1970s José Mojica Marins - Part One

AWAKENING OF THE BEAST
(1970)
Overall: MEH

Continuing with his use of Coffin Joe into more experimental terrain, José Mojica Marins' Awakening of the Beast, (O Despertar da Besta, O Ritual dos Sádicos), suffocates under its own self-indulgence and is only mildly amusing in the process.  The first hour of the movie slogs as it follows a handful of zombie-like characters being high, horny, and weird, (not zombie-like in a macabre sense, but in a visibly bored sense), and then a bunch of panelists argue about pretentious nonsense on what is revealed to be a TV show at the end.  Marins is one of these panelists, playing himself and mostly remaining silent and smug as everyone else prattles on about whether or not he is a genius.  Then random scenes go by that enhance what little narrative there is, and the last half hour switches to color so that Coffin Joe proper can show up to spout his usual brand of wicked monologues.  Marins' weird visuals take over here, including yet not limited to a bunch of people with faces painted on their asses.  While stepping outside of a conventional story formula is fine, the pacing is laborious and Marins' fiendish strengths are not utilized enough to elevate what is a ninety-odd minute, psychological venture about LSD and depravity or whatever, just with a handful of ghoulish set pieces tossed in there to wake us up.

THE BLOODY EXORCISM OF COFFIN JOE
(1974)
Overall: GOOD

Going meta again with the Coffin Joe character while actually utilizing a plot this time, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe, (Exorcismo Negro), finds José Mojica Marins growing ever more ambitious with his blasphemous formula.  The movie takes a liberal amount of time getting to its final showpiece of utter debauchery and madness, but Marins sprinkles enough bizarre and unholy scenes before the third act to keep most viewers from growing too impatient.  The narrative concerns the Brazilian filmmaker playing himself and ultimately confronting his infamous cinematic counterpart as he struggles with writers block for his next film as well as with the concept that his creation is more famous than he is.  While this is an interesting be it elementary angle that is nevertheless appreciated, being a Marins movie, it is generally about the strange and evil atmosphere, as well as the bizarre visuals that he can bombard you with.  In that regard, this is no disappointment as Marins shows as little restraint as ever and continues to push his hedonistic vision into engaging terrain.

THE STRANGE HOSTEL OF NAKED PLEASURES

(1976)

Dir - José Mojica Marins/Marcelo Motta

Overall: MEH

The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, (Estranha Hospedaria dos Prazeres), is somewhat structured as an Amicus horror anthology, minus the actual anthology part.  Which is to say that it presents a scenario where José Mojica Marins/Coffin Joe can act as host to a bunch of damned souls; characters who have all sinned to various degrees and are oblivious to their doomed fate or current state of existence.  It is a perfect premise for Marins to utilize, but it is also unfortunately lackluster in its finished form.  Utilizing the help of co-director Marcelo Motta, it is still unmistakably a Marins movie with the usual cacophony of sounds, fractured editing, and drug-fueled visuals that all of the man's films were unrelentingly full of.  This time though, it plods along with large chunks of the movie going nowhere, and despite the opening being the strangest sequence in the movie, it takes forever for anything interesting to transpire after that.  When it does, it is more confusing than anything as Marins seems unfocused at best, and the ghastly, optical elements that would usual cover for such a problem are more forgettable than usual.

1970s American Horror Part Ten

PHASE IV
(1974)
Dir - Saul Bass
Overall: MEH

Renowned graphic designer Saul Bass in his only directorial effort Phase IV concocted a visually stunning though otherwise rather barren film.  The real star of the movie is Kim Middleham, a wildlife photographer who captures elaborately-staged closeups of insects for large chunks of screen time.  That along with some excellent set designs including giant monoliths in the middle of the desert provide Phase IV with its best assets.  At the same time though, some of the ant sequences while impressively shot do drag on a bit and since the story hardly has anything going on, it creates the core problem with the movie.  A mere two scientists and a stranded girl are cooped up in their laboratory arguing while trying to decipher their best move against the mutated ant colony and nearly all of the scenes with them are rather emotionally flat or predictable, (the younger scientist shows compassion for human casualties while the older, British one is too enthusiastically fascinated by their experiment to care).  The ending is a bit dopey though likewise rather foreseeable as well.  Bass presents the whole thing deadly serious, with sparsely-used, subdued music that is wholly appreciated.  Yet the film is ultimately too void of excitement to be anything but an optically pleasing work.

