Black Sleep, The (1956)

...aka: Dr. Cadman's Secret

Directed by:
Reginald Le Borg

Usually the recipient of very negative reviews (nonsense!), this is great fun for classic horror fans and nowhere as bad as its reputed to be. Wrongly convicted of the murder of a money lender, Dr. Gordon Ramsay (Herbert Rudley) awaits his death on the gallows. The day before his execution is to take place, aristocratic scientist Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone) offers Ramsay a second chance at life under a new identity via "the black death;" a dark powder from the West Indies that will cause just a temporary demise as long as an antidote is administered within twelve hours. With nothing to lose, Ramsay signs over burial arrangements to Cadman, agrees to assist him in his experiments upon his revival and takes the drug. After dying and being brought back, Ramsay accompanies Cadman to his secluded castle home and the two begin their brain experiments on cadavers. Helping the men are a pair of surgical nurses; older, dedicated Daphne (Phyllis Stanley) and younger Laurie (Patricia Blair), who always seems to be on edge. And it's no wonder she's a bit jumpy... Every time she's left alone, a grunting, limping mental defective named Mungo (Lon Chaney, Jr.), who Cadman allows to freely wander around, tries to strangle her!

Ramsay discovers that Cadman isn't actually using cadavers in the experiments, but living humans, who have been drugged, kidnapped and dropped off by gypsy tattooist Professor Odo (Akim Tamiroff, providing much welcome comic relief). He also discovers that Cadman's chief objective with his experiments is to gain knowledge that will help him revive his wife Angelina (Louanna Gardner), who's been in a coma for eight months. A secret panel hidden behind the fireplace holds another secret. Behind it is a long staircase. Up leads to the surgical room, but down leads to a torture chamber full of disfigured, deranged cast offs from Cadman's previous experiments.

Aside from Rathbone and Chaney, the film completes its awesome all-star cast with supporting roles for Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson and John Carradine. Lugosi (looking pretty feeble in his last role) plays mute butler Casimir, who has absolutely nothing to do other than stand in the background and open and close doors as people come and go. A blank-eyed Johnson has a small part as a basement dweller and, just like Lugosi and Chaney, is given no dialogue. Carradine fairs best in a brief, but hysterically funny role as Bohemund, a deranged profit. Looking like he just walked off the set of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in a long wig, long beard and robe, the actor spends his screen time ranting, raving and beating people over the head with his walking stick!

Rathbone and Tamiroff both give great performances, but the real surprise here is Hudley, who receives sixth billing to all the genre greats, yet easily manages to hold his own with a natural and appealing performance. It's too bad the actor would never appear in another genre film. The film is set in 1872, though the production isn't elaborate enough to ever stray from the cheap looking sets. The brain surgery sequence is very well done, though, and surprisingly grisly for the time, with Rathbone poking and prodding inside a victim's head. Cerebral fluid even gushes out at one point! The make-up designs on the basement mutants are minor but passable. The ending is hectic, rushed and sometimes unintentionally funny, but one thing it's not is boring.

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All things considered, I can say with some certainty that most horror buffs will get a kick out of what they see here... granted they can find a copy. As of this writing, the film has never been released on video or DVD. Your best bet is checking the program guide for Turner Classic Movies, who air it every once in awhile.

★★1/2

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)

Directed by:

Peter Sasdy

The fifth Hammer Dracula entry - picking up right where DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968) left off - is a step back for the series. The last time we saw the evil Count (Christopher Lee), he was impaled on a large bronze cross and disintegrating to a bloody mess at the base of his mountaintop castle home. Greedy Weller (Roy Kinnear) somehow stumbles onto the scene just in time to witness the entire thing and makes sure to take a few souvenirs back with him to his antique shop. Meanwhile, three middle-aged, upper-class married men; William Hargood (Geoffrey Keen), Samuel Paxton (Peter Sallis) and Jonathan Secker (John Carson), are looking to escape from their humdrum family lives by paying their weekly visit to a neighborhood brothel. There they meet a handsome young aristocratic man - Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates) - who promises to reward them with excitement if they'll accompany him to a few places about town. Their first stop is an antique store to buy Dracula's cloak, pendant and a vial of his powdered vampire blood. Next up is an abandoned church, where Courtley will perform a ceremony to resurrect the count. He slices his hand and drips blood into the powder, which swells into a full glass of bubbly vampire blood. The three older men chicken out on drinking it, but Courtley obliges, starts convulsing on the floor and is then beat to death by the three men, who vow to keep it a secret.

