Mama Dracula (1980): or BloodSucking Freaks

If an aged Vaudevillian slips on a banana peel and no one laughs, is it still comedy?

I admit that one of the reasons I selected Mill Creek's 50 Drive-In Classics box set to follow the legendary and (probably) never-to-be-topped 50 Chilling Classics compendium (still the deal of the century folks--get one today!) is the presence of one title among the fifty forgotten films presented there that begged--nay, screamed--to be watched: 1980's Mama Dracula. I mean, come on. MAMA DRACULA. How could you not want to watch that film?

The more I learned, the better it sounded--a zany vampire spoof at the tail-end of the seventies, and starring Academy Award™ Winner Louise Fletcher in the title role? A pair of famously wacky twin vampires? An Elizabeth Bathory-based plot that promised loads of nudity along with the laffs? Last Tango in Paris hottie Maria Schneider to boot? How could it go wrong?

Let me count the ways...

We open on a portrait of the severe-looking Countess Erzebet Dracula (Fletcher, doing her best Nurse Ratchet scowl), as a deep but also fey/gay voice-over details the particulars of her history. This is the standard Bathory stuff--she kidnapped virgins from the village and bathed in their blood in order to preserve her youth, she was locked up in a tower for her crimes, she disappeared later, yadda yadda yadda--ending with the ominous line, "Today the Countess lives still, and continues to pursue her eeeevil destiny..." All in the voice of the MC from Queer Eye for the Creepy Guy. You laughing yet?

Next we cut to a laboratory, where a stereotypically nerdy professor-type who looks like he just stepped out of a Men-At-Work video (Hello, Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive!) is cajoling his bunnies into giving him blood samples. The bunny-poker is Professor Peter Von Blood, who on second look is actually the spitting image of Jon Cryer in his immortal role as Duckie in Pretty in Pink.

"This'll make Molly Ringwald fall in love with me!
Or at least knock her out long enough that it won't matter."

Dr. Duckie has big dreams--he spends a couple of minutes presenting himself an imaginary Nobel Prize for his work in blood research (seriously, with a name like "Von Blood," you think he's going into economics?) and a moment later receives an engraved invitation to the first annual World Blood Congress hosted by none other than Countess Dracula. As he boards his transatlantic steamship in New York Harbor, we get a close-up of the Statue of Liberty--which (with Looney-Tunes sound FX) suddenly sprouts a pair of vampire teeth! How 'bout now, you laffin?

There's a little bit of cleverness as Von Blood orders his dinner on the ship, obviously uncomfortable with the high-class Maître d', and as he opens the menu we find the film's credits inside. (I'll have the Fletcher Falafel, thanks!) We get more shots of differing modes of transportation as Von Blood makes his way across Europe by train, headed for Transylvania, natch. One of the passengers is holding a nespaper that has the headline, " "TERROR: FIVE MORE GIRLS ARE MISSING!" ," extraneous quotation marks included. Now THAT made me laugh--yes, I got my first chuckle of the movie from an unintentional grammar gaffe. That should tell you something.

In Harker mode, Duckie ends up at a pub in the Carpathians, where all the villagers still dress like extras from Bride of Frankenstein. There's some "comical" tooth checking, the pub owner offers his daughter to Von Blood, forcefully encouraging him to deflower her (if she's not a virgin, she'll be "safe," see?), and as Duckie dances with the buxom virgin we get more "hilarious" cartoon sound effects over closeups of the girl's cleavage (Gerald McBoob-Boing!) before a heavy, ugly henchwoman who speaks only in grunts shows up to whisk him away. It's all sub-sub-Mel Brooks level comedy, and while I enjoy boinging boobs as much as the next guy--hell, as much as the next 5 guys put together--it still all seemed a little desperate and sad.

BOOOOIIIIINNNGGG!

So Duckie finally makes it out to Castle Dracula, where he meets the Countess's twin sons (more on these two in a minute) and Mama Dracula herself. It was at this point that I realized things were just not going to get any better. Louise Fletcher is not just phoning it in--she's gone back in time to the Old West and is dictating her role to a clerk in green visor, vest, and white shirt with a garter on the sleeve who's tapping it out in Morse code. She's clearly having no fun, and the success of a would-be zany comedy like this almost depends on the sense that the people involved all think it's a hoot. Here, you get the sense that almost everyone involved would rather be having a root canal or a proctological exam--which come to think of it, would probably be more entertaining.

So the gist of the plot goes like this, and stop me if you've heard this one: Countess Dracula needs virgin blood to maintain her youth, but thanks to the recently-ended Swingin' 70s, virgin blood is in record-low supply. She's lured Duckie to her castle in the hopes that he can take a small sample of virgin blood and use SCIENCE! to reproduce it indefinitely, creating a blood-red fountain of youth. To give him the raw material he needs, she and her sons kidnap virginal girls from Mama Dracula's fashion boutique--which is named, cunningly, "Vamp Boutique"--conveniently located in the sprawling Paris-like metropolis only a half-hour's drive from her castle in the heart of the Carpathian mountains. Yeah.

Of course the missing girls raise the suspicion of the town police force, which seems to consist entirely of a fat old man in Sherlock Holmes gear and his nubile, virginal daughter, played by Schneider (the daughter, not the fat man). While the old man bumbles listlessly from one tired slapstick gag to another (and his catch phrases of "Sabotage! Sabotage!" and "You know my methods!" summarily fail to inspire the chuckles they're so plainly striving to), his considerably smarter but no more comedically-talented daughter suspects the truth about Vamp Boutique and uses her position as lead actress in a traveling drama troupe (seriously, don't ask) to infiltrate Castle Dracula and get to the bottom of things. It all ends in a gala fashion show at the castle with a would-be zany ending and a nonsensical epilogue that once again inspires little more than a sardonic smirk.

"This better be real booze if they expect to keep me on this set."

I said earlier that the comedy here is sub-sub-Mel Brooks level, and that bears repeating. At his best Brooks is able to take the old Vaudeville gags and twist them into delirious but affectionate extravaganzas that gain as many smiles from their transparent good nature and warmth as from their hoary comedic tropes. (Think of "Doin' the French Mistake" from Blazing Saddles, or Marty Feldman's inspired performance as EYE-gor in Young Frankenstein ["IIIIIIII ain't got no body!" "Call it...a hunch!" "What hump?"]) But here that warmth, affection, and knowing corniness is completely absent. It's as if the actors know the things they're doing are supposed to be funny, but are clueless as to why, and furthermore don't care enough even to try to sell it.

