Fat Black Pussycat, The (1963)

Directed by:
Harold Lea

With a sketchy production history, it's no wonder this thing is so damn jumbled and confusing. Originally an ordinary, by-the-numbers detective / crime drama, this made zero impact upon its original release, with poor box office receipts reflecting that. Michael A. Ripps, who had previously turned the 1957 flop BAYOU into the 1960 hit POOR WHITE TRASH via the title change and more exploitative added footage, got ahold of the film and decided to do the exact same thing with it. Around 30 minutes of footage was eliminated from the original cut and new scenes (primarily some bloody slasher murders and people sitting behind desks talking) were added to turn it into a seedier, more violent film. The identity, and motive, of the killer was also changed. At least one of the lead characters completely disappears from the finale, a double (seen only from behind!) fills in for the other and for some reason multiple characters have the same name. Was it really necessary to name three different characters Dave? There's also a Harry and a Harold, as well as an Edward, an Edie and an Ellie.

Things begins with a naked woman crawling into an alleyway and dying. The victim - Edie Eichorn - was a free-spirited beatnik known to get around. Detective Dave Walsh (Frank Jamus) and his partner Edward Bono are called in to investigate. Dave starts by visiting The Fat Black Pussycat Cafe and Theater (the victim had a matchbook from the establishment in her purse), where he meets a girl named Jean who agrees to take him to a party to meet several of Edie's acquaintances. There, the detective meets a slew of bizarre performance artists, struggling actors, musicians and writers and all-around weirdo's. Nope, this film doesn't paint the beatnik crowd in a very charming light. All of the guys are are loud, obnoxious, needlessly violent drunks, pot-heads and/or mental cases. The women are basically just sluts, airheads or bitchy ("I heard she got killed by a sex fiend. Ain't that a laugh?") One couple - the guy decked out in a hilariously fake goatee - head out to the fire escape for some fresh air. A black-gloved killer sneaks up behind them, throws the guy over, stabs the girl and then tosses her over the side, too. A black pussycat, previously seen chillin' next to Edie's body, then cuddles up with both corpses.









Back at the party, Dave gets in a scuffle with two beatniks and is knocked unconscious with a chair. He wakes up to strange music on the couch of a woman he'd bumped into (literally) at the party. The woman turns out to be anthropologist and NYU professor Janet Lynd (Janet Roman) and the bongo drums are a recording of "a ritual puberty chant of the Watusi Tribe" (?) Janet reveals she was at the party because she's working on a paper about the beatnik subculture. Naturally, a romance blossoms between the two, while the newly added scenes depict more women getting their throats cut and some hilariously awkward dialogue scenes of policemen and mental health professionals sitting around and discussing what drives the psycho...

Commissioner Kriegen
"I'm quite certain you've got some eloquent theory prepared on the neurotic drives which compel this poor unfortunate to behave in this paranoid manner. The poor soul, though legally sane, is mentally ill."

Professor Le Blanc
"That was quite an eloquent dissertation, Commissioner. All of which may I humbly submit is not true. This person's m.o. is a paranoid schizophrenic with homosexual tendencies if male, lesbian if female, while in this schizophrenic state."

Sergeant Thomas Frank:
"You mean they can change their sex drive when they're a schizo?"

Professor Le Blanc:
"A true schizophrenic has a complete personality change!"

Commissioner Kiegen:
"You mean if somebody wanted to fake it, they could get their kicks either way? AC / DC?"

I have no idea what Ripps was getting at trying to link up the beatnik / NYC art's culture, homosexuality and psychotic behavior, but it seems like he had more than a little disdain for both artistic types and gays. One of the suspects is a gay artist named Brom (Avital Carme), who's innocent of the previous murders, but slits a woman's throat anyway when the police corner him. He's then shot to a bloody pulp using a machine gun. When the killer is finally revealed, we learn that they too are a gay nutjob. In addition, Mr. Ripps added another absurd concept to this film that involves cats. Apparently, felines always show up at murder scenes because they can pick up on the brainwaves of dying people using their ESP (!!) abilities.

