2/10
Stylish Trash
20 July 2014
The student Christina Reiner (Cristine von Blanc) travels from her boarding school in London to the castle of her family in Montserrat for the reading of the will of her father that she has never known and recently committed suicide. On the arrival, she spends the night in an inn and people tell that nobody lives at the castle. On the next morning, the mute servant Basilio (Jesús Franco) brings Christina to the Montserrat castle, where she meets her weird Uncle Howard (Howard Vernon) that is playing waltz on the piano and her cousin Carmencé (Britt Nickols) that is painting her nails and they tell that her stepmother Herminia (Rose Kiekens) is on the deathbed. She visits Hermínia that tells her to leave the castle and dies. Christina also meets her Aunt Abigail (Rosa Palomar) and a Blind Girl and while waiting for the attorney, she entwines daydreams and nightmares with reality. When she has an encounter with the spirit of her deceased father Ernesto Pablo Reiner (Paul Muller), he tries to warn her to leave that place that is evil, but it is too late.

"La nuit des étoiles filantes" is a stylish and senseless trash by Jésus Franco. The story has a promising beginning, but suddenly the plot seems to be incomplete and does not make sense at all. I believe that the problem is the different versions of Jésus Franco's feature. The DVD released in Brazil, for example, has audio only in English and Portuguese but the introduction is written in French; the lead character is Christina Reiner, and not Christina Benton; there is Death, and not The Queen of the Night; the raping scene is totally mutilated. Therefore, his movies are edited in the most different ways and this procedure certainly makes the story senseless. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "A Virgem e os Mortos" (The Virgin and the Dead")
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