John Llewellyn Probert's House of Mortal Cinema

Don't Torture A Duckling (1972)

2012-03-05T08:48:00.000Z

Another giallo with a daft title and a ludicrous explanation for it that we don't get until the 88 minute mark, DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING was Lucio Fulci's follow-up to the similarly irrelevantly-titled LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN. It is, however, a much better film. Someone is murdering little boys in a remote Italian town. Is it naked Barbara Bouchet with her wave tank and drug problem? Or mad Florinda Bolkan who likes to stick pins in wax effigies and bury them next to the skeleton of her aborted child? Yes we're firmly in Italian horror film territory from the get go with this, which is actually a lot better than Fulci's previous giallo effort. In fact I've probably done it an injustice by so far making it sound a bit sillier than it actually is. Typical gialli of the early 1970s tended to emphasise 'with it' characters living in fashionable apartments and enjoying glossy lifestyles. DUCKLING's setting is an Italian peasant town, with sometimes dressed (and whenever she is it's always fashionably) Barbara Bouchet looking as anachronistic as the concrete highway that towers over the landscape and olde worlde town where all the action takes place. DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING's story unfolds not in the world of high rise penthouses and devious scheming murderers, but in a far more old-fashioned milieu of superstitious peasant folk and the all-pervading presence of religion. Fulci's directorial style is thoroughly dispassionate throughout - we are shown the events but are only rarely encouraged to relate to the characters on screen. It's interesting to note that the one time we are it's when Fulci involves us in the horrific torture and murder of Bolkan's character by a quartet of local men seeking revenge. Fulci's bleak bitter view of humanity comes to the fore here, where not only is Bolkan portrayed more sympathetically than at any other time in the film, but extra emphasis is placed on the unwillingness of those driving past the cemetery in which the attack takes place to stop and help. And as if he's worried the audience hasn't been manipulated enough Fulci rams his point home by having Riz Ortolani's music play a sweet and soulful song as Florinda gets beaten to death with chains.

Again contrary to many of the gialli of the time, the reason for the murders is anything but ludicrous and despite its catchpenny title DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING has one of the better (and less ridiculous) giallo denouements, with a typically horrific end for the killer. The use of a headless toy duck as the key to the mystery is really rather silly, but it's interesting to note that fourteen years later Fulci returned to the giallo form with his controversial and bleak slasher film THE NEW YORK RIPPER, which also featured a toy duck as a vital clue in identifying that movie's quacking-voiced killer. Perhaps Fulci had a thing about them, in which case we should be glad he never ended up making MR POPPER"S PENGUINS. But then again, that might have been interesting...

Dagon (2001)

2012-02-28T08:06:00.000Z

HP Lovecraft adaptations aren’t that easy to do. One needs more than a few rubbery tentacles and a ‘Yog Sothoth’ thrown around here and there to evoke HPL’s sense of other-worldly dread. It’s even more difficult to get that right and make your subject matter sexy in places as well. HPL’s writings weren’t exactly known for their throbbing eroticism, and while purists may throw up their hands in horror one of the reasons I like Stuart Gordon’s and Dennis Paoli’s approach to the material is that they have a fine sense of the sexy as well as the horrific. Not that it always works - FROM BEYOND, their follow-up to the wonderful REANIMATOR, was a bit of a misfire, but thankfully a few years later all went very well indeed with DAGON. In some ways that shouldn’t be surprising, as their version of HPL’s THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH had been on the cards for years, first with Charles Band’s Empire Pictures before languishing in development hell for so long by the time it appeared under this new title many fans had all but forgotten about it. Thankfully DAGON was worth the wait. It’s hardly a faithful adaptation but its depiction of some standard Lovecraftian tropes (the rotting fishing village, the ever-present motif of water, sunken ruins leading to even deeper horrors) are among the best ever put on film. I’ve always loved DAGON, not least because it always reminds me of holidays in Wales when I was a lad, when it was always raining and the soaked narrow streets of whatever God-forsaken village we had ended up in this time were bereft of all but the gloomiest of locals. My imagination didn’t have to do much to put me in horror movie territory.

In fact it’s partly because Gordon et al have got the atmosphere nailed so perfectly that I’m willing to forgive the sometimes cheap-looking digital effects and the sometimes rubbery-looking tentacles. The fact that said tentacles are often seen in association with Macarena Gomez (probably the sexiest high priestess in movies for many a year) or clutching at a naked Raquel Merono (who essays the helpless struggling victim role very nicely) while she’s suspended in chains over a pit probably helps. A lot. When not causing or being in peril both these actresses acquit themselves admirably otherwise as well, and Gomez in particular should have been used in more horror pictures (apart from an appearance in TO LET from the TV series PELICULAS PARA NO DORMIR I’ve not seen her in anything else). The actors fare a little less well but Ezra Godden is very good in the lead as the doomed Paul Marsh. Francisco Rabal in his last movie role is old Ezequiel and sadly despite numerous viewings of DAGON I still have to switch the subtitles on when it’s his turn to speak.

Special effects are plentiful and may well be a bit rubbery but thankfully some skilful editing dwells more on the suspense of the various chase sequences rather than the monsters who are doing the chasing. Finally, Carlos Cases’ music score is really rather good and does a much better job of encapsulating Lovecraft for me than any number of avant-garde electronic dub artists I’ve had the misfortune to experience in the last couple of years. Sadly it’s not available on disc, and it should be.

DAGON is a great piece of low-budget horror cinema, filmed in Spain with a cast of extras who for the most part look as if they were born to play their roles. Perhaps the biggest shame is that Gordon et al didn’t get to do more of this kind of thing with the same crew, and possibly even the same cast. I for one would have loved to see Macarena presiding over a Cthulhu cult At the Mountains of Madness.

Bluebeard (1972)

2012-02-24T06:51:00.000Z

Just when I think I’ve seen all the flamboyant, daft, naked pulchritude-filled European horrors of the 1970s something like this comes along to prove me wrong. Of course at first glance BLUEBEARD doesn’t look as if it’s going to be a piece of trash. Produced by Pierre Spengler and the Salkinds just before their blindingly good adaptations of THE THREE MUSKETEERS & THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, starring Richard Burton and Raquel Welch, and with music by Ennio Morricone, the film’s pedigree doesn’t suggest the pile of daft outrageous old rubbish that it actually is. But just scrape beneath the surface and we see the cast also includes Sybil Danning (who was one of the elements that made Roger Corman’s BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS memorable before appearing in HOWLING II and numerous women-in-prison flicks), Agostina Belli (from Italian OMEN rip off HOLOCAUST 2000) and Karin Schubert (COLD EYES OF FEAR, BLACK EMANUELLE, etc etc ad nudity nauseum). But the real secret as to where this film is coming from lies with its director. For some reason I thought Edward Dmytryk was a director of lavish big-budget old-style Hollywood pictures. Actually he’s the man who gave us Universal’s CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN and various other lunatic wastes of time for those so inclined.

And if there’s a better phrase to describe BLUEBEARD than a lunatic waste of time I can’t think of it at the moment. Richard Burton gets out of his biplane, takes off his cunning concealing leather mask to reveal...a blue beard! Cue the titles in case we didn’t quite get that. There’s some nonsense about his face being mutilated during the war but as this is mixed in with something about how much his beard tickles it’s all a bit confusing. Dear old Richard is very rich Kurt von Sepper, who explains all this beardy stuff to Karin Schubert just before marrying her. For reasons that aren’t quite clear Karin dies in a hunting accident when Richard accidentally points his gun at her and shoots her. Retiring to play his massive organ while his dog wanders in to the most inappropriate introductory music for a canine in movie history, we then flash forward unannounced to Joey Heatherton’s awful dance act. Bewitched by her dainty clodhopping in red high heels Richard is soon inviting her back to his castle, marrying her and giving her surreptitious glimpses of his old serving woman Martha brushing the hair of the corpse of his dead mother before pushing Martha down the stairs. Joey has a nervous breakdown. Richard goes to Vienna, leaving her the keys to his castle but saying that on no account must she use the gold one. That’s because it opens a secret chamber where the preserved naked bodies of his former wives are kept. Unfortunately his naughty latest wife opens Pandora’s Box, which all proves to be a trap for her unwary self. Because he loves her more than any of his other wives Richard says that before he kills her he’s going to tell her all about why he did all of the other wives in. We’re about halfway through this two hour film now and the series of flashbacks that now ensue are the excuse for a string of cameos from various Euro-actresses who get done in by Richard in a number of silly ways including an eagle, a giant elephant tusk, being flogged and then drowned in wine, and being nailed inside a coffin. Most of them manage to end up naked before they die, except for Raquel Welch, probably more because it was in her contract than because she plays a nun in a series of increasingly revealing outfits.

The whole thing is rounded off with Richard turning out to be impotent, and before you can say ‘so why did you marry all those sexy women if that was the problem’ he’s locked Joey in his custom-made freezer and gets himself shot by an assassin he upset as a child earlier in the film.

The big problem with BLUEBEARD is not that it’s daft, but that it isn’t daft enough. The first twenty minutes or so are a triumph of ludicrous dialogue, beautiful women and opulent sets, but this really needed a Robert Fuest or someone similarly mad to bring it all off. But the film isn’t an entire dead loss by any means, and any movie that has Richard Burton putting several bullets into a stuffed owl he has turned into the most bizarre taxidermical alarm clock so it won’t frighten his wife deserves an albeit very tiny place in cinema history.

Captive Wild Woman (1943)

2012-02-21T06:00:00.000Z

Apparently conceived as Universal’s answer to RKO’s CAT PEOPLE (!!!!), whereas Val Lewton and his team put together an elegant tale with as much care as could be lavished on a B picture, CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN lives up to its less than subtle title by turning out to be something written by people who Don’t Care At All, and don’t seem to be in the slightest bit embarrassed about it. I love CAT PEOPLE (the 1942 version anyway) but don’t get me wrong – I loved this as well, but for an entirely different set of reasons which I hope will soon become apparent.

Circus animal tamer Fred Mason return from some ludicrous round the world trip where he seems to have done his best to bring about some kind of global extinction plan, filling his ship with lions, tigers, and a man in a gorilla suit. Meanwhile Evelyn Ankers has taken her friend Dorothy to the gloomiest, most windswept, and absolute bestest sanatorium I have seen in movies in a long while. And what’s even better is that it’s run by the utterly barking mad glandular specialist Dr Sigmund Walters (John Carradine) who, throwing his patient’s welfare to the wind (quite possibly the one that’s blowing outside) smokes throughout his entire consultation with her. Somehow Carradine realises that a man in a gorilla suit is just what he needs for his Experiments to Benefit Mankind. ‘You and I are very alike,’ he tells circus performer Ankers, ‘You use animals to entertain people, I do experiments on them.’ This is the cue for the lead in to a totally bonkers scenario by which he kidnaps the gorilla, hooks it up to Dorothy, and then when his nurse objects he transplants her brain into the gorilla (I think).

And then the gorilla turns into a lady called Paula. Whom Carradine then thinks it would be a good idea to take to the circus (??) where she has an uncanny ability to scare the crap out of the lions and tigers when Fred’s not abusing them in interminable stock footage that goes on for ages.

Now that we’re about 45 minutes into this hour long film the setup is finally over with so we can get on with the plot. Paula loves Fred, sees him in a clinch with Evelyn and turns brown, then black, then hairy, and then goes off to get Evelyn. Cue one slightly scary scene, then Paula’s back with Dr Carradine and still very hairy indeed as he shouts ‘They’ll put you in the electric chair!’ to which she responds with a grunt. The ending is bloody brilliant, with Paula turning back into a man in a gorilla suit, killing Carradine and then executing the most hilarious sideways fall in response to a shot from a policeman’s gun I have ever seen a man in a gorilla suit manage.

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN is as shameless a load of old 1940s rubbish as one could possibly hope to encounter. Apparently its sequels, JUNGLE WOMAN and JUNGLE CAPTIVE are even worse but sadly neither appear to be on DVD at the moment for me to make up my own mind.

[Rec] (2007)

2012-02-18T09:00:00.000Z

While I'm a fan of the zombie movies of George Romero (and in particular of DAY OF THE DEAD), and while Stuart Gordon's REANIMATOR is one of my all-time favourites, it's European zombie horrors that I've found properly frightening and disturbing. Fulci's quartet (ZOMBI 2, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE BEYOND, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY) and Danny Boyle's 28 DAYS LATER all contain sequences that have had me on the edge of my seat, the latter because I found the fast-moving Rage virus victims absolutely terrifying. But out of all of these movies, Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's [REC] is the one I like the most. It's the best paced, the scariest, the most kinetic and the one that still leaves me shaking, even though I've now seen it several times. Taking the format of footage filmed for a documentary about a night in the life of the local fire service, [REC]'s narrative is told entirely from the point of view of Pablo, the cameraman whom we see only very intermittently, and who somehow manages to keep filming under the direst of circumstances. In this respect [REC] is a little bit like Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST but without the breaks from the filmed footage, and mercifully free of the mean-spiritedness. Manuela Velasco is the pretty presenter (apparently her real job on Spanish TV) who does her best to provide a running commentary of events when the team gets called to a residential block where an old lady is apparently trapped in her flat. Once the team are inside the building and have discovered the woman covered in blood and keen to chew on anyone who comes within biting distance, the building is sealed by the authorities. Initially there is no explanation as to what is going on and the film becomes extraordinarily tense as more and more people succumb to the zombie plague that has been unleashed. The brief running time of less than eighty minutes means that once the action begins the only time the film truly pauses for breath is close to the end, and even that is just so something even more terrifyingly horrible than what we've already seen can appear. In fact the climax almost tops everything that has gone before as the film veers off into deliciously ambiguous territory regarding the cause of the disaster, and the ending is anything but comforting. [REC] 2, this film's direct continuation, ran the risk of diminishing the impact of the first because by necessity the questions raised had to be addressed to some degree. It's interesting to note that [REC 3], due for release soon, takes a different angle on the material with the zombie plague being unleashed at a wedding. One of the reasons that [REC] works so well is because it relays superbly to the viewer the sheer frenetic anarchy of what is taking place. Hopefully [REC] 3 will use its setting to provide another dose of fast-moving terrifying outrageousness to match the original.

Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971)

2012-02-14T06:39:00.000Z

Before he became the idol of many a horror fan (and apparently the saviour of the depressed Italian film industry in 1979) with ZOMBI 2, Lucio Fulci had carved a career for himself making all kinds of movies, including historical dramas (BEATRICE CENCI / PERVERSION STORY, about the Catholic church in 16th century Italy), comedies (THE EROTICIST / THE SENATOR LIKES WOMEN...DESPITE APPEARANCES AND PROVIDED THE NATION DOESN’T KNOW, about a senator with a Benny Hill-like uncontrollable urge to grab ladies’ bottoms) and giallos, of which LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN is one.

After some groovy psychedelic music / atonal warped nonsense we launch straight into a weird acid dream featuring two naked ladies cavorting on bed while being watched by two blind hippies. One of the women, the rather characterless Florinda Bolkan, stabs the other three times and then gets all panicky before waking up in her psychiatrist's office to tell him all about that and a bit we've just seen where she runs down a railway carriage corridor filled with naked people. Rather than explain that she's in an Italian exploitation film, the psychiatrist tells her it's all because, family girl that she is, she's jealous of the girl who lives upstairs and her wild party lifestyle. Anyway, when the girl in question turns up actually dead, that's the cue for badly whistling and even more badly dubbed Stanley Baker (the film's in Italian, you see) to take on the case along with sidekick Alberto de Mendoza who could possibly be an alien who crash landed here at the beginning of time...oh sorry that's his role in HORROR EXPRESS in which the psychiatrist from this also happens to appear. Euro-horrors are sometimes their own blur of sleazy confusion that obviate the need for mind bending drugs, and how glad we should be for that.

Anyway, back to the 'plot'. because there really isn't any. Flo's father is Leo Genn from Pete Walker’s DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE who gets so fed up with the nonsensical pointless story and the terrible way his own dubbing is working out that he kills himself. The pretty girl from Mario Bava’s FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON gets her throat slashed, and despite Flo's claims the police continually reassure her that 'there are no red-haired hippies in the building'. They organise a hunt for one who eventually reveals the meaning of the title before they 'give him a lot of drugs and he confesses'. Here at the House of Mortal Cinema we’ve noticed a trend in the bizarrely titled giallos of the early seventies in that the title seems to have to be explained as late in the proceedings and bear as little relevance to the story as possible. Thus while Dario Argento can just about get away with THE BIRD WITH CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (late but relevant if absurd) and FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (also late and daft but outweighed by the daft way in which said explanation is then used to identify the killer) Lucio Fulci wins for sheer complete and utter irrelevance with this and also with DON”T TORTURE A DUCKLING (of which more another time I’m sure).

LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN, despite its cracking title, is probably the least of Fulci’s giallos. The ending is rubbish, the plot is pointless, Florinda is terrible, both as an actress and a character, and there's not a drop of J&B to be seen. Despite that, the music score by Ennio Morricone is really pretty good, and if nothing else it gave the movie posters artists around the world an opportunity to go completely crazy, as evidenced by some of the work on display here. Despite the criticisms this isn’t at all bad if one is yearning for a dose of early seventies daftness, and probably a better bet than a film about a politician’s bottom-pinching antics.

The Frozen Dead (1966)

2012-02-11T06:00:00.000Z

I had wanted to see THE FROZEN DEAD ever since the ten yearold JLP bought Alan Frank’s horror film book ‘Monsters and Vampires’ back inthe 1970s and thrilled to the pictures of Nazis in the freezer and that weirdwired-up head on a table. Cobbled together incredibly cheaply, featuring someof the worst acting to grace a 1960s British horror picture, and set in acountry house that must have been going spare for a weekend, the moviestarts off with the worst day-for-night photography I have ever seen (whichmust have been filmed on the sunniest day of the year). Dana Andrews stars asmad scientist Dr Norberg, who is trying to thaw out Nazi soldiers frozen at theend of the second world war, all while still wearing their uniforms, presumablybecause the only thing worse than a Nazi is a nude Nazi. Unfortunately so farhis attempts have been unsuccessful and have resulted in little more thanvegetables. One Nazi soldier does nothing but repetitively bounce an imaginaryball, one does nothing but comb his hair all day, and one is Edward Fox.Herbert J Leder’s directorial technique tends towards covering everything inmaster shots and he was obviously a graduate of the ‘one take’ school offilm-making. The sound isn’t very good either, which is surprising considering theboom mike has been brought so close to the actors in some scenes that you canactually see it. In amongst all this there’s some really weird imagery that forfans of this kind of thing (and we all know who we are) that more than makes upfor any incompetence. There’s a wall of severed arms that can still move, amysterious old lady in the village who wears a rubber mask, and best of allthat severed head of a green-faced girl kept in a box with her brain exposedand pulsating. Then of course there’s the kind of dialogue that would havebrought a tear to the eye of Ed Wood. “That head will destroy us all!” “Itcan’t do that – it’s only a head.” Or “He calls himself Mr Smith but with thatstrong German accent of his you’d think he should really call himself MrSchmidt”. But best of all are the terrible German accents: “Zey vill zink itvoz an accident! Zey do not know he pushed ze flower pot!” Actors stumble overtheir lines, Dana goes to put his glass down before the butler gets there withthe tray for him to put it on, and the ending is so completely bonkers, withthe severed head taking control of the wall of arms, that it has to be seen tobe believed. Top it all off with a final shot that’s genuinely unnerving and avery very strange way to end a mid-60s horror film and THE FROZEN DEAD, whenpaired with its original cofeature IT! wins hands down as the most barkingly insane double bill I’veever had the pleasure of spending close to thirty years of my life trackingdown.

Inferno (1980)

2012-02-08T06:48:00.000Z

It may be because of the paucity of visually imaginative genre product these days, or possibly just because I'm getting old, but as the years go by Inferno, Dario Argento's 1980 follow up to his ground-breaking nightmare on celluloid SUSPIRIA, just seems to get better and better. The film was a bit of a financial disaster on its original release - as far as I'm aware it played a week in London cinemas and then got pulled without being given a chance in the provinces. It fared even worse in the US, not getting a theatrical release at all because Fox boss at the time Sherry Lansing thought the violence too extreme. Presumably this must have been just before Paramount made history by being the first major motion picture company to release the independent blood-splattered horror extravaganza that was Sean Cunningham's FRIDAY THE 13th.

