Category Archives: Horror

Horror High (1973)

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

horror1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bullied teen gets revenge.

Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi) is a geeky teen tormented by the jocks and teachers and who’s only solace is his pet guinea pig that he keeps in a cage at his school’s science lab. However, the cat owned by the school’s janitor Mr. Griggs (Jeff Alexander) keeps trying to get its paws on the rodent and Vernon is forced to constantly have to scare it away, which annoys Griggs as he sees this as harassing his pet. One night Vernon comes to the lab to find that the cat has gotten into the cage and injured the guinea pig while also toppling over a bottle of lab formula. While Vernon is removing the cat Griggs enters and attacks Vernon for what he thinks was intentionally injuring his pet. He also forces Vernon to ingest the spilled liquid, which turns him into a homicidal monster where he then proceeds to kill all those that have wronged him.

Up front this should’ve been a movie that got a bad rating. The film stock, even after blu-ray restoration, is quite grainy and faded with the technical aspects being not much better than a home movie. The script by J.D. Fiegelson, whose best known work is the creepy TV-movie ‘Dark Night of the Scarecrow’, is awkward mix of Willard and ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ that has all the predictable cliches and adds nothing new to the mix. However, I still found myself strangely captivated and never bored even during the slow spots.

Part of why it works is that it’s reenactment of student life is quite accurate. Many movies have attempted to show the high school experience, but many either underplay, or overplay it and rarely get it just right, but this is one hits-the-bullseye. Virtually the entire thing gets filmed inside the school with only a few short scenes done outside of it. Normally I’d consider this problematic as it makes the characters one-dimensional since we only see them in one type of setting, but here it clicks. I’m not sure if the lack of variety for the settings was intentional, or because of economic restraints as this was clearly done on a shoestring, but like with Heathers, it symbolizes how with teens the high school is their entire world and what happens outside of is ignored and not considered important.

The special effects are surprisingly gory and this film initially suffered an X-rating because of it. While there are a few jump cuts particularly with Vernon’s attack on Griggs, the killings look overall realistic and quite bloody though it seemed strange to have classes continue with students attending them like everything is normal even as the murders of the faculty mount and become more grizzly. Today classes would be halted, grief counselors sent in, as students immediately removed by their panicked parents. The only thing on the effects end that isn’t impressive is when Vernon turns into the monster where we never see his face, which remains shadowy and may seem like a cop-out to some, but in some way makes it scarier because the viewer is required to use their imagination to fill-in how he may look when in the monster form.

The type of victims are unique too as it isn’t just spoiled, good-looking teens that get offed like in so many other slashers. Here, it’s older teachers as in the case of Mrs. Grindstaff, which is played by Joye Hash, who was apparently only in her early 40’s at the time, but looks much more like she was in her 60’s and even pushing 70. Muscular Dallas Cowboys great John Niland, who plays the gym coach and also another of the victims, also goes against type, as very rarely are big, tough guys a part of the body count and he gets just as frightened and just as severely hacked-up, as if he were a blonde, bikini-clad young women.

Pat Cardi, who was a famous child actor on TV-shows during the 60’s including in the classic episode of The Fugitive’ series entitled ‘In a Plain Brown Wrapper’ which was one of the first shows ever in TV history to advocate for gun safety, is excellent and looking effectively scrawny. This marked his very last acting performance to date as he left the business and went on to create MovieFone an app that lists movie information and showtimes. Austin Stoker also gives an energetic performance as the police investigator and it’s great seeing an African American playing a prominent role in what was otherwise an all white cast. The men who made-up his police staff were players from the Dallas Cowboys squad including future hall of famer Craig Morton.

While the film doesn’t offer anything new it does successfully deliver-the-goods on a horror level, which will most likely be enjoyed by gorehounds into B-slashers.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 20, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Larry N. Stouffer

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in Texas, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

The Grapes of Death (1978)

Posted on October 26, 2022 | Leave a comment

grapes

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Zombies created by pesticide.

