1990s Foreign Horror Part Thirteen

KARANLIK SULAR

(1994)
Dir - Kutlug Ataman
Overall: MEH

This confounding debut from Turkish filmmaker Kutlug Ataman is a vampire movie on paper, but it takes a persistently distracting route to weave its indecipherable narrative.  It is anyone's gu+ess as to what is going on from a plot perspective in Karanlik Sular, (Dark Waters, The Serpent's Tale), let alone being able to decipher any symbolism.  While this could merely be a cultural issue that is lost in translation to Western audiences, (though most of the dialog is in English, an American protagonist being at the forefront), there seems to be something profound lurking within such ambition.  A scroll that either resurrects the dead or curses those who handle it, (again, little is made clear), drives the narrative, but the handful of characters that are after it, discussing it, or have it are poorly drawn and often times just as poorly performed.  Most of the males have their dialog ADRed, giving it an unintentionally stilted Euro-trash vibe that recalls laughably dubbed giallos.  Atmospherically though, Ataman is going for wet, gothic, and ominous darkness, which is appreciated yet better serving to a story that solidifies itself more.

 

BLOOD AND DONUTS

(1995)

Dir - Holly Dale

Overall: MEH

 

Arriving a few years after the vampire comedy boom of the 1980s, Blood and Donuts is a modest non-documentary debut from director Holly Dale, who even managed to score David Cronenberg in a small part as a calm and collective crime boss.  Cronenberg has always been one to lend a hand to any up and coming fellow Canadian filmmakers, and he is the most amusing and welcome presence here in his small handful of scenes.  Unfortunately, the two male leads are consistently off-putting.  Justin Louis does a weird/annoying Christopher Walken doing Béla Lugosi impression for reasons that are anyone's guess, and he is not even the film's vampire.  That would be Gordon Currie who wears a ridiculous wig that makes him look like a grunge musician, and he seems to be allergic to emoting throughout most of the movie, instead mumbling, stuttering, staring blankly, and cracking his undead limbs as he finds himself caught up with a bored donut shop waitress, an old fling who is bitter that he never turned her, and Louis' deadbeat cabbie who is in some sort of vague trouble with the local mob.  Currie's lack of charisma is problematic, but the entire movie suffers from its clunky approach that consistently lacks humor in its barely detectable attempts to be funny in the first place.

 

IN THE WINTER DARK

(1998)

Dir - James Bogle

Overall: MEH

 

An adaptation of Tim Winton's 1988 novel of the same name, In the Winter Dark is a miserable and ugly Australian film that takes an unflinching look at damaged people without allowing for any audience members to sympathize with them.  Well, on paper we can with at least two of them, (the older couple portrayed by Ray Barrett and Brenda Blethyn who exude pent-up trauma after losing one of their children), but the other two protagonists remain elusive.  Miranda Otto drinks through her pregnancy, screams at people, and acts emotionally dependent upon stranger Richard Roxburgh who is an ambiguous creep that undresses and fondles her when she is passed out while also scolding her for her reckless behavior.  There are only fleeting moments of palpable warmth exhibited between anyone on screen, and they are always followed by bursts of rage and frustration, all the while an unseen creature may be murdering livestock around their properties.  This horror angle is a MacGuffin at best, merely serving as a inconsequential plot point to get everyone together to fight and act unpleasant towards each other.  Director James Bogle keeps up an unflinching tone, but such an approach renders the material too cold and distant to want anything to do with.

1990 American Horror Part Seventy-One

DEAD MEN DON'T DIE

(1990)

Dir - Malcolm Marmorstein

Overall: WOOF

 

Long-running screenwriter Malcolm Marmorstein finally gets behind the lens on the thankless zombie comedy Dead Men Don't Die; a childish and embarrassing would-be nyuck fest that scored Elliot Gould of all people to portray a news anchor that turns into a walking/mugging corpse.  This falls in line with the type of painfully unfunny movie that tries relentlessly to be hilarious, failing at every instance in a fashion that is actually impressive.  The film has shoddy production values, being shot almost entirely at a single office building that the production had access to, though they did splurge for a high-speed car chase as the closing set piece where both zombies and not zombies take turns climbing into each other's cars while cruising along in broad daylight.  One could single out Gould as the actor who most humiliates himself, rendered mute, (at least when the script needs him to be), after being resurrected via singing voodoo by Mabel King, since that leaves him with nothing else to do but make cartoon character faces and wild hand gestures that there is no rhyme or reason to.  In actuality though, you feel bad for everyone on screen, even Marmorstein from behind the lens who amazingly thought that he had a funny concept to work with here.

 

GHOST BRIGADE

(1993)

Dir - George Hickenlooper

Overall: MEH

 

The first non-documentary from director George Hickenlooper, Ghost Brigade, (The Killing Box, Grey Knight, The Lost Brigade), is an ambitious yet flawed genre work set during the American Civil War.  Lots of familiar faces show up, (David and Alexis Arquette, Dean Cameron, Matt LaBlanc, Ray Wise, Billy Bob Thornton, Corbin Bernsen, and Martin Sheen), and in the lead, Adrian Pasdar does a blatant and annoying Charlie/Martin Sheen impression ala Platoon and Apocalypse Now.  This makes sense in more ways than one, considering the war setting, Sheen's cameo, and Hickenlooper having directed the acclaimed Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse which chronicled Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam masterpiece.  The resulting film is a combination of grittiness, high concept yet vague ideas concerning the many facets that fellow countrymen struggled with during the Civil War, and schlocky production values.  Hickenlooper utilizes one of those cheap keyboard scores throughout almost the entire thing, (always a sign of B-movie cheapness), the sunny exteriors kill any sense of foreboding atmosphere, and a small handful of trippy flashbacks and hallucination scenes come off as hackneyed.  Such direct-to-video aesthetics undermine Matt Greenberg's promising script which would have benefited from a more experimental and/or nuanced approach.

