Mad Room, The (1969)

Directed by:
Bernard Girard

Falling somewhat in the then-popular Grand Dame Guignol mold spearheaded by the classic WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962), this long-forgotten Columbia Pictures release has not been well-serviced on home video. For some strange reason, there was no official VHS or DVD release until 2010... and not for lack of star power either. This one boasts not one, not two, but three actresses of some distinction; all of whom were very well-known when this was released. Stella Stevens is the star, multiple Oscar-winner Shelley Winters has a nice-sized supporting role and 50s horror / sci-fi queen Beverly Garland puts in a small but highly memorable guest appearance. Each of these ladies has a fan following, which makes the film's unavailability throughout the years more than just a little bit perplexing. Is it because it's terrible? A misfire? Not exactly. It's really not too bad, but I can't sit here and say it's anything special either. It's not. And it's certainly not as solid or as enjoyable as some of the films it may share company with. However, the film still has its merits; great moments are littered throughout, and most of them belong to the three aforementioned actresses.

As a teenager, Ellen Hardy walked in on her two younger siblings, 6-year-old George and 4-year-old Mandy, hunkered over the slashed bodies of their abusive parents. Ellen was sent to live in a provincial orphanage, while George and Mandy were both locked away in a mental hospital. Over the years, neither of the accused children has revealed who exactly was responsible for the butcher knife slayings or finger-painting daisies all over the walls in their blood. Both accuse each other of the crime. Some believe it was both. A now-grown Ellen (Stevens) has not spoken about this to anyone and moved on with her life. She's engaged to the successful Sam (Skip Ward) and is living with her wealthy, future-stepmother-in-law Gladys (Winters) in the family's sprawling country estate until the two are married. Ellen's new life is interrupted when she receives a letter asking her to return to Ontario to see her siblings. George (Michael Burns), now 18, and Mandy (Barbara Sammeth), now 16, are finally ready to be released back into the real world... and guess who gets awarded custody?

Ellen pleads with her siblings not to reveal their pasts to anyone, concocts a fake story about their uncle dying and brings them back to her mother-in-laws to stay. Both children confide to Ellen that they're in dire need of a "Mad Room;" a secret place where they can think and vent. Ellen allows them to use the attic (which Gladys has deemed off limits). Since no one seems to be able to keep their story straight, Gladys starts to grow suspicious and decides to investigate matters. This leads to someone going off the deep end, a murder, a cover-up of the crime and a pesky dog who keeps hiding a severed hand all over the estate just to annoy the guilty party. Some of the subplots (including one of George finding himself drawn to the maid and vice versa) serve no purpose whatsoever, there's a predictable resolution of the mystery and the conclusion is unfortunately rushed and weak.

Much of the entertainment value here is watching actors talented enough to elevate mediocre material. Stevens does a fine job in the lead and gets some good moments (especially toward the end), but the two scene-stealers here are veteran actresses Winters and Garland. Winters' character, basically an unsympathetic, self-important, passive-aggresive bitch, is nothing really new to her, but she does such a fantastic job making you thoroughly detest her character she's a real joy to watch. She rudely barks orders at her staff, has no qualms sleeping with a married man, treats her meek, sweet maid (Carol Cole) little better than a slave and keeps a bunch of dogs chained up at the edge of her property and barely feeds them just to ensure they're adequately vicious.

Garland has just two scenes as a drunk but she milks these for everything they're worth. Her Mrs. Racine is the spurned wife of a gigolo / masseur who's been sleeping with seemingly every disatisfied housewife or widow in the area (including Winters' character). During the film's very best scene, a wasted Garland crashes an uppity fundraising party full of rich bitches, offering up her husband's services ("Don't raise your hand, just raise your legs!") and screams "I know I'm married to a male whore!" before running into the bathroom and slitting her wrists with a broken bottle!

Five writers are listed. It's loosely based on Reginald Denham and Edward Percy's stage play "Ladies in Retirement," which receives a nod in the opening credits, along with Garrett Fort and Denham for their screenplay for the 1941 film version of Ladies, as well as the director and A.Z. Martin for THIS film's screenplay. Girard also made A NAME FOR EVIL (1970) and THE MIND SNATCHERS (1972). Severn Darden (SATURDAY THE 14TH) as a construction boss, Jennifer Bishop (IMPULSE) as a fundraiser chairwoman and Lloyd Haynes as a doctor also have small roles.

★★1/2

No, I haven't abandoned this place.

I got swamped. Good time for it actually as I burnt myself out watching / reviewing so many movies over the summer and was in need of a little break, anyway. Aside from my regular job, I've been busy prepping a film project, working on a (non-horror) documentary, researching essays for two different books and now trying to find time to complete the October Horror Movie Challenge. Watching movies is one thing. Watching, reviewing and screen capping is another. Just passing along a little note that I'll be back once things start settling down. Might be sooner than later. :)

~ Justin

¿Quién puede matar a un niño? (1976)

... aka: Death Is Child's Play
... aka: Hex Massacre, The
... aka: Island of Death
... aka: Island of the Damned
... aka: Killer's Playground, The
... aka: Trapped
... aka: Who Can Kill a Child?
... aka: Would You Kill a Child?

