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 25-year-older
husband remained active as a producer.
Go here for Part I: 1964–67
Go here for Part II: 1968–69
Count Dracula
(1970, dir. Jess Franco)
"The children of the night... what music they make."
Count Dracula (Christopher Lee)
Count Dracula (Christopher Lee)
We took a quick look at Count
Dracula way back in 2012, in They Died in September 2012, Part VII: Herbert Lom, where we more or less wrote: "Aka Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht. Hebert Lom as Prof. Helsing in his
second (and last) Jess Franco film — alongside no lesser names than Christopher
Lee, Klaus Kinski (who never actually speaks throughout the whole film), and
Soledad Miranda — not to mention Fred Williams and Jack Taylor. This is perhaps
the only movie version of Dracula that maintains the premise of the book that
Dracula is an old man who gets younger each time he feeds.
German trailer to
Count Dracula:
Ignoring Soledad Miranda's supposed un-credited appearance somewhere
in the early Jess Franco movie La reina
del Tabarín aka Queen of the Tabarin
Club (1960), Count Dracula is
probably the first of her feature-film Franco projects to get a general
release. Unknown to many non-Spanish fans of her films, Soledad Miranda already
had a successful career in Spain as a pop singer prior to becoming Franco's
most famous "discovery".
Not from the film —
Soledad Miranda sings:
Trivia: Though they share scenes, supposedly Christopher Lee and
Herbert Lom never shot a scene together. And although Christopher Lee famously
hated his iconic role of Dracula, and was won over for the movie with great
difficulty, he appeared as Count Dracula in three other movies in that same year, 1970: a cameo
in Jerry Lewis' unfunny One More Time
(trailer), and in the two Hammer productions, Peter Sasdy's
Taste the Blood of Dracula (trailer) and Roy Ward Baker's Scars of
Dracula (trailer). Lastly, Franco's version of Dracula is the first screen version of
the novel to include
the character of Quincey Morris (Jack Taylor).
Dorian Gray
(1970, dir. Massimo Dallamano)
We took a quick look at Dorian
Gray way back in 2012, in They Died in September 2012, Part VII: Herbert Lom, where we more or less wrote: "Director Dallamano, who died of a
car accident in Rome on 14 November 1976, was a cinematographer (for A
Fistful of Dollars [1964], among
others) who moved into the director's chair; among his more enjoyable Eurotrash
projects are Devil in the Flesh
(1969 / trailer), What Have You Done to
Solange? (1972 / trailer*), The Night Child (1975 /
trailer) and, of
course, this flick here. Herbert Lom plays Wotton, a gallerist who has the hots
for Dorian (played by Helmut Berger, seen here below with his big hands).
"The plot? Really — don't you ever read books? Handsome young
narcissist gives himself over to a lascivious lifestyle and his portrait ages
instead of himself. Tragedy for everyone involved."
It should be mentioned that this version of the tale moves the action
from Victorian England to the Swinging London of, dunno, Blow Up (1966 / trailer) and/or the opening scenes of Austin
Powers (1997 / trailer). It is "a film that stands head and shoulders above the rest
for its appealingly tawdry Eurotrash aesthetics, its flawless evocation of Swinging
'60s mod, and its flagrant, unabashed sleaze factor. […] Director Dallamano
hits pay dirt with the casting of Helmut Berger. A man so staggeringly
beautiful that he makes personal fave Joe Dallesandro (certainly one of the
most gorgeous men to have ever walked the planet) look like Ernest Borgnine. [Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For...]"
Trailer to
Dorian Gray:
The movie was a Towers and Samuel Z. Arkoff (12 June 1918 – 16 Sept 2001) coproduction.
Maria Rohm has a minor role as Alice Campbell, a character not found in the
book; Marie Liljedahl, however, plays the tragic Sibyl Vane, who is in the book
and is the first true victim of Dorian moral decay. Unlike in the novel, Dorian
does not inadvertently kill himself, but makes a conscious decision to do so —
a narrative decision that rather undermines the entire tale. Anyone who knows
what the bisexual actor Helmut Berger, the man playing Dorian Gray, looks like
today might be tempted to say he is a living picture of Dorian Gray… but then,
he is over 70 years old.
Cuadecuc, vampir
(1971, dir. Pere Portabella)
The documentary as experimental film. In this case, a documentary on
the making of Jess Franco's Count
Dracula (1970). All the stars, Maria Rohm inclusive, are found in this
project.
