Jess Franco’s Jack The Ripper

Jess Franco’s Jack The Ripper (1976)

Dir. and written by Jesus Franco

Starring Klaus Kinski, Josephine Chaplin, Herbert Fux

Well here’s something with a pedigree that promises a perfect storm for amateurish sleaze. You’ve got A) ultra-prolific Spanish pornogratuer Jesus "Jess" Franco (JESS FRANCO’S DRACULA, THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF) B) legendarily eccentric weirdo actor Klaus Kinski (CRAWLSPACE, MY BEST FIEND), C) a Jack the Ripper adaptation (a subgenre which has produced such jewels of taste and restraint as ASSAULT! JACK THE RIPPER and THE NEW YORK RIPPER*) and D) the year 1976, smack dab in the very black heart of exploitation grindhouse fever. Combine those ingredients in a blurry ripped-from-vhs rights-questionable youtube version and bake at four or five pints and you should have reached peak euro-sleaze at about 90 minutes.    

Given all that, no one is more surprised than I to have to inform you that this movie is mostly pretty normal. I never thought I’d say this about a Jesus Franco Ripper movie, but the whole thing is competently assembled, and, if anything, a little dry. Dry, for fuck’s sake! It’s not entirely without some sleaze and gore (there’s a pretty graphic dissection scene and an unpleasant bit where Jack rapes his victim as he’s stabbing her to death. Probably wouldn’t have that in the Merchant-Ivory version), but man, there’s a lot of polite British people having conversations in well-lit sitting rooms. It’s more stuffy period drama than venal exploitation fare. Hell, Hitchcock’s FRENZY from four years earlier is way more lurid.

Partially that might be because the film inexplicably has nothing whatsoever to do with the real Jack the Ripper case, which IIRC was not solved by a blind man who assures the police that he knows a murder took place because “My senses are twice as acute as most men, and I have a sixth sense: I recognize the screams of a dying woman.” Pretty good superpower there.

This same helpful blind man will ultimately identify the killer by odor, but not before he’s told the police that “The murderer, I feel, cannot control his compulsion to kill. I was able to sense that he was almost as terrified as his victim… he was consumed with strong emotion... Yes, insane, but a sort of madness which… could be transformed into brilliance… he seemed as one possessed, not a sadistic killer... He’s slight, strong, rigorous, but not a manual laborer, certainly an intellectual… His scent, it was… a strange odor I can remember exactly now. A rare blend of old books and fresh fragrance. The murderer smelled of several familiar odors, expensive soaps, sweat, and very fine woolen clothes and mild turkish tobacco, and also…alcohol… what I detected was medicinal alcohol and then a real surprise… a rare medicinal plant of India…. In England, it’s found only in a botanical garden, it is called akmar.”

“You’ve told me very little,” grouses the officer taking his statement, perhaps used to blind witnesses immediately solving the case and arresting the culprit themselves without involving the police.     

This is an absolutely phororealistic police sketch of a cartoon vampire.

This blind guy is clearly the hero of the movie, but it will come as no surprise to you to learn that Kinski is the villain, one Dr. Dennis Orloff (a name which seems to be a mainstay of Franco’s productions for reason I’d be genuinely afraid to ask). Orloff is, indeed, “one possessed, not a sadistic killer.” And he’s also “slight, strong, rigorous, but not a manual laborer, certainly an intellectual.” Since smell-o-vision has not been invented as of this writing, I cannot comment on the rest of the description. But Orloff is definitely a rather tormented man, by day working as a penniless doctor to the city’s very poor, but by night tormented with kaleidoscopic visions of his mother in a 19th-century S&M getup taunting him with sexually suggestive provocations. Although I am not a trained medical practitioner, I would have to guess that’s not a sign of particularly robust mental health.

