The Bloody Pit of Horror

... aka: Fear Hotel
... aka: Hotel Fear
... aka: Hotel of Fear
... aka: La violación de la señorita Julia (The Violation of Miss Julia)

Directed by:
Francesco Barilli

Set in rural Italy toward the end of World War II, this centers around a depressed, put-upon teenager named Rosa (Leonora Fani), who's helping her mother Marta (Lidia Biondi) run the family hotel and cafe. Dad is away serving in the war and may in fact be dead but, either way, he's not around. To relax and get away from her miserable daily life, Rosa rows out to a favorite spot she used to go to with her father and continues to write to him. Because of the war, food rations and money are both tight and even a casual dinner turns into a stressful situation with the electricity flickering when planes fly overhead and the whistling of dropping bombs can be heard off in the distance. Marta expects a lot from her only child but only because she cares. Not only does Rosa have to grow up fast, help run the hotel and put up with a bunch of creepy guests in the process but she also has to keep up with her studies and get a certificate so she can take care of herself in case something should happen to her mother. Almost prophetically, something does end up happening.

During a thunderstorm, Marta is heard screaming and is then found dead at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck. Now left to her own devices, Rosa's forced to running the hotel by herself and deal with all of the perverted, leering men her mother used to shield her from. One of her many admirers is a bald, middle-aged widower (José María Prada) whose wife and kids were killed in a bombing and who now seems to get enjoyment out of finding different ways to scare Rosa. There are many other unsavory types around, including a couple of hooker sisters and their tricks, plus a shell-shocked, unpredictable servant named Alfonso. Not only that, but Rosa is also forced to take care of her mother's secret lover (Francisco Rabal); a cowardly and increasingly paranoid war criminal who's hiding out in a hidden upstairs room of the hotel.

Rosa finds herself both drawn to and repulsed by handsome but perverted and sexually aggressive gigolo Rodolfo (Luc Merenda), who's staying there with, and is being supported by, his much older lover (Jole Fierro). Rodolfo spies on Rosa changing clothes, offers to show her his manhood through a key hole, forces her to kiss him because she won't willingly do so and even promises to take her away from there in she'll only give in to him. Since his lover is running low on money herself and can no longer afford to shower him with expensive gifts and vacations, Rodolfo finds interest in his over-the-hill amour quickly waning. Instead of taking out her frustrations where they belong, il puma brands Rosa a whore, blames her for trying to seduce Rodolfo and physically assaults her. While she's busy being insecure, he's busy attempting to steal her diamonds to trade for money and a passport to run off to Switzerland and leaving her ass high and dry.

A couple of shady, dangerous thugs, who Rosa catches murdering someone in a cemetery, show up at the hotel to meet up with Rodolfo for the swap, but things don't go as planned... for pretty much anyone! In a desperate last ditch effort to cling on to her man, sugar mama pretends to be kind and motherly to Rosa just long enough to lure her into her bedroom and then helps Rodolfo rape her. Afterward, the duo are stabbed to death in their bed. Once Rosa stumbles upon their bodies, she drags them down to the basement, sticks them in a bathtub and covers the bodies with some kind of clumpy brown substance that's either mud or feces (it's difficult to tell). Things then get even more violent when the thugs come after Rosa looking for the diamonds and upon the arrival of a surprise visitor (played by Máximo Valverde) who makes quick work of all the weirdos and pervs populating the hotel with a Tommy gun.

This is not really a giallo. Just because it was filmed in Italy, has some visual style and features a few murders does not make it one. There's no real mystery component here and it certainly doesn't stick to a set formula like the majority of films it's often erroneously categorized with. Instead, this is what I like to call a “kitchen sink art film” where the director mixes up pretty much whatever he wants (surrealism, war drama, horror film, coming-of-age story, etc.) in an effort to underscore a central theme. In this case, that theme is clearly the cost of war. The world of Pensione paura is a world where the battle scars aren't just on the soldiers, but also those dealing with war on the home front. WWII has has turned pretty much every adult into a conspirator, a criminal, a psycho, a pervert, an adulterer or a murderer, who then pass all of their bullshit on to the next generation; a point hammered home by the finale.

The only glimmer of hope in this downbeat film is a subplot involving an innocent romance that develops between Fani and a sweet neighborhood boy named Guido (Francesco Impeciati), but both end up corrupted by the adult world by the film's end. Though Rosa's fate is pretty much sealed being trapped in a seedy, dangerous environment, Guido's more sheltered and “respectable” upbringing does nothing to shelter him from the ugliness of war either. His father, a priest, won't even give Rosa a credit on a dozen eggs while he himself has a feast. One could say this has nothing new to add to the conversation but as far as I'm concerned there can't be enough anti-war sentiment floating around in this world.

Even ignoring the subtext, this is well made, well acted, handsomely shot by Gualtiero Manozzi and thoroughly interesting even when taken at just face value, with the director impressively managing to navigate multiple genres in a smooth, sensible and engaging way. Well, that is until the last fifteen minutes when he opts for a preposterous, jarring, absurdist conclusion that won't set well with many viewers and gets silly enough to undercut the credibility and serious intentions of pretty much everything that came before it. Regardless, there's more than enough good going on here to merit a strong recommendation.

Pensione paura is one of those films that's difficult to pigeonhole and categorize, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good in that it typically makes for pretty interesting and unpredictable viewing. It's bad in that it often limits a film's release and commercial appeal and thus sets its on a road to obscurity. This rare title has definitely suffered from the latter and doesn't appear to have been released anywhere outside of its production countries of Italy and Spain (under the title La violación de la señorita Julia). It has yet to receive any kind of official U.S. release, though there are at least English fan subs available for the film now.

Lead actress Fani, who was in her early 20s here but still believable playing a teen, somehow ended up in some of the sleaziest Euro flicks of this time period like NAKED MASSACRE (1975), Dog Lay Afternoon (1976) and GIALLO IN VENICE (1979). In this film she's asked to get naked and be abused a lot too but at least here she's also given an interesting part to play. Pretty much the same can be said for Merenda, who also gets naked numerous times and is certainly used to much better effect here than he was in the giallo TORSO (1973). The rest of the cast is a mix of Italian and Spanish actors and almost everybody does a fine job in their respective roles. Director Barilli is best known (among giallo fans at least) for The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1973). He also co-wrote the script with Barbara Alberti and Amedeo Pagani, who'd previously collaborated on the script for the controversial The Night Porter (1974).

★★★

... aka: Girl Trap
... aka: Gu*Zoo
... aka: Guzoo
... aka: Guzoo: The Thing Abandoned By God
... aka: Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken By God – Part 1
... aka: Guzû: Kami ni misuterareshi mono
... aka: Life After Dead

Directed by:
Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu

Four giggly teenage girls; professor's daughter Minako (Yumiko Ishikawa), whiny and immature “crybaby” Yuka (Naomi Kajitani), mystery buff Katsuko (Kyôko Komiyama) and shy Mayumi (Tomoko Maruyama), go on vacation to the Muikamacha Hot Springs. After a rousing game of Old Maid, they head off to a country boarding house where they meet Tomoko Kujô (Hidemi Maruyama). Tomoko, a researcher and archaeologist who claims to know Minako's father, is managing the place for the owners in exchange for using their basement to conduct some kind of research she's very vague about. Katsuko, who fancies herself a sleuth, sneaks downstairs to investigate a strange smell and runs right into Tomoko, who tells her the stench is a powerful solvent she uses to clean up fossils. She makes Katsuko promise never to go in the basement before sending her on her way. While the girls are out enjoying the scenery, Tomoko then sneaks into their room, opens all their bags and smashes the mirrors in each of their compacts.

It isn't long before some monster starts attacking. While they're playing volleyball in the pool, Yuka is attacked and scratched by something Tomoko calls a kamaitachi; an “invisible weasel” (!) with sickle claws that lives in whirlwinds. Later that night, Yuka is attacked again in the kitchen by a tentacle that emerges from a mirror and attempts to pull her inside. Tomoko, who is also spotted by one of the girls carrying around a tub of raw maggoty meat, claims it must have been a “nocturnal animal” that somehow got inside. The lady researcher has a silly or vague answer for pretty much everything, including what she's up to in the basement. She claims to be on the verge of discovering an ultra-advanced ancient civilization and leaves it at that.

The creature in question is called a guzoo. A parasitic being, the guzoo have been around since the beginning of time and have followed a completely different evolutionary path than any other species. As a result, they can assume the shape of both humans and any animal of its choosing. At least that's what the opening narration tells us. What we actually see in the film itself is essentially a large creature that looks quite a bit like Audrey II with a huge mouth full of fangs, loads of razor tentacles and a rude habit of making obnoxious flatulent noises. It can be controlled by playing a special flute and seems to live in another parallel dimension. The shape-shifting abilities of the creature are not explored at all and only come into play at the very end and this sets up a formula where it can only access our world via mirrors but then breaks its own rules whenever its convenient. Knowing all she knows, why Tomoko would take the time to destroy the teen's little makeup mirrors and not the multiple other mirrors in the house (or at least attempt to hide them for the time being) is just one of many things that don't make a lick of sense. Actually you're best off not thinking about the plot or the creature mythology all that much since neither is very well developed.

In a nutshell, this shot-on-video effort was made to showcase a bit of gore for the Japanese home video market and that's pretty much it. There's one excellent scene where the creature thrusts a tentacle into a girl's mouth and her chest erupts with a bunch of smaller tentacles and a couple of other OK bloody moments (like a head being bitten off) plus some fun monster effects. A number of similar and near plotless gore films emerged in Japan at around the same time in the 80s. Some were videotaped, some were shot on film and a good number ran around an hour or less. This one's only 40 minutes long and was released in Japan on VHS through Vzone Video; a short-lived arm of the Japanese zine Vzone Magazine. Considering this is called “Part 1,” Vzone Video probably would have also released “Part 2” had one actually been made.

Director Komizu started as an assistant on films like the Richard Speck-inspired pinku VIOLATED ANGELS (1967) and went on to write many soft core “roman porno” films for Nikkatsu. He is probably best known however for the utterly tasteless yet not very good “Guts” horror / gore / rape fetish trilogy, which includes the films ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN (1986), ENTRAILS OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN (1986) and Rusted Body: Guts of a Virgin III aka Female Inquisitor (1987). His Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (1991) also received a DVD release here in America.

★★

... aka: Angel for Satan, An
... aka: Ein Engel für den Teufel (An Angel for the Devil)
... aka: Un ange pour Satan

Directed by:
Camillo Mastrocinque

Because of a drought, a lake decreases in water volume and an ancient, heavily-damaged statue of a nude woman is discovered at the bottom. Count Montebruno (Claudio Gora) has the statue fished out and then hires handsome young artist / sculptor Roberto Merigi (Anthony Steffen) to restore it. Roberto arrives in the small Italian village by boat and soon comes to realize that this isn't going to be just any ordinary project. According to local legend, with the statue comes a curse and restoring this particular piece will bring tragedy and death to the entire village. Roberto has no interest in local superstition. He just wants to get to work. But before he can get started, the two men who brought him there; both fisherman and excellent swimmers, drown when their boat mysteriously capsizes. Roberto then realizes his life may be in danger from the enraged locals themselves, who aren't too happy about the statue resurfacing. When Roberto goes to a pub to work on some sketches, he gets roughed up by local brute Carlo (Mario Brega) and his thugs and barely manages to make it out of there in one piece.

The owner of the Montebruno estate isn't the Count, but his orphaned niece Harriet (Barbara Steele). After her parents died when she was just five years old, she was sent away to London to get an education and hasn't been back to the manor since. Now that it's been fifteen yeas and she's hit her 20th birthday, she can finally collect on her inheritance. Upon returning, she meets the staff, which includes butler Julian (Antonio Corevi), cute young maid Rita (Ursula Davis), retired army soldier and now security guard Sergeant Alfonso (Antonio Acqua), governess Illa (“Maureen Melrose” / Marina Berti) and gardener Victor (Aldo Berti), a “slow” neurotic who's been in and out of a nuthouse as of late. Illa is secretly the Count's lover while Rita is secretly dating school teacher Dario Morelli (Vassili“Karamesinis” / Karis); one of the few people in the area who was kind to the new arrival in town because he knows what it's like to be treated as an outsider by the locals. Romance is also in the air for Roberto and Harriet as soon as they lay eyes on each other and fall in love.

As it turns out, the statue is of Harriet's beautiful ancestor Maddalena (also played by Steele), who lived 200 years ago, was desired by all of the men in the area and hired a sculptor (also Steffen) to preserve her beauty in marble. The statue was then placed in the village public square for all to admire. Maddalena's sister Belinda, who wasn't blessed with her sibling's beauty and couldn't find a single man to love her, walked in on her sister and the sculptor (whom she had fallen in love with) in bed. For revenge, Belinda decides to destroy the statue. Unfortunately, when she attempts to push it into the lake, she falls in with it and drowns. Now her restless spirit wants revenge and a second chance at life. Since the face on the statue is damaged and Harriet looks a lot like Maddalena, Roberto convinces her to model for the restoration. That leaves the door open for the vengeful ancestor to possess Harriet and cause all kinds of problems for everyone.

