80's Wes Craven Part One

DEADLY BLESSING
(1981)
Overall: MEH
 
This early effort from Wes Craven is an atypical one in several respects for the filmmaker.  Professional and clean, filmed on location in the bright and sunny farmlands of Waxahachie, Texas and equipped with a sweeping, often busy and romantic score by James Horner, Deadly Blessing has the persistent look and feel of a made for TV movie.  Though Michael Berryman briefly returns from The Hills Have Eyes, the last two minutes are supernaturally eye-popping, and it occasionally adheres to the slasher framework, hardly any other standard Craven trappings are present.  Most noticeable is a lack of purposeful schlock, which is the director's usual stock and trade.  Though it therefor boasts a consistent, serious tone for a change and the accidental silliness is kept to a minimum, that leaves the humdrum story to play out unremarkably.  Ernest Borgnine camps it up as an ubber-Amish family leader, plus a twenty-three year old Sharon Stone gets terrorized by spiders for some reason, so there is that.  Also, watch out for a recognizable bathtub shot that Craven would use again in A Nightmare on Elm Street, replacing a snake in this instance with Freddy's claws in the latter.

 

SWAMP THING
(1982)
Overall: MEH
 
The only comic book action film from Wes Craven was Swamp Thing; a low budget offering that is passable if ultimately lackluster.  Long before superhero movies were taken remotely seriously and a few years before Alan Moore would embark on his legendary Swamp Thing run for DC, this is essentially a by-the-books, misunderstood monster in a rubber suite interpretation of the character.  It is also one with less than exemplary production values.  Dick Durock looks more silly than intimidating as the title character, but he is nowhere near as embarrassing as when Louis Jordan goes full sword-wielding werewolf in a Gorn-worthy costume that ups the camp value tenfold.  The second act brings everything to a meandering stand-still, but the finale is nothing to write home about either, being both sappy, (pardon the pun), and underwhelming.  Adrienne Barbeau makes a bosomy scream queen and treats the material more sincere than it deserves, but her commitment is not enough to elevate the film above being just a forgettable example of when such movies were mere disposable cheapies.

 

INVITATION TO HELL
(1984)
Overall: GOOD
 
The same year that A Nightmare on Elm Street was released, Wes Craven delivered the less famous made for television film Invitation to Hell for ABC.  With a well-maintained and eerie tone that is more level-headed than the director's bombastic and camp-fueled works, the script by Richard Rothstein heavily recalls the type of cultish, suburbanite paranoia found in The Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, except with a supernatural slant.  As is usually the case, the network television presentation neuters certain aspects, but the sterile look actually suits the material where upper middle class conformity and ambition is critiqued.  There is no gore or disturbing nastiness, but the final set piece is effectively strange and creepy, even if it is also silly and dated.  The cast has a hefty number of familiar faces as well, with a pre-Punky Brewster Soleil Moon Frye and a pre-The Neverending Story Barret Oliver showing up as Robert Urich and Joanna Cassidy's kids.  Kevin McCarthy and Michael Berryman drop in for a couple of seconds as well.

 

THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II
(1985)
Overall: MEH

Accounts vary as to what went wrong with Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes Part II, a sequel to his flawed yet more enduring original.  While the movie is not as abysmal as its long-standing reputation dictates, (Craven has done far worse), it is still problematic.   It could be that the production ran out of money, that it was heavily tampered with after the fact, or that Craven was simply in a financial pickle and knocked-out such a lazy follow-up for a quick paycheck.  In any event, the film was shelved for two years, only emerging in a post A Nightmare on Elm Street landscape and appearing that much more amatuerish and lame because of it.  In an attempt to stretch out the running time, significant amounts of footage is taken from the first movie in the form of arbitrary flashbacks.  Yet it is also padded with boring dirt bike races and awful pacing, with mostly obnoxious male characters and comparatively more likeable female ones prattling on and slowly walking around.  Once the sun goes down and things get drenched in darkness, Craven does manage to stir up a little atmosphere.  Unfortunately though, he endlessly interrupts it with cheap jump scares and sloppy tonal shifts.  It is more boring than anything and easily one of the most unnecessary and lackluster sequels of its kind, which is saying a lot.

80's British Horror Part Eleven

SCREAMTIME
(1983)
Dir - Michael Armstrong/Stanley A. Long
Overall: MEH

The British and American co-production Screamtime comes from director Stanley A. Long and Michael Armstrong, serving as the latter's final time from behind the lens.  A clunky anthology movie, we have a wrap-around segment with two dipshits who steal some VHS tapes, each one containing a different story.  The first concerns a puppeteer who goes loco after his bitchy wife and stepson keep acting like unreasonable assholes, the second one cobbles together premonition and slasher motifs, and the last has another two disphits that decide to rob some old ladies only to come face to face with sinister garden gnomes.  While none of the vignettes are terrible, all of them are also not any good. Budgetary constraints provide the usual issues since Armstrong and Long are only able to cobble together the most minimal amount of spooky atmosphere.  Two of the stories are more ridiculous than creepy anyway, but the lack of star power and the D-rent presentation makes this instantly forgettable.  At least the dad joke worthy title is clever.

 

THREADS
(1984)
Dir - Mick Jackson
Overall: GOOD

This famed nuclear fallout drama from the BBC, Nine Network, and Australia Western-World Television Inc remains arguably the most harrowing that has ever been made.  Inspired by the 1966 pseudo-documentary The War Game, (which was initially banned in its native U.K.), amongst other apocalyptic fare, Threads arrived near the peak of Soviet tensions throughout Europe, the Middle East, and America. Sheffield provides the natural working class industrial site for nuclear bombing, which when hit, instantaneously eliminated of all semblance of functioning society.  It takes until the fifty-five minute mark for such ruination to land, but that still leaves a full hour of unrelenting turmoil, confusion, and hopelessness to absorb.  Director Mick Jackson and screenwriter Barry Hines establish a minute amount of characters early on, (in order to give us some individuals to follow as the world they know and the plans that they laid cease to exist), but the film would be just as powerful if it merely showed us the unorganized downfall of humankind, which it still does in spades.  The drama is inter cut with typed screen text, Paul Vaughan's narration, and still shots of obliterated urban devastation, emancipated bodies, dead animals, and rotten crops.  It is a weighty watch that admirably pulls no punches, deglamorizing a post World War II threat that has remained steady every since.

