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Venus in Furs

Director: Jess Franco Run Time: 86 min. Format: 35mm Rating: R Release Year: 1969

Starring: James Darren, Barbara McNair, Maria Rohm, Klaus Kinski

Presented by Severin Films and The Oscarbate Film Collective; Severin Films Pop-Up Shop before and after the film!

Upon his death in 2013 at the age of 82, writer/director Jess Franco – hailed by The Guardian as “a dedicated exponent of weird sex, shocking sadism and surreal horror, and one of the cinema’s great individualists” – left an astonishing legacy of over 180 films that Sight & Sound says “occupy a liminal terrain between exploitation cinema and the avant-garde, playing with the porous structure of dream and nightmare, indeed the nature of reality itself.”

Violated and left for dead, a young woman’s vengeful spirit traverses space and time to seek retribution against her cold-blooded killers, a sinister group of libertines led by Klaus Kinski. Attempting to discover the truth behind her resurrection, a young jazz player begins to fall for this revenge-seeking specter, with the hope he doesn’t befall a similar fate as her and her murderers.

Rising from the psychedelic shadows of the late 60’s, Venus in Furs appeared to fit right alongside certain dosed AIP titles like The Trip and Psych-Out; however, the filmmaker’s mad vision stretched beyond the groovy bounds of those films, and emerged as a definitive statement for exploitation cinema at large. Utilizing an array of kaleidoscopic visuals and a blistering score, Venus in Furs provides the perfect gateway into the world of Jess Franco.

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