Jess Franco, the walking death of Eurocrime (Part III): The Case of Sumuru

 The Thesis: Every Eurocrime-Franchise that Jess Franco touched, had to be buried afterwards. Basically his movies are the sleazy epitaphs of once-well-regarded serials and characters: the last chance to squeeze some money out of an already dead topic.

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After having Eddie Constantine (Lemmy Caution) finishing off his eurospy/crime movies, Jess Franco then put the final nail in the coffin of Dr. Fu Manchu, only to let his spirit be guiding one of his daughters. Now let's see what he did to Fu Manchu's sister in spirit: Sumuru.

3. The Case of Sumuru

Sax Rohmer had been successful with his Fu Manchu novels, depicting the chinese super-villain who had to be beaten by the western empires. Remember that was written in the early 1900s under the influence of the joint western war against the chinese uprising. In world war II, things were not so clear any more and Rohmer decided to add another supervaillain to his roster. And what was the second biggest threat to western civilisation next to the Chinese? Right: Women. So we are introduced to a sinister, beautiful eastern evil empowered woman called Sumuru (please put the accent on the last u: Sumuru). She appeared first in a radio-show for the BBC in WWII. 

Her main agenda is to rid the world of uglyness (=men) and in this world, only the beautiful people rule. To do this, she leads a secret order of female spys that use their bodies to lure men into traps. Yes.

If you read the novels, they are very explicit for the time and Rohmer turns the kink-dial up from his Fu Manchu books. Already on the first page of the first book we learn that Sumuru is "Nude under the Mink"and our hero knows, because he gets a good look. Sumuru herself has oriental looks, but no nationality attached to her.

The Franchise: 

Harry Alan Tower's 2 for 1 deal with Sax Rohmer purchased the characters (not the books) of Fu Manchu and Sumuru. Sumuru had no cinematic heritage and so Towers was free to do conceptually whatever he liked. The first installment is solid entertainment with lots of mini-skirts, a few bikinis and firmly tongue-in-cheek. Shirley Eaton is a near-perfect impersonation of the character with her green eyes, high cheekbones and obvious enjoyment of being cruel. This is an entertaining reminder of how innocent cinema used to be. The movie did not fare worse than the 3rd installment of Fu Manchu (Vengeance) but is by far the superior movie.

The title "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" certainly is a reply to the "1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse", indicating that all the women in the world are on her side. Basically her plan falters because women simply love men too much. Interestingly, Sumuru is portraied villainous, but with a good amount of sympathy. The movie itself does not take itself too seriously and basically is a typical non-essential Towers movie. Besides the character of Sumuru itself and her "million" (I counted 36) eyes in various states of undress (but not too much), this is pretty bland.

Case opened: The Girl from Rio (The Seven Men of Sumuru)

Torturing men with sex in 1969

The plot: In Brazil, Sumuru has built a city just for her and her army of women called Femina. Accidently arriving there on a plane, our "hero" is being captured and tortured as he is believed to have ten million dollars he has stolen. In the end another crimelord attacks the city and Sumuru pushes the self-destruction button, but is able to flee. 

But  this is not what this is all about. This is all about style and asthetics and in the sequences where Franco can play to his own tune, the movie looks astonishing. The HAT-scripted sequences of plot clearly fall apart as they are treated basically with disrespect by Franco. All he is interested in is creating a future world where latex-cled young amazones rule over post-modern cities. And in these parts of the movie, Franco fully (and I might say - for the last time) is able to bring his "vision" the the screen. 

Torturing men with sex in 1984

Again highly influenced by "Lemmy Caution vs. Alphaville" and other french sf-movies Franco here throws an unruly, analog man vs an organized, digital community. But as sterile as the inhabitants of Femina are, the brooding sex underneath erupts in artful episodes  (filmed with care by Franco) of lust. Obviously inspired by the emerging fetish scene around latex and using bits and pieces of "Gwendolin", "Phoebe" and "Pauline" to create a unique enviroment (that was only explored once more in the "Gewndoline in the Land of Yak-Yak" movie). 

Although the nude scenes are done with great care and restraint by Franco, the whole subject of forced sex is undeniably disturbing so that Sumuru's name had to be changed to comply to the late Sax Rohmer's widow's concerns about damaging the artistic property. Co-producer Constantin had no such problems and kept the title in, as "Million Eyes" had done good business, basically cashing in as much as the 3rd "Fu Manchu" installment of the same year.

The character of Sumuru remains untouched, more a ruthless politician with a criminal mindset than a gangster-bosslady, but the sf elements cannot be found in Sax Rohmer's work. The casting of the same actors that were used in the first part however, is an obvious sign for the attempt to establish a franchise, as is the open ending with S. being able to flee.

Nope, this did not help gaining the 
support of Eaton for another sequel

Lead-actress Shriley Eaton, the "Face of Sumuru" had decided to leave the movie industry all together. Franco stated that she basically was a housewife who would do occasional acting jobs to earn some additonal living and that she was not made to be "in the movies". 

Eaton herself expressed a deep dissatisfaction with the conditions of working for these films and made it clear (polite as they are, the british) that she would not work with Franco again as he intercut her scenes with more explicit scenes that she did not do. Eaton did not appear naked in the film, she was wearing a skin-toned suit under the see-through dress in one debatable scene.

