal with, Franco on the other hand never had any problem with bashing religion and hypocrisy of all kinds. This is very visible in Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, another movie produced by the notorious Erwin C. Dietrich. Movie geeks who claims Franco is ha hack and never made a good movie has obviously not seen so many of his movies, and if they have it's Oasis of the Zombies, Devil Hunter, Mansion of the Living Dead or something even more trashy and easy-to-find. They're too lazy to go any further into his huge body of work. That's a pity, because here we have another excellent and edgy production!

14 years old Maria (played by 17 years old Susan Hemingway) gets caught fooling around (very innocently) with a boy by Father Vicente (William Berger). He brings her home to her mother and uses his best Christian manipulation to send Maria to a convent, lead by the sinister Mother Alma (Ana Zanatti). Maria is soon punished for being completely human and natural and Father Vicente starts to abuse her sexually while Mother Alma uses her in satanic rites! Maria just wants to get away from there, but her newfound love for god makes it even harder to leave the, by god blessed, sadism and torture!

Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun is a point blank fuck you to organized religion and abuse of power. It feels even more fresh today with the tons and tons of sexual abuse being uncovered inside the Catholic church, and while this one deals with satanic rites and more visual terror a lot of what's said from the religious representatives in this movie is eerily similar to what we've heard during recent year from PR-people at the Vatican.

This is also a gorgeous movie. Franco had a lot of fantastic exteriors and interiors to use and he uses them well. I've seen more expensive productions look less interesting and more flat than this one. For those who don't like Franco's trademark (and I would say very important trademark) use of zoom will be happy here, because it's shot in very conventional way, still beautiful, but also very calm and without apparent stress. Like many of Franco's films the cast is the most important thing and I think he has one of his strongest casts ever in this film.

First of all, William Berger is brilliant. He plays probably the most disgusting priest I've ever seen in a movie, mostly because he's a hypocrite and uses his power to get money and other things from poor citizens (just like the church to do today, to support their fancy buildings and huge paychecks) but also his sexual appetite for young girls. The scene where he cums in the confession booth while hearing Maria talk about her wet dreams is both extremely funny in a very dark way, but also sick and disturbed. Susan Hemingway, who looks way younger than she was, makes a fine performance as the frail and innocent Maria - who ironically gets corrupted by the church and not the boy she's in love with. Ana Zanatti balances the religious angest with pure sadism and coldness like no one else.

This is yet another fine production from Jess Franco and I urge you all to give it a try! 

Barbed Wire Dolls (1976)

Here it is, the mother of all fake slow-motion

filled with Lina Romay's hairy sexual potion.

Barbed Wire Dolls is back to deliver the sleaze

plus some additional scenes of extra gooey cheese!

The wardress dyke wants female flesh

fingering vaginas on new inmates - so juicy and fresh!

Lina remember how she killed her dad

Pity that fake slow-motion was just a fad!

Rarely boring, but hardly original

Fun but not a reason to start a bacchanal.

Stylish angles and a sleazy cast

But the all seemed to had a sexual blast!

Maybe it's missing some important shower scenes

Could have used someone blown to smithereens?

I'm missing the playfulness of Uncle Jess

Next time I would like to see some fun finesse.

Oh, now I sound so mean and grumpy

Didn't meant to make all of you jumpy!

Barbed Wire Dolls is fine, fine euro cult

for us who appreciates films for the adult!

So get your copy already today!

Prepare your remote control for action replay!

Long Live Uncle Jess and Lina, his late muse

May they forever light the cinematic fuse...

Voodoo Passion (1977)

I'm always a bit sceptical when it comes to the pure softcore productions from Uncle Jess, but Voodoo Passion was still made during the seventies and the steady hand of Erwin C. Dietrich as producer. Why sceptical? Probably because they mostly are focused on tits and ass, shaky zoom-shots on pubic hair and going gynaecological with the camera. That just bores me. But I need to learn to trust Uncle Jess, because behind the most boring premises there's actually some nice ideas and originality. This one is a remake, according to many, of Franco's own 1970 production Nightmares Come at Night. I have it on DVD but never seen it, so I guess that's one thing I must do now. But back to Voodoo Passion - Call of the Blonde Godess!

