witches

Something Creeping in the Dark

Something Creeping in the Dark (1971)

During a terrible storm, a group of obnoxious strangers are stranded at a mysterious house in the middle of nowhere occupied only by a lone hippie butler named Joe (Gianni Medici). Among them is a murderous criminal named Spike (Farley Granger) accompanied by two police detectives trying to haul him in. While playing a haunting melody on the piano, Spike makes a strange connection with Sylvia (Lucia Bose), a bored bourgeois lady, much to the dismay of her husband Donald (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart). Things get really strange when Sylvia holds a seance and they make contact with Sheila Marlowe, the recently deceased owner of the house. It seems that Sylvia’s spirit is not the restful type and she wants a new body to possess. People start dropping like flies under strange circumstances and the chances that anyone is going to survive until dawn are slim.

I want to love this movie, I really do. Oh yeah, it’s gonna be one of those reviews. The kind where I can’t be trusted. Director and writer Mario Coluuci only directed one horror film and it’s easy to see why. Something Creeping in the Dark has some great and very weird moments but the pacing is so off, it is almost funny. Almost. There is very little blood but there is plenty of violence with all the strangulation, bludgeoning, and shooting going on. What this movie has a great deal of is sex. Most of it is suggested and it’s as subtle as a sledgehammer (the Peter Gabriel kind).

There’s a little skin on display from Joe’s girlfriend, played by the adorable Giulia Rovai (who went on to star in nothing). The cast is also blessed with two lovely vixens: Lucia Bose and Mia Genberg (who plays Susan, the repressed nerd whose inhibitions come out and play once the ghost is in control), who both get to wear some very skimpy outfits. Lucia Bose participates in the film’s freakiest scene. While Spike is charming Sylvia’s panties off with his piano playing skills, the two of them share a disturbing fantasy sequence. In this daydream (?), Spike chases Sylvia around, slaps her around, and is about to rape her when she stabs him with a knife. She stabs him again and again and again while Spike just laughs maniacally. Genius!

The seance is where this film really kicks into high gear. (Don’t get used to it.) As you may have figured out by now, I love seance sequences in horror movies and this one is pretty superb. Giacomo Rossi-Stuart kicks all kinds of ass here when his character Donald, a natural medium, becomes possessed by the spirit they are contacting. Donald is a little ball of misery and rage and the ghost takes advantage of that with deadly results. It’s nice to see Rossi-Stuart actually getting into his role for a change. When directors didn’t know what to do with him, duder really phoned it in. Check out The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (totally awful) and Death Smiled at Murder (better film, same result) to see what I mean.

I started out looking for a giallo and found whatever this is instead. But I’ve watched Something Creeping in the Dark twice now and I still can’t get a hold on it. Yes, it’s boring. All of the good stuff: the trippy possession and poltergeist sequences, the loungy/eerie soundtrack by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, the painfully obvious model house, the catty and banal dialogue, the always welcome presence of Farley Granger (Amuck!), and general disjointedness, just doesn’t make up for the snooze factor involved. Thanks to a couple of well-crafted scares though, I will be returning to the house of Sheila Marlowe against my will. It’s almost as if she has possessed me as well. What’s that, Sheila? You want me to eat more bacon? Okay!

“This kind of morbid exultation can be harmful to the nerves. I advise against it.”

The Queen of Black Magic

The Queen of Black Magic (1979)

A wedding party falls under a black magic curse. The bride has horrific visions and the entire ceremony is in shambles. The groom, Kohar, took Murni’s virginity and then spurned her for his new woman. Now he accuses her of casting the curse upon his fiancé. Kohar encourages the villagers to capture Murni, set her mother on fire, and then throw her off a cliff. She is rescued from death by a witch doctor who teaches her the arts of black magic. Murni uses her newfound abilities to get vengeance on Kohar and the people who tried to destroy her.

Obviously not big on women’s lib, Murni (played by the lovely Suzzanna) is first manipulated by the man she loves and then becomes a pawn of the evil sorcerer. Thankfully, Kohar, the unrepentant prick gets what he deserves. Permana, the holy man, comes preaching that prayer is the best defense against black magic and he’s right. The ignorance of the villagers and their refusal to pray will spell out their doom.

The Queen of Black Magic has excellent direction and pacing. The movie flies by as we are treated to one wild scene after another. Somebody please, buy me this soundtrack! The score for The Queen of Black Magic is some wild synthesizer action mixed with a killer string section and awesome percussion. It’s freakin’ great!

The gore effects are simple but gruesome with some wicked splatter moments. One evil bastard is killed when giant blood-filled boils appear on his body and burst all over the place. Another choice scene comes when someone rips his own head off. The head starts flying around and bites a strip of flesh off the leader of the village.

