70's American Horror Part Sixty-Two

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE 

(1971)

Dir - Gordon Hessler

Overall: MEH

American International Pictures continued on with another Edgar Allan Poe "adaptation" in title only with Murders in the Rue Morgue.  Lacking all of the personnel that made their initial Roger Corman/Vincent Price run legitimate, this one at least had the good sense to bring on director Gordon Hessler who had worked with Price on the latter's last three films.  Hessler and screenwriters Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar recalibrated Poe's source material into a play-within-a-play framework, opening the film with a clever dupe that sets up the rest of the premise where nightmares and premonitions are constantly woven into the narrative to the point of endless confusion.  While this is a solid idea in theory and Hessler stages some adequately spooky dream sequences, it also becomes a detriment in making the movie difficult to follow.  By indulging in too many moments where Christine Kaufmann wakes up screaming in bed, it becomes repetitive and leads to a messy climax that seems more drawn-out than suspenseful.  Several members of the cast are recognizable and Jason Robards is a nice edition to quasi-Gothic horror, but Herbert Lom is essentially playing the exact same part that he did in Hammer's version of Phantom of the Opera nine years earlier, for better or worse.

 

THE STRANGER WITHIN

(1974)

Dir - Lee Philips

Overall: MEH

 

Television director Lee Philips and noted genre screenwriter Richard Matheson team up for The Stranger Within; an ABC Movie of the Week hybrid of Rosemary's Baby and Village of the Damned.  Matheson adapts his own novelette Trespass about an unassuming housewife who becomes miraculously impregnated by an alien force.  Those around her come to this conclusion due to a series of exhaustive and frustrating endeavors considering that the woman's husband is shooting blanks, which creates the usual "Well then who is the father?", domestic household tension.  Barbara Eden does fine work in the lead, ranting and raving with her jarring mood swings and cravings for both coffee and salt as the mysterious, extraterrestrial presences rapidly grows inside of her womb.  While Philips maintains a sinister enough atmosphere considering the television presentation and the ending leaves things off on a chilling note, Matheson's story is predictable due to the familiar ingredients that have inspired it.  There are no twists in the plot development; just increasing tension as Eden grows more and more unhinged and those around her become equally distraught with the situation.

DRACULA'S DOG

(1977)

Dir - Albert Band

Overall: MEH

The fact that a film titled both Dracula's Dog and Zoltan...Hound of Dracula is not as laugh-out-loud ridiculous as one would logically assume is either a detriment or a saving grace, depending on the viewer.  Director Albert Band was no stranger to low-level genre offerings and he brings a surprising level of dullness to the proceedings here, failing to emphasize the movie's unavoidably absurd premise for campy pizazz.  Instead, it is treated like a "legitimate" vampire movie with a scholarly undead expert showing up on the scene to convince Michael Pataki that he is indeed the last surviving descendant of Count Dracula and that a blood-sucking canine is indeed after him and his loved ones.  Notable as one of Stan Winston's earlier special effects jobs, he pulls off a few convincing dog bites, but this is hardly a spectacle for practical blood and guts-shedding.  Most of the proceedings are spent with Pataki and his well-do-do family doing normal suburban things and then camping in the woods, while Austrian character actor Reggie Nalder stares wide-eyed into the camera about seven dozen times.  There is some demonic howling on the soundtrack that adds a much needed bit of evil ambiance, though it is never enough to elevate either the snooze-worthy pace or Band's flat direction.