#veronica llimera

[gameofthunder66]

'Hatchet for the Honeymoon' (1970) film

'Hatchet for the Honeymoon' (1970)

-watched 1/16/2024- 2 [1/2] stars- on Blu-ray DVD

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Hot Nights of Linda (Franco, 1975)

I don’t watch Jess Franco’s films for things like tight plotting, but this one feels especially disjointed even by his standards. This has all the stuff you normally get with his movies, like naked ladies, cool visuals, vaguely perverted goings on, but the assembly feels half haphazard. Franco was known for shooting multiple movies at the same time, and without doing any research into this one specifically, I’d wager this was a bunch of scenes he shot and only figured out how to put it together in the editing room with the help of clumsier than usual dubbed dialogue. The fact that this abruptly piles on the killings at the end and wheels out the lamest narrative device at the very end leads me to suspect this was the case.

To be clear, this is not entirely a knock on the movie, as there are plenty of things to enjoy. For example, like many a Franco flick, this has Lina Romay, and no movie starring her is entirely bereft of enjoyment. Romay plays the sex obsessed daughter or niece of a messed up family, who may or may not have seen her uncle or father Paul Muller murder his wife Monica Swinn after finding her in the arms of a lover. Romay insists to our heroine Alice Arno, who Franco frequently shoots to have her hair glimmer like gold in the sunlight, that she’s a virgin. "I only make love by myself. I do it often." But let us say that that statement no longer holds soon after she says it. And she doesn’t seem to respect boundaries, like when she barges in on Arno taking a shower and starts chatting her up while leaving the front of her sweater vest open. Anyway if you wanna see her suggestively eat a banana like on the poster, you’ll have to wait for an hour. There is also a “hard banana” version where I assume the banana goes places it’s not meant to, even if it may be “shaped to fit”, to take a phrase from online clothes shopping. That version appears to only exist in a horrible VHS rip, so I’m not sure how much you’d see anyway.

Other than that, there is some tenderness between Veronica Llimera as Romay’s childlike sister or cousin and the family’s mute servant played by Pierre Taylou. (I half suspect the character was made mute through the dub.) And Franco produces some stylish imagery, with some nice coastal atmosphere in the outdoor scenes and a sensual zoom from Romay caressing Llimera’s nude body to the same thing seen in a mirror. And while whipping scenes in Franco’s films normally involves ladies, this was one where Muller whips Taylou, so he’s broadening his horizons. Anyway, I’m not sure how well this all comes together, but it’s worth noting that Romay is seen not just in varying states of undress but also in a green robe, which automatically makes this a good movie.