El extraño hijo del Sheriff (1982)

November 6, 2016, 2:08 pm

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... aka: El hijo del Sheriff (The Sheriff's Son)
... aka: Sheriff's Strange Son, The
... aka: Strange Son of the Sheriff, The

Directed by:
Fernando Durán Rojas

In 1890, a plague is ravaging the small town of Santa Rosa and surrounding areas... a bad time for the very pregnant Mary (Alicia Encinas) to go into labor. Her husband, Sheriff Frederick Jackson (Eric del Castillo) and his deputy, Jeremias Santos (Alfredo Gutiérrez), race to town to retrieve Dr. Jack Miller (Mario Almada) only to find he's far too busy dealing with dozens of plague victims in his hospital to tend to a mere child birth. He recommends they find a midwife and then sends them on their way. Mary ends up dying after giving birth to twin boys just as a lunar eclipse occurs. According to legend, the combination of the plague and the eclipse signals the birth of the Antichrist. Seven years pass and the Sheriff has had to raise the boys; Fred and Erick (both played by Luis Mario Quiroz), on his own. Because they're conjoined at the back and he's afraid of people making fun of them (and him), he's kept them locked up in their home away from everyone in town. He also blames the doctor for his predicament and wife's death, but he's able to put his grudge aside because he needs his help...

Sheriff Jackson lures Dr. Miller to a remote cabin to show him his sons and asks him to perform the operation to separate them. When Miller refuses because it conflicts with God, his ethics and his medical knowledge, the Sheriff holds him at gunpoint and forces him to try. Mid-surgery, Dr. Miller notices that the two boys are connected at the spine and it will be impossible to separate them without the weaker of the two, Erick, dying. The Sheriff forces him to continue. Suddenly, wind starts blowing, the cabin starts shaking and both men are knocked unconscious. When they come to, Erick is dead and Fred is alive but the boys are finally separated. They bury Erick in the hills by a tall tree in an unmarked grave and hope to just go about business as usual afterward.

Once Fred recovers, dad and Jeremias set about teaching the boy how to ride a horse and shoot a gun and do all of the other things you have to do in an Old West town. But things aren't right. Fred can't shut up about his brother and even goes around town telling people he's actually Erick himself and that he was killed by his father. Or is it really the ghost of the dead brother? Fred somehow gets his hands on a horse toy that was buried with his brother and other strange things happen. The mystery is solved rather early when Erick's ghost pays Dr. Miller a threatening visit. Since the Sheriff oversaw the hanging execution of his teenage son (who supposedly robbed and killed an elderly woman), Sam (Alfredo Wally Barrón) has a bone to pick and starts paying extra close attention to the son's strange behavior. Soon enough, Fred leads Sam to his brother's grave and the body is exhumed. Sheriff Frederick is promptly hauled off to jail and then taken before a court.

After hearing the case, the judge (special guest star Roberto Cañedo) rules that Dr. Miller lose his license to practice medicine for ten years, little Fred is to be immediately placed in an orphanage and the Sheriff must be put to death by hanging. After Fred is dropped off at an orphanage run by kindly Miss Julia (Rosa Gloria Chagoyán), the Sheriff makes his way to the gallows. There's an earthquake and then Erick's ghost shows up to make sure his father dies at his hands, not theirs. But if you think the bratty, jealous child ghost is pacified by the death of his father, think again. He now wants his surviving twin dead so that he can take his place and get all of the attention. It's up to Dr. Miller, Julia and Jeremias to protect the still-living boy and hypnosis is used in an attempt to finally banish the evil spirit.

I wish I could say this was a memorable killer kid movie but it's all rather bland, by-the-numbers, melodramatic and hokey. Like most older westerns, it shoves its “morals” right in our face with no subtlety whatsoever by blatantly insisting one should turn to God over medicine and science. (I'd love to know when the last time a seriously sick or injured Christian sat at home and wanted God to take care of their medical problems instead of, ya know, going to a hospital.) Discounting that, this doesn't really offer up much else of note. The actors are all sincere and try their best, the filming locations and outdoor scenery are both nicely captured at times and there are some minor special effects like eyes glowing red and a yellow spirit floating around a room but that's about it. Star del Castillo also wrote the original story and script with actress Bárbara Gil.

Strangely enough, this was released the same year as BASKET CASE (1982), which also featured a plot about separated-against-their-will Siamese twins, with the one left for dead coming back for revenge. The separated twins in this film also share a telepathic link just like in Henenlotter's film. This also had a lot in common with the made-for-TV movie Don't Go to Sleep, another 1982 release involving the spirit of dead child coming back to kill off members of her own family. But there's a reason the above mentioned movies are still talked about today and this one isn't. It's just not very good.

The director was another of those extremely prolific Mexi filmmakers, like the Cardona's, who had his hands on well over a hundred different films. Some of his other genre credits include Hot Snake (1978), Night Killer (1987), Angels of Death (1993) and Revenge of the Wheelchair (1993); none of which has ever been released in the U.S.

★★

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Kuutamosonaatti (1988)

November 7, 2016, 1:08 pm

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... aka: Moonlight Sonata, The

Directed by:
Olli Soinio

I want to start this out by talking about classic Finnish horror cinema. OK, so now that that's done let's move on to... Hey, I'm only kidding. Sort of. There's honestly not a whole lot to talk about here. A wiki page dedicated to Finnish horror has an index containing 6 titles, only two of which were made before 1990. IMDb does a little better job, turning up six pre-1990 feature films and two TV movies. Poking around I was able to find a few more for a grand total of around 10 films. We first have to go all the way back to 1927 with the silent Noidan kirot (“Curses of the Witch”) from director Teuvo Puroo, which is widely considered the first Finnish horror film, though a previous 1923 fantasy film, Rautakylän vanha parooni (“The Old Iron Baron of the Village”), is sometimes considered. While either of those may have been the first, they were also the only genre offering(s) out of them until the ghost film Linnaisten vihreä kamari ("The Green Chamber of Linnais") two decades later. Moving on to 1952 we have a pair; the excellent THE WHITE REINDEER (a cross-over success that won the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe and a major award at Cannes) and the OK but less successful THE WITCH. I'm forever grateful that pair exists because 1952 is pretty slim on horror titles otherwise. Two years after those came a ghost comedy (Kummitus kievari / “Ghost Tavern”). And then there was long silence...

The 80s finally rolled around and the Finnish commercial TV network Mainostelevisio offered up the ghost tale Yöjuttu: Merkitty (1984) and the four-part miniseries Painajainen / “Nightmare” (1988), which involves an amnesiac uncovering horrifying secrets about his life. The same year as the latter came this theatrical release from Soinio, who'd previously made the 23-minute monster movie parody Transvestijan tarinoita (“Tales of Transvestia”) back in 1975. There were also a few 90s releases and, in recent years, a couple of fairly well-received genre offerings like Sauna (2008) and Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010). And there you have it folks, a brief overview of Finnish horror to this day. As nice as it is to be able to sum up the horror output of an entire country in just two brief paragraphs, I'm glad all other countries aren't Finland. Otherwise I would have closed up shop here about five years ago.

International fashion model Anni Stark (Tiina Björkman) flies back home to Finland and is hounded by the press as soon as she steps off the plane. See, Anni is not a nice or sweet or even halfway decent young woman. In fact, she's hot headed, foul-mouthed, has a bad temper and is about to get canned by her agency. That's why she's in Finland in the wintertime; to avoid bad press over one of her latest explosions and lay low for a few days. In four days' time she's off to Milan to fulfill another contract. Her agent Carli (Ville-Veikko Salminen) has arranged the trip and has even found an out-of-the-way hotel where no one can find her. When they show up, they find the hotel is remodeling, so the owner sends them off an an even further out-of-the-way skiing cabin located down a long and winding road. Carli then leaves her there and promises he will back in a few days time to personally drive her to the airport for her job in Italy.

Left all alone in the cabin except for her dog (who gets about twice as many adoring close-ups as the human actors), Anni is kept up late her first night by strange, loud noises coming from outside. Little does she realize, but someone's been watching her the entire time. As for her missing panties, the same peeper crept inside while she was in the bathtub and snatched those, too. Thankfully, Anni's kid brother Johannes is supposed to come in and stay with her in another day. She walks to the bus stop the following morning hoping he's there and instead has a strange encounter with a stern old woman (Soli Labbart) and her creepy, pervy adult son Arvo (Kari Sorvali), who also happens to be the panty thief. Arvo warns her to be careful because “the roads are slippery... slippery like a wet pussy,” before pushing his ailing old mum away in her ski-chair. Anni then walks down the road looking for a phone and instead stumbles onto the unkempt farmhouse Arvo shares with his mum and another family member we'll get to here in a bit. Arvo's been following the newspapers and knows exactly who Anni is and about all of the controversies in her life. He tries to take her picture and then grabs her tits and she runs off. He makes a return visit to her cabin later on and she's forced to defend herself with a knife.

Johannes (Kim Gunell), an electronics wiz (which factors into a few later scenes), finally shows up and he and Anni face one horror after another dealing with Arvo and his disturbed family, which not only includes the mother (who likes to beat on her kids) but also a hulking, whack job of a brother with a half-burnt face. He - Sulo (Mikko Kivinen) – speaks in a comically slowed-down ultra-deep voice, fancies himself a wolf and is typically kept locked up in a shack but frequently escapes. Sulo steals Anni's dog and takes him to a snowy cliff where the two of them howl at the moon together. He also chops a TV license inspector on the head with a scythe. Not only are the family bad news, but it seems the entire rest of the town is related to them and refuse to help, including the bus driver who passes through once a day.

Unlike the earlier Finnish horror films I'd seen, which are steeped in the countries folklore and old traditions, this is straightforward, very commercial and completely modern. After starting out on a completely serious note and going on that way for nearly the entire first half, this sadly deteriorates into another blatant retread of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The entire warped family dynamic; disturbed authority figure (a woman this time) with one son who's a talkative weirdo and the other a big, groaning brute, is copied, as well as other scenes like our heroine stumbling into a general store where the owner is roasting some bloody meat and is in cahoots with the family to the mini junkyard of cars (from previous victims) at the whack family's farmhouse. Unwisely carried over is the camp attitude of the second TCM, including 80s-style cornball one-liners like the killer shouting “Time to burn some rubber!” before trying to run our heroes down with a tractor.

Lack of originality and the tonal shifts seriously harm what is otherwise a fairly well-made and nicely shot movie with a few fun ideas, nice scenery and some visual style. The most amusing bit is that Anni's dog takes to the wolf-brother, views him as being the leader of the pack and starts following him around everywhere. However, little is done with that concept aside from it making for one good sight gag. There's much less violence, blood and gore here than in most other films of this type and the cast is pretty mediocre aside from the underused Labbart and Sorvali, who makes really great evil faces. Either way, aside from the location, there's not much to differentiate this from dozens of other backwoods / hillbilly horrors flick out there.

This was successful enough in its homeland to be followed by a sequel from the same director and featuring the same crazy family: Kadunlakaisijat / Kuutamosonaatti 2 (1991), which has been given the English language title Army of Zombies. In Germany, these films were released as Muttertag 2 - Die Söhne sind zurück (“Mother 2: The Sons Are Back”) and Muttertag 3 to be sequels to Troma's Mother's Day (1980), which was released as Muttertag 1 and is yet another movie this has a lot in common with.

★★

Profondo rosso (1975)

November 9, 2016, 3:29 am

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... aka: Deep Red
... aka: Deep Red Hatchet Murders
... aka: Dripping Deep Red
... aka: Hatchet Murders, The
... aka: Les frissons de l'angoisse (Shivers of Angst)
... aka: Rojo profundo
... aka: Rosso - Die Farbe des Todes (Red: The Color of Death)
... aka: Suspiria Part 2

Directed by:
Dario Argento

Lithuanian psychic Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril) appears at a paranormal presentation taking place in Rome. After she gives a brief demonstration of her powers, she's overcome with feelings of terror as she sees visions of a child singing, blood and death. There's a murderer in the audience. Through her visions, Helga also believes she can identify the psycho. She returns home to gather her thoughts and write down her visions for the police but doesn't get a chance to give anything to them. The psycho has found her. He / she breaks in, murders her with a hatchet and takes her papers. While that's going on, British jazz musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) is heading home after a long night of practicing for an upcoming show. He hears Helga's scream and sees the very end of her murderer thought a window, which includes in the usual Argento head-crashes-through-glass climax. Marcus manages to catch a brief glimpse of the raincoat-clad killer running away plus believes the killer stole a painting from the house.

After going through the paces with the police, who naturally question his recollections about the evening's event, Marcus finds himself “fascinated by the whole event” and starts looking into matters all on his own. He gets in way over his head in the process... especially when the killer shows up at his apartment looking for him. Giving him an additional headache is the presence of journalist Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), an annoying combination of nosy, overly-peppy journalist and pseudo feminist. She'd like to work with Marcus but, after bruising his ego beating him at arm wrestling, he passes. As a retort, she threatens to start her own parallel investigation and does just that, though the two eventually decide to start helping each other out.

Other characters flutter in and out of the main story, including Marcus' friend and fellow musician Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), a depressed gay drunk with a transsexual lover who tries to discourage Marcus from sticking his nose into the investigation and suggest he leave town, as well as Carlo's kooky mother Marta (Clara Calamai), a former movie star forced to quit the business by her controlling husband. And then there's Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri), a psychiatrist with an interest in parapsychology who was “keeping” Helga and eventually helps in the investigation, much to his detriment. Children's book author Amanda Righetti (Giuliana Calandra) had written a book that may have inspired the killer. Bardi (Piero Mazzinghi), the caretaker of a certain spooky decaying mansion has an imbalanced daughter named Olga (Nicoletta Elmi) who gets her kicks torturing lizards.