For a few examples, early on Fletcher is having a therapy session with a stereotypically Jewish shrink, who inexplicably shouts all his lines at top volume. That's supposed to be funny. Fletcher relates a disgusting dream in which a naked young girl transforms into a naked old crone--so disgusting a sight, she says, "Even my horse was throwing up!" Yes, that's the punchline. Dr. Duckie works tirelessly in his lab, and is extremely disappointed when in one experiment he produces not blood, but a gold brick! He tosses it into a huge pile of alchemical loot with a disgusted sneer. Hilarious? And about a later scene in the boutique where a Little Orphan Annie lookalike wards off her vampire attackers by lifting her dress to flash panties with a cross on the front and a Star of David on the back--this last can-can style, naturally--well, the less said the better.

Oh, and the pub girl whose father was trying to protect her by helping her lose her virginity? She finally succeeds, which leads her to invite all the pub-goers to a gangbang in the back room that ends up LITERALLY making the pub explode! Cause it's a gangBANG, see! Is this thing on?

I know Louise Fletcher is renowned more for her dramatic prowess than her skills as a comedienne, but still, her performance here is just painful. Still, it's not all her fault. Apparently the writers and director thought having an Academy Award™ Winner pronounce normal words in silly, nonsensical ways equalled comedy GOLD. For instance, it's not "the castle," it's "the CAST-ull." Every time. Seriously, did anyone laugh? And apparently in the 70s and early 80s pronouncing "virgin" as "WIR-gin" was the height of hilarity--not only do they wring that gag to its dregs here, but I remember another unfunny comedy from the same era that did the same--Zorro, the Gay Blade. But at least that one had George Hamilton.

"Say, Maria--do you ever talk to Brando these days?
Could you put me in touch with his agent? I'm about to be in the market for one."

For all her notoriety and nubile-ness, in this flick Schneider is a black hole of acting ability--her mere presence makes the people around her WORSE, simply by the cosmic power of her sucking. Dr. Duckie is similarly execrable, performing his canned zaniness and mad doctor scenes like the ADD kid in the drama club. (A scene where he bounces gleefully around his new laboratory--which honest-to-God looks like a brewery--is just embarassing.) The Inspector looks like George Kennedy after a three-day bender--which is to say, like George Kennedy all the time--and couldn't make you laugh if you were on nitrous oxide. Really, it's that dire.

The only potential bright spots in this long, dark tea-time of comedy are the Countess's twin sons, played by the debuting Wajnberg Brothers. These two guys make quite an entrance, looking for all the world like the emaciated offspring of Bela Lugosi and Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Their strange voices and weird mannerisms in their early scenes are actually just freaky enough to be entertaining, and an early strange interlude where one of the brothers spouts nonsensical surreal poetry and discovers his sibling trapped in a grandfather clock (A Rollin homage? No, definitely not.) is probably the standout scene of the movie, followed closely by a dreamy shot of the two of them bathing in blood with Mama.

But unfortunately the director can't let a good thing be good enough, and by the 45-minute mark the brothers are so overused as to be annoying. He even has them go through a 5-minute recreation of the famous Harpo/Groucho "mirror routine," which they don't have anywhere near the physical comic sense nor the timing to pull off. Again, embarrassing.

Don't dream it. Be it.

(Giving credit where credit is due, there is ONE scene in the movie that inspired honest chuckles and something approaching enjoyment--Von Blood requests 10 gallons of blood for testing, which means the brothers have to procure 10 virgins from the boutique. They do this by opening a secret panel in the changing room while the girls are trying on dresses, scaring them into a faint, and dragging them off. The montage that follows the 10-gallon request is actually pretty funny, as a parade of topless girls falls into the brothers' arms, one after another, but not passing out before answering the question, "Wirgin?" As the quest goes on, the brothers get tired, letting their fatigue show through yawns as they try to scare the topless girls. Hey, it's not much, but I enjoyed it.)

I commented some time ago that I feared I had watched too many awesome movies in a row--I'd given something like seven 2.5-to-3+ thumbs ratings in a row, and I felt the streak was bound to reverse at some point. And here I am, giving Mama Dracula 0.5 thumbs, the second less-than-one-thumb review in as many weeks. Don't watch it. Watch Love at First Bite (also with George Hamilton! Hey!) or Dracula: Dead and Loving It. You'll thank me later.

As to this funk I'm in, looks like it's time to break out my unwatched Rollin, Naschy, and Meyer. I need to do something to break this streak. Oh well, thank God for AMERICAN XPRESS!

Oy!

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Three on a Meathook (1972): or, What am I, Chopped Liver?

Look, you and I have been friends a long time, right? I mean, we've had our ups and downs, our petty disagreements, the occasionally awkward passes at one another's girlfriends, or spouses, or mothers...but most of the time we've been tight, right? And don't think it hasn't meant a lot to me.

So listen, there's something you should know, before we go on this camping trip you're so inexplicably hot about. See, occasionally--not all the time, just every now and then--I have this...well, problem when I sleep. Mostly after I've been drinking, and since we're packing all this beer and sharing a tent, I thought I'd best warn you. It's a little embarrassing, and it can get messy.

You see--I gush in my sleep. Uncontrollably. Copiously. I gush and gush and gush until I'm all drained and emptied out. And it's especially bad when I've just seen a movie like the amazing blood-soaked 1972 trash-gold cinematic obscurity, Three on a Meathook. When I've got something like this in my subconscious, chances are I'm going to gush over it.

I mean all over it. Buckle in, folks:

We open with a naked blonde babe crawling out of bed, which in my book is the second best place to start a movie. It's even better when her bed partner is a balding, paunchy, sideburns-sporting 70s hunk as he is here, because that pegs the sleaze-meter at just the appropriate level. You wonder what kind of drunken swinging Bacchanalia had to happen before the credits for this girl to end up with THAT guy, and that sort of speculation just engages my imagination and puts the Vicar right in his happy place. It also makes me nostalgic, but that's a different story.

Our unnamed slice of hotness is getting ready to go on a trip with three of her best girlfriends, and no amount of protest or promises of more sweaty disco-sex on our hero's part can convince her to stay. (If only she had partaken in more hambeast love, a lot of tragedy might have been avoided--that's a tip, girls, write it down.) The vivacious quartet is soon on the road, and not long after that stop at a roadside lake for an impromptu skinny-dip. Like you do, when you're on a road trip with your girlfriends. Am I right, ladies?

Unfortunately the girls don't see the strange sunglass-wearing man in a canoe on the lake, nor do they hear the ominous music that plays every time he shows up. Soon they're obliviously on the road again, and--wouldn't you know it?--the girls' car breaks down! Not only that, but who should show up but the ominous stranger! Luckily once he takes his sunglasses off he's not nearly so ominous--he is Billy Townsend (James Pickett), a baby-faced introvert more than willing to offer the girls food and lodging at his father's farm for the night. To their credit the girls show some reticence, but in the end they go along. Hey, what's the worst that could happen, right?

Something like this, maybe?

