30 October, 2006

A JESS FRANCO HALLOWEEN TREAT!

The Sundance Channel will present the US Televison premiere of three Jess Franco films featuring the late Soledad Miranda (1943-1970) on Tuesday October 31, starting at 10PM with SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY, followed by VAMPYROS LESBOS at 1130PM and THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA at 1PM. These were the last three films which Franco completed with the legendary cult actress before her tragic death in a car accident on August 18, 1970.
This Halloween triple bill comes as a welcome surprise considering that all three films have been released on US DVD, most recently by IMAGE. Beside the smoldering presence of Miranda, always billed as "Susann Korda", all three films were scored by the avant-garde composers Sigi Schwab and Manfred Hubler. Their intoxicating rhythms for VAMPYROS LESBOS are particularly memorable and some of those cues are repeated in the SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY soundtrack.
Much has been written about VAMPYROS LESBOS, but the erotic melodrama SHE KILLED... is equally stylish and the plot in some ways predicts the recent heated debate about stem cell research. I'm also very fond of the completely wacky overuse of the telezoom in the Bryan Edgar Wallace adaptation, THE DEVIL CAME FROM AKASAVA. All three films were coproduced by Artur "Atze" Brauner's CCC company, headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
Watch and Listen!
COMMENTARY COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL: 2006



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