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Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again as it is Heather.
Drain An I for an eye, a hole for a hole, also.
Joining us once again as mss Jessica Shires.
Hello.
When you're alone in life is making you lonely? You can always go Downtown. Yes, we are wrapping up our third month dedicated to requests in twenty twenty four with one from Pat Radkey. Downtown, also known as Downtown The Naked Dolls of the Underworld. This jess Franco film was released in nineteen seventy five seventy six. I'm hearing different things and this should not be confused with his nineteen eighty four film Downtown heat Go. Written by Christine Lemback.
The film also stars Franco as a private dick who's his sex machine for all the chicks, especially Cynthia, who's played by Linda Romey. Also along for the rioter is Linda Rome's pubic area, which is on display for at least a quarter of the film. And no, I'm not exaggerating. We will be spoiling the pl lot what there is of it as we go along. So if you don't want anything we ruin, better turn off this podcast and come back after you've seen the movie. You will not
be sorry. So, Jessica, when was the first time you saw Downtown and what did you think?
Although I am a huge Just Franco fan. I actually did not watch this one until you asked me to be on this episode. I'd had the German Blu Ray for a while, but it just I'd never gotten around to and mostly because if I'm honest, I was a little bit prejudiced because I knew it was one of his more comedic films and I'm more into the darker, horror oriented stuff. But so I was excited to get a chance to like deep dive into this one and really give it a fair watch.
And Heather, how about yourself?
Kind of similar story, except I don't have that German Blu ray which I saw. I saw that release online that looks amazing. But I love, like we all do, I love Jess Franco, and I thought, oh, this is a great opportunity for me to see this film of his that I'm not super familiar with really ran that much about it. I've just vaguely heard of it, And this did not disappoint. This was definitely the first of
his comedies I have seen. And now one could say that it is probably putting eighty pounds of labia and a twenty pound bag. I don't think that's a bad thing just makes it work. Jes Franco, to me, is a true magician because he can make cinematic stories that are like anybody else's that it can enchant you. And he also just has a way of just creating his own worlds. Every syll. Even some of his real lesser works,
there's still something. There's still like some miasma, and this one definitely has it.
I've been sold a bill of goods. We've talked about these Just Franco movies. Now this is at least the second or third one, and I'm like, Wow, why did I have this bad impression of Jess Franco. Why did I think he was just some sort of schlockmeister. Now this is not a schlocky film. I really like the film noir aspects of it. I like the how many bits of it. But my god, it's just those shots. I mean, I wish I was watching this with an audience, because I think we would have a great time watching
this all together. And just every time this roommate comes on screen, it's just oh, here's your face. So there's a bush, and then then it stays on it for so long. I'm like, wow, I was laughing in my living room. My wife was laughing a little bit, but I can imagine we would be an uproarious laughter if we all saw this together in a movie theater.
Yeah, in this film, it really gives you a taste of what Jess Franco is notorious for because you get the zooms and lady bits in full display.
It's all there.
I think if you want to know, was with the zooms, and I just it's here.
It's here. This movie to me makes me think of it's one part of those seventies like cholpy action like men's novels that were real sleazy, like the Man from O rg Y like and stuff like that. But then it's also somebody's done mushrooms a little bit, because there's just even from the get go, we have this great over the top narration and this is Purple Pros the dialogue and I love it. I love Purple Pros. Oh
my gosh. There was so much fun. This is like writing with somebody having fun with it, which is fantastic. And you've got these details of this is a Mediterranean port where the crayfish or crawfish is served fresh. And we find out that our detective character our lad character was raised by what he says whores and San Juan and and already I'm like, I don't even know who is playing the detective at that point. I'm just down.
I'm immediately down. The cinematography's really beautiful. This is like really good looking movie, especially for you know, obviously I think there was clearly limited budget, but it looks beautiful. The landscapes are are great. Lena her face is so radiant and this she is just and I think she's enchanting. Anyways. I love Lena Romete. You really just she's just got that sparkle, which is why it's distracted. You're like, man, her face is so pretty. Oh oh they're okay, yeah,
that looks nice too. Those and I but I love that. It made me realize Russmeier is a breast man. Tinto Brass is a booty man. Jess Franco's a bush man. He loves the labes. He is a labies man. You can say I hate myself for say that, but but it's just part of the landscape. I think any either director had this much cross shortage with it not being porno, it would just be like, okay, dude, we get it. Ye, Franco makes it work. He really wears to obsessions, shall
I say on his sleeve in this one. I think it's Yeah.
