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I have this strange urge to pick up all of Franco's horrors (well, not the DTV ones, I do have some principles!). The interviews alone are hilarious - a chainsmoking Franco, subtitled even when speaking in english, bitching endlessly about how his leading ladies (Lina Romay excepted!) were stupid and could never understand him, and how awful and terrible everyone else's horrors are! (he badmouths George Romero frequently). Franco does have some excellent films to his name (VENUS IN FURS, EUGENIE) and he certainly excels at atmosphere, but his vanity seems to cause him to turn everything into a wacky arthouse mess, and sometimes the final result is dreadful. DEVIL HUNTER is probably the only King Kong rip off you'll see where instead of a gorilla, you get a naked black man with ping-pong ball eyes

I post on other forums where some think Uncle Jess is the greatest filmmaker.
I kid you not!

I don't mind his early black and white films and a few odd ones here and there but he's far from great.

RIP Jess Franco

A very good obituary by Stephen Thrower, whose book on Franco I'm eagerly awaiting.

Three Jess Franco films are coming from Kino/Redemption on Blu from August: The Awful Dr Orloff, Virgin Among The Living Dead (two versions) and the recently rediscovered Nightmares Come At Night. The first two are going to feature Tim Lucas commentaries.

Plus three more films in 2014.

All true yet the good news is Redemption reportedly have a dozen or more Franco titles lined up to eventually be reissued on Blu, though sales might affect how far into the catalog they're able to delve. Tim Lucas has now recorded a commentary for Nightmares Come At Night as well.

They've already released a number of Franco's to Blu so I assume sales are about as good as could be expected.

smergo wrote:A very good obituary by Stephen Thrower, whose book on Franco I'm eagerly awaiting.

Anyone know if it is still possible to get an affordable copy of the Thrower book anywhere? Looks to be OOP and going for $1000+ most everywhere I've looked so far...

You can purchase the non-limited edition for £40 (they ship internationally) direct from the publisher here.

Thanks, for some reason the link I found before was showing up as out of stock/unavailable.

EDIT-I was able to successfully place an order, though it seems to go in and out of stock somewhat.

Just a note that the second volume of Stephen Thrower's comprehensive look at Franco's filmography has just been released.

A revised and updated version of Stephen Thrower's Murderous Passions is available for preorder via Strange Attractor Press, with Amazon forthcoming. I know Domino will hate to replace his original volume 1, but sometimes we must sacrifice for the artists we love.

Quite accidentally I just got my first taste of Franco as director and now I need a bath. So, I was watching Zombie Lake because I adore Rollin and while scenes, in particular the flashback, are classically him and beautiful some scenes were awful in a way I don't associate with Rollin at his worst. The surprise came to me when I found out that most of those out of character scenes, in particular a sequence with a female basketball team that is literally out of a different movie, were directed by Franco himself. Is that home porno quality typical of him and if so how can anyone defend that?

Franco didn't direct the volleyball scene, he quit before production started. Aside from the military stock footage, the whole film is directed by Rollin (who also has a role as a detective).

My bad then. I read something that made it sound like Franco had directed that and one other scene.

It must be said that Zombie Lake is a LOT more fun than Franco's Oasis of the Zombies.

Rollin directed some horrendous zombie inserts around the sametime for a reissue of Franco's fairly effective A Virgin Among the Living Dead.

knives wrote: Wed Aug 05, 2020 7:21 pm My bad then. I read something that made it sound like Franco had directed that and one other scene.

Do you recall the source?

Just random Internet person. I really should try to not trust people off hand. I will say I did love
The film's flashback and the father-daughter scenes work even if they are a lesser variant of stuff Rollin has done elsewhere.

Still off topic but yes Zombie Lake is probably Rollin's worst, least characteristic film, though I do love that one minute edit of it, which is all you really need!

That piece of trivia about Franco originally being planned to direct the film is also in the imdb trivia page. Franco's regular star Howard Vernon also turns up in Zombie Lake too. I have not looked too deeply into it but it is worth noting that Zombie Lake was produced by Daniel Lesoeur, who produced a number of Franco films over this period including Devil Hunter and Oasis of the Zombies (plus the other video nasty that is probably only known for being on the UK Video Nasty list now, Cannibal Terror), so that is probably the reason for the overlap.

There's a Eurotika episode devoted to Lesoeur's Eurocine productions here (NSFW).

There’s an accent over the ‘u’. It’s Jesús Franco.

colinr0380 wrote: Wed Aug 05, 2020 7:32 pm Still off topic but yes Zombie Lake is probably Rollin's worst, least characteristic film, though I do love that one minute edit of it, which is all you really need!

That piece of trivia about Franco originally being planned to direct the film is also in the imdb trivia page. Franco's regular star Howard Vernon also turns up in Zombie Lake too. I have not looked too deeply into it but it is worth noting that Zombie Lake was produced by Daniel Lesoeur, who produced a number of Franco films over this period including Devil Hunter and Oasis of the Zombies (plus the other video nasty that is probably only known for being on the UK Video Nasty list now, Cannibal Terror), so that is probably the reason for the overlap.

There's a Eurotika episode devoted to Lesoeur's Eurocine productions here (NSFW).

Cannibal Terror is so bad it makes Jess Franco's Cannibals (which didn't make the VN list) look like Apocolypse Now!

As a forum we should pitch in and buy one for domino.

Not one for Domino, but others may be interested to hear that Strange Attractor Press have a sale on and are offering the second of Stephen Thrower’s monolithical books on Jesus Franco for just £25. https://strangeattractor.greedbag.com/b ... erversion/

I am very happy to see that Severin's new 4K + Blu-ray release of Vampyros Lesbos has removed the vertical banding which marred the picture on Severin's previous Blu-ray release.