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. 

LOVER OF THE MONSTER (1974) (Full Moon Features Blu-ray Review)

LOVER OF THE MONSTER (1974) 

Label: Full Moon Features
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 87 Minutes
Audio: Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 Surround with forced English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Sergio Garrone
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Katia Christine, Marzia Damon, Erol Tas, Ayhan Işık, Caterina Chiani

This trashy euroshocker was filmed back to back with writer/director Sergio Garrone's Gothic Italian/Turkish thriller The Hand That Feeds the Dead (1974), made on the same sets with the same principle cast, the same cinematographer, the same composers, with nearly identical title cards and opening credits sequence. While not a remake there are a lot of similarities, particularly the opening scenes, and as such I would suggest not watching one directly after the other as it could prove to be quite confusing. 

In it we have Klaus Kinski (Jack the Ripper) playing the same-named, though totally different, mad scientist Prof. Alex Nijinksy, who along with his wife Anijeska (Katia Christine, Probability Zero) come to live at her family's estate, hoping to rekindle their passionless marriage. Arriving they are greeted by the family butler Boris (Erol Tas, The Deathless Devil), who settles them in and almost immediately takes them to the crypt of Anjieska's late father, the Baron Rassimov, to pay their respects. 

While perusing the late Baron's study Nijinksy discovers a notebook that details Rassimov's bizarre experiments, and later finds his beaker and blood-filled laboratory in the basement. The professor quickly loses all interest in reconnecting his wife, and instead becomes singularly obsessed with her father's mad science experiments. The lab, which is the exact same set used in The Hand That Feeds the Dead, only now covered in a fresh layer of talcum powder to give the illusion of age-related dust, he sets about cleaning-up and reconnecting the instrumentation to continue the unnatural experimentation. 

As her husband spends his waking hours in the lab to carry out the experiments of her father the increasingly ignored Anijeska begins to spend a lot of time with a former flame who lives in town, the kindly Dr. Igor Walensky (Ayhan Işık, The Hand That Feeds the Dead), who makes it very clear he wishes to steal her away from her husband, but she stays faithful nonetheless, though she clearly enjoys the attention of her suitor. 

Meanwhile, Nijinksy poisons the family dog so that he

use it for experimentation, seemingly looking to reanimate it, but the surgeries seems pretty crude. He makes an incision in the doggie's belly and pulls out it's intestines, bandages it up and then applies electricity to it, Frankenstein's monster style. The dog does not spring to life but he seems to accidentally altered his own biology after getting zapped with some electricity himself. Afterward he  occasionally transforms into an insatiable sex-beast along the lines of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, finding himself rampaging through the countryside murdering people.  His victim's include a farmer young son, and a handful of  young lovers he finds canoodling in the forests. Predictably, his jealousy over the amount of time his wife has been spending with Dr. Walensky, combined with his newfound murderous alter-ego, force a violent confrontation which ends in tragedy and regret. 

The flick is a stylish slice of Euro-cult with some mild Gothic atmosphere and period costuming, but there's not enough psycho-sexual shocks for my tastes, particularly since the murders seem to have a sex-crime element, but that is never made explicit. Again, as with The Hand That Feeds the Dead, Kinski plays the role with a subdued temperament, a bit too subdued in fact. I love a good slow burn, but more often than not this entry tends to smolder-out instead of bursting into flame, making it a bit bland. A great example of this would be when Kinski's character transforms you don't actually see the physical change, all the carnage happens just off screen or is only seen through the killer's POV, with just a few close-up of Kinski's bulging his eyes for weak dramatic effect. Eventually you do see him semi-transformed, but he really just looks like Kinski after a drunken all-night bender. 

Other things that slow the film down are subplots  involving a pair of unlucky vagrants in the wrong place at the wrong time that find themselves falsely accused of the crimes perpetrated by Kinski's monster, one of whom is beat to death by an angry vigilante mob while the other is hung after a hasty court trial, all of which goes on for far too long. To top it off the nudity is a rare and only briefly glimpsed commodity, with even less of it in this film compared to The Hand That Feeds the Dead. 

Of the pair of films shot back to back this the inferior film, not that The Hand That Feeds the Dead was any great shakes, but it at least had more action, more bizarre surgeries, more nudity and carnage, and a lot less melodrama to sort through, and this Gothic euro-shocker is lacking the sleaze, shocks and psycho-sexual that could have made it something truly interesting. 

Audio/Video: Lover of the Monster (1974) arrives on region-free Blu-ray Full Moon Features in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, and is advertised as being uncut and remastered in HD for the first time in North America. The source elements are in good shape with very few blemishes, but the grain structure is compromised, losing fine detail and waxing skin textures, with the close-ups of Kinski's craggy deep-lined face are the clearest indicators of this. Colors looks solid though, this is a very earthy presentation, the only real color are the reds found in the laboratory.  

