The Diabolical Dr Z
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or, it seems, the daughter of a scientist mocked and ostracised by his fellows, Doctor Zimmer carried up the long stairs in his wheelchair in hopes of speaking at the neurological congress on his groundbreaking work on identifying the centres of the brain where good and evil originate but his theories outraging the assembly who regard such manipulation of the personality as bordering on Nazism.
Her father dead, Irma Zimmer is determined not only to carry on his work but to avenge him on the three men who humiliated him, Doctors Vicas, Moroni and Kallman, faking her own death with the murder of a young hitchhiker but accidentally disfiguring her face in the process then using a brainwashed cabaret dancer with curare laced fingernails to seduce and kill the objects of her wrath.
Directed by Jesús Franco and originally released in 1961, The Diabolical Dr Z (Le diabolique Dr Z, known in Spain as Miss Muerte) was loosely based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1940 novel The Bride Wore Black, later adapted by François Truffaut and also the inspiration for The Wedding List on Kate Bush’s 1980 album Never For Ever, starring Mabel Kerr as Irma and Estella Blain as Nadia, “Miss Death” herself.
A melange of ideas and styles, seductive horror blended with revenge thriller with aspects of mad science in the electrode implants which control the minds of the victims pinned down by robotic manipulator arms, nevertheless it is more focused and coherent than some of Franco’s other work, though there are the customary digressions into abstract performance art in the jazz nightclub scene which introduces the unwitting assassin in her revealing costume.
Paying homage to The Awful Dr Orloff as mentor to Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano), the title character is swiftly excised, as peripheral as the three primary victims (Howard Vernon, Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui and Cris Huerta) with Nadia’s abandoned lover Doctor Philippe Brighthouse (Fernando Montes) the only persistent male presence other than mute henchman Bergen (Guy Mairesse), though his impact is little more than that of the bumbling police, the case resolving itself with minimal detective work, though with women used and eliminated as coldly as men it is far from a feminist text.
Eureka’s 2K restoration showcasing the crisp monochrome, The Diabolical Dr Z exquisitely shot both indoors and on location by Alejandro Ulloa, the new edition is supported by a commentary by genre expert Tim Lucas, a comprehensive interview with Xavier Aldana Reyes discussing the wide and varied history of European Gothic horror in cinema and a video essay by Samm Deighan on mad science in literature and film along with archive interviews and soundtracks in both French and English.
The Diabolical Dr Z will be available on Blu-ray from Eureka from Monday 20th October
