70's Italian Horror Part Thirty-Seven

COLD EYES OF FEAR

(1971)
Dir - Enzo G. Castellari
Overall: MEH

A home invasion thriller with plenty of giallo stylistic touches, Cold Eyes of Fear, (Gli occhi freddi della paura, Desperate Moments), was a Spanish/Italian co-production that was set and partially shot in London. Familiar genre faces Fernando Rey and Frank Wolff are present, the latter American actor and Roger Corman regular sadly committing suicide not long after production wrapped.  Here he portrays a convicted felon who is out for revenge, hatching a scheme with a liberal amount of holes in it that involves posing as a police man, hiring a two-bit thug, and breaking into the house of the judge who sent him to the joint for fifteen years.  Wolff turns in an increasingly unhinged performance, especially in the last act where his troubled psyche is manifested on screen in surreal fashion with some flashy camera zooms and whatnot.  In fact there are several moments where director Enzo G. Castellari and cinematographer Antonio Lopez Ballesteros spice things up, including an opening psyche-out scene in a club.  Excessive nudity and gore may be missing from the proceedings, but the high-tension melodramatics are in proper place.

 

MY DEAR KILLER

(1972)

Dir - Tonino Valerii

Overall: MEH

 

The only giallo from director Tonino Valerii, My Dear Killer, (Mio caro assassino), is formulaic in most respects, but it is competently done with some sleazy details in proper tow.  The film brings together genre regulars George Hilton and Helga Line, plus this serves as the debut from seven year-old German actor Lara Wendel who makes her first of several appearances in European movies where part of the plot hinges on an icky adult being attracted to her.  Also, she is briefly shown nude, so there is that.  Such unwholesome nonsense aside, it is the usual police procedural deal where a detective is one step behind the killer until the very end, with all of the clues hiding in plain sight and in seemingly insignificant details.  Some POV camerawork from cinematographer Manuel Rojas, a murderer who smashes people to death with a stature, (or a buzz-saw in one instance), a surprisingly subtle musical score from Ennio Morricone, and a laugh-out-loud opening scene where a guy gets lifted high off the ground and decapitated by a construction crane are all highlights.  Unfortunately, the plot specifics are convoluted, plus the movie has a talky and ergo less than agreeable agency to it so that by the time the killer reveal happens, it arrives with more of a yawn than a gasp.

 

STARCRASH
(1978)
Dir - Luigi Cozzi
Overall: WOOF

 

The Italians pathetically cashing in on Star Wars?  Surely you jest.  Starcrash, (Scontri stellari oltre la terza dimensione), is a delightfully terrible knock-off from director Luigi Cozzi that exhibits the best kind of bad movie magic, meaning something that comes off as a parody in all details yet takes itself seriously.  This equals unintended hysterics from front to back, down to a cornball plot that a five year old would think is stupid, embarrassing performances that are enhanced tenfold by embarrassing dubbing that is enhanced tenfold by embarrassing dialog, and D-rent special effects done on an A-scale.  Shot in Rome and scoring everyone from Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhoff, Joe Spinell, and the husband/wife team of Judd Hamilton and Caroline Munro, everyone sounds and looks ridiculous.  Though her voice was redone by Candy Clark since why pay someone to be in your movie AND say their own lines, Munro takes the lead, rocking out a bikini in most of her scenes where her hairstyle changes between interior and exterior shots.  The plot finds our heroes hitting one deadly brick wall after the other, easily escaping or being rescued with an increasing sense of zero suspense, all with unconvincing fight scenes, cheap lasers and model work, some stop-motion animation, and Flash Gordon schmaltz peppering every scene.  To be fair, the aesthetic is pure, colorful camp and it manages to look both low-rent and decadent at the same time.  A staple for any bad movie night.

70's Italian Horror Part Thirty-Six

THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN

(1975)

Dir - Luigi Cozzi

Overall: MEH

 

A quasi-giallo from Dario Argento collaborator Luigi Cozzi, The Killer Must Kill Again, (L'assassino è costretto ad uccidere ancora, The Dark Is Death's Friend), has sleazy characters doing sleazy things, but it does not adhere to many of the sub-genre's tropes.  An adaptation of Giorgio Scerbanenco's novel Al mare con la ragazza, George Hilton plays a scumbag husband who figures out a way to get rid of his wife so that he can inherit all of her money and continue sleeping around with whoever he wants.  This plan involves Antoine Saint-John doing the dirty deed, but of course things go awry and the bulk of the movie turns into an uneventful chase to catch-up with the thrill-seeking couple that stole the killer's car which inconveniently has Hilton's wife's body in the trunk.  There is some suspense generated from the characters almost getting busted and Saint-John makes for an unnerving and emotionless psycho, but the story has no mystery, Cozzi's presentation has no flash, and the drawn-out ending is nothing to write home about.

 

WATCH ME WHEN I KILL

(1977)

Dir - Antonio Bido

Overall: MEH

 

Though it boasts inventive and brutal kill scenes plus the most blatantly Suspiria-esque musical score in any giallo, Antonio Bido's full-length debut Watch Me When I Kill, (Il gatto dagli occhi di giada, The Cat with the Jade Eyes, The Cat's Victims, Terror in the Lagoon, The Vote of Death), suffers from drab pacing and a dull story.   Kicking-off with the usual motif of somebody witnessing a murder and then becoming the target of the killer, it features a guy accidentally getting his throat sliced, an old man in a bathtub getting strangled with the shower hose while listening to opera, and best of all, a woman who gets her face cooked in an oven.  Under the guise of Trans Europa Express, Mauro Lusini and Gianfranco Coletta's music is textbook for the genre and the main theme is far more creepy than the material deserves.  Besides the flashy murders, the plot is aggressively monotonous as Corrado Pani's private dick protagonist slowly smirks his way around trying to protect his previous ladyfriend, eliminating possible suspects, and looking as Charles Bronsony as possible in the process.  The killer reveal is dished out with a hefty explanation because of course, but there is no sexual angle to the murders for a change and the closing shot is more sad than extravagant.

