NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT (1970)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Given that Jess Franco usually turned out crap when he was putting out just one movie at a time, it's surprising that NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT isn't worse, given that it's an amalgam of two separate projects. To be sure, the footage with Franco-favorite Soledad Miranda takes up very little screen time, with the majority devoted to the conflict between two young women, Anna (Diana Lorys) and Cynthia (Colette Jack). Early in the film Cynthia sees Anna perform exotic dancing at a strip club and invites the dancer to her ritzy home, where they have lesbian encounters. However, Anna begins having terrible nightmares in which she envisions herself killing a man. Cynthia brings in a psychiatrist, Doctor Lucas (Paul Muller), but he can't decide if Anna needs institutional treatment or if she just suffers from having watched SUCCUBUS once too often.

As in SUCCUBUS, the viewpoint protagonist is being manipulated by outside forces, and so it's no surprise when we learn that sinister Cynthia is doping Anna with hallucinogens, with the help of the bad doctor. I never understood what the two hoped to gain from this mental assault, and I don't think Franco really cared. He just wanted an excuse to have two beautiful women lounge around in their underwear and have soft-core sex. In contrast to SUCCUBUS, NIGHTMARES does not quote Sade, but Cynthia uses Sadean tortures to break down Anna's will, sometimes roughing Anna up, and once sleeping with a man (Jack Taylor) in front of her lesbian lover's eyes. Thus Cynthia is essentially the main character here, and Colette Jack's Sadean quality is so strong-- as against the forgettable Anna-- that it's a shame that Jack's short career did not place her as the star in a good Sade-film, though her last part was a support-role in a thriller with sadomasochistic overtones, WHAT THE PEEPER SAW.

Since NIGHTMARES is overt about its softcore aims and shows no special pretensions, it provides a relatively painless experience as long as one keeps expectations low-- as anyone acquainted with the cinema of Jess Franco ought to do automatically.