Sanskrit Read to a Pony: A World Without Lou Reed

A Sunday morning ago I awoke to my usual routine.  The alarm went off and I quickly silenced it as not to disturb my wife Kelley, who usually sleeps a bit later than I do.  Our dogs, Molly and Maizie, excitedly scurried around my feet as I put on the pajamas that always inevitably get kicked off during the night.  After a quick stop in the restroom, the three of us head downstairs where I let them take care of their business outside and then we all rush to my cat Mazzy's room, where he is anxiously awaiting, as he knows our morning arrival signals his breakfast time.  I flip the coffee on, feed the animals and then pick out some music.  My selection this past Sunday was my well-worn, but much-loved, autographed copy of Lou Reed's LP The Blue Mask, the very same copy my father had brought home for me more than twenty years ago from a trip to New York.  With the first cup of coffee poured I flipped my turntable on, dropped the switch, and waited for the opening moments of "My House" to fill the room but nothing happened.  I tried again but the needle strangely wouldn't drop and just remained in its resting position.  Frustrated, I manually picked the needle up and dropped it on the still shiny black vinyl but the sound coming out of the speaker was foreign to me...draggy...not right.  I verified the speed was at 33 1/3 and tried again but got the same result.  After a couple more attempts I gave up, figuring the belt needed replacing, even though when I tried again later in the day it played perfectly. 

A life is filled with Sunday mornings.  I have been thinking of a number of them these past few torturous days like the Sunday in the fall of 1987 when I found a copy of Lou Reed's Growing Up in Public in my father's record collection.  I was fifteen and within the span of just under forty minutes my life was forever changed.  It's funny, as many truly defining moments can happen without a person realizing it but I knew instantaneously.  I had found the voice I had been looking for...the meaning.  I had found the voice that I knew would be there from that day on and I knew I would never really be alone again. 

Kelley came down about an hour after I got up this most recent Sunday morning.  We quickly got ready to go out to get some final supplies we needed for the Halloween party we were having that evening.  I was feeling pretty rough due to an emergency root canal I had had the day before and I took some prescribed pain medicine to help forgot how uncomfortable I was.  We got back in the early part of the afternoon from the store and, as we were unpacking the groceries, I noticed I had a message on my phone.  Opening the notifications tab I saw it was a Facebook message from my friend John Levy.  Without opening the full message all I could see was "Hey Jeremy, I'm sorry to report that Lou Reed has..."  I didn't have to open the message to see the rest.  Stunned and feeling sick I made my way over to the steps next to our door and fell against them.  The tears didn't come immediately although I would have preferred them to the terrible feeling that surged through my entire body.  Our little dog Maizie sensed that something was wrong and came up to check on me.  I grasped on to her and whispered, "my voice is gone" and then the tears came...

The first time I ever got my heart broken came on a Sunday morning as well.  Getting your heart broke by an unrequited love is a necessary part of  growing up.  The first time I ever had my heart truly fractured came around the winter of 1992 when I was rejected by a very special young lady who had been my best friend for the better part of a couple of years at that point.  There is something really dramatic about being in love in your late teens and I was, of course, convinced the world would end.  After the Saturday night rejection I had made my way to my friend Trace's house as the sun rose on an extremely cold and snowy Evansville, Indiana morning.  The snow was beautiful, the roads were treacherous and a cassette dub of The Blue Mask, with Coney Island Baby on the flipside, kept me warm physically and spiritually that morning.  Before we lost touch for a painful spell in the mid nineties (due to a fall off the planet earth that I took) Lou Reed was able to offer some solace to her as well, on another Sunday morning, when I sent her the lyrics to "Magic and Loss" to help her deal with the passing of one of her grandparents.  On Sunday she was one of the first people to send me some much needed words of sorrow with, "I thought of you immediately. I can't believe he's gone."  I got similar messages from many friends throughout the week, all of which were greatly appreciated.

I did my best to put on my own personal blue mask during our Halloween party, as the last thing I wanted to do was ruin it for Kelley.  I had originally planned to dress as the mom from Psycho but changed my mind and attempted to morph myself into Candy Darling as my own internal tribute to Lou and a time that now seemed more far away than ever.  I laughed, I socialized and I watched Kelley's friends make their way in all through the night...all of them much prettier and younger than I.  I wondered what they thought of me, as the seven hour Halloween mix I had spent the week before creating played in the background.  I couldn't hear it though, I could just hear Lou's voice in the distance but instead of having a Peter Laughner type breakdown I maintained my cool and somehow even managed to enjoy myself even though I dreaded waking the next morning.

