Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies

Harlequin (1980): or, Rootin' Tootin' Rasputin

2012-01-27T20:08:00.001-06:00

We need more movies about ambiguously evil wizards with disco-fros and lacquered black fingernails in this world. We just do.

I came to this realization recently while watching Harlequin (aka Dark Forces, dir. Simon Wincer), an entertaining and thoroughly MAD slice of Ozploitation from the far reaches of 1980. Displaying hints of the skill that he would later put to good use in blockbusters like Free Willy (1993), The Phantom (1996), and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001), director Wincer delivers a fun fantasy flick mixing mysticism, cutthroat politics, charlatanry, a healthy dollop of that good ol' razzle dazzle.

We start on the coastline of an unnamed city-state, where the deputy governor is going for an afternoon snorkel while his cadre of bodyguards look on. But even dozens of vigilant servicemen cannot keep the wetsuited politician safe--he disappears in the murky depths, sparking a media frenzy that it falls to Senator Nick Rast (David Hemmings) to deal with.

This is unfortunate, as Rast has plenty of his own problems to deal with. His son Alex (Mark Spain) is suffering from late-stage leukemia, putting bored trophy wife Sandra (Carmen Duncan) on the edge of a complete emotional breakdown. She puts on a brave face for Alex's 8th birthday party, however, showing the sick kid the time of his shortened life--complete with circus rides, balloons, and the creepiest skinny mute clown money can buy!

Nightmare Fuel

Say what you will about the creep factor, though, you can't deny the clown has madd sleight-of-hand skillz. He pulls cards out of thin air, turns handkerchiefs into doves, materializes a big slab o' cake for the sickly guest of to nom upon, and at one point even seems to bring down a crash of thunder from the heavens! They don't teach that at clown college! It's such a great show that even Dad's late arrival can't spoil it for the lovable little tyke--though it does put the senator in serious dutch with the missus.

All good things must come to an end, and the close of the party day sees Alex coughing up blood in the sink and falling into a near coma. The family doctor warns them to prepare for the worst. "It may sound a bit callous," says Nick, just having been informed he's next in line to the deputy governorship, "but it couldn't possibly have come at a worse time!" Say, you're right! That does sound a bit callous. Bastard.

Just when things look their darkest, though, a strange, puppet-like bird appears at Alex's window. Within moments the animatronic avian transforms into...a WEE-ZARD!

You know what they say about guys with big sleeves

Yes, it's the clown from the party, having shed his floppy shoes and make-up for a more elegant but equally ridiculous outfit. The stranger introduces himself as Gregory Wolfe (Robert Powell), and announces he has come to help Alex. Though Nick objects vociferously, desperate mom Sandra begs the stranger to do whatever he can for her dying son. Sure enough, within moments the kid is on his feet, demanding a sammich. Before Mom can thank him properly (and Dad can call his security goons), Wolfe has vanished again, seemingly into thin air.

He's not gone long, though--soon the charismatic magick-man is a daily visitor to the Rast estate, making cozy with Sandra while Nick is occupied in tense meetings with backroom political kingmaker Doc Wheelan (Broderick Crawford, Acadamy Award Winner! But not for this film). While Wheelan molds Rast for office like putty in his fat, tobacco-stained hands, Sandra finds herself drawn to Wolfe like a chickadee to a snake's hypnotic stare. But Gregory, ever the gentleman, rejects her carnal advances at first, a circumstance Sandra takes with the grace and decorum one would expect.

"EAT PLATE, asswipe!"

While he's getting in good with the lady of the house, Gregory is also spending a great deal of time with young Alex, taking him out on long seaside walks (accompanied by Nick's chief of security) to teach him the ways of wizardry. Lesson one? Dangling the recently moribund youngster over a cliff with one hand, so he can experience the fear of death! "Always remember the feel of Death, Alex," he tells his young pupil, setting him down safely while the security man changes his underwear, "and he'll never be able to take you by surprise!" Lesson two: never stand on a cliff with a man dressed like Rue McClanahan at a lingerie party.

"Sure, it looks silly, but the bollock-cooling factor is incredible!"

As the more erudite among you may have already tumbled, writer Everett De Roche's script is a modern-day retelling of the story of Grigori Rasputin, the Infamous Mad Monk of the Russian Court. (Wikipedia article here, for those who want to brush up.) The Rast family share name-analogs with the Romanovs, and even their surname is "Tsar" spelled backwards. Clever, huh? Certain historical happenings are mimicked here, such as Rasputin allegedly curing Tsarevich Alex of hemophilia, exerting a powerful influence over Tsarina Alexandra, and another famous bit of lore that would be spoilerish to reveal here. Suffice to say, the only thing missing is the Russian's Epic Fuck-Off Beard.

Maybe He's Born With It

Things heat to the boiling point when Wolfe starts hinting he knows what happened to the former deputy governor, and points his black-shellacked fingers at Doc Wheelan's merciless machine. "You're being groomed Nick, by magicians, to suit their purpose," he warns, indicating that Wheelan's political powers, though not as mystical, are no less formidable, and perhaps even more deadly. In his role as rival sorceror, Wheelan scryes his all-knowing TRS-80 to discredit Wolfe, uncovering seemingly ironclad evidence that the wizard is a fake and has been snookering the Rasts through hypnosis, adrenocortical steroids, and old fashioned show-biz.

That explanation is dealt a bit of a blow, though, when Wolfe crashes one of the senator's fundraisers--in SERIOUS LEATHER--and turns the place into a magical Fantasia! And not the kind where the hippos are dancing either; the kind where the basement gets flooded and the brooms all try to kill you. Looking like a cross between David Bowie's Goblin King and Slim Goodbody, Wolfe levitates a piano, cuts a dove in half with a flying cymbal, and magically extracts an elderly matron's abcessed tooth--a process apparently MUCH more complicated than simply curing leukemia.

"Do I make you horny? I make *me* horny."

Having gone a bit too far, Wolfe is imprisoned by Wheelan's stooges, only to escape and return to Rast's estate with a view toward ruining the announcement of his appointment. What follows is a battle of science versus magic, as Wolfe thwarts the house's high-tech security systems in order to plead with Rast to reject the Wheelans of the world and embrace...I dunno, a return to private law practice? The details are fuzzy, but it doesn't matter: the stage is set for a showdown, with the fate of the Rast family and ~~Perth's~~ New York's government hanging in the balance.

Harlequin is a wild ride, and one that fans of crazy-ass movies like the ones we celebrate here would do well to seek out. It has everything you want and more--historical pedigree, wild fantasy fx, histrionics galore, random Sigmund Freud impersonations, a fleeting boob sighting, and, as is only appropriate for a movie based on Russian history, strict adherence to the Chekov Rule ("If you show an ill-placed bottle of ammonia acids in Act One..."). Acting is good from top to bottom, the standouts being Crawford as the gruff, no-nonsense Doc Wheelan, and Powell of course carrying the film's top spot.

Ain't Nothin' Funny About a Clown with a Cricket Bat

In short, I enjoyed this flick a lot, and you will too, if you know what's good for you! 2.5 thumbs.

A few more images from Harlequin (1980):

"They're still bigger than yours."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Not this time.

It's cymbalic, of course

State of the Art

"Oy! Fancy a shag?"

BZZZZZZZZZAT!

"Just one more question, kid--what the hell IS that thing?!"

"And that's the story of how Mercedes McCambridge and I killed a hobo one time. More punch?"

I don't know what I love more--the spray of blood on the middle dude's face, or how completely blase the guy beside him is. "Oh, this is nothing. You should see what David Copperfield can do to a baby penguin!"

"My God, Vicar--it's HUGE!"

The House of the Seven Graves (1982): or Disco in the Dovecote

2012-01-20T08:50:00.005-06:00

I admit I wasn't expecting much from The House of the Seven Graves (La Casa de las Siete Tumbas, dir. Pedro Stocki). And at first, I seemed to be getting what I was expecting. However, as the movie wore on, what started out as a standard flick about possibly supernatural childhood trauma turned into an eerie, dark fairy tale about witches in the woods, haunted wells, and the destructive tensions between lovers and friends. Perhaps that doesn't entirely excuse some of the film's narrative and technical shortcomings, but it did make for an entertaining and somewhat pleasing pelicula from our friends from way way south of the border.

Somewhere in rural Argentina, besties Clara and Cecilia make their way through an idyllic, thoroughly normal childhood. They ride their bikes, braid each others' hair, and play the innocent juvenile games of an age before Internets, XBoxes and lipstick parties. This all changes, however, when down by the train tracks an old hobo entertains them with the legend of a witch who lives nearby, who has a penchant for luring young 'uns to her house, draining their blood, tossing their lower halves down a well and shoving their disembodied heads into a huge, haunted dovecote* on her estate grounds. With nothing better to do, adventurous Cecilia drags timid Clara to the house in question and dares her to go into a workshed, only to abandon her friend once the dusty door clatters shut. If you're thinking this is a recipe for life-long psychosexual trauma, you've clearly been to Argentina before.

*Note to the Vicarage Architetural Corps: we need a haunted dovecote. STAT.

MORE MADNESS...

So THAT's what it sounds like! Thanks, your Purpleness!

Jump-cut twenty years into the future: somehow the girls have made it to adulthood, and even more amazingly have remained close friends. Clara is now a reclusive piano teacher whose much-older husband Roberto is always away on business, and Cecilia a hot-to-trot maneater on the verge of settling down with hunky hombre Armando. Shouting over the noise of Clara's time-bending hallucinations and flashback-filled fucktuppery, Cecilia tells her friend she's taking a trip back to their old home town with her fiance, for...some reason or other. Clara wishes her friend well and sees her out the door, anxious to get back to playing plaintive piano pieces and stomping her bare feet to ribbons on her glass-framed wedding portraits. As one does.

Tootsies of the Damned

Meanwhile, out in the big scary world, Cecilia meets up with Armando in Buenas Aires just as he's finishing a tennis match against a much younger, fitter chica. Laughing off his intramural activities, Cecilia hustles him into the car and away they go! Soon they're deep into the Argentinian countryside, where Armando proves bafflingly difficult to keep on task; spying an overgrown gravel path leading away from the main throughway, Armando immediately slams on the brakes and hits the turn signal. Questioned by his lover, he shrugs and says, "I've always liked dirt roads!", as if that explains everything, and thus sets them on a collision course with destiny and a suspiciously massive dovecote.

Yes, of COURSE it's the old witch's house, complete with said dovecote, a wailing well, and six well-tended graves in the front yard. Not put off AT ALL, Armando asks directions from a creepy old groundskeeper bearing a canvas bag full of yowling cats. Unhelpfully, the man asks Armando for the loan of a few cups of petrol, which he then uses to set the bag on fire! (Editor's note: what in the ACTUAL FUCK?) Turns out the lady of the house really hates cats, and it falls to Groundskeeper Willie--er, Ruperto--to get rid of them via fiery CATaclysm.

"Call the ASPCA, NOW!"

Yes, it's CATastrophic. But really the PURRrect way to...oh, shut up.

Still bravely trying to get directions, Armando is interrupted by a horrible scream from one of the upper floors of the house. "Leave! Leave!" shouts the cackling, dare I say witchy voice. "Because here there is no way out!"

"Can we spend the night here?" asks Armando, the Man Without Brains.

Here the movie veers very strongly into horror-laced fairy tale territory. Their hostess the Witch says cryptic things before locking them in the Murder In the Dark suite, where rats the size of guinea pigs watch them make out and Cecilia cries hysterically about someone hiding under the bed. Armando is unsympathetic, alternately slapping the hell out of and trying to get busy with Cecilia. We get lots of eerie shots of dark woods, that huge and increasingly sinister dovecote, and the haunted well, while somewhere in the house the Witch soliloquizes to her ward, a Pig-Slopping Retard girl, about how all men are pigs and cats are all traitors. It doesn't make much sense, but it does manage to create a respectable feeling of oddness and unease.

Sure, Armando could be a little rough, but he was the only one who loved Cecilia enough to cut her back hair for her.

Meanwhile, back in the city, Clara seems psychically linked with the occurrences at the house, calling out to her friend that she will never escape while making confetti out of her own photo albums. (She also takes a bath or two, showing off a surprisingly hot bod for a reclusive looney.) She hears voices, and the hallucinations continue. Director Pedro Stocki again shows a sure hand, with off-kilter angles and sinister lighting that purposefully (and meaningfully) recall Polanski's Repulsion.

As the flick rambled on, I began to get a strange feeling that here was a movie that was actually a lot better than it had at first seemed. Though early on we got some truly bad cinematography and editing, Stocki seems to find his groove, gaining confidence and skill as the movie barrels forward. Strange happenings at the house continue, as Cecilia falls under the witch's man-hating spell and Armando begins to plot his lover's death with Ruperto the Cat Scorcher (for no reason I caught). Skulls show up in the dovceote, creepy dolls float by in the nearby river, shadowy horsemen prevent our lovers from escaping, and creepy noises emanate from the well. All this is interspersed with flashbacks to their childhood, Clara's escalating psychosis back in her apartment, and a disturbing pig-slopping scene in which the retard girl gets intimate with a pile of mud.

Likes it Dirty

Again, it doesn't make much sense, but I found it nearly impossible to look away.

La Casa de Las Siete Tumbas started out inept, but through force of strangeness and eventual skill snuck up on me and pulled me into the bushes of its narrative. By the time we get the explanation for all the weirdness--which might not surprise aficianados of this kind of thing, but nonetheless was well-executed--I had a well-entertained smile on my face. And as you know, parishioners, that's really all I ask for.

2 thumbs.

A few more images from The House of the Seven Graves (1982):

Toys now, therapy bills later

"Ladies."

Room for One More

Sensing Clara's distress, Glycerin Man rushes to her rescue.

"Ladies."

"Wanna buy a knife?"

One man's slop is another man's forearm.

"Next time, let's not coordinate our hats, okay guys? It's weird."

"And my heart...will go OOOOOOOON!"

Shadows of Blood (1988): or, Amsterdamaged

2011-11-30T09:59:00.005-06:00

That's right--there is no poster for this movie.

In the late 80s, the port of Amsterdam is rocked by a series of brazen and motiveless murders. Local police are stymied, until they learn through Interpol that two vicious serial killers have escaped a French asylum and are currently engaged in a friendly competition to see who can deal the most Dutch death. One of the men (Barry Fleming) is a maniacal, hatchet-faced freak who nurses romantic delusions about finding true love, along with an extreme sensitivity about his male-pattern baldness. The other, played by his Mad Mad Mad Mad Magnificence Paul Naschy, is a grizzled, cigar-smoking old Spaniard, who turned to serial killing after a successful career as a b-movie horror star and champion power lifter...hey waitaminnit!

Shadows of Blood (1988, dir. Sydney Ling) is something of an oddity in Naschy's career. A flick so obscure it doesn't even have an IMDb entry--in fact, Paul is the only member of the cast whose IMDb page seems to exist!--the film was apparently a direct-to-video effort produced for the burgeoning Dutch VHS market. Like many of the early shot-on-video productions, this one suffers from terrible videography, laughable video effects, and incredibly amateurish acting from everyone but the Mighty Mighty Molina. While it's probably only of interest to hardcore Naschyphiles and obsessive DTV collectors, the movie still boasts enough MADness to make it an enjoyable waste of 70 minutes, at least for connoisseurs of trash cinema like your ever lovin' Vicar.

ETA: VIEW THE LAST 8 MINUTES OF SHADOWS OF BLOOD ON YOUTUBE! (Spoilers, obviously)

There is really no plot or character development to speak of here--we meet Fleming's killer window-shopping in Amsterdam, walking down the street like a regular (if funny-looking) tourist. On a busy thoroughfare, he sees a young New Waver coming toward him, and something behind his eyes just snaps! Without even checking whether all ist klar, Der Kommissar, he throttles the young punk on the hood of a nearby Citroen! Whether from lack of social engagement or crippling politeness, the other Amsterdammers passing by on the street take no notice.

"I told you not to put mayonnaise on my fries, but YOU JUST DIDN'T LISTEN!"

Later, Fleming meets Paul's character (who for sake of simplicity we'll call "Paul") and they discuss their newfound freedom and what they intend to do with it--which seems to be mainly random, motiveless stranglings. Of interest to Naschy fans here is that Paul speaks his few lines in English--though so heavily accented and with such strange inflection, he's clearly working it phonetically. (No shame there though--ALL of the actors in the movie seem to be reciting their lines phonetically, with the exception of a wisecracking Cockney detective on the Amsterdam police force, who seems to serve no other purpose in the movie.) I for one got a strong Lugosi vibe off Naschy's dialogue here, which of course made me giggle with glee.

"I crap bigger than you!"

Eager to show the youngster how it's done, Paul checks into a bed & breakfast. Moments after dropping his luggage in his room, he drags a chambermaid in by the throat! (In the first of many instances of somewhat effective black humor, Paul thoughtfully puts out the "Do Not Disturb" sign. Also, in the first of many instances of filmmaking flubs, we next see Paul stepping around a stage light to get to his mark.) Still spry despite his 55 years, Paul stalks his prey before executing a stunning leap attack!

Huzzah!

As the bodies pile up, the Amsterdam police force finally takes notice. Though the tough-as-nails female chief orders her men to bring the killers in before Interpol can come in and trample the case, her elderly, Carlsberg-swilling flatfoots make no progress. Meanwhile Fleming strangles a hobo, and Paul one-ups him by walking into a cafe, ordering a dish of soup (or "soap"--it's hard to tell), and then strangling a Debbie Harry lookalike before his meal can even be served! A fellow diner, sitting literally the next table over, does nothing to help...though he may well have simply been paralyzed by Paul's mesmerizing manliness.

With no clues to go on (except presumably the DOZENS of eyewitnesses to every single murder!), the chieftess is forced to accept the help of an also-elderly Interpol agent, apparently sent over from their Department of International Standing Around with Hands in Pockets. (He's the best there is at what he does!) The agent fills them in on the killers' backstories, which include the fact that Paul has murdered 22 people, and his apprentice a respectable 19--not counting the latest additions. Together the crack task force investigate several tabacs, bars, and hotel bars, finding nothing but a series of suspicious-looking cocktails that must be immediately eliminated.

"Nope, no killers under the crumpets! Maybe at the bottom of this glass, then?"

From there on out, it's a series of curious events. Fleming strangles more random passersby. Paul throttles a few too--including one fat video editor (?), whom he takes out while wearing a Venetian plague doctor mask!--but later diversifies into stabbings and power-drillings. Things take a strange turn when Fleming starts courting a hollow-eyed local woman, who is not put off by his goblin-like face and penchant for killing people during lulls in the conversational courtship. Meanwhile Paul has an odd interlude wherein he meets an elderly Dutch serial killer to talk shop with, and later has his humanity reawakened by the not-so-skillful warblings of a homeless flautist. Seriously.

Fun fact: Naschy spent a good portion of the 80s touring with Jethro Tull

Things come to a head when Fleming senselessly murders the old flute-blower, which causes a rift in his friendship with Paul--a rift that's only exacerbated when Paul garottes Fleming's girlfriend before his eyes! Somehow the cops FINALLY catch up with the younger killer, leading to a foot chase and a showdown in which Fleming laughs like Dwight Frye on nitrous oxide and rips off his hitherto-unmentioned toupee! The police are powerless against such insanity, so it's up to Paul to put Fleming down like the rabid dog he is. As the chief of police stands by completely inactive--saying nonsensically via voice-over that "Perhaps it's better he gets away!" (wha?)--we get a flashback montage with strange video effects of blood-colored hands over the footage, grasping at the old killer while he offs victim after victim. Perhaps these are the "shadows of blood" that haunt him and inspire his murderousness? Director Ling leaves us to ponder this mystery as the end credits roll, and treats us to one of the most infectiously awful title songs I've ever heard in a Naschy flick.

