Jesus Franco Biography
Jesús Franco Manera was born on May 12, 1930 in Madrid. He is a Spanish B-movie director, considered a bit like the European Ed Wood. He has worked in many countries such as France, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Italy and the United States. Passionate about music, he studied piano at the conservatory, later graduating in law. Eventually he decided to devote himself to cinema and entered a school where he remained for two years earning a living by writing novels under the pseudonym David Khunne. He moved to Paris where he studied film directing techniques, dedicating all his free time to devouring old films in film clubs. Upon his return to Spain, he began a career as a film composer, assistant director and screenwriter. Jesùs Franco's first cinematic attempts in the late 1950s failed until he devoted himself to genre cinema. The most famous films of these years are "Gritos en la noche" (Cries in the Night, 1962), "La muerte silba un blues" (Death Whistles a Blues, 1962), "Rififí en la ciudad" (Rififí in the City , 1963). As the titles suggest, these are noir films with dark tones, often with strong accents of morbid eroticism. These characteristics become Jesús Franco's trademark, earning him a small but enthusiastic fan base. Because of his films and his opposition to the dictatorship, the director had to leave Spain but continued tirelessly to make films in almost all European countries, including Italy, France, Germany and Portugal. In 1965, the great Orson Welles hired him to direct the second unit of his "Chimes at Midnight". In 1967, at the height of his success, his film "Necronomicon" was selected for the Berlin Film Festival. Jesùs Franco's films are often shot on low budgets and with low quality acting. This B-movie aesthetic, a little deliberate and a little forced, is not always well received by critics and audiences. To escape this bad reputation, Franco worked under around 30 pseudonyms and ultimately directed more than 200 films in his long career. With the rediscovery of trash cinema in the 1970s, Jesùs Franco's name was partially rehabilitated. Quentin Tarantino famously considers it one of his sources of inspiration. In 1996, the Spanish director received an award from the master of B-horror Roger Corman in New York. On April 2, 2013, after the release of his last film, "Al Pereira vs. The Alligator Ladies", Jesús Franco suffered a stroke and died at the age of 82.
