(1973)
Dir - Curtis Hanson
Overall: WOOF
According to Curtis Hanson, the writer/director's debut Sweet Kill, (A Kiss from Eddie, The Arousers), was both sleazed-up and made more derivative by producer Roger Corman, who tasked Hanson to do a straight Psycho-adjacent thriller with lots of naked boobs. Hanson's initial script had a woman as the killer, but this was deemed too unique for Corman who just wanted another disturbed male with mommy issues behind the murders. Plus in typical Corman fashion, the proposed budget was cut once shooting began, forcing Hanson to film scenes at his grandmother's apartment and to ask his parents to mortgage their house to help fund it. Such a shame that all of that effort and aggravation when into such a comatose-inducing bore of an exploitation movie. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most lifeless film about a serial murderer gym teacher who is irresistible to women despite the fact that he has all of the charisma of a wood-paneled basement. Whoever was in charge of the sound design seems to be asleep at the wheel, (and who could blame them?), since long stretches play out to silence and Hanson exhibits zero of his future chops from behind the lens, shooting everything in as inert a fashion as possible. Topless or fully nude women are sprinkled around in a pathetic attempt to keep people invested, but there is an endless array of better places to get your boobie fix than here.
(1976)
Dir - Joy N. Houck Jr.
Overall: MEH
One of the first films to be shot by cinematographer Dean Cundey, (who would go on to do everything from Satan's Cheerleaders, to Halloween, to Jurassic Park), Creature from Black Lake was also one of many 1970s Big Foot films and it is as boring as the lot of them. On the plus side, it at least looks like a real movie as opposed to the usual crop of no budget, regional dung heaps that had a guy in a bad monster suit occasionally breaking up endlessly talky monotony with some grisly murders. Such is still the case here of course since the story is too bare bones and full of dopey while people bantering the audience to smithereens, but Cundey tries his best with some slasher-style Sasquatch attacks. Thirty-six-going-on-sixty-three year old Dennis Fimple playing a college student of all things who is obsessed with hamburgers is hilarious, plus character actor Jack Elam leans hard into the whole "drunken hillbilly with detailed anecdotes about the woodland monster" thing, but this is nowhere near enough to extinguish the audience's indifference. It is the usual problem with stock creature features in that we know exactly what is happening, but the production is not sufficient enough to make it interesting to watch the characters figure out what is happening.
(1978)
Dir - Karen Arthur
Overall: WOOF
An example of a movie than can only have a plot if all of the main characters are morons, The Mafu Cage, (My Sister, My Love, Don't Ring the Doorbell, Deviation), was the second full-length from director Karen Arthur and serves as a flimsy adaptation of Eric Westphal's play Toi et Tes Nuages. Carol Kane is a mentally unstable woman who regularly murders her pet monkeys to bloody death and has the jealous-fueled hots for her own sister, yet said sister Lee Grant not only refuses to institutionalize her, but also caters to her delusions by letting her turn their house into a live-in jungle, gets her further monkeys to destroy, and leaves her all alone for days on end after one of these primate-murdering outbursts. Grant's co-worker love interest James Olson stops by and plays along with Kane's eyebrow-raising escapades, which goes about as horribly wrong as anyone anywhere would predict, and this only scratches the surface of the more prominent acts of stupidity displayed on the everyone's parts. Kane's performance is ridiculous, but so is the person that she is playing, (plus so is the crap that she has to work with), so she seems to at least understand the thankless assignment. While clearly going for exploitative shock value, Arthur's presentation of such asinine material is sincere instead of campy, making this an unintentional mess that insults the audience every step of the way, let alone sending any animal lover into justifiable fits of rage that are on par with the ones that Kane frequently exhibits on screen.
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