Trailer to
Cuadecuc, vampire:
On his own website, Pere Portabella explains his film as follows: "Vampir-Cuadecuc is possibly a key film
in understanding the transition in the Spanish filmworld from the period of the
'new cinema' (permitted by the Franco government) towards the illegal,
clandestine or openly antagonistic practices against the Franco regime. It
consists of shooting the filming of a commercial film El conde Drácula by Jesús Franco. Portabella practices two types of
violence on the standard narrative: he totally eliminates color and substitutes
the soundtrack with a landscape of image-sound collisions by Carles Santos (1
July 1940 – 4 Dec 2017). Filmed provocatively in 16mm and with sound negative,
the tensions between black and white favor the strange 'fantasmatic
materialism' of this revealing analysis of the construction mechanism for the
magic in dominant narrative cinema, which at the same time constitutes a
radical intervention in the Spanish cinematographic institution."
Jonathan Rosenbaum, who saw an original screening of the film, has some interesting info
about the event: "It was showing […] at a now-defunct cinema called Le
Français. It's worth adding that the name of the filmmaker and the title of his
film were both slightly different from the way we know them today, for reasons
that are historically significant. The name of this Barcelona-based filmmaker
was listed as Pedro Portabella and his film was called simply Vampir.
Why? Because he was Catalan, a language forbidden in Franco's Spain,
making both the name 'Pere' and the word 'Cuadacuc' (which I'm told is an
obscure Catalan term meaning both a worm's tail and the end of a reel of
unexposed film stock) equally impermissible. Furthermore, Portabella wasn't
present at the screening because, as I later discovered, he was one of the two
Spanish producers of Luis Buñuel's Viridiana (trailer) one decade earlier, and the Franco government was punishing him for
having helped to engineer this subterfuge by confiscating his passport, making
it impossible for him to travel outside of Spain. And for those like myself who
wondered how a film as unorthodox as this could play in Franco Spain at all, it
eventually became clear that it survived, like the Catalan language itself (not
to mention Dracula), clandestinely, via secret nourishment."
Black Beauty
(1971, dir. James Hill)
Possibly the first G-rated movie Maria Rohm ever appeared in — thus
signaling the end of her cult career. This family friendly movie is not found
on our list of films to see. It is based, of course, on the novel by Anna
Sewell (20 March 1820 – 25 April 1878), with a screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz (7 Nov 1924 – 20 May 1998), a man who had written screenplays for
more entertaining films, including The
Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961 / trailer) and The Two Faces of
Dr. Jekyll (1960 / trailer). Director James Hill (1 Aug 1919 – 7 Oct 1994) is perhaps best known as
the director of Born Free (1966 / trailer), but we personally prefer some of his other movies, namely: A Study in Terror (1965 / trailer) and The Man from O.R.G.Y.
(1970), the last of which is the only screen adaptation (that we know of) of
any of the paperback pulp novels by that great, productive, mostly forgotten, and highly
dated sleaze satirist "Ted Mark", aka Theodore Gottfried (19 Oct 1928 – 7 March 2004).
Trailer to
Black Beauty:
The young lady
seen most in the trailer above is the young Uschi Glas, also of Umberto Lenzi's
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), The Sinister Monk (1965 / trailer), The College Girl Murders
(1967) and Gorilla Gang (1968 / trailer) and Die Tote aus der Themse (1971 / German trailer) — Edgar
Wallace films, one and all — and the unjustly unknown Eurotrash disasterpiece Die Weibchen aka Feminine Carnivores (1970).
Trailer
to
Feminine
Carnivores (1970):
Mark Lester, in case you've forgotten, was last in the headlines
when he claimed that he thinks that Paris Jackson might actually be his daughter. (Sorry, Mark, but like you totally have the wrong skin color.)
Call of the Wild
(1972, dir. Kenneth Cooper "Ken" Annakin)
Among the movies Charlton "I'm dead, so take my gun" Heston
(4 Oct 1923 – 5 April 2008) made around the time of his classics Omega Man (1971 / trailer) and Soylent Green (1973) is this movie based on one of Jack London's most famous works, the
novella The Call of the Wild.
Considering the commercial viability of Heston's
name at the time, one could well
say that his casting was the closest a Towers film ever came to having a
current Hollywood A-list actor in its cast.
The director, Kenneth Cooper "Ken" Annakin (10 Aug 1914 –
22 April 2009), though hardly known for originality or breaking ground, and
possibly already forgotten in general, was likewise a reliable feature-film
director known at the time (1972) for "all-star, splashy, big-budget
European/American co-productions".
