Grave of the Vampire (1972)

... aka: Bébé vampire (Baby Vampire)
... aka: Die Gruft der Dämonen (Crypt of the Demons)
... aka: Die Gruft des Grauens (The Crypt of Horror)
... aka: La bara del vampiro (The Vampire's Coffin)
... aka: La tomba del vampiro (The Vampire's Grave)
... aka: Seed of Terror

Directed by:
John Hayes

College girl Leslie Hollander (Kitty Vallacher) and her boyfriend Paul (Jay Scott) pick the wrong night to go to the graveyard to make out. After he proposes to her (aw, how romantic!), undead-looking vampire Caleb Croft (Michael Pataki) comes crawling out of his tomb, breaks the boyfriend's back against a gravestone, feeds on him and then pulls Leslie into an empty grave and rapes her. She's taken to a hospital to recover, while police officers Lieutenant Panzer (Eric Mason) and Sergeant Duffy (William Guhl) are put on the case. With a missing corpse, one dead body completely drained of blood and a hysterical sexual assault victim on their hands, the officers have their work cut out for them. Panzer, however, isn't above thinking something supernatural may be at play, especially after Leslie responds in horror to a photo of Caleb (who's been dead and buried for three years) he shows her, but he's decapitated before he can get too involved in the investigation. Before leaving the hospital, Leslie's doctor informs her that she's pregnant and recommends an abortion. According to tests, what's inside her womb "isn't a human being" and somewhat parasitic. Thinking she's carrying her dead fiance's baby, Leslie refuses and takes off with Olga (Lieux Dressler), her roommate at the hospital who'd helped to take care of her.

Baby James is born 9 months later. Sickly and with a grey complexion, Olga keeps suggesting Leslie take the boy to the hospital because he won't drink milk. By accident, they discover that the baby will however drink blood. And that's what Leslie feeds it. Instead of a blood pump, she uses a syringe to drain her own blood to put into baby bottles. She somehow manages to raise James to adulthood; passing away soon after, a withered old lady from the hell she's put her body through. A now-grown James (William Smith) has vengeance on his mind; wanting to eliminate the man who raped and impregnated his mother and abandoned them. Knowing he likes to be around fresh young blood, James manages to track pops to a college, where he teaches an extremely popular night class on the occult under the alias Professor Adrian Lockwood.

James ends up enrolling in his father's class, where he meets a pair of much-different roommates; Anne Arthur (Lyn Peters) and Anita Jacoby (Diane Holden). Both James and Caleb are drawn to Anne; Caleb because she resembles his late wife Sarah and James because she's intelligent, compassionate and mature (plus he knows it'll piss off dad if he gets her first). Anita gets put on the back burner, but she's OK with that and has other objectives in mind. She's been doing her research and realizes that her professor is actually a centuries old vampire named Charles Croydon. Interestingly, she just wants him to turn her into a vampire. He slashes her throat instead and leaves her in the shower for her terrified roommate to find her. Charles / Caleb / Adrian finally decides to hold a séance with some of his favorite students (James and Anne included), where he attempts to put his dead wife's soul into Anne's body, leading to a face-off between absent father and bastard son.

Clearly very low-budget and hampered somewhat by such, this still offers enough creepy moments and does enough interesting things with standard vampire mythology to keep it feeling at least somewhat fresh. The vampire baby and half-vampire offspring angles have been done numerous times since this was made, but they were actually novel and quite unique concepts in 1972, and this really should be given credit for that. It also gives its two lead actors; both regular presences in exploitation and horror films, a chance to shine. Pataki makes for an excellent, classy-yet-cruel and very cold-blooded vampire, and this is one of the better actual roles and performances for Smith, who seems somewhat miscast but still does an acceptable job. The screenplay is credited to both the director and David Chase and was (supposedly) based on Chase's novel "The Still Life." It was filmed in just 11 days for about 50,000 dollars.

Hayes also made numerous soft and hard core films (using the alias "Harold Perkins" for the latter) and the genre films Dream No Evil (1971), Garden of the Dead (1972), which played on a double bill with Grave, and End of the World (1977) starring Christopher Lee. Chase went on to mostly TV work; writing numerous episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker before graduating to writing and directing such acclaimed shows as I'll Fly Away and The Sopranos. Grave has slipped into the public domain, so primarily subpar prints of the film are floating around. A restored, high definition print (which I clearly didn't watch!) was released earlier this year by Retromedia. Regardless of what shape you find it in, it's worth a look.