The film opens with a shot of immigrants spraying grapes with a pesticide in a vineyard owned and run by Michel (Michel Herval). One of the men (Francois Pasal) complains of a pain on the side of his neck, but Michel insists he keep working and quit complaining. The film then cuts to two women riding inside a train car, one of them is Elisabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) who’s the fiancee to Michel and coming to visit him. Once the train stops the man from the vineyards complaining of the pain walks onboard and proceeds to kill Brigitte (Evelyne Thomas) who was inside the train bathroom. He then takes a seat in the train car that Elisabeth is in, but once she notices the growing tumor on the side of his neck and then the dead body of her friend she runs screaming off the train. She then finds herself all alone in deserted town where everyone has the same type of tumors growing on their faces and all seem intent on trying to kill her.

This was the first mainstream horror film directed by Jean Rollin and credited as being the first gore film ever to be made in France. Rollin had made several experimental vampire flicks in the early part of the decade, but they had failed to catch-on and lost him a lot of money, which forced him into directing porn movies under the pseudonym of Michel Gentil. By the late 70’s he had made enough money with those that he was ready to jump back into doing another feature film, which for a zombie story is unique as the zombie’s here are fully conscious and well aware of what’s happening to them and kill out of a sense of rage. The film is also, for a horror movie, very quiet lacking the traditional pounding music score and instead has extended moments of near silence especially during the town scenes, which helps accentuate the creepiness.

Rollin hired an Italian production company to do the special effects, which are quite impressive. Normally I’m on here complaining how fake the effects look in most other low budget horrors, but here I was amazed with how realistic they were. The scene where a woman gets stabbed with a pitchfork while lying on a table and then continues to breath with it still in her really looks like the blades went right through her body. Another scene dealing with the decapitation of a nude woman (Mirella Rancelot) and then having one of the zombies carry the head around is one of the most graphic of its type. I did have some issues with the tumor make-up. On the train car where Elisabeth watches it grow on the side of the man’s head was cool, but on the people in the town it starts to look like smeared pizza and I wanted to see a shot of someone that had it all over their face instead just on a little part of it.

While Rollin stated that he admired the acting of his leading lady I felt she was the weakest link. Her fearful expressions and screams are great, but her performance otherwise is one-note. Part of what made Night of the Living Dead so great was the contrasting personalities of the main characters and I felt there needed to be that here. Having the two men (Felix Marten, Serge Marquand) enter near the end of the second act to help Elisabeth fight of the zombies is a great addition, but I had wished they came in sooner. I also didn’t like the way Elisabeth conveniently finds a gun inside the car she has just stolen, which she is able to use in the nick-of-time to shoot the zombies, but what are the odds? The gun should’ve been introduced earlier, perhaps as something she brought along with her at the beginning for her trip, and not just thrown-in haphazardly.

The twist at the end is not satisfying leaving the viewer feeling down and depressed when it’s over when a robust showdown was needed. I felt too that the reason for why the people were turning into zombies, which was the pesticide, should’ve been kept a mystery until the very end. Instead of opening it with the men spraying we should’ve seen the townsfolk going about their day in a normal fashion, which would’ve made a striking contrast to when Elisabeth gets there and they’re all crazy. Maybe a shot of a man spraying in the background behind the people talking could’ve been done as a little hint, or clue, but as it gets done here it’s too obvious when a subtle approach was needed.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 5, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Jean Rollin

Studio: Rush Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, French Films, Horror, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore, Zombie Movies

Tagged , , , ,

Evil Town (1987)

Posted on October 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

evil1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Old people kidnap travelers.