Strangely enough, this sloppy hodgepodge contains no less than five people who'd achieve some level of fame during their lifetime; probably since it was filmed in Greenwich Village where all those real-life unhinged homos artistic types like to hang. The first is Manny Dworman, a former musician who's best known for opening the world famous "Comedy Cellar" in Manhattan (where Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano and many others got their starts). Secondly, there's Hugh Romney (playing an anti-violence ranting beatnik at the party) aka "Wavy Gravy;" a guy who helped to feed the four-hundred-thousand patrons of Woodstock, is well-known for his charity work and has a popular flavor of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream named after him. Actors Leonard Frey (who'd earn a Tony Award nomination for his theater work and an Oscar nomination for FIDDLER ON THE ROOF), Frank Marshall movie regular Hector Elizondo and prolific character actor Geoffrey Lewis (the father of Juliette Lewis) all have small roles. I actually don't recall seeing either Frey or Elizondo in the movie, probably because their scenes were amongst the cut ones. Lewis however is seen twice; one getting punch at the beatnik party and another time harassing Detective Dave in the park before a bomb goes off. Oh yes, the film also has a bomb.

The cinematography isn't bad, and there's a jazz music score (The Don Bader Group appear).

Something Weird Video, who try to spin this film's disjointedness into a positive on their website (can't say I blame 'em since they have to find some way to unload this turkey), paired it with 1966's THE BLACK CAT for the DVD release. As per their usual, the disc is loaded with lots of great (mostly cat-themed) extras. They also released the original version of the film (minus Ripps' scenes) on VHS. The cut scenes are also included on the DVD.

★1/2

Nu ji zhong ying (1973)

... aka: Bamboo House of Dolls, The
... aka: Bamboo Women's Prison

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

In 1971, producer Roger Corman and director Jack Hill had a big hit on their hands with the women-in-prison exploiter THE BIG DOLL HOUSE. The film was shot in the Philippines on a modest budget and its mix of sex, violence and sadism packed drive-ins and grindhouse cinemas around the world and ended up turning a huge profit. Corman would go on to produce a number of similar films immediately afterward; WOMEN IN CAGES (1971), THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972) and THE HOT BOX (1972) being the first few out of the chute. The pinnacle of the craze usually considered Jonathan Demme's CAGED HEAT (1974), which would go on to become a cult classic. As the decade wore on, other filmmakers from around the world followed suit to try to cash in, and the films themselves became increasingly more tasteless. In Canada, there was the notorious ILSA series, which began in 1974 and starred Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic Nazi commandant who delights is sexually torturing her female inmates. These films led to a boom in Nazi prison camp torture movies, which were especially popular in Italy. Another chief contributor to the subgenre was director Jesus Franco, who made around ten women-in-prison films produced in both Spain and Switzerland. And then there's Bamboo House of Dolls from Hong Kong; a Shaw Brothers Production heavily influenced by the Corman films.

Bamboo is pretty interesting in many different ways; it actually predates (and thus possibly influenced) the first Ilsa film in its concentration camp setting by a year, it's a bit more sadistic than what Corman was churning out at the time, it's set during World War II and it features three Caucasian actresses in lead roles (something not too common in Hong Kong cinema at the time). It's also very entertaining if you like these kind of things.

As the film opens, Japanese soldiers invade a Chinese hospital and start shooting the place up. After gunning down several dozen people (including women and children), the soldiers are instructed to round up the remaining women and take them to "The 13th Women's Concentration Camp." Amongst the women are three American Red Cross nurses; blonde-haired, blue-eyed tough cookie Jennifer (Birte Tove, a Danish soft-corn actress), the more demure and innocent Mary (Roska Rozen) and large-breasted nympho Elizabeth (Niki Wane). The soldiers also manage to snuff out a rebel and drag his wife, Yu-Lan (Hoi-Suk Lee), off to the camp as well. Immediately upon arriving, the women are given ripped t-shirts and panties to wear and are subjected to various tortures at the hands of sadistic Commander Inoue (Hsieh Wang), his equally evil lesbian head guard Mako (Terry Liu) and the dozens of guards and soldiers that populate the place. The prisoners are frequently slapped, kicked and pushed down, have their hair pulled and get killed at any sign of disobedience. During their first day there, the ladies get to see a woman whipped to death and another get fried when she tries to escape over the electrified barbed wire fence surrounding the place.

