Fear Chamber, The (1968)

...aka: Cámara del terror, La

...aka: Chamber of Fear

...aka: Torture Chamber, The

...aka: Torture Zone

Directed by:

Jack Hill

Juan Ibáñez

Scientists Corinne (Julissa) and Mark (Carlos East) are exploring underneath a volcano with their "detector" when they stumble upon a strange, living rock. Meanwhile, a woman named Luisa strips down to her bra and panties and goes to bed. A dwarf (Santanón) visits her while she sleeps and when she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself in a bizarre, colorfully-lit, cobweb-strewn "fear chamber" full of unusual and creepy stuff. The dwarf is there. And so is some guy wearing white gloves, a white turban and sunglasses who threatens her with a lizard, and a sexy woman in leather who slaps her around. Skeletons, skulls and candles decorate the walls, spiders and snakes are all over the place and a pool of glowing red water has eels in it and some huge tentacle! The girl screams and screams and screams some more; finally making it to a torture room where a robed man (played by Boris Karloff) - demands "Bring on the sinner!" Another female is dragged into the room by hooded henchmen, is tied over a fire pit and then stabbed to death. Next up is Luisa, who's snatched up, brought to the table and passes out... and then thing start getting stranger than they already were.

Karloff's character enters through another door and finds himself in some kind of futuristic, brightly-lit clinic where it's revealed he's not actually a cult member, but a scientist. Dr. Carl Mandel (Boris), his evil, voyeuristic lesbian assistant Helga (Isela Vega), Corinne (his daughter), Mark (her boyfriend), Roland (a lobotomized mental defective with a diamond fetish played by Yerye Beirute) and some others are caring for the rock they'd found earlier, which apparently survives by eating special hormones produced by females when they're frightened! The scientists ponder whether its ethical or not to lure women there under false pretenses (they also run a bogus employment agency!) and then extract their blood while they're passed out, and are also having problems with that turbaned guy, who's been fooling around with the unconscious victims. Dr. Mandel ends up getting electrocuted and the experiments are put on hold, but Roland befriends and bonds with the rock monster and communicates with it telepathically (!), and he and Helga plot to continue on in the experiments against Mandel's wishes. The rock soon becomes powerful enough to take live victims whole, and it turns the sexy young women it gets ahold of (including a stripper) into withered old hags.

It's pretty awful, confusing, weird and horribly dubbed, but somewhat entertaining in a slapdash Z movie kind of way... at least for awhile. My interest level seemed to drop off about 30 minutes in once the bizarro plot was fully established and the film then really had nowhere else to go, though there's still the occasional laugh (especially Roland's "I'm gonna be da kang of dee world!" rants at the end). The torture chamber sets are actually pretty cool, though!

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Notable mainly for containing Karloff's last actual screen appearance. The actor spends most of his time in the first half sitting at a desk, and most of his time in the second half lying in a bed. His footage was shot in Santa Monica by director Hill in May of 1968 (the film itself wasn't released until 1972), which was then combined with what Ibáñez shot in Mexico. The same exact technique was used for three other last minute Karloff features (all of which are varying degrees of bad); the haunted house movie DANCE OF DEATH (also with Julissa), the voodoo movie SNAKE PEOPLE (with Julissa, East and Santanón) and the alien movie THE SINISTER INVASION (with Beirute).

★1/2

Yabu no naka no kuroneko (1968)

