An introduction to Jesus Franco

Born in 1930 in Madrid, Jesus Franco Manera is often credited as the most prolific film director ever. Whether this is true or not, there is no denying that he has made a lot of films, so many that probably he doesn't know the exact number. His films – somewhere between 150 and 300 of them – cover all manner of genres, from musicals (Queen of the Tabarin) to spy adventures (Lucky the Inscrutable), from porn (Falo Crest) to peplum (Maciste's Sext Adventures on Atlantis) and – above all – horror/fantasy, disregarding every rule of film-making in the process.

In a career spanning over 40 years the director has worked all across Europe for a succession of producers and under a plethora of pseudonyms (Frank Hollmann, Franco Manera, Horst Frank, J P Johnson and dozens more), the workaholic director would often complete six or more films in a single year. Sometimes he would be working on two or even three different projects at the one time. And he didn't only write and direct. He ofted acted, operated the camera and even, on occasion, took a hand in the music.

Even the staunchest Franco fan would have to admit that many of his movies – probably even the majority of them – are simply bad. Yet even the worst Franco film somehow manages to include one or two moments that are simply sublime. And, good or bad, they are unmistakably the work of their auteur.

Like Ed Wood Jr, Jess Franco – to use his official directorial name – makes films like no one else.

It took Franco a few years to find his distinctive voice. His first directorial effort was a documentary about the Spanish olive produced for the Ministry of Industry. The born anarchist shooting a promotional piece for the government he despised. The mind boggles. After more, increasingly personal documentaries, he made his fiction debut with the bizarre, new wave style We are 18 (1959) following it up with a couple of musicals, Queen of the Tabarin (1960) and Vamps of 1930 (1960) and an abortive project, Red Lips.

While shooting Vamps of 1930 Franco took his producer Serge Newman to see Terence Fisher's Brides of Dracula and talked him into backing a Spanish horror project. The resulting film, The Awful Dr Orloff (1962), is the defining film of Franco's career; the one that set him on his way. Though inspired in the first instance by Hammer, the finished product bears little resemblance to the British studio's product, being made in expressionistic black and white and paying homage to half-remembered pulp horrors of the 1930s and Georges Franju's Eyes Without A Face (1959). The film also introduced Franco to his frequent leading man for the next quarter century, Howard Vernon and cinephiles to the Franco universe, with its recurrent characters – Orlof himself, his henchman Morpho – and motifs – the ineffectual authority figures, the nighclub scene.

A bona fide hit, in spite of censorship troubles that confirmed to Franco it was time to leave the Spanish industry behind, the film rapidly spawned two quasi-sequels – Dr Orloff's Monster (1964) and The Diabolical Doctor Z (1965) as well as a spy thriller reworking, Attack of the Robots (1966).

The next stage of Franco's career was inaugurated by his daring erotic fantasy Necronomicon (1967). A virtually plotless series of S&M tableaux straddling the boundary between art and pornography, the film attracted the attention of Fritz Lang and got Franco some of the best notices of his career.

Under the auspices of producer Harry Alan Towers, Franco next embarked on a series of relatively glossy and conventional productions including a couple of Fu Manchu adventures starring Christopher Lee and two De Sade adaptations, Marquis De Sade's Justine (1969) and Eugenie: The Story of Her Journey into Perversion (1969).

After parting ways with Towers, Franco then hooked up with German producer Artur Brauner for a number of low-budget, exploitationers, including another De Sade adaptation, Eugenie De Sade, a Diabolical Doctor Z reworking in She Killed in Ecstasy (1970) and the immortal Vampyros Lesbos (1970). Zoom-happy and filled with trash/camp elements, these films also showcased the beautiful and tragic Soledad Miranda who was to die following a car accident shortly after completing the Edgar Wallace adaptation The Devil Came from Akasava (1971).

Miranda's death affected Franco badly and it was to be a couple of years before he found his muse once more. In the meantime, he shot various ultra low budget entries for producer Robert De Nesle, including a Most Dangerous Game take-off, The Perverse Countess (1973) and 1972's whacked-out Dracula vs Frankenstein that, alas, are all but unavailable today. Then she reappeared, in the shape of Andalusian actress Lina Romay. First starring in the atmospheric Vampyros Lesbos reworking Female Vampire (1973) Romay later became Franco's life-partner and, in effect, co-author.

Next, Franco embarked on a series of productions for Swiss producer Erwin C Dietrich. Entries like Jack the Ripper (1976) and Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977) may have lacked the weirdness of their immediate predecessors, but compensated with superior production values and greater accessibility, while the Romay-starring Doriana Grey (1976) showcases the director's ability to use the pornographic form in a distinct, idiosyncratic way.

With the ending of his relationship with Dietrich, Franco once more plunged headlong into the world of ultra-low budget, guerilla film-making. Any time and any where, he could make a film be it a cash-in on a popular trend like the slasher film (1981's Bloody Moon), cannibal movie (1980's Devil Hunter and 1981's White Cannibal Queen), zombie flick (1982's Oasis of the Zombies) or the ever-reliable porno.

Then in 1988 things came full circle with big-budget remake of The Awful Dr Orloff, Faceless, featuring Vernon, Romay and countless others from the mondo Franco.

While perhaps no longer making films that are as interesting as they once were, Franco continues to work away thanks to his relationship with Kevin Collins's One Shot Productions.

Five recommended Franco Films:

The Diabolical Doctor Z – The most technically accomplished of Franco's early films.
Marquis De Sade's Justine – Comparatively polished adaptation of a key influence on Franco.
Vampyros Lesbos – Soledad Miranda at her most beautiful.
Exorcism – Wild, confessional piece with Franco himself as the star.
Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun – Accomplished and remarkably restrained, yet still quintessentially the work of its director