The House of Lost Women (1983)

The House of Lost Women (La casa de las mujeres perdidas) was released in 1983 and belongs to Jess Franco’s Golden Films period. With Golden Films he was working on micro-budgets and as an added problem they proved to be spectacularly incompetent when it came to securing distribution outside Spain. On the other hand Golden Films gave him total creative freedom. Franco loved working for them. If he had total freedom he simply didn’t care how little money he had to work with. In this case he’s come up with a script that requires nothing more than a camera and a handful of good actors and as so often he’s also found a perfect location.

The House of Lost Women stars Lina Romay (who as so often at this period is billed as Candy Coster).

As with most Franco films of this era assigning The House of Lost Women to a genre is a bit of a challenge. It’s an erotic movie, but Franco’s erotic movies were not like other people’s. And describing it as an erotic movie is likely to give a false impression. It deals with sex, but it’s unsettling rather than arousing.

Mario Pontecorvo (Antonio Mayans) is an Argentinian actor who now lives on a tiny Spanish island with his family. Mario was forced to leave Argentina after some unpleasantness with the authorities there, unpleasantness relating to his sexual activities with a young woman. Mario is rather vague on this subject.

Mario lives on the island with his wife Dulcinea (Carmen Carrión) and his two daughters by a previous marriage. Paulova (Asunción Calero) has the body of a woman but the mind of a very small child. Desdémona (Lina Romay) is another matter.

Desdémona is the central character and provides voiceover narration.

This is one strange disturbed family. Mario seems to live in the past, dreaming of his past triumphs as an actor. He is entirely unable to satisfy Dulcinea’s sexual needs. Dulcinea is as a result crawling the walls. She has a few other issues as well, including a taste for sexual sadism.

Desdémona’s problem is that she is a virgin. She would very much like to change that situation. Given that there are no men on the island other than her father that’s a bit of a challenge for her. She has considered the possibility that her father might be able to solve the problem for her but her attempts at seduction fail and he rebuffs her approaches. Desdémona spends most of her time pleasuring herself but she desperately craves a man.

Then Tony Curtis arrives on the island. No, not that Tony Curtis. This is a young man who claims to be a hunter. As you might expect both Desdémona and Dulcinea are very excited by his arrival. You might also expect that Desdémona won’t remain a virgin much longer, and you’d be right.

The Pontecorvo family was wildly dysfunctional to begin with but this new arrival makes things dangerously unstable.

This is a classic setup for an erotic thriller or a murder mystery but that’s not at all what Franco is interested in giving us. It’s more of a psycho-sexual melodrama but heavily laced with black comedy. This is a rather amusing movie at times but it’s also at other times quite bleak. We don’t expect things to end well but Franco is not going to give us the bloodbath ending that we might have anticipated.

There’s some crazy humour in this film. Desdémona always has the TV on and while various sexual shenanigans are going on we hear a series of bizarre TV commercials in the background, and the TV station is clearly supposed to be broadcasting Dallas but this is Jess Franco’s crazed idea of Dallas. Surprisingly this stuff is actually quite amusing. It also adds an extra touch of weirdness. This is not the real world. This is Jess Franco World.

Antonio Mayans gives a very impressive performance as Mario. Mario lives in a strange world of fantasy with only the most tenuous grip on reality. It would be wrong to describe him as either villain or a victim. He’s more of a non-participant in life. He doesn’t really wish ill upon others because he’s hardly even aware of their existence.

Asunción Calero is frighteningly childlike and disturbing as Paulova. Carmen Carrión is chilling as Dulcinea.

At first we assume that we’re going to see Lina Romay once again as a sexually obsessed mad girl but as the story unfolds we start to question this. Perhaps Desdémona isn’t mad at all. She’s certainly sexually frustrated but she’s also desperate for love and she’s very bored and very lonely. She seems mad and sometimes her behaviour is unsettling but that’s because she’s in such a mad environment. Desdémona is more of a lost girl than a mad girl. It’s a subtle and poignant performance by Romay.

The House of Lost Women dates from a period at which Franco felt under no compulsion whatsoever to conform to any genre expectations. This is a story idea that appealed to him so he made the movie. The more I see of Franco’s 80s work the more of these odd neglected gems I find. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray (they’ve released this as a DVD as well) includes some very worthwhile extras. The audio essay by Robert Monell is good and as usual Stephen Thrower’s appreciation of the film is informative and perceptive.