1970s

After the death of Victor Frankenstein (Dennis Price), two figures vie for control of his metallic-skinned monster (Fernando Bilbao) and the radical technology that created him: the scientist’s daughter, Vera (Beatriz Savon), and the immortal wizard Cagliostro (Howard Vernon), who is assisted by a blind bird-woman with an unquenchable thirst for blood (Anne Libert). With THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN, controversial filmmaker Jess Franco merged his fondness for old-school horror with his unique and perverse tastes in sex and violence, partly inspired by the garish adult European comics of the early 1970s.Read More »

As a model, one can see working the essential virtues of the Godardian question in a relatively unknown work from 1978 [recte 1976]—a two-minute video clip for a popular song by Patrick Juvet, Faut Pas Rêver.

As is the case with all the brief forms invented by Godard, this little opus is not in the least a minor work. It is made up of two shots: first, a medium fixed shot of a little girl who is eating an apple for her afternoon snack after coming home from school; she is responding to her mother, whom we don’t see (the voice of Anne-Marie Miéville is recognisable) and who asks her about her day, while the little girl watches, distractedly, a television set that is supposedly broadcasting the song of Patrick Juvet (whom we don’t see either) In this everyday dialogue, we find the emergence of a fundamental critical question that, in the mid-1970s, must have been perceived as quite violent (at that time we were right in the middle of the Giscardian regime, and it would take seven more years for the left to come to power).Read More »

The story begins with a serious disillusionment experienced by a young girl at her school-leaving farewell ball.
Apostol, an architect on this side of forty, meets by chance Bella at a swimming pool on the night of her graduation party.

Winner: Silver Prize – Moscow International Film Festival’1977Read More »

Customs of the mountain people has always been strict and respectful to themselves. Doing something wrong will be considered as being disrespect to the spirits. Marrying someone from a different tribe is also wrong. Giving birth to twins, she and her husband together with the kids will have to leave the tribe.

“We are all human being, not animal” but the mountain people are treated like animals. But no one could take it for long…Read More »

Vittorio Cottafavi’s 1971 adaptation of the Sophocles play (he had adapted it earlier in 1958). Fans of Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub should be most impressed.Read More »

Momojiro comes to the rescue of beautiful Akiko who struggles to run a ranch on her own.Read More »

A truck driver in Yamagata prefecture finds himself stuck on the road due to a police speeding checkpoint. The trucker decides to use the road shoulder instead. Wen stopped they explain to the police that they have an emergency and are in a rush. Then a police cruiser with two policewomen again catches them. Apparently, this time it is for the crime of having been in a woman’s public bath.Read More »

“Truck Yaro films usually repeat the same patterns again and again in almost every instalment. It may sound boring but it actually works out great and it’s a series trademark. You always know what to expect from the plot. Bunta is gonna fall in love and see stars but in the end he never gets the girl, Kinya is gonna forget his kids’ names, Bunta visits the bath house and bring gifts for the girls, later he has a comic fight sequence at a restaurant, usually against a rivaly truck driver… But Totsugeki Ichiban-boshi is a weird bird. The opening alone is, well, very weird. There’s also no rivalry driver, no probles with the kids’ names (they don’t even appear in the film, except in a photo) and no bath house scene… wait, did I say no topless bath house girls? Yeah, I did. But that sector gets taken care of when it later turns out that Kinya’s new lady friend Mary is a stripper by profession.Read More »

Five San Quentin prisoners find self identity in spite of their surroundings.Read More »