Years before I stopped speaking to nearly everyone I had loved, and that had loved me, I would spend many a Sunday morning with friends and lovers.  Late Saturday nights that bled into those mornings have been filing in and out of my brain all week.  An impossibly late night with my friend Ryan listening to different versions of "Heroin" in his basement room with his father occasionally interrupting wanting to know what we were doing.  A Sunday morning in 1994 spent with my most corrosive and passionate partner Shayna making love and listening to the Live in Berlin bootleg I had picked up the day before at a local Bloomington, Indiana record shop walking distance from her place.  Introducing Take No Prisoners to my friend Dave, who just recently recalled a bit of his favorite between song banter to me again all these years later, and seeing Lou for the first time live with my oldest friend Kimbre.  Memory after memory of hundreds of Sunday mornings have been coming back to me starring so many people from my past, a number of whom got in touch with me this week via phone-calls, texts and emails making sure I was okay. 

It was indeed all those incredibly kind messages that I have gotten throughout the week, from people (some of whom I have never even met) who recognized that this wasn't just another celebrity passing for me.  Lou Reed was family, the brother I never had, the best friend who I didn't let go of, the voice that helped me through every crisis (small and major) I have faced in my adult life.  For the past quarter of a century the knowledge that there would be more lyrics and music from him to help get me through the most difficult nights, and darkest days, has always been there.  Now that knowledge is gone and I don't know what to do.  What am I going to do without Lou Reed?  That thought has plagued and troubled me all week.  One friend noted that the music and words will always be there to offer their help and support but the idea that there won't be more coming, that the voice I have depended on for so long has been silenced, is absolutely devastating to me.  I still haven't been able to process the news of Lou Reed's passing.  I recall the story that Jerry Schilling told about Brian Wilson's reaction to Elvis Presley dying.  "What do we do now? I don't know what to do."  I know I am not the only one feeling that way right now. 

The world has felt and looked strange since Sunday October 27th.  Feelings of anger and despair have mixed with a strong sense of gratitude and love the past few days.  I feel different, dazed and not sure what my next move should be.  I am grateful for Kelley, and our little furry family, and I am grateful for the memories...grateful for all those Sundays since that fateful day more than 25 years ago when I first discovered the artist who would have the greatest impact of any on my life.  Lou Reed blew open my mind and introduced me to artistic, cultural and spiritual worlds I had never known of before.  Attempting to imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't discovered and fell completely in love with his work is not only impossible but also unthinkable.  The Jeremy Richey I am today simply wouldn't exist...I wouldn't be married to Kelley, there would be no Moon in the Gutter, I wouldn't have the memories and friends that I do...none of it would be the same.  More than likely I would have become that middle class conforming douchebag I have always hated and, while I ultimately might not be worth a damn, I can at least look myself in the mirror each day with the knowledge that I am still, deep-down, that transformed 15 year old kid in Indiana discovering and embracing a world I found in the dusty grooves of a cut-out record my father had buried in his collection. 

 

 

I wish I could write a proper tribute to Lou Reed but I am just not capable right now.  I loved this man so much and his work meant everything to me.  I honestly thought he would never die...at least not in my lifetime.  If there is an "over there" then I hope Lou has seen all of the incredible tributes that have been pouring out of people he touched, all over the world, and I hope that he can feel all of the love.  We have lost the most important figure in popular American music since Elvis Presley and one of our finest poets.  I, and many other folks around the world, have lost a friend, mentor and spiritual guide.  Lou Reed taught us to see the light and we can all take some comfort in the thought that while the source is gone the reflection can still be found in the people touched by him. 

 

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

 

Dedicated to Laurie Anderson and my Father.

A Long Line of Crosses: Sergio Garrone's HANGING FOR DJANGO

While he never gained the notoriety of many of his peers, director Sergio Garrone carved out a most interesting place in Italian Cinema history with just over a dozen films that spanned the late part of the sixties up into the early eighties.  A more prolific writer than director, Garrone's career behind the camera didn't begin until he was already in his forties.  He established himself, almost immediately, as both a filmmaker to watch and as a unapologetic trend-hopper in 1966 with his directorial debut, the Italian Western "Se vuoi vivere... spara" (If You Want to Live...Shoot). 

