Una rata en la oscuridad (1979)

... aka: Rat in the Darkness, A

Directed by:
Alfredo Salazar

College professor Josefina Hill (Ana Luisa Peluffo) sinks her life savings into purchasing a huge, beautiful and only slightly run down old house that will only need a little cleaning, work on the electrical wiring and minor repairs to whip into shape. First rule of thumb to all you future home buyers: If you find a mansion dirt cheap there's a reason no one else wanted it... Because it's haunted! Her younger, antisocial, short-haired painter sister Sonia (Anaís de Melo) moves in with her. Sonia has had clairvoyant abilities since a young age and used them to find missing items for family members, predict her mother's car crash and so forth. She immediately senses the place they've just bought used to be a whorehouse. And the painting of a stern-looking woman on the wall hanging over the fireplace? Well, she was the madam of the establishment. Sonia adds to the tale that the madam was murdered by a jealous former lover for cheating on him. Thinking she looks familiar, the two finally realize that she is a dead ringer for the woman who sold them the house, except for her having short blonde hair and the woman depicted in the painting having long black hair. Running low on money until payday, the sisters decide to get out of their apartment so they don't have to pay another month's rent and move in before all the work is done (i.e. no electric, no phone). And then strange and creepy things begin happening... starting with an impromptu topless back massage!

After a long day of moving and cleaning, Sonia whips off her top and has her big sis go to town on her sore back. “That's wonderful! Your hands are so soft!,” says kid sister. Just when things couldn't get any more uncomfortable, the ladies have a long conversation about how Josefina has always been so loving and so caring to Sonia since they were orphaned and how she's always driven away potential suitors just so she could take care of her. Josefina finally leaves and Sonia strips to take a bubble bath. From that point on, young sis has one full frontal nude scene after another. This girl just does not like wearing clothing. While she's in the bathroom, someone sneaks into her room and steals her panties. Has Josefina not gotten around to doing her laundry yet and needing to borrow a pair? Nope. Since she enjoys taking the burden off Sonia's shoulders, Josefina is busy showing tits and ass in her own shower scene so she couldn't be the panty snatcher. Our suspicions are soon vanquished once the underwear bandit reveals herself to be a dark-haired woman in a fur-lined red robe, who shows up again in Sonia's bedroom to sneak a rat into her bed.

The following day, Sonia hears echoing laughter and thinks she feels a hand run along her cheek but Josefina puts her mind at ease by telling her it was probably “a hallucination brought on by the candles” (?) But it's not a hallucination when someone peeps on Sonia while she's sunbathing topless. And it's not a hallucination when the entire house keeps shaking late at night. And the squeaking rats all over the place aren't a hallucination either. The mystery woman with rather large and unladylike hands brings a blue glow wherever she goes and then starts paying visits to Sonia's bedroom for some late night nookie. Sonia stops painting and becomes withdrawn, moody, short-tempered and hostile (“I'll kill you!”) toward her sister. She eventually snaps and starts strangling her, which forces Josefina to bash her over the head with a platter. Sonia's rushed off to the hospital, a doctor (José Antonio Marros) shows up to give Josefina a sedative and then, after he leaves, all the doors lock, trapping Josefina inside.

In an effort to figure out just what's happened, Josefina dresses in her sister's clothes, climbs into her bed and decides to trick the late night lez into thinking she's actually Sonia. Right on cue the ghostly vixen appears... and then comes one of the strangest sex scenes I've seen in quite awhile. The ghost gets into bed, strips her and gets the ball rolling on the foreplay. Josefina starts getting into it so much she has visions of herself joyously dancing around a piano and candelabra in slow motion while white fabric blows in the wind. She's then taken by surprise when the Sapphic spirit suddenly gets on top of her and proves not to be a female at all. Seeing a guy (Ricardo Cortés) in a wig, make-up, jewelry and long pink fake fingernails wearing a lacy gown, stockings and panties thrusting on top of a woman is a sight I don't see too often. Not one to cuddle afterward, the wham bam panty-stealing phantom promptly disappears, leaving Josefina screaming in agony at what an "Impostor!” he / she is. Things lead up to a surprisingly grim fate for our two heroines.

This whole thing is pretty much a cheap piece of sleaze with some downright terrible editing but it was just on the right side of weird and I-can't-believe-somebody-actually-made-this for me to enjoy. There were at least three moments in this one that genuinely took me by surprise, most especially a couple of scenes toward the end that were ridiculous, shocking and crude as hell all in about equal measure. The film also deserves a little credit for being effectively eerie in spots and the score from Alfredo Diaz Ordaz is great. Aside from one brief scene at a hospital about 95 percent of the movie takes place inside the house.

Peluffo debuted in the 1948 American film Tarzan and the Mermaids (which was filmed in Acapulco) and made history in her home country by becoming the very first actress to film a nude scene for 1955's La fuerza del deseo (“The Force of Desire”). She continued to do them throughout her career, including appearing fully nude here numerous times at around age 50. Sure, she was a little long in the tooth compared to the late teen / early twenty-somethings who usually appeared in these kind of films, but when you still have the body for it (and great legs) why not? With age also often comes acting experience and she's able to adequately carry the film pretty much all on her shoulders. Her much-younger co-star, who has that cute tomboy look, is OK, too, though she's not around much in the second half.

