El Santo y La Tigresa (1973): or, the Mystery of the Giant Hobo

The more lucha libre movies I watch, the more I wonder how these guys ever found time to, you know, wrestle. There was just so much else going on! I bet El Santo and Blue Demon couldn't drive their shiny shiny sports cars down the street without running over a couple of alien invaders bent on world domination, or a just-resurrected werewolf and vampire plotting to complete a plan of vengeance 400 years in the making. Add to that the mad scientists, serial killers, and gangsters running rampant in the District Federale all throughout the 70s, and it's amazing they ever got the chance even to launder their turtlenecks and sports jackets, let alone lace up the boots and go bouncing around el círculo cuadrado.

As arguably the greatest, but certainly the most famous, of the masked heroes of Mexican wrestling, El Santo (aka "El Enmascarado de Plata") was a very, very busy man. Even visits to old friends were crap shoots, as likely to end up in the underground lair of some crazed supervillain as in front of the television doing tequila shots while watching the night's fútbol match. That's not quite what happens in El Santo y La Tigresa (aka Santo y el aguila real, or Santo and the Royal Eagle, 1973), but it's almost as wild.

"No, BD, I can't. I'm with someone. And didn't I ask you never to call me here?"

In this one, Irma Morales (played by Irma Serrano, about whom more in a moment), the daughter of one of Santo's deceased friends, calls the luchador to her palatial ranch to seek his help with some problems she's having. It seems there are strange goings on around the hacienda--her older brother was killed when his horse inexplicably tumbled down a cliff, and there have been two separate attempts on Irma's life, one involving a cut brake line and another an unseen sniper. Convinced that her neighboring land barons want to split up her ranch between them, she's called in El Santo (rather than the local police) to get the evidence she needs to confront them.


But things aren't usually what they seem in cases like this. Santo finds some odd strands of hair at the scenes of the assasination attempts, and sends them to a friend in the city for analysis. As romance blooms between the luchador and the lady of the house, Santo must also fight off a murderously jealous suitor of Irma's who may or may not be the true culprit. A mysterious locked room at the hacienda, ordered closed forever upon Señor Morales's death, thickens the plot, and attacks by the rival ranchers' throw suspicion back their way. Then things go completely pear-shaped when the Man in the Silver Mask is attacked by a giant, tatter-clothed hobo with the strength of ten men and just barely manages to escape with his life!

"All right, all right! ONE autograph!"

It was interesting for me to see Santo removed from his monster-fighting superhero mode and instead cast in the role of a Holmesian (or at least Scooby-Dooby Dooosian) amateur detective. Of course his horseback-riding dalliances with Señorita Morales would never pass muster with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--but hey, that ain't the only Holmes Santo shares some moves with, if you know what I'm sayin'. Unfortunately Santo's esteemed cinematic partner Blue Demon is not on hand to play the Dr. Watson role; instead he has as his foil Carlito (frequent Santo co-star Carlos Suárez), a cowardly, bald-headed sidekick who serves as extremely broad comic relief.

But the luchador has a more-than-able fighting partner in the person of Irma Morales herself, played with downright Tura Satana-style ferocity by Irma "La Tigresa" Serrano. Boastful, proud, and unwilling to suffer the slightest disrespect from anyone, Irma is a dominatrix dynamo. Always accompanied by her faithful pet La Serrana--a FUCKING FALCON--she is an excellent markswoman (as evidenced when she shoots a cigarette from the mouth of a terrified girl to "save" her from her drunken beau's attempt to do the same) and extremely handy with the short riding whip she always wears around her wrist! She also knows how to rock the leather pants and knee-high boots, which can only be counted in her favor.

(Nota bene: Morales is never called "La Tigresa" in the movie--that is Serrano's real-world nickname. A well-known singer and actress, she was infamous for many political and sexual scandals, including a rumored short-lived affair with President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz of Mexico. Judging from her brief but entertaining Wikipedia entry, she's more or less playing herself here.)

"Wanna 'rassle?"

One thing that surprised me about this movie was how intricate the plot is compared to other Santo flicks I've seen, which tend more toward the episodic. (There are episodic tangents--such as a long segment at the county fair that's actually quite interesting in a National Geographic "traditional celebrations" kinda way--but the whodunnit through-story is a lot more solid.) The mystery is really pretty well-constructed, with many red herrings and shocking revelations. In fact the story is so convoluted that the in-ring action--a staple of the Lucha film--is limited to a single match rather than the usual two or three. Which is not to say the film skimps on the grappling: Santo gets to practice his knee-lifts and forearm smashes on some of the evil ranchers' thugs (with La Tigresa fighting right alongside him, clocking their jaws and whipping them silly with her leather lash!), and later rescues Carlitos from a lynching for horse-thievery by flattening a half-dozen ranch-hands.

