80's Italian Horror Part Thirteen

THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS

(1982)

Dir - Sergio Martino

Overall: WOOF

Possibly the worst directorial effort from Sergio Martino, The Scorpion with Two Tails, (Assassinio al cimitero etrusco, Murder in the Etruscan Cemetery), was his final entry in supernatural horror, though he continued to work prolifically in other genres for the next several decades.  Perhaps partially inspired by Raiders of the Lost Arc which offered up a slew of similar temple/lost treasure adventures on both sides of the Atlantic, this France/Italian co-production was initially set to be an eight-part television serial yet was mercifully cut down to a still grueling ninety-eight minutes.  Lucio Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi delivers some hooky if incessant music, screenwriters Dardano Sacchetti and Ernesto Gastaldi had plenty of similar credits on their resume, plus Euro-trash regulars Claudio Cassinelli, Paolo Malco, and John Saxon, (in a minor capacity), are all present.  Even with such sure-fire personnel and arguably Italy's second best giallo filmmaker Martino behind the lens, the results are snore-inducing crap.  People get murdered by having their heads turned around backwards, maggots show up a lot, there is a well-decorated tomb, Elvire Audray's millionaire dad has a side hustle selling heroin, and characters that never make an impression just prattle on with each other until we reach some kind of conclusion involving a double-cross.

 

DAGGER EYES

(1982)

Dir - Carlo Vanzina

Overall: MEH

The sibling duo of Enrico and Carlo Vanzina channeled Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 cinéma du look thriller Diva with their own ambitious giallo variant Dagger Eyes, (Mystère, Murder Near Perfect).  Broken up into chapters and scoring Bond girl Carole Bouquet in the lead as a high-end, femme fatale lady of the evening, it adheres to long established film noir tropes as much as it does "black gloved killers with inventive means of murdering people" ones.  The dialog is snappy and most of the characters glide through things with a cool-as-a-cucumber charm that bypasses the type of melodramatic silliness that most Euro exploitation adheres to.  Even the disco-heavy score by Armando Trovajoli is less tacky than it should be, helping to enhance a smooth and erotic tale of double-crossing characters who adhere to their own rules.  Things are more interesting in the first act where we spend a significant amount of time with Bouquet and her classy call girl lifestyle, but the rudimentary plot runs out of momentum even before we reach a rushed and disappointing finale.  Apparently, the Vanzina brothers wanted to shoot a more downtrodden ending, but producers insisted on an uplifting one which is handled in a clumsy manner at best.

 

RATMAN

(1988)

Dir - Giuliano Carnimeo

Overall: MEH

 

The penultimate film from director Giuliano Carnimeo, Ratman, (Quella villa in fondo al parco), is a typical exploitation snooze-fest, one that is punctuated by some nasty kills and peppered with a cornball synth musical score by Stefano Mainetti.  This was one of only three movies to feature two-foot, four-inch tall Dominican actor Nelson de la Rosa, who would more famously show up as Marlon Brando's prop lackey in the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau from 1996.  As the title creature who was created by Pepito Guerra's scientist by crossing rodent semen with a monkey because dumb, Rosa makes few appearance, squeaking, leaping, and clawing away at hapless individuals who cross his path.  There is a little T&A to appease sleaze aficionados and Euro-horror fans will recognize a few of the faces that are on board, but Carnimeo's direction is lifeless and Roberto Girometti's cinematography leaves just as much to de desired.  The first two acts are sluggish enough with Janet Ågren going into morgues only to try and convince the police that the dead ratman victims are not her sister, but it eventually settles into a just as lackluster slasher framework where Eva Grimaldi tries to fend off her tiny mutant attacker.  At least the final closing credit tag is a fun and campy note to go out on.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty-Three - (Jerry Ciccoritti Editon)

PSYCHO GIRLS
(1986)
Overall: MEH

 

The debut from Canadian filmmaker Jerry Ciccoritti is the occasionally inventive sleaze-fest Psycho Girls.  Allegedly shot in nine days with a $15,000 budget, it has a demented midnight movie aesthetic with its tongue-in-cheek the entire time.  John Haslett Cuff plays a pulp author who narrates the strange tale of Darlene Mignacco who poisoned her parents when she was a kid, spent many years in an insane asylum, and eventually escapes with two also not-mentally-sound companions.  People are murdered, tricked into eating human brains, and eventually kidnapped in an elaborate torture ceremony in an abandoned and different mental asylum, a ceremony which is dedicated to Sigmund Freud because sure.  Though plenty gruesome, its many tasteless moments are more eccentric than disturbing, and the crude production values and grandiose performances only enhance a movie about psychopathic crazy people doing psychopathic crazy things.  Robert Bergman's cinematography is elaborate at times and we are treated to other non-violent and weird moments like a couple engaging in weight-lifting foreplay and transitional text appearing as typewritten pages, so even though the movie is annoying at times and never funny, at least has some garish style at its disposal.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

(1986)

Overall: MEH

 

Not to be confused with the infamous American 1990 Stephen King adaptation of the same name from director Ralph S. Singleton, THIS Graveyard Shift, (Central Park Drifter), was Canadian writer/director Jerry Ciccoritti's immediate follow-up to his debut Psycho Girls.  An urban vampire yarn, our main undead guy Michael A. Miranda leads a more reckless existence than most, getting more ass than a toilet seat as he bites an untold slew of picturesque women who have the misfortune of hopping into the back of his cab, turning them into vampires in the process who can then go and munch on any horny guys in the city that they run into.  Understandably, the police quickly get frustrated by all of the bodies that are piling up, meanwhile Miranda and his new favorite love interest are both dying, or she was and now he also is after sleeping with her or something.  Coccprotti and cinematographer Robert Bergman utilize some striking giallo-esque colors here or there and there is plenty of steamy nudity, but the presentation is clumsy and B-grade at best.  This is not helped by a script that cannot decide if it wants to lean into the more melancholic or sleazy kind of blood-sucker motifs, instead finding an awkward balance between the two.

