Blind Target

Utterly peculiar Spanish director Jess Franco is famous for his horror films and his erotic takes on many unerotic subjects. In "Blind Target" he tackles the world of political intrigue by dispatching Rachel Sheppard as a nubile political writer into the Latin American country of San Hermoso. There she quickly gets involved in plots of kidnapping, torture, assassination and lesbianism. (Hey, it's a Jess Franco film, there's got to be some lesbianism.) Admittedly Franco's tired camera work does drag the proceedings down from time to time, but the story is untypically dense and complicated for him. Strangely enough, the dialog spoken by most of the characters is compelling and witty, moreso than in the usual Franco film. Perhaps this is due to the contributions of producer Kevin Collins of One Shot Productions, who reportedly tweaked Franco's script to make it into something worth filming. Linnea Quigley is especially fine as a TV reporter and Lina Romay is terrifying as the mad doctor working for the San Hermoso political regime. She'd have fit in right nicely in one of Hussein's torture chambers. For a Franco film with a flair for difference, "Blind Target" is walk on the wild side.