I’ve always been a little too nervous to delve into Jess Franco’s post-80s output. I’ve heard terrible, terrible things about these latter day efforts, even from the toughest of Francophiles. But surely, surely, with so many films from this period, there must be a few good ones. Killer Barbys (1996) has its share of supporters and a few other entries receive scattered praise. Tender Flesh grabbed my attention when reading this glowing review. How could I resist this recommendation: “A woman urinates into a bowl, which is served at dinner. She then gets on all fours and gives oral sex under the tablecloth to each guest like a trained dog. People are beaten and hunted. These things have been done before to shocking or erotic effect; in Tender Flesh they are puerile and scummy. I don’t mean scummy in the way that some art films make you an accomplice to the plot, invoking your guilt as they degrade characters. No, Tender Flesh just caused me to gawk in embarrassment for Jess Franco, and forced me to reconsider my past enthusiasm for his works.” Wow.

 

TENDER FLESH
Spain/USA, 1997, Jess Franco

Tender Flesh is hard to make sense of at first. Not because it has a particularly complicated plot, but because the sound quality is so horrendous. The entire running time I was straining to make out what characters were saying, often made even more difficult by strong accents. The onset sound is so bad it sounds like the boom guy was a few metres away from the cast with the mic pointed at the back of their heads. Turning up the sound doesn’t help; dialogue is competing with irritating generic rock tracks that gently pump over the film. Eventually though, Tender Flesh starts to make sense.

Tender Flesh has a worryingly weak opening: Paula (Amber Newman) – a new recruit at a strip club – awkwardly dances on stage as her potential employer, Mrs. Radeck (Lina Romay) shouts instructions at her. The film then cuts to a different strip scene, this time with Paula in front of an audience. We follow Paula behind the scenes where Mrs. Radeck, between tonguing Paula’s disgusting Fangoria shirt wearing boyfriend (Mikail Kronen), is setting up a little business trip with the Baroness Irina (Monique Parent) and her moustachioed husband (Albo Sambrell). With the offer of a stack of cash, Radeck requests that Paula joins the Baroness and Co. on an island holiday filled with orgies and sexual deviance. They arrive at the island, meeting Radeck’s husband (Alain Petit) – a budding chef with a taste for strange ingredients – and the couple’s personal mute sex slave (Analía Ivars). Unsurprisingly, the foul sex scenes begin, but when Paula is dumped in the middle of the forested island, she realises her employers have more on their minds than just sex. She becomes the victim in their version of The Most Dangerous Game as she is hunted down with crossbows.

This insane and sharp turn in the film’s final act is bewildering. Only making the finale more bizarre, Franco throws in a laugh track. Yes, for no conceivable reason other than a loose connection to Lina Romay’s video introduction to the game – a fucking laugh track. With Tender Flesh, more than any other Franco film I’ve seen, it feels like a lunatic is behind the camera. And not just any lunatic; a sweating, dribbling, perverted lunatic, fogging up his glasses while the actors writhe in front of him and choking with joy as the whips fly. I’ve seen films far filthier, but Tender Flesh is the first film in a while that left me wanting a shower. It’s not only the haggard old men sucking on nipples, sadistic whippings captured with insane video effects, constant close ups of lip-licking, and Analía Ivars pissing into a bowl that’s then used as a cooking ingredient that had me gagging. It’s Franco’s cold and heartless execution. Despite her fake tits, Amber Newman is attractive and even Lina Romay looks rather good for her age, but there’s an aggression and a cruelty to all the characters that strips the film of any sort of eroticism.

Tender Flesh is technically not a good film. It really shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t have had any sort of effect of me. Yet I found myself engrossed in it (as well as grossed out). I had to put down my lunch while I was watching it, which is really saying something. I’m not sure if Franco was going for erotic thrills. If that was his attempt, he failed to awaken anything in me. However, if it was his intent to disgust his audience leaving them covered with a thick grime of sleaze, then he passes with honours. Either way, for a film to leave such a bad taste in my mouth, and even with an absurd cannibalistic ending, I have to give Tender Flesh major credit.



Availability:

Tender Flesh is available on DVD from Shock-O-Rama Cinema both individually and in a set with Franco’s Lust for Frankenstein (1998). It features a behind the scenes featurette, along with a few other less notable extras. The individual release is out of print, so the double-pack would be the way to go.