Blood Diner (1987)

... aka: Blood Feast 2

Directed by:
Jackie Kong

Warning! The truly unusual motion picture you are about to see contains many scenes of graphic violence. It is not intended for the faint of heart nor the young or impressionable. While it is a sad fact that mad homicide and practitioners of blood cults infest our society, the producers of this film wish to express that they do no condone, nor do they want to inspire, any of the human butchery or violence portrayed in this film. If you feel like you will be offended by such material, please leave the theater at once... Note: All of the mutilations, bodily dismemberments and cannibal rituals were performed by seasoned professionals. Please do not attempt any of these stunts at home. Thank You.

And so begins Blood Diner, a foray into gratuitous gore, plentiful female nudity and a mix of some genuine laughs with even more lame and childish comedy bits. At times this thing is so low-brow it makes Troma's brand of comedy look sophisticated by comparison! It's from Jackie Kong, a real anomaly in the U.S. film industry. Hell, how many other Asian-American women directors can you think of that were making exploitation films in America?

In 1962, a woman leaves her two small boys home alone because she needs to go to the market to pick up "some God damn tampons." What a nice time for the Happy Times All-Girl Glee Club Slaying psycho, who "is armed with a meat cleaver in one hand and his genitals in another," to show up. After hacking his way through the door, the boys discover that it's just they're beloved Uncle Anwar (Drew Godderis) popping in for a visit. He hands them each a "five-million-year-old" amulet, tells them to keep practicing what he's taught them and then heads out the door and gets gunned down by the police. "20 Years Later," the now-grown brothers; Michael (Rick Burks) and George (Carl Crew) Tutman, visit a cemetery, murder a security guard by popping his eyes out with a shovel blow to the back of the head, dig up a skeletal Anwar, cut open his head with a hacksaw and then remove his brain. They recite a spell from an ancient book and bring Anwar back to life. Well, he's just a talking brain in a jar barking out orders, but you get the drift.

The brothers own the Tutman Cafe, a popular local vegetarian diner, and their uncle demands they stay celibate and wants them to follow his orders to help resurrect Sheetar, "an immortal goddess more powerful than Superman!" They're to construct Sheetar out of the body parts of as many "immoral girls" as possible and, in order to raise her from the dead, they're to find a virgin to sacrifice and cook up a "blood buffet" offering. Michael shows up at an "nude aerobics studio" wearing a Ronald Reagan mask and starts blasting the girls with a machine gun. They construct the body, but must get even more body parts, so they lure two girls back from a club for their stomachs. One is covered in batter, has her head dipped in hot oil and is then decapitated with a broom. Another is split in two with a cleaver. At Bronson Caves, a completely nude woman uses kung fu to fight off one of them, but gets taken out when a stalagmite falls into her head. As the body count rises, Police Chief Miller (Max Morris) sends out his best detective, the leisure suit clad Mark Shepard (Roger Dauer), and his new partner, no-nonsense Sheba Jackson (LaNette La France), to investigate.

After getting whatever body parts or internal organs they need from their victims, the brothers then serve the leftover "meat" to their patrons. One of the brothers is an amateur wrestler who goes by the name "Luscious Lou the Lumerian" and has a bloody match with his opponent "Jimmy Hitler." The finale takes place at Club Dread, where the boys serve up a special stew that turns the patrons into green-faced zombies, plot to sacrifice virginal cheerleader Connie (Lisa Guggenheim) and manage to finally resurrect Sheetar (Tanya Papanicolas), who has a giant fanged mouth on her stomach and uses her "power of Jupiter" to shoot lasers out of her fingertips to blow stuff up.

I honestly didn't think I was going to like this one at all after the first twenty minutes or so. And true, the acting is terrible and the lowbrow humor (puking, comic dubbing, flatulence, etc.) often doesn't work, but overall I found this entertaining enough. There are some interesting songs on the soundtrack (plus several truly strange nightclub performances), it's fast paced (something is always going on), the production values are surprisingly good and it's absolutely packed with gore. I don't think this thing goes two minutes without a head or a limb getting hacked off.

Written by actor Michael D. Sonye (a Fred Olen Ray film regular) and originally intended as a sequel to BLOOD FEAST (1963), but those plans were scrapped during pre-production; Lewis himself would deliver a sequel to his own film in 2002. It was released on VHS by Lightning and Vestron, and is now on DVD through Dragon Entertainment.