Since Belinda was something of a sadist, the once-sweet Harriet now gets her kicks sinking her claws into all of the menfolk in the area and basically trying to destroy the lives of everyone she comes into contact with. She chastises Roberto for not holding her tightly enough and manages to completely alienate him in just one day. She strips off her clothes in front of the retarded / virginal gardener (“Have you ever seen a naked woman?”) and then whips him with her riding crop for looking at her. After that encounter, the poor guy loses it and goes on a rape / murder spree until he runs into a mob of angry villagers armed with pitchforks. Belinda then works her magic on both Dario the teacher, who she seduces in a greenhouse, and Rita, who she seduces with lesbian passes, expensive gifts and the promise that “We'll have so much fun... making men suffer.” That all ends in a suicide. Belinda even manages to get Carlo the brute so hot and bothered that he not only forsakes his wife and five kids for her but eventually burns them all alive! A twist ending reveals a conspiracy involving hypnosis but that's not really the main selling point of this one.

Though fairly light on the horror, this is a well-made dark fantasy / melodrama that should please fans of these kind of movies. There's an elegant, romantic musical score from Francesco De Masi, moody black-and-white photography from Giuseppe Aquari and good art direction, costumes and the like. The plot is nothing to write home about but this works well as a showcase for the gorgeous Steele. The British-born actress delivers big time here with an amazingly sensual and sinister performance that pretty much makes the entire film. When she's on screen, all eyes are on her and she completely dominates the proceedings. This is the exact kind of role Ms. Steele excelled at. While she plays the "good" heroine adequately, she really shines being seductive, manipulative and wickedly evil. If you want to see why she's the only actress from this era held in as high regard as male genre superstars like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, your proof is right here. As far as the rest of the cast is concerned, Steffen makes for a very good, very likable male lead and everyone else does fine. Halina Zalewska (Snow Devils) and Giovanna Lenzi (Deadly Inheritance) have small roles as peasant girls.

This was the ninth and final Italian horror vehicle for Steele. The others were BLACK SUNDAY (1960), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), The Ghost (1963), Castle of Blood (1964), THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964), Nightmare Castle (1965), TERROR-CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE(1965) and THE SHE BEAST (1966). If you count the Roger Corman-directed American production The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), that's an impressive ten horror films in just six years for the actress. Director / co-writer / production manager Mastrocinque (who passed away in 1969, just three years after this was released) also made Crypt of the Vampires (1964), an early adaptation of Le Fanu's Carmilla starring Lee and also featuring Ursula Davis.

Angel was the rarest Steele film for decades and remains one of the actress' least-watched films. Italian-language bootlegs in really bad shape were all that was available for the longest time. In 2009, Midnight Choir / Ryko released a restored French-dubbed cut of the film with English subtitles (for the first time ever). Their release also comes with Long Hair of Death.

★★★

... aka: Judas Goat
... aka: X-tro
... aka: Xtro, attacco alla Terra (Xtro, Attack on Earth)
... aka: Xtro – Extraterrestre (Xtro – Extraterrestrial)

Directed by:
Harry Bromley Davenport

Leonard Maltin called it “crudely directed,” “guided by gruesomeness” and “overwrought but dull.” In an episode of At the Movies, Roger Ebert labeled it “one of the most mean-spirited and ugly thrillers I've seen in a long time” and added that it “doesn't even qualify as acceptable trash,” while Gene Siskel simply shrugged it off (“garbage is the operative word”) as if he had better things to do with his time. A critic for Time Out was a little more lenient, saying that it's “incompetent enough to be prime drive-in fodder.” Those and countless other extremely negative reviews from nearly every major critic of the day were what greeted this film upon release. None of that really mattered in the long run though as this did fairly well at the box office and on video. Part of that was due to an effective marketing campaign painting it as the antithesis (“Not all extraterrestrials are friendly!”) of one of 1982's biggest family-friendly hits: E.T.. Being part of a wave of similar sci-fi / horror films from the early 80s hoping to cash in on the success of ALIEN (1979) probably didn't hurt matters either. This production is also noteworthy for being produced by Robert Shaye and his then fledgling New Line Cinema; who handled the U.S. distribution. It was one of only two horror releases (the other being the entertaining 1982 slasher ALONE IN THE DARK) that predated their company-stabilizing hit A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

Since its theatrical days, this has gone on to amass a minor cult following simply because of how bizarre and ridiculous it is. The director, who'd previously made just one feature (1976's Whispers of Fear, which doesn't appear to have ever been released on home video), claims that he and his crew made this for one reason and one reason only - “to shock people” - and didn't really put much more thought into it than that. He's also the first person to admit that the film “doesn't make much sense.” He is correct. Still, that doesn't mean this isn't still wonderfully entertaining.

While outside playing fetch with the dog, Sam Phillips (Philip Sayer) tosses a stick into the air, there's a sudden explosion of bright light and strong wind and the next thing you know he's gone. Sam's young son Tony (Simon Nash) witnesses the whole incident, but nobody believes him. Instead, wife / mom Rachel (Bernice Stegers) thinks Sam has run off and abandoned them and eventually moves on with her own life. Three years later they mother and son are out of the country and living in a brownstone in the city. Rachel is now dating a new man, girlie photographer Joe Daniels (Danny Brainin), who lives with them along with French housekeeper / nanny Analise (Maryam d'Abo in her film debut). Tony rejects the potential new father figure in his life, is haunted by recurring nightmares and is convinced his father will come back one day. He's right, of course, but pops isn't quite the same once he does finally show up. The boy also has some kind of bizarre, unexplained psychic connection to his long-missing dad, who communicates with him and makes him wake up one covered in blood (“Daddy sent it!”)

A spaceship swings by Earth long enough to drop off a reptilian alien creature. It immediately kills a couple driving through the country and then breaks into a cottage, attaches its tentacle onto a woman's (Susie Silvey) mouth and then impregnates her. Her stomach immediately swells and she gives birth to a full-grown man right then and there. That man is Sam, of course, or at least a being that looks identical to him. Soon after, Sam hunts down and finds Tony and Rachel and claims he has no idea where he was or what he was doing during those three missing years. Since he doesn't have a place to stay, Rachel is pretty much forced to take him in temporarily, which doesn't sit too well with Joe. While there, Sam exhibits some decidedly strange behavior, including eating snake eggs, and then gives his son a nasty hickey that passes along special supernatural / telekinetic abilities to him in the process. The powers also give him a mean / evil streak.

At first, Tony does simple things, like making a top spin with his mind, but then he creates a dwarf clown (Peter Mandell) with a razor blade yo yo and other deadly playthings. Downstairs tenant Mrs. Goodman (Anna Wing) smashes Tony's pet snake to death with a mallet when it sneaks into her apartment, so he turns his tiny soldier doll into a full-sized plastic assassin and sends it downstairs to stab her death with a bayonet. The young and fertile Analise is up next and they have special plans for her. While they send a toy tank that shoots real bullets and a blank panther (!!) out to take care of her boyfriend (David Cardy), the clown bludgeons her with a floppy hammer, Tony breaths into her side and next thing we know she's a cocooned incubator pumping out water balloon alien eggs. An elderly neighbor who swings by to check up on them gets his throat cut with the yo yo and there's also death by piercing sound waves, which make a man's ears start gushing blood. A second, skeletal-looking alien creature shows up toward the end. The original ending was changed later on because the distributor didn't like the first one and was planning to remove it.

Was this plot well thought out? No. Does this make much sense? No, not really. Still, Xtro is an extremely entertaining, nicely-photographed, fairly well-acted and efficient little exploitation movie with fun special effects, lots of gore, some sleaze (including several nude scenes from the stunning D'Abo) and many memorably oddball moments worth checking out. The director also co-wrote it and did the (pretty good) synthesizer score. He later came to America and made Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990) and Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995). There was talk of either a third sequel or a remake of the first but that has yet to happen.

Xtro is one of those movies you couldn't avoid even if you tried. It's been very well-distributed since its initial VHS release back in 1983 and continues to be well-distributed to this day with numerous DVD releases. Still waiting on a Blu-ray, though.

★★1/2

... aka: Death Stalks on High Heels
... aka: Death Walks on High Heels
... aka: Nuits d'amour et d'épouvante (Nights of Love and Fear)

Directed by:
Luciano Ercoli

In Paris, more than a million dollars worth of diamonds have been stolen and Ernest Rochard, the man suspected of being the safe cracker who helped steal them, has his neck slashed aboard a train headed to Switzerland. The victim's daughter, Nicole (“Susan Scott” / Nieves Navarro), is called in for questioning by the authorities but insists that her father didn't give her anything nor does she have any idea where the diamonds may be. Nicole is a popular cabaret dancer who works at numerous glitzy clubs around the city. During one of her patented acts, she wears bronze make-up, an Afro wig and a diamond thong bikini. Her unemployed and immature boyfriend Michel (Simón Andreu) gets turned on seeing her “all blacked up” and is game for a dressing room quickie in between shows, but he's still sick of her always being so busy and barely ever seeing her, plus jealous of all of the male customers who drool over her. However, until he finds work, she must continue to shake her tits and ass all over Paris as their breadwinner.

After one of her shows (this one with her decked out in a gold ensemble and slathered with glitter), Nicole receives a phone call from someone disguising their voice and threatening “If you don't want to end up like your father, tell me where the diamonds are!" She rushes home only to be greeted by her useless drunk boyfriend tossing a switchblade at her head and complaining about people calling him her gigolo. After he leaves, a blue-eyed man dressed in black and wearing a hood, sneaks in through the window of her apartment, strips her down to her bra and panties and threatens to slice her up. He leaves without physically harming... this time. He promises his next visit will be nastier if she doesn't “remember” where the diamonds are. Problem is, she really has no clue. After finding blue contact lenses in Michel's medicine cabinet, Nicole figures it's time to split town. Thankfully, she's recently gotten acquainted with a frequent presence at her shows, the friendly Dr. Robert Matthews (Frank Wolff), who is so smitten with the beauty he hops from club to club so he doesn't miss a single show. Without hesitation he agrees to bring her back home with him.

Upon arriving in London, Robert wines and dines Nicole and takes her on expensive shopping sprees. The two quickly become lovers and she doesn't even seem to mind that he's still technically married his (rich) wife Vanessa (Claudie Lange) because the two are separated and he promises to divorce her so they can marry. The two eventually run off to a small, quiet village where Robert owns a nice country home. The locals aren't only old fashioned but also incredibly strange and gossipy. Nicole immediately gets bad vibes from many in the area, including weird caretaker / handyman Hallory (Luciano Rossi), voyeuristic boat builder Captain Lenny (George Rigaud) and a priest who talks with a voice box that sounds very similar to the stalker back in Paris. Someone also begins spying on them with binoculars and reporting their bedroom activities back to the rest of the village. Robert is away in London a lot and during one of his trips someone stops by the home and gives something to Nicole that upsets her. She disappears soon after.

Later, while Robert is in the middle of performing an eye operation on blind patient Mr. Smith (José Manuel Martín), someone enters his office and shoots him. He manages to survive the attack but all the witness can really convey to the cops is that he heard a sound similar to that of high heeled shoes. Soon after, some village fishermen find a surprise in their net: Nicole's corpse. That brings up a lot of possible suspects in both her murder and Robert's attempted murder, including many of the townspeople as well as Vanessa, who at one point attempted to pay Nicole 5000 pounds to leave her husband for good. And wouldn't ya know it, Michel has flown there all the way from France and is found hanging out in the village. Drunk, of course. It's up to Scotland Yard Inspector Baxter (Carlo Gentili) and his assistant Bergson (Fabrizio Moresco) to figure out just what's going on.

I really have to hand it to these people for having me, completely losing me and then miraculously not only getting me back by the end but also winning me over. I found myself enjoying the first 30 or so minutes (several silly 70s dance routines certainly helped), not liking where this was going in the middle and finally absolutely loving where they finally went with everything they'd already set up... even the stuff I didn't like watching! You will need to patiently stick with this one through many bumps, detours, dull patches, red herrings and seemingly pointless story elements to experience the full joy of this little roller coaster of a giallo. Thanks to a sharp script by the uber prolific Ernesto Gastaldi and “May” (Mahnahén) Velasco, how this manages to tie together the numerous characters and plot threads is rather ingenious. Not only will it please fans of Italian thrillers, but it also touches base with exploitation fans. There's at least one very gory knife murder and lots of long, lingering shots of the leading lady wearing a fine selection of bikinis, lingerie or sheer clothing (or nothing at all).

Navarro married Ercoli a year after this was made, starred in five of the eight films he directed and remained married to him until his death in 2015. Reportedly, the director bowed out of show business in the late 70s after inheriting a fortune from a relative. Navarro, on the other hand, would make occasional appearances in sleazy films until the early 90s even though she probably didn't have to. Co-star Wolff, a winner of several Best Actor awards while a theater student at UCLA, decided to take Roger Corman's advice and attempt a career in Europe after a lack of success in the States. He ended up becoming a well-known star in Italy; appearing in numerous hit spaghetti westerns and thrillers. In 1971, the same year this was released, he committed suicide in the bathtub of a hotel. I've not seen much of his work thus far, but he gives a devilishly good performance in this one. The score is by Stelvio Cipriani, who did the music for several hundred (!) Euro exploitation films.

Never released theatrically here in the U.S. and completely missing out on the whole 80s and 90s VHS cycle entirely, this wouldn't see the light of day here until the 2006 No Shame DVD release. In the UK, both this and Ercoli's follow-up Death Walks at Midnight (1972), which features many of the same actors as this one, were released in a box set called “Death Walks Twice” by Arrow Video.

