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Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (1962, Italy/Austria)

October 21, 2013, 5:11 am
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This Austrian-Italian horror film was originally released under the names Lycanthropus (Italy) and Bei Vollmond Mord (Austria/Germany), but when it was brought to the US in 1963 to join a double-bill with Corridors of Blood (1958 / trailer), it was not only given a wonderful pop title track, Ghoul in School, sung by the unknown (possibly studio-created) group named "The Fortunes", so as to increase its appeal to the younger crowd, but was also bestowed with its best-known and catchiest title, Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory. Tune and title aside, the teens of the day were most likely disappointed by the movie, which is less a teen horror film than an oddly schizophrenic amalgamation of German krimi (ala the German Edgar Wallace films that had just gained popularity in Europe) and Italian Gothic.
Fan-made video: The Fortunes – The Ghoul in School
In other ways, Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory is rather a B&W predecessor of the classic Italian giallo, complete with — in addition to the titular werewolf — an unknown killer in black gloves who, like the werewolf, is unmasked by the end of the movie. That this tinge of giallo is noticeable in the movie is perhaps not all that surprising when one takes into account that the original screenplay was scripted by no one less than the extremely prolific and long-active Italo-filmscribe Ernesto Gastaldi, whom many see as one of the granddaddies the giallo genre and, to an extent, the Spaghetti Western. (To list but some of giallo, horror and westerns films that he worked on as writer:  The Scorpion with Two Tails [1982 / trailer], Torso [1973 / trailer], All the Colors of the Dark [1972 / trailer], Short Night of Glass Dolls [1971 / trailer], The Murder Clinic [1966 / trailer], The Whip and the Body [1963 / Italian trailer], Horror Castle [1963 / trailer], The Vampire and the Ballerina [1960 / trailer], Vengeance is Mine [1968 / Italian trailer], One More to Hell [1968 / German trailer], Sartana the Gravedigger [1969 / German trailer], The Horrible Dr. Hichcock [1962 / Italian trailer], The Case of the Bloody Iris [1972 / trailer], Blade of the Ripper [1971 / Italian trailer] and So Sweet... So Perverse [1969 / main theme]).
The director of the Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory, Paolo Heusch (26 Feb 1924 — 21 Oct 1982) is likewise Italian, but the movie's cast is international, with actors and actresses coming from Poland, France, Austria and Germany. (Interesting to note that Heusch, perhaps herewith the director of the first Italian werewolf film, is also the director of The Day the Sky Exploded [1958 / trailer], which many consider to be the first Italian science-fiction film.) Who knows what language Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory was actually filmed in — as sometimes some mouths actually move in synch with the dubbing, it is conceivable that everyone simply spoke their own language — but the English-language dub does serious damage to the movie. One is often hard-pressed to believe that a native speaker wrote it, particularly when they start talking about this or that "assassinated" person.
But while the dub, much like some the narrative events, does garner a giggle or two now and then, it, like the whole movie itself, is not terrible enough to make Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory a truly hilariously and enjoyably bad film event on the level of, dunno, The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1959) or Jail Bait (1954) or Mädchen from the Mambo Bar (1959) or Bloodlust! (1961) or Isle of Sin (1960) or Horrors of Spider Island (1960). Amidst all that is bad, too much is sometimes good — the B&W cinematography, the camera work and compositions, the gothic touch, the intriguing mystery angle — to make Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory craptastic. The film is an oddity to say the least, for it has enough personality to not truly be simply mediocre, but at the same time is neither good enough nor bad enough to truly be any "good" as a good film or a bad one.
In itself, Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory is a bit of a misleading title, as although there is a (relatively hairless) werewolf at work in the movie, it not only never enters the dorm, but all the action occurs in and around a girl's reformatory. (Had the film ever been re-released during the women-in-prison phase, it surely would have been called "Werewolf in a Girl's Reformatory".) And it is to this reformatory that the new biology teacher Dr. Julian Olcott (Carl Schell, the least successful of the Schell family of actors, also found in Escape from East Berlin [1962 / trailer]), a disgraced doctor with a secret past. And no sooner does he arrive than does the pretty troublemaker Mary Smith (an unknown Mary McNeeran) get killed on her way home from a midnight visit to the nubile-loving benefactor of the school, Sir Alfred Whiteman (Maurice Marsac, a French-born character actor that can even be found in films as big as How to Marry a Millionaire [1953 / trailer]), whom she has been blackmailing. Two other reformatory gals, Priscilla (the highly attractive Barbara Lass, of Der Pfarrer von St. Pauli [1970 / German trailer], at the time still Roman Polanski's first wife) and Sandy (Grace Neame), saw her slip out into the night, and when Priscilla learns that the dead Mary was blackmailing someone, she decides to find out whom and, she assumes, thus find out who the murderer is.
There are is no lack of suspects, either: aside from Dr. Olcott and Sir Alfred, there is the crippled caretaker Walter (Luciano Pigozzi, "the Italain Peter Lore" doing Peter Lore, also found in the background of Alien from the Deep [1989] and Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye [1973]); the seemingly benign director of the school, Dr Swift (war hero and familiar character actor Curt Lowens of, among others, Necronomicon: Book of Dead [1993 / Japanese trailer], Mandroid [1993 / trailer] and The Entity [1982 / trailer]), the teacher Leonore MacDonald (Maureen O'Connor), the aged and icy wife of Sir Alfred, Sheena Whiteman (Annie Steinert), and more... Mrs. Whiteman, in any event, is quickly taken off the list of suspects by falling victim not to the werewolf that killed Mary, but to a mysterious killer wearing black gloves.
Despite its title and the presence of a werewolf of sorts, Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory is less a horror film than a somewhat talky mystery film, and as such is a disappointment for those expecting the traditional innocent-cursed-to-kill every full moon. Indeed, the lycanthropy in this movie is not even due to some unnatural curse, but rather to purely biological grounds: a rare malfunction of the pituitary gland that goes haywire when triggered by the full moon is the cause — and damned if Dr. Olcott's past fall from public grace isn't directly tied with his former research into the sickness; research that more than one person at the reformatory desperately wants to get their mitts (furry or leather) on. Mary, in turn, just wants to find out who the killer is, and she continually puts herself in danger to do so.
It is the mystery that she so wants to solve that is the true focus of this too-oft slow-moving movie, and Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory milks the mystery as much as it can, with Mary's suspicions — like those of the viewer — continually shifting directions until both the werewolf and the killer are (disappointingly) revealed to the viewer mid-way into the movie not by any sleuthing on part of Mary, but simply as an element of the plot development.
Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory is one of those movies that we here at A Wasted Life really don't know what to do with. We would like to say that we like it, and we would like to be able to recommend it, but we can't. At best, we can say we enjoyed and found it interesting. But in all truth it does drag, some of the key actors are rather bland, and the script not only offers one too many idiotic turns (such as the scene with the caretaker at the local bar or his later midnight murder of a girl and subsequent death) but is also extremely dialogue heavy — a flaw intensified by the bad dubbing. On the other hand, the Euro-babes are attractive schoolgirl fantasies and the gothic trappings are nice, as are aspects of the direction and both the giallo and mystery elements. However, none of it is in any way helped by the inferior quality of the digital versions of the film available online or as a DVD.
Still, we also have to admit that we went into this movie expecting a cheap and laughable horror flick; had we expected an early but serious and dry giallo with a decidedly unique twist, perhaps we would have enjoyed the movie even more. And if you, the viewer, go into this movie expecting the latter, perhaps you might enjoy it a bit more, too.

 
As an extra attraction and just for the hell of it, we would like to present the trailer to I tabù (1964), the second-to-last film produced by Guido Giambartolomei, the producer of Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory. An early Mondo Cane (1964 / Italian trailer) imitation, the English-language release, entitled Taboos of the World,  is narrated by no one less than Vincent Price...
Trailer to Taboos of the World:
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Short Film: Swing You Sinners! (1930)

October 28, 2013, 4:47 am
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The great master Max Fleischer, the producer behind Betty Boop and so much more, was always good for animated weirdness, as we already revealed last January when we presented one of his weirder early cartoons, Bimbo's Initiation (1931), as the Short Film of the Month. Since then, on one of those rare days when we weren't just surfing the web for porn, we stumbled upon an online article over at Cracked.com entitled 5 Old Children's Cartoons Way Darker Than Most Horror Movies which, aside from also including Bimbo's Initiation as one of the five, also introduced us to this cartoon, the 9th of Fleischer's Talkartoons, Swing You Sinners!, which the website rates as the darkest of them all. As Cracked says, "Officially, LSD was first produced in 1938. We say 'officially' because this cartoon says it's from 1930, and there's no way it was created without massive doses of acid being pumped into everyone involved." Without a doubt, Swing You Sinners! is as weird as it is disturbing, and a perfect short for us to share with you.
Not that the short would indicate just how weird it is as a whole when it starts, as the first few moments are as generic as it gets, featuring a situation — attempted theft and subsequent chase — that echoes many a later cartoon, be it Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Sylvester and Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn or any number of lesser- or better-known characters. But just wait until our wanna-be chicken-thief on the run enters the graveyard...
 
Sing You Sinners from Honey (1930):
Like so many cartoons, a then-current aspect of pop culture plays an integral part of Swing You Sinners! Namely, the hit foxtrot entitled Sing You Sinners (music, W. Franke Harling; lyrics Sam Coslow) from the 1930 movie musical Honey starring Lillian Roth (of Alice, Sweet Alive [1976]). The original song was used again as the title track to the 1938 Bing Crosby movie Sing You Sinners (first 14 minutes) — like Honey, also directed by Wesley Ruggles (11 June 1889 – 8 January 1972) — and, before and since, has been covered dozens of times. The original lyrics, if course, were somewhat changed for the Fleischer cartoon.

Smith Ballew sings Sing You Sinners (1930):
Though the main character in Swing Your Sinners! remains unnamed, he is generally viewed as an another early version of Bimbo, who, if you discount the even earlier (and forgotten) Fleischer dog character Fitz the Dog as a forerunner, had debuted earlier that year in the Talkartoon Hot Dog (1930 / full cartoon) as a skirt-chasing cat-caller — or possibly a john is search of a hooker — but only got his name seven shorts later in Sky Scraping (1930 / full cartoon) and, the following year, his best-known and characteristic appearance in The Herring Murder Case (1931 / full cartoon). Here, although obviously (?) a dog, his nose is oddly reminiscent of how a much more famous mouse looked around that time.

Sing You Sinners by the Harlem Hot Chocolates (1930):
The animation of Swing You Sinners!, credited to Willard Bowsky and Ted Sears, is uneven, varying from primitive to pretty decent,  but the schizophrenia of the drawing only adds to the overall strangeness of the events. But to describe this short as strange is a bit of a disservice, for not only does more than one scene move it into the realm of seriously disturbing and a good two thirds of the short is simply macabre, but the character basically seems to die at the extremely abrupt ending. To put it simply, Swing You Sinners! is a masterpiece of irreal insanity. Enjoy.

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The Heirloom / Zhai bian (Taiwan, 2005)

November 1, 2013, 1:35 am
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(Spoilers.) A movie that annoys us enough to make us want to become a pedantic asshole and even argue that it starts going wrong with its title, which arguably should be The Inheritance, but we'll skip that since it is also arguable that the title refers not to the inherited house (perhaps "a valued possession passed down in a family through succeeding generations" but hardly "an article of personal property included in an inherited estate" [American Heritage Dictionary]) but rather to the fetus in the ceramic jar that pops up two-thirds of the way through this highly gothic and visually beautiful movie. Let it be said, however, that going by what transpires on screen  director Leste Chen has a much stronger comprehension of beautiful visuals than he does of either a tight narrative or an effective horror story: The Heirloom is an oft confusing and slightly epileptically told — "epileptically" being a nice word for sloppily — gothic tale of horror that mistakes aesthetics and style for coherence and narrative.
The result is eye candy that, while admittedly gorgeous, soon annoys, particularly because it so outweighs the coherency and story... often, the director seems to be aiming to out-artify the best of the visual overkill found in vintage Jess Franco or Jean Rollins, but without the exploitive aspects. No cheap and sleazy shock moments, no naked titties or decadent soft-core sex scenes, no cheap-looking blood and guts — just a ton of slow-moving camera movements, beautiful color compositions, extremely deliberate pacing, good looking but bad actors, and out-of-focus photography set to a washing soundtrack that sounds as if it has been cribbed from a TV love story. In other words, all foreplay and no payoff — until the final kick-in-the-gut which is hardly as depressing and saddening as it should be because by the time it happens the viewer simply doesn't give a flying fuck anymore.
In the end, more than anything else — and despite such occasionally horrific shots like that of a bloodied young woman crawling across the floor in a room full of 25 hanged bodies (which, of course, don't drip piss or shit, as they would in real life) — The Heirloom comes across less as a horror film or even an arty horror film than as a persiflage or caricature of an arty horror film. Worst of all, it lacks a couple of truly necessary ingredients indispensable to an effective horror films: dread, chills and scares. Not good.
The basic plot concerns a guy named James (Jason Chang of Formula 17 [2004 / trailer]) who returns to Taiwan from twenty years abroad to inherit a huge Art Deco house that, on the exterior, looks more like a factory or apartment building than anything else, but seeing that it once housed up to 15 people, the size is acceptable. What is less acceptable is that despite being gone for twenty years, James not only has friends of the same age in town but even a beautiful dancer girlfriend Yo (Terri Kwan of Good Will Evil [2008 / first 8.5 minutes]) who, after he confronts her with the conflict of her plans to leave town over drinks in the company of their shared friends (as is done in any good relationship), decides overnight to toss her plans to study abroad to move in with him in his spooky, dilapidated inheritance.
Uh-oh! Scary: suddenly, not only do their friends Ah-Tseng (Tender Huang of Judgment Day [2013 / trailer]) and Asian Babe #2 Yi-Chen (Terri Kwan) start appearing in the house with no memory of how they got there, but Ah-Tseng is even found dead in his bathroom, hung by an invisible rope. The investigating policeman pooh-poohs any notions of the supernatural, but then he too suddenly starts showing up in the house without knowing how he got there...
Ah, yes, yet another the typical Asian ghost that can conduct its indiscriminate nefarious actions across kilometers, even teleporting people to do so. Why neither Yo nor James suffer initially is clear at the end of the movie, once the sucker punch is delivered, but why Ah-Tseng suffers the ghostly wrath is less clear — all he ever really seems to do is smoke, drink wine and act petulant. And why does the cop get killed, but not the estate agent (or is he an inheritance lawyer?) that shows James the house in the first scenes? Or any of the movers that move James into the house? Of course, that could simply be written off to the illogical whimsies of the unnatural, but we tend to see the death of the cop as an easy way for the scriptwriter (Dorian Li) to totally drop the whole aspect of the police investigation into Ah-Tseng's death as well as that of the cameras the cops installed all over James' house, as indeed, neither aspect is ever mentioned again once the policeman teleports without his arms and bleeds to death.
Of lesser annoyance but reflective of the carelessness of the script is the fact that though the movie initially speaks of ghostly fetuses (a number underscored by the number of urns in the attic), the film not only eventually focuses on only one (buried beneath the attic floorboards) but also tends to flip-flop between this evil baby ghost and the ghost of James' mother as the source of all unnatural events. While it is perhaps believable that the fetus just wants food and doesn't care who suffers along the way, it seems illogical that James' mum — who once showed mercy for her twin sister and allowed her to survive the mass extermination of the family — would turn around and doom her child, who perhaps carries the least guilt of the entire family.... That is, at least, until the sucker-punch final when he reveals a whole new side of himself.
Let it be said, the house truly suffers some bad feng shui, as Yi-Chen — she bites the dust eventually, too, far away from the house — says somewhere along the line, but then, what is to be expected from a place once inhabited by a family of 15-plus that nurtured the ghosts of dead fetuses for personal gain, going so far as to even feed them the blood of their own crippled and unhealthy offspring?
Our one line verdict of The Heirloom: for all its aesthetic beauty, is also a pretty bad movie.
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R.I.P.: José Ramón Larraz, Part II

November 8, 2013, 1:15 am
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José Ramón Larraz
1929 (Barcelona, Spain) — 3 Sept 2013 (Málaga, Spain)

Go here for Part 1.




Whirlpool
(1970, writ. & dir. by "J. R. Larrath")

Stelvio Cipriani's Haunting Score to Whirlpool:
 
AKA Vortice dei sensi& Perversione Flash (Italy), Perversion Flash (bootleg), L'enfer de l'érotisme& Déviations sexuelles (France). Hell Broke Luce, which says the movie is "a definite statement from a first-time filmmaker if there ever was one", explains the plot: "Tulia (Vivian Neves), a young, beautiful yet extremely naïve model agrees to spend some time at the cabin home of Sara (Pia Andersson), an acquaintance of her photographer boss, and Sara's shy nephew Theo (Karl Lanchbury), who also happens to be a photographer. Tulia and Theo quickly develop a bond, and not long after Tulia lets go of all her inhibitions and becomes a player in Sara and Theo's sexual games. The entire time however, Sara and Theo are constantly speaking of Rhonda (Johanna Hegger), their previous guest at the cabin, whom Sara was rather fond of. Tulia eventually becomes increasingly suspicious of what happened to this Rhonda, and when a stranger claiming to be Rhonda's lover shows up inquiring about her whereabouts, her curiosity becomes even greater, leading Tulia to try and seek out the truth about what really happened to Rhonda."
When the film was originally released, some dude named Roger Ebert was of the opinion that "Whirlpool is a genuinely sickening film. It has to do with various varieties of sex, yes, but its main appeal seems to be its violence. The ads tell us 'she died with her boots on — and not much else', and that's a sign of the times. Two years ago, this film would have been promoted for its sex and nudity. Today, the distributor emphasizes the violence. The violence is not, however, the cathartic sort to be found in The Wild Bunch (1969 / trailer) or the comic-strip spaghetti Westerns. It's a particularly grisly sort of violence, photographed for its own sake and deliberately relishing in its ugliness. It made me awfully uneasy. For the rest, Whirlpool is fairly ridiculous, especially in its dialog."
The NY Times would tend to agree, saying: "Whirlpool suffers from certain basic flaws — poor sound, poor color, poor performances, etc. But it is most impressively undistinguished in its dialogue, which achieves a Victorian prissiness that matches and sometimes overpowers its essentially Victorian theme. [...] Tulia is played by Vivian Neves. She is very pretty, and her clothes come off frequently. Aunt Sara also disrobes, but with less effect. Theo, who is not the man he ought to be, generally glowers and endlessly pouts." That's the two babes above on the cover of big film, proving once again that women don't need men to have a good time.
Over in Chyby, Poland, Humanoid of Flesh sees the trash factor of Whirlpool as a plus, saying: "The pace is slow and the narrative is thin, but there is enough sleaze and graphic violence to satisfy fans of Euro-exploitation. 8 whirlpools out of 10."

How Quickly the Mood Can Change — A Short Scene in Spanish:



Deviation
(1971, writ. & dir. by "J. R. Larrath")
Based on an idea suggested by Sture Sjöstedt, who went on to produce the Joseph W. Sarno directed euro-porn flicks Fäbodjäntan (1978 / closing scene), Butterfly (1975 / full NSFW movie, starring Harry Reems), Bibi (1974 / full NSFW movie), the Sarno horror movie Veil of Blood (1973 / trailer), and Paul Gerber's The Keyhole (1974 / misc. sex scene set to some really odd music); Sjöstedt even appeared as an extra in Troma's original and classic version of Mother's Day (1980 / trailer) and their less-than-classic comedy When Nature Calls (1985 / trailer / full movie).
Though filmed in London, like Whirlpool Deviation was a Swedish production. Oddly enough, the cover photo of the long out-of-print VHS release above doesn't come from the film itself, but is instead of the possessed character named D.J. (Jo-Ann Robinson) from the Fred Olen Ray movie Scalps (1983 / trailer).
The plot, as described at Cult Reviews: "One dark night, Olivia (Lisbet Lundquist of Quiet Days in Clichy [1970 / title track]) and Paul (Malcolm Terris of The Gathering [2003]) are driving home when a deviation sign leads them onto a road into the woods. When they have an accident, they are invited by Julian (Karl Lanchbury) and his sister Rebecca (Sibyla Grey) to spend the night in their mansion. Paul is convinced he hit someone on the road, while Olivia doesn't believe him. Julian is a taxidermist in his spare time and he, uhm, doesn't exactly stick to animals. Paul will soon learn he did run someone over, but won't live long enough to tell anybody about it. Meanwhile Olivia is kept drugged & dazed and because of her state willingly participates in psychedelic, nightly orgies organized by Rebecca and Julian. When things go from bad to worse and Olivia finds out they murdered and skinned her lover Paul, she manages to fight back [...]"
At The Mortuary, Fred Garvin says the movie "is bursting with evil hippies, a psychic crone with weird cats, a flaying, heroin, murder and orgies" and "actually builds a sense of dread and doesn't settle for dumping a bucket of smut on the viewer to substitute a story. It tells a story as it dumps a slightly smaller bucket on you."E Splatter is likewise impressed by the movie, stating: "Larraz overcame a shoe-string budget to deliver an even better film than his flawed but fun Vampyres. This one is quiet, atmospheric, intelligent, chilling and creepy, a thinking man's horror film if there ever was one." An attitude shared by the blogspot esotika, which says Deviation "is a quiet little film, with moody atmospherics followed by intense moments of perversity. [...] The whole film does a very good job of demonstrating Larraz's skill as a director; the oddball plot which, in lesser hands, could have ended up highly convoluted and obtuse, is played out very clearly, every plot twist being revealed slowly, instead of suddenly, so as to allow the implications of each event to sink in to the viewers skull. The film is also very beautiful, taking place primarily in the middle of the night as Julian and Rebecca take part in their drug orgies or in murder. Depictions of certain events in the film can certainly be read as having anti-drug implications, but Larraz never makes his approach heavy-handed. In fact, nothing in the film is heavy-handed, everything from the performances to the build-up of tension, to the murders themselves, are understated."
The non-embeddable opening credit sequence can be seen here at YouTube. 



La casa de las muertas vivientes
(1972, writ. & dir. Alfonso Balcázar, as "Al Bagran")
Aka Night of the Scorpion, An Open Tomb... An Empty Coffin (bootleg), and Una tomba aperta... una bara vuota. La casa de las muertas vivientes is the first straight Spanish movie that José Ramón Larraz was involved in: he is credited as having supplied the story to this Spanish giallo — are there giallos outside of Italy? — directed by fellow-Spaniard Alfonso Balcázar (2 Mar 1926 — 28 Dec 1993), a screenwriter, film director and producer who, over the course of his career, wrote 46 films and directed 30, including a number of Chorizo Westerns, such as The Return of Ringo (1965 / trailer), Doc, Hands of Steel (1965 / trailer) and Sartana Does Not Forgive (1968 / trailer).

Credits:
Euro Fever, which says "La casa de las muertas vivientes is more rustic and old-fashioned in appearance than its stylized Italian counterparts" and that the "film draws more on Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940 / trailer) than it does on Argento", explains the movie: "The plot deals with Oliver Bromfield (José Antonio Amor), a handsome but alcoholized young aristocrat who is haunted by the tragic death of his wife Helen (Gioia Desideri of La bestia uccide a sangue freddo aka Asylum Erotica [1971 / trailer], Long Days of Hate [1968 / trailer] and the pathetic 'documentary'The Labyrinth of Sex [1969 / scene]). Unable to continue living in the large country mansion he had shared with Helen, Oliver leaves his home in an attempt to forget the past. But he hasn't been away very long before he finds a new love, the sweet and sexy Ruth (Daniela Giordano of Inquisition [1976 / fan trailer], Evil Eye [1975 / credits], Ombre roventi [1970 / title track] and Bloody Friday [1972 / trailer]), whom he promptly marries. Suddenly, Oliver decides it would be a good idea to move back to his old house and build a new life together with Ruth. Ruth is excited about moving into a new home but she’s a bit disappointed to discover that Oliver's huge mansion is far more secluded than she had pictured. Things aren't made any better by the fact that she is given a decidedly chilly welcome by Sarah (Nuria Torray of The Ancines Woods [1970 / trailer]), the widow of Oliver's father. [...] Also living in the house is Oliver's sister Jenny (Teresa Gimpera of The People Who Own the Dark [1976 / trailer]), a reclusive painter and sculptor, who — like Sarah — takes an instant dislike to Ruth. [...]"
The general consensus is that La casa de las muertas vivientes is a bit slow and the characters underdeveloped, with all the action saved until the third and final act. But some guy from New Jersey named Joseph Brando thinks the movie is an "awesome Spanish horror/giallo", saying that if "you are a fan of this period of Spanish/Italian horror films — you know who you are and you know what you want — this movie delivers in spades. It's got a creepy Gothic castle, very unusual spacey Spanish babes [...], strange sexual relationships, a supernatural element, and all the ingredients that make you love these things. [...] Great performances all around, and nice location, photography and direction make this a high note in the Spanish Giallo Horror subgenre."



Watch Out Gringo! Sabata Will Return
(1972 writ. & dir. Alfonso Balcázar, as "Al Bagran")

Piero Piccioni's Una Volta— Music to the Movie:
For the second time that year, José Ramón Larraz is credited as supplying the story to an "Al Bagran" movie, this time a Chorizo Western which, despite its name, is not part of the "official" and original Sabata trilogy (Sabata [1969 / trailer], Adios Sabata [1970 / trailer] and Return of Sabata [1971 / trailer]), but just another of many films that appropriated the name for its supposed box office power. In all truth, José Ramón Larraz less "supplied" a storyline for this obscure and seldom seen movie than he did rip it off...
Over at the Spaghetti Western Forum, Nzoog Wahrlfhehen, the only person has seemingly ever seen this move, says Watch Out Gringo! Sabata Will Return is "Another western from the Balcázar production line, this time inspired by The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966 / trailer). The Bad here is Luke Morgan (the late Daniel Martín, of Mystery on Monster Island [1981 / trailer]); the Ugly is obviously Fernando Sancho (of Voodoo Black Exorcist [1974 / full movie], Dr. Orloff's Invisible Monster [1970 / French trailer], and Return of the Evil Dead [1973 / Spanish trailer]), once again playing a Mexican character named Carrancho and the role of the Good is split between a gunslinger (George Martín) and an anonymous bounty hunter (Vittorio Richelmy) identified by some sources as 'Sabata'. They're all, of course, in search of a cargo of gold and forever playing tricks on one another in a story I sometimes could not understand. Early in the story, Luke Morgan shoots Carrancho in the middle of the desert and leaves him behind, although the Mexican is subsequently rescued by the bounty hunter. Later, when Luke Morgan discovers that Carrancho was the bearer of valuable information, he proceeds to mobilize his men to find him. How did he know he had survived? For the rest, this is routinely watchable stuff featuring a pleasingly lightweight score by Piero Piccioni, which bypasses the genre's predominant style, and making better use of Catalan locations than is common in these films. [...]"
Rosalba Neri of Lady Frankenstein (1971) is on hand to play the love interest...



