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Draguse (Rhomm, 1976)

#film #my screencaps #draguse #le manoir de draguse #draguse or the infernal mansion #draguse ou le manoir infernal #patrice rhomm

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Draguse (Rhomm, 1976)

#film #my screencaps #draguse #le manoir de draguse #draguse or the infernal mansion #draguse ou le manoir infernal #patrice rhomm

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Draguse (Rhomm, 1976)

#film #my screencaps #draguse #le manoir de draguse #draguse or the infernal mansion #draguse ou le manoir infernal #patrice rhomm

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Draguse (Rhomm, 1976)

#film #my screencaps #draguse #le manoir de draguse #draguse or the infernal mansion #draguse ou le manoir infernal #patrice rhomm

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Put On Your Raincoats | Draguse (Rhomm, 1976)

This more or less falls into porno-horror territory, which sounds like you’re getting two great flavours that taste great together, but I don’t think this is a particularly effective example of the subgenre. The horror is applied with what can be generously called a light touch. I’ve only seen one other Patrice Rhomm movie, and I’d wager that he isn’t the most forceful of stylists, and the atmosphere here is not thick enough to cut with a knife. There’s also the fact that there’s an awful lot of padding, in terms of street footage, driving footage, amusement park footage and what have you. To be honest I didn’t mind seeing Paris in the ‘70s, particularly the seedier locations the hero visits to look for inspiration for the erotic novels he’s been commissioned to write. Alas I didn’t note down all the titles of the porno movies playing at the different theatres, but it was a little jarring to see that a Planet of the Apes sequel was playing next door to a sex film.

That being said, I did enjoy this enough, in large part thanks to Monica Swinn, a regular of Jess Franco’s films. I don’t think Rhomm uses her as well as Franco, but I still found her a pleasing screen presence, and found endearing her attempts to sell the sometimes awkward, sometimes noxious material. (Rhomm’s lack of forcefulness means we get a lot more of the former than the latter. An example presents itself in the first few minutes, when the hero dreams of being seduced by Swinn, who awkwardly gyrates to jazzy music in a shot that’s framed off centre.) And more importantly, she goes through a number of amazing outfits, from various gowns that blend spooky with sexy, to a nightie that doesn’t cover her pubes, to a grey sweater and dress combo that she matches with glasses, boots and a bob.

There’s an element of genre satire here, in that the hero struggles to find inspiration for his novels and most of the sources he tries to mine are idiotic and cliché-ridden. The best stretch of the movie is when Swinn (in dowdy bob, glasses and grey combo mode) comes to help him write his books and comes up with one idea after another more devious than any he could conjure. In the hands of a better director, this could have been shaped into something with a lot more erotic charge or a sharper sense of gender commentary, but Rhomm uses it for halfassed but sort of entertaining riffs on different sexploitation scenarios. Oddly enough, I don’t think this even would have been good jerkoff material for the raincoat brigade, as most of this is softcore with some obvious stuntcocking when it goes hardcore, and in typical French porn fashion, there’s an element of humour or condescension in some of the scenes. So I don’t think any of this will shock you or get your motor running, but if you enjoy Swinn as a screen presence you should have a good enough time.

#film #movie review #put on your raincoats #draguse #patrice rhomm #draguse or the infernal mansion #le manoir de draguse #draguse ou le manoir infernal

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Annie, Get Your Gwangi

#🤠 #🦖

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Alien: Resurrection (1997)

#alien: resurrection #ron perlman

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Bloody Moon (1981)

Happy Franco Friday!

#bloody moon

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Bloody Moon (1981)

Happy Franco Friday!

#bloody moon

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Bloody Moon (1981)

It’s Franco Friday!

#bloody moon

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Bloody Moon (1981)

Happy Franco Friday!

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"Iris - You hurt me deeply"

Luxembourgish vintage postcard, illustrated by Boulanger, mailed in 1912 to Valencienne, France

#cat #kitty kat #meow meow meow

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Natalie Wood poses with a cat with heterochromia (one blue eye and one green eye) in publicity portraits for the 20th Century Fox/Peter Hyams mystery comedy Peeper, 1975. The cat appeared in the movie as Natalie's character Ellen Prendergast's pet.

