70's José Mojica Marins

AWAKENING OF THE BEAST
(1970)
Overall: MEH

Continuing with his use of Coffin Joe into far more experimental terrain, José Mojica Marins' Awakening of the Beast, (O Despertar da Besta, O Ritual dos Sádicos), suffocates under its own self-indulgence and is only mildly amusing in the process.  The first hour of the movie is tortuously boring as it follows a handful of zombie-like characters being high, horny, and weird, (not zombie-like in a macabre sense, but in a completely drab way), and then a bunch of panelists argue about pretentious nonsense on what is revealed to be a TV show at the end.  Marins is one of the such panelists, playing himself and mostly remaining silent and smug as the rest of them prattle on about whether or not he is a genius.  Then more uninteresting, random scenes go by that tell no story whatsoever and the last half hour switches to color so that Coffin Joe proper can show up to spout more wicked monologues.  The usual weird visuals take over here, this time including a bunch of people with faces painted on their asses.  While stepping way outside of a conventional story formula is fine, the pacing is laborious and Marins' does not seem to have any point besides really trying to appear smarter than everybody.  His fiendish strengths are not nearly utilized enough and instead we are left with a ninety-odd minute, psychological venture about LSD and depravity or whatever with just a handful of ghoulish set pieces tossed in there to wake us up.

THE BLOODY EXORCISM OF COFFIN JOE
(1974)
Overall: GOOD

Going meta again with the Coffin Joe character while actually utilizing a plot this time, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe, (Exorcismo Negro), finds José Mojica Marins growing ever more ambitious with his blasphemous formula, thankfully in a good way.  The movie takes a liberal amount of time getting to its final showpiece of utter debauchery and madness, but Marins sprinkles enough bizarre, unholy scenes before the third act to keep probably most viewers from growing too impatient.  The story which consists of the Brazilian filmmaker playing himself and ultimately confronting his infamous, cinematic counterpart is quite on the nose as he struggles with writers block for his next film as well as with the concept that his creation is more famous than he is.  While this is an interesting be it elementary angle that is wholly appreciated, being a Marins movie, it is generally about the strange, wretchedly evil atmosphere and visuals that he can bombard you with.  In that regard, The Bloody Exorcism is no disappointment as Marins shows as little restraint as ever and continues to push his hedonistic vision into engaging terrain.

THE STRANGE HOSTEL OF NAKED PLEASURES

(1976)

Dir - José Mojica Marins/Marcelo Motta

Overall: MEH

The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, (Estranha Hospedaria dos Prazeres), is somewhat structured as an Amicus horror anthology, minus the actual anthology part.  Which is to say that it presents a scenario where José Mojica Marins/Coffin Joe can act as host to a bunch of damned souls; characters who have all sinned to various degrees and are oblivious to their doomed fate or current state of existence.  It is a perfect premise for Marins to utilize, but it is also unfortunately a rather lackluster effort in its finished form.  Utilizing the help of co-director Marcelo Motta, it is still unmistakably a Marins movie with the usual cacophony of sounds, fractured editing, and drug-fueled visuals that all of the man's films were unrelentingly full of.  This time though, it plods along with large chunks of the movie going nowhere and despite the opening being the strangest sequence in the movie, it takes quite a long time for anything remotely interesting to transpire after that.  When it does, it is more confusing than anything as Marins barely seems interested in telling any kind of comprehensible story and sadly the ghastly, optical elements that would usual cover for such a problem are more forgettable than usual.

INFERNO CARNAL

(1977)

Overall: MEH

Not one of José Mojica Marins's better moments, the Coffin Joe-less Infero Carnal, (Hellish Flesh), is a bizarre and above all else, repetitive snooze-fest with one of the most asinine plots that the filmmaker ever utilized.  What essentially turns out to be a long con game of infidelity comeuppance is annoyingly padded with the same claustrophobic, poorly lit montages over and over again and for the audience's sake, hopefully you are in the mood for hearing Marins yell "Rachel" and "Why?" several thousand times.  Even working within the confines of minimal funds which was always the case for Marins' macabre movies, this is the worst that any of them ever looked with wretched cinematography and again, so many shots that are so dark as to be indecipherable.  The story though is incredibly stupid and painstakingly drawn out to eighty-five minutes when eighty of those minutes could have easily been trimmed to get the exact same point across.  Even though the ending has Marins' patented, gleeful cruelty and gore hounds will get a kick out of horrendous makeup and closeup eye surgery, this is still bottom barrel stuff.

HALLUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND
(1978)
Overall: MEH

By the time José Mojica Marins had gotten to his final Coffin Joe film before he would at last retire the character for several decades, he was almost laughably scraping the barrel.  Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind, (Delírios de um Anormal), is almost entirely made up of footage left on the cutting room floor from four of his previous Coffin Joe movies.  Marin slammed all of these sequences together, inter-cut them at a frantic pace as usual, and then filmed only around thirty-plus minutes of new scenes to desperately put some kind of story together.  In theory this works in that Marins' nightmarish visuals always came off so deliriously random anyway that throwing a hodgepodge of them from different movies together does not make their presentation any less bizarre.  The problem is that we have seen all of these specific set pieces before and the story he frames all of his good, hellish montages around seems pathetically shoe-horned in there since that is exactly what it was.  It shows a level of determination on Marins part to leave no stone unturned and to get absolutely as much out of his already filmed work as possible, but Hallucinations still cannot come off as anything but an utterly pointless, hail marry effort to unleash one last Coffin Joe movie on the masses before neither the funding nor interest was there anymore.

70's American Horror Part Ten

PHASE IV
(1974)
Dir - Saul Bass
Overall: MEH

Renowned graphic designer Saul Bass in his only directorial effort Phase IV concocted a visually stunning though otherwise rather barren film.  The real star of the movie is Kim Middleham, a wildlife photographer who captures elaborately-staged closeups of insects for large chunks of screen time.  That along with some excellent set designs including giant monoliths in the middle of the desert provide Phase IV with its best assets.  At the same time though, some of the ant sequences while impressively shot do drag on a bit and since the story hardly has anything going on, it creates the core problem with the movie.  A mere two scientists and a stranded girl are cooped up in their laboratory arguing while trying to decipher their best move against the mutated ant colony and nearly all of the scenes with them are rather emotionally flat or predictable, (the younger scientist shows compassion for human casualties while the older, British one is too enthusiastically fascinated by their experiment to care).  The ending is a bit dopey though likewise rather foreseeable as well.  Bass presents the whole thing deadly serious, with sparsely-used, subdued music that is wholly appreciated.  Yet the film is ultimately too void of excitement to be anything but an optically pleasing work.

BLUE SUNSHINE
(1978)
Dir - Jeff Lieberman
Overall: MEH

The occasionally compelling though far more frequently bumpy Blue Sunshine was writer/director Jeff Lieberman's second film; a strange, determined work that is confusing and sloppy in both wrong and intended ways.  Bizarre murders spring up in sudden and/or creative ways like an early moment where a guy sings cringeworthingly at a party and then goes on a rampage when his wig gets pulled off, plus a later moment where a woman chases kids around with a kitchen knife.  The strange behavior of the non-strange characters is unnecessarily distracting though, particularly the entire performance of the lead protagonist Zalman King who is bafflingly unhinged and unlikable from moment one.  He is not alone in this as more than one other "normal" person's actions induce a fair amount of headscratching from the audience.  This would be a clever trait if the movie's social commentary added up when it needed to, but instead the themes of reckless, counterculture college kids turning uppity yuppies rather infrequently work.  The overall inconsistencies just become too distracting by film's end, an ending of which is regretfully sudden and lazily open-ended.

