Made at a time when exploitation films could occasionally cross over to the art film market or dabble in visual or narrative experimentation that would be unthinkable now, Venus in Furs (1969, aka Paroxismus) is that rarity, a hypnotic, dreamlike tale that merges elements of a softcore grindhouse feature with avant-garde techniques and a touch of the surreal. At the center of the elliptical storyline is Jimmy Logan (James Darren), a trumpet player in an Istanbul jazz venue who witnesses the sadistic rape-murder of Wanda (Maria Rohm) by a decadent trio of thrill seekers - Ahmed (Klaus Kinski), Percival (Dennis Price) and Olga (Margaret Lee). Haunted by his memory of the incident, the musician flees to Rio where he begins a relationship with Rita (Barbara McNair), a nightclub singer, but soon his attention shifts to a mysterious woman who is a dead ringer for the murdered Wanda. Is she the same person? Has she returned from the dead for revenge? Jimmy becomes increasingly obsessed with Wanda but she appears to have a secret agenda that emerges slowly during the course of the unearthly narrative.

Originally inspired by a conversation director Jess Franco had with jazz musician Chet Baker, Venus in Furs (which bears little relation to the famous Leopold von Sacher-Masoch novel except for the title) was first designed as "an unusual love story between a black trumpeter and a beautiful white girl." Franco, who was a musician and jazz aficionado himself, intended to model the male protagonist on Miles Davis but the American producers that the director was dependent on for a wider distribution nixed the idea, telling him "The American public are not ready to see a black man and a white woman in bed." They were fine, however, with the reverse situation and so Franco reworked the story, eventually casting James Darren in the lead. Darren was looking to broaden his range after a stint as a pop singer and teen pinup in such beach pictures as For Those Who Think Young [1964], all three Gidget films [1959-1963] and the sci-fi TV series The Time Tunnel [1966-1967]. Yet, Venus in Furs would remain an intriguing anomaly in his career as he would concentrate solely on television series such as T.J. Hooker after this.

Much more interesting is Venus in Furs's real attraction, Maria Rohm, and the eclectic supporting cast that includes Barbara McNair, Klaus Kinski, Dennis Price, Margaret Lee, Paul Muller (a regular fixture in Franco films) and British musician Manfred Mann and his band (including Mike Hugg) which provides the lively jazz-influenced score, some of it performed on screen by the band, where it becomes part of the film's trippy sound design. Rohm had appeared in several of Franco's films before but mostly in decorative parts that highlighted her exotic beauty. Venus in Furs provides her with her first challenging role, one that requires her to be both seductive and menacing in equal parts and she rises to the task, creating an enigmatic femme fatale who haunts the dreams of not just Jimmy but probably those of every male and possibly female viewer. Her first appearance in the film as the reincarnated Wanda, dressed in a white fur coat and high heels with nothing on beneath it except her silver stockings, is hard to forget.

Lesbianism, S&M, voyeurism, groovy fashions, literary references and decadent jet set parties that seem like a hangover from Fellini's La Dolce Vita [1960] - Venus in Furs has something for everyone. The colorful locales of Istanbul, Barcelona and Rio provide additional eye candy and the film occasionally breaks from its drug-induced state to stage a bizarre happening like the scene where Wanda and Olga are making out in the middle of a soiree, surrounded by hipsters who start painting their bodies and showering them with feathers. Don't you miss the sixties?

Despite some budgetary restraints, a constant problem with Franco, the director had relative freedom to do what he wanted on Venus in Furs and was relatively pleased with the result, even if the distributors changed his original title from Black Angel and altered his preferred ending. And of the countless films that Franco has made - more than 150 features under various pseudonyms such as Clifford Brown, David Khunne and Joan Almirall - Venus in Furs is considered by most of his fans and even some critics as one of his most accomplished features. It's not flawless, of course, and some will take issue with the often ludicrous, deadpan voice-over narration by Darren, an overuse of some once stylistic devices of the late 60s/early 70s such as the zoom lens, and the often uneven mixture of stock footage with new material. At the same time, these qualities which were often necessitated by the meager budget, help lend the movie an almost experimental, freeform tone.

In assessing the film in The Video Watchdog Book, Franco devotee Tim Lucas wrote, "The beauty of this film - a kind of inverted telling of The Bride Wore Black [1968], influenced by Antonioni's Blow-Up [1966]- is that it makes little narrative sense, while making perfect emotional sense. What better purpose can film serve? The fetishistic images come to a boil with a hot, obsessive jazz score....as Darren narrates the hallucinations with lines like "Man, it was a wild scene, but if they wanted to go that route, it was their bag!" These Sixties-isms only make the experience more appealingly distorted, a haunting, virtually unique fantasy."

Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Director: Jesus Franco
Screenplay: Milo G. Cuccia, Carlo Fadda, Jesus Franco, Bruno Leder, Malvin Wald
Cinematography: Angelo Lotti
Special Effects: Howard A. Anderson
Music: Mike Hugg, Manfred Mann, Stu Phillips (uncredited)
Film Editing: Henry Batista, Michael Pozen, Nicholas Wentworth
Cast: James Darren (Jimmy Logan), Barbara McNair (Rita), Maria Rohm (Wanda Reed), Klaus Kinski (Ahmed Kortobawi), Dennis Price (Percival Kapp), Margaret Lee (Olga), Adolfo Lastretti (Inspector Kaplan), Paul Muller (Hermann).
C-86m.

by Jeff Stafford