Blood (1974)

Directed by:

Andy Milligan

"A traditional Gothic Horror makes this film unsuitable for children and some scenes may be disturbing to some members of the public." Whaa? Oh it's you again Iver Film Services, the same people who called the Indian "Laughing Cow" on the back of your Shriek of the Mutilated VHS box. I should have known. In 1872, scientist Dr. Lawrence Orlofsky (Allan Berendt) returns to America from an extended stay in Budapest and fronts three months rent on a new home before telling the landlord to bugger off and leave him alone. His bitchy, pampered, vain wife Regina (Hope Stansbury) has an issue with her skin pigment and must be kept out of the sun at all costs. Maid Carrie (Patricia Gaul), who is loyal to the husband but hated by the wife (and vice versa), has a withered leg and hobbles up and down the staircase in a huge Victoria gown. Carrie's husband Orlando (Michael Fischetti) actually has no legs. And having it even worse than everyone else is Carlotta (Pichulina Hampi), an orphan the family adopted as a child who's now an anemic, jittery, clumsy and retarded old hag because she has spent her entire life as a blood pump. Lawrence conducts experiments on fast-growing, man-eating killer plants in his basement lab. After finding out he's been swindled by local banker Carl Root (John Wallowitch), he plots revenge and then begins an affair with Root's lovely young secretary Prudence Towers (Pamela Adams).

Regina is upset that hubby doesn't want to make love to her anymore and starts killing people with a meat cleaver and drinking their blood because she's actually (gasp!) a vampire. One of her first victims is Carrie's sailor brother Johnny (David Bevans), who stops by long enough to reveal an incestuous secret and get a meat cleaver stuck in his head. Regina also kills an old woman by chopping off her hand, goes after Prudence when she learns of the affair and (when she gets really desperate) chops a real mouse in half and eats it head! Meanwhile, Lawrence is revealed to be (gasp!) a werewolf. His transformations during the full moon can be halted with an injection of a special serum he has created. His wife also needs weekly injections of a formula or else she'll die. No wonder the two of them don't get along!

With its deranged plot, bizarre characters, non-stop overwrought dramatics and technical ineptitude on display in nearly every single out-of-focus shot, this is bargain cinema at its most entertaining and endearing. Truly terrible in nearly every way, from the woefully unconvincing period detail, costumes (designed by the director) and sets to the awful editing and sound-recordings to the cheap grease paint fright makeups and mannequin gore fx. The actors - unpolished as some may be - are actually better than usual, but how budget restraints force them to speed-read through their long, bitter dialogue passages is hysterically funny. Milligan fans are going to love every minute of this. His recurring obsessions; warped, dysfunctional families, some kind of money or inheritance issue, European monsters, etc., are all on full display here,

It runs just 60 minutes and, at just 20,000 dollars, is Milligan's highest-budgeted feature! Some reference books list the film as being made in 1971, but I'm not so sure about that.

SBIG

La venganza del sexo (1969)

... aka: Curious Case of Dr. Humpp, The

... aka: Curious Dr. Humpp, The

... aka: Vengeance of Sex, The

Directed by:

Emilio Vieyra

A teenage couple, four hippies, a drunk, a stripper, a housewife and a pair of lesbians are knocked out with ether and kidnapped by a disfigured, clawed fiend. The abductor takes the victims back to a secluded mansion / laboratory/ clinic where they're subjected to crazed Dr. Humpp's sex experiments. Power-mad Dr. Humpp (Aldo Barbero) seems obsessed with making all men more virile and all women nymphos, thinking this ability will help him control the world ("Sex dominates the world... and now I dominate sex!). He tries to accomplish all this with a special serum derived from an "aphrodisiac compound." Other than his monster servant, he's helped along by his dedicated nurse (Susana Beltran), a small army of automaton robot men and a living, talking, pulsating disembodied brain that orders the doctor around and is kept in a glass vat with wires running into it! Police Inspector Benedict (Hector Biuchet) and newspaper reporter George Foran (Ricardo Bauleo) are on the case. George manages to also get kidnapped and finds himself caught between his affections for the nurse and a stripper named Rachel (Gloria Prat). To make matters even wackier, the nurse also has the hots for Humpp (who could care less) and the scarred monster falls in love with Rachel, bringing her flowers and romantically strumming his guitar (?) for her.

