Los monstruos del terror (1970)

... aka: Assignment Terror
... aka: Dracula Versus Frankenstein
... aka: Dracula vs. Frankenstein
... aka: Man Who Came from Ummo, The
... aka: Monster Panic: Strange Tactics
... aka: Monsters of Terror, The
... aka: Operation Terror
... aka: Reincarnator

Directed by:
Tulio Demicheli

Surgeon Dr. Kerian Danner (Ángel del Pozo), killed during wartime action, and biochemist Dr. Maleva Kerstein (Karin Dor), killed during an automobile accident, both become revived by aliens who take over their bodies and attain their medical / scientific knowledge in the process. They join forces with another alien - leader Dr. Odo Warnoff (Michael Rennie) - in an attempt to eliminate all of us pesky, weak humans from this planet. They need to conquer Earth because their home planet, Umu, is freezing and they still haven't found a way to create an artificial sun. The three aliens decide that the best way to go about this is to find a way to have attractive girls blindly do their bidding. Because "beautiful women are like magnets," they plan on using them to extract secrets from scientists, politicians and other important people. Their plan starts to come together as they kidnap numerous young women and then brainwash them into servitude by hooking them up to some contraption that looks like an electric chair.

The aliens go to a carnival, where they kidnap beautiful sideshow assistant Ilona (Ella Gessler) and kill a hypnotist. In doing so, they remove a stake from the heart of Transylvanian vampire Janos de Mailhoff (Manuel de Blas); resurrecting him. This occurrence gives the aliens a brand new idea. Why not revive and then clone all famous monsters and then unleash them by the thousands upon Earth? They start by culturing themselves on all things creature by reading "Anthology of the Monsters." After a trip to Waldemar Daninsky's (Paul "Naschi" / Naschy) tomb to steal his corpse, they resurrect the legendary werewolf by surgically removing the silver bullet from his heart and then chain him up in the cellar of their castle headquarters. Waldemar manages to break his chains and then hits the town. He attacks college student Ilsa Sternberg (Patty Shepard), but she manages to get away, so he settles for a hooker named Tootie (!) instead. The aliens manage to recapture Waldemar before he can do any more damage, then it's off to Egypt to get Tao-Tet (Gene Reyes), a mummy, and elsewhere to get a block-headed Frankenstein monster (Ferdinando Murolo).

Things don't go exactly as Dr. Warnoff had hoped because he can't stop his accomplices from being susceptible to human feelings and passions. Maleva keeps demonstrating empathy for prisoners who are punished and, when Warnoff catches her in bed with Kerian, he sends in the Frankenstein monster to strangle Kerian to death. Ilona finds herself drawn to Waldemar, so she eventually frees him and the two run off together. Dr. Warnoff watches everything on magical monitors, which seem to be able to see things anywhere in the world. As bodies start to pile up and people keep disappearing, chief Inspector Henry Tobermann (Craig Hill) discovers that's he got one hell of a weird case to crack. The inspector becomes romantically involved with Ilsa, whose judge father is somehow linked to Waldemar, and both find themselves kidnapped by the aliens. Tobermann is chained up in the cellar and threatened with rabid bats who try to eat out his eyeballs, while Ilsa is laid out for vampire prey.

Naschy (who wrote this using his real name Jacinto Molina Alvarez) was a huge fan of the Universal monster movies and it shows. This seems to want to be the (then) modern day equivalent of something like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) or House of Dracula (1945). It's atypical in the Waldemar werewolf series because Naschy has a sixth-billed supporting role, but you can still tell he wrote it because a hot blonde immediately falls in love with his short, dumpy self and he gets to be the hero at the very end and do battle with the other monsters. The screenplay also happens to be one of the film's weakest points. Though the premise is fun, everything's so hopelessly convoluted that it's often difficult to follow. Very poor continuity doesn't help matters, and neither does the terrible English-language dubbing on the version I watched. There's a restored German DVD of this one and I'm not sure if it makes any more sense. The one I watched (which has French credits) runs 83 minutes.

On the plus side, this is genuinely weird, there are some fun moments to be had here and there, the makeups are pretty good for the time and the cast is full of familiar faces. Rennie, best remembered for his performance in the classic sci-fi The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) passed away a year after this was released and it turned out to be his final film. Dor, Shepard and Gessler are all nice to look at, though the version I watched seemed to jump away any time there should be some nudity (which may be available in the uncut version). During the scene where a silver bullet is removed from the werewolf, gory footage of a real open heart surgery has been spliced in.

