Category Archives: Foreign Films

Running (1979)

Posted on January 9, 2016 | Leave a comment

running 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Life of a runner.

Michael (Michael Douglas) is suffering, at the age of 32, a midlife malaise. He goes from one dead end job to another and his marriage is crumbling. He runs to relieve the stress and finds that he has a major passion for it. When he qualifies for the Olympics he is initially excited, but it’s short lived because his former coach (Lawrence Dane) is on hand to constantly remind him how he has a tendency to ‘choke’ at the last minute and can never win a race when the pressure is on, which begins to wear on him psychologically.

The theme of a middle aged man having a passion for something that isn’t exactly ‘practical’ and resisting the pressures from the rest of world that tries to get him to conform to something that is, is highly relatable. I also liked the side-story dealing with the psychological element, which plays a far stronger factor in sports and amongst athletes than one might think. However, the majority of the screen time is spent with Michael trying to reconcile with his wife Janet (Susan Anspach) making it seem more like a romance and seemingly added in as ‘filler’ because the filmmakers believed that the running theme wouldn’t be enough to  carry it.

I also had a hard time understanding why the kids at high school, or at least his daughter’s friends, which gets played by Lesleh Donaldson in her film debut, would make fun of Michael simply because he was frequently seen around town running. I see joggers and runners every day and saw a lot of them back in the ‘70s too, so I don’t get why that would be a source of mockery and it seems like it was yet another manufactured dramatic element put in to give it more conflict. What’s even worse is when Michael finally qualifies for the Olympics then the kids do a full 180 degree turn and get excited about it and even run with him down the city streets, which gets corny to say the least.

Halfway in you realize this is just another variation of the Rocky formula and normally I would’ve found it annoying, but for some reason I actually got into it. I even liked the scene where he spots a giant cross standing on a hill and decides to run up the incline to reach it much like Rocky climbing the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and to some degree it’s invigorating although it would’ve been nice had it shown him standing next to the cross once the climb was achieved. The final segment that takes place during the climactic Olympic race even has a twist to it that I didn’t see coming and to a degree it’s interesting though pushing plausibility. I won’t give it away I’ll just say that he doesn’t win the race, but he doesn’t exactly lose it either.

Douglas did all of his own running and to prepare for the role he would run many miles a day; IMDB states that he ran 50 to 60 miles a day, which I found hard to believe, so we’ll just say it was ‘many’. Anspach is good as the sympathetic wife particularly when the character has a conflict of emotions and breaks out in tears. Eugene Levy appears with a full afro in a rare serious turn as Michael’s attorney. Lawrence Dane is okay as the hardened coach who dispenses a lot of ‘tough love’, but little else.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: November 2, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Steven Hilliard Stern

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD (Italian Import Region 0)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies from Canada, Obscure Movies, Sports Movies

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A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)

Posted on December 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

zed 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: They’re really into decay.

Oswald and Oliver (Brian and Eric Deacon) are twin brothers working at a zoo who become devastated to learn that both of their wives have died in the same freak accident in a car driven by Alba (Andrea Ferreol) who survives, but without her leg. Initially the brothers’ are angered with her, but this slowly grows into a strange attraction, which eventually forms into a ménage a trois. To help with their grief they begin doing time-lapse photography of the decaying process. They start with dead animals before deciding on a human subject with Alba as their chosen ‘star’.

From a completely visual level this film can be considered a great success. This was the first of ten projects that Director Peter Greenaway and cinematographer Sacha Vierny collaborated on and the result is stunning. The vivid contrasting colors, lighting and symmetrically designed sets make each and every shot look like its own painting. This is also one of the few films that completely transcend its era. Usually one can tell what decade a movie is from by watching it for only a few minutes, but this film is unlike any other ‘80s movie made, which is an achievement unto itself.

The best part of the movie is its depiction of the real-life decaying process captured in time-lapse form. I realize this may sound extremely morbid and ‘sick’, but it’s a natural process of the world we live in and if taken from a purely scientific perspective quite an interesting and fascinating phenomenon to watch. It gives the film a unique one-of-a-kind edge and something I wished had been shown even more.

