Night of the Living Dead

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

(1968)

Dir - George A. Romero

Overall: GREAT

Fifty-two years and some days ago, George A. Romero and a devoted collection of Pittsburgh natives all chipped in, (and without realizing it at the time), changed the horror film forever with Night of the Living Dead.  Is there anything left to say after all these decades later concerning possibly the most written about and critically examined movie that the genre ever produced?  It is cherished and beloved.  It is hugely influential.  It is culturally significant as much today as it was during the era of civil unrest and the Vietnam War in which it was produced.  It is one of the most inspiring and successful independent movies ever made.  Really, if you have not seen it by now, why would you even be reading this or be on a blog like this in the first place?

There are many aspects then to Romero's undead masterpiece, (and truly one of the best American movies of any kind to emerge from the 1960s), that make it remarkable.  Romero and his company The Latent Image was formed along with friends John Russo and Russell Streiner, both of whom appeared in the film.  As well as being the co-screenwriter on the finished product, Russo shows up as a random zombie; Streiner as Johnny aka the "They're Coming to Get You Barbara" guy.  Having tooled away making commercials and even Mister Rogers' Neighborhood shorts, they eventually acquired a 35 mm camera for the job of an elaborate, Fantastic Voyage spoof for Calgon soap.  With this new piece of fancy gear at their disposal, the crew got restless and wanted to attempt making an actual full-length movie with it.  They quickly abandoned an Ingmar Bergman-esque, introspective period drama called Whine of the Fawn which Romero had penned a script for and instead went with the more crowd pleasing genre of horror.

 

There can be no modern zombie culture without...soap!

A new production company called Image Ten was then formed with the Latent Image guys along with Karl Hardman, (Mr. Cooper), and Marilyn Eastman, (Helen Cooper).  After various other investors came on board, (many of whom also appeared in the finished film), a budget of a hundred and fourteen thousand dollars was eventually raised.  Small potatoes indeed to put a movie together, primarily with non actors and no legitimate studio backing.  It got made on sheer will power alone it seemed, with nearly everyone on screen also serving some other behind the scene duties to get the job done.

 

By the time that it was completed and shopped around for a distributor, everyone passed on it or if not, Romero passed on them for wanting the ending changed to something more conventionally uplifting.  Sticking to their guns and almost having wasted their time and resources with no one willing to get it shown in theaters, the Manhattan-based company Walter Read Organization finally agreed to distribute it, but again under a condition.  Thankfully, this one ended up being for the best as they wanted to change the more misleadingly schlocky title of Night of the Flesh Eaters to the comparatively more eerie Night of the Living Dead.  Of course in the process they also forgot to add a copyright indication to the new title on all of the prints, thus ensuring that the movie remained in the public domain until this day.  That is another story entirely though.

 

The less that's spoken about the 30th Anniversary abomination that only exists because any asshole can legally add their own footage to Night of the Living Dead, the better.

When finally unleashed upon an audience, the initial critical response was lukewarm since the film was pared with hokey B-movies for the drive-in crowd, as was common of such low-budget fare of the day.  Before too long and particularly due to the more positive recognition it received in Europe though, NOTLD was re-released back home and truly began making its undeniable mark and finding its audience in the process.

 

No hyperbole is necessary in considering it a legitimate game changer.  For the most part, the horror film up until this point had changed with the times as far as cultural interest, but they were still formulaic in their approach.  Whether dealing with Gothic literary and folklore tropes based around vampires, ghosts, werewolves, mummies, or man-made monsters, all the way to the more atomic age of the 50s and 60s where giant, behemoth-like creatures or Communist stand-in aliens from neighboring planets besieged the human race, nothing like what was show in Night of the Living Dead resembled anything of the sort.  Certainly the outcome of the film was far more desolate and bleak than any Godzilla or Universal monster movie had been.

Behold, true bleakness in its most cinematic of forms.

The "zombies" here are not referred to as such, only as "ghouls".  This was because the traditional film zombie was a resurrected body under mystical, voodoo hypnotism with some diabolical master pulling the strings.  In Romero's film, people inexplicably come back to life and even more inexplicably seek to CONSUME life by attacking and eating any living specimen that they can get their hands on.  The monsters in this case are regular, once normal people.  They are not under a curse, bitten by a supernatural being, existing ethereally between two worlds, sent from outer space, caused by radiation, or made in a lab; they are just the recently dead who no longer are going to stay that way.  There is a simplicity there that is unnerving.  Romero offers no explanation because none was necessary.  The void left by giving any such details to the audience is in turn far more frightening and concerning than anything that a screenplay could have divulged to us.

The fear of the unknown is a prominent component to most of the best horror stories out there and certainly to this one.  Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, (released six years prior), likewise presents its threat as a random occurrence, simply throwing its characters in the midst of unexplainable chaos for the duration of two hours.  Perhaps in both films, a Biblical parallel can be drawn.  Mankind has lost its humanity and as the equally brilliant sequel Dawn of the Dead would proclaim as a possible "answer", there is simply "no more room in hell".

 

Always room for fat juicy bugs though amiright?

Romero deliberately wanted to present his ghoul-outbreak from ground zero, yet he wastes no time in getting right to the good stuff as the industry executives would say.  The opening scene in an unassuming cemetery in broad daylight begins innocently enough, sans for the stock, scary music that signifies in a subtle yet assured way that something is already awry in what we are seeing.  Within minutes, that concerned feeling we already have is justified as a man randomly begins attacking the only two speaking characters we have thus far met.  One of them is presumably killed in an instant; so much for that guy being a main player.  This leaves Barbara who just in the minuscule amount of dialog that we are given, is already proven to be on-edge by being sensitive to her surroundings that once scared her as a kid.  Now the scary stuff is real; now it is unexplained.  It will remain that way for the rest of the movie.

