Torture Dungeon (1970)

... aka: Dungeon of Death

Directed by:
Andy Milligan

Life is full of regrets. Such as when I was a 9-year-old and got busted by a store manager sticking a G.I. Joe down the front of my pants, or when I was 16 and put a quart of oil in my power steering reserve. Now I can add "sitting on a stockpile of Andy Milligan movies for years and just now getting around to watching some of them" to my ever-growing list of boo boos. As soon as I heard the majestic classical music playing and saw a hideous yellow title card reading "Torture Dungeon" clumsily wedged in between the over-a-shawl-of-blue-silk credits, I pretty much knew I was gonna like this one. Only in Milligan's wacky universe could a film open with the camera nearly falling out of the director's hands (!) and then continue on with a scene of three flamboyant fellas walking through a field picking flowers before one of them is decapitated by a hooded executioner! On the outset, this might seem like a cut-rate TOWER OF LONDON wannabe, but if you have a taste for the weird and perverse, production values and competence be damned, then you'll find an extraordinary amount of off-the-wall goodies to be found here.

Mr. Milligan, a man who never understood the meaning of 'working within your means,' whisks us away to the magical, mythical Kingdom of Terragon, a land where period detail is lacking but kinky hijinks and fucked-up folks with major hang-ups are in abundance. The man who lost his head in the opening sequence just so happened to be of royal lineage. In fact, he was next in line to be crowned King. However, one of his dysfunctional family members wants complete control of the fledgling kingdom and will stop at nothing - including butchering anyone who gets in his way - to get it. While the plot might not sound like much, it's the warped screenplay, decadent characters and hilariously cheapjack production values that make this one so extra special. You will never, ever meet a group of characters like the ones featured in this flick. So without further ado, let me introduce you to some of them...

Norman, Duke of Norwich
(Gerald Jacuzzo as "Jeremy Brooks")
A swishy, perverted, eye-rolling, lip-smacking, self-proclaimed "tri-sexual," pleasure-seeking Frank Zappa look-a-like who makes Caligula look restrained by comparison and has temper tantrums more suited to a toddler, Norman is fourth in line for the crown... and he doesn't like it one bit. Conspiring with his hunchback sidekick, his mistress and a loin-cloth clad (!) executioner, Norman makes mince-meat out of those who are getting in the way of him living the lavish lifestyle he knows he deserves. He's so good he even has stuffy councilman Peter the Eye (Neil Flanagan) in his pocket. For laughs, Norman also operates his own private torture chamber where victims are chained up, starved and have their tongues and limbs removed. Despite the title of this film, his "Torture Dungeon" is only featured in one scene. Did I mention Norman also has temper tantrums?
Albert, Duke of Abernathy
(Hal Borske in a pageboy wig)
After the death of his brother, Albert has moved up to first in line for the crown and inescapably becomes a target of his unhinged half-brother. Not that it really matters since Albert is mentally retarded. You see, he "fell on his head" as a child, and now he can barely talk and likes to sit on the ground eating bugs and grass. He's so lame that he doesn't even know what to do during his wedding night and must be coached into taking off his clothes and joining his new bride in bed by Norman (who plots to steal his wife once the royal seed has been planted).
Heather MacGregor
(Susan Cassidy)
A busty nineteen-year-old peasant girl whose carefree days of frolicking nude in a stream and in the forest with her lover William (Dan Lyra) are about to come to an end. Heather is plucked from obscurity and offered up as Albert's bride after her adoptive father sells her for 30 gold pieces. She plans to run off with her beau, but the executioner shows up to crucify him and sink a pitchfork into his neck. But life must go on after all and Heather forgoes the grieving process in favor of getting knocked up by that drooling buffoon Albert.

Lady Jane
(Patricia Dillon)
Now second in line for the crown, tortured Lady Jane managed to get herself knocked up out of wedlock. To make matters worse, the father of her unborn child is dead. And to make matters even worse than that, the father of her unborn child is also her dead brother. She'd fallen in love with him and, knowing Norman is responsible for his death, plots revenge ("From now on, revenge is my lover!")