#natalie wood #cat #kitty kat #meow meow meow

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Movie Review | Dark Mission (Franco, 1988)

I was hoping that I might be sufficiently Franco-pilled to enjoy this movie that doesn’t seem to have too many defenders, but no, this Jess Franco that nobody likes is actually bad. Unlike White Cannibal Queen and Oasis of the Zombies, which have enough of Franco’s idiosyncrasies that you can enjoy them if you’re sufficiently attuned to the director’s quirks, this is a pretty generic affair that you wouldn’t know he directed unless you paid attention to the credits. It’s an action thriller that is light on action and thrills (the climax is full of recycled helicopter footage), led by Robert Mitchum’s untalented son Christopher, who seems to have been cast because the producers thought Robert Ginty might be too charismatic for the role. Also he sports a horrible mullet. And unlike his women in prison movies, Franco brings no political conviction to the proceedings. (Exhibit A: Che Guevara’s first name is erroneously stated to be Alfredo.) This feels like a purely mercenary enterprise, one which lacks even the reliably warm presence of his partner Lina Romay.

That being said, if you’re gonna watch this, you will likely enjoy the presence of Christopher Lee and Brigitte Lahaie. The former, despite being miscast as a South American, is enough of a professional that he brings some fire to his scenes. And the latter, for whom I watched this mostly, is cast against type as a woman of action. She has a lot less to do than in The Female Executioner, where she played a badass heroine, but if you liked her there, you’ll find her the best part of this one. She repeatedly surprises the hero in his hotel room, greets him at one point with “Hello, scum”, and later has a tearful scene in a bikini because apparently this emotionally charged scene needed to be sexier. Okay, those are dubious highlights, and she doesn’t get to kick ass nearly as much as you’d hope, but it’s a substantially better movie wherever she’s onscreen.

#film #movie review #dark mission #flowers of evil #jess franco

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Put On Your Raincoats | The House of Fantasies (Bernard-Aubert, 1979)

Listen, it’s been a long week, and I just wanted to de-stress by watching Brigitte Lahaie in something naughty, and this was less than seventy minutes. Is that so wrong? Anyway, this is bad. With a plot synopsis like this (“Monsieur Matthieu forces his young wife Clarisse into various sexual situations of his design”, to quote the Letterboxd and TMDb pages), there’s no way this isn’t going to be Problematic. And there’s a scene where a girl’s mother asks the male lead to make her daughter a whore that foregrounds the misogyny of the premise. But to quote the late, great Roger Ebert, “It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.” And I think this has a few primary failings.

While Lahaie does what she can to sell the material, she doesn’t have nearly enough characterization to work with, so there isn’t much erotic or dramatic charge, let alone subversion, from identifying with her during the proceedings. She does have bangs though, so fans of Lahaie won’t be totally disappointed by her role.

Richard Allan as her husband does not have dom energy, so there isn’t much much erotic or dramatic charge, let alone subversion, from identifying with him during the proceedings. He looks like Ringo Starr, but if Ringo Starr was mean. This is not as sexy as it sounds.

So on the basic level of its dom-sub scenario, it doesn’t have any juice. It also doesn’t help that this is directed with the generic classy slickness of most Alpha France productions that I’ve seen, which leaves the pungency of the material feeling strangely limp, especially when it shares with those a lack of warmth towards their characters. (I should note that there are some odd stylistic choices, like a squeaking, slide whistle sound during an early sex scene.) The only scene that really works is the gang rape turned consensual group scene, which noxious as it may sound, both summarizes the central dynamic of the movie and has enough of a sense of progression that it sort of works erotically.

But yeah, unless you really want to see Lahaie with bangs, you can probably skip this.

#film #movie review #put on your raincoats #the house of fantasies #submission #claude bernard-aubert

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#nina carter #🤠

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Anyone But My Husband (Findlay, 1975)

#film #my screencaps #anyone but my husband #roberta findlay