Shadows of Blood is a terrible, terrible movie, and one that I'm sure Paul was not sorry to have left off most of his filmographies. Apart from a short write-up on the indispensible Naschy.com, there's little information in English about this flick, and many fans would probably say that's for the better. It definitely seems beneath Paul's considerable talents, and even the man himself seems to be uncharacteristically phoning in much of the performance, his eyes only on the paycheck waiting at the end. (Apart from those few lines alluded to earlier, most of Paul's acting here is done via broad gestures and pantomime.) Bad script, bad acting, a terrible Casio-fart score, and bad cinematography abound; it's little wonder that few if any of the other people involved have any further discernible film credits.

Your guess is as good as mine

Still, whether because of my own unique mental malformations, or because I'm always under the sway the Magic of the Mighty Molina, I admit to enjoying Shadows of Blood more than a little. The plot device of the competing serial killers isn't a bad idea, and the outlandish brazenness of their killings was a source of laugh-out-loud entertainment to me. Though I couldn't argue that it's anything other than one of the worst films in Naschy's long career, I nonetheless ended the flick with my trademark Naschy-induced grin on full beam. I was never bored by it, which is of course the gold standard for trash cinema in my opinion.

So for me and other Naschy completists, I would rate the film at 2 thumbs, something you need to see and might even enjoy. But for the average moviegoer, that rating would have to drop considerably, maybe even to the 1 thumb range. I freely admit to my bias--but what can I say? Naschy always makes me happy. Rest in peace, you wonderful madman. You are missed.

More images from Shadows of Blood (1988):

Kill!

Drill!

"Waiter, there's a Fly Girl in my soup!"


"Yeah, everyone keeps telling me Alcohol Niet Ils Ik Ru, but I don't believe it!"

That's right! KNEEL, PEASANT!

The Ghost Hand goes for Paul's Booty. Can you blame it?

Even Paul doesn't know what he was thinking

NASCHY FOREVER

2011-11-29T09:17:00.003-06:00

The Man

It hardly seems like two years have passed since Jacinto Molina, known to his still-growing legions of fans as the Lon Chaney of Spain, Paul Naschy, shuffled off this mortal coil and took his final bow. Followers of this blog know what Naschy's legacy means to the Duke and me: he was quite literally the impetus of this project of ours, and the subject of its first-ever review post. He left behind a legacy of joy, terror, and madness matched by few, and (in our humbles) surpassed by none.

He is sorely missed. We shall not see his like again.

It may seem incredible to some, but here, two years after the day I woke to discover that my icon and hero had succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 75, I still get tears in my eyes just thinking about it. At some point between that first giddy discovery of Naschy's work, through countless visits to his monster-choked realm, from the dizzying heights of his Waldemar Daninsky saga to the saddening lows of his bitter, fallow years, Naschy stopped being just an image on the screen, just an old man from a foreign land whose interests and passions neatly dovetailed with mine; he became, in a sense, one of my dearest friends. And his loss was hard to take. It still is.

The Myth

Though I have delved deeply into the legacy Naschy left behind, I still have much to discover. Later today I will be posting one of these until-now-untapped discoveries. But in the meantime, as my tribute and monument to my much admired and even-more missed old friend, I collect here all the Naschyness of the blog for your reference and enjoyment.

Rest in peace, Paul. Gracias.

The Legend

Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968)
Assignment Terror (1970)
The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman (1971)
Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (1972)
Fury of the Wolfman (1972)
Horror Rises from the Tomb (1972)
Crimson (1973)
Curse of the Devil (1973)
A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1973)
The Hanging Woman (1973)
The Hunchback of the Morgue (1973)
The Mummy's Revenge (1973)
Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)
Count Dracula's Great Love (1974)
The Devil's Possessed (1974)
Exorcismo (1975)
Muerte De Un Quinqui (1975)
Night of the Howling Beast (1975)
Inquisición (1976)
El Transexual (1977)
The Frenchman's Garden (1978)
El Caminante (1979)
Los Cantabros (1980)
Night of the Werewolf (1981)
The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983)
El Ultimo Kamikaze (1984)
Rojo Sangre (2004)

And remember last year, the glorious outpouring of love that was the Paul Naschy Blogathon? You can still visit all those links too! And well you should!

THE PAUL NASCHY BLOGATHON LINKS PAGE

EDIT: It appears I've jumped the gun with my grief, as Naschy's official date of death is November 30. :( I'm letting this stand, though--expect my review of my latest Naschy viewing tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to The Duke of DVD!

2011-11-11T11:45:00.001-06:00

"Getting old ain't for pussies, verily."

Two thousand years ago, in the Australian bush near what is now Bumbang, Victoria, an Aborigine shaman fell into a Dreaming in which he saw a huge, flesh-puddled mass, barely human, surrounded by heaps of gold, piles of roasted wallabies, and the twisted limbs of a thousand writhing damned. The poor man never fully recovered, and spent the rest of his days with a severe form of involuntary sweating lalalogia accompanied by explosive incontinence. Though his people had no written language, for years the oral history recorded his bizarre utterances, collected by Swedish anthropologist Høyt Møøsewørryer in the mid-19th Century. The strange locutions--"Noshee!", "Fool-chee!", "Bah Vah!", "Arrh Ghent Oh!" and "Ooh, Dat's a Bollocky Bumtikler!" have never been satisfactorily explained, but many occult authorities point to this nameless seer as the first to glimpse the coming of the Great Destroyer of Glazed Hams and Devourer of Insanity, whose nativity today is celebrated by some, mourned by others, and feared by all.

Yes, parishioners, today is the birthday of His Flatulence, The Duke of DVD!

As is our custom on this most blessed and cursed of all calendar days, let us take a moment to review some of the lore and legend surrounding everyone's favorite aristocrat:

In addition to his expertise in all things related to Madness in Cinema, the Duke is also an accomplished (some might say "cunning") linguist, being fluent in Cantonese, Hindi, Creole, and Sasquatchian.

In 1935, up-and-coming Burlesque star-turned-actress Fifi "Bang Bang" La Desh penned a series of tell-all articles about the Duke, drawn from her experience giving command performances at his chalet in Cunter, Switzerland. Among the startling revelations in La Desh's memoirs, readers learned that after a particularly intense bout of drinking, the Duke once expelled three cysts in the shape of an Eye of Horus, a Pentacle, and Teddy Roosevelt's moustache. It was later learned that the latter was in fact the actual moustache of the ex-president, though heaven knows how it got there.

"Bugger!"

The Duke has one of the greatest collections of false limbs ever assembled. His prize exhibit is the false arm of Admiral Horatio Nelson, which he employs to open stubborn jars and retrieve hard-to-reach items from high shelves. He also owns the peg leg of privateer François le Clerc, which he habitually puts to more unspeakable uses.

On his last trip to the Amazon, the Duke and his party discovered a hitherto unknown species of beetle, Ducalias Dvdius Vulgaris, which as a defense mechanism excretes a pheromone that causes uncontrollable orgasms in its attacker. Shortly thereafter, the Duke single-handedly hunted the bug to extinction.

After receiving a pre-festival tasting pass to the 1979 Munich Oktoberfest, the Duke consumed every vat of ale earmarked for the celebration. As a result, a Novemberfest was held that year, the only such festival in the city's history. The Duke has since been banned from attending, but still sneaks in occasionally in the costume of a Gypsy prostitute.

The above is also how the Duke covers his airfare and lodging expenses for the trip.


"I find his eminence the Duke...disarming!" "Also, a right cad. sob!"

The Duke is the 3-time world champion in the Vertical Luge, and the first to be inducted in that sport's hall of fame, by virtue of his being the only person to compete in a VLA meet and survive.

Among his many hobbies, the Duke enjoys Underwater Sculptural BB-stacking, and being tossed by dwarfs.

The Duke's middle name is Eunice.

Many happy returns to my friend, my confidant, my blackmailer and fashion consultant, and one of the MADDEST men I know--parishioners and subjects, raise your glasses to the Duke!

Don't Hate Him Because He's Beautiful

Bunnies,
The Vicar

Night of the Living Dead (1968): or, Slow and Steady Wins the Race

2011-11-01T08:40:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 31!

I probably don't have to summarize this one for any of my parishioners, but in the interest of keeping good form, here goes: after laying a wreath on their father's grave, siblings Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner) are attacked by a shambling, murderous lunatic. Johnny is killed in the struggle, and Barbara flees to a nearby farmhouse, whose sole occupant is a partially devoured corpse. Soon she is joined by Ben (Duane Jones), a take-charge kinda guy who is fleeing from a horde of similarly murderous shamblers. They discover another group of refugees in the cellar of the house--lovebirds Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley), bickering married couple Helen and Harry Cooper (Marilyn Eastman and Karl Hardman), and the Coopers' injured daughter Karen (Kyra Schon). News reports inform them that what's outside are worse than murderers--incredibly, the unburied dead are coming back to life to kill and eat the living! As the group of would-be survivors tries to find a way out, tensions mount between them and the zombie horde grows larger and hungrier...

Rewatching Night of the Living Dead (1968) for the who-knows-what-numberth time, I was struck as I always am by how near-perfectly paced the film is. There's little to no drag, and from the opening scene in the cemetery to the well-known shock ending, the movie hums along like clockwork--with a very tightly wound spring. Every scene has a purpose and pushes the film forward, gaining momentum as it goes. The characters behave believably, doing what anyone would do in a similar apocalyptic situation; even Barbara's paralytic shock and Harry's angry assholery are understandable and relatable. And Romero's zombies are slow, implacable, and overwhelming, setting the standard for flesh-eating ghouls that continues to hold today.

Suspenseful, thrilling, and still scary after all these years, Night of the Living Dead is the perfect Halloween rewatch, and a great way to cap off my 31 days of horror movies. 3+ thumbs, of course.

They're all messed up.

Skew (2011): or, Tale of the Tape

2011-10-31T08:40:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 30!

Amateur videographer Simon (Rob Scattergood) embarks on a week-long road trip with his beer-swilling best friend Rich (Richard Olak) and Rich's girlfriend Eva (Amber Lewis) to attend another friend's wedding. Simon's girlfriend L.T. (Taneal Cutting) was also supposed to go, but cancels at the last moment, leaving Simon a third wheel. As the friends travel cross-country, tensions mount due to Simon's obsession with recording everything they see, and also due to his growing romantic obsession with the lovely, bra-poor Eva. Soon triangular tensions are the least of their worries, though, as Simon begins to notice strange images through his viewfinder: a hotel clerk and a gas station attendant both show up with their features strangely skewed on the tape, and later both wind up dead, the victims of seemingly random violence. As the video anomalies become more common, the body count rises, and Simon fears his camera is the instrument of a terrible supernatural curse. Still, he feels strangely compelled to keep filming, putting his friends in greater danger with every push of the "record" button...

I hadn't heard of Skew (2011) before reading a recent review on the excellent site Planet of Terror, but I'm very glad I did--dispite obvious similarities to the Ring/Ringu movies (cursed characters there also show up distorted on video), director Sevé Schelenz manages to make his "reality horror" film something fresh and intriguing. The main genius move is making our point-of-view character a flawed, possibly unreliable narrator--in addition to experiencing the supernatural visions along with him, we also slowly piece together his own neuroses and strange desires, which enhances the film's texture and deepens the resonance of the images we're shown. Schelenz does a great job revealing his character through visuals and interactions with his friends, giving the audience enough to stay interested without seeming unnaturally expository.

The cast helps things a lot too, as Scattergood, Olak, and Lewis have a lot of natural chemistry. Watching their relationships develop and change is often just as interesting as the next creepy set-piece. Which is not to say Schelenz skimps on the creepiness--the skewed faces of innocents and our knowledge of what that means generates some suspense, and Simon's periodic visitations by the ghosts of those who died of the curse are shocking and goosebump-worthy. The director also uses the medium to good effect--scenes where Rich and Eva borrow Simon's camera reveal a lot about them all, and when Simon rewinds and rewatches some of his footage at the end, it adds another possible explanation to the strange happenings. Or maybe not--I found the final image (no spoilers) puzzling, but still got an inexplicable shiver out of it, which is perhaps a testament to how the film gets under your skin.

Thanks again to Planet of Terror for turning me on to this hidden gem. It's streaming on Netflix instant, so if you're looking for a creepy little story for your Halloween viewing, you could do a lot worse. 2.5 thumbs.

"I think this shirt really brings out my eyes."

The Bat People (1974): or, Echolocation Nation

2011-10-30T10:30:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 29!

Scientist Dr. John Beck (Stewart Moss) really loves bats--so much that he's devoted his life and his ski vacation in northern New Mexico to his avid chiropterology. His beautiful wife Cathy (Marianne McAndrew) tries to make the best of things, inviting her hubby for a frolic off the tourist paths in some beautiful caves beneath the mountains. Unfortunately the amorous pair tumble immediately into a hole filled with beetles and are soon after attacked by a very frightening rubber bat replica! After their rescue, Johnny suffers a pair of hilarious seizures, which makes his wife and ski-bum physician Dr. Kipling (Paul Carr, moustache fancier extraordinaire) fear John has contracted the rubber rabies. After a bad reaction to his first rabies treatment, Paul is hospitalized.

The first night, Paul awakens from a dream of murderous bats to find himself transformed, Kafka-esque, into a Man-Bat! Half-man, half-bat, all murdery, Paul offs a nurse and later a dope-smokin', fornicatin' teen...or does he? The doctor believes his transformations and rampages are all in his head, but local cop Sgt. Ward (Michael Pataki, Mad Movie veteran of The Baby and Grave of the Vampire) is not convinced--and the pair of bodies cooling in the morgue don't help Kipling's case either. In a fit of animalistic rage, Paul escapes the hospital, steals an ambulance, and tears out of there like a bat out of hell! (So to speak.) Fleeing back to the cave where his troubles began, Paul descends into either madness or bat-itude, while Cathy and the increasingly unhinged Ward try to track him down. Can they get to him before he kills again?

Spoiler: nope.

A mad mad mad mad movie if ever there was one, The Bat People (1974) is really something special. Sure, director Jerry Jameson's film has pacing problems, and relies too heavily on poorly matched stock footage of bats in nature, but the several things about this flick had me grinning idiot-wise throughout:

Any movie gets bonus points from me when it opens with a plaintive, 70s theme song. This one has "Angel of Fear," and it's a stunner.

Some of the "attacking bats" shown in closeup are clearly being held by their wingtips directly in front of the camera and are struggling mightily against the injustice. This is both slightly cruel and deeply hilarious.

The Man-Bat makeup by Stan Winston I found to be excellent and distinctly Naschy-esque.

"I am not an animal! I...oh, wait. Fuck."

A late scene where John transforms while making love to his oblivious, orgasming wife is also Naschy-esque (q.v. Curse of the Devil [1973]).

An early bat-creature attack scene is scored with the most incongruously toe-tapping free jazz you can imagine. The Naschy parallels have pretty much got to be intentional at this point (q.v., Vengeance of the Zombies [1973])

Stewart Moss's eye-rolling, face-twitching seizures should have won him an award. Also, awesomely named Arthur Space has a show-stealing scene as a philosophical hobo.

There's an odd kneecapping of our sympathy/admiration for the shrewd, no-nonsense Sgt. Kelly when out of nowhere he gets all rapey on Cathy in her hotel room! WTF, lawman?

The final "bat-attack" scene, which also explains the plural form of the noun used in the title, is simply fantastic.

I'm not going to say The Bat People is a great film, or even one that most viewers would like--it's stupid, cheap, and takes a while getting to the bat-action (though some would count that as a strength, leaving viewers to ponder whether John is actually transforming or just rabid and hallucinating). But as a fan of all things cheap and cheesy, I thought it was great. If you feel the same, Bat People is a fun time. 2.5 thumbs.

And many thanks to the beautiful and deadly Jenn of Cavalcade of Perversions, whose love for this flick is what caused me to seek it out in the first place!

"Look, I'm getting used to the sweater, but if you say 'Good Grief!' to me one more time, so help me..."

Madhouse (1974): or, Making a Killing in Show Business

2011-10-29T08:45:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 28!

On New Year's eve, movie star Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) throws a party with three goals: to celebrate the annual changing of the calendar, to premiere the latest in his successful series of horror flicks in which he plays macabre supervillain Dr. Death, and to announce his engagement to his much, much younger lover Ellen (Julie Crosthwaite). Things are spoiled when Paul's former lover Faye (Adrienne Corri, of the previously reviewed sci-fi funfest Moon Zero Two [1969]) interferes with some cutting remarks, and Ellen's old beau, adult film producer Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry) reveals to Paul that his new fiancee has a history doing the belly-bumpin' boogie for the camera.

This news shocks the old man into spurning his soulmate, going upstairs, and collapsing in a depressed heap on the bed. A bit later, a man dressed in a very convincing Dr. Death costume sneaks into Ellen's room and dispatches her, gaining style points for perfectly balancing her head atop her severed neck for Paul to discover later! Paul is accused of Ellen's murder, and sentenced to twelve years in a mental institution.

When he gets out, he is offered a job by his old friend and screenwriter Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing)--who is also Faye's brother and her sole caregiver after a fiery car accident left her disfigured and insane--reviving the Dr. Death character for a television series. However, as the Hollywood bloodsuckers come out of the woodwork and the temperamental old actor adjusts to modern moviemaking, he suffers further bouts of unconsciousness and wakes up to find more corpses, killed just as Dr. Death would have done. Is Paul a closet psychopath, using his cinematic alter-ego to avenge himself on those he hates? Or is there something more sinister afoot?

With a real all-star cast of horror heavyweights (in addition to Price, Cushing, and Quarry, we get "special participation" by Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff! Though this participation is limited to archive footage from other films), Madhouse is pretty much guaranteed to please. The plot is a little threadbare and silly (the cocky TV director being pressed like a grape in one of Dr. Death's props is just one example), but Price goes at it gamely as always, and Quarry makes an excellent big Hollywood baddie. Cushing is fun as the milquetoast writer who may know more than he's saying, and Corri steals the show as the former beauty whose tragedy has somehow made her a basement-dwelling, spider-coddling old crone. If nothing else, the Dr. Death makeup is simply wonderful, and will make fans of Price wish he actually had made a few films as the character.

There's no actual madhouse action to speak of in Madhouse, but the climax is MAD enough without it. Light on gore and scares, but nonetheless a fun matinee-style horror flick. 2 thumbs.

"The Doctor's on smoke break, baby. Blow."

(image borrowed from the excellent horror-centric tumblr, Where Beauty and Terror Dance. Check it out!)

Spider Forest (2004): or, What Tangled Webs We Weave

2011-10-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 27!

TV journalist Kang Min (Woo-seong Kam) finds himself inexplicably wandering through a beautiful, creepy forest, and soon happens upon what appears to be an abandoned cabin. Inside, however, he discovers the mangled body of a half-naked man, his face frozen in a rictus of terror. In another bedroom he finds his girlfriend, who was apparently there for a tryst with the dead man. Also mortally wounded, the girl babbles cryptically about "The spiders! The spiders!" before expiring in her wronged lover's arms. Hearing a noise outside, Kang Min chases a shadowy figure into the woods, but gets waylaid with a stout tree branch to the noggin. Concussed and confused, he stumbles onto a nearby road, into a tunnel, and is immediately run down by an SUV! As he bleeds out on the pavement, he sees a blurry, dark figure that seems strangely, impossibly familiar...

Flashing back, we follow the events that led up to Kang Min's bad end--or do we? In Spider Forest (2004), writer/director Il-gon Song weaves an intricate web out of his protagonist's past, present, and possible futures. At the center of the web is the mysterious Min Su-Jin (Jung Suh), an enigmatic photo developing clerk who tells him the story of the Spider Forest--a place where ghosts who no one loves or remembers haunt the amnesiac living as eight-legged revenants. As the TV journalist spirals toward the truth, he becomes more and more entangled in his own memories, leading to (naturally) a shocking and slightly head-scratching conclusion.

Some of the commenters on Spider Forest's imdb reviews page compare the style and content here to a David Lynch film, and the comparison is apt. Though the movie has some horror elements--there's a ghost story in there somewhere, and the scene of the double murder is grim, especially later when Kang Min's friend detective Choi (Hyeong-seong Jang) discovers the bodies teeming with baby spiders--but mostly this is a narrative puzzle of a Lynchian stamp, where the viewer is invited to make connections between seemingly disparate events and symbols and interpret the ending on an almost subconscious level. I don't think this flick is quite as inscrutable as much of Lynch's work, but it is tightly constructed and beautifully shot, with some stunning compositions, particularly in the forest itself and the traffic tunnel where Kang Min meets his fate.

