Franco Friday #6: Kiss Me Monster

Franco Friday #6

Hot damn, duders. It is already the sixth Franco Friday and I am beginning to feel that my brain is bigger and my libido is um… bigger? Anyway, this week I tackle a film so bizarre that George C. Scott, Vanessa Redgrave, and Henry Fonda all refused to be in it. Don’t look that up. Just sit back and enjoy the show. No wait, there is no show. Sorry, you have to read this. You don’t have to but I mean, come on, it’s here, just read the damn thing. Take care, you Franco-heads!



Kiss Me Monster
Directed by Jess Franco
1969
75 minutes
Starring Janine Reynaud, Rosanna Yanni, Chris Howland, Michel Lemoine, Manuel Velasco

The Red Lips detective agency consists of Diana (played by Janine Reynaud) and Regina (Rosanna Yanni). These two wild ladies have taken on some pretty tough cases before but this one, oh boy, it’s a real humdinger. This new case falls into their laps when a musician brings them a piece of music (“The Abilene Anthem”) containing clues to a strange mystery. He is immediately knifed in the back. In fact, everyone that Diana and Regina try to get clues from die from a knife sticking out of their back. It turns out that an evil scientist is trying to create a race of supermen to take over the world. Diana and Regina track the scientist to his lair on a Caribbean Island. They steal the secret formula, Interpol gets involved, and- If I try to tell you any more about the plot of this movie, my head will explode.

Am I being punked?

After 20 minutes of Kiss Me Monster, I turned it off and begged my wife and mother-in-law to watch it with me just so I wouldn’t have to watch it alone. Oh, it’s not scary or anything, it’s just that this film is so impossibly crunked up that I had to watch it with someone so that I could make sure that I wasn’t going insane. I mean it. Don’t watch this movie alone. If you do, Ashton Kutcher shows up and beats you to death with a Nikon. Kiss Me Monster is the weirdest thing I’ve seen from Jess Franco (so far) but it’s also a new favorite. The film is totally outlandish and obsessively obtuse while somehow managing to remain entertaining and hilarious.

Janine Reynaud (Franco’s Succubus) and Rosanna Yanni (Count Dracula’s Great Love) sure seem to be having a great time making this film. They never appear out of place playing dueling saxophones or stealing a “nutrition solution” from a wacky and (presumably) gay scientist. I like to pretend that this film is a documentary and that they just forced Miss Reynaud and Miss Yanni to change their names to Diana and Regina so that all the secrets of the secret society of men in black hoods would stay secret!

What you need to know is that Kiss Me Monster is a comedy but for us viewers of Euro-trash, the joke will likely fly over our heads at first. The dubbing for this film is so bad and so strange that I immediately over-thought what I was watching. I concentrated so hard on the story and the dialog to try and figure out what the intent was that I completely forgot that Franco might just be fucking with me. It honestly feels like the voice actors improvised the dialog. Yeah, it's like that, dawg.

The story feels like it was written by a 5 year old. It is so convoluted and disastrously simple that it’s oddly brilliant. Any gap is filled with pseudoscience or skipped over with coincidence. But it’s all gobbledygook. Don’t waste another precious second of your life, my dear friends, check out Kiss Me Monster. It’s pretty fabulous and just about the nicest slap you can have right in the movie-face.


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Bull!