Dir - Robert Vincent O'Neill
Overall: MEH
Robert Vincent O'Neill's Blood Mania is cinematically impressive for a low-budget exploitation movie, but otherwise a melodramatic bore. Shot over twelve days in a house that allegedly belonged to Béla Lugosi, O'Neill and cinematographers Robert Maxwell and Gary Graver utilized numerous demented angles in their story that merely amounts to a woman going cuckoo after murdering her bedridden, curmudgeon father who leaves a more agreeable settlement to her much nicer and blonder sister. There is also something about a shady doctor being blackmailed; a doctor that beds both sisters which causes the predictable amount of tension between everyone. The first act is loaded with sex scenes, setting this agreeably in the softcore realm which is augmented by Maria De Aragon's villainess being a nymphomaniac of sorts. While some of these sequences are tripped out to wah guitar/atonal organ music and a psychedelic aesthetic, the script by Peter Carpenter and Tony Crechales never picks up any momentum. Also, O'Neill forgets to add any suspense or scares, rendering the whole thing as nothing more than an uninteresting yet well-shot sex romp with unlikable characters.
(1972)
Dir - Ray Danton
Overall: MEH
Count Yorga himself Robert Quarry, the guy who sang "The Monster Mash" Bobby Pickett, and Piglet from Winnie the Pooh John Fiedler join forces in Deathmaster, (Guru Vampire); the debut from actor-turned-director Ray Danton. One of countless vampire yarns that the early 1970's produced, Quarry's bloodsucker here is significantly different than his Yorga counterpart, presenting himself as a meandering guru for a bunch of uninspired hippies that eagerly latch onto his every word out of both sheer boredom and probably some supernatural hypnotic influence. Certainly dated with its stock of burnout characters, New Age platitude dialog, and a soundtrack made up of folk songs, dissonant organs, sitars, and Eastern bongo jams, the Manson family meets the undead hybrid is a no-brainer one for the era that brings together Gothic horror motifs with counterculture exploitation ones. Quarry's performance is appropriately ham-fisted, but sadly, the film comes off as more pretentious and lame than atmospheric and creepy, featuring few fiendish set pieces until the finale and settling into the overused trope of somebody having a difficult time in trying to convince anyone who will listen that vampires are real and in their midst.
(1977)
Dir - Robert Scheerer
Overall: WOOF
An Old Lady Might Sell Her Hotel and Oh, Also There are Ants - The Movie aka It Happened at Lakewood Manor, (Ants!, Panic at Lakewood Manor), is yet another bug-infested bit of made-for-TV nature horror from screenwriter Guerdon Trueblood. A slew of recognizable television and big screen actors are on board, (Suzanne Somers, Lynda Day George, Myra Loy, Robert Foxworth, Brian Dennehy, Bernie Casey, etc), but Trueblood's script is detrimentally talky and it takes until the last act for it to kick into full-on survivalist mode. In the meantime, there sure are a lot of bland characters to keep track of from construction workers, love interests, hotel staff, and a sleazy argumentative real estate agent because every movie needs a clear-cut bad guy. Most people who come across such a film will likely get aggravated by the lack of insect-attacking mayhem and the pleading and discussing amongst everyone continues even as it crawls towards the finish line. Such a premise is poorly-suited for a nail-biting experience to begin with since the film itself even proclaims that teeny-tiny little ants are usually not aggressive, so there is a simple assumption here that "bugs are always creepy" and ergo, that is enough to go on. Yet when one of the "intense" set pieces in your killer bug movie is a handicapped old lady briefly getting her rescue cage caught on a piece of wood as a hunky lifeguard clumsily falls off the balcony, then a problem you do have. At least the finale where three people have to sit perfectly still as to not stir-up the ant's wrath while they crawl all over them is icky and amusing.
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