The bulk of Night of the Living Dead takes place in an abandoned farmhouse, one that the crew were able to rent on the cheap as it was fit to be demolished soon afterwards.  This proves not to be a detriment since Romero even as a twenty-seven year old, first-time filmmaker was already primarily interested in presenting social commentary to go along with the horror.  It is an ideal location for such a thing.  With the utterly random realization that the dead are no longer going to stay dead let alone leave the living alone, there is also the realization that society itself will collapse along with it in such a claustrophobic environment no less.

 

In many ways, creepier than any haunted mansion would ever be.

The characters cooped up in that farmhouse are from all different walks of life; Barbara is an immediately traumatized, young attractive white woman, Ben is a strong-willed, practical oriented black man, Mr. Cooper is a scared, bald, stubborn suburban dad with an uneasy relationship with his frustrated and equally frightened wife, Tom and Judy are a young, optimistic couple from the country.  None of them are proven to be right or wrong in their actions.  Some may have more likable or benevolent qualities than others, but Romero and Russo's script wisely make them all flawed to some extent.  These characters are as textbook as anything else in the movie, meaning they are not textbook at all.  They are presented as real, unremarkable people who are caught in a very real, unexplained, and horrifically deadly scenario.  They mean well, but they also make that scenario worse and in the process, the dead keep on coming.

The film's relentless quality then is made more so by all the people on screen not being able to get along.  No matter what they agree on, disagree on, no matter what they do or refuse to do, the rules have changed and none of it matters.  It is a grim film in every respect though arguably, it is never more grim than in its final moments.

 

After enduring the night of the title only by frantically giving in to the one reality that he violently riled against Mr. Cooper about the whole film, (that the cellar really was the safest place to hide out), Ben emerges the next morning in a daze, yet still cautious.  The ghouls have dispersed.  The audience knows what Ben does not know though; that a militia of local good ole boys strapped to the gills with firearms and what would otherwise be drug-sniffing dogs are taking out all of the walking corpses that they can find, adding them "to the fire" as they do so.  We see what is coming and after the ordeal that we have just witnessed and then briefly feeling optimistic for Ben's future as the one character who is going to survive, it is even more visceral how that optimism is broken.  Especially for audiences of the time, their brains were wired not to expect the worst.  Ben's emergence from the cellar to a house full of no zombies clearly indicates that he is going to be OK and there is now some semblance of hope right?  Of course we know the answer to that and Romero and company had no intention of ending their tiny, "little engine that could", indie horror movie on any such buoyant note.

That combination look of "Oh shit" and "I've been up all goddamn night listening to dead people wanting to eat me".

As a piece of social commentary, Night of the Living Dead is viably potent.  Romero and Russo chose not to change any part of their script concerning Ben being an African American.  Actor Duane Jones was simply the best candidate for the part.  Much praise has been given to the movie and rightfully so over no mention at any time by any character as to the fact that Ben is black.  Once again, it does not matter.  In this universe, this earth-shattering, safety-shattering, conventional horror film shattering world, no one makes it out alive, their skin color be damned.  The only ones that are shown to have been spared becoming flesh-eating ghouls are the hillbilly "saviors" with riffles who do not even bother to make sure that Ben is not all dead and all messed up before they shoot him.  He is shot anyway and the film ends with the titles shown over disturbing still photographs of his body being dragged away and the rounding up of the undead continuing as just a new thing to be taken care of.  There is no emotion to these images.  They are instead presented matter of factly.

 

In 1968, the first ever televised war was the one in Vietnam.  Pictures from both that and the race riots in major metropolitan areas were being shown across the country.  The final, unapologetically relevant images at the end of the movie present this fictional world as a mere stones throw away from the actual one of the time.  On that note, to hell with the "of the time" nonsense.  In 2020, these images still hit home as they did at the end of the 1960s.  Much has changed, but clearly much remains the same.  War and racial inequality are still very much a thing and perhaps the only saving grace that Romero's landmark film leaves us with is that well, at least the dead have not come back to eat us alive.  Yet.

Another saving grace is that at least we know to shoot 'em in the head now.

There would be more Living Dead movies under Romero's direction in the decades to come.  One of them was on par with its predecessor here, one was flawed yet still damn enjoyable, and the last three, well, Romero is no longer with us so let us not speak ill of the actual dead.  In any event, Night of the Living Dead begat what is now the conventionally regarded film zombie.  What started as an intentional deviation from the previously established, cinematic walking corpse in turn came to define it.  This was a movie that made no apologies for its unforgiving finale and whose relatively crude production qualities, cinematography, and performances made it seem less like a popcorn-ready product and more like an unflinching glimpse into a disheartening world, as far as possible from the kind that Hollywood was frequently presenting.  It ushered in new possibilities for what the horror film could do and set an unreachable hallmark for regional filmmaking.

 

The American New Wave found its first poster boy for the horror genre here.  Just as unexpected as the actual goings on in the movie itself is how unexpected it was that such a film came out of Pittsburgh of all places by a Bronx native with a TV commercial background who scrapped up enough cash with his friends and eager local business men and women to make it.  It is one of the best and enduring examples of how the studio system can be avoided with the right film at the right time made by the right people with the right agenda and frame of mind.  Romero and his band of misfits may have innocently just wanted to make a horror movie because they could do it affordably and it would be a nice little bit of fun, but the perfect storm of ingenuity, conventional cinematic defiance, and luck paved the way for an entire new crop of filmmakers to break more rules.  Everything that came in its wake owes it a considerable amount of gratitude.  It will stand as a paramount work so long as humanity can crumble into a storm of flesh-eating chaos and so long as unsuspecting people just trying to visit a graveyard at a cemetery can get freaked out by that guy walking kind of strange towards them in the distance.

It is bad enough that they had a three hour drive back, now they gotta do it with a broken window.  Sigh.