At the house we meet Billy's father, Paw (Charles Kissinger, how I'm missing yer), who is none too happy that Billy has brought a lot of "TRASH" into "his MOMMA'S HOUSE." Come on, Dad, they're standing right there. Billy won't turn the girls out, though; one man's TRASH is another man's babelicious boarder, I guess. After a dinner of the strangely delicious but unplaceable gray meat that the Townsend farm is famous for ("It's veal," Paw explains), the old man ominously tells Billy, "You know what happens when you're around women, son!" The lights go out, Paw gets drunk in his room, and everyone retires for the night.

The acting up to this point has been wooden to the point of laughability, and the camera work static and fairly uninteresting (though when the camera does become mobile later, the previous stillness lends it more import--a nice but probably unintentional touch). Billy's comedic earnestness makes things better, though, as does Paw's cartoonish curmudgeonliness and the girls' stilted line readings. And the music--dear god, the music!--if you're not grinning and tapping your toes, you can get out of the tent now.

Still, nothing has prepared us for the carnage that is about to be unleashed. In short order one of the girls takes an ill-conceived bath, which gives us more boobies before ending up about the way you'd expect. The two girls in the bedroom receive shotgun blasts that splatter them all over the guest beds, a surprisingly brutal visual with some nice caro syrup FX work. But the piece de resistance is the fourth unlucky daytripper, who flees into the basement (GREAT idea, babe) and creeps silently along a large brown-paneled wall before taking an axe to the neck in one of the three or four greatest decapitation scenes it's ever been my pleasure to laugh at! Really, have a look:

Stumped.

So that's FOUR girls down already, and nary a meathook in sight. WTF? Well, it turns out they're just four slices of pickled red herring, as from here we move into the movie proper. Billy wakes up the next day to discover the carnage in the house, for which his father quickly ascribes the blame to him. It's "just like what happened after your momma died!" apparently, and even though he doesn't remember hacking the three girls to bits, Billy is overwhelmed with guilt and wants to turn himself in. His dad puts the kibosh on that, though, and sends the young man to town for "supplies" while he cleans things up and covers the bloody tracks. We're led to believe Paw has some experience in this arena.

After stopping at a general store to get the supplies, Billy surprisingly doesn't feel any better about the quadruple murder/mutilation he left back home and decides to go out on the town and get schnockered. Like you do. Soon he's tooling around the bad part of town in his pick-up; the juxtaposition of the idyllic rural scenes we've had up to now with the seedy, used-car-lot-strewn urban wasteland is jarring. Despite being a rube from the country Billy happens upon the BESTEST SEEDY BAR IN TOWN. How do I know it's the best? Because the house band is the amazing AMERICAN XPRESS, a 10+ member funkadelic funksplosion of truly funktastic proportions. Seriously, now, have a look at these guys.

Don't leave for home without them.

And there are even ceiling fans over the mosh pit. That's class, right there, people.

While AMERICAN XPRESS play the absolutely funkeriffic tune "WE ARE ALL INSANE" ("Life is so ridiculous / And I am so meticulous / I don't even like black licorice / And we're allllllllllll … INSANE!"), Billy orders whiskey after whiskey. I think he has a flashback to his father berating him for killings in his past, though that may actually come later. Anyway, his conspicuous consumption draws the attention of barmaid Sharon, who uses her preternatural powers of empathy to see that something is bothering him. They engage in some minor flirtation before Billy smiles winningly and passes the hell out.

I must say a few words here about the astonishing performance by Sherry Steiner as Sharon. Steiner is a lovely woman with sensitive eyes, lovely dark hair and a beautiful smile; she also delivers every line as if she were playing the mother in a spoof of one of those high-school personal hygiene films, with such earnestness that you half expect her to start instructing you on the proper way to floss. So kind, so sincere, so carefully enunciated and measured in her speech--seriously, she's like the best dental assistant EVER, as we shall soon see.

Billy wakes the next morning in Sharon's bed, hungover but otherwise on top of the world! A day that started in murder and terror ends in AMERICAN XPRESS and barmaid nookie! Nothing could ruin this moment, right?

"Gee! Whiz!"

WRONG--amazingly, asoundingly, unprecedentedly, and most of all HILARIOUSLY, Billy has WET THE BED! And it's a plot point! Holy crap--er, piss--if I hadn't been in love with the movie before now, that totally sealed it. Anyway, Sharon is not bothered in the least by it, even saying "I like to take care of you!" before getting up for a nude walkaround the piss-soaked bed en route to getting dressed. (Hang onto this one, Billy! She's a KEEPER!)

She cooks him breakfast, and then we get a "falling in love" montage that would be awesome in its cheesiness even if it hadn't just followed a scene of intimate protagonist incontinence--walks through the park, picnic on the grass, even LOVE SWINGING, all to some absolutely spendiferous music that must be heard to be believed. Finally the day must come to an end, and as they say goodbye Billy invites Sharon out to the farm for a weekend stay, apparently having completely forgotten what happened the LAST time he had overnight female guests. Love does funny things to a guy.

The movie slows down a little after that, as Billy and his father spar for a while over whether Billy should even be having a relationship, let alone inviting TRASH out to his MOMMA'S HOUSE again. (As Billy drives up Paw is tellingly coming out of his smokehouse, padlocking the door carefully behind him.) Once again Billy sticks to his guns, and after only a little more padding Sharon is coming up the drive to the house, inexplicably having brought her blonde friend Becky with her for her dirty weekend with Billy. On the other hand, this IS the 70s--ménage? Maybe "Three on a Meathook" is some kind of swingin' euphemism...

"Very nice, Vicar. Now pull your pants up."

From here on we barrel toward a frankly baffling and wonderful conclusion. Paw gets drunk again, making a bad impression; Becky, Sharon, and Billy go for a long playful romp on the farm and in the surrounding wilderness, to the strains of more of the film's wonderful synth-based score. Later Sharon and Becky (the very cute and amazingly-named Madelyn Buzzard) are in the bedroom talking about Billy, and Becky delivers the speech of the movie, telling Sharon in her friend's earnest, hygenist tone about her one true love and the tragic end of the affair:

"They sent him an invitation to die in one of their wars...and then sent me a telegram to say that he had." Looking directly at the camera, Becky imparts to her friend (and you, the audience) this nugget of wisdom: "Take all the happiness you can--at best life's a short ride, and it isn't always round trip." Wow, that's ama--hey, wait, what?

Anyway, after that they have dinner, where the still-plastered Paw serves up more of his special "veal" and we get more suspicious comments about the nature of the meat. Becky goes to her room and Sharon makes as if to follow, but at the last moment stops, turns slowly (I expected the 3 stooges "slowly I turn" routine--it had exactly the same timing) and comes back to kiss Billy passionately. Cue the music! They fall into make-out silhouette on the couch, doing the hopefully pee-free nasty this time. Presumably Paw takes the back staircase up to his room later.

