RESEARCH ARTICLEDaring cycles: the Towers-Franco collaboration, 1968-1970

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll*School of European Culture and Languages, University of

Kent, UK

This article focuses on the prolific partnership between British independent producer Harry Alan Towers and Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco, which yielded a total of nine films between 1968 and 1970. The Towers-Franco collaboration worked across genres, cinematic and literary traditions, and nations. Their partnership serves here as a case-study to examine serial production and related forms of exploitation cinema such as sexploitation, in particular their specific modes of production and their actual modes of circulation and reception. Through an analysis of The Blood of Fu Manchu / Kissand Kill (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu / Assignment Istanbul (1969), 99 Women (1969), Paroxismus / Venus in Furs (1969) andEugenie … The Story of her Journey into Perversion (1970), the article plunges into the messy histories of international co-production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption in the late 1960s.

Keywords: Harry Alan Towers; Jesús Franco; serial production; distribution; advertising; pulp; sexploitation

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Daring cycles: the Towers-Franco collaboration, 1968-1970

Between 1968 and 1970, British independent producer Harry

Alan Towers (1920-2009) and Spanish director Jesús Franco

(1930-) collaborated on nine low-genre film productions

that encompassed both pulp and sexploitation cinema.i

Towers’ pulp film cycle Fu Manchu was already well

established when Franco came on board for the direction

of its fourth instalment, The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968); even

before filming had begun on the fifth and final part of

the Fu Manchu series, The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), they had

diversified into another pulp cycle with a female Fu

Manchu, Sumuru, in The Girl from Rio (1969), and were also

responding to the exigencies of the European sex-film

boom and the emerging US sexploitation market with the

release of such titles as 99 Women (1969) and Venus in Furs

(1969). Their brief yet prolific partnership offers an

instructive case-study into serial production and related

forms of exploitation cinema, such as sexploitation, in

particular their specific modes of production and their

actual modes of circulation and reception. While Towers’

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and Franco’s pulp film fictions were the product of an

industrial and cultural hybridization moulded by the

economic and artistic principles of serial production and

influenced by European and American pulp cultural

histories, their sexploitation movies belong to a set of

co-production, distribution and exhibition practices

intimately bound up with histories of American

(s)exploitation cinema. An examination of the Towers-

Franco collaborations will shed light on the industrial

mechanics of serial production and its economies, among

them the role of specific producers, the assemblage

practices at work to maximize the production and

subsequent circulation of film commodities, the

international distribution networks placing these

commodities in different markets, and the cultures of

consumption for which they were destined.

The alliance of Towers and Franco opens up complex

questions about the history and the geography of low-

genre productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The

film and cultural historian is confronted, on the one

hand, with the often messy history of their output as

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individual films and cycles overlap, and patterns of

distribution respond to the particular requirements of

the industry; on the other hand, the commercial and

cultural specificities of the films and related cycles go

beyond histories of British, Spanish, European or

American cinema – as mass culture products, the Fu Manchu

collaborations were distributed globally and reached

international audiences. When Fu Manchu addresses his

band of female assassins in the opening moments of The

Blood of Fu Manchu, the film signals self-reflexively the

cosmopolitan reach of this particular film and the cycle

as a whole: “Each of you has had a destination: Rome,

Berlin, New York, Tokyo, to the ends of the Earth”.

Industrial and generic patterns

The Towers-Franco collaborations must be understood

in relation to their material contexts of production,

distribution and exhibition, and the predominant generic

trends of the time. Their products are characteristic of

the industrial milieu in which European popular genre

films were being made during the 1960s, but also adapted

to the shifts taking place in the international media

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market in the late 1960s, among them, more daring

combinations of sex and horror, the expectation of sexual

titillation and more general changes in consumer taste.

Throughout the 1960s Towers had been developing

production and distribution networks in West Germany, in

particular with distribution company Constantin, which

specialised in popular genres – exotic adventure films,

spy thrillers and crime films – for the West German

market. With two contributions to the highly popular

Edgar Wallace series, Death Drums Along the River (Laurence

Huntington 1963) and Coast of Skeletons (Robert Lynn 1965),

and three other lowbrow genre products,ii Towers entered

the industry of serial film production and embraced

international co-productions as his regular modus operandi.

i The nine films were: The Blood of Fu Manchu / Kiss and Kill

(1968), 99 Women (1969), The Girl from Rio / The Seven Secrets of

Samuru (1969), Marquis de Sade: Justine / Deadly Sanctuary / Justine

and Juliet (1969), The Castle of Fu Manchu / Assignment Istanbul

(1969), Venus in Furs / Paroxismus (1969), The Bloody Judge /

Night of the Blood Monster (1970), Eugenie … The Story of her Journey

into Perversion (1970), and Count Dracula (1970).

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Although these films benefited from some British

government subsidies and private financing obtained

through his companies Hallam Productions and Towers of

London, they were ‘specifically designed to appeal to

West German audiences and were substantially motivated by

West German distributors’ demands for crime thrillers

based on Edgar Wallace’s pulp detective fiction’

(Bergfelder 2005, 216). The first three Fu Manchu films –

The Face of Fu Manchu, The Brides of Fu Manchu and The Vengeance of Fu

Manchu – emerged as part of this Anglo-German industrial

network in which Towers was operating and related to

general industrial and cultural trends which were taking

place in the West German media market in the 1960s, more

particularly the ‘recycling of older traditions of mass

culture […] from the 1910s and 1920s’ (Bergfelder 2005,

84). Pulp publishers in West Germany commercialised the

works of European pulp authors Karl May (1842-1912),

Edgar Wallace (1875-1931) and Sax Rohmer (1883-1959),

bringing them to the attention of contemporary readers.

Soon after, film companies such as Constantin and Rialto

adapted them for the screen. These pulp fictions provided

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producers and distributors with mass culture forms which

could be cheaply adapted to film and would be easily

recognised by popular audiences. Towers’ Fu Manchu cycle

was therefore firmly located in serial production

territory.

When Towers hired Franco as the director of the last

two instalments in the series, he encountered a pulp

kindred spirit. As he had done with the two Wallace

films, Towers adopted the nom de plum Peter Welbeck for

his adaptation of the Fu Manchu films. Franco too had

assumed a pulp fiction alter ego, David Khune,iii for the

production of his Dr. Orloff cycle in the early sixties

(Gritos en la noche (1961), El secreto del Dr. Orloff (1964) and Miss

Muerte (1965)). Both therefore acknowledged in a very

conscious manner the reciprocal influence of pulp novels

and pulp movies in their filmmaking practices and

fostered the sub-cultural literary respectability this

lent to their productions. The retention by Towers of the

ii These films were two crime thrillers, Victim Five (1964)

and 24 Hours to Kill (1965), and a white-slavery film,

Mozambique (1964).

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pulp villain name Fu Manchu linked Towers’ cycle to pulp

pleasures harking back to the 1910s through to the 1940s,

as well as to the many other mass media iterations of

Rohmer’s creation – radio serials, magazines and comics.

