Scream for Vengeance! (1980)

... aka: Crying for Revenge

... aka: Schrei nach Rache (Screaming for Revenge)

... aka: Vengeance

Directed by:

Bob Bliss

She's a big city girl, student in her third year of college, granddaughter of a state senator and claims to be independently wealthy. He's a small town boy, community college graduate and doesn't have two quarters to rub together. When Jenny Bradley (Sally Lockett) and Mark Davis (Nicholas Jacquez) cross paths at a laundromat late one Friday night, he somehow manages to work his charms ("charms" being rather creepy and sex predator-esque leering in this particular instance) on her and talks her into grabbing a bite to eat after she finishes up. All on her, of course. Meanwhile, across town, jewelry store owner Anthony Lomas (Leonard Belove), his wife Del (Jane McMahon) and their teenage daughter Shari (Susie Gardner), who keeps flipping her shit because they're running a little late and some boy is supposed to call her, are heading home. 

Hey Shari, there are worse things that could happen! You know, like rapey robbers with nylons pulled over the heads breaking into your home, gagging you, tying you to a chair and threatening to kill you unless your father agrees to take them to his store and give them all the diamonds they can carry.

While three of the robbers - Mason (Walter Addison), Gandon (Steve Scearcy) and Dreyer (R.E. Roudebush) - run off to the store, the fourth stays at home with the mom and daughter. Unfortunately for the ladies, the one they're left with - Luke (Bob Elliott) - is a deranged, heavy-breathing pervert who immediately makes a beeline for the kitchen knives and decides to have a little fun while his pals are away. Naturally, his eyes gravitate right toward the daughter. He speculates about her age and whether or not she's a virgin, plays with her hair, rubs her legs ("soft and warrrrm"), sings to her ("Soft. Sweet. Sweeeeet sixteen. AHHhhhHH yeah."), rips open her top and feels her up. When he tries to take her into the bedroom, the mom fights back and lands a few kicks before the attacker stabs her to death and cuts her throat. Shari is then slapped around, kicked, thrown on the ground, stripped naked, raped and shot to death. She also misses her boyfriend's call.

Back in town, the jewelry store heist is going off without a hitch until an alarm is accidentally triggered. The three thieves panic, shoot the father, run outside, shoot a pedestrian and then carjack Jenny and Mark, who just so happen to be leaving the laundromat at around the same time. Mark is locked in the trunk, Jenny is thrown in the backseat and roughed up a bit and the thieves retreat to a remote country cabin in the Ozarks to hide out, where they'll soon be joined by Luke.

Disappointed at their jewelry store haul, the gang realize that Jenny comes from a wealthy family and plot an extortion attempt. They make her record a message to her parents letting them know what's going on and then three of them leave to go into the nearest town to find a payphone to make their demands known. Left alone to watch the hostages, Dreyer gets hot and bothered looking at porn mags and decides to try to rape Jenny, but Mark manages to break free from his ropes just in the nick time. A broken bottle over the head and a shotgun blast later and Jenny and Mark are free. They hop in a truck and try to get the hell outta Dodge but the remaining thugs catch up to them on the road and they're forced to flee into the woods by foot, with the killers in hot pursuit.

This very low budget regional production from Kansas City, made by a first (and only) time director, combines a number of popular exploitation subgenres (home invasion, hostage thriller, hunting humans...), but doesn't do any of them particularly well. Not that this is terrible either. Despite being middling to poor in most technical areas, the pacing feels about right and it's at least made with a certain basic competency. The first half hour has a few suitably nasty / sleazy bits but the film then curiously dials it back for the remainder once it relocates to the cabin. The biggest issue here is that the plot is simply too ordinary and predictable, making the film as a whole utterly forgettable. The fact it was made in the 70s when a lot of other filmmakers were pushing boundaries with similar material doesn't help the film's plight much either.