I was just gonna say about Lena. I think this is not only the most beautiful I think she looks throughout just Franco's entire canon. I know a lot of people are fans of her in Female Vampire, which is a great one, and she was just a beautiful woman, especially like that was like I think the mid seventies was like the peak of her beauty. But I think the combination of her comedic chops and her sort of
dumbfit tallness and just her absolute gorgeousness. I just think she's hotly radiant in this film.
Now, I am a little hesitant to talk too openly, just because Heather and I we've known each other for over twenty years.
I think.
Anything in everything, like nothing is off the table. Jessica, I just hope that I do not offend you in this conversation, because yeah, this is so much just talk about pubic care.
And I'm just Franco fan, so it's okay.
I'm not your first walk in the park.
She's been friends with me for years.
Hair so she's tainted.
Oh yeah, take here. Yes, I narrowed her to my web degenerously like I do all of my friends. But I like to think I'm much like Lena Remain in this movie, minus the bear breasted singing and oh my god, can we get to that song? Actually I love her. She has one song, She's what song? And half of it's like are good.
And I'm sort of indecipherable English lyrics some of them can pick up on some of it and not everything. I'll just say that. The fact that we start off this film with a nightclub scene, like right off the bat, you're getting like Jess Franco, but almost all of his films he has some sort of element that is nightclub asque or could be interpreted as nightclub or some kind
of performance. There's a lot of things in this film that are like very like classic Franco and Nash the Zooms and the Bush, but things like the nightclub scene. It's like you almost can't have a just Franco movie without having that kind of scene pretty much right up front and center.
And when we talked about Virgin among the Living Dead, the whole thing of starting with the outside and that pan around and then the music, and I love the music in these movies. Some of it is just absolutely fantastic. It's a great song that starts off this whole movie as well. And I have to say I struggled a lot with the subtitles. I don't know what was going on with my file, but I was just having a
hard time getting into all sync. But it actually added a little bit of weirdness to it because it was just so it's like, who's talking right now? And so much of it is that voiceover, So that helped as well with just tying everything together. I was just here the German which also threw me off that it was my version. I don't know if your guys as was as well, but all dubbed in German. But then it's set in Puerto Rico. But then he's talking about the Mediterraneans.
I'm just like, where are we? What is happening in my world right now? And then even the first shout of ver May, it looks like she's getting fucked, but then we pull back and you're like, oh no, she's just performing on this bear skin rug in a club with this outfit that reveals her breasts and she's as soon going to be just revealing everything else as well. But yeah, there are times where she's performing in this club and she's just wearing like lingerie, fully exposed everything,
and I'm like, what kind of nightclub is this? And where can I go to find this?
She did that a lot in Branco movies.
I'll sad a little bit about this movie later because it has an interesting parallels. But the movie that not immediately preceded this, but preceded this one by a few films as a movie called Exorcism, which is definitely an out and out horror movie. Again, here's some pretty cult satanic nightclub scenes that you just want to be there. You just want to know where it is. I'm like, I want to go to that nightclub.
Well, and then the central plot to this, not to talk too much about the plot, but the central plot of this whole thing her hiring Franco as this private detective. Hey, I want you to go take some photographs with my husband for me, And then later on the husband dies, he still has all these photos. He's, oh, no, I'm going to be the suspect for killing this guy. Eventually they go and take him to meet the woman that hired him, but it's actually not that woman, it's another woman.
I'm like, Oh, we're doing Chinatown. This is perfect, This is right in that perfect spot of let's do Chinatown. This is the whole Evelyn Mulray. Why my Diane Ladd was the one that hired him? And then you find out no, the real missus Mulray is Fate Dunaway, Like, oh, this is great, this is going to be fantastic. We're like swapping genders of Chinatown. But then I don't think that woman ever comes back again.
And this really speaks to a streak of hard boiled detective fiction and a new pulp fiction that runs through Franco's career all the way up to his very last film. And I can talk a little bit about this character that he's playing in this film, al Perira. So this is a stock Just Franco character. The first time this like the third film, I think that we have a character with this name. And Just Franco repeats names a
lot throughout his films. He does it not only with al Perreira, but there's several characters in this film that channeled names from many other Just Franco movies.
That came before it and would come after it.
So al Perreira is like this helpless detective. He's very much as you see him in this movie. Eddie Constantine was funnily enough the first person to play this character in Just Franco's one of Just Fringo sixties films forgetting the name, and then Howard Vernon played him in a movie that just predated this one by a couple of years. And then we have Just Franco decided to cast himself, which I think is another thing you can talk about, is Just Franco's casting of himself in film For just
a Guess Something. We talked a little bit about the Virgin among the Living Dead episode. But yeah, so this character would recur throughout his filmography, and his very last film before he died was I think it was something like al Pereira versus The Alligator Lady or something like that. So I think there's something to be said there.
