1970s American Horror Part Fifty-Two

THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT
(1971)
Dir - Anthony M. Lanza
Overall: MEH

American International Pictures inexplicably pumped out two movies in two years with the same premise of two heads that get stuck on the same body.  The first and less interesting of these was The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, which finds Bruce Dern's irresponsible scientist joining together a murderous sociopath and a dim-witted caretaker for reasons that are no reasons.  Screenwriter James Gordon White was credited on both this and the following year's The Thing with Two Heads, understandably since they each cover the same ground and are each ridiculous. Going to great lengths to make every awful decision possible, Dern's character is a moron for the books and there is a certain level of humor to be found as he keeps bumbling his way through a predicament that he is entirely responsible for.  Casey Kasem also shows up for what it is worth, but the movie is more of a hoot for its awful script and piss-pour production values.  As the unlikely, mutated odd-couple, Albert Cole is a one-note cackling scumbag and John Bloom a pathetic and whiny oaf, both of whom hardly bother conversing with each other despite the fact that they wake up stuck together in such an inconceivable manner.

 

THE THIRSTY DEAD

(1974)

Dir - Terry Becker

Overall: MEH

 

Actor-turned-director Terry Becker landed a few TV gigs behind the lens before making his one and only theatrically released work with The Thirsty Dead; a Filipino/American co-production that looks and feels identical to an episode of any television show from the time period.  Considering that most of the actors present were from and would continue to work on the small screen certainly helps give it such an aesthetic, but the plot may as well be one that Captain Kirk and co encountered on one of their Star Trek voyages.  An immortal, pagan hippie cult lives hidden deep within the mountains and abducts women in order to fuse their blood with a sacred plant, all because a decapitated deity head inside of a red, glass box tells them to.  The costumes, performances, and music are of the high camp variety and the make-up effects are crude when characters have been reduced to deformed whatevers or have to rapidly age before our eyes. time-lapse style.  Gore wise, there is little bright red blood splatter and besides some of the aforementioned, garish prosthetics, the only horrific elements are a spider pit full of fake skeletons and the quasi-vampiric premise.  It is only amusing at irregular intervals, as the cheap presentation does not afford for that gripping of a pace.

THE CHILD

(1977)

Dir - Robert Voskanian

Overall: MEH

 

An interesting if not altogether good bit of no-budget filmmaking, The Child, (Children of the Night, Hide and Go Kill), is understandably frustrating considering that it was made almost exclusively by nonprofessionals both behind of and in front of the screen.  Director Robert Voskanian would never helm another film again and producer Robert Dadashian, (both Columbia College Hollywood students), would almost entirely work as a sound editor for the rest of his career.  Their slap-dash work here is admirable though as they handle multiple production roles, as do several of the unknown cast.  The atmosphere is on point, with excellent use out of fog, lighting, camera angles, sinister music, and a number of strange set pieces that are a steady combination of genuinely creepy and unintentionally humorous.  Also, the zombies look fantastic and unique, sort of a monkey/monochrome/filth-covered hybrid that are only teased throughout the movie until the final, chaos-ridden attack sequence.  Sadly, the plot details are frequently incoherent, cliches are annoyingly tossed in, the ADR dialog is distracting, the 1930s setting is laughably unconvincing as well as pointless to the story, and the basic premise of a disturbingly weird kid being an annoying, smart-assed brat throughout most of it grows grating quick.

1970s American Horror Part Fifty-One

SILENT RUNNING

(1972)

Dir - Douglas Trumbull

Overall: GOOD

 

Special effects man turned-director Douglas Trumbull's first of only two full-lengths from behind the lens was the environmental sci-fi drama Silent Running which poses a futurist scenario where plant life is extinct and artificially preserved on cargo ships hovering around Saturn.  Being one of the men who was famously behind the visuals in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Trumbull's attention to presenting a lived-in amount of intergalactic detail is impressive, even if the miniature work is comparatively less convincing than in Stanley Kubrick's aforementioned masterpiece, (which can honestly be said about nearly every other science fiction movie since).  Besides the model and set design, the rest of the heavy lifting is done by Bruce Dern as a sentimental botanist who sabotages his crew and corporate duties, spending the entire second and third acts on his lonesome with a couple of non-speaking drones keeping him busy.  The film has a humanitarian agenda that while elementary is still effectively portrayed as themes of mankind's flippant attitude towards nature is juxtaposed with Dern's environmentalist who breaks under psychological strain, only to find himself at the mercy of robots for companionship.

