Crypt of the Vampire (1964)

Young women are being drained of their blood and all signs point to the Karnstein family. Count Ludwig Karnstein (Christopher Lee) enlists the help of historian Friedrich Klauss (José Campos) to explore his lineage. Klauss finds out that one of Ludwig’s ancestors was executed for witchcraft but not before she placed a curse on the family line. Ludwig’s daughter Laura (Adriana Ambesi) believes that she is possessed by the witch and is developing a taste for the red stuff.

Annette (Véra Valmont), the count’s mistress, knows that something is wrong with Laura. She is also suspicious of Laura’s new friend, Annette (Ursula Davis), who arrived under mysterious circumstances and has been at Laura’s side ever since. The family’s maid, Rowena (Nela Conjiu), thinks she’s helping the Karnstein clan with her black magic rituals but people keep dying despite her appeals to the dark lord.

Camillo Mastrocinque (who directed Barbara Steele in An Angel for Satan) delivers an effective and enjoyable though not entirely original gothic horror film. The convoluted story from prolific genre screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (The Whip and the Body) has its chilling moments and takes inspiration from the classic horror story Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The dialogue is predictable and hampered by the awkward dubbing. There is also some totally unnecessary narration which is abandoned very quickly (thanks). What Crypt of the Vampire does have going for it is good pacing and superbly eerie sets and locations.

Christopher Lee (who thankfully dubbed his own voice) is quite good in Crypt but that’s no surprise as the man rarely disappoints. I really, really liked Adriana Ambesi as Laura whose flimsy nightgown threatens to explode throughout the nighttime scenes. Her dumbass black magic schemes led by her scary maid are pretty amusing. How about next time we DON’T invoke the spirit of a witch to possess anyone, okay?

Véra Valmont, who plays Count Ludwig’s lover Annette, is very arresting. She goes all out with the terror faces and I wish that she had done more horror movies. José Campos is a little bland as Friedrich, the heroic (?) genealogist. Luckily, Lee is around to keep the appropriate levels of badass dude in a smoking jacket right where they need to be.

With its cheesy Sunday afternoon horror thrills (and some wild-eyed and voluptuous ladies), Crypt of the Vampire is a whole lot of fun. There’s melodrama, mysterious manuscripts and some gruesome business involving the severed hand of a hunchbacked beggar. This would make a terrific double feature with either Alberto De Martino’s The Blancheville Monster or the sleepy Barbara Steele vehicle: Terror Creatures from the Grave.

“I must kill you. That was my promise. I must kill you.”

Black Demons (1991)

College students, Kevin (Keith Van Hoven), Jessica (Sonia Curtis), and her brother Dick (Joe Balogh), are traveling through Brazil. Dick decides to take part in a black magic ritual and he becomes cursed. The trio’s jeep breaks down and they are escorted to a villa by two friendly travelers. Dick finds a nearby gravesite containing the bodies of six murdered slaves and awakens them. The slaves rise up from the ground armed with various pointy objects and the urge to slaughter anyone who is unlucky enough to be hanging around. Maria (played by Maria Alves), the servant and resident practitioner of magic, does all she can to protect everyone from the evil that Dick has awakened.

Umberto Lenzi, is that you? From the director of Seven Bloodstained Orchids, Eyeball, and Ghosthouse, comes the unfortunately-titled Black Demons. A straightforward plot (read as only a handful of loose ends) and beautiful Brazilian locations fooled me for a moment into thinking Lenzi might just have pulled off something of a minor classic here. However, bland lighting and a forgettable soundtrack by Franco Micalizzi combined with a cast of wildly irritating actors hinder the film from being a return to the glory days of Italian horror.

Speaking of bland, Keith Van Hoven (House of Clocks) turns up as our hero, Kevin. While he’s not the worst of the lot, the guy is frighteningly dull. From the moment she opens her mouth, soap opera and sitcom actress Sonia Curtis, is unfathomably awful as Jessica. If only the producers had hired a competent voice actress to dub over Curtis’s thinly delivered lines then we’d only be stuck with her vacant stare to contend with. Then we have Philip Murray as Jose the mumbler and Juliana Texeira as “just plain” Sonia. Two annoying characters whose death scenes inspire sighs of relief, if not some cheering.

Joe Balogh (Hitcher in the Dark) actually won me over with his portrayal of Dick, Jessica’s haunted and ultimately cursed brother. The scene where he takes part in a Macumba ritual is the best directed in the movie and Balogh is definitely up to the task. Brazilian actress Maria Alves easily has the best performance in the film. I only wish her character, Maria, could have survived long enough to get us through the rest of the dang flick. Alves spends most of her screentime looking completely terrified but it works.

