The Guy from Harlem (1977): or, Al Connors, International Brother of Mystery

Rene Martinez Jr.'s 1977 blaxploitation effort The Guy from Harlem is, there's no getting around it, a bad movie. In fact, it's one of those movies that goes beyond bad. With its high-school Senior Play-level acting, its horrendously choreographed action sequences, its static-to-the-point-of-paralysis camerawork, and its consistently worst-of-the70s set design, it's a movie that practically dares you to find something good about it. Hell, it even largely shies away from blood and sex, two of the virtually required qualities of the subgenre.

Why then did I find myself enjoying it so much?

Maybe it was the funky, Isaac Hayes-ish title song over the credits that first started me boogeying toward The Guy from Harlem's side. ("UNGH! The Guy from Harlem! [Watch out!] That cat's a baaaad dude! [Get on down!] Watch the moves! [The Guy from Harlem!] He's a mean, clean, fightin' machine!") Maybe it was the deliciously Ed Wood-ish, passionately amateurish aesthetic apparent from the unnecessary pre-credit scene and the way the character-credit crawl played over the *front* of the movie rather than the end--as if acknolwedging no one would stay around that long, so best to get the credits up there now. Maybe it was the way emotively challenged star Loye Hawkins seemed completely convinced of his own awesomeness and badassery, despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary. These things all played a part, no doubt.

But perhaps the real reason is something metaphysical--the way a movie can sometimes sink so deeply into the depths of Bad that it comes out the other side of the wormhole. It happens, right?

Or maybe there's just something wrong with me.

"UNGH!"

Loye Hawkins IS Al Connors, Miami-based P.I. known to friends and enemies as The Guy from Harlem. (I can only assume that no other Harlem natives lived in Miami at the time.) At one point Connors explains seriously to one of his clients that "Harlem is the experience playground of all people interested in becoming detectives," and it's obvious that he's very much in demand--as soon as he gets to his office and has some innuendo-laden banter with his secretary Sue, he receives a visit from his old friend David McCloud, CIA Agent (ROCKING the pink leisure suit), who has a job that only The Guy from Harlem can handle.

It seems that Princess Ashanti, "a person from an African Nation...she's the wife of a head of state," is coming into town for a meeting with the US Secrectary of State, which is presumably a photo-op/meet-and-greet, since the Princess herself tells Connors later she gets bored while her hubby is doing all this country-running stuff. The CIA has reason to believe someone might try to kidnap the Princess--a mysterious gangland drug lord named Big Daddy--which is why they've secretly moved the meeting from Washington DC to Miami--which kind of defeats the PR purpose, but let's move on.

McCloud wants Connors to be Ashanti's bodyguard, because "it's possible there could be a leak somewhere in the CIA," and so presumably none of the federal agents can be trusted. (Imagine!) Therefore they outsource security to Connors, giving him carte blanche to make his own arrangements for Ashanti's saftey without filling them in. Makes sense to me!

"Don't worry ma'am--we're with the Government."

Connors takes the case after McCloud answers his one and only question: "You want to know if she's cute? Yes, she's cute. But remember--INTERNATIONAL REPERCUSSIONS." His plan is to check into a hotel of his choosing as man and wife, spend the night, and deliver her to the meeting the next day. However, when a CIA agent who won't give his name calls Sue and asks for Connors' location, the patriotic secretary readily gives it to them...proving she's just not as hard boiled as she needs to be.

So basically what we have here is a story that could have been written by a couple of action-movie addicted 3rd graders with no idea how politics, crime-fighting, or gangland warfare actually work, but nonetheless want to incorporate it all. The acting is about that level too--the actors seem to know basically what they're supposed to say and when, but have no sense of the emotion of the scene, or even timing--repetitions and stepped-on lines are par for the course, and in fact get more frequent as the movie goes on. And the cinematography by Senor Miguel de Medio-shot Tripod makes the security cam footage from the women's dressing room at JC Penney's look positively dynamic. Or at least so I'm led to believe.

"Please--just try to relax."

So once Connors gets the *very* un-African-Continental sounding Princess to the hotel of his choice, he orders a masseuse for the jet-lagged Ashanti and a full bottle of J&B to help her relax. The lady masseuse who shows up immediately goes to the window and signals a couple of toughs outside--in PLAIN SIGHT of Connors--which understandably arouses his suspicions. He decides to watch the massage from the bedroom doorway--"for SECURITY PURPOSES," he assures the off-put princess--and thus foils the first kidnapping attempt.

After some extremely undiplomatic flirtation from Al which the princess is powerless to resist ("I'm very lucky to have you as my bodyguard!" "Baby, you don't know how lucky you are!"), Al orders some New York Strip steaks brought up to the room, even though the princess wants to eat out. ("No, for SECURITY PURPOSES, we have to eat up here!" Al informs her.) But when the maid brings in the room service tray, Al shocks us all by pulling an Austin Powers and leaping across the table to cold-cock the broad!

"It's a MAN, baby!"

You see, Al can smell a New York Strip a mile away, and there weren't any steaks on that tray, just a bottle of J&B and a Midnight Special. After an awesome...ly bad fight scene with the remaining toughs, Al takes Ashanti to his main squeeze's apartment, kicks the chick out, and settles in to protect the princess from everybody but himself.

While all this has been sometimes painfully, most often hilariously terrible cinema, the movie has a couple of points in its favor. For one thing, Al's aforementioned COMPLETE confidence in his own awesomeness, which seems unfounded and yet somehow manages to convince. (It helps that he's the best actor in the admittedly bad lot, keeping his velvet tones and smooth moves pumping even when his costars are stumbling over their lines or stepping on his.) Also, the decor of just about every room in the movie is so wonderfully 70s ugly-cool, it's kind of mesmerizing. The orange shag carpet that appears in at least two of the sets is particularly difficult to look away from.

Al and Ashanti finally GET IT AWN (though the movie seems very shy about going further than "beginning to undress and then fade to black"--again, I'm wondering if awkward 3rd graders wrote the script) and he delivers the princess to the meeting offscreen and returns to his office the next day to put more moves on Sue and go over his accounts.

They even had enough fabric left over to make an 8-track tape cozy!

At this point the movie breaks pretty neatly in half, as if it were meant to be marketed as two 45-minute episodes of the Al Connors Show rather than one coherent movie--and the second half has almost exactly the same plot set-up as the first. This time instead of Agent McCloud, Miami gang leader Harry Dubaul arrives to hire Al to retrieve his kidnapped daughter Wanda from the clutches of rival ganglord Big Daddy. He's to exchange $250K cash and $500K worth of drugs for Wanda, and get back with DuBaul's daughter alive and as much of the ransom still in his possession as possible.