This was my first foray into Indonesian horror and it will not be the last. The story reminded me of a 70s Shaw Brothers gore flick but more conservative like an Indian horror film (just without the musical numbers). Other than the crazy gore and Murni’s wacky training montage, the most outlandish aspect of The Queen of Black Magic is a totally unnecessary melodramatic twist at the end that just makes the story a little more confusing and a little more strange. Overall, this is a fun flick that folks with a taste for international horror will go bonkers over. Highly recommended!

“All men are traitors!”

Lucifera: Demon Lover

Lucifera: Demon Lover (1972)

Helga (Rosalba Neri) and her friends are out sightseeing one day when they pass by a lovely castle in the countryside. Inside they find a creepy butler (John Benedy) who invites them to dinner. Suddenly, Helga doesn’t feel very well and she is encouraged to have a rest in one of the bedrooms. She falls asleep and is transported to another time. In this past life, Helga is about to marry a handsome man named Hans (Ferdinando Poggi) but she is afraid that her marriage is cursed after a mysterious hooded stranger sees her wedding dress.

Desperate to prevent bad things from befalling her marriage, Helga approaches an old crone who tells her of a good luck spell. Helga needs her two friends to carry out this sketchy magic and they agree to join her at the gallows. Once the spell is cast, her friends are taken away by a coven of witches/vampires. Thinking that she has it made, Helga prepares for her big day but then a mysterious stranger named Gunther (Edmund Purdom) shows up and presents her with a new proposition. He offers her limitless pleasure and all she has to do is sacrifice Hans on her wedding night. Will Helga be tempted by the DEVILish man?

By the early 1970s, the Italian gothics had lost their edge. The budgets got smaller, the gore (yay!) and the sex (meh.) got more explicit, and things just seemed to be winding down for the subgenre. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. Obviously, I wish that more directors slumming in this crap had made some cheap gialli instead. And yet there are some magnificent films from this era (such as The Devil’s Wedding Night and Blood Castle) but they are usually campy and more than a little rough around the edges. Paolo Lombardo’s 1972 film, Lucifera: Demon Lover, is a particularly clunky example of compensating for a lack of suspense and scares by throwing in more skin.

The title card promises the audience a film in the tradition of the Grand Guignol. Well, this mishmash of Satanic horror, vampirism, sex, torture, and low cut gowns is definitely entertaining once it gets going (after the friggin’ half hour mark). The cinematography by Antonio Modica is a little drab for my tastes but he gets the job done. I really dig the musical score by Elvio Monti. He gets points for keeping things nice and tacky. The plot is a little gamy with its reliance on adding too many characters and trashy sex scenes (not that I was all that surprised).

I love Rosalba Neri (Amuck!) and she is definitely the best thing about this movie (despite some busty competition from some of her co-stars). I really love how her character Helga is willing to sacrifice her friends because she thinks it will protect her. Nice job spoiling your innocence, you dumb stupid idiot. Of course, I would be a fool not to mention the awesome Edmund Purdom (of Rosso Sangue) who makes his Gunther AKA Satan character into a real charmer. There are some other kind of cool actors involved here but none of them get to do much acting. Plus, there’s just too much going to keep track of everybody. How many sped up sword-fights can one man handle? The answer is none but this film has more than that.

While picking on the logic of a film with a setup as thin as Lucifera: Demon Lover is a little too easy, I have to call this one out on a few doozies. First up is one actress complaining about how dark it’s getting outside and how she and her friends should hurry home. Lady, it ain’t even dusk! It continues to look like 2 in the afternoon for the next few scenes and boy is it distracting. The other mistake that I cannot overlook is the cellophane window. There is a scene where someone is standing in a doorway and the windowpanes of the door are covered in cellophane stapled to the frame. I did not realize they had that stuff back in medieval Italy.

What can I say? I hate to be a jerk to Lucifera: Demon Lover but this is one mediocre flick. As usual, I’m trying not to let my love for Italian trash override my ability to judge this sexed up and only slightly bloody junk objectively. If you can’t get enough of Rosalba Neri (and seriously who the hell can?), then check this one out. You’ll be better off with something more fun (and more lucid) like her classic performance in Lady Frankenstein. All the thunderstorms, candelabras, graveyards, and see through negligees can’t save this one but you could definitely find worse ways to waste 80 minutes. Oh and what the hell was with that last line? Paolo Lombardo (who also wrote this ass-terpiece) had no idea how to gracefully end his film and so we get Edmund Purdom spouting some gibberish and smirking at the camera before the “FINE” pops up.

“My wedding dress. It was contaminated.”

