Author: Jim McLennan

Count Dracula (1970)

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Star: Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Klaus Kinski
Dir: Jess Franco

While I appreciate the idea of making a more faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, going back in many ways to its original roots, I’m not sure getting Jess Franco to direct it was the smartest idea. Whatever his merits, he was hardly known for PG-rated works inspired by Victorian literature, and despite a couple of bits of impressive casting, in Lee and Kinski, this feels about 15 years too late, and a bland supporting cast leave it marooned in, at best, the middle tier of vampire movies.

The main coup is, of course, getting Lee to reprise his most famous role, even if this was the third chance to sink his fangs into Count Dracula that year, its release (at least, in Germany) just managing to pip Taste the Blood of Dracula to cinemas, and with Scars of Dracula following later. [Blood wasn’t even supposed to include the Count at all, but the US distributor balked, and he was talked into playing the role again; Lee later complained Hammer’s president used “emotional blackmail” to convince him to keep playing Dracula, saying the crew would be put out of work otherwise – I wonder if it was for this film?]. He was growing increasingly disenchanted with the direction Hammer were taking: “They gave me nothing to do! I pleaded with Hammer to let me use some of the lines that Bram Stoker had written. Occasionally, I sneaked one in.” Here, no such sneaking was needed, and indeed, the film’s best scene has the Count delivering a sonorous monologue about his ancestors, which is close to Stoker’s text:

“To us was entrusted for centuries the guarding of our lands. The Lombard, the Bulgar, the Turk, poured their thousands against our frontiers – we drove them back! The Draculas have ever been the heart’s blood, the brains, the sword of our people. One of my race crossed the Danube and destroyed the Turkish host. Though sometimes beaten back, he came again and again against the enemy, till at the end, he came alone from the bloody field, for he alone could triumph. THIS was a Dracula indeed!”

countdracula2Another cool aspect is the way this Count starts off as old, and gradually becomes more youthful and active as the film goes on and he quenches his thirst on more victims – something also used in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But the film still takes liberties with the text, some of which don’t work, such as the way Jonathan Harker escapes Dracula’s castle, and is transported back to Great Britain, to rehab in a facility – here run by Professor Van Helsing (Lom) – which directly overlooks… Dracula’s English mansion. Really, what are the odds? The fiance of Lucy Westenra (Miranda) is now Quincy Morris, with Arthur Holmwood entirely omitted. So, while more faithful than many, it’s clear the makers still felt it necessary to make a number of concessions on the transition from page to screen.

Klaus Kinski plays Renfield, in a casting choice of both staggering obviousness and brilliance, matched only by Kinski’s other collaborations with Franco, where he played Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade. In this case, it’s a virtually non-verbal performance, where his sole line is “Varna…”, uttered just before Renfield shuffles off this mortal coil, to tell the good guys where the Count is heading. But that doesn’t make it any less memorable, since Kinski has always been capable of conveying an entire chapter of emotion with a stare, and is allowed to do so freely in this film. Right from the first time we see him, hurling food about his cell, it’s clear that this Renfield is barking mad – and that’s before he starts chowing down on his favorite snack, dead flies, which he has hidden in a box in his cell. According to Jay Marks and Waylon Wahl, Kinski took Franco to task for not filming Renfield’s scenes in an actual asylum, to which the director responded, “I had planned to shoot it in a real cell but then it occurred to me that they might not let you out!”

Certainly, it’s fair to say that, as well as the canonical Dracula, in Kinski this film also has the canonical Renfield, and I don’t think anyone can match the intense lunacy of his portrayal. Where the film goes off the rails is with the good guys in the cast, starting with Lom as Van Helsing, who is a very pale shadow indeed of, say, Peter Cushing. And that’s before he inexplicably appears to suffer a stroke, which confines him to a wheelchair for the rest of the movie (perhaps inspiring Dr. Everett Scott in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which hit the stage three years later?). The rest of the cast are equally forgettable, despite the scenic contributions of Miranda, and Maria Rohm as Mina – although the latter remain far more clothed than most Franco ladies! And, indeed, Hammer ones of the time, as they released The Vampire Lovers the same year, the first of their Karnstein trilogy.

That’s perhaps what I mean about it being 15 years too late. In tone and content, this comes across as less daring than even Blood of Dracula, made in 1957 and whose success led directly to the entire “Hammer Horror” filmography which followed. That packed much more of a wallop than this even lower-rent version does, which has all the impact of the giant polystyrene rocks used to disrupt the Count’s escape at the end [you can clearly see one of them glancing off the side of a horse’s head as they are “hurled” down from a nearby cliff. And do not even get me started on the “bat” effects…]. The truth is, for all the influence Dracula had, Stoker isn’t actually all that good a writer – if you can name two of his 11 other novels, it will be one more than I can manage, and my Lair of the White Worm knowledge is entirely through Ken Russell’s adaptation.  So a faithful translation to the screen may seem like a good idea in theory, yet it tends to bring over as many negatives as pluses. This film demonstrates why most movie versions have tended to take only the core, and leave everything else.

 

Jack the Ripper (1976)

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Dir: Jess Franco
Star: Klaus Kinski, Andreas Mannkopff, Josephine Chaplin, Herbert Fux

The Jess Franco film so good I watched it twice? Well, kinda… It’s certainly better than most of Franco’s work – I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with the “tedious dreck” end of the spectrum in his filmography, but this is solidly workmanlike, and grounded mostly in Kinski’s fine performance as the central character. However, the double viewing is less because of any quality, than the first copy I got was the English-language version which is among the worst dubs I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. Virtually none of the characters sound anything like their characters; they could have had Betty Boop dub Kinski, and it would have been more appropriate. That necessitated getting hold of the original German version, which is (as usual) a great deal better.

