1970s American Horror Part Eighty-Four - (John Hayes Edition)

DREAM NO EVIL
(1970)
Overall: MEH

Writer/director John Hayes made a hefty number of genre and exploitation films throughout the 1960s and 70s and Dream No Evil, (The Faith Healer, Now I Lay Me Down to Die), is a more personal one.  It was allegedly inspired by his own sister who was brought up in a religious convent only to later suffer from mental illness.  The material may hit closer to home for Hayes, but the movie itself is regrettably dull.  Though it opens with a child having a nightmare, nothing else remotely of interest to horror fans arrives until past the halfway mark.  For the drive-in movie crowd of the day, that is a generous amount of "making out in the car" time.  Hayes's cinematically toys with some psychological aspects around a troubled woman with severe daddy issues, but his direction is persistently bland.  The talking just goes on and on and on, which would be forgivable to a point if there was an interesting pay-off.  Suspense-less and comatose-inducing, it is as forgettable as they get.

 

GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE
(1972)
Overall: MEH

There are several redeemable qualities to co-writer/director John Hayes' Grave of the Vampire, (Seed of Terror), a movie that is still ultimately bogged down by some of the usual low-budget genre mishaps.  Based on the novel The Still Life by David Chase, Hayes' maintains a serious mood which affords little if any humor.  He also keeps things atmospheric at regular intervals, particularly in the opening cemetery sequence which is as appropriately fog-ridden and creepy as any from the era.  The music is refreshingly low-key as well and there is a striking moment where a woman cuts her breasts in order to feed her newborn and partially undead baby.  While the narrative features such surprises here or there and it jumps ahead several decades unexpectedly after the first act, the production cannot afford enough riveting moments to keep the momentum going.  William Smith is awkward once he is introduced as the main character, maintaining a cold demeanor until he unintentionally camps it up in the finale and coming off jarring in conjunction with the rest of the tone.  Other aspects of the script do not add up and it concludes more puzzlingly than shocking, but it is also just unique enough amongst other vampire films to recommend.

 

GARDEN OF THE DEAD
(1972)
Overall: WOOF

 

On paper, the premise for John Hayes D-rent zombie cheapie Garden of the Dead, (Tomb of the Undead), should wield wacky results.  Yet unfortunately, the movie does not understand what kind of movie it is, becoming a dull mess in the process.  Shot in Topanga Canyon for only enough money to afford fog and some undead makeup, it concerns a prison chain gang who become addicted to formaldehyde, gets punished by their warden for failing to report a botched escape plan, and then said escapees come back to life as groaning corpses who are hellbent on snagging some more formaldehyde to get high on.  What sounds like a goofy comedy is instead played straight for some ill-conceived reason, with no humor anywhere, either intentional or unintentional.  While the high-as-a-kite zombies look nasty and also run, talk, and formulate plans, Hayes does nothing clever with them.  They also die by normal gunfire wounds and not exclusively from a shot to the head, raising the question of how they came back to life in the first place and why the first time that they got killed was not enough but the second time did the trick just fine.  At least it is less than an hour long.

 

END OF THE WORLD

(1977)

Overall: WOOF

Scoring Christopher Lee and equipped with a plot about aliens taking over a small convent and disguising themselves as priests and nuns in order to rid the universe of humankind, one would think that there was enough to work with here to warrant some schlocky fun.  "Fun" is the main thing that is lacking though in the D-grade Charles Band production End of the World; a disaster movie that is actually a disaster.  Coming from Band, the lack of quality is hardly surprising and Lee was still a working actor who needed a paycheck as much as anyone did in the late 70s, but even with one's expectations adjusted accordingly, this is as lazily handled as it gets.  Kirk Scott and Sue Lyon are wooden AF in the leads and hardly anything happens to them for the first half of the film, until they finally run into Lee and his clergy of extraterrestrial visitors who simply explain their plan and make nice with them.  The plot slams home the point that there is danger facing planet Earth, but as far as showing any evidence of that danger, there was no budget for such a thing.  Instead, we have a plodding waste of time with unnecessary shots going on for ages, everyone talking and talking and talking, minimal production values, stock footage, a blippity-bloopity soundtrack, and one brief shot of an alien mask.

