La morte ha sorriso all'assassino (1973)

... aka: Death Smiles at Murder
... aka: Death Smiles on a Murderer
... aka: Morte sorride all'assassino, La
... aka: Sette strani cadaveri
... aka: Seven Strange Corpses

Directed by:
Aristede Massaccesi (Joe D'Amato)

Joe D'Amato is usually linked to two things: Italian gore-fests like BEYOND THE DARKNESS (1979) and THE GRIM REAPER (1980) or sexed-up junk like his long running Black Emanuelle series starring Laura Gemser, not to mention over a hundred (often-well-produced) hardcore porn films. But there was a time before all that when D'Amato was mingling around with more 'respectable' mainstream filmmakers. D'Amato had shot the well-regarded giallo WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (1971) and also helmed this ghost / zombie tale, made back when he was still using his real name, Aristede Massaccesi. Most of D'Amato's later efforts are notable for how sleazy and grimy they looked and felt, but this one is nicely, sumptuously photographed (by D'Amato himself), has an elegant score from Berto Pisano and a few actors who certainly wouldn't be caught dead in one of the director's later films. It's also extremely bizarre, confusing and frequently downright senseless. There's some nudity and outbursts of gory violence sprinkled throughout, but neither is as excessive as you'd expect given D'Amato's later work.

Innocent-looking, wide-eyed, blonde Swedish beauty Ewa Aulin (still riding high on her Candy fame) stars as Greta von Holstein. Greta's hunchback brother Franz (Luciano Rossi) is madly in love with his little sis and has even gone so far as to rape her. Greta plays along until she runs across Dr. Herbert von Ravensbrück (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), an older gentleman who sweeps her off her feet and eventually knocks her up. Unfortunately, she dies giving birth to their child. Three years pass and an out-of-control carriage crashes outside Herbert's castle home; impaling the coachman in the process and leaving an unconscious young woman inside the cab. Herbert's grown son Walter (Sergio Doria) and his wife Eva (Angela Bo) now live in the castle and bring the girl inside. Dr. Sturges (Klaus Kinski) is called in to evaluate her. She has amnesia and doesn't remember how she even got there. After noticing she's wearing a medallion around her neck with the name "Greta" and the year "1906" on one side, and a strange symbol on the other, the doctor proceeds to stick a pin through her eyeball (!) Greta doesn't even flinch or react.

Walter and Eva decide to let Greta live with them and both quickly fall in love with the troubled girl. Eva eventually becomes jealous, lures Greta down into some catacombs underneath their home, locks her inside a room and then bricks it up. She tells everyone that Greta has left but two weeks later she materializes yet again to even the score. Meanwhile, Dr. Sturges experiments with corpses in his lab. He concocts some green serum utilizing the formula - actually an ancient Incan spell - found on Greta's necklace, and uses it to resurrect a corpse. The doctor doesn't get very far in his endeavors, though. Someone sneaks in and kills both him and his assistant. That same person then starts stalking and killing off the Ravensbrück family (including Herbert - who shows up in town after a three-year absence to attend a funeral) as well as the nosy butler Simeon (Marco Mariani). An understandably confused inspector (Attilio Dottesio) pops in from time to time to investigate what's going on.

To say the events that transpire in this film are inadequately explained may be the understatement of the year. During an early scene, a maid at the Ravensbrück home keeps seeing visions of the hunchback brother's ghost in her bedroom, who grabs her and appears in her mirror. She attempts to leave and someone blasts off her face with a shotgun. This isn't so weird per se, but it is when it's the only scene featuring the brother's ghost. That whole idea is just dropped afterward. The zombie formula stuff also doesn't quite gel. It's revealed that Greta is revived with the elixir, but has somehow not only gained eternal youth, but has also gained supernatural powers. And I don't just mean being able to live through things that should kill her. I mean like throwing a bouquet of flowers at someone and having it turn into a vicious Siamese cat that claws someone's eyeballs out!

Strange and senseless as much of this is, it does have that really soft, dream-like, intoxicating early 70s Euro-horror feel to it. The whole thing looks pretty good, the acting isn't bad, there's some bizarrely frenetic editing, lots of zooms into eyeballs and some genuine surprises in here for more lenient viewers who don't mind wading through a muddled storyline to get to the rewards.

★★1/2

Alligator (1980)

Directed by:
Lewis Teague

While on vacation at one of those reptile tourist traps in Florida, a young girl gets herself a baby alligator she names Ramon. The family returns home to Missouri, where dad gets pissed off and flushes the little lizard down the toilet. Twelve years later, in St. Louis, animals and people are turning up missing. Well, at least partially missing: random body parts seem to be occasionally turning up at a sewage treatment facility. Officer David Madison (Robert Forster) is promptly put on the case by his superior (Michael Gazzo, and his crazy eyebrows). The first victim - a sewer worker - seems an almost random pick, but the second victim - pet shop owner Luke Gutchel (Sydney Lassick) - has ties to a company called Slade Pharmaceutical. The scientists there have been working on some kind of new growth hormone. They've used stray dogs that Gutchel has managed to round up in their experiments and have also enlisted his services in disposing of the carcasses once they're through with them. Gutchel has cut corners on the costs of cremating the dead doggies by simply tossing them into the sewers.

