Devil's Hand, The (1961)

... aka: Devil's Doll
... aka: Live to Love
... aka: Naked Goddess, The
... aka: Witchcraft

Directed by:
William J. Hole Jr.

Rick Turner (Robert Alda) is having a hard time sleeping. Night after night he keeps having dreams of a beautiful woman he's never seen nor met before. An unknown force guides his steps to a shop owned an operated by Francis Lamont (Neil Hamilton), who custom makes dolls. Inside, Rick discovers two dolls that catch his eye; one identical to the mysterious dream woman who turns out to be a real woman named; Bianca Milan (Linda Christian) and another of his own girlfriend, Donna Trent (Ariadna Welter). Strangely, the shop owner tells him that he had the doll of Bianca custom made per Rick's orders (which he doesn't remember doing), but Donna's doll was ordered by someone else. Immediately after they leave, Francis heads downstairs to an altar with the doll - as we soon find out, a voodoo doll - with the likeness of Donna and stabs it with a pin. This puts her in the hospital, where she's diagnosed with a heart spasm and learns she'll have to be under observation for some time.

Rick's next dream features Bianca informing him that if he wants to find out just what's going on to come find her. Rick shows up at Bianca's apartment and realizes the bosomy, heavy-breathing blonde was already expecting him. She informs him that she was able to come to his dreams through "thought transference;" projecting her desires into a doll in his likeness. Bianca's been worshiping "Gamba, the Great Devil God of Evil" and wants Rick to do the same. She confesses to belonging to a cult of worshipers who congregate at a shrine beneath the doll shop. Taken by the bewitching Bianca, Rick attends a ceremony there with his new "sponsor." There, a man plays bongo drums, a woman dances and Francis the "high executioner" offers up a human sacrifice. To test loyalty, a follower is placed under a wheel full of blades, the wheel is spun and then lowered onto the person. If the blade hits and bends then the person is worthy of being a follower. If the blade falls and pierces the heart, they are not. Rick swears allegiance to Gamba and promises to abide by all of the rules; only half-heartedly believing any of this.

Bianca takes him back to her home and promptly informs him "You'll never escape me, darling!" And he is quite fine with that... at least at first. He's also quite fine with the fact that he starts reaping the rewards of being a follower of Gamba; making tons of money at the race track and even more on the stock market. Still, a call of conscience comes to him in regards to Donna; who's still in the hospital suffering since her voodoo doll is still pierced back at the shop. To relieve her pain, he sneaks back into the shop late at night, removes the pin and positions it to look like it's still pierced. Growing jealous and insecure, Bianca has cultist Mary (Gere Craft), a nurse, hired at the hospital to spy on Donna and make sure she and Rick aren't rekindling things. Rick makes one too many trips to the hospital for Bianca's liking, so she decides to concoct a plan that will both test Rick's loyalty and end his relationship with Donna permanently.

A very low-budget offering, filmed in 1959 but not released until 1961 (IMDb says 1962 but they're wrong), The Devil's Hand is talky and has extremely cheap-looking sets but the cast is pretty good (particularly Hamilton and the luscious Christian) and the plot is well-paced and engaging enough to maintain interest. It's not surprising that screenwriter Jo Heims went on to a successful writing career, later penning scripts for Dirty Harry (1971), Play Misty for Me (1971), You'll Like My Mother (1972) and other films. Roy Wright (who was also in the same director's Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow [filmed the same year]) has one brief scene as a doctor and Jeanne Carmen (from The Monster of Piedras Blancas [1959]), Corman movie regular Bruno Ve Sota and Hollywood veteran Gertrude Astor play just a few of the cult members.

The surprise cast member here though for me was Mexican actress Welter in an extremely rare (her only?) American film appearance. The daughter of a wealthy Shell Oil executive born in Mexico City, Ariadna traveled the globe during her youth and became fluent in six different language (her English in this one is just fine). In Mexico, she also appeared in The Vampire (1957), The Vampire's Coffin (1957), The Brainiac (1961), 100 Cries of Terror (1965), The Panther Women (1967) and other horror and fantasy films. I wondered how she ended up in this very cheap independent American production, but a little research revealed that she's the sister of this film's star, Linda Christian; who was born under the name Blanca Rosa Welter and was married to actor and heartthrob Tyrone Power.

A public domain title, this has been spoofed on Rifftrax and you can view it online f.o.c. The print isn't the best quality but it's watchable.

