The Bloody Pit of Horror

Charro de las Calaveras, El (1965)

2012-01-26T01:11:00.024-05:00

... aka: Rider of the Skulls, The

Directed by:
Alfredo Salazar

Not entirely sure of the origins of this one. It seems like either a serial or a proposed television program that was later edited into a feature film. Our hero is The Rider of the Skulls, a Zorro-like, horseback-riding crime fighter who wears a huge sombrero and an all black outfit with skull emblems (which change positions on his shirt depending on the segment). Just like Mexico's wrestling stars, he opts to keep his face covered the majority of the time. The origin of the character is laid out just like many other famous super heroes. After his parents were murdered by bandits, The Rider swore on their grave to spend the rest of his life fighting the forces of evil. He says he covers his face because he represents justice and his identity is not important. Or as he tells a young boy; "Justice... does not have a face." In this episodic 80-minute release, the Rider faces off against three different monster foes; a werewolf, a vampire and the headless horseman. It doesn't work smoothly as a feature because the continuity is off, including shifts in costume, character history and even actors playing the same role!

Our werewolf tale opens with a farmer getting out a quick prayer before a werewolf goes for the jugular (and rips his face off). Similar attacks have helped to cause those in a small village to haul ass out of town. A financially-strapped family; headed by stressed-out, sleeping-pill-popping sheriff Don Luis Salvatierra (David Silva), simply cannot afford to leave. His wife Lupe (Alicia Caro) and stepson Perico, the latter ill ever since he himself spotted the monster, allow The Rider (Dagoberto Rodríguez) to come stay in their home until the creature can be killed. A cackling witch who lives in a graveyard raises a faceless corpse from the dead, which informs The Rider that Don Luis is the werewolf. This leads to a fist fight and a tumble down a rocky embankment. This segment has a fun enough cut rate werewolf design and cheap-o three-edit dissolves (man to skeleton to werewolf) to illustate transformation. At the end, The Rider decides to adopt young Perico and take a sidekick in the cowardly and thoroughly obnoxious Cleofas (Pascual García Peña) - typically annoying 'comic relief' - and allow them to come along on his other adventures. He also removes his mask and shows the two of them his face.

As tale #2 begins, you'll notice something different right away. For starters, the Rider of the Skulls' costume has changed. His skull emblems have moved from the back and sleeves to the front of his shirt. Instead of a black handkerchief with the eyes cut out, he now wears a black hood over his entire head. And it wouldn't surprise me if it were a completely different actor underneath the costume. In fact, I'm sure of it since the character's physique has changed. Even more strangely, "Perico" has miraculously transformed into "Juanito" and is played by a different child actor. Unfortunately, Cleofas is the same actor doing the same schtick.

Numero dos centers around a caped, ugly-faced vampire, who transforms into a rubber-bat-on-a-string. The vampire has been busy feasting on villagers, and sets his sights on a young señorita named Maria after killing her father. At the end of the first segement, the Rider had removed his mask so that his travelling companions (and we, the audience) could see his face. In this segment, the kid tells Maria that no one has ever seen his face. And the inconsistencies between the segments don't end there. Hell, discounting the first story, there are even inconsistencies within just this segment. Maria tells The Rider that she wants to avenge the death of her parentS, and yet her mom was safely in bed last we saw. The vampire's lair starts as a crumbling old hacienda, but five minutes later he's suddenly living in a graveyard...

Finally, we get to the very strange sight of the Headless Horseman galloping down a dirt trail on his horse. Just as in the other two tales, he's first seen laying waste to a poor fella walking down the road. His buddies, a pair of robed, skull-faced Grim Reapers, tell him his day of vengeance is coming soon. Meanwhile, a young woman named Gloria opens a box that belonged to her deceased grandfather and finds a living head inside! It instructs her to re-attach it to its body. She tries to bury it, but it miraculously reappears in her room. Gloria learns that the head belongs to a bandit who was executed years earlier and, to finally get rid of the damn thing, she decides to trace it back to its owner and reunite it with the body. One thing leads to another and The Rider, Cleofas and Gloria find themselves tied up and being threatened with a sword by the Horseman (who finally gets his head back on). Young Juanito unties them, The Rider and The Horseman get into a swordfight where one (hmmm... guess who?) ends up slain and a sudden thunderstorm strikes the skull dudes down.

In tone and execution, the whole thing seems like a children's matinee movie... but what other kiddie movies can you think of with faceless zombies, talking severed heads, werewolves ripping out throats and drunken bums stumbling into ladies bedrooms for some lovin'? The film is also notable for containing more fainting than a Justin Bieber concert. Considering the wide variety of papier-mâché creations on display, it can't help but to provide some entertainment (looking over these screen caps I realize just how amazingly nutty this whole thing must look), though well-executed it is not.

Never released theatrically in the U.S., in 2010 this was finally released on a double DVD by Lion's Gate, who have paired it with the non-horror EL ASESINO ENMASCARADO.

★★

Fortress of the Dead (1965)

2012-01-25T23:59:00.014-05:00

Directed by:
Ferde Grofé Jr.

American Frank Moore (John Hackett) returns to Manila for the first time in over two decades. When he was just 17 years old, he'd served as an army private during World War II, when allied Filipino and U.S. forces were fighting the Japanese on the island of Corregidor. The battle turned out to be a bloodbath and all these years later Frank is still tormented by something that occurred there. He and thirty-six other soldiers were in the midst of battle when everyone became trapped in an underground tunnel after a bomb reduced their fortress into a pile of steel and rubble. Well... everyone except for Frank. Because of the chaos and destruction surrounding him, the scared 17-year-old sat outside the steel door while his fellow soldiers suffocated to death. Because of their pleading, Frank had lied to them and said help was on the way, but it wasn't. Several days later, the traumatized young soldier was found sitting outside the tunnel still babbling to himself incoherently, with all of his platoon found dead inside. Years of therapy haven't help alleviate Frank's guilt or nightmares, so his former army buddy, Joe Rodriguez (Conrad Parham), decides he needs to face his fears head on...

Since the war, the island of Corregidor (now partially hidden amongst the overgrown jungle) has been turned into a popular tourist attraction. Joe's friend Jupee Francisco (Eddie Infante), an army major who prefers to be called Pete, works there and agrees to take Frank back to the site of the battle that traumatized him. Once they arrive and Frank recounts his tale, Jupee tells him things couldn't have went down the way he recalls. He says the tunnel is closed off because its full of rock, steel and debris and all inside died instantly after the bomb hit. So how was Frank able to talk to them for hours while they were trapped? Was he out of his mind by that point, or was he speaking to their ghosts? Frank is skeptical of Jupee's story (a lie, as it turns out), especially after he decides to take a pretty native girl named Lita ("Ana Corita" / Helen Thompson) back to show her "the big guns." Believe the place is haunted by restless spirits, Frank goes back that night all by himself to face his demons once and for all.

All but completely forgotten, this low key, mediocre ghost story (which isn't even listed as a horror film on IMDb, though it certainly qualifies) does one thing exceptionally well, and that's exploiting its setting. The giant, rusted batteries, pieces of schrapnel and weaponry peaking out through the overgrown jungle and crumbling shells of huge, abandoned buildings destroyed in the war acting as silent tombstones to the atrocities committed there make for a pretty haunting backdrop. The film has no special effects; elements of the supernatural are conveyed simply through the sounds of footsteps, voices, creaking doors and digging from beneath the ground. The performances are passable, the writing is mediocre and the production values are low. It's also a visually flat piece, and there's really not really enough content here to sustain a feature length film. Still, it's worth a look just for the scenery.

Director Grofé (who also wrote and produced) was the son of award-winning composer and song writer Ferde Grofé. He was a World War II historian who worked on many war documentaries and magazine articles. In addition, he wrote several westerns, including THE DAY OF THE WOLVES with John Wayne. To horror buffs, if Ferde Jr. is known for anything, it's probably for directing the atmospheric but middling Satanism tale JUDGEMENT DAY, which received a decent VHS release (in an eye-catching video box) by Magnum in 1989. Fortress on the other hand is seldom-seen, seldom-discussed and didn't receive much of a release despite being in the public domain. It's available on DVD-R from Sinister Cinema, but their print is soft and has both print and audio damage (plus several bad jumps - possibly to remove damaged frames). Since Sinister's packaging is atrocious to put it mildly, the ad art shown above is from the RetroFlix DVD.

Some sources claim this was made for television, but I have my doubts about that. A scene with the lone female cast member coming out of the water in a revealing wet t-shirt never would have been filmed for a television production.

★★

Castello dalle porte di fuoco, Il (1970)

2012-01-23T21:32:00.019-05:00

... aka: Altar of Blood
... aka: Blood Castle
... aka: Castle of Blood
... aka: Castle of Frankenstein, The
... aka: Ivanna
... aka: Killers in the Castle of Blood
... aka: Scream of the Demon Lover

Directed by:
José Luis Merino

A drunk discovers the bloodied body of a young maiden... the sixth such victim in less than a year. While the funeral procession is going on through the village the next day, Dr. Ivanna Rakovsky (Erna Schürer), a biochemist fresh from her university studies, arrives by coach. When she mentions she's there to take up a position at Castle Xenia, the villagers snub her and walk away. She does finally manage to find someone to take her there; the sleazy Fedor (Ezio Sancrotti). On the way, he tells her about how the murders began shortly after the death of the castle's previous owner, a scientist named Igor Dalmar, who was killed in a lab explosion. He also claims the new owner she's there to work for, Igor's brother Janos ("Charles Quinney" / Carlos Quiney), is a madman just like the rest of his family and warns she'll be the next victim if she stays. After narrowly avoiding getting raped by her transport, Ivanna makes her way to the castle, only to get a chilly reception from the housemaid, Olga (Cristiana Galloni). The baron finally shows up and demands that Ivanna leave. Since the weather's bad out, he allows her to stay one night.

Another young lady working there - a beautiful young maid named Cristiana (Agostina Belli) - draws a bath for our heroine, after which someone peeps on her as she's changing clothes. At dinner, Ivanna notices lashes on the baron's prized dogs and that her employer and the nubile Cristina don't even try to conceal their attraction for one another. Olga - the Baron's former mistress - is catty, bitter, nosy and jealous of any woman making eyes at Janos. Eventually the baron has a change of heart about Ivanna, and decides to convince her to stay. He shows her around the lab (including a bubbling bathtub full of muck which contains his dead brother's remains), claims he's experimenting on the origin of life and on the regeneration of carbonized matter and hands her a book with research from four generations of his family for study. His wish is to revive his brother, and he can only do so with Ivanna's knowledge of chemisty.

After drinking some milk, Ivanna passes out, wakes tied up topless to a rack and is threatened by someone brandishing a red hot fire poker. The same thing happens yet again the following night, but this time someone pumps fumes into her room. When she awakens the voice tells her to "stay pure" or else she will die. Yes, Ivanna is unsullied, and as it turns out all the young women who've been recently murdered (with a spiked glove) were killed immediately after losing their virginity. In fact, each had fallen in love with the tall, dark and handsome Janos right before getting it. The rest plays out as a mystery as to who the killer is. Could it be Olga, whose first inclination after seeing the Baron flirt with his new assistant is to whip out a knife? Or Cristina, who's in love with Janos herself, and says "I'll laugh at your funeral" under her breath at Ivanna. Or Janos, who is rumored to be mad anyway... And what gives with the books about lycanthropy in the library? How about the presumably dead Igor? Is he really dead, or has his vengeful ghost returned to prevent his brother from having a normal, healthy relationship? Whoever it is, they want to make sure the Baron never falls in love.

You could go down a checklist of the expected Euro Gothic horror trappings (castle, secret room, torture chamber, scientist, lovely damsel in distress, etc.) and this would check almost all of the boxes. Set sometime during the 19th Century, it's technically well-made, with a decent score, above average English-dubbing and effective art direction, lighting and photography. It's about average on nudity (with all three lead actresses going topless) and low on violence (with just a smattering of blood). This one benefits somewhat from having a spunkier, smarter, stronger-willed central female than what you'll usually find in these films, though the actress playing her still has to compromise. Sure she's educated and bookish... but who's to say she can't lie in bed studying chemical formulas... with her breasts hanging out of her nightgown! The first hour is fairly strong, but the final half hour becomes ridiculously convoluted. The revelation of the killer also isn't much of a surprise.

Director Merino also made the difficult-to-find THE FIVE WARNINGS OF SATAN (1970) and the Paul Naschy vehicle THE HANGING WOMAN (1972; which also featured Quiney). The cast includes Antonio Jiménez Escribano as Fritz the butler (he's also Cristina's father and doesn't want her daughter getting involved with Janos) and Mariano Vidal Molina as the obligatory police inspector.

An Italian / Spanish co-production, this was released as Il castello dalle Porte di Fuoco ("The Castle with Doors of Fire") in Italy and as Ivanna in Spain. Alternate "clothed" scenes were shot for more restrictive markets (Spain, the U.S., etc.). It was first released in America - sometimes double billed with Stephanie Rothman's THE VELVET VAMPIRE - by New World Pictures under the somewhat misleading moniker Scream of the Demon Lover. Fake Anglacized credits (starring "Jeffrey Chase" and "Jennifer Harvey") were added. Elsewhere it was given the even more misleading title The Castle of Frankenstein.

To my knowledge, all of the legit American releases (the VHS from Charter, the DVD from Retromedia...) are of substandard quality, and some of them are censored. I was lucky enough to see the remastered, uncut version released by the German company E-M-S, which is an decent (though full screen) print and uncut.

★★

Fée sanguinaire, La (1968)

2012-01-23T20:51:00.014-05:00

... aka: Bloodthirsty Fairy, The

Directed by:
Roland Lethem

An interesting 25-minute short, shot in grainy 16mm and in black-and-white; almost dialogue-free and full of "shocking" images and student film-esque button pushing (and, ultimately, some sort of political message). Two mysterious men dressed in black and with cigarettes dangling from their mouths drop a large, presumably heavy (since it takes two to carry it) package off on a doorstep and walk away. When the home's owner (Pierre Lampe) returns he drags the package inside, then goes about doing a few more activities before deciding to finally open it. Upon removing the paper, he notices it's a large steel barrel. Using a blowtorch, he gets the lid off and sees it's full of oily water... but rising out of the water is a nude, voluptuous, smiling woman (To Katinaki), who immediately starts to entice the man by massaging her breasts. Naturally, being in a barrel for who knows how long, she needs to get cleaned off and hops into a bubble bath. While she's lounging in the tub, the man gets into bed, lights a cigarette and starts to remove him clothes in anticipation. We get to see fantasies from both the man and "the fairy."

His fantasies are completely sex driven, but despite her smiling face and joyous demeanor, the woman's are a little on the sick side. She first goes up to a policeman and beats him to death with his Billy club. Next up, she goes up to a nun on a park bench, starts feeling her up and strangles her to death with her rosary. She pokes a little boys eyes out with her fingers and then has sex with a black man in a public park. After finishing up in the tub, the woman then joins the man in bed, where his pleasure quickly turns into pain as the woman whips out a straight razor and cuts off his penis (all of this is cut with a chicken getting its head cut off and two men dribbling the blood on themselves). The man then dies a bloody death on the floor.

The woman then drops the penis into a jar. Seems she has a whole collection of penises... and they're of some rather famous people. Some jars have penises in them, some do not. Amongst the jars with dicks are "Luther-King," "Diem" (the first president of South Vietnam), "Kennedy," "Rockwell," "Verwoede" (a South African prime minister) and "Strobel." Amongst the ones without dicks: "Franco," "Kossygine" (Soviet premiere Aleksei Kosygin), "Waldeck-Rochet" (a French communist), "Johnson," "Paul VI," "De Gaulle," "Salazar" and "Kiesinger." So the "fairy" has been neutering famous political leaders (we can assume her latest victim is one, as well). What does it all mean? I'm sure the "neutering" of various political figures is pretty self-explanatory, especially considering that all of the emasculated figures had been assassinated before this was made. The short ends with the delivery guys dropping the package off at some gated military facility and then a picture of a swastika with Nixon's face in the middle.

The director did some acting (he appeared in the horror-comedy MAMA DRACULA in 1980) and directed other short films; many of them horror-themed (or just gory). Jean-Pierre Bouyxou (who plays one of the package deliverers) later went on to appear in a half dozen films for Jean Rollin and several for Jesus Franco.

★★1/2

Jiang shi shu shu (1988)

2012-01-23T20:13:00.017-05:00

... aka: Geung si suk suk
... aka: Mr. Vampire 4
... aka: Mr. Vampire Saga
... aka: Mr. Vampire Saga 4

Directed by:
Ricky Lau

Buddhist monk Yi-Yu (Ma Wu) is an elder man of the cloth living in a desolate mountainous region who's just brought in a female wanderer named Ching-Ching (Loletta Lee) as his assistant and pupil. Right next door lives an unnamed Taoist priest (played by Anthony Chan), who's referred to only as "Master" or "Four-Eyed Taoist" because of his glasses. Unlike the monk, who prefers a quiet life of discipline and meditation, the priest is a bit on the arrogant side and is in the not-so-quiet business of capturing and controlling vampires. Using spell paper attached to the forehead, he's able to keep the dangerous undead docile and safely stored away in the morgue. The taoist is also aided by his clutzy pupil Chia-Le (Kar Lok Chin), who falls in love with the spunky Ching-Ching at first sight. Unfortunately, their masters don't get along at all. Both elders have some kind of rivalry going on and can't even sit down to have tea without it turning into a fight. At breakfast, the two get into a food fight, which ends in one shooting peanuts from his nostrils into the other one's mouth.

