As Harvey Dent said, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Lina Romay would agree, as she went from Sylvia, the heroine in this movie, to the bow and arrow carrying villainess of the remake of this movie, Tender Flesh.

Sylvia is on vacation in the south of France and wants to meet up with a guy named Tom who just so happens to work for Count and Countess Zaroff (Howard Vernon and Alice Arno), who like to play games with beautiful young women. Then, they shoot them with bows and arrows and eat them, as you do.

There’s also Bob (Robert Woods) and Moira (Tania Busselier), who procure young women for the Zaroff estate and are allowed to partake of the pleasures of the flesh and I don’t mean just penetrating it.

There are some astounding locations here, as the house was shot between two Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura-designed structures, Xanadu, which was in She Killed In Ectasy and La Muralla Roja. This adds to the production, as so many of the later shot on video Franco films are missing the lushness of his filmed movies.

There are insert shots in some cuts of this film, but Franco didn’t intend for those to be in this movie.

Anyways. this is the kind of movie that Franco could and would and did make over and over again. That said, it works and the basic tale of rich people hunting the lower rungs of society is always one that presents a great framework to hang a movie on.

It really says something about Jess Franco when the censored poster for one of his movies is filthier than the actual poster with nudity. I mean, red type that literally shouts, “Satanic lust behind cloister walls?” That’s how you get me to watch.

Who am I kidding? I watch anything and everything Jess Franco made.

Loosely based on the Letters of a Portuguese Nun attributed to Mariana Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun living in a convent named Convento de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Convent of Our Lady of the Conception. There’s some debate over whether se was the real author of these letters, which tell the story of her affair with French officer Noël Bouton, Marquis de Chamilly and later Marshal of France. Some scholars think that the letters are fiction and were written by Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne, although the actual Mariana did exist.

But this is a Jess Franco movie, so let’s prepare ourselves.

So while the basic theme of Maria (Susan Hemingway, born Maria Rosalia Coutinho) being in a convent stays the same, the convent is run by Satanists and our heroine is forced to make love to men women and even Satan himself. She writes a letter to God, which gets answered by a brave knight but ends up being taken by the inquisition and then tortured and burned at the stake.

So yeah, exactly like the book.

I mean, Jess Franco is the kind of storyteller that has Father Vicente (Wiliam Berger) bashing the bishop while Maria confesses that she wants to get biblical with her cousin. And she’s then forced to wear a crown of thorn over her privates because, well, I don’t know, it’s a Jess Franco movie. That’s usually my answer.

This is a filmed nightmare and also a dream, a time when Franco seemed to still take his time while never forgetting that it’s committing so many carnal and venal sins.

With no budget and no real script, an 82-year-old Jess Franco is alone — his muse and wife Lina Romay died a few months before — and directing his final movie, Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies.

With Paula Davis (Paula-Paula), Carmen Monte (Killer Barbys vs. Dracula), Irene Verdu and Antonio Mayans ready to act, Franco remains filled with energy despite his age and depression. There’s one moment where the older maniac’s energy is too much for the young crew, who tell him they can no longer rub their body parts together, and he loses it on everyone, retreating to close his eyes and just deal with reality. It’s also inordinately depressing because Franco really looks ready to die.

The way that his movies are made looks exactly like I thought they would. It’s boring at times, yet at others you can see the fire in the faded eyes of a man who made hundreds of movies. This movie made me confront my mortality in ways that other high art minded movies never could.

This is Jess Franco’s last movie, or so they say on IMDB, but then how did Revenge of the Alligator Ladies get made in 2013?

Three alligator ladies — Carmen Montes (Snakewoman), Irene Verdú and Paula Davis (who was in Franco’s Paula-Paula) — have come to find detective Al Pereira, the hero of several Franco films. In fact, actor Antonio Mayans had played Pereira in Botas negras, látigo de cuero; Diamonds of Kilimandjaro; Lilian; Two Spies in Flowered Panties and the two late Alligator Ladies movies. Pereira was also played by Olivier Mathot in Midnight Party, Howard Vernon in Les ebranlées, Eddie Constantine in Attack of the Robots, Conrado San Martin in Agent 77, Franco himself in Downtown and Lina Romay even played a relative of Al, Alma Pereira, in Paula-Paula.

This movie is charitably a mess and more of a series of scenes in which Al insults — and at the same time encourages — the alligator women to keep having Jess Franco sapphic pleasures and I use that phrase because I don’t believe that any women have ever indulged in one another as they do in a Franco movie.

There’s also a moment where Jess and crew show up in a mirror and instead of editing that out, he starts giving orders to the actors. This becomes an entire movie, A Ritmo de Jess. But come on, let’s cut the man some slack. By this point, Lina Romay had died from cancer and Jess was probably lost. So if he wanted to make a movie where some women got naked in a hotel conference room and bedeviled one of his longest running characters in a film that wants to be meta but is really just a One Shot softcore movie with a little bit of story, so what? Could you imagine if Jess was your grandfather, out there in a wheelchair with a Yankees hat yelling at women to scissor harder?

