Sick Product of a Sick System

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

What do we have here then? A Jess Franco vampire Western, shot in Spain on a micro-budget. Lina Romay plays Alice Brown, a journalist who travels to Sh*t City in search of someone called Frank Spencer (Steve Barrymore). He warns her that the town has been taken over by vampires. Spencer's initial voice-over compares the town to an old stage set, and even mentions Universal mummy actor Tom Tyler.As with all One Shot Productions' collaborations with Franco, this is shot entirely on video and features many outdated digital effects. It plays like an elongated music video from the early eighties. The vampire attacks, dreamed of by a naked sleeping Romay, are as thrilling as they could possibly be under the circumstances. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that stutter-motion punk-vampires baring their fangs under a cloud of harsh video lighting are far more effective in their own way, than an over-priced CGI bloodbath. Stylish and sophisticated it isn't, but there are raw and savage chills here. And then, with typical Franco unevenness, this is followed by an intimate shared shaving scene that achieves nothing and goes on long enough to bore rigid even the most committed viewer (although I have seen reviews that touch on this scene as a highlight). The delirious riot of sensuality that can accompany the vampiric act can be a very evocative thing to explore, but really, was there really no-one around to trim this segment (no pun intended)? Other scenes, like the two half-naked vampire lesbians enjoying each other, to the sound of pouring rain and the relentless windscreen wipers on Romay's (clearly static) car, are strangely effective and hallucinogenic – especially as their lovemaking is next to a window letting in glaring sunshine. Somehow, it works.Other scenes, like Romay being arrested in her car by a voice-over, are definite one shot productions.When she is eventually seduced by the two, they move in an eerie and unnatural crab-like contortions. The resulting scenes achieve little than remind us that Romay is a good 25 years older than her attackers.Another riotous mixed bag from latter-day Uncle Jess. There are good scenes and moments here, but you may have to fast-forward through the static erotica to find them.

There's something charming about Jess Franco's trash flicks: aimless, chintzy and so dreamy. That's the best kind of bad movie, the inspired type that makes you feel like your brain is melting, the standard decorum for a decent film gleefully shredded before your very eyes. You start off going 'This is so crappy, why am I watching?' until the mojo gets flowing and you've totally forgotten that golden compass supplied by countless tasteful pictures. You can't tell which way is up anymore; the map is gone, you're on Mars. Some turkeys try hard to be respectable and end up boring. Others don't bother, setting off to no man's land outright with their off kilter rhythms like some sort of bargain basement art house experiment. They don't give a sh*t.That's the kind of movie this guy seemed to specialize in with his meandering zooms and incoherent plots, the I-don't-give-a-f*ck kind. He was pleasuring himself first and foremost, audience foreplay was a distant second if it was in the running at all. Maybe I shouldn't say this having sampled only a fraction of his output, maybe I need to travel far and wide in Franco land to really get a feel for the pervy territory but it's the only way I have to explain the weird allure these masochistic experiences have. They can be frustrating as hell and I'll still keep watching (the constant barrage of sex and nudity help).This description matches VAMPIRE JUNCTION well, the plot is incomprehensible tedium with only a few trustworthy outposts to anchor us in its hermetic z-movie universe, to let us know we are passing through Franco land: Naked lesbo vamps, naked Lina Romay, western ghost towns, graphic sex verging on hardcore porn- it's all pretty batsh*t, pretty colorful. It's got the aggressive incoherence of a dream and just like somebody else's mind matinée that means boredom of the paint drying kind. Only fanatic Francophiles would stand a ghost of chance connecting all these dots, having plowed through a sizable wad of his creative ejaculations already. The non narrative approach doesn't automatically put some off like it does others; having hacked through a bunch of William Burrough's books I'm starting to find the whole thing invigorating in a nerdy way.All the boredom is worth wading through to get to a handful of scenes, as is often the case with some directors. The strange randomness of the experimental soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment, repetitive notes & noises trapping you in a nightmare cul-du-sac straight out of David Lynch. The vamp twins getting off underlined by this stuff is hypnotic, their slow languid movements at first sorta funny then hypnotic like a weird erotic dance. When they attack and strip Romay during the end and do all sorts of wild contortions with their bodies like trapeze artists from hell- it's just the cherry on top of the fruitcake. It's a strange contrast with the sleaze, given its porno explicitness; at one point a vagina gets lathered up, delicately shaved and sucked on for blood.I don't know how much Franco was deliberately surreal and how much he was just plain incompetent but it's nice to be surprised just the same. The right flavor of wtf moment is a thing to cultivate.

Vampire Junction (2001) * (out of 4) Jess Franco film, once again for One Shot Productions. I really have no idea what the story is about but it's something like a woman (Lina Romay) being stalked by two lesbian vampires. I think this is the final Franco/One Shot film that I needed to watch and I've got no problem in saying this is the worst period of Franco's career. There are some terrible films in this period and while this here only gets one star, it's actually one of the better ones. The biggest killer is that there isn't any type of story and the budgets are so low that it's really not clear what the hell Franco is trying to do. To make matters worse, for some reason he tries various camera tricks with color that just don't work. The performances are all bad and the direction is lazy but we do get countless lesbian scenes so have it.

There's no denying that the Jesus Franco of the 21st Century is a completely distilled version of the diabolical director who enjoyed his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Devoid of the healthy budgets pumped into his commercial films of 30 years ago, Franco's new shot-on-video productions are fueled not so much by cash and imagination but by poverty and hallucination. Franco no longer worries about such basics as plot or character development, he moves from scene to scene creating one unbelievable moment and then another, not necessarily caring if the plot or story has moved forward, backward, sideways or completely off the wall. It is as though what's on the screen at the moment is all that matters, what came before or what comes next is anybody's guess -- even Franco's.One Shot Productions is not, as many have claimed, a bunch of fans paying for Franco's filmed fantasies. The production company seems to enjoy allowing Senor Franco to pull the cinematic wool over unsuspecting viewers eyes time after time. VAMPIRE JUNCTION, for example, takes an inexplicable mix of characters (cowboys, doctors, acrobatic nudist vampires, a Dracula-wannabee, drunks, etc.) and tosses them all into a tourist trap of an old West ghost town and allows them all to shake up against one another for 90 minutes or so. Who knows what happens or why? Seeing nubile naked vampettes walking backwards on all fours like spiders while chubby old sheriffs are taking pot shots at old Scratch as we listen to the town drunk warbling nonsense while sitting on a hobby horse isn't supposed to make sense to anyone but Jesus Franco. Naturally, Lina Romay, with her prime deep in her rear-view mirror, wanders through the proceedings trying to solve whatever mystery the director has foisted on the story.And it's as though Franco is daring you to try to understand or even try to enjoy anything he puts in front of you.Many people hate Franco's films and some post vapid commentary on the IMDb or in chat rooms or forums about why he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a camera. The director and his producers must laugh at those comments all the way to their respective banks. I don't think Franco is going to be appreciated by his contemporaries or even by the grandchildren of his contemporaries. Jess is so off the map that only his true fans who can read the subliminal threads from film to film can truly enjoy his latter day output. For the rest of us, we can push around the tea leaves and embrace the rare -- but always present -- moment of exhilarated genius and wait for the next Franco film or video that will exasperate us no matter how prepared for it we will be.And, as usual, we'll laugh at the doubters and naysayers, and we'll make believe we understand the canvas Franco is creating for us.