That sounds like the perfect eccentric weirdo role for Kinski, but unfortunately he’s being dubbed by some British guy here, diminishing his weirdo readings and flattening out his performance somewhat. I can’t tell if he’s deliberately holding back or just phoning it in, but he’s hardly “electrifying” as they say on the DVD back cover. Still interesting to watch (he’s incapable of being anything else; even David Schmoeller had to concede that much), but not going mega here seems like a missed opportunity, since psychological realism is absolutely out of the question. His motivation (saw his mom having sex with a sailor, pretty much) is about as standard-issue as they come in 70’s slasher movies, and, conversely, is also not a real thing, so playing it low-key was probably not the right choice. Well, anyway, low-key if you don’t count the crazy psychedelic dream sequence:

The movie could have used more of that kind of nuttiness.

As it is, it has a handful of desultorily prurient murders but at least two large handful of drama. There’s Orloff’s ladylady (Olga Gebhard, SHE DEVILS OF THE SS) who would really like to marry the handsome young doctor; there’s a half-witted fisherman (Herbert Fux, LADY FRANKENSTEIN) who suspects he’s the killer, there are a series of nude victims (among them Franco muse Lina Romay, BARBED WIRE DOLLS, FEMALE VAMPIRE), and a police inspector (Andreas Mannkopff, dozens of German-language movies every year, none of which you’ve ever heard of) and his ballerina girlfriend (Josephine Chaplin --daughter of Charlie-- Pasolini’s THE CANTURBURY TALES) who I did not realize were actually the main characters until very nearly the last 15 minutes. And that blind guy turns up a few more times, too.  

The most interesting thing in the whole movie is that “Jack” (aka Dennis Orloff?) has an accomplice in a botanical gardener, who knows about the murders and inexplicably aids him. Why? That seems like it would be an interesting thread to follow, so predictably it’s ignored. That unfortunately leaves the whole thing without much of a hook to hang itself on. It’s presented as kind of a semi-classy period true crime tale, which is how most Jack The Ripper tales end up as fragmented non-stories -- true-life adaptations can be tricky because they tend to involve a lot of characters and plots which don’t neatly tie together. But this one is a little harder to understand, because aside from there being a killer in London in the 1800s, there’s not a single other detail which the films shares with the real Jack The Ripper story. So it’s a little harder to understand why Franco didn’t do more to craft an actual narrative of some kind here. It’s a solid scenario, but there’s not really any “plot” to speak of, just Jack seeing a new victim and killing her off, and then other characters in other sub”plots” talking a little about it.

Now, you’re probably saying “why didn’t Franco do more?” Are you fucking serious? The answer is he’s Franco, “not doing more” is pretty much his defining auteurial characteristic. But as Franco films go, this one is actually surprisingly competent in some ways which you wouldn’t expect. It’s actually a somewhat nice-looking movie at times, with great use of hard lighting and deep shadow. Co-cinematographer Peter Baumgartner’s other movie credits include titles like RANCH OF THE NYMPHOMANIAC GIRLS, SWEDISH NYMPHO SLAVES, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BEDS and SEX ADVENTURES OF THE THREE MUSKETEERS so I guess by process of elimination I’ve gotta credit second co-cinematographer Peter Spoerri (in his only film as cinematographer in a lengthy career as a producer and production manager) for his handsome use of backlit fog and brazen super closeups of Kinski’s face. Even on the crappy VHS rip you can tell this looks pretty good, and the stills from the new German Blu-Ray by Ascot Elite look genuinely fetching. If it weren’t for the crappy dub job and artless gratuitous nudity, you could almost forget this was the work of a guy who was comfortable making seven movies in 1976 alone (although I guess the random abruptness of the ending might be a hint.) Take a look:

In fact, with a handsome look, convincing period costuming, and Kinski in the lead, this is a rare Franco film which actually flirts with being a real movie. Shame it doesn’t really have much to offer beyond that. I'm as weirded out that I have to say this as you are, but this is one case where Franco should have gone sleazier.

*Though in fairness, it’s also spawned about as many stuffy over-mannered procedurals as it has lurid rape movies, as we see in MURDER BY DECREE and the 1988 Michael Caine starring mini-series JACK THE RIPPER.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2016 CHECKLIST!

