60's American Horror Part Sixteen

THE DEAD ONE

(1961)
Dir - Barry Mahon
Overall: WOOF
 

One of writer/director Barry Mahon's last movies before predominantly dedicating himself to nudie flicks, The Dead One, (Blood of the Zombie), is significant for a few reasons, not all of which are positive ones.  Long considered a lost film until it resurfaced over four decades after its release, it is one of the first zombie movies to be in color, sharing that distinction with England's Doctor Blood's Coffin from the same year.  It is also notoriously awful, with bottom-barrel attributes from top to bottom. Mahon pads out the first act with three different nightclub sequences one after the other as a newlywed couple gallivants around New Orleans' French Quarter.  Every scene has a stationary camera pointed at the actors with no other coverage or cross-cutting, none of the dialog is properly miked, the performances are hilariously wooden, the sole walking corpse looks like a bargain-bin version of the one that Doug Jones played in Hocus Pocus, its depiction of slave descendants as primitive voodoo practitioners is racially insensitive, and the story line is propelled by moronic behavior from every character on screen.  Even though the running time is mercifully brisk, it is still a hopelessly pathetic and boring mess.

 

VIOLENT MIDNIGHT

(1963)

Dir - Richard Hilliard

Overall: MEH

 

With exploitive murders and mild nudity in tow, Violent Midnight, (Psychomania), is a sufficiently sleazy proto-slasher for its day.  The sophomore effort from director Richard Hilliard, it was one of a small handful of regional, Connecticut drive-in cheapies made by producer Del Tenney, (who worked uncredited on the script as well).  Though the twist reveal as to who the trench coat wearing, knife-wielding maniac is may be predictable in a process of illumination sense, the premise itself has its share of unique details.  Centered around a military vet painter with violent tendencies and daddy issues, certain women in his life are getting picked off, which can either be the work of him or an asshole greaser guy that he has had a few rows with.  Several of the college dorm females present are of the promiscuous variety who are prone to flirtatious behavior and commenting on each other's figures, but the overt sex appeal is limited to their frolicking around in bathing suites, a single sex scene, and some nude modeling.  Tame stuff that goes about as hard as the equally neutered violence, (at least by contemporary standards), but the presentation is less campy than would be expected, for better or worse.

THE BLACK CAT

(1966)

Dir - Harold Hoffman

Overall: WOOF

One of only two films ever made by writer/director Harold Hoffman and one of about seven thousand to use the same Edger Allan Poe title, this contemporary The Black Cat adaptation is a no budget, regional offering that was shot in Dallas, Texas.  Sadly, it is also terrible.  An actor named Robert Frost, (who makes his lone acting appearance of any kind here), plays one of the most obnoxiously unlikable characters that ever had the misfortune to be the sole focus of a movie.  He drinks, ignores his wife, screams at her, beats up people, and tortures various felines for no reason that anyone watching could possibly care about.  Even after spending a month stint in a mental institution and undergoing shock therapy and insulin injections, he emerges "cured" only to go right back to profuse drinking and being an unrepentant asshole the second that he gets bored writing a book that he never finishes.  Hoffman's skills as a filmmaker are crude at best and he does not bother much with establishing any kind of ghoulish atmosphere.  The music is all stock and blares through nearly every scene, (plus we get a handful of sequences with a terrible rock band performing in a bar), the editing is sloppy, and it is nearly as embarrassing from a technical level as it is annoying everywhere else.