Trial by Terror (1983)

... aka: Acusado sin culpa (Accused Without Fault)
... aka: Das haus (The House)
... aka: Notte di terrore (Night of Terror)
... aka: Traumstein

Directed by:
Hildy Brooks

I used to make it a habit to watch all of the Best Picture Oscar nominees every single year; a habit I eventually broke myself of thanks to movies like Precious (2009). What really killed that movie for me was just how much pain and misery got heaped on the title character. Obesity! Poverty! Abuse! Illiteracy! Incest! Rape! Teen pregnancy! Special needs children! At one point, after already watching Precious suffer through one hardship after another for what felt like an eternity, I sat there thinking "Jesus! What's next? Is she going to get diagnosed with cancer or AIDS or something?" and, low and behold... It was at that moment I started laughing. No, the content itself wasn't funny, and these are all serious issues many people face, but just how obvious it was that the director was intentionally trying to craft something that would hit all of the critical acclaim hot buttons certainly was. Due to how forced and calculated the film was being, I was unable to really immerse myself in it. Or believe any of it. And the fact it worked on many critics and Oscar voters says worse things about them than the movie itself. 

Even though I usually enjoy Lars von Trier films, I get a similar feeling from some of his work as he basically tortures his protagonists for two straight hours to the point where it becomes almost comical. While going absurdly over-the-top works when you're making an exploitation film, it typically doesn't when you're wanting to explore adult topics in a serious manner. This is also one of the biggest issues I had with Trial by Terror.

After saving every penny they've earned for five straight years, Greg Armstrong (Wayne Crawford) and his wife Karen (Kay Lenz) have just put down a down payment on a nice new home in the safe suburbs. Greg is doing well at the gym equipment manufacturing plant where he works and has just been promoted. Out of the workforce, Karen is looking forward to finally having children and starting their family. But their plans for the future are about to all come crashing down. The first bad omen comes during their housewarming party when they hear the sound of glass shattering only to find out their friend Buddy's (Joe Unger) car has been broken into and his stereo stolen. The cop (Rod McCary) who shows up to investigate seems less interested in the crime and more interested in hitting on Buddy's new policewoman girlfriend, Terri (Colleen Camp).

Later that night, Greg and Karen are woken by noises coming from outside. Upon further investigation, they realize someone has taken it upon themselves to dump all of the neighbor's trash cans into their front yard. The police are called again and the officer who shows up writes it off as "a little malicious mischief" and says they can't do anything about it. He does however let Greg know that if he doesn't clean it up they'll be cited and have to pay a fine for littering! Greg's best friend K.C. (Karl Johnson) suggests he get a gun, but Greg is resistant due to Karen's dislike of firearms. That resistance doesn't last long after Greg and Karen return home from a nice promotion celebration dinner only to find the punks have broken in, spray painted their walls, destroyed nearly everything they own and left behind a death threat. Firearm it is!

Of course the cops are called and, yet again, do absolutely nothing but nonchalantly talk about cars (?) while they're there. Karen goes to her next door neighbor to ask if she heard or saw anything. The widowed cat lady who lives there informs her, "Nobody's gonna protect me so I mind my own business!" Greg finally goes to the gun store to purchase a rifle and just in the nick of time as the intruders break into their home yet again later that same evening. This time, Greg shoots one of them dead. When the cops arrive this FOURTH time, the couple are victimized all over again when she's restrained and he's almost shot, thrown to the floor and handcuffed. And this is just the beginning of their troubles.

The couple are forced to go to a hotel for a few days, then try to return home only to be greeted by a chalk outline of the intruder's body and a blood-splattered wall. The fact they're being targeted by multiple punks also makes it impossible to feel safe there as one of them could return at any time for revenge. Back to the hotel they go. When they're finally forced to return, they receive anonymous death threats by phone and are hounded by the press, who question whether or not they used excessive force. Every noise becomes a potential intruder and the husband is haunted by guilt for killing a teenager. The district attorney is thinking about pressing criminal charges and then the dead intruder's mother decides to sue them for wrongful death in civil court, threatening to bankrupt them and make them lose the house, anyway. Geesh!