I have no clue how the original Argentinian version plays out dialogue-wise, but the English-language dub is comedy gold, and this is the exact type of horror-sex hybrid I can personally stand behind and recommend to fans. No one expects these things to be anything more than sleazy, brainless entertainment, and that's precisely what this delivers. There's loads of soft sex and frontal nudity (which admittedly makes it drag at times), but there's also a nutty, entertaining and often hysterically funny sci-fi/horror story in here, too. And that's more than I can say for today's erotica, whether it be hard or soft. What other sex flick gives you robots, melancholy mutants, talking brains, hilarious dialogue and a completely over-the-top psycho doc? Not many I can think of. The acting is pretty much terrible and the whole thing is just plain silly, but it's wonderfully shot in black-and-white and surprisingly well-made in comparison to others of its type.

Filmed in 1967 but not released until two years later. Many of the sex scenes (nearly 20 minutes worth) were added later by the American distributor and were filmed by Jerald Intrator (who also added new footage to NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES for its U.S. release). Director Vieyra also made Stay Tuned for Terror (1965), Blood of the Virgins (1967), Feast of Flesh (1967; aka The Deadly Organ), The Naked Beast (1971) and others.

The DVD is from Something Weird.

★★1/2

Camping del terrore (1986)

...aka: Body Count

...aka: Bodycount
...aka: Camping della morte

...aka: Camping Ground

Directed by:

Ruggero Deodato

Italian-made imitation of FRIDAY THE 13TH et al has a few familiar faces in the cast and an excellent shooting location but is too predictable (and poorly made) to be of much interest to anyone other than very forgiving slasher enthusiasts. A little boy named Ben witnesses a young couple getting killed by an Indian shaman. Fifteen years later, a bunch of young folks arrive at the same location (rumored to have been built upon an Indian burial ground) to camp, fish, ride motorcycles, hike and generally goof off. They're greeted with hostility by camp owner Robert Ritchie (David Hess, star of the director's HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK), whose wife Julia (Mimsy Farmer) is having an affair with the local fuzz, Sheriff Charlie Barnes (Charles Napier). A now grown Ben (Nicola Farron), the son of Robert and Julia, also comes back for a visit. As expected, the Indian killer - who is either a human in disguise or a supernatural entity - begins killing everyone off one by one.

One could easily pick at the recycled premise, terrible dialogue or bad acting, but all that is pretty much expected of an 80s slasher flick. This one still fails because the usual irritations are coupled with unimaginative and weak murders, horrendous editing and bad lighting. What the hell is the point of one of these things if you can't even make the kills out clearly? Futhermore, what's the point of one of these things when you actually can see the kills and all you get is yet another dull knife stabbing? It's not scary, suspenseful or tense. It's not gory. And it's not even unintentionally funny. Just really bland. I also would have appreciated being able to tell what happened when our hero (Bruce Penhall) and heroine (Luisa Maneri) faced off against the killer toward the end but alas it was so damn dark and badly edited I couldn't tell what the hell was going on.

All of the problems are a true shame too, because this has the foundation of a decent enough film, starting with Claudio Simonetti's very 80s (and very great!) theme music over the opening credits. The outdoor setting itself (in Abruzzo, Italy), with its nice fall colors and mountainous backdrops, is an excellent location for one of these things. There are some horror vets in the cast, too. Aside from those mentioned, John Steiner (as a doctor) and Ivan Rassimov (as a deputy) show up in small roles, and 'B' fans may even recognize some of the lesser-knowns, such as Nancy Brilli (DEMONS 2), Cynthia Thompson (CAVEGIRL) and Valentina Forte (CUT AND RUN). Unfortunately, the pluses aren't nearly enough to overcome the negligent direction and ineptitude constantly on display here. Every single FRIDAY THE 13TH film released during the 1980s is better than this.