But back to Inferno, a film with so many stunning visual images and sequences that you're almost completely distracted from the story, which according to Argento on the accompanying documentary on the Arrow Films DVD is intended to raise questions and provide no answers - in the same way an alchemist does. There's something strangely reassuring about this explanation making about as much sense as the film he's talking about. Besides, we all know by now that these films aren't meant to make sense, at least not in the conventional way. Instead we just need to sit back and let ourselves be taken through a bizarre dreamlike world filled with imagery no-one else can do quite like Argento used to be able to.
The underwater room sequence is still a marvel, as are the scenes in the library. The other-worldly blue and pink lighting scheme that permeates most of the scenes means we're constantly being reminded that we are not in the real world. The actors are either eccentrically interesting (Sacha Pitoeff and Feodor Chaliapin) or leading man good looking but ineffectual (Leigh McCloskey and Gabriel Lavia, with Lavia getting a knife in his throat just for being a gentleman). The actresses, on the other hand are a different matter. Eleonora Giorgi is gorgeous but amazingly is reduced to looking merely ordinary next to the scarily overbearing sexiness of Ania Pieroni. Irene Miracle looks just as good underwater as out of it and Daria Nicolodi is probably at her prettiest and most vulnerable here. Argento has freely admitted that his male characters tend to be weak, and while accusations of misogynism have been levelled at him he certainly uses INFERNO to show off his actresses to their best advantage. The music's great as well, with Argento being absolutely right to get Keith Emerson to provide music that wasn't imitative of Goblin. Mater Tenebrarum is a mini-masterpiece but Emerson's flamboyant riffs and elegant main title music are all quite splendid.

Perhaps the greatest delight I've found with INFERNO is that even on a very recent viewing I was able to see things I hadn't noticed before. In fact the film still feels fresh even though it's over thirty years since it was made, and since then there has been little to compare with it. Like a lot of Argento's work there's not much in the way of humour on display here, which is probably just as well as when he tried to be funny it often fell flat, as evidenced in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET. However, when I learned that the sequence at the end where Veronica Lazar's Mater Tenebrarum crashes through the mirror was apparently orchestrated by Mario Bava, I like to think that with that director's mischievous sense of humour Bava might have been tempted to place a bottle of B&J in the background.

The Cheat (1931)

2012-02-05T08:00:00.000Z

The release of the pre-Hays Code ‘Forbidden Hollywood’ DVD box sets has meant the chance to see some previously unheard-of gems (by me anyway) from the era before various religious and financial institutions caused the imposition of restrictions on what was deemed ‘inappropriate material’ to put on film during the 1930s and 1940s in Hollywood. The Hays Code and its effect on horror cinema is worthy of a long essay in itself but for now let’s concentrate on THE CHEAT.

Tallulah Bankhead (who I had previously seen only in Hammer’s DIE, DIE MY DARLING and while much younger here definitely comes across as someone more worldly wise, cynical and scary than her age at the time ought to have suggested) plays Elsa Carlyle, who is happily married to Jeffrey (Harvey Stephens, obviously not the one from THE OMEN) but has a problem. She’s addicted to gambling and is utterly hopeless at it.
       Losing $10 000 one night at the turn of a card, the next day she is entrusted with the $13 000 plus that the ladies’ Milk Fund Charity (whatever that might be) has managed to raise to help starving orphans. Rather than simply use it to pay off her debt she invests $10 000 of that in something really very hopeless indeed, only finding out that she has lost everything when she is attending an orientally themed fancy dress party the following evening. There she is, on the phone, wearing a hat that’s ten times bigger than her head and about one thousand times smaller than her chances of her husband forgiving her if he finds out how much money she’s managed to lose.
       Luckily for absolutely no-one in this film at all she has already met rich Hardy Livingstone (Irving Pichel, looking a lot healthier here than he would in a couple of years’ time as Gloria Holden’s henchman Sandor in Universal’s DRACULA’S DAUGHTER). Hardy loves all things oriental, including clothes, servants, and dolls, of which he has a collection locked in a cupboard to remind him of past lovers. He shows Tallulah these in a scene reminiscent of the pulp horror stories of the time. Each doll has been branded with his mark to show he owns them. He offers to give Tallulah a cheque to help her with her debt in return for ‘special favours’ we can all guess the nature of. Tallulah accepts the money but lo and behold lovely, unsuspecting, ever forgiving hubby has paid her debts off for her. She tries to return the cheque but Hardy’s not happy and just to prove it he burns his mark into her chest with the branding iron he has handily heating up in the brazier in his living room. Understandably upset at this Tallulah shoots him just as Jeffrey arrives to take the rap as the servants come running in.
       The rest of the movie’s short running time is taken up with the court case. Hardy has only been wounded and tries to discredit Jeffrey but Tallulah breaks down in front of everyone and confesses which somehow makes everything all right (??) and the film ends with the happy couple tucking into no doubt another outrageously expensive meal that the average Depression-suffering moviegoer of the time could probably ill afford to buy but could just about pay to look at.

For a movie made in the early 1930s THE CHEAT doesn’t feel that dated at all. Its attitude to the subject matter is deliciously lurid and the branding scene is quite surprising. Not all of the movies in the box set this is a part of are quite as rewarding but anyone interested in Hollywood’s treatment of some pretty lurid and taboo subjects before its hands were tied certainly won’t feel cheated by this.

Intruders (2012)

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000Z

A subtle, restrained, and really rather decent little Spanish horror picture that has been fortunate enough to get multiplex distribution in the UK, INTRUDERS has received mixed reviews in general and one very poor and inappropriate review which gives away an important twist in particular (enormous injurious slap on wrist Philip French of The Observer), all of which has encouraged me to write a few words in its defence.

Spanish in all but location and its main stars, the film begins in England with the story of construction site manager Clive Owen, whose daughter Mia has just turned twelve. Climbing a tree at her grandparents’ house in the country Mia finds an old wooden box hidden in a hole deep inside the trunk. The box contains an old crumpled piece of paper on which has been written the tale of a ghostly creature who wants nothing more than to steal a child’s face to take the place of its own blank visage. Mia copies the story out and presents it as her own at school. As the tale begins by describing how you have to say the monster’s name to wake him up it’s perhaps not surprising that before long the creature is appearing in her bedroom, with Clive seeing it as well and doing his best to fight it off. When nothing shows up on the security monitors Clive has installed it’s time for the psychiatrists and social workers to accuse Clive and Mia of suffering a dual hallucination, but as the rest of the tale unfolds we horror fans are relieved to learn that that’s not what’s going on at all. To say any more would be to spoil the surprises director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has in store (are you listening, Mr French?). I haven’t even mentioned yet that the above narrative is intercut with a similar story taking place in Spain, where a young boy is being haunted by the same monster, and his mother has turned to the local Catholic priests to try to exorcise the creature. How these two stories are eventually tied together is extremely satisfying in a movie that is leisurely paced without ever being boring, and never puts a foot wrong where so many movies might have been tempted to veer off into the realm of inappropriate CGI and silly plot developments. The acting is excellent all round and there is an emphasis on the child characters that put me in mind of some of the superior ghostly television dramas for children produced by ITV in the 1970s. Add in some properly scary apparitions in a suburban setting, and INTRUDERS could almost be likened to an episode of SHADOWS with Ramsey Campbell as script editor. In fact the movie is probably as close as the modern horror genre gets to what might be termed ‘quiet horror’. There’s no blood, very little screaming, and only a bit of CGI. But when a scene can culminate in a single handwritten line scrawled on a piece of paper that chills you to the bone you know a film’s working bloody well without the need for any of that. Good old EuroHorror - alive and well and still doing the business. INTRUDERS deserves more success than it’s probably going to get, although the league of Clive Owen fans out there (I was pretty much the only man in the cinema at the screening we attended) may help to do otherwise.

Pieces (1982)

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000Z

PIECES is one of those rare movies that really does live up to your expectations, not least because everything you have heard from anyone who has seen it is true. It is awful, it is hilarious, it is beyond belief. In fact the only truly unbelievable thing about it is that despite all the insults, accolades and scorn poured on it through the years it really is more than the sum of its parts (sorry). So if the following review of this quite insane picture suggests you might enjoy watching it then be assured that you won’t be disappointed.

‘You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!’ screams the adline on the free poster I got with the DVD. And you obviously don’t have to be Ed Wood to make something as unintentionally funny and deliriously entertaining as PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE. The film opens in Boston in 1942. We know that because we’re told it by the opening caption, even though this appears to be a somewhat odd version of Boston where jigsaws of very 80s-looking nude ladies are freely available to children like the little boy we then see attempting to assemble said work of softcore naughtiness. Mum isn’t happy when she finds what he’s up to and her admonishment is all that’s needed to send junior over the edge. Grabbing a nearby axe he hacks his mother to pieces in a surprisingly graphic sequence which, if the rest of the film were remotely competent, would actually be genuinely disturbing. Two heavily moustachioed men looking like Spanish supply teachers roped in to be policemen at the annual school play turn up and turn in performances that can only be kindly described as ‘less than adequate’.

And it’s time for the titles! Pausing only to note that the screenplay was co-written by the man who gave us FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY (about a three foot high James Bond-style superspy) and THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE (no I haven’t seen it but I suspect it’s one of those movies where you can pretty much guess the plot) we can settle down and prepare ourselves for something special.

And goodness me it is. Flash forward forty years and we are on the sort of unnamed American campus where students have sex in the university grounds while Willard the psychotic gardener (Paul Smith doing his best Jack Elam impersonation by way of Tom Baker from Blackadder) looks on; that is when they’re not getting their heads chainsawed off in broad daylight.

‘The police think it’s an inside job’ says the dean’s secretary, sitting next to the biggest reddest typewriter I have ever seen. The police themselves see it somewhat differently and completely incomprehensibly “We’re just trying on clothes without labels and seeing if they fit” ‘explains’ one officer. Christopher George is in charge of the investigation and he’s even worse. “I don’t want to wait for the coroner’s opinion” he says to the local anthropology professor (Jack Taylor - Euro horror regular and veteran, or some would say casualty, of hundreds of Jess Franco and Marius Lesoeur produced low budget atrocities), as he regards the severed body parts of the killer’s latest victim, “I want yours. Could that have been done by a chainsaw like the one covered in blood lying just over there?” Professor Jack has obviously been in these sorts of films before and looks as if he’s considering everything carefully before venturing his opinion, but we know he’s actually wishing he was back at Eurocine rolling around with Lina Romay or Janine Raynaud in some softcore tat.

Suspicion falls for all of two seconds on Kendall James, the nominal hero and school lothario who wears awful check shirts and sky blue cardigans and has a spectacle-wearing best friend he rather unkindly refers to as ‘Goggles’. ‘Goggles’ wear exactly the same kind of clothes as his chum but in negative.

The police are baffled and so decide to do something even more stupid by placing ace tennis pro Mary Riggs ‘undercover’ despite the fact it’s made clear from the first scene that she’s well-known to the public. Meanwhile the killer is slowly completing more bits of that jigsaw we saw at the beginning. Quite often he has a bit of trouble getting the pieces to fit because of the black gloves he’s wearing. Then it’s onto his next actual victim, an aerobics student who finds herself in quite possibly the most hilarious scene of non-suspense ever filmed. She gets into a lift and is followed by our black gloved/coated/hated/masked villain hiding a full size chainsaw behind his back and she doesn’t notice until it’s too late.

Kendall’s fixing his motorbike when he hears her scream, and now so do we, because Kendall has swapped his cardigan for a turtleneck sweater and the kind of anorak Primark would be ashamed to stock. His success with the ladies must presumably lie with his eloquent skills of seduction. But no! A couple of scenes later we see him berating his latest conquest for her slightly vociferous orgasm. “What do you have to make such a big production for?” he says, which is certainly an accusation that can’t be levelled at the filmmakers. This is also the bit where sensitive viewers may have to turn away as Kendall’s full frontal nude scene is by far the most disturbing thing to grace the screen during the movie’s running time.

Can it get any sillier? Mary is menaced by a professor of kung fu who promptly collapses because of ‘bad chop suey’ and more murders occur. In fact to give the films its due the special effects involved are really very good and within the context of a proper film would have been extremely effective. Unfortunately like a lot of movies from the early eighties the effects are fine, it’s just everything else that’s awful.

Oh but not quite as awful as this film’s ending – a double whammy of quite staggering proportions that I guarantee will leave you unsure as to how to react.

Highly recommended in the uncut Region free double disc DVD version from Grindhouse releasing that I watched, just like the trailer says: PIECES – it’s exactly what you think it is. Or at least it should be after you’ve read this.

To The Devil A Daughter (1976)

2012-01-26T06:00:00.000Z

Hammer’s final horror picture (at least until the recentrevival of the company) kicks off by introducing us straight away to itsvillain, Father Michael Rayner. We know he’s the villain partly because he’sbeing excommunicated, secondly because he doesn’t feel one bit sorry forwhatever naughtiness he’s been accused of, but mainly because he’s being playedby Christopher Lee in a Hammer film that isn’t THE DEVIL RIDES OUT.
A brieftitle sequence and suddenly it’s twenty years later and we’re in Bavaria wherenaughty Christopher has somehow become responsible, along with his two Germancharacter actor friends, for nun Nastassja Kinski, presumably atoning for herfather’s numerous on and off set atrocities over the years. Nastassja gets puton a plane for Englandwhere she’s supposed to be met by her sweaty nervous Denholm Elliott of a dad.When she gets there however it's scowly behatted Richard Widmark who gets totake her off to his place for ‘safe keeping’ after being convinced to do so byworried old Denholm at a book signing Widmark seems to exhibit no interest atall in attending, which is odd seeing as it’s his own book that’s beinglaunched.

Widmark is playing John Verney, who is allegedly an experton the occult, although he appears to be more of an expert in wearing blueherringbone tweed, Gucci loafer slip ons, and looking exceedingly pissed off,all the time. His friends Honor ‘My God did she ever look in the mirror to seewhat she was wearing?’ Blackman and Anthony ‘At least this is better than mybit part in Tower of Evil’ Valentine are on hand to help (i.e. get murdered) andmeanwhile back in Bavaria another German extra is having her legs tied togetherso her baby can be born unnaturally, following her impregnation by ChristopherLee’s character in a scene where we Most Definitely Do Not Get To See HisActual Bottom.

The baby, which when we get to see it, appears to be the kindof thing that would be more at home in Norman J Warren’s INSEMINOID rather thanNastassja Kinksi’s womb somehow ends up there anyway, or at least it does in adream sequence. Nastassja and the baby are both needed to bring back Astaroth(I think), a process which requires a hill of flint, a whole woman’s worth ofblood, and the complete and utter absence of Richard Widmark holding a rockthat he can throw at Christopher Lee’s head. Unfortunately all does not goaccording to plan and one totally unnecessary and possibly even illegal nudescene later and the film is over. Apparently Dennis wasn’t pleased.

Stagefright (1987) - aka The Owling?

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000Z

A surprisingly good entry in the 1980s slasher subgenre, STAGEFRIGHT defies expectations by being an Italian horror film produced by Joe D'Amato and written by his frequent collaborator Luigi Montefiore (aka George Eastman / Lew Cooper in this) that's actually well crafted, makes sense, isn't too tastelessly over the top in its portrayal of the murders and has dialogue which sounds as if it's being spoken by actors rather than the usual two or three people crammed into a Soho dubbing suite. One would be tempted to lay all the credit for this endeavour at the door of talented first time director Michele Soavi and certainly his subsequent movies make you sorry he hasn't had a longer career in the horror genre.
Also known in different territories as DELIRIA and BLOODY BIRD (what would a EuroHorror picture be without several different titles?) the clever opening scene makes us think we're on the hideously cheap set of another Italian horror film. But no - we're actually on the hideously cheap set of an Italian stage play called 'The Night Owl'. After a couple of knowing comments about the Italian horror genre as a whole ("I know it doesn't make sense, but can you imagine the effect on the public?") Alicia (Barbara Cupisti) is off to the nearest hospital with Betty the wardrobe mistress to seek treatment for Alicia's sprained ankle. Unfortunately the nearest hospital is an Institution for the Criminally Insane which also just happens to be looking after psychopathic loony mass murderer plus actor Irving Wallace. Wallace escapes and hides in the back seat of the car (why does no-one ever check there after leaving these places?) before doing Betty in with a pickaxe. After the police have been and gone director Peter (David Brandon, who's not at all bad as the megalomaniacal director, although one wonders if having worked in Italy for some time he may have found quite a bit of inspiration to draw on) decides he's found the hook that will sell his play and locks his actors in for the night. Unfortunately Wallace is in there too and once he's found the owl mask and the keys to the tool and chainsaw cupboard the stage is set (sorry) for a series of well-orchestrated and quite ghastly murders, leading to the now famous scene of all the bits of the victims arranged as a tableau tastefully augmented by swirling feathers amongst which is hidden the key Alicia has to retrieve so she can escape.

For a 1980s horror film STAGEFRIGHT hasn't dated too badly at all, possibly because the actors' hair and costumes could conceivably be part of the play they're meant to be appearing in. In the era of SAW and its ilk the murders are still quite horrible and Soavi demonstrates on this picture, as he did on subsequent projects THE CHURCH & DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE, that he's a born director with a natural eye for some impressive visual compositions. As I mentioned above the acting all round seems to be rather better than many EuroHorror efforts (and in particular many Joe D'Amato efforts) and Simon Boswell's electronic music augments the proceedings nicely. I believe there was talk of a STAGEFRIGHT 2 for a couple of years after this one but perhaps it's just as well it never materialised. As it is the movie stands as the best owl-headed theatre set slasher movie out there. Unless of course anyone knows better?

Kolobos (1999)

2012-01-19T12:02:00.000Z

A low budget American movie that’s a little bit too ambitious for its own good, KOLOBOS starts with an amateurishly filmed car accident but rapidly gets much better from there. The victim of the accident is teenager Kyra (Amy Weber). Battered and bandaged, she lies in a hospital bed while flashbacks give us her memories of how she ended up there. Discharged from a halfway house for the rehabilitation of patients with mental disorders and with the scars on her arms suggesting a history of self harm, Kyra answers a newspaper advertisement to take part in a low budget backwoods USA film version of Big Brother. Once inside she gets to meet her housemates which include a poor standup comedian, a struggling actress, a college student and a girl who works in a fast food joint. It isn’t long before steel shutters have turned the house into a prison and booby traps are picking them off one by one. But all is not at it seems, and who is the mysterious figure Kyra keeps seeing on the television screen, the one persistently mutilating his own face?

Starting with a title sequence and music reminiscent of Argento at his SUSPIRIA-like best, there are a lot of nods to that classic in KOLOBOS, including the use of weird coloured lighting filters and everyday objects filmed from unfamiliar angles. Images of figures distorted by frosted glass, hospital curtains and the like abound, and as the film goes on the movie’s deliberate sense of clouded reality increases. It’s nowhere near as stylish as the Argento classic, but directors Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk obviously have great affection and appreciation for the genre, and even if their bleeding-eyed doctors do get a bit too sub-Fulci at times, it’s in a good way. Oddly enough the movie I was most reminded of while watching KOLOBOS was Norman J Warren’s TERROR, in that it employs much the same Argento-aping style to tell a story that doesn’t really make sense but by the end you don’t really mind because it’s been such a fun ride anyway. Neither director seems to have been at the helm of anything else, which is a shame as the movie should have been a springboard to greater things. KOLOBOS (and I’m not really giving anything away by saying the word translates from the classical Greek for mutilated) is no classic but it’s certainly not hackwork, and is worth 84 minutes of any discerning horror fan’s time.

Switchblade Romance (2003)

2012-01-16T05:30:00.000Z

Starting off like so many slasher movies before it, SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE (let’s call it by its English title for the sake of this review, shall we? Especially as it’s a rather better title than what Haute Tension translates as) begins in a farm house in the middle of the French countryside. Alex has brought her friend Marie back from university with her so they can do a bit of revision during the holidays. The law books never get opened, though, because as soon as everyone’s in bed it’s the cue for almost Alex’s entire family to get massacred by a mysterious caller who then proceeds to kidnap her. Marie ends up with her in the back of the killer’s van and the rest of the film details their trip through the French countryside before culminating in a final blood soaked showdown. To say any more would spoil the story for those who haven’t yet seen it, suffice to say the film takes a turn I wasn’t expecting but was extremely welcome in these days of by-the-numbers slasher movies.

The new wave of extreme French horror cinema has tended to emphasise the more grim and miserable aspects of the genre. SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE predates films like INSIDE, MARTYRS and THE HORDE and while it’s no less bloodstained it does have a lighter, more entertaining vibe to it. Having seen it it’s now no surprise to me that while his contemporaries have been exploring the finer points of miserabilism in their homeland director Alexandre Aja moved to Hollywood to direct an okay remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES and a quite outrageous over the top fun filled extravaganza of a remake of Joe Dante’s PIRANHA.

As SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE progresses, and particularly as we get into the last twenty minutes, it becomes obvious that this and PIRANHA 3D are the work of the same man. Personally it’s a delight to discover a modern French horror director who wants to entertain at least as much as he wants to mortify. It’s also a pleasure to see Giannetto de Rossi’s name in the credits, his torn throat appliances having come a long way since Olga Karlatos had hers ripped out in Fulci’s ZOMBIE 2. In fact the only thing I really didn’t like about this film was the music, which comes across as one of those ‘sound design’ efforts filled with scraping noises and wobbling base noises when a proper score would have made this even more enjoyable. On the basis of this and his subsequent projects, Alexandre Aja has confirmed his position as the only modern French horror director I would like to actually meet, if only so I can ask him if the J&B gag in this film is a reference to the Italian giallos SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE could actually so easily be a blood drenched, slasher-orientated, over the top tribute to.

Macabre (1958)

2012-01-13T09:40:00.000Z

If there is one filmmaker in the world I would have liked to have been it’s William Castle, who seemed to have a genuine love of his audiences and most of all wanted them to have a good time. His string of successful horror films included HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, THE TINGLER, HOMICIDAL and MR SARDONICUS, all made with a twinkle in the eye and a gimmick hidden somewhere in the picture. Whether it was a plastic skeleton floating over the audience, electric buzzers wired into the seats, or just the thumbs up / thumbs down poll cards for the villain’s fate at the end Castle fans knew they weren’t just paying their ticket price for a movie but an entertainment experience that might include something along the lines of the above. And it all started with MACABRE. Admittedly the gimmick here isn’t anywhere as near as ambitious as some of his other films. A stern announcement at the beginning tells us that the management is concerned for its audience’s health and if anyone should display signs of undue fright would the person next to them please alert cinema staff in case of emergency. I understand that while nobody actually died of fright and thus was able to cash in on the life insurance policy offered by Lloyds of London, actors would sometimes be employed to sit in the audience of Castle pictures to play the gibbering wreck who couldn’t take any more of the terrors being doled out on screen. Then the film proper starts, and what an odd little picture it is. Veering between film noir and lurid melodrama we begin at a funeral parlour where a child’s coffin has been stolen. Then the nurse who assists the local doctor receives a telephone call to say his six year old daughter has been kidnapped, buried underground, and they only have until midnight to find her. What follows is the most convoluted of plotlines and the most ludicrous of outcomes, but Castle keeps everything moving along breezily so the movie is never boring. There are quite a few flashbacks as well, detailing the reprehensible nature of much of the townsfolk until it gets to the point where you wonder if there’s a single decent person in the script. Much of the film takes place in a graveyard that’s actually remarkably atmospheric for such a low budget picture, and wouldn’t look out of place in a Universal film made fifteen years earlier. Once the plot has been wrapped up, the villain has died horribly and the world has been set to rights we are treated to an animated end title sequence led by Mr Castle himself and writer / coproducer Robb White driving a hearse as the cast is divided into ‘The Dead’ and ‘The Living’. Stephen King wrote about this film in Danse Macabre (he called it McBare as a child) and said when he finally got to see it he was unimpressed. So I have him to thank for lowering my expectations and providing me with an unexpectedly entertaining evening’s viewing.

Wrong Turn 2 (2007)

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000Z

One of the wonderful things about this genre of ours is that joy can come from the most unexpected places. Rob Schmidt’s original WRONG TURN (2003) was an okay hillbilly horror movie in which Eliza Dushku, Desmond Harrington and friends encountered a trio of deformed mutants and suffered the consequences. Schmidt went onto direct one of the few episodes of the second series of MASTERS OF HORROR worth watching - Right To Die, and in fact it was that TV episode that encouraged me to seek out his debut picture.

Joe Lynch, on the other hand, (who directed WRONG TURN 2) I met at FrightFest last year where he and his friend Adam Green (HATCHET, FROZEN) were premiering their new drive-in anthology movie CHILLERAMA. Lynch seemed such a personable chap, and so alive with the love of all things Mortal Cinema-esque (as did his colleague, I hasten to add) that I thought it only charitable to seek out what I assumed would be a fairly routine effort.

Far, far better than it has any right to be, you will know if you’re going to enjoy WRONG TURN 2 before the titles have finished when a blonde-haired young lady called Kimberly is despatched in a way so over the top outrageous that it will either be time to switch off the film or settle down for a hillbilly horrorfest of near-crazy proportions.

This time, instead of people randomly lost in the woods the plot centres around a simulated post-apocalypse reality TV show. The participants are introduced in such a deserve-to-die way as to bring a nostalgic tear to the eye of even the most hardened fan of slasher films. What then follows is an exercise in country carnage, with several scenes going over the top in terms of violence. Judging from the way certain scenes seems to have been included simply on the grounds of outrageous bad taste one also wonders if Mr Lynch may also harbour a love for the gleeful excesses of John Waters. In fact a viewing of his CHILLERAMA episode almost confirms it (I’ll leave you to find out the title yourselves).

As well as having a healthy sense of gory fun the cast is peppered with familiar faces from these sorts of things. Both Crystal Lowe and Texas Battle (I suspect these aren’t their real names) appeared in FINAL DESTINATION 3 as the one who dies naked in a tanning booth and the chap who gets his head squished in the gym, respectively. Walter Murphy is the only carryover from part 1, doing his best John Carradine impersonation as he tries to provide some explanation as to why the mutants developed in the first place and allowing Lynch to provide a nod to PROPHECY. In fact there are plenty of homages for horror fans to pick up on, with scenes reminiscent of everything from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to TROPIC THUNDER, but in a good way.

So, highly unexpected, highly outrageous and highly enjoyable. Well done Mr Lynch. On the Mortal Cinema shelves lurks WRONG TURN 3, which will have a hard time living up to this one, but only time will tell.

Frogs (1972)

2012-01-07T22:41:00.000Z

Along with demonic possession movies riding on the coat-tails of the success of THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN, probably the other most popular horror movie subgenre of the 1970s was the ecohorror picture. Movies about nature turning against man, often because of humankind’s scientific meddling, abounded throughout the decade. Despite the attempts of Bert I Gordon (FOOD OF THE GODS & EMPIRE OF THE ANTS) and of course William F Claxton (NIGHT OF THE LEPUS) the main differences between these and 1950s monster movies was that often the animals in question were normal sized. Few were intended to do little else than use some inexpensive animals obtained from the local pet store as a means of providing exploitative thrills. Quite possibly the nadir of the use of animals in this way was the Ted V Mikels-produced THE WORM EATERS but that’s for another time. Or, as anyone familiar with Mr Mikels’ work may be relieved to hear, quite possibly never. One of the first ecohorrors out of the gate was FROGS, an AIP production directed by George McCowan. McCowan spent almost his entire career in television, and his CV boasts mainly episodes of FANTASY ISLAND, STARSKY & HUTCH and CANNON, but he took a bit of time out in the early seventies to direct THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN RIDE!

And FROGS.

A tiny moment of nostalgia here if I may. The UK quad of FROGS was one of the very first pieces of film memorabilia I owned, and the tag lines ‘Slithering Slimy Horror!’ and ‘If You’re Squeamish Stay At Home!’ screamed out from above a picture of one of the title creatures with a human hand in its mouth much to the chagrin of the rest of my family.

On a private island in some mystical part of America where boa constrictors, rattlesnakes, alligators, monitor lizards and enough frogs to stage a live version of an old Paul McCartney single all live together, octogenarian wheelchair-bound Ray Milland is busy gathering his dysfunctional family around him for a July 4th birthday celebration. Into this unhappy mix floats Sam Elliott in his canoe. Sam’s been shooting some pictures for a magazine article on environmental pollution, which has been a handy way of showing a few shots of bin bags and Coke cans floating around over the opening credits, as well as the necessary fullscreen amphibian visage over which the title itself is imposed to an almighty burp of Les Baxter’s self-performed electronic music score. Elliott gets run over by Adam Roarke’s speedboat and by way of apology gets taken chez Milland to dry out and meet the rest of the family. And lots of frogs. Eventually anyway. Milland’s family includes Joan van Ark who gets to wear the most appalling yellow romper suit ever seen outside of a carry-cot. Milland has lost his handyman and asks Elliott to go and look for him. The fellow was last seen spraying insecticide and so we already know what has most likely happened to him. Sure enough it’s not long before he turns up with his face in a ditch, the victim of froggy revenge. As various members of the household succumb to animal-engineered accidents it soon becomes clear that the wildlife is taking over and the frogs are in charge. Milland refuses to leave the family homestead, leaving Elliott, van Ark and a couple of kids as the last ones standing as they try to escape.

FROGS is buckets of fun. Most of the deaths involve a degree of intelligence and planning not commonly encountered in simple vertebrates. A murder in a greenhouse requires the lizards in question to not just knock over bottles of chemicals but to presumably be able to read the labels on the jars so they know which bottles to smash so the contents mix to produce a lethal gas. As I have already mentioned above, at least one rattlesnake has braved its long journey from its normal desert environment to take part in the Florida-based swampy fun, and the frogs all get so excited they either don’t know which way to leap or the frog wrangler didn’t know which way to throw them. Slithering slimy horror? Oh yes. And wonderful fun, too.

Eyes of Crystal (2004)

2012-01-04T06:30:00.000Z

Does the giallo as we all know and love it have a place in21st century horror? Well that all depends. Last year Spainoffered us the thoroughly enjoyable, stylish and barking mad thriller JULIA'SEYES (which is reviewed on this very site). A few years prior to that Italy andSpain got together to produce EYES OF CRYSTAL, a police procedural that couldbe considered a serious giallo (complicated plotting, obscure clues, creativelybizarre murders) without all the daft (but fun) elements of its 1970sprecursors (outrageous fashions, terrible wallpaper, J&B, excessivescantily clad pulchritude). Oh yes, EYES OF CRYSTAL (or OCCHI DI CRISTALLO togive it the original Italian title) is definitely a giallo for the 21st century,a sleeker, more polished, more distilled version, if you will, of itspredecessors.

There's amad taxidermist roaming the streets of an unnamed Italian city, busyreconstituting the doll he keeps having flashbacks to from his youth (alongwith burning nuns and other Italian standbys) from human body parts. His murdervictims are left with the parts he has removed replaced with mannikin limbsand, more often than not, with Latin phrases written in blood on the wall closeby. Luigi Lo Cascio is the Young Cop Who Doesn't Live By The Rules (he shoots arapist in the knee in the film's opening sequence after they have caught himjust to show he's a bit unstable) assigned to investigate the murders and workout why people are turning up on the beach minus their legs. Senior policemanSimon Andreu (star of THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE and providing a nice link withthe EuroHorror of old) gets admitted to hospital where he lies slowly dying ofa brain tumour and seeing visions of him and the killer together when they wereboys at the orphanage where they grew up but unfortunately he can't rememberthe chap’s name until it’s just too late. Lucia Jimenez is on hand as thegorgeous girl who needs Lo Cascio's protection but ends up tied to a ricketyold bed in her skimpies as the killer dangles his knife over her. It allreaches a climax at the big scary orphanage overlooking the cliffs near the seawhere the killer's identity is revealed, as is his whacked out reason for whathe's been doing with all the body parts.

Extremelystylishly shot, EYES OF CRYSTAL often manages to out-Dario Mr Argento with someof its delicious visual set-ups, and there are so many the movie is worthwatching at least twice just to appreciate some of the more subtle visualtreats and framing on offer here. A glass eye factory and a climax that reliespartly on a homage to a certain Mario Bava film that will have all his fansnodding in appreciation, this really is very good indeed. Director ErosPuglielli seems to have worked solely in Italian television since making thiswhich is a shame, as his eyes would be better employed constructing morestylish visual feasts of giallo for a modern generation.

Sssssss (1973)

2011-12-31T06:00:00.000Z

Possibly the only film whose title is the same consonantrepeated seven times, Bernard L Kowalski’s SSSSSSS comes across as a 1970sversion of THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, substituting snake venom for alligator serum,Strother Martin for George MacCready, and Heather Menzies for Beverly Garland.Good old Strother plays Dr Stoner, who is trying to create snake peoplefor…well, no good reason really. There’s some mad scientist babbling about thenext stage of evolution right at the end of the film but until then he’s justyour average snake handler come loony boffin doing something daft because he’sobviously got nothing better to occupy his time. His first experiment, Tim, isa bit of a failure and gets carted off to the local freak show. At least, weassume it’s his first experiment, although for much of the movie Strother doesspend rather too much time chatting to, and drinking scotch with, a pythonnamed Harry, who actually overdoes it at one point and has to be given AlkaSeltzer to help his presumably upset snakey tummy. Harry doesn’t expand in theway one might expect a reptile with a simple digestive tract given largequantities of carbon-dioxide containing fizzy water to do but that’s because hehas to be killed by evil soccer jock Reb Brown a little bit later on. Notunduly perturbed by this, Dr Stoner decides that the most appropriate method ofrevenge is to have Reb bitten by a Black Mamba. After all seeing as he’s theonly one in the district, and quite possibly the state, to own such a creaturesuspicion could hardly fall on him, could it? But I’m getting ahead of myself.Because Tim is now a resident at the kind of carnival sideshow that also includesan almost-naked lady cavorting on stage for the benefit of the movie’s trailer(and quite possibly poster art), Dr Stoner has to settle for Dirk Benedict ashis new assistant, where he quickly settles into the routine of milking mambas,seducing Stoner’s daughter Heather Menzies, and receiving inoculations to‘build up his immunity to cobra venom’. Cue lots of shots of shirtless Dirk forthose members of the audience for whom the aforementioned dancing girl, and acuriously optically obscured naked Heather, (at least on my print) just willnot do.

Dirk startsto turn green and develop scales while Heather discovers the secret behind thecarnival sideshow’s latest attraction. It all ends very bizarrely indeed, withDirk turning into a King Cobra, begging the question: Why turn people intothese things as the next stage in evolution if they already exist…oh, nevermind. Dr Stoner goes and has a chat with the King Cobra he already has whichpromptly bites him, presumably out of jealously. Dirk Cobra gets attacked by amongoose that has remained in its cage throughout the entire film but finallyat the 95 minute mark has worked out how to pick the lock. Heather turns upwith the comedy police (at least I hope they were meant to be comedy police) soeverything can be shot and Heather can scream and scream.

As amonster movie SSSSSSS isn’t bad at all. The plot is barmy, but no less so thanits 1950s counterparts, and the makeup by John Chambers is pretty good. Thesnake handling sequences are also very well put together. Bernard Kowalski wasalso responsible for sweaty deep South low budget AIP pic ATTACK OF THE GIANTLEECHES, but that’s a different kettle of wriggly things altogether.File this one under 'S' for Something Snakey & Silly.

The Reincarnation of Isabel (1974)

2011-12-27T08:30:00.000Z

Sometimes you wonder about the intentions of filmmakers.Usually it’s easy, and you don’t have to be many minutes into a film to realisethat the object is for it to entertain, to move, to uplift, to educate oroccasionally (God forbid) to preach.

But then there are other films, films whose reason forexisting we can only guess at. Films probably produced to cater to only themost desperate, rather than the most discerning, of exploitation audiences. Butthese films, whilst delivering the goods in terms of sex, violence, blood anddeviant behaviour, provide them in such an obverse manner that you do wonderwhat on earth was going on in the minds of those responsible, before realisingthat you probably wouldn’t like to meet them.

THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL (which goesby the title BLACK MAGIC RITES on Redemption’sRegion 2 DVD) was made in Italyin 1973 and is meant to be a horror film. I say meant to be because having satthrough it this bizarre effort here in the Eurotrash Screening Room at the House of Mortal Cinema, andhaving given the entire endeavour some serious thought, I still can’t work out whatit’s meant to be about, despite the fact that one of the characters spends agood ten minutes totally unsuccessfully explaining the plot at the end. What Ican say is that it’s set in a castle, that there’s an awful lot of femalenudity, some very poor satanic rituals executed by men in red baby rompersuits, and that some of the fashions were probably designed by blind people whohad been cruelly lied to about the materials with which they had been provided.Other than that nothing’s very clear I’m afraid. I think the back story isabout a witch named Isabel who is put to death for vampirism in the fourteenthcentury. Her husband thus becomes Dracula, the ‘first vampire ever’ (see – twosentences in and this doesn’t make sense). Despite being staked graphicallybetween the breasts and burned alive Isabel takes ages to die in aninterminable sequence that in any other film would generate suspense / allowthe witch to curse everyone / show her horrible death, but because this film isthis film nothing of interest happens at all.

At a Big Old Castlethere’s an engagement party going on for the girl who is the image of ourwitch. We’re told that this is ‘500 years later’ so we should be in thenineteenth century but it looks suspiciously like 1972. We are also toldseveral times that Isabel will be reincarnated on the coming of the 25^thmoon, although from when is anyone’s guess, and seeing as it seems to only taketwo and a bit years for her to come back why they’ve waited until 1972 is alsoa mystery. Girls (and there are lots in this castle) start to disappear and endup naked and dead. This goes on for a bit to justify the movie and thensuddenly, at about the hour mark, everything suddenly becomes another film,with the male members of the cast attacking women we’ve never seen before inwhat look like a succession of hotel rooms. Just when we think the budget forfilming at the castle must have run out two naked girls run back to the castlepursued by villagers in a sequence in which day becomes night and then turnsback to day again every time the camera cuts from them to the castle. Anyonestill with the film at this point then gets treated to the ‘virgin sacrifices’which are so trippy anyone watching them on a big screen would have neededyears of therapy and lot of antipsychotic medication to enable them to copewith reality again. A man with an enormous moustache and sideboards who hasbeen lurking throughout the film with his Donald Pleasance look-alikehunchbacked friend does the aforementioned completely unintelligibleexplanation and our heroine is saved when she stabs the villain. Having readother reviews of this I think that more than does justice to the plot and Ireally do wonder what Mr Renato Polselli was on when he made this, even thoughit couldn’t have been half as mind-bendingly disorientating as the people whogave him the money to make it.

Tears of Kali (2004)

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000Z

There aren't enough German horror films around these days,or anthology horror films, or horror films that use the theme of deeplyworrying New Ageist cults as a springboard for bloodstained full-on movieterror. So it's a delight to report that here we have a film that's all three,as well as being absolutely cracking piece of nastiness into the bargain. A tiny budgeted modernEuroHorror thoroughly deserving of the attention of fans of extreme cinemaeverywhere, TEARS OF KALI starts off with a prologue sequence set in a grimroom in Poona, Indiain 1983. Various cult members are lying on filthy mattresses and are busythrowing up, having fits or just screaming. The scene culminates in a nakedgirl cutting her own eyelids off in a scene Lucio Fulci would have been proudof and, dare I say it, probably wouldn't have done anywhere near as well or asunpleasantly as we get to experience here. It's a grim shocking moment and morethan sets the scene for what is about to follow.

The cult iscalled the Taylor-Eriksson group and the film flashes forward to modern day toshow us what has happened to three of its members in three respective stories.The first concerns a girl incarcerated in an asylum after being accused ofmurdering one of the cult's members who has set up his own group in Berlinand has been trying to practice the cult's methods. We hear a lot about 'deepmeditation' and 'journeying into the darkest regions of the soul' before thestory jumps down our throats with some superbly atmospheric out of body horror.The second story finds a young offender undergoing rehabilitation therapy by aformer cult member whose treatment involves forcing the young man to cut offhis own skin. A genuine two-hander this one, with a gruesome and intense finalethat is wholly horrible without the excessive grue ever becoming too silly orover the top. The final story is about a faith healer who manages to exorcisethe evil within one of the cult members. Unfortunately it's still lurkingaround the building when he's due to leave and after it’s killed his wife heand his patient end up trapped in the cellar as the thing tries to get in. Atiny coda ends the movie on a downbeat note.

I reallyliked TEARS OF KALI, but it's a film that isn't going to be everyone's cup oftea. The violence is often excessive but never cartoonish, and the tone isdeadly serious but without the misanthropic nihilism that we have seen inFrench EuroHorrors like MARTYRS and THE HORDE. I think it's always a mark ofgreat achievement for a film like this if you end up totally ignoring the tinybudget and glarey shot-on-video feel because you're so absorbed by what'sactually going on, and that was definitely the case here. One of the commonestcomplaints levelled against anthology pictures is their uneven feel, but byhaving a very strong linking theme and consistently graphic disturbing andupsetting storylines the movie avoids this pitfall as well. It treats itssubject of what might happen to the members of a properly sinister cult in afascinating and original way, and makes that premise the star of the movie,such that when it finished I found myself very keen to know what other membersof the cult might be up to now. TEARS OF KALI 2? I'll be first in line.

