(1970)
Dir - Jack Woods/Dennis Muren
Overall: MEH
This bizarre, quasi-precursor to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead was the only full-length film from special effects artist and producer Dennis Muren. Equinox was originally funded as a short titled The Equinox: Journey into the Supernatural before independent distribution company Tonylyn Productions came on board and extra footage was shot by Jack Woods to flush it out. The result is four teenagers, (who look like they are pushing thirty-seven at times due to the several years between shooting schedules), venturing into the woods and finding a book about demons that ends up summoning stop-motion monsters and possessing random people to grow eye-shadow and start growling until someone shows them a holy symbol. The movie never has a chance of creating an unsettling, moody atmosphere as its budgetary issues and borderline incompetent direction incessantly undermine it. All of the dialog is not only dubbed, but in the most wordy lead, Edward Connell sounds like he is narrating an education film about sandpaper. In one scene, he is literally just reading from the unholy tome for what seems like four-hundred and fifty years, filling up screen time in the most sleep-inducing way possible. The cel animation and stop motion effects by Dave Allen and Jim Danforth are fun though as are the laughably bad, Z-grade schlocky qualities.
(1973)
Dir - Michael Crichton
Overall: GOOD
The first theatrically released film by author/filmmaker Michael Crichton features his patented, conceptual trademark of man's hampering with nature, (or in this case technology), backfiring in dangerous ways. While Jurassic Park may be the comparatively more well known property that used such a backdrop of an amusement park overrun by its exhibits, the initial Westworld spawned a successful franchise of its own, culminating in the HBO series of the same name that debuted in 2016. The film is an impressive production, combining period costumes and sets with slightly futuristic though contemporary ones. As the cold, villainous gunslinger android with silver-gleaming pupils decked out in his Magnificent Seven outfit, Yul Brynner makes for a creepy antagonist and also one that sums up the movie's central merging of eras and the unrelenting nature of artificially sentient machinery. While the film is fun in how it lovingly and narratively showcases its cliches, its dark turn is random and unexplained, though more in a half-baked way than a successfully chilling one. Whether this is at the fault of Crichton and his relative inexperience behind the lens or not, it is still an enjoyable be it uneven affair with some unrealized potential.
(1976)
Dir - Tobe Hooper
Overall: MEH
As a follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive, (Death Trap, Starlight Slaughter, Horror Hotel), is a technically slicker production, but a relentlessly annoying and unpleasant one as well. Two different men attempt to rape the same woman within the first eleven minutes, we see a dog get chomped on by a live alligator, an incessantly rambling-to-himself Nazi hillbilly licks cocaine out of his palm, another woman is beaten and hogtied while her daughter screams in horror watching, and that is all before it even hits the halfway point. More odd is how eccentric behavior carries over beyond the film's psychotic, reptilian enthusiast motel owner who is clearly meant to be the crazy, horror movie bad guy. A redneck bar patron does a weird slapping ritual before picking a fight and after that family dog becomes alligator breakfast, its dad starts pointing, screaming, and raving about fuck knows what to his wife before busting out a shotgun in a rage. The rest of it becomes monotonous as it is mostly foaming at the mouth, yee-haw perverts everywhere and incoherent, Nazi cocaine man wielding a sickle and yelling at people. Whereas Chainsaw went for the jugular and eventually off the rails with its unforgiving disturbingness and crude production values, the results here are straight exploitative, B-movie schlock. The film is not scary, it is just loud, messy, and stupid.
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