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The third installment in the “Pete’s Perverted Pix” series.
DIRECTED BY: Jess Franco
FEATURING: James Darren, Maria Rohm, Barbara McNair, Klaus Kinski
PLOT: A trumpet player becomes obsessed with a woman after witnessing her murder and finding her body washed up on the beach, then watches as she comes back to avenge her death.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Venus in Furs is at least twice as surreal as Hitchcock’s Vertigo, while telling a similar story of a man obsessing over a woman who might be anything from a dead ringer for the deceased to a ghost to a tulpa. On top of that, it gets way freakier between the sheets than most giallos, and tops itself off with psychedelic audio and visuals like the Summer of Love never died. All that, and it also has piss-all to do with the novel.
COMMENTS: Hang onto your lids, folks, because you’re in for a surprise. More than likely you came to Venus in Furs, as did I, expecting a hedonistic wallow in the giallo end of the Eurosmut pool. After all, this is Jess Franco making an erotic thriller with the same name as the 1870 novel whose author, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, gave masochism its name. With those credentials, you would expect a kinky, sex-crazed fetish festival that would make The Story of O look like a high school prom episode of the “Brady Bunch.” At least that’s what I’d expect, having first discovered Franco via the gory Bloody Moon (1981) and working through his horror pieces from there. What, nobody gets their brain buzzsawed this time? Awwww…
Color me surprised to find what has to be one of the tamest movies in Franco’s catalog—and also a class act that deserves to be better known. There’s little full nudity until act three, and even the topless shots are sparse, while gore is barely whispered. There is no particularly graphic cuffs-and-whips action going on. In fact, it’s hard to tell what the hell is going on at all, since the entire movie is told in random scenes shuffling through flashbacks, dreams, and memories. Franco (who also wrote the screenplay) throws away everything of Leo’s novel but the name of one of the characters and the title. Like many of our favorite surreal movies here, the plot’s open to interpretation, including the possibility of a circular narrative.
Bear with me while I piece this thing together. Jimmy (Darren), a jazz trumpet player, plays a gig where he witnesses Wanda (Rohm) murdered by what seems to be a group of aristocrats led by Kinski in what appears to be a snuff party. Jimmy flashes back to these events when he finds Wanda’s knife-scarred body washed ashore on the beach. He then wanders off in a fugue state to Rio during Mardi Gras (note to directors: please set more movies here), where the same woman returns, alive and well. The (ghost? zombie? vampire?) Wanda seduces Jimmy and stalks each of her murderers one by one,
Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: VENUS IN FURS (1969)
Its virtues are hardly found in the narrative about a sadistic husband (Paul Muller) who tortures and kills his unfaithful wife (Steele) along with her lover (Rik Battaglia), then marries her mentally unstable sister to get the inheritance. Exquisite cinematography (Enzo Borboni), a top-rate dissonant score (Ennio Morricone), Steele at her her most beguiling, and Caiano’s attention to detail renders the plot secondary. Almost surrealistic in parts (one scene clearly was a major influence on 1998’s Ringu), Nightmare Castle is shockingly sadistic and misogynistic (Battaglia loses an eye in an unsettling torture scene, and Steele gets acid to the face, followed by an S &M electrocution). It’s also visually and musically memorable, and yet another director with a Steele fetish allows the star to sear. Unfortunately, the dubbing is poor, but the valuable Blu-ray from Severin Films is a considerable improvement over previous releases. Among its extra features are complete versions of the Steele-starring films Castle of Blood (1964) and Terror Creatures from the Grave (1965).
Within minutes, we learn that it was none other than Fu Manchu who was responsible for sinking of the Titanic. To prove it, Franco economically uses black and white footage from 1958’s A Night to Remember and tints it blue so we won’t know the difference. It only gets more embarrassing. There’s a bit about turning seas into ice; kidnapping; an Asian babe; scientific experiments; TV’s Robin Hood, Richard Greene (!!!) as a nemesis; and more stock footage. When Franco’s not slapping in news reels, etc., it appears he was prodding the cast awake (although it feels as if he napped his way through a lot of it himself ). There’s some unintentional hilarity to be had (i.e. the heart transplant) with enough no-doze.
.” The art work on the DVD cover by Justin Coffee is superb! If you are a fan of Jess Franco you need this in your collection.