 

BILLY THE KID AND THE GREEN BAIZE VAMPIRE
(1985)
Dir - Alan Clarke
Overall: MEH

An undead billiards musical, (Wait, what?), Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire comes from veteran television writer directors Trever Preston and Alan Clarke, respectfully.  The fact that it also manages to throw Thatcher-era class struggles into the mix on top of its snooker sports movie foundation is even more impressive and ridiculous.  While composer George Fenton has plenty of notable works on his resume, the songs here are mostly terrible as well as large in frequency.  What few blood-sucker motifs are present are inconsequential to a tale of the dignified elite vs the underdog, (both of whom play right into the media's hands of over-zealous competitiveness), and it slams home its point long before the last act arrives, which is exclusively dedicated to the big bout between Phil Daniels and Bruce Payne.  Clarke's presentation is surreal and claustrophobic as there are a minimal amount of sets and no location shooting, but the art decoration lacks flair, as do the musical numbers which are minimal on choreography.  Even if it fails to live up to the more showy standards of your Tommys and Rocky Horror Picture Shows, the film is still strange enough to warrant a gander.

80's British Horror Part Ten

KRULL

(1983)

Dir - Peter Yates

Overall: MEH

A large-budgeted British production from Columbia Pictures, Krull stands out from the horde of sword and sorcery films that were made at the turn of the 1980s due both to its impressive scale and melding of science fantasy with medieval archetypes.  Though it has some inventive set pieces and a propelling musical score from James Horner, the film never captures that necessary sense of mystical whimsy.  This is because of bland characters, (including Ken Marshall's dashing hero who acts like a kid in a candy story throughout his adventure even though his enchanting bride is in desperate peril the entire time), stock storytelling, and director Peter Yates' sluggish pacing.  By Yates' own admission, he was overwhelmed with the undertaking as this bares no resemblance to the filmmaker's usual, modestly-scaled and unassuming dramas.  In hindsight, it may have been a mistake to put such a director in charge of a Arthurian space opera with a thirty million dollar price tag, but the film nearly gets by on its visual scope alone.  Largely shot at Pinewood Studios, the massive sets are spectacular, plus the special effects team does top-notch work for the era.  Only some rear projection and stop-motion animation comes off as dated, with everything else standing up against the best practical movie magic out there.  It is a shame that these positives are the only ones that is has to offer, but for popcorn fantasy, it may just be enough.

 

SCREAM FOR HELP
(1984)
Dir - Michael Winner
Overall: WOOF

Notable for featuring the last screenplay that Tom Holland would pen before making his directorial debut Fright Night, as well as being John Paul Jones first film work as a composer, Scream for Help is an odd exploitation movie that is almost worth tilting one's head at due to the moronic story, wretched performances, and confused tone.  A British production that is set in the US with American actors, it concerns an annoying teenager who is convinced that her douchebag stepfather David Allen Brooks is not on the up and up.  Even though her suspicious are validated halfway through, the diabolical plot that she uncovers has enough holes in it to sail a yacht through.  It involves said stepfather teaming up with two slimy criminals who pretend to be brother and sister yet are actually lovers, and even once Brooks finds out that he is being played, he still goes along with the plan that spirals out of control in unintentionally laughable fashion.  Everyone here performs like they are in a comedy even though they are not, but one could argue that such embarrassing acting is fitting for the character's baffling behavior.

BORN OF FIRE
(1987)
Dir - Jamil Dehlavi
Overall: MEH
 
An exercise in stylistically nebulous storytelling, Jamil Dehlavi's Born of Fire is visually compelling and has atmosphere to spare, even if its Middle Eastern mysticism never connects with a compelling narrative.  Shot in Turkey and making gorgeous use out of fire-lit caves and haunting deserts, (captured by Bruce McGowan's vivid cinematography), it concerns a professional flutist who undergoes a mysterious journey after the death of his mother and the arrival of an astronomer whose personality leans toward supernatural possession at regular intervals.  It all seems to tie around said musician's father, Djinns, and a bald, creepy-looking Master who dwells in the Arabic wilderness and shoots fire out of his eyes.  Shots of snakes, maggots, pool worms, erupting volcanoes, skulls, a wailing dwarf, lizards crawling on the ceiling, a slug baby thing, and other such random flourishes mix with pretentiously vague dialog and spell-binding music to create a cacophony of oddness that is slow if not impossible to make heads or tails out of.  This is a shame since it is more excessive than quirky, void of humor and lacking in any type of human element to make its evocative scenery and sounds come off as anything but aloof.

80's Mexican Horror Part Five

EL MALEFICICO 2: LOS ENVIADOS DEL INFERNO

(1986)
Dir - Raúl Araiza
Overall: MEH

A feature-length continuation of writer/director Raúl Araiza's supernatural soap opera El maleficio, El maleficio 2: Los enviados del infierno, (The Hex 2: Messengers of Hell), takes its cue from Dan Curtis' The House of Dark Shadows, which retooled plot points from its daytime program for the movie version.T  he story here focuses on one of the series' main bad guys, Ernesto Alonso who portrays a practitioner of the black arts that is on a quest to find his Bael-worshiping successor.  Unfortunately for him, the young chosen one is a teenager that is in love with his own sister and because Alonso also has the hots for said woman, things do not go according to plan. Arbitrary telekinetic powers, The Omen-styled "accidental" death sequences, a continuously ominous musical score, and two different paintings that seem to omit unholy power, there are a number of fun genre elements thrown into the mix.  As far as Araiza's presentation though, the word "fun" is not as fitting as one would hope since it plays its cards too seriously to lean into any of its inherent silliness or exploitative value.  Humorless and dour, it gets points for sticking to its macabre tone, but it also feels its length and only delivers in fits and starts.