 

HELP ME...I'M POSSESSED

(1974)

Dir - Charles Nizet

Overall: WOOF

 

The penultimate crud rock from Z-rent "filmmaker" Charles Nizet, Help Me...I'm Possessed is both stupid and, (as far as the title is concerned), misleading.  Fans of The Exorcist knock-offs be warned; this movie has no such demonic possession high jinks.  Instead, it is a mad scientist farce with a Biblical undercurrent that is as vague and poorly thought out much as the entire plot is.  Some asshole doctor runs a clinic where he keeps people locked in cages in a small warehouse basement that is totally and convincingly, (cough, sarcasm, cough), the basement to his house.  His master plan seems to be in creating a physical form for evil that once unleashed can be destroyed so that the mere concept of wickedness is eliminated from society, as he tortures and murders people while trying to make them repent their sins.  So in other words, a perfectly cromulent agenda to partake of.  On top of how moronic the material is, Nizet has virtually no money to work with as well as the directorial chops of Hershel Gordon Lewis, so the film is as technically pathetic as it gets.  Not surprisingly, the performances are also top-to-bottom embarrassing. though at least he had the good sense to ADR everybody's lines instead of poorly recording them on distant boom mics, as was the norm for such unprofessional junk.

 

DEATHMOON

(1978)

Dir - Bruce Kessler

Overall: MEH

A television movie made by EMI Films, Deathmoon is one of the more poorly paced and hum-drum entries in lycanthropian cinema.  Director Bruce Kessler worked extensively in the TV medium and he does his best with the neutered format that tiptoes around anything that would otherwise be graphically depicted.  As one could guess, this leaves little else for the movie to do besides talk its way into sluggish boredom.  The ninety-minute running time is at least a third too much and there are only a few moments of wolfman furry to spice things up, half of which do not even properly show Robert Foxworth in his full bestial form.  Though contemporarily set and in color, it has a throwback quality not just in the mild set pieces, but also due to the Jack Pierce-inspired werewolf makeup and Foxworth even running around in the same kind of trousers and buttoned up shirt that Lon Chaney Jr frequently did.  At least from the audience's perspective, there is no mystery to the plot so watching characters endlessly try and figure out who or what is murdering everyone at a Hawaiian resort while our lead character carries on with his newfound romance is too catastrophically dull to endure.

1970s American Horror Part Fifty

THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED

(1971)

Dir - Lee Madden

Overall: MEH

 

Director Lee Maden's first attempt at horror was the low-rent mishmash The Night God Screamed which is broken up into two distinct halves that each channel a different sub-genre.  The first one focuses on an unbearably obnoxious and scenery-chewing hippie messiah that eventually leads his Jesus-loving Manson cult to murder a local reverend who recently purchased a giant wooden cross for his congregation.  After that arc is presumably wrapped up, the story follows the recently-murdered reverend's wife, (Golden Age actor Jeanne Crain), as she oddly babysits a houseful of teenagers played by twenty-somethings, at which point the movie switches gears to a typical home invasion thriller.  It is a daft paring on paper and makes for one on screen as well, though the latter half has a creepy, white-knuckled intensity to it that is at least partially effective.  Of course they also throw a weak twist in at the very end that is more pointless than gasp-worthy, but the biggest issue besides the sluggish pacing are the early scenes involving Michael Sugich doing everything in his power to make the audience want to punch his pretentious, "groovy ya dig?" cult leader smack in his mouth.

