Crew
Director/Screenplay – Jess Frank [Jesus Franco], Based on the Novel by David Khüne [Jesus Franco], Producer – Marius Lesoeur, Photography (b&w) – Alfonso Nieva, Music – Daniel White, Art Direction – Fernand Somoza. Production Company – Eurocineac.
Cast
Agnes Spaak (Melissa), Marcelo Arroita-Jauregui (Dr Conrad Fisherman), Jose Rubio (Juan Manuel), Hugo Blanco (Andros), Pastor Serrado (Inspector Diaz), Manuel Guitian (Ciceron), Luisa Sala (Inglud Fisherman), Rafael Hernandez (Bar Owner), Perla Cristal (Rosa)
Plot
Melissa goes to stay with her uncle Dr Conrad Fisherman in the town of Holfen. Fisherman is a disciple of the late Dr Orloff and was bequeathed his notes. He has used these to create a mind-controlled man Andros. Fisherman gives strippers a necklace that contains a sonic homing device and then despatches Andros to home in on the signal and kill them. As murders accumulate around the town, Melissa becomes fearful staying in the house.
The late Jesus or Jess Franco (1930-2013) is considered the world’s most prolific director. Between 1957 and 2013, Franco directed a purported 199 feature films. Many of these exist under a labyrinth of alternate titles and different cuts. Franco’s most prolific heyday were during the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. During this period, he was producing easily six to eight films per year. His output covered a great many different genres from thrillers, spy films and science-fiction but most of all horror and erotica/pornography. Franco’s films have attained a certain cult following for their arty pretentions, although just as many of them are cheaply made. (A full list of Jess Franco’s other genre films is at the bottom of the page).
The Awful Dr Orloff (1962) was one of Franco’s earliest films, a copy of the classic French mad surgeon film Eyes Without a Face (1959). Subsequently, Franco made four Dr Orloff sequels with The Secret of Dr Orloff here, The Orgies of Dr Orloff (1969), The Sinister Eyes of Dr Orloff (1973) and The Sinister Dr Orloff (1984), while Howard Vernon made a cameo as Orloff in one other Franco film Faceless (1987).
That said, The Secret of Dr Orloff is not strictly a Dr Orloff film. A Dr Orloff appears in the opening scene but only to pass on his notes to Dr Fisherman before dying. In The Awful Dr Orloff, Dr Orloff was a mad surgeon, whereas here he seems to be more of a regular Mad Scientist who has created a form of Mind Control. (Although the original Dr Orloff did have a zombified servant). The film has undergone retitlings as Dr Jekyll’s Mistresses/The Mistresses of Dr Jekyll, which pose it as being a Jekyll and Hyde film, while Marcelo Arroita-Jauregui’s Dr Fisherman is renamed as Dr Jekyll in some English-language versions, but the film has nothing to do with Robert Louis Stevenson’s creation.
The Secret of Dr Orloff taps into Jess Franco’s usual preoccupations of this era. He shoots in the same black-and-white he did throughout for much of the 1960s, often creating some stark and arty black-and-whites. There is the theme of mind control that appears in some of his films, most notedly The Diabolical Dr Z (1966). There is also Franco gearing up to unleash the sado-sexual content that preoccupies much of his work – there is some brief toplessness and we see several women being strangled by the mind-controlled killer Hugo Blanco, although this is fairly tame in comparison to the envelope that Franco would push in subsequent works.
I was only able to watch an English-dubbed version of The Secret of Dr Orloff, which is not too badly done. The dubbing leads to some odd eyebrow-raising line such as detective Pastor Serrado’s “If you will permit a lack of taste, sergeant, I think I must display my feeling with a vulgar display of swearing – gadzooks!” The main problem with the film is one that emerged with a number of Franco’s later films – he is not the best at constructing plots. Here, aside from a couple of murders, almost nothing happens for the first half of the film. It has no dramatic drive and the menace of the mind-controlled Andros is not particularly well integrated, least of all when it comes to the viewpoint character of Agnes Spaak, who is merely present in the film but does remarkably little until right up to the end.
Jess Franco’s other films are:– The Awful Dr Orloff (1962), The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus (1962), Attack of the Robots (1966), The Diabolical Dr Z/Miss Death (1966), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), Necronomicon/Succubus (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), Justine (1969), Kiss Me Monster (1969), 99 Women (1969), Sadisterotica/Red Lips (1969), The Girl from Rio (1969), Venus in Furs/Paroxysmus (1969), The Bloody Judge/Night of the Blood Monster (1970), Count Dracula (1970), Eugenie/Philosophy in the Boudoir (1970), Nightmares Come at Night (1970), Vampyros Lesbos (1970), Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972), She Killed in Ecstasy (1971), The Corpse Packs His Bags (1972), The Daughter of Dracula (1972), The Demons (1972), Doctor Mabuse (1972), Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972), The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein (1972), The Silence of the Tomb (1972), The Bare-Breasted Countess/Erotikill/Female Vampire (1973), The Erotic Adventures of Maciste in Atlantis (1973), The Obscene Mirror/The Other Side of the Mirror (1973), The Sinister Eyes of Dr Orloff (1973), A Virgin Among the Living Dead/Christina, Princess of Eroticism (1973), Lorna the Exorcist (1974), Night of the Assassins/Night of the Skull (1974), The Perverse Countess (1974), Eugenie (1975), Doriana Grey (1976), Jack the Ripper (1976), Sexy Sisters/Satanic Sisters (1976), Greta the Mad Butcher/Wanda the Wicked Warden/Ilsa: Absolute Power (1977), Call of the Blonde Goddess/Voodoo Passion (1977), Wicked Women (1977), Demoniac/Exorcism/The Ripper of Notre Dame (1979), Man Hunter/The Devil Hunter (1980), White Cannibal Queen (1980), Bloody Moon (1981), Oasis of the Zombies (1981), Revenge of the House of Usher (1982), Grave of the Living Dead (1983), The Treasure of the White Goddess (1983), The Sinister Dr Orloff (1984), Mansion of the Living Dead (1985), Faceless (1987), The Killer Barbies (1996), Lust for Frankenstein (1998), Marie-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula in 8 Legs to Love You (1998), Tender Flesh (1998), Vampire Blues (1999), Vampire Junction (2001), Incubus (2002), Killer Barbies vs Dracula (2002), Snakewoman (2005), Paula-Paula (2010), Al Pereira vs the Alligator Ladies (2012), Crypt of the Condemned (2012) and Revenge of the Alligator Ladies (2013).
Trailer here