THE SINISTER EYES
OF DR. ORLOFF
Spain | 1973
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring
William Berger
Montserrat Prous
Edmund Purdom
Color | 75 Minutes | Not Rated
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC)
Intervision Picture Corp.
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Review by
Brian Lindsey

Film:2
DVD:2
More like the awfully boring Dr. Orloff... Only the most obsessively fanatical Franco collectors need apply.
    The filmography of prolific director Jess Franco is littered with characters bearing the name "Orloff" (sometimes spelled with a single 'F'). Often they are central to a film's story, as in The Awful Dr. Orlof and Dr. Orloff's Monster, while at other times only tangential supporting players (Female Vampire, Doriana Grey). Always medical men or academicians of some sort (doctors, psychiatrists, metaphysicians, philosophers, etc.), they are frequently villainous in nature — mad scientists, typically — but on occasion benign. There's really no intended or implied connection between these various Orloffs; Franco just dug the name and used it a lot. With acknowledgment to the works of British sci-fi/fantasy novelist Michael Moorcock, I personally like to imagine that there exits a Franco "multiverse" of sorts: multiple planes of coexisting realities in which these characters are connected... They're really the same being, only existing in different incarnations on various planes and in time-currents within those planes.* Franco himself would doubtless laugh at such a notion — and with good reason — but it's a concept that I just haven't been able to consciously discard.
    This particular film, The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff, is more structured and plot-driven than most of Franco's early '70s output. It's also significantly tamer in terms of sex and violence; there’s only (very) brief nudity and little blood. This time the "Orloff" in question is a modernized riff on that villainous staple of Victorian potboilers, the evil mesmerist.
    Melissa Comfort (Montserrat Prous) would seem to have it all. She's young, pretty, and the wealthy heir to her late father's fortune. Unfortunately she's also wheelchair-bound — having been unable to walk since birth — and her family thinks she's mentally unbalanced. Tormented by weird dreams of her father's death in which she, as a child, can somehow walk, Melissa greatly fears for own sanity. Her guardian uncle Sir Robert (Jaime Picas) is genuinely concerned for her well-being but the same cannot be said of his latest trophy wife (Kali Hansa) or Melissa's slutty half-sister (Loretta Tovar). A psychiatric specialist is brought in for consultation, one Dr. Orloff (William Berger) — a somewhat odd but friendly-seeming fellow who immediately establishes a strange rapport with the troubled girl. Needless to say there's a significant inheritance at stake were Melissa to be institutionalized or die, and a conspiracy is afoot to get her out of the picture. The enigmatic Dr. Orloff, however, is pursuing his own secret, very personal agenda...
    The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff will likely result in glazed, droopy eyes for the viewer. It's a deadly dull affair, a stale, predictable story lacking any notable stylistic touches by the director. Most of the Franco films that I've ended up disliking had at least something intriguingly quirky about them — an interesting scene or two; a groovy score; an erotically-charged tableux with a hot, curvy Euro-babe cavorting in the buff. But Sinister Eyes offers virtually nothing. Franco is mostly successful in creating a suitable atmosphere in which the scenario can unfold but it's just not the sort of thing that can carry an entire film. (Even one with a relatively short running time such as this one.) A dollop of wantonly gratuitous sleaze would have helped immeasurably here. Perhaps then I would've been able to stay awake through the initial viewing.
    Franco attempts to blend a touch of the modern with the standard gothic 'lady in peril' tropes by including a hippy musician (Robert Woods) who lives next door and becomes protective of Melissa. The horrid love ballad he croons sounds like it's being warbled by an inebriated Munchkin and his interaction with a reticent police inspector (Edmund Purdom), which is supposed to provide comic relief, merely comes off as awkward, feeling very much like pointless padding. Standing in for Franco favorite Howard Vernon, Berger (Sabata, Five Dolls for an August Moon) makes an acceptable if decidedly laid-back Orloff; frequent Franco muse Lina Romay is also in the cast, but one would barely know it since she's a background presence in only a few shots (as a go-go boots-wearing groupie). The director himself cameos as Melissa's murdered father in a dream sequence.
* "Morpho" — the Eternal Henchman — is another ubiquitous denizen of my Franco Multiverse.
I'll get right to the point: this DVD looks lousy. Culled from a VHS tape master, the fullframe transfer is unacceptably soft, fuzzy and murky. This is the only version of the film known to exist, however, so I'm afraid this is as good as it's ever gonna get. (This new Intervision edition reportedly uses the same source material as a 2009 Spanish release, using straight PAL to NTSC conversion.) The Spanish-language audio doesn't fare much better but is at least serviceable; unfortunately the (sometimes awkward) English subtitles completely vanish for nearly five minutes beginning a litttle after the 29:00 mark, during a fairly crucial moment in the film. Anybody that manages to make it that far — and doesn't speak Spanish — is bound to be pissed.
    The single extra on the DVD is a recently-conducted interview with Jess Franco, running some 19 minutes. He talks about the origins of the character name "Orloff", how Howard Vernon would've been cast if not for a prior commitment, working with William Berger and other aspects of the production. "Uncle Jess" is over 80 now, physically rather frail, but he's still got his wits about him and some interesting stories and opinions to offer. He speaks in very thickly accented English, it must be noted, and no subtitles are provided. (I was able to understand most of what he was saying only because I've seen so many Franco interviews in the past.) 3/13/11
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