THE UNDERSTUDY: GRAVEYARD SHIFT II

(1989)

Overall: MEH

Writer/director Jerry Ciccoritti and actor Michael A. Miranda lock-horns again for The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II, the similarly-veined sequel to 1986's Graveyard Shift.  Miranda has poofy rock star hair now, (think Richard Lewis with fangs), and is technically playing a different character who can appear in people's dreams and shapeshift into a woman or whatever.  Flippancy aside, Ciccoritti delivers another deadly serious tale of the undead that nevertheless comes off as schlocky within its direct-to-video framework.  It has a nifty if less than unique premise of a makeshift production crew filming a vampire movie while a real vampire infiltrates it, but Ciccoritti's script is muddled and does not do anything to cleverly explore its motifs within the meta framework.  Miranda is your typical ruthless blood-sucker who plays people against each other, and the only inkling that we get as to why, (besides him just being an evil dude), revolves around some vague "I'll be whole again" nonsense.  Some of it is romantic, some of it is atmospheric, some of it is crude, but like its predecessor, nothing here gels correctly.

80's Umberto Lenzi Part Three

HITCHER IN THE DARK

(1989)

Overall: WOOF

A combination of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Collector, plus some other stuff, Hitcher in the Dark, (Paura nel buio), throws a lot of unpleasant cliches into a blender and serves them up equally unpleasantly.  One of five feature length movies from director Umberto Lenzi that was released in 1989, this one concerns an odious trust fund brat with disgusting mommy issues who drives around the Florida coast in his rich daddy's RV, picking up female hitchhikers, being an asshole to them, smacking them around, and then murdering them when they either talk back too much, try to escape, have too many sexual partners in their past, or fail to look enough like his mother who he wants to have sex with.  Playing such a heartthrob is baby-faced Joe Balogh, who has has all of the charisma of someone that you want to endlessly punch in the mouth.  So in other words, he is a terrible villain, yet not terrible in the way that makes him the last bit captivating.  Josie Bissett of all people got her break here, but any fans of Melrose Place would be wise to skip such an abysmal affair, unless you want to watch her pose naked while drugged and barely try to get away from a murderous, rapist scumbag for ninety-odd minutes.

 

THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT

(1989)

Overall: MEH

In 1989, both Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi delivered two films each as part of a television series Le case maledette, (Doomed Houses, The Houses of Doom), all of which were apparently shelved due to their violence level not being on par with TV audience acceptability.  The House of Witchcraft, (La casa del sortilegio), was the third in production order, shot within four weeks like the other installments and similarly set in an ominous abode where supernatural things are taking place.  In this instance, said house is one that Andy J. Forest's character has dreams about, where a wicked old witch is running around murdering people; a witch played by Maria Cuman Quasimodo who looks like a live action version of a Halloween decoration.  The framework is dull, sticking to characters prattling on with cliched dialog exchanges that are not even necessary in order for the audience to follow what is going on.  Also, it may as well be a slasher movie due to how predictable all of the victim's murders are, plus the fact that Quasimodo simply comes at everyone with a knife after sometimes subtly tricking them with occult magical powers.  Lenzi's direction seems uninspired, even with some wind, lighting, fog, severed heads in a cauldron, a spontaneous snow storm in a basement, and a maggot-covered grim reaper thrown in to break up a chatty and stock plot.

HOUSE OF LOST SOULS

(1989)

Overall: MEH

With a premise that could not be less unique, (a bunch of young people driving through the country and then have to stop at an abandoned hotel full of ghosts because of a blocked highway), Umberto Lenzi's second television film of 1989 House of Lost Souls, (La casa delle anime erranti), goes through the motions as much as any of the other entries in the Le case maledette, (Doomed Houses, The Houses of Doom), series, let alone any low-budget Italian genre export in general.  Goblin's Claudio Simonetti delivers a typically snappy keyboard score, characters unnecessarily put themselves in harm's way of the supernatural like a bunch of idiots who have never seen a horror movie, cars fail to start, hysterical women get smacked around and gaslit by men, there is a creepy little kid, heads get chopped off in a manner that is actually relevant to the malevolent specter's backstory, and the set pieces are merely a random assortment of "scary" things on paper that seem to have been plucked out of a hat.  Its formulaic nature can either be seen as lazy and safe or lazy and safe and ergo fun for Euro-trash fans that return to such films with their expectations in proper check.  Plus, at least Lenzi keeps the pace up as to not make it an insulting cliche-fest, though cliche-fest it certainly still is.

80's Umberto Lenzi Part Two

GHOSTHOUSE
(1988)
Overall: MEH

Whereas foreign producers had attached the "La Casa" title onto Sam Raimi's first two Evil Dead films for non-American markets, Ghosthouse, (La casa 3 - Ghosthouse), was the first actual Italian movie to get the moniker, even though it was an Italian movie shot in Massachusetts.  Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi as a typical, (and most of all, nonsensical), haunted house yarn, it has many of the hallmarks of low-budget Euro-horror from the 1970s and 80s.  This includes a memorable and persistent score that leans heavy on a genuinely disturbing, gibberish nursery rhyme ditty, laughably incompetent performances, bizarre set pieces, and a story line that makes no attempts at having any logical footing.  Though the middle act drags, things start off strong where a creepy kid and her creepy clown doll inexplicably, (maybe?), manifest some kind of slasher demon that murders her father, turns light bulbs into pulsating balloons, and shatters a mirror that sends shards of glass into her mother's eyeballs.  Boatloads more head-scratching moments occur, and characters make asinine decisions, inexplicably turn up at different locations that the editing never bothers to explain, and come to conclusions that they would only arrive at because they read the script.  So yes; wacky and hilariously stupid Italian nonsense.

