German officer Erich von Strasse (Jean-Marie Lemaire) was wounded in battle but has come back to Berlin to be awarded the Iron Cross before heading to the Russian Front. A woman that he loved before he became a hero, Ronata (Brigitte Parmentier), has been forced to work in a brothel and her father sent to a concentration camp after they’ve been discovered hiding a Jewish woman. Now confronted by the evil of the Third Reich first-hand, Erich decides to save her.

Also known as East of Berlin and Convoy of Girls, this was supposedly directed by a mix of Pierre Chevalier and Jess Franco, but I must tell you, the fact that this has scenes in a house of ill repute and there’s no zoom shots into female anatomy, thirty-eight-minute lesbian love scenes or people being whipped or electrified says to me that either Jess did some pick up shots or had nothing to do with this.

Franco had to be saying, “Look, Monica Swinn and Pamela Stanford are right there, can they just kiss tongue or something?”

Eurocine movies really had no concern for who directed their movies or where footage comes from, as this one features cribbed scenes from Heroes Without Glory, Hitler’s Last Train, Captive Women 4 and Nathalie: Escape from Hell. Nearly all of those movies — and this one — were also inserted into another Franco World War II movie, Night of the Eagles.

Cecilia (Muriel Montossé, Isla the warden from Love Camp and Emmanuelle in Emmanuelle Exposed) is the wife of a rich diplomat named Andre (Antonio Mayans) and she’s bored by all of it. So filled with ennui that she often stages games when she gets nude in front of the servants and trying to seduce him, which backfires when their limo driver quits and his brothers all gang up to assault her.

This being an exploitation movie, that sexual violence is all that she needed to reawaken herself, both to wanting carnal pleasure and her husband. And, as these things happen in movies that follow the journey of Emanuelle, she soon embraces her free love nature and begins to explore being open to the ways of amour. But it always seems that in exploitation that too much of a good thing must be morally punished, right?

Aberraciones sexuales de una mujer casada (Sexual Aberrations of a Married Woman) was acquired by Eurociné, who had Olivier Mathot direct new flashback scenes, and released the movie as Ceceilia, which is the easier to find version of this film.

There’s nude horseback riding, a cave-set multiperson love scene and, in case you forgot Jess Franco directed this, Lina Romay playing a nightclub dancer who does an act in which she sucks her son’s thumb in a way that leaves nothing to your imagination. Some people would say that this is problematic; I’d say it’s a Jess Franco movie. When the Nationalist government of General Francisco Franco fell, years of making movies that only flirted with kink suddenly gave way to a tidal way of needing to show everything, to expose it, to confess it and then to cover it up with droning synth and shots of the scenery that seemingly always last way too long.

I’d say never change, but Jess Franco never did.

This movie is also called Miss Muerte, which is a great title, and it’s about Dr. Irma Zimmer, the daughter of Dr. Orloff’s student Professor Zimmer, who has made a machine that can make people into zombies. Four of the old man’s colleagues led him to an early death, so Dr. Irma uses the machine to control the firecracker sexual force that is Miss Muerte (Estella Blain), whose chief weapon is her poison-tipped fingernails, cuticles which she’s using to kill anyone connected with the death of Irma’s father.

Let me go back for a second. The movie called The Diabolical Dr. Z starts with Dr. Z dying. Also, in the Franco Cinematic Universe, I have discovered that if you are a doctor with any degree of evil whatsoever, you must know, be friends with or be a pupil of Dr. Orloff.

All of this is set to the notes of jazz, with strange angles and billowing smoke and fog following the same logic as the music playing. Meanwhile, Inspector Tanner and Inspector Green are played by a quite youthful Franco and composer Daniel J. White. This can be seen as a meta exploration of the authority of the director upon the movie or probably more truthfully two guys getting in front of the camera because there isn’t enough money to hire anyone else.

Also the notion of domination, submission and control will soon become even more a part of Franco’s films. You can see many of the themes he’d explore take their first filthy little steps here.

You can watch this on KInoCult.

Every generation gets the Invasion of the Body Snatchers they deserve.

The fifties got the McCarthy referencing pod people.

The nineties got alienation and a bleak final scene.

And I guess the 2000s got The Invasion.

But the seventies?

The pre-millennial tension and end of the world coming soon seventies got director Phillip Kaufman’s blast of pure dread, working with talents like cinematographer Michael Chapman (who ran the camera on The Godfather and Jaws before creating the look of movies like Raging Bull, The Fugitive and directing All the Right Moves and The Clan of the Cave Bear) and sound designer Ben Burtt, the man who gave Star Wars all its well-remembered noises. As for the effects, as many of them as possible were done in camera.

