13 August 1945 – 18 June 2018
Vienna-born
Maria Rohm (nee Helga Grohmann), talented cult actress and wife of British
independent film producer and screenwriter Harry Alan Towers (19 Oct 1920 – 31
July 2009), went the way of the wind in June at the age of 72 in Toronto,
Canada, the home of Bruce McArthur. Rohm, who began her acting career as a
child stage actress, seems to have begun her film career at the age of twenty
playing a prostitute in a 1964 film. Soon after she married producer Towers,
also in 1964, he began putting her in many of his projects, including nine
different movies directed by Jess Franco (12 May 1930 – 2 April 2013). She
retired from acting in 1976, at the young milfy age of 31, but like her husband remained active as a
producer.
Go here for Part I: 1964–1967
Eve
(1968, dir. Jeremy Summers)
Trivia: British
director Jeremy Summers' father was the British director Walter Summers (2 Sept
1896 – April 1973), who long ago directed the early Edgar Wallace horror film
starring Bela Lugosi, The Dark Eyes of
London aka The Human Monster (1939 / trailer).
Lugosi's character has a name familiar to many a Franco fan: Dr. Orlof[f].
Trailer to
Eve:
Maria Rohm gets neither poster credit nor does she play the title
character: she plays Anne, "a
singer who continues to trill even as a massive brawl is going on around her,
apparently because Towers wanted to play her song in full".
Elvis's A Little
Less Conversation,
as mixed by Junkie XL:
We took a quick
look at Eve way back in 2012, in They Died in September 2012, Part VII: Herbert Lom,
where we more or less wrote:
Mountain Cat Fight:
"Fantastic
Musings and Ramblings opinions: 'It's a dull affair, especially during
the long middle section where the hero returns to civilization, and any
interest it does generate is more due to the presence of several familiar faces
(Lom, Lee, Clark) than anything that actually happens. At least it doesn't take
itself too seriously, though it does resort to stereotypes (in the form of Jose
Maria Caffarel's comic character) to do so. One fun thing to do in the movie is
to keep track of how many characters die as a result of their own monumental
stupidity; I count at least three.'
"Let's hear it for leather bikinis — and
Yarnall's lovely, non-anorexic body!"
Mark David Welsh,
who was less than enamored with the movie, points out that
"The ending does suggest the possibility of sequels, but it's hardly
a surprise that none emerged. This is formula filmmaking at its most
uninspired; the lazy screenplay not even bothering to explain how the
infant Eve managed to survive all those years in the jungle. Was she
raised by apes? The native tribesmen? Aliens, maybe? Oh, well, nobody
cares. She looks great in an animal-skin bikini and that's all we need to
know!"
The Blood of Fu Manchu
(1968, writ. & dir. Jess Franco)
Aka Fu Manchu and the Kiss of Death, Kiss of Death, Kiss and Kill and Against All Odds. It is the
fourth film in a series: preceded by The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (see Part I: 1964-67), it was followed by The
Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), which we look at later.
Trailer to
The Blood of Fu
Manchu:
Written with the
help of Harry Alan Towers, otherwise credited as "Peter Welbeck", The Blood of Fu Manchu is possibly the
first of an eventual nine flicks in total that Franco (12 May 1930 – 2 April
2013) directed for Towers, almost all of which featured Maria
Rohm in the cast.
Here, she plays "Ursula Wagner". Richard
Greene (25 Aug 1918 – 1 June 1985), of The
Black Castle (1952 / clip) took over the role of Nayland Smith. Shirley Eaton
appears to say all of two lines of dialog as "Black Widow", but she
maintains that she never was officially part of the movie and never got paid
for appearing in it: Jesus Franco simply inserted footage shot for another of
her/his films, The Girl from Rio (1968), which we look at later.
Interestingly enough, at least one poster (below) was also previously used for
another movie, namely the German language release of The Vengeance of Fu Manchu.
According to Cinema Retro,
"Jess Franco admitted to being surprised at having been asked to direct
the series' fourth and fifth entries. In many respects the eccentric Spaniard
was worthy of Tower's consideration as he shared the producer's lifelong
enchantment with the comic-strip sensibilities of such popular
dime-store-caliber novelists as Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace. But while he
manages to bring some sense of old world British Empire derring-do to the
screen, his two Fu Manchu films — with their attendant misfires and lurid nude
sequences — stand apart from the first three films in the series and remain resolutely
Franco in construction."
