La señora Muerte (1969)

... aka: Death Woman, The
... aka: Madame Death
... aka: Mrs. Death

Directed by:
Jaime Salvador

Since the best offers John Carradine was getting in America at this time were in Grade Z productions like Ted V. Mikels' The Astro Zombies (1967) and Al Adamson's BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE (1969), he decided to head to Mexico to try his luck down there. Carradine wasn't the first veteran horror star to do this. Lon Chaney Jr. paved the way by playing a were-mummy in 1959's THE HOUSE OF TERROR. Carradine also wasn't the only one who'd be doing this a decade later. Basil Rathbone and Cameron Mitchell had both been in a 1967 Spanish-language horror-comedy called Autopsy of a Ghost (which Carradine was also in). Even the late, great Boris Karloff ended his long and distinguished career by appearing in four (very bad) U.S. / Mexican co-productions, which combined footage Karloff shot in Los Angeles with director Jack Hill with footage shot in Mexico by Juan Ibañez.

So what was this short-lived trend - drafting English-speaking stars into Spanish-language films - all about? One would assume it was to have more internationally-known names so the films could be released to a wider market, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Only the Karloff films were dubbed. The rest of these weren't even released outside of Spanish-speaking countries. Still, having 'name' stars never hurt anyone's movie, even if the 'names' had to be dubbed over by someone else at the end of the day. Why well-known actors would appear in these to little fanfare probably is as simple as getting a paycheck mixed with lack of opportunity elsewhere; perhaps Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were hogging all the good roles? Carradine was a blue collar actor who simply liked to work and never seemed to turn down any role - so it's not surprising that he was the most prolific English-speaking actor to do these. It was just a one-time thing for Chaney, Rathbone and Mitchell, while Carradine did a handful: Anthology of Fear, Pact with the Devil, Secret of Death, The Vampire Girls and this one; which were all filmed in 1968.

Andres (Victor Junco) is dying of cancer and is so desperate that he's enlisted the services of sketchy mad scientist Dr. Favel (Carradine), who has a bad reputation around town and was expelled from the medical academy for ethical violations. Andres' wife Marlene (Regina Torné) hates Favel, but decides to play along if it means being able to save her husband. As his patient nears his death, Favel puts him inside a glass preservation contraption that puts his body into a state of suspended animation. He then tells Marlene he needs "fresh young blood cells" to put into his body in order to save him. She agrees to be the donor and is hooked up to a machine she thinks is going to pump out some of her blood. Instead, Favel gives her some kind of degenerative disease that sometimes withers half of her face and body. Now with her husband on ice and cursed with a Jekyll & Hyde style affliction, Marlene starts to go a little mad. Favel promises that he'll restore her beauty and save her husband if she'll just get him blood.

Marlene owns a successful fashion design business with her partner Tony (Miguel Ángel Álvarez), who's having an affair on his wife Patricia (Alicia Ravel) with a model named Lisa (Isela Vega). There are always lots of attractive young women hanging around her home, and since Favel requests only blood from young woman, there are plenty of donors at Marlene's disposal. She strangles some with a steel wire and stabs others, using clear tubing to extract their blood once they're dead. After Patricia and Lisa are both killed, Marlene implicates Tony in the murders to buy herself some more time. Unfortunately for her, Dr. Favel has no real intention of helping her and is just using her as a pawn for his own egomaniacal desires to become a world famous scientist.

Fernando Osés leads up the boring police investigation, with help from a doctor played by Mário Orea. Elsa Cárdenas co-stars as Julie, Marlene's personal assistant, who becomes one of the targets. Also thrown into the mix is Favel's pitiful hunchback assistant Laro (Carlos Ancira), who has the hots for Marlene. During one Ed Wood-esque moment, the hunchback attempts to rape Marlene and Favel pulls out a whip and starts lashing him.

There's absolutely nothing new or novel about this low-budget production. The sets are cheap, the police scenes are dull, much of the dialogue is poor, the color photography is pretty flat and the mad scientist's agenda is generic and silly. The makeups are good, though, and some scenes are pretty fun. Marlene chases a victim around in a room full of mannequins and has a nightmare where she envisions Carradine's disembodied head ordering her to "Kill! Kill! Kill!" There are several lengthy fashion show sequences featuring lots of butt ugly lace tablecloth "high fashions" of the day, so those are pretty amusing. The best scene takes place in a horror wax museum with replicas of Dracula, The Wolf Man and the Frankenstein Monster, where Marlene throws acid in some guy's face and then decapitates his girlfriend with a guillotine. 

The real saving grace is its female star. Torné gets to play both tortured victim and demented, over-the-top maniac and does a good job at both. She also appears topless, something not all that common in Mexican genre films at the time. Despite having star billing, Carradine's role is a supporting one and he disappears from the film for long stretches. The actor also gets to introduce the film in a pre-credits prologue.

