Sola ante el terror

The lacklustre mash-up of ¨The Sinister Eyes of Dr Orloff¨ but with short budget , little enthusiasm and lousily paced. Dealing with Melissa , she was a child (brunette Flavia Mayans , Antonio's daughter) she witnessed the murder of her father (Antonio Mayans) by unknown assailants . In his dying breath, his head bleeding and bashed in, he beseeches her to revenge him, then falls into her lap and leaves an eternal bloody stain , while she's in process of psychoplasmosis . Somehow Melissa got it in her head, that her father is still able to speak to her, and he wants her to punish those responsible for his death. Grown-up Melissa (Lina Romay, Jesús Franco's wife) is a paralysed woman who is being taken care of by her two aunts sisters (Mabel Escaño, Carmen Carrión) who want to take her inheritance . Here a blonde wigged Lina Romay is being haunted by visions of her dead father, so much so that she eventually just snaps.

This low-budgeted film contains lots of odd details , thrills , chills , intrigue , brief nudism and several murders, but it is all very subdued . It's an embarrassing film directed by prolific filmmaker Jess Frank and also produced by his own production company , Manacoa Films, and he uses his usual marks such as zooms , foreground on objects , filmmaking in ¨do-it-yourself effort¨ style or DIY and managing to work extraordinarily quickly, but here lacks the languid textual beauty and the atmosphere of otherwordly depravity of his better 70s and 80s films. A psychological slasher movie but the flick even lacks nudity and sleaziness enough , typical Franco characteristics, but in true '80s Jess fashion it is stripped down to its core. It results to be a mostly de-sexualized mixture of Franco themes , botchery and mainly claustrophobic scenes. Stars the regular Lina Romay as Melissa whose father was mysteriously killed when she was still a child and nowadays she seeks vengeance. And involving Antonio Mayans as the undead father and other Franco's regulars , such as : Mabel Escaño , Carmen Carrión, Mary Carmen Nieto and Ricardo Palacios who starred Jess Frank's ¨The Blood of Fu Manchu¨.

Mediocre cinematography by Juan Soler filmed on location in Alicante where Jess Frank lived , however , being faded by the odd colouring of the old VHS, I would like to see this get remastered on blu-ray. It contains anticlimatic musical score composed by his usual composer Daniel White . A sleepy horror movie with no much interest and badly made by Jesús Franco. He often used a lot of pseudonyms , among the aliases he used, apart from the names Jess Franco or Franco Manera, were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford Brown, David Khune , Toni Falt, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, David Tough , among others. In many of the more than 180 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer, cinematographer and editor. Jesús's influence has been notable all over Europe . Jess was a Stajanovist, restless writer, producer, director who realized over 200 pictures. His career spans over 50 years with a few successes and lots of flops, making all. From his huge body of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless directors of Spanish cinema and often releasing several titles at the same time. Many of his films have had problems in getting released, and others have been made directly for video. More than once his staunchest supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one or more of his older films. Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when most of his colleagues tried to please the government administration. He broke up with all that and got the independence he was seeking and getting , at times great eye for composition. He was a hard-working filmmaker, directing a lot of ridiculous movies. However, making some acceptable films , such as : ¨We are 18 years old¨, ¨The awful Dr Orloff¨, ¨The Bloody Judge¨ , ¨Count Dracula¨, ¨99 women¨, ¨Parxismus, ¨The Blood of Fumanchu¨, ¨Faceless¨ and a few others. He always went upstream in an ephemeral industry that fed opportunists and curbed the activity of many professionals. But time doesn't pass in vain, and Jesus' production diminished since the 90s , but he went on working untin his death .

