La isla de la muerte (1967)

... aka: Bloodsuckers, The
... aka: Death Island
... aka: Island of Dr. Death, The
... aka: Island of the Dead
... aka: Island of the Doomed
... aka: Maneater of Hydra

Directed by:
Mel Welles

One of the genre titles on the back end of prolific star Cameron Mitchell's horrorography, this doesn't have much of a reputation (and was impossible to find for a number of years) but it's actually pretty fun. At a popular hot spot somewhere in Europe, tour guide Alfredo ("Richard" / Ricardo Valle, who'd previously played Morpho in Jess Franco's The Awful Dr. Orloff) promises potential customers a "most unique tour" of a botanical wonderland during a weekend trip. He's able to get six people to come along, takes them to a secluded island via boat and then drives everyone inland toward their destination. As soon as they arrive at the large villa owned by famous botanist Baron von Weser (Mitchell), they're greeted by a delirious man running out in front of them. Colliding with the car, the man keels over dead. Tour over? Hardly. The Baron soon makes his presence known and informs everyone that the guy they hit was his cook and he was going to die anyway from a "rare tropical disease." In other words, no big deal - Let's start the tour of the botanical gardens, anyway! Afterward, Von Weser brings the guests indoors where they'll be staying.

Snoopy University of Michigan botanist Prof. Julian Demerist (Herman "Nelson" / Nehlsen) is among the guests, and he finds it odd that so many exotic plant species - some unknown to even him - grow there when they don't have the right kind of climate. The other guests are handsome architect David Moss (George Martin), pretty, wide-eyed sweetheart Beth Christiansen (Elisa Montés), obnoxious photographer Myrtle Callahan (Matilde Muñoz Sampedro), lascivious gold digger Cora Robinson (Kai Fischer) and her much-older husband  Jim ("Ralph Naukoff" / Rolf von Nauckhoff). Cora flirts with Alfredo right in front of her frustrated hubby, calls him a worm and gets drunk and starts  to strip off her clothes in front of everyone just to piss him off. Over dinner, the Baron - a vegetarian - serves them a meal consisting of cucumber that tastes exactly like beef. It's just one of many plant mutations he's been working on. By "eradicating the germ plasm with ultraviolet light" he's been able to cross-breed all kinds of different plants, including carnivorous ones which eat mice. Not surprisingly, lots of freaky things start to happen. It's just one of many plant mutations he's been working on. By "eradicating the germ plasm with ultraviolet light" he's been able to cross-breed all kinds of different plants, including carnivorous ones which eat mice. Not surprisingly, lots of freaky things start to happen.

Everyone's startled when the guy who died right outside when they arrived pops up during dinner bringing in a bottle of wine. Never fear, it's just the dead guy's mute, "abnormally strong" twin brother Baldi (Mike Brendel)... or is it? Alfredo (who doesn't last long) is attacked and killed by something outside. And then whatever did that sneaks into Cora's bedroom and kills her too. Both victims are found with puncture wounds on their cheeks, which coincides with the island's vampire legend. Apparently too many bloodless corpses starting turning up, so all of the native islanders moved away, aside from The Baron, of course. So what's keeping him there? And what's been killing off the guests? If you guessed that the mad Baron has created a giant bloodsucking vampire tree then you would be correct!

Things start out rather slowly, but thankfully even the slow parts have their charm thanks to some amusing dialogue. It seems the people who did the English dubbing were in on the joke, as they've even given the older lady character the grating voice of an annoying, overbearing Jewish mama! During another hilarious scene, Cora goes to touch some of the flowers and is pulled away by the Baron. She starts kissing him and he pushes her off; saying, "But you were about to touch my giant... gardenias." Ha! Maneater of Hydra also gets credit for a surprisingly gruesome final ten minutes. The tree acquires its blood through a hollow tube it sticks into victims' faces, a head gets chopped up, an eyeball gets gouged and the tree starts spewing blood all over the place when our hero finally has enough and starts laying into it with an axe. Co-produced between Orbita Films in Madrid, Spain and Tefi Films in Munich, Germany, this one used to be on regular rotation on television throughout the 70s and 80s. The only print currently in circulation (including the current DVD release from Shout! Factory hosted by Elvira) is one that used to play on TV and has frequent fade outs to black about every ten minutes. It's a heavily damaged print, but that's the best that's currently available. It's enjoyable..

Co-produced between Orbita Films in Madrid, Spain and Tefi Films in Munich, Germany, this one used to be on regular rotation on television throughout the 70s and 80s. The only print currently in circulation (including the current DVD release from Shout! Factory hosted by Elvira) is one that used to play on TV and has frequent fade outs to black about every ten minutes. It's a heavily damaged print, but that's the best that's currently available. It's enjoyable.