★★★

... aka: El hombre vampiro (The Vampire Man)
... aka: Immer bei Anbruch der Nacht (Always at Nightfall)
... aka: It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn
... aka: Mark of the Vampire

Directed by:
Paul Landres

Eccentric loner scientist Matt Campbell, who's been conducting experiments of some sort in an old house for years, falls over at his desk and is discovered by a neighborhood boy who's been helping to supply him with animals. The boy goes and immediately retrieves friendly and good-hearted town doctor Paul Beecher (John Beal). Once Paul arrives, the scientist mutters something about finding “the answer,” hands him over a bottle of pills and instructs him to take them before he dies. Paul sticks them in his pocket and thinks nothing of it, especially after a coroner's report reveals that Dr. Campbell had a history of heart problems. A sufferer of bad migraine headaches, Paul, a widower and single father, asks his young daughter Betsy (Lydia Reed) to grab him a few headache pills. Guess what pills she grabs out of his jacket pocket instead? Yep, you got it: the pills the dead scientist gave him. It isn't long after taking one that Paul becomes ill. He dismisses his neurotic patient Marion (Ann Staunton), lies down on a bed in his office and goes to sleep; not waking until the following morning. Or so he thinks.

The next day, Sheriff Buck Donnelly (Kenneth Tobey) shows up at the office and tells Paul all about a “prowler” that was reported lurking around the neighborhood near where his office is located. Paul then receives an emergency phone call to check in on Marion. Upon arriving at her home, he finds she's bedridden, has a really bad fever and two strange puncture marks on her neck. But once she lays eyes on him she suddenly snaps out of her docile state, freaks out and keels over dead. That death is also blamed on a heart attack. Paul soon comes to the realization that his daughter possibly gave him those other pills and wants to find out as much as he can about what the scientist was up before he passed away. Thankfully, a few men show up to shed some light on everything...

Dr. Will Beaumont (Dabbs Greer), who runs a university psychology department and was both a former colleague of Dr. Campbell's and a former college friend of Paul's, arrives in town. He's brought along mysterious research assistant Henry Winston (James Griffith), who always wears sunglasses because his eyes are extremely light sensitive from a childhood trauma, to help assimilate him with Campbell's research so he can hopefully take over where the previous researcher left off. Paul meets up with them and many discoveries are made in regards to the experiments. Campbell was in the process of researching regression and developed the pills to temporarily drain blood from the brain and revert the taker's mind to a primitive state in order to one day reverse the process. He'd only tested the pills out on animals up to this point and all of them, aside from some vampire bats, have died from a rare tissue-destroying disorder called “capillary disintegration.” According to Campbell's notes, the pills (once taken to activate the process) must then be administered every 24 hour or else the subject will suffer from severe withdrawal symptoms and extreme pain.

What unfolds here is a very interesting Jekyll & Hyde-style tale of a decent man transformed into a grotesque killer by an experimental drug, though the protagonist this time out doesn't at all bring any of this upon himself and is the tragic victim of circumstance. This may not be the first film where science and not the supernatural is responsible for turning someone into a vampire, but this concept still wasn't at all common in 1957. There are no religious repellents, no lethal rays of sunlight, no stakes through the heart ... In fact, none of the standard mythology is really used aside from the vampire drinking blood from a victim's neck and even then this manages to add a neat twist. A bite doesn't transform the victim into a vampire, but instead passes along a virus that causes a rapid cellular degeneration that leads to madness and death. What is even less common is how the film works on another level entirely as an insightful addiction parable. The uncommonly thoughtful and multi-layered script was written by Patricia Fielder.

Sure, the budget is low, the make-up design isn't very good even for 1957 and the old school time lapse transformation scenes are executed rather poorly, but this manages to rise above most other 50s B pictures in a number of different ways. It also deserves better than to be written off as a "typical" product of its time: it's well-acted, intelligent and mature. Even the few minor comedy elements present are more sophisticated than usual and dependent on clever dialogue and the eccentricities of several supporting characters.

Brilliantly holding the whole thing together, and giving the proceedings a real heart, is Beal, who gives an outstanding central performance as a decent man turned into a desperate, murderous junkie by an act of science. Had this same performance been in a Hollywood drama about drug or alcohol addiction instead of a low-budget horror film about a vampire, Beal would have been a major award contender in 1957. The rest of the cast, which also includes pretty female lead Coleen Gray (Nightmare Alley, The Leech Woman) as Paul's compassionate nurse, Paul Brinegar (How to Make a Monster) and Louise Lewis (Blood of the Vampire), is also very strong.

This Gramercy Pictures production was released to theaters by United Artists and often double-billed with The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), which was directed by one of this film's three producers, Arnold Laven, and also written by Fielder. The same basic team also made the sci-fi film The Flame Barrier and another vampire film: The Return of Dracula, the following year. All of them, aside from Barrier, have been released on both DVD and VHS by MGM/UA, with Return and Vampire paired together for their "Midnite Movies" line.

★★★

... aka: Cautivo del mas allá (Captives of the Beyond)
... aka: Narco Satánico
... aka: Terror, Sex and Witchcraft

Directed by:
Rafael Portillo

You know something screwy is up when I list a film as having been released in 1968 and in 1984. As is the case here, this Mexican production from the same guy who made the Aztec Mummy flicks just happened to have two completely different versions released at two completely different times. The first version was released in 1968 as Cautivo del mas allá ("Captives of the Beyond"), which was light on the violence and sex, heavy on the melodrama and mysticism and apparently no longer of much interest to anyone once sleazier elements became the genre norm in the 70s and 80s. A decade-and-a-half later, brand new footage featuring gory murders, gut-ripping zombies, cemetery-haunting ghosts, full frontal nudity and other things we all love was shot. That was combined with bits and pieces of the original and everything was haphazardly edited together to form the 1984 theatrical release Terror, sexo y brujería ("Terror, Sex and Witchcraft"). For the posters and lobby cards of this new version, they included bloody pictures of a man stabbed through the throat and a woman with a spike stuck in her head as well as sexy pictures of a smiling woman in a bra and a nude couple embracing in order to entice theater patrons. They were also thoughtful enough the scrawl out the original title in teeny tiny letters underneath the new title as not to trick audience members (at least those with really good vision) into seeing the same film twice. Though I have no real proof to back myself up here, I have few doubts in my mind that the 80s version promising "Terror" and "Sexo" probably fared better at the box office than the original cut.

So what became of the two films once the video era rolled around? Well, to make a long story short, the likely coherent Cautivo was cast aside in favor of the senseless yet more exploitative mishmash Terror. Apparently not thinking anyone would wanted to rent a straight-up horror film, they then whipped up a new poster featuring one of the original co-stars holding a machine gun so they could sell it as an action flick! It was given the brand new title Narco Satánico and released to video South-of-the-border on the Film-Mex label in 1988. "Narco Satánico" basically means "Satanic Narcotics Dealer" which not only doesn't roll off the tongue very well but also has nothing at all to do with anything that occurs in the movie, not even the new footage! I'm not even sure if Portillo himself shot the 1980s scenes or not since the Narco release simply reuses the original film's credits and splices in the new title card a la Nick Millard.

Cautivo / Terror / Narco: A shining example of how class...

...becomes trash, for a quick buck.

Things open up with the desperate Vicki visiting a black magic-practicing witch she hopes can help her sort out her pathetic love life. You see, Vicki is in love with the wealthy and (so they keep telling us) “handsome” mustachioed architect Ricardo Santamaria. However, he's already in love with "that blonde woman" Barbara. The witch attempts to cast a spell, which backfires because Barbara has some kind of special charm protecting both her and Ricardo from evil. She then ties photos of Vicki and Ricardo together and casts another spell which will supposedly tie them together forever but that dooesn't work either. Perhaps Vicki should have just kicked back and waited this one out. When she isn't busy sunbathing topless out by her pool and having her girlfriend rub her down his tanning oil, Barbara is busy being whiny and insecure about how “distant” her lover has been recently. She's even gone so far as to hire a private eye to follow him around to make sure he's not seeing another woman behind her back. When she confesses this to Ricardo, he laughs it off and finds it cute instead of being horrified like most of us normal folks would be. The witch uses a voodoo doll to cause Barbara's father to have a fatal car accident, but that only ends up making the couple's love stronger. Now it's time to go to Plan B... as in Beelzebub.

The witch suggests that Vicki hand over her body and soul to Satan in exchange for getting her mitts on Ricardo and his moolah. She reluctantly agrees and a deep-voiced, skull-faced Satan appears before her, asks her to take her clothes off and then gives her a special dagger. With it, she can kill whoever she wants and no one will ever find out who did it. Satan then gifts her with eternal youth and beauty even though she doesn't look half bad to begin with. Using her new good looks and buxom bod (and now played by Ana Luisa Peluffo), Vicki gets a gig as a feather dancer in a nightclub. All the while, the witch is busy trapping Ricardo's soul inside a jar. She puts one powder in to make him forget all about Barbara and a pinch of salt so that no woman other than Vicki can awaken his sexual desires. The plan works and next thing we know Ricardo is moving Vicki in and can't keep his hands off of her. The union doesn't last long when Satan orders Vicki to kill him with the dagger, which she does with no hesitation; even after all of the work she put in to get him in the first place. After stabbing him through the throat, the dagger's powers make the wound and all of the blood disappear so the murder can be pawned off as an unfortunate case of natural causes.

Ricardo's brother Carlos (Carluis Saval... I think) shows up for the funeral and is soon haunted in his dreams by his brother, who walks out of his crypt long enough to inform him that he plans on possessing him and using his body to get revenge on Vicki. And that he does. Carlos surprises the Satanic murderess at her new dance show “Macumba Vicki” with flowers and quickly seduces her. The two become lovers but Carlos is unsure whether this is really happening or it's all just a dream. His secretary Margarita (Silvia Suárez) suggests he go to see an unorthodox psychiatrist (Roberto Cañedo), who hooks him up to a lie detector on his first visit and starts drilling him with questions. After confessing the truth, the doctor gives him sleeping pills and tells him to just let the dreams play themselves out. In his dreams, Carlos is a jealous lover and when he suspects Vicki has been dishonest with him, he stabs her to death. Uh oh. His relationship with Vicki actually wasn't a dream and he really killed her!

After lifting his fingerprints off the murder weapon, Carlos is taken into custody and the film suddenly switches gears and becomes an absurd courtroom drama for a good 10 minutes. Defense Attorney Mendoza (David Reynoso) decides to take on Carlos' case and, with some help from the lie detector shrink, attempts to prove that he's innocent because he was in a “hypnometric trance” at the time of the murder. In other words, a vengeance-seeking spirit took possession of his body and forced him to astrally project out of his body to do their dirty work. The verdict? Guilty as charged. The film then does another 180 and suddenly becomes a zombie film in more newly-added scenes. In these, the witch goes to where Ricardo is buried and hopes to put his soul at rest by driving the dagger into his head. Instead, Ricardo emerges from the grave as a rotting zombie and sinks the dagger into hers. He's back just in time to stumble upon his brother Carlos dying by firing squad and walks up to one of the soldiers and rips his guts out. From there, he goes to pay his true love Barbara, who's gracious enough to show off all her goodies taking a nude bath first, a visit.

Few films leave me almost speechless but this strange, confusing, nonsensical yet deliriously entertaining mess must be seen to be believed. Oh screw it. Just find this. Watch it. I guarantee you won't be seeing many other films in your lifetime as bizarre as this one. You'll be perplexed watching old and new footage that looks completely different desperately attempting to become one. You'll pull your hair out trying to figure out who is who and where so-and-so came from and what the hell is going on from one scene to the next. As an added bonus, this contains some of the worst editing I've ever seen. There are split second flashes of the most random things imaginable like clothing on the floor, bare breasts, swirls, darting eyeballs (which are also sometimes superimposed over the action), a man in a plastic devil mask rocking back and forth and sometimes even snippets of scenes we've already seen. There's no way some of that was intentional!

In the original film, Saval played both Carlos and Ricardo and is credited as such in the opening credits. In this new version, he only plays Carlos and another actor plays Ricardo in the new scenes. One of these is a crazy nightmare featuring a black cat, a possum, a snake, an owl, fog and zombies, one of whom stabs a vagrant to death after he attempts to rob Ricardo's ghost at knife point (!!) The Vicki character is played by Peluffo in the older footage but by another actress in the newer footage. The new actress is supposed to be the character before she's turned beautiful by Satan but is still used occasionally even after that. Some scenes contain new voice-overs that don't match the original actor's voices at all. An echoing laugh heard numerous times sounds exactly like Vincent Price's laugh at the end of Michael Jackson's “Thriller.” In fact, it may actually be!

