By Chris Hyde

September 16, 2003

The prolific Spanish-born director Jess Franco is mostly known for luridly colorful outings such as Eugenie and Vampyros Lesbos, but early in his career also sometimes worked in glorious black and white. One prime example is the excellent 1965 thriller, The Diabolical Doctor Z.

While still active as a director today, Franco's life began in Madrid in 1930. His youth included extensive musical training and theater work, all of which initially helped him to get his start in movies during the 1950s as a composer and actor for some Spanish films. He also began directing in the latter portion of that decade, though the first notable film of Franco's that is broadly known is the 1962 Gritos en la Noche (titled The Awful Dr Orloff in the USA). However, conditions in Spain in this period were such that Franco's tendencies towards sex and violence were not allowed full rein, and so he generally worked in the looser French industry or for Swiss skin flick producer Erwin C. Dietrich through the 1970s. A case in point is the film under discussion today, which was backed in the main by French production money and shot in the language of that Gallic nation.

The story of the Diabolical Doctor Z starts out in a creepy castle, as a serial killer makes his brutal escape from his dank environs. Unfortunately for him, he gets only as far as Dr. Zimmer's mad scientist laboratory, where the wheelchair bound experimenter and his female assistants (one of whom is the doctor's daughter) use him as a convenient lab animal. After testing his bizarre theories out on this wayward escapee using strange robotic equipment and successfully turning the psychopath into a docile servant, the doctor and his daughter are off to a big neuropathology conference to present their findings to the world. But once there they are excoriated and shunned by their fellow scientists, and during the proceedings the older man suffers a heart attack and passes on. However, with his dying breath he requests that his daughter carry on with his obscene research -- and she readily assents to her father's final wish.

But the younger Dr. Z has much more on her mind than just the simple continuation of her dad's bizarre brainwork. She's out to wreak vengeance on the people whom she blames for his untimely end, and so as she fulfills his last desire, she does so with one eye cocked towards using his discoveries to exact her pound of flesh. She first stages her own death so that she can operate in seclusion, and then goes out to procure a subject that she can use as a foil for her murderous ends. Choosing carefully, she handpicks a beautiful blond woman from a nightclub act who goes under the nom de plume of "Miss Death" and once the chanteuse has been placed in her thrall, she dispatches her assassin to do in the trio of men she holds most responsible for dear old dad's demise.

Clocking in at a breezy 82 minutes, this genre piece moves along briskly, without much time wasted on sub plots or exposition. There's the perfunctory police investigation/boyfriend-searching-for-missing-girlfriend byline, but in the main the movie follows the trail of Dr. Z's vengeance without getting too bogged down in the details. Whether this approach appeals to the viewer may depend on one's ability to soak up the atmosphere instead of worrying about the nuances of plot -- but suffice it to say that the stark black and white photography, eerie iconography, jazzy soundtrack and rapid pacing were more than enough to satisfy these eyes. Also of note is the insanely stylish mode of direction that Franco applies, almost to a fault: the offbeat angles and continuously fluid moving camera shots lend the picture an air of offbeat action that fits the material perfectly.

Luckily for us, in its present DVD incarnation the folks at Mondo Macabro have rendered the gorgeously stark photography of the Diabolical Doctor Z in beautiful fashion. (And yes, astute reader, this release did hit the streets much earlier in 2003. What can I say? I have a bit of a backlog.) The transfer is just incredible, giving such contrast to the blacks and whites that it allows Franco's play of light and shadow to be seen in its most pristine form. The film is filled with attractive set pieces, from the insidious lair of the robotic laboratory to the surreal atmosphere of Miss Death's strange spider webbed lounge act, and the clean presentation shows them off to the fullest. This widescreen 1.85:1 edition also makes available much peripheral information that was lost in previous VHS versions of the film.

On the audio front, both the dubbed version and the original French language soundtrack are available here. As a bonus, when watching with the English track those scenes that were cut from the American version of the film are still shown subtitled, allowing the viewer to see just what was left out of the domestic version. As for extras, this DVD includes a nice 15-minute documentary on Jess Franco that features commentary by people who worked in his films as well as input from the man himself. There are also voluminous amounts of production notes, filmographies, stills and posters available here, an alternative credits sequence that was used on the US version, the theatrical trailer, some bonus audio clips and even a special Easter egg featuring the voice of one of the movie's stars.

Overall, with their usual aplomb, Mondo Macabro has here released The Diabolical Doctor Z in a definitive edition that renders all previous incarnations superfluous. This top-notch disc shows off one of the true gems from the career of a director whose output tends to vary wildly in quality, so this one's a treat both for Franco completists and those discovering the filmmaker for the first time. It's tough to imagine that any subsequent release of this spectacular bit of '60s black and white horror could improve on it in any way, and that means that there's no reason to hesitate in scarfing this one up. Anyone with even the slightest interest in horror films from this period should find a place for this excellent disk on their shelves.