Lorna (Janine Reynaud) is an erotic dancer with a problem: her surrealistic nightclub act, her increasingly vivid nightmares, and her hazy paranoid existence are blurring together into a miasma of sex and violence. Unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, she consults a shrink. In all medical professionalism, he asks her if she is frightened by Dracula? Frankenstein? The Phantom of the Opera? What about Godzilla?

This is Succubus, or as it was known in Europe: Necronomicon, the biggest-budgeted and most successful work by cult director Jess Franco. Of course, by Franco standards, "Big Budget" and "Successful" are relative terms that still refer to off-the-boards marginalia. But if you are a neophyte looking to get into the weird and woolly world of Franco-mania, this is the place to start: if you don't like this, don't bother proceeding any further.

Frustrated by the sorry state of Spanish filmmaking in the 1960s and the punishing degree of Spanish censorship, Franco started to turn to French and German backers for his highly personal and increasingly pornographic thrillers. In 1969, Franco sought support from German producer Karl-Heinz Mannchen, presenting him an 8 page script, based on which Mannchen and Adrian Hoven agreed to put up funds.

This 8 page script is pretty telling. Most movie screenplays run to 100 or 120 pages, sometimes more. The last time a mere 8 pages were used to plot out an entire feature film was back in the silent days, when the likes of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin relied on written scenarios merely as structures for on-the-set inspiration. Substituting surrealistic nightmares for slapstick, Franco follows in that same tradition. The story of Succubus is but a flimsy excuse for a succession of lurid and bizarre images whose power slips loose the moorings of the plot.

What plot there is comes by way of the actual Necronomicon, an ancient heretical text purporting to outline various methods for raising the dead, which survives only in fragments of short stories-dark parables that spoke deeply to the fervid imagination of Jess Franco. Fleshing it out with notions of his own (many of which Franco had been ruminating on in celluloid for years already and which he would continue to grind away at through decades to come), Franco ended up with a sort of nudie version of Fritz Lang's The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. Both films concern mind-controlled women, hypnotized by a hidden mastermind into becoming agents of destruction, who ultimately find the inner strength to turn against their Svengali-like controllers. Howard Vernon, a busy Eurocult star, appears in both films, and at one point (in the loopy tangle of word-association that Franco uses in place of coherent dialogue) the characters pause to indict most of contemporary pop culture as worthless--save for the films of Fritz Lang, singled out above the Rolling Stones as an example of something that endures. The following year, Franco would be hired by the makers of the Mabuse series in Germany to direct an official sequel to Lang's film; for The Revenge of Dr. Mabuse Franco would drag many of Succubus's cast members out to some of the same locations to do it all again, with the Mabuse brand name now officially applied.

Franco's palpable love of Fritz Lang and Orson Welles has always influenced his filmmaking, as has the man's love of erotic comic books. Succubus provided a rare opportunity to indulge these fantasies without fear of censorship, resulting in a movie that feels for all the world like a drunken visit to a Magritte exhibit, with strippers. But if Franco was at last afforded a rare experience of creative autonomy, he was not free from money woes. The Mannchen-Hoven bankroll ran out after a few weeks, forcing the filmmakers to look for new resources. Enter millionaire Pierre Caminicci, who was flown to the set for some wining and dining, and ended up falling for star Janine Reynaud. Her husband Michel Lemoine was obliged to turn a blind eye to this affair for the good of the film (on which he was also employed), while Caminicci happily agreed to pay for everything. But deep pockets always come with strings attached-and Caminicci was not satisfied with the company of Reynaud alone, he also took ownership of the film and supervised its editing without Franco's involvement.

With Caminicci's promotion behind it, Succubus did reasonably well on the grindhouse circuit, with plenty of publicity from men's magazines of the time. It even played at the Berlin Film Festival, where none other than Fritz Lang himself had the chance to see his ideas converted into trippy live action comic books.

Never one to be satisfied with less when more can be had, Franco kept the band together for some extra work. The Mannchen/Hoven/Caminicci/Reynaud/Lemoine/Franco team made two more flicks together, neither of which quite matched Succubus in appeal. And then there was Jack Taylor, making his Franco-debut on Succubus and destined to remain a fixture in Jess's cinema for decades. With his vacant blue eyes and large, open face, Taylor was a blank canvas capable of being cast in almost any role Franco wrote for him-and his bilingualism came in handy as Franco asked Taylor to translate his sudden dialogue inspirations into English for the rest of the cast.

Not that Taylor's translation services were much required on Succubus, a film more concerned with delirious imagery than coherent storytelling. This is the kind of movie where, when a lesbian sex-and-murder scene is called for, opts to depict it primarily with lifeless mannequins standing in for the actresses. This DVD edition replaces a long-out-of-print 1998 disc originally published by Anchor Bay. The new Blue Underground disc substantially upgrades the offering on all fronts, from a new anamorphic transfer to a palette of interviews and behind-the-scenes extras-the best of which is a revealing and nicely photographed conversation with Franco, recorded recently. One curious relic of the older disc remains: an insert card unhelpfully listing the chapter stops of the old pressing on one side, with a reprint of the US release poster on the other.

For more information about Succubus, visit Blue Underground. To order Succubus, go to TCM Shopping.

by David Kalat