Black Cat (Gatto nero) (1980)

... aka: Black Cat, The
... aka: Gato nero, El

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

When I say "surprisingly good" it typically means that either the film has totally flown under the radar to little fanfare or that it's been outright rejected by critics and / or fans... but I liked it, anyway. This is one such case. The film came in between Fulci's living dead splatter-fest ZOMBI 2 (1979) and his spate of early 80s gore flicks such as THE BEYOND (1981) and NEW YORK RIPPER (1982). All of those were hits on VHS during the video boom era and established Fulci as an icon to gorehounds around the globe, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that many of them were disappointed by what The Black Cat had to offer. After all, this is one of his least gory, least bloody films of the period. You won't find eyes being gouged out or sliced with razors in close-up, brains oozing out of crushed heads or anything of the sort. So what do you get instead? For starters, a better made movie. The budget seems to be higher than usual; it's vividly and creatively photographed by Sergio Salvati (who utilizes lots of low level cat POV shots) and boasts an excellent Pino Donaggio score. You also get an intense performance from talented character actor Patrick Magee, a man of the stage who it's said only did films for the money. Magee's acting is so far above the norm for a Fulci movie that it instantly lends a distinction that's lacking in most of Fulci's other films.

"Freely adapted" from the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe, things open with a fiery car crash that sends the driver out of the windshield before cutting to some charming opening credits of a black cat navigating the rooftops of the village and making its way back home. But don't become too fond of the cuddly kitty. Immediately before the crash, the driver discovered it in the back seat of his car and, somehow, the cat put him into a trance, caused him to let go of the steering wheel and then crash into a parked vehicle; killing him. The cat returns to his home, heads upstairs to where its owner - Professor Robert Miles (Magee) - is intently listening to some strange, distorted tapes, and then scratches the hell out of his hand. As we'll later find out, the Professor and the feline share a very odd link. Or as he says, they're "bound together by hatred."

Miles is feared and hated by the townsfolk in about equal measure. A loner, he frequents a nearby cemetery late at night with his audio equipment in an attempt to capture the voices of the dead. Aside from communicating with the spirit world, Miles possesses psychic powers and the ability to hypnotize people. He believes that the black cat who's hounding him will eventually kill him, but attempts to poison and hang it don't work. It keeps coming back. After a young couple disappear, Lillian (Dagmar Lassander) comes to Miles for help locating her daughter. Miles leads Lillian and the authorities to the missing girl and her boyfriend, but by then it's too late. They've both suffocated after being locked inside an airtight boat house. Cat prints and fur are found at the scene of the crime. A gossipy drunk (Bruno Corazzari) is then pushed onto some spikes. Local cop Sgt. Wilson (Al Cliver) decides to call in Scotland Yard Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck) to get to the bottom of the sudden rash of seemingly accidental deaths. Meanwhile, American photographer Jill Travers (Mimsy Farmer), who's come to England to shoot pictures of ancient ruins, starts getting to know the Professor and slowly comes to the realization that the cat is somehow acting out Miles' subconscious impulses.

Everything here isn't perfect; especially the confused supernatural elements. Though I can accept the concept of a human to animal psychic link, there's no attempt made to explain how the ghost cat is connected to Miles. Or better yet, why the ghost cat is connected to Miles. Since the Professor isn't given proper motivation, and some of the victims are innocents who we've never seen cross or mistreat him, the murders that occur are as much random as revenge oriented (or just a case of wanting people who know too much out of the way). Other scenes, such as the failed attempt to kill the cat causing Jill's windows to explode, lights to flash and bed to levitate, seem completely out of place. One could also gripe about the obvious dummy during a sequence where a victim is burnt up in her apartment and jumps out of the window. But the whole thing is so interesting, and so nicely presented with a modern Gothic feel, that I was willing to say to hell with logic.

Unusual direction, too. I doubt you'll ever see more close-ups on eyeballs in any other film! The cast includes Geoffrey Copleston as another Scotland Yard detective called in at the end to help out, and Daniela Doria (who - as per her usual - provides some nudity) as the boat house victim. DVD from Anchor Bay.

★★★

La noche de los brujos (1973)

... aka: Night of the Sorcerers, The

... aka: Woodoo - Inferno des Grauens

Directed by:

Amando de Ossorio 

In the fictional country of Bumbasa in Africa, a screaming white woman in stripped, whipped, bit on the neck and has her head chopped off by a group of natives. Some soliders stumble upon them and gun down the entire tribe. Then the white woman's head suddenly comes to life and sports some vampire fangs. Cut to "present day," as a five-party expedition arrives in the same area. Professor Jonathan Grant (Jack Taylor) is doing an article on endangered species, with assist from his photographer Carol Harris ("Lorena Tower" / Loreta Tovar). Rod Carter (Simón Andreu) is a guide and big game hunter assisted by his girlfriend Tanika (Kali Hansa). And rich bitch Liz Meredith (María Kosty) is just along for the ride since her father financed the trip. They set up camp near a neighboring village and decide to spend the night, with plans of moving on the next day. Fur trader Munga ("Joseph" / José Thelman) stumbles upon their camp, tells them that even the animals are too scared to come around the area and lets slip that near where they are is a sorcerer's sacrificial altar where it's rumored that sacrifice humans to "the voodoo devil Yaru." He warns them not to stray into the jungle after dark.

