Murderock - uccide a passo di danza (1984)

...aka: Danza mortal
...aka: Demon Is Loose, The
...aka: Giallo a disco...aka: Murderock
...aka: Murder Rock Dancing Death...aka: Murder-Rock: Dancing Death

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

Who knew Fulci could be so lustrous? Most of his films from the early 80s are pretty gritty. From his tropical living dead cash-in ZOMBI 2 (1979) to the misogynistic exploits of the THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982), it's all about primitive shock effects shot through a grainy eye. Not so much here. This one's sumptuous, soft-focus and much more polished. It's also quite restrained as far as blood-and-guts are concerned and is one of the director's least violent and least graphic films. Trading off over-the-top splatter for a more professional-looking sheen is something that's probably not going to sit well with the majority of Mr. Fulci's fan base. After all, we're talking about a man whose claim to fame rests primarily on images of eyeballs being skewered by splintered wood, internal organs exiting bodies through mouths, razor blades slicing open nipples and ginger girls getting their heads blasted off with shotguns. Murderock is the other side of Fulci. It's him returning to the oft-neglected beginning of his career when he was making less-celebrated giallo thrillers such as A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1972). Is it as good as either of those? Nope, but it's still a passable effort. Passable, that is, if you have a high tolerance for 80s tackiness.

The words "cheesy" and "dated" often crop up during discussions of this film and both are apt descriptions of what you'll see here. Fulci claimed in interviews that both the musical numbers and Keith Emerson's cheesy pop/disco/synth music soundtrack were both forced upon him by the film's producer. This results in what is essentially a slasher remake of Flashdance. Sure it sounds God awful, and parts of it are indeed God awful, but it's usually in a good-dumb-fun kind of way. Much of the entertainment value rests in the hilarious choreographed dance routines where leotard-clad ladies get so worked up they're flinging sweat off by the time they're done. And then, of course, they die.

The very attractive Olga Karlatos (aka the gouged-out eyeball chica in Zombi 2) stars as Candice Norman, a troubled dance instructor whipping her young male and female dancers into shape at the Arts for Living Center in New York City. One of her female students decides to stay late and is attacked while taking a shower by a psycho who chloroforms her and then sticks a thin metal pin through her heart. Many more students will die in a similar fashion and everything seems to coincide with the arrival of some producers announcing they'll be accepting only a couple of the students from the school for an upcoming TV series. Is someone wanting to trim the competition to increase their own chances? Or is something else afoot?

You get your typical line-up of suspects. Naturally, any of the students would have reason to kill the others. The first victim's boyfriend, Willy (Christian Borromeo), seems to have a temper and a bad habit of being at the scene of the murders right before they occur. Then there's jealous choreographer Margie (Geretta Giancarlo), academy director Dick Gibson (Claudio Cassinelli), who's either sleeping with several of the students or wants to, and Candice herself, who has been plagued by strange nightmares of a man trying to kill her. Even stranger, the man she's been dreaming about turns out to be a real man named George Webb (Ray Lovelock), a hard-drinking, washed up former male model. Candice and George begin seeing one another, but it's revealed that George is also connected to the dance academy: One of the chief dancers is his ex-girlfriend. Everything ends with a John Huston quote.

Nice-looking production with a typically convoluted plot and badly written dialogue, a pinch of T&A, a surprisingly low violence quotient and a fair mystery. Karlatos does a very good job in her role, though the rest of the cast doesn't make much of an impression. Cosimo Cinieri (from Fulci's Manhattan Baby) co-stars as a detective and small roles are played by Robert Gligorov (from Soavi's STAGE FRIGHT) and an uncredited Al Cliver. Fulci himself appears briefly as an agent.

★★

Scream Dream (1989)

Directed by:

Donald Farmer

Like most of Farmer's output, this is very cheap, very badly made, full of continuity errors, padded out with whatever will stretch the running time to about an hour and has terrible amateurish acting. However, it's slightly better than his two previous efforts (the seemingly-unfinished DEMON QUEEN and the enticingly-titled though nearly insufferable CANNIBAL HOOKERS) thanks primarily to second tier 'B' queen Melissa Moore, from Versailles, Kentucky. Though Moore (a blonde, six-foot-tall model) never quite reached the height of fame as some of her Scream Queen sisters, she was one of the most beautiful in her category, a decent actress and had a pretty good ten year run lasting from the late eighties until about the mid-90s, racking up credits in numerous low-budget horror films such as Jim Wynorski's Sorority House Massacre II and HARD TO DIE (both 1990), Vampire Cop (1990; Farmer again), the horror spoof REPOSSESSED (1990) and Mad at the Moon (1992; an arty horror western for director Martin Donovan), among others. Scream Dream is the actresses' first leading role, and all things considered, she acquits herself fairly well here... especially in comparison to the rest of the atrocious cast!