...aka: Black Cat, The
...aka: Black Cat from the Grove
...aka: Kuroneko

Directed by:
Kaneto Shindô

Shindô's terrific companion piece to his highly-regarded ONIBABA (1964) is nearly as good. A group of samurai casually invade a farm house where two women live. They steal their food and water, gang rape them, murder them and then burn down their home. The victims - elder Yone (the excellent Nobuko Otowa, returning from ONIBABA) and her daughter-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi) - have made a pact with an evil God; they can return to human form in exchange for killing and drinking the blood of every samurai they happen to come across. Late at night, at Rajomon Gate - their village's city square - Shige waits patiently for any chivalrous samurai passing through the area and then asks if they'll accompany her home. The men are then led down a long, dark path, invited inside, given enough sake to get them drunk, are tempted with sex and then have their throats chewed out by the stealthy, cat-like seductresses. Meanwhile, Gintoki (Kichiemon Nakamura), Yone's son and Shige's husband, who was drafted to go to war three years earlier, has returned home only to find the charred remnants of his former home and is family missing. Now a war hero and high ranking samurai himself after slaying a powerful barbarian, Gintoki is hired by the village's prejudicial police chief Raiko (Kei Sato, also from ONIBABA) to kill the "monster" responsible for the recent series of samurai slayings.

While patrolling Rajomon Gate one evening, Gintoki comes across a veiled Shige, who lures him back to her home. Though Shige and Yone try to hide their identities at first (a pact they made with the evil God states they cannot reveal who they are or why they are killing samurai or else face spending eternity in hell), it's all too obvious to Gintoki that's he finally located his missing family. Shige risks all by starting a passionate affair with her former husband instead of killing him, while Gintoki is given an ultimatum from Raiko to either kill the women or be killed himself.

A lot of the themes (revenge, ghosts, the black cat, loyalty to family, class status...) contained here were very common themes in Japanese cinema during this time. How the film deconstructs the myth of the samurai; stripping down a profession once blindly regarded as strictly "noble" and "respectable" and turning into something more shaded, was also something common. Just like those in any high-ranking position, power is abused and many samurai used their status as an excuse to terrorize and commit crimes against those their arrogance led them to believe were lesser or expendable (namely farmers, peasants and women). In regard to these themes the film is somewhat familiar, but this is so well-made it doesn't really matter. It's very well acted by all four of the principals and superbly photographed in b/w by Kiyomi Kuromi (who won a major Japanese film award for his work here; as did Otowa). The lighting is highly stylized (sometimes images are even spot-lit to stand out) and Takashi Marumo's art direction is also exceptional (and clever), particularly inside the ladies' new home, which is done with a symmetrical/vertical theme that nearly blends the interiors with the thick bamboo fields located right outside. The characters are given enough conflicts of conscience to keep the emotional content compelling, and the horror/supernatural elements are eerie; sometimes jarring even.
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So if you haven't seen this or ONIBABA, plan a double-feature as soon as you can to check out two of the decade's very best films. Amazingly, the director is still busy writing and directing to this very day... at the age of 97!

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★★★1/2

Stripped to Kill (1987)

Directed by:

Katt Shea

What happens when you hire a competent female writer/director to make a low-budget T&A horror-thriller with a strip club setting? You get compromise, and a kind of tug-of-war effect between exploitation and realism. While this one has a more-than-generous amount of T&A and violence, it should also be given credit for delivering a gritty, credible and often unflattering look inside a strip club and the women who populate it. The dancing is explored for all its worth and from all possible angles; exploitation, entertainment, eroticism, even as art. Some of the dancers view their occupation as being a way to express themselves through dance while others think of it as just a paycheck for another night's work. A few are lesbians, some have drug problems, most have criminal records and a few even seem like reasonably well-adjusted women who just happen to find stripping unpredictable and exciting. The club itself is so atmospherically represented that you can almost smell the cigarette smoke in the hallways. The door of the girl's dressing room, the congregation place where the girls change into their costumes, bitch about customers, reflect on their lives and pasts, etc., has "Women" scratched out and "Sluts" amusingly spray-painted over it. Much of the dialogue between them is laced with cynicism, no doubt based on a life's worth of problems, failures and disappointments. All of the girls are given just enough personality to be likable and what seems seedy at first eventually turns into a somewhat accommodating place for outcasts of all types once the heroine of this film gains employment as one of the dancers.