This minor thriller by Jess Franco is not really very badly-made but it is uninspired, dull and hence uninteresting. A young guitarist playing an English-language serenade to the main protagonist, a crippled young girl, fails to add anticipated tenderness and feels awkward. Only Carmen Dion is really good as the sinister antagonist and some clever close-ups reveal her acting ability thru just the 'looks' in her face. One curiosity is that the child-Melissa of the flashbacks has black hair but grown-up Melissa (played by Lina Romay her blonde period) is blond! Perhaps it was indeed Katja Bienart who was slated to star in this movie as she is top-billed in original theatrical posters and the video box but doesn't appear in the movie... If she had played Melissa, the movie might have had something going worth watching. But the way it is, SOLA ANTE EL TERROR is only for the Jess Franco completist. No wonder the movie was shelved for three years after its production waiting for release.

For me, one of the compelling, lesser known genre features shot during Franco's latter-day Alicante period is Sola ante terror (Alone Against Terror). Alone Against Terror's relative obscurity is due in large part to its unavailability, rather than the quality of filmmaking, which in this pleasing instance is remarkably more sophisticated than one may think! This low-budget, captivatingly lurid psychodrama centres around the increasingly ignominious plight of fragile, mentally traumatized invalid Melissa (Lina Romay). Witnessing the grisly death throes of her beloved father (Antonio Mayans)traumatizes her so severely she is rendered comatose with shock. Paralysed, Melissa becomes bed bound, begrudgingly nursed to adulthood by her boozy, prototypically wicked, evilly inheritance-coveting stepmother.

The main strengths of Franco's hysteria-laden thriller reside in the charismatically tweaked protagonists and welcome generosity of sublime eccentricity! Oppressively confined to her bedroom, forced to listen to her stepmother, and her equally degenerated sister's hedonistic carousing, Melissa's nightmares become ever more intense. Melissa's precarious grip on reality fatefully shattered by the haunting apparition of her gruesome-looking father demanding that she revenge his brutal murder! As always, Lina Romay's energised performance is exemplary, watching the tragic, disarmingly angelic, Melissa righteously dispatch her villainous in-laws proves enormously edifying! 'Sola ante terror' is professionally shot, has a fine score, a sympathetic heroine, and the sordid, Sangria-sotted sister's antics have a deliciously camp, Almodovar-like quality!

With more than 200 movies written and directed, the resume of Jésus Franco is without a doubt one of the most prolific and impressive ones to find here on IMDb. Of course, once you deep-dive into Franco's repertoire, it quickly becomes less astounding. I'll be the first person to admit that Jésus "Jess" Franco made a handful of great movies ("Bloody Moon", "Faceless", "Night of the Skull", "The Sadist Baron Von Klaus", "Diabolical Dr. Z"), but for every half-decent effort he has made a dozen of terrible and downright insufferable films.

Another one of Franco's trick to reach such impressive numbers was constantly recycling his own previous movies by adding extra (XXX-)footage or via remakes. There exist three versions of "The Sadist of Notre Dame", for instance, and this "Alone Against Terror" is basically just a bottom-of-the-barrel remake of Jess' 1973 movie "The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff". Oh, and don't get me started on the "Orloff" franchise! Franco never stopped exploiting the lead character's name of his first successful movie. "Alone against Terror" has nothing to do with the original "The Awful Dr. Orloff", but even here there is even a doctor named Orloff. Actually, he is named Orgaff. And if he's really a doctor, he should urgently prescribe himself a diet.

In "Alone against Terror", Franco's partner and muse Rina Romay puts on a ridiculous blond wig in a desperate attempt to look 20 years old. She stars as the mentally traumatized Melissa, who watched her beloved father die at young age and has been paralyzed from the shock ever since. One night, daddy starts reaching out to Melissa in her dreams and instructs her to murder the people who so cowardly killed him. Daddy gives Melissa the power to walk again and leads her to her victims, but they - surprise, surprise - turn out to be her beloved family members.

This inconspicuous and by-the-numbers early 80s Franco effort is mediocre and completely unmemorable, but at least it never angered me like some of his other movies did. "Alone against Terror" is never boring, it's not stuffed with pointless padding footage or irrelevant porn, and the supportive cast - notably Carmen Carrión and Mabel Escaño - give good performances as the greedy and wicked aunts.