Just do not expect anything like authenticity, or anything bearing much more than a tangential relationship to the real Jack the Ripper, despite a couple of nods, which I’ll get to later. That’s clear right from the start, where a lady of the night is warned outside the enchantingly-named Pike’s Hole music-hall: “You have to walk through Kensington and Chelsea, where he looks for his victims.” Er… No? And Zurich isn’t much of a substitute for London either, despite providing some waterways through which bodies can be transported. Still, as long as you’re happy with lurid sleaze, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here, even if it does fall a little short of Edge of Sanity, another take on the tale from a sometime director of porn, Gerard Kikoine. That had Anthony Perkins, threw a large helping of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde into the blender, and was shot like the demented offspring of Ken Russell and Dario Argento. Compared to that masterpiece of misbegotten excess, this is almost tame, yet there’s a good amount to appreciate.

The story has Kinski playing Dr. Orloff, a character name used a bunch of other times by Franco, from 1962’s The Awful Dr. Orloff through to one of the director’s best, Faceless, in 1987. He has what can only be described as severe mommy issues, and is acting these out by abducting prostitutes and dismembering them, with the help of an assistant, Frieda, who may be mentally deficient and/or in love with Orloff [the film is vague on such details]. It’s never clear if Orloff’s recollections of his mother as a whore are literal or metaphorical, but if the former, it doesn’t appear to have prevented him from rising up to pursue a medical career, As the body count rises, Inspector Selby (Mannkopff) of Scotland Yard investigates the case, but matters are complicated by his ballet-dancer girlfriend, Cynthia (Chaplin – the daughter of Charlie!), who decides to go undercover in search of the killer herself. Needless to say, she finds the not-so good Doctor, only to fall into his clutches as Selby searches frantically for both of them – like a number of others, a plotline also largely recycled from The Awful Dr. Orloff.

jtr13It’s certainly an epic bit of casting to have Kinski playing a largely undiluted sexual psychopath, and he is actually quite restrained in his performance, save for a couple of moments where the mommy issues burst out in a gush of scenery-chewing. There’s no doubt Kinski had an ambivalent attitude towards women, and it’s the nastier side which is allowed full rein here, in his brutal treatment of his victims, usually raping them before beginning their dismemberment, which is depicted in occasionally highly graphic fashion. The worst such is reserved for frequent Franco muse (and future wife), Lina Romay, whose promising career as a music-hall act is brought to an abrupt end by Orloff carving off one of her breasts in its entirety. Yet Orloff spends his days tending to the poor, accepting whatever they can pay. It’s an unusual dichotomy, perhaps intended to expose Victorian hypocrisy [though when one of his patients attempts to blackmail the doctor, the results are unsurprising!].

I kept expecting Mrs. Baxter, Orloff’s landlady, to play a significant role in proceedings; that doesn’t happen, and her character serves no real purpose. On the other hand, I was quite impressed by the police procedural aspects, in particular a scene where the Inspector has to wrangle witnesses of wildly varied social stature into putting together a composite portrait, only to find there are two, clearly different descriptions. Fortunately, the sharpest tool in the box is also present, in the shape of a blind man, whose heightened senses provide a couple of key elements that narrow down the inquiry, and also gives Selby a crucial clue after Cynthia is abducted. However, the ending falls kinda flat: rather than any kind of fitting retribution for or by society, on behalf of the numerous victims, Orloff simply gives himself up, though in response to Selby’s assertion, “You are Jack the Ripper,” the doctor counters coolly, “You will have to prove that first.”

There are occasional, albeit slight, nods to real Ripperology. For there is some evidence to suspect the real Ripper may, like Orloff, have had medical training, and the film does make a reference to him having “relatives at Buckingham Palace”, perhaps hinting at the connection to the British royal family which has been suggested by some. However, this is an entity appreciated for its own merits, whatever they might be, and not as any kind of historical reconstruction. In particular, it’s good to see a Kinski film which truly lives up to that label, with him front, center and given the opportunity to unleash, quite possibly, a few of his own inner demons involving sex and death. As so often, however, you are left to wonder what might have been, had the material been handled by a better director than Franco, though the results here are certainly among the upper tier of his filmography. Just don’t inflict the dubbed version on youself, for that would be far more horrible than any of the breast-removing and repeated stabbings carried out on Orloff’s victims!

Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse (1963)

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Dir: Paul May
Star: Peter van Eyck, Dieter Borsche, Werner Peters, Klaus Kinski

Dr. Mabuse is best known through the Fritz Lang movies. Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, but in the sixties, the character was revived for six films made by the Berlin company, CCC Film. Some were remakes, in particular 1962’s version of Testament, which starred Gert Fröbe of Goldfinger fame – though not as a villain! But others used the character in other settings, such as this, the fourth entry, based on a novel by Bryan Wallace, who was the son of the more famous Edgar. Here, Mabuse is actually dead, but his role has been adopted by the head of the lunatic asylum where he was confined, Professor Pohland. His plan involves liberating an electronics specialist, George Cockstone (Borsche), to work on a mind-control device which can implant suggestions in virtually anyone’s mind, that they are powerless to resist. When strange cases start to occur as a result, such as a postman murdering a man to whom he is delivered a package, they are investigated by German detective Inspector Vulpius (Peters).

However, once crimes start also to occur in England, the full force of Scotland Yard comes in to assist, led by Major Bill Tern (van Eyck), who was originally responsible for putting Cockstone away. Mabuse/Pohland continues his plan, and the move to England was for a specific purpose, since with the aid of the mind-control device, he accumulates an entire cabinet’s worth of high-ranking citizens, from the police commissioner through to royalty. As the villain expounds, “I’ve summoned you all here, for the express purpose of assisting me to halt the decay of the country, to bring back the glory of the empire and to bring new leadership.” Among those abducted are Vulpius and Inspector Joe Rank (Kinski), and they kidnap Tern with the intent of killing him, and deraoling the investigation. But it turns out that Vulpius, as well as Tern’s elderly mother, have something that renders them impervious to the mind-control device, and which holds the key to Tern defeating Mabuse’s spiritual successor and his quest for global, or at least Anglo, domination.

mabuse2It’s quite an entertaining piece of hokum, even if the concept at the core is dubious; the mind control works only until the subject falls asleep, so the suggestion must be reinforced every day, which has got to become problematic as the circle of the hypnotized grows, apparently exponentially. The connection to Mabuse is tenuous at best, though this does mean you don’t have to have seen any of the previous entries to appreciate this one. On the other hand, the characters are memorable and quirky, particularly Tern’s mother, who appears to be several steps ahead of the “professional” detectives in terms of figuring out what’s going on, thanks to her encyclopedic knowledge of crimi. I also note a significant plot-point is a robbery of the Glasgow-London train. Either this was eerily prescient or turnaround on production was remarkably fast, because the real Great Train Robbery took place in August 1963, and the film came out in German cinemas the following month.

