70's American Horror Part Forty

SINTHIA: THE DEVIL'S DOLL

(1970)

Dir - Ray Dennis Steckler

Overall: WOOF

Garbage peddler Ray Dennis Steckler's pathetic attempt at Satanic nudie sleaze in Sinthia: The Devil's Doll, (Teenage She-Devil, Where the Devil Toils), is as much of a nonsensical bore as one would expect coming from the "filmmaker" who also made the notoriously bad The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  Typical with early sexploitation movies, the "sex" is merely unflattering angles of naked bodies rubbing each other plus one or two topless go-go dances, but the severe lack of titillation is hardly the most egregious faux pas here.  As the title character, Bunny Allister, (allegedly just a school teacher who got hired by driving another actor Ted Roter to the audition), appears as hopelessly amatuerish as everyone else on screen, taking her clothes off regularly and screaming "Daddy!" just as often.  The only production values present is a curtain, some body paint, a few camera zooms, and psychedelic kaleidoscope montages that undeniably date the movie to the occult-fascinated hippy era.  Yet the narrative concocted by Steckler and fellow screenwriter Herb Robbins, (the latter usually getting work as a D-rent actor), has the amazing distinction of being both incoherent and elementary at the same time.  Despite all of its desperate, trash ingredients, it is more lackluster than laughably kitschy.

NIGHT WATCH

(1973)
Dir - Brian G. Hutton
Overall: GOOD

Running full-tilt with the "Nobody believes a hysterical woman" cliche, Brian G. Hutton's adaptation of Lucille Fletcher's play Night Watch is a Hitchcock-esque murder mystery headed by A-listers Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey, the latter in his penultimate role released in his lifetime.  Impressive considering something with so many formulaic components, (Taylor ranting and raving while being coddled with sedatives, the police inspector rolling his eyes at her concern, Harvey's husband character growing aggressively frustrated with his wife's "delusions", a stone-faced psychiatrist recommending a vacation while only slightly disguising his condescending tone, etc), the film utilizes its own genre confines to allude to an inevitable twist ending that makes all of the previous tropes fall cleverly into place. In other words, we trust the movie to defend its use of such familiar beats by unveiling its rug-pull in the finale.  Hutton expertly plays with the audience, having us share in Taylor's frustration by keeping the undeniable proof of her persistent concerns just out of the camera's eye.  Though it sprinkles in some gruesomeness and has a twisted, jealously-fueled revenge agenda, the ride and reveal are satisfying in a dark, campy manner.

VAMPIRE HOOKERS

(1978)

Dir - Cirio H. Santiago

Overall: MEH

A Filipino/American co-production, Vampire Hookers, (Cemetery Girls, Night of the Bloodsuckers, Sensuous Vampires, Twice Bitten), is also a deliberately craptacular combination of horror spoof and sexploitation for those that enjoy naked women, lots of hokey one-liners, and flatulence gags.  Filmed in the Philippines with an international cast, this is one of several less than exemplary genre movies that poor John Carradine was force to collect a paycheck on and depending on who you ask, it is either a good or bad thing that he was top-billed in something so relentlessly stupid.  For whatever reason, nearly all of Carradine's dialog is poetry cliches and the movie even opens with a Glen or Glenda homage with the past-his-prime former Dracula actor sitting in a chair, starting directly into the camera, and spouting random nonsense in a pathetic attempt to set the mood.  Elsewhere, two idiot Navy officers stumble around while never saying a single thing that is remotely funny, Vic Diaz farts and jerks off, and a slow motion sex scene which feels like it is ten hours long grinds the already braindead production to a screeching halt at the onset of the third act.  The decked-out cemetery sets are decent and boobs are always fun, but in pretty much every other capacity, this is an embarrassing waste of time.