★★

Les raisins de la mort (1978)

... aka: Grapes of Death, The
... aka: Pesticide
... aka: Raisins of Death, The
... aka: Village of the Living Dead, The

Directed by:
Jean Rollin

Grape harvesters who work for Roubelais Vineyard have been using a new chemical pesticide on their annual crop. Unfortunately, the shoddy masks they've been given by their boss haven't been airtight and the men have been breathing in the toxic substance all along. And if direct contact with the substance in the air is bad, actually ingesting the wine certainly couldn't be any better for you. Aboard a train, two women; Elisabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) and Brigitte (Evelyne Thomas) are the sole passengers and happen to be passing through the same area as the vineyard. At a brief stop, one of the sick men gets aboard the train. His face begins to swell and bleed, he goes mad, kills Brigitte and then tries to kill Elisabeth, but she stops the train and escapes. After running a piece through the country, she comes across a farmhouse where named Lucien (Serge Marquand) and his daughter Antoinette (Patricia Cartier) live. It doesn't take long before Elisabeth realizes that the same affliction that's befallen the man aboard the train has also infected the farmer, who has a strange rash on his hand and has already murdered his wife during one of his "spells." Antoinette insists they sneak out and take the car to go get help, but they're ambushed by the father, who promptly rips open Antoinette's top to reveal she too is infected before sinking a pitchfork into her. On her way out, the farmer pleads with Elisabeth to kill him, so she smashes him up against a wall with the car before heading on down the road.

Elisabeth eventually finds herself in another village, where she's attacked by yet another crazed / infected man and shoots him in the head. From there, she encounters the blind Lucie (Mirella Rancelot) wandering around in a field full of large stones. Lucie claims she's from a nearby village, has been ostracized for supposedly being bad luck and has gotten separated from her guide. Elisabeth decides to take her back and, once they arrive, the entire village appears to have been slaughtered. Bloody corpses are strewn all over the ground, but soon more insane killers to come crawling out of the rubble. After Lucie wanders off and gets herself killed, Elisabeth seeks refuge in a home where a mysterious, nameless beauty (Brigitte Lahaie) is hiding out. The woman claims to be the mayor's assistant and says she's been trapped there for three days. Elisabeth senses something's a little off about her, but since she doesn't bear any of the trademark soars of the infected, our heroine takes her at her word. As soon as the two step outside to make a run for it, the woman grabs Elisabeth and informs all of the mad villagers to come out and kill her. Thankfully, a pair of construction workers pop in just in the nick of time. They; WWII veteran Paul (Félix Martin), and his younger co-worker Francois (Patrice Valota), rescue Elisabeth and the three head off to the vineyard - where Elisabeth's fiancé Michel (Michel Herval) is supervisor - to try to find out just what's happened.

First off, it needs to be pointed out that this is a much more commercial film than Rollin's previous efforts and, as a result, it may not please some of his die-hard fans. As a matter of fact, I've seen Grapes written off numerous times as a lesser film in the director's oeuvre. Though the ambiance, locales and much of the photography is terrific, there's little "surreal" or "dream-like" atmosphere to be found here. It follows along a linear story line without meandering at a funeral procession pace like many of Rollin's other works. It also lacks the director's typically large amount of gratuitous nudity and his obsessive undraping of underage-looking girls in pigtails, which I suspect is actually the chief reason it is sometimes discounted. I've noticed about the same treatment has been afforded some of Spanish director Jess Franco's least exploitative films. While his sex films are often branded "art," some of his other works, such as his black-and-white Gothic horrors, are often written off as being too mainstream by the dedicated. Me? I go straight down the middle with my tastes, so I often enjoy these "lesser" efforts more so than the lauded ones. I like a nice balance between style and story. If a movie is lacking in one area or the other, it better succeed with flying colors where it is good. Grapes possesses neither exorbitant visual style nor a brilliantly written screenplay, but does show enough attention to both areas to at least skim by with a passing grade.

This same story (pollutants leading to madness, mutation and death) has been told many times elsewhere in films made both before and after this one. Where it separates itself is in its amazing shooting locations, which give this an unique atmosphere that sets it apart from other efforts in the 'living dead' sub-genre to which it belongs. The majority of the film has been shot outdoors in the French countryside and it's filled with Autumn colors, various crumbling structures and old farmhouses and walkways made of stone. The backdrops are often so absorbing to view, you'll find your attention drifting away from the action and characters just to check out what's going on behind them. The writing is less successful. Though the plot-line is certainly at least competent, its attempts to draw war parallels at the very end aren't elaborated upon enough to make them all that impactful. The makeup work is itself highly uneven, but there's at least one memorably gruesome sequence (a decapitation) which has managed to withstand the test of time well enough.

Leading lady Pascal sadly committed suicide in 1985 at the age of 39. Lahaie and Rollin also collaborated on many other projects, including the highly-regarded-by-fans FASCINATION (1979), THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED (1980), which shares a similar toxic-chemicals-turn-people-into-homicidal-maniacs premise, and The Escapees (1981). The Synapse DVD release contains 30 minutes worth of interviews with both Rollin and Lahaie, but they don't really even talk about this film except in passing!