Kinski’s role is relatively minor – more than a cameo, yet you’d be hard pushed to call it a significant supporting role – and he’s positively restrained by the standards of even his later work in the genre. It might have been more interesting, from a casting point of view, to have Kinski play the role of Cockstone since, at least in Wallace’s original novel, published the previous year, he appears to have been the main protagonist rather than operating largely as a minion. Indeed, that version of Cockstone has something of a Mabuse-esque quality to it, and I’d like to have seen what Kinski could have done with the role of a megalomaniacal villain, rather than what is, if truth be told, a bland and colorless police officer. The film, notably, also drops the anti-socialist theme of the book, in which Cockstone offered his device and its potential to the Communist party! Hey, there was a Cold War on, y’know… If not what you’d call memorable, it does keep moving at a good pace, and succeeds in its apparent goals, even if those never seem any more ambitious than achieving an adequate degree of competence.

Paganini (1989)

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Dir: Klaus Kinski
Star: Klaus Kinski, Debora Kinski, Nicolai Kinski, Dalila Di Lazzaro

“Everyone knows what a pig he is. The whole world knows what a dissipated life he leads. It’s disgusting. His only interests in life are… money and, of course, women. The younger, the better, and if possible, underage. He’s obsessed with sex.”

The above lines are spoken at the beginning of the movie, by two priests on their way to Paganini’s house where the musician is dying, in an effort to administer last rights and save his immortal soul. But, obviously – and in the light of subsequent allegations, unfortunately – they are intended to be applied as much to Kinski himself. Klaus clearly sees himself as a spiritual descendant of Paganini, and even referred to himself as Paganini reincarnated: a great artist, whose genius is misunderstood and derided by his critics, but who is capable of touching the hearts of his audience directly. Quite how accurate he is there, could politely be called a topic for debate, but let’s face it: he had a one-man show in which he played Jesus Christ. No-one had a higher opinion of Klaus Kinski’s talents than Klaus Kinski.

However, it’s clear that whatever skills he had on the stage and in front of the camera, did not translate in any way to writing and directing. For the result is a complete mess, and an utter failure in terms of providing any significant insight into the life of Paganini. As an insight into Kinski’s self-image and psychological identity, on the other hand, there’s enough material here to keep an entire Las Vegas convention of psychiatrists happy. As disasters go, it’s a glorious, fascinating one, a misconceived project from beginning to end.

Werner Herzog says Kinski repeatedly asked him to direct the film, but Werner turned it down. When a man who dragged a full-scale boat over a mountain for his movie, calls your script “unfilmable,” it’s probably best to rethink it a bit. Klaus, naturally, had no such second thoughts, instead opting to direct it himself, and the result is the most batshit-crazy biography ever of a classical musician. And considering this field includes the likes of Ken Russell’s Lisztomania, that’s some gold standard for insanity.

It’s the kind of film which breeds urban legends, of varying credibility. There’s rumors of a 12-hour version. Or that the film contains so many long shots, because this allowed the crew to stay out of range of Kinski’s wrath. Before going on, I should mention the review is based on the director’s cut version, which runs 94 minutes. The producers, when they saw what he had delivered, were apparently appalled, calling it “pornographic”- not without reason – and suing Kinski. Their version, which received a minimal release, runs 80 minutes, although one presumes, is no more coherent. 

For there is little or no effort at any kind of narrative structure here: what you get is a series of montages, approximately 50% of which involve sex (or perhaps it just seems that way), and most of those involve Kinski. But not all. In one of the film more notorious sequences, Di Lazzaro, playing noblewoman Helene von Feuerbacha, is overcome in her carriage with lust at seeing a stallion servicing a mare, and begins masturbating furious while thinking of Paganini.

paganiiniThis is, it appears, perfectly normal. For another early montage shows Paganini on stage, while the (young, attractive) women in the audience are virtually orgasming in their seats, and generally reacting in a way that recalls Beatlemania at its height. There’s a lot of this kind of thing, unsubtly suggesting he is entirely irresistible to women: later on, one of his conquests goes on a self-abasing demand that he make love to her again, mere seconds after he has dismounted. “He is an animal!” it is bemoaned. “Given the chance, he would rape every girl he meets. Especially the ones underage!” Again with the benefit of hindsight and future events, an unfortunate choice of sexual predilection, not apparently rooted in biographical accuracy. Though one of the film’s themes appears to be how the legend of Paganini was exaggerated to malign him by his enemies, which could conceivably apply equally as much to Kinski and his legacy. Here, Paganini certainly doesn’t need to rape anyone, his partners are all entirely and enthusiastically willing.

In between the sex, you get footage of Paganini stalking the streets of Venice in slow-motion, violence to both a chicken and a goat, and scenes of family life, with his wife Antonia Bianchi, played by Debora Caprioglio. The two were having a relationship, even though Caprioglio was one-third Kinski’s age, and credited as Debora Kinski even though she was never actually married to Klaus [curiously, she also played the wife of his character in their other film together, Grandi cacciatori] Extending the familial feel, Nastassja was supposed to have been involved, but it’s reported, “after three days she fled from the set in tears, never to return”.

