The Devil Came from Akasava
(Der Teufel kam aus Akasava, 1971)

Jess Franco

Germany / Spain

84 min, full screen, German (English subtitles)

Review © 2007 Branislav L. Slantchev

Some people swear the Jess Franco is a legitimate director. But then again some people lick frogs for fun. I have yet to see a film by this "acclaimed" purveyor of schlock that would exceed the Z-grade standard of a garage production by hormone-crazed pimple-toting adolescents fascinated by the zoom feature of the camera lens and the recently discovered stash of lounge jazz records their father hid right next to that stash of Playboys whose content informs the entire erotic content of these films. In other words, Franco's films I have seen are bad. They are so bad, they are not even good at being bad. And that's no fun when it comes to Eurotrash.

My dear Sir Philip, I am attracted by your body	The incomparable Soledad Miranda

So why do I keep coming back to explore yet another dud in his seemingly interminable Moebius Strip output career? Because I get suckered by writers I normally trust to exhibit some good judgment. Like Tohill and Tombs in their otherwise excellent study of the European sex and horror cinema at its peak, Immoral Tales, for example. Or the random film review that glorifies the achievements of this cineaste. I then develop doubts in my own conclusions, faithfully scour the net for some other offering by Franco, pay the exorbitant prices commanded by the better releases, wait with stilled breath, and when the disc arrives, pop it into the player and then proceed to fall asleep somewhere between the main title and the second scene. When will I learn?

In the heyday of the British Secret Service	Sickeningly lovable pair of old farts

One may wonder why I go for films that even Franco fans normally consider below whatever passes for standard in Franco's oeuvre. Well, The Devil Came from Akasava has long been a film I really wanted to see in decent quality and in a language I can understand. I used to have an awful VHS tape in Italian (?) without English subs. It's not like knowing what the characters are saying is actually important but one does need as much help as one can get to track the hallucinogenic narrative made even less comprehensible by Franco's unnerving tendency to film whatever random thing strikes his fancy during a scene. (This, by the way, is especially evident in this flick: the camera would follow something related to the plot and then suddenly veer off to film some bushes or some palm tree tops or just some scenery, entirely forgetting what it was supposed to be showing us.)

Ewa Strömberg injects some (not much) class into the incomprehensible proceedings	If sleaze were an art form, Franco would have been its maestro

OK, so why did I want to see that film so badly? It's all because that B&W photo of Soledad Miranda in Tohill & Tombs' chapter on Franco, actually. It's a publicity shot from this film and shows the legendary beauty in exotic garb striking a pose on a scene. The shot does not actually appear in the film even though Soledad performs two, well, "dances" would be an overstatement, so let's go with "grinding her pelvis against a red chair" and "shaking her booty while lying flat on her stomach" as more apposite descriptions of her talents. As it turns out, I should have stuck to the single photo for despite the aforementioned two long scenes, there is nothing less exciting than a beauty with a stoned faraway look obviously doing something for the camera without taking any apparent pleasure from it. Only Franco can take a potentially highly erotically charged sequence and morph it into irredeemable sleaze that can turn one off faster than a castration scene.

The rare (unintentionally) inspired shot	Right now, I am fantasizing about being that chair

Whatever cinematic virtues this iconoclastic director has, none of them are in evidence in this outing. Despite the gorgeous transfer offered by Image on this (overpriced) DVD, the film feels and looks like the work of someone who wandered off from a porn shoot to film some vacation footage for his grandmother. In other words, the film succeeds simultaneously in being entirely devoid of virtue as a mainstream production and totally disappointing as exploitative Eurotrash. I have heard that some think this was Franco's attempt to break into mainstream cinema. Although this explains the lack of full frontal nudity and sex scenes, it does not explain the total amateurishness of the effort, in terms of both cinematography and plotting. The only thing more distracting than the tendency to film random matter is Franco's love affair with the zoom. I got vertigo after the first 5 minutes with all those sudden zooms in and out. But that's what happens when you're too cheap too reposition your camera between shots.

If chirping of crickets was any indication, this cleanup by the Secret Service is done in the middle of the night	No time for makeup: the cast hard at work dissecting the intricacies of this psychological drama

Storywise, the basic plotline appears to have been lifted from some work by Edgar Wallace. At least that's what some claim. I have never read any spy yarn from Wallace that resembles The Devil Came from Akasava, so maybe they just lifted the word "Akasava," I don't know. What I do know is that there's actually a glimmer of something that could have been developed into something else that could have been made interesting in the hands of someone who actually had the faintest idea of how to write a plot. Of course, in the hands of this auteur, it all seems slapped together haphazardly at the very last minute, which it probably was. It's a straight mystery that with a higher budget could even aspire to be a thriller.