Good Kill Hunting

ALIAS	JACK THE RIPPER, no “Jess Franco’s”
TAGLINE	Close Your Eyes and Whisper His Name. I have no idea what that means, and watching the movie doesn’t make it any cleaerer.
TITLE ACCURACY	Uhhh, I think they do talk about “Jack The Ripper” here, but otherwise it has nothing in common with the real life case.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	Switzerland/ West Germany, but with a Spanish director
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Serial Killer, Slasher, True Crime (sorta)
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None. Josephine Chaplin, maybe? She was Charlie Chaplin’s daughter and appeared in LIMELIGHT (uncredited, as a child) and a Pasolini movie. But she was also directed by Menahem Golan before Franco came calling.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Klaus Kinski, Jesus Franco
NUDITY?	Yes, I think “Jack” rips at least the top off every woman he kills, plus there’s a few full frontals in there, a few even while they’re not immediately being murdered.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Yes, “Jack” rapes at least one of the women while murdering her. Ick.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	None
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	“Jack’s” greenhouse accomplice calls the incoming bodies “dolls,” and not in a pet name sort of way. But she doesn’t do anything interesting with them.
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	Well, “Jack” is definitely pretty nutty
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	Oddly I can’t recall any. “Jack” tends to approach his victims more or less straight-on
MORAL OF THE STORY	Even if you do see visions of your hooker mom leering at you at night, you would probably still be better off not murdering a bunch of 19th-century British streetwalkers. Seems like a real hassle. But if you MUST do that, at least don’t leave a superpowered blind man as a witness.

Eyes Of My Mother

Eyes of My Mother (2016)

Dir. and written by Nicolas Pesce

Starring Diana Agostini, Kika Magalhaes, Olivia Bond, Will Brill, Paul Nazak

It’s interesting that if there’s any identifiable trend in the horror cinema of the 2010’s, it’s surely the rise of the arthouse horror film. Combining horror --surely the most disreputable of all genres -- with highbrow aspirations for aesthetic and textual significance is hardly a new impulse, of course; you could probably start by looking back to Murnau's NOSFERATU or at least Carl Dreyer’s 1932 minimalist nightmare VAMPYR, and trace a fairly consistent --if winding-- path through Val Lewton, EYES WITHOUT A FACE,  JIGOKU, HOUR OF THE WOLF, GANJA AND HESS, David Lynch, DON’T LOOK NOW, Andrzej Zulawski’ POSSESSION, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and finally to Haneke and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and ANTICHRIST. So it’s always been in the mix. But it seems like the field has proliferated immensely in the late ‘naughts and early 2010s, first led by Euro-horror like the aforementioned LET THE RIGHT ONE IN or TAXEDERMIA but gradually spilling over into the US indie horror scene too, and ushering in a raft of low-budget but high-minded fare like GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, ENEMY, THE VVITCH, AMER, BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO, RESOLUTION, SPRING, A FIELD IN ENGLAND, and this year’s DARLING. And now even non-genre aueteurs are getting in on the game, with Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee taking on vampires last year in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE and DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS.

I don’t necessarily regard this as a bad thing, though; if it’s resulted in a few pretentious snoozers, at least it’s also occasionally succeeded in shaking the horror genre out of its comfortable conventions, and provided a space to play with some genuinely new ideas. As primarily an exploitation genre with a history now well over a hundred years old, horror cinema has often been perfectly content recycling the same old beats for decades at a time --which can be perfectly enjoyable, even comforting-- but there’s also something valuable about imaginative and ambitious upstarts tackling the genre with an eye to find something unexpected. Something for a new generation to rip off. Fresh blood.

The AMELIE of dismemberment.

That brings us to EYES OF MY MOTHER, one of the most unique and surprising horror films I saw all month. It’s quiet, spare, stark, and filled with strange and haunting black-and-white images that don’t have any obvious link to familiar tropes and icons of the genre. It’s deliberate and lyrical, but It’s also plenty hardcore, so don’t get the idea that this is one of those incidental horror movies which is embarrassed about wearing the label loud and proud. It’s as brazen as the genre comes, it just has something little different in store for you, and it wants to present it in a distinct way. Give it a chance!