If things couldn't get any worse, the women are also forced into becoming sex slaves to entertain the troops. During a long rape montage, we get to see each of the ladies manhandled. An innocent blind girl named Hu Lizhu has her legs sliced up with a sword and is forced to walk on broken glass before getting thrown down on the glass and raped. Mary - who has been singled out by the alpha lesbian of the place - is pinned down by two guards and raped by Mako (who has a special strap-on for such occasions). Jennifer (who the commander has a thing for) and Yu-Lan are also slapped around and raped. As for Elizabeth... Well, she just get enough of it. And therein lies a major problem with this film, and that's tone. It's virtually impossible to laugh at Elizabeth tossing off her unsatisfactory lovers after we've just seen dead-serious scenes of women being abused and viciously killed. Yes, there's so much pain, screaming, crying and all-around misery to go around this place that even an out-of-nowhere food fight couldn't even make me smile.

The film also abruptly switches gears at around the mid-way point. After a first half dedicated almost entirely to death, torture and wall-to-wall T&A, the second half mostly lays off the sexploitation and goes the action movie route. Yu-Lan (suffering from a case of temporary amnesia after being struck in the head one too many times) was told the whereabouts of some hidden gold bars before being apprehended. There are two male alliances in the camp (both posing as guards) willing to risk their lives to help Yu-Lan escape and locate the treasure. Yu-Lan insists five of her friends; the three nurses, the blind girl and a student named Wang Xia (Hsia-ying Lo), come along. Their first escape is botched and they find themselves tied down to stakes in the heat and denied water for days. Their second attempt, with help from a man named Cui Guodong (Lo Lieh) is more successful and the rest of the film follows him and the ladies as they brave the wild to reach the gold while a bunch of soldiers try to track them down. Amongst the women there's also a spy working for the bad guys.

Despite the tonal issues, the fact this never strays very far from the standard W-I-P template and the fact several of our lead characters face a rather anti-climactic fate, this is still a watchable, highly entertaining and healthily-budget trash flick. It's nicely shot, has good sets, a decent music score from Wang Fu Liang (including a great credits theme) and nice location work during the second half, which takes place around waterfalls and the mountains. The acting really isn't too bad, either. It's also packed with action. There's cat fights, sword fights, gun fights, karate fights, bayonet stabbings, impalements, explosions, electrocutions, car chases, foot chases, snake attacks, forced boot licking and much, much more.

★★1/2

Host, The (1960)

Directed by:
Jack Hill

Made while director Jack Hill was still a student, this black-and-white short (which runs about half an hour) is rumored to have been the inspiration behind the third act of APOCALYPSE NOW (Francis Ford Coppola was one of Hill's classmates at UCLA). It also marks the film debut of actor Sid Haig, who'd be a popular exploitation film supporting player throughout the 60s and 70s before gaining a new generation of fans in the 2000s thanks primarily to his frequent casting in Rob Zombie movies (his "Captain Spaulding" from HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS is probably one of the more popular genre characters of the new millennium). Hill and Haig made a grand total of eight films together (most of which were produced by Roger Corman), including the wonderfully demented, blackly comic SPIDER BABY (1964), the frequently messy, very interesting and sometimes even brilliant vampire tale BLOOD BATH aka TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE (1966), the classic 'blaxploitation' Pam Grier vehicles COFFY (1973) and FOXY BROWN (1974) and several women-in-prison films that helped laid down the foundation for dozens of future chicks-in-chains releases.

Haig plays an unnamed fugitive from a Mexican prison who's riding around somewhere in the desert when he comes across an old, large, crumbling house. He goes in looking for water and ends up meeting a beautiful, bizarre-acting Indian woman (Sharon Bercutt) as well as a crazed Spaniard (Joseph Hanwright). The Spaniard immediately tries to shoot him, but he jumps for cover. The Indian woman follows him inside, mutters something about how her people are afraid to come out because of the man and how they believe he's preventing rain and thus keeping their corn crop from growing. She also encourages him to kill the guy. After being shot at a few more times, Haig obliges by poking out the Spaniard's eyeball with a tree branch and then bludgeoning him to death. That evening, the Indian woman's tribe (all wearing hoods) emerge from the shadows to dismember the corpse with machetes. Haig begins to think he's struck it rich when he discovers gold and jewels there the following day, but then realizes the Indians may have other ideas in mind.

Aside from the curio value of seeing Hill and Haig get their start, this certainly isn't anything to write home about. It's a typical student film done within the limitations of a student film budget and might remind one of a lesser Twilight Zone episode. The photography is OK and there are a few nice images (particularly at the very beginning), but the storyline is muddled and confusing, the acting is amateurish and the score is a bit overbearing. Hill also edited it. The assistant director was Egyptian-born Farouk Agrama, who'd go on to make several horror features himself (under the name Frank Agrama), such as QUEEN KONG (1976) and DAWN OF THE MUMMY (1981).