Chris and Julie (James Keach, Michele Marsh) along with another couple (Robert Walker Jr., Doria Cook-Nelson) are traveling through rural California from Los Angeles when they begin to have car trouble and stop-off at a rundown gas station in a small town. Earl (E.J. Andre), the old man who runs the station, inspects the vehicle and tells them it’s a water pump issue that will take at least a day to repair. Since it’s late at night he and his wife Mildred (Lurene Tuttle) offer them their spares room to sleep over in, but the couples decide they’d rather camp-out. However, they become harassed by unknown peepers, so when that car is found to have even more issues the next day and forced to spend yet another night there, they agree to stay at the elderly couple’s home. It is here that they get fed a poison that knocks them-out and they are then taken to a nearby hospital run by Dr. Schaeffer (Dean Jagger) who needs bodies of young people in order to conduct his experiments on the aging process.

This film is a great example of how funding is so crucial to a production and once it runs out there isn’t much else to do. Filming began under the working title ‘God Bless Grandma and Grandpa’ in the fall of 1973 in Mendocino, California and was directed by the talented Curtis Hanson, but money ran out before they could shoot the ending. In 1977 a different production company bought the unfinished footage and tried to market it as a movie under the title Dr. Shagetz, but with no real ending it failed to catch-on and the entire thing fell into obscurity. Then in 1984 another independent studio bought the lost footage and attempted to again redistribute it, but this time by adding in new footage, which they hoped to edit around the old footage in an effort to make it seem like a complete movie and then ultimately released to select theaters on June 2, 1987.

Unfortunately by the time they were ready to shoot the new stuff many of the elderly actors from the original were already dead, or to old at that point to perform. The four younger stars who made-up the two couples had no interest going back to finish shooting a movie the had long ago forgot about. This resulted in new actors getting hired to play both the roles of the protagonists and the bad-guys and while it’s edited in a way to make it seem like the new stars are interacting with the old ones from the lost footage it’s quite clear that they really aren’t and whole thing ultimately comes-off as two bad movies compressed into one really lousy one.

The story idea I liked and has definite similarities with Homebodies that also featured old people as the killers. There are a few good moments like having the actions scenes done in slow-motion and Keach forced to fight-off the old people who attack him by jumping on him one after the other. The scene where he gets surrounded by a group of chanting old folks while trapped in an old, nonoperational car isn’t bad either, but the pacing is slow and takes too long to get going.  The added footage is highly exploitative and basically consists of Playboy Playmate Lynda Wiesmeier running around topless in the night as she tries to avoid two killers.

Jagger, who was clearly at the tail-end of his long career, which at one point featured winning an Academy Award in 1949 for best supporting actor, gives an interesting performance. His shiny bald head along with the shaded glasses he wears gives him a creepy look and the odd speech pattern that he uses here make him seem genuinely menacing. Had the story stayed focused solely on him and had the original production been better funded and retained the first director this thing might’ve had a chance and even cult potential, but the way it is now it’s just a sad curio showing what might’ve been.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 2, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Director: Curtis Hanson (70’s footage), Mardi Rustam (80’s footage)

Rated R

Studio: Trans World Entertainment

Available: Blu-ray

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, 80's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with a rural setting

Tagged , , , , , ,

Deadly Games (1989)

Posted on October 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

game1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kid versus Santa Claus.

Thomas (Alain Lalanne) is a 10-year-old who’s a wiz with computers and technology. Not only has he set various booby traps throughout the large mansion that he lives in with his mother (Brigitte Fossey), but he can fix cars and even drive them. Despite being super smart he still believes in Santa Claus while his friend Pilou (Stephane Legros) tries to convince him that he isn’t real. Thomas goes on the computer in an attempt to communicate with Santa, but instead gets a vagrant (Patrick Floersheim) on the other end pretending to be the jolly red fellow. He gets Thomas to give out his address and also reveal that his mother is a rich corporate CEO. The vagrant goes to his mother’s company and gets a job as a Santa, but is soon fired by her when he slaps a child. In revenge the vagrant, still in his Santa costume, goes to Thomas’ house where he plans to kill him, but Thomas uses his technical ingenuity to set a trap.

