Death Wish Club, The (1984)

... aka: Carnival of Fools
... aka: Case of Gretta Connors, The
... aka: Dark Side to Love, The
... aka: Erskine Caldwell's Gretta
... aka: Gretta

Directed by:
John Carr

One cannot really discuss Death Wish Club in much detail without talking about three other films it will forever be associated with: Cataclysm (1980), Scream Your Head Off (1982 / 1992) and Night Train to Terror (1985). The uneven and sometimes amateurish but very interesting Satanism tale Cataclysm was first announced in 1977 and began filming later that same year according to an article in The San Diego Union. There are numerous stories floating around about what happened from there, but production was closed down for awhile and then picked back up again in the spring of 1979. By that point, they were filming in Utah. After another round of shoots occurred about a year later, it was finally complete. No less than three directors; former documentary filmmaker Tom McGowan, Greek-born Grigorios Thalassinos aka Gregg C. Tallas (who started out as an editor) and former theater actor turned hardcore porn director Phillip Marshak (of Dracula Sucks fame), are credited with the finished product and I'm not sure who filmed what, where and when. I can find no evidence that Cataclysm ever played theatrically, but the first example of a VHS release I could find here in the U.S. was a 1986 tape from Academy, who've re-titled it Satan's Supper. Because it featured known actors like Cameron Mitchell, Marc Lawrence and “Charles” (Richard) Moll in the cast, the film would go on to become a real workhorse on the early home video market; garnering releases from countless labels which all utilized different artwork and one of three different titles (the other common one was The Nightmare Never Ends).

Director John Carr's Scream Your Head Off, a sleazy tale of suicide, hypnosis, bodily dismemberment and a psychiatric clinic fronting for a white slavery ring, was primarily filmed in 1982 but the director never quite finished it. Unbeknownst to him, well over a decade later someone else cobbled what he had shot together and the film was finally released to video under its original title in the mid 90s. Carr himself later shot additional scenes to add to it, removed most of the gore and all of the nudity from the original shoot and prepared yet another PG-13 release called MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS, which popped up on DVD in 2006. While the still-unfinished / unreleased SYHO was still languishing in limbo, Carr made another film based very loosely on the 1955 Erskine Caldwell novel Gretta, which was first announced in 1980 (with a different director and producer attached), was filmed in 1982, bears a 1983 copyright date and was the subject of trade screenings in 1984 under the title The Dark Side to Love. A year later it made its way to home video on the Regal label under the new title Death Wish Club. Two years later AIR Video would re-release the movie under yet another title, Carnival of Fools; an apt name considering many people were potentially being tricked into sitting through a film they'd already seen.

So what do all of these films have in common? For starters, each was written by Philip Yordan, an Oscar-winning former producer, writer and major Hollywood player whose entire career is shrouded in controversy and mystery. Yordan is best known for fronting for numerous blacklisted writers during the 50s and 60s and taking screen credit for their screenplays, but there's a lot more to his fascinating story than meets the eye. (For a very worthwhile read about his career, let me now direct you to a well-written article from Alan K. Rode that can be read RIGHT HERE). Aside from Yordan, what really ties these movie together forever is that each of these feature-length films were cut down to about 20 minutes, re-edited, re-titled and had new gore and stop motion special effects added so they could be included in the haphazard horror anthology Night Train to Terror (1985). Ironically, far more people have seen Night Train than any of the full features it ineptly truncated into rubbish. That's unfortunate in the case of Death Wish Club, which is actually a fascinating little movie in its full, 91-minute form.

Filthy rich eccentric George Youngmeyer (J. Martin Sellers) doesn't care much about traditional love or sex but still fancies himself “the last of the great lovers” and considers “one-sided love” to be “the only true emotion.” In other words, he's something of a cynical masochist who wants to meet someone he can lavish with money, gifts and his love; a person who doesn't necessarily have to give a shit about him. Tellingly, in real life, Yordan had once had an affair with, and been jilted by, actress Simone Simon of Cat People (1942) fame. A series of other failed relationships and marriages later, he was quoted (as per the article linked above) as saying “I married them [his first three wives] and supported them in a life style none of them experienced before they met me. That's all I had to offer.” 

George meets his perfect match selling popcorn at a carnival. She – Gretta Connors (Meridith Haze) – is young, pretty and has no issue quitting her menial job and moving in with him after he shoves hundred dollar bills down the front of her shirt. Gretta soon proves to be rude, weird, foul-mouthed, obnoxious, slutty, mentally-imbalanced and uncultured (“I hate Chopin... I'm glad Chopin's dead!”). She wants George to make her a star, so he puts her in porn movies instead. It's in one of these movies that twenty-something college med student / army vet Glenn Marshall (Rick Barnes) sees her and becomes instantly infatuated. He manages to track her down to a smoky nightclub called Club Manhattan where she performs piano in a jazz ensemble wearing just a jacket and a leotard (!) George immediately warns him to stay away because she “lives in the fourth dimension.” Glenn's little fantasy of meeting a beguiling young beauty is quickly extinguished upon meeting Gretta, who proves to be a little too sexually aggressive and outlandish for his tastes.

