I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Let's be realistic.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Dr. Zimmer (Antonio Jimenez Escribano) is a blind, wheelchair-bound scientist with radical ideas about where the impulses for good and evil reside in the human body, and how to isolate them. By doing this, he hopes to rehabilitate criminal types. But when his peers scoff at and demonize his research, he suffers a fatal heart attack, and his daughter Irma (Mabel Karr) carries on his work. However, she is the truly diabolical one, perverting her fathers' ideas in the name of old-fashioned revenge. She telepathically controls an exotic dancer, Nadia a.k.a. Miss Death (Estella Blain), into murdering the mocking doctors Vicas (Howard Vernon), Moroni (Marcelo Arroita-Jauregui), and Kallman (Cris Huerta). This poor Nadia is made to do thanks to curare-tipped fingernails.One of the handful of traditional genre films made by cult icon Jess Franco, "The Diabolical Dr. Z" is good fun, as it adheres to classic trappings of horror. It's not really a Gothic; it's set in modern times. But it still has that great old-style feel, complete with stark black & white photography. Franco utilizes themes that would then recur throughout his filmography, enhancing the standard revenge plot with touches of eroticism. The ladies are gorgeous, and the cast is uniformly solid, with Karr suitably icy as the Frankenstein-wannabe on a mission. Fernando Montes is enjoyable as the man of medicine *and* the man who ends up dating Irma, and sometime after she has faked her death, her unwitting murderer. Guy Mairesse has a great character face as the strangler who gets employed as a henchman. Adding to the fun is seeing Uncle Jess himself in an uncredited supporting role, as one of two detectives investigating the crimes (the other is played by the films' composer, Daniel White). Jess even gets a character detail: his inspector is sleep-deprived because his wife recently had triplets.The cinematography by Alejandro Ulloa is striking, Whites' music is atmospheric, and the pacing is pretty consistent. The tale being told (scripted by Jean-Claude Carriere, based on a story by Jess) is not a great one, but it does hold your attention. It's sexy, and sordid, and has some nice touches along the way.Seven out of 10.

Those of the scientific community(mainly three in particular, doctors Vicas, Moroni & Kallman)who berated Dr. Zimmer(Antonio Jiménez Escribano), whose experiments concerning mind control procedures which have the ability to cease the violent tendencies in the criminal element(for a while Z worked on monkeys amongst other animals before an exhausted escaped convict dumped right in his lap)they vehemently disagreed with, cause him to ultimately die of stress when they threaten to stop him from completing his work. Zimmer caused a major outburst at the conference where he proposed a chance to use a convict on death row(..a human being)as part of testing his theories before them proving that he could change human behavior. His daughter, Irma(Mabel Karr), goes mad from the loss of her father and hatefully vows revenge against the main three culprits she considers the cause of her father's death. Using a pretty actress who goes under the stage name "Mrs. Death", with these long fingernails, named Nadia(Estella Blain)as an instrument to possibly seduce the three doctors one at a time, Irma has a plan in place while adopting her father's controlled convict Hans Bergen(Guy Mairesse)as the muscle(..he is often used to kill when Nadia fails in her part of the scheme). Irma will fake her own death by running over a hitchhiker who resembles her, burning the body with a specific ring she's known for wearing, in her car driving into a pond. Meanwhile, an ally(..of sorts)of her father's work, Dr. Phillippe Brighthouse(whom Irma sleeps with)who attended the conference Dr. Z was ridiculed at, lends a hand to two Scotland Yard detectives working the case of Irma's supposed death and the sequential murders of the doctors who "killed Irma's father." Phillippe and Nadia had begun a love affair when Irma kidnapped her, using the experiments to control Mrs. Death's will. Will Phillippe find Nadia in time to save her before Irma decides to dispose of her? Can the detectives and Phillippe silence the blind rage of Irma before more people come to violent harm? Can Phillippe stand a chance against convict Bergen? Fantastic mad Scientist/revenge thriller, beautifully photographed in moody B&W by Alejandro Ulloa. Thankfully, this is a focused, finely paced, well crafted thriller which doesn't wander from it's story staying on course delivering the goods. I particularly like how Franco shoots Mable Karr's face in angles which show hints of the dementia thriving behind her beautifully, sweaty reconstructed face(her face had been burnt during Irma's attempt to push the flaming car into the pond containing the look-a-like hitchhiker).