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The heroine is question is a reserved tomboy policewoman played by Kay Lenz, who goes undercover at the club when a serial killer begins targeting the strippers. Sure, we've seen this exact same plot many times before (at least I have), but this movie takes it a step further. Not only is Lenz trying to crack the case but her character is learning and opening up in the process. This assignment allows her an outlet from the male dominated police force and the opportunity to explore her femininity and sexuality. She also discovers an odd kinship and inner working between the women and gets a little too involved on a personal level. It's an interesting role and Lenz (a sorely overlooked actress over the years) is great in it. And yeah, she does several nude scenes and looks great doing so, but it's a thoughtful, very good performance that doesn't rely on her nude scenes to be memorable. Norman Fell also has a great supporting role as the no-nonsense club owner, who's every bit as dry, cynical and world-weary as his girls.

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The biggest gripe I see about this film is that there are too many dance scenes and they're too long. This is no doubt just filling executive producer Roger Corman's quotient of T&A for direct-to-video profit. Well fine, we get the naked girls and get the stripping. Plenty of each. What I don't see usually pointed out is that the dance scenes themselves are entertaining. They usually incorporate some interesting props (motorcycles, fire, a giant spider web...) or have a specific theme and with the lighting mixed in, it does come off as performance art at times. In addition, you can tell the women hired in these roles are actually either professionally trained dancers or actual strippers (or ex-strippers) because their stage performances incorporate flips, splits and a flexibility that requires dance training. The soundtrack is full of dated 80s-style rock, usually with a female vocalist, but it's tolerable. The biggest problem I had with the film is that the slasher movie plot seems almost an unnecessary afterthought. I was far more interested in the everything else that was going on that I almost lost complete interest in who was actually killing the strippers.

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Without question, Katt Shea is one of the most talented writer-directors Corman employed in the 80s and 90s. She was one of the few with the ability to transcend the formulaic material and anemic budgets to create films that are distinctive, thoughtful, personal and interesting. And like many other notable cult/underground directors, she has never, and may never, receive much recognition or attention, and that's a true shame. I especially recommend her films DANCE OF THE DAMNED (1988; an intriguing and original vampire film which has sadly slipped into obscurity over the years) and STREETS (1990; a grim drama/thriller starring Christina Applegate as a teenage prostitute hunted by a serial killer). While STRIPPED TO KILL might not be as impressive as the aforementioned films, and a bit more weighted down and padded out, it's still a bright starting point for the director and well worth checking out.

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Also with Greg Evigan as Lenz's chauvenist partner/love interest, Diana Bellamy and Debra Lamb (who also appeared in the 1989 sequel - STRIPPED TO KILL II: LIVE GIRLS).

★★★

Imps* (2009) [filmed in 1983]

Directed by:

Scott Mansfield

This comedy that went unreleased for over 20-25 years... Now see why! The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) is a good example of a collection of comedy skits done right. IMPS* (which stands for The Immoral Minority Picture Show) on the other hand is an example of just how grueling this format can be when everything goes horribly wrong! Even Saturday Night Live on its worst day is funnier than this. I'm not really sure when IMPS* was actually filmed (checking the end credits says the DVD issue year of 2008), but it was obviously some time in the early/mid 1980s since several of the actors here were dead by the middle part of the decade. So is it a bad sign that it took about 25 years to actually release this? Absolutely! You will find yourself groaning and rolling your eyes about twenty times more than you'll snicker at this childish, horribly unfunny collection of skits that poke fun at various movies, TV shows, sporting events, news programs and commercials, as well as Nazis, gays, blacks, "Pollocks," Mexicans, Jews, "orientals" and other groups. I personally don't mind off color or offensive humor at all, but this movie doesn't go far enough to be over-the-top and outrageous, nor does it cleverly play up on stereotypes or anything of the sort. Though I can't recommend that anyone watch this, it's now of some interest as a curio piece because of the ensemble cast. Here we have a very interesting mix of up-and-coming young film and TV stars, washed-up former stars in their twilight years, magazine centerfolds, porn stars, cult/horror staples and even a Harlem Globetrotter!

