The Films of Jess Franco

Jesús “Jess” Franco (1930-2013) is one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema. His remarkable career spanned more than half a century and produced around two hundred films shot in Spain and across Europe. He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically-charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science-fiction to pornography. Although he made his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic. Franco’s offbeat films command a devoted cult following; they have even developed a mainstream audience in recent years, thanks to their release on DVD and Blu-Ray. To date, however, they have received very little scholarly attention. The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address this neglect, and at the same time to broaden the conversation around the director’s work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike. Arguing that his multifaceted, paradoxical cinema cannot be pinned down by any one single approach, this edited volume—the first dedicated to Franco—features twelve original essays on his movies written from a variety of different perspectives by noted scholars around the world. Ultimately, its aim is to encourage both reassessment of a critically-undervalued filmmaker and recognition of his significant contributions to popular European cinema and culture.