The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966)

Original title: Miss Muerte

When somewhat mad neurologist Doctor Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano) explains his somewhat bizarre theories at a conference, he is laughed and scorned out of the room. Since he explains he has found the parts of the brain that control “good” and “evil”, as well as a way to stimulate or shut them down, so evil will be forever ended, some scepticism shouldn’t come as a surprise here. Still, the good Doctor promptly dies, cause of death: criticism (no, I don’t know how that works, either).

A couple of months later, Zimmer’s daughter and assistant Irma (Mabel Karr) fakes her death in a car accident – hitchhikers are so useful when you need a stand-in corpse – and proceeds with her plans to take revenge on the three scientists she specifically holds responsible for her father’s death. She already has a former killer (Guy Mairesse) suborned by her father’s SCIENCE and his mind controlled nurse as useful helpers, but she decides these men have to die in a more interesting manner.

Being a Jess Franco character, Irma finds herself inspired (and clearly a bit turned on) by the dance choreography of nightclub dancer Nadia (Estella Blain). It’s no wonder, for Nadia’s bit as “Miss Muerte” is all about seduction and murder by freakishly long fingernails, things that resonate with all of us, particularly when we’re planning vengeance. So Irma kidnaps Nadia, puts the mind-control whammy of her father’s SCIENCE on her, somehow poisons her nails, and sends her out to seduce and kill the scientists one by one.

The police, under leadership of a character played by director Jess Franco himself, seem rather confused by the whole thing, but Nadia’s boyfriend (Fernando Montes) – who also happens to be Irma’s short-term flirt and a neurologist himself – seems rather more capable, and certainly more motivated when it comes to uncovering the weird menace plot.

In 1966, Jess Franco was still a somewhat conventional filmmaker, putting some effort into making pulpy horror science fiction thrillers like this one with an audience in mind instead of ascending/descending completely into his world of personal obsessions and perversions. Which in turn means Franco could actually acquire decent budgets to work with. There’s a degree of slickness in Miss Muerte’s black and white photography Franco’s body of work would soon enough lose in favour of the languid, sometimes boring, idiosyncratic phantasmagoria his style would soon enough turn into.

Here, Franco seems to be at an absolute sweet spot between the old and the new. The – somewhat – higher budget inspires him to more concise storytelling, and his love for interesting/weird camera angles is here paired with some wonderful play with shadow and light that often creates as thick of an atmosphere of Franco-ness as his later, more difficult, work.

Many of Franco’s obsessions are there and accounted for: some of his favourite kinks, the nightclub scenes – though there’s no stripping and zooming on crotches here, in fact, very little zooming at all –, his very specific ideas about seduction, dominance and sado-masochism, and many a plot element we’ll encounter again and again in his films. Just here, these kinks seem still to be in service of the pulp horror plot instead of the other way around. From time to time, the film descends into delicious weirdness – the moment where Nadia seduces Howard Vernon’s neurologist character is incredible – but this weirdness still seems controlled.

In fact, Miss Muerte suggests a Franco might have been very effective in subsuming his personal weirdness, at least a little, to make more conventionally accessible yet still highly worthwhile genre movies. Being who I am, I am glad he let his freak flag fly rather sooner than later, but this does not make Miss Muerte any less of an interesting, fun bit of pulp horror.