The actor playing Harry DuBaul is Steve Gallon, and he is AWESOME. Like a jolly, foul-mouthed Don King with the volume turned up to twenty, Gallon seems to detonate his lines rather than speak them. Though his acting style has only one setting--FULL THROTTLE--he overwhelms all the other characters onscreen, Al included, and I was grinning like an idiot for every foot of filmstock he owned.

Big Daddy is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, says DuBaul--nobody ever sees him, and he has henchmen do all his dirty work. "All I know about him is this--he's big, six feet tall, and has a lot of muscles! Curly blond hair, and always wears these bands around his muscles! That's all I know!" Wow, he really *is* a man of mystery, isn't he?

"I'm STEVE GALLON, BITCH!"

So Al heads down to the local bodybuilders' gym to get the details of the drop from Big Daddy's right-hand man Jim. On his way in he goes right past a 6 foot blond dude with big armbands pumping iron in the front room, who glares at him significantly as he goes by. Damn, where could this shadow-man known as Big Daddy be hiding?

Anyway, the rest of the movie deals with Al's mission to rescue Wanda from Big Daddy's goons and his eventual confrontation with the pasty, musclebound drug lord himself. Highlights of this section of the movie include Wanda's incredibly confrontational bad attitude that seems to be the only thing protecting her from rape at the hands of the henchman assigned to guard her (well, that and the guards bottomless stupidity and almost adorable hesitancy to actually make good on his threats--at one point he even goes all sour grapes after being rebuffed particularly roughly: "Ah, you're probably no good anyway!"), Jim's incredible powder-blue leisure suit, Martinez's...interesting decision to film Al's action-packed fight scenes from about thirty yards away, another appearance by the endlessly entertaining Harry DuBaul, and of course the final fight between Al and Big Daddy for pride, honor, and triumph over racism.

Let me say again--by just about any standard (even mine!) this movie is BAD BAD BAD. The acting, the cinematography, the editing (more than once entire exchanges of dialogue are repeated, seemingly because the actors ran out of things to say and so went back to the Important Bits)--nothing raises its gloriously Afro'd head above amateur hour at any point, and in fact seldom even approaches it. Even the n-bombs flung around by Big Daddy's gang seem half-hearted, and while Martinez *does* finally give us a little nudity (Wanda takes a nicely gratuitous shower post-rescue), nobody seems that interested in backing up all of the movie's innuendo. And as for pacing, the movie really drags in the second half, with three too many repetitions of the initially entertaining but eventually tiresome rebuffed rape attempts by Big Daddy's henchman on Wanda.

Scintillating Action!

And yet, to steal a phrase from BC over at Horror Movie a Day, the movie reaches a point where it's *so* bad, it's kind of lovable. In spite of everything--hell, even because of it--I found myself grinning like an idiot almost all the way through, awash in trash-movie euphoria.

So can I recommend The Guy from Harlem? In good conscience, no--most people, even those who usually like bad movies, are probably going to hate it. But criticism is subjective by its nature, and I can only rate *my* experience of the film, which as I say was positive overall, even though it was for all the wrong reasons. Therefore I'm bucking the trends and giving The Guy from Harlem 2 thumbs for the fun it provided. Your mileage will almost CERTAINLY vary though--you were warned.

Nota Bene: Apparently director Rene Martinez made only one film after The Guy from Harlem, the amazingly un-PC titled The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger, starring the irrepressible Steve Gallon as a character named "Wildman Steve." I...kinda have to see this one now. For SCIENCE. ;)

"Eat it, Whitey!"

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Vicar-ious Verse: The Leprechaun

In honor of the holiday, a sonnet I wrote some time ago imagining the darker side of the old Irish legends (as if there were a *brighter* side!). Not related at all to the movie starring Jennifer Aniston, except for the fact that Warwick Davis has already agreed to star in the film adaptation of this poem.

The Leprechaun

The little man slips sly out of the wood
and knocks the dirt clods off his hobnail boots.
Westward, the sun becomes an orb of blood
and creeping shadows blanket hard, gnarled roots;

His coat is road-worn, holes in the elbows;
his tattered trousers: mud-caked as his shoes.
Burst vessels spiderweb his swollen nose;
his face, once jolly, darkens like a bruise.

The bottle in his fist helps him forget
the shame and pain he's left, the stories told
about him in his former village yet:
how he, of all his kind, first lost their gold.

He spies the thief, asleep in his back yard,
fingers the knife, and smiles--this won't be hard.

Nota Bene: if poetry is your bag, the Vicar's alter ego spent a year or so sometime back writing a sonnet every day, many of which were horror themed. The entire project is available for perusal online, though I wouldn't recommend trying to swallow it whole. Maybe just read the horror sonnets by clicking here, and hopefully find something to enjoy.

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J&B Spells Trash Movie Excellence!

Number 2: The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Women (1971)


Full Review Here.

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Savage Weekend (1976): or, Don't Judge a Book by Its Boom Mike

It's easy to see why, when they talk about it at all, people like to rag on David Paulsen's 1976 slasher obscurity Savage Weekend. After all, this is a movie that features not only a pre-"Dr. Hill in Re-Animator" David Gale as a rugged, moustachioed lumberjack Lothario, but also William "This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl" Sanderson of "Newhart" fame playing pretty much exactly the same character he played in the long-running sit-com, only going for menace here instead of yuks. Add to that some egregious continuity flubs, shots framed with some foreign object (possibly the cameraman's thumb) obscuring the top of the lens, and a boom mike that has not a cameo but a essentially a meaty bit-character part in the film, and you've got yourself a b-movie snark-target that's really almost irresistible.

But to dismiss Savage Weekend because of its myriad technical faults is to do the film, the director, and yourself--the audience--a grave, grave disservice. Because underneath all those problems is a genuinely *good* slasher flick, even bordering upon the Awesome. It has interesting 3-dimensional characters, a serviceable plot with well-developed subplots that actually pay off, and some genuine tension in the exciting climax. In fact, with just a little more technical prowess, I posit that we'd be hailing Savage Weekend as a hidden gem, a lost classic in the annals of late 70s horror.

And no, I'm not kidding.

