Doriana Grey

Doriana Grey (Lina Romay) lives in a magnificent castle in an island paradise. Despite this, her great wealth and ageless beauty, Doriana's life is an empty one. Surgically separated at birth from her sister, she cannot experience sexual pleasure without being compelled to kill her lover.

A journalist (Monica Swinn) comes to interview Doriana and soon succumbs to her voracious and insatiable carnal appetite. In the interim Doriana recounts her tragic tale and, with the aid of her mute servant Ziros (Ramon Ardid – Romay's first husband) claims fresh victims.

All the while Doriana's twin, locked away in Dr Orloff's private clinic, masturbates furiously in resonse to the sensations Doriana cannot feel…

As a film that is explicitly pornographic yet unmistakably personal, Doriana Grey presents something of a challenge for the Franco enthusiast.

Scenes of fellatio, cunnilingus and masturbation are central to the film. There is no possibility of excusing them as being shot in a disinterested, director-for-hire manner, nor as having been inserted at the periphery by money-minded producers and distributors, against the director's wishes and to the detriment of his artistic vision.

WHat we can say in defence of the film and its auteur, then, is that Doriana Grey's pornographic material challenges the viewer as much as it excites him.

In reworking the basic Vampyros Lesbos and Female Vampire scenario, where death is intimately linked with desire and satisfaction is illusory and impossible, the film presents a curiously ambiguous attitude towards sex, a million miles away from the typical 70s porno.

Franco's way of shooting the sex scenes is similarly problematic. His trademark voyeurism is much in evidence, with plenty of extreme close ups that start by show the viewer the gynaecological detail he wants to see. Yet by blurring focus to the point of abstraction Franco then denies our gaze much of its power.

Elsewhere Franco's mise-en-scene exhibits more restraint and polish than its thematic predeessors but is not as stately as certain other Erwin C Dietrich era productions from the same era, such as Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. With Franco handling the cinematography himself, the mixture maybe lacks a certain coherence. There is a frustrating tendency for otherwise accomplished compositions – the director's ability to pick out details being very much in evidence – to be disrupted by a crude zoom or out of focus shot. Or perhaps this is the point.

Though Lina Romay may not be a particularly accomplished actress, Doriana Grey plays to her strengths. Dialogue is kept to a minimum and often presented via voice over, while the sex scenes demonstrate her uninhibited commitment and with the remarkable degree of mutual respect and trust that she and Franco have for one another.

Regular Dietrich-era composer Walter Baumgartner contributes a simple, understated score that enhances the dreamlike mood to good effect.

All told, Doriana Grey is much more than a mere exercise in pornography, representing a worthwhile addition to the Franco canon and an interesting take on the Dorian Grey myth.