On the bright side, they find an ally in detective Jay Galen (Martin Landau), a 20-year homicide veteran, who talks D.A. Frederick Estus ("Allan Goorwitz" / Allen Garfield) out of prosecuting Greg for murder, as he's planning to do merely to set an example. Still, someone continues to lurk outside the couple's home, so they're forced to move to a trailer in the country that Greg's boss owns and lets them use. The faceless stalkers eventually track Greg down at work and try to kill him with a welding torch and then find out where the trailer is and go after Karen.

While there's not much "terror" in this obscure film, there's enough empty yapping and flat / unimaginative direction to make this feel like it was made-for-the-tube. A lot of action movies and thrillers made in the 70s and 80s were basically a call to arms for (usually white) "good people" to run out and buy guns to defend themselves against (usually black or Hispanic) killers, thieves and gang members. This movie starts out that way, but instead of becoming a full-fledged vigilante pic it tries to explore the legal / criminal / social repercussions of using a gun for self-defense. However, instead of tying up those story threads, this completely forgets about them and instead spends the last 20 minutes trying to be a thriller again, concluding with a big shootout. There's no real resolution to any of the couple's other struggles.

Though the acting is generally OK, it's easy to see why this one's been completely forgotten over the years. It can't quite decide what it wants to be and what little it tries to add to the conversation about guns and the necessity of taking the law into your own hands if need be was just as simple-minded and irrelevant back then as it is today. There's even ample evidence that the filmmakers themselves are aware that what they're doing here is steeped in stereotypes and even faintly offensive. 

In order to stave off potential criticism for making all of the criminals Mexican (and the non-English-speaking mother of the slain punk basically an extortionist) and a scene where Greg goes to the “bad neighborhood” and they show nothing but black people walking around, they cast a black extra for the party scene and a Mexican actress (Alma Martinez) in a nothing role as the best friend's wife. See! They aren't ALL bad! And just so they aren't accused of hyperbolic depictions of all cops as inept buffoons, they make sure one of them – just one – isn't so bad. The other 20 are depicted as rude, tone deaf and / or clueless.

This was one of many collaborations between star / writer / producer Crawford and writer / producer Andrew Lane, whose partnership stretches all the way back to 1975's God's Bloody Acre and includes a lot of other movies like Tomcats (1977; aka Avenged), Night of the Comet (1984), Jake Speed (1986) and Servants of Twilight (1991). The executive producer was Ed Adlum (Invasion of the Flesh Hunters) and the busy Robert O. Ragland did the score.

I could not locate a single theatrical poster or English-language VHS box scan for this movie so I have no idea if it was ever commercially released in the U.S. or not. However, CBS/Fox released it in a number of other countries, including France, Italy, Argentina and Germany. The quality of the VHS dupe I watched was awful and this doesn't seem like something that's ever going to get the deluxe DVD treatment.

★1/2

Headhunter (1988)

... aka: Duo pour une mort noire (Two for Black Death)
... aka: Head Hunter
... aka: Die Stunde des Headhunter (Hour of the Headhunter)

Directed by:
Francis Schaeffer

Miami police officer Pete Giuliani (Wayne Crawford), whose hard-bitten, hard-luck, hard-drinking character is laid out for us early on by his razor-nicked face and mass consumption of Alka Seltzer, and his more sensible, compassionate and straight-laced partner Katherine Hall (Kay Lenz) get assigned a new case involving a gruesome murder. A Nigerian immigrant has been decapitated and not in a normal way either. The head almost seems to have been cauterized right off the shoulders and is nowhere to be found. A second identical murder happens in a trinket shop. While leaving the latest crime scene, they encounter Dr. Samuel Juru (Sam Williams), a professor of Pan-African studies at the University of Miami and also a shaman and spiritual leader to all of the Nigerian immigrants now flooding into the area. Sam is called down to the station to offer his insights and informs the skeptical cops that the wave of Nigerians moving there aren't coming for the weather but instead are fleeing their country to escape a “curse.” Said curse is an ancient African demon called Chikatitumo, who doesn't like the fact so many are now out of his reach so he's come all the way to a large American city to get them... and he may end up liking there here so much he'll make it his permanent home.

