La cripta de las condenadas

While watching this movie I glanced at the time and made a mental note to tell you all to skip the first 23 minutes, that's how enthralled I was.

Two women lie on a rug, one occasionally caresses the other. For 23 minutes.

The music probably means something to the director, but not to me. It was like being stuck in an elevator.

The rest of the movie's scenes consist of two or more women, somewhere, vaguely caressing one-another. Occasionally there's some subtitles about something, occasionally someone talks about hell.

The director and cameraman are clearly fans of the sepia filter on their handicam.

You get much better looking women in a proper softcore flick and much more bang for your buck (if that's what you're after) from porn.

Do yourself a favour, avoid this at all costs.

M

La cripta de las condenadas (2012)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

One of Jess Franco's final films turned out to be this, LA CRIPTA DE LAS CONDENADAS, also known under the title A BAD DAY AT THE CEMETERY. I'm not sure where the title is coming from as there's not a cemetery to be found, at least not in this first part.

This Franco film was broken into two parts and the whole thing clocks in just shy of 150-minutes. This first film runs 70-minutes and starts off with a bizarre woman sitting on the floor looking directly into the camera. As various weird sounds are made on the soundtrack, another woman joins here and they begin to mess around. This here continues and we get other scenes of other women doing the same thing.

Look, you're either a fan of Jess Franco or you're not. I personally love the man but there's no question that he made a lot of really awful movies in his career but that's part of the charm. Some Franco experts say you've never seen a Franco movie until you've seen them all and I personally agree with that. I'm getting closer to the finish line but it does seem as if each movie you watch is just a piece of a bigger puzzle.

With all of that said, how is this film? I personally thought it was pretty bad. As was the case with the majority of his digital era films, there's no plot here as we simply see a bunch of different women flaunt their bodies to the camera. This gets rather boring after a while and with no plot to follow it gets even more aggrevating. Yes, this here is something Franco did throughout the later part of his career but it wasn't entertaining then and it's certainly not entertaining here.

Franco nuts such as myself will still want to check this film out but all others should stay very far away. I really don't see anyone not familiar with the work of Franco being impressed by this thing and especially since there's another movie to go.