FRANCO FEBRUARY - DAY 18! JACK THE RIPPER (1976) (Full Moon Features DVD Review)

Day 19 of Franco February unearths a vintage review for Jess Franco's Jack The Ripper (1976) starring cinema-madman Klaus Kinski as the titular ripper. Interestingly Franco weaves one of his Orloff films into the story, and Kinski while a bit subdued for my tastes here, does have a smoldering intensity that worked for a psychological terror film. This one has some terrific Victorian visuals and Gothic atmosphere, and the fun musical number with Lina Romay. Overall this was solid Ripper period piece, and because Franco feels reigned and not prone to his more avant garde tendencies, so this might appeal to a broader range of cinema fans who would typically fall outside of the usual Franco-philes and Eurocult enthusiasts. 

JACK THE RIPPER (1976)  

Label: Full Moon Entertainment  
Duration: 92 Minutes
Region Code: Region Free 
Rating: R 
Audio: English Dolby Digital Mono 2.0 (No subtitles) 
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)  
Director: Jess Franco 
Cast: Lina Romay, Klaus Kinski, Josephine Chaplin, Herbert Fux, Andreas Mannkopff

With Jack the Ripper (1976) Spanish Eurocult provocateur Jess Franco seized an opportunity to not just bring London's Jack the Ripper to life onscreen, but to also resurrect one of his most infamous recurring characters, by way of Dr. Orloff, played this time by movie madman and all around intense thespian Klaus Kinski (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), a local doctor who does good for the community by day, but at night the psychotic doc is overcome with inner demons and stalks the fog shrouded streets of London in search of tarts to flay with his surgical tools.

Orloff usually brings the whores corpses to his practice after hours where he dismembers them, with the help of his trusty housekeeper, who kindly offers to pack the bits of people into a burlap sack and dump their remains into the Thames river. She was an interesting bird, I couldn't help but want to know more about her character, was body disposal and voyeuristic rape-watching advertised on the help wanted ad? 

The horrific Ripper crimes have not gone unnoticed by law enforcement, Inspector Selby (Andreas Mannkopff) from Scotland Yard is on the case, but have thus far had no luck pinning down the bladed culprit,however, when a conniving local fisherman (Herbert Fux, Mark of the Devil) snags one of the dismembered hands on his fishing line he discovers an opportunity to extort some cash from the doc, and a local blind man with a supernaturally sensitive sense of smell also threatens to undo Dr. Orloff nocturnal activities

The movie has some interesting characters, including the Inspector's girlfriend, a ballet dancer, played by Josephine Chaplin (Downtown Heat, daughter of silent film legend Charlie Chaplin) who at one point goes undercover as a street tart to identify the Ripper, which works, but at what cost? Casting Kinski as the Ripper was a wonderful casting choice, surprisingly Kinski doesn't sink his rabid fangs into the role as much as I thought he would, he played it a bit subdued, perhaps a bit too much for my tastes, but I still enjoyed it. Orloff is a character with some serious mommy issues, flashbacks to his whore mother enticing men with offers to "satisfy your most disgusting whims. Apparently this childhood trauma is the source of Orloff's hatred for whores.  I rather enjoyed the psychological underpinnings for the murder-spree, the flashbacks are cool and sort of surreal, which is notable as this is not a flashy visual film, shot by cinematographer Peter Baumgartner, the brother of composer Walter Baumgartner. Absent are the familiar Franconian zoom-ins we've come to expect, it's not flashy cinematography, but it is sort of classy in an austere sort of period-setting sort of way.  

Franco shot the bulk of the film in Zurich as a stand-in for London, and it works, the cobblestone streets and historical architecture are close enough for someone as unworldly as myself, haha. Anyway, Baumgartner does a good job capturing it all on film, the atmosphere and set dressing feels like Victorian London to me. 

Franco muse and future wife Lina Romay (The Hot Nights of Linda) shows up in a small role, but a wonderfully memorable one, as a cabaret singer who unfortunately 

catches the eye of Orloff. He invites her for an after show stroll in a foggy park, it doesn't end well for her. As far a blood and gore go, the film is slim, but Romay gets the worst of it with the doc raping her and taking her back to hos clinic where he gruesomely slices off her tit, a thick spray of blood squirting into his face, the red-paint grue brought to mind the kitschy effects of Blood Feast. Romay's scenes are the most brutal, which is no surprise, she was always willing to do pretty much ANYTHING for Franco on film. 

