Necronomicon – Geträumte Sünden

Before the Spanish cult director Jess Franco reinvented himself in the 1970s as the Jesús of radically obsessive trash cinema, he made a series of more respectable productions. As Franco's first work outside of Spain, Necronomicon became a transitional film that defined the intermediate realm of both career phases: already as surreal as the avant-garde low-budget ecstasies of his somnambulistic exploitation cinema, but still with greater show values. The aesthetics of modern comics, especially those of Guido Crepax, were an inspiration, and fans of the film included Fritz Lang and Anatole Litvak (said Franco). The “story” about an S/M artist with murderous visions and dwarves distributing LSD remains an opaque web of dreams, but one that prances along with great artistic ambitions (Gulda soundtrack, elegant sequences of images in glistening Mediterranean sunlight). (C.H.)

Image: Austrian Film Museum