She Freak (1967)

... aka: Alley of Nightmares
... aka: Asylum of the Insane
... aka: Freaks!

Directed by:
Byron Mabe

Young waitress Jade Cochran (Claire Brennen), a sandy blonde with straight bangs, an upturned snout, sun-baked skin and a Steven Tyler mouth, turns heads at the cafe she works at. The redneck customers hit on her. Her sleazebag married boss - appropriately named Greasy (Claude "Smith" / Earl Jones) - hits on her. Everyone hits on her... but Jade wants something more. Raised in a dirt poor household in dusty Texas with a miserable mom who had eight other kids to raise, Jade is determined to make it and, according to her, she'll beg, lie, cheat and steal to get where she wants to be in life. Show promoter Ben Thomas (Ben Moore) comes in to get a bite to eat and asks to hang a poster. From him, Jade learns that a carnival is about to pass through town, and she figures that may be the next step to getting her life turned around. You hear that, kids. If you want to make something of yourself, forget about college; just go join a sleazy traveling carnival instead. When Greasy finds out Jade plans on ditching her job there, he has a few kind parting words for her: "Get out of here you carnival tramp... I don't want you givin' my customers no disease!"

Jade goes to see the carnival owner Al Babcock (Vanteen), and ends up getting a job as a waitress. Customers and her new boss like the fact she "has it together." She meets Moon Mullins (Lynn Courtney), a friendly strip-tease artist who dances as lewdly as the law allows in her fringe-covered bikini at a burlesque review. Looking for a roommate, Moon suggests she and Jade split costs on a motel room and warns her to stay away from studly, womanizing ride foreman Blackie Fleming (Lee Raymond). So what does Jade do? Why, she immediately heads right out after Blackie and the two end up literally rockin' his trailer. Soon after, she finds out about a bigger fish in the pond in the form of Steve St. John (Bill McKinney), a wealthy middle-aged widower who owns the freak show exhibit that Jade can't stand going into. Though she thinks "They're disgusting!" and nice guy Steve is a freak sympathizer, he has a vacation home in Tampa, a brand new black Cadillac and other such perks that come along with snagging him. Jade decides to make her move and soon enough the two are married... but the new bride can't resist the passion Blackie has to offer and resumes her affair with him behind her husband's back. Could death, revenge, a fitting disfigurement and a bible quote be too far in the future?

This is a very blatant rip-off of Tod Browning's classic Freaks (1932) stripped of that film's quirky insight, its memorable cast, its humanity and its chilling finale. It begins the same way with a disclaimer followed by an opening sequence where a carnival barker (played by an uncredited David F. Friedman, who also wrote and produced) is about to present a disturbing human freak not for kids or those with nervous disorders, weak hearts or queasy stomachs. Said exhibit turns out to be the leading lady after the freaks get done with her, just as it panned out for Olga Baclanova in Browning's film. Speaking of freaks, this film barely even features them! We get to see a couple of dwarfs, a geek, a "herpetologist hypnotist" and a sword swallower briefly, but that's it. No amazing real-life "mistakes of nature" like the Browning film. Zero characterization. No glimpses into their lives. They simply come out during the rushed finale to teach the greedy Jade a lesson. Instead of focusing on them, time is padded out with endless montages of customers doing ordinary things at the carnival (riding rides, playing games) and the workers setting things up, all set to a sleep-inducing light jazz score. It's pretty boring aside from some amusing bits of dialogue here and there and the final unveiling of the "She Freak" (admittedly a very good make-up job for the time).

Felix Silla co-stars as a nosy dwarf named Shorty. Rumor has it that he and Brennen carried on a secret affair for nearly a decade after this was made until her untimely death from cancer in 1977 at age 43. The cast also includes William Bagdad as a toothless drunk who gets a screwdriver jammed into his hand during a fight and the director as a police officer. For a 1971 reissue, director Donn Davison added a few minutes worth of 3D effects and it was released under the new title Asylum of the Insane. It's on DVD from Something Weird.

★1/2

Bermuda Triangle, The (1978)

... aka: Devil's Triangle of Bermuda
... aka: Mystere du Triangle des Bermudes, Le
... aka: Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, The
... aka: Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle
... aka: Triangle: The Bermuda Mystery
... aka: Triangolo delle Bermude, Il
... aka: Triángula diabólico de las Bermudas, El

Directed by:
René Cardona Jr.