No lame jokes about how cut-throat the music business is, I promise!

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Things begin when a topless chick lying in bed gets chainsawed between her legs in a 'shocking' music video for bitchy heavy metal queen Michelle Shock (Carol Carr). Michelle is rumored to be a devil-worshipper and once word gets to the press that people have been mysteriously disappearing from her concerts and that her music contains subliminal Satanic messages, she's fired from her band. Michelle turns out to be a blood-drinking demoness who's been murdering her fans. In one scene, she goes down on a guy and bites off his dick. She also has some kind of rubbery little mutant hand puppet cat familiar that kills people. Derrick (Nikki Riggins), a bandmate and former lover of Michelle's (who's now dating a jealous girl named Linnea, played by Michelle Uber), stumbles upon her secret and ends up having to kill her with a medieval axe. Strangely, her dismembered hand takes on a life of its own and must also be stabbed. So band manager Lou (Gene Amonette) decides to replace Michelle with up-and-comer Jamie Summers (Moore). Jamie becomes possessed by the scorned Michelle and, in between overlong musical numbers, morphs into a murderous demon-creature with horns and claws.

The horror genre misses Melissa!

Definitely nothing to write home about. There's cheap gore, lots of charmingly dated hair metal from a group called Rikk-O-Shay, a couple of topless scenes and an unexciting, anti-climactic ending. Make-up artist Rick Gonzales (an assistant to Tom Savini on Day of the Dead) contributes a decent demon costume to the works for what it's worth. So what became of Melissa, you ask? She now trains American saddle-bred show horses, has 50 World Championships to her credit, is the owner and manager of Sunrise Stables and was a 2007 Wilhelmina 40+ Model Search finalist. I guess she's no longer acting, but she still looks great and I'd like to see her in film again.

Hide your junk, girlie men!

Tough-to-track down these days, Scream Dream was released to VHS on the American Video label and hasn't been picked up for distribution since. It's so rare that I can't even find a box scan anywhere online. Someone out there hook a brother up!

★1/2

Descanse en piezas (1987)

...aka: Rest in Pieces

Directed by:
José Ramón Larraz

It doesn't happen too often when one gets both a genuine startle and an unintentional laugh right in the opening scene, but that's exactly what happens here when a corpse lying on a slab suddenly sits up. Yeah, I'll admit it. I jumped. They got me. The fact I hadn't really adjusted my volume beforehand probably didn't help matters, but it's an effective little jump scare. Unfortunately, immediately afterward I found myself laughing when a mortician steps in, dryly states "Chemical reflex... often happens" and then pushes the body back down, complete with a creaky, rusty-door-hinge sound effect. So is this supposed to be a comedy? I mean, the title sure makes it sound like a campy zombie comedy, doesn't it? As far as I could tell, no. There are a couple of black comic moments but for the most part this thing is meant to be taken seriously. And it doesn't work very well thanks to a muddled screenplay and an awful performance from the lead actress.

The corpse belongs to a woman named Catherine Boyle, who is played by screen vet Dorothy Malone. Best known for her Oscar-winning performance in Douglas Sirk's torrid melodrama WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1965) and recurring role on the TV series Peyton Place, Malone doesn't have much to do here. As the film opens she's already dead and about to be cremated. Niece Helen (Lorin Jean Vail) and Helen's tennis pro hubby Bob (Scott Thompson Baker) show up to accept their inheritance. Aunt Catherine videotaped her will (and strychnine-in-the-milk suicide) and leaves everything to Helen despite the fact that she hated her mother. The young couple then move to Catherine's estate "Eight Manors;" which consists of eight large homes, six of which are occupied by auntie's refined older friends. None of them pay any rent and all of them behave rather strangely.

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Soon after moving in, Helen realizes the home is haunted. Cars in the garage take on a life of their own, clothes in a closet move, lights flicker, a piano plays itself and she's tormented by visions of her laughing aunt. After getting some heavy breathing phone calls and almost being drowned in the bathtub by a reanimated shower curtain, Helen finally wants to leave but her husband insists they stay because there's a rumored eight million dollars in cash hidden somewhere on the grounds. The film then seems to completely drop the haunting aspect and focuses instead on the sinister neighbors, who are harboring a secret that involves mass suicide, a mental asylum and reincarnation. It's all confusing, half-assed and doesn't really make much sense. But hey, the bad guys and gals do get to sing "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" and slaughter a string quartet in slow motion, dismember their corpses and dispose of the parts in an oven.

