Venus in Furs

REVIEW
Trying to navigate your way through the filmography of ultra-prolific Spanish-born exploitation auteur Jess Franco can be a daunting task: still active today, the 74-year-old director has been responsible for almost two hundred feature films, dating back to his 1959 directorial debut. Franco worked in all possible genres – horror, action, comedy, et al, but with a particular emphasis on the erotic film in all of its various manifestations – and there are those committed auteurists who insist that every one of his films is worth seeing to have the proper overview of his career…but, aside from the fact that Franco has been responsible for some pretty dreadful work, the time constraints involved in such an endeavor are prohibitive for all but the most diehard Franco-phile. But Venus in Furs, the director’s trippy 1969 dream-poem of sado-masochism, sexual obsession, and memorably dated dialogue, is easily among Franco’s top five achievements as a filmmaker, and is also a perfect introduction to his unique oeuvre (other Franco faves like The Female Vampire and A Virgin Among the Living Dead would likely prove more difficult for Franco novices).

A genuinely haunting and eerie thriller that fuses the visual texture of late-60s Euro-chic erotic cinema with the plotting and fatalist tone of film noir, Venus (which Franco prefers to call Black Angel; the film was retitled by its producers) centers around James Darren as jazz trumpeter Jimmy Logan, who falls in love with the mysterious Wanda (Maria Rohm), an enigmatic blonde with a strange connection to three wealthy jetsetters who continue to appear in Wanda’s life (Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee, Dennis Price). While Jimmy’s long-suffering part-time-girlfriend Rita (Barbara McNair) tries to help him distinguish reality from fantasy, Jimmy becomes more deeply entangled in Wanda’s world – but is Wanda from this world, or another? And what is her connection to the three swingers who seem so enthralled by her?

Featuring an unforgettable (for better or worse, really unforgettable) title theme and an excellent jazz score by Manfred Mann, Venus in Furs is not just one of Franco’s slickest films, but also one of his most accomplished and evocative; some Franco fans tend to prefer the more technically polished work, even if it happens to be among the director’s dullest (e.g. Love Letters of a Portugese Nun), but Venus is every bit as distinctive and visionary as Franco’s more threadbare personal films. Easily one of this controversial director’s best films (to date?), Venus in Furs is not only perfect as an introduction to his exhausting filmography, but it’s pretty essential viewing for anyone interested in 1960s and 70s European genre cinema. Highly recommended.