Just to play it safe, Rod and Jonathan decide to alternate guarding their campsite that night. Rod is up first and decides to protect everyone by having sex with Tunika, giving Carol the opportunity to sneak out. She wants to photograph a voodoo ceremony and gets more than she bargains for when she stumbles onto the resurrected dead and a vampire queen (Bárbara Rey) who can't wait to make her one of their own. Carol goes through the same routine as the lady in the opening sequence: whipped, stripped, bit and decapitated. Now she's a vampire. The next day, with Carol missing, everyone's forced to stick around until she comes back. The next evening it's a wash, rinse and repeat as one of the men is drowned while developing photos, another of the ladies disappears and the remaining duo must come face to face with the vampire-zombie cult.

 

While this may well be the best movie ever made about hot vampire chicks in leopard-print bikinis running around in slow motion you will ever see, as a horror movie, it's only about a 3. Sadly, I couldn't really get too enthused about this voodoo jungle cheese from the director of the Blind Dead quadilogy. In theory, it seems like this might be fun. And it could have been fun. But it's not. What keeps it from being a good guilty pleasure are the characters. Nearly every single person in this movie is annoying and unlikable. Tunika, for instance, is an insecure control freak who's paranoid about letting her boyfriend out of her sight, for fear that he's going to sleep with one of "the blondes." There's constant mention of "the blondes." When Tanika is left alone at camp, the fur trader shows up to try to rape her and tells her she might as well just have sex with him willingly because Rod is gonna dump her anyway for one of "the blondes." When one of "the blondes" finally retaliates, she calls Tanika a "dirty brunette." I have no clue what this silly hair war was all about but I'm pretty sure De Ossorio saw Martine Beswick enslaving the fair-haired in PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1966) before he wrote this stinker.

 

The hateful characters aren't the only thing that's monotonous and repetitive: so are the horror scenes. The three primary set pieces are almost identical. At the sorcerer's altar, burial mounds put off smoke, zombie natives magically appear on top, the vampire lady shows up, does her routine on the female victim and it ends with a mannequin head being lopped off. The ever-smiling vampire queen and her new female inductees into blocksuckerdom, all with teased hair, plastic fangs and an outfit that consists of a leopard-skin bra, leopard-skin cape, a grass miniskirt and fringe covered leopard boots, are seen about a dozen times doing their slow-mo frolicking through the woods. Since this wasn't actually filmed in Africa, stock footage of elephants, giraffe, birds and leopards have been inserted here and there for that jungle feel... and so have some ridiculous close-ups of stuffed leopard heads. There's also an out-of-place flashback that serves no purpose whatsoever. Any fun that happens to emanate from this one stems from what a blast Rey and Tovar appear to be having playing the vampire chicks.

\

The original U.S. video release was from Unicorn. A nice, clean print was released on DVD through Deimos in 2007. Some versions replace the nude scenes with clothed ones, which are contained as one of the features on the DVD. As if anyone's interested in seeing those!

★1/2

Devil Times Five (1974)

... aka: Horrible House on the Hill, The
... aka: People Toys
... aka: Tantrums

Directed by:
Sean MacGregor
David Sheldon (uncredited)
Sandra Lee Blowitz (uncredited)

A quirky, one-of-a-kind and oddly enjoyable blackly comic shocker; this had an extremely troubled production history which often causes coherence and pacing problems, but at other times manages to enhance the overall weirdness, making the film that much more enjoyable. Grumpy bazillionaire Papa Doc (Gene Evans), who's made a fortune building retirement villages and resort complexes across the U.S., is planning on opening up a new branch and brings along a pair of doctors; experienced Harvey (Sorrell Booke), who's a brilliant doctor but something of a pushover, and his daughter Julie's (Joan McCall) boyfriend Rick (Taylor Lacher), who refuses to bite his tongue around his abrasive, bossy future father-in-law, or kiss his ass. All of the above plus Papa's unfaithful, nympho wife Lovely (Carolyn Stellar) and Harvey's unhappy, boozy wife Ruth (Shelley Morrison) all decide to spend the weekend at Papa's remote ski lodge at Lake Arrowhead to get the plans in motion. Because of bad weather, they all get snowed in and the phone lines are down. What better time for a van transporting a handful of deranged young folks to crash nearby? Five of the psychotic kids escape into the snow and eventually show up at the cabin.

