Deranged (1974)

... aka: Deranged: The Confessions of a Necrophile

Directed by:
Jeff Gillen
Alan Ormsby

I seriously doubt Ed Gein, who lived a very sad and lonely existence, thought much about his contributions to society while he was out in the country robbing graves, defiling corpses and murdering people. However, when it comes to real-life killers, Gein and his ghastly crimes are right up there with Jack the Ripper in how they've helped influence and re-shape the genre we all know and love. Three of the best horror films ever made - PSYCHO (1960), THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) - were clearly influenced by the crimes Gein committed, and there were countless more where those came from that didn't quite reach the heights of fame and acclaim as that sacred circle of three. Deranged is one of those "other" films. It sticks closer to the actual story than most other films influenced by Gein (the opening disclaimer states "The motion picture you are about to see is absolutely true! Only the names and locations have been changed.") and would hold that distinction until 2000's [somewhat boring] ED GEIN (aka In the Light of the Moon) was released.

Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom) has lived a very sheltered life out on in the country with his ultra-religious, by-the-bible mama, Amanda (Cosette Lee). Ez'a father died when he was just a young boy and Ez took his place and all of his responsibilities that went along with that; tending to the farm and taking care of his crippled, ailing mother... even going so far as sleeping right outside his ma's bedroom for over a decade just in case she needed him for something. All that time, Ez hasn't had a chance to develop any lasting friendships, let alone a sexual relationship, and a deepening psychosis has been building steadily for years. On her death bed, Amanda regrets not lasting long enough to see the Great Flood wipe away all of the sinners and curses "filthy, black-souled sluts." She doesn't want her boy messing around with women - all whores and users in her eyes - when she passes, and makes sure he knows it. After Amanda finally dies and Ezra is left to his own, he snaps and things start getting nasty.

A year passes and Ezra has refused to accept his mother's death. To him, she's "just sleeping." He hears her voice calling to him and goes to the graveyard, digs up her corpse and brings it back home. Ez studies up on embalming and taxidermy and starts following the obituary column in the newspaper. After all, ma needs frequent repair work done on her face. That escalates to Ezra bringing home body parts and entire corpses to keep him and ma company. Ez goes to visit Maureen Selby (Marian Waldman, the drunk house mother from BLACK CHRISTMAS), the only woman his mother claims to have trusted (because she's fat). She turns out to be not quite right in the head herself and holds a séance where she speaks in her dead husband's voice and encourages Ezra to have sex with her. After murdering her, Ezra begins to yearn for the companionship of a living woman, which leads to fatal encounters with both a promiscuous barmaid (Micki Moore) and the teenage girlfriend (Pat Orr) of his neighbor's (Robert Warner) son.

Instead of presenting this grim material matter-of-factly, director Jeff Gillen and writer / co-director Alan Ormsby include lots of black humor and fashion the whole thing as a pseudo-documentary, with an on-screen narrator (Les Carlson) filtering in and out as the action unfolds. Though this format won't work for everybody, I found it both clever and effective. Released the same year as Texas Chainsaw; both films feature a macabre set design inside the killer's home. This one has arms nailed to walls, a skull bowl, a drum made from belly skin, a club made from bone and other such touches to the horror-home's decor. It's well-made on a low-budget and manages to be creepy, disturbing and darkly humorous (frequently all at once). The rural / small town atmosphere feels authentic and believable and there's an effective, organ-heavy score from Carl Zittrer. But what really makes the movie is the excellent central performance from Blossom. A skinny, frail-looking man, Blossom refuses to showboat or go over-the-top and instead relies heavily on facial expressions in his quiet portrayal of a very disturbed mind. His ability to convey madness through body tics and an intensity in the eyes is pretty amazing to watch. Because of the actor, you can't help but feel some pity for the meek, fragile, awkward and uneducated man, but he's also very scary in the role.

Filmed in February and March of 1973 in Oshawa and Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the budget was just 200,000 dollars, much of it put up by concert promoter Tom Karr. Bob Clark was also a producer on the project, though he's not credited. Ormsby, Jerome Bergson and, a name that should need no introduction, Tom Savini, did the makeups. The most gruesome effect (pictured below) ended up being omitted from the original theatrical release print and remained absent from most DVD and VHS versions of the film. It featured Ezra digging up the grave of his recently-departed Sunday school teacher, scooping out her eyeball with a spoon, sawing off the top of her head and then removing the brains.