Oh man, I just got the more I hear about Jazz and Layer and the more I just love him. That's I It's so funny because I haven't seen the previous Alperera films, but going in this film, before you see him. I kept thinking, is it gonna be I knew Howard Vernon, wasn't it Basley? Is it gonna be Howard Vernon type? And then all of a sudden, I'm l no, and I'm like, oh my god, it's Jes which is wonderful. We love him, but it with like such a juxtaposition, and I love that he just seems
to lenk into it. It's like, yeah, I'm a short I have a short, middle aged guy with this awkward, pale body that I'm just gonna inflict on and a lot of it. Be proud of your body. There's no body shaven here.
I just want to say, I think Jess is the only person to be seen wearing underwear anywhere in this film.
One hundred percent. This film hans for me, probably one of the most difficult to watch threesomes I have seen in film get straight in a very long time. But it's so funny because Lena and her friend Lola are full Starkers complete just lips a blazon, and he's dressed like a used car salesman.
Right.
I've seen plenty of sixties exploitation where the guys are dressed like fred Garvin mil prostitute where they got the knee socks and the boxers when the girls are pretty much naked. This took that one step further, which was a fascinating choice. It went on the way too. I
don't know. It's like when you love certain of tours, it's almost after a while seeing like a family member or something where you were like, imagine watching a William freaka Baby We're reallyam freakins in it, and you're like, oh, I love Liam Freakin and he's really good in it. You're like, yeah, this is great, and he's feeling a little sensual and you're like, whatnly, this is weird. I'm totally gonna get haunted by him. I think he's said was he haunting the guy that made the Exertion sequel?
Anyways, I just watched Play Misty for Me for the first time last night, and Clint Eastwood in that full minute long cheesy seventies sex scene, so I was just, oh, my god, what is happening right until like the first time ROBERTA. Flack is playing in the background. I'm just like, what inn hell is happening right now? I think you have a whole discussion on when directors cast themselves in
films like what they do with it. And I think, like Jess, Franco here is really telling you a lot by kind of just the fact that he's like this sort of self misfacing, dorky guy. What's really funny. I think about what he does with this character is like the character is constantly saying things about how he doesn't like having to take pictures of women having sex, or he doesn't like spying on people, whereas in fact, just Franco was a huge voyeur who spent the better part
of forty years filming naked people. Well, and that just goes back actually to a lot of the dialogue. There's a lot of funny in jokes here, especially you know a lot about Franco, you can pick up on them and things like that I'm no voyeur or something like that. He was like the biggest voyeur imaginable.
That was his thing.
And some of the banter between him and Lena reveals some of that too, and also as funny as you can see in that dialogue, their relationship was budding at this point, like she was still married to I think it's his name is Ramon ar Did who plays Pepe, who's like the assistant, so that was Lina's husband at the time, but yet at the same time she was also like sort of this rising star and developing this relationship with Franco that would you know, ultimately be personal
as well as professional. So there's a lot in the dialogue. And also I just want to say that this is a really heavy dialogue film for Jess Franco film. His movies are often very sparse with the dialogue, and this is if it's not a sex scene, it's people talking
the lot, which is interesting. I'm not that familiar with Christine Lembach, who's credited as writing the dialogue on this, but number one, it's interesting that it's a woman, and number two, it's interesting that Jess came up with the story and then plussibly this Lembach fleshed out the dialogue, whether or not it was because she was a German speaker, and because this is a Swiss German production, they needed
a German speaker to translate literally everything into German. Yeah, I think I actually I had to watch this twice because there was so much in the dialogue. I felt like I had to catch everything. And then also as you were pointing out earlier, like the subtitles are and can confirm on the Blu rays pretty bad as and
mismatched and incomplete as well the subtitles. Yeah, you're not missing some whole sort of brief sections that are no subtitles, subtitles that are misspelled and don't make sense and stuff like that. So there is some improvement to be done there for sure, especially because the dialogue is so tight.
Yeah, I feel like at one point late Rita, who's Pereira's girl like friend who's a girl but also girlfriends like the closest we get a pure love interest and at one point she calls them Deeter and I don't know, definitely not a clue, no clue about that one.
Again, it's I think there must be an en joke there that maybe we're not privy to or were Maybe I don't get but I noticed that as well, but didn't understand its meaning.