★★★

Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

... aka: Alice, Alice...!
... aka: Alice, Sweet Alice
... aka: Communion
... aka: Holy Terror
... aka: Mask Murders, The

... aka: Sweet Alice

Directed by: 
Alfred Sole

Alice (Paula E. Sheppard) is hardly sweet. She's disobedient, prone to tantrums, has problems at school and just loves to torment her kid sister Karen (Brooke Shields) with her creepy plastic masks. Karen is the "good" kid, the "sweet" kid, the "pretty one..."  and Alice doesn't like that one bit. Feeling neglected and lost in the shuffle, Alice does what many other children in her situation do: She starts acting out. Extremely jealous that Karen has been receiving lots of attention and gifts as of late; Alice steals a doll - a present from their long-absent father - from her sister and threatens to steal or destroy the new dress, veil and necklace Karen has received to wear during her upcoming first communion. When the date finally does arrive, someone wearing a mask similar to Alice's and a yellow raincoat similar to one Alice owns sneaks into the church, strangles Karen to death, stuffs her body inside a bench and then sets it on fire. Karen's veil ends up in Alice's possession. She claims she found it on the ground, but not many believe her. In fact, it seems like all of the evidence for the crime points directly at young Alice, and seeing how she's been showing signs of being a disturbed little girl in recent months, the suspicion is more than a little justified.

Now having lost one daughter to a mysterious and unsolved murder, poor single mom Catherine Spages (Linda Miller) must now deal with the psychological issues of her other child. To complicate matters even more, her estranged husband Dominick (Niles McMaster), father to both girls and since remarried, comes back into town and refuses to leave until he finds out what happened. Not helping matters either is Catherine's overbearing, judgmental sister Annie (Jane Lowry), who forces her unwanted "help" onto the family. However, that's all taken care of when she's attacked in the stairwell by the same masked, raincoat clad killer who stabs her foot and leg numerous times. Annie is rushed off to the hospital and, despite not actually seeing the assailant's face, tells authorities that Alice was the one who attacked her. Alice claims it was Karen. She's taken to the police station, has mixed results on the polygraph test and is dubbed a "weird little girl" by the officers. Detective Mike Spina (Michael Hardstark) decides to book her and has her sent off to a mental hospital where test results confirm the girl has some major psychological issues. But, screwed up as she is, is she actually the murderer?

Filmed under the more appropriate title Communion, Alice, Sweet Alice is completely entrenched in Catholic culture and with it the accompanying themes of guilt, secrecy and repression. Nearly every frame contains a cross or a religious painting in the backdrop, and almost all of the characters are heavily involved in the church, which is decidedly not a good thing as depicted here. Catherine's sister, for instance, retains a certain bitterness for both her sister and Dominick for engaging in premarital sex nearly a decade earlier. As a result, she's always secretly resented Alice and treated her more harshly than the other children in the family. Growing up in such a repressive environment, with many around her quick to judge and condemn, little Alice doesn't even feel secure enough to confess she's had her first period to her own mother, let alone relay her feelings of rage about her father abandoning the family and starting a new one. As per Sole and Rosemary Ritvo's screenplay, a restrictive religious environment becomes the breeding ground for various mental problems, which take on many different faces... Just like the strange doll Alice has swiped from her sister.

In this bizarre world, even well-meaning characters do unintended damage. For some reason, Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich), an outgoing, trusted family friend who oversees the private school Alice attends, doesn't relay critical information to Catherine about her daughter's mental problems until things have already started to boil over. On the other end of the spectrum is Mr. Alphonso (Alphonso De Noble), the Spages' obese, disgusting, reclusive landlord. Alphonso lives in the apartment downstairs with dozens of cats and lies around in his own filth all day listening to music. He also happens to be a pedophile who has sexual designs on young Alice. This character works as yet another reflection of the dark side of Catholicism.

Comparisons have been drawn between this film and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973), for the raincoat-clad killer and the constant, dreary shots of gloomy skies and rain, but this is actually much more in tune with Hitchcock thrillers, right down to some of the camerawork and the music score. There are some genuinely creepy scenes and moments of jarring violence, and a good deal of suspense during the first half, though the mystery elements are dropped all together once the killer's identity is revealed well before the conclusion.

The performances are all fairly good here, though there's some histrionic over-acting from at least one of the key players. Sheppard, who was 19-years-old when this was filmed but completely convincing as a much younger girl, probably makes the greatest impression. This was the film debut of Shields. Soon after, she'd become a star after playing a child prostitute in the controversial Pretty Baby (1978), which led to other (creepy) highly sexualized roles for the underage girl. Mildred Clinton (as Father Tom's housekeeper), Louisa Horton (a psychiatrist), Tom Signorelli (a detective) and Lillian Roth (a pathologist) round out the cast.

The cut titled Holy Terror is missing footage, but the DVD releases through both Anchor Bay (which features a commentary track from the director and editor Edward Salier) and Hen's Tooth (which features no notable extras) appear to be uncut. Surprise, surprise, a remake was announced earlier this year.

★★★1/2