Rating: NR
Run Time: 95 minutes
Director: Jesus
Franco
Starring: Howard
Vernon, Hugo Blanco, Gogo Rojo
I am becoming a bit
of a Jess Franco apologist. El Conde Dracula was, despite what others might
think, certainly not the worst
thing I have ever seen, and some bits were actually good. And here with The Sadistic
Baron Von Klaus, is a second Franco film worth watching for its
own sake. The movie is an odd mix of gothic ghost story and serial murder
mystery that holds one's interest and generally provides an ultimately
satisfying conclusion. And, very interestingly, in the compelling
opinion of Matthew Saliba, this just might be the first giallo, the story and
direction by a Spaniard one full year before Mario Bava’s The Girl Who
Knew Too Much.
The movie begins
in the local village bar, where a bunch of guitar-playing pipe smokers (or,
pipe-smoking guitar players, if you prefer) are swaying and singing the most
outrageously ridiculous yet thematically-related song ever, being sung by the
owner of the bar as they all sway back and forth in time to the tune.
Personally, my image of guitar players who smoke is
of Keith Richards or Jimmy Page, guitar and cigarette slung low from hip and
lip, not a bunch of French-speaking “Austrians” singing a song written by a
jazz-loving Spaniard…to each his own.
The song foreshadows
the tale we next hear from the village ragman and his diminutive sidekick,
Hanzel and Theo (or maybe it's Theo and Hanzel, I really don't remember) as
they ply it on the psychiatrist, Kallman (Angel Menendez) who is in town
to hear some of the local legends and folklore. It speaks of a
horrid 17th century
nobleman, Baron Von Klaus, whose castle overshadows the township. Well,
of course the castle overshadows the town! Just as in any half-way
respectable Hammer gothic, the castle always overshadows the town in these
movies. Anyway, this awful man kidnapped, tortured and killed young girls
for years before he was finally hunted down in the swamps of his own land and
presumably drowned. The father of one of his victims placed a curse on
the baron that doomed the evil man to return to haunt the village, compelled
to commit even more atrocities over the years. Now, for a
sadistic killer, this seems like a good thing, not a curse, but whatever.
Over the years, the
evil soul of the original baron has continued to plague his ancestors,
even so far as to possess some of the later barons in order to continue his
signature killings. There were a series of such murders approximately
fifty years ago, in the youth of the ragman, and he believes the killings are
beginning again. There have already been found the mutilated bodies of
two young girls. Another signature of the baron's return is that the
wild winds and even wilder animals from the hills descend to ravage the village
along with the resurrected baron, who is described as either a spirit
possessing his descendants or an actual ghost who rises from the depths of
the swamps of his own land…take your pick (this element was confusing,
although, at the end, it does seem like a little bit of both going on).
Next, we see that the
two junkmen have discovered yet a third corpse on the ice one morning. We
hear the wild winds and then we see ungodly evidence of the wild animals who
will unleash their unholy depredations on the town…two little bunnies who are
scampering down the slope; my blood runs cold even as I write these
words. At the scene later is a tall newsman, Karl Steiner (Fernando
Delgado) who is apparently known to the chief inspector, Borowsky (George
Rollin). From the back and forth banter of the dialogue, it would
appear the two share a friendly adversarial relationship and
that each genuinely likes the other. Together, these two will men
will eventually work to solve the crimes.
First, however, we
are introduced to the latest baron, Max Von Klaus. We see first a
sinister-looking photo of him, then a sinister portrait of him, and then the
very sinister him himself, played by the sinister-looking Howard Vernon.
He is at the bedside of his sister, Elisa Von Klaus (Maria Frances). She
is dying and wishes to warn off her son, both regarding the family curse and
her suspicions regarding her brother (who she tells him is the spitting image
of the former barons; so that portrait is actually of a former
baron…hmmm). The son, Ludvig (Hugo Blanco), arrives in town with his
fiancé, Karine (Paula Martel) just before his mom expires. She has
her time alone with him and gives him the key to the original baron’s basement
torture chamber. She then tells him to get the hell out of town. These
seem contradictory pieces of advice: go look at your ancestor’s cool setup
downstairs; but then you better get the fuck out of here. Another
thing that bugged me about this scene: this kid is apparently the only
sonofabitch within a thousand miles who has not already heard of the legend of
his own damned family.