Maybe She's Born With It

We open with a woman in a nightgown fleeing some unseen stalker, which as you know is one of my favorite ways to open a movie. While some Deliverance-style banjo music plays over the credits, the woman claws her way through the woods and we see country bumpkin Otis (Sanderson) nonchalantly wander up to a chainsaw in the foreground (which for reasons we won't know for quite some time is already running), pick it up, and head menacingly toward the camera. The woman stands upright, paralyzed by shock, mascara running down her terror-stricken face...

From there we cut to the Manhattan skyline, from whence we pull back to the apartment of main character Marie Pettis (Marilyn Hamlin), our shell-shocked heroine from the opening flash-forward. She's preparing for a weekend getaway with her sister Shirley (Caitlin O'Heaney), their flaming gay friend Nicky (an excellent Christopher Allport), and Marie's middle-aged stockbroker boyfriend Robert (Jim Doerr). After a few minutes of preparation Marie's ex-husband Greg shows up (TV veteran and John Holmes lookalike Jeff Pomerantz) to take custody of their young son while Mom goes away for her dirty weekend. Greg is a former political power player whose boss the Governor has recently committed suicide, and his subsequent fall from influence is the unspoken cause for the dissolution of the marriage. There's some nice establishment of uncomfortable tension between Greg, Marie, and Robert here (when the broker gives the child a baseball glove as a present, Greg sweeps the boy away with a look of hatred and spits, "Get your hands off my son!"), and once the party-pooper and son have vacated the premises, our upper-middleclass group can get on its way.

"I just cain't fuckin' believe it was all a dream..."

It seems Marie's sugar-daddy has bought a lakeside cabin and a large unfinished boat from a family of bumpkins upstate, who had to sell after the paterfamilias died unexpectedly. The plan is to go into the wilds of upstate New York, have some fun, and oversee the completion of Robert's new yacht; to assist, he's invited along shipwright and engineer Jay Alsop (Devin Goldenberg), who's married but not that married, apparently, since the slutty Shirley sets her sights on him from the get-go. Slow-but-intense Otis is supposed to be finishing his father's boat, but has let things slide because of his resentment of the city folk coming in to steal his daddy's dream. "My boat now," he says over the grave of his pa. "I won't promise what I'll do if'n they try to steal it away from me!" Given what we've seen and heard of Otis up to this point, it seems pretty clear who the villain of the piece is shaping up to be.

On their way to the remote cabin and lake, our group stops at a convenience story where Shirley purchases a rubber horror mask as a gag gift for Nicky. Meanwhile, Nicky slides into the local redneck bar and orders a Tanqueray Martini (he has to instruct the retired trucker barkeep how to do it: "Have you got gin? Well, splash some in a pretty glass for me. Vermouth. Divine.") while a couple of local toughs eye him hatefully. When the two come up to start early on the weekend gay-bashing, Nicky surprises them and everyone else by totally mopping the bar with them single-handed! He smashes chairs over backs, breaks a bottle and threatens a slit throat, and ends by kneeing the biggest of them in the groin. "I wasn't brought up in the South Bronx for nothin'!" he declares, and then prances out of the establishment, officially the Queen of the Mountain. Of course he's made some enemies now...enemies who know where they're heading...

Unfortunately, he'd left his spinach in his other pants.

Once out at the cabin, things start to get weird. First, there's the dead bat nailed to the doorframe, which Nicky is the only one man enough to remove. Then there's the local lumberjack and fishing guide Mac Macauley (David Gale, ROCKING the flannel shirt and Sam Elliot 'stache) who when he's not surreptitiously yanking fish hooks into the feet of stockbrokers (yee-ouch!) likes to spin yarns about Otis' possibly murderous past. "See, people up here are too closed in...Makes a man lonely to be closed in like that...you get lonely, you get weird. Any time you see people closed in like that, you better watch 'em. Close."

It's around this time that Paulsen starts adding a few weird touches of the sort that always make me smile. For instance, while Mac tells about Otis' previous obsession with a local girl and his revenge for being spurned, sunbathing Marie imagines herself as the girl in the story and ex-hubbie Greg as the rival lover Otis supposedly bludgeons. This excites her, apparently, as she starts feeling herself up even as Mac details the way Otis branded the girl's chest with a hot iron! Her excitement obviously has an effect on the storyteller too, who eyes her a little too laciviously...

"Actually, I always dreamed of becomin' a scientist..."

Also around this time we see Shirley sunbathing naked in waist-high weeds (like you do), approached by Jay, who wordlessly strips and falls to for an extended sex scene. From a distance, Otis watches through binoculars, and from a nearby brush stand Nicky watches too, with a strangely hateful, jealous look on his face. His relationship with Shirley is obviously a little more complicated than fag and fag-hag...

So really, story-wise, there's a lot to like about the film so far. Paulsen has deftly established a number of possible villains/red herrings for the eventual murder mystery (hey, it said "slasher" on the marquee, it's no secret there will be blood), and has even managed to flesh out the backstories of his characters believably, dramatically, and economically. And the tension between the entitled-feeling city dwellers and the poor rural folk is played up nicely as well, never in the forefront but always noticeable in the way the groups interact. (The catchy, banjo-centric folk song "Upstate Man" that plays every now and then also helps in this regard.)

The cinematography has actually been fairly interesting up to now, with some nice scenic shots and a few cool compositions in the graveyard and the ship barn, and the pacing has been moving us along at a nice clip. However, Paulsen was unfortunate enough on this film to have hired what has to be the WORST BOOM MIKE OPERATOR OF ALL TIME. It's expected in low-budget horror flicks that every now and then the boom mike or cameraman's shadow will appear, but this is really one for the record books. Dude CAN NOT keep it out of the frame! It sneaks in for the first time around the 22 minute mark, then again at around 38 mins during an important dramatic scene from Gale (and it doesn't just pop in and then out--it stays on screen for a good 10-20 seconds, shamelessly!) , again at 47 minutes, and then AGAIN in shadow-form at 53. It's funny, of course, but it's also kind of a shame, as it's distracting and the movie really deserves better.

"Check one..."

"...two..."

"...three!"

As the weekend wears on we get more character development on Marie, who feels overwhelmed by the events of her post-divorce life. "Things happen to me--life happens all around me and I don't have any control!...I don't feel anything but fear. I've been so numbed by what happened with Greg!" She's obviously looking to feel things, to do something, anything to reassert her control. And in this case that takes the form of fantasizing about her porn-star ex-hubby Greg while screwing Robert. We all cope in different ways.