Towers and Franco would activate similar strategies in

subsequent collaborations. They did it for their Marquis de

Sade: Justine (1968), Venus in Furs and Eugenie (1970), this time

mining literary sources associated with deviant pleasures

and perversities (Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) and von

Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895)) rather than pulp pleasures or

more conventional horror thrills. And they did it again

for their Count Dracula (1970).iv

The adaptation of pulp fictions to the screen, as

well as the international co-production of lowbrow fare,

made little demand in terms of the means of production:

use was made of material already in the public domain;

formulaic narratives and stock characters and locations

were constantly repeated and modified with few

variations; shooting schedules were limited to a maximum

of three to four weeks; and technical personnel moved

from one production to the next. Specific production

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strategies also maximized the industrial and cultural

exploitation of individual films and cycles: the

repetition of similar titles assured the consumption of a

regular novelty; generic conventions, motifs and tropes

appealed to different audiences and encouraged cross-

iii According to Franco, these films were adaptations for

the screen from novels allegedly penned by Franco. See

Lázaro-Reboll (2012) for a discussion of Franco’s pulp

alter ego. Concurrent to these films, Franco had also

directed a number of genre films such as the spy spoofs

La muerte silba un blues / 077 – Operation Jamaique (1962), Residencia

para espías (1965) and Cartas boca arriba / Attack of the Robots

(1966).

iv As the pressbook and opening credits proclaimed, Count

Dracula was the first faithful ‘adaptation of Bram

Stoker’s original Count Dracula’. Towers’ and Franco’s

claims to staying true to the original were embodied and

confirmed in the figure of Lee, who lent the film

authenticity and horror pedigree (his powerfully erotic

and predatory rendition of the Count having been polished

in the Hammer Dracula series) and, above all, guaranteed

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generic links; and the casting of local and international

actors appealed to various territories. Co-production

arrangements maximized even further the economics of

serial production since costs were shared and spread

across two or more countries, and distribution and

exhibition reached international markets and audiences.

The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu certainly belong

to this international model of production and

distribution; in fact, given their negligible budgets and

sharper schedule constraints, they exemplify an even more

intense and exploitative mode of production.

While the first three instalments were

straightforward Anglo-German co-productions, the Towers-

Franco Fu Manchu collaborations involved multiple sources

of finance, which Towers sought intercontinentally to cut

back on production costs. The Blood of Fu Manchu was co-

financed by Ada Films (Spain), Terra Filmkunst (West

Germany), Towers of London (United Kingdom) and Udastex

Films Ltd. (UK); The Castle of Fu Manchu was co-produced by

Towers of London, Terra Filmkunst, Estudios Balcázar

international sales.

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(Spain) and Italia International (Italy). All these

production companies provided expertise in popular genre

production as well as low-cost production facilities –

Spain and Italy had become especially low-cost locations

by the late 1960s. Estudios Balcázar, for example, had

specialised in spaghetti westerns during the mid-1960s

and forayed into horror genre productions towards the end

of the decade. Continuity in the cycle was provided at

the levels of production, distribution and exhibition.

Titles identified the Towers-Franco collaborations as

belonging to a larger recognizable series, while, at the

same time, they crudely characterized the individual

episode. Further continuity was provided across the five

films with the casting of Christopher Lee as Dr. Fu

Manchu, Tsai Chin as his sadistic daughter Lin Tang, and

Howard Marion-Crawford as Dr. Petrie, assistant to

Scotland Yard’s inspector Nayland Smith. As the main

point of reference for the series and the main selling

point to a variety of markets and audiences, Lee’s screen

persona and cinematic reputation as a Hammer horror star

lent the cycle an air of generic gravitas. Other casting

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practices promoted connections and correspondences

between the Fu Manchu series and other contemporary

series such as the Karl May or the Edgar Wallace films.

In the case of The Blood of Fu Manchu, the character of

secret agent Carl Jansen was performed by German actor

Götz George, recognizable to European audiences through

his work in Karl May western productions, whilst the

inclusion of European B-movie starlets like Rosalba Neri

and Maria Perschy in The Castle of Fu Manchu established a link

to Italian and Spanish genre products. The last two

entries to the Fu Manchu series also slotted into and

circulated within the economically proven circuits of

distribution and exhibition trodden by Towers, which

meant that the films premièred in West Germany’s inner-

city cinema houses and so-called bahnhofskinos (shabby

cinemas located near train stations) and were then

released to other European countries such as Italy

(seconda visione / second showing and terza visione / third

showings circuits) and Spain (cines de barrio / neighbourhood

cinemas) and beyond (the US genre and exploitation

markets).

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The Fu Manchu and Sumuru films were contemporary

with a number of lowbrow cycles being produced in West

Germany, among them the Dr. Mabuse films (1960-1964) and

the secret agent Jerry Cotton series (1965-1969) to name

just a few. They were also coetaneous with other more

globally successful Anglo-American series like the James

Bond films, pitched at a multi-national audience, and the

huge number of Bond spin-offs and imitations produced

across the world. Many other popular genre products,

which were internationally distributable, were coming out

from different national contexts. Exotic adventure yarns,

crime thrillers, secret agent films (à la James Bond),

westerns and horror movies were among the most

predominant generic trends in European popular cinema

during the 1960s. The Italian exploitation film industry

described them as filone (a term that encompasses

traditions, formulas and cycles of films) and most local

critics dismissed them as sottoprodotto (products of low

industrial and aesthetic quality); the Spanish industry

and the critical establishment referred to this bulk of

cinema production as cine de subgénero, which implied both a

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cheap mode of production and an inferior type of cinema

in terms of cinematic quality.

Marketing was crucial to differentiate one lowbrow

genre product from another in such a fecund and

competitive market. While a generic product required

continuous reconfiguration and modification, it had to be

sold in relation to similar individual products, sets of

films and cycles. The advertising and publicity materials

designed by the producers and the distributors of many of

these international genre products shared a number of

marketing strategies. Pressbooks, posters and trailers

promised audiences the same gratifications, highlighted

the sensationalist features of the product, evoked a

range of different generic markers that would appeal to

different audiences, and promoted generic affiliations

with other films and cycles. Terms such as ‘suspense’,

‘thrills’, ‘fear’, ‘terror’, ‘mystery’, ‘adventure’ and

‘action’ were recurrent general descriptors in

promotional materials. All the trailers for the Fu Manchu

films guaranteed the delivery of old-fashioned

gratifications thus: ‘Dangerous Action, Thrilling

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Suspense and Exciting Adventures’. As the decade

progressed and censorship laws relaxed in most Western

European countries and the US, however, the promise of

more daring subject matter and titillation grabbed the

attention of (male) audiences, who expected different

pleasures and thrills, namely the display of female

bodies in new dramas and erotic adventures.