Audio comes by way of compressed Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround with forced English subtitles, and as there's no English dub on the disc I did not mind the non-optional subtitles. The Italian dialogue is clean and free of distortion, and the score from Stefano Liberati and Elio Maestosi (The Hand That Feeds the Dead) is solid as well, adding to the Gothic charm of the film. I did not check for comparison but I would not be surprised if the score was also recycled from The Hand That Feeds the Dead. 

The only extras on the disc are are 8-minutes of euro-cult trailers from Full Moon. Not that my opinion carries any weight, but I would suggest future Euro-cult release from Full Moon should get at least an audio commentaries, from someone along the lines of Nathaniel Thompson, Troy Howarth, Tim Lucas, or Chris Alexander - someone who knows their eurocult stuff, would be a cool value-add. 

Special Features: 

 - Trailers: Barbed Wire Dolls (1 min), Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (3 min), Naked Girl Murdered in the Park (1 min),  Satanic Sisters (1 min), Voodoo Passion (1 min), Women in Cell Block 9 (1 min) 

The Lover of the Dead (1974) is an interesting companion piece to The Hand That Feeds the Dead, but it fails to deliver the bare-minimum of sleaze, psycho-sexual fervor and shocks that could have made it a more interesting viewing. That said, I am down for anything with Klaus Kinski in it, even when it's on the tamer side of his catalog. You can pick it up for under $20 from www.fullmoondirect.com, and probably for under $10 if you're willing to wait till one of their sales. 

Screenshot from the Full Moon Blu-ray: 

MADAME CLAUDE (1977) (Cult Epics Blu-ray Review)

MADAME CLAUDE (1977)

AKA THE FRENCH WOMAN 

Label: Cult Epics
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 109 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)
Audio: French LPCM 2.0 Mono, DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono, English Dolby Digital 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Just Jaeckin
Cast: Françoise Fabian, Klaus Kinski, Dayle Haddon, Murray Head, Vibeke Knudsen-Bergeron

Following the worldwide success of the softcore one-two erotic punch of Emmanuelle (1974) and then The Story of O (1975) French filmmaker Just Jaeckin returned with his third film, the sensual thriller Madame Claude (1977),  based on Jacques Quoirez's novel 'Allô Oui, or, the Memoirs of Madame Claude' (1975). The film stars French New Wave icon Françoise Fabian (Expulsion of the Devil) in the titular role of a jet set proprietor of a globetrotting call girl service that caters to elite society, including the American President, Howard (Robert Webber, S.O.B.).

Photographer David Evans (Murray Head, Sunday Bloody Sunday) is someone constantly within Madame Claude's periphery, he is currently Claude's star escort, the knock-out Anne-Marie (Vibeke Knudsen-Bergeron, Spermula), whom Evan's puts increasing pressure to snap pictures of her high-society clients. The idea is that he can either blackmail the wealthy men or sell the photos for top-dollar. It's this scheme that lands Evans on the watch-list of the C.I.A. and other powerful elites who do not want their sensitive clients and assets exposed in an embarrassing prostitutions ring scheme.  

A lot of the story digs into that blackmail/cover-up element, as well as detouring into Madame Claude newest recruit, a former secretary turned call-girl named Elizabeth (the stunning Dayle Haddon, Spermula), whom Claude sets out to transform from a naïve girl to a sophisticated woman with plenty of class and sex appeal. Her first assignment is being hired by wealthy industrialist Alexander Zakis (Klaus Kinski, Venom), hired to seduce his son, which she does, but when she begins to fallfor him she learns that maybe she is not emotionally cut out for the strictly sex life of a call girl, no matter how posh a lifestyle it may be. 

The film is not quite the erotic skin ride that Jaeckin's previous films were, but there is still eyefuls of stunning naked women and plenty of sex up on the screen. The movie opens with a scene of a nude woman sprawled out on swiveling plush chair as she seduces no less than the American president! We get  scenes of orgies in sex clubs and elite mansions, plus a rather kinetic hot tub sex scene up against a glass wall that is not only artfully shot but is super-hot. The globetrotting nature of the film also allows for naughtiness to play out in the surf of a sandy Bermuda beach. There's plenty of titillating naughtiness for the erotic cravers, but all of that is diffused with an intriguing bit of spy craft that plays out, though I think it is fumbled a bit in it's execution, in that there are perhaps a few too many subplots that do not go anywhere. 

The cloak and dagger spy-thriller type stuff comes by way of both nefarious government agencies and private dark forces keeping tabs on Murray Head's photographer as they look to acquire his photography negatives, either destroy and/or exploit. To that end we get some clandestine decent deep throat type meetings in parking garages, with shadowy figures stalking and tapping the phones of both the photographer and Madame Claude. The most thrilling if it being a pursuit of the photographer to an Eyes Wide Shut style orgy being held at the mansion of Kinski's character Zakis, which does not end well for the photographer, when a practical joke he played earlier in the film comes back to bite him in the ass. 