Salazar also directed the goofy THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS (1965) and Herencia diabólica / "Diabolical Inheritance" (1994), about a killer clown doll. He's far more prolific as a writer though, and has dozens of credits to his name there, including the Aztec Mummy series and numerous Santo, Blue Demon and Luchadores (wrestling women) films. BCI / Eclipse released this on DVD (paired with La maldicion del monasterio aka Blood Screams here in America) but only in Spanish.

★★1/2

Headhunter (1988)

... aka: Duo pour une mort noire (Two for Black Death)
... aka: Head Hunter
... aka: Die Stunde des Headhunter (Hour of the Headhunter)

Directed by:
Francis Schaeffer

Miami police officer Pete Giuliani (Wayne Crawford), whose hard-bitten, hard-luck, hard-drinking character is laid out for us early on by his razor-nicked face and mass consumption of Alka Seltzer, and his more sensible, compassionate and straight-laced partner Katherine Hall (Kay Lenz) get assigned a new case involving a gruesome murder. A Nigerian immigrant has been decapitated and not in a normal way either. The head almost seems to have been cauterized right off the shoulders and is nowhere to be found. A second identical murder happens in a trinket shop. While leaving the latest crime scene, they encounter Dr. Samuel Juru (Sam Williams), a professor of Pan-African studies at the University of Miami and also a shaman and spiritual leader to all of the Nigerian immigrants now flooding into the area. Sam is called down to the station to offer his insights and informs the skeptical cops that the wave of Nigerians moving there aren't coming for the weather but instead are fleeing their country to escape a “curse.” Said curse is an ancient African demon called Chikatitumo, who doesn't like the fact so many are now out of his reach so he's come all the way to a large American city to get them... and he may end up liking there here so much he'll make it his permanent home.

Sam continues to warn the authorities that the demon will become more powerful with each victim as it feeds on the human spirit and is decapitating victims to separate the mind from the body. The collection of heads signify that he's captured their souls and he gravitates toward those with the most resistance to believing he exists. The cops are all naturally skeptical (“It's Exorcist time, kids!”) and all his warnings end up accomplishing is making him a suspect in the murders. Pete and Katherine's superior, Captain Ted Calvin (TV star Steve Kanaly of Dallas fame, who is pretty awful here and has a terrible come-and-go Southern drawl), even force them to throw the poor guy in jail, though he's soon exonerated as the slaughter continues even when he's behind bars. During one ridiculous scene, a pastor using the recent string of murders to “save” the Nigerians so they'll be “leaving all of that jungle darkness behind” is in the middle of baptizing a woman when a huge sword travels along the water like a shark fin accompanied by Jaws music (!) and decapitates her, prompting him to run away screaming, “I'm never using this fucking river again! God damn devil in here!”

The banter between the two detectives isn't only about the case at hand, but also about Pete's personal life as his marriage to Denise (June Chadwick) has just ended. She's left him for another woman (“My wife is a muff diver!”) and kicked him out of his own home, forcing Katherine to let him shack up with her and sleep on her couch even though she's dating another cop named Roger (John Fatooh). Considering Kat's relationship is spotty at best, is romance eventually in store for our heroes? Not if the demon, who has managed to amass a band of obedient torch-wielding followers who'd rather do his bidding than die. has anything to say about it as he attempts to kill both of them. Once Sam is murdered by the cult, Pete and Katherine pay a visit to Professor Robert Sinclair (Gordon Mulholland), author of “Life Among the Tribes.” which has a chapter specifically dedicated to the severing of heads. His suggestion? Sever all limbs and decapitate the demon. Easier said than done, but a late night trip to a hardware store provides a chainsaw that may come in handy finally completing the task.

I've heard pretty much all bad things about this one but it's not completely awful. Lenz and Crawford have decent chemistry with one another and make for likable, engaging leads. Good thing too because this is heavier on the talk than it is the action. Some scenes are tense and fairly well done (others not so much), the creature design (not seen until the last five minutes) is adequate and some of the spirit POV camerawork is pretty cool, too. The demon's ability to impersonate people to trick victims doesn't really come into play until near the end and one wonders why it even bothers, especially considering it has no issue sweeping in to lop off every other victim's head in about three seconds. So much time is wasted that the ending is rushed through in frantic fashion (albeit amusingly frantic fashion!) and those who live in Miami or are familiar with the city may chuckle at the fact this clearly wasn't filmed there, but in South Africa instead.

This was one of around a dozen productions made by Gibraltar Entertainment in the late 80s into the mid 90s. Most of these were filmed in South Africa, some played at film festivals or in very limited engagements in theaters and all were primarily just video shelf / cable TV filler. Crawford starred in no less than seven of them. They also frequently reused Chadwick, who co-starred alongside Crawford in Quiet Thunder (1988), The Evil Below (1989) and Rising Storm (1989). Ted Le Plat, who plays an obnoxious detective here, was also in four and many of the other actors seen here were in the others. Gibraltar's stable of regular actors also included Zach Galligan, William Katt, John Rhys-Davies and Martin Hewitt.

Multiple scenes from the Z grade "classic" The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) can be see on TV sets at various points for some reason. There hasn't been a legit DVD release here in America for this one yet, nor for many of the other Gibraltar titles. It was, however, well-distributed on VHS by Academy and received a laserdisc release from Image.

★★