Cat and the Canary, The (1977)

Directed by:

Radley Metzger

Not bad old-fashioned comic chiller set at Glencliffe Manor on a dark and stormy night where potential heirs to a fortune gather for the reading of a will (which has been filmed, giving Wilfred Hyde-White a delightful cameo... "Good evening, leeches!"). Annabelle (Carol Lynley) ends up inheriting everything, but as one greedy character puts it, "Where there's a will there's a way." Meanwhile, "The Cat," a deformed killer in a slouched black hat and trench coat has just escaped from an asylum and is lurking the grounds, using secret passageways to stalk characters in the mansion. Surprisingly restrained for director Metzger, a top "adults only" director who later switched to porn (as "Harry Paris"). It’s so tame that when a guy is shot three times there's no blood, but the excellent cast (Michael Callan, Honor Blackman, Daniel Massey, Olivia Hussey, Peter McEnery, Wendy Hiller, Edward Fox...) are more than worth their weight in grue if you ask me. The same story (based on a John Hillard novel) was told in a classic 1927 silent version and again in 1939 (with Bob Hope). This version is inferior to both of those (and wasn't released until 1979) but it's still pretty entertaining.

★★1/2

Curse II: The Bite (1989)

...aka: Bite, The

Directed by:

Frederico Prosperi

Curse II: The Bite (originally called simply The Bite) has absolutely nothing to do with the original THE CURSE (1987), a gory adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space." It also has no connection to the other two films released later as part of this series, which has been known to annoy many people. In the case of this one, if you're willing to put the annoying marketing out of your mind and take it at face value, it isn't too bad. If you're scared of snakes, it effectively plays that fear to the hilt... and then some! Attractive young couple Lisa (Jill Schoelen) and Clark (J. Eddie Peck) are traveling through New Mexico when some decidedly strange things begin to happen. For starters, snakes seem to be are all over the place, including the road they're driving on in a memorable opening sequence. One manages to get into their jeep, he's bit on the hand and we eventually find out that the snakes have been exposed to radioactive materials. This, mixed with some anti venom injection given to him by Jamie Farr (not a qualified doctor), combine for horrific results when Clark's hand slowly turns into an uncontrollable killer snake with a mind of its own. It reaches down a cop's throat and pulls his heart out of his mouth, blinds a woman (Savina Gersak) by spitting venom in her eyes and rips a female doctor's jaw completely off during several of the more potent gore / murder scenes. However, the best fx (from the reliable Screaming Mad George) are saved for the big finale as Clark begins to go through a major transformation. His tongue and eyeballs fall out, he starts vomiting up snakes and eventually falls apart to reveal a huge snake monster.

Ridiculous as this all may sound, the premise in unusual enough to maintain interest throughout, the make-up effects are inventive and there's a nice Southern road movie feel with scenes taking place along windswept interstate highways along the desert, in country bars and in the house of some backwoods religious folks. Performances are mostly good, with the two leads doing fairly well, as well as Farr. Smaller roles are played by veteran character actors Bo Svenson (as a blowhard Sheriff), Marianne Muellerleile (Farr's female truck driver girlfriend), Sydney Lassick (a guy at the hotel) and Al Fann (a gas station attendant whose dog has been also been effected by the snakes), plus there's an early performance from Shiri Appleby (TV's "Roswell") as a nosy little girl. There were American, Italian (Ovidio G. Assonitis was one of the executive producers) and Japanese backers on this project.

★★1/2

Mil gritos tiene la noche (1982)

...aka: Chainsaw Devil
...aka: Chainsaw Killer, The
...aka: Pieces

Directed by:
Juan Piquer Simón

If you're a fan of complete and utter trash with no redeeming social or artistic value, then here's your movie! In Boston in 1942 (where touch-tone phones must have been invented) a little creep is chastised by his mother (May Heatherly) when she catches him putting together a nude jigsaw puzzle. He gets revenge by taking a couple whacks at her head with an axe and dismembering her body with a hacksaw; playing the traumatized little kid act to get away with his crime. Around forty years later, the now-grown kid (who has not only managed to suppress his psychotic urges for the better part of his life but also somehow managed to keep his mom's dress and shoes safely tucked away in a box after all these years still perfectly spattered with bright red blood!) runs around the local college campus chewing up coeds with a chainsaw. One body part from each victim is found missing at the crime scene because the killer is creating his own life-sized human puzzle out of the spare parts. There's a dump truck full of gore as a girl lounging on campus green is decapitated, a topless skinny-dipper is netted in for the kill, a woman on a waterbed is stabbed in the back of head through her mouth and a girl has both of her arms sawed off after boogying down to the electro-synthesizer disco beat in her aerobics class. There's also a charming sequence where a topless girl is sawed in half in a public bathroom stall.

