Jesús Franco

Who was Joe D'Amato aka. Aristide Massaccesi? A genius of horror in the USA, a master of eroticism in France, the king of porn in Italy. A man with a thousand pseudonyms capable of making over 200 films while simultaneously holding the roles of producer, director, author, director of photography and even camera operator. An artisan of cinema as he liked to call himself, capable of working on all film genres. From spaghetti western to post-atomic, decamerotic to glossy eroticism, and blockbuster porn to bloody horror. Guided by the aesthetics of extremes and supported by an undeniable technical ability, Joe D’Amato pushed himself, and the viewer, beyond all limits following with dedication three rigid principles that have become his stylistic code: Amaze, Shock, Scandalize.

Spain, 1975. Franco's death opens the door to the possibility of uncensored cinema. After two years of relaxed censorship, it is abolished in 1977, and the “S” rating is created to protect viewers from films that may “offend their sensibilities.”

In the late sixties, Spanish cinema began to produce a huge amount of horror genre films: international markets were opened, the production was continuous, a small star-system was created, as well as a solid group of specialized directors. Although foreign trends were imitated, Spanish horror offered a particular approach to sex, blood and violence. It was an extremely unusual artistic movement in Franco's Spain.

An in-depth analysis of the "Video Nasty" scandal of the early 1980s in Britain.

Cult director Jess Franco recalls the making of his adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula starring Christopher Lee.

Jess Franco and Christopher Lee discuss their 1970 collaboration, The Bloody Judge.

A man is on safari in the jungle with his wife and daughter when the wife gets eaten and the daughter is captured by cannibals. Several years later he goes back to see if his daughter is still alive.

Soon after newlyweds Olga and Michel set foot on the grounds of a notorious women's prison, they're arrested by topless guards and ushered behind bars where the warden quickly dismisses Michel but demands that Olga do a little time.

After being released from a mental asylum, a disfigured man becomes obsessed with a student at his sister’s boarding school while grappling with his dark past.

After the fall of the Third Reich, all Nazi SS officers ran away in Latin American countries. There they created special laboratories to crate beautiful women for satisfaction of their guards' sexual desires. The main warden in this prison is a cruel woman. Their main plan is to revenge for defeat of Nazi's Germany.

A venereal disease turns an entire town of two-timing mothers into cannibals!

The son of the infamous Dr. Orloff clashes with his father when he begins to stalk and dismember prostitutes to get parts to reanimate his dead mother.

Princess Obongo, the Goddess of Unspeakable Lust, uses dark powers to ensnare a hapless couple of yuppies, so that she can imbue them with evil and conquer the world.

A telepathic nightclub act becomes the backdrop for murder.

Agents across the globe take turns spying on and double-crossing one another in an attempt to locate a valuable formula encrypted in the music code.

Adult film actresses get abducted and impregnated by aliens after appearing in a sci-fi porno. Knocked up with high-powered extraterrestrial sperm that allows them to conceive and give birth in a matter of seconds, the starlets become human breeding machines for a race of ultra-horny invaders.

Al Pereira is hired by Lina, the wife of a wealthy man, to recover some compromising photos. She has sex with him by way of a retainer. In the course of his investigation, Al is obliged to commit a couple of murders... and he's left holding the bag when Lina turns out not to be what she seems to be.

A faithful adaptation of the classic tale portrays Dracula as an old man who grows younger whenever he dines on the blood of young maidens.

An erotic horror tale about a vixen vampiress seducing and killing women to appease her insatiable thirst for female blood.

A mute noblewoman's vampiric heritage compels her to drain the life force from all of her lovers.

The story opens with Celestine eluding arrest with a friend as the police raid a brothel. While hiding out in the hayloft of the Count de la Braquette's estate, she meets the hayseed handyman Sébastien and the butler Malou, who reward her favors with the offer of employment. In a manner recalling Terence Stamp's effect on the household in TEOREMA, Celestine's open and relaxed attitude toward sexuality has a transformative effect on the isolated, moribund inhabitants of the mansion, imbuing them with gift of renewed life for the men and women alike, that remains even after a third act twist that forces her to betray them.

