Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

... aka: Hell Creatures
... aka: Invasion of the Hell Creatures
... aka: Invasion of the Saucer-Men

Directed by:
Edward L. Cahn

It's Saturday night in the small American town of Hicksburg ("No I'm not kidding, that's the name... Scout's honor!"). The businesses are closing up shop for the evening. A couple of scam artists, or as they like to be called "investment specialists," have run out of luck and plan on hitting the road in the morning. All of the teenagers - at least the lucky ones - are heading up to Lover's Point for some drinking and smooching. Grumpy Farmer Larkin (Raymond Hatton) is sick and tired of the teeny boppers littering his cow pasture with their beer cans and getting his prized bull Old Walt drunk. And an unidentified flying object has just landed on the outskirts of town. Several people witness it, including Joe (Frank Gorshin), one of the scammers, who immediately returns to his boarding house to tell his buddy Artie (Lyn Osborn) they've just found a new way to make some money: UFO exhibitions. Though the local police are skeptical about the presence of an alien craft, the military is immediately on it and have sent a small squadron into the woods to check out the landed saucer. Back at Lover's Point, a couple of teenagers - Johnny (Steven Terrell) and his girl Joan (Gloria Castillo) - decide to call it a night. To avoid being detected on their way out, they decide to drive home with their lights off and end up running over... something.

Initially thinking they've struck down a young child, further investigation reveals they've actually hit a little green man. The alien's hand detaches and moves on its own, grows needle-like claws out of each fingertip and flattens their tire. They rush off to Larkin's home and make a phone call to the police before being chased off by the mean farmer. Scammer Joe plans on retrieving the alien corpse from under Johnny's car but is attacked and killed by the aliens. When the police finally do show up, Johnny and Joan are accused of being drunk and are blamed for the death. They sneak out of the station, steal the police chief's car and set out to prove their innocence. Luckily, when they return to the crime scene they are able to trap one of the detached hands inside their car, then enlist the aid of Artie in taking its picture. The aliens turns out to be so light sensitive they dissolve on contact with light. Meanwhile, at the spaceship, the military are trying their dardnest to get the aliens to show themselves. After firing shots at the craft, they try to open it with blow torches and just blow the whole thing up, then go about trying to cover things up.

Several things make this stand apart from many similar efforts. For starters, it's witty and light-hearted, almost spoof-like (claiming right out of the gate to be "A true story of a flying saucer!") and can actually be viewed as a send up of similar alien invasion films. The filmmakers even poke fun at all the stereotyped characters and cliches present in this genre, often effectively. Secondly, the movie actrually mocks the military, who are shown to be rather incompetent and that's not something you see too often in the gung ho 1950s. And third, the alien designs are really charming. The beings are small, but have large, bulbous heads and huge eyes. The detached hands, which have their own eyeball, are a very imaginative touch, as are the needles that protrude from the fingers and inject a drug into victims which simulates intoxication. The aliens seem to have inspired the same line of notorious Topps bubblegum - released in 1962 - that were the basis of the 1996 Tim Burton sci-fi comedy movie MARS ATTACKS! (1996). The film also seems to have influenced Frank Henenlotter's cult classic BRAIN DAMAGE (1987), which involved a tiny parasitic monster that hooked victims on its blue hallucinogenic "juice" (injected via needle-like appendage) in exchange for fresh human brains.

One of the most amusing scenes is a cow vs. alien fight. The alien shoots the cow up while the cow gouges out its eyeball with its horn! The cast includes Russ Bender as a doctor, Sam Buffington leading up the military unit, Douglas Henderson as an army lieutenant, Scott Peters (star of THE CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS) and Ed Nelson. Dwarf Angelo Rossitto (who had a long line of genre credits stretching back to the silent days) plays one of the saucer men. The technical effects are credited to Paul Blaisdell, who did the spaceship scenes, and the special effects (the aliens) are credited to Howard Anderson and Alex Weldon. Ronald Stein (who worked on many early Corman films) did the score and Samuel Z. Arkoff was the executive producer.

American International Pictures released this to theaters on a popular double-bill with I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957). There was a VHS release by Columbia TriStar in the early 2000s but the film has never been officially released on DVD.

