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The Bloody Judge (1970)

Dir: Jess Franco.

Made a year after the magnificent “Witchfinder General”, hack master Jess Franco spins his own tale of puritanical madness with the real life figure of Judge Jeffrey's replacing Mathew Hopkins.

The year is 1685, King Charles is dead and his brother James II sits on the throne. But in France, William of Orange, plans, with the help of the Duke of Monmouth (Charles’ natural Son), to invade England and take the Crown.
Into this turmoil strides the figure of Judge Jeffrey's, (Christopher Lee) a puritan and royalist who holds the country in an iron fist of fear where anyone suspected of withcraft or of supporting Monmouth is quickly arrested, tortured and tried. Witches are ‘examined’ by the courts torturer/executioner Ketch (Franco regular Howard Vernon) for abnormalities of the body and mind to prove they are in league with satan. These examinations are nothing but corrupt, sadistic tortures.

One such unfortunate is Alicia Gray (Margaret Lee) who is tortured and found guilty of witchcraft. She suffers death by burning in front of her sister Mary (Maria Rohm) who unsuccessfully pleaded for mercy from Jeffrey's, but could not bring herself to succumb to the judges lustful requirements. A scene that shows the hypocrisy in Jeffrey's character.
The sisters father was executed for plotting against the King, and Mary carries on her fathers cause by joining up with her lover Harry (Hans Hass) to help in the upcoming invasion by Monmouth.

Harry is the son of The Lord of Wessex (veteran British actor Leo Genn,) and Jeffrey's warns Wessex that his son will be executed for treachery if he is linked to the Rebels. When the Lords servant Satchel (Milo Quesada) lets slip that Harry is seeing Mary, Jeffrey's makes plans to have her kidnapped using the treacherous Satchel to trick her.
But Monmouth invades and Jeffrey's must flee, Satchel takes this opportunity to ravish Mary but she pushes his face into a fireplace horrifically scarring him. Harry rescues her and they join the rebellion. Satchel, now with vengeance in his heart joins Jeffrey's fanatical followers and, after Monmouth’s attack fails, he recaptures Mary and the other woman folk of the rebels and takes them to Jeffrey's. Harry and the surviving rebels give chase. And as William of Orange plans his own invasion and battle draws closer, has time finally run out for Judge Jeffrey's?...

 

Produced by the infamous Harry Alan Towers (still working with Franco despite blaming him for the demise of the “Fu Manchu” series) this is a remarkably plush looking film, far removed from the cheap looking efforts that Franco is better known for. The music (by Bruno Nicolai) is full orchestral score that, along with the costumes, large number of extras and impressive sets and locations, helps give the film a very professional feel. We are even treated to pretty impressive battle scenes; the kind of scenes Michael Reeves was unable to put into "Witchfinder General". Whereas the much mentioned Battle of Naseby in “Witchfinder" is absent, “Bloody Judge” recreates Monmouth's ill fated battle of Sedgemoor with the use of plentiful extras, horse charges and much canon fire. It shows that given the budget Franco could indeed make completely acceptable cinema, which is born out by the fact that “Judge” was one of Franco’s rare U.S cinema releases.

Sadly his actual direction of many scenes is overly stodgy, creating a very static feel to certain sequences. So it is left to Christopher Lee to keep the film going with a nicely judged (ha) performance (Lee has said it was one of his best) that at first oozes restrained nastiness before skillfully moving to more up front madness as Jeffrey loses control when he sees his power under threat. One of the ways Franco shows us this madness is with a well-staged red hued nightmare that is a gruesome montage of screaming tortured women and severed fingers!

Genn, who would also shows up in Lucio Fulci’s UK based giallo “Lizard in a Woman’s Skin”, does a perfectly competent job as Wessex but only Quesada as the evil, oddly named Satchel, makes any impression amongst the Euro actors. Fans of the classic “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie” will recognize Satchel’s dubbing artist as the man who also did the voice of the coroner, Mr. Perkins, in Grau’s superlative Zombie fest.

But it is only in the few aforementioned torture chamber scenes that any kind of life is injected into the films pacing. These scenes are more like the Franco we know and (sometimes) love. Although tame compared to a lot of his later stuff (including his revisiting of Jeffrey's in “The Demons”) they still add a much welcome bit of exploitation garnish to what is actually a very straight faced historical drama.

We are treated to various dungeon delights for our voyeuristic pleasure. The most explicit being dealt out to Alicia as she is stretched on the rack, branded with a hot iron and cut with a knife, all shown in close up detail. And although she wears strategically ripped clothes that carefully cover up any nudity, this sequence is still highly exploitative. In fact we only have very brief nudity during the whole film, with only the odd topless caged woman or rear shots during floggings (essential to all torture chamber sequences) to supply the naked goods.

It’s a far cry from the full on crotch zooms ol’ Jess would become notorious for. It’s Vernon who is the main focus in these scenes (they actually look like they may have been added later, and rumour has it Lee never knew about these more exploitative elements) taking much hammy delight in making his victims suffer, but his costume is an hysterical miss-step! He wears a one piece, skin tight black leotard with matching hood that is anything but scary. Fans of “Young Frankenstein” will be unable to keep a straight face at his appearance as images of Marty Feldman pass before them!

So what we have is one of Franco’s most impressive looking films, with an excellent performance by Christopher Lee that, along with the increased budget, elevate the film above many of Franco’s other schlock efforts. But it sadly lacks enough of the gratuitous exploitation ingredients of his more amateur movies to keep the viewer completely hooked. If Franco could only get the explicitness and the professionalism mixed together in the right combination he may yet surprise everyone by making a truly exemplary piece of exploitation cinema.