Biography
Jess Franco has created his own crazy cinematic world over the past 40 years. Born in 1936 in Madrid, the son of a Cuban mother and a Spanish father, he studied Literature, Philosophy and Music in Madrid and Paris. He directed his first feature film in 1959 and soon became infamous for strange films of horror, eroticism, weird comedy, film noir and surreal drama. For "Chimes at Midnight", Orson Welles engaged him as second unit director. Like Welles, Franco was a "one-man-band": director, writer, cameraman, editor, composer/musician, and actor. Obsessed by cinema, he has made more than 180 films to date and has adopted more than 10 pseudonyms. Some of his most famous films are German productions like "Necronomicon" (1967), "Vampyros Lesbos" (1976), "Jack the Ripper (1976) and "Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun" (1976). In the 1970s, Franco was declared, along with Luis Bunuel, by the Catholic Church as one of the “most dangerous filmmakers”. His work includes such cult-classics as "The Awful Dr. Orloff" (1961), "Miss Muerte" (1965), "Marquis de Sade: Justine" (1968), "Venus in Furs" (1968), "99 Women" (1968), "Fu-Manchu" (1968), "Dracula Contra Frankenstein (1971), "The Black Countess" (1973), "Blue Rita"(1977), "House of Usher" (1983), and "Killer Barbys" (1996).
In 1992, he received the official assignment to finish Orson Welles' masterpiece "Don Quijote". He then became fascinated with new technical developments and became a pioneer and master in the art of digital filmmaking, resulting in the films "Dr. Wong’s Virtual Hell"(1998), "Vampyr Blues" (1999), and "Killer Barbys vs. Dracula" (2002).
Jess Franco died April 2, 2013 in Malaga.
Source: German Films Service & Marketing GmbH