With all these nodules of dysfunction popping off like so much popcorn, it's time for the murderer to make his appearance, in hand-held POV fashion, of course, donning the mask Shirley bought and snooping through the house while everyone's away. It takes a while for the actual killings to begin, but once they do, it's pretty exciting, inventive, and mostly well-done. But as the movie barrels toward its conclusion there are a few more bits of strangeness that merit special mention:

• Nicky nearly going ballistic when he overhears Shirley and Jay fighting, grabbing a skillet off the wall, but being foiled in his violent tendencies when the pot falls to pieces in his hand!
• Some excellent nudity and sex from Shirley, and less-excellent but still respectable and copious nudity from Marie.
• A VERY strange scene in which Marie goes to the dairy barn and sensuously feels up a cow, before Mac comes in and offers to "let her taste it fresh!" (Note: the similarity between this scene and the Significant Goat Milking in Haunts is so stark, I wonder if it's an homage.)

"Milk it, baby!"

• The group dressing for a formal dinner in the cabin, which allows a nice "getting dressed soul-baring" scene between the sisters, in which Shirley puts the same stocking on at least two times!
  
• An odd scene in which Shirley, spurned by the already dead Jay, puts on a tango record and strips to her lingerie for an extended attempted seduction of Nicky, complete with feather fan!

As for the kills, we get a hat-pin lobotomy, hay-bale hooking, defenestration to impalement, post-mortem hanging, and in the real centerpiece of the flick, an extended bondage scene in which the killer ties the still lingerie-clad Shirley to a table saw, plugs it into a light fixture, and then neglects to turn on the juice--which leads to some very effective tension in the final climax.

As for that final confrontation--perhaps lulled into a feeling of smugness by the technical gaffes, I admit I thought I had things figured out. And then, like Otis and Mac, the filmmakers proved themselves much more crafty and resourceful than I would have given them credit for. Maybe others will see the twists coming, but I was pleasantly surprised, and won't ruin them for you here. I will say this though: CHAINSAW/MACHETE DUEL. That's the stuff.

It Takes All Kinds

The acting is largely good as well. David Gale is excellent as Mac, and even though he's playing the role he always plays, William Sanderson is suitably backwoods-creepy as Otis (sometimes, like Dwight Frye, you get typecast because you're fucking AWESOME at it). Christopher Allport really steals the show as Nicky, and though Caitlin O'Heaney is mostly one-note as Shirley, her stark terror when the killer confronts her is surpisingly well-acted and affecting. Other bit characters turn in memorably intense performances as well. In fact, the only weak spot is (unfortunately) lead actress Marylin Hamlin, whom I never quite believed as the damaged thrill seeker. Still, she does get her kit off a lot, so she's got dedication at least.

I really, really liked Savage Weekend, and to all the haters, I say go soak your heads. If you can get past the boom mike's ubiquity and the occasional lens shadow, you'll find a surprisingly effective and intriguing little slasher here, ripe for rediscovery. 2.5 Thumbs--if you're in the mood for something unusual, give this one a try.

Nota Bene: according to Internet sources (the BEST sources!) this movie was put out on DVD a few years back by a company called Substance, in a hacked-up print that removed most of the nudity and gore. Avoid that one. I watched it on the Mill Creek Drive-In Movie Classics box set, and while there is a bit of print damage and some strange fluctuation between full screen and letterbox ratios, all the good stuff seems to be intact. That may make this the only instance in history where the Mill Creek version of the movie is actually the preferred print!

Life is a Cabaret

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The Vampire Lovers (1970): or, Love is the Pitts

As a long-time aficionado and part-time scholar of that rarefied subgenre, the Lesbian Vampire movie (it was actually my minor in VHS Seminary), I have by now seen many, many movies based on the original literary Lesbian Vampire tale, Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (which if you haven't read, you can--and should--download for free here). It's really a brilliant and surprisingly modern tale of vampirism as metaphor for human (specifically female) sexuality, psychologically well ahead of its time when it was written in 1872, and a refreshing counterpoint to the Stoker-based, rapaciously phallocentric vampire lore most of us are more familiar with.

Therefore, as a student of all things lesbo-vampo, I've seen dozens of movies that take Le Fanu's text as either a primary or (more commonly) secondary or tertiary source, among them the previously reviewed Christopher Lee chiller Crypt of Horror, the yet to be Vicarized Daughters of Darkness, and the much-geeked over mmmmmasterpiece The Blood-Spattered Bride. But leave it to the equal parts literary-and-titterary Hammer Films circa 1970 to bring us perhaps the definitive movie adaptation of Carmilla, Roy Ward Baker's entirely excellent The Vampire Lovers.

"When you say 'Bite Me,' you'd better mean it!"

The initial flick in Hammer's loose "Karnstein Trilogy" (followed by the almost equally excellent Lust for a Vampire and the soon-to-be-Vicar-viewed Twins of Evil, both 1971), The Vampire Lovers stays remarkably faithful to Le Fanu's story of a mysterious woman who contrives to push her "niece" off on well-meaning aristocratic hosts who little realize that by offering the girl shelter, they are inviting a monster into their midsts. Baker and his trio of writers (including the wonderfully named and prolific Tudor Gates, who also scripted the other Hammer Karnstein flicks as well as a little something called Danger: Diabolik) also manage to take the simmering sensuality of Le Fanu's tale and bring it to a full rolling boil, aided in no small part by the exotic scorching hawtness of Horror Royalty Ingrid Pitt as the sexy undead.

The movie opens with a voice-over narrated flashback in which vampire hunter Baron Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) recounts his experience ridding the local village of a clan of vampires years ago. This sequence really sets the tone for the rest of the movie, as Hartog watches the vampire rise from her grave, completely shrouded in diaphanous purple silk (one HELL of an image, let me tell you) and creep slowly through the thick, eerie fog toward the village for her meal. The visuals just drip Gothic awesomeness, and the excellent score by Harry Robertson hits all the right notes (ba-dump-bump). When the vampire returns, sated, and reveals herself a gorgeous femme fatale, it's all Hartog can do to raise his sword and behead her--one of the only two ways to kill a vampire, as we all know.

