Spanish director Jesus
‘Jess’ Franco first met his principal leading lady Lina Romay in the early
1970s. They spent the next four decades together making exploitation movies of
many hues, some of them rather good, others little more than elegantly-filmed
porn with Romay an enthusiastic participant. He was a highly-driven Svengali of
sleaze, capable of greatness but more often mired in threadbare drudge-work to
keep the wolf from the door. She was a declared exhibitionist with a
disarmingly natural screen presence although never much of an actress. After
the strangest, longest courtship in film history, they decided to get married
in 2008, around the time Franco was turning out his 150th feature. Estimates
vary on the exact number he eventually made.
Not that you need to know any of that to enjoy this 1976 chapter from
their union but it certainly helps to explain why Franco’s camera so clearly
adores Lina Romay. The name-checking of the Marquise (sic) de Sade reflects
Franco’s career fascination with the notorious scribe, although the actual
movie has nothing to do with him, being instead a re-imagining of Oscar Wilde’s
The Portrait of Dorian Gray from a female perspective.
The plot, such as it is, centres on enigmatic, ageless aristo Miss
Gray (Romay). While wandering the grounds of her opulent gaff, she explains the
set-up via voiceover. Turns out her twin sister is banged up in an asylum and
Miss Gray herself needs to shag the life out of mortal humans in order to stay
looking disarmingly like Wendy Padbury from 1960s Doctor Who. While she is
unable to experience direct sexual pleasure, her imprisoned sister (also a dead
spit for Wendy) feels it on her behalf, so to speak. She relates all this to a female reporter who
turns up the way female reporters tended to do in this kind of thing (see also
Joe D’Amato’s Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals). Cue some seriously hirsute
co-joinery involving the two versions of Miss Gray, an inquisitive lady
visitor, the reporter and (this being a 1970s porn film) some spare bloke with
a beard.
Full Moon Features are to be commended for sourcing a very decent
print of the uncut version which obviously means you see people going all the
way and then going back for seconds. And thirds, if truth be told. But on its
own terms it certainly succeeds; there is a dreamlike quality to the location
photography and it’s edited and scored with panache. Above all, there is Lina Romay in her dual
role, alternating between cool detachment and unbridled sexuality as only she
could do.
You don’t necessarily expect much in the way of extras when delving
this deep into the 70s sleaze pit but you do get a fun VHS-quality trailer reel
of Franco’s work plus a short retrospective documentary interviewing the late
Jess Franco himself and producer Erwin C. Dietrich. This is rather good;
Dietrich claims this production was never even sanctioned, being instead one of
those notorious ‘extra’ movies Franco would secretly knock out at the same time
as the one he was actually hired to make, using the same actors and sets, in
order to go double-up at the box office for the same outlay. Challenged on this
ruse, Franco mumbles a denial but looks a tad sheepish, the old rogue.
Lina Romay died in 2012 and Franco followed her a year later,
seemingly from a broken heart (although the fags didn’t much help). As filmic
legacies go, theirs remains a bizarre and filthy trove for connoisseurs of a
certain persuasion. It will certainly
take some beating, if you’ll excuse the pun.
DIE MARQUISE VON SADE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JESUS “JESS” FRANCO / STARRING:
LINA ROMAY, MONICA SWINN, MARTINE STEDIL/ RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