The monk's morning ritual of getting up before dawn to pray and loudly bang on his gong doesn't sit well with the priest. In retaliation, he gets the monk's thumb print and uses it to create a voodoo doll, which he then uses to make the monk bash his head into the wall and rip out his tooth with pliers. Not one to let the his rival get the better of him, the monk does a magic act of his own to freeze the priest. He and Ching-Ching then have some fun with firecrackers, blowing one up inside his mouth. Back and forth it goes from one "comic" slapstick gag to the next and the next thing we know we're 50 minutes into the movie and nothing of note has even happened. The only real action occurred in an earlier throwaway scene when the priest is marching a dozen or so obedient vampires through the forest and encounters a woman (Pauline Wang Yu-wan) who tries to seduce him and turns into a fox.

Things finally pick up toward the end when a royal funeral caravan (headed by Fat Chung as Taoist Crane) on their way to deliver a corpse to the nearby town stops in for a brief visit. That evening while the travelers are setting up camp, a thunderstorm erupts, which blows the spell paper off the casket and washes away all of the black ink (a preventative measure to keep the body inside). The super-strong, nearly indestructible vampire / corpse returns to life, busts out of its coffin and starts killing everyone in sight. A flamboyant, annoying, stereotypically cowardly gay guy named Wu-yuan (Wah Yuen) manages to scoop up a young prince and make it back to the temple. The rest is basically a bunch of kicking, punching, flipping, fighting, biting, clawing and various comic gags as the monstrous main vampire and those infected with bites attack. No piece of furniture is left intact.

Just as MR. VAMPIRE II (1986) was a significant drop in quality from the original MR. VAMPIRE (1985), #4 in the popular series is a significant drop in quality from MR. VAMPIRE III (1987). Not only does the film take forever to get going, but the main characters are either too mean-spirited, or just plain stupid, to take much of a liking to. Things do change somewhat in the second half when the rivals must work together to defeat the vampires, but Ching-Ying Lam's one-eyebrow priest (a perfect grounding point for the over-the-top gags in the other entries) is still sorely missed here. The laughs are sporadic at best, with childish slapstick involving poking asses, slipping in cow shit, getting whacked over the head with bamboo sticks, getting hit in the crotch repeatedly, breaking furniture, being constipated after having to suck down a vat of oil, etc. Particularly embarrassing is the gay "comic relief;" as the "sissy man" screams, flails, develops a crush on our hero and proves to be utterly useless when the vampires lay siege on the temple.

To be fair, some cool things do occur now and then. The crazy mythology in these things always provides passing interest, such as eating whole cloves of garlic to break curses and bathing in rice milk to heal vampire wounds (and keep those bites from transforming you into a vampire). In another scene, the priest and his line of vampires do the limbo under a tree branch and, when he gets lazy, he has a frog lead the process of the dead (which naturally backfires on him). Imaginatively choreographed action and impressive stunt / wire work (showcased primarily in the last third) remain the highlight, of course.

To my knowledge, there are three additional films sometimes seen as parts of this series; the unofficial fifth entry (which is known primarily as MAGIC COP, but also as MR. VAMPIRE 5), as well as the unofficial spin-off series NEW MR. VAMPIRE (1987 and aka "Kung Fu Vampire Buster") and NEW MR. VAMPIRE 2 (1989 and aka "Vampire vs. Vampire"). Ricky Lau (who directed the first four) had nothing to do with the others.

★★1/2

Cult of the Cobra (1955)

2012-01-16T20:12:00.021-05:00

... aka: Cobra

Directed by:
Francis D. Lyon

While stationed somewhere in Asia, six air force corporals about to be sent home decide to do something crazy before they head back to the states. They come across a snake charmer named Daru (Leonard Strong), who promises to sneak them into a secret society of snake worshippers called the Lamians for a hundred bucks. The cult believe that humans can transform into snakes at will and worship some kind of ancient snake goddess. After knocking back a few drinks, the guys slap on some robes and prepare to enter the Lamian temple incognito. Daru warns them to not be noticed. After watching a weird ceremony where a guy dances, two guys swordfight and a woman in a skin tight snake outfit slithers out of a wicker basket, one of the guys - Nick (James Dobson) - decides to snap a picture. The flash signals the cult that they've been infiltrated, a fist fight breaks out and, as the guys rush out, a cultist warns "One by one you will die!" The next day, Nick dies from a cobra snake bite. The other five guys; Paul (Richard Long), Tom (Marshall Thompson), Pete (William Reynolds), Carl (Jack Kelly) and Rico (David Janssen), head back to America.

Some time passes and the men are all back to regular jobs and regular lives away from the military. Rico has inherited his father's bowling alley, Tom makes a good living doing commercial / advertising art, Carl is a womanizing playboy, Paul is a research assistant and, uh, I'm not really sure what Pete does but since he's played by William Reynolds he at least looks good doing it. Roommates, Tom and Paul have both been dating the same gal, aspiring actress Julia (Kathleen Hughes), but she has finally made up her mind. She wants Paul and goes to break the news to poor Tom in the most condescending way possible, with such zingers as "We want you to stay our friend!" and "I'm sorry things didn't work out the way you wanted." Hey Julia, you could have avoided all that if you didn't simultaneously date two best friends. And if I were you, I'd be checking into your man's current living arrangement. He and his "roomie" cook each other breakfast, bring each other drinks and sleep in the same bedroom ("I'll be along in a minute, professor!") Next thing you'll tell me is that they even get their dry cleaning done together. Uh, wait a second...

Heartbroken but realistic about losing his sort-of girl, Tom is settling down for bed when he hears a woman screaming. He rushes into the apartment across the hall and sees Lisa (Faith Domergue), a doe-eyed beauty in a state of panic. It's her first night in town and she claims a man has just snuck in and tried to rape her. Tom uses this as an opportunity to ask her out on a date. I forget the exact words he used, but it basically amounts to, "I'm sorry you almost got raped... Wanna go out?" Smooth. Lisa agrees and he shows her all around New York City. Well, we don't actually get to see any of it. We just see them sitting at a hot dog stand talking about it. (Probably because this was filmed in sunny California).

Tom's instantly smitten by the alluring mystery woman, but she does have some hard-to-understand quirks about her. Why do dogs bark, cats hiss and horses kick any time they see her? Why does she go out on strolls around the neighborhood at 3am? Why doesn't she smoke, drink or enjoy bowling? Why is she so cold and resistant to romance? In you're quicker on the draw than that poor sap Tom, you'll realize that Lisa is the snake goddess. She's come to New York City to kill off the remaining guys who saw the secret cult ceremony. What she doesn't count on is falling in love. Paul doesn't like her. Of course he doesn't like her. Julie invites everyone to a play she's going to be in, telling Paul and Tom that "I'm counting on you all to be so gay that I won't have time to be nervous!"

Cult of the Cobra reminds one of CAT PEOPLE (1942) in its depiction of a virginal, foreign young woman who seems out of place in the world, is frightened by the prospect of love and sex and whose repressed animal instincts take on a literal form. This one adds the whole revenge angle to it, so it's a little different, but it's along those lines. However, while CAT PEOPLE effectively used suggestion to fuel its horror, this one gives us shadows of the cobra, rippling snake POV shots as it approaches victims and even utilizes a rubber snake. It's rather talky, not particularly original, the only actual transformation scene we get is at the very end (which isn't much) and the ending is unsatisfying. Much of the acting is pretty stiff, but Domergue (who replaced Mari Blanchard days into filming) is fun to watch. Every time someone mentions the Lamian cult, snakes or any of the soldiers, she'll look off into space with a vague sinister expression while spooky music plays. She also gets DRACULA-style lighting around her eyes any time she's about to attack or has a malicious thought. Aside from her, there's not much else here to recommend though it proves to be mildly entertaining.

Director Lyon was an Oscar-winning editor who'd also go on to direct CASTLE OF EVIL (1966) and DESTINATION INNER SPACE (1966). A quality print of the film has been issued on VHS and DVD by Universal, but the studio really seems to have cut corners on the budget on this one.

★★

Jiang shi shao ye (1987)

2012-01-16T19:35:00.018-05:00

... aka: Corpse Master
... aka: Magic Story
... aka: Young Master Vampire

Directed by:
Bing-chi Liu

During the opening credits, three vampires are resurrected, turn into cartoon bats and fly out of a castle. And that ends up being the highlight of this unfunny, lackluster MR. VAMPIRE rip-off. The vampires go to a small village and start killing, starting with a night watchman. A professor (Bill Tung) needs vampires for his experiments and sends his bumbling idiot assistant Akui (Mars) out to find some; promising him 5 bucks per vampire. Too bad the assistant is a complete buffoon who's unable to procure a corpse and is too busy trying to romance the scientist's daughter Ahua. A greedy, red-nosed, bogus priest named Mao Shan has been stealing bodies from the morgue to add to his small army of obedient vampires. Using spell paper attached to the foreheads, he's able to make them jump, turn, go up or down and do other basic commands. Though it doesn't really say, it seems he's using his vampires to scare the villagers and then makes money on the side by selling them charms that supposedly ward off vampire attacks. The corrupt police captain and his klepto chief aide Wang are also in on the scam.

Akui finds a cutesy and mostly benign little child vampire that can be summoned using a gold pocket watch. He nicknames him (what else?) Ding-Dong. Ding-Dong has his own theme song and there's even a cheesy musical sequence set in some kind of black void where the kid vamp plays with other child vampires while a children's choir sings about innocence and how children are "a precious treasure." Ick. The little vampire follows Akui around like a lost puppy, mimics his every move, wraps him up like a mummy, hangs from the ceiling by his fingernails and tries to shave. Akui takes him outside during the daytime and when his sunglasses are accidentally removed, he become ill and wll turn into a pile of ashes unless the scientist can cure him. He comes up with an idea about sending electronic waves through Ding-Dong, which works. But by that point, the bad guys get their hands on Ding-Dong. In a twist lifted directly from MR. VAMPIRE II (1986), the main vampires that have been haunting the village turn out to be Ding-Dong's parents and all they want is their kid back.

For a good hour plus, this is nothing but sub-Three Stooges slapstick scenes featuring idiotic characters doing idiotic things accompanied by comic sound effects. The real action doesn't come until the last fifteen minutes, when our heroes, the bad guys, the vampire parents and a super-strong vampire granny (played by a man in drag!) start fighting. These scenes are passable and utilize decent stunt and wire work, but by this point it's too little, too late. Mythology from the Mr. Vampire series is reused (the spell papers, holding one's breath to keep vampires away, etc.), though this does come up with one new trick to add to your vampire fighting arsenal... piss. Yes, apparently piss can keep vampires away. But only the piss of a virgin (!!!) During the finale, when Akui can't "make water" he's instructed to rub garlic on his privates to speed along the process.

The film went unreleased in American until a few years ago, when Deimos put it on a double DVD ("Eastern Horror: Volume 4), where it's paired with the Indonesian ghost / zombie horror SATAN'S SLAVE (1982).

★1/2

Nazareno Cruz y el lobo (1975)

2012-01-08T20:20:00.017-05:00

... aka: Nazarene Cross and the Wolf, The
... aka: Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf

Directed by:
Leonardo Favio

Many films have used the werewolf theme metaphorically, as a way to announce that a boy has become a man. What better way to signal puberty than by having a mild-mannered teenage boy suddenly transform into a hairy, instinctually-driven beast who starts stealthily stalking his female prey? Taking their cue from Universal's THE WOLF MAN, and sticking to the lycanthrope mythology devised for that film by writer Curt Siodmak for the most part, one of the first notable entries in this arena was the hit I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957), with its high school setting and nice guy Michael Landon transforming into a ferocious beast. During one sequence, as a "beast" Mr. Landon silently watches a tighty-clad gymnast in the high school's gymnasium before deciding to attack; a clear-cut example of pent up sexual desire finally being unleashed upon the unsuspecting female. There were other similar films about young men becoming more aggressive thanks to the curse of the beast. They were usually also dangerous, but not always. Take for instance the terrible TEEN WOLF comedies, where Michael J. Fox's character becomes athletic and popular (even with the ladies!) thanks to his transformation. In Neil Jordan's THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, set inside a Red Riding Hood-esque fever dream of a young girl having her very first period, our heroine is continually advised to steer clear of men because of "the beast" they have lurking inside. In the film - "the beast" - naturally takes literal shape when one of Rosaleen's sneaky and mysterious potential suitors ends up transforming into a werewolf.

The lead character in Nazareno Cruz y el lobo faces a similar curse-of-the-wolf problem that decides to kick in right when he starts becoming a man. An explanation behind the curse is laid out in the first ten minutes. After her husband Jeremias and six (!) sons die in a freak flooding accident, pregnant Damiana (Elcira Olivera Garcés) is determined to have her child, despite warnings that if she bears a seventh son he'll be "fed by the devil's breast." Knowing the boy is going to have a tough road to hoe, wise, toothless old witch Lechiguana (Nora Cullen) becomes his godmother and insists he be named something extremely holy to help ward off the curse, and thus the boy is named Nazareno Cruz ("The Nazarene Cross"). The baby is baptized and many years pass. With no signs of the curse taking place and because of his good looks and outgoing personality, a now-grown Nazareno (Juan José Camero) has won over the respect, admiration and love of the entire village. That is, until he decides to fall in love Griselda (Marina Magali), a young beauty who stands out amongst the crowd because of her uncommon blonde hair.

As it turns out, love is what stirs the dormant wolf inside Nazareno. He's warned by his mother and godmother, but can't control himself when he's around Giselda. A mysterious, nameless, sinister-looking man (Alfredo Alcón) who possesses supernatural abilities also shows up to also warn him. The man - who claims to have known Nazareno's father and brothers before they were killed - tells Nazareno he can avoid his tragic fate if he'll simply forget about love. He also promises that in he can avoid Griselda for an entire week that he'll leave gold and jewels at his doorstep each and every day. Still, Nazareno carries on in the relationship and on the first full moon transforms into a wolf (not really a werewolf, just a black dog that looks like a German Shepherd) and kills a farmer, some sheep and some dogs. When word gets around the village, an armed posse is organized to hunt down and kill Nazareno.

After managing to avoid the mob one night, Nazareno gets scared by chicken with a snake on it, falls into a hole, tumbles down and ends up in some kind of cave, where he encounters a cackling old woman who transforms into a sheep, snake, fox and chicken (!!) She leads him through some water to an underground cavern... which happens to be hell! Hell is a dusty, boring place with burning fires, black-robed cultists sitting about, witches stirring bubbling cauldrons, nooses hanging from windows, people being whipped, nude women acting as tables, crucified men hanging on crosses and the like. The mysterious man who had warned Nazareno turns out to be Satan himself. In an interesting spin on things, the devil isn't really such a bad guy after all. Just misunderstood. His stay in hell brief, Nazareno must then return to Earth to meet his fate.

Not really just a 'coming of age' fable dressed in wolf's clothing, this semi-surrealistic tale has other points to make about spirituality, life and love. It's dramatically uneven, a bit unfocused and not all of the director's artistic choices work (some are distracting, indulgent and downright annoying), but everything really looks great thanks to cinematographer Juan José Stagnaro. The film has a beautiful, earthy, washed-out look to it, the shot compositions are frequently excellent and there are some interesting camera placements (including at water level where water sloppily splashes on the lens; distorting the image), camera movements (including rapid 360 degree spins) and editing choices. The art direction is solid, there's a haunting score (by Juan José García Caffi) and good use made of blur and slow-motion. All of the actors are good; Alcón and Cullen in particular. The film has a very organic sense to it and the director really manages to exploit natural beauty for all it's worth, from lingering shots of hazy skies to rocky cliff backdrops and tall weeds blowing in the wind. For some reason, there are almost obsessive shots of animals throughout; birds flying in slow-motion, dogs running through fields, frogs and lizards seen in close-up with the action going on behind them, etc.

The director is one of the most acclaimed in his country (having won several of their Oscar equivalents) and based this on an Argentinean radio program by Juan Carlos Chiappe. It's one of the most popular and viewed films in its home country, though it's virtually unknown here in America (since it's never been released here).

★★1/2

Casa del sortilegio, La (1989)

2012-01-05T20:25:00.022-05:00

... aka: Doomed Houses: The House of Witchcraft
... aka: House of Witchcraft, The
... aka: Le case maledette: La casa del sortilegio

Directed by:
Umberto Lenzi

Luke Palmer (Andy J. Forest) has been having a recurring nightmare for the past six months. In it, he encounters a grinning hag witch (Maria Clementina Cumani Quasimodo) after going to a large country home, and the dream always ends the same way: "...with my head boiling in that God damn huge cauldron!" So troubling are the dreams that Luke's checked himself into a hospital for a nervous breakdown. His widowed sister-in-law Elsa (Susanna Martinková) is his doctor. She gives him a few pills and asks about how his six-month-long marriage to Martha (Sonia Petrovna) is going. Not well, he says. There's no sex and she's obsessed with the occult. Elsa tells him to stop "dwelling on the morbid." Luke checks out and is picked up by his wife, who has arranged one final little get-away so the two can determine whether or not their marriage is worth saving. Going by the fact they sleep in separate bedrooms upon arrival and she refers to him as "the most abominable being in the world" at a larger junction, my advice is "Time for a divorce!" The house Martha has rented ends up being the same large country home from Luke's nightmare. If the bad omens couldn't get any worse, Luke and Martha are involved in a car accident where the passengers of the other vehicle end up dead. She shrugs it off and demands they split before the police arrive.