 

SPECTRE

(1996)

Dir - Scott Levy

Overall: WOOF

 

Though it borders on insulting due to how blatantly derivative it is, the made-for-tv cheapie Spectre, (House of the Damned, Escape to Nowhere), by director Scott Levy suffers even worse from its consistently embarrassing and unintentionally hilarious scare tactics and heightened performances.  In other words, everyone involved makes a fool of themselves and every viewer will feel bad for them.  The script from Brendan Broderick may constitute as a hate crime for those who cannot stomach yet another "family moves into a remote haunted house" film, and it directly references Carrie, The Shining, various Italian La Casa films, Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, and The Omen to name but a few.  It hits all the beats plot wise, (a ghostly imaginary friend, evil spirits acting immediately to murder people while other times dilly-dallying around, infidelity hallucinations, paranormal experts brought in, the skeptical husband, possession, a sacred amulet, a ghost's body buried behind a wall, everyone thinking the problem is solved when there is still thirty minutes left in the running time, etc), but the production values are a combination of Showtime sleaze and Hallmark aesthetics, failing to create any convincing macabre atmosphere.  We even get a computer generated, transparent gargoyle that looks like a Sega graphic for fuck's sake.

1990s American Horror Part Seventy

CAMPFIRE TALES
(1991)
Dir - William Cooke/Paul Talbot
Overall: WOOF

 

This South Carolina shot dung heap was the first of two insufficiently budgeted horror movies that the writer/director duo of William Cooke and Paul Talbot did with Gunnar Hansen, but the OG Leatherface's inclusion is hardly enough to make it watchable.  Campfire Tales, (as the title would suggest), is an anthology film with a framing story set around such a campfire where mulleted bad actor teenagers sit and listen to Hansen's mysterious hobo who comes out the woods to spin some yarns.  None of the stories are good, but at least two of them are borderline unique, the grimy Reefer Madness tweak "Overtook" and a Yuletide segment "The Fright Before Xmas" where a literal Satan Clause murders an asshole who kills his mother for his inheritance.  The bookending "The Hook" and "Skull and Crossbones" are more trite, though the latter has some acceptable zombie makeup that comes off sillier than it deserves being shot on broad daylight.  Overall, the production values are nearly nonexistent and the performances terrible, rendering this a scuzzy and embarrassing watch that just makes you feel bad for everyone involved.  Hopefully Hansen at least made enough to pay some bills.

 

LOVE BITES

(1993)

Dir - Malcolm Marmorstein

Overall: MEH

 

Screenwriter Malcolm Marmorstein only got behind the lens on two movies during his long career, both horror comedies and neither worth remembering.  The low stakes, vanilla-humored Love Bites was the second and last of them, one with a dopey plot that forgives its consistent comedic blunders that are more innocent than egregious.  It also scored Adam Ant as the lead blood-sucker, Start Trek: The Next Generation's Michelle Forbes playing his smirking and embittered other half who comes back into his unlife right when he decides to recalibrate his digestive system into that of a human with his new and wholesome love interest Kimberly Foster.  The plotting is about as logistically sound as a Saturday morning cartoon, with a handful of "Wait, what?" throwaway lines that contradict other information.  At one point, Ant and Foster are watching Universal's Son of Dracula on TV, only for it to turn into the Béla Lugosi version, at which point Ant admits that Lugosi is his "favorite" after previously having established that he was asleep for a full century and would therefor have no idea who Lugosi is by 1992.  This is of course a minor nitpick, but Marmorstein's script is full of such lazy excuses for lame gags.  Ant is charming enough to make the lousy material work to his favor here or there, and some of the dated yuppie and health craze humor is clever on paper, but there are so many better vampire nyuck fests out there to kill ninety minutes with.

 

THE CREEPS

(1997)

Dir - Charles Band

Overall: MEH

 

Charles "the man who makes nine-hundred movies a year for about the combined cost of a ham sandwich" Band drops another one with The Creeps, a horror comedy that is mildly amusing despite its penny-pinching attributes and deliberately dopey story.  As always, Band cranks out these straight-to-video B-movies so aggressively that most of his actors have no choice but to embarrass themselves with the few takes that they are given, let alone the silly material that they have to work with which only lands about a tenth, (at beast), of the intended gags.  This is what makes Phil Fondacaro's portrayal as Count Dracula that much more impressive since the always busy character actor gives it his all without the use of scenery chewing, instead playing it straight and coming off as a charisma-oozing professional who seems hellbent on saving face in a turkey of a film that most other thespians would mug their way through.  Some of the other monster makeup that the little people wear is effective, (why they are all smaller sized is never convincingly explained, but a gag is a gag), yet Fondacaro is the only such actor to get any dialog; a werewolf, a mummy, and the Frankenstein monster merely stumbling around at his beck and call.  Frequent Band collaborator Neal Marshall Stevens' script is too stupid to delve into, the special effects are predictably lousy, and every one on screen besides Fondacaro is forgettable, but the film gets in and out quick enough with some adorable attempts at humor and one set of naked boobs, so trash fans may be able to endure it at least.

1990s American Horror Part Sixty-Nine

NOT OF THIS WORLD
(1991)
Dir - Jon Hess
Overall: MEH

 

A sluggish made-for-TV movie from schlock director Jon Hess, Not of This World updates the usual "crash landed alien entity taking over a small town" scenario with some gore, but it is an instantly forgettable watch.  Two actors from Tim Burton's Batman are present, (Pat Hingle and Tracey Walter, respectively), with one or two other familiar faces joining the proceedings in order to put something on their resume so that they can maintain their SAG insurance.  They all play it straight, no one giving in to wacky mannerisms or scenery chewing, which fits Hess' oddly serious tone that takes too much time establishing the run-of-the-mill characters before it gets to the extraterrestrial creature that feeds off electricity and goes for larger and larger power sources.  Lisa Hartman portrays a woman who is in charge of a local power plant, but of course it is her young son instead of any trained professionals that comes up with the plan which will stop the out-of-control monster.  This gives it an old school drive-in B-movie vibe where children were often more clever than the adults and got to mingle with military and authority figures during dangerous threats.  While this angle could have been cute if leaned on, Hess Hess never lets anything divulge into camp, making for a dull watch that only occasionally remembers that it is a stupid monster movie instead of one about boring adults talking about their jobs and starting relationships.

