Marquis de Sade's Justine aka Deadly Sanctuary (Jess Franco, 1969)

Despite my love of drive-in/exploitation/b-movie/underground/cult film, I've never quite warmed up to Spanish filmmaker Jesús "Jess" Franco, one of the horniest and most prolific of b-movie directors, who released the first of his 100+ features, Tenemos 18 años, in 1959 and the last, Revenge of the Alligator Ladies, in 2013, the year of his death at the age of 82. To be fair, I've seen only a fraction of his output, including two movies I wrote about on this site, Barbed Wire Dolls, a standard-issue women-in-prison movie with an absurd number of crotch shots and one hilarious slow-motion scene that, instead of changing the frame rate of the film, has the actors (unconvincingly) move slowly, kids-on-a-playground style, and Oasis of the Zombies aka Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies, a standard-issue zombie movie in which the zombies that are supposedly reanimated Nazi soldiers sport early '80s shaggy rock'n'roll hairstyles like they're in Quiet Riot or Def Leppard.

This is usually the kind of thing I can get behind, but the lackadaisical sloppiness and narrative inertia of these two films and Franco's artless use of the zoom and casual disregard for whether his images are in focus (picture '80s camcorder footage of a children's birthday party, but shot on film) didn't win me over. I was expecting more of the same but on a grander scale with Justine, a Marquis de Sade adaptation with name actors and a much bigger budget than Franco usually had at his disposal that is frequently referred to by the Franco-heads as one of his dullest and most disappointing films. I think I'm in opposite land when it comes to Franco, because I really enjoyed this one, occasional artless zoom notwithstanding. It's nutty, ridiculous, horny, and bewildering, and it also has an energy and passion missing from the other Francos I've seen. He even manages to capture some exciting and beautiful images in between the scenes that look like he handed the equipment to a child or a drunk dad.

The worst part of Justine is the framing device, despite featuring Klaus Kinski as de Sade. This wordless performance sees Kinski behind bars, writing Justine in the Bastille between bouts of meaningful glowering and pacing and the occasional vision of Justine and lightly tortured nude women who otherwise don't seem to be a part of the narrative. Franco zooms his camera in and out on Kinski's aggrieved mug and the bars of the cell for what feels like an interminable stretch of time. This must have been a quick paycheck for Kinski for what I'm assuming was less than a day's work. He surprisingly appeared in several Franco films, and Franco is possibly one of the only directors Kinski never threatened to murder. (I recently saw the Brian Eno documentary with a friend of mine at the Austin Film Society. Afterwards, noticing Fitzcarraldo on the schedule, my friend made the comment that Kinski would have been unsuitable for any job on earth other than actor. After some pondering on this, we decided he would have been the proprietor of an extra-legal high-end exotic pet smuggling ring in Europe. "Hans, my Russians can get you three black bears by Thursday.")

Fortunately, the rest of Justine is much more entertaining. A loose adaptation of the de Sade novel, the film tells the story of the virtuous but naive Justine (Romina Power, daughter of Tyrone Power), and her unfortunate travels through France. Justine and her sister Juliette (Maria Rohm) are teenage girls living in a convent. The nuns inform the girls that their mother has died and their father has been forced to flee the country due to some kind of legal entanglement and can no longer pay for their room and board. The nuns boot the sisters out of the convent, which is devastating for Justine but fine and dandy with hedonistic bad girl Juliette. (The film flips the script on the usual stereotypes by making the blonde the bad girl and the brunette the goodie-two-shoes.) Justine is heartbroken by her mother's death, but Juliette is more concerned with any inheritance they may have received.

Given 400 crowns by their parents' estate and dumped on the street by the convent, the sisters make their way to Paris, where Juliette claims to know a place where they can stay. Of course it's a brothel, and the shocked Justine decides to take her chances on the streets rather than take up sex work. Juliette stays and wastes little time entering into a steamy relationship with fellow hedonist libertine Claudine (Rosemary Dexter). 