THE VISITOR
(1979)
Dir - Giulio Paradisi
Overall: GOOD

Sometimes the perfect concoction of the desperately bizarre can manifest itself into something that transcends logical analysis and becomes rather admirable in the process.  The Visitor is just such a strange film that exists in its own world.  Directed by Italian Giulio Paradisi, (credited as Michael J. Paradise), based off of a story by Egyptian/Italian writer Ovidio G. Assonitis, featuring an all-star, primarily American cast, and filmed on location in Atlanta, Georgia, The Visitor is one of those strange hodgepodges made up of conflicting parts.  It borrows liberally and tries to cash-in on well-known genre films of the time like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen, The Exorcist, and even older gems like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, plus it has an unmistakable, Italian knock-off quality that is benefited from an elaborate budget and ambitious plot.  Other curious elements like the same scenes being shown multiple times and some of the most clashing music in practically any movie further add to the perplexing nature of the entire thing.  The story is mostly void of substance and presents itself as a point A to point B fairytale, but it is all in the embellished presentation which remains both easy to follow and all over the place simultaneously.  Paradisi only helmed a small handful of movies and his work here is rather remarkable, both from a visual perspective and how he manages to juggle so many confounding elements to make it one of the most unique sci-fi horror films of probably any decade.

70's American Horror Part Nine

BLOOD AND LACE
(1971)
Dir - Phillip S. Gilbert
Overall: MEH

Blood and Lace, (not to be confused with the far superior Mario Bava film Blood and BLACK Lace from seven years prior), is truly as dumb as they come.  Co-written by producer Gil Lasky and directed by Phillip S. Gilbert, (serving as the only movie the latter would ever make), they also scored Gloria Grahame as an evil orphanage owner and future Uncle Leo Len Lesser as her sleazy sidekick.  Appropriate casting aside, it is the script which is all levels of absurdity.  There are so many "can only happen in a stupid movie" coincidences and likewise so many times when characters do the most irrational thing possible that it just barely transcends being an offensive waste of time and becomes an occasionally fun trainwreck instead.  Since it was made so cheaply, (using awful stock music, thoroughly unconvincing day for night shots, and amateur cinematography), it makes the hilarious plot that much more unintentionally amusing.  It is really within the last few minutes when the inevitable twist rears its head that the ridiculousness becomes overbearing, but up until then it does not drag too much and there is plenty of embarrassment to laugh at.  It is a terrible movie anyway you look at it of course, but harmlessly so more or less.

BAD RONALD
(1974)
Dir - Buzz Kulik
Overall: MEH

An adaptation of Jack Vance's book of the same name, Bad Ronald was a made for TV film that aired on ABC around Halloween time in 1974.  At a brisk seventy-four minutes, director Buzz Kulik keeps the pace cruising along with the rather simple and unarguably far-fetched set-up; a pace which actually kind of undoes the whole movie.  Due to the brief running time, the relationship between the title character and his mother plus how the former meets his mental breaking point could afford a little more substance.  It takes until the very end before Bad Roland gets suspenseful enough to finally start resembling an actual thriller.  Before that, it just gets by on the creepiness of its on-paper premise.  This makes it seem like a missed opportunity really.  To watch something from the point of view of a young, eccentric teenager with mommy and anger issues who is essentially trapped in his own house while succumbing to the madness of isolation, the approach here is far too mild and underdeveloped for what the story is worth.  On the plus side, it is an admirable move that Kulik and his cast treat the material respectfully while keeping any potential schlock value uninvited to the party.

PIRANHA
(1978)
Dir - Joe Dante
Overall: MEH

Joe Dante's second feature was the Jaws parody/cash-in Piranha, a film which Universal tried to shut down before Steven Spielberg blessed it by calling it "the best of the Jaws rip-offs".  That statement is probably true, mostly because Dante is interested in getting as many laughs out of his audience as possible, taking the silly, intentionally derivative subject matter as non-seriously as possible.  Full of recognizable faces like Paul Bartel, Dick Miller, Barbara Steele, and Kevin McCarthy as well as highly unremarkable special effects, it is knowingly ham-fisted and everyone on the screen seems fully aware of this without getting too overtly goofy.  While fun and funny at times, it is a tedious story where people get warned about the flesh eating fish, people ignore said warning, and then people get killed by said fish, all of which gets repeated until the high-body count finish.  Characters routinely do idiotic things as well, (including knowingly jumping into the piranha-infested waters), and the laws of physics are slapped in the face as one character parks his boat as far away as possible to then hold his breathe for a supernaturally long time to do something imperative underwater while the fish are probably everywhere.  Naturally ending on an ominous note with a sly, overly confident remark from Steele that clearly sets up the next in the franchise, (Piranha II: The Spawning which would be James Cameron's directorial debut), many of the movie's "flaws" can be seen as part of the appeal, but it does grow just a tad too tiresome after awhile.

70's American Horror Part Eight

WILLARD
(1971)
Dir - Daniel Mann
Overall: MEH

The broadly-received Willard, (an adaptation of Stephen Gilbert's short novel Ratman's Notebooks), is a likeable if not altogether spectacular film.  Daniel Mann had a pretty diverse resume by the time he made his only horror movie here, directing a number of comedies, dramas, and action films and then primarily going into television very soon afterwards.  Willard boasts some decent performances from its lead Bruce Davison as the feeble, pathetic title character, plus Ernest Borgnine, Elsa Lancaster, and Sondra Locke bring some recognizably to their smaller roles, (Borgnine in particular being his usual douchebagy villain).  The movie is a bit too tedious in nature and only near the very end do the rats themselves successfully pose their necessary threat.  Basically, everybody either dotes over Willard or treats him like an incompetent pest and he spends the entire movie going back and forth from his house where he is talking to all of his furry minions to his work where his boss is an asshole.  The ending which proves once and for all that Willard truly cannot catch a break is rather preordained and also comes off pretty sudden and anticlimactic.  There have been worse movies about hordes of animals terrorizing people to be sure, but this one could probably have used a lot more horror in general as well as more trimming of the plot to have aged better.

IT'S ALIVE
(1974)
Dir - Larry Cohen
Overall: MEH

Beginning his career with a number of blaxploitation movies, Larry Cohen's first horror film It's Alive is another frustrating effort from the writer/director.  Cohen's filmography is rather all over the place in quality, with some of his works being interesting, (God Told Me To), stupid and clumsy, (Q), or atrociously horrible, (The Stuff).  It's Alive is a problem in that Cohen's script lazily presents too many "wait/why/what?" moments that distract one from the strong performances by John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell, some well-directed, nerve-wracking scenes, and an acceptable premise that should otherwise work.  It is very aggravating that after a very solid opening which abruptly, (and wonderfully), pulls the rug out from under us, the behavior of the police and the parents raises illogical questions one after the other.  Cohen cannot convincingly pull off how such a disturbing incident effects the people involved.  Meanwhile it is all very serious and frequently emotionally harrowing, but there are just too many implausible details mucking everything up.  The parents being allowed to immediately leave the hospital, the father immediately returning to work and excepting that his kid is a monstrosity even though no one has laid eyes on it, the cops lackadaisical investigating, the son who supposedly was left in the dark who is being compassionate to his mutant sibling, the mother being taken to the site of where they have cornered her child/creature in the first place, etc.  It is a shame because Cohen leaves all of his ridiculous quirks out of the equation for once, but he still unintentionally insults his audience's intelligence and patience.