Ramon, meanwhile, has grown to somewhere between 30 and 40 feet in length by consuming all of those hormone-laced canines. Since he's no longer getting frequent handouts from Gutchel (you know... since he ate him), he'll eventually be forced above ground for his next meal. Well, after chowing down on a few more officers and a nosy reporter (Bart Braverman), that is. Because David keeps coming back to the pharmaceutical company, president and founder Mr. Slade (Dean Jagger, in his final role) pulls some strings and gets him shit-canned. But David doesn't let that, or insecurity about his male pattern baldness, stop him from getting the gator. He receives help from Marisa (Robin Riker), the now-grown young girl who brought baby Ramon to St. Louis to begin with. Marisa has parlayed her love for all things reptile into a career as a world-renowned herpetologist. There are a lot of good scenes in here, but my personal favorite is when the gator crashes an outdoor wedding reception and gobbles a bunch of people up, thrashes others with its tail and smashes a few people inside a car.

Director Lewis Teague, who'd later direct the King adaptations CUJO (1983) and CAT'S EYE (1985), writer John Sayles and the cast have managed to successfully walk a very fine line here. There are plenty of laughs, but they're weaved into this in a way where they never turn it into a send-up, or even really a horror-comedy. It's more of an action-oriented horror film, played rather straight by many of the actors, where the humor is simply an added bonus. The creature effects are done two different ways. A real gator is placed on model sets for some of these, but at other times use is made of an excellent animatronic one. I thought both were very convincing. And damn, don't you just miss the hands-on labor that went into creating real fx back before CGI came into the picture and turned everything into a laughable cartoony mess? Just compare the old school fx seen here to anything you'll see today on the SyFy Channel. I rest my case.

In addition to sharp writing, plenty of action (and explosions), fun nods to everything from The Honeymooners to THE THIRD MAN and effective special effects, there's also a pretty great cast here. Forster makes for an ideal and relatable 'everyman' type of lead. Henry Silva has perhaps the most amusing bit as a skirt-chasing great white hunter who ends up having a fatal encounter with the gator in a dark alley... after drafting some black ghetto youth to be his 'native' guides! There's also Jack Carter as the city mayor, Perry Lang as a police officer who gets eaten after helping disarm a mad bomber, Sue "Lolita" Lyon (in her last role to date) as the news reporter Silva hits on, Angel Tompkins as another reporter, John F. Goff, Mike Mazurki and many other familiar faces. After filming, the animatronic gator was donated to the Florida Gators to use as a mascot.

Saying this is probably the best of the killer crocodile / alligator movies might not sound like much, but there are actually many more of these than most people realize. Just to start the list there's EATEN ALIVE (1976), CROCODILE (1979), THE GREAT ALLIGATOR (1979), KRAI THONG (1980), KRAI THONG 2 (1985), CROCODILE EVIL (1985), DARK AGE (1986), CROCODILE FURY (1988), ENEMY UNSEEN (1989), KILLER CROCODILE (1989), KILLER CROCODILE II (1990), LAKE PLACID (1998) and its three sequels, BLOOD SURF (2000), CROCODILE (2000), CROCODILE 2: DEATH SWAMP (2002), PRIMEVAL (2007), ROGUE (2007) and SUPERGATOR (2007). Alligator itself was popular enough to spawn its own sequel: ALLIGATOR II: THE MUTATION, in 1991.

★★★

Escalofrío diabólico (1972)

... aka: Diabolical Shudder

Directed by:
George Martin

I'd like to dedicate this review to actress Patty Shepard, who passed away January 3rd at the age of 67. Shepard was born October 1, 1945 in Greenville, South Carolina and accompanied her family (her father was an Air Force pilot) to Spain in 1963, where she would remain for the rest of her life. The dark-haired, blue-eyed Shepard studied philosophy, but show business soon came calling and she found modeling, print, commercial and television work; developing a following for the latter. It wasn't long before she'd begin landing feature films, starting with a small, uncredited role in The City Is Not for Me in 1966; eventually moving on to more significant roles, primarily in horror films and spaghetti westerns eager to capitalize on a mysterious and alluring dark beauty quite similar to that of British horror icon Barbara Steele. Her first genre role came in 1970's ASSIGNMENT TERROR, where she acted alongside the likes of Michael Rennie and Paul Naschy. The film also starred Manuel de Blas, whom Shepard had married in 1967; a marriage that would last until her passing.