THE INFERNAL RAPIST
(1988)
Dir - Damián Acosta Esparza
Overall: WOOF

Arguably the sleaziest film to ever come out of Mexico, The Infernal Rapist, (El violador infernal), lives up to its apt title.  This is the type of gutter trash that one can skip over large portions of, (if not the entire movie), while also ignoring subtitles since it follows a rinse and repeat framework for eighty-three minutes that consists of nothing more than some guy chatting up his victims, giving them drugs, raping them, and then killing them.  Said hopeless romantic is played by Noé Murayama, who has all of the charisma of your creepy uncle that should be kept away from children.  His title character is a convicted murderer that is left alone in his electric chair immediately after getting fried, only for three fabulously dressed female demons to show up and grant him immortality, drugs, and pleasure so long as he continuously rapes, murders, and carves "666" into the flesh of his conquests.  He definitely does this and the entire ordeal is sporadically broken up with hot-headed police officers who rough up "fags" and make the usual complaints that the media is laughing at them and blah, blah, blah.  How a dead man waltzed out of jail and roams around freely on a murder spree for so long is left hilariously unexplained, but anyone coming to this expecting narrative coherence is watching the wrong movie.  It is cheap, boring, painfully moronic, and pathetically offensive, but for those who are in the mood for garbage, you cannot do worse than this.

 

HELL'S TRAP

(1989)

Dir - Pedro Galindo III

Overall: WOOF

Slasher movies suck for a number of reasons and one of the primary ones is that it is impossible to give a shit about characters who are A) all idiots and B) exist in a universe that runs on arbitrary logic.  Pedro Galindo III's Hell's Trap, (Trampa Infernal), pits its cast of morons against a Vietnam vet who went loco in the woods; woods that everyone ventures into on a dare as to which group of friends/enemies can kill a bear first.  The flimsy jumping-off point is made worse by a drawn-out sense of pacing that will lose most viewers long before the first kill happens at about thirty minutes in.  Once these dumb-dumbs realize that they are being picked off, instead of fleeing their isolated location in their properly working automobiles, they insist on staying put because the killer has traps everywhere, (traps that in no way hindered their arrival on road), thus we settle into a mind-numbingly boring and unimaginative "picking everyone off one-by-one" framework.  On paper, mixing First Blood with your typical masked slasher piece of garbage might sound like a fun bit of stupid to indulge in, but all of the existing problems render this a forgettable and insulting waste of time.  So in other words, it is just another 80s slasher movie.

80's Spanish Horror Part Seven

REGRESO DEL MÁS ALLÁ
(1982)
Dir - Juan José Porto
Overall: MEH

The second of only two horror movies from Spanish filmmaker Juan José Porto, Regreso del más allá, (Back from Beyond, Return from Beyond), is an obscure and clearly minuscule-budgeted one. Set almost entirely at a contemporary-styled mansion that a couple rents to work on their novel and thesis respectfully, it has a redundant nature where the woman incessantly has visions of the three people who were brutally murdered there. Save for one or two hazy framing effects, the ghosts are just actors in pale zombie make-up who either merely stand still or slowly walk up to Ana Obregón as she stares wide-eyed, cries, screams, and still insists on staying there because the movie needs to be longer than twelve minutes. The husband never sees anything of course, but at least he does not gaslight his partner, plus Porto goes for a curious stillness in the presentation. There is little incidental music and the numerous supernatural scenes play out in a calm and matter-of-fact manner. While the approach is unique and seems to be going for a sense of low-key and eerie intimacy, it unfortunately results in a sterile watch.  The twist ends up  being both predictable and logically undermines the long wait to get there, but at least some exploitative gore, nudity, and a genuine attempt at spookiness is appreciated.

 

AKELARRE

(1984)

Dir - Pedro Olea
Overall: MEH

A witch trial drama from filmmaker Pedro Olea, Akelarre, (Witches' Sabbath), hits all of the miserable and predictable beats even if it is presented sincerely instead of being merely exploitative.  Set during the end of the 16th century in Navarre, Spain and apparently shot on location there, it concerns your usual crop of corrupt clergyman and town officials who squash the peasants pre-Christian traditions by striking fear into the village with preposterous witch accusations.  It has false confessions brought on by torture, a Don's son who tries to free a condemned tavern maid after making repeated sexual advances towards her, (and then raping her anyway), plus the Catholic church depicted in the bog-standard and unflattering light where they go from town to town murdering innocent members of the lower class in the name of the Jesus.  As stock as the story and black and white as the characters may be depicted, Olea presents it as a timely tragedy where paranoia and superstition make natural bedfellows with corruption and class dynamics.  The pacing is without agency, but José Luis Alcaine's cinematography utilizes natural lighting to ideally capture the rustic setting.

 

THE SEA SERPENT

(1985)

Dir - Amando de Ossorio

Overall: MEH

Doubling as the final theatrically-released film from Spanish writer/director Amando de Ossorio as well as veteran actor Ray Milland, The Sea Serpent, (Serpiente de mar), is a rightfully neglected nature horror dud, one of oodles that sprung forth in the wake of Stephen Spielberg's Jaws.  There is no killer shark, but the creature that we do get is hilariously unconvincing.  The filmography of de Ossorio was always ill-equipped budget wise and this, (his only giant monster movie), is no different.  The creature resembles that "What! What'll come out no more!" stop-motion thing that shows up for one shot in John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, if only it was made with papier-mâché for a third grade school art project.  Hardly a proper Loch Ness Monster stand-in, it is delegated to little screen time anyway.  In fact, it disappears for almost the entire second act which allows for the hackneyed plot to unfold as a series of frustrated people trying to convince other frustrated people that an oversized sea beast exists.  Besides Milland, Jack Taylor, Victor Israel, and even Spanish horror director León Klimovsky make appearances, but this and the stupid looking title monster are hardly enough to maintain interest.