BLUE SUNSHINE
(1977)
Dir - Jeff Lieberman
Overall: MEH

The occasionally compelling though far more frequently bumpy Blue Sunshine was writer/director Jeff Lieberman's second film; a strange, determined work that is confusing and sloppy in both wrong and intended ways.  Bizarre murders spring up in sudden and/or creative ways like an early moment where a guy sings cringeworthingly at a party and then goes on a rampage when his wig gets pulled off, plus a later moment where a woman chases kids around with a kitchen knife.  The strange behavior of the non-strange characters is unnecessarily distracting though, particularly the entire performance of the lead protagonist Zalman King who is bafflingly unhinged and unlikable from moment one.  He is not alone in this as more than one other "normal" person's actions induce a fair amount of headscratching from the audience.  This would be a clever trait if the movie's social commentary added up when it needed to, but instead the themes of reckless, counterculture college kids turning uppity yuppies rather infrequently work.  The overall inconsistencies just become too distracting by film's end, an ending of which is regretfully sudden and lazily open-ended.

THE VISITOR
(1979)
Dir - Giulio Paradisi
Overall: GOOD

Sometimes the perfect concoction of the desperately bizarre can manifest itself into something that transcends logical analysis and becomes rather admirable in the process.  The Visitor is just such a strange film that exists in its own world.  Directed by Italian Giulio Paradisi, (credited as Michael J. Paradise), based off of a story by Egyptian/Italian writer Ovidio G. Assonitis, featuring an all-star, primarily American cast, and filmed on location in Atlanta, Georgia, The Visitor is one of those strange hodgepodges made up of conflicting parts.  It borrows liberally and tries to cash-in on well-known genre films of the time like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen, The Exorcist, and even older gems like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, plus it has an unmistakable, Italian knock-off quality that is benefited from an elaborate budget and ambitious plot.  Other curious elements like the same scenes being shown multiple times and some of the most clashing music in practically any movie further add to the perplexing nature of the entire thing.  The story is mostly void of substance and presents itself as a point A to point B fairytale, but it is all in the embellished presentation which remains both easy to follow and all over the place simultaneously.  Paradisi only helmed a small handful of movies and his work here is rather remarkable, both from a visual perspective and how he manages to juggle so many confounding elements to make it one of the most unique sci-fi horror films of probably any decade.

1970s American Horror Part Nine

BLOOD AND LACE
(1971)
Dir - Phillip S. Gilbert
Overall: MEH

Blood and Lace, (not to be confused with the superior Mario Bava film Blood and BLACK Lace from seven years prior), is as dumb as they come.  Co-written by producer Gil Lasky and directed by Phillip S. Gilbert, (serving as the only movie that the latter would ever make), they also scored Gloria Grahame as an evil orphanage owner, as well as future Uncle Leo Len Lesser as her sleazy sidekick.  Appropriate casting aside, the script is absurd.  There are so many "can only happen in a stupid movie" coincidences and likewise so many times when characters do the most irrational thing possible that it just barely transcends being an offensive waste of time and becomes an occasionally fun trainwreck instead.  Since it was made so cheaply, (using awful stock music, thoroughly unconvincing day for night shots, and amateur cinematography), it makes the hilarious plot that much more unintentionally amusing.  It is within the last few minutes when the inevitable twist rears its head that the ridiculousness becomes overbearing, but there is still plenty to laugh at up until then.