Filmed over the course of several years, finally completed in 1979 and, per an advertisement in the October 1980 issue of Variety, released theatrically the following year by Manson International... only not in the United States apparently! I don't believe this was seen by American audiences until the 1986 Magnum VHS release. There were also VHS releases in Argentina (on the Magnum Golden label), the UK (on the Intervision label), the Netherlands (on the Standard Video label), France (Proserpine), Germany (Video Medien Pool) and Greece (Video Standard). In Australia, it was banned in 1982 (reasons cited were for violence and sexual violence), but a cut version missing around six minutes was released there in 1984 on the Video Classics label. I believe most of the other VHS releases also have some cuts as most run below the 93 minute time that was submitted to Australian censors. The version I watched (the Dutch release) ran 89 minutes.

Though hardly an essential title, I'm still surprised that no one has picked this up for DVD or Blu-ray distribution as of yet. Any DVD releases you find online are bootlegs derived from one of the previous VHS releases. Since much of the second half takes place outdoors, this is a title that could conceivably be improved upon somewhat (at least visually speaking) with a proper restoration.

★★

Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû (1969)

... aka: 江戸川乱歩全集 恐怖奇形人間

... aka: Collected Tales of Edogawa Rampo: Horrors of Malformed Men

... aka: Horrors of Malformed Men

... aka: L'effrayant Docteur Hijikata (The Scary Doctor Hijikata)

Directed by:

Teruo Ishii

If I wasn't too lazy to get out of my chair right now, I'd probably kick myself for not getting around to this one sooner... especially since I've owned the DVD for a good decade now!

With his sanity and thus the validity of what we're about to see always in question, former medical student Hirosuke Hitomi (Teruo Yoshida) narrates this tale from his cell at a Taisho Era mental asylum circa 1825. Though he suffers from some sort of amnesia and can't remember much of his past, he's haunted by visions of a seashore, a creepy long-haired man in a dress hanging around rocky cliffs and a beautiful woman whose face keeps changing into that of an ugly man. The only thing seemingly tying it all together is a distinct lullaby. Late one night, a bald man in an adjacent cell sneaks out and attacks him. Hirosuke kills him and then manages to escape. Outside, he hears someone humming the familiar lullaby and finds out it's a young woman named Hatsuyo (Teruko Yumi), who works at a traveling circus that just so happens to be in town and claims she may have keep kidnapped. She's able to help place the lullaby as coming from an island before she's mysteriously murdered in broad daylight; leaving Hirosuke holding the bloody knife. He's blamed for the killing and flees.

While taking a train ride to the coast, Hirosuke happens to glance down at a newspaper and finds a man who looks identical to him listed in an obituary. The man, named Genzaburo, was the son of the wealthy Jôgorô Komoda (Tatsumi Hijikata), a local eccentric with bad eyesight and webbed fingers who purchased a nearby island with plans on turning it into some kind of amusement park. Jôgorô had retreated to the island to live full time with his wife, leaving Genzaburo to be raised by a nurse on the mainland. Per a blind masseuse who regularly worked on Genzaburo, Hirosuke has the same identical scar (shaped like a swastika) on the sole of his foot. Same face and now the same distinctive scar? Can that possibly be a coincidence? Hirosuke begins to suspect he may actually be Genzaburo himself. Just to be sure he's not, he exhumes the grave. Nope. Genzaburo's corpse is there. He just happens to be a dead ringer for him.

Since he's now wanted for several murders, Hirosuke decides to perform a little identity switcheroo. He leaves a suicide note by the shore, swaps clothes with the corpse, throws the body in the water and thus effectively kills off Hirosuke for all intents and purposes. He then lies down in the graveyard and is discovered by some monks. Newspapers are soon filled with stories about Genzaburo's miraculous resurrection. He return to Genzaburo's home to live with his widow Chioko (Michiko Kobata), distant relative Shizuko (Yukie Kagawa), servant Hirukawa (Asao Koike), elderly nurse Gindashi (Kyômi Sakura) and some maids. Seeing how all of these people knew the previous master and his quirks very well, Hirosuke must make some big adjustments to his typical behavior, including pretending to be left-handed and having poor vision to emulate Genzaburo. However, some things can't be faked, like the family dog not recognizing him or his scent and attacking as if he were a stranger.