The film is an unusual hybrid between playful children’s comedy, a holiday film, and a slasher horror, which only could’ve been made in France where filmmakers aren’t under a repressive studio system that forces all scripts to conform to a cookie-cutter formula and here allows them to deviate between genres. Many have labeled this the original Home Alone and in-fact writer/director Rene Manzor threatened to sue John Hughes, who had directed the other one, insisting that he had essentially remade his film without permission. There are though quite a few differences between the movies to the extent that I didn’t think it was an unauthorized remake at all. If anything it reminded me more of another French classic Le Jout, about a rich kid living in a big place with a wide assortment of toys. This is also the best of the killer Santa movies as You Better Watch Out and Silent Night, Deadly Night took themselves too seriously while this one has a playful edge that manages to be both amusing and tense.

The kid certainly has an engaging quality and his love for his elderly grandfather (Louis Ducreux) is quite endearing, but he’s also just a bit too smart. I was okay with him being keen on the gadgetry, but having him get underneath a car and able to not only fix it, but also drive it was going too far. I wasn’t sure that a 10-year-old could reach the pedals with his feet and still be able to see over the dashboard. Part of what makes horror movies intense is having a victim appear vulnerable, but right away with the kid being so incredibly ingenious it makes the odds stacked against the killer and thus their cat-and-mouse game not as intriguing. I also really couldn’t stand the kid’s mullet haircut.

The home is over-the-top as well. It gets referred to as a mansion, but really seems more like a castle that’s bigger than anything I’ve seen anyone else, even the billionaires and celebrities, reside in. It doesn’t even seem like a real place, but instead, in certain shots, a miniature model and at other points a painting. All the secret rooms gets a bit dizzying including the hidden one that can be entered via an old refrigerator (are they really expecting us to believe that a 10-year-old kid, no matter how smart he is, could build that?). Another moment has Thomas getting trapped inside a life sized maze, but who the hell would take the time and effort to build a maze in their very own home, which again ends up getting too creative for its own good and negates the tension instead of enhancing it.

The Santa character is a boring. Usually horror movies make an effort to give the psycho, whether it’s through flashback or dialogue, some sort-of backstory, but here this guy pops-up without any idea of who he is, where he’s from, or why he’s so crazy. There’s also a few segments where he gets caught in a trap, like when he falls through a trap door and stuck in a net, but no shot showing how he got out of the predicament. Seeing how he gets himself out should’ve been shown each time (it’s shown in a few scenarios, but not all) in order to make the plot seem more reality based and less cartoonish.

Overall, despite the over-direction, it’s still a fun, wild ride that could be enjoyed by the whole family. It does get a bit intense at times, but the quick-thinking kid always seems to be pretty much in-control. Outside of the pet dog getting stabbed none of the other killings are seen and only the feet of the dead bodies are captured on camera to represent their demise, which should make it palatable for most kids to sit through without having nightmares afterwards.

Alternate Titles: 36.15 code Pere Noel, Game Over

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 18, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Rene Manzor

Studio: Deal

Available: DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Christmas Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, French Films, Horror, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , ,

Bloodlust (1976)

Posted on October 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

bloodlust1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Deaf mute craves blood.

A deaf mute, who goes by the nickname Mosquito, (Werner Pochath) works as an accountant during the day, but at night he goes back to his lonely apartment, which is painted all black, and plays with his collection of dolls. He secretly longs for an attractive neighbor girl (Birgit Zamulo), but due to his physical limitations is unable to have a relationship with her. Living with these frustrations as well as the traumatic memories of his father beating him, which directly lead to his loss of hearing and speech, compels him to break into mortuaries at night and drink the blood from the corpses in their coffins. This creates a panic around town about a so-called vampire on-the-loose. When the neighbor girls ends up dying in a tragic accident it drives Mosquito to even darker depths as he then begins killing people and sucking their blood.