Upon arriving at the house, the couple meets the owner of the house; blind former concert pianist Andrew Mason (Paul Muller) and his German Shepherd, Eram. Andy tells them that he hasn't rented the home because it "exherts a sorcery upon whoever lives in it." Andrew's niece Sharon (Marina Giulia Cavalli) is headed there for a break between studies at "architecture school." Immediately, Luke begins seeing and hearing mysterious things. For starters, he witnesses a priest getting beat to death with a crow bar in the front lawn by the witch. The body disappears, but Luke finds a bloody bible and later discovers that the man's death was attributed to a hit-and-run accident. Does Luke do what any other rational human being would do and get the hell out of there? Of course not! Instead he invites his sister-in-law and her teenage daughter Deborah (Maria Stella Musy) down for the weekend. And things only get worse from there.

Everything becomes hopelessly convoluted after awhile. I guess we have the director to thank for that since he scripted this thing (basing it on a story from the prolific Gianfranco Clerici and Daniele Stroppa). Andrew tells Sharon their family is cursed because his wife had burned to death in a fire and her mother died giving birth to her, but what does any of that have to do with Martha; who dresses up in a white robe and - in a trance-like state - takes midnight strolls through the garden in a white robe? Martha also may be able to transform into a black cat; which pops up every time there's a death. She leaves Death tarot cards all over the place and the dog constantly "senses her evil" and won't stop barking. Martha also tries to run over Sharon and the dog with her car and may be possessed by the spirit of a witch who was bricked up behind a wall in the home several centuries earlier.

Deborah's boyfriend Steven (Alberto Frasca) tries to sneak over for some lovin' but "banana oil" (her pet name for him - gag!) gets chopped with a pair of hedge clipped and pushed down a artesian well. Deborah herself ends up trapped in the cellar and gets stabbed to death. In the film's only standout scene, Deb's mama goes down to the basement only to find that it's snowing and her daughter is a rotten-faced ghost. There are sudden gusts of wind, flying feathers, vases and lights exploding in slow-motion and plants wilting, bleeding and smelling like rotten flesh. The film has a very confused sense to the paranormal elements. Aside from the standard witchcraft, tarot cards and the family curse, there's mention of the madness-inducing orchids from the West Indies and Haitian voodoo, plus a special medallion full of Egyptian symbols. A skeletal, maggot-faced grim reaper with a scythe even makes a special appearance during the finale.

The production values are fair, the music score's OK, there's a decent shooting location as well as some blood (including several decapitations) and brief nudity (which doesn't happen until the last ten minutes). Cast-wise, the actress playing the old witch does an effective enough job and it's nice to see genre vet Muller again. Sadly, all of the positives are constantly at odds with the terribly muddled plotting and laughable dialogue (the horrid English dub certainly doesn't help matters), which keep this from realizing its full potential.

Amongst his fellow Italian directors, Lenzi had one of the most varied careers. He all but started the Italian cannibal craze with 1972's MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (later adding EATEN ALIVE BY CANNIBALS and CANNIBAL FEROX to the cycle), made many giallo (four of which starred American actress Carroll Baker) and even made slasher (1988's NIGHTMARE BEACH), zombie (1980's NIGHTMARE CITY), haunted house (1987's GHOSTHOUSE) and demon (1991's BLACK DEMONS) movies. Sadly, this trip to the witch well (a popular subgenre at the time) sinks.

Tell me about it, puss!

This was the third entry in a proposed four-part series entitled "Le case maledette" (or "The Doomed Houses"), which were intended to play on Italian TV, though some apparently didn't. The others were THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS This was the third enteryand THE SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS (both directed by Lucio Fulci) and HOUSE OF LOST SOULS, also from Lenzi.

★1/2

Death Weekend (1976)

2012-01-05T19:22:00.019-05:00

... aka: House by the Lake, The

Directed by:
William Fruet

Thrillers featuring "normal" people being held hostage and terrorized by criminal degenerates were mighty popular during the 70s, thanks in no due part to the success of Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS (1971) and Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972). While Peckinpah's film was about the unfortunate *need* for violence (and how pacifism is more idealistic than realistic in contemporary society), Craven's dealt with how violence dehumanizes everyone involved, not just victims and their attackers, but also those involved in using violence to enact revenge. Most of the films influenced by these two trailblazers really didn't have much to say outside of what had already been said and usually went for straight-up exploitation. Death Weekend is something of a happy medium between exploitative thrills and substantative content. While many others of this type are a bit lopsided in painting those in the lower-class as the bad guys and the successful, wealthy ones as the victims, this film smartly counteracts that by making the rich guy 'victim' a scumbag, too. The key character to pay attention to here is the woman caught in the middle of it all. How she deals with the constant sexual threats and attempts by men to manipulate and violate her, and eventually triumphs over all of the macho bullshit, is the core of the film.

Rich, womanizing oral surgeon Harry (Chuck Shamata), who's used to having his way with the ladies, and a thrill-seeking, independent-minded model / actress Diane (Brenda Vaccaro) plan to spend a weekend at his isolated country mansion ten miles removed from civilization. He's promised a weekend party, but in actuality has lured her there simply to try to get her in the sack. On the road heading toward his place, Harry and Diane are harassed by a quartet of thugs, which escalates to a dangerous car chase. The thugs, led by the sadistic Lep (Don Stroud), end up wrecking their car and then go about hunting the duo down to enact their revenge. Thinking they've eluded the thugs, Harry and Diane make it to his home. He immediately gets to work trying to conquer his prey; attempting to impress her with his material possessions, complementing her physique, trying to ply her with drinks to loosen her up, etc. He's a bit disappointed to find out that Diane is having none of it. She's not naive... and after his spectacle, she's now not interested. Little does she know, Harry has already spied on her taking a shower and took photographs of her naked utilizing a two-way mirror.

When Diane figures out Harry isn't having a party and she's been tricked into going there, she insists he take her back to town. He tells her to walk. Before anyone can go anywhere, the thugs (who'd already taken time out of their busy schedule to drag a park ranger with their car) show up to turn Diane's annoyance with one man into a struggle for survival against four. Lep and company proceed to guzzle down liquor, bust out windows, destroy Harry's expensive decorations, grope and threaten Diane with rape and trash the entire home. After they take a ride in his speed boat and run over and kill two men, Diane realizes that if she doesn't manage to escape, she's going to be raped and killed. And later on that evening, after Harry is murdered, and she's set to get assaulted and sliced up with a razor, Diane's survivalist instincts kick in. Because she's shown to be a strong, assertive and intelligent woman from the very beginning, her resorting to violence in order to protect herself is a bit more plausible than usual for this type of film.

But don't get me wrong, not once does the director blatantly beat viewers over the head with the feminism stick. The film can simply be enjoyed as a rape-revenge or home invasion suspense thriller and that's that. I'm just pointing out that it happens to involve a woman who refuses to be influenced, compromised or overpowered by a man's wealth, power or physical strength and that certainly is no coincidence. In an interview with director Fruet I read years ago he stated that the husky-voiced Vaccaro basically shrugged this film off after she'd received an Oscar nomination for JACQUELINE SUSANN'S ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH (which was released the same year). I've read elsewhere that Vaccaro went all the way to England to plead the BBFC censors to allow the film to pass uncut; successfully. Either way, she needn't be embarrassed by her work here, nor the film itself. Her performance is very good and this material is actually far less offensive than brainless modern 'girl power' crap like CHARLIE'S ANGELS.

Aside from Vaccaro, the other actors all do fine work. All four of the men cast as the assailants (also including Richard Ayres, Kyle Edwards and Don Granberry) are convincing, display varying degrees of instability, actually look their parts and are given some kind of quirk to differentiate them from the others. From top to bottom, it's made with skill, and things get pretty grisly and violent at the end. The "road rage" incident that opens the film is based on an actual occurrence that happened to the director and his friend; who were harassed by a group of drunken thugs who tried to run them off the road while out driving in the country.

The film was released on VHS by Vestron. Sadly, there's no DVD release.

★★★

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-22T22:41:00.003-05:00

I won't be posting any reviews for a little while since I'm busy at work on another little project (... horror movie related, naturally!), but I just wanted to stop in and wish all of my blog buddies and any other visitor a very Merry Christmas! Take care, best wishes to all and I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Child, The (1977)

2011-12-05T00:32:00.025-05:00

... aka: Kill and Go Hide
... aka: La casa degli zombi
... aka: Zombie Child

Directed by:
Robert Voskanian

Alicianne Del Mar (Laurel Barnett) decides to travel back to the small country town she grew up in to take a live-in nanny position at the Nordon home. On her way there, she runs her car off the road to avoid a barrel, decides to walk the rest of the way and crosses paths with elderly, gossipy widow Mrs. Whitfield (Ruth Ballen), who invites her inside for tea and promptly informs her that her new charge Rosalie (Rosalie Cole) is a strange, trouble-making little girl whose now deceased mother had spent much of her time in mental institutions. Mrs. Whitfield also insists Alicianne stay on the path and not wander into the woods since she's been hearing strange noises there and small animals have recently been discovered dead. Since the opening credits sequence shows Rosalie feeding a kitten to some kind of cemetery ghoul, we already known poor Alicianne's gonna have her hands full. Still, since she lost both of her parents at a young age and Rosalie has recently lost her mother, Alicianne figures they'll relate on some level.

Upon arriving at the Nordon home, Alicianne meets patriarch Joshua (Frank Janson), a cranky old prick who warns "I hope you're not a nervous woman," as well as Joshua's grown son Len (Richard Hanners) and, of course, young Rosalie (who actually looks like a teenager; not the little girl I was expecting). There's also an Chinese gardener (Slosson Bing Jong) who works there but his few scenes seem removed from the rest of the film and he's not once seen in the same shot with anyone else from the cast, possibly because his scenes were added later on. Alicianne discovers that Rosalie is a pouty, obnoxious little brat who hates other kids ("Aw, they're all dumb!"), grapefruit ("I hate grapefruit!") and donuts ("Donuts!?"), gets pissed at Alicianne for going horseback riding with her older brother and giggles at a story her father tells her about a bunch of boy scouts who got poisoned by oleander sap and died. Rosalie also enjoys drawing morbid pictures and makes frequent midnight trips to the cemetery to visit her "friends." Her "friends" turn out to be a bunch of zombies that she's summoned forth and controls to do her bidding. And her bidding is basically to kill anyone who rubs her the wrong way.

Why Rosalie even wants everyone dead is one of many muddled story points you'll encounter in this film. I've seen this advertised as a revenge picture, but I could never quite figure out just who exactly the little psycho was going after, or why she was going after them. We never learn for sure if the mother had actually been murdered or just died of natural causes. However, I'm willing to accept that Rosalie could just be mad about her mother's death and doesn't know how to cope. Or she's simply just evil. She basically just comes off like a whiny little beotch who uses her zombie pals to punish people who don't let her get her way. And her powers (vague and unexplained as they may be) extend beyond just the zombies, as she's also able to make inanimate objects move, including a scarecrow that she brings to life to kill when the zombies are too busy eating kittens.

What I can't accept is the horrendous acting and dialogue. It's difficult to blame the actors so much because it appears that their dialogue was all dubbed in later. Still, you'd be hard pressed to find more stilted, awkward and unnatural- sounding dialogue readings than you'll find in this film. Nothing that comes out of anyone's mouth is delivered with the least bit of believability or conviction. And I mean nothing. The editing is done with the same level of ineptitude, and it has a habit of switching from night to day back to night again in the same scene. The film has a early America period setting for some reason, which seems to be the 1920s, though not all of the clothing and home decor really bespeak that era.

It's not all bad news, though. The film does have some nice atmospheric, foggy moments here and there, and a couple of the dialogue-free sequences (such as when our heroine has a nightmare where she's dancing with Len and he turns into the scarecrow) are effective. There's enough gore to please (faces ripped off, an eyeball gouging, a head getting chopped with an axe, etc.), the zombie designs by Jay Owens (mostly saved for the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-inspired finale) are pretty good and I quite liked the bizarre polymoog synthesizer soundtrack. It's pretty slow-going until near the end, when Alicianne and Len are besieged by a horde of zombies and try to barricade themselves inside a shed. Even these scenes are partially spoiled because our "heroine" proves to be utterly useless and just stands around shrieking the entire time, refusing to be of much help to poor Len as he tries to fight off the ghouls.

Released theatrically by Boxoffice International (and executive produced by Harry Novak), this title has been well-serviced on both VHS (Paragon, Best and Monterey were but a few of the distributors) and DVD (by Something Weird). The Canadian release title was Zombie Child.

★★

El monje loco (1984)

2011-12-04T23:40:00.012-05:00

... aka: Crazy Monk, The
... aka: Mad Monk, The

Directed by:
Julio Aldama

Organist, singer and church music director Martín Liceaga (Júlio "Augurio" / Aldama, son of the director) and one of his "flock;" the lovely Carmen (Luz María Rico), start collaborating on music together. The two badly lipsync to an operatic version of Ave Maria (for four minutes!) and then Martín finds himself so caught up in the moment that he must resist the urge to get more, uh, physical with the young beauty. He instead goes to pray for strength, but can only see visions of Carmen's face over top those of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The guy just can't get her out of his head, so he confesses his feelings of lust to the elderly Padre Superior (Paco Pharrez), who gives him a pep talk and an ornate crucifix... and reminds him his faith is most important of all. Carmen ends up meeting a potential suitor, which enrages Martín. He has a dream of her passionately begging him to kiss her, but she turns into a skull-faced topless demoness instead. One day during confessional, Carmen discusses some sordid details about her new relationship, which is enough to send Brother Martín over the edge. He chases her, starts trying to rape her and accidentally knocks her off the roof. He sneaks her body off to a cemetery, but is haunted by visions of Carmen and the gets his comeuppance from God himself. A one-eyed monk laughs maniacally. The end. Well... the end of this segment.

The film then jumps ahead to a second story: "El talismán maldito" (the first story is never named). Hard-working, depressed farmer José Martinez (director Aldama) and his wife Susana (Queta Lavat) are having financial problems and might lose their ranch. To make matters worse, their son Alejandro (Jorge Aldama) is injured working on his truck and the jack falls out from underneath of it. Jose tries to hawk his prized crucifix (the same one seen in the first story) but the pawn broker isn't interested in it. Desperate, José makes a deal with a shady guy, who gives him a three-pronged wooden fork which is supposed to grant his wishes (with each wish granted a prong disappears until they're all gone). Feeling he's exhausted his options, José raises the fork up to the sky and prays to try to get his family out of debt. It ends up working... but not without an unexpected cost to the family: his son's life. But he still has two more wishes to grant...

El monje loco ("The Crazy Monk" or "The Mad Monk") begins and ends with a cloaked Grim Reaper-ish figure walking through an empty field. Who it is isn't made clear at first since he's not seen at all during the first story. However, the character (who has something that looks like a ping pong ball over one of his eyes) pops up a lot in the second segment to provide running commentary and cackle maniacally as the events unfold. Obviously these scenes were added to bulk up the run time. The first story runs 40 minutes, while the second runs 30 and would probably only run 20 without the monk scenes (the rushed finale is also indicative of some production problems). As is, the whole package runs 77 minutes.

A remake of 1940's EL MONJE LOCO, this was shot-on-video and has production values comparable to public access TV 'productions.' The videography is a little shaky at times, with the camera jerking from left to right for no reason, images sometimes blurred and lots of cheap overlapping effects. The sound is also occasionally a little muffled, with dialogue difficult to hear at times.

Heavy on talk and religious moralizing, low on production values, originality and artistry, this is not going to appeal to many people out there. You might have more fun counting the amount of times flies swarm in front of the camera and land on the actors than actually watching the movie. Still, if you can ignore the cheap, stagy feel, the amateurism and don't mind simple, straight-forward storytelling, you could probably sit through this. At the very least, it's sincere and the actors aren't bad.

It was written by Rafael Portillo (possibly best known for directing the AZTEC MUMMY films) and Roberto G. Rivera (who - like director Aldama - is best known as an actor). It was released on VHS only in Spanish-speaking countries.

★★

Night Ripper! (1986)

2011-12-04T23:10:00.016-05:00

... aka: Night Ripper

Directed by:
Jeff Hathcock

I can see where they were trying to go with this one, but they didn't quite have the budget (or talent) to pull it all off in the end. The film really lacks guts. And when I say it lacks guts, I mean it literally lacks guts. I'm only mentioning this because the plot involves a hooded nut going around murdering young ladies and then disemboweling their corpses, so this would have really benefited from showing a butchered corpse or gory murder every now and again. Instead, all of the nastier stuff is kept off-screen. In place of what should have been there are a few awkwardly-staged and horribly edited stabbings and throat slashings that are repetitive and dull. Subtlety doesn't bode too well for a shot-on-video slasher with amateur acting, silly dialogue, blink-and-you'll-miss-it partial nudity and a completely routine plot. This thing simply needed to be sleazier to overcome all of its other limitations, especially considering that the market is already flooded with hundreds of similar films with better production values than this one. Why not just watch one of those instead?