1970s American Horror Part Eighty-Three

DEAR DEAD DELILAH
(1972)
Dir - John Farris
Overall: WOOF

Try as no budget junk movies often did, hardly any of them could escape the insurmountable hurdle of having little to offer besides people delivering piles of dialog to each other.  Dear Dead Delilah is the only film to be directed by screenwriter John Farris and it adheres to such an ever-present trope, making for an unwatchably dull experience that even bottom-barrel B-movie hounds will find insufferable.  A rich southern family squabble over a buried fortune while an unrelated woman shows up having just been released from a mental institution for murdering her mother with an axe.  Agnes Moorehead makes one of her last screen appearances in the lead, but she was too ill to do anything outside of a bed or a wheelchair.  Leisurely sprinkled into proper southern-accented tomfoolery are some Herschell Gordon Lewis-worthy shots of dismembered limbs, people being axed, blood-covered bodies, and a hilarious beheading via horseback.  Regrettably though, these shots are too infrequent to make this anything worth participating in, unless someone wants an immediate cure for insomnia.

ALABAMA'S GHOST
(1973)
Dir - Fredric Hobbs
Overall: MEH

A tonally wild exploitation movie from small-scale writer/director Fredric Hobbs, Alabama's Ghost is dated, goofy, loud, and cheap, but it is loaded with so many conflicting details that it is able to maintain one's interest for significant portions of its running time.  An ambitious stage manager comes across a box belonging to a long-dead and famed magician, leading said stage manner on a trek through superstardom as he strikes up a bargain with the magician's elder sister, (who is a guy in drag), and another manager who kicks his career into the stratosphere.  There is also a meglomaniacal vampire-controlling Dr. Caligari with a robot-making machine, wailing ghosts, hippie musical numbers, ole timey ragtime jazz musical numbers, slapstick gags, a Mad Max-styled car that looks like it is made out of dinosaur fossils and a bulldozer, stock footage, nightmare drug trips, voodoo rituals, an elephant, and a showdown in the desert which suggests that the filmmaker's lost their goddamn minds while shooting this.  Every performance is cranked up to eleven and whatever semblance of a "plot" is hiding in there gets steamrolled off of a cliff.  Whether this is the best or worst movie about a magician's rise to power is debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is easily the weirdest.

PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR
(1979)
Dir - Robert S. Fiveson
Overall: MEH

The 1970s produced a handful of dystopian-styled sci-fi thrillers and Parts: The Clonus Horror, (The Clonus Horror, Clonus), is an independently-made one that takes itself seriously yet is predictable and less than memorable.  This was the directorial debut from producer Robert S. Fiveson, co-writing Bob Sullivan's story along with two other credited screenwriters; a story that takes its obvious cues from Michael Anderson's Logan's Run, Michael Crichton's Coma, and George Orwell's seminal 1984 novel.  The film has a unique enough angle, focusing on a clone farm where wealthy people harvest their doubles for body parts, all in the name of immortality.  It raises the question of whether or not artificial humans should be treated as "real" humans, which is a weak excuse for those in power to utilize and those in power are the ones who are persistently portrayed as villainous.  Presentation wise, it has clumsy acting and dialog which should produce some unintended chuckles from the audience, but its sense of paranoia is matched by a fun and dated aesthetic that fits the times well enough.

1970s American Horror Part Eighty-Two

NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN
(1972)
Dir - Andrew Meyer
Overall: MEH

 

Another in a long line of snake lady films, Night of the Cobra Woman is also another in a long line of American B-movies that were shot in the Philippines to save a buck.  Marlene Clark appeared in two such similar properties, (1974's Black Mamba was the other), and this one at least had the good sense to keep John "stick in the mud" Ashley out of the proceedings, though Roger Garrett is his own brand of stiff as the head Caucasian guy who looks perpetually bored while having two different women at his disposal to have sex with.  Vic Diaz is of course present though, this time as a mute invalid with a deformed face.  Such nasty, reptilian-produced ailments lie at the heart of writer/director Andrew Meyer's poorly thought-out story which has Clark's native lady bedding men and then in turn making them addicted to her youth-granting venom or something.  A New World Pictures production with Roger Corman held at least partially responsible, the presentation is curious to say the least.  The sound goes dead at regular intervals and most of the actors even besides Garrett seem to be stumbling around in a haze as nonsensical things happen around them.  It must be something in the Filipino water then.

