X312 - Flight to Hell (1971)

Original title: X312 - Flug zur Holle

Director: Jesus Franco

Writers: Artur Brauner, Jesus Franco

Composer: Wolf Hartmayer, Bruno Nicolai

Starring: Thomas Hunter, Gila von Weitershausen, Hans Hass Jr., Fernando Sancho, Esperanza Roy, Ewa Stromberg, Siegfried Schurenberg, Howard Vernon, Paul Muller

More info: IMDb


Plot: A plane leaving the turmoil of a South American country in the midst of a revolution crash-lands in the Amazon jungle in Brazil. Among the passengers are a corrupt banker who is smuggling diamonds out of the country, a reporter, a mysterious beauty and a shady flight attendant. The survivors find themselves up against not only the dangers of the jungle itself but a band of headhunters and a gang of revolutionaries who are looking for the smuggled diamonds.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

I've had this for so long that I forgot what interested me in it in the first place.  Maybe it's the jungle setting and it's a Jesus Franco picture which usually means gratuitous nudity.  not this time.  There's a little but what's there is very nice (he always had an eye for picking out exotically beautiful women).  Aside from one silly nude scene, Franco waits until the last twenty minutes to throw in an extended lesbian romp.  I'm not complaining.  Drinking game: take a drink every time there's a quick zoom in or out.  The last twenty minutes offer more in the way of action and fun than the previous hour but it's not worth sitting through just for that.  It's an usually different kind of film for Franco which has its own merit, I suppose, but without his usual abundance of T&A and eroticism plus a dull first hour, this one's OK to pass on. 

For what it's worth, Amazon had this DVD new for less than two bucks (with free shipping) a couple of months ago.  That price sounds about right for this.  The image looks great (anamorphic widescreen) and you only get the English dub.  There are a few moments that are in German with English subtitles and it sounds so much better in German that I'd rather have seen the whole thing that way.