Also crawling out of the wreckage from the van crash, a doctor pursues the escapees, only to immediately get killed upon arriving at the cabin. The children eventually turn on the others adults, devising clever ways to kill them off. The victims are so wrapped up in business and personal matters that they barely seem to realize that there's something not quite with the kids until it's too late. Orphaned Susan (Tia Thompson) has a thing for fire, precocious wannabe actor David (future star Leif Garrett) has a thing for chess, wigs and ladies clothing, Brian (Tierre Turner) fancies himself an army drill instructor and little Moe (Dawn Lyn, Garrett's real-life kid sister) is obsessed with fish, carries around a stuffed fish doll and thinks fish are her babies. Most interesting of all is the oldest of the children, a sullen albino girl named Hannah (Gail Smale), who passes herself off as a novice nun in charge of the others!

Working as a group, the killer kiddies rig the cabin's generator to hang the semi-retarded, bunny-loving caretaker (played by screenwriter John Durren) and use axes, wire, hammers, bear traps, pitchforks and a hand-made spear to kill. One victim is coated in gasoline and set on fire and another is killed with a scythe fashioned to a swing. During the most memorable bit, the nun surprises Papa's sexpot wife in the bathtub and holds her underwater as the youngest of the psychos throws live piranha into the tub. Only in the 1970s would a scene like that - featuring a nude woman in clear view of two children (one dressed as a nun, natch!) - have been shot!

Devil Times Five (originally filmed as Peopletoys and also aka The Horrible House on the Hill) has a production history so checkered you just know the movie is going to be a mess. Just doing a little research on this one turns up the following annecdotes:

- Though there are conflicting stories, director Sean MacGregor was either fired or quit the film well before completetion. Supposedly less than half of the footage used in the final cut was shot by him, though he received sole credit for directing.
- Producer Mickey Blowitz and MacGregor hated each other so much that, during a physical alteraction, Blowitz threw him through a plate glass window (!)
- The film ruined a longtime friendship between screenwriter Durren and the director because MacGregor scrapped much of Durren's original screenplay while in the middle of filming. - After MacGregor was out of the picture, Blowitz salvaged what footage he could from the first shoot, then hired David Sheldon to help him re-write the script and two additional people (Sheldon and Sandra Blowitz - the producer's wife) to direct the rest of the movie.
- Shoot two had to be edited together with shoot one, despite the films having different interior and exterior shooting locations.

So it's no surprise that the editing, continuity, pacing and coherence level are all just a little bit off; downright amateurish at times. Characters are mentioned who never materialize on screen, things seem rushed toward the end and one slow-motion, sepia-toned murder sequence lasts a patience-shredding five minutes. And yet, despite all of the obvious problems, it's amazing how interesting and entertaining the finished product is. It helps that the filmmakers had the courage to be pretty sick, darkly humorous and subversive, and it benefits a lot from a decent cast, with veteran character actors Evans and Booke (indistinguishable from his famous Dukes of Hazzard "Boss Hogg" character here) leading the way. The characters, adult and child alike, are all surprisingly well-defined. Garrett, who became a heartthrob and disco singer soon after making this, has probably the best role of his entire career as the sexually confused pre-teen. In surprisingly perverse scenes, he flirts with one of the old guys and is even seen in full drag at one point! Several nude scenes are provided by the busty Stellar, Garrett's real-life mother.

Though currently credited to "Alan Smithee" on IMDb, MacGregor also made the drama GYPSY ANGELS (1981), another troubled production which lends credeence to the recollections of the cast and crew on Devil concerning his lack of professionalism. The film was not technically finished and multiple lawsuits were filed against MacGregor by both investors wanting their money back and at least one of the actors who appeared in it. Vanna White, who did some brief nudity in Angels and didn't want to sully her image as a squeaky clean game show hostess, sued to try to hault its release. According to MacGregor, star Gene Bicknell, who put up most of the production budget, also didn't want to tarnish his image as a squeaky clean "family values" Republican gubernatorial candidate by the film's release. The unsuccessful politican would later go on record as saying that appearing in the sleazy slasher flick / Sybil Danning vehicle THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE (1984) cost him the election. Regardless of the lawsuits, the film finally made its way to video in 1994.

Presumably a public domain title, Devil Times Five is available on many bargain DVD packs, but your best bet is getting the Code Red DVD, who offer the superior print and an interesting documentary featuring interviews with Blowitz, Sheldon, McCall, Lyn and Turner. It's definitely worth a look. I enjoyed it a whole lot.

★★★