La casa de las sombras (1976)

... aka: House of Shadows

Directed by:
"Richard Wulicher" (Ricardo Wullicher)

Slow going, plot-heavy, poorly edited, not particularly original and so badly lit that they should have called it "House of I Don't Know What in the Hell is Going On Cause I Can't See Shit," not many people are going to be able to endure this one. To make matters worse, it's also victim to one of the absolute worst English dubs you'll ever hear. The voice actors are awful, there are frequent and very awkward pauses... between every... other... word just... to... match the... lips, plus clutzy narration in one scene that's hard to attribute to a certain character since all of the female roles seem voiced by the same actress. Even the two top-billed, English-speaking stars, Yvonne ("Lily Munster") De Carlo and John (PSYCHO) Gavin, were dubbed. Things begin with our luckless teenage heroine Audrey Christiansen (Leonor Manso, about ten years too old for this role), who is fresh out of an orphanage and never actually met her parents. She's taken up a position as a companion and errand girl for wealthy, lonely, depressed spinster Mrs. Howard (De Carlo), who drinks a lot, lounges around in frilly pink nightgowns and seems to somewhat resent Audrey's youth and beauty. While Audrey's out walking Mrs. Howard's poodle one evening, the dog runs off and into an old house. Audrey walks inside and sees fresh flowers, a burning fire and furniture, but no one appears to be there. Upon investigating, she ends up witnessing a woman being shot and falling down the stairs, then flees.

The next day, Audrey, Mrs. Howard and the police go to the crime scene only to see no sign of a crime having taken place. There's also no evidence that anyone has actually lived there for a very long time. Well, aside from an upstairs bedroom that's still clean and furnished. Audrey spots a painting on the wall and instantly recognizes the woman in it as the lady she saw being murdered. She's then informed that the portrait is of a woman who was murdered there twenty-three years earlier. The killer was never found and crime went unsolved... and Audrey looks an awful lot like her. Finding herself drawn to the home for some odd reason, Audrey locates the diary of the victim - Catherine Webster (also played by Manso) - and begins learning more about her life, which we see in flashbacks. Catherine was a promiscuous busy body uphappy in her marriage to Gregory (Roberto Airaldi). She fell in love with not one, but two, different men; Richard Wilson (Walter Soubrie), a married man whose wife Nora (Iris Morenza) found out about the affair, and another guy named Roland Stewart (Gavin); a man Mrs. Howard was in love with who wouldn't give her the time of day. So who killed Catherine? That's what Audrey would like to find out.

The link between Catherine and our heroine is never fully established, and we never know whether Audrey is possessed or possibly a reincarnation of the murder victim. It's also never explained why she looks exactly like her. Audrey buddies up with Mrs. Randall (Mecha Ortiz), Catherine's former maid and close confidant, and talks about she's not of this world but of "the astral world," but that doesn't make much sense either. Either way, she can't seem to stay away from the house and knows things that only Catherine would know. Everyone seems to want Catherine's diary because it may hold the key to her murder. How everyone knows she even kept a diary in the first place, or why the police never got their hands on it when they investigated the murder, is never adequately explained either. Yes, there are a ton of plot holes and unanswered questions to be found here, and I wonder whether this is the fault of the dubbing, or it's just a poorly made film.

It also takes forever and a day for Catherine's murderer to start murdering again. And by forever and a day, I mean 70 minutes. To start the ball rolling, a wheelchair-bound man in pushed in front of a moving train. The effect is hilariously accomplished by reversing the film (notice how the smoke sucks back up into the train as it 'approaches' the victim). Next up, poor maid Cookie (Nora "Cuyen" / Cullen) receives a hatchet to the face. That's followed by a car going over a cliff after the brake wires are cut, a man getting crushed against a wall by a car and an off-screen slashed throat. The killer also appears to be stalking Audrey. He / she breaks into her room (presumably to find the diary) and then try to run her off the road. When revealed, the identity of the psycho is adequate, but not really much of a surprise. Ricardo Castro Ríos and Germán Kraus co-star as the police inspectors on the case.