Love Bites

Next we're whisked away to a gala ball thrown by General von Spielsdorf, assayed by the inestimable Peter Cushing. (Nota bene: Pete was BORN to wear the Nutcracker-style Prussian military dress uniform.) Crashing the party is a mysterious Countess (Dawn Addams) and her gorgeous, standoffish niece, Marcilla (Pitt), who catches the eye of the General's daughter Laura (Pippa Steel). When Laura jokes with her lover Carl Ebhardt (a *very* Oliver-Reedish Jon Finch) that, the way Marcilla keeps staring at him, "I think she'd like to steal you away from me!" Carl replies significantly, "Nonsense--she's looking at you!" I think we can all see where this is heading.

When the Countess is called away on urgent, mysterious business by her equally mysterious servant (a creepy John Forbes-Robertson, credited here only as Man in Black), the General graciously offers to allow Mircalla to stay with them until her aunt can return. Before long Laura and Mircalla are the best of friends, and Laura starts having terrible nighmares (done in stylish black-and-white) of a huge gray cat smothering her in her bed. His daughter's health deteriorating, the General starts to suspect her attachment to Mircalla is something "unnatural," and hopes to get rid of his mysterious guest. Sadly he's too right, too late, as after an OMG SMOKIN' HAWT supernatural makeout session with Mircalla, Laura expires, drained of life and love. With no reason to stay, Mircalla vanishes as if she were never there.

As you've come to expect from Hammer films of this period, The Vampire Lovers is just absolutely GORGEOUS. The costumes and sets are nothing short of stunning, with wonderful gigantic manor houses and creepy dilapidated graveyards to spare. (From my while-I-watched tweet-log: "How much more Gothic could Vampire Lovers be? The answer is: none. None more Gothic.") The score is almost a character, really amping up the creepiness where appropriate and making the action scenes that much more thrilling, but also lending an eerie, sensuous aural eroticism to Marcilla's seduction of Laura. Add some great camera work--through-wall dissolves, slow-mo corpse-walks, sexy compositions and eerie, effective lighting--and really, there's nothing left wanting. An absolute treat.

"I should like to inquire once again: Who's Bad?"

A few days later, some miles down the road (a not-insignificant distance in these days), gentleman Roger Morton (George Cole) is out riding when he witnesses an amazing carriage catastrophe that dumps a familiar bruised but unbeaten Countess in his lap. This time her story goes that she's rushing to another town because of a family emergency; the wrack of the carriage has knocked her niece Carmilla (Pitt's new alias) unconscious, and while she can't hang around longer than it takes to put the wheel back on the cart, the Countess worries about moving her injured relative. Being a kind soul Morton immediately offers to take Carmilla back to his estate so she can recuperate, where the Countess can pick her up on her return journey in a few weeks. Since Morton has a young daughter of his own, Emma (wide-eyes slice of hawtness Madeline Smith), it'll even be fun--after all, girls love sleepovers.

Carmilla quickly becomes Emma's BFF, much to the consternation of also uber-hott governess Madmoiselle Perrodot, played by the cat-like Kate O'Mara. (Really, there are so many super-gorgeous Eurobabes in this movie, it's a challenge to keep track of them all--you may want to open a spreadsheet.) Early in her stay, Carmilla invites Emma into her room while she's in the middle of a nice HAWT bath, then coaxes her into dropping her petticoats to try on some of Carmilla's fancy dresses. This leads to an all-girl game of "Chase Me Nude Around the Room" that is enough to make anyone's loins reach Ludicrous Speed. When Emma finally wrestles her way into one of her friend's super-slinky dresses, she's shocked at her own sexiness. "What will my father say?" she wonders. "Oh, he will appreciate it," Carmilla says, archly. "Like *all* men."

The Spielsdorf Pattern continues to repeat when Emma also starts having nightmares about a large gray cat. "The cat lies across me," Emma tells Carmilla in horror, "Warm and heavy...and I feel its fur in my mouth!" Well, I don't think we need to consult the Dream Dictionary on this one, do you?

"I mean, it was a cat, and I was eating it! Really hungry for it, you know? WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY MEAN?"

Here as in Le Fanu's book and other of the better adaptations, the character of Carmilla is a very different kind of vampire than those viewers weaned on Stoker, Lugosi, and Lee are used to. She has no trouble moving around in daylight, and furthermore seems a bit conflicted about her undead state. In a strangely powerful scene Carmilla sees a funeral procession going by the estate, she freaks out. "I hate funerals! You must die! Everybody must die!" she weeps to Emma, holding her close against her heaving bosoms. Obviously being hott and immortal has its drawbacks; Carmilla is very lonely, and doesn't really want to destroy Emma with her hunger for blood. "I want you to love me for all your life!" she says, almost pleads--but of course Emma doesn't know how short a span that's likely to be.

In fact, one of the really interesting thing about Le Fanu's book and this adaptation is the juxtaposition of Carmilla's passionate, destructive love for her victims with the more traditional, heterosexual, phallocentric society that must destroy her. Carmilla wants nothing more than to love and be loved forever in an explicitly lesbian relationship. It's significant that the people who are most threatened and spurred to action by her predations are not the girls--who are largely complicit in their seduction, if admittedly overpowered by Carmilla's supernatural magnetism (when Madmoiselle Perrodot falls under Carmilla's sway as well, she becomes not a passive victim but a jealous lover intent on supplanting Emma from Carmilla's side)--but their fathers, aristocrats all, whose wealth and continued affluence depend upon marrying their daughters off to good, upstanding, manly men like Carl. It is their power structure that Carmilla's "unnatural" love threatens, and while some might point to her fatal kiss as evidence of the cultural bias against lesbianism, an argument could also be made that this too is a metaphor for what happens to girls who buck the phallocentric system. (See also Alucarda, The Blood-Spattered Bride, etc.)

Once Pa Morton becomes really worried about Emma's failing health and her too-close relationship with their houseguest, as if by fate he runs into General Spielsdorf returning from Vienna with an aged but still vamp-hating Baron Hartog in tow. Hartog recaps the opening flashback and fills in a few more unsavory details, including the fact that while he staked most of the Karnstein clan back in the day, he failed to find one grave--that of Carmilla. He's come back with Spiesldorf to finish the job, and Morton's report on the situation back home only adds urgency to their quest.

"Don't worry, baby--we'll work it out."

There are lots of high points in this last half-hour of the film, including Carmilla's hostile takeover of the Morton estate (she bites both Perrodot and manservant Renton--Harvey Hall in an excellent bit part--into subservience), a nosy doctor's prescription of garlic flowers and Carmilla's beast-like vengeance upon him, Perrodot's aforementioned jealous rage and Carmilla's cold shunning of her, and of course the exciting climax (ooer!) with Carl racing to save Emma while Hartog, Morton, and Spielsdorf search the ruins of Karnstein Castle for Carmilla's tomb.

