Recently seeing Pedro Almodovar's Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980) and Jose Ramon Larraz's The Coming of Sin (1978) (both also reviewed.) I decided to make this a trio of auteur works from Spain, by finishing with "Uncle" Jess Franco. Finding a film of his I've had on the side for ages,I headed out to the oasis.
View on the film:
Detailed in Stephen Thrower's superb book Flowers of Perversion:The Delirious Cinema of Jess Franco that the studio rushed the production out after Zombie Lake (1981) was a hit,and that the film maker, (who had quit Zombie Lake) was later vocal of his hate for the zombie genre, co-writer/(with Ramon Llido) directing auteur "Uncle" Jess Franco makes his distaste for zombies palpable in the opening sequence, where Uncle Jess's signature button bashing trombone zoom-ins unwind from a distance, played with a air of disinterest in getting up close to the zombie shocks.
Rising up with off-cuts from regular composer Daniel White's past scores, Jess keeps the walking dead moving with unintended dips into Comedy,cast in the zombies being covered in cornflour and visibly annoyed at worms being placed on their faces. Just before the zombies get their hands on the humans, in the final 10 minutes Jess displays some of his unique stylisation in magic hour wide-shots panning along the humans dipping into the zombie oasis.
View on the film:
Detailed in Stephen Thrower's superb book Flowers of Perversion:The Delirious Cinema of Jess Franco that the studio rushed the production out after Zombie Lake (1981) was a hit,and that the film maker, (who had quit Zombie Lake) was later vocal of his hate for the zombie genre, co-writer/(with Ramon Llido) directing auteur "Uncle" Jess Franco makes his distaste for zombies palpable in the opening sequence, where Uncle Jess's signature button bashing trombone zoom-ins unwind from a distance, played with a air of disinterest in getting up close to the zombie shocks.
Rising up with off-cuts from regular composer Daniel White's past scores, Jess keeps the walking dead moving with unintended dips into Comedy,cast in the zombies being covered in cornflour and visibly annoyed at worms being placed on their faces. Just before the zombies get their hands on the humans, in the final 10 minutes Jess displays some of his unique stylisation in magic hour wide-shots panning along the humans dipping into the zombie oasis.