★★1/2

Las amantes del diablo (1971)

... aka: Feast for the Devil
... aka: Feast of Satan, The

Directed by:
José María Elorrieta

After going away for a month-long holiday, a young nurse named Maria (Verónica Luján) has an experience so frightening that she emerges from it crazed, prematurely aged (wrinkled and with white hair) and blubbering incoherently about "Sheba!," "The music!" "The medallion!" and "Those eyes!" She's taken to an insane asylum for observation, undergoes tests and is diagnosed with something called "The Hammer Syndrome." Someone manages to sneak inside the hospital later that night and, with help from a patient (who later has his throat ripped out by a dog), kidnaps her. Maria's sister Hilda (Krista Nell) decides to get to the bottom of things and travels to the same coastal resort village Maria had gone to before going crazy. She checks into a hotel under an alias ("Hilda Torras") and almost immediately receives a beautiful bouquet of flowers from one Tills Nescu (Espartaco Santoni), a former medical doctor who stopped practicing. He's obscenely wealthy, popular with all of the ladies, seems to possess superhuman hypnotic powers ("Magic is the art of using means which are invisible to produce effects which are physical.") and may be involved in the black arts.

Initially believing that Tills has something to do with Maria's disappearance, Hilda begins indulging in the jet-setter lifestyle with him, his loyal "secretary" Andrea (Teresa Gimpera) and his current lover Paola (Carla Conti). They sit around on his yacht sipping drinks laced with "Indian herbs," go to a cocktail party and attend a nightclub where Tills seems to be able to make a singer forget his lyrics by simply staring at him. Against her better judgment, Hilda finds herself drawn to the seductive Tills and then the two begin getting romantic. Sure, he has intense eyes whose stares seem to make anyone do his bidding ("Those eyes!"), wears an ornate medallion around his neck ("The medallion!"), plays creepy tunes on the organ ("The music!") and is linked to the female reincarnation of the devil ("Sheba!") on more than one occasion, but is he really the one who's terrorized and then abducted Maria? Well yeah, actually he is. And it seems pretty obvious to everyone except for our heroine.

I reckon we're supposed to believe that Hilda has somehow been placed under Tills' spell, except for the fact that at one point she clearly manages to break free from him only to senselessly allow herself to get suckered right back in. Andrea warns her not to get too close (though Hilda assumes she's just jealous), a psychic woman (Elsa Zabala) warns her that he's evil (though she's told that the woman is a psycho) and all of the possible signs are there that he did terrible things to her sister... and yet Hilda still cannot keep away. Eventually, she finds herself at Tills' castle home sucking down some cloudy drink ("a mild sedative"), having nightmares of cultists sacrificing a goat and chanting "Hail Satan! Hail Sheba!" and at the mercy of her host and his voyeuristic Asian butler, Britta. Flashbacks show that as a child, Tills had an evil mother (Inés Morales) who flaunted her infidelities in front of his father and liked abusing daddy with a whip. Because of the abuse, Tills' pop hung himself and now Tills hates women.

I can usually find redeeming qualities in these European Gothics, but this lethargic film fails on just about every level. The writing is poor, the plot is uneventful and the pacing is slow. The Satanism scenes are underwhelming and mostly saved for the conclusion where, truth be told, they don't have much of anything to do with our antagonist's motive for killing. Unless you thrill to gratuitous slow zooms into eyeballs, the film is seriously lacking in style as well, especially when compared to other Gothic films from the era. If it's not bad enough to have a film weak on story and weak on visual presentation, the film also decides to skimp on blood and sex. There's nary a drop of the red stuff, leaving only a handful of nude scenes as compensation. Even those are rather brief.

Ennio Girolami (billed as "Thomas Moore") co-stars as Carlos Ferrer, Hilda's doctor friend who is secretly in love with her and gets jealous that she's spending all of her time with Tills. Julio Peña is the police inspector on the case (who doesn't decide to really "inspect" anything until the last few minutes of the film) and Tomás Blanco plays another doctor. Star Santoni also co-produced and co-wrote the film.