★★1/2

Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea (1972)

... aka: From the Secret Police Files of a European Capital
... aka: Trágica ceremonia en villa Alexander
... aka: Tragic Ceremony
... aka: Tragic Ceremony at Villa Alexander
... aka: Tragic Experience at Villa Alexander

Directed by:
"Robert Hampton" (Riccardo Freda)

Originally titled Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale Europa (roughly: "From the Secret Police Files of a European Capital"), this attempt at a modern Gothic pretty much flat lines. After some sailing, four young hippies - pretty Jane (Camille Keaton), her boyfriend Joe (Máximo Valverde), wannabe musician Fred (Giovanni "Petrucci" / Petti) and rich, spoiled industrialist's son Bill (Tony Isbert) - decide to camp out on Lighthouse Point beach. Bill has the hots for Jane and tries to impress her by giving her a pearl necklace. We discover that there's a strange legend behind the necklace. Supposedly, it belonged to a crazy old woman believed to be possessed by the devil and the possession was thought to have been brought on by the cursed pearls themselves. The woman who owned them was exorcized but she and her entire family died anyway. Bill had tried to give them to his mother (Irina Demick) but she gave them back to him because she found it to be in bad taste. So now they're Jane's. She accepts the gift but refuses to kiss him for it. After all, she already has a boyfriend. Now I need to stop right now and point out that this "possessed pearls" subplot has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film, so why it required about ten minutes of screen time, a lengthy flashback and constant shots of Jane strumming the pearls is anyone's guess.

All four decide to take a trip to town in Bill's dune-buggy like "Scarabo" vehicle. They run out of gas and have to push it to the nearest gas station. When they arrive, the attendant ("Pepe" / José Calvo) acts like a prick and refuses to take their traveler's checks without an ID. Just to get rid of them, he pumps a tiny amount in and sends them off. The little bit of gas doesn't take them very far and they end up stranded by a large villa. A voice over the intercom tells them to park their car in the garage and come inside. They briefly meet the home's bizarre-acting owners: Lady (Luciana Paluzzi) and Lord (Luigi Pistilli) Alexander and are welcomed to spend the night. While bathing, Jane falls into a trance, wanders downstairs and finds herself stretched out on a sacrificial table with her hostess hovering over her with a knife. The guy stumble in just in time and disrupt the black mass. Over a struggle for the knife, Bill accidentally stabs Lady Alexander and they take off. Make-up artist Carlo Rambaldi then gets to take over as the cultists start slaughtering each other set to the tune of Stelvio Cipriani's classical score.

Jane and company then make a pit stop at Bill's home, his mother gives them money for a hotel (dad's away on a hunting trip and her lover is spending the night) and they end up going to Bill's father's country home to hide out and try to decide what to do. A news broadcast compares the Alexander home massacre to the Manson murders and authorities already suspect the presence of hippies (Fred left his guitar behind). We also learn that Lady Alexander's body has disappeared and that the gas station owner died fifteen years ago. One by one, the young folks are mysteriously killed off - or forced to kill themselves - by some unseen force. The sole survivor is rushed off to a nuthouse in a catatonic state where doctor Paul Muller tries to explain the nonsense we just witnessed.

One might expect a bit better from director Freda (using the alias "Robert Hampton" here), one of the pioneering forces behind the late 50s / early 60s Italian Gothic revival. The film has some nicely composed shots here and there - including one of Jane descending a staircase holding a candelabra while the curtains blow in the wind - but otherwise it's pretty bland. In interviews, Freda has stated that he hated this movie and regrets making it, and it's easy to see why. One thing that does breath a little occasional life into the proceedings are the Rambaldi fx. There are some very gory moments in here, such as a gunshot to the head and a man slashing his own throat. The best however is a man getting his head hacked in two with a sword. It's so good the filmmakers decided to repeat it at least five times. Keaton - best known for her starring role as the vengeful rape victim in the notorious I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) - also has some nudity.

The DVD - titled Tragic Ceremony on the cover but Estratto dagli... on the actual print - is from Dark Sky. The disc also comes with a 13-minute interview with Keaton titled Camille's European Adventures, where she briefly discusses her work in WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (1971), SEX OF THE WITCH (1973), this film and MADELINE, STUDY OF A NIGHTMARE (1974), which has never been released in America but she claims is her favorite of all her films.