The acting here is mostly excellent, with the notable exception of Madeline Smith as Emma, whose perpetually wide-eyed stare and breathless line readings would really grate on you if she didn't also offer lots of distracting and frankly excellent boobage. Hall is great as the loyal but eventually corrupted Renton, and Finch adds a level of rugged manliness to his glorified walk-on as the de facto young hero. Cushing is great as always, bringing a level of class to the proceedings that only a legend of his stature can--while Hartog is really the Van Helsing in this story, Cushing hangs around to give the vamp hunt an extra level of gravitas and to finish off the last of the Karnsteins himself--because really, who else do you want wielding the stake and hammer?

But of course this is Ingrid Pitt's movie, and she owns it from the first time she's on screen all the way through to her tragic demise. Far from a one-note, bloodthirsty vamp, Pitt plays Carmilla through a wide range of conflicting emotions--beast-like hunger, morbid depression, passionate love, fear, regret--she pulls it all together and makes it work. No wonder this role became one of her best-loved and remembered, even if like many of the famous vampire actors before her she later betrayed a certain reticence about her association with the role. (Apparently at one time Pitt had a bit of a problem with the "Lesbian Vampire" label, claiming that her characters weren't lesbians because vampires and humans were different species--why she thought interspecies beastiality was better than lesbianism is anyone's guess. And thanks to Tenebrous Kate for that little tidbit of information! ;) ) And this is to say nothing of her lip-smacking gorgeousness here--about which there's plenty to be said, believe it.

Pitt Don't Spitt

Of course the Forces of Good prevail as expected, with a group of three aristocratic men forcing their way into Carmilla's secret sanctum sanctorum, stripping her breast bare, and piercing her sensitive organs with a long hard shaft of sharpened wood--and if you don't think that's sexual by this point, you haven't been paying attention. Thus vanquished by the act of penetration, Carmilla's unnatural love is conquered and Emma recovers, presumably to marry young and live a long life pumping out babies for some earl or duke. Happy ending? You make the call.

Obviously I LOVE THIS MOVIE, so it should come as no suprise that it gets an easy 3+ thumbs from me. Probably the best, most faithful adaptation of Le Fanu's seminal (ha!) work of vampire literature, it should definitely be seen by anyone who loves horror, whether you're a fan of the classics or not. And would it kill you to read a book now and then? No, it wouldn't. Get thee to a library!

"OBEY!"

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Bad Ronald (1974): or, Geeks in the Walls

The 1974 made-for-TV flick Bad Ronald is a movie that really shouldn't work as well as it does. Its focus is a dweebish 16-year-old misfit who would be among the least attractive attendees at any GenCon event; what little action there is takes place in a single location, mostly involving our protagonist puttering around a one-room studio; and the acting is pure 1970s sitcom-level cheese, only without the dated punchlines. Add those together, and by rights you should arrive at a disposable piece of movie-of-the-week boredom.

And yet, it works. Whether on the strength of its completely left-field premise, the strangely charming naivete of its characters, the tantalizingly hinted-at but never-exploited psychosexual subtext, or the sheer force of magnetism contained in Dabney Coleman's moustache, Bad Ronald comes together as the video equivalent of a dimestore page-turner--sure, the style isn't all that great and the print comes off in your hands, but still you keep reading all the way through because you just *have* to find out what happens next.

Not bad, just socially retarded

We open with geeky lad Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby) celebrating his 16th birthday with his mother, alone in the cavernous Victorian house they call home. It's significant that Mom (Kim Hunter, better known as cheeky monkey Dr. Zira from Planet of the Apes) is the only party guest, since Ronald immediately strikes you as the sort of kid who would have more pet turtles than friends. Ma Wilby absolutely dotes on him, though, and after cake presents him with a fully loaded Sears Craftsman Toolbox ("The salesman said it had everything!") and a set of art supplies. In addition to being handy around the house, Ronald is also an artist and amateur fantasy author of a series of stapled and memeographed books about the fairy kingdom of Atranta--pay attention now, both these facts will become important later.

Flush with his new feeling of maturity, Ronald heads out to visit hot girl-next-door Laurie Matthews, for whom he's clearly carrying the torch. Overprotective Mom warns him, "You shouldn't waste your time with someone who doesn't care!" but Ronald is having none of that. After all, how could Laurie say no to a playa like Ron?

Ronald finds his love having a pool party with many of her popular high school friends, and it doesn't take long to establish he's in way over his head. The jocks and cheerleaders in the pool tease him mercilessly while bikini-clad Laurie taunts him with her adolescent hotness, as cruel as only a beautiful teenager can be to a socially inept admirer. When Ronald gets the hint and sulks away, her parting shot--"Come back when you can't stay so long!"--says pretty much all you need to know about Ronald's high school situation.

Phil the Porn-Stache Pool Guy--Ignoring Restraining Orders since 1972

Crushed and humiliated, Ronald leaves in disgrace, only to run smack dab into Laurie's younger sister Carol, knocking her off her banana-seat bike. The young girl is obviously well on her way to emulating her elder sister's snotty insouciance, unleashing a torrent of abuse that culminates with: "You're weird, and so's your mother!" Enraged as any good son of a domineering harpy would be, Ronald pushes the girl down, accidentally crushing her head on convenient cinderblock! In a panic Ronald does the only thing to do in such a situation--he drags the girl off and buries her in a shallow grave, then rushes home to tell Momma about his rotten day.

Realizing the cops will never buy the truth of the accident--that whole "covering up the body with dirt" thing does not tend to play well at the station house--Ma Whilby quickly devises a fool-proof plan to keep Ronald out of jail: they'll wall off the downstairs bathroom and cover the doorway with plaster and wallpaper, leaving only a trap door in the pantry for ingress and exodus. Then they'll tell the cops he ran away, sending the manhunt to another state while Ronald stays comfy right there at home. Once the murder blows over--Mom estimates a month or two--they'll move to a new town and start a new life. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

That birthday toolkit definitely comes in handy, as in a single evening Ronald and Mom are able to create an absolutely undetectable cubby-hole where the bathroom used to be. Just in time, too, as the cops show up asking questions about Ronald and the dead girl. Everything goes according to plan--the pigs buy the runaway story and head out in search of the fugitive, and Ronald settles in to his well-stocked studio, spending his days doing calesthenics, writing fantasy, and drawing pictures of himself as an Armored Fairy Hero. Nosy neighbor Mrs. Schumacher peeks in (hilariously) every now and then to keep the Whilbys on their toes, but mostly it seems like they're all set to get away with murder.