★★★

Zoltan... Hound of Dracula (1978)

... aka: Dracula's Dog
... aka: Hound of Dracula, The
... aka: Satan's Dog

Directed by:
Albert Band

In Romania, a group of soldiers uncover the Dracula family's 19th Century underground burial tomb. A tremor occurs, two of the crypts open up and a coffin slides out of one of them. The one guard posted on duty opens it up, unwisely removes a stake from the heart of whatever's inside and suddenly a dog leaps out and goes right for the jugular. Now with him out of the way, Zoltan the doggie has his very own flashback to a simpler time with his owner Veidt Smit (Reggie Nalder) before Count Igor Dracula (Michael Pataki) transformed into a bat and put the bite to him. The bloodsucking pooch then pulls the second coffin out, knocks off the lid, removes the stake and resurrects Veidt, who immediately informs him that they "must find our new master." Veidt isn't a vampire himself and has no cravings for blood; he's only a resurrected servant to the family and will stop at nothing to get Zoltan back to the last living descendant of the family. Veidt and Zoltan manage to sneak out of the tomb undetected. Vampire expert Inspector Branco (José Ferrer) shows up to investigate the death and empty coffins and is assigned by his superior - Major Rachel Hessle (Arlene Martel) - the task of hunting the two down.

As a child, Michael Dracula (also played by Pataki) was taken all the way to America to live a normal life. His name was changed to Michael Drake, he's oblivious to his past and he's now a happy, normal, middle-aged suburban husband with two children living in Los Angeles. Planning a quiet camping trip away from the big city in their RV, Michael's wife Marla (Jan Shutan) talks him into letting their children - Linda (Libbie Chase) and Steve (John Levin) - bring along their two German Shepherd's and their litter of puppies on the trip. Veidt and Zoltan, who've already arrived in the States via boat and have managed to get their hands on a Hearst, follow close behind. It doesn't take long until their peaceful vacation gets weird. Zoltan vampirizes one of the puppies, who is found dead but later comes crawling back out of its grave. Zoltan turns another dog he comes across into a follower as well, and both dogs manage to sneak into the RV and attack. After putting both of the family's German Shepherd's under his spell, Zoltan now has an army of vampire dog followers to help him achieve his main goal: turning Michael into a vampire that both he and Veidt can serve.

Inspector Branco finally flies in armed with a bag full of wooden stakes, tracks the family down and explains things to a reluctant Michael. It doesn't take too long to convince him of what's going on, especially after Linda is bitten and almost ripped to shreds by the dogs. Michael then sends his entire family back to town while he and Branco stay behind in the woods to hunt down and destroy Veidt and all of the dogs. A hiker is attacked and killed, there's a lengthy attack on the fishing cabin where Branco and Michael are staying where the dogs bust their way through windows, the door and even chew through the roof and the climactic stand off has our hero being attacked while in a convertible.

Killer dogs were a hot commodity in the late 70s and early 80s thanks to the devil dog sequences in the big hit The Omen (1976). Zoltan (also released as Dracula's Dog) joins the ranks of Slaughter (1976; aka Dogs), The Pack (1977; aka The Long Dark Night), the made-for-TV movie Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), Play Dead (1981), Dogs of Hell (1982), Mongrel (1983) and many others in this cycle. It's slightly better than most in this category thanks to the novel vampire angle (which sounds [and sometimes is] silly but is played relatively straight here), well-choreographed attack sequences (thanks in large part to the animal training skills of Karl Miller and Lou Schumacher), reasonable production values, a professional cast and the general filmmaking competence on display. Andrew Belling provided a good (though very 70s) music score, Stan Winston was in charge of the makeup effects and Richard Band (who'd compose most of the scores for Albert and brother Charles' later films) was the assistant production manager.

