Blood Beast Terror, The (1968)

...aka: Blood Beast from Hell

...aka: Deathshead Vampire, The

...aka: Vampire-Beast Craves Blood, The

Directed by:

Vernon Sewell

Somewhere in Merry Old England, pale corpses (all men for a change) are turning up drained of their blood. A vampire, you say? You would be wrong. Just as I was wrong in hoping this would somehow perk up my dreary movie viewing week. I should have known better. Apparently, star Peter Cushing had singled this particular film out in interviews as being the very worst of his entire career. While I haven't seen every film he's been in (far from it), as of now I'm apt to agree with him. The only other Cushing film I've seen in the same league of bad was LAND OF THE MINOTAUR (1975), but even that benefitted from picturesque Greek locations and Cushing himself was fine in a small supporting role. Here he's the lead and, for the first time ever, I got the impression he was working on autopilot. He not only looks utterly bored, but his line delivery lacks the usual conviction. Part of me is tempted to lay the blame on Sewell. I mean, he did get together a genre dream team (Karloff, Lee, Steele and Gough) for THE CRIMSON CULT (1968) the following year, and somehow managed to foul it all up, too. Supposedly, Robert Flemyng (who replaced Basil Rathbone in the 'mad scientist' role shortly before filming began), also had a miserable time working on this movie, so something clearly unpleasant was going on behind-the-scenes.

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After a vague, poorly-filmed opening sequence supposedly set in Africa, a coach driver discovers a body and spots a strange, flying beast so spooky it drives him batshit crazy. We learn that the body is actually the sixth victim of a mysterious killer, but since the witness is unintelligible he's of no use to Inspector Quennell (Cushing). Other clues eventually lead Quennell to the home of professor and entomologist Dr. Karl Mallinger (Flemyng) and his seductress daughter Claire (Wanda Ventham). To make a long story short, Claire is the killer and every once in awhile she transforms into a giant bloodsucking deathshead moth (!) Yep, you heard that right. Giant bloodsucking deathshead moth.

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The seldom-seen moth-monster costume consists of a mask with large, buggy red eyes, wings and a black bodysuit. To be fair, the mask itself isn't really that bad compared to many other 'B' horror pictures of the time. As silly as the concept is, I could live with it if they'd even bothered explaining its origins. If this is a man-made beast, how did the doctor make it? And why did he decide to do something like this to his own daughter? Is she even his daughter or another woman pretending to be his daughter? Why does she seem so unconcerned if she started out as a normal girl but has been transformed into a murderous beast? None of these questions are really answered. The fact Dr. Mallinger is busy at work trying to create a second moth creature as a mate for Claire leads one to believe that he somehow also turned her into what she is, but a little clarification, or motivation, would have been nice.

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The amount of technical ineptitude on display, especially in comparison to other British horror titles from the era, is somewhat startling. The photography is murky, flat and even grainy at times, with night shots clearly filmed during the day using improper filtering. It's poorly paced and just as badly edited and directed. During one scene, the inspector's daughter Meg (played by Vanessa Howard) is talking to Claire and in the next scene she's hypnotized and strapped to a table getting her blood pumped out. So now the moth lady now has the ability to hypnotize her prey? Though the costumes and sets are decent in capturing the Victorian era, any potential for fun is squashed by how mannered, sedate and languidly paced the whole thing is. Sloppy attempts at time-lapsing transformations and poor acting, particularly from Flemyng (the male lead from the well-regarded 1962 Italian horror THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK) and Howard (impressive in the macabre black comedy GIRLY but certainly not here), don't help matters. Neither does a truly terrible 'moth to the flame' finale where a very brief, fuzzy close-up of a fiery flapping wing supposedly signals the demise of the creature. Some demise.

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One thing that does actually fascinate me is wondering whether or not this film's writer (Peter Bryan) was influenced by the American Mothman legend. After all, the first reported sightings of Mothman in Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia (which - as per eyewitness descriptions - is nearly identical in appearance to the Mothwoman featured here) came in 1966, just a year before this film was made. Make you wonder, doesn't it?

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Tigon, a short-lived rival to Hammer and Amicus, was the production company and it was originally released in America under the title The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood, where it was double billed with Curse of the Blood Ghouls aka SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES (1961).

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★1/2

Additions to the Index

Every time I think I'm making some progress with my title index, a new title I'd never even heard of before (or one I'd forgotten to include) comes to my attention. I usually jot them down so I can add them on here later and it didn't take long for one to become two to become three to become 124 before I had a chance to play catch up. Below are the new movies I just added. Should be fun to try to hunt some of these down...

- Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951; Charles Lamont)
- Ash Tree, The (Ghost Story for Christmas: The Ash Tree) (1975; Lawrence Gordon Clark)
- Beautiful Girl Hunter (Dabide no hoshi: Bishôjo-gari) (1979; Norifumi Suzuki)
- Beauty and the Devil (1950; Rene Clair)
- Black Rain (Kuroi ame) (1989; Shohei Imamura)
- Blind Beast (Môjû) (1969; Yasuzo Masumura)
- Blood Stains in a New Car (Manchas de sangre en un coche nuevo) (1975; Antonio Mercero)
- Bride from Hades, The (Botan-dôrô) (1968; Satsuo Yamamoto)
- Bridge to Nowhere (1986; Ian Mune)
- Casting the Runes (1979; Lawrence Gordon Clark)
- Chaos (Kaos) (1984; Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani)
- Cold Night's Death, A (The Chill Factor) (1973; Jerrold Freedman)
- Colossus of New York, The (1958; Eugène Lourié)
- Cosmic Monsters (The Strange World of Planet X) (1958; Gilbert Gunn)
- Cross Current (Un omicidio perfetto a termine di legge) (1971; Tonino Ricci)
- Day of Wrath (Den gneva) (1985; Sulambek Mamilov)
- Dead Father, The (1986; Guy Maddin)
- Deadly Corpse (Khooni Murdaa) (1989; Mohan Bhakri)
- Depth (Gehrayee) (1980; Vikas Desai and Aruna Raje)
- Devil in Miss Jones, The (1973; Gerard Damiano)
- Devilish Murder (Salinma) (1965; Yongmin Lee)
- Drifter in the Rain (Vagabundo en la lluvia) (1968; Carlos Enrique Taboada)
- Eden and After (L'éden et après) (1970; Alain Robbe-Grillet)
- Emperor and the Golem, The (Císaruv pekar - Pekaruv císar) (1952; Martin Fric)
- Ferat Vampire (Upír z Feratu) (1981; Juraj Herz)
- Fist In the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) (1965; Marco Bellocchio)
- Ghost-Cat Cursed Wall, The (Kaibyô noroi no kabe) (1958; Kenji Misumi)
- Ghost Stories of Wanderer at Honjo (Kaidan Honsho nanafushigi) (1957; Gorô Kadono)
- Ghost Story of Deathfire Pond (Kaidan onibi no numa) (1963; Bin Kado)
- Ghost Story of Kakui Street (Kaidan Kakuidori) (1961; Kazuo Mori)
- Ghost Story of Oiwa's Spirit (Kaidan Oiwa no borei) (1961; Tai Kato)
- Gog (1954; Herbert L. Strock)
- Gorilla at Large (1954; Harmon Jones)
- Habit (1982; Larry Fessenden)
- Haunted Castle, The (Hiroku kaibyoden) (1969; Tokuzo Tanaka)
- Haunted Strangler, The (Grip of the Strangler) (1958; Robert Day)
- Headless Rider, The (El jinete sin cabeza) (1957; Chano Urueta)
- He Lives By Night (Ye jing hun) (1982; Po-Chih Leong)
- H-Man, The (Beauty and the Liquidman; Bijo to Ekitainingen) (1958; Ishirô Honda)
- Hostile Takeover (Office Party) (1988; George Mihalka)
- Human Vapor, The (Gasu ningen dai ichigo) (1960; Ishirô Honda)
- I'll See You in Hell (Ti aspetterò all'inferno) (1960; Piero Regnoli)
- Illusion of Blood (Yotsuya Ghost Story; Yotsuya kaidan) (1965; Shirô Toyoda)
- In the Old Manor House (W starym dworku czyli niepodleglosc trójkatów) (1985; Andrzej Kotkowski)
- Kill Barbara with Panic (Patayin mo sa sindak si Barbara) (1974; Celso Ad. Castillo)
- Killer is Still Among Us, The (L'assassino è ancora tra noi) (1986; Camillo Teti)
- Kiss from Beyond the Grave, The (El beso de ultratumba) (1963; Carlos Toussaint)
- Kronos (1957; Kurt Neumann)
- Last Savage, The (Addio ultimo uomo) (1978; Alfredo Castiglioni and Angelo Castiglioni)
- Living Coffin, The (El grito de la muerte; Scream of Death) (1959; Fernando Méndez)
- Living Skeleton, The (Kyuketsu dokuro sen) (1968; Hiroshi Matsuno)
- Lokis (The Bear) (1970; Janusz Majewski)
- Lolita: Vibrator Torture (Lolita vib-zeme) (1987; Hisayasu Sato)
- Man and the Monster, The (El hombre y el monstruo) (1959; Rafael Baledón)
- Mangalsutra (1981; Vijay B.)
- Månguden (1988; Jonas Cornell)
- Man with No Face, The (El hombre sin rostro) (1950; Juan Bustillo Oro)
- Mister Designer (Gospodin oformitel) (1988;Oleg Teptsov)
- Monster from Green Hell (1958; Kenneth G. Crane)
- Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (1965; David L. Hewitt)
- Monster with Twenty Faces (Kaijin nijumenso) (1954; Susumu Yumizuri)
- Morbo (Morbidness) (1972; Gonzalo Suárez)
- Mother Tree, The (Ghost of Chibusa Enoki; Kaidan chibusa enoki) (1958; Gorô Kadono)
- Museum of Horror (Museo del horror) (1965; Rafael Baledón)
- Naked Jungle, The (1954; Byron Haskin)
- Nest of the Cuckoo Birds, The (1965; Bert Williams)
- Night of 1,000 Sexes (Mil sexos tiene la noche) (1984; Jesus Franco)
- Night of the Ghouls (Revenge of the Dead) (1959; Edward D. Wood, Jr.)
- Nine Guests for a Crime (Nove ospiti per un delitto) (1977; Ferdinando Baldi)
- Oiwa Phanton, The (Yotsuya kaidan - Oiwa no borei) (1969; Kazuo Mori)
- Old Temple, The (Purana Mandir) (1984; Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay)
- Olga's House of Shame (36 Hours of Terror) (1964; Joseph P. Mawra)
- Panic on the Mountain (Pánico en la montaña) (1989; Pedro Galindo III)
- Passport for a Corpse (Lasciapassare per il morto) (1962; Mario Gariazzo)
- Phantom of the Red House, The (El fantasma de la casa roja) (1956; Miguel M. Delgado)
- Pig-Chicken Suicide (Tonkei shinjû) (1981; Yoshihiko Matsui)
- Playbird Murders, The (The Playbirds) (1978; Willy Roe)
- Plot of Fear (...e tanta paura) (1976; Paolo Cavara)
- Porno Zombies, The (La fille à la fourrure) (1977; Claude Pierson)
- Portrait of Hell (Jigokuhen) (1969; Shirô Toyoda)
- Revived Monster, The (El monstruo resucitado) (1953; Chano Urueta)
- Room to Let (1950; Godfrey Grayson)
- Rowing with the Wind (Remando al viento) (1988; Gonzalo Suárez)
- Rusted Body: Guts of a Virgin III (Gômon kifujin) (1987; Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu)
- Samurai Resurrection (Makai tenshô) (1981; Kinji Fukasaku)
- Saragossa Manuscript, The (Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie) (1965; Wojciech Has)
- Satan's Bed (1983; H. Tjut Djalil)
- School for Dead Girls (1972; unknown)
- School of the Holy Beast (Seijû gakuen) (1974; Norifumi Suzuki)
- Scream, The (Cheekh) (1985; Mohan Bhakri)
- Secret of Death (Enigma de muerte) (1969; Federico Curiel)
- Secrets (Rahsia) (1987; Othman Hafsham)
- Serial Rape Murderer, The (Renzoku bôkan) (1983; Yôjirô Takita)
- Serpent Island (1954; Tom Gries)
- Seventh Grave, The (La settima tomba) (1965; Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo)
- Sexual Apocalypse (Apocalipsis sexual) (1982; Carlos Aured and Sergio Bergonzelli)
- Stalls of Barchester, The (Ghost Story for Christmas: The Stalls of Barchester) (1971; Lawrence Gordon Clark)
- Sucedió en el internado (1985; Emilio Vieyra)
- Survivors, The (Los sobrevivientes) (1979; Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)
- Swamp of the Lost Souls (El pantano de las ánimas) (1957; Rafael Baledón)
- Sweet Body of Deborah, The (Il dolce corpo di Deborah) (1968; Romolo Guerrieri)
- Take Me Naked (Take Me) (1967; Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay)
- Taming of Rebecca, The (1982; Phil Prince)
- Target Earth (1954; Sherman A. Rose)
- Television Set, The (El televisor) (1974; Narciso Ibáñez Serrador)
- Tenamonya: Ghost Journey (Tenamonya yurei dochu) (1967; Shûe Matsubayashi)
- Terror in the Midnight Sun (Rymdinvasion i Lappland) (1959; Virgil W. Vogel)
- Tortured Females (1965; Arch Hudson)
- Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974; Lawrence Gordon Clark)
- Twelve Months of the Summer, The (Sommarens tolv månader) (1988; Richard Hobert)
- Unknown, The (Gumnaam) (1965; Raja Nawathe)
- Vengeance Is Mine (Fukushû suru wa ware ni ari) (1979; Shohei Imamura)
- Violated Angels (Okasareta hakui) (1967; Kôji Wakamatsu)
- Voodoo Woman (1957; Edward L. Cahn)
- Weak-kneed from Fear of Ghost-Cat (Kaibyo koshinuke daisodo) (1954; Torajiro Saito)
- Witch, The (La bruja) (1954; Chano Urueta)
- Witches' Hammer, The (Kladivo na carodejnice) (1970; Otakar Vávra)
- Witches' Sabbath, The (La visione del Sabba) (1988; Marco Bellocchio)
- Witch with Flying Head, The (Fei taugh mo neuih) (1977; Lian Sing Woo)
- Without Warning! (1952; Arnold Laven)
- Woman Called Sada Abe, A (Jitsuroku Abe Sada) (1975; Noboru Tanaka)
- Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952; Fred C. Brannon)
- Zoom In: Rape Apartments (Zoom In: boko danchii) (1980; Naosuke Kurosawa)
- Zoom Up: Rape Site (Zûmu appu: bôkô genba) (1979; Koyu Ohara)

Evil in the Woods (1986)

Directed by:
William J. Oates

A little boy (Brian Abent) goes to the library and snatches a copy of an ancient-looking book titled "Evil in the Woods." He returns home, hops in bed and starts reading the "fractured fable" found inside, which is then visualized for us. It's narrated by someone with a cheesy and highly annoying country fried goofball accent and for some reason redundant title cards have been inserted every once in awhile, probably less to keep viewers informed of what's going on than to help with the consistently poor continuity. Somewhere near Mildew, Georgia in 1956 a man is attacked by something from the sky. The film then hops to present day Atlanta and we're on the set of "Bigfoot vs. the Space Monsters." The cast and production crew promptly travel to Mildew, where a big foot-like creature is roaming the woods and a tinfoil spaceship with a couple of alien midgets lands. All that turns out to be just a movie.

Meanwhile, a camping family from the big city lose their little son Billy (played by the same kid reading the book), who ends up getting dismembered (off screen) by an old backwoods witch named Ida Pierson (Stephanie Kaskel). Ida has about half-a dozen retarded fully-grown children (bi-products of incest, naturally) who roam around in the woods, kidnap the crew members, take them back to their home, torture and dismember them and then eat them. Ida makes herself young and beautiful with a magic potion and eventually turns her clan into mutant monsters with the help of voodoo dolls. The missing little boy's parents go to the sheriff for help, little knowing he's actually romantically involved with the witch. The cast and crew of the movie hang out, bicker, drink and do drugs before getting killed.

