Los ojos siniestros del doctor Orloff (1973)

... aka: Sinister Eyes of Doctor Orloff, The
... aka: Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff, The

Directed by:
Jesus Franco

Reclusive invalid Melissa Comfort (Montserrat Prous) is just twenty years old but has spent most of that time lying in bed. She's barely ever left the house, has been confined to a wheelchair since birth, is a virgin who's never had a boyfriend, has a "persecution complex" and wakes up screaming every morning from a recurring nightmare. In her nightmare, which turn out to be a childhood flashback, her father (Franco in a cameo) enters her bedroom and bleeds on her as he's dying. Needless to say, Melissa has repressed whatever it was that happened back then, but it's clearly had a terrible effect on her mental state over the years. With both her father and mother dead, Melissa and her chain-smoking stepsister Martha (Loreta Tovar) both live in a large mansion - Fisque Manor - with wealthy Uncle Henry (Jaume Picas), a duke and convicted pedophile (!), and his much-younger wife Flora (tall and exotic-looking Kali Hansa), a former cabaret dancer who's not quite been faithful to her hubby over the years and has a bad reputation around town. Eavesdropping butler Mathews (José Manuel Martín) has fallen in love with Melissa and claims he'll kill anyone who harms her in any way. Mathews also believes that Martha and Flora are up to no good and are secretly conspiring against both Melissa and Henry.

Wanting to help poor Melissa, or at least claiming such, Martha and Flora arrange for a psychiatrist named (uh-oh!) Dr. Orloff (William Berger) to come and evaluate her. Orloff tells Melissa that both her father and he fell in love with her mother years earlier. After being rejected, he went on to marry someone else and have his own daughter, who tragically passed away in an accident. Since no one had ever told Melissa how her father really died, Orloff finally spills the beans. Someone cut his throat and the crime went unsolved all these years. He prescribes Melissa some pills and goes on his way, promising to check back on her in a few days. Later that night, and despite the fact she's been paralyzed since birth, Melissa manages to rise from her bed and walk. In some kind of sleepwalking trance, she goes into her Uncle's study and stabs him through the throat with a clock pendulum. Someone removes the body from the home and dumps it elsewhere. The ineffective police - led by Inspector Crosby (Edmund Purdom) - start investigating... though none too well, seeing as how they do almost nothing to solve the original crime, or the ones that will follow, until the very end of the film.

As one can surmise from the title, Orloff turns out to be responsible for most of the bad stuff and wants revenge on the entire Comfort family, whom he labels "degenerate monsters" and "accomplices" and blame for his lost love's death. After performing the autopsy on Henry, he steals a vial of his blood and uses it to scratch each of his victims off his hit list. Using an injection of a special serum, he's able to not only temporarily cure Melissa's paralysis, but also control and hypnotize her, making her kill at his command. Both her aunt and stepsister are in on it, too, and know what the sinister doc is doing, but go along with it thinking he'll only kill the lord and the butler so they can walk away with all of the inheritance. Little do the scheming ladies realize, but they're also marked for death by the doctor. And little does Martha realize, her aunt isn't planning on splitting any of the money with her. Orloff is aided by a nameless female assistant all too eager to help him carry out his vengeance. A celebrity musician named Davey Procop Robert Eugene Hutchinson (!) aka Davey Sweet and Brown (Robert Woods), who's temporarily renting the house next door while he works on his music, sees several questionable things going on and starts snooping around. He's finally able to convince the authorities to look into things.

If his name wasn't in the credits and the movie didn't have Orloff in the title, you'd be hard pressed to guess that this was directed by Jess Franco. The film doesn't have much visual style and it's surprisingly low on sleaze. Few creative liberties are taken with the material, aside from some token zooms and one very interestingly-shot murder sequence which looks to have some haze and solarization effects added post production to give it a dream-like feel. Even more surprisingly, the film goes almost an entire hour with no nudity... which might be something of a record for a Franco movie shot in the 1970s! When some skin finally is shown, it's during a brief, unerotic and non-gratuitous scene where one of the ladies is beat to death with a shower nozzle while taking a bath. However lacking this may be to the director's die-hard fans, it's still competently put together and watchable, with acceptable acting (Berger and Hansa stand out in the cast) and a silly but workable premise. The ending certainly could have used a little more oomph, though.