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Leading lady Vail, a dark-eyebrowed blonde, has a very grating and whiny voice but goes topless on at least five different occasions. This movie certainly would have been a little better with a more capable actress playing the part. Otherwise the film is surprisingly well cast. The actors playing the neighbors are all quite good in their roles and the film is at its best when focusing on them. Amongst the actors are the prolific Jack Taylor (an American expatriate character actor who found success in Mexico and Spain) as a blind former musician who carries around a cane with a retractible blade, Jeffrey Segal as a doctor, Patty Shepard (another American who appeared in quite a few Spanish horror productions), Fernando Bilbao, Daniel Katz, Tony Isbert as a grumpy Nazi gardener and Carole James as slutty maid. Still, what in the hell are these people? Ghosts? Zombies? Reincarnated humans? Hell if I could figure it all out.

★1/2

Witchcraft (1988)

...aka: Witch and Warlock

Directed by:
Robert Spera

One of the most baffling of mysteries is how something as bland, derivative and forgettable as Witchcraft managed to spawn not one, not two, not three, but twelve sequels to date, making it one of the most resilient horror film franchises of the past thirty years. And I cannot really answer that question except to say all of these film were cheaply made and adequately filled up space on video store shelves during their heyday. There's clearly less of a demand for these movies nowadays as they've stopped making them. Anat Topol-Barzilai (the daughter of Israeli-born Fiddler on the Roof star Topol) plays Grace, a Polish (?) emigre who thinks she's lucked out snagging filthy rich businessman John Churchill (Gary Sloan). While delivering their first child, Grace has visions of a witch burning. Afterward, her husband takes her and their child William to temporarily stay with his mother Elizabeth (Mary Shelley) in the family mansion.

Almost immediately, Grace begins to suspect something is up. Her nightmares (including one where her mother-in-law eats a dead dog) continue, John no longer gives her the attention (or sex) he once used to, Elizabeth forbids her to going into the attic, a mute butler named Ellsworth (Lee Kissman) lurks around and a priest who was supposed to baptize her baby gets sick and eventually hangs himself. It all has something to do with a witch and a warlock who died three-hundred years earlier, but this movie doesn't even really pretend to mask its origins. Pace for pace this is little more than a retread of ROSEMARY'S BABY, right down to the strange old people congregating in the living room, the backstabbing husband and a trusted elder giving the unsuspecting mother drugged tea. You'll certainly gain more from revisiting Polanski's film than you will by watching this one... even if you've already seen it a dozen times.

Aside from being predictable, mawkish and derivative, the dialogue is hokey, the performances are highly uneven (leaning toward bad), the visual effects are chintzy and the movie fails to build any tension or suspense. On a technical level, it's made with enough basic skill to be watchable if you've got nothing better to do, but it's still just not very good. One of the few bright spots is the supporting performance from Deborah Scott as Grace's kooky best friend Linda, who also incidentally gets the best death scene. Scott is, I believe, married to the director and now uses the professional name Deborah Spera.

The only sequel I'll for sure be covering here is WITCHCRAFT II: THE TEMPTRESS (1989), which follows up on the teenage years of baby William and reuses some footage from this one. The others are Witchcraft III: The Kiss of Death (1991), Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart (1992), Witchcraft V: Dance with the Devil (1993), Witchcraft 6: The Devil's Mistress (1994), Witchcraft 7: Judgement Hour (1995), Witchcraft 8 Salem's Ghost (1996), Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh (1997), Witchcraft X: Mistress of the Craft (1998), Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood (2000), Witchcraft XII: In the Lair of the Serpent (2002) and Witchcraft 13: Blood of the Chosen (2008).

★1/2

Cannibal Hookers (1987)

...aka: I Will Dance on Your Grave: Cannibal Hookers
...aka: I Will Dance on Your Grave, Volume 3

Directed by:
Donald Farmer

There's always going to be an audience for titles such as these (like me!) but most of the time you end up getting burned, and this is no exception to the rule. After some deranged, bald man eats a human heart, another guy picks up a hooker in a bar. She takes him back to her apartment, removes her top, bites off his finger and then chops him up with an axe. Meanwhile, college girls Hilary (Amy Waddell) and Dee Dee (Annette Munro) decide to avoid "all the social status of being raped by Nazis" by joining Gamma Zeta Beta, "the sleaziest sorority on campus." Stephanie (Sheila Best aka Tara the Southern Belle on G.L.O.W.: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), queen bitch of the sorority house, decides that for initiation Hilary and Dee Dee must dress up like hookers and parade around on Sunset Boulevard until they can find a trick. The two pledges, as well as Hilary's boyfriend Bruce (Tommy Carrano) and his friends Darrell (Donald Trimborn) and Dwight (Matt Borlenghi), end up running across a slew of cannibal hookers who work out of whorehouse instead.