I Don't Want To Be Born (1975)

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000Z

My God what am I doing reviewing this one? It’s awful, atrue car crash of a movie that one finds it difficult to believe anyone wouldsit through once, and I’ve seen it at least three times, including once as partof a Joan Collins double bill with Gerry O’Hara’s THE BITCH (and that’s theonly time you’ll see mention of that on here, especially as I couldn’t make itto the end of that particular low-rent disco-filled load of soap-operasilliness without nodding off and I’m definitely not going to watch it again). But I digress…

I DON’T WANT TO BE BORN was known as THE DEVIL WITHIN HER inthe US and asthe UK poster reallywasn’t very good I thought I’d put up its stateside equivalent. The UK videorelease goes under the title of THE MONSTER, but whatever it would prefer to becalled it really is a special film, and probably the only chance you’ll get tosee what might happen if a bunch of 1970s BritHorror actors were to be castin an Italian demonic possession movie that tried to rip off THE OMEN beforeit had even been released (which is probably partly why it doesn’t bear muchresemblance to it.). Part of the reason is that this was a British-Italiancoproduction, with Rank really not knowing what it was getting itself intodoing a deal with Italian producer Nato de Angeles who also came up with theoriginal story, which is presumably why some of the characters are Italian.

And ‘original’ is certainly being kind to the string ofevents we get to see. Attempting some sort of chronological order (there arequite a few flashbacks) Joan Collins is a stripper who gets cursed by a dwarfwhose advances she spurns. Before you can say ‘that’s a bit tasteless even for1975’ she’s giving birth unconvincingly in the presence of children’s TV starFloella Benjamin and Donald Pleasance, looking as if he wishes he could beanywhere else but in this film with every single line of dialogue he utters.“This one doesn’t want to be born” says Donald as Ron Grainer’s hideouslysleazy but catchy 1970s theme music kicks in to herald the main titles. MrGrainer came up with some fine TV themes including Dr Who, The Prisoner, andTales Of The Unexpected, but he never really achieved success in the movieswhich on the basis of this isn’t surprising (his score to THE OMEGA MAN isquite a bit better but still nothing too special). Where were we? Oh yes – Joanis married to Gino Carlesi played by Ralph Bates sporting an unconvincingItalian accent. Gino’s sister is a nun who seems to spend most of her time at a conventwhere she has a laboratory where she carries out animal experimentation. Thishas absolutely nothing to do with the film and one can only presume there wassome animal research facility going free that day in which to film a fewscenes. Eileen Atkins plays the role as…well…someone in an Italian horror film,which is the note everyone seems to take. Perhaps director Peter Sasdy (that’sPeter Sasdy – HANDS OF THE RIPPER and THE STONE TAPE Peter Sasdy) got them allto watch a badly dubbed Sergio Martino picture and said “You see? THAT’S what Iwant.”

Joan’s baby possesses such superhuman strength that when itisn’t happy gurgling in its pram it’s whacking babysitter Janet Key over thehead, cutting off Donald Pleasance’s head with a shovel (you can almost feelthe relief ebbing through the screen as he realises he’s finally off thepicture) and murdering his way through most of the cast. It all ends very verystupidly indeed with an exorcism scene intercut with a slow motion dwarf deathat the strip club. Say what you like but I don’t think there has been an endinglike this before or since in cinema history. Before that we are treated to theItalian horror standbys of obvious dubbing (Caroline Munro and John Steiner), gratuitousand unnecessary nudity and a totally bizarre and out of left field dreamsequence featuring Joan being threatened by a bloodstained John Steiner andRalph Bates dressed up as a dead nun. Be assured - I DON’T WANT TO BE BORN is atruly awful film, and it probably goes without saying that I enjoyed it more onmy third viewing than on the previous two.

Go on…youknow you want to, and here's the grim gloomy UK poster, mad dwarf and all, to round off the experience.

The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)

2011-12-13T06:00:00.000Z

A masterclass in how to make a sleazy and crazy giallo out of astraightforward old chestnut of an idea (in this case driving someone who’s richinsane so you can get their money), THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE startsas it means to incoherently go on with its central character, Lord AlanCunningham (Anthony Steffen) escaping from a psychiatric clinic. This openingisn’t too bad – he’s pursued by white coated orderlies across an overgrowncoliseum that just happens to be in the grounds before being dragged back oncehe gets to the perimeter fence and despite a bit too much gurning from our heroit’s intriguing enough to engage our interest. The problem is I still have noidea where this bit of the film, played out before the main titles begin, ismeant to fit into the plot. Once the credits are out of the way we’re in LordAlan’s car, where he’s in the company of an attractive young redhead he’spicked up in a bar, He stops for no other reason than to pull at her hair (“Tosee if it’s a wig”) and so he can get out and take off the car’s false numberplates. He gets back into his Italian car before they set off for his isolatedItalian villa set in the depths of the English (according to the film)countryside, where he makes her wear nothing but a pair of black knee lengthboots before chasing her around his very own torture dungeon with a whip. Onlythe most tenuous of reasons is ever given for Alan’s preponderance for doingthis, and a bit later on he does it to Erika Blanc as well. Evelyn, by the way, is Lord Alan’s late wife whom he caught having anaked assignation with a lover in a field. There’s an awful lot of femalenudity in this film, even for an early seventies EuroHorror, in fact one might go sofar as to call it excessive and gratuitous. Anyway, Evelyn died in childbirth and now Alan keeps a painting of her in his bedroom, which if nothing else should be a bigwarning beacon to all the girls he brings back. As well as a torture dungeon, apredilection for whipping redheads and presumably a psychiatric history, Alanalso has one of the most outrageous wardrobes ever to grace an Italian horror film. A maroon suede suit the jacket of which laces up theback, a crimson double breasted jacket with lapels so big they have their ownbrass buttons to hold them in place, and an assortment of trousers of suchoutrageous hues it’s a wonder everyone around him doesn’t keep their sunglasseson. In fact with those kinds of clothes it’s a wonder anyone thinks he isn’t alreadyinsane.

Alan gets anew wife who doesn’t have red hair but does wear outfits with such outrageouslyplunging necklines it looks as if her breasts aren’t so much falling out asactively trying to throw themselves into plain sight. She also possesses quitepossibly the skimpiest night attire ever seen in a movie as well as an Alice inWonderland outfit that she puts on to go and investigate the crypt.

And doesEvelyn actually get to come out of the grave? Well, kind of, but like I said,it’s all part of the most ridiculously convoluted plot to drive Lord Alan madwhen he already seems to be well on the way without any aid at all. Thedenouement piles twist upon twist but best of all is the climactic fight by theswimming pool next to which has been precariously placed a big sack ofSulphuric Acid which doubtless carries the warning in Italian ‘Do Not Throw InSwimming Pool’. The final fade out of the villain being carried towards thecamera with his legs wide apart is merely the daft icing on a very silly cakeindeed, making THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE a movie best suited for those who like their thrillers outrageous in every meaning of the word.

Rare Exports (2010)

2011-12-09T06:00:00.000Z

Probably the most widely distributed subtitled Finnish filmin UK cinemaslast year, RARE EXPORTS has finally had a Region 2 DVD release for all those whodidn’t catch it on the big screen. Althoughit’s not obvious from the title, it's a Christmas film for all thoseof us who can’t stand the thought of the usual modern sugary sentimentalclaptrap that passes for yuletide cinema these days, daring to ask the question:Is Santa Claus a cuddly old man on a Coke advert or is he in fact a 60 foottall Lovecraftian demon who delights in tearing naughty children to piecesleaving shrunken wicker effigies in their place, has been buriedin ice for centuries, and God Help Us All if he thaws out?

We’re in Lapland. At the top of amountain a mining company has discovered that there is a block of ice 60 feetsquare buried deep in its depths, and they’re being paid to dig it out.Meanwhile our 9 year old hero is convinced this is the burial place of the originalSanta Claus, a mythical creature far removed from the kindly fat bearded blokewe’re more familiar with. Via a delicious title sequence we get to see oldwoodcuts demonstrating just how much more interested this Santa is / was inpunishing naughty children than rewarding the good. “He tore the naughtychildren apart,” says one character “until even their skeletons weren’t left”.

I won’t say much more except that Santa’s elves are some ofthe scariest things I saw on screen last year, and the scene of thembesieging a warehouse where ‘Santa’ (who is a bit of a cross betweenCarpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS and Tim Curry’s devil from LEGEND but bloodyhuge) is being defrosted is one of the most Lovecraftian film moments I’ve seenin a while. Add to that the fact that our heroes are good old-fashionedreindeer hunters who look like rejects from a Metallica tribute band and a nineyear old boy with cardboard taped across his bottom so he doesn’t get spankedand this is one very strange Christmas movie. The freezing locations and senseof dread (a scene of a field of reindeer slaughtered by…something at one pointis just plain unnerving) reminded me of Carpenter’s THE THING, but most of allI loved the twisted sentiment – peace on earth and goodwill to all, or Santawill tear your face off. Highly, highly recommended.

The Thing (2011)

2011-12-05T06:00:00.000Z

It is a truth universally acknowledged in Hollywoodthat a successful film must be in want of a remake, sequel or prequel and nomovie company is more familiar with this than Universal Pictures, havingoriginally built its fortunes on its hugely successful Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy series ofpictures of the 1930s and 1940s. When John Carpenter’s big budget remake of THETHING was released in the early eighties, however, it was a financial disaster,as would any film about a hideous shape-shifting paranoia-inducing creature inan isolated Antarctic setting have been in the Summer of Steven Spielberg’sfeel-good ET THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL. Time and critical attention have, however,been immensely kind to Mr Carpenter’s film and it is now rightly recognised asa classic, considered by many (including myself) to be better than the original1951 version, which in the world of horror films is a nigh on impossible featto pull off. When word went out that it was itself to be the subject of a remakethe first word that sprang to my mind was ‘pointless’, especially when itturned out that the new film was to be a prequel to Carpenter’s picture, withthe ending therefore being necessarily pre-determined. So it was with myexpectations at rock bottom that I went to see the new version of THE THING, presuming that I may well end up bored, annoyed, frustrated and to come out of the cinema havingwasted time and money. So it pleases me greatly to say that I really rather likedit.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about THE THING the prequel is notthat it’s actually okay, but that it’s a movie that has been made with fans ofthe previous film in mind. In fact someone who loves Carpenter’s THE THING is goingto get a lot more out of this than someone unfamiliar with it, and with anyluck it will send those latter audience members scurrying to pick up the quitestunning BluRay edition of the 1982 film that’s now available. There’s nothingat all original here and the plot is entirely predictable, with Mary ElizabethWinstead in the Kurt Russell role surrounded by hairy Norwegians with anincreasing propensity to turn into hugeLovecraftian monsters at the drop of a dental filling. In fact the first scenein which we discover the creature’s inability to regenerate inorganic material(in this case an internal fracture fixation device) provides a nice lead-in tothe discovery of what the creature that has just been dug out of the ice, beendefrosted and gone on a killing spree before being gunned down, is actuallycapable of. Making the original form of the thing insectoid doesn’t go any wayto explaining how on earth it piloted the ship we get to see, and there’s stillno explanation for why a monster presumably capable of operating such hi-techequipment is happy to want to splodge around and randomly kill people when itcould just as easily slope off back to its flying saucer and fly away. But thenumber of touches that are there to ensure consistency with Carpenter’s film,plus some impressive special effects mean that you would have to bean extremely unforgiving and demanding horror fan not to have a good time withthis. I was expecting ropey CGI but instead I had difficulty distinguishing theprosthetics (there’s a long credit roll at the end for the prosthetics teamswhich had me feeling quite nostalgic in itself) from the digital work. The musicby Marco Beltrami opts for mainly orchestral work this time out, only segueinginto synthesisers at the end for a final sequence that’s the best writer EricHeisserer and director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr could possibly have done withthe brief they were presumably given. There are quite a few reviews out thereat the moment trashing this film which is partly why I felt like writing this one up as it really isn’t bad at all and, in a rare thing for sequelsand remakes these days, seems to be acutely aware of its appropriate place inthe movie scheme of Things.

Outcast (2010)

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000Z

One of the most interesting themes that seems to be comingto the fore in modern British horror films is that despite their contemporaryurban settings, at their heart is very much a sense of the mythic, a hearkeningback to the kind of folk tales that went to form much of what we now know as Celtic and other mythologies. Philip Ridley's HEARTLESS dealt with theage old tale of the Bargain With Powers With Whom One Should Never Deal, whileOUTCAST goes one better, giving us a timeless story of magical powers in conflict anda beast conceived by misguided intentions that is aroused to transformation bySex and Blood. The movie takes place on an Edinburghcouncil housing estate but it could just as easily be set anywhere and at anytime during Britain'shistory. In fact as I watched it I wondered just how outright terrifying thefilm might have been if it had been set during the Middle Ages, with noelectricity, grim weather, and an overwhelming all-pervading sense of thesuperstitious adding to the all too real terrors. The urban setting works wellthough, and serves as a reminder that tower blocks are really no different froma little huddle of medieval huts around a campfire. In fact perhaps to drive the point home we even get an‘urban campfire’ scene early on in the proceedings that serves as a centre pointfor a teenagers’ get together.

Mary (Kate Dickie) arrives with teenaged son Fergal (NiallBruton) in Edinburgh, moves intothe scabbiest, grimmest looking flat on an estate where the sun never shines,and immediately starts painting mystic symbols on the walls in her own blood.Pretty soon we find out why as we're introduced to Cathal (James Nesbitt in afine angry scary form) who has been selected to pursue her and her son from Ireland.He's been given special powers to enable him to detect and destroy them butneeds the assistance of Liam (Ciaran McMenamin) and permission from the Laird(James Cosmo - a nice touch) to enable him to carry out his task. Fergal meetsnice girl Petronella (Hannah Stanbridge) and they embark on the kind ofultimately doomed romance dark myth has thrived on since forever. There’s also a monster onthe prowl and as the bodies begin to pile up and Nesbitt gets ever closer thestage is set for the final showdown.

I enjoyed OUTCAST far more than I was expecting to. Dickieand Nesbitt are fine and well matched as the magicians from the old country,and Bruton and Stanbridge are engaging and likeable enough to engage audiencesympathy. The council estate backdrop works well at being just that anddirector Colm McCarthy is wise not to rub his squalid urban setting in ourfaces too much, instead concentrating on the timelessness of his story andtaking the time to include elements that continually catch the attention (theuse of birds as sacrifices, the cockroach candle, the use of a blooded knife)all of which add up to a fine little modern British horror picture that, alongwith certain other recent efforts like PANIC BUTTON and KILL LIST has actuallymade me quite optimistic for the state of the BritHorror of today. Hurrah!

Frankenstein 1970 (1958)

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000Z

Imagine how glorious and exotic the year 1970 must have seemed to some of the studio craftspeople of 1958 - a vibrant world filled with hope, technological advancement, and endless possibilities. None of them seem to have been involved in the making of this film, however, which does its best to liven up the same old monster making story with an atomic reactor, a contemporary setting and a monster that looks like the end result of a comedy road accident, but more about him later.
FRANKENSTEIN 1970, despite its 'futuristic' title, begins with a distinctly retro feel (even for 1958) as a girl is chased through swampland by a faceless, hook-clawed monster. This sequence only lasts a minute or two and isn't at all bad. It's edited and paced well and unfortunately, although we don't know it yet, has just set a standard the rest of the picture is going to have a lot of trouble meeting.
The opening is a gag, a staged sequence filmed by a television crew which has travelled to Germany to film a documentary about the history of the Frankenstein family. There's talk of an anniversary but absolutely none of the mathematics add up so it's probably best to ignore that the same way the actual film-makers have. The only Frankenstein still living is concentration camp survivor Boris Karloff. Fortunately his castle has fared rather better than he has and betrays none of the damage the fiery climax of numerous Universal and other pictures should have caused it by now. Either they have very good (and very busy) stonemasons over in the part of Germany where he lives, or is it just possible that the exterior shot we keep seeing is stock footage of a model?
Karloff probably wonders what he's doing reciting distinctly dubious dialogue next to a tomb that allegedly contains 'Richard, Freiherr von Frankenstein I' and whose stonemason couldn't even get the last word of his epitaph centred properly, but then he was probably too busy rebuilding the castle yet again. The TV crew betrays not the slightest hint of futuristic fashions and while we're not expecting to see a flared trouser or a feather boa it does make one wonder quite why they chose FRANKENSTEIN 1970 as a title at all unless by some weird use of a time machine that isn't mentioned Karloff is actually the 1970th Frankenstein to hold the name. But that would be silly.
Boris has agreed to the TV crew coming because the money they're paying him is going towards the atomic reactor he has in the basement. His gurning manservant discovers the Baron at work in his secret laboratory and pays the price for his Charlie Ruggles impersonation (if you don't know who he is then look him up, or on second thoughts don't) by having Boris hypnotise him with a pair of scissors and then take his heart out. Boris is carrying on the family tradition by making one of the cheapest, tattiest-looking monsters in Frankenstein history, who you can't help but feel sorry for as he wanders around the castle looking like a half-hearted Michelin man in his head-to-toe bandages with two eye holes in the head bit for eyes he doesn't even have until close to the end of the film. The ending is underwhelming to say the least and seems to involve a cloud of radioactive steam killing both monster and creator that then miraculously disappears in time for the wind up.
If the above leads you to think I don't like FRANKENSTEIN 1970, nothing could be further from the truth. It's not a terribly good film but Karloff really is quite delicious in his role, the Cinemascope framing is often well used and there's the kernel of a good idea here. The concept of treating the old horror classics as if they really happened and then bringing a reality TV / documentary crew in to meet their ends at the hands of the legend they've come to exploit is a subject ripe for satirical fun on a number of levels. FRANKENSTEIN 1970 doesn't develop the idea at all but with the right handling a remake could be very interesting indeed. FRANKENSTEIN 2020 anyone?

The Redeemer - Not Quite a Class Act

2011-11-25T06:30:00.000Z

Here’s a 1977 horror movie produced by the kind of backwoodsAmerican independent moviemakers who only over turned out one film and thenwent back to their ordinary everyday lives (or possibly got their day releasefrom the local long stay mental institution revoked so they just couldn’t makeany more – who knows?). Some of these films are scary, many are dull, and someare just plain stupid. The Redeemer is a film that manages to be all three andat the same time pull off the feat of being genuinely disturbing, not leastbecause I have no idea what was going on in the minds of those responsible for it.The intention may have been to illustrate the hypocrisy and intolerance ofreligious extremism using dream imagery and surrealism. On the other hand thisfilm could well be a pre-Halloween slasher from people with extremistprincipals themselves that runs out of plot after an hour and has a very randomten minutes of footage stapled to either end so that it could be sold as anOmen rip off. I suspect I will never know – which in itself is part of itsappeal.

The movie opens on a long shot of a valley. The credits cometo an end and the camera doesn’t move as we are treated to a wait of severallong seconds before a pseudo-biblical quote appears and we move in for a closeup on the surface of the river. A hand appears from the water that turns out tobelong to a very late 70s fully dressed ten year old boy with a pudding bowelhaircut and corduroy trousers. Sopping wet he walks up the bank and catches abus into town, where he enters the local church and gets changed into cassockand surplice with some other choirboys, who seem entirely nonplussed at thisnewcomer in their midst. The church service is led by a blood and thunderpreacher who goes on and on about sin while elsewhere someone is busy murderingthe caretaker of a local (we presume) school, making a latex of mask of hisface and cutting out pictures from a school yearbook of the ‘six most likely tosucceed’. We are presumably meant to think of these individuals as sinners aseach is introduced by a rant from the priest’s sermon. The ‘sins’ they areguilty of seem to consist of: being a criminal defence lawyer, marrying formoney and shooting pigeons, being divorced, having an affair or possibly justeating lots of cheeseburgers but not being at all fat, being vain, and being alesbian. These six attend their school reunion to find they are the only ones whohave turned up. They are let in by the caretaker (our mystery killer indisguise) and rather than run a mile at the sight of the apparently desertedschool that has now acquired bars on all its windows they sit down to eat lunchin a scene bizarrely reminiscent of the last supper. It’s not long before theystart to get bumped off by a killer who seems omnipresent, wears a series offrankly disturbing masks while killing, and who eventually turns out to be thepriest, who gets to finish his sermon at the end of the film.

Whether this has all been a dream on the priest’s part isnever explained, and neither is why he should want to kill these people, or howthese really quite minor ‘sins’ can justify them being burned alive, drowned,shot, speared through the head and so on, never mind the murder of thecaretaker. Some of these sequences are genuinely unnerving, not least becauseof their viciousness. At the end of the film the boy leaves the church, getsback on the bus and walks back into the river, but not before slashing thethroat of a choirboy who threatened him with a knife at the start for notlaughing at a joke.

I have yet to mention the recurring motif of having twothumbs on one hand. Where it fits in I have no idea, but the killer has thisdeformity, then at the end we see the priest with it, then his extra thumbdisappears and the boy acquires one instead.