Audio/Video: Jess Franco's Jack The Ripper (1976) arrives on DVD from Full Moon Entertainment sporting a HD transfer and restoration supervised by the film's Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich. I am assuming these are the same HD transfers that were used for the Ascot Elite Golden Goya Collection Blu-rays in the UK. The restoration work looks wonderful, nicely framed in anamorphic 

widescreen, the colors are gorgeous, flaws are near non-existent with only some white speckling , and the detail look good. The colors are largely earthen, lots of browns, black levels are good. 

The only audio on the disc is an English dubbed Dolby Digital Mono 2.0, and it's solid. The dub can be problematic from time to time, as far as matching the movement of the lips, but there are no issues with distortion or hiss, and the Walter Baumgartner (Barbed Wire Dolls) score comes through clean, though it's not much to brag about. 

Onto the extras, we get a 10 minute introduction from former Fango editor and current Delirium Magazine editor Chris Alexander who gives an enthusiastic take on the director and the movie, he's a huge fan.  

Noteworthy, the fullmondirect.com page indicated the release had an audio commentary with Producer Erwin C. Dietrich, but the DVD artwork does not, and there is no commentary option on the disc. Producer Erwin C. Dietrich shows up however for a 17 minute featurette wherein he discusses his career working with Franco, a collaboration that spanned over two dozen movies. The interview is in German with burned-in English subtitles. There's also a very cool featurette about Dietrich's restoration of the film, from cleaning and repairing the well-worn original negative, scanning it, restoring numerous instances of damage, the color grading, and creating a new HD master. It also goes into authoring the DVD, I love behind-the-scenes stuff like this about film preservation. Franco himself shows up in a 40 minute archival audio interview apparently recorded in '73, the interview is in French with English burned-in subtitles. Additionally we get trailers for Franco's Blue Rita, Love Camp, Sexy Sisters, Barbed Wire Dolls which are also part of Full Moon's 10-film Jess Franco Collection. There's also a very brief 7-second deleted scene of Lina Romay's flayed corpse, which is of poor quality and without audio.

Special Features:
- Introduction by Chris Alexander of Delirium Magazine (10 min) 
- Rare Deleted Scene (1 min) 
- Ripping Yarn: Restoring JACK THE RIPPER (17 min) 
- Franco, Bloody Franco: Audio Interview with Jess Franco (French w/English Subtitles)(40 min) 
- Original German Theatrical Trailer (3 min) 
- Trailers: Blue Rita 2 min), Love Camp (3 min), Sexy Sisters (3 min), Barbed Wire Dolls (2 min) 

I enjoyed Franco's take on Jack The Ripper with Klaus Kinski as the titular madman, I like that he was able to weave it into one of his Orloff films, and Kinski while a bit subdued for my tastes, does have a smoldering intensity that worked for a psychological terror film. I like the Victorian setting, the atmosphere, and the fun musical number with Lina Romay along with her violent end. What I didn't care for, the finale is sort of a anticlimactic, was hoping for some serious crash and burn. Overall this was solid Ripper period piece, and because Franco feels reigned and not prone to his more avant garde tendencies this might appeal to a broader range of cinema fan, outside of the usual Franco-philes and Eurocult enthusiasts. 

FRANCO FEBRUARY! SLAVES (1977)

SLAVES (1977) 

Label: Full Moon Features
Region Code: Region-Free
Duration: 76 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: German Dolby Digital 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Lina Romay, Martine Stedil, Vitor Mendes, Esther Moset, Jess Franco

In Jess Franco's Slaves (1977), a.k.a Die Sklavinnen, a.k.a Swedish Nympho Slaves, we have a wonderfully trashy women-in-peril entry from Euro-trash superstar Jess Franco. The film begins with a scantily clad woman named Marta (Esther Moser, Sexy Sisters) clumsily making her way through the thick green canopy of a jungle before arriving at a shack with the words "Federal Police" literally written in marker onto a sheet of paper,that there is some great quality production values! Once inside she collapses, spinning a sordid tale of escaping the clutches of a dope peddling  Madama Araminda, played by Franco's 70s sex-kitten and muse, the lovely Lina Romay (Night of Open Sex). Araminda is the proprietor of a the Pagoda brothel, and apparently that story Marta spun was very convincing, because in the very next scene Araminda has been sent to the Snake Island Prison. It doesn't take long for her to break free though, escaping with the help of a young woman named Ebenholz (Aida Vargas, Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun). 