Adding to the fun, we also get an all-star line-up of international suspects... Jack Taylor is a stuffy homosexual anatomy professor who has to teach a bimbo where her pectoral muscles are... but is he the one cutting them off? Paul L. Smith is a hulking groundskeeper who is always seen carrying around something sharp and pointy, and trims the bushes... with a chainsaw. How about ever-present college dean Edmund Purdom or police head-shrinker Gérard Tichy, who shows up to get a psychological profile on some of the suspects. Speaking of suspects, we also have obnoxious, self-proclaimed "campus stud" Kendall James (Ian Sera), who is presented as being a suspect even though he's about 30 years too young to be the killer kid from the opening sequence. However, he had "sexual relations" with more than one of the victims and is currently trying to get into the pants of Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George, credited as "Linda Day"), a tennis champ cum detective who goes undercover on campus in an effort to catch the killer. There's also a snoopy Boston Globe reporter (Isabel Luque) and a "kung fu professor" (?!?) who attacks Mary in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. Christopher George and Frank Braña are just two of the coppers on the case.

Pieces has the worst dialogue ever (the script is credited to producer Dick Randall and "John Shadow"/Joe D'Amato), is full of continuity errors and is too dark, idiotic and senseless, but it's also unintentionally hilarious and entertaining in the sleaziest, trashiest way imaginable. The surprise shock ending is unbelievably stupid and seems inspired by the similar ludicrous ending of Bava Jr.'s 1980 film Macabro / Frozen Terror. It was filmed in Boston and Madrid, Spain and was originally slapped with an X rating (which was converted over to an R a few years later).

SBIG

Rawhead Rex (1986)

Directed by:

George Pavlou

Routinely directed, often unintentionally hilarious monster movie has decent pedigree from the very start, being a Clive Barker adaptation and all (he also scripted from his story in "Books of Blood"), but the end result is middling thanks to a silly monster costume. In Ireland, a man digging around a large stone accidentally awakens an evil presence, lightning strikes and a hulking, 9-foot tall, cannibalistic Pagan creature with red glowing eyes (played by big guy Heinrich von Schellendorf) is unleashed. Victims are clawed, eaten, decapitated and dismembered, or as one local puts it in his thick Irish accent, "Jesus Christ! It's a bloody massacre!" There's also American historian Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes), his wife Elaine (Kelly Piper, the nurse in MANIAC) and their two small children, who arrive just in time to get in the middle of things. The best character though is Declan O'Brien (Ronan Wilmot, wonderfully overacting) a psychotic clergyman who screams "Get upstairs fuck face!" to a reverend and lets the ghoul piss on him in a graveyard! Although Barker disowned this film, its fun-filled nonsense that moves at such a fast pace you have little time to realize just how stupid it all is. There's plenty of gore, the acting is decent and it's all well photographed and scenic. And unlike the 1985 Barker adaptation TRANSMUTATIONS (aka UNDERWORLD), at least it's not boring.

★★

Curse, The (1987)

...aka: Farm, The

Directed by:

David Keith

H.P. Lovecraft's great story "The Colour Out of Space" had already been filmed in 1965 as DIE, MONSTER, DIE!, but here it is again. The story is set on a failing family farm threatened with bank foreclosure in the small town of Tellico Plains, Tennessee. Wil Wheaton (the year after the big hit Stand by Me) stars as Zachary, living on the farm with his mother (Kathleen Jordan Gregory), real-life sister (Amy Wheaton), abusive religious fanatic stepfather (Claude Akins), a handyman (Steve Carlisle) and a fat, obnoxious slob older stepbrother (Malcolm Danare) whose hairy ass we see in an unflattering close-up. One night a big glowing meteor falls and lands in their backyard and secretes a black, oily substance into the ground, polluting their water supply. Madness and / or grotesque mutations show up in vegetables, livestock, dogs, horses, chickens and, or course, humans. Hampered by bad photography, a pointless subplot with John ("The Dukes of Hazard") Schenider as a Tennessee Valley Authority surveyor and an uneven script, but more often than not it's pretty entertaining. There are some pretty good, gross shocks (mostly involving maggots) and most of the performances are fine.

This marks the directorial debut of actor Keith, who does a decent job capitalizing on the remote rural settings. Two of the producers were Italian filmmakers Ovidio G. Assonitis and Lucio (billed as "Louis") Fulci. It was followed by three unrelated direct-to-video sequels; CURSE II: THE BITE (1989; an even-stranger toxic snake movie originally called The Bite), Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1990; which involves voodoo curses and was originally titled Panga) and Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice (1988; which involves demonic possession, was filmed before parts 2 and 3 and was originally called Catacombs). This one was filmed as The Farm. Confusing, eh?