From the get-go, Garrone's films had an strangely surreal and oddly oppressive feel about them.  His filmmaking touches were wonderfully rough around the edges but there were striking signs of finesse and style.  In his best films, such as 1969's "Django il bastardo" (Django the Bastard), 1974's "Le amanti del mostro" (Lover of the Monster) and his infamous S.S. Camp movies of the late seventies, Garrone created  frenzied hallucinatory works that still sets him apart from more recognizable genre giants.  Simultaneously jarring and oddly poetic, Garrone's best moments behind the camera had an urgency that stood with some of the finest Italian exploitation works of the seventies.  One of Garrone's key, if little-seen works, 1969's Una lunga fila di croci (Hanging for Django) is getting ready to make its Blu-Ray premiere here in the states via a fine edition from Raro Video and Kino Lorber. 
Operating as both a seriously sympathetic portrait to the plight of Mexican Immigrants in the old west as well as a deliriously violent exploitation picture with an absolutely dizzying number of gunfights throughout, Hanging for Django is one of Sergio Garrone's more striking and, relatively speaking, sedate works.  While not as nightmarish as the more well-known Django the Bastard, nor as off the chain as his later Naziploitation films, Hanging for Django still casts its own very distinctive spell.  Featuring a number of beloved genre icons, including Anthony Steffen, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Mariangela Giordano and a terrific William Berger (who delivers one of his best screen-performances as a bounty hunter preacher named Murdoch) Hanging for Django might not stand with the best European Westerns ever made but it has a number of great moments that will surely delight fans of the genre. 
While the cast alone would have assured that Hanging for Django was a fully-loaded production the real stars of the show are editors Cesare Bianchini and Marcello Malvestito, whose superlative cutting work here is unbelievably creative and consistently surprising.  The duo's wildly audacious editing services Garrone's off-kilter, and often unexpected, angles and framing incredibly well.  Hanging for Django suffers at times, due to a rather pedestrian script from Garrone (centered an admittedly intriguing premise) and a clearly lower than needed budget that hampers a number of interior sequences, but it is a good film and its return is very welcome. 
Bianchini and Malvestito aren't the only great behind the scenes artistic duo fuelling Hanging for Django as strong words of praise must go to cinematographer Franco Villa (who would shoot a number of the seventies great Italian genre films) and the legendary Aristide Massaccesi (Joe D'Amato) whose work here as a camera operator is extraordinarily ballsy (check the incredible mid-film gunfight where D'Amato expertly (and literally) flips the camera to match the action creating one of the most exhilarating moments I have seen in some time. 
Hanging for Django is ultimately a good film made up of a number of truly great moments (Berger's eerie introduction is particularly mesmerizing) but it never quite reaches the excellence of the finest European westerns of the period.  The pros far outweigh the cons though and I would recommend it without reservation to even casual fans of the genre.
Raro's new Blu-ray is absolutely beautiful.  The print is immaculate and both the English Dub and Italian language track are wonderfully preserved and presented.  The excellent quality of the disc perhaps, at times, makes the films low-budget a bit more transparent than it needs to be but Raro and Kino have done an impressive job here.  Two extras are available with the first being a small unattributed booklet and the second being a featurette entitled "Bounty Killer for a Massacre", which is in reality a 2007 fifteen minute chat with author and film historian Manlio Gomarasca.  The disc will be released later this month and can be ordered at the links above, at Amazon or at any number of your preferred retailers. 

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

Happy October!!!

 

HAPPY OCTOBER EVERYONE!  Here's to a frightfully awesome month!

Remake/Remodel

I am currently in the process of giving Moon in the Gutter a much needed upgrade.  This will include changing the look of the blog, updating the links sections and ironing out a few other kinks.  This will be a work in progress but I hope to get the majority done this week and then get some new posts rolling out.  Thanks for your patience and continued support!

Keep a Look Out For...

I wanted to take a moment and share some information about some upcoming releases I am very excited about. 

First up, my friend and past Moon in the Gutter Q&A participant Jill Nelson is working on an exciting new book entitled 1976:  Tapes From California and she has just started a new blog dedicated to it.  Jill is one of my favorite writers and is a terrific person so please give a visit to her new blog and support her upcoming book. 

