I want to alert my fellow Jess Franco completists to the release in Italy of some long elusive footage. Sinister Films' SINFONIA PER UN SADICO ("Symphony for a Sadist") is DVD only, unfortunately - nevertheless, it represents an essential upgrade of the film known to us here as THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS (1963). It includes the same HD restoration as released in the US back in 2015 by Kino Lorber as a Blu-ray disc, but its greater purchase incentive is the bonus inclusion of a 2K restoration of a 16mm Italian scope print that includes the film's legendary but rarely screened prologue. Boasting some of the most striking visuals in the entire film, shorn of all narrative duty, this prologue is an impressionistic procession of cruel images that unfold as follows:
Opening with a black screen, the film fades up to reveal a view of a house, depicted in a lowering crane shot. There is visible movement by a shadow cast on the one illuminated window, but our view is partially blocked by a clothes line, from which are dangling various articles of intimate female apparel. The camera lowers while pushing forward past the clothes line.
This image then dissolves to a menacing shadow cast upon the outside of another closed window, the glass panes smeared with some kind of grease.
From this, we cut to what we presume is the prey sought by this menacing shadow. There is a slow zoom into the woman's face.
This close-up then dissolves to the woman's silhouetted hands, rising up to clutch at some dangling fabric, pulling it down in a pantomime of agony.
This then dissolves to the hanging skeleton on display in the Von Klaus torture chamber. It is a mobile shot but the action within - the woman's upright, outstretched hand - is frozen within it. The camera slowly pans down the length of the woman's arm to her face.
This then dissolves to another tableau vivant, of the woman standing in the foreground, with the skeleton displayed at screen right. Slowly, from behind the woman, a figure approaches her, dressed in black with his face swathed in opaque white material, a mouth painted onto it with what appears to be a gash of lipstick. Aside from his advance, the image remains perfectly still until the figure lowers a kind of soft rope around the woman's neck. As if on cue, her mouth opens in a silent scream.
A return to the earlier shot of the intruder peering through the window.
We next dissolve to an overhead view of the woman arranged supine on the bed in the torture room, as viewed by the mirror suspended above it, behind an arrangement of ceremonial candles. The shadowy male figure joins her on the bed and raises a dagger before plunging it slowly down. As it descends, we cut to the point of the dagger, already dipped in blood, lowering past the camera. As the wrist of the killer passes by, the image dissolves to the hands of the pianist as he plays the accompaniment to the main titles - where all other versions of the film begin.
As you can see, the sequence confirms the rumor that Franco's portrayal of the sadist anticipates the look of Mario Bava's masked assassin in BLOOD AND BLACK LACE by a full year, and now that we see that the prologue was part of the Italian release as well as the Spanish one, there are grounds to believe that Bava could have seen it.
Those familiar with the film will recall the astounding sequence of the killer's abduction of the tavern girl played by Gogo Robins. As with the bulk of this erotic sequence, the original soundtrack for this "continental" material appears to be lost. Eurociné (the film's co-producer) has covered the silent track with some of Franco's own impressionistic music of atonal glides across piano wires and off-kilter percussive thumps. Though this version of the film restores the startling prologue, it is otherwise a conservative presentation and presents Gogo's big scene with the "dressed" version shown in most countries. Therefore, the scene in which Inspector Borowski (Georges Rollin) discovers her body in the dungeon, her arms manacled above her head, she is clothed - rather than semi-nude, as she appears in the Kino Lorber release.
There have also been a number of recent worthwhile additions to the Franco Blu-ray discography, including the German imports ROTE LIPPEN, SADISTEROTICA (DigiDreams Studios), which is an uncut version of the film now known to US collectors as TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS, and also a five-disc colossus box set of DER HEXENTÖTER VON BLACKMOOR (Koch Media), which includes three different cuts of the film and various supplements over two Blu-rays or two bonus DVDs, and a soundtrack CD of Bruno Nicolai's score - which can also be found at Diabolik DVD. Blue Underground has recently upgraded various Franco films from their catalogue to Blu-ray, including EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION and CECILIA (which includes as a bonus the Spanish alternative cut known as ABERACCIONES SEXUALES DE UNA MUJER CASADA). Blue Underground also recently posted on their Facebook page that there are now down to less than 100 remaining copies of their three-disc 99 WOMEN Blu-ray limited edition, so grab that if you can still find it. And finally, in the UK, Indicator is about to unleash their box set of THE FU MANCHU CYCLE 1963-1969, which will include much-improved 4K restorations of Franco's two conclusive entries in the series with - as I understand it - some previously unseen footage and a 120-page color booklet featuring an essay by Yours Truly. The set is limited to 6000 copies.
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