Ebenholz and Araminda arrive at a designated meeting point where they are intercepted by a menacing character, a cameo from director Jess Franco, an assistant/enforcer to a wealthy man named Amos Radeck (Vítor Mendes, Call of the Blonde Goddess), who questions Araminda about the whereabouts of  his daughter and where exactly the five million dollars in ransom he paid for her went. Apparently the brothel owner had been involved in a kidnap/ransom scheme involving the billionaires sexy daughter Martine (Martine Stedil, Die Marquise Von Sade). Radeck's enforcer strips off Araminda's shirt and begins burning her bare breasts with a lit cigarette, promising more torture to come if she does not begin talking. While all this unsavory stuff is happening fatso Radeck is seen looking rather bemusedly at a comic book.

At this point the story evolves into a series of flashbacks narrated by Araminda, we find out more about her whoring business, and how she cruised the beaches of the island looking for fresh meat for the brothel. She tells of how she seduced Martine and then addled her mind with psychotropic drugs that made her forget not only who she was, but also convincing her that she was a already a whore and that Araminda was her princess, so dang,  those were some good drugs!

Obviously Araminda is not a nice lady, she drugs her whores, beats them, and routinely lets her goons rape them when they get out of line, because it just wouldn't be a Franco film without some form of rape. Araminda's not above killing the girls when they begin to turn on her, stranglin a girl named Vicky (Peggy Markoff, Barbed Wire Dolls) with her own satin gown. It was nice to see the lovely Romay play someone villainous, more often than not I see her playing the victim being manipulated by the baddies, so this was a nice turn of character. Bad though she may be she's still a charmer, even as the ice cold madame she's still smoking-hot.  

Even by Franco standards of the era there's a lot of lady flesh on display here, gorgeous 70s baring it all, leaving very little to the imagination, and of subjected to various cruelties including water torture, rape, or serving as eye-candy for despicable men. The story is threadbare, even by the usually slim story standards of Franco, but it is a fun slice of exploitation as seen through the lens of Franco, attractively shot in various locations throughout Portugal with keen lensing by cinematographer Peter Baumgartner (Jack the Ripper) and an exotic jazzy score from Peter's brother Walter Baumgartner (Die Marquise von Sade), both of whom Franco worked with on many of the films he made with Swiss producer/financier Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich. Franco also handles some of the cinematography himself, which is clearly evident from the use of zoom-in and zoom-out shots which he loved. 

The film ends with a wonderfully diabolical twist, while it's not one of my favorite Franco films it definitely delivers all the Franco hallmarks, with plenty of nudity, lots of sleaze and cruelty, and some tasty lensing. 


Audio/Video: Slaves (1977) arrives uncut on DVD from Full Moon Entertainment as part of their Jess Franco Collection line-up, framed in anamorphic widescreen with German Dolby Digital with optional English subtitles. Extras include the same 40-min 'Franco, Bloody Franco' audio interview that showed up on both Full Moon's Women in Cell Block 9 and Jack The Ripper releases. It's from 1976, conducted in French, with burned-in English subtitles, Franco touches on his version of Jack the Ripper, his thoughts on Roger Corman and his unflattering views on Spanish horror star Paul Naschy. There's also a trailer for the film and a 7-min VHS trailer reel of Franco films.

Special Features:
- Franco, Bloody Franco: Audio Interview with Jess Franco (French with English subtitles)(40 min) 
- Vintage VHS Franco Trailer Reel (7 min)

Slaves (1977) is a thoroughly entertaining slice of Franco sleaze from the late-70's, if you're a fan this is a must-own, and I don't think it's a bad place to start-off if you're a newcomer, plus this is prime-era Lina Romay, and that's a sexy treat unto itself.