Call of the Wild was shot on location in Spain, Norway and possibly Finland, the last
of which is a country in northern Europe now famous as the location where, in
July 2018, Donald Trump, after labeling Europe a foe of the US, satisfied his
penchant for golden showers with Putin in a toilet stall. And it was good.
DVD Talk points out that "[…] The
Call of the Wild (1972) is a real anomaly, downright bizarre even. It
improbably brought together A-list Hollywood star Charlton Heston, still near
the peak of his fame, with shady Harry Alan Towers, a one-time procurer,
bail-jumper, and possible Soviet spy-turned-movie producer, best known for his
cheapo Fu Manchu movies and long association with schlockmeisters like director
Jesus Franco. Typical of Towers's productions, The Call of the Wild is a multinational patchwork filmed in Norway
and Spain, with American, French, German, Austrian, and Spanish actors, whose
salaries were shakily financed with money coming from all over Europe. Though
the direction is credited to Ken Annakin, a veteran British filmmaker who knew
his way around big league pictures, The
Call of the Wild is itself only marginally professional, looking not at all
like Heston's other movies but typical of Towers's oeuvre."
The full film —
The Call of the Wild:
The movie was not well received when it was originally released.
Indeed, at one point in his life Charlton Heston supposedly called it "the
worst movie I ever made". In his autobiography The Actor's Life — Journals 1956-1976, Heston also wrote:
"We're faced with the endless problems of organization, personnel, dogs,
publicity . . . I fear I've fallen in with amateurs and con men. This had not
been a picture really but a production deal, patched together with incredible
adroitness and negotiating skill — and no filmmaking talent whatsoever."
Somewhere along the way in the movie, as DVD Talk puts it, "Thornton searches for his missing team while resolving
his sort-of love triangle between an ambitious saloon owner (Michèle Mercier)
and his beloved Buck." We mention this primarily because of DVD Talk's picturesque wording — visions
of bestial three-ways cross our minds — and because it gives us reason to
include the photograph below, not from the movie, of Michèle Mercier (of Women of Devil's Island [1962 / trailer], Black Sabbath [1963 / trailer], Cemetery Without Crosses [1969 / trailer], and Web of the Spider [1971 / German trailer]) in her prime.
Treasure Island
(1972, dir. John Hough & others)
Maria Rohm appears as the extremely MILFy Mrs. Hawkins, the owner of
Hawkins' Tavern, the pub where the tale begins. (She's in the clip directly below.)
Scene from
Treasure Island:
This time around, Harry Alan Towers snared no one less than Orson
Welles (6 May 1915 – 10 Oct 1985) to play Long John Silver. Welles
himself, however, was less than thrilled to participate as his commitment was
due to an almost ten-year-old contractual commitment: "Welles only offered
to direct and star as Long John Silver in 1964 in order to secure funding for
his cherished Falstaff project Falstaff – Chimes at Midnight (1965 / trailer), but he made only a cursory effort to make that version, dispatching
Jess Franco to film some second-unit material, before abandoning the pretence
entirely. However, he was still legally obliged to make the movie if new
funding was ever obtained, which it duly was in 1972. The only problem with
that was that it was prolific British schlockmeister Harry Alan Towers into
whose hands the resurrected project fell. Towers was a poor moviemaker but a
shrewd businessman, and he had three versions of the movie made — English,
Italian and Spanish — by three different directors. He also had the screenplay
Welles had prepared for the 1964 version re-written — a fact that prompted the
actor to request that his name be removed from the credits (he's credited under
the pseudonym O. W. Jeeves). [2020 Movie Reviews]"
To what extent the two other directors — Andrea Bianchi (31March 1925 – 4 Nov 2013) and Antonio
Margheriti (19 Sept 1930 – 4 Nov 1972) — actually directed complete, different
versions is up to question. In an interview, John Hough claimed to have
directed the whole movie, with Andrea Bianchi (credited, as often, as
"Andrew White"), the second-unit director, listed on the European
release for tax reasons.
Trailer to
American Gothic (1987):
Treasure Island, of course, is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel of the
same name; Harry Alan Towers was to return to the tale again 17 years later in
1999 when he coproduced a version of the tale starring Jack Palance (trailer).