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One of the highlights is an ever-so-mildly amusing horror spoof "Don't Scream on My Face" (did Edgar Wright see this?) starring Linda Blair as "The Don't Girl," the dumbest horror movie heroine in history who does the expected stupid things (going into the house alone, the basement alone, the woods alone, etc.) Jason Voorhees even makes a cameo appearance in this one... using a walker! A young Jennifer Tilly goes to an auction to purchase a well-established bachelor in the next bit. "The 3 Mile Island People" is a sitcom spoof about a literal nuclear family (with Fred Willard as the dad). Marilyn Chambers shows up wearing see-through lingerie in a credit card commercial. Colleen Camp humiliates some poor guy at a bar for no real reason (was this even supposed to be funny?). John Carradine hosts "Great Moments" in Polish history (where an off-screen narrator reminds him there are no great moments in Polish history... har har). Wendie Jo Sperber is the Marquessa De Sade in a music video spoof about S&M and spousal abuse. Julia Duffy narrates a trashy soap opera sketch from a bed on a theater stage. Rich Hall tries to sell us an album from some Don Ho clone. Busty former Playboy model Lynda Wiesmeier plays sex queen Bambi Juliette in what is probably the most amusing segment - "Teenage French Stewardess Nurse Babysitter," though even that just rips off the much funnier "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble" sketch from the aforementioned Kentucky Fried Movie.

Jimmie Walker plays "the first black in space" in another segment that also features Keenan Wynn (who passed away in 1986). James B. Sikking gets to play a weight conscious Count Dracula in a stupid "Lite Blood" commercial. The two longest segments; one about a Nazi interrogation (with David Lander and Michael McKean) and the other a slasher/ detective movie spoof called "The Hanukah Horror," yield no laughs at all. There are also commercials spoofing everything from Calvin Klein jeans (featuring a young Erika Eleniak imitating Brooke Shields) to flavorless diet soda (with P.J. Soles) to dandruff shampoo (with Peter Scolari and Audrey Landers) to telephone companies (with Sybil Danning). Other commercial spoof involve super glue, aspirin, deodorant, Shake N' Bake, beer and "quaaludes for kids.

While some of this may sound amusing and many of the themes seem ripe for parody, this "comedy" is so horribly written and has such lame and obvious jokes that the laughs just aren't there. Like ever! I've seldom seen a film like this fail so badly. It's just plain painful to watch. Most of the segments last about a minute, though a few are longer are manage to wear out their welcome pretty quickly. The only thing the film really provides an abundance of is bare breasts, but you could always spare yourself the headache and just watch a porno instead.

The cast also includes Miguel A. Nunez, Jr. (The Return of the Living Dead), Karen Mayo-Chandler (Hard to Die), Diana Muldaur (The Other), Ed Marinaro, William Sanderson, Karen Witter, Meadowlark Lemon, porno actors Paul Thomas and Lori Wagner and many others. The 1983 year of production is just an estimate on my part based on the cast and some of the things spoofed (it couldn't have been shot any later than 1985). Either way, it didn't see the light of day until 2009!

p.s. I'm only including this here because of the horror spoof content.

★

Jekyll & Hyde... Together Again (1982)

Directed by:

Jerry Belson

Several dozen parodies emerged in the early 80s hoping the combination of sight gags, silly, irreverent dialogue and physical humor would appeal to the same audience who'd flocked to see Airplane! back in 1980. This one's a parody of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (that took four people to write), was badly received by critics during its day and didn't make much of a dent at the box office. Dr. Daniel Jekyll (comedian Mark Blankfield), resident surgeon at "Our Lady of Pain and Suffering" Hospital wants to retire so he can experiment with drugs (huh?) but first, dying gazillionaire Hubert Howes (Peter Brocco), who's as old as Moses, wants Jekyll to perform the world's first full body transplant on him. Even though Dr. Jekyll's dead-set on retiring, pushy hospital administrator Dr. Carew (Michael McGuire) threatens not to let his high-maintenance daughter Mary (Bess Armstrong), who Jekyll's engaged to, marry him. After snorting some special cocaine, Jekyll becomes an aggressive swinger who grows an afro, chest hair, bushy eyebrows, a mustache, a tighter ass and a long pinky nail (!?) He also gets gold jewely, a silver tooth and a constant erection that won't go away.

