Biography
Jesús Franco, also credited as Jess Franco, was a Spanish film director, writer, editor and composer. Born in Madrid in 1930, he studied at the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas in Madrid and the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques in Paris. He began working as an assistant director on Spanish and Hollywood productions in the 1950s.
Franco directed, wrote or otherwise contributed to numerous low-budget exploitation, horror and erotic films from the late 1950s onwards, often under pseudonyms. Among his better-known works are Vampyros Lesbos (1971), Count Dracula (1970), A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973) and Bloody Moon (1981). He also served as second-unit or assistant director on Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight (1965) and edited and supervised a 1992 assembly of Welles’s unfinished Don Quixote footage. In 2009 he received an honorary Goya Award for his contributions to Spanish cinema.