Working out a cast list for this film is next to impossible. Since a lot of the original footage ended up on the cutting room floor, many of the listed actors aren't even in this new cut of the movie. Beatriz Aguirre, who is billed third in the original film's credits for playing Ricardo and Carlos' mother, had her role whittled down to next to nothing in this version. The Cautivo poster brags about it being the “debut estelar” of an actor named Gonzalo Aiza, yet the Terror poster calls the same actor Carluis Saval while the Narco release reverts back to the Aiza name for the video box yet uses the Saval name in the credits. Say what? Under any name, this man either didn't appear in another movie after his “debut estelar” or he's a fan of fucking with people's minds by using multiple fake names for the same film. To add to the confusion, a Dr. Gonzalo Aiza Avalos is credited as the producer. The same guy? The star's father who backed the film to give his son his one and only starring role? Who knows. I want to hear from you pronto, Mr. Saval / Aiza / Avalos. None of the actors featured in the new footage are credited though a few looked vaguely familiar, especially the “new” Ricardo; hilarious fake mustache and all. How this one came to be and who made it and starred in it is pretty much a complete mystery and seeing how the director and most of the cast and crew are no longer with us, it will likely remain that way.

SBIG

... aka: Morbidness

Directed by:
Gonzalo Suárez

Hidden gem alert, folks! While this one isn't all that easy to find (it was never officially released in the U.S. or many other places outside of Spain) it's definitely worth the effort to track down, especially for fans of subtle, ambiguous horror. Immediately following their wedding, young newlyweds Diego (Víctor Manuel) and Alicia (Ana Belén) hit the road with their camper in search of some adventure and fun. Feeling liberated and free, she even strips off her wedding gown down to a mesh bikini at a gas station in full view of the attendant. They drive along and finally pull off the main highway onto a dirt road, ignoring a “Prohibido el Paso” sign as they do. Going deep into the woods, they finally pull over in an empty field and decide to camp there for a few days. They gorge themselves on food and wine, have sex, carve their names into a tree, play dodge ball, discuss their love and their fears and other strange things, blown up some inflatable chairs, sunbathe and decide to open all of their gifts; most of which they mock and nonchalantly toss on the ground. Well, except for a Mona Lisa painting. Alicia wants to hang that by the fireplace of her beautiful country home. Once Diego buys it for her, of course. But the honeymoon doesn't last forever as they say... though usually newlywed bliss lasts longer than a day!

All of the happiness, passion and optimism about the future quickly falls by the wayside in favor of boredom, insecurity, bickering and a curious sudden disconnect between the two. He's brought along his economics books to catch up on some work. She's not happy about it and has no idea what to do with herself. When he suggests she go on a walk, she accuses him of treating her like a child. What we've done here is basically fast-forwarded to the problems and hurdles most couples face years down the line in their relationship. In this case you have the working career man and the housewife. He immerses himself in his work, becomes complacent, stops being attentive to her basic needs (he even has to be nagged continually to get her some clean water) and adopts an almost condescending, resentful attitude toward her at times. She quickly becomes bored, feels unfulfilled in her role and starts becoming increasingly neurotic. All of this coincides with a strong gust of wind, which is just the beginning of the odd things that start going on in the natural world around them as their relationship suddenly starts crumbling.

Alicia starts growing more paranoid and begins to suspect not only that he husband is lying but also that the two of them are not alone. She constantly has a feeling she's being watching, most particularly when she's naked, sleeping or being intimate with her new husband. She steps on a hairpin outside on the ground... and she doesn't use hairpins. Somehow the windshield wipers on their car turn on, which coincides with her wedding gown (left in the backseat) disappearing. One of her pet hamsters eats the head off of its mate, survives their attempt to drown it in the sink and eventually has to be tossed outside in a plastic bag. Their wedding cake topper is found floating in a river with the eyes on the bride gouged out. Diego discovers a seemingly-abandoned home nearby and takes water from their well, but the jugs are found emptied later on. And there's a lot more weirdness where that comes from.

I couldn't help but feel a strong sense of deja vu as this one unfolded. That's probably because it shares more than a few things in common with the later and much more famous Australian film LONG WEEKEND (1978). That Colin Eggleston-directed / Everett De Roche-scripted effort centers around an unhappy, extremely unlikable couple on the verge of divorce who take their camper to a secluded area in a last ditch effort to save their doomed relationship. Their foulness of mouth and personality, and their complete disregard for the natural world around them, leads mother nature to strike out at them. Morbo is so similar in so many different ways that I refuse to believe the makers of Weekend didn't see this one beforehand. And while I did enjoy Eggleston's film quite a bit, this is the more sophisticated and multi-layered of the two.

Director Suárez, who worked on a number of other genre films I'm now excited to check out, isn't one to completely tie himself down with genre restrictions and does a very impressive job making much from little. Most of the film takes place on one plot of land and the surrounding forest, yet he's able to keep viewers fully immersed in the plot and intrigued about where things may be headed. Not only that, but he generates a good amount of suspense and is able to create effectively eerie, disquieting moments from things as simple as the rustling of trees in the wind. Juan Amorós' excellent cinematography and an outstandingly creepy music score from Jacques Denjean both also contribute heavily to the film's success. The leads, who are both famous singers in Spain, deserve kudos as well for solid performances and holding the whole thing together. Belén is especially good.

American character actor Michael J. Pollard, who is always weird but perhaps even weirder than usual here with a deep, dubbed voice, turns up at the end in an enigmatic role as a backwoods creep who lives in a crumbling old mill house with his blind, wheelchair-bound, disfigured wife (María Vico), who was burned up in a forest fire. The wife, who's suicidal and bitter to the point where she doesn't even want to be touched, and the husband, who's been so long without companionship (and sex) he's driven to some very creepy behavior, seem to be a grim reflection of where the young couple may be headed one day. However, the same can't be said for the two stars in real life. They fell in love while making this film, got married and remain together to this very day. Suárez used both of them again the following year in his adventure-fantasy Al diablo con amor (To Hell with Love).

★★★1/2

... aka: Body, The
... aka: El dulce cuerpo de Deborah
... aka: En röst i mörkret (A Voice in the Darkness)
... aka: Married to Kill
... aka: Sweet Body of Deborah, The

Directed by:
Romolo Guerrieri

Only very forgiving giallo addicts are going to want to swill this perfumed toilet water. Tranquilizer-popping, possibly unstable American Deborah (Carroll Baker) and her hunky new hubby Marcel (Jean Sorel) decide to take their honeymoon in Geneva, Switzerland so she can see where he grew up and learn as much about him as possible. Well, more like learn something about him as the two don't seem to know each other all that well. Everything is going fine (at least as far as sex and nice scenery are concerned) until they decide to go to a nightclub to watch a black dancer strip down to a g-string and Marcel runs into an old buddy of his. The friend, Philippe (Luigi Pistilli), glares at him, gives him the cold shoulder and turns right around and leaves as soon as her spots Marcel. Marcel chases him down only to have Philippe brand him a murderer; accusing him of killing his former girlfriend Suzanne prior to running off to the U.S. Philippe insinuates he murdered her, though the death is on the book as a suicide. Deborah overhears the entire conversation and, later on, presses Marcel to provide an explanation. That he does and a long flashback follows.

Prior to going to America, Marcel, who'd fallen on some hard times, fell in love with the well-to-do Suzanne Boileau (“Evelyn Stewart” / Ida Galli). Because some thugs he owed money to were beating him and threatening his life on a regular basis, Marcel had Suzanne swipe some money from her loaded parents to pay them off. Wanting to better himself (and pay them back), he then decided to go to America and stay with some friends in Boston until he could get back on his feet and provide better for their future. He promised Suzanne he'd write her every day and that he'd soon return to her, but that all changed once he met Deborah and fell in love with her. Supposedly the heartbroken Suzanne then committed suicide in his absence. Philippe is bitter because he was also in love with Suzanne and perhaps now wants revenge.

Now wanting to find out exactly what happened, Marcel goes to visit Suzanne's parents only to find the house has been abandoned long ago. When they go inside, they find a lit cigarette with lipstick on it and hear someone playing the piano but no one is to be found. A phone rings and the voice on the other end threatens Deborah; claiming they're going to kill her to punish Marcel for what he's done. A later call to the phone company reveals the phone at the villa was disconnected over a year ago. Never mind all of that, the lovey dovey duo have a plane to catch to Nice, France. Upon arrival, they rent a huge orange villa out in the country for a week and then many little things occur that give Marcel the impression that they didn't leave their troubles behind back in Geneva. Suzanne's favorite song ends up in their stack of records, Marcel thinks he sees Philippe at a boxing match and the strange phone calls begin again...

A lame and utterly forgettable thriller, Deborah is slow-moving, almost offensively empty and vapid and completely devoid of thrills and suspense. This has to be one of the weakest, most bland scripts ever penned by the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi. The dialogue is awful, the one-dimensional characters function as little more than mannequins to adorn with fine late 60s fashions and things plod along from one boring non-event to another until the very end when it unleashes a few customary "surprises." Sadly, the last minute plot twists are all incredibly lame and predictable (gee, a 300 thousand dollar life insurance policy... who'd have ever guessed!) and come way too late in the game to salvage this, anyway.

The only thrills this attempts to generate are of the erotic kind. However, since this was made during a big transitional period in world cinema when censorship was just starting to erode, the scenes are all extremely tame. We're talking close-up shots of arms, legs and shoulders and barely discernible “nude” scenes shot through foggy shower doors. In other words, there is no real nudity from the stars (at least not in the 92 minute version I viewed) despite about a half dozen “love” scenes. Instead, we get long sequences of the two leads kissing, hugging, lying in bed with strategically draped blankets wrapped around them and pawing at each other while spouting laughably insipid “romantic” dialogue (“You're so delicious... and I'm always so hungry.”) Often resembling a feature-length perfume commercial (perhaps a better alternate title would have been “Eau de Giallo”), the print ads pretty much sold the entire film on the (bare) backs of the hot lead couple. Alas, it takes more than a few pretty faces to make something worth watching.

I love Baker in certain roles (like her brilliant turn in Andy Warhol's Bad) but, let's face it, when the woman is bad, she is really bad. In the English version, the actress dubbed her own voice (I believe several of the other main actors did as well) and, despite being in her mid-30s when this was filmed, usually sounds like a frail old lady. Her voice cracks, warbles and completely lacks inflection and she often awkwardly breaks and pauses between words as if trying to sync her dub to her lips. She does however look great and some of her clothing choices are pretty hilarious. During one scene, she cuts it loose in a comic book-themed nightclub (“Kaboom!”) decked out in Christmas bulb earrings and bracelets. In another, she plays Twister on the front lawn while dressed in a lime green mesh onesie. Oh, the late 60s. Gotta love 'em.

Genre regular George Hilton is in this one, too, playing a voyeuristic painter named Robert. Born in Uruguay, the handsome Hilton started acting in Argentina but quickly relocated to Europe so that he could actually have a career. He was far better suited for the spaghetti westerns he was frequently cast in than suspense thrillers and horror, but found himself cast in numerous early 70s gialli anyway; usually ones also produced by Luciano Martino and directed by Luciano's brother Sergio Martino (who was one of the production managers on this one). In most of those films Hilton came off as incredibly bland and one-note, but he's a bit more animated and less wooden here despite the film itself being worse than his later efforts.

This French / Italian production was given a U.S. theatrical release in 1969 by Warner Brothers / Seven Arts but was never officially issued here on home video. Italy (on the Nocturno label), Greece (Key Video), Hungary (Mokep), Brazil (Mac) and Spain (CJ) all received VHS releases, while Italy, Sweden and Japan have gotten DVDs. The director was born under the name Romolo Girolami and is the brother of director Marino Girolami and uncle of director Enzo G. Castellari and actor Ennio Girolami. He also made the giallo The Double (1971) and a number of westerns.

★1/2

... aka: Club War
... aka: 1,000 Ways to Die
... aka: War

Directed by:
Michael Herz
"Samuel Weil" (Lloyd Kaufman)

Since the 80s became more and more conservative as the decade progressed, violent action movies featuring flag-waving American meat-heads (usually with military training) going overseas to kick evil foreigner ass became all the rage. An excellent dipstick to gauge where the decade headed was the Rambo series. The initial entry in the franchise, 1982's First Blood, took place in America and dealt with a disrespected, forgotten drifter war vet who's forced into action after being victimized by abusive and corrupt police officers in a small Washington town. This film was clearly made with anti-war commentary in mind, particularly in regards to the neglect and poor treatment of our soldiers after they've served. On the other hand, the later Rambo sequels (released in 1985 and 1988), threw lead character John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) into third world countries and asked audiences to cheer him on as he blew away countless Vietnamese, Afghani and “Commie” bad guys. Audiences also flocked to theaters to see Arnold Schwarzenegger take on pesky Central and South Americans in Commando (1985) and PREDATOR (1987) and Chuck Norris taking on the Vietnamese in three Missing in Action films and Lebanese and South American terrorists in two Delta Force films. And there were plenty more where those came from.

A number of directors offered up a counter balance of sorts to the action heroism of the above films (which some felt not only tastelessly glorified war but also were pushing a right wing blind patriotism agenda during the Reagan Era), including Oliver Stone with Platoon (1985), Stanley Kubrick with Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Brian De Palma with Casualties of War (1989); all of which made war out to be what it truly is: ugly, depressing, often utterly pointless and dehumanizing for all parties involved. Since the 80s saw plenty of shoot-em-up war action movies as well as plenty of serious war dramas, it seemed like the perfect time for a war movie spoof. After all, there was plenty to poke fun at and who better to tackle such delicate subject matter than Troma, the folks behind The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke 'em High? Well, actually, I can think of quite of few people who'd have been better suited but considering no one else at the time would even think of making a movie like this, Troma's War is what we get.

