Saturday, September 9, 2023

70's American Horror Part Forty-Four

THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE
(1970)
Dir - John Llewellyn Moxey
Overall: MEH
 
Though this Halloween ABC Movie of the Week scored The City of the Dead director John Llewellyn Moxey and veteran Barbara Stanwyck in her first television film, The House That Would Not Die ends up being just a consistently mediocre haunted house mystery.  The script was penned by What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? author Henry Farrell and is an adaptation of Barbara Mertz' 1968 book Annie Come Home which features séances, possessions, howling winds, hidden rooms, nightmare sequences, and poltergeist activity in a bog-standard fashion with all of the accompanying cliches in proper tow.  Similar to Paramount's well-lauded The Uninvited, the exclusively white characters here easily buy into the supernatural events transpiring around them instead of stubbornly dismissing such things as imaginary bouts of anxiety suffered by stressed-out women, as is often the case.  What it does feature is well paced enough, but it also lacks the proper ghostly atmosphere necessary to enhance it and the story itself is only mildly interesting.  In other words, it all makes for something professionally handled yet also easily forgettable.
 
BLOOD LEGACY
(1971)
Dir - Carl Monson
Overall: WOOF

The first directorial effort from D-rent filmmaker Carl Monson, Blood Legacy, (Will to Die, Legacy of Blood), is an abysmal affair from top to bottom.  Premise wise, it could not be less original as it features yet another "reading of the will" set-up where an eccentric millionaire pits his offspring against each other with cockamamie instructions for them to stay at his creepy mansion which of course results in them getting systematically picked-off.  The outcome is just as lazy, with a "twist" that anyone could spot a mile away; well, anyone with enough caffeine in their system to stay awake throughout the entire torturous running time.  Even with a stock plot line to work with, such a thing could still afford a macabre chuckle or two if handled by someone with anything besides the bare minimum of competence from behind the lens.  Alas though, Monson's entire approach is to simply point the camera at his, (over), actors in conventional medium shots until they finish saying all of their awful lines.  There is no atmosphere, no style, and nothing visually interesting whatsoever to look at.  It is a complete failure as a gore and exploitation movie, plus to make matters even more sad and pathetic, it is also one of numerous, low-budget crud rocks that John Carradine appeared in for forty-five seconds in order to pay his rent.
 
DEATH GAME
(1977)
Dir - Peter S. Traynor
Overall: MEH
 
One of a handful of New Hollywood movies that closely followed in the footsteps of low-budget exploitation films made independently around the turn of the 1970s, Death Game, (The Seducers), is a home invasion thriller that throws statutory infidelity and teenage runaways with demented daddy issues into the mix with understandably unsettling results.  The first of only two films to be directed by producer Peter S. Traynor, the initial script by Anthony Overman and Michael Ronald Ross floated around for a number of years with different personnel considered both behind of and in front of the camera.  The finished project was reworked by Clint Eastwood collaborator Jo Heims, furthering the former's connection with Sondra Locke as one of the three leads along with relative newcomer Colleen Camp and veteran Seymour Cassel, (whose voice was dubbed by cinematographer David Worth as Cassell's relationship with Traynor was highly troublesome on set).  Though the movie is too unpleasant and loose with its plotting to properly recommend it, both Locke and Camp are effectively frightening as the two sociopathic kidnappers.  Also, the movie has a quirky tone that mixes awkward comedic elements and stylistic flourishes that clash with the heady themes of female outrage and empowerment taken out on the unassuming "family man" who succumbs to morally dubious temptation.

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