I rather enjoyed the film, it's super-stylish, very sexy and fun, and while the marriage of sensual eroticism and spy craft thriller don't exactly marry flawlessly I enjoyed both halves of the story and the inherent drama of both. It certainly does not hurt that both Vibeke Knudsen-Bergeron and Dayle Haddon are stunning beauties who hold the screen with their magnetic beauty, the camera loves these women. Not to be outdone, Françoise Fabian who plays the slightly older Madame still a smoldering beauty here in her mid-forties and has quite a bit of presence. 

Madame Clade (1977) is a gorgeously shot film with attractive lensing by cinematographer Robert Fraisse (Emmanuelle, Ronin), that captures the stylish locations and fashions as well as the sensual beauty of the women. We also get a fantastic score from Serge Gainsbourg that has a cool sounding exotic funk/disco vibe, plus a great pop song by way of "Yesterday Yes a Day" sung by Jane Birken (Death on the Nile), that also adds an elegance to the sensual thriller.  

Audio/Video: Madame Claude (1977) AKA The French Woman, arrives on region-free dual-layered Blu-ray from Cult Epics framed in 1.66:1 widescreen in 1080p HD, sourced from a new 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, which was supervised by original cinematographer Robert Fraisse. The overall image is pleasing with an intact grain structure that is well-preserved, though the soft focus tends to dampen sharpness and clarity, but it is an attractive aesthetic that compliments the movie. Early on there is a brief bit of print damage by way of a few vertical lines that pop-up during an airport scene but that was about it, otherwise the source is in great shape. The colors and skin tones are warm and natural looking throughout, the worst I can say of it is that the black levels are not deep black and lean toward gray at times which diminishes shadow detail and depth in the darker scenes, but overall this is a pleasing presentation. Be sure to checkout the over sixty screenshots from the Blu-ray at the bottom of the review! 

Audio comes by way of French LPCM 2.0 Mono and a new DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono mix, and English Dolby Digital 2.0 with optional English subtitles. I would definitely suggest going with the uncompressed French audio options, of which I slightly preferred the LPCM over the DTS-HD, but both sound great. Unsurprisingly the compressed English Dolby Digital is nowhere near as dynamic, the uncompressed audio exports the French dialogue with precision, and the score from Serge Gainsbourg sounded fantastic, it's a very cool funk/disco score that I wouldn't mind owning.  

Extras begin with an audio commentary by Jeremy Richey, author of the upcoming book 'Sylvia Kristel: from Emmanuelle to Chabrol'. Richey offers insight into the production, the adaptation of the novel, the real-life events that inspired it, and the cast and crew who worked on the film. We also get a brand new 2020 interview with the director who discusses his early career as a photographer and how that informed his future as a filmmaker, also getting into the production of this film and what it was like working with the cast and crew, including the mandatory conversation about how difficult it was to work with Klaus Kinski, which is always a fun listen. The disc is buttoned up with a brief gallery of promotional images and the French trailer for the film, plus a handful of Cult Epics trailers including Blue Movie, Camille 2000, Death Laid an Egg, The Lickerish Quartet, My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga & Julie, Paprika, and P.O. Box Tinto Brass . 

The single-disc release arrives in a clear keepcase with a dual-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster on the front, and while it is not reversible the reverse side features a seductive photo from the film, the Blu-ray disc itself also features an excerpt of the same key artwork. 

Special Features:
- NEW 4K HD Transfer from original 35mm Negative supervised by cinematographer Robert Fraisse
- Original French LPCM 2.0 Mono Audio
- NEW French DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono Audio 
- Original Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo English track
- Audio Commentary by Jeremy Richey (Author of the upcoming book 'Sylvia Kristel: from Emmanuelle to Chabrol')
- 2020 Interview with Just Jaeckin (27 min) HD
- Vintage French Theatrical Trailer (2 min)  HD
- Promotional Gallery (1 min) HD
- Cult Epics Trailers: Blue Movie (2 min), Camille 2000, Death Laid an Egg, The Lickerish Quartet, My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga & Julie, Paprika, P.O. Box Tinto Brass
- Double-sided sleeve on the first print run. 

Madame Claude (1977) is a sensual true-crime drama with intriguing spy-thriller elements, the mash-up of erotic drama by way of  true-crime thriller might not be for all tastes, but I loved it. Cult Epics does solid work bringing this sensual thriller to Blu-ray, recommended for adventurous lovers of erotic cinema.

  

Screenshots from the Cult Epics Blu-ray: