Vacaciones de terror (1988)

... aka: Vacation of Terror

... aka: Vacations of Terror

Directed by:
René Cardona III

In a sepia-toned prologue, a witch (Andaluz Russell) vows revenge on her executioners before being burned at the stake. The grand inquisitor (“special appearance by” Carlos East) then has all of her belonging, including a creepy old doll), tossed into a well and sealed shut. Jump ahead to the late 80s and we meet Fernando (Julio Alemán), a wealthy architect who's interested in ancient culture and the old ways... like eating tacos with cow eyeballs inside (!) Fernando's just inherited a new vacation home from his dead auntie and decides to take his wife Lorena (Nuria Bages), who's two months pregnant, and three young children; daughter Gabby (Gianella Hassel Kus) and twin sons Jaimito (Carlos East Jr.) and Pedrito (Ernesto East), there for a little vacation. Fernando's teenage niece Paulina (Gabriela Hassel), who's been staying with them while she's in school, is also invited and is even allowed to let her “funny,” mullet-y unemployed boyfriend Julio (Pedro Fernández) tag along. Thankfully, Julio happens to be really into science, the occult and about a thousand other things and has just recently traded a “little magic box” (a Walkman) to some backwoods Indian (Ernesto Casillas) for a magical medallion that is said to ward off all evil. Naturally, that medallion will later come in handy.

When the family arrive at the once-beautiful home, they're sad to see that the place is now all run down. Not only could it use a coat of paint but the inside is full of dust, dirt, spiderwebs and covered antique furniture. The uptight wife isn't too happy about any of this and bitches up a storm but she'll soon have to contend with even worse things than not having a stove to cook on. Yup, you guessed it: The home was built upon the same cursed plot of land from the opening scene. Pretty soon lots of cliche-ridden, sometimes poorly-edited and staged supernatural scenes start playing out as the family weathers a supernatural shit-storm. The film not only borrows its central plot and family-friendly style PG-13 scares from Poltergeist (1982), but it also swipes two pieces of key imagery from the Hooper / Spielberg film: the living tree and the possessed doll.

Despite the fact the electricity hasn't yet been turned on, the lights manage to come on all by themselves. One of the little boys climbs a huge tree in the backyard (the same one where the witch was tied up and burned years earlier) and claims it won't let him come down. Later, when Fernando and Julio attempt to cut down the tree, it bleeds. Little Gabby is haunted by visions of the witch and nightmares about the execution. She falls down the well (which is actually the entrance to a cave) and finds the cursed doll, which possesses her, turns her “evil” and gives her an echo voice. The doll's eyes move, it jealously rips up all of Gabby's teddy bears and dolls and telepathically communicates grim things to her (“She says that Mother is going to die.”). It also has the power to injure people, make people pass out and make people hallucinate.

The witch's spirit first decides to take out the mother because she thinks the doll is ugly and encourages Gabby to play with her other toys instead. After she starts convulsing to the point where she may lose her baby, Fernando rushes her to the hospital, leaving Paulina and Julio in charge of the kids. The witch / doll then decides she hates Julio and Paulina too and tries to kill them both. It knocks Julio out with a crippling headache, attempts to run him over with his own truck, pummels him with dishes, flings a drawer full of sharp knives and other kitchen utensils at him and eventually sucks him into a mirror (hey, at least it's not a TV set). Paulina has it nearly as bad as she's knocked around a room, has her clothes shredded, burns her hand on a red-hot door handle and is terrorized with frightening visions of bleeding walls, green slime, rotting food, snakes, rats and tarantulas. Because the mom is having nightmares in the hospital and senses her children are in danger, she has Fernando rush home to make sure everything is alright.

Carlos Valdemar's script (based on a story co-written by the director and Santiago Galindo) doesn't do much other than unleash a bag of hoary and outdated haunted house tricks onto the audience. The only thing they seem to have left out from your typical 1930s old dark house flick was eyes on a painting moving but they more than make up for that with a hundred odd close-up shots of the doll's eyes shifting from left to right. They also don't bother linking Fernando and his family to the witch's executioners, so why she's so dead set on getting her "revenge" against a completely random and innocent family is left unclear. Production values are low, the acting isn't very good, the whole thing is incredibly predictable and it's pretty tame for the time (there's no gore, nudity or even profanity). Still, I'd put this into the “mildly entertaining” category. The pacing is pretty fast, it doesn't overstay its welcome at just 80 minutes and provides enough brainless entertainment (particularly in the second half) to keep you going.