Why dance standing when one can dance lying?	Obligatory gratuitous shot of Soledad Miranda

Basically, a scientist by the name of Forrester (Angel Menendez) is funded by the aging philanthropist Lord Kingsley (Walter Rilla) to dig out some crystal in Akasava. The crystal is supposed to be the philosopher's stone and turn various metals into gold. When someone murders the doctor's assistant, the crystal disappears along with Forrester himself. At this point, one may legitimately wonder what Lord Kingsley is doing supporting this sort of shoddy research but as we shall find out, this is the least of our worries. The British Secret Service cooperates with Scotland Yard in clandestine meetings using a brothel as a front (I did not know these were legal in the UK). The Secret Service has blown its entire budget on maintaining their agent Lambert (Alberto Dalbes) as the British consul in Akasava. As a consequence of the budget crisis, their other agent Jane Morgan (Soledad Miranda) cannot afford proper clothes and has to spend most of her cold and dreary British days either naked or close to being so. Sir Philip (Siegfried Schurenberg), a cooperating Scotland Yard detective, checks out the numerous holes in Jane's bodice and then gropes the girl to maintain operational security.

Franco acting in the basement (not a metaphor)	The Grand Mystery of the movie: will Soledad ever manage to get dressed?

This is the first half of the film. In the second half, Jane goes to Akasava because the missing doctor has somehow sprouted a nephew (Fred Williams) who nobody knew existed before. This guy gets immediately involved with the fulsome cheating wife Ingrid (Ewa Stromberg) of the local doctor Andrew (Horst Tappert) who operates without washing his hands in defiance of the medical establishment and in total disregard of the theories of Louis Pasteur. Given how unconcerned the doctor is with numerous aspects of existence that should have been of relevance to any normal person (e.g., infecting his patients, his wife's adultery, the mysterious disappearance of his acquaintance), this Andrew is a bit suspicious. Naturally, some people die before our intrepid investigators get clued in.

The phony noble and the real ex-hooker	Let us now fulfill your lifelong dream of being a woman

The evolve an elaborate scheme that I admit to not following. Basically, Jane has to lure Andrew & Ingrid to her club (where we should recall she dusts furniture with her body), which she does although Andrew wonders (like we do) why this stranger has invited them out. Naturally, he blows the joint and gets to his compound just in time to incinerate the Italian agent Celli (Jess Franco in repulsively pomaded hairdo) and take potshots at Lambert. Jane emerges as the reason the Secret Service started hiring men and giving them license to kill. She is singularly unsuccessful as a seductress (as Forrester, Jr. quickly gets down to business with Ingrid who plays the opposite of hard to get, much to the chagrin of Jane who seems to have developed some affection for the guy). She miserably fails in her diversionary tactics, costing the lives of both her colleagues. She can't hide a dead body well (she dumps one in a car without realizing that it's not her partner that's driving it). She can't even keep her balance for long, as seen in the sequence where she confronts Forrester, Jr. and he jumps her: now we can clearly see that he lands on the floor slightly to the right and several feet in front of her but in the next scene she's lying firmly below him.

This Secret Service agent always gets to the bottom of things	Damn teleprompter is malfunctioning again

At any rate, Jane really manages to accomplish nothing although she does spend most of her time trying to put some clothes on with great determination. Unfortunately, as every spy worth her plane tickets to Akasava knows, women are good for secret service work only in the nude, which explains why Jane heroically shuns anything that can cover more than 5% of her body. It's all for Queen and Country. And red-blooded males in the audience, no doubt, although as I explained above, this stratagem failed miserably on account of Franco's abundant talent to obliterate any hint of eroticism by being a vandal with the camera. As a result, Howard Vernon is the only interesting character who shows up for all of 5 seconds in the film but upstages even Soledad Miranda lying uncovered in bed.

Howard Vernon in Assassination for Dummies, Lesson 14: How to Tip-toe with a Luger	If we only had brains, we'd realize what schlock we've just filmed

If you absolutely positively must see The Devil Came from Akasava, then you could do worse than getting Image's DVD. Although cropped from the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio to a (presumably pan/scan but it's hard to tell given the oddball framing of shots) full screen, the quality of the transfer itself is gorgeous. That way, you can admire the glimpses of all the things Franco should have shot but didn't, along with the grainier but much more professional stock footage that plagues this genre. The audio is limited to German mono but with these international films one never knows what the "true" language is supposed to be anyway. The English subtitles are excellent, and the trailer is the only extra. In other words, at the price this thing sells on Amazon.com, the DVD should be rented for preview and then acquired only following the lobotomy of the purchaser.

January 7, 2007