It was a rare lead role for Nell, an attractive Austrian actress who tragically passed away in a car accident not long after this was made. Usually cast in support roles, Nell's brief career saw her filming movies in Egypt (1970's Shadow of Illusion), Turkey (1971's The Red Headed Corpse), Spain (this one) and Italy (1972's The Slasher Is the Sex Maniac!). Though she looks great here, her character is so naive and boneheaded that's it difficult to really get behind her.

Director Elorrieta (billed as "Joe Lacy" here) also made The Witch Without a Broom (1967) and Curse of the Vampyr (1972).

★1/2

Tower of Evil (1972)

... aka: Beyond the Fog
... aka: Devil's Tower
... aka: Horror of Snape Island, The
... aka: Horror on Snape Island

Directed by:
Jim O'Connolly

Higher levels of sex and blood than usual, plus its possible influence on later slasher flicks, are all that separate this from the pack. Two fishermen; elderly John (George Coulouris) and his son Hamp (Jack Watson), venture onto Snape Isle, a small, fog-bound, rocky island that's barely big enough to house a single lighthouse. As soon as they step foot off the boat, they find a naked, dead man face down in a puddle of water (plus a crab chowing down on his dismembered hand). Upon further investigation, they find a decapitated girl and another dead man pinned to a wall with a spear. Suddenly, a crazed young woman pops out, stabs John to death and is then knocked unconscious by Hamp. The girl - Penny (Candace Glendenning - star of the sleazy SATAN'S SLAVE) - is taken to a psychiatric clinic and subjected to tests that are supposed to unlock the secrets to what happened there. Though in a "complete state of catatonic stupor;" doctors are able to use a drug and multi-colored lights to kick start Penny's brain long enough to get some information out of her. Too bad the next batch of visitors to Snape Isle aren't privy to the info before they head there...

Because one of the murder weapons was an ancient, solid gold Phoenician ceremonial spear, "one of the most exciting archeological discoveries" in years, and that confirms rumors that a wealthy explorer died there and was buried with his treasure years earlier, Professor Lawrence Bakewell (Dennis Price, in a one-scene cameo) decides to put together an expedition to be headed by Dan Winthrop (Derek Fowlds). Also coming along are Dan's wife Nora (Anna Palk), art expert Rose Mason (Jill Haworth), Rose' ex-fiancé Adam Masters (Mark Edwards) and investigator Edward Brent (Bryant Haliday, from the memorable DEVIL DOLL), who's been hired by Penny's parents to find out what actually happened on the island. Hamp, whose brother Saul and his family used to live on the island (before they mysteriously drowned), and his first mate Brom (Gary Hamilton), are in charge of captaining the boat to get them there.

After the expedition arrives, someone, or some thing, manages to blow up their boat, stranding them there. And then the movie plays out as your standard stalk-and-slash where those dumb enough to wander off by themselves - when they should know better - get killed off. Someone's pushed from the top of the lighthouse. Another gets a sword stuck in their head, a neck is snapped and someone's burned alive. Underneath the island are a series of caves containing the treasure and a giant gold statue to an ancient God.

It opens strongly, with an opening sequence that pulls you in and well-edited scenes of Penny recollecting her horror vacation afterward, but once the expedition arrives on the island it becomes a bit too routine. The characters are neither sympathetic nor interesting, and the identity of the mystery killer isn't much of a surprise. Still, there's much here to admire: an unusual island setting, decent art direction, handsome photography courtesy of Desmond Dickinson, and, of course, plenty of bloody moments, as well as some nice eye candy provided by Glendenning, John Hamill and Seretta Wilson. Palk doesn't get naked, but she runs around in little more than a bra for the duration of the movie. The cast also includes Anthony Valentine as a psychiatrist, William Lucas as a police inspector, Robin Askwith (of "Carry On" fame) and UK cameo queen Marianne Stone.

Director O'Connolly had previously made BERSERK! (1967) with Joan Crawford, which was also considered quite violent for its time, and the cowboys vs. dinosaurs film THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969).

Original theatrical version THE HORROR OF SNAPE ISLAND runs 85 minutes and had five minutes removed. It was also on video as BEYOND THE FOG.

