The House Of The Lost Women — The House Of The Lost Women( Blu Ray & CD)
The House Of The Lost Women is forlorn, at points troubling family drama liberally dotted with female flesh ‘n’ perversion. This early 1980’s Jess Franco feature has a small cast of just five actors, with Franco regulars Lina Romay and Antonio Mayans among this number- with both giving great performances to the backdrop of a deserted Spanish island. Here from Severin is the first-ever Blu-Ray release of the film- featuring an uncut print of the picture, a few on-disc extras, and a CD featuring a selection of soundtrack music from Franco collaborator Daniel J. White.
Released in 1983 The House Of The Lost Women( aka La casa de las mujeres perdidas) was one of the sixteen films Franco released that year. With filming locations been Almería, Málaga, Murcia Spain- with Franco's skilful use of location, shot and cutting creating the feeling of a deserted island.
The film opens with shots of stark Spanish coast as harmonic, elegant, yet melancholic piano music is playing. We see a woman (Romay) walking along the deserted beach, and the closer she gets we see she is completely naked- with a voice-over detailing that she lives on the island with her father, stepmother, and sister in the only inhabited building on the island. Next, we switch to a bedroom, where we see Romay playfully touching herself, in the next room pretending to ignore what’s going on is a middle-aged man who keeps reading out headlines, and looking very awkward- before getting up and leaving the room. In time we find out the woman is Desdémona, and the man is Mario (Antonio Mayans)- she is his just eighteen-year-old daughter, and so begins the highly twisted and perverse family drama.
As things unfold, we meet Dulcinea (Carmen Carrión) Desdémona stepmother, and Mario's sexually unsatisfied wife. And Mario’s other daughter Paulova (Asunción Calero) who is around the same age as Desdémona- though wheelchair bound, and constantly babbles.
When not charting the insular and strange family drama, one of the film's key themes is voyeurism as characters are constantly watching others pleasuring themselves, or trying to pleasure themselves through half-open doors. With Desdémona constantly pinning to be away from the island, as she hopefully watches planes passing overhead to mainline Spain.
A large part of the film is concerned with sleaze, and female flesh- though more often than not it’s not in any way titillating. As either, it’s played over by TV soap banter or patronising adverts, or the tone of the encounters is abusive/ manipulative. In time we find out Mario is an actor who has had some sort of breakdown, and hiding away on the island- so when a stranger (Tony Skios) turns up claiming to be a hunter- he gets suspicious that he’s from his past, or chasing him for something.
Like much of Franco’s output the picture is more of a cinematic tone statement, than a richly storied film. And the tone is all about longing, isolation, and (seemingly) aimless existence. I’d say you’ll need to have a decent grounding in Franco’s work to really appreciate The House Of The Lost Women, as on the surface it seems to be just glum softcore- but there is way more depth, emotion and darkly- to-kinky amusing stabs at the family unit. With both troubling, and later decidedly tragic elements coming to the surface.
Moving onto this two-disc set- and firstly have the region free Blu ray disc, which features an uncut scan of the film- this looks very good, with good balance and definition throughout. On the extras side, we get a few things- In The Land Of Franco Part 6(20.41) which is next in the series of tours around film locations with Stephen Thrower, this time he's covering the areas of Alicante, Benidorm, and Calpe. And for this one, he is joined by actor Antonio Mayans, and the pair visit several locations and buildings. Including the distinctive Xanadu buildings where Franco filmed pictures such as She Killed In Ecstasy & Countess Perverse. We visit the large outcrop of Limestone which featured in Franco’s work from the 60’s up to the 80s, with its most notably used in the director's stab at the slasher genre Bloody Moon. Once again, this is another interesting selection of locations and Thrower also interviews Mayans regarding how he first met Jess, and how conformable the actor was with some of the more outlandish elements of Franco’s film work. Next, we get The Island Of Perversion (16.32) which finds Stephen Thrower giving his usual in-depth and informative overview of the film and its production- he begins by touching on the many other films Franco made in this busy period of his career. We find out that as well as having a small cast, there was a small crew too on the film- with Mayans also being the film's producer. He talks about the film's themes, discusses the actors/ their roles, etc. Lastly, on the disc we have an audio essay about the film (11.30) this finds writer Robert Monell- of I’m In A Franco State Of Mind- discussing the film's release in Spain, its certificate, the locations, and much more. So, all in all a nice selection of extras on the Blu-Ray.
The second disc in the set is a sixteen-track CD entitled In The Land Of Franco Vol 2. This features the soundtrack work of Daniel J White for five Franco films from the early 1980s. It features a nicely varied selection of cues going from mellow jazz funk, rapidly strummed acoustic guitar playing in a few different genres, darting organ discord, honking Spanish easy listening, mellow and wavering vibe-led workouts, and off-kilter jaunting-ness.
The House Of The Lost Women is another lost 80’s gem of sleaze 'n' unease from Jess Franco- with Severin once again doing a splendid job on the wonderful new scan, excellent/ interesting on disc extras, and of course, the genre varied sixteen track CD