★1/2

And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Directed by:
Robert Fuest

I originally wrote this film off with a mediocre rating but decided to give it a second shot and I'm glad I did. I now have a new appreciation for it. Two young nurses; reserved and virginal Jane (Pamela Franklin) and the more adventurous and immature Cathy (Michele Dotrice) are spending their holiday away from the hospital taking a bike trip around Europe. While somewhere in France, they stop at a cafe and spot a handsome, sunglasses-sporting stranger (Sandor Elès), who they'll see several more times on their journey. Cathy harmlessly flirts with him and then the girls are on their way through the countryside. Jane's enjoying the peace and tranquility, while Cathy is bored out of her mind. You see, she's looking for a little excitement and seems much more interested in meeting guys than sight-seeing. She'll soon get her wish, just not in the way she'd hoped. The two girls stop by a wooded area to take a brief rest. With the nearest village possibly miles away, Jane suggests they hit the road so they can find lodging before nightfall. Cathy doesn't want to and accuses her friend of being boring and bossy. After an argument, Jane rides off and leaves Cathy behind to hang out her wet underwear on the trees, listen to the radio and catch some sun. It will be the last time Jane sees her friend.

While stopped by a local inn, a French woman tries to warn Jane about something but all she can squeeze out in English is "bad road," which gets Jane to thinking she better head back to the wooded area to find her friend. When she arrives, she finds a camera but no sign of Cathy. The Frenchman Cathy had been flirting with earlier however does show up and introduces himself as Paul. He offers to take Jane back to the village on his motor scooter so she can keep searching. Once there, they learn that no one has seen Cathy pass through. Paul takes off to search for her and Jane finally finds someone who speaks English, a schoolmistress (Clare Kelly), who informs her that three years ago a tourist had been raped and murdered there: the victim of a sex maniac who was never caught. Trapped in a country where few people know English, many of the locals are uncooperative and the one man who offers up help seems shady to put it mildly, Jane's got her work cut out for her.

Many aspects of this low-key British production (filmed on location in France) are quite commendable. The desolation of the area is palpable and the director creatively exploits the miles and miles of straight country road, lush green fields and stirring branches in the forest to sometimes eerie effect. Fuest is also able to slowly amp up the terror and suspense without once resorting to shock effects. The scene of Cathy alone in the woods slowly realizing that someone is there with here is an outstanding set piece and a texbook example of how to stage an effective and scary scene. Ditto for a scene at the very end where one of the suspected killers searches through a junkyard full of trailers looking for Jane, who's hiding in one of them. The mystery aspects of the storyline sufficiently keep you guessing, though they're rather lazily achieved by making every single person in this movie behave suspiciously, even when it makes no sense. There is one character in particular whose sketchy behavior is rather senseless (and frustrating in retrospect). If he'd been forthright the entire time - and he has no real reason not to be - poor Jane would have definitely been spared a whole lot of trouble.

Overall, it's an imperfect but still pretty impressive debut for director Fuest, who'd go on to make his biggest splash the following year with the very successful THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971), which would go on to become a cult classic and was followed by a middling 1972 follow-up. Fuest also made the badly-received sci-fi film LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH (1973), the badly-received all-star-cast Satanism movie THE DEVIL'S RAIN (1975) and the forgettable REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES (1980). Mr. Fuest passed away earlier this year.

 

The Anchor Bay DVD has commentary by Fuest and co-producer / co-scripter Brian Clemens. It was remade (from all indications, rather poorly) in 2010.