 

MOONCHILD

(1974)

Dir - Alan Gadney

Overall: MEH

 

As pretentious and incomprehensible as any art film from the era, Moonchild is a frustrating, meandering work that is notably for the small handful of recognizable faces present.  The only full-length from writer/director Alan Gadney, the movie began three years before it was finished as a thesis project while he was studying at the University of Southern California.  For whatever reason John Carradine, Victor Buono, Janet Landgard, Pat Renella, and William Challee all got on board which makes it a curiosity to see such professional thespians in something so unapologetically impenetrable and showy.  The editing is nausea-inducing as countless flashbacks/flash-forwards/whatevers are inter-cut in a subliminal way and the film frequently jumps ahead to the next scene while the previous one is still wrapping up.  One needs to read a plot synopsis to have any inkling as to what is going on, with every character endlessly prattling on about the nature of life, death, and sin as they are all aggressively pulling Mark Travis' protagonist in conflicting directions.  Still, there are stylistic flourishes that are enticing and the movie's spell, (while grating), is also singular enough to admire.

THE POSSESSED

(1977)

Dir - Jerry Thorpe

Overall: MEH

Occasionally creepy yet poorly plotted, The Possessed was one of countless films from the 1970s to take clear thematic inspiration from the decade's flagship The Exorcist.   A television movie that originally aired on NBC mere weeks before Star Wars was released, it is notable for featuring Harrison Ford in a supporting role as a college professor.  Elsewhere, James Farentino plays the required priest who has lost his faith, though his arc is given a curious tweak as he returns from the grave as penance for his alcoholic nature and must rid the world of demonic evil.  As one would guess, there is a person who gets overcome by a malevolent entity, but it is an older woman instead of a teenage girl, even though the story takes place at a college campus.  The details are murky at best, with spontaneous fires, unnecessary romantic affairs, and school politics all clamoring for space in what is essentially just another good vs evil showdown.  Director Jerry Thorpe already had a prolific career mostly in TV at this point and would continue to do so, bringing an agreeable sense of pacing to the proceedings, as well as letting certain moments calmly simmer to enhance their sinister nature.  The results are mediocre and not without their flaws, but supernatural horror and/or Ford fans may find it of interest.

1970s American Horror Part Forty-Nine

CARNIVAL OF BLOOD

(1970)

Dir - Leonard Kirtman

Overall: WOOF

Before he ended up in real movies, poor Burt Young found himself collecting a paycheck in Leonard Kirtman's unwatchable debut Carnival of Blood, which technically belongs on any honest list of the worst movies ever made.  Shot guerilla style on location at Coney Island with actors who do not know what acting is, it has some of the most unforgivingly grating performances that have ever been captured by cameras.  Every character aggressively talks over each other like a, (very), poor man's attempt at John Cassaveetes' cinéma vérité grittiness.  The results are certainly gritty, but more like a dumpster full of diapers and open ketchup packets than anything artistically meritable.  It is as if Kirtman got a hold of a camera and assumed that he could simply improvise a slasher film by asking random people at an amusement park to be in it, except that the only direction he gave them was to fight and talk louder than whoever else was talking.  Throw in some nonsensical sound effects, rock music to fill random spaces, and then editing all of the embarrassingly unprofessional footage together while blindfolded and you get some semblance of just how much of a travesty on the medium of cinema this piece of shit is.

 

THE SAVAGE BEES

(1976)

Dir - Bruce Geller
Overall: MEH

One of three directorial efforts from Mission Impossible creator Bruce Geller, the NBC Monday Night at the Movies installment The Savage Bees is a typical Jaws-adjacent bit of nature horror where people try desperately to get city officials to take an external animal threat seriously before it is too late.  Scripted by Guerdon Trueblood, (who had a particular penchant for stories about killer somethings by also authoring Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, Ants!, this film's sequel Terror Out of the Sky, and Jaws 3-D), the TV presentation means that the bulk of the running time is delegated to people talking about insect mayhem as opposed to actually showing any.  When swarms of aggressive African bees actually do descend upon their prey, it is depicted merely through sound effects, sinister music, and busy camerawork, that is until the last twenty minutes when we finally see them in people-and-car-covering action.  Though Ben Johnson is a no-brainer choice to play the concerned sheriff and Michael Parks and Gretchen Corbett have a blossoming romance with each other for what it is worth, the human characters are hardly important here, which is a shame in that nearly the entirety of the movie focuses on them.  Still, it is agreeably paced and the finale is equal parts silly and suspenseful.