Over at All Movie,
Robert Firsching has a
plot: "This horror-tinged adventure is full of
jungle action, creative murders, and violent sexual sadism. […] The mysterious
Asian madman Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) [is] plotting world domination from his
secret headquarters underneath the Amazon rainforest. Fu has discovered a rare
poison which affects only men, and uses it as lipstick for ten beautiful women,
who are to deliver a kiss of death to each of 10 public officials. Carl Jansen
(Gotz George [23 July 1938 – 19 June 2016] of Hypnosis
[1962]) and Sir Denis Nayland Smith (Greene), a pair of Scotland Yard
detectives, track Fu Manchu to his underground hideout and — with the aid of
Dr. Ronald Petrie (Howard Marion Crawford) — search for the antidote to the
deadly poison. Lee's wooden performance is alleviated by an amusing turn by Ricardo
Palacios (2 March 1940 – 11 Feb 2015) as a revolutionary, and a beautiful
female cast. […] This [is an] entertaining, if extremely sexist, fourth entry
in the Fu Manchu series. Nude torture scenes and snake attacks are featured in
some of the numerous prints, running 91, 88, 82, and 61 minutes."
"Filled
with bright colors, banditos, and bondage galore courtesy of chained women in
cages, this film encountered numerous censorship hassles and raised more than a
few eyebrows with its publicity stills of topless women being tortured, one of
which adorned the film's first VHS release box in America despite the fact that
anything remotely naughty had been trimmed out of the film itself. The nudity
level is actually pretty discreet by today's standards, but for a series of
adventure films geared at preteens, it was definitely strong stuff. The low
budget and sometimes pokey pacing can be a challenge if you're expecting
something like the earlier Fu Manchu titles, but as a slice of cinematic
exotica (with a slinky score by regular Franco composer Daniel White, it's an
amusing diversion and a key entry in Franco's post-'60s evolution. [Mondo Digital]"
"The plot
of The Blood of Fu Manchu often resembles the one in The
Brides of Fu Manchu, which similarly had Fu Manchu with a collection
of women under his control, hypnotised and forced to act as his puppets. The
plot about women with a deadly kiss or as carriers of a disease was also used
in a number of spy films of the era, most notably the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969 /
trailer).
However, the story here is all over the place. Most of the film consists of Fu
Manchu prepping the girls for their mission intercut with numerous scenes of
the bandits raiding. It is a plot that never seems to be in the process of
going anywhere or building to anything. Disappointingly, Fu Manchu's customary
adversary of Nayland Smith is barely present as a nemesis throughout. He is put
out of action early in the show and only appears in two scenes during the first
hour. This is peculiarly a Fu Manchu film where Nayland Smith is almost a
supporting character to Dr Petrie who gets the lion's share of the adversarial
scenes […]. The film arrives at a perfunctory climax where the lost city is
blown up. [Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review]"
At Schmollywood Babylon,
Fred Anderson thinks that "Götz George is decent in the part [of an agent],
but his character kinda disappears from time to time and there're other
characters taking over, including a fat bandit and the stunning Maria Rohm
— and I could never figure out why. Everything is very confusing. It's also low
on action and adventure, which is very dangerous for being an adventure movie.
Fu Manchu sits in his fortress yelling orders to people watching him, then he
walks around a bit and then he sits down a bit. That's what Lee does and it's
not much fun. […] I'm a huge fan of Franco and I love when he goes secret agent/kitch
adventure in the 60's […] but The Blood
of Fu Manchu just doesn't work. Damn pity."
The Blood of Fu Man Chu is in the public domain in the US. You can watch it here, at Free Classic Movies. Free Classic Movies is the place to go for your legal public domain movies.
The Girl from Rio
(1969, dir. Jess Franco)
Not to be
mistaken with The Girl from Rio
(1939 / full movie),
from Lambert Hillyer (8 July 1889 – 5 July 1969),
the uninteresting director who somehow managed to direct two minor classics of horror, Dracula's
Daughter (1936 / trailer)
and The Invisible Ray (1936 /
trailer).
