Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (1967)

...aka: This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse
...aka: Tonight I Will Eat Your Corpse

Directed by:
José Mojica Marins

After a brief recap of the conclusion of AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1964), there's a wild, ingeniously-edited flurry of opening credits announcing the cast and crew, which features snippets of scenes we're about to see accompanied by distorted screams and moans, as well as new scenes showing that Zé do Caixão has not only been absolved of his crimes due to lack of evidence but also gets surgery to restore his vision. Now he's ready to relocate and begin again in his search for the "superior woman" to bear his child; maintaining his belief that the only way to achieve immortality is through blood and heredity since there's no afterlife. Zé arrives in a new village (hilariously, everyone there runs inside and hides when they hear he's coming), opens up his own funeral parlor, buys a mansion on the outskirts of the village and hires a facially-deformed hunchback named Bruno (Nivaldo de Lima) to assit him. The two immediately abduct six attractive young women, all of whom are rumored to be atheist and might be sufficient to bear a child to Zé's satisfaction. He keeps them prisoner in a hidden room in his home (all dressed in see-through negligees) and unleashes a horde of tarnatulas on them as they sleep to see who holds up the best under pressure. Pouty-lipped heiress Marcia (Tina Wohlers) manages to maintain her cool the best, so Zé decides to do away with the other five. One is strangled by the hunchback and has her face melted with acid, and the other four are led into a secret room, where a secret panel opens and dozens of snakes slither out!

Unfortunately, Zé discovers that Marcia has fallen for him and since he views love as a weakness he decides to dismiss her; letting her live because he knows she won't go to the cops and he can use her to help implicate another guy - bald muscleman Truncador (William Morgan) - in the killings. A colonel's (Roque Rodrigues) lovely daughter, Laura (Nadia Freitas), arrives in town just in time to catch Zé's eye. And to his delight, she's a bit of a sadist herself. Her family naturally disapprove of the union, but that's OK. Zé and his hunchback make their point by killing the brother by dropping a huge rock on his head. Laura eventually finds herself with child, but things start to unravel for our despicable mortician when he realizes that one of his original victims - Jandira (Tania Mendonça) - was pregnant at the time of her death. Despite his hatred for most adults, Zé never wants harm to come to a child, because they're fine until adults manage to ruin them later on.

Guilt over Jandira's death leads to a nightmarish vision of hell, and the film suddenly changes from black-and-white to full color for about five minutes. Hell, as seen here, is a bright, gaudy mix of fire and ice. Red-painted men run around sticking people with pitchforks, whipping them and driving nails into their foreheads. Some people hang on upside down crosses with snakes wrapped around them. Steam and ice pour from holes. Walls bleed. Blood drips from the ceiling. Heads and body parts jut out from everywhere. Zé also gets to visit briefly with Satan (who's also played by Marins). When he awakens, everything's back to b/w for the finish, which wraps up with Ze being chased by a torch-carrying mob of villagers through a swamp and finally being forced into accepting the fact that there is a God.

Though this wears out its welcome a bit toward the end and goes on about ten minutes too long, there's loads of interesting and incredibly bizarre stuff going on here to easily hold one's interest. It's better made than the previous entry (the budget seems a bit higher), the dialogue is well-written, interesting and sometimes blackly humorous and Marins (whose voice apparently is dubbed in all of these films) has great presence - and some amazing fingernails - in the lead.

Clips from the film were later recycled in the partial compilation HALUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND (1978) and COFFIN JOE'S VISIONS OF TERROR (1994). Marins would even return as Coffin Joe in a direct sequel 40 years later (!) It - titled either DEVIL'S REINCARNATION or EMBODIMENT OF EVIL - apparently uses footage from both an abandoned 1981 attempt to revive the character along with new footage shot in 2006.

