Italian horror

Doom It Yourself Moviethon

For years now, I’ve been defining a moviethon as a movie marathon of 5 films or more, preferably watching those five films in a single day. If you need to stretch the viewing over a 2-day period, then you should bump it up to 6 movies or more. Many of the moviethons I’ve written about over the years were between 13 and 18 films between Friday night and Sunday evening.

The main rule of a moviethon is that you have to sit through all of the films at normal speed. No cheating by having a movie playing at 10x speed or whatever abominable settings that modern technology has provided. Of course, you can pause for bathroom breaks and meals, and even leave yourself time to take a nap but I recommend setting an alarm (or two) just in case your body revolts and wants to crash for like 8 or 9 hours.

Obviously, you can do a moviethon any way that you see fit with any theme that you can imagine. But why not stage a Giallo Meltdown and burn through all those wonderful Italian thrillers you’ve been hoarding? Or watch all of those The Fast and the Furious films in an epic, brain-melting weekend of vroom vroom stuff. You could even do a “The Worst of ‘82” marathon with titles like Jerry Lewis’s nightmarish Slapstick of Another Kind (1982) and the paranormal high school sleaze fest Zapped! (1982) with a pre-“Charles in Charge” Scott Baio and Willie Aames. Does that sound too random? Good! The tenuous connections between your title choices is purely up to you.

Don’t have any ideas for your own moviethon? I got you covered. Want me to challenge you with a customized moviethon of my own making? Ditto. So yeah, I thought it might be fun to develop a playlist for a proper 10 film Doomed Moviethon-style moviethon based on the criteria I came up with below. The theme I’m providing you with is that there is no theme other than a collection of various horror, cult, and genre films.

The Very Official Doom It Yourself Moviethon Criteria:

1 giallo or 80 slasher – My two favorite genres!

1 Asian horror film – This is how your worldliness can be increased.

1 British horror film – Never underestimate how crazy British horror films can get.

1 zombie movie – There’s only a million of these to choose from.

1 non-horror film – This is your wild card and a chance to get truly freaky.

1 Spanish horror film – You need some Paul Naschy.

1 haunted house or ghost film – Save this one for after dark so you get spookefied.

1 Italian horror film – How can you choose just one?

1 action film – Some sweaty, machine gun-toting, macho bullshit.

1 vampire movie – Get sucked.

There are no rules in terms of the order or the scheduling with that criteria. Do two movies Friday night and then the other 8 all day on Saturday. Or save a couple for Sunday. Heck, if you were having trouble deciding between two many choices, don’t stop at 10 films. Go for 12 or 13 before you have to actually get some sleep and then go back to work. I do recommend putting the shorter films near the end of the marathon and/or saving your favorites or most anticipated titles for last.

Hopefully, I left you with some vague enough sub-genres so that you will be overwhelmed with choices. List making is fun! Speaking of being overwhelmed, here is my list as a curated challenge for you. Do you dare to get this doomed? The following playlist is what I am currently in the mood for right now. Every time I think about those criteria, I come up with different films, but I need to stop somewhere.

The Doomed Moviethon Challenge Playlist:

The Initiation (1984) – Dumb and overly serious slasher that is so much fun.

The Seventh Curse (1987) – You will never forget this Hong Kong splatterfest.

Terror (1978) – One of the weirdest British horror films ever.

One Dark Night (1982) – Very odd little zombie movie.

Spinout (1966) – This is like watching every Elvis Presley movie at the same time.

The Fury of the Wolfman (1973) – Paul Naschy hated making this dopey shit.

House on Haunted Hill (1999) – Something kooky from the tail end of the 1990s.

Aenigma (1987) – Fulci’s Carrie (1976) rip-off that is wacko.

Cyborg (1989) – Science fiction AND action in one movie. Van Damme it!

Vamp (1986) – This is about as offbeat as it gets.

So, there it is. Please let me know if you attempt this moviethon or a variant of it. I would be super jazzed to see how far you got or what titles you chose with my criteria. Before I wrap this up, don’t forget to watch these movies with some pals, either in the real world or in the virtual Internet space. Having someone along for the ride to react to your crazy picks makes staying awake much easier.

Giallo Meltdown: Slashing Back To You

Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know two things. One: this will have some minor spoilers, but I tried to make it so that I wouldn’t ruin the whole plot or the identity of the killer if it’s part of the mystery. Two: this is going to be the ninth chapter of the upcoming book, Giallo Meltdown 2. What’s a Giallo Meltdown? You can find out by picking up the first book right here. Thanks for hanging out!

 

 

In the 1980s, the giallo went through a rough patch but it definitely didn’t die. My beloved genre became a gorier and more insane -or just trashier- version of itself. Italian and Spanish genre filmmakers segued into the slasher business by doing what they do best: make a giallo but gorier. And the Americans, having spent the 1970s being bombarded with rereleases and retitlings of gialli, did what they do best: make a giallo but gorier. Of course, not all slashers from Italy and Spain were just gialli in new packaging. Some of them are actually freakin’ awesome card-carrying members of the slasher club. The goal of this moviethon is to delve deep into that blood spattered gray area that’s somewhere between giallo and slasher. And I don’t care if get lost in it forever.

 

FRIDAY

 

It’s a breezy (though typically warm and Tampa-esque) November night which can mean only one thing: death is coming! I’m sitting here feeling very stuffed and sluggish. I will ultimately be easy prey for the killer. Oh well, that Mexican pizza I ordered from Senor Tequila was worth my impending slaughtering. But let’s not focus on such morbid things for it is time to watch other people die (and not just me slowly)! Personally, I’ve been simply dying (EDIT: please stop talking about dying!) to get this moviethon going for a long while now and hoo boy, the time is here. I’ve got an overly ambitious stack of movies, a good attitude, and a pleasing countenance. Ready, steady, go!

 

 

“What did shithead say?”

5:55PM

BODY COUNT (1986)

 

Ruggero Deodato is personally assisting me in the beginning of this bloodbath. That opening theme by Claudio Simonetti is kicking my ass, dood! I have a feeling that I’m going to regret having put this one off for so long. Boy am I glad that this opens with some basketball. I was beginning to worry if I wouldn’t get my daily recommended sports footage intake. John Steiner is in this, so I guess he’s the killer. Just sayin’. There is a character named Bob and another one named Ann? I feel like I’m in heaven. Speaking of heaven, David Hess and Mimsy Farmer play the owners of a campground that was built on an “Indian burial ground”. This film has an amazingly disorienting mix of live sound and post dubbing. And I just saw a bottle of J&B.

A group of teenagers in an RV are headed to that accursed campsite with their hitchhiker pal Ben. He grew up there, but he also witnessed a couple getting murdered in the woods. I’m sure that won’t come up later. Ivan Rassimov plays a grumpy sheriff’s deputy, and my heart is melting. I love him so much. America’s treasure, David Hess, is extra insane as Ben’s dad. He’s obsessed with catching an old shaman who stalks the woods. The killer I saw for a split second earlier looked more like a deflated Nick Nolte to me than a shaman. These teenagers are extra horny. One girl just fellated a sausage, but only just the tip. We’re all just sucking on the tip tonight. Charles Napier and Mimsy Farmer are super-secret lovers, but I don’t think my feeble mind can process such a thing.

One of the girls is doing the worst aerobics I’ve ever seen. She looks like she’s auditioning for The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Close your eyes and imagine what that looks like. All of these characters are terrible and lovable at the same time. Thanks to a prank played on the fat comic relief character, we’re able to start the wiener count. If it turns out that it’s the only peepee we see during this entire moviethon then so be it. This is a damn good slasher and has set the mood for this weekend perfectly. I really hope that Body Count gets a proper release someday because this is one pretty film. This full frame shit is for the birds. The shitty ass birds!

 

 

“You have quite a repertoire of chilling tales.”

7:21PM

BLOODY MOON (1981)

 

Give me that holiday feelin’. Horrific snake murder aside, this is one of Jess Franco’s best films. Don’t listen to those folks who say otherwise. Bloody Moon is a G dang masterpiece. Just like Miguel, I feel like a disco king in my Mickey Mouse mask. After he murders a young lady, Miguel is shipped off to an insane asylum. Luckily, his doctor is Jess Franco, so he doesn’t have to stay there very long. His sister Manuela takes him back to the language school/mansion that their curmudgeonly old aunt owns. It’s full of sexy young ladies that are just begging to get murdered. Someone just set the old lady on fire. I miss her already.

Studly Antonio has his pick of the ladies, especially when he’s in his tennis gear. Speaking of ladies, the girls in this are some of the daffiest slasher movie vixens ever. And the dubbing of every character is broken and extra weird. Heck, this whole thing is just unhinged. The producers wanted Pink Floyd to do the film’s soundtrack. Pink Floyd was… unavailable. Manuela and Miguel have a very special relationship. Incestuous thoughts are okay if your sister looks like Manuela. Those are the rules. Cut to the night club where the DJ is spinning a nightmarish song that commands me to shake my baby. Antonio makes a crack about chocolate syrup and Inga, this movie’s VIP, freaks and storms out of the club. If you’re confused, then just imagine how I feel!

Inga may be my favorite character, but my second favorite is the giant Styrofoam rock that falls down the side of the mountain. Such charisma! The scene where the snake gets killed just gets harder to watch every time. Ugh. Damn it, Franco. Why must you hurt me so? Jeez Louise, even the outfits in Bloody Moon are loud and stupid. There’s an adorable cat scare AND a dummy fakeout. More of that stuff, please. It’s all so wonderful and daft that I’m ridin’ high. Don’t get me wrong though, the allergy medicine I took is making my eyes feel like they have lead weights tied to them. This is requiring all of my concentration. The killer’s motivation is so giallo that it hurts. The only way this could be any better is if this was a modelling school and not a language school.

 

 

“Here comes the bullshit!”

8:49PM

NIGHT SCHOOL (1981)

 

It has been a very, very long time since I’ve seen this one. All that I remember is that the killer looks like the one from What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974) and it contains a certain food-based lovemaking/shower scene. There are probably other things that happen in this film. Manly Leonard Mann plays Judd, a police detective investigating the brutal murders of lovely coeds at a Massachusetts college. He questions Vincent, a professor of archeology at the school, to find out more about one of his female students that got beheaded. The professor isn’t suspicious at all. Nope. He’s just creepily showing too much affection to one his students in front of the detective.

Exchange student Eleanor (Rachel Ward) hates how all the girls fawn all over Vincent because she’s his very special teaching assistant. She really knows how to grade his papers! She really knows how to load his slide projector! She really knows how to notate his lectures! Maybe I should just go to bed. A gratuitous shower scene happens and LeEtta is very offended by it. It’s not the nudity on display, it’s the fact that Rachel Ward didn’t take off her earrings beforehand! Vincent joins her in the shower and starts rubbing raspberry jam all over her while the synthesizer plays a creepy dirge. Why does every slasher movie have raspberry jam lovemaking shower scenes?! I’ve never understood that trope.

Watching this film is like jumping on a grenade but instead of shrapnel, your body is pierced by deadly shards of melodrama. The best character is Carol, the kindly but sassy waitress at the Lamplight Restaurant who gives out worldly advice while refilling your coffee. I sure hope that nothing happens to her. The killer likes to decapitate his victims and put the heads in water. They call him “The Wet Bandit”! We’ve seen two neon signs for Schlitz in two movies tonight. Classy. There’s so much soft focus and diffused lighting in this movie that it’s making me feel like I’m floating. Floating like a head in a toilet. Damn it, I need to watch this one more often.

SATURDAY

 

After a night of confusing and boring dreams, I wake up feeling expertly rested. We had a nice jam experiment for breakfast. LeEtta made calamondin jam and pineapple jam. On our English muffins, I put butter and then calamondin on the bottom slice and then butter and pineapple on the top slice. The calamondin was a total failure. But the pineapple was a huge success. So, it all worked out. Was I ready for more movies? Hell no, brother! I came here to do chores! My plan to do my cleaning duties on Thursday night was a complete failure. Woopsie doodle. So, after cleaning the toilets and vacuuming the house, I ran out to get our lottery tickets. After that, I didn’t want to see the sun anymore!

 

 

“The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot
and fucking on a waterbed at the same time!”

10:03AM

PIECES (1982)

 

I am one bold son of a biscuit by starting the day with a stone cold favorite, but this is what it takes to be a hero. I love Pieces so much that my band has a song about it! The VHS tape for this one leered at me on the shelves of the video store when I was a kid. But the cover freaked me out too much, so I never rented it. In the early 2000s, I picked up the Diamond DVD for seven dollars and I’ve loved it ever since. It’s always a big hit at parties. The black-gloved killer likes to fondle his trophies. To be completely honest, it took me multiple viewings before I understood that the girl on the skateboard crashing into the giant mirror on the street is what triggered the killer’s bloodlust. And hell, it might have even been somebody else’s review that explained it to me. I’m not THAT bright or whatever.

At a very un-prestigious college campus in Boston, our murderer is chopping up the female students and stealing one PIECE of their bodies at a time. Everyone’s favorite pasty Englishman Edmund Purdom plays the dean of the university and Jess Franco regular Jack Taylor plays a very suspicious professor encased in a turtleneck. Somebody is gonna have to crack this case and who better than green cigar-chomping detective Christopher George and undercover policewoman/tennis pro Lynda Day George? Oh, hello there, swimming pool at night! You’re one of my favorite characters. The girl by the pool looks alarmed by the dark figure approaching her with a chainsaw, but not alarmed enough to jump back in the pool to evade the maniac. Maybe she thought it was her time.

Nearly every line of dialogue and just about every character in Pieces is a heckin’ riot. I don’t want to get into everything because this entry would be a whole chapter’s worth of writing. The creepy horror synths, progressive rock breakdowns, and the kooky pieces of library music by CAM, a collection of musicians including Fabio Frizzi, Stelvio Cipriani, and Carlo Maria Cordo, are excellent. The way the gore is filmed in this is so grotesque and yet elegant. Let’s call it “grotelegant”. This film makes my heart do cartwheels or maybe that’s just some blockage I’m trying to clear. Director Juan Piquer Simón was a mad genius. One of these days, I need to check out his film called Pod People (1983). I’ve heard that it stinks. I throw a frozen pizza in the oven to feed LeEtta and I because we be hungry.

 

 

“I’m full of surprises today.”

12:30PM

MADHOUSE (1981)

 

This might as well be a first time watch for me. I remember enjoying it and brief flashes of the story, but that’s about it. Back in the 90s, I had a bad case of Assonitis. Holy crud, Madhouse doesn’t waste any time getting to the gore. Whoa! I look forward to comparing this one to Happy Birthday to Me (1981), which was released months after this one and has similar story elements. A music score by Riz Ortolani? Bam! TV actress Patricia Mickey plays Julia Sullivan, a teacher at a school for the deaf. Julia gets a letter from her uncle urging her to visit her twin sister Mary in the hospital. Mary has contracted a virus that has disfigured her face but she’s still the same old sis, a cruel and violent psychopath! In a few days, it will be the twins’ birthday and Mary says that has a very special ritual planned for Julia.

Back at Julia’s place, the building’s super Mr. Kimura, played by Jerry Fujikawa, is tinkering with the fuse box. Fujikawa’s Asian stereotype game is tight. A rottweiler just appeared out of nowhere and killed a security guard at the hospital that Mary just escaped from. Apparently, Mary had a huge, mean dog back when the girls were kids that would obey her every command. If it’s the same dog, then it should probably be in a frickin’ museum because it’s gotta be in its mid to late 20s. One thing I love about this movie is that Julia’s and Mary’s backstory feels like it was based on a 70s pulp horror novel. Riz Ortolani brought all of his farty bass plucks and gurgley stomach synth burps to this party. The owner of the building where Julia lives is a new age nightmare woman with a Southern accent that’ll peel the skin right off your ears. She’s great.

Julia’s cute friend Helen comes over to stay the night and keep her company. This actress is named Morgan Most, and she looks so darn familiar. I know her best from a film called Madhouse (1981). Julia’s cat gets gotten and there’s a brief shot of it hanging by its neck. The cat isn’t dead, but it looks rather pissed off at the filmmakers. Boo. Come on, people. Just get a fake cat. You got a fake dog! The scene is crazy creepy though as a mystery woman is stepping slowly towards Helen in the dark of the basement. Mild animal cruelty aside, this one is a lot of fun. The villain takes such perverse pleasure from evildoing that I discover I’m smiling from ear to ear. When this film gets wild, it gets very wild. I kinda love it. Suddenly I’ve got a craving to watch another Ovidio Assonitis favorite, Beyond the Door (1974), but not today!

 

“I make real good midnight snacks. You hungry?”

1:57PM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (1981)

 

Speaking of films that I don’t watch often enough, here’s one of them. This Mill Creek Blu-ray looks so damn nice, BTW. A black-gloved killer is stalking a college campus and I’m struck by how original that plotline sounds. The first girl gets it right in the throat zone with a straight razor. She was a member of The Riches or The Elites or The Top Dogs. Whatever their name is, they’re a group of snooty college jerkwads. Luckily for us, the viewing public, these pricks are going to die horribly. The only nice one is Virginia Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson) and she’s got some darkness in her past. I can’t judge her too harshly because I once saw C+C Music Factory in concert. The headmistress of the school has it in for the gang and I don’t blame her at all. She has a giant bulldog and he’s such a cutie.

A demonstration with electricity applied to frog legs in class brings back Virginia’s memories of her time she spent in the hospital after a traumatic head injury she suffered as a kid. Her psychologist is played by Glenn Ford. He’s hot. Forget all the psychobabble about Virginia’s fragile mental state, let’s get to the motocross scene. If your movie doesn’t have dirt bikes, did you even make a movie? Speaking of motorized vehicles, don’t get so close to a revving engine when you’ve wearing your Hogwarts scarf. Happy Birthday to Me has both weightlifting and soccer. Is it MY birthday? I can’t believe that this film’s director also directed the sleazetastic 10 to Midnight (1983), a movie I watched with my family when I was way, waaaay too young.

Why am I watching this trash? It features the main cast smoking doobies. I’m scared. Is this even legal to watch in the privacy of my own home? Even though this film is just a little over 110 minutes long, I never find it boring. Virginia’s birthday is quickly approaching, and her dad is too busy organizing the cleanup efforts of some dumb bullshit involving an oil rig on fire. What a selfish bastard! Holy carp, I forgot about the scene at the dance. It contains some delicious disco dancing. The movie delivers what its poster promises with the shish kabob of death which gives LeEtta and I a lot to discuss. What a tasty way to go. While this does have a somewhat similar ending to Madhouse (1981), I think this one is better at delivering the gruesome thrills, and it’s just so darn well made.

 

 

“You want me to stick my head in a fucking trash bag?”

4:27PM

DOUBLE EXPOSURE (1982)

 

I have been saving this DVD from Scorpion Releasing for a very long time. I suppose that this might be a good time to watch it. After an undercover cop disguised as a hooker gets killed by a maniac, the filmmakers get all trippy and keep with the double exposure theme by laying on some nausea-inducing special effects over the opening credits. Once that’s over, we meet Adrian (Michael Callan), a photographer who’s been having strange dreams and vague impotency. His therapist is Seymour Cassel so things can’t be all that bad. Adrian acts like a complete psycho while hitting on a lady named Mindy (Joanna Pettet) who’s just trying to get to her car in the parking garage. She foolishly agrees to see him later. LeEtta made us kielbasa, sauerkraut, and spaetzle for dinner because of all these German movies we’re watching.

Meanwhile the colleagues of the dead uncover cop are getting grief from the police chief, who’s played by Cleavon Little of Once Bitten (1985)! His character’s name is “Police Chief”. That’s creative! Adrian has a dream about murdering a model he’s supposed to be photographing. That’s bad but his homophobic brother B.J. (James Stacy) is worse. He treats Adrian’s gay co-worker like dogshit. What a cool guy. Victoria Jackson has a tiny part in this. More importantly, Frances Bay of Blue Velvet (1986) plays an old woman named “Old Woman”. How did the screenwriter think of that!? Adrian has ghosted Mindy for some reason and has now hooked up with some other chick. He’s a real piece of work.

Holy forking shirt, Grady Fletcher’s fiancée just got killed. I wonder if Aunt Jessica will turn up to solve the mystery! The only mystery is why I wanted to watch this movie. Michael Callan just started monologuing the movie right into the fucking ground. Did he take an acting class? He’s chewing the scenery like it was the last stick of beef jerky hidden in his couch cushions. I don’t like the term “overindulgent” because people use it to describe me all the time. Hold up, Mindy has taken Adrian back after all of his bullshit? Why would she do that? Why is she rubbing her crotch with his foot? LeEtta theorizes that the reels of the film are out of order.

Adrian and B.J. take their dates to a bar that has female mud wrestling. B.J.’s date named Bambi gets him to bet $230 that he can wrassle and win against the reigning champ in the ring. Spoiler alert: he loses. Damn it, Double Exposure is pretty dreadful and has almost lost us completely. But we’re hangin’ on, damn it. And for what it’s worth, the ending is pretty decent and there’s some surprisingly good atmosphere on display. But I have to wonder what the heck happened to this movie. There’s a lot of extras on the disc that might explain things. So now we’re watching those. Just kidding. We’re moving right along.

 

 

“Stop kvetching, honey. You could always go back to
microwaving chili at Mexico Joe’s.”

6:08PM

STAGEFRIGHT (1987)

 

Now, this feels like coming home. I’ve seen this wondrous film so many times that I’ve practically got it memorized. A group of dancers is getting ready for a big show by pulling an all-night rehearsal. Hey, this is just like Noises Off (1992). The show that they’re rehearsing is some crunked up garbage with hookers, murder, and a killer in a huge owl mask. Barbara Cupisti plays Alicia, one of the dancers who sneaks off with her pal so that she can have a doctor look at her injured ankle. They go to a mental institution because they think that psychiatrists treat sprained ankles. After the doctor feels her up, they head back to the theater not realizing that a homicidal killer has escaped from the hospital and secreted (Ew, bro!) himself away in the backseat.

Good old Michele Soavi directed this masterpiece of murder, and he did it just for me. What a good guy! No wait, he did it for Joe D’Amato who produced it. But George Eastman, who wrote this, said that he dedicated the screenplay to me. Giovanni Lombardo Radice plays Brett, one of the dancers. The screenwriter gives Brett all of the best lines. He’s so damn funny. Brett has an antagonistic friendship with his pal Laurel, played by Mary Sellers of Ghosthouse (1988). They attempt to see which of them can be cattier than the other. It’s a stalemate. The killer steals Brett’s owl mask and kills one of the dancers right in front of everyone. Now the key to the only door out is lost and these silly goofs are trapped in the theater.