Directed by:
Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

A nearly ten-minute-long opening credits sequence takes a disturbing and grim look at war. We see footage taken during World War II, the Indio-Pakistani War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Biafra War in Nigeria. The number of casualties in each instance is shown for us; both the total number of deaths directly caused by the war and the number of victims that were children. In each instance, children comprise at least 50 percent of the total victims, sometimes as high as 75 percent. Needless to say, war is strictly an adult venture. Children do not start wars, nor do they ask for it or want it, yet they are perhaps the most vulnerable of all to war and its after-effects. A few thousand children may have survived being singled out for medical experiments in Auschwitz, for instance, but many more died after the war from things like acute anemia and tuberculosis. Children are more susceptible and vulnerable to the fallout from war as well; the famine, the spreading of disease, the lack of money and resources to medically care for the injured or sick... Hard-to-shake images of children suffering, starving, injured, missing limbs, burned by napalm, dying, or dead and covered in flies or being bulldozed into an open grave splash across the screen during this documentary intro accompanied by the haunting sound of children singing and humming. With this, Who Can Kill a Child? establishes its case for children having a grudge against us adults.

In the small Spanish village of Benavis, a female corpse - the victim of multiple stabbings - washes up on a crowded beach one fine sunny day. Soon after, a couple of British tourists - biologist Tom (Lewis Fiander) and his pregnant photographer wife Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) arrive there on vacation. Some kind of street festival is taking place but they aren't really there for that. They find a room, find a place to rent a boat and plan on heading out to the secluded Island of Almanzora - a place Tom had visited twelve years earlier - the following day. Since it's a four hour boat ride and a sparsely populated place of just a few hundred, very few tourists actually venture out there any more. The tide however does manage to carry lots of debris over from there... like a second corpse later that day. Tom and Evelyn go to see a fireworks show and discuss Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA. After learning it features a character who kills his own children so they won't suffer from the mistakes he's made, the wife labels the director "A fascist just like Mussolini."

The following day, Tom and Evelyn get on their boat and head out. Upon arrival, they encounter a few children hanging out by the pier. One little boy fishing refuses to let Tom see what he's using for bait. They venture inland and discover that a cafe, a bar, a store, a church and seemingly all of the homes are completely uninhabited. Aside from the few children they've already seen and a few others who pop from time to time. The kids usually refuse to talk to them and often just run away whenever they spot them. The only real interaction they have with the children is when a little girl wants to feel Evelyn's pregnant belly and listen to the baby's heartbeat. Afterward she does what most of the other kids do, laughs and then takes off. The couple stop by a boarding house and also find no one running the place. And then they see an old man getting beat to death with his cane by a little girl. Tom takes the body to a barn and then sees the children stringing it up, taking a long stick with a scythe fastened to the end and playing a bloody game of piñata.

One adult survivor who witnessed his wife getting murdered is eventually found hiding out in an attic and recounts what had happened there. Just two nights before Tom and Evelyn arrived, all of the island's children had woken up at the same exact time, began entering houses and slaughtering all of the adults one by one; laughing all the while and treating the whole thing like one big party. The man is eventually killed himself and so is a female Dutch tourist (some little boys then strip off her clothes in a church). There's no phone going out to the mainland anywhere on the island and every time Tom and Evelyn attempt to go to the pier to get a boat, an army of children line the streets. Tom and Evelyn manage to get to a jeep and head over to the other side of the island looking for help, but they're soon swarmed by the killer kids. Will the couple have to resort to violence against the children in order to save their own asses?

No fantasy-based explanation is given as to why all of the kids on the island have turned into killers. There is no toxic chemical spill, aliens have not taken over their bodies and they're not possessed by evil spirits. They've simply woken up one day with the desire to eliminate all adults and that's that. The intro and several other moments give us a hint as to why: They've basically grown tired of being abused, killed and mistreated by adults. Perhaps the children are evolving instinctually to what's gone on in the past and are sick of always being victims. The film works quite well metaphorically on those terms alone. It's well-made, fairly well-acted, nicely photographed (primarily in broad daylight), offers up numerous surprises and, despite a runtime of nearly 2 hours, manages to maintain interest throughout.

Released theatrically in the U.S. under no less than three different titles; simultaneously as Island of the Damned and Trapped by American International Pictures and later re-issued The Hex Massacre, this went into hibernation for a number of years (there was no legitimate American VHS release [at least to my knowledge] for a very long time). The film's reputation as a neglected mini-classic picked up some steam upon the 2007 release of the Dark Sky DVD, which includes a couple of documentary featurettes; one an interview with the director (who also adapted Juan José Plans' novel "El juego de los niños" / "The Children's Game") and another with cinematographer José Luis Alcaine (who'd later become the trusted cinematographer of Pedro Almodovar).

