1963
El llanero
Rififí en la Ciudad
Don’t worry — I’m not only going to review Jess Franco movies for the rest of the year. Still, you might want to pay extra attention to this particular update. 1963 gives us, first of all, one of Franco’s rarest and least-known movies, even by comparison to his musicals: a strange quasi-Western set in Venezuela. But for the names of some of the characters, you’d never imagine this was a Jess Franco movie.
Then comes the film you’d never guess in a million years was written and directed by Franco: Rififí en la Ciudad, a taut crime thriller that suggests Orson Welles far more than the man who made Castle of Fu Manchu.
Jess Franco, King Vidor and Orson Welles