Jaz cover issue low res - Flipbook - Page 12
Jess Franco
can separate fiction and reality find difficult. It’s certainly why Franco remained
a bete noir for the BBFC of James Ferman, where such blurring of the lines and
the exploration of unspoken dark fantasy was seen as inherently dangerous.
For censors like Ferman, it was a simple case of monkey see, monkey do; the
idea that a rape scene could be in any way erotic was unthinkable because of
what he thought – with little evidence to back it up – the effect would be on the
great unwashed. That novels like The Story of O were read mostly by women
– women who had no wish to be subjected to sexual assault in reality but who
found the fantasy of such ideas arousing simply because it was forbidden – was
lost on those who knew better. Just Jaekin’s film of Pauline Reage’s book was
banned in Britain until 2000.
If you look at Franco’s Women in prison films, for instance, you might see
nothing more than crude misogynistic fantasies celebrating violence against
women – and clearly, that’s EXACTLY what a lot of people do see in those films –
but much like their religious counterparts in the nunsploitation genre (a narrative
that Franco was, of course, also drawn to several times), these are films awash with
BDSM imagery – bondage, torture, degradation and domination, quite often by
a female prison warden – because more often than not, these films were loved by
submissive males who liked nothing more than a jack-booted dominatrix running
the show. Franco was at
the forefront of the genre
with 99 Women, which
essentially
kick-started
the genre and saw such
dubious offshoots as the
Naziploitation
movie
during the 1970s (to show
how closely connected
these genres were, Franco’s
own Greta the Mad Butcher
was later retconned into
the Ilsa series, retitled Ilsa
the Wicked Warden thanks
to the presence of Dyanne
Thorne; while the original
Ilsa films were outrageous,
tasteless satires, Franco’s
film was a darker affair
altogether). There is no
glamour in these films –
and that’s why many of the
people who admire his more openly erotic films have no interest in these movies.
While there might be the inherent elements of BDSM, the films themselves are
simply too grubby and ugly – not in their sexual content but simply aesthetically.
These are films that are at the grottier, nastier end of Franco’s fantasies about
domination and submission, with little in the way of style beyond the jackboots and
uniforms of the warders. They are certainly lacking the visual audacity of his other
work, even though they are clearly works driven by a definite personal fascination.
If we are to look for the signature imagery of Franco’s kinky imagination, we must
look elsewhere.
erhaps the most recognisable and repeated motif of Franco’s erotic
works can be found first in Succubus – at least, it is here where it
becomes a defined, specific moment that feels inherently Franco, the
sort of scene that you would expect anyone making a Franco pastiche
to want to copy because it seems so unique to him. I’m talking about
the nightclub floorshow where a BDSM fantasy is played out to a crowd of bored
voyeurs. It’s the sort of nightclub act that litters movies of the 1960s, suggesting
a glorious and long-lost time when a visit to a nightclub or even just a restaurant
would involve spectacular performances from dancers and singers. In Franco’s
world, these cabaret acts involve flagellation and torture, striptease with a touch
of sadism that is often initially presented as an actual moment of torture – with
men as much or more likely to be in the submissive role – before we discover
that it is all an act. Though we are never quite sure that it IS all an act because
the lines between truth and fiction are often blurred, as if Franco is teasing
his censorial critics by playing on their worst fears about fantasy and reality
bleeding into each other. Franco repeats aspects of this throughout other films
across his career in various ways, from The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein to The
Sadist of Notre Dame, while the visual motifs and kinkily erotic moments runs
through much of his classic oeuvre – you can see aspects of BDSM roleplay,
sensual dreams, performative erotica and sexual domination in everything
from A Virgin Among the Living Dead to Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in
Ecstasy to Female Vampire and beyond. Often dominant and sexually voracious
Sexually voracious
women who take
pleasure from
inflicting pain and
humiliation on
hapless men
P
10/Salvation
Main picture pages 8/9, Linda Romay and friends in Franco’s
masterpiece, La Comtesse Noire aka Female Vampire (1973),
above, Linda Romay during a cabaret torture show,
Exorcisme (1974),
women who take pleasure from inflicting pain and humiliation on hapless men,
monsters who are desirable and mysterious.
ranco’s most overt explorations of BDSM come in his adaptations
of the literary erotic classic by De Sade. His 1969 film Justine is,
perversely, one of his most commercial ventures, made at a time
when it seemed as though he was going to break through into the
mainstream, with starry casts and reasonably lavish production
values courtesy of Harry Alan Towers. The film follows the book – at least the
tamest version of the book – quite closely though like De Sade, you get the
impression that Franco is less than impressed with Justine’s virtuous nature
and rather prefers her naughty sister Juliette. Over the years, he would return
to De Sade – his version of Philosophy in the Boudoir, best known under the
gloriously Sadean title of Eugenie - the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion,
is one of his finest and his other films that explore De Sade through either
adaptation or inspiration are uniquely inspired. The Divine Marquis’ work
F