Jasper-18

It's a shame that most people here seem to have seen a cut version of this film, because the actual original is absolutely beautiful, and belies the criticism that Franco was a complete hack. It is a perfect example of what can be achieved in the horror genre with an almost zero budget in what was probably the director's busiest period. However most people seem to have seen the US release print, which also circulated on video in the UK in the 80's under the title of `The Invisible Dead'. This film was marketed as being a successor to Fulci's `Zombi', and basically was padded out with scenes from Jean Rollin's `Lake of Zombies' (shot almost 10 years after Franco's original film) and had all nudity removed.

There is another version which circulated with hardcore black mass footage featuring Franco regular Alice Arno and a host of stunt doubles for Vernon, Nichols and von Blanc.

The only video release of the original film at present is on Redemption, featuring a couple of nude mass scenes, some lesbian vampire sucking, a bizarre scene where Christina knocks over a giant phallus and an effectively hypnotic score from Bruno Nicolai. The UK version is missing the rather graphic rape scene present in the Benelux versions.

Christina von Blanc never unfortunately appeared in any other Franco films – in fact only appeared in a couple of others including the giallo `L'Etrusco uccide ancora'. The delightful pairing of Britt Nichols and Anne Libert occurs again in his bizarre `Erotic Rites of Frankenstein' and `Les Demons', amongst other films of the period. If you are interested in Franco, this is one of his best of the period, very atmospheric and deserves to be seen in its original version.

One of the disadvantages of being an Englishman living in Amsterdam, of course, is that the linguistic barriers impose some pretty severe limitations on ones cinematic diet. However, given that the choice between watching films like this and the likes of the 'The Phantom Menace' would have yielded the same conclusion whatever language it was to be viewed in, I am pleased to say that my embryonic graspings of the Dutch language were sufficient to cope in this particular case. Whether this can be put down to simplistic subtitling, the succinct approach to dialogue of Russian films, or director Alexei Balabanov's grasp of the fact that in the hypothetically visual culture of cinema, actions speak louder than words, is debatable. Whatever; I came, I saw, and I enjoyed.

Director Alexei Balabanov, whose 1997 debut was 'Brother' ('Brat'), has here created a fascinating tale around the subject of pornography in turn of the century St Petersberg. Johann (Sergei Makovetsky), a purveyor of salacious erotic autochromes of staged flagellation scenes, along with assistant Victor, worms his way into the lives of two noble families, drawing adopted Mongolian conjoined twins Kolja and Tolja and the delicately beautiful Lisa (Dinara Drukarova) into his enterprise as subjects for his short erotic films.

From the early blue-tinted scenes detailing the birth and background of the twins, set to a soundtrack all but silent save for the presence of hisses and scratches, to the vivid invocation of a feverish preoccupation with all things sexual welling beneath the austere trappings of the Russian bourgeoisie, Balabanov lyrically invokes the spirit of the times. 'Of Freaks and Men' is nothing if it is not beautiful and evocative, crisply photographed in monochrome by cinematographer Sergei Astakhov. There is dark quirky humour here, and a host of eccentric periphery characters, from the lustily compliant serving maid, to a blind wife, and Johann's snaggle-toothed henchman. Visually the film is consistently rich and fascinating.

The premise, of course, is guaranteed to offend the more conservative of viewers. The numerous whipping scenes as well as the portrayal of Johann's treatment of the twins are sure to prove distasteful to those approaching with a more polically correct viewpoint, though the studied art direction and period stylistic veneer distances the viewer to some extent. This, after all is a film about the origins of pornography, and it is not really pornographic in itself. It also touches on a fear of technology (in this case, the emerging medium of cinema), and how that new technology can either empower or enslave. Despite the rather flaccid denouement, and at times seeming slightly overblown in its characterisation of Johann (whose dominance is more usually manifested by means of a handgun rather than a camera), the intriguingly original premise and stunning sepia-toned cinematography should prove ample reward for the curious viewer. After all, there are not a lot of Russian films getting shown over here at the moment.

Like Kevin Smith and Neil LaBute, Doug Liman struck gold with his first film, 'Swingers', a distinctive low-budget comedy which came from out of nowhere. Similar to the other two director's second features ('Mallrats' and 'Your Friends and Neighbours' respectively), 'Go' retains the same style, and indeed increases it, but lacks the heart. 'Swingers' was very much an actor's film, scripted by its lead, John Favreau, so was more concerned with character development. Given the subtle dig at Tarantino in that film, it is somewhat ironic that John August's script for this one should adopt the same portmanteau approach as 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Four Rooms', with it's three stories occurring over the same night, whose main threads all combine to share the same conclusion.

Los Angeles club culture is the focus of this film, and the atmosphere is admirably conjured up, with a frenetic editing style in the first half (Nathan Bexton's Ecstasy trip is pretty well handled cinematically) and a pumping score. There's some sparkling dialogue and funny scenes, but nothing here is as consistently funny as 'Swingers'. The main problem here is that, like 'Pulp Fiction', the film suffers from a decidedly random narrative. It's one thing keeping an audience guessing what is about to happen, but the stringing together an evening's worth of events into a plot with no real purpose other than to portray these events seems rather pointless. This is especially notable in the Las Vegas episode, which features some good moments, but comes across as rather redundant after a while. The various contrivances that merge the narratives together reminded me of last year's 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels', another triumph of style over substance. This is a film of scenes and sequences, that seem to gel together rather self-consciously. Up against the laidback suave of 'Swingers', 'Go' seems rather studied and forced.

Still, to his credit, Liman keeps the pace up to the extent that boredom never gets a chance to set in. The end result seems to add up to be more than the sum of its parts and I ended up warming to it more than most of the films I have mentioned here. It captures the zeitgeist of late 90's drugs culture pretty well, and in a lightweight sort of laidback sort of way, is a pretty agreeable timewaster; as energetic and vapid as the milieu which it portrays. It would be interesting to compare this with Justin Kerrigan's 'Human Traffic' (1999), a transatlantic counterpart featuring more hedonistic pleasures from drug-fuelled teens.

The eclectic casting here throws together Katie Holmes ('Dawsons Creak' TV show, and object of Tobey Maguire's desire in 'The Ice Storm'), Canadian Sarah Polley (Atom Egoyan's 'The Sweet Hereafter' and loads more), hyperactive Brit Douglas Askew ('Grange Hill'!), and trivia fans might like to note the presence of 70's action hero Doug McClure's daughter Tane McClure as a stripper, who's silicon stuffed tits are sprayed in blood in a scene guaranteed not to make it into the UK release!