(1972)
Dir - Robert Hartford-Davis
Overall: MEH
British filmmaker Robert Hartford-Davis occasionally mingled with horror throughout his decade and some change career, never to any overtly successful degrees. The Fiend, (Beware My Brethren), is no exception in this regard. It is another example of religious nutjobs whose zeal crosses over into villainy, except with a serial killer on the loose angle thrown in to provide some extra gore and naked female bodies. The story is basically a snore and tries one's patience with the amount of characters begging for repentance and finding repugnant sin in every possible activity. Never one to shy away from chomping at the bit when it is available, Patrick Magee makes for a "good" fanatical Minister and character actor Tony Beckley, (The Italian Job, Doctor Who's "The Seeds of Doom"), cannot come off as anything but a villain even if it is a pathetic, partly-sympathetic one. The movie is more dull than anything though and also has some positively clashing and embarrassing musical numbers included for reasons probably better left unknown.
(1975)
Dir - Peter Sasdy
Overall: MEH
An unintentional trainwreck that developed a well-warranted "so bad it's good" reputation since its dismal release, I Don't Want to Be Born, (The Devil Within Her, The Monster, Sharon's Baby), has all the inane hallmarks that one would expect to be present. Ridiculous fake Italian accents, ridiculous expository dialog dumps, ridiculous dialog in general, ridiculous performances, ridiculous sound effects, and a generically unoriginal devil baby plot that comes closer to parody than anything else. Not that it is particularly easy to make a serious movie about an unnaturally growing newborn with superhuman strength and malevolent superpowers such as putting a dead mouse in an old woman's tea. More curious yet is the familiar, respected names on board such as Donald Pleasence, Ralph Bates, Joan Collins, Caroline Munro, and Eileen Atkins. Also director Peter Sasdy whose career in the genre may have been uneven, but his work on Countess Dracula, Taste the Blood of Dracula, and others certainly does not resemble the embarrassing nonsense that is on screen here. Say what you want about how awful it is, (which cannot be denied), but it is mostly not boring and makes for a worthy "bad movie night" entry to be sure.
(1977)
Dir - Norman J. Warren
Overall: MEH
The middle installment in Norman J. Warren's narratively unrelated 70's horror trilogy, Prey, (Alien Prey), is a robustly odd, Freudian ordeal. Shot at a lone, isolated manor house with only three characters on screen for almost the entire duration, it is a noticeably low-budget affair with outrageous performances and heavy-handed hetero and homosexual themes co-mingling rather violently. It is also a mess, though difficult to tell how unintentionally so. Tedious pacing, (lots and lots of long, uninterrupted shots of characters walking from one place to another), behavior that is so erratic that it frequently crosses over into comedy, a random crossdressing scene that probably means something, and even a fatal pratfall are all cause for well warranted head-scratching from the viewer. There is also an underlying B-movie worthy plot thread of an alien takeover with its own version of silly "So and so reporting back to base with my report on the humans" jargon. Not to mention the alien makeup that is nothing more than a regular looking dude with a dog nose and some red eyes. In any event, it is pretty steadily unpleasant with all of the screaming, arguing, and resentfully cruel sex scenes afoot.
No comments:
Post a Comment