Jesus Franco
| Jesús Franco | |
|---|---|
At the 2008 , Gérardmer, France
|
|
| Born |
Jesús Franco Manera 12 May 1930 Málaga, Kingdom of Spain |
| Died | 2 April 2013 (aged 82) Málaga, Spain |
| Cause of death | Stroke |
| Other names | Jess Franco Clifford Brown James P. Johnson Frank Hollmann David Khune |
| Occupation | Director, screenwriter, cinematographer, musician, actor |
| Years active | 1959–2013 |
| Spouse(s) |
Nicole Guettard (married from circa 1962 – 1980) Lina Romay (m. 25 April 2008 – 15 February 2012, her death) |
Jesús "Jess" Franco (born Jesús Franco Manera; 12 May 1930 – 2 April 2013) was a Spanish film director, writer, composer, cinematographer and actor.
Franco began his career in 1954 (at age 24) as an assistant director in the Spanish film industry, performing many tasks including composing music for some of the films as well as co-writing a number of the screenplays. He assisted a number of directors such as Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, Leon Klimovsky and Juan Antonio Bardem. After working on more than 20 films, he decided to get into directing films in 1959, making a few musicals and a crime drama called Red Lips.
In 1960, Franco took Marius Lesoeur and Sergio Newman, two producer friends, to a cinema to see the newly released Hammer horror film The Brides of Dracula and the three men decided to get into the horror film business. His career took off in 1961 with The Awful Dr. Orloff (aka Gritos en la noche), which received wide distribution in the United States and the UK. Franco wrote and directed Orloff, and even supplied some of the music for the film. In the mid-1960s, he went on to direct two other horror films, then proceeded to turn out a number of James Bond-like spy thrillers and softcore sex films based on the works of the Marquis de Sade (which remained one of his major influences throughout his career). Though he had some American box office success with Necronomicon (1967), 99 Women (1968) and two 1969 Christopher Lee films — The Bloody Judge and Count Dracula — he never achieved wide commercial success. Many of his films were only distributed in Europe, and most of them were never dubbed into English.
...
Wikipedia