This B-to-Z double bill pays homage to two emblematic figures of Spanish erotic, transgressive and cult cinema: Jess Franco and Bigas Luna, both deceased in 2013.

Jess Franco is not only a monumental figure of Spanish B-cinema, he's unique and unconventional on an international scale, a director with an immense and inimitable filmography (nearly 200 films, difficult to catalogue them all). He was a cinematic Stakhanovite who kept shooting until his dying breath! This B-movie master was close to the A-movie master, Orson Welles, for whom he completed Don Quixote! Miss Muerte (Diabolical Dr. Z), written by Jean-Claude Carrière, is one of Franco's earliest masterpieces in a similar vein to The Awful Dr. Orlof: a strong plotline, lots of ingenuity to make up for the low-budget production value, and sumptuous black-and-white cinematography accentuated by a touch of eroticism (including a brilliant opening sequence in which a scantily-clad lady dances on a giant spider web!).

Bigas Luna also had a remarkable career. His earlier filmography included bleak, more extreme and underground films like Caniche or Bilbao. The highlight of that era, Anguish, brought the sultry atmosphere of his earlier films to a larger audience by developing clearer features of the "genre" and a complex "film-within-a-film" screenplay. His later works deviate from the genre, with lighter and more erotic movies like Jamón, Jamón (where he discovered the sublime Penelope Cruz) and Golden Balls.