Oddly enough, Lenzi refers to Black Demons as his masterpiece during an interview in the book, “Spaghetti Nightmares”. Well, I just don’t know how to interpret that one. The pace of this film is drowsy at best and despite some occasionally inspired camerawork, fluid editing, cool zombie makeup, and somewhat gory (and well-staged) deaths, I don’t see how any director could interpret this as their masterpiece. While not the worst of his horror contributions, Lenzi has done much, much better. If nothing else, Black Demons is a decent little time waster.

“You know, Kevin, you really get up my nose!”

Say Uh… Phenomena!

[Reader beware. There are major spoilers coming up.]

Whenever the wind is in the trees, I think of Phenomena and nothing feels right or normal in the best way. Released in 1985, Dario Argento’s twisted fairy-tale masterpiece has always had a strange effect on me. It’s a ridiculous world of tangible impossibilities with an atmosphere of doom and insanity hanging around every corner. Imagine if your fantasy world got caught in the kitchen disposal and then you were able to film it; the end result would look a whole lot like Phenomena.

The film starts as Jennifer Corvino (played by Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of a famous actor, arrives at a Swiss boarding school. Jennifer has a sleepwalking problem and one night while she is wandering around the closed section of the school, she witnesses a girl being murdered by a psychotic killer. She meets wheelchair bound Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence), an entomologist living with his helper chimpanzee who’s been enlisted by the police to help track down the murderer. He seems to think that Jennifer’s sleepwalking is a symptom of burgeoning mental powers. McGregor’s hypothesis proves to be true as Jennifer soon realizes that she can communicate with insects. They decide to use her strange gift to catch the killer.

When the unlikely duo gets too close to discovering the truth, the killer comes after Professor McGregor. Now alone against a sadistic psychopath, Jennifer mistakenly takes shelter with Frau Brückner (Daria Nicolodi) who turns out to be the mother of the deformed creature that has been doing all the killing. With the help of a detective (Patrick Bauchau) and her insect helpers, Jennifer just barely escapes with her life. Frau Brückner kills the detective and comes looking for our young heroine. Jennifer’s ultimate rescue comes in the form of John McGregor’s chimpanzee that gets revenge for its slain master by taking a straight razor to the insane woman.

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was intrigued by a segment on an MTV show called “Stephen King’s World of Horror” about Dario Argento. It talked about a film called Creepers and I sought it out. The cover of the VHS tape entitled Creepers really blew my mind. It features a painting of Jennifer Connelly (“The chick from Labyrinth!” I thought to myself) holding a handful of flies and other insects. These creepy crawlies were flying out of her half rotted face and I was completely mesmerized by the sickening beauty of this image. At this point in my young life, my parents were allowing me to rent whatever horror films I pleased. They had given me their old VCR to hook up in my room so I had absolutely no trouble getting this particular flick by them. There was a mix-up at the video store and the film Creeper (AKA In the Devil’s Garden AKA Assault from 1971) was in the Creepers case by mistake. Once that was resolved, I finally had the film in my hands.

Little did I know what awaited me on that tape. Creepers is actually Dario Argento’s giallo-fantastico masterpiece Phenomena, minus about 28 minutes of footage. A few very brief shots of gore had been trimmed but most of the cuts had to do with the plot and Jennifer Corvino’s character development. The most shocking moments in the film: the big reveal of Frau Brückner’s murderous and hideously deformed child and Jennifer falling into a pit of rotting corpses, remained intact on the rental copy I watched back in the day.

I love Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini’s childish plot. Everything that takes place in Phenomena, no matter how ludicrous, made perfect sense to my young mind. Even now, I’ll catch myself just nodding and smiling as the events unfold that would likely cause most rational folks to start throwing furniture at the screen. How is it that a girl with the ability to communicate telepathically with insects just happens to become best buds with a crippled entomologist who just happens to have been researching the psychic powers of insects throughout his career? I guess that is a small concession in a film that also features a dang chimpanzee armed with a straight razor that brutally savages his master’s murderer.

I especially love the film’s minimalist set design of the finale. The brilliantly lit monochromatic and sparsely decorated walls help focus the viewer’s attention on the action and give it a stark bleakness. Phenomena also has a hypnotic quality, a morbid melancholy (a little something which I call “The Vibe”) that I’ve rarely found in American horror films. Similarly, Joe D’Amato’s horror films often have little to no set design and I can’t help but feel this perfectly communicated sense of claustrophobia and horror in my bones. I’m sure one could assume these things were kept simple to keep production costs low but so be it, I’m already smitten.