The centerpiece battles, though, are his two fights with the mysterious, primitive-seeming Giant (Domingo Bazán)--both of which have rather startling conclusions. The first takes place in an abandoned bullfighting ring, and Santo gets to perform his patented frog splash off an adobe wall, from a rather dangerous-looking height. However, the caveman-cum-hobo is (amazingly) too strong for Santo, and leaves him unconscious in the sand! Later they have a rematch in the cobweb-covered catacombs beneath the hacienda (what, you thought things wouldn't get all Gothic up in here?), and Santo seems to get the upper hand before being waylaid by a shorter caveman/hobo who seems to be the Giant's keeper, left unconscious and presumed dead! Two battles, two losses--unheard of in Santo Cinema!

El Enmascarado Volidor

Of course he's not dead, but the final confrontation in Irma's room, where secrets are revealed and motives explicated, is notable for its pointed LACK of Santo's presence. He comes in after the dust is already settling, shaking off his concussion and in need of a change of shirt. Who's the hero here, anyway? This makes me believe the producers saw this not so much as a Santo vehicle, but a Serrano one--kind of a Brigitte Nielsen/Red Sonja situation, with Santo along in the Arnold Schwarzenegger role. (In one memorable exchange, Irma claims "never to have tasted fear," while Santo admits that he has--his courage is not bravado, but perseverance even in the face of fear.)

Serrano is a powerful screen presence, however, and in addition to the fight scenes gets to shine in a couple of musical numbers--notably when she takes Santo and Carlitos to a cock fight where her prized rooster is set to do battle, and trades musical boasts with the rival ranchers. (These are sadly untranslated on the disc I have--I can only assume it's a Beowulf-style taunting before the poultry-centric main event.) She also gets to show off her voluptuous figure in that excellent leather pants/boots ensemble, and a couple of groovy negligees. No complaints from me.

Santo came back from his tour of Japan with some...interesting ideas for the bedroom.

About that cockfight--I admit I found it a little rough to watch the animals being set upon one another for sport, and one of them actually killed by the other on camera. Yes, I know, it's a different time, a different culture from my own, and nothing most people in Mexico in 1973 would have batted an eye at. But still, it's real animal death, really onscreen, and modern viewers may well be taken aback. And that's not the only instance of animal snuff in the film. Later we also see Santo and Irma hunting, and she shoots a rabbit; we get to see the effects in detail, as the running bunny is hit and tumbles feet-over-destroyed-cranium. Finally, there is a flashback to Irma's brother's death, wherein a human-shaped dummy is sent down the cliff on the back of an ACTUAL horse. I rather hope the nag was dead before they rolled her down the cliff, but I can by no means be certain. (Also, a kitten is used to test a poisoned dish of soup, and fails the test, though one hopes the cat was not actually poisoned.) Animal lovers, be warned.

(Irma's falcon La Serrana fares slightly better than the other animals--in fact, the hawk even flies to Santo's rescue during his first fight with the giant, and then saves her owner from a poisonous snake in her bed! The cavemen don't take kindly to this, and later stuff the bird in a canvas bag and smack it against a wall several times; however, since the falcon appears safe and sound in the final scenes, hopefully this was merely cinema magic.)

"That wasn't *quite* what I was asking for, Maria, but thanks all the same."

Also of note is some rather salty language--lots of "assholes" and "bitches" bandied about, at least in translation--which together with the animal snuff and Carlitos's "comedic" lynching scene (to say nothing of the decidedly PG-13 Dark Family Secrets that hold the key to the mystery) give the film a much darker tone that I had grown to expect from a Santo film.

Still, it all really worked for me. I was involved in the story, amazed by the plot twists, excited by the dangers and thrilled by the fights. A more "adult" Santo perhaps, though it still manages to bring in the Gothic trappings and superhuman enemies required by such a larger-than-life hero. I give El Santo y La Tigresa 2.5 thumbs. It's available from Netflix on DVD, so check it out!

¡Viva el Santo!

A few more images from El Santo y La Tigresa (1973): 

So lifelike

Eyes Up, Santo

Now THAT'S comedy!

"Grovel before the awesome might of the muumuu, slave!"

FALCON KICK!

Knight in Shining Headgear

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine..."

"Well, shucks, Irma, I never thought about it before...but yeah, I guess I could put it there..."

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

10 More Facts About the Duke of DVD...

On the occasion of his *mumblemumble*th birthday!

Yes, once again that black season is upon is in which his corpulent Eminence burst forth into our plane from whatever damnable parallel dimension was once his home, dripping gore and ichor, bellowing like a Stink Ape whose privates had been mishandled by an overzealous anthropologist. Here are a few things you might not know about my esteemed colleague and scholar of the MAD:

"Welcome to my party! Pants in the pile to the left, please."