The director is the son of René Cardona Jr. and grandson of René Cardona, two of the most prolific and successful Mexican directors of their day who were involved in one capacity or another in hundreds of film productions apiece. While René III hasn't been quite as busy, he has still amassed an impressive 70+ directorial credits to date. Vacaciones was one of his very first films as director and was successful enough to both spawn a 1989 sequel and prompt the director to make a whole slew of obscure low-budget horror flicks like Alarido del terror / SHRIEK OF TERROR (1991), El descuartizador / “The Ripper” (1991), El intruso / “The Intruder” (1991), Colmillos, el hombre lobo / “Fangs, the Werewolf” (1993), Sendero mortal / “Deadly Path” (1993) and El asesino del teatro / “The Theater Murderer” (1996). If none of those titles sound familiar it's probably because most were never released outside of Spanish-speaking countries. Vacaciones became an exception to the rule when BCI Eclipse released it on DVD in 2008. They also released the sequel and a number of other previously-unseen-in-America titles.

Using the alias “Al Coster,” René III also appears in a cameo role as a real estate agent selling the home to potential new buyers at the very end. He's dedicated the movie to his grandfather, who passed away in 1988.

★★

Witchmaker, The (1969)

... aka: I seguaci di satana (The Followers of Satan)
... aka: La hechicera de la muerte (Sorceress of Death)
... aka: Legend of Witch Hollow, The
... aka: Witchkill
... aka: Witch Maker
... aka: Witchmaster, The

Directed by:
William O. Brown

After taking a dip in a pond, a woman is attacked by a hulking, pale-faced man as she's getting dressed. He knocks her out, rips off her bra, draws a symbol on her stomach, hangs her from a tree by her feet, slits her throat and then collects her blood in a bucket. She's not the first young lady to die in a similar fashion (“...hanging there like a cut hog”) in the same Louisiana swamp and is actually the eighth victim in the past two years. Police have come there numerous times to investigate matters but have come up empty-handed in their investigations. A local thinks there's a “prevert” on the loose, but a small research team believe something supernatural may be afoot and show up to look into things. Posing as a movie scout there to check out locations, Dr. Ralph Hayes (Alvy Moore, also the associate producer) is actually a professor there to do  “psychic research.” To help him, he's brought along psychic “sensitive” Tasha (Thordis Brandt), skeptical reporter Vic Gordon (Anthony Eisley), his secretary Maggie (Shelby Grant) and young students Owen (Tony Benson) and Sharon (Robyn Millan).

During the boat trip to a secluded cabin they'll be renting for a week, old timer Mr. LeBlanc (Burt Mustin) tells them all about the local witch legends and says that once he drops them off, there's no way back to civilization until he comes out there to get them. Far as he knows, no one's made it through the gator, snake and quicksand infested swamps by foot and lived to tell about it. As everyone's getting settled in, the man who's been periodically killing local girls spies on them from the brush. He's eventually revealed to be a powerful Satanist by the name of Luther the Berserk (John Lodge). Luther immediately falls in love with the beautiful Tasha and learns her grandmother was also a witch, which makes her suitable for membership into his coven. Luther calls forth an old, ugly hag witch named Jessie (Helene Winston) and strikes up a bargains with her: He'll help to restore her youth and beauty in exchange for her helping him get his hands on Tasha. First, they need to blood of a young virgin...