I’m not the kind of guy who has to upgrade every single DVD in my collection but this old Anchor Bay disc ain’t lookin’ so hot. Normally I wouldn’t care but dang it all, my eyes are so tired right now. The scene where Laurel and Alicia hide from the killer in the showers is so good. Then there’s the whole tableau with all of the victim’s bodies arranged onstage while classical music is blaring, and feathers are blowing around by the fan. I think this is anime because feathers = anime. There’s a black cat in this named Lucifcer but I think he’s played by two cats because one of them is a tabby that’s been dyed black. That’s Hollywood for ya.

QUICK BREAK

 

LeEtta and I went outside to look at the stars and the mostly full moon. It was very cool outside and windy. I was feeling both elated by the barrage of movies I’ve been shoving into my brain and in pain from another cold front moving in. Those sinus infections I had back in the day really destroyed my shit forever. But the tops of the trees swaying to and fro were so gorgeous that I laid down on our driveway and stared at them while LeEtta looked for constellations. The light pollution and some pesky clouds weren’t helping her. After a little while, we went back inside.

 

 

“Enjoy the show, creep.”

8:15PM

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE (1983)

 

Here’s another one that I’ve never seen before. The cover art for this one and Double Exposure (1982) are so damn gialloriffic that I couldn’t resist. We have nudity and pot smoking in the first few seconds. That’s unacceptable. We are turning this off! The straight razor starts flying and we are off to the last film of the day. Welcome to the world of strippers and prostitutes and Canadians. This dude named Eric is looking for his missing sister (who we just saw killed). She was involved in some skeevy shit, and he wants to find her. This movie is as grubby as the VHS that it was ripped from. Another gay stereotype! These things happen.

Michael Ironside just showed up as a cop and I’ve made a bet with LeEtta that he’s the killer. And minutes later, I am proved wrong. Oh well, good thing I didn’t mention how many thousands of dollars I had intended to wager. Eric turns to Louise (Lora Staley), his sister’s friend to help him and they both take turns giving each other guilt trips. Good gawd, it looks freakin’ COLD up there in that Canada place. I’m starting to fall in love with all of these characters. A decent script and some solid performances are things that movies have sometimes. What’s that all about? Sure, it’s a little bad TV cop drama but I’m very much enjoying this.

I keep seeing Christmas decorations and that excites me very much. If American Nightmare could be a part of our Christmas viewing every year that would make me happy. While running around town trying to get more info, Eric and Louise are accosted by a mugger. Eric makes quick work of this punk by nearly ripping his ear off. Later that night, after arguing about how stripping is bad and how he’s a hypocrite, Eric and Louise meet halfway by having a really long sex scene. Well, this just took a nasty turn. I truly didn’t see that coming. I need a shower now. I mean, I always NEED a shower but this time, it’s because a movie made me feel dirty. Canada, you naughty.

 

SUNDAY

 

We went to bed as soon as American Nightmare (1982) AKA Canadian Nightmare (or Hoser Nightmare as David Assassino calls it) was over. I stayed awake for a little while to read a bit more of The Tea Party by Charles L. Grant. I have read many, many books by Grant and I highly recommend him if you can track down his stuff. Anyway, I went to sleep and had many dreams of social awkwardness and paranoia. My giallo killer is being afraid of hanging out with people. LeEtta gave us both a break from yard work for the day, and there was much rejoicing. For breakfast, I drove out and picked up sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches from Panera Bread (not my sponsor). It was a lovely morning but already warmer than it had been the night before but there was rain and cooler weather in the forecast. I decided to stay indoors where it was much safer for my delicate constitution.

 

“Once the cerebral cells are destroyed, they cannot regenerate.”

9:19AM

ABSURD (1981)

 

Here’s a cozy little number. I first saw this marvelous Joe D’Amato joint way back in the day as a little kid and it got lodged in my brain. When I got back into horror movies around 2002, I asked about it on a horror message board, giving as many details as I could about the plot. Someone identified it as Absurd (AKA Rosso Sangue AKA Monster Hunter AKA George Eastman vs. Mechagodzilla) immediately and I was shocked that it was so hard to find. I bought the VHS and fell in love with it all over again. Now I have this swanky ass Severin Blu-ray and the soundtrack on red and black swirl vinyl (a gift from my friend Sam). So yeah, I kinda like this one.

This movie is about true love between two men. One is played by George Eastman and the other is Edmund Purdom. Eastman is an undying rage-filled beast and Purdom is a priest out to stop him at any cost. Michele Soavi is back as a young man on a motorcycle. Because his portrayal won him so many awards, he would reprise this game changing role in Tenebre (1982). One thing about this movie is the annoying kid in it. Everyone bitches about Bob in The House by the Cemetery (1981) but he doesn’t hold a candle to little Willy played by Kasimir Berger, son of the great William Berger. His sister Katia is played by his real-life sister Katya Berger. Katia is in traction from some anomaly in her spine and likes to draw circles! Bless her heart.

Mmm, Nurse Emily. She’s played by the lovely Annie Belle, who was more known for her roles in erotic films. I would injure myself forever if she was the one operating on me. Most of this film takes place at night and it’s all just lovely. I wish I could stroll around some cozy looking streets in Italy with George Eastman all night. There’d be no trouble since he’s 9 feet tall. Fun fact about me: it took many, many viewings of Absurd before I realized that it was D’Amato trying to cash in on the success of Halloween (1978). This is also a vague sequel to Antropophagus (1980), but Eastman didn’t want to have the gnarly makeup on this time around.

When my buddy Brad and I were talking about this film on the podcast, we talked about its ridiculous obsession with American football. And of course, the Italians got it completely wrong but football fucking sucks, so who cares?! You have adults dressing up in their finest duds to go to a football watching party which starts at 10pm and where they eat big bowls of spaghetti. All of the play-by-play commentary from the TV is complete gibberish. And bonus, the fanfare they play at the game is the same as the music from Pieces (1982). It’s not too surprising since a lot of that score was borrowed from this one. Meanwhile, there’s a whole subplot involving Willy’s dad being racked with guilt after hitting Eastman with his car and fleeing the scene. I’d be racked with guilt too if my seed had brought the curse upon the world known as Willy.

 

LUNCH

 

I went out to get some food from Simply Pho. I picked up egg rolls, chicken with fried rice for LeEtta, and pork with stir-fried noodles for me. So, I guess I didn’t get simply pho but whatever. There were lots of Vietnamese families enjoying lunch there and I did a little sneaky people watching while I was waiting. Probably creepy or maybe I was just hungry. Whatever everyone was ordering looked amazing. So maybe more pathetic than creepy? Who knows? On the way back, I listened to Edsel. There are few things from the 1990s that I enjoy more than that band. Look up their album called Techniques of Speed Hypnosis. It’s great. I’m so full of recommendations this moviethon.

 

 

“You haven’t kissed me goodnight for a long time.”

12:37PM

SCHIZOID (1980)

 

I have been staring at this one on my shelves for what seems like forever. Good old Canon Films. This opens with a lady hunched over her typewriter while writing on her couch. She’s just like me! You fill a hot tub with lovely ladies sipping glasses of wine and you’re creating a situation where anything can happen. Now that one of the girl gang are alone, she’s being pursued by a man with black gloves wielding a huge pair of scissors. He chases her to the California version of the Sawyer Ranch. Hot damn, Marianna Hill of Messiah of Evil (1973) is in this. She plays Julie. She writes the advice column for a newspaper that her ex-husband Doug (Craig Wasson) runs. My God, they would’ve had beautiful children together. Julie is getting anonymous letters from a psycho. He talks about wanting to kill people and he wants her advice for some reason.

Julie and her pals are in a group therapy session led by Dr. Peter Fales. I suspect that their session will not be successful because Fales is played by Klaus Kinski. He may know more about madness than anyone, but I think he mostly just causes it. Dr. Fales likes to sneak a peek at his daughter Alison (Donna Wilkes) whiles she’s undressing. That’s not good. Christopher Lloyd plays one of the members of the group and he sounds like the loneliest man on the planet. He’s so good but I’m glad the movie isn’t about him. That’d be a bit of a bummer. After the session is over, Julie shows Dr. Fales the psycho letter and he gives her a big surprise kiss. His secretary walks in and catches them. He acts all cool and leaves but Julie looks like he hit her with a two-by-four. Another gay stereotype! Damn, these North Americans are giving Italy a run for their money.

Speaking of character actors, John Regalbuto of “Murphy Brown” and Richard Herd of “T.J. Hooker”, are both in this! Ooh, a strip club. We definitely didn’t get enough of that action yet this moviethon. Kinski just had sex with a stripper against a hot water heater. LeEtta is making candles in the kitchen, so she only heard the sound effects of them making the sex act. She said, “Those didn’t sound like sexy sounds!” Holy shit, this was directed by the dude who did Savage Weekend (1979)?! That’s amazing. Julie and Dr. Fales are actually starting up a romance. Duder, I gotta tell ya, that is some weird, inhuman shit. His daughter Alison certainly thinks it’s weird. She’s spying on them from her bedroom window while holding a huge revolver. My brain just reminded me who Donna Wilkes is. She’s Angel from Angel (1983)!

While Julie is getting Kinski’d by Dr. Fales, Doug is snooping around the fire escape, trying to get a look at them in The Bone Zone. A neighbor who looks a lot like Martin Scorsese chases him down the street with a baseball bat screaming, “I’ll fix your ass!” The members of the group therapy session are gettin’ gotten and Kinski saying, “Where is everybody?” to the surviving members cracks me up. Donna Wilks almost looks like she’s trying to cosplay as Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris (1972) in one scene. Now that was a fun first-time watch. I want to own this soundtrack. It’s by some dude named Craig Huxley and damn it, it’s so damn cool.

“I’m depressed and I have a headache.”

2:17PM

EDGE OF THE AXE (1988)

 

I love how José Ramón Larraz got into the slasher game in the late 80s with this little gem. The killer looks super cool with his creepy expressionless mask. But the real magic of this movie comes from all of the computer rigmarole and wacko character interactions. Gerald is a computer geek with a hipster haircut. He and his friend Richard (no relation) run around town earning extra money exterminating vermin. Today, the owner of the local bar wants them to investigate a foul stench coming from somewhere at his establishment. Surprise, it’s a corpse! Ugh, I hate Richard. No, I’m not talking about myself though I do hate myself. This Richard is such a sleazebag. He brags about only having married his wife, played by Patty Shepard for her money and he’s obsessed with tits. Not his wife’s tits but all the other tits in town. No one ever married Patty Shepard for any other reason than Patty Shepard!

This movie has a love story even sweeter than the one between Eastman and Purdom. Gerald meets Lillian another computer geek just like him. Their online chats are the stuff of legend. Perhaps you’ve heard of The Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey. Those hit properties are both based on Gerald and Lillian. Thanks to Arrow Video I was able to retire my VHS rip of this film. This Blu-ray is kinda blowing my mind right now. It just looks so damn nice. And I get to hear the soul deflating country songs and the garbled dialogue of some of the locally sourced actors in HD. Jack Taylor returns to the moviethon! He’s also in HD, glaring suspiciously.

My pal Sam has arrived to partake of this craziness. He is witnessing the blossoming yet complicated love of Lillian and Gerald. LeEtta says that old Ger looks like Jim Carrey and Sam says he looks like Evan Peters of “American Horror Story”. Meanwhile, Patty Shepard and Jack Taylor are having the best interaction ever filmed at the bar. He’s practically making love to her whiskey glass. The computer voice coldly narrating the online chats of the young lovers just blew Sam’s mind. Gerald looks as tired and distraught as the manager at Panera did this morning. Although I suspect that she was just really hungover. Gerald has no excuse.

 

GYROJETS AND DINNER

 

Sam and I retreated to the music room where we worked on some new parts of new GYROJETS songs. It was as loud and ridiculous as always. Then we talked about Laser Tag and synthesizers and horror manga. Sam ate one of the pumpkin spice bourbon muffins that LeEtta made, and he found them to be amazing. I could do nothing but agree. They were that good. And then Sam had to take his leave of us. I heated up the leftover beans and rice from Senor Tequila and we made burritos. It was finally time for the last movie of the moviethon.

 

 

“Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

6:25PM

NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN (1981)

 

And now I must tussle with Romano Scavolini and his Video Nasty classic. He directed A White Dress for Marialé (1972)?! That kinda blows my mind. I’m loving the hand-painted 21st Century Distribution Corp. logo at the beginning of this. Somebody’s cousin was a skilled draftsman. Or draftsperson. A young man in tighty whities wakes up with a woman’s severed head in his bed. But then he really wakes up in a straitjacket in an asylum. After some diseased jazz plays over the credits, a title card proclaiming “The First Night – Florida” boldly flashes on the screen. I love me some Florida movies, y’all. You know this! Some maniac is running around and scares the Bujebus out of a poor babysitter. One of the kids she’s babysitting looks very amused by all this as the cops are running around outside looking for the aforementioned maniac.

So Mr. Tighty Whities is named George Tatum and he lives in New York City. He is the first quote unquote success with a combination of new anti-psychotic medications. Sadly, his list of mental problems is as long as my arm, so let’s just say things are likely not gonna go well for him on the outside. George goes out in the world to a peep show and he’s haunted by visions of the dead woman tying a man to a bed and slapping the shit out of him. Holy crud, this has some serious dildo on lady bits action happening here. Paging, Dr. Franco! He drives down to Florida and goes to a bar. A country singer armed with an acoustic guitar croons, “I’m feelin’ tired and beat” to which I say, “Fuck you!” George follows a woman home from the bar and brutally kills her to death. But then he apologizes. So, it all works out.

Someone thought it would be a good idea to have some recorder on this soundtrack. And here I thought the harmonica was the worst instrument ever invented. There’s a lady named Susan who likes to leave her kids locked out of the house while she’s on a boat getting groped by a guy who looks like a roadie for The Eagles. When she realizes that she needs to get home to feed her children, he says, “Let them eat Mallomars.” I’m not gonna lie, her kids, especially C.J. the little terror, are pretty awful. Never blame the parents! JK LOL. Susan really sucks. Her boyfriend suggests that they go to McDonald’s, but they dub over him so he’s saying “McDuff’s”. I thought C.J. was making pipe bombs in his bedroom but LeEtta explained that he’s wiring up one of his masks for a prank. Someone show this to my mom so that she will thank the Lord for what a well-behaved child I was.

George feels bad for killing people. He takes his victim to the beach and just screams at the night sky. Nice to see that sometimes a killer has remorse. Sometimes. The babysitter freaks out on Susan after C.J. pulls another prank and I have to laugh. She looks like a true Floridian. I’d say perfect casting, but they probably just grabbed her off the street out of desperation. We get some great impossible computer crapola as a cigar chomping detective is hunting for George by typing questions into a computer and getting instant answers. LeEtta has had it with Susan, but I think she’s mother of the year. This movie gets so weird as the police question C.J. about his dead friend at the scene of the crime in front of a camera crew and reporters. Wut? This is the best prequel to Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007) ever made. I seriously don’t know I feel about this fuckin’ movie. It is exquisite suffering.

 

CIGAR AND FINAL THOUGHTS

 

I sat out in the carport in the dark smoking an Eiroa cigar and drinking a lime Jarrito. The temperature was already starting to drop. Winter was coming or at least the Florida version of it. I was giddy. After 13 films, 102 murders, and 4 wieners (almost five if you count George’s peepee bouncing round in his tighty whities), I was in splatter heaven. In fact, I had just experienced one of the best moviethons I’d had in years. Slashers and gialli are always battling it out for the open spot in the happy hole in my head but also heart. Intentionally getting lost in that happy space between my two favorite subgenres was fascinating and stupid. It was a snotty and unimaginably selfish gesture to enrage giallo diehards and make myself happy.

On one end of the spectrum, you have Stagefright (1987) and Body Count (1986) which were very successful slashers; and then on the other, you have Pieces (1982) and American Nightmare (1983) which were totally latecomers to the giallo game. Then you’ve got Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981) and Double Exposure (1982) which I don’t have a clue what the actual fudge category they fit into. As for new favorites, I will definitely be revisiting Schizoid (1980) and Body Count again. Hell, I’m still trying to talk LeEtta into letting me slip American Nightmare into our regular Christmas sleaze watchin’. Only time will tell.

Giallo Meltdown: Thirteen Boogers In A Black Cat’s Eye

Hi there. This moviethon is going to be the third chapter of Giallo Meltdown volume 2, a book that is still currently being written! To check out more, be sure to grab yourself a copy of the first Giallo Meltdown right here. I should probably also say that there are some minor spoilers ahead though I never reveal the identity of the killer or major plot twists. I recommend you seek these films out if you can! On with the show…

 

 

Some giallo purists out there say that the heyday of the giallo genre ended in 1972 when the popularity of the films had reached their peak. There’s some great stuff that came after that from directors that didn’t get the memo and thus, some of my favorites didn’t even see theaters until 1975. Personally, I give the glory days of the giallo a much longer shelf life and take it all the way to 1982 when Dario Argento unleashed Tenebre upon an unsuspecting world. But the giallo didn’t stop there! They kept making the damned things for what appears to be kind of forever, often incorporating other genres and trendy film techniques to satisfy audiences. So, I’m headed back to Italy to see just what these latter-day offerings were all about.

 

FRIDAY

 

On the way to work this morning, the lady in the car behind me was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes while eating an ice cream sandwich. I started singing to her, “Girl! I wish I had your life!”, but she couldn’t hear me. Work was pretty humdrum today. Thanks to the pandemic, I only go in one day a week and I work all alone in the big office myself. This is how the killer is going to find me. We just had a tropical storm blow through this week and it left behind some decent weather. But it’s frickin’ November in Florida, so anything under 85 degrees is considered decent.

I picked up a big Italian sandwich for myself and a baked potato for LeEtta from Jason’s Deli and we eat while watching Rick Steves travel through Italy. We love Rick. This moviethon contains an almost entirely “unseen by me” lineup and that excites me! After my ceremonial shot of J&B was tolerated (barely), I proclaimed that it was time to get started.

 

“I don’t want to end up like a larvae!”

5:48PM

BAD INCLINATION (2003)

 

I hated this film so much the first time I watched it that I refused to include it in the first volume of Giallo Meltdown. But my tastes have changed and I’m ready to give this very late entry another go. A woman preparing herself a giant meal of meat is accosted by a black-gloved killer in her home. He gropes her and then stabs her to death with a giant setsquare. There’s some familiar faces in this including Florinda Bolkan, Franco Nero, and Eva Robbins of Tenebre (1982). The acting is all over the place, the script is hideous, and the dubbing is beyond terrible! I’m kinda loving this.

Bolkan plays Mirta, an artist/art historian who’s trying to con a dumb idiot into buying some forged antiques from her. She catches a girl named Donatella breaking into her car but decides to help her out. She confesses to Donatella that she’s dying and guilts her into helping commit suicide. Meanwhile, the lovely detective Rita is on the case of The Setsquare Killer. More importantly, Florinda Bolkan is walking her wiener dog named Van Gogh and she picks up his enormous (fake) turd so that she can put it in the bed of her nosy maid. She’s a stinker.

So much crazy shit is happening that I’m beginning to lose my mind already. One of the freewheelin’ ladies that lives in the building where the murder was committed has Axel Foley’s theme song as her ringtone. It interrupts her trying to bang some random dude who lives on her floor. A cop investigating a second murder with a setsquare says, “As yet, I don’t want to express an opinion.” A lady who wears feather underwear takes her cat for a walk but this cat has clearly never even seen a harness much less actually been walked by a human. And the calls from the killer sound like a little kid trying to sound scary.

Multiple characters living in the very same building are copying the killer’s methods in order to get away with their own murders. That’s just wild. Detective Rita goes on the Internet and uses a search engine called “MetaWeb”. That’s so old school that it probably never existed. Hooker bonfire! Lascivious sex! While I prefer this director’s other film Bugie Rosse (1993), Bad Inclination is a lot of cheesed out fun. It’s impossible to take seriously but the locations are gorgeous, and the camerawork is decent. Bonus: the ending is as abrupt as it is baffling.

 

“It’s best if I don’t think.”

7:25PM

SQUILLO (1996)

 

Carlo Vanzina, director of Nothing Underneath (1985), brings us Squillo. I like to lean out the window and scream “Skweeelooooo!” and the ladies come runnin’. All I’ve heard from folks is that this movie is pretty terrible. I’ll just see about that! The dubbing is also um… hideous! A poor Polish farmgirl named Eva witnesses the fall of the Berlin Wall and then grows up to be a high-class call girl in Milan. Her younger sister Maria shows up from Poland to hang out and then Eva immediately disappears. She goes to cops and meets up with Inspector Tony Ponytail (Raz Degan), a sarcastic pretty boy who looks like a romance novel reject.

In order to find out what happened to her sister, Maria dresses up like a sexbot, pretends to be Eva, and goes on a double date with Barbara, another prostitute. One of their dates looks like Eric Idle. All of this has to do with a company called NEOTECH. They must be the creators of “MetaWeb” which means that Squillo and Bad Inclination are from the same cinematic universe! Please, let Tony Stark be one of Eva’s clients! Well, the two films do have dreadful acting in common, but that’s about it so far. The cinematography on this one is by the amazing Luigi Kuveiller and the score is by musical magician Pino Donaggio.

Maria and inspector Tony have teamed up and are using a baby monitor to stay in contact during her undercover work. Paul Freeman, a fine actor of many, many films is in this as a bigshot client who hires Maria for some naughtiness. Maybe he wants her to pour Jello on his calves or squeeze his throw pillows. Either way, I’m slipping out of my khakis right now just in case things get nasty. Maria is having trouble getting used to the prostituting side of prostitution. After another successful night of giving her sister’s clients blue balls, Tony and Maria hook up. After their romantic talkin’, LeEtta looks at me and says, “Oh, this is so bad. So bad.”

If our lead characters were likeable, that’d be nice. But they’re not. Vanzina sure does like his sepia-toned flashbacks. Oh brother. This is turning into a nightmare. It just goes to show that you can make a big glossy movie with attractive people and it’s still a chore to sit through when the script is torturously bland. I hate to harsh on a movie this badly, but my pet peeve showed up. I hate when characters narrate their thoughts out loud just in case the audience is too dumb to follow along. We’re not! At least Bad Inclination was cheap and bad. The ending of this is a huge letdown as well. Carlo, what happened?

“Normality is his hideout.”

9:12PM

THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE (1986)

 

From the famously bad to the infamous, I go venturing into true crime territory. This is one of at least three films made about the as yet unsolved Italian serial killer case but that’s not important. What is important is that I’m the Monster of Florence. I began my killing spree before I was born and then stopped when I was nine years old because I was scared of getting caught. Please, arrest me. Suave badass Leonard Mann of Death Steps in the Dark (1977) is in this as a no-nonsense reporter with humongous sunglasses. He and his photographer cronies are relentless at getting the gory details even sneaking photos of the corpses when the cops aren’t looking.

