Jess Franco

The maker of many low-budget films, director Jess Franco made his mark on cinema in various explotation genres and erotic horror films. He first came to international attention with his 1961 chiller "The Awful Dr. Orloff," and in America, he had some commercial success with the horror film "The Diabolical Dr. Z" in 1965, and a women's prison movie, "Ninety-Nine Women," in 1968. Franco worked with Christopher Lee on two films, "The Bloody Judge" and "Count Dracula," and Lee himself has said that Franco is "not an untalented man," but the director has been mired in such low-rent fare all his life that he professes to openly despise most of his films. Still, there is a cult around him that avidly collects his work, and he is able to pull off an unexpected gem like the sultry horror film "Venus in Furs" from 1969, starring Klaus Kinski. Making his career even more difficult to track, Franco, a jazz enthusiast, often works under different names, sometimes taking on the monikers of jazz greats like Clifford Brown.