This was my second Jess Franco film, one of his earlier black-and-white thrillers; often considered among his very best. Despite being an obviously low-budget production, the film actually looks pretty slick for all that. This seems to have been an interesting period for Franco: his films from this era are easily the most accessible and readily enjoyable. Still, there are definite hints of what was to come, even in this film where the accent is on a somewhat disturbing use of violence but also on the seductiveness of (female) sexuality.The plot of the film is quite simple, if improbable, and Franco would apparently borrow freely from its themes and images for many years afterwards (SUCCUBUS [1967], VAMPYROS LESBOS and SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY [both 1970]). Jean-Claude Carriere contributed to the script and while the film is closer in spirit to Franju than Bunuel, he manages a few distinctively surreal touches – as when Irma Zimmer (Mabel Karr) 'tames' the rebellious Nadia/Miss Death (Estella Blain) by using a whip and a chair, as if she were a wild circus animal; or the fistfight at the climax which suddenly turns into a good old-fashioned swashbuckling routine. As a director, Franco rises to the occasion with any number of eerie and unusual compositions – though the film does not entirely escape his trademark haphazard 'style'. Other visual assets here would have to be: the photography, which is smooth for a change and satisfactorily 'expressionistic'; and the production design, which maintains a good balance between 'old' (Dr. Zimmer's castle and country-house) and 'new' (Dr. Z's laboratory, full of hilariously impractical gadgets, and the cabaret where Miss Death performs her act). Daniel White's music, while not exactly imposing, provides the perfect underscoring for Franco's wild romp.The film features several memorable sequences, often involving heart-pounding chases (Miss Death pursued in the empty theater by the hypnotized criminal Bergen; Dr. Moroni's fog-laden close encounter with both Miss Death and Irma Zimmer before he is dispatched) or graphic violence (Irma Zimmer's botched 'suicide' which leaves her facially scarred; Mrs. Moroni's death, by having her head plunged through a window-pane, ten years prior to Dario Argento's DEEP RED [1975]!; Dr. Vicas' train seduction and eventual assassination at the hands of Miss Death). Also notable, of course, is Miss Death's weird and kinky dance routine - complete with fetching outfit!The cast was not made up of star names but they all acquit themselves nicely, particularly Mabel Karr who is quite convincing – and even demands pity – in her obsessive quest for revenge; Howard Vernon, the epitome of sleek villainy, though his presence is all too brief; and, above all, Estella Blain who is sumptuous throughout (aided a great deal, of course, by her character's all-important 'wardrobe').The film contains several in-jokes and references to other films which Franco may have admired and subsequently been influenced by: during Dr. Zimmer's first appearance, the phone rings and Irma says after answering that it was Dr. Bresson calling that 'un condamne' a' mort s'est eschappe'' (a condemned man has escaped). It is an unexpected and amusing nod towards Robert Bresson (certainly among France's finest film-makers ever and one of my personal favorites) and that which is arguably his greatest film, more commonly known as A MAN ESCAPED (1956). Furthermore, Louis Feuillade's legendary seven-hour serial LES VAMPIRES (1915-16) is homaged by naming the leading character Irma (after that film's most memorable character, Irma Vep, who frequently sported sultry costumes herself) and Miss Death's dancing at a night-club recalls an early scene in Feuillade's Silent serial as well. Somehow I suspect that these references may be Carriere's doing (who could hardly fail to be aware of these two directors and their movies, especially the latter's which were highly regarded by the Surrealist movement) rather than Franco's, but I could be wrong. Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE aka EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959) – an established influence on Franco's THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1961) – is also referenced here in Irma's facial decompositions (which recall the ones suffered by Edith Scob in Franju's film), while Irma's killing of the hitch-hiker and disposing of her body in the river is strikingly similar to that film's opening sequence. Of course, the laboratory sequences in DR. Z are a loving nod towards the Universal monster films of the Thirties.When a film is as enjoyable as this one, its faults – thematic as well as technical – are hardly worth criticizing, as these can often be pinned down to budgetary/time constraints. So, now I'll rush on to my thoughts on the DVD proper: the film is presented in French (which is what the actors are apparently mouthing) and it is a reasonably effective track, giving the whole a distinctly 'European' feel. Both the film's OAR and its running time have been the subject of controversy over the Internet these last few days. There are definite traces of overscan here, for even the menu screens are visibly cramped. The quality of the video and audio on this disc are excellent for the most part; unfortunately, the film's closing moments are marred by excessive pops and crackles on the soundtrack (these are also present on the English-dubbed version). The extras, while not plentiful, compliment the film superbly; particularly of note are the 15-minute featurette on Franco (giving a nice, if understandably skimpy, overview of his career), the informative biographies and, of course, the 'amusing' Easter Egg – which shouldn't be too hard to find now! I don't quite know what to say about the 'extra' scenes featured in the 'Stills Gallery' section: these could just as well have been publicity shots, or perhaps were scrapped prior to release; it's true that the film runs for only 83 minutes when the 'original' Spanish version was somewhere between 86 and 87 minutes long, but that could be because the transfer was made in PAL mode (after all, Mondo Macabro is a UK-based company).This film has certainly whetted my appetite for more films from this early phase of Franco's career. It seems that the only ones that are available on DVD are THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (unfortunately, I've already missed watching the original Spanish-language version of this one – which I understand to be considerably longer – twice so far!), THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS (1962) and DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER (1964). Though I recall opinions on the other two as being pretty mixed, I would still like to know if they are cut as well?I'm not quite sure which of the two Francos I prefer at this stage: while THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z is certainly the more enjoyable (and straightforward) one, EUGENIE…THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1969) is obviously the more profound – and thus mature and personal - work. That said, they have both earned their well-deserved place in my collection – and, at long last, the (negative) barriers surrounding the Franco 'myth' have been dealt a blow, even if they are still a LONG way from being struck down…though I don't know if I'd REALLY want to do that in the first place!

This is one of the best, creepiest and most stylish from the Godfather of Eurosleaze. "The Diabolical Dr. Z" is a semi-sequel to the classic "The Horrible Dr. Orlof" (1961). Dr. Zimmer, who calls himself a disciple of Dr. Dr. Orlof, dabbles in mind control with the help of a weird spiderlike metal contraption which injects electric needles into victims brains. After other doctors laugh at him and his experiments, he suffers a stroke but before he dies his daughter promises to continue the experiment. She visits a nightclub where an exotic dancer, Miss Muerte, perform a "show". Miss Muerte then becomes a zombie-like killermachine for Dr. Zimmer's daughter and goes after the doctors who ridiculed him. The film is loaded with sinister atmosphere, beautifully shot - a masterpiece of the macabre!