A Tromaville Airlines plane crash lands right off the coast of a seemingly-uninhabited island near Cuba. Many are killed, but the survivors gather together on the beach and try to figure out what to do. Though the majority of these people are outright obnoxious to start they strangely become almost likable by the end. The closest thing we have to central figures in this group are the shirtless Taylor (Sean Bowen), who's a smart ass but basically a nice guy, and Lydia (Carolyn Beauchamp), an uptight, tough girl feminist. There's also mysterious British spy / blowgun assassin Marshall (Steven Crossley), racist, sexist, homophobic and violence-loving Vietnam vet Parker (“Michael Ryder” / Rick Wasburn), flamboyant punk singer Sean (Alex Cserhart) and his all-female band “The Bearded Clams” (Aleida Harris, Mary Yorio and Susan Bachli), blind vegetarian Jennifer (Lisa Petruno), Jewish widow Dottie (Jessica Dublin), single mother Kim (Brenda Brock) and her baby (Lisbeth Kaufman), priest Father Brown (Dan Snow), Wall Street broker aka corporate slime Roger Kirkland (Patrick Weathers), fat guy Cooney (Ara Romanoff), feisty Latina Maria (Lorayn Lane Deluca), cancer-stricken, one-armed Hardwick (Charles Kay-Hune), a prissy male flight attendant, a neurotic woman and others. Yes, that's a lot of people to keep track of but at least everyone has their own individual quirks.

Almost immediately, the gang notice some heavily-armed soldiers patrolling the woods but this isn't a military rescue mission looking for them. The island is instead home to a multi-ethnic and multicultural group of terrorists, who've gathered there from all over the world with one goal in mind: to “make American crumble.” They plan on infiltrating the U.S. and causing as much destruction as possible from coast to coast, which includes setting off car bombs, infecting citizens with AIDS and poisoning every major water supply. The group is working hand-in-hand with republican politicians (Ha!) in the U.S. who are helping to fund their little organization and want to freak out the population and destabilize the country in order to line their own pockets, increase their power in Washington and help out their corporate buddies. Gee, sounds like the George W. Bush reelection campaign all over again.

Ludicrously believing the plane crash survivors are actually commandos sent there on a mission to destroy them, the terrorists set out to hunt them down, but our band of heroes prove to be tougher and more resilient than they expected. This leads to lots of lengthy, laughably violent battle scenes that include lots of gunfire and explosions and death by snake, quicksand, neck snapping, gutting and harakiri, a crossbow arrow to the crotch, a tongue ripped out, mutant Siamese twins cut in two, ears cut off and fashioned into a necklace and literally hundreds of extras being shot, stabbed and blown to smithereens over the course of the film. This is exactly what you'd expect from Troma taking on the war genre. It's fast-paced, noisy, crude, gory, zany, filled with violence and T&A, sometimes very funny and clever but at other times painfully stupid and irritating. One thing it's not is boring.

Not all of this works and the film suffers mostly from several incredibly tasteless “gags” that simply aren't funny (like a woman getting raped by an AIDS-infected man covered in puss-oozing soars) and some hideous overacting. Especially awful are the bad guys, including a training camp colonel doing one of the worst Schwarzenegger impressions imaginable and an incredibly annoying, snorting, pig-snouted military base commander. Subtle this ain't.

At 3 million dollars, this remains Troma's highest-budgeted in-house production to date. It was originally called Club War (also the release title in Germany) and played at numerous international film festivals; even winning a critic's award at Fantasporto in 1990. However, it wasn't financially successful as a theatrical feature and had to recoup its budget on home video. The cast also includes Pericles Lewnes (who was in charge on the special effects along with William Jennings) and Troma regulars Rick Collins and Joe Fleishaker.

★★1/2

... aka: Siluman Perempuan (Demon Woman)
... aka: Temptation of the Demon Woman

Directed by:
Ackyl Anwari

Here's some more ultra-obscure Indonesian weirdness. This one's based on a ghostly figure in Southeast Asian folklore called Penanggalan / Penanggal; a word that literally means “detach,” which are also referred to as Hantu Penanggal (or “detached ghost”). These bloodsucking creatures are typically created via black magic spells and curses and appear to be normal human females during the day. By night, however, their heads detach from their bodies, complete with stomach and entrails dangling beneath them, and fly around causing havoc. This being is common throughout Asian folklore and is known by many different names and with slightly altered mythology depending on the region in question. Elsewhere in Indonesia it is called a Leyak or Palasik. In Thailand it is called a Krasue. In Cambodia it's an Ap. In Mayalsia it's a Balan-balan. It's the Philippines it's a Manananggal. The two best known films (which aren't well known at all unless you're a big cult movie fan) featuring these creatures are the Indonesian production Leák aka MYSTICS IN BALI (1981) and the Hong Kong / Taiwan co-production The Witch with Flying Head (1982). There have been some more recent offerings as well, like the Thai productions Krasue aka Demonic Beauty (2002) and Krasue Valentine (2006).

The wonderfully animated Sofia W.D. (who went on to play the Leák Queen in the aforementioned Mystics in Bali and also appeared in the Suzzanna vehicle Queen of Black Magic) stars as an old, ugly Penanggalan named Siluman (a word that translates to “demon”). Siluman is an extremely powerful, entirely evil, cackling, fetus-feasting witch with crazy hair and over-sized plastic fangs. Not only can she detach her head and send it after people (notably pregnant women whose fetuses she sucks directly out of you-know-where), but she can also shoot out her eyeballs to spy on others from afar, make animals do her bidding, disappear and reappear at will and transform into a younger, beautiful woman. The immature and non-religious Ban (Fadly), who lives on a modest, secluded farm with his pregnant wife Karta (Rina“Hassim” / Hasyim) and their young daughter Marni, sets out on foot for the local village to get some food. Siluman, who's been spying on his family and wants their upcoming baby to “be my dessert!” transforms into the lovely young Sumirah (Doris Callebaute). Sumirah calls forth her legion of cobras to attack her so that she can meet Ban when he rescues her.

After laying a sob story on the naive young farmer about how she's been kicked out of her and is now homeless, Ban agrees to let her stay in a shack on their property. With a wave of the finger, Sumirah transforms the shack it into a luxurious, fully-furnished home and later turns it into a heated pool and even a disco club! It doesn't take much effort on her part to entrance and then seduce the family man, which leaves his perplexed wife wondering why he's not returning home at night. Sumirah starts out nice, giving Ban medicine for his wife, having sex with him, helping him win money and saving him from thugs who attempt to beat him up, but that soon changes when she starts planting ideas in his head and possesses him. She convinces him that his wife and brother-in-law Mario (El Koesno) are conspiring against him and plotting to poison him. In an enraged trance, he smacks his wife around and tries to stab Mario with a knife, so they cut a chicken's throat and dribble fresh blood into his mouth to break the spell. Things only get worse from there.

Gradually, Ban is transformed into a drunken, wife-and-child beating brute with sometimes green, glowing eyes who pukes up maggots and bloody worms, pushes villagers around and bites off bottle caps with his teeth! When his wife catches him with Sumirah, the two ladies get into a hair-pulling cat fight and Ban ends up taking his new mistress' side. He demands a divorce but his brother-in-law won't hear of it, especially since he and Karta are living on his family's land. After conveniently running into a white-robed shaman (Moch. Baun Gazhali) who exorcises the demon from within, Ban returns home with a clear head and catches the witch doing a little maintenance on her “pretty” head that was scratched during the fight with the wife. Now wanting to get back on the path of the Lord, Ban seeks out the shaman, who gives him a necklace that he's supposed to hang on his door for seven days and nights to keep the witch away. Unfortunately, Siluman is able to send a raven to remove the necklace, sneaks in, sucks out Karta's fetus and then kidnaps Ban and takes him back to the shack. Having finally gotten her “dessert” why she continues to terrorize the family is pretty much anyone's guess.

The shaman then sends Karta to see a crippled old beggar (“H. Sjamsuddin Sjafei” / Syamsuddin Syafei) who's actually some kind of witch doctor. Before he'll help her, he insists that she first take a bite of his wounded, maggot-infested leg (!!) Why? Well, it comes in handy later on when Siluman scratches her husband's chest and she pukes up green slime that instantly heals the wound. The wife and the beggar / witch doctor manage to chase the witch off, but she has other plans in store for the family. First, she turns Mario's wife (“Waty Siregar” / Emawati Siregur) into a cat and impersonates her. After unsuccessfully attempting to seduce Mario, she transforms back into the ugly witch, shoots him with her fingernails and then turns him into a goat. The beggar and Siluman then square off for the final battle which includes lots of cheap laser effects, fire, nets, a giant butcher knife, hair used as a rope and the witch's fingernails growing about five feet long and catching on fire. With the evil defeated, the shaman shows up to deliver the moral of our story: “If you embrace religion, this kind of thing will not happen again.” Ha!

This horribly edited, ridiculous yet never boring horror-fantasy schlock also features music stolen from numerous other films (including The Omen and The Visitor), tambourine-playing drag queens instigating a fight at a gambling parlor, two men forced to punch each other out because of a spell, sped-up fight sequences, someone really getting bitten by a snake and noodles being turned into worms. Unfortunately, there's also cruelty and death dished out to several animals. In one scene, a poor tailless cat gets snatched up, smacked in the face repeatedly, waved around and then thrown right onto the floor. During another overlong scene, the witch doctor unleashes his mini-army of mongooses onto some cobras, who proceed to chew them to bits. Those scenes are anything but fun to watch and put a damper over what is otherwise a pretty amusing and silly film.

Also in the cast are S. Parya (who also did the special effects), artist Bokir and comedic actor Darto Helm (from Tuyul), who is prominently featured on the posters despite only appearing briefly as a drunken gambler. Naturally, this never saw the light of day here in the U.S., nor in most of the rest of the world. It's so obscure it's currently not even listed on IMDb and I could find no DVD, VCD or VHS covers for it. The version I saw was recorded from a broadcast on the Indonesian UHF station Surya Citra Televisi (SCTV) some time in the 90s.

★★

... aka: Blancheville Monster, The
... aka: Démoniac
... aka: Edgar Allan Poe: Horror
... aka: Edgar Allan Poe's Horror
... aka: Horror: The Blancheville Monster
... aka: Le manoir de la terreur (The Mansion of Terror)

Directed by:
"Martin Herbert" (Alberto De Martino)

A week before her 21st birthday, Emilie De Blancheville (“Joan Hills” / Ombretta Colli) returns to her family castle in England for the first time in many years, bringing along her best friend Alice Taylor (Irán Eory), who she met in college in America, and Alice's brother John (“Richard Davis” / Vanni Materassi). Since her father was burned to death in a fire while she was away, or so she's been told, Emilie's brother Rodéric (Gérard Tichy) has taken over and there have been a number of big changes made in the interim. For starters, all of the staff members Emilie remembers from her childhood are gone and they've all been replaced by a mysterious and shady new group of servants. The new housekeeper is Miss Eleonore (Helga Liné) who, despite being gorgeous and not the old crone usually seen in these films, is so solemn and sinister she manages to give Emilie a fright by just standing there, and new butler Alistair ("Frank Moran" / Paco Morán) isn't much better. The family physician, who'd treated the past three generations of the De Blancheville family has also been replaced by a newer / younger model in Doctor LaRouche (Leo Anchóriz).

During dinner, the visitors hear some strange noises that Rodéric tells them are dogs. Later that night, Alice wakes from her sleep to go on a midnight stroll, only to stumble upon some strange goings-on in the tower involving Eleonore, a syringe and a wailing, disfigured “monster.” Alice passes out, wakes in her bed and is told it was all in her imagination. Later, Rodéric gathers everyone together and finally spills the beans. The father wasn't actually killed in the fire; only severely disfigured and turned into a raving maniac in need of constant sedation. After Alice interrupted Eleonore giving him his treatment, he escaped into the woods and is now haunting the grounds. Carved on the headstone of the family tomb is a prophecy that states that the De Blancheville bloodline is set to end during this generation when the last female descendant reaches the age of 21. Now that her father is a grotesque madman, some believe he'd like to make the prophecy come true.

A search party is organized to scour the woods looking for the father but they can find no trace of him. That night, he pays a visit to Emilie, hypnotizes her and leads her outside to the family tomb and tries to temp her to crawl into her grave to experience “the sweetness of death.” Luckily for her, both the butler and the doctor saw her leave the castle and followed them there, which sends the father running off before he can complete his task. The next day, Emilie wakes up with a muddy nightgown feeling very peculiar, disoriented and with no idea what had happened the night before. She's not quite the same after that, starts having fainting spells and falls into a depression. Alice and her brother John (who's fallen in love with Emilie) attempt to find out just what's going on. Is her father really lurking around trying to fulfill the family prophecy? Is she being driven mad? Is she being slowly poisoned? Is someone making good use of Franz Anton Mesmer's book Hypnotism and Magnetism?

I consider myself a pretty patient person, but this dreary little mystery takes so long to really kick into gear it's going to make most people check out long before any of the better sequences even occur. Instead of the moody Gothic horror we all came to see, for a good hour we are treated to something more akin to a Gothic soap opera. It's talky, set bound and filled with the usual shady characters played by actors attempting to give off an ambiguously suspicious vibe. The numerous romantic entanglements get to be a bit much as well. Of course, Emilie and John have their thing but then we have the doctor falling in love with Alice who's already in love with Rodéric who already has a thing going on with Eleonore who's also got something going on with... Yeah, you get the picture.