THE DRILLER KILLER
(1979)
Dir - Abel Ferrara
Overall: MEH

Though the porno movie 9 Lives to a Wet Pussy proceeded this one by three years, The Driller Killer was the first non-adult debut from Abel Ferrara who also stars as the title-character/murderer.  Long considered part of the notorious video nasty blacklist of films in England, Driller Killer is far more tame than most, though it makes up for it with an unrelenting, grimy atmosphere.  Filmed in Ferrara's own Union Square apartment around the time when Manhattan was hardly considered the world's safest, cleanest city to live in, the movie has a seedy quality that is benefited from the rather amateurish way that Ferrara puts it all together.  The actors are not miked and you are bound to recognize none of them, plus a generous amount of time is spent watching the no-wave band The Roosters play gigs and rehearse, making the movie rather chaotic and noisy at all possible intervals.  The script by frequent Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St. John is poorly underdeveloped, but this may be intentional to make it all seem anarchistic since all of the characters are either miserable or drugged out lowlifes who seem both bored and perfectly fine while wallowing in such grunginess.  Some moments of humor work OK and the ending is borderline great, but it is kind of a drag to sit through for the majority of it, with everyone moping around, being occasionally obnoxious, and then the whole murdering angle just very randomly being tossed in there.

70's American Horror Part Seven

THE BABY
(1973)
Dir - Ted Post
Overall: MEH

It is a bit trying to decide what to make out of a film like The Baby.  It goes far enough trying to be disturbing to border on pathetic, but because it is portrayed so deadly serious, the sleazy schlock value is undermined to a critical point.  Things continue to fire off of the deep end as it goes on and the final culmination is in such bad taste while being so absurd that it is nearly impossible not to laugh at it.  The fact that everything that comes before it is so frustratingly stupid and disturbing makes for quite a problem though.  In other words, if this is meant to be "Oh, brother" silly, then it is too dark and twisted.  If it is meant to be seriously dark and twisted, then it is far too "Oh, brother" silly.  Director Ted Post, (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Magnum Force), tries to concoct a conventional, chilling finish, but he fumbles the pacing too much.  We spend several minutes watching characters slowly creep around a house and then not turn any lights on when the logical moment arises.  At least the script somewhat "explains" some of the other gigantic disregards for logic, (most prominently why no one goes to the goddamn police), but in the end, it still comes down to whether or not you want to watch a movie with a grown man in diapers acting and screaming like an infant while wackadoo women physically, sexually, and psychologically abuse him at every opportunity.

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
(1976)
Dir - Rene Daalder
Overall: WOOF

When teenagers are concerned, few things in cinema are more annoying than A) high school kids endlessly being repugnant assholes to each other and B) no adults being anywhere.  The second full-length work from Russ Myer protégé Rene Daalder Massacre at Central High is thankfully not a slasher movie as the title profoundly suggests, but rather an incredibly annoying thriller that poses so many illogical scenarios with a complete disregard for creating the desperately necessary, surreal mood to make any of its social commentary work.  The film's first act is nearly impossible to stomach as a small group of bullies hold complete sway over an entire school, (again with no teachers, parents or authority figures at any time intervening), and before we are even five minutes in, you simply want everyone on screen to die.  Then the massacre of the title begins, (one such murder happening to a kid who is too stupid to notice that a giant swimming pool has no water in it just because someone turned the lights off), and the moronic scenario escalates rapidly.  So many students get piked off over the course of days and weeks, (again with no teachers, parents, or authority figures at any time intervening, cannot mention that enough), and everyone goes about their business while both practically ignoring what is happening and even more excruciating, the bullies become even bigger scumbags.  The ending is the most insulting moment of all.  After so, so many murders, a bomb goes off outside of a school during a dance and the first grown-up we have seen the entire film says "Its just a fire, let's all go back to dancing". You can almost see what the allegorical intention was but, nah it just sucks.

DEMON SEED
(1977)
Dir - Donald Cammell
Overall: MEH

Donald Cammell's long-awaited follow-up to Performance was the Dean Koontz adaptation Demon Seed, a film that is accidentally silly despite its best efforts.  While featuring a generous budget, somewhat acting heavyweights Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, and the voice of Robert Vaughan, and again based off of a novel from the renowned Koontz, the sum of its parts should probably wield something better.  The premise of an artificial intelligence going malevolent on its makers is fool proof to at least be creepy on paper, but it poses a problem when it comes to life.  Scenes like a mechanical robot arm attached to a wheelchair and a giant, bronze, puzzle-looking thing or whatever attacking people are all bound to garnish a laugh or several from the audience when of course you are supposed to feel the opposite.  There are also some plot holes getting in the way.  One can buy that it only takes a mutant baby less than a month to reach full term, but nobody is going to check on the woman who is been held captive that whole time or the guy who visited and went missing weeks ago?  Things are also pretty one-note.  From the very beginning it is pretty obvious what is going to happen and then waiting through it gets more tedious than spine-chilling, leaving us with an ending where characters seem to behave rather inexplicably.  Then there is a weird looking alien/machine/monster kid thing for good measure.

70's American Horror Part Six

PRIVATE PARTS
(1972)
Dir - Paul Bartel
Overall: MEH

The first full-length film from Paul Bartel, (the much celebrated cult movie Death Race 2000 would be his follow-up), Private Parts is silly and weird in both good and bad ways.  The themes of sexual repression, voyeurism, and perversion never really pick up any steam and all of the horror-tinged, violent bits just seem to be there to give it a bloody body count for whatever reason.  The characters are certainly humorous in their eccentricities, (Laurie Main who hosted Welcome to Pooh Corner is the most fun as a flamboyantly creepy, gay Reverend), but why they are all cooped up in a single hotel and why the owner herself is up to such a bizarre scheme in the first place is kind of just thrown into the mix to make the movie more strange.  This may not be a bad thing depending if one finds the seedy, early 70s New York atmosphere appealing enough or the murder scenes satisfactory.  Yet the script does pose its ideas in a kind of lazy way, coming to a head with a ridiculous ending that is bound to make most eyes roll.  It would probably work better as a quirky fish-out-of-water comedy devoid of all of the lame slasher movie bits, but it is an interesting experiment nonetheless.

AXE
(1974)
Dir - Frederick R. Friedel
Overall: WOOF

It is quite telling that when writer/director Frederick R. Friedel was trying desperately to get his first movie made while pitching it to any producer who would humor him, he knew as much about the filmmaking process as a Neanderthal.  The result Axe, (Lisa, Lisa), is roughly a mere sixty-seven minutes long, but if feels like six-hundred and seven.  This is another perfect, horrendous combination of a "why would anyone want to watch that?" story with completely inept movie making from all the technical levels on down.  Friedel, (who unsurprisingly exudes the same amount of on-screen charisma as one of the characters as he does expertise behind the lens), has a sentence-long story here at best.  Because of this, he fills the screen time with anything, ANYTHING to get it just barely to an acceptable full-length.  In the very first opening scene, characters sit around in a room waiting for someone and they wait, and wait, and wait, and what happens next is so unpleasant and nasty that it sets the template precisely for everything else that is to follow.  That is Axe ladies and gentlemen; waiting around while watching the director not turn the camera off until something wretched happens that you did not want to see in the first place. 