But the sins of the father are about to revisited upon each man's entire family as Count Dracula, resurrected from Courtley's ashes, comes back to destroy them all. William is shown to be the ultimate hypocrite and manages to be a more imposing and unlikable presence than Lee! A church-goer who claims he's off doing charity work while he's actually off with his buddies at the whorehouse, William is not only a liar and hypocrite, but an abusive alcoholic who bosses his weak wife Martha (Gwen Watford) around and accuses his cherubic daughter Alice (Linda Hayden) of being a "harlot" for simply talking to a boy. The boy - Paul (Anthony Corlan) - is actually Samuel's son, who's in love with Alice (and vice versa). Samuel also has a daughter -Lucy (Isla Blair) - who is being courted by Jonathan's son Jeremy (Martin Jarvis). Both daughters become entraced by the vampire and are used to help lure the men to their deaths.

Unfortunately, despite acceptible performances and production values, this chapter never really seems to take off. Both the characters and the scenarios said characters find themselves in seem dull and recycled. The exceptions here are Bates and Hayden. Bates vividly portrays a dashing, arrogant eccentric and his black magic scene is a nice departure from the norm. Hayden also makes an impression for her ability to switch from baby-faced innocent to evil, voracious seductress. It's easy to see why both actors - making their genre debuts here - would become familiar faces in the British horror industry of the 70s. Lee on the other hand has just a few lines and seems to have even less screentime than he did in the previous films. No wonder he was getting fed up playing the part at this stage in his career! Hammer regular Michael Ripper pops in briefly as a police inspector.

Followed by SCARS OF DRACULA (1970).

★★

Chamber of Horrors (1966)

...aka: House of Wax

Directed by:

Hy Averback

Warner Bros. originally commissioned this project to be the pilot episode for a supernatural detective series to be titled "House of Wax" but the film was deemed too violent and disturbing for network TV. New scenes were then added to boost the running time and a pre-credits sequence (narrated by William Conrad) explaining the also newly-added gimmicks "The Horror Horn" (an alarm urging people to close their eyes and cover their ears) and "The Fear Flasher" (flashes of red light heeding a warning that things were about to get violent) were added so the film could play theatrically instead. Surprisingly enough, it all comes together extremely well thanks to fine production values, good writing and an excellent cast.

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Handsome, suave, wealthy lady killer Jason Cravette (excellently played by Patrick O'Neal) is terrorizing Baltimore; strangling young ladies and then marrying their corpses! But his reign of terror seems to end after he's apprehended by authorities and sentenced to die. While being transported elsewhere on a train, he's secured to a heavy steel wheel, manages to unscrew it, get his hands on an axe and leaps off the train into the river below. With his arm still cuffed to the wheel, Jason starts sinking to the bottom and is forced to use the axe to chop off his hand! The authorities assume he's dead, but they're wrong as Jason actually managed to survive and is hiding out in New Orleans. There, he gets a special feature made for his arm stump; a base where a detachable hook or meat cleaver (!) can be placed, hires a beautiful, oblivious hooker (Laura Devon) to help him and then returns to Baltimore to get revenge on those who had him put away. Meanwhile, a pair of amateur sleuths; debonaire ladies man Anthony Draco (Cesare Danova) and his aged partner Harold Blount (a wonderful Wilfrid Hyde-White), investigate when a local judge turns up missing. The men also happen to work at the House of Wax exhibit, giving guided tours and lectures about famous murderers.