The music of Phenomena ranges from spectacular to totally inappropriate. Simon Boswell and Goblin contribute the ethereal pieces and the horror stingers. And though they sound great where they are placed within the film, “Flash of the Blade” by Iron Maiden and “Locomotive” by Motörhead are disruptive to the flow of the rest of the soundtrack. Now don’t get me wrong, I was a metalhead during my early teens and the inclusion of these songs only made me love this movie all the more. But even as a youngster, I knew that “Flash of the Blade” has nothing lyrically that fits with what’s happening onscreen. Argento’s indiscriminate love of (often cheesy) heavy metal rears its ugly head again in his next film Opera but with less or more success depending entirely on your taste in metal.

A classic Italian horror film needs a great cast and Phenomena is certainly no slouch in that department. Leading the cast is a young Jennifer Connelly (who Argento spotted in Once Upon a Time in America and decided to cast her) and Donald Pleasence who was serving time in Italy between Halloween sequels. Daria Nicolodi is totally batshit crazy as Frau Brückner, one of my favorite villainesses ever captured on film. Belgian born actor Patrick Bauchau (of “Carnivale”) plays Inspector Geiger, the detective who almost saves the day but who dies horribly (off camera).

Sadly, Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly has since distanced herself from Phenomena and her time spent in Italy. In a 2004 interview with Vogue, she disses the film and her performance in it saying it was little more than an excuse to vacation in Europe. I can’t help but laugh at this because this is best thing Connelly has ever done or ever will do. No, I’m not kidding. As far as I’m concerned, Jennifer Connelly’s career tanked in 1986 with only a few minor points of interest since (Mulholland Falls, Dark City and the Dark Water remake). There’s still a chance for her to redeem herself but only if she returns to Italian horror.

One of the greatest character actors of all time, Donald Pleasence, delivers his performance of Professor John McGregor with his usual morbid sincerity. Pleasence is totally convincing as the renowned entomologist even while he is dishing up the corniest dialogue. He easily mesmerizes the viewer into believing his every word. In an interview in Profondo Argento, the actor mentions that Phenomena had one of the silliest scripts he’d ever read. I find this very curious. Perhaps he’d forgotten about Paganini Horror and Fatal Frames of hadn’t made them yet at the time of the interview. Those two totally wacko Italian horror films are easily sillier than Phenomena.

Near the end of the film, we have traveled with Jennifer through windswept Sweden, entered a girls’ school with almost no discernible curriculum, been knocked with her into a pit full of carrion and squirming larvae, and joined in her desperate psychic cry to her insect brethren to chew the face off her diminutive tormentor. Moments later, everything changes as Jennifer is swimming to shore thus washing away the horror (and filth from the corpse pit) and we’re led to believe that the horror is finally over. For me, this ethereal scene is the most resplendent of the film and is a transcendent landmark for Italian horror. This peaceful moment is interrupted when Jennifer’s father’s lawyer who shows up to take her home. No easy denouement here as Argento has one more showstopping setpiece tucked up his sleeve.

Phenomena is a feverish, outrageous, and gory maggot party that will always be at the top of the list of my favorite horror movies of all time. I cannot stress enough how badly you need to see this film or see it again if you’ve already taken the plunge. There’s a whole lot of ugly, a whole lot of weird, and a whole lot of beauty packed into Argento’s whacked out beast. This film stands very tall among the dozen or so horror flicks that had a huge impact on my young brain. Phenomena’s somnambulistic evil grows as the years go by and every time I am drawn back in, I get just a little closer to happily losing my mind.

Red Riding Hood

redridinghood

Red Riding Hood (2003)

After the death of her politician father and subsequent abandonment by her mother, 12 year old Jenny (Susanna Satta) feels that it is imperative that the guilty are punished because God forgets their sins (no matter how miniscule) too easily. With the help of her mysterious friend, George, Jenny begins terrorizing Rome by punishing sinners with deadly justice. All is going well for Jenny until her grandmother, Rose (Kathleen Archebald), comes to take Jenny back to New York with her. Jenny imprisons Rose in her apartment so that she won’t interfere with her plans to confess her love for her tutor, Tom (Roberto Purvis). When Tom starts to suspect that something is terribly wrong with Jenny, he tries to stop her and George’s killing spree before he himself becomes a victim.

For a first time director, I have to compliment Giacomo Cimini. Although flawed, Red Riding Hood is a fine first feature and shows great promise. Some of the credit goes to one of the films co-cinematographers, Sergio Salvati (Fulci’s The Beyond and The Black Cat), who manages to add some of the old school Italian horror flair to the filming. The script and the plot are well done and become especially tense in the final act.

The role of Jenny is a difficult one and is handled fairly well by the young Susanna Satta. Unfortunately, many of her lines are delivered too mechanically. But to Satta’s credit, she portrays an evil little girl perfectly and has great control over her expressions and the physical aspects of her screen presence. This was a tough first film role for her and I’m interested to see what she’ll do next.