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS
(1978)
Dir - Dennis Donnelly
Overall: MEH

Outside of the appearance of the generally ridiculous Cameron Mitchell as a cuckoo building owner who murders women for the flimsiest of reasons, The Toolbox Murders has nigh a single redeemable quality.  The "based on a true story" tag has been used so many times to garnish interest that the words have lost all meaning and it ultimately matters not at all to the final proceedings.  The murders are all unpleasant and then things get worse from there with another woman being kept prisoner for disturbing reasons and then once she is finally released, she gets rapped by her would-be rescuer anyway.  Isn't that lovely?  One can easily look past all of the deliberately exploitative elements since the film was made to cash-in on the wave of low-budget sleaze that was continually being produced in droves, so expecting anything remotely intellectual would be unfair.  The real deficiency with the movie is with its piss-poor direction and pacing.  Scenes like characters walking into a building, asking for keys, looking for keys, finding keys, saying "bye", walking back outside into a car, driving the car away, driving some more, driving up to their destination, parking and walking out of the car into another building, and well you get the idea.  The film is so void of substance that much of the running time has to be padded with such completely irrelevant information, just leaving you with all of the nasty bits and Cameron Mitchell, (thankfully at least), overacting to the best of his abilities.

70's American Horror Part Five

SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT
(1972)
Dir - Theodore Gershuny
Overall: MEH

Another early, holiday themed slasher outing, (arguably the first one?), Silent Night, Bloody Night is primarily terrible for other reasons besides it being boxed in by the usual cliches such movies cannot escape from.  The problems lie first and foremost with the script which is a gigantic mess.  It is nothing unusual to have the identity of your killer be a mystery and likewise to have the unveiling of said killer be as unlikely as possible, but not only does this movie go for a highly unsatisfying and cheap pay out, but worse yet is the road to get there which is just loaded with confusion.  It is always a bad idea to grind your film's progress down to a screeching halt so you can have an extended flashback just before the final showpiece.  Yet when said flashback poses more questions than answers, you are even more baffled than you were before being given such an "explanation".  Other elements such as on-again/off-again narration, John Carradine being completely wasted playing a mute for absolutely no reason, and poor cinematography all leaves very little to make a positive case out of.  The film does have a surprise or two, but most of them are the kind that just leave you scratching your head at their inclusion in the first place.

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET
(1977)
Dir - Roger Watkins
Overall: WOOF

This is as bad as it gets folks.  Shot in 1972 and released in a limited capacity with all of the on screen credits being pseudonyms, (since who in any mind set would want to be associated with this abomination?), Last House on Dead End Street eventually garnished a reputation for being a legitimate snuff film for decades before the "writer", "director", and "star" came out nearly thirty years later to fess up that no, it was just a horrible "movie".  The question is, what is worse; if this was actually supposed to be some kind of a legitimate horror film or if it was actually just people dying for real on screen?  Yes it is that terrible.  Every possible technical aspect could not be worse.  Roger Watkins is oblivious how to frame a shot, light a scene, point a camera, work a camera, mic his actors, write dialog for his actors to say, cast his actors, act himself, or come up with any remotely interesting story beyond some New York-accented bonehead who does not like authority so he is going to kill people while filming it with a camera.  There really is not a single thing more to it than that.  Despite having no possible audience designed for it, (you have to be so bored with actual filmmaking to find this "refreshing" in any way and actual serial killers would still be appalled by the dialog at least), this perfectly encapsulates everything movies can do completely wrong.

MAGIC
(1978)
Dir - Richard Attenborough
Overall: GOOD

Enough evil ventriloquist dummy movies have been made to give it its own sub-genre, Magic being the rather large-budgeted, somewhat A-list adaptation of William Goldman's novel of the same name, (Goldman also penning the script as usual).  What Magic may lack in originality, (many of the plot points anyone can see coming from afar), it makes up for with solid performances all around and one or two effectively creepy scenes.  Voicing the doll of Fats, learning enough card maneuvers to be passable as a magician, and appearing thoroughly unhinged from the moment we meet him, Anthony Hopkins' ambitious performance is sufficient whereas he seems altogether disturbed and pathetic, usually at all times.  Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, and character actor Ed Lauter round out the rest of the major cast, all of them rather perfectly suited.  While the relationship between Corky and the Fats dummy is pretty standard stuff, (the dummy is "evil", the ventriloquist is impish and "good", and it is consistently vague who is controlling who), it is made pretty clear what is actually going on, though director Richard Attenborough very wisely keeps the audience slightly guessing at every possible opportunity.  This makes some of the diabolical acts more shocking than they otherwise would be and likewise, some of them less silly than they otherwise would be.

70's American Horror Part Four

THE OTHER
(1972)
Dir - Robert Mulligan
Overall: MEH

In his only quasi-horror film, To Kill a Mocking Bird director Robert Mulligan adapted Tom Tryon's novel The Other, Tryon himself penning the screenplay as well.  While it is well made and looks rather pretty, (perhaps too pretty), it is not all together that interesting of a movie.  From the very beginning, it is crystal clear that we are dealing with another "kid has an imaginary friend who we can also see" scenario, this time it being his identical twin brother.  Though it is not made to look that mysterious, when it becomes explicitly stated that this is what is going on later in the movie, the obviousness robs the would-be most dramatic scene of all of its oomph.  We are left with a family that gets one murder or grave misfortune after the other during a matter of weeks and no one once thinks it might be the doing of this young boy who is perpetually acting a little off.  Maybe it is asking too much since as the viewer, we are in a far different seat than the characters on the screen.  Yet when it comes to movies, some of this does need to be taken into consideration.  Otherwise, we are getting taken out of the experience too much.  Gore and actual "horror" wise, this is as bland as they come, though this is not a knock on it in anyway.  The film is just too tame all around.  A pre-Three's Company John Ritter does show up for a couple of scenes which is amusing at least.

DERANGED
(1974)
Dir -  Jeff Gillen/Alan Ormsby
Overall: MEH

As much a Canadian production as an American one, (it was shot north of the border and includes a primarily Canadian cast though it was funded by an American music promoter), Deranged, (Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile), was the first film to more obviously be inspired by Ed Gein with both Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre only taking minor details into their plots from the real life Mamas-boy turned necrophiliac, grave-robbing serial murderer.  The film is pretty straightforward for anyone familiar with the real life Gein, except it throws in a slightly awkward documentary approach by having an on screen narrator walk on and explain things from time to time.  The movie is also played for laughs more frequently than one would think, not so much with frequent Bob Clark collaborator, make-up artist, and writer/co-director Alan Ormsby's script, but with some of the performances that go from goofy to disturbing in a gradual fashion.  Speaking of make-up, Tom Savini was also on board to decorate some of the corpses here as well.  The film is bad by any stretch, but it also does not even remotely offer up any suspense which it rather needs.  We know the fate of every murder victim that is set up for Gein, (here called Ezra Cobb and played by Roberts Blossom, Old Man Marley from Home Alone), so it is difficult to get our heart racing when we see these scenes play out.  That said, some of them are oddly humorous and even "yyyyyyaaaaaa!" terrifying, so it gets a pass.

THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA
(1976)
Dir - Matt Cimber
Overall: MEH

This rather ambitious project from blaxploitation director Matt Cimber is a bit surprising in how it skews its rather exploitative elements and becomes quite poignant as it goes on.  The Witch Who Came from the Sea is anything but what its movie poster and title may suggest, (there is no sexy, Frazetta-esque sea witch wreaking havoc on doomed sailors or anything).  The film is unpleasant to watch at various times, occasionally seems a bit ridiculous, (including a main musical score that is rather inappropriate for such material), and has some gruesome moments, but it seems clear by the end that the filmmakers were not making something for pure shock value at all.  Now, watching a movie about sexual child abuse is never a fun experience and in this regard, there is much here that one would rather not sit through.  Millie Perkins, (The Diary of Anne Frank), as the lead protagonist Molly is a frustrating character and likewise uncomfortable to witness most of the time.  Ultimately though, it would have been disingenuous to make her any less complex and aggressive, the story itself being a difficult thing to stomach.  Future A-list cinematographer Dean Cundey is on board in one of his first movies and he also helps elevate the material even further, showing just enough to make the disturbing aspects strike home.  It is still a tough call if the movie is in fact a triumph or bares more than a single viewing, but it is something to take note of at the very least.