 

THE MILPITAS MONSTER
(1976)
Dir - Robert L. Burrill
Overall: WOOF

As technically inept and aggressively terrible as any film has ever been, The Milpitas Monster, (The Mutant Beast), is Z-grade garbage made by local yokels who clearly have no idea what movies are, but also seem to be enjoying themselves while throwing their hat into the ring.  The only movie of any kind from director Robert L. Burrill, (who handled multiple levels of production along with other friends and community folks), the results are adorable on paper considering the non-existent budget and lack of skill set for anyone involved.  A giant monster movie with a goofy agenda, it goes for a 1950s throwback vibe that unfortunately channels the abysmal work of Bill Rebane instead of anybody else who would have been preferable to emulate.  Everyone's lines are post-dubbed and rarely match their lip movements, the cast of non-actors only embarrass themselves, there are but a handful of shots of the giant garbage stealing creature and hardly any before the fifty-five minute mark, the pacing is slower than a nine inning game of baseball played by geriatric patients, and the plot is too stupid to mention.  More than anything though, the movie is relentlessly annoying.  Whether its yahooing teenagers who look thirty, "stupid wino fall down and be drunk" gags, or scene after scene of nothing funny happening yet everyone pretending that funny stuff is happening, it has a baffling tone that is equally aggressive and mind-numbingly boring.

THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401
(1978)
Dir - Steven Hillard Stern
Overall: MEH

A sensationalized interpretation of the 1972 Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 disaster, The Ghost of Flight 401 examines the documented alleged ghost sightings that followed the crash and the psychological toll that was felt by rational professionals who were faced with unexplained phenomenon.  This is a age old concept for horror films and nothing unique is done with it in such a setting, but the ABC Movie of the Week steers clear of exploiting a real life tragedy for the sake of genre adherence.  This is due to the serious tone, one that is too serious in fact since the whole thing suffers from major pacing issues and only a scant few supernatural encounters are shown on screen.  These moments are also never frightening, since even the best actors or director in the world cannot convey the scary in merely seeing Ernest Borgnine sitting or standing silently with his co-pilot uniform on.  Borgnine is delightful during the first act as a happy-go-lucky family man who likes overdoing it on the cologne and he is joined by a cast of familiar TV faces, as well as a young Kim Basinger in one of her earliest roles with significant screen time.  Even if director Steven Hillard Stern fails to make the material gripping, the production's sincere intentions seem to be correctly aligned at least.

1970s American Horror Part Eighty-One

THE CREMATORS

(1972)

Dir - Harry Essex
Overall: WOOF

 

This antiquated killer alien monster movie is based on Julian May's short story "The Dune Roller" which had already been adapted twenty years earlier in a Tales of Tomorrow episode.  Why director Harry Essex decided to do a full-length version at this point in his career when such generic sci-fi yarns were old hat is anybody's guess and the resulting The Cremators suffers from all angles of its production.  This was the last time that veteran teleplay writer Essex would be behind the lens and judging by the snoozable results, hardly anyone could lament his retirement.  The film starts off sluggish and never recovers, featuring bland Caucasian characters delivering bland dialog as a giant ball of alien energy ravishes the countryside, though it is given far less screen time than the bored actors sitting around looking bored at each other.  Essex tries to spice things up with some cheap special effects shots that are interjected at random intervals and this would give the movie an aura of tacky surrealism if not for how stone-faced and tiring the presentation is.