Lady Agatha
(Donna Whitfield)
Third in line for the crown, Lady Agatha is just kind of there... with only her amazingly wooden line deliveries to keep her company.

Magda
(Helen Adams)
An elderly, senile, shrill 'marriage counselor'... who for some strange reason finds it necessary to dress like a giant butterfly while dishing out the redundant goods on the birds and the bees to the less-than-wholesome Heather.

Ivan, the Hunchback
(Richard Mason)
He sings. He dances. He constantly bounces up and down. He gets whipped for falling on to the ground and simulating masturbation. He's Ivan! Ivan is not only a jester, but he's also Norman's secret lover. Ivan also induges in necrophilia when the opportunity comes his way. He relates a childhood trauma story about when he was six years old and his prostitute mother wanted him to be a more convincing beggar so she arranged for some of her male 'friends' to gang rape him and then stomp on his back until it broke (!!)

Rosemary
(Patricia Garvey)
Norman's other lover, Rosemary was a poor orphan who had religion shoved down her throat growing up. Her aunt sold her to the kingdom at age 12 and she spent the next four years eating table scraps and veggie peels. That is, until she became a chambermaid and found her way into Norman's bed. Now Norman wants to have a menage-a-troix with her and his hunchback buddy. Will Rosemary cave under the pressure?

Margaret, the One-Eyed Hag
(Maggie Rogers)
This 'one-eyed hag' has a bone to pick with Norman because years earlier he locked her in a burning church, which resulted in her being hideously disfigured, losing both her husband and one of her peepers and having to give up custody of her infant daughter. Did I mention that Heather has never met her mother? Yes, I believe I did. When not loitering around in the torture chamber or impressing with her spear-chucking skills, Margaret also takes time out of her busy schedule to provide us with the moral of the story: "Why do people do such fouls things? They're beasts by nature!" Preach it, sister.

Needless to say, watching all of these not-so-fine folks interacting, fighting and killing each other off makes for some, uh, rather interesting viewing. I won't lead anyone astray by saying this is a good movie. It's not. The performances range from hilariously overwrought to ridiculously wooden, the sets would be subpar for an elementary school production, the costumes were all fashioned out of bedsheets, shower curtains and quilts and all of the music was stolen from other movies. The chaotic editing, lighting that is alternately too bright or too dark and amateurish 16mm photography are awful, too. While I recognize this for the disasterous mess it is, I can't help but recommend it as the fascinating and oddly engrossing train wreck that it is. Every horror fan should watch at least one Andy Milligan movie, and this is one of the 'best' I've seen so far.

Strangely enough, in a film filled with incest, rape, child abuse, threesomes, full frontal nudity from both sexes and lots of cheap gore, a gay kissing scene between Norman and his hunchbacked amore was the one to be censored out (notice the jump in frames when the mad duke leans over hunchie and asks if he's happy). If left intact, that probably would have been a first in the world of horror. It was written by "John Borske" (who is probably co-star / technical director Hal Borske) and Milligan (who also shot it, did costumes as "Raffine" and probably also decorations as "Elaine"). The budget was just 15 thousand dollars.

Midnight Video and Something Weird Video were the American video distributors. I don't believe this is officially on DVD. Methinks a Milligan box set is long overdue. I'll be the first in line.

SBIG

Man with Two Heads, The (1972)

... aka: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Blood
... aka: Man with Two Faces, The

Directed by:
Andy Milligan

By Milligan standards, this is a disappointingly dull, slow, routine and somewhat tame adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Technically-speaking, it's slightly more competent than most of his other films. He's still stuck with a microscopic budget, but in this instance the camera seems to stay on a tripod much of the time, the primary actors are decent (it was actually filmed in England using local talent), the sets and costumes look a bit more convincing than usual (maybe they were allowed to raid a theater wardrobe department instead of someone's linen closet) and the whole production has a stage play feel to it. Sadly, because it's a fairly faithful Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation, Milligan's personality seems almost completely absent from the dialogue. It's almost as if he was trying to go legit or was aiming for respectability. Either that, or someone had him on a tight leash throughout the production. There are still trademark Milligan flashes to the cinematography from time to time, such as the camera spinning around to where you can't tell what the hell is going on during most of the horror scenes, but for the most part, this is a sterile and impersonal effort. The only thing of distinction is the high level of misogyny and that it has some of the absolutely worst overlighting in the history of cinema. During most of the scenes, the actors faces are drowned out in white glare.

