Dumb Waiter, The (1979)

Directed by:
Robert Bierman

Sally (Geraldine James) receives a creepy phone call one evening from a man who asks “Haven't you seen me following you?” and then tells her to “Look out for me while you're driving... I'll be right behind you.” Later, after she picks up her dry cleaning and is heading home, she notices a car following closely behind. She doesn't give it too much thought until the car starts threateningly flashing its lights and then she pretty much knows who it is. The car pulls ahead, cuts her off and stops. A man jumps out, rushes toward her, opens her door and tries to pull her out but she's able to drive off and get back to her apartment. Ah, safe at last. Still a bit shook up over the incident, she calls her boyfriend and asks him to come over as soon as he can. While she's taking a bath and getting herself ready for his visit, the black-gloved psycho stalker (John White) is busy trying to find a way inside her apartment. Luckily for him, Sally has the titular contraption inside that she uses to get rid of her trash. That's all she wrote plot-wise in this 17-minute British short but, in this particular case, that's all it really has to be. This also obviously has nothing to do with the famous Harold Pinter play of the same name.

A pretty good sign for something like this is if you'd like for it to go on longer than it actually does or if you can imagine what it would be like placed inside a full length movie and it gets the wheels turning about what the rest of the film would be like. This achieves that much and it really could have been a signature set piece within a feature or perhaps even the big finale to one. It's stylish, well-shot, has a great eerie synthesizer score from Colin Towns and provides some actual suspense and several good shocks, which is pretty impressive for the short running time. The ambiguous freeze frame ending may not be for all tastes, though.

The only glaring issue I had was that Sally never calls the cops. Even putting this in context to when it was made that's a hard swallow. In those pre-Internet / pre-cell phone days, it was cake to find the numbers / names / addresses of whoever you wanted just skimming through a phone book. Given the general anonymity of phones back then, it wasn't uncommon at all to receive the occasional call from a stranger saying they were going to do something horrible to you. You didn't call the police for something like that, you told the person to fuck off and then hung up on them. However, someone threatening you, telling you they know where you live and then actually physically coming for you after trying to run you off the road certainly was, is and always will be enough reason to get in touch with the cops! The fact Sally doesn't drive straight to the police station after the attempted attack, doesn't even call them when she gets home and doesn't even mention it to her boyfriend so he'll hurry his ass along is pretty silly.

Director Bierman went on to make the BAFTA nominated D.H. Lawrence adaptation The Rocking Horse Winner (1983), the CableACE Award-winning TV movie Apology (1986) and the very polarizing Nicholas Cage vehicle Vampire's Kiss (1988), which wasn't particularly well-received at the time but has since gone on to garner a cult following. After such an interesting start, it's kind of a shame to see he was relegated mostly to TV work after 1990. All that is currently available for this one is a poor copy that was recorded from a TV broadcast. Apparently it played in UK theaters as a warm up to Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982), which is... odd.

★★★

Xin tiao yi bai (1987)

... aka: Heartbeat 100
... aka: Heartbeat One Hundred
... aka: Sam tiu yat baak

Directed by:
Kent Cheng
Kin Lo

After leaving a nightclub in On Lok (Happy) Village, a couple who duck into an old building are stabbed to death while having sex and their bodies are then dumped into the Tai Shek Bay. The dead male was involved in a robbery where 15 million dollars worth of cash, antiques and other valuables were stolen. Five days after police discover the bodies and put up 50,000 dollars in reward money for information leading to the whereabouts of the other robbers / missing money, a small group of friends decide to head out to the same bay for a two month stay. That's not very good timing, but Maggie (Maggie Cheung), a young writer who's working on a TV detective drama, could use a little inspiration. Her somewhat snobby sister Chu Chu (Bonnie Law) is kind of there like it or not. And that's a big not on the presence of Weeny Eyes (Fong Liu), a persistent guy who's been after Chu Chu since they were both eight years old and seemingly won't take no for an answer. As the gang head down a narrow mountain road (the girls in a car and Weeny on a three wheeler), a motorcycle comes barreling down on them. After a minor crash, driver To Nam (Mark Cheng), has a flat tire and the girls agree to give him a lift.