Oy ve. Where shall I even begin describing this exercise in cheap gore, cheap T&A contributed by ladies who certainly look their parts and camcorder production values? Let's just say I had more fun making the screen caps than I did actually watching the movie. So maybe you'll have more fun looking at the screen caps than you will reading my description? Enjoy...

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Cannibal Hookers love chewy man fingers and Cherry Kool-Aid.

Do these come in a Size 8?

You've ruined my career, Donald Farmer!!

Lobo esta loco!

The 80s called, they want their hair bac... Ah, nevermind.

Honey, could you take the trash out to the curb?

3, 2, 1, Action! Argh! Cut! Cannibal Hooker #314, could you please stop staring directly at the camera? Ah, fuck it, nevermind... And rolling!

She was Courtney, when Courtney wasn't cool.

You still here, you big masochist, you? Trust me when I say that if the amount of fun were only half as big as the hair, this might actually be worth sitting through. Sadly, it doesn't even have enough cheap oomph to fill up 60 minutes. Actually, they didn't even have enough material to fill up 60 minutes either judging by the fact that an entire scene is actually repeated in its entirety for no reason whatsoever toward the end! Strangely, neither of the two protagonists even make it to the finale (nor is their any resolution to their story) and it's bookmarked with scenes of characters who don't interact with the main cast at any point during the rest of the film (likely because their scenes were tacked on later). Even more strangely, victims of the cannibal hookers return as vampires who attack and infect others. Or were they zombies? Hell if I could tell, but now that I think about it this movie is awfully similar to the terrible 1979 Filipino horror-comedy VAMPIRE HOOKERS (1979).

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The opening credits theme song was also used in Farmer's DEMON QUEEN (1986) and footage from THE CURSE OF THE SCREAMING DEAD (1982) can be seen on a TV set. The cast includes Drew Godderis (EVIL SPAWN), Sky Nicholas (FATAL PULSE), Katina Garner (HACK-O'LANTERN; also an associate producer) and Marya Gant (A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK). One scene was filmed at the Hollywood Book and Poster Company, where owner Eric Caidin makes a brief appearance. And who could forget Gary J. Levinson (another of the producers) in his star making role as the big, bald, bug-eyed, human-heart-eating retard henchman Lobo? "No give? Lobo take!"

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First released to unsuspecting video stores by Camp Video, the same folks who gave us the similar but much-better HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS (1987). It was also later included in a fake four-part video/DVD series (distributed by Tapeworm) entitled I WILL DANCE ON YOUR GRAVE. Others in that "series" include KILLING SPREE (1987), W.A.R.: WOMEN AGAINST RAPE (1987) and SAVAGE VENGEANCE (1989).

★

Death Warmed Up (1984)

...aka: Death Warmed Over

Directed by:

David Blyth

I have two DVD players; one in my living room and one in my bedroom. The one in my bedroom is one of those temperamental bastards that only plays *certain* DVDs in my collection; namely the immaculate ones fresh out of the package. Anything else with even the faintest scratch or smudge, you might as well forget about. Strangely, that same player has no issue at all playing anything I pull out of any of those 50/ 100/ 70 Gazillion Movie Packs distributed by Mill Creek Entertainment. Even those discs I've forgotten to put back in the envelopes... which somehow end up on the floor... get covered in dust... are scratched up by my cat... and somehow get dotted with dried globs of Mountain Dew. My player just loves those, so that's usually what I pop in to watch right before bed since most do a great job of putting me to sleep. Death Warmed Up (aka Death Warmed Over) - released in their "Nightmare Worlds" set - is an exception to the rule. This movie is a complete and utter mess, but it did manage to keep my attention for 82 minutes. And dammit, I actually could have used some sleep last night!

A pre-Peter Jackson New Zealand gore film that doesn't make a lick o' sense, DWU uses an old school mad doctor scenario to center its bizarre and nonsensical events around. The film starts with some promise. Professor Tucker (David Weatherley) and the thoroughly insane Dr. Archer Howell (Gary Day) are trying to concoct a formula to reverse the aging process. Howell gets greedy and, during an amusingly homoerotic sequence, sneaks up behind Tucker's son Michael (Michael Hurst) while he's taking a shower and injects the serum into his ass with a huge syringe. Michael goes nuts, surprises his parents in bed with a shotgun and then spends seven years in a nuthouse before being released. Now wanting revenge, a white-haired Michael, along with his girlfriend Sandy (Margaret Umbers) and another couple; Lucas (William Upjohn) and Jeannie (Norelle Scott), take a boat to a secluded island where Dr. Howell now runs a psychiatric hospital.