Instead, we do have Klaus’s son Nikolai, by his third wife, Minhoi. It’s actually kinda touching, because the affection between father and son appears entirely genuine on both sides. This also leads into the film’s best sequence, with Paganini playing the violin with increasingly berserk passion, as his son watches, entranced and holding a kitten. Which is a good place to laud Salvatore Accardo, whose performances provide the music for the film, and is awesome. If nothing else, he was apparently satisfied with Kinski in the role, saying, “Paganini has finally come back to us through you, Klaus.”

Mind you, that comes from the film’s website which says, almost proudly, “Just as Paganini didn’t need to tune his violin because he could play his unique music anyway, so Kinski doesn’t need to prepare, repeat or rehearse the scenes – he just does it. Also as the director, he doesn’t rehearse or repeat – he just shoots.” If having the ring of plausibility, this is probably the movie’s biggest problem: it’s no coincidence that the quality of Kinski’s performances appear almost directly related to the degree any given director was prepared to butt heads with him, e.g. Herzog. Here, there wasn’t apparently anyone with the courage to stand up to Kinski and rein in more self-indulgent ideas, such as apparently insisting on everything being shot with natural light [though this may partly be an issue with the transfer of the director’s cut].

This was described by one viewer as “very possibly the worst film I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” and while I don’t agree, that isn’t an assessment with which I can find enormous fault. The review did continue, “on that score alone it’s clearly a must-buy,” and that does illustrate the conflicting emotions the film generates, much like the man himself. Yes, it’s a complete mess and abject failure, on just about every level. But as complete messes and abject failures go, it exerts an almost-hypnotic fascination, and I’d far rather have something like this, which takes the art of cinema and twists it into something bizarre, than another bland biopic. Klaus’s sole directorial credit is absolutely everything you would want or could expect from that, illustrating once more how thin the line is, between genius and insanity.

kinski-paganini

Black Killer (1971)

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Dir: Carlo Croccolo
Star: Fred Robsahm, Antonio Cantafora, Klaus Kinski, Marina Malfatti

This is one of Kinski’s more morally-ambiguous characters. Sure, gun-toting lawyer James Webb is clearly a man with no qualms about manipulating others to achieve his own ends, nor is he squeamish about violence, dealing death from his law books, in which he has concealed pistols. However, as far as the town of Tombstone – hey, local flavor, even if this never leaves Italy! – is concerned, he represents a much more palatable alternative than the O’Hara clan, who are responsible for a reign of terror in the area. Contrary to what their name might suggest, they are not Irish, but apparently Mexican – the first names of the five brother who make up the gang are Ramon, Pedro, Miguel, Ryan (!) and Slide (???). They have a scheme by which they force, with intimidation and brutality, small landowners to hand over the deeds to their property, working in cahoots with Judge Wilson, the local arm of the judiciary. The town sheriff is no use: they’ve already gone through eight of those, and the ninth is terminated after daring merely to issue a wanted poster for one of the brothers, Pedro.

When Webb arrives, toting his books somewhat ostentatiously, there are thoughts he might be a long-awaited federal agent. That isn’t the case – as we discover, when the real one is ambushed by the O’Haras and killed, before he even reached Tombstone. But Webb certainly has an agenda, and sets his plan in motion. Meanwhile, Burt Collins (Robsahm) arrives in town to visit his brother, Peter, one of the victims of the O’Haras, who now lives on the outskirts of his town with his squaw wife, Sarah (Malfatti). Yes, I know the term “squaw” is considered derogatory these days, but you should see this portrayal, which is pretty much a collection of stereotypes, all fringed buckskin, beaded hair and good with a bow and arrow, played by an actress born in Florence, without any apparent ounce of native American blood. Burt kills two of O’Hara’s men after catching them cheating at cards in the town saloon, which is run by the semi-respectable brother, Ramon (Cantafora). The following day, when three more members of the gang show up, seeking revenge, and are shot (with a little help from Webb), Burt is told by Judge Wilson (also with a little help from Webb), he must become sheriff #10, or stand trial. If he kills all the O’Haras, the land will default to Wilson, who offers to split it 50/50 with Burt.

black killerBefore he can get that far, the O’Haras strike first, attacking Burt when he is visiting Peter and Sarah. The new sheriff is beaten unconscious, Sarah raped, and her husband killed when he tries to stop the attack. The gang set the farm on fire, but fail to finish off the Sarah and Burt, which turns out to be a fatal mistake, for the second half of the film (largely free of Kinski), concentrate instead on Burt and Sarah’s team-up against the O’Haras. no longer solely driven by Judge Wilson’s interests. [If ever I become an evil overlord, I will instruct my minions to be utterly ruthless, and leave no survivors who can take on a mission of personal vengeance…] Between Burt’s shooting, and Sarah’s archery skills, the gang of brothers are whittled down until only Ramon is left. Webb, meanwhile, turns out to have some nifty safe-cracking skills, and uses these to extract papers from Wilson’s safe, applying the screws to the judge and setting up the final confrontations between the various corners of the plot, in and around the center of Tombstone.

I’ve really got no idea what the title means in the context of the film, or even to whom it is supposed to refer; it could be just about any of the characters, from the Judge, through the two protagonists, to Ramon O’Hara. But it’s hard to be sure, since nobody in the film is black, and nobody in the films kills anyone who is black either.  Otherwise, much of this is fairly standard Western fare, the main exception being the question of whether Webb and Collins have a relationship, or if their near-simultaneous arrival in the town is merely fortuitous. They share very few scenes in the film, up until the climax, and it seems the script intentionally keeps it murky as to who is running things. My money is on Webb being the puppet-master, not least because he is smart enough not to step directly into the firing line against the O’Haras. He apparently prefers to spend his time lurking around the saloon, which is equipped with an unexpected number of curtains, perfect for skulking behind to overhear conversations, etc.