So here's the kicker--as it turns out, Billy is NOT to blame for the killings out at the ranch! It's actually PAW doing the killing! (<--Spoilers!) We discover this when a heavy-breathing Paw strolls into Becky's room in the middle of the night and plants a pickaxe in her chest, My Bloody Valentine-style! Awesome. Practiced in the ways of stealth impalement, Paw wakes up no one with his hijinx.

In the morning Sharon discovers her friend missing and asks Paw about it ("I've never known here to get up early before!" What, never?) and is rebuffed and thrown out of the house. Wandering around on her own (you may well ask "where's Billy?" but it will avail thee naught) she stumbles into the smokehouse and finds the titular three, though on THREE SEPARATE meathooks and not one as the title suggested. False advertising! It's not clear which three they are, but at this point it doesn't matter. The screaming Sharon races back to the house and bursts into the kitchen to confront this grisly scene:

"Veal! From a calf! Ya geddit?"

Billy finally appears to intercede between his maddened Paw and his lady love, and just when the old man swings the cleaver to apparently end his tortured son's lie-filled life, the most incredible deus ex machina EVAR occurs--and if you want to know what it is, you'll just have to hunt this flick down and watch it, because I'm not telling. Suffice to say that the only thing more amazing and hilarious is the 10 minute post-rescue exposition with an unnamed Expert, who somehow is able to tell Sharon and Billy everything we need to know about what they just experienced. Nobody seems to worried that they've been dining on human flesh for the better part of the movie, Dad gets committed for life, and the credits roll to put an end to the seemingly interminable awesomeness.

Three on a Meathook is not for everyone's tastes. (HAW!) In fact it might be a good acid test for readers of this site to see if your tastes are down with mine and the Duke's. If you can watch this movie and be put off by the hilarious music, the over-earnest acting, the crazy plot developments, and the low-tech gore, then you know you're not part of the congregation I'm preaching to.

But if you watch it and find yourself grinning like an idiot with every Mr. Rogers-intoned profession of love, every overwrought bit of dialog and wonderful strain of synth-addled score--in short, if you will let yourself be entertained by the ineptness that approaches high art, then stick around. You're going to agree with me when I give Three on a Meathook 2.75 thumbs--it's a bit slow in spots, silly in others, but the quicker bits, the amazing ending, and AMERICAN XPRESS more than make up for it.

If you agree, pack up the truck. We're going camping.

"You're taking me to see AMERICAN XPRESS?
You are so getting laid!"

PS--This is so far as I know my first exposure to the cinema of director William Girdler, who also directed The Manitou and other well-known but yet-unseen-by-me 70s obscurities, but it will not be my last. Apparently I'm not the only one enraptured by his cinematic output: here is a whole website devoted to Girdler's art, including trivia, interviews, an even more detailed plot summary of Three on a Meathook, and most valuably, an audio clip of AMERICAN XPRESS! Listen now, thank me later!

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Animatronic Doll, or Lord of the Seventh Circle of Hell?

Okay, it's not a review, but this was just too horrifying not to post.

I thought the unhinged-jaw mannequin heads in Tourist Trap were scary. I thought the creepy porcelain doll in Satan's Blood was horrifying. And then a "friend" sent me this:



I haven't slept in three days. Tonight's not looking too good either.

P.S.--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

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The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (1972): or, Rosalie Loves Company

People are always asking Stephen King where he gets his ideas, and while he has several stock answers, my favorite is probably the one I've seen reproduced the most--when he pulls out this old chestnut, the buttzillion-selling author smiles sheepishly and says, "I think it's because I have the heart of a young boy...I keep it in a jar on my desk." Hahaha! Oh, Steve, you make the evisceration of children for inspiration sound like such a lark!

Still, taking the first part of that answer at face value, I wonder if that young boy whose heart Mr. King possesses might have ever gone to a drive-in with his parents to see 1972's The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (aka Rosalie and the Strange Vengeance, aka Someone to Watch Over Me). Because seeing hapless jewelry salesman Virgil (Ken Howard) strapped to an old-fashioned iron bed after childish, slightly-unhinged Rosalie (Bonnie Bedelia) has broken his leg with the back end of an axe so that he'll be unable to leave her remote homestead, hearing her proclaim her love for him even while he writhes in...well, misery...pleading with her to for god's sake bring him a doctor--well, it all seems just a little bit familiar.

Then again, Virgil isn't a writer. An important point.

We open with Rosalie digging in a dust-strewn, hardscrabble landscape, while chickens cluck in the background and artistic silhouettes of fowl-festooned trees drift by in the foreground. Rosalie is digging a grave for her granddaddy, Bear, and old Indian rancher who was apparently her only family. After rolling his corpse into the grave the young girl shimmies down a rope into a well to retrieve a mysterious bag from behind a loose stone, then climbs back and puts the bag in the dead grandparent's hand. She also buries his rifle with him. Then she walks for hours to the freeway, where she starts hitchhiking and is quickly picked up by Virgil, a salesman on vacation en route to catch a flight to Hawaii. No points for guessing he's not going to make the baggage check. After they're threatened at a truck stop by an ugly and belligerent biker, Virgil agrees to deliver the young lady back to her door.

Rosalie claims to be meeting her Grandaddy at the ranch, a place she's never been but has dreamed about. The viewer's alarm bells sound, but of course Virgil just smiles and goes along. On the way back to the ranch, Rosalie betrays a fascination with the car's tapedeck and cigarette lighter, almost as if she's never seen such things before! She has a thick hillbilly accent and seems none too bright. Virgil takes it all in stride, making no advances since she's meant to be 15 years old. It's one of the few notes of nobility his character sounds, as we shall see.

"It's the swearing, Virgil. It has no nobility."

It's a very The Hills Have Eyes-ish trek back out to the dirt farm; at one point they even pass a dilapidated "Radioactive Warning" sign, though nothing ever comes of this plot-wise (unless we're meant to understand that at least 2 of the 3 cast members are mutants in addition to being inbred hillbillies). When they get there Rosalie begs him to wait while she finds her Granddaddy. She disappears into the gathering dark and Virgil goes after her, poking around the eerily abandoned shack. When he returns to the car he finds both tires deflated, and when he enters the now-open shack, he gets a near-stab to the wrist and a chicken to the face! Stranded, he agrees to stay the night with Rosalie and head back to town in the morning.

The next day Rosalie tries to convince Virgil to stay, asking him pointedly, "You figure I'd make a good wife?" But he is un-enticed by her strange sack dress and weekly bathing habits, and says so. Bad idea--next think you know Rosalie is swinging the the back of an axe at Virgil's tibia, and the pole-axed Samaritan faints from pain. He awakes, Gulliver-esque, strapped to a ratty old bed and being fawned over by his young, somewhat smelly admirer. Misery set-up now complete.