In 2002, MGM released the R-rated cut (missing the entire scene above) as as part of their "Midnite Movies" collection, where it was paired with MOTEL HELL (1980). The 30th Anniversay Collector's Edition DVD (which was released in Germany) puts the MGM one to shame. They not only present the film unrated and uncut, but the set also includes multiple documentaries (one on the film and one on Gein), plus a 24-page booklet and other extras.

★★★1/2

Troll (1986)

... aka: Torok the Troll
... aka: Troll: Creature of Evil

Directed by:
John Carl Buechler

Troll was one of the earliest films from executive producer Charles Band to show off his strange and obsessive love for evil and destructive little critters; a love that would be responsible for spawning dozens of similar films featuring killer puppets, killer toys, killer gnomes, killer bongs and, of course, killer gingerdead - er, gingerbread - cookies. You could call Troll the seed pod that helped to grow the Great Oak of Empire / Wizard / Shadow / Full Moon. And speaking of seed pods, how'd you like to see Sonny "I Got You Babe" Bono transform into one and then explode into a lush forest? Oh, what irony there! Noah Hathaway (fresh from The Neverending Story) stars as a young teen named Harry Potter Jr. (is J.K. Rowling a fan of this movie?!) who moves into a new San Francisco apartment building with his family. Dad, Harry Sr. (Michael Moriarty), is a book critic who has a huge collection of 3000 records he likes to seizure-dance to. Anna (Shelley Hack, better here than in The Stepfather, thankfully) is your typical cleanin' cookin' stay-at-home wife / mom. And let us not forget Wendy (Jenny Beck), who may look like a cute little blonde-haired, blue-eyed sprite... but looks can be deceiving.

While they're still unloading the moving van, Wendy has the misfortune of crossing paths with a mischievous troll in the downstairs laundry room. The troll immediately takes over her body and sets about causing as many problems as possible for her family and the other tenants in the building. Wendy begins eating like a pig, becomes disobedient and obnoxious, runs around screaming, growls, throws boxes around and bites people. Since she's now a troll, Wendy starts using her magical ring to change her habitat into the perfect stomping grounds for herself and other such creatures. She starts by taking out middle-aged sleazebag Peter Dickinson (Bono). With one touch of the ring, Peter turns into a pod, which explodes into vines and foliage, turning Peter's upstairs bachelor pad into a haven for little rubbery creatures. Wendy does the same thing to Barry Taybor (Gary Sandy), a marine / fitness buff / Ronald Reagan lover. The troll just bounces around from apartment to apartment taking over each space.

Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart), the eccentric old lady who lives on the top floor, is a former princess who's now a witch / guardian living there to keep the trolls and fairies in check. Friendless and lonely, Harry Jr. befriends her and learns all about what's going on. Eunice has magical staffs and a talking mushroom named Galwin, and explains the origin of the troll causing all of the problems. The troll - named Torok - was banished by humans a long, long time ago and has used Walpurgis Night (the Witch's Sabbath) as a chance to take over the planet with his evil little friends. They're trying to create "the fourth dimension." Meanwhile, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (in her film debut) is transformed into a wood nymph and Wendy / Torok cozies up to Malcolm Mallory (Phil Fondacaro), a dying dwarf English professor, because she / it thinks he's an elf. Fondcaro - a regular in the director's films - also plays Torok.

A decent budget, imaginative (though often hokey) special effects and a few talented actors cannot save this melding of fantasy, horror and comedy elements; which misfires on most levels. It appears the filmmakers were wanting to cash in on the big fantasy film craze of the mid-80s - which resulted in such hits as The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and Legend (all 1985 releases) - but their attempts at light whimsy are completely at odds with a roster of obnoxious characters. I think they're supposed to be quirky and funny, but they're really just over-the-top and irritating. The story takes far too long to delve into the mythology of the monsters and, after already being beaten into submission by a bunch of pea-brained gags and screaming buffoons, I found myself not really caring. Attempts at tugging at our heartstrings will result in more than a few pairs of eyeballs rolling, as well. There are a lot of variable special effects in this one. The troll itself - which was designed by director Buechler (making his debut here) - is excellent. Most of the rest of the creatures look identical to the cheesy / rubbery demons from the Ghoulies movies. At the end, there's a large bat creature (which doesn't even fly). John Vulich, Everett Burrell and Howard Berger also worked on the makeups.

