... Franco's finest film as revealed by the Film Scientist

Succubus is a blur of the surreal and erotic unlike anything you've ever seen. It made Jess Franco famous in both Europe and America. He went on to direct every kind of sexploitation film, but none ever matched the popularity or genius of this 1969 shocker. Among the most prolific filmmakers of all time, Franco's sprawling body of work is a catalog of his obsessions, ranging from bondage and assorted sexual perversion pieces to occult-steeped psychological horror to cynical (but solid) genre exercises: splatter flicks, spy thrillers, even women-in-prison and Fu Manchu movies. Succubus is undeniably a diamond in the rough when compared to most of Franco's other films, though he knew as few others how to make entertaining sleaze.

The wildly inconsistent quality and focus of Franco's work help him defy categorization, but it does have a distinctly Spanish quality -- it bears the mark of both the surrealist masters, Bunuel and Dali -- and a jazzy, hyperliterate feel. Juxtaposing high- and low-art references, he weaves a dizzying, disorienting context for the fetishized expressionism of his characters and plot that's always shifting, hypnotic and delirious. Allegedly "adapted" from the Necronomicon, Succubus also plunders Wilde, Capote, Cortazar, and Heine with one hand, Bosch, Godzilla, and the Universal movie monsters of the 30s with the other. "Could it all be a mystique that has enclosed us in a masquerade, or a cruel illusion, who knows?" asks Adrian Hoven (Castle of the Creeping Flesh) in a moment that sets the movie's tone; this indeterminacy is a fundamental component of Franco's, and Succubus's, cool.

Janine Reynaud stars as Lorna, a sexy dominatrix who acts out disturbing s-m for a leering public. Franco keeps you guessing about her true nature. At times she seems playful, even affectionate; the love scenes with her boyfriend/manager, Bill (Jack Taylor) are actually sweet. Bill seems to exert some control over her until he takes her to a wild LSD party straight out of La Dolce Vita. Here Lorna meets her new improved Svengali, a strange man with weird, unfocused eyes (Michael Lemoine) who appears to hypnotize her. He turns out to be a demon, and transforms her from swinger to succubus -- a 'devil on earth' who gathers souls for him. A lot of stylish eroticized violence is the happy result.

Converted character actor and Franco regular Howard Vernon makes a brief but memorable pair of appearances as a magician who speaks in riddles, first under a rain of stabs from Lorna's cruel blade, later in a casket she and Bill stumble on in a church. Her surprise upon finding him seems genuine. In another great scene she takes a beautiful blond to a castle to fool around. After some kissing, though, Lorna beats her to death with a statue. As she flees, a gang of mannequins comes to life, hobbling across the floor to block her exit with a creepy, convincingly animate rhythm. It's a terrific visual in a movie full of them, as Lorna desperately runs from the mounting evidence, both real and hallucinated, that she has a murderous alter ego.

Succubus has the feel of an opium or fever dream. The cinematography is lush, moving back and forth between vaporous, shrouded mystery and glowing, hyperlucid sheen; standard soft-focus lens and hand-held shots (particularly footage of the Lisbon setting as seen through a car window) produce some of these effects, but other scenes (most notably the "fish tank love scene") seem derived solely from Franco's twisted aesthetic/obsessional vision. More kinetic and dynamic than the lingering, expressly voyeuristic style that marked his films of the 70s, Succubus is full of ideas on a visual level compared to the later stuff. You could say Jess shot his whole wad with Succubus -- but what a wad it was!

The bulk of Jess Franco is definitely hack work. But over the years, with fluctuating budgets and bad ideas in mind, he made some fine movies. Succubus is one of Franco's rare class acts. Even compared to the 20 or so films considered his best, it holds its own, not just as a great piece of trash, but as a genuinely seductive visual experience. It sets the standard for surreal eroticism, never bettered in the thirty years since its release.