Hello, my name is Justin the Cluehr. I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club. And today, we're talking about Jess Franco.

Also known as Jesus Franco. Part one, because...

Part one. We've never done this before, Justin.

We've never done this before. But we've also never discussed a filmmaker who has 200-plus feature film credits.

Wow.

And so if you don't know who Jess Franco is, how would you describe him, Will?

Jess Franco is kind of the ultimate Euro-Trash O'Tour.

He is a Schlockmeister, has many fans, but is still quite disreputable, and he's somebody

for whom the act of creation was more important than any one film. You know, there are certain

filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, say, who have a very clear filmography where you've got,

you know, 12 movies. Each one is lovingly handcrafted and much thought about perfect object.

Then you have Jess Franco who made 12 movies in a year, some of them incomplete, some of them, which would be repurposed into other movies.

And he would use the same story themes, the same plots, the same character names,

and movie to movie. He adapted Marquis de Sade's pleasures in the boudoir like five times.

And Justine, you know, probably five times as well. The same actors, the same ideas. You know,

there's an enormous amount of sameness to his movies.

And yet, as Tim Lucas, a video watchdog, once said,

you cannot really understand Jess Franco without seeing all of his movies.

And you can never see all of his movies,

which I think is what's magical about people that get obsessed with his work.

Now, Jess Franco was somebody who was an acquired taste for me. Because he didn't give you the stuff that you wanted. It's not a perfect filmography. So, you know, you can pick one at random and you'll think, what's the big deal? And then, you know, if you're interested in exploitation movies, you will inevitably see several Just Franco movies. And then you'll see another one. you'll think, I don't get it. Why does this guy have fans? Then you'll see another one. And then maybe another one that's like, oh, wait a minute. And then you'll get drawn in. When I got into like Euro trash, Jess Franco offered me something that was different than Lucho Fulte because Fulci, it was just right up there, right?

...