(1971)
Dir - José María Elorrieta
Overall: MEH
Filmmaker José María Elorrieta closed out his directorial career with a small handful of horror cheapies, The Feast of Satan, (Las amantes del diablo, Feast for the Devil), being one of many with the usual stylistic choices on prominent display. Sexy, hip jazz music whether it belongs on the soundtrack or not, melodramatic dubbing that gives most characters a pompous cadence, gorgeous women who all look alike, the lead male who said females all find irresistible, said females getting smacked around, enormous amounts of chatty padding, and very arguably the world record for camera zooms/reverse zooms in any motion picture. Also standard procedure, a number of people are credited with the screenplay which was apparently necessary to fill every scene with nothing more than aimless dialog in place of well, anything at all that could be more interesting. The stakes are incredibly low, diabolical atmosphere is alarmingly absent, and while there is no prominent feast to speak of, at least a few aristocratic people finally give alms to Satan with less than ten minutes to spare in the running time.
(1974)
Dir - Manuel Caño
Overall: MEH
Imagine Universal's 1932 masterpiece The Mummy as weird, Spanish, and mostly terrible and that gives you a bare-bones representation of what Voodoo Black Exorcist, (Vudú sangriento, Bloody Voudou), is. Director Manuel Caño had mainly been doing jungle movies by the time he got behind the lens here, which is fitting as various sequences that were shot in the Dominican Republic feature barely-if-at-all-clad natives dancing around to tribal drums in the middle of exotic foliage. Genre regulars Fernando Sancho, Aldo Sambrell, and Eva León are all on-board and are all laughably dubbed. To the film's credit, there are a few memorably outrageous moments though. Spanish actors in black-face, unconvincing decapitated heads, melodramatically stupid dialog, a silly piece of romantic music dropped in here or there, the bad guy getting attacked by a fire hose, and a rushed, "wait, what?" ending are all unintentional hoots. The final set piece in an actual cave looks great with multi-colored lighting scattered around, plus Sambrell's makeup as the Karloff stand-in is primitive yet effective in how jarring it is. Pacing wise, it drags as much as you would expect, but there is a naive, garish, exploitative charm to it that almost holds things together enough to recommend.
(1979)
Dir - Silvio Narizzano
Overall: MEH
Largely incomprehensible and rambling, The Sky Is Falling, (Las Flores Del Vicio, The Flowers of Vice, El cielo se cae, Bloodbath), is a bizarre fever dream of hedonistic grime and decadence. Shot on location in the seaside village of Mojacar in Almeria Spain, it focuses on a group of expatriates who wallow in alcohol and drug-fueled bitterness, bonding with a mysterious, newly-arrived bunch of hippies who ultimate prove to have manipulative, sinister intentions. This is not revealed to be the case until the last few minutes though, leaving almost the entirety of the movie to meander in a surreal stupor that becomes frustratingly monotonous early on. Dennis Hopper was in his prime, drugged-out state here and it is disturbingly difficult to tell how much of his unkempt, drenched-in-sweat performance was the result of actual acting. Several of the other participants go off the rails just as much, with Win Wells and Carroll Baker in particular laying into a type of mania that is appropriately scenery chewing for such an affair. The tone is consistently aggressive and impenetrable for those who can get on board with it and if anything else, it definitely represents a type of "nail in the coffin" cynicism towards all things peace and love.
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