Jesùs Franco

Active - 1959 - 2006  |   Born - May 12, 1930   |   Died - Apr 2, 2013   |   Genres - Horror, Drama, Mystery

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Biography by AllMovie

Jesús Franco began directing low-budget films in the late '50s, and, by the '60s, found his specialty in horror movies. His 1962 Gritos en la Noche (aka The Awful Dr. Orloff) found many admirers internationally, and spawned several sequels. A prolific filmmaker, Franco's lurid shockers embraced almost every horror subgenre: Frankenstein (La Maldicion de Frankenstein); vampires (Count Dracula); psycho killers (Jack the Ripper); the occult (El Procesco de las Brujas [aka Night of the Blood Monster]); Fu Manchu (The Castle of Fu Manchu); and satanism (Lorna, The Exorcist [aka Les Possédées du Diable]). Franco often combined eroticism and horror (El Case de las Dos Bellezas [aka Sadisterotica]; Necronomicon -- Getraumte Sunden [aka Succubus]), and exhibited a fondness for women-in-prison exploitation films (99 Women [aka Isle of Lost Women]; Caged Women [aka Barbed Wire Dolls]). Franco also made several films derived from the writings of the Marquis de Sade, including Justine, Eugenie de Sade, Eugenie: The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion (aka Philosophy in the Boudoir), and Juliette. He received an honorary Goya Award in 2009 and continued working steadily up to his death in 2013.

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