Suffer, Little Children (1983)

Directed by:

Alan Briggs

Made by the students in writer/ producer Meg Shanks' Drama School, this no-budget, shot-on-video British production (which claims to be based on a true story!) is so inept that it's taken on new life as a minor camp classic in the UK. It was never released here in the United States (or probably anywhere else outside England for that matter), but thankfully we live in an age where previously impossible-to-find junk is now easy-to-find junk so we can all suffer, suffer, suffer little viewers through amateur home videos such as this! At Sullivans Children's Home, a school/home for orphans, a weird, mute little girl named Elizabeth (Nicola Diana) is left on the doorstep with a note from her mother saying she can no longer care for her. The school administrators; uptight, straight-laced Maurice (Colin Chamberlain) and blonde free spirit Jenny (Ginny Rose) welcome the girl with open arms despite the fact she seems like she'd be better off at a special needs school. Elizabeth turns out to be an evil Satanic moppet with telekinetic abilities who immediately gets to work raising a little hell. She slams a girl into a door, knocks a boy down the stairs, forces a girl to stab herself in the leg, moves furniture, turns two of the girls into her mindless slaves by making them have a nightmare about zombies and causes others to scream, fight, freak out and eventually kill.

Meanwhile, Mick Philips (Jon Hollanz), a pop star who grew up in the orphanage, pays a special visit, plans a charity concert and takes Jenny on a date to a punk club called "Cloud Busters" where a bunch of Boy George look-a-likes dance horribly to reggae music. As their romance blossoms, Elizabeth's army of pre-teen Satanists is growing. She has special ceremonies lit with candles and a strobe light, where her followers pound their fists in the air while screaming "Come, Devil, Come!" and little Liz shrieks in an EXORCIST-like possession voice. If that's not enough, just wait until the big finale where... drum roll, please... Jesus Christ himself (complete with his crown of thorns) makes a special guest appearance to ward off the evil by pointing his almighty finger at them, which results in a cheesy laser beam sound effect and the kids screaming even more than they already have been while apparently having the evil spirits driven from their bodies. Wow.

Watch as every filmmaking sin in the book is committed before your very eyes in a video that makes absolutely no sense, is full of continuity errors, flubbed lines, horrible editing cuts and issues with the lighting, camerawork, sound recording and every other possible technical aspect that goes into making a film. In many of the scenes, it seems like about ten characters are all talking at once, over top one another, and it's impossible to really make out what anyone is saying as a result. In other scenes, the music almost completely drowns out the dialogue, which might actually be a blessing. But on the plus side, they were smart enough to record a "Suffer, Little Children" theme song and it's hilarious! During the end credits, the movie also makes sure to acknowledge all the films (CARRIE, PSYCHO, HALLOWEEN, etc.) it was "inspired" by, as well as thanking the parents of the young actors for allowing their children to embarrass themselves in a cheap horror video.

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Apparently it was released on VHS in 1985 by the UK label FGL (Films Galore, Ltd.), though I can find no scans of an actual box anywhere online to prove this.

★ SBIG

Superstition (1982)

...aka: House of Mary, The

...aka: Witch, The

Directed by:

James W. Roberson

Another unfortunate entry in the "could have been so much better" sweepstakes. Here we have the ground work for at least a passable haunted house flick. The budget seems to be decent. The cast seems to be decent. There is a high body count and plenty of gory, creative murder sequences. The locations and art direction are good. The director, best known as a cinematographer, has the expected good eye for scene composition and detail. The film itself has three different cinematographers credited, and they do a fine job giving this film a polished and atmospheric look. So what went wrong? For starters, while the director may have a nice visual sense, he has absolutely no idea how to work with actors, and elicits one bad performance after another from dependable actors and actresses who have been brilliant in other's hands. The score is pretty schizophrenic, fluctuating from a re-mixed version of the "Rocky Mountains" tune from THE SHINING (it's pretty much the same but with a few bell chimes added) to some annoying chanting a la THE OMEN and then on to some very light sounding track that would be more at home in some buddy cop movie.