★★1/2

Il pavone nero (1975)

... aka: Black Peacock, The
... aka: Pavo real negro
... aka: Voodoo Sexy

Directed by:
Osvaldo Civirani

Kluger (Franco Ressel), an engineer, has disappeared in Haiti while scouting areas to build a resort. Marco (Chris Avram) flies in to take his place. When he arrives, his wife Laura (Karin Schubert) is there waiting on him and the two - along with their guide Romero (Luigi Angelillo) - go to the small, isolated jungle shack where Kluger was staying before he vanished. Seeing how the tiny house has some primitive charm to it and it's closer to where Marco will be working, Laura insists they stay there instead of at the hotel back in the city. He reluctantly agrees, especially considering the rumors that there are practitioners of black magic living nearby and voodoo dolls are found in the house. The couple go to the beach so Laura can sunbathe topless and take photos and Marco can break in his spear gun. While snorkeling, she finds another voodoo doll underwater in a cloud of blood. Her flipper gets caught in some coral, but she's miraculously saved when a native man rescues her, pulls her ashore and then administers mouth to mouth. By the time her husband gets to her, the mysterious native has disappeared.

The rumors of voodoo turn out be accurate and the local sect don't want Marco nosing around and threatening their land. While out snapping photos, the cult's powerful high priest - Balaga (Don Powell) - makes his presence known by starting a fire. He's also able to superimpose his image in every photo Marco attempts to take to render them useless. Since Marco refuses to head back to Italy, Balaga then decides to hit him where it really hurts: by targeting his wife. Using voodoo dolls, he lures Laura into the jungle to one of their voodoo ceremonies where she watches from behind a tree as people have sex, a chicken's head gets cut off and everybody drinks its blood. One of the native girls gets her black flesh ripped off to reveal white Laura underneath and then Balaga has sex with her. Now under his spell, she has frequent dreams - either sexual in nature or ones of her running through the jungles tinted green, blue or with some swirl effect - and seems to be turning into a nymphomaniac. After she unsuccessfully tries to seduce their guide, Marco decides to try to break the curse. Well, after having sex with their voluptuous native maid Youma (Samantha Star) on the kitchen table first. Laura also gets a go at Youma herself to fill the obligatory lesbian scene.

Voodoo Sexy (filmed as Il pavone nero or "The Black Peacock") predates a handful of better-known but very similar titles made by Joe D'Amato by a number of years. That cycle included Erotic Night of the Living Dead, Orgasmo nero (aka Sex and Black Magic), Porno Holocaust, Voodoo Baby (all from 1980) and several others. These films weren't so much about their horror plots and utilizing their exotic filming locations so much as they were about insuring there'd be lots of interracial sex scenes. Many of them had slight voodoo themes simply because they probably didn't know what else to do, and that seems to be the case here. The plot is minimal and the voodoo cult pretty much just gyrate around and have sex a lot. Just like D'Amato's efforts this was also filmed in the Dominican Republic (though set in Haiti the "Dominicana" airplane is a dead giveaway) and the bulk of the time is set aside for various sex scenes. While it appears to have been shot as a soft-core, the version I watched had numerous hardcore inserts spliced in using obvious doubles. Schubert herself has a double for the more explicit stuff though she'd make the plunge into hardcore herself a decade later when she was well into her 40s.

I don't think this was ever released here in America and it's really all just dull. The full run-time of the version I watched was 87 minutes (though IMDb says 90).

★1/2

Dracula 3D (2012)

... aka: Argento's Dracula 3-D
... aka: Dario Argento's Dracula
... aka: Dracula di Dario Argento

Directed by:
Dario Argento

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Dario Argento rose to the forefront of the genre with such strong offerings as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977) and Phenomena (1985). Some even went so far as to dub him "The Italian Hitchcock." Along with the strong body of work came a dedicated and loyal fan base who appreciated the director's colorful visual flair, elaborate camerawork and creative bloodshed. Though many would agree that the quality of Argento's output began to take a turn for the worse immediately after the box office flop Opera (1987), the shit didn't really hit the fan until about the turn of the century with the release of The Phantom of the Opera (1998); a gore-drenched, fairly well-produced yet laughable take on the Gaston Leroux novel. Subsequent highly-uneven films throughout the 2000s polarized fans even more. Some felt alienated or betrayed; even embarrassed. Many have since given up on him entirely and claim he's forever lost his touch. Personally, I've always found at least something to enjoy in most of these later, lesser films. I readily admit to being entertained by the likes of The Card Player (2004) and Mother of Tears (2007), while simultaneously realizing this clearly isn't Argento at his best. However, even I - as a huge fan, though never a blindly loyal one - cannot defend his latest release. This is absolutely dire. Rock bottom. Not only is the whole thing utterly pointless, it's also amateurishly directed, horribly written and acted and, worst of all, incredibly boring... Well, boring when it isn't being unintentionally comic.