Welcome to the moviethon, Gabriele Tinti! He plays Andreas, a writer who’s been working on a book about the case for years. His girlfriend Giulia (Bettina Giovannini), a journalist herself, encourages Enrico to keep working on his book despite how conflicted he feels about it. I love how claustrophobic and haunting this film feels. The dread starts creeping in almost  immediately, and the score by Paolo Rustichelli is kicking ass. Now the film segues into gritty reenactments of the crimes. These are obviously staged because I’m not there.

Andreas and Giulia go see a production of Verdi’s Othello where it looks and sounds as though the actors onstage are lip-syncing to an old record. They run into Enrico and his ditzy lady friend at the opera house, but Andreas is too distracted by the case. He’s getting paranoid and looking for clues everywhere he goes. I’m very happy to report that it feels really good to finally be watching a real movie with a great cast and good writing tonight. The biggest criticism I can make is that this movie is about as subtle as a bullet to the face, especially when we get to see the killer’s life when he’s not out in the night blowing people away.

This movie is brutal and the fact that the killer looks vaguely like Ted Raimi might be my best alibi as no one has ever told me that I look like Ted Raimi. Do I? DO I?! You should call the police and have him arrested. I’m innocent! This is such a strange film and must’ve been really weird for the Italian public to go see a film made just a year after the most recent murders had been committed. So that’s what ties this film in with the first two we watched tonight: tackiness. This is some truly tacky shit and yet, I am digging this movie, y’all.

 

SATURDAY

 

I dreamt too many dreams though nothing giallo-like. The one I remember the best was having dinner with some extended family and doing my Robert DeNiro impression which is just me saying “You had your chance AND THEN YOU BLEW IT!” Did Al Pacino say that? We woke up to cats crawling on us, insisting we get started. After LeEtta’s homemade apple cinnamon and raisin muffins and a tangerine, we jumped right into chores. After that fun stuff, I went out to buy lottery tickets and then drive 16 miles round trip just to get TacoSon. Thanks to a bad accident on Busch Boulevard, I had to cut through a very spicy section of Tampa where a lady was screaming, laughing, and spitting on cars. She was wielding either a broom or a mop. The tacos were worth the hassle and of course, I ate too much. The day was disappearing.

 

“I’ve dragged you into a nightmare.”

12:53PM

TULPA: DEMON OF DESIRE (2012)

 

Extra special thanks goes out to my bud Justin Kosch for hooking me up many years ago with the following trilogy of films. This opens with some very sensual SEXophone music and some kinky sex. A guy who looks like Adrian Brody’s uncle ties a woman to a bed with some very elaborate knots. Ball gags are never a good sign. He doesn’t get to enjoy himself because a black-gloved killer shows up and kills him to death. The killer cuts off his manly bits and puts them right in front of the girl’s face. Now that’s a real ball gag! According to the credits, legendary screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti worked on this badboy.

By day, the lovely Lisa (Claudia Gerini) works for a generic corporation that buys stocks and has intense meetings about stuff. By night, she gets dolled up and goes to an underground sex club to get her freak on. While out with a friend in the park, she sees one of the girls from the club picking up a John. That night, the girl is chased and brutally murdered by the killer with a merry-go-round and barbed wire. Don’t ask. Lisa’s boss can’t keep his hands to himself which hopefully means he’s gonna get his dingle cut off too. We get to see inside the sex club, and it feels like it’s inside the city limits of Twin Peaks.

Another one of Lisa’s lady friends gets killed in a very sadistic way by the killer. That’s not nice. When she reads in the newspaper about the killings, she freaks out and goes to the club to get the contact info of a guy who works there. Marla, Lisa’s bitchy rival from work, follows her there and takes a picture of her going inside. That’s not nice at all. Well, if you’re going to make a throwback to the golden age of the psychosexual giallo, then this is the way to do it. Tulpa is colorful, trashy, ludicrously violent, and sports a decent music score. It’s not earth-shatteringly original or anything but I dig it well enough.

“What a friggin’ mess. Fuck you!”

2:25PM

ALMOST BLUE (2000)

 

I’ve been hearing about this movie for a very long time and I keep forgetting to watch it. I suppose that now is a good time to do that since I have put the DVD on and it is currently playing. A police task force is trying to catch a serial killer who targets college students. They call in a profiler/computer expert named Grazia Negro (Lorenza Indovina) to track him down. We’ve got a techno thriller on our hands here, people. Better check in with my AOL chatroom in Linux and see if I have enough RAM to handle this. A blind hacker named (Claudio Santamaria) Simone finds out the identity of the killer’s next victim and contacts Grazia. Shock of all shocks, they don’t get there in time. Whoa, this film is crazy stylish so far.

I haven’t been this excited about cloned cell phones in a very long time. That must mean we don’t watch NCIS anymore. Every time the killer strikes, he steals the victim’s clothes and identity and then moves on. This color palette is reminding me of Thesis (1996), a film that I’m way overdue for a rewatch of. Since Simone the blind dude knows the sound of the killer’s voice, Grazia and her colleagues take him to a party they suspect that he’s going to attend. Good plan! Everything goes to shit but also, it’s a complete clusterfuck. LeEtta says everything is going to be okay because in gialli, the cops never solve the case themselves anyway. This movie is just crazy. I liked it but I will say no more so I don’t spoil anything.

 

DINNER AND CIGAR BREAK

 

In order to stick to our Italian theme, LeEtta made us quesadillas from some left-over ground beef she had. Tacos for lunch and quesadillas for dinner? Hillsborough County sent over a representative in a gas mask to let us know that we were violating the Fart Ordinance. After dinner, I retreated out to the carpark for a silky smooth El Centurion cigar and a pineapple soda. While listening to giallo soundtracks, I read Stephen Thrower’s giallo introduction in his book, Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci. The sun set crazy early so after a while, I just enjoyed the evening air and watched my neighbors go about their business.

 

“I don’t trust anyone anymore.”

5:53PM

THE VANITY SERUM (2004)

 

And I just made this an Alex Infascelli double feature! After nearly dying during an arrest gone wrong, bitter ex-detective Lucia (Margherita Buy) is now being called in to help her ex-husband/old partner with a new case. A popular live talk show hosted by the popular personality Sonia Norton (Francesca Neri) goes off the rails when a famous psychologist named Dr. Benda gets his comeuppance. He storms off the set and then is drugged and kidnapped. Then a comedian who plays a farting cow on a popular children’s show is also kidnapped. As they investigate these disappearances, they find out more cases are tied to the same episode of the Sonia Norton show.

The cops are running around trying to protect the other guests but they’re not having much luck Another dude from the show is kidnapped after lasciviously biting into a hotdog while naked. I tell you, there’s a fetish for everything. They manage to get to Azzurra (Barbora Bobulova), a former Miss Italy (and now coked up loser) before she too gets gotten. Oops, spoke too soon. The cops screw it up and now Azzurra has been taken as well. Gee, I’m noticing a theme between the two films. All the kidnapped celebs are being held in cages in some weird underground bunker.

After this colossal screw-up, Lucia is thrown off the case and fired (even though LeEtta and I both thought she wasn’t employed). With nothing else to do but wallow in self-pity, she starts looking into the case on her own. I already like this more than Almost Blue. The score by Marco Castoldi is kicking ass and adding to the tense atmosphere of this bizarre and delightfully cynical movie. This is too good to spoil. All I have left to say is you have to seek this one out for yourself.

 

“This is a shitty film anyway.”

7:31PM

MASSACRE (1989)

 

A cool dude in mirrored shades and red mittens is cruising down the street to some bitchin’ 80s video game music. He sees a prostitute by the road, pulls over, and then hacks her to death with a hatchet and a switchblade in broad daylight. The credits read “Lucio Fulci presents… An Andrea Biachi film” and I say to that, “God help us.” Now we cut to a satanic ritual in a graveyard with hooded figures and a lady who looks vaguely like Caroline Munro who’s rather perturbed to be waking up in the middle of it all. Oh dang, this is a movie set. Jennifer is the star and she decides to take the night off. The rumors are that she’s a lesbian but back at the hotel she’s taking a shower with a hunky dude. Frankly, I’m shocked.

The director (Maurice Poli), who isn’t satisfied with the fantasy elements of the horror film they’re making, has decided to stage a séance to achieve maximum realism in their movie. The crew who’ve been working hard on the special effects are understandably pissed off about this change of direction. Meanwhile a handsome young police detective is trying to solve the murder of the prostitute. Apparently, this was the work of a serial killer and the cop’s boss (Paul Muller!) is very angry at him for not having solved the case already.

Not too surprising, this is daft already and potentially magical. There’s been a clumsy offer for lesbian sex, an extended striptease, and a four-alarm gay stereotype already. The kookiest séance I’ve ever seen just happened and I’m feeling very good about it. According to the medium, the wrong spirit guide showed up and it must be a teetotaler because he smashed all the booze at the bar. Drunk hottie Lisa, who might be an actress or not, winds up murdered and her body staged on the strangest merry-go-round I’ve ever seen. And I just found out that the movie they’re making is called Dirty Blood. Holy carp.

The cops consulted a computer and it told them there are two different killers at work. They should ask it to got ahead and solve the case because an important film like Dirty Blood must get finished no matter what the cost. Thankfully, the ghost didn’t destroy the bottle of J&B featured prominently in the big important scene where members of the film crew were being bitchy to each other. The more they show of Dirty Blood, the less I understand what it’s about. This is some seriously cheap and stupid crap. I’m smitten. Massacre might be my favorite of this entire moviethon.

 

“You think I care about your stupid gialli?”

9:30PM

DELITTI (1987)

 

This opens with a woman talking directly to the camera about a traumatic event that happened to her. From what I’ve read about Delitti, I think she might be speaking about working on this film. A double murder at a villa has taken place and the cops are grilling the suspects. When they lift up the sheet covering one of the bodies, the victim’s face looks like a big pile of lasagna. I’m not trying to be funny; it really looks like lasagna. Then the opening credits kick in with a tune that sounds like a cross between Duran Duran and Flock of Seagulls, but in a bad way. This was directed by Giovanna Lenzi who is probably not related to Umberto Lenzi. And the budget appears to be even lower than Massacre’s.

The script is horrid. Here’s an example. Harriette and Susan, two girls who were at the villa the night of the murder, are worried that the killer might come after them. They’re doing mild aerobics together. Harriette starts to strangle Susan, calms down, tries to comfort her even though she was just strangling her, makes a half-hearted pass at her, and then gets in the shower with all of her clothes on. And then we’re off to another scene with people talking about stuff. The detective looks like Great Value Columbo™ played by a bearded Stacy Keach impersonator. When he goes to work, there are not one but two maps on the wall so that the audience knows that it’s a police station. Now he’s chasing a little person who claims to know the killer.

Apaprently, the killer’s method is using a poison that interacts with sugar in a person’s coffee. If they don’t use sugar then nothing happens. But if they happen to use sugar, then the poison is like acid and it turns the victim’s face into a sloppy mess (or “mummified” according to the detective). There is also a healthy dose of music lifted directly from A Blade in the Dark (1982) in the music score. Classy. A lady spends approximately 10 minutes of film time and all of her dignity trying to seduce her lover. Then she runs off to the bathroom so that she can spray deodorant on her thighs. When they finally have sex, he keeps his pajamas on.

If you wanted to make the case that this is the worst giallo of all time, I couldn’t argue with you. But honestly, this is kind of great. It will take me years to figure out what in the world is even going on. Susan runs to a phone booth to call the detective and then she’s menaced by a guy in trenchcoat. He takes off his coat and challenges her to a dance-off. His moves are sick as fuck. LeEtta and I are shook. That dude looks familiar. It’s Saverio Vallone of Antropophagus (1980). And that’s George Ardisson of Date for a Murder (1967). The poor bastards. The detective’s daughter reads gialli and keeps telling him how the cop in her novel is a failure just like he is. I could love this film if it wasn’t 96 damn minutes long. It’s almost bad movie gold. Oh well. Goodnight.

 

SUNDAY

 

This time, my dreams were super cool and full of giallo imagery. Just kidding, no black-gloved killers but they were pretty weird. The one I can remember best is that my dad was Kurt Russell and our family made money by building armor and weapons for collectors. I got in trouble because I was playing with his throwing knives and had screwed them up by breaking the tips off the blades. Dad understood but insisted I work in his shop to pay for their replacements. I got up early and ran out to Einstein Bagels for bagel sandwiches. After that, we got started on the yard work. The hot weather was back and it was pretty awful; though we did see a spider we’d never seen before called a Spiny Orb Weaver. So cute! After we eat a frozen pizza for lunch, it was time to get back to the bullshit.

 

“Oh my goodness! My horoscope said there’d be an exceptional occurrence today.”

12:35PM

APPOINTMENT IN BLACK (1990)

 

Moody opening music over a black screen and t-shirt-style font credits should be troubling, but I’m assured that this is a “REAL Film Production”. Then the movie goes right into the brutal rape of a young girl. I keep waiting for it to cut away. It doesn’t. Somehow, I get through this without shutting it off. After a “15 years later” title card, a sexy woman named Angela, played by Mirella Banti of Tenebre (1982), is driving along, smiling at herself in the rearview mirror, and listening to some strident garbage rock which LeEtta says sounds like the “Beverly Hills, 90210” theme. Angela goes to a porno theater where she insults some hornballs who’re checking her out.

Angela gets attacked offscreen in the theater toilet and a sleazy guy acts suspiciously. While she’s reporting the details of this attack to a female police inspector, played by Sonia Viviani of Nightmare City (1980), her husband John is at home banging Eva, his blond mistress. When he finds out that she was raped, he confides to his lover that he wishes that Angela had been killed by the rapist. As soon as Angela goes to bed, he goes back to sucking on Eva’s panties. John is an animal. The romantic music sounds like an anal trumpeter spitting his butt wind into the audience’s sad, unprotected ears.

The projectionist from the theater approaches Angela to tell her that he saw the whole incident where she faked being raped. He wants money and he starts raping her. Get me out of here. Angela and John throw a fancy party where all of his asshole socialite friends talk shit about her. So she gets a little too drunk and does a striptease. The only moment of light in this dogshit is when Angela asks the band to play something with some sex in it. The band proceeds to play a happy Lawrence Welk-style floppy dong polka. It’s awesome. Now Angela is being harassed by a man claiming to be her attacker. John and Eva are up to some sneaky shit but Angela is beginning to make some plans of her own.

The most giallo-like thing to happen so far is that someone left a bloody doll in Angela’s car with a switchblade stuck in its face. Ooh, the man who raped Angela as a child died a very horrible death. Hell yes! His dick didn’t get cut off and fed to him but I’ll take what I can get. John and Eva have at least a half a dozen sex scenes in this so that same love scene theme music keeps playing. And here come the double crosses and the triple crosses. Who cares? Other than a couple of decent, atmospheric moments, I highly recommend skipping this fucking trash.

 

“Wanna do a porno gig? Just the three of us?”

2:15PM

OBSESSION: A TASTE FOR FEAR (1988)

 

I love how someone ripped this from their laserdisc copy. Thank you, whoever you are. This opens quite strikingly with a giallo villainess menacing a girl with a huge silver 9mm pistol. Diane (Virginia Hey) the photographer is pissed off because the model isn’t good enough at portraying fear on film. Oh brother, this is a high-tech movie with pointless computer screens everywhere. After making her assistant Valerie (Gioia Scola), who’s clearly in love with her, scrub her back in the shower, she meets up with her smug douchebag ex-husband Georges (Gérard Darmon) in his limo. He gives her an assignment to seduce a rich guy for him.

That night, Diane goes to hunt her prey at a fancy nightclub that has little people dancing onstage, people having sex in the booths, and bodybuilders mixing with the crowd. I guess it worked because we see her screwing the guy in the nightclub. At yet another gaudy fashion shoot, Diane is being a dick. When a bodybuilder chick cuts herself, she demands Valerie touch the wound so she can photograph it. Valerie refuses and they shut down for the day. Later, the bodybuilder chick goes to a private videotape session where a killer in black gloves ties her up. She turns up dead and sealed up in a giant bag. Also of note: Diane is narrating this insanity.

Thanks to Diane’s inefficiently sleek car and other weird gadgetry, LeEtta and I just realized that this takes place in the future, as imagined by the people of 1988. That explains the weird sets and everyone acting like aliens. But that doesn’t explain how pretentious this movie is. The police detective looks like he escaped from an episode of “Miami Vice”. Diane gets real sad about the death of the bodybuilder and cries naked while rocking a slammin’ dope jam called “Midnight Blue” by Lou Gramm of Foreigner. This song is so good that I want to rip off my ears and shove them up my urethra. Seriously, this would be a lot better if Diane wasn’t such a jerk. It wouldn’t hurt the movie at all. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t shamin’. I like that she screws everything in sight. She’s just an asshole.

At least Obsession: A Taste for Fear is pretty to look at. There’s so many saturated colors and eye-popping visuals going on that it’s easy to forget that very little is happening. Another bonus is that this is a real movie unlike that lumpy turd called Appointment in Black. Somebody just tried to run over the cop and he shot at their jeep with a gosh darn laser gun. We are on fire in here, bro! Another murder happens and someone yells, “You police pig!” Between the wall-to-wall nudity, the techno gobbledygook, campy soundtrack, and nearly every character acting like a dickbagel, this movie is a lot to take in. It’s certainly unique, I’ll give it that.

 

DINNER

 

LeEtta made bacon and broccoli carbonara and it was delicious. While she was preparing it, I laid in the recliner and rested my eyes. I took an allergy pill before bed and felt totally wiped out. After dinner, I washed dishes so that LeEtta wouldn’t suspect that I was a total waste of space.  With a glass of iced coffee and a bag of black licorice by my side, I was ready for another movie.

 

“You can be a great archeologist and still be a fink.”

4:40PM

THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS (1982)

 

I know next to nothing about this Sergio Martino joint other than it’s got Paolo Malco AND John Saxon in it. A New Yorker named Joan (Elvire Audray) has been having weird dreams about the ancient civilization of the Etruscans lately. Her husband is the scrumptious John Saxon, an archeologist who’s been studying the Etruscans over in Italy. These things could be connected. When Saxon is about to ship crates of loot back to New York, somebody sneaks up on him and twists his dang head around backwards! Despite the protestations of her dad (Van freakin’ Johnson), Joan heads to Italy with her husband’s flirty colleague Mike (Paolo Malco).

One of my giallo crushes, Marilù Tolo of My Dear Killer (1972), is here as a rich countess that Joan’s husband was staying with when he got killed. She’s not providing any useful information. A bunch of Fabio Frizzi’s music queues from City of the Living Dead (1980) are mixed into this score. I ain’t complainin’. One of John Saxon’s former colleagues gives Joan an Etruscan pendant of a scorpion with two tails. There’s a fashion shoot with some sexy models happening in some of the ruins. I hope that Diane doesn’t show up and starts screwing everybody. Now Joan’s visions are getting weirder, featuring mysterious Etruscan people and maggots, lots of maggots. I have no clue where this is going but I wish I’d seen it years ago.

Back in New York, Joan’s dad is going through the crates sent by John Saxon and not finding a certain something that was supposed to be stashed inside. Now he’s in trouble with some gangsters and is practically in tears while holding an Estruscan vase. He’s a real Mulligan. Meanwhile, a vagabond flautist tells Joan some cryptic nonsense and tells her she’s the “bringer of gifts”. With all the maggots, fake bats, that music score, and obtuse dialog, I don’t know how this isn’t a Fulci movie. Ruh roh, Joan’s dad just arrived in Italy. but Joan is missing. An assassin in black motorcycle gear sporting a weird pistol shows up and a funny sped up car chase ensues.

More people get their heads twisted and Van Johnson is chewing the scenery and holy heck, we’re only at the halfway mark of this weirdness. Whoa, Claudio Cassinelli of The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975) just popped up in this as Paolo the archaeologist. He informs Joan that he and his team just uncovered a portrait that looks exactly like her in an old tomb. While Paolo and Joan are out looking for clues, they go see a photographer who has a big honkin’ rebel flag in his studio. The south of Italy will rise again? Holy shit, this has one of the most improbable and bonkers twists in it that I’ve ever seen. What did I just watch?

 

“It’s all a joke, right?”

6:24PM

THE MURDER SECRET (1988)

 

Lucio Fulci presents… another film he had nothing to do with. This one is directed by Mario Bianchi, so you know it’s gonna be totally better than Massacre. Don’t tell Andrea I said that! A woman in an asylum has visions or flashbacks of a man driving a car. She’s got dark circles under her eyes and she’s throwing a fit. I know just how she feels. Oh wait, these are memories of Aunt Martha. Gabriele Tinti plays Richard and he was in the asylum as a kid watching his aunt lose her mind. He and his family are on their way to see his estranged Aunt Martha out in the countryside.

Maurice Poli is back again. He must have owed the Bianchi brothers some money or something. He’s got Aunt Martha’s place spotless and ready for visitors but there’s one room that they must never go in. That’s always a good sign. Richard’s cute and horny wife is played by Adriana Russo of A Whisper in the Dark (1976) and The Face with Two Left Feet (1979). Their eldest son shows up in their bedroom in the middle of the night with a shotgun. No, this isn’t the Amityville murders. It’s just -well, I don’t know what it is. The biggest mystery is why crazy Aunt Martha invited them out here and hasn’t shown up yet. Spooky!

Their daughter Georgia (Jessica Moore) acts like a teenager but she’s built like a woman. She tries on Aunt Martha’s nightgown and gets scolded by a disembodied voice for her transgression. Then her bucktoothed nitwit brother named Maurice (wah-wow!) sneaks in, trying to scare her. Later, Maurice gets up in the middle of the night and stares at the staticky TV like a zombie. When strange stuff happens, Richard looks around with his shifty eyes and doesn’t give a clear answer to anything. Not to worry, a black gloved killer shows up and starts making trouble of the butcher knife and chainsaw variety. I am so into this. And it has the longest man on man non-nude grappling scene ever made.

“Everyone is happy today because someone is going to die!”

8:09PM

FORMULA FOR A MURDER (1985)

 

Here’s another film that slipped through the cracks while I was working on the first book. My only concrete memory of it is that I thought it was too long. Let’s see how it holds up this time. Alberto de Martino, you beautiful son of a gun! I’ve missed you. A priest carrying a creepy baby doll is menacing a little girl on a very steep set of stone stairs. Francesco de Masi is getting freaky with the synths for this opening music. After the stylish slow-motion opening, there’s some priest-on-priest crime.

