(1971)
Dir - Viktors Ritelis
Overall: MEH
A low budget re-imagining of the much surpassing in quality Les Diaboliques, The Corpse, (Crucible of Horror in the U.S.), is a messy movie to be sure. The first half of the film sufficiently builds to an enticing enough moment, with genre-mainstay Michael Gough delivering a menacing performance as a tyrannical, obsessively proper father who torments his wife and daughter only to nonchalantly read the paper and prattle on about insignificant headlines a mere moment later. He also washes his hands a lot and seems rather insistent on tidiness being maintained. The build up to his comeuppance is interesting enough, but then things get less interesting and more head-scratching. It is not only confusing how his wife and daughter continue to behave, but it is certainly also confusing how the laws of physics are vanquished as what may or may not be supernaturally transpiring is anyone's guess from the way it is conferred. This is not done in a clever psychological manner, (though that was probably the desired end game), but instead through a random and sloppy mishmash of editing and scenes. You are assuredly not likely to "get" it, but one may still enjoy what transpires to a point.
(1976)
Dir - Pete Walker
Overall: MEH
For Pete Walker's next stab at shining an ugly light on religious hypocrisy, he goes big with House of Mortal Sin, utilizing no less than an evil Catholic priest as its villainous brute. Walker still takes his subject matter seriously and keeps it far enough away from overt camp, with some convincing portrayals helping him out along the way. Shelia Keith has a minor yet important role one as she is once again a menacing, cruel old crone, but Anthony Sharp, (A Clockwork Orange), delivers splendidly as the tormented priest who is both childishly pitiful and overbearingly sinister at a moments notice. Walker and David McGillivray's script almost keeps everything together to make it all convincing, but it is a shame that it relies so heavily on convincing the audience that a normal, rational woman would be declared delusional beyond any doubt by so many people for so long. It is a detrimental cliche when characters in horror movies will not even fathom let alone look into other character's pleas for help, instead continuously giving them sedatives and saying they are emotionally stressed. In this regard, Mortal Sin sins far too much. The film is not likely to cheer anybody up, (a Walker hallmark if ever there was one), and the ending is even more dour than usual, but its genuine presentation is commendable at least above anything else.
(1979)
Dir - John Badham
Overall: GOOD
Saturday Night Fever director John Badham took a stab at adapting the Dracula stage play, (the same that Universal's 1931 Dracula was based on), to screen with Frank Langella returning to the role that won him a Tony Award on Broadway. Being the most familiar story in all of horror fiction, this take intriguingly shuffles things around enough. The best part of the book and most film adaptations is actually entirely skipped over, where Johnathan Harker meets the Count for the first time at his Transylvanian home. Instead, many details that transpired then and throughout Bram Stoker's novel are cleverly moved around and adapted to follow a slightly different chain of events. For his title character role, Langella excels with a suave, sophisticated confidence as he deliberately presents himself as the most charming man in the room, cutting off people's sentences and demanding everyone's attention with the most charming of mannerisms. The grey and bleak set design and John William's musical score are also top notch, this version being the most directly influential one on Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 take, which upped many of these elements to almost schlocky overkill. The only mistakes here are the typical ones with Dracula movies, like how he ignores his most useful powers at times when the script needs him to appear too vulnerable. This aspect slightly fumbles the ending, but there is so much done exceedingly well throughout that it can easily rank as one of the very best of all Dracula films.
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