The movie doesn't have a lot of pulse-pounding action, and I would really classify it more as "brain-twisting drama" than horror (but imdb classifies it as horror, so I'm keeping it for the Challenge!)--still, it is a very interesting movie that kept me engaged and intrigued. 2.25 thumbs.

"I just want to drive a big, long semi down this tunnel, again and again and again! I don't know why..."

The Cabinet of Caligari (1962): or, Crazy, Baby

2011-10-27T09:12:00.007-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 27!

Jane Lindstrom (Glynis Johns), a free-spirited and adventure-seeking young woman, is driving her little sports car through a mountainous stretch of countryside when her tire goes flat, forcing her to seek shelter at the palatial home of enigmatic Dr. Caligari (Dan O'Herlihy). After an extremely odd and disturbingly insinuating conversation, the doctor instructs his assistant Chris (Constance Ford) to prepare a room for their new "guest." As it turns out the Caligari estate is full of guests, each one more eccentric than the last and none of them in a terrible hurry to leave. As Jane's stay stretches from hours to days, she discovers weirdness upon weirdness: the doctor's study has a glass revolving door behind its ordinary wooden one, the gates are locked and electrically charged at night, and the doctor seems inordinately interested in Jane's early sex life.

Things go from strange to threatening when Jane sees a leering face in the skylight window above her bathtub, and later watches Caligari's henchman David (Lawrence Dobkin) beat lovable elderly nutcase Ruth (the show-stealing Estelle Winwood) to death with a cane! Despite the reassurances of kindly old codger Paul and periodic visitor Mark (Richard Davalos), Jane grows more and more frantic to escape Caligari's sinister clutches--and then a shocking revelation sends her into a tailspin of phantasmagoric madness from which she might well not recover...

Until director Roger Kay's 1962 flick The Cabinet of Caligari showed up on my "suggested for you" queue, I had no idea the film even existed. (The only other version of the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I knew of was the psychotronic brainfuckler Dr. Caligari, made in 1989 by Stephen Sayadian). I'm glad I gave this one a chance, because Kay (working from a script by Psycho author
Robert Bloch) delivers a neat update on the German-Expressionist classic, with beautiful black & white cinematography, bizarre and entertaining dialogue, and some truly odd images that will stay in your mind for quite a while.

The differences between this movie and its inspiration are significant. Here Caligari is a controlling Freudian madman, keeping Jane against her will and taunting her with scarcely glimpsed perversities. Kay and Bloch do away with the somnambulist Cesar and the carnival setting, focusing instead on the implications of the earlier film's ending. But while the majority of the action seems much more "real world" than in Weine's film, the climax in which Jane descends fully into madness is a real stunner. One particular sequence in which Jane sees a baker pulling loaves of bread shaped like infants out of a blazing oven even seems to prefigure David Lynch's Eraserhead in both theme and imagery--in fact, I would not be surprised to learn this film was a direct influence on that one.

The actors seem to pitch their performances to match the strangeness of the material. O'Herlihy, best known among horror geeks as the sinister Samhain stealer Conal Cochran from Halloween III, delivers his lines with such an odd accent and cadence that he seems almost like an alien from another planet impersonating Bela Lugosi. Glynis Johns's voice sounds like that of a particularly fluffy kitten that wandered into Dr. Moreau's transformation room, and her dreamy, high-pitched delivery never lets you doubt she's not entirely anchored in the real world. And Robert Bloch's dialogue--poetic, unnatural, and just plain weird--somehow manages to fit in perfectly.

Fans of the silent film by Robert Wiene--indeed any student of horror films worth his or her salt--will not be surprised by the explanation for the strange happenings at Chez Caligari. Nonetheless, The Cabinet of Caligari is a deeply odd and beautifully made film, and one that fans of the classics would do well to rediscover. 3 thumbs.

"It will be morning soon. Halloween morning. A very busy day for me."

Dreamaniac (1986): or, Pour Some Caro On Me

2011-10-26T09:21:00.002-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 25!

Heavy metal musician and songwriter Adam (Thomas Bern) is housesitting for a friend, spending his days smoking cigarettes, ironing his Def Leppard t-shirts, and researching new lyrics in his large library of occult grimoires. It seems that despite having a smokin' hawt, punk rock riot grrrl girlfriend in Pat (80s porn legend Ashlyn Gere, here credited as "Kim McKay"), he still wants more carnal satisfaction--which thanks to his researches soon arrives in the form of small-chested, blood-spattered succubus Lily (Sylvia Summers). As Adam battles his disturbing sex dreams and struggles to find a rhyme for "METULL," Pat and her mousy sister Jodi (Lauren Peterson) prepare for a rockin' house party--the kind of Gathering of Stereotypes that only happens in 80s movies.

On the guest list are rich snob Francis (Cynthia Crass), who has designs on Jodi's out-of-her-league football player boyfriend Brad (Brad Laughlin); Valley Girls Jan and Rosie (Linda Denise Martin and Lisa Emery); specs-wearing nerd Jamie (Bob Pelham) and skinny Jughead-style glutton Foster (Matthew Phelps). Don't get too attached to any of them though--Lily's crashing the party, and is thirsty for sex and blood, not necessarily in that order.

"An original made-for-video feature film" produced in 1986, Dreamaniac is cheap, stupid, and a whole lot of fun. This is perhaps the most awkward house party in the history of partying, possibly because each of the attendees is the only representative of his or her clique and would never associate with any of the other partygoers in their natural high school environment. Things heat up as the night wears on, though: either due to the influence of an ancient sex-demon or else good old teenage hormones, sooner or later most of the girls and guys get undressed and do that horizontal bop. Director David DeCoteau (Creepozoids, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, The Brotherhood) is clearly more interested in Man Meat than girlflesh, though, so there are plenty of gratuitous butt-shots for the ladies...and dudes too, for that matter. There's also more than one illustration of why you should never accept a blowjob from a demon, a BDSM scene that leads to a package-jiggling electrocution, a final showdown in which Jodi and Pat must fight their way through the reanimated zombie corpses of their friends to get to Adam and Lily, a decapitation by power drill (wha?), and a "stinger" ending that makes almost as little sense as that of Pieces.

The acting is all broad, high-school level, as the cast is full of first- (and only- ) time actors. The notable exception is Gere, who perhaps unsurprisingly gives the most natural, engaging performance in the film.The fashions and set design are almost a parody of the movie's own era--watch particularly for Francis' amazing knit sweater and Jan's side-ponytail and skin-tight yellow jumpsuit. Dialogue is bad but in a strangely charming way, and the gore is mostly of the caro-syrup variety. DeCoteau's direction is competent, though he does rely rather heavily on slllloooooowwww pans and tracking shots, especially early on.

In my youth, when I would load up on VHS rentals every Friday, snatching anything off the shelves that looked even remotely like a horror flick, Dreamaniac would have been just the kind of fun, goofy ride I was looking for. Your enjoyment will depend on how well you like your DTV cheese. For me, 2 thumbs.

"OK, Jodi--you know the drill."

Inferno (1980): or, Death is a Mutha

2011-10-25T09:59:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 24!

Poet and antique book aficionado Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) finds an enigmatic tome entitled The Three Mothers in her local junk shop in New York. The book is the autobiography of an alchemist-cum-architect named Varelli who claims to have built three houses for the titular creatures--malevolent, mythological beings like the Fates, who poison the air and bring destruction to everyone around them. Unfortunately for her, Rose's apartment building just happens to be the home of Madre Tenebraum, the Mother of Darkness. After exploring the building's flooded basement and discovering proof of the Madre's residence (not to mention a very clingy drowned corpse), Rose decides she needs to call in some help.

That help is thousands of miles away in Rome, in the form of her brother, musicology student Mark (Leigh McCloskey). Upon receipt of his sister's letter detailing her troubles, Mark begins to experience strange phenomena himself--a mysterious green-eyed woman (Ania Pieroni) sits in on class, causing freak windstorms while stroking her big furry pussy...cat. Mark's friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi) reads Rose's letter and goes to the local library to pick up a copy of The Three Mothers, only to be menaced by a bookbinder, picked up by a sports writer, and then stabbed in the spine by a scar-handed killer. Mark beats it to New York, where in the meantime his sister has been offed by another shadowy figure with the same sinister psoriasis. He befriends weirdo neighbor Elise (Daria Nicolodi) and journeys deep into the bowels of the Mother's abode, which as you might imagine stirs up all kinds of fragrant, freaky shit.

I've always been lukewarm on the work of Dario Argento--I mean, I appreciate his importance and his vision, but I've never been the raving fan of his stuff that others--notably his corpulence the Duke of DVD--are. Still, even a jaded critic like me has to admit that Inferno (1980) is absolutely stunning stuff. The director's trademark use of color, particularly his strong use of red and blue gels, consistently wows the viewer and lends the whole film a weird, dreamlike beauty. The opening scene with Rose swimming through the flooded subterranean ballroom is simply amazing. Stylistic camera placement and frame composition abound--in a favorite scene of mine, the camera seems to float on a breeze into the lecture hall where Mark is reading his sister's letter. The whole movie is just gorgeous to look at, and proves just how powerful Argento's vision can be. And the gore scenes, particularly the death of Sara's ill-fated pickup, are fantastic.

Story-wise, this is one of my favorite of Argento's films, perhaps only slightly behind the glorious MADness of Phenomena (1985). The middle of the Three Mothers trilogy, this one cements the supernatural mythology of the series and effectively conveys the vast power of these forgotten goddesses, or demons, or whatever they are. If there's any criticism to bring to bear, it's that at times the movie seems to lose its focus, jumping from Rose to Sara to Mark to Elise without ever settling fully on one protagonist. However, this could as easily be counted a strength of the film, whose real star is Argento's camera and the labyrinthine, expressionist nightmare that is Madre Tenebraum's house.

In short, wonderful stuff from an artist near the peak of his powers. 3 thumbs.

Significant Stroking

TerrorVision (1986): or, Quite the Dish

2011-10-24T09:02:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 23!

In the days when "satellite TV" meant having a dish the size of a bisected Volkswagen in your backyard and access to NASA-level array-control technology, Stanley Putterman (the inimitable Gerrit Graham, "Bud the CHUD" and The Phantom of the Paradise's Beef himself ) installs a "Do-It-Yourself 100" dish in the hopes of opening a new world of entertainment possibilities. This meets with the approval of his wife Raquel (Mary Woronov of Eating Raoul, Silent Night Bloody Night, and Chopping Mall), daughter Suzy (Diane Franklin, of the superlatively MAD Amityville II: the Possession) and son Sherman (Chad Allen, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman). Even military-minded Grandpa (Bert Remsen) is down, excited about the possibilities for monitoring enemy troop movements.

However, when a sanitation worker from Planet Pluton accidently beams a dangerous piece of garbage--a slavering, amorphous mutant called a "Hungry Monster"-- into the Puttermans' new dish, what started out as a nice night in front of the tube becomes a fight for survival and the future of the human race. As the monster crawls out of the boob tube to munch on its new hosts, the Puttermans' "swinging" guests, and Suzy's punkish boyfriend O.D. (Jon "I'm a Wolfman and I've Got Nards" Gries), Sherman makes desperate calls for help, first to the police and then to late-night horror hostess Medusa (Jennifer Richards). Meanwhile, O.D. and Suzy try to train the beast, which goes well until the Pluton Sanitation Department shows up to try and correct its error. Then things get a little messy...

Produced by Charles Band and directed by Full Moon Pictures-mainstay Ted Nicolaou, TerrorVision (1986) is an energetic, broad parody of everything 80s that, like many a fine cheese, has only grown more delicious as it ages. Viewers of a certain age will recognize a lot of the period piece details, from Raquel's Jazzercize obsession to Suzy's Cyndi Lauper fashions to Medusa's Elvira-esque show and costumery. Graham is hilarious as always (what an underrated performer this guy is), and Gries steals the show in a role that prefigures Bill and Ted by three years. The effects are goopy, practical, and disgusting, and the monster design is gross but strangely adorable. (In a standout scene, the monster uses its mimicking ability to morph several appendages into a slime-covered orgy involving the Puttermans, their guests, and even Grandpa! Must-see.) The music by Richard Band is as good as you'd expect.

TerrorVision is nothing but OTT fun from one end to the other. Even those born in the era of dinner plate-sized satellite dishes should find this blast from the past enjoyable. 2.5 thumbs.

"Don't wait up! I've heard these Noam Chomsky lectures sometimes go long."

Bonus: The awesomely 80s TerrorVision Theme song!

The Strangers (2008): or, Don't Be Home

2011-10-23T10:21:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 22!

After a friend's wedding reception, hopeless romantic James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) proposes to his chain-smoking girlfriend Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler). Unfortunately she is just not ready for marriage and shuts him down hard, which turns the elaborate romantic weekend James has planned at his parents' isolated summer cabin a real Olympics of Awkwardness. Soon they have bigger fish to fry, however, as a mysterious girl keeps knocking at their door, at 4 am, asking for "Tamara." Later the knocks become loud bangs, the chimney gets blocked off, and someone not only cuts the phone line, but sneaks in and steals Kristen's recharging cell. As the creepiness and hostilities escalate, James and Kristen find themselves fighting for their lives against a trio of implacable killers whose motivations are as inscrutable as the faces behind their creepy, old-fashioned Halloween masks...

The Strangers (2008) does exactly what I believe it sets out to do--to unsettle the viewer, ramp up the tension, and send you home determined to buy new deadbolts for all the doors in your house--and does so very efficiently, with very little extra narrative fat. After a Laroquette-ish opening voiceover and a flash-forward "discovery" scene, we're thrown right into Kristen and James's uncomfortable arrival at the cottage, and from there things just get more tense. Tyler is a gifted actress, and brings her talents fully to bear on the role of Kristen, both in her sad, emotionally-troubled opening scenes and in her terrified, fighting for her life scenes at the end. Hoyt is fine as the shell-shocked beau suddenly called upon to protect the woman he loves. It's a testament to their skill as actors and the skill of director Bryan Bertino (working from his own script) that, despite being largely a 2-character piece, the flick kept my interest and never felt boring.

The trio of Killers are extremely creepy and menacing, at times seeming almost supernatural in their machinations and ability to walk in and out of the house at will, despite James and Kristen's best battening-down efforts. (In fact I was wondering for a while whether they were some kind of supernatural beings, but the ending has little in it to support that idea.) Their nightmare-fuel masks and the sing-song voice of Dollface, the only one who talks (Gemma Ward, I think) are sure to produce shivers. And Bertino's decision never to show their faces--even when they unmask themselves to James and Kristen--hammers home the idea of them as something more than run-of-the-mill psychopaths. They're almost symbols of all senseless violence and murder. When Kristen asks Dollface the usual question--"Why are you doing this to us?"--the killer's answer is chilling: "Because you were home."

A very creepy and well-made home invasion flick, The Strangers is not the feel-good flick of the year (though its ending is happier than it could have been, in a way), but it's definitely a tension-filled ride. 2.75 thumbs.

"I'm going to ask you this one more time: WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED BATHROOM?"

The Last Exorcism (2010): or, He Puts on a Hell of a Show

2011-10-22T09:26:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 21!

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), former child preacher and the last in a long line of evangelical exorcists, invites a film crew along to document all the hocus pocus that goes on behind the scenes. It seems the good reverend has lost his faith--while he still believes he provides a service for his flock, giving them the mystical experience they psychologically crave, he does not see himself as anything more than a showman and second-tier magician. Picking a letter at random from his pile of requests, Marcus and crew go to rural Louisiana to help Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), whom her widowed and Bible-obsessed father Louis (Louis Herthum) insists is possessed by the Devil. Marcus gives the yokels the whole show, and seems to cure Nell's ills. But soon the preacher discovers that there might be something to all this exorcism business after all...

The Last Exorcism (2010) does a lot of things I liked, and does them very well. The set-up of a revivalist preacher documenting his own hokum is taken directly from Marjoe (1972), the fascinating documentary about child-preacher and later B-movie star Marjoe Gortner.* Certain early scenes and even some of the dialogue seem to be direct quotes of that movie. Director Daniel Stamm lets the mystery of what's happening to Nell unfold slowly, rushing directly to the neck-snapping exorcism business, but still dropping enough clues and stingers along the way to keep the viewer engaged--unlike some recent horror flicks. The script by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland is intelligent and intriguing--and I don't want to spoil the ultimate solution to Nell's troubles, but it was shocking in a way that still made sense with what had come before, and sent me into the end credits with an appreciative smile.

*And a highly recommended viewing in its own right.

The acting is great from top to bottom. Fabian plays Cotton Marcus as a charismatic, sardonic but lovable rogue, a man who knows he's full of it but nonetheless genuinely seems to care about the people who come to him for help. Bell's Nell (ha!) is wonderful--all fresh and innocent and giggly at the beginning, throwing her later sinister turn in stark relief. (According to imdb trivia, Bell also did all the amazing, poster-spoiled contortions herself, without the aid of special effects.) Herthum makes a great menacing, possibly not so well-meaning dad, and Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class's Banshee) gives a nice performance as Nell's brother.

Put simply, The Last Exorcism is one of the best recent horror films I've seen in a long time. A fresh look at the "possession" subgenre--a stylish, entertaining and even frightening film. 3 thumbs. Recommended.

On third and short, the Devil shows Blitz.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010): or, Wake Me When It's Haunting

2011-10-21T08:52:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 20!

In the months before the events of the first movie, new mother Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and husband Daniel (Brian Boland) bring their infant son Hunter home from the hospital to their palatial mini-mansion in the suburbs. All is happy days and lollipops for a while, until one day the couple finds their house completely trashed, apparently by vandals who had the courtesy to lock the doors behind them and not steal anything of value. Being the wealthy, proactive father he is, Daniel has surveillance cameras installed so that they can monitor all nocturnal goings on in the house. But the footage thus captured doesn't reveal bored teenagers emulating their favorite MTV shows--rather, it's g-g-g-ghosts!

The strange happenings escalate--pots fall from kitchen racks, mobiles spin by themselves over Hunter's crib, the automatic pool cleaner inexplicably removes itself from the pool, and strange knockings are heard. As the frightened young parents try to make sense of things, they discover a dark secret in their family history that will threaten not only their own safety, but spill over into the lives of Kristi's sister Katie (Katie Featherston) and her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat)--the protagonists of the first film, whose own subsequent travails are a direct result of what happens here.

I was a bit lukewarm about Paranormal Activity (2007)--I thought it had some unsettling imagery and well-executed, totally legit scares, but found the main characters annoying and their actions more than a little contrived. I also felt it was a bit too light on explanation for the haunting, and the pacing much too slow. Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) does a bit better on the first count, proposing a Faustian bargain in the sisters' family history in which a first-born son was promised and must now be delivered, since Hunter is the first male in the line for a few generations. However, it does even worse on the second count. There are a few scare scenes in the flick, but you have to sit through more than an hour of fairly boring "found footage" before you get to them--by which point, if you're still awake, you might well wonder if the payoff is worth the wait.

The acting is okay, and the "reality" filming is done pretty well, but in the end there are few things more boring than watching someone else's home movies, particularly when you don't know or care about the people involved. While a little restraint and deliberate, slow-boil reveals are usually a good thing in a haunted house flick, I felt director Tod Williams went a little overboard here--when you're more than an hour in and the scariest thing that's happened has been a CG shadow disturbing someone's nap, you run the risk of trying your audience's patience.

Once we actually reach the climax, it's pretty good stuff--nothing we haven't seen before at this point, but well executed nonetheless--and I appreciated the creepy little tie-in to the ending of the last film. But after enduring an hour and fifteen minutes of only occasionally-broken boredom, I felt it was too little, too late. 1 thumb.

"Screw this, I'm outta here."

Gothic (1987): or, The Young Romantics are TRIPPING BALLS

2011-10-20T09:23:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 19!

