Identikit (AKA The Driver's Seat) (1974)
Directed by #GiuseppePatroniGriffi
Starring by #ElizabethTaylor #IanBannen #GuidoMannari
#MonaWashbourne #LuigiSquarzina #MaxenceMailfort #AndyWarhol
Cinematography by #VittorioStoraro
Music by #FrancoMannino
#Identikit #TheDriversSeat #Cinemaitaliano
Takashi Ishii's ethereal grunge noir A NIGHT IN NUDE (1993) stages intimacy as speculative investment, each character attempting to leverage another—yet every act of trust yields inescapable emotional debt with reinvention fantasies central to Japan’s bubble ethos untenably fluid.
A perfect film 🧑🍳 💋
All the pain and torture that I went through
All makes sense to me now, I was dying for you
Angel Guts: Red Vertigo (1988)
A Night in Nude (1993)
#TakashiIshii #sidebyside #Nami+#Muraki 💔
My favorite improper use of an umbrella coming at ya
Nothing is ever black & white in Takashi Ishii's cinematic universe—so retribution is the least important aspect of melodically atonal revenge noir ALONE IN THE NIGHT (1994) wherein a quasi Orpheus interposed between violence fetish & love leads personified pain out of an autogenic hell.
#NowWatching LOVE HOTEL (1985), Shinji Sōmai #filmsky #Nikkatsu #TakashiIshii
Mabuse’s drunk cousin no one acknowledges at reunions gets caught stealing shots in Franco’s zero f*cks given DR. M SCHLÄGT ZU (1972), a spatially spontaneous maybe coastal maybe border town inept cowpoke hunts panther dancer nabbing sad FrankenKong krimi mid quickie with giallo. #FrancoFebruary
A master at utilizing genre against itself, in NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND DESIRES (1983) Franco distills melodrama to its purest visual ecliptics, a threadbare plot heavy with subtextual agony mesmerically dislocated from logic by protracted editing, askew angles & otherworldly sound design. #FrancoFriday
Soledad Miranda in THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA (1971), Jesús Franco
#SoledadMiranda #JessFranco #EdgarWallace #CCC #FrancoFebruary
One of the last krimi for CCC, Franco’s DER TODESRÄCHER VON SOHO (1972) veers more expressionistic camp than dirty “London,” finagling fringe POV through a use of roving camera & casual lack of narrative coherence to form palatable pulp—even if it packs a carryall instead of a punch. #FrancoFebruary
"I think films have maintained the structure of novels. I, who have always admired Julio Camba, thought it would be possible to make a film that dealt with diverse themes, which could be linked by the person narrating them. That's how the idea for We Are Eighteen was born."—Jess Franco ❤️
Predating quasi-contemporaneous Nouvelle Vague roadtrips such as Pierrot le Fou, the ladies of frothy Franco first TENEMOS 18 AÑOS (1959) are never decorative extensions of masculine plotting—but catalytic constructors who drive their narrative through genres at high speed. #FrancoFebruary
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973), Jesús Franco
Un Rêve Plus Long Que la Nuit (1976), Niki de Saint Phalle
#sidebyside #phantasmagoria #queensofnight #filmsky
Like salt in your champagne, Franco's WOMEN IN CELLBLOCK 9 (1977) flattens the senses with icy, sustained Sadean torment crescendoing in perfunctory bleakness diametrically opposed to a discernible authorial preference for dwelling upon halcyon interludes amidst the forêt vierge. #FrancoFriday
Glitter on the mattress
Franco’s LOVE CAMP (1977)—aka Love Triangle Camp involving Ada Amazonian Tauler, real life murder suspect Wal Davis & (not) John Oates—benefits from more than group showers & nude slap fights, but also above market visuals with several instances of astonishing perspective camerawork. #FrancoFebruary
Lina Romay in DIE MARQUISE VON SADE aka Das Bildnis der Doriana Gray (1975), dir. Jesús Franco
#LinaRomay (June 25, 1954–February 15, 2012) 🩷
Franco’s lugubrious burlesque HOUSE OF LOST WOMEN (1982) centers its farcically self-aware soap opera of perversity on the oddly poignant antics of a stir-crazy family led by an inveterate mythomaniac actor whose career is deader than Shakespeare’s proverbial doornail. #FrancoFriday
Same. She’s so amazing.
Def in my top five for sure. 🤍
Emma Cohen as Ana in Al otro lado del espejo (1973) aka THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR, dir. Jesús Franco 🪞📽️
#EmmaCohen #JessFranco #FrancoFebruary #filmsky
The answer to has anyone been cuter? Blessed few. Lina would podium.❤️
Franco's slyly ironic The Most Dangerous Game variant LA COMTESSE PERVERSE (1973) has an undeniable breezy kineticism, squeezing erotically drenched dread out of every frame while giving low rent sleaze an ultra-modern overhaul in Xanadú's mind melting atmos. #FrancoFebruary
While LORNA THE EXORCIST (1974) invites comparison to Rosemary’s Baby—in both cases a woman’s womb is mortgaged by her spouse for his lucrative solvency—Franco’s heretical symphony rejects this gendered economy, climaxing in a bloody reclamation of bartered autonomy. #FrancoFebruary
Radiating from a Robert de Nesle nucleus of avaricious intent & more abused upon release than the tortured nuns of its environs, Franco's popedelic witchfinder-ploitation LES DEMONS (1973) is a fascinatingly odd potage of his own Bloody Judge with The Devils & a dash of de Sade. #FrancoFebruary
Lurking within the same rinky-dink tax shelter as Nightmares Come at Night, it's perhaps best placed between Dracula & The Other Side of the Mirror as the purest synthesis of Franco's revenant themes of dark absurdity, misfits in isolation, surrender to seduction & haunted geography.
With the baleful poésie of a gothic ode, Franco’s temporal vacuum A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1973) exemplifies the beguiling pull not of carnal vitality but of depression, a dark destiny innocently accepted as symbolic submersion in an ecosystem of shadows. #FrancoFriday
It sure is
I feel like a lot of people suffer from this affliction
Mildred Pierce (1945), Michael Curtiz
——
The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966), Jesus Franco
#sidebyside #Noir #FrancoFebruary
