If you thought that Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS was the limit, this movie makes it feel as if Jess Franco tool that movie as a personal challenge to somehow create something innumerable times sleazier.

Considered the third movie in the series — even if it wasn’t filmed as a sequel — and also known as Greta, the Mad Butcher, Ilsa: Absolute Power and Wanda, the Wicked Warden, this stars the women who is Ilsa, Dyanne Thorne, as Greta. She’s running a psychiatric hospital for young women, which gives her plenty of opportunities to indulge her more, shall we say, psychosexual side.

Probably shot at the same time — who knows, maybe even the same place — as Barbed Wire Dolls, the heroine of this story is Abbie Phillips, whose sister died inside the walls of Greta’s hospital, and now must infiltrate the hospital and find out why.

The amazing thing about this movie is that as wild as Ilsa has been in the past, she’s now entering the ninth circle of voyeur hell where director Jess Franco and his muse, Lina Romay, reside. Lina plays a prisoner named Juana who keeps the other female prisoners in line as well as lined up for prostitution and pornography. Also, in one scene that might break your mind, she follows a prison toilet BM by forcing Abbie to be human toilet paper. Yes, this happens and yes, this movie played American theaters and I have no idea how.

Snuff movies, acupuncture gone wrong, scarred women being used by cruel men, Lina Romay no doubt looking as perfect as she ever will or ever did and being the meanest woman in the world in a manner so brutal that she can only devour — literally — the previous champion in an ending that is either going to flip your stomach, raise your fist in triumph or both and Franco pretty much running through the motions he did in so many other women in prison movies, except Franco through the motions is still way more magical and insane and upsetting and sleazy and can you endure this than anyone perhaps ever.

Five talented San Francisco-based filmmakers (Scotty Cornfield, Donna Mae Foronda, Tony Jonick, Alisha McCutcheon and Dana Moe) have come together to create five interconnected stories about the city, a place that the filmmakers describe as “a city of dreamers and immigrants, of old gold money, and new tech schemes, of people living under tarps by the side of the road, and young artists finding new neighborhoods, of bridges to the past and future.”

Narrated by Peter Coyote (who movies from New York City to Iowa to the city this movie takes place in, getting his masters at San Francisco State University and starting so many artistic programs; he also sings over the closing credits), the main narrative of this movie is how newcomer Nina (Linnae Dosumu-Johnson) discovers the town — and how to ride a bike — from her friend Mikey (Robert Henningsen), who takes her through the many neighborhoods, meeting outsider homeless artist Plato (Chris Marsol), a depressed performance artist named Andy (Carlos Flores, Jr.), art dealer Grace (Bettina Devin), his workaholic public defender cousin Marwan (Alessandro Garcia) and a couple who has just met on a dating app, Connie (Adrienne Marie Thomas) and Adam (Tony Gapastione). There’s also Mel (Andrea Martzipan, her famous author grandfather Ulee (Bert Van Aalsburg), her refugee roommate Saadi (Nicole Azalee Danielle) and Saadi’s daughter Zarah (Poppy Sanchez), all of whose stories move and flow together until things end up at a farmer’s market, which is, one assumes, a very San Francisco way to achieve an ending.

The movie is an anthology film with five interlocking stories, which was shot as five individual short films because the directors all belong to a short-film creating co-op. Actors returned several times to reprise their roles from previous films, which makes this flow pretty well, despite how it was made. If you enjoy Altman-esque movies that bring together multiple lives into one narrative, then you’ll definitely find something to enjoy here.

San Francisco Stories is now available on demand. You can learn more on the official site

Fourteen years after Llámale Jess, director Carles Prats (who also made Drácula Barcelona, which tells the tale of how Jess Franco’s Count Dracula and Cuadecuc, Vampir were made at the same time, uniting the worlds of genre and arthouse) made a totally new edit of the documentary that he made about Franco and Lina Romay.

After an entire month of Franco film, this was a great little palate cleanser before my next month-long deep dive into another series of movies. Franco is quite sharp, telling stories about his history of directing, walking the camera through a children’s arcade and smoking pack after pack of cigarettes alongside Lina, who laughs and smiles along as he keeps talking. You can really feel the joy between the two of them, as well as the passion that Franco still felt for film.

Ah man — I watched more than a hundred Franco movies in a month. I’d never recommend anyone ever try that, but on the other hand, I feel that I’ve learned so much about not only genre films, but about love, loss and life.

Desdemona (Lina Romat) lives on an isolated island with her father Mario (Antonio Mayans), her stepmother Dulcinea (Carmen Carrión) and her mentally handicapped sister Paulova (Asunción Calero). What’s there to do on such an island? Well, beyond Desdemona’s onanistic acts on the beach, getting whipped by her mother and using her hand on her sister, she’s been trying to sleep with her father, so when a stranger (Tony Skios) enters the film, things are looking up pun unintended.

The House of Lost Women is just one of thirteen movies Franco made in 1983 but this soap opera is sure strange, as we demand, and quite pervy, as we probably demand as well.

Man, is this another Jess Franco Cinematic Universe theme? Disgraced men that have taken their entire family to an island where all there is to do is dream of escape and have sex wit oranges? Is this island close to the one in Muñecas Rojas? Could you swim over and be attacked by the sirens of Bahia Blanca? Or are we so very close to Hot Nights of Linda?

Watching too much Franco makes you either confused or feeling as if the onion is peeling back to show you the multiple realities and versions of these characters, all yearning for orgasmic bliss but trapped with one foot on the bed and the other in the void.