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Once on the island, things take a turn into the truly senseless as Michael and company encounter a bunch of spastic mutant nutcases; Dr. Howell's failed experiments. In several scenes obviously inspired by Mad Max, the gang is chased and almost run off a road by some mutants while speeding down a dirt road and then encounter them again in underground catacombs where they chase them around on their motorcycles. There's plenty of blood, violence and gore to go around (including skull drilling and an exploding head), a pinch of sex, some decent camerawork (again, obviously Mad Max-inspired) and dark, foggy, futuristic set design inside of the clinic. The production values aren't bad and it's somewhat stylish, but there's way too much going on here. It's unfocused overkill that grows tiresome well before the end.

The cast also includes David Letch (who appeared - along with Umbers - in the underrated haunted car film MR. WRONG aka DARK OF THE NIGHT), Bruno Lawrence (THE QUIET EARTH) and Ian Watkin (the obnoxious uncle in Jackson's DEAD ALIVE). Vestron Video handled the original U.S. video release.

★★

El techo de cristal (1971)

...aka: Glass Ceiling, The

Directed by:
Eloy de la Iglesia

As it turns out, Roman Polanski isn't the only person with an apartment trilogy. Combine THE GLASS CEILING with CANNIBAL MAN (1972; originally and more aptly titled WEEK OF THE KILLER) and NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM (1973) - all of which prominently feature apartment house backdrops - and overlooked Spanish director Eloy de la Iglesia has one as well. Though his films are quieter and less showy than Polanski's horror masterpieces, all three films in de la Iglesia's series are certainly strong enough to merit another look. Specifically I should say they're strong enough to merit a look since not many people outside of Spain have been able to actually see these movies. Two of the three have never been released on video or DVD here in the U.S. and, to further complicate matters, the one that actually has been released is the recipient of a very misleading English-language title that has resulted in some backlash. You know, people who were expecting gore and cannibalism running around claiming it's "boring" and feeling cheated by the title. In reality, none of these movies were made to cater to the exploitation/gore crowd regardless of how they're packaged. Instead, they'll appeal more to viewers who like slow-building suspense and a more psychological horror grounded in reality.

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Ceiling is set in a small, rural apartment house and details the deceptively normal everyday activities of around a half dozen characters. Because her husband Charles (Fernando Cebrián) is always out of town on business, housewife Martha (Carmen Sevilla) spends most of her time alone with only her pet cat to keep her company. Already prone to fantacizing away her boredom and lonliness, Martha begins to suspect that her upstairs neighbor Julie (Patty Shepard) - who she's caught telling several lies - may have murdered her husband. Their landlord Richard (Dean Selmier), a sculptor and artist, has picqued the interest of farmer's daughter Rosa (Emma Cohen), who delivers milk there every morning, but finds himself being drawn to Martha instead. Pete (Javier De Campos), a grocery delivery man, also seems to have a thing for Martha and may be having an affair with Julie. Meanwhile, someone's spying on and taking provocative pictures of all three of the women. Sounds pretty simple, and in a way it is, but the good stuff comes in the details.

You'd be hard pressed to even consider this a genre film until around the final half-hour, but the fact the director doesn't play by the rules is part of the beauty of his work. By the time the terror finally does hit, you feel interested in and invested enough in all of the principal characters he's created that the horror content has that much more of an impact. de la Iglesia also does an excellent job slowly ratcheting up the suspense here. Once you've settled into the film's quiet pacing and the seemingly innocuous everyday events of the characters (though we're still kept a bit uneasy throughout by the women constantly being photographed) that's when he decides to knock you out of your comfort zone. The apartment setting, where one is generally surrounded by people they sort-of know but not that well, is naturally an ideal location when you're dealing with themes of voyeurism and paranoia. It's exploited here the same effective way Polanski exploited it in his apartment-set films.

All of the performances are very good. Sevilla (also the lead in NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM) is outstanding playing a woman who's either very clever and observant or one who's becoming increasingly unhinged. She won a major award in her home country (the Cinema Writers Circle Award) for this performance. Shepard, who's probably best known for appearing alongside Paul Naschy in several films (including THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN), is also effective as the mysterious upstairs neighbor.

The version I saw (a British VHS release on the EKO Video Films label) was English-dubbed. A restored, subtitled release would certainly be welcome, but I don't expect one anytime soon.

★★★