1. Dropped like a cuckoo into the nursery of his mother the Duchess Brunhilda (sixth wife of his father Perriwig Pigknuckle Higginbotham, thereafter the 665th Duke of DVD), he soon grew to Mammoth size, and his baby teeth were highly sought by the Ivory artisans of the lower realms. Nearly bankrupting his father's fiefdom with his voracious appetite for sorrel mushrooms and horse steaks, the young Duke was "cured" of his gigantism by a wizard whose name and spells are lost to history. 
2.  A the age of twelve, while out snuffling for truffles with his prize hunting pig Bildad, he discovered the long lost treasure of his great grandfather, "Screaming Mad" Duke Dooncan Von Danglingdong, hidden in a mass grave on the ducal estate and sufficient to satisfy his lusts of all sorts for the rest of his life.
3. At the age of 13 he had a traumatic experience with a one-eyed, three-toed, hook-handed gypsy prostitute, about which he still refuses to speak.
4. The Duke's favorite colors are chartreuse, magenta, and viscera.
5. Some years ago his pleasure yacht the D.S.S. Urungus vanished into a maelstrom off the coast of Norway, and all hands were presumed lost. However, the Duke was discovered by explorers several months later on a remote island of doll-sized orange pygmies, where he was being worshiped as a god.
6. He is a certified Human Cannonball, currently ranked 4th in the world.
7. Rumors that the Duke has appeared in adult films under the alias Pinky Gynormus have been neither confirmed nor denied. 
8. He once drank an entire vat of Avery Samael's Oak-Aged Ale, and went on a murderous and lustful rampage through the town of Dunwoody-on-the-Wolde that is still sung about in the local balladry to this day.
9. In his vaults the Duke possesses a pristine print of The Day the Clown Cried, but still hasn't got round to watching it.
10. Somewhere on his body is a tattoo of First Lady Lucretia Garfield in the nude. First one to find it wins a prize!

Auditions for the musical biopic DUKEY! are going better than expected.

So please everyone, join me in wishing my talented and hilarious compatriot the happiest of birthdays. May you get everything you wish for today, and not have to answer to the authorities for it. ;)

Many happy returns, my friend!
The Vicar

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Mosquito der Schänder (1976), Or I Want To Suck Your Blood, But Only If You Are A Corpse

My dearest readers, friends, I bid thee well-met. It is I, the Duke of DVD, once more exposing the contents of my brain like so many sweet treats spilling forth upon the loamy ground from the rent bottom of a piñata, worked to be an effigy of the Vicar buggering a sheep. “What are we celebrating?” you ask, sphincter contracting alarmingly. The onset of cold weather, of course! The hoary wind of fall ripples across our skin, raising our nipples erect, a harbinger of the dread winter to come. So let us sit before a roaring fire, a crystal glass of port in hand, and muse upon the bleak abomination that is German cinema.

Not content to merely churn out endless chest-shitting videos, which they could easily do given their industrial capacities, the Germans have instead deigned it necessary to befoul the world with another form of disturbingly MAD cinema: blood-drinking, doll-collecting deaf-mutes who love molesting corpses. “But Duke,” you bleat in a piping voice, “isn’t this a sub-genre that the Germans should excel at?” Be at ease, sir or madam! It is indeed a sub-genre that only the Germans could pay adequate service to! Not only were the makers of this film up to the task of bringing us the eerie world of deaf-mutes who play with dolls obsessively, but they were also keen on throwing the doors open wide on the multi-faceted world of breaking into funeral parlors and molesting corpses.

Are you with me so far? Don’t be afraid! Grip the Duke’s hand, and let us explore, shall we?

Mosquito der Schänder or Mosquito, the Rapist (renamed Bloodlust for the U.S.), is set in the bleak, soundless world of a deaf-mute. We don’t know his name, and in fact as far as I could tell, no one in this movie is given a name. He is credited simply as “The Man” (played excellently by Werner Pochath). He is no one, and everyone. Or something like that. Our deaf-mute friend lives in a simple apartment, the walls painted black, surrounded by shelves of dolls of various sizes. Dolls are his passion, and he would like nothing more than for them to be alive, so that they might comfort him and love him.

"I get 50 mpg on this hog, baby!"

Our movie opens with this poor soul riding a hilariously small scooter through a nameless small town. He arrives at his apartment building, and we are given a disturbing flashback that gives us a bit of insight as to his mental health. As a young boy he is beaten severely by his father, who leaves him bleeding on the floor as he begins to molest his young sister (in a rather graphic and shocking scene). These things, which presumably went on for some time, left him a shattered individual, capable of feelings only for his dolls. He’s in love with a young girl who lives in the same apartment complex as he, but of course doesn’t know how to express this.

"Now... where did I leave the non-doll-related porn?"