The Bermuda Triangle is an unspecified area of water in the Atlantic Ocean where an unusually-high number of airplanes and ships were said to have mysteriously disappeared over the years. It covers between 500,000 and 1.5 million square miles depending on who you ask and some authors have defined the area's points as stretching from around Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico on over to the island of Bermuda and back to Florida, but not all stick by this definition. The Bermuda Triangle legend began back in 1950 with an article in the Miami Herald newspaper, and subsequent sensationalist articles claiming supernatural forces may somehow be at play quickly followed suit. These helped establish the various legends that the area was somehow cursed or haunted, and some even went so far as to assert that it was controlled by aliens! These claims and the poorly-researched early articles have long since been debunked by researchers, authors, scientists, insurance companies and members of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. Like so many other legends, it's a fun thing to think about until fact crashes the party. In reality, there has not been a larger-than-usual amount of planes and ships to vanish in the Bermuda Triangle than there has been anywhere else. It's one of those things that's been ingrained in our subconscious despite the fact it's an unsubstantiated hoax comparable to Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Amityville haunting and numerous other oddities some people continue to believe are real simply because they want to.

The Bermuda Triangle legend reached its peak in popularity in the 1970s and various films were made to cash in. Richard Winer's documentary The Devil's Triangle (1974), narrated by Vincent Price, led the way and was followed by the made for TV movies Satan's Triangle (1975), directed by Sutton Roley and starring Kim Novak, and Beyond the Bermuda Triangle (1975), this theatrical release (an Italian / Mexican co-production), Richard Friedenberg's documentary The Bermuda Triangle (1979) and numerous others. Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which made mention of the alien theory, helped ensure the Triangle legend was known to the masses. Other films, like The Bermuda Depths (1978) and Bermuda: Cave of the Sharks (1978), didn't care so much about the legend, but didn't mind using the Bermuda name to help sell tickets. Since the 70s, movies have been produced in each decade about the Triangle. Some examples include Lost in the Bermuda Triangle (1998), the TV miniseries The Triangle (2005) and Beneath the Bermuda Triangle (2007). And this isn't scratching the surface if you want to list movies making mention of it, movies influenced by it or all of the TV programs devoted to the particular topic.

Expert diver and photographer Edward Marvin (71-year-old John Huston, who is way too old for this role) charters the boat the Black Whale in his quest to discover the lost city of Atlantis (another popular theory floated around by Triangle conspiracy theorists). He brings along his wife Kim (Marina Vlady, who was 30+ years Huston's junior), his teenage children Michelle (hot blonde Gloria Guida) and Dave ("Al Coster" / René Cardona III aka the director's son) and younger kids Billy (Andrés Garcia Jr.) and Diane (Gretha). Edward's half-brother Peter (Carlos East), a drunk, obnoxious former doctor who lost his desire to practice after accidentally killing a child during an operation, and his miserable wife Sybil (Claudine Auger) are also around for the unpleasant cruise, which is about to become even more unpleasant. While way out at sea in the Bermuda Triangle, Diane discovers a creepy old doll floating in the water. It's fished out, given to her and is soon whispering in her ear that it wants raw meat to eat. Soon enough, Diane becomes possessed, starts acting weird, gets flogged by a bunch of green parrots that promptly fall over dead with broken necks and begins obsessively talking about death.

Some of the family members go diving and stumble upon a bunch of underwater ruins which may be Atlantis. Some pillars fall and crush Michelle's legs; critically injuring her in the process. Diane has some questions about the black cook (Jorge Zamora), so she asks her mommy, "What color would Simon be when he dies? Purple or white?" More like red when he's found dead in a puddle of blood after his throat is cut with a broken bottle. Some mysterious bouts of bad weather come their way and a wave sweeps Edward and Kim out to sea. Superstitious Gordon (Miguel Ángel Fuentes), who works in the boiler room, insists the doll be destroyed but no one listens and he gets chopped up by the boat's propeller. Captain Mark Briggs (Hugo Stiglitz) and his right hand man Alan (Andrés Garcia) attempt to get them to the island of Bimini but various problems keep them from going anywhere and a strange static interference prevents them from radioing anywhere for help. Will the survivors be able to escape, or will they become the latest in a long line to disappear without a trace?

No explanation for the mysterious occurrences is ever given here, which is fine by me, but the poor handling of this material is not OK. Potentially eerie moments are continually botched by poor directorial choices and inept editing and pacing. The characters are mostly either cardboard or flat-out unpleasant, and they're not made any better by English-language dubbing so bad and so lacking in infliction that lines like "Would you like a cup of coffee?" and "Oh my God!! She's dead!!" come out sounding exactly the same. The script is bland and plodding, the dialogue is terrible, the film lurches along very slowly for nearly two hours and it's so light on violence (everything pretty much takes place off-screen) that one suspects this was made for a family audience. That's all a shame, too, because this is actually reasonably produced and features decent photography (including some nice underwater work) and an atmospheric score from Stelvio Cipriani.