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I personally think the premise would have actually made for a great series myself, but since that never happened we can at least thank Warners for getting an excellent print of this out on DVD. It's very entertaining, looks great, has a nice period setting and the roster of character actors give it their all. The standouts are clearly O'Neal and Hyde-White, though Jeanette Nolan (as the killer's aunt), Philip Bourneuf (a police detective), Tun Tun aka Jose Rene Ruiz (a Mexican dwarf character actor who plays another worker at the museum) and Marie Windsor (a whorehouse madam) do nice jobs, as well. The cast also includes Suzy Parker, Wayne Rogers, Richard O'Brien and Berry Kroeger. Also look for an unbilled Tony Curtis in a cameo.

★★★

Evil Laugh (1986)

Directed by:
Dominick Brascia

Jerry (Gary Hays) purchases a large, secluded house that used to be an orphanage and plans to restore it to use as a children's medical clinic. He calls up some friends, all of whom are in health related studies, and asks them to come up for the weekend to help him straighten the place up. Before everyone gets there, Jerry is killed and has his heart cut out. Delivery boy Donald (Tom Shell) also gets it with a drill. The weekend rolls along and the friends - mature Connie (Kim McKamy aka Ashlyn Gere), bimbo Tina (Jody Gibson, who'd go on to become a real-life "Hollywood Super Madam"), horror movie-loving Barney (Jerold Pearson, who acts exactly like Randy in SCREAM... only 10 years earlier), Scott Baio's lookalike brother Steven Baio (who co-wrote and co-produced with the director), blonde hunk Mark (Myles O'Brien) and snobby couple Sammy (Tony Griffin) and Betty (Karyn O'Bryan) - show up and get to work. Connie relates the sordid history of the home and how years earlier an orderly named Martin was framed for child molestion, which caused his father to commit suicide. Not long after Connie clues everyone in to why they got the place at a discounted rate, the killer starts doing his/her thing until the mask finally comes off.

The title alludes to the killer's penchant for laughter during most of the murder scenes, an idea that would be repeated in DR. GIGGLES (1992) a few years later. Here, the evil laugh sounds more like a silly giggle and it's a rather stupid and pointless way to try to differentiate this otherwise very hokey, run-of-the-mill 80s slasher from others of its type. There's some blood (though not much in the way of actual gore), some skin (though the lead actress - who'd become a porno superstar a few years down the line - amusingly used a body double for her shower scene!), some horror references, some unintended cannibalism (where the leads eat a victims heart, liver and even his - gasp - rocky mountain oysters) and some comedy. Well, a whole lot of comedy. In fact, the filmmakers obviously aren't taking any of this seriously. They couldn't be, could they? I mean, a guy getting his head roasted in a microwave oven with the door wide open? Muahahahahaha! See now, there's an evil laugh for ya. And I didn't even mention the God awful 80s pop tunes about partying the night away or the supremely cheesy music montage complete with close-ups of shaking butts. Where's Jesse Walsh when you need him?

Director/co-writer/co-producer Brascia (who also plays the Evil Laugher here) is best known to us horror geeks as the chubby, chocolate-smeared axe victim Joey in FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING (1985) and, as a inside joke, Mr. Brascia even managed to squeeze an issue of Fangoria dedicated to that film in here. Brascia also played small roles in the Sybil Danning psycho-sexual thriller THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE (1984), the vampire comedy ONCE BITTEN (1985) and the campus slasher RUSH WEEK (1989), and directed the ultra-rare heavy metal werewolf flick HARD ROCK NIGHTMARE (1988), before moving on to a career as a radio host. Hal Shafer (SATAN'S STORYBOOK) and Johnny Venocur (SAVAGE STREETS) play cops.

Filmed in 1986 and not released until 1988. The DVD - a decent quality print - is from Lucky 13.

★1/2

Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1982, 1992)

...aka: Case of Harry Billings, The
...aka: Scream Your Head Off

Directed by:

John Carr

This weird, disjointed and obviously patched-together film has a long, troubled production history that (sort of) explains things. Director John Carr, working with a screenplay from Oscar-winner Philip Yordan, began shooting the gory SCREAM YOUR HEAD OFF back in 1982. The film was never completed at the time but an abridged version turned up as one of the stories in the notoriously - and hilariously - awful anthology NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR (1985). Some time in the early 90s, Carr returned to the project, shooting brand new framing scenes starring John Phillip Law (returning from the unfinished 1982 film in the same role to link it all together) and Francine York (as Marilyn Monroe!) and releasing the film under the Marilyn Alive moniker, which made its way to DVD - via Trinity Home Entertainment - in 2006. To make matters even more confusing, someone managed to splice together all the 1982 footage and crib a separate feature out of that, which was released to video only (below) in 1997 under the Scream title.