 

THE DAY TIME ENDED (1979) (Full Moon Features)

THE DAY TIME ENDED (1979) 

Label: Full Moon Features
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: PG
Duration:
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 & 5.1 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: John 'Bud' Carlos
Cast: Jim Davis, Dorothy Malone, Christopher Mitchum, Scott Kolden

The Day Time Ended (1979) is a bit of drive-in schlock from director John 'Bud' Carlos (Kingdom of the Spiders), and it's is weird one! A sci-fi fantasy film that feels like a series of semi-connected vignettes concerning a space-time warp/vortex of some kind that besets a family on their isolated California desert property. This is a premise that is a set-up with opening talk of three simultaneous supernovas that have been observed by astronomers in the distant night sky, with speculation that the ancient radiation from these supernovas is due to begin entering the Earth's atmosphere. Of course all of this allows for the introduction of pony stealing glowing lime-green pyramid, a few unidentified flying objects, green dancing aliens, and stop-motion creatures that inexplicably battle one another on this family's front lawn. 

The cast here is headed-up by Jim Davis (Dracula vs Frankenstein) as Grant, the grandfatherly patriarch of three generations living at the desert home. No one here is really turning in a good performance, though the little Natasha Ryan who plays the adolescent granddaughter does an OK job of appearing charmingly naive and clueless in the middle of what transpires. The real stars of this drive-in dud though are the special effects, we get some cool-looking stop-motion animation from David Allen and Randall William Cook, and some cheap but fun looking miniature work from Paul Gentry (Airplane) along with some otherworldly optical effects and vintage matte paintings, so at least on a special effects level the film is fun even if the story is a bit of an undefined mess of sci-fi adventure, with an ending that doesn't so much explain anything to any sort of satisfaction, but sort of says, "well, there you go"... 

Aside from some cool effects the film is notable in that it features a number of future Empire Pictures/Full Moon regulars by way of co-writer David Schmoeller (Crawlspace) and editor Ted Nicolau who would go onto direct the Subspecies films for producer Charles Band, with a tasty score by Richard Band (Re-Animator). 

The movie sort of feels like made-for-TV film, the direction and performances are flat, and the special effects are fun but very low-budget, it definitely feels like the worse half of an already bad double bill, this would have been the film kids use to make-out during a trip to the drive-in at the end of then 70's, now it makes for a cheesy fun watch at home for lovers of bad movies who were conceived at those drive-ins.  

Audio/Video: The Day Time Ended (1979) arrives on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features sourced from a 35mm print of the film, presented in 1080p HD and framed in 2.35:1 widescreen. The source is not stellar looking, showing plenty of flaws by way of dirt, debris, cigarette burns, nicks, scratches and straight up deterioration. The image is fairly washed out but on occasion shows some good color saturation and decent fine detail, though grain levels would indicate that some digital noise scrubbing has been applied throughout the film.  The original press release for the film advertised “now in a totally remastered HD version with new and improved FX shots”, not sure what they might have tinkered with here but most of the optical FX looks appropriately dated to my eyes. 

Full Moon again opt for lossy English Dolby Digital 2.0 & 5.1 mixes, there's a bit of noise throughout the presentation, but nothing I couldn't live with, and the score from Richard Band (Re-Animator) is a goodie. 

Samples of the more egregious moments of print damage in the film. 

 

Onto the extras we get an audio commentary with Producer/Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Gentry and Writer/Producer Wayne Schmidt. It's a solid listen with some fun anecdotes about the making of the film, the special effects, smashing up some brand new cars, they even touch on the source for this transfer of the film. We also get 7-min photo gallery of behind-the-scenes stuff including models of the alien crafts being crafted, plus lots of stop-motion stuff being done, it's pretty cool. There's also 2-min of footage of a scene from the film being shot.

The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster, the same artwork appears on the disc. 

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary with Producer/Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Gentry and Writer/Producer Wayne Schmidt
- Gallery (7 min) 
- Rare Footage (7 min) 

The Day Time Ended (1979) probably won't set the world on fire for those coming into it with fresh eyes, but I think that if you grew up watching this on TV as kid or you just love 70's drive-in cheese there's plenty to enjoy about this slice of silly sci-fi. I'd put it one the level of The Crater Lake Monster (1977), as in it's not very good, but it's got some cool vintage stop-motion, and that's enough the monster kid in me to give it a recommend.