The ending kinda clarifies things, though can hardly be said to tie up all the loose ends, with the question of the Collins/Webb relationship never fully explained. Still, it’s solid enough, even if I wished Kinski had been quite as prominent in the film as he is on the promotional materials, and Daniele Patucchi’s score cements his place among the upper tier of Italian soundtrack composers. Have to say, the English dubbing here is also quite interesting, giving Webb a plummy, upper-class sound that is certainly unusual and distinctive, particularly when whoever is playing the part gets to sink their teeth into lines like “It seems to be oozing with quiet calm,” as Webb sarcastically describes Tombstone to Ramon on arriving in the town. Webb certainly puts the “aggressive” in “aggressive legal representation,” even if you do wonder how he manages to aim his lethal library with such apparent accuracy.

Zoo Zéro (1979)

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Dir: Alain Fleischer
Star: Catherine Jourdan, Klaus Kinski, Pierre Clémenti, Piéral

There are probably stranger movies out there, but I’m not sure I’ve seen one. This is the kind of film, carrying massive artistic pretensions of “meaning,” which would typically have me gnawing my own limb off to escape. I think if I had actually been forced to sit down, and devote my entire attention to this  nonsense for its full running-time, that would likely have been the case. But, I will confess, I took advantage of the subtitles, and spent the last 50 minutes running on our treadmill. This is probably not the way the makers intended their creation to be appreciated, but what can I say? It worked for me, and I would recommend something similar to viewers, since this probably works better as background art, like a painting on the wall of a room, rather than as something to which you must devote your full attention.

I can’t really provide much of a coherent synopsis here, since obscurity is the film’s middle name. I’m going to crib shamelessly from other sources. Unfortunately, when you Google “Zoo Zero”, the IMDB.com information says “A cruel dictator rules a Latin American state. Corruption, brutality and exploitation are present every day. A few people begin to organise resistance.” Two things worth mentioning. Firstly, that’s actually the synopsis of another Kinski movie, Kommando Leopard. Secondly, such is the obscurity in which this wallows, it’s not implausible this could be the synopsis here too, because there are definite references to what appears to be the death of General Franco. Fortunately,. Letterbox.com is slightly better informed:

Eva is a singer in a Noah’s Ark themed nightclub, where the guests wear animal masks. She sings about a doomed love affair between a lion tamer and a lion. She is approached by a stranger who claims to know her and to remember her singing Mozart which she denies. Driven around in her midget manager´s limousine she encounters bizarre characters who turn out to belong to her incestuous family of ogres.

zoozeroAt this point, I’m tempted to insert a clip from Doctor Who, which has David Tennant saying “What?” for about 30 seconds. But I can’t argue with its overall accuracy either, and it has a dream-like atmosphere which means that you just have to roll with its own surreal logic, as the surreal events unfold. They climax in Eva (Jourdan, best known for her supporting role in The Girl on a Motorcycle) and Yavé, the zoo manager played by Kinski, running around the zoo, while arias from Mozart’s The Magic Flute play. Oh, and Yavé speaks entirely through a computer-controlled vocoder; it’s not clear if this was ever even actually Kinski speaking the lines, and they were subsequently treated electronically, or if he managed to get a pay-check, purely for showing up and looking suitably intense.

The film certainly looks lovely, with the art department and lush, blue-drenched cinematography making for a picture that’s pretty as a picture. The characters seem both to exist and to act, simply because the film demands it happen. How else to explain the chauffeur of Eva’s pint-sized manager (Piéral), who carried a ventriloquist’s dummy with him in the front-seat, and with which he will occasionally do political commentary? As with many other things here, I’m sure there’s an intended meaning, but 35 years of time have removed any obvious topical content, and it’s so obtuse as to be completely impenetrable. I did enjoy the use of music: the opening scene had echoes of Cabaret with its staging of the musical number, and the opera score, in particular the Mozart, is also effective, and had me making a mental note to find a full version of The Magic Flute.

Curiously, that opening, where Eva sings about a semi-bestial relationship between a man and his feline, felt almost like it was foreshadowing Cat People from three years later, starring Klaus’s daughter, Nastassja [And I mentioned in my review of Grandi cacciatori, how that, in turn, seems to answer back Paul Schrader’s film] As Kinski roles go, it’s certainly unusual. The deliberately masked timbre of his voice, while disconcerting, is probably preferable to all those films I’ve seen, in which he has been dubbed, by someone who is very clearly not Klaus. Its melodic tones are certainly in contrast to his physical performance, which is like a tightly-wound spring, as he calmly discusses his philosophy with the caged Eva before releasing her, for them to gallop through the zoo. It does take the film about an hour to get there, with much of the early going consisting of Eva being driven around, and to be honest, that isn’t very interesting. Kinski’s appearance provides the film with something it desperately needs: a focus, rather than feeling like turning the pages in a picture-book dreamed up by your subconscious after too many slices of pizza.

On the whole, while I’d still have to class this as a failure, it is at least an interesting failure. Even if it’s not at all clear what Fleischer was attempting to accomplish – perhaps I needed the right mind-altering drugs – and nor is it something I’ll be rushing to re-watch, in terms of cinema as a visual art, this does have its moments.

Grandi Cacciatori (1988)

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Dir: Augusto Caminito
Star: Harvey Keitel, Klaus Kinski, Roberto Bisacco, Yorgo Voyagis

Well, this is a weird beast, and make no mistake about it. At least one place describes it as “Klaus Kinski’s last film,” which doesn’t seem right to me, since I always thought that title belonged to Paganini. This is what it goes on to say: I can’t vouch for the accuracy, and it’s on a members-only forum, so there’s no point linking, but would certainly explain some of the more bizarre aspects. “Kinski had an agreement for 4 movies with Carlo Alberto Alfieri and Caminito, including Paganini. But you know Kinski: after shooting the second one, his Paganini, he made a lot of trouble while shooting the third and then, after shooting the first part in Africa, left the set while in Alaska. Consequently the story was changed and Kinski dies after 40 minutes or so.” I’m not sure what four films they would be: aside from Paganini, there’s also Vampire in Venice and this one, but that’s only three, so we still seem to be missing one. Neither Alfieri nor Caminito have anything else on their filmographies around this time with Klaus. Maybe the contract never was completed, with Grandi Cacciatori (which translates as “Great Hunters”) being the third?

