Gecenin Katili Ustura (1980)

... aka: Gecenin Katili (Killer of the Night)

... aka: Murderer of the Night, The

... aka: Razor Killer of the Night

Directed by:

Semih Servidal

Sadece korkunç! I've now seen around a dozen pre-1990 Turkish horror films and have yet to stumble across what I'd consider a "good" one. In fact, most of these have been outright terrible! And this - whatever the hell this is - only carries on in that not-so-grand tradition. I had no clue what I was getting myself into here and decided to watch this based solely on keywords labeling it a "Turkish giallo" or a "Turkish slasher." Sounded interesting enough, especially since the release date corresponded with the rise in similar flicks in North America. Little did I know, but this is mostly a horribly-spliced-together collage of scenes from a bunch of different erotic movies! Bookmarking the action are two slasher scenes that are completely unrelated to all of the stuff in between.

Turkey's film industry had hit its production peak in the period between 1950 and 1973 when Yeşilçam, which was basically their version of Hollywood or Bollywood, was cranking out hundreds of films a year. However, TV eventually became the entertainment option of choice in the country and the market for theatrically-released films decreased dramatically. As a result, theaters had to rely on showing things people couldn't get on TV, which basically narrowed the market down to sleaze and porn. Just like in Brazil in the 80s, most of the films made to be screened in theaters were sex flicks. Both soft and hardcore movies took over for a little while and were especially dominant in the late 70s and early 80s. The VHS era eventually leveled the playing field out as filmmakers didn't have to rely on TV and could make films of all genres specifically for the video market.

Things open with a young woman entering her apartment, taking off her coat (she's not wearing anything underneath) and hopping in the shower. A man in a trench coat and hat sneaks in, goes into the bathroom, pulls out a razor and slashes the woman to death. After this minute long sequence there's a split second shot of a bird (?!) and we're suddenly in a bedroom where a good-looking, young, large-breasted woman is being pawed and basically covered in drool by an ugly, older mustachioed man. The guy spends minutes licking the woman all over as she writhes on bed and occasionally looks off to the side in a disinterested fashion. This scene lasts forever (nearly 10 minutes) and has full frontal female nudity. (+1 bonus point to the actress for not having a completely out of control 70s bush.)

We then cut to a quick shot of a woman taking a drink and then it's back to the same exact couple having sex again. Only you'll notice this is just five minutes worth of repeated shots of the scene we've just sat through! We next meet a bald man, who leads a blonde woman up some stairs to an apartment building. Once she's inside, a woman with a syringe chases her down, injects her with something and then leaves her lying on a mattress. Sounds like the perfect time to wedge in a random musical number, eh? Well, that's just what we get when a blonde woman and a funk band perform a (surprisingly pretty good) song at some kind of dinner club. We then get a flurry of sex clips which are clearly taken from different sources as the quality of each varies wildly. The same mustache guy from the earlier sex scenes (top-billed Çetin Başaran) is the featured man in all but one of these, though the women are all different. One of these scenes has some kind of weird effect applied to it where the edges of the screen are blurred out to make it look like some kind of flashback.

We move to an office (again with the "flashback" look), where one of the women featured in one of the earlier sex scenes (Perizat) gets gang raped by three men. She then goes to a policeman (Seyfettin Karadayi) to recount her story. An old voyeur (Kamer Baba) makes goofy faces as he watches a couple of lesbians (including Aylin Berkay) have sex and, finally, we get our second slasher scene where a woman is dropped off at home and is then attacked by a guy with a razor, who's wearing a disguise similar to the killer in the first scene. Then-popular Turkish sex film stars Sabahan and Dilber Ay are also in this one in footage that appears to have been swiped from the hardcore porn film Doyumsuzlar / "Insatiable" (1980), though edited to be softcore here.

This is definitely one of the worst, most inept and most incoherent things I've watched here recently. There's very little dialogue, it makes no sense whatsoever and even the sex footage is difficult to enjoy because the quality is so bad. The opening and closing horror scenes seemed vaguely familiar to me so I browsed back through the 1972 Turkish giallo Aska Susayanlar: Seks ve Cinayet (THIRSTY FOR LOVE, SEX & MURDER) and, whatta ya know, both of these scenes were simply stolen from that one!

There's no poster nor any VHS boxes (though the print I viewed looked video-sourced) for this title anywhere to be found so it's hard to tell just where this was originally shown. Seeing how a director is actually credited, and that director has a dozen earlier sex films to his credit, it's possible this is kind of a "greatest hits" package for his career, in which case we're probably safe to just ignore the rest of his filmography.

NO STARS!

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

... aka: Creature from the Cave

... aka: La bestia de la cueva maldita (The Beast from the Cursed Cave)

... aka: La bestia maldita (The Cursed Beast)

Directed by:

Monte Hellman

SEE: Snow run red with blood as a ski party turns into a carnival of death!

SEE: Screaming young girls sucked into a labyrinth of horror by a blood-starved ghoul from hell!

