Michael_Elliott X-312: Flight to Hell (1970) ** (out of 4) Jess Franco directed adventure film about a plane that goes down in the Brazil jungles and the survivors who must battle natives, gangsters and wild animals. The political side plot is quite boring and really drags the film down but the adventure story isn't too bad, although it drags even at only 85-minutes. The film is pretty straight forward, considering this is a Jess Franco film, which makes it a tad bit too bland for its own good. Paul Muller and Howard Vernon star.The movie is available in Spanish with English subs (unlike many of the director's best work).

Coventry The legendary euro-sleaze filmmaker Jess Franco directed an average of 5 movies per year during the early 70's, so naturally not all of his films are genuine masterpieces, or even remotely good movies for that matter. The majority, however, are truly entertaining and even grew out to become most wanted cult treasures that are difficult to come across on DVD. "X312 – Flight To Hell" is another extremely obscure and rarely seen film from The Godfather of Sleaze, and even though it certainly doesn't rank among his finest efforts, it's an action-packed and exiting exploitation adventure with cargo loads of rancid sex, paltry dialogs and nasty violence. The plot is extremely unoriginal but straightforward, as it introduces a series of highly sinister characters traveling over the Amazon jungle in a ramshackle airplane. One of the passengers is a corrupt bank director who's fleeing from the authorities with a briefcase of stolen diamonds attached to his arm. When the plane crash-lands in the middle of the Amazonian jungle and the survivors have to rely on each other in order to find their way out, some of passengers' true nature begins to show. Especially when the greedy flight captain Paco finds out about the valuable stolen loot, the lives of the rest of the passengers aren't worth a penny anymore. Franco's portrayal of the dangerous Amazon jungle is rather tame, actually. There are almost no virulent animal-attacks (apart from a handful of plastic alligators) or cannibalistic tribes, and most of the cast members die as a result of banal accidents or personal struggles. Sex and nudity, on the other hand, there is plenty! I guess only a director like Jess Franco is capable of mixing the concept of a jungle survival-trek with extended footage of lesbian sex and SM-torturing. The camera-work and editing is almost intolerably amateurish, with fast and uncontrolled movements that are unclear and difficult to follow. At least Bruno Nicolai's score is excellent and – surprisingly enough – the acting performances are far above average! The heroic male lead Thomas Hunter has quite the ideal charisma for his role and Franco regulars Howard Vernon ("The Awful Dr. Orloff", "Virgin Among The Living Dead") and Fernando Sancho ("Return of the Blind Dead", "Demon Witch Child") make great villains. The female starlets mainly serve as sexy eye-candy. Particularly Esperanza Roy impresses with her … um … big rack.

tim_age This movie has recently been released on DVD in the US. Fortunately they used the German language version so they avoided the dreadful English synchronisation that is common for these type of movies.Still, it's not a very good movie. It has been clearly made very fast and it seems they only had enough money to go to South America to shoot some footage (although it might also be archive footage now I come to think of it).The story is simple and not very original: a plane crashes in the jungle and among the survivors is a bank president carrying a suitcase with stolen jewelry. As soon as the other passengers find out they start fighting while trying to survive in the Brazilian jungle.Typical Franco elements are still there but not as numerous as they normally are; of course you'll see most of the women in this movie naked and there's a lesbian lovescene; Franco's love of zooming in and out on irrelevant details is apparent several times; and Franco regulars have small roles, I saw Paul Müller, Ewa Stroemberg, Howard Vernon, Beni Cardosi and Franco himself passing by on the screen.Unfortunately this is not a movie to remember, and not a good place to start if you want to witness the genius of Jesus F.

Andy Irvine Not sure how to rate this. It's an ultra-low quality film which, in terms of what it set out to achieve, fails miserably. The plane crash (I hope I'm not giving away too much of the plot here) is conveyed to the audience principally by means of horrified expressions on bystanders' faces, plus a little flame-coloured lighting. Needless to say, the tension is non-existent.However, it does have a redeeming feature. It's unintentionally hilarious. Minimalist special effects aside, the dubbed English dialogue is dreadfully stilted, well beyond the point at which a soap opera script editor would blanch, and the scene in which the, er, hunky guy picks up the love interest by means of his sexy whistling (honestly) is a golden moment in cinema history.Get many, many beers in and enjoy.