La muerte incierta
(1973, writ. & dir. José Ramón Larraz)
5 Minutes of the Film:
Aka La morte incerta (Italy). Co-scripted with Giovanni Simonelli, who as a screenwriter worked on such fine Euro-trash as Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye (1973) and Nightmare Concert (A Cat in the Brain) (1990 / trailer).
La muerte incierta doesn't seem to ever have had a notable English release, and it has no generally accepted English-language title. Nevertheless, one or two websites refer to it as "Uncertain Death", a direct translation of its Italian & Spanish titles. The movie is also often referred to as a lost film, but that is a matter of how one looks at it. It is not "lost" in the same way as, say, London After Midnight (1927), in that no known copy of the movie is still existent; it is lost in that no known 35-mm copy is known to exist, though the film still floats around as 16-mm bootleg. As such, this rarely seen and rarely screened Italo-Spanish psychological thriller is actually easily available at various online sources. 
Over at Cinema Drome, Robert Monell explains the basic situation of the movie's narrative: "INDIA 1930: Wealthy, alcoholic, neurotic plantation owner Clive Dawson (Antonio Molino Rojo of Hell of the Living Dead [1980 / trailer] and Killing of the Dolls [1975 / music]) arrives back at his jungle mansion with his new wife (Mary Maude of Terror [1978 / trailer], Crucible of Terror [1971 / trailer] and The House That Screamed [1969 / trailer]). Immediately we are made aware that this is something other than a happy occasion or the joyous beginning of a new life for the recently marrieds. Dawson and his house are under a curse lain by his rejected lover (Rosalbi Neri), a local woman who may have been a powerful sorceress, who makes sure that he knows she has blighted him and all who reside and will reside in his estate. She later commits suicide, her body burned in public when Dawson withdraws to England. But soon after he arrives back to the plantation the presence of the dead woman slowly permeates the house, the surrounding jungle and the twisted byways of Dawson's guilty mind."
Monell was very taken by the movie, going on to say: "Atmospherically lensed by Riccardo Pallotini in Rome, the Balcazar studios, Barelona locations, with locations in the teeming cities and jungles of India, this is a humid, oppressive, highly effective psychological thriller without a false step in sight. Credit must be given to the usually reliable secondary player Antonio Molino Rojo for not softening the despicable Dawson. He gets exactly what he deserves and there is no pity given to him. It's pretty much a chamber piece between him and the infrequently glimpsed Neri, who manages to burn her brief presence into the viewer's consciousness in just a few minutes of screen time."



Vampyres
(1974, dir. José Ramón Larraz as "Joseph Larraz")
Temple of Schlock, which oddly and inappropriately calls the movie "a minor programmer to round out drive-in triple bills", poses and then answers a rhetorical question: "Ever notice that that most actresses who pose nude have no business doing so? Luckily stars Marianne Morris and Anulka flash their bare bods at us more than once and prove an exception to the unflattering rule."
Years ago, we too were impressed by this when we saw the movie — and, having never yet been to Britain at that time, we were likewise truly shocked at, going by those in the movie, how universally ugly all British men must be. (Having gone to England a few times now, we are no longer shocked... and if nothing else, on their plus side they are at least generally thinner and better hung than Americans.)
Vampyres is the film for which everyone knows the director. Though featuring all the typical stylistic trapping of a Larraz script, this time around the writing chores are credited to Diana Daubeney and Thomas Owen, but supposedly Larraz's wife Diana Daubeney was credited for Larraz's script simply because she was a UK citizen and they needed to meet a UK production quota. Producer Brian Smedley-Ashton, working with Larraz on the first of four feature films, went on to direct Paul Raymond's Erotica (1982 / whole movie in 7 minutes), which some claim features the first erection in a non-porn British film (an "honor" that actually belongs to the Derek Jarman art film Sebastiane [1976 / a trailer of sorts]).
The man responsible for the dreamy cinematography of Vampyres was Harry Waxman (3 April 1912 — 24 Dec 1984), who once won an award from the British Society of Cinematographers for Sapphire (1959). If the castle-like mansion inhabited by the two vampires looks familiar, that's cause it was used for the exteriors of a variety of Hammer films as well as for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975 / trailer). Of the film's two attractive vampires, the decidedly more-average blonde with the exotic name of "Anulka" was Playboy's Playmate of the Month of May 1973, while the dark-haired Marianne Morris, whose exotic looks would better justify an exotic name, graced the October 1976 issue of Britain's less prestigious (and less likely to airbrush) imitation publication Mayfair. Neither of the two went on to a spectacular film career, though Anulka did move to LA, where she still lives, to become a Buddhist florist and author (you can still get her 2006 book Zen Flowers: Designs to Soothe the Senses and Nourish the Soul at Amazon).
 

Trailer:
Dr Gore, always one for the uncomplicated masculine view of things, says "Vampyres must be the greatest lesbian vampire movie ever made. I say this with authority since I have seen more than my share of lesbian vampire flicks. Some might even say that I've seen too many of them. It has everything you could want. Hot vampire women, lots of blood, hot vampire women showering together, some more blood, and hot vampire women giving each other bloody kisses as their victim screams in pain. Did I mention they were hot?"
But while it is tempting to simply dismiss the movie's popularity to male hormones, Larraz's classic lesbian vampire flick even enjoys female appreciation. Final Girl, for example, says "Vampyres is typical and formulaic, and the plot, as it were, is bare-bones... but who the hell cares?"
A fairly on-the-mark description of the basic narrative of Vampyres is found at Eccentric Cinema: "Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska (of Lisztomania [1975 / cock scene] and The Likely Lads [1976 / trailer]) play [Fran and Miriam] the titular undead, actually more akin to blood-drinking ghosts than the traditional vampire we usually see in films. (Fangs are never bared, nor do they sleep in coffins.) They haunt a creepy English manor house [...] from which they periodically venture to flag down unsuspecting male motorists on a nearby country lane. Lured with the promise of sex, the men willingly enter the spider's web to be brutally killed. The women use daggers to slay their victims, lapping up the blood with the frenzied abandon of wild animals. With their lust for blood satiated the gals then tumble into bed (or the shower — running water's no problem for these naughty nosferatu) for some steamy lesbian sex. Morris and Dziubinska are very sexy, and the violence — in which the blood flows in copious amounts — is shocking in its savagery and suddenness. [...] If you're looking for a horror film with some genuinely erotic imagery, or a sex film with a liberal dash of horror, Vampyres should fit the bill. It's arguably the best lesbian vampire movie ever made, and even almost 30 years on, still capable of raising an eyebrow or two... amongst other things."
Among the other characters of importance in the movie are Ted (Murray Brown of Bram Stoker's Dracula [1974 / trailer]), the one who gets away, and the camping couple John (Brian Deacon, who was married to Rula Lenska from 1977 to 1987 and stars in A Zed & Two Noughts [1986 / title sequence]) and Harriet (Sally Faulkner of The Body Stealers [1969] and Alien Prey [1978]) who, unexpectedly, don't.
Rula Lenska, 1975, for VO5 — Despite Her Voice, Not Transgender:



Emma, puertas oscuras
(1974, dir. José Ramón Larraz)
José Ramón Larraz's follow-up project to Vampyres was this obscure Spanish project, filmed in Spain with exteriors shot in England, which doesn't seem to be currently available in the English language. Few English-speaking people that have seen it have bothered to write about on-line, but the general consensus is that it has all the common tropes of a Larraz film but nevertheless fails to engage, and that the movie suffers a symptom of many slashers: the fodder isn't around long enough to engage the viewer. One dissenter of this opinion is Humanoid of Flesh, one of the 145 inhabitants of the Polish village of Chyby, who in 2010 on imdb called the movie an "interesting and well-directed psycho-slasher" that has "some calculated and gory giallo-like stabbings, nudity and [a] grim atmosphere". 
Full Movie in Spanish: 
Cinemadrome is one of the few websites to have seen and written about the film, and they were less impressed by what they saw: "Technically proficient and occasionally stylish, Larraz has rarely been able to overcome the basic dramatic vapidity of his own scripts, usually badly structured and with inconclusive or perfunctory endings. In Emma, puertas oscuras, [...] the vapidity becomes downright ineptitude, given an inability to resolve embryonic themes and indeed basic plotlines."
Cinemadrome also takes the movie's big twist to task: "The idea of bumping off what appears to be a leading character in mid-film is obviously indebted to Psycho [...] and Larraz, indeed, drives this home by having Cristal pull down a shower curtain before expiring. But Hitchcock, working with a carefully thought-out structure, was able to tell the same story throughout. In this case, instead, the script arbitrarily changes gear and launches into a different movie, as it were, with a new cast of characters, except for the badly incorporated supporting role of a clairvoyant who is one of Emma's few friends."
The plot? Well, the first half involves the psychiatrist Sylvia (Perla Cristal of The Awful Dr. Orlof [1962 / trailer]) who accidently hits familyless Emma (Susanna East of Carry on Emmannuelle [1978 / trailer], The Fiend [1972 / trailer] and Permissive [1970 / trailer]) with her car and sends her to the hospital. Once released, she moves in with Sylvia and her husband (Ángel Menéndez of When the Screaming Stops (1976 / trailer] and The Legend of Blood Castle [1973 / trailer]) and eventually kills them (among other people). Hooking up with a hip young couple (Marina Ferri [of La diosa salvaje (1975 / trailer)] and Andrew Grant [of The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970 / a trailer) and Girl from Starship Venus (1975 / theme song)]), they all end up at a dark and deserted hotel...



Symptoms
(1974, writ. & dir. José Ramón Larraz as Joseph Larraz)
José Ramón Larraz does the mandatory unhinged lesbian flick. Oddly enough, and to the loathing of English critics, Symptoms was, alongside Ken Russell's Mahler, selected as an official British entry at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where the movie was even nominated for a Palme d'Or — it didn't get it. Instead, Symptoms returned to England for a short and ignoble release and then slipped into obscurity, where it was forgotten. Last broadcast in the UK in 1983, no original print of the film is known to be in circulation; the versions available are all made from bootlegs or similar sources. According to that master of irony, Bleeding Skull, "Symptoms is a deviation from Larraz's filmography — it's less Jesus Franco and more Ingmar Bergman."
The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review describes the plot as follows: "Ann West (Lorna Heilbron) goes to stay with her friend Helen Ramsey (Angela Pleasence of From Beyond the Grave [1974 / trailer] and The Godsend [1980 / French trailer]) at Helen's large, remote country mansion. As Helen descends into madness, Ann becomes scared by the strange happenings about the house, the eerie voices, and the sinister groundsman (Peter Vaughan of Haunted Honeymoon [1986], Die! Die! My Darling! [1965 / trailer] and Brazil [1985 / trailer]) who hints that disturbing things may have happened to Helen's other friends." They were less than impressed by the movie, complaining that "Symptoms [...] becomes overstrained and the film eventually becomes a vacuous, pseudo-arty offering. Frequently it appears to have been constructed around lengthy, meaningful pauses. What the twist ending means could be is anybody's guess."
Movie Morlocks, on the other hands, thinks that "Symptoms is a subtle, deliberately paced and haunting mood piece that plays mind games with the viewer and generates a sense of unease and growing menace by charting the slow mental disintegration of an obviously disturbed young woman named Helen. She appears to be going quietly mad and the movie follows suit."

While It Lasts — The Full Movie:



The House That Vanished
(1974, dir. José Ramón Larraz as Joseph Larraz)
TV Spot:

Aka Psycho Sex Fiend, Scream... and Die! A rare English-language project in that Larraz did not write the script; instead, it was penned by the mostly forgotten sleazemonger Derek Ford who, two years earlier, made his directorial debut with the Stanley A. Long produced jiggler I Am A Groupie (1970 / opening credits) and, before dying of a heart attack in relatively impoverished circumstances, co-wrote with Alan Selwyn (as "Sewlyn Ford") the great "true" Hollywood scandals book, The Casting Couch.
If the movie's English language tag line — "To Avoid Fainting, Keep Repeating It’s Only a Movie!"— sounds familiar, it should: it was lifted directly from the marketing campaign of the original Last House on the Left (1972 / trailer / full movie), which most people who have seen both films claim to be the better of the two (though such a comparison is perhaps unfair, as they are two different kinds of horror movies). That said, The House That Vanished does have a lot more sex and skin... and, like so many of Larraz's films, inter-familial trysts.
The Terror Trap, which finds the movie "a routine, if well-intentioned British horror", explains the plot: "Lovely fashion model Valerie (Andrea Allan of the TV series UFO [1970-71 / trailer] and Old Drac [1974 / TV spot]) accompanies her boyfriend Terry (Alex Leppard) to a remote English country house for a little nighttime thievery [and shagging]. But there, poor Val witnesses a brutal murder and barely escapes with her own life. Now the psycho has followed the hapless beauty home and it's up to Valerie to discover his identity before she loses her own. Could the madman be her oddball downstairs neighbour (Peter Forbes-Robertson of Island of Terror [1966 / trailer])? Her new (but strange) mask-making beau Paul (Karl Lanchbury)?"
Over at Jack's Movie Page, Jack says that this "British-made effort from the Spanish exploitation specialist is also worth a look. With its plot of a mysterious black-gloved killer stalking a glamorous young fashion model, Scream... And Die! plays almost like a British giallo. While the film is marred somewhat by the painfully obvious nature of the killer's identity, a combination of subtle, paranoid suspense and liberal doses of continental style sex and violence ensure Scream... And Die! should satisfy fans of trashy European horror and exploitation."
The Video Vacuum, on the other hand, was less impressed but nevertheless entertained, saying: "Despite the fact that the flick is dreary and sluggishly paced, Larraz pours on plenty of gothic atmosphere during the murder sequences (the scene in the junkyard is creepy), which should help to keep your attention when things are getting particularly tough going. If it doesn't though, you can count on the ample amount of female breasts to do the trick. The movie also features an inexplicable scene in which a hot naked chick unexplainably wakes up next to a monkey! I've seen some weird shit in my time (after all, Troll 2 [1990 / trailer] is one of my favorite movies) but this one took the fucking cake. Scream… and Die! ain't all that great, but if you want to see a nude broad make out with a monkey, then this flick is for you!"

While it Lasts, the Full Movie:



Luto riguroso
(1977, writ. & dir. dir. José Ramón Larraz)
 
Who knows whether it's a comedy, sex film or drama, this Spanish movie got an Italian release but never an English one. The only online description we could find says "The groom's sister forgets mourning and discovers physical love."



El mirón
(1977, writ. & dir. dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Another Spanish film that never got an English-language release. A computer translation of some Spanish synopsis offers the following: "A middle-aged man (Héctor Alterio of Scarab [1983 / trailer]) has a dissatisfying marriage with Elaine (Alexandra Bastedo of The Blood Spattered Bride [1972 / trailer]), who sleeps with other men on the condition is that he has to be present and, in some cases, participate in the ménage à trois." Seems to be a real snoozer...

Long scene in Spanish:



El fin de la inocencia
(1977, writ. & dir. dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Sort of a nice poster, though... Another Spanish film, probably very serious, that no one who speaks (or writes) English seems to have seen or finds worthy of writing about. A computer-generated translation of some online Spanish synopsis offers the following film description: "A student expelled from a boarding school for his fractious behavior moves to his uncle, a lustful mature man, married to dissatisfied wife, in a house with sadistic tendencies." (We'll leave it to the reader here to decide who or what has the sadistic tendencies.) The lead female, Paca Gabaldón, often credited as "Mary Francis" as in this film here, had four years earlier taken part in the obscure movie The Cannibal Man (1973), a "sensitive look at platonic relationships between serial killers and homosexuals". It was not directed by Larraz.
Trailer to The Cannibal Man (1973):



Cartas de amor de una monja
(1978, dir. Jorge Grau)
José Ramón Larraz does a rare acting appearance in this movie as, according to the credit list at imdb, a "Familiar de la Inquisición". A Wasted Life took a look at this movie way back on Friday, February 24, 2012, in Part I of our R.I.P. career review of Lina Romay, where we wrote the following: "Nunsploitation from the director of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974 / trailer) and Ceremonia sangrienta (1973 / trailer), more familiar under its AKA title, Love Letters of a Nun, which has led it to often be mistaken with Franco's own nunsploitation flick from 1977, Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (scene). In a review found on numerous websites, Jason Buchanan states '[T]his controversial religious drama [is] about a seventeenth-century nun swept up in a diabolical torrent of passion and lust. Spain, 1640: reverent superior nun Mariana (Analía Gadé) is attending the funeral of her younger sister Isabel's husband when Isabel (Teresa Gimpera of Hannah, Queen of the Vampires [1973 / trailer]) begins fondling the cadaver as if it were her sleeping lover. Aroused by the sight yet repulsed by her response to such a morbid sight, Mother Mariana fears that she won't have the courage to confess in the morning and begins drafting a confession letter to Father Augustin (Alfredo Alcón). Later that same evening, novice nun Maria (Lina Romay) bursts into Mother Mariana's room distressed after being taunted by a local pilgrim. When Mother Mariana attempts to comfort Sister Maria, the novice mistakes her superior's maternal affection for romantic interest and attempts to seduce her. Following a moment of hesitation, Mother Mariana rejects the advances, prompting Sister Maria to masturbate with a large crucifix. Convinced that this is a sign of demonic possession, Mother Mariana prepares to report the incident to the Holy office."
First 7.5 minutes of the movie in Spanish:



La ocasión
(1978, writ. & dir. dir. José Ramón Larraz)
We found only two reviews of this film online, and both end with the phrase "For Larraz completists". Unhinged Films says: "This is a very rare film by cult director José Ramon Larraz. An erotic and claustrophobic thriller with the beautiful Teresa Gimpera (of Night of the Devils [1972 / scary scene]). Contains the right amount of nudity and violence. For Larraz completists."
Over at imdb, krys plume of United States is of the opinion "we've seen this before": "So we have some hippies, we have an uptight couple. Hippies are nude, carefree, American. Couple is rich; he's got a stick up you-know-where; she wants anyone else's stick up the you-know-where. Miscommunication ensues resulting in tragedy. This is not Larraz's best film, nor his worst — it just kind of exists. Some nudity, sex is limited to a few scenes at the end. Actors are serviceable; Angel Alcazar (of Adam and Eve Versus the Cannibals [1983 / full movie]), I believe is the main hippie guy, brings an intense sex appeal that reminded me of Joe D'Alessandro with a little bit more range. Film also has none of the atmosphere of Larraz's earlier work, or even Los Ritos... For Larraz completists only." 
Full Film, while It Lasts:



La visita del vicio
(1978, writ. & dir. dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Aka The Coming of Sin, Sodomia and The Violation of the Bitch. Larraz enters Walerian Borowczyk territory with love-it-or-hate-it movie. For every person that says something like the movie is a "plodding, boring, missed opportunity" (which is what the Void calls it at imdb), someone else, like the blogspot Girls, Guns and Ghouls, says something like "The Coming of Sin is an extremely compelling piece of erotic cinema made by a director who clearly knows what he's doing, with a complex vision. I'd urge anyone who's into erotic art-cinema to get hold of it and take a look. It's an underrated little classic."
Over at always-entertaining Shock Cinema, Steven Puchalski, who hits the nail on the head when he says says "José Larraz has never been a consistent director. He could be good [...], but his pics could also reek", finds the movie interesting despite it being "little more than EuroPorn Chic" and "trash of the highest order": "This Spanish, three-way psycho-drama proved that with only a bare-bone budget and a minimum of (occasionally terrible) actors, the guy could still come up with a gorgeously realized, intensely erotic delight. Triana (Lidia Zuazo) is a sultry young gypsy girl who's staying at the country estate of artist Lorna (Patricia Granada), while her usual employees are out of town. 18-years-old and plagued by sexual nightmares, Triana's fragmented dreams involve being chased by a naked young man on a horse, as well as various heartwarming close-ups of two horses screwing. So it comes as no surprise that Triana freaks out when this nature boy (Rafael Machado) begins riding about the grounds. Meanwhile, there's no shortage of lesbian subtext here, with the sexually-charged Lorna and Triana finally ending up in bed together for a steamy episode. And later, after Triana is raped in a field by this perpetually naked stranger, Chico finally puts on some damned clothes and introduces himself to Lorna. Before long, it evolves into a threesome, since Lorna enjoys them both. But Triana's fate has already been foretold — she'll have sex with a man and someone will die — so you know the shit is gonna hit behind the end credits."
The movie, which Mondo Digital calls "a strangely compelling alternative to the usual plotless European sex films of the period" is available in various versions, including one with hardcore inserts entitled Sex Maniac.

Use Your Imagination:


Part III will follow... eventually.
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Wishmaster (USA, 1997)

November 16, 2013, 12:38 am
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As a makeup and special effects man, director Robert Kurtzman has solid roots that were nurtured by dozens of genre films, including such fine stuff (to list only those that have been reviewed here at A Wasted Life and came out before Wishmaster) as Night of the Creeps (1986), Army of Darkness (1992) and Tremors (1990). Wishmaster was his second directorial job, a straight horror film after his more traditional genre B-film directorial debut, the Robo-Cop (1987 / trailer) with mamilla riff The Demolitionist (1995 / trailer), which was populated by a cast of breasts (Nicole Eggert [of Decoys (2004)]), forgottens (Bruce Abbott [of Re-Animator (1985)], Susan Tyrrell, Sarah Douglas [of The People That Time Forgot (1977 / trailer) and Strippers vs Werewolves (2012 / trailer)], Heather Langenkamp (of A Nightmare on Elm Street [1984 / trailer], Richard Grieco (of Webs [2003] and Raiders of the Damned [2005], Jack Nance [of Eraserhead (1977 / trailer) and The Blob (1988)] and unknowns (almost everyone else). The Demolitionist offers nothing new or innovative, but it is a fun and at times almost campy film that goes well with a six-pack, chips and a joint — which is more or less what you can also say about Wishmaster: as a horror film it offers little new or innovative, but it is a fun and at times almost campy film that goes well with, well, a six-pack, chips and a joint (which is actually what we consumed it with).
OK, to be honest, Wishmaster does offer one semi-new concept: the genie as an evil entity. As the tertiary character Wendy Derleth (Jenny O'Hara of The Sacred [2012 / trailer] and Devil [2010 / trailer]) says at one point, "Forget what our culture has made of the djinn. Forget Barbara Eden.* Forget Robin Williams. To the people of ancient Arabia, the djinn was neither cute not funny. It was something else entirely. It was the face of fear itself." And that is exactly what the screenwriter Peter Atkins did: he jettisoned the young and delectable Barbara Eden's navel to go back to (and alter as needed) the concept of the djinn as found in Islamic theology and the Koran, in which the djinn are one of the three "sapient" and free-willed creatures created by God (the other two being humans and angels). In the film, as in Islamic theology, the djinn inhabit another dimension other than ours, but unlike the theological version, in Wishmaster not only are all djinns evil, they also want to break through the dimensions and takeover our world. And how can this be done? By letting one of them grant you three wishes. At that point, the dimensions become permeable and the earth will become hell on earth...
And what this might look like is seen in the prologue sequence of Wishmaster where, in ancient Arabia, the Wishmaster (Andrew Divoff of Faust [2000 / trailer], Graveyard Shift [1990 / trailer] and Neon Maniacs [1986 / trailer]) twists the second wish of the Caliph (Richard Assad) and hell breaks loose in good ol' rubber-and-prosthetic excess... luckily for the Caliph, he also has a sorcerer (Ari Barak) on hand that manages to trap the Wishmaster in a jewel and thus save the world as they know it. Then the film jumps forward a couple of thousand years to contemporary La La Land and real story of the movie...
Like The Demolitionist, Wishmaster is populated by a cast of unknowns and familiar faces, but in this case here the familiar faces are less "forgotten" than cult — in fact, one or two names are arguably better known as names than as faces, Kane Hodder being the best example. To tell the truth, the familiar faces are almost a detriment: whenever someone like Tony Todd (Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh [1995]) or Ted Raimi (The Midnight Meat Train [2008 / trailer] and Crimewave [1985 / trailer]) — and to a lesser extent, Reggie Bannister (Phantasm [1979 / trailer]) or George 'Buck' Flower (Satans Lust [1971 / full NSFW film], Suckula [1973 / whole NSFW movie in 8.5 minutes], Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS [1975 / trailer], Escape from New York [1981 / trailer] and dozens of other noteworthy flicks, as well as some less noteworthy ones such as Village of the Damned [1995]) — suddenly appear in a miniscule part that could really be played by anyone, the flow and imposed sense of reality of the movie is jarringly destroyed by facial recognition. But, hell, this is a horror flick, so the "imposed sense of reality" is relative in any event...
The familiar face with the biggest part is of course Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy's Revenge [1985] and Zombie Strippers [2008]), who plays the tertiary character Raymond Beaumont, the slightly sleazy art collector who is unintentionally responsible for bringing the djinn to the US: a collector of rare religious statues, he purchases a rare statue of Ahura Mazda which is accidently destroyed when a drunken crane operator drops it on top of Beaumont's assistant Ed Finney (Raimi). Another dockworker finds the magic gem hidden in the wreckage and promptly pockets it and through some logical contrivances it finds its way into the hands of the attractive appraiser Alexandra Amberson (Tammy Lauren of Radioland Murders [1994 / trailer]), who unwittingly unleashes the djinn... who in turn initially reinvigorates himself by tricking people into making wishes and then, both in djinn and human form, goes after Alexandra as the person who freed him, to get her to make three wishes and thus destroy the wall between the dimensions.
If you haven't figured it out yet, making a wish is not a good thing in the company of the djinn: he twists whatever you say in such a way that the granting of the wish is your demise — and takes your soul in exchange for the wish. Sometimes his interpretations of a wish are mighty broad — in the case of doorman Johnny Valentine (Tony Todd), it is so broad as to be annoying — but they are always detrimental for the person who made them.
In all truth, Wishmaster has a variety of narrative flaws that almost sink the film, but it is saved by the for the most part great and/or gory special effects, the occasionally witty dialogue, the solid performances of the two main actors characters, Andrew Divoff (as the Wishmaster and his suavely evil human alter ego Nathaniel Demerest) and Tammy Lauren (as the innocent suddenly confronted with an all-powerful evil), and the director's relatively staid but never boring direction. The film succeeds in presenting the Wishmaster as an evil creature to be if not feared than definitely not underestimated, and even if the movie is perhaps not the scariest of films one might see, it does keep you interested until the end and manages to jolt you on many an occasion with some nasty visuals and good gore as well as an occasionally wickedly interpreted wish that is so drenched black humor that you have to laugh.
Final verdict: Nothing groundbreaking or new, Wishmaster does get minus points for not having any gratuitous nudity and one sloppy CGI scene, but aside from that it nevertheless delivers the goods and makes for a quick and entertaining evening's viewing.
Wishmaster went on to spawn three sequels, all of which were direct-to-video: Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999 / trailer), Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001 / trailer) and  Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (2002 / trailer).
*Considering how botched her last couple of plastic surgeries were, she could now well play an evil genie without the use of makeup.
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Maniac (USA, 1934)

November 22, 2013, 12:52 am
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"The rats eat the cats, the cats eat the rats, and I get the skin."
The cat-farming neighbor 'Goof', whose real identity is unknown today.