 

DR. GIGGLES

(1992)

Dir - Manny Coto

Overall: WOOF

 

Like most inherently piece of shit slasher movies, Dr. Giggles is obnoxious, hackneyed, and insults the viewer at regular intervals.  Based on the Dark Horse comic of the same name, it gives character actor Larry Drake a meaty enough title role as a lunatic who thinks that he is a physician and is running around murdering people because who cares.  Director Manny Coto and co-screenwriter Graeme Whifler maintain a mostly comedic tone while delving into the Giggles backstory with some flashbacks, but it hardly matters since Drake's antagonist is merely here to predictably sneak up on people and off them in ways that pertain to medical instruments.  Some of the deaths are mildly amusing in their impracticality, (he uses a blood pressure pump to make a guy's face swell up, per example), and Giggles manages to avoid capture and have numerous gear at his disposal because again, who cares.  The plotting is pure nonsense and indulges in cliches like horny dipshit teenagers acting as such, the police force dismissing any reports or accusations of danger, a final girl who plays it straight, conveniently timed plot maneuvers, and the bad guy being armed with an endless supply of groan-worthy quips.  It does everything that one would expect it to do, but a movie can only be so lazy and formulaic before someone asks why they should bother watching it in the first place.

 

TWILIGHT ZONE: ROD SERLING'S LOST CLASSICS
(1994)
Dir - Robert Markowitz
Overall: MEH

 

As opposed to letting them continue to collect dust, Rod Serling's widow Carol decided to get two unearthed scripts from her famous husband into production.  The resulting CBS television film Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics acts as a coda then to the beloved television show that wrapped up three decades earlier, with James Earl Jones stepping in for Serling as host, as well as Richard Matheson scripting the first segment "The Theatre" based on Rod's story treatment.  The other and longer tale "Where the Dead Are" was authored solely by Serling, featuring Jack Palance as a mysterious scientist living on an island who has found a way to revitalize dead tissue.  The aforementioned "The Theatre" is actually the more Twilight Zone worthy vignette, dealing with a woman who sees her recent life events unfold on a screen in the middle of His Girl Friday showings, eventually leading to a paranoid, deadly, and ambiguous climax.  Director Robert Markowitz worked exclusively in television throughout his career, and his results here are aesthetically and tonally in line with the time period, meaning far removed from the original black and white program.  This is understandable and not a bad thing, but neither of the stories are anywhere near as memorable as even the more mid-range Twilight Zone episodes from the show's heyday, making this merely an appreciated addition for purists to check out.

1990s American Horror Part Sixty-Eight

NO TELLING

(1991) 

Dir - Larry Fessenden

Overall: MEH

 

Coming from the authorship of genre purist Larry Fessenden and judging by the fact that one of the protagonists does mad scientist-adjacent work in his locked up laboratory, one would assume that No Telling belongs in the horror camp.  In actuality though, it is an increasingly uncomfortable domestic drama, one that mixes forced emotion with indie filmmaking tactics like being shot on 16 mm, in actual locations, with an unknown cast, and with plenty of intimate handheld camera work.  Throughout his directorial career, Fessenden has made it a point to channel his classic monster movie influences into a contemporary and low-key setting, but this one strays far enough from the Frankenstein path to make those influences undetectable.  Miriam Healy-Louie and Stephen Ramsey's marriage falls apart while the later becomes a reckless asshole who is frustrated that he cannot experiment on enough animals in a hurried fashion, while the former nearly has a fling with a smirking local douchebag and occasionally paints dead things.  There is little else to it than that, and because the stakes are so small, the performances are frequently unconvincing, and the dialog stilted despite the actor's going into a rage here or there, the movie falls flat.

 

ASWANG

(1994)

Dir - Wrye Martin/Barry Poltermann

Overall: MEH

 

An ultra low-budget debut from filmmakers Wrye Martin and Barry Poltermann, Aswang, (The Unearthing), is equally impressive and embarrassing on account of the meager production.  Utilizing the Philippine monster of the title, (one that is vampire-like with a comically long tongue that sucks the blood from its victims), it was shot on location in various Wisconsin areas and with local actors, all delivering uneven performances that occasionally go for heightened gusto while other times feeling amateurish.  That is the end result of the entire movie actually, one that is imbalanced at best with solid practical gore effects and some eerie sound design, but ruined by an awful and steadfast keyboard score and tons of obnoxious jump scares.  Martin and Poltermann's script, (which was collaborated upon by Frank L. Anderson, someone who had apparently grown up in the actual Philippines and could provide some first hand input on the film's chosen creature), is bare-bones and would probably have worked better as a short vignette in an anthology movie instead of being stretched out to eighty-two minutes.  Such elongating of the material only enhances the technical flaws, as well as making the unlikable and/or underwritten characters that much more of a chore to endure.

 

RUMPELSTILTSKIN

(1995)

Dir - Mark Jones

Overall: WOOF

 

Trying and succeeding in making terrible lighting strike twice, Mark Jones' Leprechaun follow-up Rumpelstiltskin is just as awful and idiotic, despite how awful and idiotic it knows that it is.  The title goblin is portrayed by Max Grodénchik from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame, and he knows the assignment by hobbling around, chewing the scenery, and quipping away as much as Warwick Davis' Leprhecaun does.  Rumpelstiltskin also speaks in modern vernacular, effortlessly can ride a motorcycle and a Class A heavy truck, can shapeshift only when the script needs him to, and has a New York accent despite the fact that his character is at least several centuries older than New York is.  Jones must have gotten a deal on various vehicles since cars, a go-kart, and a bulldozer are also used, Rumpelstiltskin referring to them as steeds and whatnot because "funny".  Tone, production values, and performance wise, it is on the level of schlocky Charles Band nonsense, deliberately playing up its stupidity while obnoxious dialog, dipshit characters, lazy and monotonous plotting, and brutal violence fly at the screen in equal measures.  Anyone coming into such proceedings will know what they are going to get, but the best that this can do is to be at the bottom of anyone's "bad movie night" pile, which is where it belongs.