It certainly globe-trots, with the first chunk, as noted, in Africa, where Kinski plays Klaus Naginsky, a famous big-game hunter, whose life goes off the rails after his wife is attacked and killed by a black panther. He starts drinking heavily, and becomes obsessed with the animal in question, considering it “his”, to the extent that he reacts violently when another party attempts to capture the panther. The resulting gun-battle gets Naginsky sent to prison, but he is bailed out by Hermann (Bisacco), who has an offer: a hunting job on the other side of the world, in Alaska. There, Hermann’s brother, a film-maker, was killed while documenting the barbaric practices of the annual fur seal hunt, with the last seconds of footage testifying to the identity of the killer. Klaus is hired to wait on the pack ice, wait for the hunters to return, identify the perpetrator and deliver some Arctic justice. However, Klaus – Naginsky, but if the report above is true, Kinski as well! – vanishes without trace, and Herman has bring a replacement for the same task, Thomas (Keitel), who gets the same spiel and follows his predecessor onto the ice.

Things don’t go so well, though he does discover his predecessor, entombed in the ice, gazing up at him like a mammoth, looking slightly surprised. [Man, that would be a great idea for a SyFy original movie: Kinski Comes Alive, in which a deep-frozen KK is discovered in the German Alps, is thawed, and goes on a rampage through the modern film industry…] Worse is to follow, as Thomas’s first encounter with the hunters ends with him being clubbed on the side of the head, and left unconscious in the snow. Fortunately, he is found by one of the native inhabitants, who takes Thomas back to his igloo, and nurses the hunter of hunters back to health. While recuperating, he is shown the wreckage of a downed plane, left over from the end of World War II, and in it’s hold, preserved better than you’d expect due to the cold conditions, is a very large machine-gun. With the aid of some Eskimo urine (look, I’m not making this up!), Thomas gets the gun ship-shape, and in something with echoes of Django, heads of for another encounter with the hunters, intent on completing Hermann’s mission of vengeance.

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In some ways, this is “Klaus Kinski vs. the Wilderness” – and, as usual, the wilderness comes out on top. I think it’s a shame he walked off the set, as there is definite potential shown in the early scenes. Naginsky’s relationship with the panther that killed his woman is a deliciously weird one. It’s a true love-hate deal, which sees the hunter incredibly possessive, prepared to shoot up anyone he perceives as a threat to the animal – yet it’s apparently only because he wants to be the one who kills it. I’m certainly tempted to read many kinds of psychological meanings into the film, given daughter Nastassja’s portrayal of a woman who turns into a black panther, earlier in the eighties. You could organize an entire convention of psychiatrists around an analysis of this movie, in that regard. However, it’s an angle that’s entirely dumped after Kinski is sent to prison, even before his transformation into a giant popsicle. I’m not sure why, and wonder how the film might have gone in a radically different direction, if not for the need to replace Kinski with Keitel.

Keitel isn’t bad; he rarely is. But in his second “overlap” with Kinski, after El caballero del dragón (which did at least have them share scenes, unlike this!), you sense Cacciatori is more of a case where he rolled up his sleeves and got down to some jobbing acting. The switch in focus from one character to another after the first third is extremely jarring, and they would have been far better off, simply junking the footage shot with Kinski and beginning the film all over again. I imagine it was purely a business decision, the production being unable to fund a return trip to Africa to reshoot all the footage there, with a different lead actor. If so, it didn’t pay off, as the film appears to have received little or no distribution at the time, and subsequently vanished into the black hole of lost rights for a quarter-century, until unexpectedly showing up on Italian TV, from where a fan-subbed version was generated, and can be found in several places, including YouTube. It’s certainly worth a look, though probably benefits from the viewer being forewarned regarding the… ah, difficult nature of its creation!

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Le orme (1975)

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This is the kind of film which could easily provoke riots at the cinema with its ending, a cheap-shot caption which ranks up there with “…and it was all a dream,” in terms of absolute laziness on the part of writer Luigi Bazzoni. I can only presume the novel on which it was based, Las Huellas by Mario Fenelli (who also worked on the screenplay), was a good deal more rigorous in terms of its storytelling. It’s a shame, as up until the movie’s abject failure to provide anything approaching a suitable resolution, there is much to admire. It looks, thanks to triple-Oscar winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, very nice, and Nicola Piovani’s score is also highly effective. Bolkan delivers an effective performance as heroine Alice Cespi, who is initially plagued by dreams of an astronaut being deliberately left behind on the moon, apparently as part of some experiment, run from mission control by Blackmann (Kinski). That turns out to be the tip of the mental iceberg, because when Alice turns up to her job as a translator, the boss berates her for missing days of work, and Alice is shocked to realize a whole chunk of time has apparently gone missing from her life.

