Succubus (1969)
Janine Reynaud stars as Lorna, a performer of an S&M act at a nightclub. Under the influence of her enigmatic manager, Jack Taylor, she begins to lose her grip on reality and her dreams become real life hallucinations in a dangerous game played by the Mephistopheles like Taylor.
Succubus is an odd film in the Jess Franco canon. Dreams and hallucinations are things he'd always go back to throughout his career but Succubus becomes a surreal viewing experience as the viewer also loses all concept of Reynaud's reality and the plot becomes ever so incoherent yet still remains a quite fascinating viewing experience.
I suppose how much you enjoy Succubus depends on Janine Reynaud as the film is her vehicle and rests solely on her performance. Despite several smaller roles Succubus was her breakthrough performance, at the age of 39. Despite IMDB saying Franco discovered her in a bistro in Rome, this isn't true. She was married to actor Michel Lemoine who was known to Franco's co-producer and actor Adrian Hoven. When Lemoine was cast, Franco still had no star and chose the former model due to her association with Lemoine and her gorgeous but unconventional look as well as a lack of inhibition due to her modelling. Her casting also helped the film as friend and designer, Karl Lagerfeld, produced her costumes.
I think Reynaud is brilliant. She has the statuesque figure that would easily dominate both women and men in any sexual act but is also equally at home when in the presence of actors like Howard Vernon, her range swinging from derangedly perverse to elegantly insecure.
Franco introduces Reynaud's fever-dreams or hallucinatory reality through soft focus, high grain camera techniques which look decidedly odd at first but you soon get used to it and the blurring of dream and reality often means scenes are filmed using this and normal camera lenses as the film continues.
Succubus isn't a fast moving film, nor is it especially gory. Naturally there's a fair amount of sleaze and Reynaud nudity as well as some glorious oddball scenes such as the shop dummies seemingly coming alive to murder an unfortunate girl or truly inspiring cinematography from Franco.
The film's other highlight is the truly magnificent score from Austrian composer and pianist Friedrich Gulda who ensures Succubus has an air of the sensual amidst the sleaze onscreen.
Succubus is an often disorienting decadent film and is never less than interesting, especially in it's weirdness, making it in my opinion one of the director's best works.
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