1980s American Horror Part One-Hundred and Twenty-Seven

RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD

(1986)

Dir - Samuel M. Sherman/Brett Piper

Overall: MEH

 

This dopey low-budget schlock excursion from producer, screenwriter, director Samuel M. Sherman, (stepping in behind the lens allegedly after co-screenwriter Brett Piper was dismissed), gets off to a solid start with the banger title song by George Edward Ott, but things are awkward from there.  Raiders of the Living Dead, (Dying Day, Dark Knight), exists in at least three different versions, some credited exclusively to Piper and some not, and some explaining less than others.  In any event, they all deliver a clumsily executed zombie movie that fits more in with D-grade drive-in cheapies from the 1950s then the era of gory slasher nonsense.  To compensate for both Piper and Sherman's lifeless direction, music is played almost continually throughout scenes that are only suspenseful on paper, barely establishing any characters or sense of plot as a needlessly suspicious reporter roams around the suburbs while zombies haphazardly chase him once in awhile.  Scott Schwartz from A Christmas Story shows up as a teenager who makes a laser gun and then goes undead hunting with his grandfather without either one of them bothering to notify authorities, but otherwise the film is void of many recognizable faces.  It is detrimentally void of anything really, only sporadically being stupid and low-effort enough to point and laugh at, never with.

 

NIGHTFLYERS

(1987)

Dir - Robert Collector

Overall: MEH

 

The first feature-length film adapted from the works of George R. R. Martin, Nightflyers brings to cornball B-movie life his 1980 novella of the same name.  Martin penned the screenplay along with official input from producer Robert Jaffe, much of the former's source material getting the standard jettisoned treatment to cram everything into an acceptable running time.  Doug Timm's aggressively cheap keyboard score takes about fifteen minutes to finally chill for a bit before things settle into a hackneyed plot about a sentient spaceship computer going AWOL while a small crew of affordable actors ADR their campy dialog.  Though nothing here reinvents the wheel on paper, there are some inventive ideas in Martin's script, namely consciousness transference and how humans and emotionally-charged artificial intelligence interact with each other.  Yet the Roger Corman caliber production values and some scenery-chewing performances undermine any bold intentions.  Catherine Mary Stewart, James Avery, and a particularly trying-too-hard Michael Des Barres are among the names who take things seriously, and the special effects work is a mixed bag of unconvincing and admirable considering the clearly meager funds that were available.  It is hardly a sci-fi thriller that anyone will remember once the credits roll, but it has some "little movie that could" energy that saves it from being an embarrassment.

 

WATCHERS
(1988)
Dir - Jon Hess
Overall: MEH

 

Shot in Canada in order to take care of those convenient tax breaks, Watchers kicked-off a forgettable and measly budgeted straight-to-video franchise based on the Dean Koontz novel of the same name.  Because Canada, Michael Ironside is present doing his usual cold villain routine as efficiently as he did in both better and worse movies, joined here by a top-billed Corey Haim as a teenager who unknowingly teams up with a lab experiment Golden Retriever.  Oh, and there is also another lab experiment on the loose, this one a gorilla monster that brutally murders people off screen until the last ten minutes.  It is a good thing that this is the case since the B-level production clearly could not afford a convincing monkey suit for its rampaging beast, Ironside himself coming off far more sinister as the relentless NSO agent that is out to get the dog, stop the monster, and kill whoever he feels like while smirking and poorly managing the government cover-up that he alleges to be in charge of.  Canine lovers will enjoy the bits where Haim's super-smart furry friend types on a keyboard and plays Scrabble, and Ironside fans will probably get a kick out of him effortlessly playing another scumbag, but otherwise this is a dopey chore to sit through.  Director Jon Hess maintained a tone that is part cutesy and light, part brutal and R-rated, all with a monotonous script where characters keep being one step ahead of other characters until the lackluster finale that finally shows off how not convincing the killer mutant animal is.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Thirty-Five

THE VINDICATOR

(1986)

Dir - Jean-Claude Lord

Overall: MEH

 

Opening with a scene where reckless dipshit scientists terrorize a monkey because "science", The Vindicator, (Frankenstein '88, Roboman), proceeds into a cornball 50s B-movie throwback, just with more gore, more animal abuse, Stan Winston providing the special effects for some reason, and eventually Pam Grier because a girls gotta eat.  Shot in Montreal, Quebec and directed by Canadian genre peddler Jean-Claude Lord, the "dangerous escaped lab experiment on the loose" script by Edith Rey and David Preston is formulaic and predictable, allowing for mostly unlikable characters to behave like idiots while uttering persistently hackneyed dialog at each other.  Grier can hold her own in any schlocky nonsense thrown her way, and she does commendable work here in a thankless role as an assassin literally named Hunter who gets to say things like "Inside that suit is a man...and I've never, EVER lost to a man" and "Well well well, hello spaceman" while pointing weapons at people and kicking everyone's ass.  Elsewhere, the performances are embarrassing at best, but again, the material that everyone has to work with takes itself way too seriously to come off as anything but groan-worthy.  At least a couple of unintentionally funny moments and Grier's involvement keep it from being a total waste.

 

THE 13TH FLOOR

(1988)
Dir - Chris Roache
Overall: MEH

 

The only directorial effort from Chris Roache, (who also penned the screenplay here), The 13th Floor is a rightfully forgotten one out of Australia, technically belonging in the horror genre since it features the ghost of an electrocuted child that is sometimes haunting a high-rise office building.  In actuality though, it is a low-level crime film, where a mafia boss tries to track down his estranged daughter Lisa Hensley who is slumming it up in said office building with two of her friends.  Hensley witnessed her father murdering the now ghost kid when she herself was a youngster, but it has taken until she reaches adulthood for their paths to cross again.  Horny guys try to get in Hensley's pants, one of them succeeds, her friend Miranda Otto is jealous of this and overdoses on smack which the ghost child watches her, and a guy gets the bloody shit beaten out of him by hired goons who want to get their hands on some incriminating documents.  The film is competently done and atmospherically photographed by Stephen Prime, but there lies the problem; it has neither a deliberate style nor any accidental camp appeal, just a haphazard supernatural element thrown into some unengaging gangster dealings.