Using her magic, Jessie possesses Tasha's body and uses her to lure innocent Sharon into the woods, where she's promptly pummeled and then drained dry by Luther. Once the blood ritual is complete (which involves Tasha getting her lower back branded with a hot iron and then professing her eternal love to a Satan bust), Jessie transforms into a newer and hotter model (played by Warrene Ott). Luther and Jessie then decide it would be best to use Maggie as their next blood donor and knock off all the male researchers so there'll be no one left to get in their way. Our heroes, meanwhile, try to devise their own plan to stay alive. Since their boat won't be arriving for days, they plan on using Maggie as bait to lure Luther out of hiding so they can kill him. Wild garlic, which supposedly makes humans invisible to witches, and fresh pig's blood, which is said to be fatal if ingested by those in line with Satan, are two of the things in their bag of witch-fighting tricks.

Witchmaker has both bad points (which we'll get to first) and good points. The movie is overly-talky and the dialogue is frequently leaden, which may not have been a huge issue if they had decent actors to pull it all off. Alas, the acting in this one is incredibly wooden by nearly the entire principal cast, with the two biggest names on the payroll (Green Acres star Moore and TV and exploitation flick regular Eisley) being perhaps the biggest offenders. The two exceptions to the bad acting rule are Lodge, whose fun and animated performance puts most of the others to shame, and Winston, who's effective in her small witch role (she also dubs the younger version of her character). The biggest issue with this one though is that things really drag after the first 10 or so minutes. The initial set-up is adequate, but then minor plot points start getting dragged out in a dull, lifeless manner, resulting in a mid-section that's both plodding and tedious.

Thankfully, the last 15 to 20 minutes are pretty good payoff for slogging through the rest. These final scenes show us what goes down at a Witch's Sabbath when Luther calls forth ten other members of the Satanic elite for a shindig that includes food, dance, sex, lashing (of one of the gossipy female members) and (they hope) a climactic initiation of their thirteenth member. With its more academic and pseudo-scientific approach to the paranormal, this also feels a bit ahead of its time and elements of many later witch / Satanism / ghost movies can be seen all over this one. In other words, this may have been a more influential film than usually given credit for. One of the other places this excels is in the atmosphere department and the filmmakers do as wonderful a job utilizing the desolate Louisiana bayou locations as cinematographer John Arthur Morrill does filming them. While all of the above helps, it's not quite enough to overcome the other major problems at hand.

If you happen to like seeing Playboy centerfolds on the silver screen, you've lucked out here as this features not one, not two, but four different Playmates in small roles as coven members. The first of these is Diane Webber, who was a rare two-time Playmate (May 1955 and February 1956) and one of the most famous nude models of her day. Webber would also become a spokeswoman for the nudist colony lifestyle and a belly dancing instructor. Her skills at the latter are even briefly showcased in this film. Playmate #2 is Sue Bernard (December 1966), who'd previously appeared in the cult classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and went on to play small roles in Necromancy (1971) and THE KILLING KIND (1973) before marrying actor Jason Miller. Nancy Crawford (April 1959) and Gwen Lipscomb (April 1967, as “Gwen Wong”) are the other two. In addition, Patricia Wymer, who also did some nude modeling work and received top-billing for a pair of Crown International releases around the same time, has a small role. One would think that with this female cast the nudity would be through the roof, but there's no actual nudity in the film itself. All naughty bits are amusingly covered with strategically-placed hands, plants, cups, etc.

Some viewers may also recognize the oldest of the male coven members, who's played by former Los Angeles-based TV horror host Seymour (aka Larry Vincent), who hosted numerous late night horror shows and also made appearances in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971) and Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls (1973) before his death in 1975.

Made in response to the popularity of Ira Levin's best-selling novel Rosemary's Baby the same year Polanski's classic screen adaptation became a hit, this was conceived to show specifically at drive ins. According to executive producer L.Q. Jones (in an interview on the Code Red DVD), cars were lined up for miles to see it and the film set records on the drive in circuit. It played on a double bill with Larry Buchanan's THE NAKED WITCH (1961) is some venues and with THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED aka La residencia (1969) in others, often using the title The Legend of Witch Hollow. Jones also claims he had a hand in writing, selling and shooting it sans credit and that it was endorsed by Anton LaVey (“a fun man to talk with”) and his Church of Satan! The film's success led Jones and Moore to produce another witchcraft film: THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971), which turned out much better than this one.

★★