This sounds like a "amicable seperation", although Eaton stated that "she cried the whole way back in the plane from brazil"

. 

It certainly did not help that german distributor Constantin photoshopped her head on the naked body of another actress on the big movie posters! 

Franco finished the movie a week ahead of schedule and while the basic crew had to stay in brazil to film the carnival in Rio scenes for the film, everybody else was sent back and HAT together with Franco quickly filmed material for a WIP-movie called "99 Women" in the spare time. 

This is how Franco 1969 thought women in plexiglass-cages would look like in the future

Box-Office returns for Sumuru II were dismal. I mean bad, really bad. Much worse than this movie deserved. In 1969 this one came in at the bottom-10 grossing movies in germany with only about 100.000 tickets sold. This was much lower than the already dismal returns on "The Castle of Fu Manchu" (ca 350.000) . Ticket sales in other markets were bad as well so that AIP decided to sell the movie directly to Columbia TV where it was released as "Future Women" in an obviously heavily cut (75min) version. It never made it to the cinemas in the US.

It is debatable why this happened. The movie feels disjointed and offers the same kind of bland unexcitement that basically was a staple of the  previous eurospy-films. The Femina-parts however are stunning and gorgeous but few and in-between.

Maybe the brand Sumuru, like Fu Manchu smelled stained, and those folks that went in to see these kinds of films now had a wife and children and a tv-set at home. The younger audience basically did not care about the pulp-heroes of the previous generation. 

And to start with, Sumuru never had been a "hot property", she was just a "plan B" even from Sax Rohmer and thrown into the deal with HAT. Sumuru is like a third-born child that is free to do whatever it wants in life as the parents never had a plan for her. 

The 100.000 ticket sales desaster definitively led to an end of the Sumuru-franchise although HAT produced a Sumuru-movie in 2003 that takes place in outer space and sadly lacks entertainment value. A Jess Franco in his prime would have made that movie a classic. There is a 15-minutes cut of the movie on youtube. That's all you need. 

Harry Alan Towers had obtained the rights to Fu Manchu and Sumuru for the legal lifespan (70 years after the author's death), so both HAT and Jess Franco would play with the thought of re-visiting these properties. HAT stated that "Jess Franco was a good and fast director, when he was being entertained." Bsically that's HAT saying that JF is unreliable.

Verdict: There is little doubt that the bad box-office returns led to an end of the franchise, but is Jess Franco really to blame? The movie is not worse than a dozen other eurospy-flicks but contains stunning visions that were maybe ahead of it's time. The only reasonable way to continue this franchise in a commercially successful way would have been movies like "Blue Rita". But here, Elizabeth Rohmer firmly stood against the sexploitation of Sumuru.                        

Acquittal

The Relapse: Blue Rita (1977) and Linda (1981) 

Blue Rita is the head of an amazon organisation that lures wealthy men into a high-class brothel only to torture them to get money and information for different secret agencies.

The whole plot sounds like a low-key Sumuru-sexcapade. It helps that Sumuru is not specified in Sax Rohmer's work, she is merely described as seductious mistress of disguise (like some female sexual Fantomas). So now we have a caucasian "Rita" with her oriental sidekick "Princess".

The movie features a lot of outre-sf-noir stylistics and Franco obviously tries to recapture the feel of Femina. The movie is done with relative care and can be looked upon as a worthy successor to Sumuru. I can totally see this being remade in Blade-Runner style. And to me this is the inofficial "Sumuru 3: Slaves of Sumuru" - movie...

Princess explaining advanced yoga techniques to her tribe

Raquel Evans

Linda works in a hotel and gets entangled in the evil doings of Sheila, the manager of the night club "Amore". Women are drugged and given to wealthy business men to whatever use they can imagine. This sounds like a rework of "Blue Rita", and while writing this entry, I was immediately reminded of Raquel Evans, who plays the night club manager. I re-checked "Linda" and indeed again a lot reminded me of the Sumuru-movies. The scale is much, much smaller (but basically more akin the the later Sax Rohmer novels), the sf-motiv is gone,  but the care and general coherence suggest that Franco had something bigger in mind. Indeed some scenes have a direct connection to Sumuru and Raquel Evans is a perfect substitute for Shirley Eaton. 

This is how women in plexiglass-cages looked in 1981

The three Sumuru-style movies are all above-average entries in Jess Franco's work, showing his affection to the character. Sumuru seems to have been some kind of catalyst for Franco's work and the diffusion of motives from movie to movie (Sumuru in the end just cares for herself, there is no political agenda left) basically reflects Franco's own cinematic carreer.

Was Franco a male Sumuru who, with a group of acolytes (his cast and crew) tried to steal money from rich movie-producers by casting them under his audio-visual spell and basically abducting them by secretly robbing them of their time and money and getting the movie audience under mind-control??????

In the end, Sumuru failed.

99 Women was a big box-office success, as was Justine, making it clear to everybody where the money lay. "Count Dracula" and "Witchhunter" performed reasonably but the collab with Towers ended (obviously due to mutual distrust) and Franco was employed by Arthur Brauner, who held three franchises: Bryan Edgar Wallace, Doktor Mabuse and some original Edgar Wallace stuff.

Coming next: Jess Franco vs. Edgar Wallace