However, instead of begging and cajoling his captor, Virgil responds by getting as nasty and abusive as possible. He spits venom at Rosalie, calling her stupid, cursing her ignorance, threatening her with the police, telling her he wouldn't marry her if she was the last girl on earth--really, considering his helpless position, his attitude is quite shocking. Even threats from Rosalie ("How would you like me to break your arm too?") only improve his outlook for a few moments; it's never long before he's cursing and name-calling and spitting abuse at the girl again. If I'd been Rosalie, I think I would have taken a few more whacks at him, just to teach him some manners.

"Don't beat me wid a rubbah hose!
Don't beat me wid a rubbah hose!"

Later in the movie I started to think that Virgil's anger and venom might stem from a feeling of entitlement--after all, he's the sophisticated city-dweller on his way to Honolulu, and she's the ignorant rube who barely even knows how to operate a can opener. How can SHE do this to HIM? Even later there's a (very) little racial subtext, when the greasy biker from way back at the beginning (his name is Fry, and he has a history with Rosalie and her granddad) shows up and talks about the dangers of going to the police: "A 'breed gets in trouble in this state--it ain't too good." Virgil calls Rosalie an "ignorant half-breed Indian SQUAW!" and a "stupid APE!" several times, driving home that possible feeling of racial superiority. It's an ugly part of Virgil's character, and it's never really redeemed in him.

The rest of the movie can be summed up by the formula "Vigil Attempts escape --> FAIL --> Rosalie professes love/threatens bodily harm --> REPEAT." It's broken up a little by the appearance of Fry, who wants the sack of gold Bear had hidden on his land now that the old man is dead. Rosalie buried it with him of course, and doesn't want to tell Fry anyway, as they have a hate/hate relationship (she bit his finger off once because he was "tickling" her). Once Virgil learns that Rosalie might have a sack of gold somewhere he too becomes interested in her, and peppers his speech with more pleasantries and promises of marriage (though never completely banishing the terms "IGNORANT" and "APE" from his sweet nothings), but to her credit Rosalie is too smart to be taken in by such talk. His inability to deceive the Indian girl enrages Virgil to even further abuse.

In the end Rosalie's apparently genuine love for Virgil makes her betray the gold's secret location to Fry and leave the ranch with him, in order to keep him from hurting Virgil even worse. Once she's gone Virgil proves quite able to drag himself out to the car and get its tires pumped up (even changing a spare on a bum leg!) and finally he escapes the ranch. Once out on the road (to some HILARIOUS traveling music) Virgil sees Rosalie sitting alone and forlorn on the shoulder of the freeway. Inexplicably (perhaps gripped by the guilt of the White Man's Burden?) he goes back to see if he can help her, discovering that she has killed Fry and setting things up for a not-at-all surprising twist ending.

Just another pretty face.

The movie is long--nearly 2 full hours--and there is basically one setting and three characters. Therefore a lot of the time we're just listening to Virgil and Rosalie talk, one-act play style, with no real gore or nudity even to spice things up. It has to be said Bonnie Bedelia (who ought to be a children's book heroine with that name) does a great job as the uneducated, naive, but hardly-helpless Rosalie, imparting her violence and threats with a strange kind of childishness that makes it believable; after all, if you don't think a kid would swing an axe at you sometimes to get her way, you've never been a parent.

Ken Howard as Virgil is somewhat worse--though his insults and outrage can be entertaining at times, he never seems like a real character, and his line readings are often perfunctory. But character actor Anthony Zerbe (of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park!)really steals the show as Fry, the slimy, cunning, animalistic villain who might be stupid but who's always dangerous. But even with Zerbe and Bedelia doing their best,the movie is at least half-an-hour longer than its plot can support. The twist at the end (which I assume constitutes the titular "strange vengeance") is rather stupid, and not much else happens.

Still, the movie is SO much like Stephen King's Misery in its set-up--and fifteen years before the fact!--that it's worth a look for fans of the author. As for whether the similarities are intentional or not, I can't say--but I can tell you that star Bonnie Bedelia appeared in the orignal Salem's Lot mini-series, as well as the movie version of Needful Things. Coincidence? One has to wonder whether King might be this movie's number one fay-unnn...

So 1.5 thumbs for The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie. You might dig it, you might not. See it or don't. What am I, your mother?


Thanks again to Karswell for the obscurities!

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Waxwork (1988): or, ALF-fiderzein, Hans!

Another week, another dolls/dummies/puppets movie for the Vicar. I never realized until recently I had this many such films in my library. Clearly my subconscious is trying to tell me something. I just hope it doesn't lead to blackouts and mysterious charges to RealDoll.com on my credit card.

This time the movie is 1988's Waxwork, a horror/comedy with a strong Tales from the Crypt/Darkside vibe starring Zach "Hey, Wasn't He in Gremlins?" Galligan. Here we find Zach fighting terror on the clock again, only this time rather than trying to keep his freaky furry friends from eating after midnight he's racing to prevent a sadistic sculptor from claiming 18 souls with his magical wax museum before the clock strikes twelve and the monstrous mannequins take over the world. And he has to do it without Phoebe Cates this time, which we can all agree is a downer for him.

We open with a strong pre-credits sequence set in an old mansion, where we join the murder of an anonymous screaming dude, already in progress. An unseen assailant force-feeds his victim a fiery yule-log and we get to see the poor guy dance around on fire before taking a nose-dive right back into the blazing hearth! The killer then steals a bunch of artifacts from a museum-quality display case before disappearing and allowing the opening titles to roll.

After some cartoon-wipe transitions we finally meet Zach, playing spoiled rich kid Mark Loftmore. There's a weird scene here where he's having breakfast with his socialite, oppressively infantilizing mother (Mark gets very pissy when she insists he drink juice instead of coffee) before stepping out in the hallway to get his espresso and a cigarette from his stereotypically English butler Jenkins. There's lots of grousing and generally bratty behavior from Mark here, leading me to question at first whether he is to be our hero or some kind of frat-boy villain who will get his comeuppance through the horror. He's certainly not going to win "Mr. Congeniality."

However, we quickly learn that Mark's behavior is pretty much standard for the youths of 1988, in the universe of this film anyway. As Mark walks to school we cut to a couple of his school chums, mousy Sarah (Valley Girl Deborah Foreman) and sassy China (Michelle Johnson). China is a blonde in a black body suit, totally rockin' the Mariel Hemingway bushy-brows, and is so bitchy and sex-obsessed you just know she'll come to a bad end. As they too walk to school (nobody drives or takes the bus in this posh neighborhood) they pass a gothic mansion right in the middle of their street which strangely neither of them has ever noticed there before. A big sign over the door reads "WAXWORK" in gothic script, and the proprieter (a wonderfully creepy David Warner) appears out of nowhere to invite them and "no more than four" of their friends to a private showing that evening. He disappears just as quickly, leaving the two girls to sass their way to school and tell their friends the good news.