Upon arrival in the village, the locals aren't very friendly and their rental home is a filthy, rat-infested disaster so they set about trying to whip it into habitable condition. Their attempt at hiring a maid (Mama Hung) backfires when she refuses to enter their home, claiming it's haunted. She does however invite them to her home so she can tell them about what happened there years earlier, which involved a love triangle, a suicide and a restless ghost haunting the home. Meanwhile, To Nam, who turns out to be a police inspector visiting the village to investigate the murders, meets up with local law enforcement, who are in the middle of trying to beat a disobedient dog to death with a log (!) when he walks in. Arrogant yet seemingly inept police sergeant Kwan Kao (Lam Chung) informs him that he's been there for decades and the tiny village hadn't had any problems until recently. Kind of hard to believe once we see who else is living there!

For starters, there's the mentally retarded and snake-obsessed Pink Panther (Ching Wong), who Chu Chu catches peeping in the window while she's in the bathtub. And then there's his father Yam (Wung Foo), who hears what his son's been up to, beats him over the back with a 2x4 and then kicks him to the ground. And trust me, it's probably even more difficult to type out scenarios like “Yam beats Pink Panther with a 2x4 after he peeps on Chu Chu” with a straight face than it is reading it. Mrs. Tse (Lisa Chiao Chiao), the mother of suspected robber Hoi (Fui-On Shing), claims she hasn't seen her son in a decade and appears to be out of her mind as well. There's also a gang of young thugs dressed in black who continue to harass the new arrivals even after To Nam kung fu's their asses and forces them to apologize.

As it turns out, numerous people in the village are not who they appear to be and a series of gory axe murders soon begins. Late one night, Maggie hears commotion coming from the home next door and sees a murder Rear Window-style. Because she tagged a particular person as the victim and that person turns out to still be alive after the cops look into it, she loses the support of the local police and decides to investigate matters on her own against the urging of To Nam. This ends up getting a dog killed and her sister and their friend kidnapped and put in a death trap that threatens to impale them both on spikes. But that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as the problems they'll face.

Considering all of the elements at play here, this combination of drama, comedy, romance, mystery and horror should have been a chaotic mess... and yet it's not. A very likable cast helps a lot, but so does the sheer unpredictability of it all. You never know what you're going to get from one scene to the next. The blossoming romance between the detective and the writer (done with some genuine charm) or a body chopped in two with a shovel? A surprising bit of humanity shown the usually one dimensional "annoying" character or a shootout at a fireworks festival? They also throw in a car chase, explosions, a snake attack, a decapitation, sword fights, karate fights, gore, a dash of nudity, some Nancy Drew-style sleuthing, a bizarre ceiling fan attack, corpses hidden in plaster sculptures, a sense of humor that's more character-driven and less slapstick than most other HK films from this same time frame and much, much more. There's never a dull moment and the directors are geniuses as far as I'm concerned for making this run as smoothly as it does, tying everything together by the end and for making a film that's quirky and offbeat yet still easily digestible at the same time. I was thoroughly impressed.

This one's from Cinema City & Films Company (later called just Cinema City Company) and has drifted into obscurity over the years thanks to never being given a DVD release. That's somewhat surprising considering CCC is the same company behind the easy-to-find hit A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). There was a VHS release from Rainbow Audio & Visual out of San Francisco, which had English subtitles. The VCD release from Mega Star has no English option. DVDs several sites currently hawk are actually DVD-Rs that just use the video print.

★★★1/2

Dr. Satan (1966)

... aka: Doctor Satán
... aka: Dr. Satán

Directed by:
Miguel Morayta

In a wonderfully spooky opening sequence complete with music that would be more at home in a Coffin Joe film, a beggar is swiped by a few pale-faced, karate-chopping zombies and taken to the lab of Dr. Plutarco Arozamena (Joaquín Cordero). There, the mad scientist injects his patented XX-34 serum into the beggar's neck, killing him. He then uses his XR-6 formula (an antidote) to bring the beggar back to life. A ha, instant zombie! This particular combination of formulas can turn any living being into the living dead as long as the antidote is given within 48 hours of the first injection. Dr. Arozamena instructs his henchmen to take the beggar back to where they kidnapped him and leave him there (he won't remember anything), plus stuffs some bills in their pockets to “pay the fee.” What fee, you ask? Well, Dr. Arozamena is involved in other nefarious activities that don't involve kidnapping unwilling human guinea pigs and turning them into zombies. He also happens to be embroiled in an international crime / mafia network that stretches all the way to Europe.