In short order, Justine gets her crowns stolen by a man in Catholic vestments, who says he'll look after the money for her at the church and sends to her a house where she can stay. When she arrives at the rooming house, the weirdo landlord Harpin (Orson Welles regular Akim Tamiroff) has no idea what she's talking about. Realizing she's been scammed, Justine begs for a job, and Harpin makes her the house maid, but her habit of wearing short nightgowns sans underwear while cleaning draws the attention of house resident Desroches (Gustavo Re). She rejects his aggressive advances while also rejecting Harpin's plan of using her to rob Desroches of his stash of gold jewelry.

Eventually, Justine is framed for stealing Desroches' gold brooch and sentenced to death, which is just the beginning of her scantily clad but virtuous journey across the French countryside, where she repeatedly meets and naively trusts unscrupulous people, gets cruelly taken advantage of, and miraculously escapes, only to get in another jam. Meanwhile, Juliette and Claudine also hit the countryside in an orgy of violence, theft, and nude river bathing. In contrast to her virtuous sister, the more wickedness Juliette indulges in, the more her fortunes grow.

Along the way, Justine encounters the evil head of a criminal gang, Madame Dusbois (Mercedes McCambridge, who appears to be having a fantastic time playing a baddie); sensitive painter Raymond (Harald Leipnitz), a seemingly decent guy with a spectacularly architecturally strange house; the marquis of Bressac (Horst Frank), a sadistic weasel who tries to get Justine to poison his much wealthier wife, the marquise (Sylva Koscina), so he can inherit her family fortune and freely have sex with his boy toy; and Antonin (Jack Palance), the head of a freaky, pleasure-seeking, S&M monastery with women slaves. Palance also pulls double duty as the film's narrator. 

I haven't seen every single Jack Palance performance, but I'm confident that what I'm about to type is one hundred percent accurate. Palance's performance as Antonin is the weirdest performance of his entire career and could conceivably be the weirdest performance an actor has ever delivered in anything. There's a wild moment where Franco fades down Palance's voice and superimposes a different scene over his face, mid-monologue. It's as if Franco is telling us that Palance's maniacally eccentric approach to the character is even too much for Franco.

Aside from the dull Kinski scenes (which only eat up maybe 10 minutes of the running time, tops), Justine is grade-A late '60s Eurotrash. I was thoroughly entertained, and, since I'd never read the de Sade novel (though some of it has been dramatically changed here), I never knew what to expect. This movie takes some wild turns. Even the crazy Franco zooms (which frequently go out of focus) don't bother me here because it feels like the director's id has completely taken over the proceedings and can't be bothered with technical details, and that's an exciting feeling. The actors mostly give campy (but not too campy), energetic, personality-filled performances, and Romina Power makes a good straight woman enveloped by nuttiness. She has the right face and delivery for the material. She's believable as the virginal, naive, pure of heart girl, but she also has just a hint of a sly, knowing look that subtly lets the audience know she's in on the joke. That may be the only time I ever use the word "subtly" in a Jess Franco review. Maybe I was too hasty in my initial Franco judgment, maybe this is an outlier, maybe I'm a contradictory man, but I like this one.

Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975)

Does any movie have a more destined-to-be-a-cult-film pedigree than Death Race 2000? This story of a nationally televised cross-country drag race through a near-future totalitarian United States where every pedestrian mowed down and killed is worth a certain amount of points was produced by Roger Corman for his New World Pictures company, directed by Paul Bartel, and written by Corman vets Charles B. Griffith and Robert Thom, with a cast including David Carradine, Mary Woronov, a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone, Roberta Collins, Martin Kove, Louisa Moritz, and The Real Don Steele. The combined life work of nearly every human being involved in this movie (including the work of people they mentored, collaborated with, learned from, or befriended) could give you a near-complete picture of underground and countercultural movements, pop culture, radio, independent filmmaking, drive-in/exploitation filmmaking, mainstream Hollywood television and film, and the business of mass media in the 20th century United States.

A claim like that may lead you to believe that Death Race 2000 is a vital and important landmark in cinema history. It's not, though it is a goofy, fun, visually striking, fast-paced drive-in movie, and a great example of Roger Corman in the '70s (with some personal Paul Bartel touches). That claim is, however, a tribute to the thriving subcultures of 20th century life that have mostly been flattened, homogenized, or destroyed by 21st century technology and venture capitalism. (Maybe a little of this is old-man-yelling-at-cloud business, and there are still new forms taking shape and people making great things outside of the dominant systems, but we live in a lonelier and more standardized and corporatized world than we used to, culturally and subculturally speaking.)