★★★

À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (1964)

...aka: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

Directed by:

José Mojica Marins

The very first outing for Brazilian horror king Marins (who self-financed the project by selling his home and car!) has a nastier edge than most of what was coming out during the same time period, though when you widdle away the excess you'll find the framework of a classic morality tale. Bearded, black-clad, caped and tophat sporting mortician Zé de Caixão (aka "Coffin Joe;" played by the director) is a cruel, sadistic piece of work who seems to get much joy out of terrorizing and bullying others. An atheist, Zé scoffs at local religious customs (eating lamb while others fast) and believes he's intellectually superior to the superstitious, simple-minded townspeople. Zé also takes what he wants. If anyone resists, he quickly becomes violent. At a local pub, Zé gropes a young female barmaid in front of her father, cuts off a guys fingers with a broken bottle when he doesn't want to fork over money he lost in a card game, whips another guy and, in the most startling bit, removes a jagged crown of thorns from a Jesus statue and slams it into a guys face!

Conceiving a son seems of utmost important to Zé, but his wife Lenita (Valéria Vasquez) has yet to bear any children. Fed up with her infertility (or perhaps his own), Ze decides to just get rid of his old lady by giving her some ether, tying her down to a bed and letting a huge spider bite her until she dies. Ze then sets his sights on his best friend Antonio's (Nivaldo Lima) girlfriend Terezinha (Magda Mei, who co-scripted with the director). One evening while they're alone, Ze knocks Antonio out, beats his head off the side of a bathtub and drowns him. When he goes after an unwilling Terezinha, he slaps her around and then rapes her. She ends up killing herself and when a doctor (Ilídio Martins Simões) threatens to expose him, Zé uses his long, sharpened fingernails to poke out his eyeballs, then coats him with liquor and sets him on fire! Karma finally catches up to Zé during the Day of the Dead while he's out near a graveyard... walking alone... at midnight.

Despite the extremely low budget, mixed technical work (including some wobbly graveyard and catacomb sets right out of Plan 9 from Outer Space) and mostly bad acting, the film is worth seeing for the invigoratingly violent and nasty scenes, a few eye-raising sacriligious moments and some interesting surrealistic moments toward the end. There's a zombie surrounded by a glow of glitter, a floating ghost woman, maggot-covered corpses, loads of candles and a funeral "Procession of the Dead" seen in negative where Ze sees his own funeral taking place. Shot in black-and-white in a fittingly crude way that often recalls silent cinema.

★★1/2

Magic (1978)

Directed by:
Richard Attenborough

Looking over the talented cast and crew, one is likely to expect more than what this major studio film is actually able to deliver in the end. It's the good old "Is he/she actually insane or is the dummy / doll / mannequin actually living" scenario (which had already basically been perfected in the great Michael Redgrave segment of the 1945 British anthology DEAD OF NIGHT) played out here with disappointingly predictable results. Anthony Hopkins (who'd just appeared in the likewise disappointing AUDREY ROSE) is able to rise above the material as timid, socially awkward magician Corky Withers, a man crippled with insecurity who's only really able to come out of his shell and achieve a level of professional success through his ventriloquist's dummy Fats (voiced - unnervingly so - by Hopkins). While on the verge of achieving fame on the talk show circuit thanks in part to his no-nonsense agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith), a push-pull effect begins between the outgoing Fats and the introspective magician controlling him; the doll being a outlet for Corky's schizophrenic personality to simultaneously surface and spiral out of control without really being detected by the masses.
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Right when his career is beginning to take off, Corky retreats to a secluded area in upstate New York in an ill-fated attempt to get away from the pressures of show business (and avoid his agent's insistence on him taking a medical exam to secure a job). There, he gets back in touch with Peggy (Ann-Margret), the attractive, popular girl who never really gave him the time of day during his youth but still managed to make an impression on him. Peggy ended up settling for a quiet life - owning some rental cabins in the middle of nowhere with her temperamental husband Duke (Ed Lauter) - and is looking for a way out. She and Corky become lovers, but the relationship is obviously doomed right from the start. There's just a touch of violence and a couple of murders, though director Attenborough aggressively refuses to turn the film into an obvious shock show; consistently downplaying suspense and terror through anti-climax. What's left is a predictable story of mental illness using the obvious metaphors and a bland, doomed love story traveling down a well-worn path.