For some unfathomable reason, it took four different writers (not including Stoker) to conceive this tired rehash. After having a secret midnight rendezvous with her boyfriend, Tania (Miriam Giovanelli) is chased through the woods by a laugh-inducing cartoon owl that transforms into Count Dracula (Thomas Kretschmann). He takes a bite and then drags her back to his castle home to be his new bride. Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde) then arrives in the village via train to take up a position as Dracula's librarian. After a few weird occurrences there, he finds himself being bitten and promptly disappears. Harker's wife Mina (Marta Gastini) arrives a few days later looking for him and reunites with her old friend Lucy (Asia Argento). Dracula shows up and bites Lucy. She gets sick, dies and returns as a vampire just in time for the arrival of Van Helsing (Rutger Hauer). After Lucy is set ablaze and reduced to embers, Mina (the reincarnation of the Count's former love) finds herself under Dracula's spell. Van Helsing and some priest (who was just in one earlier scene) then descend on Dracula's castle for the final showdown. Words cannot adequately describe just how poorly developed and blank each and every character in this film is. None of them have an ounce of depth. There's nothing to make them feel alive and nothing to make us care about anything going on in this overdone story. Furthermore, there's zero regard for pacing, it refuses to find a rhythm and there's a complete absence of dramatic drive to push the story forward. It just all falls flat.

One of Argento's main weaknesses, evident even in his best work, is his complete disregard for scripts and actors. While he used to camouflage this with his trademark style, he's completely unable to do so here thanks to the ordinary high def digital photography. Kretschmann (previously in Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome [1996]) makes for a dashing-looking count, and at least attempts to make the Count seductive and menacing, but the ridiculously poor dialogue and non-existent chemistry with his wooden co-stars completely foils his efforts. Not that I'm blaming his co-stars per se, as they have absolutely nothing to work with themselves. Gastini is cute as Mina, and I could see her being appealing in something else, but the romantic scenes between her and Kretschmann are awkward, forced and completely ineffectual. Asia (who can be quite good if given proper material and direction) gives an abysmal performance and seems to be here only so daddy can fulfill his desire to film her topless (which he's been doing in nearly film of his since 1993's Trauma). Most disappointing of all is Hauer, who acts like he'd rather be doing something - anything - other than playing Van Helsing in this movie. For some reason, most of the actors maw over their stale, lifeless dialogue in an oddly unnatural way, with frequent and unnecessary pauses between words for no reason whatsoever. What is usually relegated to the outtake reel has been allowed to pass muster in the finished product. Hell, I'd be scared to see what takes actually got rejected!

It probably doesn't help matters that Stoker's novel has been filmed so many times over the years that it's almost impossible to invigorate this tired material. Even with a huge Hollywood budget at his disposal, Francis Ford Coppola was only able to deliver a visually astounding adaptation, though even it was dramatically flaccid (having a walking lobotomy like Keanu Reeves in the cast didn't help matters). And that was twenty years ago. While Argento's take on the story (budgeted at nearly 8 million U.S. dollars, which is neither huge nor peanuts) has the appropriate period costumes and art direction, that's about it as far as the pluses are concerned. The photography (courtesy of the talented Luciano Tovoli) is merely OK though thoroughly unimaginative; this looks just like every other medium-budget digitally-shot video out there. The score fluctuates from appropriate ethereal music to a track that sounds borrowed from some 1950s sci-fi flick. There's depressing heavy reliance on CGI for the majority of the special effects and silly-looking beetles, birds, fire, a giant praying mantis (don't ask) and other fx are a constant source of laughs. Shots of the castle and train station look like more like desktop wallpaper than locations. Hell, I don't even think they used a single real wooden stake or any actual fake blood in this entire film. Argento can't even resist ripping himself off here. There are images of flies threateningly swarming outside a window (like in Phenomena), a slow-motion shot of a cartoon bullet traveling through a mouth (just like in Stendhal) and other, shall we say, self-referential moments.

With this, one hopes the legend of Dracula can finally be put to rest for good or, at the very least, a decade or so. There's really no point in re-filming this same story over and over and over again. The addition of 3D effects do nothing to make it feel fresh or exciting, especially when the rest of the film is otherwise terrible. And, sad to say it as a fan, but if this is the best he can do, Argento should probably consider taking a little rest himself. Some directors are excellent storytellers who can make impressive films on small budgets, but Argento isn't, and never really was, one of those people. His visions require a good deal of money and I seriously doubt anyone is going to be giving him much green to make a movie at this point in his career. Trying to skirt costs utilizing newer technology have done nothing but neuter him, and many of his later films have done nothing but dampen his once very good reputation.

★