80's Italian Horror Part Three

THE HOUSE OF BLUE SHADOWS

(1986)

Dir - Beppe Cino

Overall: MEH

 

An obscure, incoherent, small-scale, and meandering effort from writer/director Beppe Cino, The House of Blue Shadows, (La Casa del Buon Ritorno, The House of Good Returns, Haus der Blauen Schatten, The House with Blue Shutters), is high on atmosphere with nowhere to go story wise.  The cast is small and the entire thing was shot in only twelve days, almost entirely at a single location where it is persistently unclear what is even going on.  Two timelines are bounced back and forth between, (or so it would seem), which adds even more confusion to a dormant plot involving a couple staying in an old house because reasons, who are occasionally visited by a smirking woman from one of their pasts.  Also, there is a masked maybe ghost/maybe killer with an Onibaba mask on and something about a kid that was murdered fifteen years earlier.  It is all conveyed in a murky fashion, deliberately so by Cino who tries to create a spooky, surreal atmosphere that becomes laborious to sit through.  As the man in the relationship, Stefano Gabriniis' performance is hilariously awful as he yells almost all of his lines when not staring into mirrors with no expression on his face whatsoever.  We certainly feel his frustration in watching the finished product.

VAMPIRE IN VENICE
(1988)
Dir - Augusto Caminito/Klaus Kinski
Overall: GOOD

Tales of Klaus Kinski's barbaric difficulty on and off set are legendary and have served as the basis for more than one documentary even.  His resulting shenanigans during the filming of Vampire in Venice, (Nosferatu a Venezia, Prince of the Night), are no exception and included sexually assaulting his female actors, locking himself in his trailer, ignoring rehearsals and staging which forced the cinematographer to rearrange everything last minute, and demanding re-writes and cast changes.  So in other words, just another Klaus Kinski production.  To further complicate matters, the budget doubled, producer Augusto Caminito ended up directing along with an uncredited Kinksi after two other directors were either fired or dropped out for various reasons, and only two thirds of the movie were ultimately shot before everything inevitably collapsed.  It is therefor amazing that such an insufferably troubled production ended up not being a total disaster in its completed form.  While the plotting has absolutely no choice but to become incomprehensible, the thick, densely macabre atmosphere goes a very long way.  Respectable performances from Christopher Plummer, Barbara De Rossi, and a bit over the top Donald Pleasence also help.  Ultimately it is Kinski who remains as mesmerizingly disturbing as ever though.  Of course one cannot condone his atrocious methods, (even after he was forced to apologize on set allegedly), but it undoubtedly comes through as he pulls off one of cinema's most sadistic undead.

THE RED MONKS
(1989)
Dir - Gianni Martucci
Overall: MEH

Oddly out of time for the end of 1989, Gianni Martucci's final directorial effort The Red Monks, (I frati rossi), specifically evokes 60s and 70s Gothic Euro-horror.  It went so far as to attach Lucio Fulci's name to the project as special effects supervisor even though in reality the Italian filmmaker had nothing to do with any part of the movie.  The pacing is a little tighter at times and from a production standpoint it is much more professionally put together than the films it styles itself so closely after.  Though it fixes these all too common hick-ups with its more contemporary presentation, it is still a bit flat in other areas.  What turns out to be a flash-forward opening, (which was tagged on after the final cut by Martucci proved too short), serves no other purpose and the mystery is simple enough, but the payoff nothing to really write home about.  It is also low on gore though liberal with nudity and women getting raped of course.  The evil, Satan praising monks of the title can be directly linked to Amando de Ossorio's Blind Dead series, but while their vividly crimson get ups are indeed striking, naturally they pale in comparison to the highly effective and decrepit walking corpse skeletons of the Knights Templar.  It could be worth seeking out for fans of such material or those looking to scrape the barrel a bit with more obscure and singular stuff from its era, but it is still ultimately mediocre.

80's Italian Horror Part Two

CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE
(1980)
Dir - Antonio Margheriti
Overall: MEH

Coming from an wide-ranging background of Gothic horror, giallos, sword and sandal, westerns, sci-fi, and various other things in between, prolific filmmaker Antonio Margheriti dropped this weird, cannibal/Vietnam hybrid Cannibal Apocalypse, (Apocalypse Domani, Invasion of the Flesh Hunters, Cannibals in the Streets), in between two other just as eclectically paired movies at the dawn of the 80s.  While the film assuredly is not good, by Eurotrash standards it has some goofy, gross-out appeal.  The English dubbing is as wincingly bad as any from the era and certainly helps the already melodramatic performances kicking into an even higher gear with a cartoon cutout police Sargent, a dopey, Southern-accent doctor, and all of the women coming off the most ridiculous.  John Saxon in one of his many appearances in an Italian production is literally the only actor on screen who plays it respectable and he sticks out for better or worse because of it.  Speaking of clashing, the ideas presented in the script deserve some props for uniting the treatment of war veterans with almost a zombie outbreak type of scenario, but again, the movie is too consistently schlocky to make any type of enduring points.  It is plenty gory though and well-paced for a change.

BURIAL GROUND
(1981)
Dir - Andrea Bianchi
Overall: WOOF

Occasionally, something gets unleashed that on paper is so uniquely horrible as to cause nothing but sheer befuddlement.  Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground, (Le Notti del terrore, Nights of Terror, Zombi Horror, The Zombie Dead, Zombie 3), is just such a movie.  A collection of nonsensical set pieces with bizarre production choices such as a twenty-five year old, midget-height actor playing a woman's young, incestuous child is all fascinatingly absurd.  As far as a plot goes, there is none.  The first act features several couples getting interrupted while making out or having sex by either zombies or the weird man-kid, then everyone locks themselves indoors Night of the Living Dead style and the story ends there with about fifty minutes still left to go.  Laughably slow undead is nothing singular to this film when compared to others of the Italian or Spanish variety, but the zombies here not only move like their eternal organs are exclusively made of molasses, but they also variate randomly between the standard biting people to also choking them, throwing things at them, equipping themselves with scythes to break down doors, or pretending to be monks.  The relentless pacing mixed with the total lack of narrative and thoroughly odd details scattered about make it something to see, (and scratch your head at), alright.