Aka Sex Maniac, under any title it remains another noteworthy what-the-fuck production from the great cinematic shyster Dwain Esper (7 Oct 1892 — 18 Oct 1982), one of the great non-talents of the early years of English-language exploitation cinema who for years carved a successful living as a fly-by-night, drive-by-night traveling filmmaker and roadshow film presenter.
Like the great Kroger Babb, Esper helped shape early American exploitation films, which in those early years tended to be independent productions tackling topics that Hollywood avoided (drugs, venereal disease, pregnancy, bestiality, etc.) by presenting them in the supposed form of documentary or educational films. But whereas the magnum opus of Esper's later compatriot in exploitation Kroger Babb, the 1945 "sex hygiene" flick Mom and Dad (1945), which once shocked millions with its inserted real-life footage of an actual birth, entered the hallowed halls of the US National Film Registry in 2005 as a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" film, Esper's equally exploitive if far more primitively made movies seem doomed to eternal disrespect, the public domain and — as in the case of his short How To Take A Bath (1937) or feature-length The Seventh Commandment (1932) — loss. But though his movies may be the dregs of filmdom, the Esper productions that still survive — Narcotic (1933 / full film), Sex Madness (1938 / trailer / full film) and Maniac being the most famous titles that he actually directed — also reveal themselves as extremely entertaining jaw-droppers. It's really no wonder that they all now enjoy varying levels of cult popularity.
 
But assuming that you know nothing of Dwain Esper and his career in exploitation, instead of clarifying the facts we would suggest you just watch the following entertaining and informative fan-made documentary...
J. W.  Criddle's Dwain Esper: The King of the Celluloid Gypsies:

Like most of Esper's movies, Maniac was written by the love-of-his-life, his wife Hildegarde Stadie (14 July 1895 — 21 July 1993), who, having been both raised and an active participant in the intenerate life of patent medicine peddling, seems to have shared her husband's cinematic bent for the prurient. For Maniac, which is ostensibly a filmic treatise explaining a variety of mental illnesses, she borrowed aspects from Shelley's Frankenstein and Poe's The Black Cat and The Murders of Rue Morgue to regurgitate a wildly over-the-top and ridiculous horror filmscript that her loving husband filmed with equal inanity and a similar total disregard for either good taste or verisimilitude.
A restored version of Maniac was released in 1999, and we would recommend watching that version, although we ourselves chose the Internet Archives and the attendant displeasure of watching the public domain version of Maniac, which is in deplorable condition. Thus, much of the almost Godardian dialogue found in Maniac was close to impossible to hear or only sank in slowly or after a quick rewind. That which we did understand, we must say, was often outstanding in its non-sequential humor and parodist excess. The Espers may have sold their movies as serious treatises, but the obvious irony in which they present the sleazy excesses found throughout the movie reveals a fascination with the forbidden and socially abnormal that has nothing to do with factual reportage but everything with an attraction to the sordid and socially unacceptable. Maniac may be old and technically creaky, but it is an exploitation film just like we like them: socially irredeemable and transgressive — and hilariously entertaining to boot. In all respects, it easily equals or outdoes many an exploitation film from the more recent past... and not just in its technical or thespian ineptitude.
The movie supposedly concerns the mental unraveling of a former vaudevillian impersonator named Don Maxwell (played by Bill Woods, in his only known acting job, who went on to become a makeup artist*), but in the end Maniac is a simply a super-cheap, straight horror film heavy on sleaze and filler.
* Though William "Bill" Woods mostly did make-up for TV series, occasionally he worked on films such as the unjustly unknown horror flick, Back from the Dead (1957):

And what filler it is! Aside from the mandatory and lengthy scene of cheap gals lounging around in their skimpies in their shared flat, which allows for a lot of skin and shaking cellulite, there is one entire scene with a man named Goof (played by an unknown actor) that was probably less fictional filler than fortuitous reality that the Epsteins simply worked into their movie: though he plays an instrumental part in the movie's climax, one can't help but feel that his movie career as a cat and rat skin harvester was probably his real-life career as well, and that the sheer distastefulness of his source of income got him his part in the movie — especially since it corresponded so well to plot aspects taken from Poe's The Black Cat.
But let's get to the plot of the movie: Maxwell, on the lamb from the police, has taken refuge with the respected scientist Dr. Meirschultz (the forgotten but once extremely busy and usually uncredited actor Horace B. Carpenter of the first known [and now lost] haunted house movie, The Ghost Breaker [1914], Condemned to Live [1935 / full movie], and hundreds of other films). Meirschultz is a regular Dr Frankenstein, obsessed with bringing back the dead, which he actually does at one point when he and Maxwell gain illegal entry to the local morgue and revive a suicide (actress unknown). But as brilliant as the Doc might be, he also ain't all there: in need of another corpse to experiment on, the Doc gives Maxwell a gun with which to shoot himself so that the Doc can experiment some more... but Maxwell aims the pistol elsewhere and then, thanks to his make-up and impersonation skills, takes the Doc's place.
The plot, of course, is pure hokum and, like 99% of the film's dialogue, often lacks any semblance of logic or conceivable continuity. But for that, Maniac plays out like a live action hypnagogic nightmare interlaced with dialogue that is often better suited for a television sitcom. Highpoints include a man (Ted Edwards of Polygamy [1936]) going total ham when given a needle full of the wrong stuff and turning into a ape-like sexual predator (he promptly carries away, strips, molests and kills the revived suicide [now played a different actress]), a wonderful catfight between two women brandishing hypodermic needles in which one woman gets her head smashed in with a big rock but gets up to walk away, and the infamous  cat-eye-eating scene, done in a single shot, which is almost as stomach-turning than Divine's famous shit-eating scene in Pink Flamingoes (1972 / trailer).
Needless to say, despite being a pretty funny film at times, Maniac, even after over eighty years since its initial release, still delivers some real shocks between all its laughable aspects.
Without doubt, Maniac is a one of a kind cinematic experience that should appeal to fans of trash, exploitation and film history.** We here at A Wasted Life give this early classic of exploitation a hearty and heart-felt recommendation!

Maniac — full movie:

** Fans of old film might recognize some of the footage superimposed whenever Esper wanted to show the devils of insanity taking over Maxwell's mind. We caught shots taken from Benjamin Christensen's silent classic Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922 / full film), but we didn't catch some of the other films supposedly also used, namely: Fritz Lang's Siegfried (1923), which we have seen in full already, and Maciste in Hell (1925 / full film), which we haven't seen (yet).
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Short Film: Kung Fu Cooking Girls (China, 2011)

November 27, 2013, 2:20 am
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"What a waste of food"

Written by Cloverxie and Jin Roh, the latter of whom also directed. When we first saw this cute little film, we assumed that it was a parody of the modern Asian sock-em-chop-em film, complete with terrible subtitles. Only recently did we learn that this slightly more than 8 minute long and under-known animated treasure — complete with a quick nipple shot — is indeed truly from China; Shanghai, to be exact, "the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper by population in the world" (Wikipedia). It is a product of the small and relatively unknown animation studio Wolf Smoke, which has since gone on to do the three-episode, stylistically similar micro-series, The Bat Man of Shanghai (2012 / full series). And yes, we are talking about the Batman.
Kung Fu Cooking Girls features a strong and appealing style, fast action and a simple story, and never fails to make us smile when we watch it. To simply quote the Wolf Smoke webpage, the "background of this short set in a Chinatown in a fictional time, and the town is very hustle and bustle every day. As the saying goes, the person of the same trade is enemy. In order to attract more customers, a young talented Chinese girl and an extraordinary western lady open a duel with each other. Since we put the elements like Kung Fu and cooking into this short, of course, there should be lots of delicious foods. A joy and yummy comedy [...]!" 
Their disingenuous plot description is, of course, a smokescreen to hide the true thematic of their subversive yet appealing film so as not to run into trouble with the powers that be.Kung Fu Cooking Girls is, in fact, much more than just a "yummy comedy". The narrative is actually a symbolic manifestation of the capitalistic conflict between the East and the West, personified by the Asian and Western female cook and their proffered wares, to capture the commercial trade of the less affluent underdeveloped countries, personified by the itinerant youth. As is often the case in real life, the simple needs of the object of possible capitalistic exploitation are overlooked and lost in the heat of the globalist battle, thus forcing the less affluent to look elsewhere.
As the final, mildly lesbian-tinged credit sequence of Kung Fu Cooking Girls indicates, life would be better if the capitalistic battle was replaced by love, sweet love....
Enjoy!
Kung Fu Cooking Girls, our Short Film of the Month for November 2013 !
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Short Movie: A Very Zombie Holiday (USA, 2010)

December 2, 2013, 12:36 am
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"Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la la la la la...."

Yes, 'tis the season to be jolly, so don we now our gay apparel and let us consider the Man whom this Joyous Holiday does honor. And no, we don't mean that hirsute fat guy in red whom you've never met but who has nevertheless managed to steal the undying love of your pre-pubescent children; we're talking about that Other Guy, the one born on this [upcoming] Christmas Day who grew up to be an unwashed, long-haired hippie and, eventually, rose from the dead to become the world's first zombie. You know: The Man...
As it says in the uncensored 1 Corinthians of the New Testament, "[...] Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he did go forth and eat brains, and it was good [...]." And it is in His honor that we now so wallow in capitalistic splendor and culinary gluttony each winter, and it is in His honor that we here at A Wasted Life have once again chosen a Christmas-themed short as our Short Film of the Month for December 2013. And like last year, we present it now, in the first week of December, so that yes, you, Virginia, can have the next 20-odd jolly days to contemplate the real meaning of Christmas and Coca Cola — and all that which the World's First Zombie has wrought.

Directed by Sean Becker and written by Zeb Wells, A Very Zombie Holiday is TV/Internet production of Team Unicorn, a multi-media production group we had never heard of before we stumbled upon this short... but that we now wish we were married to (all of them — why not?). The original members were the four main sexy babes that appear in this short, Rileah Vanderbilt (of Hatchet [2006 / trailer]), Michele Boyd (of Cheerleader Massacre 2 [2011 / trailer]), Milynn Sarley (of Street Fighter High: The Musical [2010 / trailer]) and Clare Grant (of The Graves [2009 / trailer]). Talented, good-looking women, one and all, and this short instructional video is proof of it
Hairy Christmas to you all — and to all, a Zombie Night!
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R.I.P.: José Ramón Larraz, Part III (1979-1990)

December 8, 2013, 8:43 am
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1929 (Barcelona, Spain) – 3 Sept 2013 (Málaga, Spain)
 
Go here for José Ramón Larraz, Part I
Go here for José Ramón Larraz, Part II



The Golden Lady
(1979, dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Title Track, by The Three Degrees:

For a change, Larraz did not write the script; that was by Joshua Sinclair, who, to quote imdb, "is an eclectic personality. A medical doctor specializing in tropical diseases, he has worked in India with Mother Teresa (Calcutta) and Sister Rosa (Bombay), as well as in various parts of Africa. He is also a professor in comparative theology. Since his acquired professions are obviously 'non-profit', he has made a living as a best-selling novelist and a film and television writer, actor, producer and director."
Aside from this movie here, he also worked on such intriguing projects as Just a Gigolo (1978 / trailer) and Fassbinder's Lili Marleen (1981). For this movie here, he swiped the core ingredients of that classic bad movie with the great Tura Satana that inspired the TV series Charlie's Angels (1976-81), Ted V. Mikels's The Doll Squad (1973 / trailer).
More Disco Music from The Golden Lady— George Garvarentz's Dahlia:
The Video Vacuum says: "The main problem with The Golden Lady is that it's boring as fuck. Larraz can do lesbian vampires like it's nobody's business but he's out of his element when it comes to James Bond rip-offs. [...] There are three sex scenes; one of which features some pretty good full frontal action, but the others are pretty lame. (One is senselessly intercut with an awful disco musical number.) And while the prospect of [Miss] World having a gang of female agents at her side sounds good; they just never do anything sexy. [...] Instead they spend lots of time talking on the telephone or watching horrible disco numbers in their entirety or sitting around waiting for something to happen. Every now and then somebody will find a dead body or start fucking to keep you from falling asleep, but it's not enough to make it worthwhile."
Also in the Movie — Charles Aznavour's We Had It All:
Video Junkie complains that "Writer-producer Joshua Sinclair [...] tries to gussie up this simple premise by burying it under loads of long, occasionally surreal dialogue that will sometimes veer next to a point relevant to the plot. Occasionally. Mostly it's just long speeches that make you think that he spent the weekend reading Tom Stoppard and thought to himself "That's easy! I can do that!'." The junkie explains the plot as follows: "Allegedly sexy British mercenary Julia Hemingway (Ina Skriver* looking about as sexy and deadly as your aunt) runs the best securities firm in Europe, staffed only with deadly, sexy ladies doing the dirty work their way. When the heir to a murdered Arab oil baron offers his fields up to the highest bidder, influential British cigar-smoking, asthmatic blowhard Charlie Whitlock (Patrick Newell of A Study in Terror [1965 / trailer] and Young Sherlock Holmes [1985 / trailer]) hires Hemingway to 'take care' of the other bidders..."
A slumming Desmond Llewelyn (the original "Q" of the James Bond films) shows up to give the gals their secret weapons, and the delectable June Chadwick (of Rising Storm [1989 / trailer], Forbidden World [1982 / trailer] and The Comeback [1978 / trailer]) is also on hand as one of the female agents.
Blonde on Blonde also did a song for the movie, but this isn't it:
*The imdb says "When she made The Golden Lady, she changed her name to Christina World, just so the movie's credits could read 'starring Miss World'. In her biography, she refuses to acknowledge that Ina and Christina are the same person." Her only other film appearance of note is the Koo Stark flick Emily (1976 / 9 minutes).



El periscopio
(1979, dir. José Ramón Larraz)
 
Credit sequence:

Aka Malicia erótica, ...And Give Us Our Daily Sex, Zeig mir, wie man's macht and more...
An unbelievably unknown movie, considering it stars Laura Gemser in her prime as well as the somewhat less well-known cult semi-fav Bárbara Ray (of The Night of the Sorcerers [1974 / trailer] and Horror of the Zombies [1974 / trailer]), and that José Ramón Larraz's co-scriptwriter is the sleaze-monger Sergio Garrone (of Django the Bastard [1969 / full film], SS Camp 5: Women's Hell [1977 / trailer], SS Experiment Love Camp [1976 / trailer], Lover of the Monster [1974 / Italian trailer], The Hand That Feeds the Dead [1974 / trailer] and more).
Despite the participation of Sergio Garrone and the rare beaver and knob shot, the movie is soft-core and far from being as sleazy as it could be. The Good, the Bad and the Unusual is not impressed by the movie, saying "[El periscopio is] sex comedy about a young lad (Ángel Herraiz as Albert) that lives in an apartment below two young nurses and his attempts to spy on them with a homemade periscope. Uninspired, and patchy at best; only for those desperate to see more of Laura Gemser or love listening to cocktail jazz soundtracks."
Gemser has fun with her sugar plum:
Women in Prison Films calls the movie "mostly uninspired and often dreadfully unfunny" but also details some of the subplots: "Whilst gorgeous Gemser is getting it on with her equally luscious lover, Albert is busy putting his new science project — a periscope — to good use by spying on the lingerie-wearing lovelies. Meanwhile, Albert's mother is being even naughtier than her precious little boy, sneaking off for some extra-marital sex while her hair-obsessed husband (José Sazatornil) is at the salon, having his follicles tended to. [...] The scene in which nurse Gemser is called in to relieve a mysterious pain in Albert's nads is enjoyably daft (and also features the first unexpected close-up: a blink and you'll miss it 'nob' shot), whilst a little invention is eventually displayed in a sub-plot which sees the mother devise an ingenious scheme to bring home an expensive fur coat — paid for by money from her lover — without raising the suspicion of her husband."
Moon in the Gutter says "El Periscopio remains one of the more elusive films that Laura Gemser shot in the seventies", and is of the opinion that: "While not among his more notable films, El Periscopio, [...] remains a lightly perverse and fitfully funny film that is worth seeking out for fans of this iconic director, as well as its popular star. [...] El Periscopio is the most lightweight film Larraz ever shot, a deliberately ridiculous and goofy work centering on a teenagers obsessive peeping at two often-undressed nurses who are his neighbors. Even though it is bogged down by a series of bizarre subplots, El Periscopio ultimately succeeds as a sexy dumbed-down farce precisely because Larraz understood the type of film he was making. In other words, El Periscopio is the kind of intellectually vacant film only a very intelligent director could successfully make."
 



Stigma
(1980, dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Full Movie:

After his softcore sex comedy with a knob shot, Larraz returned to horror with this film "adapted" by the Italian Sergio Pastore, aka "George Vidor", who among other movies, also wrote and/or directed The Crimes of the Black Cat [1972 / trailer]. Larraz makes a rare (un-credited) appearance in Stigma as one of the mourners at a funeral.
Deep Red Rum is of the opinion that "Stigma succeeds in its darkness and moodiness, which more than make up for the pace. This is a somewhat unfairly overlooked entry into the Euro horror canon. Seek it out if you think you've seen everything from the time period." Considering how easy Stigma is to find in comparison to so many of Larraz's movies, it is a bit surprising that so few people have bothered to watch it.
Over at DB Cult, Phil Hardy offers the following bare-bones plot description: "Sebastian (Christian Borromeo of Murder-Rock: Dancing Death [1984 / German trailer] and Tenebre [1982 / trailer]) discovers at puberty that he has the ability to kill people by thought-power. Initially disturbed by the rumblings in his psyche, which terrify a medium (the great and underappreciated Helga Liné of The Vampires' Night Orgy [1974 / trailer], When the Screaming Stops [1974 / trailer], Virgin Killer [1978 / Italian trailer], My Dear Killer [1972 / trailer] and So Sweet... So Perverse... [1969 / main title]) he accidentally encounters, he learns to use them and kills his brother (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba of La comunidad [2000 / trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-lgCwdZ_oA] and The Art of Dying [2000]) out of jealousy for his girlfriend, Ana (Alexandra Bastedo of I Hate My Body [1974 / scene]).



Madame Olga's Pupils
(1981, writ. & dir. José Ramón Larraz)
 
Credits:
Aka Las alumnas de madame Olga, Sex Academy, Der französische Salon der Lady O. and Les élèves de madame Olga.
 
The film is variously credited to director "Jose L Gil" or "Joseph L Bronstein", but it's Larraz in weak form. A soft core sex drama starring the beautiful Helge Liné (of Horror Rises from the Tomb [1973 / trailer], Horror Express [1972 / trailer / full movie], Exorcism's Daughter [1971 / trailer] and Nightmare Castle [1965 / trailer / full movie]) looking hot (when naked) but looking oddly trans-gendered (when dressed) as Olga, the owner of a high class and successful London bordello.
 
Euro Trash Cinema says of Sex Academy: "Obscure José Larraz film starring the statuesque Helga Line! She plays Madame Olga, a piano instructor who also just so happens to run a brothel on the side, using her piano students as prostitutes! They don't seem to mind. Lots of nudity and interesting plot twists make this a must see." The main plot twist involves a man, Rafa (George Gonce), who, upon the death of his girlfriend Tina (Eva Lyberten), one of Olga's working girls, begins to ask questions. Olga believes him to be out to blackmail, so she uses her charms to placate him. Quickly recovering from the loss of Tina, he ends up falling for one her girls, a supposed virgin — which doesn't stop him from bonking her mother, some of her friends and, of course, Olga, before finally resolving the situation by (to use a euphemism) "forcing himself upon her"...
 



The National Mummy
(1981, dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Short Scene in Spanish:
Aka La momia nacional. Written by Juan José Alonso Millán, the scriptwriter of Marta (1971 / scene) and Historia de una traición (1971 / opening credits), among others. One of Larraz' purely Spanish projects, this costume horror comedy features a lot of possibly well-known-in-Spain Spanish comedians and female nudity, female nudity and more female nudity.
The plot, to re-write a computer-generated translation of a Spanish-language synopsis: Saturnino (Francisco Algora of Rojo sangre [2004 / trailer] and They're Watching Us [2002 / scene]), a young archaeologist, middle-class and wealthy, lives in a luxurious mansion. He receives a visit from his old teacher, Don Felipe (Quique Camoiras of Juan Piquer Simón's Supersonic Man [1979 / trailer]), accompanied by his daughter and a monumental female mummy that Felipe has just discovered at one of his excavations in the upper Nile. The mummy, a former princess, was mummified under a spell that breaks; awakening, she is dedicated to pursuing and raping all the men who find their way on her bands... er, hands.
Over at Fantastic Movies Musings and Ramblings, Dave Sindelar, who doesn't speak Spanish but watched a Spanish video of the movie, cuts to the mustard when he says: "Nitwits encounter monsters. Comic mayhem ensues." According to him, "[...] the movie features a great deal of nudity. On top of the mummy in the title, we also have a bunch of vampires, a werewolf, and axe murderess to contend with in the horror department. Most of the humor seems to involve sex. The oddest moment has a man working with a midget to kill a vampire. The man holds up with the obligatory cross; the vampire counters with a hammer and sickle, and the midget counters back with a swastika..."
Lots of Nudity in Spanish Edited Together:

  



Los ritos sexuales del diablo
(1982, writ. & dir. José Ramón Larraz as "Joseph Braunstein")
Trailer:
Over at DB Cult, Phil Hardy puts this film in perspective: "With the relaxation of censorship following General Franco's death, a number of almost-Adult movies such as this one were manufactured and released in Spain with a special 'S' classification."
Aka Naked Dreams, Black Candles and Hot Fantasies, more than one online source claims that Larraz was less than fond of this movie... and neither is the Worldwide Celluloid Massacre, which say that "The Sexual Rites of the Devil" (to translate the original title) is "A bad rip-off of Rosemary's Baby (1968 / trailer) complete with a married couple, a traitorous husband, Satanic neighbours, rituals and Satanic brides, only this one is soft-core porn and happens to include rape, sex with a goat and sodomy with a sword." Yep, you read right: sex with a goat. Thus, the following immortal exchange between characters:

"You better stop that or you'll get him too excited."
Robert (Mauro Rivera)
"Exactly what I want to do! I'm sure you've never seen a billy goat mounting a woman and cumming inside her."
Georgiana (Carmen Carrión)

Stigmatophilia says "Black Candles [...] really has to be seen to be believed. The film in essence is an 82-minute-long softcore / sexploitation film masquerading under the guise of a satanic horror which features more 80s bush and boobs than you can shake a stick at [...]. Directed by José Ramon Larraz, who is better known for his brooding erotic horror Vampyres, really went to town in this film with a plot serving as a vehicle to have the cast cavorting around in various stages of nakedness (normally full) and conducting orgies with wild abandon at the drop of a hat in a fairly graphic manner while not leaving very much to the imagination. [...] As scene after scene launches into yet another woman stripping off and mounting some leering bloke while she starts screaming and moaning in ecstasy, in fake porn overdub style, it all gets a bit wearing and slightly sad. [...] As well as the sex scenes, man on girl, girl on girl, masturbation, voyeurism, buggery and orgies, there are a few 'shock' factors added in which come in the form of some bestiality with a 'horny' goat, which gets fluffed by a crow-faced hag in the barn before he comes on to do his money shot (he actually lasts a lot longer than some of the human males amongst this ramshackle cast). There is also a moment when a bloated-bellied pornstached man gets sodomised with a ceremonial sword and while this wasn't particularly unpleasant, providing a brief moment of gore, I would ask was it really necessary to have a lingering close up shot of his sweating hairy buttocks prior to the insertion."
As Front Row Posters notes, "The film, which featured all kinds of bizarre nastiness [...], was so controversial and just plain bad that even Larraz disowned it after it had been made. The film's title Black Candles was changed to Hot Fantasies for its U.K. release to make it more appealing to audiences of the late-night sex film variety, to whom the film was eventually targeted. The artwork for this rare quad [below] is by Tom Chantrell [...]."
And before we forget, the plot of a film Shocking Images says is "an excellent mix of spooky and sleazy; the kind you could only find at a grindhouse", an opinion more-or-less shared by Hell Broke Luce, which holds Black Candles as its favorite Larraz film and claims the movie "is European satanic sexploitation at its finest ": "Following the sudden death of her brother, Carol (Vanessa Hidalgo) and her boyfriend Robert (Mauro Rivera of Jesús Franco's Night of 1,000 Sexes aka Mil sexos tiene la noche [1984 / full NSFW Spanish movie] and Paul Naschy's La bestia y la espada mágica [1983 / Spanish trailer] and Night of the Werewolf [1981 / trailer]) travel to England to spend some time at her sister in law Fiona's (Helga Liné of The Dracula Saga [1973 / trailer], The Blancheville Monster (1963 / full movie) and Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon [1964 / trailer / full movie]) country home. Almost immediately after arriving however Carol begins to feel some very strange vibes from Fiona, the house and Fiona's group of friends whom she's been introduced too. Her suspicious are not without warrant, as Fiona and her friends happen to belong to a satanic cult who are not only responsible for the death of Carol's brother, but have managed to seduce Robert into their ways, and they've got their sights set on Carol." (Why? Duh — you never see Rosemary's Baby?)