Next up we have the much anticipated re-release of David Hess' incredible soundtrack to Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. I have just pre-ordered the limited to 1000 CD and can't wait to hear it.  Here is the link for American readers and a different one for International followers. 

Back to the bookshelf, legendary actress Seka is getting ready to release her sure to be essential autobiography Inside Seka.  I am expecting my copy from Amazon next week and look forward to covering the book here after I read it.  Here is the Amazon link for those interested, as well as a recent New York Daily News article on it. 

On the DVD and Blu-ray front.  Severin Films has some amazing new releases coming up including a special edition of one of my favorites House on Straw Hill and a limited edition package dedicated to Jess Franco's The Hot Nights of Linda.

Kino Redemption continue their incredibly valuable Mario Bava collection with two key films just released on DVD and Blu-ray, A Bay of Blood and Five Dolls for an August Moon. Both discs look incredible and contain essential Tim Lucas commentary tracks. 

Two of my favorite bands, Goldfrapp and Mazzy Star, return this month.  Both releases are a major cause for celebration. 

Finally the great Kathleen Hanna has recently resurrected her band Julie Ruin and the new EP is a real jaw dropper.  Visit their site here and give a listen. 

A New Project and the Return of an Old Friend

After about a year of being totally burned out and exhausted I have started to feel like I am back in business as the summer is drawing to a close.  I have several writing projects I have been working on (more details soon) and I am feeling reenergized, reorganized and revitalized personally, professionally and spiritually.  To capitalize on this I recently started a new project and am restarted an older one. 
First up we have the long gestating Jean Rollin Forum, a message board I recently created to go along with my Rollin blog Fascination.  Two weeks in and we already have over a dozen members and a number of great conversations going.  If you are interested in Rollin please visit the board and send me a membership request to access all of the forums. 
Also, I have just relaunched Harry Moseby Confidential, my tribute to the figures, films, sights and sounds of the seventies!  Consider this Moseby 2.0 as I am expanding it to include not just the seventies but the fifteen year period between 1968 and 1983, probably my favorite stretch of time in popular culture. 
So, pay me a visit to both places and Let's Rock Again!

Into the Black: Jess Franco's THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962)

It's one of the most brilliant and shocking openings in horror film history.  As we are greeted with the first flickering of celluloid we see a seemingly abandoned alley only visibly lit by a lantern in the foreground.  The black and white photography is immediately jolting and that, combined with the deadening silence on the soundtrack, makes us think we are perhaps watching an expressionistic film from the silent era.  As the camera begins to pan down to the street we suddenly hear a the sound of a woman singing and the first strains of the film's audacious and dissonant jazz score.  A lady of the night comes into frame as the camera pans down even more.  She is holding a purse in one hand and a wine bottle in the other and she is clearly intoxicated.  She sings, and even twirls, as she stumbles down the street to a door as the camera lingers and the music on the soundtrack gets progressively more percussive, more intense.  The credits begin to roll as she opens her door...L'Horrible Docteur Orlof or The Awful Dr. Orlof depending on which version you are watching.  What an utterly bizarre title that is and yet even before we are even a minute into the film it seems to capture the sheer oddness of everything that is beginning to play out in front of our eyes.  The woman makes her way into her flat but our eyes are left on the alley, once again seemingly abandoned, as the credits continue to roll.  After a moment the camera begins to slowly pan up the side of the building and we notice the first edit in the film and it is almost a subliminal one.  A light appears in the window and BOOM edit number 2 but this one is jolting...even harsh.  We are suddenly in the woman's apartment and the dark oppressive lighting outside has been transformed into something brighter but somehow even more menacing.  The woman continues to sing and stumbles around her room as the camera quickly pulls back, its stillness replaced by a sudden frenzy.  She takes yet another drink and is then momentarily entranced by her own reflection in a mirror.  The music takes on a brief eerie stillness as our unnamed heroine shuffles to her closet where, upon opening, she is greeted by a truly horrifying sight as the soundtrack swells into a deafening shriek.  Another jolting cut, a zoom-in on a man in the closet, his eyes bulging and lifeless.  Is he wearing a mask or is he horribly disfigured?  We only get a glance before another cut, this time a close-up of our female victim before another edit takes us back into the room where we witness a brutal attack.  A fight ensues, the man pushes the woman towards her window and then we are suddenly back to our spot on the street looking up.  The edits then take on a frenzied rapid fire approach cross-cutting rapidly between the fight, a shocked boy staring out of his apartment window and a man awakened by the sounds of his neighbor screaming.  We see the lamp in her apartment knocked over in the scuffle as the as of yet unnamed assailant renders her unconscious and carries her possibly lifeless body out of her apartment back to our abandoned alleyway.  Our attacker wanders aimlessly down the alley way until the sound of cane tapping against a nearby wall alerts him to follow.  We see a stranger in the distance waiting and then leading this mysterious monster, and our doomed lady, down another isolated alley way into the deep dark black of the night. 