The film’s drawbacks are the characters that come off as too weird and twisted, which is an issue in a lot of Greenaway’s movies that are always technically brilliant, but lacking in emotion or empathy. A good movie, no matter how ‘artistic’ it may be still needs relatable characters to help propel it and instead this movie has what amounts to mouth pieces in disguise as people who are simply used to relay a concept, but in no way connected to anyone you’d ever meet in real life. This results in leaving the viewer cold and making the film more of an ‘Avant-garde experiment’ than an actual story.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 4, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 55Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Peter Greenaway

Studio: British Film Institute

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, British Movies, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat

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The Leather Boys (1964)

Posted on November 25, 2015 | 4 comments

leather boys 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Befriending a gay biker.

Reggie and Dot (Colin Campbell, Rita Tushingham) are young and in love, at least they think they are. They want to rush off and get married, but Reggie’s father (Lockwood West) feels that they ‘don’t know the meaning of the word’ and he gets proven right as immediately after they tie the knot they are at odds with each other. Reggie begins looking for companionship elsewhere and meets up with a fellow biker named Pete (Dudley Sutton). Pete and Reggie quickly become best friends and begin hanging out together, but Pete is secretly gay and has more of an interest in Reggie than just a friendship.

Director Sidney J. Furie, whose career has now spanned 6 decades, has done a lot of duds in his time, but this isn’t one of them. The stark black-and-white photography helps bring out the bleak working class existence of the characters and the variety of locales used including a nicely captured cross country motorbike race make the story captivating and believable.

The performances are outstanding. Tushingham is especially good at displaying a genuinely nasty side to her character at the most unexpected times. Gladys Henson, who plays the widowed grandmother, is also excellent and the scene where the others argue while right in front of her about how they consider her to be ‘an elderly inconvenience’ who needs to be sent away to a retirement home is downright heart wrenching. Sutton though is the most dynamic in a risky role that helped jettison him to stardom. His distinctive facial features galvanize the viewer’s attention and the ambivalent expressions that he makes particularly when in the presence of Dot are priceless.

Spoiler Alert!

The film though takes too long to get to its obvious conclusion as we have a pretty good idea from the beginning that Pete is gay, so having to wait until the very end for this to finally get revealed seems to be stretching the story out longer than necessary. Most likely Pete would’ve made some sort of pass at Reggie at some point earlier anyways especially since the men shared the same bed. The film also ends with Reggie walking away from Pete and essentially ‘abandoning’ him once he realizes that he is gay. The music that is played over the scene conveys the idea that this is the ‘right’ thing to do and parlays the conventional attitude of the time that there is something ‘wrong’ with Pete, which doesn’t make this as much of a landmark movie as it’s widely considered since its ultimate message is still entrenched with the biases and bigotry of that era.

End of Spoiler Alert!

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 8, 1964

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Studio: Allied Artists

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

 

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Gay/Lesbian, Movies Based on Novels

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The Visitor (1979)

Posted on November 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

visitor 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Her daughter is evil.

Dark forces from another dimension conspire to use an 8-year-old girl named Katy (Paige Conner) as their centerpiece in creating an evil empire on earth. Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer), while working under the cover of being a noted surgeon, heads the secret organization. He instructs local millionaire Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen) who made a pact with the group years earlier in order to receive his fortune, that he must impregnate his girlfriend Barbara (Joanne Nail) again, so that she can give birth to an evil son to complement their already wicked daughter Katy and allow the two to eventually reproduce a new offspring. Barbara though, who does not know of Raymond’s secret pact and feels leery of her child already, is unwilling to have another one, which forces him to use unethical ways to get her to change her mind.

This Italian production, which was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, has gotten a bad rap from the critics and there have been several different cuts issued with some making more sense than others. For the most part it’s a mixed bag with lots of story loopholes and an ill-advised music score that seems better suited for an NFL highlight reel. The movie also defies any genre and jumps between several, but ultimate fails at all of them.