Sam continues to warn the authorities that the demon will become more powerful with each victim as it feeds on the human spirit and is decapitating victims to separate the mind from the body. The collection of heads signify that he's captured their souls and he gravitates toward those with the most resistance to believing he exists. The cops are all naturally skeptical (“It's Exorcist time, kids!”) and all his warnings end up accomplishing is making him a suspect in the murders. Pete and Katherine's superior, Captain Ted Calvin (TV star Steve Kanaly of Dallas fame, who is pretty awful here and has a terrible come-and-go Southern drawl), even force them to throw the poor guy in jail, though he's soon exonerated as the slaughter continues even when he's behind bars. During one ridiculous scene, a pastor using the recent string of murders to “save” the Nigerians so they'll be “leaving all of that jungle darkness behind” is in the middle of baptizing a woman when a huge sword travels along the water like a shark fin accompanied by Jaws music (!) and decapitates her, prompting him to run away screaming, “I'm never using this fucking river again! God damn devil in here!”

The banter between the two detectives isn't only about the case at hand, but also about Pete's personal life as his marriage to Denise (June Chadwick) has just ended. She's left him for another woman (“My wife is a muff diver!”) and kicked him out of his own home, forcing Katherine to let him shack up with her and sleep on her couch even though she's dating another cop named Roger (John Fatooh). Considering Kat's relationship is spotty at best, is romance eventually in store for our heroes? Not if the demon, who has managed to amass a band of obedient torch-wielding followers who'd rather do his bidding than die. has anything to say about it as he attempts to kill both of them. Once Sam is murdered by the cult, Pete and Katherine pay a visit to Professor Robert Sinclair (Gordon Mulholland), author of “Life Among the Tribes.” which has a chapter specifically dedicated to the severing of heads. His suggestion? Sever all limbs and decapitate the demon. Easier said than done, but a late night trip to a hardware store provides a chainsaw that may come in handy finally completing the task.

I've heard pretty much all bad things about this one but it's not completely awful. Lenz and Crawford have decent chemistry with one another and make for likable, engaging leads. Good thing too because this is heavier on the talk than it is the action. Some scenes are tense and fairly well done (others not so much), the creature design (not seen until the last five minutes) is adequate and some of the spirit POV camerawork is pretty cool, too. The demon's ability to impersonate people to trick victims doesn't really come into play until near the end and one wonders why it even bothers, especially considering it has no issue sweeping in to lop off every other victim's head in about three seconds. So much time is wasted that the ending is rushed through in frantic fashion (albeit amusingly frantic fashion!) and those who live in Miami or are familiar with the city may chuckle at the fact this clearly wasn't filmed there, but in South Africa instead.

This was one of around a dozen productions made by Gibraltar Entertainment in the late 80s into the mid 90s. Most of these were filmed in South Africa, some played at film festivals or in very limited engagements in theaters and all were primarily just video shelf / cable TV filler. Crawford starred in no less than seven of them. They also frequently reused Chadwick, who co-starred alongside Crawford in Quiet Thunder (1988), The Evil Below (1989) and Rising Storm (1989). Ted Le Plat, who plays an obnoxious detective here, was also in four and many of the other actors seen here were in the others. Gibraltar's stable of regular actors also included Zach Galligan, William Katt, John Rhys-Davies and Martin Hewitt.

Multiple scenes from the Z grade "classic" The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) can be see on TV sets at various points for some reason. There hasn't been a legit DVD release here in America for this one yet, nor for many of the other Gibraltar titles. It was, however, well-distributed on VHS by Academy and received a laserdisc release from Image.

★★