THE DARK

(1979)

Dir - John Cardos

Overall: MEH

After an eleven year break having worked exclusively in television as was his norm, Dick Clark briefly returned to producing theatrical features with The Dark, an occasionally atmospheric though steadily dull affair.  Stuntman-turned director John Cardos stepped in for Tobe Hopper, the latter of whom was let go early on for allegedly falling behind schedule.  Stanford Whitmore's script was then tweaked at the eleventh hour, changing the movie's monster to an alien that can shoot lasers from its eyes instead of a mutated giant that was to be living in its parent's attic.  Cardos brings with him the same merely competent chops from behind the lens that he had on his previous Kingdom of the Spiders, with an identical problem of far too little action making way for meandering dialog between characters who are just doing their mundane jobs.  All encounters with the extraterrestrial beast are kept off screen until the last ten minutes, with Cardos merely, (yet effectively), teasing the earlier murder sequences by way of Roger Kellaway's sinister, Friday the 13th-esque musical score which utilizes creepy chanting.  Such moments are frequent and create an eerie tone, but everything else going on is a horrendous bore and though the Neanderthal-esque baddie looks cool when he finally does appear, the messy finale fails to justify the laborious trek to get to him.

1970s American Horror Part Forty-Eight

THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN

(1971)

Dir - Robert Wise

Overall: MEH

The first cinematic adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel in The Andromeda Strain throws in some flashy shot constructions, special effects, and editing tricks, though none of this can properly distract from its lackadaisical pacing.  Similar in look and feel to other science fiction thrillers from the 1970s such as Logan's Run or Soylent Green, the setting of a high-tech, underground research facility is interesting at first as a group of hot shot scientists get recruited and undergo a series of elaborate protocol to avoid further contamination.  After this though, things grind to an irreversible slog as the generally more-than-competent director Robert Wise chose to create a low-key tone to gradually rank up the tension, minus the tension part.  By the time that the situation finally reaches a ticking clock climax, (which does not occur until the last couple of minutes BTW), it is likely that the audience has lost both interest and comprehensibility in what is even going on.  The dated visuals are fun and the lack of movie stars in the cast give in an aura of authenticity that is appreciated, but the over two-hour running time definitely feels its length and it all becomes a highly forgettable, viral outbreak movie with a whole lot of standing around and talking in place of exciting stakes being grippingly established.

LOVE ME DEADLY

(1972)

Dir - Jacques Lacerte

Overall: MEH

  

The only film ever made by co-writer/director Jacques Lacerte, (which is probably a good thing), Love Me Deadly is disorienting sexploitation of the oddly perverse variety.  Disturbing on paper, the premise of a deeply disturbed heiress who goes to funerals to make out with corpses because she is obsessed with her dead father, (and then also runs into a necrophiliac cult that persists on initiating her), is more icky than frightening.  The movie does not shy away from its subject matter as we see plenty of nudity, murder, dead bodies, and even a gay prostitute being injected with formaldehyde while still alive and screaming.  Structurally though, this is a bizarre beast.  One of the film's producers later went on record as excusing the numerous, music-heavy montage sequences as being in place to cover up lousy dialog, yet this means that the movie's theme song and other generally flowery music is frequently interjected around the unwholesome sequences.  It gives the whole thing an accidentally goofy tone, but for those that can stomach the cheap production qualities and uncomfortable sleaze, it maybe be worth laughing at so long as you do not mind taking a shower afterwards.