Susan (Ada Tauler) moves to Haiti to join her new husband Jack (Jack Taylor) there. They are newly wed and it comes as a surprise when Jack's sex-crazy lesbian sister Olga (Karine Gambier) also lives in their house. Her life revolves around sex and nothing more. Susan soon finds this quite nice and starts living the dream together with her husband and his sister - but something is wrong! She starts having hallucinations, almost trance-like walks - and she's killing people! Is it voodoo? Or something more sinister, something more natural?

There's a lot of penis in this movie. And buttocks (often those of Jack Taylor). And pubic hair and vaginas. Often in close-up and often lingering a few seconds too long. But that's what's it all about, it's a softcore thriller set on Haiti by Jess Franco! What to expect? While I fail to see the exciting with these many, many sex scenes, I can still see that it's a stylish and often very entertaining sex-thriller. The bright and clean cinematography looks fantastic (at least when it's in focus) and the hotel gardens standing in for jungles looks good.

Even if the sex and nudity is the most important thing here it's easy to see that Franco want to create a mystery and build-up an interesting, but thin, storyline that will help us get through the cheesiness. Karine Gambier is easiest the best thing here. Not that she's the best actress, but she's so vulgar, blonde and over-the-top that it's hard to dislike her. Muriel Montossé, who plays the lesbian housekeeper Inès, has a stunning and almost scary look (the eyes, the eyes!) and rules most of the footage she's in. Jack Taylor does his job, and is great, but this is a strictly women's movie and so shall it be.

In-between these reproductive organs and nice tropical gardens there's the music of Walter Baumgartner and I must say that here he's created a couple of masterpieces. Especially one piece, traditional jazz fused with some form of tropical bongo-beats. It's so good and so hypnotic and suddenly raises the somewhat cheap production several notches up to a completely different class of filmmaking.

No, I can't say that Voodoo Passion is a great movie, but it worked for me and Franco made it a little bit interesting with some clever twists and nicely handled sleaze-filled voodoo-sequences.

The only thing really bad is the awkward opening dance-number on the beach. I've seen drunk old men do better than that on the ferry to Finland!

Blue Rita (1977)

Jess Franco is back on Ninja Dixon. I wrote about a week ago that I wouldn't write any new Franco-reviews for a while, but here he is again. The reason is that when I'm very down the works of Franco is the best movies to make me feel better again. I've never been interested in Blue Rita mostly because I thought was a normal softcore romp without any redeeming qualities, but when I finally started to read more about it I saw that it's actually more fun than I first though. Produced by the Erwin C. Dietrich (and according to some sources Robert de Nesle also), Blue Rita is a fun little spy-thriller behind all that sleaze and nudity...

At the Blue Rita Bar there's a secret organization lead by Blue Rita (Martine Fléty) and her team of lesbian strippers/killers. They lure important politicians, journalists and other power-hungry men to their bar to drug and torture them, only to get their money and secrets - the latter something they can sell to other countries to the highest bid. Oh, she torture the men by exposing them to a chemical that makes them absurdly horny and then she teases them with her women! But what she don't know is that there's a spy among them, a female Interpol agent who's there to expose their dirty business!

Blue Rita was a big surprise. I still can't say its a masterpiece or anything, but here we have a fun and tongue-in-cheek thriller set in an extremely stylish (but cheap, like everything else in this film) bar and a script that's not just humping, but has a few fun twists. The set design and visual approach from Uncle Jess feels like one of this more kitchy 60's films, like The Girl from Rio - but instead of an exotic country and lots of locations we have here a very grey Paris and a couple of glittering plywood sets. Even of the script was more than I expected it to be this is more of an adventure in style than anything else. The sex-room, for example, is painted totally white with only transparent, blow-up furniture! Only in the mind of Jess Franco.

Expect a lot of boobs, ass and pussy from the female actors, but also some dicks and ass from the not-so-attractive male cast. I must confess I have a soft spot for Eric Falk, the tall karate-freak that did a lot of sleaze during the seventies and early eighties. He's probably most famous or his hilarious performance as the nudy, karate-kicking nazi-biker in Mad Foxes. In that one he acts like he's gonna die tomorrow, but he's not bad at all in Blue Rita. He's also in the most stylish scene in the whole film, when he and his bodyguards visits a Eastern European restaurant and it all ends with a fun fight outside.