Trailer to
The Girl from
Rio:
"Speaking
of which, […] brunette Maria Rohm [makes] her leggy presence felt […] while
giving Jeff Sutton (Richard Wyler [20 June 1923 – 5
March 2010], of The Strange Door
[1951 / clip])
a manicure in his hotel room. Sitting with her legs crossed, Maria, who plays a
woman named Leslye, notices that Jeff has put his hand on her knee. If I tried
a move like that, I would be shunned by society; shunned, I tell you. But since
this Jeff pratt exudes charm and douche-adjacent elegance, he's got himself a
date with a leggy Maria Rohm. It's not fair. [House of Self Indulgence]"
Ninja Dixon
gushes, "Wow, this was one fun Jess Franco-movie! […] The Girl from Rio manages to make a lot of entertainment with
probably very little money. We have the good old Franco working, with lots of
pointless zooms and out-of-focus shots. But it's not that much, because most of
the movie is a gorgeous and fantastic-looking spy/thriller/kitsch/action story
with Franco showing his best. That man knows how to point a camera, and he
likes stylish wide shots — as usual — and lots of half-naked women. There're a
few fights and chase scenes and all of them are competent and echoes of James
Bond and all the other colorful action movies from that time. But they
obviously didn't have money to use blanks, so every time someone shoots it's
off screen, just with sound effects. The final is extra cheap, and if they
didn't say that the places was blowing to pieces, I would just think it was
some extra abstract editing and Franco being a little more creative than usual!
But still, it looks damn good and the Rio-locations are beautiful."
99 Women
(1969 writ & dir. Jess Franco)
"From now on you have no name, only a number. You have no future, only the past. No hope, only regrets. You have no friends, only me."
Thelma Diaz
(Mercedes McCambridge)
According to
various sites online, including Cinesploitation,
"In 1968 Franco and his legendary producer Harry Alan Towers (aka 'Peter
Warbeck') were in Brazil shooting The Girl From Rio when they found
that they had some extra time on their hands. So instead of letting the crew
just hang out getting paid in Rio de Janeiro, they decided to write a whole new
movie over the weekend and began shooting the following Monday. By the end of
the week, they had shot a third of the entire script."
Scripting
assistance was supplied by "Peter Welbeck", Milo G. Cuccia and Carlo
Fadda. Maria Rohm plays Marie, subsequently called [prisoner] #98. We took a quick
look at 99 Women way back in 2012,
in They Died in September 2012, Part VII: Herbert Lom,
where we more or less wrote:
"Herbert Lom takes part in his first Jess
Franco film — and in nothing less than Franco's first women-in-prison flick! As
Governor Santos, Lom shares the screen with Maria Schell, Mercedes McCambridge
and Rosalba Neri (of Lady
Frankenstein [1971]); the French release includes inserted hardcore
footage, none of which naturally involves the real cast.
Trailer to
99 Women:
"DVD Drive-in
explains the film: 'In cult director Jess Franco's [...] epic, three sentenced
females arrive by boat to the island where they will imprisoned — 'The Castle
of Death.' The main girl is a pretty blond named Marie (Maria Rohm), but since
these prisoners are only called by their numbers, she becomes branded "98".
Marie makes the mistake of informing the butchy warden (Oscar-winner Mercedes
McCambridge [16 March 1916 – 2 March 2004]) of an ill patient in the next cell.
After the expected punishment, she finds herself at the wandering hands of a
feisty lesbian (Rosalba Neri [below, not from the movie]), as well as the shady Governor (Herbert Lom) who
apparently reaps the benefits of having sex with the prettier inmates that the
warden delivers to him. Later, a sympathetic investigator (Maria Schell [15 Jan
1926 – 26 April 2005]) arrives on the scene to witness firsthand how badly
these girls have been abused and mistreated, but it may be too late…"
Prison Movies
obviously disagrees: "[...] This is a boring, limp-scripted, horribly
acted, and uninspired effort. Ninety-nine
Women in very short tunics and from a selection of different European
countries are imprisoned on a half of a remote island in a big castle. The
Oscar-winning (!) Mercedes McCambridge plays the confused-accented
Superintendent Diaz, who reigns by terror (one is led to believe, because you
see very little of it) and also procures prisoners for the male Governor who
runs the men's prison on the other side of the island. Fortunately we don't see
much of this, but the relationship between the two reminded me oddly of Nurse
Diesel and Dr Montague in High Anxiety
(1977 / trailer)."
Marquis de Sade: Justine
(1969, dir Jess Franco)
Based on some
novel entitled Justine, or The
Misfortunes of Virtue, written by some guy named Donatien
Alphonse François de Sade (2 June 1740 – 2 Dec 1814), aka Marquis de Sade. Adapted for the screen by
"Peter Welbeck"; "heavily censored, various prints run
120, 105, 93, and 90 minutes."
