oraklon

Great peplum with lots of charm! It's kinda like the first 10 minutes of a sword and sorcery flick, where a bunch of barbarians dressed up as Manowar pillage some village, but for 90 minutes. It even features a man in a bear costume! The tartar queen is really a kick-ass girl, who takes no crap and is a better leader than the men (ps! she's really cute too). I wouldn't go an call it feminist masterpiece, but well... it's about as feminist as the peplum genre gets (remember this is the genre where women with black hair are automatically cunning and evil). If you're a peplum fan and get the chance to see this little film, by all means do - it's one of the best of its kind!

Mindnumbing bad slasher flick about a killer who's killing off a young film crew while playing a godawful new wave track that goes something like "Boil me! Boil me! Boil me! Cut me! Cut me!" on his tape deck. It's painfully apparent that nobody, in front or behind the camera, have no clue what so ever what the hell they're doing. Incomprehensable story, dialogue that makes no sense, acting from hell, weird cuts etc. About halfway through I got the creeping suspicion that this slasher abomination was the brainchild of a bunch of really confused hippie freaks! There was just one misplaced quasi-philosophical mumbo-jumbo line, longhaired acoustic guitar player or "i'm not going to mess with a bunch of food picky drug freaks!"-line too many to pass unnoticed, especially in a god-damned teen slasher flick! Label under uniquely bad. Since it's from 1981 it was pretty enjoyable as a cheezy turkey, if it was from 2001 I would probably hate it. You won't believe the twist ending... Guaranteed to make any intelligent, sensible human being lose their lunch.

A really, really good early 1980s Franco title which remains one of his most underestimated according to me. It's basically a remake on Eugenie, the Story of a Young Girl's Journey into Perversion (a title he would remake many times, even as a HC porno) but this is way better than the original according to me. Great atmosphere, perverse, voyeuristic and detached, and as with many of the better of his 1980s films: much more focused than most of his 60/70s output. A benefit of the ultra low budget I reckon. When you're making a movie with such a ridiculously low budget as this, you have to really make the best use of the elements you've got and you've got to keep it minimal. The cute Katja Bienert is the perfect face for innocence-to-be-corrupted and Antonio Mayans has one of his best roles as sadistic Alberto de Rosa. Anyway, if you're at all interested in Franco, make sure to catch this one, if only to see Lina Romay as a dog (!). I'd also like to add that the sandfigures is one of the best images Franco has come up with yet!

I think Franco during his career has been the filmmakers who have reached closest to the true spirit of De Sade in his work... unlike all the other sleaze merchants and bozos that have consistently missed the point.