THE CHURCH
(1989)
Dir - Michele Soavi
Overall: GOOD

Yet another collaboration between Dario Argento and director Michele Soavi, The Church, (La Chiesa), is a bit problematically slow, but still a somewhat effective "gates of hell" Euro-horror entry.  While it was initially scripted by Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti as the third entry in Lamberto Bava's Dèmoni franchise, (which was likewise produced by Argento), apparently little to no interest was shared with another such sequel and it ultimately shifted into the hands of Soavi who reworked the screenplay as a stand-alone entry.  It still bares some standard calling cards from Argento's projects, namely loose plotting, a score which combines pieces from past collaborators Keith Emerson and Goblin's bassist Fabio Pignatelli, and rather creepy, inappropriate scenes involving Argento's daughter Asia.  Though eerily atmospheric in spots, it takes rather long for things to start moving and even with all of the extra build up, the story is still so thin that it is really not warranted.  When it does stop pussyfooting around though, it is a solid combination of silly and fun set pieces involving lots of gore, characters acting strange, and the occasional live action demon puppet.  Similar to other films of its irk, the flaws can be seen as tolerable so long as the rest of it delivers the evil in a sufficient enough manner, which is mostly the case here.

80's Italian Horror Part One

ZEDER
(1983)
Dir - Pupi Avati
Overall: MEH

The second strange and uneven giallo-esque offering from Pupi Avati after 1976's The House with Laughing Windows, Zeder, (Revenge of the Dead), gets points for little else besides its ambitions and a handful of brief, quite spooky moments.  It is a frustrating example of having a fairly unique enough premise that at very infrequent intervals has glimpses of atmospheric and macabre visuals.   Such things are ultimately wasted when the film is looked at as a whole though.  Once again, Avati's pacing is just dreadful, blowing at least its entire middle hour by advancing the plot with the most mundane, minute conversations between characters.  The problem is that while such things are happening, nothing else is.  This includes anything remotely creepy or befitting to such a genre film.  On that note, the bombastic horror music soundtrack seems to turn on at completely arbitrary intervals, often during scenes where nothing at all foreboding is even happening.  It becomes difficult to tell just what exactly is going on after awhile anyway, but not in a challenging manner.  Instead, the film seems to just meander aimlessly with too many people talking about too many things that are void of interest, let alone scares.

STAGE FRIGHT
(1987)
Dir - Michele Soavi
Overall: MEH

Serving as the behind the lens debut from Dario Argento protégé and actor turned director Michele Soavi, Stage Fright, (Deliria), has a singular premise of a theater trope locked up with a maniac in a rehearsal studio.  On top of that though, Soavi like Argento, (and Alfred Hitchcock before both), focuses on specific little details to rev-up tension.  The finale gets a lot of mileage out of a single key per example.  While the camera work is typically flashy for this kind of giallo-influenced fare and the film is well dressed in general, Soavi does not quite have the chops yet to keep the pacing from slagging, particularly in its first two lumbering acts.  While the final few set pieces do a tremendous job of making up for that, the very ending of the movie seems bafflingly tagged on and becomes both laughable and annoying as the final girl returns to the scene of the crime only to find the dead murderer who the police already took away still there inexplicably.  This is after he got stabbed in the eye, fell from the theater ceiling, and was set on fire.  Which then leads to the janitor rambling about how you have to take the safety off of a handgun before he shoots him "right between the eyes" and proceeds to say just those words about nine-hundred and eighty-four times in the last thirty seconds of the movie.  Remove that moronic nonsense and tighten up the first hour, and the movie passes the test of being a unique enough slasher to recommend.

THE SPIDER LABYRINTH
(1988)
Dir - Gianfranco Giagni
Overall: MEH

The relatively obscure and rather strange The Spider Labyrinth, (Il nido del ragno), remains the only non television or documentary work from director Gianfranco Giagni.  Also serving as his debut, Giagni brought in singer-songwriter Gianfranco Manfredi to co-tweak the initial script that had been floating around for sometime, a script with an odd premise of some kind of spider god worshiping cult operating in Budapest.  It is plenty atmospheric in spots and well shot by cinematographer Nino Celeste, but the first half is a sluggish crawl.  After the kind of pedestrian, standard opening dream sequence, the initial, board room set up that follows is a poor place to kick things into motion and sadly the script never picks up any proper momentum until well past the point of either noticing or caring what is even going on.  There is a mystery at hand, but when that mystery is not properly engaging as is the case here, the entire presentation assuredly suffers.  A freaky spider lady with mad scientist hair, wide eyes, and fangs does provide some much needed jolts, but the real horror movie meat and potatoes set piece doe not come until the very end, though it does make up for some of the humdrum approach of everything proceeding it.  It is probably more worthy of checking out a few select scenes the partaking of the actual complete filmgoing experience if one was so inclined though.

80's Lucio Fulci Part Three

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD
(1980)
Overall: MEH

It may be the first, but Lucio Fulci's City of the Dead, (aka The Gates of Hell), is easily the weakest in his "Gates of Hell Trilogy".  Pick any of his other exertions into this genre and you are going to find plot holes and nonsensical moments galore, but this one seems to do nothing else than pounce from one wacky scene to the next.  A woman puking up her own entrails when a demon/zombie looks at her and makes her eyes bleed is indeed a memorable horror movie moment if ever there was one though.  A few others like the hurricane worthy gust of maggots and Catriona MacColl, (who appeared in all three "Gates" films), waking up after being buried alive are also on point.  Naturally, Euro-horror needs not a rhyme or reason all the time for its showstoppers, (Dario Argento has made a career out of mostly gruesome death scenes that can hardly be classified as "realistic"), but here, Fulci mixes the illogical moments with dull pacing and just too haphazard of a script.  Still, that guts puking scene is pretty damn awesome.