Darlene returns from "modeling class" only to encounter a bespeckled perv named Mitch (Larry Thomas) lurking around outside her apartment. The two briefly discuss "The Ripper," a local nutbag given the name by the press for similarities to the Jack the Ripper slashings (including showcasing knowledge of human anatomy and surgical precision in dismembering the bodies), then she heads inside to get ready for bed. Later on that evening the doorbell rings and, knowing full well that a serial killer who's been butchering random women is out there and that a weirdo is basically stalking her, Darlene decides to casually open the door without bothering to ask who's there. A gloved-hand reaches her a rose and all she manages to get out is a monotone "What the...?" before she's stabbed in the chest.

Mitch co-owns "Beauty Photography" with his business partner; photographer David (James Hansen). David is engaged to be married to Karen (Suzanne Tegmann), but becomes infatuated with Euro-accented legal secretary named Jill (Danielle Louis), who shows up at his shop looking to take bathing suit "glamour shots" for her boyfriend. But that's OK. Karen's fucking her boss, anyway. When David catches wind of her affair he starts to pursue Jill and, while the two start getting mushy, the psycho continues butchering women. Another woman is killed after informing her married lover that "This isn't love! This is two sweaty bodies fucking under flood lamps. And I'm sick of flood lamps!" Since many of the victims were models that could be directly linked back to Mitch and David's studio, police lieutenant Bernie (Simon De Soto) and his partner Dan (Lawrence Scott) start snooping around. They become especially interested in "Beauty Photography" after Karen is murdered.

Several suspects immediately emerge from the pack. One is, of course, Mitch. Not only was he already seen at the crime scene harassing a woman just minutes before she was murdered, but he also worked as a (gasp!) butcher for five years before deciding to become a sleazebag photographer. It's also revealed that he had been burned by a model girlfriend, who chose her career over him, years earlier. The second suspect is a flannel-shirt-clad lesbian mail lady named Janet (April Audia as "April Anne"), who tries to come on to Jill but is rejected and has a screaming fit because she wants "Angela" out of her head. While those two may be red herrings, the reveal is poorly telegraphed well in advance by poor acting and clumsy, obvious clues scattered throughout. The conclusion takes place at the "Vogue International" mannequin factory, where the psycho goes on a rant about women being bitches and models being users and bitches and how all models deserve to have their insides ripped out because they don't give a shit about anyone else's insides.

Along the way, there's some slight time padding, including as a minor subplot of the police pursuing a burglar and a three-minute long scene of someone driving through the city that's just an excuse to play an entire song. Despite being neither original (though the plot is no worse than what you'll find in the majority of other slasher and giallo films) nor good, I have to admit that I didn't have a problem sitting through this. I was mildly entertained. Mildly. I was even prepared to give this a slight pass... until the incompetent ending reared its ugly head to knock it down a notch. Oh well.

The only recognizable cast member is Courtney Lercara, who has just one scene here as a victim, but went on to appear in the fun low-budget backwoods slasher SLAUGHTERHOUSE (1987) and in Tim Ritter's KILLING SPREE (1987). Director / writer Hathcock also made VICTIMS! (1985), STREETS OF DEATH (1987) and MARK OF THE BEAST (1990; aka Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell). VHS by Magnum. No DVD.

★★

Extraña regresión (1986)

2011-12-03T21:16:00.017-05:00

... aka: Strange Regression

Directed by:
Jairo Pinilla Téllez

When you think of vintage South American horror, you might conjure up visions of masked Mexican wrestlers battling Aztec mummies, Brazil's Coffin Joe torturing his underlings (which basically includes everyone aside from himself) or even possibly the wacky monster sexploiters from Argentina's Emilio "Curious Dr. Humpp" Vieyra. Colombia doesn't even really factor into the equasion, aside from being a great place to film an Italian cannibal movie. But as it turns out, even they had a genre filmmaker to call their own: Jairo Pinilla Téllez. Téllez began making documentaries before branching out to do other genres and had a real leaning toward fantasy-driven horror, regardless of the fact there was no real market for horror in his home country at the time he was making these things. After already having such films as FUNERAL SINIESTRO (1977) and 27 HOURS WITH THE DEAD (1981) in the can, Téllez discovered that typically low-budget Spanish-language films were flopping in his home country, but American films were bringing in the big bucks. Because of this, he decided to film his next few movies in Spanish, but then have them English-dubbed. He then added Spanish subtitles to try to trick audiences into thinking they were actually American. Apparently a stickler for detail, Tellez also made sure to drop other hints into his films that might indicate they were American, such as using American currency. Well, trying to make a wad of one dollar bills look like a substantial sum of money!

After the tragic loss of her father, medical student Laura Mendoza is driven to music for comfort. That worries her mother Bertha, who wants her to concentrate more on her class work than her piano playing. Regardless, Bertha (who owns a lucrative jewelry store) has set aside some money and expensive jewelry for her daughter's upcoming graduation, which she keeps in a safe. Jealous, Laura's sociopathic cousin Rodolfo and his sister decide to break into the home and steal it. When their aunt returns home prematurely, Rodolfo beats her to death with a log. He and his sister flee and the crime goes cold. When his sister tries to blackmail him for a bigger portion of the money, Rodolfo decides to kill her too, and stages it to look like a car accident. Even worse, since Laura is now orphaned, Rodolfo and his father Gonzalo will soon be moving into Laura's home. Could things get any worse for poor Laura? Well yeah, actually they can. And do.

During a class, the professor and students discuss spirits, cryogenics, miracles and Jesus' resurrection, "Do you mean that a corpse in good condition can be revived by pumping the blood through the body with a machine?" asks one. The wheels start turning. One of the students thinks they should try invoking the spirit of Laura's mother to tell them who murdered her. Unfortunately, a visit to a psychic proves unfruitful. Laura, in conjunction with a handful of her peers and her reluctant boyfriend Ray, then decides to conduct a controlled experiment of their own. They'll kill Laura so that her spirit can speak to her mother's spirit and find out who killed her and then revive her in three days. It's just one more reason why religion has absolutely no place in the classroom! Late one evening, Laura, Ray and a handful of their other friends sneak into the school morgue, suffocate Laura with carbon monoxide and stick her in the freezer, hoping to thaw her out in a few days with knowledge that will put her mother's killer behind bars. Unfortunately, Rodolfo learns of their plan, cuts the power supply to the school (so the body will rot) and then rats them out to the police (so they'll be arrested). Because of this, they never have a chance to revive Laura. All involved in the experiment are later acquitted, however, when authorities learn that Laura wasn't exactly murdered, but a willing participant. Rodolfo on the other hand, is never caught or charged with anything.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that upon the hour Laura's spirit was supposed to return to her body, a family friend gave birth to a baby girl. The baby - named Karol - proves to be super-intelligent even as a toddler, stabs a piece of raw meat with a syringe and shows an aptitude for piano playing without having had any lessons. She also has the psychic gift of premonition and accurately predicts that her parents are going to die in a horrible plane crash. So why is she so strange and other-worldly? Well, because "Karol" is just a host body for Laura, and she's been put back on Earth in human form to right a few wrongs. As an adult now in college, "Karol" bumps into Laura's now middle-aged former boyfriend Ray (who is played by the director himself) and instantly falls for him. The pieces all fall into place as to who she really is... and when she finds out that Rodolfo is still living in the area, she's able to finally exact her revenge.

Being plot-heavy and packed with incident doesn't save this talky, unfocused New Age-y tale of reincarnation and revenge from being dull. The acting is bad enough as is, but the horrendous dubbing, hokey dialogue and brainless character actions only makes matters worse. Religion is a prevalent theme throughout, but what's shown here doesn't really adhere to any one particular religion; it's almost as if the director has decided to invent his own or doesn't want to commit to the belief system of just one. Very strange, but it's an interesting point of view and Téllez does end things with a great, haunting final shot that's almost worth slogging through the rest of the movie to get to. Almost.

Despite being English-dubbed, this was never released in America in any form. Actually, it was never released theatrically in Colombia either. The backers decided to send it straight to video.

★★

Blood Diner (1987)

2011-12-03T19:46:00.022-05:00

... aka: Blood Feast 2

Directed by:
Jackie Kong

Warning! The truly unusual motion picture you are about to see contains many scenes of graphic violence. It is not intended for the faint of heart nor the young or impressionable. While it is a sad fact that mad homicide and practitioners of blood cults infest our society, the producers of this film wish to express that they do no condone, nor do they want to inspire, any of the human butchery or violence portrayed in this film. If you feel like you will be offended by such material, please leave the theater at once... Note: All of the mutilations, bodily dismemberments and cannibal rituals were performed by seasoned professionals. Please do not attempt any of these stunts at home. Thank You.

And so begins Blood Diner, a foray into gratuitous gore, plentiful female nudity and a mix of some genuine laughs with even more lame and childish comedy bits. At times this thing is so low-brow it makes Troma's brand of comedy look sophisticated by comparison! It's from Jackie Kong, a real anomaly in the U.S. film industry. Hell, how many other Asian-American women directors can you think of that were making exploitation films in America?

In 1962, a woman leaves her two small boys home alone because she needs to go to the market to pick up "some God damn tampons." What a nice time for the Happy Times All-Girl Glee Club Slaying psycho, who "is armed with a meat cleaver in one hand and his genitals in another," to show up. After hacking his way through the door, the boys discover that it's just they're beloved Uncle Anwar (Drew Godderis) popping in for a visit. He hands them each a "five-million-year-old" amulet, tells them to keep practicing what he's taught them and then heads out the door and gets gunned down by the police. "20 Years Later," the now-grown brothers; Michael (Rick Burks) and George (Carl Crew) Tutman, visit a cemetery, murder a security guard by popping his eyes out with a shovel blow to the back of the head, dig up a skeletal Anwar, cut open his head with a hacksaw and then remove his brain. They recite a spell from an ancient book and bring Anwar back to life. Well, he's just a talking brain in a jar barking out orders, but you get the drift.

The brothers own the Tutman Cafe, a popular local vegetarian diner, and their uncle demands they stay celibate and wants them to follow his orders to help resurrect Sheetar, "an immortal goddess more powerful than Superman!" They're to construct Sheetar out of the body parts of as many "immoral girls" as possible and, in order to raise her from the dead, they're to find a virgin to sacrifice and cook up a "blood buffet" offering. Michael shows up at an "nude aerobics studio" wearing a Ronald Reagan mask and starts blasting the girls with a machine gun. They construct the body, but must get even more body parts, so they lure two girls back from a club for their stomachs. One is covered in batter, has her head dipped in hot oil and is then decapitated with a broom. Another is split in two with a cleaver. At Bronson Caves, a completely nude woman uses kung fu to fight off one of them, but gets taken out when a stalagmite falls into her head. As the body count rises, Police Chief Miller (Max Morris) sends out his best detective, the leisure suit clad Mark Shepard (Roger Dauer), and his new partner, no-nonsense Sheba Jackson (LaNette La France), to investigate.

After getting whatever body parts or internal organs they need from their victims, the brothers then serve the leftover "meat" to their patrons. One of the brothers is an amateur wrestler who goes by the name "Luscious Lou the Lumerian" and has a bloody match with his opponent "Jimmy Hitler." The finale takes place at Club Dread, where the boys serve up a special stew that turns the patrons into green-faced zombies, plot to sacrifice virginal cheerleader Connie (Lisa Guggenheim) and manage to finally resurrect Sheetar (Tanya Papanicolas), who has a giant fanged mouth on her stomach and uses her "power of Jupiter" to shoot lasers out of her fingertips to blow stuff up.

I honestly didn't think I was going to like this one at all after the first twenty minutes or so. And true, the acting is terrible and the lowbrow humor (puking, comic dubbing, flatulence, etc.) often doesn't work, but overall I found this entertaining enough. There are some interesting songs on the soundtrack (plus several truly strange nightclub performances), it's fast paced (something is always going on), the production values are surprisingly good and it's absolutely packed with gore. I don't think this thing goes two minutes without a head or a limb getting hacked off.

Written by actor Michael D. Sonye (a Fred Olen Ray film regular) and originally intended as a sequel to BLOOD FEAST (1963), but those plans were scrapped during pre-production; Lewis himself would deliver a sequel to his own film in 2002. It was released on VHS by Lightning and Vestron, and is now on DVD through Dragon Entertainment.

★★1/2

Amantes del diablo, Las (1971)

2011-12-01T21:29:00.017-05:00

... aka: Feast for the Devil
... aka: Feast of Satan, The

Directed by:
José María Elorrieta

After going away for a month-long holiday, a young nurse named Maria (Verónica Luján) has an experience so frightening that she emerges from it crazed, prematurely aged (wrinkled and with white hair) and blubbering incoherently about "Sheba!," "The music!" "The medallion!" and "Those eyes!" She's taken to an insane asylum for observation, undergoes tests and is diagnosed with something called "The Hammer Syndrome." Someone manages to sneak inside the hospital later that night and, with help from a patient (who later has his throat ripped out by a dog), kidnaps her. Maria's sister Hilda (Krista Nell) decides to get to the bottom of things and travels to the same coastal resort village Maria had gone to before going crazy. She checks into a hotel under an alias ("Hilda Torras") and almost immediately receives a beautiful bouquet of flowers from one Tills Nescu (Espartaco Santoni), a former medical doctor who stopped practicing. He's obscenely wealthy, popular with all of the ladies, seems to possess superhuman hypnotic powers ("Magic is the art of using means which are invisible to produce effects which are physical.") and may be involved in the black arts.

Initially believing that Tills has something to do with Maria's disappearance, Hilda begins indulging in the jet-setter lifestyle with him, his loyal "secretary" Andrea (Teresa Gimpera) and his current lover Paola (Inés Morales). They sit around on his yacht sipping drinks laced with "Indian herbs," go to a cocktail party and attend a nightclub where Tills seems to be able to make a singer forget his lyrics by simply staring at him. Against her better judgment, Hilda finds herself drawn to the seductive Tills and then the two begin getting romantic. Sure, he has intense eyes whose stares seem to make anyone do his bidding ("Those eyes!"), wears an ornate medallion around his neck ("The medallion!"), plays creepy tunes on the organ ("The music!") and is linked to the female reincarnation of the devil ("Sheba!") on more than one occasion, but is he really the one who's terrorized and then abducted Maria? Well yeah, actually he is. And it seems pretty obvious to everyone except for our heroine.

I reckon we're supposed to believe that Hilda has somehow been placed under Tills' spell, except for the fact that at one point she clearly manages to break free from him only to senselessly allow herself to get suckered right back in. Andrea warns her not to get too close (though Hilda assumes she's just jealous), a psychic woman (Elsa Zabala) warns her that he's evil (though she's told that the woman is a psycho) and all of the possible signs are there that he did terrible things to her sister... and yet Hilda still cannot keep away. Eventually, she finds herself at Tills' castle home sucking down some cloudy drink ("a mild sedative"), having nightmares of cultists sacrificing a goat and chanting "Hail Satan! Hail Sheba!" and at the mercy of her host and his voyeuristic Asian butler, Britta. Flashbacks show that as a child, Tills had an evil mother who flaunted her infidelities in front of his father and liked abusing daddy with a whip. Because of the abuse, Tills' pop hung himself and now Tills hates women.

I can usually find redeeming qualities in these European Gothic horror films, but this lethargic film fails on just about every level. The writing is poor, the plot is uneventful and the pacing is slow. The Satanism scenes (cultists chanting "Hail Satan! Hail Sheba," a goat sacrifice...) are underwhelming and mostly saved for the conclusion, where truth be told, they don't have much of anything to do with our antagonist's motive for killing. The film is seriously lacking in style as well, unless you thrill at gratuitous slow zooms into eyeballs, especially when compared to other Gothic films from the era. If it's not bad enough to have a film weak on story and weak on visual presentation, the film also decides to skimp on blood and sex. There's nary a drop of the red stuff, leaving only a handful of nude scenes as compensation. Even those are rather brief.

Ennio Girolami (billed as "Thomas Moore") co-stars as Carlos Ferrer, Hilda's doctor friend who is secretly in love with her and gets jealous that she's spending all of her time with Tills. Julio Peña is the police inspector on the case (who doesn't decide to really "inspect" anything until the last few minutes of the film) and Tomás Blanco plays another doctor. Star Santoni also co-produced and co-wrote the film.

It was a rare lead role for Nell, an attractive Austrian actress who tragically passed away in a car accident not long after this was made. Usually cast in support roles, Nell's brief career saw her filming movies in Egypt (1970's SHADOW OF ILLUSION), Turkey (1971's THE RED HEADED CORPSE), Spain (this one) and Italy (1972's THE SLASHER IS THE SEX MANIAC!). Though she looks great here, her character is so naive and boneheaded that's it difficult to really get behind her.

Director Elorrieta (billed as "Joe Lacy" here) also made THE WITCH WITHOUT A BROOM (1967) and CURSE OF THE VAMPYR (1972).