At work, where he is an accountant, he fares no better. His coworkers laugh behind his back, and in some cases straight to his face, accusing him of being a pervert and gay. He tries to find solace with a prostitute, but he has no clue as to how to “be” with a female, so the hooker kicks him out when it becomes clear all the dude knows to do is lay his head on her flabby stomach. So, what’s a social outcast to do, when all you have are dolls and a pet rat to give you attention? Well, logic dictates that you try to bring the dolls to life, of course! This comes at the wrong time, though, because he finds he’s obsessed with how blood looks on skin. This first manifests itself when he first spills ketchup on himself at lunch, and then later spills red ink on himself at work. He realizes that, damn, blood sure is awesome!

"I'll teach you to change the channel during Sanford & Son!"

This sets off a truly epic series of scenes in while our burgeoning pervert repeatedly breaks into funeral parlors and molests corpses. There’s never anything overtly sexual; instead he’s obsessed with their blood. It starts out small, just cutting a corpse and licking the blood off his hand, but escalates quickly, culminating in the drinking of corpse blood with a forked glass straw (hence “mosquito,” get it? haw!). Like any bandit worth his salt, our man signs the wall “Mosquito,” perhaps as some sort of calling card to let the funeral home know that he was all up in their business, drinking blood and what not, yo.

"No, it's an ACTION FIGURE!"

He further defiles some corpses by taking their eyes out of their heads. The effects here were adequate, but nothing too showy. He tries using the blood from the cadavers to breathe life into his doll collection, but he must be doing something wrong, because this plan fails. (Shocker.) He’s going through life, enjoying his blood-letting festivities, when suddenly, tragedy strikes! The young (living) girl who is the object of his obsessions falls off the apartment building roof in what I could only deem an accident of Darwinian proportions. She’s dancing, eyes closed, near the edge, and suddenly over she goes! I, for one, am thinking deaf-mute guy is better off not dating someone so stupid.

"All right, luv, just swipe your credit card and we'll be good to go!"

Her funeral is barely over when Mosquito digs her up and drinks her blood, which is the only way he knows how to express true love. Awwwwww! Her death, though, is more than he can take. As if his mind weren’t snapped enough, he comes unglued, and stalks the first couple in love he can find, following them out to the woods. He watches them make the beast with two backs for a bit, before finally stabbing both of them to death and drinking blood out of the girl’s breast.

Everyone knows Berliners are jelly-filled!

This proves one step too far, as the cops arrest him at work shortly after, dragging him out past a lot of employees who aren’t surprised in the least. The movie ends with a dream sequence showing the girl he loved, dancing around. Fin.

Ahem. So you see, fellow readers, that a movie shot in Switzerland, made and released by Germans, can have quite a bit of depravity in it. The movie stops short of showing actual necrophilia, but I believe this is only because our poor deaf-mute guy simply didn’t know how sex is made. He instead penetrated the corpses with his glass tube, and drank their essence. Despite the grotesque subject matter, I found myself fascinated by this movie. The use of theremin music during the scenes when mutie was in his apartment really kept me on-edge. The namelessness of everyone involved added to things as well. The child beatings and molestation were just disturbing icing on an already unseemly cake.

The director (Marijan David Vajda) does a great job in composing each shot, giving us a constant barrage of the claustrophobic world that the deaf-mute inhabits. Hookers leer at him from side alleys, coworkers stand too close and laugh at him. Even his ridiculously small scooter is somehow appropriate. Werner himself does a great job, and is very convincing as a man driven to follow his desires, no matter how twisted.

"At last, my RealDoll™ has arrived! And what a spiffy collector's case!"

I do have to take exception with a few things, however. For one, the movie was titled “Mosquito the Rapist,” yet no actual rape ever happens, to living beings or corpses. The closest we get is the man’s dad molesting his own daughter, but this only goes as far as groping. Perhaps stabbing a glass straw into a corpse’s breast to drink its blood is considered rape in Germany? This brings me to my other nit to pick, and that is the fact that there’s blood in the corpses to drink at all. I don’t know the state of embalming during 1970’s Germany, but I’m pretty sure corpses were being drained of all fluids back in Egyptian times. I can forgive this, however, because if proper embalming techniques were used, we wouldn’t have a movie, now would we?

In the end, Mosquito served as the genesis for a glut of German necrophilia movies (such as the infamous Nekromantik series), and for that we should give the creators thanks. Don’t feign mock alarm! You know it’s true! The movie is worth watching, not only from a purely historical point of view, but from a pure Euro-trash point of view as well. Come for the corpses, stay for the blood-drinking!

2 Thumbs Up.

Extra bonus images from Mosquito der Schänder (1976):
 

Never question the accuracy of Klaus's accountancy. EVER.

"I didn't want to kill her...but just LOOK at this dress! Really!"

"Hurry up, Billy!  Before someone comes along and wants to drink blood from my breast!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

BONUS DVD Review: SCREAM QUEENS ILLUSTRATED DOUBLE FEATURE (2010)

I've got a lot of DVDs backed up to review, and am trying something a little different while knocking them out--so check out my first BONUS DVD REVIEW over at the VHS Vicarage Tumblr:

• DVD Review: SCREAM QUEENS ILLUSTRATED DOUBLE FEATURE (2010)

 From MVD Entertainment. Directed by John A. Russo--but don't get yer hopes up. :P

(Depending on how folks like the spreading out, it might become a regular thing to put extra reviews over on the tumblr in between regular postings. So be sure and let me know what you think, either here or there!)