★★1/2

I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale (1973)

... aka: Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, The
... aka: Carnal Violence
... aka: Torso
... aka: Torso - Carnal Violence

Directed by:
Sergio Martino

With such good efforts as THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971), ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1972) and YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (1972) already behind him, this is something of a disappointment for director Martino. And yet strangely enough, it's probably his most popular horror film; perhaps because it received better circulation than his others over the years (possibly due to the fact it starred then-popular British actress / sex symbol Suzy Kendall), or perhaps because it's more of a standard slasher flick than his previous giallo. Either way, it's nothing to write home about. After appearing in some kind of lesbian porn photography session, one of the stars, university student Florence (Patricia Adiutori), is strangled to death with a red-and-black silk scarf and then gets her torso sliced open. The killer (who wears a ski mask) also slashes her boyfriend's throat and has visions of a child's hand slowly reaching for a doll. Next up is Carol (Cristina Airoldi), the other woman who appeared in the photos and also a student. She accompanies two guys to some kind of hippie-drug party, smokes weed and burns one of the guys with a lit cigarette for feeling her up. Deciding to leave early, she encounters the masked psycho while walking through a muddy forest, who repeats the strangulation / defilement of the corpse routine on her; taking it one step further by poking out her eyeballs with his fingers.

A handful of Flo and Carol's other classmates, all of whom are taking an art course taught by Professor Franz (John Richardson), also become targeted for one reason or another. Daniela (Tina Aumont) remembers seeing someone wearing the same style of scarf that was used to kill the previous two women, but can't quite remember who was wearing it. When the killer catches wind of this, he calls Dani at home and threatens to kill her. Immediately after, her uncle (Carlo Alighiero) flatly states, "Try and control yourself my dear. Find some way of getting your mind off it all." Hey pops, just seconds ago a psycho who has just murdered two of my friends revealed that he knows who I am, knows where I live and has just told me that I'm next... Calm down, my ass! Her uncle suggests she split town for awhile and go to their isolated villa; a huge and hard-to-access mansion located on top of a mountain overlooking a small village. Just the kind of place you want to be when there's a nutjob stalking you, right? Daniela invites three of her girlfriends; American transfer student Jane (Kendall) and lesbians Katia (Angela Covello) and Ursula (Carla Brait), to accompany her. Soon after they leave, the vendor (Ernesto Colli) who sold the killer his scarves has his head smashed again the side of a building by a car. It's the killer trying to cover his tracks, and now the last track he has to cover is Daniela.

Nearly all of the leering male characters from the city, whom the director has tried to set up as possible suspects at various points in the film, show up in the village to reaffirm their status as red herrings. The primary two are Roberto (Luc Merenda), a handsome doctor spotted both around town and on the girls' train trip over to the village, and Stefano (Roberto Bisacco), a student. The director really tries to shine the spotlight on Stefano's weirdness in particular. He's frequently seen sitting in his car staring at the girls, is obsessively in love with Daniela (who wants nothing to do with him) and can't perform for a prostitute so he starts strangling her after she suggests popping in a Swedish porno to help him along. Stefano is painted as so weird throughout that you pretty much know it's not him doing the actual killings. Martino does what most other filmmakers in this style do by randomly pulling the psycho out of the giallo playbook i.e. making it a seemingly incidental side character with minimal screen time until the big 'reveal.' Said reveal actually doesn't have any kind of and giving them a silly motive stretching back to a traumatic moment in their youth.

Aside from many beautiful actresses on hand and an abundance of nudity (though top-billed Kendall and Aumont get to leave their clothes on), the best moments here occur about thirty minutes before the actual finale. Our heroine Jane, who has injured her leg after falling down the stairs, finds herself alone in the villa with the killer. The catch is that the killer doesn't know she's there. While hiding just feet from the corpses of her friends, Jane has to watch as each gets dismembered with a hacksaw. She then goes upstairs, tries to quickly and quietly make it look like her room hasn't been used and finds herself getting locked inside the room. But never fear, town gossip leads the killer back to the villa to try to cover his tracks... once again. These scenes are fairly suspenseful and well-done but they aren't enough to make up for the rest, which is pretty lackluster in both story and style. The last ten or so minutes pretty much suck, too.