★★★

Frightmare (1974)

... aka: Cover Up
... aka: Frightmare II
... aka: Once Upon a Frightmare

Directed by:
Pete Walker

Family responsibility. Some have it. Some don't. Jackie Yates (Deborah Fairfax) definitely falls into the former category. In fact, what she has to deal with on a daily basis is going to make most people feel like they've got it easy. In 1957, Jackie's parents - father Edmund (Rupert Davies) and stepmother Dorothy (Sheila Keith) - committed crimes so heinous that both of them landed in a mental institution for fifteen years. In the meantime, Jackie's been saddled with the legal responsibility of raising her kid sister, Debbie (Kim Butcher). Now fifteen years old, Debbie is like most teenagers and a defiant of the boundaries and rules set down by her guardian. She refuses to get a job, refuses to go to school, refuses to come home at a decent hour and has been running around with a bunch of violent punks that the police are always after. Unlike most impressionable teens who happen to fall in with a bad crowd, Debbie isn't a follower. She herself is in very much in on the "action" and instigates much of it, including getting revenge on a bartender who refuses to serve her because she's underage by telling her none-too-bright pseudo-boyfriend Alec (Edward Kalinski) that the barman called her a "tart." The gang then waits outside until the place closes and beat the guy up.

As if dealing with delinquent Debbie wasn't enough already, Jackie also has to cater to her parents, who've been released from the asylum and are living a low-key life in a country farmhouse. Dad Edmund begins to think mum Dorothy might be falling back into her old ways again. Since her "old ways" involve murder and cannibalism, you can see why he's become alarmed. Up until now, he and Jackie have been trying to pass of parcels of animal meat for human meat (actually brains), but Edmund has begun to suspect that Dorothy's caught on to them... and he's right. While he's away at his chauffeur's job, Dorothy's been luring lonely or troubled women to their home with an advertisement for tarot readings. Once they get there, she murders them, cannibalizes them and keeps their corpses stored in the barn. Edmund is weak and complacent; totally and hopelessly devoted to his wife to the point of covering up for her crimes, feigning derangement just so that he'd get locked away with her and even helping her to lure victims. While he may not be the one who's actually committing the murders, he's clearly not right in the head either.

Under the circumstances, Jackie is trying to live as normal life as possible. She has a social circle and works as a make-up artist at the BBC. Through friends, she meets and then begins dating Graham (Paul Greenwood), a psychologist. Once he learns that she's been lying to him and seems to be living a double life, and he hears about her troubles caring for Debbie, Graham decides to step in to help (whether Jackie wants it or not). Using his connections in the medical field, he's privy to confidential information about Jackie's parents and what they did to get locked away for so long, so it all finally starts making sense. Meanwhile, Debbie is being investigated for the death of the barman she and the gang beat up (the body is stored in a locked building in the hood of a car). Has young Debbie somehow inherited criminal / psychotic tendencies from her deranged mother?

Frightmare has a lot going for it, but there's mild disappointment in knowing that with just a few tweaks in David McGillivray's script this could have been a great film instead of merely a good film. It begins strongly by centering its horror around a put-upon young woman bearing the emotional and financial burden of a troubled, disturbed family but then seems to put the daughter character on the back burner to concentrate its energies on more formulaic stuff, such as Dorothy's killing spree and Graham's investigation into the Yates family (which reveals little new information). The film just seems to run out of ideas after about an hour and then slowly lurches toward its grim conclusion.

That said, this an otherwise well-made movie with fine technical credits and mostly effective performancs from the cast. Best of all, it boasts a very memorable character in Dorothy, a truly cunning and sneaky psycho. She uses every weapon in her "frail old lady" arsenal to manipulate those around her and deflect attention away from her depraved activities. Dorothy's an expert at playing the victim card: Everyone always gangs up on her and takes everything away from her, she suffers from migraines (which conveniently only become a problem when suspicion is cast upon her), she can't even see her beloved youngest child and, of course, she's oh so lonely out there in the country by herself. The role is superbly played by Keith, whose performance alone bumps this up a point in its rating.

Upon initial release, the reaction to Frightmare was spotty. A few recognized it as being a well-done horror film while the majority wrote it off as trash in very bad taste. In an extremely rare instance of honesty in advertising, the poster for this film reflected the mixed response and included barbs such as "horrendous," "despicable" and "a moral obscenity," flipping these negative critiques into something oddly inticing by inviting audiences to "Judge for yourself." It was a surprisingly forthright yet effective campaign.

In the early 80s, American VHS distributor Prism decided to re-title this film Frightmare II so it wouldn't be confused with one of their previous releases (1981's FRIGHTMARE, which was filmed - and played many theaters - as "Horror Star"). That naturally only made things even more confusing.

★★★