70's American Horror Part Three

CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS
(1972)
Dir - Bob Clark
Overall: MEH

Bob Clark's first horror movie and only second full-length one Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is a frustrating bit of low-budget filmmaking.  Made on a measly $50,000 and featuring a small cast made up of Clark's college buddies and make-up artists, its DIY aesthetic is admirable to be sure as is the fact that it goes comedic since four years after Night of the Living Dead came out, it was already a ripe time to poke fun at the concept of a bunch of people held up in a house being attacked by flesh-eating ghouls.  The only problem is that Clark and company concoct some of the most unbelievably obnoxious characters ever put to celluloid.  Special effects man/director/actor Alan Ormsby's raving douchebag theatre troupe leader is nearly impossible to stomach from scene one and it only gets so much worse from there.  While Ormsby's character is initially made fun of by the rest of the endlessly quippy cast, he is so profoundly annoying to begin with that the tone shift during the last twenty minutes of the movie feels more like a charitable saving grace than anything else since finally at long last, everyone stops being horrible and unfunny, instead just acting scared.  Everything before the final few moments are excruciating and once the movie kicks into Michael Jacksons Thriller mode and gets plenty spooky with actually intimidating zombies on the loose, it is all nothing that has not been done too many times to count.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE
(1976)
Dir - Alfred Sole
Overall: MEH

A well-appreciated, pre-Halloween slasher movie, Alice, Sweet Alice, (which was also screened as Communion and Holy Terror in earlier instances), is too nasty and unpleasant to really "enjoy" as a horror film.  This is not to say that the subject matter is too wretched or that it is too gory since these things are requisites more or less in the genre.  Yet when your film revolves around a violent, smart-ass, whining twelve-year old and uses her as a red herring, it is a little difficult to feel sympathy for her or anyone else who feels sympathy for her.  So really, it is the premise of that is rather doomed to fail.  The killer reveal is more shocking in how rather lame it is than anything else, which is never a good sign.  Stylistically, co-writer/director Alfred Sole, (who was working as an architect at the time and had only made one movie previously, which was a porno), does competent, be it standard work.  The performances balance between naturalistic and grounded, to cartoonish, (Alphonso DeNoble's obese, cat-obsessed landlord reeks of sleazy exploitation).  Yet as far as your run of the mill, "killer in a mask" kind of fare, this does not stray too far from the formula.  It is just difficult to watch something where several of the worst characters in it are not even the real "bad guys".

THE REDEEMER: SON OF SATAN
(1978)
Dir - Constantine S. Gochis
Overall: WOOF

When pretentiousness meets amateur filmmaking, you are either in for a laugh or one abysmal movie-going experience.  Constantine S. Gochis' The Redeemer: Son of Satan, (The Class Reunion Massacre), is unfortunately very much the latter.  While it is adequately photographed, (the only positive it deserves), the pacing is all over the place, the acting atrocious, and the story is a conglomerate of cliched afterthoughts such as another overly-zealous preacher who wants to punish rudimentary-labeled sinners, pecking off murder victims in another locked building, and another creepy demon kid or some horseshit.  It could not be more sloppy in how it is all put together.  The movie goes from having scenes where the director seems to have forgotten to yell "cut", to others that are spliced together so frantically that the same director supposedly forgot to put some scenes in between them.  Immediately after a woman is murdered in a bathroom by the murderer dressed as a clown while her friend discovers the body, (how he got into this room or out is of course left a mystery), the same guy is in a completely different part of the building dressed as a mustached detective shown in mid conversation with his next victim while his last victim is then shown again exactly where we last saw her.  There are more examples of this disregard of proper physics where the killer has all of the time in the world to immediately be everywhere as well as seven hundred steps ahead of everyone.  Furthermore, the low-grade actors stuck in this dung heap can hardly do anything with the material that they are given in the first place and the self-righteous religious nonsense just makes it extra awful.

70's Italian Horror Part Six

THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT
(1973)
Dir - Luigi Batzella/Joe D'Amato
Overall: GOOD

It leans a little too heavy on cliches that act as plotholes and spends several minutes too many slugging the pace down with characters walking around looking for things, but for the most part The Devil's Wedding Night, (Full Moon of the Virgins), is an innocent and fun, Gothic horror gem.  Apparently American-though-very-Italian-looking start Mark Damon had gotten his hands on a version of the script which he was eager to make, eventually coming to life once producer Franco Gaudenzi got on board.  Acting as a debut for both Luigi Batzella, (Nude for Satan), and Joe D'Amato, (Beyond the Darkness), each director shot and then re-shot various scenes, yet the result is thankfully quite uniform and consistent.  The story presents yet another scenario where bold, non-superstitious travelers find a flimsy reason to travel to Dracula's castle, (even more conveniently on the eve of some kind of virgin moon blood sacrifice Satan whatever event), and of course lots of naked women, bright red blood, spooky catacombs, and all sorts of evil are on display.  It is hardly anything to take too seriously, but the filmmakers utilize just enough care to make it rather captivating and occasionally even clever.  There is a twin brother angle that is used to make the audience second guess a few instances and of course a final, bleak tag at the end that actually does seem to be there to make you chuckle.  Yet it is all excellently atmospheric and charmingly blasphemous, proving to be a rather textbook and strong example of Hammer-inspired, occult, 70's Euro-horror in an era with plenty to choose from.

THE ANTICHRIST
(1974)
Dir - Alberto De Martino
Overall: MEH

There are moments of worth to Alberto De Martino's The Antichrist, (L'anticristo, The Tempter), yet another deliberate Euro-Exorcist knock-off made quickly and comparatively on the cheap.  The cast is not altogether undistinguished with familiar faces Arthur Kennedy and Alida Valli present.  Sonically and visually it is frequently exceptional even with some pretty dated special effects here or there.  The black mass scene in particular could not be better, (or more 70s), and the opening around an elaborate Catholic ceremony with a bizarre Virgin Mother statue plays out very sinisterly with whispered voices and screechy violins on the soundtrack, cues which would thankfully appear later on as well.  Everywhere else, it is predictable and drab.  Ippolita Oderisi, (Carla Gravina), is unlikable even before the devil starts speaking explicitly through her and there are the usual scenes of concerned family members talking to priests and whatnot, slowing things down until we get to the inevitable exorcism of course.  Director Alberto De Martino, (who would go on to make the hilariously stupid The Pumaman six years later, much to the delight of MST3K fans), does a decent enough job with the weird dream sequences and demonic possession scenes.  Still, a hundred and twelve minutes is an unnecessary amount of time for such material with much of the pussyfooting around easily something that could have been done away with to get to more of the Satan.

