Eglima sto Kavouri (1974)

...aka: Death Kiss

...aka: He Murdered His Wife

...aka: Rape Killer, The

Directed by:

Kostas Karagiannis

Similar in many ways to Italian gialli (particularly the 1975 title THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN), this Greek horror-thriller is worth checking out. Jim Preston (Lakis Komninos, as "Larry Daniels") has just gotten married to the older Helen (played by an Angie Dickinson look-a-like who goes by the probably-fake name of Dorothy Moore). Since Helen has a load of money and runs her own business and Jim's just a meager oil rig worker handsome enough to get whatever woman he wants, you can guess where this thing's headed. Yep, it's another of those kill-her-for-her-will tales where the greedy people get just what's coming to them in the end. However, this one has enough violence and sex, and enough interesting twists and turns in the storyline to keep it surprisingly watchable throughout. A little far-fetched at times, for sure, but it's not boring. A big part of that has to do with Mike ("Angelo Cilento"/Vagelis Seilinos), a sadistic, drug-addicted sex maniac, who chloroforms, rapes and murders women. The actor who plays Mike is very convincing in the role.

Anyway, Jim strikes up a deal with the psycho. He'll give him Helen to do as he pleases with (as long as she ends up dead) in exchange for part of the inheritance. To keep the cops off his tail, Jim also allows Mike to shoot him in a non-fatal way (the psycho also decides to give him a few whacks over the head with a rock when he's out cold just for fun!) to make it look like he'd also been attacked. Thinking he needs some added insurance since Jim is a less than savory character, Mike drugs, kidnaps and murders a woman who looks exactly like Helen (and is played by the same actress). He substitutes her body for Helen's corpse, and keeps Helen prisoner in the cellar of his home until he gets what Jim promised him. Adding extra complications are a doctor friend of Helen's, who's in love with her and aids the police in finding her, and Jim's blonde mistress Laura (Jane Paterson), who's sick of being treated like his whore.

There's a load of female nudity, some sex, some rape, some violence, a nightmare sequence, a flashback and a long and gratuitous "Lord of the Dance" style sequence at a restaurant. I liked it for the most part. The director, who made around 130 films (!) in Greece before his death in 1993, also made the terrible LAND OF THE MINOTAUR (1976).

★★1/2

Graveyard Shift (1990)

...aka: Stephen King's Graveyard Shift

Directed by:

Ralph S. Singleton

Based on a short story by Stephen King, this dark, dreary misfire is one of the worst of the King adaptations, though I'd take it any day over MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (1985), THE LANGOLIERS (1995) or THE TOMMY- KNOCKERS (1993). Bland hunk David Andrews stars as a drifter who likes to keep to himself and starts the late shift at Bachman Mills, a grimy textile factory headed over by sleazeball boss (an over-the-top Stephen Macht). The basement work crew start falling prey to a giant rat monster that lurks undergound. Real rats are all over the place too, to clean up the bodies. The gore effects are mostly top-notch, the sets are good and there's plenty of violence and action, but this movie is still one big unpleasant cliché thanks to poor direction and scripting (by John Esposito), plus uneven performances. Everyone yells and screams a lot, but Kelly Wolf (as a tough female worker who can hold her own) and Brad Dourif (appearing in a small role as a 'Nam vet pest exterminator named Tucker Cleveland) are the only two who bring any spark to their roles. The director wisely went on to production jobs after this. With Andrew Divoff (the evil djinn from the first two WISHMASTER films), Richard France (from Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD) and Vic Polizos (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS).

★1/2

Notte al cimitero, Una (1987)

...aka: Brivido giallo - Una notte al cimitero

...aka: Graveyard Disturbance

...aka: Gruft, Die

...aka: Outre-tombe

Directed by:

Lamberto Bava

After pulling off a supermarket job (stealing... candy bars???) and busting through a police barricade, five teens - hunky Robin (Gregory Lech Thaddeus), pretty Mikki (Beatrice Ring), her brother David (Karl Zinny), brainy Tina (Lea Martino) and their getaway driver Johnny (Gianmarco Tognazzi) end up passing through a thick blanket of fog and from then on out find themselves lost in the middle of nowhere. After getting their van stuck trying to drive over a creek, they grab their camping gear and decide to hike to the nearest town by foot. As night falls, they stumble upon a huge crumbling church where they decide to spend the night and also discover a spooky tavern located on the other side, go in and find it populated by a bunch of strange, ghoulish people with red glowing eyes. The deformed tavern keeper (Lino Salemme) promises them a treasure if they're able to survive the night in an underground catacomb of crypts located beneath the church, and like all moronic horror movie teenagers, the five take up the challenge. Yeah, like allowing yourselves to be locked up in a dark, spooky place by creepy and, from all indications, inhuman strangers is ever going to have a good outcome...

So after cracking a lame American Werewolf in London joke, down below they go, finding themselves even more lost than they were before in an Escher-style maze of staircases, ladders and various tombs and crypts. Other than encountering the expected cobwebs, gravestones, coffins, spiders and rats, there are also zombies, an animated eyeball, some kind of large wolf creature and a skull-faced Grim Reaper complete with a scythe he never uses. Unfortunately, the zombies never come off in a threatening way and are used mostly for pathetically unfunny and completely out-of-place comic scenes (such as when a male zombie grabs a female zombies boob and she slaps him) and the werewolf itself is never once shown. Boo! In fact, this entire movie, which I believe was made for Italian TV, is virtually gore free.

On the plus side, the art direction and sets are (surprisingly) quite good, and mix that with the cinematography, score and liberal use of a fog machine, and the film manages to be fairly atmospheric at times. I found myself really enjoying the first half, but soon after the teens enter the crypt, the film becomes annoying, repetitive and even more illogical than it already was. After encountering various creatures, I seriously doubt you'd be giggling, cracking jokes or even lying down to take a nap if you only have to survive until dawn. The characters are extremely annoying and do consistently stupid things, the dialogue and English-dubbing are both terrible and the tone uneasily fluctuates between being jokey to wanting to be taken seriously. A senseless twist ending drives the final nail in the coffin, relegating this potentially good film to failed opportunity status. And do they really serve Miller Beer in hell? I always kind of figured it would be Milwaukee's Best.

★★

Gremlins (1984)

Directed by:

Joe Dante

It’s more comic horror from director Joe Dante (PIRANHA and THE HOWLING) and executive producer Steven Spielberg (JAWS, of course). Everyone who was a child of the 80s knows the plot... Fumbling inventor Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) purchases a extremely cute, lovable and furry "mogwai" from Chinatown and gives it to his son Billy (Zach Galligan) as a Christmas present. When three rules (avoid bright light, don't get wet and don't feed after midnight) are ignored, the docile critter spawns vicious, evil, green, slimy, scaly monsters that terrorize and kill denizens of the picture-postcard small town right out of Norman Rockwell. Phoebe Cates is a bank employee who tells a very morbid story (for a kids movie, anyway) about her dad falling down the chimney on Christmas Eve and breaking his neck to add to the holiday spirit. Axton is great fun toying around with his botched inventions and Frances Lee McCain, as his wife, is involved in some of the more memorably nasty sequences when she freaks out and kills Gremlins using a blender and a microwave oven. Polly Holliday (the sassy diner waitress Flo from the Alice TV series) is great as crotchety old bitch Mrs. Deagle and also has the best death scene. Dick Miller is hilarious as a war vet neighbor who gets run over by a snow plow.

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Also in the stellar supporting cast are Scott Brady as the town sheriff, Keye Luke as the wise shopkeeper, Jackie Joseph (Audrey from the original LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS) as Miller's wife, Corey Feldman (who'd just faced off against Jason in FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER) as a neighborhood kid, Belinda Balaski (from Dante's THE HOWLING), Glynn Turman, Judge Reinhold as a jerk bank employee, Kenneth Tobey (who is uncredited) as a gas station worker who gets one of the dad's smokeless ashtrays, as well as Spielberg and Robbie the Robot in brief cameos. Chris Walas did the excellent special effects, Jerry Goldsmith scored and Howie Mandel is the voice of Gizmo. This was a huge moneymaker, raking in over 148 million domestic gross during its initial theatrical release, and up until the mid-90s was listed as one of the top five highest-grossing horror films of all time (it's now just outside the top ten).

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Followed by GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990), which was nearly as good but was a box-office disappointment, and countless low-grade imitations (GHOULIES, CRITTERS and MUNCHIES to name a few) that were mostly made for the video market. GREMLINS should, and probably will, remain a holiday classic for many of us.

★★★1/2

Spasms (1981)

...aka: Death Bite

Directed by:

William Fruet

Review coming soon.

★★

Shanks (1974)

Directed by:

William Castle

Review coming soon.

★★★1/2

Strange Invaders (1983)

Directed by:

Michael Laughlin

Here’s a surprisingly enjoyable, fast-paced and good-natured comic spin on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (or any one of a dozen or so other 1950s science fiction films), whose sense of humor only enhances, and does not get in the way of, the alien-invasion story. In the small town of Centerville, Illinois, a race of big-eyed, lizard-faced, green-blooded aliens have taken over the appearance of the entire populace. The comic catch is, that they've been there since the 1950s and are stuck there in both mannerism and appearance, having not caved in to the peer pressure of cultural advancement. With their mission about complete after a 25-year placement, the race plan to head back to their home planet in a couple of days. In New York City, a college entomology professor (Paul Le Mat) discovers his ex-wife (Diane Scarwid) is actually one of those aliens and their young daughter is half-alien and destined to join the rest of her extended extraterrestrial family in space. Nancy Allen is a chain-smoking tabloid reporter who becomes an alien target for using a picture of a real alien in her article Strange Invaders. She teams up with Le Mat and a silver-haired fella hiding out as a mental patient (Michael Lerner) to infiltrate the town and rescue the daughter when she's kidnapped.

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50s sci-fi star Kenneth Tobey has one of his more notable (and sizable) roles of the 1980s as the main alien. He disguises himself as an unfriendly rooming house owner, but is able to suck victims dry by twisting his hand (the bodies shrivel up and their souls spill out in the form of glowing, floating spheres). Also along for the fun are Louise Fletcher as head of a government agency who (surprise!) actually know about the aliens and help hide their presence on Earth, Fiona Lewis, who shows up on an assassination mission dressed as the Avon lady, Wallace Shawn in a bit, June Lockhart as Le Mat's mom, Charles Lane, Dey Young and Mark Goddard. Many of them (including Fletcher and Lewis) were also in Laughlin's equally fun - but ignored - horror-comedy DEAD KIDS (1981; aka STRANGE BEHAVIOR). The casting of Lockhart and Goddard is obviously meant to bring to mind Lost in Space.

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STRANGE INVADERS has spirited acting, fun nods to science fiction classics past and present, the right visual look and very good make-up design and visual effects. There are several ingenious ideas in the uneven, but generally entertaining, screenplay by Laughlin and Bill Condon. Worth a look.

★★★