In merry England, a hag prostitute (who's later referred to as a "young girl") gets stabbed and gutted. After the killer is captured and commits suicide, atheist medical school professor Dr. William Jekyll (Denis De Marne) gets permission from the dead man's wife to procure the body for his studies. Jekyll's theories on how to eliminate man's criminal urges are so outlandish they've alienated from the entire medical board and he's only been able to find six students in all of Europe to teach. His students dismember the killer's corpse (they actually start hacking into it with cleavers and a hatchet!), remove the head and Jekyll uses his special formula, which isolates and treats the "evil area" of the brain, on the killer's brain. It turns the bad area blue and the deeper the blue the more evil the person.

Sensing his formula will work on humans, having already created an antidote and frustrated by the fact he's going to have to wait on a shipment of vicious animals to do further tests on, an impatient Jekyll decides to go ahead and drink the serum himself. Little does he know, but his favorite student Jack Smithers (Berwick Kaler) has accidentally erased Jekyll's antidote formula by spilling liquid on the papers. Smoke fills the room, Jekyll writhes in agony and then transforms into a misogynist alter ego with a palid appearance, a toothy grin and thick eyebrows. Clad in a top hat and cap and introducing himself as Danny, Jekyll starts frequenting a local pub and sets his sights on singer / prostitute April Conners (Julia Stratton, billed as "April Conners"). After beating a man with his cane, Jekyll accompanies April back to her apartment and then proceeds to degrade her ("You're a cheap little slut. You know that, don't you? You shouldn't be allowed on the face of this Earth. You're scum!" You're the defecation of the slums of London!"), slap her around, pulls her hair, smack her over the head, makes her bark like a dog and then burns her with his cigar. He decides not to kill her, though, and just knifes a prostitute outside after he leaves.

The next day, Jekyll wakes with ripped, blood-stained clothes but no recollection of the past evening's events. From here on out, he'll slip in and out of the Danny persona. He starts being mean to his mothering sister Carla (Jacqueline Lawrence), starts neglecting his fiance Mary Ann (Gay Feld) even more than he already was, tells his sole female student that "All women should be in bed to be used!," shows up at Jack's to stab him to death and set his house on fire, then pays another visit to April to whip her with his belt. On his third visit to April he decapitates her with a meat cleaver, but any trace of gore seems to have been removed. Things get a bit frantic with the seizure-like 'shakycam' camerawork whenever anything horrific or action-oriented occurs.

Though De Marne gives a fair performance as the tortured doctor, this is sadly both boring (with many gruelingly long talk scenes) and completely unoriginal. It's almost like an attempt at a Hammer Film, minus those film's production values and general competence. It does however have one solitary bizarro scene where Jekyll spends the evening in a hazy brothel where kinky sex and mutilation take place. Unfortunately, the copy I watched was so damn bright I couldn't even make much of it out.

Billed as "Jeremy Brooks," Gerald Jacuzzo (from the director's much more memorable TORTURE DUNGEON) has a small role. Originally filmed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Blood, the title was changed by producer William Mishkin to cash in on the success of The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971) and The Thing with Two Heads (1972). The only VHS releases I'm aware of in America came via Midnight Video in 1982 and then through Something Weird Video.