Philip Yordan putting in a cameo as a "Dirty Old Moviegoer."

Glenn returns to school and work, but a few weeks later George sends his flamboyant male chauffeur Mary Contrary ("Paul" / Norm Keefer) to fetch him because Gretta won't leave a steaming-hot bathtub and stop pretending she's a fish (!!) unless he does. Glenn ends up sleeping with her (in front of George), the two then start dating and she moves into his apartment, proving to be quite the handful in the process. She eats corn flakes and parades around in front of Glenn's uptight mom while topless and refuses to put on clothes when he asks her to get dressed or have friends over. She sells his TV, moves in a huge piano and wants sex all the time. As far as Gretta is concerned, “as long as you can get it up,” everything's OK. When she's not having sex, she's off in her own little world. I guess that's “the fourth dimension.”

Eventually, Glenn is dragged to a party by George and Gretta where he meets a handful of other weirdos who indulge in deadly games. The small secret society, which includes Contessa Pacelli ("Anne Fairchild" / Toni Covington), Federico Libuse ("William Charles" aka associate producer William C. Moore) and Prince Flubutu (Mark Ridley), have each had a near death experience in their past and now get together occasionally to get their jollies putting themselves in potentially fatal Russian Roulette-like scenarios so they can relive “the exquisite ecstasy of death.” After barely surviving getting a fatal sting from a “Tanzanian winged beetle,” Glenn decides he's had enough. He attempts to move on with his life yet again but is rejected by his former girlfriend (Theresa Jenson) when he tries to rekindle things and she (rightfully) suspects he's still in love with Gretta. Next thing he knows, George is showing up at his apartment informing him that Gretta has killed herself.

Right after Gretta's funeral, Glenn goes to Club Manhattan and discovers a now short-haired and very much alive Gretta is still performing there, only decked out in male drag and going by the name of Charlie White. Her suicide attempt, preexisting schizo tendencies and trauma have all caused her to revert to this all-new male personality. Problem is, “he” is straight and Glenn wants the old Gretta back. A shrink buddy recommends our hero go ahead and rape her to shock her back into reality (!) but things don't go quite as smoothly as planned. Glenn finds himself back at the death club several times against his wishes; once strapped to an electric chair and another time held at gunpoint and forced to get inside a sleeping bag while a 1250 pound construction ball swings overhead! There's also a strange comic subplot involving an elderly next door neighbor couple who get their kicks keeping tabs on Glen's sex life and even stranger scenes where Glenn crashes a drag queen wedding ceremony (!) and then uses karate on kidnappers.

Genuinely bizarre, perplexing, tongue-in-cheek, erratic, uneven, frequently hilarious, sometimes eerie, noir-ish and intense and thoroughly one of a kind and entertaining, this refuses to tie itself down to the conventions of just one genre and truly deserves some kind of cult following it has yet to receive. It's also one of those cases where rough production values and some amateurish acting actually improve the end product by enhancing its charm and quirkiness. Not to imply that all the acting here is bad. Quite the contrary actually. Sellers is excellent in his role as a decadent older gentleman / Yordan stand-in and also narrates the proceedings and Barnes does a fine job as the straight-laced, understandably dumbfounded central figure who takes a plunge into a pit of kooky, dangerous oddballs hoping to pull the woman he's grown to love out with him. Lead actress Haze gives an extremely memorable, animated and colorful performance which is, at times, wildly amateurish, but never uninteresting. Only a couple of the supporting players, most notably Keefer, are able to really bring their small roles to life, but every little bit helps. At points, audio problems are an issue and certain lines from certain actors clearly had to be dubbed in later by others.

The biggest surprise of all is that this is a more serious-minded, personal and intelligently-written film than one might expect. Perhaps the true key to unlocking its intentions is keeping in mind its original title, The Dark Side to Love. Chip away all the eccentricities and underneath you have an atypical love story and an insightful documentation about the rocky, sometimes scary road one travels down in virtually any romantic relationship. We follow the Glenn character throughout the whole process, from his initial feelings of lust that first draw him to someone he doesn't even really know, to the distrust and the jealousy once the two begin actually dating and his feelings intensify on unstable ground, to all of the strange and scary revelations that threaten to drive the two apart... After awhile, Glenn finds himself unable to move forward and puts everything at risk (even his own life) for Gretta. Brains, dignity, self-respect and common sense right out the window? Yeah, that's true love for ya. Things conclude with a final scene that's both poignant and perfect.

After numerous VHS releases throughout the 80s and 90s, this received a bare bones DVD release (which appears to be a decent tape transfer) from Trinity in 2007. In 2013, Vinegar Syndrome released it again under yet another new title (Gretta) and included it as an extra on their Night Train to Terror DVD / Blu-ray release. As happy as I am to see this finally available to the masses in good, remastered condition, in another way it's sad that its final epitaph is being an extra "bonus feature" to a notoriously awful headliner that it is far superior to.