Though the credits list only Demicheli as director, IMDb claims that Hugo Fregonese (who'd previously made 1953's Man in the Attic starring Jack Palance) and Eberhard Meichsner as uncredited co-directors.

★★

El refugio del miedo (1974)

... aka: Creation of the Damned
... aka: Refuge of Fear

Directed by:
José Ulloa

Not usually well-regarded by the masses and often written off as being boring, this post nuke tale from Spain managed to keep me reasonably entertained for 90 minutes. It's talky, set-bound, low on action and not particularly original, but the film manages to undermine many of our early expectations in a good way, especially in regards to its characters. After establishing a sensible, level-headed hero in one of them and painting another as a demanding, uncooperative adulteress, the film slowly and effectively does a 180 with both, turning the presumed hero into a raving lunatic who ends up seriously cracking under the pressure and a presumed victim into a resilient type who does whatever it takes to survive a pretty dire situation. Risking turning the latter into someone completely unlikable in doing so, the filmmakers refreshingly never paint her as some kind of saintly super-woman. She survives simply because she's selfish enough to know that she's best off looking out for number one... even if that means locking herself inside her bedroom while one of her unhinged shelter mates is trying to kill one of her friends!

Refuge gives no real details about the nuclear holocaust that's occurred in the United States (where this is set), but we can only assume it's war based, especially since two of the central characters are high-ranking military officers. Aside from the two brief scenes, the entire film is set inside an underground bomb shelter that's basically decked out like any other 70s house. Well, aside from having an elevator going up to the surface and its own miniature mortuary in the basement. Five people; Robert (Craig Hill), his wife Margie (Teresa Gimpera), her teenage son Chris (Pedro Mari Sánchez), Robert's army pal Arthur (Fernando Hilbeck) and his wife Carol (Patty Shepard), plus a Siamese kitty cat, are living there and - as the film opens - have already been down a good deal of time. Supplies are running short, tensions are on the rise and being stuck in the claustrophobic confines of the shelter for God knows how long is starting to seriously wear on everyone. Via radio, they do have contact with other pockets of survivors and everyone's just playing the waiting game until radiation levels to drop to a safe level. There is mention of a sixth member of the group who we learn had to be "put down" when he went crazy and tried to set fire to the shelter.

Because Robert paid to have the shelter built to begin with, he feels licensed to be a complete control freak and balances his time between playing billiards and doing inventory on the supplies to make sure no one is taking more than their share. Likely because of his military training, he expects everyone else to show "discipline" and even goes so far as telling one of the women she can't wear a revealing outfit to dinner! His wife just stays drunk and knits sweaters all the time, while her lonely son mans the radio and pines for his (most likely dead) girlfriend on the surface. Arthur is so stressed out he's taken to pills and has to heavily medicate himself in order to sleep. Carol spends most of her time in her bedroom, feigns illness so she doesn't have to fraternize with the others and is so prone to boredom she's not above performing a strip tease in front of everyone. She also finds herself drawn to the teenage son and the two eventually start having sex... starting with a tryst in her bedroom with her husband zonked out right next to them! When Carol finds herself pregnant and reveals the affair, things go from bad to worse.

With food, water and oxygen all in short supply, cabin fever setting in, personal relations in shambles and seismic activity creating cracks in the shelter's foundation causing it to shift, the stress finally takes its toll on Robert, who snaps and starts injecting the others with poison. The cat is the first to go and, needing the food, it's skinned and put in the refrigerator. Robert also starts sneaking down to the mortuary to cannibalize the corpses; serving the meat to the others. When blamed for one of the deaths, the teen son decides to leave the shelter. He finds a house full of shriveled corpses before succumbing to radiation poisoning. Eventually, only Carol and Robert remain and a game of cat-and-mouse in close confines is underway. In a scene VERY reminiscent of THE STEPFATHER (1987), Robert merrily sings "My Darling Clementine" while cleaning blood off his tie in front of the bathroom mirror.

Though some of the actors appear to be speaking English here, it was still obviously dubbed and suffers a bit because of that (Gimpera's character's dub is especially whiny). That aside, the cast acquits itself fairly well under the circumstances. I'm not too familiar with Hill (who's married to Gimpera in real-life), but he does an especially fine job as the psycho. Hill and Shepard had previously appeared together in the Paul Naschy vehicle ASSIGNMENT TERROR (1969) and Shepard and Gimpera also shared the screen in the same year's vampire tale CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1973).

The DVD is from Substance, who unfortunately use a full-screen VHS print of the movie.

★★1/2