 

WICKED, WICKED

(1973)

Dir - Richard L. Bare

Overall: MEH

 

A gimmick movie that utilizes a split-screen device throughout almost every shot, (here given the William Castle-worthy title of "Duo-Vision"), Wicked, Wicked is more quirky than watchable.  This was the last theatrically released work from veteran television director Richard L. Bare who concocted the novelty, penned the screenplay, and produced it himself.  Unfortunately, the "watching two versions of the same movie at once" gag is the only thing that it has going for it.  As far as the plot goes, it concerns a wacky bellboy who murders blonde women because of mommy issues and every other character on board is as uninteresting as the next.  While there are one or two garish flourishes to the proceedings, Bare tries to balance tongue-in-cheek goofiness with exploitative nastiness and bland melodrama, doing so with mixed results.  Some moments, (particularly the ending and frequent shots of a mugging old lady playing organ), and hilariously stupid, but the dual-screen presentation becomes more annoying than clever.  Basically, this is a poorly paced comedy/horror bit of schlock that disguises how lame it is by making you pay attention to different things being shown simultaneously.  The distraction works to a point, but only just.

 

SCREAMS OF A WINTER NIGHT
(1979)
Dir - James L. Wilson
Overall: MEH

The only film to be directed by James L. Wilson, Screams of a Winter Night is both one of the decade's many to be in the anthology horror vein and one of many to be regionally made.  Shot in Louisiana with local actors that no one has ever heard of, it revolves around a bunch of boring white people who tell campfire stories at a remote cabin in the woods.  The results are more inconsistent than outright terrible.  Story-wise, each of the tales is instantly forgettable, (a dwarf creature attacking people in a car, a couple of schlubs spending the night in an abandoned haunted hotel, a woman going crazy after stabbing her rapist, and a supernatural Native American force that terrorizes the main characters), but the presentation has its moments.  Whether unintentional or not, several scenes dip their toes into the surreal and Wilson makes effective use out of suggestive sounds, alluding to more freaky things than he has the budget to show.  That said, the finale goes full-tilt with violently howling winds driving everyone to screaming hysterics.  Unfortunately, the whole thing is paced like a bucked of molasses trudging through a swamp full of molasses, plus the characters are as annoying as they are snore-inducing to tolerate.  If one can forgive the shortcomings and also has enough caffeine in their systems though, there is some weirdness here to appreciate.

1970s American Horror Part Eighty - (John Newland Edition)

CRAWLSPACE

(1972)

Dir - John Newland/Buzz Kulik

Overall: MEH

 

This adaptation of Herbert Lieberman's novel Crawlspace aired on CBS in February of 1972 and boasts a head-scratching premise that is nevertheless played straight.  Both directors John Newland and Buzz Kulick had a busy enough decade from behind the small screen, but their powers combined cannot elevate such a curious and flimsy tale.  An elderly, childless couple living all alone in the woods deciding to let a drifter with noticeable mental illness live in their crawlspace is a difficult enough pill for any audience member to swallow.  Yet plausibility is stretched further as Tom Happer's behavior continues to raise eyebrows both around town and in front of his clueless new tenants.  Ernest Kinoy's teleplay offers up a few flimsy excuses along the way, pitting the locals as bigots who are suspicious of hippy-esque outsiders and making it seem that Arthur Kennedy and Teresa Wright would turn a blind eye to things out of desperation and loneliness.  Verisimilitude breaking aside, the film's pacing lags and suspenseful set pieces are almost non-existent, making it a drab and miserable watch, in addition to a moronic one.

THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN

(1972)

Overall: MEH

 

An Appalachian mountain bit of folk horror from veteran television director John Newland, The Legend of Hillbilly John, (Ballad of Hillbilly John, Who Fears the Devil), has tonal issues for days and is a curious watch because of it, for better or worse.  Based on the work of author Manly Wade Wellman who researched regional mountain folklore, Hedges Capers' title character is a dopey hippy who travels the land with his silver-stringed guitar, something that respells evil in this universe and makes him sort of a nonchalant hero.  A part musical, the syrupy folk songs are lame at best and they slow down an already unhurried presentation.  Several familiar character actors crop up including Severn Darden, Harris Yulin, and R.G. Armstrong, plus we get some stop-motion animation sequences where a prehistoric bird of apparently demonic origins swoops down on John a few times, for reasons that are never properly explained.  Most of the harrowing moments come off as goofy due to the whimsical and inconsistent presentation, but the dense dialog, lousy music, rambling plot, and low-grade production values make it unique and worth exploring for fringe genre cinema fans.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
(1973)
Overall: MEH