You can order the movie from Severin.

Princess von Baky (Carmen Carrión) leads a life of wickedness, using everyone around her, like her sickly and impotent husband (Daniel Katz) and her servants Mara (Mari Carmen Nieto) and Mauro (Mauro Rivera), who lure virgins to her home where they all violate and torture the innocence out of them until the well runs dry.

A young American named Odéle (Alicia Príncipe) has been spying on them. As she starts to become part of the carnal games within the home, Mauro falls in love with her and tries to save her, but as the movie moves from a languid soft core feel to a psychedelic burst of blue lights and bloody BDSM violence, everything gets incredible apocalyptic, followed by a walk into the sea that perhaps can wash away the blood. But probably not.

Franco made this movie with an entirely new cast of actors than he usually used in an attempt to shake things up. One wonders if he could have done that by making a film he hadn’t already made before, but I have no interest in questioning Franco, only using his films to send my brain into a level of near drug-induced drone.

1975 saw two movies titled The Mark of Zorro, one from Italian director Franco Lo Cascio that starred George Hilton, and this film, directed by Marius Lesoeur with uncredited directing help from Alain Payet and Jess Franco. There was also the big budget Alain Delon movie that same year, directed by Duccio Tessari, that was such a huge deal that it became one of the first Western-produced films to be exported to the People’s Republic of China after the Cultural Revolution where more than 70 million viewers watched it.

This is not that movie.

This was made in France with French actors, pulling footage from La venganza del Zorro* like Godfrey Ho and with Franco regulars Howard Vernon as the Governor of California and Monica Swinn as his daughter, well…this won’t be the best Zorro movie that you’ve ever seen. Speaking of Zorro, he’s played by Clint Douglas, who only made two other movies.

You have to give Eurocine some credit for trying to cash in, but if anyone was fooled, well, they deserve to get the ZZ on both cheeks of their life.

*Which was co-written by Franco.

How to Seduce a Virgin is another Jess Franco trip into De Sade, as Countess Martine de Bressac (Alice Arno) emerges from a sanitarium — 18 months after castrating a lover — with no intention of giving up on the left hand path, soon discovering a young woman who she wants to destroy just because she can.

Yes, The Philosophy In the Boudoir inspired many of Franco’s movies and this one, well, this one goes all the way. All the way to remake Eugenie, which had been a success for Franco before and the theory, one thinks, could have been to make a more horror-themed version of the same story.

Martine’s husband Charles (Robert Woods) soon joins her in the basement of bodies preserved at the exact moment of death and shows him the girl they must corrupt, Cécile (Tania Busselier).

Despite the warnings of the gardener Malou (Alfred Baillou), Cécile soon joins into the sexual games of the Bressacs, including the embrace of the mute girl Adele (Lina Romay) who lives with them. Yet the game has changed, as Adele, Cécile and the Count end up draining the Countess of her life, leaving her as one more exhibition in the terrifying hidden room and as they leave behind their home, only Malou is left to stare at the cold eyes of the lost lady that he has served so many decades.

The original ending predated Maniac by several years, as the preserved corpses came back to life and attacked the Countess. There’s also a moment where Cécile is drugged and wakes up to become a mannequin which is the kind of weirdness that I keep watching Jess Franco’s filmography for.

This movie has so many Jess Franco picadillos.

Pina and Tina (Lina Romay and Pamela Standford) are two nightclub dancers who would rather be spies. If you say, hmm, have I seen this before, I ask you to remember that you are now within the Jess Franco Cinematic Universe, a place where all exotic dancers are either spies, possessed or possessed spies.

Most of the movie is them talking directly to us, when they’re not having sex, or being attacked by Duran the monster man or dressing up in a catsuit. Yes, it’s another Red Lips movie, if not in name, because these girls go by Golden Panther.

What it does have is the most valuable prize in all of the JFCU. No, not Ms. Romay’s quim, but diamonds. Yes, diamonds have been stolen from a millionaire with the cursed Franco name of Radeck. So they do what anyone would when it comes to steal them back. They conceal them inside their sex or within Monica Swinn’s fake penis that she’s packing to dress like a man.

The name translates to Pain in the Ass but this movie is anything but. It’s a truly joyous find within the multitudes of Franco films and one woven into so many of the films he made before this. How did Dr. Orloff not show up?

Beyond releasing the astounding UHD of Dune, Arrow Video now has The Sleeper Must Awaken on its ARROW Player streaming service. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

Frank Herbert’s Dune seems like the type of book that is either unfilmable or would need a madman like Alejandro Jodorowsky to make, creating a film out of something he’d never read and still changing the world even if his movie never got made (see Jodorowsky’s Dune).

Dino de Laurentiis seemed like he wanted to blow Star Wars out of people’s minds with sandworms and spice and still suits, spending $40 million ($108 million in 2022 money) to attempt to get this film to the screen, bringing in David Lynch and getting folks to read a glossary of terms before they even watched the movie.

This movie has no talking heads, which is a departure for films covering films, and we hear Herbert and Lynch via old interviews, as one is dead and the other claims that the movie is dead to him.

If you’ve never seen Dune before, I’m not sure that this movie will get you wanting to see it. But for those of us fascinated with how a movie that seemingly had no chance of connecting to mainstream audiences and didn’t and yet became a movie that people still love to watch, well, this is the kind of movie that shows you how it happened, what went wrong and how audiences reacted.