Clues lead Marcus first to a haunting children's song he hears being played when the killer shows up at his place, which then leads to a book on urban legends and folklore, which then leads to an abandoned house that used to be the home of a German ghost story writer who'd long since passed away, which then leads to a school housing some important drawings. As Marcus tries to piece the clues together and avoid being killed himself, a number of the supporting characters get bumped off in gruesome ways that involve a face seriously scalded by hot water, a head getting squashed by a car, decapitation via elevator and some major dental damage after an open mouth is slammed into a mantle and desk, plus a few garden variety stabbings. (The alternate title The Hatchet Murders is a bit misleading as there's actually only one murder by hatchet and the butcher knife used isn't even called a hatchet here in America.)

Profondo rosso is generally considered one of the director's finest films and it's easy to see why. This ably combines an engrossing mystery plot with bloody and elaborately staged murder sequences and has a better screenplay and slightly more developed characters (including a male lead who acts human for a change and exhibits fear and confusion in the proper places) than his usual, plus a unique and memorable (albeit sometimes grating) music score from Giorgio Gaslini and Goblin. Though there's some clunker dialogue (“There's somebody in the house...g...uh... a-absolutely trying to kill me, ya know?”) and it lags a bit here and there, it more than makes up for that with impressive horror / suspense set pieces, which are stylish, imaginatively shot, sometimes pretty startling (two words: creepy doll) and range from good to downright brilliant.

Argento fans will eat up the various camera shots, the fact the camera seldom stays put and odd camera placements throughout, which include several long close-up shots prowling around a table looking at various objects, low level POV shots gliding along the floor, a shot titling into a spinning record album, a shot following a blade down into a victim and an exterior crane shot of a house. The cinematographer was Luigi Kuveiller, who'd previously shot those sleazy, campy Andy Warhol-produced adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein.

Originally conceived as La tigre dai denti a sciabola (“The Sabre-Toothed Tiger”), this started life as a 500 page (!) script written by Argento, which was then whittled down to around 320 pages with help from Bernardino Zapponi. After shooting was complete, the full running time clocked in at 126 minutes, which isn't hard to believe knowing Argento very well could have spent 30 pages describing a single elaborate camera shot. 126 minutes was deemed too long by many distributors, so it was cut considerably in certain markets. Many feel the 105 minute version actually flows best, as it removes most of the dialogue that has no real bearing on the plot (notably excessive playful banter between Hemmings and Nicolodi) yet retains the gorier moments provided by makeup artists Germano Natali and Carlo Rambaldi.

Having previously seen only the hacked up U.S. version, what I ended up watching this time was the 126 minute version and several scenes really do feel unnecessary and / or go on for too a bit long. While I liked some of the Hemmings / Nicolodi scenes, I certainly wouldn't miss any of the scenes with the dumb police superintendent (Eros Pagni).

After Argento's follow-up Suspiria (1977) hit it big, Deep Red saw a re-release in numerous countries and was even re-titled Suspiria 2 in several places, like Japan. Argento himself oversaw the R-rated reduced cut that was released theatrically here in America and elsewhere. Because over 20 minutes of footage was removed prior to the film being dubbed into English, later DVD / BR releases from distributors like Anchor Bay and Blue Underground present an “uncut version” that's mostly been dubbed in English but with bits of dialogue here and there in Italian.

★★★1/2

Savage Island (1985)

November 11, 2016, 7:46 am

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... aka: Banished Women
... aka: Paluu helvetistä (Return from Hell)
... aka: Prisioneiras da Ilha Selvagem (Prisoners of Wild Island)
... aka: Prison Island

Directed by:
"Nicholas Beardsley" (Ted Nicolaou)
Edoardo Mulargia (uncredited)

Charles Bands' Empire Pictures acquired the U.S. release rights to the sleazy Italian / Spanish women-in-prison films Femmine infernali (aka ESCAPE FROM HELL) and Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso (aka Orinoco: Prison of Sex or HOTEL PARADISE), which were filmed back-to-back and released in 1980. Wizard Video issued the former on home video under the title Escape in 1984, but didn't release the second of the two as is. Instead, they cobbled together some footage from it, some footage from Escape and added about 15 minutes of bookmarking footage plus narration in an attempt to tie it all together, thus creating this third “new” movie. Some new credits were attached that managed to incorrectly match nearly all of the original films' stars to the wrong roles. Someone then whipped up a poster featuring Linda Blair (“star” of the new footage) in a skimpy bathing suit holding an Uzi and called it Savage Island. Island was released to theaters in 1985 and made its way onto home video later that same year on the Empire sub label Force Video. Needless to say, the entire thing is such a huge mess that both the director and Band ("Robert Amante") opted for aliases.

We open with the buried-girl-killed-by-python death from Escape, before meeting the well-dressed Ms. Daly (Blair). She steps out of a car, scowls, walks into a high rise office building, encounters a security guard and puts a bullet in the head after he insists she sign the register. This broad means business! The guard, by the way, is played by comedian / magician Penn Jillette in his film debut and he gets to spit out about three lines before he's shot dead. Daly goes upstairs, insists on seeing Mr. Luker (Leon Askin) and is soon holding him at gunpoint recounting her story. Daly was one of a hundred female prisoners promised shorter sentences if they went to work for Luker's island camp. “What they didn't tell me was that one week on your Emerald Island is like a thousand years in the shittiest South American hole!,” Blair angrily informs him. Turns out Daly along with the rest of the women were treated little better than slaves, plus were regularly tortured and killed. Since her escape two years earlier, Daly put together a plan to overthrow Emerald Island and she's managed to finally pull it off. We then jump back “four days ago” to see how it all went down as Blair occasionally chirps in to narrate.

We meet prisoner Maria (Cristina Lay), who's on a transport boat headed to the work camp being captained by Orinoco (Stelio Candelli). Though Maria claims she's there for “stealing from a fat old bitch and her sex starved husband,” she's actually Daly's partner going undercover. Cutting across the jungle in hopes of intercepting the boat is Daly's other partner Laredo (Anthony Steffen). He, along with a bunch of hired jewel thieves, end up clashing with Orinoco's group. They kill the guards and Laredo convinces Orinoco and his men to come over to their side by promising he'll be paid handsomely for his efforts. Pretty much exactly how it went down in Hotel Paradise only with some slight changes. The gang finally arrive at the prison, the ladies are thrown in with the wolves while the guys do their conspiring without so much as breaking a fingernail until the very end.

After Maria meets her new cellmates Muriel (Ajita Wilson), Mary (Maite Nicote) and Kate (Cintia Lodetti), the girls go to work mining for emeralds while lash happy guards walk around barking out things like “Quit fuckin' around fat ass!” and “You good for nothing bitches!” This very much keeps in tune with the original films' near-constant parade of nudity, including the nude cat fights, nude torture, nude stream bathing, lounging around the cell in the nude and, rather ingeniously, combining the outdoor shower scene from Escape and the outdoor shower scene from Hotel to make an even longer shower scene. However, while this does keep in much of the full female nudity, it gets rid of the more explicit shots present in the originals plus removes all of the soft-core sex and rape scenes. The nastier torture and whipping scenes didn't make the cut either, likely so this could secure a U.S. R rating.

What this film cannot do is combine two different films with similar yet slightly different plots and still keep everything coherent. Just as the credits themselves are jacked up, this hatchet-job (which was mostly re-dubbed for this release) switches around characters and character names like it's nothing. One actor who played a sadistic guard in Escape but one of the heroic revolutionaries in Hotel starts out as a heroic revolutionary with one name but then becomes a sadistic guard with another name that was already given to one of the other guards. At least three different characters are called Paco at various points and this keeps both the sadistic warden from Escape (played by Luciano Pigozzi) AND the sadistic warden from Hotel (played by Luciano Rossi), so depending on the scene it's impossible to tell who's even running this place. For the record, the majority of the recycled footage seen here comes from Hotel, though this finishes out by putting both of the films' big finales back to back!

We then return to Daly, who demands the jewels in Luker's safe as compensation for the hell she and her friends went through. She snarls out a few one-liners (“All that horror for two little bags of green SHIT!”), shoots both Luker and his bodyguard (Dirk Kancilia) dead and then gets what she came for. The end.

Watching this misbegotten project made me wonder why in the hell they didn't just release the superior Hotel Paradise as is with a few needed cuts since they'd already done that with Escape. It likely boiled down to it not having any kind of name recognition here in the states. Perhaps it was a smart business decision and being able to promote the film using Blair's name made it more profitable than it otherwise would have been. Either way, her screen time amounts to less than 10 minutes and she reportedly filmed all of her scenes in a single day. The editing, continuity and new dialogue are all terrible, the transfer of the original footage is way too dark (the night scenes are almost impossible to make out) and, despite the enticing poster, Linda's never on a beach in a bathing suit brandishing a gun. Afterward, you may feel compelled to cleanse your palate with a viewing of Chained Heat. Hell, Red Heat even.

★1/2

Midnight Blue (1979)

November 12, 2016, 7:09 am

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... aka: La domenica del diavolo (The Devil on Sunday)
... aka: Noche azul (Blue Night)
... aka: Sexy Blue
... aka: Week-end me poly sex

Directed by:
Raimondo Del Balzo

A busload of teenage female track athletes are taking a “tourist trip” along the Mediterranean coast. After making a pit stop to swim, Francesca Laruso (Monica Como) and her pals Rita (Christiana Borghi) and Elena (Elisabetta Valgiusti) decide they'd rather spend a few days at the secluded beachfront villa owned by Francesca's rich mother than continue with the boring tour (“To think, it's only educational for God's sake. Who needs it? I certainly don't!”) They manage to convince their chaperone Silvia (Dirce Funari) to drop them off there, with plans of the bus swinging back by in a couple of days to pick them up. After the girls get settled in, they hit the beach and then decide to do a little topless sunbathing afterward. It's a privately owned beach after all, so why not? As they're relaxing, three older men; Pier Luigi (“Michael Coby” / Antonio Cantafora), Mario (Vincenzo Crocitti) and Bruno (Giancarlo Prete), suddenly approach and ask to use the beach. The naive girls unwisely decide to be a little more friendly and accommodating than they should be and it ends up biting them in the ass.

About two minutes after the men have arrived, Rita takes Pier Luigi up to the house and has sex with him in the shower while the camera moves up and down their bodies for several minutes. Afterward, Francesca offers to give the guys a place to stay for the entire weekend since lodging is hard to find in those parts. They play cards, eat, talk about nothing in particular and there's another sex scene between Rita and Pier Luigi. The following day, Pier Luigi drives Francesca into town to pick up some food at an outdoor market. She grabs a newspaper while she's there, gets back in the car and opens it only to discover their three guests have just escaped from prison. She attempts to get to a payphone but Pier Luigi catches on and drives her back so he and his pals can figure out what to do.

The three girls are then yanked back inside where they're thrown on the floor, called bitches, tramps and cunts, have their clothes cut off with a switchblade, are watched while showering, get slapped around, get gang raped and are constantly threatened with death. The criminals, who'd all been given life sentences for murder and rape prior to escaping, cut the phone wires, eat like pigs, get drunk and mock family photos. They plan on killing them once their crime boss shows up with their passports, but two of the girls manage to escape through a second floor window onto the roof and then into the woods. They're finally able to put their track skills (one girl is an expert javelin thrower) to good use dispatching the cretins, but the story doesn't quite end there.

This falls into the “terror film” category of European Last House on the Left wannabes that were very popular in the 70s and early 80s. These all feature a small group of people being held hostage, beaten, murdered, raped and / or terrorized by violent criminals before finally deciding they've had enough. Others in the cycle include the Turkish Last House in Istanbul (1974), Night Train Murders (1974), HITCH-HIKE (1977), LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH (1978), the porno Hard Sensation (1980), House on the Edge of the Park (1980), TERROR EXPRESS (1980), VACATION FOR A MASSACRE (1980) and the list goes on. Some other films were even inappropriately titled to appeal to those looking for a Last House-style film, like Bava's trendsetting BAY OF BLOOD (1971) and the (very good) Spanish psychological horror film CANNIBAL MAN (1973). Based on what I've seen, I'd throw Midnight Blue right at the very bottom of the list.

Not only is this one of the cheapest films of the bunch, it's also one of the dullest. It's not thrilling, suspenseful or even slightly disturbing. It's also poorly made, poorly edited, poorly scored (the Stelvio Cipriani central theme of a woman going “da da da da” is looped endlessly) and suffers from a bland cast playing characters who are given little personality in the script. To make matters even worse, it takes forever to kick into gear and falls so flat for so long it's hard to even really appreciate the amusingly grim ending. Injecting a pair of dimwitted cops (clearly ripped off from Last House) into the film for a few scenes just comes off as a desperate attempt at levity.

When all else fails, make your crappy thriller look like a porno!

Though this was a theatrical release in numerous countries (including playing in Italy under at least three different titles!), it was never released here in America. There are two cuts available: One is a decent quality widescreen print in Italian and the other is an awful quality (and too dark) full screen print in English. I unfortunately had to watch the latter, which was taken from a Greek VHS release on the EKO Video Films label.

★1/2

Dr. Satan (1966)

November 13, 2016, 8:21 am

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... aka: Doctor Satán
... aka: Dr. Satán

Directed by:
Miguel Morayta

In a wonderfully spooky opening sequence complete with music that would be more at home in a Coffin Joe film, a beggar is swiped by a few pale-faced, karate-chopping zombies and taken to the lab of Dr. Plutarco Arozamena (Joaquín Cordero). There, the mad scientist injects his patented XX-34 serum into the beggar's neck, killing him. He then uses his XR-6 formula (an antidote) to bring the beggar back to life. A ha, instant zombie! This particular combination of formulas can turn any living being into the living dead as long as the antidote is given within 48 hours of the first injection. Dr. Arozamena instructs his henchmen to take the beggar back to where they kidnapped him and leave him there (he won't remember anything), plus stuffs some bills in their pockets to “pay the fee.” What fee, you ask? Well, Dr. Arozamena is involved in other nefarious activities that don't involve kidnapping unwilling human guinea pigs and turning them into zombies. He also happens to be embroiled in an international crime / mafia network that stretches all the way to Europe.