Polvos mágicos
(1983, writ. & dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Co-scripted with Mauro Ivaldi, this horror comedy (aka Lady Lucifera and Zwei Kuckuckseier im Gruselnest) doesn't seem to have made it past Spain, Italy and Germany, all countries known for their intelligent humor. 
We were unable to find an English-language review of the film anywhere, but be cobbling together various computer-generated translations of short Italian and Spanish blurbs — one of which say the movie is "in theory it is an erotic movie"— it would seem Polvos mágicos is about the following: Two idiots Arthur (Alfredo Landa) and Paco (Vincenzo Crocitti, who plays a delivery man in Torso [1973]) see the chance of hitting the jackpot in the rich and beautiful daughter of a dead aristocrat. When the two arrive at the castle for Paco to marry Sulfurina (Carmen Villani), who is called "Lucifer" in the Italian dub, they discover that she is a witch.
Not a Larraz Movie, but Here's the Trailer to Torso (1973):

While someone in Italy finds the movie "worth watching in the company of friends and with alcoholic beverages," the Größte Filmlexikon der Welt @ the German website 2001 says that Zwei Kuckuckseier im Gruselnest, which also features gnomes and the undead, fails as a horror parody and that "the silly plot, filled with male adolescent  jokes, bawdy dialog and sex scenes, produces one thing above all: boredom".
Scriptwriter Mauro Ivaldi, by the way, was (and still is) married to the female lead Carmen Villani, a formerly successful Italian singer of the 60s and 70s who went into sex comedies after her singing career petered out. One of her comedies is Lettomania (1976), costarring no one less than Harry Reems.
Carmen Villani sings Bada Caterina:









Juana la Loca... de vez en cuando
(1983, dir José Ramón Larraz)
A comedy scripted by Juan José Alonso Millán, with whom Larraz had previously worked together on The National Mummy (1981). Among other movies, Millán also wrote the thriller La muerte ronda a Mónica (1976 / naked lesbians). Juana La Loca seems never to have gotten past the Spanish border.
Scene in Spanish:
To translate Miguel Ángel Díaz González's Spanish-language synopsis found at imdb: "The Catholic monarchs are concerned by Torquemada's obsession to prosecute everyone. Cisneros has senile amnesia, the Infanta Isabel has become Republican, and Juana is in love. A comic and unique vision of the Court of the Catholic Kings."
Scene in Spanish:
Also at imdb, Miguel Angel Diaz Gonzalez continues to say that "This film should be only for Spanish viewers. If you're not Spanish, then you'll probably think it's trash. But it's not. It's very funny. It's a film released in 1983, and it has lots of references to political aspects of Spain in the 80s. In fact, it's just another forward critic of Spain (both past and actual), in the same mood of many other Spanish films of the decade. As in Airplane! (1980 / trailer), nobody is safe from satire. The acid comments and the past-present mixture reminds me Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975 / trailer). It's almost the same kind of film, but with Spanish characters and references. I really love Lola Flores as the Queen Isabel I. She's not a great actress, but she's tremendously charismatic. José Luis López Vázquez and Jaime Morey are also splendid."
Scene in Spanish:

 


Rest in Pieces
(1987, dir José Ramón Larraz as "Joseph Braunstein")
Aka Descanse en piezas (Spain), Repose en paix (French), Efialtis dihos telos (Greece) and Ruhe in Frieden (West Germany). Tagline: "Their dream house brought them together...Their neighbors are tearing them apart!" Written by Santiago Moncada, who, aside from working with Jess Franco on three films (Dirty Game in Casablanca [1985], Las últimas de Filipinas [1986] and La esclava blanca [1985]), also helped bring to the world a variety of other fun Spanish trash, including Voodoo Black Exorcist (1974 / full movie), The Swamp of the Ravens (1974 / 3.5 minutes) [Writer], Bell from Hell (1973 / full film) [Writer], All the Colors of the Dark (1972 / trailer / music), Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) and ... and ... and ...
Trailer to Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970):
The Ghoul Basement thinks that Rest in Pieces"is a huge pile of shit. It starts off well enough but quickly dissolves into a series of confusing plot holes. The 'big' twist involving the woman's husband near the conclusion invalidates everything prior (I've probably devoted far too much thought trying to get it) and then the film really derails into an absolutely jumbled mess of contrived scenes until mercifully the credits roll. It's fucking awful and deserves to be forgotten. The best parts are the ample breasts of Lorin Vail [...]."
 
The plot? Well, this is how it is explained on the back cover the the VHS release: "A nightmare of unrelenting terror is in store for a beautiful young woman when she inherits an eerie Spanish estate from her eccentric aunt (Dorothy Malone from TV's Peyton Place) But is aunt Catherine really dead? ...and who are the creepy neighbors? As Helen and her boyfriend Bob explore the mansion, macabre and horrifying things happen. Old cars start on their own ... strange music is heard ... and the servants perform a grisly human sacrifice on an unsuspecting string quartet. And all through this terrifying ordeal, the image of Aunt Catherine keeps haunting Helen! Is she going crazy? Does her boyfriend* have something to do with this insanity? Murder, madness and the bloodthirst of the living dead reveal the mystery!"
Bloody Pit of Horror, like most, doesn't like the movie: "So is this supposed to be a comedy? I mean, the title sure makes it sound like a campy zombie comedy, doesn't it? As far as I could tell, no. [...] Soon after moving in, Helen (Lorin Jean Vail of Arizona Heat [1988 / Italian trailer]) realizes the home is haunted. [...] After getting some heavy breathing phone calls and almost being drowned in the bathtub by a reanimated shower curtain, Helen finally wants to leave but her husband (Scott Thompson Baker of Open House [1987 / German trailer]) insists they stay because there's a rumored eight million dollars in cash hidden somewhere on the grounds. The film then seems to completely drop the haunting aspect and focuses instead on the sinister neighbors, who are harboring a secret that involves mass suicide, a mental asylum and reincarnation. It's all confusing, half-assed and doesn't really make much sense. [...] Leading lady Vail, a dark-eye-browed blonde, has a very grating and whiny voice but goes topless on at least five different occasions. This movie certainly would have been a little better with a more capable actress playing the part. Otherwise the film is surprisingly well cast. The actors playing the neighbors are all quite good in their roles and the film is at its best when focusing on them. [...] Still, what in the hell are these people? Ghosts? Zombies? Reincarnated humans? Hell if I could figure it all out."
 
A rare voice of praise comes from the dude at In It for the Kills: "I found to my delight that Rest in Pieces did not disappoint. [...] Heaven help me, I really dug this movie. It's like Dead and Buried (1981 / trailer) with Lisa and the Devil (1974 / trailer) for dessert. People say it's hard to understand, but the plot made perfect sense to me. The aunt wanted to keep her niece forever, so she has her minions try to convince her to kill herself. The evil doctor (Jeffrey Segal) must be using the murder victims to keep everyone undead. The ending means that Helen thought she escaped, but didn't. Standard nightmare crap." Nevertheless, In It for the Kills agrees there are flaws: "The only problem I have [...] is that the lead actress was the worst thespian I’ve seen in awhile, and because of her acting I am now stupider. [...] Those of you who own penises that point at women won't care about her acting, however, because she spends so much screen time nude. I think that's where the budget went. I'm sure Ms. Vail’s a lovely person with nice boobies, but her voice reminds me of the older sister from Sixteen Candles (1984 / trailer), and that ain’t right."
Full movie:

 


Edge of the Axe
(1988, dir. José Ramón Larraz as Joseph Braunstein)
 Trailer:
Aka Al filo del hacha (original Spanish title), Patienten (Denmark), Sti lampsi tou tsekouriou (Greece) and Axolution - Tödliche Begegnung (West Germany). Larraz does his first slasher — bodycount: 9 — written by someone named "Pablo de Aldebarán"; as far as we can tell, Pablo has seemingly never written another film. The movie is not well regarded by most, though it does have its defenders. Still, going by Ben Frankenstein's synopsis of the film at imdb, it would seem that the movie suffers from a typically slasher non-plot: "A deranged guy in a mask kills people with an axe."
Gutmunchers has some rare words of semi-praise for the movie, which it calls "another of those 80s slasher movies that tends to blend in with the rest" but then also says that "Edge of the Axe does a bang-up job in the execution of the kills": "The story is very straightforward. You have a masked killer making short work of the locals, a police department unable to handle the situation, and several suspects in the cast. Now what I really enjoyed about Edge of the Axe is a certain plot twist that is out of nowhere, but is pulled off perfectly and works. Can't say anymore than that, but the reveal of the killer is brilliant and sets up and ending that is memorable and fun. That said I do need to warn everyone that there is a stretch in the middle of the movie that I found to be a bit slow as the kills tail off and the romance between Gerald and Lillian is taking up screen time. But once the movie gets back to the killer things get fun again. The cast is good for a slasher movie, but really not asked to do a whole lot. I didn’t really see much chemistry between Gerald (Barton Faulks) and Lillian (Christina Marie Lane), which might explain why I found the romance bit to be the worst part of the movie." A lot of people seem to hate the icky romance stuff in this movie...
Vegan Voorhees, who finds the film full of "useless subplots" and also is so PC that he complains that the guy cheating on his wife gets to survive while his wife doesn't, says "Larraz manages to create some tension from time to time but the film peaks with the opening axe 'em up at a car wash and its climax appears slightly skewered once all of the red herrings are eliminated, with a motive so contrived and unlikely — how convenient was it that all the intended victims were so local?"
Elsewhere — @ Xomba, to be exact — Pidde Andersson says "Larraz is doing his darnedest best to imitate an American slasher film of that period and I wouldn't be surprised if he fools viewers who have no idea this is a Spanish production. Looking like a glorified American TV movie, Larraz's film takes place in a small American town, where a psycho wearing a white rubber mask [...] uses an axe to kill women. The murders are pretty brutal and the cops try to find a pattern, the victims seem to have been chosen randomly. [...] I tried to guess who the killer was and I suspected a couple of characters, including one who impossibly could be the killer. However, it did turn out to be that character — and the movie ends with the cops shooting the wrong person and the 'saved' killer looks into the camera and smiles. Freeze frame, end credits — and a country & western tune!"
The full film, while it lasts:





Deadly Manor
(1990, writ. & dir. José Ramón Larraz)

"Peter, take it easy."
Susan (Liz Hitchler)
"Take it easy? Take it easy? There's a smashed car outside, coffins in the basement, and scalps in the closet, and you're telling me to take it easy? What's next Uncle Fester on the patio?"
Peter (Jerry Kernion)

Larraz's second slasher movie, aka La danza del diavolo  (Italy) and Savage Lust (elsewhere for a while), this time with scriptwriting help from Larry Ganem and co-producer Brian Smedley-Aston, the latter of whom years earlier had co-produced Larraz's classic, Vampyres (1974). Smedley-Aston, actually, was primarily active as a film editor, and among the better projects for which he swung scissors is the classic Jeff Lieberman horror films Squirm (1976) and Blue Sunshine (1978 / trailer), the latter of which starred Zalman King.
Trailer to Jeff Lieberman's Squirm (1976):
The Bloody Pit of Horror, which says the movie "is dumb, but surprisingly watchable", explains the basic set-up that leads up to the bodycount: "Three couples — wisecracking pothead fat guy motorcyclist Peter (Jerry Kernion of King Cobra [1999 / trailer] and They Crawl [2001 / trailer]), his girl Anne (Kathleen Patane), bad boy Tony (Greg Rhodes), his possibly psychic girlfriend Helen (Claudia Franjul) and normal guy Rod (Mark Irish of Crippled Creek [2005 / trailer]) and his sweet blonde girlfriend Susan (Liz Hitchler) — are driving through the country on their way to some lake for the weekend. They pick up a long-haired hitchhiker named Jack (Clark Tufts) who claims to know the area and offers to show them the way. After having a run-in with a nosy cop (Douglas Gowland) who shows them the penny test, everyone gets tired and decide to go somewhere to rest. Rod pulls off the road, goes deep into the woods and ends up at a large, secluded country home. The place appears to be abandoned and is strange right off the bat. In the front yard, there's a crashed car set up on an altar. The car's interior has blood stains on the seats and is decorated like a shrine, with pictures of an attractive woman everywhere. As one character aptly puts it, 'Major weird!' But certainly not 'Major weird!' enough for them to go elsewhere... and just wait till you get a load of the inside of the house! [...] After busting down a door, our not-so-bright characters take a gander inside. There, they find 1. Pictures of an angry-looking woman adorning nearly every wall. 2. Unoccupied coffins in the basement. 3. A closet full of human scalps and body parts pickled in jars 4. A photo album filled with pictures of naked corpses and 5. Yesterday's newspaper. And guess what? These boneheads still decide to spend the night!"
Surprisingly enough, no review we read picked up Larraz's obvious homage to Franju's Eyes without a Face (1960 / trailer) — the expressionless mask — but, for that, most sort of found some level of entertainment in its being as bad as it is. As Video Vacuum puts it: "Savage Lust reminds me of the kind of movie I would've rented from the video store back in the day. If I watched had it when it first came out, I don't think I would've been entertained. Now though, with the passage of time, I can appreciate the dated fashions, dopey characters, and overall cheese factor of the entire enterprise."
The music is from Cengiz Yaltkaya, someone we've never heard of but by mentioning him we have an excuse to present the screenshot below.



Sevilla Connection
(1992, dir. José Ramón Larraz)
Somehow, we find it hard to believe that anyone familiar with the name "José Ramón Larraz the Exploitation Film Director" would be tempted by this poster to see this film even with his name on it at the bottom. After his less than successful US-oriented slashers, Larraz returned to Spain to do another comedy that no one outside of Spain ever saw.
Trailer:
Starring the brothers César Cadaval and Jorge Cadaval, a Spanish comic duo known as 'Los Morancos de Triana', the movie was scripted by Jesús de Diego and Ramón de Diego, whom we assume might also be related in some way. Sevilla Connection was to be Larraz's last directorial effort. Jorge Cadaval married Kenneth Appledorn in May, 2007. The plot of Sevilla Connection, according to a computer-generated translation of a Spanish synopsis: "Two New York policemen are sent to Spain to solve a case of drugs."




Una chica entre un millón
(1994, dir.  Álvaro Sáenz de Heredia)
Two years after Sevilla Connection, José Ramón Larraz supplied the story that director Álvaro Sáenz de Heredia converted into a screenplay and then directed. Snore.
Spanish TV trailer:
The plot of Una chica entre un millón, according to a computer-generated translation of a Spanish synopsis: "An executive, Miguel, (Juanjo Puigcorbé) uses Arabian strategies to attract the attention of a young woman, Lola, (Esperanza Campuzano) who moves in a world very different from his own." One assumes that "Arabian strategies" must be a literal translation of some Spanish idiom...
From the Movie — Manolo Tena sings Romperá tu corazón:





On Vampyres and Other Symptoms
(2011, writ. & dir. Celia Novis)

2.25 minutes of the Documentary:
 
Spanish_ON VAMPYRES AND OTHER SYMPTOMS from Celia Novis on Vimeo.
As far as we can tell, this documentary on José Ramón Larraz and his films is Celia Novis's first cinematic project.  On the film's website, the following synopsis is given: "'Last night I dreamt that they had returned, I have the feeling that something is about to happen.' The last horror script written by José Ramón Larraz (1928-2013), alongside some excerpts from his films, immerses us in the dreamy and mysterious world of this author, investigating the origins of his lifelong love of fear. His 2009 trip to the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia (Sitges) to receive an honorary prize for his cult movie Vampyres and for the whole of his career as well (despite his being practically unknown in Spain), shows Larraz as a craftsman of stories, but also reveals his own to be quite the material of one of his own fictions."
 
Horror 101 did not like the documentary at all: "Is it a documentary? Is it an art house pic? Is it a portrait of an artist in his sunset years? Is it a commission from the Sitges Film Festival on one of their own? Is it a tribute to a relatively obscure horror director (Jose Ramon Larraz) known primarily for making one of the worthier lesbian bloodsucker pictures (Vampyres, 1975)? Does it feature shots of that film's nubile stars, Anulka Dubinska and Marianne Morris, now 35 years older, inexplicably running down hotel hallways? Does it feature stark black-and-white comic book panels depicting Larraz meeting famed director Josef von Sternberg in his youth, a chance encounter that led to the former becoming a filmmaker himself? Does it culminate with Larraz receiving a lifetime achievement award at Sitges? The answer to all of these questions is 'Yes,' and yet, perhaps because of that, the end result seems to obscure as much about its subject as it reveals. While Novis' unconventional approach deserves merit for its own sake, one cannot help but feel that the full story has been left untold or that, maybe, just maybe, a man with only two significant international credits (1974's lesser known Symptoms) wasn't much of a documentary subject."
For that Movie Morlocks thought the film was a worthy if flawed watch: "On Vampyres and Other Symptoms is the clever title of a new documentary [...] on the reclusive filmmaker, writer and artist José Ramón Larraz. [...] Celia Novis' unique documentary unfolds slowly like one of the director's films, quietly drawing you in and immersing you in Larraz' hermetic world. Unlike typical documentaries that ask talking heads to analyze their subject, Novis takes a more creative approach that's reminiscent of Larraz' own films and artistic background. [...] On Vampyres and Other Symptoms takes a look back at Larraz' early years through a series of comic book panels that Celia Novis brings to life with lighting effects and sweeping camera movements. These scenes are intermingled with footage of Larraz discussing his work while Novis shoots the aging director taking long walks through old cemeteries and twisted hotel hallways. These walks seem to trigger a flood of memories for Larraz and the ghosts of his past begin to materialize. The director quietly expresses his disappointment with the business side of filmmaking that he encountered at film festivals like Cannes where 'exhibitionism and opportunism' were rampant. But most of the conversations revolve around his thoughts about aging, his appreciation of family, regret over lost loves and the lack of critical respect for his work. He also discusses his lifelong fascination with the supernatural and the desire to find a new approach to the horror genre. The documentary limits its scope by focusing its attention on two of Larraz' most acclaimed films, [...] both wonderful representations of Larazz' unique vision and contain many of the veiled themes that have interested the director throughout his career including his obsession with codependent relationships and ominous structures that house his protagonists and their dark secrets. [...] On Vampyres and Other Symptoms might frustrate some viewers with its ambiguity, but I found the viewing experience absolutely mesmerizing and very touching at times. [...] Its evocative soundscapes, eerie visuals and inspired editing elevated the material and turned what could have easily become a conventional documentary into an expressive tone poem that evokes dusty libraries, funeral dirges and haunted landscapes. [...] For more information about upcoming screenings and future release dates please visit the film's official website: On Vampyres and Other Symptoms."

José Ramón Larraz
 
May He Rest In Peace on the Bosom of Death
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Zzikhimyeon jukneunda / Record (Korea, 2000)

December 17, 2013, 3:58 am
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(Spoilers.) Over here in Germany, the DVD release (shorn of probably the movie's best and bloodiest 4 minutes) was saddled with the rather incongruous title Fear No Evil; the English-language title Record is without doubt much more on the mark, as home video plays such an important aspect to the movie's plot... but title and censored gore aside, what is perhaps truest about this film is that it is no wonder that most of those involved don't seem to have made another film — we really hope that none of them quit there day job to take part in this thing.*
Which is not say that the movie, a slasher, has absolutely no redeeming values, it's just that its redeeming factors don't add up to a worthwhile film, as in the end there are only three: the fact that it's an Asian (Korean, to be exact) horror film that for a change isn't about some white-faced, long-haired, all-powerful ghost, and it features a hilarious and unexpected event that interrupts the fiery immolation of a "dead" body as well as a singular mildly innovative shock scene involving a cell phone and arm.
As just mentioned, Fear No Evil stands out as a rarity in that it is a Korean slasher flick, one modeled after the standard American template that hasn't changed all that much since first introduced who knows when. (Most people like to credit Carpenter's Halloween [1978 / trailer] as the genre's granddaddy, but while that film may arguably have been the one to start the modern Golden Age of Slashers, the genre itself can arguably be traced back to Coppola's Dementia 13 [1963 / trailer / full movie], Powell's Peeping Tom [1960 / trailer], or — if you're of the type that see slashers and bodycount films as one and the same — even the now rather dull films Terror Aboard [1933] or Thirteen Women [1932 / song about the film], the latter an early Myrna Loy film that holds the distinction of also being the only surviving film featuring a credited Peg Entwistle.**) In regards to the slasher template, Fear No Evil follows it so closely that for a while one is almost convinced that the film is meant to be ironic but that like, say, Tim Burton's non-slasher Planet of the Apes (2001 / trailer), the filmmakers play with the tropes so closely that it becomes impossible to see that they (and the film) are not being 100% serious. But after a while, it becomes obvious that in the case of Fear No Evil, at least, the film is less knowingly ironic than it truly is simply by-the-numbers and seriously sub-standard.
Like so many a dead-teenager flick, the driving instigation behind the revenge killings in Fear No Evil is the classic prank that goes wrong. In this case, prank played by the school's best (two babes, three dudes) on the school loser. The babes, sorta plain Hui-jung (Seong-min Kang) and hot stuff Eun-mi (Chae-young Han, "Korea's Barbie Doll" and only participant to have achieved a subsequent show biz career, in her film debut), invite the eternal loser to join them for a weekend alone at a secluded cabin as the set-up, unknown to the loser of course, to film a fake snuff film. But when the three dudes show up to play their parts as the masked killer home-invaders, they unintentionally use a real knife (!?!) and don't notice, until it is too late, that it not only punctures the boy's chest but that there is real blood everywhere — the latter is odd indeed, as obviously no one thought to bring fake blood with them in the first place. (As a whole, the events of the set-up give the viewer the feeling that if the five students are truly examples of South Korea's best and brightest, than the future of the region may indeed lie in the North.)
Needless to say, like the much better I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997 / trailer), the movie Fear No Evil emulates most closely, the five students don't want to ruin their futures due to the "accident" and decide to destroy the body (and the self-made video of their deed) — an event that also goes hilariously wrong. Nevertheless, convinced all is OK, they swear themselves to secrecy. But then, a year later, not only is the "snuff film" video online, but a masked killer in a red jumpsuit is out to kill them one by one... Five students being a relatively low number for a body-count movie, however, the unknown and unstoppable killer also does away with an occasional innocent (elder sauna worker, MILF school nurse, ambulance attendant, policeman) as well.
Our DVD version, cut, is hardly the most bloody of films, so we'll reserve comment on the gore, but we must state that seldom have we seen a film in which teenagers, conscious that someone is out to kill them, so consistently find a reason to separate or go somewhere alone. Indeed, they do it so consistently they could well have all worn "Kill Me, Please" signs on their backs — but as stupid as their actions are in this regard, they do give cause for regular laughter. Likewise, the killer(s) — yes, a nod to Scream (1996 / trailer) is at hand as well — are so obvious, that they each could just as well have worn a sign on their back saying "I'm a killer". Needless to say, on the whole Fear No Evil is rather lax when it comes to suspense or tension...
For that, it is mildly funny in a bad film sort of way. Aside from the above, who can't break out in guffaws when one student flirts with the MILF nurse by saying something to the effect of "I've got heat pimples on my inner-thigh, you want to see them?" Likewise, it is sort of amusing when the final girl and guy consciously hunt for the killer — they don't know it's more than one, of course — and then, when they finally find him, lose their cool and start running around like to chickens without heads. The fun ridiculousness of that bit is topped soon thereafter when, after surviving that, they end up having a wham-bang showdown with the second killer, who appears to be as unstoppable as Arnie in the first Terminator film (1984 / trailer). (A fun scene, perhaps the best of the movie.) As always, however, the filmmakers simply don't know when to stop and throw in a final after-graduation scene with a twist from left field that is as aggravating as it is prefatory to a possible sequel.
So is Fear No Evil any good? Not really, but as derivative and idiotic as it is, there are many far worse slashers out there, many of which you find reviewed elsewhere on this blog. The end question is, does the fact that there are worse films out there really make it worth your time to watch this movie? In our humble opinion, your money would be better spent on kimchi...
 
 
 Antipodal to Fear No Evil — 
a trailer to film that doesn't exist:

* Jae-hwan Ahn, who plays the wimpy teacher in the movie, no longer has to worry in this regard: he killed himself in 2008 at the age of 36.
** In the case of the last two and earliest films, however, it must be said that they are definitely far less slashers than body counters, while with the exception of Dementia 13, all the historic precursors listed — including Halloween — listed lack a key ingredient of the modern slasher: that the killer remains unknown until the final showdown.
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R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part VI (1985)

December 23, 2013, 3:12 am
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Harry Reems
August 27, 1947 — March 19, 2013

On 19 March 2013, Herbert Streicher — better known under his later name Harry Reems — went to the great porn shoot in the sky. The following is the sixth installment of a career review of the many films splattered across his career. By the 80s, he was on the alcoholic and drug-induced skids, and, as he once said, "By 1985 nobody would hire me any more. That's when the real alcoholism kicked in. I was drinking 24 hours a day and the seizures started." The films that follow were all released after he and his special talent had become unreliable...
Go here for Part I
Go here for Part II (1969–72)
Go here for Part III (1973–74)
Go here for Part IV (1975–79)
Go here for Part V (1980–84)



WPINK-TV
(1985, dir. Myles "Miles" Kidder)
This direct-to-video masturbatory aid is distinguished by some of the most famous sausages of the Golden Age, those of John Holmes, a-just-starting-to-bloat Ron Jeremy, Harry Reems and Marc Wallace, the reported "Patient Zero" of the AIDS wave to hit the heterosexual porn biz just before the turn of the century. The real drawing card here, however, is the legendary (and, at 19 years of age, young) Christy Canyon (born Melissa Kaye Bardizbanian) — though, like all babes of the time, she suffers a nasty case of Big Hair in this film. 
Some of the scenes of co-babe Ali Moore (born Erin Marie Scott) were later cut out when it was discovered Moore had entered the biz underage, but oddly enough her pre-legal films haven't been as heavily pursued as those of Traci Lords, thus many of them (like this one) still feature her exchanging body fluids. You'll notice on the video cover above, however, under-the-table Ali's face has been replaced with that of Christy, who as a result appears twice in the photo (an earlier VHS release features the same photo not Photoshopped).
Over at the adult film database, they explain the movie: "TV cameraman Phil (Ron Jeremy) turns up with a brazen plan for a 'sex-rated' past-prime-time program after watching girlfriend Cathy (Christy Canyon) turning on for his private video viewing pleasure. Phil and his crew start the ball rolling with some pulse-stopping aerobics that unbeknownst to the group have been picked up by satellite and beamed around-the-world; launching an investigation led by super-agent Scorpio (Harry Reems). Disguised as a maintenance engineer, Harry is nevertheless quickly spotted as Cathy can't help but notice his gear. Cast and crew continue to make air-waves with special guest star, John Holmes, who holds his own against a panel of experts on 'Beat The Cock'. Behind the scenes, Bambi lends the director a helping hand and Harry convinces Cathy he is ready, willing and more than able to handle his share of the load. Meanwhile a network of foreign and domestic audiences are now desperately trying to horn in on Scorpio's undercover operation. Finally, the lights are dimmed, the cameras stilled and the action slowly grinds to a halt as Cathy and Scorpio take to the darkened center stage for some instant re-play-by-play until, flushed with success, the entire ensemble joins in. Forgotten in the fray, agent Scorpio's 2-way communicator is heat activated and his cover is blown, announcing to one and all they have been caught in the act on WPINK TV." 
The full NSFW movie can be found here; it was followed by four direct-to-video sequels between 1986 and 1993...