THE NEW YORK RIPPER
(1982)
Overall: MEH

A lot of mileage is gotten out of the premise of a slasher killer who talks like Donald Duck in Lucio Fulci's raunchy, abundantly misogynistic The New York Ripper, (Lo squartatore di New York).   It is probably the most blatantly sleazy film in the director's career.  On top of all of the extreme violence towards women serving as its main objective, it also indulges in prolonged, odd sex scenes like watching a couple bang on stage in some kind of typical, "New York City sure is wild and weird isn't it?" scenario.  Also, another woman gets her gentiles massaged by a guy's foot in a bar.  The dialog is lots silly and it fittingly paints females in an unflattering manner, ("You women should stay home where you belong.  You're a menace to the public.  And you got the brains of a chicken!" and "Your overpowering touch shorts out my brain circuits." spoken by a woman).  Fulci may have been attempting to make a statement about chauvinism, but his violent, cinematic quirks distract such a potential message.  On that note, the duck-quacking murderer has to be seen, (or heard), to be believed though and that very odd detail alone gives it a memorable edge amongst other more conventional giallos and slasher movies.

CONQUEST
(1983)
Overall: GOOD

Lucio Fulci may not have ever kicked up the camp value into higher gear than he did with the hilariously strange, B-movie ham-fest Conquest.  A caveman/sci-fi/adventure/fantasy/sword and sorcery hybrid that still found time to include hideous beast men and filthy zombies, (as well as lots of boobs, torso-ripping, head-smashing gore, and a retro soft focus the entire film), it is pretty endlessly wild and fun.  It is also clearly done on a shoe-string budget, and filmed in both Mexico and Italy with an international cast of dubbed actors from both countries as well as Spain.  This is part of its charm though since as a piece of derivative barbarian fiction, its primitive and silly production values enhance the camp level tenfold.  The story is so elementary that the entire plot can fit on a single piece of paper even if your writing is huge and in crayon.  Similar to the low-budget nature being a plus, it is likewise not a detriment how simple the narrative is since scenes of bloody carnage with monster henchmen and He-Man-clad alphas liquefying bodies with weapons interrupt every scene of dialog only about every eleven seconds or so anyway.  This leaves nothing really to follow, just lots of Italian-flavored, Neanderthal-warrior mumbo jumbo and carnage to sit back and devour the popcorn while laughing with/at.

80's Lucio Fulci Part Two

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY
(1981)
Overall: GOOD

The finale in Lucio Fulci's "Gates of Hell Trilogy", The House By the Cemetery, (Quella villa accanto al cimitero), is the Italian gore-meister's take on the haunted house film more or less.  Gory ghost movies are not a massively saturated genre, though if they were, Fulci's maggot-infested, blood-oozing crack at it would be a landmark entry.  That said, its a somewhat more subdued affair for the filmmaker.  Long stretches go by without any nastiness and just some subtle, (if cliched), creepiness taking its place.  When the blood and guts do make an appearance, one can hardly be disappointed though.  Knives through the brain and out the mouth, throats being ripped out, heads being cut off, and maggots spewing from stab-wounds, (all in splendid detail no less), certainly deliver.  Homely and goofy looking child actor Giovanni Frezza is surprisingly not as distracting as many children in such genre outings, which is also a plus.  The flaws here are the same ones in all of Fulci's great, good, or poor offerings though which includes so-so pacing, monsters slower than senior citizens driving with Wisconsin license plates, and any kind of logical sense being thrown right out the window.  With a consistent tone and mood in place though, it is still rather satisfactory.

MANHATTAN BABY

(1982)

Overall: MEH

 

The second Lucio Fulci film in a row to be shot on location in New York, the appropriately dubbed Manhattan Baby, (The Possessed), is a far weaker and different entry by comparison than his The New York Ripper which was released several months prior.  Fulci himself was not a fan of the finished product, one whose once substantial budget was cut in half at the last minute and most likely suffers because of it.  It still features a solid share of arbitrary, supernatural happenings that follow no decipherable logic, (a Fulci staple to be sure), such as the floor to an elevator giving out, people not being visible in Polaroids, people disappearing through portals and then the script completely forgetting about them, and reptiles showing up dramatically and doing things.  While these are all fun on paper, the pacing is utterly horrendous.  Several of the characters are so unmemorable that you cannot even recall if they have showed up already in a previous scene.  As the bulk of the movie follows them around doing lots of talking, good luck being all that interested in anything except the random, weird moments.  Speaking of weird, that unfortunately creepy looking kid from The House by the Cemetery also returns and is dubbed more distractedly hilarious than even usual.

AENIGMA
(1988)
Overall: MEH

Not a particularly strong effort from Lucio Fulci, Aenigma serves as his Italian-flavored hybrid of Richard Franklin's Patrick and Brian De Palma's Carrie.  The premise is simple enough to provide ample footing for the filmmaker's trademark, bizarre supernatural set pieces and a moment where a girl gets eaten to death by snails in her bed, a man's reflection emerging from a mirror to murder him, and a statue at a museum coming to life to kill another girl certainly qualify.  There is also some primo-hilarious dialog like "I may have a fat ass but if you slap it again, I'll slap your face" and "A successful semester to me means making out with as many cute boys as possible."  Of course the horrendous dubbing makes said line readings even more silly than they already are on paper.  The movie's more slightly, (and unintentionally), schlocky qualities are really the only things that break up the kind of hum-drum story that unavoidably comes off as a lesser variant of the films that it is narratively tailored after.  This late into his career, Fulci was still able to put his mark on the project to warrant it fitting as a curiosity, but calling it a memorable movie in its own right is not entirely accurate.