The Vicar

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

DVD Review: Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives (2010)

Well, that was a surprise!

I'll admit, when I saw the title and promotional materials for Israel Luna's 2010 comedy Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives (distributed by Breaking Glass Pictures), my expectations were lower than basement level. I fully expected it to be another in the long line of tasteless retro-exploitation "comedies" that never reach for anything beyond the obvious joke, that would go out of its way to offend with blatant stereotyping and knee-jerk homophobia. In fact, so dire were my fears that I almost had to force myself to slap the screener in the dvd player and watch it unfold.

So imagine my delight when T-OTwK grabbed me from the get-go and kept me interested and involved almost throughout. Engaging characters, skillful filmmaking, and some genuinely chilling scenes of violence? Over-the-top zany comedy and gore scenes tempered with sensitivity and respect for its subjects? All in an indie comedy with an obvious love for 70s exploitation and the confidence to play with its tropes and trust the audience to come along? Who'd have thunk it?

The plot synopsis goes a little like this: protagonist Bubbles Cliquot (Krystal Summers) works as a dancer at a transgender strip-club in some major urban area (Dallas, as it turns out). With her fellow dancers--the glamourous Tipper Summore (Jenna Skyy), Latina bombshell Emma Grashun (Erica Andrews), Southern belle Rachel Slurr (Willam Belli), and fiercely protective "Momma" Pinky La'Trimm (Kelexis Davenport)--Bubbles is part of a supportive and understanding family of transsexuals. As we see the girls perform and join them for afterhours cocktails and conversations, we sense the cameraderie and affection between them, an "us against the world" sisterhood that feels both real and engaging.

Unfortunately that sisterhood is shattered when trannie-hating psychopath Boner (Tom Zembrod) lures Bubbles, Emma, and Rachel into a warehouse trap, and proceeds to take his vengeance on them, ostensibly for Bubbles' having "tricked him" into homosexual sex, but more obviously because he can't handle his own repressed sexuality. The other girls answer Bubbles' distress call, but the ensuing fight ends with Boner and his two gang-mates free, Tipper and Emma dead, and Bubbles in a coma.

When Bubbles awakes, she joins Pinky and Rachel in a plan to avenge their sisters' deaths--a plan that involves a trip to the dojo of club regular and kung-fu expert Fergus (Richard D. Curtin) and extensive training with a variety of ornate bladed weaponry. Once they're ready, the girls set a trap for Boner and his thugs that leads to a blood-soaked and action-packed climax--pun definitely NOT intended.

Ticked ,but still fabulous

It would have been very easy for this flick to fall into the Bad Comedy Tar Pit, but director Luna  shuns the easy jokes and over-the-top camp and focuses instead on the sisterly relationship between his characters. The "trannies" in this flick are never treated as jokes just because they are transsexuals--rather, they're human beings who just happen to also be funny every now and then, and who also face real dangers and problems. Really, you could have replaced "trannies" with just your average female strippers and made almost exactly the same movie.

Which is not to say there's not camp here--there is, of course--but to me it was realistic camp, i.e., the campiness you would expect to find in groups and clubs such as those depicted here, in real life. If you've ever been to a drag show or hung out with people involved in them, then you would not blink twice at the witty bitchiness or jokes presented in Luna's script. However, the camp is less central than the real affection between the characters, and the way they band together, even before tragedy strikes.

Maybe because I was so taken with the relationships Luna focused on, the most over-the-top of the comedy bits didn't work as well for me. One is when Bubbles wakes up in the hospital, and she and her friends are flabbergasted by a latex-clad transsexual nurse (Chase Wade) and the reflector-wearing, innuendo-spouting Dr. Laccio (Todd Jenkins). Another is the trip to Fergus's dojo, a bit of chop-socky silliness that elicited some giggles, but mostly fell flat for me. Luckily, Luna had the directorial intuition not to let the bit go on too long.

Boner (Zembrow) menaces his victim

The style of the film winks knowingly at 70s exploitation, though it probably owes more to Quentin Tarantino's take on the same. The movie is divided into chapters, each with its own usually humorous title card, and there is artificial film grain and even a "missing reel." While the flick is never really convincingly "grindhouse," the practical gore effects and creative vengeance methods in the final confrontation do hit that mark.