I've heard both good and bad things about this rare low-budgeter, but I'm mostly siding with the bad camp. The (over)acting, dialogue, editing and production values are all pretty dire, attempts at humor are labored and unfunny, the narration is extremely irritating and never seems to end and the whole mess is sloppy, juvenile, slapdash and lacks focus. On the plus side, some of the music is actually pretty good (except for a song that attempts to rhyme "tequila" with "squeeze-a"), there's some OK aerial photography and the last half hour is much better than what precedes it (which is pretty much unwatchable). Most of the cheap gore is also saved for the end. We get an exploding head, guts ripped out, brains removed, etc. Too little, too late. It ends with a shot of an Iron Maiden poster and a page of the book that says "Please watch for other fractured fables by Fantasy Factory." Guess that never happened.

The VHS distributor was Cinevest Interactive, who also released NIGHTMARE (1981), THE SLAYER (1981), NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR (1985), REVENGE OF THE LIVING ZOMBIES (1988), VAMPIRES (1988) and NIGHT TERROR (1989). Bootleg DVD-R's are also available.

★1/2

Hereafter, The (1983)

...aka: Qualen

Directed by:

Michael J. Murphy

Here's another film so rare that IMDb doesn't even bother listing it. As a matter of fact, of director Michael J. Murphy's 25 films (many of which are horror and have been released), only two (1982's INVITATION TO HELL and 1983's THE LAST NIGHT) are currently in their database. Murphy claims (in this interview) that the producer could only sell this particular title in Spain, where it was released under the title QUALEN (whatever that means) and dubbed into Spanish. I guess neither he nor his interviewer were aware of it at the time, but this movie was also released here in the U.S. in 1987 under the title THE HEREAFTER. The company who distributed it on VHS, Mogul Communications (who specialized mostly in obscure foreign films - see list below), even put it in a very nice, eye-catching box that has attracted attention from genre fans, particularly zombie movie fans. Well, don't get your hopes up too high, buckos. I couldn't imagine too many people (let alone those looking for some living dead action) being impressed with they'll see here.

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Neville (Steven Longhurst) is saddled with a drunken old crank of a crippled father. Dad (who is rich) also doesn't seem to think much of his son's new girlfriend Vicky (Catherine Rowlands), who he refers to as "that hairdresser slut." During an argument, Neville leaves his dad sitting atop a rocky embankment. He forgets to put the emergency brake on the wheelchair, which promptly rolls down a hill and throws pops out into a lake, where he drowns. Soon after, Neville and Vicky get married and settle into the mansion. He relates a flashback to the home's troubled history. Many years earlier, Neville's great great uncle fell in love with a poor village girl with a bad reputation. The young man's father frowned upon the union to the point where he arranged for the girl to get gang raped and murdered. His son then killed himself by leaping from his bedroom window.

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The film then settles into a tired 'let's drive the rich person crazy to get their money' storyline, with a slight touch of the supernatural. A skull-faced zombie (the thing pictured on the box) turns up long enough to knock Neville out of a window. He ends up surviving the fall, is stuck in a wheelchair and soon discovers his new wife has been plotting against him with her lover, hunky gardener Patrick (David Slater), to get their hand on a million pounds Neville inherited. Vicky and Patrick even go so far as to getting it on in the house while Neville tries to recooperate from his injuries. They also begin to get suspicious about the female writer named Dorothy (Wendy Young) who lives next door, so Vicky sinks a pick axe into her face while she's trying to ride away on her bicycle! Eventually ghosts (whose, I'm not so sure) turn up to help settle the score.

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Is the fact an already unknown director decided to use a pseudonym ("Michael Melsack") a bad sign? In this case, yep. The acting, lighting, sound, editing and camerawork (note the shot where the camera pans down then has to abruptly jerk over to capture a woman on the phone) are all pretty amateurish. The zombie on the box is only featured briefly and it turns out to be a hoax. The "haunting" portion is limited to a rocking horse moving and lights flickering. There are a couple of laughably choreographed fight scenes, a tiny bit of blood (the aforementioned bicycle murder and an arm smashed in a bear trap) and a couple of timid sex scenes where the nudity is concealed (or has been cut). Mostly though, this is just talk, with very stiff actors reciting very bland dialogue in service of a slow-moving, cliche-ridden, predictable plot. Not really worth the search.

