(1972)
Dir - Bill L. Norton
Overall: MEH
Notable as the first film that Stan Winston worked on, Gargoyles was the November 21st, 1972 entry of The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies program and the first of a career's worth of works in television for director Bill L. Norton. Shot on New Mexico desert highways as well as Carlsbad Caverns Natural Park, the titular monsters look about as good as the best Star Trek aliens and Norton chose to present them in slow motion for most of their scenes, which does nothing to enhance their otherworldliness. In fact it becomes more difficult to take the creatures seriously as things go on, especially when they are shown in a non-threatening light while reading books, hatching from eggs while cooing, speaking English with artificially wobbled voices, and riding horses even though they have wings and can fly. While the concept is unsettling of slumbering demons awakening to reap havoc amongst the human race in an age-old war to defy their creator, (in other words, these gargoyles are meant to be Satan's army), only the first act provides any mysterious menace. Still, the novelty of watching none other than Bernie Casey as the head gargoyle is a hoot in and of itself.
(1976)
Dir - Richard Ashe
Overall: WOOF
Some New Mexico regional junk, Track of the Moon Beast was rightfully lambasted on a later episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is exactly where such a dull piece of celluloid belongs. It is also telling that the film was shot in 1972 yet failed to find a distributor for four years, ultimately debuting on television by a station that must have been desperate for content. This marks the only time that Richard Ashe's was behind the lens and it was inexplicably co-authored by Bill Finger, who created none other than Batman with Bob Kane nearly forty-years prior. In any event, the movie is caca. A lazy riff on pick-any-wolf-man story, it is laughably more ridiculous since Chase Cordell's hapless mineralogist gets hit in the head with a rock and then somehow turns into a lizard beast when the moon is out. He also has a Native American buddy that lists all of the ingredients in his stew, as well as spouting some expository nonsense about an ancient legend that foretells the title creature's coming. The performances are abysmally wooden and Ashe's direction mostly consists of long shots that do not cut away until everyone is done with the scene, creating one of the most insultingly boring and D-rent dung heaps that the 1970s ever produced.
(1978)
Dir - Radley Metzger
Overall: MEH
Nearly four decades had passed since Hollywood attempted a version of John Willard's 1922 stage play The Cat and the Canary and filmmaker Radley Metzger, (who had a significant career making soft and hardcore porn movies), hardly seems like the logical choice to bring such an antiquated tale to life in the late 70s. A British and American co-production whose wide release was held up for three years by a lawsuit with the distributors, it is as formulaic in its plotting as any other whodunit. Metzger resists the urge to load the film with nudity or eroticism, but there is a lesbian couple present and he does add more ghastly ingredients like blood and shots of torture equipment. Alex Thomson's cinematography creates some menace here or there, (either with claustrophobic closeups or wide shots which show off the vastness of the sparsely-decorated mansion ), but the updated presentation hardly improves upon the more spooky black and white atmospherics of previous versions. It also replaces all the humor with mean-spirited cynicism, making it a downer of a watch that answers the question of what the Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard classic would be like if it had a miserable tone.
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