★1/2

Santa sangre (1989)

...aka: Holy Blood

Directed by:

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Review coming soon.

★★★1/2

Axe (1973)

...aka: Axe Murders, The
...aka: California Axe Massacre

...aka: California Axe Murders
...aka: Lisa, Lisa
...aka: Virgin Slaughter, The

Directed by:

Frederick R. Friedel

Three thugs; sadistic leader Steele (Jack Canon), cigar-chomping and equally violent Lomax (Ray Green) and young, apprehensive Billy (the director), go on a crime/killing spree. First, they put out a lit cigar on a man's face and threatens his lover, who promptly jumps out of a window nine stories up. Then they visit a convenience store, pelt a female clerk with apples, force her to take off her shirt, threaten to shoot an apple off her head and then pour beer on her. Meanwhile, at a secluded farmhouse, young, pretty, virginal Lisa (Leslie Lee) beheads a chicken and patiently takes care of her grandfather (Douglas Powers), a paraletic war vet vegetable and the only other person living in the home. One quiet evening, the three criminals barge in, make themselves at home, threaten the grandfather with a gun to get Lisa to send some cops away and then make her cook them dinner.

But the brutes picked the wrong home to visit and wrong girl to push around as Lisa's not as shy and demure as she appears. She's also not quite right in the head (and suicidal). All it takes is a sexual assault to send her over the edge, leading to a bloody retaliation. There's a razor to the back of the neck, a body dismembered in a bathtub and placed in a trunk, an axing and a sudden household menu change from the usual chicken, raw eggs and dairy products. There's plenty of that scuzzy, amateurish regional flavor some people seem to love, but it's not especially well made, the acting is very unconvincing and the whole thing is more dreary and unpleasant than scary. Cinematographer Austin McKinney does a decent job, though. Some passages of the score are haunting, while others are grating (two different composers are credited, so there ya go).

It was filmed as LISA, LISA in the fall of 1973 on an 11-day schedule. Though often listed as being released in 1977 (which is likely when it was distributed by Harry Novak's Box Office International), it actually played drive-ins as early as 1974. Various distribution titles include CALIFORNIA AXE MASSACRE (nonsense since it was filmed in North Carolina) and THE VIRGIN SLAUGHTER. J.G. Patterson, Jr. (DOCTOR GORE) produced and helped edit the film. The director regretted selling the rights to both AXE and his follow-up, KIDNAPPED COED (1975), so he combined the two films together (which are linked by actor Canon, who plays killers in both) and titled for BLOODY BROTHERS.

★★

Thirsty Dead, The (1974)

...aka: Blood Cult of Shangri-La, The

...aka: Blood Hunt

Directed by:

Terry Becker

Stewardess Laura (Jennifer Billings- ley), go-go dancer Claire (Judith McConnell), Acme computer employee Bonnie (Chiqui da Rosa) and teenage beauty queen Ann (Fredricka Meyers) are abducted from the streets of Manila by what they assume is a white slavery ring. They could only be so lucky! Instead, the ladies are loaded on canoes, taken upstream and then dragged off deep into the jungle to service a hidden society of male and female cave-dwellers. After being locked inside a cell and dressed in skimpy loincloths, our heroines eventually discover that their captives need to drink the blood of women to retain their youth and vigor. Since Laura looks exactly like the blonde goddess high-ranking tribe member Radu (John Considine) saw in a dream and then painted, he and tribal queen Ranu (Tani Guthrie) insist she join them. She refuses and is tossed back in the cell with her friends. The ladies manage to escape with some help and the rest of the film goes from The Flintstones to THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME as the tribe hunts tries to track them down before they reach civilization.

