Originally filmed as La nuit des étoiles filantes (The Night of the Shooting Stars), Jess Franco felt that this movie was one of his favorites and he even appears as Basilio, a man who wanders the movie speaking to a chicken’s head, and his wife Nicole Guettard is also on hand as a nurse.

But then, remixes started happening that had nothing to do with the original work Franco created.

It was released twice — as Christina, Princess of Eroticism in 1973 and in Italy in 1978 as The Erotic Dreams of Christine, both versions cwith  porn inserts directed by Pierre Querut — before Jean Rollin was hired to shoot zombie footage, the porn inserts removed and a new title A Virgin Among the Living Dead.

Christina von Blanc (The Dead Are Alive) is Christina Benson, who has come to Europe for the reading of her father’s (Paul Muller, a Franco regular) will. Soon learning that her relatives — like Howard Vernon as Uncle Howard — are all the living dead, she sees them as a way to avoid her loneliness and invites them to stay. But her father committed suicide, so the Queen of the Night (Anne Libert, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein) owns his soul forever unless she can save him.

You know how Lisa and the Devil has another world that takes over our own? Franco does that here but, being Franco, it’s filled with zooms, nudity and a gigantic phallus that all live in their own world, a place where things like logic, pace and common sense are cast aside much like the clothing of his actresses.

We should all commit to the joys of walking into the ghostly swamp.

You can watch this on Kino Cult.

A Virgin Among the Living Dead is also on the ARROW PLAYER. Head over to 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.

After The Blood of Fu Manchu, producer Harry Alan Towers and Jess Franco wanted to make a more adult film and this movie was the result, made with a million dollar budget, which isn’t much for some people but would be one of Franco’s largest budgets.

There were still some issues, like how Rosemary Dexter (Eye in the Labyrinth) was supposed to play the lead, yet she was moved to the smaller role of Claudine when Romina Power was chosen by a Hollywood money man to play the lead. Franco was unhappy with her in the movie, saying “most of the time she didn’t even know we were shooting” and that he had to rewrite the story and move away from DeSade as she was so hard to reach.

Justine and Juliette (Maria Roma) are sisters who live in a convent, a place they’re taken from when he dies and leaves his gold behind. While Juliette goes to stay at Madame de Buisson’s (Carmen de Lirio) house of ill repute, learning the skills of the oldest business, her sister Justine goes to the church, where a priest introduces her to du Harpin (Akim Tamiroff), who hires her on as a maid, but it’s all a scheme to steal from his master and use her as a stooge, yet Justine escapes prison thanks to Madame Dubois (Mercedes McCambridge, can this movie have more great actors in it? Yes, it can.).

While all this is going on, Juliette and another prostitute named Claudine (yes, Rosemary Dexter who was supposed to be the lead) kill their boss and a client, stealing gold and going on the run all the way to Madame Dubois. The men there end up trying to assault her more innocent sister, as she runs to the home of an artist named Raymond (Harald Leipnitz) before being caught in the murderous games of the de Bressacs (Horst Frank and Sylva Koscina), which ends up getting her branded with an M — for murderess — on her breast.

I kind of love that every decision that Juliette makes is stuff like killing people and drowing her crime partners while Justine ends up trapped in all manner of Little Annie Fanny situations like being kidnapped by Father Antonin (Jack Palance) and his order of ascetics. Instead of studying and meditating, they’re making filthy love to anything that moves. When Father Antonin offers to free Justine from this world by making her a sacrifice, but she escapes yet again, finally finding her way back to her sister.

Meanwhile, the Marquis de Sade (Klaus Kinski) has hallucinated this all while stuck in prison, obsessed as always with female flesh. I mean, when Rosalba Neri is in the story you’re imagining, wouldn’t you? Also — just as a warning — Rosemary Dexter was 16 when she made this. Fair warning.

People often ask me, “What’s the one Jess Franco movie I should watch?” Depending on how well you can handle this material, this would be the best produced of his movies, filled with gorgeous settings, period perfect costumes, a wonderful Bruno Nicolai score and perhaps the most focused Franco I’ve seen, despite the fact that he wasn’t getting to make the movie that he wanted to make. And if you’re a maniac, I have a bunch more to tell you about.

You know that we love movies with multiple titles, so how about these ones? Fu Manchu and the Kiss of Death, Kiss of Death, Against All Odds and best of all, Kiss and Kill. The fourth movie in the Fu Manchu series produced by Harry Alan Towers, this movie finds Jess Franco pulling off an amazing movie: he used scenes featuring Shirley Eaton from his movie The Girl from Rio without telling her. She didn’t learn that she was in a Fu Manchu movie for several years.

Somewhere in the jungle, Dr. Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) has found a lost Amazon city that has a deadly venom that can only kill men yet gives women the kiss of death. Of course, they have to be bit by venomous snakes to get this power and mind-controlled, but you know, this may not be the goofiest plan that Fu has come up with. Can I call him Fu? Is that too familiar and am I assuming our friendship?

You can tell when Franco is into the movie. Spoiler warning, it’s when women are tied up or when the gorgeous and deadly Lin Tang*, the daughter of Fu Manchu shows up surrounded in light and smoke. Or when Maria Rohm appears in a cowboy hat and chaps? You know that’s when Jess Franco is being, well, Jess Franco.

Look, this movie was made for less than some movies spend on donuts. Also, yes, Christopher Lee is in yellow face and the entire Fu Manchu thing is super racist and there’s a lot to unpack there, but let me give you some advice: if you are watching Jess Franco movies for life lessons and good taste, you’re doing it wrong.

*How amazing is it that Tsai Chin not only was a Bond girl twice (You Only Live Twice and Casino Royale), as well as two Marvel Cinematic Universe characters (Melinda May’s mother on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Walpo in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), the role of Auntie Lindo in the film The Joy Luck Club, Auntie in Memoirs of a Geisha and an international recording artist whose song “The Ding-Dong Song” was a big hit?