From one German film to a… very different one. The Century of Cinema project was probably doomed to feature some unabashed trash, let’s face it, and frankly unabashed trash doesn’t come much more unabashed than Jess Franco. I actually had it in mind to rewatch Vampyros Lesbos for it, but then I thought, why not go instead with one of his that I haven’t seen? Why not cross something else off my absurdly large to-watch list, especially something I’ve had waiting for so long that I bought it on DVD rather than blu… Hence, therefore, tonight’s second film, which seems to be generally considered one of Tio Jess’ better films and I’d probably agree with that myself. Plotwise, we’re dealing with a fairly simple revenge plot: doctor who’s been doing some unorthodox experiments is struck off the medical register and kills himself as a consequence; his grieving and evidently no longer 100% sane widow goes on a quest to kill the four doctors responsible for striking him down. Nothing too complicated in the plot department, but I don’t suppose anyone comes to Franco for the plot (they also don’t come for a serious discussion about the ethics of Johnson’s research and if the board wasn’t actually right to reject him, which is good cos the film never offers anything of the sort). In this case, they’re coming for the unfortunate and tragic Soledad Miranda:
Ms. “Korda” is nothing if not a singular presence throughout the film, in her various states of dress and undress; I recall saying once on my old blog that I have trouble judging the quality of acting performances when they’re not done in English—I don’t know if that’s her voice on the soundtrack or not, cos I don’t know how well or if she spoke German—but in this case I think I can actually make an exception. This was really good. And face it, no one comes to a Jess Franco film for good acting either, but for once you get it here. I really should’ve watched this a lot sooner than I did. Going to invest in a blu upgrade, at any rate.
Apart from the Wallace & Gromit film, I think this is my favourite first-time watch in the Century of Cinema project so far. This was one of the last big European silent film productions, and like an awful lot of silent cinema it then proceeded to vanish for decades, with a print only turning up as recently as 2008. The blu-ray also includes its even longer-lost 1914 predecessor, which the booklet essay (handily reproduced 
There’s some really tremendous atmospherics throughout the film, and the camerawork is remarkably mobile even for a 1920s German film, so you get a great sense of the size of the Baskerville Hall interior among other things. It’s a compact story, unfortunately rendered a bit more compact by the loss of much of reels two and three from the only known print; some of this (plus bits of reel 5) has been filled in by footage from the 9.5mm copy that Pathe produced for home viewing (apparently, though the film never got an American release, it did good enough business in Europe to merit a “home video” release, but the rest had to be filled in with stills and title cards explaining the missing scenes (Watson arriving at Baskerville Hall, establishing the Barrymores and Stapletons). But it’s not really distracting, and the rest of the film is great. I think we can fairly describe this as a major rediscovery, and its reputation will hopefully grow.
Just “mostly”?
Well, that was pleasant viewing. Sergio Martino is considered one of the major giallo directors, despite only really making five of them and those all within the first three or so years of his directorial career, and despite also not really being considered an auteur like Dario Argento (at least according to Kat Ellinger on the blu-ray commentary). He made other films after this that don’t seem to be considered “proper” gialli as such, so this was his last “real” one, and what an… unclean film it is. Plotwise, we’re in the rather delightful-looking (if dangerously paved) town of 
I don’t know where to begin, so I don’t think I’ll even try.
Ah, classic Hollywood orientalism. Let’s get that out of the way first, the film is full of obviously white people in varying degrees of makeup playing characters that are clearly meant to be Middle Eastern, but it’s not like any of these characters are actual people as such, so I suppose if we can cope with the other legendary monsters the film features, we can cope with these equally mythical Anglo-looking Arabs? Too bad if we can’t, cos I have a few more films in this vein waiting to be watched and reviewed, and in this case at least you’d be missing quite a lot of fun. As Wiki notes, the film’s not really based on the actual “7th voyage” story, but more on other adventures of Sinbad with a bit of the Odyssey thrown in (though those elements seem to be in one of the Sinbad stories too)… Sinbad and his crew land on the isle of Colossa and fall in with a magician called Sokurah when the latter loses a magic lamp to a cyclops; Sinbad is disinclined to go back there despite Sokurah’s begging, so the latter contrives an interesting reason to make him change his mind. Director Nathan Juran was building a certain reputation as a director of this sort of thing, and we’ll see more of him as I go through the collection cos I’ve accrued quite a few of his titles; here he teamed up again with Ray Harryhausen, whose first colour production this was, and let’s face it, Harryhausen’s work is what you come to a film like this rather than the thespian display… no doubt star Kerwin Matthews was a lovely person, but possibly not the most magnetic screen presence. But you’re not here for him, you’re here for the cyclopes, and the snake woman, and the rocs, and the dragon, and the fighting skeleton (which he’d expand upon a few years later in Jason and the Argonauts), and though HD video possibly enhances just how old these effects look all these decades later, I’d still take them over their probable modern CGI equivalents. This must’ve been an absolute blast in 1958, especially if you were a kid.
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