The acting here is not Shakespearean quality--many of the line readings are stilted and some reactions less than convincing--but graded on a sliding scale for low-budget direct-to-video indie films, it's really not that bad (and certainly as good as many of the 70s films it emulates). The girls--most of them real transgendered actors--do passably well, and as I said, the affection and cameraderie seems real enough. Standout performances are Davenport as Momma Pinky, who manages to be hilarious when the film calls for it and menacing as a mother lion when her girls are threatened. And Zembrod is an excellent villain--his first scene, wherein he whispers his grievances in a sing-song voice while he brutally kills one of the girls with a baseball bat, is truly chilling and well acted. (Well-filmed too--Luna handles the difficult scene with skill, even throwing in some disturbing, gruesome touches, like the matted hair and brain matter on the end of the killer's weapon.)

There are some negatives, as always. The pacing of the final confrontation scene suffers when first one group and then the other explain their needlessly complex and convoluted vengeance schemes--though again, perhaps this is true to the spirit of the 70s films that are the model. The comedy didn't always work for me, and the shot-on-video cinematography may put some viewers off, especially with the added video-effects grain and things like that. For me, I didn't mind it too much--Luna and crew had won me over, so I just went with it. Also, while Zembrod gave a chilling performance, his character *is* a stereotype of Southern bigoted homophobes that seemed a bit too easy for a movie that otherwise seemed to be fighting such stereotypes.

(Also, I learn through the wonders of the internet that there was backlash against the film from GLAAD and some trans-groups, citing the films' portrayal of transsexuals as "murderous vigilantes" and use of the perjorative term "trannies" as unhelpful. I can't presume to speak to those issues, but I for one never felt the title characters were presented anything other than affectionately, and certainly no different from heterosexual characters in similarly plotted films. But judge for yourself:  Full article here.)

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives, and extremely glad I got the chance to see it--somehow I doubt it's going to be playing theatrically in Little Rock. :) DVD features will inlude bloopers, Behind-the-Scenes footage, the "missing reel," commentary, and more (but were not included on the screener I got for review.)  2.25 thumbs.

Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives trailer (youtube)

Interesting, informative article from Queerty discussing the pros & cons of T-OTwK (hat-tip to Tenebrous Kate for the link!)

Note: Breaking Glass Pictures provided a copy of this film to MMMMMovies for review purposes. Images gleaned from the Internet--if one is yours and you need credit or to have it removed, please let me know and I will gladly comply.

Luna (center, in leather jacket) and cast at the Tribeca Film Festival

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

PAUL NASCHY BLOGATHON Banners now available!

If you are participating in the PAUL NASCHY BLOGATHON from November 29-December 3, now you can spread the word with some beautiful blog banners and badges, designed by MMMMMovies friend, the ever gracious and erudite Pierre Fournier of Frankensteinia!

One of six designs! Collect them all!

Click here to select your banner!

Please post a banner to your blog or website, whether you plan to contribute or just want to spread the word! And if you would like to be a part of the celebration, contact me!

The Vicar

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Castle of Blood (1964): or, She's Dead and Lovely Now

On a dark and fog-shrouded night, a lone traveler finds his way to The Four Devils pub in a particularly seedy section of Old London Towne. Shaking the chill night air from his greatcoat, journalist Alan Foster (Georges Rivière) hears a deep, sonorous voice relating a macabre story about love, death, obsession, and a handful of stolen teeth. The speaker is none other than visiting writer Edgar Allan Poe (Silvano Tranquilli, credited here as Mongomery Glenn), offering an extemporaneous recital of his famous story "Berenice" (which you can and should read online here). His companion, Lord Thomas Blackwood (Umberto Raho, here called Raul H. Newman), is the owner of one of the most haunted mansions in England, so full of horrors that he's willing to offer anyone one hundred pounds sterling to spend a single night within its walls. Foster takes Blackwood up on his wager, hoping to get an interview with the famous American author on the way out to the estate, and perhaps some juicy material about Blackwood Manor to sell to his editors once he returns.

So begins the 1964 creepfest Castle of Blood (aka Danza Macabra), directed by future Eurotrash legend Antonio Margheriti (Cannibal Apocalypse [1980], Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye [1973, reviewed on MMMMMovies here], et al.). Dripping with gloomy, Gothic atmosphere, boasting  positively Bava-esque black-and-white cinematography, and featuring a mesmerizing performance by justly lauded screen legend Barbara Steele, this one of the greatest, creepiest ghost stories in Italian cinema for my money, and one of my absolute favorite fright films of the 60s.

Poe is suddenly overtaken with horror, unable to remember whether he left the iron on.

In the coach on the way to Blackwood Manor, Foster manages to get a few choice pull quotes from Poe for his article, including the famous one about a dead, beautiful woman being "the most poetical subject in the world." I hope he keeps his notebook handy, because he's going to want to revisit that one in view of the ghostly happenings in store!