BAD RONALD
(1974)
Dir - Buzz Kulik
Overall: MEH

An adaptation of Jack Vance's book of the same name, Bad Ronald was a made for TV film that aired on ABC around Halloween time in 1974.  At a brisk seventy-four minutes, director Buzz Kulik keeps the pace cruising along with a simple yet far-fetched set-up; a pace which undoes the whole movie.  Due to the brief running time, the relationship between the title character and his mother plus how the former meets his mental breaking point could afford more substance.  It takes until the end before Bad Roland gets suspenseful enough to finally start resembling an actual thriller.  Before that, it just gets by on the creepiness of its on-paper premise, making it a missed opportunity.  To watch something from the point of view of a young and eccentric teenager with mommy and anger issues who is essentially trapped in his own house while succumbing to the madness of isolation, the approach is too mild and underdeveloped for what the story is worth.  On the plus side though, it is an admirable move that Kulik and his cast treat the material respectfully while keeping any potential schlock value uninvited to the party.

PIRANHA
(1978)
Dir - Joe Dante
Overall: MEH

Joe Dante's second feature was the Jaws parody/cash-in Piranha, a film which Universal tried to shut down before Steven Spielberg blessed it by calling it "the best of the Jaws rip-offs".  That statement is probably true, mostly because Dante is interested in getting as many laughs out of his audience as possible, taking the silly, intentionally derivative subject matter as non-seriously as possible.  Full of recognizable faces like Paul Bartel, Dick Miller, Barbara Steele, and Kevin McCarthy as well as highly unremarkable special effects, it is knowingly ham-fisted and everyone on the screen seems fully aware of this without getting too overtly goofy.  While fun and funny at times, it is a tedious story where people get warned about the flesh eating fish, people ignore said warning, and then people get killed by said fish, all of which gets repeated until the high-body count finish.  Characters routinely do idiotic things as well, (including knowingly jumping into the piranha-infested waters), and the laws of physics are slapped in the face as one character parks his boat as far away as possible to then hold his breathe for a supernaturally long time to do something imperative underwater while the fish are probably everywhere.  Naturally ending on an ominous note with a sly, overly confident remark from Steele that clearly sets up the next in the franchise, (Piranha II: The Spawning which would be James Cameron's directorial debut), many of the movie's "flaws" can be seen as part of the appeal, but it does grow just a tad too tiresome after awhile.

1970s American Horror Part Eight

WILLARD
(1971)
Dir - Daniel Mann
Overall: MEH

The broadly-received Willard, (an adaptation of Stephen Gilbert's short novel Ratman's Notebooks), is a likeable if not altogether spectacular film.  Daniel Mann had a pretty diverse resume by the time he made his only horror movie here, directing a number of comedies, dramas, and action films and then primarily going into television very soon afterwards.  Willard boasts some decent performances from its lead Bruce Davison as the feeble, pathetic title character, plus Ernest Borgnine, Elsa Lancaster, and Sondra Locke bring some recognizably to their smaller roles, (Borgnine in particular being his usual douchebagy villain).  The movie is a bit too tedious in nature and only near the very end do the rats themselves successfully pose their necessary threat.  Basically, everybody either dotes over Willard or treats him like an incompetent pest and he spends the entire movie going back and forth from his house where he is talking to all of his furry minions to his work where his boss is an asshole.  The ending which proves once and for all that Willard truly cannot catch a break is rather preordained and also comes off pretty sudden and anticlimactic.  There have been worse movies about hordes of animals terrorizing people to be sure, but this one could probably have used a lot more horror in general as well as more trimming of the plot to have aged better.

IT'S ALIVE
(1974)
Dir - Larry Cohen
Overall: MEH

Beginning his career with a number of blaxploitation movies, Larry Cohen's first horror film It's Alive is another frustrating effort from the writer/director.  Cohen's filmography is rather all over the place in quality, with some of his works being interesting, (God Told Me To), stupid and clumsy, (Q), or atrociously horrible, (The Stuff).  It's Alive is a problem in that Cohen's script lazily presents too many "wait/why/what?" moments that distract one from the strong performances by John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell, some well-directed, nerve-wracking scenes, and an acceptable premise that should otherwise work.  It is very aggravating that after a very solid opening which abruptly, (and wonderfully), pulls the rug out from under us, the behavior of the police and the parents raises illogical questions one after the other.  Cohen cannot convincingly pull off how such a disturbing incident effects the people involved.  Meanwhile it is all very serious and frequently emotionally harrowing, but there are just too many implausible details mucking everything up.  The parents being allowed to immediately leave the hospital, the father immediately returning to work and excepting that his kid is a monstrosity even though no one has laid eyes on it, the cops lackadaisical investigating, the son who supposedly was left in the dark who is being compassionate to his mutant sibling, the mother being taken to the site of where they have cornered her child/creature in the first place, etc.  It is a shame because Cohen leaves all of his ridiculous quirks out of the equation for once, but he still unintentionally insults his audience's intelligence and patience.

