Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Jess Franco, R. I. P.

Variety: Jess Franco, the prolific Spanish filmmaker who became renowned for his low-budget cult films, died in Malaga, Spain, of heart complications. He was 82. 

Franco’s feature pic debut came in 1959 with “We Are 18 Years Old,” but the helmer found more mainstream success with 1962′s “The Awful Dr. Orlof,” which received wide distribution Stateside and in Blighty. He is best known for his contributions to the cinema fantastique genre, which veered away from the mainstream and employed supernatural phenomena in otherwise realistic narratives. Notable credits include “Necronomicon,” (1967), “Count Dracula” (1969), “Vampyros Lesbos” (1970), “Dracula vs. Frankenstein” (1971), and “Oasis of the Zombies” (1983).

Hat tip to Todd Mason.

2 comments:

Fred Blosser said...

Is it one or two degrees of separation? In the '90s, I worked with someone who later bankrolled some of Franco's direct-to-video movies. He's listed as a producer on half dozen or so of Franco's DTV movies 1998-2005.

Dan said...

He also put together a bunch of footage and released it on DVD as Orson Welles' DON QUIXOTE