A species has made its way to Earth and one of the first people to notice is Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), who wakes to find her husband Dr. Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle) is no longer the man that she’s spent so many days and nights with. The species — do I have to spoil it for you — takes over humans and assimilates them.

A co-worker, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) wants to introduce Elizabeth to self-help author Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) as a way of helping her handle this strange situation, but on the way, a man runs through the street screaming, “They’re coming! You’ll be next!” before being chased by a crowd and killed by a car.

That mystery man is Kevin McCarthy, the star of the original film, who one supposes has been running through America since the end of the last film. Even before the movie was finished, McCarthy told Kaufman that this movie was better than the one he was in. You can also see original director Don Siegel as a taxi driver later in the film.

The seventies were the me decade. So David believes that people behaving so different is their response to stress while Elizabeth just thinks this is how she’s being told her relationship is over. The truth is so much weirder as people begin to find partially formed doppelgangers of themselves and their friends.

By the end of the film, children are being taken for duplication, strange priests (Robert Duvall) swing as the world ends, dogs appear with human heads, women disintegrate in their lovers’ arms — the film takes the basic ideas of the original and makes them as horrifyingly real and unreal as they can be at the very same time.

Plus, there’s Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright, who between this and Alien really was on the forefront of late 20th century science fiction movies.

While Pauline Kael said that this “may be the best film of its kind ever made” and Variety wrote that it “validates the entire concept of remake,” Roger Ebert derided Kael’s love for the remake. But over time, this has become the example of a sequel that’s beyond the original in so many ways.

The true terror of this movie is the ending, which upset me utterly as a child. I’d never seen a movie end this way. Only Kaufman, writer W.D. Richter and Donald Sutherland knew how the film was going to end, so when Sutherland screams at Veronica Cartwright, her reaction is genuine. The hopeful ending that was scripted was never shot, because Kaufman knew that if the studio had the option, they’d pick that, just like they did with the first version of this story.

I’m so excited to have Invasion of the Body Snatchers in my library. It’s a movie that transcends era and genre and one I recommend that you view now if you haven’t and even if you have.

Kino Lorber’s re-release of Invasion of the Body Snatchers includes everything you need to fully savor this film, including a newly restored HD master from a 4K Scan of the original camera negative approved and color graded by director Philip Kaufman, who also provides a commentary track. There’s another track from author and film historian Steve Haberman, as well as interviews with Brooke Adams, W.D. Richter, composer Denny Zeitlin, Art Hindle, Jack Finney expert Jack Seabrook and featurettes such as Re-Visitors from Outer Space, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pod, Practical Magic: The Special Effects Pod, The Man Behind the Scream: The Sound Effects Pod and The Invasion Will Be Televised: The Cinematography Pod. There are also TV and radio spots and the trailer. 

You can get this movie on blu ray or 4K UHD from Kino Lorber.

I had no idea that this Italian Western was an Israeli co-production and just a few years before they’d make it to the USA, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus would work with The Irwin Yablans Company and Cannon Film Distributors to bring this movie to screens all over the world.

Sam Clayton (Jack Palance, as always, a grinning force of complete menace) and his gang have taken over Juno City, stabbing men and assaulting women before leaving the town in the bloody dust. No man will ride out to stop them, except Father John (Lee Van Cleef), a holy man who rides out unarmed and takes the guilty gang members to jail.

The gang breaks them out of jail and kills the priest, sending a young boy named Johnny (Leif Garrett!) to Mexico to bring Lewis, the twin brother of the dead man of the cloth, and he comes back with vengeance on his mind, even if it turns out that Clayton ends up being Johnny’s father.

Also known as Diamante Lobo and A Bullet From God, this is Lee Van Cleef’s last filmed Western (and second movie with Garrett). It was a rough film for Richard Boone, who had started having health problems, then got drunk and walked off the set, leaving the Israeli location before he even dubbed his dialogue. He’d say in an interview, “I’m starring in the worst picture ever made. The producer is an Israeli and the director is Italian, and they don’t speak. Fortunately it doesn’t matter, because the director is deaf in both ears.”