The cast also includes Simmy Bow and JoJo D'Amore as a pair of fishermen who get in the middle of things, Roger Pancake as the sheriff (spelled "Sherriff in the end credits), Al Ferrara as a deputy and future director Dimitri Logothetis (SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK) as a soldier. Many of the actors had already appeared in the Band-produced dwarf comedy Little Cigars (1973) and the gloomy Pataki-directed MANSION OF THE DOOMED (1976). Writer and co-producer Frank Ray Perilli also helped write Cigars and Mansion, as well as the Band sci-fi productions End of the World (1977), Laserblast (1978), the Band soft sex films Cinderella (1977) and Fairy Tales (1978) and the hit ALLIGATOR (1980). The DVD release is through Anchor Bay.

★★1/2

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Directed by:

Dwight H. Little

Unstoppable killer Michael Myers returns (after sitting out the completely unrelated HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH) to kill off his young niece Jamie (Danielle Harris) in this fairly well-made, but hopelessly cliched, sequel. As much as this is missing in originality and plot concept, it remains watchable for franchise fans thanks to decent performances, a few well timed shocks, some bloody make-up effects provided by John Carl Buechler and decent production values. Myers, played by George P. Wilbur in this outing, has a slightly redesigned mask. Donald Pleasence reprises his role as nutty, dedicated doc Sam Loomis. The cast also includes Ellie Cornell as Jamie's teenage cousin, Michael Pataki as a doctor, Kathleen Kinmont as the sheriff's daughter, Sasha Jensen, Beau Starr, Gene Ross and Raymond O'Connor. Characters are stabbed, axed, impaled with a gun through the chest and Michael sticks his hand into someone’s neck. The concluding scenes are pretty suspenseful but it all ends with a very lame set-up for Part 5. Alan Howarth took over the music score for this and the next two entries.

★★

Baby, The (1972)

Directed by:

Ted Post

There were many 1970s horror films that gleefully deconstructed the family unit (IT'S ALIVE, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES and many others), but nothing quite like this! Compassionate social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) is assigned the case of her career; paying frequent visits to "Baby" Wadsworth (David "Manzy"/ Mooney), a mentally regressed fully grown adult male who wears diapers, crawls around on the ground, cries in an infant voice, sleeps in a crib and sucks on baby bottles (and *cough* other things when he can get his hands on them). Baby lives at home with his domineering, husky-voiced, ball-busting, man-hating mother (Ruth Roman), whose idea of child discipline incorporates an electric cattle prod, and two pretty, but equally strange, grown sisters; Germaine (Marianna Hill) and Alba (Suzanne Zenor). All the kids have different fathers but none of the fathers are anywhere to be found. Neither is Ann's husband; by all indications she lives the life of a widow at the mansion home of her her wealthy mother-in-law Judith (Beatrice Manley Blau, who was the co-founded of the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco). The whole family claim Baby is simply retarded and incapable of improving, but Ann thinks otherwise and the case becomes a personal crusade for her. After frequent visits to the home, she becomes convinced that Baby is actually be a fully functioning adult who has been kept in mentally adolescent state by three women who have some serious mental problems of their own.

Beginning as a strange, engrossing, well-made melodrama of one woman's consuming infatuation with her charge and getting through to the family, it turns into a full blown horror movie by the end with multiple kidnappings, bloody knife and hatchet murders and a character being buried alive. Sure it sometimes feels like a mixed bag of silly, tasteless, campy and downright sick ideas, but the performances are good enough to bail it out when it needs it and compensate for the shortcomings. Ruth Roman is especially terrific here. She possesses the same exact effortless campy qualities that made Bette Davis and Joan Crawford seem so at home in the horror genre during their twilight years. There's a memorable scene when she stumbles into the room to see the teen babysitter, uh, doing something she shouldn't be doing with "baby," and she proceeds to beat the living shit out of her while screeching "You lying bitch!" in her great deep voice. I'm used to seeing Marianna Hill as the lady-in-distress in such films as MESSIAH OF EVIL and BLOOD BEACH, but she's way better here playing it all wide-eyed, aloof and unhinged. Comer does well as the offbeat heroine and David Mooney is excellent in a role that could have come off as a complete joke in someone else's hands. Michael Pataki shows up briefly as Dennis, "one of" Alba's boyfriends during an amusingly gaudily-colored birthday party scene, and Virginia Vincent (the mom from The Hills Have Eyes) is in the movie somewhere. I kept my eyes peeled for her, so she was either cut out completely or was simply an extra during the party scene.

