With Arrowdrome’s release of the obscure little slice of the trashy Eurociné-released Spanish zombie film The Devil’s Kiss (available to order here), what better time to blow away those cobwebs and get stuck into some juicy info about the film.

The 1970s saw a boom in exploitation horror cinema all across the world, in particular that of the zombie genre after the phenomenal success of George A. Romero’s 1968 Night Of The Living Dead. Such undead titles that followed included the incredibly atmospheric Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, Deathdream (a personal favourite), Messiah Of Evil, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death and David Cronenberg’s sex-obsessed  Shivers. Spain also saw a rise in the zombie genre too, with horror icon Paul Naschy being one of the first Spanards to benefit with the 1972 film Horror Rises From The Tomb and Vengeance of the Zombies in ’73. Soon Spain too was infected with the living dead virus and spewed out a few more rotten zombie films including the American co-produced The Swamp Of The Ravens and the instantly recognisable and zombie-fan-favourites, Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series.

Then in 1975, a little film crept out from under the grave and reared its ugly trashy head  into drive-in and grindhouse cinemas. A little known movie known as La Perversa Caricia de Satán, or in the English speaking world, The Devil’s Kiss. This obscure exploitation gem tells the story of the Countess Claire Grandier and a Proffesor Gruber who attempt to raise the a corpse from its infinite slumber to act out their devilish plans. Since it’s initial release the film has often fallen down the back of cinema’s metaphorical sofa,  a place it feels strangely at home with among the grub and muck; a trashy cult gem that has constantly remained obscure and undiscovered.

The director of this film, Jordi Gigó seemed to have quite a knack for creating titles that ultimately ended up in the ‘obscure’ and ‘little known treasure’ piles of film. His filmography is unsurprisingly very short indeed with only 4 films to his directing credit: The Devil’s Kiss, the poetically titled Porno Girls, the comedy El Jovencito Drácula and the practically unseen L’espectre de Justine. So let’s have a little celebration of the not-so-famous career of Mr Gigó!

The Devil Kiss' original artwork

Released in 1975,  Jordi Gigó not only directed The Devil’s Kiss but also wrote it and even had a minor role in the film. So if anyones to blame for such a trashy slice of cinema, well it’s him! Financed by Andros Films Española, who only produced one other film after this (the obscure short Cartells d’un Poble en Guerra), The Devil’s Kiss stars a few of Eurocinema’s ‘greats’. In the lead role of the Countess we have a certain Silvia Solar (or any of her other 4 spellings of her name!) who, with her powerful face, landed the roles in many favourite exploitation films including the yetisploitation Night Of The Howling Beast, Cannibal Terror , Danger Deathray! , Umberto Lenzi’s giallo Eyeball and Arrowdrome’s The Man With The Severed Head as well as several other films. Solar passed away May of this year with an interesting reputation as one of the Queens of Eurotrash. They say that a great monster can make a great horror film. While thats true with A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th and Alien, the unshapely dim-witted zombie in this film just adds to the movie’s charm. Moisés Augusto Rocha plays the monster  adding to his mostly uncredited filmography of freaky roles.  From Cutting Heads to Van Helsing’s slave in Count Dracula, The Devil’s Kiss marked the end of Rocha’s career.

Next up for Gigó was the 1975 film Exorcismo which he co-wrote. This was basically the Spanish exploitation cash-in on William Freidkin’s The Exorcist, staring Paul Naschy as the Father. Gigó was at his best here, writing such thought provoking and meaningful dialogue as ‘Get lost! Retract! All you here are nothing but stupid asses’. Ah, Shakespeare would be proud. Whilst not the greatest film ever made, this was perhaps Gigó’s most successful and carried on The Devil’s Kiss‘s Satanic theme. Check out the below trailer for more info on this one.

1984 VHS cover of Porno Girls

Soon ol’ Jordi could feel deep inside him an urge to create something beautiful, something moving, something unequivically awesome that would stand the test of time and be studied for decades after as an example of true art. He created Porno Girls. Time has not been kind to the little-known Porno Girls and the film has suffered many changes, in fact the date ’1977′ is just an estimate! Under the sodymn of George Lewis, Jordi Gigó’s film is an example of European hardcore cinema and is a rather peculiar one at that. Split into two 50 minute sections; Amores Profundos (roughly translating to Deep Love) and Trampa Para Una Call-Girl (meaning Trap For A Call Girl). The first segment ends in a life-threatening climax (pun intended) urging viewers to watch/buy the second half. Before it’s 1984 VHS release, the film circulated underground on Super-8, and so 50 minutes was a lot more portable than a film of a full-length running time. This film is particularly interesting as, despite General Franco’s death in ’75, hardcore pornographic films were still illegal….or rather, semi-illegal. Whilst XXX cinemas were banned, sex shows were perfectly legal and as such several filmmakers exploited this little loop hole. Of course, it wasn’t until the 1980s that legistration changed that allowed Spanish filmmakers to openly make films of this nature and so this is the time in which Porno Girls surfaced, creating a lot of confusion about the films official release.