The publicity material for The Girl from Rio provides a

clear example of the ways in which a particular film not

only encouraged connections between and within the cycles

already set in motion by Towers but also fostered links

across a number of contemporaneous cycles with an

international reach. Based on a character created by Sax

Rohmer and adapted to the screen for the first time by

Peter Welbeck in The Million Eyes of Sumuru (Lindsay Shonteff

1967), the film affirmed its pulp lineage.v The Girl from Rio

displayed generic allegiances to many a cycle, from its

explicit modelling on the Franco-Italian Bond spin-off

title L’Homme de Rio / That Man from Rio (Philippe de Broca

1964) to its obvious bond with the genuine OO7 series via

the casting of British actress Shirley Eaton, who had

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achieved world-wide publicity appearing as the “golden

girl” in Goldfinger, and also to its linkage with the

secret agent Coplan series through the casting of

American actor Richard Wyler. But the Bond brand and its

European imitations were not the only generic frames of

reference; exotic adventure stories set in the jungle and

pseudo-spy films set in futuristic scenarios were also

alluded to in the textual and visual materials. Other

references spilled over to the world of comics, namely

the Italian fumetti Diabolik and its film adaptation Danger:

Diabolik! (Mario Bava 1967), and to wider references to

contemporary pop art aesthetics through the costumes and

fashion-like arrangements of female characters.

Distribution in different countries also reveals how the

The Girl from Rio established a dialogue with local traditions

and cultures of consumption. The West German distributor

Constantin released the film under the title Die Sieben

Männer der Sumuru in order to locate it in a recognizable

pulp genealogy and in the pressbook emphasized its pulp

merits (‘Ein Aktion-film’; ‘Sumuru Ziel: die

Weltherrschaft’ / ‘Sumuru’s aim is to take the world

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over) and sensasionalist qualities (‘Brutalität und

Erotik’ / ‘Brutality and Eroticism’). The Italian poster

for Sumuru: Regina di femme also conveyed the female

villain’s pursuit of domination in the title, her pulp

attributes sexed-up through a graphic artwork reminiscent

of fumetti comics.

The Towers-Franco collaborations not only responded

to the demands and developments of European co-production

markets but also to the commercial needs and changes of

the US film market. Throughout the 1960s US film

companies such as American International Pictures (AIP),

Commonwealth United Entertainment (CUE) and Harold

Goldman Associates sought co-production and distribution

arrangements in Europe. These companies were major

players in the exploitation and genre markets catering

for double-bill programming cinemas, the drive-in and the

grindhouse circuits. Business deals with European

partners in Great Britain, Italy and Germany fulfilled a

dual purpose: meeting the demands of theatrical

distribution and responding to the exigencies of

television distribution, at a time when television

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syndication was becoming a highly profitable sellers’

market for the distribution of feature films. Many of

these films were retitled, dubbed, rescored and recut in

order to fill double-bill screenings and fit the generic

tastes of American audiences. Goldman, for example,

placed some of Towers’ low-budget action-adventure films

in the US genre market; ‘Goldman & Towers plot three

films’, reported Variety in May 1967: ‘A Foreign Legion v See Knapp’s website ‘The Page of FU MANCHU’ for an

account of Sax Rohmer’s creation: ‘Sumuru was originally

created for an eight part radio serial on the B.B.C [in

1945-46]. Rohmer rewrote the serial as a novel titled The

Sins of Sumuru. The American paperback publisher, Fawcett,

which was looking for material for first edition

paperbacks saw great possibilities for the character and

published it as Nude in Mink in May, 1950. It sold so well

they had a second printing the same month and they wanted

more. Another series was born. There are nine titles, but

only five novels. The Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks are

the true first editions’ (2005). This was followed by The

Slaves of Sumuru (1951), The Fire Goddess (1952), Return of Sumuru

(1954) and Sinister Madonna (1956) (2005).

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saga’ and two other pix [which] will be announced later.

All three will be distributed here by Feature Film Corp.

of America, Goldman’s theatrical distribution arm and

marketed to television by TV Enterprises Corp., after a

two-year theatrical clearance’ (16).vi The titles of the

films, as these snippets reveal, were unimportant;

generic categorization and commercial distribution was

what mattered.

Similarly, CUE and AIP provided Towers’ productions

with access to the genre market as well as to more

specialist circuits such as exploitation and

sexploitation. These same American co-producers and

distributors also shaped the commercial and critical

trajectory of the Towers-Franco collaborations. The

retitling of The Blood of Fu Manchu as the more suggestive Kiss

and Kill by CUE meant that the Fu Manchu cycle was broken –

no longer marketable and readable as a cycle – and that

the film had been repackaged and released for wider

exploitation circuits, a commercial move aided by the

film’s generic fluidity. As a sequel to The Million Eyes of

Sumuru, The Girl from Rio can be seen as Towers’s bid to

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branch out and orchestrate yet another cycle peddling on

the success of his own Fu Manchu series as well as other

popular contemporary generic trends; the commercial

possibilities of the Sumuru cycle, however, were short-

lived since AIP did not release the film theatrically and

it ended up as a direct to TV release with the more sci-

fi title Future Women.vii Products like The Blood of Fu Manchu

and The Girl from Rio therefore highlight the complex history

of the Towers-Franco films’ international distribution,

exhibition and consumption.

Derring-do Fu Manchu

The two Towers-Franco takes on Fu Manchu, The Blood of Fu

Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu, peddled on the relative

success of the producer’s first instalment, The Face of Fu

Manchu, and the less financially and critically

successful sequels, The Brides of Fu Manchu and The Vengeance of

Fu Manchu. By the time Towers hired Franco to helm The Blood

of Fu Manchu the budgets were much lower – from the initial

$10 million dollars of the first film down to the $3

vi Of the three films plotted, only the jungle adventure

film The Face of Eve (Jeremy Summers 1968) came to fruition.

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million allocated to each of the last two films and much

shorter shooting schedules (from six to three weeks).viii

Towers maximized the serial production assemblage

practices fine-tuned in his previous adaptations of

Wallace and Rohmer, from the casting of actors to appeal

to various territories to the mobilising of genre markers

to the intensive use of locations. The serial template is

also replicated in the last two sequels: Fu Manchu

plotting world domination; Fu Manchu seeking the

annihilation of his arch-enemy, Inspector Nayland Smith

of Scotland Yard, who, in turn, is constantly on the

trail of the evil doctor; convoluted plotlines leading to

the formulaic open-ended finale whereby Fu Manchu claims

“The world shall hear from me again”; and the use of

stock characters, locations and scenarios, which perform

assigned formal and aesthetic functions in the series.

Plotlines for The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu

Manchu reiterated formal principles with a modicum of

variation to conform to the maxim of product

differentiation. Similar tropes and motifs shaped the

commonalities and differences between films in the cycle.

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Thus while Fu Manchu’s bid to conquer the world in The Face

of Fu Manchu is aided by a fatal poison distilled from the

seeds of a rare Tibetan poppy, in The Blood of Fu Manchu the

poison of choice has been distilled from a black cobra

native to an unspecified part of the South American

jungle. And whereas the latest evil invention in The Brides

of Fu Manchu is a deadly ray, the villain’s ruse to world

domination in The Castle of Fu Manchu takes the form of a

powerful machine which will freeze the world’s oceans.