80's Italian Horror Part Fourteen

NOTHING UNDERNEATH

(1985)

Dir - Carlo Vanzina

Overall: MEH

 

Interestingly, the writer/director team of Enrico and Carlo Vanzina deliberately stylized Nothing Underneath, (Sotto il vestito niente, Pele nua, Où est passée Jessica, Modelmordene, The Last Shot, Mannekiinimurhaaja), as a Brian de Palma-esque giallo, which was a genre that de Palma himself adapted a handful of times across the Atlantic.  Bringing it back to home base, the film takes place in Milan, concerns a pair of psychically connected siblings, has plenty of T&A, and revolves around the fashion industry where a guy witnesses his sister being murdered via supernatural mental images and then travels to discover the killer.  Donald Pleasence also shows up to eat spaghetti at a Wendy's and talk in an Italian accent as the head police inspector, so he at least interjects some life into an otherwise pedestrian offering.  The movie was originally to be an adaptation of Paolo Pietroni's novel of the same name, (with famed filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni of all people at the helm), but it eventually fell into the Vanzina brother's hands, with screenwriter Franco Ferrini allegedly reconfiguring the script from scratch.  In any event, it disguises its exploitative nature to a point, but all of the elements are merely competently rehashed, so it has little going for it in the end.

 

TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE

(1988)

Dir - Dario Piana

Overall: MEH

The full-length debut from TV commercial director Dario Piana, Too Beautiful to Die, (Sotto il vestito niente II), lumped itself in with Carlo Vanzina's 1985's erotic thriller Nothing Underneath, but like many Italian films which were haphazardly thrown into a franchise after the fact, (and in this case, a franchise that does not exist), it bares little resemblance to Vanzina's aforementioned giallo.  It still revolves around the fashion industry and has a police inspector trying to track down the killer, but countless other Euro slashers adhered to a similar jumping off point going all the way back to Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace.  The details here are lazily fleshed out, as if Piana and his co-screenwriters were just going on autopilot and throwing in whatever merely serviceable plot nonsense they could in order to tie together one slow montage after the other.  On that note, the film is plenty stylish, featuring wet models in Max Max/Rollerball gear doing heaven knows what while the bad guy goes around slicing people up with a nifty medieval-styled device.  Nudity, some steamy saxophone music, flashy colors, and dark warehouses provide the alluring scenery, (also a guy plays an Atari-styled porno game on his computer at one point), but the story is instantly forgettable, the dubbing of course sucks, and the kill scenes are both lame and infrequent.

ARABELLA BLACK ANGEL

(1989)

Dir - Stelvio Massi

Overall: WOOF

To sum up what kind of giallo Stelvio Massi/Max Steel's Arabella Black Angel, (Arabella l'angelo nero), is, a woman willingly goes into a castle with S&M practitioners having sex, she gets yelled at for not charging money like the rest of them do, then a cop bends her over her car and asks her "Didn't anyone ever tell you its illegal to be a whore in this country?', followed by said cop raping her on said car.  Oh, and he rapes her again within the next ten minutes and then gets killed.  The proceeding hour and some change of this gutter-level Euro-sleaze continues in a similar vein where naked women cry while being degraded in some capacity, and then someone keeps easily stabbing people to death with a pair of scissors.  Sometimes the nakedness and the fornication is consensual, but the murder, (and particularly the genital mutilation), naturally never is.  Who any of these people are and why they are all either assholes or emotionally and physically battered women does not seem to be of any importance.  Going through the debauchery motions in the laziest manner possible does seem to be of importance.  Massi had a steady body of exploitation on his resume at this point and had also been a cinematographer on a hefty amount of equally-to-less gaudy movies, but this would be a bottom-barrel entry on anyone's filmography.

80's Italian Horror Part Thirteen

THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS

(1982)

Dir - Sergio Martino

Overall: WOOF

Possibly the worst directorial effort from Sergio Martino, The Scorpion with Two Tails, (Assassinio al cimitero etrusco, Murder in the Etruscan Cemetery), was his final entry in supernatural horror, though he continued to work prolifically in other genres for the next several decades.  Perhaps partially inspired by Raiders of the Lost Arc which offered up a slew of similar temple/lost treasure adventures on both sides of the Atlantic, this France/Italian co-production was initially set to be an eight-part television serial yet was mercifully cut down to a still grueling ninety-eight minutes.  Lucio Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi delivers some hooky if incessant music, screenwriters Dardano Sacchetti and Ernesto Gastaldi had plenty of similar credits on their resume, plus Euro-trash regulars Claudio Cassinelli, Paolo Malco, and John Saxon, (in a minor capacity), are all present.  Even with such sure-fire personnel and arguably Italy's second best giallo filmmaker Martino behind the lens, the results are snore-inducing crap.  People get murdered by having their heads turned around backwards, maggots show up a lot, there is a well-decorated tomb, Elvire Audray's millionaire dad has a side hustle selling heroin, and characters that never make an impression just prattle on with each other until we reach some kind of conclusion involving a double-cross.

 

DAGGER EYES

(1982)

Dir - Carlo Vanzina

Overall: MEH

The sibling duo of Enrico and Carlo Vanzina channeled Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 cinéma du look thriller Diva with their own ambitious giallo variant Dagger Eyes, (Mystère, Murder Near Perfect).  Broken up into chapters and scoring Bond girl Carole Bouquet in the lead as a high-end, femme fatale lady of the evening, it adheres to long established film noir tropes as much as it does "black gloved killers with inventive means of murdering people" ones.  The dialog is snappy and most of the characters glide through things with a cool-as-a-cucumber charm that bypasses the type of melodramatic silliness that most Euro exploitation adheres to.  Even the disco-heavy score by Armando Trovajoli is less tacky than it should be, helping to enhance a smooth and erotic tale of double-crossing characters who adhere to their own rules.  Things are more interesting in the first act where we spend a significant amount of time with Bouquet and her classy call girl lifestyle, but the rudimentary plot runs out of momentum even before we reach a rushed and disappointing finale.  Apparently, the Vanzina brothers wanted to shoot a more downtrodden ending, but producers insisted on an uplifting one which is handled in a clumsy manner at best.

