(1971)
Dir - Eloy de la Iglesia
Overall: WOOF
The first thriller from Spanish filmmaker Eloy de la Iglesia, The Glass Ceiling, (El techo de cristal), could be described as criminally insipid. When almost every scene of the movie is two people talking yet almost none of them advance the plot, you have a serious problem. The results are so boring that forty-minutes in, it is too bothersome to even care about or have any idea of what is even happening. There are two women living in a rural apartment building, each of whom have a husband who is out of town. There is a sculpture, another lady, some other guy, and a pervert around and they all have various conversations about things that vaguely allude to maybe one of the woman's husbands being missing or murdered. The film is such a tedious drag though that you pretty much have to use your imagination to even surmise that much. Sadly the dubbing, cinematography, and performances are as flat as the pacing and story. Even a would-be trippy nightmare sequence seems uninspired. The last fifteen minutes almost give the movie some signs of life, but if you have to wait that damn long, it is hardly worth the trouble.
(1973)
Dir - Amando de Ossorio
Overall: MEH
This creature feature from Amando de Ossorio came right smack in between the four entries in his more famous, Blind Dead series. While The Loreley's Grasp, (Las Garras de Lorelei, When the Screaming Stops), is exquisitely violent with body parts being clawed up, chests getting ripped open, and vital organs getting pulled out, its title monster also has an embarrassingly silly costume that pushes the whole thing into schlock terrain. This may have been simply a budgetary matter, (after all, the Knights Templar had a simple visual design yet came off creepy enough), but no matter how sudden and brutal the killings are or how quickly Ossorio tries to cut away from it, a reptilian Halloween costume in a black hood still provides nothing but hysterics. Elsewhere the plotting is typically lazy and primarily seems concerned with having scantily clad women present for as many shots as the monster is not in. Though it does manage to shoehorn an angry mob in there for what it is worth. With its unintended humor creating a clashing atmosphere and, (naturally being an Ossorio movie), having too leisurely of a pace, it is kind of a failure, but an occasionally fun one.
(1975)
Dir - Jordi Gigó
Overall: WOOF
Jordi Gigó only directed three movies, (one of which was called Porno Girls), and it is not too surprising that his career was not more lucrative after enduring his debut here. Devil's Kiss, (La perversa caricia de Satán), is an unrelenting drag of a movie, even by 70s Euro-horror standards. A professor of something and a medium move into an old boring guy's chateau after an equally uninteresting seance and fashion show takes place there, (do not ask), and then it is mostly people talking, some boobs, and a shirtless Frankenstein monster stamping around killing a few folks while the choppy, stock organ music drops some minor key bombs on the soundtrack. When the organ bursts are not reminding you that you are watching a horror movie, the rest of it plays to silence or crickets chirping which understandably enhances the lameness tenfold. If you are unfortunate enough to sit through the dubbed version, the voice-over actors sound like they were trying to cram the whole recording session in before lunch and could not be bothered to do any second, more enthusiastic takes. It is not so much standard as just random and above all else, dull, dull, dull. For certain viewers, its overwhelming vapid qualities may make it a hilarious trainwreck of uninspired nonsense. For the rest, it will just be an aggravating waste of time.
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