However, if taken as a cheesy over-the-top production then it’s not half-bad. The camera work, editing, special effects and sets are to a degree impressive. The scene where Glenn Ford’s character is driving down a busy highway only to have his eyes pecked out by an evil hawk, which creates a major road accident that culminates with the car tumbling onto a softball field is quite exciting. Katy’s cat-and-mouse foot chase with the John Huston character through the Atlanta streets and some abandoned buildings is also well done as is her ice skating foray in which she single-handedly takes out a group of much older and bigger boys by sending them flying through the windows of some nearby shops and restaurants.

Conner’s bad girl performance with her angelic face making a perfect contrast to her otherwise dark personality is great. Nail as her mother is equally beautiful and creates enough sympathy from the viewer to make the torment that she goes through unsettling to watch. Shelley Winters, in a rare turn playing a normal, likable character, is also excellent as the family’s housekeeper

The male cast though is wasted including Franco Nero who appears briefly only at the beginning and very end. John Huston and Glenn Ford were too old for their respective parts and casting younger actors in their roles would’ve made more sense, but seeing director Sam Peckinpah in a brief acting bit is fun.

The ending can’t quite equal the audaciousness of the rest of it, but there is enough weird, wacky, one-of-a-kind shit here to keep anyone especially those with an affinity for the bizarre entertained and amused.

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My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 22, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated R

Director: Giulio Paradisi

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Movies that take place in the South, Sci-Fi

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Death Ship (1980)

Posted on October 28, 2015 | 1 comment

death ship 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ghost ship haunts ocean.

Members of a luxury ocean liner collide with a mysterious ship that comes out of nowhere. The liner sinks, but a few of the passengers manage to survive by boarding on a raft and going out to sea. After a few days of being afloat in the watery abyss they come into contact with the ship that they collided with. Having no other options they board the vessel only to find that no one else is on it. At first they are relived, but then creepy things begin to occur making them feel that it may be haunted. When the ship begins killing off members of the group one-by-one the remaining people look for a way off, but find nothing available.

The film starts out okay with a likable enough cast filled with veteran B-actors. The collision and subsequent sinking of the luxury liner as some definite tinges of The Poseidon Adventure to it and I’ll give props to the shot showing a grand piano crashing several stories down as well as the way the engine room quickly and realistically fills up with water. The ghost ship has a nice threatening quality and is shot in a way that gives it effective creepiness and makes it like a third character.

The performers do their best and giver earnest performances although it’s hard to believe that any of them could possibly have taken the material seriously and could only have been doing this for the money. I did not like the way George Kennedy’s character goes from being this surly prick of a sea captain to a man possessed by the evil spirits of the ship as I liked the way his character’s disagreeable personality meshed with the others and made the group dynamics a little more interesting.

The ultimate problem with the film though is the fact that there is no second or third act and the whole concept would’ve worked much better as a thirty minute episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ instead of trying to stretch it out to feature film length. There are just so many creepy shots of the ship, foreboding music and scared reactions of the cast one can take before it all becomes quite old and redundant.  

The ending is unsatisfying and doesn’t explain anything. Yes, we understand this is a ship once used by the Nazi’s to torture victims, but why is it haunting these waters and why did it decide to collide with the ocean liner and if it has collided with other ships then why hasn’t it been detected by world governments and possibly gone under attack by armies in an attempt to subdue it? Again, as a creepy short story or an episode of an anthology series it might’ve worked, but as a film it is boring, one-dimensional and lacking any type of unique spin.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: March 7, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alvin Rakoff

Studio: Astral Films

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Drama on the High Seas, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity

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To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

Posted on October 23, 2015 | 1 comment

to the devil a daughter 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He sacrifices his daughter.

