Ten Little Maidens (1985)

... aka: Desert sa Slagom
... aka: Sexo na Ilha Fatal (Sex at Fatal Island)
... aka: Suspense erótico (Erotic Thriller)
... aka: 10 Lil' Maidens
... aka: Vergini corpi frementi (Virgin Bodies Quivering)

Directed by:
John Seeman

After some silly narration (“The erotic instinct is basic to human nature, and will always be, no matter what established religion has to say on the matter – or what present or future laws deem as proper.”) we follow buxom mail lady Kitten Natividad around a neighborhood as she does her route. Hearing strange noises coming from one of the homes, she peaks in the mail slot and watches John Orvis (Harry Reems) and his (married) lover Carol Morgan (Ginger Lynn Allen), whose husband is out of town on business, going at it. Afterward, John tosses aside all of the bills and opens the only interesting-looking letter, addressed by one U.N. Seen. Inside is a pair of plane tickets and an invitation to an “all-expense paid erotic orgy” to take place on a secluded island over the weekend. Thinking it sounds too interesting to pass up, the two fly to Marina del Rey and catch a boat from there. The captain takes them as close as he can go and then Renfro (Jamie Gillis), who strangely knows both of their names, shows up on a smaller boat to pick them up.

Upon arriving on Bacchanal Island, they make their way through the woods to a huge estate and meet Renfro's wife Tabatha (Nina Hartley), who works there as a cook and housekeeper wearing a sheer maid's outfit (with no panties). As she's taking them to their room, she informs them that she and her husband were hired just two days earlier, given a list of guests and instructions on what to do but have not even met the man who hired them. While John is busy checking out the grounds (and a few topless sunbathers by the pool), Carol decides to take a shower and gets accosted by another female guest named Charlene (Janey Robbins), who helps her get extra clean before the night's festivities begin. They soon join Charlene's husband Peter (Richard Pacheco) and two other couples; Dick (Paul Thomas) and Candy (Amber Lynn) and Larry (Eric Edwards) and Agatha (Lisa De Leeuw) around the dinner table.

Living up to his reputation of being one of porno's weirdest perverts, Gillis jerks off using a chicken (!) which is then served up to the guests as having been “creamed” (har har) He then jerks off on Carol's salad when she requests “creamy Italian” dressing. (har har har) What follows is a messy food orgy. You probably won't be surprised what they do with corncobs, cucumbers and a hollowed out peach, but you may be surprised seeing Hartley getting screwed by Gillis while covered with a pig's carcass (!!) and perhaps even more surprised (or grossed out) watching Gillis alternate performing oral sex with chewing off a piece of the pig's snout. The host (who imitates Alfred Hitchcock) has provided some cassette tapes to be played at certain times. On the first, he informs the guests that he and his wife won't be able to attend but they'll still feel his presence. On the second tape he tell them “payment is due” and that none of them will make it off the island alive. Why? Well, because they've all lived “erotically immoral” lives. Soon after, a series of murders begin and after each death one of ten statues in the dining room is found smashed.

I figured SEX WITH A STRANGER (1986) was an anomaly being a hardcore spoof of Agatha Christie's famous and oft-filmed mystery novel Ten Little Indians but, as it turns out, it actually ripped off this earlier film. Both are a mix of X sex, terrible acting, extremely dumb humor and silly sex-oriented deaths. There are some nods to mystery movie cliches like a black cat lurking around, eyes spying from behind a painting and a bad Peter Lorre impersonation, plus death by arsenic-laced vagina, someone suffocated with a rubber duck placed over their dick, a drowning in the pool, someone crushed by a bed canopy and two of the women getting electrocuted by a double-sided dildo. They even thrown in a bizarre POV shot from inside a vagina.

For what it's worth, this has higher production values having been shot on film instead of video, a better variety of sex scenes (including some kinkier stuff if you're into that) and more weird (and tasteless) moments than its predecessor, though the two are otherwise pretty much the same. This supposedly played adult theaters in the U.S. and in Spanish-speaking countries, though the only theatrical poster I could find was a Yugoslavian one under the title Desert sa Slagom. It was financed and distributed by Excalibur and is available on DVD (though you can probably tell from the screen caps that I watched a VHS version).

