(1972)
Dir - Chuck Vincent
Overall: MEH
The full-length debut from Chuck Vincent, (who goes by the name Mark Ubell here and would spend a large majority of the next two decades working as a pornographic director), Voices of Desire is a singular, erotic version of Carnival of Souls where a woman is troubled by eerie hallucinations, dead silence, smiling ghouls, and a whispering voice in her head. Also, she gets naked a lot. Serving as another staring vehicle for Sandra Peabody who also appeared in Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left the same year, she plays the troubled protagonist who falls victim to a sex cult that uses mysterious and possibly otherworldly means to get her in their clutches for group horizontal tango purposes. The dialog is almost non-existent, the music is mostly classical and sounds as if somebody just turned a record on at full blast, hardcore footage from what looks like other productions is spliced in, and most of the running time is made up of slow, unsexy, and naked bodies fondling each other. Largely comatose-inducing, but its surreal amateurism casts a creepy and hazy spell that makes it stand out from other skin flicks from the era.
(1974)
Dir - Jerry London
Overall: WOOF
A year after Stephen King published his short story/eventual Maximum Overdrive source material "Trucks", ABC broadcast the television movie Killdozer! with a comparatively ridiculous premise of a piece of machinery on wheels that becomes sentient and goes on a murdering spree. The first full-length from veteran TV director Jerry London, the most detrimental and head-scratching aspect of the production is in how straight such doofy material is played. A modest crop of character and small screen actors who look like other actors, (Carl Betz is close enough to Richard Crenna and Clint Walker is the American version of English thespian Nigel Green), do battle with the hulking piece of construction equipment of the title, but they only do so in between long and slack dialog exchanges that only slow down an already bare-bones presentation. Scenes of the Caterpillar D9 bulldozer gradually attacking people because of a mysterious meteorite that crash landed in the crew's excavation site have no agency too them and worse yet, it comes across like the machine's victims could have easily gotten out of the way or avoided its attacks altogether. Too silly to take seriously and to serious to be silly, it is a misguided dud.
(1975)
Dir - Ray Danton
Overall: GOOD
Wrapping up his theatrical career from behind the lens before switching exclusively to television, actor-turned-director Ray Danton's Psychic Killer, (The Kirlian Force), is an oddity amongst 70s B-movies. Doubling as the last work on the big screen for the top-billed Jim Hutton and Paul Burke, it also has Julie Adams holding her own as a no-nonsense psychiatrist, but the film is less about its "star" power than it is about its odd premise and some grisly murder sequences that find Hutton's wrongly-convicted ex-felon being granted astral projection abilities which he uses to reap his revenge. The first act in a correctional facility only hints at the events to come, but there are still some startling moments there to keep the viewer from checking out too soon. Before too long though, it settles into a fun smorgasbord of people being picked off, from a possessed/boiling hot shower faucet, to a car that will only accelerate, to a butcher shop coming alive, to a guy singing opera for absolutely no reason who falls victim to the equivalent of a Looney Tunes gag. Danton keeps the mood serious even if some of the moments have got to be intentionally comedic, plus we have an unnecessary romance detour to give both Burke and Adams something more to do, but the film has enough unsettling inventiveness to give it an edge in the exploitation field.
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