I'm so glad though, that you guys brought up the music for me, And of course I'm such a sawt music and film and writing or my three just three headed hydra of love if my heart and Jess Franco just his use of music in general is just always so glorious to me. And this I loved the soundtrack for this even and even the fact that her song.
I was so fascinated by her song because it's like it's mostly muling, but she's just like, oh like that, and then all of a sudden, they'll be like, I want We'll make I sound like, be like, I'm not a bad by organ personation. I can't honor this. But and then but then I think she's saying keep cool. It's it, keep keep cool, and it's but she sells it. It's got this great kind of jazzy and I just
I love it. And I love like this like Nightclub World because it's bananas, because the dancers all do seem to be a bit edgier than your typical sort of burlesque or strip teas. Because we get another dancer named Sexy Rexy, who that name alone, she's that sounds like a doctor hook medicine show song or something that's sexy rexy, and she's like doing this dance at the Red Candle, and I feel like it cuts away right before stuff gets really hard and did everybody's oh wonderful when my
favorite is one girl and she doesn't sound sarcastic. At the end of Lena Rome's act, says, Oh she's so classy or classy. Yeah it is if you say so. Sure, sure, I'm the bike. Yeah, the human body should be celebrated.
I just I was.
It's just fascinating to me because I'm like, this is not and I genuinely love this. I love it when a film can take place but just enough reality where we've got okay, we've got the mob, and we have people conniving for more money and power and lust. Okay, these are all very human elements. It's very real, true to life, but it's done in this way where it might as well be science, like the universe it's in
and I love that. I generally think it's such a compelling mix that is created, especially in this film, and it just especially the way, just like the camera just gets lost and we're talking, you can't escape it. If oh, you guys are being juvenile, especially that girl Heather, that philistine over there, if you have seen this movie, we're not exaggerating, Mike. You and I on this very show up talked about explicit sex films that had less kindacological looks and that's bad.
Yeah, And it used to be the joke for my friends and I where it was, oh, do you need to take a break from this porno film? Okay, well just put on a lesbian scene and then go to the store and then go shopping, and then go to the bank and then come back and it might be over by that time. It felt very similar to me with this one, where it's just like, okay, we're in the lesbian and seene, Oh, we might as well just
take a break here. I'm gonna hit the restroom, maybe make a sandwich or something, because it just goes on forever.
Yeah.
The second time I watched this, I was just okay, I don't need to watch this. Used to pay more attention to the dialogic than anything else this total.
It's a shame too, because I really like the actual detective story that's going on, and detective story mixed with sex. Hey, that's great. I love that idea. But yeah, just the balance wasn't there. And we should also say Franco's making what I think it was at least six movies this year, if not more so. It's just like, well, of course, not everything gets the love and attention of other things. But going back to what you were saying before, Heather,
this film looks absolutely gorgeous. Everything looks so good. The colors are popping, everything looks great. I imagine this had been restored at some point and it just looks beautiful. And I just love the look of it. I actually really liked the story. I love him as this kind of schlubby detective that's really not that good of a detective.
I like detectives like that where they do know their foibles and they're just like, maybe I'm not the greatest detective in the world, but I'm going to try to get this case done. And he gets set up by Lena, and if not for the good graces of the inspector the Paul Mueller character, he would just go to jail. But instead, Mueller at the end it's like, you know what, I'm going to give you a chance to get revenge on this person.
I loved. I thought that was wonderful.
Oh god, I think I had to stop with one go is he really just gonna let him go and say, you know what, just go get her?
You know, sorry, we let him? Oh my god, what if many decisions made this film where you're like, oh,
what questionable shit? Where along for the ride? No, I love this and Freako was having so much about like that shot where it cuts to him in the back singing, it's just I literally loved it aloud, like he is so funny here, and I love the fact that he's not trying to because I think when people think of a director casting themselves as a heroic lead with the prey lady there most of the time, ninety times the time,
that's not going to be a good performance. And it's also going to be played completely straight, like we're supposed to believe that the director guy has all of the sax appeal of Franco Niro and John Saxon combined, but they actually look like morally safer. Just Franco, I love, we all love jonangar it just Rinko just doesn't. You're right,
and I love the fact you point it out. Yeah, his character isn't the greatest detective, is very aware of his humanity, is very prone to being like that sweet little bitch, and this recurring thing about the circular holes, like a bullet is a circular hole. But then he's imprisoned by that sweet circular hole and it made my it. Honestly, maybe I'm like, I've never thought of a China as a pure, a perfect circle.