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The other releases from the Mogul VHS catalogue include FEAST OF SATAN (1971), AUTOPSY (1973), HAVE A NICE WEEKEND (1975), SCHOOL OF DEATH (1975), RAPE (1976), WEREWOLF WOMAN (1976), THE BEAST IN HEAT (1977; as SS Experiment Camp 2), SATAN'S BLOOD (1978; as Don't Panic), FROZEN TERROR (1980; as Macabro), THE ICEBOX MURDERS (1981), THE CURSE OF THE SCREAMING DEAD (1982), DON'T LOOK IN THE ATTIC (1982), HORROR SAFARI (1982; as Invaders of the Lost Gold), SATAN'S BLADE (1984), DEMON QUEEN (1986) and GREEN INFERNO (1988). While some of those have been picked up for DVD distribution by other companies, others (including this one) have sunk into obscurity over the years.

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★1/2

Tao chu shan hu hai (1986)

... aka: 逃出珊瑚海

... aka: Escape from Coral Cove

... aka: Tiu chut saan woo hoi 

Directed by:

Terrance Cheung Ga-Jan 

Going by the plot synopsis I had read online, I expected to see a bunch of stranded teens getting killed by a zombie on an island. What I got instead was a feature length commercial for various boats and water sports equipment being pitched by a cast of grating idiots that finally remembers to be a horror movie during the last twenty minutes. In short, this movie is just too damn tame and too damn slow to really pique anyone's interest. Now I'm not saying I don't appreciate subtlety and restraint in the right context, but what's the point of holding back in the 'annoying teens get hacked up by something' subgenre? Right. There isn't a good reason. These movies usually don't bother with having an actual plot, so they're left with trying to come up with inventive and/or bloody death scenes. The more the merrier. Throw in enough sex and it can really satisfy the target audience. Throw in neither, and it fails to justify its existence. 

Admittedly, I did kind of enjoy the first twenty minutes. After a confusing prologue, the director (or someone else) decided to tack on a scene of a naked woman (Marilyn Bautista) discovering a decapitated head while snorkeling. Although it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie, this scene at least provides a cheap shock, a little gore and a little nudity. The underwater photography is also pretty nice. A hilarious version of "In My House" by the Mary Jane Girls (sung by Joann Tang Lai-Ying in Cantonese) plays over the credits. Then we're introduced to our characters. There's Alex (Alex "Fu" / Fong), a good-looking, cocky jerk who tries to have his way with every female in the cast. Well, except for his annoyed girlfriend Chen-chen ("Bee Lee Tan" / Yin-Ling Joh). Another of the girls, San-san (Elsie Chan), is a backstabbing slut (nicknamed "Big Tits" for obvious reasons) who tries to steal Chen-chen's man away and their other friend Irene ("Iwanbeo" / Yuen-Jing Leung) is nice, sweet and pretty. The four meet up with a nerdy aspiring scientist named Dak (Louis Kong) - nicknamed "Four Eyes" for obvious reasons - and his annoying kid brother Gus (Jun-Git Leung). 

Everyone goes on a sail boat ride. Then they go on a speed boat ride. Then they go on a ride on a rubber boat. They swim underwater and above the water. They swim to the beach and back from the beach. They go skiing. They roll around in the sand. They even get to joust with those giant Q-tip things like on American Gladiators. They also bitch and complain a lot. Most of the drama is centered around Alex trying to get in Irene's Donald Duck swimsuit while San-san tries to get into Alex's orange speedo. Chen-chen gets pissed, takes off in the boat and doesn't come back (cause she's dead). The rest go back to the resort and the zombie-killer (who now suddenly looks like a normal human and is played by Roy Cheung) shows up. Someone is put in a barrel and thrown over a rocky embankment. An exorcist shows up long enough to get a stake in his heart and a girl gets her head bashed in with a chunk of coral. Strangely (and annoyingly), the womanizing asshole we've spent the whole film hating just disappears from the movie and doesn't even die! There's also a drunken security guard (Huang Chin) who I think is supposed to be funny, a lame cat fight that is over before it can get any good, an exploding goldfish and a dancing montage set to my new favorite song. 