80's Lucio Fulci Part One

THE BLACK CAT
(1981)
Overall: MEH

Breaking up the more frenzied, nightmarish monotony of his "Gates of Hell Trilogy", Lucio Fulci made the very loose Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in name only The Black Cat, (Gatto nero), right in between his masterpiece The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery.  Comparatively more stripped down and simple in nature then, the story is not chock-full of just "Eh, fuck it let's just put a bunch of weird creepy crap in there", sans a few exceptions.  Instead, it genuinely follows a pretty comprehensible structure.  Unfortunately coming from a filmmaker like Fulci who usually excelled at arbitrary freakiness, (especially coming right after The Beyond), the movie's more pedestrian nature is not all that interesting.  It is not a total bore though either.  Patrick Magee in his penultimate film appearance does what he always does which is being a memorable, oddball, overacting creep.  While the main narrative of a killer cat is of course utterly ridiculous and not even remotely frightening, the subplot of Magee's bitter old supernatural medium playing recordings from beyond the grave is a bit chilling.  The feline-scratching gore is adequate for what it is, but again it pales in comparison to Fulci's usual crimson-splattered bread and butter.

MURDER ROCK
(1984)
Overall: MEH

Opening up with two hilariously dated, full dance sequences set to two different though equally horrible songs, Lucio Fulci's Murder Rock, (Murderock uccide a passo di danza), is not off to that promising of a start.  Unless of course one enjoys the concept of Flashdance if it was a badly dubbed Italian slasher.  Technically a giallo then, this is a remarkably dull one despite or partly because of all the gyrating, leotard-clad dance numbers.  The mystery never picks up any serious momentum and when it side-steps to develop its characters more, things get pretty boring pretty quick.  Even the killer's inescapable quirk of poking women with needles is pretty lame, not that you get too many such scenes anyway.  Elsewhere, it is either stagnant or laughably melodramatic.  During one particularly absurd moment, a gruff detective interrogates a suspect with his lawyer standing right there, slaps the shit out of him, at which point the suspect says "She was a lousy Puerto Rican and I don't like spics!" followed by "You idiot!" and more roughing up, then chuckling from the detective.  It still ends up being little more than a collection of camera zooms, killers making threatening phone calls for no reason, red herrings, some naked boobs, and more of the usual stuff.  Just with more hot and bothered jitterbugging to shitty 80s music.

ZOMBI 3
(1988)
Dir - Lucio Fulci/Bruno Mattei
Overall: MEH

This mangled production that found Lucio Fulci quitting before filming was complete, (which in turn forced producer Claudio Fragasso to bring in second unit director Bruno Mattei to shoot additional scenes with different actors), serves as the "sure, I guess" official sequel to Fulci's own Zombi 2.  Further confusion exists from the fact that Zombi 2 was given the sequel moniker in the first place only to cash in on George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead and was in fact a stand-alone entry, plus the Zombi 3 title also belonged to a number of other movies in different markets before this one.  In any event, the finished product here is an unavoidable mess considering its troubled background.  Its first half is snore-inducing, there is unconvincing make-up effects, much ridiculous acting, and a steady lack of proper atmosphere since it is flatly shot in the sunny Philippines.  The structure is your typical one of military personnel trying to contain a zombie outbreak while arguing with scientists in lab coats.  Also, some of the zombies sprint while others cannot pick up their feet and of course some people turn into them after merely brushing up against one in a manner of seconds, while others take hours.  As a low-rent, shameless rip-off of way better movies, its got a few outrageously goofy moments, but for the most part it belongs on the do not recommend list.

80's Foreign Horror Part Nine

DEATH WATCH
(1980)
Dir - Bertrand Tavernier
Overall: GOOD

Shot primarily in Scotland with a recognizable, international cast, (Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Max von Sydow, and French actress Romy Schneider in one of her last screen performances before committing suicide two years later), Death Watch, (Le mort en direct), is Bertrand Tavernier's bleak yet humanizing adaptation of David G. Compton's novel The Unsleeping Eye.  It bares little to no hallmarks of the conventional horror or even thriller genre, but its themes of voyeurism and the objectification of women are quite disturbing without becoming unpleasantly overbearing.  Even the characters that seem one-dimensionally callous are not all together unsympathetic and the same goes for Schneider as the more obvious victim.  All of this gives the entire film a rather gray, emotionally ambiguous pallet to work off of, one that spends no time spoon-feeding the audience.  As a challenging, somewhat dystopian bit of science fiction then, its lack of clear-cut fulfillment, (as well as its often imposing length), may sit uncomfortable with some.  It is still an impressively done work though, most likely worthy of repeat views to grasp more fully.

POSSESSION
(1981)
Dir - Andrzej Żuławski
Overall: GOOD

The only English-speaking film from Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, Possession can be seen as one of the most strangely intense horror movies ever made about a marriage coming to an end.  Written by Żuławski and American novelist Frederic Tuten, shot in West Germany, and precisely inspired by the director's recent divorce from actress Malgorzata Braunek, the film morphs into an increasingly disturbing and increasingly strange exaggeration of the guilt, confusion, and obsessive desperation felt and then materialized by a crippling marital partnership.  Almost laughable at times in its over the top abstractness, the fact that it is all played incredibly straight as an arthouse movie may be completely lacking in intended humor, but it also makes for a dizzying, strange tone.  It is not just the absurdly horrific events that transpire, but the performances are all levels of unorthodox.  Every character regularly seems in a wide-eyed daze as they compulsively cannot sit still, asking and answering horribly upsetting questions at a breakneck pace.  While Sam Neil is quite excellent, it is really Isabelle Adjani who deserves top honors for her recklessly unhinged performance of a violently befuddled adulteress, one of the best such portrayals in screen history really. 