 

NIGHTMARE BEACH

(1989)

Dir - Umberto Lenzi/Harry Kirkpatrick

Overall: MEH

 

A deliciously dated, sleazy, and stupid Miami Beach slasher movie, Nightmare Beach, (Welcome to Spring Break), was embarrassing enough for initial director Umberto Lenzi to ask for both his services and name to be removed from the finished product.  Accounts vary as to how much Lenzi was ultimately involved in the production, with some saying that he co-directed it with screenwriter Harry Kirkpatrick, (James Justice), and Lenzi himself insisting that he backed out early and only stayed on as a technical consultant.  In any event, there are some delightful hallmarks of 80s Euro-crap cinema on display, including horrendous acting, laughable dialog, the same two heavy metal songs played upwards of ninety billion times, John Saxton of course playing a cop, a derivative script that is loaded with cliches, and plenty of naked boobs, male chauvinism, and tasteless kill scenes.  Though the opening sequence sets up a vengeance-seeking biker from beyond the grave, (the only scene in the movie that is played without any jacked up music or in-your-face schlock), it quickly becomes apparent who the actual masked killer is, making the final reveal land with an unintended and pathetic whimper.  On that note, the film is accidentally amusing at times and plenty trashy for fans of such doofiness.

LE PORTE DELL'INFERNO
(1989)
Overall: MEH

Sluggish and repetitive, Umberto Lenzi's Le porte dell'inferno, (The Hell's Gate), goes through a small handful of hackneyed motions while sticking all of its characters in a cave so that they can painstakingly stand next to each other delivering slight variations of the same dialog for ninety minutes.  The script by Lenzi and wife Olga Pehar, (who also co-penned the same year's Hitcher in the Dark), throws together a poorly explained experiment where a man is trying to beat the world record of how many days he can live in a cave or something, all with resurrected, occult-practicing monks who start picking off everybody without showing their faces until the last six minutes.  While the finale is fun in an illogically silly sense, it is also foreseeable and hardly constitutes as a worthy payoff for the lackluster boredom that came before it.  Lenzi seems powerless to build up any tension within such a scenario, simply letting the characters complain, argue, and grow more despaired as they find themselves trapped underground where every attempt at escape proves fruitless, and it takes far too long for everyone to even be properly convinced that supernatural shenanigans are afoot.  We also have one of the slowest and least exciting spider deaths in cinema history, for anyone keeping track.

80's Umberto Lenzi Part One

EATEN ALIVE!

(1980)

Overall: MEH

 

Off-putting disco music, terrible dubbing, swiped footage, real on-screen animal murder, gratuitous torture, rape, flesh-eating, and nudity, plus a Jim Jones styled villain, Eaten Alive!, (Mangiati vivi!) is Umberto Lenzi's first of two cannibal craze cash grabs that he made in the early 1980s.  Deliberately tasteless since how could a movie like this NOT be, it borrows some of its nastiness from Lenzi's own Man from the Deep River, as well as Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World and Sergio Martin's Slave of the Cannibal God, all of which are seminal enough works in the sub-genre.  Which is not to say that this one fails to carve out its own sleazy niche amongst its peers.  Recognizable character actor Ivan Rassimov has the naturally fiendish charisma to pull-off the Bible-quoting psycho who rallies his followers together through a mind control concoction of snake venom and hackneyed screenwriting.  The plot is hardly worth paying attention to, (ignorant white people venture into dangerous tribal territory and then try to escape, the end), but Lenzi pulls no punches with a barrage of awful set pieces that are there for pure icky shock value.  These movies are an acquired taste more than most, but fans of ugly jungle exploitation will be both delighted and not surprised by what they encounter here.

 

NIGHTMARE CITY

(1980)

Overall: MEH

The 1980s were ripe with zombie films and Italy alone produced a fare share of them, with Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City, (Incubo sulla città contaminata, City of the Walking Dead), being one of the first to get the decade's ball rolling.  No more or less nonsensical and ridiculous than any of the other ones, it at least tweaks the zombies themselves who are not reanimated corpses but mutated humans that have to feast on human blood in order to maintain their radiation-ravaged form.  The rate at which they take over the populous is absurdly quick, with a plane full of them easily overpowering a barrage of armed military personnel, at which point they render both the city and countryside barren in a manner of hours.  It is pure nonsense that is "enhanced" by horrendous makeup effects that look as if they were applied within thirty seconds per actor and cost about seventy-five cents to produce.  The movie has a number of fun set pieces though, including the aforementioned showdown in an open airfield, a news studio segue where an unplugged TV set immediately turns into a grenade when thrown, and a finale on top of a roller coaster that results in a gloriously unconvincing prop dummy falling to its death.  The film is also full of charisma-less characters and predominantly bounces between various, monotonous subplots that merely get in the way of the unintentionally funny moments, but at least the silly stuff is fun.

 

CANNIBAL FEROX

(1981)

Overall: MEH

 

A companion piece to the previous year's Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Ferox, (Make Them Die Slowly, Woman from Deep River), may confuse people to think that they are watching the exact same movie within the opening few minutes, which once again is set to lousy disco music as the credits play over an urban landscape.  We are then quickly treated to the most gratuitous use of the word "shitface" before we switch to the jungles of Columbia to meet a crop of obnoxious, stupid, and awful characters who come face to face with naked tribe people that go all munchy/gentile mutilation on them.  As "same shit, different cannibal movie" as it all is, credit can be awarded to Umberto Lenzi's screenplay, which offers up an ironic angle in that the character played by Lorraine De Selle is venturing on such a trek to prove her thesis that man-eating-man action is merely a racist myth.  That goes about as well as one would expect as we witness Giovanni Lombardo Radice being one hellova lunatic scumbag who provokes the locals into slicing and biting back at him, plus there is on-screen animal mutilation because of course.  Hey, at least the non-disco music is kind of awesome and no one gets too raped this time!