A young woman is lured to an island paradise, where she is drawn into a dark world of pleasure, pain, and murder under the control of a sinister figure.

A young woman feigns illness in order to infiltrate a mental hospital, where she investigates the disappearance of her sister, a former patient. Meanwhile, the hospital warden and her attendants abuse and torture their charges, forcing them to star in cheap skinflicks.

Twenty years after seducing a businessman, a demonic temptress lays claim to the man's daughter.

A girl arrives from London to visit her estranged relatives in a remote castle for the reading of her father's will. After a while she discovers that they are all in fact dead and her decision to live with them turns into a nightmare. Unable to leave she's drawn into a macabre underworld through visions of nude satanic rituals and her own impending sacrifice.

A vengeful widow seduces and murders the men and women responsible for her husband’s suicide.

Eugenie, a beautiful but shy young girl, lives with her stepfather, a famous writer specializing in stories of erotica. One day she happens to read one of his "erotic" books and its power so affects her that begins to find herself sexually attracted to her stepfather. He notices this, and eventually brings her into his dark world of sexual perversion and murder.

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

A nightclub singer is haunted by the ghost of her late father. The dead man summons her through a mirror, forcing her to commit a series of violent crimes.

A disturbed priest, who witness an occult ritual, thinks the people are possessed and start a private inquisition to exorcise the demons by torturing them to death.

Luisa is called to the bed of her dying mother Edith at Karlstein Castle. Before she dies, she tells Luisa that the Karlsteins are a family of vampires and that her ancestor, the original Count Karlstein, lies buried in the crypt. Afterwards, Luisa goes and finds the count's coffin and discovers that he is undead. As she takes Karine, her cousin as her lover, a police inspector, Ptuschko investigates a series of killings around the town, dismissing the locals who insist these are being caused by vampires.

A mineral is discovered which can turn metal to gold or humans into zombies. When the mineral is stolen, secret agents are sent in to get the mineral back!

A London slasher pack the suitcases of his victims before stabbing them to death in this adaptation of Edgar Wallace's 'Secret of the Black Suitcases.'

After the death of Victor Frankenstein, two figures vie for control of his monster and the radical technology that created him: the scientist's daughter, and an immortal wizard assisted by a blind bird-woman with an unquenchable thirst for blood.

After Lord Archibald Marion is brutally murdered by an unknown assailant, his bitter and feuding family members gather for a reading of the will, setting into motion an increasingly chilling series of deaths when their arrival is marked by a second grisly killing.

Dr. Mabuse and his accomplices steal all kinds of attributes from a National Research Institute (including female staff members) in order to complete his own evil mind-control ray. Dr. Mabuse has this impressive and horribly scarred man-monster that kills for him while the entire police force desperately tries to catch him.

A deadly look into the savage world of gangsters. The aftermath of a holdup turns into a game of deceit and doublecross. A vengeful woman brings about the destruction of the entire gang of ruthless killers.

A lovely summer day in Paris. Roger and Martine are on their way to work. "Work" is a euphemism because Martine is a prostitute in Pigalle. She is saving money to buy the house of her dreams in the country. Her husband Roger "works" for the same goal, but in a brothel for women. There, duchesses rub elbows with businesswomen, militant members of women's lib and other female pleasure-seekers.

A private eye who's over his head in debt takes on a job snapping photos of his client's rich husband in bed with another woman. But when the husband winds up with three bullet holes that seem to have come from the private eye's own gun, he's got to prove he's not the murderer meanwhile getting tangled deeper in a web of deceit, lies, and steamy night club dancers!

Amid the craggy, dusty hills of southern France, a woman screams in the night. Gorgeous Melissa Comfort, a wealthy heiress confined to a wheelchair since birth, cries out in her nightmares, terrified of a dream that comes night after night. In this night terror, she's 10-years-old. Running from a man who may or may not be her father.

Jesus Franco directs and stars in this cut-copy-and-paste-version of one of his own movies. Here, he plays a mad priest going around killing sinful people in the name of God, all while trying to get a book published.