Wheelchair-bound Joanna (Christina Nagy) is getting some physical therapy from dreamboat Craig (David Warbeck). He’s teaching her fencing, archery, karate, marksmanship, and bomb diffusing. Craig is flirting with Joanna and her sexy assistant pal Ruth isn’t happy about that. Once those pesky American exteriors are out of the way, Joanna goes home and we’re instantly in Rome. Ruth likes to give angry massages, especially when she finds out that Craig has asked Joanna to marry him. There’s a lot of confusing medical stuff with Joanna. She says she can’t laugh without pressing her diaphragm and then she laughs just a moment later.

Her doctor is played by the wildly prolific Rossano Brazzi of Psychout for Murder (1969) and a whole mess of other things. He informs Craig to be careful on their wedding night because as a kid, Joanna was raped by a phony priest and fell down a flight of stairs. Other than her blood curdling screams of pleasure, their wedding night goes exceedingly well. Soon, Joanna begins to see visions of the evil priest holding a bloody baby doll that taunts her with a creepy voice.

Just to add more priests to the mix, Father Davis shows up. It’s Loris Loddi. I’ve seen him before in the wacky Miami Golem (also 1985) and Ruggero Deodato’s Phantom of Death (1988). And now he’s out of the movie. Oops! One thing about this movie is that it shows its cards way too early. I think de Martino and screenwriter Vincenzo Mannino should’ve held off just a bit longer before letting us in on the game. Luckily, there’s lots of style scattered throughout to keep things lively. De Masi, naughty or lazy little devil that he is, inserted the main melody from New York Ripper (1982) into the score when Joanna and Craig are driving to the ferry. Love it. That’s it, I gotta tap out. Later, folks.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

Another moviethon has come and gone. I had a feeling that I shouldn’t have ended on Formula for a Murder and I was right. It’s decent but the movie, even though it’s only 85 minutes, is just one idea is stretched out far too thin to not get dull. As usual, I didn’t get to all of the humongous stack that I always pick for myself at the start of these things. The twenty films I picked out were just never going to happen, but I’m cool with that because it means there’s just more material for even more chapters later. Isn’t that a refreshing attitude? Please clap.

The Spirit Of ’76 Moviethon

spirit-of-76

In the summer of 1976, when I was 2 weeks old, men in black cloaks came to take me away. My family was living in Great Falls, Montana when one afternoon someone banged at the front door. My mother answered with me in her arms and asked these mysteriously garbed individuals what they wanted. They told her that they had come for her son. Frightened but headstrong, my mother held me closer and told them to leave immediately. Perhaps it was something in her eyes or her voice that stole their resolve but the men in black cloaks quickly retreated from the yard. Only feeling safe after she had shut and locked the front door, my mother looked at her young son and realized that he was something special.

Now the story keeps changing and I’m probably embellishing it here. When I first heard this tale from my mother, there were men in black cloaks. But recently they have morphed into just one man dressed as a monk who came to take me away. I have no idea if this story is true and my mom is very vague on the details. But that’s what she told me. Whatever really happened that day, it seems to me that it had something to do with horror.

The theme of this moviethon is all things 1976 but there is a twist. The rules are simple: 1) the horror films in question have to have been released sometime in 1976 (not just in theaters at the time) and 2) they have to be titles that I’ve never seen before. So many fantastic things happened in that magical year such as The Omen, Carrie, Werewolf Woman, Plot Of Fear, and Burnt Offerings but I’ve already friggin’ seen them. Oh well, this moviethon is about mining for the unknown in hopes of beholding the wonderful (and terrible) discoveries waiting for me in my birth year.

For further preparation, I looked at newspapers from 1976 on microfilm to see what was playing in theaters that year and I also watched 1976 TV on the blessed Youtube. “The Charo TV Special” was especially entertaining although almost all of the jokes centered on how no one could understand what she was saying. In order to truly envelop myself in half-assed research I picked up the 1976 edition of one of those Remember When booklets at our local Bob Evans (random facts appear below). That’s like receiving a master’s degree for the entire year!

Friday

The usual Friday afternoon post-work stuff is made particularly awful by the wicked humidity. We hit the CVS on 56th street so LeEtta can have wine and then we quickly pick up some dinner (Wendy’s salads are almost healthy). Once dinner is consumed and everything seems to be in order, it is time to begin. The lousy foulness I’ve been experiencing all through the day have melted away now that things are about to start. This horrible hypochondria has been haunting me ever since the werewolf moviethon was almost ruined by a dang head cold.

makojawsofdeath

“Okay, shark-boy, I’m gonna break your fin.”

5:17pm

Mako: The Jaws Of Death

First, a little back story on obtaining this film. I found a VHS copy of The Jaws Of Death on Amazon used for less than a buck. When I got the tape and tried to convert it to DVDR, everything went to shit. My VCR started making this high-pitched whine and the film was playing in a terribly distorted and unwholesome manner on my TV screen. Even though I figured it was a lost cause, I brought the tape to my friend Nafa who is something of an expert at VHS repair. After unspooling and re-spooling the entire tape and running it through an impressive looking tape-cleaning machine, we got it to play again and I managed to get it on DVDR, finally.

After just a few minutes into this flick, I’m already regretting having Nafa go to all the trouble rescuing this piece of shit. Sonny (played by Richard Jaeckel) loves sharks. I mean really, really loves them. He gives them names like Mattilda and Sammy. Unfortunately, he’s totally naïve to the ways of the world (that’s putting it nicely) and puts his trust in a pretentious scumbag like Mr. Whitney.

Down at the world-renowned Rustic Inn, we have the lovely Karen (played by Jennifer Bishop), an underwater dancer, and her sickeningly obese husband Barney (played by someone named Buffy Dee). They soon discover what a total sucker Sonny is and quickly take advantage. These people want to use him and his sharks for some reason or another and it’s all going to end in tears and blood.

Whoa, this movie almost just redeemed itself. Getting to see Sonny’s 1,000 yard stare is pretty priceless. I love how everyone takes turns shitting on this guy when he is clearly deranged. Sonny rescues Karen from some would-be rapists and one of them is Harold “Oddjob” Sakata. After an awkward kiss between Sonny and Karen, I realize that Sonny has probably never kissed a non-shark person before. Uh oh, things are going south as Sonny realizes he shouldn’t have trusted these evil people.

Man oh man, between the endless underwater scenes and all the poorly lit nighttime scenes, this is one murky ass movie. Take the poor quality of the film and match it with the cheapness of the videotape and the end result is more than a little challenging to watch. Thankfully, I can still see Barney in all of his sensual glory. Of course, Mako: The Jaws Of Death has all the tension and drama of a bathtub fart. Oh good, a flashback sequence! This explains everything! I want to go to sleep now. If there was ever a time to nap during a moviethon, it is right now.

As the climax of this ass festival gets closer and closer, a horrible realization has just hit me: I’ve seen this film before. How depressing is that? I go out of my way to avoid films I’ve seen before and this sneaky bitch turns out to be a (happily) repressed memory or some shit. Oh Florida, why do you want to hurt us with your hurricanes? And it’s over. Sonny got his revenge but the angry townsfolk got their comeuppance when he was eaten by his own sharks. I hope that by revealing a big whopper of a spoiler like that encourages everyone to avoid Mako: The Jaws Of Death.

Random 1976 Fact: The “Son of Sam” claims his first victim in July.

Cigar Break

After that Jaws Of Death business, an early cigar break is essential. The father-in-law hooked me up with a fistful of cigars last time I saw him so I’m all set in that department. The weather has changed. A steady breeze has kicked in and the humidity has been lifted making this July evening quite pleasant. I smoke a Bohio cigar and wash it down with some Arizona green tea. Very nice. The cigar isn’t rolled very well and is falling apart in my hands but the flavor holds out so I’m satisfied. Once that’s done, I head back in for another flick.

driveinmassacre

“Do you really wanna talk to that piece of puke?”

7:32pm

Drive-In Massacre

Drive-In Massacre introduces itself with some fake Santana opening credit music. Seeing that the magic of the drive-in has been captured on film forever, I’m already feeling good about this one. The couple getting hot and heavy in their car at the beginning has a problem: the guy is too busy watching the movie while his chick wants to jump his bones. This is the 70s, you friggin’ moron, you’re supposed to get it on. Better hurry before the AIDS comes. That is just so sad and it’s even sadder now that they’ve just been brutally murdered by a psycho killer who is stalking the drive-in. Whoa, that cheap gore sure is sweet and sassy.

The miserable cops, Detectives Mike and Larry, show up to question the owner of the drive-in, Mr. Austin Johnson, who is described as being the “perfect asshole”. Johnson just said “wang-bangers” and I think I’m going to have to strive for perfection myself. We are introduced to Germy, our special buddy, who’s wearing what looks like a Peter Pan hat minus the feather and who has the illustrious job of waving the cars in and picking up trash. Now the soundtrack sounds like three disjointed organ grinders playing at once. So it’s as perfect as Mr. Austin Johnson.

The film slows down for some psychobabble and some dull police procedural stuff but it hasn’t thrown me yet. The cops are a real riot shaking down their chief suspect, the local pervert who utters the line: “I just wanted to beat my meat!” I just saw some boobs; the first of the moviethon. In order to catch the killer stalking the drive-in, one of the detectives dresses up in drag for a goofy stakeout. You’ve got to love a slasher flick where half of the characters are ex-carnies.

Drive-In Massacre slows down AGAIN for a carnival sequence and then some boring crap in a warehouse. Hello Arlene! Why hasn’t she been in the rest of the picture? Oh yes, this is all going to end in tears. The open-endedness of the finale is absolute genius. A little nod to William Castle, I think. This is a marked improvement over Mako: The Jaws Of Death, to say the least.

Random 1976 Fact: Life expectancy is 72.9 years.

deathatlovehouse

“She’s evil and this house is rotten with her memories.”

8:56pm

Death At Love House

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, E.W. Swackhamer and Aaron Spelling AKA The Dream Team! Joel (played by Robert Wagner) and Donna (Kate Jackson) visit the mansion of Lorna Love to help Joel write a book about the dead Hollywood legend. There’s a cat named Nosferatu, a ghostly figure running through a courtyard, and some mention of the Malleus Maleficarum (which LeEtta points out as being totally out of context here). Spooky stuff, let me tells ya. But I’m really just afraid of Joel and Donna’s friend Oscar who always shouts when he speaks.

John Carradine kicks ass as usual which is good since the plot just ain’t doing it for me. Joel’s dad was one of the mysterious Lorna Love’s lovers and… Well, there are some sepia-toned flashbacks. That’s great. Beware the duder in the black goat’s head cloak. His name is Father Eternal Fire and he was a holy man “of sorts”. Was he the one who tried to steal me as a baby?

Things start getting freaky when we meet the nutty Marcella (played by the legendary Joan Blondell) and hey, hang on a minute! That’s the luscious Marianna Hill from Messiah Of Evil as Lorna Love. Score! The scene where one of Lorna’s films comes to life and starts calling to Joel is surprisingly well done and hypnotic. Oh shit, Donna is getting the cold shoulder as Joel becomes more and more obsessed with the dead actress.

Death At Love House is pretty tame and the plot is convoluted as hell but I’m having a good time. The film has a decent full-bodied soundtrack and the climax (despite the cheese) is awesome. Of course, everything has to go up in flames. Whoa, that denouement was abrupt. LeEtta expresses her dissatisfaction with that super quick wrap-up and I am in total agreement. So I guess everything just turned out okay then. That’s just like in real life.

Random 1976 Fact: “Afternoon Delight” by The Starlight Vocal Band is a number one hit.

Saturday

You know, I’m starting to get sick of the whole “something must go wrong every moviethon” bit. We decided to call it quits early last night so that we could get a jump on the films. Ha ha, a jump indeed. We get up bright and early, go to the gas station, fuel up, and the car won’t start. Luckily, a guy there is nice enough to get my 1978 (not ’76) Ford Thunderbird going again with a jumpstart. At AutoZone, we find out that my battery is toast. Luckily, it was still under warranty, so we get a new battery for $2. We immediately get breakfast, hit the grocery store for moviethon supplies, and head back home.

foodofthegods

“My name is Morgan and I play football.”

10:10am

The Food Of The Gods

Bert I. Gordon brings us a flick that I could have sworn that I’d seen before but after only a few moments of this schlocky nonsense, I realize that I’ve seen its 1989 sequel. Morgan (played by Marjoe Gortner of Starcrash) delivers some crummy foreshadowing in his voiceover. To sum things up: nature is sick of mankind’s BS and is making animals grow all big and stuff. The end. Okay, there’s more to this film than that but it’s all logic free cheese.

Attack of the giant rats! Attack of the big rubba bug! Attack of the giant rooster! This is anything but dull, that’s for sure. Oh crap, those giant maggots are really nasty. Ida Lupino is very charming as the perpetually freaked out Mrs. Skinner. Careful lady, they’re using the old good scientist/bad scientist routine on ya. Some of these lame effects are starting to get to me already. Well, look at that, the homely chick named Lorna the actress I had a major crush on from Legend Of Hell House! She fell down a hole? What a dumbass.

Why do giant rats make cat noises? Whatever the reason, these rat attacks prompt my wife to start laughing like a madwoman. I am starting to strongly dislike the treatment of the rats in this movie. They’re shooting them with paintballs, knocking them about in little explosions, and drowning them for the climax. Hmm, that really took the fun out of this one. I rarely get worked up about animal rights but that seemed excessively cruel to me. God, I’m such a whiner. Next!

Random 1976 Fact: A new car costs $4,557.

clownmurders

“I’m sick of his God-damned jokes.”

11:45am

The Clown Murders

Any film that starts with a rousing game of polo has got to be good, right? Ugh, 7 minutes in and I already don’t care. Come on, duder, this has a good ominous soundtrack, give it a chance. I’m talking to myself already. Speaking of animal violence! There’s a gratuitous chicken beheading. Hmm, is that better or worse than the rat torture from Food Of The Gods? Whatever, this film is Canadian, they don’t have the same rules that we do. Fat jokes and headless chickens? Can do.

This strange ass flick is well acted but the plot is ridiculous. Our “heroes” cook up a plot to kidnap the lovely Allison in order to stop some land deal from going through. This is one of those seemingly innocent but idiotic schemes where things invariably go very wrong. It doesn’t help matters much that one of their gang is crazy Charlie who still has a thing for Allison. I think my initial allergic reaction to The Clown Murders may have been too hasty. This is such a bizarre little thriller with a knack for building tension. After the POV stalking kicks in, I feel more at home.

This Rosie guy is a complete piece of shit. LeEtta would like him to be the first one to die. His name is Rosie. You know what? There is some creepy business buried in this movie. There’s a killer stalking these folks but that’s not central to the plot. Or is it? I’m certainly surprised by all of this. Adventurous viewers, this batshit flick is waiting for you. Then it just goes on this total exploitation bender. Okay, that’s John Candy rape.

Oh, this would have been perfect for Doomed WTFiethon. I’m not sure about this film. It’s gone from horror to exploitation but I… I’m speechless. It’s the weirdest one so far. Either way, this is equal parts boring, entertaining, and painful to watch. Talk about your roller coaster shifts in tone. This beast is unclassifiable.

Random 1976 Fact: The Pittsburgh Steelers are the Pro Football champions.

Short Break

Nafa calls to say that he will be joining the moviethon festivities in a little while. He informs me that people are crashing their makeshift planes into a nearby lake. That sounds reasonable but way less entertaining than this hot movie action. LeEtta makes some guacamole dip which we devour and then it’s back to the flicks.

creaturefromblacklake

“All right, big creature, here we come.”

1:42pm

Creature From Black Lake

This soundtrack is very, very special. Could this film like actually be good? My expectations for a Bigfoot movie are rock bottom, so this flick’s got a fighting chance. Our two main goofballs, two old college students named Reeves and Pahoo, are traveling to the swamps of Louisiana to find Bigfoot. Is Pahoo slang for something? ‘Cause it sounds awfully dirty. Pahoo is obsessed with hamburgers and French fries. And just like me, he’s all fired up about Cajun women!

This flick is done surprisingly well and well acted even. Legendary lazy-eyed Jack Elam plays Joe, the crazy old freak who had a negative experience with the creature (it ate his friend). So, I guess that explains why he has a doll in a noose in his shack. Them there Bigfoot creatures do that to a man. Holy crap, that is one hot waitress there. Pahoo and Reeves are going to gather evidence with the height of 1976 technology: a tape recorder.

Orville is a good old boy with a story to tell (strictly off the record). We meet his pappy who is played by the incredible Dub Taylor. Don’t even mention the creature around this guy. Whoa, Pahoo just flipped out. Now Reeves and Pahoo are picking up chicks. Two bad one of the girls is the daughter of the sheriff. That might be problematic. Jeez, these guys are crappy anthropologists. Maybe they can tell me what hole the company that released this shitty pan and scan DVD are hiding in.

This movie is entertaining as hell… sometimes. There’s lots of comic relief. Guys, come on, stop arguing! We have got to stick together! Well, the creature isn’t all that impressive but at least they keep it hidden pretty well. Wow, what an awful ending. So that’s it. Really? To answer that question, we are tortured with some wimpy ending song with pitiful lyrics that I’ve already forgotten.

Random 1976 Fact: Nelson Rockefeller is the Vice President of the United States.

Almost Nap

I decide to take one of my world famous power naps. I get about 10 minutes into it when LeEtta knocks on the door and tells me that Nafa has already arrived. So, I don’t get my nap or the fantastic disorientation that comes afterwards. Boo hoo! Nafa brings me an awesome bicentennial flag which I immediately hang up to inspire us. Thanks to that flag, 1976 is so much closer now.

embryo

“I don’t want to kill! I don’t want to kill! I just want to live!”

3:38pm

Embryo

Uh oh, this one opens with a very important message that sends chills up my… Well, not my spine, that’s for sure. Ladies and gentleman, Rock Hudson. Sadly, Doris Day will not be joining us for this bleak and muddled little movie. Hudson plays Paul, a doctor who seems to have lost his way since the death of his wife. So one dark and stormy night, he runs over a pregnant Doberman and gets inspired to try and save the unborn puppies with science. Maybe that constant boom mike dipping into the shot can help.

Things fall apart when Dr. Paul calls his son in the middle of the night and asks for a million cc’s of dog plasma. DOG. PLASMA. His son Gordon is more than happy to oblige. He and his pregnant wife Helen (who was the mom on “Alf”) show up to see a puppy fetus in a big tank and they aren’t fazed at all. I guess when you’re drowning in pseudoscience, everything just seems normal. Paul manages to do a bunch of stuff to so that the puppy fetus is full grown in a week. My God, he’s created a super pooch!

So what do you think our newly mad scientist will do next? Get a human fetus and try it again. This is such a sad little film. He’s smoking in the same room where the baby is developing in the tank. That can’t be good. Okay doctor, we are no longer listening to your gibberish. This movie is dragging. The entire suspense at this point is the horror and revulsion we’re supposed to be feeling at this unnatural birthing. Gee, I wonder why this wasn’t a huge hit.

Now it’s the Helen Keller story as Paul teaches his instant woman (played by the lovely Barbara Carrera) to speak. He names her Victoria and it isn’t long before we know something ain’t right. She tends to hide behind doors with sharp scissors when someone frightens her. Poor Diane Ladd (yeah, she’s in this too). Her character, Martha, is the nails on the chalkboard in this flick. Between Victoria’s wide-eyed disconnectedness and Martha’s smarty pants cattiness, we’re really in a pickle here.

Roddy McDowall is in fine form here (read as: he gets to look incredulous and shout a lot). NO! We’re back in the poorly lit laboratory again. Half of this movie is hard to see and this busted ass DVD doesn’t help either. Can we please just go back to the dog plasma? No we can’t because Victoria needs human fetus extract because Dr. Paul fucked up the growth acceleration procedure because… I think this movie will defeat us.

I love the synthesizer in the soundtrack and there are some eerie moments but damn, this shit will just not end. Victoria starts aging really quickly and her list of victims grows because she just can’t get enough fetus juice. The ending finally comes with a car chase and the rest is just painfully hilarious and overblown melodrama. Nafa, LeEtta, and I are totally confounded. It ends and we’re kind of ruined but the bad movie adrenaline is pumping. Nothing to do but go to Taco Bell.

Random 1976 Fact: Bacon is $1.05 per pound.

Dinner

It’s bright out and very hot. The clouds in the sky aren’t substantial enough to give us any relief from the sun. Nafa and I head out to Athenos to get LeEtta a veggie platter. Like a dumbass, I forget the spanakopita. We park in the Taco Bell parking lot and walk next door to CVS. Nafa grabs some Powerade and I get a 20oz Sunkist (the caffeinated orange soda). After getting stuck in line behind a scattered and bizarrely behaving Spanish family, we walk back to Taco Bell.

Despite experiences from previous moviethons where fast food has done me wrong, I order way too much food for myself and get a big Mountain Dew. Nafa and I jump in the car and head back home. On the way down 56th Street, we pass the legendary Morrisound Studios where death metal bands such as Deicide and Malevolent Creation have recorded their albums. Nafa and I decide that our very un-death metal band should record there as well. Back at the apartment, we find that Shelly has arrived. She and LeEtta are on the patio smoking while Nafa and I dig in. Once LeEtta has eaten and Shelly has ordered her Chinese food, we move on to the next movie.

nakedmassacre

“Who dares come between an Irishman and his drink?”

6:33pm

Naked Massacre

This movie is political because it takes place in Belfast. We see some hot Irish nurses and I begin to suspect that we’re in for a trashy ride. This disgruntled Vietnam vet is going to make some trouble. There’s lots of dialogue about nothing in particular and jump cuts galore. The most priceless scene in the history of film: the bad guy (does he have a name?) paying an old hooker to dance naked while he plays “Oh Susanna” on the harmonica. Okay, she isn’t really dancing so much as spasmodically jerking to the music while her big saggy everything shimmies to and fro.

Things are starting to look very grim for the four of us viewers as this trashy piece of trash finally reveals itself. So this guy kidnaps a bunch of nurses living together and starts raping and killing them. Even worse, he tells them bad jokes. Was Richard Speck really this “charming”? This is some seriously horrible shit. I’d had a just a tiny taste of exploitation with The Clown Murders, this is the real rapetastic deal.

We are all heckling Naked Massacre to keep from screaming. Talk about a totally wrong selection for a moviethon but that’s what happens when you pick a bunch of unseen titles. This is just unpleasant as hell and we’re all mortified and pretty embarrassed. I will say this in the movie’s defense: if I was watching this alone, I probably wouldn’t feel so totally miserable right now. But honestly, this movie just sucks. The end.

Random 1976 Fact: Reese Witherspoon is born on March 22nd.

Cigar Break

We are more than happy to go outside after that. I light up my H. Uppman cigar which is really, really good. It’s got a ton of flavor and it goes very well with Sunkist orange soda. Shelly joins me in the smoking with her cloves while Nafa just hangs out. The summer sun is finally going down and it is much cooler outside. Thank God. I apologize profusely about the Naked Massacre incident but nobody is too upset about it. The “Oh Susanna” scene was almost worth the pain of the rest of the film. It was shitty but not gloriously shitty like Embryo. After the break is over, Nafa takes his leave but Shelly hangs on for more flicks.

landoftheminotaur

“There’s nothing wrong with my capacity!”

