70's Foreign Horror Part One

MARK OF THE DEVIL
(1970)
Dir - Michael Armstrong
Overall:  MEH

Witchsplotation movies are usually rather depressing and man were there a lot of them at the turn of the 60s and early 70s.  The West German Mark of the Devil, (Hexen bis aufs Blut gequäl), has a surprisingly small amount of nudity, plenty of blood and torture, utterly deplorable characters, and genre favorite Udo Kier looking dashing and young.  As is usually the case, the less attractive actors play the torturers and "men of god" while all the pretty and attractive villagers who are always wrongly accused of witchcraft are the ones that get their bodies destroyed most painfully.  The "happy" musical score by Michael Holm is distractingly odd at most points and it is used quite a lot.  Meanwhile, the dubbing is likewise unintentionally silly, but then again, when is it not?  Armstrong does not quite land the ending which is rather bleak, but at the same time, it also has that soaring and lovely birds-chirping-in-the-Spring-time musical theme again.  With the added issue of such tonal problems then, the movie is one of the many to deliver on its promise to shock for its day, but that also means there is nothing really unique or different offered up here from other such films.

LEPTIRICA
(1973)
Dir - Đorđe Kadijević
Overall:  MEH

Historically important for being the first Serbian horror movie ever made, Leptirica, (The She Butterfly), is kind of...off.  It is based off the 1880 story After Nintey Years by Milovan Glišić, itself based off the famous Serbian vampire Sava Savanović who was said to have lived in an old mill where he did vampire stuff.  Leptirica at times reminds one of the very first Soviet horror film Viy.  Most of the characters act rather goofy and a good bulk of the middle of the movie seems to be going for "villagers being drunk and wimpish" laughs.  There are a few OK moments that are very spread out and unfortunately the rest of the only sixty-two minute running time is pretty snore-inducing.  There is also a romance going on, but it is rather dumb and the final seen is more head scratching than scary.  The insufficient budget becomes noticeably apparent, particularly in the laughable makeup effects, but the odd, zoo animal noise "soundtrack" and pasted together look of the title character are pretty pleasing in an odd enough way.

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE
(1974)
Dir - Jorge Grau
Overall:  MEH

In horror movies, it is always laughable at best and annoying at worst when the local police are both inept and obnoxiously skeptical.  Both of these things play a large part in Jorge Grau's Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, (Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti, No profanar el sueño de los muertos, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Don't Open the Window).  The Spanish/Italian zombie film features three lead characters and all of them are annoying for different reasons.  The Sergent is the big root of the aforementioned cops in horror movies problem, while the two attractive protagonists with their "long hair and faggot clothes", (admittingly a great line that Electric Wizard used to hilarious effect), are variations of whiny, useless, and smug.  So yeah, it is one of those scenarios where you want everyone to get eaten by the dead.  This brings us to the movie's strong point, which is that the zombies are quite good and the gore is quite gory.  Things like boobs getting ripped off and stomachs getting pulled out by the sloppy handfuls while gorged upon are basically the reason to watch such a film in the first place.  Unfortunately there is more woefulness in the fact that the 70's foreign movie curse is upon this one in that the pacing is dreadful.  It takes way too long for the fun, nasty stuff to start happening and Grau, (as many of his peers), does not realize that we do not need to see long, uninterrupted shots of people walking around and doing things when a couple quick cuts will give us the same amount of information.