Supposedly a partial remake of the same director's NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT (1970) - which I haven't seen yet - this was one of many Franco films to include the Orloff character, though none of the films are really connected. Others include THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1961), DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER (1964), THE ORGIES OF DR. ORLOFF aka Only a Coffin (1966), THE INVISIBLE DEAD aka Dr. Orloff's Invisible Monster (1970), THE VENGEANCE OF DR. MABUSE (1972), THE SINISTER DR. ORLOFF (1984) and FACELESS (1987).

The DVD is from Intervision, who use a mediocre, full-screen print of the film. It runs just 76 minutes and includes the twenty-minute mini-documentary "The Sinister Origins of Dr. Orloff," which is basically just Franco sitting in a chair talking the entire time. He speaks in English and I didn't understand half of what he said, but he did mention that Berger was just a few weeks out of prison on a drug offense when he took the role and that the leading lady looks a lot like his wife Lina Romay, who also plays a small role here.

★★1/2

Frightmare (1983)

... aka: Body Snatchers
... aka: Horror Star

Directed by:
Norman Thaddeus Vane

While doing a commercial, world famous horror film star Conrad Ragzoff (Ferdy Mayne) gets fed up with the obnoxious director and uses his cane to knock him over the balcony to his death. Years later, "the last of the great giants of the horror cinema" is speaking at a college before the student film society and collapses from a heart attack. He's taken home, where he regretfully tells his wife Etta (Barbara Pilavin) "I still have so much to do... I've never died before." At least he gets to do one of those things: suffocating his sniveling assistant / chauffeur Wolfgang (Leon Askin) to death with a pillow, before he croaks. After claiming his twentieth victim, Ragzoff plays the organ, climbs into a coffin and passes on. Not one to go out with a whimper, Ragzoff has already told the press that he refuses to be cremated because he plans on coming back from the dead, has purchased a huge mausoleum with a flickering neon star to house his corpse and has even pre-recorded his own sign off video so that he can be the star, even at his own funeral.

Seven members of the student film society, led by Saint (Luca Bercovici) and his reluctant girlfriend Meg (Jennifer Starrett), get wasted and go to the mausoleum late one night, where they decide it would be swell to sneak inside and steal Conrad's corpse. Stu (Jeffrey Combs, in his horror movie debut) climbs onto the roof, busts in through the skylight and lets his friends inside. Despite some security measures (Conrad appears on a video screen to warn them), they manage to get in and out with the body without being detected, then take it back to their home. They eat spaghetti wearing monster masks, dance with the corpse, kiss the corpse and then set it down inside a coffin in the attic and plan to return it to the mausoleum eventually. The next day, detectives (led by Chuck Mitchell aka Porky from the 80s comedies of the same name) are already investigating the break-in and missing body. When Conrad's widow and her friend Elizabeth (Nita Talbot) get word, they decide to hold a séance to try to contact his spirit and have it tell them where the body is. Instead, they accidentally raise Conrad from the dead.

Because Conrad had gone to hell for his Earthly deeds, he now has supernatural powers. He rips a guy's tongue out with his fingers, causes a girl to spontaneously combust, lures a guy into his mausoleum and kills him with toxic fumes, crushes a head with his coffin, decapitates someone with a sword (a crow then feasts on the head) and levitates a casket and sends someone straight into an incinerator. Strangely enough, Conrad's actual revenge on those responsible for stealing his corpse is the worst part of the movie! The murder scenes are mostly botched because the director seems to have no clue how to set up a shock scene or build suspense. It's also interesting that most are killed inside the house over a period of several days, yet no one hears the screaming at night and no one notices a charred corpse lying plain as day right in the front lawn! The fact the victims aren't given any noticeable personality traits (aside from being borderline obnoxious) doesn't help matters, nor does the fact that this movie is so darkly photographed you can't see half of what's going on. What sandwiches these scenes (the opening twenty minutes and the last ten minutes) are the highlights of the film.

Really, the best thing this has going for it is its lead actor. Mayne (best known for playing Count von Krolock in Polanski's THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS) does a wonderful job in his role; making for a pretty creepy zombie-killer once resurrected and getting to channel Christopher Lee as the pretentious, arrogant actor the rest of the time. Solidifying the Lee connection, film clips used to illustrate Conrad's early career are actually Lee movies! There are nice supporting performances from Pilavin, Talbot and Askin, as well. The rest of the cast is pretty amateurish, with just a few of them going on to bigger things. Lead actor Bercovici would later become a director and, of course, Combs would star in RE-ANIMATOR (1985) in a few years and become a beloved genre icon.