Agent Tomás Mateos (José Gálvez) receives a telegram from Paris Interpol about a counterfeit money scam operating between France and Mexico. Tomás either needs to get to the bottom of things pronto or else he'll lose his job. Thankfully, he's got a good assistant in Nora (Alma Delia Fuentes), who proves to be an even better sleuth than her superior. Meanwhile, Luisa Moncelli (Gina Romand) flies in from Europe. A representative of the counterfeiters who's come to make sure the Mexican contingent doesn't screw things up, Luisa meets up with Dr. Arozamena, whose experiments are being funded by the organization. The doctor is instantly smitten with the blonde beauty and, since she has a thing for evil, mysterious guys, the feeling's mutual. The two decide they need to eliminate a few people in order for their operation to run more smoothly. On the immediate hit list are Tomás, Nora and Javier Rodríguez (Quintín Bulnes), who's been doing an inept job distributing the counterfeit cash and attracting unwanted police attention in the process.

All of the principals end up at a nightclub where the doctor shoots a capsule of XX-34 into Javier's neck with a blowgun disguised as a cigarette. Javier goes back home and dies while the police apprehend Daniel (Antonio Raxel), one of the zombie henchmen. Daniel can only repeat “No se nada” and Arozamena's name in a monotone voice to any question asked. But the doctor cleverly manages to avoid being implicated by telling them Daniel is one of his patients. He then gives him a salt tablet which releases his soul and makes him disappear into thin air. Arozamena sends his boys out to dig up Javier's corpse so he can be resurrected as a zombie (complete with staples in head) who's renamed Cain and then stages assassination attempts on both Tomás and Nora using Cain and his other two henchman, Baltazar (Carlos Agostí) and Tino (Gerardo Zepeda).

The police have a major break in the case when the doctor's personal secretary Elsa (Judith Ruiz Azcarraga) steps forward. Elsa's father was a former colleague of Arozamena's until he disappeared and she's been secretly gathering evidence against him ever since. Now in possession of incriminating recordings of his conversations plus duplicate keys to his lab, which is accessed through a hidden panel which leads down a stairwell into some caves, she finally decides to blow the whistle on him. However, our heroes really have no idea what they're up against. In addition to creating zombies and helping to spread fake money around the city, Dr. Arozamena is also a dedicated Satanist who prays to “Rey Diablo” (King Devil) for help and guidance, captures souls inside little boxes and even conjures up a winged demon.

I can't speak for everybody out there, but when I watch a movie called Dr. Satan that was made in Mexico in the 60s, this is pretty much exactly what I'm wanting to see. Sure, there aren't any pro wrestlers to be found, but this doesn't need them. It's also made with enough skill to never really lapse into dated camp territory. There's an entertaining (and busy) plot, a thoroughly evil villain dedicated solely to the art of spreading evil, mindless zombies, secret passageways, cool gadgets, a bit of early gore (like the doctor sewing up a wound on one of his henchmen), good sets, an excellent music score from Luis Hernández Bretón and some very atmospheric sequences, best of which is the first appearance of the demon in a foggy cemetery.

With his deep voice, widow's peak, V-shaped eyebrows and completely serious approach to the role, Cordero is perfect as the evil doctor and channels some serious Lugosi here with his intense stares (simple lighting effects used to accentuate his face help, as well). The rest of the actors are also very good. The open ending is a set up for the 1968 sequel, Dr. Satán y la magia negra / "Dr. Satan and the Black Magic Woman" (U.S. title: Dr. Satan vs. Black Magic), which was shot in color and also features Cordero.

This was released at least two different times on VHS here in the U.S.. Unfortunately, neither release was in English. The first video (pictured above) came from The Puente Group in 1990 and the second was from Something Weird Video a few years later. There's a bootleg version currently available taken from one of the VHS releases. While it doesn't score very high on print quality it at least has fan made English subs. IMDb currently has this listed as Doctor Satán, though the title screen and all posters and lobby cards title it Dr. Satan.

★★★

Xin tiao yi bai (1987)

November 14, 2016, 2:03 pm

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... aka: Heartbeat 100
... aka: Heartbeat One Hundred
... aka: Sam tiu yat baak

Directed by:
Kent Cheng
Kin Lo

After leaving a nightclub in On Lok (Happy) Village, a couple who duck into an old building are stabbed to death while having sex and their bodies are then dumped into the Tai Shek Bay. The dead male was involved in a robbery where 15 million dollars worth of cash, antiques and other valuables were stolen. Five days after police discover the bodies and put up 50,000 dollars in reward money for information leading to the whereabouts of the other robbers / missing money, a small group of friends decide to head out to the same bay for a two month stay. That's not very good timing, but Maggie (Maggie Cheung), a young writer who's working on a TV detective drama, could use a little inspiration. Her somewhat snobby sister Chu Chu (Bonnie Law) is kind of there like it or not. And that's a big not on the presence of Weeny Eyes (Fong Liu), a persistent guy who's been after Chu Chu since they were both eight years old and seemingly won't take no for an answer. As the gang head down a narrow mountain road (the girls in a car and Weeny on a three wheeler), a motorcycle comes barreling down on them. After a minor crash, driver To Nam (Mark Cheng), has a flat tire and the girls agree to give him a lift.

Upon arrival in the village, the locals aren't very friendly and their rental home is a filthy, rat-infested disaster so they set about trying to whip it into habitable condition. Their attempt at hiring a maid (Mama Hung) backfires when she refuses to enter their home, claiming it's haunted. She does however invite them to her home so she can tell them about what happened there years earlier, which involved a love triangle, a suicide and a restless ghost haunting the home. Meanwhile, To Nam, who turns out to be a police inspector visiting the village to investigate the murders, meets up with local law enforcement, who are in the middle of trying to beat a disobedient dog to death with a log (!) when he walks in. Arrogant yet seemingly inept police sergeant Kwan Kao (Lam Chung) informs him that he's been there for decades and the tiny village hadn't had any problems until recently. Kind of hard to believe once we see who else is living there!

For starters, there's the mentally retarded and snake-obsessed Pink Panther (Ching Wong), who Chu Chu catches peeping in the window while she's in the bathtub. And then there's his father Yam (Wung Foo), who hears what his son's been up to, beats him over the back with a 2x4 and then kicks him to the ground. And trust me, it's probably even more difficult to type out scenarios like “Yam beats Pink Panther with a 2x4 after he peeps on Chu Chu” with a straight face than it is reading it. Mrs. Tse (Lisa Chiao Chiao), the mother of suspected robber Hoi (Fui-On Shing), claims she hasn't seen her son in a decade and appears to be out of her mind as well. There's also a gang of young thugs dressed in black who continue to harass the new arrivals even after To Nam kung fu's their asses and forces them to apologize.

As it turns out, numerous people in the village are not who they appear to be and a series of gory axe murders soon begins. Late one night, Maggie hears commotion coming from the home next door and sees a murder Rear Window-style. Because she tagged a particular person as the victim and that person turns out to still be alive after the cops look into it, she loses the support of the local police and decides to investigate matters on her own against the urging of To Nam. This ends up getting a dog killed and her sister and their friend kidnapped and put in a death trap that threatens to impale them both on spikes. But that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as the problems they'll face.

Considering all of the elements at play here, this combination of drama, comedy, romance, mystery and horror should have been a chaotic mess... and yet it's not. A very likable cast helps a lot, but so does the sheer unpredictability of it all. You never know what you're going to get from one scene to the next. The blossoming romance between the detective and the writer (done with some genuine charm) or a body chopped in two with a shovel? A surprising bit of humanity shown the usually one dimensional "annoying" character or a shootout at a fireworks festival? They also throw in a car chase, explosions, a snake attack, a decapitation, sword fights, karate fights, gore, a dash of nudity, some Nancy Drew-style sleuthing, a bizarre ceiling fan attack, corpses hidden in plaster sculptures, a sense of humor that's more character-driven and less slapstick than most other HK films from this same time frame and much, much more. There's never a dull moment and the directors are geniuses as far as I'm concerned for making this run as smoothly as it does, tying everything together by the end and for making a film that's quirky and offbeat yet still easily digestible at the same time. I was thoroughly impressed.

This one's from Cinema City & Films Company (later called just Cinema City Company) and has drifted into obscurity over the years thanks to never being given a DVD release. That's somewhat surprising considering CCC is the same company behind the easy-to-find hit A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). There was a VHS release from Rainbow Audio & Visual out of San Francisco, which had English subtitles. The VCD release from Mega Star has no English option. DVDs several sites currently hawk are actually DVD-Rs that just use the video print.

★★★1/2

Dumb Waiter, The (1979)

November 15, 2016, 10:19 am

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Directed by:
Robert Bierman

Sally (Geraldine James) receives a creepy phone call one evening from a man who asks “Haven't you seen me following you?” and then tells her to “Look out for me while you're driving... I'll be right behind you.” Later, after she picks up her dry cleaning and is heading home, she notices a car following closely behind. She doesn't give it too much thought until the car starts threateningly flashing its lights and then she pretty much knows who it is. The car pulls ahead, cuts her off and stops. A man jumps out, rushes toward her, opens her door and tries to pull her out but she's able to drive off and get back to her apartment. Ah, safe at last. Still a bit shook up over the incident, she calls her boyfriend and asks him to come over as soon as he can. While she's taking a bath and getting herself ready for his visit, the black-gloved psycho stalker (John White) is busy trying to find a way inside her apartment. Luckily for him, Sally has the titular contraption inside that she uses to get rid of her trash. That's all she wrote plot-wise in this 17-minute British short but, in this particular case, that's all it really has to be. This also obviously has nothing to do with the famous Harold Pinter play of the same name.

A pretty good sign for something like this is if you'd like for it to go on longer than it actually does or if you can imagine what it would be like placed inside a full length movie and it gets the wheels turning about what the rest of the film would be like. This achieves that much and it really could have been a signature set piece within a feature or perhaps even the big finale to one. It's stylish, well-shot, has a great eerie synthesizer score from Colin Towns and provides some actual suspense and several good shocks, which is pretty impressive for the short running time. The ambiguous freeze frame ending may not be for all tastes, though.

The only glaring issue I had was that Sally never calls the cops. Even putting this in context to when it was made that's a hard swallow. In those pre-Internet / pre-cell phone days, it was cake to find the numbers / names / addresses of whoever you wanted just skimming through a phone book. Given the general anonymity of phones back then, it wasn't uncommon at all to receive the occasional call from a stranger saying they were going to do something horrible to you. You didn't call the police for something like that, you told the person to fuck off and then hung up on them. However, someone threatening you, telling you they know where you live and then actually physically coming for you after trying to run you off the road certainly was, is and always will be enough reason to get in touch with the cops! The fact Sally doesn't drive straight to the police station after the attempted attack, doesn't even call them when she gets home and doesn't even mention it to her boyfriend so he'll hurry his ass along is pretty silly.

Director Bierman went on to make the BAFTA nominated D.H. Lawrence adaptation The Rocking Horse Winner (1983), the CableACE Award-winning TV movie Apology (1986) and the very polarizing Nicholas Cage vehicle Vampire's Kiss (1988), which wasn't particularly well-received at the time but has since gone on to garner a cult following. After such an interesting start, it's kind of a shame to see he was relegated mostly to TV work after 1990. All that is currently available for this one is a poor copy that was recorded from a TV broadcast. Apparently it played in UK theaters as a warm up to Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982), which is... odd.

★★★

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Sexandroide (1987)

November 16, 2016, 8:41 am

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... aka: La dagy de les sexandroides
... aka: Les sexandroïdes
... aka: Sex Android

Directed by:
Michel Ricaud

Sexandroide is a shot-on-video exercise in plotless gore, nudity and overall bad taste - a videotaped Grand Guignol if you will - that runs just 57 minutes and is divided into three segments. I guess one could call it an anthology, though there's no linking segments to tie the stories together so this just really comes off like three shorts shown back-to-back-to-back. Though French in origin, there's no real dialogue to listen to in any of the segments so subtitles aren't even be needed for this one. Our first tale is titled "Le dagyde," which immediately had me hopping on the ole search engine to find out what in the hell that even was. "Dagyde" is derived from the Greek word dagos, meaning “doll.” The definition I found claims a dagyde is a doll similar to, but not exactly the same as, a voodoo doll, though it sounds exactly the same. The doll represents a person who's going to be the subject of a magical ritual or spell. Needles or pins are then inserted into various places on the doll to indicate where energy, for good or ill, is to be sent. Hey, I need to make watching this crap, and having you read about it, at least somewhat educational, don't I?

A man seen only in shadow opens an envelope containing a Polaroid of a woman. He places a fingernail, a snippet of hair, an earring and a bobby pin all presumably belonging to the woman on the photo and then starts messing around with a voodoo doll. The woman in the photo, who's at a bar, soon starts feeling woozy and excuses herself to the bathroom. She pukes in the sink and, as clothes are ripped off the voodoo doll, her clothes are also ripped off. First goes her dress and then her stockings and then her panties, bra and garter until she's standing their butt ass naked. The man then pokes the voodoo doll in the vagina until the woman is bleeding profusely from between her legs all over the floor and into a toilet. Next up comes the eyeballs and breasts, which also start bleeding all over the place. He then burns the doll's face, slits its throat and hangs it from a noose, all of which happen to the girl in the bathroom. Though she screams a few times, she mostly moans and sounds like she's getting off.