In the summer of 1816, in Sweden at the Villa Diodati, one of the most legendary gatherings of literary heavyweights in history is about to take place. One of England's most famous young poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Julian Sands) is to be the guest of one of its most infamous, the Mephistophelean Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne). Shelley is accompanied by his beautiful future wife, Mary Godwin (Natasha Richardson)--not yet Mary Shelley, since the poet is still technically married to his first wife--and Mary's fiery, slightly unhinged stepsister Claire Clairmont (Myriam Cyr). Byron's sole companion is his physician, Dr. Polidori (Timothy Spall), a creepy little man with a more-than-professional interest in Byron's body. Once gathered, the group immediately engages in an orgy of free love, laudanum-fueled licentiousness, and nightmarish visions that will drive them to the brink of MADness, and will also give birth to one of the enduring horror myths of all time.

Warning: if you're in the mood for a Merchant Ivory-style biopic about the girl who wrote Frankenstein, this is NOT the movie you're looking for.

I had seen Gothic (1987) before, many years ago, but somehow I had forgotten how relentlessly, jaw-droppingly INSANE this movie is. Director Ken Russell--a man not particularly well-known for his even hand and cool restraint--takes the famous historical event as a springboard into a Phantasmagoria* of frenetic debauchery and borderline-surrealism. Everything is turned up to 11: the dialogue is overblown and operatic--literary references and quotes are dropped repeatedly and with great force. The music (by Thomas "She Blinded Me with SCIENCE" Dolby!) is hyperactive and intrusive, going from 80s synth rock to symphonic tempests to the Diodati Disco. And the images...dear God, the images!

*Yes, I know.

A fish flopping helplessly (and pointlessly) in a stone birdbath. A writhing python draped around a suit of medieval armor. A merkin-jerkin' automaton. A demonic dwarf crouched on Mary's chest. Byron's menstrual vampirism. Claire's constant CRAZYFACE. Mary's visions of her dead baby. And Percy meeting a dream woman who never has to say, "Hey, my eyes are up here."

None of it makes very much sense, but Russell is clearly not interested in any sort of accurate historical representation--it's all about seeing how many beautiful, nightmarish images he can cram into 90 minutes. Turns out, the answer is "A Metric Shit-Ton."

The acting here is hard to judge. I said it was operatic, and it's true--there's lots of grand gestures, wild expressions, and screaming on key. Byrne really makes a meal of this diabolic version of Lord Byron, and Richardson is vulnerable and passionate as the future Mary Shelley. Cyr is a force of nature, with her wild black hair, huge, almost Steele-ian eyes, and a sensuality so raw it's almost bleeding. On the down side, Sands seems to have been hired solely for his (admittedly uncanny) resemblance to the actual Percy Shelley--even taking into account the over-the-topness of the script, he is uniformly terrible here.

Themes of birth, death, creation and destruction form only the thinnest framework for the unstoppable fever dream that is Ken Russell's Gothic--a movie so incredibly insane, if it were a person, you'd have to lock it up in the interest of public safety. This is, of course, the highest of recommendations. 3 thumbs way up!

This was exactly my facial expression during the entire runtime of Gothic.It will be yours too.

Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971): or, I Dont Know Who Killed Me

2011-10-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 18!

In the gorgeous, history-rich city of Prague, the body of American journalist Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is found discovered by a crow, and shortly thereafter by a lowly street sweeper. The corpse is taken to the city morgue for storage and autopsy--a bit too soon, as we learn via voice-over/internal monologue that Gregory is in fact alive, and fully conscious of what's happening to him! Paralyzed and on the verge of accidental vivisection, the hapless Yank searches his confused, fragmented memory to reconstruct the events of the previous few days. It all has something to do with his girlfriend Mira (Barbara Bach), whose sudden disappearance led Gregory to investigate a series of similar disappearances, the horrible truth behind which is of course the cause of his predicament. Can he remember it all and regain his motor functions before he's sliced and diced in the operating theater?

Though it's packaged and presented as a giallo, director Aldo Lado's Short Night of Glass Dolls displays few of the characteristics we normally associate with the cinematic subgenre. (Though in point of fact, the gialli novels from which the genre takes its name had much more varied plots than just the old stalk-and-slash.) Instead of a black-gloved killer practicing baroque psychosexual violence, here we get an almost Poe-like "buried alive" (or "put in the fridge drawer alive") tale, with a conscious man undergoing mental torture as he helplessly awaits his doom. We also get conspiracy theory and sociopolitical allegory, as it turns out the girls of Prague are (spoiler!) being preyed upon by a kinky sex-cult made up of the rich, powerful, and elderly, somehow draining the life essence of the young to extend their lives and enhance their power. One wonders if Stanley Kubrick was a fan of the film.

Typical of the better giallos, though, is Lado's emphasis on style over plot--the director and cinematographer Giuseppe Ruzzolini deliver some wonderful visuals--a sequence in which Gregory finds himself in a pitch-black room where a white vase of flowers seems to float eerily toward him is a great one, and several shots of quivering chandeliers are also quite beautiful. As for horror, the cult's rituals are stylish and eerie, and there's a rather shocking scene where Gregory hallucinates his girlfriend's corpse in his apartment refrigerator--perhaps a parallel to his own icebox accomodations.

Short Night of Glass Dolls moves rather slowly, but it's beautiful to look at and has some neat ideas. And if you're particularly horrified by the "don't bury me I'm not dead!" idea, you'll be on the edge of your seat as Gregory sweats out his impending autopsy. (Though the dubbing/voice acting kind of undercuts the tension imo.) Those looking for a stylish, out-of-the-ordinary giallo will not be disappointed. 2.25 thumbs.

"Well, I guess it's true what they say about post-mortem muscle contractions. Better get a mop, Johnston."

Burn, Witch, Burn (1962): or, Under the Double Eagle

2011-10-18T08:38:00.001-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 17!

Everything is coming up roses for stuffy-but-suave college professor Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde): his students love him, his peers admire him, and despite his brief tenure at the university where he lectures, he seems a shoo-in for the Chair of the Sociology department--much to the consternation of rival professor Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston). Little does the skeptical scholar realize that his wife Tansy (Janet Blair) has been helping his career along by means of Jamaican voodoo and Olde Englishe Witchcrafte. When he discovers his wife's talismans (talismen?) strewn about the house, however, he decides to put a stop to all this superstitious rubbish by tossing the lot into the fireplace--after which his luck goes into what can charitably be termed a death spiral. One student threatens him with a gun for better grades, another claims the dapper dean violated her in the lecture hall, lorries barrel toward him out of nowhere, and his former friends shun him. Has he angered the Ancient Gods with his disbelief, or is there something more scientifically explainable (but no less sinister) at work?

Burn, Witch, Burn takes a little while to get going, but the payoff is definitely worth it. Director Sidney Hayers builds the suspense slowly, painting Taylor as an intelligent, over-confident man in love who clearly feels he deserves all the good that has come his way, then yanking that believe out from under him and letting the pieces fall. (It always helps when you're working from a script by speculative fiction superstars Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, themselves working from a novel by Fritz Leiber Jr.) Blair is excellent as Taylor's slavishly devoted wife, willing to do anything--even make deals with the devil--in order to advance her husband's career. (Think of a darker, more passionate version of Samantha Stevens from TV's Bewitched.) Wyngarde has a face like a Rolls Royce grille and looks simultaneously stuffy and sexy in his waist-high chinos and chest-baring silk shirts, and it's fun to watch his proper facade crumble. Johnston makes a wonderful adversary--petty, but intelligent and ruthless enough to do real damage--and the rest of the British cast is great too.

The movie plays out a bit like an extended Twilight Zone episode (no coincidence, perhaps, given its script's pedigree), but when it hits the barn-burning climax, it ventures out into another dimension of the MAD. No spoilers, but I definitely wasn't expecting the Final Boss.

Well acted, with a good script and efficient direction, Burn, Witch, Burn may be a little old fashioned, but I was entertained nonetheless. 2 thumbs.

Tan, Witch, Tan

(Image shamlessly lifted from Krell Labs--Where the Future is Being Conquered Today!™)

Captive Wild Woman (1943): or, I'm Going Ape for You, Baby

2011-10-17T08:45:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 16!

Daring circus man and animal trainer Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) returns from a 2-year journey with a cargo hold full of big cats, zebras, and one very intelligent gorilla named Cheela (Ray "Crash" Corrigan in one of his patented and excellent ape suits). Girlfriend Beth Coleman (scream queen extraordinaire Evelyn Ankers) is happy to have him back, and introduces him to mysterious Dr. Sigmund Walters (a never-more-dapper John Carradine), a brilliant glandular specialist who has been treating Beth's friend Dorothy (The Big Sleep's Carmen Sternwood herself, Martha Vickers) for an overabundance of "the sex hormone." Of course Dr. Walters is a scientist of the extremely MAD persuasion, and hopes to use Dorothy's hormones and his own surgical know-how to transform Cheela into a human/ape hybrid, which will be the first of a race of supermen to help him rule the world, blah blah blah.

He succeeds beyond his wildest expectations, for when the bandages come off Cheela has become the smokin' hawt Acquanetta. However, when the simian sweetie figuratively goes ape for Fred, the strong (sexual) emotions cause a glandular chaos in her system, which results in her going ape literally. As Dr. Walters targets Beth for his next lethal transplant and Fred finds himself at the mercy of a cage full of storm spooked cats, Cheela's animal and human natures fight to decide the fate of all involved.

They sure don't make 'em like this anymore. Captive Wild Woman is a briskly paced mad science thriller whose one-hour running time is packed with action, thrills, and more than a little post-Code perversity. Director Edward Dmytryk does a nice job juggling the circus and laboratory scenes, and even the lengthy lion-and-tiger-taming sequences (comprised mostly of footage lifted from the 1933 circus flick The Big Cage, according to Tom Weaver's excellent book Universal Horrors) kept me on the edge of my seat. (And would likely be the scariest thing in the movie to a modern, ASPCA-sympathetic viewer.) The half-ape/half-woman makeup by the legendary Jack Pierce is, of course, excellent.

The cast is full of wonderful genre actors of the era, including Fay Helm, who played alongside Ankers a couple years earlier in 1941's The Wolf Man, as Dr. Walter's ill-fated nurse. Carradine gives a remarkably restrained performance as the mad doctor, and Corrigan's ape-acting is great as always. While Acquanetta was billed as "A New Sensation in Savagery!" she's not really given much to do in her non-speaking role--still, her exotic beauty and big, expressive eyes make a definite impression.

A fun second-tier Universal flick I'd been meaning to check out for a long time, and am very glad I did. A great Sunday-afternoon popcorn muncher: 2.25 thumbs.


"Gimme some sugar, baby!"

Hatchet (2006): or, Blood and Gore and Little More

2011-10-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 15!

A group of stupid tourists in New Orleans for Mardis Gras stupidly take a haunted swamp tour from a stupid tour guide and end up stupidly stuck in the swamp being killed off by a hulking, bloodthirsty killer ghost.

Okay, maybe that's a little harsh. I'll try again.

Mopey emo kid Ben (Joel David Moore, whom I was shocked to learn has NOT played Shaggy in a live-action Scooby-Doo flick...yet) and his pal Marcus (Deon Richmond) go to Mardis Gras to help Ben get over being dumped by his long-term girlfriend. Uninterested in boobs and booze--I hate him already--Ben convinces Marcus instead to go on a Haunted Swamp Tour, headed by the Ragin' Asian Cajun Shawn (Parry Shen). Also along for the ride: a would-be pornographer and his two bickering, boob-baring starlets, a stereotypical retired couple from the Midwest, and a silent, brooding local girl with a hidden agenda.

Of course they get stranded in the swamp and are soon under attack by Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder), a hulking, vengeful revenant who kills any and everybody trespassing in his swamp, in extremely gory and bloody ways. Can our hapless tourists survive a night in the swamp, on the run from gators, snakes, and an unkillable, bloodthirsty ghost?

When Hatchet came out in 2006, it got a lot of hype from the horror community, and its easy to see why. In addition to some truly spectacular, gut-wrenching gore and a villain who looks like a mashup of Jason (part 2 era), Madman Marz, and the Freak from Funhouse, it also boasted cameos by such 80s and 90s horror icons as Hodder, Robert Englund, and Tony Todd. (Todd in particular has a hilarious bit part as a bitter former tour guide in the French Quarter.)

I guess I'm just an old fogey, but I couldn't get into this one. While I enjoyed the creature design and the inventive, extremely gory FX (and appreciated even more that they were all practical FX, no CG), I found those scenes consistently undercut by the extremely broad, lowest-common-denominator "comedy" that comprised pretty much all of the plot. The characters are not developed past their one-dimensional sketches--Brian is only ever mopey and heartbroken, Marcus is only ever a wisecracking sidekick, and the Boob girls are only ever ditzy porn stars. Sure, it's nice to see girls baring their boobs and shouting "Woo!" but even that gets old when it's the entirety of a character's personality.

Also, I understand that the movie is meant an homage to the slashers of the 80s, but it felt really by the numbers to me. "Here's the part where they go off the beaten path and get stranded. Here's the part where they learn the truth about the legend. Here's the part where people get killed. Here's the part where they stop running and fight back." There was no tweaking of the formula, which would be fine, except there were also no engaging characters to keep me interested. Writer/Director
Adam Green seemed to keep a hard line drawn between the comedy sections and horror sections of the movie, and as a result I felt detached from both.

I know a lot of people loved this, and Green's personal story is a very inspirational one (look it up) so I don't begrudge him his success. And the practical gore scenes really are something to see, a nice present for fans of the genre starved by the malnutritive properties of CG gore. Maybe it's my age, or my steady diet of 70s exploitation and Italian wackiness, but this just didn't do it for me. I found Hatchet okay, but just okay. 1.5 thumbs.

"Zoiks!"

Dark August (1976): or, Warlock with a Shotgun

2011-10-15T09:37:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 14!

Gruff, no-nonsense Noo Yawker Sal Devito (J.J. Barry), reeling from a messy separation and mid-life crisis, has relocated to rural Vermont to start a new life. Things are going pretty well for him--he's set up as a photographer, started building a studio, and fallen in with anorexic blonde artist Jackie (Carolyne Barry), who cares about neither his still-married status nor his chronic shortage of shirt-buttons. However, when Sal accidently runs over the granddaughter of local occultist Old Man McDermitt, the grieving grandfather hexes Sal with all the powers of Hell!

Dark August starts out extremely well, setting up Sal as man tormented by guilt, not only for the accident, but his failed marriage. Director Martin Goldman does a good job getting Sal's story out visually, dropping hints about his paranoia (he's taken up smoking again, let the housework go, left his loaded shotgun on the bed, that sort of thing) and normal conversations to let the viewer work things out. J.J. Barry is believable and engaging as Sal, and for a while I was really interested in his plight and worried for him.

Unfortunately, it seems all the old man's hex has the power to do is give Sal periodic panic attacks and cause minor hallucinations that don't do anything. (Though I guess being interrupted by hyperventilation while banging a skinny Vermont artist is pretty evil.) The movie drags as Sal gets more and more upset about this mostly harmless curse, leading to some cool 70s occultism/spiritualism from his friend Theo's girlfriend. But it goes nowhere, even when he visits local witch Adrianna Putnam (Kim Hunter, famous round these parts for being Bad Ronald's mom, around others for being Dr. Zira in the Planet of the Apes series), who munches pumpkin seeds while talking about hexes and evil forces and has a surprising exit in the film's otherwise in-name-only climax.

The first half of Dark August was pretty great, I though--artfully filmed, well-scripted and paced, believably acted, giving us some cool creepy occult curse action in dribs and drabs. But unfortunately the film never really delivers on its promise of Eeevil Wizardry and demonic dispensation, leaving the audience wishing something--ANYTHING--would happen. And if there's one thing a Mad Movie should never be, it's boring. 1.25 thumbs.

"Don't mind me. I'm just going to stand here and do nothing for the next 87 minutes."

[REC] ² (2009): or, 28 Floors Later

2011-10-14T08:40:00.002-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 13!

An apartment building in the center of a Barcelona has been locked down, sealed off with plastic wrap, and surrounded by police and officials. It seems the people inside have come down with a particularly bad case of the Extreme Ocular Hemorrhage and Homicidal Violence Flu. The virus is extremely contagious, leading the municipal health department to take drastic measures. A SWAT team is sent in, along with the secretive Dr. Owen (living Pixar character Jonathan Mellor) to locate Patient Zero and get a blood sample, which they hope will allow them to find a cure. But when one blood-spitting murder machine gets surprisingly un-murdery after Dr. Owen holds up a crucifix and lays some scripture on his ass, the members of the police party realize there's something much more sinister than just a virus going on...

Picking up precisely where 2007 hit [REC] left off, [REC] ² is more of the same--but I didn't really mind that much. The demonic possession-as-virus idea is not bad as such explanations go, adding a supernatural layer to the standard 28 Days Later-style infection flick. (Which by now should in fact be its own subgenre.) Once again co-directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza use the first-cameras again, here mounted on the SWAT team's helmets for command and control purposes--to set up some tense "moving through the shadows" shots and frenetic attacks by the infected remnants. The "night vision" shots are back too, and used here to the same good effect. Manuela Velasco also returns in a reprise of her role from the first movie, with a welcome if predictable twist.

[REC] ² doesn't do anything particularly new, but it does deliver an exciting, bloody, action-packed and sometimes creepy ride. 2 thumbs up.

"We're out of jelly."

Dead Alive (1992): or, Kicking Arse for the Lord

2011-10-13T08:21:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 12!

Young Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) meets cute with Spanish Gypsy babe Paquita (Diana Peñalver) after her second-sighted mother reads romance in her cards. Lionel's own Mum (Elizabeth Moody)--a domineering harpy of a woman--is none too pleased with the new relationship, and spies on the couple to ensure that she remains the only woman in her son's life. When she follows Lionel and Paquita to the zoo and is bitten by the only Sumatran Rat Monkey in captivity, however, Mum picks up a rather nasty zoonitic bug--she runs a fever, bursts into cold sweats, and parts of her body start falling off into her custard. Soon Mum has passed the disease on to several local residents, and Lionel is sent scrambling trying to contain the mess. And what a mess it is...

Come on, do I really have to summarize this one?

One of the most over-the-top, silly, and gory movies of all time, Peter Jackson's Dead Alive is a flick that just keeps topping itself. You think it's got as crazy as it's going to get when it introduces the flip-top nurse zombie...then it throws in the famous Kung-Fu Priest (Stuart Devenie), bodies ripped in half, an animated (and strangely adorable) set of roving internal organs, and a skull-bursting Zombie Baby. By the time we get to the famous end party scene (Oh Crikey! It's Lawnmower Deth!), the viewer might rightly believe he's seen it all...but as Lionel warns his girlfriend, "I haven't seen Mum this evening..."

This is the movie I believe the term "splatstick comedy" was coined for, and imo the one to which it applies most perfectly. Jackson's movie is full of brilliant physical comedy and sight gags that would not be out of place in a Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton one-reeler--only without all the dismemberment and copious bodily fluids. Timothy Balme is a gifted physical comedian of the Charlie Chaplin school, and the way his Lionel goes to greater and greater extremes to maintain some semblance of normalcy while the world literally goes to pieces around him is both hilarious and affecting.

The special effects are as funny as they are disgusting--from faces being ripped off, legs being stripped to bone, multiple impalements (on grave markers, splintered wood, and memorably a still-blazing light bulb), to of course the show-stopping stop-motion Rat Monkey. Jackson also works in a nod to his touchstone flick King Kong (1931), and the early scenes in Sumatra starkly prefigure the scenes with the savage tribe in the director's 2005 remake.

For a justly celebrated horror-comedy classic, my rating of Dead Alive is a no-brainer: 3 thumbs way up!

"♫ FEELINGS! Whoa-whoa-whoa....♫"

The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2005): or, Open Wide and Say AAAAAAAUGH!

2011-10-12T08:35:00.001-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 11!

