My First Franco
Is it a cause for celebration? Could be.

Because of my near total distaste for modern Hollywood movies, in order to fill my desire for cinema I continue to search farther and wider for material. This has led me on my wild Asian rampage over the past few years from Hong Kong to Japan and now Korea. When I still look to America I keep having to work backward and go farther and farther to the fringe. But what, you may ask, about Europe?

I hadn't really thought about until last night. Truth is, I've always looked to the fringe for the majority of European cinema that I've enjoyed. When I see trailers for European movies these days, I usually end up laughing and thinking, "Did someone hand them a manual, How To Make a (insert Euro country here) Film." Seriously.

But if you've stuck with me at all, then you know that I'm often a sucker for European genre cinema (particularly the Italians). Last night, one of the Euro-genre masters, Jess Franco, pretty much reiterated how I felt by way of an interview Alfred Hitchcock had with the French Nouvelle Vague filmmakers. They loved Hitch, and Hitch told them that he didn't care for their films because he found them boring. Franco, agreeing with Hitch, put it this way:

"I feel that cinema should be like a box of surprises, like a magic box. And in that world, anything is allowed to enter, as long as it's always treated with the spirit of 'Pop!' Not in the spirit of 'Now you understand the problems of society in 1947.'No, I don't give a shit about that."

Amen Brother. Amen.

Of course, I'd have to make sure that brother Franco also agrees that there should be some kind of substance. I don't necessarily care what kind of substance. It's just gotta have something. Anything. So let's discuss my first Franco:

The Girl From Rio (1969, aka. The Seven Secrets of Sumuru) d. Jess Franco

The Story: In search of a missing heiress, Jeff Sutton arrives in Rio disguised as a fugitive with ten million dollars in order to get himself kidnapped by Sumuru the ruler of the all female island Femina who may be holding the girl.

The Review: Despite the popularity of Austin Powers, I still don't think people realize just how many Bond knockoffs there really were in the Swingin' Sixties. Besides even the obvious ones like Coburn's Derek Flint, or Dean Martin's Matt Helm there were scores of others both in the states and abroad. There was in addition to the superspy genre the super-thief (though theif is too limited, supervillain gives the wrong impression) genre with entries like Diabolik or Satank (if the word's not evil enough just slap on a 'k'). These films followed much of the same style and tone as the spy films, it's just that the good guy was now a bad guy.

Most of these, of course, drew much of their style from comic books. The Italians and the French produced the bulk of these comics for grown ups that featured the ultra-slick mod tales of gadget-ridden adventure characters of one kind or another. Probably the closest American equivalent would be the Steranko penciled Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series of the 60's. The stories, however, were largely pulled form earlier pulp spy and scienc fiction by authors like Ian Fleming, Kenneth Robeson (a pseudonym for a host of different pulp authors), or in the case of The Girl From Rio, Sax Rohmer (creator of Fu Manchu).

Do you have to know all this to enjoy/understand the flick? No, but it certainly puts it into better context. Watching it, I could think of plenty of people who would spend a lot of the movie going "What the HELL is GOING ON?"; however, with a little history I'm sure some of them would be significantly calmed. For myself, to review such a movie, I feel the only way to be fair is knowing something about it and where it comes from.

Is this a great movie? Is it on par with James Bond or even Derek Flint? No.

Is it a terrible 90 minute test of your tolerance for schlock? Again, no.

For all the speed that this movie was made in, not a moment of it doesn't not seem carefully composed and calculated. It's fault fall more within the realms of it's meager budget, and some questionable editing choices. I can't help comparing it to Mario Bava's Diabolik which I mentioned above. The bizarre thing there was that Bava had a considerable budget and found a way to make the movie for only a fraction of what he could've spent. Franco had almost no budget and does the best he can in expanding on his world.

This film does an excellent job in making the best use of found locations for it's quasi-futuristic look (a feat only truly outstanding in Godard's Alphaville). The costuming, though thoroughly 60's hokum, work well in adding to the otherworldliness of the piece. Again it can't beat Bond, but what it does, it does well. The two villain leads seem to be having a deliriously wonderful time being evil. Our hero, though a little stiff, comes across as a no-nonsense kind of hero. The humor is that while he totally lacks Bond's debonair, he has that sort of @$$hole suave that I've certainly seen work in real life.

Oh, but I did make it sound like there was a bad side to this budgeting thing I mentioned right? The only true failure is the ending. The women warriors of Femina go out to fight with machine guns, but you see nary a muzzle blast. In fact, the girls appear to just be shaking the guns at the helicopters. Oh, and the helicopters. Well, they are real, but the explosives they drop don't seem to be explosives as much as they're high powered smoke bombs. In fact, it seems that the girls are dying from smoke inhalation more than explosions or bullet wounds. Also, for harshly trained soliders, they seem to run around pretty willy-nilly.

The editing. I know I mentioned that. If you've seen enough European cinema, then the editing seems to work in a sort of Eisenstein/Godard kind of way. Unfortunately, it just doesn't fly for this sort of piece...except to show where budgetary constraints didn't allow for reshoots and pick-up shots.

I read one review that claimed that the movie was: a) tame and b) disappointing in acting out it's premise of female world domination. Hmmm, well let's look at that. For one thing, we hadn't reached the porno 70's, but this film, when compared to its mainstream contemporaries, is fairly risqué (certainly on it's way to softcore). As for the violence, well it could have been done better, but I'm certainly not sure that more was necessary. Then there's the failure of it's pushing the envelope of its premise. Well, if you look at exploitation/genre cinema of nearly any time it's rife with touchy subjects that it rarely if ever follows through on. Look at much of the race issues posed in blaxploitation films like Mandingo that fails to go anywhere after the first 20 minutes other than being titillating. Even after reading the synopsis before watching it, I knew that without fail the 'uppity' womenfolk would end up right squarely back in their places. Hell, In Like Flint did the same thing, and achieved the same result on a bigger scale with a bigger budget.

Come to think of it, that's the story with nearly every movie, low- or high-budget. It's the hook. In the end, though, status quo values are usually firmly re-established. In that respect, this movie passed with flying colors.

Lest we forget, the point of movies is not to be art, it's to make money. Though independent and exploitation filmmakers are often afforded far more freedom, their worship for the almighty dollar is usually just as high if not higher than the studios. You don't make your money back by being truly controversial. You make it by stirring people up, and then telling them that everything they believe is actually right. Simple. Even the controversial and risqué Jess Franco obviously gets that.

I realized I didn't mention much about the story itself. Hmmmm. Well, in many ways it's inconsequential to the camera work. This movie is a series of incredible stills. It's only the action at the end that throws it off. The story's fairly mediocre but works well enough. It has a reminiscent feel to Barbarella, but as it is less episodic it feels marginally more coherent. If I had to pick though, I'd probably still go with Barbarella.

In the end, this movie gets it. It knows what it is. It's in the superspy/super-thief vein. It's wild and mod in appearance. It's got a bevy of sexy girls. It's a series of fun cheap thrills. It's an enjoyable way to pass an hour and a half with some arty kitsch. You could do much worse.

Like 'hicksploitation.' It is worse than you imagine.

I'm out of here...before the fear sets in.