Whore of the Worlds
(1985, dir. Myles "Miles Kidder)
More direct-to-video product from Myles "Miles" Kidder, who either left the business or changed names after 1987. Written by the obviously pseudonymous "Major Lodes", which we guess is what the makers hoped this film would help make male viewers deliver. The film has a plot, but also simply reuses scenes from other films directed by Kidder: in the first version released, for example, it reused the Ginger Lynn/John Holmes from Those Young Girls (1984) as well as the Ali Moore/Ron Jeremy coupling from WPINK-TV, but just like in WPINK-TV the Moore/Jeremy scene was later cut (due to Ali's age). In any event, there are a variety of versions floating about of this "poorly written and amateurishly acted but nevertheless 'campy' and amusing" movie.
The plot, as according to Hot Movies and a hundred other websites: "Just when she's smugly certain the entire population of the planet has accepted her moratorium on sex — evil ruler Clitemnestra discovers the decampment of Zork and Zindy for worldly pleasures. In her private chambers, Clitemnestra watches their amorous antics through the telly and finds her gorge rising as well as long buried desires. After taking matters quickly in hand, she dispatches her chief aide-de-camp (Harry Reems) to trap and zap the fallen angels. Meanwhile, Zork and Zinky, unaware they are being watched, have found Hollywood, California, a fine state of affairs and, anxious to make up for lost years of enforced celibacy, are having a ball with a playful group of consenting adults. But just as the ball starts rolling, the promiscuous pair are hog-tied and high-tailed back to face the music and certain death. When brought before Cliteminestra's court, however, a member of the jury takes Zork's plight to heart, while Zindy gives the vengeful empress a taste of her own medicine and thereby turns the rapscallion ruler into The Whore of the Worlds."
For one of its versions, the video was recut and redubbed and, with additional scenes added, renamed Lust in Space... the hairy guy in the ugly makeup on the cover is no one less than an unrecognizable Harry Reems.



Trashy Lady
(1985, dir. Steve Scott [1937–1987])
One of only three straight shot-on-film pornos directed by Steve Scott, who worked primarily in gay porn (he even performed in some of his own films, including such gay classics as his first widely distributed directorial job Track Meet [1976 / NSFW trailer] and Inches [1979 / NSFW trailer], the latter which we looked at briefly in They Died in September 2012, Part X: Addendum and features the legendary Al Parker [1952-1992]). Steve Scott, born Salvatore Grasso, who was known to place value on the story and technical aspects of his movies, died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 50. Scott co-wrote Trashy Lady with Will Kelly, who went on to direct Reems in the 1988 porno, Night Prowlers. Trashy Lady, a period piece set in the 20s, is more-or-less a riff on the Academy-Award-winning dramedy Born Yesterday (1950), but in reverse: instead of a gangster hiring a woman to teach his mole manners and couth behavior, the mobster hires someone to teach his gal to be trashy. Over at imdb, arturopanduro of Florida calls the film "a very well-made period piece [...] with a great cast and better-than-average production values," and among other scenes points out that "there's also a nice DP performed by Cheri Janvier with Marc Wallace and Francois Papillon in a boxing gym."
CD Universe explains the plot: "Trashy Lady is a period piece set against the backdrop of the roaring 1920's Chicago underworld, during the days of prohibition, well-dressed gangsters and tommy-guns. Harry Reems plays mobster Dutch Siegel, who has just been dumped by his filthy-mouthed girlfriend, Jessie (Cara Lott). Shortly after, he falls for the new cigarette girl, Katherine (Ginger Lynn of Buried Alive [1990 / full film], Mind, Body & Soul [1992 / trailer], Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain [2003 / trailer] and The Devil's Rejects [2005 / trailer]), whom he meets at his posh club. Dutch wants 'Kitty' [as he calls her] as his dame, but a problem exists — she's too classy for him. Kitty is a lady and Dutch likes his dames trashy. He employs a local whore, Rita, played by Amber Lynn, to teach Kitty the 'right' ways to act. His problems are compounded when another local mobster, Big Louie (Herschel Savage of Fatal Pulse [1988 / trailer]) decides to take revenge against Dutch because he believes that he's been sleeping with his girl, sparking a small gang war."
Video Tramp says: "All three of [Scott's straight porno] films featured an up-n-coming starlet named Ginger Lynn. Interestingly, their three collaborations, especially Trashy Lady, are still being discussed by porn fans even today — a testament to their significance. The years truly have been kind to Trashy Lady, which has gone on to become a legitimate adult film classic, often noted by Ginger Lynn aficionados as one of her finest films."
For 11 NSFW minutes of "Rita" teaching "Kitty" to swallow sausage (and more) to period-correct music, go here.
Trailer to Born Yesterday (1955), the probable inspiration for Trashy Lady:



The Girls of 'A' Team
(1985, dir. Jerome Tanner)
Another direct-to-video porn film directed by Jerome Tanner, the director of the previous year's For Your Thighs Only; and whereas in the earlier film the plot involved prudes trying to outlaw sex, this film involves an evil force trying to outlaw anal sex. In England, some guy named Richie says "Girls of the A Team is the funniest adult movie ever." In Japan, Saijoo is of the opinion that the film is "Hilarious B-grade filth at its best! This movie is a must see for anyone who's even remotely a fan of Ron Jeremy or Harry Reems. It has some of the best one-liners that you'll ever see, and some of the most disgusting pre-sex drooling, and come-shot rambling that Harry Reems has ever had recorded." Indeed, Harold Reems' line "Zanos, you're the best!" seems to be sort of cult classic among some.
The plot, more or less as we could piece together from various sites: Zanos (Ron Jeremy) is the ambassador of Uranus and has a strong penchant for anal sex. While visiting the United States, he gets frustrated when the girl he's bonking (Tamara Longley) won't let him do anal, so he rings Steven, his US liaison (Peter North), who suggests he should contact the A Team, whom Steven describes as 'masters in the art of anal penetration'. The A Team soon arrive at Zanos' villa in a van (similar to that used in the original TV series The A-Team [1983-87]). Soon thereafter, Harry Reems visits Zanos and is introduced to Mr P, who sets him up with an A Team babe, Ami Rogers, who teasingly asks 'Well, Mr Reems — are you going to ream me out?'"Several anal orgies take place, with a lot of anal and some DP…" As an added attraction, in a couple of scenes the ends of the receiving ends have faces painted on them.



 
Ten Little Maidens
(1985, dir. John Seeman)
Director John Seeman, retired, was one of the many unsung perennially active flesh-cucumbers of the Golden Age: appearing in over 100 films, like so many Joe Shmoes active in the field his reliable 7-inch erections kept him employed but never brought him the fame of, say, John Leslie or Harry Reems. We only know of him, actually, because he was the lead weenie in one of the most psychotronic movies we have ever seen, the triple-X gore horror flick Hardgore(1974), a movie well worth watching for anyone into deranged cinema who has no problem with on-screen exchanging of body fluids...
 
Ten Little Maidens, as far as we can tell, was his third and last attempt as a director. The movie, as implied by the title, is inspired by Agatha Christie's best-selling novel Ten Little Niggers (1939), which was later given the more palatable title Then There Were None and/or Ten Little Indians and which has enjoyed great success as a stage play and a variety of films. René Clair directed the first feature film version of the Christie story in 1945.
Full film — René Clair's And Then There Were None (1945):
 
3X Update describes the plot as follows: "Ten Little Maidens is a classic of 80s erotica that stars Ginger Lynn in one of her finest performances. She and Harry Reems play a happily married couple who find their wedded bliss interrupted by an offer for an all-expense paid trip to the mysterious Bacchanale Island [delivered by Kitten Natividad, in a non-sex appearance]. The sexual adventurers jump at the chance and are soon swept away on a tide of carnal mayhem. When Ginger and Harry arrive, they find themselves at a decadent dinner party with a few other couples — a dinner party that soon turns into a full-fledged orgy. Afterwards, their enigmatic host announces that after having so much fun, all of the guests must pay — with their lives! The flick turns into a wild murder mystery in which deadly intentions and sensual shenanigans lurk around every corner. This flick epitomizes everything that was great about 80s porn, from the cheesy yet effective story to the breathless acting to the white-hot action. […] One of the best porn films of the decade, it's a must-see experience for anyone into feverish fun and atmospheric ecstasy." Possibly taking inspiration from Hardgore, the film includes death by electric dildo…
Over in Brugge (Belgium), Dirtymoviedevotee (dries.vermeulen@hotmail.be) says that "the AVN Award-winning 'food orgy' sequence [...] really grosses some people out" and that "seeing a man masturbate using a turkey is not appealing in the least". Ten Little Maidens can be found on-line at this Russian website here, 24Video.
Trailer to George Pollock's non-sex Euroversion of Ten Little Indians (1965):



Rubdown
(1985, dir. Bill Amerson)
Director Amerson, along with Bob Chin, is one of the movers and shakers of the early years of porn that were amalgamated to the character "Jack Horner", played by Burt Reynolds in that great flick Boogie Nights (1997 / trailer). Amerson "discovered" John Holmes and remained his manager until the end. (Holmes is seen swinging his sword in this film here, too.) Amerson started his career selling illegal porn under the counter and in back alleys way back when Deep Throat (1972) hadn't even been thought of, much less the concept that porn might one day be legal. As Bill "Williams", the name given in the credits, he would also occasionally appear in non-sex roles in a porn film or sexploitation flick such as, for example, Stephen C. Apostolof's The Divorcee (1969). Scriptwriter Patty Plenty, born in Wichita, Kansas, on April 28, 1948, and also known as "Patty Please", was still baring her pneumatic plastic pillows in geriatric porn at the start of the eighties in titles like Top Heavy Grannies (2003).
 
Rubdown is a less than spectacular direct-to-video product with big hair, body hair, bad acting and direction, and a plot that might hold water but a resolution that does not... At imdb, VCX explains the plot: "Bixby (Reems) is a horrid employer who fires Gail (Kim Carson) because she refuses to give in to his sexual advances. Her two co-workers, Patty and Suzy, quit in protest and the three decide to become full-time self-employed entrepreneurs in the 'World's Oldest Profession'. 'If you've got to let somebody squeeze the goods,' says Gail, 'you might as well get paid for it!' The enterprise is an outstanding success and their 9-to-5 world is crowded with lust-filled men and couples looking to add spice to their lives. One day old Bixby catches their ad in the paper and phones for an appointment. Recognizing his voice, the girls plan a just revenge!"
Discount DVD says that the film "is a waning career assignment for porn studs Harry Reems and John Holmes, who have to perform with some of the hottest young porn actresses of the mid-1980s. Fortunately, they manage to rise to the occasion."



Oriental Jade
(1985, writ. & dir. G.W. Hunter)
 
Heart Throbs
(1985, writ. & dir. G.W. Hunter)
Two films from 1985 directed by two-spurt "G.W. Hunter", for whom we can find no information and no other credits, both featuring Harry Reems' reliable (?) rod somewhere for a scene or two. Oriental Jade (full NSFW film) was a star vehicle for the Korean American Kristara Barrington, a popular babe of the 1980s who may or may not have entered the field underage (her first films are now unavailable) and eventually gave up her Porn Queen title (according to popular but unsubstantiated rumor) to become a veterinarian under her real, unknown name — though kristarabarringtononline.com actually claims that "Recent notification has placed our 80s superstar in Chicago working with other friends of the family and supporting family members doing bookkeeping for a relatives Korean grocery stores."
According to an interview she gave to Gregory Dark in Psychotronic #26, "The high point of my life was that I fucked 350 guys in high school"— a statement that might help explain her oft-enthusiastic performances. The plot of Oriental Jade, according to some website: "Shot on location in the South Seas, Oriental Jade is an epic tale of movie making Hollywood Style — and the wanton desires that blaze behind-the-scenes. At the center of the story is G.W. Hunter, the booze-loving screenwriter with a taste for Oriental erotica. His script is laced with plenty of steamy scenes, but most of the real action occurs off-screen and after hours. There's the hot actress with a taste for jungle love, the director who puts his all (among other things) into his work, and the writer's wife who discovers a very talented actor … and that's only part of the action. Featuring one of the most beautiful casts ever assembled, Oriental Jade is an adult blockbuster that must be seen to be believed!" (Assuming the above description to be correct, and the character "G.W. Hunter" is also the real director, then the film would seem to have been directed by James Miles, aka Miles Long. [Whatta name — Hah, Hah, Hah.])
Like Reems and most of the cast from Oriental Jade except Kristara Barrington, James Miles / Miles Long also appears here in Heart Throbs, the paper thin plot of which concerns (to quote Adult DVD Talk): "Four sex-craved representatives of the Amalgamated Cosmetics Company travel to Hawaii to try out their new Shocking Pink Lipstick, which brings women to their knees, literally." Ron Jeremy is also in both films, but in regard to the latter of the two films, a reviewer was inspired to say: "He is actually tolerable here, and he used to be a half-way decent actor, which is weird. I can't recall anyone, porn or mainstream, becoming progressively worse over the years. I know it doesn't make sense, but I swear it's true. Ron was also less hairy than some of the women he bones, but aside from that, [the film] suffered from too many shadows, bad sound, and less than arousing sex. Shot in Hawaii, at least the scenery was attractive."



The Grafenberg Spot
(1985, writ. & dir. Artie Mitchell)
The Grafenberg Spot is one of the last big budget productions of the now-infamous Mitchell Brothers, with Harry Reems getting the star treatment on the poster to a film filled with name actors, including Nina Hartley, Amber Lynn, John Holmes, Annette Haven, Rick Savage and (once upon a time) Traci Lords. Lords had her only scene, a three-way with Harry Reems and Rick Savage, edited out of the film when it was discovered she was underage at the time.
The plot: Leslie (Ginger Lynn) and Michael (Harry Reems) are a couple who have a problem: she has a highly active G-spot and whenever she gets the Big O she gushes fountains, which freaks Michael, who thinks she can't control her bladder. Leslie visits a doc (Annette Haven) who fills her in on the G-spot and then teaches Michael about it; he gets to see the spot in action a few more times with other babes while Leslie has her own fun and then they get back together and squirt off into the sunset... 
Six years after this film, on February 27, 1991, director Artie was shot to death by his business partner and brother, Jim Mitchell; Jim died of a heart attack in 2007. Back in the good ol' days, they made the legendary porn film Behind the Green Door (1972 / NSFW clip), which made them rich, and the equally interesting Resurrection of Eve (1973 / innocent dance scene); both films starred the legendary Marilyn Chambers (of Rabid [1977 / trailer]).



 
Tower of Power
(1985, dir. Gary Graver)
Another film by Gary Graver (as "Robert McCallum"), the director of Society Affairs (1982). According to Rog Reviews, which lists this film here as a "parody" with "curvy girls [&] big tits" as its theme, Tower of Power"is an 80s flick that really represents the era nicely. It's a little soap opera story about corporate espionage, sexual blackmail and hot women willing to do whatever it take to stay on top. [...] If you like movies with a bit of a story, some drama and pretty 1980's porn actresses, then this is one to check out. Angel is worth watching for sure, especially if you have never seen her." As the fun blogspot Golden Sin Pleasure explains, the film "is not expanded more than necessary and the revelation of the traitor's name comes without surprise and really fast at the end. This does not mean I did not like the movie because it's hard not to like a Gary Graver's film. As usual his direction is perfect, all is well filmed and the pace is efficient (the mixture of the scenes between Robert Kerman and Janey Robbins with the one between Annette Haven and Herschel Savage who takes place at the same time is a very good example of this). [...] Even with my reservation about the plot, this film is a recommendation and a good example of how to edit a movie when a lot of sex scenes are present."
One of Gary Graver's first directorial efforts,
the short film Good Country People (circa 1960):
 


Beverly Hills Exposed
(1985, dir. Gary Graver)
And yet another Gary Graver movie. More big business shenanigans with Harry Reems as the head man, "Gregory Towns". Rame.net says the following about the movie: "Harry Reems plays a nymphomaniac businessman trying to close a deal with Billy Dee (seen here to the left in a photo from the iafd). The video plays out in a very refreshing, breezy way [... and ...] shows you can have a very hot porn flick w/o anals, facials, DPs, etc. It also shows a porn flick can have production values w/o a bunch of stupid camera tricks and nonsense symbolism like painted midgets or glow-in-the dark costumes." Billy Dee, by the way, was "one of the first of the do-anything, do-anyone second-tier porno studs, [...] a smooth-talking, light-skinned black hunk who was one of the coolest, most suave studs of his time". Born "William Daniels", he usually played a white dude in the countless films he appeared in, or an Hispanic. He left the adult film business in 1990 because, in his own words: "As it happens, I [...] went to Bible College. I now have a theological degree, but never became an ordained minister. But I am a believer. That is why I am not in the biz anymore." Supposedly he now plays in a church band somewhere in San Antonio, TX.
As mentioned under the entry on Society Affairs, director Gary Graver (July 20, 1938 — November 16, 2006) was an intensely active if not obsessed filmmaker that worked on hundreds of films. And where does a filmmaker like that begin? Well, with super low budget (as in Super-8, probably) surrealistic short films, this one here possibly starring a young Ron Keas...
Another of Gary Graver's first directorial efforts,
the short film Mildred (circa 1960):




Too Naughty to Say No
(1985, writ. & dir. Suze Randall)
Too Naughty to Say No and Love Bites (the next film listed) are two directorial efforts by former glamour girl and (explicit) glamour girl photographer Suze Randall, seen to the left here, which she released under the moniker of "Victor Nye". Too Naughty was inspired by the work of Marquis de Sade, and like so much of his work is about the corruption of the innocent — to use the plot description at 3X Update: "Two students at a Catholic girls' school are best friends. One, Betty, (Angel) is a shy, withdrawn girl, and the other, Catherine, (Ginger Lynn) is a wild, party-till-you-drop hellraiser. The partier decides to give her 'good girl' friend an education in the ways of the world."
According to Adult DVD Talk, "The film starts out [...] as the Catholic school girl watches the wild girl having sex with her pimp. From there the film gets more wild as the girl ends up at a whore house, getting attacked by a rapist, being brought back from the dead and having a lesbian encounter surrounded by men watching and jerking off." Harry Reems appears in the film as an undertaker who screws the dead Betty, only to his tongue soooo good that she comes back alive... the babe who played Betty, Angel, gets an "introducing" credit at the start of the film, but the former Seventeen covergirl (real name: Jennifer James) had actually already been doing films for a year.
Who knows how long Too Naughty to Say No will be there, but the full film can be watched on-line here...



Love Bites
(1985, writ. & dir. Suze Randall)
Tracy Lords gets the star credits on the poster, but according to at least one website she had her single sex scene edited out after her age-related scandal... no loss as far as we're concerned, as we never did like her pout. The film is about what happens when a mosquito is discovered the sting of which has an aphrodisiac effect. The synopsis, according to Rame.net: "The aphrodisiac is in this new breed of mosquito, 'cupex cuidens'. It's encountered in Africa by a missionary whose daughter, Prudence (Ali Moore), is bitten by one of the little devils and transformed into an insatiable nymphomaniac. She exhausts the village chief (Andre Bolla — who went on to become 'one of the hairiest Black gay actors to ever appear before the camera') [...] while her horrified father (Fred Jones) prays for her salvation. Soon the mosquito is in the United States, being studied in the laboratory of a bumbling research biologist, Harry Reems, and his assistant, Doctor Traci Lords. To the music of The Flight of the Bumblebee, one of the little darlings escapes and bites a frosty career woman, Amber Lynn, as she takes the elevator to her job. Peter North is the only occupant. [...] The elevator sequence takes about ten minutes and a lot of other passengers are involved. The mosquito invades a meeting of More Morality, chaired by Michael Morrison, who looks a little like Jerry Falwell. The prudish members drop their pants and panties. [...]."
The Canadian Brass plays Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee:




Erotica Jones
(1985, dir. Scotty Fox)
Were it not that we here at A Wasted Life are total cleavage fans, we might have skipped this film... but, damn! Christy Canyon got cleavage! (Back then she had ugly Big Hair, too, but then it was the 80s...) Rame.net explains the film: "She felt what she wrote! Sally (Christy Canyon) is a sweet, naive, innocent housewife... or so her husband Rob (Harry Reems) thinks! In reality she is Erotica Jones, famous authoress of racy sex novels, which incidentally happens to be Rob's favorite reading material. When writing, Sally, frustrated by Rob's lack of sex drive, envisions herself as all of the horny women in her novels, and experiences all their lustful encounters. There was the peddler, Blind Sam (Paul Thomas of Al Adamson's Doctor Dracula aka Lucifer's Women [1978 / trailer] and Jesus Christ Superstar [1973 / trailer]) who had to do everything by the feel system, so he felt her... every inch of her... and didn't stop until he knew her backward and forwards, inside and outside. And since Erotica's women were all bi-sexual, there were encounters with women like Alicia (Pat Manning) who went door-to-door spreading love and joy. Sally absolutely loved spreading her joy for Alicia! And what sex novel would be complete without a ménage-a-trois, so Sally, through Erotica Jones, meets up with two neighborhood actors Hotrod and Silvertongue, and makes them each prove that they are deserving of their names! Sally's only problem, is how to tell Rob that she is Erotica Jones, and when she blurts it out one evening, he scoffs at her in disbelief. Later that night though, Rob finds her newest manuscript and finally realizes the truth...."
Paul Thomas singing in his acting debut  
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973):

 


Hot Blooded
(1985, dir. Stu Segall)
The last porno projects of Stu Segall (as Godfrey Daniels), who went on to become a successful producer of such series as Silk Stalkings (1991-99) as well as the founder of the San Diego production facilities, Stu Segall Productions. Among his porn credits is the popular Marilyn Chambers vehicle from 1980, Insatiable (theme song, sung by Ms. Chambers herself). The plot of the X-rated comedy Hot Blooded, according to 3X Update: "Three promiscuous young women launch a provocative plan to boost business in the local video store. The shopgirls give patrons all the service one could ever imagine! It is not long before sales shoot through the roof." Reems has a bit part as "Harry" and shows up with his on-screen wife (Colleen Brennan) for one of the last sex scenes. 
Of more interest to us here at A Wasted Life are a variety of Stu Segall's early credits: as Godfrey Daniels or Ms. Michelle Krelmn or Ms. Ricki Krelmn or P.C. O'Kake or Arthur Byrd he wrote and/or directed and/or produced such fun early sleaze as Saddle Tramp Women (1972) and...
The Suckers (1972)...
The Dirty Dolls (1973)...

 
Scene from Teen-Age Jail Bait (1973)...

C.B. Hustlers 
(1976, full film— with Uschi Digard!)...

Spirit of Seventy Sex
(1976 / one very hardcore and hairy minute)

Let's Play Doctor (1977)...

and, of course, his cult classic,Drive-In Massacre (1977):

 


Indecent Itch
(1985, writ. & dir. John Stagliano)
Gotta admit, the cover is good for a laugh — and yes, that is Harry Reems made up as the Devil. Indecent Itch is an early film from John "Buttman" Stagliano, who is considered the daddy of gonzo porn and has gotten rich by making his own personal kink the focus of his product. Having tested positive in 1997, he no longer barebacks babes in his own films. According to the back cover of the video, Indecent Itch tells the tale of "Stunning new starlet Brittany Stryker dances alone, withdrawn from the pain and frustration of relationships. Her constant masturbation is her one escape. This bittersweet solitude is broken by the intrusion of old friends. The taunts and teasing of her promiscuous friends drive her to have nightmares of her masturbation fantasy, having each of her holes filled with a large vibrating pink dildo, the cold piece of plastic to which she is addicted. She is left empty and begging for the real thing, which she gets when three young studs replace the cold plastic with the hot pulsating real thing, all three of them at once! In the midst of her struggle and the constant partying (soothing oil and all!) of her friends, Brittany somehow finds what she really wants."
In honor of John Stagliono, 
here's a cover version of one of our favorite cumbias, Bombom Asesino:



Part XII will follow in 2014 ... eventually.
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The Sadist (USA, 1963)

December 28, 2013, 5:46 am
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"School's out, teacher!"
Charles A. 'Charlie' Tibbs (Arch Hall Jr.)

 
Wow. What a fucking great movie...
The set-up is hardly original or uncommon: the car of a group of people — in this case three teachers on their way to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles — develops engine trouble so they pull into a rural, independent gas station with a car graveyard. Odd thing is, though there is still warm food on the table in the kitchen of the house, no one is there — until a psychotic young man appears, with his silent Baby-Doll-like girl in tow, brandishing a gun....
In all truth, we here at A Wasted Life had often both heard of this low-budget B&W thriller, aka Sweet Baby Charlie and Profile of Terror, usually in relation to the facts that it is the first known movie to be inspired by the Starkweather-Fugate killings and, supposedly, the only good movie that the legendary Arch Hall Jr ever made. In regard to the latter, this happens to be the only Arch Hall Jr movie we've seen to date, so we have nothing to compare it to, but The Sadist is definitely a ten and Arch Hall Jr's turn as the Starkweather figure ain't too shabby either.
For the uninformed, the Starkweather-Fugate murders were a two-month (December 1957 & January 1958), ten-body murder spree in Nebraska and Wyoming conducted by the James Dean wanna-be Charles Starkweather (24 Nov 1938 — 25 June 1959) and his 14-year squeeze Caril Ann Fugate (that's them above). The entire sordid tale has since inspired many a film aside from The Sadist, the most famous of which are probably Terrance Malick's feature-film debut Badlands (1973 / trailer) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994 / trailer).* In The Sadist, among other things the names and locations and ages are changed (the age of the killerette inspired by Fugate, for example, is changed from 14 to a more socially acceptable 18), but the source nevertheless remains glaringly obvious.
In turn, also for the uninformed, some info about the legendary Arch Hall Jr., who left the film business in 1965 to become a pilot and is now enjoying his retirement doing fun stuff (see his website here). He is, as the name indicates, the son of Arch Hall Sr., a true personality and former Hollywood stuntman who enjoyed an active if mostly lackluster career in the movie industry that spanned from before his first un-credited onscreen role in the serial Dick Tracy Returns (1938 / chapter 1) to its gloriously inglorious end with his screenplay for the Ted V. Mikels' film The Corpse Grinders (1972 / trailer). (The Jack-Webb-directed war comedy The Last Time I Saw Archie [1961 / theme], by the way, is based on his war-time experiences.) Hall Senior founded the no-budget movie studio Fairway Productions,** allegedly with the goal of making his son Arch Hall Jr a bankable star and musician, a goal that allegedly faltered not just due to the low quality of the Fairway productions but also to Hall Jr's own desire to become a pilot. Many of their limited number of projects have become classics of craptastic cinema, and while Arch Hall Jr never did become a bankable star, he and his films have definitely long become an object of cult popularity.
Still, Hall Jr was never seen as a particularly effective actor, in part, perhaps, to quote Ray Dennis Steckler from ReSearch #10: Incredibly Strange Films (1986), because Hall Jr was "a nice kid and a good singer, but he didn't seem to have his heart in it; never seemed to really care." It would seem, however, that in The Sadist he did care, for in the film he offers an unrelenting and effective performance so consistent and ruthless that it is 100% believable. In truth, almost all the performances in The Sadist are excellent, but Hall Jr, whose interpretation of the giggling psycho Charles A. 'Charlie' Tibbs owes a lot to Richard Widmark's giggling psycho in Kiss of Death (1944 / trailer), is such an overriding presence that the other actors almost fade into the background.
"Almost", however, is the word here: Marilyn Manning (of What's Up Front! [1964 / scene] and Eegah [1962 / full movie]) is also highly memorable as the mostly silent and equally sadistic and simple-minded white-trash nubile Judy Bradshaw, and it is hard to forget the realism of the doomed family-man teacher Carl Oliver*** as portrayed by Don Russell (the director of the nudie cutie Tales of a Salesman [1965 / trailer]). The powerless manly-man teacher Ed Stiles (Richard Alden of The Pit [1981 / trailer]) manages well enough, the desperation on his face literally tangible at times, but like that of the fresh-faced, helpless and almost sexy Doris Page (Helen Hovey, Arch Hall Jr's cousin in real life), his performance is occasionally overshadowed by the others.
For all that we had heard about The Sadist in the past, we were lucky enough to have never heard a full plot description, so we went into this movie without really knowing where the story would go or even whether it was half-way competently shot. What we were confronted with proved to be an eye-opener: The Sadist, filmed in a searing and hard B&W, is a tightly scripted and absolutely suspenseful 92-minute emotional downer told in real time. And just as tight and solid as the script is the great cinematography of the movie: scenes are blocked and framed and shot with a cinematic eye that both belies the movie's low budget roots and also reveals some knowledge of past films — more than one shot, for example, indicates an intentional homage or visual reference to Sergei Eisenstein.**** The script is also in no way flabby, spending just enough time to set up the situation and introduce the teachers before taking them (and the viewer) through a realistic, brutal and sucker-punching nightmare.
 