The film has been restored and can be found as an extra on the SWITCHBLADE SISTERS DVD (released by Rolling Thunder Pictures in 2000).

★★

Vahset kasirgasi (1985)

... aka: Brutal Storm

Directed by:
Kadir Akgün

In Turkey during the 70s and 80s, their crazy ass film industry cranked out dozens of cheapies which directly copied films from other countries. And by directly, I mean often line-for-line and scene-for-scene. In essence, these films were actually remakes. Apparently, it was assumed that these films would never, ever leave the country (and apparently the original versions would never enter!) so they had no fear of being sued for copyright infringement or plagiarism. Copies of these inferior clones eventually started to leak out; some were actually released to VHS in countries such as Greece and Germany, then they began showing up as black market tapes and then bootleg DVDs in the U.S. and now some have popped up on the internet. Some were copies of hit blockbusters, such as The Exorcist (or as they called it, SEYTAN), Jaws, Young Frankenstein, E.T., Star Wars and Rambo, but some of their choices for films to remake were downright bizarre. I've already seen and reviewed THIRSTY FOR LOVE, SEX AND MURDER (1972), which was a carbon copy of the not-especially-well known Italian giallo THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971). And now I've seen Brutal Storm, which copycats the barely-known Spanish chiller IT HAPPENED AT NIGHTMARE INN (1973), of all things.

Nightmare Inn (which is actually a pretty good film) starred Aurora Bautista and Esperanza Roy as, respectively, sanctimonious, bitter, hypocritical and controlling Marta and the weak and passive Veronica; a pair of murderous, middle-aged, ultra-religious sisters who own and operate an inn located in a popular tourist area and butcher women they view as being of loose moral character. This film features sanctimonious, bitter, hypocritical and controlling Naide (Nur Incegül) and weak and passive Cahide (Leyla Akin), who (surprise) own and operate an inn located in a popular tourist area and (even more surprisingly) butcher women they view as being of loose moral character. But hey, according to the opening narration; There are only two kinds of people in this world; the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous. The sisters are first scene hacking up a side of beef with cleavers while bitching about the "naked tourists invading our town" and how they'll all burn in hell. One of their female boarders, Hale, is caught sunbathing topless on the roof. During a scuffle, Naide screams "You sinful bitch!" and pushes her down the stairs, where she's impaled on a bronze statue. Instead of going to the police, the ladies decide to hack up the corpse and throw the pieces into an oven.

Nightmare Inn also featured blonde British actress Judy Geeson as Laura; a woman who shows up at the inn looking for answers when her sister disappears. This one features a blonde girl named Nalan, who shows up there looking for answers after her friend goes missing. Nalan is told that her friend has already checked out but is skeptical of that, rents a room and starts snooping around. Another free-spirited, obnoxious (and loud) girl named Dilek gets under the sisters' skin by constantly laughing, being drunk, making fake lesbian advances at Naide, running around in her bikini and dancing for men on the beach. Naide stabs her to death. Songül (Songül Gündüz), a single woman with an infant daughter, comes along next and Naide doesn't seem to appreciate the fact that the baby may have been born out of wedlock. Eventually realizing that three unexplained disappears probably means that something is seriously wrong, Nalan (who'd already been kicked out for asking too many questions) decides to check back in with her male friend Kaya (posing as her fiancée) to investigate some more.

The film seldom strays from the original source material. It's also technically inept. I'm not entirely sure (because the quality of the version I saw was in such poor shape), but this appears to have been shot on video. It's full of zoom shots, lingering shots of people at the beach, poor editing cuts, poor lighting, horribly inappropriate music cues and filler scenes that seem to last an eternity. There are several scenes of the characters walking down the street that go on for minutes and another of Naide walking through a field feeling herself up (after watching a couple have sex) that never seems to end. Aside from the husky-voiced Incegül (who also appeared in Bloody Mansion of Death for the same director) as the nastier of the two sisters, the acting is pretty bad. There are two topless scenes (one from the sunbather and another a shower scene) and a couple of bloody moments (including a decapitation).

