Soul Snatcher, The (1965)

Directed by:

H.L. Zimmer

Wannabe photographer's model Kathy (Diane Webster) is having a hard time finding a job. She's sick of putting herself "up for exhibition" by showing off her body at auditions that lead nowhere, and as a result has a hard time paying her rent. She does have two understanding roommates, though. One of them ("nudie" movie regular Darlene Bennett) is first seen simultaneously painting a nude portrait and gabbing on the phone, while a fan on the floor between her legs blows up her skirt (?!) Kathy and her roommates attend a party where the painter roomie strips down to a bikini and Kathy pouts in the corner. Magically, a balding, goateed guy wearing heavy eyeliner, rouge and a tux appears out of nowhere. Yep, it's Satan himself, even though he's referred to as "The Stranger" (apparently the big "revelation" at the end was supposed to be a surprise... oops!) He's there to temporarily help out this "lost soul" by granting her wishes. The only condition is that she has to wear a pair of gold high heels at all times (?!) Desperate, Kathy agrees to the bargain. Some time passes and our gullible heroine has become a popular model with an understanding boyfriend named Cary. She should be happy, but everything seems so hollow. In frustration, she takes off the gold shoes and throws them across the floor. "The Stranger" then shows up to inform her that since she broke the contract, she owes him her soul. He disappears yet again and the next time he shows up will be the last we hear of poor Kathy. Yay!

Where to start, where to start... Even though characters move their lips there is no dialogue, which leads me to believe either the sound was lost or that it was shot silent and they planned to dub in the dialogue later. That didn't happen, so the whole film is narrated instead. Said narration is horribly written and monotonous in the extreme... and it never seems to end. Neither does the corny, sleep-inducing elevator music. There's no nudity, it's stupid, badly shot on 16mm and is very boring, with endless scenes of people sitting and or walking around for padding. The only thing even mildly amusing are the inappropriate facial expressions of the leading lady when she's supposed to exit worry and fear. I should point out that I only saw the reduced 30 minute short version that came as an extra on the ASYLUM OF SATAN/SATAN'S CHILDREN double feature. Apparently, the full-length version is 90 minutes! Will I ever watch THE SOUL SNATCHER is all its bloated glory? No. Freaking. Way.

NO STARS!

Straight Jacket (1982) [filmed in 1978]

...aka: Dark Sanity

Directed by:

Martin Green

A friendly insurance salesman (Chuck Jamison) and his recently de-institutionalized alcoholic blonde wife (Kory Clark) move into a new house in Los Angeles. She has bloody visions of an axe murderer and severed body parts lying around the house, but is it all in her head? Turns out that the same house was a former murder site and the killer was never found. Hmmm. This extremely obscure film (not to be confused with the Joan Crawford film Strait-Jacket, which is actually good) includes a slew of ridiculous suspects, including a balding, sweaty gardener who crushes snails in his hand, a nosy neighbor inspired by Ruth Gordon's character in Rosemary's Baby, her fat slob / pervert husband, a guy at a nuthouse and guest star Aldo Ray as a "retired" cop Larry Craig, who had similar visions of the house when he investigated the original murders. There's a pinch of low-budget charm in this rock-bottom budgeted chiller (also out on video as Dark Sanity), but it' slow moving, poorly made and pretty boring for the most part. Some videos say it was made in 1982 or 1987, but the actual production year was 1978. There are rumors that the director and producers skipped town and never paid any of the actors. Seems to be a common occurrence with these low budget regional horrors. Get your money up front, people!

★1/2

Slaughterhouse Rock (1987)

...aka: Alcatraz Horror

...aka: Hell Island

...aka: Horror on Alcatraz

...aka: Slaughter House

Directed by:

Dimitri Logothetis

College student Alex Gardner (played by Nicholas Celozzi, who is likely the son of executive producer Nick Celozzi, Sr.) is plagued by nightmares of a cellar-dwelling ghoul at Alcatraz. He dreams of cutting off his own hand, spitting up a worm, a ghoul ripping open his chest and being roasted over an open fire. After his friends see him levitating "6 feet" over his bed, a helpful, occult-obsessed teacher (Donna Denton) suggests that they sneak into Alcatraz to face his fears. Of course they go in the middle of the night when no one is around to help when things get out of hand! The group become stranded, Alex's brother Richard (Tom Reilly) becomes possessed and starts killing everyone. Toni Basil of "Mickey" fame shows up as the helpful ghost of Sammy Mitchell, lead singer of the group "Bodybag". She teaches Alex how to levitate out of his body and does a rock music dance intercut with repeat nightmare footage to pad out the running time. Playboy Playmate Hope Marie Carlton is also on hand to provide some topless nudity. All of the victims show up as wisecracking ghosts a la the Griffin Dunne character in An American Werewolf in London.

The script is full of plot holes, cheesy dialogue and lame attempts at comedy. Decent FX work and cool opening credits (both provided by Ernest D. Farino) are the only things gaining any merit. Basil and Devo ("Whip It") do some songs on the soundtrack. It's one of the least enjoyable of around a dozen heavy metal / hard rock fueled horror efforts to come out during the 80s and early 90s.