MICROWAVE MASSACRE

(1979)

Dir - Wayne Berwick

Overall: WOOF

 

Possibly the most groan-inducing "comedy" ever made, Wayne Berwick's wretched debut Microwave Massacre seems as if it was written by aliens whose only exposure to the English language was a book of sexual innuendos and puns.  Screenwriter Thomas Singer is the actual culprit, a man whose only other cinematic credit of any kind was co-authoring the same year's exploitation film Malibu High.  Embarrassingly lame-brained in the jokes department, the premise here is nearly as dumb as the dialog where a dumpy construction worker does not care for his dumpy wife's cooking so he kills her while drunk, then forgets he did it, then finds her body in an industrial-sized microwave, and then just figures why not start killing and eating prostitutes on the regular.  Frosty the Snowman himself Jackie Vernon plays said ridiculous individual, spending the entire movie not emoting while talking to either himself or people who do not seem to be processing a single word that he says.  Berwick has all of the directorial prowess of Bill Rebane, shooting almost the entire thing in brightly lit rooms and creating an anti-tone that is completely dead-pan and stale from beginning to end.  The only saving grace is that it is only seventy-six minutes long and can easily be played/ignored in the background while watching a far better movie at the same time.

1970s American Horror Part Forty-Seven

THE TOUCH OF SATAN
(1971)
Dir - Don Henderson
Overall: MEH

The last film from director Don Henderson, The Touch of Satan is notable for featuring some of the earliest credited work from makeup artist Joe Blasco and cinematographer Jordan Croneweth, both of whom would go on to bigger and better things.  Shot between 1968 and 1970 around Santa Ynez, California and featuring a cast of no one in particular, it manages to be unremarkable without being atrocious.  While Henderson's sense of pacing is insufficient and James E. McLarty's screenplay is nothing to write home about, (something to do with two sisters who were accused of witchcraft centuries earlier, only to become witches themselves and oh yeah, one of them looks like a burnt up ole crone while the other has retained her youth until she hasn't), the film looks better than it has any reason to.  Clumsy dialog, stiff performances, and awkward editing further muddle things up, but even amongst the technical shortcomings and the fact that the isolated walnut farm location is anything but spooky, Henderson is still able to achieve some semblance of macabre dread here and there.

 

THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER
(1977)
Dir - William R. Stromberg
Overall: WOOF

The 1970s produced a handful of throwback, 1950s-tinged giant monster movies and even more no budget piece of shit creature features, The Crater Lake Monster arguably being the worst of any of them.  This was the only film to be directed by William R. Stromberg who had a background in commercials, (as well as working on Davey and Goliath), hence the idea to make the Loch Ness Monster stand-in with stop-motion animated.  The small handful of dinosaur shots that we get are a hoot due to how dated and poorly-realized they are, but they at least provide the movie with some semblance of unintentional enjoyment.  There is nothing of the kind to be found anywhere else.  According to actor/screenwriter Richard Cardella, the finance company botched the editing, added a library-cued musical score, and removed expository dialog sequences, which is hilarious since Satan knows how much more insufferably boring this would have been with even MORE scenes of people who cannot act standing around while discussing things.  There is wretched comic relief, a pointless subplot about some asshole robbing a convenient store, and a whole lotta local yokels with hillbilly accents delivering derivative and embarrassing dialog in a stilted manner.  It is movies like this that give lakes, monsters, and craters all a bad name.

 

NOCTURNA: GRANDDAUGHTER OF DRACULA

(1979)

Dir - Harry Hurwitz

Overall: WOOF

The, (rightfully), penultimate film from Vietnamese belly dancer turned actor/writer/producer Nai Bonet, Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula is notable for being both absolutely terrible and for providing John Carradine with his fifth and last role as the title Count.  While the movie is an embarrassingly dated trainwreck for a multitude of reasons, many of these reasons give it an unintentional charm.  The most noticeable faux pas is Bonet's atrocious acting abilities, though the fact that the movie is littered with some of the worst disco music known to man is equally distracting.  There are numerous dance and song montages to the point that this qualifies as a musical, but anyone expecting anything near the quality of Saturday Night Fever except with vampires will be wholly disappointed.  At least when it comes to showing off her dance moves and bodacious body, Bonet gives the people what they want, but her awkward, smiling, deer in headlights performance leaves no doubt whatsoever as to why her acting career permanently vanished soon after this.  While the jokes are top-to-bottom groan-worthy, Yvonne De Carlo as Dracula's ole fling and Brother Theoodore as a horny Renfield stand-in are delightful highlights.  It was always bittersweet to see Carradine in so many bottom barrel genre films and this is no different, but he at least seems in on the lame joke.