Kathleen Archebald is very good as Rose who suffers a great deal of torment from her twisted granddaughter. The actor I’m least impressed with is Roberto Purvis. The character of Tom isn’t developed well in the script and isn’t given much depth by Purvis until his last few moments of screen time.

The music of the film is creative but distracting. It is some merry sounding business with lyrics that seem to refer to the plot but overall just doesn’t work in the film. The incidental music is fine but this jaunty theme keeps coming back. Some upbeat music would have been perfect for many of the strange scenes in the movie but the filmmakers have made a poor choice here.

Jenny’s companion through much of the film is George, a mysterious figure in a black jumpsuit, red galoshes, black cloak, and a white wolfish mask. George looks pretty silly and just isn’t creepy at all. My last complaint is about the film’s pacing. It slows down a little in the middle but not for too long. Just long enough for a viewer to wonder when the film is coming to an end.

Okay, enough griping, why is this film worth seeing? For one thing, the murders are very cool and bloody. The effects aren’t over the top or disgusting but a couple of them are inventive and memorable. The movie has some very twisted humor in it that will appeal to horror fans. And finally, this film is just plain nuts. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie this odd in a while.

Red Riding Hood is a likeable flick with some very strange elements thrown in to keep it from being just another slasher. The setting of Rome and the Italian crew give this film just a hint of Giallo, which is always pleasant. Despite a couple of flaws (some wooden delivery from a couple of the actors and George’s costume), I had a great time watching this. Prepare to be weirded out and enjoy the show.

The Sweet House of Horrors

sweethouseofhorrors

The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

After their parents are brutally murdered by a burglar, Marco (Giuliano Gensini) and Sarah (Ilary Blasi) are put in the care of their Aunt Marcia (Cinzia Monreale) and Uncle Carlo (Jean-Christophe Brétigniere). While their Aunt and Uncle are waiting for the children’s home to sell, Marco and Sarah are contacted by the ghosts of their dead parents who don’t want the children to leave. Once they witness some supernatural phenomenon for themselves and begin fearing for the children’s safety, Marcia and Carlo hire an exorcist to cleanse the house of evil spirits.

Along with House of Clocks, Lucio Fulci directed The Sweet House of Horrors for Italian television. After reading a very negative review of this film several years ago, I put it on the imaginary “oh well, I’ll never watch that one” shelf. Well, after Doomed Fulci-Thon, I say all bets are off, people. It’s time for me to buckle down and watch every dang thing that the “Godfather of Gore” ever directed.

Here’s the paragraph where I slam the film. The writing is quite confusing and lame. Some of the comedy works but the backhoe scene is unspeakably stupid. Here’s another script featuring characters speaking their painfully obvious thoughts out loud for the audience‘s sake. The subplot with the burglar’s comeuppance is okay but seems more like an afterthought. There is a plethora of cheesy and mostly embarrassing optical effects if you’re into that kind of thing. Most annoying though, is the film’s terrible English dubbing rendering most of the characters even dumber than their dialogue.

And now I must praise the film. There is some attention-grabbing gore in the first few minutes and a couple more gruesome moments later in the film that were excellent. The lighting, Sebastiano Celeste’s camerawork (fisheye lens and soft focus!), and the set design are all surprising good for an Italian television production. Most importantly, a clearly inspired Fulci establishes a very bizarre and often creepy atmosphere that holds up throughout most of the film.

The lovely Cinzia Monreale of The Beyond and Beyond the Darkness graces us with her presence. The kids, Ilary Blasi and Giuliano Gensini, aren’t terrible child actors by any means but when they’re voiced by adults pretending to be children, things get ugly. The most bizarre casting has to be the Abraham Lincoln lookalike in a turtleneck (French actor Vernon Dobtcheff) as the Russian (who speaks German) exorcist.

Once again, I’ve done myself a disservice by avoiding a Fulci film based on a poor review I barely even remember reading. Without a doubt, The Sweet House of Horrors has its problems but it’s definitely a watchable title. There’s a lot to like here especially for Fulci completists like myself. As my standards have been severely lowered by Door to Silence, I’m probably not the most reliable reviewer of this stuff anymore. Shocked? Me neither. But I know one thing… I do loves me a séance sequence! I can’t wait to watch this again.

“Don’t believe him. Grownups are all liars.”

Murderock – Splatter Generation

murderock-splattergen

Hey gorefiends, here is the horror metal album you’ve been waiting for. Hailing from the desert wasteland of Nevada, Murderock wears their film fandom on their gore-soaked sleeve with songs inspired by Italian horror fare like Dellamorte Dellamore, The Beyond, and The New York Ripper. Any band with a track about Dr. Freudstein of The House by the Cemetery gets serious points with me right out of the gate. Plus, you can see the sexy doc’s face on the cover. And to keep things nice and sleazy, they also reference grindhouse flicks like Thriller: A Cruel Picture and Last House on Dead End Street.