That deaf director was Gianfranco Parolini, better known in America as Frank Kramer, and the maker of some wild stuff like Sabata; Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century; Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill; The Three Fantastic Supermen and writing If You Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death. It was written by John Fonseca, whose career is all over the place, acting in The Uranium Conspiracy (also produced by Golan), serving as a dialogue coach and even shooting stills on the sets of Don’t Open Till Christmas and Slaughter High.

How did I get this far without telling you Sybil Danning is in this movie? Am I slipping?

This may not be the best Italian Western you’ve ever seen, but honestly, the end with Palance rambling in a cemetery and alternating between being paternal and horrifying, well, that’s worth the price of this blu ray. And Lee Van Cleef? Always just right.

The Kino Lorber blu ray release of God’s Gun — I’ve never seen it look this good, as I own it on multiple Italian Western public domain sets — has a brand new 2K Master, audio commentary by Repo Man filmmaker Alex Cox (!), a trailer, subtitles and a great reversible cover. Here’s to more movies like this coming out on blu ray! You can get this from Kino Lorber.

Leo and Emma, a newlywed couple from a small town in Mexico, have made the decision of a lifetime. They are coming to America. But when they arrive, they wonder if the American Dream was everything they hoped that it would be.

Fernando Rodriguez directed, wrote, edited, produced and did the cinematography for this movie, which really shows the journey that immigants have to take to try to better their lives in America, even if they have to do it illegally.

It’s one thing for them to attempt to make this new life on their own, but when they have to consider their daughter Luciana, as well as living in a place with no family, friends or support, they wonder if they’ve made the right choice.

At under an hour, Por Mi Hija let me explore a life I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. That’s about all you can ask from a film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Schoolgirl Report movies were big business in the early 70s and so were the mondo films, so here’s Jess Franco to make his own version in his own style. And we are here to watch.

Ingrid Steinbach and Eva Garden have been in a bunch of the originals like Schoolgirl Report Part 3: What Parents Find Unthinkable and Virgin Wives, plus Franco brought his regulars like Howard Vernon (Dr. Orloff, I presume), Britt Nichols AKA Carmen Yazalde (A Virgin Among the Living Dead, The Demons) and Christina von Blanc (A Bell from Hell, The Dead Are Alive!).

This entire movie is dedicated to women losing their virginity, whether it’s through deflowering rituals of the past or the women of today doing everything they can to lose their innocence. There’s also Adam and Eve showing how they knew each other biblically and, following that, a priest and a nun giving one another confession, so to speak. And oh yeah — man on the street interviews.

Strangely enough, in the 1980s, Franco would make Faceless for the producer who created the Schulmädchen-Report series, Wolf C. Hartwig. Franco also made another mondo,  In 80 Betten um die Welt, which my obsession screams at me that I must now watch.

So let’s say that some silver aliens are very advanced, so advanced that they can impregnate women in minutes not months and they decide to do it onstage at a kinda sorta men’s club and pick Mrs. Foncesca (Lina Romay, who else, using her Candy Coster alter ego) to be the one to bring their otherworldly children to life.

Or maybe it’s a spy movie.

Or maybe it’s a dream.

Or maybe it’s Franco’s take on Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

Or maybe it’s Franco’s take on Rosemary’s Baby.

Or maybe it’s the making of a sex movie within a sex movie.

Or maybe those aliens come back and they’re real.

Look, only Jess Franco would film Lina Romay pouring water all over her nether regions as if he were shooting the Sistine Chapel, but maybe her body was his vision of what God could bring to man with a soundtrack that sounds like a Casio set to demo mode. I really don’t know what he was going for — people don’t even speak any language that exists — but in no way do I feel that I wasted my time watching whatever this was.

I think we’re going to have to get a deprogrammer for me after Jess Franco month.

Detective Al Pereira (Antonio Mayans) is back and for this story, he’s been hired by Raden (Ricardo Palacios) and Eva (Lina Romay) to find their sister Adrianna (also Lina, but let’s say that she’s also Candice Coster).

Mayan’s daughte Flavia plays his daughter in the movie and his wife Juana de la Morena plays his ex-wife and somehow, this is a noir movie with none of the excesses that you expect from Jess Franco, just a detective story. There’s even a voice-over that explains that this is how real detective work happens, not like you see it in a film.

So yeah. A Jess Franco movie without rampant nudity, all that much violence and a tender relationship between father and daughter who wants to be his detective secretary. Keep on surprising me from beyond the grave, Jess Franco.

Franco was going to make twelve years before with Marisa Mell, Barbara Bouchet and Mark Damon, but he couldn’t get the money. You have no idea how much I wish that movie had happened.