★★1/2

Haunting Fear (1990)

... aka: Edgar Allan Poe's Haunting Fear

Directed by:
Fred Olen Ray

I saw this one a very long time ago and thought it was awful. Upon this re-visit, I enjoyed it a bit more; probably because I knew just what I was getting myself into. Very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's story "Premature Burial," this has Poe's name plastered all over the VHS box, begins with a Poe quote, throws Poe's name over the title and then makes sure that we know that "Sherman Scott's" (Ray's) screenplay is based on Poe. So Poe or no Poe? Well, there is a premature burial of sorts but the similarities pretty much end right there. With this one you'll be getting lots of R-rated sex and nudity plus three different story paths that hope to blend together at the very end. The first aspect of the story is an utterly unoriginal kill-or-drive-the-wife-insane-for-her-money angle. The second, and the most interesting aspect, is a blurring or dream and reality. We're not always entirely surely (at least in the beginning) if what's happening is really happening or just in the mind of its troubled heroine. The third is the possible presence of the supernatural, which itself is divided into three separate possibilities: ghosts, possession and reincarnation. Or perhaps a blending of all three could be at play. Hey, I never said this thing wasn't muddled as fuck, did I?

Neurotic, wealthy housewife Victoria Munroe (Brinke Stevens) is suffering from horrible nightmares that won't let her sleep. Some of these involve her father (Hoke Howell), who she believes may have been buried alive, which instills the fear in her that she too may be prematurely entombed. Vicky blames family physician Dr. Richard Carlton (Robert Clarke) for her dad's death because in a last ditch effort to save him during a heart attack, Carlton gave him an injection of adrenaline. Nevertheless, a girl's gotta sleep, so she's prescribed some powerful sleeping pills. Meanwhile, Victoria's businessman hubby Terry (Jay Richardson) is having an affair with his kinky secretary / mistress Lisa (Delia Sheppard) and owes 80 thousand dollars of gambling debt to sleazy mob boss Mr. Visconti (Robert Quarry), who demands payment soon... or else. The adulterous hubby and his Girl Friday hope that Victoria's weak heart will give out just like it did her old man's, but they're not above trying to speed along the process to get their greedy hands on Victoria's estate. Watching all of the action from a car parked outside the Munroe home is James Trent (Jan-Michael Vincent); who claims to be a detective following up on neighbor complaints of screaming, but may be up something else entirely.

Victoria's nightmares continue to drive her increasingly closer to the breaking point. She imagines her father comes to life in his casket and grabs her, that she's in a bathtub slowly filling with blood and that she finds a skull which oozes yellow gunk and maggots while she's outside gardening. The best nightmare is when she dreams she dies of heart failure but remains conscious inside her own body and is hauled off to a mortuary where she awakens mid-autopsy just as Michael Berryman (in a fun cameo) starts to cut her open. Dr. Carlton eventually seeks the aid of hypnotist and paranormal researcher Dr. Julia Harcourt (Karen Black) in getting to the bottom of the troubled Victoria's irrational fears. After putting Victoria under, Dr. Harcourt is able to communicate with a dormant spirit inside Victoria; her former self. Apparently, in her past life Victoria was raped by her brother-in-law on her wedding night. The husband got revenge by burying both of them alive. Once this is uncovered, Victoria is finally freed of her fears, only to awaken and find her worst nightmare coming true...

I still don't know what in the hell happened at the end. Did Victoria simply go crazy? Did she die of a heart attack and then reemerge from her coffin possessed? If so, by whom? Her dead father? The ghost of her past self? I wish I could provide an answer but sadly I couldn't quite figure it out. I also couldn't quite figure out if it was intentionally left this way so we could make up our own minds about it or not. All I really know is that the last shot rips off the end of the killer doll segment of Trilogy of Terror (1975) by having a bloody, hunched-over Vicky slowly tapping her knife on the kitchen floor.

Haunting Fear is pretty talky and depends a lot on its stars; many of whom had a good deal of dialogue to spit out during the 6-day shoot. Thankfully, there are some decent actors in this one and they make the frequent character interactions at least somewhat entertaining. Stevens looks lovely, has three nude scenes in the first half-hour and attempts (with varying degrees of success) to make her character a sympathetic focal point. Vincent looks - gasp! - clean-cut and sober, which is about the best you could hope for from him by this point in his career. Black (dolled out in a short blonde wig) seems like she'd rather be somewhere else and appears annoyed by something in both of her scenes. Perhaps she read the script just a few minutes before filming? Still, always nice seeing her, as well as veteran horror stars Clarke (The Hideous Sun Demon), Quarry (Count Yorga, Vampire) and Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes). Strangely enough though, it is Sheppard (a former Penthouse Pet from Denmark) who walks away with this one... and not just because she looks great naked and has two lengthy sex scenes. She's simply fun to watch as the evil bitch secretary who likes to burn her breasts with lit cigarettes, smack her lover around in bed and call our demure and sweet little heroine things like "sniveling little whore."