AMERICAN GOTHIC
(1988)
Dir - John Hough
Overall: MEH

This Canadian/British co-production by John Hough's is a schlocky, somewhat lame-brained mess.  Rather pedestrian in concept, American Gothic is another in the "held against their will by an evil Bible-quoting family" line of horror films and it does nothing to elevate the already stale sub-genre.  Following a predictable structure up until it embraces its tongue-in-cheek silliness by going with a more implausible final act, one's only chance of enjoyment is to sit back and find unintentionally amusing attributes.  To be fair, the movie has a generous amount of them.  As the elderly couple who does not believe in non-married folk sleeping in the same bed and still think the Charleston dance is what the kids are into these days, Rod Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo ham it up to the tilt and give funny enough "Eh, it's a paycheck" performances.  Their senior citizen aged children who behave like eight-year olds are less creepy and more just dumb and unsympathetic.  Same goes for the dipshit "normal" characters who find themselves at the mercy of the textbook disturbing family, though at least one of them has a horrific mullet that deserves a standing ovation of its own.  Nothing in the film is clever, including all of the kills which are just kind of brutal and random.  An easy pass all around.

80's Foreign Horror Part Eight

DE LIFT
(1983)
Dir - Dick Maas
Overall: MEH

Killer machinery is always unstable footing for a horror movie premise and Dutch director Dick Maas' De Lift, (The Lift), is a clear example of such a problem.  The concept alone of a malevolent elevator is laughable of course which makes the movie's mostly straight-faced tone fail to provide any properly frightening moments.  Instead, it is a solid contender for one of the least scary horror movies ever made.  It is also incredibly boring.  To flesh out the running time, Maas has a mechanic spend his free time tracking people down and trying to get to the bottom of what could be causing so many accidents in the high-end building complex.  What else is there to do really then wait for the title "monster" to decide to murder someone or simply stop working so its passengers pass out from heat exhaustion?  Even though most of the time the elevator runs just fine, including at the end when the main guy whose especially convinced that it is dangerous just takes a ride in it anyway.  Speaking of malfunctioning equipment, either telephones work different in Amsterdam or they forgot to add the ringing sound effect as characters multiple times pick up the receiver and just start talking to whoever called them.  Whatever.  Moving on.

MEMOIRS OF A SINNER
(1986)
Dir - Wojciech Jerzy Has
Overall: GOOD

This adaptation of James Hogg's novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Killer by Polish filmmaker Wojciech Jerzy Has is a deliberately paced, surreal exercise in internal struggles between Christian-fed values of good and evil.  Memoirs of a Sinner, (Osobisty pamiętnik grzesznika przez niego samego spisany), is a part-horror film in mood; one which occasionally becomes intoxicatingly fitting with eerie music and fog-laden cinematography.  The opening scene of a cemetery full of corpses rising up from their graves at dusk and embarking on a candlelit procession is less cliche-ridden zombie movie fare and more of a curious, ethereal beginning that sets the tone for the rest of the movie.  Has embellishes in a number of long takes throughout which are visually grand and impressive, though they also tend to extend the running time a bit too long than is perhaps necessary.  The dialog is mostly philosophical and though it is not necessarily cryptic in nature, it is less a routine, point A to point B story .  Instead, it is ambiguous in its message or lack thereof which involves a disturbed man who justifies his vile deeds against those whom he sees as already damned.  While the pacing is cumbersome at times, it is a beautiful film with enough haunting imagery to keep one intrigued.

THE BRAIN
(1988)
Dir - Edward Hunt
Overall:  MEH

A wildly silly, cheap schlock-fest from Canada, The Brain has many hallmarks of craptacular cinema.  Several of the actors turn in embarrassing performances, Edward Hunt's direction is laughably inept at times, the script is pure nonsense, and the title monster is a cheap, slimy mess.  Thankfully, the amatuer-hour presentation does not bleed too much into the pacing at least which besides a middle act eventually getting bogged down by chase scenes, is kept brisk.  Another sleeze-ball, hammy performance from Re-Animator's David Gale certainly helps as well, though sadly he is a bit underused.  Many of the set pieces involve elaborate hallucinations where floppy, rubber tentacles choke people or on the lighter end of the spectrum, make teddy bears start moving and women's clothes disappear while they are holding an apple.  Sodium also plays a critical role, which is indeed a bizarre sentence to write.  While its attempts at mass-hypnosis creepiness kind of fall flat amidst all of the other lame-brained, (har, har), production qualities, for the most part the movie lays into its dumbness enough to make it consistently easy to laugh at.  It is trash, but it is trash with a much needed, good amount of eye-winking towards its audience.

80's British Horror Part Five

INSEMINOID

(1981)

Dir - Norman J. Warren

Overall: MEH

This D-grade Alien-adjacent rip-off from sexploitation director Norman J. Warren is plagued by a number of elements, all of them related primarily to its measly budget being rather noticeable.  Bland, overly-lit art direction, uninspired cinematography; the only atmosphere slammed home is a cheap one which enhances the lousy sets and costume design.  Performance wise, the somewhat recognizable, British cast is comparatively fine alongside two, American add-ons, (Robin Clarke and Jennifer Ashley), who are just laughably terrible.  The script was penned by the husband and wife team of Nick and Gloria Myley, (both of whom worked with Warren before on 1976's Satan's Slave), but it may as well have been written by any office temp under the gun at Roger Corman's office.  In fact the whole of Inseminoid, (Horror Planet), comes off as a rushed, cliche-ridden sci-fi Corman production even if that is not  technically what it is, several of which such movies were still similarly being made at the time and are indistinguishable from what is present here.  It all further gives the movie a generic, lackluster quality which is really only to be appreciated by B-movie junkies who enjoy laughing at such low-rent nonsense.