In our next story, "Les sexandroïdes," a scared woman (who actually conveys fear and other emotions unlike the chick in the first story) makes her way down a flight stairs to a cheap dungeon set. There, she's attacked a mutant hunchback wearing a robe and shoots him until he goes away. A skull starts smoking, she becomes possessed and then does a long strip routine that involves removing her panties, giving a mannequin torso a lap dance, constantly bending over to show off her ass, playing with fire and violently flogging herself with a cat o' nine tails. The monster returns, whips her some more and then (really!) sticks four pins through her nipples, another long pin through her tongue and more into both of her boobs. He hands her a razor and she cuts off one of her nipples, hands it over to him and he eats it. After cutting himself and having her lick his blood, what could he possibly do for an encore? Well, cut out her eyeball, stab her through the throat and then gut himself over her corpse.

Finally comes "Les dents de l'amour" ("The Teeth of Love"); which is little more than a chick showing off her hot body. A casket is cracked open for a widow to have a private viewing but the corpse rises as a vampire (in really crappy makeup). He rips the woman's clothes off, bites her and then hops back in his coffin and goes to sleep. She then leans over on the coffin and comes back to life as a pale-faced vampire with an oversized set of plastic fangs who does a nude dance around the coffin... all set to  horrible covers of the Tina Turner songs "I Might Have Been Queen" and "What's Love Got to Do With It!" After her eight minute long grave gyration complete with spread eagle shots and crotch rubbing concludes, she climbs into the coffin with the vampire, hangs a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside and closes the lid. The end.

Sometimes you'll sit through something and wonder what kind of audience they had in mind when they made it. This is one of those times. Considering the director's only other output was hardcore porn, I think it's safe to say all of the actresses on hand (none of whom is credited) were probably porno gals. I would say perhaps professional strippers except none of them can actually dance, though they all have the bodies for it. The ass on the final girl is probably worthy of a star all on its own. Not only does the constant flesh scream porn, but so do the static long shots, the fact it was shot on videotape and the ultra cheap sets, which resemble something a community theater may throw together in half an hour. Rest assured, if there happens to be a chair or another prop in the room, it's there to be used in some fashion.

Released on video in both France and Japan back in the 80s, this finally made its American debut last year courtesy of Massacre Video, who offer both a DVD and a collector's edition VHS. The Massacre release includes hardcore inserts featuring different performers that were added to at least one of the two Japanese releases. As per the usual Japanese standard, these explicit shots have been censored so why they're even there in the first place is a mystery.

★★

Devicanska svirka (1973) [TV]

November 17, 2016, 9:20 am

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... aka: Song of Virgins
... aka: Virgin's Music

Directed by:
Djordje Kadijevic

Passing through the country on his way to the city, a young man named Ivan (Goran Sultanovic) arrives in a small village. After a black carriage being driven by two white horses rolls across a dusty road in the distance, his own driver (Toma Kuruzovic) refuses to take him the rest of the way to his destination... not even if God himself asked him to. Ivan is then forced to go by foot. As he approaches a large castle, he can hear strange music playing. A young boy passing through warns him to stay away right before the black carriage speeds down the road and runs him down. The coachman, Bartolomeo (Ivan Jagodic), stops and his passenger, the mysterious, sexy and extremely voluptuous Sibila (Olivera Katarina) step out to check on the unconscious, bleeding boy. Sibila asks for Ivan's help and, perhaps mesmerized by her impressive cleavage, ignores the ample warning he's already had and agrees. Ivan gets into the coach and they all go to the castle, where the boy soon passes away. Claiming she doesn't know his parents or what to even do with the body, Sibila asks Ivan to stay. After all, her castle wasn't always so quiet and lonely and perhaps with him there now things will finally change. He agrees. Again, it's all about the cleavage.

Almost immediately entering the doors of her own home, Sibila wastes no time letting her crazy colors show. When Ivan tells her he'll stay as long as she wants him to, she bursts into laughter... and sometimes that laughter has a strange echo to it. She acts like a bird, says a lot of things that don't make any sense whatsoever, discusses cemeteries and other depressing things, warns him “If you only knew how cruel I am...” and then describes her relationship with her former husband and how she didn't exactly kill him but instead took all of his joy away until he finally did die. Amazing rack or no, the fact all of this doesn't have Ivan running for the nearest exit is pretty perplexing. The two even make get romantic in the same room where the child's corpses lies and then again on a shine dedicated to her dead hubby!

Still, Ivan has fallen in love. Didn't take long but it never did in the olden days. Sibila even dresses up in a white wedding gown after he declares his adoration for her. All the while, Bartolomeo is lurking around spying on them... and that strange organ music keeps playing. Sibila tells him it's the “Virgin's Music” and promises to show him where it's coming from “at the end.” While that has a certain uneasy finality to it, she assures him “The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.” That hardly sounds much better! At one point Ivan does get freaked out and runs away, but he ends up going back. Sibila even offers him the chance to leave and Bartolomeo's coach services but he again refuses. The allure of the unknown is too great. Candelabra in hand, she eventually takes him up a winding staircase to show him her morbid surprise.

Despite the fact you'll want to grab the protagonist, shake him and tell him what an idiot he is at various points, this is still excellent as a Gothic mood piece. The photography, lighting, barren sets and strong use of shadow (which recall silent era films) all help to make this genuinely creepy. Music and sound are used sparingly to eerie effect and even the low quality print I had to view seemed to enhance the atmosphere. Helping to hold everything together, no short order considering the dialogue often feels empty and superfluous, is a good cast. It's especially nice seeing Katarina, best known for playing the female lead in the semi-famous witch torture film MARK OF THE DEVIL (1970), again. It's obvious the director had seen Mark himself because she's given the exact same wardrobe here to maximize her cleavage. I had no idea she was as good an actress as she is until I saw this.

The director made a number of other horror films, usually produced by Serbian public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Beograd (Radio Television of Serbia). Some of the others include Darovi moje rodjake Marije (1969), LEPTIRICA (1973), Sticenik (1973) and Zaklevta (1974). He received a bit of international attention with A Holy Place (1990) and now works as a college film professor.

★★★

Olivia (1983) [filmed in 1981]

November 19, 2016, 11:04 am

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... aka: Beyond the Bridge
... aka: Double Jeopardy
... aka: Faces of Fear
... aka: Im Blutrausch des Wahnsinns (Murderous Frenzy of Madness)
... aka: Mad Night
... aka: Olivia: dulce asesina (Olivia: Sweet Killer)
... aka: Prozzie
... aka: Taste of Sin, A

Directed by:
Ulli Lommel

Built in the 1830s, the London Bridge once spanned the Thames River and was the talk of the whole city. However, by the 1960s it was slowly sinking into the riverbed and had to be removed. Instead of destroying the historic landmark, the city decided to put it up for auction. Missouri entrepreneur Robert Paxton McCulloch (best known for his chainsaws and oil company) ended up putting in the winning bid of 2.5 million dollars. The bridge was then dismantled and transported back to the United States. In his search for oil, McCulloch had previously purchased a bunch of land in northern Arizona and founded Lake Havasu City there. Now he wanted to invest big bucks into something to attract tourists. The bridge, a way to allow people to see a once important piece of architecture from a foreign country without having to actually go there, was perfect. Over a three year period and at a cost of over 7 million dollars, the bridge was carefully reconstructed stone by stone across the Colorado River. It was finally opened to the public in late 1971 and remains a popular destination to this day.

Not surprisingly, a number of filmmakers decided to take advantage of all the publicity. The first movie to ever be filmed there was the heist film The Day of the Wolves (1971). Later, two horror films were made using the bridge as its centerpiece: the made-for-TV Terror at London Bridge (1985) and this one. The former involved the spirit of Jack the Ripper being transported to the U.S.. Olivia is more of a psychological horror / drama with the bridge taking on a symbolic purpose. Lommel was inspired to make the film after a trip to Lake Havasu.

A London prostitute (Bibbe Hansen) with a sweet view of the bridge from her apartment window is entertaining an America soldier client (Nicholas Love). He seems nice and polite at first, even when he asks her to handcuff him, tease him and insult him (“You're the most disgusting man that I've ever met in my entire life!”), but instructs her not to untie him even if he begs her to. When he starts getting loud, she tells him she's had enough, asks him to leave and unlocks him. He then promptly beats her to death. Watching the whole sordid act play out from a hole in the wall is the hooker's young daughter, Olivia (Amy Robinson). The mother's body is dumped into the Thames and later fished out. A detective (played by the director) tries to break through to little Olivia but she's in too much shock to be of any help.

Jump ahead 15 or so years and we meet the now 20-year-old Olivia (Suzanna Love). Olivia is married to an older welder named Richard (Jeff Winchester) who, while perhaps not filmdom's most monstrous husband, is pretty damn bad. He's moody, insecure, insensitive and too prideful to even allow his wife to work a simple waitress job. Richard married her when she was only 16 and, to him, she's property whose purpose doesn't extend beyond cooking, cleaning and having sex with him whenever he wants it (whether or not she's in the mood being of no concern). Since he's usually gone late into the night, Olivia has had a lot of time alone to think, reflect and fantasize. After having to spend a depressing birthday alone, she starts hearing her mother's voice and finds herself being guided by her. She dresses up as a hooker in black leather boots, a miniskirt and sunglasses, goes down to the bridge where other hookers hang out and is soon picked up by a guy who takes her back to his mannequin-filled apartment. There, she ties him up and then beats him to death with a glass vase. (“Now you can show mommy how much you love her.”)

American engineer Michael Grant (Robert Walker Jr.), who's been flown over to England to help determine whether they should try to fix or demolish the bridge, starts spending a lot of time there. He spots Olivia several times; once in her normal attire walking her dog and another time dressed as a prostitute and becomes intrigued. The two end up going back to his hotel and, because he's kind and not into the kinkier stuff, they have “normal” sex and no one ends up dead. The two continue their passionate affair. After she returns home late on numerous occasions, Richard becomes suspicious. He catches Olivia and Michael kissing, there's a struggle and Richard falls over the side of the bridge. Olivia flees into the night.

Four years later, after the bridge has been moved over to America, Michael goes to Arizona to see it. Much to his shock, he hears a very familiar voice giving a boat tour. The woman, who goes by the name of Jenny, is a dead ringer for Olivia aside from her dark hair, glasses and more conservative attire. “Jenny” works there selling condos. Sometimes she behaves like she knows Mike, sometimes she doesn't. Either way, he gently pushes his way back into her life and soon notices she shares many things in common with the troubled woman he'd met in London years earlier, including the rather distinct habit of opening beer bottles with her teeth. That's because she is her. The romance starts up once again, but Olivia regresses to her old self. She dyes her hair back to blonde, dresses sexier and makes comments about how her mother may not approve of them getting back together. Like it or not, sometimes it's for the best just to let some people go... granted that's even possible.

Olivia seems like an attempt to bridge the gap between “respectable” Hitchcockian psychological thrillers of the previous decades and 80s exploitation / slasher flicks. The childhood flashbacks (complete with bedtime readings of classic fairy tales), the two different locations, the parallel / converging story lines, the dual personalities and the bridge used as the common link between the first half and the second mean there's subtext to spare here. Hell, the final sequence even features a quite literal disposal of baggage. At this point in his career, the director still had very good visual instinct, which was colorfully put front and center in his underrated The Boogeyman (1980) and is here in abundance, too. The interiors are lit with care in a noir style with central images neatly blending in with the darkness surrounding the edges of the frame. There are also some wonderfully filmed outdoor sequences, such as Michael encountering Olivia on the bridge as the sun sets behind them and the camera sometimes allows a peak of the light to enter and overwhelm the frame. The visual presentation wonderfully complements the plot and psychological content, as does an eerie piano and synth score from Joel Goldsmith.

Is the above enough to overcome a few rough patches, the occasional wonky editing cut and a bit of schlock like someone being murdered with an electric toothbrush? For me personally, yes, it was.

One can wonder what the hell happened to Lommel and his talent over time (I usually do after seeing a genuinely good effort out of him like this one or THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES), but one could wonder the same about his then-wife Love. While not the world's best actress, she wasn't half bad either and certainly appealing, talented and beautiful enough to warrant a better career than what she actually had. I also can't think of another actress during this same time period who was co-writing and producing most of their own movies. After their divorce, Love bowed out of show business and now reportedly lives the quiet life in Maine with her daughter. She and Lommel also teamed up for the punk film Blank Generation (1978), the two Boogeyman movies, BrainWaves (1982) and The Devonsville Terror (1983). I'm looking forward to watching some of those.

This was released under a whole slew of alternate titles. Produced in 1981 as Faces of Fear and also called Beyond the Bridge at some point, this played theatrically in the U.S. and Canada under the title A Taste of Sin. It was called Mad Night in France and Double Jeopardy in Australia and several other countries. The UK release is called Prozzie (slang for prostitute).

★★★

Happy Thanksgiving and To See List

November 23, 2016, 8:47 pm

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First off, Happy Thanksgiving, friends! Hope everyone has a great day tomorrow. Me? I'll be cooking turkey for the second time in my life (which I'm hoping will turn out better than last year's frozen fiasco) and then, afterwards, I've been conned into attempting to swoop into a store and grab a few things really quick before being trampled to death during the Black Friday stampede. Hopefully I'll make it back in one piece.

So I'll be M.I.A. for a few days but in the meantime, I've compiled a list of the films I'll be reviewing here over the next few months. I'm setting a goal of watching / reviewing at least 30 of the following before the end of the year and the rest will come soon after that. These are mostly movies I've had copies of for quite a long time but haven't gotten around to watching yet for whatever reason.