I often see Torso cited as being a chief influence on the late 70s / early 80s slasher movie cycle, and find that a bit of an exaggeration. As a singular entity, it's no more influential than most in its sub-category. And it certainly didn't have the impact of films such as BAY OF BLOOD (1971), BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

★★

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Directed by:
Brian De Palma

I completely understand why some viewers wouldn't really take to this psycho-thriller. Hell, I can even understand why it was showered with Razzie nominations upon release. This is not a particularly well-written film with an airtight plot or an unpredictable resolution. The story threads that tie the set pieces together are weak, trivial, even ludicrous at times and we pretty much know where it's going the entire time. Plot-wise, the film holds few actual surprises and I could also see why some were offended by its depictions of 'loose' women (an adulteress, a hooker...) as primary victims, black men as would-be rapist thugs and a transvestite as a razor-slashing psycho with a dual persona. It also rather blatantly copies PSYCHO (1960) in how it is structured and presented. However, De Palma isn't the kind of filmmaker who ever shies away from acknowledging his reference points. In fact, he all but shines a spotlight on them. And he does that consciously to use our familiarity (in this case, with the aforementioned Hitchcock classic) against us to subvert our expectations and completely throw us off guard at certain points. Audience manipulation at its finest. De Palma is also a true master of mood. Dressed to Kill has a hazy sheen, an extremely soft focus look that is downright sumptuous. Romantic, even. The director is aided to no end by both Ralf Bode's lush photography and Pino Donaggio's elegant score is setting up a calming, sensuous mood which effectively accentuates his moments of shock. He's even smart enough to use sex itself, whether it be in the form of an erotic-shower-scene-turned-scary or some rather raunchy dialogue, to both heighten the mood and up the shock factor*.

The plot? Well, it basically involves a serial killer, but it's not really all that important. Angie Dickinson (who has stated in interviews that this is her favorite of all her films) has the Janet Leigh role as Kate Miller; a wealthy, but bitter and sexually dissatisfied housewife who seeks fulfillment in the arms of a stranger, and pays the price for it when a psycho with a razor attacks and kills her immediately afterward in an elevator. Her dry, uptight and very professional psychiatrist Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine) thinks the culprit may be one of his former patients; a transsexual named "Bobbi," who's been leaving threats on his answering machine. Meanwhile, Kate's distraught electronics wiz son Peter (Keith Gordon) teams up with streetwise hooker Liz (Nancy Allen, Mrs. De Palma at the time), who witnessed the crime, to do some freelance investigating on their own. Liz will become the next victim unless she and Peter can find a way to trap the psycho.

Aside from the triumphant development of mood, this film does an excellent job of toying with viewer emotions. One of the best set of sequences in the film starts as an ordinary day about town for our short-lived protagonist Kate. While visiting an art museum, a handsome stranger meets her eye. She begins harmlessly following him from room to room, then comes to discover that he's actually following her. The two end up having an anonymous, torrid fling that begins in a taxi cab and ends at his apartment. Her embers now stirred, Kate sits down with a sheepish smile on her face to write him a note before heading home, and then finds out a very shocking piece of medical information about her new lover. She hurried runs off, and then realizes she's forgotten her wedding ring! Bad enough it itself, right? De Palma then goes a step further by having Kate sneak back into the apartment to retrieve her ring, generating a big "whew" for both Kate and the viewer, and when it appears she's all free and clear, that's when De Palma decides to hit us with the unexpected demise of what we thought was our lead character.

Made in 1980 just as the slasher film movement was starting to gain some major momentum, Dressed, strangely enough, manages to fit pretty snug with the rest of the slasher flicks from its time. It was better received, critically, but that's only because it was made by someone who actually knew what they were doing. This film is much more than a series of murder-set-pieces. It's about making us feel or think a certain way, and then suddenly taking that all away at a moment's notice.

Dennis Franz has a great supporting role as a sarcastic cop who wants to use Allen's character as bait for the killer, and Brandon Maggart (star of the underrated CHRISTMAS EVIL) shows up as one of Allen's tricks from Cleveland. William Finley (star of De Palma's SISTERS and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) provides the voice of the killer. Two Penthouse Pets also appear; Anneka De Lorenzo, one of the co-stars of the notorious historical porno CALIGULA (1979), and Victoria Lynn Johnson, who was Dickinson's stand-in during the shower scene. Because of the criticism leveled on Dickinson for using the double, De Palma followed with BODY DOUBLE (1984) a few years later.

(* To note, depictions / discussions of sex aren't so shocking to most of us these days. Considering that this was a mainstream, major studio release with well-known stars from the beginning of the Reagan Era, the nudity and overt sexual content in this particular film did actually shock people. Whether or not it still does will depend solely on the viewer.)

★★★