THE PERFECT CRIME
(1978)
Dir - Giuseppe Rosati
Overall: MEH

Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Rosati closed out his career with the giallo The Perfect Crime, (Indagine su un delitto perfetto); a sufficient if unremarkable entry in the sub-genre.  Headed by a recognizable cast including Adolfo Celi, Alida Vali, Paul Müller, Gloria Guida, and token American Joseph Cotten, someone dies in a plane crash, someone is presumed to have died in a car crash, and several more people who are tied into a globally powerful company also die, directing suspicion everywhere and giving the police inspectors a splitting headache trying to decipher such convoluted plotting.  The wacky details are fun to a point and Cotten's demise is a unique one in that the killer gets him by fatally triggering his pacemaker, but the presentation is played more straight than sleazy.  It is a lot of humdrum pitter-patter from all involved, plus Rosati exhibits zero pizzazz from behind the lens.  Rare for Euro-trash where there were usually many cooks in the kitchen, Rosati received sole screenwriting credit, but he seems to have gotten carried away with the Agatha Christie framework and forgot to emphasize the fiendish set pieces or unintentionally goofy misogyny.  In other words, it checks off all of the boxes yet does not indulge in any of them, so one is not likely to remember it amongst the hordes of better, worse, and more ridiculous giallos out there.

70's Italian Horror Part Thirty-Five - (Armando Crispino Edition)

THE DEAD ARE ALIVE
(1972)
Overall: MEH

A convoluted four-way love escapade partly fueled by jealousy and rage lies at the center of Armando Crispino's The Dead Are Alive, (L'etrusco uccide ancora, The Etruscan Kills Again, Das Geheimnis des Gelben Grabes, Overtime, El dios de la muerte asesina otra vez), which is an overlong and dull giallo with an archeological setting.  While both John Marley and Alex Cord let loose with asshole-worthy performances, the music is at least occasionally creepy, Erico Menczer's cinematography is appropriately atmospheric, and the minimal amount of murder sequences have a ghastly bright-red-blood brutality to them, yet the plot's dramatics are both uninteresting and take up most of the running time.  Giallos generally hinge on various misdirects as far as who the killer is and while this is no different, the story makes the mistake of vaguely teasing at some ancient demon forces early on, which makes the inevitable, "Oh never mind, it was just that guy" reveal even more disappointing than it otherwise would be.  Some of the style carries it though, but only in short spurts.

 

AUTOPSY
(1975)
Overall: MEH

The penultimate of Armando Crispino's directorial efforts to be theatrically released, Autopsy, (Macchie solari, The Victim, Corpse), is a textbook giallo for better or worse.  Crispino had been steadily delivering adequate if unexceptional works in various genres by this point in his career and by following the Italian slasher framework to a tee, he crafted something that is no more or less ridiculous than the plethora of others of its kind.  Here, every character is privy to bouts of spontaneous violence as to paint them as the possible killer, Mimsy Farmer gets naked several times and randomly falls in love with a guy that she hates, her father survives getting thrown off of a high-rise building only to put on goofy goggles by trying to help the police identify his attacker, (long story, sort of), and there are a couple of weird hallucination sequences to break up the hum-drum plot.  Focusing on a single murder that takes place early on, the body count is low and therefor disappointing for anyone who finds wacky, misogynistic kill scenes to be the main reason to watch such films in the first place.  Still, Crispino makes up for a lack of flare with some halfway decent mood-building, stock footage, and of course plenty of camera zooms, but the story is too lazily constructed to forgive the merely passable presentation.

 

FRANKENSTEIN: ITALIAN STYLE
(1975)
Overall: WOOF
 
Regrettably, filmmaker Armando Crispino closed out his directorial career with the unwatchable Frankenstein: Italian Style, (Frankenstein all'italiana - Prendimi, straziami, che brucio de passion!, Frankenstein Italian Style - Take Me, Torture Me, as I am Burning with Passion!); a horror comedy that pathetically piggy-backs off of the success of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.  This one is in color, has fart gags, and sticks to a relentlessly juvenile agenda where every character gets to act like a three year old child throwing a tantrum at least once.  Of course the creature, (portrayed by singer Aldo Maccione), gets a free pass to exhibit the most infantile of mannerisms, passing gas, throwing food, fondling ladies, and relentlessly grunting while everyone else falls down and mugs at the camera.  We get moments like the monster banging several women so good that they sing "Hallelujah" afterwards, the monster hiding under a kitchen table for what seems like hours even though nobody notices, the monster getting a shot in his butt so that he can make an obnoxious noise, the monster dancing a waltz with Igor, and plenty of other horny tomfoolery that represents the antithesis of funny.  This was a rare work from Crispino that he did not have a hand in writing, which saves him some embarrassment at least since he probably just did it for a paycheck.  Still, the man never made another movie after this and lived for nearly another three decades, so one can add the phrase "career ending" to the film's list of accomplishments.

70's Foreign Horror Part Thirty

THE DEMON

(1979)

Dir - Percival Rubens

Overall: MEH

A South African slasher movie with a top-billed Cameron Mitchell as a psychic detective who uses his unexplained powers to help a family locate the killer of their daughter, The Demon, (Midnight Caller), is a less than engaging dud from director Percival Rubens.  It was released anywhere from 1979 to 1985 depending on the source, but its killer is even more bland and forgettable than the lot of em that came in the wake of the slasher boom.  Though he was top-billed and the only name actor on board, Mitchell has almost nothing to do here, disappearing entirely an hour in and only getting one scene early on to take note of when he sniffs a pillow in one of the victim's bedrooms and starts ripping the feathers out of it.  Elsewhere, it is lackluster stuff, introducing characters that we never care about as the murderer lurks around and kills random people with zero exploitative flash.  Though there is nudity scattered about and some bloodshed, it has more of a watered-down television presentation which does not do the film any favors.  It is difficult to tell what Rubens was going for here since he fails to build any eerie atmosphere and stages zero alarming set pieces, wasting any potential to hop on the post-Halloween bandwagon.