Amoral, hardened criminal Alexander Ward (Frank Wolff), his hard-drinking "secretary" / lover Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Carol) and his two none-too-bright goons Byron Smith (Wally Campo) and Marty Jones (Richard Sinatra, the cousin of Frank), all arrive at a small ski resort and promptly hire ski instructor / outdoorsman Gil Jackson (Michael Forest) to take them on a two day cross-country trip by ski through the mountains to a lodge. However, the crooks naturally have ulterior motives for their "vacation." Alexander has concocted a scheme to set off a timed explosive in a nearby cave (a closed former gold mine), which he hopes will distract both the local authorities and the townsfolk. He, Byron and Marty will then break into the town's administrative building and steal some gold from a safe. And, while they are doing that, Gypsy will distract Gil by setting off on their trip a little bit early, while Alexander and company plan on meeting up with them later on. After the bomb goes off at the cave, the men use explosives to blow open the safe door and snatch six bars of gold. They then hurry over to the slopes, take a ski lift up to meet Gil and Gypsy and the five are off.

 

However, a couple things threaten to throw a wrench into their plans. For starters, a gold prospector had wandered into the cave and was killed by the explosion, which means they're now not only thieves, but also murderers, which means the authorities are likely to double down on their manhunt. Even worse, the night before, a drunken Marty took local barmaid Natalie (Linné Ahlstrand, Playboy's "Playmate of the Month" for July 1958) to the cave to plant the explosives and she never came back. The two were attacked by something, though it was hard to tell exactly what in the dark. Marty becomes convinced that whatever it was from the night before is now following them. And he turns out to be correct! While they camp out for the night, Marty finds Natalie hung in the trees in a webbed cocoon and spots the creature again, though he's reluctant to tell his fellow travelers about any of this.

The following day they make it to Gil's lodge and are greeted by his Native American housekeeper Small Dove (Kay Jennings), who is neither small ("I kind of like that hefty ole squaw!") nor a dove ("Strong looking woman that Small Dove"). Claiming being tired and in need of a rest when he is really just wanting to lay low for a few days until their plane arrives, Alex convinces Gil to let them stay there awhile before they head back. They get word on the radio about the police search underway for the "bandits" and tensions arise due to Gypsy's frequent drunken passes at Gil, which are starting to piss off the jealous Alex. A fight ensues, the thieves pull their guns and Gil quickly comes to the conclusion they're the crooks the police are after.

It doesn't take long to realize that all of the creature stuff seems somewhat disembodied from the main plot and, as it turns out, there's a good reason for that. The script by Charles B. Griffith, a re-working of his already-produced script for Naked Paradise (1957), was originally a basic crime / heist flick. All of the monster stuff was added later on because (uncredited) executive producer Roger Corman wanted another creature feature. Like most other Corman films from the time, this is very low budget, short and talky, though an efficient enough time-waster. The script gives us a simple plot with fair, sometimes snappy dialogue and OK characterizations. The performances are mostly passable, with Carol and Wolff faring best. As an added bonus, this one boasts some nice snowy locations. It was shot in Deadwood / Black Hills, South Dakota back-to-back with Corman's Ski Troop Attack (1960), which featured most of the same actors.

Where this runs into trouble is that it's called Beast from Haunted Cave, not "Heist in the Mountains," and thus everyone who's watching is going into it wanting to see a monster movie; which makes the end results a wee bit disappointing. The creature (a tentacled, hairy, blood-drinking "spider") is kept almost entirely off-screen until the very end and even then it's difficult to really make out because all of its scenes are inside a dark cave. Of course, that's all entirely by design to disguise the fact this creation looks less like a threatening monster and more like something you'd find lying in the rubble if a Home Depot exploded. Future soap opera star Chris Robinson was given the thankless task of trying to create the creature given a 2 buck allowance and has listed the following raw materials as being used in its creation: plywood, chicken wire, putty, aluminum stripping, vinyl paint, paper, crepe hair and spun glass. Robinson also gets to "play" the creature and has a cameo as a bar patron.

This was the feature film debut of Hellman, who went on to make the critically acclaimed sleeper Two-Lane Backdrop in 1971 (which was given the high honor of National Film Registry preservation in 2012) and a few other forgettable genre films like SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III (1989) and the "Stanley's Girlfriend" segment of the anthology Trapped Ashes (2006). Hellman was also one of seven (!) directors who chipped in to help make Corman's notorious The Terror (1963) starring Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson.

Three years after this film was completed, Corman brought Hellman back to shoot additional scenes to add to the film (which originally ran around 65 minutes) so it could be sold as part of a TV package. Forest, Campo and Sinatra were all wrangled back for these re-shoots, which boosted the running time up to 72 minutes. The newly-shot scenes (all spliced in at the beginning) include a pre-credits opening featuring Campo and Sinatra taking pictures and driving around, some more skiing footage and Sinatra flirting with the newly-added character of Jill Jackson (Gil's little sister), who's played by Jacquelyn Ravell (the director's then-wife). Around this time, Hellman also shot footage to add to Last Woman on Earth (1960), Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) and the aforementioned Ski Troop Attack. (The images below are only seen in the expanded TV version of the film)

Beast played theatrically on a double bill with The Wasp Woman (1959) in both the U. S. and the UK. As with many other Corman-directed films, there are almost too many DVD and VHS releases to even mention. Retromedia released it on Blu-ray in 2017 and this is easy to watch for free on many streaming platforms like Youtube and Tubi. It's pretty middling but not a terrible way to spend an hour.

★★