EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this on October 22, 2019 and man, it may not be the movie that Franco usually makes, but it’s deranged and really goes for it as a slasher.

If you’ve watched enough slashers, you’ve reached that point where you say, “There’s no way they’re going to show a bandsaw tear a woman’s head off her body.” But when you really title a movie Die Sage des Todes, or The Saw of Death, and you’re Jess Franco, you go for it.

Seriously — turn back now all that aren’t ready for an incestual slasher that takes no prisoners.

Miguel has a disfigured face, a horrible secret and just got out of being in a mental asylum for five years after stabbing a woman. Now, he’s been released into the loving arms — too loving, hence that secret — of his sister Manuela, who operates Europe’s International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages. Now, Miguel has his eye on Angela, an attractive student at his sister’s school.

We full-on learn Miguel and his sister’s secret shame, as when the two begin to kiss, she reminds him that the last time they went this far, people died. No one can ever understand them and it can never happen again.

Between the disco dancing and constant murders, this European resort town stays hopping. Perhaps the best sequence is the aforementioned bandsaw murder, which ends with its lone witness, a kid who has to be less than ten years old, getting run over by the killer too. Life is cheap — and in this movie, it’s cheaper than it ever has been before.

I kind of adore that the producers told Franco that Pink Floyd was going to do the music for this. In what universe would that happen?

Of course, this didn’t just end up on any video nasty list. It’s one of the category 1 films that was actually prosecuted for obscenity. If any movie on that list deserves it, it’s this one.

Severin has re-released this on blu ray, selling it with this line: “just when you thought you’d seen it all, Franco shocked the world by delivering surprising style, genuine suspense and a cavalcade of depravity that includes incest, voyeurism and roller disco.” If you aren’t ordering this right now, what’s wrong with you?

You can also watch this on Tubi.

Any time you don’t see a poster in a Jess Franco month post, realize that I share these on Facebook and I’d like people to be able to see them. Seeing as how this is also called Wicked Women and Women Without Innocence, you can imagine that there was no poster that really was safe for posting.

Margarita (Lina Romat) is the only witness of a murder so brutal — it was in the midst of a romantic thruple situation — that it’s given her shock and amnesia, sending her to a psychiatric clinic where another masked man — or is the same one? — assauts her and kills another woman. He promises to return to murder her, so she better get those memories back in a hurry.

If you think you’ve seen bad doctors before, well, these ones just scream at Lina and one of the female doctors decides to take a bath with her, which doesn’t seem like the kind of bedside manner that gets taught in college. I don’t know, maybe the Jess Franco universe has very different rules than our own.

So in short: women in prison but in a sanitarium with diamond smuggling and giallo.

How many Jess Franco movies concern diamond smuggling? All of them, sometimes.

Also known as Diamonds of Kilimandjaro and The Treasure of the White Goddess, this trip through the libido and madness of Jess Franco finds a diamond treasure — Jess loves diamonds almost as much as showing you the love of his life’s lady parts in zoomtastic details — and a lost white girl amongst the natives — naked, unafraid, with a pet monkey and all of 16 years old, as Katja Bienert was way too young to be in one of his movies at this point.

Filled with stock footage, an editing error that shows the same scene twice, a scene where the crew can be seen — another Franco trademark? — and as always, Franco had already made this movie kinda sorta as White Cannibal Queen, so if you’ve watched more than fifty of his movies in fourteen days — do not walk the left hand path I have stepped down — it all starts to blend together.

Katja’s dad leads the tribe, by the way, and he’s Scottish because he wears skirts and plays bagpipes and only leaves his room for whiskey. He’s also composer Daniel White, who for some reason decided that this movie needed bongos and synth, which is probably half right and all wrong.

Look, if you’ve never seen a Franco movie or want someone to watch one with you, don’t make it this one. Actually, if you’ve succeeded in life enough to have someone that wants to share movies with you, don’t screw it up. I mean, I can’t even think of what Franco movie to show them. Venus In Furs? That’s probably the best one, but it’s still deranged. So is Vampyros Lesbos. Still, if you find someone who’ll sit for 80 minutes of bad editing, landscape shots, tree swinging and Lina Romay in old woman makeup, you’ve won life.

