1971, Germany/Spain. Starring Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams, Horst Tappert, Ewa Stromberg, Siegfried Schurenberg, Walter Rilla, Paul Muller, Blandine Ebinger. Directed by Jess Franco. Written by Paul Andre, Ladislas Fodor, Jess Franco. Purchase from Amazon.com

If you run a site like I do, full of the sort of vitamin-packed goodness that has kids in rolled-up jeans and coon skin caps throwing their glasses of rich, chocolaty Ovaltine over their shoulder with reckless disregard for the public good, in order that they may get to Teleport City's most recent post that much quicker on their rickety soapbox scooters, then there are certain inevitabilities you have to face. For instance, you're probably going to write about Zombie Lake sooner or later. You're probably going to know more about the careers of Wings Hauser and Michael Pare than any sane person would. And, sooner or later, you're going to have to review a Jess Franco film.

Franco is a looming monolith that casts a long shadow over the cinematic landscape, a monolith constructed purely out of sheer force of volume. This Spanish-born director, who has worked in Spain as well as Italy, France, Germany, and on occasion, the United States, has made roughly seventy-three million films since the 1960s, and he shows little sign of letting up. In fact, if you break down the cinema of the world based on number of productions per nation, Jess Franco alone qualifies as a sovereign film-producing state, falling just below India but well above Hong Kong and the United States in terms of number of films produced per year. Like any good European cult film director, Franco has worked in every genre conceivable, and perhaps more than a few you of which you wouldn't want any conception whatsoever. Horror, adventure, espionage, thriller, comedy, even a hardcore film or two -- Franco has been there, done that, and most likely in a way that is imminently interesting and often thoroughly unwatchable. How he manages to capture two mutually exclusive reactions is one of the great mysteries of Jess Franco's career, and likely the main reason people keep coming back to his films despite being bored stiff (or in the case of his saucier films, bored but not stiff) by every one of them they've ever seen.

There's really no effective way to describe Jess Franco to the uninitiated. He is something they will simply have to discover ont heir own, n small bits and pieces, perhaps completely unaware of the fact that they are learning things about Jess Franco, until the day they wake up and realize they understand him, though they may not like him, and they certainly won't be able to articulate their comprehension to others. If anyone tries to puzzle you with one of those Zen koans, your reply should be to simply show them a Jess Franco film.

The thing that makes Franco so unique among the legions of oddball Eurocult directors is that, although he's certainly working in exploitation, he has a very definite artistic vision in even the worst of his films -- and believe me, "the worst of the films" describes the bulk of his film work. Beneath the avalanche of half-assed productions and trashy films, however, lingers the haunting realization that Franco is actually possessed of a tremendous amount of talent in certain respects, making him not unlike guys like Jean Rollin or Ray Dennis Steckler. Steckler, as an example, has never made an especially good film, though he certainly has his moments. But if you sit down, sad as this may found, and really study The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, there's quite a bit about that film, especially in the realm of cinematography and the ability to create an exceptionally eerie atmosphere, that is quite accomplished. French director Jean Rollin was the same way. He was a master of the quirky, off-kilter mood.


But where guys like Rollin, Steckler, and Franco fall down is in the fact that they are so driven by a vision, however cracked it may be, that they attempt to control as much of the film as possible. This means, on the one hand, that they are able to truly put an auteur's stamp on each film. It also means, unfortunately, that whatever weaknesses they may have (for Rollin and Franco, being of the European cult school, this usually manifests itself in the script and pacing of a film, when they bothered with a script) are significantly augmented by the exclusion of outside voices. Franco is left to wallow in his own vision, and thus in his own excesses, often allowing a film to completely lose focus in favor of dwelling on tiny bits and pieces that fascinate him but simply don't resound with audiences. Franco had his talents -- Orson Welles, of all people, considered Franco a kindred spirit and employed him as a cameraman and second unit director, if I'm not mistaken (and I might be).

Thus, watching a Jess Franco film is like going on an archaeological dig. You turn up a lot of useless junk, but from time to time, particularly if you are digging in the mud of cinematography, lighting, costuming, mood, and music, you turn up some real choice pieces.

