(1972)
Dir - Brianne Murphy
Overall: MEH
In a post Charles Manson landscape, fusing hippies with the occult was ample fodder for D-rent exploitation movies and cinematographer-turned-director Brianne Murphy's Blood Sabbath is of such an ilk. A guy who looks like Stephen Stills plays a returned Vietnam veteran who is just minding his business in the woods when some naked hippie women decide to molest him, (which he has an "Eww get away from me!" reaction to like all straight men would), only to immediate fall for a clothed water nymph who wakes him up and then swims away in the lake. This kicks off the meandering plot where Anthony Geary tries to get rid of his soul in order to get laid, (don't ask), and some war flashbacks, Steve Graves overacting as a priest, stuff about sacrificing children in order to have a good harvest, and Dyanne Thorne being a red-robed, bosomy witch queen also happens. There are plenty of naked women on display to slam home the sleaze and the wacky musical score is appropriate, but the pacing is dreadful, the acting embarrassing, and production values are non-existent.
(1975)
Dir - Bryan Forbes
Overall: GOOD
The noteworthy cult film The Stepford Wives is Bryan Forbes decently chilling adaptation of Ira Levin's novel of the same name. The complaints against the movie, (namely its padded pacing), are indeed legit as it takes too leisurely of a time unveiling its more alarming components. Especially now when the premise and very phrase "Stepford wives" is quite known in the lexicon, it is quite obvious what is happening from the get-go. In this respect, it is less about the mystery and more about how the film perverts such themes of domestication and female complacency in a disturbing yet fantastical way. In a lesser director's hands, the material here perhaps could have come off as silly. Yet Forbes manages to make sunny, upper-class white suburbia seem increasingly unwholesome, forgoing conventional horror movie atmosphere almost the entire way though. How it manages to make the women nothing but sympathetic and the men quite the opposite even with both sides are persistently being polite to each other is yet another impressive feature. It could bare to trim twenty-minutes or so, but as a feminist nightmare brought respectfully to the screen, it is quite effective.
(1977)
Dir - Dan Curtis
Overall: MEH
Overall: MEH
Trying to recapture the success of Trilogy of Terror from two years prior, Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson collaborate again on the television anthology film Dead of Night, (not to be confused with the outstanding British movie from 1945). While the aforementioned movie was saved by a demonic Zuni doll, sadly none of the entries here garnish much interest. The opening, Twilight Zone-esque "Second Chance" is the only one based on a Jack Finney story and it scarcely belongs with the other two, more straight-forward horror outings. "No Such Thing As A Vampire" is utterly blood-less, but does feature an adequate enough twist. The last segment "Bobby" is easily the most sinister and atmospheric, with a heart-skipper of an ending, though it works better on paper than it does on screen. Instead of a two-foot doll chasing Karen Black around her apartment, it has an obnoxious zombie kid chasing Joan Hackett around her house after she toys with occult forces. While nothing here is remotely bad, none of it rises above competent mediocrity either and save for a couple moments in the last story, there is nothing to linger for the audience after the credits roll.
No comments:
Post a Comment