EYES tells the story of Francisca (Olivia Boand as a child, Kika Magelhaes as an adult), the Midwestern daughter of a Portuguese mother (Diana Agostini), who teaches her secrets of the medical sciences she used to practice in her native land by calmly having the child dissect a disembodied cow’s eyeball on the kitchen table. Francisca takes this rather clinical view of the world to heart, and does not waver even when a deranged stranger (Will Brill, NEVER FADE AWAY) shows up at the house and brutally murders her mom in front of her. Her revenge against this sick fuck --cutting his eyes and tongue out and keeping him chained up in the barn of her isolated farmhouse for years-- gradually morphs from cold blooded vengeance into something stranger and more complex as Francisca starts to chafe from the years of isolation brought on her her lack of parental guidance. Her desire to find something to replace the family she lost gradually consumes her and begins to manifest itself in some potentially unhealthy ways.

That’s probably all that needs be said about the plot -- and indeed, very little is said. It’s a very quiet movie, much more inclined to sit silently and observe than to chatter on about what exactly we should be making of all this. That might be frustrating to some -- The Guardian’s Lanre Bakare called the movie laughable because we’re never presented with a specific spoken motivation -- but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? The root of Francisca’s problem comes for her very inability to clearly articulate her inner world to anyone else. All we can do is observe actress (and professional dancer) Kika Magelhaes’s precise, complicated expressions and body movements and try to parse for ourselves what is and isn’t going on in her head. The what is eloquently presented in the film’s closely observed visuals, but the why is what should be occupying our minds, prodding at our own vulnerabilities and fears and petty desperations as we struggle to make sense of the extremes we’re observing. Engaging with this odd and nebulous character is the whole point, not listening to a psychology lecture. Horror is rarely the purview of the rational and easily digestible. It’s entire purpose is often to push us to grotesque and distorted extremes, daring us to wade further into the depths of the human condition that we’re comfortable or familiar with. Here there be monsters.

EYES OF MY MOTHER is a film that asks a little more of its viewers than some of the more genre-friendly fare we’ve looked at recently -- patience, a lack of squeamishness, a tolerance for some ambiguity, and, of course, an appreciation for simple aesthetic beauty -- but it’s also not without some earthier rewards. It can be quite funny in its dry, devastating kind of way, and, when pressed, is capable of summoning not just images of repellent suffering but sequences of intense, visceral dread and nerve-curling tension. Sometimes even all at once, but always with an approach all its own. Consider the terrific sequence where Francisca’s captive attempts to make a break for it, fleeing blind and alone into the night. As she pursues, we’re struck by a somewhat chaotic bricolage of feelings -- we can’t help but have some sympathy for the panicked runner, but we also know he’s a heartless killer. We want Francisca to catch him, but we also sympathize with her and don’t want to see her do something we’re going to regret. And we can see she’s filled with conflict too -- she’s confident and predatory, but somehow she also feels personally wounded here, insulted and rejected and hopelessly alone. And director Nicolas Pesce chooses to communicate all of this to us in one long take; as Francisca sees her quarry through the kitchen window and heads off pursuant, the camera lingers inside to watch the slow, deliberate and methodical hunt unfolding in the silent, chrome-plated night grass outside. Like the movie itself, it’s mysterious, complex, deeply affecting, and simultaneously gut-wrenching hauntingly beautiful. Exactly the sort of unique, surprising perspective you’d want in an arthouse horror movie.

But now that we’ve done that, let’s hope Francisca also gets a franchise of low-budget DTV slasher sequels. Best of both worlds!

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2016 CHECKLIST!

Good Kill Hunting

TAGLINE	None apparent
TITLE ACCURACY	Uhhh, I think it’s a metaphor or something. She does not literally have the eyes of her mother.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	No
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA, but a good bit of it is in Portuguese
HORROR SUB-GENRE	“Horror-of-personality,” a phrase I learned about on THE UNSEEN.
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	No
NUDITY?	Yes
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	There’s definitely a sexual act that takes place here in a context in which consent is not really taken into account. But it’s probably not what you think.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	No, ordinary ol’ humans.
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	Definitely
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	No
VOYEURISM?	Francisca spends some time watching a blind captive who can’t see her.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Don’t uh, don’t… whoo boy, this is a pretty hard one to parse. I guess the moral is, you should really get out of the house a little more.