Blackwood and Poe drop Foster off at the gates of the mansion, promising to pick him up in the morning and present him with his winnings, should he manage to earn them. With night falling quickly, Foster makes his way past the creaky, rusted gate--making special note of the dangerously protruding iron bar that serves as the latching mechanism--and steps carefully through the crowded family graveyard up to the front door. Inside he finds the apotheosis of all creepy haunted mansions in literature and film history: the place is coated in thick layers of dust, festooned with ropy cobwebs, and dotted with candelabras bearing stubs of tallow candles. Foster lights a few and explores his surroundings for the night, a bit put out by the sudden gusts of wind that extinguish his light sources and by the hypnotic, seizure-inducing portrait of a lovely but severe lady dressed in the costume of a bygone age.

This opening exploration of Blackwood Manor is a real powerhouse sequence, executed with almost no dialogue, masterful use of light and shadow, odd camera angles, creepy sound effects and a moody score that for once is perfectly matched to the visuals. It might be a bit of a slow burn for viewers weaned on kill-a-minute slashers and the "we don't need no stinking backstory" modern directorial style, but this aged viewer was in eerie movie heaven. When Foster turns a shadowy corner and (with the help of that gloomy cinematography and a slight orchestral sting) receives his first scare of the evening, I got that delicious hair-rising-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling that told me I was in the hands of a master.

Foster researches the truth behind the legend of Sir Reginal Blackwood's "Second Lance"

The slow build-up--which has been imperceptibly but effectively ratcheting up the creepy tension--pays off when Foster hears harpsichord music from a neighboring study, and sees (or does he?) a ghostly couple dancing past the aperture. Rushing to investigate, he finds of course an empty room, the instrument closed and covered with dust. Blaming it on his active imagination, he sits down to tickle the keys for a moment, and nearly jumps out of his skin (as do we all) when a slender pale hand drops on his shoulder!

Rather than vanishing like the others, however, this figure stays to introduce herself: she is Elisabeth Blackwood (Barbara Steele), Sir Thomas's younger (and considerably more attractive) sister. She claims that she's been a recluse at the mansion for ten years, since a mysterious traumatic event made her give up on the world and everyone in it. She explains that her brother, out of pity or spite or plain bored mischeviousness, sends her visitors every year on the anniversary of the event, but not before spooking them up with tales of the mansion's haints. Maybe Foster buys this story or maybe he doesn't, but one look in Bab's huge dark eyes is all he needs to convince him to start laying on the charm thicker than the dust on the mirrors. It's not long before Foster is making out with Elisabeth on the big four-poster in his room, his kisses insufficient to stop her blathering on about how "I need your warmth" and "Your love will give me life!"--which I'm sure is not sinister at all, just her way of saying she likes the way he puts the motion in the ocean AMIRITE?

"Alan, you're trembling...I like that in a man."

Unfortunately for our literate Lothario, Blackwood Manor is not nearly as deserted as it appears--in fact, as the night wears on, the place gets positively CRAMMED with corps--er, I mean, "residents."  Chief among them is Elisabeth's companion and confidante Julia (Margarete Robsahm), the blonde Teutonic ice queen from the portrait that gave Foster such a funny feeling earlier. Julia clearly doesn't like Foster, or any man for that matter (IYKWIMAITYD), though she does cruelly tease Elisabeth with the prospect of seducing the journalist away from her. They're later joined by Dr. Carmus (Arturo Dominici), a houseguest whose position in the household is nebulous--at least for anyone in the audience who hasn't seen a haunted house movie before, ever.

The good doctor soon spills the beans to Foster about what's really going on at Blackwood Manor--or rather BlackBLOOD Manor, as it was named before Sir Thomas wisely changed his family name. Seems the patriarch of the Blackbloods was Lord High Executioner some centuries back, and either because of that or because sometimes life's a bitch, everyone who dies at the house is cursed to remain there forever, reenacting their final hours on one night of the year before returning to the icy cold of their tombs. (And guess what day it is today?) This is where the slow burn of the earlier part of the movie gives way to NONSTOP HAUNTING ACTION, as Foster gets an Ebenezer Scrooge-style seat for the rest of the residents' final performances.

"Dr. Carmus--please tell me that's a ghost's hand on my bum..."

As it happens, Elisabeth was married to the lord of the manor once, but was carrying on an adulterous tryst with a musclebound and extremely possessive stable boy. At the same time Julia was sneaking into Liz's bedroom at night for midnight Sappho-snacks, creating a love quadrangle of the sort that never ends well. End well it doesn't, as Foster watches the stable boy rip the husband from Elisabeth's arms in flagrante de uh-oh and strangle him to death, before having his own skull bludgeoned to a meaty pulp by Julia. Never one to let two male corpses stop her from getting BIZAY, Julia puts her lesbonic moves on the shock-addled Elisabeth, who nonetheless has the presence of mind to grab a dagger and penetrate Julia with it--which is all I'm gonna say about that. Driven mad by the orgy of death in her room, Elisabeth screams and screams...and SCENE.