My favorite song is “Cut You To Pieces” about, what else? Pieces! They even incorporate that splatter classic’s very memorable tagline, “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre”, into the chorus. Just calling them metal does the band a disservice as the influences of punk and fuzzed out rock and roll are all over their sound making Splatter Generation fun, scary, catchy, and heavy as fuck. All of the musicianship is great from everyone involved and the lyrics make a great case for the benefits of necrophilia.

http://murderock.net/

https://murderock.bandcamp.com/

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.

My Doomed Moviethon

mydoomedmoviethon

I first became hooked on horror movies watching Elvira’s “Movie Macabre” when I was a kid (around 9 or 10 years old). She was making fun of Flesh For Frankenstein and I was totally flipping out. I was laughing at her gags (and oggling her goodies) but I was also really enjoying the movie (despite the fact that it was cut to ribbons for television). After that night, I tuned in every weekend to catch her shtick and I always ended up enjoying whatever movie she hosted.

Soon after, my parents gave me their old TV and I started up staying up all night to watch whatever was on the local channels. Some of you who remember the 1980s may also remember that there used to be horror movies on ALL THE TIME on late night TV. I have this vague memory of catching the creepy mannequin-filled Tourist Trap just before dawn. Good or bad, damn it, they were always on.

There were two films which aired in the middle of the night that caused me to slip over the edge and become completely obsessed with horror movies. The first one was Zombie 6: Monster Hunter (AKA Joe D’Amato’s Absurd) and the second was Girls Nite Out (a dull yet atmospheric slasher flick with the killer wearing a bear costume circa. 1984). Granted, neither of these are the best examples of horror but these two movies totally blew me away. I can still hear the announcer’s voice saying “We now return to Zombie 6: Monster Hunter” in a laughably menacing voice. I know George Eastman is out there somewhere stuffing some babysitter’s head into an oven.

Although I’m sure she has no idea, my sister Lora also had a hand in altering my filmic fate forever. While she was babysitting me one night, her boyfriend came over with a copy of Nightmare On Elm Street. Before they started the tape my sister told me the story of their “friend” who still sleeps in the same bed with her mother after watching the film. That didn’t scare me and neither did the first Elm Street flick. Later, my sister and her boyfriend took me to the local drive-in for a weird triple feature: Hot Pursuit (John Cusack, huh?), Cut And Run (yep, the Ruggero Deodato flick), and Creepshow 2. “Thanks for the ride, lady!”

By this time, my parents and I were renting 4 movies every weekend. Well, that all changed when I caught the horror bug. When I was 11, my parents gave me my own VCR. They had just purchased a new VCR, so, once again, I got the hand-me-down. Lucky for me the old one was in terrific shape and soon the thing was running nearly every time I set foot in my room.

There, at the video store (a Video-X-Tron before Blockbuster bought them out) was something that thrilled me: the HORROR section. There is something devious and alluring about an entire set of shelves full of dead teenagers, dark places, unholy incantations, and severed heads. Oddly enough, my parents had no problem with allowing me to watch whatever I wanted (sure, blame the parents!) so I had no trouble getting started on my mission which was to rent every single horror movie in the store. Nowadays, this would be easy since it is rare to find a decent selection of horror titles anywhere.

revengeofthedead

My family’s rental program changed one weekend. Two movies for my parents, one for the whole family, and four horror flicks for me. The ones I remember loving the most were Evil Dead 2, the Friday the 13th series, Halloween, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), Rabid, Night Of the Creeps, Hellraiser (both 1 and 2), From Beyond, Critters (both 1 and 2), Night of the Demons, Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Ghoulies, Warlock, Creepers (aka Dario Argento’s Phenomena), Munchies (terrible I know but I must have watched this one 4 or 5 times), Lamberto Bava’s Demons, Forever Evil (actually scared me!), April Fools Day, Dario Argento’s Trauma, Revenge Of The Dead (AKA Zeder) and many, many more.

Several years later, my buddy Scott (the original Moviethoner) and I started renting enough movies and buying enough junk food to get us through the night. Scott introduced me to Peter Medak’s The Changeling starring George C. Scott. We often tore through the entire Omen trilogy (yes, I still like to pretend Omen IV: The Awakening never happened) as well as Phantasm and Phantasm II before the night was through.

Then, I just stopped watching horror movies. I have no idea why I gave up on them. Perhaps films like Pulp Fiction and Clerks steered me into Indie land. Or maybe it was the sixth entry in the Halloween series or Hellraiser: Bloodline. I could just as easily blame the Leprechaun series or The Mangler for ruining horror movies for me.