★★★1/2

Bakterion (1982)

... aka: Panic
... aka: Pánico
... aka: Panik
... aka: Zombi 4

Directed by:
"Anthony Richmond" (Tonino Ricci)

Something goes wrong at the Chemi-Cal Corporation, which infects rats (turning them violent) as well as an accidental human guinea pig for a new vaccine, who turns green, starts smoking and begins the slow process of mutating into a lumpy-faced radioactive monster. The man manages to escape the building but Chemi-Cal president Mr. Milton (Franco Ressel) doesn't want anyone to say anything about this to the citizens of the small town of Newton, England. He claims to be afraid of a citywide panic if journalists get word out about what's going on, but he's mostly concerned about his highly-profitable business. Scientists Jane Blake (Janet Agren) and Dr. Vince (Miguel Herrera) claim to know nothing about the new vaccine that started the problem. It was in fact the brainchild of Professor Adams (Roberto Ricci), who's unfortunately on vacation trout fishing as all this goes down. Well, supposedly. Since Chemi-Cal is known primarily for making just aspirin and antibiotics, suspicions fall quickly fall upon Adams, who may have been experimenting with things he shouldn't have been.

The mutant man soon gets to work killing people. He surprises a young couple having sex in a car and slaughters both. Upon finding the bodies, Sergeant O'Brien (José Lifante) is called in to investigate the crime. Newton being a small town and all, he only has two men under him, so government agent Captain Kirk (David Warbeck) is brought in to do a parallel investigation on Chemi-Cal. Kirk soon draws the correct conclusion that there's a connection between the murders, the accident in the laboratory and the disappearance of the the professor. He decides to enlist Jane's aid in hunting down Adams. They go to his vacation cottage and find no sign of him. They do however find his "bodyguard" dead, bloody and strung up over the fireplace. An autopsy on the body uncovers something strange about his cellular structure. The mutant then sneaks into a home and kills a woman in the shower, leaving behind some "green stuff" at the crime scene. Each of the victims have the same traits: they look like they've been chewed up by some kind of animal, most of their blood has been drained from their body and they have strange sores that are the result of contact with a radioactive substance.

The monster - which has been hanging around in an underground sewer system and hates bright light and loud noises - goes to a movie theatre and busts through the screen mid-movie causing a mild pAnIcO. Its gravitation toward naked or half-naked or just-got-naked big-breasted women continues as it zeros in on a half-dressed trollop who'd just promised her date she'd put out if he went and got her an ice cream cone! Excuse me for a second while I go stock my freezer with drumsticks. After he strangles her, throws her over his shoulder and takes her backstage for a midday snack he decides for a change of scenery and goes to a church to impale a priest. As it turns out, Professor Adams was actually working on a virus to use in germ warfare and managed to infect himself in the process. The government decides to send in the military in to quarantine the entire town. A roadblock with armed guards is put in place and the phones, TVs and any contact with the outside world for the citizens of Newton are all cut off. Because no one is giving them any information, some of the citizens decide to do a little revolting but they're no match for the military.

Word gets out that the government has also decided to enact "Plan Q," which means the entire town is going to get blown off the map unless either Adams is proven to be non-contagious and is killed or if Jane and Vince are able to come up with an antidote. Adams manages to find his way to Mr. Milton's home and kills him in front of his children. Kirk heads on over to the crime scene and decides to follow the green slime / blood trail into the sewers. 

Sgt. O'Brien:
What are you doing?

Kirk:
I want to follow it.

Sgt. O'Brien:
I forbid you to. It's crazy. You don't know how to kill him, anyway!

Kirk:
I know I don't, but I have no choice!

Uh huh. So down he goes. A close call or two later, Jane finishes the antidote and volunteers to give it to Adams, but everyone else just wants to blast him to pieces. With time ticking away and just an hour or so remaining until the military bombs the hell out of the town, can our heroes track the killer down in time?

Despite being murky, dreary, predictable and completely unoriginal (much of this seems inspired by George Romero's THE CRAZIES), this has many other problems. If there was a toxic, radioactive, possibly contagious monster running amuck, would you casually run your fingers through blood or touch the victims? Eventually it's established that the virus the mutant is carrying is not actually contagious, yet no one decides to inform the government of this so they can cancel "Plan Q?" Speaking of the government, how come none of the military men are ever out looking for Adams and the locals have to do all the work? The soundtrack seems to hint toward wanting us to feel sympathy for the monster, but since Adams was never established as an actual character, that simply ain't gonna happen. And so on and so on. The monsters effects from Rino Carboni are pretty mediocre though I've seen worse.

The DVD I viewed was from Mill Creek Entertainment and it's pretty much an embarrassment sourced from a censored VHS tape. There are picture rolls (with "stereo" actually popping up on the screen during one of them!), profanity is bleeped out and all of the nudity has been removed. Since several of the attacks are on nude women, this means that some of the blood / gore is also missing. Then again, when one spends peanuts on a multi-movie packs they can't expect too much.

★1/2