A small-time hood brings the attention of the law with an insurance scam and diamond theft, but things become even more interesting when his moll murders him and is slammed behind bars where she faces all manner of electric shock treatments to various parts of her anatomy

Maria, an unfortunate young woman, kills her rapist father in self-defense, and is later tried, sentenced, and shipped off to a woman's penitentiary where she and her fellow inmates are subjected to psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of a psychotic lesbian warden.

A plane leaving the turmoil of a South American country in the midst of a revolution crash-lands in the Amazon jungle in Brazil. Among the passengers are a corrupt banker who is smuggling diamonds out of the country, a reporter, a mysterious beauty and a shady flight attendant. The survivors find themselves up against not only the dangers of the jungle itself but a band of headhunters and a gang of revolutionaries who are looking for the smuggled diamonds.

Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.

Female prisoners endure the horrors of drug abuse, prostitution and rampant sadism at an island prison. When an escape attempt goes awry, the fugitives discover that escaping can be as dangerous as remaining in the prison.

In his remote jungle hideout, the evil Fu Manchu and his sadistic daughter Lin Tang have discovered a deadly venom that affects only men. Using mind control Fu Manchu recruits six women to become carriers of the 'kiss of death' targeting key people of political influence. This will prevent them from interfering with his own ambition to spread his venomous death around the World's major cities in a plan to gain World domination.

Dr. Orlof, a former prison doctor, abducts beautiful women from nightclubs to use their skin to repair his daughter's fire-scarred face. He is assisted by Morpho, a deformed monstrosity who delights in biting his victims. Orlof had better hurry, though -- a young police inspector and his ballerina girlfriend are onto his sadistic practices.

Sumuru, the beautiful leader of the all-female kingdom of Femina, plans to use her women to take over the world.

The evil mastermind Fu Manchu plots his latest scheme to basically freeze over the Earth's oceans with his diabolical new device. Opposing him is his arch-nemesis, Interpol's very British Nayland Smith.

Lorna Green is a performer at a Lisbon nightclub who performs fictionalized acts that involve erotically charged sadomasochistic murders. As she begins to suffer violent, surreal nightmares, she starts to believe that she may be under mind control by a man who may be Satan incarnate.

An American secret agent is sent to Europe to track down a ring of counterfeiters. His investigation takes him from Rome to Albania, where he gets involved with a sexy Albanian police commissioner.

A dead musician’s widow seeks revenge against the gun trafficker who betrayed them.

After a jazz musician finds a woman's corpse washed up on the beach and remembers that he witnessed her murder at a party the previous night, a woman who bears a strong resemblance to her begins to exact revenge on the murderers.

Al Pereira, a wise-cracking superspy, investigates a series of assassinations being performed by ruthless killers with bronze skin and horn-rimmed glasses. The trail of these mindless automata leads him to the lair of a seductive villainess who has formulated a computer-powered plot to overthrow the governments of Europe. 'Cartes sur table' is at once an homage to classical Hollywood thrillers and a playful riff on the newly-popular James Bond films.

Al Pereira, a wise-cracking superspy, investigates a series of assassinations being performed by ruthless killers with bronze skin and horn-rimmed glasses. The trail of these mindless automata leads him to the lair of a seductive villainess who has formulated a computer-powered plot to overthrow the governments of Europe. 'Cartes sur table' is at once an homage to classical Hollywood thrillers and a playful riff on the newly-popular James Bond films.

A mad scientist creates a hideous monster to carry out his murderous plans...

On an island somewhere in the Caribbean a professor is experimenting with mankind. Meanwhile, The Red Lips are moonlighting on a striptease world tour, but as soon as they hit the stage, the girls are up to their pasties in stiffs, Satanists and Sapphic sadists, all after the professor's secret formula for human clones!

A woman seeks to avenge her father's death using a local dancer, with long poisonous fingernails, to do her bidding.

Based on the famous book by Jules Verne the movie follows Phileas Fogg on his journey around the world. Which has to be completed within 80 days, a very short period for those days.