THE BLOODSTAINED SHADOW
(1978)
Dir - Antonio Bido
Overall: MEH

All the hallmarks are present in Antonio Bido's The Bloodstained Shadow, (Solamente nero, Only Blackness), to make it what it is; a giallo by numbers affair.  Goblin provides the music, its two leads are Lino Capolicchio, (The House with Laughing Windows), and Stefania Casini, (Suspiria), the entire movie is one boring wait after the other to see some other suspicious character get picked off by a disguised killer, and the end reveal is easy to guess by who is left.  Bido in fact plays all of his cards so competently that it actually makes the movie rather unremarkable because of it.  Just like the uncountable amounts of teen slasher films alone that would begin to emerge like a rapid-growing pestilence across the VHS horror landscape in the coming few years following, so little of an attempt is made to differentiate The Bloodstained Shadow from the plethora of works that came before it that its mere existence is pointless.  The performances are all toned-down and the twist is not any more nonsensical than any others, but maybe if they were it would actually be a bit more of a hoot since by 1978, it would have been fair game for filmmakers to already be making fun of these movies instead of playing them so bland and serious.  Yet just like avid, easily pleased slasher movie fans, for those who cannot get enough of the Italian variety, this movie sure crosses all of its T's and dots all of its I's.

70's Italian Horror Part Five

NIGHT OF THE DEVILS
(1972)
Dir - Giorgio Feronni
Overall: MEH

Mill of the Stone Woman director Giorgio Feronni made his second to last film Night of the Devils, (La notte dei diavoli, La noche de los diablos), as a co-production between Italian and Spanish companies, one such company being founded by one of the actors appearing here.  It is a pretty dull affair truth be told, even with a dark be it predictable ending and a premise that we have seen a thousand times of a family isolated in the middle of the woods who have to lock up their doors at night because of something evil outside.  Of course, the concept of just getting up and moving away is never an option because why would it be?  The cliches in tow are not the problem though.  It primarily falls on director Feronni's shoulders, since he never kicks the pace up enough to stop the viewer from tuning out.  Scenes showing people walking around and not saying or doing anything of particular interest simply go on too long and this actually gets in the way of making the movie have any sense of urgent dread.  It has a few successful moments if looked at on their own though, particularly near the end where our main protagonist seems genuinely terrified as a horde of zombie/vampire/witch/whatevers are attacking him.  Said horde of which includes two cackling children, something that is usually a plus.

BABA YAGA
(1973)
Dir - Corrado Farina
Overall: MEH

The character of Baba Yaga as she appears in the film baring her name has zero resemblance to her Russian folklore counterpart.  Instead, the movie Baba Yaga is an adaptation of one of Guido Crepax's erotic Vanelntia comics.  Director and screenwriter Corrado Farina, (in his second and last feature film), does make a purposeful attempt to spice up the presentation, frequently flash-cutting between the past and present while the film is edited in an occasionally bizarre manner where characters are having continuing conversations over the course of several different locations, presumably with large enough amounts of time in between to make them peculiar.  This could be the work of cuts that were made to Farina's original run of the movie against his will and could not be restored, cuts which omitted some twenty minutes due to it being too slow.  In any event, it is a somewhat strange movie with an interesting premise of a witch or something using a doll or something to murder people through a camera or something.  Also, Nazis because why not?  If the specifics sound unimportant, that is because that is precisely how they are treated by the filmmakers.  This is kind of a bummer since we need a little more information to make what is intriguing actually work.  Whether easily bored, cut-happy studio heads or Farina himself is to blame is forever a mystery, but it is a flawed end product all the same.

THE HAND THAT FEEDS THE DEAD
(1974)
Dir - Sergio Garrone
Overall: MEH

Now speaking of slow and boring, good grief.  Shot in Istanbul along with Lover of the Monster during an eight week period with the same actors and crew, The Hand That Feeds the Dead, (La mano che nutre la morte), sounds like it is worth seeing if you take into account that it has Klaus Kinski in it playing an unofficial Dr. Frankenstein type character.  There is nothing else good you can say about it besides that brief little synopsis though.  This is one of the biggest offenders of not knowing how to pace your film.  Not only do all of the scenes linger on longer than they should which is common enough, but every character in it seems to be in the opposite of a hurry.  There are moments where people are literally laying around barely able to move and the camera just stays on them endlessly as we wait for something to happen.  Kinski is dubbed which is nothing new yet even though he does his usual shtick of being calmly creepy, it does not work here because every shot is so lackadaisical that you end up using every ounce of will power just to get through the whole thing.  Sergio Garrone, (who also penned the screenplay), primarily made spaghetti westerns, but judging by his work here, it is not likely that they pack any more of a wallop.

70's Italian Horror Part Four

ARCANA
(1972)
Dir - Giulio Questi
Overall: MEH

Writer/director Giulio Questi's last theatrically released movie before moving permanently into television was Arcana, an experimental art film that bares as much resemblance to the work of David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Luis Buñuel, or Frederico Fellini as any other that you can think of.  It also comes off as rather exploitative with a barrage of uncomfortable, disturbing imagery put there solely for the sake of shock value more or less, (incest anyone?).  Questi by all accounts was a rather uncompromising filmmaker with somewhat of an anarchist agenda, one who wished to challenge his audience as much as possible, proclaiming in the very first frame here that the movie "is not a story, but a game of cards".  Split into two parts, the first is still bizarre, but it at least seems to be going somewhere.  The second on the other hand unleashes hell and throws logic to the ether.  While it is a bit fascinating to watch, (be it uneasily so at times), it does seem to just be a random barrage of images with none of the characters behaving in any remotely comprehensible manner.  It also probably was not meant to be anything else, but in the world of pretentious art cinema, Questi's choice to have his images be devoid of meaning does rather give it a pointless feeling.  That said, you can generally champion the bizarre nature of the film and for those that are curious, it is certainly worth a gander.

THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK
(1974)
Dir - Francesco Barilli
Overall: GOOD

With a title like The Perfume of the Lady in Black, (Il profumo della signora in nero), and coming out of Italy in the mid 70s, one would logically assume that this is another in an endless stream of silly giallos made liberally in said country at the time.  Not only is it pleasantly very much not, (giallos are fine, but it is nice to be surprised now and again), it is also a borderline superb, supernaturally-vague thriller with an utterly perfect ending.  There is undeniably some confusion as to the details of how everything plays out, but co-writer/director Francesco Barilli keeps everything more tightly constructed than usual.  European horror, (particularly of the Italian variety), often has a knack to make logical plot points a secondary concern, but the mysterious, long con played on Mimsy Farmer's Silvia here does not drop anything like an utterly random room full of barbed wire at us per example.  Premises where seemingly one person seems to be succumbing to madness with everyone around him/her acting on the side of peculiar are always a good place to start.  One could fairly see this as an Italian answer to Rosemary's Baby, to the point where it is likely no accident that Farmer looks more than a bit like Mia Farrow.  Also while the ball can often be dropped with a limp payoff, thankfully that is not the case here.  Again, you may be scratching your head over a few specifics, but the outcome is fiendishly clever enough to make it possibly one of Italy's most overlooked horror films.

LAST CANNIBAL WORLD
(1977)
Dir - Ruggero Deodato
Overall: MEH

The cannibal boom which emerged out of Italy in the early 1970s after the success of Umberto Lenzi's Il paese del sesso selvaggio was by nature a rather unpleasant sub-genre, itself a more fictionalized and exploitative extension of the mondo documentary cinema movement which began a decade earlier in the same country.  Last Cannibal World, (Ultimo mondo cannibale, Cannibal the Last Survivor, Jungle Holocaust), was the first such entry into this nasty, Euro-horror movement from Ruggero Deodato who would make the even more barbaric and unflinching Cannibal Holocaust three years later.  While the same routine of people getting marooned in the jungle with a primitive tribe that wants to eat them as well as each other is the same as ever, comparatively to Cannibal Holocaust at least, this is a more "tame" version.  The real life animal murdering is still there yet in less graphic detail and it is mostly reserved to the mondo style version of seeing the animals themselves attacking and devouring each other.  Make no mistake though, the movie is still loaded with explicit and nauseating footage of chest cavities getting ripped open and gorged upon, plus rape, filth, and torture everywhere else.  The appeal of these films is assuredly a mystery, but credit where it is due; Last Cannibal World delivers in all of the unwholesome ways one would be accustomed to.  Also, what the fuck was with the lush, romantic music during that final cannibal feast?  Someone should have probably gotten fired over that move.