One of the most memorable aspects of this film is the music score. The movie not only lifts its plot, dialogue and characters from another film, it also steals music from at least a dozen other films! Music from the first three Halloween movies makes up the bulk of it, but you can also hear snippets from other films, such as Deep Red, Cannibal Holocaust, Friday the 13th Part 3 (yes, the opening disco theme lives again!) and others. Nalan even attends a dance party at one point, where they play the Ghostbusters theme song! I didn't recognize all of the music, though. Some of it sounds lifted from an action movie (or movies) and doesn't fit the material at all. The film would get a lower rating if it wasn't all so funny.

SBIG

El aullido del diablo (1987)

... aka: Howl of the Devil

Directed by:
Paul Naschy

Famous horror actor Peter Kerensky aka Alex Doriani (Señor Naschy) supposedly committed suicide. Not long after, his notoriously unfaithful wife Lorena (Isabel Prinz) died from an overdose of heroine; orphaning their young son Adrian (Naschy's real-life son Sergio Molina, as "Serge Mill"). Adrian is now in the care of Alex's twin brother Hector (also Naschy), an egotistical, abusive, failed actor who's been in and out of mental institutions and is still bitter over the fact he was never able to achieve his brother's success. Hector is also a pervert and sadist who enjoys drugging women and then forcing them to participate in his twisted sex games. The women often walk away rattled but physically unharmed, but are immediately butchered by a gloved killer as soon as they leave his crumbling, remote mansion home. Also sharing space there is Eric (Howard Vernon), a chauffeur and servant who formerly worked for Alex and has now resigned himself to Hector's sick ways (one of his chief responsibilities is running out and fetching prostitutes for his master to play with and then throwing them out of the home). Though he's rumored to be a necrophile and often uses black magic to keep in contact with the spirit of Alex, Eric isn't such a bad guy after all, as he's kind to Adrian and ultimately wants to oversee the downfall of Hector.

Another frequent presence in the home is Carmen (Caroline Munro), an attractive cook and maid. Despite the fact she's disgusted by Hector's constant attempts to proposition her and buy her hand in marriage, Carmen sticks around because she's desperate for money to care for her ailing, elderly parents and has motherly affection toward poor, young Adrian, who is forbidden to go to school, have friends or live an otherwise normal life by his uncle. Instead, Adrian has retreated to a fantasy world with a bunch of make-believe friends... they're all monsters... and they're all played by Naschy! So in addition to getting to play twin brothers (including one who enjoys dressing up as Rasputin, Marquis de Sade and Fu Manchu, and the other who appears as a pale ghost), Naschy also gets to play Mr. Hyde, The Frankenstein Monster, The Phantom of the Opera, Quasimodo, a rotting zombie, Satan and even his most-famous horror character; the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky.

Carmen has made the mistake of having an brief affair with local priest Father Damián (Fernando Hilbeck), and now he continues to lust after her, regardless of the fact she's called the whole thing off. Damián won't take no for an answer, starts researching into the pasts of both the Doriani brothers and Eric and has even paid off drunken bum Zacarías (Cris Huerta) to spy on the Doriani home. During one scene, Carmen has a nightmare referencing both FRIDAY THE 13TH and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, where a masked man threatens to cut off her legs with a chainsaw.

Nearly all of the male characters are big time misogynists with dialogue like "Bitches! You use them and then throw them away!," so they're all suspects when the females start dropping like flies. A woman sitting in a car outside the Doriani home has her neck sawed open. A foul-mouthed prostitute who just indulged Hector's Rasputin fantasy is stabbed while walking home, a pot-smoking female camper has her throat cut while taking a piss, a female thief gets gutted and another woman looking for her missing sister is killed after having her nipple threatened by a poisonous snake. Someone sneaks into the morgue and dismembers one of the bodies with a chainsaw. Brigitte (Roberta Kuhn), a French student and writer actually enjoys being drugged, tied up and threatened with a knife. She shows up a second time only to get impaled while taking a bath. By the way, this has full nudity from four different women and naturally, being the ladies man he is (or at least fancies himself to be!), Mr. Naschy gets love scenes with most of them.

It's an incredibly busy and fast-paced film, and certainly no masterpiece, but it's fun and very entertaining. There are many enjoyable references to Naschy's career and his reputation as a horror star, the acting is pretty good, the story is entertaining, the characters are well-drawn, it delivers when it comes to sex and violence and there's even one of those great 80s synthesizer scores. Well, great, if you enjoy them! It's impossible to really evaluate the production quality since the version I watched looked like a second or third generation dupe recorded off of TV.