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty-Two

NIGHTMARES
(1980)
Dir - John D. Lamond
Overall: MEH
 
Australia was hardly going to sit out of the early 80s slasher boom and Nightmares, (Stage Fright), was a cheap and forgettable, cobbled together entry into the sub-genre from director John D. Lamond.  No better or worse than the lot of em from any other country, it was allegedly shot and conceived quickly to take advantage of some funds, hence its lack of original ideas.  While the killer is not blatantly revealed until the closing moments, there is no doubt at any point as to who is doing all of the murdering in a stage play production full of unlikable characters.  The kill scenes lack flair and imagination, plus everyone's portrayals adhere to proper stereotypes, (the pretentious asshole theater director, the bipolar crazy virgin beauty, the horny actor who mostly is in it for the poon-tang, the smug critic who delights in the power that he wields in his niche field, etc.).  Plot wise, it opens with a flashback that utilizes the ole gag of someone being traumatized by catching their parents having sex, and things simply go the straight, narrow, and predictable from there.

 

DECODER

(1984)

Dir - Muscha

Overall: MEH

 

The second of only two movies from German punk musician-turned-filmmaker Muscha, (Jürgen Muschalek), Decoder takes a bold crack at adapting William S. Burrough's notoriously unfilmable literature on a minuscule budget.  Made several years before David Cronenberg found an agreeable if still indecipherable angle to utilize in Naked Lunch, this one cobbles together various motifs from the eccentric author instead of interpreting a specific book, with Burrough's himself briefly appearing in a dream sequence.  To be fair, the entire film can be described as a "dream sequence" and perhaps can ONLY be described as such.  For people who thought that Cronengerg's aforementioned Naked Lunch was too easy to follow, the team of screenwriter/producers Muscha, Klaus Maeck, Volker Schäfer, and Trini Trimpop hold no viewer's hands through an impenetrable series of vignettes that have something to do with mind control muzak, Burger King, a peep show, frogs, and delinquent riots.  The soundtrack is loaded with New Wave synth pop, industrial noise, and krautrock, and it manages to pull-off an impressive and colorful cyberpunk dystopia despite the fact that it was all shot on location and without the use of any special effects.  It is also meandering and aggressively incoherent, but it deserves an A for effort at least.

 

BAY COVE

(1987)

Dir - Carl Schenkel

Overall: MEH

Hey look, its Woody Harrelson.  A Canadian NBC movie that appropriately aired around Halloween time, Bay Cove, (Bay Coven), is full of familiar trappings for better or worse.  The script by Tim Kring pulls no clever punches, adhering to age-old tropes like a town full of old weirdos who welcome their new neighbors by being cordial yet also weird, said town being a remote island, the younger couple who moves there being big city yuppies, the husband changing his personality and insisting on staying, the wife being gaslit and wanting to leave, plus of course everyone is a witch.  So basically, Rosemary's Baby without the baby.  Such predictability is more annoying than enjoyable and all of the supernatural elements are in place to make Pamela Sue Martin look crazy.  Every last nuance and detail has been lifted from other horror films of a similar ilk, (the dog dies, there are creepy kids around, old people in windows who disappear right when Martin wants to prove to another person that they are there, etc), and being a television production, there is a limited amount of foreboding atmosphere that director Carl Schenkel is able to muster.  The incessant keyboard score by Shuki Levy is particularly ruining, contributing to the dated and cheap aesthetic of the whole thing.  It is not insulting in its banality, but it is instantly forgettable.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty-One

MAMA DRACULA

(1980)

Dir - Boris Szulzinger

Overall: WOOF

 

It is funny enough when future Oscar winners have a dud or two in their filmography, but it is another thing entirely when a FORMER Oscar winner ADDS a dud to their filmography.  Enter Louise Fletcher and the painfully not-amusing and hare-brained Belgium "comedy" Mama Dracula, the last movie from director/producer Boris Szulzinger.  Watching Fletcher do a Béla Lugosi accent seems like it would be a hoot on paper, but the movie that she agreed to appear in has nothing else going for it.  This mostly stems from every character being an obnoxious dipshit.  Jimmy Shuman is a stereotypical dork who leaps around like Daffy Duck, one of Fletcher's servants loudly grunts instead of talks, some asshole ends every sentence with the word "OK", and worst of all are the twins Marc-Henri and Alexander Wajnberg who play Fletcher's pansy undead sons as if they will spontaneously combust if they do not stop mugging at the camera.  The story is who-cares-nonsense about Fletcher having the name Dracula and being a vampire, yet also being Elizabeth Báthory and needing virgin blood to bathe in to maintain her youth, even though vampires already maintain their youth by being, ya know, vampires.

DEADLY EYES

(1982)

Dir - Robert Clouse

Overall: MEH

Some nature horror from Canada, Deadly Eyes, (The Rats, Night Eyes), has killer rats on the menu who terrorize Toronto after being exposed to a contaminated food supply.  In actuality, the rodents are largely portrayed by dachshunds in adorable little costumes, (or poorly realized puppets during the close-ups), since getting dogs to behave on screen is presumably easier than getting rats to.  An adaptation of Jame Herbert's 1974 novel The Rats, director Robert Clouse was and would continue to be more well-versed in action movies, but he dabbles in the horror genre here comparatively better than in the similarly themed The Pack, a movie that he proved ill-equipped to make NOT terrible.  After taking out Scatman Crothers in an underground sewer system, the disease-bag little critters kill a guy in a bowling alley, overrun a movie theater, and make their last stand in a subway tunnel which in a movie like this is the worst place for pedestrians to get stuck in.  Sam Groom playing a high school teacher who is apparently irresistible to women gives the plot something to focus on when the screeching dog-sized rats are not doing their thing, but this is the usual deal where the animal mayhem is fun, yet everything else that happens is not so fun.  The way that the film sidesteps having a cutesy ending is amusing though.