DRACULA BLOWS HIS COOL

(1979)

Dir - Carl Schenkel

Overall: MEH

 

1979 produced more Dracula movies than Cuba does cigars and Dracula Blows His Cool, (Graf Dracula in Oberbayern, Count Dracula in Upper Bavaria), is of the West German sex comedy variety.  The debut from Swiss director Carl Schenkel, it mixes boobs, Béla Lugosi and Peter Lorre accents, rotten disco music, castle tombs, undead high-jinks, and juvenile horndog jokes at a reckless abandon.  The movie is stupid, but Schenkel knows the assignment to put as much titillation and groan-worthy boner comedy gags in as possible, all within a horror spoof framework that pokes fun at blood that is of a bad vintage, the vampires blending right in with oblivious disco patrons dancing and talking their clothes off, and people exploiting the blood-sucking ancestors living in the crypt while a crotchety local woman disproves of all the nakedness and biting.  Erich Tomek's screenplay uses the mistaken identity angle where Gianni Garko plays both the Count and his descendant who turns the family castle into a discothèque because again, 1979.  Therefore some of the comedy revolves around people confusing the two of them, but the final ten or so minutes gives up on this angle and the two main vampires just decide to go on strike and huff it back to Transylvania since their new blood supply is too ready available.  Some moments are funny, most are not, but the film has its doofy heart in the right place.

THE DOGS

(1979)

Dir - Alain Jessua

Overall: GOOD

An understated thriller that plays off the fears of mob like panic, lower class uprising, and immigration, The Dogs, (Les Chiens), was the third and last movie of the 1970s from French filmmaker Alain Jessua.  It is in line with his previous metaphorical genre works, (Shock Treatment and Armageddon, respectfully), taking a low-key approach to its paranoia-ridden subject matter.  On the surface, the characters do not act irrationally since we see vandalism and rape within the first act, making it reasonable for those in this everyday town to start protecting themselves with well-trained guard dogs.  Yet we also see a black man getting attacked for no reason and a mayor getting murdered under dubious means so that by the time we meet Gérard Depardieu's mild-mannered canine handler, there is some gray area to explore as to who is provoking who.  It becomes more clear where our sympathies are meant to lie as it inches its way towards the finale, a finale that is brutal in its lack of victors.  This is a potent cautionary tale where no one comes out on top and mankind can be all too easily groomed when there is an external threat to exaggerate, sadly fitting in with any era before or after the film's release.

70's Asian Horror Part Twelve

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS

(1973)
Dir - Eiichi Yamamoto
Overall: GOOD

The last in Mushi Production's Animerama trilogy, (all of which were directed by Eiichi Yamamoto), Belladonna of Sadness, (Kanashimi no Beradonna), is a striking combination of Faustian pacts, medieval savagery, women's suffrage, psychedelic aesthetics, and violent adult imagery.  Concocting a narrative out of Jules Michelet's 1862 text Satanism and Witchcraft which depicted the alleged uprising of occult practices as being linked to peasant rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church and the feudal system, it is an unflinching and continuously surreal trek into class struggle, particularly that of women who were brutalized more than their male counterparts.  Depicted in a combination of traditional animation and still watercolor paintings, (which were inspired by Art Nouveau painters with a distinct Japanese leniency), the images alone are evocative, which is a plus since the story is threadbare.  As the doomed lower class lovers Jeanne and Jean suffer hardship after hardship, the kingdom is threatened by the former farmer's maiden long before she gives into Satanic temptation which grants her power and influence.  The soundtrack uses a combination of avant-garde jazz and lush vocal melodies, and even if its depictions of rape and misogyny prove too heavy for some pallets, it remains a captivating watch.

 

THE MAGIC CURSE

(1975)

Dir - Chun-Ku Lu/Wen-Po Tu

Overall: MEH

A Hong Kong/Philippines co-production that combines the jungle savage and black magic sub-genres, The Magic Curse, (Cui hua du jiang tou), is silly business and one of the more absurd romance stories in any such movie.  Different directors were credited with the finished result, and the cast is a mixed bag of busy actors from various Asian countries.  While nobody here does particularly exceptional work, it achieves its exploitative value well enough.  Jason Pai Piao goes to look for both his uncle and jewels in the treacherous island of Borneo, runs into a cackling bad guy wizard, also runs into a scantily-clad lady wizard, and said lady puts a curse on him when he returns to the mainland that if he sticks his ding-a-ling in any other woman, than that woman will die a horrible death.  Of course Piao cannot keep it in his pants, so a few unfortunate one night stands get killed by snakes and supernatural winds, then the whole thing ends with an anticlimactic magical showdown back in Borneo.  The pacing is all over the place, sometimes edited to smithereens and sometimes slow enough to put a PCP-ridden horse to sleep, but its nudity, misogyny, and mean-spirited nature should do the trick for trash fans.

THE MIGHTY PECKING MAN

(1977)

Dir - Ho Meng-hua

Overall: MEH

Drugs were apparently in the air when the Shaw Brothers decided to cash-in on Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong remake by also throwing disco and a female Tarzan into the mix.  The resulting The Mighty Pecking Man, (Xīngxing Wáng, Goliathon), is a camp-heavy watch and idiotic by design, but it is at least amusingly terrible.  Zero effort was put into the plot since it does the only thing that movies like this can ever think to do, which is to venture into the remote jungle, find a giant beast, and bring him back to civilization so people can gawk at it and it can inevitably break free and run amok.  Clearly none of the moronic characters in this movie ever saw the original King Kong.  The addition of Evelyne Kraft as a feral woman who grew up into a blonde bombshell with make-up and no body hair is the differentiating factor here, but even that plays into the same ole tropes where the big Abominable Snowman gorilla is infatuated with her to the point where he goes on a rampage once witnessing a cartoonishly sleazy businessman raping her.  Because rape is the one thing that every kid-friendly kaiju movie needs.  The monster looks stupid and the miniature and rear projection work is silly, but the subpar special effects are at least done on an elaborate scale, especially in the destruction-fueled finale which again because lazy, of course ends with the title monkey climbing the city's tallest building so that the military can throw explosions at it.

70's Asian Horror Part Eleven

THE BEDEVILLED

(1975)

Dir - Lo Wei

Overall: MEH

 

A detrimentally slow boil ghost movie from prolific filmmaker Lo Wei, The Bedevilled, (Sum moh), lumbers through most of its running time with drawn-out melodrama before eventually delivering some supernatural activity well into the last act.  Disturbed by Golden Harvest who specialized in martial arts movies as has writer/director Wei, the film boasts some nudity, (courtesy of pink films actor Reiko Ike), as well as an impressively spooky synth score from Joseph Koo, which springs to life right away during an opening credit scene full of skull heads with foggy green backlighting.  Unfortunately, nothing remotely horror-adjacent happens for almost fifty minutes after that, which would not be a problem if Wei's story had enough hooks in it.  Instead, we are treated to an unfortunate scenario where corrupt individuals bribe a desperate yet good-natured magistrate into wrongly executing an innocent man, only to eventually be haunted by said man and his wife who commits suicide in her despair.  A simple enough morality tale where people are punished from beyond the grave for their morally askew mistakes, the stagnant pacing undermines the agenda and some truly fun, last minute sequences where specters finally do some creepy things with their severed heads.