Unfortunately, this film was never English-dubbed or even released in America (to theaters or to video)... and for the life of me, I don't understand why. The film not only boasts Naschy (who also co-wrote and co-produced) in more roles than most genre legends play during their entire career, but also internationally-known actors Munro and Vernon, plus it's actually better than many of Naschy's earlier films that have received deluxe DVD treatments here in recent years. Oh well, maybe one day.

★★★

Morirai a mezzanotte (1986)

... aka: Die at Midnight
... aka: Midnight Horror
... aka: Midnight Killer
... aka: Midnight Ripper
... aka: You Will Die at Midnight

Directed by:
Lamberto Bava

Police officer Nicola Levi (Leonardo Treviglio) discovers that his wife Sara (Loredana Romito) has been cheating on him. The two get into an argument that escalates into a brutal physical fight when he slaps her, she sinks an ice pick into his shoulder and he starts to drown her in the kitchen sink. Nicola pulls it together long enough to get out of his home before actually killing her, uttering "I hope you die!" as he exits. And wouldn't ya know it, right after he leaves someone sneaks in and stabs Sara to death while she's in the shower. The killer even uses the same ice pick. Now with blood evidence where he was injured, a witness (he passed a mechanic on his way out) and a motive (his wife was rich), the cards are stacked against poor Nicola, who is forced to flee and hide out from the police. Anna Berardi (Valeria D'Obici), a professor and police psychologist who also happens to be Nicola's friend, believes the murder is just too brutal to be pinned on Nicola. In fact, it matches the same exact m.o. of a serial 'ripper' murderer named Franco Tribbo (Peter Pitsch). The problem is, Franco died in a nuthouse fire years earlier... or at least he was believed to have been.

After a second woman is chased into an abandoned opera house and is ice picked to death, Anna is assured of Nicola's innocence. She's even more assured when Franco himself shows up at her home one evening. Paolo Malco (star of Fulci's HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY) has the thankless role of Inspector Piero Terzi and he seems dead-set on Nicola's guilt. He doesn't believe Anna when she says Franco is still alive. Hell, he doesn't even believe his own daughter Carol (Lara Wendel, from Argento's TENEBRE) when she finds herself stalked by Franco while locked in a museum. A bit rattled by almost being killed, Carol decides to go to an unpopulated resort area, off-season while no one is around, of course, with a couple of her classmates; Gioia (Lea Martino) and Monica (Eliana Hoppe). Meanwhile, a policeman hears a scream and stumbles upon Nicola trying to attack Anna with a knife. Nicola is shot dead... and yet the murders continue.

Franco murders a shopkeeper by stuffing lingerie down her throat (after trying to force her to model a bra for him), and then decides to pay Carol and her girlfriends a visit. Carol and Gioia go jogging, so Monica is first up. If you don't laugh (or at least roll your eyes) watching her attempt to fight off the psycho with an electric mixer and then turn away from the killer and just stand there until he walks up to her and stabs her in the back, then you’re a more forgiving person than I. I should probably point out here that the killer also uses the mixer to, uh, violate the corpse, and had previously done the same to another victim with the ice pick. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

So where was I? Oh yes... Carol and Gioia make it back to the hotel and then it's their turn. Anna, the Inspector and another male classmate named Alberto (Marcello Modugno) also show up, and all that's left is one of the most ridiculous 'reveals' you'll find in the slasher canon... which goes completely against several things we've seen earlier in the film. Yes, several classic 'cheat' scenes were employed to try to throw us off. Boo. Hiss. And damn you Bava Junior (and you too, Dardano Sacchetti), it actually worked on me.

For what it's worth, this is fairly bloody and it's reasonably budgeted, scored (by Claudio Simonetti) and photographed (by Gianlorenzo Battaglia). There are few nice, stylish shots here if you like seeing light glimmering off of knife blades and such. On the down side, it's poorly written, silly as hell and the acting is mediocre at best. There's also more nudity on the poster than there is in the actual film. It's kind of amusing that every alternate title contains the word "midnight" in it, yet nearly every murder (aside from one where the victim specifically states it is 8pm right before she's killed) occurs in broad daylight.

So when all is said and done, I can only really recommended this one to undemanding slasher / giallo fanatics. It was never officially released in America.

