Ms Kathleen's

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In “Succubus” and “Vampyros Lesbos” the female sex demon premise didn’t work for me but in “Venus in Furs” it kind of fit because Wanda came across as sophisticated and mysterious and seductive, and we wonder if all of these scenes are merely a figment of Jimmy’s imagination (distraught by guilt of finding a dead woman on the beach) or perhaps merely the result of Jimmy’s sexual fantasies. Thus viewing the demon possessed women in “Succubus” and “Vampyros Lesbos” and interpreting it as a male’s sexual fantasy, it finally works in “Venus in Furs” if we substitute the character Jimmy for the real male author of the fantasy (Jess Franco).

In his interview on the DVD, Franco said that he hated the bizarre ending of “Venus in Furs” and blamed it on producer Harry Alan Towers. Yet it’s the marriage between Franco and Towers that made this movie Franco’s so-called masterpiece. Just as Lynch stumbled into his masterpiece “Mulholland Drive” when ABC cancelled what was supposed to be a television series and Lynch took what he had filmed and made it into a movie, likewise Franco stumbled into his best film when Commonwealth United forced him to work a woman wearing furs into his dream project of doing a movie about a black trumpet player who is inspired by a white woman he sees in his audience.