1970s Boris Karloff

CAULDRON OF BLOOD
(1970)
Dir - Edward Mann/Santos Alcocer
Overall: MEH

There are a few redeeming qualities to the still greatly flawed Cauldron of Blood, (El Coleccionista de Cadaveres), one of the last films Boris Karloff shot, though it was not released until three years later.  Filmed in Spain with an international cast, Karloff is wisely undubbed at least and though the well-renowned actor is clearly worn down as he was in all of his later films, (he is usually either sitting down or using a cane), he does bring a level of class to what is essentially cheaply made, Euro-exploitation fodder.  The lazy script is not anything to impress as it is a rehash of other "artist uses human bodies for art" movies, full of the same cliches, and worse yet it does not make any amount of sense, using a "yeah whatever, just have them murder people" plot devise.  That said, the dialog is rather clever at times and the performances stray away from overt camp, sans a few exceptions such as one of them who gets a completely unexplained backstory of getting abused or something as a child maybe?  Yet directors Edward Mann and Santos Alcocer fill the movie with a few random visual flourishes such as psychedelic dream scenes and some gruesome, giallo-style murders.  There is not enough of these moments though and the mood still never becomes as ghoulishly engaging as it should be to elevate the unremarkable material they are working with.

ISLE OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE
(1971)
Dir - Juan Ibáñez/Jack Hill
Overall: MEH

Compared to the other three Mexican/American productions that served as Boris Karloff's cinematic swansongs, the only complaint besides being a rather bad movie overall of course with Isle of the Snake People, (La muerte viviente, Cult of the Dead, and Snake People in other countries), is that it is a bit too slow for its own weird, schlocky good.  There is a twist in this one which anyone with half an IQ point can spot almost as soon as the movie begins and the plot is another vague conglomerate of past movie voodoo rituals that we have all seen plenty of times before and since.  Credit where it is due though that is not saying much, but this is the least inane script out of the bunch, (House of Evil, Fear Chamber, and The Incredible Invasion being the others), and a lot of the horrory set pieces would have actually come off as rather creepy if most of them did not overstay their welcome by dragging out for too long.  Still, a guy resurrecting a zombie and then making out with it, nightmares of a woman also making out with her own doppelganger as well as a snake, and a horde of zombie ladies presumably eating a few people to death, (though this is shown in un-gory detail), are at least more striking than one would expect from such a low-cost, drive-in romp such as this.

THE INCREDIBLE INVASION
(1971)
Dir - Juan Ibáñez/Jack Hill
Overall: MEH

Another poor, semi-mash-up that combines visitors from outerspace with scientists doing scientist things and a sadomasochistic, women-murdering brute with angry villagers after him was Boris Karloff's very final film The Incredible Invasion.  All of these collaborations that the actor did with Mexican producer Louis Enrique Vergara and American director Jack Hill were pretty lousy and this one is no exception.  The story is asinine and the filmmakers once again forgo the common courtesy to try and rationally explain anything that is going on.  Because of this, we are either left laughing at all of it or worse, getting impatiently bored.  There is a, (very), few instances where The Incredible Invasion is rather nice to look at with some fog-laden, Bave-esque colorful sets and clever camera angles, but besides that and Karloff being charming as always, the film is a dull mess.  It is not as ridiculous as say Fear Chamber nor as forgettable as House of Evil, but it just kind of falls in the middle where not enough is "so bad it's funny" and too much is just dumb.  This makes it a pretty lackluster way for Karloff to end his career truth be told, but thankfully the man's legacy was in pretty solid shape at the time of his death anyway so all is forgiven.