★★★

Intruder (1989)

... aka: Bloodnight
... aka: Night Crew, The
... aka: Night Crew: The Final Checkout
... aka: Night of the Intruder

Directed by:
Scott Spiegel

For its inaugural release, Paramount re-titled what was originally called The Night Crew to the more generic-sounding Intruder because they felt the name would appeal more to slasher movie fans. They then turned right around and hit those same slasher fans where it hurt the most by eliminating nearly all of the gore (over five minutes worth) to get an R rating while refusing to release an uncut alternative. Talk about contempt for your target audience! However, none of that should come as a surprise considering how the same studio treated their long-running Friday the 13th series, which ended up receiving more pre-release cuts than all Jason's victims combined. Still, it's hard to really blame Paramount. After all, they simply had product to market and sell and knew that being slapped with an "X" rating or "unrated" label would kill a film's full earning potential. The real culprits were that horrible moralist Jack Valenti and his corrupt MPAA, who showed considerable, hypocritical bias against not only horror films but independent films of all stripes, yet played favorites with the top brass in Hollywood. People like Steven Spielberg could pack as much violence and adult content into their films as they wanted and manage to skim by with whatever rating they wanted, while low-budget filmmakers were picked on and made examples of. Intruder is just one of many genre films to receive this kind of 'bastard stepchild' treatment in the 80s and 90s. Unfair as all that is, this is still simply not a very good movie, even in its uncut form.

In keeping with slasher tradition, the "plot" - psycho starts killing employees of a grocery store after hours - is as simplistic and thin as can be. A major suspect (i.e. obvious red herring) in established early on in Craig (David Byrnes), who we know is a bad guy because he's wearing a leather jacket and doesn't shave. Craig had drug problems in the past, spent a year in prison for killing someone (just a year?!) and now seems to be stalking his ex- girlfriend Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox), who works as a cashier at the Walnut Creek Market. The other major suspects are, well, pretty much everyone else who works there. Owner Danny (Eugene Robert Glazer) has sold the store to the city and plans on shutting the doors permanently in a week, which doesn't sit well with co-owner Bill (Danny Hicks) or the rest of the staff. Not that it really matters one way or another as the identity of the killer and their motive turns out to be as obvious and ridiculous as can be. However, the primary audience won't be tuning in for the story, they'll be tuning in for the gore. This provides at least that much in its unaltered form.

For your money, you get knives sunk into chests and heads, a hook through a jaw, an eye-skewering, a head crushed by a hydraulic press, severed limbs all over the place and, most gruesomely of all, a head sawed in half with a band saw. Some of the fx are well-executed by KNB, while others look rather rubbery, but they're fun all the same. Unfortunately, it takes more than a copious amount of fake blood and latex to make a good horror film and literally everything else about this one is poorly done. Next to nothing happens in the entire boring first half, the acting is terrible, the characters are annoying and not the least bit engaging, the music score (some of which was actually recycled from other films) is God awful, the attempts at comic relief are embarrassing, the editing is truly abysmal, the film lacks a proper ending and the makers are completely unable to generate any tension, suspense or excitement at any point in the film. Hell, they aren't even able to capture a basic sense of fun.

Worst of all perhaps is the direction and camera-work. Spiegel thinks he's being clever and original by shooting through a cardboard cut-out of a rotary phone, putting a camera in a shopping cart and wheeling it around, placing the camera underneath a character while they are sweeping the floor and constantly shooting reflections and weird angles through bottles, water tanks and windows, but all he accomplishes by doing this is destroying the flow of the film and taking viewers completely out of the story. While these silly shots are sporadically effective (there are a few good scene transitions that admittedly work well), they're done at such an overkill level this looks less like a movie than it does the work of some freshman film student attempting to show off. It also does nothing to distract from all of the other areas where this film fails.

Gotta say, I was expecting better from this one, especially considering its current 6.3 rating on IMDb and all the glowing reviews its received from genre publications and websites over the years. The minor and, quite frankly, completely undeserved cult following it's acquired I can only attribute to two things: 1. High anticipation for the uncut (i.e. non-butchered) version, which took seemingly forever to get a release here in America, and 2. Fan boys who've made themselves believe this has to be better than most others of its type (it's not) just because Spiegel, Sam Raimi and a few other Evil Dead alumni (Hicks, KNB, Ted Raimi) were involved. Bruce Campbell even shows up briefly at the very end as a police officer but is given nothing to do, despite his star billing on the DVD cover. 

Renee Estevez, Alvy Moore, Emil Sitka and fx man Greg Nicotero all have small roles, as do future Hollywood successes Burr Steers, who went on to make the acclaimed indy film Igby Goes Down (2003) and then squander his talents with Zac Efron movies, and three-time Oscar nominee Lawrence Bender, who went on to become a top Hollywood producer best known for his work with Quentin Tarantino. Pointing out the Evil Dead connections was always the major selling point for the film, but the latest releases can now boast it's "from the producer of Inglorious Basterds and Pulp Fiction." Too bad the film has never been able to stand on its own merits. Charles Band was the uncredited executive producer and put up much of the 130,000 budget.

★★