★★

Xie qi (1981)

... aka: 邪妻

... aka: Curse of the Wicked Wife
... aka: Wicked Wife

Directed by:
"King Ming" (Kuang Hui)

A young woman (whose hair is covering her face) is almost raped three different times during the opening three minutes (!), seems to turn into a tiger and then kills her would-be attackers in quick succession. Master Kin (Hsieh Wang), a supposed philanthropist and pillar of the community, then sends a kind and charitable young man named Jen-hu (Hsiu-Shen Liang) out to investigate. Since all of the victims were patrons of a bar and whorehouse called "The Red Pearl Saloon," Jen-hu becomes a regular customer there in order to get to the bottom of things. He eventually catches eye of the beautiful owner / madam of the establishment, Miss Red (Sheng-Lien Lu), and learns a rumor that she supposedly is driven to kill every time there's a full moon. While out walking through the forest one evening, Jen-hu is approached by Miss Red, who tells him "I was chased by some drumkers and I get lost." Yes, this one has those kind of subtitles throughout... Is Miss Red really some kind of tigress (literally!) who has been killing innocent men, or is something else sinister afoot? If you chose Option # 2, then congratulations, you win! You'll be receiving one warning to avoid this absolute cluster-fuck of a confusing movie.

Aside from Miss Red's shenanigans, this has a secondary possible antagonist in the form of an old, bearded, long-haired wizard named Shan-fei. He has a gang of bandits lurking about to do his bidding (most of them are useless drunks) and the special ability to kill by throwing handfuls of poisonous centipedes at victims that burrow under the skin. But there's a slight problem with this cat. Either the script-writer or the subtitle-writer forgot to give him any kind of tangible motivation for his actions. What exactly does this guy want... aside from just generally being a prick? Well, as it turns out, no one aside from our hero is really who they claim to be. And that includes Jen-hu's possible love interest Da-nieu, who is gracious enough to treat us to a cheese-licious ballad ("The butterfly is flying... The bees is working...") and lots of whiny pining before her true colors are finally revealed. There's also a red masked man with a whip (who seems to be Miss Red's protector), two cartoonish gay men (one of whom turns to the other and says he wants to take a bath with him) and lots of obnoxious drunks (one of whom karate chops a sleeping prostitute in the head while she sleeps so he can rape her) to provide incessant comic relief throughout.

So yeah, this thing makes absolutely no sense. It tries during the very end to let the tiger out of the bag, but it's too little, too late. I don't like spending over an hour scratching my head saying "WTF?" at the events unfolding on screen only to get no less than three major revelations tacked-on during the final three minutes. Not that it really matters, because my head would explode if I even attempted to try to deconstruct this film's plot. I could say that it's an hour into the film that our hero reveals his "fiancé" (who's he's never even met!) has gone missing, that Miss Red has a flashback where her employer (who may or may not be the evil wizard!) tried to rape her and then murdered her mother, that there's a Scooby Doo-style reveal moment with the wizard, that one of the female's chief objectives is to steal a centipede poison antidote, that the 'transforming into a tiger' angle is a complete cheat and that anyone who is killed and not immediately buried returns to life as a clumpy-faced ghost bent on getting revenge on whoever killed them... but what's really the point?

If things couldn't get any worse, this is also victim to an abysmal editing job that makes matters even more confusing. Stock footage is used during the majority of the tiger attack sequences. There's an out-of-nowhere 'mondo' scene of three tigers killing and eating a goat. Then there's the startling image of a tiger leaping at, mauling and knocking down a terrified little boy. The quality of this footage, as well as most of the other footage of the tiger, doesn't match the rest of the movie. I looked around online and came across the same images from a 1977 film from the same director called Tiger Love (which was also released as Kung Fu Zombie vs. Tiger Claws [!?] in Germany) so the scenes here were swiped from that one... and I now have yet another film to add to my never-ending index. One scene that probably is original is the one where the villagers take jabs at an obvious stuffed tiger head.

The film's only saving grace are a few lively fight sequences. The leading actress does some impressive stunts; doing flips, high jumps, kicks and splits while taking on her opponents. She's also game enough to put live centipedes into her mouth and puke them up into our hero's hand at one point. So I'd like to salute Sheng-Lien Lu (in what may be her only film appearance) for going beyond the call of duty to try to entertain us. Nice try there.

It was released on VCD by Ocean Shores a long time ago and I believe that was it.

★1/2