Not that this doesn't have its moments. There's good, high contrast, shadow-filled black-and-white photography courtesy of Alejandro Ulloa, decent art direction, lots of candlelit strolls down dark corridors and all of the expected atmospheric Gothic accoutrements. At around the hour mark, there's a pretty good Corman-esque nightmare sequence shot on blank sets with lots of fog and use of superimposition. The last fifteen minutes are pretty solid, with all of the story threads getting adequately tied together. It helps that some of these later scenes take us outside the dreary castle to an amazing old crumbling church that looks identical to the main shooting location used in the first Blind Dead film. Hell, it may even be the same exact location. That place is far too cool not to show up in other horror films shot in Spain.

Shades of Edgar Allan Poe abound, as this pinches ideas from several of his stories, most obviously The Fall of the House of Usher, but also a little Premature Burial toward the end. Interestingly, Poe's name is nowhere in the film's actual credits but was used extensively in the advertising, with many posters placing his name right above the title.

The cast is fairly decent in this one and there are a number of lovely actresses on hand. Former beauty queen Eory (who was born Elvira Teresa Eory Sidi and took her stage name from her country of birth) and Colli, a frequent presence in peplum and sci-fi films for a number of years before becoming a singer and eventually a politician, are nothing to sneeze at. Hell, Colli even does the late night corridor shuffle at one point clad in a sheer nightgown that doesn't leave much to the imagination. However, it's the presence of a completely buttoned-up Liné (in her first genre role) that garners the most attention. Like Barbara Steele, this woman was absolutely perfect for these kind of films so it's no wonder she landed many other similar roles throughout her career. She's pretty much matched in the sinister department by Anchóriz in what was sadly his only horror role. How this man never got cast as Satan at least once in his career is beyond me.

Though a cut English-dubbed version was distributed by AIP for TV showings, this took forever to get a home video release here in America. That wouldn't occur until a rather shoddy print (the same dubbed AIP-TV cut) popped up on numerous cheap sets distributed by Alpha and Mill Creek in the mid 2000s. There are differences between the various releases but only minor ones, including a different opening sequence depending on which version you see. The British theatrical cut (which has the alternate opening not seen in the U.S. version) was made available on DVD by Retromedia in 2013, which was the best-quality version of the film up to that point. In France, they got a sepia-tinted VHS release in the 80s under the title Démoniac (Delta Video) and, in 2015, a widescreen remastered DVD under the title Le manoir de la terreur. Unfortunately, the latter doesn't come with an English option but the Retromedia release was just fine by my standards.

★★

... aka: Gli invasori spaziali (The Space Invaders)
... aka: Invasion vom Mars (Invasion from Mars)
... aka: L'attaque des martiens (Attack of the Martians)
... aka: Les envahisseurs de la planète rouge (Invaders from the Red Planet)

Directed by:
William Cameron Menzies

13-year-old David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) has a great interest is science and astronomy, something he's picked up from his scientist father George (Leif Erickson), who works as an engineer at a rocket manufacturing plant. David's so dedicated to studying the stars that he sets his alarm for 4am just so he doesn't miss the chance to get a clear look at the Great Nebula. Afterward, he's awoken by a loud humming noise and bright lights and spots what he thinks is a spaceship landing beyond the sand dunes near his home. He wakes up his father and tells him about what he'd just seen, which has George heading out to the dunes on his own. By morning, he hasn't returned. Concerned, his wife Mary (Hillary Brooke) phones the cops. Two officers show up and go to the dunes, only to be swallowed up by something under the sand. Both George and the officers eventually turn up, though when they do they're not quite the same. The once kind and loving George is now extremely irritable, cold and short-tempered, even going so far as to slap his son to the ground for no reason. He also seems to be in some kind of strange plot with the two policemen. David notices that both his pops and the officers have small, needle-like puncture wounds on the back of their necks.

More people in town are tricked into going to the sand pit and return not quite the same as before. A little girl named Kathy (Janine Perreau) falls in and returns home only to set the basement on fire with gasoline. After George takes Mary up to the dunes, poor David finds he really has no one to turn to. That is until the taken-over police chief throws the boy in the slammer and another officer calls in psychologist Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter), who becomes an unlikely ally and saves David from having to go home to his parents when his mother tries to insinuate he got his alien invasion ideas from “reading those trashy science fiction magazines.” Pat is friends with astronomer Dr. Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz) and takes the boy to the observatory where he works. After David recounts his story and the astronomer and Pat get some solid evidence of what's going down at the sand pit, Kelston calls up the military and troops are soon on their way led by the surprisingly open-minded Colonel Fielding (Morris Ankrum).

After young Kathy is found dead, an autopsy reveals not only that she'd suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage but also that she's had a small crystalline gadget attached to the base of her brain, which the subterranean aliens use to control their victims. They not only give out orders using the device but also can terminate their slaves in a second's notice. Anyone who'd disappeared down the sand pit thus far, including David's parents, the police chief, two officers and an army general, have undergone the procedure and now must be found and taken to a brain surgeon to have them removed. The military then descend into a series of dark caves the malicious space visitors have carved underground in an effort to stop them.

Invaders is one of the most famous low-budget sci-fi flicks from its decade and it's easy to see why this one scared the hell out of the Baby Boomer generation. This is not only told from the viewpoint of a child but it's fashioned specifically to both capture the feel of a child's nightmare (and a child's vivid imagination) and deal with common childhood fears (like not being able to trust adults), which is precisely why it struck a particular chord with the youth of the 50s and 60s. The first 20 minutes or so brilliantly capture the feeling of being trapped in a bad dream, which is brought full circle at the end with a bookmarking scene that brings us right back to where we started. This feel is further accentuated by expressionistic, vacant sets, taller-than-normal doorways, exaggeratedly long halls and other off-kilter touches to give the film the feeling of unreality. All of this was clearly by design for Menzies, who was also the production designer and had previously won several art direction Academy Awards.

The creature design is also memorable. The “Invaders” of the title are led by just one master alien; a silver, pint-sized being with tentacles that's kept in a glass globe. Though small, it looks very serious like it really means business and, since it doesn't speak, its intentions for Earth and its denizens are left ambiguous. This alien design clearly went on to influence the look of Belial in the Basket Case series. Doing most of the alien's dirty work and hard labor are a bunch of tall mutant (amusingly pronounced “mu-taunt” by the cast) slaves, which are basically tall men in baggy suits with giant plastic cups over their eyes. The spaceship they've traveled in is just like many of the other sets and almost a blank canvas colorfully lit up with green and blue and with the walls casting large, ominous shadows.

This isn't without some major flaws, though. After a really strong start the dull mid-section drags and it's downright sloppy at times in regards to how it incorporates stock footage and recycles shots. Some sequences manage to be poorly directed, poorly shot and poorly edited, including a bit where a couple of alien-possessed humans attempt to assassinate a scientist. That said, this is still a minor classic of its day (with all of the expected cold war themes) and still worth seeing, particularly for its odd and unique visual presentation.

Filmed on a budget of less than 300,000 dollars, this was rushed into production to beat the upcoming 2-million-budgeted THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) to theaters. That it did, by three whole months, and it became the first color alien invasion film as a result. This also deserves a lot of credit for helping to develop the popular concept of aliens taking over human bodies. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) usually gets credit for that, but this film did it first and also did it several years before Jack Finney's Body Snatchers novel was published in 1955.

There are some noteworthy differences between the 78-minute U.S. and 83-minute British releases of this film, most importantly the latter attempting to dress up the sets and altering the ending, which essentially ruins the director's entire vision in the process! This was done because British censors found the original ending not upbeat and positive enough for their liking. Some of the original actors were even called back to shoot new footage specifically for the British release (including a longer and talkier scene at the observatory where they discuss UFO cases) months after production had wrapped. Stick with the U.S. version if possible, though the 50th Anniversary "Special Edition" DVD from Image contains both prints.

The cast also includes William Phipps and Milbur Stone, plus uncredited appearances by a pre-Leave It to BeaverBarbara Billingsley as a secretary, Bert Freed, Peter Brocco, Robert Shayne and Richard Deacon in his film debut. In theaters, it played both as a standalone feature and (later) as part of a double bill with This Island Earth (1955). Tobe Hooper offered up a big budget remake in 1986, which was both critically panned and a financial flop.

★★★

... aka: Dancer and the Vampire, The
... aka: Die Geliebte des Vampirs (The Beloved Vampire)
... aka: La maitresse du vampire (Mistress of the Vampire)
... aka: Vampire and the Ballerina, The
... aka: Vampire's Lover, The

Directed by:
Renato Polselli

The first Italian genre film of the sound era was a pretty good Gothic horror called I VAMPIRI (1957), which was co-directed by Riccardo Freda and an uncredited Mario Bava and finally made it to the U.S. under the new title The Devil's Commandment in 1963. It took a few years after I vampiri's release for Gothic horror to really catch on in Italy but, once it did, it really took off and by the end of the 60s over three dozen Gothic horrors had been produced there. 1960 alone saw the release of no less than five. The most famous was Bava's international hit BLACK SUNDAY (1960), which became the benchmark for this cycle and was the first to get a U.S. release in 1961. Actually filmed before Sunday and also before ATOM AGE VAMPIRE, The Playgirls and the Vampire and the French / Italian co-production Mill of the Stone Women (all 1960), was The Vampire and the Ballerina (originally L'amante del vampiro / “The Vampire's Lover”), which was in Italian theaters three months before any of the others.

In a small village, young women are being attacked and drained of blood by an ugly-looking vampire; leading to an anemic illness and then death. Near where the attacks have all taken place, a group of ballerinas are training for an upcoming show. Lead dancers Luisa (the sexy Hélène Rémy) and Francesca (Tina Gloriani), along with Francesca's fiance Luca (Isarco Ravaioli), end up getting lost out in the woods. With a thunderstorm fast approach they stumble upon the thought-to-be-abandoned Damian Castle and duck inside. Much to their surprise, they're greeted by mysterious Countess Alda (María Luisa Rolando), who's dressed in gowns from another century and claims she has no use for the outside world or the people in it. Still, she offers up her visitors some tea, served up by her equally strange butler Herman (Walter Brandi), and a place to stay until the rain stops. The Countess makes a seductive aside to Luca that she'd really like him to visit her again later on without the girls, while Luisa finds herself getting snatched up and bitten by the vampire. Not remembering what had happened to her, Luisa eventually joins her two friends and heads back home.

The bite from this particular vampire releases some kind of substance into a victim's bloodstream that makes them uncontrollably drawn to the bloodsucker. Now under its spell, Luisa becomes cold and distant to her friends and leaves her bedroom window open for nocturnal visits from the vampire; getting weaker and weaker with each feeding. Meanwhile, Luca finds the voluptuous Countess' offer too hard to pass up and sneaks back over to the castle. There, she tells him that she's being held prisoner by Herman, who only poses as a servant around guests but is actually really in charge of things. It turns out that she and Herman have had a strange symbiotic relationship the past 400 years. She needs to feed off of him to retain her youth and beauty, turning him into a monster every time she does. He then has to turn around and feed off of beautiful young female victims to not only return human form but also provide the Countess with the blood she needs.

This is pretty silly at times but fun all the same and surprisingly well done from a visual standpoint. There's excellent cinematography from Angelo Baistrocchi, some wonderful shooting locations and impressive expressionistic sets and lighting. One of the best moments is when our heroine explores the castle on her own with doors closing behind her as she makes her way down into catacombs; finally discovering the vampire's hidden crypt. The film also provides a few interesting spins on standard vampire mythology, including the master vampire hunting down and staking his own undead victims when they return as vampires because he wants all the power. Another sequence shot from the POV of a living “corpse” inside a coffin looking up at the trees during her own funeral procession rips off a famous bit from Dreyer's Vampyr (1932).

You may be asking yourself: Why ballerinas of all things? Pretty simple. It's just a convenient excuse to film lots of pretty young women frolicking around in one piece leotards as they show off their pantyhose-covered legs and asses cavorting around, doing stretches and performing their routines. Evening apparel seems to consist almost entirely of sheer, short, flimsy little nighties. The director seems especially fond of turning this into one big leg show. The troupe's musical director Giorgio (“John Turner” / Gino Turini) even gets the idea to turn the production into a vampire-themed ballet, which results in a hilarious dance sequence with strong lesbian undertones. These undertones are also pretty prevalent between the two lead female “friends” in other scenes.

This was the very first screenplay credit for the extremely prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, who co-wrote with director Polselli and Giuseppe Pellegrini and also served as assistant director. Polselli made numerous other genre films including the extremely obscure The Monster of the Opera (1964), Delirium (1972), The Reincarnation of Isabel (1972), The Truth According to Satan (1972) and Mania (1974).

While an English-dubbed version was prepped by United Artists to play theaters in the US, that version has never been made commercially available here. In fact, this has never seen the light of day on VHS or DVD here period, though MGM offers an English-subtitled version on Amazon Prime.

★★1/2

... aka: Edge of Fear
... aka: Macho Woman
... aka: They Call Me Macho Woman!