★1/2

Tower of Evil (1972)

2011-12-01T19:46:00.010-05:00

... aka: Beyond the Fog
... aka: Devil's Tower
... aka: Horror of Snape Island, The
... aka: Horror on Snape Island

Directed by:
Jim O'Connolly

Higher levels of sex and blood than usual, plus its possible influence on later slasher flicks, are all that separate this from the pack. Two fishermen; elderly John (George Coulouris) and his son Hamp (Jack Watson), venture onto Snape Isle, a small, fog-bound, rocky island that's barely big enough to house a single lighthouse. As soon as they step foot off the boat, they find a naked, dead man face down in a puddle of water (plus a crab chowing down on his dismembered hand). Upon further investigation, they find a decapitated girl and another dead man pinned to a wall with a spear. Suddenly, a crazed young woman pops out, stabs John to death and is then knocked unconscious by Hamp. The girl - Penny (Candace Glendenning - star of the sleazy SATAN'S SLAVE) - is taken to a psychiatric clinic and subjected to tests that are supposed to unlock the secrets to what happened there. Though in a "complete state of catatonic stupor;" doctors are able to use a drug and multi-colored lights to kick start Penny's brain long enough to get some information out of her. Too bad the next batch of visitors to Snape Isle aren't privy to the info before they head there...

Because one of the murder weapons was an ancient, solid gold Phoenician ceremonial spear, "one of the most exciting archeological discoveries" in years, and that confirms rumors that a wealthy explorer died there and was buried with his treasure years earlier, Professor Lawrence Bakewell (Dennis Price, in a one-scene cameo) decides to put together an expedition to be headed by Dan Winthrop (Derek Fowlds). Also coming along are Dan's wife Nora (Anna Palk), art expert Rose Mason (Jill Haworth), Rose' ex-fiancé Adam Masters (Mark Edwards) and investigator Edward Brent (Bryant Haliday, from the memorable DEVIL DOLL), who's been hired by Penny's parents to find out what actually happened on the island. Hamp, whose brother Saul and his family used to live on the island (before they mysteriously drowned), and his first mate Brom (Gary Hamilton), are in charge of captaining the boat to get them there.

After the expedition arrives, someone, or some thing, manages to blow up their boat, stranding them there. And then the movie plays out as your standard stalk-and-slash where those dumb enough to wander off by themselves - when they should know better - get killed off. Someone's pushed from the top of the lighthouse. Another gets a sword stuck in their head, a neck is snapped and someone's burned alive. Underneath the island are a series of caves containing the treasure and a giant gold statue to an ancient God.

It opens strongly, with an opening sequence that pulls you in and well-edited scenes of Penny recollecting her horror vacation afterward, but once the expedition arrives on the island it becomes a bit too routine. The characters are neither sympathetic nor interesting, and the identity of the mystery killer isn't much of a surprise. Still, there's much here to admire: an unusual island setting, decent art direction, handsome photography courtesy of Desmond Dickinson, and, of course, plenty of bloody moments, as well as some nice eye candy provided by Glendenning, John Hamill and Seretta Wilson. Palk doesn't get naked, but she runs around in little more than a bra for the duration of the movie. The cast also includes Anthony Valentine as a psychiatrist, William Lucas as a police inspector, Robin Askwith (of "Carry On" fame) and UK cameo queen Marianne Stone.

Director O'Connolly had previously made BERSERK! (1967) with Joan Crawford, which was also considered quite violent for its time, and the cowboys vs. dinosaurs film THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969).

Original theatrical version THE HORROR OF SNAPE ISLAND runs 85 minutes and had five minutes removed. It was also on video as BEYOND THE FOG.

★★1/2

I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale (1973)

2011-11-06T20:09:00.012-05:00

... aka: Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, The
... aka: Carnal Violence
... aka: Torso
... aka: Torso - Carnal Violence

Directed by:
Sergio Martino

With such good efforts as THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1970), ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1971) and YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (1972) already behind him, this is something of a disappointment for director Martino. And yet strangely enough, it's probably his most popular horror film; perhaps because it received better circulation than his others over the years (possibly due to the fact it starred then-popular British actress / sex symbol Suzy Kendall), or perhaps because it's more of a standard slasher flick than his previous giallo. Either way, it's nothing to write home about. After appearing in some kind of lesbian porn photography session, one of the stars, university student Florence (Patricia Adiutori), is strangled to death with a red-and-black silk scarf and then gets her torso sliced open. The killer (who wears a ski mask) also slashes her boyfriend's throat and has visions of a child's hand slowly reaching for a doll. Next up is Carol (Cristina Airoldi), the other woman who appeared in the photos and also a student. She accompanies two guys to some kind of hippie-drug party, smokes weed and burns one of the guys with a lit cigarette for feeling her up. Deciding to leave early, she encounters the masked psycho while walking through a muddy forest, who repeats the strangulation / defilement of the corpse routine on her; taking it one step further by poking out her eyeballs with his fingers.

A handful of Flo and Carol's other classmates, all of whom are taking an art course taught by Professor Franz (John Richardson), also become targeted for one reason or another. Daniela (Tina Aumont) remembers seeing someone wearing the same style of scarf that was used to kill the previous two women, but can't quite remember who was wearing it. When the killer catches wind of this, he calls Dani at home and threatens to kill her. Immediately after, her uncle (Carlo Alighiero) flatly states, "Try and control yourself my dear. Find some way of getting your mind off it all." Hey pops, just seconds ago a psycho who has just murdered two of my friends revealed that he knows who I am, knows where I live and has just told me that I'm next... Calm down, my ass! Her uncle suggests she split town for awhile and go to their isolated villa; a huge and hard-to-access mansion located on top of a mountain overlooking a small village. Just the kind of place you want to be when there's a nutjob stalking you, right? Daniela invites three of her girlfriends; American transfer student Jane (Kendall) and lesbians Katia (Angela Covello) and Ursula (Carla Brait), to accompany her. Soon after they leave, the vendor (Ernesto Colli) who sold the killer his scarves has his head smashed again the side of a building by a car. It's the killer trying to cover his tracks, and now the last track he has to cover is Daniela.

Nearly all of the leering male characters from the city, whom the director has tried to set up as possible suspects at various points in the film, show up in the village to reaffirm their status as red herrings. The primary two are Roberto (Luc Merenda), a handsome doctor spotted both around town and on the girls' train trip over to the village, and Stefano (Roberto Bisacco), a student. The director really tries to shine the spotlight on Stefano's weirdness in particular. He's frequently seen sitting in his car staring at the girls, is obsessively in love with Daniela (who wants nothing to do with him) and can't perform for a prostitute so he starts strangling her after she suggests popping in a Swedish porno to help him along. Stefano is painted as so weird throughout that you pretty much know it's not him doing the actual killings. Martino does what most other filmmakers in this style do by randomly pulling the psycho out of the giallo playbook i.e. making it a seemingly incidental side character with minimal screen time until the big 'reveal.' Said reveal actually doesn't have any kind of and giving them a silly motive stretching back to a traumatic moment in their youth.

Aside from many beautiful actresses on hand and an abundance of nudity (though top-billed Kendall and Aumont get to leave their clothes on), the best moments here occur about thirty minutes before the actual finale. Our heroine Jane, who has injured her leg after falling down the stairs, finds herself alone in the villa with the killer. The catch is that the killer doesn't know she's there. While hiding just feet from the corpses of her friends, Jane has to watch as each gets dismembered with a hacksaw. She then goes upstairs, tries to quickly and quietly make it look like her room hasn't been used and finds herself getting locked inside the room. But never fear, town gossip leads the killer back to the villa to try to cover his tracks... once again. These scenes are fairly suspenseful and well-done but they aren't enough to make up for the rest, which is pretty lackluster in both story and style. The last ten or so minutes pretty much suck, too.

I often see Torso cited as being a chief influence on the late 70s / early 80s slasher movie cycle, and find that a bit of an exaggeration. As a singular entity, it's no more influential than most in its sub-category. And it certainly didn't have the impact of films such as BAY OF BLOOD (1971), BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974).

★★

Dressed to Kill (1980)

2011-11-06T19:22:00.011-05:00

Directed by:
Brian De Palma

I completely understand why some viewers wouldn't really take to this psycho-thriller. Hell, I can even understand why it was showered with Razzie nominations upon release. This is not a particularly well-written film with an airtight plot or an unpredictable resolution. The story threads that tie the set pieces together are weak, trivial, even ludicrous at times and we pretty much know where it's going the entire time. Plot-wise, the film holds few actual surprises and I could also see why some were offended by its depictions of 'loose' women (an adulteress, a hooker...) as primary victims, black men as would-be rapist thugs and a transvestite as a razor-slashing psycho with a dual persona. It also rather blatantly copies PSYCHO (1960) in how it is structured and presented. However, De Palma isn't the kind of filmmaker who ever shies away from acknowledging his reference points. In fact, he all but shines a spotlight on them. And he does that consciously to use our familiarity (in this case, with the aforementioned Hitchcock classic) against us to subvert our expectations and completely throw us off guard at certain points. Audience manipulation at its finest. De Palma is also a true master of mood. Dressed to Kill has a hazy sheen, an extremely soft focus look that is downright sumptuous. Romantic, even. The director is aided to no end by both Ralf Bode's lush photography and Pino Donaggio's elegant score is setting up a calming, sensuous mood which effectively accentuates his moments of shock. He's even smart enough to use sex itself, whether it be in the form of an erotic-shower-scene-turned-scary or some rather raunchy dialogue, to both heighten the mood and up the shock factor*.

The plot? Well, it basically involves a serial killer, but it's not really all that important. Angie Dickinson (who has stated in interviews that this is her favorite of all her films) has the Janet Leigh role as Kate Miller; a wealthy, but bitter and sexually dissatisfied housewife who seeks fulfillment in the arms of a stranger, and pays the price for it when a psycho with a razor attacks and kills her immediately afterward in an elevator. Her dry, uptight and very professional psychiatrist Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine) thinks the culprit may be one of his former patients; a transsexual named "Bobbi," who's been leaving threats on his answering machine. Meanwhile, Kate's distraught electronics wiz son Peter (Keith Gordon) teams up with streetwise hooker Liz (Nancy Allen, Mrs. De Palma at the time), who witnessed the crime, to do some freelance investigating on their own. Liz will become the next victim unless she and Peter can find a way to trap the psycho.

Aside from the triumphant development of mood, this film does an excellent job of toying with viewer emotions. One of the best set of sequences in the film starts as an ordinary day about town for our short-lived protagonist Kate. While visiting an art museum, a handsome stranger meets her eye. She begins harmlessly following him from room to room, then comes to discover that he's actually following her. The two end up having an anonymous, torrid fling that begins in a taxi cab and ends at his apartment. Her embers now stirred, Kate sits down with a sheepish smile on her face to write him a note before heading home, and then finds out a very shocking piece of medical information about her new lover. She hurried runs off, and then realizes she's forgotten her wedding ring! Bad enough it itself, right? De Palma then goes a step further by having Kate sneak back into the apartment to retrieve her ring, generating a big "whew" for both Kate and the viewer, and when it appears she's all free and clear, that's when De Palma decides to hit us with the unexpected demise of what we thought was our lead character.

Made in 1980 just as the slasher film movement was starting to gain some major momentum, Dressed, strangely enough, manages to fit pretty snug with the rest of the slasher flicks from its time. It was better received, critically, but that's only because it was made by someone who actually knew what they were doing. This film is much more than a series of murder-set-pieces. It's about making us feel or think a certain way, and then suddenly taking that all away at a moment's notice.

Dennis Franz has a great supporting role as a sarcastic cop who wants to use Allen's character as bait for the killer, and Brandon Maggart (star of the underrated CHRISTMAS EVIL) shows up as one of Allen's tricks from Cleveland. William Finley (star of De Palma's SISTERS and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) provides the voice of the killer. Two Penthouse Pets also appear; Anneka De Lorenzo, one of the co-stars of the notorious historical porno CALIGULA (1979), and Victoria Lynn Johnson, who was Dickinson's stand-in during the shower scene. Because of the criticism leveled on Dickinson for using the double, De Palma followed with BODY DOUBLE (1984) a few years later.

(* To note, depictions / discussions of sex aren't so shocking to most of us these days. Considering that this was a mainstream, major studio release with well-known stars from the beginning of the Reagan Era, the nudity and overt sexual content in this particular film did actually shock people. Whether or not it still does will depend solely on the viewer.)

★★★

Ritual of Death, The (1989)

2011-10-23T20:04:00.024-04:00

Directed by:
Fauzi Mansur

After attending a lecture on ancient Indians, actor Brad (Olair Coan) exits the theater, smoke fills the hallways, strong gusts of wind start from nowhere and he sees four Indians running under the stage. When he goes down to take a look, the Indians are doing some kind of ceremony which involves blowing smoke on each other and a well-dressed older man (Sérgio Hingst) in a bowler hat appears, tells him he wants "the book" and then his hand suddenly starts oozing green blood. One of the Indians grabs Brad's arm, and his hand starts oozing white blood. Then everyone disappears. Brad's weird friend Jim (Michael Kelly) shows up, brushes off his crazy story and tells him he wants to translate an Egyptian parchment for a theatre play ("a real exotic horror show!") he plans on writing and producing. The only problem is that the sacred text he wants to use as the basis is in the possession of the lecturer / librarian (Serafim Gonzales) and he supposedly keeps it hidden in the attic of the library. Brad's friend / the play's director Mickey (Tião Hoover) sneaks in, manages to find it and steals it. Supposedly, by altering the original text, you unleash a curse, Brad, Jim, Mickey and their friends all ignore that and go ahead with whipping up a script, anyway.

Next thing ya know, all kinds of weird shit starts going down. Jim and his female friend (Graça Costa) drizzle blood all over themselves from a (real) goat head and have sex in a blood-filled bathtub. Brad starts freaking out and begins eating raw meat. Frogs appear in his bedroom and then he starts bleeding and mutating. After squeezing a puss-filled boil that appears, his face completely starts to fall apart. He also starts having homicidal impulses, which become increasingly more difficult to control. While enacting a scene from the play, Brad gets a little too into a strangling scene with one of the actresses and has to fight off the urge to slit his girlfriend Carol's (Carina Palatinik) throat with a sickle. Before too long, he's completely possessed and has no control over what he does. What's to come is an extremely gory killing spree that puts most other slashers to shame in the blood and guts department.

Brad visits one of his cast mates, Liza (Lilian Ramos), who makes extra money working as a hooker, and proceeds to stab her in the stomach. As she lies on the ground, suddenly a train (!!!) rolls over her and cuts her in half! He returns to the theater, where another girl tries to help him and is repaid by getting stabbed in the mouth. Another actress (who is in the middle of hanging pictures in the theater hallway wearing nothing but a t-shirt and thong [?]) gets her stomach beat in and guts yanked out with a hammer. There's also a strangulation with a chain, a drowning, eyeballs poked out, a knife through the throat and a guy getting crushed by a piece of heavy machinery until his guts pour out. In one of the more memorable scenes, a man has battery acid thrown in his face and then get chopped to pieces by the propeller of a wind machine. There are also zombies. As it turns out, the old man, Mr. Parker, is actually a ghost wanting to return to life and is planning on possessing Brad to do so. Jim and Carol, with help from the librarian, must find a way to stop him.

It’s really not too bad as far as these things go. The storyline is thin and often confusing, the acting and dialogue are both terrible (it's English-dubbed) and the low budget is evident in the flat 16mm photography, poor lighting and schizo editing cuts, but the whole point is to be uber gory, and this delivers the gooods on that front. In fact, it's so violent it had to be released unrated in the U.S. (the distributor was Complete Entertainment). The director, best known in his native country as a porn director, also made SATANIC ATTRACTION (1989) for the direct-to-video market. Lead actor Coan died in a car accident in 2007.

★★1/2

Return of the Family Man (1988)

2011-10-23T18:57:00.020-04:00

Directed by:
John Murlowski

"Kink's Pizza" delivery boy Alden (Liam Cundill) shows up at a hotel to drop off a pizza. A shady-looking guy opens the door and tells him to come inside, where he sees money and guns laid out on a table and a bunch of Italian and Asian men measuring out cocaine! Oh, no criminal could be THAT stupid to casually expose their criminal activity to a bloody pizza delivery boy, this must just be a dream... Then, a bunch of excited, scantily-clad ladies come out from another room and start nuzzling up to him. Or a sex fantasy... Suddenly an Asian man busts through the door, a gunfight breaks out, nearly everyone is shot and killed and the assassin then points his gun at delivery boy's boys head and tries to shoot, but the clip is dry. Make that a nightmare... Nope, believe it or not, this is all supposed to be real. The killer threatens to return and kill Alden before he takes off running. Alden high tails it out of there, the maid sees him fleeing the room and by the time Alden flips on the TV set, he's in the news. His friends; couple Brian (Terence Reis) and Vickie (Michelle Constant), are about ready to take a trip and have managed to rent out a mansion dirt cheap. Despite the fact that Brian hates Alden, Vickie talks him into letting Alden him tag along with them so he can hide out and let his experience blow over.

Meanwhile, infamous mass murderer Mark Allen Schecter aka The Family Man (Ron Smerczak), is in the middle of being transferred to another nuthouse when one of the guards unwisely decides to get a little rough with him. The psycho then pokes out an officer's eyeballs with his own fingers, gets his hand on a gun and then shoots the rest of the cops. The transport bus crashes and Family Man picks his handcuffs, shoots the rest of the prisoners and then escapes into the woods. Alden, Brian and Vickie arrive at their destination and discover they've been had. The place is a complete dump. To make matters worse, the realtor didn't bother to tell them that he's also rented the place out to another group. Snooty blonde Libby (Debra Kaye), a tour guide working for the travel company "American Adventures," has just arrived with four foreigners in town; Sylvie (Dominique Moser) from France, Marty (Kurt Egelhof) from India, Evelyn (Vicki Bawcombe) from Ireland and British punk rocker Weasel (Adrian Galley). Libby has already managed to alienate the entire town by accidentally running over their satellite dish, so everyone is given a chilly reception by the locals. And did I mention the name of the place they're staying at is "The Schecter Estate?"