★

Cellar Dweller (1987)

... aka: Cannibal Monster, The
... aka: Ork
... aka: Underground Werewolf

Directed by:
John Carl Buechler

Comic book artist Colin Childress (Jeffrey Combs), best known for his horrific "Cellar Dweller" series, has been using an ancient Satanic book to fill in his dialogue bubbles. In the process, he manages to resurrect both a big demon monster and a lady in peril, all of whom go up in flames. Thirty years later, horror-loving cartoonist Whitney Taylor (Debrah Mullowney, who'd marry actor James Farentino and go by the professional name Debrah Farentino) arrives via taxi to the secluded Throckmorton Institute for the Arts, an artist's colony which used to be Childress' home. A big fan of the "Cellar Dweller" comics, Whitney decides she wants to do something along those lines with her career. She's given a chilly reception by school administrator Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne De Carlo), who remembers Whitney unfavorably from a convention years earlier and doesn't believe comic art is actually art (calling it "populist tripe'). The cellar where Childress did most of his work, and the same place he and the woman died (Childress was blamed for killing her) is off limits to everyone.

Whitney soon meets a handful of other students, including young abstract painter Phillip Lemley (Brian Robbins, then known as the star of the series Head of the Class and now a successful producer and director), eccentric performance artist Lisa (Cheryl-Ann Wilson) and cigar-chomping pulp writer and Raymond Chandler wannabe Norman Meshelski (Vince Edwards). There's also the bitchy Amanda (Pamela Bellwood, just wrapping up her long stint on the primetime soap Dynasty), who had previously attended another art school with Whitney and made her life a living hell because she was jealous of her success. Since Mrs. Briggs is on Amanda's side, the two women team up to try to get Whitney kicked out of the artist's colony by setting her up as a plagiarist. Meanwhile, Whitney keeps hearing noises coming from the cellar. Upon investigating, she discovers all kinds of remnants from Childress' career, including copies of his comics and the Satanic book ("Curses of the Ancient Dead"). How none of this stuff was damaged or destroyed in the fire, or removed by the police, is anybody's guess.

Whitney convinces Mrs. Briggs to let her set up her work station in the cellar. She starts messing with the evil book, draws the titular creature and then people start dying as the flesh-hungry creature materializes in the 'real world' and gobbles them up. Some interesting things happen; Whitney begins drawing comics that come true, but then the drawings start materializing out of thin air, we learn the creature is fueled by literally consuming creative energy, etc., but they aren't always adequately expanded upon. One nice touch toward the end is that our heroine discovers she can both contain the monster and bring those who have been killed back to life, but that aspect is completely undermined by a poor ending.

Seems the filmmakers were shooting for nothing more than a fun, escapist movie with an appreciation for macabre art and a comic book feel, but they're only partially successful because of the muddled, half-hearted creature mythology (the film runs just 77 minutes and probably could have used at least another 10 to fill in the gaps). Farentino is a likable and appealing lead, De Carlo has a fun supporting role (Combs is pretty much wasted, though) and the design on the big, wolf-like monster is pretty good. There's also an old-of-left-field fantasy sequence featuring an axe-wielding zombie. Director Buechler (best known as a make-up fx man) had already made TROLL (1986) for executive producer Charles Band's Empire Pictures (note the posters for DOLLS and GHOST TOWN on the wall). He'd also go on to also direct FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD (1988), GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE (1990), WATCHERS REBORN (1998), MINER'S MASSACRE (2002) and others.

Screenwriter Don Mancini would go on to write CHILD'S PLAY (1988) and all of its subsequent sequels; finally stepping into the director's chair for SEED OF CHUCKY (2008).

It was filmed in Italy and released to VHS several times (through New World, Starmaker and others). Image released a laserdisc, though there's no DVD as of this writing.