1977 also saw the release of Jordi Gigó’s (co-directed with Carlos Benpar) vampire film El Jovencito Drácula (roughly translated as Dracula: The Young Man). This film was a comical take on the Dracula story we’re all familiar with and used absurd comedy to tell it. The film stared Victor Israel, a ‘favourite’ of Spanish horror who had appeared in Horror Express and 1972′ Blazing Guns. This film has too since fallen into obscurity.

So, that’s it for a little info on one of cinema’s many unspoken directors, Jordi Gigó. Be sure to watch Arrowdrome’s new release of The Devil’s Kiss for a chance to watch one of his obscure, virtually undiscoveredand very niche films.

The Devil’s Kiss is out now on DVD for only £5.99.

Ladies and gentlemen, the genius behind many recent great film artworks including the Arrow Video’s new Exterminator DVD out on the 7th November (Pre-Order Here) , Tom Hodge A.K.A. The Dude Designs, has written a little something for all you blog readers.

Coming soon...

So without further ado, take it away Tom…

“Hey guys it’s just your friendly neighbourhood dude designs here to say a few words about the thoughts and inspirations behind the artwork for new release of The Exterminator!

So here it is and as you all know I’m sure The Exterminator like Savage Streets is another classic 80′s video vigilante genre film, so my initial thought was to create a sort of brother piece to accompany Savage Streets. My aim was to really have fun with the title again (I’m a big fan of these vigilante Death Wish-esque films) so I wanted to and create a historically accurate piece of video art and tackle the design as if it had been briefed to sit on those old VHS store racks alongside Media or Paragon releases.

Like everyone, I knew and really dug the original artwork, but I did feel justified shining a different light on the film as I do remember feeling somewhat disappointed at how many liberties this key art did actually take….THAT’S NOT John Eastland!!! Robert Ginty’s great as the Exterminator but he ain’t no Arnie, which was kind of the point Steve James is the action man and Roberts this reluctant anti hero who has to take a stand, so expecting to see a buff flame throwing dude just sets the wrong tone. Secondly that flame thrower… WHERE WAS IT! I mean really ?! It turns up for about five seconds during the initial torture scene then it’s never heard of again!!

Now having said all that don’t get me wrong, I love totally inaccurate 70′s/80′s cover art as much as the next man (probably more so because I’m sad like that and have chosen to devote my life to the cause of creative embellishment!!!) The Medusa release of Savage Streets is a great example of this.

Linda Blair looks more like Adrienne Barbeau and they have turned the crossbow into some futuristic looking weapon. Guns usually come off the best in these 80′s video covers, I love the way the main character’s gun is always turned into this over the top souped up futuristic cannon for greater titillation (or just that the illustrator didn’t really know how the gun actually looked!) just look at Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity and Special Force!

So I jumped on the chance to incorporate this into The Exterminator and had the main focus of the design being Ginty’s space age OTT Magnum. I usually like to have a fun fantasy focal point to the design – it breaks up the characters and just injects some action into the proceedings (it prevents the floating head syndrome as well).

I did still want to keep some familiarity to the original key art though for the viewer to have that recognition so I kept the iconic black biker helmet for the main character, then played this off with some more narrative elements of the film like Steve James being jumped and Christopher George as the police dude (next time watch The Exterminator try playing the Detective James Dalton telephone drinking game – it’s crazy how many time this dude is on the phone!!). I then topped the whole thing off with a nice helicopter just because you just need one!!!! Then set all against that classic city backdrop which along with the title design are a homage to another of my favourite 80′s video classics Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous, if you spotted it!! I always like to throw in these little random tributes to different video cover designs as it makes it fun when putting the piece together and the little hidden homages are interesting for people to spot, the same way directors do in their films I like to think, I’ve always said I’m a frustrated director and the film design/illustration work is an outlet to create my own idealised version of the movie I’m working on to paraphrase Graham Humphreys!!!

Well hope you enjoy the film and the new cover adds to your viewing experience, you haven’t seen the last of the big guns!!!!!”

- Tom ‘The Dude Designs’ Hodge

THE EXTERMINATOR IS OUT ON BLU-RAY ON THE 7TH NOVEMBER! Pre-Order here!