Right now I can't vouch the SYHO release (I'll review it here eventually), but the Marilyn cut of the film is fun ride if you don't mind mismatched clips (the original was shot on film while the new footage was clearly shot on video) and a lead actor who ages considerably right before your very eyes. The original plot is left more or less intact. Harry Billings (Law) accidentally kills his wife while driving drunk. Guilt-stricken, he attempts suicide by jumping off a bridge, but awakens to find himself a patient at Pinewood Sanitarium. Two corrupt physicians; Dr. Fargo (Sharon Ratcliff) and Dr. Brewer (Arthur Braham), run the joint with help from Richard Moll as sadistic orderly Otto, and use a special drug to make Harry do their bidding. They convince him he's actually world famous lover Casanova and then send him out to kidnap attractive women, who are then sold to black market slave dealers helping Middle Eastern shieks fill out their harems!

As if that wasn't ridiculous enough already, in the newly-added footage Harry pays visits to aged actress Marilyn Monroe, who isn't dead after all but instead being help prisoner in her own separate wing of the sanitarium! What we're told is that when Marilyn's contract was up, the studio murdered a look-a-like to fool the public and then shipped her off to Pinewood to rid themselves of her. Now she's just wasting away there; sometimes delusional thanks to a steady diet of drugs being fed to her by the staff. In one scene, she's seen lounging around in pigtails and grotesque, overdone makeup while clutching a teddy bear. York tries her very best breathless impersonation here, and the scenes she shares with Law have an odd charm to them. Of course, this is all completely absurd, but what I saw was harmless "what if..." fantasy fluff (complete with a happy ending for Harry and Marilyn) spliced into a horror film.

Strangely, all of the gore and nudity originally filmed in 1982 has been removed for the Marilyn cut of the film, which was given a PG-13 rating. Oh well, I still enjoyed it.

★★

Mo tai (1983)

...aka: Devil Fetus

...aka: Devil Foetus

...aka: Devil's Fetus

...aka: Moh toi

Directed by:

Hung Chuen Lau

A woman, who's staying with her well-to-do brother-in-law's family while her husband is out of town, purchases a jade vase at an auction that's supposed to bring good fortune. Instead, the vase unleashes an oily, horny, lizard-like demon that wastes no time spreading its seed. When the husband returns from a long business trip, he walks in on wifey making it with the demon, which leads him to rip the skin off his face to reveal a maggot infestation before jumping out the window. Immediately after, the wife is also killed when a possessed cat knocks her down the staircase. At their joint funeral, a priest realizes the woman is impregnated with an evil fetus and performs a special ritual to keep the curse from spreading. And it won't, as long as their shrines are never tampered with and the charms placed upon them are never removed.

Years later, the brother-in-law (Pak-Kwong Ho), his wife (San Leung), their now-teenage boys; popular and outgoing Ken (Eddie Chan) and shy and reserved Wai (Danny Lau), and granny (Shafei Ouyang), who's been keeping the shrines safe at her home, are living a peaceful life until Ken's new girlfriend Jo-Jo (Shirley Lu) accidentally removes a charm from one of the graves. The evil spirit is then unleashed once again. It first possesses their pet German Shepherd Bobby, who tries to get it on with a human woman before becoming rabid. After he's put down, the spirit enters into Wai and things get even stranger. And I'm not just talking about the 1980s birthday party where everyone dances horribly before eating worm-infested cake.