Back in her apartment, she discovers a clue, in the form of a ripped-up postcard from the ‘Garma Hotel’, and on a hunch, she travels to the Turkish seaside resort [in reality, it was filmed in Kemer]. There, she meets a little girl, Paula (Elmi), who seems to recognize her – but as a woman with red hair, called “Nicole”. And she is not the only person who appears to remember Alice/Nicole from a previous visit to the town, for one reason or another, a boutique owner and an old lady on the beach also having interacted with her. She is befriended by a visitor, Henry (McEnery), but the more Alice pries out of Paula about her alter-ego Nicole, and what she told the child, the more suspicious she grows about Henry’s motives. Alice also becomes increasingly concerned that persons or a group – perhaps connected to ‘Blackmann’ in some way – are after her, though the reasons for this remain obscure. Did she discover something in connection with her work, perhaps when she was translating at an astronautics conference? Meanwhile, the dreams continue, and do they hold a key clue? Or is she just remembering scenes from a film she saw?

leorme2It’s the kind of paranoid, psychological thriller that is a great deal easier to set up than to resolve, and it’s clear that Bazzoni has absolutely no interest in the resolution. Which, I’d probably have been a great deal more okay with, if I had known going in, that there would be only a token effort to tie the threads together – which is so wretched, I wish they hadn’t bothered – I could just have appreciated the atmosphere, which is certainly present in spades. But I’ve always been a believer that cinema should be a story-telling medium, first and foremost; if there are other aspects present, that’s fine, as long as they are built on an adequately-strong foundation of content. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an art gallery, looking at pretty pictures. In multiple places online, I saw this movie described as a giallo, that most Italian of mystery genres; but apart from its total disregard for logic, it lacks the horror and erotic elements which tend to characterize the other entries in the field (though that may be as much my own interests leading me towards that side!).

Kinski’s role is little more than an extended cameo, and I doubt it took much more than a couple of days to film his segments. Indeed, just as in Deadly Sanctuary, it appear that his character has absolutely no direct interaction with anyone else in the movie, since he’s communicating with the astronauts over the radio from a (sparsely populated!) ground control center. Perhaps this is a way directors found to avoid issues? Effectively, keep him in solitary confinement? I’ll have to keep an eye out for this in other Kinski-cameos. It’s a very slight piece, not helped by Kinski apparently being dubbed into Italian, though he does manage to deliver his usual disturbing degree of intensity. If he’d been on the ground in Houston for Apollo 13, he could probably have brought the module home by sheer force of will. However, it certainly counts as a film watched in spite, rather than because, of the Kinski content. And yet, despite the qualms expressed above, I don’t feel like it was 90 minutes entirely wasted. The technical aspects and the lead performance were enough to merit appreciation. It’s just a shame they weren’t in the service of a better script.

Dir: Luigi Bazzoni
Star: Florinda Bolkan, Peter McEnery, Nicoletta Elmi, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Primal Impulse, Footprints on the Moon

Deadly Sanctuary (1969)

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Dir: Jess Franco
Star: Romina Power, Maria Rohm, Mercedes McCambridge, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Marquis de Sade: Justine

“Contrary to his reputation, [Klaus] was not difficult to direct. We made seven films together, without any hassle and he was wonderful: friendly, gentle as a child, except, of course, when he got pissed off. This great master didn’t have problems, except with idiots. When a small-time filmmaker told him nothing at all except, “Sit there and smile”, he got angry.”
— Jess Franco

justineKinski is certainly a good choice to play the Marquis de Sade, between those full lips and a sense of overwhelming cruelty lurking not far behind his eyes. So, I was surprised to learn he was actually not the first pick for the role: it was originally supposed to be Orson Welles, who apparently backed out after reading the script. I’m not certain quite what Franco’s thought process was here: I’m hard pushed to think of any character where you’d think, “Well, if we can’t get Orson Welles, what about Klaus Kinski?” Though perhaps surprisingly, this film is only one of a number of connections between Welles and Franco. Back in 1965, Franco was the second-unit director on Welles’s Chimes at Midnight, though they reportedly parted on bad terms, and there are at least two other Franco productions in which Welles was linked to roles, including 1975’s The Man From Guyane, which also had Kinski attached to it. And after Welles’s death, Franco took the footage from his unfinished Don Quixote production and turned it into 1992’s Don Quixote de Orson Welles.

That’s surprising, because – and let me speak frankly here – Franco is one of the most godawful directors in the history of cinema. I know there are those of a cult persuasion who love his work, but the description of him as a European version of Ed Wood is perhaps closer to the mark, albeit an incredibly prolific Ed Wood with a fondness for sleaze, with Franco not infrequently working in hardcore porn. However, given that, this adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine: The Misfortunes of Virtue, is actually relatively tame, with only one (admittedly, fairly extended) sequence exhibiting the sadomasochistic bent which was one of the characteristics in much of Franco’s work. It feels more like a historical romp, though does retain some of the cynicism present in the original, which suggests that the wicked are rewarded, and that a life of virtue is simply a meaningless exercise in self-restraint. It is also true that, the novel itself was relatively restrained by de Sade’s standards of depravity. However, the film does present a softer ending than de Sade’s novel, in which the heroine is struck by lightning and killed.

Truth be told, Klaus doesn’t have much to do – not even a single line of dialogue – since the film is not “about” him, except in the sense that the story occasionally flicks back from the main plot, to the Marquis de Sade (Kinski), scribbling feverishly away in his cell at (supposedly) the Bastille. There, he’s tormented by visions of women, inspiring him to inflict further torments of his heroine as she progresses on her journey through life. She is Justine (Power), who along with her sister, Juliette (Rohm), are being brought up in a convent, though Justine is far closer in temperament and outlook to the nuns than Juliette. Their tranquil to the point of boring life is shattered by the news that their father is bankrupt and their mother dead, a double whammy which leads to both sisters being turfed out on the streets of Paris [albeit a Paris oddly equipped with palm trees] with 100 crowns to their name. Juliette says she knows where they can stay: when this turns out to be a notorious brothel, Justine bails.