 

LA MORT MYSTÉRIEUSE DE NINA CHÉREAU

(1988)

Dir - Dennis Berry

Overall: MEH

 

French/American filmmaker Dennis Berry worked on both sides of the Atlantic, his 1988 film La mort mystérieuse de Nina Chéreau, (The Mysterious Death of Nina Chereau), serving as his only full-length foray into horror, though such elements are largely underplayed.  Clumsily executed and plotted, the script by Claude Harz and Steven Bawol starts off with a rocky premise where a smug and persistently unlikable therapist, (unfortunately the film's main protagonist), recklessly ignores professional protocol in his attempt to get the to the bottom of what happened to one of his escaped patients.  Said patient is portrayed with awkward aloofness by Maude Adams, while Scott Renderer is her therapist that is clearly smitten with her, bumbling through Paris as he smirks at Adams' aggressively distant mother, smirks at the detectives that knows he is aiding and abetting a wanted criminal, and botches various attempts to uncover the mystery.  He eventually does, and it proves to revolve around cinema's favorite blood-bathing Countess Elizabeth Báthory, (hence the horror angle), but despite some agreeable location shooting, the film is poorly written, poorly performed, poorly paced, and fails to deliver on a mystery that should be more suspenseful than it is.

1980s Ramsay Brothers Horror - Part Three

TAHKHANA
(1986)
Overall: MEH

 

Men trying to rape women, other men jumping in to save those women with their martial arts abilities, villagers with torches, and a growling unleashed monster are all motifs that the Ramsay brothers had utilized many times before, all of which are at the forefront of Tahkhana, (Dungeon).  It is a paint-by-numbers effort in this regard, offering up nothing unique to Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay's oeuvre, just more of the same, done the same.  Musical numbers and embarrassing comic relief segments drag out the already hefty running time, another hallmark for Bollywood genre films in general, not just the ones made by these prolific gentlemen.  The rape angle is comically overdone as Imtiaz Khan portrays a scumbag that forcibly tries to get in a women's pants in virtually every scene that he is in, going so far as to murder a lady in his first attempt yet still going for it time and time again.  Slow motion, much fog, an imposing creature that wails ridiculously with garish makeup on, females being objectified left and right, and a finale where our hero dressed as Rambo pushes enormous pillars onto the monster in order to defeat it are all silly additions.

 

VEERANA
(1988)
Overall: MEH

 

Opening with the usual gag of a black sorcerer doing black sorcerer shit, Veerana, (Deserted Palace), ultimately morphs into the Ramsay brother's version of The Exorcist, be it in a singular enough manner that is nowhere near as blatant as many of the other knock-offs that came in the wake of William Friedkin's masterpiece.  A young woman gets possessed by an ancient and powerful witch who mostly allows her to live her life normally as said young woman for over a decade before occasionally having a monster voice, widening her eyes, and threatening to kill people more than she actually kills people.  Her powers are arbitrary, (she has the ability to change her form, teleport, and make a scared therapist's car stop, all of which she only does once, per example), and as usual, Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay are more concerned with stretching the running time to over two hours with musical numbers and atrocious comic relief, neither of which have any barring on the narrative.  Naturally, this is all per the course and unfortunately, one has to suffer through roughly forty plus minutes of irritating and tone-murdering nonsense in order to enjoy the overtly horror elements which are the true selling points.  Said elements are here and they are fun, but as a whole, this is as faulty as all of the Ramsay brother's other work.

 

PURANI HAVELI
(1989)
Overall: MEH

 

Their last horror film of the 1980s, the Ramsay brother's Purani Haveli, (Mansion of Evil), does almost everything that their previous many other horror films did, for better or worse depending on one's tolerance level.  We have a monster living in a crypt, a big haunted mansion, roaming thugs of rapists who the hero kung-fu fights in broad daylight, pointless side arcs and obnoxious bozos who provide ruinous comic relief, and a shady asshole who is trying to get his hands on something of value.  Also, the Ramsay's have long locked-in their style which persistently contradicts itself.  They can create cranked-up atmosphere, yet they also dilute it with large amounts of horrendous silliness and song and dance numbers.  The horror set dressing looks great on account of the meager budget, but the set pieces are clumsily handled.  There is aggressive misogyny and scantily clad women getting eye-humped left and right, but never any nudity or sex scenes as to avoid going full exploitation.  The music is often better and more memorable than the cheap synth scores that their Western counterparts lazily utilized, but they overdue it by playing the same snippets dozens and dozens of times throughout.  These movies always feel their length and yet there is always a better movie hiding in there somewhere, one that requires significant editing to take out half the things that routinely fail.  This is no exception, so proceed with caution.

1980s Ramsay Brothers Horror - Part Two

HOTEL
(1981)
Overall: MEH

 

The third straight horror film that the Ramsay brothers released in 1981 alone, Hotel takes longer than even most to get to the freaky set pieces, about ninety minutes in fact which is likely too long of a wait for even the most patient of genre enthusiasts.  Until the newly constructed hotel of the title gets the haunted treatment so far into the proceedings, we are forced to witness overacting characters occasionally laughing with each other, occasionally backstabbing each other, and occasionally flirting with each other, including one burly and aggressive man who unknowingly drinks a potion that is meant for a lady which turns him into a flamboyant homosexual because the early 80s were a different time.  The musical interludes are frequent in number, the wacky sound effect-ridden slapstick is also frequent in number, the exaggerated yelling is, (you guessed it), also ALSO frequent in number, but the last act has some fun supernatural set pieces to get behind.  Transparent ghost zombies coming out of the walls, wailing scary noises on the soundtrack, a guy getting impaled, a guy getting crushed by a chandelier during a song and dance number, a guy getting run over by a driver-less car, and another getting electrocuted, etc.