THE VISITOR IN THE EYE

(1977)

Dir - Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Overall: MEH

Filmmaker Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's immediate follow-up to his celebrated cult film Housu is comparatively not as strange, (Since how could it be?), but it still boats plenty of bizarre whimsy.  The Visitor in the Eye, (Hitomi no naka no houmonsha, The Haunted Cornea), borrows the manga character of Black Jack, who is portrayed by Jô Shishido and given an enigmatic presentation without context.  He has a Two-Face-styled makeup job, lives in a remote house on the edge of a cliff, is prone to bouts of fury, is a brilliant surgeon as well as an unofficial detective, and has a live-in companion played by a small child who claims to be his wife.  The actual story though revolves around a young tennis player whose eye is damaged in the opening scene, only to get the good ole mad scientist treatment of a replacement eye that used to belong to a murdered woman.  While the plot is easy enough to follow from there, Ôbayashi's presentation is still singular, with an incessant and annoyingly repetitive musical score that blares through many scenes that it has no business being in, on-the-nose sound cues, soft focus photography that enhances the film's fairy tale aspects, and lingering shots of characters delivering their backstories.  The pacing regularly suffers and the climax is too stretched-out, but this is almost a fitting companion piece to its wackadoo predecessor.

LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN

(1979)

Dir - King Hu

Overall: GOOD

Only for the most accommodating of viewers, wuxia filmmaker King Hu's sprawling Taiwanese/Hong Kong fantasy epic Legend of the Mountain, (Shan-chung ch'uan-ch'i), is low on story and measured in pace, but it is also exquisitely shot and mesmeric in its lava-like flow.  Based on Song Dynasty folklore about an unassuming scholar who is tasked with translating a Buddhist sutra and in turn gets caught up with dueling magic practitioners who are either trying to protect such a task or are out to thwart it for their own gain, little happens as far as plot development throughout its three-hour and twelve-minute running time.  In place of this, Hu establishes the beautiful isolated setting via long montage sequences, so cinematographer Henry Chan deserves star credit in this respect.  Even with a couple of intense, mystical drum battles between opposing forces and some bouts of kinetic acting on the performers parts, the film is mostly subdued, which is what gives it such a hypnotic aura.  It is only within the last thirty or so minutes where more pronounced supernatural elements come into play as Hsu Feng is outed for her wicked ways and willingly becomes a demon to reap her revenge.  For modern day viewers that are indoctrinated on more agreeably hurried presentations, the movie will be difficult to get through in a single sitting, but met on its own terms, it is a lush and unique work.

70's Asian Horror Part Ten

THE GHOST LOVERS

(1974)

Dir - Shin Sang-ok

Overall: MEH

 

The final supernatural horror film from director Shin Sang-ok, The Ghost Lovers, (Yan nu huan hun), is unfortunately sluggish and uneventful.  It has a well-used kaidan scenario where a dead beautiful young woman and her also dead elderly companion try to make merriment with a good-natured man, but the story meanders endlessly with soft comedic playfulness and snore-inducing melodrama.  There is never an emphasis on spooky atmosphere or any kind of tacky exploitation, with the otherworldly elements merely serving as a framing device for a doomed love story between two characters who were engaged when they were children and remain helplessly in admiration of each other even though they have spent the majority of their lives apart.  If Shin was able to interject any kind of excitement or a mystical tone, (let alone if any of the intended humor landed so much as once), then such things could have enhanced a bare-bones plot that is desperately in need of such enhancement.  It is not incompetent and suffices as a mild, low-stakes romance, but that is about it.

IODO

(1977)

Dir - Kim Ki-young

Overall: MEH

 

Strict gender roles, environmental issues, the encroaching inevitability of fate, peculiar and ancient customs, men lost at sea, plus an island that beckons for the dead, Kim Ki-young's adaptation of Lee Cheong-jun's 1974 novel Iodo, (here also known as Io Island), has a lot on its plate and sadly fails to bring it all to compelling life.  The location scenery is lovely as cinematographer Jeong Il-seong captures the crashing waves, expansive hills, and wailing winds of the remote rocky island setting, turning it into a foreboding presence without any flashy camera tricks or visual flourishes.  It becomes a bloated viewing experience though and the pacing is anything but forgiving.  Several plot points are explored and half of the film is told in lengthy flashbacks, though many of the specifics are left dangling and are ultimately not important in order to soak in the melancholic atmosphere that Kim persistently maintains.  While it works as a dour mood piece in this regard in spite of its loose ends, the matter of fact depiction of the story's all-female village and their quirky practices seems to hint at a more interesting movie than what is presented.

DEMON POND

(1979)

Dir - Masahiro Shinoda

Overall: MEH

An adaptation of Izumi Kyōka's 1913 stage play of the same name, Demon Pond, (Yashagaike), is a folk tale fantasy set in three acts, and even though it is directed by respected Japanese New Wave filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, it suffers under its laborious length.  The story is simple enough as it concerns a village suffering from a prolonged drought which would otherwise be drowned in a supernaturally-charged flood if not for a bell being rung three times a day.  Mystical beings are kept away by the bell towing as well, though we get to spend the second act with them lammenting such arbitrary rules that were set forth by their ancient ancestors.  It is a shame that the first act is tortuously drawn-out and ultimately unnecessary since all of the information that we are given then is regularly repeated throughout the rest of the film.  It still struggles to move along once we meet the colorful and melodramatic entities forty-nine minutes in, but the finale delivers a Ten Commandments-worthy water spectacle where the flood comes from the sky and all of the rotten townsfolk are doomed.  Also, notable male kabuki actor Tamasaburo Bando plays a dual role as two women, though one would be hard-pressed to notice unless they read the credits.

