Endless Re-View: Jess Franco in Video Watchdog and Eyeball

As one of the most celebrated and well-represented exploitation and cult auteurs, Jess Franco’s work has been regularly covered in many a fanzine devoted to horror across the world. Some film commentators have returned repeatedly and compulsively to his films, among them Tim Lucas since the first issue of his Video Watchdog, in which he discussed in auterist terms ‘How to Read a Franco Film’, and Stephen Thrower from the pages of the magazine Eyeball (1989-1998), and, more recently in his Murderous Passions. The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco (2015), the first of two volumes to provide a completist approach to Franco’s filmography. This chapter focuses on discursive constructions and fan-canonizations of Franco as an exploitation and cult auteur in Anglo-American contexts of reception and consumption since the late 1980s to the present date. An examination of two localized cult responses, Video Watchdog and Eyeball, is presented vis-à-vis Franco’s own responses to these critical constructions and Franco’s very own (and on-going) process of strategic investment in auterism and cultism.