I still have no idea what this film is really meant to beabout but some standout imagery in amongst all the silliness (there’s a sceneon a stage with a giant puppet and The Redeemer in weird black and white makeupthat could be a source of plentiful nightmares) and a really horriblesynthesiser soundtrack where the only noises the keyboard could be programmedto make were presumably ‘wheeze’, ‘fart’ and ‘burp’ that just adds to theweirdness means this one’s staying in the House of Mortal Cinema DVD Collection.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

2011-11-21T15:03:00.000Z

What would the world of early seventies giallo cinema bewithout Dario Argento? For one thing there would probably be a lot less of it –a lot less fashions and production design that are almost as unbelievable asthe plots, a lot less groovy soundtrack music, a lot less Edwige Fenech andprobably a lot less J&B consumed (unless each movie that featured it justkept refilling the bottle with cold tea, but somehow I don’t think that’s theItalian way). Unlike his contemporaries, Argento never favoured placing thatparticular tipple in a prominent location in his movies (although it is here ifyou look hard enough), and he never cast Edwige Fenech either, which is ashame. All the other above elements however, are present in force in FOUR FLIESON GREY VELVET, a film that is a bit slow and confusing in places but makes upfor it by being deliriously mental in others – again, a bit like most movies inthe giallo subgenre.

We beginwith one of the most manic undisciplined pieces of music composer Ennio Morriconemust have ever committed to paper, if indeed he ever wrote it down and didn’tjust tell his assembled musicians to ‘pretend they were in a room filled withwasps’. Or who knows? Perhaps that’s what actually happened. Intercut with thetitles is a little beating heart that we never see again once they’re over.There’s no real reason for this other than possibly to indulge Dario’spredilection for including random cameos from internal organs in his films(after all there’s a pulsating brain in OPERA). We then get to meet groovydrummer Michael Brandon who is being followed by a chap in dark glasses and abig hat. He pursues him to an abandoned theatre where red curtains open likethey will in PROFONDO ROSSO before he seemingly kills the chap as a maskedonlooker takes photographs, one of which is then surreptitiously placed in Brandon’srecord collection at a party. Brandon’smarried to mad Mimsy Farmer (although we don’t find out about the mental bituntil the end, unlike the entire film which we already know by now is bonkers)who’s rich so they have a maid. She knows who the killer is, but this being a giallo the only person shetells is the murderer themselves before agreeing to meet them in a desertedpark after dark. Argento’s murder scenes are always one of the highlights ofhis pictures and this time he cleverly coveys her death mostly off screen byhaving her cries heard by bystanders the other side of a twenty foot wall. Thefingernails scraping down the brick are a nice added touch. Mimsy disappears offwith the police for reasons I couldn’t fathom and Brandon, who should be beingaccused of murder by now, is left free to employ a private detective who has afailure rate of 100%. Argento may have once been a superlative maker of horrorthrillers but his comedy skills aren’t up to much. Perhaps a bit gets lost intranslation but the comedy postman and the comedy camp characters we get inthis film have either dated horribly or more likely never worked in the firstplace. It’s a tribute to actor Jean-Pierre Marielle that his detectivecharacter is still so likeable despite the stereotypical overplaying and hisdeath because he has finally solved a case is doubly poignant. Fans of Italiancinema will raise a smile at Bud Spencer’s cameo as ‘God’, and his Professorsidekick is quite fun as well but otherwise it was probably wise for Dario tostick to the nastiness. Because Mimsy’s gone Brandontakes this as his cue to fall into the bath with pretty Francine Racette.Needless to say Francine’s soon at the end of the killer’s big knife, but notbefore being thrown down the stairs in a way that probably had Lucio Fulcithinking ‘I can do better than that’.

There alsoseems to be some unwritten rule with these movies that the meaning of the titlehas to be explained as late as possible in the proceedings. In fact I wonder if at the time there may even have been something of a competition between film makers about this sort of thing. Herewe’re 84 minutes into the running time before we get the spiel about Francine’sretina retaining the last image she ever saw, but not before the remaining casthave viewed her body in the kind of morgue that can only exist in Italy – onewith black and white marble columns that looks more like the foyer of a 1970shotel than a functioning pathology lab.

The FourFlies idea is a good one if intrinsically daft. No-one explains why Mimsy’swearing a fly around her neck, but then she is a mad giallo killer so sheprobably doesn’t need a reason. “I was raised as a boy!” she screams at thedenouement in a typical Argento murderer’s lament, “My father beat me! I waslocked in an asylum for three years!” We still don’t know why she’s wearing afly and we don’t have time to find out because off she goes in her car and herhead’s come off and it’s The End. Would you really marry Michael Brandon justbecause he bore a resemblance to your mad father who you wanted to torture by aridiculously elaborate scheme that involved paying someone to pretend to bekilled by him before you threatened him in your own home but with a mask on sothere was no way he could recognise you despite being married to you beforeadmitting you were in a asylum where the rehabilitation programme presumablydidn’t involve driving lessons?

Oh how Ilove these films. God bless Dario Argento and all who copied him.

The Hospice (1987)

2011-11-15T20:03:00.001Z

I keep intending to review some more mainstream (or at least accessible) fare on this site but then delicious obscurities like this keep coming my way. THE HOSPICE was made in 1987 by HTV West as part of a co-production deal with a European company to make a series called 'Night Voices', and is an adaptation of the Robert Aickman story of the same name. Despite some of them being included in the Fontana Books of Great Ghost Stories that he edited, Aickman's stories are difficult to classify and certainly deserve the label 'strange'. THE HOSPICE is no exception. Jack Shepherd gets lost in the countryside and eventually, after passing a statue that resembles Christ which turns its head in the direction he takes, he runs out of petrol and ends up at a country house. He's invited in and finds himself part of a large dinner party whose members resemble OAP versions of the cast of the movies of David Lynch, John Waters and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Full of soup and spaghetti he declines the huge roast dinner and brimming flagon of gravy that's placed before him, only to incur such displeasure in his waitress that she throws the whole lot on the floor. Alan Dobie plays the deliciously sinister supervisor of the proceedings who tells Shepherd not to worry and offers him a room for the night once he has explained that they have no petrol (an ancient-looking minibus runs on 'Diesel Only', or at least that's what the handwriting over the petrol cap says). And so Shepherd has to spend the night in a Robert Aickman House, which means he ends up having to share an overheated bedroom with nervous pathetic Jonathan Cecil who has a large model bird above his bed that he can operate the wings of to help him sleep, and who doesn't want the light switched off. Earlier in the evening Shepherd has met sexy Marthe Keller who has dropped an earring she presumably wants returned and so off he goes on a nightmare journey to find her, only to come across a photograph depicting her in period dress and dated 1938. We finally make it to morning, only for Shepherd to be informed that 'someone' has died during the night. They are rather efficiently already in their coffin, and as he is told that the only way he can leave is to accompany it we are treated to a final shot of Shepherd crammed into the back of a hearse as it leaves the mansion.
Atmospheric, enigmatic and nightmarishly disorientating. THE HOSPICE works very well as a 50 minute adaptation of an Aickman story. Performances, location and music are all excellent, but perhaps the biggest surprise for me was that it was directed by Domenique Othenin-Girard who was responsible for the forgettable HALLOWEEN 5 and the regrettable OMEN IV - THE AWAKENING. On the basis of those two movies I had been anticipating something far more workmanlike and uninspired and THE HOSPICE is neither. In fact I would highly recommend it. Now to track down the other episodes in this series.

The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

2011-11-11T08:00:00.000Z

What would you do if you were walking along a deserted beachand came across a beautiful woman buried in the sand wearing nothing but adiving mask? If like me you’d be on the alert for the inevitable Spanish horrorfilm crew that had to be lurking somewhere you’re reading the right column.There’s quite a bit of memorable imagery in Vicente Aranda’s 1972 Spanishlesbian vampire picture, but none that’s quite as bizarre or surreal as this.One presumes that the diving mask was probably requested, quite reasonably, byactress Alexandra Bastedo to stop all the sand from getting in her face, and toallow her to breath while the shot was set up. In fact director Aranda seems tohave been most accommodating to both his lead actresses as one also presumesthat he had no problems sorting out a nude double for Maribel Martin, even ifit does look like they had to use more than one. But I’m getting ahead of myselfhere.

While UShorror cinema has only used Sheridan LeFanu’s story Carmilla for the briefestof inspiration (eg in Stephanie Rothman’s 1971 THE VELVET VAMPIRE) Europe hasdone its best to do Mr LeFanu proud, with interpretations from France (RogerVadim’s 1960 BLOOD & ROSES / ETMOURIR DE PLAISIR), Italy (LA CRIPTO E L’INCUBO from 1964), and of course theUK (Hammer’s THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, which surprisingly enough is the most faithfulof all, even if the two sequels, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE and TWINS OF EVIL aren’t). Spain’sversion went under the original title of LA NOVIA ENSANGRENTADA but it’s bestknown by the title heading this article.

SimonAndreu and Maribel Martin get married but all is not well. As soon as they getto their honeymoon hotel Maribel’s starting to suffer from hallucinations inwhich she is raped, causing her to want to leave. They travel back to Simon’sancestral home, which has a tumbledown church next door (the kind of beautifullocation movies like this seem to be able to come up with effortlessly) and paintings of all his female ancestors in the cellar, one of whichis holding a bloody dagger, has had the face cut out of it and bears the name‘Mircalla Karstein’. In this film the legend goes that she killed her husbandbecause he wanted her to perform ‘unspeakable acts’ on their wedding night.What these acts were we never get to find out but they were certainly badenough for Mircalla to become cursed as a vampire (probably) and to get sealedup in the crypt next door. While we’re finding all this out Maribel’s sufferingfrom more hallucinations, but now she’s where Mircalla presumably wants herthey’re taking the far more pleasant form of a ghostly Alexandra Bastedo,draped in lilac and wandering the ruins during the hours of darkness. It’s notlong before Simon has discovered Ms Bastedo naked on, or rather in, the beach(see above) and has brought her back home for tea, as one does in EuroHorrorfilms based on Carmilla. Of course it’s not a good idea, not least because oneof Maribel’s night-time hallucinations has already involved both her andMircalla stabbing Simon to death in a particularly unpleasant scene that hasgraced video box covers up and down the land. Calling herself Carmilla herseduction of Maribel continues, leading to the death of the local doctor and ahuntsman, who gets more than just his face blown off after releasing Carmillafrom an animal trap in a yet another arresting (sorry) image. The finaleinvolves possibly the one direct visual reference to LeFanu’s story, when Simonriddles Mircalla’s coffin with bullets, causing it to fill with blood. ButSimon has a further fate in store for the two bloodied female corpses within,summed up rather more subtly than one might expect by this point by a newspaperheadline that leads to the fadeout.

Like manyEuropean horror films of the time, THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE is a mixture ofatmospheric longeurs, fine visual imagery, and the necessary exploitationelements that enabled this to be booked at many a drive-in cinema (with a moviecalled I DISMEMBER MAMA, which I have yet to see but I can’t say I’m in anyhurry). Fans of films of this period, and of this style, will find a lot toreward their viewing patience in a film where probably the least subtle thingabout it is the title. Oh, and all the blood that gets spattered over…well, perhaps it is a goodtitle after all.

The Exquisite Cadaver (1969)

2011-11-09T08:56:00.000Z

A fantastic title for an obscure late 1960s movie, matched only by its original language title of LAS CRUELES which is perhaps even better, EXQUISITE CADAVER is a weird, Spanish art-house Euro-Horror that might also be considered a giallo by some, simply because of its ingredients. The movie has a complex and quite ludicrous plotline, there's the presence of beautiful fashionably dressed ladies, and the drink of giallo kings and queens - J&B - is in evidence, although only the most eagle-eyed will spot it.

The movie opens with a girl laying her head on a railway line. For those in the know she's played by Judy Matheson, who in a couple of years will become a minor BritHorror babe by featuring in TWINS OF EVIL, Pete Walker's THE FLESH & BLOOD SHOW, and CRUCIBLE OF TERROR. A train rushes past and then we cut to an editor (Carlos Estrada) at a publishing house being sent a severed hand in a box. He tells his secretary it's wax to which the girl replies 'It doesn't smell like wax', prompting him to disappear off into a forest so he can bury it. At home, where his two strange little boys enact weird burial rites over their recently deceased tortoise while wearing spectacles with red and blue lenses, he's confronted by his wife who wants to know what the letter means that has come for him that says he's soon going to be receiving a forearm. Carlos makes up some ludicrous (but perhaps not for this film) excuse before engaging on a quest to find who has been sending him bits of a girl through the post. It turns out to be PINK PANTHER star Capucine, who may or may not have a false right hand (it's that kind of film) and who leaves him alone in her big old house after giving him drugs so he can go for a wander and find Judy's naked body squashed into the fridge. There's a lot of did-it-happen-or-didn't-it before we get some backstory, revealing that Carlos had an affair with Judy several years ago and then dumped her (I think). Capucine is now her lesbian lover who was distraught enough when all Judy would do is go on about Carlos but now Judy has died of leukaemia and Capucine is out to make Carlos pay. I think. Judy's death may actually be thanks to the ministrations of a quack doctor who ends up with his head in a bidet - the film isn't quite clear, but then it's a bit blurry on lots of things and believe me it's a far more dreamy and bizarre experience than I'm doing my best to rationally recount here. It all ends a bit quickly and rather weirdly with a head in a box but I have to say I was spellbound by the entire picture. Director Vicente Aranda was responsible for THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE a couple of years later and this movie is possibly even more interesting. The dialogue is often stilted and the actors are wooden, but it feels more as if this is part of the deliberately strange style of the piece rather than due to incompetence on anyone's part. Those who make a start with this may be put off by what feels like a very slow, stilted beginning, but even then there are enough weird goings-on to reward the viewer's persistence. Another one that deserves a decent DVD release.

The Alligator People (1959)

2011-11-04T04:18:00.000Z

The formula of Twentieth Century Fox, Cinemascope, the late 1950s and monsters should, when mixed in the right proportions, yield Kurt Neumann’s fabulously successful THE FLY. If you get the mixture a bit wrong, however, you might just end up with THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, another movie from the same era and the same company but lacking so many of the factors that made THE FLY a success.

After an opening title sequence over suitably atmospheric swampland we cut to a doctor’s office where Dr Lorimer is hypnotising pretty nurse Beverly Garland with the aid of intravenous drugs, quite possibly fulfilling the dreams of many cinemagoing men of dubious moral virtue of the time. This medication seems to induce a state of wild hallucination where she envisages herself in a rather sub-par monster movie. But oh no – actually it’s a flashback! Beverly’s just got married to Paul Webster (Richard Crane) but no sooner have they got on the train to begin their honeymoon than he receives a telegram and sooner than you can say ‘it’s your ex-wife you’re actually still married to’ he’s jumped the train and disappeared. Beverly tracks him down in the heart of Louisiana swamp country where mad scientist George Macready has been injecting accident victims with a serum from alligators that allows them to grow new limbs. It also makes them go all scaly and turn green – probably, as this is in black and white. George has a cobalt bomb and the means to use it – a complex looking piece of equipment that must have cost a bit as it gets demonstrated frequently during the film’s brief running time of 74 minutes. Because Paul turning into an alligator and the constant threat of radiation poisoning isn’t enough Lon Chaney Junior is also stumbling around in a torn seersucker suit and boasting a hook instead of a right hand due to a previous alligator attack, allowing him to wax lyrical at length about how much he hates them ‘gators and would spend the rest of his life killing them if he could. In fact he’s actually on hand (sorry) to molest Beverly after she’s lost a fair amount of her skirt in the swamp, which is probably about all the titillation a film like this was allowed back then. Presumably that and the drugging was enough to satisfy a certain part of the audience demographic. The alligators for Macready’s work, and the mutilated results of his experiments, are all captured and / or restrained by men who look as if they should be extras in a particularly non-heterosexual remake of ‘On The Town’, the tightness of their white T-shirts only matched by the severity of their haircuts.

It all ends badly of course. Despite still being able to play the piano and thus opening up a whole new possible market in Alligator Music Recitals, Paul gets an Extra Big dose of radiation and ends up with a properly snouty head filled with big teeth. Off he goes into the bayou pursued by Beverly, where before either of them can stop to wonder at this reversal of a classic horror film trope they both demonstrate a quite uncanny ability to fall over a lot before Paul falls one time to many and ends up in the swamp. Where he sinks. The End. Oh, except we get to see nurse Beverly again just so we can be reassured that the two doctors who drugged her haven’t been using the film we’ve just seen as a distraction while they cart her off to be sold to white slave traders or anything like that.

One for completists, as is director Roy del Ruth’s previous PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE, THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE does have a few nice moments, namely that of Garland’s arrival at the deserted Louisiana railway station and the piano-playing alligator man, even if overall it’s a bit slow considering its brief running time. The science is the usual utter rubbish with a few words thrown in from medical texts but for fans of a certain type of movie (you know you are, and I’m certainly one) the ending has to be watched at least once.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

2011-11-01T06:48:00.000Z

Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel was one ofthose rare pictures that until very recently had escaped me, not for any reasonother than the opportunity to watch it properly hadn’t presented itself. Aside from thefact that it’s a very good film indeed there was a certain fascination for mein watching a film intended for an audience of more than 40 years ago for thevery first time, particularly one that really hasn’t dated that much.

We all know the story by now but here it is again anyway. Shy,fragile, nervous little Mia Farrow is married to boorish wisecracking actorJohn Cassavetes. They move into the building in New Yorkwhere John Lennon was later assassinated to come under the influence ofneighbours Minnie & Roman Castavet (Ruth Gordon, who won an Oscar for her immenseskills at portraying an annoying old woman, and Sidney Blackmer). Mia does herbest to make friends with young ex drug-addict Terry in the laundry room. Mimscomments on Terry’s likeness to ‘the actress Victoria Vetri’ in a rather oddexchange because the girl actually is Playboy model and movie star Ms Vetriacting under her real name of Angela Dorian.

Angela’s in denial mode, however, presumablybecause she knows that this is a classic film and WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THEEARTH, in which she will be appearing next year, is not. Angela / Terry /Victoria plunges to her death, but did she jump in a drug-fuelled frenzy or wasshe just pushed by an evil elderly person? Either way Mia inherits Angela’ssmelly fungus-filled neckwear (according to friend Maurice Evans who is on theside of Good and Reason and so isn’t going to last long in this film). Afterconsuming just a spoonful of Mrs Castavet’s evil chocolate mousse Mia has adream where a nude stand in of her is painted with satanic symbols and mauledby hairy hands, and wakes up to find she’s pregnant. Nice obstetrician CharlesGrodin is dispensed with to make way for top-notch-but-nevertheless-suspiciousobstetrician Ralph Bellamy while Mrs Castavet keeps popping in with a healthdrink that looks suspiciously like those natural yoghurts that are meant tohelp bowel function. Of course all these measures are actually designed toensure the Second Coming of Satan’s child but the horrors here are not so muchanticipated ones as those derived from everyday mundanity. It’s interestingthat ROSEMARY’S BABY came out more or less at the same time as Hammer’s THEDEVIL RIDES OUT – another adaptation of a popular novel. I saw the Wheatleyadaptation when I was twelve years old and Polanski’s film only recently and Ithink I’ve seen both at just the right times in my life. The Hammer film is arip-roaring adventure story with spectacle, monsters, moustache-twirlingvillainy and noble heroics that you almost need to be a boy of a certain age toget the most from.

But you need to be an adult to appreciate what’s best about Polanksi’sfilm, because it isn’t the devil worship stuff, or the implications about thesecond coming of Satan being responsible for the cultural climate of the late 1960s,it’s Polanski’s ruminations on what evil actually is. Ultimate evil isn’tDennis Wheatley’s Mocata in a cape, it’s the annoying old couple who live nextdoor, the obstetrician who wants your baby for his own devices, the best friendwho kills themselves and leaves you alone again just as you thought you were managingto settle into your strange new environment a tiny bit. It’s the emptycorridors that always look as if they’re hiding someone or somethingthreatening around the next corner. It’s those individuals in our society(spouse, neighbour, doctor) that you should be able to trust but you can’t.

Despite the exploitation pedigreeof some of the participants the film was hardly likely to have been advertisedas from the director of THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS and the producer of HOUSEON HAUNTED HILL, HOMICIDAL and THETINGLER, but it should nevertheless be remembered that Polanski had alreadychalked up a track record of working with exploitation film producers withcommendable results. Both REPULSION and CUL-DE-SAC were made for Tony Tenser(Tigon) and Michael Klinger (GET CARTER), and I suspect that William Castle hada hand in keeping Mr Polanski under control and on schedule to ensure that ROSEMARY’SBABY was the success it turned out to be. In fact there is very little tocomplain about here, although Ms Farrow’s drastic ‘save the day’ Sassoonhaircut really does occur at a fairly unbelievable point in the proceedings, evenif being able to wash it more quickly probably meant more minutes in the day forRosemary to worry about everything else that was happening to her. And wouldeven the mother of Satan have wanted quite such a preponderance of yellow inher furnishings?

Actually, thinking about it, thesofas of hell probably are upholstered in yellow nylon.