Agent Tomás Mateos (José Gálvez) receives a telegram from Paris Interpol about a counterfeit money scam operating between France and Mexico. Tomás either needs to get to the bottom of things pronto or else he'll lose his job. Thankfully, he's got a good assistant in Nora (Alma Delia Fuentes), who proves to be an even better sleuth than her superior. Meanwhile, Luisa Moncelli (Gina Romand) flies in from Europe. A representative of the counterfeiters who's come to make sure the Mexican contingent doesn't screw things up, Luisa meets up with Dr. Arozamena, whose experiments are being funded by the organization. The doctor is instantly smitten with the blonde beauty and, since she has a thing for evil, mysterious guys, the feeling's mutual. The two decide they need to eliminate a few people in order for their operation to run more smoothly. On the immediate hit list are Tomás, Nora and Javier Rodríguez (Quintín Bulnes), who's been doing an inept job distributing the counterfeit cash and attracting unwanted police attention in the process.

All of the principals end up at a nightclub where the doctor shoots a capsule of XX-34 into Javier's neck with a blowgun disguised as a cigarette. Javier goes back home and dies while the police apprehend Daniel (Antonio Raxel), one of the zombie henchmen. Daniel can only repeat “No se nada” and Arozamena's name in a monotone voice to any question asked. But the doctor cleverly manages to avoid being implicated by telling them Daniel is one of his patients. He then gives him a salt tablet which releases his soul and makes him disappear into thin air. Arozamena sends his boys out to dig up Javier's corpse so he can be resurrected as a zombie (complete with staples in head) who's renamed Cain and then stages assassination attempts on both Tomás and Nora using Cain and his other two henchman, Baltazar (Carlos Agostí) and Tino (Gerardo Zepeda).

The police have a major break in the case when the doctor's personal secretary Elsa (Judith Ruiz Azcarraga) steps forward. Elsa's father was a former colleague of Arozamena's until he disappeared and she's been secretly gathering evidence against him ever since. Now in possession of incriminating recordings of his conversations plus duplicate keys to his lab, which is accessed through a hidden panel which leads down a stairwell into some caves, she finally decides to blow the whistle on him. However, our heroes really have no idea what they're up against. In addition to creating zombies and helping to spread fake money around the city, Dr. Arozamena is also a dedicated Satanist who prays to “Rey Diablo” (King Devil) for help and guidance, captures souls inside little boxes and even conjures up a winged demon.

I can't speak for everybody out there, but when I watch a movie called Dr. Satan that was made in Mexico in the 60s, this is pretty much exactly what I'm wanting to see. Sure, there aren't any pro wrestlers to be found, but this doesn't need them. It's also made with enough skill to never really lapse into dated camp territory. There's an entertaining (and busy) plot, a thoroughly evil villain dedicated solely to the art of spreading evil, mindless zombies, secret passageways, cool gadgets, a bit of early gore (like the doctor sewing up a wound on one of his henchmen), good sets, an excellent music score from Luis Hernández Bretón and some very atmospheric sequences, best of which is the first appearance of the demon in a foggy cemetery.

With his deep voice, widow's peak, V-shaped eyebrows and completely serious approach to the role, Cordero is perfect as the evil doctor and channels some serious Lugosi here with his intense stares (simple lighting effects used to accentuate his face help, as well). The rest of the actors are also very good. The open ending is a set up for the 1968 sequel, Dr. Satán y la magia negra / DR. SATAN VS. BLACK MAGIC, which was shot in color and also features Cordero.

This was released at least two different times on VHS here in the U.S.. Unfortunately, neither release was in English. The first video (pictured above) came from The Puente Group in 1990 and the second was from Something Weird Video a few years later. There's a bootleg version currently available taken from one of the VHS releases. While it doesn't score very high on print quality it at least has fan made English subs. IMDb currently has this listed as Doctor Satán, though the title screen and all posters and lobby cards title it Dr. Satan.

★★★