OUTBACK VAMPIRES
(1987)
Dir - Colin Eggleston
Overall: MEH
 
The last movie from director Colin Eggleston was the doofy undead romp Outback Vampires, (The Wicked). which does the whole "our car broke down so now we have to stay at a creepy place in the middle of nowhere" gag, except with vampires.  A little bit of The Addams Family, a little bit of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and some Lovecraft nonsense sprinkled on top, (all with actors overdoing it to the heavens), it is grandiose in scope, even if the production leaves everything to be desired.  Cheap titles over a SOV opening hardly screams "cinematic", but once we get to the big house full of weirdos, Eggleston and director of photography Garry Wapshott use some fog and eerie backlighting to enhance the macabre mood.  The tone stays tongue-in-cheek though, with a new wave band showing up to do a musical number out of nowhere and the vampire family in pasty makeup engaging in broad hand gestures, silly accents, flirting, hovering, climbing of walls, and overall scenery-chewing.  There is too much prattling on in Eggleston and David Young's script in place of memorable set pieces or actual funny nyuck nyucks, making it all too easy to tune out of piles of exposition thrown at the mundane characters who are caught in a wacky scenario on paper.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirty - (Paul Lynch Edition)

PROM NIGHT

(1980)

Overall: MEH

 

Another deliberate Canadian cash-in on Halloween, (which also scored Jamie Lee-Curtis who looks more like a soccer mom than a high school girl), Prom Night is just as mediocre and unremarkable as any other such film of its ilk.  As usual with a slasher movie, silver linings are few and far between.  The kill scenes are mostly presented over no music and the masked murderer is a bumbling boob, routinely getting bested by his eventual victims or even botching his own axe swings.  While it is nice for the killer to not have superhuman ninja powers for a change, the scenes that show him being normal and occasionally incompetent are unintentionally funny, while the rest of the movie is deadly serious.  Premise wise, it is another boring variation of the "kids were mean and now I want revenge" cliche.  There are plenty of other tired tropes utilized throughout, such as anonymous phone calls that are logically unnecessary, high-schoolers that are either bullies, bitches, dorky virgins, or unfunny hornballs, and women getting chased by lunatics who run away from them into unlit and deserted locations instead of where dozens of people are at who can help.

 

HUMONGOUS

(1982)

Overall: MEH

 

Director Paul Lynch followed up the formulaic Prom Night with Humongous; another lackluster slasher movie that is problematically paced and full of nothing but unlikable assholes.  The sub-genre was in its heyday here and on paper at least, William Gray's script makes some unorthodox choices, namely holding everybody up on an island inhabited by an old recluse and her viscous, unseen canines.  Structure wise though, it is the same ole boring nonsense, opening with a rapey flashback and then settling into one horny and obnoxious young adult slowly getting picked off after the other.  POV shots, an incessant keyboard score, the woods, a creepy house with creepy stuff inside of it, a dead phone line, a foreseeable plot twist, the token final girl, boobs, bimbos, macho dickweeds that you want to punch in the face; it is all here to be bored with.  While Lynch does everything with the material that he is supposed to, his attempts at creating suspense and atmospheric dread fail to land, simply because of the routine nature that he is trapped in.  Some creative kills or unintentional comic relief could have helped punctuate things if not distinguishing the whole film from its boatload of peers, but it instead just comes off like a stock cash grab and ergo a waste of ninety-three minutes.

 

MANIA

(1986)

Dir - Paul Lynch/David M. Robertson/John Sheppard

Overall: MEH

An obscure, possible failed TV pilot, Mania, (Mania: The Intruder), cobbles together four unrelated stories with no linking segment and is in-line with various other small screen Canadian horror series' from the time period.  We have a schlub who witnesses a murderer in action, another schllub who is afraid of dogs, a woman whose daughter is kidnapped, and yet another schlub and another woman getting terrorized by a knife-wielding guy from the subway.  Along with Paul Lynch, screenwriters David M. Robertson and John Sheppard handle a segment each from behind the lens, and they manage to shoehorn a scumbag criminal into each story, even the dog one.  Though void of star power, not without some narrative doofiness, formulaic, and failing to pack any surprises into any of its twist endings, it is not the worst of the genre's many anthologies.  The aforementioned kidnapping one "Have a Nice Day" is genuinely suspenseful and the most agreeable of the bunch, as Lynch handles a familiar premise with a Hitchcockian attention to details.  Elsewhere, the film has its moments, but there is hardly enough here to stick with the viewer once it is all wrapped up

80's Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Nine

THE SURVIVOR

(1981)
Dir - David Hemmings
Overall: MEH

This adaptation of James Herbert's 1976 novel The Survivor is an Australian production from David Hemmings, one of the last theatrically-released directorial efforts from the actor, (though he would continue to work behind the lens in television for a number of years).  Clumsy and sluggish, it opens with a devastating 747 crash sequence that looks as it if took up ninety percent of the modest budget, but things steadily meander from there.  Jenny Agguter spends the first forty-five minutes standing around outside looking concerned before she utters a word, and during her second dialog scene, she awkwardly goes berserk and attacks Robert Powell's disgraced pilot who was the only miraculous survivor from the inciting tragedy.  There is a narrative purpose for Agguter's outburst of course, but this and many other scenes are handled in a similar butterfingered manner. The supernatural components are more half-baked than chilling, even though the tone remains humorless and the film goes to great lengths to bombard the soundtrack with the ethereal wails of its victims.  At least Joseph Cotten collected one more paycheck here before officially retiring.

 

MURDER BY PHONE

(1982)

Dir - Michael Anderson
Overall: MEH

 

A science fiction slasher movie where people are killed by getting electrocuted through the telephone, the appropriately titled Murder by Phone, (Bells, The Calling), at least deserves props for ingenuity.  It is part of the early 80s slasher boom and is one of several to stem from Canada aye, but it does not adhere to many of the sub-genre's tropes.  Instead of being a boring picking-off-victims scenario where everyone is an obnoxious stereotype, it follows a gloriously bearded Richard Chamberlain around as he tries to convince people of the absurd premise.  Thankfully, the lead actor has charisma to spare and director Michael Anderson keeps the pace moving, at least up until a point.  The death scenes are unintentionally comedic, (especially when people fly through the air due to their devises exploding), and the plot becomes a convoluted conspiracy thriller where a disgruntled employee utilizes his recently discovered technology for unstable revenge purposes.  A boatload of people were involved with the story and screenplay, and things start to drag as it gets more bloated, resulting in a drawn-out conclusion that fails to live up to the mounting dread that we are supposed to feel as people pick up their phones to their doom.