1960s Boris Karloff Part Four

THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI
(1966)
Dir - Don Weis
Overall: MEH

The final installment in American International's ridiculous Beach Party series, (though they had to merely settle for a swimming pool here), was The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini which was the only one to be half horror.  Boris Karloff and Susan Hart, (wife of James H. Nicholson) were added after the movie was completed to give it an even more convoluted plot, one which was already as juvenile and enormously stupid as it gets.  This was nothing new to these films though which all featured random, terrible songs, scantily-clad women, young, tanned white people partying, a motorcycle gang for no reason, and non-stop, bottom of the barrel slapstick humor that is rarely if at all funny.  All of this is present here and thankfully the filmmakers have the good sense to treat it as preposterously as it deserves.  While this makes it more groan-worthy than anything and something to make fun of at best, the horror angle saves it from being completely forgettable.  Under various directors, (primarily Roger Corman), AIP still generally produced wonderfully fun, spooky sets and visuals.  On that note, there is a fog laden cemetery and a haunted house with a "chamber of horrors" torture chamber hidden in it that get an adequate amount of screen time here.  Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff being on board is likewise wonderful, particularly the former who gets to indulge in physical comedy for a change.

FEAR CHAMBER
(1968)
Dir - Juan Ibáñez/Jack Hill
Overall: MEH

The first released of four Mexican/American co-productions that Boris Karloff starred in just before his death was Fear Chamber which is probably the most absurd movie the legendary horror icon was ever in.  The plot, (if you can call it that), so desperately tries to combine cliched sci-fi elements like mutated life forms and scientists conducting the vaguest of experiments while using giant computers and analyzing data, all with random nudity, sadism, and even occultism kinda not really thrown into the mix.  The disastrous result is pretty consistently hilarious as the film jumps wildly all over the place when it is not settling down for actors to dub some of the most shockingly asinine dialog in the most shockingly bad of ways.  One lumbering ogre of a lab assistant spends the last twenty or so minutes of the movie manically ranting about how much he loves diamonds and is "king of the world" and it gets more embarrassingly stupid from there.  Elsewhere, this may have the most pointless nude scene in all of cinema and even more moronically, practically none of the characters are kept in check, illogically behaving completely different at a moment's notice which includes randomly killing people at times.  It is nonsense from top to bottom yet kind of a hoot because of it.  Also, an early scene where we get to see Karloff baptize women in the name of Satan is just wonderful.

HOUSE OF EVIL
(1968)
Dir - Juan Ibáñez/Jack Hill
Overall: MEH

It is on the one hand admirable that Boris Karloff kept working up until the very end of his days but on the other, the rather abysmal and last to be released while he was alive House of Evil, (aka Dance of Death), was hardly a necessary movie to make.  As part of his four picture deal with Mexican producer Luis Enrique Vergara, Karloff's scenes here were filmed all at once by American exploitation director Jack Hill and the veteran actor was quite ill while suffering from emphysema at the time.  Whatever the particular reason, Karloff is more hammy here than usual, over-dramatizing much of his lines and mannerisms though not necessarily to a fault.  That lies on the shoulders of everything else going on.  The dubbing is typically horrendous and nearly derails the film on its own, but the cinematography is also atrocious where a frequent number of scenes play out virtually in pitch blackness.  The story though, (credited sort of barely to the work by Edgar Allan Poe), is a stupid mess where a family full of people we do not care about are invited to get Karloff's Matthias Morteval's fortune and then for some reason animated toys/people dressed up as toys try and kill them or something.

1960s Hammer Horror Part Seven

TASTE OF FEAR
(1961)
Dir - Seth Holt
Overall: GOOD

Well-regarded director Seth Holt made only a handful of films before dying suddenly at the age of forty-eight and the one that Christopher Lee himself considered "the best film that I was in that Hammer ever made" was the topsy tervy thriller Taste of Fear, (Scream of Fear in the US since the word "Taste" was not tasteful enough, har, har).  While Lee's generous praise is not necessarily agreed upon by many, Taste is indeed well done from the director's chair.  The twists in Jimmy Sangster's script hit hard due to how methodically Holt plays with the audience's expectations.  Cliches such as doctors giving out sedatives to women who have over-active imaginations when we the viewer know damn well that there is nothing psychological going on at all can very easily be tiresome to endlessly sit through with so many similar films.  Holt makes these standard plot devices work in spite of themselves though and even the ending which goes off the rails with double and triple crosses, truly exposing the crater-sized holes in the script, still manages to pack quite a wallop.  While the whole movie may appear to come apart if you think about the story too much, it cannot be argued that it does not do exactly what the best suspense films are supposed to do, at least while you are watching it.

FANATIC
(1965)
Dir - Silvio Narizzano
Overall: MEH

Taking on the similar ingredients that Pete Walker would more relentlessly explore the following decade, (namely an old crone/religious lunatic kidnapping and tormenting a young woman to "cleanse her soul"), Silvio Narizzano's theatrical debut Fanatic, (Die! Die! My Darling!) also doubles as the final film appearance for Tallulah Bankhead's, (Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat).  The wildly prolific and even more wildly consistent screenwriter Richard Matheson was on hand as well and his script is brimful of manic, biblical dogma for Bankhead to just as manically dive into.  The film and particularly Bankhead's performance are over the top in many places they should be, but the overall tone is way off.  The frequent comedic touches, (whether with inappropriate musical cues or jokey lines of dialog), jive rather poorly with the serious and horrifying plight of a woman held against her will while being helplessly tortured.  Matheson's script unfortunately is also rather formulaic and riddled with inconsistencies involving some of the sloppily-written secondary characters as well as showing us more than a handful of moments where Patricia, (Stefanie Powers), could have easily escaped.  Some might be amused to see Donald Sutherland as a dim-witted handyman though.

THE MUMMY'S SHROUD
(1967)
Dir - John Gilling
Overall: MEH

What could be seen as the weakest in Hammer's Mummy series was the third entry The Mummy's Shroud.  Though it is both directed and co-scripted by John Gilling who was hot off of the one-two punch of the extraordinary The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, Shroud is generic in nearly every possible way.  The film is unable to resist the urge to recycle the same plot, (again), from the previous two films not to mention several Universals a few decades prior.  It is yet another run-through of a mummy who comes back from the dead due to some fanatical ancestor to act out a curse on those who desecrating its grave.  Because of this, the story could not be more boring, having seen it so many times before.  Worse yet, Gilling cannot muster enough gruesome or spooky set pieces to spice it up.  Roger Delgado is always a treat and he is perfectly suited to play the vengeful Egyptian pulling all of the strings, yet again though, there is a character like him in all of these movies so he is still rather stock.  Worse yet, the mummy itself, (played by Christopher Lee's regular stunt double Eddie Powell), is pretty lame looking, but to be fair, his demise is the one visually striking image in the whole movie as he crumbles into a powdered skeleton before our eyes.  Unfortunately, that one pleasantry does not happen until the last minute and a half of the movie.

1960s Hammer Horror Part Six

THE TERROR OF THE TONGS
(1961)
Dir - Anthony Bushell
Overall: MEH

A step down from the film that it is essentially a remake of, (down to re-casting Doctor Who's The Master Roger Delgado once again as a right-hand, evil second in command), The Terror of the Tongs is The Stranglers of Bombay just in a different country.  Once again being a Hammer production and switching from India to China of course means having lots of English actors in yellow face.  Also unfortunately, Jimmy Sangster's script, while campy and fun, is still dated and just as politically incorrect to Chinese culture.  This makes it pretty similar to the Fu Manchu series which also depicted the Chinese as either terrified peasants or mindless henchmen, all addicted to opium, money, and scantily clad women in equal amounts.  Speaking of Fu Manchu, Christopher Lee of course is on hand to essentially play the exact same character and though the offensive make-up is unintentionally goofy, Lee still could not be an ineffective villain if he tried, making him just as solid here as in any of his multitude of bad guy roles.  Elsewhere, the movie is occasionally fun, but it still goes through the motions in recycling the plot from Bombay which becomes increasingly impossible not to compare it to.  Even with Lee here, it is an inferior effort overall.

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB
(1964)
Dir - Michael Carreras
Overall: MEH

A bit embarrassingly silly at times and downright boring in others, Michael Carreras' written, (under the pen name Henry Younger), produced, and directed The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb still ends up being above mildly entertaining at times.  A sequel to Hammer's 1959 The Mummy only in the fact that it features such a monster, (and maybe because George Pastell returns, even though he plays a different character), Mummy's Tomb tells virtually the same story of a cursed Egyptian expedition and a resurrected son of a Pharaoh who is getting controlled by someone.  There is a stronger emphasis on humor, particularly with American character actor Fred Clark as a charming yet sleazy showbiz promoter.  Carreras, (who mostly worked as a producer on a number of Hammer outings), stages some unique, music-less monster movie moments for the day that deserve some props, but he also waits until there are only about thirty-minutes left in the movie to unveil his title monster.  In the meantime, it is the common complaint of "too much talking, too little horror".  Even though the mystery is pleasantly resolved, the ending falls apart rather cartoonishly with a hysterical woman simply standing motionless as a slooooooooow mummy pursuers her and then said mummy pulls a string and rocks fall on him.  Preeeetty lame Milhouse.

HYSTERIA
(1965)
Dir - Freddie Francis
Overall: MEH

Freddie Francis' follow-up to arguably the finest Amicus anthology horror production Dr. Terror's House of Horrors was Hysteria, a rather straight-forward thriller scripted once again by Jimmy Sangster, who wrote virtually everything for Hammer at the time.  The only problem with the film is really that we gather from the very beginning that no supernatural or even psychological elements are truly at play and it is rather easy to predict what characters will be involved in the inevitable plot twist.  While this keeps the story from becoming as engaging as it should, Sangster still sets up an excellent premise of a guy who wakes up in a hospital with no memory and all of his bills plus a luxury penthouse for him funded by unknown persons.  In addition, Francis directs with a tight control, deepening the mystery with a lot of clever, confusing details that keep both Robert Webber's main protagonist and the viewer on edge.  The attempts at humor work rather well too, with Maurice Denham's private investigator and his no nonsense tactics standing out the most.  It is certainly not bad or forgettable, but it does not quite grab you enough and the uninspired "yeah sure whatever" payoff is a let down of sorts.

1960s British Horror Part Eight

THE BLACK TORMENT
(1964)
Dir - Robert Hartford-Davis
Overall: MEH

Though it is ultimately a bit undone by its uninspired twist and lackluster, final action sequence, Robert Hartford-Davis' The Black Torment for most of its running time is an above-average, Gothic horror outing.  Very deliberately styled after the Hammer films of the day, it was produced by the far lesser known Compton Films and borrows Phantom of the Opera's Heather Sears and even Patrick Troughton in a smaller role, the latter who would go on to be immortalized as the Second Doctor on Doctor Who a mere two years later.  The film's opening is quite strong, (before we even see anything no less) and familiar plot devices such as ghostly ladies in white and possible doppelgangers getting into tomfoolery are showcased in a number of wonderfully creepy ways.  John Turner as the tormented Sir Richard Fordyke is definitely over the top as he yells and goes into body-convulsing fits of rage, (Oliver Reed would have positively excelled here), but the mystery surrounding him really is rather captivating due to how cleverly the movie teases everything, keeping it from us until the last possible moment.  Again though, anything hokey or lame you may have guessed was going on ends up being the case and the payoff does not live up to what came before it, so the movie is still only a partial success.

NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT
(1967)
Dir - Terence Fisher
Overall: WOOF

Quite easily the most absolutely boring movie Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee ever made together, Night of the Big Heat is a dated, horrendously dull adaptation of the John Lymington novel of the same name.  The alien threat is barely given screen time and they are as convincing looking as any other cheaply made, blob-like creatures.  It also takes absolutely forever to get the story to the point where they are even noticed by anyone on screen, let alone the audience.  In the meantime, every character is either just there to have a few lines and die, (Cushing is sadly wasted in this regard), or they are just assholes.  This includes Lee who is unnecessarily rude and cold to everyone because he is a serious scientist.  Patrick Allen is just as arrogantly unlikable, playing a man who is cheating on his secretary that he calls a "slut" a few times in a couple of hilarious rants.  All the while, the woman that he is cheating with just wants to be there so she can be annoying apparently while his wife cries a little yet ultimately seems just fine with him saying he only did it because he is a horny guy who does not really love his mistress.  The love triangle is so badly written that it makes the totally generic, "handful of people making a last stand against monsters" core element all the more disappointing.  Then the aliens get killed because it starts to rain and the credits roll about ten seconds later.

TWISTED NERVE
(1968)
Dir - Roy Boulting
Overall: MEH

A rare psychological thriller from Roy Boulting, (who primarily made comedy films and also occasionally co-directed with his brother John), Twisted Nerve takes its title from a poem by German-American writer George Sylvester Viereck, who regrettably was also a pro-Nazi propagandist.  Not that any such fascism creeps into the proceedings here, but it does have a rather un-PC premise of a sociopath who pretends to be retarded to manipulate people.  Co-scripted by Leo Marks, (Peeping Tom), Boulting keeps everything far enough from getting unfavorably exploitative, but the subject matter and highly disturbed and unlikable protagonist are surely meant to make one rather uncomfortable.  Most of the nudity and violence is underplayed, (at least by later standards), and none of the behavior of Hywel Bennett's Martin/Georgie is glorified in the slightest.  This is all rather part of the problem with the movie in general though.  By keeping itself mostly grounded and safe, it lacks uniqueness and really is not that thought-provoking or shocking.  It is just another "crazy guy does crazy things" scenario really.  As a fun side-note, the main musical theme by Bernard Herman was later used in a number of other places, least of all two Quentin Tarantino movies.

1960s British Horror Part Seven

THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING
(1964)
Dir - Terence Fisher
Overall: MEH

In between several of his average to well-regarded horror vehicles for Hammer Studios in the early 60s, Terence Fisher made the low-budget The Earth Dies Screaming for Twentieth Century Fox.  Why he bothered is anyone's guess as the film is remarkably dull.  Opening almost exactly as Village of the Damned did four years earlier, it straight-away gets the feel of a rip-off, making the set-up very difficult to come off as hooky as indented.  At a mere sixty-two minutes long, it feels quite rushed with all of the would-be compelling details regarding the alien or something menace feeling totally left out.  That leaves us with a handful of characters who we are not given enough time with, making everybody's actions seem rather random and uninteresting.  The movie never goes anywhere past its initial, very vague premise and even though it gets to the drab conclusion quickly, Fisher hardly has anything to work with to make the movie anything except monotonous.  The characters hide, argue, then get along, disappear, turn against each other, and reach conclusions out of thin air and then it is all done and over with before you even notice or worse yet, bother to even care.

BERSERK!
(1967)
Dir - Jim O'Connolly
Overall: MEH

Low on gore and sex appeal although occasionally lively at times, most aspects about Jim O'Connolly's Berserk! which are rather a chore to sit through are all similar to the same ones that undid Sidney Hayers just slightly better Circus of Horrors seven years prior.  That is, we watch a bunch of proficient, professional circus routines and then every so often somebody gets killed while performing them.  At which point, the movie then ends.  Joan Crawford is actually pretty restrained and even rather likeable here as the owner/ringleader of the traveling circus, plus Michael Gough has a small yet solid role as well.  Both of them bring a bit more class to the proceedings than would be expected.  If the word "class" comes to mind when describing Crawford's rather schlocky and final period to her career.  The mystery is in fact somewhat intriguing as of course all of the obvious candidates as far as who the hell is murdering everyone cannot possibly be the culprits, leaving one to genuinely scratch their head as to who it is going to turn out to be.  Sadly, the answer to this question is as lame as the bulk of the movie is and really outside of Crawford adequately holding down the fort, Berserk! is as forgettable as they come.

THEATRE OF DEATH
(1967)
Dir - Samuel Gallu
Overall: GOOD

This lesser-known staring vehicle for Christopher Lee, Theatre of Death also features Julian Glover, (Indian Jones and the Last Crusade, Doctor Who, The Empire Strikes Back), and Lelia Goldoni, (Hysteria, John Cassavete's Shadows, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), and it is rather stylishly directed by the equally lesser-known American Samuel Gallu.  Why the film is not mentioned as often as other such horror works from the 1960s is anyone's guess, but then again as far as Lee was concerned, the man did make about seven hundred such films that decade so it is rather easy to overlook a couple.  Lee is perfectly cast as a brutish, egomaniacal theater director and he does everything his expertise allows to make his character thoroughly deplorable.  With a script full of silly, implausible coincidences, it must be said that the real hero of the production is Gallu.  The director choose to shoot a great deal of the movie with off-kilter angles and handheld camerawork, evoking a cinéma vérité style that is rather refreshing for the somewhat ridiculous, Jack the Ripper-esque plot.  By giving it such a visual edge, it makes it more forgivable that the movie drags in a few spots, particularly the ending which gets rather interrupted by a drawn-out voodoo dance sequence that unintentionally deflates the tension.

1960s British Horror Part Six

THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS
(1960)
Dir - John Gilling
Overall: MEH

In Peter Cushing's first staring role in a horror film outside of Hammer studios, The Flesh and the Fiends, (Mania in the US), he is very Dr. Frankensteiny in the best of ways.  As a blindly narcissistic anatomist, delusionally convincing himself that his dubious methods are outweighed by their results, Cushing as the real life Dr. Rober Knox is both villainous and sympathetically pitiful to the audience, even if the ending is too illogically crowd-pleasing let alone historically very inaccurate.  Director John Gilling had written the screenplay for the 1948 cinematic version of the Burke and Hare murders, (The Greed of William Hart), but he was forced to change all of the character's names around then.  As opposed to Cushing, George Rose and Donald Pleasence are textbook, vile scumbags here and it is more unpleasant than anything to watch them do what the actual two Williams did in 1828.  The movie also distracts itself with a number of lame sub-plots, never managing to settle on any story element in particular long enough to make them interesting.  It is too banal despite the talent at hand, with various other diabolical body snatcher and/or Jack the Ripper style movies of the era, (or older), faring far better.

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED
(1964)
Dir - Anton M. Leader
Overall: GOOD

The Village of the Damned sequel, (based off of the 1960 John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos), Children of the Damned is not only a solid second offering, it also inspired an excellent Iron Maiden song.  Prominently boasting larger moralistic themes, (as in typical science fiction, the "aliens" are the benevolent ones holding a mirror up to the trigger-happy society that is confused/threatened by them), it retcons the original novel and film source material, removing the effective if straight-ahead creepiness of the first movie in place of a high-minded allegory.  While this is a shift in focus, it is not a bad one, and what the film lacks in a more eerie, horror-tinged premise and execution it makes up for in other ways.  The ending comes close to being an unintentionally comedic cop-out, but there are still some striking moments of the children of the title standing motionless with their glowing eyes as they defend themselves against endless military men, embassy leaders, and hired goons who would do them harm.  Director Anton M. Leader makes some effective stylistic choices such as showing the children move in slow motion as they are out and about while gathering their forces in downtown London.  It is a well done example of a sequel that wisely chooses not to simply rehash its predecessor, but instead takes a gamble at going a different yet still compelling route.

ISLAND OF TERROR
(1966)
Dir - Terence Fisher
Overall: MEH

By 1966, movies where lab coat-wearing scientists get together and theorize about what weird, scientific anomaly is terrorizing whatever area while unimportant locals get predictably picked off as we wait were already old hat.  That right there is the biggest reason that Island of Terror fails to work, being "same shit, different movie" to a fault.  Sadly, Terence Fisher being brought in while taking a quick break from Hammer does nothing to elevate the humdrum.  He is forced to shoot pointless scenes such as the entire process of guys getting into radioactive suits, opening a storage area, and removing a single cylinder of whatever while the music desperately tries to make it exciting.  Instead, we could have just watched them enter the room and come back out with the stuff in about three seconds.  Peter Cushing is also here as one of the doctor guys looking for answers and he played so many such similar characters over his long career that you almost forget that he does not actually have a PhD in such fields.  The bone-marrow sucking monsters are somewhat menacing since of course bullets, dynamite, and fire do nothing to harm them, but they also move at a snail's pace and are just another mindless hoard of silly looking blobby/snake-like things.  Pretty unexciting stuff.