A Bring Out the GIMP (Girls in Merciless Peril) Movie Review


3 Jess Franco Reviews

Reviewed by John Galt


Here's a relatively short trio of Jess Franco reviews. The first one I include as a cautionary review, since I would have fully expected it to have something of value, GIMP-wise, and it was a total wash. So, forewarned is forearmed.

* * * * *

Jess Franco's Count Dracula (1970)

Look! A Jess Franco movie about Dracula. So it's vampires and it's Dracula, but sadly it sucks. Sucks sucks sucks.

Starring Klaus Kinski (Renfield), Herbert Lom (van Helsing), the beautiful Maria Rohm (Mina), and the even more beautiful Soledad Miranda (Lucy)--and, of course, Christopher Lee. I was hoping for nudity and violence, if not a little rough sex thrown in. I was disappointed. As a retelling of the standard Dracula story, it was probably more faithful to Bram Stoker's novel than most. As a GIMP vehicle, it rates a zero (0). There was no GIMP at all. How do you do that? How do have a monster who attacks and sucks the blood out of pretty young women and have no GIMP? Jess, what is the deal?

The IMDB lists the title as Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht. (That must translate to "Nights when Dracula sucks, GIMP-wise.") .

My Grade: 0 (zero)

Amazon.com

* * * * *

Doriana Gray (1976)

Jess Franco's Doriana Gray is a cinematic retelling of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, with typical Jess Franco modifications. The protagonist is a woman, Doriana, played by Franco muse Lina Romay. She is a nymphomaniacal lesbian sex vampire. The movie recounts her sexual appetites. She is mysteriously linked to a twin sister who is kept hidden away, so I thought perhaps some bondage might be involved.

There is a lot of 22-year-old Lina Romay nudity, including open-leg masturbation with finger sucking. (Insert KFC joke here.) When she isn't nude, Lina Romay is wearing a diaphanous (and completely see-through) pink gown. There is no point in this movie where Lina Romay is covered up.

So Doriana is visited by a former porn star (played by Peggy Markoff, who looks like she's been rode hard and put away wet) who wants a job and offers to "do anything" Doriana wants. This leads to X-rated carpet munching. The next day the porn star is discovered in the hotel elevator, dead, cause unknown. (Insert "going down" joke here.)

Muff Dive of DeathA journalist (Monica Swinn, who is not a young beauty, and I think looks vaguely masculine) interviews Doriana. They make out. Later, Doriana goes down on her manservant, Ziros. Still later, Ziros meets his girlfriend (a hot-looking blond Martine Stedil) at a hotel and engages in X-rated sex. Ziros leaves her splayed out on the bed, sleeping. Doriana appears and wakes her, and although she tells Doriana she is not into women, Doriana seduces her and we get another X-rated lesbian scene. The girl starts complaining that it hurts, and Ziros runs back into the room and holds her down, hand gagging her, while Doriana oral sexes her to death. It ends with the life force of the girl dripping out of Doriana's mouth like sex juice, or something.

While Doriana is inflicting the Muff Dive of Death, we see Doriana's twin sister (Lina Romay again, of course) flailing around, clawing at her fully exposed crotch, apparently feeling the fatal orgasm remotely. (If you've ever wondered what Lina Romay's vagina looks like, including long, lingering close-ups of her clitoris, this is your movie.)

Doriana has an X-rated sex encounter with Ziros, during which her sister writhes around in bed, remotely experiencing it all. Sadly for Ziros, Doriana ends up with not only a mouthful of his semen but also his life force. Ziros has been fellated to death.

The journalist is sleeping nude on top of her bed covers. Doriana walks in. The journalist has been expecting her. More X-rated lesbian sex, culminating in the journalist being eaten-out to death.

Meanwhile, at the clinic where Doriana's twin sister is being kept, the female nurse who looks after her finally succumbs to the sister's sexual entreaties and there's more X-rated lesbian sex. Doriana's sister does not suck the life force from her sex partners, and has really intense orgasms.

Finally, Doriana visits her sister, goes down on her, and gives her a fatal orgasm, killing her. And now Doriana can feel her own orgasms, and promptly masturbates herself to death.

Honestly, this had potential, most apparent in the scene where Ziros roughly holds down his girlfriend and hand gags her while Doriana sucks her to death. A few more scenes where the pretty female victim figures it out and needs to be held down, or even tied down, for fatal sex would have been awesome. But, no. As an X-rated Lina Romay sex movie, this rates a good solid B+. You practically got to see inside of her. But as a GIMP vehicle, it had only the one nice, 4-minute-long (!) scene with Ziros' girlfriend, so it is a C- at best. (Forced sex that ends in death, even if it is lesbian sex, is one of my favorite things.)

The IMDB lists this movie as Die Marquise von Sade.


My Grade: C-

Amazon.com

* * * * *

Bloody Moon (1981)

This Jess Franco flick involves a language school full of pretty girls and a masked killer. Sounds like a winning combination.

Rape and murderThe movie begins at a pool party where the partiers are wearing masks. The disfigured guy (Miguel) might or might not be the guy who steals the mask of a well-known Lothario and picks up a loose chick who thinks it's the hot guy. She takes the masked guy back to her room (Bungalow 13) and he starts to get rough, so she tears off the mask and fights him. He grabs a pair of scissors and stabs her to death.

Flash to a sanatorium where Dr Jess Franco is releasing Miguel into the care of his sister, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff). She is taking him home after his convalescence following "that incident." They return to the language school. We are introduced to a bevy of attractive students, including Angela (Olivia Pascal), Inga (Jasmin Losensky), Eva (Ann-Beate Engelke) and Laura (Corinna Drews). Angela is staying in Bungalow 13. And it turns out Miguel and Manuela have an incest thing going.

Skewered nippleEva visits Angela in Bungalow 13 and gets stabbed in the back, with the blade skewering her nipple and poking out through her naked breast.

Inga goes for a ride with someone (wearing a mask) to an abandoned rock quarry, where she thinks she's in for some kinky Spanish sex. She lets him rope tie her ankles together, then rope tie her down onto a stone slab (fully clothed), then turn on a rock saw and we watch as the conveyor moves her closer and closer until it slices off her head.

SawedLaura goes for a walk at night after Angela has told her someone is trying to kill her and gets strangled with a pair of metal tongs in a lackluster murder scene. Angela finds Inga's head in her bed, Eva's plastic-bagged and skewered body behind her curtain, and Laura's dead body hanging from her porch ceiling. She freaks. The movie concludes in a bloody orgy of killing, but with no real GIMP value.

So we have one attempted rape and stabbing. One naked breast skewering murder. One kind of nice bit with a girl roped to a slab and eventually sawed to death (although she was, sadly, fully clothed). The strangulation with metal tongs wasn't all that exciting, and like the rest of the murders, lacked GIMP. This gets a grade of D+ mostly based on the rock quarry saw scene, but with a nod to the attempted rape and nude skewering. If the gal had been tied naked to the rock and sawed lengthwise instead of perpendicular, it would have easily increased a full grade point. But oh well.

This movie is listed at IMDB as Die Sage des Todes.


My Grade: D+

Amazon.com




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