 

RATMAN

(1988)

Dir - Giuliano Carnimeo

Overall: MEH

 

The penultimate film from director Giuliano Carnimeo, Ratman, (Quella villa in fondo al parco), is a typical exploitation snooze-fest, one that is punctuated by some nasty kills and peppered with a cornball synth musical score by Stefano Mainetti.  This was one of only three movies to feature two-foot, four-inch tall Dominican actor Nelson de la Rosa, who would more famously show up as Marlon Brando's prop lackey in the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau from 1996.  As the title creature who was created by Pepito Guerra's scientist by crossing rodent semen with a monkey because dumb, Rosa makes few appearance, squeaking, leaping, and clawing away at hapless individuals who cross his path.  There is a little T&A to appease sleaze aficionados and Euro-horror fans will recognize a few of the faces that are on board, but Carnimeo's direction is lifeless and Roberto Girometti's cinematography leaves just as much to de desired.  The first two acts are sluggish enough with Janet Ågren going into morgues only to try and convince the police that the dead ratman victims are not her sister, but it eventually settles into a just as lackluster slasher framework where Eva Grimaldi tries to fend off her tiny mutant attacker.  At least the final closing credit tag is a fun and campy note to go out on.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty-Three - (Jerry Ciccoritti Editon)

PSYCHO GIRLS
(1986)
Overall: MEH

 

The debut from Canadian filmmaker Jerry Ciccoritti is the occasionally inventive sleaze-fest Psycho Girls.  Allegedly shot in nine days with a $15,000 budget, it has a demented midnight movie aesthetic with its tongue-in-cheek the entire time.  John Haslett Cuff plays a pulp author who narrates the strange tale of Darlene Mignacco who poisoned her parents when she was a kid, spent many years in an insane asylum, and eventually escapes with two also not-mentally-sound companions.  People are murdered, tricked into eating human brains, and eventually kidnapped in an elaborate torture ceremony in an abandoned and different mental asylum, a ceremony which is dedicated to Sigmund Freud because sure.  Though plenty gruesome, its many tasteless moments are more eccentric than disturbing, and the crude production values and grandiose performances only enhance a movie about psychopathic crazy people doing psychopathic crazy things.  Robert Bergman's cinematography is elaborate at times and we are treated to other non-violent and weird moments like a couple engaging in weight-lifting foreplay and transitional text appearing as typewritten pages, so even though the movie is annoying at times and never funny, at least has some garish style at its disposal.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

(1986)

Overall: MEH

 

Not to be confused with the infamous American 1990 Stephen King adaptation of the same name from director Ralph S. Singleton, THIS Graveyard Shift, (Central Park Drifter), was Canadian writer/director Jerry Ciccoritti's immediate follow-up to his debut Psycho Girls.  An urban vampire yarn, our main undead guy Michael A. Miranda leads a more reckless existence than most, getting more ass than a toilet seat as he bites an untold slew of picturesque women who have the misfortune of hopping into the back of his cab, turning them into vampires in the process who can then go and munch on any horny guys in the city that they run into.  Understandably, the police quickly get frustrated by all of the bodies that are piling up, meanwhile Miranda and his new favorite love interest are both dying, or she was and now he also is after sleeping with her or something.  Coccprotti and cinematographer Robert Bergman utilize some striking giallo-esque colors here or there and there is plenty of steamy nudity, but the presentation is clumsy and B-grade at best.  This is not helped by a script that cannot decide if it wants to lean into the more melancholic or sleazy kind of blood-sucker motifs, instead finding an awkward balance between the two.

THE UNDERSTUDY: GRAVEYARD SHIFT II

(1989)

Overall: MEH

Writer/director Jerry Ciccoritti and actor Michael A. Miranda lock-horns again for The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II, the similarly-veined sequel to 1986's Graveyard Shift.  Miranda has poofy rock star hair now, (think Richard Lewis with fangs), and is technically playing a different character who can appear in people's dreams and shapeshift into a woman or whatever.  Flippancy aside, Ciccoritti delivers another deadly serious tale of the undead that nevertheless comes off as schlocky within its direct-to-video framework.  It has a nifty if less than unique premise of a makeshift production crew filming a vampire movie while a real vampire infiltrates it, but Ciccoritti's script is muddled and does not do anything to cleverly explore its motifs within the meta framework.  Miranda is your typical ruthless blood-sucker who plays people against each other, and the only inkling that we get as to why, (besides him just being an evil dude), revolves around some vague "I'll be whole again" nonsense.  Some of it is romantic, some of it is atmospheric, some of it is crude, but like its predecessor, nothing here gels correctly.

80's Umberto Lenzi Part Three

HITCHER IN THE DARK

(1989)

Overall: WOOF

A combination of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Collector, plus some other stuff, Hitcher in the Dark, (Paura nel buio), throws a lot of unpleasant cliches into a blender and serves them up equally unpleasantly.  One of five feature length movies from director Umberto Lenzi that was released in 1989, this one concerns an odious trust fund brat with disgusting mommy issues who drives around the Florida coast in his rich daddy's RV, picking up female hitchhikers, being an asshole to them, smacking them around, and then murdering them when they either talk back too much, try to escape, have too many sexual partners in their past, or fail to look enough like his mother who he wants to have sex with.  Playing such a heartthrob is baby-faced Joe Balogh, who has has all of the charisma of someone that you want to endlessly punch in the mouth.  So in other words, he is a terrible villain, yet not terrible in the way that makes him the last bit captivating.  Josie Bissett of all people got her break here, but any fans of Melrose Place would be wise to skip such an abysmal affair, unless you want to watch her pose naked while drugged and barely try to get away from a murderous, rapist scumbag for ninety-odd minutes.

 

THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT

(1989)

Overall: MEH

In 1989, both Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi delivered two films each as part of a television series Le case maledette, (Doomed Houses, The Houses of Doom), all of which were apparently shelved due to their violence level not being on par with TV audience acceptability.  The House of Witchcraft, (La casa del sortilegio), was the third in production order, shot within four weeks like the other installments and similarly set in an ominous abode where supernatural things are taking place.  In this instance, said house is one that Andy J. Forest's character has dreams about, where a wicked old witch is running around murdering people; a witch played by Maria Cuman Quasimodo who looks like a live action version of a Halloween decoration.  The framework is dull, sticking to characters prattling on with cliched dialog exchanges that are not even necessary in order for the audience to follow what is going on.  Also, it may as well be a slasher movie due to how predictable all of the victim's murders are, plus the fact that Quasimodo simply comes at everyone with a knife after sometimes subtly tricking them with occult magical powers.  Lenzi's direction seems uninspired, even with some wind, lighting, fog, severed heads in a cauldron, a spontaneous snow storm in a basement, and a maggot-covered grim reaper thrown in to break up a chatty and stock plot.