 

MUTATOR

(1989)

Dir - John Bowey

Overall: WOOF

The British/American/South African co-production Mutator was shot in the latter country and is a rare top-billed staring vehicle for character actor Brion James, who plays not a bad guy for once.  As the title would suggest, there are house cats of the mutated variety and they are granted less than a minute of screen time.  This is a good thing because they look terrible, but it is also a bad thing because guess what that leaves the rest of the movie to do?  If you said, "Have boring characters walk around and talk" then you win a gold star.  Casting James as the action hero lead is a hoot even if his character has the ridiculous distinction of being a scientist turned security guard, (the former title of which he is likely the least suited actor for), but without his presence, this would be a movie that was even more ignored and forgotten.  The plot is mundane and repetitive, taking place almost entirely in a spacious factory and utilizing corporate cover up/genetic experiment cliches left and right, with a stock keyboard/sexy lead guitar score playing uninterrupted.  It ends with James chasing a monkey and then a part of the building being on fire, but good luck remembering or giving a shit about anything else that happens before that.

80's Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Eight

DEADLINE

(1980)
Dir - Mario Azzopardi
Overall: MEH

Released anywhere between 1979 and 1984, (accounts vary), Deadline, (Anatomy of a Horror), is the sophomore effort from veteran Canadian-based writer/director Mario Azzopardi.  The meta premise has some legs to it, concerning a horror author who longs to be taken seriously and to create the ultimate work in terror, meanwhile his books are a hit and the movies that are based off of his books are a hit, yet he still pushes himself to elevate the ridiculed genre that he works in.  Inter-cutting with scenes from his movies and him writing those scenes, the cinematic vignettes are odd and unrelated, (a guy getting brutally mutilated by factory equipment, a blood-gushing shower, a woman having a horrific birth, a Nazi new wave punk band performing a lousy song, etc.), but the problem is a simple one; our protagonist is a raging douchebag.  He is yells at, hits, psychologically abuses, and neglects his kids, he yells at, hits, psychologically abuses, and neglects his wife, he is pretentious, he flies off at the handle when anyone criticizes him or gets annoyed by his efforts, and he garnishes zero sympathy for anyone in the audience.  Most of the people that he is surrounded by are equally unlikable, (a raving wife with a substance abuse problem, an unfeeling producer, a prima donna actor who hates her lines or lack of them, an assortment of cackling coked-out ladies that he brings home from a bar), but even when tragedy inevitable strikes and madness intensifies in the third act, it remains a tiring watch.

 

LUCKER THE NECROPHAGUS

(1986)

Dir - Johan Vandewoestijne

Overall: WOOF

The debut from Belgium filmmaker Johan Vandewoestijne, (who would not get behind the lens again until several decades after this), Lucker the Necrophagus, (Lucker), this was a lone slasher movie from the country, in such an era with far too many of them elsewhere.  It is also a nasty and primitive one at that, with Vandewoestijne throwing necrophilia into the mix and handling most levels of production in the true DIY spirit of independent exploitation movies that were made to shock and appall first and foremost.  Logic is immediately thrown out of the window as Nick Van Suyt's largely mute, captured title character wakes up with zero difficulty after getting drugged to a level that should have put him in a coma for a year, just so we can get to the reckless murdering and eventual corpse fucking.  The lack of story may appease trash fans who just want to laugh at the sick stuff, but the film is detrimentally padded and wretchedly paced since it is not merely one nasty kill/rape scene after the other.  Thankfully, a director's cut exists which trims down the moments of Suyt walking around endlessly to a more agreeable sixty-eight minutes, but its combination of sluggishness and depravity is only for the most patient of gore hounds.  It may suffice for everyone else to just acknowledge its existence and go watch Nekromantik or Angst instead.

ON THE SILVER GLOBE

(1988)

Dir - Andrzej Żuławski

Overall: MEH

Left abandoned for nearly ten years after the Polish government shut down production, Andrzej Żuławski's sprawling science fiction opus On the Silver Globe, (Na srebrnym globie), was eventually completed with narration over contemporary montage sequences to explain what was never shot, yet the word "explain" can only be used loosely at best.  This was a passion project for the famed filmmaker as it adapts his grand-uncle Jerzy Żuławski The Lunar Trilogy of novels, and it is a case of what could have been, since Żuławski was forced to make do with what he had.  Thankfully, most of the footage was in the can and it is unlikely that the results would have been any more conventionally decipherable had it been completed in the late 1970s, as intended.  From a sensory overload perspective, this is an impressive achievement, with striking costume design, mountain, beach, crumbling city, and salt mine location shooting, mobile wide-angle cinematography, and a score that touches upon classical, rock and ambient music.  Most of its intimidating, one-hundred and sixty-five minute running time is made up of aggressive rambling and incoherent dialog delivered by actors that seem to have only one setting which is raving insanity.  It is difficult to find any kind of footing either emotionally or intellectually here within a story that seems to be breaking down religion, society, and the ego of man, but it sure looks and sounds amazing.

80's Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Seven

PHOBIA

(1980)

Dir - John Huston

Overall: MEH

Falling under the category of "Wait, HE directed this?" is the dumb Canadian thriller Phobia, which has none other than John Huston behind the lens.  Largely regarded as a crud rock in the famed filmmaker's cannon and rightfully so, it suffers right out of the gate with a goofy premise that is impossible to take seriously.  Paul Michael Glaser's hopelessly Boston-accented psychiatrist is allowed to conduct inhumane experiments on criminals with severe phobias; criminals who start dying in rapid succession of each other with only one obvious suspect at the center of things the whole time.  A mystery that forgets the importance of convincing red herrings, it is staggering that so many screenwriters were credited with the project, yet somehow any winning details were omitted upon re-writes.  More surprising is the otherwise reliable chops of those screenwriters.  The team of Ronald Shusett and Gary Sherman had and would continue to have some landmark works on their resumes, and even Hammer's mainstay Jimmy Sangster was brought on board in some capacity.  Huston must have just needed the money since it is hard to believe that he saw any promise in such a hare-brained project, and he takes an indifferent approach to the material by letting the pacing inevitably drag with no visual flourishes anywhere.  The cast lacks familiar faces and the several woman that seem smitten with Glaser's character all have the same hair color and close to the same haircut, just adding one more forgettable ingredient to a forgettable movie.