That's not been my experience. But maybe I'm just going out with the wrong people.
Okay, the lady is with perfect symmetry in that and their orifices. I don't know where I'd go with that, but I will say I loved Rita. I thought she was like a cool character ell of the fact that she gives him shit too, like where he actually proposes to her and she's I may be stupid, but I'm not great. Yeah.
And this, here's another character parallel from at least one other film that I can think of, is and it is what he'd covered on the show before, Mike is Venus and Furs, where you have Rita as the long suffering girlfriend who wearily tolerates the cheating of her man, but he always comes back to her because Rita is that strong base that he can come back to. Yeah, so that's another parallel. Is that type of character with that name?
Well, I like that.
You get that whole metaphor for directing as well. When franco inexplicedly decides that he's going to join up with Cynthia and help her blackmail this guy and take all of these blackmail photos from the looking through side of the one way mirror, and he's there directing them and talking to them pretty much yelling at them from the other side of the mirror. And now the guy who's drunk or high or stoned or whatever they did to him,
but he's just like whoa. The mirror talked whoa. And then it's just Franco like the man behind the curtain.
Oh, you don't handle a cock like that, don't do that.
It's so meta event seeing it's absolutely him being very aware of the fact that this is like a metaphor for him as a director and hilariously, oh go.
And the funniest thing to me about that was right before he starts talking through it, I kept being like, camera noise is so loud. I was seeing that when we first see him getting the evidence against who we think is Cynthia's has been Chris. We find out things are not to say seem but and I love the use of actually the mirror in that because at first you keep thinking are we ever going to see them?
And it is nice.
Yeah, it was a nice slow build and then just him just that simple sort of twist of the mirror and all is revealed. I love that. I love for that kind of thing, when a drid can do that. Anyways, Yeah, I've actually been.
This is a theme that I've picked up on in watching Franco's and every time I watched another Franco for the first time or for the tenth time or whenever, I always make notes on when I see mirrors because they pop up like in so many films, Like I think, once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. Yeah, so you have that scene when he is trying to take the illicit pictures of the sky having an affair, and then you see that scene with how it's reflected in the mirror.
It seems like it's so deliberate.
And then again towards the end, we have that double sided mirror with the mirrors and Jess Franco films, I think are something I always like to examine closely.
Okay, what does he do in with the mirror?
And this fell purpose isn't serving because I think it does different things in various of his films, but you see them quite a lot once you start to notice them.
Oh, absolutely. I feel the same way about Radley Metzker. On a side note, I always find it fascinating with certain directors how we approach mirrors, like because only certain watchers really have that motif pop up again. But yeah, I kept thinking they're going to hear him that camera. This is an old school hemera and light. It is so loud. And then second time, I'm like, oh, surely to god, that guy's gonna hear him clicking find that mirror. And then all of a sudden, he's just yelling at him,
you fool, or that thing. And this poor guy I had so many questions. I'm like, why are they trying to blackmail? Okay, his dad's a pastor, but then he gets killed and I'm like, wait, this poor guy is awkward. Tidy whities, they're the most awkward, unsexy underwear shuffling, and
it's not a bad looking guy. You're like, he's all right then, but then he starts walking, Oh my god, And it's totally like if you were like at a sleepover at a friend's house and their dad walks out to grab the thing from the fridge and he's in his underwear and it's that it's like dad underwear walk. It is not sex speaking of about sexy while we're talking about families, I have a line of dialogue I specifically wrote on a note card so I would not forget it, And this is perhaps one of the most
unsexy sexy sentences I've heard of. Luck time, Come on, sweetie, where's your fat uncle dick?
Oh geez, forgot that.
If you hear a weird husky now sound, that might be my overy shriveling to nothing say that line.
But I would actually love to see this re translated with better subtitles. Youdn tell they're pretty terrible. I have a feeling a lot of this really uncomfortable awkward to us as English speakers. Dialogue comes across a lot because it's just badly translated. And I guess i'll I'll take a second to talk about.
Like why this movie is in German and like a little bit about the production plays. Yeah, this is fascinating.
Yeah, Heather said, there's not a lot of stuff written about this. Scour through all of these different Franco books and I came up with what three articles or something.