HOUSE OF LOST SOULS

(1989)

Overall: MEH

With a premise that could not be less unique, (a bunch of young people driving through the country and then have to stop at an abandoned hotel full of ghosts because of a blocked highway), Umberto Lenzi's second television film of 1989 House of Lost Souls, (La casa delle anime erranti), goes through the motions as much as any of the other entries in the Le case maledette, (Doomed Houses, The Houses of Doom), series, let alone any low-budget Italian genre export in general.  Goblin's Claudio Simonetti delivers a typically snappy keyboard score, characters unnecessarily put themselves in harm's way of the supernatural like a bunch of idiots who have never seen a horror movie, cars fail to start, hysterical women get smacked around and gaslit by men, there is a creepy little kid, heads get chopped off in a manner that is actually relevant to the malevolent specter's backstory, and the set pieces are merely a random assortment of "scary" things on paper that seem to have been plucked out of a hat.  Its formulaic nature can either be seen as lazy and safe or lazy and safe and ergo fun for Euro-trash fans that return to such films with their expectations in proper check.  Plus, at least Lenzi keeps the pace up as to not make it an insulting cliche-fest, though cliche-fest it certainly still is.

80's Umberto Lenzi Part Two

GHOSTHOUSE
(1988)
Overall: MEH

Whereas foreign producers had attached the "La Casa" title onto Sam Raimi's first two Evil Dead films for non-American markets, Ghosthouse, (La casa 3 - Ghosthouse), was the first actual Italian movie to get the moniker, even though it was an Italian movie shot in Massachusetts.  Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi as a typical, (and most of all, nonsensical), haunted house yarn, it has many of the hallmarks of low-budget Euro-horror from the 1970s and 80s.  This includes a memorable and persistent score that leans heavy on a genuinely disturbing, gibberish nursery rhyme ditty, laughably incompetent performances, bizarre set pieces, and a story line that makes no attempts at having any logical footing.  Though the middle act drags, things start off strong where a creepy kid and her creepy clown doll inexplicably, (maybe?), manifest some kind of slasher demon that murders her father, turns light bulbs into pulsating balloons, and shatters a mirror that sends shards of glass into her mother's eyeballs.  Boatloads more head-scratching moments occur, and characters make asinine decisions, inexplicably turn up at different locations that the editing never bothers to explain, and come to conclusions that they would only arrive at because they read the script.  So yes; wacky and hilariously stupid Italian nonsense.

 

NIGHTMARE BEACH

(1989)

Dir - Umberto Lenzi/Harry Kirkpatrick

Overall: MEH

 

A deliciously dated, sleazy, and stupid Miami Beach slasher movie, Nightmare Beach, (Welcome to Spring Break), was embarrassing enough for initial director Umberto Lenzi to ask for both his services and name to be removed from the finished product.  Accounts vary as to how much Lenzi was ultimately involved in the production, with some saying that he co-directed it with screenwriter Harry Kirkpatrick, (James Justice), and Lenzi himself insisting that he backed out early and only stayed on as a technical consultant.  In any event, there are some delightful hallmarks of 80s Euro-crap cinema on display, including horrendous acting, laughable dialog, the same two heavy metal songs played upwards of ninety billion times, John Saxton of course playing a cop, a derivative script that is loaded with cliches, and plenty of naked boobs, male chauvinism, and tasteless kill scenes.  Though the opening sequence sets up a vengeance-seeking biker from beyond the grave, (the only scene in the movie that is played without any jacked up music or in-your-face schlock), it quickly becomes apparent who the actual masked killer is, making the final reveal land with an unintended and pathetic whimper.  On that note, the film is accidentally amusing at times and plenty trashy for fans of such doofiness.

LE PORTE DELL'INFERNO
(1989)
Overall: MEH

Sluggish and repetitive, Umberto Lenzi's Le porte dell'inferno, (The Hell's Gate), goes through a small handful of hackneyed motions while sticking all of its characters in a cave so that they can painstakingly stand next to each other delivering slight variations of the same dialog for ninety minutes.  The script by Lenzi and wife Olga Pehar, (who also co-penned the same year's Hitcher in the Dark), throws together a poorly explained experiment where a man is trying to beat the world record of how many days he can live in a cave or something, all with resurrected, occult-practicing monks who start picking off everybody without showing their faces until the last six minutes.  While the finale is fun in an illogically silly sense, it is also foreseeable and hardly constitutes as a worthy payoff for the lackluster boredom that came before it.  Lenzi seems powerless to build up any tension within such a scenario, simply letting the characters complain, argue, and grow more despaired as they find themselves trapped underground where every attempt at escape proves fruitless, and it takes far too long for everyone to even be properly convinced that supernatural shenanigans are afoot.  We also have one of the slowest and least exciting spider deaths in cinema history, for anyone keeping track.

80's Umberto Lenzi Part One

EATEN ALIVE!

(1980)

Overall: MEH

 

Off-putting disco music, terrible dubbing, swiped footage, real on-screen animal murder, gratuitous torture, rape, flesh-eating, and nudity, plus a Jim Jones styled villain, Eaten Alive!, (Mangiati vivi!) is Umberto Lenzi's first of two cannibal craze cash grabs that he made in the early 1980s.  Deliberately tasteless since how could a movie like this NOT be, it borrows some of its nastiness from Lenzi's own Man from the Deep River, as well as Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World and Sergio Martin's Slave of the Cannibal God, all of which are seminal enough works in the sub-genre.  Which is not to say that this one fails to carve out its own sleazy niche amongst its peers.  Recognizable character actor Ivan Rassimov has the naturally fiendish charisma to pull-off the Bible-quoting psycho who rallies his followers together through a mind control concoction of snake venom and hackneyed screenwriting.  The plot is hardly worth paying attention to, (ignorant white people venture into dangerous tribal territory and then try to escape, the end), but Lenzi pulls no punches with a barrage of awful set pieces that are there for pure icky shock value.  These movies are an acquired taste more than most, but fans of ugly jungle exploitation will be both delighted and not surprised by what they encounter here.