- Abracadabra (Tian ling ling, di ling ling) (1986; Tai Kit Mak) Hong Kong
- Aftermath, The (Zombie Aftermath) (1982; Steve Barkett) USA
- After the Fall of New York (2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York) (1983; Sergio Martino) France, Italy
- Altaweza (The Talisman) (1987; Mohammed Shebl) Egypt
- Ancines Woods, The (El bosque del lobo) (1970; Pedro Olea) Spain
- Assault! Jack the Ripper (Bôkô Kirisaki Jakku) (1976; Yasuharu Hasebe) Japan
- Attic, The (1980; George Edwards) USA
- Autopsy (Macchie solari) (1975; Armando Crispino) Italy
- Autopsy of a Ghost (Autopsia de un fantasma) (1967; Ismael Rodríguez) Mexico
- Avengers from Hell (Gi yu) (1981; Pei-Chuan Li) Hong Kong
- Beast Man Snow Man (Jû jin yuki otoko) (1955; Ishirô Honda) Japan
- Bedroom Eyes 2 (1989; Chuck Vincent) USA
- Bimbos B.C. (1990; Todd Sheets) USA
- Birth in the Tomb (Beranak dalam kubur) (1972; Awaludin, Ali Shahab) Indonesia
- Black Panther, The (1977; Ian Merrick) UK
- Bless This House (Meng gui fo tiao qiang) 1988; Ronny Yu) Hong Kong
- Blood Frenzy (1986; Hal Freeman) USA
- Blood of Fu Manchu, The (1968; Jesus Franco) Spain, UK, USA, West Germany
- Blood Ritual (Xie luo ji) (1989; Yuen Ching Lee) Hong Kong
- Bloody Parrot (Xie ying wu) (1981; Shan Hua) Hong Kong
- Bondage Ecstasy (Tosui yugi) (1989; Hisayasu Satô) Japan
- Brain Eaters, The (1958; Bruno VeSota) USA
- Burning Sensation (Huo zhu gui) (1989; Ma Wu) Hong Kong
- Caller, The (1987; Arthur Allan Seidelman) USA
- Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (Caltiki il mostro immortale) (1959; Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda) Italy, USA
- Castle of Fu Manchu, The (1969; Jesus Franco) Italy, Liechtenstein, Spain, UK, WG
- Centipede Horror (Wu gong zhou) (1982; Keith Li) Hong Kong
- Chiller (1985; Wes Craven) [TV] USA
- Click: The Calendar Girl Killer (1990; Ross Hagen, John Stewart) USA
- Clouds (Alapaap) (1984; Tata Esteban) Philippines
- Cold Eyes of Fear (Gli occhi freddi della paura) (1971; Enzo G. Castellari) Italy, Spain
- Cold Light of Day (1989; Fhiona Louise) UK
- College Girl Murders, The (Der Mönch mit der Peitsche) (1967; Alfred Vohrer) West Germany
- Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1985; Elem Klimov) Soviet Union
- Come Haunt with Me (Hu gui xi chun) (1971; Chun Hsieh) Hong Kong, Taiwan
- Couch, The (1962; Owen Crump) USA
- Count Tsakona and His Draculettes (O komis... Tsakonas) (1989; Takis Simonetatos) Greece
- Crimes of Passion (1984; Ken Russell) USA
- Cruel Ghost Legend (Kaidan zankoku monogatari) (1968; Kazuo Hase) Japan
- Crystalbrain (Trasplante de un cerebro) (1970; Juan Logan) Italy, Spain
- Crystal Force (1990; Laura Keats) USA
- Curse (Cannibal Curse; Chu nu jiang) (1988; Yeung Kong) Hong Kong

- Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice (Catacombs) (1988; David Schmoeller) Italy, USA

- Curse of the Alpha Stone, The (1972; Stewart Malleon) USA
- Dark Romances Vol. 2 (1990; Rodd Matsui, Patricia Miller, Bryan Moore, Samuel Oldham, Mark Shepard, John Strysik) USA
- Dead Sleep (1990; Alec Mills) Australia
- Death Carries a Cane (Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio) (1973: Maurizio Pradeaux) Italy, Spain
- Death Powder (Desu pawuda) (1986; Shigeru Izumiya) Japan
- Death Ship (1980; Alvin Rakoff) Canada, UK, USA
- Death Walks at Midnight (La morte accarezza a mezzanotte) (1972; Luciano Ercoli) Italy, Spain
- Deep Blood (Sangue negli abissi) (1990; Joe D'Amato, Raffaele Donato) Italy
- Deep End (1970; Jerzy Skolimowski) UK, West Germany
- Demon, The (Il demonio) (1963; Brunello Rondi) France, Italy
- Demon Hunter (Cazador de demonios) (1983; Gilberto de Anda) Mexico
- Devil, The (Xie mo) (1981; Jen-Chieh Chang) Hong Kong, Taiwan
- Devilish Murder, A (Salinma) (1965; Yong-min Lee) South Korea
- Devil Woman (1970; Jose Flores Sibal) Philippines
- Dr. Satan vs. Black Magic (Dr. Satán y la magia negra) (1968; Rogelio A. González) Mexico
- Don't Panic (1988; Rubén Galindo Jr.) Mexico
- Drifting Classroom, The (Hyôryu kyôshitsu) (1987; Nobuhiko Ôbayashi) Japan
- Erotic Games of a Respectable Family (Giochi erotici di una famiglia per bene) (1975; Francesco Degli Espinosa) Italy
- Evil Clergyman, The (1988; Charles Band) [short] USA
- Exorcism's Daughter (Las melancolicas) (1971; Rafael Moreno Alba) Spain
- Fan, The (Der Fan; Trance) (1982; Eckhart Schmidt) West Germany
- Fangs (Anyab) (1981; Mohammed Shebl) Egypt
- Ferat Vampire (Upir z Feratu) (1982; Juraj Herz) Czechoslovakia
- Fireworks Woman, The (1975; Wes Craven) [X] USA
- Flower and Snake 5: Rope Magic (Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô) (1987; Masayuki Asao) Japan
- Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Le foto proibite di una signora per bene) (1970; Luciano Ercoli) Italy, Spain
- Friendly Ghost (Lao you gui gui) (1985; Chuan Chen) Hong Kong
- Fright House (1989; Len Anthony) USA
- Funhouse, The (1981; Tobe Hooper) USA
- Ghostly Vixen (Tian shi zhuo jian) (1990; Wellson Chin) Hong Kong
- Ghost of the Hunchback, The (Kaidan semushi otoko) (1965; Hajime Satô) Japan
- Girl of Diabolical Sex (A Menina do Sexo Diabólico) (1987; Mario Lima) [X] Brazil
- Golden Nun (Jin nígu) (1977; Tien-Yung Hsu) Taiwan
- Gorgo (1961; Eugène Lourié) UK
- Gorilla at Large (1954; Harmon Jones) USA
- Hanging Heart (Mórbida Paixão) (1983; Jimmy Lee) USA
- Hard Rock Nightmare (1988; Dominick Brascia) USA
- Hard Times for Dracula (Tiempos duros para Drácula) (1976; Jorge Darnell) Argentina, Spain
- Haunted Strangler, The (Grip of the Strangler) (1958; Robert Day) UK
- Haunted Tales (Die xian) (1980; Yuen Chor, Tun Fei Mou) Hong Kong
- Head, The (Die Nackte und der Satan) (1959; Victor Trivas) West Germany
- He Lives by Night (Ye jing hun) (1982; Po-Chih Leong) Hong Kong
- Hellgate (1989; William A. Levey) South Africa, USA
- Hell's Gate (Le porte dell'inferno) (1989; Umberto Lenzi) Italy
- Helltrain (Hitler's Last Train; Train spécial pour SS) (1977; Alan Payet) France, Spain
- Holocaust 2000 (Rain of Fire) (1977; Alberto De Martino) Italy, UK
- Hooray for Horrorwood! (1990; Ray Ferry) [doc] USA
- Horrible Dr. Hichcock, The (L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock) (1962; Riccardo Freda) Italy
- Horrors of Malformed Men (Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû) (1969; Teruo Ishii) Japan
- House of the Seven Tombs (La casa de las siete tumbas) (1982; Pedro Stocki) Argentina
- Howling, The (1981; Joe Dante) USA

- Human Beasts (El carnaval de las bestias) (1980; Paul Naschy) Japan, Spain

- Human Lanterns (Ren pi deng long) (1982; Chung Sun) Hong Kong
- Humongous (1982; Paul Lynch) Canada
- Inquisition (Inquisición) (1976; Paul Naschy) Spain
- I Saw What You Did (1988; Fred Walton) [TV] USA
- Island, The (1980; Michael Ritchie) USA
- Jail House Eros (Jian yu bu she fang) (1990; Sai Hung Fung, Jing Wong) Hong Kong
- Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio, The (1971; Eric Jeffrey Haims) USA
- Katarsis (1963; Giuseppe Veggezzi) Italy
- Killer! (1989; Tony Elwood) USA
- Killer Inside Me, The (1976; Burt Kennedy) USA
- Killer is One of Thirteen, The (El asesino está entre los trece) (1973; Javier Aguirre) Spain
- Killer is Still Among Us, The (L'assassino è ancora tra noi) (1986; Camillo Teti) Italy
- Killing Spree (1987; Tim Ritter) USA
- Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1981; Patrick Regan) USA
- Last Theft, The (Poslední lup) (1987; Jirí Barta) [short] Czechoslovakia
- Lost Souls (Da se) (1980; Tun Fei Mou) Hong Kong
- Love and Death in the Garden of the Gods (Amore e morte nel giardino degli dei) (1973; Sauro Scavolini) Italy
- Lustmord (Bôkô honban; Pleasure Kill) (1987; Hisayasu Satô) Japan
- Magic Curse, The (Cui hua du jiang tou) (1977; Chin-Ku Lu, Wen Po Tu) Hong Kong, Philippines
- Marley's Revenge: The Monster Movie (1989; Jet Eller) USA
- Monsters & Maniacs (1988; Ted Newsom) [doc] USA
- Monstrosity (1987; Andy Milligan) USA
- Murder a la Mod (1968; Brian De Palma) [short] USA
- Mystery on Monster Island (Misterio en la isla de los monstruos) (1981; Juan Piquer Simón) Spain, USA
- Night of a Thousand Cats (La noche de los mil gatos) (1972; René Cardona Jr.) Mexico
- Night of Terror (Gabi ng lagim) (1960; Tommy C. David, Larry Santiago, Pablo Santiago, Felix Villa) Philippines
- Occupant, The (Lung hei bik yan) (1984; Ronny Yu) Hong Kong
- Old Mansion, The (Purana Haveli) (1989; Shyam Ramsay, Tulsi Ramsay) India
- Oltretomba (Beyond) (1987; Fabio Salerno) [short] Italy
- Our Mother's House (1967; Jack Clayton) UK
- Perversion (Estupro) (1979; José Mojica Marins) Brazil
- Phantom of Hollywood, The (1974; Gene Levitt) [TV] USA
- Pituitary Hunter (1990; Dan Pan) Hong Kong
- Predator: The Quietus (1988; Leslie McCarthy) UK
- Primal Rage (Rage - Furia primitiva) (1988; Vittorio Rambaldi) Italy, USA
- Quatermass 2 (Enemy from Space) (1957; Val Guest) UK, USA
- Rats: Night of Terror (Rats - Notte di terrore) (1984; Bruno Mattei) France, Italy
- Ravager, The (1970; Charles Nizet) USA
- Redeemer: Son of Satan!, The (1978; Constantine S. Gochis) USA
- Return of Dracula, The (1958; Paul Landres) USA
- Robot Holocaust (1986; Tim Kincaid) USA
- Robowar (Robowar - Robot da guerra) (1988; Bruno Mattei) Italy
- Rock 'n' Roll Cowboys (1987; Rob Stewart) [TV] Australia
- Satan (3D Saamri) (1985; Shyam Ramsay, Tulsi Ramsay) India
- Secret of the Mummy, The (O Segredo da Múmia) (1982; Ivan Cardoso) Brazil
- Serpent Warriors, The (1985; John Howard, Niels Rasmussen) Hong Kong, USA
- Seventh Curse, The (Yuan Zhen-Xia yu Wei Si-Li) (1986; Ngai Choi Lam) Hong Kong
- Shake, Rattle & Roll (1984; Ishmael Bernal, Emmanuel H. Borlaza, Peque Gallaga) Philippines
- Sinister Dr. Orloff, The (El siniestro doctor Orloff) (1984; Jesus Franco) Spain
- Skin Under the Claws, The (La pelle sotto gli artigli) (1975; Alessandro Santini) Italy
- So Sweet... So Perverse (Così dolce... così perversa) (1969; Umberto Lenzi) France, Italy, West Germany
- Spine (1986; John Howard) USA
- Spirit of the Raped (Suo ming) (1976; Chih-Hung Kuei) Hong Kong
- Spirits of Death (Un bianco vestito per Marialé) (1972; Romano Scavolini) Italy
- Stick, The (1988; Darrell Roodt) South Africa
- Stigma (Estigma) (1980; José Ramón Larraz) Italy, Spain
- Strangler vs. Strangler (Davitelj protiv davitelja) (1984; Slobodan Sijan) Yugoslavia
- Streets of Death (1987; Jeff Hathcock) USA
- Sweet, Sweet Rachel (1971; Sutton Roley) [TV] USA
- Tales of the Third Dimension (1984; Worth Keeter, Thom McIntyre, Earl Owensby) USA
- Terror in Teakwood, The (1961; Paul Henreid) [TV] USA
- That House in the Outskirts (Aquella casa en las afueras) (1980; Eugenio Martín) Spain
- They've Changed Faces (Hanno cambiato faccia) (1970; Corrado Farina) Italy
- This House Possessed (1981; William Wiard) [TV] USA
- Till Death Do We Scare (Xiao sheng pa pa) (1982; Chia Yung Liu) Hong Kong
- Top Sensation (The Seducers) (1969; Ottavio Alessi) Italy
- Trapped Alive (1988; Leszek Burzynski) USA
- Trhauma (1980; Gianni Martucci) Italy
- Turkey Shoot (Escape 2000) (1982; Brian Trenchard-Smith) Australia
- Turn of the Screw, The (Otra vuelta de tuerca) (1985; Eloy de la Iglesia) Spain
- Ulvetid (1981; Jens Ravn) Denmark
- Uncertain Death, The (La muerte incierta) (1972; José Ramón Larraz) Italy, Spain
- Vampires (Abadon) (1986; Len Anthony) USA
- Vengeance of Fu Manchu, The (1967; Jeremy Summers) Hong Kong, Ireland, UK, West Germany
- Victims (Day of the Rapist; Paulie) (1982; Tony Vorno) USA
- Violent Midnight (Psychomania) (1963; Richard Hilliard) USA
- What the Peeper Saw (Diabólica malicia; Night Child) (1971; Andrea Bianchi, James Kelly) Italy, Spain, UK, West Germany
- Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie (Eugenie (Historia de una perversión)) (1980; Jesus Franco) Spain
- Witch with the Flying Head (Fei tou mo nu) (1982; Jen-Chieh Chang) Hong Kong, Taiwan
- Women's Prison Massacre (Blade Violent - I violenti) (1983; Bruno Mattei) France, Italy
- Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990; Harry Bromley Davenport) Canada
- Yellow Wallpaper, The (1989; John Clive) [TV] Canada, USA
- Zeder (1983; Pupi Avati) Italy
- Zombie Rampage (1989; Todd Sheets) USA
- Zuma (1985; Jun Raquiza) Philippines

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Take care everyone and have a great day!