French trailer:
Way back in
March of this year, in R.I.P. Umberto Lenzi, Part IV: 1976-82,
while taking a look at Lenzi's 1982 film Incontro
nell'ultimo paradise, we quoted a surprisingly snarky and since-deleted
Wikipedia entry on that movie's star, Sabrina Siani, that said Jess Franco hailed Siani as "the 2nd worst actress he ever worked with (next to Romina Power
[…])."
We mention that because Romina Power, the
daughter of Tyrone Power (5 May 1914 – 15 Nov 1958, of Nightmare Alley [1947 / Trailer from Hell])
and Linda Christian (13 Nov 1923 – 22 July 2011, of The Devil's Hand [1961 / trailer]),
plays the title role of this movie. According to the movie's trivia section at
the imdb,
"In an interview on the Anchor Bay DVD release, Jesús Franco says he
originally wanted Rosemary Dexter (19 July 1944 – 8 Sept 2010) as Justine, but
the American partners in the film insisted upon Romina Power. Franco compared
her performance to a window dummy."
Al Bano and Romina Power's
biggest hit, Felicità:
But to the
movie! SexGoreMutants
raves "The film opens with everyone's favorite Euro cult stalwart Klaus
Kinski pacing around in a cell tormented by the visions of some naked, blood-spattered
females manacled in the adjoining room. He opens a book and starts to
transcribe Justine's story — and so the fun begins. Young innocent Justine
(Romina Power) and her more worldly sister Juliette (Maria
Rohm) are ejected from their cosseted French orphanage to fend for
themselves after their father flees the country. Left with a small amount of
money, Juliette suggests they go stay with her friends; Justine discovers that
these so-called friends are actually the inhabitants of the local brothel.
Being the pure young lass she is, Justine decides this is not for her and
decides to do her own thing. Sadly the young girl is swiftly conned out of the
little money she has by a corrupt monk and ends up working as a house slave for
a local hotelier. Things go from bad to worse when one of the lecherous
residents upset by her disinterest to his sexual advances frames her for the
theft of his gold brooch. Poor Justine is thrown into jail [and] sentenced to
death, but just when you think things couldn't get any more dreadful for the
poor girl (well surely you can't get any worse than the death sentence surely?)
life does indeed go from ghastly to downright disgraceful! Beaten, branded,
tortured and enslaved by a sadistic band of monks (led by Jack Palance in what
is without doubt his finest ever role) it looks as though the pitiful Justine
will soon be wishing she had never been born. What will become of Justine? How
does she mange to keep going through the endless brutality? Will it ever end?
Well, fans of exploitation cinema will be salivating in delight at the onscreen
perversions hoping that it won't!"
TV Guide,
on the other hand, carps that "One of the Marquis de Sade's most notorious
works is stripped to its basic elements here as Jack Palance involves a number
of nude women in his macabre forays into black magic and sadism. Klaus Kinski
turns in a fairly good performance as the marquis, but the film is mostly
exploitive garbage. It's a shame that filmmakers have been reluctant to
consider the marquis' philosophical concerns; De Sade's revolutionary ideas
would almost certainly be more interesting (and less lurid) than his outrageous
sexual descriptions." (Yes, and the average reader of TV Guide would probably also find such philosophical concerns extremely
intellectually stimulating.)
10K Bullets, which laments that Maria Rohm's Juliette "is
underused" and that "she delivers a pitch perfect portrayal of
Juliette", mentions: "From a production stand point, Marquis de Sade's Justine
would give Franco the largest canvas that he ever got to work with as a
filmmaker, with the film's reported budget being one million pounds. Needless
to say, he would take full advantage of this rare opportunity as this film is a
period drama set in 18th century. When it comes to costumes and set designs,
this film does a superb job maintaining the intended look of this era. Another
area where this film far exceeds its expectations are the actually Barcelona
locations featured in the film, and some of them are considered landmark
locations."
Venus in Furs
(1969, writ & dir. Jess Franco)
Trailer to
Jess Franco's Venus
in Furs:
It also isn't
the only Venus in Furs of 1969: the
adaptation by Massimo Dallamano (17 April 1917 – 4 Nov 1976), aka Devil in the Flesh, hit the screen
the same year (trailer).
