La nuit des étoiles filantes (1973)

... aka: Among the Living Dead
... aka: Christine, Princess de l'érotisme
... aka: Erotic Dreams of Christine, The
... aka: Exorcismo per una Vergine
... aka: Labyrinth, The
... aka: Vergine tra i Morti Viventi, Una
... aka: Vierge chez les Morts-Vivants, Una
... aka: Virgin Among the Living Dead, A
... aka: Zombie 4

Directed by:
Jesus Franco
Jean Rollin (zombie dream sequence)
Pierre Quérut (additional sequences)

Like numerous other Franco films, this took on many different shapes as it bounced around European theaters in the 70s and finally made its home video debut in the 80s. Filmed under the title Le nuit des étoiles filantes ("The Night of the Shooting Stars"), Franco originally intended this to be a pseudo-surreal film about death and the afterlife. The distributors, however, had other ideas in mind. The release date is usually listed as either 1973 (the production year), 1974 or 1975, and the film may have debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in its original form in the spring of 1974 (sources give conflicting information). French distributors got their hands on it first and had director Pierre Quérut add brand new soft-core footage starring Alice Arno (as "The Princess of Eroticism"), Nadine Pascal, Pierre Taylou and Wal Davis (aka Waldemar Wohlfaart) so that it could be sold as a sex film. When it came time for its video release, hack company Eurociné bought up the rights, removed the added sex scenes, hired Jean Rollin to shoot completely unrelated new zombie footage to splice in and then it was issued under the title A Virgin Among the Living Dead. This cut was the one distributed by Wizard Video in the U.S. and then re-issued under the title Zombie 4 as part of a bogus series that also included Franco's Revenge in the House of Usher (1982) and D'Amato's Monster Hunter (1981). For the Italian release (under the title Exorcismo per una Vergine / "Exorcism of the Virgin"), someone combined this film with scenes from one of Rollin's earlier vampire movies. The version I watched had the French title Una vierge chez les Morts-Vivants, runs 78 minutes and does not have the added sex scenes nor Rollin's zombie footage. I believe this is the closest version to what Franco originally intended.

Kind-hearted teenage orphan Christina Benton (Christina von Blanc) arrives in a small coastal town from a London boarding school. She's been summoned there by a letter asking her to come visit her estranged family and attend to the reading of her late father's will. Arriving at an inn late that night, Christina receives a warning from the innkeeper about her planned destination; Montserrat Mansion, that she chooses to ignore. The woman also insists that nobody lives there, something Christina will be hearing a lot of over the next few days. Basilio (director Franco, as "Jesus Manera"), the mumbling, incoherent family servant arrives there the following morning to pick her up. After a long car ride where Christina observes strange behavior in the birds and ever stranger odors emanating from the plants, she arrives at the mansion and finally meets her bizarre extended family. While her stepmother Hermine is upstairs dying, her Uncle Howard (Howard Vernon) plays upbeat piano music, her inhospitable Aunt Abigail (Rosa Paloma) behaves zombie-like and emotionless and her cousin Carmencé (Britt Nichols) chain smokes, constantly coughs and laughs at the most inappropriate moments. Christina gets to see Hermine only briefly and she too spits out a warning ("Run... run away...") in her last dying breath. Everyone seems strangely unphased by any of this. And the strange events only get more bizarre from there.

None of her relatives seem to ever eat and any outsider she meets keeps insisting no one lives in the manor. Basilio runs around at night with a chicken head spouting gibberish. A blind woman named Linda (Linda Hastreiter) shows up in Christina's bedroom hoping to "help" her and says she'll pray for her to keep evil away and Christina meets a crazed old man at a nearby chapel who tells her to immediately leave the area. So what is that, four warnings now? Well, make that five as the ghost of Christina's late father (Paul Muller), who hung himself, starts calling to her at night and provides yet more wise advice to get the hell out of there. Dead bats appear on her bedspread, her Uncle slaps her across the face for attempting to bring a local boy into the home and she catches sight of Carmencé cutting up Linda with scissors so she can feast on her blood. A lawyer shows up to finally settle the estate, leaving everything to the naive young woman, but she insists all of these weirdos still stick around. Oh yes, and there is also a woman dressed in black lurking around who's referred to as "The Guardian of the Night" (Anne Libert); a seductive Grim Reaper-type figure.

An entertaining, often dream-like film; Virgin presents a tug-of-war between (s)exploitation and art typical of much of the director's other work. One moment it's going for straight-up sleaze ("You shattered the big ebony phallus!"), the next providing tongue-in-cheek macabre humor (Nichols nonchalantly painting her toenails during a funeral) and a minute later feeling like a haunting otherworldly meditation on death. Composer Bruno Nicolai seems to understand just what's going on and contributes a wonderfully weird and schizophrenic score to proceedings. There are tons of zoom shots, as well as some very stylish and well-executed moments like the dead father - noose wrapped around his neck - floating backwards to lead his daughter down a path and descending into the dark in the arms of the Grim Reaper-like lady. And, of course, there are some seriously smokin' hot actresses in this film who are naked as often as not. All of the brainless behavior and strange events are adequately explained by the final plot revelation. I've seen some refer to it as being ambiguous but it seemed pretty cut and dry to me personally.