Yeah, so this film, the reason why it's in German is because during this time, just Forco just started to work with this Swiss producer named Erwin Dietrich, who he'd made like seventeen films with him, and some of them are absolutely some of his best films, not this one maybe, but he did some great work with Dietrich, and this list came on the early end of this So basically Dietrich funded all these productions, obviously not with tons of money,
but probably a little bit more money than Franco was used to working with. And Dietrich had a studio, so he had access to a lot of locations and things that he didn't have previously, which is why the cast sort of changes around this time, like the sort of Franco regulars that you see kind of change. We see people like Martine stead Deal this was her first film with him, or maybe maybe her first one, one of
our first one to ten. Again, this is very hard to pin down what came first the chronology of these as you were talking about earlier at the beginning of the episode of Mikel was this seventy five or seventy six. I could track down that it was shot in like late summer of seventy five, but the thing is, and we talk about this a lot when you discussed Franco is the fact that he was throughout his whole career,
not just when he was working with d Trich. He would have someone pay him, give him funds and resources to make film, and he would do that on the super cheap and end up being able to scrape a little bit aside, so he could make a different film, usually with the same cast, usually with the same set. So that's why you sometimes see these films that look really similar, for instance, the cast and even the costumes in this.
As someone who's watched a lot of the films.
From this period, I'm like, oh, that drops us from Women behind Bars, that outfit is from this, or this shot was shot in the same or this location is the same as it was in Doriana Gray or something like that. Like they were all shot so much around the same time. He was shooting multiple films at the same time. Okay, I'll do a scene for this other project that I'm working on. So the timeline for these is incredibly complex and hard to unravel, but it is
interesting to see that from the beginning. Brank Who It's a long career, even though you can go through his filmography and see the themes that run throughout the entire course of his career. You can carve it up by eras during which he worked with different producers, when he was working with Dietrich or previously when he was working with Harrio and Towers, when he was working with various production companies.
It's an interesting way to divide up his long career.
So, yeah, long story short, that's what this film was in German. I don't think there is an English version that exists of this, so this is all we got. Clearly, the cast was completely international, Spanish, French, Swiss, like all over the place, and probably people are speaking their native languages during the shoot, but it all ended up being dubbed into German.
Yeah, some of those shots of the bay that opened this up and things, or maybe it's towards middle towards the end, I think too. I'm just like, oh, these are probably stock shots that he shot and have been used in other things. And that's also adds to the whole ear reality of where the hell am I am
I in Puerto Rico? Am I in Germany? And to have of course, I've watched a lot of movies where it's a bunch of French soldiers, but they're speaking Spanish because this was a Spanish film, so I'm like, oh, okay, But to have all of these people in this exotic island location and they're all speaking German, I was just like, this just doesn't add up to me. And just to see the dubbing and everything, I was just like, this
is really strange. But it also just makes it feel odd and off, which I usually really like.
Yeah, for what it's worth, this was shot and I think it's called Bolius or Mayer, which is around Nice, and some of it was shot in Nice as well, and I think those casino shots with the I watched it the second time with thinking about, Okay, why is this movie called downtown because it doesn't feel very bustling with a lot of remote apartments and villas and stuff. But you go back and okay, yes, the nightclub scene is clearly in an underworldy kind of downtown, gritty, grimy thing.
We see these exterior shots of casinos, a palm trees, and at least get the hint that this isn't some kind of criminal underworld, which the German title kind of suggests.
I love the favorite best film. It's called that because it does make you think, because there's all that great nature, which Frank goes so great about Havings I think about you mentioned Venus and Firds, which is one of my favorites of his, like top oh, I love it filed and just the shot at the beach, yeah, and just the body washed on the shore. But I also feelate with Perreira. He's he is kind of downtown. He is the downtown because he's not going to change his flawed humanity.
He's just owning it. He's at the bar getting loaded. Oh. The girl tries to be like, I want to screw you, and he's, oh, I only go for singers. And then I love it when read us like singing in the bathtub and he's just like like carpet adder. Yeah, and just the inter place was so cute. I love they. I definitely I do wonder too about some of the translation.
Part of me. You don't want to find out that Santa isn't real with some of these lines, like I hope to God these are authentic because they're great, Like lin Cynthia, like bn Lola first starts undressing her and she's what is set. You're like a seventh story brothel and she's saying that it's sexy.
This is why I'm dying to know who is which of the two writers of this film is the genesis of lines like that?
Is it this with German?
Presumably woman who by the way, I looked her up, So she was Christine.
Baut What was her name? Yeah? Or Limbock maybe yeah.
Anyway, she was born in nineteen eighteen apparently, so she would have been like about six, probably pushing late fifties. To think of a Swiss German fifty year old woman coming up with some of these lines, I'm just like, interesting, So is it Franco? Is it this other writer who came up with this? Because they're quite there's some real gems in there.