Directed by:
Patrick G. Donahue

Two years after her husband is killed in a car accident by a drunk driver, Susan Morris (Debra Sweaney) decides to realize their mutual dream of buying a piece of land out in the country. Realtor Cecil Thorne (Lory-Michael Ringuette) takes her into the sticks, they get a flat tire and it's then that they inadvertently arouse the suspicions of a bunch of crazed biker goons living there on a ranch. The goons, led by the big, bald Mongo (former track athlete and Olympian Brian Oldfield) deal in cocaine and apparently aren't used to anyone being out that way, so they pursue the widow and Realtor in their jeep and run them off the road. Their car rolls down an embankment, Susan's legs get pinned and the cowardly Cecil runs off to supposedly "get help." He doesn't make it far. When Susan finally frees herself, she finds a barn which turns out to be the goons' headquarters / coke lab. After a run-in with Apples (Paul Henri), she manages to escape only to run into the rest of the gang. She's pushed down, slapped, bitten and kissed, has her top ripped open and is finally gagged and tied up in a horse stall.

Seeing how seemingly every character in this movie wants to rape Susan, she's paid a visit by Star (Monica Mullen), the sole female gang member (and thus a lesbian, of course!), who attempts to have her way with her. Our plucky heroine manages to free herself, the two get into a cat fight with a pitchfork and Susan escapes after tackling Star out of a door in the hayloft and then punching her out. Into the woods she runs, next running across Georgie (Jerry Johnson), who also attempts to rape her. He rips off her panties and feels her up but she fights back and rams a twig into his ear (!) and then stabs him in the leg with his switchblade. She makes her way to another ranch, this one owned by elderly Mr. Wilson (J. Brown), but he too is in cahoots with the goons and is actually in charge of delivering the drugs to inner cities. The gang shows up again, call her a bitch and a bimbo and Mongo orders them to "Tie her up in the barn and take her shoes!" That they do, but another horny gang member attempts rape #3 and ends up getting his head impaled on a nail instead. After Susan flees into the woods yet again, Mongo promises his men a 5,000 bonus if they manage to capture her alive and 10,000 if they can kill her.

After another chase, Susan finds a road and flags down a trio of beer-drinking teen boys driving by. After hopping into their car she soon realizes that, even though they are in no way affiliated with the gang, they too want to rape her! They pull onto a country road, the goons show up again and somehow manage to kill all three of the guys, including hanging one and popping a tire so another gets crushed under the car. After managing to elude the gang several more times, including stepping on their heads to get around them and finding an abandoned police car and NOT driving away in it, Susan stumbles upon a shed. It is there she finds all that she needs for her final confrontation with the bad guys, including axes, bolts, spiked shoes, leather to make harnesses, weapon holders and a whip out of and clothing to fashion herself a sexy midriff-baring She Rambo outfit (!) Somehow she's also managed to find some makeup and a few cans of Aqua Net to complete the look. What follows is a bloody retaliation as “macho woman” flings axes and bolts into the guys, gouges out eyeballs, chops off heads and lures men into various silly booby traps she's set up in the woods.

This is a cheap, dumb and poorly made backwoods revenge movie and perhaps the most preposterous “girl kicks ass” movie of its era. The acting is terrible, the dialogue is terrible, the editing is terrible, the attempts at camp humor are terrible and all of the characters (including our overly spunky leading lady) are one-dimensional, unlikable and obnoxious. It's also filled with moronic one-liners and has too many continuity errors to count, including a hilarious moment when a would-be rapist's pants are up one minute and then mysteriously down around his ankles a shot later. It's hard to tell exactly what the filmmakers even had in mind here. Sometimes they seem to be taking the plot seriously and other times are desperately attempting to be tongue-in-cheek. That said, they're at least smart enough to jump from one silly, poorly-staged action scene to the next so this is never really boring. Strangely, there is no nudity, but there's plenty of violence, blood and gore, plus some decent stunt work and a few amusing bits. Most memorably, the main bad guy dispatches victims by headbutting them while wearing a spiked headband!

Filmed in early 1989, this wouldn't be released until several years later. It played at several film festivals (including at Cannes and Fantasporto) in 1991 under the title Edge of Fear. In 1992, it was issued on VHS by AIP under the new title Savage Instinct and later made the rounds on late night cable under that same title. After Troma acquired the rights, it was distributed on VHS and DVD under the new, predictably schlocky title They Call Me Macho Woman and with the tag line was “Born to shop... I learned to kill!”

Director Donahue also works as a stuntman / stunt coordinator and had previously made the bad action film Kill Squad (1982), which has gained a small cult following. The production manager was William Rice, who co-directed the strange The Vineyard (1989) around the same time. Some of the same actors here (including Sweaney and co-star Sean P. Donahue, the director's brother) also appeared in that one.

★1/2

... aka: Pánico en la residencia (Panic in the Residence)
... aka: Stay Awake - Nacht des Grauens (Stay Awake – Night of Horror)

Directed by:
"John Bernard" (Johan Barnard)

In 1969 in America, ponytail-sporting Satanist serial killer William John Brown (Lindsay Reardon) is convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting eleven young female victims and is sentenced to death. Before dying in the gas chamber he warns (in a demon voice) “You fools cannot kill me! I am the Angel of Darknessssss!” and promises to return one day in the near future to kill off all the children of everyone responsible for his demise. Nineteen years later at St. Mary's School for Girls in “Europe,” William's spirit arrives and causes all kinds of problems for a handful of young tootsies staying there. It slams doors, topples over furniture, turns lights on and off, kills lab rats and other animals outside, knocks a framed photo of the Virgin Mary off a wall and makes a boombox blow up and melt during aerobics class. Despite all of the weirdness, eight schoolgirls decide to carry on with plans to have a “stay awake” in the gymnasium where they will stay awake all night in order to raise money for their school.

Overseeing the evening's festivities is science teacher Trish Walton (Shirley Jane Harris), who's recently noticed some “vandalism” at the school and has elderly caretaker Mr. Stark (Ken Marshall) looking into it. At the sleepover, the girls watch horror movies, eat junk food, talk about boys, play volleyball, play a prank on their teacher by pretending to be dead, sneak in a few cigarettes (rebels!) and start exiting the gym for one reason or another, where they disappear after encountering the evil spirit. Said spirit sometimes takes regular human form and sometimes takes the form of a rat-headed rubber monster with large red eyes, claws and a long tongue it uses to grab or strangle victims with. In between monster sightings, there are gratuitous POV shots of the spirit floating around the school making weird noises, which include laughing, groaning, gurgling and mimicking a baby and a little girl. The sound mix on this film is loud and incredibly obnoxious, by the way.

Any time someone knocks the Slumber Party Massacre series, I always point them in the direction of something like this so they realize they didn't know how good they actually had it. The SPM movies are dumb but entertaining, fast paced, fairly well made for what they are and provide viewers with the blood and nudity they actually want to see. This movie provides viewers with absolutely nothing they want to see. None of the kills are memorable and most are bloodless, shot in dim light or take place completely off screen. Even worse, this has perhaps the all time worst group shower scene in history. The camera focuses on the girls' faces making sensuous looks, starts slowly panning down and then suddenly cuts away before revealing so much as a hint of cleavage. You can even see the top of a bikini an actress is wearing in one instance. And then there are shots of the camera tilting up from the floor showing a foot and then a leg before stopping mid thigh. We also have a girl opening her towel to flash her friends with her back turned to the camera. You either show the T&A or you don't even bother going there. And for God's sake, turn on a fucking light so we can at least see what's going on!

The mixture of awful writing / dialogue and amateur acting ensures we could care less about any of the characters. Though the ladies who populated the SPM movies were hardly budding Meryl Streeps, they at least managed to be likable and show a bit of character. The girls here are pretty enough but they're boring and almost completely devoid of personality. Since the film lists the stars in the opening credits but not in the end credits, I even had to waste an hour of my time online stalking some of these broads so I could match the actress to the role. So for what it's worth, Tanya Gordon plays Samantha, the snobby girl who says “You're fat! Gross!” to a girl who weighs about 90 pounds. Jayne Hutton (a former beauty queen and model) plays Carrie, the sweet girl. Heath Potter plays Debbie, the bookworm. Michelle Carey (not actress Michele Carey as falsely listed on IMDb) plays Toby, the black girl. Maxine John (also in HOWLING IV) plays Cheryl, the prankster. Christobel d'Orthez (also in the 1989 “remake” of The Masque of the Red Death) plays Allison, the slutty girl who invites her boyfriend and three of his friends over so they can raid the prop room for monkey masks and then quickly be dispatched. Rounding out the group are Heilie Oeschger as Amy and Joanna Rowlands as Jennifer. Both of them are just kind of there.

Stay Awake is so pathetic that it can't even set up a basic plot. At one point the spirit claims he's there to “ravage all the young girls” because he's looking for a “bride” so he can “plant the seed of evil deep within her.” That still doesn't explain the prologue or why the demonic spirit of an American serial killer would go all the way to Europe to possess a bunch of dull schoolgirls who are in no way connected to him, his capture or his execution. Having this all take place 19 years after his execution hints that at one point they were planning on linking at least one of the girls (or perhaps the teacher) to the killer but those dots are never once connected. I also probably won't be spoiling much here but none of the girls are actually shown being killed. They simply scream at the approaching demon and are later shown possessed. And the stupid ending leaves all of their fates completely up in the air as we never learn what happens to any of them. I'd like to think they all went straight to hell and took the director with them.

Home video distributors have done a good job keeping this turkey in circulation over the years. I couldn't find a theatrical poster for the film, but IMDb claims it had a very limited big screen release here in America through MPCA. It was then issued on VHS and laserdisc by Nelson and later given a DVD release through Image. It's also been released in South Africa (where it was filmed), the UK, Germany, Spain, Japan and numerous other countries. The only known name in the credits is executive producer Avi Lerner, who's still extremely busy to this day and has nearly 300 producing credits to his name.

★

... aka: City of the Living Dead
... aka: Ein Zombie hing am Glockenseil (Zombie Hung on a Bell Rope)
... aka: Fear in the City of the Living Dead
... aka: Frayeurs (Fears)
... aka: Gates of Hell, The
... aka: Pater Thomas (Father Thomas)
... aka: Zombiernes by (Zombie City)

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

In a small New England town, priest Father William Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine) hangs himself in a cemetery. Meanwhile, in New York City, psychic Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl) and some of her colleagues are having a séance. Mary has visions of the suicide and of a zombie rising from the grave, freaks out, breaks the link and keels over onto the floor dead. When police show up at the scene, they're told she was scared to death. Not buying into the story, wisecracking journalist Peter Bell (Christopher George) decides to look into matters. He goes to the cemetery, rescues Mary from being buried alive when she miraculously springs back to life and then accompanies her to a friend's apartment to learn all about a prophecy contained in the Book of Enoch, a religious text written over 4000 years ago. According to the book, the gates of hell will open somewhere in a small town and mankind will be wiped out because no dead body will ever be able to rest in peace again. The only remedy to the situation is closing the gates before All Saint's Day.

Back in Dunwich, strange things are afoot. Winds are atypically strong, the town is enveloped in a cloud of “dust” (fog), windows and mirrors shatter on their own, walls crack open and sometimes bleed and cute little kittens attack their owners. Even worse, the dead priest has returned from the grave and now has supernatural powers that he doesn't hesitate using against the townsfolk, who are rumored to be descendants of “Salem witch burners.” He starts out by force feeding pretty young Emily (Antonella Interlenghi) a mouthful of worms and muck. During the film's most memorably gross bit, he appears before a pair of necking teens and squeezes the brains right out of the guy's head after making his girl puke up all of her internal organs. Others disappear or start turning up dead and the recently deceased return to life and add to the army of the undead. At a mortuary, an old lady kills a thieving mortician. Emily returns as a pizza-faced zombie to haunt her parents and kid brother. And so on and so on.

Since Mary saw “Dunwich” written on a tombstone in one of her visions, she knows just where to go. Peter, despite his skepticism, decides to tag along. I'd like to say the two are in a big hurry to get there considering a zombie apocalypse and the fate of all mankind life is at stake. But nope. With just 48 hours to find the town (which isn't even on a map), the two decide to flirt, act casual about the whole ordeal and even take a detour to sample some fine regional cuisine. Getting directions from another priest in a nearby town, the two finally make it to their destination, but not until many have died and everything's pretty much gone to (literal) hell. Our heroes eventually team up with town shrink Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) and one of his patients, neurotic painter Sandra (Janet Agren), in an effort to close the gates. The four get showered with maggots at one point and the big finale takes place in an underground tomb and some catacombs.

This is one of the key titles on Fulci's filmography that helped turn him into a cult director during the early days of home video. Like most of the director's other works, it drags at times (particularly around the midway point), some scenes work better than others and there are about 1001 zoom shots into eyeballs, but it's also atmospheric, gloomy and gory. Nicely shot by Sergio Salvati (who shot all of the director's films around this time), this also boasts an excellent score from Fabio Frizzi and a more straightforward and less confusing story line (co-written by Dardano Sacchetti) than some of Fulci's other efforts.

Italian horror / exploitation fans should recognize much of this cast. Aside from those already mentioned, small roles are also played by future director Michele Soavi, Fulci regular Daniela Doria (who almost always gets the best death scene in these things), Venantino Venantini, Luciano Rossi, Robert Sampson and Fulci himself as a pathologist. Giovanni Lombardo Radice (aka “John Morghen”) has a memorable bit as the slow-witted town outcast whose girlfriend is an inflatable doll and who may or not be a sex predator. He also meets a memorable demise when the father of one of his supposed victims pushes a huge electric drill through his head (an excellent effect). American porn actor Michael Gaunt also turns up playing a gravedigger in one scene alongside Percy Pirkanen of Cannibal Holocaust fame.