9:04pm

Land Of The Minotaur

Donald Pleasence and Peter Cushing go to Greece. Flame on, minotaur, flame on! We are treated to a ceremony featuring some retarded KKK-like duders in multi-colored robes. This breathy and weird Brian Eno soundtrack is seriously friggin’ awesome. Then a trio of hippies show up. They disappear and Father Roche (Pleasence) goes looking for them. He calls up Milo, a detective friend from Boston, who looks like Father Ted. Feck!

The locations for this flick are beautiful and there’s plenty of atmosphere to spare. “You’re out of line, Tom!” So Peter Cushing is Carpathian? That’s nice. Of course he’s the ringleader of this busted ass minotaur cult that needs human sacrifices for some reason. He’s the one who is responsible for all the suspicious glances in the village too. Damn, that Laurie chick (played by Luan Peters of The Flesh And Blood Show) is so crazy hot. She’s in peril, people. We need to keep a better eye on her. Mm-hmm.

I refuse to believe you, sensible priest! This movie is really strange and- Ha! I knew it! There are men in black cloaks! Finally, they are here. My mom was right. They came from Greece to get me. So much freakin’ oddness going on here. I want to say that this movie is boring but it is just so awesome. And explosive! So the only minotaur in the movie is a statue? That is rather lame but yet I can’t wait to watch this one again. I think we’re finally out of the rut. Next!

Random 1976 Fact: The Supreme Court votes to reinstate the death penalty.

houseofmortalsin

“None of us is without sin, be sure of that.”

10:32pm

The House Of Mortal Sin

Oh Jenny (played by Susan Penhaligon), you could so much better. Man, this chick is whipped by her scumbag boyfriend. Enter one seriously creepy priest who happens to be one twisted and murderous motherfucker. Father Xavier Meldrum is his name and he kills the boyfriend in a very brutal manner. Father Meldrum isn’t alone in his lunacy. Miss Brabazon is helping the priest keep it real. Brabazon is played by the incredibly creepy Sheila Keith from Frightmare.

The priest secretly tape records people’s confessions, is stalking Jenny, and is killing all the men close to her. Now he’s killing to cover up his other killings. That isn’t very holy behavior, dude. This might be director Pete Walker’s finest hour. We’ve got some great kill scenes, cool cinematography, and priestly temptations. I think the director may have been taking notes from the Giallos for this one. The cyanide sacrament! I saw that one comin’ a mile away.

Unbeknownst to Father Xavier, Mrs. Brabazon is going behind his back and torturing his poor decrepit mother. His mother, mute from a stroke, tries to warn people. The subplot with Father Bernard and his love affair with Jenny’s sister comes to a horrible end as well. Wow, this movie is outrageously cruel, malevolent, and dark. The House Of Mortal Sin accomplishes what many strive but fail to be. I’m looking at you, Naked Massacre!

Random 1976 Fact: “Happy Days” is the number one TV show.

Very Short Break

Shelly is leaving and LeEtta is getting ready for bed. That leaves little old me to fend for myself. Hey, how about if I eat a taco? Buying too much food at Taco Bell earlier was a blessing in disguise. I put sour cream and hot sauce on this taco. I eat this taco. I put another movie in the DVD player. Things are going to be okay.

whocankillachild

“The world is crazy.”

12:23am

Who Can Kill A Child?

Things are not going to be okay. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The very real and very horrifying news footage at the beginning of this film lets me know in an extremely unsubtle way that the fun is over. My God, this introduction is 8 minutes long! The world is chaotic and filled with hate. You will be destroyed exquisitely.

Our biologist buddy, Tom and his pregnant wife Evelyn, arrive in a small village in Spain for a vacation. They head out alone to an island nearby where there seems to be no adults anywhere. The children are oddly quiet and very suspicious. The beautiful scenery has given way to an undeniable eeriness. Things are so very wrong on this picturesque island and the children are so ominous, I would have bugged out already.

Who Can Kill A Child? is one of the most frightening and claustrophobic films I’ve seen in a while. The tension just keeps growing. Those kids are gonna be so disappointed. There’s no candy in that old man they’ve strung up and are now beating like a piñata. Tom is trying to protect Evelyn from the things he’s seen. Fuck it, man, these kids is evil. This is like Village Of The Damned on meth.

They find one living adult who relates the chilling story of when the children woke up one night and starting killing all the adults. When Tom finally lashes out against their attackers, it isn’t cathartic like in a regular horror movie. There is no relief. This is a bold and challenging film from beginning to end that shows you inconceivable horrors awaiting our protagonists around every corner. And it only gets worse at the end. Amazing.

Random 1976 Fact: Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs found Apple Computers.

whisperinthedark

“Death is a place where no one’s ever happy.”

2:21am

A Whisper in the Dark

I need you right now gothic Italian horror movie. My God, this movie is pretty already. A fog enshrouded mansion? Thank you! We are introduced to a typical Italian family. Normal except for their son, Martino, who insists that his invisible friend Luca is real. Whoa, Martino is one freaky and angry little kid. Well, with horrid sisters like his, I’d be freaky and angry too. Mom of the feathered hair is clueless and dad is John Phillip Law of Diabolik (but is also clueless). Their marriage is on the rocks and their son going nuts is really quite bothersome.

That was strange. Martino describes a dream that sounds like a scene out of Who Can Kill A Child? A self-referential moviethon? It’s hard to focus when this kid is so dang hypnotic. The score by Pino Donaggio is very haunting and adds to the dreamy atmosphere. I know something terrible is going to happen. The family is starting to fall apart and things are becoming more and more surreal. Ha ha! The sisters don’t get to go to the party!

Some comic moments come out of nowhere. I realize that I can no longer be trusted. My notes are getting more and more erratic and it is clear to me that only folks really, really into Italian horror will enjoy this. No, even they won’t like this one. A Whisper In The Dark is visually stunning but is there any substance? The spell of the mysterious specter of Luca is taking over. Joseph Cotten (of Mario Bava’s Baron Blood) is here as the professor whose come to study Martino’s condition. How could a duder this unsettling ever make it as a child psychologist?

The party sequence is so outlandish and beautiful that I have ceased to wonder what happened to the plot. Drinking vodka and smoking in the bath? Jeez professor, when are you going to fix that dang kid’s crazy brain? Oops, he’s dead! I have a funny feeling about this movie but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I love the POV camera angles letting you know that someone is always watching. Leave mom alone, she’s goth. No wonder the reviews for this film were so bad. That ending wasn’t really an ending at all. Mom and dad have screwed and all is right with the world.

Random 1976 Fact: Sonny and Cher resume their TV show, despite their real-life divorce.

Trouble

It’s 4:15am and I just put in the last film of the Moviethon: Mansion Of The Doomed. I’m about 5 minutes into it when I realize that I can’t even look at the screen, my eyes and head hurt so bad. This isn’t fun anymore. I stop the movie and write down this gibberish: “I can barely moves. My eyes are distant shores. Nobody feels this way while my cat coos in his sleep. Sorry almost made it.” I am now going to haul my ass off to bed.

Many Hours Later…

I wake up around 10:00am Sunday morning and I really need to get out of the house. I’m pretty depressed when I wake up. I realize that I have one movie to go and that I should have been able to get through all ten movies yesterday. But then LeEtta reminds me that I should just start giving myself a schedule for these dang things. I feel run down but alive as the wife and I run to breakfast and go catch Hellboy 2: The Golden Army at the theatre. How un-moviethon and 1976-inappropriate is that? Oh well, we get back home and I return to the final film.

mansionofthedoomed

“No! I’m a scientist! No more nightmares.”

3:37pm

Mansion Of The Doomed

The movie opens with some stock footage of eye surgeries that are just plain old nasty to behold. Something tells me that we’re gonna be violating some eyes very soon. Oh great, another mad scientist. I hope this one doesn’t have to send out for his dog plasma. Richard Basehart plays Dr. Chaney who has to conduct illegal and experimental eye surgery on his daughter Nancy. He feels just a tad guilty for breaking her eyes in a car accident.

A very young Lance Henriksen (from Pumpkinhead and a million other awesome things) is on board as Nancy’s fiancé. Dr. Chaney drugs the guy, steals his eyes, and then locks him up in a cage (with electrified bars!) located in the filthy basement of his mansion (of the doomed). When the eye transplant doesn’t take, the very evil doctor starts kidnapping more and more people. God, this movie is great. It’s claustrophobic and perfectly grungy in almost every way.

I sure hope Lucio Fulci got to see this one with all the eye violence and gaping blood-filled eye sockets we get to see. I really don’t like Nancy at all. Waa, I’m blind so my life is over, waa! Well, at least she’s better than the doctor’s washed out assistant, Kathy, who assists the evil bastard in all of his bastardliness. Mad scientists should never have children or wives or friends or colleagues. They’re a goddamned liability. Character actor Vic Tayback is totally underused as the detective trying to find out what’s up with all these empty eyeholes.

Seriously, duders, this movie is messed up. Instead of Eyes Without A Face, this is Face Without Some Eyes. This is just one of the most satisfying horror experiences I’ve seen in a while. Why is Mansion Of The Doomed so friggin’ obscure? Could be that crappy soundtrack. I am consumed by the evil badness of these people keeping their eyeless victims alive in the basement until they starve to death or kill each other. Things go just as bad as they should and everything falls into place just as horribly as it should. It’s all about the eyes.

Random 1976 Fact: Tawny Godin of Saratoga Springs, NY becomes the next Miss America.

The End

This will forever be known as the moviethon that made John Candy cry or at the very least, the cruelest of all moviethons. Sure, I got burned a couple of times but by watching 13 unseen films (with Mako being the sneaky exception) but that’s just part of the adventure. The most startling aspect was their brutality. There were more than a few eye-opening scenes as well as entire films that were just painful to watch with their unrelenting torture of their characters. What can you do with a moviethon with a mean streak a mile wide?

So, have I beaten 1976, the year of my birth? I have to say no. There are too many horror titles released that year that remain out of print and will have to be acquired for a sequel. And once again, I’ve learned that poor scheduling, evil junk food, and OD’ing on caffeine can screw up the whole scene. With Marjoe Gortner as my witness, I will conquer my inadequacies as a moviethoner and become the man that I was always meant to be. I will not let the men in black cloaks win. And mother, I promise, you did not save your son’s life for nothing.

BAVADOOM

bavadoom-main

If Bava is the Father, Argento the Son, then Fulci must be the Holy Ghost! Seriously though, I am super psyched about finally getting around to this moviethon. Mario Bava was a genius of not only creating visually stunning masterpieces but he could also turn a mediocre script into something magical. He could also create richly rewarding films with nearly endless threads of ideas waiting to be uncovered and explored.

Despite all my enthusiasm, I still worry about Mario Bava or rather I worry about what his films will do to me. You see, his movies have this annoying habit of inducing sleepiness in me. They aren’t dull films but they have this ethereal quality that puts me in a drowsy state. This is why I’m nervous. Nodding off during a moviethon pisses me off. But what if the director wants me to dream?

I also have another problem: I’m totally intimidated when it comes to writing about Mario Bava. There are some Bava experts out there (like Tim Lucas, author of the massive Bava book, Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark) and I feel like a total amateur even approaching this stuff. So, in my usual moviethoner style, I will record the experience of watching these films and leave the critical thinking to someone else.

Genres as disparate as Gothic horror, peplum (AKA sword and sandal), science fiction, action, crime thriller, and even a sex comedy will all be explored here. Mario Bava became a sought after cinematographer early on in his career. Once he paid his dues as a cameraman, he moved into directing and proved that he could make gorgeous genre pictures cheaply. Bava worked in many genres but his greatest work can be found in his horror films.

Friday Night

My wife LeEtta and I go to CVS to get supplies. Do we do this every moviethon? Probably. She picks up some wine and I get Sunkist, Mountain Dew, and Vitamin Water. We also get some chips since my friend Matt and his wife Rubis are going to be dropping by tonight for some of the Bava action. We then go to Taco Bell for some dinner. I know that I said I would eat healthier for these things but oh well… This is the way of the moviethon.

Shit, I’m very agitated at the moment. Friday afternoons at work always get me all wound up. Everything goes wrong on Friday and none of it happens until the last hour of my shift. Back at home, I scramble around doing some minor chores so that our apartment will be presentable for guests. I also spend a lot of time cleaning my filthy glasses. When I’m finally done being a grumpy goof, we turn off an awful Clark Gable movie on TCM and get this party started. Quickly.

blacksabbath

“My lips are dead without your kisses.”

5:34pm

Black Sabbath

Boris Karloff introduces us to the world of Mario Bava. The first story in this trilogy of horror tales is ‘The Telephone’. It features a crazy hot chick named Rosy (played by French actress Michèle Mercier) being menaced by a mysterious caller. No matter what she does to hide from her stalker, he seems to know every step she takes, every move she makes. I’m channeling Gordon Sumner.

This creep makes it very clear that he ain’t after her body for the sexy, he wants to kill her. This claustrophobic little tale is so exquisitely shot. I love her tiny apartment with the lovely and mesmerizing stucco walls. The hot and bright colors of Rosy’s gaudy décor are set off perfectly by this cold white backdrop. There’s that dang bed that Bava loved to use over and over again. It will be making numerous appearances in this moviethon. The caller reveals himself as Frank, Rosy’s ex-boyfriend who has just busted out of jail.

Good thinking, Rosy, call your lesbian friend Mary (played by Lidia Alfonsi). She will help you and only be hella creepy about being alone with you in the process. Mary shows up in her bulletproof dress looking absolutely stunning. They settle in for the night and Mary offers Rosy a lesbian tranquilizer. Frank (Milo Quesada) shows up in the middle of the night with murder on his mind. This neat little number wraps up perfectly.

The second story, ‘The Wurdalak’, is a much more gruesome tale starring the toothy Mark Damon as Count Vladimir, a strapping young traveler with incredibly shitty luck. He finds a decapitated corpse and decides to take it to a nearby house. There he finds out that the corpse belongs to a person suspected of being a wurdalak (that’s a vampire, by the way).

Boris Karloff is Gorca, the master of this household full of suspicious and superstitious folks. These people are very scared and- HOLY SHIT! Did I mention how hot Sdenka (played by Susy Andersen) is? Vladimir falls in love with her immediately. This segment of Black Sabbath is sumptuously lit and its gothic atmosphere is hypnotizing. Oh, the chills that run down my spine when the canned dog howls…

As night approaches, the tension inside the house starts to crank up one notch at a time. When Gorca returns, the fam immediately notices that there is something different about him. C’mon people, the guy is such a wurdalak! Make with the heart stabbing and the decapitating. Oops, too late. He just took the kid! Oh, you poor peasants. You’re all screwed now.

Vladimir has an idea: I’ll just take the hot chick and we’ll run off together. But Sdenka won’t go, she knows she’s already damned to share the fate of her family. One thing I love about this tale is that evil casually floats towards you because it knows you don’t stand a chance. The battle is already decided. U R FUKT.

Our final tale is ‘The Drop of Water’. Oh yes, we’ve saved the best for last. I hope you guys like flashing green lights. Who am I talking to? Our not so nice heroine is Miss Helen Chester (played by Jacqueline Pierreux). The mistress of the house where Helen is a maid died while conducting a séance. It’s too bad that her final séance didn’t take place on camera. I loves me a good séance!

The corpse of the lady of the house is as grotesque as she can be, her face frozen in a terrible death grin. There are cats everywhere in this old house and creepy baby dolls too. Miss Chester decides to steal a ring off the corpse (and stuff it into her ample bosom). I highly doubt that this is not going to end well.

A spilled glass of water provides the calling card of our vengeful spirit. The sound of dripping water lets you know that you done did some dead person very wrong and they are coming to get you, ayup. Everything about this little blood-curdling tale is perfect. The mood gets creepier and creepier every minute. The lighting is masterful, pulsing and persistent.

Hey there’s a familiar face (it’s Harriet Medin from Riccardo Freda’s The Ghost). Agh, good lord, this story has an unsettling final shot. Boris Karloff bids us farewell but not without a warning to watch our backs on our way home. I suddenly have the feeling that this is going to be a fucking awesome moviethon, y’all.

dangerdiabolik

“I told you I’d cross your name off the human register.”

7:11 pm

Danger: Diabolik

I have fond memories of this film from when it would show up on Saturday morning TV when I was a kid. At the time, I had no idea that this was from Mario Bava or even that it was Italian. Diabolik is one of the most unique and bizarre action flicks ever made. The bank manager and the inspector have sent out a distraction, a fake police escort to trick the underworld and especially Diabolik (played by John Phillip Law) from guessing where the money is.

They send out these two idiots disguised as diplomats to guard the real $10 million. Oh shit, this soundtrack is bad ass. Some kickass Ennio Morricone jazz keeps things moving. Diabolik’s laugh is a killer. I hope I can still hear it when I try to sleep tonight. Deep deep dah! This music is orgasmic! And so are the sped up car chases! Marisa Mell is Eva, Diabolik’s special lady friend and she is five kinds of sexay!

This film contains the most amazing sets ever. Diabolik’s lair is a feast for the eyes. Beautiful painted backdrops and kooky devices abound. Legendary British comedic actor Terry Thomas plays the idiotic Minister of Finance. Diabolik and Eva really, really like each other a lot. They just made that pile of dirty money even dirtier! They gas the press conference with “exhilarating gas” but Eva and Diabolik are not affected because they took their “anti-exhilarating gas” pills? Diabolik, you crazy!

Our friends, Matt and Rubis arrive and are amazed by our little comic book adventure tale. The police crack down on the criminal underbelly. That means stopping all those evil hippies from doing their crazy dances and smoking their wacky weed. The bad guy, Valmont (Adolfo Celi of Who Saw Her Die?) is a pretty bad guy, let me tells ya. This dialogue is outstanding! You can predict almost every line before it’s spoken.

What I remember the most is Diabolik’s numerous jumpsuits that match his environments (which was parodied to great effect by the Beastie Boys). Them goofy gadgets sure is a hoot, ain’t they? Attack of the blue screen! Diabolik’s leg just disappeared. He’s all about this Jingko man. Diabolik’s pursuers are really persistent. It’s like they’re more than just a little attracted to him. I know I am.

This is the sweet miracle of this movie. Mario Bava’s visual effects are totally genius. This man cannot be caught. Not even death (or a really convincing coma) can stop him. They be blowin’ up the fake ass model buildings y’all. To protect the gubbment and the economy, the Minister of Finance and his cronies are transporting this giant hunk of gold to somewhere. Of course, Diabolik has other plans for the gold. Man, this is Eurotastic!

Cigar & Dinner Break

Matt and I head out for a smoke. He bums a clove from LeEtta’s stash while I smoke a huge Casa Fernandez cigar while drinking a Vitamin Water (XXX flavor). It’s cold out so Matt ducks back in while I do battle with my Nicaraguan delight. Dang, it is really friggin’ cold out here. I turn off the patio light and look up at the sky. The clouds are very high and wispy. They’re being stretched out like brush strokes. Suddenly it occurs to me that Bava painted this backdrop. I’m in a dang matte painting.

We get pizza from Vocelli’s and we harass the delivery guy because we are confused by the order. Matt tips him well which is good because we immediately realize that the order is just fine. I’m getting my eat on with one hand when while putting the next movie in the DVD player with the other.

whipandthebody

“I cling to my hatred as I cling to this dagger.”

10:27 pm

The Whip and the Body

Mr. Bava is credited here as John M. Old. Giorgia (Harriet Medin again) is our haunted housekeeper. Luciano Pigozzi has finally showed up. You can bet your sweet bippy that we’ll be seeing a great deal of him in this moviethon. Christopher Lee plays Kurt, the prodigal son who has returned and will bring about the destruction of this damaged family. He sexed up a servant girl (Giorgia’s daughter) and she committed suicide with a dagger that Giorgia keeps in a commemorative glass case. What the hell is that centerpiece? Donuts and baby skulls? Please papa, give me my patrimony! The lovely beach scenes are so melodramatic it hurts and this soundtrack by prolific composer Carlo Rustichelli is getting into my bloodstream.

Oh yes, Navenka (the insanely sexy Daliah Lavi) likes it but only the way Kurt can give it to her. She is Kurt’s ex and she is a dirty, dirty girl! Whip her! Whip her real good! Katia, the spurned and lovelorn girl, is played by the gorgeous Ida Galli AKA Evelyn Stewart (star of many Giallos). She wants to marry Christian (Tony Kendall) but he’s all hung up on masochistic Nevenka. Dang, this is Midsummer Night’s Dream Italian style. We’ve got some serious atmosphere here, folks. The wind never stops blowing.

Oh snap, Kurt just got a dagger in the neck! And not just any dagger either; THE DAGGER! We are treated to a great funeral scene. Sound design is an important factor in this movie as we hear the faint sounds of the whipping which torment Navenka. Now Kurt’s ghost is all up in her grill. I can’t believe those footprints just disappeared. I simply REFUSE to believe it! The color palette of this film is so decadent that it is interruptive. The red light falling on Navenka’s neck… Tony Kendall is super fantastic by the way.

This is precisely what an Italian horror movie is supposed to be: sexy, confusing, and ridiculously melodramatic. Man, what is up with these dang garbled subtitles? The story winds around and around. It builds and keeps building wonderfully. Secret passages, cobwebs, and coffins; what more could you ask for? This is one of Italy’s finest moments. The Whip and the Body gets better every time I watch it. The ending (which I won’t spoil for you here) is full on rockin’ awesome.

Short Break

Matt and Rubis have left us but their gifts include leftover desert pizza and more leftover pizza. They are good people. Take the beer with you, Matt. Beer is repellant. Those are my words. Why do people think I’m being sarcastic when I say I hate beer? Anyway, we turn the heat on as I try to get some feeling back in my frozen toes. This is Florida by the way. So you can just imagine how cold it’s getting.

hatchethoneymoon

“A woman should live only until her wedding night. Love once and then die.”

11:57 pm

Hatchet for the Honeymoon

The opening credits tell me all I need to know: DAGMAR LASSANDER! The opening music is a cascade of lounge schmaltz trash on the rocks with a twist of polyester and cheese. This is Bava in late ‘60s drive-in mode and Hatchet for the Honeymoon is one of his most underrated films. John Harrington (played by Stephen Forsyth), our main duder is haunted by blurry memories and is quite in touch with his craziness. He knows he is a madman and he seems to like it. John is compelled to kill women on their wedding night by something he can’t quite remember.