She's no slouch though, when you look at her filmography and it's like love letters of Portuguese non barboar dolls. I thought at first that she had something to do with The Devil and Miss Jones, but no, it's The Devil and Miss Jonas.
Yeah.
So she definitely knows her way around some purple prose at yeah.
And both of those that you mentioned, the two Franco films with love Letters of Portuguese done and with Barboar dolls, or both Franco films and both, or when Dietrich productions. She must have been in his circle.
I think, speaking of Dietrich, I was getting a little blue angel at the end of this. I don't know why. Maybe it was when they described her. They described her hair. Lina Romas is having a page boy and I was like, that's not a page boy. It's not short enough for me to be a page boy haircut. But then just the whole he never gets his revenge. He ends up getting knocked over the head by her girlfriend, and then the movie abruptly ends. I can't believe how quick this
movie ends. It just feels like they just lopped off the last bit of it and we're just like, okay, that was it. Like when the movie ended, I was like, wait a second, what just happened? I thought something went wrong with the file.
Yeah.
I feel like that happens often with his films, and like really abruptly and you're already enmeshed in this fever dream though, and then it just like stops and you're just like it's almost like waking up from a weird dream, like what the hell just happened.
That's exactly what I thought of too. When it ended, it was I was just like, oh, we're out of the realm. Now it is over, I know in some weird way. And they're two completely different filmmakers, but there's some kind of that sacked, like some kind of chemick goal effect from this movie that I get from incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became except zombies by
Ray Dennis Steckler. I don't know if it's the musical numbers there could play again, anybody who's gonna be If everybody has not seen that movie, don't go into it expecting a lot of new shape. It's not. And Steckler is very much a very American director, and the stuff feels very American. But that film has a weird sort of dream quality to it too, and I just I love I don't know, I'm a sucker for that. It's fancay because I thought they everyone ever call this like
a great Franker film. If somebody was like, oh, can you recommend like a good introduction, this would not be high on my list. But I'm really glad I watched it. I really did genuinely enjoy this and I love the performances. I love Jess Franco playing this that I feel like we need more. I want to see more detective characters like this one. It's almost like taking the like Elliott Gold as Philip Marlow and making him even more just down on his lot.
I'm just a really reminded of a line, just going back briefly, so memorable lines in the films is where he says again, it makes me think of Franco considering which roles to take in his films. He says something like, I'm know Robert Redford or alland alone.
Yeah, this was a great time for these schlubby detectives. And we've talked a lot about him on the show before, as far as Ellie Gould or Richard Dreyfus in The Big Fix and some of these other anti detectives that they had going on at this time, and even going back to Jake Gidtis, he's also he's not a good detective. A lot of times he hears about the Badford Grass thing and it takes him forever to figure that out or doesn't realize like maybe he should investigate the other
missus mul ray and all these things. He's not the great it's detective in the world, and that Franco is in that mold as well. There's something there, but I'm too stupid to recognize it. I'm like, okay, good, But at least he recognizes that he's too stupid, especially.
Because it's all his hyper fixation, Like you cannot get this woman out of his system, no even and who can blame him?
I know?
And that's the thing. Like the camera loves lener I wish I really actually do you wish we had more shots of her face this film, because there's some of them. It's almost like looking at painting. It's not just because she's pretty, like she's just she's luminescent.
Yeah, she's really magnetic in this movie, like just beautiful obviously, but also like just has such a present. She was a trained theater actress. There's a couple of her comedic roles that she did for Franco that I haven't seen yet that are still on my to watch list. But I have a feeling that her talents lie more in the comedic sphere. This is not to disagree with people who really love her things like female Vampire where she's playing this iconic horror film figure. But I really feel
like she knows what she's doing with comedy. She handles the material really well. You can really see in this movie what a good actor she is, And I think anyone who is as dismissive of Lena as they would be of say, just Franco, would really benefit from looking at the performance in this film and seeing how really good she is.
Oh great, and she is so genuinely funny, and is like that part when you're talking about Mike where he's like giving the orders, is she.
Just tugging for the camera.
That's it's as good as the penis is gonna get it.
It's just it's a really good physical comedian as well, like I think, and you totally see it in that particular scene too.
Yeah, And to think that they were together for what forty years and she was in I would I sound like I'm exaggerating, but one hundred and nine of his films, I want to say I read something like that. Yeah, they had quite the relationship. To still see them together in their twilight years and her still out there going to Fantastic Fast in two thousand and nine and spreading the word still just like, Wow, that's amazing just the
longevity of her career. And yeah, I think I would have liked to have seen her in more of a screwball comedy. I think she could have pulled that off beautifully.
