60's Italian Horror Part Eleven

THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE

(1960)
Dir - Piero Regnoli
Overall: MEH

Unoffensively riddled with cliches and ergo passable, The Playgirls and the Vampire, (L'ultima preda del vampiro, The Vampire's Last Prey, Curse of the Vampire), delivers some mild titillation and undead silliness. Piero Regnoli had a prolific career as a screenwriter and he generally bounced around from genre to genre when he got a chance to get behind the lens, this standing as his only directorial work in horror.  The cinematography by Aldo Greci makes an effort to sell the Gothic atmosphere, with some clever camera angles thankfully keeping the whole affair from being just another stagnantly framed melodrama.  It is still a heavily talky movie that utilizes lazy tropes like all of the women being berated, one of them getting smacked around by a dashing man who she just met and then immediately professes her unwavering trust for, vague warnings from characters who refuse to divulge useful information, convenient plot maneuvers, and the ole "the roads are bad so we all have to hold up in a creepy castle" setup.  Being a sexploitation film in some respects, nudity is alluded to while women show off their bodies and bust into hilariously arbitrary strip teases, but there is not enough of these sleazy moments or vampiric ones to keep it from just becoming more forgettable Euro-fluff.

 

CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD

(1964)

Dir - Warren Kiefer

Overall: MEH

 

The first of only four films made by American writer/director Warren Kiefer, (all of which were Italian productions), and the only one to be in the horror genre, Castle of the Living Dead, (Il Castello dei Morti Vivi, Le Chateau des Morts Vivants, Crypt of Horror), is enormously lackluster stuff despite the presence of Christopher Lee as a deranged Count and Donald Sutherland playing three different roles.  Conceived of as a cheap way to break into the movie business by Kiefer and producer Paul Maslansky while both were working abroad, the film is also notable as one of Michael Reeves' earliest credits, him serving as second unit director.  Unfortunately, some of the personnel involved cannot elevate it above being another sluggish, low-budget cliche-fest where a madman performs macabre experiments, people experience disturbing events while staying at his castle, and a brute, a dwarf, and a cackling witch, (the latter played by Sutherland), all serve no other purpose than to just be stock horror movie fodder.  Sutherland seems to be enjoying himself under the unrecognizable crone garb and Lee does his admirable best with the lousy material, plus as opposed to some of his other European genre works, his highly recognizable voice is actually intact for the English dub.  Besides all of that though, this is advisable to avoid.

 

KONG ISLAND

(1968)

Dir - Roberto Mauri

Overall: WOOF

An unwatchably boring, D-rent jungle export from filmmaker Roberto Mauri, Kong Island, (Eva, la Venere selvaggia, Eva, the Savage Venus, King of Kong Island), has a fraudulent title that may have tricked one or two unfortunate movie patrons into thinking that it was an Italian King Kong knock-off of some sort.  While there are guerrillas present, (or men in guerilla suites to be precise), they are standard-sized and controlled in a small handful of scenes by a mad scientist, all for cartoon bad guy reasons that are not worth getting into.  In fact none of the movie is worth getting into as it is insultingly lifeless from top to bottom.  Though jungle women films with alluring, Amazonian vixens and superstitious, local guides had long been a thing by the late 1960s, this was made before the cannibal boom really took off, so the exploitative elements are merely reduced to some brief shots of naked, female body parts here or there.  The movie is so exasperatingly dull that it only partially bothers with being too talk heavy, though there is still plenty of repetitive dialog mind you.  Most of the running time is just people walking around high temperature foliage to awful, stock music, only occasionally breaking things up with a shirtless guy eating a banana and a topless lady smiling at him while electronically controlled apes grab and murder a person or two.