But when in comes to this version here, The Movie Scene has the plot: "One day Billy Bones (Lionel Stander [11 Jan 1908
– 30 Nov 1994]) comes to stay at a pub run by Mrs. Hawkins (Maria Rohm) and
where her young son Jim (Kim Burfield) works. But Billy has a love of the sauce
and when he dies it is Jim who ends up in possession of a map showing the
location of Captain Flint's treasure. Jim along with Squire Trelawney (Walter
Slezak [in his final film appearance]) and Dr. Livesey (Angel DelPozo) decide
to follow the map which leads them on a sea journey with Captain Smollett (Rik
Battaglia [18 Feb 1927 – 27 March 2015]) who agrees to take them to the island.
But everyone aboard including former pirate turned ship's cook, Long John
Silver (Orson Welles) learns of the treasure map and that makes it a dangerous
place to be especially with Silver willing to do anything to get his hands on
the treasure."
Derek Winnert says that "This rumbustious, undervalued 1972 Spanish-shot
version of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 classic young adults' novel about
a boy's life with pirates on the high seas proves a pleasant,
enjoyable surprise. It's good that, this time, much of the plot and the
linking narrative, spoken by the actor playing Jim Hawkins, is faithful to the
original book. […] Walter Slezak, Lionel Stander, Rik Battaglia and Ángel
del Pozo are also flamboyant assets to liven up the movie as Squire Trelawney,
Billy Bones, Captain Smollett and Doctor Livesey. And young Kim Burfield
is more than adequate as cabin lad Jim Hawkins."
An opinion countered by the writer at Mystery File, who says: "I had somewhat high hopes for Treasure Island, but I probably should
have known better. It's probably one of Orson Welles' least-known films and
it's most certainty [sic] that way for a reason. Produced by Harry Alan Towers,
this somewhat genial, but ultimately unsatisfying adventure yarn …."
More-interesting films by the various names involved: Rik Battaglia is
found in the minor classic Nightmare
Castle (1965 / trailer) and non-classic White Slave (1985 / trailer); Ángel del Pozo is in the classic Horror Express (1972 / trailer), the forgotten — for a Bunel film — Leonor (1975 / music) and the trashy Assignment
Terror (1970 / German trailer)*; and character actor Lionel Stander is found in any of the
following: Cul-De-Sac (1966 / trailer), Pulp (1972 / trailer), Wicked Stepmother (1989 / trailer), The Loved One (1965 / trailer), Blast of Silence (1961 / trailer), and so much more.
* A film high on our "to see" list.
Not to be mistaken for Towers's film —
Scott King's Treasure
Island (1999):
Sex Charade
(1972, writ. & dir. Jess Franco)
The last film that Maria Rohm made with Franco was this movie, Sex Charade, which is considered by most a lost film — which would mean that the poster below is "fake". Anyone know?
In any event, Rohm is not the star: instead, the babe of focus is Franco's muse of the
time, the beautiful Soledad Miranda (9 July 1943 – 18 August 1970).
Fan-made music video to
a song of Soledad's:
The imdb and other sites
list the film as from 1972, but most sites claim the movie was released in 1970
— as does Lost Media Archive, whence most of the photos here come. The LMA further claim, "Sex
Charade […] was one of three films Franco shot in Liechtenstein (the other
two being Nightmares Come at Night [1970
/ scene] and Eugenie de Sade [1973]).
[…] The film apparently had a short theatrical run in France and was partially
released in Belgium as a bizarre collage featuring footage from other
films."
The starring cast consisted of Soledad Miranda, Jack Taylor, Howard
Vernon, Maria Rohm, Diana Lorys and Paul Muller — Franco regulars, one all. The
underappreciated Diana Lorys also starred in one of our favorite movies,
Armando de Ossorio's oft-maligned gothic, vampire comedy flick Malenka aka Fangs of the Living Dead (1969).
Trailer to
Fangs of the Living Dead:
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
(1974, dir. Peter Collinson [1 April 1936 – 16
Dec 1980])
"Same script, different locations. You always kill off the most expensive stars first!"
– Harry Alan Towers on his three versions of Ten Little Indians
The first to go, Charles Aznavour, performs
The Old Fashioned Way (Les
Plaisirs Démodés)
in And Then
There Were None:
We took a quick look at And
Then There Were None aka Ten Little
Indians way back in 2012, in They Died in September 2012, Part VII: Herbert Lom, where we more or less wrote:
"Peter Collinson's career was already on the slide when he made
this, the umpteenth film version of the famous Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None (originally
entitled Ten Little Niggers), the
best-selling book of all books she ever wrote (in fact, it is the 7th
best-selling book of all time). This version here, the first one to made in
color, is also the second of three versions that producer Harry Alan Towers
brought to the screen (the first being from 1965 [trailer]; the third,
1989 [trailer]).