The Killer Barbies — remember when they did Killer Barbys with Franco? — play Tivoli World, which was the largest theme park in Costa del Sol, a Wild West-themed place that sadly closed due to the coronavirus in 2020.

They’re soon met by two Russians — Irina (Lina Romay) and Ivan — who have brought the dead body of Dracula for the theme park. But after hearing the band play — and look, let’s be honest, if you were a vampire and Silvia Superstar was performing in front of your coffin, you’d rise from the grave too — Dracula is back and the park’s owners call in Dr. Seward, a vampire killer, as the undead lord of the manor of Carpathia starts killing everyone.

You know, I kind of like the music of the Barbys and they even play that song “Candy” that Iggy Pop and Kate Pearson did. It’s all pretty silly. That said, it’s a lot of fun. Carmen Montes from Snakewoman does some dancing and Katja Bienert from Linda and Eugenie (Historia de una perversión) is in this too, which makes me super happy. In fact, let’s just all live in this world, where there’s amusement park rides, silly horror pop and goofy Dracula running around.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We covered this back on September 10, 2020 and wow. It’s an odd movie even by Franco’s standards. 

While the movie is called Killer Barbys, it features the Spanish punk rock band The Killer Barbies, who are fronted by Silvia Superstar. They’ve used the alternate spelling to avoid legal action from Mattel, but at other times use the “ie” spelling.

Released along with their first album Dressed to Kiss, this movie finds the band on the road when their van breaks down. Arkan (Aldo Sambrell, who was in everything from Leone’s Italian Westerns to Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, Silver Saddle and Operation Condor: Armor of God 2) welcomes them to the castle of Countess Von Fledermaus (Mariangela Giordano, Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror), who is really the artist Olga Luchan, who has remained alive for decades.

Billy and Sharon elect to stay in the van — continually aardvarking throughout the movies — while Flavia, Rafa and Mario all discover the secret of the Countess. Yes, she’s remained young on a diet of semen and blood.

There are only two songs by the band on the soundtrack and you will know them both well by the time the movie is done. You’ll also be amazed that Franco had made way more than a hundred movies before this, but so much of what I love is that you never really know what kind of movie the director would bring you.

Basically, imagine if Scooby-Doo had every character having sex with one another, but pervy sex because Jess Franco wouldn’t have it any other way. What a magical lunatic. The band would also work with Mr. Franco again to make 2002’s Killer Barbys vs. Dracula.

You can watch this on KinoCult.

St. Elizabeth’s Refuge seems like a place that helps the downtrodden women of Victorian England by placing them into the homes of the upper class where they gain fulfilling careers that last for their entire lives. Or, you know, they disappear forever.

Now, a rebellious charge named Leonore (Sandra Mozarowsky, Hitler’s Last Train) is trying to discover the secrets of this place and when a movie starts off with a girl’s brain being opened up and sliced against her will, you know that there’s nothing good here. Once her friend Sylvia (Victoria Vera, Monster Dog) becomes one of the missing, her mission becomes even more necessary.

The headmistress Miss Wilkins (Norma Kastel, Tender and Perverse Emanuelle) and her assistant Miss Colton have no problems whipping the girls into shape or pushing them into the unloving arms of Dr. Krueger (Dean Selmier, The Blood Spattered Bride).

More of a gothic romance than the exploitation movie that the first scene may leadd you to believe, School of Death takes its time to give you the rewards you’re looking for. But they’re there and worth the time.

Director Pedro L. Ramírez also made The Fish with the Eyes of Gold, a giallo more concerned with mystery than kills. If you liked that, well, this will be your speed. I kind of love that this movie sets up a totally pervy premise — sex slaves created through brain surgery — and then it’s pretty much a movie that could play on TV.

The Mondo Macabro blu ray of School of Death is the first time that this movie has ever been released on disc. It features a 1080p presentation from a new 4K restoration of the original camera negative, as well as commentary by Kat Ellinger. You can get it from Mondo Macabro.

