Above you see a poster for the exploitation flick La comtesse perverse, which we decided to watch because it was directed by Jesús Franco, and his films have only two outcomes, both entertaining—they’re either cult gems or total train wrecks. La comtesse perverse was originally French made, is known in English as Countess Perverse, and stars Robert Woods, Howard Vernon, and Alice Arno, the latter of whom we last saw in an issue of the tabloid Rampage. The poster gets the idea across effectively: it’s a human hunt movie, a type of exploitation that goes back to 1933’s The Most Dangerous Game, and which has been explored in films like the The Suckers, as well as various women-in-prison entries such as Frauen für Zellenblock 9—coincidentally one of Franco’s craziest efforts.
Here you get a group of people lured to the island house of a countess, played by Arno, who happens to be cannibal. We don’t mean a wild cannibal cooking hanks of dripping meat over an open fire. We mean a gourmet cannibal. A genteel wine-drinking cannibal. A Hannibal cannibal. The guests are first treated to a dinner at which they unknowingly eat human flesh, then the bad news drops that they’re the star attractions in an organized hunt. Arno is not the type of minor royalty who lets others do all her work. She’s the main hunter, dispatching prey with her trusty bow and arrows. And we sort of misspoke earlier. She’s genteel, yes, but she later goes on the hunt stripped to the skin. So she’s wild too.
Her house, by the way—and this will be a long digression—is actually a real place, an apartment building named Xanadu, located on Spain’s central Mediterranean coast, near the city of Calp. It was designed by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, who created some interesting buildings, but architecture is about context as well as design, and in this case he defiled a beautiful rocky point with an Escheresque monstrosity. It’s an epidemic here in Spain, the ruining of pristine spots. Casa Xanadon’t has nice views of Calp, but seen from the opposite direction—which nobody has a choice about—is a monument to ugly excess and an insult to people who care about beauty, nature, sharing the environment, and forging a sustainable future. That it’s central to a horror movie makes perfect sense.
Franco can likewise be said to be a maverick of ugly excess, but in the unobtrusive medium of film. With Xanadu’s exteriors and a couple of other mindbending locales to help set the mood, he revels in his favorite indulgences—everything from transgressive violence to full frontal bushes. Lina Ronay, Tania Busselier, Arno, and the other performers give Franco the total commitment he needs to make his masturbationpiece, and once again present a final product that will leave viewers divided. Do you love cheap cinema in the grindhouse vein? Then you’ll love La comtesse perverse. Do you hate undeniably shoddy cinema that people seem to adore anyway? Then stay as far away from this one as you can. Which group do we fall into? Guess. La comtesse perverse premiered in France today in 1975.