It was based on a novel by William Goldman (who adapted his own work here), has a Jerry Goldsmith score, an effectively gloomy look thanks to cinematographer Victor J. Kemper and is well-budgeted and professionally made. There are some effective creepy moments, the doll design - fashioned to look somewhat like the leading actor - is excellent and most of the cast (particularly Hopkins and Meredith) acquit themselves well. Regardless, the level of subdued familiarity - and the obviousness of the entire premise - will be a turn off to certain viewers.

★★

Resurrection of Michael Myers Part 2, The (1988)

Directed by:

Richard Holm

Henrik Wadling

The clutz (co-director Holm) from the original short horror spoof is in the hospital while some kind of office party is going on. Michael Myers (this time wearing a mask that actually does look like the original mask) is resurrected and sticks a pair of scissors through a guys head. In the same morgue, some kind of chemical manages to resurrect both Leatherface and Jason, who also instantly get to work slaughtering people. Leatherface pins a woman down, saws off her arm and then beats her to death with it while Jason pours acid in another guys face. When they're done, they high five each other and go off to cut off women's clothes with their weapons and have a karate fight with a blue-faced zombie who repeats famous one-liners (from Freddy, Eastwood and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD). Meanwhile, Myers takes a dump, dunks a guy into it and flushes him down the toilet, bashes a bottle over a woman's head and then sticks the jagged bottle into her face, shoves a VHS tape into a guys mouth and cuts open the zombies head so he can eat his own brains. Things end with a rap song.

Again, it was all shot with what appears to be a commercial grade camcorder, and the nth generation copy I got to see didn't help matters. This one's still a bit better than the first. There's a lot of amateur gore, a little nudity, skateboarding, dancing, an issue of Fangoria, a rap end theme song and plenty of horror movie references and inside jokes (some of which will be lost on those who haven't seen the original). No clue if any of the dialogue is actually funny or not since it's in Swedish.

★★

Resurrection of Michael Myers, The (1987)

Directed by:

Mikael Beckman

Richard Holm

Henrik Wadling

Silly, amateur Swedish horror spoof (which runs just 25 minutes and understandably hasn't seen any kind of official release) reuses the original HALLOWEEN score and opens with theater patrons viewing the final reel of the original John Carpenter film. In a nearly-abandoned office building, a psycho (Mikael Lindgren) in a jumpsuit and white mask - which looks nothing like the Myers mask - cuts his way out of a package and proceeds to chase a clumsy clerk (played by co-director Holm) around while killing off anyone who crosses his path. The clerk falls down the stairs (twice), runs into walls, hits his head a bunch of times and rolls around on a skateboard, a guy has his throat slashed, another has his head smashed against a wall and a third is stabbed and lifted off the ground like the nurse in HALLOWEEN II. For some reason, one of the victims returns as a demon/zombie, bites a chunk out of someone's arm (an obvious nod to DAWN OF THE DEAD) and then gouges out his eyeballs with his thumbs (THE EVIL DEAD). Freddy Krueger also makes an appearance. At the end, there's a karate fight and the cast dances around to the song "I'm Your Boogeyman."

Available only in Swedish (though there's not too much actual dialogue), it's essentially a shot-with-a-camcorder fan film that would be right at home on a local public access TV station. A few of the gore fx are decent. All three directors went on to work on other things. Beckman (who appears here as a security guard) is a Swedish porno director under the name Mike Beck, Holm directs Swedish TV shows and Wadling has taken on various production jobs over the years, including work on EVIL ED (1996) and THE UNKNOWN (2000). Followed by a sequel.