 

NIGHTMARE CITY

(1980)

Overall: MEH

The 1980s were ripe with zombie films and Italy alone produced a fare share of them, with Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City, (Incubo sulla città contaminata, City of the Walking Dead), being one of the first to get the decade's ball rolling.  No more or less nonsensical and ridiculous than any of the other ones, it at least tweaks the zombies themselves who are not reanimated corpses but mutated humans that have to feast on human blood in order to maintain their radiation-ravaged form.  The rate at which they take over the populous is absurdly quick, with a plane full of them easily overpowering a barrage of armed military personnel, at which point they render both the city and countryside barren in a manner of hours.  It is pure nonsense that is "enhanced" by horrendous makeup effects that look as if they were applied within thirty seconds per actor and cost about seventy-five cents to produce.  The movie has a number of fun set pieces though, including the aforementioned showdown in an open airfield, a news studio segue where an unplugged TV set immediately turns into a grenade when thrown, and a finale on top of a roller coaster that results in a gloriously unconvincing prop dummy falling to its death.  The film is also full of charisma-less characters and predominantly bounces between various, monotonous subplots that merely get in the way of the unintentionally funny moments, but at least the silly stuff is fun.

 

CANNIBAL FEROX

(1981)

Overall: MEH

 

A companion piece to the previous year's Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Ferox, (Make Them Die Slowly, Woman from Deep River), may confuse people to think that they are watching the exact same movie within the opening few minutes, which once again is set to lousy disco music as the credits play over an urban landscape.  We are then quickly treated to the most gratuitous use of the word "shitface" before we switch to the jungles of Columbia to meet a crop of obnoxious, stupid, and awful characters who come face to face with naked tribe people that go all munchy/gentile mutilation on them.  As "same shit, different cannibal movie" as it all is, credit can be awarded to Umberto Lenzi's screenplay, which offers up an ironic angle in that the character played by Lorraine De Selle is venturing on such a trek to prove her thesis that man-eating-man action is merely a racist myth.  That goes about as well as one would expect as we witness Giovanni Lombardo Radice being one hellova lunatic scumbag who provokes the locals into slicing and biting back at him, plus there is on-screen animal mutilation because of course.  Hey, at least the non-disco music is kind of awesome and no one gets too raped this time!

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty-Two

NIGHTMARES
(1980)
Dir - John D. Lamond
Overall: MEH
 
Australia was hardly going to sit out of the early 80s slasher boom and Nightmares, (Stage Fright), was a cheap and forgettable, cobbled together entry into the sub-genre from director John D. Lamond.  No better or worse than the lot of em from any other country, it was allegedly shot and conceived quickly to take advantage of some funds, hence its lack of original ideas.  While the killer is not blatantly revealed until the closing moments, there is no doubt at any point as to who is doing all of the murdering in a stage play production full of unlikable characters.  The kill scenes lack flair and imagination, plus everyone's portrayals adhere to proper stereotypes, (the pretentious asshole theater director, the bipolar crazy virgin beauty, the horny actor who mostly is in it for the poon-tang, the smug critic who delights in the power that he wields in his niche field, etc.).  Plot wise, it opens with a flashback that utilizes the ole gag of someone being traumatized by catching their parents having sex, and things simply go the straight, narrow, and predictable from there.

 

DECODER

(1984)

Dir - Muscha

Overall: MEH

 

The second of only two movies from German punk musician-turned-filmmaker Muscha, (Jürgen Muschalek), Decoder takes a bold crack at adapting William S. Burrough's notoriously unfilmable literature on a minuscule budget.  Made several years before David Cronenberg found an agreeable if still indecipherable angle to utilize in Naked Lunch, this one cobbles together various motifs from the eccentric author instead of interpreting a specific book, with Burrough's himself briefly appearing in a dream sequence.  To be fair, the entire film can be described as a "dream sequence" and perhaps can ONLY be described as such.  For people who thought that Cronengerg's aforementioned Naked Lunch was too easy to follow, the team of screenwriter/producers Muscha, Klaus Maeck, Volker Schäfer, and Trini Trimpop hold no viewer's hands through an impenetrable series of vignettes that have something to do with mind control muzak, Burger King, a peep show, frogs, and delinquent riots.  The soundtrack is loaded with New Wave synth pop, industrial noise, and krautrock, and it manages to pull-off an impressive and colorful cyberpunk dystopia despite the fact that it was all shot on location and without the use of any special effects.  It is also meandering and aggressively incoherent, but it deserves an A for effort at least.

 

BAY COVE

(1987)

Dir - Carl Schenkel

Overall: MEH

Hey look, its Woody Harrelson.  A Canadian NBC movie that appropriately aired around Halloween time, Bay Cove, (Bay Coven), is full of familiar trappings for better or worse.  The script by Tim Kring pulls no clever punches, adhering to age-old tropes like a town full of old weirdos who welcome their new neighbors by being cordial yet also weird, said town being a remote island, the younger couple who moves there being big city yuppies, the husband changing his personality and insisting on staying, the wife being gaslit and wanting to leave, plus of course everyone is a witch.  So basically, Rosemary's Baby without the baby.  Such predictability is more annoying than enjoyable and all of the supernatural elements are in place to make Pamela Sue Martin look crazy.  Every last nuance and detail has been lifted from other horror films of a similar ilk, (the dog dies, there are creepy kids around, old people in windows who disappear right when Martin wants to prove to another person that they are there, etc), and being a television production, there is a limited amount of foreboding atmosphere that director Carl Schenkel is able to muster.  The incessant keyboard score by Shuki Levy is particularly ruining, contributing to the dated and cheap aesthetic of the whole thing.  It is not insulting in its banality, but it is instantly forgettable.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty-One

MAMA DRACULA

(1980)

Dir - Boris Szulzinger

Overall: WOOF

 

It is funny enough when future Oscar winners have a dud or two in their filmography, but it is another thing entirely when a FORMER Oscar winner ADDS a dud to their filmography.  Enter Louise Fletcher and the painfully not-amusing and hare-brained Belgium "comedy" Mama Dracula, the last movie from director/producer Boris Szulzinger.  Watching Fletcher do a Béla Lugosi accent seems like it would be a hoot on paper, but the movie that she agreed to appear in has nothing else going for it.  This mostly stems from every character being an obnoxious dipshit.  Jimmy Shuman is a stereotypical dork who leaps around like Daffy Duck, one of Fletcher's servants loudly grunts instead of talks, some asshole ends every sentence with the word "OK", and worst of all are the twins Marc-Henri and Alexander Wajnberg who play Fletcher's pansy undead sons as if they will spontaneously combust if they do not stop mugging at the camera.  The story is who-cares-nonsense about Fletcher having the name Dracula and being a vampire, yet also being Elizabeth Báthory and needing virgin blood to bathe in to maintain her youth, even though vampires already maintain their youth by being, ya know, vampires.

DEADLY EYES

(1982)

Dir - Robert Clouse

Overall: MEH

Some nature horror from Canada, Deadly Eyes, (The Rats, Night Eyes), has killer rats on the menu who terrorize Toronto after being exposed to a contaminated food supply.  In actuality, the rodents are largely portrayed by dachshunds in adorable little costumes, (or poorly realized puppets during the close-ups), since getting dogs to behave on screen is presumably easier than getting rats to.  An adaptation of Jame Herbert's 1974 novel The Rats, director Robert Clouse was and would continue to be more well-versed in action movies, but he dabbles in the horror genre here comparatively better than in the similarly themed The Pack, a movie that he proved ill-equipped to make NOT terrible.  After taking out Scatman Crothers in an underground sewer system, the disease-bag little critters kill a guy in a bowling alley, overrun a movie theater, and make their last stand in a subway tunnel which in a movie like this is the worst place for pedestrians to get stuck in.  Sam Groom playing a high school teacher who is apparently irresistible to women gives the plot something to focus on when the screeching dog-sized rats are not doing their thing, but this is the usual deal where the animal mayhem is fun, yet everything else that happens is not so fun.  The way that the film sidesteps having a cutesy ending is amusing though.

OUTBACK VAMPIRES
(1987)
Dir - Colin Eggleston
Overall: MEH
 
The last movie from director Colin Eggleston was the doofy undead romp Outback Vampires, (The Wicked). which does the whole "our car broke down so now we have to stay at a creepy place in the middle of nowhere" gag, except with vampires.  A little bit of The Addams Family, a little bit of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and some Lovecraft nonsense sprinkled on top, (all with actors overdoing it to the heavens), it is grandiose in scope, even if the production leaves everything to be desired.  Cheap titles over a SOV opening hardly screams "cinematic", but once we get to the big house full of weirdos, Eggleston and director of photography Garry Wapshott use some fog and eerie backlighting to enhance the macabre mood.  The tone stays tongue-in-cheek though, with a new wave band showing up to do a musical number out of nowhere and the vampire family in pasty makeup engaging in broad hand gestures, silly accents, flirting, hovering, climbing of walls, and overall scenery-chewing.  There is too much prattling on in Eggleston and David Young's script in place of memorable set pieces or actual funny nyuck nyucks, making it all too easy to tune out of piles of exposition thrown at the mundane characters who are caught in a wacky scenario on paper.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty - (Paul Lynch Edition)

PROM NIGHT

(1980)

Overall: MEH

 

Another deliberate Canadian cash-in on Halloween, (which also scored Jamie Lee-Curtis who looks more like a soccer mom than a high school girl), Prom Night is just as mediocre and unremarkable as any other such film of its ilk.  As usual with a slasher movie, silver linings are few and far between.  The kill scenes are mostly presented over no music and the masked murderer is a bumbling boob, routinely getting bested by his eventual victims or even botching his own axe swings.  While it is nice for the killer to not have superhuman ninja powers for a change, the scenes that show him being normal and occasionally incompetent are unintentionally funny, while the rest of the movie is deadly serious.  Premise wise, it is another boring variation of the "kids were mean and now I want revenge" cliche.  There are plenty of other tired tropes utilized throughout, such as anonymous phone calls that are logically unnecessary, high-schoolers that are either bullies, bitches, dorky virgins, or unfunny hornballs, and women getting chased by lunatics who run away from them into unlit and deserted locations instead of where dozens of people are at who can help.

 

HUMONGOUS

(1982)

Overall: MEH

 

Director Paul Lynch followed up the formulaic Prom Night with Humongous; another lackluster slasher movie that is problematically paced and full of nothing but unlikable assholes.  The sub-genre was in its heyday here and on paper at least, William Gray's script makes some unorthodox choices, namely holding everybody up on an island inhabited by an old recluse and her viscous, unseen canines.  Structure wise though, it is the same ole boring nonsense, opening with a rapey flashback and then settling into one horny and obnoxious young adult slowly getting picked off after the other.  POV shots, an incessant keyboard score, the woods, a creepy house with creepy stuff inside of it, a dead phone line, a foreseeable plot twist, the token final girl, boobs, bimbos, macho dickweeds that you want to punch in the face; it is all here to be bored with.  While Lynch does everything with the material that he is supposed to, his attempts at creating suspense and atmospheric dread fail to land, simply because of the routine nature that he is trapped in.  Some creative kills or unintentional comic relief could have helped punctuate things if not distinguishing the whole film from its boatload of peers, but it instead just comes off like a stock cash grab and ergo a waste of ninety-three minutes.

 

MANIA

(1986)

Dir - Paul Lynch/David M. Robertson/John Sheppard

Overall: MEH

An obscure, possible failed TV pilot, Mania, (Mania: The Intruder), cobbles together four unrelated stories with no linking segment and is in-line with various other small screen Canadian horror series' from the time period.  We have a schlub who witnesses a murderer in action, another schllub who is afraid of dogs, a woman whose daughter is kidnapped, and yet another schlub and another woman getting terrorized by a knife-wielding guy from the subway.  Along with Paul Lynch, screenwriters David M. Robertson and John Sheppard handle a segment each from behind the lens, and they manage to shoehorn a scumbag criminal into each story, even the dog one.  Though void of star power, not without some narrative doofiness, formulaic, and failing to pack any surprises into any of its twist endings, it is not the worst of the genre's many anthologies.  The aforementioned kidnapping one "Have a Nice Day" is genuinely suspenseful and the most agreeable of the bunch, as Lynch handles a familiar premise with a Hitchcockian attention to details.  Elsewhere, the film has its moments, but there is hardly enough here to stick with the viewer once it is all wrapped up