Jess said that this was a “happy movie about happy people” and it seems like just about everyone was willing to indulge him. So that makes me happy, even if I feel party in the indulging by forcing myself to sit through this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally ran on December 13, 2020, back in the days when the idea of watching more than fifty Jess Franco movies in one month felt either quixotic or just plain insane. Well, as we’re currently in the middle of a month of Franco’s films, let’s bring this back with some more info and thoughts.

Jess Franco wrote, directed, produced, acted and scored around 200 or so feature films and I have been cursed to watch all of them. This one, he made for French producer Marius Lesoeur and its also known as L’Abîme des Morts-Vivants* (The Abyss of the Living Dead), as there are unqiue Spanish and French versions of this movie.

This is where I discovered the drug inside a Franco film and his ability to somehow lull you into a fuzzed out haze, helped by a bad looking print, as you wait and wait and watch and hope and dream of the moment when the zombies that guard some Nazi gold will emerge and kill the treasure hunters.

Tubi has a print that looks like a VHS that has been rented thousands of times, which makes this so much better of a viewing experience than a pristine version would be.

Roger Braden also reviewed this for our site and he said, “Looks and sounds like a decent movie to watch, right? You couldn’t be more fucking wrong.” and “When the zombies finally make their appearance they are some of the worst looking creatures you’ll ever see.”

Yeah, Jess Franco is an acquired taste.

Robert Blabert, the hero trying to find the Nazi gold, should be like forty if this is really set in 1982. And the Nazis hunting him shouldn’t probably be much, much older. But come on, why am I looking for logic in a zombie movie, much less something to make sense in a Jess Franco movie?

*It’s also known as Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies, El Desierto de los Zombies, The Grave of the Living Dead, The Treasure of the Living Dead and for having a Spanish version called La Tumba de los Muertos Vivientes that is blessed with Lina Romay as the Nazi doctor’s wife.

You can watch this on KInoCult.

Oasis of the Zombies 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.

As they seek to gain the rights to cult movie star Oriana Balasz’s (Carmen Montes, Paula-Paula) estate, a company sends Carla (Fata Morgana, Vampire Junction, Killer Barbys vs. Dracula) to get her heirs to make the deal.

Of course, Oriana is still alive, a deathless female vampire with a full body snake tattoo who could only exist within the world of a Jess Franco movie.

There’s also a woman named Alpha (Christie Levin, Red Silk) who has been put in a trance by a monk named Nostradamus (Antonio Mayans) and who is obsessed with Oriana as well.

Now, imagine all that and throw away any attempt at there being a plot and instead just long languid scenes of Montes undulating and seducing Morgana. And then Dr. Van Helsing (Lina Romay) attempts to cure Carla of her feelings for Oriana before we see the footage that was in such high demand, a vampiric vision of Oriana brutally draining a male member of more fluids than you’d expect.

So yes, when I say, this is a retelling of Vampyros Lesbos, I want you to realize that this is late Franco, a time when one lovemaking scene can last for a quarter of the movie and have almost one long static shot that seems to never end, achieving peak drone levels, as strange dialogue like “Men and women are united by the ass.” and “I like it. I like pretty asses in general.” which is dialogue that seems like it belongs in John Stagliano movie instead of a story of a 1920s sapphic unliving snake woman making her presence felt across the decades.

Only in a Jess Franco movie can house long uninterrupted stretches of female love scenes, encircling their thighs around one another as visuals of birds soaring into an unfeeling sky play across your mind. It’s not perfect, it struggles, but it takes flight — or crawls through the filth — and for that, we are better.

Formed in 1999 as I Decline by Joey and Jason LaRocca and Matthew Stolarz, the Los Angeles punk rock band The Briggs have recorded four albums, three EPs and played the Warped Tour four different years.

Gridlocked shows their ten-day 2015 West Coast tour, which shows the band maturing and dealing with family responsibility whole dealing with a career that may have fallen short of their teen dreams.

Directed by Kevin James Barry (Serena and the Ratts), this movie took seven years of time with the band to put together. It’s a reminder that every time you see a band get on stage, for some, it’s often them living a dream come true, even if that dream ends up feeling different than what you wanted.

Gridlocked is available on DVD, bu ray and on demand from Gravitas Ventures.  You can learn more on the official Facebook page.

Helter Skelter Part One: Pleasure and Pain never had a sequel and we’re probably better off for that. This feels like you walked into a bar and saw Franco hunched over a bar stool while his lady love Lina Romay is whispering in his ear and he says to you, “Mi esposa y yo te vimos desde el otro lado del bar.”