"Hotsy-totsy! I'm a Nazi!"

The friends are just as annoying as Mark and China, particularly high-socked chain-smoking joker Tony (Dana Ashbrook). They attend a lecture by a German professor standing "hilariously" in front of a Nazi flag, then later while watching football practice from the bleachers (China is schtupping the quarterback, natch) decide they might as well go to the waxworks, since otherwise we'd have no movie.

So far (with the exceptions of Log Boy) the movie has been all comedy and no horror, and the comedy has left quite a bit to be desired. The jokes are all broad and obvious, the characters snarky and unlikeable, and the plot worthy of several eye-rolls. A couple of quotable lines from sassy-slut China allay matters a little (such as her motto "I do what I want, when I want--dig it, or fuck off!" and the can't-believe-it's-not-foreshadowing line "Can't a girl get laid around here without getting burned at the stake?"), but mostly it's been a slow train to Yawnsville. That's about to change, however, thanks to a big performance in a small package: Mihaly 'Michu' Meszaros.

Michu is a Little Person of the creepy Hungarian variety, and it's impossible to take your eyes off him. A veteran of such classics as Big Top Pee-Wee and Warlock: the Armageddon as well as a nightmare-realization specialist in H. R. Pufnstuf, Michu will forever be best remembered as "full-body ALF"--that's right, he was the man in the suit whenever Alf had to be shown running after the Tanners' cat or dashing upstairs or in his hot steamy love scenes with luscious teeny Lynn. Or maybe that was just the dream. Anyway, he's ALF.

"Vere are awl de KATZ?"

Here he plays Hans, the butler who welcomes our group of punk kids to the waxworks. (With his distinctive voice and that character name, I wondered if his casting was an homage to Harry Earles's immortal role in Tod Browning's Freaks. Probably not.) He only gets a few minutes of screen time here, but he makes every second count, giving sharp militaristic bows (complete with "whoosh!" sound effects) and berating his Lurch-like underling butler before exiting in a huff. Seeing Michu connect with a left hook to Lurch's kneecaps makes me smile every time.

Left to their own devices, the Brat Pack soon find their way into the musuem proper, and FINALLY the horror elements start to make their presence known. The museum itself is the expected Hall of Horrors, with werewolves, mummies, zombies, vampires, and even a bandaged Invisible Man force-feeding a flapper from a gasoline pump! I don't remember that from the Claude Rains version; maybe it was cut. The figures and lighting are very well done here, with blue and red gels just screaming "80s Music Video" and the wax monsters themselves being suitably creepy.

When idiot Tony drops his lighter into the werewolf display, he saunters in after it and magically finds himself in a real-life version of the scene, courtesy the best cartoon blue wavy lines the studio could offer. Suddenly in the middle of a vast forest in period costume and with a ponytailed colonial hairdo, Tony jumps to the only logical conclusion--his friends have hypnotized him and are playing a practical joke! Makes sense to me! He follows the trail to a creepy cabin, where pre-Gimli John Rhys-Davies is doing that furry moondance. We don't get a real transformation here, but the practical werewolf costume is pretty imposing and impressive--except for the comically over-sized ears that make him look like a vicious wolf-rabbit hybrid. WTF?

"What's up, Doc?"

Wolfy bites Tony just as some hunters come in to break things up. One of them gets the most impressive death scene in the movie, as the werewolf grabs the top of his head and tears him in half VERTICALLY, just like a blood-spurting paper doll! You have to cheer. Then Gimliwolf gets pumped full of silver and Tony starts to change from the bite, getting a load of pewter for his trouble as well. We return to the museum, where half-changed Tony is now a part of the display. It's a trap!

Next to go wandering into a display is China, who we knew wouldn't be long for this movie anyway. She is whisked to Castle Dracula, where a romance-novel cover-model count (b-movie prettyboy Miles O'Keeffe) is serving steak tartar to his guests. This is actually one of the most effectively disturbing scenes in the movie, as shell-shocked China chokes down a slice or two of "beef" (complete with special sticky red "sauce") while the rest of the party gnosh like hyenas on a downed wildebeest, dripping blood and meat everywhere. Excusing herself from the table, China staggers into the kitchen where she finds a man strapped to the butcher block, his lower leg stripped to the bone! The effects here are very good and icky, and I found myself cringing at the thought of looking down and seeing half your leg gone; and of knowing that you just ate some poor dude's calf RAW. Nasty stuff.

The vampires soon storm the kitchen and there's a great, bloody battle as China puts up one hell of a fight. There's an exploding head, more leg trauma, amazing gouts of blood on the white-tiled walls (a great visual), and one of the most hilarious vampire kills I've ever seen--China desperately pushes one of the Count's brides away, throwing her roughly against a wall-sized wine rack. Three champagne bottles impale the vampire, corks intact, and once they tear through the front of her dress (these are CORKS, mind you), they pop, spraying now-pink champagne all over the horrified China! Amazing! Shortly thereafter Miles shows up and puts an end to all this foolishness with a bite to the neck, but I had to admire China's toughness. Sassy slut, you are redeemed.

Par-tay!

Back in the museum, sweet and silent Sarah is fascinated by a display showing the Marquis de Sade whipping one of his women, the first hint that she might only LOOK sweet and innocent. Before the museum can claim more victims, however, bratty Mark drags her out and they head on home, living to fight another day.

His curiosity aroused by his friends' disappearance and some missing persons posters that look EXACTLY like some of the figures in the museum, Mark somehow figures out that the museum isn't what it appears to be and contacts his crazy uncle for help and much-needed exposition. It seems the wax artist is collecting souls with his wax displays, which are life-sized voodoo dolls or something since they have bits and pieces of all the original subject in them (a hair of the Marquis de Sades, a knife of Jack the Ripper's--I'm not sure how they got the werewolf's nail clippings or the invisible man's used cotton swabs) and, if he gets 18 souls (6 plus 6 plus 6, just like in AD&D!) his creations will turn into real live boys and wreak havoc on the world. It all leads to a final battle in the museum that's as fun as it is wacky, and of course you know it all comes out in the wash.

It's slow going on the front end with the bad acting and terrible "humor," but once Michu shows up, the supernatural stuff kicks in, and we start to go into the wax displays, it's like several horror movies in one--none of them spectacular, but all of them entertaining. In the second trip to the museum we get a nice mummy scene with an unlucky cop as the victim, a black and white zombie display with Zach, and a strange but satisfying trip to the court of the Marquis de Sade (played wonderfully slimy by the "striking" J. Kenneth Campbell) where quiet little Sarah finally indulges her wild side. The final battle between the living dummies and Mark's uncle's army of old men (including Jenkins!) is silly but fun, with rapid-fire references to Little Shop of Horrors, It's Alive, and even Dirty Harry ("Go ahead, bat--Make My Day.") Though Mark's arc from spoiled brat to hero isn't at all believable, it was necessary to get to the end, and the end was a blast, so I didn't mind too much.