A doctor and a nurse working the graveyard shift at a hospital specializing in cosmetic surgery retire to a forbidden, closed-off room for a little stress-relieving sex--or quite a lot of it, actually. Unfortunately, the rumpy-pumpy is interrupted by the appearance of the Slit-Mouthed Woman--a long-haired ghost seeking revenge for the mutilation that earned her the name. Three years later, the hospital is abandoned and the ghost a popular urban legend. A journalist writing for a Cosmo-esque magazine who was tasked with writing an article on the story disappears a few days before deadline, and pretty young go-getter Yoko is tasked with finishing the story. As she investigates the Slit-Mouthed Woman's history, she and her live-in stepsister Kazumi are drawn deeper into a mystery that will soon threaten their happiness, if not their lives.

I really don't have that much to say about The Slit-Mouthed Woman. I didn't know anything about it before queuing it up on Netflix instant, but I believe it's an example of the pinku genre of Japanese film, short movies that typically mix extreme genre film-making (often horror, martial arts, true crime, and/or ultraviolence) with tons and tons of softcore sex. The ghost story is competently done, drawing from a well-known and fairly creepy Japanese legend you can read more about here. The woman's first appearance is pretty scary, though her subsequent materializations diminish the overall effect with their clockwork regularity: people enter the hospital, they have borderline-explicit sex (including many, MANY lingering shots of sloppy tongue-kissing--director Takaaki Hashiguchi clearly has a fetish), and then BOOM, ghostliness. The journalist's story is really just a framework for these vignettes. Basically it plays out like Skinemax international, only with better acting.

If you're the sort of person who likes ghostly urban legends and lots of nudity and sex, this is a good way to spend just over an hour of your time. Slight, but not terrible. 1.75 thumbs.

Nota bene: there are several movies based on this story, apparently, including this one from Asia Extreme. The one on Netflix instant is *not* that movie.

No more ribs before bedtime!

Night of the Creeps (1986): or, Consider Me Thrilled

2011-10-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 10!

In Earth-Year 1959 AD, a passing insterstellar research craft is the scene of intrigue and mutiny, as a creature who looks like E.T. on steroids steals a canister of dangerous parasites and makes a waddling bee-line for the air lock. In the ensuing hail of laser fire and gratuitous alien butt-shots, the mastermind fails to make good his escape, but does manage to fling the canister out of the ship, where it becomes trapped in Earth's orbit and crashes near the campus of an American university. A jock and his girlfriend are caught between a rock and a squishy place, as the boy falls prey to the alien worms while the girl is hacked to death by an escaped axe murderer! And all this in the first five minutes!

Nearly 20 years later, nerdy nice guy Chris (Jason Lively) is smitten by sorority girl Cynthia (super-cute Jill Whitlow). At the urging of his handicapped but fearless friend J.C. (Steve Marshall in a show-stealing performance), Chris pledges to a fraternity run by The Bradster (Allan Kayser), a sadistic Aryan preppie who is also Cynthia's erstwhile boyfriend. Brad tasks the boys to steal a corpse from the university research facility and dump it on a rival fraternity's steps--and I bet you can guess which body they corpse-nap. Soon the alien parasites are running rampant, turning students both living and dead into shambling, bloodthirsty zombies with exploding heads! It's up to Chris, J.C., and beyond-grizzled and gruff detective Ray Cameron (Tom "Fucking" Atkins) to exterminate the alien menace before the planet is overrun and the sorority formal ruined.

One of the true cult-classics of 80s horror, Night of the Creeps is a great time from beginning to end. Writer/Director Fred Dekker (the man also responsible for the much-loved 1987 kids' horror-adventure, The Monster Squad) delivers a fast-paced, quick-witted, gloriously gross hunk of grade-A cheese that should satisfy any fan of the genre. His script is full of quotable quips and unforgettable images, from the suspended-animation body of the 50s jock (which J.C. memorably terms a "corpsicle") to Cynthia in formal dress fighting off zombies with a flamethrower, to Atkin's immortal catchphrase, "Thrill me!" The acting is good across the board, with Atkins and Marshall making the best impressions. Add some great makeup effects, some fun, grody gore (watch particularly for the infected zombie cat puppet), and a special appearance by legendary character actor and national treasure Dick Miller, and there's really nothing left wanting.

A flick I haven't watched in years, and one I'm very glad I revisited. 3 thumbs!

"I don't know, Brad...you've just been so cold to me lately."

Unholy (2007): or, Some Things are Better Left Unknown

2011-10-10T08:44:00.003-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 9!

Pianist and GMILF Martha (the lovely and legendary Adrienne Barbeau) has her life turned upside down when her daughter Hope (Siri Baruc) commits suicide in the family cellar, after warning her mother cryptically to "beware the experiment." With her mostly useless stoner son Lucas (Nicholas Brendon) in tow, Martha starts digging into the dark history of their small town, which leads her to menacing encounters with the local creepy recluse Gertrude (Susan Willis, whom I mistook for Cloris Leachman until I read the end credits), the worlds most threatening florist (Richard Ziman), and into the bowels of local folklore involving Lester Krauss (Joseph McKenna), also known as The Necromancer. Much more than just a bedtime boogeyman, Krauss was apparently a Nazi occultist working on the "Unholy Trinity" of parapsychological powers--Invisibility, Mind Control, and Time Travel--under the post-war auspices of a shadowy US Government agency. As the plot unravels, Martha learns that not only was Hope a subject of Krauss's experiments, but so also was the entire town--herself and her son included. Soon she finds herself in a race to find out what really happened to her daughter, and perhaps to save history from the evil machinations of a time-traveling Nazi warlock--the worst kind!

I remember when Unholy was being hyped by certain horror websites and on messageboards back in '07--fans were of course excited to see Barbeau working in anything, and the Nazi occultism plot seemed a can't-miss premise. (If memory serves, I think there was even some kind of abortive Augmented Reality Game launched to build anticipation for the flick.) Then the hype seemed to disappear, and I forgot about the flick until it turned up in the Netflix instant queue.

Well, some things are indeed better left unknown, including the entirety of this terrible, terrible movie. It's hard to tell which is more at fault--the nonsensical script by Sam Freeman or the clunky direction of Daryl Goldberg--but both smell up the joint with alarming consistency. Goldberg substitutes dissonant orchestral stings for suspense, leaves out huge chunks of context, and drops in some of the worst CG I've seen since Barbie: Fairytopia. Barbeau gives it a decent shot (I wonder whether she realized what kind of stinker she had somehow signed on for), but even an actress of her ability is consistently hamstrung by the script's wooden dialogue and intelligence-assaulting contrivances. Ziman is entertaining as the confrontational storekeeper, and for his part McKenna makes a very creepy Nazi doctor, but the rest of the acting is uniformly bad--though again, perhaps we can't blame the actors, given what they had to work with.

Unholy tries to set up a time-twisting mystery thriller, but the only mystery I was interested in solving was how they got Barbeau to agree to be in it in the first place. 0.75 thumbs. Avoid.

"Get my agent out here...RIGHT NOW!"

Ginger Snaps Back (2004): or, The Past is a Bitch, and So Am I

2011-10-09T12:00:00.001-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 8!

In the winter of 1815, sisters Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are traveling by river through the Canadian wilderness when their riverboat capsizes, their parents and protectors drown, and they find themselves stranded miles from civilization. As bad as that sounds, things get even worse: they discover an Indian camp that has recently been the scene of a slaughter--huge holes in the tepees, blood and guts everywhere, and the only survivor a mystical old seer whose predictions are (predictably) cryptic and grim. After Brigitte steps into an iron wolf trap, a strong but silent Native American hunter (Nathaniel Arcand) helps the girls to relative safety--a wooden fort under the command of a fur trading company. But the wary unwelcome they receive (and the inch-deep, bloody scratches on the heavily fortified gates) hint that there might be even more dangers in store for our intrepid siblings.

If you're familiar at all with the first two entries in this series, you'll know that the cause of all the trouble is a bad case of Werewolfery, which Hunter says the Europeans brought to their land, just like the plagues of small-pox and alcoholism. Running out of supplies and surrounding by a ferocious pack of man-beasts, the widowed Captain Wallace Rowlands (Tom McCamus) is also hiding a dark secret about the supposed death of his son--a secret that will of course land Ginger right in the middle of the full-moon madness, with Brigitte the only one she can count on to help her break the curse. But given the choice between sisterly loyalty and rescuing future generations from the Horror of the Werewolf, what will the kind-hearted but needy younger sibling do?

I was a big fan of Ginger Snaps (2000), finding it a refreshing, even invigorating entry in the werewolf subgenre, which had been languishing arguably ever since the triumph of 1981's monster masterpiece An American Werewolf in London. I also very much enjoyed the second entry, Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004, filmed back to back with its sequel), which in my humble should have been a star-making turn for Emily Perkins in a complex, harrowing role she absolutely knocked out of the park. I thought the movies had some great fresh ideas--I love the relationship between the outcast sisters, and the notion of the transformation as gradual and one-way; in this world, when you turn, you turn forever, making the race to find a cure that much more intense. However, I somehow missed this third installment, and the lukewarm reviews it received upon its release (much of which expressed bafflement at the decision to go period-piece with the story) did nothing to make me rush out and see it.

However, this many years after the fact and able to view it on its own merits, I found Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning a well-made, entertaining, and even thrilling modern werewolf movie. Director Grant Harvey makes good use of the Canadian wilderness and period sets, creating a believable window into the past. And DP Michael Marshall deserves props for his gorgeous shots of some absolutely beautiful scenery, to say nothing of his lensing of the exciting werewolf battles and dream sequences.

But of course the heart of all three movies is the relationship between sisters Brigitte and Ginger, their outsider status and absolute devotion to one another. While I found it extremely difficult to buy Isabelle as an 1800s teenage, Perkins once again turns in a fantastic, emotional performance--one which drew me in and made me concerned for her, and thus frightened and excited by the werewolves' attacks (and the menace from baddies inside the fort: leering Reverend Gilbert and battle-scarred soldier James (Hugh Dillon and JR Bourne, respectively). The other trapped trappers provide good performances as well, and the director gets some mileage out of the religious, racial, and personal tensions their precarious situation brings out.

Standing on its own, Ginger Snaps Back is a well-made period horror film that I think would make a good companion piece to fan-favorite Wendigo-flick Ravenous (1999), and could go toe-to-toe with it, for that matter. Another 2.5 thumb rating.

"I didn't mean to eat all the jelly donuts! OMG, Brigitte, help me!"

The Baby's Room (2006): or, Chillin' in the Crib

2011-10-08T09:58:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 7!

Young parents Juan and Sonia (Javier Gutiérrez and Leonor Watling) and their infant son have just moved into their new home: a palatial but dilapidated old house that would ordinarily be far beyond their means, but which for some reason the realtors have priced within a mid-level sports journalist's budget. Before you can say "stop me if you've heard this one," they're hearing bumps in the night and strange voices on their baby's crib monitor. Juan goes hi-tech and purchases a home alarm system and a video monitor for his bouncing little boy's room, which only leads to more disturbing revelations: in the dead of night, the terrified father spies the shadowy figure of a man sitting beside his baby's bed! Rushing to the rescue with a butcher knife, Juan nearly skewers his confused and sleep-addled wife, who has witnessed none of this and is rightly concerned about her husband's mental well-being, to say nothing of the baby's safety and her own.

Alone in the house, Juan continues to see strange visions through the video monitor--furniture that isn't there, rooms arranged differently on the screen than in real life, and even more of the shadowy, cigarette-smoking man. Wondering if he is imagining it all and fearing for his own sanity, he is finally vindicated when his baby monitor-visions lead him to a secret room, apparently a doorway to another realm. There he discovers the identity of the shadowy man who has been haunting him, but the solution to that riddle only prompts more disturbing questions...as such things so often do, in cases like these.

I've heard a lot of positive buzz for The Baby's Room since its release in 2006 as part of the Spanish film series Peliculas para No Dormir (Films to Keep You Awake). I'm delighted to report that the good press is more than justified. Director Álex de la Iglesia and his writing partner Jorge Guerricaechevarría here deliver a creepy, thrilling, and inventive horror story that turns out to be much more than just your standard haunted house tale. Gutiérrez and Watling have great chemistry, and both turn in excellent performances. Also, I liked how the writer and director played with the conventions of the "endangered baby" story, here making Gutiérrez's Juan the "hysterical" figure, with Watlin's Sonia the supportive but disbelieving spouse. No spoilers on the cause for the haunting--but I thought it was pretty interesting, and I dug it a lot.

Well-photographed, well-acted, well-plotted, and well creepy, The Baby's Room is another winner from the new Spanish Horror revival.Recommended with 2.5 thumbs.

"And when I push *this* button, the baby will self-destruct!"

The Incredible Melting Man (1977): or, You Reduce Me to a Puddle

2011-10-07T06:34:00.002-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 6!

Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) and two expendable crew mates are the first men to visit the rings of Saturn. The men are amazed by the sight...and then of course, something goes terribly wrong! (Sunspots, to judge from the stock-footage that is the only offered explanation.) West is the only survivor; somehow the ship's autopilot gets him back to earth (in considerably less than the 3-7 years such a journey would take), and deposits him at a secret hospital overseen by West's friend, Dr. Ted Nelson (an absolutely priceless Burr DeBenning). Less than five minutes after the opening credits West has awakened from his coma to discover he's come back with a disturbing skin condition--his flesh is slowly liquefying, sloughing off his body in long drips like cheese off a deep dish! Mentally broken and craving healthy human flesh to slow his own decomposition, West goes on a murderous rampage, leaving a trail of dismembered and partially nommed bodies in his wake. Can Nelson and secretive military man General Michael Perry (Jonathan Winters lookalike Myron Healey) find West and stop him before he oozes again?

I really didn't expect this one to be as much fun as it was, but I had a blast. The Incredible Melting Man is a throwback to the sci-fi monster flicks of the 50s and 60s (think The Amazing Collosal Man mashed up with The Hideous Sun Demon), only with an extra layer of cheese and a heapin' helping of gore. Special effects master Rick Baker provides the goopiness here, and his design of the Melting Man is pretty much flawless--we get slimy drips, exposed bone, an eye sliding down his face, an ear left on a pine bush, and a final "meltdown" scene that will remind mad movie fans pleasantly of Street Trash. The victims of the melting man are also shown in loving, disgusting detail--in my favorite scene, a fisherman's just-ripped-off head floats in slow-mo down a river, Orpheus-style, before going over a waterfall and bursting like a melon!

The acting is b-movie bad, but entertaining nonetheless. Rebar's "trauma" scene in the rings of Saturn is worth the price of admission alone, but the real prize winner here is accomplished TV actor DeBenning. Channeling Bill Bixby on a bad day, DeBenning delivers every line with supreme frustration and disgust, with an expression like someone constantly smelling another man's fart. (Believe me: no one, but NO ONE stares angrily at a phone receiver like my boy Burr!) Healy is entertaining as the general in charge of the most nonchalant radioactive pathogen-carrier manhunt in history, and character actors Edwin Max and Dorothy Love have a wonderful spot as a comic relief romantic elderly couple. And exploitation fans should look for Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith as a photographer's model posing in the Melting Man's domain.--topless, naturally.

Plenty of gore, b-movie pseudo-science, some good-natured if ill-executed acting, and a bit of a shock ending made The Incredible Melting Man a ton of fun. If you like your cheese stringy, drippy, and laid on thick, this is the pie for you. 2.25 thumbs.

Sunscreen, kids. It's important.

Tales that Witness Madness (1973): or, Try the Veal

2011-10-06T09:43:00.003-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 5!

In a high-security, hi-tech asylum in the British countryside, Professor R. C. Tremayne (Donald "Fucking" Pleasence) is doing psychological research on a ragtag group of inmates, each of whom is a "special case." Imaginative little moppet Paul (Russell Lewis) arrived after his neglectful and constantly scream-fighting parents got a first-hand introduction to his imaginary friend "Mr. Tiger." Fire-scarred junk dealer Timothy (Peter McEnery "the-Eigth-I-Am") went koo-koo upon receipt of "The Penny-Farthing," a time-traveling antique bicycle somehow linked to the constantly-changing picture of sinister Uncle Albert. (We're so sorry.) In another room, Brian (Michael Jayston) reflects on the demise of his hot, bitchy wife Bella (a never hotter nor bitchier Joan Collins), apparently at the hands...er, branches...of a jealous hunk of wood he cals "Mel." And the final patient, Auriol (screen legend Kim Novak) is still overcoming indigestion thanks to a cannibalistic "Luau" that may or may not (but almost definitely DID) include her daughter Ginny (Mary Tamm) as a main course. Dr. Tremayne claims he has "absolute proof" in these cases--but of what? And to what purpose?

Tales that Witness Madness is an old school British anthology film of the kind I absolutely ate up as a kid on Saturday afternoon TV matinees. Director Freddie Francis is no stranger to the format (having helmed the classic Amicus anthology Tales from the Crypt just a couple years earlier), nor to the horror genre generally, as one of Britain's more prolific terror tale directors of the era (The Evil of Frankenstein, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave , The Creeping Flesh, and many more). Here he's got a star-studded cast who all seem game enough, but sadly the quality of the stories is not up to the same creepy level of Crypt. The stories are serviceable enough in a second-tier Twilight Zone-y kinda way, with my favorite being the opener "Mr. Tiger." The little boy's creepy Schroeder-esque piano playing, the riotously over-the-top performance by blustery Welshman Donald Houston as the boy's dad, and some nicely filmed blood-spatter imagery near the end make it a stand-out. (Another creeptastic image is the "paper faced" Uncle Albert in the time-travel segments of "Penny-Farthing." Also, the strangely sensuous half-woman/half-tree thing in "Mel" is more than a little pleasingly perverse.) Still, the lack of explanation for any of the goings on--which wouldn't have bothered me at all as a kid, it bears noting--left adult me wanting more.

Not the best example of the British horror anthology, but not terrible either. If you're looking for something a little fun that doesn't require too much mental engagement, this one could fit the bill. 1.5 thumbs.

"Show me your pecker, big boy!"

INSIDIOUS (2010): or, Should Have Gone Further

2011-10-05T08:51:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 4!

Musician and exhausted mother of three Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) and her well-meaning but more than a little thick schoolteacher husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) have just moved into a palatial, deeply shadowed old house, when their energetic oldest child Dalton (Ty Simpkins) suffers a knock on the head while exploring the requisite creepy attic. The next morning the boy has fallen into a coma, and the family begins to suffer under a plague of what paranormal experts like to call "freaky shit." Creepy voices from the nursery are overheard on the baby monitor, strange faces appear in second-floor windows, and middle son Foster (Andrew Astor) reports seeing his brother walking around at night, even when Dalton is clearly still strapped in his sick bed. Fleeing the haunting, they move into suburban crackerbox that is much more believably affordable on a high school teacher's salary, only to find that the malevolent entities have followed them. Turns out it's not their house that is haunted, but their son--his soul has come detached from his body via innocent astral projection gone too far, and the demons of the netherworld called "The Further" want to commandeer his body to wreak havoc on the living. Can Josh use his own astral projecting skills to retrieve his son and keep the demons at bay?

Spoiler: yup.

Directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell (the horror loving duo who struck gold in 2004 with the first installment of the loved-by-some and reviled-by-others Saw series), Insidious has a few good ideas and manages a couple of extremely effective scare scenes. The movie's at its best early on, establishing Renai's exhaustion and Josh's obliviousness, then turning up the tension with the tried-and-true "child in danger" shtick. Once Josh follows his son into the Further, the ghosts and demons that inhabit the place are wonderfully creepy in a "porcelain dolls gone wrong" way; the Sith Lord-styled, Tiny Tim-loving Lipstick Face Demon is also a disturbing creation. The astral projection angle is an interesting one too, and I got a kick out of psychic Elise Ranier (Lin Shaye) and her team of nerdy paranormal techs. (The medium's method of channeling the dead while wearing a fetish-style gas mask was also a pleasingly WTF touch.)