 

 

While Gritos en la noche, or The Awful Dr. Orlof as it is more universally recognized, wasn't the first film that Jesus Franco Manera had directed it was the work that would forcefully announce him as one of the most daring and distinctive filmmakers of the sound era.  Viewed now more than fifty years after its original 1962 release date The Awful Dr. Orlof stills feels as perverse and shocking as ever.  While it is much more controlled and subtle, mostly due to the rigid censorship that was in place in the early sixties, than Franco's most personal later works it remains one of the most progressive horror films ever made.  As Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs would write in their indispensable Immoral Tales, "there was nothing old hat about this dank masterpiece, it pulsed with a new freshness, ransacking the annals of cinema with a deviant vigor."

 

 

I must admit that I have never felt the remaining portion of The Awful Dr. Orlof ever quite matches the absolute genius that is on display during its opening few minutes.  Aspects of the film have a certain procedural quality that I don't completely respond to but there is no question that it is one of the most important films in Jess Franco's unbelievably prolific career and one of the most important films of the sixties.  While actors Howard Vernon, Diana Lorys and Richard Valle (so unforgettable as the monstrous Morpho) all give star-making turns my favorite aspects of the production remain Franco's daring direction (which transcends the film's incredibly low-budget and chaotic shooting schedule in every shot), the incredible black and white photography of Godofredo Pacheco (which manages to tip its hat to decades old classics while being totally transgressive) and the ferocious cutting of editor Alfonso Santacana (who would put many of the skills he had learned working with Franco to iconic use a couple of years down the road for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars).  Despite its budget, and forgiving some continuity errors that were caused by the varying versions of the film prepared, The Awful Dr. Orlof is an incredibly well-made and effective film.  It remains perhaps the easiest, and most natural, entry-way into the world of Jess Franco even though ultimately I think he would perfect many of the films themes and stylistic touches in later works. 

 

 

The Awful Dr. Orlof has recently been released as a splendid special edition DVD and Blu-ray by Redemption/Kino Lorber.  Containing the more explicit French-language cut (with the English dub offered as a separate audio-track) this newly struck print of The Awful Dr. Orlof looks quite good.  Some print damage is apparent throughout the film but I have never seen a version of this work that is visually as detailed and intoxicating.  Like their other most recent Franco releases (A Virgin Among the Living Dead and Nightmares Come at Night) The Awful Dr. Orlof comes armed with some really splendid extras including a David Gregory directed and Elijah Drenner produced interview with the much-missed Franco and a terrific new near 20 minute documentary on the film from director Daniel Gouyette.  A trailer for the film, and other Franco titles, is also on hand as well as a photo gallery and the very moving Gouyette work Homage to Jess that also graces the other new Franco releases.  Last but certainly not least we have a wonderful new Tim Lucas audio-commentary, that is a wonderfully detailed and an essential listen for fans of the film, Franco and horror-cinema in general.  If I have one complaint about this new special edition release of The Awful Dr. Orlof it is that it doesn't contain the longer alternate Spanish version that is mentioned numerous times on the film's supplements.  Otherwise this is a stellar new release and a major upgrade for an undeniably important film. 

 

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

 

 

My Look at Michel Lemoine's Seven Women for Satan at Mondo Macabro

I was recently invited to submit a piece for Mondo Macabro's great blog focused on one of their past releases.  I chose Michel Lemoine's terrific 1976 feature Seven Women for Satan and my look at the film is now available to read for those interested.  Thanks to Jared over at Mondo for asking me!