Despite a premise that seems tailor-made to showcase sex and violence, the film is having none of it. There's little gore, zero nudity and it's rated PG! Not that it really detracts from the overall experience. This Filipino-lensed fluff is basically just a bunch of childish nonsense, thought not without its own odd charm. The acting is extremely uneven, but the cast are sincere enough to offset some off line-readings. The caves and jungle locations are decent. And what about those costumes? Hilarious! Why use boring old brown animal hides when you can dress each person in bright green, blue and pink pastels? It also manages to skimp by with just a tiny bit of blood and only one visual effect, a time-lapse rapid-aging. Director Becker is best known as an actor (and for his recurring role on the 60s TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and prolific Filipino character actor Vic Diaz plays a police lieutenant and was also the production coordinator.

Something Weird handled the DVD release and have teamed it up with the even more bizarre SWAMP OF THE RAVENS (1974). I'm pleased with the purchase.

★★

La maschera del demonio (1989)

... aka: Black Sabbath

... aka: Demons 5

... aka: Demons V: The Devil's Veil

... aka: Mascara del Satano, La

... aka: Mask of Satan

... aka: Masque de Satan, Le

Directed by:

Lamberto Bava

Confused about the "Demons" series of films? Well you ain't the only one. This French / German / Italian / Portuguese / Spanish co-production from the director of Demons (1985), Demons 2 (1986) and The Ogre: Demons 3 (1987) was based on the same Nikolai Gogol story ("Vij") that was the basis for BLACK SUNDAY (1960), a film that's now considered a Gothic horror classic and was made by Lamberto's very talented father, Mario. Both Sunday and Demons 5 share the same original filming title and also have the spiked mask and resurrected witch story aspects in common, but this still isn't really a remake of the earlier film. The sequel title comes from Japan, where it was re-titled to follow Lamberto Bava's first two movies, Demons 3 (better known as The Church) and Demons 4 (better known as either The Sect or The Devil's Daughter). It was never English-dubbed or officially released in America. In fact, the only known version with English subs was released by bootleggers Video Search of Miami, who put out a very dark, very washed-out looking print of the film derived from a broadcast on Spanish TV.

Eight young people; four guys and four girls, manage to all fall into a deep ice cavern while skiing down a mountain. One of the girls - Sabina (Deborah Caprioglio, Klaus Kinski's buxom and much younger ex-wife) - injurs her leg, while another of the guys finds a frozen corpse with a steel mask over the face. A few of the boys decides to chip away at the ice until they can remove the mask. The Earth shakes, a guy is impaled with a giant icicle, Sabina's leg miraculously heals itself and they locate the backside of a church. They go inside, exit out the front door and find themselves in a deserted, snow-covered town populated only by a superstitious albino priest (Stanko Molnar) and his pet wolf. The priest informs them that they made a grave mistake removing the mask because it will awaken evil witch Anibas (Eva Grimaldi), whose fate is shown to us through flashback. Immediately six of the "teens" are possessed, start behaving strangely and attempt to kill Sabina and David (Giovanni Guidelli), apparently the only two virgins in the group. Even stranger, the names of the six possessed - Alexandra (Mary Sellers), Nora (Alessandra Bonarotta), Irma (Laura Devoti), Bebo (Michele Soavi), Andrea (Stefano Molinari) and Sergio (Ron Williams) - spell out "Anibas." There's another clumsy clue mirrored in the witch's name that I probably don't even need to reveal.

The premise itself is great. The discoveries at the beginning of the film with the cavern and that snowy ghost town are fascinating, and the art direction and sets that bring these locations to life is top notch. Unfortunately, once the possession portion sets in after about half an hour, the film becomes bland. Fans of the first Demons films will notice a considerable lack of action and gore. There are no hideous-looking, rotten demon-people running amuck that claw and infect the others. Instead, the possessions happen instantaneously and those possessed are not given any kind of makeup application to make them look intimidating. It seems like they saved up their fx budget for the witch when she finally materializes.

It's also difficult to really get swept up in the atmosphere since the characters are pretty much all obnoxious, annoying and stupid. I don't know about you, but under the circumstances (one girl injured, one guy dead and trapped underground in a freezing-cold ice crevice) I wouldn't be laughing and cracking jokes. A few girls lose their tops and there's a demon sex scene, but that's about it. Simon Boswell provided the disappointing and forgettable score.

★★