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Customer Reviews of The Diabolical Doctor Z

Mondo Macabro needs to release more exotic titles
I have never been a huge Franco fan but his earlier work like this is by far his strongest. The best qualities of Franco's films are always atomosphere and this one is on the mark mixing 60s sleaze with themes from 30s style Bela Lugosi serials like Phantom Creeps. My favorite as with all the Mondo Macabro releases is the docu this time about Franco. The only complaint I have is more of a request really. After reading the book Mondo Macabro I was expecting for them to release horror and cult films from more exotic and third world countries. Yet most of their releases have been from Europe and the US. I have nothing against domestic terror films but these days it seems as though every DVD company is releasing Franco, Fulci, HG Lewis. I am still waiting for the Hindu horror films of the Ramsey Brothers, or the cheesy Turkish and Indonesian flicks from the 70s, Midnight Song the 30s Chinese Phantom of the Opera, Pakistani gore fest like Balaa the Witch. These are the undiscovered gold mines wich are in desperate demand for the jaded horror fan.

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Possible Franco's best 1960s Gothic
The Diabolical Dr Z is one of director Jess Franco's best 1960s Gothics. The film oozes atmosphere and features some lush black-and-white photography, together with threatening shots of darkened corridors (in a prison, in the doctor's mansion, on a train) which feature prominently in Franco's early work (The Awful Dr Orloff, The Sadistic Baron von Klaus) and in many 1950s/1960s horror movies (for example, Riccardo Freda's The Horrible Dr Hitchcock); psychoanalysts would probably explain these shots by relating the use of this type of mise-en-scène to the concept of the 'spider woman' (or the 'monstrous feminine'), which is a central concern of this film and of the films of Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava. Knowing that Franco often borrows ideas from Surrealism, however, it may be self-defeating to try to find this type of 'meaning' in his films: in his 1960s pictures, Franco simply delights in covering the intertextual quotation that takes place in his films with lashings of Gothic atmosphere. Franco's films are an exploration of excess, and could be likened to onions: once one layer of 'meaning' has been peeled away, the viewer is left with an indeterminate number of other layers.

The Diabolical Dr Z also highlights Franco's anti-idealism: most of the characters in this film are simply out for revenge, or are seeking to further their careers, and think nothing of trampling on the people in their path. This theme would become more prominent in later Franco films, which expressed it through the metaphor of vampirism (The Female Vampire), the motif of the 'witchhunt' (The Bloody Judge) and the conventions of the Women in Prison film. With hindsight, Franco would have been the ideal candidate to film an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

The Diabolical Dr Z will probably not appeal to those whose interest in horror begins and ends with 'ironic' horror films such as Scream; as with the work of Mario Bava and Terence Fisher, although there is a large amount of intentional humour in Dr Z (via some very witty dialogue, particularly the comments made by Franco-in a cameo as a policeman-in the final scene), modern audiences may poke fun at its predominantly sombre tone, and will probably be alienated by both the use of black-and-white photography and Daniel White's atonal jazz score. This is a shame, because for me, Franco's 1960s films (together with some of his 1970s pictures, such as Exorcism and The Demons) represent some of the highlights of the horror genre.

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Sharp fingernailed Miss Death will haunt you...
For those of you who know Franco for his late 60's/early 70's amateurish horrotica/eurosleaze flicks, this will come as one big surprise.
The cinematography on "Le Diabolique Docteur Z" is as lavish and gorgeous as if it had been directed by one Mario Bava (and god knows how much I admire the director of "Whip & The Body"). The casting is good, especially the creepy Howard Vernon, the script is OK, the dialogs sometimes quite amusing (especially Franco's own character) but most of all the lightning, photography and direction are simply breathtaking.
Although I find some of Franco's later films thoroughly enjoyable (especially the splendidly surreal and jazzy "Venus In Furs" - among the best experimental erotic films of all time, screams for a DVD reissue! - more than the overrated "Vampyros Lesbos"), I can't help but regret that he didn't put as much love and care in his later projects - and some of them looked promising on paper - and especially that he didn't cast the spanish goddess Soledad Miranda in a similarly crafted film. "Diabolical Doctor Z" could very well be Franco's ultimate masterpiece, along with the aforementioned "Venus In Furs". I say "could" because I have "only" seen about 30 of his 180 odd entries and I am always ready to see some burried gem resurface some gloomy friday evening at the cinemathèque of Paris (I keep my fingers crossed...)
About this DVD reissue... The image and soundtrack (especially important in a Franco film as the score is as always simply beautiful) are crisp and the overall impression is that the guys at Mondo Macabro have done their job quite seriously. The bonus documentary is interesting but quite out of place on this DVD as most of the people interviewed keep on insisting on Franco's amateurish approach to making films which is nowhere apparent on the painstakingly-crafted "Dr Z". I also regret the lack of exerpts from the various films mentioned - I suppose they couldn't get the rights - as most of them are not available on DVD. But don't let that put you off - after all, you don't buy a DVD for its extra features, do you? - Dr Z is a masterpiece!