Father Michael (Christopher Lee) is an ex-communicated priest who runs an offshoot religion called Children of the Lord that seems connected to the Catholic Church on the outside, but underneath the façade it is actually a cover for a group of Satanists. Henry (Denholm Elliot) is the father who signs over his daughter Cathrine’s (Nastassja Kinski) soul at her birth which stipulates that on her 18th birthday she will become the devil’s representative here on earth. Yet as that date approaches Henry begins to have second thoughts and hires occult novelist John Verney (Richard Widmark) to steal Catherine away from her captors and take her away to his place to hide, but Father Michael uses the power of black magic to hypnotize Catherine and force her to return to him while John tries everything in his power to stop it.

One commenter on the IMDB message boards claims this is ‘one of the worst movie to come out in the 70’s’, which only proves that he must not have seen a lot of ‘70’s movies as there is far worse stuff from that decade than this. Although it is certainly no classic it’s still not bad on the technical end and even rather slick. I enjoyed the on-location shooting done in Europe particularly the scene showing a drawbridge that could be lowered and raised manually by one person. The gore and scares are skimpy, but the scene where Kinski dreams of having the devil fetus crawl up her body and she then proceeds to stuff it into her vagina is certainly worth a few points.

Kinski’s presence is the best thing about the movie and the film became notorious in its day for showing her in full frontal nudity even though she was only 14 at the time. However, what surprised me even more was how confident she looked when she did it without any of the expected nervousness or shyness. I felt that because she was the daughter of actor Klaus Kinski and had to learn to group up fast she had a higher level of maturity than most other teens her age and therefore the scene wasn’t as awkward for her as it might otherwise have been.

Lee’s great as always as the bad guy and I particularly enjoyed his facial expressions. However, Widmark  was miscast as he was too old and I didn’t understand why being only a friend of the family he would take such an invested interest in their daughter and such personal risks to get her out of the cult, which I felt would’ve been better suited to the role of the father and cutting out the Gurney character altogether.

This was the last horror film to be produced by Hammer and for the most part it plays like a cheesy rip-off of The Exorcist, but still has enough of a budget and a capable enough cast to keep it mildly enjoyable.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 4, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Sykes

Studio: Hammer Films

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Village of the Damned (1960)

Posted on October 22, 2015 | 6 comments

village of the damned 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: The eyes have it.

Remade in 1995 and based on the John Wyndham novel ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ the story centers on a small English village where one day everyone mysteriously falls asleep for several hours while under the spell of some invisible, odorless gas. When they awaken everything seems normal, but later on all the women become pregnant, even those that were not married or were still virgins. When the babies are born they are found to be different from their human counterparts as they have a higher intelligence, odd shaped heads and bright blonde hair. Later on these same children gain the ability to read other people’s minds and dispose of those that they don’t like penetrating them with the spell of their glowing eyes. As the rest of the village panics one man (George Sanders) feels that he may have the ability to stop them, but only if he can somehow control his own thoughts, so they won’t be able to tell what he is actually up to.

As a sci-fi thriller it’s not bad. The film’s short running time has a nice compact style to it with a story that evolves at a fast pace and continues to add new twists. The special effects for its day are realistic enough to be passable and the violence is surprisingly high. Sanders is effective in the lead and Martin Stephens as the leader of the children is quite creepy.

I found it a bit baffling though that the townspeople wouldn’t have quarantined the strange children from the start as it becomes quite obvious from the beginning that they aren’t normal. Instead they are allowed to roam freely even as they become increasingly more sinister. I would’ve also have thought that some of the mothers who gave birth to these strange beings would’ve disowned them and even refused to take care of them once their unnatural and frightening oddities became apparent.

The ending is frustrating as the film does not supply any answer as to who these kids where and what type of alien presence impregnated the women and why. The movie tells us that other places have been effected with these strange children as well, which leads one to believe that this is only a part of some other more sinister plot with far reaching consequences that never gets tackled. Instead we get left with a short film that acts like a small chapter to a fascinating idea with broad potential variables that unfortunately never gets followed through on.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 5, 1960

Runtime: 1Hour 17Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Wolf Rilla

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, British Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Mystery, Sci-Fi

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The Changeling (1980)

Posted on October 18, 2015 | 6 comments

the changeling

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dead child haunts house.