Shot on a budget of $33,000 dollars over a period of two weeks, The Sadist is one of those films that really has to be seen to be believed. An almost upsetting movie, it remains persistently depressing and unforgiving until the end, and by the time the unexpected resolution plays out, a total of eight bodies litter the rural landscape. And while clearly an exploitation film aimed at drive-ins and threadbare cinemas, The Sadist evidences such visual and narrative power that it transcends its own roots: when it comes to no-budget crime films, this nail-biter of a movie is easily of the same caliber of such well-known — not to mention acknowledged and respected — hard-hitting gut-crunchers like Edgar G. Ulmer's now somewhat creaky masterpiece from 1945, Detour (full film), and one-film-wonder Leonard Kastle's unflinching slow-burner, The Honeymoon Killers (1969 / trailer). The Sadist, like Night of the Living Dead (1968), is one of those films in which the ostensibly meager sum of the parts adds up to produce an unexpected masterpiece — but unlike any of the three other films just named, The Sadist still lingers in relative and totally unjust obscurity.
Help change that: watch The Sadist now, and then tell all your friends about it...

* Other related films include the 1993 US TV movie Murder in the Heartland and the 2004 "true story"Starkweather (trailer), written by Stephan Johnson, the scriptwriter of Ed Gein (2000). The "murderous white trash lovers" aspect, in turn, can be found in movies as diverse as the excellent and under-appreciated early Brad Pitt movie Kalifornia (1993 / trailer) — made at a time when David Duchovny was the bigger name — as well as the entertaining Peter Jackson black/action comedy The Frighteners (1996 / trailer).
** We haven't been able to find a definitive list of all films that came from the house of Fairway Productions, but the firm produced a number of fun films. Their first film seems to have been the nudie-cutie Magic Spectacles (1961, dir. Bob Wehling), which Arch Hall Jr. supposedly scripted. Aside from The Sadist, the titles featuring Hall Jr as an actor are The Choppers (1961 / full movie), Eegah (1962), Wild Guitar (1962 / full movie  / trailer), The Nasty Rabbit (1964 / full movie) and Deadwood '76 (1965 / full movie). Known productions without Hall Jr are Tell It Like It Is aka The Weird Ones (1971), Ray Dennis Steckler's The Thrill Killers (1964 / trailer) and What's Up Front! (1964).
*** The convincing look of fear in his eyes and those of fellow teacher Doris Page when Charlie shoots the car window above their head is probably not acted: there were no special effects used here, only real bullets going through the window a foot or two above their heads.
**** In this regard, we would tend to say that the "director of photography" Vilmos Zsigmond — working here under the pseudonym "William Zsigmond"— should get the accolades: he went on to a long and successful career spanning from films like this and Satan's Sadists (1969 / trailer) to respectable projects like The Deer Hunter (1978 / trailer), The Witches of Eastwick (1987 / trailer), Maverick (1994 / trailer) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977 / trailer), the last for which he won an Oscar. In turn, director John Landis (10 June 1926 — 17 Dec 1991), who also wrote the script for The Sadist, forever remained in the netherworld of no-budget filmmaking from his first films (Stakeout! and Airborne [full film], both released in 1962) to his last known and uncredited directorial turn, the under-known hixploitation roughie Jennie: Wife/Child aka Tender Grass (1968 / credits).

Full film:

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The Ten Best in 2013

January 2, 2014, 12:28 am
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Year 5 of A Wasted Life's "Ten Best Films in XXXX" list... the rules, as they have crystallized over the past five years:
1. The films need not be made in the year in question (2013), they need only to have been viewed for the first time and reviewed that given year.
2. They need not even be good films, they need only to have left an exceptional impression or been in some way memorable enough while watching that they achieved a level of "unforgettableness" that makes them, in our non-humble opinion, worth watching — if only one time.
3. Short Films of the Month are as a rule excluded from the list, one: because simply by dent of the fact that their being chosen as a Short Film of the Month already makes them recommended, and two: the "Ten Best" list is for feature-length films only.
4. The order in which the films are presented is immaterial. This is not a countdown list, going from "tenth best" to "best". As far as we are concerned, all films presented are equally deserving of their placement.
This year, there were a total of 60 blog entries here at A Wasted Life, of which one was the Ten Best Films in 2012 list, 12 were short films and five were R.I.P. Career Reviews of notable folks who have gone on permanent vacation — Harry Reems (six instalments and counting), Ray Harryhausen (3) Jim Kelly (2), Haji (1) and José Ramon Larraz (3) — with a total of 15 instalments. Thus, in grand total there were only 31 feature films reviewed this year, the lowest amount since this ego-stroking blog first went online. And with such a low amount of movies, it is perhaps not surprising that for the first time we weren't able to come up with a full ten movies for the list. This year, we only have an "official" nine — and a forced nine at that.
That said, we must admit that there are two feature-length films that probably would have made the list, but don't due to rule Number 1: in the case of the two old German flicks directly below, we not only didn't watch them in 2013, but the reviews were actually written almost a decade ago and we've seen both movies a couple of time since then. Thus neither makes the final cut, though we like them both and can only say watch them if you have the chance — no German Edgar Wallace or Brian Edgar Wallace krimi is ever a total waste of time. Of the two below, Der Rote Kreis is probably the better one, while Der Frosch mit der Maske, being the first of the historical Rialto Wallace series, is more historically relevant. Both make for worthwhile viewing, no matter whatever flaws they might have. But, in any event, they are not an official part of The Ten Best in 2013 list and are presented here only because, well, because we want to present them here.



Der Frosch mit der Maske
(Germany / Denmark, 1959)
Aka: The Fellowship of the Frog

German Trailer:



Der Rote Kreis
(Denmark / Germany, 1960)
Aka: The Crimson Circle

German Trailer:



The Sadist
(USA, 1963)
Trailer:
Aka Sweet Baby Charlie and Profile of Terror. OK, we break a rule here. Here at A Wasted Life, we are listing The Sadist in the first position on this list because, well, it was truly the best movie we saw this year and deserves a First Place rating. Almost unknown, this film seriously needs to be rediscovered and shared and finally given the credit it deserves. Searing black and white for a nasty, hard-boiled story told in real time. We would list this movie up there with Detour (1945 / fan-made trailer / full film), The Honeymoon Killers (1969 / trailer) and Night of the Living Dead (1968 / trailer / full film) as one of the best low budget B&W genre movies we've ever seen. Watch it. Now. Or go die.
Full movie:



Wheels / Tockovi
(Republic of Yugoslavia / Serbia, 1999)
A well made, East Bloc wanna-be Tarentino movie that saves itself by displaying a lot of personality — Wheels is low budget, bloody, nihilistic and funny as hell. Good luck finding it, but it's worth the search...
Trailer:



Demoniac
 (French, 1975)
Jess Franco (12 May 1930—2 April 2013) at his artsy-fartsy, decadent best. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but we found the amalgamation of ugly people, sex and violence amazingly intriguing. Without a doubt, one of our favorite Franco films to date, full everything you might expect from the infamous auteur, god rest his soul. Also, we really must say that Franco's longtime muse Lina Romay (25 June 1954—15 February 2012), who gets naked a lot in this movie, never looked better than she does here... The blogspot Ninja Dixon has a nice plot description, which we'll use again here: "Bored upper class is enjoying a simulated black mass including a human sacrifice. Something for the rich and famous to tickle their boring lives and hopefully tickle their sex-lives even more. But in the background the defrocked priest and now adult author Mathis Vogel (Uncle Jess himself) is slithering around taking detailed notes about the masses. He's still a strong believer and wants to save these poor women from Satan — and the only way to do it is to slaughter them as a sacrifice to God!"
Trailer:



Dirty War
 (Spain, 1984)
Hitman vs Hitman scene:
Aka Guerra Sucia. Regrettably enough, we've been unable to locate a trailer from this movie anywhere online, but the outtakes here give you a good idea of what to expect. Is Dirty War a good movie? No fucking way — it's a fucking Juan Piquer Simón movie, for Christ's sake, so it's a mess. But, as is often the case with his movies — his real masterpiece Slugs (1988) being the best example — Dirty War takes on that special otherworldliness that only true craptastic movies have. As we say in our review, Dirty War [...] is "a crappy, trashy piece of shit, actually. But [...] it is also a wonderfully entertaining piece of flotsam that occasionally verges on surrealism." We loved it, and can only say: watch it, you'll hate it.
Chase scene:



Piranha 3DD
 (USA, 2012)
This movie makes it onto our list only by the tip of a nipple. The original Piranha (1978) is one of our favorite idiosyncratic exploiters from the Golden Age of Exploitation, so we were very prepared to totally hate Alexandre Aja's 2010 remake Piranha 3-D... but we didn't. We really enjoyed it. Still, despite all the T&A and gore, there was an undercurrent of Puritanism in the movie that we could have done without, and which costs that film its place on this list. This Puritanism, however, is totally lacking from the direct-to-DVD sequel that followed two years later, Piranha 3DD. Piranha 3DD is a totally infantile T&A-heavy piece of unapologetic trash; the story is dumbed down, but the amount of silicon and blood and guts remain more or less the same — and all that graced with a totally meta self-referential performance by one of our most-hated performers, David Hasselhof, that works so well that we almost became a fan. (Almost.) Perhaps if we had a broader selection of movies to choose from, Piranha 3DD wouldn't make the cut of this list, but beggers can't be choosers and besides, who can truly hate a movie about killer prehistoric piranhas that invade a pool park full of buxom babes?
Red-band Trailer:

From the makers of that Nippon masterpiece Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009), yet another tasteless, P.I. and blood-drenched masterpiece. The influences of Hieronymus Bosch and Sigmund Freud are a lot more obvious this time around than the Pop Art extremes found in VGvsFG, but this year-older movie is nevertheless just as bat-shit crazy. You like fountains of gore? Hot Asian babes? Nightmarish imagery? Racially incorrect characterizations? This film is for you...
Trailer:



Hardgore
(USA, 1974)
Opening scene:
Aka Horror Whore and Sadoasylum. The first hardcore fuck film to ever make its way onto one of our "Best Films" lists. Hardgore is an unbelievable piece of flotsam from the early Golden Age of Porn that defies categorization and believability. What were they thinking when they made this movie? But for one scene, Hardgore totally fails as a visual aid to your greased palm — in fact, despite genital detail and constant exchange of body fluids, this body-hair heavy porno movie is sure to keep you limp or dry — if not, you can rest assured that you are probably not normal. Hardgore is definitely not a good movie; in fact, it is not a movie that probably deserves any form of recommendation... but it is an indescribably jaw-dropper; a unique oddity that hits 100 on the bizarre scale. And as such, we might not recommend it but we do have to say it was one of the most "memorable" movies we saw in 2013, and thus rightfully earns it place on this list. Watch it — if you dare.
Naked woman (Dianne Galke) running down the hall:



Maniac
(USA, 1934)
Trailer:
An early non-masterpiece of exploitation displaying truly Ed Woodian directorial and narrative finesse, Maniac is one of the great Guilty Pleasure of filmdom. Read our review to learn about this great movie and its equally notable filmmaker...
Full movie:

Trailer:
Another movie that probably wouldn't make the cut had we a greater selection to choose from. 5 Minutes to Live is hardly a masterpiece, and it suffers from a very weak female lead (Cay Forrester) and a terrible framing structure; but, for that, it is relatively well shot and edited, moves at quick enough pace, has one or two decent shocks and stars the great Johnny Cash as a violent psycho. The last alone makes the movie worth watching on a rainy day. Of course, you can just wait until the Jan de Bont remake is released, but then you won't have the pleasure of watching a drugged-out Cash making his feature-film acting debut.
 
Full movie:



Movie of Special Mention
With 5 Minutes to Live, our list of The Ten Best Films in 2013 thus ends — one film short of a full ten fingers. And since we are one short, we've decided to bend the rules a bit (again) and add this "Movie of Special Mention". It is one of the many films we saw this year that we didn't get around to writing about... but even if we had, we couldn't put it on the list 'cause we've seen it two or three times before. Nevertheless, we feel this movie deserves more attention than it ever gets, and thus we present it as our unofficial tenth movie.
Dementia
(USA, 1953)
Trailer:
Daughter of Horror aka Dementia is an under-seen surreal, semi-feature-length expressionistic noir nightmare that has, amongst those who have watched it, as many detractors as fans. We are definitely fans. Made in 1953 and released in 1955, Dementia is the only known movie from the unknown filmmaker John Parker and, until Re/Search wrote about it in their influential volume Incredibly Strange Films, it was best known (if at all) as the movie being watched in the original version of The Blob (1958) when the blob invades the cinema. Long in the public domain, it is easy to get a hold of nowadays, though usually in the re-release version with an added narration by Ed McMahon. Watch it. Now. Or go die.
Full movie:
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Necromancy / The Witching (USA, 1972)

January 6, 2014, 1:44 am
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Bert I. Gordon is one of the great heroes of low budget schlock and treasured guilty pleasures, mostly from the third quarter of the 20th century. Director, writer, producer, auteur, the man is still alive but hasn't made a film since his 1990 horror film Satan's Princess (1990 / full movie); a fact that might have changed by the time you read this, as although it has hardly received the fanfare the news perhaps deserves, the good man is currently making his first film in over 25 years, the thriller Secrets of a Psychopath, due out in 2014 and starring a typically (for him) career-stalled, genre-laden name, Kari Wuhrer (of Thinner [1996] and Anaconda [1997]). One can only hope that that film is more akin to his classic trash — Beginning of the End (1957 / trailer), with its classic scene of a dumb man screaming silently; The Amazing Colossal Man (1957 / trailer), with its memorable hypodermic-needle harpooning scene; Attack of the Puppet People (1958 / trailer); War of the Colossal Beast (1958 / trailer); the teen-heavy Tarantula (1955 / trailer) spin Earth vs. the Spider (1958 / trailer) ; the fun, unjustly maligned and overlooked ghost story Tormented (1960 trailer / full movie); the nasty thriller The Mad Bomber (1973 / trailer); and the undeniably horrible but hilariously entertaining duet The Food of the Gods (1976 / trailer) and Empire of the Ants (1977 / trailer) — and less like his duds, Picture Mommy Dead (1966 / German trailer), Burned at the Stake (1981) and all his comedies (though, in truth, How to Succeed with Sex [1970] is of note for being such an unfunny comedy that is funny in its unfunniness and really deserves to be seen just to even learn how funny unfunny can be).
Necromancy, aka The Witching, Rosemary's Disciples and Horror Attack, we are sad to say, is not one of Gordon's better films, either in terms of being fun and trashy or serious and scary (not that one ever really expects the latter from a Gordon film). Of all the titles the film has had, Rosemary's Disciples is perhaps the most apt, for the core narrative thread is stolen directly from Polanski's much more successful Rosemary's Baby (1968 / trailer): hubby Frank Brandon (Michael Ontkean) falls in with coven of devil worshippers and trades off his wife Lori Brandon (Pamela Franklin) for... a hedonistic lifestyle and a good job in a toy factory!?

Michael Ontkean sells 7-Up:
Instead of having the events based around an apartment building full of witches, however, the events are moved to the difficult-to-reach, small, rural town located somewhere in California called Lilith. (Here alone, the astute already know something is rotten in the state of Denmark, as the town is named after Adam's first wife Lilith, the world's first feminist who smartly chose to leave the Garden of Eden for her own personal freedom away from the domineering Adam.) Unlike in Rosemary's Baby, however, our endangered heroine — who just had a miscarriage back in the big city — should not give birth to the devil's baby, but rather give up her life so that the dead son of the town's patriarch Mr. Cato (a slumming Orson Welles) can return to life...
The version we put in our DVD player was the re-release version from 1983, The Witching / Horror Attack, which is graced with an entirely new opening scene of a Black Mass featuring a lot of male and female frontal nudity from people that appear nowhere else in the movie as well as an Orson Welles stand-in wearing a goat's head so as to hide the fact it's a different actor. The scene is neither needed or in any way horrific, but as we here at A Wasted Life do like pointless nude scenes we tend to see the added scene as perhaps the best one in the whole confused and mostly incomprehensible movie.
But the fact that The Witching is a new, re-cut version makes it a bit hard to place the blame of the movie's total failure upon Bert I. Gordon, as aside from the added nudity, the confusing ghostly female (Anne Gaybis of Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman! [1975 / trailer]) spouting inane tirades to our heroine is also a new addition. In any event, we find it doubtful that the original version, Necromancy, could have been all that much better than the re-release, especially since the terrible one-note performances of Pamela Franklin and Michael Ontkean are so typical of the performances found in most Gordon films. (OK, Michael Ontkean, whom most people know as Sheriff Harry S Truman from the classic TV series Twin Peaks [1990-1991], was always better looking than he was good at acting, but Pamela Franklin proved her stuff at a variety of ages in a number of memorable films, including The Innocents [1961 / trailer], The Nanny [1965 / trailer], And Soon the Darkness [1970 / trailer], and The Legend of Hell House [1973 / trailer].) The best acting of the movie, aside from Orson Welles' obvious walk on non-performance, is that of the actor playing Dr. Jay, Harvey Jason, who looks like and conveys the hedonistic quality of a refugee from the Golden Age of Porn, the perfect quality needed for a person that has given himself over to the total hedonistic abandonment the coven members practice and enjoy. (An interesting tidbit of trivia: he and Pamela Franklin met for the first time on the set of this movie and are still happily married today.)
Overly talky and expository, The Witching is nevertheless often messy and incomprehensible. But for all the bad acting and dialogue and loose plotting and pointlessly arty cinematography and editing, it is the dislikably whiney and overly helpless heroine, Lori (Franklin), which becomes the most annoying aspect of the movie. Indeed, she does more damage to the flick than all the other flaws combined: forever ignoring the facts she is confronted with — including both dead bodies and honest town folk that don't hide their religious affiliations — and refusing to flee from the imminent danger, Lori literally whines her way to her fate. Had Lori only been given a brain and at least a little mettle, The Witching might have at least achieved some character identification and, through that, some effectiveness as a lightly arty exercise of third-rate, mildly moody horror. An understandable and sympathetic heroine would also have given the depressing ending a lot more punch, because the viewer might have still at least cared...
Necromancy, aka The Witching, Rosemary's Disciples and Horror Attack, is a dud of a horror movie that is not scary, interesting nor funny. Not imperative viewing.
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R.I.P.: Alexandra Bastedo

January 15, 2014, 6:24 am
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Alexandra Bastedo

 (9 March 1946 – 12 January 2014)
 
The mostly forgotten (outside of the Commonwealth) 60s sex symbol Alexandra Bastedo, a "devoted animal rights activist" and vegetarian, died the other day of cancer. We here at A Wasted Life rather liked her exotic eyes and her prime 60s figure and her filmogaphy, which we take a look at below...




13 Frightened Girls
(1963 / dir. William Castle)

(Aka The Candy Web) Alexandra Bastedo made her film debut in this quaint and dated lesser outing from the great William Castle. In a typical Castle publicity stunt, the famed producer/director searched the world for young female talent — "Teenage Diplomats"— to play the given female schoolgirl character representing real nationality (and, in turn, be the girl driving the bus in a certain scene for the print released in their individual country as well as introduce the trailer meant for their homeland). The England (Bastedo's country), Sweden, France, and German versions of this sequence are presented as bonus material on the 13 Frightened Girls DVD in the William Castle Film Collection box set from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. In the end, not all were really from the country they represented (Judy Pace, for example, also making her film debut here was an American, not a Liberian), but most — like Alexandra Bastedo, as the English "Alex"— used their real names in the movie. The title is a direct play upon Castle's earlier (and better) horror film, 13 Ghosts (1960 / trailer), but is also not fully true: the move features 15 not-so-frightened girls.
TV Guide hates the movie: "This idiotic spy film aimed at juveniles features Kathy Dunn as the daughter of an American diplomat on a holiday in London. She stumbles onto a political murder and informs Murray Hamilton (of Seconds [1966 / trailer] and Hysterical [1983 / trailer]), a CIA man she has a schoolgirl-crush on. Through her father's connections, Dunn has access to many foreign embassies and becomes known in the espionage world as 'Kitten', a hunted agent. Hamilton finds this out and goes to the Swiss boarding school she attends to save her from disaster. [...] His [Castle's] direction is usually bad, and the screaming gaggle of girls he 'discovered' get on one's nerves after a bit."
 
The Dissolve, however, is kinder: "Forget the horror-movie title, which was changed in some places to the more tonally apt The Candy Web. 13 Frightened Girls is like a Disney version of a spy picture, completely devoid of anything objectionable, aside from some outdated notions of gender roles. It's colorful, with some of the chipper overtones of juvenile fiction, and some of the despondent undertones of the Cold War era. [...] Mostly, it’s sturdy. What gets forgotten in all the reminiscences about Castle's shillery is that the man was a competent, crafty director, not some hapless hack. Without his gimmicks, Castle's films probably would've been mostly forgotten, because they aren't that good. But they're good enough that fans can give thanks that those gimmicks existed, because they've kept his work alive in B-philes' hearts and minds."
 
Judy Pace, who plays the Libyan student, was actually from the US and grew up to be the "personification of black beauty" in the 60s and 70s and is found in such great films as Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970 / trailer) and Frogs (1972 / trailer)...



The Liquidator
(1965/66, dir. Jack Cardiff)

Alexandra Bastedo's (uncredited) part is so tiny in this spy caper — she appears somewhere as a radio operator — that we include the movie here only because it was directed by Jack Cardiff (who later directed The Freakmakers [1973]) and features both a great credit sequence and groovy title track.
 
 Title Sequence and Track of The Liquidator (1965):
The Liquidator was based on the first (published in 1964) of a series of eight pulp novels written by the British pulp author John Gardner, whom should not be confused with the serious American author John Gardner who wrote Grendel. MGM hoped to develop a franchise from the espionage spoof, but eventually vetoed the idea. DVD Talk says The Liquidator is "an upscale production that can boast a good leading man in Rod Taylor and a creative director [...]. Saying that The Liquidator has dated isn't enough, as its problem is a tonal friction that gripes many a SuperSpy® contender. The comedy wants to be slapstick-broad and tongue-in-cheek cynical at the same time. It wants to sell sex, yet is too tame to present any real sexual content. Finally, the audience will be way ahead of most of the plot developments, especially the story's main 'twists'. Just the same, Taylor and Cardiff put on a lively show."
 
An opinion shared, for the most part, by The Mystery File, which says that "Thanks to the cast and a script that closely follows Gardner's novel, this spy spoof works both as a send-up of Bond and as damn good spy film on its own." They explain the plot as follows: "Rod Taylor is well cast as Boysie, a handsome amoral bungler, coward, and general screw-up, who is mistaken by Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard of The Third Man [1949 / trailer]) of MI6 for a cold-blooded killer when they meet during the fall of Nazi-held Paris. Twenty years later Mostyn is second in command of MI6, and a series of defections and had headlines [sic] has convinced his boss (Hyde-White of The Cat and the Canary [1979]) that what the service needs is an executioner, a liquidator who will rid them of embarrassment before it gets that far. Mostyn remembers Boysie, whom he finds burying his partner (they owned a pub together) whose wife he has been having an affair with. Mostyn jumps to conclusions, and before he can protest, Boysie finds himself the private executioner for the British Secret Service. And it isn't a bad life. He has a lush apartment, a nice stipend, a sexy sports car, a parade of beautiful girls, and there is always the sardonic Mostyn's secretary Jill St. John (of The Concrete Jungle [1982 / trailer]) — if only there wasn’t that silly rule about inter-service romance. Then the first problem arises. They actually want Boysie to kill someone..."
 
Lalo Schifrin — Bikini Waltz:




Doctor in Clover
(1966, dir. Ralph Thomas)

Alexandra Bastedo's has another (uncredited) part as "Nurse at Party" in this, the sixth in a series of British comedies that began with Doctor in the House (1954 / clip) and ended with Doctor in Trouble (1970 / trailer) but continued long after as various TV series in Britain. Like the Carry On series, the Doctor series in all its forms is proof positive of England's refined nature and cultural importance.
 
The year it came out, Doctor in Clover was one of the 15 best British box office draws; in its land of origin, it was shorn a full four minutes to get the then applicable A-rating ("children must be accompanied by adults"). TV Guide kindly describes the movie as "a dreary, depressing, unfunny comedy." The plot? Let's look at Brit Movie Co for that: "More comical situations at Saint Swithins Hospital, Leslie Phillips (of The Gamma People [1956 / trailer]) is on call in place as Dr Gaston Grimsdyke, who is more interested in the nurses than the patients. Grimsdyke loses his job as medical officer at a women's prison, so he enrolls in a refresher course with his old medical tutor Sir Lancelot Spratt (James Robertson Justice) — who is determined to make a successful physician out of him. There are some complications involving a rejuvenation serum, which is accidentally injected into the irascible Sir Lancelot, causing him to wreak havoc at a party." As the trailer informs us, the movie introduces another mostly forgotten 60s sexpot, "a beautiful young sexstacular French star in her first British film, Elisabeth Ercy".
 