"Good lord! Just *look* at that wallpaper!"

However, after a leisurely few scenes in which we see Mom and Ronald uniting in solitude and foiling the cops with their stealth, the unthinkable happens when Mrs. Whilby goes into the hospital for a routine gallbladder operation and comes out in a body bag. His only connection to the outside world gone, Ronald sits on his crates of canned food, chewing chocolate bars and descending further and further into his fantasy world of Atranta. He also finds some time to cut a few more trapdoors into the walls and drill some peepholes from his lair (that handy toolbox again!)--because you know, idle hands.

As I said before, the acting here is pretty much standard 70s TV-show level. Kim Hunter comes off best as Mrs. Whilby, and it strikes me she would have made a good Mrs. Bates in a psycho prequel, since that's essentially what she's playing here. Jacoby is believably awkward and blank, but doesn't do much besides look stunned at everything going on around him. And in the first 30-40 mins, we get out of the house exactly *once*, just so the murder can happen. And yet as the narrative builds and we see events conspiring to leave Ronald sealed secretly in the walls of his own house--well, don't *you* want to know what happens next?

What happens is the house is quickly sold, and before Ronald runs out of pork & beans the new owners move in--Mr. and Mrs. Woods (the better-than-everybody Dabney Coleman along with Kate Hepburn-clone Pippa Scott) and their three daughters Ellen, Althea, and Babs. As the semi-Brady Bunch crew gets used to the new digs (commenting several times on the inexplicable lack of a second bathroom), youngest daughter Babs starts complaining of noises in the walls and the feeling that she's being watched. Tut-tutted by her entirely unsupporting family, Babs also unknowingly suffers the rapt attentions of the crazier-by-the-day Ronald, who sees in her a beautiful princess and fit bride for the King of Atranta.

Ron's-Eye View

Nothing ever moves too quickly in the movie, but as Babs hears more and more movement behind the walls and the director shows us some of Ronald's increasingly disturbing art, you can't help starting to feel a little uncomfortable for the likable young girl. Things get creepier when eldest daughter Ellen starts dating Duane Matthews (Ted Eccles as a pretty fair Wally Cleaver-analog), the brother of the late lamented Carol, who fills them all in about the bad, bad boy who used to live there. Spying on them, Ronald quickly casts Duane as the Evil Duke standing between him and his lady love--which you just know isn't going to end up well.

When Mrs. Schumacher finally catches Ronald stealing food from the Woods' icebox while they're out, the shock is so great she has a heart attack and tumbles down the stairs, dead! Once again faced with an inconvenient corpse, Ronald stays true to form by dragging it into the crawlspace underneath the house and then raiding the Schumacher place for snacks. And when a few days later the Woods parents leave their little girls unsupervised for a weekend business trip, well, Ronald the Fairy Prince sees his chance to bring his Princess back to Atranta for their wedding...

As a TV movie from the 70s, obviously Bad Ronald is kind of limited on just how far it can go with the pyschosexual aspect of the story (the fact that the protagonists are all kids--actual kids for a change--further limits this, I think), but the filmmakers do a good job of implying a lot and letting the slow-burn creepiness build for a good hour and five minutes without losing your attention. In fact, when Ronald finally reveals himself to his Princess and All Hell Breaks Loose, it's such a contrast to the rest of the movie that it packs perhaps an amplified wallop. A couple of the images they manage are really great ones too--for instance, Althea following a beam of light to one of Ronald's peepholes, only to find an eye on the other side staring back! (Another scene with Babs trapped in the basement of the Schumacher place toys devilishly with your expectations--I thought she'd find the old woman's body, naturally, but what she *does* find is even more out of nowhere and effective, imo.)

More than a little creepy

In the end, I enjoyed Bad Ronald a lot, got totally wrapped up in the story and was dying to see how it would all play out. And you have to admit--the idea of a fantasy-mad high school geek peeking at you through the walls is enough to inspire the shivers; in fact, I'd be surprised if Wes Craven hadn't seen this before attacking his similarly themed but much-wilder-in-scope The People Under the Stairs. Not one for those with short attention spans, but if you're in a nostalgic mood, you could do a lot worse. 2 Thumbs--if you get the chance, give it a shot.

P.S.--I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout-out to Unkle Lancifer over at the excellent site Kindertrauma, whose wonderful review of this movie I had to study carefully in order to cover up any plagiarism. Also mad props to Unk for coining the term "Anne-Franking It" to describe Ronald's living quarters, a phrase I wish to Zog I had come up with first. If you're not visiting Kindertrauma everyday, you're wasting your life!

ETA: Art imitates art! I just discovered thanks to IMDb that Scott "Bad Ronald" Jacoby actually starred in the 1980 TV adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, as Anne's friend-boy Peter Van Daan! I can only assume his work in this movie landed him the role! :)

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Embodiment of Evil (2008): or, Dear God, Joe, What Have You Done?

I've been a fan of Jose Mojica Marins' work for some time now. I was blown away by his no-budget inventiveness and uniquely perverse sensibility in This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, went back and was wowed by Coffin Joe's debut in At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, and was completely brainfuckled by his nightmarish metafictional trip-out, Awakening of the Beast. I was mesmerized by his artistry, hypnotized by his vision, thrilled and awed by what he achieved through creativity, passion, and sheer force of will. I grabbed everything of hs I could get my hands on in order to complete my education. I wrote a feature article about him for the late lamented City Slab Magazine, singing his praises and encouraging everyone to check him out. Any chance I've had since that first exposure, I've done my best to spread the gospel of this largely unsung cinematic savant from Brazil.

I have loved Coffin Joe in all his incarnations, been shocked and delighted by his creepy cool. I have respected the director, the artist, in all his efforts. But I have never been literally afraid of the man, Jose Mojica Marins, himself.

But now I've seen Mojica's 2008 opus, Embodiment of Evil (Encarnação do Demônio)--and I don't mind telling you, parisioners: I'm scared.

According to interviews he's given, Mojica always wanted to do a third and final film about his iconic alter-ego's life, but due to a confluence of unfortunate circumstances--and perhaps the machinations of a loving but moribund God--he was never able to complete the trilogy.* Lacking funding, support, and even film stock, Mojica had to take the projects that came his way, letting the ideas he had for the final Coffin Joe film percolate and distill themselves in his brain all these years.