70's Italian Horror Part Three

THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES
(1972)
Dir - Emilio P. Miraglia
Overall: MEH

The final film by Emilio P. Miraglia, (who also made The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave the previous year), was yet another elaborately silly giallo made during the sub-genre's prime era.  Combining a ghostly legend straight out of any Gothic horror film and fusing it with a typically complex, "whodunit" premise posing practically every character we meet as a possible suspect, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, (La dama rossa uccide sette volte), is especially difficult to follow even compared to most.  For one, it does not help that nearly every female in it looks exactly the same and one male character seems to be romantically involved with most of them which kind of makes you scratch your head regularly as to who the hell you are watching do what.  Naturally though, the killer reveal is even more head-scratching and involves switched identities, perplexing us even more as to who is who and supposed to be who else.  Miraglia and cinematographer Alberto Spagnoli thankfully save the film from being completely bland.  The first official kill scene is fantastically done, but also raises expectations that perhaps the supernatural details would be further emphasized before the movie switches into predictable mode and goes through the commonplace motions of people killing people over money and making them think ghosts are real and blah, blah, blah.

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN
(1974)
Dir - Paul Morrissey
Overall: MEH

What can fairly be described as one of the dumbest movies ever made, Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein was the first of two Italian scam productions along with Carlo Ponti that he made, (Blood for Dracula being the other also ridiculous one).  Antonio Margheriti was credited as a director in Italy due to some legal loopholes that needed to be bypassed and by all available accounts, Margheriti directed virtually nothing and same as "producer" Andy Warhol, was only on set one or two times tops.  Morrissey wrote dialog for his actors on the spot and the words spoken in this trash-fest are as ludicrous as they come, ("To know death Otto, you have to fuck life...in the gallbladder!" deserves its own standing ovation).  Udo Kier for whatever reason dove in, full-tilt and his is an exaggerated performance few can hold a candle to, one which single handedly saves the film from being a waste of time.  It is still ultimately a terrible movie due to the fact that Morrissey has not the skill to successfully parody either the European, Gothic horror movies nor the counterculture trash films that he himself was responsible for making.  It is unmistakably funny at times and as distasteful as anything from the time period ever got, yet it drags for large chunks, becoming more incompetently laughable than creatively in on its own joke.  I will say that the movie looks pretty excellent with the Baron's laboratory being effectively spacious and decorated.  Also, the gore is plenty eye-popping and gross.

BEYOND THE DARKNESS
(1979)
Dir - Joe D'Amato
Overall: MEH

Joe D'Amato was a shameless proprietor of sleaze throughout his career and Beyond the Darkness, (Buio Omega, In quella casa Buio omega), is his repugnant, gory, and utterly tasteless remake of Mino Guerrini's The Third Eye.  None of these adjectives that I am using to describe the man's work are meant to be defamatory by the way, but one would be misinformed to make the assumption that really any of his movies, (particularly this one), were made to be anything besides exploitative trash.  Allegedly, D'Amato told his actors on set "We're making a movie to make people throw up. We must make 'em vomit!", so the guy knew his trade and knew it well.  In the "eeewww" regard, this has a generous amount to offer.  A woman gorges on a human heart in a stew, (with extreme, food and slobber pouring out the mouth close-up and sound effects to boot!), a guy gets jerked off by his motherly housemaid who also feeds him her boobs to suckle on, she announces that they are going to get married, she then stabs him in the dick and rips his eye out before he bites her face off, and plenty of other women get tortured and mutilated in graphic fashion.  The ending which brings in a twin sister, (of all things), for no reason is fittingly ridiculous as well.  Goblin actually did the music for this one which is always appreciated, but it is still pretty much your typical keyboard-laced, occasionally funky, late 70s thriller/action movie score and nothing as bloodcurdlingly awesome as Suspiria.  Then again, what is?

A Tale of Two Nine Year Old Kiss Fans

A TALE OF TWO NINE YEAR OLD KISS FANS

There is never a dull moment in Kamp Kiss.  Is Kamp Kiss an authorized, official thing?  Like Kiss' own version of summer camp or the boy-scouts or some shit?  If not, Gene Simmons is asleep at the wheel there.

Yet anyway where was I?  Oh yes, for any member of the Kiss Army or even the casual rock fan, one is bound to notice the seemingly endless amount of drama revolving around this band that has been dressing up like horny superhero mimes and blowing shit up since since 1974.  Well, technically they took a break from the looking like mimes part for a few years but you know what I mean.  Wherever anything Kiss is concerned, there is plenty to talk about, be it past members being mad at each other, Kiss fans being mad at other Kiss fans, former Kiss fans being mad at other former Kiss fans, former Kiss fans being mad at current Kiss fans, or just whatever the fuck Vinnie Vincent is currently doing.  Again, the moments are never dull is what I am saying.

This fuckin' guy, amiright?

At this writing, Kiss is a month and some change into their End of the Road tour.  By all available logic to humankind, this will in fact be the last trek across the globe that the band will ever take before retiring at least that part of their business.  Whether we will get a Kiss 2.0, more DVDs, more new music, more new Kiss Koffins, a theatrically released documentary and/or biopic that is as historically inaccurate as Bohemian Rhapsody was are all to be determined.  Yeah Kiss says a lot of things, but they are also pushing seventy and one would imagine that there are only so many times that one can cry wolf so yes, I actually do believe them this time.

Because it is a three year tour that is hitting every city that they have ever played, maybe some others just to leave no stone un-turned, and well, because it is Kiss, this is a fairly big deal in the rock world.  It is also one that many parties are participating in getting some headlines out of.  Nikki Six and Tommy Lee have called Kiss out for stealing their own farewell tour stage, but those guys also have a biopic coming out on Netflix presently and have certainly learned a thing or two from Gene Simmons in that steadfast and true "say something stupid to get people talking" tactic.  So good for them.  Also good for Ace Frehley, (I mean his wife, girlfriend, pimp?), calling Gene and Paul out for still not wanting to work with him after twelve years of sobriety, nor including him in the farewell tour that he was never going to be included in to begin with and blah, blah, fuck blah.  Also of course, good for Vinnie Vincent for doing...your guess is as good as mine.

This fuckin' guy, (ma'am?), amiright?

Yet that is not what I am here to write about.  A quick scroll through my blog's archives will establish that I am rather a genuine Kiss fan to say the very least.  That being the case, it should not be surprising that I, A) have always played Kiss in the car when I have my kids with me and B) because of this or just because Kiss music is awesome, my kids have become Kiss fans.  Then because of THAT, I decided to take two of them that were at the rather ideal age, (nine), to go see the End of the Road tour in Chicago on Saturday, March 3rd of this year which also marked their very first concert experience ever.