Elizabeth Ercy, seen above from the movie, was born in Dresden, Germany on 20 July, 1944; she went on to star in that great, depressing horror film The Sorcerers (1967), directed by Michael Reeves, the man behind Witchfinder General (1968). Unlike that of Alexandra Bastedo, Ercy's career ended soon thereafter.
 Trailer to The Sorcerers (1967):




That Riviera Touch
(1966, dir. Cliff Owen)

Alexandra Bastedo's career takes a step forward: she receives on-screen credit as the "Girl at roulette table"— but the real cheesecake factor of the movie was the Canadian-born Suzanne Lloyd (born on November 11, 1934 in Toronto) as the deceitful Claudette, who retired at the "young age of 40".
That Riviera Touch was a vehicle for the English comedy due (Eric) Morecambe and (Ernie) Wise, whose partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe died in 1984. Primarily a TV phenomena and unknown outside of the land of fish and chips, they made three of movies together in the 60s, of which this is the second; like Doctor in Clover above, it was one of the top 15 British box office hits of 1966. Brit Movie Co calls the movie "a routine comedy" and complains that "despite many colourful shots of the Côte d’Azur and a riotous closing sequence involving a helicopter and water skis the duo are unable to sustain feature length narratives and ultimately the film is lacking in laughs."
 
Film 4 explains the plot to "this, the second and best of their so-so big-screen outings": "Eric and Ernie star as traffic wardens who, thanks to a muddle up with British royalty, find themselves holidaying in the south of France. There, they become involved with Le Pirate (Paul Stassino of Die Screaming Marianne [1971 / trailer]), a Gallic thief who intends to use the hapless pair to smuggle his goods overseas. Of course, it's not long before pandemonium reigns as our comic heroes cross swords with all sorts of villains and almost come to blows over the comely thiefette Claudette (Lloyd).
Opening Credits — Bastedo's Name Is There:




The Scales of Justice: The Haunted Man
 (1966, dir. Stanley Willis)
As the website Radio Sounds Familiar explains: "The Scales of Justice [was not a TV series but] was a run of thirteen British cinema 'B' films made between 1962 and 1967 at Merton Park Studios in London by Anglo-Amalgamated. They were based on real criminal cases and each film was introduced by the famous crime writer Edgar Lustgarten. The titles [above] feature the symbolic scales held by the statue of Justice, which is located on top of the dome of The Old Bailey. In the opening narration she is described as having '...in her right hand, the Sword of Retribution, and in her left — The Scales of Justice'." Only later did they actually end up on TV.
The plot of The Haunted Man: "Actor Bill Kenton (James Ellis, who plays "Psycho Ward Guard No. 1" in Re-Animator [1985]), injured trying to prevent a raid on a shop, returns to his career, to find that he cannot remember his lines. Forced to leave the theatre, he becomes a man obsessed with finding the thief." Alexandra Bastedo, who can be seen cuddling with Keith Barron (of Nothing But The Night [1973]) in the background of the screenshot above, plays "Laura". All thirteen instalment are now available on DVD.
 Trailer to Nothing but the Night:




 Casino Royale
(1967, dir. Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, Richard Talmadge and possible others)
 
Alexandra Bastedo appears somewhere in this, one of the most legendary cinematic fuck-ups in the world, as "Meg". We saw the film many a year ago, long before we even registered that was a "Alexandra Bastedo", and had we even known of her we surely wouldn't have seen her amongst the plethora of much more famous names that flit, explode, crawl, dies, walk, run, whatever across the screen. If we remember correctly, the only thing we really like about the movie was (spoiler) that everyone dies...
The BBC is right when they saw "the film itself may defy description" and "the lurid sets and costumes amount to two hours of Technicolor madness". Is the film good? No. Is it jaw-dropping and entertaining? Yes — in a mostly train wreck sort of way. A flop with the critics, it was a popular hit and made a profit despite the movies explosive budget (which went from 6 to 12 million dollars while filming). It works much better now due to the nostalgia factor than it did when it came out and tried, so desperately, to be (to quote La Cinema Dreams) "like Barbarella (1968 / trailer), Myra Breckinridge (1970 / trailer), and The Magic Christian (1969 / trailer) [...] a 'head film' from the start. A head film being a movie that either courted young, college-age audiences by attempting to cinematically replicate the psychedelic drug experience, or one that was best appreciated in an altered mind state."
As TCM explains the plot: "The original James Bond (007) retired following his star-crossed love affair with Mata Hari [...]. But as the international crime organization known as SMERSH threatens world domination, he agrees to come out of retirement. After his longtime superior McTarry ('M') is killed, Bond goes to Scotland to console McTarry's widow, Lady Fiona, unaware that the woman he encounters is actually a SMERSH agent. Bond's charms are such, however, that Lady Fiona gives up her life of espionage and retires to a convent when Bond declines her offer of love. To outwit his enemy, Bond decides there should be more than one 007 agent. He enlists the services of Vesper Lynd, the world's richest and most seductive spy; Evelyn Tremble, the inventor of a foolproof gambling system; Cooper, a strong-arm agent trained to resist women; and Bond's own daughter, Mata Bond [...]."
 Casino Royale Theme Song:




The Champions
(TV series, 1968-1969)
While this British "cult" TV series "filled with intelligent, intriguing characters, exotic settings and fabulous cars (DVD Verdict)" is not whence we know Alexandra Bastedo, it would seem it is whence most do, as virtually every obit we read was apt to say something along the lines as what Wikipedia does: Alexandra Bastedo is "best known for her role as secret agent Sharron Macready in the 1968 British espionage/science fiction adventure series The Champions." Indeed, Boot Hill quotes the actress as have said: "Apart from becoming a household name in England, Scotland and Wales, I became an international star, particularly in Spain and South America where they called me La Bastedo." We here at A Wasted Life, however, are not familiar with the 30-episode series, which supposedly also ran in the US on NBC in 1968, a time when our tastes were still more oriented towards shows such as Batman (1966-1968) or The Monkees (1966-1968).
Classic Film and TV Café explains the basic set up around which the series was constructed: "Three secret agents, being pursued by bad guys, crash land their plane in the Himalayas. All but dead, they are found by an elderly man who takes them to an ancient city occupied by a secret civilization (shades of Shangri-La). Not only are our heroes healed, but they are 'made better.' They gradually learn that they have been given superhuman powers: they can communicate telepathetically, their senses are heightened, and they possess great strength. They can also 'sense' when danger in imminent or when one of them is in trouble." They fought international threats for 30 episodes before succumbing to the deadliest of all TV enemies: low viewer ratings.
Other than Bastedo as the semi-superwoman Sharron Macready, The Champions also featured the fellow super-people Craig Stirling (Stuart Damon) and Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) and their non-super boss Tremayne (Anthony Nicholls of Night of the Eagle [1962 / trailer] and The Omen [1976 / trailer]).
At one point (2007), Variety announced that Guillermo del Toro would be doing a film version of the movie, but it would seem that nothing ever came of it. 

To be continued...
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Nero veneziano / Damned in Venice (Italy, 1978)

January 20, 2014, 1:21 am
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A fan-made tribute to Damned in Venice:

Hard to believe that such a dull film can be so enthralling...
 
Aka Die Wiege des Teufels and Venetian Black, Damned in Venice is the second movie we've seen from 1972 that presents one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Venice, in a less than glamorous or even attractive light. Like Also Lado's giallo The Child (1972), which shares an actor with this film (José Quaglio, here as the duplicitous Father Stefani), this leisurely paced, dank and moody horror film shows Venice as a grey city in decline, rich in atmosphere but decaying and oppressive, almost empty of people — a far cry from today, when even in the rainy off season, which is when we like to go, the city is still so full of tourists that every restaurant still feels no reason to cook a decent meal as all tables will always be filled anyways. Now, like then, the perfect location for the Son of Satan to come onto the world...
In the last of his directorial efforts, Ugo Liberatore, who has always been more active as a screenwriter (among others, he co-wrote The Mill of the Stone Women [1960 / trailer] and The Hellbenders [1967 / trailer]), presents a narratively flawed and somewhat diffuse and almost alienating if ultimately interesting and memorable horror story that most of the few who have ever seen tend to dismiss as an Italo take on Rosemray's Baby (1968 / trailer). To simply dismiss Damned in Venice as such does disservice to this overlooked and mostly forgotten movie, for it is related to Rosemary's Baby only in as much as that it, too, is about the Son of Satan being born unto this earth; other than that, and perhaps the concept of a mother's overriding love for her child, Liberatore's movie owes little to everyone's favorite Polanski flick — and shows a lot more naked nubile flesh, to boot, not to mention blood and gucky stuff.

Mark has a vision:

The plot involves the two orphans, the blind Mark (former Italo child "star" Renato Cestiè, also seen in Torso [1973 / trailer] and A Bay of Blood [1971 / trailer]) and his bitchy, semi-frigid virgin older sister Christine (former German nubile Rena Niehaus of Arabella l'angelo nero [1989 / What is eurotrash?] and Wilde Früchte [1977 / trailer]), who live with their less-than-loving Granny (Bettine Milne of House of Clocks [1989 / trailer]). Mark is plagued by frightful visions of a mysterious man and woman, and when one such vision inadvertently results in the incineration of Granny, the disharmonious siblings go to live with their sickly Aunt and Uncle Martin (Tom Felleghy of Black Emanuelle in Afrika [1978 / soundtrack], Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye [1973] and much, much more) in their squalid, run down and shuttered canal-front hotel. (A hotel in Venice that can't get guests? A canal-front hotel that fails? My, Venice was different in the 70s.) Before long, Christine is running a "hotel" populated by numerous attentive nubile who accept cash and, soon after, the man in Mark's visions, Dan (Yorgo Voyagis of Nosferatu in Venedig [1988 / trailer], Die Washing Machine [1993 / trailer], Delicatessen [1991 / trailer] and City of Lost Children [1995 / trailer]), shows up and Christine, who insists she is still a virgin, suddenly has a bun in the oven...
Heavy on symbolism, Damned in Venice is not as weird as it is strange, and is as equally discombobulating as it is dramaturgically confused and slow. Thus, it is also a hard film to recommend, particular to anyone who has a distaste for leisurely pacing and arty pretensions. One of our favorite arty spleens of the director is his use of the beautiful actress Olga Karlatos, who played Prince's mom in Purple Rain (1984 / the crappy song) and is familiar to most (if anyone) for the wood-impaled eye scene of Zombie (1979 / trailer)  — though she can also be seen in such semi-classics as Murder Rock (1984 / German trailer), Once Upon A Time In America (1984 / trailer) and Keoma (1976 / trailer) — in four different small roles of varying importance (as the woman in Mark's visions, his Aunt Madeleine, Vicky's mother, and the Midwife on the ferry), thus symbolizing just how fully evil is pulling the strings.*
That Mark, his blindness and helplessness a literal symbol for the fruitlessness and hopelessness of his attempts to prevent fate, doesn't notice is perhaps understandable, but that no one else does — or perhaps chooses not to — is almost funny. Are we all so blind to evil? In the end, everyone in Damned in Venice, whether good, evil or simply indifferent, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, is, like Mark, doomed to be a pawn of Satan. (Yep, if there is one lesson to be learned from this movie, it is "Trust no one"... or, maybe, "Evil always prevails"— two things currently emphasized and confirmed and personified by the NSA.)
In regards to acting, it is always a bit difficult to make judgment on an Italo film simply because the dubbing is always a minus (and dubbed this film is indeed, with its cast of Italians, Germans and Greeks), but in general everyone succeeds even where the makeup does not. One does often wonder, however, why the filmmakers didn't give blind Mark blind eyes like, say, those of Emily (Cinzia Monreale) in The Beyond (1981 / trailer). To the detriment of the movie, not only do his eyes simply look like eyes that can see, but more than once (or twice or thrice) his eyes obviously see when they shouldn't; had he been given blind contacts, the overall impression of both his blindness and his later regaining of sight would've been emphasized by this small detail.
Damned in Venice is overflowing with "scary" or "gross" or "decadent" events that don't really tie together but combine to create an oddly dreamy, almost narcotic mood in a Venice that, but for a singular fire scene aboard a water taxi, is unnaturally empty... but unnatural is the overall impression of this oddly distant supernatural thriller about the possible arrival of Satan's son — though for much of the movie one is never really sure if it isn't just that Mark is just delusional.
Overlooked and unknown, the film might not be everyone's cup of tea, but fans of oddly aloof and inconclusive horror films liberally sugared with scenes that are as half-normal or abnormal as they are played fully normal (Giogio's fuck scene while Mark is there, a well full of rats and snakes, all conversations with Father  Stefani [José Quaglio of — aside from The Child (1972) — Malastrana (1971 / trailer), L'occhio dietro la parete (1977 / soundtrack) and Gualtiero Jacopetti's Mondo Candido (1975 / Italian trailer)] that are played out in his private chambers) should find the film well worth watching. And even those who find the film a bore will probably still spit their beer at the movie's one major shock moment.

The threat-laden soundtrack by Pino Donaggio:

* We liked the Last Supper, too, but felt it wasn't really sleazy enough...
 
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Short Movie: The Pervert (USA, circa 2011)

January 30, 2014, 2:35 am
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"A boy succumbs to the evils of perversion."

This month's short is from some dude named Adam Rosenberg. We first stumbled upon this little cute little gem some time ago while perusing that eternally entertaining black hole of ephemera, the Internet Archives, where it resides in the rubric Prelinger Archive Mashups. (Like the Short Film of the Month of April 2011, Helping Johnny Remember, The Pervert reuses material from the Prelinger Archives.) Since that day some months ago we have found The Pervert elsewhere, and as it has always given us a little giggle whenever we saw it, we figured it is time to share the short but giggle-inducing film with the readers of A Wasted Life. ("What readers?" one might ask, but that is a different story...) 
To quote imdb, "Adam Rosenberg is a director and actor, known for Manny (2009)"— and, indeed, though we never placed a name to the short, we caught Manny (full short) — image below — long before The Pervert, but forgot it relatively quickly 'cause though it is a highly disturbing short, it is simply a bit too Jan Švankmajer for us to fully go gaga over. 
In any event, we could find little info on The Pervert, and only slightly more on Rosenberg. So, while we were unable to find out when exactly the short was made, we were able to find out that Adam Rosenberg is partial to "backflips, potty humor, and General Tso's chicken". Rosenberg calls himself "an award-winning filmmaker and video editor"; according to his CV, which you can find online at his website, he is a Magne Cum Laude BFA graduate (3.9 GPA!) of the Virginia Commonwealth University Dept of Kinetic Imaging, 2011 and, going by his short film Adam Rosenberg: A Self Portrait, he wears ugly underwear. His CV doesn't say whether or not his is single, but if so, The Pervert would indicate that he is probably one for the ladies. As for what he looks like: he plays the doomed lad in his short film seen at the top of the page here.
The Pervert initially plays with the structure of the good ol' educational film before zooming off to... well, a great magazine collection, mildly nightmarish humor and an abrupt end featuring a cowboy. For The Pervert, Rosenberg appropriates a few minutes from one of the great pieces of anti-sex and anti-porn US propaganda, Perversion for Profit  (1965), which can be found in its full jaw-dropping idiocy and embarrassing length all over the web. As Wikipedia succinctly puts it, the propaganda "documentary" is "a vehement diatribe against pornography, the film argues that sexually explicit materials corrupt young viewers and readers, leading to acts of violence and 'perverted' attitudes regarding sex — including inclination toward homosexuality."
The "documentary" was a product of Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL), which, to quote Whitney Strub at Temple of Schlock, was "the pre-eminent anti-smut organization of the 1960s, nestled snugly between earlier Catholic pressure groups and later Christian Right ones. […] Founded by Cincinnati lawyer Charles Keating in the late 1950s, CDL amassed a rapid national following and exerted a powerful influence by the late Sixties, reaching its peak when President Richard Nixon appointed Keating to the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Later Keating let CDL languish as he shifted his interests toward junk bonds in the 1980s, contributing to our current era of disaster capitalism during the Savings & Loan catastrophes of the Reagan era. Apparently sexual decency meant more to him than the financial sort."Perversion for Profit, one of the most popular downloads at the Internet Archives, is extremely popular for mash-ups. 
The host of Perversion for Profit, and thus the introductory host of Adam Rosenberg's The Pervert, is the 6'2" former Los Angeles-based  news reporter and talk show host George Putnam (14 July 1914 – 12 September 2008). A conservative Democrat (and good argument of the shortcomings of a two-party system), Putnam did go on record in the 80s that he no longer thought "the homosexual" a pervert but rather born that way, but in Perversion for Profit— and the sequences in The Pervert— he palpably conveys the feeling that the whole of the US should best wear a chastity belt and blinders. You can visit his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6372 Hollywood Blvd or, if you keep your eyes open, catch his brief appearance (always as a reporter) in the movies Fourteen Hours (1951 / trailer), I Want to Live! (1958 / trailer), Helter Skelter (1976 / trailer) and — gag — Independence Day (1996 / trailer).
 The short:
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The Killer Shrews (USA, 1959)

February 3, 2014, 12:46 am
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"If you have to be isolated for your work you sure picked a lonely little island."
Thorne Sherman (James Best)


Ah, the wonderful films that we all saw on our local creature feature show while growing up in the USA back when life was so simple. Some scared us poopless, others almost made us piss in our pants from the suspense, a select few left us indifferent, and once in a blue moon we found one really stupid. (Actually, the only creature feature film we remember seeing as a kid that we found stupid was The Creeping Terror [1964 / trailer / full film], but that's another story.)
How do those old movies hold up when viewed again as an adult? Some sort of hold up well enough (House on Haunted Hill [1959 / trailer / full movie]), others seem to have improved (White Zombie [1932 / trailer / full movie] and, to tell the truth, The Creeping Terror), while others seem to be completely new films. The last is the case with The Killer Shrews: we know we saw it — every pre-pubescent with a heterosexual penis can see that Ingrid Goude was wet-dream material in her prime — but, damn! Ain't like we remembered anything when we finally caught it again last week, after way too many decades for us to want to admit here, but in all truth, we probably won't remember all that much about the movie — other than Goude, maybe — in a month or two, either...
Written by former TV scribe Jay Simms (who wrote better low budget films, such as Panic in Year Zero! [1962 / trailer] and The Creation of the Humanoids [1962 / trailer]), The Killer Shrews was part of the two-fold directorial debut of the successful visual effects artist Ray Kellogg who, over the course of his career, for example, did the visual effects on a total of ten Marilyn Monroe movies (not to mention such great stuff like The Girl Can't Help It [1956 / trailer], The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951 / trailer] and Pickup on South Street [1953 / trailer]). The other film Kellog directed at the same time as this flick here was the teen trash classic The Giant Gila Monster (1959 / trailer / full film), a movie that scared the poop out of us when we were six but we now imagine is probably just as tacky as The Killer Shrews. (It's on our re-watch list, so who knows, maybe we'll review it eventually).
The Killer Shrews was a regional production from Texas, the state that thinks it is its own country (and should be, if you ask us). As such, we are not sure if the predictability of who dies is due to the era of the movie or the location of its origin, but rest assured the order of death is easy to predict: first the minorities — there is one Afro American, Rook Griswald (Judge Henry Dupree), and one Mexican, Mario (Alfredo DeSoto), so guess who goes first — and then the fat person, and then the remaining asshole. Well, shit: it is a "horror" movie, so somebody gotta die... and also, if you get down to it, the predictable order of death really hasn't changed any today in one sense: you a minority, you gonna die.
For a regional production, The Killer Shrews— alongside The Giant Gila Monster, with which it was distributed as a double feature — was a highly successful movie: it not only got national distribution, but even made it overseas, helped in part we are sure by the presence of Miss Sweden 1956, Ingrid Goude as the movie's singular hot tamale, Ann Craigis. Goude never had much of a career, though she does hold her own well enough in a film that suffers less from bad acting than from static direction and a slow-developing, talk-heavy script. Still, she probably did the right thing by retiring two years later to marry what would be the first of three rich men over the subsequent course of eleven years. (A smart person, after all, knows which side of the bread is buttered.)
The Killer Shrews is of course infamous for its use of wigged dogs with fake fangs as stand-ins for the mutated and insatiably hungry killer shrews. Yes, they are a joke, but most reviews fail to mention that they are used relatively sparingly and, while perhaps unconvincing as giant shrews, nevertheless convey more threat than, say, the intentionally bad-CGI shrews of the intentionally crappy sequel Return of the Killer Shrews (trailer) made 53 years later in 2012. But then, the crappy CGI of the sequel is just an extension of the whole wink-wink-we-know-we're-bad self-conscious attitude of the no-longer-so-contemporary post-post-modern bad film aesthetic, whereas in the original the "shrews" are just cheap and bad.
Like so many films, The Killer Shrews involves a small group of people at an isolated location facing a deadly threat. Here, a group of seven is stuck on a remote island due to an approaching storm and face the deadly threat of a scientific experiment that, meant for the good of mankind, has gone wrong. (Rather unlike what the opening narration implies when it talks of a deadly threat coming southwards from Alaska.) Yes, once again, science has gone too far without thinking, and yes, once again Mother Nature is out for revenge, despite the altruistic nature of the experiments.
As the Yiddish-accented Dr. Milo Craigis (Baruch Lumet, Sidney Lumet's father, who can be seen somewhere in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask [1972 / trailer]) explains at one point, "If we were half as big as we are now, we could live twice as long on our natural resources." Thus, he and his colleague Dr. Radford Baines (Gordon McLendon), in their search to make us smaller, do the logical thing of making the tiny shrew giant. (For more info on the life of shrews, we recommend that you watch the short Our Wonderful Nature, our Short Film of the Month for July, 2011.) Worse, their alcoholic asshole handyman Jerry Farrell (Ken Curtis, a former vocalist in the Tommy Dorsey Band and busy western actor), who's all sweet on the Doc's Swedish-accented daughter Ann (Goude), forgot to lock the cage door one night and now the island is overrun with "hundreds" half-starved giant shrews — and they smell human for dinner.
The rug-covered dogs are of course a detriment to the movie, but less so than the cheaply made set of the house interior where easily over two thirds of the film occurs. Looking as cheap and fake as it is, the characters have little to do much of the time they are in it, so all they do is smoke, drink, change their outfits (OK, only Ann does that) and talk, talk, talk — and then talk some more. Although some talk is perhaps needed to set up the situation and introduce the characters, in The Killer Shrews the talk is both interminable and often totally unnecessary, an obvious attempt to simply pad the running time. Thus, roughly the first two-thirds of the film are rather sleep-inducing.
Once the shrews finally show up, however, things do get better, and if you can convince yourself to see killer shrews on screen instead of rug-covered dogs, the movie even actually becomes somewhat interesting and, at times, mildly suspenseful both due to the threat of the hungry creatures and the inter-dynamics between the trapped people, particularly between alky Jerry and he-man skipper Thorne Sherman (James Best of One Way Street [1950 / trailer], Ray Harryhausen's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [1953 / trailer], Forbidden Planet (1956 / trailer], Shock Corridor [1963 / trailer] and  Rolling Thunder [1977 / trailer]), who obviously gives Ann an itch somewhere that Jerry doesn't.
Aside from rug-covered dogs, a talky script and cheap interiors, The Killer Shrews also suffers from some pretty bland direction. Occasionally — indiscriminately, if you get down to it — director Ray Kellogg seems to decide he's gonna experiment or something and then he does something totally outrageous like a tiny dolly shot, but for the most part the movie is retains a static camera and middle-of-the-frame blocking of scenes. A dull and uninteresting directorial style that in no way adds tension but often, as during the big escape scene, negates any and all suspense by tipping the events into the laughably incompetent.
In light of all the above, one really must give the various actors credit: despite their mismatching accents they really aren't that bad, and not only deliver their lines competently but even manage, somehow, to give their stock characters a lot more personality and individuality than might be expected in a movie like this one. (In this regard, perhaps scriptwriter Simms also deserves some credit, as he is the one who wrote such personality-revealing scenes as when a furious Skipper Thorne almost — but then doesn't — toss alky Jerry over the fence to the killer shrews.)
That The Killer Shrews is justifiable Mystery Science Theater 3000 material is without doubt, but it is still a far cry from being totally crappy on the level of, for example, Teenage Zombies, a film made the same year. Luckily, even where it is crappy, The Killer Shrews— unlike Teenage Zombies — is at least more fun crappy than crap crappy. Still, due to the excessive dry spots, in the end The Killer Shrews fails to become a classic psychotronic movie but, instead, remains a relatively unmemorable cinematic experience. Watchable, but hardly essential.
Full movie:
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R.I.P.: Alexandra Bastedo, Part II

February 10, 2014, 7:02 am
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9 March 1946 — 12 January 2014

The mostly forgotten (outside of the Commonwealth) 60s sex symbol Alexandra Bastedo, a "devoted animal rights activist" and vegetarian, died the other day of cancer. Retrorambling says "Bastedo was born in Hove, Sussex, England. According to her official website, her mother was of French, German and Italian descent. Her Canadian-born father was of Spanish, Dutch, Scottish and native Indian extraction. She attended Brighton and Hove High School and Brighton School of Drama. Although most familiar to viewers of 1960s TV, she was also famous for her multilingual skills, speaking Italian, Spanish, French and German. This skill brought her to the door of 10 Downing Street to assist with translations and landed her the role of co-presenter of Miss World competitions with Peter Marshall in the 1980s." We here at A Wasted Life rather liked her exotic eyes, strong jaw and her prime 60s figure and parts of her filmogaphy, which we take a look at below...