70's British Horror Part Thirty-Two

DISCIPLE OF DEATH
(1972)
Dir - Tom Parkinson
Overall: MEH

The directorial debut from producer Tom Parkinson also doubles as the final film that not-Christopher Lee actor Mike Raven appeared in.  Disciple of Death bares a generic title and is a generic movie, appearing as if it was shot with minimal funds in Cornwall, England locations that looked untouched enough to serve the period setting.  This is more of an involved work from Raven who produced and co-wrote the screenplay with Parkinson, the two of them channeling a hefty amount of genre cliches into something that comes off as forgettable by design.  A peasant farmer wants to marry a squire's daughter, her parents disapprove, they make a blood pact, said blood falls on the ground, and then Raven shows up as a Count Dracula stand-in who introduces himself to his new neighbors while systematically taking the town's women away to do vague occult rituals with them.  We also have a local priest who sees through Raven's bullshit immediately, another religious expert who is brought in, Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" is played ad nauseam, and the list of tired tropes proceeds further from there.  Raven hams it up by doing his usual Lee impression except with a lisp, but the tone goes goofy at irregular intervals and the whole thing is as sluggish as it is derivative.

 

VOICES
(1973)
Dir - Kevin Billington
Overall: MEH

 

Husband/wife team David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt appeared in a number of British thrillers together during their seven year marriage in the early 1970s, Voices being an adaptation of the stage play of the same name from Richard Lortz.  Mostly shot on video like your typical BBC serial, it readily recalls Nicolas Roeg's seminal Don't Look Now which was released the same year, with the same jumping-off point where a young couple's child dies and they then suffer a relatable amount of trauma because of such an incident.  Psychological turmoil, ghostly sightings, and a predictable twist all follow, but sadly, the whole ordeal is borderline insufferable with its claustrophobic and tedious bickering.  Hemmings and Hannicutt's characters do what we would imagine they would do in such a scenario, namely say "I'm sorry" and "I hate you" in equal measures as they become unavoidably frustrated with each other in their futile attempts to reconcile the loss of their child.  There is a reason that most couples cannot overcome such a harrowing event, but witnessing two splendid actors merely take out their conflicted feelings towards each other does not result in an agreeable watch.  This is not helped by director Kevin Billington's stiff presentation and the cheap look of the proceedings, which never generate any visual intrigue or effectively spooky atmosphere.

 

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL
(1978)
Dir - Franklin J. Schaffner
Overall: GOOD

 

Two years after playing an infamous Nazi scientist on the lam in John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier portrays a hunter of such Nazis in Franklin J. Schaffner's adaptation of Ira Levin's 1976 novel The Boys from Brazil.  Ever the diverse thespian, Olivier was in ill health at the time yet this fits his tired and cynical character who dukes it out with Gregory Peck's Dr. Josef "Angel of Death" Mengele himself.  While Peck comes off as ridiculous at times chewing the scenery with jet-black-dyed hair, Aryan proclamations, bouts of unhinged mania, and a German accent, (in fact almost every actor here does the German dialect thing), there is a sort of schlocky satisfaction to be found in his ridiculous on-screen demise since Mengele was arguably history's biggest monster besides Hitler himself.  An American and British co-production that was shot in multiple countries, the cast is loaded with other familiar faces besides Olivier and Peck, with Steve Guttenberg, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Denholm Elliot, Michael Gough, Bruno Ganz, and Linda Hayden all making appearances.  The story itself is sensationalized fluff and it becomes difficult to take everything seriously when the tone dictates as much, but the premise is so wild and the performances so dialed-in that it is far from a tiresome two-hours and seven minutes.

70's British Horror Part Thirty-One

FRAGMENT OF FEAR
(1970)
Dir - Richard C. Sarafian
Overall: MEH

 

A British giallo of sorts that even had the good sense to spend its first act in Pompeii and utilize a spontaneous flute and bongo score that would fit right at home in a Luciano Ercoli movie, Fragment of Fear unfortunately suffers from some inescapable flaws.  For one, David Hemmings makes for an unlikable protagonist, even if his curmudgeon frustration with his situation is understandable.  A former drug addict turned successful author, his benevolent Aunt is murdered, no one seems to care, and then he is harassed by a clandestine organization that goes out of their way to make both the police and his fiance convinced that he is using again and paranoid to the gills.  This leads to one of the most awkward wedding ceremonies ever filmed that will only make one feel awful for his bride-to-be, (and real life wife), Gayle Hunnicutt, begging the question of why she is so committed to such a charmless stick-in-the-mud in the first place.  Based on John Bingham's 1965 novel of the same name, the plot only kicks into high psychological gear during its closing moments once Hemmings has clearly snapped his pickle, but everything else that came before the finale is too unhurried and mundane to stay invested in.

THE FINAL PROGRAMME

(1973)

Dir - Robert Fuest
Overall: MEH

Significant as the only cinematic adaptation of a Michael Moorcock novel, The Finale Programme, (The Last Days of Man on Earth), comes from writer/director Robert Fuest who was hot off of both entries in the Dr. Phibes series.  Sadly, his work here is more self-indulgent than satisfying, but the film's off-the rails narrative and wild set design at least gives it some sort of memorability, be it perhaps not entirely intentional.  Jon Finch plays the son of a recently deceased scientist who came up with some kind of design for a self-replicating human that people are after, but there sure are a lot of other side-arcs and characters to keep track of along the way.  Sterling Hayden shows up for a scene looking like Fidel Castro, Patrick McGee almost buys the coveted microfilm, Derrick O'Connor and Finch engage in not one but two needle-gun action scenes, Sarah Douglas shows up for a few seconds as Finch's bed-ridden and forcibly drug-addicted sister, there is an arcade where go-go dancers bounce around in bubbles, there is a fortified lair with epileptic booby-traps, and the ridiculous finale fuses Finch with Nazi femme fatale Jenny Runacre into a hunched-over Neanderthal that is supposed to be the Messiah.  It is nonsense from front to back and whatever satirical tone was meant to come through in Moorcock's source material gets disastrously muddled, but if one gives up in trying to make heads or tails of it from the onset, a fun time can be had by watching it all spiral out of control.