One of the several "Don'ts" to come out of the 1970s, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was a made-for-TV movie directed by John Newland, a veteran of the small screen both on and behind the camera.  It has endured well with a cult audience that includes Guilermo del Toro who co-wrote and produced the 2011 remake with Katie Holmes.  The film's basic premise is chilling enough, but it comes off as under cooked within such conditions.  First off, Kim Darby, (from True Grit fame), is a piece of wood in the lead and easily one of the least convincing or exciting potential scream queens of all time.  Her and on-screen husband Jim Hutton, (who does a comparatively better job), hardly exude any chemistry and basically come off as roommates, but then again maybe that was the point considering the film's couple-in-tension framework.  The whispering things to be afraid of in the dark who start their friendly chatter within the first few seconds of the film mostly look and sound silly, though they could have looked and sounded a lot more silly.  Finally and though it is only seventy-four minutes long, it is sluggish to the point of being Xanax in movie form. 

1970s American Horror Part Seventy-Nine - (Harry Thomason Edition)

ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN
(1972)
Overall: MEH

Fittingly narrated by none other than Rod Serling, Encounter with the Unknown is a meager-budgeted anthology film with three low-key and unimpressive stories that are vaguely linked together by a faux opening which proclaims that each tale was based on psychic phenomena researched by some doctor.  This was Harry Thomason's first venture behind the lens and he exhibits a standard level of inexperience, namely in how humdrum the presentation is.  Each story feels longer than it is, which is not helped by all of them having redundant callbacks to pad out the running time.  The film was shot in and around Little Rock, Arkansas with a cast that is largely made up of unknowns, which puts this in the regional horror catalog that was still thriving in number if not in box office dollars during the early 1970s.  A story about a weird grieving mom cursing some college kids who inadvertently caused the death of her son, another about a hole in the ground the makes some strange noises for hillbillies to investigate, and a third that takes the age ole premise of the lady ghost on the highway are all predictable and lame in such a context.  Also, some other uncredited narrator takes over for Serling in the closing minutes and prattles on for eons, once again to pad out the running time.

SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA

(1973)

Overall: MEH

 

For his second low-budget feature So Sad About Gloria, (Visions of Evil), Arkansas-based regional filmmaker Harry Thomason scored a few television actors, including Petticoat Junction's Lori Saunders in the lead.  As a troubled young woman who spent some time in an institution after witnessing her father's death as a child, she has a zest for her freedom once released and quickly falls in love with a writer who hangs out in trees.  What follows is a bog-standard psychological thriller plot where Saunders' sanity is questioned and we the viewer are left to wonder if her new hubby is behind the gaslighting or the random guy with an axe who chops wood for them without being asked or some dude with an ex who killed a woman in their new house some time earlier or none of the above.  Thomason frequently cuts to the same flashes of some other guy with an axe hacking away at a coffin, plus there are numerous montages set to pretty music that while brief in length are large enough in frequency to shut down an already laborious flow.  The inevitable twist is easy to spot and ergo lame, (plus there is even another twist in the final moment that is only worthy of a "Buh?" for anyone who is still watching), but the whole movie is innocently stock instead of outright terrible.

 

THE DAY IT CAME TO EARTH

(1977)

Overall: WOOF

Unwatchable from top to bottom, The Day It Came to Earth is a failed 1950s B-movie throwback, done in an era where it sticks out like a sore thumb instead of being a fitting nostalgia piece.  While regional director Harry Thomason has never done anything good, he has certainly done far better than this Z-grade crap which looks and sounds as if it was made by amateurs and with zero dollars, no idea how cinematography works, and no microphones to properly record anyone.  The premise is stupid enough, with a meteor crashing into a lake and reanimating the corpse of a guy who was recently dumped there after being whacked by the mob.  Some dopey teenagers find said meteor, they show it to their professor, (played awkwardly by comedian George Gobel), and the plot only becomes more mind-numbingly dull from there.  It occasionally comes off that Thomason is going for a comedic tone with some doofy musical cues and deliberate attempts at jokey dialog, but these moments are both inconsistent and never funny.  In this respect, the performances are so awful and the presentation so clumsy that it is difficult to tell how much of it is in on its own bad movie charm, if one could be so generous as to consider any aspect of it "charming".  At least the zombie makeup looks sufficient, even if said dead guy is only granted a couple of seconds of screen time.