Director Vane also co-directed the underrated THE BLACK ROOM (1982) and made the rancid "comedy" MIDNIGHT (1988) starring Lynn Redgrave. Husband-and-wife producers Patrick Wright and Tallie Wright (Cochrane) were veterans of the 70s exploitation circuit and both appear here in cameos. The masks and posters were provided by Forrest J. Ackerman.

In the 80s, the company Prism released a "sequel:" Frightmare II, which turned out to be a re-titling of the 1974 British cannibal movie FRIGHTMARE. The 1981 Frightmare was filmed as Horror Star (and was also released as Body Snatchers) and released in 1983. Troma handled the DVD release.

★★

Darkness at Blaisedon, A (1969)

... aka: Dead of Night: A Darkness at Blaisedon 

Directed by:
Lela Swift 

Produced by Dan Curtis, this was intended to be the pilot episode for a supernatural-themed series titled Dead of Night. It runs just 52 minutes and was never actually aired on TV so the "series" both began and ended right here. It has much in common with Curtis' then-popular daytime soap Dark Shadows: it's set-bound, was shot cheaply on video, is mostly talk and features a relatively small cast. Not at all surprising since the director was Lela Swift, who had previously directed almost 600 (!) episodes of Shadows, and the writer was Sam Hall, who had written over 300. Mrs. Swift, perhaps the most prolific female television director of all time (she retired in 1989), also made a handful of other made-for-the-tube horrors such as Deadly Visitor (1973), The Gift of Terror (1973; which earned her a Daytime Emmy nod and was part of the ABC Afternoon Playbreak series), as well as the Wide World Mystery releases The Satan Murders (1974) and Alien Lover (1975). To my knowledge, none of those have seen the light of day since they aired on TV back in the 70s.

Angela Martin (Marj Dusay) inherits the dark, gloomy Blaisedon house from a dead aunt she's never met. Since she can't afford the upkeep on her secretary's salary, she's forced to try to sell it. The problem is that it's rumored to be haunted and no one wants to buy it. Being saddled with creepy, grumpy caretaker Seth Blakely (Thayer David), who informs her the home is "not fit for the living anymore," doesn't help matters. Angela seeks help from debonair Jonathan Fletcher (Kerwin Mathews), a former law student turned paranormal expert who became interested in all things supernatural after his dead father's ghost paid him a visit in college. Jonathan, along with his Indian assistant Sajid Raul (Cal Bellini), decide to take Angela back to the Blaisedon home to spend the night and see if there's any truth to those haunting rumors. Indeed there are. Almost immediately, all the hoary old haunted clichés (sudden gusts of wind blowing out candles, the organ playing all by itself, a "cold spot" upstairs where a violent act may have occurred years earlier...) start being trotted out.

Tracing back Angela's family history (using books conveniently located in the mansion's library), Jonathan determines that the malicious ghost responsible for the haunting belongs to its former owner: reclusive commodore Nicholas Blaise (Louis Edmonds). At the turn of the century, Nicholas murdered his brother because he believed he was having an affair with his wife, Melinda. Melinda responded by to that by hanging herself. Since Angela is a dead ringer for Melinda and may in fact be her reincarnation, Jonathan believes the restless commodore has lured her there in attempt to kill her and have her join him in the hereafter. There's a possession (when Angela slips on a cursed ruby ring that belonged to Melinda), a séance (where Angela speaks in Melinda's voice), some grave digging (when it's discovered that Melinda's body isn't in the casket) and a hidden, walled-in room that holds the key to the mystery.

After they survive the night in Blaisedon, Jonathan and Sajid offer Angela a job as a medium, and the trio would have no doubt gone on to investigate other paranormal cases if the series ever saw fruition. But it's kind of easy to see why that never happened. Though not badly made or acted for the medium, everything here seems overly-familiar and the whole project is ultimately forgettable (even by 1969 standards). Actor George Di Cenzo (who played prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the excellent Manson movie Helter Skelter) was an the assistant to the producer.

First released on VHS by MPI, it's now available as an extra on the Dark Sky release of Curtis' made-for-TV trio of terror tales DEAD OF NIGHT (1976), which has nothing to do with the proposed series Dead of Night.