I also want to say that while both of them being into Kiss was something I certainly paved the road for, they also took it upon themselves to be fans.  My oldest daughter digs the costumes and makeup, but honestly is not that big on their music while my two youngest can still kind of take or leave the band at this point.  The nine year olds though?  Different deal.  Several years ago my daughter started getting the small talk out of the way as quickly as possible when I would pick her up from school and instead get out with a "Dad, can we listen to Kiss?" in earnest.  This tradition is something that has not changed since.  Now that her and her brother are old enough to actually have fond memories of their first concert experience and both of them legit jumped up and down all excited-like when we told them they were going to this concert, I would say that it is a safe bet that they really are fans and have not just been playing a long con on me this whole time.  The evidence seems to support such a thing at least.

Oddly enough, this is the daughter that is NOT that big of a Kiss fan.

So yes, we went to see the End of the Road show which also happened to be the first time I had seen the band since the, (other), Farewell Tour in 2000.  Since then I honestly have not had a great desire to go to another Kiss concert.  This is where I wil start to get into details about what does not bother me about what Kiss has been doing since that time.  For one, I have not avoided seeing my favorite active band because two guys who are not Ace Frehley and Peter Criss are wearing their makeup.  That reality makes the most logical sense out of anything I can imagine.  I love Pete and I love Ace, but the former was and has always been a pain in the ass and possibly bipolar or something which is not a knock on him yet something he himself even admitted to in enough instances in his own autobiography Make Up to Break Up: My Life In and Out of Kiss.  On that note, Ace has until the last decade and some change been an active alcoholic and by his own account in his own autobiography No Regrets, has also always been a lazy, lazy man who expects to act like a rock star and usually cannot be bothered with such activities as say being on time to things or carrying his own gear ever.

So, Paul and Gene get a chance to resurrect their band, (which they never quit/got fired from btw), in the mid-nineties out of most likely finishing their career on the theater circuit like most classic rock era bands that are still going right?  They do this by launching a hugely successful, arena-filling reunion tour with the original members that surpasses even their expectations and permanently cements their place in pop culture as a household name, right?  So when Ace and Peter were basically being Ace and Peter like they always were, Gene and Paul then decided to move on without them and instead get two ridiculously reliable and competent yes men that were perfectly happy with their salaries and in the process, the band kept selling lots of tickets and remained in the public eye ,right?  Call it luck or crafty business tactics or whatever you want to but man, wise move there.

"So the show's at 8 PM sharp, I have to carry my own guitar, and can't drink any alcohol?  Sure thing Skip!" - (probably) Tommy Thayer

Me not going to see Kiss in the last eighteen years is because first and foremost, I love Kiss' music.  Whatever do I mean by that?  Well, the stage show is still as good as they get and the costumes and make-up and all that shit is certainly cool, but nearly all my favorite Kiss songs are ones that they do not touch live with a ten foot pole.  So my desire to see them play the same songs they had already been doing since the Reunion Tour more or less just was not something I was into.  I also have to point out though that I am simply not one of those "I have to see the bands I love every time they come to town guys" to begin with.  In my twenties I would make more of an effort but really, having kids, having bills, and having only so much disposable income or babysitters to rely on has limited what shows I make a priority to check out and which ones I do not.  Basically, if I have already seen it and it is still pretty much the same deal just with some new bombs or a costume change, I am good with the experiences that I have already had.  This is just me though.  People who see multiple shows a tour and see every tour that comes around no matter what the act, go you.  I can dig it, I just do not partake.

Seeing the End of the Road show this time therefor was almost entirely based on the fact that I had the chance to make two nine year olds very happy to see the band that for so many years have set the high standard of how amazing a live show can possibly be.  Also, they are a band that both of my kids legitimately loved even before they knew said band split blood, dropped confetti from the ceiling, or shot rockets out of their guitars.  Like me, my kids like Kiss' music and that was basically it.  Besides a few YouTube videos, (mostly from the 80s because I have learned em that everything Paul sang in that decade was better than anything any band has ever done), my kids really did not know anything about "The Kiss show".  Especially once I knew this final tour was around the corner, I started to make it a point NOT to play them any of the Kissologies, documentaries or really anything beyond just giving them a bunch of my old Kiss pictures that decorated my room when I was in jr. high and high school.  I wanted them to see it in person and get that very rare experience in the information age to actually get something close to "blown away" by what they saw.

So I essentially wanted my kids to pull a Ted Theodore Logan.

Besides them never being exposed to anything so loud before, (yes I had them wear earplugs), and getting a little uncomfortable during the middle of the set, my kids had a remarkable time.  My daughter raised up the horns and danced around like a goofball for large parts of it and her eyes noticeably widened when they played her favorite Kiss song "I Was Made for Loving You", the smile on my son's face never left him, (oh and he was the only one who wore any make up, my daughter chickening out last minute), and both of them clapped when Paul told them to and ran around like mad afterwards grabbing confetti off the floors to take home.

On the other hand, they did not jump up and down like maniacs, (we were in the upper nosebleeds which anyone who has been to the United Center can attest to are rather steep and not meant for such excitable concert-going behavior), they did not sing along, they did not leave the show saying how they were going to form their own band, and they were quick to get back to talking about other things nine year olds talk about, (Minecraft and Fortnite mostly).  Yet that is alright.  For me to say I was disappointed because they were not speechless after the show or so ecstatically into it during the show as to faint like teenage girls watching The Beatles in 1964 would be ridiculous.  My kids became Kiss fans from listening to my favorite deep cut Kiss songs in the car and then after seeing them, they said they absolutely loved it and I believe them.

Pictured: Not my nine year olds.

So this is what I am writing all this about.  There are a handful of fans, ex-fans, whatever you want to call it fans that are not in the position I am nor have the mindset that I have which is their right and totally cool.  They can say any grown men are morons who "wanna be twelve again", do not care about the lip-singing, think there is no lip-singing, do not care about the different guys in make-up, do not care about the set list not being whatever, do not care about Kiss being so old now that they cannot run around and do high kicks on stage anymore, do not care about the price of the VIP meet and greets, do not care that Paul's stage raps are the same as they ever were, do not care that Gene and Paul are hypocrites, and do not care that the band should have packed it in seventeen years ago.  Go for it.  Say what you like, argue what you like, buy what Kiss products you like or do not, it is all good and it is all cool.  Personally, I like listening to Kiss music because it is my favorite music.  Personally I am thrilled that Kiss did NOT pack it in a decade and a half ago, instead sticking around until Paul's voice was shot, Gene's too out of shape to move around on stage, and Ace and Peter are either butt-hurt or in-different that they are not involved.

You know why I am thrilled?  Because I got to take my two nine year olds to see their first concert which just so happens to be of a band that both they and I love to listen to and now, love to watch.  Once this is over, a tribute band will be the best we can do and if you think that sounds better and would be a preferable experience for a nine year old because it has "more integrity" and is actually100% live or what the fuck ever, great, who is to argue?  I for one am glad that I got to take them to see Gene and Paul plus two other guys that they do not even care are not the original guys play songs that they know and love. For the rest of their life whenever anyone asks em what their first concert was, they will both have the same answer.  They will also both add that "it was awesome".  That is why I am happy to be a Kiss fan and that is why I do not care about all of the drama in the Kiss world.  Bitch about it, draw your line where you like, accept it, or laugh at it like I do and vote with your wallet like we all do.  If Ace and Peter were in Kiss, if I got to pick the set list and take out virtually everything in it, if Paul's voice was still godlike and as incredible as it was in his prime, if the band could still move around like athletes, if, if, if.  Kiss is their own band and they can run it however they want and if I was too preoccupied with not enjoying it for all of the reasons I can find, then you know what?  I would have missed this moment with two of my spawn; a moment that I and they will always remember.

Thank you Kiss.  Glad as always to give you my money.