The Diabolical Dr. Z, 1966.
Directed by Jess Franco.
Starring Estella Blain, Howard Vernon, Mabel Karr, Fernando Montes, Cris Huerta, Jess Franco, and Antonio Jiménez Escribano.
SYNOPSIS:
After a fatal heart attack kills her father, the daughter of Dr. Z seeks revenge by using her father’s experiments in mind control.
The title The Diabolical Dr. Z is a little misleading, as the titular doctor is only in the movie for first 10-or-so minutes, so the original Spanish title of Miss Muetre (translated as Miss Death) would be a more fitting one, despite the fact that Miss Death is not the main antagonist.
That role falls to Irma Zimmer (Mabel Karr), the daughter of Dr. Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano in an uncredited role), and both father and daughter have gate-crashed a science convention so that the wheelchair-bound neurosurgeon can announce that his experiments have led him to be able to separate the good and evil sides of a person’s personality by controlling their minds, basically making them into zombies who obey orders without question. Naturally, the other scientists are disgusted at this moral outrage and verbally attack the doctor, which brings on a fatal heart attack.
Following on from this, Irma vows to continue her father’s work and plots revenge on the three main scientists who caused her father’s death. She does this by kidnapping an exotic dancer known as Miss Death (Estella Blain), who has extremely long fingernails, and controlling her mind using her father’s machine, coating said nails with poison and sending her off to do Irma’s dastardly work.
So technically, Irma does become Dr. Z and she is quite diabolical, although whether she is a fully qualified doctor we do not know. Along with lots of other details, you have to take these things on faith, and this being a Jess Franco movie that normally is the way. However, for this production the prolific director had a bigger budget – one of the biggest he ever worked with – and you can tell that a little bit more care and attention went into making this one than the Euro-sleaze titles he would become more famous for in the following decade.
For a start, this movie looks gorgeous, the stylish cinematography accentuating the sense of gothic much more than a foggy castle in a cheap horror movie ever could. Utilising filmmaking techniques such as close-ups on faces to create drama and bizarre camera angles – such as the upwards shots of a spiral staircase, which Lamberto Bava recreated in Demons 2 – there is an undercurrent of expressionism and surrealism throughout which plays into the off-kilter methods of the main antagonist, and the design of the Miss Death’s spider web and costume are pure 1960s pop art, accessible but with a dark edge.
Jess Franco regular Howard Vernon turns up as Dr. Vicas, the President of the scientific group, and Franco himself plays one of the police detectives on the case in an uncredited role, but otherwise the performances are fairly low-key and keep to the more melancholic vibe that Franco seems to be going for. It is very unusual to be talking about a Jess Franco movie without mentioning gratuitous nudity and gory violence, but The Diabolical Dr. Z is a restrained piece from the director that proves he could craft a suspenseful and slick thriller when the conditions were right.
Coming backed with an informative audio commentary by genre expert Tim Lucas, a couple of video essays leaning into the gothic side of ‘60s Euro-horror and science fiction and several archive interviews with various academics, this packed Blu-ray edition of The Diabolical Dr. Z may not appeal so much to the casual viewer but the movie is an important stepping stone in both the career of Jess Franco and for European genre cinema in general, and Eureka have put a lot of effort into bringing out all of the visual appeal with a pristine print from a 2K restoration. Overall, an atmospheric and surprisingly- for use of a better word – classy movie from the same director who brought you Devil Hunter and Swedish Nympho Slaves. Can’t go wrong, really.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