★★

Onna kyûketsuki (1959)

... aka: Lady Vampire, The
... aka: Vampire Man
... aka: Woman Vampire, The

Directed by:
Nobuo Nakagawa

Late for his girlfriend's birthday party, Tokyo Times reporter Tamio Oki (Keinosuke Wada) and his taxi driver are speeding through the streets when a woman walks out in front of their car. Thinking they've hit her, the two get out only to discover that there's no body. Once they arrive at their destination, Tamio gets another glimpse of the same woman hanging out in the garden, but she disappears again. He goes in, finds his girlfriend Itsuko (Junko Ikeuchi) a little upset at him (well, until he hands over a present) and everyone gets started dancing, singing and eating cake. That is, until a surprise visitor stops in unexpectedly. That visitor is Miwako (Yôko Mihara), who disappeared twenty years ago when Itsuko was just a baby. Needless to say, Itsuko's father / Miwako's husband, Shigekatso (Torahiko Nakamura) is shocked to see her again, and even more shocked that she looks identical to the young bride he'd married over two decades earlier. Seeing as how she hasn't aged a day, Shigekatso calls in a doctor friend to look her over. He's unable to come up with any explanation for it, but Miwako is weak, confused and suffers from partial amnesia. She needs her sleep.

While mum's resting, Tamio takes Itsuko to an art gallery and, low and behold, the two find that the award-winning painting is a nude portrait of Miwako. No one knows the first thing about the artist who painted it, but he goes by the name Shiro Sofue (Shigeru Amachi), and he's the dude always wearing shades in the daytime and accompanied by a dwarf sidekick he calls "Tiny." Shiro's real name is Nobutaka Takenaka and he's not quite human. OK, he's a centuries old vampire somehow connected to Miwako's bloodline, which is explained in a lengthy and confusing flashback. In a bizarre touch which injects werewolf mythos into the proceedings, the vampire is set off by the glow of the moon, which makes him uglier, fanged and clawed, and drives him into a murderous rampage. He kills a hotel maid and, when exposed in a nightclub, kills six different women. And you know how in most vampire movies the vampire casts no reflection? This film has scenes where the vampire is invisible and can ONLY be seen as a reflection in mirrors.

Naturally, Nobutaka / Shiro was the one to kidnap and entrance Miwako years earlier and now he wants his runaway bride back, even though she doesn't love him. After getting a slew of reporters and police officers on his tail for the murders, he finally manages to capture Miwako and retreats to his castle home. His castle is in the mountains hidden underground through a cave system and he shares company there with not only the dwarf but other ill-defined "monsters" such as a white-haired old witch and a bald strongman. The ladies in Nobutaka's life who've betrayed him over the years have been turned into statues that decorate the place.

Aside from its historical importance as one of the first Japanese vampire films and one of the earliest vampire films set in contemporary times, this boasts a very charismatic performance from Amachi. The film also has numerous impressive shots (with especially excellent use made of mirrors throughout the film), nice use of widescreen photography (with some breathtaking outdoor shots), very moody lighting and some striking minimalist set designs. Unfortunately, these pluses are all but thrown out the window by an awful final 20 minutes. Once Tamio, Itsuko and a slew of police invade the underground castle, the movie pretty much becomes an unintentionally hilarious disaster. For starters, the sets look incredibly cheap, with floors and walls wobbling throughout the action. Secondly, the fight choreography is terrible, with the vampire suddenly going all Errol Flynn with a fencing sword. The strongman's descent into a pool of bubbling water is done with all the finesse of Tor Johnson and watching the dwarf chase the screaming leading lady around all over the place is just plain comical.

Confused mythology doesn't help matters. I could care less about the fusion of vampire and werewolf tendencies for the villain, but little is explained. The link between his bloodline and the heroine's isn't adequately explained either (he does mention he likes the taste of their blood, but that doesn't count). Neither is how he became a vampire in the first place or who / what the dwarf, old woman and strongman are. Why does the moon turn him into a murderous beast throughout the film, but at the very end turn him into a white-haired corpse? There are lots of frustrating inconsistencies here. Too bad.

Nakagawa also made the impressive THE GHOST OF KASANE SWAMP (1957) and THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA (1959), as well as JIGOKU (1960), which many claim is the first gore film. Watch any of those and skip this one.

★★