For the few people who have never seen it, Death Race 2000 takes place in the once futuristic and now retro-futuristic year 2000. An unnamed nationwide economic and communication-disabling disaster took place in 1979 (the French are blamed), leading the United States to adopt a totalitarian governmental system mixing fascism, communism, and bloodsport into an incoherent slurry.

The permanent president (Sandy McCallum) created the titular annual death race, officially known as the Transcontinental Road Race, a cross-country jaunt from New York City to Los Angeles, with 12-hour pit stops in St. Louis and Albuquerque. The event is broadcast nationally and hosted by Junior Bruce (legendary Los Angeles DJ The Real Don Steele) and Grace Pander (Joyce Jameson), a sort of proto-Martha Stewart/Robin Leach hybrid who hosts a popular TV show from her living room. Each souped-up dragster has a driver and a navigator, and the goals are to hit the finish line first and to kill as many pedestrians as possible. The point system favors women and children over men, with elderly people supplying the highest scores.

The five drivers in this year's race are Nero the Hero (The Karate Kid's Martin Kove) and his ample-cleavaged navigator Cleopatra (former Miss Hawaii Leslie McRay), Midwest Nazi Matilda the Hun (Corman regular Roberta Collins) and her German navigator Herman (The Love Boat's Fred Grandy), Calamity Jane (Warhol Factory scenester/Velvet Underground dancer/cult movie legend Mary Woronov), wearing a helmet that looks like it was designed by Nudie Cohn, and her navigator Pete (theater actor/director and Brian de Palma buddy William Shepard), Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone, months away from never having to work for a Roger Corman paycheck again) and his blonde bombshell navigator Myra (Louisa Moritz, cult movie and TV veteran), and, last but not least, winner of multiple previous death races, Frankenstein (David Carradine), a disfigured bionic man and survivor of multiple crashes and limb transplants, decked out in black leather body suit and cape. His navigator Annie (Simone Griffeth, who mostly works in TV) is secretly working for The Resistance, led by the elderly Thomasina Paine (Harriet Medin), an organization attempting, without much success, to end the death race and the totalitarian regime. Whew.

Death Race 2000 is a little thin and the satire doesn't hit quite as hard as it should, but Paul Bartel is a sharp, funny filmmaker with a great eye who understands how much the camera loves the faces of his charismatic cast. (He also appears in a cameo as Frankenstein's doctor.) By doing everything else so well, he makes you forget that the movie is not exploring much of the world it sets up. Imagine what a Bartel untethered by budget, running time restrictions, and Corman's quick schedules could have done with the material.

What's here, though, is pretty damn enjoyable. It's a movie full of eye-popping shot compositions, car chases, big personalities, nudity, gleeful murder, light and dark comedy, explosions, and fabulous outfits, so if you can't find something to like about it, I feel sorry for you. 

Bartel was a director, writer, and actor whose resumé is filled with cult classics and occasional dips into the mainstream, frequently collaborating with his good friend Woronov. My favorites among the films he directed are Private Parts, a psychosexual horror-thriller that makes great use of its skid row hotel location, and the dark comedy Eating Raoul. Bartel died in 2000.

For a guy whose main goal was to make a profit as quickly and cheaply as possible and then keep doing that in perpetuity, Roger Corman, who died just four months ago at the age of 98, also made an enormous impact on film and film culture. It's hard to imagine a world without him. I don't think a week has gone by in my 47 years where I haven't seen something that hasn't been touched by Roger Corman in some way, whether it was one of the hundreds of drive-in movies he produced, directed, or distributed, one of the foreign films he brought to the United States as a distributor, or one of the thousands of movies featuring a director, actor, editor, costume designer, set decorator, cinematographer, writer, producer, or stunt performer who got their start working for Corman. He used to tell people, "My goal is that you never have to work for me again." As someone with a love for nearly every kind of film, from high art to the cheapest shlock, I have nothing but gratitude and respect for the man. He was a businessman who loved making money without spending money, but he was also an artist who loved movies. And he was pretty damn good at both.