Together with the twin tropes of wicked inventions and vii The film was re-edited for its TV release, which

included the deletion of the pre-credit sequence, as well

as the ‘removal of all nudity and numerous images of

erotically charged torture and sexually suggestive

dancing in the streets of Rio by scantily clad female

participants in the 1968 Rio Carnival’ (Monell 2006). AIP

also intended to commercialise the film with the title

Mothers of America. While AIP circulated The Million Eyes of Sumuru

as part of a double bill with another Towers Euro-

American co-production, the white-slavery film House of

1,000 Dolls (Jeremy Summers 1967), The Girl from Rio was retitled

Future Women and ended up as a television release.

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global domination, the films in the cycle feature a

string of kidnappings, abductions and escapes, the

criminal exploits of local bandits, drug barons and

international crime syndicates, and, of course, the

display of beautiful girls, either as the vulnerable

victims of or fiendish accomplices to the master villain.

Set in the depths of the Amazonian jungle, the pre-

credit sequence of The Blood of Fu Manchu follows a group of

enslaved young women and their captors to Fu Manchu’s

secret headquarters where, with the help of his daughter,

he is indoctrinating the new recruits: ‘Each of you has

had a pointed task with the ten men who are my greatest

enemies. You will take them the gift you bear upon your

lips: death’. The first assignment falls to Celeste,

whose mission will be to travel to London and kiss and

kill Scotland Yard commissioner Nayland Smith (Richard

Green). Blinded by the poison, Nayland Smith persuades

his friend and Home Office pathologist Dr Petrie (Howard

viii Shooting for The Castle of Fu Manchu started on 10

September 1968; three weeks later Franco was filming Venus

in Furs, from 1 October.

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Marion-Crawford) to take him to South America where,

following intelligence from his agent Carl Jansen (Götz

George), he believes Fu Manchu to be hiding. In the

meantime Fu Manchu’s plans to eliminate Nayland Smith and

Jansen require the recruitment of local bandit Sancho

López (Ricardo Palacios). Fu Manchu’s underground

headquarters are finally destroyed, but the voice of the

eponymous villain can be heard rising ominously from the

ruins: ‘The world shall hear from me again’. The reviewer

of the Monthly Film Bulletin rebuffed the promise of a sequel

in no uncertain terms: ‘One can only hope that Fu

Manchu’s promise to return will not be fulfilled if his

next appearance is anything like this abysmal mess of a

film’ (1969, 56). But the world does hear from the evil

mastermind again, in The Castle of Fu Manchu. The film opens

with a radio broadcast from the evil doctor: ‘This is Fu

Manchu. Once again, the world is at my mercy. I have

conquered not only the mysteries of the continent but now

of the oceans, too. In a few moments the proof of my

mystery will be completed’. Established tropes and motifs

from the cycle are economically and squarely re-

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presented. The radio broadcast knowingly reminds

audiences that this is Fu Machu’s preferred means of

communication, and also of the media formats through

which this serial narrative spread across the globe, from

its pulp literature origins to its adaptations for the

radio to the pulp film fiction the viewer is about to

experience. But, although the villain threatens to return

once again as his castle is being blown up in the closing

scenes, there would never be another sequel.

The release pattern for The Blood of Fu Manchu followed

a similar trajectory to the other films in the cycle:

like The Face of Fu Manchu and The Vengeance of Fu Manchu it

premiered in West Germany (23 August 1968), then reached

the British (30 August 1968) and Scandinavian markets

(Sweden on 25 November 1968 and Finland on 25 April 1969)

and, finally, crossed the Atlantic a year later (24

September 1969) where it was commercialized by

Commonwealth United Entertainment under its export title

Kiss and Kill. The release history of The Castle of Fu Manchu, on

the other hand, reflected the film’s box-office flop in

West Germany. The British release was in 1972, and the US

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release was held for several years, only to appear at the

lower half of a double bill under the more Euro-spy title

Assignment Istanbul, entirely removing the Fu Manchu brand

from the product. From sequel to sequel the cycle waned

commercially and critically.

Reading the reviews published in the Monthly Film

Bulletin, the contemporary reader notices the demise of the

cycle. The Face of Fu Manchu, directed by Sharp, had set the

critical yardstick: a ‘first-class thriller […]

resourcefully directed and inventively scripted’ (1965,

163). The reviewer particularly praised the plausible

locations which ‘sensibly stick to the point and make no

attempt to rival the Bond films in opulent extravagance’

(163). Although ‘remarkably similar in plot and style’

(1967, 9), the sequel The Brides of Fu Manchu is ‘another

excellent thriller’ (9) which remained ‘particularly

inventive’ (9) in its display of atmospheric period sets

and the way the film ‘makes use of the pioneering days of

wireless communications’ (9), namely ‘Fu Manchu’s

sinister but not yet perfected electronic apparatus to

the detailed explanations of how the British Broadcasting

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Company (as it then was) has discovered a new method of

tuning in to alien wavelengths and jamming their signals’

(9). The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, however, showed ‘none of the

inventiveness’ (1968, 13) of its predecessor and director

Summers ended up delivering ‘a very tame affair after the

period splendours’ (13) of the first two films in the

series. Franco’s The Blood of Fu Manchu did little to revive

the series. The Monthly Film Bulletin reviewers insisted on the

same elements, that is, innovation and the ability to

recreate period settings: ‘there is no trace of either

the invention or the period charm of Don Sharp’s earlier

films in the series, and the Amazon jungle looks about as

menacing as Epping Forest’ (1969, 56). The Castle of Fu Manchu

was defined as ‘an inept production’ that looked ‘as if

it has been patched together from several tatty

television segments’ (Gillett 1972, 31).ix Clearly, the

production values of the last two sequels were closer to

a sub-product than to the B-film productions that Towers

had churned out in collaboration with West German

distributor Constantin. The Castle of Fu Manchu, for instance,

not only unashamedly repeats a sequence from The Brides of Fu

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Manchu but also uses stock footage from a film, the

Titanic drama A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker 1958), and

recycles an unknown documentary about dams. In the US,

the retitling and repackaging orchestrated by

distributors Commonwealth United Entertainment reoriented

The Blood of Fu Manchu towards a more audacious terrain where

the promise of sex and horror would pay more dividends

than the exhausted and expendable image of Fu Manchu.