★★1/2

Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)

... aka: City of the Living Dead
... aka: Ein Zombie hing am Glockenseil (Zombie Hung on a Bell Rope)
... aka: Fear in the City of the Living Dead
... aka: Frayeurs (Fears)
... aka: Gates of Hell, The
... aka: Pater Thomas (Father Thomas)
... aka: Zombiernes by (Zombie City)

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

In a small New England town, priest Father William Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine) hangs himself in a cemetery. Meanwhile, in New York City, psychic Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl) and some of her colleagues are having a séance. Mary has visions of the suicide and of a zombie rising from the grave, freaks out, breaks the link and keels over onto the floor dead. When police show up at the scene, they're told she was scared to death. Not buying into the story, wisecracking journalist Peter Bell (Christopher George) decides to look into matters. He goes to the cemetery, rescues Mary from being buried alive when she miraculously springs back to life and then accompanies her to a friend's apartment to learn all about a prophecy contained in the Book of Enoch, a religious text written over 4000 years ago. According to the book, the gates of hell will open somewhere in a small town and mankind will be wiped out because no dead body will ever be able to rest in peace again. The only remedy to the situation is closing the gates before All Saint's Day.

Back in Dunwich, strange things are afoot. Winds are atypically strong, the town is enveloped in a cloud of “dust” (fog), windows and mirrors shatter on their own, walls crack open and sometimes bleed and cute little kittens attack their owners. Even worse, the dead priest has returned from the grave and now has supernatural powers that he doesn't hesitate using against the townsfolk, who are rumored to be descendants of “Salem witch burners.” He starts out by force feeding pretty young Emily (Antonella Interlenghi) a mouthful of worms and muck. During the film's most memorably gross bit, he appears before a pair of necking teens and squeezes the brains right out of the guy's head after making his girl puke up all of her internal organs. Others disappear or start turning up dead and the recently deceased return to life and add to the army of the undead. At a mortuary, an old lady kills a thieving mortician. Emily returns as a pizza-faced zombie to haunt her parents and kid brother. And so on and so on.

Since Mary saw “Dunwich” written on a tombstone in one of her visions, she knows just where to go. Peter, despite his skepticism, decides to tag along. I'd like to say the two are in a big hurry to get there considering a zombie apocalypse and the fate of all mankind life is at stake. But nope. With just 48 hours to find the town (which isn't even on a map), the two decide to flirt, act casual about the whole ordeal and even take a detour to sample some fine regional cuisine. Getting directions from another priest in a nearby town, the two finally make it to their destination, but not until many have died and everything's pretty much gone to (literal) hell. Our heroes eventually team up with town shrink Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) and one of his patients, neurotic painter Sandra (Janet Agren), in an effort to close the gates. The four get showered with maggots at one point and the big finale takes place in an underground tomb and some catacombs.

This is one of the key titles on Fulci's filmography that helped turn him into a cult director during the early days of home video. Like most of the director's other works, it drags at times (particularly around the midway point), some scenes work better than others and there are about 1001 zoom shots into eyeballs, but it's also atmospheric, gloomy and gory. Nicely shot by Sergio Salvati (who shot all of the director's films around this time), this also boasts an excellent score from Fabio Frizzi and a more straightforward and less confusing story line (co-written by Dardano Sacchetti) than some of Fulci's other efforts.

Italian horror / exploitation fans should recognize much of this cast. Aside from those already mentioned, small roles are also played by future director Michele Soavi, Fulci regular Daniela Doria (who almost always gets the best death scene in these things), Venantino Venantini, Luciano Rossi, Robert Sampson and Fulci himself as a pathologist. Giovanni Lombardo Radice (aka “John Morghen”) has a memorable bit as the slow-witted town outcast whose girlfriend is an inflatable doll and who may or not be a sex predator. He also meets a memorable demise when the father of one of his supposed victims pushes a huge electric drill through his head (an excellent effect). American porn actor Michael Gaunt also turns up playing a gravedigger in one scene alongside Percy Pirkanen of Cannibal Holocaust fame.

Here in America, this was picked up by Motion Picture Marketing, who wanted to release it as Twilight of the Dead with ad art copying Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) until they were served a cease and desist order. It was then re-titled The Gates of Hell, great new posters were made and it played theaters unrated and uncut in 1983. On home video, it was issued the following year by Paragon, also unrated and under the same title. Later VHS, DVD and BR releases (from Anchor Bay, Arrow, Blue Underground, etc.) used the City of the Living Dead title. The full running time of the uncut version is 93 minutes, though some countries (like Australia) received a shorter cut missing some of the gore.

★★1/2