It might be. I only discovered him through his only MST3K entry, The Castle of Fu Manchu.
Mm-mm. OK, let me ask: do you have much familiarty with this sub-genre of horror? Because I have to repeat the basic imperative that you should have some understanding of what the film is attempting to accomplish, and I don't see this understanding reflected in your criticisms. Are you familiar with Anthony Margheriti (
Castle of Blood, Long Hair of Death, Web of the Spider)? I mention Jean Rollin, who may be the finest example of this style of soft-core evocative horror, anything from him? Joe D'Amato (
The Devil's Wedding Night, Death Smiles on a Murderer)? I'll go out on a limb and ask, Walerian Borowczyk (
Immoral Tales, The Beast, Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne)? Not to mention if you have much familiarity with soft-core more generally? I think if you knew what you were looking for you may have been able to find a firmer entry point to this kind of material.
So, why Franco? And not someone like a Mario Bava who may make a better introduction to this style of sensual, mood (rather than plot) driven horror? Because MST3K is many things, but it's not the kind of place I'd look for Welles-worthy filmmakers.
I know Letterboxd considers that his worst movie, with the second being Oasis of the Zombies. As far as his best goes, the three options seem to be Vampyros Lesbos, Diabolical Dr. Z, and The Awful Dr. Orloff. I haven't seen the last of those. I also checked out The Girl from Rio, which wasn't utterly horrific like Fu Manchu, just pretty damn boring. I'll be done checking him out onpy qhen I've gone through his absolute best, worst and most popular, but no way I'm getting through all of them or even half. But sides, I can't seem to find some of them online and I don't wanna bother other people for the links.
I'm curious what you expect to get out of this excursion. I honestly don't understand why "worst" is a priority (and "popular"?, wtf?), but in terms of his better efforts, yes, I'd say those three are pretty good, but personally, I might place
She Killed In Ecstasy a little higher, and lump
Count Dracula and
Venus in Furs along with them. Still seems like a rather random exercise.