Make no mistake: Hans WILL kick the shit
out of some punk-ass bitchez.

So while it's by no means perfect, Waxwork is a fun little flick with something to offer the 80s-nostalgic horror fan, and I give it a solid 2 thumbs. If you don't shed a tear when Poor Hans meets his fate, you have no soul. And that's a shame, because we're still a couple short.


PS--Not sure if you can read it on that poster, but the tagline at the bottom of the poster is "More fun than a barrel of mummies!" Seriously, guys, that's the best you could do? Ugh. I'm sure my readers could do LOADS better. (Wink-wink!)

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Goregasm (2007): or, Oh Dear God No

When you're young, your parents give you lots of good advice that, due to the nature of parent/child relationships, you won't fully appreciate until you're much, much older. Things like "Always wash behind your ears," "Look both ways before you cross the street," and "Never try to draw to an inside straight." It's only as an adult, having learned through experience the hard truths your parents tried to teach abstractly, you look back and understand the wisdom and compassion Mom and Dad possessed, and wish that you'd been smart and mature enough to take their advice before personal tragedy brought those lessons home.

Of all those nuggets of parental wisdom I wish I'd paid more attention to, perhaps the greatest is this: "Don't take candy from strangers."

Of course "candy" is figurative here. It could just as easily mean "poisoned toffee bars" or "LSD-laced Mickey Mouse tattoos." The basic truth remains the same--beware of gifts from givers who may not have your best interests at heart.

In my case, at last weekend Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in LA, "candy" was "a free DVD," and the strangers were the purveyors of the 2007 DIY orchestrated assault on filmmaking, good taste, and basic human decency known as Goregasm.

Looking back, I guess that title should have been a tip-off.

Think of a GWAR video, only without the showmanship, musical proficiency, and insightful social commentary. Think of a Troma movie without the high production values and delightfully cosmopolitan sense of humor. Think of all those dead baby jokes you and your friends used to tell in junior high, but without the rapier wit. Got it? Formed a picture of that movie in your head?

That movie is still about twice as good as Goregasm.

Better than Goregasm.

We open with a teenage kid whacking off to fattie porn in his room, and it all goes downhill from there. His mother catches him at it and reprimands him with the earnestness of a damp cereal box, saying "The Cockface Killer will get you!" if he keeps self-pleasuring.

Next Mom heads to her own bedroom to re-enact the scene her son was enjoying with a gangly fellow we later learn is meant to be the kid's dad--though judging from their looks, he'd have had to father the boy before he got out of diapers himself. Anyway, they've barely gotten busy--and in this case, it's a blessing--before they are attacked by one of the three focal devices of the movie, the Cockface Killer himself! CK is a hulking brute in a strategically-ripped black bodysuit (buttocks wahey!) wearing a German stormtrooper-style helmet, a dimestore zombie mask, and a phallus on his chin. Hence the name. Apparently devoted to wiping out all perversity by using the very tools the perverts use to sin, CK bludgeons the couple to death with a gigantic floppy black dildo. Lots of caro syrup blood flies, screaming ensues, etc. etc. And...SCENE.

Next we meet our lead characters, a couple of porn store clerks persumably modelled after Dante and Randal from Kevin Smith's comparative masterpiece. They spend their days talking about sex, selling sex toys and videos to a parade of eccentric degenerates, and pointing their more adventurous clients to a "glory hole" room in the back of the store run by a mysterious 3rd party corporation. Lead clerk Mark is having trouble with his girlfriend Stacy, who doesn't want to have sex with him because she's afraid of the Cockface Killer's wrath. His sidekick makes wisecracks that are meant to be funny. We get lots of shots of fake penises. SCENE.

We also meet the homicide division of the local PD, a man and woman team on CK's trail. Except the male cop nonsensically believes that the murders are not the work of the Cockface killer, but of a "Fetish Killer" who is going Se7en-style through a magazine called 13 Filthy Fetishes as a model for his killings. His longsuffering partner--the only halfway engaging actress in the whole flick--rolls her eyes and points out his stupidity in making up another killer where none is necessary. Occam's razor, dude. SCENE.

Still better.

Mark and Stacy finally overcome her paranoia to get it on, and who should show up but the Cockface Killer! They get slapped by his Dildo of Death but manage to escape, nude, into the streets. They buy clothes from a whore with a flea market in what's meant to be a rib-tickler ("Look at their funny clothes! Haha! He's wearing a pimp coat!") and the hooker offers to do them for half price. Laughing yet? Me neither. SCENE.

Elsewhere, a stereotypically gay guy is applying for membership in a girl gang known as the C.L.A.M. which stands for "The Clitoral Legion Against Mankind." Their leader is a big-breasted hispanic woman with a goatee (I wish I were making this up) and since the gay fellow is still technically a man, they beat him, torture him, anally rape him with a razor-edged strap-on, and then lock him in the glory hole at the porn shop. Wow, didn't see that coming!

So that's the set-up: Mark and his sidekick are out to stop CK so that the world will be safe for perverts, the cops bumble along doing their Abbott and Costello Go to Sodom routine (only not as funny as that sounds), and the C.L.A.M. commit atrocity after atrocity, occasionally crossing paths with and battling CK while the clueless cops prance around in the foreground.

After that's established, the movie devolves--as if it could further--into a series of skits designed to offend and disgust, in fact DESPERATE to do so. A woman masturbating at home alone is killed graphically by CK (close up of prosthetic lady-bits spurting blood and CK using his head, literally), the porn store "mascots" (a couple of underfed naked folks who have sex nonstop every day in the shop--and who seem to be actually having sex on camera, as far as my untrained eye could tell) are leisurely chainsawed in half by CK, the "hilarious" male cop has sex with his dead wife, the poor sod in the glory hole gets force-fed feces, and the C.L.A.M. and the Cockface Killer square off in a battle of villains that brings thing to a merciful though far-too-late end. Having fun yet?

Getting closer.

So the whole thing is pretty desperately, relentlessly repellent from one end to another. There's lots of nudity, but none that you would really want to see (okay, the girl playing Stacy is kind of cute in a "real girl and not a glamor queen" kinda way). The acting is all "Hey you, at the end of the bar! Want to be in a movie?" level, the jokes never even get close to being funny, and the effects are pretty much dildos and corn syrup. Oh, and it looks like it was shot on someone's dad's camcorder, which it probably was.