Femmine infernali (1980)

October 20, 2016, 7:28 pm

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... aka: Escape
... aka: Escape from Hell
... aka: Hell Females
... aka: Hellfire on Ice, Part 2: Escape from Hell
... aka: Hell Prison
... aka: Les évadées du camp d'amour (Escapees of Love Camp)

Directed by:
"Tony Moore" (Edoardo Mulargia)

I've owned a copy of the Linda Blair vehicle SAVAGE ISLAND (1985) for quite some time now and put off watching it after learning it's mostly made up of footage from two other Italian / Spanish women-in-prison exploitation movies; this one and Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso / “Orinoco: Prison of Sex” (better known by the title HOTEL PARADISE). Both Escape and Orinoco were shot back-to-back by the same director for the same production companies in the same country using the same sets and featuring the same actors. In fact, the two are so similar that for the longest time they were listed as being the same film in most reference books. So I held off on watching the Blair version until I acquired the other two films just so I could map out the chronology of how one shoot produces two films and then two films become three films and about how three films can then be released under about thirty different titles between them. Anyway, I now have all three so expect to see a one-two-three punch of W.I.P. crap in your near future.

This genre of film basically exists for one reason: To show scantily-clad / naked females being raped, abused, tortured and degraded in various ways. Having a mostly female cast trapped in a prison setting is pretty much the ideal exploitation premise because it means more shower scenes and more lesbian scenes which means more flesh on display. A tropical prison setting is even better. After all, hot = less clothing and hot also = more showers needed. Most of these films attempt to justify what they're doing by applying a “girl power” angle and allowing the ladies to either outsmart the corrupt staff and escape or turn the tables on their oppressors and get bloody revenge. Of course that usually happens in the last ten minutes or so. There are far more pressing things to take care of first!

To its credit, Escape from Hell clicks not only all of the expected boxes, plus also a few unexpected ones. Things open with a group of ladies dressed essentially in ripped, stained t-shirts doing their hard labor for the day and getting pushed, kicked, whipped and berated by laughing, leering guards the entire time. A girl named Ann attempts to escape but she's caught, gang raped and murdered. Lead guard Martinez (Serafino Profumo) tells everyone else she's been killed and eaten by a jaguar but most of the women know better. Things are about to get even worse for the prisoners with the arrival of the new warden (Luciano Pigozzi), who's an asshole germaphobe that claims to be a stickler for law and order but isn't above torturing the prisoners when they do something he doesn't happen to like. He's also so uptight that even his room cannot be dusted to his satisfaction. As it turns out, the Warden is under contract to clear a path through the swamp and I bet you can guess who gets to work their asses off even harder than usual to accomplish that.

Along with the new Warden, a new batch of prisoners are brought in, including the pouty Vivienne (Cristina Lay), who's set to serve 10 long years. She's introduced to her three cellmates; Mary (Maite Nicote), a former prostitute, Zaira (Ajita Wilson), who's serving 20 years for unpremeditated murder for accidentally shooting her partner in a circus act gone wrong and blonde lesbian Katie (Cintia Lodetti), a lifer who rather casually mentions that she killed her girlfriend as if were nothing to her. Katie is also the Queen Bee of the prison and insists that whatever she says goes and whatever she wants she eventually gets... including the new arrival. Vivienne resists her advances at first and is slapped in the face. She eventually caves in but Zaira also has eyes for the newcomer and gets into a nude cat fight with Katie (“You black bitch!” “White trash!”) over her.

The girls are called things like “swine,” “rats” and “fucking whores” and are fed nothing but a steady diet of snake meat because it “gives them zip.” For punishment, they get strung up by their wrists, are forced to run around in a circle carrying heavy bags, are whipped bloody or get shot dead. Mary, who's been screwing one of the guards for special favors (“I prefer to buy you like a whore than take you by force!”), is busted with booze and cigarettes so she ends up getting buried up to her shoulders on the jungle floor and is killed by a giant python. Having had enough torture, rape and slave labor to probably last them a lifetime, Vivienne, Zaira and Katie, along with their new cellmate Lucy (former Miss Italy Zaira Zoccheddu), decide to attempt an escape and even have an ally on the inside...

Classical music loving drunk Dr. Farrell (Anthony Steffen), the only halfway decent person who works at the camp, has seen enough himself and decides to help the ladies out. He gives them a potion that will make them erupt in red soars and puke up blood in hopes that he can convince the Warden they have the plague. It works and he's given permission to take the infected girls a few miles away from the camp until they recover. Farrell decides to kill the Warden before they take off, which ends up biting them in the ass once his body is discovered. What follows is a Most Dangerous Game-style forest hunt with the doc and the girls trying to elude armed guards whilst also trying to survive the elements during their 10 mile trek to the river. There's death by snake, leeches, dehydration, quicksand and gunfire, plus an out of nowhere fantasy striptease from Wilson, which is wedged in because the film had gone (gasp!) a whopping 15 minutes without gratuitous nudity beforehand.

Also for your viewing pleasure, you get a snake having its head bitten off, a crazy woman “dog lover” who supposedly has a sexual relationship with the resident canine and a voyeuristic mute servant who's had his tongue removed. There's plenty of torture violence (though this isn't quite as sadistic as the Ilsa movies) and full frontal nudity in shower scenes, soft core sex scenes (both straight and girl-girl) and cat fights and one long and rather graphic rape scene including spread eagle shots that would have gotten this slapped with an X here in America had they not been cut out. In other words, you get everything you could possibly want from one of these things and then some with this dumb but lively piece of Euro-sleaze. The version I viewed ran 89 minutes and does not appear to have been cut, though some sources claim there's a 93 minute version out there.

Wizard Video first released this in the U.S. in 1984 under the title Escape, which managed to actually beat Savage Island to theaters so some people saw parts of the same film twice. In 1990, the obscure label Hurricane Pictures then reissued it under the name Hellfire on Ice, Part 2: Escape from Hell (the *other* Hellfire on Ice was actually 1972's Sweet Sugar). It was then picked up by Troma and Shock-O-Rama for DVD distribution. The UK version titled Hell Prison was cut by about 5 minutes. In Germany, it was released as part three in a bogus series entitled Die Schwarze Nymphomanin / “The Black Nymphomaniac.” The first two Black Nympho releases (all of which starred African American post op transsexual Wilson) were Queen of Sex (1977) and Erotic Passion (1981). It was also released in Germany under the irresistible title Die Liebeshexen vom Rio Cannibale / “Love Witches of Cannibal River.” This is much easier to find that its companion piece.

★★1/2

Giochi erotici di una famiglia per bene (1975)

August 28, 2017, 6:36 am

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... aka: Erotic Games of a Respectable Family
... aka: Juegos eroticos amorales (Amoral Erotic Games)
... aka: Juegos eróticos de una familia bien (Erotic Games of a Good Family)
... aka: Thrilling Story

Directed by:
“Francesco Degli Espinosa” (Enzo Matassi)

Known around town as the paragon of morals, values and social ethics, professor / city councilman Ricardo Rossi (Donald O'Brien) tells a few of his colleagues that “Everyone has the marriage they deserve” when the subject of divorce comes up. He's actually quite right. In the civilized world, no one can really force someone to marry someone else, nor does anyone absolutely have to stay in a terrible marriage. There are always other options. Ricardo's not immune from his own philosophy. Constantly busy with work, meetings and conventions (plus kind of an asshole to begin with), his younger trophy wife Elisa (Malisa Longo) isn't exactly happy. Suffering from stress, neck pain and nervous exhaustion, Ricardo skips a meeting and returns home early one evening only to find his wife upstairs in their bedroom entertaining company. Elisa's lover manages to conceal their identity and escape out of the window before Ricardo can shoot them. Elisa should have followed. Instead, her jilted hubby has special plans in store for her.

After slapping her a few times and calling her a “whore” and a “bitch in heat,” Ricardo asks his wife to pack her bags because she's leaving. She suggests they get a divorce and move on with their lives. Unfortunately, he's too paranoid about what that will do to his precious reputation and is publicly such a stickler on the indissolubility of marriage concept that he'll never allow that to happen. Ricardo then drives Elisa out into the country. He explains he's going to drop her off at a secluded mountain village where she'll live under a fake name and constantly be watched and monitored. Little does Elisa know, but he has other plans in store for her. He's already slipped sleeping pills into a drink she had before they left. When she passes out, he stuffs her in a sack, throws in a huge rock and rolls her body down a hill toward a lake.

Upon returning home, Ricardo sees the figure of a body lying under blankets on his bed. Just as he breathes a sigh of relief discovering they're just pillows, his wife's ghost appears in the doorway giving him the veiled threat that they'll soon be reunited for all eternity. But just as soon as she appeared, she disappears in the blink of an eye. Running through the entire trial in his head, Ricardo starts hitting the bottle and goes to a seedy area of the city to sulk.  As he's drowning his sorrows, he's approached by a hooker named Eva (Erika Blanc). She's not like the other girls. She's educated, intelligent, free-spirited, is a hooker because she wants to be a hooker and knows exactly what he, and perhaps any other man who'd seek the services of a girl like her, wants to hear. Sensing he's not like the usual tricks and has some class, she tells him she'd love to come stay with him for a little while and help him forget his female troubles. And what does he have to lose at this point?

Eva accompanies Ricardo home and then things start getting even weirder. The two head upstairs to make love while an until-now unseen grinning woman watches from the couch smoking a cigarette and the camera alternates between zooming in and out on the characters and zooming in an out on a spinning Frank Sinatra album; a simple yet quite hypnotic effect in a pretty clever erotic sequence. Afterward, Elisa's ghost makes her presence known yet again. The following morning, Ricardo receives a phone call from a woman who says “Murderer!” and then hangs up. A different kind of distraction soon appears on Ricardo's doorstep in the form of his wife's beautiful 18-year-old niece Barbara (Maria D'Incoronato), aka the girl who may or may not have been sitting on the couch watching him and Eva go at it. Ricardo soon finds himself courting the girl and to his surprise she's rather receptive.

Still, Ricardo finds himself wanting Eva back and is willing to pay top dollar for her to temporarily move in with him; handing out a 600 thousand lira advance on her services. There are more appearances by the ghost wife (who continues to threaten his life), more creepy phone calls and, to complicate matters further, a strange bearded man who was at the scene the same night Ricardo murdered his wife appears to be stalking him. Now that she's living with him, Eva cannot see Elisa's ghost like Ricardo can even when she's standing right next to her. Is he so racked with guilt he's hallucinating things and going insane? Is Elisa's ghost really back from beyond to settle the score? Did Elisa actually not end up dead in the lake after being pushed down the hill? And what part, if any, do Eva, Barbara and the mysterious bearded many have in any of this?

Essentially your standard issue “Is he or isn't he insane?” / “Is she or isn't she dead?” giallo mystery, this is livened up somewhat by amusing dialogue, welcome elements of black comedy sprinkled throughout, a decent cast and a heaping helping of flesh. Though the visual presentation often lacks punch (and style), the mystery itself is no worse than most other films of this type and it gleefully chucks out a bunch of twists toward the end that are as entertaining as they are silly. The script (which contains surprisingly decent dialogue) is from Renato Polselli, who'd previously directed such sleazy genre films as Delirium (1972), The Reincarnation of Isabel (1973) and Mania (1974), as well as some porn. He also wrote a number of 60s Gothic horror films. The director is a relative unknown whose only other directorial credit was the (reputedly terrible) spaghetti western comedy Once Upon a Time in the Wild, Wild West (1973).

Never released here in the U.S., this played theatrically in both Italy and Spain. The version I watched was taken from a Spanish language VHS released by Grupo Video in 1985. After this, I'm going to start keeping track of the amount of times Ms. Blanc actually wore that marvelous black bikini / bell bottom / catsuit hybrid in her various films. The outfit is so awesome she'd already worn it in both The Devil's Nightmare and The Red-Headed Corpse and it looks no worse for wear in this one four years later. It's obvious she had this outfit among her personal wardrobe, which makes me love her even more than I already do.

★★1/2

Dao yin jian chu cha (1990)

November 13, 2017, 5:57 pm

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... aka: Business Trip to the Netherworld
... aka: You Have Arrived in the Hades

Directed by:
Chen-Kuo Chao

Obnoxious, rich young businessman Li Bin (Ching-Huang Yang) gets distracted on the road and drives off the edge of an incomplete bridge during the day. When he lands at the bottom it's suddenly night and foggy. He accidentally blows up a gas station tossing out a lit match after a strange encounter with the attendant and finally arrives home where his wife Hsi Huan (So Lai-Mei) and sister-in-law Hsi Dan (Ting Chang) are watching a horror film. Li Bin tries to talk to them and tries to get their attention in various ways (like turning the TV back on multiple times after they've turned if off) but they pay no attention to him... almost as if he isn't there at all. When Li Bin tries to give his wife a diamond ring as a birthday present she continues to ignore him and dances and sings to “Like a Virgin” to which Li Bin responds “Don't sing it! You know I hate Madonna! You imitate her! Look at you! Disgusting!"