It's your typical assortment of noisy, pea-brained gags; some of which are genuinely funny, while others are embarrassingly awful. Blankfield's lifeless performance as Jekyll is about adequately balanced by his grotesque over-the-top mugging in the wildman Hyde persona. Not that he's really a pleasure to watch either way... When Jekyll's told a woman has a "foreign object" stuck in her vagina, he enters the room to find a sexy woman and Japanese man latched together. Said woman is Ivy (Krista Errickson), who sings "Light Up My Body" at Madame Woo Woo's punk club with her band "The Shitty Rainbows." Blankfield (who would also appear in the horror parodies Frankenstein General Hospital in 1988 and Dracula: Dead and Loving It in 1995) also gets to sing "Hyde's Got Nothing to Hide" at the end during a mock Pulitzer Prize ceremony where Oscar-winner George Chakiris accepts the award on his behalf! Best that can really be said about this one is that are are worse examples of this kind of thing out. Then again, there's also better.

The supporting cast boasts some familiar faces. Tim Thomerson is a bewigged plastic surgeon who gets a little carried away performing a boob job. Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira) plays a "busty nurse" whose scrubs are specially designed to show off ample cleavage. George Wendt ("Cheers") has a brief scene as a patient with a severed hand. Lin Shaye, Art LaFleur and others have small roles.

★★

Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

...aka: Fantastic Puppet People, The

...aka: I Was a Teenage Doll

...aka: Six Inches Tall

Directed by:

Bert I. Gordon

Jovial puppeteer/scientist Mr. Franz (John Hoyt) runs "Dolls Incorporated," a company well-known for their beautifully crafted dolls. Secretary Sally Reynolds (June Kenney), just hired on to replace a woman named Janet who'd mysteriously disappeared, is a little wigged out by her new bosses behavior. After all, he talks to the dolls and treats some of them as if they're actual people. He also has a special selection of more lifelike dolls that are off-limits, and kept in a specially-locked cabinet and he never wants to be disturbed when he's working in the back room. Sally does get somewhat used to Mr. Franz over time and even begins dating salesman Bob Westley (John Agar), who asks for her hand in marriage after taking her on a drive-in date to see The Amazing Colossal Man (also from Mr. Gordon). The two plan on running off and getting hitched, but before they can, Bob disappears. Sally becomes suspicious when a lifelike Bob doll shows up in Franz's shop and goes to the cops with her theories that the dollmaker is actually somehow turning people into dolls. Naturally, Sgt. Paterson (Jack Kosslyn) thinks she's nuts and that Bob just ran off on her. Sally threatens to quit, but Mr. Franz (who's very lonely and hates when people leave him) straps her to a table and shrinks her using some ray gun emitting high frequency sonic vibrations.

As Sally awakens, she's introduced to the others who have also been shrunk down to one-sixth their original size. Aside from Bob, there's the saucy Georgia (Laurie Mitchell), who seems resigned to her fate as a little person, militaryman Mac (Scott Peters) and teenagers Laurie (Marlene Willis) and Stan (Kenny Miller). Each of the puppet people are kept in little compression tubes that render them immobile, but Franz lets them out every once in awhile to have parties, drink champagne, eat cake and dance to records. He shrinks a cat to keep them company and the younger girl even gets to sing a song called "You're My Living Doll!" Sally and Bob convince the others that this is no way to live and, when Franz threatens to kill them all because the police are breathing down his neck, the "puppet people" try to organize an escape attempt.

Despite having a reputation for being a dud, I actually found much to enjoy here. Sure, it's silly as hell and sure it was obviously made on the cheap to cash in on the success of the previous year's The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), and lacks that film's depth, but I found it entertaining and enjoyably undemanding. There's a great performance from John Hoyt, sporting some Eastern European accent, in the lead role, and both the actor and the screenplay ensure he's not an evil, one-note villain, but more a man driven to do bad by his own insecurities and lonliness. The rest of the cast is certainly sufficient and the special effects (which were also done by the director), though highly uneven, still boast some genuine imagination. It's amusing just watching characters trying to use a giant telephone, using thread to lasso a doorknob and climbing up and down table legs, and there are enough clever touches (the miniature cat climbing out of a matchbox, the leads sneaking into a package to avoid a dog, the leading lady put on a little stage with a Dr. Jekyll puppet, etc.) to merit giving this a look.