However, much of the movie seemed to me a slightly higher-rent version of Wan's summarily awful 2007 flick Dead Silence. As in that earlier flick, Wan doesn't seem to trust his nightmare imagery to be quite scary enough, and so relies heavily on screeching strings and other loud noises to put the exclamation point on every jump scare. The director even seems to transplant the "creepy old ventriloquist lady" character from that movie into this one, here making her a netherworld demon.

The problems continue with Whannell's script, which includes such absurdities as Renai listening to a grunting, growling male voice on her baby monitor for a full three minutes (BEFORE rushing upstairs to, you know, CHECK ON THE BABY), and Josh dashing downstairs to find the front door wide open and the burglar alarm going off, then nonchalantly shutting the door, turning on the alarm, and, you know, NOT CALLING THE POLICE.

TWICE.

Byrne and Wilson are both usually fairly decent actors, but here they both seem to be phoning it in from a great distance. And scream flick legend Barbara Hershey is similarly detached in her small role as Josh's mother. When the most engaging actors in the flick are our comic relief ghostbusters (writer Leigh Whannell as "Specs" and Angus Sampson as "Tucker"), somebody at the top of the marquee isn't pulling his or her weight.

I didn't think Insidious was really a bad movie--I can see where many viewers (especially those whippersnapping young'uns) might be thrilled and disturbed by the spookhouse scares and loud noises--but I guess it just left me a little tired and unfulfilled. It looks good though, and did manage to raise the goosebumps a couple of times, so I give it a 1.5 thumb rating.

"See you later, babe. Darth Maul and I are going to try to get in a quick 9."

TROLLHUNTER (2010): or, Don't Feed the Trolls

2011-10-04T09:51:00.002-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 3!

A group of conservation-minded college students, on the trail of a man they think is poaching the fiercely regulated and protected bear population of their native Norway, think they have found the perfect subject for their Dokumentar 101 final project. But as they follow the rough, enigmatic hunter on his mysterious nightly raids, they find themselves at the center of a whole different wildlife conservation battle, focused on a much rarer and more dangerous native predator: the Troll.

Just when you think endless knockoffs and repetitions have completely sapped the found footage subgenre of its vitality and creativity, along comes a group of plucky Norwegians to show us there's life in the old bird yet. Combining a believable documentary style with a clear passion for the fairy tales and folklore of his native land, writer/director André Øvredal creates an exciting, funny, and truly inventive take on the old Giant Monsters Amok tropes. Throw in government cover-ups, eccentric bear hunters, and a gruff monster-fighting badass of the Ash/Reggie the Ice Cream Man stamp (Otto Jespersen, whom I could almost believe really is an honest-to-Odin Trolljegeren), and you've got a good time for everybody.

The rest of the cast is good too, but the real stars of the show are of course the trolls. Here the "documentary" style really helps a lot, as Øvredal is able to use shadows, dusky light, and night-vision effects to help sell the idea of a twenty-foot tall, three-headed beast rampaging through the forest. The movie is edited extremely well, with exciting chases and entertaining bits of dialogue explaining the folklore for the uninitiated. (For instance, it's important to the Troll Hunter to ensure that none of the documentary crew are Christians, since trolls can "smell the blood of a Christian man.") Several troll species are represented, and my favorite scene involves a witty take on one of the most treasured Grimm Fairy tales from my childhood. Most importantly, by the time the two-hundred foot Final Boss showedup, I found my imagination so engaged that I didn't even think about the CG. Which seldom happens, and is a big complement.

2.75 thumbs. Recommended!

"Do you mind? I'm tryin' to dump some gravel here!"

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971): or, Phantom of the Monkey Suit

2011-10-02T22:06:00.002-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 2!

Jason Robards, of all people, stars in this AIP version of a gothicky thriller, EXTREMELY loosely based on the famous detective story by Edgar Allen Poe--by which I mean, even less tightly than the 1932 version with Bela Lugosi. Which is to say, not really based on it at all.

Robards plays Cesar, the manager of a Grand Guignol-esque troupe who are performing their smash hit, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, at a theatre actually located in the Rue Morgue in Paris. All is going swimmingly until one night, the actor playing the ape Erik is brutally murdered, and his killer takes his place in that night's performance, which no one realizes on account of the monkey suit. It's only later they realize how meta things have become, as they have a murder at the Murders in the Rue Morgue, IN THE RUE MORGUE. You see what they did there?

Things are twistier here than our old pal Eddie ever imagined, though, as what follows is less a faithful retelling of his pioneering tale of ratiocination than a mash-up of the Rue Morgue, "The Premature Burial", and The Phantom of the Opera, with a little Bloody Pit of Horror thrown in for good measure. A-List baddie Herbert Lom (later famously of Peter Sellers' Pink Panther series) here reprises his Phantom role from 1961 (with almost exactly the same makeup), playing former theatrical star Rene Marot, disfigured in a freak accident on stage and later a presumed suicide. Of course he hasn't stayed dead, and along with his dapper dwarf assistant Pierre (Michael Dunn), he sets out to wreak vengeance on those who wronged him, and to win the heart of Madeline (Christine Kaufmann), the daughter of his former lover (Lilli Palmer), which is of course not creepy at all.

Dark secrets, gothic settings, and batshit plot twists make this one a real barn burner. If you love the old "man in an ape suit" trope (and if you don't, let's face it, YOU'RE DEAD INSIDE), there's plenty to love here, including ape-man bending the bars of his cage, ape-man holding up decapitated head, and even ape-man swinging Errol Flynn-style from a chandelier! In addition, we get multiple acid-disfigurations (including a particularly nasty one with Eurobabe Maria Perschy, who would later co-star with the Mighty Mighty Molina in The Hunchback of the Morgue, Exorcismo, and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll), some stylishly filmed, borderline surreal dream sequences, and even some Shakespeare allusions via Punch and Judy shows, administrated by the aforementioned dapper dwarf. Really, it's an embarrassment of riches.

The movie might strike some as a bit slight, but I admired its energy and complete dedication to throwing everything it could at the lens to see what would stick. Robards is a bit miscast, but the rest of the troupe do well, with Kaufmann almost Adjani-esque in her "am I crazy or what?" innocent role, and Lom excellent as always in the villain slot. With more than a couple of inventive twists near the end, this one stays entertaining until the final Dummy Death curtain call. Lush production values and period costumes round out the package, earning this one a 2.5 thumb rating. Fun stuff!

"WHO'S YER MESSIAH NOW?!"

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981): or, That's the Last Straw

2011-10-01T15:59:00.000-05:00

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 1!

A thirty-six year old, mentally challenged behemoth of a man named Bubba (Larry Drake, typecast again) draws the ire of his small, rural town's postmaster Otis P. Hazelrigg (the legendary Charles Durning) for being a bit too friendly with sweet little Marylee (Tonya Crowe). When the girl is attacked by a vicious dog and Bubba comes to her rescue, the sight of the gigantic toddler with the bloodied body of the innocent in his arms drives the letter carrier into a frenzy--he quickly recruits alcoholic farmer Harless Hooker (Lane Smith), grease-monkey and Cooter Davenport impersonator Skeeter Norris (Robert F. Lyons), and morbidly obese hypertension-sufferer Philby (Claude "No Relation to James" Earl Jones) to form the world's sweatiest posse and wreak retarded vengeance before the cops can come in and muck things up. Bubba displays a little creativity by concealing himself from the lynch mob in a well-crafted scarecrow costume, but the men aren't fooled and execute the poor slob just before learning that the girl is okay and the dog has been rightly convicted. Incredibly the men get off scot-free on the charge of galoot-icide, but soon an ominous wind blows in from the cornfield at night, bringing with in supernatural vengeance and barley-scented DEATH.

Rightly hailed as one of the best made-for-TV horror movies of the Big Network Era, Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a beautifully shot, expertly paced thriller many genuinely creepy scenes and even some surprisingly effective emotional moments. Director Frank De Felitta does a great job with J.D. Feigelson's story, displaying a deft hand for suspense and never letting the proceedings drag. He's aided by an absolutely stellar cast--character actors Jones and Lyons are fantastic as the basically decent but tragically misguided stooges of Hazelrigg, and Lane Smith hits all the right notes as the slimiest of crew. (Lyons in particular impresses by seeming to channel character-acting god Elisha Cook Jr. to great effect, especially in one of the great "losing his shit" scenes in TV movie history.) Most importantly, we get Charles Durning at his Durning-est, playing the postmaster as an angry little man with delusions of grandeur (note the prominent Patton photos in his sad boardinghouse bedroom), taking out his frustrations on hapless ogre Drake. There's really not a bad performance in the movie--A-level stuff, all the way across the board.

There's more than a touch of MADNESS to savor here too, as we get strict observance of the Chekhov rule ("If you show a wood-chipper in act one..."), amber waves of PAIN, impromptu exhumation, a gas stove explosion powerful enough to split the atom, and even an obvious but wonderfully done homage to the "flowers" scene from James Whale's Frankenstein (1931). And the post-comeuppance coda has a nice little ghostly chill in it as well, wrapping everything up with a satisfying shiver.

A great way to start my October Horror Movie challenge, Dark Night of the Scarecrow gets a solid 2.5 thumbs up. Made-for-TV fans and horror lovers in general should seek it out for their Halloween viewing posthaste!

"If I only had a brain. Yours, I mean. On the end of a pitchfork."

Track of the Moon Beast (1976), Or Stalk Like A Dinosaur

2011-09-21T08:00:00.002-05:00

Special Guest Post by Jose Cruz of Mephisto's Castle!

Fellow MMMMad movie lovers and maniacs in general, it is with great pleasure and honor that I, El Jose, write this rabid review for you today. Being a devout member of the Church of Cheesy Cinema, I was eager in sending a message inked in the perspiration of 100 Italian prostitutes to see if the honorable Vicar and Duke would lend me an ear… and any other necessary organs that I might need. And when the message returned (though the pony it was sent with had mysteriously disappeared upon arriving at the gilded gates of the Vicarage) with a gracious consent, I leaped forth from my filthy grotto, chittering like an Appalachian love slave in heated excitement.

“So what,” you impatiently ask in between savory chomps of your roasted dragon thigh, “did you decide to offer us for today, you sniveling knave?”

Why, none other than one of the many hidden treasures on the glorious 50 Chilling Classics Set put out by the fine folks at Mill Creek. And having a deep and affectionate love for lycanthropes, I was immediately drawn to the freaky-sounding flick Track of the Moon Beast. But, dear reader, I was quick to find out that we weren’t dealing with the usual furry-faced fiends that serve as the wolfish, flesh-chomping mascots of Daninsky U, but a poor soul who instead turns into a leathery lizard-creature upon the night of the full moon in order to get his cold-blooded groove on.

Intrigued? So was I! So take the perfumed, gloved hand I offer to you now and journey with me into the slithery shenanigans of this kooky drive-in monsterama…

Our film opens up with a dumpy-looking fellow fiddling around in an observatory which is quickly followed up with a news report concerning a flaming meteorite that is on a crash course with Earth’s moon. Nothing to worry about, we are assured. After all, the meteorite appears to be a crumpled-up page from the script that some foolhardy crew hand set on fire and is twirling around on a string in the grand tradition of Ed Wood. As the blazing ~~spitball~~ meteorite comes ever closer, a group of elder Native Americans are getting’ jiggy with it in the middle of the New Mexican desert, waving large baby rattles as an imminent warning of the meteor’s approach.

It's coming right fer us!

The next day, good-looking-in-a-70s-sense Paul Carlson (Chase Cordell) speeds into the arid desert on his motorbike and dismounts in order to do some archaeological digging. Making sure to take his shirt off in order to show off his impressive pecs and expose himself to the sun’s merciless rays, Paul gets a great find in the form of a bone approximately two inches under the sand, only to be spooked by a bloodcurdling scream that echoes off the mountains. Looking around, he spies a giant metal mask peering down at him that apparently grew its own pair of legs and mounted itself on a ledge.

Turns out it’s the work of college couple Budd and Janet (dammit!) and Paul’s good friend Professor Johnny Longbow (the charismatic Gregorio Sala) who decided to play a prank on the muscley anthropologist. Paul also meets leggy photojournalist Kathy Nolan (Leigh Drake) who makes her attraction to Paul IMMEDIATELY known. Like, before they’re introduced.

The spirit of Chief Walla-Walla-Bing-Bang presides over all.

Paul is eager to reciprocate the obvious flirtation, telling the shutterbug he knows of some great photo spots but that they’re a little off the beaten track. So without taking the time to consider the possibility that Paul is a sweet-faced homicidal maniac that wants to knit a sweater from her succulent ass cheeks, Kathy happily hops onto his moped and drives off to possible death in the name of an easy lay.

While having lunch, Janet is frightened by a scampering lizard, which prompts Johnny to go full-on Native American and illustrate the episode using an ancient folktale involving the Coyote and the Lizard and their argument on what form Man should take.* That night Paul and Kathy stand atop a windy hill in which Kathy has surprisingly not been buried in, the blonde vixen rubbing the chiseled stud’s hairy chest while he waxes romantic. And right in the middle of his poetic soliloquy, the dazzling meteorite shower descends from the heavens and knocks the lovers to the ground with its blinding intensity.

*Mankind retains Lizard's five-fingered hands but get to keep Coyote's mortality. Fair trade, right?

Paul gets a scratch on his head, and Kathy tends to the wound with a handkerchief while the lummox picks up a fragment of the miraculously cool “moon rock” for a keepsake. Kathy aloofly tosses the hankie aside (she don’t give a fuck for no Crying Indian) and takes Paul’s suggestion to go to his house for medicinal needs as an invitation to jump his bones. Heading off, they miss the lizard that has crawled on to the now ominously-glowing hankie as a sign of terrible things to come…

"Well if you must know, that telescope there should give you a good estimation..."

At Paul’s home, the hunk lets it slip during the pre-sexcapades that he lives with his mom (it’s okay—she’s away on vacation) and his bedroom comes fully equipped with adorable childhood photographs, a telescope, and a freakin’ Komodo dragon in a cage named Ty! You would think the implication that she may be horribly raped and have her remains fed to the vicious reptile would be scaring her, but Kathy admits to Paul—whom she has only met that very same day—that “It’s us I’m really frightened about.” Seeing a way to approach their growing relationship in an adult manner, they make out.

Ty watching all the while.

Giggity!

The next afternoon finds Paul in the university museum checking out moon rock samples similar to his souvenir from the previous night and Kathy attempting to take snapshots of his rock-hard ass. But the camera’s flash sets off a cartoon sound effect in Paul’s head that leaves him dizzier than an iguana dipped in tequila. Later Paul, Kathy, and Johnny go to a local show for some entertainment put on by the pastiest guy in New Mexico and his band of fellow hippies.

"This IS my farmer's tan!"

Feeling a little woozy, Paul is taken from the AMAZINGLY PACKED HOUSE back to his place to west his wittle head. After being tucked in by Kathy and awaking from a fitful slumber, Paul paces across his room, illuminated by the full moon’s beams. Clutching the moon rock to his chest, Paul looks wearily up at the caged Ty and then…

We cut to a random drunk old man trying to get into his house and showing us the seat of his wrinkled, probably-filled-with-unchanged-diapers pants for a good 10 seconds. Old Guy’s overweight, chain-smoking wife ain’t having none of his inebriated hijinks and sees fit to keep him locked outside. The poor drunk finds out that a little hair of the dog gains him a tooth from the lizard when some shambling, unseen creature stalks up on him and goes in for a nibble. Alarmed by a scream and the puddle of blood that is now oozing under her front door, Roseanne suffers a heart attack when she sees her hubby’s corpse set up on the stoop James Cagney-style.

"I regret nothing!"

The following afternoon Police Captain McCabe (Patrick Wright) calls in Johnny to have him weigh in his opinion on the deaths. Seeing the shredded remains of the victim, Johnny guesses it’s the work of a mountain lion, but the Scooby Doo-esque handprint that the beast left behind after it tripped over the garden hose confirms that we’re in Roger Corman territory now. Kathy wakes Paul up back at the house, and the two are startled to discover that Ty has seemingly escaped from his cage! At the university, Johnny says it’s possible that a footprint found at the crime scene could have been made by a Komodo dragon. But the print had to have been made by an upright creature, and McCabe speculates that they could be dealing with a T-rex.

Yeah. That second one is more plausible.

Out of options, the gang decided to consult with the reanimated remains of Abraham Lincoln.

To get their mind off things, Paul, Kathy, and Johnny head out into the desert and see two children participating in a game of archery. Paul and Johnny decide to play William Tell with ears of corn standing in for apples, but Paul has another one of his spells. Given a glass of warm milk and a kiss from ~~Mommy~~ Kathy, Paul awakens yet again during the night by the moon’s haunting light.

We then cut to a group of three campers in the woods, playing cards and jovially chatting as a fire crackles. But the revelry is disturbed when the Moon Beast rudely interrupts their game of Old Maid, their asses severely chewed out and WHOLE ARMS RIPPED FROM SOCKETS in a hideous display of scaly slaughter. This was a wonderfully executed (heh), high-energy scene, and couldn’t help but remind me of the bum massacre from An American Werewolf in London. And we didn’t even get full-on dismemberment in THAT movie.

Paul wakes up from Nappy Time the next morning and, after being chided by Kathy for being a baby (yuh think?), he’s taken to the hospital to get his head examined. The X-rays come up showing something abnormal in Paul’s skull (barring severe independence, that is) and plans are made to operate. It seems that the buckaroo didn’t walk away from that meteorite shower as unscathed as he first thought, as a small piece from the moon rock has lodged itself into his brain meats. Just WHY exactly that forces Paul to metamorphose into a six-foot-tall gecko when the bad moon comes arising is left completely unexplained, but if we were cinematic prudes we wouldn’t be here in the first place, would we?

"Ma always said there were rocks in my head, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS!"

Meanwhile the murder investigation continues as Johnny presents McCabe with a slideshow detailing a Native American legend about a tribesman who was struck by a beam of light and thus turned into a “demon-lizard-monster.” That’s right, folks. This isn’t some prissy, tampon-wearing lizard-monster. This is a DEMON-lizard-monster, so you know this is some heavy dinosaur shit we’re dealing with here.

At any rate, this demon-lizard-wrestler-thunder god-monster caused much havoc before it spontaneously combusted for no other reason than it simply couldn’t handle its own awesomeness. Sensing that Paul has taken the monster mantle, Longbow persuades McCabe to go along with locking Paul into his hospital room that night to see what happens. Ridiculous hunches prevail though, as all those in attendance watch as Paul’s tan features become exceedingly dryer and more rubbery.

The expert doctors are called in and they are quick to diagnose that the moon rock particles in Paul’s body are spreading in his system at such a rate that they will eventually cause him to burst open faster than a piñata at a diabetic birthday party. Paul’s not a sit-down-and-explode kind of guy (at least not in this sense), and he’s intent on doing… something… before he can make like a geisha and blow. There’s the requisite dramatic scene between the two lovers, Kathy weeping "Oh, Paul. Why did this have to happen to you?" and Paul cleverly answering “It did happen. That’s all I know” in between squirmy, grinding kisses of awkwardness. Just before leaving, Paul finally resolves: “I wanna die looking like a man, not a monster…”

"... just not in this fucking gown."

Disguised as a doctor, Paul snatches a motorbike from the parking lot and purchases a gun from Colonel Sanders at a local ammunition shop, planning to kill himself atop the windy hill he loves so much. Kathy heads there after him, Longbow and the police quick on her tail. Finding Paul, she tries to talk him out of his suicide mission before he blows to smithereens and/or is gunned down by the coppers. Things are looking bad, especially with the sun going down in a matter of SECONDS and Paul beginning to walk a little too much like a dinosaur.

"Is there something on my face?"

Kat screams bloody murder, which somehow convinces the Moon Beast NOT to eat her, and a couple of cops try taking shots at the beast before he washes his claws in their sweet, bacony blood. Johnny is here to save the day, as he’s devised to sharpen a piece of the moon rock into an arrowhead and wreak sweet Tonto action onto Paul’s leathery hindquarters. Kathy tries driving off but is cornered by the beastie. Johnny is quick on the feet and faster on the draw though as he sends the lunar arrow straight into the creature’s beating heart! The particle reaction sped up in its body, the Moon Beast disintegrates into ashes in a flurry of psychedelic lights. Completely spent and craving some good burritos, our heroes walk off down the dark road.