The Long Hair of Death

longhairofdeath

The Long Hair of Death (1964)

As noblemen, Count Humboldt and his son Kurt Humboldt (played by George Ardisson), burn a witch at the stake, she places a curse upon them. The witch’s daughter, Helen Karnstein (Barbara Steele), vows to make sure that curse is carried out but she is soon put to death. Her younger sister, Elizabeth (Halina Zalewska), survives and years later, is forced to marry Kurt Humboldt. One night, during a thunderstorm, Helen Karnstein’s grave is struck by lightning and a mysterious woman named Mary (also Barbara Steele) appears at the castle. Kurt is immediately smitten with Mary and takes her as a mistress not suspecting that she might have a little something to do with a certain curse that was placed upon him.

Director Antonio Margheriti, the man responsible for Castle of Blood, Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye, and Cannibal Apocalypse, brings us this gothic chiller. The plot isn’t anything spectacular and the dialogue is pretty standard. However, the ending ties everything together very nicely and the film’s atmosphere is pregnant with dread. Ah, I’ve always wanted to say that. I love the music score though it is pretty generic. Composer Carlo Rustichelli hits all the right cues with either the scary strings or the eerie organ. There’s also a bounty of excellent castle locations and detailed gothic sets which add to the creepy mood.

This film features more of that wonderful Italian cinematography that drives me absolutely bonkers (in a good way). The amazing Riccardo Pallottini (The Killer Must Kill Again, Massacre Time) lensed this one and I am astounded by his ability to create such stark compositions in black and white. The scene where Kurt Humboldt walks through the town square towards Elizabeth’s tomb is brilliantly framed and almost dizzyingly detailed. It reminds me of some of Joe D’Amato’s camerawork in Death Smiled at Murder.

Two lovely ladies, Barbara Steele and Halina Zalewska, lead the charge in this Italian goth-assault. As usual, Steele’s presence steels the show but Halina Zalewska is certainly no slouch. It’s a shame that Zalewska did little more than supporting roles for the rest of her career. When Steele, as Helen Karnstein, visits the spot where her mother was burned alive and raises a fistful of her ashes to the sky…Oh, I get chills. Then you got scenery-chomper, George Ardisson (Django Defies Sartana). Oh man, this guy is intense.

The Long Hair of Death has one major problem: it draaaaaaags in its middle section. A plague that strikes the kingdom and the machinations of the noblemen will stretch any attention span to the breaking point. The fine pacing of the first 40 minutes hits this lull and it takes a little while before the film’s climax lifts us out of the muck. On the plus side, keep an eye out for the really nasty looking corpse (shown in odious detail) and the not-so-subtly implied necrophilia. Aw yeah! Barbara Steele fans, if you enjoyed The Faceless Monster, The Ghost, or Terror Creatures from the Grave, you’ll dig on this one.

“She’s the cause of all our trouble. I curse the shrew that brought her into this castle of hell.”

Queens Of Evil

queensofevil_DVD

Queens of Evil (1970)

David (Ray Lovelock The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) stops to help a man with a flat tire one night. As David changes the tire they discuss the differences between the burgeoning hippie culture and the older generation’s set of  ideals and the man surreptitiously punctures David’s motorcycle tire. As the man drives off he warns David not to fall to the devil. David fixes his own tire and catches up to the man but he crashes his car into a tree and no one will stop to help them. The man dies and David drives on, stopping to sleep in the shed of a house in the forest.

He is awakened the next morning by a beautiful girl named Liv (Hadee Politoff – Count Dracula’s Great Love) who lives there with her two sisters Bibiana, (Evelyn Stewart – Spirits Of Death) and Samantha (Sylvia Monti – The Fifth Cord). David is invited in for a madcap, psychedelic breakfast but doesn’t seem to realize that there is something a little off about the sisters. After his attempts to leave go nowhere, we realize that David has stepped into another world like Alice through the looking glass or maybe, more appropriately, like Lisa from Lisa and the Devil, the moment she strays from the crowd.

I don’t want to give away too much about this dreamy, hazy film from Tonino Cervi (director of Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die, a Spaghetti Western co-written by Dario Argento). There are castles in the forest, mysterious nighttime visitors, midnight bonfire rituals, and general unexplainable goings on; all with a pop art Italian Horror fairytale sheen throughout the whole film.

In fact, it is a very fairytale-like film that combines a Grimm’s Fairy Tales feel with the aforementioned Lisa And The Devil and a touch of the weirdness toward the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Queens Of Evil is very much an Italian horror gem waiting to be rediscovered, don’t blink toward the end as you’ll miss Geraldine Hooper the actress that played Carlo’s ‘boyfriend’ in Deep Red. How’s that for trivia?

-Brad Hogue