Still grieving from the sudden loss of his family in a freak accident composer John Russell (George C. Scott) decides to move to the Pacific Northwest where he finds a large stately mansion to move into. He feels it would be the perfect place to reflect and continue with his work, but instead realizes that it is haunted by a child who was murdered there years earlier. With the help of Claire (Trish Van Devere) who had procured the property for him they investigate its history and find that there is a connection between the killing and an influential senator (Melvyn Douglas).

One of the aspects about this film that I did like was that it was given a big budget and the on-location shooting that was done from New York, Seattle and even Toronto gives it a strong visual backdrop and makes it light years ahead of the average horror film that is usually crippled from the start by its meager funding. The mansion is impressive at least the outside of it, which was actually only a façade that was constructed when they couldn’t find a real one to fit their needs. However, the idea that a single man would move into such a large place seems ridiculous and there’s nothing that says ghosts can’t haunt small homes that would be more practical place for one person to live in.

Scott gives an unusual performance in that he shows little of a frightened reaction when the scares occur. To some extent I liked this as the screams and shocked expressions in most horror movies become overdone, but when a vision of a ghostly boy appears in a bathtub and all Scott does is calmly back away it seems to be underplaying it a bit too much.

I also felt that Van Devere’s character was unnecessary and was put in only because she was Scott’s real-life wife at the time, but it seemed unrealistic that a real estate agent who was merely an acquaintance to John would get so wrapped up in his quandary or even believe him to begin with. No relationship is ever implied, but it would have made more sense had the character been written in as a girlfriend.

I realize there are those that consider this to be a ‘really scary’ movie, but I found it to be pretty flat. The ‘scares’ as it where consist of nothing more than a child’s ball rolling down a staircase twice, whispery voices, a runaway wheelchair and a few doors slamming. There is also a fiery finale that borders on the hooky and a tacky séance and if that is enough to keep you up all night then have at it.

Spoiler Alert!

The idea that this child, who was sickly and if he died before his 21st birthday the family fortune would go to charity, so the father kills him and has him replaced with another child who later grows into being this powerful aging senator, didn’t make sense in that I didn’t see where the ‘justice’ was in getting back at the senator who had nothing to do with the killing or even knew about it. He was simply an innocent child taken from an orphanage and the product of a nefarious scheme by the father, so why not go after the dead soul of the murdering father and leave the senator alone? The senator dies from a heart attack that we are lead to believe was caused by the ghostly presence of the angry child, which to some extent makes the protagonists look like the bad guys since they were the ones that precipitated the meeting that lead to the death and instead should’ve tried to prevent it.

I was also confused by the whole backstory about John’s family being killed in a roadside accident that begins the movie since it really didn’t have much to do with the main plot and could’ve easily been left out completely.

End of Spoiler Alert!

I first saw this film over 20 years ago and wasn’t all that impressed with it then and I’m still not. I realize it has its legion of fans, but to me it’s just an average ghost story and far from being a classic.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 28, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Medak

Studio: Associated Film Distribution (AFD)

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies from Canada

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Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)

Posted on October 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

don't torture a duckling 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who’s killing the children?

The setting in this Italian giallo is a small, rural village where the children of the townspeople are being murdered. At first the police suspect and arrest a mentally handicapped man (Vito Passeri), but the killings continue. Soon even more suspects turn up including Maciara (Florinda Bolkan) the mother of a dead child herself who secretly practices voodoo using dolls made by her father and yet every time the authorities believe they’ve found the culprit more clues arise that leads them to someone else creating panic in a town already steeped in fear, suspicion and the superstitious.