It is traditional, for anyone setting out to write their first review of a Jess Franco film, to begin with his highest profile cult movie, Vampyro Lesbos, a movie that has managed to enter the annals of cult film history based purely on the strength of its title. It is a fine movie with which to begin, because it showcases pretty much every Jess Franco quirk and obsession, not to mention the fact that it boasts a performance by sultry Eurocult beauty Soledad Miranda, who until her untimely death, served as Jess Franco's muse (after her death, Franco would wander lost for a spell until finding Lina Romay, an actress whose willingness to do pretty much anything made her the perfect match for Franco -- she still appears regularly in his films, all these decades later, and often still totally in the buff).


Somehow, I just never got around to reviewing Vampyro Lesbos, just as somehow, I've managed to go all these years without reviewing, as far as I can remember, a Jess Franco film. Well, the latter I can rectify here and now, but as for the former, I'm afraid that the wheel of fate has been spun and landed on a lesser-known, at least until it's recent DVD release, film called The Devil Came from Akasava, though it came out the same yearas Vampyro Lesbos and also stars Soledad Miranda in (and out of) eye-popping outfits and features plenty of Jess Franco trademarks, though none will be so obvious as his undying commitment to the zoom lens.

Coming out in 1971, The Devil Came from Akasava (which is based on a story by mystery writer Edgar Wallace) was a bit late to jump the Eurospy bandwagon of the 1960s, which Franco had previously entered with his thoroughly ridiculous and highly entertaining Danger! Death Ray. Still, when a movie is this utterly strange, we can forgive it showing up to the dance a little late, especially since it shows up clad in silver boots and a see-through black tunic thing. Our action, if you want to call it that, begins in the fictional country of Akasava, where a geologist discovers the fabled Philosopher's Stone that can turn any metal into gold. The only problem with the stone is that exposure to it causes one's face to fry. Oh, and it also turns you into a zombie. So, right away, we're going to have zombies, spies, and Soledad Miranda striptease performance art? I guess you can see why Franco has his admirers.

No sooner has the geologist found the stone than he is getting shot at. He manages to deliver the stone to Doctor Thorrsen (German cult movie mainstay Horst Tappert, who would work with Franco on a regular basis during the 1970s), but it isn't long before someone show sup to off the assistant geologist and steal the stone. Then Thorrsen himself mysteriously vanishes while, at the same time, back in London, a mysterious man in the shadows who may or may not be Alfred Hitchcock is lurking behind the curtains in Thorrsen's office, just long enough to kill a man sneaking in to try and crack a safe. How's that for intrigue?


It's enough to get sexy British intelligence agent Soledad Miranda assigned to the case, and like any good female operative, she ascertains that the best way to approach the case would be to travel to Akasava and immediately get a job as a stripper in one of those arty, weirdly-lit strip-jazz clubs that only exist in Jess Franco films yet exist in every Jess Franco film. Here is the first, most noticeable, and most enjoyable of Franco's reoccurring obsessions. It kills the man to go ten minutes without inserting a performance art striptease at a jazz club full of swirling lights and candy colors. The man should have made a Bollywood film at some point in his career, because he shares the same affection for cutting to the musical number and the hot dancing girl, regardless of whether or not it has anything at all to do with the scene before or after it, or with the movie in general. Thing is, though these scenes were often gratuitous asides, it's obvious that Franco (himself an avid jazz fan and musician) adores them. They are shot and choreographed beautifully, and Franco's taste in groovy sixties cocktail lounge jazz is impeccable. I've certainly had worse times at the movies than watching Soledad Miranda dance (if you want to call it that; it's more a series of stylized poses -- "voguing," I suppose) while breezy lounge music from some of Europe's most accomplished composers of swanky bachelor pad music go wild.

Miranda teams up with Fred Williams as Rex Forrester, a detective from Scotland Yard, who all things considered, seem a little out of their jurisdiction operating in a fictional African nation, but jurisdictional squabbles are really the least of anyone's concerns in a movie with magic stones, Lugers, zombies, and avant-garde jazz-strip clubs. Together, at a very languid and meandering pace, they get around in one way or another of working on the case at hand, tracking down Thorrsen and recovering the stone. Like most Franco films, The Devil Came from Akasava walks to it's own idiosyncratic beat, and it takes its sweet time getting anywhere, allowing Franco to linger on whatever catches his fancy. Luckily, mor etimes than not, that's Soledad Miranda, the sort of women who make sit perfectly clear how a man could be instantly smitten and totally obsessed by a single glimpse. In the world of Eurocult starlets, Edwidge Fenech has always been my favorite, but Soledad Miranda, with dark hair and dark eyes and an engaging yet reserved personality, is the kind of intoxicatingly beautiful woman over whom men willingly destroy themselves. She certainly had that effect on Franco. And film of his in which she appears is about her, even if she isn't the main character, and Franco shoots her like a work of art.

