Prolific cinematic maverick Jess Franco directed roughly 7,865 movies in his career, so it seems inevitable he would ply his trade with a lil’ film noir… and he sure as shit did! To that end we turn our putrid peepers towards Severin’s release of Franco Noir, a collection of two noir film’s Franco created between 1962 and 1963.
Kicking things off we have 1962’s (or 1964’s… the box says ’62 IMDb says ’64… feel free to let me know) Death Whistles the Blues:
Trafficking sumbitch Vogel (Georges Rollin) sells out his accomplices Castro and Smith (Manuel Alexandre) which results in Castro being ventilated by the boys in blue, and Smith coolin’ his joltin’ jets in prison. Well all things come to pass, and our man Smith finally sees the light of day again… and he is hellbent on settlin’ the score against Vogel, with only a blues tune to herald his coming to lay down an ultimate ass-whippin’!
All manner of double-dealin’ and vicious violence ensue as Smith walks the hard mile that is Revenge Road!
Now, to say “Franco” had a directing style all his own would be a massive understatement (think inexplicable zooms, jaw-dropping levels of female nudity, and an obsession turned to ennui as you can see the bits where ol’ Uncle Jess was thinking about his next movie while filming the current one), but many of his trademarks are absent here (or toned down considerably) which results in a rather straightforward noir experience, competently told… which many times wasn’t always my dude Jess’ strong suit.
One of Franco’s pertinent interests that did find it’s way into Death Whistles the Blues was his love for jazz music and culture which features heavily into many sequences in the film, as it does in our next feature, 1963’s Rififi in the City…
The long and very short of the plot of Rififi in the City goes as follows: in a Central American state (never named in the film), a police stool pigeon, working for one officer Miguel Mora (Fernando Fernán Gómez), is killed while trying to uncover dirt on the crooked-as-all-fuck politician Maurice Leprince (Jean Servais)… who needs no static on the eve of an upcoming election. The only problem is, Leprince’s Rent- A – Thugs begin turning up dead as doornails as well. Who is doing all of this murder biz, and what is their true motivation?
Out of the two features contained on this Blu-ray, Rififi in the City has the most Franco-riffic touches, especially in it’s prolonged, and at times completely surreal musical numbers (and suitably jazzy numbers at that)… and what it lacks in narrative complexity, it more than makes up for in off-beat choices and plenty of noir atmosphere.
Along with the deadly duo mentioned up yonder, this release also contains an over hour long chat with author and Franco scholar Stephen Thrower discussing the film’s at hand and their place in Franco’s oeuvre.
Bottom line: those delightful devils at Severin have brought to light two of Franco’s lesser seen flicks, and that alone should have Franco-fans doing some groovy gyrations to beat the beastly band!