This is the day in the life of Jane Grey (Natasha Bain, who also wrote some of the script), a black actress struggling between her career, her love life and how she’s dealing with it all. A breakup with a married man has done more damage to her self-esteem than it should have and she wants to see him one last time, all while getting ready to audition for a role that she’s certain that she can’t get.

It all sounds rather depressing, but as this is directed by Andrew Rajan, the long dialogue segments really inform you all about Jane and how she’s trying to keep her life from going to pieces.

Obviously, I’ll never be a black actress trying to live a modern life in London, but this film puts you directly into the mind and aware of the decisions that its protagonist makes.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’ve been wanting to see this movie for years and held off, because there’s no way that it can live up to the imagery of the sculpture of a giant woman with a teeth-like door between her thighs that opens to reveal a skeleton that falls out, its head rolling toward camera. But somehow, someway, this movie is even stranger and better than that bravura moment.

https://diedangerdiediekill.blogspot.com/2018/02/femina-ridens-aka-laughing-woman-italy.html

Maria (Dagmar Lassander) works in the office of Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy), who claims to be working in philanthropy but really believes in an increasingly wild series of conspiracies like how every woman in the world is against him and they’re all collecting the sperm of men so they can get rid of them after harvesting their life-giving sperm and that governments are planning on making men obsolete.

After having a drink with Sayer, Maria wakes up chained to a bed and his prisoner, being told that he can make her do anything he wants and when he’s done, like so many other women, he will just get rid of her, move on and do it all over again.

Directed and written by Piero Schivazappa, this movie takes the expected BDSM idea that an independent woman is going to enjoy pushing her boundaries and fall for her captor and instead flip it like a kink-friendly Arabian Nights, as Maria keeps talking and pushing and prodding Sayer, making him question who he is and what he’s doing.

The world that this happens inside is the kind of future that we were promised and never got, a push-button retro tomorrow that never got here, filled with starkness, strange human forms and swimming pools that are either havens for torture or passion. There’s also a strange bed that Maria soon learns allows Sayer to sleep next to her even when she thinks she’s all alone. And then he makes her make love — with his direction — to his exact mannequin duplicate.

How strange is it that there’s a major inversion before the end of this movie, between who is in charge and who controls who and the traditional top and bottom roles and wow, when Maria pulls off her short wig — Sayer had previously chopped all of her hair — to reveal her flowing locks again, it’s beyond perfect. I was ready for what would happen, but somehow still so happy that it all played out this way, because yes, it has to play out this way.

Sometimes, style and substance fight it out and argue and no one wins. And other times, they just decide to just stop fighting and start fucking and the results are glorious. This would be that time.

Mondo Macabro’s blu ray of this movie is the region-free world blu ray premiere, with a 1080p presentation from a 4k restoration of the original camera negative. It has a choice of English or Italian audio, with optional English subtitles, as well as an interview with writer/director Piero Schivazappa, commentary by Kat Ellinger, a video essay on the film’s production design by Rachael Nisbet, an animated foto-novel by Jacques Spohr and the trailers for the movie. You can get it from Mondo Macabro.

No, no, not Sodomania and its long dark journey down a tunnel of love. That’s different.

Jess Franco’s Sadomania is all about the wacky hijinks that ensue when Olga (Uta Koepke) and Michael (Ángel Caballero) find their honeymoon — who goes to the desert on their wedding trip? — trespasses on the grounds of Magda Urtado (Ajita Wilson, Escape from Hell, who was born George Wilson) and her resort boot camp Sadomania, a place where topless women abuse other nude women because they’re in a Jess Franco movie.

Michael is told to leave while Olga does time and gets turned out as a call girl and the top client is the governor (of course it’s Antonio Mayans) who can only perform with his wife while watching a strange scene that feels like it came right out of a Joe D’Amato movie if you know what I mean and I think you do, as a friend from Texas says.

There’s also women being chased, another Franco favorite, along with plenty of torture and eventually, Olga’s man remembers that he needs to rescue her. Anything to get out of digging holes for no reason in the desert with Tara (Ursula Buchfellner) and Conita, who battles a guard in a gladiator match. And oh yeah — Jess himself as a gay slave trader.

Look, if you didn’t think 99 Women was scummy enough, no worries. Jess Franco can always sink lower.