There is much technical trickery from director/cinematographer Bava to be found in this little piece of brilliance. Sweet Dagmar plays Helen Wood (yeah, I bet she WOOD), a lovely little lass. John’s got a secret hideaway place and it’s not his butt. I feel I have to mention that this movie makes me sleepy though I refuse to fall asleep. We’ve just drifted into something sweet and strange. John’s mannequin makeout sessions are adorable. Then the crazy echo guitar and synthesizers kick in. This segues right into a séance and I couldn’t be happier. What a delight!

John’s wife Mildred is played by the very odd Laura Betti (who we’ll see again later in Bay of Blood). Mildred talks to the spirit world while someone hums a lullaby. Classic. The inspector (Jesús Puente) shows up and starts nosing around. John kills brides! And now we’ve got fashion models that dress like brides. Oh you silly bitch, don’t tell your boss that you’re getting married. He is totally going to kill you! But I guess it’s okay. John is killing because he has to. The trippy camera tricks are so totally bitchin’ like I can’t like believe my eyes and stuff. Wait a second, shouldn’t this be called Meat Cleaver for the Honeymoon?

I ask: “Um, if that cremator is so hot then how can he pull the tray out with his bare hands?”

LeEtta whispers: “Supah powahs!”

Mildred is just begging to get hit with his meat cleaver. Mainly, it is because she really hates grapes. Helen likes to amuse herself doing ‘crazy’ things! I’m the same way. The non-horror sections of the soundtrack are elevator drone frenzy. LeEtta is starting to doze off. She’s so lucky! I want to be the one dreaming of this movie, not watching it! Hey look at that, John’s watching a scene from ‘The Wurdalak’ on TV and the dialogue has been changed to make it sound like a soap opera.

This mansion is gorgeous and boy does that headboard look familiar (probably because we saw it in ‘The Telephone’). Mildred wants some action but John can’t give it to her. Ha ha, they’ve never made love. What a couple of idiots! People who have marital problems are all serial killers. Marital strife reaches a fever pitch as John is coming after Mildred with the meat cleaver. Hmm, I can’t tell if she’s scared, happy, or horny about it. I’m feeling all three of those myself right now.

The cops show up for a little Telltale Heart action as Mildred’s body is dripping blood from the top of the stairs. Why don’t they just start tearing Mr. Harrington’s goddamned mansion apart? Since when do Italian cops do things by the book? John is such a lucky bastard. I need a little doppelganger of my younger self hanging around me constantly. Cool and spooky moments abound as Mildred’s spirit doesn’t stay departed for long. LeEtta wakes up and announces that she is going to bed.

Broads with loose morals are drawn to the dreamy lady-killer John like flies. There is a shape coming up the stairs getting more and more tangible as it gets closer to the room and John is paralyzed by fear. Later, John goes clubbin’ with his wife’s ashes and some more ghostly hijinks ensue. These are the wonder years, my friends. It seems that his destroyed childhood drove him butt ass crazy. Creepy toys! This is supposed be taking place in France? I think someone’s mental condition is deteriorating rapidly. Taste the sweet irony of death, you dirty rat bastard. Well that’s it for tonight. I’m going to go to bed now. BAAAVAAAA!!!!

Saturday

We wake up at a reasonable hour. I slept like a rock! I try to remember my dreams but they’re gone before I can jot them down. Sorry, Mario. Maybe I’ll try making something up: Last night, I dreamed of hot air balloons and train tunnels. What do you think that means? LeE and I go to Einstein’s (big surprise!). After that, we go to Cigar Castle (which opens nice and early on Saturdays) and I get a couple of snobby expensive selections for today and tomorrow.

Finally, we go to 7-11 so I can get us lottery tickets, some Vitamin Waters (they have the Formula 50 flavor!), and a modest sized Slurpee for me. Enough doddling, time for Bava! I am going to be entering his world completely with my Saturday morning features. Gods, devils, and space vampires? Bring it.

herculeshauntedworld

“Well, I didn’t think Hades would be anything like this!”

10:44 am

Hercules in the Haunted World

I draw the curtains to shut out the morning sun and get knee deep in the peplum cinema. This is a genre I know absolutely jack squat about. The dubbing is priceless. Hercules (played by Reg Park) and Thesus (George Ardisson) got some problems. Evil duders are raiding! Oh noes! Jocasta is hot as hell! But the miniatures are even hotter. Go get Dianara you magnificent bastard. Christopher Lee is back in the moviethon as King Lico, the evil and scheming uncle of Princess Deianira. That’s good. Real good.

Deianira (played by Leonora Ruffo) rises from her stone coffin and she is a haunting vision of goddessness. Hercules tries to get through to her but she is cursed and thinks that he is dead. This delicious hunk of man is not dead, you silly beyatch! Hercules goes to the oracle to get some dang answers. Zeus, help me! He gets his list of instructions but before he can go save the day, he needs his buddy Thesus. Damn, Hercules just cock-blocked Thesus but for some reason he’s happy about it. I don’t understand these giant oily dudes.

Okay yeah, this is one beautiful Hercules movie. They get out onto the sea and everything goes red and blue. This strange world is so soothing and gorgeous yet it is tinged with danger. I think you just got dosed, Hercules. We all sleepy now. The film kindly delivers a dash of sexiness from the fine womens of Hesperides. Look lady, just tell me where the G-damn golden apple is! Oh, it’s up this giant tree right here? Thanks so much!

The creature that tries to eat Hercules’s buddies looks like something out of a Japanese monster movie. Oh my Gods, that friggin’ thing just talked! Don’t trust Hades, it be schemin’. I don’t think I’ll become a fan of this genre anytime soon but this is just so freakin’ cool. Evil ladies in chains, bubbling lava, the fetid winds of Hades, and tree roots that bleed. Sign me up. Oops, scratch that. Man down! Man down! We just lost Thesus. Nooooooo!

Okay, never mind. Thesus is back and is dumber than ever (there’s a spoiler for you). He has pissed off Pluto by taking his favorite daughter without mentioning it to anyone. Now King Lico needs to steal Deianira’s blood by flaying her and then somehow transfusing it into his veins. I doubt we’re going to see that happen today. The flying undead (which are actually pretty frightening) come after Hercules as he tries to save the day from the evil Licos. This is one rollicking adventure, I tells ya. Christopher Lee’s skeleton hand dagger is cool as shit. It’s all fun and games until somebody offends the Gods.

planetvampires

“Emergency, emergency! Conditions desperate. Little chance of survival. Help us!”

12:21 pm

Planet of the Vampires

I must confess that this movie destroyed me the first time I watched it. First, it bored me to tears and then it eventually lulled me into a deep sleep long before the final credits rolled. Now I return to it and I think that this highly stylized spaceship goofiness is just what I need right now. “In 60 fractions of megon, we’ll start the landing maneuver.” Okay, fucker, when the hell is that exactly?

Those leather outfits are pretty impressive. They manage to crash land the ship safely but the crew starts going bonkers. They are suddenly murderously violent, bent on destroying one another. I think I know what happened: They must have landed on the planet of Everyonzadouche. The landscape of this alien world is superbly realized. It’s all colored lights and fog machines and it’s brilliant.

Hey Captain Mark (played by Barry Sullivan), why don’t you tell us to calm down again? It will do us a whole lot of good, you magnificent son of a bitch. I can’t believe what a fool I was not to be completely gaga over this hot slice of eye candy and ridiculous dialog. I should have teamed this with Hercules in the Haunted World and Diabolik for a seriously sweet triple feature. The shot of the fog rolling over the silver graves of their comrades is magnificent!

The undead spacemen rise from their cellophane tombs in grand slow motion. This is where Dr. Bava earned his PHD from the school of Kickassiness. Giant skeletons of unearthly creatures and their ghostly voices mumbling in a horrid unknown language echoing through giant decaying catacombs- I mean, a spaceship. H.P. Lovecraft, anyone? I wonder if someone was inspired by this film and then made millions off of it. I’m looking at you, Ridley Scott.

“Empty faces! Dead faces!” Tiona (played by Evi Marandi) screams while lying naked and sweaty under some very thin sheets as her super sexy redhead ladyfriend Sanya tries to calm her. Hey Sanya looks familiar and it’s probably because she’s Norma Bengell (of Sergio Corbucci’s Hellbenders). God damn it, this movie (a perfect blend of science fiction and gothic horror, by the way) is a super good time! There’s even some gory surprises and cool jumps scares.

Ah, poor aliens. “Hey dudes, can you guys give us a lift? IN YOUR DEAD BODIES!?!?!” There’s one hell of a throwdown as the remaining humans and the space vampires battle for the only working meteor rejecter on the planet. Oh, the deliciously evil irony at the end of the film is quite delightful. I am kind of an idiot for not loving this movie the first time around.

Lunch

LeEtta bakes red potatoes and fresh Brussels sprouts for a healthy lunch which will hopefully balance out last night’s junk food transgressions. Oh, the sprouts are fantastic! They are perfectly cooked all the way through and covered in Cavender’s Greek seasoning and olive oil. The red potatoes are also perfect. They are lighter than regular potatoes and not nearly as starchy as what I’m used to.

fourtimesnight

“Come here, Miss Innocent, and I’ll teach you a new game!”

2:05 pm

Four Times that Night

Mr. Space Vampires directs this swingin’ sex comedy take on Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômon. What was that? No, I am not making this up. Once you hear the sassy jazz soundtrack of the animated credit sequence, you’ll be powerless to resist this film’s seductive powers. This creepy perv bastard likes to drive around the park trying to score. But he’s Gianni (played by Brett Halsey) and he can have any woman he wants.

Gianni manages to convince the luscious but innocent Tina (the lovely Daniela Giordano) to go on a date with him. Off to the disco they go. When Tina decides that it’s time to go home is where the story takes off in a new direction. We flash ahead to 3:30 in the morning where she comes home with a torn dress and a story to tell her worried mother. In Tina’s side of the story, Gianni is pretty creepy bastard.

Shouldn’t someone be concerned about that freaky janitor/security guard (played by trash producer extraordinaire Dick Randall)? He looks like a professional sex maniac. Uh oh, pervert Gianni takes Tina back to his place, strips down to his bikini underwear, and tries to molest her. We rewind back to the park for Gianni’s side of the story. Now Gianni is the shy one. Even Tina’s spinster mother is transformed into a ravenous vamp in his version.

The way Gianni tells it, Tina is an aggressive sex kitten but it’s totally understandable. What woman can resist a man with a badass bachelor pad and a bottomless supply of J&B? Four Times that Night is sexy and funny! It’s like a comedy with sexual situations! And now it’s time for the less-than-reliable and lascivious janitor to tell his side of the story. This should be good.

According to this degenerate, Gianni’s date with Tina turns into a foursome with Gianni’s weird friends back at his place. Gianni is gay and wants his friend Giorgio while Tina is seduced by Esmerelda (French actress Pascale Petit), the lesbian. Esmerelda: “I met Gianni in a club full of gays.” Hold on, was that a flashback within a flashback? Now that is good storytelling, my friends.

Okay, so this is just a little politically incorrect. Luckily for us confused and offended viewers, a psychologist steps in to give us the ‘truth’. He shows us the fourth and final possible story of the events of that night. Of course, the final version, where everything from the subjective tales comes together, is the best. This definitely isn’t one of my favorites from Bava but it is just kooky and fun enough for an old stick in the mud like me.

Nap!

Four Times That Night almost got me! I was starting to get really snoozy by the end. I tell LeEtta to wake me by 5:00 if I’m not up already. One delightful power nap later, I wake up on my own exactly when I want to. Groggy but in good spirits, I’m ready for the next movie. LeEtta takes a break from her computering to rejoin the moviethon.

fivedolls

“Only murders kill.”

5:13 pm

5 Dolls for an August Moon

This wild and wacky giallo is a classic case of Bava taking a shit script and turning it into gold. With interchangeable characters and a convoluted plot, there’s almost nothing to it at all. Professor Farrell (played by William Berger) has a secret formula and everyone wants to buy it. When he won’t sell, people start turning up dead. A few twists and then it’s over. Goodnight, everyone!

But wait! Did I mention that the succulent Edwige Fenech is in this one? LeEtta asks me if that means she’s relatively hearty in dry climates. I say yes and I truly mean it this time. There are love triangles, some straight and some lesbian. The sexy soundtrack by Piero Umiliani melts in your mouth like ribald candy. The fashions and set designs were chic for about 5 seconds in 1970.

LeEtta: (to Edwige Fenech) “Put your dress on, lady.”

Me: “No! Don’t you EVER tell her to do that!”

I love the jaunty music they play when they start stashing the murder victims’ bodies in the freezer. George (Teodoro Corrà), you suave son of a bitch. Your wife only has eyes for the raging lesbian affections of Trudy (played by Ira von Fürstenberg of The Fifth Cord) who also happens to be the professor’s wife. Okay Mr. Bava, is it day or is it night? The whole movie seems to take place in this perpetual twilight. Has it been days or has it been hours since the murders started?

A knock at the door (our real door, not one in the movie) means that our friend Shelly has just joined us for yet another moviethon. I sure hope she likes characters that like to buy formulas for industrial resins and who may or may not be willing to kill for them. I know I do! Those day for night filters aim to please. Don’t fuck with Trudy. She will super karate your ass! Jack (Howard Ross of New York Ripper and Werewolf Woman) is frightening but his underwear frightens us even more. We are all very happy when he puts some dang pants on.

This is the first film in the moviethon that is truly slumber inducing. Strange and unexplained things happen, murders even, and none of the characters gets all that bent out of shape about it. Speaking of weird, here is my run on sentence: The killer spikes the alcohol so that three of the remaining folks pass out and then makes the three unconscious characters disappear while they could have been rescued by some sailors passing through and then this mysterious person also manages to put everything back EXACTLY as it had been before these characters wake up again. This is some fucking confounding and convoluted bullshit right here.

And what’s with that freezer that keeps bodies and meat frozen but a barrel of fruit fresh at room temperature? These are the questions that 5 Dolls for an August Moon inspires. Getting shot causes George to make some weird noises. Industrial espionage and microfilm; they go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Hey, nice carrot placement! The big reveal at the end is astoundingly stupid but hella fun.

Cigar Break & Dinner

I smoke a cigar but it doesn’t have a label and I can’t remember what the hell it is. LeEtta and Shelly smoke clove cigarettes. LeEtta is drinking wine and Shelly is drinking Diet Mountain Dew. I drink regular Mountain Dew. This is the high life. Shelly and I go out for subs from Publix. The grocery store at night is so great. It is brightly lit but it is damn near empty. After we eat, Shelly switches to J&B which is an excellent way to go all things considered.

girlwhoknewtoomuch

“Do you still think that I’m delusional? Or that I’m crazy?”

9:15 pm

The Girl Who Knew Too Much

We finally get to what is considered by some to be the very first giallo. The opening song is a nice and slinky slice of rock and roll. Thank you, Mr. Bava for the best TWA commercial ever. While flying to Rome to visit a sickly family friend, Nora (played by Letícia Román) mistakenly takes a pack of marijuana cigarettes from a stranger on the plane. Judging by her horrible snakeskin coat, she smokes them all the time. A young and strapping John Saxon (of Tenebre and A Nightmare on Elm Street) plays Dr. Marcello Bassi who clearly has a thing for Nora.

That nightie you got there is hella sexy, Miss Nora. But not such a great job taking care of Ethel, you jackass! She dies the first night you’re there? Bava’s black and white photography of Rome is razor sharp. After being knocked senseless by a purse-snatcher, Nora witnesses a murder. She passes out again and some helpful goofus gives her whiskey to help her wake up. Now the cop doesn’t believe her story because he thinks she’s a drunk.

Lookie there, another incredible funeral scene. There are all these little subtle touches that make the whole setting tangible and creepy. I don’t think I trust this weirdo named Laura (played by Valentina Cortese), who claims to be dead Ethyl’s friend. Nora decides to accept Laura’s offer to stay in her house. Now our heroine is alone and everything is getting wonderfully suspicious and creepy.

Nora is awesome! She is so obsessed with her murder mystery novels that she decides to treat this very dangerous situation like a game. Her complicated trap made with a maze of string and flour that she sets up to catch the killer is hilariously overdone. Poor love struck Marcello falls into the running joke (literally) by getting injured over and over again throughout the film.

An outstandingly eerie atmosphere creeps in at the deserted building with the swinging light fixtures. The voice guiding her through the building with the constantly shifting light is outstanding. Every clue leads to another twist of the story. But there’s comedy to keep things light. When Nora gets too close to the truth, the game isn’t so fun anymore.

baronblood

“Child, do you think you can destroy me with a TRINKET!?!?!”

10:50 pm

Baron Blood

Let the soothing muzak of this lovely Pan Am commercial (I guess Bava lost his contract with TWA) that is passing as the opening credits take you to a special place. Peter (played by Antonio Cantafora) shows up in Austria to claim his newly inherited castle. Of course his castle is known as the ‘castle of the devils’ but that’s just a name, right? Elke Sommer (of Lisa and the Devil), is a truly magnificent woman! She plays Eva, an architectural student. Student? She looks old enough to be the teacher.

Luciano Pigozzi, you impish prankster! Little (freaky looking) Nicoletta Elmi of Deep Red and The Cursed Medallion is in this one too. The story of the evil Baron Otto von Kliest is pretty dark and twisted. He tortured people real good yeah he did. Elke Sommer is kind of um… bad in this movie. I love her, I really do but damn. Peter says: “Don’t worry, Eva, my turtleneck will protect us from any ancient incantations that I might read aloud in a haunted castle. I must never remove my turtleneck!”

Look, you two fuckin’ cheeseballs, do not read that incantation! Oops, too late! Eva and Peter just totally read the incantation summoning the naughty baron. Queue the wind and the fog machines. These locations are gorgeous. This castle is a godsend and, of course, it’s perfectly lit and shot. Hey, what the shit? They’re reading the spell to summon the malignant baron AGAIN? Really? You stupid asses deserve whatever comes your way.

The makeup on the baron is pretty dang grotesque. And he is certainly a force to be reckoned with. This guy is going through victims like something that goes through things fast. Joseph Cotton (of The Hellbenders and A Whisper in the Dark) is all up in this one, my friends. Did I mention how good this organ-laden soundtrack is? Composer Stelvio Cipriani is a man among men who are way, way not as cool as he is.

We are nearing the last phase of Bava’s film career and he is still in top form. There are strange, blurry moments of foreboding that are warnings that nobody pays attention to. The chase sequence through the campus at night is a foggy dream. Kristina the clairvoyant will help us. She will save the day in one of my favorite séance sequences of all time. Kristina is played by Ivan Rassimov’s frickin’ sister! I can’t even wrap my mind around that much awesomeness.

They summon the witch to fix this shit. I like how the little girl figures out the mystery. She tells the adults and they start to put everything together. They saved Eva’s worst outfit for last. The ending is the bomb. The baron’s victims come calling and they want to make him pay for his torturous crimes. Bless you, fish eye lens. The movies are over for tonight.

Sunday

I wake up around 8:30 and try to remember my dreams. The most distinct one is where this chick needed a face transplant (like in Eyes Without a Face) because of this degenerative face condition she had. This has nothing to do with Bava but at the worst stages she did kind of resemble the mutilated mug of the bloody Baron. In the same dream, I got arrested (I don’t know why) and my cousin Bonnie had to come bail me out and drive me back to Tampa which she wasn’t too happy about. Anyway…

We head out to Bob Evans (another surprise for a moviethon!) where I get a hotcake, their world famous biscuit sandwich with sausage, egg and cheese, and unsweetened iced tea. LeEtta gets the spinach and bacon benedict, coffee, and orange juice. Healthy? No, but these are soul fortifying foods. We need them because it isn’t just any Sunday. This is Black Sunday, y’all. I draw the curtains yet again, plunging our living room in the all too familiar dim reddish glow.

blacksunday

“Come, kiss me! My lips will transform you.”

10:37 am

Black Sunday

For some, this is the be all, end all of Mario Bava’s entire legacy. For me, it is proof that for a brief but wonderful time, the Italians had everyone trumped when it came to gothic horror. Don’t believe me? Take Black Sunday and Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock and compare them to anything the States had to offer at the time. Big eyed Barbara Steele will be our witchy woman for this horror classic. The terror is coming. It is going to be nailed to your face for all eternity. Enjoy.

Here is yet another example of Bava’s masterful command of black and white photography. Every single detail is captured by his meticulous eye and presented in stark hyper reality. Andre (a strapping young John Richardson (of Umberto Lenzi’s Eyeball)) and the Dr. Jackass (played by Andrea Checchi) just awakened a timeless evil in the form of a dead sleeping witch but I don’t hold it against them. Without dumbasses to stir up some shit, there’d be no horror movies.

The inhabitants of the village who are also the ancestors of the witch’s brother who condemned her to death 200 years ago are starting to get a little spooked. There is some nasty churning going on in them there rotting eye sockets, y’all. And now the witch’s evil cohort Igor (Arturo Dominici) has risen from the grave in a truly fabulous manner. What an entrance! I can still smell the syrup from my pancake on me. Now that’s terrifying.

Slow motion stagecoach! Doctor Butterkiss (yeah, I know that’s not his name) decides to get inside this strange coach and go along with the zombie duder. That’s smart. Now you’re totally trapped and our favorite vampiric witch is gonna feed on ya. “You will be dead to men but you will be alive in death!” Sounds like a pretty sweet gig to me.

The melodramatic music kicks in as Andre carries the lovely Steele after a wee fainting spell. This is some righteous gothic awesomeness. The funniest thing is that these superstitious people don’t like to talk about what they fear may be happening. They KNOW what’s going on, for God’s sake. Grab the pitchforks and some torches and let’s settle this shit, you friggin’ rednecks!

Secret passages, eh? I didn’t expect to find any of those in this CREEPY OLD CASTLE! Yes, let’s explore it! Let us arm ourselves with candles. That’s funny, I never noticed that nudie portrait of the witch before. That’s kind of trashy. But you know what, that is exactly what bitches do when they’re in league with the devil.

There are some pretty gory moments in this one. We get a nasty eye-gouging and a man is thrown into the fire where we get to see his head burn in all of its nasty and melty glory. Okay, so NOW the townspeople are all riled up. Took them freakin’ long enough. Everything’s gonna be all right! Rockabye!

rabiddogs

“You guys are obnoxious pigs!”

12:14 pm

Rabid Dogs

Please Note: There is an alternate cut of this movie called Kidnapped. Do not under any circumstances watch this version. Though his intentions were good, Lamberto Bava totally fucked up his dad’s film by recutting, shooting new footage, and slapping a new and shitty soundtrack over the top.

We are now about as far away as we can get from Black Sunday. This is the versatile Bava keeping up with the times. As the crime film genre dominated the popular cinema, Bava directed this brutal thriller. Unfortunately, Rabid Dogs had some terrible production and casting problems and it took a very long time before it saw the light of day. This sweaty and grim crime drama is so different from everything else in Bava’s canon that I can’t help but love it.