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

(1978)

Dir - Paul Morrissey

Overall: WOOF

 

Paul Morrissey's infamous take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's often-filmed The Hound of the Baskervilles came after his bizarre Italian horror pairings with Udo Kier, and though it lacks the off-color sleaze of those two movies, (as well as that in his earlier Andy Warhol collaborations), it instead leans into the comedy full-force with the celebrated Beyond the Fringe duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, respectfully.  Cook and Moore penned the screenplay along with Morrissey, twisting the source material into a heady combination of juvenile, annoying, and straight-up bizarre gags.  Most of the known British character actors crank-up the sillies to eleven, often shouting their lines, aggressively mugging, and flaying about with exaggerated accents in tow.  Joan Geenwood goes full Linda Blair at two instances, levitating her bed, sticking out a lizard tongue, spinning her head around while projectile vomiting, and turning her eyes into glowing colors as Moore flies out of the window twice in a row.  At another instance, Denholm Elliot loudly smothers his Chihuahua as is continually pisses all over Moore, plus he and Cook do a farcical bit about a one-legged man applying for a runner job that feels as if it goes on for forty-seven minutes.  It is a loud, relentless, and stupid mess that even fans of the usually reliable talent herein will find insufferable.

70's British Horror Part Thirty

ASSAULT
(1971)
Dir - Sidney Hayers
Overall: MEH

A formulaic whodunit with a sensationalized rape angle, Assault, (The Creepers, In the Devil's Garden), has a number of British faces who anyone familiar with Doctor Who or any other BBC program from the era will be able to spot.  Anthony Ainley, Tony Beckley, James Laurenson, and Frank Finlay have all made the rounds, plus Suzy Kendall was a bonafide scream queen for a solid decade, finding herself in the lead here as a woman who helps both the doctors and the police in tracking down a madman who cannot keep his vile mitts off of young girls walking through the woods.  John Kruse's script adapts Kendal Young's 1962 novel The Ravine and points the finger at numerous red herring suspects along the way, interjecting the proceedings with a couple of POV sequences where the bad guy rips at the undergarments of his screaming victims.  The subject matter sounds more brutal than it comes off on screen, with a busy brass and bongo soundtrack giving it a zippy tone, plus little action in place of characters discussing the psychology of the do-badder and how to catch him.

 

NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND
(1972)
Dir - Fred Burnley
Overall: MEH

The only full-length from television director Fred Burnley, Neither the Sea Nor the Sand, (The Exorcism of Hugh), is a peculiar telling of love withstanding death, but it is also a vapid one.  Shot in Jersey with many sequences taking place on rocky, crashing-waved beaches, there is a haunting element to the locale where Susan Hampshire and Michael Petrovitch meet and quickly fall in love, despite their puzzling lack of on-screen chemistry.  Gordon Honeycomb adapts his own 1969 novel, but the romance seems as forced as it is unconvincing.  This would work in a more melodramatic setting, but the performances are subdued in keeping with Burnley's chilled atmosphere which recalls various folk horror films from the era. Unfortunately though, there is nothing creepy or interesting going on.  Petrovitch inexplicably comes back from the dead in a manner of speaking and Hampshire does everything she can to pretend that such a thing is normal, but the otherworldly situation seems awkward instead of harrowing for our small crop of characters.  We are also never given enough insight into the two star-crossed lovers that Hampshire and Petrovitch portray, since their dialog is pretentious and meandering, (before Petrovitch stops speaking verbally altogether halfway through), making their ordeal rushed and underwritten.

 

THE HOUSE IN NIGHTMARE PARK
(1973)
Dir - Peter Sykes
Overall: MEH

An old dark house throwback nyuck-fest that is lacking in laughs, The House in Nightmare Park, (Crazy House, The House of the Laughing Dead), has Frankie Howerd stumbling around a spacious mansion after being invited there by an eccentric family for reasons that of course revolve around a family fortune that everyone wants to get their greedy hands on.  While Howerd is not the least funny "bonehead falls down" comedian that jolly ole England had to offer, he is far from the best.  His character is not stupid enough to be grating, but he is not likeable enough to be charming, instead coming off somewhere in the lukewarm middle.  Clive Exton and Terry Nation's script is too formulaic to keep the yawns at bay, but to be fair, some of the gags and throwaway lines of dialog are amusing if one can steer off the boredom long enough to catch them.  There is also a head-scratching scene where Ray Milland and the rest of his oddball family put on a mime performance in clown make-up; a scene that is of no significance to the plot in any way shape or form.  Since there is no mystery and just a drawn-out charade to try and find out where some diamonds are buried, the entire story could have been told in about twenty minutes instead of a hundred of them.  At least Ian Wilson's cinematography has some agency to it, turning the Pinewood Studio interiors into a fun Gothic abode.

70's British Horror Part Twenty-Nine

THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF
(1970)
Dir - Basil Dearden
Overall: MEH

The last film from director Basil Dearden before his untimely death via car crash less than a year after its release, (which is coincidental since the movie bookends with Roger Moore suffering automobile accidents), The Man Who Haunted Himself plays an elongated psychological game that wears thin long before the characters finally catch up with the audience.  Anthony Armstrong's 1940 short story "The Strange Case of Mr Pelham" had already been adapted for both the small screen and radio a handful of times before, this version serving as producer Bryan Forbes' first work for EMI Films.  Made on the cheap with a ready and willing Moore on board to challenge himself after his seven year run on The Saint, its doppelgänger nightmare premise takes until the last few minutes to fully reveal itself, which would not be a problem if the plot had more mysterious juice to work with.  Instead, we quickly gather that there are two Moores running around and that it also stems from some sort of unleashed id judging by the opening scene.  Dearden does all the he can to keep the mystery compelling, stylishly moving his camera around to emphasis various clues, and Moore turns in a committed performance, but it is ultimately a tedious watch.

 

ZARDOZ

(1974)

Dir - John Boorman
Overall: GOOD

Seizing the once in a career opportunity to go hog-wild after the critical and financial success of Deliverance, John Boorman's follow-up Zardoz remains one of the most self-indulgent and baffling movies, (with a significant budget and top-tier production values at least), that the 1970s ever unleashed.  Snagging a post-James Bond Sean Connery after Burt Reynolds dropped out due to illness, Boorman dresses him in an iconically ridiculous mankini as his character weaves through a distant future utopia full of psychic immortals, gun-totting savages, a floating stone head, and an all-knowing artificial intelligence that lives inside of a crystal.  This of course only scratches the surface of the hodgepodge of ideas here, which also includes the metaphysical, Orwellian dystopia, eugenics, class structure, Arthurian legend, and the inevitable corruption of a human society that is left to perpetually linger with child birth being long abandoned.  Shot entirely in Ireland, Boorman and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth co-mingle the lush, pristine scenery with dated New Age fantasy and hedonism, which makes for boundlessly interesting visuals to keep the viewer's head from exploding in trying to decipher a stubbornly nebulous narrative.  Still, the whole experience is so wacky and pretentious, (let alone pulled off at such an impressive scale), that it stands as a pristine cult movie in an era where a filmmaker's free reign was tailor made for such silliness.

 

FACE OF DARKNESS
(1976)
Dir - Ian F.H. Lloyd
Overall: MEH

The only movie of any kind from writer/director/producer Ian F.H. Lloyd was the fifty-eight minute oddity Face of Darkness.  Fusing medieval folk horror with increased paranoia in Great Brittan in the midst of terrorist threats that would eventually lead to Thatcherism, Lloyd's story is lethargic in structure yet also topical and curious.  A conservative backbencher hatches a bizarre plan to dig up a condemned male witch who he has read about in his occult studies, all in order to have him commit a heinous act that will push through a capital punishment bill that he is facing universal opposition for.  The tone is relentlessly dry, (stilted performances, no musical score, a matter-of-fact delivery system for its more quirky components, etc.), but it is interesting up until a point.  Once David Allister's resurrected and unemotive black magic practitioner sets off a bomb in a schoolyard, things settle into a sluggish crawl where Lennard Pearce and John Bennett walk around gardens and discuss Allister's mental state and the supernatural hold that it has on Pearce who unearthed him.  The material is weird and the hazy presentation enhances such weirdness, but it fails to kick up the right kind of unsettling atmosphere that it is going for.

70's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Ten

THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON

(1973)

Dir - Milton Moses Ginsberg
Overall: WOOF

Yet another independently made horror comedy done by a filmmaker that is too inexperienced to meld his chosen genres, The Werewolf of Washington, (Werewolf at Midnight), is a poorly executed dud.  As the title would suggest, this is a lycanthropy movie with a political slant, though such a thing is played for laughs at least on paper.  In execution, writer/director Milton Moses Ginsberg stages one klutzy scene after the next, letting the camera linger as actors humiliate themselves with no laughs to be found.  One may be intrigued by the idea of Dean Stockwell playing the title wolf man, but they will be disappointed by endless moments of politicians and journalists making inconsequential banter with each other.  Some people may find it mildly amusing when Stockwell mugs it up in the transformation scenes or crawls around on the floor while sniffing people in full on beast mode, including one baffling moment where he does this with a midget scientist who treats such an encounter nonchalantly, (a scientist that serves no other purpose in the story, mind you).  Otherwise though, this is consistently head-scratching in its stumbling attempts at humor, to the point where one can barely consider it a spoof and can more easily just forget about it entirely.

DEATH RACE 2000

(1975)

Dir - Paul Bartel

Overall: GOOD

In typical Roger Corman fashion, the producer opted to make his own low-budget variant of United Artists' Rollerball, and the resulting Death Race 2000, (which was released the same year), has endured as the more seminal cult film of the two.  Loosely adapting Ib Melchior's 1956 short story "The Racer", Corman and character actor/director Paul Bartel clashed on the extent of how comedic the tone should be, with Robert Thorn's initial script allegedly getting re-written by Corman regular Charles B. Griffith to be more deliberately campy.  Such tactics are necessary for a film whose ridiculous premise involves murderous race car drivers scoring points on the age, innocence, and gender of the pedestrians that they brutally run over in an annual cross-country trek to appease a totalitarian government and the hungry masses.  Hot off of Kung Fu, David Carradine makes for a stoic anti-hero and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone proves that he could have had a career playing villainous thugs.  The rest of the cast is peppered with familiar faces, plus the racing scenes and souped-up hot rods have a dated pizzazz to them that matches the tongue-in-cheek social commentary and melodrama.

LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY'S BABY

(1976)

Dir - Sam O'Steen

Overall: MEH

Done as an ABC Friday Night Movie, Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby is a mess of a sequel to an influential and beloved horror work.  Part incompetent and part unintentionally hilarious, (yet oddly sincere), it delivers on the promise of the title by showing the aftermath of Roman Polanski's seminal Rosemary's Baby, which is a moronic idea that can and does wield disappointing results.  This also serves as a D-rent version of Richard Donner's The Omen, which was released a few months prior and similarly follows the exploits of the Antichrist and all of the evil doers behind the scenes who are inching him towards his dark destiny.  Broken up into three chapters, the first one shows Not-Damien fleeing with his mother who is ultimately captured by a buss with no driver, (which is at least a creepy concept on paper), the second features grown-up Not-Damien being a local rock singer who we never hear sing, (yet we do see him in mime make-up while awkwardly dancing), and the third has Not-Damien waking up in an institution and escaping with a doctor/love interest that unsurprisingly is in on the whole Satanic cult thing.  The plot is a desperate hodgepodge of stupid and hackneyed ideas, but the presentation is endlessly clumsy, culminating in a "Huh?" finale that is just as lackluster and misguided as everything else going on here.

70's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Nine

THE VICTIM

(1972)

Dir - Herschel Daugherty

Overall: MEH

Television director Herschel Daugherty does a more expanded version of McKnight Malmar's short story "The Storm", (which he had previously adapted ten years earlier for the NBS series Thriller), here titled The Victim and featuring Elizabeth Montgomery in the lead.  An ABC Movie of the Week, it has a simple premise of a woman's sister getting murdered on-screen, yet said sister does not even find out for certain that a murder took place until just before the credits roll.  Likewise, the killer's identity is also not revealed to the audience until then, and there is still some room left to speculate.  This is a frustrating yet unique angle to close on since the entire film plays the slow-boil game where Montgomery grows more and more paranoid and suspicious of the only two characters who could possibly be behind the foul dead, wandering around a spacious house in the middle of a thunder storm with the lights out and the phone line dead.  Even if it uneventful and obvious in most respects, Daugherty handles the gradual dread as expertly as such a small screen presentation would allow, with low-key and eerie music plus gotcha moments peppering long portions where we are given no new information to munch on.

THE SEVERED ARM

(1973)

Dir - Thomas S. Alderman

Overall: MEH

 

The second of only two movies directed by Thomas S. Alderman, The Severed Arm has a gnarly inciting incident where some spelunking buddies get trapped in a cave and resort to cannibalism while the delegated piece of human lunch meat screams and begs for them to hold out a little longer.  Cue getting rescued shortly after, fast forward five years, and the guy's hand is mysteriously delivered, (by Angus Scrimm in an unrecognizable first screen appearance), to the home of one of the survivors.  This sets in motion a slasher scenario where karma-infused vengeance is served, leading to a demented finale that would fit right at home in an issue of EC Comics.  Though these bookending moments are appropriately macabre, everything else going on leaves much to be desired.  Alderman is working with a razor-thin budget and the film has a typically flat aesthetic, even if cinematographer Robert Maxwell tries his best to cast some shadows on the wall and get some interesting camera angles in there.  The same problem that dooms almost every cheap genre movie from the period is present though, in that the pacing is snore-inducing.  Also, Marvin Kaplan embarrasses himself as a radio DJ with nothing but abysmal groaners at his disposal to spew over the airwaves, but at least he is one of the guys who dies a horrible death.

 

A*P*E

(1976)

Dir - Paul Leder

Overall: WOOF

This movie sure is stupid Charlie Brown.  An American/South Korean co-production that could be the most embarrassing kaiju monster film ever made, (saying something), A*P*E, (King Kong's Great Counterattack, King Kong eui daeyeokseup, Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla, Hideous Mutant, Super King Kong, King Kong Returns), was apparently shot in two weeks on a budget of $23,000, with only $1,200 delegated to the special effects.  To answer your question, yes, it absolutely looks like shit.  This beat Dino De Laurentiis' big-scale King Kong remake to the theaters by two months, but anyone who was afraid that this would take away from the latter film's box office gross clearly did not see the actual movie.  Some profanity, a film director telling an actor to "rape her gently", and the title monstrosity literally giving the camera the middle finger makes this technically not a family movie, but it bizarrely still maintains a cutesy and comedic tone.  Well, either that or the film is so asinine in its presentation that it comes off as having a comedic tone.  Lots of footage of giggling kids, the ridiculous umpa-dumpa soundtrack, and not-King Kong dancing during his death scene provide the movie with a further combination of lighthearted schmaltz and strangeness.  If the whole thing was full of such conflicting silliness then it would suffice as a trainwreck to laugh at, but it is instead just insultingly lazy and cheap crap that is done on a crap scale.

70's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Eight

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED
(1974)
Dir - Michael Findlay
Overall: WOOF
 
Z-grade smut peddler Michael Findlay directing a Bigfoot movie?  Shriek of the Mutilated, (Scream of the Snowbeast, Mutilated), was the last "real" film that Findlay would make before his untimely death via helicopter crash three years later, his estranged wife and long-time collaborator Roberta Findlay serving as cinematographer here.  On that note, the camerawork leaves everything to be desired as all of the monster murders are done in rapid-cut, claustrophobic close-ups that are impossible to decipher.  We get few glimpses of the Yeti anyway because of course, and also because of course, it looks ridiculous and about as frightening as a mall Easter Bunny.  In fact a mall Easter Bunny is far more frightening.  The story takes an idiotic twist in its closing moments once it is revealed that there is no Abominable Snowman conducting murders at all but instead just some rich assholes who lure college kids out into the wilderness to eat them as part of some kind of vague pagan ritual.  Equally boring and obnoxious, the instantly forgettable characters prattle on and on with each other and one of the actors decides that she has to scream all of her dialog once her character is upset.  Some viewers may laugh at the absurdity of the plot twist if they can stay with the movie that long, but this still ends up being as wretchedly bad and unwatchable as anything else that Findlay ever unleashed on the masses.
 

DOGS

(1976)

Dir - Burt Brinckerhoff

Overall: MEH

 

A silly killer canine movie that takes itself seriously, Dogs suffers from predictable ailments, namely that the characters are uninteresting, the plot spends a predominant amount of time with them prattling on with each other, and even in groups, dogs are not the most frightening of beasts.  The first act is dedicated to David McCallum's crotchety university scientist slowly figuring out what the audience already knows before they even press "play", then its the usual Jaws nonsense of the people in an authority position poo-pooing the threat because well, how else are we gonna get to the ninety-minute mark?  Then more talking, more arguing, people panicking and acting like idiots, and eventually some rampaging pooch scenes that are shot in a dark and claustrophobic manner that makes them more annoyingly indecipherable than intense.  This was the second and last theatrically released movie from director Burt Brinckerhoff who worked steadily in television for over two decades, but the guy can only do so much with O'Brian Tomalin's ho-hum script.  It is never a good sign when the threatening howls of the four-legged critters heard off screen are considerably more frightening than when they attack on screen, but at least an attempt was made there to provide some ominous atmosphere.  Plus the dogs maul a woman to death in a shower so again, silly stuff.

SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS
(1977)
Dir - Greydon Clark
Overall: MEH

While its title is accurate enough, Satan's Cheerleaders represents a missed opportunity of dopey occult high-jinks.  This was the first horror movie that screenwriter Greydon Clark was also behind the lens on, but he has a clumsy way of delivering his material to say the least.  This is a comedy on paper and all parties involved seem to understand the assignment, but it is more awkward than funny to watch a bunch of teenage girls speaking in sexual innuendo as their clueless cheer teacher just smiles like a ditz at everyone, even when a fat janitor proclaims that he is going to rape them after crashing his truck and bringing them to a satanic alter in broad daylight.  Every set piece plays out in such a butterfingerd manner where the things that are happening are sleazy and weird, yet the people on screen are acting like they are in an entirely different set of circumstances.  The fact that John Carradine, Yvonne De Carlo, and John Ireland needed the money enough to appear is even more confusing and even as the third act switches gears by trying to be more diabolical, the presentation remains just as aloof.  As a dated trainwreck, the film has some unintentional charm, but its head-scratching ineptitude cannot be denied.