However, the film's real unraveling happens in the screenplay department. The derivative storyline basically tries to mix the first two AMITYVILLE films (troubled family moves into a new haunted house) with the aforementioned OMEN (gory supernatural death scenes), but that's not the real problem here. What is the real problem is that a good deal of the dialogue is moronic and, even worse, the character actions are so consistently idiotic, pathetic and unrealistic you'll find yourself wondering how this project even managed to leave the script stage when three or four more rewrites were obviously needed. I can usually forgive one or two lapses in logic, but when a film is completely cluttered with such obvious stupidity, it's just plain lazy writing. So while some competent folks worked on this film, their efforts sadlly were in collective vain thanks to piss poor writing. All you end up watching is 90 minutes of stupid people doing stupid things. Well, 90 minutes of stupid people doing stupid things that looks more professional than it deserves to.

After a promising opening double-murder sequence of pranksters getting killed (one is decapitated and has his head blown to bits in a microwave and the other gets split in half by a window), very friendly clergyman David (James Houghton, giving a sincere and likable performance, considering) and reverend Henry (Stacy Keach, Sr.) start making preparations to move a reverend and his family into the cursed lakeside home. Yep, despite the fact many have died in this place and the murders have gone completely unsolved, they're not quite ready to bring in the bulldozers. Not yet. About ten more people need to needlessly die first, including a couple of children. And I didn't even mention creepy old caretaker Elvira (Jacquelyn Hyde), her hulking retarded/mute son (who cops seem to want to blame for the killings) or the lil girl ghosty dressed in white who pops up out of nowhere from time to time. Red flags! Red flags!

Early on, someone states: "What about the violent history this place is supposed to have had?" Wait a minute... "supposed to have had?" Before the new family even enters through the front doors, David and the reverend are sitting in an office discussing dismembered teen corpses found in the house with a detective (Albert Salmi). And then a cop mysteriously drowns in the lake. And then the reverend himself is killed during renovations when a circular blade comes off the saw, miraculously flies across a room, hits him in the chest and then continues to saw away until it goes through his body. This being a blade that's not even attached to the saw anymore. Even stranger is that this obviously supernatural event is in full view of David and about a half dozen construction workers, who do nothing except gasp in horror. Oh well, I guess things will suddenly just change once the family gets here!

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So recovering alcoholic dad (Larry Pennell), mom (Lynn Carlin, who was excellent in DEATHDREAM but seems completely lost here) and their three kids (teen daughters Heidi Bohay and Maylo McCaslin and young son Bobby Jacoby) lay the welcome matt and then it's time for more of the same. While they're still unpacking, a repairman is hung by cables in what appears to be an elevator shaft (?!) inside the home. No one even seems to notice and no one ever shows up looking for the poor feller. Both the son and the youngest of the daughters, as well as David, come into contact with the girl ghost, but no one really makes a big deal about it. I guess if you're moving into a haunted house where people are getting brutally killed right and left, it's best not to question the presence of spirit kids that may have something to do with it. Even so, when one of the daughters emerges from the lake with a severed hand clamped to her ankle, you'd figure it would be a good time to find another place to live. Nope, not yet. First wait first until your little son disappears... and then mom starts getting tossed around in the kitchen by some hooded figure with demon claws... and someone's hammering a stake into your bitchy daughter's forehead. That's the best time to try to leave. You know, when everyone's already dead or in the process of being killed. That's the best time. "Shut your BITCHY mouth!"

"Gee, what a stink!" / "That's rotting flesh!"

"Your decisions are so right. Your will is soooo strong."

Toward the end, there's a lengthy flashback to a late 17th Century witch drowning, which uses a hilarious deep possession voice-over for the sorceress as she vows to get her revenge. "You and all your generations will damn your birth! Anyone who ventures near this plaaaaaaaaace!" Yep, that's what she says. I rewound it five times to make sure I was hearing it correctly. So the drowning happened in the lake... by the house... that the family has moved into. So that's why it's cursed. Obtaining this particular knowledge is enough for David to finally realize the family needs to get out of the house (corpses piling up obviously wasn't a good enough indicator) and he decides to stop being such a passive nimrod and heads there carrying a couple of cans of gasoline. Sadly, the film doesn't even give us an adequate fiery finale, and finally just gets pulled into the lake... kicking and screaming all the way to the bottom.

★1/2

La fille de Dracula (1972)

... aka: Daughter of Dracula

... aka: Dracula's Daughter
... aka: Eine Jungfrau in den Krallen von Vampiren
... aka: Filha de Dracula, A

Directed by:

Jesus Franco

A narrator tells us about how Castle Karlstein is rumored to have been the former home of Count Dracula. Then a woman takes off her top, walks around sipping wine and gets into a bath, where a female vampire attacks her. Afterward, Luisa (Britt Nichols) shows up just in time to have one last conversation with her elderly mother before she passes away. The dying woman tells her daughter that’s she the last descendant of the Karlstein family, then gives her a key to a tower in the family castle, tells her to prepare to see horrible things and then lets her know some of her descendants were vampires. Luisa goes to the tower and finds two coffins inside. The lid blows off one of them and a still-living Count Dracula (Howard Vernon) is inside, shows his fangs and puts the bite to his distant relative. Next thing Luisa knows, she’s attacking strippers and seducing her lonely cousin Karine (Anne Libert) after they reminisce about gouging out a bird’s eye with a needle (!) as children. The ladies go at it during a long lesbian scene while Karine’s father Count Max Karlstein (Daniel White, who also helped compose the score) tickles the ivories and the camera zooms in on parts of the piano, thighs, hands and *a-hem* other parts of the ladies.

Inspector Ptuschko (Alberto Dalbés) shows up to investigate the rising body count of naked women in the area. The Karlstein family secretary, Cyril Jefferson (played by the director) uses silly phrases like “blood-drinking, darkness-despising birds” and is an expert on things of the supernatural, but nobody believes him when he tells them what's going on. Ana Kramer (Yelena Samarina), who runs the local bar and pay-by-the-hour hotel, is married but secretly having an affair with Max. Charlie (Fernando Bilbao), a nosy reporter, is snooping around and doing his own private investigating. Sorry if you’re wanting more vampire action because the film spends more time with the above people than it does with the vampires.

As the vampire count, Vernon unfortunately doesn't get to do anything interesting. Hell, he doesn't even get to leave his coffin since he gets special deliveries made to his tomb from Luisa, who drops a topless barmaid into his coffin for him to feast on. The ending features a stake driven through a forehead instead of a heart. Said ending is also a pathetic, suspense-free non-event (kind of like the rest of this film) where characters just casually stroll into the tomb and kill them and that’s it. I couldn't even see one of Franco’s most staunch supporters defending this dull trash, but I’m sure some of them do. You’d be hard pressed to find a less interesting vampire movie out there. Neither the story line nor the characters generate any interest whatsoever, and the scant horror scenes fail to deliver in atmosphere, chills or bloody good fun. Though it’s fairly well-photographed and utilizes a few nice locations (especially the excellent castle setting, with a long garden full of statues and Autumnal colors leading up to it), there’s not much actual visual style present, unless you count zooming in to crotches or random shots of a beach as being high style.

By conventional standards, the nudity quotient is high, with two fairly long lesbian scenes and two nude victims. However, by Franco early 70s standards it’s actually quite low. I just watched Franco’s THE DEMONS right before this one and, while it’s also not very good, it at least offered loads of nudity, some blood and attempted a period setting and story line. If you absolutely have to watch one of these, chose that one instead. Nichols, who has a very contemporary, almost "supermodel" look about her, is very nice to look at, but it's a shame she happened to stumble upon Franco during this stage of his career.

The title screen on the version I watched (from Bertucci Film Entertainment) was Eine Jungfrau in den Krallen von Vampiren ("A Virgin in the Claws of Vampires"). It has some of the worst English subtitles I’ve seen, which are small, flat and extremely difficult to read. Lina Romay makes her first appearance of many in a Franco film. She’s in the second scene for about 15 seconds and has no dialogue.

★

Las Vegas Blood Bath (1989)

Directed by:
David Schwartz

It doesn't get much worse than this. Businessman Sam Butler (Ari Levin) is in Sacramento on business and decides to go back to his Vegas home early to surprise his wife Ruth (Elizabeth Anderson). Instead, he's the one surprised when he finds out she's screwing a policeman. Sam picks up a gun, shoots them both (offscreen), decapitates his wife (also offscreen) and then mumbles "All women are alike. They just don't deserve to live!" before hitting the Las Vegas Strip in search of "whores" to murder. He picks up a hooker, takes her behind a dumpster, rips off her top, stabs her through the chin and then rips her leg off with his car. He takes his wife's head into a bar, where he shoots the bartender. He then shoots off a guy's middle finger while he flips him off and smashes another guy's head in with a shovel. And for an encore he stalks a bunch of big-haired female oil wrestlers in bikinis giving a baby shower for their pregnant friend, who, according to her friends, actually is a whore. The women are all members of "B.L.O.W." (!), the "Beautiful Ladies of Wrestling" and they even have their own TV show.

Sam barges in, makes one of the girls tie the other ones up with rope and duct tape and then kills them off one by one. The pregnant one is taken upstairs first, has her breasts pulled out and then has her stomach sliced open. Sam then pulls her baby out and throws it against the wall. Another of the girls is dragged upstairs and drilled through the forehead. Others are shot, killed with a hammer and have their arm yanked off. A Jehovah's Witness stops by to get decapitated when the killer karate kicks a door, and finally a policeman pops in for the big surprise ending.

It's stupid, nearly plotless, was shot with a consumer grade camcorder (from all indications no attention was paid to picture, lighting or sound), has some of the worst amateur acting you'll ever see, awful one-liners and is full of cheap gore effects, a few of which admittedly aren't bad for a homemade production such as this. Most of the cast members act like they're not the least bit interested in being in the film and don't even bother trying to show emotion even as they're being attacked and killed. I've seen a few claim this is (or should be) a cult classic, but some people will say that about anything that's cheap and moronic. The biggest laugh I actually got out of the whole thing was during a Vegas street scene when an old woman walking by smiles and waves at the camera.

To my knowledge, this was initially distributed solely in the Vegas area, but then it received an official VHS release from a small company called Burning Moon in 1997. Now it's a DVD fixture on budget packs released by Mill Creek/Pendulum Pictures. The run time is only 67 minutes.

NO STARS!

Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The (1953)

... aka: Dinosaur in New York

... aka: Monster from Beneath the Sea

... aka: Panic in New York

Directed by:

Eugène Lourié

A hydrogen bomb blast in the arctic has unleashed a giant, aquatic "prehistoric beast" (aka Rhedosaurus) and it's about to do some major damage! Swiss Scientist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian) is the only living human to actually encounter the monster while working on "Operation Experiment" in the arctic and ends up with a broken leg after it knocks him into a ravine. He's rushed back to a New York City hospital where doctors there label his recollections of the beast as "traumatic hallucinations." After reading about a sea monster sinking a ship in St. Pierre, Nova Scotia, Tom sneaks out of the hospital and seeks help from paleontologist Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway), who initially doubts Tom's theory about the monster being able to survive for 100 millions in a block of ice before becoming unfrozen. Elson's assistant - scientist Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) - decides to kick things into motion when she has Tom and one of the survivors of a boat attack both pick out pictures of the beast they saw. That, along with various other sightings and attacks, all leading down the East Coast headed toward the United States, is enough proof to get Elson to enlist other scientists and military men, the latter lead by army colonel Jack Evans (Kenneth Tobey) on a sea expedition to locate the dino. Their attempts prove futile and they're unable to stop the beast before it emerges in New York harbor and then goes on a rampage.

The dino tears apart a lighthouse, breaks up a shark vs. octopus fight (by eating both of them) and consumes a diving bell with one of the principal characters on board. But the really great stuff comes when he crashes into the Big Apple, starts stomping on everything, eats a policeman, picks up a car in its mouth and then drops it, buries people under a pile of rubble after crashing through a brick building and destroys a roller coaster, not to mention causing screaming people to stampede over a blind man! It's also revealed that the monster has toxic blood that can kill humans on contact. After the monster's first sweep, a newspaper headline says "180 known dead; 1500 injured. Damage estimated at 300,000,000." And then the stupid military, like they always do, have to come in and spoil all our fun by shooting a bazooka at it, trying to electrocute it and finally having marksman Lee Van Cleef shoot a radioactive isotope missile into its wound.

This is clearly one of the very best '50s monster flicks and obviously a big inspiration for the obscenely popular Japanese Godzilla series that started just one year later, as well as numerous other films made across the globe during the later part of the decade. The movie's chief drawing card, of course, are the spectacular Ray Harryhausen special effects, which are outstanding for their time and still hold up surprisingly well today. Hell, give me Ray's charming stop-motion monsters any day of the week over the cartoonish CGI of today. At least his fx have some personality to them.

On a meager budget of just 200,000 dollars, this went on to gross over 5 million, making it one of the biggest box office successes of its year. Director Lourié (who also co-scripted from a Ray Bradbury story) was a "jack of all trades" in the entertainment industry, serving as a production designer / art director on numerous features, and also dabbling in other production areas. He'd direct several other films; The Colossus of New York (1958), The Giant Behemoth (1959) and Gorgo (1961), all of which were about giant monsters or beings. Lead actor Christian (real name Paul Hubschmid) apparently became "the first Swiss film star" back in the late 1930s and had a very successful career in Germany, though he's virtually unknown here in America except for this film.

The cast also includes many familiar faces from 50s sci-fi/horror, including Donald Woods (13 Ghosts), Steve Brodie (Donovan's Brain), Ross Elliott (Tarantula), King Donovan (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) as a psychiatrist and an uncredited James Best, who'd go on to star in THE KILLER SHREWS (1959) and play "Rosco P. Coltrane" on The Dukes of Hazard. Merv Griffin provides the voice of a radio announcer and Vera Miles appears in the trailer but not in the actual film itself.

★★★1/2

House by the River (1950)

...aka: Floodtide

...aka: Ghost of Rio, The

.

Directed by:

Fritz Lang

Frustrated, married writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) is feeling a little down in the dumps because his manuscripts have all been sent back by publishers. Looking for a little drunken pick-me-up while his wife is away, Stephen decides to come on to Emily (Dorothy Patrick), the attractive young maid they've recently hired. When he grabs Emily and kisses her, she screams and puts up a struggle. Stephen tries to silence her and ends up strangling her to death in the process. Immediately afterward, Stephen's crippled bookkeeper brother John (Lee Bowman) shows up and decides to go to the police. He's sick of covering for him, but is talked out of reporting it when Stephen claims his wife is pregnant. The two put the body in a sack and sink it in a nearby river (which has a well-earned reputation of recycling trash because of tidal water), and then try to go about their normal lives. While John is guilt-stricken over the events and finds his life falling apart because of it, brother Stephen is reveling in the attention he's getting in gossip circles and the local newspaper. In fact, he's getting enough free publicity to get his first novel published!

Several weeks later, the body turns up and John ends up being the brother taken to court and charged with murder since his name is stenciled on the sack that was used to hide Emily's body in. He's absolved of all wrongdoing, but the suspicion has ruined his reputation, friendships and career. Stephen however, who is sometimes haunted by visions of leaping fish he'd seen the night they sunk the body, is thriving and decides to relay the real-life events into a new novel he's writing titled "The River." Jane Wyatt co-stars as Stephen's long-suffering wife Marjorie, who eventually comes to the conclusion she's married a remorseless killer.

With such films as DESTINY (1921), DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (1922), METROPOLIS (1927), M (1931) and THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933) already long behind him, Lang had been having some trouble finding "respectable" big-budget studio work at this stage in his career. A studio he'd co-founded a few years earlier had went under and he, much to his displeasure, found himself at second rate Republic Pictures directing this. By Lang standards, this is just a minor footnote in a landmark career. However, by normal standards it's an above average and very entertaining film that blends melodrama, Gothic horror, courtroom drama and thriller together quite well. There's plenty of suspense, good performances and interesting and well thought out characterizations and character interactions. Though much takes place on sets, there are some nicely-done scenes that defy the anemic budget, such as Stephen frantically rowing around the edge of the river searching for the floating body.

Hayward (who would go on to play Jekyll and Hyde a year later in THE SON OF DRACULA) is great in his extremely unlikable role, and Wyatt and Bowman both also do nice jobs. There are a couple of nice supporting turns as well; one from Ann Shoemaker as a nosy but good-hearted neighbor who believes the Byrne brothers can do no wrong, and Jody Gilbert as John's hefty, talkative maid, who's getting fed up with her bosses irritable attitude. The cast also includes Peter Brocco as a coroner, Kathleen Freeman as a party guest and Carl Switzer (aka Alfalfa) as an office boy.

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Filmed in 1949 (right after Lang's SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR...). It's been issued to DVD at least three times, including once from Kino and a two-disc edition from Wild Side Video.

★★★

La perversa caricia de Satán (1976)

... aka: Baiser du diable, Le

... aka: Devil's Kiss

... aka: Wicked Caresses of Satan

Directed by:

Georges Gigó

A seance! An ancient castle! A mad scientist! A zombie! A rapist dwarf! An "avante-garde fashion show" featuring models who dance so horribly and are wearing such hideously ugly one-piece bell bottom outfits while dancing so horribly that I laughed until I cried and then rewound the movie five times to watch it all over again. Take all those elements, add some chintzy gore, grave-robbing, Satanism and a little nudity, stir together, and you have this economy-budget Eurotrash effort that's sure to please fans of senseless cheese. At a large Gothic castle, Duke Victor De Haussmont (José Nieto) is throwing a party. Since his festivities have been getting a bit stale lately, he's brought in evocative Claire Grandier (Silvia Solar) to liven things up a bit. Claire is bitter because she used to be a wealthy countess with a promising future as a medical student and now she's working as a medium. Years earlier, her husband killed himself and the Duke and his family cashed in on his death while doing nothing to help Claire when she needed it. Now she wants revenge. Accompanying Claire to the party is Professor Ramar Gruber ("Oliver Matthau"/Olivier Mathot), an expert on telepathy who has been experimenting with the regeneration of animal cells (?) on the side. Together, the duo make up "the inseparable union of life... the spirit and the magic." Confused yet? Just wait. It gets worse.

After the fashion show, all the models decide to go check out the seance except for one named Betty (Mara Vador), who stays behind to take a shower. The creepy voyeuristic butler Charles (José Ruiz Lifante) peeps in on her showering, watches her change clothes, then tries to rape her and finally slaps her in the face for trying to steal a little gold box. After adequately proving their abilities, the duke offers up his hospitality to Claire and Gruber, promising to give them room, board, a place in the cellar to set up a lab and funding for their experiments in exchange for them teaching him occult sciences. They agree, and the duo move in. The Professor starts work on his experiments, while Claire plots to use Satanism to get her revenge. Meanwhile, Loreta (Evelyne Scott) the maid is having sex with the stable boy Jean (Juan M. Solano). Well... I guess that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot but they wanted to throw that in there, anyway.

While out horse riding, Claire comes across a mentally-retarded dwarf serial rapist (!), brings him home, gives him food and has sex with him so he'll help them out. They all dig up a mangled corpse and bring it back to the lab. The doctor reconstructs the head and gives it a shot of his special "catalyptic serum," then Claire does a ceremony that involves reading from a Satanic text and killing a chicken. The dead guy (basically some bald skinny guy with a protruding rib cage, a couple of scratches and a stitched up eye) then comes to life as a zombie. Professor Gruber can control it with his telepathic abilities. That evening they send it upstairs to strangle the Duke, who happens to have a cigarette in one hand and a candelabra in the other (!) so when he burns up in bed after being strangled to death the authorities think nothing of it.

The Duke's playboy photographer nephew Richard (Daniel Martin) then inherits the castle, moves in and decides to let Claire and the Professor stay to continue their experiments, but the duo start losing control of their monster because the Professor's bad heart can't handle it any longer. Right in the middle of having an erotic dream about some woman horseriding naked and running around in a field in a sheer outfit (!), the rapist dwarf (Ronnie Harp) gets strangled to death by the monster, who then sneaks upstairs and gets Loreta too before escaping the castle to going on a little rampage around town. Claire puts "the power of Astra" into Loreta so she turns into a killer zombie, too, then stabs her lover to death with a pair of scissors. The Duke's model girlfriend Susan (María Silva) shows up for a visit and ends up getting chased around the grounds by the bald zombie. Will she become the next victim?

If you bothered reading all this, you can probably tell this movie tries to cram way too much nonsense into its 93 minute run-time for any sane viewer to handle. It seldom makes sense, some of the character motivations are muddled and the film completely lacks any kind of protagonist. Most of the time it's centered around Claire and the Professor, then treats their demises as almost an afterthought while attempting to switch attention around to Richard and Susan during the last 25-30 minutes. It's too bad neither Richard nor Susan are the least bit interesting, we know nothing about them and we could care less about what happens to either of them. To make matters worse, the filmmakers also try to squeeze a police investigation in at the very end, as well as a scientific study into a zombie, which are two other half-assed subplots we could care less about by that point.

The sets are pretty good, as is the photography, but most of the acting and dialogue are bad, the pacing is awful and the generic organ score isn't very good either. The best thing about the film is actress Silvia Solar. She cuts a striking figure with her exotic looks, jet black hair, long black eyelashes and mostly black wardrobe, and hits just the right note of bitchy villainy to keep this mess at least someone watchable. I always remember Lifante in these things, too, but that's probably just because he's so odd and creepy looking.

The cast also includes Víctor Israel (who's only in the first scene), Carlos Otero as one of the castle's three (!) butlers, Moisés Augusto Rocha ("Jack Rocha" here) as the zombie and the director (who is also billed as Jordi Gigo) as "The Annunciator."

★1/2