CASSANDRA

(1987)

Dir - Colin Eggleston

Overall: MEH

 

A premonition slasher movie of sorts, Cassandra was the penultimate work from Australian filmmaker Colin Eggleston.  Well shot by cinematographer Garry Wapshott and boasting a consistent atmosphere of dread, it has Tessa Humphries' title character being plagued by nightmares and visions of both her past and current murders taking place that she witnesses through the killer's eyes.  It all ends up being linked to a convoluted family secret including a mentally unstable brother and a set of parents who are not exactly who they say they are.  The melodramatic details would seem silly under a different presentation, but Eggleston plays things dour and straight, plus the mood is enhanced by sincere performances and an unsettling score by Trevor Lucas and Ian Mason.  A couple of jump scares, stalking killer sequences, and jarring gore helps to appease genre fans, but the movie unfortunately becomes weighted down by a lethargic pace.  Also, we get to the bottom of the mystery about twenty minutes before it finally wraps itself up, making the closing moments feel their length as we correctly assume that it is now only a matter of time before the murderer is offed by the final girl.

 

RABID GRANNIES

(1988)

Dir - Emmanuel Kervyn

Overall: MEH

The only film from writer/director Emmanuel Kervyn, Rabid Grannies, (Les mémés cannibales), fails to deliver on its title in the literal sense since it does not have plural grandmas running around after being bitten by dogs, but it does have two elderly aunties running around after being cursed by a Satanic box.  Essentially a Belgium old dark house Evil Dead, it recalls a number of familiar tropes and plot points, yet it seems to be enjoying itself in the process.  Every character is unlikable which would usually be an insufferable detriment, yet Kervyn sticks to such a goofy and nasty tone that it is impossible to take anyone's rotten attitude, selfishness, or cowardliness seriously.  This makes for a more amusing picking-everyone-off scenario than usual since everyone's grisly deaths comes as a relief.  Also, the two old ladies who are running around like cackling, mutated monster demons, (that look like a cross between overgrown babies, zombies, and the crones in Nicholas Roeg's The Witches), are hilariously unpleasant.  Unfortunately, the good stuff takes over thirty minutes to happen, plus it spins its wheels after awhile, coming off as a missed opportunity to do more with its ridiculous premise than it allows itself to.  Still, it is a wild, mean-spirited, and laugh-out-loud hoot when it gets things right.

80's Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Six

HARLEQUIN

(1980)
Dir - Simon Wincer
Overall: MEH

An Australian production that is made to look like an American one, Harlequin, (Dark Forces), doubles as a modern day reworking of the Rasputin legend from director Simon Wincer.  It gets too convoluted and muddled in its presentation to work, but its solid premise is upheld by a great performance from Robert Powell.  As the Rasputin stand-in, Powell is wide-eyed, loudly dressed, and persistently charismatic, which makes his infiltration into a Senator's household more believable than it should be.  This is in part due to the character's bonding with the family's leukemia ridden son, (whom he presumably cures), and the horned-up trophy wife that he begins a fling with, all of which is tolerated by David Hemmings' also adulterous politician.  Some questions are raised as to the supernatural legitimacy of Powell's powers, but by that time, the story collapses with shady manipulation on the part of higher-ups who want the mad magician out of the picture as soon as possible.  This reveal is less interesting than the set pieces involving Powell strutting his otherworldly abilities, and though his protagonist is ultimately underwritten, his presence still hints at a better movie hiding somewhere in here.

 

HEAVY METAL

(1981)

Dir - Gerald Potterton/Jimmy T. Murakami/John Bruno/Harold Whitaker/Pino van Lamsweerde/Jack Stokes/Julian Harris/Paul Sebella/Barrie Nelson/John Halas

Overall: MEH

Rockin' tits, a rockin' soundtrack, and...only kind of rockin' animation join forces in producer Ivan Reitman's big screen adaptation of the sci-fi fantasy comic Heavy Metal.  Co-produced by the magazine's publisher Leonard Mogel, this Canadian production brings together a slew of animators and directors, as well as some recognizable voice talent, with the likes of SCTV's John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty, plus Harold Ramis and John Vernon to name but a few.  The source material for each individual segment comes from an array of sources, with screenwriters Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum pulling from stories and characters that were created by Richard Corben, Angus McKie, Dan O'Bannon, Thomas Warkentin, and Bernie Wrightson.  The results of such a motley crew of talent is unfortunately a mixed bag, not just in the inevitable and uneven pairing of each entry but also in the overall presentation.  The animation bounces between acceptable and embarrassing, the pacing is not up to par even though each section seems rushed, and the permeating, juvenile sexism is more ridiculous than intriguing.  Still, it proves inventive at irregular intervals and any movie that throws Dio-era Black Sabbath, Stevie Nicks, Sammy Hagar, and Devo into its mix is doing at least something right.

MORNING PATROL

(1987)

Dir - Nikos Nikolaidis

Overall: MEH

Greek filmmaker Nikos Nikolaidis' Morning Patrol, (Proini Peripolos), is a foggy post apocalyptic work that serves as an atmospheric answer to Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, except more meandering than majestic.  Broken up into two halves that never vary in mood, the first forty-five minutes consist of Michele Valley's nameless protagonist simply wandering through a dilapidated cityscape, sneaking past or murdering people who would do her harm, only to briefly catch some shuteye while watching old black and white film noir movies that seem to be playing on every TV set that she finds.  Eventually, she meets up with another nameless character who under unwilling circumstances, proceeds to escort her out of their current no man's land.  Mysteriously, neither of them seem to be able to regain any substantial memories of what happened before society collapsed.  Through equally sparse dialog and internal monologuing, we only learn that it all may have something to do with a virus and/or humanity's inevitable self-destruction, but such ambiguity serves its purpose to emphasis a melancholic tone.  Unfortunately though, the characters are kept just as vague, plus the movie feels its length under such a murky presentation where there is too little to invest in; only an ugly and miserable world to pointlessly explore.