Go here forPart I


 
I Can't... I Can't
(1969, dir. Piers Haggard)
 
Aka Wedding Night. Alexandra Bastedo's first cinematic project following the demise of The Champions was as Gloria in this forgotten, serious, if not now sorely dated drama directed by the author H. Rider Haggard's grandson, Piers Haggard, whose best-known films are probably Venom (1981 / trailer), The Blood on Satan's Claws (1971 / trailer) and The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980 / trailer). Contrary to what the poster and name would seem to indicate, we are not dealing with sexploitation here... or?
Over at the NY Times, Dan Pavlides explains the plot: "The moral dilemma of a young Catholic woman [named Mady (Tessa Wyatt of The Beast in the Cellar [1970 / trailer])] is intensified when her religion forbids the use of birth control. When her own mother dies during childbirth on her wedding day, the woman becomes fraught with a fury of anger, guilt and sexual dysfunction. The woman is forced to care for the seven children her mother left behind as the groom [named Joe O'Reilly (Dennis Waterman of Fright [1971 / trailer] and Scars of Dracula [1970 / trailer])] must leave on business, and the tirades of a narrow-minded priest (Martin Dempsey) further complicate the relationship between the newlyweds. This film is meant to pose serious questions of universal concern to those who follow the path of religious dogma insisted upon by the church."
The Irish Film Institute, which occasionally pulls its copy out of the vaults for a rare screening, has pointed out that when released, the Most Rev Dr. Lucey tried to have it withdrawn from the Cork Film Festival because "with its nude and semi-nude scenes it must lead to immodest thoughts". For a 2011 screening at the Institute, we are told by CineIreland, "The writer of the film, Lee Dunne was in attendance and gave a brief interview before the screening [...] in which he revealed that he still had not seen the film [...]." Supposedly, following the screening of the movie, which "is full of some classic Irish stereotypes", Dunne "stood up [...] and thanked everyone for not leaving."CineIreland is also of the opinion that "the scenes at the disco in 'swinging' London looking particularly dated"; the band playing was the Garden Odyssey Enterprise, a long-forgotten group that once (in 1969) had a mild success with the forgotten song Sad & Lonely.
Garden Odyssey Enterprise — Sad & Lonely:



My Lover My Son
(1970, dir John Newland)
 
Released in Germany as Inzest. One of those scandal films of yesteryear which, more than anything, are scandalous today only for being so boring. Supposedly it took the filmmakers two sources, Wilbur Stark's short story Second Level and Edward Grierson's novel Reputation for a Song, to come up with their story which, as TCM tersely puts it, is basically, about "a deranged woman [who] thinks her son is her dead lover." Romy Schneider (born September 1938) plays the mum, Francesca Anderson, while Dennis Waterman (born February 1948) plays the son, James Anderson — and indeed, the fact that the son is only about ten years younger than the mum is obvious in this soap opera of a drama.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is of the opinion that the main object of the director of My Lover, My Son"seems to be gaudiness, [as] the screenplay all but drowns its principals in cheap melodramatic thrills, and neither the mother's ultimate comeuppance nor the son's more natural romance with a local girl (Patricia Brake) can save the movie from deserved oblivion." The reviewer at the NY Times was also not really impressed by the narrative, calling the movie a "simple tale of a lad who loves his mother and murders his father". He goes on to say "My Lover, My Son adds a little pomp and lots of circumstance — to the extent that the boy only thinks he kills his father, and it isn't his father anyway, and he doesn't really love his mother, he really loves a nice girl he picks up in a London discothèque, who works for the B.B.C. and lives alone in a vine-covered houseboat on the Thames. On the whole, I prefer the pomp: the houseboat, the discothèque, handsome offices, romantic restaurants, a really terrific Tudor mansion with a baroque swimming pool, the London zoo, and the whole world looking like 6 o'clock of a spring morning over dewy lawns — mostly because the images are so dark and fuzzy. Although it is difficult to see My Lover, My Son and not wish you were somewhere else doing something different, the film has at least the grace to suggest what and where." Alexandra Bastedo shows up as "Cicely Clarkson"...
 From the Movie: Norrie Paramor & Mike Vickers — What's On Your Mind:



This, That & the Other
(1970, dir. Derek Ford)
Aka A Promise of Bed— produced by Stanley A. Long, we already took a look at this movie in the R.I.P. Career Review we did on him when he died two years ago. Alexandra Bastedo, as "Angie", is one of the many attractive babes to flit across the screen in this sexploitation comedy written and directed by Derek Ford who ended his life in literal penury; somewhere along the line of his downward spiral, along Alan Selwyn, he co-wrote — as "Selwyn Ford"—the immensely entertaining sleazy scandal book The Casting Couch.
Anyone for a swim?
This mod comedy is "Derek Ford's third and final film for Stanley Long [...]. TV Guide calls the film "An all-around sophomoric picture." Over at imdb, Gavcrimson (gavcrimson@tesco.net) explains that the film is a "Three-part 'trilogy of comedy'. In 'This,' Susan Stress (Vanda Hudson of Circus of Horrors [1960 / trailer], in her last film), a fading sex symbol attempts to win the lead in a movie by seducing the son of a film producer only to make a fool of herself in a case of mistaken identity. In 'That,' George (Victor Spinetti of Help! [1965 / trailer]) is a depressed middle-aged loner whose suicide attempt is interrupted by the arrival of a child-like hippy girl who proceeds to turn his life on its head.
Let's party!
While in 'The Other,' Harold (John Bird), an avid sex film fan and taxi driver, crashes his cab after being distracted by the leggy charms of his latest passenger. Suffering a thump on the head, Harold has bizarre hallucinations and ends up being chased around a forest by shapely girls." A given character of one interludes acts as the linking crossover to the next.
Susan Stress takes a bath:




Tibetana
(1970, dir. John Peyser)
 
In Alexandra Bastedo's next equally obscure project, she shared space on the posters with the movie's real star, Bonanza's eternally missing son Pernell Roberts. Aka as The Kashmiri Run, four years later director John Peyser went on to make his masterpiece, the far more memorable exploitation movie, The Centerfold Girls (1974 / trailer); scriptwriter Jameson Brewer went on to help pen the far more memorable black comedy Arnold (1973 / trailer); and co-star Julián Mateos went on to do the more entertaining slice of true Eurocrap horror, Demon Witch Child (1975 / full movie).
 
The 1995 copy of Video Movie Guide rates The Kashmiri Run as a turkey, saying that the plot involves an "American adventurer in the Far East [who] is commissioned to take two scientists to India and bring back a load of yak skins." Everywhere on the web, everyone else simply reprints Jason Ankeny's one-line plot description: "An American adventurer leads another man and a girl on an escape route out of Chinese communist-occupied Tibet." Only TV Cowboys says something else: "Pernell wears a slouch hat, he gets to sleep with 2 women (any man's fantasy) and ends up with the girl. All this while running around in Tibet with a Chinese general chasing after him." We would assume that Alexandra Bastedo is the gal he ends up with...
Poseidon's Underworld was nice enough to supply the above photo of the bathing Pernell, saying "Actor Pernell Roberts only made a small handful of feature film appearances in his career. I can't figure out where this publicity shot of him bathing comes from! [...] The best bet is 1970's The Kashmiri Run, a little-known Spanish-made film about an ex-mountain climber trying to help a scientist get out of Tibet before the Chinese invade the country."
The first 17.5 minutes of Tibetana:



La novia ensangrentada
(1972, dir. Vicente Aranda)
 Trailer:
Aka The Blood Spattered Bride* — that Eurotrash classic we all know and love. This is also the movie that made us notice her: who can ever see the beach scene of her discovery and fail to remember her? (The GIF of the scene seen below, as well as that further down, comes from the blogspot Cult Movies.) Director Aranda went on to do the screenplay to León Klimovsky's People Who Own the Dark (1976 / trailer).
Like so many a classic and non-classic lezzie (and some not so lezzie) vampire film — most notably: Carl Creyer's poetically stunning Vampyr (1932 / full masterpiece); Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1960 / trailer); the Christopher Lee movie Crypt of the Vampire (1964 / French trailer) and Roy Ward Baker's The Vampire Lovers (1970 / trailer) with Ingrid Pitt— The Blood Spattered Bride is based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic novella of circumspect lesbian vampire love, Carmilla, which hit the presses a good 25 years before Bram Stoker's better-known but less well written classic Dracula. For decades, The Blood Spattered Bride was only available in English in a highly butchered version (83 min long instead of the original 101 min), but at the latest since Anchor Bay Entertainment brought out an uncut DVD version, the movie can be enjoyed in its full Eurotrash artiness.
Like so many, the irreverent and oft-falsely informed website Mr Skin confuses the fictional Carmilla with the historical figure Countess Bathory — that they are not one and the same is one reason why we do not list Harry Kümel's masterpiece Daughters of Darkness (1971 / trailer) above — and gives the skinny of the movie as follows: "The Blood Spattered Bride actually has very little to do with Countess Bathory, but it does hold the honor of having one of the greatest horror-film names of all time. Maribel Mart plays half of a newlywed couple that [...] end up getting too close to a Sapphically inclined villainess (Alexandra Bastedo) who has young Maribel cleaning her carpet like a Stanley Steemer before her husband can say 'Billy Jean King!' Shag-slurping isn't the only pursuit Maribel is led into by Bastedo, and soon the two gal pals are planning a grim fate for Maribel's cuckolded husband. Luckily he finds his wife (naked) and Alexandra (naked) while the two are sleeping off a night of bloodletting and bush licking in a king-size coffin and sends them both to hell in a love casket."
 
Radio Anthrocide lists The Blood Spattered Bride between Daughters of Darkness (1971) and Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper (1982 / trailer) in part six its list of The Most Disturbing Films Ever Made, explaining: "While the Spanish Horror / Giallo industry was always very much in the shadow of the Titans in Italy, there were moments when the Spaniards matched the intelligence, style, luridness and sexual license of the completely uninhibited Italians. Such is the case with Blood Spattered, one of the weirdest films I've ever seen and a completely original and enjoyable take on the Carmilla tale. Starring a splendidly lovely Maribel Martin and including a remarkable performance by the unearthly adolescent beauty of Maria-Rosa Rodriguez (and you just wait 'till you see what she is all about, buddy), this is a unique and upsetting film of sexual violence, grim abuse, male cuckoldry and cruelty and... scintillating lesbianism. Featuring one of the most truly remarkable Surrealistic scenes in Giallo-inspired cinema — one that literally comes out of nowhere like in a dream — the supernatural element to this film is so deftly handled that you almost can believe what your seeing could be real. And the final scenes, the pay-off as it were... I was just completely stunned by how all this ended up, and I promise that you will be too."
Mondo Digital took a look at the restored DVD of this veiled critique of fascism and said "Fully restored to its original perverse glory, this film will never be perceived in quite the same way again. [...] In its familiar, censored 80 minute form, The Blood Spattered Bride is a fascinating but incomplete horrific fantasy laced with unexpected surrealism and nudity. This restoration significantly reinstates a number of graphic sequences, including a jolting amount of frontal nudity and genital-related violence, but it also greatly improves the pacing of the film. [...] In any case, the film itself will not appeal to all tastes, thanks to the slow pacing and disorienting storyline, but game viewers will be rewarded with a unique vampire tale graced with hefty dollops of eroticism. The strange, jittery music score creates unease from the opening scene, and the evocative imagery of director Aranda [...] wouldn't look out of place in one of Jean Rollin's vampire sagas."
The cut version of The Blood Spattered Bride was a bit of a grindhouse hit in 1974 when it was shown as part of a double feature with I Dismember Mama (1974).
Trailer to the double feature:
* Which, we must point out, should actually be The Blood-Spattered Bride.



The Starlost
(1973, various directors)
 
Full episode:
The print adverts shown below come from the blogspot Space: 1970. Alexandra Bastedo had a guest appearance in episode 10 of this Canadian science fiction series conceived by that walking Napoleon-complex known as Harlan Ellison; as possibly to be expected, he was displeased with the changes in his concept so by the time this noticeably low budget series — it was even shot on video back in a time when most TV shows were still shot on film — hit the airwaves, he had his credit changed to his well-known pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird". The series was in no way inspired by the silent fiction film Silent Running (1972 / trailer), which had been released a year earlier, because we all know Ellison never borrows from others, only others borrow from him. Ben Bova and Douglas Trumbull (the director of Silent Running) were also on hand during the conceptional phase, but like Ellison they left their posts as the budget got smaller.
The basic plotline involved a giant spaceship ("The Ark") consisting of a multitude of interlocked domes, each of which containing the remnants of a different culture from the planet Earth, a planet long dead. Due to an asteroid disaster, the original crew in charge died, and the various domes have advanced socially alone and separate for hundreds of years until three Amish-like upstarts not only find out the truth (for which they are forced to flee their dome) but also find out that the Ark is flying towards an unavoidable collision with a sun...
Over at imdb, Jeremy Morrow (tashimon@hotmail.com) points out: "Often perceived as one of the most low budget, awful sci-fi series ever made, it has a cult following, especially with Canadian sci-fi fans. Known for its all video, low budget special effects and wooden acting, it has a certain charm, even if the pacing of the show is viciously slow. It's also notable as being the second Canadian sci-fi series ever created." 16 of 24 planned episodes of the series, which among others starred Keir Dullea (of Brain Waves [1983]) and his Castro-Clone moustache, were aired; two un-aired episodes should exist in limbo somewhere. Ten of the episodes were re-edited and combined in the 1980s to create a series of three TV movies: The Starlost: The Beginning, The Starlost: Deception and The Starlost: The Alien Oro.
And speaking of the last TV movie, it included episode 10, The Alien Oro, directed by a TV director named Joseph L. Scanlan, which originally aired on 3 November 1973 and, aside from Bastedo in the supplementary babe roll as Idona, featured the least Shakespearean of all the original cast of Star Trek (1966-69), Walter Koenig, as the titular alien Oro. The plot, basically, has the lead trio of the show discovering a stranded alien named Oro who, "dressed in a gold lame jump-suit with a cheap motorcycle helmet" and with the assistance of Idona, is stripping the parts he needs to repair his crash-landed spaceship from the Ark so that he can fly home. Rather a self-centered snob, Oro knows the future fate of the Ark but doesn't give a rat's ass. Idona, who is actually also an escapee from another dome, sort of gets romantic with the second formerly Amish-like upstart male lead (Robin Ward), but the romance is doomed: she's got a deadly sickness and her only hope to survive supposedly lies on Oro's home planet, Xar. Oro returned without Idona on 15 December 1973 in the follow-up episode, The Return of Oro (dir., Francis Chapman). 



Odio mi cuerpo
(1974, dir. León Klimovsky)
 Short scene:
Aka I Hate My Body. This Spanish science fiction horror movie was the next foreign-language film of the linguistically gifted Alexandra Bastedo — aside from English, she could also speak Italian, Spanish, French and German — after The Blood Spatter Bride. And this time around she was directed by no one less than the famously prolific Argentina-born auteur León Klimovsky (16 October 1906 — 8 April 1996), the man behind a countless number of much-loved Spanish cult movies, eight of which he made with the even more-loved Paul Naschy. With over 70 titles to his name, it is difficult to pinpoint Klimovsky's best, but currently Wikipedia sees The Strange Love of the Vampires (1975 / opening), The Dracula Saga (1973 / trailer), and The Vampires' Night Orgy (1974 / trailer) as classics. Nobody, however, who has seen this rare and difficult to obtain movie seems to view it as one of his best. It should be noted that the scratchy print of I Hate My Body available at Something Weird, at 82 minutes, is a full 15 minutes shorter than the original Spanish length...

"I think like a man! I act like a man! This female form is a stranger to me! I hate my own body!"
Leta / Ernest (Alexandra Bastedo)


In their great entry "The 50 Most Fascinating Gender-bending Characters of Psychotronic Film", the Daily Grindhouse calls I Hate My Body"a strange mess of sleaze, a weird exploitation flick that wants to make a point about misogyny while simultaneously wallowing in it", which makes the movie sound better than they probably wanted it to.
Bloody Pit of Rod, which calls this movie "a pretty good but not great slice of sleazy trash", offers the following plot description: "Philandering husband Ernest (Manuel de Blas of Slugs [1988] and The Ghost Galleon  [1974 / trailer]) is out partying in a nightclub with some co-workers one night. He gets in his car to take one of the secretaries home for the evening for a little mattress bounce but has overestimated his ability to drive while drunk. One crash later the secretary is dead and he is on an operating table breathing his last. Enter mad scientist/doctor of insane medicine Adolph (Narciso Ibáñez Menta of Obras maestras del terror [1960 / full film in Spanish], Sólo se muere dos veces [1997 / Spanish trailer] and, a directorial effort, The House that Screamed [1969 / trailer]) who is pressed by his nurse into continuing his concentration camp experiments on poor Ernest. A gleeful Adolph takes the fellow's brain out of his dying body and pops it into the body of Leta (Alexandra Bastedo). It seems that she'd had a terminal brain tumor but her body is in fine shape so it's a perfect match — right? You would think so — especially if you were a Nazi doctor hell-bent on proving his mad theories to the world. Of course if you're a macho man suddenly placed inside a woman's body you might think otherwise..."

"Men are the bosses! They talk about sexual equality but it's all a dirty lie!"
Peter Muller (Byron Mabe)


One of the few who appears to have liked what truly sounds like an interesting movie is some guy named John Bernhard, who says: "Here is a strange film indeed.....mixing feminism, sci-fi medical experiments and good old fashioned exploitation elements. The Spanish excel in the field of mix and match genres and Klimovsky made just about every kind of movie imaginable. [...] What follows is one of the more inventive male / female switch films that I have seen. Throughout the film, whenever Alexandra's character is sexually harassed, the viewer sees Manuel getting pawed. He still feels and thinks like a man, and like the title says, he hates his (hot) body and can't handle a guy shoving his tongue down her/his throat. It's one of the films many effective techniques. Klimovsky co wrote the screenplay too, so I think he was trying to say something here, I'm just not sure what. Or I was, but the abrupt ending threw me, it seemed out of place (and pretty harsh)...."



 El clan de los Nazarenos
(1975, dir. Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent)
It would seem that this movie never received an English-language release, but to translate the title, it's called "The Clan of the Nazarenes". Director Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent also made the super nasty Chorizo Western Cut-Throats Nine (1972 / trailer). Alexandra Bastedo plays Arima, the female fly in the ointment of the movie. The plot, from what we could decipher from a few computer-generated translations of Spanish descriptions, concerns a monk named Chris (Javier Escrivá) who loses his faith, leaves the monastery and forms a ruthless and murderous criminal gang that stop at nothing, his concept that since he never saw God while doing good he might while doing evil. "Better to see you in your wrath than to die without having known you."
That quote, by the way, was taken from the only English-language review we could find online, written by one Nzoog Wahrlfhehen, who wasn't thrilled by the movie, complaining that Chris as a character was under-drawn, his motivations too vague. Nzoog also went on to say: "Chris's underlings are more persuasively drawn: a self-destructive youth (Luca Bonicalzi), a punch-drunk former boxer (real-life fighter Luis Folledo) and a vocational murderer (Tony Isbert), plus an enigmatic newcomer (Antonio Sabato). A detonating element in the storyline involves a woman (Alexandra Bastedo) who, after being found unconscious on the beach, is taken by Cris into the gang's rural quarters. The rest is a tepid tale of the gang disintegrating, variously on account of character flaws or duplicity, while the ending manages to be both predictable and unsatisfying as it closes in on characters that had hitherto played comparatively secondary roles, as if the scriptwriters had felt, after what must have been some bad planning, that they had to close the film somehow."
Among the other females to populate the background is the tragic Sandra Mozarowsky (as Magda), seen above, who may or may not have been done away with in the name of protecting the Spanish Royal Family....
The music of El clan de los Nazarenos was composed by Stelvio Cipriani, the man behind the music of Nightmare City (1980), A Bay of Blood (1971 / trailer), Baron Blood (1972 / trailer), The Big Alligator (1979 / German trailer) and Tragic Ceremony (1972 / trailer), among many other wonderfully trashy films.
 Stelvio Cipriani — Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978):



The Ghoul
(1975, dir. Freddie Francis)
Aka Night Of The Ghoul and The Thing In The Attic. A movie, oddly enough, often confused with the public domain B&W Boris Karloff movie from 1933 also entitled The Ghoul (full film), remade in 1961 as What a Carve Up! Hello, out there: while the Karloff movie and Francis both films may be British products, this movie here, however, is in color, stars Peter Cushing, has a completely different plot, and is not in public domain.
The Ghoul was the third movie produced by the Tyburn Film Productions, an English horror movie production house set up by Kevin Francis, the son of Freddie Francis, and due to its rather old fashioned productions — its films owed more to the then-dying Hammer than, say, the more contemporarily exploitive movies of Pete Walker— Tyburn folded a few films later. Keeping everything in the family, The Ghoul was scripted by no one less than Anthony Hinds (19 September 1922 — 30 September 2013), the son of Will Hammer, the co-founder of Hammer Films. When Hammer died, Hinds took over his father's share of the business and, as The Telegraph put it, "was the producer and screenwriter chiefly responsible for the Hammer company’s indelible association with horror films".
For The Ghoul, Hinds mined his past productions and then regurgitated a reworking of one of Hammer's more atmospheric but equally disappointing horror movies, The Reptile (1966). More than one website out there incorrectly lists Alexandra Bastedo as playing the evil housekeeper in The Ghoul, but they are wrong: that would be the much older Gwen Watford (of Taste the Blood of Dracula [1970 / trailer]) as Ayah, while Bastedo plays — for a lack of a better description — the Final Girl, Angela.
 Trailer to The Reptile (1966), which "inspired"The Ghoul (1975):
Terror Trap, typically terse, offers the following plot description: "Peter Cushing is top notch in this effective British chiller about a former clergyman who keeps a secret possession locked up in the attic... his crazed flesh-hungry son who feeds upon the visitors!"
Horrorpedia says: "The film was set, interestingly, in the 1920s jazz age (taking advantage of sets built for The Great Gatsby [1974 / trailer]), with Ian McCullough (of Zombie Holocaust [1980 / trailer]), Bastedo and Veronica Carlson (see above) playing rich kids who challenge each other to a race to Land's End, only to become lost on the moors (which moors isn't made clear). They are attacked by red herring John Hurt and offered shelter by Cushing, who has a sinister Indian servant, a private chapel and mutters a lot about corrupt Eastern religious cults — so clearly nothing good will come of this. [Nevertheless], it turns out to be a somewhat tedious film. Devoid of shocks or any sense of style, it features listless performances, bored direction from Francis (who clearly didn't feel the need to up his game just because his son was paying the bills) and seems incredibly dated for the time. Very little happens, and when it does, it's handled with an overly genteel style."
British Horror Films, however, though they call Bastedo a "horrifically bad actress", is of a differing opinion: "Beautifully shot, with fog-shrouded moors, a lovely period setting and a racist 'white-woman-blacked-up-to-play-an-Indian' bit of casting, The Ghoul is a top-notch Gothic horror in the Hammer tradition, which unfortunately by the time it was made was woefully out of whack with the trends at the time. Still, with the benefit of hindsight, it's a cracker. [...] Well, you can guess what happens next, can't you? Bumpings-off galore, a fair amount of blood letting… yup, all the things we love. [...] A late night must-see."
  

Part III will follow... soon enough.
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The Hamiltons (USA, 2006)

February 18, 2014, 1:04 am
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(Spoilers — but then, it is impossible to write about this movie without giving away a key revelation.)
Now this movie was a surprise... one can only wonder what has to later go wrong for two people to produce something as good as this movie and then, two years later, go on to make something as crappy as the 2008 remake of April Fool's Day (trailer)...
The Butcher Brothers, the catchy moniker of Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, may not have made their feature-length directorial debut with The Hamiltons— they did that with the 2002 indi comedy Long Cut— but with this genre-bending film they finally made some waves. And justifiably so, for The Hamiltons is an adeptly modernized take on an extremely popular horror genre that tweaks classic rules as supplied in a defining and eternally inspiring book first published in 1897 and as usually followed to the T in most films and popular television programs... in The Hamiltons, however, everything is made a lot more human, if definitely not at all humane. As the asshole sibling Wendell Hamilton (Joseph McKelheer of The Violent Kind [2010 / trailer]) teasingly tells one of his future victims, the piteous Kitty (Jena Hunt), at one point: "Kitty, if monsters were real they'd be a lot different than they are on TV." He should know.
The basic situation is of a group of four siblings trying to survive as a family after the unexplained sudden death of their loving parents — a situation effectively presented by the opening montage of old family films and the voiceover of the young teenage son Francis (Cory Knauf of Pocahauntus [2006 / trailer]). But the unexplained sudden death of the parents has seemingly left a group of alienated and extremely psycho siblings in its wake — not to mention an unseen creature locked in the basement — and why they should in any way want to stick together is unexplainable for much of the movie, as aside for the incestuous twins, the redneck Wendell and the Goth Darlene (Mackenzie Firgens of Sweet Insanity [2006 / trailer]), they don't seem to really get along at all. Of them all, only Francis appears to have any feelings of disgust for the bloody and violent deeds of his brothers and sister, and the guilt for being the silent witness weighs heavy upon his shoulders — all the more so when he begins to feel attached to Samantha (Rebekah Hoyle), they latest bound nubile hanging from a hook down in the basement...
One might complain that the movie does suffer from a slight case of sexism, for though both girls and (mostly gay) men are killed, only the girls seem to be tormented and terrorized while, with but for one overweight exception, the men are mostly killed off-screen. Still, it must be said that the movie really isn't half as bloody and gory as it seems to be: what is present far more than any gore, and what also gets so under the viewer's skin, is the creepy sense of dread that infuses so much of the movie. This dread is equaled by an ever-present aura of repugnance and distastefulness — caused by the brutality shown the victims, the normalcy with which the family goes about their bloody activities,* the queasy incestuous sexuality, and the sense of hopelessness that threads through most of the movie — that continually leaves one feeling uneasy but never fully tips to instigating a total feeling disgust. (The filmmakers often tread a fine line in this respect, but somehow they never take it all too far.) As a result, the movie not only retains one's interest despite its oddly grimy feel — and, equally important, despite its often somewhat leisurely pacing, the movie also manages to maintain a level of tense suspense that is nicely complemented by a sense of gloomy inevitably.
On one level, The Hamiltons is very much a coming-of-age story: a tale of a troubled teen unable to deal with the actions of the family, and who is not only struggling to balance guilt and shame with family responsibility but is also having major problems coming to terms with what or who he is. Luckily, however, while it would seem that the Butcher Brothers do believe in strong family ties — this thematic aspect does indeed play a major part in the events of the movie — the Butcher Brothers are no John Hughes and definitely are not at all interested in corn or tugging at our tear ducts. The latter is almost mischievously and ironically underscored by the film's last ten minutes in which, in regards to the whole coming-of-age and/or family-bonds aspect, the filmmakers unfurl a truly crowning achievement: the odd feeling of hope that the family-reaffirming ending gives you also leaves you feeling slightly ill.
As mentioned earlier, The Hamiltons is an low-budget indi horror, and as such it also suffers both some of the normal flaws as well as enjoys some of the hoped-for advantages such a production can have. The strong (and tight) story is a definite plus, as is the solid direction and the occasional and brief (and thus enjoyable) slightly arty cinematographic interludes. The acting is often variable, the weakest possibly being that of the uptight, quasi-homo David (Samuel Child, who supposedly appears un-credited somewhere in Piranha 3D [2010]), but even he gets stronger towards the end and reveals greater depth to his character. Still, across the board the victims tend to be both the best actors and the most likeable characters; as a result (and to the advantage of the movie), they also gain the most sympathy from the viewer — something the Hamiltons, bound by their "family sickness", only gain towards the last ten minutes of the depressing and futile story when, for them at least (including the one locked away in the cellar always unseen but heard, hungry and ready to feed until almost the end), all's well that ends well... 
* That they are so brutal and "heartless" is easy to understand, however, when one takes into account the statement made somewhere along the way in the film about how the rest of the world is basically their mast, their fodder, and thus a lower animal. Mankind is hardly the most gentle of creatures when it comes to how they treat their own livestock or living food, be it hens or pigs or milk cows or any animal hunted, so why should it be otherwise when man is viewed as the food source?
The sequel six years later; watch with trepidation, for the trailer below reveals everything we tried not to reveal in our review...
The Thompsons (2012):
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