(1973)
Dir - George A. Romero
Overall: GOOD
Released a month before The Crazies, Season of the Witch, (initially put out as Hungry Wives by the insistence of producer Jack H. Harris who promoted it incorrectly as a soft-core porn film), acts in part as George Romero's second be it quasi-horror film after Night of the Living Dead. Romero's ambitions here clearly go beyond making a standard, genre-pandering supernatural yarn. In typical fashion for the independent filmmaker, it was shot locally on an ultra-modest budget with mostly low-caliber actors. Romero's story of an anxiety-ridden middle-class housewife slowly unraveling and turning to witchcraft is less about Rosemary's Baby-inspired, occult freakiness though and more a cinematic essay on feminism and female conformity in the wake of late 60s counterculture. It uses spooky music and nightmare sequences liberally yet effectively, but the macabre, unnatural tone is more meant to enhance the frustration, boredom, and confusion of its main protagonist than cause chills for the viewer. Moments of dated, improvisational, drunk John Cassavetes dialog, some clunky editing, and a lifeless flow makes it a less rewarding watch than it was probably intended to be, but its aspirations still keep it afloat for the most part.
(1976)
Dir - Charles B. Pierce
Overall: MEH
Charles B. Pierce's follow-up to the atrociously Z-rent abomination snooze-fest that is The Legend of Boggy Creek was this dramatic re-telling of the infamous Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946. The Town That Dreaded Sundown has a catchy title, a fetching horror movie slasher villain in the white-hooded The Phantom, and a handful of nasty scenes where victims scream and beg as they are dragged out of cars, beaten to a pulp, and brutally done away with. Pierce stages these killings in an effectively disturbing way, usually with minimal to no music. That and the Phantom's heavy breathing, weird grunts, and bugged-out eyes peaking through tiny slits in his crudely makeshift mask make it pretty horrific indeed. Elsewhere it is the usual slag though with county sheriffs and Texas Rangers talking about how they are going to catch the guy in drawn out, emotionally unengaging and talky scenes. Pierce's attempts at comic relief are more head-scratching than funny, like some Dukes of Hazzard getaway scenes and several officers dressed in drag, pulling a stakeout in cars to try and bait the killer. The combination of legit actors and town locals is jarring and overall, it is an uneven affair that regularly looses momentum or becomes unnecessarily goofy when it otherwise should keep its non-murder sequences properly compelling.
(1978)
Dir - John DeBello
Overall: WOOF
When a movie's entire purpose is to be "so bad it's good", it can be a misconception that achieving such a thing is like shooting fish in a barrel. As Attack of the Killer Tomatoes clearly demonstrates, this task is in fact far more difficult. One or two chuckles aside, (a smiling guy in a library calmly over-enunciating the word "tomato" to insinuate a small riot is legitimately laugh out loud funny), almost the entirety of this deliberately lousy B-monster invasion parody is actually just that; lousy. All of the technical blunders are there knowingly, (bad acting, bad miking, bad special effects, bad script), but the fact that so very little of it is actually amusing rather completely sinks the entire thing. The humor or lack thereof is way too on the nose. When trying to hit the same beats as schlocky drive-in genre films that are accidentally a hoot, those same beats here are exaggerated to such an extreme as to try and be intentionally funny instead. This ultimately makes them too juvenile, obvious, and groan-worthy to work and the movie's knowing stupidity becomes overwhelming in the worst way. Three more sequels followed, (all directed and co-written by John DeBello), but one is enough thank you.
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