THE DRILLER KILLER
(1979)
Dir - Abel Ferrara
Overall: MEH

Though the porno movie 9 Lives to a Wet Pussy proceeded this one by three years, The Driller Killer was the first non-adult debut from Abel Ferrara who also stars as the title-character/murderer.  Long considered part of the notorious video nasty blacklist of films in England, Driller Killer is far more tame than most, though it makes up for it with an unrelenting, grimy atmosphere.  Filmed in Ferrara's own Union Square apartment around the time when Manhattan was hardly considered the world's safest, cleanest city to live in, the movie has a seedy quality that is benefited from the rather amateurish way that Ferrara puts it all together.  The actors are not miked and you are bound to recognize none of them, plus a generous amount of time is spent watching the no-wave band The Roosters play gigs and rehearse, making the movie rather chaotic and noisy at all possible intervals.  The script by frequent Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St. John is poorly underdeveloped, but this may be intentional to make it all seem anarchistic since all of the characters are either miserable or drugged out lowlifes who seem both bored and perfectly fine while wallowing in such grunginess.  Some moments of humor work OK and the ending is borderline great, but it is kind of a drag to sit through for the majority of it, with everyone moping around, being occasionally obnoxious, and then the whole murdering angle just very randomly being tossed in there.

1970s American Horror Part Seven

THE BABY
(1973)
Dir - Ted Post
Overall: MEH

It is a bit trying to decide what to make out of a film like The Baby.  It goes far enough trying to be disturbing to border on pathetic, but because it is portrayed so deadly serious, the sleazy schlock value is undermined to a critical point.  Things continue to fire off of the deep end as it goes on and the final culmination is in such bad taste while being so absurd that it is nearly impossible not to laugh at it.  The fact that everything that comes before it is so frustratingly stupid and disturbing makes for quite a problem though.  In other words, if this is meant to be "Oh, brother" silly, then it is too dark and twisted.  If it is meant to be seriously dark and twisted, then it is far too "Oh, brother" silly.  Director Ted Post, (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Magnum Force), tries to concoct a conventional, chilling finish, but he fumbles the pacing too much.  We spend several minutes watching characters slowly creep around a house and then not turn any lights on when the logical moment arises.  At least the script somewhat "explains" some of the other gigantic disregards for logic, (most prominently why no one goes to the goddamn police), but in the end, it still comes down to whether or not you want to watch a movie with a grown man in diapers acting and screaming like an infant while wackadoo women physically, sexually, and psychologically abuse him at every opportunity.

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
(1976)
Dir - Rene Daalder
Overall: WOOF

When teenagers are concerned, few things in cinema are more annoying than A) high school kids endlessly being repugnant assholes to each other and B) no adults being anywhere.  The second full-length work from Russ Myer protégé Rene Daalder Massacre at Central High is thankfully not a slasher movie as the title profoundly suggests, but rather an incredibly annoying thriller that poses so many illogical scenarios with a complete disregard for creating the desperately necessary, surreal mood to make any of its social commentary work.  The film's first act is nearly impossible to stomach as a small group of bullies hold complete sway over an entire school, (again with no teachers, parents or authority figures at any time intervening), and before we are even five minutes in, you simply want everyone on screen to die.  Then the massacre of the title begins, (one such murder happening to a kid who is too stupid to notice that a giant swimming pool has no water in it just because someone turned the lights off), and the moronic scenario escalates rapidly.  So many students get piked off over the course of days and weeks, (again with no teachers, parents, or authority figures at any time intervening, cannot mention that enough), and everyone goes about their business while both practically ignoring what is happening and even more excruciating, the bullies become even bigger scumbags.  The ending is the most insulting moment of all.  After so, so many murders, a bomb goes off outside of a school during a dance and the first grown-up we have seen the entire film says "Its just a fire, let's all go back to dancing". You can almost see what the allegorical intention was but, nah it just sucks.