I was still a film buff, watching tons and tons of artsy cinematic masterworks. I would sit through Last Tango In Paris, Rashômon, A Woman Under The Influence, Touch Of Evil, Amacord, etc. I was always searching for something with meaning and depth. Then one day (about three years ago) I was watching Fellini’s Satyricon and I just snapped. Sure, it’s a disturbing film filled with frightening characters and some gory moments but it (like Fellini’s other films) is half an hour too long. I didn’t want to endure the lofty and pretentious any longer. I wanted something fun and something gory that I could ingest in 90 minutes or less (preferably less).

One day, I was talking my friend Nafa about horror movies. He was a former moviethoner who had stopped watching horror flicks years ago but had been quite a connoisseur in his own time. Charged from the conversation, I decided to start renting horror movies again. My first surprise: I was appalled at how little horror Blockbuster Video actually carries nowadays. The company is reducing their VHS stock to make room for DVD but not restocking their shelves with the DVD versions. This corporate giant had bought out nearly all of the ma and pa video stores but it didn’t keep the one thing that gave them their strength in the first place:, their selection.

Frustrated, I went on the internet and started to poke around for horror facts and trivia. I suddenly noticed just how many of those old horror flicks I used to love had been censored long before I ever got a chance to watch them. As a child of the 80s, I absolutely despise censorship (thanks to the PMRC), so I decided to track the uncensored versions of these flicks down. No easy task, especially considering that I wasn’t into collecting. Yet.

Nafa told me about this horror/eurosleaze/porn video store across town and decided to check it out. Well, the situation looked grim. The place, Unique Video, as cool as it is was way out of my jurisdiction and had a 24 HOUR return policy. The duder wanted the movies back by closing time, THE NEXT DAY and I’m 20 or 30 minutes (of shitty Tampa traffic) away.

Figuring that I’d never see this type of selection again, I bit the bullet and rented four (only four! I was such an idiot) movies: Zombi 2, Phenomena, The Stendhal Syndrome, and Ms. 45, albeit not a horror movie but a classic piece of trash if ever there was one. This is one of the reasons why Doomed Moviethon extends its reach into the cult genre as well. So, I watched Ms.45 first to get it out of the way. That isn’t to say it wasn’t a perfect film to start my moviethon with. Next, I jumped into the horror with Zombi 2, Phenomena, and then finished everything off with The Stendhal Syndrome (not a fan favorite but one of my top 10).

So, I returned the tapes on time (barely) and made a decision not to return to the place. It was just too difficult to get across town every time I needed to return a tape. This decision was painful because none of the video stores I’d ever been to had this kind of selection. Hell, I had never even heard of Lucio Fulci before that night. The seedy looking covers of the Italian horror, German gorefests, and Giallo VHS tapes pulled the trigger in my brain. I was sold. I wanted my own horror movie library.

Of course, staying a horror purist is impossible with so many genre jumping directors and films (so yeah, Takashi Miike), one gets lead into other territory so easily. The yakuza film has ruined the American gangster movie for me forever. I even find myself craving the occasional spaghetti western, kung-fu flick, or even some trashy exploitation garbage. Also, I found that it takes a lot of fact checking and reading up to find the uncut versions of films and that it is easy to get bogged down in “Special Editions” and “Director’s Cuts”.

And that’s my horror story. My collection is now past the 500 mark and I’m loving every gore-soaked and scream-filled minute of it. I’ve almost located everything that inspired me to start this here website. However, I keep uncovering forgotten movies buried in the recesses of my brain. As more and more obscure as hell titles start coming to DVD, I’m sure I’ll be able to put all the pieces of my horror film geekhood together. Anyway, I’ve already spent too much time writing this and not watching something. Thanks for reading, moviethoners.

That Freudstein House!

thatfredusteinhouse

Let me go ahead and show my hand here. Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (from 1981) is my favorite film of all time. It’s not just my favorite horror film. It’s my favorite film. Period. Exclamation mark. While The Beyond is a bigger spectacle and Don’t Torture a Duckling is a better film, the tale of Dr. Freudstein, for my money, represents the best of Fulci’s gory golden age. I’m also particularly attached to this film because it reminds me so much of autumn. You see, I live in Tampa and fall around here just means more summer so anything that can jumpstart my autumnal heart is essential. Think of this as Fulci’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown except the pumpkins are rotting corpses and Linus Van Pelt is Bob Doyle, the most irritatingly dubbed kid in the history of Italian horror cinema.

