The Devil Came from Akasava (1971)

First of all, I would lie if I said I actually understood the story of The Devil Came from Akasava, but in some weird way I think that's the point with it all. It's a spoof, a send-up, a caper with a lot of humour and of course made by Jess Franco. Officially another Edgar Wallace story, but I'm not so sure it's really one from the beginning. Maybe something Wallace's son wrote down on a napkin once, just an idea,  a few words and somehow the German producers of got their hands on it. So what's it about? I'll give you the basic structure, but that's all.

Somewhere on a tropical location (really Alicante, Spain and the garden of an hotel) a couple of scientists - Horst Tappert for example - find an amazing stone, or metal, that both create huge damage to the people handling it, but also can transform normal metals into gold - or something like that. Suddenly everyone wants this stone, and one of the scientists goes missing and so is the stone. A relative to the scientist, Rex (Fred Williams), starts to investigate but soon finds out that everyone wants to kill everyone in this confusing mess of a story!

I can't say that The Devil Came from Akasava is Franco's best movie, not by a long-shot, but it still holds a certain charm to entertain me. The best thing with it is the cast, from Horst Tappert doing is normal robotic routine as Horst Tappert to Soledad Miranda, in a quite small part, as a thief and maybe even a secret agent. She's cool and beautiful, as usual! Paul Müller and Howard Vernon shows up later in the story and both is perfect in their small parts. Fred Williams, who was that guy? Anyone who knows? He looks good and had some talent, but he's lost as an interview object. I want to hear his story! Someone, please?

The problem - or maybe the point - is that the script is so damn convoluted. Everyone is fucking up things for everyone else, friends becomes foes and foes becomes friends and in the end... I'm not sure how it ends. This could be a part of the concept of course, the movie has humour and a generous twinkle in the eye. One part I really love is the Kiss Me Deadly-reference, the bag with the mysterious stone that kills people with a strong light. The film could be a unofficial goofy sequel to Robert Aldrich's classic noir-masterpiece...

Franco made this at the same time as Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy and it differs a lot from the two other movies. It's also one of those Franco films that looks less thought through, cheaper and yeah, sloppier. We have the traditional hotel garden standing in for a jungle, there's editing that even I can do better - sometimes - and uglier lighting. It's easy to see that the heart of Franco wasn't involved all the time, this was a normal gun for hired-project.

Still, quite entertaining and a nice cast. A cozy feeling, a movie to look at when you're very tired and just want to see handsome and cool people walking in and out of hotel rooms doing nothing special.