Parishioners, it would be haughty of me indeed to claim that Track of the Moon Beast is a monumental achievement of genre cinema and that you all must make haste in sacrificing baby newts at its epic altar of grandness (as cool as that might be). What the movie IS, though, is a fun little drive-in feature that is kind enough to throw some rubber-suited monster action our way and a pint of sticky blood to wash it down. And that, friends and loved ones, is something to stand up and cheer for.

Dancin' In The Street

Performances overall are adequate, but the script never demands too much on the actor’s part. Chase Cordell as the Lawrence Talbot-stand in though is sadly devoid of any real tragic qualities about him, despite the major suckage of his situation. Cordell’s performance never really pulls you in and has you rooting for his doomed protagonist, which is the ultimate goal of any lycanthrope worth their silver.

He still isn’t horrible, though, and Cordell is at least able to pull off ~~his shirt~~ some worthwhile dramatic moments. Sala as Johnny Longbow is the picture of charm and suavity as the world-wise American Indian, and his presence just screams bad ass at times. The rest of the cast fill in their telegraphed roles with the aplomb of dedicated TV actors, so there’s that too.

The film seems like it could have easily been an episode from Kolchak: The Night Stalker as it has all the foamy creatures and MAD monster mythology that made that series so great. And while there are undoubtedly allusions to many a werewolf feature, this movie has a surprising reference to the Val Lewton chiller The Leopard Man (1943).

Not only does that movie also take place in the New Mexican desert, but it deals with an escaped animal (in that case the titular feline) that the countryside believes to be the culprit behind a series of recent murders, mirroring Ty the Dragon’s break-out from this flick. However, writers Charles Sinclair and Bill Finger (the very same one who developed the original conception of Batman with Bob Kane!) do absolutely nothing with that plotline. Perhaps they wanted to leave room open for the summer blockbuster sequel, Commando Komodo?

On the whole, I can give Track of the Moon Beast a solid 2 thumbs. Fans of popcorn creature features will surely get a kick out of this one, and it comes equipped with a few MAD moments to keep the smiles coming. Definitely apply some lotion after watching it though.

And take that last statement how you will.

More images from Track of the Moon Beast (1976):

Mind the Rattlers

Amaize-ing Precision

Even A Man Who Is Hard In Pec

"Daddy's home."

"Cool ghost stories. But could we turn the lights on now please?"

Fried Chicken and Firearms: A Colonel's Story

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I'm the gawd-damn INDIAN, man!"

News and Notes from the Vicarage

2011-09-19T10:05:00.000-05:00

Greetings, friends and former lovers! As I'm sure you've noticed, things continue to move slowly around the Vicarage and Duchy these days, for which I can only say I'm very sorry. It's not for lack of desire, I can tell you--but this cloud of malaise is proving difficult to disperse, the Joybaloo increasingly elusive.

BUT--if you can judge a Vicar by the quality of his friends, then I'm a rich clergyman indeed. In a couple days' time in this very spot, tune in for a guest post by Parishioner Par Excellance Jose Cruz, who is taking time out from his stellar work at Mephisto's Castle to contribute a review to Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies.

Another good friend of the site, the brilliant and devious Dr. Vulnavia Morbius of the consistently excellent Krell Labs, is doing her best to smack the Vicar out of his laziness by throwing down the leather gauntlet of the 7th Annual October Horror Movie Challenge--participants agree to watch and write about 31 movies in the 31 days of October, more than half of which have to be new to the watcher. It's a hefty challenge, and a big commitment, but what the hell--I'm in! More info can be found at the Challenge's Facebook page, where you can also sign up yourself. Thirty-one straight days of Madness with the Vicar...GET READY!

I also have a couple of brief DVD reviews I hope to get done by the end of the week. And that should be enough for you, ya heathens! Now go! I have to meditate to prepare myself for my latest ascent from the grave.

Bunnies,
VoV

Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991), Or Is That A Demon Dagger In Your Pocket?

2011-09-05T09:29:00.003-05:00

Dearest friends, it is I, the Duke of DVD, returned once again from a long sabbatical, a sojourn that sent me to the farthest corners of the world, in order to return to you, my dear readers, the cinematic offal that you so crave! I've crept silently through darkened hallways, stepping over the moldering carcasses of sacrificed druids, their faces frozen in rictuses of pain. I've endured the 301 Flayings of the Man-Child of Lower Cambodia. I've burrowed with stunted dwarves, delving deeper and deeper, unearthing nameless entities best left buried.

Yes, friends, I've blown entire stacks of Coke Rewards(tm), launched Russian rockets from Chinese platforms, drove a Kia, and subjugated an entire realm to the east of Moldavia, in order to bring you what you most desire. "But Duke!" you interject, spraying your befouled environs with blue cheese fragments and bone meal. "Surely you took some time for yourself!?" Yes, I did, and thank you for your concern, friend. I spent a liberal amount of time soaking in the hot springs of Calhoun Holler outside Possumrape, Kentucky, followed by a month-long trip into Indo-China to visit a hedge-wizard with a knack for curing gonorrhea (for a friend, I assure thee!).

Despite these side ventures, I never lost sight of what my reading public wants: Troma movies. That is why, today, I return to you at the turn of the tide, when you thought all hope was lost, as you were just about to dump your last bottle of Ativan into a half-empty bottle of grandma's cough medicine. Fear not, for I am with thee! Gaze upon what I've brought you, and despair!

As most of you know, I worship at the altar of Troma, but even I must admit when I've bitten off more than I can chew safely, and in this case, folks, I have. Today's rotten pile comes to us in the form of Wizards of the Demon Sword, which is basically a Conan-meets-Princess-Bride movie of epic suckage. I scarcely know where to begin, so let's just do the obvious and start from the beginning, shall we?

This title sponsored by Mordor and the letter "Z".

The movie opens with the unspoiled, clad-in-white Melina (Heidi Paine), who is running through a desert landscape from a group of road agents, whose lack of weapon skills is only matched by their penchant for wearing all-leather. She tricks them for a while, pretending to have leapt off a 5' cliff, which apparently they thought of as too steep for a human to survive. But after a bit one of them gets clever and uses a horse to pursue her, finally capturing her with a net. One of the other ruffians, who appears to be in charge, orders her brought back to the castle. They are about to leave when a hunky hero arrives firing crossbow bolts before asking any questions.

"Guys, I can see my house from here!"

He introduces himself as Thane of Hawksridge (Blake Bahner). He dresses like Conan doing Broadway, and wields a massive two-handed sword that is ludicrously over-sized. He dispatches the bandits in short order, and then we get some expository scenes in which Melina informs him that she's the daughter of Ulric (the awesome Russ Tamblyn or Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks!), keeper of the famed Demon Sword--which is really just a dagger. It seems that Ulric has been captured along with the Sword, and taken to the castle of the evil Lord Khoura (Lyle Waggoner), who is determined to use the nefarious Demon Sword for his own person gains.

Satisfaction. Fuck yeah.

Thane (of Hawksridge!) is all for stopping that shit, so he sets of with Melina to find the fabled Seer of Roebuck (guffaw! played by Hoke Howell), who is supposed to help them in some way that the bourbon I'm now drinking has made me forget. At any rate, they're off! Meanwhile, at Khoura's castle, we see his #1 henchman is really a lady, who dresses like she's right out of the Thunderdome. Khoura, who is trying in vain to activate the Demon Sword, realizes that he needs fresh virgin blood to do so, so he sends his dominatrix out to find some.

"This is the Demon Sword?! I thought it was one of them glass dildos..."

Thane and Melina, meanwhile, have arrived at a village. We get a humorous scene involving a slave trader (played by the amazing Lawrence Tierney) who sells sex slaves, both young and old. Thane and Melina eventually find their way into a hookah den of sorts, all the while asking where the Seer of Roebuck is. Some humor is thrown in here, when Thane gets a dance from a bellydancer and slips a large coin into her bustier. They finally get directions to the Seer and are off to see him.

I must hand it to the folks at Troma, they threw in totally unnecessary yet awesome claymation dinosaurs. Seriously. They're sprinkled throughout the movie, have almost zero interaction with any of the actors, yet, well, there they are. Thane will comment on them from time to time, but that's about it. I still got a smirk from seeing them.

And here we get a rare glimpse at the Harryhausen species of dinosaur.

Finally, our intrepid adventurers arrive at the Seer of Roebuck's hovel. The Seer himself resembles a late-stage Alzheimers Dumbledore and his manner of speaking is like a cross between Mr. Magoo and Burl Ives. Meanwhile, back at Khoura's castle of awesome... actually, we get scenes cut back here from time to time but nothing really much happens other than Khoura spouting some admittedly awesome dialogue that is so over-the-top hammy it deserves light applause. We get a scene where Khoura's henchwoman does some spell in order to take over Melina's body somehow, and try to kill Thane remotely, but that doesn't work.

"Hi, I'm Kenny Rogers, welcome to Jackass!"

Finally, Thane and Melina leave the Seer (having learned what? I'm not sure), and on the way slay a flying dinosaur and eat it. While sleeping, Khoura's henchmen find them and kidnap Melina, yet leave Thane alive for some fucking reason, and tie him to the ground. Thane awakes with a snake on his chest, that rattles despite clearly being a boa instead of a rattlesnake. Like us, the snake soon becomes bored with Thane and leaves. A wandering swordsman by the name of Damon (Dan Speaker) happens by and frees Thane, only to challenge him to see who is the most saturated with testosterone...I mean, the best swordsman. It ends in a tie, and they become best buds, with Damon pledging his sword arm to Thane's cause. Away they go to Khoura's castle!

Snakes on a Thane

Melina is finally reunited with her father in Khoura's Dungeon of Shame. Thane and Damon arrive in short order and proceed to penetrate large numbers of leather-clad guard-ass with their giant...swords. One thing of note here: a guard with long hair that is basically the head guard keeps goading his underlings into attacking (and dying via) Thane and Damon, yet he himself keeps fleeing, only to arrive again with another group of guards, and then fleeing again. Hilarious stuff! Thane and Damon make short work of most everyone in the castle not named Khoura. The evil man himself finally shows up with Melina and her father, with the Demon Sword (dagger) in his belt.

Damon is killed, off-screen, by Khoura, and Thane attempts to attack Khoura but fails due to his magic. Khoura ends up with a death grip on Thane's tunic, for some reason or other, and Melina draws Thane's attention to the freakin' Demon Sword/Dagger, just sitting there, tucked into Khoura's belt. Thane simply looks over, draws the dagger/Sword out, and plunges into Khoura's chest, simple as that. Khoura screams and disappears in a flash of light. Thane hands the Demon Sword back to Ulric and then starts making out with Melina right in front of her dad, who rolls his eyes and walks away. The end.

"Compensate much?"

Friends, have I ever lead thee astray? "Yes!" you bleat, dropping a half-chewed chicken carcass out of your greasy fingers, "You told me it was safe to perform ass-to-mouth on the Whore of 701 Delightful Diseases!" Ahh, yes, there was that...well, anyway, I shall not lie to you this day when I say that Wizards of the Demon Sword does indeed have a tiny bit of merit to it. Sure, the claymation dinosaurs are laughable, as is the blatant Conan plagiarism, but when you get past all that you will find that Wizards does have a few worthy ideas, mostly due to the humorous dialogue. The fighting is atrocious, the sets are best forgotten, and the plot will drive you mad waiting on the actual wizards of the fabled Demon Sword to show up (They never do! Who are these "wizards"?!).

But still, if you like cheese, and I mean thick, sloppy, dripping off week-old nachos directly into your greasehole cheese, then you could do worse than watching Wizards of the Demon Sword...but just barely. Incidentally, it's also laughable that The Hills Have Eyes great Michael Berryman is given top billing on the cover as well as featured on the cover art, yet his scene is all of 10 seconds long.

In the end, I would have to say this, like most Troma movies, deserves a split score. I give it 1 Thumb Up if you are a fairly well-adjusted person, capable of tying your own shoes and shitting in a pot without soiling passersby. I give it a solid 2.5 Thumbs Up if you are a fan of Troma movies, or the type of person who likes to spend a busy afternoon hooking up a golf-cart battery to your inflamed nipples.

"Et tu, Thane?"

Until next time, my dearest friends, I bid thee adieu.

Random Mad Movie Screengrab

2011-09-01T18:36:00.001-05:00

"Ooh! I'll give that burgomeister such a pinch!"

Blu-Ray Review--MONAMOUR (2006): or, Tinto Brass's World of Asses

2011-08-25T14:09:00.003-05:00

Mention the name Tinto Brass to fan of exploitational cinema, and you're bound to see a little gleam appear in his or her eye. As the writer and director of Salon Kitty (simultaneously one of the most lushly artistic and one of the grime-encrusted sleaziest examples of the Nazisploitation subgenre) and one of the directors of the historical epic Caligula (probably the most expensive and star-studded exploitation movie ever made), Brass has already staked out his place in the pantheon of Exploitation Godhood. Even if none of his later movies could possibly harness the power of that one-two punch to the crotch he delivered in 1976 and 1979, Brass has laurels enough to rest his haunches upon well into retirement.

But like many a movie-making madman, for Brass, resting on a pile of shrubbery was never an option. Film is not a vocation for men like Brass, Franco, and others--it's sustenance. They have to make movies, or else wither and die from creative starvation. Sure, the public's tastes change, the budgets get smaller and smaller, and perhaps the edge is dulled as the visionaries get older and their eyes less sharp, but they're still out there, making movies on whatever scale they can--because they must.

All that's by way of introducing Brass's 2006 movie, Monamour, recently released on Blu-Ray by Cult Epics. The film shows that Brass still has an eye for magnificent composition, lush design, and gorgeous Euroflesh of the highest order. It also shows that age has softened none of Brass's perverse obsessions, which here are in full and varied display. As a result, Monamour plays as either the dirtiest mainstream movie you ever saw*, or else the most lavish porn ever made**, with only the actual penetration scenes cut.

This is, of course, a recommendation.

* Caligula excluded.
** Ditto.

The plot is basically Unfaithful (2002) all over again. Prominent literary editor Dario (Max Parodi) has come to Mantova for a literary festival, bringing along his beautiful, free-spirited, and extremely restless young wife Marta (Anna Jimskaia). Six months into their marriage she is feeling the wane of what was once a passionate affair--no longer do they make love in public while bemused duck hunters look on, and she hasn't climaxed since she said "I do." (Marta records all this late at night in her journal--sitting at her writing desk, pantsless, while Brass gives us an up close and detailed view of her open marrone degli occhi.)

While looking at some explicitly sexual murals at the famous Palazzo del Te (including one of Jupiter's Erect Cock), Marta meets and mysterious stranger, Leon (Riccardo Marino), who seems to have been built in the same Sexy Factory as a young Antonio Banderas or Unfaithful's Olivier Martinez. Like that latter Latin Lothario, this Roman rapscallion uses the silent, forward, borderline-rapey seduction method that always seems to work in stories like these. Before you know it Marta is blowing Leon at a literary fest dinner, having anal sex with him in cafe restrooms, and dancing drunk and nearly naked in public squares, stopping only to quaff more champagne and stick her tongue down the younger man's throat. Of course it's not long before Dario starts getting suspicious (Marta's sudden distaste for wearing panties in public is one clue; her ass-baring dirty dance with Leon at the Lit Fest Ball is another), which paradoxically inflames his dormant desire for his wife to new heights. Is Marta's affair a marital tragedy, or a new kind of happy ending?

It's probably just as well that I don't have Blu-Ray screengrabbing capabilities as yet, because I would be hard-pressed to find a single frame of this film that I could post here without the Blogger Police shutting me down. As I said earlier: this is a porn, only without the actual penetration. Everything up to the very border of that--and I mean EVERYTHING--is present and accounted for. If you don't like seeing puckered starfish, turgid tube-steaks, spot-lit lady-parts,and lots and lots of simulated sex (of just about every configuration), then you had best stay well away from this one. Tinto also tips his hand as to his own personal "special needs," as we get many lovingly filmed odes to asses of all kinds, not to mention several scenes of Marta and her brazen confidant Sylvia (Nela Lucic) chatting while on toilets or otherwise squatting down to urinate.Threesomes, lesbianism, anal, masturbation, simulated-or-possibly-not oral sex--whatever floats your boat, chances are Brass has it covered.

So why does Brass tease the line of pornography without actually barreling over? Perhaps he thinks it's ugly, and Brass's work is about nothing if not the beauty of desire. The movie is sumptuously filmed, the compositions are striking and often gorgeous, and the sex scenes orchestrated for maximum artistic erotic impact. Whether the manner of sexual congress is to your taste or not, you still have to appreciate the artist's eye he brings to even the sleaziest material. It's a beautiful film to look at, and there's always something eye-pleasing on screen. With Monamour, Brass shows once again that he doesn't so much tread the line between sleaze and art, as he denies the existence of any such line.

Also included in this 2-disc set is a short film by Brass, Kick the Cock, which explores the ins and outs of special needs culinary study. Special features include making-of featurettes for both films, director's commentary, and trailers.

Monamour is a slight but sexy film, worth looking at for fans of Brass and Eurosleaze enthusiasts. Cult Epics has once again delivered an excellent Blu-Ray package for material other distributors might not touch with a ten-foot salami. 2 Thumbs. Stay sleazy, Tinto. Stay classy, Signor Brass.

Book Review: MIDNIGHT MOVIE by Tobe Hooper

2011-08-15T08:23:00.000-05:00

I recently had to good fortune to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) on the big screen. It's a movie whose imagery benefits from that kind of scale. And not just the gross, disturbing scenes, but also several compositions of surprising beauty--the green grass and yellow flowers as our hapless teens walk toward their doom, the near gothic beauty of Franklin's Daddy's ruined house. It may take a couple of viewings to appreciate, but the dimensions of the big screen help bring it out in a way the small screen just can't.

Another thing it might take a few viewings to appreciate is the film's sense of humor. There's a lot in TCM that is extremely funny--the slapstick of Franklin's roll down the hill with a can of pee in his hand, the insult-comic banter of the Hitchhiker and the Father, some of Leatherface's non-violent antics, and of course the Bronx cheers. But again, for many, these things get overwhelmed by all the terror and intensity of the rest of the film. As I watched the other night, I was struck by how pervasive Hooper's (admittedly twisted) sense of humor is, even in what many consider his most "serious" work.

I mention these things because I recently got to read an advance copy of Tobe Hooper's first novel, Midnight Movie, now available from Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House. It's a wild ride, an extremely enjoyable read, and a work that, like his most famous film, benefits from both the expansive scale afforded by a work of literature, and from its author's strange sense of humor.

In the novel, an eccentric festival organizer in in Austin, Texas, has discovered a pristine print of Destiny Express, one of Tobe Hooper's early films that had been thought lost. Hooper comes for the screening, despite having lost all memory of the film in question due to a car accident in his youth. A motley group of other characters, whom we get to know through interviews, blog entries, emails and even Twitter tweets, also converge at the festival.

But Destiny Express is no ordinary film, and once the screening is over, strange things start to happen to those in attendance. A previously virginal girl becomes a man-eating nymphomaniac, spreading a strange and completely disgusting STD in her wake. An undercover terrorism expert goes over to the other side and plans an attack. And a journalist starts getting up at night to move at high speed through the city, infecting loners everywhere with the strange plague that turns them into violent, rotting, and extremely horny zombies. As Hooper and his new friends Erick Laughlin and Janine Daltrey try to discover whether Hooper's film is responsible for the outbreak, and if so how they can stop it, the plague spreads into neighboring cities and threatens to overwhelm the country.

The novel is told as a series of interviews, newspaper articles, blog posts and emails, an epistolary history of the apocalyptic aftermath of Destiny Express's screening. This gives the book a quick-reading, conversational style that carries you along easily through increasingly wild and bizarre happenings. Hooper writes himself as crusty, cynical, and world-weary but with a cutting wit, an aging hippie for whom movie-making is the only thing worth doing. And while he is the hero of his own story, he doesn't let himself off the hook, just as often having a bitter laugh at himself as at other targets.

