Monday, November 18, 2024

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.

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