DEMON SEED
(1977)
Dir - Donald Cammell
Overall: MEH

Donald Cammell's long-awaited follow-up to Performance was the Dean Koontz adaptation Demon Seed, a film that is accidentally silly despite its best efforts.  While featuring a generous budget, somewhat acting heavyweights Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, and the voice of Robert Vaughan, and again based off of a novel from the renowned Koontz, the sum of its parts should probably wield something better.  The premise of an artificial intelligence going malevolent on its makers is fool proof to at least be creepy on paper, but it poses a problem when it comes to life.  Scenes like a mechanical robot arm attached to a wheelchair and a giant, bronze, puzzle-looking thing or whatever attacking people are all bound to garnish a laugh or several from the audience when of course you are supposed to feel the opposite.  There are also some plot holes getting in the way.  One can buy that it only takes a mutant baby less than a month to reach full term, but nobody is going to check on the woman who is been held captive that whole time or the guy who visited and went missing weeks ago?  Things are also pretty one-note.  From the very beginning it is pretty obvious what is going to happen and then waiting through it gets more tedious than spine-chilling, leaving us with an ending where characters seem to behave rather inexplicably.  Then there is a weird looking alien/machine/monster kid thing for good measure.

1970s American Horror Part Six

PRIVATE PARTS
(1972)
Dir - Paul Bartel
Overall: MEH

The first full-length film from Paul Bartel, (the much celebrated cult movie Death Race 2000 would be his follow-up), Private Parts is silly and weird in both good and bad ways.  The themes of sexual repression, voyeurism, and perversion never really pick up any steam and all of the horror-tinged, violent bits just seem to be there to give it a bloody body count for whatever reason.  The characters are certainly humorous in their eccentricities, (Laurie Main who hosted Welcome to Pooh Corner is the most fun as a flamboyantly creepy, gay Reverend), but why they are all cooped up in a single hotel and why the owner herself is up to such a bizarre scheme in the first place is kind of just thrown into the mix to make the movie more strange.  This may not be a bad thing depending if one finds the seedy, early 70s New York atmosphere appealing enough or the murder scenes satisfactory.  Yet the script does pose its ideas in a kind of lazy way, coming to a head with a ridiculous ending that is bound to make most eyes roll.  It would probably work better as a quirky fish-out-of-water comedy devoid of all of the lame slasher movie bits, but it is an interesting experiment nonetheless.

AXE
(1974)
Dir - Frederick R. Friedel
Overall: WOOF

It is quite telling that when writer/director Frederick R. Friedel was trying desperately to get his first movie made while pitching it to any producer who would humor him, he knew as much about the filmmaking process as a Neanderthal.  The result Axe, (Lisa, Lisa), is roughly a mere sixty-seven minutes long, but if feels like six-hundred and seven.  This is another perfect, horrendous combination of a "why would anyone want to watch that?" story with completely inept movie making from all the technical levels on down.  Friedel, (who unsurprisingly exudes the same amount of on-screen charisma as one of the characters as he does expertise behind the lens), has a sentence-long story here at best.  Because of this, he fills the screen time with anything, ANYTHING to get it just barely to an acceptable full-length.  In the very first opening scene, characters sit around in a room waiting for someone and they wait, and wait, and wait, and what happens next is so unpleasant and nasty that it sets the template precisely for everything else that is to follow.  That is Axe ladies and gentlemen; waiting around while watching the director not turn the camera off until something wretched happens that you did not want to see in the first place. 

