Cover Art

Credits

Director: Jess Franco Starring: Cristina von Blanc, Howard Vernon, Jess Franco Screenplay: Jess Franco, Paul D'Ales Music: Bruno Nicolai Country: France

So then, the plot: beautiful young Christina turns up at her family home in Monserrat and some spooky stuff happens and she takes her top off, or otherwise nudes up, with an amazing frequency. That's what I could understand, anyway.

I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm not the dumbest either – there were characters who made little, if any, sense in terms of furthering the story (eg the two old perverts ogling Christina skinny-dipping – I fail to see any real purpose to these characters in the broader scheme of things). Some of this film simply struck me as arch and pretentious – weird for weirdness' sake.

The acting is not the greatest – Howard Vernon hams it up like nobody's business, in particular. And while our heroine looks like a million bucks, she's terribly wooden. Apart from maybe a half dozen or so sequences where the atmosphere is created and successfully maintained, this movie bites the wiener. The dialogue is simply abominable, and the supporting cast aren't helping anyone with their "talents". And what was all that malarkey about the Queen of the Night?

Okay, okay – I do realise that any film featuring the line: "How could you shatter the Great Phallus?!" should be taken with a grain of salt, but this film is slipshod in the composition of shot, too random in its plotting, too flawed in its characterisation (Jess Franco as the gibbering imbecile Basilio is especially grating). I can't stand lazy film making, and to me, that's what this is – I've seen enough Franco films to know he's capable of far better than this – a single viewing of Female Vampire, Vampyros Lesbos, Eugenie or Justine would convince you of this.

I'm not the kind of viewer who needs (or even particularly wants) things spelt out for them - linear, non-linear, I don't care which I get, just give me something I can hang my hat on - but the film lacks a coherent narrative. I've made more sense out of David Lynch short films. What's even more confusing is the question of what Christina's family actually are. I don't quite get it – there are intimations of vampirism, or maybe ghosts.

Want more confusion? Watch the zombie insert footage in the special features, shot some time after the whole affair by Euro-hack Jean Rollin for his craptastic Zombie Lake, nearly ten years later. Makes no sense at all, especially when taken in the context of the original story. What's that? A dream sequence, you say? Okay – explain to me its relevance to the film, or indeed what it means in the grand scheme of things. Not so much a dream sequence as more simply cynical fashionable exploitation drivel churned out and foisted upon the work of a director capable of stronger fare. Talk about kicking a man when he's down…