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Sunday, January 29, 2017

Venus in Furs A.K.A. Paroxismus - Può una morta rivivere per amore?, Schwarzer Engel (1969)

An Italian West German erotic thriller directed by Jesus Franco, starring Klaus Kinski and Dennis Price.
A jazz trumpet player meets a woman who is supposed to be dead. Although he is already in a relationship with the female vocalist of his band, he pursues the new woman and finds that she is involved in fetishistic S&M activities.
This was about what I was expecting as a Jesus Franco film. The plot was unclear, seemingly on purpose. It is only at the very end that the truth of what has been happening is revealed. The characters were on the shallow side, but acted pretty decently. Their dialogue reflected the era and culture with correct use of slang terms. The video featured lots of odd and experimental shots and scenes. This started right from the beginning with the motionless actress smoking and some type of tower in a handheld shot. It continued into the ending climax with heavy color manipulation during a chase scene. There was a scene of the main character running on the beach in slow motion that was very jarring, jerky and looked poor quality. As with most of Franco's films, there was some partial female nudity. The actresses were clearly selected for these scenes. The audio was actually not to shabby. The soundtrack was accurate to time and culture and the dialogue was mostly clear and at a good level in the mix. Overall, be prepared to not know what's going on until the end. I rate this o.k. because it tried some groovy techniques, but could have been produced better.

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