Things get off to an extremely slow start and the action doesn't really pick up until the last 20 minutes, which features some truly laughable gore fx (including a terrible dummy head). Shot in 1989 on a budget of 115,000 dollars, it at least looks and sounds like a proper movie thanks to Gary Graver's professional photography and Chuck Cirino's elegant music score. Rhino and Troma were the VHS distributors but I'm not aware of an American DVD release.

★★

Terrifying Tales (1989)

Directed by:
Paul Bunnell
Armand Garabidian
Ephraim Schwartz

It was a common practice in the 80s to combine unrelated short subjects filmed independently of one another to create feature-length horror anthologies for release onto video. Some added new framing scenes, while others just simply strung the shorts together and left it at that. The most widely seen of these were probably the two Stephen King's Night Shift Collection tapes, but there was also CREEPTALES (1989), CINEMAGIC: FRIGHT SHOW (1986), Tales from the Third Dimension (1985), Tales of the Unknown (1990) and others. Some even recycled the same shorts. The misleadingly-titled Terrifying Tales contains three independently-produced shorts running about 20 minutes apiece. Only one of the three; Paul Bunnell's "Final Destination: Unknown" (copyrighted 1989), is actually horror. The other two; Armand Garabidian's "Ten Seconds to Countdown" (copyrighted 1986) and Ephraim Schwartz's "Creatures of Habit" (also 1986), are, respectively, science fiction and drama with only slight mystery components. The three used here are connected only in that they were shorts made by UCLA graduate students. Sadly, none of them is very good. The opening title screens and closing credits have been left intact for each.

In "Ten Seconds," set in the near future (2025), a young woman (Christine Warner) flees her home and ends up in the desert. A white van with a giant bug on top seems to be following her around so she ducks into a bar where a man is playing pool and asks him for a lift. The guy, who has an emotionless scowl on his face and refuses to talk, grabs his NASA jacket and they're off. The girl claims the guy following her is her father and the van shows up again to try to run them off the road. After the man shoots the van's driver mid-chase, the girl becomes leery of him and his strange behavior. She burns him with a lighter, the two get into a struggle and end up in a chase through the desert. Things end aboard a spaceship. The director, who'd go on to make episodes of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series, also wrote, produced and did the miniature sets and animation. V.V. Dachin Hsu (who'd later direct the decent vampire film Pale Blood) also contributed to the special effects. There's some showoff camerawork, like the camera on a pool table following the balls around. Rating: ★★

Next up is Paul Bunnell's "Final Destination: Unknown," which also has scenes filmed along a desert highway. Psycho hitchhiker Sonny Blake (Andrew Magarian), who's garnered the nickname "The Roadside Strangler" for his crimes, strangles another young woman to death after she gives him a lift and leaves her body in her car on the side of the road. After leaving the scene, an older man shows up and offers Sonny a ride. The man - Mr. Godfrey (Jeffrey Culver aka James R. Sweeney) - takes him back to his home for lunch, where he meets the man's daughter Angela (Lisa Fuller), who looks exactly like the girl he's just murdered. Of course, Mr. Godfrey and Angela aren't who they claim to be. This is even weaker that the first story, with uneven editing, sound recording and photography, and is all rather predictable. Bunnell (who also shot, co-wrote and edited) appears to have ditched directing to concentrate on acting. All three of the main actors went on to act in other films. Rating: ★1/2

They're supposed to save the best for last, but can Ephraim Schwartz's "Creatures of Habit" save the day? Short answer: No. This is even more confusing than the first story. Coroner Dr. Malcolm Rutledge (George Dickerson) shows up at a crime scene where someone has been stabbed. There's no body and the only witness to the crime is hooker Jennie (Linda Nichols) who doesn't seem to want to talk about anything. Feeling sympathy toward her, Malcolm spends the night at her apartment and a weird, one-armed guy named Charlie (Craig Dalton) wanders in later that night. Charlie has bouts of anger, may be retarded, may be faking being retarded just to get out of the army, may have killed someone and keeps talking about potatoes. Malcolm abandons his wife Johanna (Suzanne Hartman) and starts staying with Linda, telling her "I need to know everything about you... what kind of tampons you use... everything." This boring, extremely confusing and darkly lit drama is hardly "terrifying" and doesn't belong in this collection at all. Boasting a 1986 copyright date, it appears to have actually been filmed in the late 70s or very early 80s. Lead Dickerson went on to appear in Psycho 2 (1983), David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and others. Rating: ★

Platinum Productions and MNTEX Entertainment both released this on VHS in the states and both companies put it in a box with a skeleton on it.

★1/2