★★

I criminali della galassia (1966)

...aka: Criminals of the Galaxy

...aka: Galaxy Criminals, The

...aka: Gamma I Quadrilogy Vol. 1

...aka: Wild Wild Planet

Directed by:

Antonio Margheriti

In 2015, scientists aboard a spaceship, headed by Dr. Nurmi, the “best chemist in the world,” are experimenting with body parts, tissue grafts and organ transplants. Nurmi (Massimo Serato) is actually trying to create an immortal race of perfect, body- beautiful people. Some of his subjects, mainly attractive females in mini-skirts and piled-up hair, come to Earth, shrink humans to doll-size, store the bodies in their purses and keep a little black book of who they are supposed to kidnap. One strangles a little girl to death and some others dressed in nighties use kung fu. They are aided by big, bald, emotionless, four-armed henchman in sunglasses and black cloaks. They are said to also have cat eyes, which we never get to see. Commander Mike Halsted (middle-aged, gray-haired American actor Tony Russell) and others (including a young Franco Nero) are investigating “thousands” of disappearances and use guns that shoot fire to battle the bad guys. Mike’s girl Connie (Lisa Gastoni), a karate instructor in leotards who gets drunk, runs her mouth a little too much and comes off as a completely unappealing bitch throughout, is tricked into going on a dream holiday to a distant planet by Nurmi. He actually has other plans in store for her; namely combining her body with his to make the ultimate ‘perfect specimen.’ (Hmm, last time I checked, this was called a transsexual).

Mike calls someone a “helium head” and when he sees one of the bald monsters he describes it as “A freak! A sickening freak!” There’s also guys swimming through space in rocket packs, a dance party on a spaceship, a chamber full of hideous mutants (botched experiments), some funny three-wheeled pod cars and some laughable futuristic performance art where people in butterfly costumes do some silly dance. It’s not as good as it sounds. Because the sets on Earth, the spaceship and another planet all look about the same, and people hop around from place to place quite frequently, it’s tough to keep track of where exactly the action is taking place. Not that the plot (devised by Ivan Reiner, also the associate producer) is otherwise coherent. It’s cheap, childish and the miniature sets, spaceships, helicopters and cars look like they came straight out of kid’s toy box. Margheriti did a much better job on his Gothic films than this silly sci-fi outing.

★1/2

Zero in and Scream (1970)

...aka: Sex Power

Directed by:

Lee Frost

Lots of exploitation movies feature sex watched through peepholes and binoculars, but this one features the sex viewed through a rifle scope cardboard cutout instead. That's about it for originality. Released on a 'sharpshooter' triple-bill by Something Weird, along with THE SEX KILLER (1967) and THE ZODIAC KILLER (1970), this attempts to terrify and titillate, not doing too well at either task. Don't get me wrong, this movie has a TON of full frontal nudity (female and male), a fairly attractive cast (and least body-wise), many sex scenes, outdoor sex romps, pool sex romps, two lesbian scenes, strippers and an orgy, but the drawn-out, 10-minute-long scenes are incredibly monotonous and will just make you want to fast-forward to the next sniping. The director (Lee Frost, using the alias "Les Emerson") tries to be artistic during the numerous underwater scenes, changing film stocks and such, but naked people flailing around in the water for an eternity isn't much fun to watch for an hour. So if you go into this one expecting action, blood, a plot or horror content, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Reclusive voyeuristic weirdo Mike (Michael Stearns), who likes his women to be "pure," shoots a love-making couple in the Hollywood Hills, goes back to his apparently one-room residence and listens to a radio broadcast about his crime. He then goes to a club with a marquee reading "Direct From Denmark - Love Dance Erotica." Inside are a bunch of distinctly American "bottomless," rhythm deficient strippers who dance to boring instrumental jazz. We see a brunette, a blonde and a crazy redhead go through their (long) routines. Another ten minutes in the can. The blonde stripper (Linda, played by Dawna Rae) invites Mike to a pool party at her pal Susan's (Cathy Horton) place, which turns into an orgy and lots of underwater shots of naked bodies going to and fro. Mike just stands around watching. Another ten/fifteen minutes in the can. By the way, there is almost no dialogue during this time.

Roy (Edward Frank), apparently the super-stud of the party, has sex with Susan, is mean to Mike, kicks him out, and immediately starts nailing Linda in the pool. Mike sneaks outside to a safe distance away on the hilltop, watches for a bit and then shoots the guy in the face before he can finish, leaving Linda screeching in terror (and sexually unfulfilled, no doubt). Mike goes home, has a long sex fantasy (yes, in a pool and yes, it seems to go on for at least 10 minutes) and snipes two lesbians going at it in the middle of the woods. He then goes to visit Linda and arranges to have a date with her. Linda apparently has a very short memory (or is just incredibly stupid), because the next time you see her she's casually lounging by the same pool where her previous lover was shot dead. Anyway, Mike shows up, starts acting weird and goes into a ridiculous, yet hilarious, speech ("When a man climbs on top of a woman she becomes ugly! He made her ugly. You were ugly! Did he ball you? Answer me! Did HE BALL YOU!?") He then holds her captive at rifle-point, makes her dance, rapes her and leaves, promising to return later to kill her. Next time you see Mike he's lurking around on the hillside again and, you guessed it, Linda's hanging out by the pool again in rifle range... again. Will Mike finally get what he deserves for his perverted ways? Or will Linda finally pay the ultimate price for being such a dumb whore?

Obviously influenced by the Zodiac Killer murders, this one might be worth a look for the nudity, but otherwise it's incredibly boring sexploitation with bottom-of-the-barrel acting, dialogue and production values. The quality of the print isn't the best either, with green vertical lines appearing in most of the frames.

★1/2