1970s American Horror Part Seventy-Eight

A REFLECTION OF FEAR

(1972)
Dir - William A. Fraker
Overall: MEH

 

This adaptation of Stanton Forbes novel Go to Thy Deathbed is notable for featuring a twenty-seven year old Sondra Locke playing a fifteen year old girl with mental instability, a distant yet concerned father, and a suspicious mother and grandmother, all of whom look as if they are only fifteen years or less older than she is.  One of only three theatrically-released films from William A. Fraker who would settle into a television career after this, A Reflection of Fear suffers from a meandering plot, but it serves its purpose as a melodramatic psychological study of emotional dependence brought on by a stilted upbringing.  As a sheltered and naive teenager coming into womanhood as her family is getting picked-off by a mysterious assailant, Locke turns in a showy performance, talking to her dolls, making her sexually confused attraction to her own father blatant, and manipulating those around her with eccentric mannerisms.  All of the ideas in Edward Hume and Lewis John Carlino's screenplay do not properly connect and the more horrory aspects seem shoehorned in there, but the film has an unsettling aura throughout that is enhanced by László Kovács' soft focus cinematography and Fred Myrow's off-kilter score.

THE DEMON LOVER
(1976)
Dir - Donald G. Jackson/Jerry Younkins
Overall: WOOF

Twelve years before making the ridiculous and lovable Hell Comes to Frogtown, indie filmmaker Donald G. Jackson delivered his amateur-hour debut The Demon Lover, (The Devil Master), on the masses, (and by "masses" we mean probably a few hapless saps who were unfortunate to come across a movie that is rightfully forgotten).  Shot in Jackson's own, well, Jackson, Michigan with a cast of homely locals, (including a cult leader that looks like Warren Haynes' gas station attendant cousin and whose idea of a good time is probably slam dunking beer cans in front of underage girls in order to impress them), it is a pathetically realized bit of occult sleaze.  The Midwestern accents are parody level and on that note, forgiving viewers could consider this a spoof of post Charles Manson exploitation junk where groovy young people dabble in mystical forces only for those forces to get unleashed beyond their control.  Still, anything here that is intended to be amusing is just awkward and clumsy, with the typical issue that faces nearly every first time regional filmmaker in that the movie is as boring as it is inept.  Playful whipped cream battles, a bar fight, and a karate class montage fill up space in between a guy in a blanket and a cheap monster mask who shows up to make weird noises and kill people.  In other words, the movie poster is hilariously misleading.

ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE?

(1978)

Dir - Walter Grauman

Overall: MEH

A made-for-television movie that utilizes the premise of a creep terrorizing a young girl via pervy and threatening phone calls, Are You in the House Alone? debuted on CBS in September of 1978, predating When a Stranger Calls by a full year.  Ultimately less concerned with horror spectacle than it is with examining a troubling few days in the life of an unassuming suburban girl, it backtracks for its first hour by explaining the events that led up to Kathleen Beller's rape at the hands of an unnamed assailant.  Once the perpetrator is revealed, we still have another half-hour to go and it continues on its dour trek with no relief.  Thankfully, the subject matter is handheld sensitively and Beller's relatable relationship with her parents and new boyfriend is convincingly portrayed beyond just retooling stale stereotypes.  Unfortunately, it is frustrating that Beller refuses to tell people about her stalker and when she does, that so many people fail to take the situation seriously.  Not that this is entirely uncommon in the real world and as the plot thickens, even more nuanced details emerge that shine a light on privileged scumbags being able to get away with deplorable acts.  Still, it makes for a miserable watch and as a message movie with nasty genre trappings haphazardly thrown in, it can only be seen as partially successful.