In the film, Dr. Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco of New York Ripper) is called to continue the work of Dr. Peterson, a colleague who killed himself while researching old houses in Boston. Norman, his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl of City of the Living Dead) and their young son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) relocate to Boston for six months so that he can finish his work. Almost immediately, Bob meets and befriends a little ghost girl named Mae (Silvia Collatina) who warns him not to go into the house? What house? Why the Freudstein house, of course!

A crooked realtor named Laura Gittleson (Dagmar Lassander of The Frightened Woman) sets up the Boyle family for a whole mess of trouble by putting them in the former home of Dr. Freudstein, a place where people have been dying violently and/or disappearing. It turns out that Norman’s former colleague was so obsessed with Dr. Freudstein, a mad scientist who was exiled from the medical community 80 years prior, that he committed suicide. In walks Ann the babysitter (Ania Pieroni), apparently sent over by Laura to look after Bob. Lucy can’t help but notice Ann’s bizarre demeanor but Norman can’t be bothered.

Strange noises echo throughout the house and Lucy (who is already hopped up on mood stabilizers anyway) begins to lose her grip on her sanity. In order to help his wife keep her shit together, Norman agrees to go into the basement that has remain locked the entire time. While Lucy and he are down there, they are assaulted by a bat that looks like turds and fur with a pair of wings. The bat latches onto Norman’s hand; he then rushes upstairs and starts stabbing the thing with a kitchen knife. He appears to be taking great joy slaughtering the thing and flings blood all over the place including Bob (who looks just a tad shell-shocked by the spectacle).

That evening, while the Boyle fam is at the doctor, Laura the shitty realtor shows up when everyone is out and gets royally killed to death by an unseen Dr. Freudstein who drags her body down to the basement. The following morning, Ann is wiping up the blood but nobody notices because… um… the coffee is ready. As it starts to look like she may be in on the conspiracy of murders, Ann gets her friggin’ head chopped off which Bob sees rolling down the stairs. Of course, Lucy can’t find any evidence of the babysitter’s decapitation and convinces him it all just in his imagination.

To make sure that his college fund is a complete waste of time, Bob decides to head down to the basement that night and search for Ann (or at least her head). This time, Bob comes face to face with Dr. Freudstein and the charnel house that he has made of the basement. Norman, armed with proof that Freudstein is alive and using human remains to recharge his cells, and Lucy, armed with a mother’s love, rush to Bob’s rescue. But are they too late to save their irritating little boy? And more importantly, just who will save them?

Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well, it ain’t. There is so much more to this moody gorefest that every time I watch it, I have to wonder what planet it came from. Frequent Fulci collaborator, Sergio Salvati, is a fantastic cinematographer and doesn’t miss a beat here. The man knows how to pick up the minutest details and knows when to slap on the old fish eye lens to distort the truly terrifying sequences. Salvati is also complicit in feeding Fulci’s eye fetish and there are many, many close-ups of peepers. He also captures the amazing Freudstein house in all of its exterior Massachusetts glory (interiors filmed in Rome). It’s such an amazing house, I want to live there- oh fuck me, is that a tombstone built INSIDE the house? I still want to live there.

You’d think that child actors would get dubbed by child voice actors but no, that’s too expensive. Bob and Mae’s voices are provided by adults pretending to be children and they are both outrageously irritating. Bob wins out as the most annoying dubbing job in Italian horror history (his only rival is Marco in Mario Bava’s Shock). But screw the dubbing, all that matters is that Catriona MacColl’s trademark scream comes through loud and clear in this flick. Oh, I better mention the soundtrack by Walter Razatti. The House by the Cemetery has the quintessential early 80s horror score with a bevy of eerie synthesizer and piano pieces.

Lapses in logic and obtuse exchanges between characters make for a confounding viewing experience the first time around but after you let the magic set in, it all makes sense. Okay, maybe ‘sense’ is too strong of a word. The embodiment of incomprehensibility is Ann the babysitter. Ann is played by the captivating Ania Pieroni whom you may remember from Dario Argento’s Inferno where she played another weird role as the Mother of Tears. What the hell is the secret that Norman and Ann seem to share? Why does Norman deny that the Freudstein house looks exactly like the one in the photo hanging in his office? Why is Lucy on crazy pills? Can we trust her? Why doesn’t Bob get run over by a car in the first five minutes of the film and spare us the pain of listening to his ass-feather voice? The answer to all of these questions comes in the explanation of how Dr. Freudstein has stayed alive all these years: “He needs human victims to renew his cells.” Well, aren’t you satisfied?

As soon as we see down in that basement with all those chunks of people scattered all over the place, my eyes light up like it’s my 10th birthday forever. While I did pick this flick up in a bargain DVD bin for chump change back in 2003, the basement sequences feel so strangely familiar that I keep trying to convince myself I’ve seen this before. Some of my favorite childhood memories are fighting insomnia by catching horror movies in the small hours. Two of the most important were Joe D’Amato’s Rosso Sangue AKA Horrible and Girls Nite Out (the one where the killer wears a bear costume). Could it be that I tuned in just in time to see Bob and his mom desperately trying to evade the rotting grasp of Dr. Freudstein?