*Though Coffin Joe appeared as a character in several other of Mojica's films--The Strange World of Coffin Joe, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe, The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, just to name a few--only At Midnight... and This Night... are actually about Zé do Caixão's own story.

Ready or not, here he comes.
(images © Twentieth Century Fox)

With the greater exposure he's enjoyed over the past few years and a growing fan base (not to mention a cadre of supportive young filmmakers influenced by his work), Mojica was finally able to realize his goal in 2008 when he completed Embodiment of Evil, the third and final chapter in the Coffin Joe saga. Questions flew wildly--at 83 years old, would Mojica still have the imagination and energy to deliver on the promises of nearly forty years? In a world where Coffin Joe's shocking exploits have become almost quaint by comparison with newer, gorier horrors, could the aged filmmaker hope to make Zé anything more than a nostalgic retread?

Allow me, my loves, to allay your fears: Coffin Joe is back, and he's lost *none* of his edge. In fact, he's put edges ON, delivering such an avalanche of shocking, horrifying, soul-scarring imagery and ideas that it's almost hard to believe it could be allowed, even now, even in this day and age. Over-hype, do I? History will be my judge--but I don't think so.

The movie begins in the present day, where some very nervous prison guards are descending into the lower depths of a very filthy fortress to free a prisoner who's done his 40 years and is scheduled for release--as if you had any doubt, the claw-like nails that creep through the opening door announce his identity: Zé do Caixão, known to us as Coffin Joe. Undaunted and unreformed, Joe strides out of the prison in his trademark top hat and cape, his wrinkled, aged countenance a roadmap of hatred and contempt for the inferior beings who surround him.

Guess who?
(images © Twentieth Century Fox)

He is met at the gate by his trusted, faithful assistant Bruno, still hunchbacked after all these years. After a surprising bit of difficulty getting out on the streets, Joe and Bruno head to the slums of São Paulo, where the seemingly mentally challenged Bruno displays some frankly astounding organizational skills. Not only has he secured and furnished a perfect lair for Coffin Joe's operations (complete with coffins, chains, sharp implements, and a horned-skull throne fit for Lucifer himself), he's also rounded up four devotees of the just-established Cult of Zé, two men and two women willing to give their own lives at Joe's whim, and anybody else's even more readily. Thus headquartered and staffed, Joe gets right back to the business at clawed-hand--finding the perfect woman to bear his child and thus make him immortal.

Alas, the course of Evil Immortality never did run smooth, and Joe is opposed in his quest by various representatives of the side of "good," though most of them with very questionable angelic credentials. His chief adversaries are a couple of extremely corrupt police officials (one of whom Joe blinded in one eye, as we get to see in an excellent flashback), two elderly Macumba priestesses intent on keeping their niece out of Zé's clutches, and a fanatical priest whose father Joe killed back in the day and who wants to damn Joe to hell before killing him in revenge--as if such a precaution were necessary.

If there were ever any doubt about Mojica's technical skill as a director, Embodiment of Evil should lay them to rest once and for all. The low budgets and borrowed equipment that made his early flicks impressive in their ingenuity clearly were not masking any directorial shortcomings, as is sometimes the case--this movie looks GREAT, with wonderful cinematography, long shadows and garish eerie lighting, and truly spectacular practical effects. From the dirty streets of São Paulo to the hellish lair where Joe continues his atrocities to the nightmarish dreamscapes where he confronts the ghosts and demons who stand in his way, Embodiment of Evil is a visual feast. The pacing is superb, the music evocative, the story disquieting--everything here bespeaks an artiste still at the very top of his game, finally possessed of the resources he never had before in order to bring his vision to the screen. It's something to see, and Mojica's visuals will be rattling around in your head long after the end credits.

Who says you can't find good help these days?
(images © Twentieth Century Fox)

As for Coffin Joe himself, you'd think that a portly 83-year-old man in old fashioned clothes would have trouble inspiring the shivers, but brother, you'd be wrong. Zé has never been more imposing, more frightening, more dangerously unhinged. Whether he's assembling his bevy of possible Perfect Women (almost all of whom are naked and extremely Zang-worthy), taking revenge on those who would stand in his way, or simply ordering a mug of wine, he takes his trademark palpable malevolence and turns it up to eleven. And he backs it up too--the movie boasts several extremely difficult-to-watch torture scenes (including such niceties as flaying, unsimulated hook suspension, forced self-cannibalism, and submersion in a barrel of guts--and that's just scratching the surface!), as well as some fascinating set pieces with his brides, including a smokin' hawt nude Macumba ritual and a jaw-dropper where Joe takes his bride carnally in a rain of blood! As the Duke of DVD opined after watching this, "Just when you think even Joe wouldn't go there...not only does he go there, he razes the ground, builds a house, and moves in!"

Coffin Joe has always been a complicated character, paradoxically haunted by personal demons even while denying their existence. In this flick these demons take the shape of his former "brides" from the earlier two movies. We get flashbacks to their deaths which are pristinely restored scenes from At Midnight... and This Night..., in black and white of course--and in a nice cinematic touch, when the women appear to Joe, they are shown in unearthly monochrome, despite the dark colorful world around them. (The latex masks used to replicate the original actresses' faces look strange and disturbing, another example of Mojica using low-tech methods to greater-than-expected effect.) And a dream sequence in which Joe once again enters the afterworld to observe the activities of the damned is equal parts Hell from This Night... and LSD trip from Awakening of the Beast, but harsher.

Make Love the Coffin Joe Way
(images © Twentieth Century Fox)

If the movie has a weakness, it's perhaps that it absolutely presupposes a knowledge of the first two films in order to appreciate it fully--not a problem for hardcore Joe fans like me, but perhaps a bit confusing for newcomers. Still, even if you're not entirely sure what's going on, Mojica will crawl in your mind and stay there--I'd bet real cash money.

This is a triumphant and mind-blowing conclusion to the Coffin Joe saga (the ending image is just *perfect*, imo), and one that I hope horror fans get to see--if not in a region 1 release, at least in region 2. But if you're a Coffin Joe fan, SEE THIS, by hook or by crook--but be warned: you are not ready.

666 taloned thumbs for this, imo the movie of the year, any year.

Hail to the King, Baby
(images © Twentieth Century Fox)

To watch the mind-blowing trailer, see soul-scarring stills, and read up on how best to prepare yourself for Joe's reign, visit the Embodiment of Evil Official Movie Site!

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