Of course, the people who worked on this would tell you I've missed the point--I don't have the requisite sick sense of humor required to "get" what they were going for here. And that may be so. Plus, there's really no such thing as bad publicity. I don't doubt that some poor soul out there will read this synopsis and say, "Wow, that sounds awesome! I've got to check it out, over a bowl!" And that person would doubtless be the producers' target audience. To him I say, more power to you. Don't let me put a cloud on your enjoyment. Let your rainbow shine.

But I don't think I'm exactly a film snob here. I've got Live from Antarctica and Phallus in Wonderland on VHS. I've sat through all the special features on the 2-disc collector's edition of Terror Firmer. I even enjoyed Die You Zombie Bastards, a movie with similar production values and goals but whose strange, jazz-like humor riffing and skewed child-like enthusiasm eventually won me over (and which I would recommend over Goregasm any day of the week). So I don't think I'm incapable of appreciating this kind of thing when done with a certain amount of flair.

So hey, kids, you've been warned. Goregasm receives a MMMMmovie record low of 0.25 thumbs, and that much only because I broke that thumb in grade school and don't have a full range of motion. (Okay, it's actually for the female cop, who was the only person here I really felt sorry for and wished she'd been in a better movie.) If you can break the cycle and take a grown-up's advice, it'll save you unnecessary pain and tummy upset. If not...well, sometimes we all have to learn our lessons the hard way.

That's the ticket.

[Note: The picture above showing raw sewage pouring into a waterway was taken by Trey Ratcliff and is licensed under creative commons. Plus, it's way better than Goregasm.]

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The Hanging Woman (1973): or, Life Tastes Better with a Dash o' Nash

Is there any movie you can think of, in any genre or any era, that a brief appearance by Paul Naschy would not make better? Imagine him as one of the bar patrons in Casablanca; one of the background gypsies in The Wolf Man; a burly biker in Easy Rider; wearing a letterman jacket in Revenge of the Nerds or sporting an Ewok costume in Return of the Jedi. As great as all those movies are, I defy you to say that a little dash o' Nash would not make them just a little bit more flavorful. He is truly the MSG of cinema.

I was a little concerned when I started 1973's The Hanging Woman (aka La Orgia de los Muertos) that this might be a Naschy flick that wasn't a Naschy flick. After all, he didn't write it, nor did he direct. He wasn't even the top-billed star! How could it possibly live up to the greatnesses of Horror Rises from the Tomb or Fury of the Wolfman?

Well, it couldn't, but that's okay--nothing can. Luckily, taken on its own, The Hanging Woman is a fun, frantic, and slightly goofy old house mystery/monster romp, with plenty of gore and copious amounts of Euroskin for your viewing delectation. And when you add in that little smidgen of Jacinto, it becomes quite a tasty dish indeed.

We open in a somber cemetery, where the local Count is being laid to rest amongst the wails of his household. Jacinto is in full effect right away as Igor (yes!) the gravedigger/cemetery attendant whose job it is to seal the deceased in the crypt. Paul is looking quite dirty and dangerous here, and his charisma of course overwhelms everything else.

After the crypt is sealed, however, a mysterious woman is seen sneaking among the tombstones. (I think I recognized her as one of the zombies from Vengeance of the Zombies, actually.) She enters the Count's crypt and takes a document from the corpse's jacket, and is apparently shocked by its import. Before she can fully react, however, an ominous shadow passes over her. She pulls out a gun (!) and shoots, but then screams and falls back under the shadow's portentous weight.

Meanwhile, the next day...the young nephew of the Count, Mr. Chekhov, has come to town to attend the reading of the will and stun the townspeople with his luxurious blonde locks. None of the superstitious villagers will transport him to the manor after dark, though, so he must walk past the cemetery on his own, with only his own chrome-plated heater for company. Entering the cemetery--on a whim, apparently--he discovers the corpse of the woman from scene one, hanging from one of the graveyard trees! She is...THE HANGING WOMAN! And so we get the film's credits--the title of the movie, complete with a cartoon noose, and nothing else. Moving on...

"If you like this body, and you think I'm sexy.."

Next we get a flies-eye view of the hanging woman's autopsy, which is nicely graphic for a film of this vintage, if a little brightly colored. Meanwhile, back at the manor house, we learn that young Mr. Chekhov has inherited everything, leaving the nymphomaniac Countess, the live-in houseman/scientist, and the scientist's hawt blonde daughter wondering what their positions will be. The slighted parties storm off, leaving Chekhov to deal with a Pete-Jackson-esque police inspector, who informs us that the hanging woman, who was apparently the Count's niece, died not of hanging, but of heart attack--she was literally SCARED TO DEATH! The countess spies on this exchange through a peephole in the floor of her room/ceiling of the parlor, while Igor also watches through a peephole in his catacombs, whose location in the house is unclear.

The countess, hoping to stave off her depression at being written out of the will, summons Igor with incense and a striptease in her room, which he can magically see through the exact same peephole he was using the scene before. When she puts on a shroud and lies down in a corpse-pose, Igor can resist no longer and appears in the room, as if by magic. Mere walls cannot stand between a necrophiliac Paul and his passion! Igor's a necro with a conscience, thoguh, and in the end he can't be unfaithful to the stiffs he's got squirreled away back in the tombs. He leaves the Countess resuscitated and frustrated. A subsequent scene in which he makes his apologies to his decomposing debutantes is more than a little screwed up, but in the most awesome way possible.

Inspector Jackson is on the case, though, and immediately investigates Igor's pad, a Eurocop who for once demonstrates good police work by going straight for the most obvious suspect. Shocking! They discover that the gravedigger is also a shutterbug, with many examples of stunningly composed decompositions--yes, it's a stash of corpse porn. Even more damning to the inspector, apparently, is the ladies' underwear Igor has stowed in a dresser--"The scoundrel!" And so the manhunt is on! Igor flees, however, and no puny municipal police force can track him once he's loose in the tombs.

"Dead yet? No? That's okay, I can wait..."

Back at the manor, we see the countess doing voodoo on a wax doll (?!) before being interrupted by a lovelorn butler with hair like a 70s country star. After a cryptic exchange THEY are interrupted by young Chekhov, who enters into a war of words with the butler (it seems the countess is doing EVERYONE, and her attentions to the young lord of the manor make the jealous butler go ape), which quickly devolves into fisticuffs and a knife fight! Talk about disgruntled! The Battling Butler's no match for the Blond Bomber, though, as the new Count sends him off with a Van Damme-worthy one-liner: "You're DISMISSED!" *Pow!* The countess's bosoms heave appropriately as the count retires for the night.

Or DOES he? After Chekhov bares his hairy chest for the ladies in the audience, Igor appears again like a phantom, swearing his innocence! Still hopped up on adrenaline, the