"This version has a highly enjoyable international cast, to say
the least, and unlike the original story, which is set on an island, the events
here take place in a hotel deep in the Iranian desert. Herbert Rom appears here
as Dr Edward Armstrong, who had been accused of causing a woman's death by
operating on her while drunk. (Lom is also present in Towers' 1989 production,
directed by Alan Birkinshaw, but as the General, who had caused the death of
his wife's lover by sending the soldier on a suicide mission.)
"The plot, according to Wikipedia: 'A group of 10 people, strangers to one another, have all travelled
to a hotel located deep in the deserts of Iran. Upon arrival they discover that
their host is mysteriously absent. They are accused by a tape recording of
having committed various crimes in the past which went unpunished by the law.
As guests start to die, the remainder deduce that their unseen host is
determined to murder them. Since a search of the hotel proves that there is no
one hiding among them, they realize that the murderer is one of them'."
Trailer to
And Then There Were None:
"Peter Welbeck" (aka Harry Alan Towers) is the credited
screenwriter, but then the script is almost the same as the 1965 version of And Then There Were None, for which he received co-writing credit. Maria Lohm has a relatively
unglamorous part in this version of the tale, that of Elsa Martino, the housekeeper and cook.
She, along with her husband Otto (Alberto de Mendoza
[21 Jan 23 – 12 Dec 11] of Horror
Express [1972 / trailer]),
"maliciously and brutally caused the death of [their] invalid employer for
[their] own financial gain". The film's final girl heroine, now named Vera
Clyde, is played by a young Elke Sommer, of Flashback — Morderische Ferien (2000) and Hotel der toten Gäste (1965).
Ninja Dixon says, "To be honest, if you want to see a brilliant version of Ten Little Indians watch the Soviet
version from 1987, Desyat Negrityat
(Ninja's review / full film in Russian). That's a very faithful adaptation, maybe the only version 100% true
to Christie's original vision. But until then, this one delivers cozy
entertainment for Saturday mornings and that day you need to stay home because
of a nasty cold."
We here at a wasted life, on
the other hand, would recommend the less-than-faithful Bollywood version from
1965,
Gumnaam.
Dance scene in Gumnaam (1965),
the Bollywood version of Ten Little Indians:
As of recent, it has come to light that Christie may have purloined her
basic plot from another book turned into a play turned into a film in which
eight guests are brought together to a dinner party and killed one by one. The
book, The Invisible Host, by Bruce Manning (15 July 1902 – 3 Aug
1965) and Gwen Bristow (16 Sept 1903 – 17 Aug 1980) was published in 1930, nine
years before Christie's racistly titled novel. The play, The Ninth Guest by Owen Davis (29 Jan 1874 – 14 Oct 1956), was
first performed in 1934, 13 years before Christie's play. The movie version of The Ninth Guest, directed by Roy
William Neill (4 Sept 1887 – 14 Dec 1946), came out in 1934, 11 years before And Then There Were None (1945 / film).
Roy William Neill's The Ninth Guest
is now in public domain.
Full film — Roy William Neill's
The Ninth Guest:
Closed Up-Tight
(1975, dir. Cliff Owen
[22 April 1919 – Nov 1993])
OK, since this
flick is listed in the imdb and
various other online sources, we're including it here. One might assume it to be an
obscure and forgotten British comedy, produced by Harry Alan Towers, which
could well be a lost film and in someone's attic. But before you start searching, some things need to be
considered.
The Internet is strangely uninformative about Closed Up-Tight, for example. No one has written about it, despite its intriguing cast (Maria Rohm, Marty Feldman, Robin Askwith, Terry Thomas, Ron Moody, Mark "I fathered Paris Jackson" Lester, and minor cult babe Annie Belle), and the same "poster" image is seen everywhere. But the "poster" usually found isn't even a poster: it is a page ripped from a magazine on which is written, at the bottom, "Shooting Start: June 1976" — a full year after the release date commonly given for Closed Up-Tight.
The Internet is strangely uninformative about Closed Up-Tight, for example. No one has written about it, despite its intriguing cast (Maria Rohm, Marty Feldman, Robin Askwith, Terry Thomas, Ron Moody, Mark "I fathered Paris Jackson" Lester, and minor cult babe Annie Belle), and the same "poster" image is seen everywhere. But the "poster" usually found isn't even a poster: it is a page ripped from a magazine on which is written, at the bottom, "Shooting Start: June 1976" — a full year after the release date commonly given for Closed Up-Tight.