Well, if I first discovered this film when I was just a pup or not until my mid-20s makes very little difference. The House by the Cemetery has a zombified mad scientist, a grand old haunted house, a ghost with psychic abilities (is that special or do they all have them?), numerous gore setpieces, and a plethora of themes and hidden meanings to explore and dissect. Add all that up and you’ve got one seriously essential piece of Italian gore-art. The house awaits you; creaky doors, an inch of dust, cobwebs, intestines, and all. Come for the splatter but stay for the intangible horrors and the unmistakable Lucio Fulci-ness of it all. And I tell you, good people, that gory and bleak finale is one of the most satisfying in all of horror filmdom. If you call yourself a horror fan, then check this one out. Or else.

Night of the Devils

nightofthedevils

Night of the Devils (1972)

A man suffering from amnesia (Gianni Garko) staggers out of the woods, injured, and catatonic. He is brought to a hospital where a doctor (Umberto Raho) runs tests which determine the man has suffered a terrible shock that has reduced him to this agitated and paranoid state. The only person who can identify this man is Sdenka (Agostina Belli), a lovely young woman who claims she met the patient a just few days ago. She identifies him as Nicola, a business man from Italy, but then disappears after the very sight of her drives Nicola into a frenzy.

The film then flashes back to a few days before to the events that drove Nicola mad. While purchasing lumber for his company, Nicola’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and he seeks help from a family returning from a funeral and living in a nearly abandoned village in the woods. Jovan (played by Roberto Maldera) agrees to help Nicola but it must be in the morning because there is said to be a blood-drinking witch who prowls around at night. This turns out to be true when the patriarch Gorca (Bill Vanders) returns from attempting to kill the witch but is now a vampire himself. As each member of the family falls prey to vampiric forces, Nicola tries to rescue the lovely Sdenka, the lovely daughter of Gorca with whom he has fallen in love with.

Night of the Devils kicks in with one of the most attention-grabbing opening scenes in Italian horror. Gianni Garko (or Sartana to you spaghetti western types) comes stumbling out of the woods into a clearing. He passes out near a stream and wakes up in a hospital where he is being examined by doctors. During his tests, we see into his mind where he is tormented by horrific visions of rotting corpses, a woman’s face getting shot off, ghoulish figures ripping the flesh from a naked woman’s body. This sequence is spell-binding. Its cheesy for sure but it is impossible not to wonder just what happened to this guy. Curiosity = piqued? You know it.

Director Giorgio Feroni (Mill of the Stone Women) remakes the ‘Wurdulak’ segment of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath but makes it his own by amping up the sex, the gore, and the cackling madness of the vampires. The soundtrack by Giorgio Gaslini (So Sweet, So Dead) is great with its haunting vocal pieces and tense and minimal freakouts. Spanish cinematographer, Manuel Berenguer, keeps things nice and claustrophobic. While the countryside is nice, it is never pretty. Instead, the entire film is very somber and cast in shadows (without being overly dark). When there is a brightly lit scene, it screams danger and madness. If I have to find faults with this flick then it would be that the pacing is a little slow and the gore effects are looking a bit gamy.

Oh, this cast is great. Gianni Garko is always good. The lovely Agostina Belli of Holocaust 2000 and Scream of the Demon Lover is excellent as the sweet (or possibly evil) Sdenka. You might remember Roberto Maldera from The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave where he played the very unlucky groundskeeper. The luscious and hypnotic Teresa Gimpera of Crypt of the Living Dead gets ripped to shreds in this one (and it’s not by the critics). The always dependable Umberto Raho who usually plays police inspectors gets to flash his skillz by playing a doctor! And then there’s Maria Monti as ‘The Witch’. This is a truly eerie performance from an underused actress who had a small role in What Have You Done to Solange? I also have to mention young Cinzia De Carolis who grew up and played the freaky jailbait who tries to seduce John Saxon in Cannibal Apocalypse.

Night of the Devils is one of those forgotten masterpieces and a genuinely gore-soaked relic. This is the kind of cinema that drives me nerdily on. This film proves that if you think you’ve seen every last scrap of Italian junk, chances are there is one more title out there you need to see. Creepy, sleazy, bloody, melodramatic, nasty, and, as an added bonus: mind-fucky! The somber tone never lets up for a second and you just know that this ain’t gonna end well for our deranged hero. This is good stuff, y’all.

“Television? Now that’s something I’ve never seen!”