Night of the Lepus (1972) - Watership Daft

2011-10-28T11:48:00.000+01:00

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m very fond ofillustrating the reviews I post on here with original posters from the moviesin question. Apart from hopefully stirring feelings of nostalgia in those oldenough to remember when such works of art graced cinema billboards (or thegrubby bit of wall just outside the bus station if you lived in Abergavenny), Ilike to think that the way in which these films were sold is also a little bitof cinematic history itself, particularly in the realm of the genre picture,where breathless hyperbole and ludicrous artwork were often the norm. However,there is another reason for reproducing a couple of the posters for NIGHT OF THE LEPUS here,namely to evoke some sympathy for those who, in the days before imdb and otherresources, went to see movies simply on the basis of their advertising. Can youimagine what it must have been like to be lured in to your local picture houseon the basis of what you can see here, and then to realise what the film wasactually about? What if you’d brought a date? Or friends who up until thispoint had respected your artistic judgement? Would such a picture have inspiredcamaraderie among an audience who must have quickly realised they had beensuckered into one of the daftest ideas for a monster movie ever? Or wouldeveryone have made their individual excuses for needing an ice cream or the lavatoryand then slipped quietly out of the cinema, hoping no-one they knew had spottedthem?

The wholepoint of House of Mortal Cinema is to celebrate my enduring love for thehorror movie genre, a love that has enabled me to find something good to sayabout almost every horror film I’ve ever seen. Certainly every film you readabout on here will have its good points emphasised over the bad, whether theybe of artistic merit, technical skill, or just sheer entertainment value. Theonly thing NIGHT OF THE LEPUS does exceedingly well is “Silly”. It is without adoubt one of the silliest films I have ever seen. Competently directed byWilliam F Claxton, competently (if unexcitedly) acted by Stuart Whitman, JanetLeigh and DeForrest Kelley, even the special effects aren’t too bad in quite afew shots. It’s what the special effects are of that’s the problem.

I have readRussell F Braddon’s novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit. It’s actually not atall bad – a humorous satire on nationalism and capitalism which uses giantmutant rabbits as its MacGuffin to allow its lead characters to engage in allkinds of political scheming, backstabbing and blackmail. NIGHT OF THE LEPUSdispenses with everything in that book exceptthe bit that’s really, really silly. It ispossible to make rabbits scary – at least to other rabbits. WATERSHIP DOWN,both book and film, actually manages to give rabbits a whole range ofbelievable personalities, from the terrifyingly violent General Woundwort tothe sinisterly suicidal Cowslip. Unfortunately, NIGHT OF THE LEPUS takes thegiant monster movie route, with the result that Stuart and Janet’s formula totreat the local rabbit problem misfires when their rather strange-lookingdaughter (blonde hair and very black eyebrows) allows one of their testsubjects to escape down a hole and infect the population, creating a thousandbunnies the size of horses in the space of what seems like a couple of hours.It also makes them carnivores, too, as well as endowing them with an unnaturalability to not go to the toilet as much as rabbits are well known to do. Infact not a single dropping the size of a bowling ball is seen throughout theentire film, nor are any of their human victims seen drowning in the vast poolsof rabbit urine one would also expect to have to deal with were such a problemto actually transpire. Quite where these monsters get all their energy from isa mystery as well as the only thing the rampaging horde eats in the entire filmis a shop full of tomatoes and a couple of people. In fact they end up so fullafter the tomatoes they have a little rest leading to the delightfullyendearing shot of a model shop packed with pet shop bunnies having a lovely sitdown.

As Ihave said, the model shots actually aren’t at all bad – but the rabbits justaren’t frightening in the slightest. For close up rabbit attacks they actuallyuse a man in a suit which takes the film into another realm of sillinessaltogether. It all ends on an electrified railway line with a lot of loadsquealing which in cinemas of the time probably still wouldn’t have been loudenough to drown out the laughter of those hardy shameless veterans who hadstayed to enjoy a quite unique movie experience.

The Murder Clinic (1966)

2011-10-27T06:56:00.000+01:00

Nothing brings quite the same kind of joy to Probert Towers as the chance to view some ultra-obscure Eurotrash.I had wanted to watch THE MURDER CLINIC (known as LA LAMA NEL CORPO in itsnative Italy) ever since, at the tender age of nine, seeing a still of thehideously disfigured woman who features prominently in the film’s plot in DenisGifford’s A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, a volume that also encouraged theyoung JLP to track down such genre gems as HORROR OF MALFORMED MEN, RichardGordon’s THE PROJECTED MAN and that version of THE BLACK CAT by Harold Hoffmanwhere the girl gets an axe in her head.

But back toTHE MURDER CLINIC. After a title sequence which exhibits a considerable degreeof creativity in terms of changing Italian names to presumably more exportableEnglish ones, we get an opening caption which tells us it’s “About 1870” andthat we’re in Norfolk. The mountainous forest-filled countryside and Italianatearchitecture on display are less suggestive of Norwichand its environs and more of a country considerably further south (and a bit east aswell) and fans of this kind of thing wouldn’t have it any other way. There’s ahooded and cloaked figure stalking the corridors of an isolated asylum andbumping off attractive young ladies with a razor. Mary the pretty nurse startsworking there, enabling her to meet some of the inmates that only exist inItalian horror films, including an old lady whose best friend is her stuffed cat and a young man called Fred who has violent tendencies and should havebeen played by Klaus Kinski but sadly isn’t. There’s someone clumping around onthe third floor as well but we won’t get to see her scarred face for a littlewhile yet. The place is run by Dr Robert Vance (William Berger) who spends alot of time in his laboratory where we can be sure that his animal experimentson skin grafting aren’t just for the benefit of guinea pigs who may have beenin nasty accidents involving scorchingly hot objects.

Into all of this comesGiselle, who we already know is up to no good as we’ve seen her bop the chapwhose job it is to ‘escort’ her out of the country over the head and takeflight to a local cave, only to spy Dr Vance burying the pretty young thing ourcowled figure slashed up just after the opening credits. Soon she’sattempting to blackmail Dr Vance, which as we all know is a Very Bad Thing to attempt inthis sort of a movie and before you can say Blackmailing A Man Who Has Access to Anaesthetics, Scalpels and Electro-Shock Therapy is Probably A Bit Foolhardy the razor is being wielded again.

It soonbecomes apparent that while the trappings are gothic and the style is giallo,screenwriters Ernesto Gastaldi (who ended up writing more of these things than he could probably ever remember) and Luciano Martino (Sergio’s brother) have also decided tomix in a goodly dollop of Eyes Without a Face as well. The mysterious figure isDr Vance’s sister-in-law Laura, whom he managed to have a naughty dalliancewith before he caused her to fall into a lime pit (or so he believes) while ironically she was wearing a lemon-coloured dress. Now hespends his days grafting guinea pigs and keeping his fingers crossed that hishousekeeper Harriet White Medin (Italy’s Sheila Keith) won’t tell people why hespends so much time shaving them. It all ends in the traditional ItalianEurotrash way, with a totally bonkers twist ending where it turns out quite abit wasn’t what it seemed (including the flashback detailing the Laura-in-limetragedy) and with nearly everyone dead by the time we get to the fadeout toFrancesco de Masi’s main theme.

As amid-sixties Italian gothic THE MURDER CLINIC is not at all bad. There are sometouches of style and the faceless killer feels quite Bava-inspired. Sadly, theprint we saw was terribly washed out so it’s difficult to comment on how thefilm was intended to look. A decent DVD release would be very welcome indeed.

Frightmare - Bleak, British & Brilliant

2011-10-24T19:41:00.000+01:00

Good old Pete Walker. It’s nice to know that in 1974, whenHammer was cashing in on popular trends by indulging in the colourful theatricsof THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES and Amicus had just made one ofthe best examples of the British ghost story movie in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE,someone was working hard at producing our own equivalent to Tobe Hooper’s THETEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

LikeHooper’s film, much of FRIGHTMARE’s action takes place in an isolated locationin the country. Where it differs, however, is in its very British attitudetowards all the madness and horror that occurs there. Dorothy Yates (SheilaKeith, whose performance I enjoy more and more every time I watch this film) isa cannibal with a predilection for brains. But when she isn’t gibbering withglee drilling open peoples’ skulls, or subjecting pretty Pamela Farbrother (whoyou would think would have had enough of being tortured on film after CRY OFTHE BANSHEE) to a poker through the guts, she’s a kindly (and slightly pathetic)little old lady who does crochet by the fire. Her husband Edmund (RupertDavies) knows exactly what’s going on but adheres to the time honoured Britishtraditions of Not Wanting Any Trouble and Pretending It Doesn’t Exist. Becauseof Keith’s stellar performance Davies’ role often goes unnoticed but it’s alsoa masterly study – this time in male impotence, never willing to takeresponsibility and insidiously scheming so that the blame for any upset withinthe family can be attributed to his daughter Jackie (Deborah Fairfax). Jackie’shis daughter from his first marriage, which means she’s sane. Debra (KimButcher) is Dorothy’s daughter, which means she’s not. Graham (Paul Greenwood)is a psychiatrist which means he’s going to get everything wrong with selfconfident superciliousness before dying horribly - Walker and screenwriterDavid McGillivray do seem to have it in for the psychiatric profession in thisone. Graham’s boss is called Dr Lytell and he has an X-Ray upside down on thescreen in his office. He gets referred to the director of the mentalinstitution from which Edmund and Dorothy have been released. “We didn’t kickthem out for the fun of it you know,” he says. “They’re completely cured – assane as you or I.” Cut to bloodied corpse being hidden beneath straw in thebarn. And if we haven’t got the point by the end of the film, just as heroineJackie is about to be meat-cleavered in the face by her stepmother we get areplay of the sentencing judge’s “And let the members of the public be assuredthat you will remain in that institution until there can be no doubt whatsoeverthat you are fit and able to enter society again” from the movie’s black andwhite prologue.

It’s beensaid that the first three collaborations between Walker and McGillivray (HOUSEOF WHIPCORD, FRIGHTMARE, and HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN) form a trilogy in which therespective institutions of the law, the family and the Catholic church areattacked and to some extent satirised. I’ve found that much of the horror in Walker’sfilms tends to stem from their implication of a lack of trust. We cannot trustour elders and self-appointed ‘betters’, or our doctors, or our priests, or thegirl we’re married to (SCHIZO) or even a kindly old couple of housekeepers (THECOMEBACK). Much of the power of the cunningly constructed endings to thesefilms lies in how believably the innocent parties are drawn to their fates. In Walker’sworld of horror, it’s always the scheming villains who will win, and you can’tget more bleak than that.

Cannibals, Coppola and Kinski - Oh My! The "Up The Creek Without A Paddle" Subgenre

2011-10-20T08:25:00.003+01:00

Recently, being in the mood for something that would leave us wrung out, we 'treated' ourselves to a rewatch of Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBALHOLOCAUST at Probert Towers.It's no surprise that this film often tends to be discussed and compared withcannibal movies produced around the same time, such as Umberto Lenzi's MAKETHEM DIE SLOWLY and DEEP RIVER SAVAGES, and Sergio Martino's SLAVE OF THECANNIBAL GOD. But whereas Lenzi and Martino’s intentions were to make purelyexploitative gory jungle adventures there’s a lot more going on in Deodato'spicture. Indeed, despite the parts of it that no-one can condone, I think therest of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST displays a level of integrity that allows it to be discussedin the same breath as a different group of films altogether. 'Up the CreekWithout a Paddle' may sound a flippant phrase to describe these movies and foranyone who might prefer something more serious sounding then 'Journeys into theHeart of Darkness' would be equally apt. Because that is what these films are –worst case scenarios of what happens when often foolhardy individuals withunrealistic expectations set off into some unknown wilderness. As the storyunfolds it becomes obvious to the viewer, but often not to the charactersthemselves, that they stand little chance of surviving as they venture furtherinto hostile territory. We know that all that actually awaits them is madnessand death, that their fated journey is merely a disaster waiting to happen, andall we can do is watch fascinated as it all happens before out very eyes,sometimes in an almost unbearably protracted form.

CANNIBALHOLOCAUST is a grim, unpleasant, unrelenting film. It has deservedly courtedcontroversy and ironically has nearly destroyed the career of its directorwhile at the time being the best thing he has ever done. It's an easy targetfor those who wish to criticise it, and the use of animal footage has beendeemed misjudged by pretty much everyone, including its director. Apart fromthe obvious reasons, it's a great shame that footage was included at all as it hasserved to detract from what is a biting, beautifully constructed, utterlyharrowing satire on the lengths unscrupulous documentary film-makers could beprepared to go to in order to get results. Of all the graphic and unpleasanthorror films made during the late seventies and early eighties, CANNIBALHOLOCAUST is probably the only one that has even more relevance today than itdid when it was made. The film is now old enough that those who want to see itprobably have, and those who know it would be too much for them have sensiblysteered clear. But if you like your cinema tense, cruel and edge-of-the-seat-exhausting,if your experience of films from the period has been coloured by the efforts ofLenzi et al, and you haven’t seen CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, I’d recommend you checkout the Grindhouse double disc Region 1 DVD release from a couple of years agothat has the ‘animal cruelty free’ option.

For furtherexamples of the sub-genre we need look no further than some of its mostrespected practitioners. Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD is thespellbinding story of a group of Spanish conquistadores who decided to journeyup the Amazon in search of the fabled city of Eldorado.We know they're onto a loser from the start but it's only a couple of minutesin, when the camera catches sight of a certain Klaus Kinski, that we knowthey're utterly doomed. What follows is seriously great film-making, as theintrepid group pushes ever onwards losing men and women along the way, withKlaus eventually doing what Klaus always did best - scaring the hell out ofanyone within a 100 mile radius with his contagious madness, chasing monkeysand insisting the few remaining members of his band pilot their hopeless littleraft on into inevitable death and destruction. We're with them all the way,through death and disease, hallucinations and madness towards the inevitableconclusion, and the film is a fascinating experience that rewards repeatviewings.

A few yearslater, and on a much bigger budget, Francis Ford Coppola would embark on asimilar journey, taking cast, crew, financiers and eventually, once it was finished,the audience with him as well when he made APOCALYPSE NOW. We're with MartinSheen all the way as he descends into both literal and metaphorical hells, andby the time his band of weary 'explorers' find Dennis Hopper it's clear they'veall arrived at a level of hell only Mr Hopper has probably seen previously. Allthat's left is for Marlon Brando to tell us, not entirely intelligibly, about “thehorror, the horror” and Coppola's operatic journey into his very personal heartof darkness is complete.

Perhaps themost recent contribution to the subgenre has to be Nicolas Winding-Refn’s Vikingepic VALHALLA RISING, a film where almost nothing happens and yet the grimatmosphere and unrelenting sense of dread means you can’t take your eyes offthe screen. Slow moving but always fascinating, the movie doesn’t really needits on-screen chapter headings for you to know that this is a story about agroup of men who have no idea where they’re going or that they’ve completelylost their way. It’s a testament to the skill of the film-maker than so many ofthe ‘twist’ endings that have been suggested as add-ons to the way the filmactually ends are so apt. Everything from the final shot being of anapocalyptic cityscape to Winding-Refn’s own suggestion that a spaceship arrivesto carry away the character of One-Eye merely proves that that the “hauntedhopeless journey into madness” tale is one that suits any time period.

Guilty of Romance (2011)

2011-10-16T18:39:00.000+01:00

Oh my goodness where do I start with this one? Probably withthe honest admission that the only reason we went to see GUILTY OF ROMANCE, atitle more suggestive of a romcom than the sleazefest it actually is, wasbecause we had read a description of the opening scene, where the apparentremains of two bodies are discovered in a Tokyo love hotel. The parts that havebeen removed have been replaced by parts of shop window dummies, a lot of pinkpaint has been splashed about and the word ‘Castle’ has been daubed on thewall. ‘What follows’ said the pre-screening blurb, ‘is a descent into a sexualhell’. So even though its director might be horrified that this could beconsidered a genre piece there were certainly enough elements to suggest a possibleevening of delirious whacked-out cinema. Which is exactly what we got.

After theopening scene we are introduced to Izumi, a meticulously behaved housewife whois married to a bestselling novelist. Every day he leaves the house to go outand write at some undisclosed location, coming back late to compliment her onthe precise alignment of his slippers and the correct temperature of his tea asshe sits at his feet. The long days of nothing mean, however, that boredom soonsets in, and she gets his permission to get a job selling sausages at a localsupermarket. It’s there that she’s approached by a personable young woman whosays she can get Izumi work modelling, and before you can say ‘It’s probablynot for Vogue’ she’s working in pornography and indulging in multiple randomaffairs, while feeling intensely liberated from her ‘normal’ life in theprocess. She meets Mitsuko, a prostitute who in the daytime is a lecturer at ahighly respected university and who is obsessed with the works of Kafka, in particularThe Castle. Mitsuko’s elderly mother knows all about her double life and duringa bizarre tea party tells how her deceased husband also exhibited an unnaturalinterest in their daughter. Needless to say everything is headed into horriblywrong territory here and after the film spends rather too long procrastinatingand over-emphasising the life of a Tokyoprostitute we get a completely insane ending that is going to be appreciatedfar more by trash film enthusiasts than the art house crowd I suspect this filmwas made for.

TheGuardian has called GUILTY OF ROMANCE an eccentrically confused mess as if thatis a bad thing, but we art-house-trash-and-everything-else horror aficionadosare well acquainted with movies that don’t make sense, have been throwntogether with everyone’s fingers kept crossed behind their backs and of courseout and out rubbish. GUILTY OF ROMANCE isn’t any of these but I can’t quiteagree with the opinion held by some that director Sion Sono is a genius either.The film veers from the almost Bava-esque opening (mannequins, corpses, brightcolours) to a much quieter but engrossing forty-five minutes, after which thereis far too much meandering before everything goes completely mental. It’sapparently meant to be part of his ‘hate’ trilogy, but while almost everycharacter in the film is up to things they really shouldn’t be, at no point didI feel myself really disliking any of them. Instead the film conveys a far moreambivalent attitude to the lives these characters have created for themselves.It’s a bit of a misfire and will probably leave some viewers open-mouthed whilestill being a far more viable option for a night’s viewing than the romanticcomedy it most definitely isn’t.

The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1970)

2011-10-12T08:01:00.000+01:00

It’s giallo time! Let’s make sure we’ve got the rightingredients. Gorgeous Edwige Fenech wearing very little and frequently nothingat all? Check. Mad Ivan Rassimov? Check. Hunky George Hilton? Bottle of J&Bplaced with the label prominently visible no matter where the two actresses inthe scene concerned are standing or sitting? Screenplay most likely written byErnesto Gastaldi? Check check check. With all these elements at director SergioMartino’s fingertips the plot seems less than important, especially as we knowin a couple of years he’s going to make TORSO, which is one third brilliance totwo thirds random nudity and silliness. In fact that’s pretty much what we gethere, but unfortunately with a little less brilliance than we might ideally like. A serial killer is terrorising Vienna(which is presumably where the Italian crew felt like taking their holidaysthat year), murdering young women in states of undress. While this is going onEdwige is living with her diplomat husband Alberto de Mendoza (who would beunrecognisable as Pujardov the mad monk in HORROR EXPRESS in a couple of years’time) in a flat the interior décor of which can only have been thought up bysomeone who usually comes up with the design for types of toothpaste. Edwige’sunhappy, probably because she’s no longer with lover Ivan Rassimov, who used tocater to her ‘strange vice’, but perhaps because the matching horizontallystriped curtains and wallpaper of her living room are enough to drive anyone tohave a plethora of Martini bottles lying around. The bedroom’s not much better,where the stripes are vertical and brown, there’s a big red telephone and alarge carton of cigarettes is always prominently on display. When Edwige’sfriends start dying she suspects Ivan, who keeps sending her roses with crypticmessages attached, but then she discovers him dead so it can’t be him, can it?New lover George Hilton has some of the weirdest shirts ever seen in a 1970film and a jacket that probably allowed him access to some of the less heterosexualnightclubs of the day but not much else. He doesn’t seem to cater to her‘strange vice’ but then seeing as not much is made of it we’re not terriblysure of what it is until much later in the film. Does she like having herwoolly jumper torn off her in the rain? Of having brandy poured over her nakedbody? No – it seems she has a ‘blood fetish’, which is explained late in theday by a trendy doctor in a sports car (there really shouldn’t be any othertype in these films). We get to see very little of it indeed but to be honestthat’s probably just as well.

Halfwaythrough the killer gets bumped off by one of his potential victims, so whatexactly is going on? Whatever it is, it involves Edwige decamping to Spainwith George where she ends up being gassed in the kitchen which, in the bestsequence in the film, is made to look like a suicide attempt. By the end it’sclear Martino has seen STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and has decided to put together hisown daft nudity-filled version of it. The ending requires the usual mammoth setof coincidences that no giallo fan would be satisfied without, and as the car withour heroine and the trendy well-dressed doctor drives away through thepicturesque countryside we are once again treated to the film’s main theme. Foronce this isn’t composed by either Ennio Morricone or Bruno Nicolai but insteadby Nora Orlandi and it’s not at all bad, with a couple of haunting melodiesthat do get a bit overused. THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS WARDH isn’t actually thatmemorable but there are moments that make it worth an evening’s viewing when your Argentoshave been watched to death.