 

THE SENDER

(1982)

Dir - Roger Christian

Overall: GOOD

The trippy, mostly well made psychological horror outing The Sender from Roger Christian, (who also had the severe misfortune of being behind the lens on Battlefield Earth eighteen years later, poor guy), served as his full-length directorial debut.  Having previously worked as an art director, set decorator, and second unit director on iconic sci-fi such as Star Wars,  Alien, and Return of the Jedi, (as well as making the short film Black Angel which was shown along with The Empire Strikes Back in select theaters), he has an eye for staging memorable, hallucination scenes and building the proper level of unexplained tension around them.  As is often common, usually these moments are more arbitrary than scary and might make the movie unintentionally silly for some viewers.  Christian deserves credit though for maintaining the right, serious tone, never letting the film divulge into calculated camp when it easily could have.  The cast, though not A-list, is persistently strong, with Željko Ivanek and Shirley Knight working ideally as a mysterious, psychically creepy mother and son duo at the center of such oddness.

PAPERHOUSE

(1988)

Dir - Bernard Rose

Overall: MEH

 

Based on the novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, (which also served as the basis for a 70s, children's television show called Escape Into Night), Bernard Rose's Paperhouse has some interesting, dark, and imaginary concepts at play as well as generally pleasing visuals, yet it suffers from some annoying attributes.  Most prominently, its main child protagonist is a thoroughly obnoxious, rude brat who lies and talks back to her mother and basically everyone she meets, yet the film endlessly tries to garnish sympathy for her from the viewer.  The sprightly, cheerful keyboard score incessantly plays through scenes it has no business playing through and along with the final act seemingly overstaying its welcome a bit, it all forces an air of sentimentality that becomes overbearing at times.  Beautifully shot by cinematographer Mike Southon, the film works best when it lingers in its dream world, only briefly becoming nightmarish yet effectively so.  To be fair though, it is not a proper horror film to begin with, but more of a contemporary-set fantasy that sprinkles a few otherworldly ideas into it via a child's somewhat troubled imagination.

80's British Horror Part Four

THE GODSEND

(1980)

Dir - Gabrielle Beaumont

Overall: MEH

 

The non-television, full-length debut from Gabrielle Beaumont, The Godsend follows a long tradition of evil child movies such as The Bad Seed, Village of the Damned, or most obviously The Omen.  Based off of the novel of the same name by Bernard Taylor, the fact that no one believes for a solitary second that the innocent looking, platinum blonde demon brat is the one causing any mischief whatsoever for so long is rather ridiculous and annoying.  Considering she was birthed in their house by a creepy, random woman who then immediately disappeared to begin with, (Angela Pleasence looking as unsettling as ever), these dipshit parents just blame whatever other child was around.  They also continue to leave all of them unsupervised on the regular, even after more than one of them begins dropping like flies when said evil, adopted spawn is always around when things go south.  You would think that the death of just a single offspring would be enough to turn even the most inept parents into helicopter ones, but that is where this story proves you wrong. With any sympathy let alone plausibility for the central characters null and void then, the movie laboriously struggles with its own flawed lack of logic for most of its running time.  It is miserable and stupid, about all there is to it really.

THE BRIDE

(1985)

Dir - Franc Roddam

Overall: GOOD

Sometimes it is nice just to have a, well, nice ending.  This ambitious, off-shoot adaptation, (or continuation more accurately), of Mary Shelley's landmark novel Frankenstein picks up near the end of the book and presents a remarkably different chain of events than what took place not only in the original, written work, but also every film version since.  It is so different in fact that it pulls of the tricky feat of standing on its own amongst the well-cinematized source material. Taken on its own grounds as it should be then, Franc Roddam's The Bride is only a slightly flawed film with redeemable qualities in spades.  For one, the presentation of the Monster, (a heavily made-up Clancy Brown), is given substantial screen time and leans almost entirely into his gentle, misunderstood nature.  In this context, Frankenstein's creation is given a chance to at least attempt some semblance of a "normal" life, growing as a benevolent character far more than he possibly ever had before.  The film's themes of feminist empowerment, bigotry, and the questionable ethics of class systems are rudimentary presented, but by bouncing between the increasingly interlocking adventures of the Monster and his would-be mate, Roddam balances such things without letting the somewhat hefty length feel that way.  Lastly, for his part as the god-playing Barron, Sting is a bit underwritten, but he ultimately makes for an adequately evil, Peter Cushing-esque doctor.

BLACK RAINBOW

(1989)

Dir - Mike Hodges

Overall: MEH

 

Shot in South and North Carolina with an entirely American cast, Black Rainbow from British filmmaker Mike Hodges, (Get Carter, Flash Gordon), plays somewhat like a supernaturally-tinged Elmer Gantry.  Jason Robards is quite strong as an emotionally abusive, alcoholic father who continues to coax his medium daughter into performing her traveling clairvoyant "scam", as is Tom Hulce as a skeptical reporter with a Southern drawl at his disposal.  In the lead, Rosanna Arquette is unfortunately kind of uneven, though a lot of that has to due with her underwritten character.  While the plotting is rather straightforward, the story itself treads murky waters.  Hodges' ideas could have possibly worked if the tone more consistently matched the weirdness, but the cookie-cutter/TV movie presentation instead undermines them.  It is a frustrating mess that becomes arbitrarily unfocused, particularly by the ending which offers no satisfying payoff to the mystical mumbo jumbo happenings that kicked everything into motion in the first place.  With many of the characters behaving somewhat randomly, there being no real humor, and certainly no scares or even suspense, it is a poor effort for whatever it may have been trying to achieve.