As you've probably already guessed, Li Bin is actually dead and now a ghost. Someone just needs to tell him that. After a friend calls to inform the ladies of his accident and death, he still doesn't believe it. A trip to the morgue to view his own dead body the following day doesn't even fully convince him. Damn, talk about a serious case of denial. That soon ends when he discovers he casts no reflection and a ghost by the name of Ma Tung (Chung-Yu Huang) shows up.

Ma Tung, first seen in a morgue feasting on a corpse with his vampire fangs, then takes us into a flashback set 300 years earlier in feudal times. Li Bin was a noble governor who was framed, leading to an order to execute him and his family. Ma Tung was his servant, a swordsman who attempted to protect Li Bin's wife and her sister and then lead them to safety. Things didn't go as planned. Before dying, Ma Tung cut off his own beard which excluded him from ever being able to return to human form again. He's been a wandering ghost ever since. Li Bin doesn't necessarily have to face the safe fate. In fact, since he died an untimely death there are ways to return to his human life in seven days. Ma Tung offers to help but wants a grave marker out of the deal, which will finally put his spirit to rest. But fiiiiirst...

Hsi Huan's friends decide to throw her a surprise birthday party... a ghost-themed birthday party... just one day after the death of her husband. And no one seems to mind. A mutual friend of the couple, ladies man Hua Ka Yiu (Huang An), already has his sights set on Hsi Huan, so Li Bin and Ma Tung decide to wreck the party. After all, these two have some time to kill. It's not like returning to your human life or ending 300 years of being a miserable homeless ghost would present you with more pressing issues to deal with. Either way, they toy with the guests, start a cake fight and put on white sheets so they can be seen. One of the guests, Fan Hsi Hai (Hsing Wang), is an expert at catching souls and has brought along a “magic mirror” to try to drive them away.

The comic party scene lasts about 30 minutes, which is 15 minutes longer than it should. Afterward, the ghosts have to return to Hades before curfew and Hsi Huan and Hua Ka Yiu accidentally get sucked through a portal back with them. In Hades, we learn you need a passport / spell book to gain access, that ghosts are money obsessed cheaters and can easily be bribed into serving the living and that you can go to jail for doing bad things, as Li Bin finds out for accidentally blowing up that gas station. While in prison, an effete “foreigner” who died from AIDS tries to trick Li Bin into drinking after him and is punched repeatedly (it's about as funny as it sounds) and our hero is finally sprung out by his buddies. They all end up going to Li Bin's cellmate Black Jaguar's high rise penthouse and he gives them money and then sends them on their way.

The gang go to dinner and find they only serve disgusting food in Hades like steamed brain, eyeball soup and mice with wine sauce. And the rest is basically a similar bunch of crazy, fast-paced gags involving portraits coming to life, a ghost wiping someone's ass, a slutty waitress losing her hand, a zombie attack on a car thwarted by flaming spell papers, 360 degree head spins, a battle with a hellcop brandishing a bazooka and more. The two best bits involve a mahjong game with ghosts using their powers to cheat and some hopping vampires in a cave whose mouths glow red and then shoot out fully-formed “virgin ghost” child hopping vampires.

This is a crazy mixed bag of various nonsense. Some scenes are fun; others not so much. Humor-wise, this misses more often than it hits. Action-wise, it does a little better. Script-wise, it's an absolute mess. It's more than a little annoying that earthly goals are set up for both of the main ghosts yet this doesn't even bother following through with those. In fact, that plot point is dropped altogether. It also can't decide whether the human characters can or cannot see, hear and touch the ghosts at any given time because sometimes they can and sometimes they can't without any explanation and only when it happens to be convenient to the plot. Many of the scenes have clearly been influenced by Beetlejuice (1988). Actually this rips off a few of its gags pretty blatantly.

Despite being released on video and VCD with (typically poorly translated) English subs, this Taiwanese production has no votes on any of the popular movie sites. The same director / writer also made something called Ghost Bustin' (1985) that I'm not going to be in any big hurry to find a copy of.

★★

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Atacan las brujas (1968)

November 14, 2017, 5:18 pm

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... aka: Attack of the Witches
... aka: Santo Attacks the Witches
... aka: Santo in the Witches Attack
... aka: Witches Attack

Directed by:
José Díaz Morales

The overlong pre-credits sequence involves a hysterical woman going on a voice-over rant and then Santo attempting to sneak into a castle. He then engages in combat with two black-clad men in scenes often too dark and poorly shot to even see. I finally could make out that the bad guys got the upper hand on our hero, wrapped a rope around him, knocked him out and then drug him into a castle. When he awakens he's tied down to a table in a dungeon next to rant girl, blonde pointy-bra'd “maiden” Ofelia (María Eugenia San Martín), and they're just in time to take part in a Satanic ritual. Some scantily-clad women file into the room. One of them, Priestess Medusa (Edaena Ruiz), scatters ashes about, chants and then resurrects Mayra, Queen of the Vampires (Lorena Velázquez) in a cloud of smoke. Mayra, who'd been sacrificed 300 years earlier, wastes no time immediately calling forth the “Lord of the Shadows” (a caped guy wearing a devil mask) and asks for his protection as they attempt to take over the world. Just as they're about to plunge the knife into Ofelia, Santo breaks his chains and then...

Ofelia awakens in bed. Only a nightmare. Apparently being in a gloomy old mansion for the upcoming reading of her parent's will is getting to her. Or perhaps her nightmare about evil forces being out to get her and a silver masked hero saving the day is going to turn out to be prophetic. One odd thing about her recurring dream is that Mayra is a dead ringer for Elisa Cardenas (Velázquez again), her parents' former secretary. Elisa makes sure to let Ofelia know that a stipulation of the will states she must live in her parent's mansion for an entire year before she can claim her inheritance. Then again, the lawyer (Crox Alvarado) who oversaw the will reading also looks suspiciously like one of the warlocks from her dream...

Ofelia's fiance Arturo (Ramón Bugarini) has been looking into matters on her behalf. He discovers the parents' secretary supposedly died 15 years earlier of pneumonia, which may make the current Elisa, who looks far too young and beautiful to be 50-years-old, an impostor. The problem is, she also looks identical to the younger Elisa. Arturo goes to Santo and lets him know all of the strange things that's been going on, so he decides to help take a closer look. His first trip to the dungeon finds him getting ambushed by three henchmen, but he escapes after fighting them off and making a cross shape out of his body.

Naturally, Ofelia isn't crazy and Elisa really is a witch with designs on sacrificing both her and Santo to the Lord of Shadows. In an attempt to snare Santo, she sends out the voluptuous Medusa to try to seduce him. Medusa lures him into a home and strips down to a bikini but he's so upstanding and virtuous he's able to kick open the door and leave without falling prey to her charms. When she gets pissed, a crow, a lizard, spiders and a chicken (!) suddenly appear. Eventually the witches use their powers to force Arturo into a car accident, kidnap him and hypnotize him. And as if the director has no clue where else to go from there, Santo and Ofelia keep getting kidnapped, tied up and almost sacrificed before escaping over and over again.

The fight scenes are ineptly shot and unfortunately there are over half a dozen of them. They clearly used two different cameras to film all of this action. The problem is that the one used for long shots is properly lit but too far away while the other used for closer shots is so dark you can't even see what's going on. The film then inserts a random five minute Santo wrestling match before a live audience into the film, which is shot, lit and edited so much more competently than the other action scenes one has to assume it was stolen from another source. His opponent in the match is Fernando Osés, who also plays one of the warlocks / henchmen working for Mayra, which further supports the theory this scene wasn't shot for this particular movie.

As poorly done as some aspects of these early Mexican horror films are they almost can't even help themselves in regards to atmosphere. There's something nicely primitive to the crude black-and-white photography that recalls early silent cinema even in a movie made at the tail end of the 60s. This also has another big plus in the statuesque and lovely Velázquez, who makes for a great villainess. What ruins the entire experience is the minimal plot being stretched out with dull padding and just how repetitive the whole thing gets after awhile. Interestingly, at the 23 minute mark there's a title card that reads La Bruja Maldita (“The Damned Witch”) and announcing the second episode is about to begin, which hints this started life as a serial. It must have been a really short serial seeing how there clearly wasn't enough material originally shot to make a feature.

Wrestler Guillermo Hernández aka 'Lobo Negro' is also in the cast. This was first released in the U.S. on home video by Something Weird (their tape was Spanish language only) but there's now an English subbed print.

★1/2

Metempsyco (1963)

November 17, 2017, 2:35 pm

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... aka: Die Bestie von Schloß Monte Christo (The Beast of Monte Cristo Castle)
... aka: Le manoir maudit (The Cursed Mansion)
... aka: Metempsycose
... aka: Tomb of Torture

Directed by:
"Anthony Kristye" (Antonio Boccaci)

Due to the international success of Hammer's takes on Dracula and Frankenstein as well as BLACK SUNDAY a few years later, there was a mini-Gothic horror revival in Italy in the 60s. This is one of the least-viewed of dozens of those... a fate pretty much deserved. Things begin when schoolgirls Esther (Emy Eco) and Cathy (“Terry Thompson”) decide to sneak into a crumbling old castle where the beautiful Countess Irene disappeared 20 years earlier. No one has seen her since. She was set to marry her fiance Rahman beforehand; a unfulfilled union rumored to have driven Rahman mad over the years. The girls run into the castle's stern, bitchy caretaker, Countess Elizabeth (“Elizabeth Queen” / Flora Carosello), who promptly tells them to get the hell out. Before that can happen they run into a bearded, deformed hunchback with a nervous laugh who makes short work of them in his torture chamber. Their nude bodies are later discovered discarded in a field.

Dr. Darnell (“Thony Maky” / Adriano Micantoni) arrives in town with his troubled daughter Anna (Annie Alberti), who happens to look exactly like the missing Countess Irene. Because she's been plagued by nightmares of the death of Irene, her father hopes actually staying in the castle will cure her. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work but seeing how the doctor later tells a concerned policeman to get “a good enema” he likely doesn't put much thought into such matters. Their first day there, Anna sees a ghost in the mirror and passes out. That leads to a nightmare involving a talking skeleton, a werewolf-like creature, a zombie and a walking suit of armor that chops a guy up with its sword and shoots her in the stomach with an arrow. The director (as “William Gray”) wears dark face paint, a turban and a continuously expressionless look playing the Indian Rahman, who's been obsessed with finding Irene's remains since her disappearance and warns the doctor to get out while the getting is good.

Reporter George Dickson (“Mark Marian” / Marco Mariani) is headed to the village to do a story on the two murdered girls when his car overheats. When he goes down to the lake for some water for his radiator he's just in time to get an eye full of Anna skinny dipping. Despite that awkward first meeting, the two are soon flirting and, in just their second scene together, are already discussing marriage! Elizabeth, the current owner of the old castle who loves it so much she lives elsewhere, shows up speaking of a hidden treasure in jewels somewhere on the grounds and tries to scare Anna (“They're going to kill you! They're going to KILL YOU!”) It's also revealed that Rahman was romantically involved with Elizabeth two decades earlier but cast her aside once Irene entered the picture. And Elizabeth is still bitter about it.

Meanwhile, Hugo the droopy-eyed hunchback is lurking in a hidden torture dungeon only accessible through one of two hidden passageways that even Rahmad hasn't discovered in twenty years time. Someone wearing a suit of armor and speaking in a deep female voice (gee, wonder who that could be?) encourages him to kill the intruders. Eventually, Anna is entranced, lured to the dungeon and is tied up while George and Rahman attempt to come to her rescue. It must have been a real blow to their egos that they then get schooled in how to defeat bad guys by the two guinea pigs who've been posing as rats throughout the film.

This has all the expected trappings of a good old Gothic horror film. There's a picturesque shooting location, a great castle, good art direction, passable period detail (it's set in 1910), decent black-and-white photography, atmospheric lighting, a dusty dungeon, secret passageways, effective makeups on a variety of ghouls and more. What really drags this down is its boring slog of a midsection where nothing of interest occurs, unless you count annoyingly neurotic characters spewing abominably bad dubbed dialogue as interesting. I actually thought I was going to rate this even lower but the last 20 minutes finally provide some much-needed tension and suspense.

Aside from the actress playing Elizabeth and the unknown playing the hunchback, the cast is dull and really make one look at what charismatic actors like Barbara Steele, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price brought to similar films with a new appreciation.

The distribution rights for this were acquired by Richard Gordon. He had it English dubbed and then released theatrically in the U.S. in 1966, where it often (but not always) played on a double bill with the West German / Yugoslavian film Cave of the Living Dead (1964). Image acquired both titles for DVD release in 2000.

★★

Vampires (1988)

November 21, 2017, 3:59 pm

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... aka: Abadon
... aka: Vampiros

Directed by:
Len Anthony

At a prestigious New York art college called the Abadon School, construction workers using a jackhammer unleash some kind of deep-voiced spirit that promptly goes upstairs to the dorms and sucks a topless girl and her boyfriend down the toilet. Don't worry, it remembers to flush afterward. However, it won't be for another fifteen painfully disjointed minutes, which includes an art show, a tarot card reading, a woman wandering around foggy corridors, a narrated prologue (“Wouldn't you like to live forever?”) and some guy attacked by the spirit, that an actual plot starts to take shape. The pretty Orly Benyair, a real-life artist from Israel who has a beautiful smile but issues stumbling her way through her awkward lines, stars as foreign student Ione. Ione's just arrived at Abadon to study photography and film and already has one acquaintance there; a music major named Gary (Thomas Ostuni), who she was once romantically involved with. Because she's a scholarship student, Ione gets to stay on the third floor of the main building on campus. As she's getting settled in, she's befriended by a kooky but friendly girl named Helen (Vicki Richardson), whose room is right across the hall from hers.