Even though I was bored senseless by the first half of this movie, I eventually got more wrapped up in the storyline once I got used to the lighting and dubbing. Since the film has two decent Yank actors, and the rest of the roles are played by established (and in some cases, award-winning) Argentinian actors, I can imagine the performances in this before the dubbing came into play were fine. The poor dialogue translations and confusing clusterfuck of a plot could also very well be the fault of the dubbers. I can also imagine that the photography and lighting were done with more care than what is present on either the too-dark American VHS release (through Media in 1983), or the one I watched (which was taken from Spanish-based cable / satellite channel Calle 13). It's really hard to tell, so I'm cutting this a little slack on the rating.

★★

Masterblaster (1986)

... aka: Master Blaster
... aka: Masterblaster: The Exterminator
Directed by:
Glenn R. Wilder

Filmed near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, this low-budgeter attempts to blend survivalist action with backwoods slasher, and doesn't do a very good job at either. Motorcycle-riding Native American loner Jeremy Hawk (co-writer Jeff Moldovan) shows up at a small town bar and is immediately greeted by three pleasant rednecks who tell him they "just don't want no AIDS-carryin' dirtbag biker hanging around." Since Jeremy's also a Vietnam vet, they wonder if he's been "screwing those little chink whores" and might be spreading around "infectuous VD stuff." When they start getting physical, Jeremy kicks their asses and sends one flying out the window and another through the door. Police officer Samantha (Donna Rosae) shows up with a gun to help hold them off, and two hispanic guys, failed actor Monk (Richard St. George) and el loco Snake (George Gill) help tie him to a tree. The redneck leader, Leon (Antoni Corone) - screams that they'll get their revenge. So what are Jeremy, Samantha, Monk and Snake doing risking their lives out in redneck country? Well, they're all regional winners of paintball contests heading out to a secluded camp where they'll compete for 50 thousand dollars with other regional winners at The First Annual Master Blaster Grand National Championship.

Upon arriving at camp, contest organizer Mike (Robert Goodman) introduces the rest of the contestants. There's Lincoln Shakir (Raymond Forchion), winner of Chicago regionals, Tony De Angelo (Joe Hess), winner of Big Apple Games and personal body guard for a famous Italian businessman, rock star Lewis Carlisle (Peter Lundblad) who's brought along his snobby girlfriend Lisa (Tracy Hutchinson), Mr. Yamada aka The Shadow Warrior (Yoshimitsu Yamada), who's descended from samurai, psychiatrist Laura Dacosta (Earleen Carey) and journalist and novelist Brad Sterling (Bill Wohrman). Rounding out the roster are three racist rednecks (yes, more of these); Jimmy Roy (Jim Reynolds), Gary Lee (Julian Byrd) and Bobby Jo (Ron Burgs), who are distant relatives of Daniel Boone. There's also an attorney and ex-pro football quarterback, but he decides to drop out of the competition when he learns the woods will be booby-tapped: "You people are crazy! Somebody's gonna get hurt... real bad!" And yes, some people do get hurt real bad, when someone in group goes crazy and starts slaughtering everyone... but it takes almost an entire hour to even get to that point.

First, we must learn the rules of the game (avoid traps, retrieve money and return to camp without getting splattered), listen to a never-ending stream of racial and homophobic slurs, see some bad campfire dancing and watch as a romance starts to bloom between our monotone hero Jeremy and huge-eyeballed heroine Sam. He tells her about how he spent two years in a 'Nam concentration camp and had to slaughter an entire family, children included. She tells him that her partner had his head blown off with a shotgun because she was too slow to react and that the rock star guy had slept with her and then dumped a year earlier. Meanwhile, the "graduates of Hee Haw University" make watermelon jokes and talk about "speak-chuckers." The dialogue, original songs (including a rap theme) and the acting are all absolutely terrible, by the way.

45 minutes in, the game finally is under way. Unfortunately, even it fails to build up much excitement and is essentially just a series of scenes of people walking through the woods before being killed. Several characters are hung, there are numerous fist fights, someone gets stabbed, someone gets decapitated, one of the girls is killed after taking a shower and another is shot in the face with an acid capsule. Sadly, most of this occurs off-screen... but just wait until you see the identity of the mystery killer and learn their motivation for offing everyone. Absolutely hilarious!

