Succubus

Franco's art-house calling card, such as it is, and the film that got him taken seriously by people who normally would not. A nightclub performer whose sadomasochistic stage act blurs into real violence loses her grip on what is performance and what is murder, and the film unfolds as fractured, surreal psychodrama.

It is pretentious and strange in roughly equal measure, and Fritz Lang, of all people, reportedly admired it. Janine Reynaud drifts through it in a haze of eroticism and dread. Coherence is not the goal.

Early, ambitious Franco, and a key to understanding his stranger instincts.