The advertising ballyhooing for the Fu Manchu cycle

in the US presents another angle on the changing tactics

deployed to sell particular films and to (re)position

cycles in the market. Ahead of the release of The Face of Fu

Manchu, Seven Arts Productions plastered parts of New

York City with posters containing the header ‘FU MANCHU

RUNNING FOR MAYOR’ under the imposing and menacing iconic

portrait of Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu. The sequel The

Brides of Fu Manchu, a clear reference to the 1960 Hammer The

Brides of Dracula (Terence Fisher 1960), was sold by Seven

Arts Productions on a double visual appeal. It maintained

the recognizable iconic image of Christopher Lee as Fu

Manchu at the centre of the poster, carrying in his arms

28

the voluptuous body of a defenceless young woman, but the

large shadow of Fu Manchu teems with images of beautiful

women in lingerie in a photographic arrangement

reminiscent of the American ‘nudie-cutie’ subgenre. The

ratio between sexual imagery and horror iconography is

provocatively summarized in the tag-line ‘The Master of

Horror Takes a Harem of Women’ and the more humorous

phrase ‘Better Dead Than Wed!’

The shift towards the exploitation of sexual

excitement and sensation was even more evident in CUE’s

publicity material for Kiss and Kill. (The retitling as well

ix British trade journal Cinema TV Today reviewed the film

along similar lines: ‘a sorry hotchpotch of bits and

pieces of plot, odds and ends of film stock, and

characters who come and go with an almost total disregard

for any semblance of continuity’ (Bilbow 1972, 29). Yet

the critic predicted that the film would do well at the

box-office for ‘stars and the title will no doubt lure

the unwary in sufficient numbers to make this an

acceptable choice for popular cinemas catering for

uncritical audiences’ (29).

29

as the re-cutting and rescoring of European genre films

for the US market was a common practice among

distributors.) The textual material included in the

pressbook mainly emphasised the horror genre credentials

of the film (‘Christopher Lee Creates New Horror Role for

“Kiss and Kill”’, ‘Top Stars Create Horror for “Kiss and

Kill”’, or ‘“Kiss and Kill” Is Blood-Curdling Epic”’) and

devoted some advance announcements to persuading

exhibitors – and prospective viewers – that the pulp

villain could still attract local audiences. In this

respect, the news item ‘There Is An Audience for “Kiss

and Kill”’ noted that

The so-called “Geritol generation” grew up watching

the machinations of Fu Manchu, as played by Warner

Oland and Boris Karloff, and they watched Myrna Loy

win her acting spurs in the early Fu Manchu films

long before the “Thin Man” series. Now the so-called

“Pepsi generation” is going to see what all the

ruckus is about.

30

Part of the commotion was the performance of ‘skull-and-

terror’ star Christopher Lee, who followed ‘the footsteps

of Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi’. But the

real ruckus lay in the ads, posters and lobby materials

which emphasised the juxtaposition of sex and horror. The

graphic artwork for the poster pits the head of a young

woman in profile, lips pouting, against a skull. Between

them the film’s tag-line reads: ‘LUSCIOUS LIPS – lethal

in their biting sting of death’. The image is

complemented by the sketch of three women in a kneeling

position, their hands tied, suggesting a disciplining and

sadistic scenario which audiences could readily associate

with ‘roughie’ movies. The promoters ‘Positively

Recommended [“Kiss and Kill”] for the Pure and Strong in

Heart – Transplants are Hard to Come By!!!’ Such taunting

publicity material would become the norm in advertising

campaigns orchestrated by the US distributors of

subsequent Towers and Franco products which broke through

to the sexploitation market.

Tapping into Sexploitation Circuits

31

Commonwealth United Entertainment, American

International Pictures and Distinction – a subsidiary of

AIP which specialised in the distribution of X-rated

films – led Towers and Franco into the US sexploitation

market with slick advertising and promotional tactics.

With 99 Women, Marquis de Sade: Justine, Venus in Furs and Eugenie …

The Story of Her Journey into Perversion, the Towers-Franco

collaborations moved into more daring territory by

exploring cinema’s newfound erotic freedom across some

parts of Europe and the US. While Venus in Furs was based on

a loose adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel

published in 1869, Marquis de Sade: Justine and Eugenie were

based on the Marquis de Sade’s libertine novels Justine, or

the Misfortunes of Virtue (1791) and Philosophy in the Boudoir (1795),

respectively. Like the pulp fictions of Sax Rohmer,

Sade’s and von Sacher-Masoch’s oeuvres were also in the

public domain and could be exploited at no cost.

As well as sharing a literary origin – albeit one

drawing from erotic rather than pulp fiction – these

films also presented similar production and distribution

patterns to the Fu Manchu and Sumuru cycles, among them

32

Towers’ own presence as screenwriter, multinational

sources of finance, lucrative pre-sales deals with

distribution companies on both sides of the Atlantic, and

the casting of Hollywood veterans and European genre

actors to appeal to various territories and audiences.

Marquis de Sade: Justine is a case in point: an adaptation by

Peter Welbeck of de Sade’s novel; co-produced by the US

(AIP), West Germany (Corona Filmproduktion), Italy (Aica

Cinematografica S.R. L.) and Liechtenstein (Etablissment

Sargon); distributed by Constantin in West Germany and

AIP in the US; and the inclusion of Mercedes McCambridge,

Jack Palance, Klaus Kinski and Howard Vernon. But, above

all, this set of Towers-Franco films represent an

adaptation of their output to the changes in audience

expectations and tastes demanding material of a more

‘adult’ nature – sex and violence – and to the

requirements of distributors and exhibitors in specific

territories (France, Italy, Scandinavian countries and

West Germany) which catered for sex-films, soft-porn or

erotic cinema.

33

This final section, however, moves away from their

European contexts of reception and turns its focus to a

very specific temporal and spatial location, Times Square

in New York, by focusing on the role of American

distributors in circulating and selling these

commodities, which trafficked on sensation and sexuality,

and by plunging into the messy histories of their

exhibition and consumption, with particular attention to

the sleaze audiences frequenting the downtown grindhouses

of Times Square. The production, distribution,

exhibition, critical reception and consumption of these

films were industrially and aesthetically shaped by

sexploitation film practices and cultures of consumption.

The action-adventure-mystery genre blend which gave

momentum to the Fu Manchu cycle was being replaced by

film hybrids which fused erotic, horrific and sadistic

elements. By the late 1960s Towers’ and Franco’s pulp

sensibilities had successfully readjusted to developments

in the genre film industry, which gave free rein to more

deviant and disreputable forms of production.

34

The Towers-Franco products were therefore inserted

into an established tradition of exploitation cinema and

its latest industrial and cultural manifestation,

sexploitation, which developed throughout the 1960s.

Sexploitation movies ‘in combination with more daring

European product’, as Eric Schaefer has argued, ‘put the

final nail in the coffin of classical exploitation’

(1999, 337) with their focus ‘on nudity, sexual

situations, and simulated (i.e. nonexplicit) sex acts,

designed for titillation and entertainment’ (338).x The

proliferation of sexploitation movies throughout the

decade also ran parallel to the economic legitimacy of

male sexual desire and the ‘growing recognition of the

desire of women, younger people, and those deemed to be

35

in some way “deviant”’ (Schaeffer 1999, 339). Deviant

pleasures could be sated in Times Square’s grindhouses,

adult bookstores, live S&M shows, and other sex-related

businesses which formed part of a larger culture of

consumption. It is in this specific context that Towers’

and Franco’s foray into the women-in-prison subgenre and

their cinematic adaptations of the untapped works of de

Sade and von Sacher-Masoch must be understood.