Virgin has always been one of Franco's easiest-to-find and, as a result, most viewed of all his 200+ films. Here in America, the Wizard VHS, with its eye-catching art and large-sized display box, was a fixture of most video stores' horror sections. Image Entertainment released a DVD in 2003 under their EuroShock line. The release contained both the original cut as well as the one with Rollin's inserts (which increases the running time by 13 minutes).

★★★

Che yuen joi che (1982)

... aka: 邪完再邪
... aka: 鬼妻
... aka: Ghost Wife
... aka: Hex After Hex

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

Director Chih-Hung Kuei's Hex trilogy concludes with this third and final installment for Shaw Brothers. It has absolutely nothing to do with the serious Diabolique variant HEX (1980) and is instead a direct follow-up to the first comic sequel, HEX VERSUS WITCHCRAFT (also 1980). In HvsW, a desperate, down-on-his-luck man with a gambling problems gets more than he bargained for marrying a ghost for money. This sequel initially follows a similar premise but then shoots off in its own crazy direction. Checking out a knock on the door late one night, muscular movie stuntman Ma Su (Meng Lo) - neighbor of the guy from the previous film - finds a parcel full of gold and valuables laying on his doorstep. He thinks he's lucked out until old Mr. Liu (Chi Hing Yeung) shows up to inform him that he can only keep the money (plus he'll get a house) if he agrees to marry his daughter, Ah Tsui. The daughter happens to love muscular, fit men so it appears to be a good match-up. Well, except for one tiny detail: Ah Tsui is dead. Ma Su refuses to marry a ghost, but when the old man returns home, the daughter's angry spirit leaves the altar. The ghost causes a car accident that kills Ma Su's pretty neighbor Suk Yi (Nancy Lau Nam-Kai) so she's able to inhabit her body and make a play for Ma Su herself.

Suk Yi / Ah Tsui shows up at Ma Su's apartment and insists he call her Red Pok Pok. She seduces him and gets him to marry her. Many problems ensue for the young couple, none of which really has anything to do with her being a ghost. For starters, they and the other tenants in their apartment building face eviction from a development company. To scare them off on demolition day, Ah Tsui pretends to be Yoda from Star Wars (!) and then transforms into Darth Vader and strips the construction crew's clothes off with a light saber (!!) After being fired from Shaw Brother Studios for refusing to do a dangerous stunt, Ma Su ends up getting a job as a driver for Johnny Tien (Dan Lau), the greedy and comically awful manager of the Puck Hik Real Estate Company. Because of his ineptitude and gambling issues, Johnny has run the company into the ground and takes it all out on his employees by being the boss from hell. He doesn't give his employees benefits, watches everyone on video monitors and fires people for the most ridiculous reasons imaginable, even leading one tired, overworked old man to hang himself in the bathroom.

Johnny's having a hard time getting the locals to leave their homes so he can tear them down and begin construction on some high-priced hotels, so he hires a bumbling, cross-eyed arsonist (Yue Tau-Wan) to cause problems. Once Ah Tsing discovers what he's doing, she decides to use her supernatural powers for revenge. During one silly scene, she zaps the arsonist's clothes off, so he slips on a pair of pantyhose, is chased around by angry villagers, gets his ass burned with fire, slides down a hill in a bucket, gets piss accidentally thrown in his face and then has the Shaw Brothers logo branded onto his ass. Ah Tsing has it in for the evil Johnny even more, especially after he fires her hubby. She gets his secretary Lily (Lily Chen) fired, takes her place and then sets out to destroy the shady businessman. She can't type, but Johnny tells her that all she needs is a "nice buxom body" to be his secretary. Ah Tsing feigns interest in him and the two start going on dates. All the while she's actually setting him up to lose all his money during an auction. It all drives him crazy and he's sent away to a nuthouse. Despite receiving plenty of help from his new wife, Ma Su eventually realizes she's a ghost. His friend Big Beard takes him to see Master Lau Gia Lin; a sorcerer who teaches Ma Su about "Sun-Da;" a practice for invoking Gods to drive pesky spirits away. He calls up the spirit and manages to banish her, but begins to have second thoughts about doing so.

This mile-a-minute ghost comedy moves along at an insane pace, with little regard for pacing and continuity. There are many extremely irritating and over-the-top characters and gags miss the mark as often as not, but it's so freaking weird you can't keep your eyes away from the screen. Not just a crude comedy, Hex After Hex also seems to be trying to make a serious point about the infiltration of American culture into Chinese culture. Characters wear clothes with American labels, the English language seeps into the country's dialect and an American named "The Godfather" lives behind a gated home and burns petitions from the locals without even reading them. The finale is one of the absolute strangest you'll ever see in any film as a statue of Thomas Jefferson in the city square is brought to life by a rival sorcerer to do battle. It flips off the hero and then its jacket opens to reveal a slot machine and pieces of gold spew from its mouth. Wow.