These scumbag bandits (led by Maurice Poli) pull off a heist and turn to carjacking after their driver is shot and their getaway car is disabled. They take a female hostage, Maria (played by Lea Lander (who we’ll be seeing later in Blood and Black Lace)) after knifing her friend in a parking garage while surrounded by police. Next, they hijack a car with a man named Riccardo (Riccardo Cucciolla of Sacco and Vanzetti) at the wheel and his ill son in the backseat. Now we’re all good and ready to go on a little road trip straight to hell.

While the car (where most of this movie takes place) is loaded with excellent actors, my money is on George Eastman (AKA Luigi Montefiori). The guy is a giant and his character named 32 is an unhinged madman. Eastman is one of my favorite actors and this performance is one of his freakiest. His crazy competition comes in the form of the equally unhinged Bisturi played excellently by Don Backy AKA Aldo Caponi.

Bava expert Tim Lucas’s awesome audio commentary on this DVD is a major temptation for me. The guy’s encyclopedic knowledge about the entire Bava catalog is staggering and I want to get the scoop on the trivia for Rabid Dogs. But I’ll have to be an even nerdier nerd than I already am some other time as this intense film requires my total attention.

Damn it, these degenerates are driving me up the fucking wall! Their acts of savagery and general awfulness are very hard to watch. But that’s the nature of this film (and the entire Italian crime thriller genre for that matter). If these characters were cool or admirable for their callous and sick behavior then this would be a very different and much less rewarding film. Uh oh, 32 picked up a bottle of J&B. Now the shit is really going to hit the fan.

The look of horror on Bisturi’s face after 32 is shot intercut with the shots of a pinball machine is a sign that there is some unholy genius at work behind this one. It’s astonishing to me that this cut of the film, as it is presented here on this DVD, is a workprint. Thanks to some disastrous distribution issues, this isn’t even Bava’s final cut and it is still a brilliant movie. And the ending is so savagely ironic, it is wonderfully satisfying. Rabid Dogs may be a lot of work but it pays off big time.

Lunch

Nothing fancy. I boil some pasta, pour some sauce and sprinkle cheese over it. LeEtta joins me for a little food and then she heads back into the other room to get back on the computer. I occasionally interrupt her to let her know what she’s missing.

shock-bava

“Mama, I have to kill you.”

2:24 pm

Shock

Bava’s final horror film? Why, yes it is. “Marco, that’s my name.” And thus, we are introduced to one of the most annoying kids in Italian horror history. The throne eludes Marco (played by David Colin Jr. of Beyond the Door) because of the woefully irritating Bob in Fulci’s House by the Cemetery. I made sure to schedule this movie today because Shelly HATES Marco and I wouldn’t her want to suffer through him again. You know, I try to be somewhat accommodating to my moviethon guests.

Marco’s mother Dora (played by the lovely Daria Nicolodi) and her new husband Bruno (John Steiner of Tenebre) move into her old house. This house just happens to be where she and her dead husband Carlo used to live her. You see, Carlo was a junkie who killed himself and something tells me that his spirit hasn’t like moved on. Marco gets possessed by his dead daddy’s spirit and all sorts of ghostly gobbledygook takes place.

There’s a squirm-inducing incestuous theme running through this film. And that Punch and Judy show Marco and Dora watch in the park is far more traumatizing than that. There are some great jump scares hidden in this one. I’ve always felt that Shock was as much a product of Mario’s son, Lamberto Bava (who served as assistant director), as it was his own, especially when comparing it to Lamberto’s excellent psychosexual thriller Macabre.

My biggest issue with this film is that while it is very well shot, the vibrant color schemes that Bava once saturated his supernatural tales with are nowhere to be found. Luckily, the freaky sequences (like the rotting hand of Carlo’s corpse caressing Dora’s neck) are excellent and give this film the creepy edge that it needs. The presence of Ivan Rassimov, the film’s wild prog psychedelic score, and a case of J&B place this firmly in 70s Italian genre cinema.

Even though Daria Nicolodi’s dialogue is dubbed, her terrified and robust screams are not. When she is menaced by a flying boxcutter (I guess that would be her 9/11), Dora lets the world know of her terror by belting out some real blood-curdlers. As her son’s behavior gets more and more demented and the unexplainable occurrences become more frequent, Dora’s sanity begins to fracture.

Shock does have its low points. For instance, the psychobabble that Dr. Aldi (played by the super mega awesome badass Mr. Rassimov) spouts off in regards to Marco’s condition are lame as shit. And the Slinky. What is up with the friggin’ Slinky? Meh, I don’t even want to talk about it. I’m nitpicking. The last third of this film kicks so much ass that its boot is soaked in blood and poopoo. I must say that I regret typing that last sentence.

The strangeness… The strangeness… The ending makes me wish I’d found this one as a pre-teenager at the video store like I did with Pupi Avati’s Zeder. This movie’s climax gives me that wistful, haunted feeling from my childhood I used to get when watching horror movies. Bless you, Mario Bava.

killbabykill

“Die, you damned bitch! You and all your demonic creatures.”

4:03 pm

Kill Baby Kill!

This was the first Mario Bava film I ever watched (not counting Diabolik). I picked up the cheap Diamond DVD (along with Fulci’s House by the Cemetery and Seven Doors of Death) at Suncoast Video in the University Mall and it totally blew me away. Now Anchor Bay has finally, finally put this out in a nicely restored widescreen version. Kill Baby Kill! never lets up on its eerie atmosphere and it is easily one of Bava’s finest films.

Dr. Paul Eswai (played by Giacomo Rossi-Stuart of Death Smiled at Murder) has been called in to aid Inspector Kruger (Piero Lulli of My Dear Killer) in his investigation of some mysterious deaths in a small rundown village. The townspeople are suspicious of these two outsiders and are terrified by some unspoken horror lurking in the village. The doctor performs an autopsy (against the wishes of the superstitious locals) on a woman who recently died and finds something strange: a coin stuck inside her dang heart.

Paul is assisted by the pale-lipped Monica (Erica Blanc of The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave), a local girl who has just returned from her schooling abroad. She will become the doctor’s love interest as well as a big part of the plot later in the film. Don’t believe me? Just you wait and see, yo. Excuse me, burgomeister Karl (Luciano Catenacci of Almost Human). You’re not fucking helping the situation so just step aside, duder.

Then there’s the wickedly creepy little ghost girl. She is a vicious little spirit whose very presence causes people to kill themselves. No wonder the morons in this village are scared. This smiling and giggling little princess will bring about your demise, bitches. And she’ll do it by your own hands!

Ruth (played by Fabienne Dali) is the local sexy, sexy witch who the people turn to for help in spiritual matters. Her methods of protecting people from evil spirits are cruel AND unusual. Some very bad shit be goin’ down at the Villa Graps. Man, this movie’s got everything: spiral staircases, a kickass mansion, potions, arcane exorcism rites, etc. E getter inbegstigate dids slizinvo gggggggg

Woops, dozed off for a little bit there. See, I told you these flicks were dreamy. I got too comfortable and the giggling of that murderous spirit caused me to drift into a light slumber. That is a tad disconcerting to me. If this actually took place in real life, I’d be an easy mark. There is an evil wind blowing through the village just as the breeze outside picks up just behind the window behind me.

This supernatural horror tale is exquisitely scripted with a great deal of thought put into it. Obviously in love with the material, Bava delivers everything one could ever hope to find in a film of this variety. The sets are deliciously gothic, the moody lighting is always perfect, and the tension never lets up. Even the soundtrack is awesome.

The best and strangest scene is when Dr. Paul gets caught in a spiritual loop in the house. Every time he leaves a room, he runs through it again. It seems as though he is chasing someone: HIMSELF! Next, he bumps into a painting of the house and then into it, transporting him outside where he passes out. This is a truly bizarre and memorable sequence.

Time for the final showdown! Ruth is mad as hell and she’s not gonna take it anymore. Yay! Creepy baby dolls! Who doesn’t like those in their scary ass house? Okay, that ending was fucking awesome. Everyone needs to run out and watch this movie immediately. Do it or the little girl will make you kill yourself!

Dinner

LeEtta makes some lo-fi quesadillas for us with spinach tortillas, two different kinds of cheese, and Cavender’s seasoning (we kind of put this on everything). We discuss the curse of Blood and Black Lace. LeEtta has never managed to stay awake through it. Will tonight be any different? Let’s hope so.

bloodblacklace

“I never thought I had it in me to kill.”

5:48 pm

Blood and Black Lace

This is Bava’s model-slashin’ masterpiece and it’s also his most garishly lit and sumptuously designed film. While The Girl Who Knew Too Much was technically the first giallo, it is Blood and Black Lace, released in 1964, that defined the genre. The credit sequence introducing the characters posing alongside mannequins and seamstress’s dummies is the bomb. Hmm, that swinging sign makes me think this is supposed to be a comedy. Hey it’s Cameron Mitchell (of Minnesota Clay and Maneater of Hydra) before he was a washed up loser. Luciano Pigozzi is in the house and yes ladies, he’s keepin’ it real!

A ‘respectable’ fashion house is the scene of a brutal murder. Peggy (Mary Arden), stop crying! Did your best friend just get killed or something? Oh shiznit, the cocaine is involved. COCAINE! I feel so dirty just thinking about it. Actually, the drug factor in this movie is so abstract that it could be anything: heroin, LSD, crystal meth, etc. You know, the entire string of murders could have been prevented if the first victim, Isabella (Francesca Ungaro), hadn’t kept a dang diary. Now all of you fuckers have to die!

There are about a million suspicious glances just in the first 20 minutes of this flick. Everyone looks so guilty. And they should be. They’re all dang junkies, especially Marco (Massimo Righi of Black Sabbath). He’s a nice guy, has a thing for Peggy but he needs his fix. Yeah, he needs a fix real bad.

Gee, Nicole (played by Ariana Gorini) is kind of annoying. I think that she deserves to die. The lighting in the antique shop is to die for. This kill scene is saturated in green, purple, blue and red. The part where the killer vanishes into thin air. Yeah, that didn’t work very well. Our masked killer is on the warpath!

Oh wow, Harriet Medin is here too? She’s been all over this dang moviethon. Medin plays Clarice, Peggy’s guardian. Huh? All I know is that everyone has something to hide. People threaten each other with blackmail every couple of minutes. I’m getting kind of confused here. LeEtta is awake so far. The movie has not defeated her yet but I think I’m in trouble. Holy shit, the killer just smacked Peggy across the room!

For some reason, Greta (Lea Lander) isn’t too concerned about the body in her trunk. The killer is especially sadistic; beating, stabbing, bludgeoning, smothering, drowning and burning his way through fashion models like they were going out of style. I don’t think Marco is going to be too good in a police lineup. The guy’s too squirrelly. Oh, he’s got epilepsy. That explains a few things. Sorry, Marco. I judged you too harshly. So epileptics act just like junkies? Okay, got it.

This Tao Li chick, is she supposed to be Chinese? The actress’s name is Claude Dantes. Sounds kind of Asian, I guess. The thought of a sex maniac in their fashion house doesn’t please her at all. Oh thank you, Tao Li, you died so exquisitely just now.

The plot comes together very nicely once all is revealed. But it’s not over yet. We still have a few loose ends. Oh snap, there’s the double cross! WTF? You just can’t trust murderers these days. Uh oh, the camera is moving slowly through the room. A creeping presence; someone or something is trudging along. The killer is here!

Cigar Break

Out on the patio, I light up an amazing Rocky Patel cigar, crack open a Sunkist orange soda, fire up my iPod and listen to my giallo mix. It’s a god damned good time. LeEtta finally conquered Blood and Black Lace but it almost destroyed me. Seems as though I needed this break more than I thought. I wander down the steps of my patio and onto the path and very suspiciously trudge along looking up into the evening sky. I’m trying to figure out how to light the path to make it appear sufficiently eerie on film.

bayofblood

“Gee, they’re good at playing dead, aren’t they?”

8:35 pm

Bay Of Blood

While the most appropriate title for this film is Chain Reaction, I prefer one of its alternate titles: Twitch of the Death Nerve. It always gets the most bizarre looks from people whenever I mention it. In a recent medical journal, scientists have actually located and have managed to isolate the ‘death nerve’ in the human body. Millions of lives have been spared.

I played this film for a group of friends once and it went over like a lead balloon. I can’t really explain it. This fast paced giallo with a very high body count and gratuitous nudity bored everyone (a bunch of haters) to tears. It was a very traumatic experience for me and is the sole reason why I’m the shut-in that I am today.

Oh, Stelvio Cipriani, you’re soundtrack is so soothing especially when I hear it and think of all the carnage this flick has. Poor old lady, I sure hope someone puts her out of her misery soon. But what does she have to be upset about? Look at the opulent and wonderful house she has. Aren’t all rich people happy? Hey look, someone put her out of her misery. And now her killer has been killed. Everyone wants to inherit the bay and will kill to get their hands on it.

Who wipes their nose on a squid? Did Simon (played by Claudio Camaso) actor improvise that or did Mario Bava direct him to wipe his nose on that poor, defenseless squid? Paolo Fosatti (Leopoldo Trieste) is a great comic character. He chases bugs around. Oh goodie, a carload of fun-loving young people. Thank God, they are marked for death. Brunhilda (Brigitte Skay) is totally hot and was also naked in Four Time That Night. All is not right at this quaint decrepit villa. Someone is watching these trampy tramps with angry evil eyes.

Laura Betti, the horny wife from Hatchet for the Honeymoon is here as Paolo’s drunk (and possibly horny) wife. She’s my favorite (and gets the best death scene (almost))! She reminds LeEtta of Medusa. Every inch of this film’s décor is wickedly tacky and I can only dream of stepping into this freakishly ugly world to live forever. Brunhilda’s death scene is completely awesome. She gets abandoned by her ‘friends’ and this makes her an easy target for the killer (or killers or whatever).

I love the dissolves in this movie. Sometimes a shot will dissolve into darkness and then the film fades back in… on the same scene! Every movie should do this. Oh shit, machete to the face! I can dig that. Then the killer pins the lovers together with a spear and their death squirms look like they’re still making love which is 1. erotic, 2. repulsive and 3. totally bitchin’. Twitch of the Death Nerve isn’t about who the killer is; it’s about who the killer isn’t.

Luigi Pistilli (Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) is in this one. All the paths and all the storylines are intersecting. Characters coming into contact with one another invariably leads them to their death. Geez, every one of these scenes is so perfectly shot and lit, it makes my eyes dance. The camera never stops moving. I think Simon gets the best death scene. His is an agonizing and brutal death. Renata? Is that her name? She is played by Claudine Auger of Black Belly of the Tarantula and what a beauty she is. Oops, she’s dead too. One thing I’ve learned from Italian horror cinema is that all paths lead to Nicoletta Elmi. Bava, you so crazy!

lisaandthedevil

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this nightmare.”

10:13 pm

Lisa and the Devil

This dream is coming to an end. Fortunately, there’s one more very important film left. Lisa and the Devil is hands down my favorite Bava flick. This unlucky film was recut and released as The House of Exorcism, a complete travesty. There are so many weird ass horror films in the 70s, why did this one have to suffer the fate of being raped and deformed to become an Exorcist clone? Don’t get me wrong, I love Exorcist rip-offs way more than the original but Lisa and the Devil deserved better treatment.

After an awesome opening credit sequence (check it out), we meet Lisa (Elke Sommer), a tourist who steps off the bus straight into hell (actually Toledo, Spain). Telly Savalas is the devil. He carries a dummy around with him which occasionally turns into the corpse of a real person and back again. Nice going, Lisa, your first day in Spain and you shove Carlo (played by Espartaco Santoni of Blood Castle) down the stairs and kill him.

When night falls, the fog rolls in and poor lost Lisa meets some nice strangers who she begs for a lift. Awkward silences abound until the car breaks down in front of a mysterious mansion. Oh look Telly Savalas (the devil) is the butler. Good lord, look at the giant collar on Maximillion (Alessio Orano). His mom is Alida Valli of Suspiria and that’s a very, very good thing.

Hey Sofia (Sylva Koscina), don’t sleep with your driver. That simply isn’t done. Maximillion tells Lisa that he is glad she’s back. But Lisa seems to think she’s never been there before. But we know don’t differently, don’t we? Look, you fucking goofballs, my name is Lisa not Helena. I’ve never been here before in my life and I certainly don’t know any of you. Fuckin’ A! This movie is a big old bag of weird!

You must watch Lisa and the Devil over and over again until it all comes together in your mind. I want to watch this until I can’t remember anything else. This film never stops for me. It goes on and on and hypnotizes me without even trying. A dream sequence in this movie is like putting bacon on a hotdog. In other words, it’s delicious. LeEtta calls it gratuitous. It’s delirious delicious stupendous wondrous. Thank you, Satan.

Make up yer dang mind, Lisa. You can have either Carlo or Maximillion. You can’t have both! Ah, poor Sofia. This is why you should never fall in love with the help. They always end up with scissors in their neck. We are given a nice (yet completely surreal and hilarious) impromptu funeral procession through the house, into the garden and straight to the chapel.

The blackly sardonic humor runs rampant through this movie. And who better to supply it than Telly Savalas? The guy is a dang weirdo. Hey, that headboard sure does look familiar. Perhaps it’s the one from Black Sabbath and four or five other Bava flicks. Lousy women drivers! Well, at least Sofia is finally letting her husband Frank (played by Eduardo Fajardo) know how she feels by rolling the car over his body again and again and again.

Sofia’s death scene got cut pretty short in this version. I blogged about the differences between her violent fate here and in The House Of Exorcism. I blog about things because they are important to me. What if Maximillion had a blog? It would probably be about Lisa and necrophilia and his mom and his broken dreams. So yeah, it would be pretty emo.

Things take an even stranger and sicker turn as Maximillion takes Lisa to meet Helena. We are spinning out of control here. The more we learn about this screwed up family, the more lost we become. Not even our faux blind matriarch can withstand the sheer killing force of her almost comically fucked up son. Cockroach death cake!! No one will escape.

This is transcendent horror. Lisa sleeps and the world moves on without her. There is no time here. Was it always like this? Was this all a dream? She awakes in the ruins of the mansion like the new Eve without an Adam. And just like Eve, she calls bullshit on all this and gets on the first flight out of this fucking madhouse! But these are totally unfriendly skies, duder. Okay, that’s it. This moviethon is finished!

Conclusion

Well, this sucks. It is Monday and the world is normal again. LeEtta and I both took the day off today but there are errands and chores to do. So it feels like a really shitty Sunday except everyone else in the world is at work. At the grocery store, I keep looking for signs that Bava is still with me but no. Thanks to my proper scheduling (for a change) of the films, I don’t even have a moviethon hangover or the usual delusional behavior to fall back on.

While I’m doing laundry, I can’t help but notice that the lighting isn’t interesting at all. The rows of dryers aren’t bathed in a purple glow and there isn’t a garish neon green floodlight pulsing in through the windows. There isn’t even a fisheye lens to tweak my perspective of the rows of washers. There is a Coke machine so it’s kind of like the castle in Baron Blood. If ever I was convinced that the real world friggin’ blows, it is now.

The rest of the day I spend half-watching the old “Freddy’s Nightmares” TV series (not good) and even trying and sit through Joe D’Amato’s Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals (really, really not good). Meh. I settle on The Sixth Sense (which I’ve never seen before) and now I know I’m lost. The aftereffects of this moviethon are a graying and flattening of my surroundings and an especially snobby depression where nothing is good enough. This is the other side of sensory overload. Things have never been this grim before. Oh Bava, what have you done?

Argentophobia: 13 Films in 34 Hours

argentophobia_main

I’ve been putting off watching any of my Dario Argento DVDs ever since Doomed Fulci-Thon nearly a year ago. The biggest delay with this moviethon was that I was searching for a watchable copy of Four Flies On Grey Velvet. After I picked up a halfway decent bootleg at Screamfest, it was time for Argentophobia to happen. It would be nice if Five Days In Milan would show up sometime. Anyway…

My original idea was to watch all 18 Argento DVDs at my disposal but my pickiness intervened. I cut Sleepless, The Card Player, Do You Like Hitchcock?, Jenifer, and Pelts, because a few of these are my least favorite titles and I didn’t want the moviethon to stretch too far into Sunday. I really needed my recovery time if I was going to make it to work on Monday. So, the 13 films were chosen and scheduled, a drinking game was concocted, and I invited some friends to participate in the festival.

Immediately after work, to the liquor store we went. I bought the mother of all Jack Daniels bottles while my wife, LeEtta, picked up some Admiral Nelson spiced rum and a bottle of Jameson. Then onto the cigar store where I grabbed two cigars: Cabinet Selección Por Larrañaga and an Oliva Serie V. Our last stop: 7-11 for caffeine related drinks: Java Monster (all 3 varieties). Our friends, Zac and Stephanie, arrive with Schlitz beer (for Zac) and Smirnoff Ice (for Stephanie). We ordered 2 pizzas from Papa John’s (yeah I know, we have poor taste in pizza) and we were finally ready to start.

argentophobia-bird

“Now you’re going to die! You’re going to die. Now, just like all the others.”

6:33pm – The Bird With The Crystal Plumage

Dario’s first. What better place to start? It’s our first encounter with memory and art. A character has to remember something he/she has already seen in order to catch the killer. And a piece of artwork gives the biggest clue to solving the case. Wow, Sam (played by Tony Musante) is such a dick! “These murders are inconveniencing me!” Suzy Kendall, you’re such an ineffectual little sweetie.

Now, we settle into the James Bond section of the film with Reggie Nalder chasing Sam around with a pistol. There’s some wacky ass pseudoscience all up in this piece. Some nonsense about vowel lengths like fingerprints in the human voice. Who knows, it’s probably true. This movie really doesn’t hold up to scrutiny in the detail department.

LeEtta: “There are no killers in Italy. Rome is like Candyland.”

Thank God I didn’t make eccentric characters part of the drinking game. There’s Berto Consalvi – our painter. Zac says he sounds like an extra from Fiddler On The Roof. Oh yeah, Solong AKA Garullo gets the nomination for Pimp Of The Year. Inspector Morosini – that eye twitch, wow! LeEtta points out that the bird with the crystal plumage is a pretty disappointing bird. And just like that, the first film is over. Great, great movie. Lame, lame bird.

argentophobia-catonine

“I like solving puzzles.”

8:23pm – The Cat ‘O Nine Tails

Though not one of Argento’s finest, The Cat ‘O Nine Tails is one I’ve always enjoyed. The film stars Ken Doll look-alike James Franciscus and Karl Malden (Stephanie expresses her surprise at this). Now that’s a job for a blind man: typesetting a friggin’ crossword puzzle. Empowerment or cruelty?

