With one of the most prolific careers in film history, Spaniard Jesús Franco directed more than 170 films, mostly bizarre, low-budget B-pictures spanning the horror and exploitation genres, releasing multiple films per year, some under pseudonyms. His earliest films include two in the noir style, Rififi in the City (1963) and this one, La muerte silba en blues (US: Death Whistles the Blues), a stylish, gangster-forced-out-of-hiding film with a fantastic twist ending. Georges Rollin plays Paul Vogel, a retired gangster living a carefree life in Jamaica after a botched heist in which one partner was caught — and the other partner killed — by police. When Vogel’s wife Lina (Perla Cristal) informs him that a man at the local jazz club was asking about his past, Vogel has the man killed, but this raises the suspicion of the local police commissioner (Fortunio Bonanova) who recruits the club’s sexy chanteuse, Maria Santos (Danik Patisson), to befriend Vogel and act as a spy. Meanwhile, Vogel’s surviving partner (Conrado San Martin) is now out of prison and in town to exact his revenge, which includes harnessing the anger of the local fishermen whom Vogel has been squeezing out of their profits. An enormous fan (and occasional associate) of Orson Welles, Franco lets his visual imagination run wild with crane shots, jump cuts, oblique camera angles (especially in the jazz club), and deeply expressionist lighting, particularly during the fabulously staged fight scenes and at the masquerade ball where the final confrontation takes place. Note Franco’s ability to create and sustain tension, particularly in the speeding scene that comprises rapid cross-cutting between extreme close-up, insert shots, and passenger reaction.