Given that Towers’ production and distribution

practices were grounded in his proven pragmatic approach

to lowbrow genre filmmaking, it is no surprise that 99

Women was effectively a by-product of the economies of

serial production. When Franco and Towers completed the

x The marketing and consumption of these films must also

be considered in relation to developing film cultures in

the late 1950s and early 1960s, whereby exploitation,

sexploitation and art cinema ‘shared discourses and modes

of address’ (Betz 2003, 204); American exploitation

movies and European art-house films were regularly cross-

marketed and exhibited in art-house and grindhouse

circuits.

36

shooting of The Girl from Rio in Brazil ahead of schedule,

they contrived to pre-sell another project to their

American distributors. The locations and personnel

available in Rio de Janeiro provided the raw material for

this next film, which led, in turn, to the run of films

destined for the sexploitation market. Towers and Franco

filmed around thirty minutes of footage featuring

actresses Maria Rohm, Eliza Montes and Valentina Godoy,

who had all taken part in The Girl from Rio. This film

fragment, which only included three scantily clad “women

in peril” in a jungle, promised a variety of sellable

generic gratifications and sensations, namely exotic

adventure stories, white-slavery film scenarios and

sexploitation aesthetics. Around this footage, Towers

penned another screenplay as Peter Welbeck and once more

secured multi-national financing and distribution in

various territories,xi primarily through the assembling of

an international cast list. The result was a feature

film.xii The narrative template of choice this time was

the women-in-prison formula, a genre which had been

classified as ‘crime drama’ in the 1950s and which had

37

been appropriated by the sexploitation trade throughout

the 1960s. CUE’s pressbook simply described the film as

‘A new daring drama’, invoking, on the one hand, a 1950s

tradition through the use of the general-purpose label

‘drama’,xiii and, on the other hand, a sexploitation

tradition by qualifying the film as ‘daring’. As Schaefer

has pointed out in ‘Pandering to the “Goon Trade”.

Framing the Sexploitation Audience through Advertising’

(2007),

some words turn up over and over in the advertising

for sexploitation films. Not surprisingly, “adult”

is the most constant signifier, usually to indicate

the intended audience either with “adults only” or

“strictly adult.” Other words that recur repeatedly

include “sex,” “erotic,” “passion,” “intimate,”

“pleasure,” “love,” and variations on “lust.”

“Daring,” “shocking,” “raw,” “thrills,” “lurid,”

“orgy,” and “sin” also appear often. Finally,

descriptors such as “exotic,” “abnormal,” and

“bizarre” turn up with some frequency. (26)

38

Thus, Schaefer states, ‘regardless of who produced and

distributed the advertising material, as with

sexploitation films themselves, the ads for the movies

have a large degree of intertextual similarity’ (26). 99

Women was no different. Advertising and promotional xi Five countries were involved in the coproduction of 99

Women: Spain (Hesperia Films), German Federal Republic

(Corona-Filmproduktion), Italy (Cineproduzioni

Associate), Great Britain (Towers of London) and the US

(Commonwealth United Entertainment).

xii Again, recognizable headliners were at the forefront of

Towers’ casting practices in a bid to attract different

audiences and territories. Veteran Hollywood actress

Mercedes McCambridge, who played the sadistic prison

director Thelma Diaz, was paired with European film star

Maria Schell as the sympathetic superintendent Leonie,

and with European B-movie stalwart actor Herbert Lom in

the role of Governor Santos. Italian Luciana Paluzzi and

Rosalba Neri, who have made their names in the European

genre circuit, were cast for their proven sex-appeal.

xiii See Morton (1986: 151-20) for a brief history of

women-in-prison films.

39

tactics explicitly inscribed the film in the

sexploitation trade, from the so-called ‘eye-stopper’xiv

images in ads and posters to the use of generic markers

that encouraged the recognition of sexploitative traits

among prospective audiences. The main poster ran the

following tag-line: ‘One Girl’s Shock-Awakening from

Innocence … To the Raw Realism of Prison Life, Among

Women Without Men’. The trade press unquestionably

categorized and read 99 Women as sexploitation. Whereas

Today’s Cinema described it as a ‘sexploitation melodrama in

colour’ (1969, 8), Variety catalogued it both as a ‘prison

drama’ and ‘a sleazy prison melodrama’ (1969, 3).

99 Women told the familiar story of a repressive

women’s prison located in a remote island, populated with

stock characters: the attractive and probably wrongly-

imprisoned inmate, the sadistic, menacing warden, and the

no less threatening and aggressive inmates. The graphic

artwork on posters resorted to the representational codes

of the women-in-prison film subgenre and, more generally,

to sexploitation tactics, among them the recurring hints

at lesbianism and sadomasochistic imagery. The customary

40

tropes of sexploitation advertising completed the

manufacture of 99 Women: headlines which associated the

film with controversial and shocking adult material

(‘Provocative treatment of a daring theme’), tag-lines

which suggested deviant sexual practices (‘99 Women …

Behind Bars, Without Men!’ or ‘Women who are forced to

live without the companionship and love of men’), and

marketing strategies which enticed the prospective

sexploitation male patron to be part of an exclusive

audience (‘Whisper to your friend that you have seen

it’). The opening of the trailer strategically aligned

the film with the sophistication and ‘respectability’

associated with foreign productions based on literary

adaptations – ‘First The Fox …, then Therese and Isabelle … and

now 99 Women … without men’,xv and at the same time xiv Here I borrow Schaefer’s description of this

advertising technique in relation to Vance Packard’s

‘classic 1957 exposé of the advertising industry, The

Hidden Persuaders (1957)’ (2007, 21). “Eye stoppers” are

‘those sexy images that can arrest the eye’ and in

sexploitation advertising they ‘relied first and foremost

on eye stoppers – images of scantily clad women’ (21).

41

fostered connections between similar groups of films.

Sexploitation audiences would consider these films in

relation to each other and in relation to other

contemporary products. The role of CUE in up-scaling the

erotic appeal of 99 Women from advertising to post-

production, the film’s avid promotion by consumers as

well as its X rating all paid dividends, since the film

became the top-grossing film in Variety for several weeks

after its release in March 1969. The film went on to play

double and triple bills with other so-called Euro-sleaze

movies in Times Square grindhouses such as the Liberty

and the drive-in circuit throughout the early 1970s.xvi

With Venus in Furs, AIP and CUE joined forces and

adopted a straightforward sexploitation release strategy.