 

PURANA MANDIR
(1984)
Overall: MEH

 

Over-burdended with dopey, tasteless slapstick subplots as well as a staggering five musical numbers, Purana Mandir, (The Old Temple), suffers from the usual Bollywood ailments that Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay's genre films indulged in.  On the plus side, it does deliver a lot of ghoulish window dressing and censored exploitation within its laborious one-hundred and thirty-eight minute running time.  The camera zoom abuse is off the charts, along with tons of fog, blaring noises, a guy who gets ping-pong ball eyes after being possessed by a headless demon, said headless demon rejoining with his body to enact his centuries-prophesied curse, Bava-esque lighting on a creepy mansion and underground crypt, torch-bearing villagers, and a bloody shower scene where the woman keeps her one-piece bathing suit on since nudity of any kind is never allowed in these movies.  Men gawk at cleavage, and Indian comedian Jagdeep portrays a completely unnecessary scenery-chewing rapist character who looks like Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder, getting plenty of screen time against the film's better judgement.  The main gist of the story involves the classic motif of a condemned bad guy vowing his revenge on the decedents of his persecutors, which is something that the Ramsay's certainly deliver on for long stretches.  Unfortunately, they also deliver on pointless padding that makes the whole thing bloated and significantly skippable.

 

SAAMRI
(1985)
Overall: MEH

 

One of the Ramsay brothers more straightforward genre works that mercifully clocks in at under two hours, Saamri, (Satan), is otherwise no different or worse than the lot of the sibling duo's outrageous horror movies.  Several cast members who had previously appeared in Ramsay joints show up again, and unfortunately one of them is the obnoxious and wretchedly unfunny comedian Jagdeep, here playing a mansion servant called Changez Khan who mugs directly into camera, jumps up and down like Daffy Duck, and bulldozes though inane dialog.  Removing his character entirely would help wonders, but the Ramsay brothers continually balanced out the garish horror bits with dopey comic relief, all of which enhances both the madness and the boredom.  The story finds Anirudh Agarwal playing the one-hundred and thirty-five year old occult sorcerer title character who is murdered by family members in order to get a hold of his wealthy estate, only to be resurrected by his goonie and sent on a zombie revenge mission.  A few of the set pieces are over the top and fun, sometimes adhering to brute violence and other times arbitrary supernatural "logic" just to get the bad guys systematically out of the way.  Also, one of the musical numbers is a reworking of Michael Jackson's "Thriller", not to be confused with that other Bollywood clip that went viral from A. Kodandarami Reddy's film Donga, coincidentally from the same year.

1980s Ramsay Brothers Horror - Part One

GUEST HOUSE

(1980)

Overall: MEH

 

The 1980s kicked off with a slew of horror films from the Ramsay brothers, Guest House continuing the previously established template of low-grade production values, over-acting, tons of fog, occasional ghoulish set pieces, and both unintentional and intentionally goofy atmosphere.  Roaming gangs of ruffians trying to rape women must have been a persistent problem in India since every one of the Ramsay's horror films up until this point featured at least one scene where a lady is chased in broad daylight by men trying to get in her pants, only for a hero to spontaneously emerge to kick and punch them away.  Said moment as well as prerequisite musical numbers pop up, none of which are necessary to a tale about a group of characters that willfully murder and bury a guy who stays at the guest house of the title in order to get their hands on his expensive ring, one of these characters severing the hand that it was on in order to pay off gambling debts.  The story is too simple, (and idiotic), the tone too inconsistent, and the length too long to make it something worth recommending, but as always, sporadic enjoyment can be found for patient viewers who can lock into the Ramsay's quirky agenda.

 

DAHSHAT

(1981)

Overall: MEH

 

One of the better and certainly more consistent of the Ramsay brother's large crop of low-budget horror films, Dahshat, (Terror), is a simple and contemporary mad scientist romp that minimalizes the usual goofy detours into slapstick comedy, tedious melodrama, and mood-killing musical numbers.  It still gets off to a sluggish start and is at least thirty minutes too long, but the Ramsay's keep the fog machine running day or night, throwing grave robbing into the mix from the onset, which leads to the discovery of a superhuman, blue-skinned mute in a black hood, and then Om Shivpuri conducting vague experiments on animals in a colorful and also fog-laden laboratory.  This comes back to bite him in the ass when his neglected and embittered wife shoots him up with his own syndrome after one of his adulterous flings, at which point the movie shifts into a quasi-Jekyll and Hyde slasher scenario where Shiypuri turns into a beast, attacks people, and keeps trying to get a colleague of his on the phone before he kills again.  The makeup effects are primitive of course, but they are also striking in the sense that variations are used, depending on what stage of transformation Shiypuri is settling into.  Sometimes he looks like Hyde, sometimes a werewolf, sometimes a full blown snake man, and sometimes a combination of all three.  We also get more than one spontaneous angry, torch-bearing mob scenes because what horror movie involving a monster chase can go without some of those?