Terror (1978)

2011-10-10T21:36:00.000+01:00

The most important thing you need to know about Terror is that it’s not supposed to make sense, and why should it? After all, it's a late-1970s British horror filminspired by Dariostream-of-scary-visual-consciousness-sometimes-when-he-was-good Argento. Onceyou understand that you realise that it doesn’t matter that the opening ismeant to be a film within a film but then the witch that reappears at the endlooks exactly like the presumed actress playing her in the prologue sequence.It doesn’t matter that pretty Glynis Barber gets chased through the woods andstabbed to death even though she has nothing to do with the family curse that’sjust been explained to us. It doesn’t matter that Michael Craze discovers herpinned to a tree with a knife through the throat and then he disappears fromthe picture never to be seen again. It doesn’t matter that most of the victimshave absolutely nothing to do with the aforementioned curse and don’t deserveto die, or that there’s a prolonged suspenseful sequence set during a rainstormthat climaxes with the appearance of Peter Mayhew and his big moustache. Whatmatters is that the opening witch burning sequence is splendidly put togetherand stands up well even today, that most of the murders are very well staged,and that most of the actors and actresses concerned acquit themselvessufficiently during their screen time that you’re sorry to see them gethorribly killed. What matters is that there are some great set-pieces,including an Argento-worthy scene set in a film studio where James Aubrey getsattacked by film canisters (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, apparently, and that’sprobably the only time that film’s going to get mentioned on here) and flungdown a flight of stairs where he meets a fate similar to that suffered by IreneMiracle’s Rose in Argento’s INFERNO which that director made two years afterthis. What matters is the ‘How the hell did they manage that?’ bit where a carfloats thirty feet above the ground. What matters is the completely crazyclimax, shot for pennies but which still looks fantastic, where a bloody greatsword shoots through the air to staple final surviving cast member CarolynCourage to the fireplace with an emphatic ‘No-one, but no-one, gets out of thisfilm alive’ before Ivor Slaney’s weird, spooky, deliciously unsettlingsynthesiser music kicks in again, the music that at the start of this deliriousmovie has accompanied what must have been one of the most unsettling titlesequences cinema audiences of the time had seen, in which several of the horrifyingset-piece murders are played out in slow motion, blood splatters and all.Director Norman J Warren has freely admitted that TERROR was put together bywriting down scary ideas and sequences and then handing the finished shoppinglist to screenwriter David McGillivray who quite sensibly must have realisedthat to try and work everything into a story that made sense probably wasn’tthe way to deal with the material, and he was right. TERROR should be approachedwith a big bag of popcorn and a love for this scary, surreal, crazy andsometimes outright daft genre of ours, because it deserves no less.

Insidious (2011)

2011-10-07T19:41:00.000+01:00

Good movies about ghosts tend to be subtle. The mostmemorable ghostly movies of the last fifteen years (Shyamalan’s SIXTH SENSE,Amenabar’s THE OTHERS and Juan Antonio Bayona’s THE ORPHANAGE) displayedtremendous skill in conjuring up the kind of delicate dread atmosphere neededto make the kind of stories they were telling succeed superbly. Going furtherback, movies generally regarded as classics (THE INNOCENTS, THE HAUNTING)employ similar carefully structured storytelling to draw the viewer in. We’reshortly promised THE WOMAN IN BLACK from Hammer, and THE AWAKENING from writerStephen Volk, and very good the trailers for both of those look, too.

INSIDIOUSis also a movie about ghosts, and it’s a rattling good one, but rather than agentle journey into the cobweb-enshrouded depths of the supernatural, it’s morea ghost train ride into hell, complete with things designed to make you jump atevery opportunity. So, enthusiasts of supernatural subtlety be warned – thisprobably won’t be your cup of tea.

JoshLambert (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) move into their lovelynew dark gloomy house with their three children. It’s not long before weirdthings start happening that culminate in their son Dalton(Ty Simpkins) falling from a ladder and ending up in a coma. Renai sees severalspooky apparitions and the family move again, only for the manifestations tofollow them. Cue the intervention of parapsychologist Lin Shaye and her comedysidekicks Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson who determine that it’s not thehouse that’s haunted so much as the boy himself. Barbara Hershey, playingJosh’s mother and looking a good deal saner than in BLACK SWAN (thank heavens)has some secrets to reveal about her son’s past as well, and the stage is setfor Josh to enter the astral plane to get his son back.

DirectorJames Wan and writer Leigh Whannell’s love for the genre is obvious ininterviews and thankfully it translates well to the screen. Images and soundsredolent of early twenties horrors like NOSFERATU and the films of DarioArgento mean they run the risk of criticism for being derivative but, in thesame way that a good comedy just keeps at you with plenty of properly funnygags, they provide the viewer with so many well-executed scares that INSIDIOUSis very difficult not to like. Add in some very clever framing and all kinds ofthings happening that you really have to be paying attention to notice and it’sdifficult to catch everything that’s going on in a single viewing. The music’sgood too – a mixture of electronic sound effects reminiscent of those pioneeredby Delia Derbyshire and her team for LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE and very scratchyviolins. It’s not often the composer gets screen time in a movie (I canremember Jerry Goldsmith getting a cameo next to an ice cream machine inGREMLINS 2 but that’s about it) but here Joseph Bishara gets to play theultimate nasty demon as well, and a fine job he does of it.

Wan and Whannell’s previous horror efforts received mixedreviews, with both getting more than their fare share of negative notices. I’mnot afraid to admit that I loved SAW, and DEAD SILENCE, while flawed, was agenuine attempt at the kind of old fashioned horror film that you just don’tsee anymore. With INSIDIOUS they’ve proven that they’re getting very goodindeed at being very very scary and I very much hope they’ll decide to staywithin the genre for at least another couple of films.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

2011-10-05T18:33:00.000+01:00

One can imagine at the beginning of the 1940s the executivesat Universal counting the enormous mountain of money made by 1939’s SON OFFRANKENSTEIN and saying something along the lines of “We have GOT to makeanother one of these! But how can we make things a bit different? I know – howabout we START this one with the locals blowing up Castle Frankenstein? We’llend with a fire as well of course but no-one will expect it at the beginning!”

And so that’s how the fourth movie in Universal’sFrankenstein saga opens. In complete contrast to those Universal executives,the inhabitants of the village of Frankenstein aren’t the slightest bit pleasedwith the outcome of the last film, especially as Bela Lugosi’s Ygor, presumablyshot dead, is now alive and well again. “They tried to hang him and that didn’twork,” someone says in a desperate scriptwriter’s attempt to explain why hedoesn’t look any the worse for wear for the bullets dealt him by Basil Rathboneat the end of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. Mind you, two burghers who appear in thisopening scene (Michael Mark and Lionel Belmore) are the ones who were killed by the monster atLugosi’s behest in the previous film and they don't seem any the worse for respectively having had a cart driven over them and having been bashed over the head only a short while ago. Continuity was never Universal’s strongpoint.

Universal’s Castle Frankenstein was a little bit like JasonVoorhees of FRIDAY THE 13^TH fame, having a completely different look fromfilm to film and surviving more or less intact despite having been burned /blown up / flooded etc at the end of the last one. This time it gets destroyedvia some pretty impressive model work early on, allowing the release of themonster from the sulphur pit it was knocked into by Basil Rathbone. “Thesulphur was good for you!” says Bela as the scriptwriter again manfully triesto explain why the monster hasn’t just suffocated beneath all that eggysmelling rock. It has however caused him to become rather less expressive, havea different body shape, and look altogether more like Lon Chaney Jr than BorisKarloff, but then that’s because he is. Helped out of the cave by Ygor andsubjected to rejuvenating lightning in one of the film’s most impressive scenes,the two of them are soon off to find Frankenstein’s other son Ludwig, played bybaggy of eye and limited of expression Sir Cedric Hardwicke, who doesn’t lookhappy to be in this film at all. He runs the Frankenstein Institute forDiseases of the Mind, which seems to require him to have an old dungeon underhis house equipped with prison cells and ‘soporific gas’, presumably in casehis patients get a bit overactive. Sir Cedric’s assistant is Lionel Atwill whounlike his co-star looks as if he’s having his usual whale of a time as oneof the true villains of the piece, the other being (of course) Mr Lugosi. Ludwiggets visited by the ghost of his father (Hardwicke again) in one of the series’few nods to the supernatural before everything went mental later on with themonster rallies. Father Frankenstein tells junior that all the monster needs isa new brain so why doesn’t he get on and sort it out? Planning to use the brainof a colleague killed by the monster everything goes predictably wrong whenAtwill arranges for Ygor’s brain to be substituted instead. The monster awakensand goes blind. Ludwig says some rubbish about the incompatibility of bloodtypes causing trouble getting oxygen to the neurones but we all know it’s thatpoor writer being flogged by the execs to get the script finished in under 24hours again so we forgive him. The house goes on fire and Evelyn Ankers andRalph Bellamy get to walk towards the sunrise as everyone interesting is nowdead and besides they have to fulfil some sort of function as the nominal heroand heroine.

THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN isn’t bad. It’s a big comedownafter Rowland V Lee’s predecessor but it’s not a disaster. Lugosi and Atwillkeep things interesting from the acting point of view and director Erle CKenton manages a few nice shots (the lightning bolts hitting the monster, somenice framing of Lugosi in the propped open lid of a grand piano) in amongstwhat looks like a very rushed job. Clocking in at 68 minutes this breezy fourthentry was a sign of the way things were about to go very quickly indeed as moreand more monsters were delivered by the studio at a vastly increased rate overthe next couple of years.

Blood On Satan's Claw - But Where Are Satan's Legs?

2011-09-28T06:45:00.000+01:00

After the huge success of 1967’s WITCHFINDER GENERAL it wasunsurprising that both companies involved in its production were keen to cash inon the success of that movie, as well as copycat efforts likeMichael Armstrong’s MARK OF THE DEVIL. Both follow-ups materialised around thesame time. AIP’s CRY OF THE BANSHEE was an incoherent sadistic British horrorpicture filled with unnecessary nudity and scenes of violence that as a whole didn’treally work. Oddly enough, Tigon’s BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW could be described inexactly the same way, but somehow it managed to be a completely different, farmore unsettling affair.

We’re infreezing gloomy seventeenth century England,with none of the fake charm, cosiness or glamour redolent of Hollywood’sdepiction of the period. Ralph Gower’s plough turns up something nasty in afield – bits of bones, fur and a skull with one very blue eye (and attachedworm). It disappears, leaving Patrick Wymark’s Judge (a finely balancedperformance with just the right amount of veiled drunken threat behind a scaryheadmasterly authoritiveness) to doubt its existence. Sexy Angel Blake (LindaHayden) finds the claw of the title and soon the children of the community aregrowing bits of nasty-looking fur on them as the thing (it’s never made clearexactly what it is) tries to resurrect itself. Other odd things happen too – young Peter brings his new bride Rosalindback to his aunt’s farmhouse only for her to be driven insane in the attic bysomething we never get to see. When Peter goes up there he falls asleep only tobe attacked by his own hand, now covered with the same fur, which he hacks off.Peter’s aunt disappears halfway through the film never to be seen again, and asthe film becomes increasingly nasty and outrageous (the seduction of thevillage priest in his church by a naked Hayden, the horrifying rape and murderof Wendy Padbury) a relentless sense of downbeat dread drives the film towardsit conclusion, where the creature is finally vanquished by Wymark’s sword.

Afascinating mixture of the diabolically nasty and the diabolically daft, someof BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW’s lapses in logic can be attributed to the fact thatit was originally planned as a three part anthology movie, and vestiges of allthree stories remain in the final script. The fact that it still works can beput down to the conviction with which the movie’s properly unpleasant centralconceit is played out. The idea of some horrible rotting thing regrowing partsof itself on children who are then willing to have them hacked off to allow itto be put back together is brilliantly horrible and the gloominess andisolation evinced by the landscape and period are just perfect for such astory. Attempted solutions are as unpleasant as the evil itself. Cutting theskin from a girl’s leg is considered pointless as it will just regrow but thelocal doctor goes ahead and does it anyway, without any anaesthetic. Wymark’sjudge explains that the evil has to be allowed to take hold and possess enoughchildren before he will be able to destroy it – a remarkable position for the‘force for good’ to take in any horror film, and perhaps one we might only eversee in a film from the early 1970s. It’s very easy to pull BLOOD ON SATAN’SCLAW to pieces and make fun of it, not least because one can see the hand ofproducer Tony Tenser in some of the more exploitation-orientated scenes –indeed, towards the end of the film a girl is thrown in the river to be ‘swum’on suspicion of being a witch apparently because a similar scene in WITCHFINDERGENERAL had gone down well with audiences. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense that Satan (or whatever it is) would grow its legs last, but the image (and sound) of the 'hopping fiend' is very scary indeed. In fact no matter how cobbled together,random and inexplicable much of the film is, there’s no doubt that it’sdisturbing, unsettling and at times properly horrifying. Well done Tigon – Istill can't quite work out how you managed it.

Psychomania - "The Word, Mother, Is Daft"

2011-09-24T13:05:00.000+01:00

With a Region 1 DVD release out from Severin Films a little while back, withplenty of extras and struck from the best print available, what better film to launch the BritHorror Dungeon part of this blog with than PSYCHOMANIA, a horror film made in 1972 by British filmcompany Benmar productions, whose only other foray into things cinematic wasthe equally daft and no less enjoyable HORROR EXPRESS. Known everywhere as‘that zombie biker movie where Beryl Reid gets turned into a frog’ I couldn’tlet another viewing of this particular film at Probert Towers pass withoutwriting a few well-chosen words about it, the title of which makes no sense,but then neither does anything else.

‘The Living Dead’ motorcycle gang consists of a group ofyoung RADA-trained actors with beautiful speaking voices trying to act evil.They are aided in this endeavour by the names given them by the script whichinclude ‘Hatchet’ (played by the chubby little ginger chap from BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, ‘Chopped Meat’ (who ends up a singing one of the strangest songsin popular horror film history but more on that in a minute) and ‘Jane’ (AnnMichelle, keeping her clothes on this time after the copious nudity of Tigon’s THE VIRGIN WITCH a couple of years previous and soon to appear in PeteWalker’s HOUSE OF WHIPCORD). Each member of the gang has their name writtenon their leathers, presumably in case they (or indeed the actors playing them)forget who they are. It also makes it very handy later on for the police to beable to identify the various perpetrators of any ensuing miscreant behaviour.

The leader is Tom, played by Nicky Henson (Ian Ogilvy’sfriend from WITCHFINDER GENERAL), whose girlfriend Abby is played by MaryLarkin. Despite being pretty much the only one left alive at the end of this asfar as I’m aware Ms Larkin never went on to do anything of any significanceafterwards.

The opening title sequence of this film is wonderful. JohnCameron’s music theme is very seventies but it’s the right kind of seventiesand when this sequence is watched now it lends an even more hauntingotherworldly atmosphere to the proceedings. The incongruous image ofmotorcycles riding around fog-wreathed standing stones in slow motion is atonce outlandish and engaging, and is almost perfect in its atmospheric scenesetting. The movie which follows is also going to be filled with standoutmoments, albeit on the whole for reasons other than what one could hesitatinglycall quality.

After a little bit of road-based violence to get the filmstarted (and to demonstrate just how nasty the bike gang is) Tom and Abby popoff to the nearest graveyard where their canoodling is interrupted by Tom’sinterest in a frog who has been thrown onto the set. Popping his new ‘littlegreen friend’ into his pocket he leaves Abby to probably seriously reconsiderher position in a relationship where amphibians seem to take precedence, anddrives back to the manor house where he lives with mum Beryl Reid, butlerShadwell (George Sanders) and some of the most hideous seventies wall-sculpturesyou will ever see. While Shadwell admires the frog (now housed beneath atransparent cover probably last used for a sponge cake) Tom brings us up tospeed on how Shadwell never gets older, that the butler knows the secret of theliving dead, and that the house has a room that’s been locked for eighteenyears. Needless to say, Tom’s soon in the mysteriously dust-free and highlypolished forbidden chamber, finding his dead dad’s NHS spectacles and havingvisions of a big frog and then Beryl doing something suspiciously like signingTom’s soul away when he was a baby to a man with a frog ring. Tom should beokay, apparently, because he’s wearing a frog pendant, which leads one towonder if the producers spent a day in 1971 at World of Frogs buying up their unsoldstock, and then got screenwriters Arnaud D’Usseau and Julian Halevy tofollow-up their previous movie hit HORROR EXPRESS with “anything (and we meanliterally anything) involving frogs and motorbikes”.

The ‘bigsecret’ is that if you kill yourself but believe you’ll come back then youwill, which if it were actually true would mean a world full of the buggers.There’s probably more to it than that but I suspect the film-makers thought it wouldbe irresponsible to divulge anything else, although somehow I suspect itinvolves more frog-based shenanigans.

After somevery poor shopping-centre antics and a road chase, Tom drives off a bridge andinto the local river, killing himself. “We’d like to bury him out way if that’sok” says Abby when she visits Beryl’s house. Trusting Beryl agrees withoutasking any more, so it’s a bit of a relief when it turns out that the gang’s‘way’ involves burying Tom in his leathers and sitting on his motorbike in thestone circle. Lucky for Tom as well that ‘their way’ doesn’t involve jammingsomething sizeable up his bottom, covering him in treacle and placing himupside down on the town merry-go-round or he’d have some explaining to do whenhe came back to life.

Which hedoes, in another impressive screen moment. “Do you want him back?” says GeorgeSanders beforehand. “Yes,” says Beryl. “Yes, God help me I do.” Which is thecue, ladies and gentlemen for you to either hit the fast forward button, go andmake a cup of tea, or brace yourselves for one of the most incongruous momentsin movie history as this zombie biker horror picture grinds to a halt so thatthe gang, dressed in hippy gear, can make wreaths and other flower-based itemsof mourning while the song ‘Riding Free’ is mercilessly etched into yoursubconscious. Tom may indeed have ‘really got it on’ and may well have ‘rodethat sweet machine just like a bomb’ but I am going to stop before I tell youthe full horror of these lyrics in case there’s any risk of copyrightinfringement.

Tom comesback and looks remarkably clean for a man who’s been buried under a grave fullof earth. He gets some free petrol and then proceeds to murder a pub full ofpeople. Police inspector Robert Hardy, looking unsure as to how he’s meant tobe playing this, keeps a straight face as the bodies start to pile up,especially when the gang cotton on and proceed to kill themselves in a montageof suicides so ridiculously over the top that the comic moments of the film sofar are in serious danger of being topped by this single three minute sequence.

Scarcelyhas the pathologist time to answer a call from his wife than the gang are upand about again, including Abby, who’s not actually dead as her overdose failed,but not before giving her a slightly trippy dream sequence where her nightmarebecomes so extreme and unpleasant that she envisions herself wearing somethingapproaching a gaily coloured African tablecloth.

Beryl findsout from the police that Tom’s told his gang the Family Secret and tellShadwell she wishes to break her bargain. “And you know what you will be becomefor all eternity?” he says and she nods, figuring she might always be able toget a job presenting The Muppet Show in a couple of years.

Tom findsout Abby is still living and in a showdown with the gang back at the stonecircle attempts to kill her. Fortunately Beryl has completed the ritual,acquiring a distinctly croaky voice and a Kermit-like appearance in theprocess, and as a result Tom and his gang turn to stone. The End. Apart fromblack-cloaked Shadwell approaching distraught Abby in the stone circle as JohnCameron’s music plays us out in another haunting moment that almost makes upfor what’s gone before.

There isnothing quite like PSYCHOMANIA andthere never will be again. The film could not have been made at any other timeor in any other country, and it still manages to achieve an open-mouthedresponse of ‘what on earth were they thinking when they made this?’ on viewingthat, coupled with some memorable scenes and a haunting score, means itshouldn’t be allowed to fade into obscurity.

Fear Itself - Or Is It?

2011-09-21T16:37:00.000+01:00

Horror on television has always been considered difficult todo, but one can always argue that horror on the big screen doesn’t exactly havea 100% track record of success either. Therefore perhaps it’s not surprisingthat horror anthology TV shows can be patchy affairs. Patchy, however, doesmean good as well as bad, and shows like NIGHT GALLERY (Camera Obscura), HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR (The Two Faces of Evil) and MASTERS OF HORROR (Cigarette Burns)have all had their moments of glory, even if those of us who stuck with theentire run of all of those shows were also left with the feeling that perhapsoverall they could have done better. That feeling was no more in evidence forme with the last series on that list, which used the fact that each episodewould be directed by an acclaimed ‘master’ of the form as an expectation setterthat had little hope of succeeding, and indeed it was only John Carpenter’sepisode that emerged as the kind of thing one was hoping every episode wouldbe. Another series followed, with some of the directors boasting ratherquestionable cinematic qualifications for them to be considered a ‘Master’ andthat series was similarly hit and mostly miss.