One is sort of blinded by her beauty, but even if her presence alone wasn't enough to overshadow the rest of the cast, it wouldn't matter, because there's really not much to this film. Franco populates his film with a cast of experienced B-movie actors, all of whom turn in exactly the performance you expect from a band of such professionals -- which is to say, some are good, and some are just weird. Besides, Soledad, the real star of the film is the zoom lens, which Franco employs with almost gleeful abandon, zooming slowly, zooming rapidly, on any and every thing that happens to catch he camera's eye. It gets disorienting after a while, as the mere act of walking down a hallway seems to justify Franco zooming in and out. Often called the cheap man's dolly shot, the zoom can be petty brutally abused. Witness the deadly "slow zoom" of any number of home vacation movies. It seems like a good idea when you are doing it, like the "slow pan," but when you have to sit through a shot that takes a full two minutes to zoom into some detail, all you can do in the end is curse the day your father ever learned what that button did.

Still, there are times when a director or cinematographer can use the zoom to great effect. For example, whenever a cool guy walks into the room in a kungfu film. You just know you're getting a fast zoom in on his face, which can be really disconcerting if the character happens to be played by Lo Lie in the mid-to-late 1970s, when his case of Greasy Uglies was in full effect. Jess Franco, however, seems to zoom as often as possible, very rapidly, usually with no discernable reason other than to keep the shot moving. The end result is that a rather run-of-the-mill trashy James Bond knock-off like The Devil Came from Akasava becomes suddenly hallucinatory. Creating a dreamlike atmosphere is the primary goal in many European cult films, but while we expect it from a vampire or zombie or ghost film, seeing the same technique applied to a straight-forward spy thriller is really odd. Pleasant, though, and along with Soledad Miranda, it's that quirky approach to filmmaking that saves an otherwise dull spy film from going on the scrapheap alongside clunkers like Agent for H.A.R.M..

There's nothing particularly exciting about The Devil Came from Akasava. The action, when it does come, is pretty clumsy and not the least bit thrilling. The espionage isn't particularly engaging, either. But the film appeals to me never the less, perhaps because I can sympathize and relate to Franco's weird pacing and personal quirks. There are times when I simply can't struggle through one of his films -- A Virgin Among the Living Dead remains to this day one of the most excruciating chores to finish that I've ever failed at completing -- but The Devil Came from Akasava is much breezier, eye-catching and fun, helped in large part by Franco's dwelling on Soledad Miranda, a goofy spy plot, and some really good Euro-lounge cocktail music, which gets better when it's employed at really inopportune times that should be tense and exciting save for the breathless "la de do za zu!" female vocals accompanying the action.

The Devil Came from Akasava is probably one of Franco's more accessible film from the 1970s, when he really started getting weird. He even appears (as he often does) in a small role. But the film belongs to Soledad Miranda, and she remains the over-arching reason to watch. She made three films in 1971, all with Franco: this, Vampyro Lesbos, and the Lesbos follow-up, She Killed in Ecstasy. It was shortly after completing the filming of The Devil Came from Akasava that she was killed in a car wreck. Like Franco, we were all the worse off for her tragic passing.

As far as cheap Eurospy films go, this one clicks nicely into the middle of the pack, though Franco's offbeat direction and Miranda's presence lift above other middle-of-the-road spy films. I have a weakness for goofy spy films, though, so be forewarned that not only to do I go into The Devil Came from Akasava with a higher Franco tolerance than many, I also have a soft spot for European spy capers. So The Devil Came from Akasava is definitely not the sort of spy film I'd recommend to everyone, but I would recommend it to a select few, and you know, if you are looking to dip your toe into the Jess Franco pool, which is deep and wide and rather choked with weeds and surface scum, I think it's a more accessible starting point than Vampyro Lesbos, though really, what you should do is set aside a night and just watch all three Miranda-Franco films from 1971 in a row. That'll do some glorious damage to ya, right there.

Labels: Director: Jess Franco, Espionage, Eurospies, Netflix Diary, Series: Edgar Wallace Krimi, Year: 1971