1970s American Horror Part Forty-Six

DEMENTED DEATH FARM MASSACRE
(1971)
Dir - Fred Olen Ray/Donn Davidson
Overall: WOOF

Re-edited years later by Fred Olen Ray with new scenes added of John Carradine spouting nonsense from cue cards, (How many times can parts of THAT sentenced be used as an accurate description for a movie?), the initial Donn Davidson crud rock Honey Britches apparently no longer exists.  Instead, we have Demented Death Farm Massacre, which has also been released by Troma Entertainment under a barrage of other titles such as Moonshiner's Women, Shantytown Honeymoon, Hillbilly Hooker, and Little Whorehouse on the Prairie to name a few.  For anyone who thought that the bumbling sheriff and the chicken lady from Wes Craven's abysmal The Last House on the Left were too funny to stomach, this piece of shit has you covered.  Two dipshits and two women without pants steal a bunch of jewels, their car breaks down in the deep south, and then they run into some hillbilly yokels including another women without pants.  Initial director Donn Davidson hardly has an expansive or impressive resume of his own and as anyone familiar with Ray's work can vouch for, he was ill-equipped to add anything cinematically captivating to anything.  Horrid acting, some bible quoting, copious amounts of cleavage, a few awkward murders, and a pacing that is in no hurry whatsoever, the film has all of the suck.

 

THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET

(1973)

Dir - David Lowell Rich

Overall: MEH

 

A Boeing 747 takes off with a Druidic demon or something on board, as well as only a small handful of B-movie and television actors in the CBS Movie of the Week The Horror at 37,000 Feet.  Dopey stuff to be sure, a number of elements get in the way of the film nailing the sinister mood that it is going for.  Cheap production values are one thing where the malevolent force is rendered invisible and besides a section of the plane going full walk-in freezer, we are show very little of its unholy powers.  Mostly it is just gusts of wind blowing and character staring wide-eyed at something off screen.  Speaking of starring wide-eyed, the performances are largely scenery-chewing save for a smirking William Shatner, (in his second time experiencing unknown forces during air travel), and Paul Winfield who saves face with a calm British accent for some reason.  Lynn Loring is particularly ridiculous in all of her scenes where her character is completely underwritten, making her frantic mannerisms puzzling as she seems to be having a panic attack even before the troubling stuff actually starts.  The screenplay by Ronald Austin and James D. Buchanan is just as shortchanged, lazily plotted and wrapped up without seeming to say anything besides "people turn into savages when they are afraid".

NURSE SHERRI

(1977)

Dir - Al Adamson

Overall: MEH

 

Al Adamson's last horror film to be released in the 1970s was the typically low-rent Nurse Sherri, (The Possession of Nurse Sherri, Black Voodoo, Beyond the Living, Hospital of Terror, Killer's Curse, Hands of Death), which finds the schlock peddler's directorial "talents" in as abysmal a fashion as ever.  Some of the performers here seem to be trying, (or over-trying), to living up the bizarre material which begins with a head-scratching scene that was added on in post where a bunch of people talk in a desert before some religious leader makes vague proclamations.  Then everything shifts to a heavily understaffed and undecorated hospital where a former football player has bandages on both of his eyes and the nurse of the title gets possessed by the aforementioned cult leader, (or something), whenever the script tells her too.  There is also a car chase and a couple of naked boob shots for anyone who is paying attention enough to notice.  It is certainly pathetic from a production standpoint even though Adamson tries to pull off some special effects here or there, but his pacing is detrimental and he either has no ability or no budgetary luxury of framing any of the shots in anything but the most flat, boring manner possible.  The whole thing is nowhere near as sexy, sleazy, or wacky as it is probably trying to be and just comes off as an awkward snooze instead.