★1/2

Kaidan nobori ryu (1970)

...aka: Black Cat's Revenge

...aka: Blind Woman's Curse, The

...aka: Strange Tales of Dragon Tattoo

...aka: Tattooed Swordsman, The

Directed by:

Teruo Ishii

For avenging the death of her father, Akemi Tachibana (Meiko Kaji, who'd go on to star in the excellent LADY SNOWBLOOD) spends three years in prison; heading home to take her place as leader of a large Yakuza clan upon release. As per her father's wishes, Akemi attempts to head a more civilized and less ruthless brand of crime family when she takes the reigns, but finds the task next to impossible when a series of events force her and her associates back to their violent ways. For starters, there's a rival Yakuza who are moving into their territory and plotting to take over. It's sadistic leader, Dobashi (Tôru Abe), has just teamed up with soft-spoken, yet stealthy and very skilled, swordswoman (Hoki Tokuda) who has a grudge against our heroine for slaying her father and accidentally blinding her in the process. Secondly, she believes herself to be cursed by a black cat that seems to be everywhere lapping up blood. And finally, someone's running around decapitating and skinning the dragon tattoos off the backs of her family members. The Tachibana clan eventually disband, at least temporarily, until some innocents are dragged into the picture and they're forced into a bloody climactic battle.

What will keep many at arms length the entire time is how needlessly complicated and busy the whole shebang is. The film is stuffed with so many supporting characters (several of whom are irrelevant to the main storyline) that our leads aren't adequately fleshed out. Just a few of these include a depraved, blood-licking hunchback (memorably played by Tatsumi Hijikata) obsessed with helping out Aiko, an embarrassing, arrogant rival gang leader (Ryohei Uchida) who struts around the village in a thong and a half-assed pseudo love interest for Akemi, played by Makoto Satô, who ends up getting romantically involved with the pure daughter (Yôko Tagaki) of a kindly local restaurant owner (Yoshi Kato). All these characters really do is underline an uncertainty in tone prevalant throughout the film.

Not-so-welcome humor mostly fixated around body odor is spread throughout the film for some strange reason. Both the ghost cat curse and the Yakuza crime themes have been done better elsewhere, many times before and since this one, so I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to secure a copy of Blind Woman's Curse, which received a DVD release in 2007 from a company called Discotek Media.

★★

Home for the Holidays (1972) (TV)

...aka: Deadly Desires

Directed by:

John Llewellyn Moxey

Standard, brief (73 minutes), talk-heavy, low-budget Movie of the Week fare, written by Joseph Stefano (PSYCHO) and executive produced by Aaron Spelling, is helped along by a decent cast of familiar faces. It's Christmastime as dying Benjamin Morgan (Walter Brennan) requests his four estranged daughters return home for one visit. They; eldest, straight-laced Alex (Eleanor Parker), alcohol/pill addict Frederica (Jessica Walter), snotty and promiscuous Joanna (Jill Haworth) and young, sweet Christine (Sally Field), a college student, are immediately informed by their father that he thinks that his wife/their stepmother Elizabeth (Julie Harris) is attempting to slowly poison him to death... just like she was accused of doing to a previous husband. A rainstorm floods out the roadways and the characters find themselves stranded as one-by-one they're picked off by a gloved psycho dressed in a rain slicker.

It's darkly lit, overly familiar, somewhat predictable and the venomous family dynamic makes for a pretty depressing viewing experience, though Stefano attempts to temper things with black humor and the film can now be seen as a proto slasher utilizing the holiday feel several years before BLACK CHRISTMAS did the same. Several of the actresses elevate the material as much as possible, particularly Parker and Harris, both of whom give performances of chilly restraint. The same cannot be said for Walter, who probably landed the role after her excellent psycho portrayal in the previous year's PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Her big scene finds her camping it up in near hysterics with a broken bottle in her hand. Haworth is sufficient as an icy bitch, while Field is still stuck in the squeaky clean rut she found herself in after making a name for herself on the TV shows Gidget and The Flying Nun. It wouldn't be until a few years she'd make a name for herself in Emmy (1976's SYBIL) and Oscar (1979's NORMA RAE) winning roles.

I best remember this one for that Vidmark VHS cover pictured above, which always intrigued me as a kid. No official DVD release as of yet.

★★