In mostwalks of life, the more practice one has at something the better one tends toget – playing the piano, transplanting kidneys, and (one hopes) producinghorror television series. Sadly sometimes the more one does something the moreit becomes apparent that one isn’t suited to it at all and that one shouldprobably be doing something else. It was therefore with some trepidation afterthe two ‘Masters’ series that I approached producer / creator Mick Garris’third attempt at the form.

The firstcouple of seconds of the first episode of FEAR ITSELF are promising. The openingtitles consist of a series of well-photographed unsettling images. A shame,then, that these are accompanied by a quite terrible (and terribly annoying)theme tune reminiscent of a particularly bad 1970s Eurovision Song Contestentry. It’s with that ringing in our ears that we are introduced to the firstepisode. I’m aware that the running order on UStelevision may have been a little different (and somewhat non-existent as theshow was pulled after eight of its thirteen episode run) so the rest of thiscolumn makes recourse to the running order of the DVD box set that’s nowavailable

Side one ofdisk one kicks off with Brad Anderson’s ‘Spooked’. Eric Roberts plays a copwhose unorthodox methods get him fired when he goes a little too far with oneof the suspects he’s torturing and the young man dies. The fact that Roberts’actions enable a senator’s son to be saved means that Eric gets away withsacking and loss of pension rather than anything more severe. Years later he’schanged his surname and is now running a private detective agency called‘Bender Investigations’ (someone really has to tell US TV people that that wordhas entirely different connotations in the UK). Employed to prove that awoman’s husband is having an affair he finds himself setting up hissurveillance cameras in The House Across The Street, which just happens to be Anderson’sversion of a suburban haunted house, and a very good one it is too. Graffiti onthe walls incorporates images that with a bit of CGI animation lead to the creepiestand most effective moments in the episode. Saying any more would spoil thestory but suffice to say this is yet another Brad Anderson project where themale central character has to undergo psychological torment for some terribleact he has committed in his past. So far so good.

The secondepisode is ‘Eater’, directed by Stuart Gordon. This is the second time thatPete Crowther’s short story, originally published in Cemetery Dance magazine,has been adapted for television. The first was as part of the UK Channel Fiveseries URBAN GOTHIC where the story was told in half the time, had a moreeffective villain and a better ending. Here the cannibalistic body-switchingkiller of the title is a singing Cajun who is seen far too much and despitegiving the villain a set of scary teeth Gordon keeps everything too well litand that, coupled with a silly and impractical ending, makes this one adisappointment.

Flippingthe disk over we are treated to Mary Harron’s 'Community', a surprisinglyeffective little piece about the age-old (but always relevant) theme of gated privilegedcommunities that have a Deep Dark Secret. Brandon Routh (Bryan Singer’sSuperman) and Shiri Appleby (from ROSWELL)can’t afford to move out of their grim little apartment. However the news thatthey are trying for a baby results in them being welcomed with open arms (anda ridiculously low mortgage rate) into an exclusive suburban residentialcommunity. Discovering that one of their neighbours only has one leg is justthe start of their problems as they realise they really should have read thesmall print on the paperwork, especially the bit about the consequences if theydon’t actually have a baby within six months. It’s a fine little piece of TVhorror and more than makes up for the slightly lacking 'The Sacrifice', whichcompletes disc one. Breck Eisner’s direction delivers a nicely atmospheric talewith some great sets but the story about a gang of utterly unlikeable villainscoming across a group of gorgeous young girls living in what looks like aconcentration camp in the middle of nowhere doesn’t really work.

Onto disktwo and John Landis’ 'In Sickness and In Health', which in better days andanother country would have made a very enjoyable giallo. As it is people whoare in the habit of looking for twists will see this one coming a mile off as abride receives a note on the day of her wedding that suggests all may not be asit seems with her intended. William B Davis (of X FILES Smoking Man fame) doesa nice turn as a deaf priest but it’s not enough to make this episode special.

In factthat’s the problem with the series overall, and what dogged MASTERS OF HORROR, the series this is heir to – there aren’t enough strong episodes tojustify watching the entire series. Anyone who wants to dip in, however, shouldbe directed with all speed towards Larry Fessenden’s ‘Skin & Bones’, whichcontinues the director’s obsession with the wendigo myth. This time it’sthinner than thin itself actor Doug Jones who gets possessed by the wanderingevil spirit and develops a taste for his own family in their remote farm in thewoods. Jones is properly scary as the possessed creature and any familiar withFessenden’s work will be pleased to hear this story doesn’t disappoint. Anotherhonourable mention deserves to go to Ronny Yu (director of BRIDE OF CHUCKY andFREDDY Vs. JASON) whose ‘Family Man’ is an entertaining body swap horror inwhich loving husband and father Colin Ferguson finding himself in the body of aserial killer facing a death sentence, who is now free to prey on Ferguson’sfamily. A cracking ending makes this a decent little slice of TV horror in aseries that sadly doesn’t deliver on its title promise anywhere near as oftenas it should, but hopefully anyone picking up the box set now has a fewpointers on what might be worth watching first.

Julia's Eyes - More Spanish Horror Worth Seeing

2011-09-18T10:03:00.000+01:00

In recent years one country more than any other has givenhope to Euro-horror fans everywhere. Atmospheric ghost stories, the kineticzombie antics of the excellent [REC] and even a splendid series of television ‘FILMSTO KEEP YOU AWAKE’ (PELICULAS PARA NO DORMIR -which I’ll be covering on here indue course) have put Spainon the map as a leading producer of quality screen terror. JULIA’S EYES, whichhas just come out on UK Region 2 DVD & Blu-Ray after a limited independentcinema run here, is another one to look out for, although how much you willenjoy it will depend on your tastes.

Inappropriately marketed in some territories as a subtle psychological chiller,anyone going to see JULIA'S EYES because of its implied links to quiet Spanish horrorhits like THE ORPHANAGE or some of Guillermo del Toro’s own projects may wellfind themselves getting rather more in the way of outrageous incident than theybargained for. The rest of us can sit back and relax, safe in the knowledgethat the spirit of the giallo seems to be well and alive and making a comebackfrom Spain.

Juliasuffers from Made-Up-Movie-Optic-Nerve-Degeneration, one of those plot devicesthat allows her to lose and regain sight whenever it becomes necessary to theplot or to aid in the construction of an atmospheric scene. Her sister has thesame condition at the beginning but is swiftly put out of the picture(literally) because she appears to be another one of those movie characters whocan tie an expert noose to hang themselves with (or do they sell them in‘specialist’ shops nowadays?). Julia’s convinced her sister was murdered andthat the girl’s mysterious new boyfriend is to blame and so the hunt is on,taking her to the hotel where they stayed just before her death by way of achanging room full of naked blind women who sniff out Julia’s presence, and theman who is now stalking her, in one of the set pieces that, along with what isactually a very well developed, tense and mysterious first forty five minutes,certainly endeared this writer to this particular picture.

It’s in themovie’s second half that the audience is going to be divided, when the movieenters seriously silly giallo territory, with the requisite One Daft ThingAfter Another taking place. However, and where the film scores big points, allthese daft things are perfectly executed, the performances are spot on and someof the shocks are so well choreographed that I jumped and cringed along witheverybody else. Two of the murders later on suggest that, rather than studyingthe likes of Del Toro’s PAN’S LABYRINTH and THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, directorGuillem Morales has been rather more influenced by some of the murders in Norman J Warren’sSATAN’S SLAVE and Pete Walker’s SCHIZO. The climactic turning out of the lightshas been used in many a picture but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t workagain here and in a way it would be disappointing if it wasn’t.

Definitelydesigned as a crowd pleaser, JULIA’S EYES is delicious entertainment. It’sscary, well paced, and when it realises it’s going to go over the top it doesso with verve and enthusiasm, embracing its clichés with gusto and is a muchbetter film for it. It also happens to be a film with a more mature centralfemale character than we get to see from Hollywood,someone who is in a loving relationship, which the film manages to express onseveral levels and at several points in the movie without interfering with thepacing. Actually it’s a refreshing change to see a modern horror film without ateenager in sight. Lady P and I really loved it. Cracking job, Guillem – we’llbe first in line for your next one.

Lady Frankenstein - Eurotrash Corner No.1

2011-09-16T10:11:00.000+01:00

So to launch the Eurotrash Corner of this blog (you knew there had to be one) here’s an enjoyably tatty slice of Gothic Euro-daftness.Joseph Cotton stars as a very American Baron Frankenstein who together with hisdubbed colleague Dr Marshall makes one of the poorer monsters to grace ourscreens, with a head that’s too bulbous and one wobbly fake eye that keepsthreatening to fall off. The monster escapes but not before killing the Baron,to the distress of his daughter (RosalbaNeri) who’s just back from medical school as a fully qualified surgeon. “I couldnever love you,” says Neri to Dr Marshall, “unless of course your brain was inthe body of that hunky but brain dead farmhand who works here”. Dr Marshalldoesn’t take much persuading which, despite that fact that Ms Neri really is avery attractive Lady Frankenstein, suggests he really hasn’t had all that muchexperience with women. She does of course have another reason for theoperation, namely that the only thing that can kill her father’s rampagingmonster is another monster, apparently. Meanwhile uncharismatic policeman and traumatichaircut victim Mickey Hargitay is on the case, punching innocent villagers, bargingin when he’s not wanted, and shouting a lot.

LadyFrankenstein’s surgery goes as planned. The monster, who has been out for alittle walk mainly to kill a few villagers and molest a couple of naked ladies,returns to the castle. It was during his little sojourn that I stopped towonder why the Frankenstein monster never seems to need to eat or have a cup oftea, much less go to the toilet. Indeed, the grunts and groans elicited by the creaturehere may suggest an altogether more bowel-orientated cause for his anger anddistress. Anyway, the scene is set for a showdown between Lady Frankenstein’sbrain-transplanted boyfriend (who now also possesses super-strength) and herfather’s constipated creation, who dies with a monkey wrench in the back of hisskull after an enjoyably choreographed fight where his arm gets chopped off.Numerous members of Rentatorchwieldingmob.com get to fulfil their contracts andstorm the castle while the Lady and her creation get to have sex in front of aroaring fireplace and a massive pool of blood. The End.

Director Mel Welles does a reasonable job of keeping everything moving, and the onlyother thing I’m going to mention is that the music (by Alessandro Alessandroni)really isn’t very good, the main part being carried by a verydisinterested-sounding (or possibly drunk) flautist. I’m not quite sure why butsomehow the soundtrack album for this has found its way into the Probert Towers collection. I suspect thetemptation of having that, THE MAD BUTCHER and KILLER NUN all on one CD was toogreat a temptation to resist.

Never Mind Kevin, We Need To Talk About The Children!

2011-09-14T09:06:00.000+01:00

The term handmade can mean many things, from somethinglovingly and carefully put together by someone with years of experience, to ahastily cobbled together load of old rubbish that you wouldn’t let yourchildren near for fear it might damage them for life.

Whichbrings us nicely if admittedly in the most contrived way possible to Carton JAlbright’s 1980 production THE CHILDREN,which feels very handmade indeed, right down to the main title art that seemsto have been drawn more or less freehand by someone who might benefit from acouple of years at art school. Or any school. While throughout much of the movie’s runningtime one might tend to favour my former definition of the word ‘handmade’ ratherthan the latter, that doesn’t mean that the movie is without merit. Indeed, interms of tiny no-budget backwoods efforts this is never less than entertaining,and boasts a few surprises along the way.

In anopening worthy of the worst of Bruno Mattei or Umberto Lenzi, both of whom mayhave seen this picture and then ‘pinched’ the idea to get the ball rolling ontheir own ‘perils of technological advancement’ epics HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH in the UK) and NIGHTMARE CITY, two workers end a busyday discussing who’s going to buy the beer as they make their way out of thelocal nuclear power plant. But oh no! What’s that? It’s a leaky pipe theyhaven’t noticed that’s discharging a yellow gas. And Oh My Goodness the localschool bus just happens to be driving past. A shot of the young passengerswithin reveals two things about the town in which our story is about to unfold.First, there appear to be very few children living there and second, they allseem to have been heavily tranquilised by the local doctor as none of them arefighting, distracting the driver, smoking, vandalising the seats or drawingpictures of genitalia on the seats in marker pen. Perhaps this is to provide acontrast to the evil beings they are about to become or perhaps the properly naughtychild actors didn’t turn up for filming that day.

The kidsget turned radioactive (I think) which in this film means that they acquireblack fingernails and an ability to turn the skin of whomever they hug into burnedand bloody scar tissue with the aid of some genuinely unsettling and reallyrather good makeup effects. The action kicks off with the sheriff finding theschool bus abandoned. One of the missing children belongs to the local doctorwho, when she isn’t presumably dosing the kids with ketamine seems to spend hertime sitting in the garden wearing a bikini that’s too tight while her blindlesbian lover does her best to impersonate LeFanu's Carmilla playing the piano. Thedoctor gets dressed and heads off to the local graveyard where junior gives hera lovely big hug and a case of skin irritation that not even the biggest tubeof eczema cream she can prescribe will cure.

Next it’s time to set up some more victims, which is the cuefor the usual collection of walk on character roles by Anyone The DirectorCould Find to pad out the running time. These include a topless lady and herseriously steroid-overdosed weightlifting husband, a couple of rednecks who areintroduced doing their best to sell the old lady who answers the police radioat the local store (?) a couple of dead chickens they haven’t bitten the headsoff, a porn-star wannabe with a big cowboy hat who turns up in a car with atelephone and electric windows the up-and-down motion of which gets demonstrated threetime in the space of a minute, and the hot pant wearing girlfriend of the localdeputy, all of whom get offed by the killer kiddies.

As is oftenthe case in films like this the children give the best performances. Admittedlyall they really have to do is hold out their arms, grin and look creepy, butthey do it really well. They also react well to the violence that gets metedout to them, including being chopped up into pieces and shot at, in one casewith such force that the boy in question gets thrown off a staircase. There’seven a so-daft-it’s-good twist ending involving the annoying pregnant wife ofour utterly unendearing hero that leaves you wondering quite why they did thatwhen the film could have merely ended on a heap of dismembered dead littledarlings awaiting the inevitable ‘outside world’ to intrude and announce the arrivalof paedogeddon.

THE CHILDREN is silly, poorlyacted, cobbled together and has a music score that was subsequently liftedpretty much note-for-note by its composer Harry Manfredini for SeanCunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH(which used many of the members of THE CHILDREN's crew, including director of photography Barry Abrams). It’s alsoa movie that’s never boring, in fact the running time flies by. Fun, creepy, weird,and ever-so-slightly disturbing, it’s an excellent companion piece to NarcisoIbanez Serrador’s WHO WOULD KILL A CHILD? for when you’re feeling in the mood for adouble bill of tiny terrors.

Eyes Without Faces, or What To Do If You’re A Brilliant Surgeon And Your Daughter’s Had A Bit of an Accident

2011-09-09T19:06:00.000+01:00

This week Lady P and I have had the good fortune to see two films on the big screen about brilliant-but-mad plastic surgeons doing terrible things to people because of family misdemeanours. Both of these movies, made more than fifty years apart, are the creations of highly respected ‘art house’ movie directors, and they currently bookend a horror movie subgenre that has otherwise been characterised by projects that can only be described as being of a rather lesser quality, even though they can provide their own rewards if viewed in the right mood.

Georges Franju’s classic LES YEUX SANS VISAGE is currently enjoying a big screen revival in various art house cinemas across the country. The print is tatty and scratched and the sound didn’t work on the first attempt to thread it through the projector in our local cinema, but that was all part of the fun to be had, as was watching it with those lured in by the prospect of an 1950s art film who weren’t expecting to see gory face transplants carried out in sparkling black and white or Alida Valli stabbed in the throat.

I would always argue that Franju’s film is a genre picture more than anything else. The tale of the surgeon responsible for destroying his own daughter’s face and willing to do anything to repair his actions is the stuff of pulp paperback luridness, and Franju certainly elevates it way above its penny dreadful potential, making as fine a horror film as one could hope for with the material. Apart from the nasty bits there’s a pervasive gloom to the film that serves to augment the desperate situation of its central character, wandering her father’s isolated country mansion, a literally faceless wraith assumed dead by the rest of the world. One imagines the city-set scenes at the police station and its environs would be grey even if the picture were in colour, and it never seems to stop raining. Almost from the beginning there is no suggestion that the film is going to end anything other than badly, which is possibly why the final scene is all the more moving, simultaneously suggesting hope and hopelessness, freedom and utter loneliness. The film was made in 1959 but it’s best viewed out of context with contemporary horror cinema of the time – Hammer were well on their way to becoming the most successful producers of horror films in the world, Hitchcock was about to make PSYCHO, and British company Anglo Amalgamated had just released Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM. Compared with these slicker movies the Franju film seems very creaky indeed – no less effective, but nevertheless it feels as if it belongs to a different age, making the surgical scenes and the deaths at the climax possibly even more shocking and unexpected. Definitely worth catching if you get the chance.

Pedro Almodovar’s THE SKIN I LIVE IN is also on release at the moment and is the latest take on the theme popularised and elevated to art form by Franju. Antonio Banderas plays another brilliant plastic surgeon, one who has invented a new form of artificial skin. He also has more than his fair share of secrets as well as a beautiful girl locked up in his remote country clinic-cum-home complete with operating theatre, but then don’t we all? To say much more would spoil the surprises Almodovar has in store, suffice to say that this is as much a horror film as the Franju picture, and walks the narrow line between EuroTrash and EuroArt – and I mean that in a very, very good way.

Of course to get from Franju to Almodovar fans of this particular subgenre of movie have had to endure a number of efforts which could be considered at best sub-par and at worst sleazy and incomprehensible. First off the English language speaking mark was probably Robert Hartford-Davis’ CORRUPTION, a nasty British version of the story with Peter Cushing causing the burning of his beautiful model girlfriend’s face at a party and spending the rest of the film trying to make it all better. Unfortunately ‘making it all better’ in Corruption-land means hacking girls’ heads off in gruesome detail, extracting pituitary glands the size of a small root vegetable and using a private laser that’s massive but somehow easily transportable from a London townhouse to a country cottage near the sea.. Unfortunately Mr Cushing obviously hasn’t done his laser safety training and everything goes completely bonkers at the end but it’s all ok because not satisfied with one daft ending Hartford-Davis et al have tacked on another one as well that makes everything out to be a dream. I think. Still difficult to get hold of in its country of origin anyone willing to brave this will need to do a bit of searching to find the uncut version, horrible inappropriate incessant jazz music score and all.

Not to be outdone by the Europeans, the US came up with its own unpleasant variation on this theme with 1976’s MANSION OF THE DOOMED. Richard Basehart is the doctor with the accident-prone daughter. She loses her eyes in an auto wreck, resulting in dad popping eyeballs out of other people’s skulls and into hers willy nilly with such abandon it’s a good thing he’s got a great big cage in the cellar to put all the ‘donors’ in. Quite why he locks them up and treats them like stray dogs is a bit of a mystery until we realise this is an early Charles Band production and consequently have to adjust our tasteometer settings to a few notches below zero. Michael Pataki was responsible for directing this one just before starring in perennial TV favourite of our youth ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA (as Dracula just to avoid any confusion), and after this and appearing in The Bat People he probably deserved it.

And then of course there’s Jess Franco. Usually mentioned only to be condemned, I have a sneaking liking for some of his more art house pieces (stop sniggering at the back there). His 1988 production FACELESS was intended as a much higher quality movie than much of his work of the two previous decades, which admittedly wouldn’t be difficult as anyone who has seen more than a couple of his efforts can testify. Helmut Berger’s the doctor in this one and it’s his sister that gets the hideous facial rearrangement which comes about because one of Helmut’s old patients isn’t happy with his work and rather than complain to her local MP she lobs a bottle of acid at him one evening in a car park. Unfortunately it misses and sister Ingrid gets it instead. Off goes Helmut to his chum Dr Orloff (Howard Vernon) for advice and he suggests old Nazi plastic surgery colleague Anton Diffring. They kidnap model Caroline Munro, causing her wealthy father Telly Savalas to hire private detective Chris Mitchum to find her. A lot of daftness takes place before – surprise! – the face transplant is performed and is a success! The doctors toast their success while leaving Chris and Caroline to die – the end. Well, pretty much. Of course Franco had tackled the subject before in 1961’s AWFUL DR ORLOFF, another one of the director’s films that’s actually worth watching. I do realise that if I recommend any more Franco I shall have to have some plastic surgery of my own to escape irate movie fans who may not be as kindly disposed to the director’s work as I am, so for now I shall leave it at that.