It was backed by Bill Grefé (William Grefe), an independent director who'd been churning out films since the early 60s and had moderate success with such drive-in favorites as STANLEY (1972; which involved a man using snakes to strike back at his enemies), IMPULSE (1974; with William Shatner as a sleazy, bell bottom-clad psycho child molestor) and MAKO: THE JAWS OF DEATH (1976; a JAWS-inspired killer shark tale). Another Floridian who worked on this thing is Brad F. Grinter, the director of Veronica Lake's last hurrah, FLESH FEST (1970), as well as the notorious turkey-man-monster gorefest BLOOD FREAK (1971). Randy Grinter, perhaps Brad's brother, wrote the original story, co-scripted, produced and was the 2nd unit director. Kari Whitman (a Playboy centerfold and the star of PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE) and Herb Goldstein (BLOOD STALKERS) have small roles.

The director is best known as a Hollywood stunt man and has worked steadily in that capacity since the early 60s (this is his only director credit). While performing a speedboat stunt for the dumb comedy GONE FISHIN' (1996), Wilder, his son Scott and his daughter-in-law Janet (all stuntpersons) were involved in an accident that cost Janet her life. Masterblaster was released on VHS by Prism in 1987. As of this writing, there's no official DVD.

★1/2

Denso Ningen (1960)

... aka: Electrical Facsimile Man, The

... aka: Electrical Facsimile Transmission Human, The

... aka: Secret of the Telegian, The

... aka: Telegian, The
... aka: Telegraphed Man, The

Directed by:
Jun Fukuda

At an amusement park 'Cave of Horrors' spook show, a man is stabbed to death with a knife. Left behind at the crime scene are a gold-plated name tag, a note from an unknown source asking the victim to meet him there and a piece of Klyotron transistor wire. Reporter Kirioka (Koji Tsuruta), who has a background in science, Detective Kobayashi (Akihiko Hirata), a childhood friend of the reporter, and a slew of other police officers led by Captain Onosaki (Yoshio Tsuchiya) begin investigating... and end up involved with an even stranger case than they could have ever imagined. Clues lead them to the Military-Land Cabaret, a nightclub that serves drinks like "Hand Grenades" and "Missiles," has waitresses dressed in cute little sailor uniforms and a gold-painted dancer as the evening's entertainment. The club is owned by a man named Onishi, who is rumored to run an illegal narcotics smuggling ring out of his establishment and has a few dark secrets in his closet. Something that went down fourteen years earlier right as Japan was about ready to surrender to Allied Forces during WWII that's about to come back to haunt both him and the others who were involved in the ass.

As it turns out, Onishi (Seizaburô Kawazu), along with the man found dead at the funhouse (a former sergeant) and two others; former intelligence agent Takashi (Yoshifumi Tajima) and Construction Corp. foreman Taki (Sachio Sakai), were all militarymen a decade and a half earlier. They had been assigned to help protect scientist / electrical engineer Dr. Kajuro Nikki's top secret experiments in creating electronic weaponry. Instead, the men decided to throw out the doctor's experiment and fill the crates with stolen gold bars. The only opposion they faced was from Lance Corporal Tsudo (Tadao Nakamura), who insisted the gold belonged to the people of his country. Onishi and the others stabbed Tsudo, shot Dr. Nikki and barely made it out of the cave before it's blown up with dynamite. They returned there a year later, only to discover that both men's corpses and the gold were missing. Have Tsudo and Dr. Nikki (Takamaru Sasaki) seemingly returned from the grave for revenge? Well... sort of.

Both Tsudo (now using the alias Goro Nakamoto) and Nikki (confined to a wheelchair and missing both legs) live quietly in seclusion on a remote farm... located near an active volcano! Over the years, Nikki has perfected a transportation device capable of moving matter from one place to another in a matter of seconds. Unbeknownst to the good doctor, a (rightfully) bitter and vengeful Tsudo is secretly using his contraption to leap back and forth from his desired locations to get revenge on Onishi and the others; easily alluding the police in the process. Tsudo sends the gold dog tags as sort of a death sentence, sends audio tapes ("I'm going to send you to hell!") or notes to each of the men informing them when he plans on killing them and stabs each with a bayonette. Because Nikki's experiment still has a few kinks, Tsudo's appeareance after transporting himself sometimes takes on a staticky, holographic look (one of several ideas present here that were cloned by Wes Craven for his shitty 1989 flop Shocker).

A Toho production, this mixture of science fiction, horror and crime-thriller genres was made with a reasonable budget and is a pretty interesting curio if you can track down a copy. Judging by the fact it currently has less than 50 votes on IMDb, it seems that the film hasn't built up much of a reputation (or an audience) over the years. It's fairly well-made, though, and features an intriguing premise, some good ideas and decent special effects that haven't aged too badly over the years. If anything bogs it all down, it's too much time spent with the police investigation and not enough time spent with the doctor / killer.

