70's American Horror Part Fifty-Five

CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

(1972)

Dir - Leonard Kirtman

Overall: WOOF

Arguably and astonishingly even more unwatchable than his proceeding Carnival of Blood, Curse of the Headless Horseman makes for a perfect Leonard Kirtman double feature for anyone who never wants to watch movies again and/or would like to be inspired to jump off of a bridge.  For all intents and purposes, this incomprehensible and staggeringly boring mess was improvised on the spot by Kirtman and his crew of non-actors who mumble and ramble through meaningless dialog exchanges that improper microphone equipment hardly manages to pick up in the first place.  Nearly every such scene is followed by a folk song montage to further drag out the running time and oh yeah, there is a legend about a headless horseman or something.  Every plot point, (if you can call them that), comes off as a complete afterthought to just make way for more scenes of obnoxious hippies prattling on about nothing.  The way that the whole thing barely if at all hinges upon some kind of narrative through-line would be laughably embarrassing if not for how torturous it is to sit through.  Ergo this is the worst type of "bad movie" where there is nothing even hilariously inept about it; it is instead just an insulting travesty and a colossal waste of celluloid.

LUCIFER'S WOMEN

(1974)

Dir - Paul Aratow

Overall: MEH

 

The second of only two non-pornographic full-lenghts from writer/director Paul Aratow, Lucifer's Women, (Svengali the Magician), was later reworked by hack-meister Al Adamson into a completely different film Doctor Dracula starring John Carradine.  This version is not-really-based off of George du Maurier's novel Trilby and features the same central character of Svengali, here reincarnated into Larry Hankin's body as an renowned author and magician.  He also belongs to a Satanic cult or something in his possessed form and is instructed to murder a young woman that he has recently fallen for.  Some other jazz is thrown in as well, such as an asshole pimp, various characters casually doing cocaine, a deaf mute clown, and a bisexual woman who sleepwalks through most of her line readings.  There is a surprising lack of exploitative nudity and the occult ceremony sequences are more silly than atmospherically blasphemous.  Hankin makes a striking appearance with his piercing eyes and goofy makeup, but the plot is largely nonsensical and it is difficult to tell how much of the movie is purposely comedic.  It is counter culture trash that has a dated, sleazy charm here or there, but it still ends up being mostly forgettable.

DAY OF THE ANIMALS

(1977)

Dir - William Girdler

Overall: MEH

 

As director William Girdler's follow-up to the similarly themed Grizzly from the previous year, Day of the Animals, (Something Is Out There), pits more than just an eight-hundred pound bear against unsuspecting people gallivanting about in the woods.  Well, at least it does so for a couple of seconds at a time as a break from people arguing with each other.  Co-written by exploitation producer Eleanor E. Norton, it presents a scenario where aerosol spray cans have effected the Earth's ozone layer to such an extent that wild life, (and even some humans under duress), succumb to violent outbursts.  Hardly the most clever or not-stupid idea for a movie out there and sadly, it is one that plays out predictably and ergo boringly.  Most of the animal attacks that befall a small town happen off-screen and the ones that are shown for our hapless campers are done so with laughable special effects and/or are over with almost before they begin.  The latter is the case when Leslie Nielsen goes stark-raving-rapist and wrestles a grizzly in the rain, which is a scene that should have turned out much more hilarious than it did.  Such is the case for the entire film really which sluggishly takes its environmental, nature horror concept seriously while forgetting to keep its tongue-in-cheek where it belongs.