This kicks off a series of misadventures which see her arrested as a thief; broken out of jail by notorious murderess Madame Dusbois (McCambridge); forced to become part of a gang; turned into a servant to the wife of a gay aristocrat; forced into becoming the sex slave for an order of depraved monks under Brother Antonin (Jack Palance, apparently drunk throughout filming); re-encounters Madame Dusbois and is turned into an 18th-century stripper; is accused of murder; and, finally, encounters her sister again, who has turned her life of depravity into a position as the mistress to a member of the upper classes. Juliette rescues her sister from a likely trip to the guillotine, thanks to her powerful connections. Justine realizes that all her efforts to be good and do the right thing, have not helped her in the slightest, so she might as well have given into her baser tendencies, and used them to her advantage and pleasure, as Juliette did.

klausmarquisIt certainly looks better than the typical Franco low-budgeter – the price-tag on this one was a million bucks, which is close to $7m in today’s money. However, that appears not to have come without its problems. He had originally cast Rosemary Dexter as Justine, but Hollywood’s Golden Rule – he who has the gold, makes the rules – kicked in, one of the producers insisting on Power (daughter of Tyrone Power) for the leading role. The director reluctantly agreed, with Dexter reduced to a small role, but it’s a choice Franco has repeatedly regretted, comparing Power’s performance unfavorably to that of a window dummy. Personally, I didn’t find her particularly grating: she’s playing a wide-eyed innocent, so her lack of acting experience perhaps works for her in the role. However, in her scenes with McCambridge, it’s definitely clear who is the seasoned actress, and you are left to wonder what might have happened, had Franco been given the same budget without any external interference in casting or production.

But much more irritating for me, is Klaus Kinski being entirely wasted. While, as mentioned above, it’s a great choice, I’d have far preferred to see him play de Sade in something like Quills, peeling away the psyche of one of history’s most notorious figures. Here, his presence is entirely pointless, and you’re left wondering why they bothered to get him at all, for what can only have been a couple of days’ work. It’s certainly not Franco’s worst – I’ve sat through Virgin Among the Living Dead, so can say this with absolute certainty. But there’s not a great deal to commend this to anyone, unless you’re specifically looking for a lukewarm adaptation of de Sade, lightly garnished with Kinski face-pulling.

Killer’s Carnival (1966)

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Dir: Albert Cardiff, Robert Lynn and Sheldon Reynolds
Stsr: Stewart Granger, Pierre Brice, Lex Barker, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Gern hab’ ich die Frauen gekillt, Spies Against the World

I think there’s a good reason the anthology film is more common in genres like horror than the spy field. While you can conjure up scares with a relatively scant amount of storyline, it takes a fair amount of plotting to put together a decent espionage yarn. That certainly seems to be the case here, where the three stories presented are all underdeveloped, little more than trifles where any potential interest is only sketched out in the briefest of terms. It’s like this film is an artist’s impression of three statues, rather than any of them being fully-fledged work in themselves. The wraparound story is also rather dumb. A wanted man (Peter Vogel) takes refuge in the house of a professor (Patton‘s Richard Münch); while waiting for the police who are combing the era to leave, the professor tells three stories of crime and espionage, with the vague moral that crime doesn’t pay. [The way this ends, after the final tale is told, likely will be among the more WTF? twists you’ll have seen]

The first story takes place in Vienna, and is clearly trying to channel The Third Man, right down to the zither-laden soundtrack. After a woman’s journalist brother is killed in a car “accident”, she goes to David Porter (Granger), a grumpy private-eye who initially refuses to help, but eventually agrees after seeing that the woman was apparently trailed to his office. The journalist had been investigating a drugs ring, travelling across Europe to find its leader, and it seems he may have got too close to the truth. Porter pays a visit to the last person shown in the dead writer’s journal before his untimely demise, and discovers that the conclusion that contact was a dead-end is not entirely true. So why would a journalist lie in his own notes to himself? It;s an intriguing idea, but no sooner has it been set up, than it’s resolved, in about two minutes of unconvincing deductive work, because the film needs to gallop on to the second installment.

This is more of a spy caper, and is clearly not intended to be taken seriously, right from the time that the hero, Agent Brice (Brice) gets his instructions in the form of a 7″ single made of spaghetti, which he is instructed to eat after listening to. Though disappointingly, he doesn’t bother to boil the pasta record and serve with a nice carbonara sauce. What a Philistine. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is delivering a package of documents to a specific location, but Brice soon finds the Chico gang are also after the papers, and will stop at nothing to get their hands on them. With no backup to hand, he has to figure out who he can trust, and who is really working for the enemy. If light-hearted in nature, that’s no excuse for being dull as ditch-water, with comic mugging and slapstick replacing anything likely to cause more than a slight twitch at the corner of your mouth.

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The third is perhaps the most interesting, and has the most potential for development, though as with the other two, is severely hampered by having to gallop through the narrative at such a pace as to leave little or no room for character portrayal, atmosphere, etc. It starts in San Francisco with the discovery of two dead women in the ocean; private eye Glenn Cassidy (Barker) investigates, and discovers that they were killed to try and hush up a planned plot to assassinate the Brazilian president during the Rio carnival. He takes the place of the assassin hired for the job, and heads for Brazil to expose the ringleader, who is incredibly cautious with regard to protecting his identity, to the extent of wearing a black hood when he meets with Cassidy. This has some nice action sequences, in particular a roof-top chase involving a Ferris wheel, that has some good stunt-work. It’s the one of the trilogy that I could most easily see being expanded into a full feature, and on this showing, wouldn’t be a bad one.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Klaus. That’s because his appearance is very much of the “blink and you’ll miss it” variety, playing the part of Gomez, one of the leading henchmen to the assassins in the final segment. He has about two scenes, one depicted in the picture above, which takes place overlooking Rio harbor and Sugarloaf mountain – apparently for the sole purpose of proving that the film did actually shoot on location, and not fake it with the aid of some stock Mardi Gras footage. Given the paucity of his role, I suspect the pitch for this went something like, “Fancy a couple of weeks in Rio, Klaus? Just need you for a scene or two.” Can’t say I blame the man for accepting on that basis, though having to wait 87 minutes into the film for him to show up, is certainly going to tax the patience of most Kinski fans.

Random trivia: the German title, Gern hab’ ich die Frauen gekillt, translates as “I am happy to have killed the women,” and is a riff on an operatic aria by Franz Lehar, Gern hab’ ich die Frauen geküsst, “I am happy to have kissed the women.” I only mention this, in the light of Kinski’s presence, because the name and subject of the operetta is Paganini…