Personally, we
don't think the movie was ever made (perhaps the shoot never even began). Closed
Up-Tight, odd spelling and all, is not found on most filmographies of any
the actors outside of the imdb. And the
French blogspot Chez Roubi's (Annie Belle Fan Blog) lends credence
to the concept that film was never made by simply claiming that the film was a
"Projet abandonné".
Of the names
involved in the cast that never was, the most interesting to fans of cult
flotsam are (outside of Maria Rohm) without doubt Robin Askwith and Annie Bell/Belle.
In theory, Closed Up-Tight would
have been the debut film of "Annie Belle". True, she had participated
in four previous films, but in all her prior movies — including Jean Rollon's Lips of Blood (1975 / trailer) — she was credited either under her birth name, "Annie
Brilland", or as "Annie Briand". As Annie Belle, she is the lead in the last film Maria Rohm acted, Annie aka Blue Bell (1976), which we look at in Part IV of this career review. Annie Belle, found in Laura (1976 / trailer), Velluto nero (1976), House on the Edge of the Park (1980 / trailer, with David Hess), and Absurd (1981 / trailer), retired after the decidedly unexciting bad film Escape from Death aka Luna di sangue (1989) to become a social worker.
Trailer to
Velluto nero (1976):
Robin Askwith might no longer be a household name (and perhaps never
was outside of Great Britain), but his recognizable face is found in numerous
badly dated sex comedies as well as watchable movies (mostly in the 70s), the
latter including Lindsay Anderson's If....
(1968 / trailer) & Britannia Hospital
(1982 / trailer), Pier Paolo Pasolini's The
Canterbury Tales (1972 / trailer),
the non-classic Queen Kong (1976,
with Rula "VO5" Lenska [!]), Peter Walker's The
Flesh and Blood Show (1972 / trailer),
Horror on Snape Island (1972 /
trailer, with Jill Haworth) and Horror Hospital (1973
/ trailer, with Michael Gough).
Trailer to
Queen Kong (1976):
El asesino no está solo
(1975, dir. Jesús García de
Dueñas)
Aka The Killer Is Not Alone. Contrary to popular opinion, this Spanish thriller is not Maria Rohm's
last movie, but it is close. A Spanish production, it doesn't seem to have been
released in any other country. One of the producers, Andrés Vicente Gómez,
co-produced some earlier Towers productions — for example, both Black Beauty (1971) and Treasure Island (1972) — which might
explain how Maria Rohm came to get cast in one of her few non-Towers produced
films. Among other later projects, Andrés Vicente Gómez produced such fun stuff
like El día de la bestia (1995) and Killer Tongue (1996).
Trailer to
Killer Tongue (1996):
The plot, more or less as found online: "Julio (David 'Tarzan' Carpenter),
an only child of a wealthy family, murders a prostitute who tries to seduce
him. He, in childhood, suffered severe trauma and this has caused serious
problems with women. Because of this, he runs away and stays at a boarding house
in Madrid, where he meets Monica (Teresa Rabal), the daughter of the owner
(Lola Flores [21 Jan 1923 – 16 May 1995]). Monica finds him attractive … even
as his obsession for killing is increases."
Over at the imdb, Red-Barracuda says that "It's not the most original concept in the
world", but also says: "But this Spanish production still registers.
It has decent performances and a story that essentially holds up. But more
importantly it has a good sense of style. The killer's inner turmoil is shown
by flashbacks, close-ups of eyes and eerie music. In the murder scenes, all of
these elements kick in together and are well-executed. Generally speaking, it's
a well-photographed film, with nice exterior shots of various Spanish locales
and great detail of a religious festival incorporated into the story, which
adds good additional atmosphere. The killer's obsession with women's shoes also
adds a further fetishistic detail; similarly, images and sounds of trains add
additional material that recalls his past trauma. The music varies from cheesy
Spanish pop to atmospheric glockenspiel and piano driven pieces. […] Definitely
a movie that deserves to be more widely seen."
Not many people have written about the movie in English, but The Bloody Pit of Horror did and points out that "All of the actors do a decent job in
their respective parts. Co-star Maria Rohm is interestingly cast playing three
different characters; the opening murder victim, the prostitute living at the
boarding house and Julio's childhood babysitter (and sports a different hair
color in each role; red, blonde and mousy brunette, respectively)."
Clip with Maria Rohm from
El asesino no está solo (1975):
Go here for Part IV: 1976 – 2007.
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