Totally totally agree.
There's a comedy she's in, and again I haven't seen it yet, so I really can't speak much about it. But there's a Just Franco film called it's called Celestine all Around Made or something like that in English, which is like a very straightforward comedy apparently, So now I want to track that one down and see more for
comedic jobs. And by the way, for anyone who hasn't seen the absolutely adorable video clip of just Franco receiving his life Lifetime Goya Award sometime in the two thousands, she been like little old lady Lena Rome wheeling out Jess Franco to accept his a war like is just the absolute most adorable thing you'll ever see. I'm sure you can find it on YouTube.
It's really cute. Oh, it's really sweetest.
For anyone who's a fan, it's like, really such a thing.
This film almost broke me at times, but pat Radkey, we did your request and you haven't broken me, sir. I'm going to continue down this path with Jess Franco. So I'm looking forward to talking about some more of his films, and it sounds like just I'm just going to have to start picking your brain and finding out what some of the really good ones are.
Oh yeah, talking out and then when that.
Get thrown off by one of these, I'll know that I can get back on the horse and not have to worry about it.
Yeah, there's a lot there to be mined. Because I mentioned it earlier, I guess I might as well briefly go back to it. Jess Franco casting himself, which he didn't do a lot, especially in like main roles, like we see him pop up a lot in Virgin among the Living Dead and like small weird usually comedic kinds of roles, sometimes a little more horror oriented, but he
very rarely casts himself as the lead. And two that came right around the same time where this and the film I was talking about earlier, Exorcism, which was like a total one eighty from this film and is a great film and I totally highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it, who wants to see more of
just Franco. I think it's a sort of a hidden gem in his catalog where he plays this kind of defrucked batanic priest who's like trying to get vengeance on the loose morals women that he sees as causing his sort of moral downfall, and he's just sees a really it's a really dark he's really like this kind of like evil, like maniacal character. And again, like it came so close on the heels of this for him to choose to cast himself in the main role, I think
is a really kind of interesting. It's a really interesting parallel to to me because there's such totally different roles and then again that he just so rarely did that, you have to think there's something deliberate in it.
He could have found anyone to.
Be in this role, but he decided to cast himself and it's just an interesting dichotomy of those two roles together.
All Right, we're going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Sir, can I ask you a question? You just saw Kama Kazi eighty nine. Yeah, yes, bas B's is bast fast Binda. You say fast Binda?
Who who this guy is?
Who is this guy who wears leopard and has leopard car and he wears leopard halta and oh leopard cut on bias And I don't like murder mysteries that make.
You laugh all of the time, big fat belly hanging out. I hated Kamakazi.
That's right. We'll be back next week with a look at Kama Kazi eighty nine. Until then, I want to thank this week's co host, Heather and Jessica. So, Heather, what is the latest with you?
Ma'am? My very first YouTube essay is live and I get to discuss the inspirational nature and more out of the grind House. Also, if you go to my website Mondoheather dot com, I have a new piece about the best albums for the darker side of Autumn. Of course, you can find all this and other sundry items at my linktree linktree dot com or at slash Mondoheather.
And Jessica, what's the latest with you?
Not too much with me, but if you're interested to see my goings on, you can find me on my Instagram account at Lovethalotero law dot Dell dot Botero.
It'scream.
Highly recommend it. Thank you so much ladies for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash projection booth. Every donation we get helps a rejection b take over the world.
When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown when you've got worries. All the noise and the why seems to help.
Unknown downtown.
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city.
Linger on the side of whether neon signs up pretty? How can you lose the lights so much brighter there?
You can't. Forget all your.
Truck boost, forget all your.
Cares and go down town.
Things a great when you're down town, No find a place for sure time everything's waiting for you. Don't hang you around and let your problems surround you. There are movie shows downtown, Maybe know some little places to go to where they never close downtown.
Just listen to the rhythm of a jelly busy over You'll.
Be dancing with them to the father. Night has over here again.
The light's so much brighter.
You can't forget all your travelers, forget all your cares and gods down.
Where are the lights? Are guys waiting for you tonight? You're gonna be all by that time.
You have got somebody kind to help that understand you, someone who is just like you, and need to gentle him to guide them along.
So maybe a see you there.
We can't forget our trousers, can forget on our castles gone down.
Things will be great when you're done.
Don't wait a minute as fark everything waiting fall you.
Down, down, Tell
Ya told him to stand it