 

SANNATA

(1981)

Overall: MEH

 

For Sannata, (Silence), Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay find a way to integrate the prerequisite Bollywood song and dance numbers into the actual narrative, concocting a story where a vengeful spirit sings a pop tune equipped with full instrumental production values whenever she means to claim another victim.  Well, such as the tale goes since what is actually happening, (and what kind of framework the movie adheres to), is a slasher killer in a garish Halloween mask and black robe who goes knife-happy on people staying at an estate.  In typical old dark house whodunit style, the guests and police try and figure out the culprit with ingenious tactics like simply waiting around every night to see who is killed next, and it all becomes tedious despite the Ramsay's gaining a little more stylistic confidence.  The cinematography is less stagnant than usual, plus a red "Cinemagic" filter is utilized to spice up the still D-grade visuals.  Fans of the filmmaking sibling's now established M.O. will be pleased though since the fog machine still gets a heavy workout, plus the performances are as far from subtle as ever, as is the goofy slapstick which comes equipped with cartoon sound effects.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Thirty-Two (Ramsay Brothers Edition)

DO GAZ ZAMEEN KE NEECHE

(1972)

Overall: MEH

 

Serving as the first of many subsequent horror films from the Ramsay brothers Tulsi and Shyam, Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, (Two Yards Under the Ground), suffers from many of the prerequisite failings that low-budget genre works from the era did, particularly those that try to meld Western tropes and melodrama with Eastern mores and folkways.  This particular Bollywood example is more bog-standard than exploratory for its cultural backdrop, essentially being an Indian variation of greedy family members offing one of their own in order to get their hands on copious amounts of cash in a locked safe.  There are no horror bits whatsoever until ninety minutes in when Surender Kumar's wealthy protagonist succumbs to poisoning at the hand of Shobhna; a woman that he saved from being raped, had a romantic moment with, and whose honor he tried to salvage by marrying her.  Unfortunately for him, Shobhna, her other love interest, and her uncle scheme to take advantage of her good fortune, yet unfortunately for the later crop of money-grubbing characters, Kumar decides to resurrect himself as a zombie.  There is no build up to this reveal, and the film merely becomes a haphazard dump of arbitrary cliches from there, where Kumar's animated corpse sometimes behaves like one, sometimes has the supernatural powers of a poltergeist, and can appear and reappear anywhere at will.  This is all before the rug-pull Scooby-Doo ending that insults the viewer ever further.

 

DARWAZA

(1978)

Overall: MEH

 

After a six year break, the Ramsay brothers Tulsi and Shyam return to the horror genre which they would continue to indulge in throughout the following decade with Darwaza, a typically boisterous, overlong, unintentionally silly, and occasionally striking foray into their own particular Bollywood take on the genre.  If one wants to guarantee alcohol poisoning, a drinking game can be made every time that the camera rapidly zooms in on a character's face while a loud trumpet noise blares on the soundtrack, something that serves the startling purpose of a jump scare yet is done in such comical abundance as to become disorienting.  There is a hefty cast in place, all over-acting to the gills and flying into bouts of crying mania or ragefull and demanding outbursts, all of this along with the busy editing contributing to the over-the-top tone.  The location shooting does not allow for the European or Westernized style gothic scenery, but the Ramsay's make it a point to drench every horror set piece in fog, blaring the scary music, casting shadows on the nondescript walls, and even venturing into an earthy and candlelit dungeon to discover the identity of the film's towering, char-faced, werewolf-like monster.  Angry villagers, curses, cars breaking down, forbidden mansions, dark family secrets, revenge, unnecessary musical numbers; it is all here for better or worse.

 

AUR KAUN?

(1979)

Overall: MEH

 

Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay closed out the 1970s with another wacky horror film, Aur Kaun?, (Who Else?), having the usual combination of bombastic and slapdash elements.  Jet-powered fog, rapid-fire camera zooms, blaring soundtrack cues, characters flying into melodramatic rages, and even a finale where everyone slides through the mud while battling each other, it is a ridiculous watch if one is to merely point out the most outlandish aspects.  At over two-hours as was the norm, it is bogged-down by random song and dance numbers, (which was also the norm), and is more problematic due to a razor-thin story that is stretched to a breaking point with redundant dialog and bare bones production values.  The Ramsay's still crank it up to eleven when going for genre freakiness, but these moments are fewer and more far between than in their previous two horror works.  It is mostly yelling, crying, more yelling, and aggressive comic relief as Padmini Kapila's teacher spirit kind-of-not-really haunts Sachin Pilgaonkar, only for us to find out that someone who we thought was dead never was.  The movie comes to life when it kicks into aggressive gear and has its own semblance of logic for those who can simply ride the wave, but the downtime in between such moments proves detrimental to the whole.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Thirty-One

SENSUOUS SORCERESS
(1970)
Dir - Torgny Wickman
Overall: MEH

This Swedish mild erotic witchcraft film from sexploitation director Torgny Wickman is notable as an early foray into its chosen genres for its country, but it is too aloof to land anywhere.  Sensuous Sorceress, (Skräcken har 1000 ögon, Fear Has 1,000 Eyes), is mostly set at an isolated farmhouse where Anita Sanders and her vicar husband Hans Wahlgren have relocated with Sanders' close friend and house servant Solveig Andersson, all of whom give sleepwalking performances that seem deliberate in creating a distant mood for some arbitrary occult escapades and naked seductions on the part of Andersson.  She puts on a wig and pretends to be Sanders in order to grind naked on the latter's sleeping, disinterested, and clearly not erect husband, plays various gaslighting tricks on Sanders that she never becomes wise to, kills the family cat for no reason, burns an upside down cross on her flesh, and works her black magik with voodoo dolls to kill or injure whoever she feels like in any particular moment.  Her diabolical plan does not seem to have any structure, and nobody on screen gets regularly excitable over what is going on, leading to a comatose-inducing watch and an orgy finale where everyone seems more bored than bewitched.

 

THE REINCARNATE

(1971)

Dir - Don Haldane

Overall: WOOF

 

The only, (barely, not really), horror film from Canadian director Don Haldane is the abysmally stagnant The Reincarnate, (The Dark Side), a movie that is void of atmosphere, thrills, or action, all to an aggressive extent.  This is not to say that every genre work needs to have any share of intense set pieces to captivate, but when you have something that is exclusively and redundantly talky, any interesting philosophical discourse quickly dissolves into irritating background noise.  Writer/producer Seeleg Lester's script concerns an alleged eight-thousand year old lawyer, (he was not always a lawyer), whose body is about to extinguish, prompting him to find someone worthy of his memories being transferred to, thus insuring his continued immortality.  Of course there always has to be a catch though, and this one requires the sacrificing of a virgin in order to work, providing Jay Reynolds' protagonist with a dilemma that he seems more annoyed than morally struggling with.  Characters endlessly repeat themselves as they try to sell each other on the fallacies of religion or the fact that centuries worth of knowledge being passed down is the only thing that can advance humankind, coming off as pompous bores that eventually just ware everyone else down to agree with them.  It is no exaggeration to say that there is nothing else to the movie than that.

