Not director Jess Franco's finest work but still a mildly entertaining romp that mixes a spy movie with Franco's signature sleaze. Lina Romay(billed here as Candy Coster) and Nadine Pascal are our frequently naked leads who go from strippers to detectives for some reason that is never really explained very well. There's also a gang of hippies who live in caves, a human trafficking group led by a gal who uses a magical hypnotizing ring, torture, rape(not only of women but a gay dude gets molested against his will in a scene that's played for laughs), gun-fu and lots of Euro-bush. AKA OPAL OF FIRE: SEX MERCHANTS
One of the all-time classics of Eurotrash cinema! Obviously inspired by NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, director Amando de Ossorio takes things in a decidedly Spanish-horror direction with his tale of some ex-communicated Templars returning from the dead to mount horses and chow down(and chop since they brought along their old-timey swords) on the living. The best thing about this film is the unique-look our zombies have. They're kind of a gang of grim-reapers with beards on horseback. The horses always confuse me a bit though. Are they phantoms? zombies? Where do the Templars keep them when they're in their graves? Weird, bloody, rapey, 70s horror that all fans of Euro-horror need to check out at least once.
I made the mistake of watching the dubbed version on my last viewing which is missing almost 20 minutes of prime footage. So stick with those subtitles for maximum carnage.
The weirdest retitling of this is REVENGE OF PLANET APE which gave this a whole new opening monologue tying it into the, very popular at the time, PLANET OF THE APES SERIES. Other AKA's include LEGEND OF THE BLIND DEAD, THE BLIND DEAD, THE NIGHT OF THE BLIND TERROR and MARK OF THE DEVIL PART 4: TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (also released on video as MARK OF THE DEVIL PART V: NIGHT OF THE BLIND TERROR)
The cut version was only rated PG when distributed in the US by AIP!:
This one is the final chapter in Jess Franco's monster trilogy, which includes DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN. It's also my least favorite of the three. It seems like with each film Franco was less concerned with any sort of actual plot and more interested in just filming whatever he felt like. There's lesbianism, vampirism, cameras zooming into pubes and a very inconsequential plot about a lady(Carmen Yazalde) who is told about the curse of her family being vampires. Franco himself has a pretty big role where he gets to show off his oddball version of acting and Howard Vernon plays our main vampire who's not named Dracula at all but instead Count Karlstein. Pretty unique way of staking the vamps here (through the forehead!) and lots of atmosphere but still not up to the first 2 films in this sorta series.
Subtitles so small you need to have Superman's vision to read them!:
By the time this came out, in 1991, there must have been something like 100 movies that already used the title CAGED WOMEN so that gives you some idea of the creativity and originality involved in this Italian/ Portugese co-produced women-in-prison flick. Packed full of boobs and degradation though it certainly delivers what you'd expect from this sub-genre. Main gal, Pilar Orive, who seems to have had a very small acting career in the 90s, is certainly not hard to look at completely naked throughout most of the film. While nothing particularly exceptional happens here they do manage to jam in a THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME homage to bring it all to a close. Good watch for sleazoid completists. AKA CAGED WOMEN IN PURGATORY
Known in France under the very unsexy title of HIGH SECURITY DISTRICT:
The old story of a husband and his mistress trying to drive his wife crazy. The twist here is that "the mistress" is actually a rather flamboyant gay fella making this the gayest film director Jess Franco has ever made(male on male anyway, lesbianism is in almost all of his movies of course). I guess technically he's bi since there's also a nun that gets sexually abused by our male leads but ends up liking it because "hey this was filmed in the 70s!". Lina Romay does a pretty good job as the neglected wife but overall this is a pretty depressing tale with no clear viewpoint except maybe that people are pretty shitty.
One unexpected thing that did stand out to me from this is that during the finale they use the bed spear kill from FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2. Of course this was previously used in Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD but I would not have guessed it was gonna show up here.
Loosely based on the writings of the Marquis DeSade who seems to be Franco's go-to guy for inspiration. AKA EROTIC SYMPHONY