★★

El secreto del Dr. Orloff (1964)

... aka: Brides of Dr. Jekyll
... aka: Dr. Jekyll's Mistresses
... aka: Dr. Orloff's Monster
... aka: Maîtresses du Docteur Jekyll, Les
... aka: Mistresses of Dr. Orloff, The
... aka: Secret of Dr. Orloff, The

Directed by:
"Jess Frank" (Jesus Franco)

An Austrian / Spanish / French co-production, this was originally released in both America (Dr. Orloff's Monster) and Spain (El secreto del Dr. Orloff / "The Secret of Dr. Orloff") as a sequel to Franco's earlier hit Gritos en la noche (1961) aka THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1961), though not in France, where it was titled Les maîtresses du Docteur Jekyll ("The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll"). So, is it a sequel to the original Orloff film or not? Well, yes and no. Technically-speaking, the French title is the most accurate since the film deals primarily with Professor Jekyll, though there's a brief appearance by an elderly man who's presumably Dr. Orloff. Sort of passing the torch down if you will. Sequel or not, the two films have much in common, including similar characters (though the names have been changed), bawdy musical numbers, an old castle setting, numerous scenes in jazz clubs and a disfigured killer being controlled by an evil, intelligent scientist / doctor mastermind. Most seem to think this one isn't nearly as good as the first Orloff film, but I beg to differ. It's just as good.

Ditching the period setting of the first, this updates the story to modern times but keeps the atmospheric Gothic trappings intact. Dr. Conrad Jekyll (Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui) has just learned (from his elderly superior Dr. Orloff) the secret of how to use ultrasonic sound to activate and control a humanoid robot. So what's the first thing he does with his newfound power? Why, make the robot strangle a topless stripper, of course! Conrad is constantly haunted by memories of an affair his wife Ingrid (Luisa Sala) had with his brother, which angered him so much he ended up killing his sibling. Actually, the robot killer, Andros (played by "Hugh White" / Hugo Blanco), is his brother. Andros (who's tall, pale, gloved, dressed in all-black, walks upright and stiff and will instantly remind viewers of Cesare in the silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) still has vague memories of his past, but is at the mercy of Conrad, who keeps him locked up in an upright glass coffin when he's not using him to kill.

Because of an inheritance she's supposed to get on her twenty-first birthday, Jekyll's niece Melissa (Agnès Spaak) arrives over Christmas break with a male admirer of hers named Juan Manuel (José Rubio) in tow. Melissa never got to actually meet her father, and her mother passed away after saving enough money for her to attend college. Melissa is immediately perplexed at her aunt and uncle's erratic behavior. Ingrid is a sickly, bitter and reclusive alcoholic who hates her unfaithful, neglectful husband and suffers from nightmares where she screams "Murderer!" over and over again. Uncle Conrad forbids anyone from going into either his tower laboratory or his dead brother's room and refuses to allow Melissa's beau to come inside and forces him to stay at a hotel in town. After seeing a picture of the father she's never met and then seeing Andros walking about, Melissa decides to try to solve the mystery before heading back to school.

While not quite as atmospheric as the first Orloff opus, this is still fairly stylish (the art direction, photography and lighting are all good) and has the superior screenplay. There's more of an actual plot here, better-defined characters and more natural, sometimes even humorous, dialogue. There are also surprisingly affecting scenes of Andros going to visit his own grave and sneaking into his daughter's bedroom at night to take a gander at the now-grown daughter he never got to meet and now refuses to harm. Franco's favorite milieus; smoky jazz clubs, seedy strip bars and even an opium den, are exploited as the mad Dr. Jekyll gets his jollies sending Andros out to murder innocent (well, sort of...) women. Perla Cristal , who played Orloff's reluctant female companion is the first film, shows up in this one, too, as a victim who performs a memorable song called 'Pepita.' Also in the cast are Pastor Serrador as the obligatory police inspector, Manuel Guitián as the Jekyll family's servant and José Truchado and Ramón Lillo as cops. Franco himself has a cameo as a blind piano player whose girlfriend is attacked after taking a bath; one of two instances of nudity in the film. Daniel White contributes an outstanding score to the proceedings.

Based on a novel by David Khune (Franco). Image handled the DVD release and put out a nice-looking, subtitled print. Other films in Franco's Orloff series include THE ORGIES OF DR. ORLOFF (1969), THE INVISIBLE DEAD (1971), THE SINISTER EYES OF DR. ORLOFF (1973) and THE SINISTER DR. ORLOFF (1984).

★★★