Shepard re-teamed with Naschy the following year in the international hit THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN (1970); playing perhaps her best-known role: the Bathory-inspired 'blood countess" Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy, who wants to use Walpurgis Night to create an undead army of bloodsuckers. Many other genre roles followed. She played a writer who may or may not be part of a coven of witches in THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN (1972), the heroine in the vampire tale CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1973) and one of a handful of nuclear war survivors trapped in an underground bunker with an unhinged psycho in the apocalyptic REFUGE OF FEAR (1974). Her bloody death by buzz saw in the giallo MY DEAR KILLER (1972) is captured on most of that film's ad art. Perhaps her best genre role of all was in Eloy de la Iglesia's unfortunately seldom-viewed THE GLASS CEILING (1971), a Polanski-esque psychological horror film where she played a deceitful woman whose her downstairs neighbor (played by Carmen Sevilla) suspects has murdered her husband. Many of Shepard's genre films (such as this one and 1973's THE KILLER IS ONE OF THE THIRTEEN) never got released in America.

Things slowed down for the actress considerably in the 80s but she made a mini-comeback of sorts toward the end of the decade, playing one of several sinister members of an exclusive gated community (who may be a ghost) in the confusing REST IN PIECES (1987), a target for elimination by a psycho killer in the slasher EDGE OF THE AXE (1988) and a wealthy investor whose lovely business lunch in a fancy restaurant is ruined when a man's eyeball explodes with parasitic worms in SLUGS: THE MOVIE (1988). All three of those late 80s titles received fairy good distribution deals in the U.S. during the video boom era and probably remain amongst the actress' most-viewed films. So here at The Bloody Pit of Horror, we'd like to give a big salute to Mrs. Shepard and thank her for bringing both her beauty and her talent to the horror genre over the years.

Diabolical Shudder is basically your age old tale of good vs. evil set in and around an old castle. In the evil corner we have Alex Montan (Mariano Vidal Molina), who has spent years coveting both his ailing mother Mina's fortune and his deceased stepbrother Clay's lovely former flame Vivian (Shepard). Clay supposedly died years earlier in a mysterious auto accident, but the body recovered from the accident site was burned beyond recognition, so no one quite knows for sure. The mother (Rosario Royo) suffers from a bad case of dementia, makes no bones about her disdain for her greedy son and refuses to sign over the estate to him. She also claims that Clay and her former husband Walter (who is also dead) continue to pay her visits late at night when no one else is around. Alex cannot wait to get his hands on his mom's money and is getting impatient waiting for the "medieval relic" to keel over. Alex is also a Satanist who heads up a small sect of followers called "The Brothers of Satan," who wear black robes with red hoods and are preparing to reap the rewards of the their service to the Dark Lord.

According to legend, every 100 years on the third night of the invocation after the clock strikes midnight, the King of Darkness comes to his disciples to feast on the blood of a virgin and grant power and prosperity to all of his followers. Alex is banking on it. In conjunction with his portly physician friend (Cris Huerta), whom the subtitles call Doctor Batman (!!), they've already lined up the poor virginal orphan Alma Beilan (Silvana Sandoval) to come to the castle; luring her there under the pretense of temp nursing work. At the mother's request, Vivian also flies in for a visit after a long absence, where she has to constantly reject all of Alex's advances. Alex has been sleeping with the housekeeper Simone (Maria Salerno), but refuses to marry her, and she gets jealous of the attention her man bestows upon Vivian. She throws a drink at him when he refers to Vivian as a "delicious girl" and begins spying on them. Rene (José Villasante), a creepy, grinning, mute old butler, lurks around peeping through keyholes and keeps a mannequin hidden in an old grave in some castle ruins that he fondles and dances around with (!?)

Mina pops in to warn Alma to leave before it's too late and the crazed matriarch of the clan has also exhumed her husband's corpse, hidden it inside the castle and talks to it. Vivian keeps having flashbacks to better days with Clay and nightmares about Alex running his brother off the road down a rocky embankment. Rene tries to rape Alma, so Alex beats him with a riding crop. And poor Clay isn't actually dead, he's just been kept drug and shackled in the dungeon. He does however break out for the big finale and gets to machine gun and kung fu some of the cultists.

Never released in the U.S., and it's kind of easy to see why. When distributors were looking for European horrors to import, they certainly weren't looking for films with no gore and no nudity. Still, what the lacks in sleaze it at least partially makes up for in wackiness. They keep saying the big sacrifice has to take place at midnight, but when Clay busts out of his chains and gets to the ceremony it's in the middle of the day. They've also decide to sacrifice Vivian (a virgin?) instead of Alma for some reason. There is no real justification for why Alex would keep his stepbrother alive and prisoner for years (Why not just kill him?), and I'll probably not be the only one a little disappointed that Satan himself doesn't make an appearance.

All that said, this is a very busy movie with lots going on and it's brainlessly entertaining. The settings are pretty nice, the actors are decent and some of the style choices are downright strange. Quick shots of eyeballs flash on the screen, the camera rapidly zooms in and out and in and out on faces and then starts to wobble and go to and fro for no real reason. When I saw that Martin not only starred, but also directed, wrote and co-produced, I figured this would be some kind of vanity project, but it's really not. Though he does get to be the hero at the end, he has less actual screen time than Shepard, Molina and some of the others billed beneath him.

★★