The other characters are engaging and often funny, the plot just keeps getting wilder and more disgusting, and while the final explanation of the apocalypse may seem a little easy,the heroes' last-gasp attempt to stop it is a not-so-subtle parable that should please those aspiring artists who still believe movies can save the world.

For fans of Hooper's movies, Midnight Movie is a double treat: it gives us a chance not only to live in the director's head and hear his sardonic thoughts on everything from horror festivals to the film-pitching process to his own work and that of his directorial contemporaries. (We also get a healthy dose of his possibly justified antiestablishment paranoia.) And it also a chance to "see" a Hooper movie too big and expensive ever to be put on screen--the plot is definitely more Lifeforce than Texas Chain Saw Massacre*.) The book is easy reading, which is damned hard writing--Hooper and collaborator Alan Goldsher bring the director's voice out in an engaging, funny way that keeps you turning pages. Hooper is at his strongest when presenting the interviews in a cinematic way, cutting back and forth for sometimes comedic effect. He's at his weakest, though, when emulating news reports and articles, which don't really read like the real thing.

In closing, I thoroughly recommend Hooper's Midnight Movie for fans of the director and fans of horror literature alike. There's sex, violence, gags and gross-outs, sometimes inelegant but never boring. 2.5 thumbs. Here's hoping this won't be the last time Hooper exchanges his camera for a pen.

*Nota bene: In a crushing blow to horror snobs around the world, Hooper repeatedly and consistently refers to his own 1974 masterpiece as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, eliding the space between the "n" and "s" that such scholars have clung to for proof of their erudition. On the bright side, now we can all get over it and move on.

The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (1975): or, How to Get A Head (or 3) in the Theater

2011-07-29T12:35:00.003-05:00

Nota bene: this movie is set in 1903 Ireland.
Still a great poster though.

Friends, I've seen enough 1970s Italian horror/thrillers by now to know that, just because a movie has a florid, poetic title doesn't necessarily mean said verse has anything at all to do with the film it precedes. So perhaps it was naive of me to expect that Alfredo Rizzo's 1975 Old Dark House thriller The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (La sanguisuga conduce la danza--a straight translation, for once!) would involve dancing, blood, and/or someone sucking it--possibly whilst calling out promenades and do-si-does.

It's the romantic in me.

Sadly it was not to be, but that's not to say there's nothing to enjoy here. We do get slutty actresses in Victorian gear, a rampantly religious butler, lesbonic room service and bi-curious chambermaids, not to mention at least three decapitations and as batshit an ending as you could ask for. Plus voyeurism and Scooby-Doo footprints. So really, one can't complain too much.

Let me show you what I mean.

One thing director Rizzo (a prolific actor when not behind the lens, whose filmography includes in Spirits of the Dead [1968], b-movie staple Bloody Pit of Horror [1965], and an uncredited role in one of Nazisploitation's nasty masterpieces, The Beast in Heat [1977]) really has going for him here is some fantastic sets and locations. Okay, maybe that's two things...anyway, here's an example:

Cobbled As Fuck

"And in this outbuilding--the Orgy Room!"

Okay, that's two examples. I think I need a new abacus.

Our story, such as it is, begins in IRELAND, 1902. While all the natives are dancing jigs, playing the tin whistle, and wondering where (the fuck) all these Italians came from, an all-girl theater troupe has just closed its last performance. The actresses are understandably worried about what they'll do now that their corned-beef-and-Chianti money has dried up. It's never really spelled out what their show entailed, but I'm guessing there was scandalous ankle-baring involved. That's just the kind of sluts they seem to be.

Well, all except Evelyn, played by the lovely and bodaciously endowed Patrizia De Rossi, aka Patrizia Webley, whom Mad Movie fans will remember at first glance from her memorable turn as adulterous bitch-in-law Nais in the mmmmmasterpiece Malabimba, THE MALICIOUS WHORE (1979)--a movie that, unlike this one, DOES live up to its title.

Here Patrizia plays the diametric opposite of that character, as Evelyn is the good girl of the troupe--a widowed singer who spends her days pining for her lost hubby and NOT abusing stage manager-gofer Samuel (Leo Valeriano), as all the other girls never miss an opportunity to do. Luckily Evelyn's girl-next-villa wholesomeness has attracted the attention of mush-mouthed aristocrat Count Richard Marnack (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), who invites Evelyn and all her gal-pals to his secluded castle for an extended stay. Since no rich guy ever invites a group of loose women out to his country estate with anything but the noblest of intentions, the girls readily accept.

"That's right baby--I'm into the kinky stuff."

Not wanting to be entirely without chaperone (I said she was a good girl), Evelyn insists that sad-sack Samuel come along to protect them. Though exactly what protection they can expect from a milquetoast with bug-eyes and chicken arms whom they constantly berate and insult, and who furthermore looks like a mad-science genetic mash-up of Alan Cumming and Buster Keaton, is anyone's guess.

"Ladies."

Out at the castle, the girls are greeted by Ice Queen-cum-Hausfrau Sybil, played with repressed sexual fury by Femi Benussi, whose high collars and ruffled cuffs can barely contain her voluptuousness. (If you'd like to see her a little less restrained--and really, you SHOULD--the Vicar recommends checking her out in Strip Nude for Your Killer [1975] where she...well, absolutely does that. Zang!)

Strip Nude for Your Vicar

Also on staff is butler Jeffrey (Mario De Rosa) an Evangelical Catholic given to calling down curses from the heavens the "LOOSE WOMEN! CREATURES OF THE DEVIL!" under their roof, whilst frantically stroking his King Jimmy. The fact that the troupe's HBIC Cora (Krista Nell, of the recently reviewed mannequin mystery The Red Headed Corpse) likes to get drunk and make sloppy passes at the Count, while lesbian lovers Rosalind and Penny (Marzia Damon and Lidia Olizzi, like you care) won't even interrupt their frantic rug-brunching when innocent maid Mary (Barbara "Bang Bang" Marzano) comes a-knocking, unsurprisingly make the good Christian crusader blow a gasket.

"So I says to the theater owner, I says, 'If I'm working with a muthahumpin' DONKEY, I'm gonna need a MUCH bigger dressing room! HAW!"


"Dear Lord...please send me a poster for that wall!"

"Hey, I have to WASH those sheets, you know!"

Then again, that last episode does make the wide-eyed washer woman sufficiently curious to convince her coworker/roomate to make the Beast With Four Boobies with her, so maybe the belligerent butler has a point.

"Go on, squeeze 'em. They make squeeky noises."

Meanwhile, the Count has installed Evelyn in The Dragon Room, a suspiciously appointed ~~fuckpad~~ bedroom that just happens to share a door with his boudoir. A door that doesn't lock, and that he doesn't hesitate to rush through at the slightest sound of disturbance--in case Evelyn's having a bad dream, needs warm milk, or help unlacing her corset, I guess.

"If you need anything, madam, just massage the bedside dragon's prostate. I'll be here in a jiff."

To her credit Evie is not altogether on-board with this, even less so when she discovers a portrait of the Count's disappeared-and-presumed-dead wife, who of course (stop me if you've heard this one) looks EXACTLY like Evelyn!

"You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

But waitaminnit, you might be saying to yourself--lesbianism and Dragon Rooms are all well and good, but isn't this supposed to be a horror-thriller? Why no bloodshed? No carnage? No bumps in the night? (Besides lady-bumps, natch.) I admit I asked myself the same thing. Sure, there's the weirdness of the missing Countess; the constant abuse of the increasingly frustrated Samuel; the laser-like green beams of jealousy Sybil's eyes shoot at Evelyn every time the Count mutters his affections; the apocalyptic curses of St. Jeffrey whenever one of the girls gives him a hard-on; and the voyeuristic tendencies of brutish stablehand Gregory (Luciano Pigozzi, a familiar face to genre fans). But as fun as that is, Rizzo seems to be spending all his time establishing extremely plausible suspects, and absolutely no time giving us, you know, an ACTUAL CRIME. Which is kind of important in this sort of flick.

"I heard screaming!"

"Damn straight you did, Daddio."

And the set-ups continue for a bit yet. Gregory knows something about Sybil, something sufficiently embarrassing to enable the old codger to blackmail her for sex! Weirder still, she seems kind of into it. Also, turns out the Count's grandfather beheaded his grandmother for adultery...then 20 years later, the Count's father murdered his wife for the same reason before leaping into the sea! And the current Count (that's 3) keeps his father's dagger on display in the drawing room--the very weapon that MURDERED HIS OWN MOTHER. Nope, nuthin' weird about that! Oh, and the current Countess didn't disappear--she took a lover and ran away to the city before Marnack could complete the adultery triple-header!

Counter-intuitively, this makes Evelyn weirdly hot--she finally falls for the marble-chewing aristocrat, leading to a falling-in-love montage and mucho sexy time. And Cora, desperate for cock, beds a stocky fisherman, the son of Gregory. Jeffrey continues to wait for God's wrath to strike them all dead.

Fortunately for him (and us!) the wait is over!

How do ya like THEM apples?

Waiting for the Wig Fairy

"Don't ask me--I'm stumped."

(Spoilers, btw.)

Yes, in rapid succession Cora and the Lesbians (cool band name alert) have been dispatched, all of them beheaded! Is this the spirit of the Count's grandfather, wreaking ghostly vengeance via harlot-disposal? Has the Count himself, traumatized by the loss of his mother AND wife, finally snapped? Or is the snappee Jeffrey? Or Gregory? Or poor old beleaguered Samuel?

Ruh-roh.

Does the fact that Evelyn was in an asylum before she joined the troupe, driven mad by the loss of her villager husband, signify at all? Is she actually the Count's amnesiac wife, returned for her cursed punishment? Or is there something far more sinister and STUPID going on?

"Come play with us, Danny."

Despite the lack of vampire square-dances, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance is a gorgeous movie, full of sumptuous sets, grand locations, and some really beautiful compositions. Rizzo definitely has an eye for a nice visual, even if his sense of pacing is a bit off. But then he is Italian, so maybe that's genetically unavoidable.

Also in the plus column is the gorgeous cast. Webley and Benussi are a couple of the hotter 2nd-tier Eurobabes of the era for my money, and both are fairly good actresses to boot, at least on the sliding scale of 70s genre cinema. I do think Webley seems more comfortable in the "bitch" role a la Malabimba, and struggles a bit maintaining the innocence and vulnerability the role of Evelyn requires--particularly when she bursts out of her corset and beds the Count, getting down like no good girl should, IYKWIMAITYD. The other actresses are lovely and often nude, offering plenty of eye candy for those viewers to whom such trivial things are important.

Eeybita-eeybita.

It was a dark and horny night.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall...who's the sluttiest of them all?"


"You are. Totes M'Goats." "..." "I...couldn't help overhearing."

Plot-wise, as I said, there's an awful lot of set-up for very little pay-off, but the set-up is fun in its own way. As long as you're not too worried about when exactly something will HAPPEN, you can sit back and enjoy Jeffrey's still-timely brand of hateful religiosity, Cora's harlotry, the Count's sometimes indecipherable Tommy Wiseau-esque dubbing, and the usual accumulation of nonsensical gothickry that make these old dark house movies such a joy to me.

And the final "reveal" is wacky even for this genre, including a detective who solves the crime by pulling completely fabricated guesses out of his ASS until he happens on the correct one by sheer luck (again, Italian); a confession that is false, unnecessary, and never explained; a SHOCK REVEAL that actually made me glee-squee a little; and enough nonsensical twists and turns to leave even a seasoned viewer wondering WTF just happened.

In short, a good time. 2.5 thumbs.

Still Yet MORE images from The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (1975):

You tell me: is there a Volkswagen in this picture?

Buster Keaton in "Steamboat Bill's Night at the Bordello"


"I hate myself." "I hate you too."

Late Bloomers

Worst. Gravedigger. EVER.

"Why, Johnny? Why? Johnny, why? Why?"

Blu-Ray Review: Camille 2000 (1969)

2011-07-15T11:33:00.000-05:00

Marguerite (the stunning Danièle Gaubert) is a girl who seems to have it all. Young, beautiful ,and married to a fabulously rich duke who puts few demands on her time and fewer still on her body, she is free to explore all the pleasures and excesses that late-sixties Rome has to offer.

These, you will find, are considerable.

We watch Camille as she organizes and attends a series of galas, orgies, and freak-out happenings, against some of the most sumptuous settings and clad in the grooviest fashions imaginable. She drinks, shoots up, and pops pills with abandon, floating from one erotic adventure to the next in a haze of altered reality. (When one of her exhausted, tripping friends asks breathlessly, "Marguerite, don't you ever come down?" she replies, "Not if I can help it!") The victim of an unspecified wasting disease, Marguerite has apparently decided to live life to the fullest every day, and to grab all the sexy goodies she can in the process.

Directed by Radley Metzger, the infamous auteur behind art-house classics (The Lickerish Quartet, 1970) and less-respected but no less arty porn flicks (The Opening of Misty Beethoven, 1976), Camille 2000 is a movie with so much style, substance almost doesn't enter into the equation. From the lush cityscapes of Rome, to bedrooms with inflatable furniture and mirrored walls, Metzger delivers one visual treat after another, for which the main story of Marguerite's affair with comparatively stodgy businessman Armand (Nino Castelnuovo) is simply the framework. The new Blu-Ray release from Cult Epics does great justice to Metzger's film, and should have arty-erotica fans standing at attention and saluting.

Nota bene: I do not have screen-capture capability on my blu-ray...therefore I have shamelessly stolen all the images in this review (unless otherwise noted) from Retrocinema by Wetcircuit, an excellent site that everyone should visit immediately. Full credit to Wetcircuit, who I hope will not hate and/or sue me.

About that story--Marguerite's world of carefree, casual sex and drug use is rocked when she meets and falls in love with Armand, the son of a wealthy Italian tycoon in Rome to learn the family business. After some rather stoic flirtatiousness at a couple of parties (including an orgy featuring a Eurobabe in an amazing mesh bikini), Marguerite takes Armand to her bed, kicking off a series of sensual sex scenes and an affair that will change everything for her, and not really in a good way. While Marguerite is a free-love kind of girl, Armand demands faithfulness.

Beautimous

When he tells her he wants her to be his alone, Marguerite sighs, "Are we there already? Measuring love like a coffin? Who loves the most, how do we measure it? In carats, or ducats?" Armand is not to be dissuaded, however, and Marguerite reacts by breaking a date with him so she can make love to a cruel young Count with whom she has a strange sex/power relationship. When Armand learns of the betrayal, he responds as you would expect--by sending a model to Marguerite's bedroom, who then strips nude to reveal a note on her back reading "YOU ARE A WHORE! I WAS AN IDIOT!"

Okay, maybe you wouldn't expect that. But it does make an impression.

"No, it wasn't the couch...that one was all me."

The rest of the film is about Marguerite's relationship with Armand, how his need for faithfulness and hers for freedom clash. This comes to a head when Armand's father confronts her and warns her off, leading to a break-up, misunderstandings, erotic revenge, and a glittery partner-swapping bondage party with chain-mail dresses and public sex! Finally, Marguerite's strange malady reappears, lending a tragic end that you pretty much had to think was coming.

Except that's not really what the film's about. What it's about is the visual experience of Metzger's imagery, the amazing sets and costumes and compositions, which are usually centered around the act of sticky love. Two long sequences in Marguerite's amazingly appointed bedroom are visually stunning, containing some representations of oral sex (but cunni- and fellati-) that are both artistic and tasteful. (ba-dump) To be honest the story drags a bit at times, but if you give yourself over to the beauty of the images on the screen, it's well worth the trip.

For Mad Movie fans, there is joy to be had in the amazing costumery of Marguerite's hippie entourage, including some that look like they just walked off the set of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Also, though the flick was filmed in English, few of the actors seem comfortable in the language, and Armand's father's mush-mouthed delivery is an unintentionally hilarious highlight. The acting throughout is fairly wooden, but whether that's a directorial decision, or a result of the language barrier, or just how Europeans acted in the 60s, it's still rather secondary. Gaubert is stunning, Rome is beautiful, and the camera drinks it all in. That's all you really need.

Promo Art from Cult Epics

Cult Epics has done a great job with the Blu-Ray presentation, improving greatly upon previous transfers (despite some perhaps inexpungable print damage). The colors and sound are great, and the disc is packed with extras, including behind-the-scenes and restoration featurettes, commentary by Metzger himself, deleted scenes, outtakes, and trailers. A great package for lovers of 60s sexploitation.

Movie: 2.5 thumbs
Blu-Ray: 3 thumbs

And be sure to visit http://www.retrocinema.wetcircuit.com/ for more great images from this and other films!

Not from the Cult Epics transfer, but it does appear in the film, and was too wild not to show. Credit to Tenebrous Kate for the grab!

Book Review: SHOCK VALUE by Jason Zinoman

2011-07-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

Jason Zinoman's new book wears its heart on its book jacket--or rather in the verbose title on the jacket, Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror. Published just this month by Penguin Press, the book does exactly what it says on the cover, tracing the development of "New Horror" from its beginnings in milestone films such as Psycho and Rosemary's Baby, and through many of its more revered examples (Night of the Living Dead, The Last House on the Left, The Exorcist, and of course The Texas Chain Saw Massacre). Along the way Zinoman travels over a lot of well-worn ground that most horror geeks will have visited before, but takes enough interesting detours to make the book worth a look for the curious.

Zinoman begins by making the customary distinction between "Old Horror," dripping cobwebs and peopled with creaky old monsters, and "New Horror," its grittier, more dangerous cousin. He explains how Roger Corman and William Castle, both grand masters of Old Horror, each inadvertently had a hand in birthing the genre's next stage--Corman through his bankrolling of Peter Bogdonavich's excellent Targets (1968, reviewed on MMMMMovies here), and Castle by optioning Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby, which he planned to direct himself, but was famously (and fortunately) forced to cede the director's chair to young upstart Roman Polanski. The author then follows the repercussions of these films (along with Hitchcock's Psycho, of course) and the cinematic dialogue they inspired in a new crop of hungry, visionary directors throughout the next decade.

As the title suggests, Zinoman definitely subscribes to the auteur theory of film criticism, though at times he glancingly admits its limitations. He follows a few select directors--Polanski, George Romero, John Carpenter, William Friedkin, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, and Brian De Palma--considering how each was influenced by or reacting against "Old Horror," as well as work of the other young directors under discussion. In doing so Zinoman tells a lot of stories that will be very familiar to afficianados of the genre--Polanski and the Manson murders, Romero's "accidental" commentary on Racism and carelessness with copyright, the cast tensions and mob connections in TCM's history, etc. But he also paints an interesting picture of the sometimes volatile personalities involved in each film, and the friendships that were made and often destroyed along the way.

Most interesting to me was Zinoman's portrait the partnership/rivalry between John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon, who worked together on the sci-fi oddity Dark Star and each made their own marks on modern horror. O'Bannon particularly gets a lot of ink, painted as an eccentric, combative outsider very bitter at his perceived betrayal by Carpenter after their collaboration. Carpenter comes off as cold and sometimes petty, lording his success over his former friend. O'Bannon's involvements in Zodorowsky's Dune and later Ridley Scott's Alien are explored in detail, though his zombie classic Return of the Living Dead is only mentioned briefly. Still, it's an interesting picture of a fascinating personality.

As an introduction to the "New Horror" of the 70s, Zinoman's book fits the bill; however, someone already fairly familiar with the decade's horror output might not find much new information. And as is always the case, every horror fan is going to find himself wondering why this or that movie was overlooked. (I found myself wishing Zinoman had given more thought to the influence of Italian horror--he mentions gialli and talks about Dario Argento briefly in relation to Romero's Dawn of the Dead, I felt there might well have been more to be said, particularly in relation to the American Slasher genre.) Still, Zinoman's style is clean and easy reading, and the book not too long to get encyclopaedically boring. If you're looking for a way "in" to 70s American horror, Shock Value is a good enough doorway.