Hirosuke also has to get a feel for the household dynamic. Though he starts fulfilling his husbandry bedroom duties to please Chioko, he also discovers that Shizuko was having an affair with Genzaburo, which means he has to pick up where the former master left off with her as well. You know, so no one gets suspicious! Making matters even more complicated, he also has to continue with the family business ventures and things aren't looking so good there. Not only does he not know what he's doing but they're teetering on bankruptcy and a lot of the paperwork requires a verifiable signature. He's able to buy himself a little more time spilling tea on documents but that's not going to work forever. Trying to impersonate someone else, even someone with loads of privilege and money, isn't quite as easy as he expected!

As if everything isn't stressful enough already, it turns out that Genzaburo may have been murdered, so whomever was responsible for that will probably come after him as well. Deadly snakes are snuck into a bathroom to try to kill Shizuko and blackmail notes are left in various family member's bedrooms. In one, the blackmailer reveals they know about the affair. In another, they repeat private bedroom conversations between husband and wife verbatim. Several strange deformed men show up to terrorize everyone and Chioko awakens from her sleep in severe pain, spits up blood and then dies. Hirosuke decides it's then time to go against Genzaburo's reclusive father's wishes and visit the island... and then the film gets really, REALLY weird.

I've seen some ludicrously overly-complicated plots in my day but this one about takes the cake! I'm not even going to go into much further detail about all of the characters and their various alliances, betrayals, false identities and such. We only have so much time in one day! Instead I'd like to point out that what starts out as a strange mystery turns into something more along the lines of The Island of Dr. Moreau at around the midway point. This actually does a very good job pacing itself and sets aside plenty of time in the second half to unleash a bunch of bizarre, gruesome and surreal surprises.

Using a false employment agency in Tokyo as a front, Genzaburo's father Jôgorô and his accomplices (including a hunchback) have been able to kidnap hundreds of young women and transport them to the island, where they've either been turned into slave girls, mindless zombies or half-human / half-animal hybrids. White-painted women in thongs run around in herds making animal noises and being whipped, silver-painted men and women put on a Vegas-style show (!) with mirrors, acrobatics, sparklers and colorful lighting, some girls have taken on identities of fish, birds or sheep, bandaged people are kept in cages and fed grass and the deranged mad scientist has even perfected the first-ever male-female Siamese twin, with the female half - Hideki (Teruko Yumi again in a second role) - eventually becoming Hirosuke's lover after she's separated.

Sepia and pink tinted flashbacks feature such sights as a crazed, sadistic transvestite torturing imprisoned topless girls with a knife while cackling with glee and red and green tinted ones detail Jôgorô's unhappy marriage to the unfaithful Toki (Mitsuko Aoi), whom he's been keeping prisoner in a cave, where she's been forced to eat crabs and bugs off her dead lover's corpse (!) to survive. There's plenty of blood and gore, endless female nudity, incest, a real snake getting killed, an amazing Trojan Horse-style grope chair and an absolutely hilarious finale featuring a couple committing suicide via fireworks explosion, which send their heads and various body parts flying across the evening sky!

This is definitely a case where a film with a problematic script (cobbled together using numerous stories from Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo) is carried by directorial flair, originality, artistry, oddball visuals, a distinct lack of good taste and overall craziness. And Tatsumi Hijikata should have been showered with awards for his mesmerizing, truly demented performance as the father.

This Toei Company production went unreleased on any home viewing format for nearly 40 years but was finally unearthed by Synapse Films and Panik House Entertainment, who released it on DVD for the first time in 2007. That was followed by a 2018 Blu-ray release from Arrow Video. Watch and be amazed!

★★★