Before The Family Man arrives, he decides to crash a family's cookout long enough to knock the dad's face into the fireplace and beat mom to death with a frying pan and meat tenderizer (the children are also killed off screen). He then sinks a broken beer bottle into a drunk's stomach and steals his car. There's a rumor that he killed his parents for the insurance money and possibly has millions of dollars hidden somewhere on the grounds of his estate. One morning, the vacationers wake to find that one of the girls has disappeared. A few of them head into town to try to get help, but the policemen is a prick and tells them to come back in 24 hours. While looking in the cellar, Brian finds a hidden room in the basement that's been bricked up. Inside are family pictures, candles, teddy bears, skeletons and dead animals... plus a trunk loaded with cash. Before he can share his good fortune with his buddies, he's beat to death with a hammer. When everyone else returns, they discover Brian's body and realize that the killer is lurking around, but by that point they find themselves stuck after the psycho sinks their car in a lake. And by stuck, I mean slasher movie stuck. Not like really stuck. They could always, you know, walk somewhere instead of hanging around the house and getting killed.

The first half really isn't much worse than most other 80s slasher flicks. Some (not all) of the acting is terrible, but there are also a couple of decent scenes, plenty of murders and some scattered (sometimes intentional) laughs. Unfortunately, the final half hour is so incredibly stupid that you get the impression the filmmakers just gave up after awhile. By that point, all of the characters are well aware there's a killer around, but continue to wander off by themselves to get killed. They also decide to create their own weapons to fight back. The Indian guy MacGiver's a bomb out of wire and a camera (?!) and the blonde makes a torch out of her hairspray cans. The latter manages to torch the killer (giving him a charred appearance from there on out) before getting her face diced by a blender (!) Another is hung from a ceiling fan, there's a drowning and the finale features the killer trapped in the well trying to pull the heroine down there with him as a propane tank wired to explode rolls down a hill toward them. Also pay close attention to how many times characters mention that this is taking place in the United States. Only a film shot elsewhere would have to reassure us over and over again that we're in America, so it figures that this was shot in South Africa.

The American VHS release was from Raedon Video, a label that became known for distributing some of the worst low-budget trash available at the time. Amongst their releases: the lame living dead pot-harvesters flick TOXIC ZOMBIES (1980), Andy Milligan's wacky THE WEIRDO (1986), ALIEN PRIVATE EYE (1987), THE BRAINSUCKER (1988; which I'll be reviewing here soon), the terrible shot-on-video slasher HOLLYWOOD'S NEW BLOOD (1988) and a pair of OK efforts from Dennis Devine: DEAD GIRLS, probably the best of the Raedon releases, and HELL SPA (both 1990).

★1/2

Cementerio del terror (1985)

2011-10-22T20:32:00.016-04:00

... aka: Cemetery of Satan
... aka: Cemetery of Terror
... aka: Cemetery of Zombies
... aka: Zombie Apocalypse

Directed by:
Rubén Galindo Jr.

It's Halloween, and some college medical students decide to dissuade their girlfriends from going to a rock concert by promising them an evening at a "jet set party" instead. Little do the ladies know, but instead of hobnobbing with celebrities, doing photo ops for the press and spending their evening sipping martinis in a luxurious setting, they'll be fending off their horny loser boyfriends in a dusty old abandoned mansion instead. Meanwhile, nightmare-plagued head-shrinker Dr. Camilo Cardan (Hugo Stiglitz) gets word that one of the patients he's been treating has just died. The patient - Devlon (José Gomez Parcero) - had killed seventeen people, including his own parents, and is rumored to be into the black arts. Camilo insists the patient be cremated because Devlon is actually a demon, but his superiors overrule him and decide on a burial instead. Guess whose mansion the teens decide to break into? The ladies are too pissed off about being tricked to comply with their boyfriends wishes, so one of the guys - Jorge (Cervando Manzetti) - goes to the attic and finds a book with the name "Devlon" etched on front. He brings it downstairs, then comes up with a brilliant idea: How about they steal a corpse and then try to resurrect it using the Satanic book?

The guys amazingly manage to sneak into the morgue undetected and even more amazingly (and randomly) manage to snatch Devlon's corpse. They then take it to a cemetery and begin reading from the book, but a sudden rainstorm puts a damper on their plans and they take off, leaving the body behind. Devlon (who has supernatural abilities) rises from the grave and decides to head on home to quickly kill off all six of the teenagers. They're clawed, have their guts ripped out, one is forced to sink an axe into his own head and another is disemboweled with a broken bottle. With who we thought were going to be our main characters all dead at around the one hour mark, the movie suddenly switches its attention over to five young trick-or-treaters, two of whom are the children of Police Captain Adam Ancira (Raúl Meraz), who's been palling around with Dr. Cardan trying to locate the missing stiff (and the kids). The little ones have been out too late, and make the unwise decision to go to the foggy graveyard... just as a bunch of zombies are rising from their tombs; called forth by Devlon and his big black Satanic book.

Definitely not for those who are sticklers for realism (or details). Though it takes place on Halloween night, supposedly the resurrection spell read from the book only work on the sixth day of the sixth month. It's stated early on that Devlon must be cremated, but then that switches over to simply burning his book by the end (one of many ideas swiped directly from THE EVIL DEAD). I also wasn't quite sure why Devlon had stubby, webbed fingers. The tone might also be an issue for some people. It begins as a teen supernatural slasher flick with a decent amount of gore and ends as a much-less-violent zombie movie with little kids running around the foggy cemetery and house trying to avoid being killed. Dr. Cardan eventually shows up to help them.

It seems the reaction to this one is pretty mixed. People seem to either love it or hate it. Me? Well, I had a blast with it. The film actually takes itself pretty seriously, but it's inescapably silly, regardless. I much prefer that effect to something like, say, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, PART 2 (1988), where the cartoonish comedy is in your face the entire time. The dead-rising-from-their-graves sequence, with zombies crawling out of the ground and busting through tombs, all accompanied by lots of fog and red light shining up from under the ground, had this wonderful funhouse feel to it. There's plenty of blood (particularly in the first half), the zombie designs are very good, it's fast-paced, oddly charming, full of action and, though the acting isn't spectacular, the whole cast really seem to be into it. Hell, I didn't even mind the kid characters in this one!

René Cardona III (the son of René Cardona Jr., and grandson of René Cardona; both prolific Mexican directors) and Andrés García Jr. (son of actor and Mexi heartthrob Andrés García) are also in the cast. Three of the actresses (Edna Bolkan, Erika Buenfil and María Rebeca) would also appear in director Galindo's GRAVE ROBBERS (1990). Galindo (who now produces reality TV in Mexico) also made the OUIJA board chiller DON'T PANIC (1988) and the toxic mutated vermin sci-fi/horror DEMON RAT (1992). All of the above were released to DVD by Deimos on their Crypt of Terror line.

★★★

Im Schloß der blutigen Begierde (1967)

2011-10-21T22:12:00.018-04:00

... aka: Castle of Bloody Lust
... aka: Castle of Lust
... aka: Castle of the Creeping Flesh
... aka: Das Schloß der Gehenkten
... aka: In the Castle of Bloody Lust

Directed by:
"Percy G. Parker" (Adrian Hoven)

A poor example of Euro Gothic horror; even fans of the subgenre might want to skip this tedious West German production. At a party, handsome and wealthy Baron Brack (Michel Lemoine) invites some of the others to take a horseback ride and continue the festivities back at his beautiful country home. Coming along are lascivious redhead Vera Lagrange (Janine Reynaud) and her raven-haired sister Elena (Elvira Berndorff), along with Elena's fiancé Roger (Pier A. Caminnecci, one of the producers), the Baron's virginal fiancée Marion (Claudia Butenuth) and Marion's brother George (Jan Hendriks). The Baron and Elena decide to ride ahead of the others, which turns out to be a big mistake on her part when the insatiable Baron decides to rape her ("You're disgusting, you dirty swine!").

When the others show up, Elena doesn't mention the rape at all and Marion tells them a story about the mysterious Earl of Saxon, who lives in a remote castle with his beautiful daughter, Katharina. Several days earlier, Katharina was attacked and raped, prompting the Earl to release his pet bear into the wild. Distraught over what happened to her and annoyed by a comment made by Roger (who claims the Earl's daughter possibly enjoyed getting raped), Elena decides to take off on a horse. Brack, Roger and Vera head out after her. As night falls, they arrive at the Saxon castle... just as the Earl's daughter has passed away from injuries inflicted upon her by her attacker. They're brought inside by manservant Alecos (Vladimir Medar, from the wonderful TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM) and come inside to meet the Earl (THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF's Howard Vernon), a physician who offers them a place to stay. Elena's there already - having a rest in one of the bedrooms.

Graf Saxon tells everyone a tale about his cursed family lineage. Many years ago, marauders invaded the castle and raped and killed the daughter of his forefather as his wicked mistress (a "nasty, mischievous little bawdy bitch!" according to her lover) watched and did nothing to help. The King then slaughtered his daughter's attackers, stabbed his mistress and tried to revive his daughter with her blood. When the authorities caught on, they beheaded him. George and Marion (injured after hitting her head on a low-hanging tree branch) eventually show up at the castle looking for their friends. And wouldn't ya know it, Vera is a dead ringer for the devious mistress (and seems to be just as lacking in the moral department) and Marion is a dead ringer for both the King and Earl's ill-fated daughters. While giving a tour, Alecos even shows the visitors a room where the original crimes are reenacted by mannequins! Downstairs in the secret laboratory, the Earl and his assistant cut open Katharina's body. It looks like they used a pig carcass for the scalpel cutting flesh effect, but then swiped some actual surgery footage for the operation (which we see about 50 flashes of throughout the film).

While the other two ladies sleep, Vera decides to take this opportunity to try to seduce both Marion's fiancé and her own sister's fiancé, finally having some luck with the latter. She also has a lengthy nightmare (lasting almost fifteen minutes!) recounting the earlier crime, which is completely unnecessary since we're already had it described to use in detail twice earlier. Alecos scoops up a sleeping Marion and takes her downstairs to the lab, where the Earl and his assistant plot to do a brain switcheroo to revive his daughter. Meanwhile, Brack gets scared and leaves the castle to go get the car, but gets lost and is mauled by a man in a bear suit. He stumbles back just in time for the insufficient finale.

It's cheap-looking, bland, unoriginal, slow-moving, has continuity issues and none of the poorly-developed characters (including Vernon's rather restrained mad doctor) manage to spark even the slightest bit of interest. The violence is mild (aside from a brief decapitation), but there's a generous helping of female flesh - most provided by Reynaud - and that seems to be the real point of this entire piece. According to the opening credits, the screenplay is based on an idea by Eric Martin Schnitzler and "Percy G. Parker" (the director). However, many sources claim the was actually written by Jesus Franco; not difficult to believe since Hoven, Reynaud and Lemoine had all starred in Franco's "Red Lips" female detective films made around the same time and all three of them, plus Vernon and Caminnecci, were in Franco's well-regarded SUCCUBUS, also from 1967.

Never officially released to DVD, this was however issued on VHS by both Magnum and Sinister Cinema.

★1/2

La casa de las sombras (1976)

2011-10-21T21:22:00.020-04:00

... aka: House of Shadows

Directed by:
"Richard Wulicher" (Ricardo Wullicher)

Slow going, plot-heavy, poorly edited, not particularly original and so badly lit that they should have called it "House of I Don't Know What in the Hell is Going On Cause I Can't See Shit," not many people are going to be able to endure this one. To make matters worse, it's also victim to one of the absolute worst English dubs you'll ever hear. The voice actors are awful, there are frequent and very awkward pauses... between every... other... word just... to... match the... lips, plus clutzy narration in one scene that's hard to attribute to a certain character since all of the female roles seem voiced by the same actress. Even the two top-billed, English-speaking stars, Yvonne ("Lily Munster") De Carlo and John (PSYCHO) Gavin, were dubbed. Things begin with our luckless teenage heroine Audrey Christiansen (Leonor Manso, about ten years too old for this role), who is fresh out of an orphanage and never actually met her parents. She's taken up a position as a companion and errand girl for wealthy, lonely, depressed spinster Mrs. Howard (De Carlo), who drinks a lot, lounges around in frilly pink nightgowns and seems to somewhat resent Audrey's youth and beauty. While Audrey's out walking Mrs. Howard's poodle one evening, the dog runs off and into an old house. Audrey walks inside and sees fresh flowers, a burning fire and furniture, but no one appears to be there. Upon investigating, she ends up witnessing a woman being shot and falling down the stairs, then flees.

The next day, Audrey, Mrs. Howard and the police go to the crime scene only to see no sign of a crime having taken place. There's also no evidence that anyone has actually lived there for a very long time. Well, aside from an upstairs bedroom that's still clean and furnished. Audrey spots a painting on the wall and instantly recognizes the woman in it as the lady she saw being murdered. She's then informed that the portrait is of a woman who was murdered there twenty-three years earlier. The killer was never found and crime went unsolved... and Audrey looks an awful lot like her. Finding herself drawn to the home for some odd reason, Audrey locates the diary of the victim - Catherine Webster (also played by Manso) - and begins learning more about her life, which we see in flashbacks. Catherine was a promiscuous busy body uphappy in her marriage to Gregory (Roberto Airaldi). She fell in love with not one, but two, different men; Richard Wilson (Walter Soubrie), a married man whose wife Nora (Iris Morenza) found out about the affair, and another guy named Roland Stewart (Gavin); a man Mrs. Howard was in love with who wouldn't give her the time of day. So who killed Catherine? That's what Audrey would like to find out.

The link between Catherine and our heroine is never fully established, and we never know whether Audrey is possessed or possibly a reincarnation of the murder victim. It's also never explained why she looks exactly like her. Audrey buddies up with Mrs. Randall (Mecha Ortiz), Catherine's former maid and close confidant, and talks about she's not of this world but of "the astral world," but that doesn't make much sense either. Either way, she can't seem to stay away from the house and knows things that only Catherine would know. Everyone seems to want Catherine's diary because it may hold the key to her murder. How everyone knows she even kept a diary in the first place, or why the police never got their hands on it when they investigated the murder, is never adequately explained either. Yes, there are a ton of plot holes and unanswered questions to be found here, and I wonder whether this is the fault of the dubbing, or it's just a poorly made film.

It also takes forever and a day for Catherine's murderer to start murdering again. And by forever and a day, I mean 70 minutes. To start the ball rolling, a wheelchair-bound man in pushed in front of a moving train. The effect is hilariously accomplished by reversing the film (notice how the smoke sucks back up into the train as it 'approaches' the victim). Next up, poor maid Cookie (Nora "Cuyen" / Cullen) receives a hatchet to the face. That's followed by a car going over a cliff after the brake wires are cut, a man getting crushed against a wall by a car and an off-screen slashed throat. The killer also appears to be stalking Audrey. He / she breaks into her room (presumably to find the diary) and then try to run her off the road. When revealed, the identity of the psycho is adequate, but not really much of a surprise. Ricardo Castro Ríos and Germán Kraus co-star as the police inspectors on the case.

Even though I was bored senseless by the first half of this movie, I eventually got more wrapped up in the storyline once I got used to the lighting and dubbing. Since the film has two decent Yank actors, and the rest of the roles are played by established (and in some cases, award-winning) Argentinian actors, I can imagine the performances in this before the dubbing came into play were fine. The poor dialogue translations and confusing clusterfuck of a plot could also very well be the fault of the dubbers. I can also imagine that the photography and lighting were done with more care than what is present on either the too-dark American VHS release (through Media in 1983), or the one I watched (which was taken from Spanish-based cable / satellite channel Calle 13). It's really hard to tell, so I'm cutting this a little slack on the rating.

★★

Masterblaster (1986)

2011-10-21T20:44:00.014-04:00

... aka: Master Blaster
... aka: Masterblaster: The Exterminator

Directed by:
Glenn R. Wilder

Filmed near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, this low-budgeter attempts to blend survivalist action with backwoods slasher, and doesn't do a very good job at either. Motorcycle-riding Native American loner Jeremy Hawk (co-writer Jeff Moldovan) shows up at a small town bar and is immediately greeted by three pleasant rednecks who tell him they "just don't want no AIDS-carryin' dirtbag biker hanging around." Since Jeremy's also a Vietnam vet, they wonder if he's been "screwing those little chink whores" and might be spreading around "infectuous VD stuff." When they start getting physical, Jeremy kicks their asses and sends one flying out the window and another through the door. Police officer Samantha (Donna Rosae) shows up with a gun to help hold them off, and two hispanic guys, failed actor Monk (Richard St. George) and el loco Snake (George Gill) help tie him to a tree. The redneck leader, Leon (Antoni Corone) - screams that they'll get their revenge. So what are Jeremy, Samantha, Monk and Snake doing risking their lives out in redneck country? Well, they're all regional winners of paintball contests heading out to a secluded camp where they'll compete for 50 thousand dollars with other regional winners at The First Annual Master Blaster Grand National Championship.