Mondo Esoterica
has the what and the why: "Although often hailed as Franco's masterwork,
the end film Venus in Furs is a long way from Franco's original concept
of Black Angel, which was to be a surreal love affair between a
black jazz musician and a white fantasy woman whom he conjoured up during solo
playing. However, the American distributors refused to fund a film with a black
man/white woman romance and Franco was forced to rethink the whole story — even
the title was a commercial insistence of the American International producers
who wanted to capitalize on the success of the Leopold Sacher-Masoch book, even
though the film itself was little related. As it stands, the storyline of Venus
in Furs is very interesting and unpredictable with the curious
recurrent themes of a jazz piece and the languorous pacing and jumps of a
dream. […] The ending is very strong, although it would probably be more
powerful without the final line of dialogue."
Barbara McNair's biggest hit,
Here I Am Baby:
The plot, as
given by Claudio
Carvalho (of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) at the imdb: "In Istanbul, the trumpet player Jimmy Logan (Darren) is
dazed and confused on the beach and finds his musical instrument buried in the
sand. Then he sees a woman in the sea and he pulls her body from the surf. He
recognizes her as Wanda Reed (Rohm), a gorgeous
woman that he saw in the party of the playboy Ahmed Kortobawi (Klaus Kinski [18
Oct 1926 – 23 Nov 1991]). Then he saw her being whipped and raped by Ahmed and
his friends Percival Kapp (Dennis Price [23 June 1915 – 6 Oct 1973]) and Olga
(Margaret Lee). Jimmy travels to Rio de Janeiro and spends the Carnival playing
with a jazz band and his girlfriend Rita (McNair) in the nightclub of Herman.
One night, Wanda Reed comes to the club and Jimmy becomes obsessed on her.
Sooner he leaves Rita and stays with Wanda. Meanwhile, she kills Percival, Olga
and Ahmed [while] dressed in furs. When the police seek out the woman, Jimmy
discovers a secret about Wanda Reed and him."
The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre,
which often wouldn't recognize a good movie if it bit them, rates the movie as
"Worthless" and spleens: "An early Franco movie bordering on the
confusing and strange, and often claimed to be a surreal masterpiece but is
mostly just a badly executed ghost story. […] Features trippy editing and
warped cinematography (Franco's subtle way to make things dreamy), Klaus Kinski
as a kinky Turk (say that three times fast), the usual dull Franco exploitative
nudity, and a final twist ending."
Barbara McNair & Manfred Mann —
Venus in Furs:
Lastly, to return
to Mondo Esoterica:
"Like most of the Towers/Franco collaborations, Venus in Furs has a
strong cast. American actor James Darren was unusual casting for the lead role,
a popular American TV star he was little known in Europe, Franco agreed to cast
him after discovering that Darren was a former jazz trumpeter which lends some
real authenticity to the musical sequences. Barbara McNair was similarly
well known in America as a singer, which allows her character to seem much more
authentic (no need to dub the singing separately) while Maria Rohm as her
supernatural love rival was Tower's top name actress and very popular, although
probably intentionally she gets little range here, usually appearing mute. The
tragic Dennis Price and legendary Klaus Kinski give good but almost mute
performances as Wanda's torturers and victims, although with little
screen-time. Look out for Franco regular Paul Muller as a bar owner, and
jazz musician Manfred Mann as himself, even Franco himself puts in a turn
on the piano in one scene."
Has nothing to do with this film —
trailer to Joe Marzano's Venus in Furs
(1967):
Eugenie... The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion
(1969, dir Jess Franco)
Another Harry
Alan Towers production scripted by "Peter Welbeck" featuring Maria
Rohm. Aka The Virgin and the Whip, De Sade 70: Beaten and Loved, Philosophy in the Boudoir and other names. Tangentially based
on the works of Marquis de Sade, it is also yet another movie starring Christopher
Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) that he later claimed he had no idea would
feature so much nudity — considering that this is the case of almost all his
Franco films, one wonders why Lee made so many with Franco. (Aside from the
four he made around the same time — 1988-70 — he returned in 1988 for Dark
Mission [full film in Spanish]
and in 1989 for Fall of the Eagles [trailer].)