★1/2

Someone at the Top of the Stairs (1973) (TV)

...aka: Thriller: Someone at the Top of the Stairs

Directed by:

John Sichel

* I've decided to list certain episodes of the six-season British TV series "Thriller" on this website. Two reasons for this 1.) Each entry is feature length; all run between 60 and 80 minutes, and (most importantly) 2.) Many of these entries were released on tape as features. Recently, A&E released a Thriller Season 1 box set. I'm not going to review all of these episodes; just the ones to receive a VHS release before the box set came out. In the UK, only four titles qualify; but in the US fifteen were issued on tape as features/separate video releases. Only two were released in both the US and the UK, which brings the grand total up to seventeen. Some have been re-titled.*

Chrissie Morton (Donna Mills), an American studying abroad, and her Brit friend Gillian (Judy Carne) find a boarding house where the rent is only 24 pounds a month. Both being poor college students, they decide it's too good an offer to pass up and move in together. Strange things being happening. They find newspaper clippings from the 1800s lining a drawer and "Help Me Help Me" written on the inside of their closet door. The owner of the establishment, Mrs. Oxley (Alethea Charlton), seems a little sinister, and the other tenants are so chirpy and bizarre they wouldn't be out of place in Stepford. Everyone smiles, seems friendly, say marvelous a lot and do the same bizarre hand gestures. A cat Chrissie gets for a young boy ends up dead in a trash can the next day and someone is using peep holes to spy on the girls sleeping and taking showers, as well as sneaking into their room to steal their bras and panties. One man (Clifford Parrish) shows up looking for his missing daughter, who was last seen living there. The tenants claim they've never seen her, even though her locket is found in one of the rooms. And who is Mr. C? The oldest tenant in the home never seems to leave his room on the third floor of the house.

Though shot cheaply on videotape, limited to just a few set changes (the house, a cafe and a pub), talky and a little too expository at the end, this is well acted by the entire cast and has an interesting and incident packed script working well with small detail. This episode was released in the UK on VHS by ITC Entertainment and was paired with AN ECHO OF THERESA (called ANATOMY OF TERROR on US video).

Score: 6.5 out of 10

Demon Queen (1986)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Devil's Gift, The (1984)

Directed by:
Kenneth J. Berton

Return to sender! Susan (Vicki Saputo) buys a cymbal-playing toy monkey with glowing eyes at an antique store to give to her boyfriend's young son Michael (Struan Robertson) for his birthday. It turns out to be possessed by a demon, which means the electricity goes off, the plants wilt and Charlie the goldfish and Sparkle the dog are goners. Eventually it possesses Susan which puts dad David (Bob Mendlesohn) on a quest to find out what's going on. I think this was made by some Christian right-wing group to get back at the all the gory 80s slasher movies, because there's no violence, nudity or profanity. I can't think of a horror movie with more hugging, kissing, tickling, "knuckle sandwiches," back patting, good family values and platonic puppy-doggy lovey-dovey, and it's set in white bread middle class suburbia. David cheerfully tells his neighbor, "If there was a friend of the year award, you'd get it!" Even a psychic's home is littered with velvet paintings and statues of Jesus! Most of the running time is composed of the boring everyday events of boring everyday people, all set to bad elevator-style muzak. It copies Stephen King's short story "The Monkey" and is pure torture from start to finish.

The director's other 'film' Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1996) is a two-part fantasy / horror anthology hosted by Ernest Borgnine. One of the segments in that film is actually The Devil's Gift in a condensed form; so you can now experience this awful movie in two separate versions! Both films have been bobbing in and out of IMDb's Bottom 100 for ages and the latter was even ridiculed on a popular episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

★

Beyond the Door III (1989)

... aka: Amok Train

... aka: Dark Train

... aka: Death Train

... aka: Evil Train
... aka: Train, The

... aka: Winds of Evil

Directed by:

Jeff Kwitny

Seven L.A. coeds take a "once in a lifetime" trip to Yugoslavia to witness an ancient Balkan rite. Among them is the unsullied Beverly (Mary Kohnert) who has bad premonitions about the trip and the "sign of the pagan virgin" birthmark on her stomach. After arriving overseas, some evil Serbian residents in a small town they are staying at attack them. Beverly is felt up while sleeping by a white-eyed toothless old woman who cackles, "Virgin!" The survivors board a possessed train and are slaughtered en route to delivering Beverly to her destiny. Watchable and interesting in spots, with good cinematography and location work, but also horribly acted (I mean horribly acted), senseless and irritating. To make matters worse, most of the gore scenes have been carelessly trimmed out of the U.S. release (at least the VHS release; I haven't seen the DVD), resulting in some jagged editing cuts. On the plus side, there's an excellent steel beam decapitation (plus some other fairly good gore effects), a decent ending and Savina Gersak is fun in the film's sole standout performance as a cigar chomping stowaway. Name value star Bo Svenson is miscast as a Serbian professor, but does a fair job with his role (and accent).

Despite the title, this film has nothing to do with the other Beyond the Door films as they've all just been re-titled for American distribution. The first (made in 1974) was a standard Exorcist rip-off with Juliet Mills going the Linda Blair route, the second (made in 1977) was a Mario Bava possession shocker better known as Shock and starring Daria Nicolodi as mother to a child who seems to be possessed by the spirit of her dead husband. This one was originally called either Amok Train or just The Train and was re-named. Not surprisingly, Ovidio G. Assonitis (who was partially responsible for The Curse non-"series" of films, as well) was the executive producer.

★1/2