Upon arriving at camp, contest organizer Mike (Robert Goodman) introdues the rest of the contestants. There's Lincoln Shakir (Raymond Forchion), winner of Chicago regionals, Tony De Angelo (Joe Hess), winner of Big Apple Games and personal body guard for a famous Italian businessman, rock star Lewis Carlisle (Peter Lundblad) who's brought along his snobby girlfriend Lisa (Tracy Hutchinson), Mr. Yamada aka The Shadow Warrior (Yoshimitsu Yamada), who's descended from samurai, psychiatrist Laura Dacosta (Earleen Carey) and journalist and novelist Brad Sterling (Bill Wohrman). Rouding out the roster are three racist rednecks (yes, more of these); Jimmy Roy (Jim Reynolds), Gary Lee (Julian Byrd) and Bobby Jo (Ron Burgs), who are distant relatives of Daniel Boone. There's also an attorney and ex-pro footaball quarterback, but he decides to drop out of the competition when he learns the woods will be booby-tapped: "You people are crazy! Somebody's gonna get hurt... real bad!" And yes, some people do get hurt real bad, when someone in group goes crazy and starts slaughtering everyone... but it takes almost an entire hour to even get to that point.

First, we must learn the rules of the game (avoid traps, retrieve money and return to camp without getting splattered), listen to a never-ending stream of racial and homophobic slurs, see some bad campfire dancing and watch as a romance starts to bloom between our monotone hero Jeremy and huge-eyeballed heroine Sam. He tells her about how he spent two years in a 'Nam concentration camp and had to slaughter an entire family, children included. She tells him that her partner had his head blown off with a shotgun because she was too slow to react and that the rock star guy had slept with her and then dumped a year earlier. Meanwhile, the "graduates of Hee Haw University" make watermelon jokes and talk about "speak-chuckers." The dialogue, original songs (including a rap theme) and the acting are all absolutely terrible, by the way.

45 minutes in, the game finally is under way. Unfortunately, even it fails to build up much excitement and is essentially just a series of scenes of people walking through the woods before being killed. Several characters are hung, there are numerous fist fights, someone gets stabbed, someone gets decapitated, one of the girls is killed after taking a shower and another is shot in the face with an acid capsule. Sadly, most of this occurs off-screen... but just wait until you see the identity of the mystery killer and learn their motivation for offing everyone. Absolutely hilarious!

It was backed by Bill Grefé (William Grefe), an independent director who'd been churning out films since the early 60s and had moderate success with such drive-in favorites as STANLEY (1972; which involved a man using snakes to strike back at his enemies), IMPULSE (1974; with William Shatner as a sleazy, bell bottom-clad psycho child molestor) and MAKO: THE JAWS OF DEATH (1976; a JAWS-inspired killer shark tale). Another Floridian who worked on this thing is Brad F. Grinter, the director of Veronica Lake's last hurrah, FLESH FEST (1970), as well as the notorious turkey-man-monster gorefest BLOOD FREAK (1971). Randy Grinter, perhaps Brad's brother, wrote the original story, co-scripted, produced and was the 2nd unit director. Kari Whitman (a Playboy centerfold and the star of PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE) and Herb Goldstein (BLOOD STALKERS) have small roles.

The director is best known as a Hollywood stunt man and has worked steadily in that capacity since the early 60s (this is his only director credit). While performing a speedboat stunt for the dumb comedy GONE FISHIN' (1996), Wilder, his son Scott and his daughter-in-law Janet (all stuntpersons) were involved in an accident that cost Janet her life. Masterblaster was released on VHS by Prism in 1987. As of this writing, there's no official DVD.

★1/2

Denso Ningen (1960)

2011-10-20T01:34:00.018-04:00

... aka: Electrical Facsimile Man, The
... aka: Electrical Facsimile Transmission Human, The
... aka: Secret of the Telegian, The
... aka: Telegian, The
... aka: Telegraphed Man, The

Directed by:
Jun Fukuda

At an amusement park 'Cave of Horrors' spook show, a man is stabbed to death with a knife. Left behind at the crime scene are a gold-plated name tag, a note from an unknown source asking the victim to meet him there and a piece of Klyotron transistor wire. Reporter Kirioka (Koji Tsuruta), who has a background in science, Detective Kobayashi (Akihiko Hirata), a childhood friend of the reporter, and a slew of other police officers led by Captain Onosaki (Yoshio Tsuchiya) begin investigating... and end up involved with an even stranger case than they could have ever imagined. Clues lead them to the Military-Land Cabaret, a nightclub that serves drinks like "Hand Grenades" and "Missiles," has waitresses dressed in cute little sailor uniforms and a gold-painted dancer as the evening's entertainment. The club is owned by a man named Onishi, who is rumored to run an illegal narcotics smuggling ring out of his establishment and has a few dark secrets in his closet. Something that went down fourteen years earlier right as Japan was about ready to surrender to Allied Forces during WWII that's about to come back to haunt both him and the others who were involved in the ass.

As it turns out, Onishi (Seizaburô Kawazu), along with the man found dead at the funhouse (a former sergeant) and two others; former intelligence agent Takashi (Yoshifumi Tajima) and Construction Corp. foreman Taki (Sachio Sakai), were all militarymen a decade and a half earlier. They had been assigned to help protect scientist / electrical engineer Dr. Kajuro Nikki's top secret experiments in creating electronic weaponry. Instead, the men decided to throw out the doctor's experiment and fill the crates with stolen gold bars. The only opposion they faced was from Lance Corporal Tsudo (Tadao Nakamura), who insisted the gold belonged to the people of his country. Onishi and the others stabbed Tsudo, shot Dr. Nikki and barely made it out of the cave before it's blown up with dynamite. They returned there a year later, only to discover that both men's corpses and the gold were missing. Have Tsudo and Dr. Nikki (Takamaru Sasaki) seemingly returned from the grave for revenge? Well... sort of.

Both Tsudo (now using the alias Goro Nakamoto) and Nikki (confined to a wheelchair and missing both legs) live quietly in seclusion on a remote farm... located near an active volcano! Over the years, Nikki has perfected a transportation device capable of moving matter from one place to another in a matter of seconds. Unbeknownst to the good doctor, a (rightfully) bitter and vengeful Tsudo is secretly using his contraption to leap back and forth from his desired locations to get revenge on Onishi and the others; easily alluding the police in the process. Tsudo sends the gold dog tags as sort of a death sentence, sends audio tapes ("I'm going to send you to hell!") or notes to each of the men informing them when he plans on killing them and stabs each with a bayonette. Because Nikki's experiment still has a few kinks, Tsudo's appeareance after transporting himself sometimes takes on a staticky, holographic look (one of several ideas present here that were cloned by Wes Craven for his shitty 1989 flop SHOCKER).

A Toho production, this mixture of science fiction, horror and crime-thriller genres was made with a reasonable budget and is a pretty interesting curio if you can track down a copy. Judging by the fact it currently has less than 50 votes on IMDb, it seems that the film hasn't built up much of a reputation (or an audience) over the years. It's fairly well-made, though, and features an intriguing premise, some good ideas and decent special effects that haven't aged too badly over the years. If anything bogs it all down, it's too much time spent with the police investigation and not enough time spent with the doctor / killer.

This was one of the first films for director Fukuda, who'd go on to make GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER (1966), SON OF GODZILLA (1967), GODZILLA VS. GIGAN (1972), GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA (1974) and others in the long-running series. Though Telegian failed to score at the box office, Fukuda co-scripted a second film ("Transparent Man vs. the Flame Man"), which was never made.

There are two versions floating around. One is cut and black-and-white (presumably the one that used to play on television), and the other is nicely shot in color (Tohoscope).

★★1/2

Evil of Frankenstein, The (1964)

2011-10-19T23:53:00.018-04:00

... aka: Revolt of Frankenstein, The

Directed by:
Freddie Francis

Entry # 3 in Hammer's resilient series, this is a follow-up to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) and THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958) in-name-only. Though it features the same central character, the film disregards the events of the previous movies and is basically a stand-alone film. A drunk body snatcher steals the body of a recently deceased man directly from his home, then delivers it to the remote laboratory of Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), who immediately gets to work removing the heart. "Why not? He has no better use for it?" Before Frankenstein can get much further in his experiments, the drunk rats him out and a local priest shows up to destroy some of his equipment. The Baron and his young assistant Hans (Sandor Elès) decide to flee the area before they get into any more trouble. Frankenstein decides to head back to Karlstaad, his former stomping grounds and the same village he'd previously lived in a decade earlier. A ten minute long flashback (this is brand new footage and not just recycled clips from Revenge) shows what became of the Baron's first monster creation; a pitiable being who had a taste for raw meat and was eventually shot and killed by some angry townspeople. The Baron was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer and "working against God" and was banished from Karlstaad for the rest of his life.

Well, he's come back, anyway. Upon arrival, a carnival is taking place in the village, so the Baron and his assistant easily glide on through undetected. When they show up to his mountaintop castle, Chateau Frankenstein, they find the place overrun with vines and discover it's been looted (they were planning on selling some of his art to make money to further his experiments). The Baron wonders why people can't just leave him alone and mocks the superstitious townspeople for wanting to destroy what they cannot understand. The village's corrupt Burgomaster (David Hutcheson) has his home decked out in all of the Baron's former furnishings, and even wears one of his rings, which infuriates him to the point that he makes his presence known. So it isn't long before the local Police Chief (Duncan Lamont) and the entire village are out searching for him.

While fleeing the village, Frankenstein and Hans come across a deaf beggar girl (Katy Wild) who lives in cave. They decide spend the night there and discover the Baron's creature (who'd previously taken a tumble off the mountaintop) perfectly preserved in a block of ice the next morning! The three take the creature back to the chateau, hook it up to the old equipment and use lightning to resurrect it. However, something's off. Though the brain may be technically revived, the creature lacks motor function and remains in a vegetable-like state. Frankenstein decides to enlist the aid of slimy carnival hypnotist Professor Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe) to "stimulate" the creature's brain with his powers. The plan works, but the hypnotist has other ideas in store for the creature. Since only he can really control it, he makes it sneak into the village to steal some gold and then sends him back to "punish" the Burgomaster and the Chief of Police for throwing him out of town.

Certainly not up to the first two films (Terence Fisher was originally slated to direct but had to bow out after an auto accident), this is saddled with a mediocre, unfocused screenplay. The second half is rushed in comparison to the first. Well, actually the opening half hour could have easily been condensed into about five minutes with absolutely nothing lost in the process. Still, it's a Hammer film, so you can expect much in the way of production quality. The sets and locations are excellent, there's pretty good model / matte work, it's nicely-photographed by John Wilcox (including a great shot of the camera following the strapped-down creature along a track and then lifting up) and most of the performances are at least acceptable. Also of note: The look of the monster has reverted back to the more block-headed style used in the superior Universal films here (Hammer was allowed to do this because Universal distributed it). Unfortunately, the make-up job is subpar compared to Jack Pierce's work.

Though Baron Frankenstein meets a fiery demise at the finale, you can't keep a good mad scientist down, especially when their movies are raking in a lot of money. Cushing would return in the same role in FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967), FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED! (1969) and FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1974). There was also the Cushing-free THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (1970).

The original U.S. release was 13 minutes longer, is censored and has additional footage featuring Steven Geray, Maria Palmer and William Phipps tacked on.

★★1/2

Sorella di Ursula, La (1978)

2011-10-19T21:53:00.021-04:00

... aka: Curse of Ursula
... aka: Sister of Ursula, The

Directed by:
Enzo Milioni

Dagmar (Stefania D'Amario) and her extremely fucked-up younger sister Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi) have just inherited a ton of money and decide to take a holiday at a resort hotel in Italy. While Dagmar plans for a nice, peaceful stay in the picturesque town, and possibly even a little romance while they're there, Ursula behaves like a miserable, hateful bitch the entire time and constantly complains about wanting to leave, claiming that "Terrible things are going to happen!" And she would be correct, as a sadistic serial killer starts running amuck killing nude women in a very perverse way. But we'll get to that here in a second. First, a little history on our sibling protagonists. Their mother was a famous actress who put them in a boarding school when they were little girls and never saw them again. Their father was a musician who commited suicide. Both girls inherited a lot of money, and Ursula ended up inheriting much more, like some serious mental problems. She's also cursed with ESP abilities, which makes it difficult for her to interact with anyone because she always knows their true intentions ahead of time... and with the crew she encounters at this hotel, that's definitely not a good thing. Either way, Ursula is picking up some bad vibes and barely wants to leave her bed.

Hotel owner / drug trafficker Roberto Delleri (Vanni Materassi) is having an affair on his wife Vanessa (Anna Zinneman) with cabaret singer Stella Shining (Yvonne Harlow), who in turn is having an affair with heroin junkie Filippo Andrei (Marc Porel). Both Roberto and Filippo seem interested in Dagmar, while Vanessa demands a divorce (and her share of the profitable hotel) from her husband because she's also been unfaithful and has fallen in love with Jenny (Antinisca Nemour). Stella tries to call off her affair with Filippo, but he starts stalking her. All the while, Ursula carries on hysterically about various things (including thinking her father is still alive) and the mystery killer continues their rampage; first killing a few extras (including a prostitute and a pair of horny runaway teenagers) before moving on to our principal characters. So what technique does the killer use in dispatching victims? Well, by raping them to death with a giant wooden dildo! Hey, I already told you it was perverted.

If nothing else, this silly film delivers big time on the sleaze. It's filled with graphic sex scenes (which actually cross into hardcore territory on at least one occasion), full frontal nudity from both genders and lots of bloody, below-the-belt aftermath shots of what the killer has done to his / her victims. It also benefits from being shot in Amalfi, Italy, an incredibly beautiful location with lots of large homes dotted along the cliffsides and sparkling waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The cinematography and art direction are both good, and they even through in a couple of cabaret numbers for good measure. So while this may not be a great film, or even a good one, it provides the trashy goods for fans of this stuff, plus has the production values to back it all up.

It's also interesting to see two actresses who were usually lost in minor roles in popular Euro horror flicks getting to play major parts here. Magnolfi's best-known part was playing Jessica Harper's bitchy roommate Olga in Argento's SUSPIRIA (1977). There she had just a couple of scenes, but in this one she gets to emote a lot and is the only female in the cast without a major nude scene. D'Amario is probably best known for playing zombie fodder in Fulci's ZOMBI 2 (1979) and Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY (1980). She had little to do in those films but die, but here she's really the primary focus. She also picks up Magnolfi's slack by appearing fully nude no no less than four times (including a solo scene pleasuring herself with a gold necklace). Porel, who had also acted for Fulci (1977's THE PSYCHIC) and starred in Mario Bava's final film THE VENUS OF ILLE (1978), doesn't make much of an impression in this one, plus the big revelation of his character doesn't really make sense.

Never released to American theaters or on VHS (though IMDb lists this as having gotten an X rating), this finally received a DVD release in 2009 through Severin.

★★

Screamtime (1983)

2011-10-18T23:59:00.022-04:00

Directed by:
Michael Armstrong
Stanley A. Long

A trio of independent British shorts (each running less than 30 minutes apiece) were rounded up by someone in the U.S., who then shot silly linking segments and released it all as an anthology. Surprisingly enough, the end result isn't as bad as you might imagine. No one seems to know who shot the American footage, but the shorts were made by Michael Armstrong (of MARK OF THE DEVIL fame) and Stanley A. Long (who is primarily known for making Brit sex comedies, including numerous entries in the "Adventures of..." series). The film begins in New York City as Ed (Vincent Russo) and his buddy Bruce (Michael Gordon) steal three horror videos ("Killer Punch," "Scream House" and "Garden of Blood") from a shop, then head over to their friend Marie's (Marie Scinto) apartment to watch them. After Marie takes a customary shower (apparently she's got a date lined up for later in the evening), the three then settle down on the couch with some beer and chicken legs to check them out...

Story #1 centers around Jack Grimshaw (Robin Bailey), a friendly old man who loves entertaining children with his puppet shows. Unfortunately, his profession isn't quite paying the bills to his wife Lena's (Ann Lynn) satisfaction. She calls him a "born loser," thinks he's been neglecting the family for years, wants him to burn all of his puppets and plans to run off to Canada. Her son from a previous marriage, Damien (Jonathon Morris), is an obnoxious punk who hates his stepfather. One day after a performance, Damien decides to burn down Jack's puppet stand and throw some of his puppets into the ocean. Later that day he's mysteriously killed by someone brandishing a club. The same killer decides to whack Lena to death, and then does the same to a doctor who stops by. Have Jack's puppets come to life for revenge? This one has decent acting, is somewhat fun and has a rather predictable, though satisfactory, twist at the end. If the score sounds familiar, that's because it was stolen from Cronenberg's RABID (1977).

In our second tale, a young couple, Tony (Ian Saynor) and Susan (Yvonne Nicholson) Kingsley, move into an old fixer-upper, which was sold to them by his father. The two are kept up at night by sounds they attribute to mice, red water that fills the bathtub that they attribute to rust and flickering lights they attribute to bad wiring. Soon, strange things that can't be contributed to anything of this Earth begin happening. Susan begins seeing visions of a little boy on a bicycle, the corpse of a dead man in her bed, a young man painting and a man lurking around with a knife. Blood appears on a knife in the kitchen and on a banister. She arranges for psychic Miss Burns (Veronica Doran) to come over and evaluate the home, but she comes up with nothing, and informs Tony that his wife needs to see a shrink. Is the house actually haunted or has Susan gone bonkers? There's an excellent twist at the end. Amazingly, this segment was just recently remade as a feature-length film; PSYCHOSIS (2010).