Here in America, this was picked up by Motion Picture Marketing, who wanted to release it as Twilight of the Dead with ad art copying Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) until they were served a cease and desist order. It was then re-titled The Gates of Hell, great new posters were made and it played theaters unrated and uncut in 1983. On home video, it was issued the following year by Paragon, also unrated and under the same title. Later VHS, DVD and BR releases (from Anchor Bay, Arrow, Blue Underground, etc.) used the City of the Living Dead title. The full running time of the uncut version is 93 minutes, though some countries (like Australia) received a shorter cut missing some of the gore.

★★1/2

... aka: Desert sa Slagom
... aka: Sexo na Ilha Fatal (Sex at Fatal Island)
... aka: Suspense erótico (Erotic Thriller)
... aka: 10 Lil' Maidens
... aka: Vergini corpi frementi (Virgin Bodies Quivering)

Directed by:
John Seeman

After some silly narration (“The erotic instinct is basic to human nature, and will always be, no matter what established religion has to say on the matter – or what present or future laws deem as proper.”) we follow buxom mail lady Kitten Natividad around a neighborhood as she does her route. Hearing strange noises coming from one of the homes, she peaks in the mail slot and watches John Orvis (Harry Reems) and his (married) lover Carol Morgan (Ginger Lynn Allen), whose husband is out of town on business, going at it. Afterward, John tosses aside all of the bills and opens the only interesting-looking letter, addressed by one U.N. Seen. Inside is a pair of plane tickets and an invitation to an “all-expense paid erotic orgy” to take place on a secluded island over the weekend. Thinking it sounds too interesting to pass up, the two fly to Marina del Rey and catch a boat from there. The captain takes them as close as he can go and then Renfro (Jamie Gillis), who strangely knows both of their names, shows up on a smaller boat to pick them up.

Upon arriving on Bacchanal Island, they make their way through the woods to a huge estate and meet Renfro's wife Tabatha (Nina Hartley), who works there as a cook and housekeeper wearing a sheer maid's outfit (with no panties). As she's taking them to their room, she informs them that she and her husband were hired just two days earlier, given a list of guests and instructions on what to do but have not even met the man who hired them. While John is busy checking out the grounds (and a few topless sunbathers by the pool), Carol decides to take a shower and gets accosted by another female guest named Charlene (Janey Robbins), who helps her get extra clean before the night's festivities begin. They soon join Charlene's husband Peter (Richard Pacheco) and two other couples; Dick (Paul Thomas) and Candy (Amber Lynn) and Larry (Eric Edwards) and Agatha (Lisa De Leeuw) around the dinner table.

Living up to his reputation of being one of porno's weirdest perverts, Gillis jerks off using a chicken (!) which is then served up to the guests as having been “creamed” (har har) He then jerks off on Carol's salad when she requests “creamy Italian” dressing. (har har har) What follows is a messy food orgy. You probably won't be surprised what they do with corncobs, cucumbers and a hollowed out peach, but you may be surprised seeing Hartley getting screwed by Gillis while covered with a pig's carcass (!!) and perhaps even more surprised (or grossed out) watching Gillis alternate performing oral sex with chewing off a piece of the pig's snout. The host (who imitates Alfred Hitchcock) has provided some cassette tapes to be played at certain times. On the first, he informs the guests that he and his wife won't be able to attend but they'll still feel his presence. On the second tape he tell them “payment is due” and that none of them will make it off the island alive. Why? Well, because they've all lived “erotically immoral” lives. Soon after, a series of murders begin and after each death one of ten statues in the dining room is found smashed.

I figured SEX WITH A STRANGER (1986) was an anomaly being a hardcore spoof of Agatha Christie's famous and oft-filmed mystery novel Ten Little Indians but, as it turns out, it actually ripped off this earlier film. Both are a mix of X sex, terrible acting, extremely dumb humor and silly sex-oriented deaths. There are some nods to mystery movie cliches like a black cat lurking around, eyes spying from behind a painting and a bad Peter Lorre impersonation, plus death by arsenic-laced vagina, someone suffocated with a rubber duck placed over their dick, a drowning in the pool, someone crushed by a bed canopy and two of the women getting electrocuted by a double-sided dildo. They even thrown in a bizarre POV shot from inside a vagina.

For what it's worth, this has higher production values having been shot on film instead of video, a better variety of sex scenes (including some kinkier stuff if you're into that) and more weird (and tasteless) moments than its predecessor, though the two are otherwise pretty much the same. This supposedly played adult theaters in the U.S. and in Spanish-speaking countries, though the only theatrical poster I could find was a Yugoslavian one under the title Desert sa Slagom. It was financed and distributed by Excalibur and is available on DVD (though you can probably tell from the screen caps that I watched a VHS version).

★★1/2

... aka: Ghost Story for Christmas: The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

Directed by:
Lawrence Gordon Clark

Wealthy Lady Dattering (Virginia Balfour) hasn't quite gotten over the death of her husband and as a result conducts a séance every evening in hopes of contacting his spirit. She's even invited a shady married couple; Mr. and Mrs. Tyson (Frank Mills, Sheila Dunn), to come live with her. The Tyson's possess what they call “the gift” and claim to be in tune with the spirit world. Lady Dattering's bright, clever, college-aged son Peter (Paul Lavers) suspects the couple are a fraud leeching off his gullible mother's hospitality, so he goes to the church and asks friend and mentor Reverend Justin Somerton (the excellent Michael Bryant) to come to one of their gatherings to help prove it. The couple have supposedly been in contact with a spirit guide named Father Dominic who's been relaying messages to Lady Dattering from her late husband by possessing Lady Tyson and using her as a mouthpiece. Using Latin, Justin is able to expose the duo as con artists and they're quickly shown the door. The experience however gets both Peter and Justin more interested in the spirit world and they begin tampering with things best left alone.

According to some old church documents, a 15th century churchman named Abbot Thomas was practicing the black arts and alchemy and was sentenced to death as a result. Rumor has it that before he could burn he was whisked away by Satan himself but not before revealing that he'd hidden a cache of gold somewhere on the grounds of the monastery where Justin works. Teacher and pupil then begin examining the church grounds, starting with taking photographs of an ancient stained glass mural to bring out further detail. In one of the photos they notice a strange black smudge over one of the images that doesn't appear in any of the other photos. Further inspection of the smudge reveals it is one of the many gargoyles lining the church roof. From there, the men start to put together pieces of a very elaborate puzzle, which requires transcribing Latin and figuring out the hidden meanings in the text and images on the mural and using math to decipher cryptograms found hidden behind layers of paint. All fingers end up pointing to an old underground tomb in the church graveyard and exploration of that proves yet again that some riddles are best left unsolved.

This was the fourth of eight entries in the first crop of BBC Ghost Story for Christmas presentations and was based on the M.R. James story of the same name, which was contained in the collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary published in 1904. Like many of James' stories it centers around academic types whose realist beliefs get turned upside down by a taste of the supernatural. Many of the protagonists in these stories are cynics who happen to have their own spiritual beliefs yet still doubt the potential of an other-worldly evil manifesting itself in the real world and that ends up eventually hitting them where it hurts. This one has all of that, is very well-acted, atmospheric and efficiently directed; adeptly mixing mystery and ghost story in that measured, moody, subtle way the Brits seem to excel at. The 37-minute running time moves things along at a brisk pace and this also happens to have one of the most chilling conclusions of any of these adaptations, which is pretty much the main point.

THE ASH TREE and LOST HEARTS were also adapted from James'Antiquary by Clark for the annual 70s series. When the series was revived in 2005, Pier Wilkie tackled the story Number 13. Prior to the Christmas series, Jonathan Miller had adapted WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU (1968) for the BBC series Omnibus and numerous other stories from the collection were filmed for the Mystery and Imagination (1966-68) series.

★★★

... aka: Chinese Ghost-core
... aka: Ghost Girl
... aka: Romantic Ghost Story, A

Directed by:
Wen Hua

Japanese tourist Lisa (Mai Hayami) is vacationing in Hong Kong when she's involved in a horrible car accident. She awakens on the beach and then is chased down by two jester-looking guys with dunce hats, fuzzy sticks and tongues so long they hang out of their mouths about a foot. She's captured and brought to a female “guard” who tells her she's arrived at the “Gate of Death.” Fortunately for her, a consultation with the “Book of Life and Death” reveals Lisa's name is nowhere to be found. (I guess because she's from out of town?!) Lisa is shown a huge cemetery that's the “World of the Ghosts” where everyone is treated equal and then the guard, whom she later refers to as her "Ghost Auntie," encourages her to head down to the city and have some fun. Meanwhile, the nightmare-plagued John (Denis Fan) has visions of Lisa's car accident and her going to hell all set to music from Charles Bernstein (stolen from A Nightmare on Elm Street). Afterward, he and his fast-living friend / co-worker Jim go to a sleazy, red-lit bar looking for “pussy” and watch a pair of Caucasian dancers in thongs (one male and one female) do some silly routine to an instrumental version of Blondie's 'Rapture.' What in the hell am I watching again?

John owns a studio. Jim is his photographer. Both work on what they call “figurative art,” which is what the rest of us would call naked, smutty pictures. When one of their models doesn't show up, the guys go to lunch and spot Lisa while they're out; little realizing that they'd already met her the night before when John accidentally pissed all over her head (!) in an alleyway. They give her their card and she calls the studio. John is instantly smitten with the mysterious Japanese beauty and would rather date her than put her in a magazine. Now without a model, Lisa promises to coerce their secretary Sue into doing it instead. Lisa uses her ghostly powers to make the conservative girl do a nekkid photo spread but when she finally sees the pictures she can't even remember posing for them. Figuring something sinister and otherworldly must be up, Sue consults a shady sorcerer / exorcist / drunkard and has him meet Lisa. After he determines the life line on her palm is broken, she scares him off by flashing her demon face at him.

The photography business isn't doing too well, so Lisa goes to her Ghost Auntie for help, gets her hands on some very valuable antiques and soon she and John have a room full of money to play around with. She also helps Jim out with his crush on Sue by taking possession of her and making her have sex with him. When Sue awakens, she starts punching him and accusing him of raping her. Back to the exorcist they go. This time he promises to “chase her back to hell” with his arsenal of weapons and magic trickery that includes a magic sword, a Buddha statue and dog's blood. In the meantime, he gives Sue about 500 spell papers to plaster all around her apartment.

Nothing really seems to work on Lisa since she's not technically crossed over to either heaven or hell yet and all anyone does to ward her off only accomplishes pissing her off further. After Jim and Sue ruin her relationship with John by revealing what she truly is, things only get worse when she decides she wants revenge. Ghost Auntie, who sometimes boasts a skull face but usually just looks like an old woman, helps by taking on the exorcist. She tricks him into drinking water that's actually serpent embryonic fluid and he proceeds to throw up a bunch of snakes. The wizard isn't up to much though and is easily taken out of commission with a red chain and a knife. Everyone else who tried to cock block our love-struck lady ghost also ends up paying for it, as well. It's all topped off with a lame and stupid “Was it real or just a nightmare?” type of ending.

Most HK ghost movies from this same time look stylish, have decent special effects and have a few scenes/moments that are memorably crazy. This one has none of that. It's filled with impenetrable night scenes, ragged editing, amateur acting and laughably cheap / shoddy fx and makeup. Since they clearly couldn't afford any visual or technical perks, they try to make up for that by displaying as much bare female flesh as possible. There's full frontal nudity from both lead females and each has their own nude modeling / photo session montage plus a soft core sex scene with the Jim character. Hayami, a pinku girl who had appeared in a half dozen or so rape / bondage / fetish soft core movies in Japan, was brought over to play her role. Other than her and the male lead, I did not recognize any of the other actors. Listed director Wen Hua also is a complete unknown. Either that or he's someone else using a fake name.

I found next to no information about this obscure title online. None of the major Hong Kong movie databases even list it and, though there's an IMDb page, it only lists the director, two actors and the alternate title of Chinese Ghost-core (an English translation of the Japanese title). It was made for the Hong Kong Man Wah Film Company, which does not appear to have released much else though I recognize the logo, has a 1988 copyright date, was theatrically released in February of 1989 and is classed as Cat III erotica. The copy floating around (taken from a Japanese VCD release) is in Cantonese with burnt-in English and Japanese subtitles.

★1/2

Pensione paura (1977)

Guzoo: Kami ni misuterareshi mono - Part I (1986)

Un angelo per Satana (1966)

Xtro (1982)

La morte cammina con i tacchi alti (1971)

Vampire, The (1957)

Terror, sexo y brujería (1968, 1984)

Morbo (1972)

Il dolce corpo di Deborah (1968)

Troma's War (1988)

Godaan Siluman Perempuan (1978)

Horror (1963)

Invaders from Mars (1953)

L'amante del vampiro (1960)

Savage Instinct (1991) [copyright 1989]

Stay Awake, The (1987)

Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)

Ten Little Maidens (1985)

Treasure of Abbot Thomas, The (1974) (TV)

Meng gui jia ren (1989)