It doesn't take Ione long to discover the staff is as strange as they are unfriendly, the students are a little more immature than she'd hoped and her former flame has a reputation for being king man-whore on campus. What else could possibly go wrong? Wellll... For starters, Gary was the guy who already got sucked down the toilet along with fellow student Tracy (Karen Nielsen). Then, during orientation, Ione feels dizzy at the mere presence of stern headmistress Madeline Abadon Avernus (Jackie James), who gathers the new students together to explain not only the school's history but also the school rules. Built in the 17th Century, the Abadon estate has been in Madeline's family nearly as long, was once used as a mental asylum where unorthodox experiments took place and was almost destroyed in a fire several decades earlier that claimed the life of Madeline's father. As for the rules, they're simple: The fourth floor and the basement are both off limits. Break those rules and you'll be “punished."

Ione starts hearing voices, including those of her dead former boyfriend, and feels general unease being at the school so she seeks help from tarot card reader / psychic Dr. Charles Harmon (Duane Jones). Another scared student named Deborah (Robin Michaels), who was also involved with Gary (damn, he really got around) also goes to Charles for help. Deborah begins snooping and finds a few books authored by Madeline's late scientist husband with titles like “Making the Fountain of Youth” and “Experimentation in Energy.” Prior to dying, Dr. Abadon had created some kind of machine that can be used to extract positive energy from victims that can then be transferred to someone else to keep them from aging. Two guesses as to who's been using it.

As much as I love when some unknown 80s title like this suddenly pops up, some things were buried for a reason the first time around. Vampires is most definitely one of those instances. From what I can gather, this was never even finished and what's been cobbled together for this release is a dull, confusing and completely incoherent mess from start to finish. Supposedly some of the footage seen here came from another unfinished film called Negatives, which had also starred Jones and featured future Scream Queen Debbie Rochon in an early role. About half of that film was shot before production closed down due to the producer passing bad checks.

We never once get to see the machine (a major part of the premise) at work, never learn how it works nor do we really get to see Madeline even using it. Characters also come and go without rhyme or reason and keep saying they're going to do something or go somewhere and it never seems to happen. One actress is our heroine one minute and a voice-over is describing her mysterious death the next. A groundskeeper character (John Bly), who's been promised sanctuary and safety by Madeline's late husband, is introduced and given a revenge motive and then vanishes. The evil Madeline also is gone for long stretches of time and isn't even present at the big finale! There's talk of positive and negative energy, fields of energy and threats of people being “neutralized” and none of it really makes a lick of sense.

If this is remembered for anything, it will be for containing one of the final film appearances of Duane Jones. Jones, who broke barriers in the horror classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), worked as an acting teacher, an English professor and a stage director after appearing in Romero's landmark film. A theatrical association with Bill Gunn also landed him the lead role in the black-cast vampire film Ganja & Hess in 1973. After that, he wasn't seen onscreen for around a decade. Perhaps finally being recognized as a horror icon and star of a horror classic in the video era, Jones was in the middle of staging a film comeback when he appeared in this and a few other films before unexpectedly passing away in 1988 at the age of just 52. What makes his appearance in this film extra sad is that his talent still manages to shine through something that's otherwise incompetent. The only other known name in the credits is Ernest R. Dickerson, who shares cinematography credit with Larry Revene.

IMDb and many other websites currently list this movie as having been released in 1986. That's incorrect. Though parts of it may have been shot as early as 1986, it has a 1988 copyright date and was screened at the Cannes Film Market that same year. Instead of receiving a traditional home video release, Vampires was shortened considerably in length, re-edited (again!) and paired up with another shortened horror feature (which also supposedly contains additional footage from Negatives) to make up Fright House, which was released to home video in 1989. To my knowledge, Vampires was not widely available in its current 80-minute form until it finally popped up on DVD in May 2016 on the Film Chest Media Group label, which uses a strictly VHS quality print. Seeing how the cast list in the end credits lists characters who aren't even in this “full” version, clearly not all of the footage from the original shoot made it into this cut either.

★

Don't Panic (1988)

November 22, 2017, 2:33 pm

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... aka: A Maldição de Ouija (The Ouija Curse)
... aka: Dimensiones ocultas (Hidden Dimensions)
... aka: El secreto de la ouija (The Secret of the Ouija)

Directed by:
Rubén Galindo Jr.

Because of a father who's always away on business, teen Michael Smith (Jon Michael Bischof) has been yanked out of Beverly Hills High and taken down to Mexico City to finish out high school. After his 17th birthday party clears out, his depressed drunk of a mother (Helena Rojo) goes to bed and six of his friends pop out with a surprise b-day present: his very own Ouija board! And it's the same Parker Brothers Ouija board pretty much everyone had back then. Though Michael's more interested in the unibrow charms of sweet new girl in school Alexandra (Gabriela Hassel), he's eventually talked into messing around with the board by his obnoxious best friend Tony (Juan Ignacio Aranda). They ask it a few basic questions and then Tony, who's really into occult stuff, decides to summon a spirit called Virgil, which may or may not be Satan himself. We all know that's gonna spell trouble. But first! The most cliché 80s love montage imaginable that includes balloons, bike rides, pictures in the park, sitting by a lake throwing bread to ducks, feeding each other ice cream and sunset canoe rides. All that's missing is a shot of him giving her a rose as she blushes. Oh wait...

Michael goes to visit Tony, who takes a break from puking to give him a “magic rose” that supposedly will stay fresh and beautiful as long as the love between him and Alexandra is pure. It's enough to get Alex to sacrifice her virginity to him but otherwise things are anything but rosy. Michael begins suffering from terrible headaches, nightmares, blurry visions of things like a bloody hand bursting out of his ceiling and then begins sensing an evil presence is around. His eyes sometimes turn red and then he starts hallucinating a face emerging from a TV set, a girl in his classroom gushing blood and a teacher warning him that he needs to take one of his friends, Cristy Higgins (Melinda McCallum), out of the city before midnight or else she'll die.

After learning from a news broadcast that two of his other friends who messed with the Ouija have been mysterious murdered, Michael rushes to the hospital but is too late to save Cristy, who get stabbed to death with a large sword. He does however succeed in making himself a suspect in her death and making people think he's gone crazy. Michael goes home in hysterics and finds that his mother doesn't believe his story. Instead, she calls a doctor, who comes over and sedates him. Michael's estranged father Fred (Eduardo Noriega) comes back and gets into a huge fight with the mom. While that's going on, Cristy's foul-mouthed brother John (Roberto Palazuelos), who's been bullying Michael in school, sneaks in and kidnaps him. He takes him out in the woods and threatens to shoot him unless he tells him what happened to his sister.

As expected, the night of Ouija birthday fun had left Tony open to possession and now his body's been taken over by Virgil. Tony's spirit however has its own life and sometimes shows up to give Michael advice a la An American Werewolf in London. So what does Virgil want to accomplish? Well, other than killing off everyone who played with the Ouija, hell if I know.

This has clearly been heavily “inspired” by the Nightmare on Elm Street series, from the hallucinations / nightmares to the drunk mother to the “don't make me sleep” scene to the facially-scarred killer having a deep, Freddy-like voice and making dumb wisecracks. The end even takes place inside a dark warehouse / boiler room. What this lacks in creativity it hardly makes up for in other areas as the plotting, dialogue and most of the acting / dubbing is downright terrible. I couldn't even tell what language this was shot in as some of the actors appear to be speaking their lines in English while others don't. Screaming Mad George was imported in to do the special effects and, while he does a typically solid job, the kills themselves (all stabbings and throat slashings) are unimaginative. The man does use a hilarious amount of blood at times, though!

What may save this for certain viewers is the generous amount of 80s cheese on display. The funniest part for me was that our hero runs around wearing dinosaur pajamas (I thought he was seventeen... not seven!) half the time. Like with Dream Warriors, this also has its own title theme song, which is performed by the lead actor (who also wrote it) and is pretty catchy if you're a fan of music from this time. The director also makes sure to plug his previous, and much better, CEMETERY OF TERROR (1985); clips of which are seen multiple times playing on TV sets. The cast also includes Jorge Luke (TREASURE OF THE AMAZON) as a police lieutenant looking into matters, Edna Bolkan (GRAVE ROBBERS) as a teacher and Raúl Araiza. The copyright date in the credits is 1987.

There's some confusion and misprinted information about the home video releases for this one so hopefully I can clear that up right now. Mogul released a video titled Don't Panic here in America (above, top) in 1987, but it wasn't this Don't Panic. Instead, that was their new title for Carlos Puerto's trashy Satanism flick Escalofrio (1978), which is better known now as Satan's Blood. However, in the UK, another company called Colourbox used the same exact cover art and tag line (above, bottom) Mogul used for Escalofrio for their release of *this* Don't Panic. Several other countries (including the Netherlands) did the same. Though an English language version was always available (this appears to have been at least partially shot in English), I'm not quite sure if there even was an official U.S. release until the 2008 DVD from BCI / Eclipse.

★1/2

A.A.A. Massaggiatrice bella presenza offresi... (1972)

November 28, 2017, 5:17 pm

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... aka: A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services
... aka: Caresses à domicile (Caresses at Home)

Directed by:
Demofilo Fidani

Teenager Cristina Graziani (redhead Paola Senatore, in her first major role) has had it with living at home and makes arrangements to live elsewhere with a friend. Her mother (Yvonne Sanson) isn't too happy about it but she's resigned herself to the inevitable. The major problem is that her overworked father Enrico (“Hunt Powers” / Jack Betts) is a controlling, neurotic asshole who's constantly complaining and stressed about money. He's also spoiled Cristina by essentially giving her everything she wanted, whether that be fur coats, a new car or luxurious holidays to other countries. Cristina decides to avoid the drama and not to tell pops before splitting; leaving that unpleasant task to her poor mama. Cristina's new roommate is Paola (“Simone Blondell” / Simonetta Vitelli, real-life daughter of the director), who's currently a window dresser but working toward a better job in the art department. Now Cristina herself needs a job. And fast.

Enrico worries his little girl will pose for nude photographs to get by but Cristina manages to exceed his expectations by placing an ad in the paper claiming to be an “expert masseuse” which is code word for high-priced call girl. She tells everyone else she works in “public relations.” When she arrives to see her very first client (muscleman Armando Bottin) she strips off her clothes only to discover he's looking for an actual masseuse for his elderly mother. Oops. Thankfully, the rest of her clients know what they're getting themselves into. Her next client (Giancarlo Prete) informs her “you weren't that great” after sex, but promises to teach her to be better before stiffing her by giving her a box of soap in lieu of full pay. Cristina then meets the shady Oskar (Howard Ross), who knows she's a beginner and promises to be her “business administrator.” That's code word for pimp. He promises to set her up with only the wealthiest clients for a 50/50 split in profits.

Cristina's first hook-up through Oskar is Professor D'Angelo (Franco Ressel), a New Age type who doesn't even want sex. He just wants to dance with her and give her a bubble bath. After Cristina leaves someone wearing the most cliché disguise imaginable (trench coat, gloves, bowler hat) sneaks into his apartment and murders him with a straight razor. Investigators on the case led by Ettore Manni decide to use his contact book to search for possible suspects. Her second client, insurance agent Santino (Carlo Gentili), gets his throat slashed with a razor after he asks Cristina to model shoes for him. The list of possible suspects is pretty much the entire rest of the cast.

We have Paola, who's pissed her sleaze bag boyfriend Franco (Jerry Colman) keeps coming on to Cristina, even going so far as to try to blackmail her for sex. Worried about his reputation once word starts getting around, Cristina's father shows up in hysterics and slaps her in the face when she refuses to come back home with him. Cristina also still kinda has a nice guy boyfriend, Marco (Raffaele Curi), whom she chastises for not making love to her satisfaction. Oskar ends up fitting the pimp label all too well with his major gambling problem and increasingly abusive behavior toward Cristina. He also plans to put her to work more so they can make enough money to get out of town before the police link them with the murders. That doesn't end up working out when another of her clients, engineer Favretto (Mario Valdemarin), turns up dead and both Cristina and Oskar are hauled into the police station for questioning.

This is an average, forgettable and overly talky, though watchable and competent, giallo with tame murders, unlikable characters and loads of T&A shots of the lead actress (plus more from some uncredited blonde). Usually in these movies the culprit is one of the peripheral, underwritten side characters who isn't given a whole lot of screen time; one the filmmakers hope you forget is even in the movie until the end. This one at least doesn't use that particular cop out. It's surprisingly coherent as far as these things go. The best part for me didn't even come until the movie was over and that's the great end theme song called “Circus Mind” by Mack Sigis Porter, who sounds a lot like Jimi Hendrix. I liked this enough to try to find it for my music collection but the damn thing is impossible to find. It's also not on the film's soundtrack album, which is just Lallo Gori's instrumental score.

Senatore is in her early 20s here but still looks far too old to be playing a teenager. Not to be rude, but if she were to play a more youthful-looking actresses mother I probably wouldn't bat an eye. She just has that 'mature' look about her. Either way, she'd go on to a busy career in Euro exploitation over the next decade in such sleaze "classics" as Salon Kitty (1976), Emanuelle in America (1977) and the cannibal gore-fest Eaten Alive! (1980). In the mid 80s, heroin addiction led her to appear in her first and only hardcore porno movie. Soon after, she was arrested for drug smuggling, spent a year in prison and hasn't been seen since. In thirty years' time, no one has even landed an interview with this woman. I wonder if she's even still alive.

Likely because there are no internationally famous names in the cast, this was never released here in America. It did receive a theatrical release in both France and Italy. The director is best known for his Sartana spaghetti westerns and doesn't appear to have much interest in thrillers seeing how he rushes through the murder sequences and shows little affinity for building suspense.

★★