Aside from the Hex trilogy, director Kuei also made BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (1973), Ghost Eyes (1974), Fearful Interlude (1975), The Killer Snakes (1975), Spirit of the Raped (1976), Bewitched (1981), CORPSE MANIA (1981), Revenge of the Corpse (1981), Curse of Evil (1982) and THE BOXER'S OMEN (1983) (1983). All of the ones I've seen so far on his filmography are worth seeking out and I can't wait to see more.

★★1/2

Woman Hunt, The (1972)

... aka: Escape
... aka: Highest Bidder, The
... aka: Women for Sale

Directed by:
Eddie Romero

An exploitation twist on Richard Connell's famous and oft-filmed short story "The Most Dangerous Game," this Filipino-lensed turkey misses the fun mark by a wide, wide margin. Working on behalf of wealthy sadist Spyros (Eddie Garcia), a trio of thugs are given the task of kidnapping five beautiful women for use in their shady employer's brothel. Lured onto a boat, naive blonde stewardess Lori (Laurie Rose) and her friend become the latest abductees... except one of the kidnappers gets a little too rough with the friend trying to silence her. Oops, make that four women. Lori is taken aboard another boat and thrown into a bamboo cage, where she joins the sexy, short-haired McGee (Pat Woodell), black Billie (Charlene Jones) and Filipino Rita (Liza Belmonte). The ladies are all taken to a remote island, where they're blindfolded, have their arms tied behind their back and then are thrown into a truck and driven out into the jungle. From there, they're transferred into a cage being pulled by a cow for the rest of the trip. After a botched (and extremely pathetic) escape attempt that night, they finally make it to their destination the following day.

Upon arrival, the women are each given their own room and some sexy evening wear for a "dinner party" they're to attend later that evening. Little do they realize, but Spyros has other plans in store for them other than sexual slavery: namely letting them loose in the jungle, hunting them down and then killing them. He even forces some of his reluctant millionaire clients to take part. Before any of that can happen, some of the thugs decide to try make a move on the ladies; or as one so eloquently puts it: "Sure is a lot of pussy going to waste over there." Some of the girls attempt to comply in hopes that they'll be spared, but when McGee gets her top off for the mean Karp (Ken Metcalfe), he just throws her on the ground, spits on her and calls her a pig, and when Billie gets drunk Silas (Sid Haig) into the sack, he just passes out on her. Looks like their destiny is pretty much set in stone... unless they can escape. Thankfully, the conscientious Tony (top-billed John Ashley; also one of the producers) is having no part in the "hunt" and helps the ladies get out of the house, but they still have miles of dangerous jungle to navigate as well as Spyros, his guests and his goons to evade, if they're going to reach safety.

Combining elements of numerous tried-and-true exploitation subgenres: jungle-action, women-in-prison, hunting humans, etc., probably sounded great on paper, but unfortunately the execution is extremely bland and the film pretty much flat lines right out of the gate. Part of the blame falls on the director for his inability to generate any excitement or fun at any point in the film. Perhaps even more of the blame falls on the writers (it was scripted by David Hoover based on a story he co-wrote with Jack Hill), for doing a poor job rehashing an already tired plot, for refusing to give any of the characters even the slightest glimmer of personality and for pussy-footing around with various boring nonsense before allowing the action to finally kick in. Hell, our heroines aren't even actually in the jungle until the final 20 minutes, and even then we're not given much in the way of action or violence. Certainly not enough to justify the first boring hour of this 72-minute film.

I also have a bone to pick with the cast. With the possible exception of Haig, the performances are uniformly terrible and lifeless and most of these people behave as though they'd rather be somewhere else doing something else. This isn't fun, spirited, over-the-top bad acting from an enthusiastic cast, it's just bland, bored bad acting. In low-budget exploitation films, a game cast goes a long, long way. Roger Corman (the uncredited executive producer) knows this himself because many of his own super-low-budget films were elevated tremendously by talented, memorable actors like Dick Miller and Beverly Garland. Sadly, this one lacks anyone with the charisma and talent of, say, Pam Grier or Roberta Collins; both mainstays of Corman productions from around this same time. Perhaps the worst offender of all is the painfully wooden Lisa Todd (later of Hee Haw fame), who's handed a camp movie dream role as Spyros' black-clad lesbian assistant and does absolutely nothing memorable with the part.

Best one can say for this one is that there's breasts (all of the female leads aside from Todd lose their top at least once) and a bit of blood toward the end (including a spike trap hitting a stomach, a head being blown off and a real cobra getting hacked up with a machete). Romero also made The Beast of the Yellow Night (1971), The Twilight People (1972) and Black Mama, White Mama (1973) for Corman's New World Pictures. IMDb claims this was released in 1973, but it actually first hit theaters November 1972.

★1/2