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS
(1978)
Dir - Dennis Donnelly
Overall: MEH

Outside of the appearance of the generally ridiculous Cameron Mitchell as a cuckoo building owner who murders women for the flimsiest of reasons, The Toolbox Murders has nigh a single redeemable quality.  The "based on a true story" tag has been used so many times to garnish interest that the words have lost all meaning and it ultimately matters not at all to the final proceedings.  The murders are all unpleasant and then things get worse from there with another woman being kept prisoner for disturbing reasons and then once she is finally released, she gets rapped by her would-be rescuer anyway.  Isn't that lovely?  One can easily look past all of the deliberately exploitative elements since the film was made to cash-in on the wave of low-budget sleaze that was continually being produced in droves, so expecting anything remotely intellectual would be unfair.  The real deficiency with the movie is with its piss-poor direction and pacing.  Scenes like characters walking into a building, asking for keys, looking for keys, finding keys, saying "bye", walking back outside into a car, driving the car away, driving some more, driving up to their destination, parking and walking out of the car into another building, and well you get the idea.  The film is so void of substance that much of the running time has to be padded with such completely irrelevant information, just leaving you with all of the nasty bits and Cameron Mitchell, (thankfully at least), overacting to the best of his abilities.

1970s American Horror Part Five

SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT
(1972)
Dir - Theodore Gershuny
Overall: MEH

Another early, holiday themed slasher outing, (arguably the first one?), Silent Night, Bloody Night, (Deathhouse), is primarily terrible for other reasons besides it being boxed in by the usual cliches such movies cannot escape from.  The problems lie first and foremost with the script which is a gigantic mess.  It is nothing unusual to have the identity of your killer be a mystery and likewise to have the unveiling of said killer be as unlikely as possible, but not only does this movie go for a highly unsatisfying and cheap pay out, but worse yet is the road to get there which is just loaded with confusion.  It is always a bad idea to grind your film's progress down to a screeching halt so you can have an extended flashback just before the final showpiece.  Yet when said flashback poses more questions than answers, you are even more baffled than you were before being given such an "explanation".  Other elements such as on-again/off-again narration, John Carradine being completely wasted playing a mute for absolutely no reason, and poor cinematography all leaves very little to make a positive case out of.  The film does have a surprise or two, but most of them are the kind that just leave you scratching your head at their inclusion in the first place.

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET
(1977)
Dir - Roger Watkins
Overall: WOOF

This is as bad as it gets folks.  Shot in 1972 and released in a limited capacity with all of the on screen credits being pseudonyms, (since who in any mind set would want to be associated with this abomination?), Last House on Dead End Street eventually garnished a reputation for being a legitimate snuff film for decades before the "writer", "director", and "star" came out nearly thirty years later to fess up that no, it was just a horrible "movie".  The question is, what is worse; if this was actually supposed to be some kind of a legitimate horror film or if it was actually just people dying for real on screen?  Yes it is that terrible.  Every possible technical aspect could not be worse.  Roger Watkins is oblivious how to frame a shot, light a scene, point a camera, work a camera, mic his actors, write dialog for his actors to say, cast his actors, act himself, or come up with any remotely interesting story beyond some New York-accented bonehead who does not like authority so he is going to kill people while filming it with a camera.  There really is not a single thing more to it than that.  Despite having no possible audience designed for it, (you have to be so bored with actual filmmaking to find this "refreshing" in any way and actual serial killers would still be appalled by the dialog at least), this perfectly encapsulates everything movies can do completely wrong.

MAGIC
(1978)
Dir - Richard Attenborough
Overall: GOOD

Enough evil ventriloquist dummy movies have been made to give it its own sub-genre, Magic being the rather large-budgeted, somewhat A-list adaptation of William Goldman's novel of the same name, (Goldman also penning the script as usual).  What Magic may lack in originality, (many of the plot points anyone can see coming from afar), it makes up for with solid performances all around and one or two effectively creepy scenes.  Voicing the doll of Fats, learning enough card maneuvers to be passable as a magician, and appearing thoroughly unhinged from the moment we meet him, Anthony Hopkins' ambitious performance is sufficient whereas he seems altogether disturbed and pathetic, usually at all times.  Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, and character actor Ed Lauter round out the rest of the major cast, all of them rather perfectly suited.  While the relationship between Corky and the Fats dummy is pretty standard stuff, (the dummy is "evil", the ventriloquist is impish and "good", and it is consistently vague who is controlling who), it is made pretty clear what is actually going on, though director Richard Attenborough very wisely keeps the audience slightly guessing at every possible opportunity.  This makes some of the diabolical acts more shocking than they otherwise would be and likewise, some of them less silly than they otherwise would be.