The killings
continue, committed by, not a ghost, but a black–gloved man in a
trench coat. The remainder of the movie is concerned with elucidating the
why and the who. And indeed, who? I won't tell. But it is
useful to point out its similarity to the giallo, which, although
they certainly refined and defined the genre, the Italians may not
have originated after all. Almost all the tropes are present:
1) it's a murder mystery
involving multiple/serial murders; 2) there is a black-gloved, hooded, trench-coated
killer who uses a sharp-edged weapon; 3) the mystery is solved by a duo comprised of a detective
(hard-nosed and practical) and reporter (more adventurous in his thinking &
a foreign to the town); 4) there is a psycho-sexual
motive for the killings (as if there were ever anything else but); 5)
there are red herrings galore. We could probably go on. Let's
not.
The film is frankly
fascinating in several other ways, as well. At some point in the story,
that psychiatrist from earlier in the film provides a very good early
definition of the sexual sadist who kills for pleasure and enjoys the
suffering of his victim. He also correctly points out that when the
killer is not frenzied or in crisis, he may appear outwardly perfectly
normal. These are surely theories about the psychology of the serial
murderer that could not have been widely known, if at all, in the early
1960s. It would be close to another twenty years before the F.B.I.'s
Behavioral Sciences Unit would begin to popularize these ideas such that
they began appearing in mainstream popular fiction like, say, Thomas
Harris's Red Dragon. Yet here it
is in a movie from 1962.
Similar to this idea
of there being a psychological motivation (sexual cruelty) for the killer's
actions is the point Bodorowsky makes to Steiner early in the movie,
telling the reporter that people always think the killer is a murderous or
vengeful ghost or monster, yet in the end the murderer is found to be all too
human; this is to me an interesting point to make in a particular sort of film
that, together with Psycho and Peeping Tom from two years earlier, marks
the move away from the supernatural and toward the psychological motivation for
the killings in horror films. Let us always keep in mind
what the giallo and its European counterparts birthed in the United
States and Canada a few years later.
Who is the
killer? I won't tell. I recommend you watch the movie. I
think perhaps its historical significance has been subsumed by others of its
ilk that are no less important but which are not necessarily any
more so.
LAST THINGS:
Cons
Franco’s use of jazz
music in a horror film is jarringly inappropriate to me. He uses it even
during attack scenes…
Why the does the
killer torture and mutilate his victims, then fully clothe them again? So
they don’t get cold?
Why would the baron
use a false name at the bar?; every last character we even peripherally meet
knows the Von Klaus legend; surely everybody knows what the
fucker looks like.
Pros
Midway in the movie
is a scene where the fiancé, Karine, who is in her bedroom in the castle,
is terrified by a series of loud noises; you may note its similarity to another
more famous supernatural movie released a year after this one.
Cribbing? Perhaps...
The chase scenes in
the streets at night are pretty well-done, genuinely creepy and suspenseful.
There is a very
atmospheric and tension-filled hunt for the killer, torch-wielding mob in
the cemetery and everything…good lighting and appropriately eerie music.
Gogo Rojo plays the
sexy barmaid, Margaret, who very suggestively and conspicuously sways her
butt every time we see her. Rojo was a vedette, trained in her
country of origin, Argentina. A vedette is a female singer/entertainer
(akin to a hybrid of the cabaret entertainer and showgirl) who has been trained
in Latin-tinged singing, dancing, and/or acting.
Beautiful scenery,
good compositions…the script is intelligent and has some poetic language in
it…the last shot of everyone entering their cars and driving off as the camera
pans up and the piano music crescendos is well-done.
Interesting
Chronology Screw-up
Someone says the
killings first started with the original baron in the 17th century. Someone else says the
crimes first occurred over five hundred years ago. Assuming both were
true and using a mean of 1650 AD for the 17th century, that would make the movie a
science fiction tale set in around 2150 AD. This is the kinda thing that
older films never seemed to really give a shit about.
The Horror Inkwell Rating: 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment