1960s Herschell Gordon Lewis Part Two

BLOOD FEAST

(1963)

Overall: MEH

 

While not his first film, Blood Feast marks ground zero for Herschell Gordon Lewis' legacy as a splatter pioneer.  The former teacher-turned-no-budget-filmmaker had already made a good handful of exploitative nudie flicks, but like many lesser talented people have, he took inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and wondered what it would be like if the murders did not shy away from excessive gore.  This is as fine of a jumping-off point as any and considering that the 1960s were a transgressive decade that marked a turning point for various artistic mediums, somebody had to come along and up the crimson blood splatter and tastelessness in order to push cinema further away from its more censored form.  This is all that a movie like Blood Feast deserves, which in every technical aspect is a moronic and dull bit of celluloid that resembles countless other Z-grade cheapies from its era.  Still, there is a tacky sleaze-ball charm to all of the dreadful cinematography, acting, set design, music, and the story itself which features an eccentric caterer who is obsessed with murder and cannibalism in the name of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

 

TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!

(1964)

Overall: MEH

 

Easily the least egregious entry in Herschell Gordon Lewis' wretched filmography, Two Thousand Maniacs! boasts a larger enough budget to afford some semblance of professionalism, be it of the low-grade drive-in variety of course.  An early example of hicksploitation that sensationalizes redneck stereotypes, the fear of backwoods communities, and the cultural divide that still exists somewhat between the North and the South even a century after the end of the Civil War, it has a bizarre and darkly comedic tone.  Incessant and boisterous cackling on the part of the hillbilly bumpkin characters grows insufferably annoying, but it is also in place to exaggerate what is a nightmarish story on paper; namely a disturbing centennial celebration where the South rises up for revenge and lays on the charm while manipulating some Yankees who cross their paths.  The set pieces are nasty enough to appease gore fans and Lewis makes sure to show some severed limbs and unrealistic bloodshed whenever appropriate.  The movie is still too amateurish to be properly unsettling, but the balancing of goofiness, sleaze, and sadism occasionally works to its advantage and this would spearhead a slew of similar exploitation films over the decades, for better and worse.

THE GRUESOME TWOSOME

(1967)

Overall: WOOF

A rambling, amateur-hour piece of shit, The Gruesome Twosome finds craptacular filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis in his usual form.  As unwatchably nonsensical and boring as it is, credit must be given to the opening scene which finds two crude dummy heads engaging in mindless, southern-accented chit-chat with each other, before one of them gets stabbed and starts oozing blood.  Whether this intro was meant to set a comedic tone or was just the result of Lewis' cinematic ineptitude, (or drug use?), is inconsequential since the rest of the movie needs to be avoided at all costs.  It concerns an old lady and her dim-witted son who run a wig shop that specializes in human hair.  One can guess what that means and yes, women get murdered by the mommy/son duo in order to get scalped, but moments of such nasty bloodshed are alarmingly sparse.  Do not worry though, Lewis makes sure to pad out the run time with college girls in their underwear making endless small talk, a couple of boys also talking, various other characters talking, and a few excruciating musical numbers just to make sure that the whole thing reaches an acceptable full-length running time.  Easily the worst movie with a horror angle in Lewis' heyday unless one counts Monster a Go-Go, (which nobody should ever count), this is just garbage, pure and simple.

1960s Hammer Horror Part Eight

THE FULL TREATMENT

(1960)

Dir - Val Guest

Overall: MEH

 

One of the more talky psychological thrillers in Hammer's cannon, The Full Treatment, (Stop Me Before I Kill!, The Treatment), was a passion project for one of the studio's busiest directors Val Guest.  After purchasing the film rights to Ronald Scott Thorn's novel of the same name, Guest produced and co-wrote the screenplay with the author and maybe because of this, it is loaded with busy dialog involving Ronald Lewis' troubled race car driver who suffers bouts of severe mood swings and violence towards his wife after both were involved in an automobile crash.  While the cast turns in fittingly melodramatic performances and Guest utilizes some Hitchcockian style from behind the lens, the plot is monotonous and mostly revolves around waiting for Lewis to act like an asshole out of nowhere, which he does.  This is intentional to showcase the frustration suffered by he and the characters around him, but the very concept of a pushy psychiatrist using such aggressive methods to crack his patient's mental affliction are more annoying than compelling.

 

MANIAC

(1963)

Dir - Michael Carreras

Overall: MEH

 

A bit of film noir by way of psychological thriller, Maniac, (The Maniac), was also one of several such Hammer movies to be scripted and produced by Jimmy Sangster at the time, who was briefly stepping away from the studio's Gothic horror vehicles.  Set and particularly filmed in the South of France, it concerns a dupe played by Kerwin Mathews who has an affair with a married woman while also falling for her adopted adult daughter, getting played by the former in a convoluted ploy involving her husband who was committed to an asylum after murdering his daughter's rapist with a blowtorch.  The wacky details sound more interesting on paper than they come across on screen unfortunately, with Hammer founder James Carreras' son, (producer-turned-director Michael Carreras), failing to keep up the momentum throughout the sluggish first half.  Manipulative plot points eventually start kicking into gear, but it is too easy to tune out before that happens and there is not enough gusto to the presentation or the performances to elevate it.

THE NANNY

(1965)

Dir - Seth Holt

Overall: MEH

Hammer's psycho-biddy entry The Nanny features a wonderfully low-key performance from Bette Davis, but its focus on a completely unlikable family makes it a tiring watch.  Oddly enough, mainstay screenwriter Jimmy Sangster allegedly wanted Greer Garson in the title role and had to settle for Davis who was still hot off of her Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? success.  Though she is not ranting and raving to her heart's content, Davis is still ideally suited as a traumatized woman who takes a curiously passive stance amongst the dysfunctional behavior of her employers.  Young William Dix has the thankless responsibility of playing a mercilessly obnoxious brat, while James Villiers is his ice cold father and Wendy Craig his enabling, bed-ridden mother.  Sangster's script does gradually shift where the audience's sympathies lie so that we feel more sorry for everyone as opposed to hating them, but the structure is clearly leading to a twist from the onset so it never ends up anywhere surprising.  In other words, the kid that Dix plays cannot be THAT awful can he?  Still, director Seth Hold handles everything with a sturdy hand and does not let the pace lull once everything settles into a routine second act.

1960s Spanish Horror Part Three

FACE OF TERROR
(1962)
Dir - Isidoro M. Ferry/William J. Hole Jr.
Overall: MEH

A Spanish, "plastic surgery gone amok" horror film done on the cheap, Face of Terror, (La cara del terror), is unique among such movies in that the crop of not-American actors largely dub their own dialog with accents in tow, but it is otherwise a derivative and sluggish bore.  TV director William J. Hole Jr. added some extra scenes for the US release depending on which version you come across, but either one boasts the same lackluster results.  It plays the trope that all women with mental illness must be raving lunatics, but the annoyance of Lisa Gaye's antagonist over people gawking at her or trying to send her back to a crazy house comes off as reasonable.  That is because her extreme level of depression stems from her face being deformed, something which would make anyone unhappy to say the least.  The film detours with musical numbers, police trying to track Gaye down, and the attempts of Fernando Rey's doctor to recover from Gaye's earlier attack on him after he "cures" her unfortunate facial features.  It makes for a boring and talky watch that only mildly springs to life with clumsy set pieces, plus the cinematography is barely competent and the finale is clearly broadcast from the onset.

 

STRANGE VOYAGE

(1964)
Dir - Fernando Fernán Gómez
Overall: MEH

Splashing together some old dark house and hagsploitation motifs under what is primarily a lighthearted black comedy, Strange Voyage, (El extraño viaje), comes from director Fernando Fernán Gómez, who was a beloved Spanish renaissance man in various fields throughout his career.  While the story meanders with several side characters and never lands anywhere interesting, it does provide a melodramatic look into unassuming Spanish life during an era that was undergoing cultural change.  Most of the film focuses on the generational differences emerging during Francoist Spain, where the older townspeople are depicted as suspicious curmudgeons and the younger adults try to find their way out of their small, judgemental village while dancing and falling in love.  It also just so happens to throw in an accidental murder where an old spinster gets bludgeoned by her dim-witted siblings, one of whom is portrayed with schlubby charm by the world's lousiest/most prolific filmmaker Jess Franco.  We eventually get a convoluted explanation that ties some otherwise unrelated arcs together, but the road to get there is poorly paced and lacking in any convincing humor.  It is a shame though that Gómez never embarked on anything in the horror genre proper, since he stages some early scenes in a spacious house at night with suspenseful and spooky confidence.

 

THE MARK OF THE WOLFMAN
(1968)
Dir - Enrique López Eguiluz
Overall: GOOD

While the debut of Paul Nashcy's Waldemar Daninsky's character has some of the usual drawbacks for Euro-horror of the era, (namely sluggish pacing, laughable dubbing, and a hare-brained script), The Mark of the Wolfman is benefited by stylish visuals and of course Nashy's ferocious performance.  This was the actor's first starring role, which he allegedly debating in offering to a far past his prime Lon Chaney Jr before Naschy somewhat reluctantly took it on himself.  Considering that this launched his career as the Spanish Wolfman and easily the country's most stubborn-in-a-good-way proponent of throwback horror cinema, it is crazy to see anyone else in the part.  Director Enrique López Eguiluz helps to create a colorful, Bava-esque tone with vibrant lighting, Gothic locations, fog, and occasionally eerie music which accompanies the transformation scenes wonderfully.  Of course no European genre film would be complete without having been released under a plethora of alternate titles and this one is near the top of such a list with La Marca del Hombre Lobo, Hell Creature, Les Fantomes de Dracula en de Weerwolf, Le Notti di Satana, Hexen des Grauens, Die Vampire des Dr. Dracula, and of course the most misleading, Americanized title of all time in Frankenstein's Bloody Terror.

1960s Spanish Horror Part Two

HYPNOSIS

(1962)

Dir - Eugenio Martín

Overall: MEH

 

An early effort from director Eugenio Martín, Hypnosis, (Ipnosi, Nur Tote Zeugen Schweigen, Dummy of Death), is a European co-production between West German, Spain, Italy, and France that adheres to the formulaic trappings of Edgar Wallace krimi films.  Though a ventriloquist dummy is introduced in the opening scene and is even more garishly unsettling looking than most, this proves to be a misleading motif as the story instead concerns Jean Sorel trying to cover his tracks while making things much worse after a hypnotist is murdered in his dressing room.  The plotting is cumbersome and mostly hinders around Heinz Drache's police inspector interviewing and tailing to the same woman several times, all in an attempt to catch up to the suspect who doubles as someone that the audience knows is innocent.  This is because we are aware of who the murder is from the get go, rendering this as a police procedural without a mystery.  Martín hardly has the production backing to make anything stylistically noteworthy, but ghostly wailings of a dummy's cackle are inherently creepy and though we are fully aware that no otherworldly or even psychological trick is being played on us, there are still a few shadowy and suspensefully curious moments to break up the monotony.

FATA MORGANA

(1965)

Dir - Vicente Aranda

Overall: MEH

An incoherent art film with a murder mystery disguised underneath it, Fata Morgana, (Left-Handed Fate), was the second effort from Spanish director Vincente Aranda.  Model-turned-actor Teresa Gimpera runs around a deserted Barcelona as everyone that she meets becomes different levels of infatuated with her, all while her death seems to be preordained and a police detective, (who is the only frustrated one in the movie), tries to find her before it is too late.  Or something along those lines.  Antonio Pérez Olea's up-temp jazz score occasionally breaks the long moments of silence, a woman kills two guys with a fish knife, one character keeps taking off disguises, sometimes people talk directly into the camera, hoodlums cut out and steal a billboard with Gimpera's photo on it, and the whole film has meta references to further confuse things.  Our main heroine all but disappears for the final act as we switch to the detective before things end in a frustratingly abrupt manner, which all things considered, is in keeping with the nebulous giallo by way of Alain Robbe-Grillet/Jean-Luc Godard approach that Aranda takes here.

 

MACABRE

(1969)

Dir - Javier Setó

Overall: WOOF

The penultimate film Macabre, (Shadow of Death, Viaje al vacío), from Spanish director Javier Setó is unfortunately a lifeless, giallo-adjacent snooze-fest.  A co-production between Spain and Italy as many identically structured cheapies were, familiar genre faces Larry Ward, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, and Teresa Gimpera are all present, with Ward playing a set of identical twin brothers convincingly enough.  The ole "let's kill him by making him go crazy and take all of his money" scheme is utilized here, as well as a blackmail one involving Stuart who takes on the appearance of a typical, black trench coat and gloves giallo killer even if he does not play one.  Setó's presentation of the already stock material is lifeless, with hardly any murders taking place and any sleazy elements left alone.  Granted, the plot line revolves around a woman's infidelity with her husband's brother which is seedy enough on paper, but with hardly any set pieces besides Ward boringly getting treated for epileptic seizures, a woman getting killed so boringly that you hardly notice, and then Stuart getting thrown off out of a train, (also boringly), there is nothing here to captivate trash enthusiasts who expect a lot more, (or for that matter ANY), silliness, Euro-style, or camped-up melodrama.

1960s Spanish Horror Part One

PYRO...THE THING WITHOUT A FACE

(1964)
Dir - Julio Coll
Overall: MEH

The extramarital thriller Pyro...the Thing Without a Face, (Fuego, Wheel of Fire), was one of a handful of tacky B-movies from producer Sydney W. Pink, several of which were shot in Spain.  This one is no different in that regard, though the two top-billed actors were Americans Barry Sullivan and Martha Hyler.  The first half is an insufferable bore, revolving around Sullivan's guilt over his on-going affair with Hyler.  This is because none of the characters are interesting or sympathetic and they prattle on with each other to such a degree that viewers will long check out before anything promised in the movie's title takes place.  Eventually, the revenge plot takes over, first with Hyler torching her lover's home after he dumps her and then with Sullivan's now burned-up frame getting back at her. Julio Coll's direction is meandering and dull, but Pink's script deserves the brunt of the blame as it fails to properly exploit the plight of its adulteress pyromaniac or its architect-turned-ferris-wheel-repair-man, (?!?).  How three different women become hopelessly in love with Sullivan's moody character is both ridiculous and insulting, but at least the couple of seconds that we get of his melted, fleshy burn make-up at the very end looks nice and ghastly.

LA LLAMADA
(1965)
Dir - Javier Setó
Overall: GOOD

An obscure, supernatural romance that ends up growing increasingly chilling as things progress, La Llamada, (The Sweet Sound of Death), benefits from its minimalist production.  The script by John Davis Hart, Paulino Rodrigo Díaz, and director Javier Setó takes some liberties as far as logic is concerned in order to keep the plot moving, but it also fuses familiar motifs with genuine surprises.  A Spanish answer to Herk Harvey's American independent masterpiece Carnival of Souls, it covers some of the same ground of people questioning their existence from beyond the grave and it even borrows said film's gag of dropping out all of the noise on the soundtrack for a particular scene.  Though it is set in contemporary times, (possibly for budgetary reasons), Setó still manages to make atmospheric use out of cemeteries and a crumbling mansion which recall some of the period Gothic aesthetic that European horror was already indulging in by the mid 1960s.  The movie still cannot avoid some pacing lulls as Emilio Gutiérrez Caba and scream queen Dyanik Zurakowska's destined lovers exchange the same flowery dialog with each other throughout the first act, but the finale delivers the appropriate level of spookiness as well as a fitting plot twist that teases at a psychological undercurrent.

 

SOUND OF HORROR

(1966)

Dir - José Antonio Nieves Conde

Overall: MEH

As the title would dictate, Sound of Horror, (El sonido de la muerte), does in fact contain an impressively sinister sound design.  It arrives whenever an unearthed, invisible dinosaur monster whatever thing attacks a bunch of archeologists who were careless enough to blow up dynamite and not heed a superstitious lady's warnings about fucking around in a cave in order to find some treasure.  A typical tale of people doomed by their own greed then, it features a small crop of bland characters whose names are not even worth remembering, even if scream queens Ingrid Pitt and Soledad Miranda play two of them.  Director José Antonio Nieves Conde was not one to bother with the horror genre, and there is little for him to do with it under the confines of Sam X. Abarbanel's stuck-in-the-muck script, which just has everyone boringly talking, getting picked off, and running from a house to the cave until the ninety minute mark.  While it is clearly a detrimental byproduct of the inadequate budget that the deadly creature is left unseen, the film deserves some credit for the howling wind/human screaming noise that it utilizes at regular intervals, which serves as an unnerving substitute for a guy in a rubber suit or some bad puppetry.

1960s Mexican Horror Part Twelve

HOUSE OF TERROR
(1960)
Dir - Gilberto Martínez Solares
Overall: MEH

 

Allegedly hard up for cash enough to make a south of the border trip for a pay day, Lon Chaney Jr. puts on the werewolf makeup for one of the last times in co-writer/director Gilberto Martínez Solares' House of Terror, (La Casa del Terror).  Joining forces with Germán "Tin-Tan" Valdés, it is about as lackluster and not-humorous as any other Mexican horror comedy from the era, with plenty of goofy mugging, cartoon sound effects, an arbitrary musical number, and Valdés jumping at his own shadow like a buffoon.  Watching Chaney pathetically howl, slowly prance around a busy highway, awkwardly remove a lock from a prison cell door, and stand unflatteringly in full mummy garb for closeups while a mannequin that is noticeably half his size is used in the wide shots all amounts to an embarrassing ordeal for the man who was delegated to such lowly parts at this point in his career.  Solares and his cinematographer brother Raúl Martínez pull-off some atmospheric shots here or there when the movie is not exclusively concerned with an aggressively juvenile sense of humor, but it is also too dull and sluggish as a genre hodgepodge to recommend.

LA MARCA DEL MUERTO
(1961)
Dir - Fernando Cortés
Overall: MEH
 
Later reworked for American audiences by Jerry Warren as Creature of the Walking Dead, La marca del muerto, (Mark of the Dead Man), is one of countless movies where a lunatic scientist justifies killing young woman in a ridiculous, pseudo-science scheme of attaining immortality.  Fernando Casanova stars in a dual role, both said mad doctor and also his descendant who of course looks exactly like him to the point where the villainous version easily dupes people into thinking that he is the good one.  Also because of course, the eternal youth blood transfusions only work for a limited amount of time, forcing more victims to pile up while simultaneously allowing for bad "monster" makeup when Casanova's Dr. Malthus needs his fix.  There are a handful of talky set pieces that slow things down to a standstill with characters regurgitated redundant dialog, though this is still a quicker paced affair than would be expected.  Director/co-writer Fernando Cortés builds suspense with some sinister stalking and lab experiment scenes, plus the set design and location work is not without its macabre charm.  The story is cliche-ridden, cockamamie nonsense that even a three year old would find illogical, but it at least not insulting in its presentation.

 

EL MONSTRUO DE LOS VOLCANES
(1963)
Dir - Jaime Salvador
Overall: WOOF

 

More of a yawn-inducing, contemporary, Western-adjacent crime movie than a Mexican yeti one, El monstruo de los volcanes, (The Monster of the Volcano), comes from prolific director Jaime Salvador who is unfortunately powerless to elevate the material towards anything close to watchable.  Federico Curiel and Alfredo Ruanova's script deserves points for effort at least in trying to sandwich two clashing ideas together as we have a band of henchman or something trying to get a medallion, an ancient monster who is guarding a treasure in a volcanic region, and a love interest who gets caught up between everything.  Said abominable not-snowman looks like a cross between an albino version of Billy Bob from the Rockafire Explosion and a Teletubby, which is to say a tall actor wearing a fluffy rug that comes off about as menacing as it sounds.  Not that we see much of him anyway since this is another clear example of a rushed B-movie that can only afford to have a series of actors standing in rooms while talking to each other.  At one point, several of them are having an aggressively uninteresting conversation in one room, only for one of them to proclaim that they should continue their conversation in the next room, which they then promptly do.  Such edge-of-your-seat set pieces are all that we get here and still at only seventy-six minutes, it cannot end fast enough.

1960s Mexican Horror Part Eleven - (Benito Alazraki Edition)

THE CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE
(1961)
Overall: MEH
 
A dopey and heavily talky witchcraft export from director Benito Alazraki, The Curse of the Doll People, (Muñecos infernales, Infernal Dolls, The Devil Doll Men), tosses together its horror cliches in a silly manner.  Seeing dwarf-sized actors in dead-eyed rubber masks stumbling around dark rooms with pointy needles is both viscerally unsettling and weirdly humorous, plus there are thankfully several such moments scattered about as a vengeful witch doctor gets his revenge against scientists who disrespect his particular brand of voodoo.  This inadvertently leads to a monotonous structure where everyone gets picked off one by one and each character keeps having the same conversation throughout the whole movie as to whether or not supernatural activity is afoot.  Everyone on screen is a cardboard cutout with zero personality, save for Quintin Bulnes who spouts hilariously arrogant dialog while raising his eyebrows in a cartoon bad guy manner.  The finale is both abrupt and ridiculous where he easily hypnotizes his pursuers, only to allow them to show a cross at him in his hubris.  This forces him to cower so that his puppet minions can stab him, naturally leaving him no alternative than to torch his own hideout while his would-be victims easily get away.  In other words, this is nothing to take seriously, but it is worth a few chuckles for those that can endure its tedious nature.

 

FRANKESTEIN EL VAMPIRO Y COMPAÑÍA
(1962)
Overall: WOOF

 

The Mexican Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Frankestein el vampiro y compañía, (Frankenstein, Vampire & Co.), sees Manuel "Loco" Valdés and José "El Ojón" Jasso standing in for the famed American comedy duo and they do a particularly not funny job with the also particularly not funny material.  Granted, Alfredo Salazar's plagiarizing script follows the plot of the Abbot and Costello classic almost to a tee and therefor should have some inherent humor to it, but with gags like a mustached man fooling everyone as a belly dancer, the "least conscious of what time of night that the full moon rises" werewolf in cinema history, Valdés bizarre penchant for hopping up and down and making seal noises for no reason, and much more stupidity all sink the ship.  Director Benito Alazraki keeps the tone juvenile throughout and he does his best within the meager production values to make an underground laboratory give off a nostalgic Universal monsters vibe, but the constant mugging and "dumb dumb fall down" high jinks become grating right from the onset.  Also, the wolfman makeup is atrocious, the Frankenstein monster does absolutely nothing until he gets Valdés' brain in the finale and busts out the whole obnoxious jumping seal thing, plus Quintín Bulnes hardly makes for a menacing Count Dracula when he can be thwarted by such bumbling antics.

 

ESPIRITISMO
(1962)
Overall: MEH

 

Director Benito Alazraki's Espiritismo, (Spiritism), bears as little resemblance as possible to his dreadful Frankestein el vampiro y compañía from the same year.  A somber cautionary tale of evil forces being utilized in dire situations when conventional Christian faith fails to do the trick, Alazraki lets zero humor into the proceedings, instead creating a heavy melodrama where a family loses everything and it all ultimately points the way of religious redemption.  Arriving in the early 1960s before George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead helped usher in more nihilistic outcomes for horror movies, this one bypasses a fully miserable conclusion, but it comes awfully close by slamming home a level of despair that low-budget Mexican genre exports were less often to get away with.  A tragedy then first and foremost, it is unfortunately burdened by a repetitive plot and padded dialog that crawls to a foreseeable conclusion that introduces the age old "Monkey's Paw" concept in its final act.  When the film is not stuck in the muck with characters repeating mere variations of the same information over and over again with its cumbersome process to get all of everyone on board with the fact that in this universe, spiritualism is all too legit, there are intense performances and some spooky set pieces to appreciate.