Bermuda was filmed around the same time as Cardona's TINTORERA (1977) and TERROR STORM (1978), both of which also have ocean settings, shark scenes (three real sharks are needlessly harpooned and killed in this film, which seemed to be one of the director's unfortunate preoccupations at the time) and feature cast members Stiglitz, Garcia and East. Top-billed Huston really isn't given much to do. This was made during a strange chapter in the multiple Oscar-winning filmmaker's career which also saw roles in other low-brow films like the killer octopus flick Tentacles (1977) and the Exorcist / Omen cash-in The Visitor (1979).

★1/2

Nekeddo burâddo: Megyaku (1996)

... aka: Megyaku: Akuma no yorokobi - itai no ga suki
... aka: Naked Blood
... aka: Naked Blood: Megyaku
... aka: Splatter: Naked Blood

Directed by:
Hisayasu Sato

While conducting "brain secretion research,"  17-year-old budding scientist Eije Kure (Sadao Abe) has created the "ultimate painkiller for human beings" that he names "Myson." The problem? He has no one to test its effectiveness on. Thankfully, his scientist mother Yuki (Masumi Nakao) is conducting her own experiments in contraception to help curb overpopulation. She pays three young women; Rika Mikami (Misa Aika), who for some reason written off as a "psychological shock" doesn't need to sleep, and two others known only as "Vain Woman" (Mika Kirihara) and "Gluttonous Woman" (Yumika Hayashi) for obvious reasons, to take part in the harmless test. Well, harmless untl Eije sneaks into the research center and, unbeknownst to his mom or the test subjects, taints each of their iv bags with his experimental drug. Each girl is given it, go on their way and are instructed to come back in a week. Eije's drug won't be kicking in for another 48 hours, so he decides to start following the girls around to document the progress with his video camera.

Rika catches Eije stalking her and the would-be scientist discovers that she is mighty odd herself. Because of her extreme insomnia, Rika's hearing has become extremely sensitive to the point where she can hear what small animals and even plants are saying. It's a language she doesn't understand and it's driving her crazy, so she doesn't get out much and her only sanctuary is her small apartment. She keeps a cactus there because they never talk and has a special sleeping contraption and virtual reality headset so she and her potted friend can share "dreams of the heart" together. Meanwhile, the other two girls who were part of the experiment start showing strange side effects. The vain girl starts jabbing pins in her ears and the gluttonous one cuts her finger with a knife, covers her hand in tempura batter, dips it a pot of boiling oil and then bites off her finger. As it turns out, the drug Eije had given them has a way of turning extreme pain into extreme pleasure. It's a pleasure so strong and irresistible that the girls cannot help but to keep mutilating themselves...

Naked Blood has a reputation as being an extreme gore-fest but during the slow and somewhat bland first 50 minutes you may start wondering "Where's the disgusting gore?" Well, rest assured, it finally does come. A girl jams various sharp objects through her arm and turns herself into a human pincushion (in a scene clearly copying Return of the Living Dead III), another sticks a fork and knife up her hoo-ha and starts eating pieces of it, a nipple is cut off and eaten, a torso is sliced wide open and a man climbs inside (?), blood sprays out all over the place when a throat is cut and, during the most memorably icky moment, an eyeball is speared with a fork, pulled out and eaten. The fx are pretty good but, gruesome moments aside, I ultimately became annoyed at how much of this wasn't making sense. It begins with a rather straight-forward narrative (granted you can accept the whole 'sharing a dream world with a cactus' thing) then during the last half hour goes off in such a bizarre, would-be "profound" direction that even most fans of the film are left scratching their heads. A man walks along the beach, sees a shining light and simply disappears into thin air, only to later return as a ghost... I think. What's going on with the drug may not actually be what's going on with the drug... or maybe it is. Certain aspects are perhaps hallucinations or nightmares but after awhile I simply stopped caring. Random weirdness for the sake of random weirdness doesn't bother some viewers out there, but it usually just leaves me feeling dissatisfied by the end, which is pretty much the case here.

Prolific director Sato also made the sadistic pinku Lolita: Vibrator Torture (1987), the vampire film Love-O=Infinity (1994) and one of four shorts in the horror anthology Rampo Noir (2005). Most of his other movies appear to be fixated on rather unsavory topics like torture, rape, incest, necrophilia, snuff movies and even bestiality. From what I've learned about the director's overall body of work, Naked Blood (a partial remake of Sato's earlier film Bôkô honban aka Rape: For Real) appears to be one of his more accessible films. I'm sure morbid curiosity is going to eventually get the better of me and have me checking out more of this guy's stuff. DVD is from Discotek Media.

★★1/2