Franco did a
total of five films "based" on DeSade's Philosophy in the Boudoir. He followed this version here, for
example, a year later with the similarly entitled Eugénie (striptease),
starring 9 July 1943 – 18 August
1970. After that, he followed with Plaisir a trois aka How to Seduce a Virgin (1974 / full NSFW movie,
in French) and two further sex-film versions, both of which we took a quick
glance at way back in 2012 in R.I.P. Lina Romay:
1978's Cocktail Special (full NSFW movie),
and his final riff on the tale in 1980, Eugenie
(Historia de una perversión) aka Wicked
Memoirs of Eugenie.
Trailer to
Eugenie... The
Story of Her Journey Into Perversion:
But now, to get
to the movie. "Though not a neat break from his past oeuvre, historians of
continental film are of the mind that Eugenie
was more-or-less a transitional movie for Franco, a pivotal catalyst for the
director’s turn from more traditional movie-making forms to a more seamy and
steamy catalog of cult-films. In the final analysis, Eugenie was a difficult film to market in 1970 as it had a
cinematic foothold in two disparate worlds. U.S. distributor, Jerry Gross (26
Jan 1940 – 20 Nov 2002), didn't even want the final product as he found the
film too artsy and tame and wanted to see more flesh on-screen. Franco would
defend the finished film as 'erotic but not pornographic'. [Cinemaretro]"
The plot, as
found at The Bloody Pit of Horror:
"Madame Marianne Saint Ange (Maria Rohm) seduces Monsieur de Mistival
(Paul Muller of Lady Frankenstein
[1971] and so much more) and gets him to agree to let her take his
impressionable, sheltered 15-year-old daughter Eugenie (Marie Liljedahl) away
to her tropical island mansion (only accessible via boat) for the weekend. She
promises no harm will become of his virginal little girl in the process. Upon
arriving, Eugenie is showered with attention, fancy wardrobe, ocean-front
dinners, wine and smoke by her libertine hostess, who also enjoys bathing and
rubbing lotion on her guest in various states of undress. Eugenie is also
introduced to Marianne's step-brother (and lover) Mirvel (Jack Taylor of Succubus
[1968] and so much more), who immediately falls in love with the naive young
beauty, a black handyman named Augustin (Anney Kablan) and
reclusive, mute maid Therese (Uta Dahlberg).
Seems harmless — and typical — late 60s/early 70s soft-focus soft-core fluff,
right? Not so fast, sucker. […] There's sadism galore, druggings, rapings,
beatings, nightmares, murders and a strange cult dressed in Victorian era garb
and headed over by Christopher Lee
as Dolmance. Said cult seems to want to get their hands on a human heart for
some kind of ceremony. [….]"
At All Movie,
Mark Deming demurs that "Die
Jungfrau und die Peitsche is rather subdued by Franco's standards, though
it has enough nudity, decadence, and pretty people doing awful things to
satisfy the vast majority of his fans. Die
Jungfrau und die Peitsche (released in the United States as Eugenie: The Story of Her Journey Into
Perversion) features plenty of lovely scenery and pleasing sequences of the
idle rich enjoying themselves to balance out the lurid and enthusiastic torture
sequences, though most of them are mildly creepy rather than bloodcurdling.
Christopher Lee's all too brief supporting performance as master sadist
Dolmance hits all the right notes […], and Maria Rohm and Jack Taylor are a
fine pair of creepy, if attractive, libertines. Marie Liljedahl, however, takes
top honors as the defiled innocent Eugenie, who walks an appropriate line
between schoolgirl charm and ripe sexuality — scoring impressively on both
sides. Die Jungfrau und die Peitsche
may be sleaze, but it's sleaze with style, delivering kinky softcore sex and
amusingly pretentious philosophizing in amusingly equal measure."
Of Maria Rohm, at House of Self Indulgence
pre-transition Yum-Yum writes, "Anyway,
Maria Rohm plays Madame Saint Ange, a leggy aristocratic who enjoys sunbathing,
toying with her guitar-playing gardener/boatman, Augustin, diaphanous clothing,
sado-masochism, and corrupting minors."
The Bloody Judge
(1969, dir. Jess Franco)
Trailer to
Aka: Night of the Blood Monster and,
according to various sources, Throne of
the Blood Monster, Trial of the
Witches and Witch Killer of
Broadmoor. Original title, Il trono
di fuoco — but not to be mistaken with 1983's Il trono di fuoco (trailer). The version that is
Night of the Blood Monster is
severely cut, so don't expect the normal amount of Franco blood, breasts,
bondage and beatings.
