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One year ahead of The Devils, Jesús Franco's El Greco to Russell's Hieronymus Bosch. England not quite out of medieval dread, "a very shaky throne" after the death of Charles II, the oppressor is seen in peruked effigy studded with nails. Pleasure and suffering forever braided, a wench (Margaret Lee) captured mid-romp and promptly tried for witchcraft. Presiding over the court is Judge Jeffreys (Christopher Lee), "the devil in red robes," Dreyer's pyre (Day of Wrath) receives his verdict. The victim's sister (Maria Rohm) takes up with a Monmouth rebel (Hans Hass Jr.), son of Lord Wessex (Leo Genn) and participant on a thrifty battlefield of horses and cannons. "As prescribed by law," branded flesh and hacked limbs, a hanging interrupted for an ax to the chest. "We do our humble best." "God save us, my lord, from your worst." Old superstitions in changing regimes, cutthroats in high places, enough to link 17th-century persecution to the dictatorship in the filmmaker's birthplace. The executioner relishes his work, Howard Vernon portrays him with gleeful glare and squeaky clubfoot in a tribute to Karloff in Lee's Tower of London. Tenebrous interiors, a forest unwarmed by sunlight, great swaths of crimson and black throughout. The superfices of a conventional film are fixed only for Franco to dive into the lyrical set piece of the heroine licking the wounds on a prisoner's dangling nude body, camera zooming in and out. The blind prophetess (Maria Schell) bears witness in her cave, "my eyes don't cry anymore." Being forced to connect sanctimonious cant and visceral consequence is a proper comeuppance for the Judge, all things told. With Milo Quesada, Peter Martell, and Diana Lorys.
--- Fernando F. Croce |