Moriarty gets to goof off a bit but he's pretty much wasted here. Lockhart steals what there is to steal (not much, sadly). Her daughter Anne Lockhart gets to play a younger version of the same character. Band, along with his wife Debra Dion (the associate producer), father Albert Band (the producer) and mother Jacquelyn Band, all have cameos on TV sets. Parts of Richard Band's score were reused for From Beyond (1986) and posters for the Band films Parasite (1982) and Ragewar (1984) can be seen on the son's bedroom walls.

Irony of all ironies, the popularity of this film (which was shot in Italy and was a big money-maker in theaters and on video) has been completely eclipsed in recent years by the hilariously awful unrelated Italian "sequel" Troll 2 (1990). CRAWLERS (1990), another Italian film, took the title of Troll III at one point. Neither Troll 2 nor Troll III actually featured trolls.

★1/2

Cosmic Man, The (1959)

... aka: O Monstro da Era Atômica (Monster of the Atomic Era)

Directed by:
Herbert S. Greene

A UFGB (Unidentified Flying Golf Ball) traveling 50 miles a second, which is so fast it can neither be seen nor heard in the skies and so fast that it should disintigrate but doesn't, yet can somehow still be picked up on the military's radar screen, decides to pay a visit to our fine planet. It's neither a bird nor a plane, but whatever it is has decided to go into the mountains. Forest rangers call in to report some "ball-shaped thing" that looks like a satellite. Colonel Matthews (Paul Langton) of the U.S. Air Force decides to head out that way to investigate and calls up Dr. Carl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett), an astrophysicist at the Pacific Institute of Technology, to meet him there. Upon arrival, Matthews and Sorenson discover a large white spherical object levitating a few feet off the ground. It's radioactive. It may look like egg but it's not so easy to crack and cannot even be accessed by a powerful blowtorch reaching temperatures of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And even though it's not that big in size, it's not going anywhere. Not even a the strength of a bulldozer can move it.

Both Matthews and Sorenson come to the conclusion that there couldn't possibly be anything the side the orb, but both are mistaken. Inside is an alien visitor (John Carradine) here to simply study us and then be on his way. And so begins another tale of science and the military butting heads. The military demands they open up the spaceship and try to trap the alien for further study so that we humans can have "space supremacy." They also view the docile alien as being a menace simply because his snooping around has managed to contaminate millions of dollars in valuable resources. The scientists on the other hand would like to study and learn from the alien, just as long as the alien isn't hurt. They opt for a more peaceful approach that may benefit us in the future. After all, you really don't want to piss off beings who are far more advanced in their technologies and thinking, right? Tell that to the military.

Much of this well-intentioned low-budget film is about how we humans are scared of things we do not understand and how we're more apt to destroy those things than challenge our own beliefs. As the Cosmic Man tells the scientist, he respects him because he searches for truth in a society that fears the truth. This film is also about the dangers of scientific advancement; more specifically the misuse of scientific advancement. The Dr. Sorenson character is apprehensive about his involvement with the military because his past research resulted in the development of the atomic bomb, which was in turn used to destroy many lives in Hiroshima. And his apprehensions are well founded since the military's gut instinct when discovering the spaceship is to learn more about its "anti-gravity" and how that can advance their weaponry. Perhaps most importantly, the movie is a plea for rational, reasonable, non-reactionary thought and how new discoveries and knowledge should be applied only to positive endeavors instead of things like war, just as the alien applies his own abilities to cure a terminally-ill young boy (Scotty Morrow) when he could just as easily destroy this planet.

Elements from this were clearly swiped from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), but its sincere and the moral and ethical dillemas faced by our protagonists still ring true. It's better thought-out than what it's been given credit for (thanks to Arthur C. Pierce's script). One of the great things about many of these older sci-fi films is that they have a message and regardless of how heavy-handed and obvious it's delivered, it's usually something worth listening to. I didn't even find The Cosmic Man to be all that hokey to be quite honest. Even the obligatory love interest, a widowed lodge owner / single mother (played by Angela Greene) serves a purpose. She's representative of the rest of us, simultaneously wooed by a member of the military / government and a member of the science community. When the two are at odds with one another, we use our own judgment and / or moral compass to pick a side just as Greene's character does in this film.

The budget didn't allow for any fancy special effects. The Cosmic Man himself is seen either as a silhouette or Carradine wearing a coat, hat and weird sunglasses. And the script is a little heavy on the science talk (some of which is absurd given what we know now), but it's still interesting to hear characters discussing the possibility of converting solar energy into electricity. The cast also includes Harry Fleer (THE UNEARTHLY) and Lyn Osborn (INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN).

Multiple DVD and VHS issuings means this is an easy title to find. It's worth watching.

★★1/2