The sexy French-born Catherine Spaak plays Anna Terzi: a beautiful woman with helmet head. There’s a lot of details to the mystery in this film. You know, small things that only a blind person would notice. Another gorgeous soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. Zac is totally smitten with the Porsche in this movie.

There’s a great scene in the barbershop with a barber who should probably retire soon. Hilarious. Argento’s comedy is something that I’ve noticed but never really remember. Oh snap, a wallpaper debate just broke out. Jellyfish? Brains? Some kind of sponge treatment? Bust out the XYY chromosomes, y’all. Yet another heaping helping of goofy ass pseudoscience. Add that to the drinking game rules.

Another helmet head, Rada Rassimov (Ivan’s sister!), gets killed pretty dang brutally here. I got a syringe for your milk, bitch. Anna Terzi has a look on her face like “Sorry about my boobs, duder.” Poison milk! Poison milk! And then there’s Gigi the Loser, yet another bizarre character. Nice lantern jaw, duder.

“COOKIE!!! COOKIE!!!”

The inspector is played by Pier Paolo Capponi of Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. The guy has one hell of a mug. Karl Malden is fucking awesome in this film but Cookie’s (his nickname) relationship with Laurie is just a little creepy. Holy shit! Ken Doll just got face-checked with a two by four. The film wraps up with a great fight sequence and an awesome (though abrupt) ending.

10:15pm – Cigar Break

I can’t believe that I picked a bum cigar. Cabinet Selección my ass! Zac and I load up on nicotine while the four of us sit on the patio discussing things. I seem to remember a friendly shouting match between Zac and I over Hostel; a totally inappropriate conversation considering our mission. No matter. Break time is over.

argentophobia-flies

“What’s everybody got against mailmen, huh?”

11:01pm – Four Flies On Grey Velvet

I’ve been pursuing a decent copy of this movie for years and I finally found a watchable copy which is pretty much the impetus of this entire moviethon. We’re in bootleg territory here, people, and so far, audio hiss and dropouts are our only enemy. Whoa, that creepy Kewpie doll mask! That is woefully disturbing to all four of us.

Ladies and gentlemen, witness the supreme awesomeness of Mimsy Farmer. I get all kinds of stupid over this chick. Her presence gives me an urge to watch The Perfume Of The Lady In Black. Though most reviewers (and probably Argento himself) think Michael Brandon doesn’t work in the role of Roberto Tobias, I’ve got news for ya, people: He’s playing a drummer. You ever hang out with a drummer? Exactly.

Ah, visions of a beheading. Man, this movie (as well as the camera) is all over the place. This is my kind of Argento: beautiful and indulgent. Four Flies was to be Argento’s “farewell” to the Giallo. Everyone knows it wasn’t but you can see the guy pulling out all the stops with this one. He’s really challenging the genre here and giving it a surreal edge.

God is played by Bud Spencer because Bud Spencer is God. He named his bird Jerkoff. That’s nice. God damn it (sorry Godfrey), how many bizarro people are we going to meet tonight? Hell, even Solong the pimp is back as the battered mailman. Then there’s “The Professor” played by Oreste Lionello (the gay photographer from The Case Of The Bloody Iris).

Speaking of gay stereotypes, Jean-Pierre Marielle plays the hapless private eye, Gianni Arrosio. Ouch. Vengeance of the gay stereotypes when Arrosio meets one of his own. We’re all a little ashamed of ourselves now. LeEtta: “Oh my GOD, he had a fan.”

Pseudoscience has attacked for the third time tonight. Images recorded on a corpse’s eye? LeEtta interjects: “Oh, come on! What is this, the 17th century?” Oh, the ending is priceless. So much so that I want to tell you but no, you must seek this movie out as I did. Obscurity has been kind to this film. It isn’t just a completist’s holy grail. We are all in agreement: Four Flies On Grey Velvet is fucking good.

12.45am – Very Short Break

LeEtta and Stephanie have gone to bed. I envy them just a little bit since those last shots have left me all… Whoa Nelly! Zac and I are prepared for the last movie of the night, I think. Let’s do this. Break’s over.

argentophobia-deepred

“But I am the proletariat of the pianoforte.”

12:50am – Deep Red

Gobin assaults us right off the bat. Oh yeah, it’s on. This is where Argento cannot be stopped. He has finally found his voice and its color is red. The surrealist’s Rome strikes again with strange corners and alleyways populated with all kinds of oddballs. Even the architecture is a character in Deep Red.

Oh, Carlo, you’re so gay. What a fabulous affirmation. A truly great performance from Gabriele Lavia of Zeder, Sleepless, Beyond The Door, etc. And David Hemmings makes for an excellent neurotic and sexist hero. There’s a slew of Italian genre actors in this one and it gets pretty out of control. And that bastard police inspector played by Eros Pagni! Always harassing the artists.

Then the show is stolen by true Italian horror royalty: Daria Nicolodi as Gianna Brezzi. Her presence not only undermines the jackassery of Hemmings’s Mark character but she also completely steals the show. Nicolodi’s vivacious is just astonishing. The arm-wrestling scene is one of Argento’s funniest.

The camera doesn’t miss a thing. Every detail is lovingly filmed and where are we exactly? Rome? The future? Oh, and is that a replica of the Blue Bar? Sweet Jesus, this film has it all. The soundtrack by Goblin is a classic and those music queues are fantastic. The synthesizer meltdown when Mark is hanging on the side of the building just fucking owns, y’all.

Zac has passed out at the 52 minute mark with his last beer in hand. I’m dang drunk. There’s some scary shit here. An implied presence. Something you suspect is right over your shoulder but you’re too afraid to look. I’m going to try and not pass out before the movie ends.

2:52am – Goodnight

After grabbing the half empty beer out of Zac’s hand, I shake him awake to let him know it’s time for bed. I bid him goodnight while I stumble around in the kitchen trying to clean up a little so that it won’t be so scary in the morning. After my shower, I finally get to go to sleep or pass out or something.

8:39am – Good Morning

LeEtta and I get up to go to the grocery store where we get bagels and cream cheese and other foodstuffs. We get back home and see that Zac and Stephanie are groggy but are both ready for day two. After a lot of water and some breakfast, it’s back to the beasts.

argentophobia-opera

“If you try to close your eyes, you’ll tear them apart.”

10:23am – Opera

I have to confess that this isn’t one of my favorites. The ridiculous heavy metal and the wandering and totally halfhearted ending just piss me off. Having said that, I always like Opera more with each viewing so it is getting closer and closer to my heart as the years go by.

Betty is played by Cristina Marsillach and such a fine leading lady she is. Her performance just rocks. I especially like the turn her character takes at the end. Betty, I don’t mean to be rude but there’s totally something hiding in your vent. Not cool.

Let the birds sing! WTF? Can we have some more bird violence here? I think that this is the weirdest (and worst) production of Macbeth ever staged. Who is that dreamy stage manager? William McNamara AKA the guy from Copycat. Thanks, internet. Sorry for the spoiler but the duder has one of the most violent death scenes I’ve even seen. Let’s listen to some hideous heavy metal while Betty watches her damn boyfriend get stabbed to death.

Stephanie: “We all took emotional shots in this movie.”

The cinematography is fantastic (even more daring than Deep Red) and the sets in the abandoned parts of the opera house just friggin’ rock. Daria Nicolodi returns as a real shrew this time. You gotta love one of the newer queens of Italian horror, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (Phantom Of The Opera, Demons 2) as Giulia, the most annoying character in the film. Yeah, that ending really just trails off…

argentophobia-blackcat

“How about fixing me something to eat? I’m here and the cat’s not.”

12:16pm – Two Evil Eyes: “The Black Cat”

Well, GORE-io Argento, you’ve got my attention. Harvey Keitel? Oh man. Dario and Keitel. I can’t imagine them as a duo that got along very well. Nice beret, fucker. Harvey Keitel plays Rod Usher, maniacal photographer and murderer, and is so totally over the top. The whole “MEOW!! MEOW!!!” bit is priceless.
Imaginary Dario quote: “Here Americans, here’s what you like: Gore and cursing!”

Soundtrack by Philip Glass? Nope, that’s Pino Donaggio. Good stuff. And then the whole thing goes nuts. Uh oh, looks like the Ren Fest is in town. Much love for a Tom Savini cameo, y’all. Martin Balsam, anyone? Pittsburgh has never looked as stupid and annoying as it does here.

Wow, Tom Savini’s effects are so damn good here. Zac and I are in agreement that the meat cleaver to the hand effect is beautiful. Madeleine Potter, who plays Annabel, is such an odd looking (in a good way) actress. Oh shit, the schemes that Rod cooks up to hide his crime induce some major fucking LOLs. Yet somehow, it all comes together for the climax. Nice tension.

1:15pm – Lunch

I quickly reheat yesterday’s pizza and we get our munch on. Back to movies.

argentophobia-trauma

“Nicholas, are you here with us?”

1:26pm – Trauma

Ah, finally, one of my guilty pleasures. So very definitely not one his best but this one was an early Argento in my life. It was the second film of his I’d ever seen (after Phenomena AKA Creepers). I rented this sooooo long ago. This movie just weirded me out as a kid and at the time, I had no idea that this was the same guy who directed Creepers.

Hey, Piper Laurie, nice accent. Oh man, the anorexia angle. Geez, it’s handled with less emotion than a god damned public service announcement. I really feel like I’m hallucinating all of this. I’m such a sucker for séance sequences; the more ridiculous they are, the better.

Finally, Asia Argento steps into the ring as Aura, a troubled teen. A discussion about nude scenes filmed by her father takes place. Somehow, this movie has found its DVD niche here, all pretty and restored for Argentoholics to visit and revisit, yet Trauma also belongs in video hell as well.

The irritating dumbass butterfly-collecting kid brings out the worst in all of us. Even the girls start taking potshots at this dumb little jerk. Speaking of irritating, what is Pino Donaggio’s score on this one? It’s always distant and beneath the action, never a part of it.

Ah, the amazing Frederic Forrester of Apocalypse Now as Dr. Judd. Wow, what a dang weirdo. The scene with the psychotropic berry is genius. Then our main character, David (Christopher Rydell), starts the drugging. Oh man. This movie does wander. Brad Dourif is awesome as always. Too bad Dr. Lloyd isn’t given enough to do. I really wish his character had been a little more substantial. Piper Laurie is just grand in Trauma and I’m totally convinced that she’s this crazy in real life. Hey there, Dario. Hitchcock much? Oh man, we just got DePalma’ed.

3:15pm – Cigar Break

Oliva Cigar and another one of those Java Monster coffee things. This time it’s the Big Black flavor and I’m surprised by how good it is. Dang, I need them to sponsor my life. Zac and I are chilling and smoking, delaying the inevitable. I am relieved to have a cigar that is world’s better than yesterday’s crap.

argentophobia-stendhal

“I have problems, you know?”

4:01pm – The Stendhal Syndrome

Now this is one of my favorites from the man. This one gets better every single time. German actor, Thomas Kretschmann, superbly plays Alfredo Grossi, a thoroughly evil serial rapist/murderer. He’s actually pretty frightening; this handsome and totally buff guy committing these odious crimes.

Asia Argento really disappears into her role of Detective Anna Manni. I love calling my answering machine to see who I am. So nice to know who I am. Ugh… Marco. God, how I fucking hate this guy. I like when bad things happen to Marco. It makes me smile so big.

Me: “So what did Stendhal call The Stendhal Syndrome? ‘The Me Syndrome’?”

Penis envy much? The psychology behind this film is pretty simple, naïve even, but it works for me. I totally forgot about her goofy brothers and her comically stern father (the actor that should be dubbed). This movie has some subtle nuances that just make it even more amazing. It’s so gritty and nasty and… just plain nasty. It feels like someone else’s film.

Like I said before, Asia is phenomenal in this film. I love the wigs. And I’m sure no one agrees with me on this point but I even like her voice actress. Hey, look it’s Cinzia Monreale of The Beyond as Grossi’s wife! I hardly recognized her with seeing eyes. Ah, poor Marie. Poor French bastard didn’t know what he was getting into when he started dating Anna.

Oh, by the way, I’m still watching the old busted ass Troma DVD of this movie. I haven’t picked up the Blue Underground disc yet. I still can’t get over the outright shittiness and incompetence of Troma Studios. Yeah, I get it. They’re a joke. They’re movies are a joke and they’re shitcan DVDs are a joke but they could have at least treated this one film with some respect.

5:54pm – Dinner

Zac and Stephanie take their leave of the marathon. They have both been run pretty ragged so it’s good that they make a break for it. Are they the lucky ones? The Phantom is coming… LeEtta and I make a food and wine run. The world looks weird. We get some Wendy’s and I order something… a creature… it’s THE BACONATOR!

argentophobia-phantom

“I’m not a phantom. I’m a rat.”

6:39pm – The Phantom Of The Opera

LeEtta said this is a fun one and I agree. Fun for all the wrong reasons! Is this Argento’s worst film or his most misunderstood film? Well… it’s definitely uneven. If he could have just stuck with the comedy and/or horror and skipped the deplorable melodrama (and I normally love melodrama). There is a great deal of wickedly black and outrageous humor to be found in this film.

Hey, it’s Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, that chick from Opera, as Christine’s maid. I don’t really dig the Baron (played by Andrea Di Stefano). Get behind me Satan! The sets are gorgeous and the music is excellent. Ennio Morricone strikes again. Of course, it’s hard to hear the music over the screaming and the screaming and the screaming.

Did I ever tell you that Julian Sands (Warlock) is awesome? Well, fuck yeah, he is. Lots and lots of rats. And I guess there’s no rule saying that the Phantom has to be disfigured (I’ve never been all that attached to the story). Hell, Sands is like a Nordic god or something (or is that a body double?).

LeEtta raises a point: The gore in this movie is some of the most extreme and over-the-top in Argento’s films. Sergio Stivaletti and company really outdo themselves. A woman’s tongue is pulled out by its root, a man is impaled on a stalagmite, and another man has his finger munched on by rats to the bone. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The computer generated sky and the rat catching machine, oh my god. This reminds of the debacle that is Wax Mask. The dialogue is cheesed out and so many of the scenes are awkward. With Phantom, Argento redefines the word decadent. Sort of a chocolate covered corndog of a film. There really is no other way to describe it. Oh and Asia gets nekkid. Sooooo… Nekkid.

“CHRISTINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I have found a new appreciation for this unholy beast of a film. When Christine catches the Phantom lovin’ on his rats… Um… Sweet Jesus. I should have held Zac and Stephanie and gunpoint and made them sit through this. Of course, The Phantom Of The Opera overstays its welcome as the ending plays out like a slowly dying animal.

8:18pm – Short Break

We check out an interview with Julian Sands on the Phantom Of The Opera DVD to see if he can provide some insight on what the damn hell we just watched. Nothing. Richie calls to say that he and Barbi are on their way. Two more souls for our Argentonian feast. Word.

argentophobia-suspiria

“Suzy, do you know anything about witches?”

8:31pm – Suspiria

Finally, we are here. The home stretch. Oh doctor, I have such a crush on Jessica Harper. Somebody give that woman a sammich. I never could understand the point of the friggin’ narration at the beginning. Whose idea was it? This film and Phenomena both have abandoned narration.

Sorry, kids, but reality is no longer yours. Everything will destroy you. Every doorway, every color, and every note of the horribly beautiful music winds us up. Everything. Suspiria is a Day-Glo red-tinted trap. It never feels thirty years old. Not for a second.

Are those Dario’s monstrous hands that do the killing? They seem otherworldly as does the neon red blood. An exposed heart, a woman’s face pulled through a window (take a shot), a throat torn out, and much more. I love how the witches are feeding off the girls at the dance academy. Destroying their bodies and feeding off their souls.

I just realized that Suzy Banyan has stepped into Hell. Dance school Hell, that is. Even the girls at the school are awful. Every moment just turns into another nightmare. The most mundane scenes are ratcheted up with tension and strangeness.

And look at that: my friends, Richie and Barbi, arrive just in time for the maggot rain. Richie brings some Yuengling Lager! You know, happiness is a very young Udo Kier delivering the fucking gibberish. When your TV is exploding, you know it’s the finale of Suspiria. It’s one of the most complete horror experiences.

argentophobia-inferno

“You are being watched.”

10:15pm – Inferno

Now for Inferno, the enigma. The weird one. The color palette is even more invasive than in Suspiria. None of this is real. Or is it? Wow, this movie tries to destroy you. Don’t believe me? Just listen to Keith Emerson’s soundtrack. How come every library doesn’t have an alchemist? This film is definitely growing on me.

Images come by fast and furious. You can barely keep your feet beneath you. This film is visually stunning and endlessly perplexing. I have learned to just let it go because the witches have the advantage. Don’t even try to escape. It’s already too late.

The ridiculously long death of a bookseller gets on my nerves. That, my friends, is the creepiest butler of all time. The movie definitely doesn’t perplex me nearly as much as it used to. This is the closest to Lucio Fulci that Argento ever got. This is Argento’s The Beyond. Both directors went for weird and it all paid off.

Now I’m sure that Argento has a grand design in mind for every tiny detail and subtle nuance in Inferno but I’ll be damned if the plot doesn’t just seem like a collection of totally random moments that only take place for aesthetic value. Are setpieces the only end? The music queues just seem totally arbitrary. Mark finds a crawlspace and all musical shit breaks out.

Things start to spin out of control as Leigh McCloskey’s mustache starts to drive us bonkers. Who is that nurse? That actress… Is that Martha (Veronica Lazar) from The Beyond? My God, I think it is! The Euro-Cult nerd that lives in my brain just started breakdancing.

I still can’t talk myself into liking that ending. I’m thinking that Argento was going for a classic Italian horror kind of a thing or maybe something even older. Perhaps he saw a woodblock print that scared him as a child or something. Either way, Richie and Barbi aren’t convinced.

12:08am – Short Break

Richie, Barbi, and I retreat to the patio for a smoke and drink break. We’re getting pretty seriously wrecked at this point. Things get silly but I have to stay focused. Nothing to do but march onward.

argentophobia-tenebre

“I only drink when I’m on duty.”

12:46am – Tenebre

Utter confusion breaks out with Anthony Franciosa riding his bike on the freeway. I really have no answer for that one. Even more confusion is caused when I hint that one of the actresses is transgendered. The sometimes sexually confused and always sleazy characters just never stop popping up.

That continuous shot around the entire house; does it help or hurt? Argento goes so over the top with this film but in a totally different manner than Suspiria and Inferno. I love how the brilliant color scheme of the last two films has been replaced with drab whites and grays only occasionally interrupted by gouts of bright red.

Could this be where the giallo and the slasher merge? There’s something about the music, the fleeing teenager, the almighty POV shot, and the overly lit sets that just scream Slasher. Argento still doing the classic Giallo but with an eye for the trends.

Veronica Lario plays the ill-fated Jane and for me, she’s an Italian horror icon that never was. Aside from having one of the most memorable death scenes in all of Argento’s films, Lario also has the classic Hollywood beauty that just infects my mind and I can’t stop looking at her.

I love the misdirection in the park scene with good old John Saxon. The whole thing feels like Hitchcock. Dang, that final reveal is so satisfying. Call me an idiot but I never saw it coming. “A book!!!” There’s no shortage of blood spilled here. Argento was a man on fire in the 1980s. The screaming won’t stop. Not for me. Not for another movie.

2:26am – Short Break

Richie and Barbi leave but they wish me luck on their way out. I need it.

argentophobia-phenomena

“I love you. I love all of you.”

2:35am – Phenomena

The next three sentences are totally true. This is my favorite Dario Argento film. This is my favorite Italian horror film. This is my favorite horror movie of all time!

Ever since I saw this as Creepers when I was 12 or 13 years old, I can find no wrong in Phenomena. I can’t think about the subtext that Argento may or may not be trying to convey right now. I’m too far gone. After years and years of repeatedly watching this film, I find nothing more in it than total entertainment. I cannot be dissuaded from thinking of this as the perfect horror film.

That being said, what the fuck is with the heavy metal? This is where Dario’s indiscriminate love of heavy metal started. Good songs chosen with no regard to lyrical content. Iron Maiden’s “Flash Of The Blade” is about duelists, for God’s sake! Okay, so maybe “Ace Of Spades” could be about anything but it still sounds like shit on the soundtrack and it’s totally out of place. The rest of Phenomena’s soundtrack is haunting, eerie, and beautiful but it is stained by the inappropriateness of the two heavy metal numbers. I’m a metalhead and even I can’t buy this.

One of the greatest character actors of all time, Donald Pleasence, delivers his performance of Professor John McGregor with a morbid sincerity. They guy is totally convincing as a renowned entomologist even while he is speaking the goofiest dang dialogue. Pleasence easily mesmerizes me into believing his every word.

The scenes underneath Frau Bruckner’s house are truly horrifying and are bursting with that Italian horror sensibility. That indescribable grim and claustrophobic feeling I get from the horror films of Joe D’Amato and Lucio Fulci. Making the most of a deceptively minimalist set seems to be the trick. The wild plot and the childish logic of Phenomena go hand in hand. I’m wide-eyed and nodding, taking in every twist like it makes sense.

The places where this film takes me, these are infernal places. Don’t worry. You’ll never come back. Alice skips Wonderland and goes straight to Hell with about a million creepy crawlies to guide her way. As Jennifer Connelly is swimming away from danger and rinsing off the filth of the corpse pit, that moment, I’m nailed to the spot and I’m on the verge of tears. I’m so fucking happy. Ladies and gentlemen… MONKEY WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR! This is the complete package. Horror will never be this good again, beeyatch.

4:29am – The End

I am really going down for the count here, folks. My eyes are swimming and my body feels like it was assembled wrong. Good night. Good morning. Good night.

Conclusion

The next day I woke up in pain. LeEtta came in with the cats at 9:30 in the morning and I felt fucking horrible. My only instinct was to watch more Argento. I wanted Four Flies On Grey Velvet all over again, maybe Deep Red just one more time, and I wanted to get to the movies I’d left out of the moviethon. Why did I cut Do You Like Hitchcock? again? I thought I liked that one. If only I had a decent copy of Sleepless (stupid Artisan DVD pan and scan!)…

I was actually saddened at the end of this experience. After Doomed Fulci-Thon, I felt totally satisfied. But with Argentophobia, I ended up just wanting more. All I can do now is think about the next moviethon. Something even more involved and yet more random. I need the world to stay looking weird. Thanks to having watched 13 of Dario Argento’s films in less than 36 hours, everything should stay in its proper aspect ratio.

Argento Drinking Game Rules

Take a drink when any of the following happens:

A woman’s head crashes through a window

The killer puts black gloves on

The killer caresses and/or fondles their weapons

A limb is severed

Harvey Keitel screams “Meow! Meow!”

Asia Argento gets naked

Someone is killed by a sculpture

Eye violence

Animal violence

Monkey with a straight razor