Into the Ether with Jess Franco's A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD

Among the finest creations found in the lengthy filmography of late Spanish auteur Jesús Franco Manera, and one of the most startling films of the seventies, A Virgin Among the Living Dead makes its Blu-ray debut this month via a terrific special edition from Kino Lorber/Redemption. 
While I have often picked A Virgin Among the Living Dead as my absolute favorite Franco film I came to the work later than most of his others I first encountered through grey market VHS copies throughout the nineties.  For whatever reason, A Virgin Among the Living Dead wasn't among the Midnight Video or Video Search of Miami tapes, that Tim Lucas mentions on his tremendous new commentary track, that either me or my movie buddy Dave ordered back in the day.  While I had read much about this film I didn't finally get a chance to see any version of it until just over a decade ago when it first made its way to DVD as part of Image's Euroshock line. 
I fell in love with Franco's hypnotic 1973 masterpiece during that first viewing in my late twenties.  Watching it that first time I felt like I was, in a way, collapsing into the film and all these years (and viewings) later it still mesmerizes me in a way that few fantastic works of art do.  It's a remarkably meditative work that is as compelling as it is strange and as surreal as it is oddly grounded. 
Pulsing with a soothing narcotic feel punctuated at nearly every turn by Bruno Nicolai's absolutely gorgeous score, A Virgin Among the Living Dead is an incredibly singular experience.  While it was marketed both as a horror and sexploitation film during its various theatrical runs, A Virgin Among the Living Dead is very much one of the great European Art Films.  It's breathtaking in both its thematic scope and its punctuated brevity and it has a striking emotional core that is sadly missing from most modern 'genre' films.  A Virgin Among the Living Dead is among the richest and most rewarding films in Jess Franco's canon as well as being one of the most fully realized, a fact that is made all the more remarkable when one considers just how consistently tampered with the film was through the years. 
Redemption's excellent new DVD and Blu-ray offers up A Virgin Among the Living Dead under the title Christina, Princess of Eroticism, the 79 minute cut of the film which is the closest we have to Franco's preferred version of one of his greatest works.  The disc also offers the infamous 'horror' version, as an extra, featuring all of the padded out Zombie footage French filmmaker Jean Rollin shot years later, which I wrote a bit about here at my Rollin blog.  The new disc also offers up some extremely strange 'alternate erotic footage' featuring Alice Arno, that would have been just as out of place in Franco's soulful work as Rollin's undead were.  While Christina, Princess of Eroticism is extremely close to Franco's original cut, it shouldn't be forgotten that A Virgin Among the Living Dead is still a compromised work, a sad fact that points to how much Franco had to work against throughout his combative career. 
I am hesitant to write too much about A Virgin Among the Living Dead as it really is a work of art that needs to be experienced and I don't want to spoil anything for readers who might not have seen it before.  I will say that it has a number of images and moments that even if I had only seen once would have eternally stuck with me.  If I am ever asked what it is that I love so much about this particular period of esoteric European filmmaking A Virgin Among the Living Dead is one of the key works I would point to.   More importantly it is one of the pictures I would suggest to less adventurous film fans who still think of Jess Franco as a lesser, or even poor, filmmaker.  I defy anyone to watch this film and not be impressed by the amount of passion, skill and thought that can be found in each frame. 
Redemption's new discs offer up the best looking print of the film to date.  While it is noticeably more grainy and scratchy than Image's older DVD it has a much more consistently vibrant and warmer feel throughout.  Skin-tones are much more natural, the day for night shots more sinister and the new disc has finally just a more cinematic look about it.  To go along with this struck from negative print we have three audio tracks; the preferred French, the atrocious English dub and the aforementioned Lucas commentary, which is among the best he has ever done. 
Along with the alternate version and footage I mentioned earlier, Redemption's new discs have several other extremely valuable extras including trailers, a photo gallery and one of the final filmed interviews with Franco by David Gregory and Elijah Drenner.  Best of all are two featurettes from former Jean Rollin assistant Daniel Gouyette, The Three Faces of Christina (which chronicles the various different versions) and Jess! What are You Doing Now? (an incredibly moving tribute featuring friends and collaborators conjecturing on Franco's role in the great beyond).  All in all Redemption's new release of one of Jess Franco's key films is an absolute knock-out in every way and one of their best releases so far and can now be ordered from Kino, Diabolik and Amazon.

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-