As a story detailing a police investigation it’s not too bad. The plot works in a linear fashion that’s easy to follow without entering in too many subplots or red herrings although it’s still no better than your average episode of ‘Murder She Wrote’. I did enjoy the rural Italian landscape and the bird’s eye shot of the village whose decrepit, rundown buildings visually hit home the stifled, bleak nature of the residents and why they would turn so heavily to the spiritual world as their sole escape.

Balkan’s performance as the nutty lady is effective particularly when she has a seizure during her interrogation and the scene where she gets surrounded by men who belt her with chains is quite graphic and realistic.

The film though, like with a lot of Italian productions from that era, does have dubbing issues particularly director Lucio Fulci’s use of adding in all the sound effects giving it a certain over-the-top cartoon quality. For instance when a victim is being slapped by a man’s hand it sounds more like the lashing of a whip and even simple stuff like the shoveling of dirt comes off wrong because the sound effect is not in sync with the action on the screen.

The film also has a uncomfortable moment where an adult character (Barbara Bouchet), who is one of the protagonists, walks around naked in front of a 12-year-old boy and even asks him how many women ‘he’s done it with’.

Spoiler Alert!

Guessing who the real killer is was easy and I had the whole thing figured out after about 30 minutes making the rest of the mystery predictable and boring. The idea of a priest killing children might’ve been considered shocking at the time, but now as with Fulci’s criticism of the Catholic Church it comes off as heavy-handed and redundant.

The close-up, slow motion shot of the priest falling down a cliff at the end is the film’s most controversial moment as it is clearly a dummy whose blank eyes and unnaturally agape mouth looks incredibly fake. Some have argued that this was Fulci’s attempt at revealing the ‘inner ugliness’ of the character by showing something with such a distorted face, but since a similar looking mannequin is also used to portray one of the boy victim’s submerged in a tub of water earlier I think it can safely be said that it was more just the cheapness of the production than anything else.

End of Spoiler Alert!

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My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: September 29, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Lucio Fulci

Studio: Medusa Distribuzione

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery

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Frightmare (1974)

Posted on October 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

cover up 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Mother likes eating humans.

After 15 years of being locked up in an asylum Dorothy and Edmund Yates (Sheila Keith, Rupert Davies) are freed, Dorothy was in there for killing 6 people and eating their flesh while Edmund helped cover it up from authorities. Now that they are deemed sane they are free to start their lives over. Jackie (Deborah Fairfax) is their oldest daughter and she secretly visits them on the side, but their youngest daughter Debbie (Kim Butcher) was just an infant when they were put away and does not know that they are out. Jackie tries to keep their parents past from her, but this proves difficult when Dorothy starts killing again and Debbie begins showing the same homicidal traits.

On the technical end this British made horror isn’t too bad. Director Pete Walker makes the most of his limited budget by keeping the story moving and never allowing it to get bogged down with endless dialogue. There is a surprising amount of gore that looks relatively realistic and the recent Kino Lorber Blu-ray transfer is excellent with sharp color and no graininess.

However, it’s not scary at all. Yes, the subject matter is a bit unsettling, but there are no shocks or surprises and no atmosphere or tension either. The twist ending might’ve been effective had the script not telegraphed it, so by the time that it does occur it’s a letdown since the viewer had already been anticipating it for quite a while.

The idea that anyone could ever be considered ‘sane’ after killing and eating 6 people is absurd as mental illness isn’t something that can be ‘cured’ and freeing anyone at any time after committing such a heinous crime is illogical. It made me wonder what test was given to see if Dorothy no longer had cannibalistic urges and had therefore ‘earned’ her freedom. Did they throw a human body in front of her and if she didn’t jump up and bite into it was she then deemed ‘normal’?

Although she doesn’t look anything like the drawing on the film’s promotional poster I did enjoy Keith in the lead especially the way she could quickly go from menacing to child-like. I also liked Butcher, who despite looking like she was way over 15, which was the supposed age of her character is fun as the rebellious teen particularly the scenes where she challenges the authority of her older sister.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: November 6, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 22Minutes

Rated R

Director: Pete Walker

Studio: Miracle

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Slasher/Gore

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