Even though it's well worth checking out, it does go way overboard during the hard-to-swallow finale and note to future filmmakers - Do not put a platinum blonde wig on the stunt double of a redhead. There are no special features on the Geneon DVD I rented, not even scene selection. When you pop it in, it plays. Simple as that. But the quality of the print is excellent.

★★★

Zombie Death House (1988)

...aka: Death House

Directed by:

John Saxon

Here's another prison/electric chair horror movie to join the ranks of dozen or so other (mostly awful) titles produced from 1986-1989. Though one of the more difficult to find until the recent DVD reissue, this one is thankfully not all that bad and it's also notable as the directorial debut of John Saxon. It begins as a near-incomprehensible crime saga with Anthony Franciosa as ruthless, cigar-smoking, drug-pushing gangster Vic Moretti. His sexy, much younger, blonde actress girlfriend Genelle (Dana Lis Mason) begins an affair with their new chauffeur Derek (Dennis Cole); a tan, shaggy-headed Vietnam vet and ex-con who is trying to go straight. After Derek spoils a drug deal (and breaks someone's neck with his bare hands), Vic finds out about the affair, drowns Genelle in the bathtub, plants her body in Derek's hotel room and has the cops arrest him. Vic buys the judge off, so Derek is convicted of murder, given the death penalty and is then sent off to prison to be locked away in solitary confinement on death row.

Upon entering the prison, Derek is greeted by an a-hole warden (Alex Courtney), a head guard (Howard George) who hits him with a club, friendly prisoners who inform him "You'll look real cute when you bend over!" and "I'm going to get your candy ass!" and a cockroach that crawls on his eye when he tries to sleep. Also there is Vic's gay brother Franco (Michael Pataki), who pretty much runs the prison and conducts criminal activity from the inside and has a blonde "Pretty Boy" lover living in his lavish cell, and Dr. Chaney, who begrudgingly administers a "behavior modification experiment;" injections of yellow fluid that are supposed to decrease violent tendencies. In any case, the serum infects whoever has ingested it with a flesh-eating virus that starts with a nosebleed, leads to panic and paranoia and eventually turns the victim into a flesh-eating zombie with inhuman strength.

But Chaney's not to blame when the experiment backfires; he's just following orders. It's actually the brainchild of corrupt CIA agent Col. Gordon Burgess (John Saxon), who has decided to carry on with the project after it was initially abandoned by scientist Tanya Kerrington (Tane McClure). Tanya has since given up medicine for a career as a successful newscaster, but she's called back to the scene by Burgess and must concoct an antidote when things get out of hand. All the prisoners, staff, Tanya, her cameraman Jake (Dennis Mooney), the warden's wife Mary (June Chandler), their two young kids, and some others (including Vic, who is tricked into going inside) are all trapped inside when Saxon (who *yawn* wants to create a zombie army) decides to call in some troops and lock the place down to quarantine those inside. In time, the prison is overrun with infected, zombie-like prisoners, people fight for survival and only four of them end up making it through a secret passageway that leads outside the prison to... Bronson Canyon, of course!

The plot is a bit overly complicated, there are too many characters to keep track of and some badly misplaced comedy (like a fat zombie cook screaming "Don't touch my twinkies!" and attacking with a butcher knife). Some of the editing and scene transitions are rough, too, but it looks pretty good (Gary Graver was one of three cinematographers who worked on it) and, all in all, it's an OK time waster. Gore scenes include a blood-gushing head, an arm ripped off, a pick-axe through the chest, a head rammed through prison bars, a slashed throat and a head ripped off by a rabid Jamaican zombie, plus there's a topless dream sequence (starring McClure), a police chase, some explosions, an electric chair scene and (hands down, my favorite part) a Christmas dinner where prisoners dine to the NOT OF THIS EARTH theme song played on an organ! The cast also includes Salvator Richichi, Frank Sarcinello, Jr. (both of whom were in the shot-on-video prison horror film DEATH ROW DINER, along with Dennis Mooney and Dana Mason), veteran schlock actor Joel van Ornsteiner and Ron O'Neal (SUPERFLY), who appears briefly at the beginning as Derek's army buddy.

Trivia Note: Future BOYZ N THE HOOD star Morris Chestnut plays one of the prisoners. The VHS title (released by Action International) is DEATH HOUSE; the DVD title (released by Retromedia) is ZOMBIE DEATH HOUSE. Guarantee they'll sell many more copies under the second title!

★★