One of Franco’s One Shot Productions — a name that makes more sense than it should — this is around an hour of so of images inspired by de Sade, but mainly Jess telling Lina what he wants to see while Casio music and video effects have their way with her. This makes me feel like someone discussing gonzo porn — how many ways can you describe the same acts over and over again?

Franco used the directing alias Clifford Brown Jr. and the David J. Khunne writing alias, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if he does much of either in this other than de Sade writings being spoken over nude flesh and Alfonso Azpiri paintings.

As for the other actresses, Mavi Tienda was also in Franco’s Broken Dolls, which is probably where so much of this footage was taken from. Analía Ivars was in The Panther Squad, as well as Franco’s Lust for Frankenstein and Dr. Wong’s Virtual Hell. Rachel Sheppard was in the same Franco movies from this era, including Jess Franco’s Perversion and Jess Franco’s Passion. And actor Exequiel Cohen? He’s in ten or so Franco movies like Killer Barbys vs. Dracula, Snakewoman, Red SIlk and Blind Target.

I really wish this was more than a Franco home movie. But it is what it is.

Lady Doriana Grey (Lina Romay, who else?) haunts a castle while her twin sister has been under the care of Dr. Orloff in his asylum, but we never see him. And we do know they have a strange psychic connection beyond their similar looks.

That’s not the only problem Doriana has.

It turns out that she can’t properly experience le petite mort, as they say, and her lovers end up taking the big sleep as a result of making love to her. That’s what keeps both of the sisters young, but it’s the bliss — and feelings of life running out — that are making the other sister even more unhinged.

Also known as Die Marquise von Sade, this has Monica Swinn as the reporter who figures this out and Raymond Hardy is also in it. He was Romay’s husband at the time and let that walk around your brain because this entire movie feels like Jess making love to his muse — and future wife — with his camera, every zoom being a thrust, every long look at her body a longing sigh either in his heart or probably loins, a union of just the two of them making tender love through the glass lens, rainbow in the skyline behind her, dead woman in the bathtub, multiple Linas into infinity.

Also — it’s pretty much Female Vampire, but you’re either going to love this or think Franco is a hack.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nearly five years ago — August 22, 2017 — we talked about this movie on our site. Let’s bring it back from the grave as we unearth all this Franco all month long. 

Sometimes, when you watch a horror film, you’re lied to by a title that promises you something that the film cannot or will not deliver. Not so with Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos. Franco promises you lesbians and vampires and he delivers.

He also delivers plenty of late 60’s style and a space age jazz soundtrack that threatens to take over your mind. In fact, I had the soundtrack way before I had the movie, as it was re-released in the 1990s.

Countess Nadine Carody (the sublime and sadly departed Soledad Miranda) lives on a remote island where she puts on a seductive burlesque act every night that entices unwary women. Now, she has her eyes set on Linda, who starts dreaming of her.

Somehow, somewhere in all these lesbionic dreams, Linda finds Memmet torturing a young woman. It’s probably of worth to note that the director of the film, Franco, plays the torturer.

Then, Linda finds Nadine’s home, the former residence of Count Dracula. Linda gets dizzy off wine, the two women have sex and Nadine drinks from Linda’s neck. Upon awakening, Linda finds Nadine floating motionless in a pool and awakens screaming in a mental asylum.

That said — Nadine is alive and explains to her familiar, Morpho, how Dracula turned her. Now, she feels that she must turn Linda. Nadine keeps coming back to her, then reappearing in the mental hospital, so Dr. Seward (Dennis Price, Twins of Evil, Theater of Blood) explains that if she wants to defeat the curse, she must split a  vampire’s head with an axe or pierce it with a pole.

Let me see if I can sum up the insanity of the next few minutes: Linda is kidnapped by Memmet. Dr. Seward wants to become a vampire, Nadine refuses and Morpho kills him. Memmet explains that all women who meet Nadine become insane, including his wife, so he must kill them all. Linda kills him with a saw, then returns to Nadine. Instead of giving her the blood she needs to survive, she stabs her in the eye, wanting to belong to no one. Morpho kills himself. And finally, Linda’s boyfriend tries to convince her that this was all a dream.

If you’re seeking a film that makes narrative sense, you should just leave this one on the shelf. If you’re seeking an erotic, psychedelic freak out with some amazing music, then you’ve found the right film. While some compare Franco to Ed Wood, in this film, he hit his high watermark with this one.

This is one of those films where you kind of have to put your own reading into it. Mine’s that Linda is bored by her life, by feeling that she needs a man to be complete and believes that Nadine’s free life could be her escape. However, she finds that she would still be a possession, so she destroys her to make her final escape, deciding that a life of boredom could be better than a life of constant feeding on others.

But who can say? Watch it for yourself. Or just listen to the music — this song is also featured in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.