Down Town (1975) Puerto Rican Detective / Sexploitation Jazz Noir

"Adults only Noir!" (Noirsville)

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…

THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

Director Jesús Franco (La muerte silba un blues). Writers Jesús Franco and Christine Lembach. 

Make no mistake about it Jesús Franco goes Down Town and you can read all the subtext you want into that.

Jesús Franco started out as a musical prodigy, and was only six years old when he started composing music. He studied Piano and Harmony at  Real Conservatorio de Madrid. He studied Law, became a paperback writer, went to Paris to study directing techniques at the Sorbonne. He also immersed himself in the Sorbonne's film archive. Back in Spain he began both composing for and directing films. 

He made films in all genres, from "B" horror films to pure hardcore sex films. He also often contributed to his films as an actor and working also as composer, writer, cinematographer, and editor.

The Cinematography in Down Town was by Jesús Franco (listed in the credits as David Khunne) Music was by by Walter Baumgartner. 

Porto Santo

This is a Swiss financed Sexploitation Neo Noir supposedly taking place in Puerto Rico with everyone speaking German. I'm not even if sure any location work was done on Puerto Rico, or if its one of the "Riviera's" filling in. Unless this ever gets a wide release, you are most likely gonna be reading the subtitles anyway. It's not going to be for everyone but it's a good example of a Sexploitation Crime Noir film that's a hard "R" rating on the sex with a humorous, sort of picaresque-ly believable sleazy story, filmed with a good knowledge of Film Noir's Visual Style. 

It's an eye opener (in more ways than one) as a good example of how you can make a Sexploitation Noir worth watching also for the Story, the Visuals and the Jazz besides obviously the Sex  Who would have thunk it? 

It takes somebody with artistic talent to pull that off. Now god knows, I know hardly anything of Jesús Franco. I was indifferent to Venus In Furs (a Jazz Noir Nightmare), Loved Death Whistles The Blues, and was impressed with this. Somebody who is also Jesús Franco fan might know if he made any more Noir.

It's Sexploitation because that is what people were paying to see and what was making money. and if one of your professions is a film director you make them to make your living. This director took the trouble to give us very good Noir visuals and a plausible story, besides the beautiful naked women and who am I to quibble. 

Franco shoots these Sexploitation shots in this film as what the main character, a middle aged, slightly cubby, normal, average looking guy is gonna do when he is loose in a candy story of un inhibited women, and that's the look at them.

The character looks and acts a bit like the Seinfeld character George Costanza, but he's a detective and grew up in the slums as he explains in the V.O. Narration so he's more confident around women. 

So be forewarned, you are going to see everything they got, in a very artistic way of course, and more than once in case you had to take a leak and missed something the first go round. and in occasionally zooms for the visually impaired. lol.  How Noir is that? 

This film, would never get past the old MPPC and if it had come out in mid 1930s Paris the French right wing and religious publications it would have been condemned as a Film Noir. 

The film stars Jesús Franco Manera as Al Pereira, private detective. Lina Romay (his real life partner at the time) as Cynthia, Paul Muller as Mendoza the police Inspector, Martine Stedil as Lola, Monica Swinn as Olga Ramos, Erik Falk as Carlos Rivas, Beni Cardoso as Rita, Raymond Hardy as Pepe, and Ronald Weiss as the detective assistant. 

Jesús Franco Manera as Al Pereira

Lina Romay as Cynthia

Paul Muller as police Inspector Mendoza 

Martine Stedil as Lola with Al

Raymond Hardy as Pepe lt. with Mendoza

The whole sleazy story

Al Pereira. Private detective. A cheap one. A window peeper. A bedroom dick. We get the lowdown from Al himself in a classic V.O. narration. He's outside of the Casino and heading to the Mugano Club.

Al Pereira (V.O.): It started here in the casino and this is where I want to put an end to this horror drama. I won't be tricked by her again. Although it's very difficult with such a sexy kitten. She's an icicle, Or all the same, or just because of that. Something I'd like to keep licking. She had a grip on me , the sweet bitch, I thought I couldn't be beaten, I, the smart Algino Pereira. I grew up in the care of whores in the brothels of San Juan, and matured into a man among bar-hostesses, nymphomaniacs, and would-be striptease artists. 

That's why I know what I'll do now. I'll kill her with my Colt, bump her off with a small bore. That's they way they do it here. Who ever didn't get the business style, the touch of Al Capone, was punished for his weakness with a sweet circular hole. And a crafty Puerto Rican boy like me prefers to have a circular hole elsewhere than in his body. In popular language an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hole for a hole.

Al Pereira (V.O.): Yes she knows the ropes. If I wasn't such a clever Puerto Rican who already thrown American cops off their horse, she'd have thrown me into the clutches of the French coppers who are still dreaming of the huge knife, the Guillotine. My dreams are more idyllic a hidden port in a Mediterranean bay where the crayfish is served fresh at 12 O'clock and where you can wander around under the palm trees after your siesta. A secret nest that Interpol has not yet come across and who's female inhabitants are as fresh as a daisy at midnight as crayfish at lunchtime. But unfortunately my romantic vein violated my never failing intuition as a detective. In other words in search of new paradises. The Mafia bosses had discovered this Porto Santo and built luxury palaces. 

Flashback

Porto Santo, Puerto Rico.  

Al Pereira house / office, Porto Ssanto

Al Pereira (V.O.): My dwelling was comparatively modest. My monthly wage was about as much as an efficient Porto Santo whore earns on a Sunday.   

