Doriana Grey/Die Marquise Von Sade

The greatest spanish import of them all.

If someone wanted to define Jess Franco merely as an erotic/porn filmmaker he would be just miserably missing the point.  Jess Franco was much more than an erotic/porn director. In fact, I'd like to state, Mr. Franco's signature talent was that he developed erotic/porn horror like no other in the industry. He didn’t invent the erotic horror movie, but he took it further than anyone else had taken it up to that point, and further than anyone has taken it since. And in Doriana Grey, AKA Die Marquise von Sade, made in 1976, he took the form to its logical conclusion. 

Given that the movie contains real sex (fellatio, cunnilinguns, penetration, facials and masturbation to be exact), it raises the obvious questions. Is this pornography or art? Is this pornography or a horror movie? The answer is that it’s pornography, and it’s art, and it’s a horror movie, and there in lies Jess Franco's undisputable talent.

Poor girl can't stop masturbating.

See? masturbating is her thing.

It deals with the same themes Franco had already explored in my personal favorite Female Vampire, AKA Erotikill in 1973, and to a certain extent in Vampyros Lesbos in 1970. Vampirism is no longer a metaphor for sex. Vampirism is sex. Superficially these movies seem to equate sex with death, but given that the theme is obviously important and personal for Franco I find it difficult to believe that he’s actually intending such a puritanical message. I’m more inclined to think that he’s equating sex with life, sex as the life force, sex as the alpha and the omega of life. It’s not a case of the blood is the life; it’s sex that is the life.

Doriana Grey is a fabulously wealthy, exquisitely beautiful and eternal youthful woman. She is also a vampire. Like the Countess Irina in Female Vampire she has an insatiable hunger for sex, and like the Countess Irina she drains the life from her victims through sex. But she can never satisfy her hunger; she is incapable of experiencing the physical fulfillment of sex. She has a twin sister, from whom she was surgically separated birth. She was left without the ability to experience sexual ecstacy no matter how much she craves it; her sister was left with little except that ability. They are both incomplete. Doriana has sex obsessively, but it’s her twin who experiences the pleasure.

Yes kids, real actors portray real sex.

Doriana can go from one boy to one girl at ease.

The link to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray may seem somewhat tenuous, and it certainly doesn’t qualify as an adaptation of the novel, but Wilde’s tale was undoubtedly one of the inspirations for the movie. In this case the twin sister takes the place of the painting.

Lina Romay plays both sisters. She looks ravishing, and I doubt that any other actress could have combined the necessary feel for the character with the necessary very high degree of uninhibitedness that the role demands. I personally think she’s a very underrated actress, and this is one of her best performances.

Those who dislike Franco’s movies in general will hate this one. Apart from an enormous amount of sex it features the stylistic touches that annoy his critics so much. There’s an obsessive use of the zoom lens, and there’s an equally obsessive and at times bewildering tendency to move in and out of focus, with the focus frequently dissolving altogether. There’s no question it’s a deliberate technique, and it works, conveying very effectively Doriana’s disconnection and alienation from herself (in fact the disconnection and alienation from self of both halves of her personality housed in separate bodies).

Skiddle addict.

Doriana likes to drink cum at tea time.

I think it’s vitally important not to see this movie until you’ve seen Vampyros Lesbos and Female Vampire - they form a sort of vampire trilogy, with each film pushing the theme a little bit further. It’s not a movie for everyone, but then no Jess Franco movie could be described as a movie for everyone. And be warned, I’m not kidding about the sex. It really is explicit and it really is non-simulated. Personally I think it’s a bold and brilliant film. 

Here you can see Doriana Grey getting busy: