Body Count (1986) (TV)

... aka: Bodycount

Directed by:

Lionel Shenken

After leaving a bar (where a band called The Razor Blades sing the hilarious “Body Count” theme song), a young couple end up getting gunned down on a playground. The serial killer responsible for that double murder has been leaving numbered cards with each victim, which keeps track of his overall body count. The top suspect in the murders is taxi driver Mark Stephens (James Lukie), who seems to always be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A red taxi looking just like Mark’s was seen near the location of the first murder, he’s emdebted to a black thug named Charley (Lance K. McIntyre) who lent him money to buy his car and is saddled with temperamental model girlfriend Nanette (Sherry Lee), who’s always bitching about money. After dropping off a weird old woman at a cemetery, Mark runs across Laurie (Christine Manning) – the sister of the last victim, who came all the way from Vancouver and now doesn’t have a place to stay. Or so she claims. Mark invites her to come over to his place, they have sex and then she disappears the next day. Investigators, led by police sergeant Corey Jackman (Jonathan Knapp) and his partner Al Vinetti (Paul Amato), keep harassing Mark, but they’ve got the wrong man tagged. Radio reporter Kirby (James Patrick Knapp), who has been covering the murders, also lends them a hand.

The real killer (revealed early on so I’m not giving anything away here) is Paul Carter (Jonathan Potts), a clean-cut, virginal college student lashing out at a world that has fucked him over. He claims to have no family, rents a room from kindly Mrs. Potts (Ilene Cummings), finds out he has inoperable cancer during a doctor’s check up (blaming it on growing up near a factory called “Diamond Chemicals”) and lashes out by going out and shooting down random people with his magnum. In one scene he shoots another taxi driver in the back of the head. In another, he perches outside a public zoo and aims his scope at babies and little kids running around. Despite his odd behavior, Paul finds himself an understanding girlfriend in Jennifer (Cynthia Kereluk), whose parents abuse her. She doesn't mind that Paul can’t “perform” and wants to skip town with him.

It was filmed around Ontario, Canada. It was shot on video. It’s nearly impossible to find. I do have to give these people credit for at least trying to come up with something decent on a nonexistent budget. There’s some level of competence here when it comes to story structure. However, everyone is defeated by a talky, cliché-ridden script where there’s absolutely nothing interesting or original about either the characters or the situations they find themselves in. The excitement quotient is nil, the videography is flat and most of the actors are mediocre, while a few others are flat out terrible. In other words, not many people are going to want to watch this one, let alone seek it out. It also seems to "borrow" many of its ideas from the highly superior Targets (1968). Watch that one instead.

Released on VHS by AVEC Video, this was one of at least fifteen extremely cheap, extremely talky shot-on-video productions from Emmeritus Productions, a "film" branch of the Canadian TV station CHCH-TV. Other titles from them include the awful anthology Greedy Terror (1985), Blue Murder (1985; which was given the more exploitative title The Porn Murders for the American video release), SURVIVAL EARTH (1985) and Mark of the Beast (1986).

Strangely, there were no less than three horror films titled (or re-titled) Body Count that were made within a year of one another. Other than this one, there was the Italian campground slasher from 1986 directed by Ruggero Deodato (which was originally titled Camping del terror) and Paul Leder’s murders-for-the-inheritance flick (which was also called The Eleventh Commandment).

★1/2

Angst (1983)

...aka: Fear

...aka: Schizophrenia

Directed by:

Gerald Kargl

There are some things in life I'll probably never understand. Why does anyone watch Big Brother, a TV "reality show" where people basically sit around doing absolutely nothing, and why is it going into its 11th season? Who would pay ten dollars to watch a spoof movie in a theater? Why would anyone feel compelled to defend the "legacy" of George W. Bush? And why the hell hasn't ANGST been released to video or DVD in America? Over the years several different companies have announced they were finally going to do it. Barrel Entertainment said they were... about three years ago. And that never happened. Maybe it'll never be released. I was able to find an excellent copy online, which I believe was sourced from the 2005 German DVD release (from Epix Media) and thankfully came with custom English subs made by a fan of the film that seem to be accurate. Though I do on occasion watch films in their original language when there's no other alternative, this is one film where dialogue is crucial. I'll be doing a more in-depth review of this one once I get a chance. Definitely a must see if you can find it. It'll be debuting as #2 on my Top 10 list for 1983.

★★★1/2

Chunk Blower (1990)

Directed by:
Jim Van Bebber

Van Bebber had started production on what was to be a feature-length horror/gore film about a killer tow truck driver/junkyard owner (Bruce Paisley) and the production fell through at some point after they’d already shot enough to assemble a promo reel for it. What remains was then edited into a 3 ½ minute narrated trailer, and that’s what we have here. Based on what’s shown, it’s a shame the full feature never happened. Looks like it could have been fun. The photography (with a slick blue/purple look for the night scenes) and camerawork seem very good and there’s some gore (a body split open with a hook; two guys handcuffed to the steering wheel and people burned alive in their car). It was co-scripted by Chas. Balun and features appearances from musicians Bill Leeb (from Frontline Assembly) and Dwayne Goettel (from Skinny Puppy). It can be found on either Google Video or Youtube. Ohio native Van Bebber also made DEADBEAT AT DAWN (1988), the short MY SWEET SATAN (1994) and the highly-regarded (by some) THE MANSON FAMILY (which began production in 1988 but wasn't completed until 2003).

★★1/2

Love Me Deadly (1972)

...aka: Secrets of the Death Room

Directed by:

Jacques Lacerte

Lindsay Finch (Mary Wilcox), who was sexually molested by her father as a child, has grown into a rather disturbed young woman. She’s first seen at a funeral making out with a corpse, and next browsing through the obituaries for men who’ve died recently, looking for just one brief intimate moment once backs are turned or the room is empty. During one such trip she gets carried away and crushes the nose of a corpse, not realizing the face she was feeling was of a man whose face had to be reconstructed for the viewing. As she’s fleeing the mortuary, she bumps into the dead man’s brother Alex (Lyle Waggoner), briefly introduces herself and leaves. Meanwhile, Fred McSweeney (Timothy Scott), a mortician who runs his own funeral parlor, is out cruising the gay district of the city. He picks up a young street hustler named Billy-Jo (I. William Quinn) and gives him 10 extra bucks if he’ll accompany him to where he work for sex. When they get there, he talks Billy-Jo into getting up on a slab naked, then quickly straps him down, jabs needles into him and embalms him alive!

Lindsay, trying to force a “normal” relationship, goes on a date with a pushy, womanizing jerk named Wade (Christopher Stone) and begins spying on art gallery owner Alex because he resembles her dead father. Fred notices Lindsay’s been hanging around at funeal services and is getting touchy feely with the bodies and lets her know, “You are not alone.” Turns out Fred’s the leader of a secret society of hooded necrophiliacs who meet together and share their hobby late at night at his establishment. After going to pick up another prostitute (female this time), he sends Lindsay an invite. She goes, walks in on room full of nude necros getting down with a corpse and runs away in disgust. Fred promises to let her have a “private session”with a corpse to help ease her into this new and exciting (?) lifestyle.

Lindsay begins spending more and more time with Alex and the two eventually get married, but Alex is frustrated because his new bride sleeps in a different bedroom and won’t have sex with him. He becomes even more suspicious when she’s caught lying about sneaking off to the funeral home. The fact she's been receiving priority letters from McSweeney Funeral Home on a regular basis doesn't look good either. The bad news for him, and for anyone else who happens to stumble upon the secret society, is that they’re immediately killed.

There have been many other movies made before this one with a discreet hint of necrophilia, but this is one of the earliest I can think of that completely revolves around it and seems to be trying to maturely delve into psychological aspects instead of using the subject matter simply to shock. Lindsay is shown as a woman who desperately wants to be normal, but can’t. She’s far too overwhelmed by her urge to be with the dead to have a healthy relationship with a consenting adult. What most would deem sick and immoral is normal and comforting to her... and a select few others. Frequent flashbacks (some sepia toned) to Lindsay’s youth try to shed some light on why she is the way she is.

The performances here are very uneven; sometimes downright wooden. And to an extent, making the mortuary owner/necro cult leader a psychotic killer compromises the more serious-minded portrayal of the necro lifestyle as seen through the Lindsay character. However, the cast and crew both deserve some credit for taking on this subject matter and at least attempting to give an unthinkable lifestyle a human face. I'm sure this was considered pretty strong stuff back in 1972, though it might seem pretty tame to modern audiences. Kit Fuller sings the title theme song and it was produced by H.B. Halicki, who went on to direct the original version of GONE IN 60 SECONDS (1974). He also has a cameo here as a racecar driver.

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Code Red and Media Blasters have both announced they were going to release the film as a special edition DVD, but Anime Works beat both to the punch with their 2008 release of the film. Something Weird also offers the film on DVD-R (which is sourced from a 35mm print) and it was also released to VHS back in the 80s by Video Gems.

★★1/2

Si yiu (1981)

...aka: Corpse Mania
...aka: Shi yao

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

A mysterious, well-dressed man has just moved to a small town called Guangzhou with a wife so ill she can't even move. The gossipy neighbor notices he barely ever leaves the house and goes about spying on him; peeping in his window one night and catching the couple having sex. A few days later, a strong odor is eminating from the home, so police bust in and discover a dead, nude and maggot-covered female corpse in the home but no sign of the man. Investigators, led by detective Mr. Zhang (Wong Yung), connect this crime to another similar one where a strangled female corpse showed signs of sexual entry post mortem. Meanwhile, at the Zui Hong House, a brothel, the necro - Mr. Li (Erik Chan Ga Kei) - shows up and bargains with Madam Lan (Tanny, real name Nien Ti) over the price of Hongmei, one of her girls, who's too sick with tuberculosis to work. The two settle on 500 dollars for the trade. Li takes Hongmei (Jenny Liang) as his bride and moves her into a decrepit old home. She dies, a nosy delivery boy catches Li continuing to have sex with her corpse, goes to the cops and has Li arrested. He's promptly sent off to an asylum. Now everyone can sleep safely, right?

Wrong! A serial killer dressed in a blue robe, sunglasses and a top hat - the exact same ensemble Li normally wore (aside from having a white scarf now pulled over the face) begins murdering everyone connected with Madam Lan or her brothel. It's no coincidence that the new series of murders coincide with Li being prematurely released from the asylum, is it? Plot twists abound during a busy ending, which works in elements of blackmail, false identity, corpse swapping and the like.

The first thirty minutes of this Shaw Brothers production are actually quite excellent. It's surprisingly stylish; with excellent cinematography, good use of crane shots, some nice art direction and colorful, stylized lighting choices. There's also excellent use a soft-focus lighting during one standout scene where Li rubs down his newly deceased wife with powder. In addition the necrophile-killer premise set up is pretty intriguing and there's an amazingly disgusting scene of a corpse absolutely infested with maggots. Unfortunately, the film then slips into the routine, drops the necro content for the most part and settles into a mix of slasher scenes, dull police procedural and convoluted plot twists. The stalking / slasher scenes are probably the best the film has to offer during its second half. Most take place at night in empty streets where light reflects from wet cobblestone streets and glares from the killer's knife blade, though even these scenes seem less visually arresting and more repetitive as the film goes on.

Director Chih-Hung Kuei churned out quite a few horror films for Shaw during the early portion of the 80s, including HEX (1980), HEX VS. WITCHCRAFT (1980), BEWITCHED (1981), CURSE OF EVIL (1982) and finally his most famous effort, THE BOXER'S OMEN (1983), which also turned out to be his last film. He retired afterward and passed away in 1999. The cast includes Yau Chui Ling as Lan's adopted daughter Yan-Er and Walter Tso as the police chief. The 2008 DVD release is from Image.

★★1/2

Flesh and the Fiends, The (1960)

... aka: Fiendish Ghouls, The

... aka: Mania

... aka: Psycho Killers

Directed by:

John Gilling

Unpleasant, extremely atmospheric and very well-acted retelling of the Burke and Hare "West Port Murders" serial killings, which took place in an eighteen month period between 1827 and 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Outwardly-respectable doctor/ anatomy teacher Robert Knox (Peter Cushing) isn't content with only occasionally getting the corpses of executed criminals, so he secretly employs shady Irish grave-robbers Burke (George Rose) and Hare (Donald Pleasence), who go about murdering drunks, bums and prostitutes who frequent a local tavern to procure fresh corpses for their employer. Knox doesn't ask too many questions about where the bodies are actually coming from, nor does he seem to particularly care where they're coming from, but his assistant Dr. Geoffrey Mitchell (Dermot Walsh), who has just begun dating Knox's niece Martha (June Laverick), begins to voice suspicions that fall on deaf ears. John Cairney co-stars as a flunky med school student involved in a doomed romance with a brassy bar girl played by Billie Whitelaw (that evil nanny from The Omen, in an early role) and Renee Houston plays Hare's sour wife, who casually assists the men in the killings. Though the horror fan in me wants to single out Cushing and Pleasence's contributions to this film, it's futile to do so since everyone listed above does equally fine work here and it's really the entire ensemble that drives home this material.

Another of the films great strengths is its evocative period detail, with John Elphick's elaborate art direction, Monty Berman's sharply dark / inky photography and Laura Nightingale's costuming combining to create a seedy, grimy, impoverished environment; a believable breeding ground for casual killings for profit. The contrast between the elite few of the upper class and science community with the depressing living conditions of your everyday average Joe is well played, and the film raises issue to some interesting topics involving medical ethics and whom one might deem worthless or disposable within a given society.

The Burke and Hare incident would go on to inspire many books, stories and films over the years. The first known TV adaptation was a 1939 BBC production titled The Anatomist. Later episodes of the American TV shows Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone were also dedicated to the same subject. The first theatrical film to directly take on the real-incident was 1948's Crimes of Burke and Hare, starring Tod Slaughter. Unfortunately, the British Board of Censors rejected the film and forced the filmmakers to re-dub and remove all references to Burke and Hare before it would issue a release certificate. The film was then re-titled The Greed of William Hart in the UK and Horror Maniacs in the US. Following that were THE ANATOMIST in 1956 (part of the ITV Play of the Week TV series in the UK), The Horrors of Burke and Hare in 1972, The Doctor and the Devils (a virtual remake of Flesh and the Fiends) in 1985 and others. In addition, Burke and Hare inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's short story "The Body Snatcher," which itself would be filmed several times, most notably in 1945 by Robert Wise (which was produced by Val Lewton and starred Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi).

Copyright date for this film is 1959; though it wasn't released until 1960 (the U.S. theatrical title was Mania). It will be making its debut on my Top 10 list for 1960 at #9.

★★★

Ai sha (1981)

...aka: Love Massacre Directed by: Patrick Tam I've never seen the point of always using white subtitles. Why can't they use yellow or neon green or some other color instead? Sure, white is fine for darkly shot films and sure, it might look less tacky than a more gaudy color, but for films like this one - which mostly takes place in the daytime and features characters constantly wearing white clothing and cropped shots with white pillows and white tableclothes constantly showing up at the bottom of the screen - using white subs is an extremely poor choice. On the plus side, this one's not hard to follow even when you miss some of the dialogue. It's your garden variety "psycho lover" flick; a subgenre of horror that features a protagonist dating, marrying and/or having sex with a seemingly normal person who turns out to be a psycho who then terrorizes them. Clint Eastwood's PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971), about a radio being stalked by an unstable former listener/lover, is one of the earliest contemporary examples of this subgenre. Years later we'd have such box office hits as FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) and BASIC INSTINCT (1992), which then spearheaded a huge amount of direct-to-video or cable "erotic thrillers" with almost identical plotlines. LOVE MASSACRE is a fairly early example of this kind of film. It's a Hong Kong production that was filmed in the United States in 1981. There's no nudity or eroticism like in the later films, but there is a decent amount of violence if you can wade past the incredibly slow first hour. Emotionally disturbed college student Joy (Tina Lau) slashes her wrists when her boyfriend breaks up with her. She recovers from the attempted suicide, but suffers from bad headaches and fainting spells and seems to strongly disapprove of her friend Ivy (Brigitte Lin), who attends the same California college she does, dating her brother Chiu Chung (Kuo Chu Chang). Joy is killed in a car accident and Chiu Chung tells Ivy he needs to return to Hong Kong for an extended stay but will be back. While he's gone, Ivy learns some surprising things about her new boyfriend. For starters, he forgot to tell her that he's already married and has a child back in Taiwan. He also forgot to mention that he and his sister were institutionalized at one point and both suffer from a "hereditary" psycho disorder. Ivy reads in the Hong Kong paper than an unemployed engineer had killed his wife and then disappeared. Putting two and two together, she comes to the conclusion that Chiu Chung is the nutjob responsible. Unfortunately for her, he's already headed back to the U.S. to ask for her hand in marriage. Chiu Chung shows up, starts acting psycho and confesses he'd killed his family so he can be with her. Ivy flees and goes and visits her photographer friend Louie (Charlie Chin). Meanwhile, Chiu Chung decides to break into Ivy's dorm. When he discovers she's not there he decides to pass the time by grabbing a kitchen knife and slaughtering all of her housemates. He gathers them all up, ties and gags them, then begins killing them one by one. One is slashed to death in bed, another gets her head slammed in a door, a throat is slashed, a neck is snapped and a face gets stabbed through a pillow. I don't know if I got ahold of a cut version or this or not, but the camera seems to cut away each time the murders threaten to get too violent. You'll see the beginning of each kill, but then it quickly cuts away before it can get gory. The editing in these scenes is terrible. Ivy eventually shows up and encounters a blood-soaked Chiu Chung on the rooftop for the big finale. It's a seldom-seen film here in the States, but I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to acquire a copy of this one. The acting's mediocre, the premise is worn out and this thing takes forever to get going. In fact, the big dorm massacre doesn't take place until the last 20 minutes. The rest of the time is spent setting up the fact that the boyfriend is a psycho, which is something pretty evident early on in the film. The director and cameraman do at least try to be artistic at times, and occasionally manage to spice up this otherwise ordinary film, just not nearly often for this to be of much interest. The cast includes Patrick Kong Lung (who also co-produced the film) and Ann Hui (who'd go to an acclaimed career as an award-winning director). I also need to point out that the other websites I visited list this as being solely a drama, when it's most definitely a horror/thriller.

  ★★