I've read at least one review of this movie that claims that Franco has very little talent when it comes to staging action sequences, and yes, I can agree on that. The odd thing is that the action in this movie, while very short and not so spectacular, isn't bad at all. Especially the fight outside the restaurant and some of the shooting at the end. It's simple yes, but it also works better than a lot of unnecessary editing.

Blue Rita is a lot more fun than you could imagine. It's a nice sleaze-movie with a fun cast and lots of cool sets and clothes. It's shallow and stupid, but made with passion and love for the art of cinematic storytelling - even if the budget wasn't there to help out in the end. 

Jack the Ripper (1976)

Last week Lina Romay passed away, the iconic actress and partner of director Jesus Franco. It became official yesterday. For me, and for many others, this came as a shock – I had no idea Lina was battling with cancer and I can’t even imagine how Uncle Jess must feel now when his soulmate has left him after so many years. One of the first movies by Franco I saw was Jack the Ripper, the Erwin C. Dietrich-produced thriller from 1976. Hardly a historical correct retelling of mystery of Jack the Ripper, Franco just takes the basic idea of a brutal murderer of whores in London and tells it from Jack’s point of view instead.

Klaus Kinski is Dr. Dennis Orloff (a relative of The Awful Dr. Orloff maybe?), a doctor popular among the poor and freaks in society. He’s very kind and wants to help those who can’t afford to take of their health, but he’s also a sadistic killer of prostitutes and showgirls. Hot on his trail is the ambitious Inspector Selby (Andreas Mannkopff) who also dates a dancer, Cynthia (Josephine Chaplin) – and believe it or not, soon our good old ripper gains interest in her…

Jack the Ripper is not the most loved of Franco’s output in the seventies, and I wonder why? Sure, it’s a bit too talky – but I think that’s only main drawback with the screenplay. I guess Dietrich wanted something serious, something with class – not just gore and nudity – maybe glancing at the more serious Edgar Wallace-thrillers out there or even Hammer. And Franco did what was expected of him. The weak spots is the police procedure, which never gets especially interesting. But every time the story jumps back to Klaus Kinski and his inner demons this becomes a super-classy and original production. Kinski, as the master-actor he was, uses his favorite form of telling his characters story – less dialogue, more acting. He never goes as far like in Count Dracula, where he has not dialogue at all – but here it’s kept to a minimum and it works out very fine.

When watching it now I realized I totally forgot how Kinski is tormented by a former victim (or is it his abusive mother?), who haunts him in his house and makes him feel guilty. His relationship with the lobotomized maid is also excellent, and gives us a great performance from a very convincing Nikola Weisse. But why I first watched this movie again was the presence of Lina Romay. Here she has a minor part – but probably the most spectacular – as a showgirl getting stalked and killed by Kinski. And boy, she’s probably most unlucky victim I ever seen in a Jack the Ripper-movie: she first gets repeatedly stabbed in the guts, then brutally raped and finally carried home to the good doctor and getting chopped up in pieces while still alive! Romay has not much to do except looking sexy, getting scared and then die – but she’s also shows a lot of comedic talent when she performs her dance number, strutting around pouting her lips and having a ball with the scene.

It’s a violent movie, but much is off-screen – but when it’s onscreen it’s bloody as hell and graphic in the cheap way only Franco could do it.

Jack the Ripper is an underrated movie with gorgeous cinematography by Peter Baumgartner and excellent directing from Jess Franco. And if you don’t like those things, watch it for Lina Romay.

Rest in peace, Lina. You will be missed.

Mad Foxes (1982)

Regarding Mad Foxes I could tell you a lot. I could tell you about the worst martial arts-fight ever committed to celluloid. About when the hero get his gun stuck in the jacket and the director dosen't yell "cut!". About how many dicks you will see in this movie. And how much tits. How the swastika-crosses disappears from the nazi-logo everytime the nazis are out in the public. I could mention the fantastic over-acting from leading man José Gras and how he sports a fancy Erik Estrada-haircut. The explicit sex-scenes and that there's a lengthy musical dance-number for all our enjoyment.

But I won't bore you with stuff like that. Instead I let these screenshots speak for themselves. Enjoy.