Trailer to
Night of the
Blood Monster:
Another Jess
Franco film with Maria Rohm — and Christopher Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015),
Maria Schell (15 Jan 1926 – 26 April 2005) and Margaret Lee, among others. The
story by Towers, script by Franco, Michael Haller (co-scripter of Sonne, Sylt und kesse Krabben aka Ready, Willing and Able [1971 / song]),
Anthony Scott Veitch ([6 Jan 1914 – 23 Feb 1983] who cowrote Coast of Skeletons
[1965]), and Enrico Colombo. Colombo scripted some fun trash in his day,
for example: Il castello dalle porte di
fuoco aka Ivanna (1970 / German trailer),
La orgía de los muertos aka Beyond the Living Dead (1973 / Spanish trailer)
and the unjustly unknown Réquiem para el
gringo aka Duel in the Eclipse
(1968 / trailer).
One might be
tempted to write this off as a remake or alternative version of Witchfinder General
(1968), but that film is based on the life and times of Matthew Hopkins
(c. 1620 – 12 Aug 1647), while Franco's Bloody Judge is based on the life and times of George Jeffreys,
1st Baron Jeffreys of Wem, otherwise known as The Hanging Judge (15 May
1645 – 18 April 1689). But surely, Franco's film — like Michael Armstrong's Mark
of the Devil I (1970 / trailer)
and Adrian Hoven's Mark of the Devil II (1973 / trailer)
— would not have come to be were it not for the success of Witchfinder General.
Hans Hass Jr. sings in German —
American Pie (1972):
"Franco's
admittedly admirable attempts to craft a serious period piece/historical drama
include several well-staged battle sequences, dark political shenanigans
ever-afoot and snatches of the driest humour. The Bloody Judge
also boosts a budget more sizable than most Franco films, and there's plenty of
grim detail to the filthy authenticity of the period, which is handsomely
evoked. Also worth mentioning is the beautiful cinematography by Franco regular
Manuel Merino, and the emotive score courtesy of Behind the Couch
favourite, Bruno Nicolai. Despite these positive aspects, events are too often
bogged down in dusty scenes of badly dubbed dialogue that go on a little too
long; and regardless of some surprisingly effective performances, none of the
characters ever really garner any sympathy. Maria Rohm […] is rather good as
Mary Gray; the damsel in distress who seems prepared to do whatever it takes to
protect her lover. Sir Christopher Lee, as usual, delivers the kind of stately
performance he is now renowned for as the merciless judge. [Behind the Couch]"
20-20 Movie Reviews,
on the other hand, says, "Anyone who has seen a Franco movie will pretty
much know what to expect in terms of plot and quality. The story is played
fairly straight to begin with, but it's as if even Franco grows bored of the
tedious pace with which the muddled plot unfolds and decides to spice things up
with gratuitous female nudity. [That's Maria Rohm getting nekkid below.] Most
of this involves an unsavoury focus on violence towards women, including
beatings and rape. […] Despite the attempts at respectability and relatively
high production values for a Franco production, no attempt is made to add any
depth to the characters. Jeffries is simply a sadistic monster with no human
emotions whatsoever, and no back-story to speak of."
As Robert
Firsching points out at All Movie,
"This erotic horror film from cult director Jesus Franco […] revels in
displays of whipping, sex, and chained women, but is difficult to evaluate
otherwise due to the numerous different versions available, some with alternate
endings. One version has Jeffreys hanged, then taken down and beheaded, while
another has him watching a hanging from a window while a narrator reads his
death sentence. There is also a third ending in which Jeffreys makes a confession
to Harry's father, the Earl of Wessex, before suffering a fatal heart attack."
Bruno Nicolai — Music to
The Bloody Judge:
Jess Franco,
ever a believer in (depending on your viewpoint) flogging a dead horse or
reinvention of ideas, returned to the character of Jeffreys a few years later in Les Demons (1973 / trailer),
with Cihangir "John Foster" Gaffari (also of Hundra [1983 / trailer]
and El monte de las brujas aka The Witches Mountain [1975 / trailer])
playing the judge. Franco's Les Demons,
by the way, was also an exploitation take of Ken Russell's
The Devils (1971 / trailer).
When released in the US with its misleading name, poster and general presentation, Night of the Blood Monster was part of a double bill with one of Hammer's more troubled and more succesful productions, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971 / trailer).
Go here for Part III: 1970-75.
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