Al is sunning, sitting in his undershorts on his sun patio. His pulled down straw trilby hat throws a lattice shadow over his face. He's entertaining himself with humming a song

Al's assistant Pepe comes up on to the patio to tell Al he's got a walk in customer. He tells Al the that the lady looks like a lady. If Pepe is impressed. Al is interested.

Al Pereira (V.O.): Such prospects always got me moving. 

He runs into his bedroom and puts on a stripped shirt and pulls on pants, all the while asking Pepe if she's beautiful, if he thinks she's a hooker, etc., etc. Pepe tells Al the main thing is she has dough that will help keep them afloat. 

Al goes down to his office. The woman is a brunette is a peach colored sun suit. 

Cynthia: I've come about an extremely delicate matter, as one says.

Al Pereira: What are you willing to spend on delicacy.

Cynthia: I thought about 2,500 dollars. as a down payment  or as an incentive and when you've done  your job, then I'm capable of giving you another 5,000.

Al Pereira: Who do I bump off?

Cynthia: Bump off? No you're to photograph him.

Al Pereira: Who?

Who do I bump off?

Cynthia: My husband. Even though your more used to the former.

Al Pereira: I don't quite understand. If you wish to have photographs of your husband there are plenty photographers around. 

Cynthia: That's not what I want. I want you to photograph him naked. I said it was a delicate matter. You force me to be frank. He's fucking his girlfriend in my bed. I'd like every phase of this act to be recorded. They are meeting at eight tomorrow in our house downtown. Here's the key. 

Cynthia tells Al that her husband's name is Tifilio Ramos, that he owns seven night clubs and three bars he has millions. 

Al tells her that he will do the job and develop the prints himself. He asks her where to bring the prints to collect the rest of the cash. Cynthia tells Al that Tifilio makes her work at the Mugano Club as a stripper and a bar hostess. She tells him to be there at 12 PM.

later that day we watch Al visit his bartender gal pal at another strip club. There we all get to watch a stripper with a burning candle routine .Hey, ya gotta remember it's Sexploitation.

The next evening, he strolls over to the downtown Ramos house. Al discovers that the house is shuttered and mostly closed at the moment. He's easily inside the deserted house by eight. He follows the noise of lovemaking an snaps his roll off.

The Ramos Job

Al develops the film and is waiting in Cynthia's dressing room when she enters after a set. All she's got on is a barter belt, stockings, and heels. 

Al gets a private show

Cynthia after a set

She immediately has Al's full attention. She knows exactly what she's doing. She faces Al full frontal and changes her stockings.

If you've seen Romeo Is Bleeding it's the same move Leona Olin puts on Gary Oldman in the safe room (though in that film it's subdued and all implied), and this scene of course just blows away Sharon Stone's miro second crotch flash in Basic Instinct. It that made Sharon famous Lina Romay should have been a superstar.

Cynthia is crossing her legs as she slips off her pumps, then she un snaps the stockings from the garter belt, and then rolls them off each leg and then reaching for a new pair and putting them. All the while this is going on she's flashing Al. 

And we, the viewers, of the subjective camera, see exactly what Al's staring at. And Jesús Franco obliges with a zoom to boot for any in the audience with vision problems. 

Ladies it can also be valued on an educational level because this was still the age of real women and before breast implants were routine. Franco films real women lovingly. 

Cynthia has been teasing him all along. Al thought the flashing session was all a stall but Cynthia tells him the check for 5,000 is on the dresser. 

Al meets his girlfriend out in the club and they watch the Cynthia's "baby on fur" routine. 

After the show Martine and Al go to Martine's place for sex. It all goes Noirsville the next day when Al sees that Ramos was killed in the morning paper and he gets a call from Pepe telling him that he better get to the house and bring his P.I. license. 

Mendoza the police Inspector tells Al that Ramos is dead, that these photos and negatives that the police have found in his office mean he was the last person they know of to see him alive.

So Al explains to Mendoza that he was going a surveillance job for Ramos' wife. 

So Mendoza and his men bring Al to Ramos' wife whose name is actually Olga, it's not the Cynthia who hired him. 

Olga the real Mrs. Ramos

But Olga Ramos, quickly wises up and plays along with the story Al told Mendoza. 

Noirsville

Comparatively, there's only a small handful of surviving Sexploitation Noir that are also very well put together films. There's others that a are lost of sitting in a film vault forgotten. The main difference between say this film and a contemporary R rated film, is that the actual shots of female nudity are held for a longer while. or repeated, a lot. Back then it was like being a kid in a candy store. Something that had been forbidden was suddenly free to depict. So there was no, I guess you could call it film language to go by on the best way to exploit the new found freedoms. Sex was what a grindhouse audience was paying for. All it took for a grindhouse film to make all its money back was to play two weeks. So anything extra in a film was put there by the artistry of the director, in this case realizing his fantasy "detective" in a Jazz Noir Dream.  Franco made an entertaining film with a jazzy score that isn't gonna fly with mainstream audiences but is just as valid a Film Noir as the rest. 

In Europe there were French Noir with casual nudity in the mid 1930s, ditto for a Mexican Noir from 1937, in one country it was no big deal in Mexico it didn't get a release until 1942, so other than for the disruptions of WWII films were still made. Nudity was a normal thing in European cinema and possibly also in Mexico post 1942. and no big deal. There was nothing to exploit, lol

A contemporary sex scene today in an R rated film is quick cuts, maybe 2 second shots, quick impressions. Back then they last minutes. The film is only an hour and 26 minutes, if you recut it to how its done today you'd probably have a 15 minute shorter film. 

I got about a 7 /10 worth of entertainment out of it. It could be a cult favorite if it were ever dubbed into English and Spanish. Bravo Franco!