80's Foreign Horror Part Twenty-Five (William Fruet Edition)

FUNERAL HOME

(1980)

Overall: WOOF

 

A psycho-biddy slasher snore-fest from Canadian filmmaker William Fruet, Funeral Home, (Cries in the Night), arrived with a whimper during the sub-genre's heyday.  A talky affair with boring and underwritten characters as well as equally boring set pieces that are too few and far between, the small scale budget is detrimentally noticeable at every turn.  Kay Hawtrey turns in an appropriately crotchety performance as a bitter and self-righteous lady who has fallen on financial hardships, therefor turning her spacious house/former funeral home into a bed and breakfast.  While it is refreshing that Hawtrey's character is not exclusively bitchy and exhibits moments of tenderness towards her newly-arrived granddaughter, (played by minor Canadian scream queen Lesleh Donaldson), her suspicious behavior wields predictable results.  As we all know, any time that someone vehemently forbids anyone from venturing into a locked room, (in this case, the basement), clearly that is where all of the malevolent secrets lie.  Such pieces are in place here to deliver something that is merely mildly acceptable, meaning that it lacks the necessary exploitative pizazz to differentiate it from both worse and more ridiculous slasher crap.

 

TRAPPED

(1982)

Overall: MEH

 

Low-budget director William Fruet and slasher screenwriter John Beaird team up for the ugly hicksploitation romp Trapped, (Baker County, U.S.A., The Killer Instinct), which hinges its suspense on both the odious and moronic decisions that every character in it continually makes.  Set in a mountain village that runs its own form of redneck justice that cherry picks the Biblical vengeance verses while ignoring all of the "love they neighbor" ones, we know from the get-go that a small crop of happy-go-lucky yet ignorant college kids are going to have a run in with Henry Silva's inbreed flock of violent bumpkins.  This makes the general structure inherently nail-biting, but it also means that we have to endure people poking the tiger and testing fate with their idiotic actions; actions that only make things worse for themselves.  This includes the bad guys and the hapless victims alike, crossing the whole thing into torture porn at times that does not make for an easy watch.  On the plus side though, Silva, (as he is wont to do), is ideally cast as the diabolical ringleader who oozes the type of "do not fuck with this psycho" intimidation with a professional level of scenery-chewing confidence.  His villain gets a fitting and nasty comeuppance too, which should relieve everyone watching.  Now if only the trek to get there was peppered with some more humor or not-stupid behavior from everyone on screen.

 

SPASMS

(1983)

Overall: MEH

 

Despite the presence of noted thespians Peter Fonda and Oliver Reed, Spasms ends up being a poorly-executed killer snake movie.  Adapted from the novel Death Bite by Michael Maryk and Brent Monahan, the production was wrought with issues.  The original company behind it went bankrupt, various directors were allegedly attached, numerous rewrites ultimately threw in supernatural elements not found in the book, and the idea to utilize live stakes was abandoned for awful puppet ones that looked so poor on camera that director William Fruet chose to eliminate their screen time almost entirely.  This makes the final showdown between Reed and a taipan serpent more laughable than intense, not just because of the goofy creature design, but because flashback footage is spliced in to cover up said goofy creature design.  Uninteresting and loaded with distracting and obvious ADRed dialog, at least noted special effects makeup men Dick Smith and Stephan Dupuis were able to pull off some always-appreciated icky bladder effects.  Say what you want about this period in Reed's career where he was almost certainly pickled in alcohol, but his sweaty intensity is ideally-suited for a character whose psychic link to reptiles results in the overpowering spasms that the title alludes to.

 

KILLER PARTY

(1986)

Overall: WOOF

Ill-conceived and tonally imbalanced, William Fruet's Killer Party dumps a handful of cliches into a confused mess of a final product.  Opening with a double "movie-within-a-movie" psyche-out, such a gimmick lends itself logically enough to a series of pranks that are pulled both on the audience and the people on screen.  A sorority hazing backdrop means that we have a crop of characters who are either assholes or nerds, and though the three leads are more likeable than usual as far as 80s slasher garbage is concerned, good luck telling them apart aside from their hair color or the fact that one of them wears glasses and seems to be handy with a guillotine.  While everyone's forgettable banter with each other is lousy enough, the biggest blunder is the malevolent possession angle that is awkwardly thrown in, largely because this does not even become readily apparent until the last ten minutes.  Until then, everyone's goofy mannerisms continually undercut some snore-inducing murders that no one seems to either be aware of or take that seriously.  By trying to play in the horror comedy pool without committing enough to either genre, it just comes off as a boring hodgepodge that has many of the usual ingredients for such films while simultaneously having no idea what to do with any of them.

 

BLUE MONKEY

(1987)

Overall: MEH

A bog-standard mutant larva bug virus alien thing B-movie, Blue Monkey, (Insect), was the last full-length project from Canadian director William Fruet for some time, at least for the next twenty years of his career which was spent exclusively in television.  All of the hallmarks of straight-to-video productions are there; mostly no-name actors, mediocre-at-best special effects, an incessant and cheap keyboard score, and it being predominantly shot at a single location, likely without any sets.  Though he rarely if ever worked with interesting material, (which includes the uninspired script here by George Goldsmith and Chris Kosulek), Fruet had enough experience and chops from behind the lens to make the proceedings at least visually acceptable.  The giant ant creature does look inescapably ridiculous, but he keeps it off screen until the third act when it is fully matured, shooting it with minimal dark blue lighting and bathing the scenery with shadows.  Some nifty POV camerawork and squishy cocoon close-ups also make up for the still noticeable lack of a budget, but the film's biggest issue is in its sluggish first half and the overall pedestrian nature.  Cameos by SCTV's Robin Duke and Joe Flaherty, plus a supporting part for John Vernon are appreciated, but this is otherwise forgettable, mid-level monster tripe.