Wai exhumes the dog's corpse (which he keeps hidden under his bed) and eats its innards! Wai tries to drown Jo-Jo in the pool! Wai rapes the maid, kills her, puts her corpse under his bed, has sex with it and then starts eating it! Wai dresses in drag and jerks off to a poster of Farrah Fawcett! In addition, furniture starts moves around, dad gets squashed to a bloody mess in the sauna and Wai has a sorcerers duel with a priest that includes fire, smoke and cheesy teleportation and cartoon laser effects.

It's poorly directed, badly edited and completely incoherent throughout, but it all looks nice and colorful. The over-the-top tastelessness and ineptitude constantly on display will likely turn off just as many people as it pleases, though I found the whole thing entertaining in a crap movie kinda way.

SBIG

O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Caixão (1968)

... aka: Strange World of Coffin Joe, The

... aka: Strange World of Zé do Caixão, The

Directed by:

José Mojica Marins

For 1968, this trio of gritty black-and-white terror tales is startlingly sick and, to its credit, age hasn't lessened its ability to shock and surprise one bit. Things begin with a close shot of Marins' eyes superimposed over grainy shots of an overcast sky as he narrates. In the first tale, "O Fabricante de Bonecas" ("The Dollmaker" in the subs) an elderly, bearded dollmaker shows up at a bar to drop off one of his hand-crafted creations. Four men overhear a conversation about how much money the old guy makes and how he has four sexy daughters back at home. The punks then decide to rob him and have a little fun while they're at it. While the daughters are getting ready for bed, the men crash in, knock the old guy old when he refuses money, bust into the girls' shared bedroom and plot to rape each of them. But then each girl makes comments about how beautiful the men's eyes are... just like customers are always commenting on how life-like the eyes are in the dolls they make. Hmmm... There's nudity and gore, but it's predictable and much shorter than the other two tales. Just filler, really.

Next up is "Tara" (aka "Obsession") a twisted, completely dialogue-free story that seems to be partially influenced by the filmography of Lon Chaney. A hunchbacked balloon vendor (played by producer George Michel Serkeis) silently stalks attractive young Tara (Íris Bruzzi) over a long period of time. He watches her strip from a window down below before she gets into the bath and follows her shopping. She drops a box containing a pair of shoes but he's unable to catch her to give them back. He watches from afar as she meets a new man, and later is viewing her wedding from across the street when suddenly a scorned woman stabs Tara to death right as she's leaving the church! He's not permitted into the funeral, but sneaks into the mausoleum after hours, opens her coffin and begins getting frisky with the corpse. The lack of dialogue, the grainy b/w photography and odd sound effects (church bells, wind) turn this a disturbing little short. The necro scenes are much more damaged that the rest of the film, which indicates that they were removed from the theatrical release print and had to be restored at a later junction; possibly just for this DVD release. I couldn't imagine this stuff being allowed in most countries back in the 60s!

The extremely depraved "Ideologia" ("Ideology") - which makes today's "torture porn" look like a Hallmark Channel presentation by comparison - is our last tale. Prof. Oãxic Odéz (played by the director, dressed in all black and a weird wig) debates his controversial "love doesn't actually exist" philosophy on a TV talk show. One of the hosts, Alfredo (Oswaldo De Souza), gives him a hard time about it, so the professor asks him to come to his home so he can prove his theory. HE also asks that Alfredo bring along his wife Wilma (Nidi Reis). The two show up, are held against their will by their host, his Lurch-like butler (Nivaldo de Lima) and some others who subscribe to the professor's philosophy and are forced to view a warped burlesque show featuring all kind of depraved, sexually violent acts. These include a couple making love while being scrubbed bloody with a steel brush, a man actually having pins driven through his flesh and people crawl around like dogs while being whipped. And that's only the beginning! We also get a man being stretched out on a rack who is cannibalized, a woman who's stripped and has her face melted off with acid before being dragged offstage by her hair and more!

Eventually, Alfredo is chained up in a glass room and Wilma is chained up and placed in a cage to put their relationship to the test. Will love win out, or will instinct to survive? The two are refused food and water for days and start to go a little mad while their host comes in and gives them a bible sermon every day! At the end, the professor and his cohorts enjoy a cannibal feast of heads, hands and feet as "Hallelujah" plays on the soundtrack. Unreal!

★★★