At the end, one of our survivors is below deck on a boat, throws an axe at the killer, misses and then picks up a fire extinguisher. Suddenly the film cuts to a close-up of an aerosol can and a lighter above deck as someone torches the killer. The major release of this rare film is from the HK-based Ocean Shores, who offered it on VHS and VCD. Based on what I've read, the company may be responsible for the bad editing cuts, as well as removing some gore from the film, but I can't really verify that claim. What I can verify is that their subtitles suck ass. It's filled with white buildings, white walls and white boats, and nearly every character wears white clothes, so they decided that the best color for the subs is also white. I guess because it blends in so well that half the time you can't even see them.

★★

Hook of Woodland Heights, The (1990)

Directed by:
Michael Savino

The guys behind the 15-minute short ATTACK OF THE KILLER REFRI(D)GERATOR (1984) are back with this 40-minute, shot-on-video slasher, which was first released in 1990 on VHS by Donna Michelle Productions (who put Refrigerator on the same tape for a double feature that's actually shorter than most standard features). Hook is a silly, over-the-top play on the 'hook-handed killer haunting lover's lane' urban legend, but it's better-made, better acted and better photographed than their first effort. We're first introduced to teenager Tommy (Michael Elyanow), who picks up his date Katie (Christine McNamara) and hopes to score with her out in the sticks. The film then cuts to a mental hospital where a bunch of cliched nutters roam the halls except for a maniacal, one-handed serial killer named Mason Crane (Robert W. Allen) who is kept locked away in solitary. Mason manages to kill two orderlies in charge of moving him (one is smashed in the door and the other is killed when a clipboard is thrown at his head!) and then escapes.

Mason immediately heads into the woods, kills a dog and then finds a two-pronged barbeque / grill fork lying on the ground and jams it into his arm stump. He then kills a young boy playing hide-and-seek in a graveyard, another guy and finally makes his way to Tommy and Katie, who are too busy making out to pay much attention to the radio news broadcasts warning of the psychos escape. There's some POV camerawork trailing through the woods, a couple of good songs (the theme is called "Hooked on You") and even a crotch stabbing. On the down side, the make-up job on the killer (overdone white face and black eye grease paint) is pretty awful. Most of the acting is mediocre or bad, but Allen is memorably over-the-top as the psycho. He laughs maniacally, breathes heavy, grunts and acts like a mix between a gorilla, a rabid dog and, well, a hyperactive, raving loony.

So nothing great, but mildly entertaining. The short run-time keeps it from wearing out its welcome with unneeded filler and it's a slight step up from their previous effort. Slasher fans will probably want to see it because it's one of the rarest titles in the subgenre, though if you have 25 extra bucks to throw away, you can order it from the director's website.

★★

Attack of the Killer Refrigerator (1984)

...aka: Attack of the Killer Refridgerator

Directed by:
Michael Savino

It was made by media students at Worcester State College in Massachusetts. It was shot-on-video in 1984 with a budget of just 25 dollars. It miraculously managed to get a VHS release in 1990 from Donna Michelle Productions. One might refer to it as amateur hour... except it only runs 15 minutes. So what can you expect here? Nonexistent production values, bad acting, bad effects, bad picture quality, bad editing and a bad music score with a cute premise, a little no budget charm and an attention-getting title. Things begin with a bunch of people having a party. One guy goes into flashback mode and we learn how the poor refrigerator's freezer section got some unwanted ice beat off with a hammer. So now it's pissed off. Steaming mad, you could say. The party clears out, leaving just two guys and their girlfriends. One by one they're killed off. The first victim has her hand chopped off when the door slams on it. A guy gets bashed against a wall. Another is stabbed with a door handle and the final chick gets smashed with the door. It also eats a cat. A girl comes over and cries over a dead body. The end.

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Strangely, the on-screen title calls our killer appliance a "refridgerator." I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. Even stranger, this isn't even the only killer fridge movie. Just one year after this made its way to videoland (where it was paired with the same filmmakers' THE HOOK OF WOODLAND HEIGHTS), the feature length film horror-comedy THE REFRIGERATOR (1991) was released. If interested, you can purchase Refrigerator, Woodland Heights and another short called DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS from the same folks (director/writer/producer Savino and writer/producer Mark Veau) from their website Media House Films.

★1/2