 

EL PODER DE LAS TINIEBLAS

(1979)

Dir - Mario Sábato

Overall: MEH

 

While it does not conventionally belong in the horror camp, Mario Sábato's El poder de las tinieblas, (The Power of Darkness), has a drawn-out paranoia agenda, with references to Rosemary's Baby and the occult thrown in for good measure.  It is still too laborious to recommend, feeling all of its ninety-minutes in an dilapidated urban setting of grey buildings and men dressed identically in flat overcoats.  A commentary on the "National Reorganization Process" that Argentina underwent during the late 1970s into the 80s, it can also be looked at metaphorically from a psychological perspective, (What kind of power do those who "cannot see" have over those who are "searching for truth" and unable to convince anyone of their findings?).  Such conclusions take considerable effort for the audience to come up with, likely on purpose due to Sábato's lethargic and challenging approach to the material which is based on a lone chapter in his father Ernesto's 1961 novel On Heroes and Tombs.  The ending delivers some chilling visuals where Sergio Renán's increasingly obsessed and fraught protagonist finally comes face to face, (or so we are led to believe), with the clandestine organization that he is convinced exists, but the road to get there is full of inconsequential moments that never believably feed into his psychosis.

1970s José Mojica Marins - Part Two

THE END OF MAN

(1971)

Overall: MEH

 

José Mojica Marins steps away from his blasphemous Coffin Joe persona into that of an aloof messiah figure with The End of Man, (Finis Hominis).  Amusing at times yet consistently aimless in its low-budget surrealism, it is told in arbitrary vignettes instead of adhering to any sort of plot, where Marins' mysterious quasi-guru occasionally appears while nameless characters are sometimes confused, sometimes fascinated, sometimes worshiping, or sometimes seeking his willy-nilly wisdom and supernatural powers.  Marins enjoyed casting himself as some sort of revelatory prophet who could change mankind, but whereas Coffin Joe had a consistent and fully-formed agenda of Crowley hedonism in order to find the perfect woman to perpetuate his seed, here he just wanders around without saying much.  When he does open his mouth, it is nothing but brief, nondescript platitudes of enlightenment that somehow captivate the entire populous by film's end.  He disappears for large portions of the running time, and perhaps intentional, perhaps unintentionally goofy moments are interjected, like a wheelchair-bound woman spontaneous getting up and running away from his naked frame, certain scenes presented in black and white, an injured child covered in chocolate syrup blood, a woman crying tears of Vaseline while getting fucked over an open casket at a funeral.

 

WHEN THE GODS FALL ASLEEP

(1972)

Overall: MEH

 

Picking up immediately where he left off with the previous year's rambling The End of Man, José Mojica Marins's When the Gods Fall Asleep, (Quando os Deuses Adormecem), is a more sluggish and uninteresting variation of the same vague themes.  Marins is taking the piss out of much here, from institutions, to new age enlightenment, to generic hippy culture, to messiah complexes, to impressionable guru worshipers, to society's ills breeding morally vapid degenerates.  All of it is thrown into a minuscule-budgeted stew, but it comes off as a lack of vision instead of a razor-sharp satire, if such a thing was even the agenda.  Marins still only sporadically pops up as his Finis Hominis alter-ego, who we find out may just be a metal asylum escapee or the financial patron of said asylum, or both.  We are treated to long sequences of knife-happy and perverted gypsies getting down, knife-happy perverts in a restaurant except in black and white also getting down, and a Satanic ceremony where cult members writhe around eating live chickens only to proclaim that Satan is not real once Marins shows up to scold them.  Some of the set pieces are funny in their dingy sloppiness, but the pacing is horrendous, and the whole thing fails to justify its existence.

 

INFERNO CARNAL
(1977)
Overall: MEH

Not one of José Mojica Marins's better moments, the Coffin Joe-less Inferno Carnal, (Hellish Flesh), is a bizarre and above all else, repetitive snooze-fest with one of the most asinine plots that the filmmaker ever utilized.  What essentially turns out to be a long con game of infidelity comeuppance is annoyingly padded with the same claustrophobic and poorly lit montages over and over again.  For the audience's sake, hopefully you are in the mood for hearing Marins yell "Rachel" and "Why?" several thousand times.  Even working within the confines of minimal funds which was always the case for Marins' macabre movies, this is the worst that any of them ever looked, with wretched cinematography and again, so many shots that are dark enough as to be indecipherable.  The story itself is stupid and painstakingly drawn out to eighty-five minutes when eighty of those minutes could have easily been trimmed to get the exact same point across.  Even though the ending has Marins' patented gleeful cruelty, and gore hounds will get a kick out of horrendous makeup and closeup eye surgery, this is still bottom barrel stuff.

HALLUCINATIONS OF A DERANGED MIND
(1978)
Overall: MEH

By the time that José Mojica Marins had gotten to his final Coffin Joe film before he would at last retire the character for several decades, he was almost laughably scraping the barrel.  Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind, (Delírios de um Anormal), is almost entirely made up of footage left on the cutting room floor from four of his previous Coffin Joe movies.  Marin slammed all of these sequences together, inter-cut them at a frantic pace as usual, and then filmed only around thirty-plus minutes of new scenes to desperately put some kind of story together.  In theory this works in that Marins' nightmarish visuals always came off so deliriously random anyway that throwing a hodgepodge of them from different movies together does not make the presentation any less bizarre.  The problem is that we have seen all of these specific set pieces before, and the story which he frames all of his good, hellish montages around is pathetically shoe-horned in there.  It shows a level of determination on Marins' part to leave no stone unturned and to get as much out of his already filmed work as possible, but this still cannot come off as anything but a pointless hail marry effort to unleash one last Coffin Joe movie on the masses before neither the funding nor interest was there anymore.