On the down side, the film is saddled with one of the worst and most anti-climactic endings you'll ever see and much time is wasted on Emil (Michael Mark; Dr. Zinthrop from Corman's The Wasp Woman), a friend of Franz's from his homeland (Russia?) who doesn't adequately figure into the plot at all and is used as nothing more than a plot device to distract Franz so the puppet people can try to escape. The director's little daughter Susan Gordon (who'd appear in a larger and better role in TORMENTED two years later) shows up briefly as a spoiled little girl. It was an AIP production (exec. produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson) and was scripted by George Worthing Yates (who also wrote IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and other 50s sci-fi/horror favorites, including others for the same director).

★★1/2

Terror in the Haunted House (1958)

...aka: My World Dies Screaming

Directed by:

Harold Daniels

Sheila (Cathy O'Donnell) is haunted by a recurring nightmare about a sinister house ("Death in its most hideous form waits for me at the top of the stairs!") Her psychiatrist Dr. Forel (Barry Bernard) thinks its her subconscious acting out a repressed past trauma, but she's not too convinced of that. Newly married to Philip Justin (Gerald Mohr) after a "whirlwind romance," Sheila's about to travel from Switzerland (where she's lived since a child) to America to start her new life. Once they arrive in Florida, Sheila instantly recognizes their rented vacation home... it's the same one she's been dreaming about! When they try to leave, they discover someone's ripped all of the wires out of their car. Their chief suspect in doing it is elderly caretaker Jonah (John Qualen), who tries to scare Sheila away telling her about the axe-murder-laden history of the home and how its former occupants were referred to as "The Mad Tierney's." So Sheila spots a "hideous, inhuman face" outside her window. And Sheila is chased up the stairs by a mean dog. And Sheila starts suspecting everyone around her (including her new hubby) of foul play. Sheila pouts. Sheila screams. Sheila cries. Sheila faints. Sheila scream some more.

Eventually showing up at the home to shed some light on things is its owner, Mark Snell (William Ching), who helps Sheila fill in the blanks by informing her that her husband is actually the last of the Tierney's and she somehow was connected to the family in her youth. Well, before she went bonkers at the age of seven and was shipped off to Europe. After setting up the premise during the first half and sloppily unveiling the few twists to the storyline before it should, the film really has nowhere else to go and plods along toward a predictable and exposition-heavy conclusion. O'Donnell (fondly remembered by film buffs for her performances in The Best Years of Our Lives and They Live by Night a decade earlier) actually tries to give a performance, but she's stuck playing one of those irritating 50s females who ultimately has little to do other than act on the verge of hysteria throughout and whimper in the corner. The male actors (particularly the lead) are all pretty bad, and the supernatural/haunted house clutch is nothing more than a hoax.

The one and only thing that makes this worth watching is the fact it was shot in "Psycho-Rama;" a "subliminal communication" process which is nothing more than brief flashes of cartoon-like drawning; of a devil sticking his tongue out, a man in glasses with a rat in his mouth, a skull and a cobra (the latter colored red), and message cards (reading... "Get Ready to Scream!," "Prepare to Die!," "Scream Bloody Murder!," etc.), edited into the film in one-frame incriments. So if you plan on watching this make sure you keep your trigger finger on the pause/ foward advance button for maximum enjoyment. Well, it might be your only chance to get any kind of enjoyment out of this one. On some prints, Rhino Video (one of the major distributors of this title) had some fun by "subliminally" sneaking an advertisement in during the last ten minutes! Since use of subliminals was illegal until 1961, the print shown on TV had these inserts removed. The following year director Daniels made Date with Death (1959), which also made use of the same technique.

★1/2