And finally, teen dirt bike racer Gavin Martin (David Van Day, from the UK pop duo Dollar) is having financial problems and isn't making enough money at his current job at a menswear store. His mechanic brother Tim (Matthew Peters) spots an ad in a trade paper for a general handyman and gardener. Gavin decides to apply for the position and ends up at large home that was reputedly built as early as the 16th Century. His new employers; Mildred (Jean Anderson) and Emma (a scenery-chewing Dora Bryan) Hurley quickly fill Gavin in on the bizarre history of the place. Supposedly, a noblewoman named Lady Anne made a contract with some evil fairies to give them the souls of her discarded lovers. When Gavin, Tim and Tim's co-workers Frank (Gary Linley) decide to break in an rob the home, they end up coming across fairies (basically shown as specks of light), killer garden gnomes, ghosts and Lady Anne (Kim Thomson) herself. It's somewhat original, I guess, and one sequence copies Piper Laurie's demise in CARRIE (1976).

Things return to our trio in New York, as what they've seen in the horror videos come back to kill them. It was originally released in on VHS by Lightning Video. The DVD (which is a video transfer) is from Event Media UK.

★★1/2

Vierges et vampires (1973)

2011-10-17T21:56:00.019-04:00

... aka: Caged Vampires
... aka: Caged Virgins
... aka: Dungeon of Terror
... aka: Requiem for a Vampire
... aka: Requiem pour un vampire
... aka: Sex Vampires
... aka: Virgins and the Vampires

Directed by:
Jean Rollin

French director Jean Rollin achieved minor cult fame for a series of 'arty erotic horror' films he made in Europe from 1967 into the new millennium. I've not seen many of these, but I didn't particularly care for most of the ones I have, including the director's very first genre film THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE (1967), a jumbled mess that started as a short but was poorly bloated to feature length, and his best-circulated title ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), which is (deservedly) known as one of the worst zombie films ever produced. Requiem (one of the few Rollin films to be released theatrically in America [under the title CAGED VIRGINS]) unfortunately does little to really change my opinion about him.

After a New Years party, Marie (Marie-Pierre Castel) and Michelle (Mireille Dargent), a pair of teenage, bisexual, pistol-packin' criminals dressed as clowns, and their male accomplice, try to evade another car during a gunfight. He suggests they turn down a dirt road before being shot and killed. The girls manage to get away, cover the car with gasoline and then set it on fire. They stop in a run-down home briefly to change into miniskirts and pigtails. One girl tempts a food truck worker with sex so she and her friend can get free french fries (?) before they head off to a graveyard to snuggle on top of a grave. When some men show up, one of the girls accidentally falls into an open grave and is almost buried alive. Some skulls and bats scare them away and they head out into the woods, eventually coming across a large, crumbling chateau. The girls locate a bed, get naked and start rubbing each other.

Upon further exploring the chateau, the girls discover skeletal monks, bloody hands protruding through the walls and a cult of aristrocratic bloodsuckers who plan on using the girls to carry on their race. Well, sort of. The sullen vampire leader (who doesn't leave the cemetery mausoleum) actually doesn't want to carry on the race, but the others do. There's one female helper (Louise Dhour) who plays the piano, can go out during the daytime and plots to use the girls to lure victims back to the chateau, as well as a female vampire (Dominique Toussaint) with plastic fangs and three thugish men who rape hairy-armpitted women chained up in a torture chamber. Rubber bats attached to victims can hypnotize them, and in one sequence a bat even attaches itself to a woman's vagina and drinks blood from there (!) The girls unsuccessfully try to escape three or four times and are eventually bitten, though it takes awhile for them to actually become vampires. Well actually, they never really do become vampires.

The film tries to establish some kind of rule about how one cannot be a vampire and a virgin simultaneously. Either way, Michelle (who takes to the vampires) and Marie (who doesn't) both seduce men wandering through the cemetery, though Marie quickly falls in love with her prey (Philippe Gasté) and doesn't want to kill him.

It's very slow-moving, thinly-plotted and often awkward, there's little dialogue and many long, unbroken takes of people walking around that last for minutes at a time. Almost nothing of note really happens during the first 40 minutes and the second half, the vampire portion, fails to provide much in the way of excitement, character insight or plot interest. Thanks to some simple red and green lighting effects, some lovely outdoor shooting locations and the occasional nice camera shot (the director does have a nice eye for framing shots and probably would have made a better still photographer than an actual filmmaker), some will undoubtedly refer to this as a work of art. Others will just see it as a flimsy, yawn-inducing, meandering excuse to feature naked, innocent-looking girls being chained up, whipped and abused. And in a way, both camps would be correct.

The DVD is from Redemption, which provides English audio or French audio with English subs options, as well as a few trailers and a stills gallery. The print quality is pretty mediocre.

★★

Thrill Killer (1964)

2011-10-17T21:07:00.013-04:00

... aka: Follow That Skirt

Directed by:
"Richard W. Bomont" (Herschell Gordon Lewis)

Herschell Gordon Lewis began his film career making silly, harmless nudie movies before hitting upon another profitable idea - the gore film. The result was BLOOD FEAST (1963), which (despite being awful) raked in a ton of money at drive-ins and had audiences clamouring for more gross-out flicks. Many of Lewis' films (both the nudies and his earlier gore films) were produced by a man named David A. Friedman ("R.J. Michael" here), who also worked in other capacities (he has credits for writing and sound) on these films. It's not a well-known fact, but after the success of Feast but before their official follow-ups TWO-THOUSAND MANIACS! and COLOR ME BLOOD RED, Lewis and Friedman tried their hand at another gore film. This time they added gratuitous nudity to the works; something the "gore trilogy" lacked (though Lewis would eventually mix sex 'n' violence in later films such as THE GORE GORE GIRLS). Something must have gone wrong along the way, because this doesn't seem to have been finished. It runs just under half-an-hour and there is no sound. They were probably planning on dubbing it all in later, but as is, there's a non-stop lounge music soundtrack that isn't very appropriate for the material plus some highly ridiculous and schizophrenic narration told from the point of view of the killer.

Opening with brief flashes of the killings we're about to see, plus some news headlines ("Thrill Killer!"), we meet a suit-and-sunglasses-wearing voyeuristic psycho named Dale (Dale West), who gets off on stalking and murdering attractive large-breasted women. Red-head Helen Rogers picks up her dry-cleaning, Dale sneaks a peak at her address from the receipt slip and then decides to pay poor Helen a visit. After she changes out of her clothes, she's stabbed to death. Next up is a nameless brunette, who sunbathes and is strangled (after stripping down to her granny panties and changing bras). After her is a blonde. The narrator adds: "This is Betty Watson, model. She will change her clothes and lay in the sun as she's always done. Only today she will have company; a man who hates woman. Because he wants to be one himself." Yes, she does change clothes. Three different times. Finally, she gets stabbed to death in her bathtub.

Dale then returns home, where we learn he's a catty schizophrenic cross-dresser who kills women because he's jealous of how pretty they are ("Now I'll show them they're not the only ones with beauty!"). He puts on make-up, panties, a bra, stockings, a dress, a wig and wraps his head in a scarf and gets ready to head out ("There, who can tell the difference? Now I'll leave and show the world!"). As he opens the door, a cop is there waiting for him. The end. While there's the germ of a fun movie here, nudity from three decent-looking ladies and a couple of amusing moments, it's not nearly as much fun as it sounds and somehow manages to seriously drag at just 30 minutes. I couldn't imagine how grueling it would be as a full-length feature!

It's available as one of four short subjects on Something Weird's release of THE WEIRD WORLD OF WEIRD. One of the other shorts is a hilariously awful 60s sitcom pilot called "Rosie;" which features a talking dog entering the lives of a Leave It to Beaver-style family. So why didn't it catch on? Probably because "Rosie" is played by a human dressed in a dog costume and the costume looks like... a horrifying werewolf! Seeing a man in a shaggy costume looking through peep holes and crawling around on all fours is actually pretty damn creepy, so it's a shame this one didn't catch on. We also get a look at "The Weird World of Weird;" a pilot for series exploring psychic phenomena, astrology, witchcraft and the occult. Hosted by Ralph Story and featuring special appearances by Linda Kaye Henning, Pamela Mason, Terry Moore, Criswell, Ann Francis, author Jean Rejaunier, Tige Andrews and Anton LaVey. The DVD concludes with twenty-minutes worth of footage from THE SMUT PEDDLER, a film which gained some notoriety for its trailer but is missing in its entirety.

And no, that isn't an official poster. I just threw it together because there are no promotional materials for this one; Friedman himself claims the film played in only one theater in San Francisco before being stuck on a shelf somewhere. The credits also add a bit of confusion. The opening title card calls it "Follow That Skirt" but the closing credits call it "Thrill Killer." Since "Follow That Skirt" reminds me too much of the Sesame Street Movie FOLLOW THAT BIRD, I decided to go ahead and use the "Thrill Killer" moniker.

★

Una gota de sangre para morir amando (1972)

2011-10-16T14:47:00.022-04:00

... aka: Clockwork Terror
... aka: Dead Angel
... aka: Murder in a Blue World
... aka: To Love, Perhaps to Die

Directed by:
Eloy de la Iglesia

A truly oddball (and tough to categorize) little film, this revolves around both a serial killer ("an unknown killer of young people") and behavior modification experiments being conducted to help reduce criminal activity. It's set sometime in the future and the appropriate look and feel are achieved through bizarre set design and even more bizarre new broadcasts (where the announcer expounds on the virtues of "the perfect race") and commercials (including one for something called "Blue Drink;" "the natural product of nature!"), which are constantly playing on TV sets throughout the film. Even stranger are the amount of Stanley Kubrick film references on hand. During one bizarre sequence, four whip-wielding thugs dressed in black leather outfits and red helmets arrive at an ultra modern house and terrorize the family living there. They trash their furniture, make the husband bark like a dog, whip the wife and then drag both of them off to separate bedrooms to rape them. Yes, this is certainly copying the famous home invasion scene from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971), but the director has absolutely no problem stating his sources. The couple have just sat down to watch Kubrick's film before they're attacked!

Elsewhere, well-scrubbed blonde Ana Vernia (Sue Lyon), who inherited much from her deceased parents and lives alone in a gated mansion guarded by dogs, has just won a special award for completing her "health officer" studies. Her friend, Dr. Victor Sender (Jean Sorel), a professor in clinical psychotherapy who'd no doubt like to be more than just friends with Ana, thinks she's smart enough to be a doctor. Ana however claims that she's not as much interested in the technical aspects of health care as she is the compassionate ones... which might explain why she's something of an accomplished serial killer! Because her victims are all good-looking young men between the ages of 17 and 25, the press and police have it all wrong that the killer responsible has "tendencies toward homosexuality." Because of their erroneous assumptions, Ana easily gets away with her 'caring nurse by day / murderess by night' routine. That is, until someone accidentally catches on to what she's doing.

Ana utilizes a wide variety of disguises to help lure men into her clutches, seduces them and then stabs them through the heart with a scalpel immediately after sex (and listening to their heartbeat). During one scene, she dresses up as an old woman and goes to a brothel, where she hires over-the-hill underwear model / gigolo Bruno (Charly Bravo) to accompany her home. In another scene, she dresses up as a lesbian in a short black wig and suit, goes to a gay bar and picks up a young guy (Alfredo Alba) who seems to be unsure of (or just fighting against) his sexual orientation. Meanwhile, David (Christopher Mitchum), one of the leather-clad thugs seen in the home invasion scene, has managed to turn all his juvenile delinquent friends against him. Desperate for money, he lucks out in discovering Ana disposing of one of her victims in the river. He sneaks over to her house, watches as she kills another man and then blackmails her to get money and a new motorcycle. Things come to a head at the lab, after David is severely beaten by his gang and is left at the mercy of Ana in the hospital where she works.

The connections to Kubrick extend beyond the droog-like juvenile delinquents and attempted shock treatment cures to criminal impulses (which amusingly backfire during the bloody conclusion), but to the presence of Sue Lyon, star of Kubrick's LOLITA (1962). There are many nods to that film, including a play on the famous sunglasses scene, as well as an actual copy of Vladimir Nabokov's book seen several times.

I'm not even sure what to make of all of this, or what the actual point (aside from those already established in Kubrick's ACO) is, but it's all very interesting to watch play out. de la Iglesia is one of those European directors you hear very little about here in America. He never achieved much notoriety here, and is pretty much only known for the good, though misleadingly-titled, CANNIBAL MAN (1971). However, tracking down copies of his other films has been worthwhile. A gay director, he'd often infuse his films with gay subtext (sometimes subtlely, sometimes more blatantly [as seen here]), and really brought a fresh perspective to many thrillers as a result. See also: THE GLASS CEILING (1971), NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM (1973).

One of the major letdowns are our trio of lead actors. Lyon, Mitchum and Sorel all act like they don't even want to be here and give wooden, forgettable performances. The cast also includes Ramón Pons as a victim Ana picks up at an auction, Antonio del Real, David Carpenter (THE KILLER IS NOT ALONE) and Ramón Fernández Tejela as David's punk friends, Fernando Hilbeck and Eduardo Calvo.

★★1/2

Twisted Nerve (1968)

2011-10-14T04:28:00.018-04:00

Directed by:
Roy Boulting

Entertaining, well-acted, well-made psycho-thriller; this didn't make much of an impact at the box office back during its day and would be the only genre release from the fledgling Charter Film Productions (who cranked out a couple of comedies after this and then folded). The film was actually somewhat controversial upon release for what some felt was an irresponsible attempt to link mongolism (a condition we now refer to as Down's Syndrome) with psychopathic and criminal behavior. To counteract that, the film had a disclaimer ("Ladies and gentlemen, in view of the controversy already aroused, the producers of this film wish to reemphasize what is already stated in the film; that there is no established scientific connection between mongolism and psychotic or ciminal behavior.") spoken by a stuffy-sounding man tacked to the beginning. Aside from the scientific nonsense; which really only comes into play briefly at the end, doesn't amount to much of anything anyway and can easily just be overlooked, plus the fact the film isn't particularly well-known and underperformed at the box office, it would go on to become an influential effort in some rather surprising ways.

Twenty-two-year-old Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett) lives at home with his overly nurturing mother (Phyllis Calvert) and his stern, wealthy stepfather (Frank Finlay). Since all of his siblings suffered from "mongolism" and Martin was born "normal," his mother has been a bit smothering over the years and managed to seriously spoil her son in the process. However, Martin's stepfather wants him to get out and begin his life independently of them; especially seeing how Martin doesn't do much but sit upstairs listening to records and is frequently getting in trouble with the law. While out shoplifting, Martin is caught by the police. He gives them a false name ("Georgie Clifford") and pretends to be mentally retarded. Pretty, sweet Susan (Hayley Mills), a student who works as a librarian, sympathizes with "Georgie" and helps get him off the hook, but when Martin returns home and his stepfather gets wind of what took place, he gives Martin some money and tells him he has to move out.

Martin then decides to adapt the "Georgie" persona and wedge himself into Susan's life. Susan is temporarily staying with her lonely mother Joan (Billie Whitelaw) while she completes her studies. Joan owns a boarding house and has already rented out rooms to Gerry (Barry Foster), an abrasive alcoholic struggling to get by in the film industry (who's also Joan's lover), and Shashie (Salmaan Peerzada), an Indian medical student. One evening, "Georgie" shows up with a forged letter from his father asking them to take him in while he's out of town on business. They're reluctant at first, but since he seems relatively harmless and soon proves to be a big help doing various chores around the home, Joan soon takes a liking to him. It isn't long before "Georgie" sneaks off to murder his stepfather and his true intentions for Susan begin to surface. Sensing there's more to their new boarder than meets the eye (and finding a handwriting book with the name Martin Durnley written over and over again inside), Susan investigates.

Despite running nearly two hours, this has no problem maintaining interest. It's helped along by very good performances, an interesting screenplay (written by the director and PEEPING TOM scripter Leo Marks) and solid production values. Bennett does an effective job as the psycho (a showy, edgy role allowing him to take on two different personas), Mills (a former child actress just starting to move into more adult roles here; she'd marry the director right after filming was complete) is likable as our heoine and there are nice supporting performances from Whitelaw (whose character finds herself sexually attracted to "Georgie" in one of the ickier subplots), Finlay, Calvert and most of the rest of the cast. There are also a number of D.H. Lawrence references throw in (obviously because of the author's own Freudian mother fixation), including a direct visual allusion to Lawrence's masturbation parable "The Rocking Horse Winner."

Someone must have liked the chemistry between Mills and Bennett because the two were re-teamed in the Agatha Christie adaptation ENDLESS NIGHT just a few years later. And apparently Alfred Hitchcock liked what he saw of Whitelaw (who won a BAFTA Award for her performance here) and Foster, because after viewing this film he decided to cast both in his hit FRENZY (1972). Bernard Herrmann's eerie, memorable whistling theme later turned up in rip-off artist Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL: VOL 1 and other films. I also just noticed checking out the debut episode of the new series American Horror Story, that it not only recycles the same theme music, but also has a neighbor character (played by Jessica Lange) with a Down's Syndrome daughter (whom she refers to as a "mongoloid").

It's well-photographed by Harry Waxman, and also features Hammer film regular Thorley Walters and an uncredited Marianne Stone in small roles. The DVD is from Optium Releasing.

★★★