We get another couple of macabre danses, including the horrific end of Dr. Carmus himself. A paranormal researcher in the age before reality shows, Carmus was lured to Blackwood Manor the same way Foster was--by a wager with Sir Thomas, whose motives are growing ever more suspect. For some goddamned reason, Carmus goes into the crypt to uncover the body of the musclebound stable boy--who still has excellent pecs, despite his face having rotted away to a grim skull! In an exceptionally creepy and clearly Bava-influenced scene, the dust settles from the opened coffin lid and the corpse slowly starts to breathe, his papery skin flaking dust and damnation! Soon Dr. Carmus is a goner, doomed to assuage the ghosts' unnatural hunger.

A Flexing Pec Gathers No Dust

Because hey, get this! (spoiler) Turns out the ghosts need HUMAN BLOOD in order to be resurrected again the following year and enjoy one more evening of damnable life. Sir Thomas is the human agency that sends the undead their unholy sustenance, in the form of wayward souls looking to prove their bravery and earn a quick buck. And this year's menu includes Bananas Foster...or, you know, something.

In case it isn't clear: I LOVE THIS MOVIE. For creepy Gothic atmosphere and chilling, eerie set pieces, Castle of Blood is really tough to beat. Margheriti does a great job framing the gloriously spooky images, and the camera is seldom stationary, using slow zooms, Dutch angles, and even a surprising hand-held shot or two to keep things visually kinetic and interesting. The sets are picture perfect, the music actually FITS and sets a ghastly mood, and the plot is a ripping old-school ghost story that wouldn't be out of place in a collection of stories by Poe himself, or Sheridan Le Fanu, or even Algernon Blackwood, come to that...hey, waitaminnit!

That's Some Party

So the story has its roots in macabre tales of a past century, and the sets and visuals hearken back to the best of the Universal horrors of the 40s--but because this is the 60s, the story is able to go in some surprising (to me) directions. The love affair between Julia and Elisabeth is explicit--textually, anyway--and there's even a lesbian love scene complete with moans and gasps, though the camera pans away before the bodices are oped.  And a later scene featuring some ill-fated honeymooners who take Sir Thomas up on his bet features a see-through hoop skirt and some very impressive toplessness that made me wanna sit up and beg for buttermilk.

In addition to gorgeous cinematography and masterful atmosphere, Castle of Blood sports some great performances from stars and supporting players alike. Georges Rivière as Alan Foster strikes the right note as the skeptical-but-not-stupidly-so hero, and his shock reaction to the scenes of ghostly carnage is affecting, as is the surprising downbeat end to his character arc. Margarete Rosbahm as Julia is a dominant screen presence, and would have been right at home in a Hammer lesbian vampire romp or an Italian Nazisploitation sleaze-fest. But my favorite supporting actor hands down is Arturo Dominici--his Dr. Carmus is a subtly unsettling figure whose stoic stare and deadpan line deliveries make him seem truly otherworldly and sinister. When he says, "It is the hour; words have no meaning...I have a rendezvous with Death. Come."--well, I don't mind telling you it gave me the honest-to-god willies.

I may need a moment...and some wire cutters.

But of course the steadfast anchor of this marvelous ghost ship is Barbara Steele as Elisabeth. In the early days of my VHS Seminary I had seen a few lesser Steele vehicles, which did not showcase her talents and left me wondering what the big deal was. That all changed when I watched Castle of Blood for the first time--Steele is absolutely MESMERIZING here--ethereal, tragic, otherworldly, sensuous, and uniquely lovely, she totally owns the screen and had me stretching my eyelids to take her whole performance in. Though some might think Foster falls in love with Elisabeth too quickly to sustain plausibility, for me it was never even a question. I've since seen many of Steele's more famous portrayals, and it's hard to pick a favorite, but there will always be a special place in my heart for Castle of Blood, the movie that made me fall in love with La Steele.

In short, Castle of Blood is one of my top ten Gothic horrors--scratch that, one of my top ten PERIOD. If you haven't seen it, seek it out and thank me later. It's available in many public domain versions, but the Synapse DVD released in 2002 is my definitive release. This one contains the "uncensored international version," with scenes (including the lesbian tryst and honeymoon nudity) that were never included in stateside prints and thus never dubbed to English; as a result the audio for these scenes is take from a French print, with new English subtitles. (Gotta love the vagaries of Italian audio production!) Plus, it looks great.

3+ Thumbs for this classic MMMMMasterpiece. If you want a great Gothic time, this is the house to visit. And remember: Halloween may be over, but Barbara Steele is forever.

"OBEY!"

A few more scenes from Castle of Blood (1964):

Discouraged by all the attention Elisabeth received, Julia opted for toplessness.

"Seriously, dude: grab my ass one more time and you're getting decked, I don't care how fucking dead you are."

Necropiphany (n.): the moment you realize you just banged a dead girl.

Not What It Looks Like--Well, OK, Kinda

The Vicar, every moment La Steele was on screen

  

Harsh, but Fair

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...