The ad campaign was premised on tag-lines which

emphasised sensationalist (‘Venus in Furs: A Masterpiece

of Supernatural Sex’) and coarse sexuality (‘The coat

that covered paradise, uncovered hell!’). The poster,

which featured a woman loosely draped in fur and baring

flesh, also drew visual continuities between different

media formats: men’s pulp magazines, pulp paperbacks and

42

imagery from sexploitation movies. (Sax Rohmer’s novel The

Sins of Sumuru had been published in the US ‘with the more

titillating title: Nude in Mink. It was published in May

of 1950 with a Marilyn Monroe-like nude in a mink coat’

(Knapp 2005)). The trailer pandered to the curiosity and

desires of the sexploitation consumer: ‘Who is this

elusive Venus? Is she the sex-symbol of a wild fantasy?’

And the commercial and critical category assigned to the

film by trade journals and the press was that of ‘an

international sexploiter loosely based on the Leopold von

Sacher-Masoch porno classic’ (Variety 1970, 24). Tellingly,

Venus in Furs overlapped with other ‘Venus in Furs’ movies

which gave commercial impetus to the Towers-Franco

version, among them Joe Marzano’s 1967 Venus in Furs and

Massimo Dallamano’s Venus in Furs / Devil in the Flesh (1969). The

promotional material of these films trafficked on similar

imagery and played off each other with deliberate

references to, echoes of and departures from each other.

Contemporary reviews in trade journals and the

mainstream press give a sense of the programmes and

venues for which 99 Women, Venus in Furs and Eugenie were

43

destined and of the patrons who consumed them. Some are

straightforward predictions. 99 Women would do ‘good in

the sexploitation market’ (Bilbow 1969, 8), according to

Today’s Cinema. Eugenie was presented as a ‘minor entry

strictly for specialised sex-perversion markets’ by Film

Bulletin (1970, 20) and panned as an imitation of a previous

sexploitation cycle by The New York Times’ reviewer: ‘“Inga”

is at it again, as Eugenie’ (Thompson 1970, 207), here

referring to Swedish actress Marie Liljedahl, who had xv In fact, Mark Rydell’s The Fox (1967) and Radley

Metzger’s Therese and Isabelle (1968) were adaptations of

novellas written by D.H. Lawrence and Violette Lecuc,

respectively.

xvi See “The Liberty and the Cinerama: Showcases for

Eurosleaze” in Sleazoid Express (2002) for a discussion of

the context in which 99 Women was exhibited in the

downtown grindhouses of Times Square in New York. As

Landis and Clifford note, ‘The king of the Deuce Eurosex

movie was and is Jess Franco’ (2002, 177). Franco’s 99

mujeres, as well as his Necronomicón (aka Succubus (1969)),

were shown alongside ‘violent thrillers known as giallos,

cannibal vomitoring and zombie rip-offs’ (2002, 177).

44

been the lead protagonist in the successful nudie film

Inga (1968) by sexploitation filmmaker Joseph W. Sarno.

But other reviews are interesting documents which reveal

the ways in which these films were classified. Variety’s

review on 99 Women was mostly devoted to these aspects:

Simply because it includes beaucoup footage of

female nudity, most of it in connection with lesbian

love making, 99 Women is by far the most

commercially promising feature yet released under

corporate moniker of Commonwealth United

Entertainment. Without all that stuff, pic would

rank as little more than a sleazy prison melodrama

suitable only for the bottom half of action bills

(1969, 3).

The journalist then concedes that the film had ‘a chance

for the first run “sex-art” market and deserved

consideration as a top-of-the bill “showcase” entry’ (3),

arguing that ‘leaving aside the sexploiteer subtrade, sex

elements have historically entered regular “commercial”

fare via “class” product , then later filtered down to

45

routine releases’ (3). Although this critic does not

explain what exactly constitutes the “sex-art market’, it

can be argued that the term refers to the intersections

between art-house and sexploitation cinema at the levels

of marketing, exhibition and reception. The critic also

viewed the film from an industrial and formal standpoint

as a conventional B picture: ‘pic on hand has all of the

cast, story and production attributes of a second feature

– except for that liberal dose of frank sex’ (3). From

the plural predictions of this one review, the

contemporary film historian can see how 99 Women short-

circuits marketing labels, exhibition routes and film-

going experiences.

Venus in Furs also caused a sense of confusion among

some critics and audiences; the film displayed a

‘bewildering ambiguity that should mystify general run

audiences’, yet it seemed ‘a good programmer in multiple

release’ (Variety 1970, 24). For this Variety reviewer Venus in

Furs was a ‘slickly-produced, soft-core vehicle of sex,

sadism and lesser aberrations and fetishes’ which is

nothing more than ‘a tired paperback original […] despite

46

its vague tie-in with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s porno

classic’ (24). The film ended up as part of a double

bill, as The New York Times informed prospective viewers:

‘Swappers shares bills with Venus in Furs at neighbourhood

theatres in New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, and

Westchester’ (Greenspun 1971, 210). The New York Times

critic gives us an insight into the profile of the

sexploitation consumer: ‘considering the bland nature of

the sexual infusion of these movies [Swappers and Venus in

Furs], it seems to me that there is less harm in what sin

may do to the suburbs than in what the suburbs are doing

for sin’ (1970, 210), an unequivocal reference to the

notorious 1964 film Sin in the Suburbs by Joseph W. Sarno and

its subsequent spin-offs. Another reviewer in the same

newspaper commented on the generic and sleazy qualities

of 99 Women and the presumed perversities of its

audiences:

A prison drama, imported from England, opened a

window at local theatres yesterday through which

indiscriminate voyeurs can gape without much

satisfaction. Despite the appearance of such

47

professionals as Mercedes McCambridge, Maria Schell

and Herbert Lom and hints of sexuality, a

discriminate moviegoer suffers more than any of the

harried inmates in “99 Women” (Weiler 1969, 41).

For Cinema TV Today, Justine and Juliet was nonsense

entertainment for easy consumption and titillation, a

‘colourful codswallop for undemanding audiences and

timorous voyeurs. A collector’s piece for connoisseurs of

the magnificently daft’ (Bilbow 1972a, 36). Industrially,

however, Justine and Juliet deserved praise: ‘the mind boggles

at the cunning with which Harry Alan Towers has collected

together a cast of stars each of whom is a big office

draw in at least one European country; in addition to

those who are internationally known. Say what you like

and think what you like, it’s an object lesson for

producers’ (1972a, 36). More often than not deviant

filmic pleasures and sensibilities were linked to other

cultural forms and activities; the reception of Eugenie,

according to the Film Bulletin, ‘is restricted to what is

commonly considered the “underground” trade – a market

that usually contents itself with picture books of sado-

48

masochistic content and certain 8mm perversity-oriented

film cellars’ (Combs 1970, 20).