This was one of the first films for director Fukuda, who'd go on to make GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER (1966), SON OF GODZILLA (1967), GODZILLA VS. GIGAN (1972), GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA (1974) and others in the long-running series. Though Telegian failed to score at the box office, Fukuda co-scripted a second film ("Transparent Man vs. the Flame Man"), which was never made.

There are two versions floating around. One is cut and black-and-white (presumably the one that used to play on television), and the other is nicely shot in color (Tohoscope).

★★1/2

Evil of Frankenstein, The (1964)

... aka: Revolt of Frankenstein, The

Directed by:
Freddie Francis

Entry # 3 in Hammer's resilient series, this is a follow-up to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) and THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958) in-name-only. Though it features the same central character, the film disregards the events of the previous movies and is basically a stand-alone film. A drunk body snatcher steals the body of a recently deceased man directly from his home, then delivers it to the remote laboratory of Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), who immediately gets to work removing the heart. "Why not? He has no better use for it?" Before Frankenstein can get much further in his experiments, the drunk rats him out and a local priest shows up to destroy some of his equipment. The Baron and his young assistant Hans (Sandor Elès) decide to flee the area before they get into any more trouble. Frankenstein decides to head back to Karlstaad, his former stomping grounds and the same village he'd previously lived in a decade earlier. A ten minute long flashback (this is brand new footage and not just recycled clips from Revenge) shows what became of the Baron's first monster creation; a pitiable being who had a taste for raw meat and was eventually shot and killed by some angry townspeople. The Baron was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer and "working against God" and was banished from Karlstaad for the rest of his life.

Well, he's come back, anyway. Upon arrival, a carnival is taking place in the village, so the Baron and his assistant easily glide on through undetected. When they show up to his mountaintop castle, Chateau Frankenstein, they find the place overrun with vines and discover it's been looted (they were planning on selling some of his art to make money to further his experiments). The Baron wonders why people can't just leave him alone and mocks the superstitious townspeople for wanting to destroy what they cannot understand. The village's corrupt Burgomaster (David Hutcheson) has his home decked out in all of the Baron's former furnishings, and even wears one of his rings, which infuriates him to the point that he makes his presence known. So it isn't long before the local Police Chief (Duncan Lamont) and the entire village are out searching for him.

While fleeing the village, Frankenstein and Hans come across a deaf beggar girl (Katy Wild) who lives in cave. They decide spend the night there and discover the Baron's creature (who'd previously taken a tumble off the mountaintop) perfectly preserved in a block of ice the next morning! The three take the creature back to the chateau, hook it up to the old equipment and use lightning to resurrect it. However, something's off. Though the brain may be technically revived, the creature lacks motor function and remains in a vegetable-like state. Frankenstein decides to enlist the aid of slimy carnival hypnotist Professor Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe) to "stimulate" the creature's brain with his powers. The plan works, but the hypnotist has other ideas in store for the creature. Since only he can really control it, he makes it sneak into the village to steal some gold and then sends him back to "punish" the Burgomaster and the Chief of Police for throwing him out of town.

Certainly not up to the first two films (Terence Fisher was originally slated to direct but had to bow out after an auto accident), this is saddled with a mediocre, unfocused screenplay. The second half is rushed in comparison to the first. Well, actually the opening half hour could have easily been condensed into about five minutes with absolutely nothing lost in the process. Still, it's a Hammer film, so you can expect much in the way of production quality. The sets and locations are excellent, there's pretty good model / matte work, it's nicely-photographed by John Wilcox (including a great shot of the camera following the strapped-down creature along a track and then lifting up) and most of the performances are at least acceptable. Also of note: The look of the monster has reverted back to the more block-headed style used in the superior Universal films here (Hammer was allowed to do this because Universal distributed it). Unfortunately, the make-up job is subpar compared to Jack Pierce's work.

Though Baron Frankenstein meets a fiery demise at the finale, you can't keep a good mad scientist down, especially when their movies are raking in a lot of money. Cushing would return in the same role in FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967), FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED! (1969) and FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1974). There was also the Cushing-free THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (1970).

The original U.S. release was 13 minutes longer, is censored and has additional footage featuring Steven Geray, Maria Palmer and William Phipps tacked on.

★★1/2