Four decades later, contemporary ‘connoisseurs of

the magnificently daft’ Towers-Franco collaborations have

carried these films and cycles into contemporary film

culture. Obsessive archivists and completists of Franco’s

work such as Tim Lucas of specialist magazine Video

Watchdog return time and again to the films discussed

here, drawing further connections and commonalities

between them. Lucas has returned repeatedly to Franco’s

partnership with Towers: his first comprehensive approach

to the study of Franco films in the premiere Video Watchdog

issue (1990) referred to the “The Harry Alan Towers

Period”; this phase of Franco’s production was also

addressed in the co-edited volume Obsession: the Films of Jess

Franco (1993); for more than a decade he has supplied

detailed liner notes for DVD releases of many Franco

films; and, more recently, he has revisited Franco’s work

with Towers as a subcategory of what he has categorized

as “The Adult Fantasy Years (1967-1973)” (2010: 18). Late

TV screenings, videotapes and DVDs have enabled the

49

recovery and repeated viewings of the nine films

resulting from their collaboration. Changing technologies

and fan / cinephile discourses have contributed, and

continue to contribute, to the re-evaluation of the

Franco and Towers partnership. Other 1980s, 1990s and

2000s specialist genre magazines, paracinema publications

and blogs such as Fangoria, Sleazoid Expressxvii or ‘I’m in a

Jess Franco State of Mind’ by Robert Monnell, to name but

a few, have generated countless writings on Franco’s

films, and, by extension, specific references to his

partnership with Towers and other producers. Furthermore,

over 150 videocassettes, DVD and Blue-ray discs are now

available on Franco’s work, not including the

‘multilingual variants and alternative titles, re-

packagings of his films, or the copies with hardcore

inserts’ (O’Brien 1993, 187). The Franco-Towers

collaboration is certainly well represented; all the

films mentioned here have been commercialised and made

available for new generations of fans across the globe.

xvii See Koetting (1996a, 1996b) and Landis Clifford

(2002).

50

The Fu Manchu cycle, for example, has been recycled and

reconfigured in a variety of ways in the 2000s: as the

‘Dr. Fu Manchu Collection’ by German DVD distributor

Kinowelt, as “The Christopher Lee Collection’ by US Blue

Underground, and as a double bill DVD release by British

Optimum Releasing. Kinowelt and Blue Underground have

brought to light original trailers and pressbooks for the

German and American markets, respectively, as well as

interviews with the ever accessible Franco. Redemption

(United Kingdom), Anchor Bay (US) and Blue Underground

(US) have released their sexploitation products trading

on the same sensations and tropes mobilised by

sexploitation distributors back in the 1960s, repackaging

these sexploitation movies for DVD consumption using

similar marketing labels and generic categories such as

Euro-sleaze, and aligning them with specific cultural

sensibilities emerging in contemporary critical

discourses (cult, psychotronic or trash, to name just a

few critical categories).

Conclusion

51

The Towers-Franco collaborations worked across

genres (pulp adventures and mysteries, secret agent

spoofs, women-in-prison films and erotic fantasies) and

nations. Whether as serial productions or sexploitation

movies, their films traded in low-brow pleasures: pulp

and pop, crime and horror, sex and sleaze. Distributors

and exhibitors capitalized on their pulp and deviant

sensibilities and commercialised them as part of film

making practices and film cultures which went beyond the

work of individual producers and directors. Their

disreputable mass-cultural creations responded not only

to the economics of product differentiation but also to

the increasingly hybrid and international industrial and

cultural landscape of late 1960s and wider shifts in

consumer taste cultures. Tagging their movies to

successful films, cycles and generic trends, Towers and

Franco forged alliances with American and European

economies of serial and exploitation production,

instigated liaisons and connections across the filmic

medium, and mobilised intermedial relationships between

and across popular cultures of consumption.

52

Balbo, Lucas, Peter Blumenstock, Christian Kessler and

Tim Lucas. eds. 1993 Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco, Berlin:

Graf Haufen & Frank Trebbin.

Bergfelder, Tom. 2005. International Adventures: German Popular

Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s. New York: Berghahn

Books.

Betz, Mark. 2003. Art, exploitation, underground. in

Jancovich, Mark et al. eds. Defining Cult Movies. The Cultural

Politics of Oppositional Taste. Manchester: Manchester University

Press: 203-222.

Bilbow, Margaret. 1969. 99 Women [review]. Today’s

Cinema, 5 December:8.

1972a. The Castle of Fu Manchu [review]. Cinema TV

Today, 14 January: 29.

1972b. Justine and Juliet [review]. Cinema TV Today,

25 March: 36.

Combs, Richard. 1970. Marquis de Sade: Justine (Justine

and Juliet) [review]. Film Bulletin, 39 (16): 20.

Duvoli, John R. (1970) Eugenie … The Story of Her Journey

into Perversion [review]. Cinefantastique, 1: 32.

53

Gillett, John. 1972. Folterkammer des Dr. Fu Manchu, Die

(The Castle of Fu Manchu) [review]. Monthly Film Bulletin, 39

(457): 31.

Greenspun, Roger. 1971. “Swappers” Shares Bill With

“Venus in Furs” [review]. The New York Times. 6 September

1970, in The New York Times Film Reviews (1969-1970). New York:

The New York Press & Arno: 210.

Knapp, Laurence. 2005. The Page of FU MANCHU.

www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm.

Koetting, Christopher. 1996a. The Towers of London. Part

One. in Fangoria. April: 12-17, 80.

1996b. Making Book for Fear. Part Two. in Fangoria.

May: 60-65, 80.

Lázaro-Reboll, Antonio. 2012. Jesús Franco: From Pulp

Auteur to Cult Auteur. in Jo Labanyi and Tatjana

Pavlović. eds. A Companion to Spanish Cinema. New York: Wiley-

Blackwell: 167-171.

Landis, Bill and Michelle Clifford. 2002. The Liberty and

the Cinerama: Showcases for Eurosleaze. in Sleazoid Express.

New York: Fireside: 177-213

54

Lucas, Tim. 1990. How To Read a Franco Film. Video

Watchdog, 1: 18-38.

2010. Jess Franco’s Declaration of Principles. How

To Read the Early Films, 1959-1967. Video Watchdog, 157:

16-49.

Monell, Robert. 2006. The Films of Sumuru.

robertmonell.blogspot.co.uk.

Monthly Film Bulletin. 1965. The Face of Fu Manchu [review].

32(382): 163.

Monthly Film Bulletin. 1967. The Brides of Fu Manchu [review].

34(396): 8-9.

Monthly Film Bulletin. 1968. The Vengeance of Fu Manchu

[review]. 35(408):12-13.

Monthly Film Bulletin. 1969. The Blood of Fu Manchu [review].

36(422): 56.

Monthly Film Bulletin. 1972. The Castle of Fu Manchu [review].

39(457): 31.

O’Brien, Geoffrey. 1993. A Ticket to Hell. in The Phantom

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55

Schaefer, Eric. 1999. “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of

Exploitation Films, 1919-1959. Durham and London: Duke

University Press.

2007. Pandering to the “Goon Trade”: Framing the

Sexploitation Audience through Advertising. in

Jeffrey Sconce. ed. Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of

Taste, Style, and Politics, Durham and London: Duke

University Press: 19-46.

Thompson, Howard. 1971. Eugenie [review]. The New York

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