While this film has gained a small cult following it really doesn’t seem like all that much to get excited about. It was written and directed by Marijan Vajda, who’s better known as a documentary filmmaker, which is exactly what this comes-off like as the story flounders and the camera more interested in following Mosquito around and seeing what he’ll do versus propelling the plot. The characters are cardboard caricatures with Mosquito’s office co-workers behaving more like cruel adolescents and the neighbor girl seeming like she’s 4 instead of 19. Her accident, where she slips off a roof of a building, should’ve only caused an injury, since it was only 2-stories up instead of an instant death. A far better demise, which would’ve fit-in with its blood theme, would’ve had her perish in a car accident and Mosquito come to seemingly save her, but then when he arrives he instead sucks at the blood from her injuries.

The inside of Mosquito’s apartment doesn’t have enough dolls in it and to make it creepier the room should’ve been lined with shelves of dolls stretching from the ceiling to the floor. The abuse sequence gets equally underplayed as the actor playing the father is clearly softening his kicks at the victim and if anything looks like two guys playfully roughhousing. When Mosquito stabs one of the corpses in the mortuary the body deflates like a tire being slashed and not that a body made of bones. Sucking blood from dead bodies is suspect as well because if they’re put inside a coffin that usually means they’ve been embalmed and the blood drained-out.

Spoiler Alert!

I kept expecting some sort of shocking, horrifying climax to make sitting through the rest of it worth it, but nothing much happens. He does kill two people, a couple sitting in their car making-out, but they die too quickly and not enough blood to look realistic. He also retrieves the dead body of the neighbor girl out of her grave, but then proceeds to basically just kiss and fondle her a bit and that’s it. Even the arrest scene isn’t interesting as the police merely walk-in into Mosquito’s office and put the hand-cuffs on him while he sits at his desk instead of having a big, long chase that could’ve at least given it some excitement.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: November 5, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Marijan Vajda

Studio: Monarex

Available: DVD (Region 2), Amazon Video 

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , ,

Torso (1973)

Posted on October 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

torso2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Strangler stalks college students.

Jane (Suzy Kendall) is a British student attending college in Italy where a rash of grisly murders amongst the female coeds is keeping everybody on edge. The killer’s modus operandi is a red and black scarf that he uses to strangle his victims. Jane’s friend Dani (Tina Aumont) fears that the maniac may be Stefano (Roberto Bisacco) a young man who’s been harassing her for a date and won’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer. To get away from the terror Jane and her girlfriends decide to go to a villa in the countryside, but find that the killer strikes again, in their home, and with Jane hobbled with a sprained ankle, she’s unable to get away and must use her creative wits to escape.

Horror director Eli Roth has hailed this as being his favorite giallo and a major influence to his Hostel movies, but in retrospect it doesn’t have all that much to distinguish it. Despite its lurid title the emphasis is more on the mystery featuring a cast of lonely men who seem to lack quality social skills to go out with women and instead long for them from afar while also harboring dark violent sexual fantasies of what they’d like to do to them if they could, making this more than anything a forerunner to what’s become known as incels (involuntary celibate) today.

Director Sergio Martino captures Perugia, Italy and its many old and scary looking buildings nicely. The build-up to the murders where the victims find themselves alone in a dark,desolate area of the city, or in one instance an isolated forest, are some of the film’s best moments and could’ve been played-up more.

The deaths themselves though are uninteresting. The average time for a person to die from strangulation is 3 minutes and up to 7 to 14 seconds before they’ll pass-out, but the victim here falls over dead after the flimsy scarf is put around her neck for only 3-seconds, which all looks quite fake. The female victims never, ever fight back and just stand, or lie still and scream loudly, but do nothing else. Police will usually look for scratches on suspects as a sign that the victim fought for their life and there will be defensive wounds on the victim’s arms and hands too, so for the victims here not to attempt any physical defense looks rather pathetic. Some may say that back in this era it was considered more ‘tasteful’ to have the killing get over with quickly and watching someone try to fight-off the attacker would be prolonging it too much, but I wondered if this was also an attempt to feed-in to the male fantasy where once a man decides to make his move the females are virtually ‘helpless’ and must just passively accept their fate.

The special effects are threadbare as well. The close-ups of the knife cutting into the victim’s body has a lighter tone of skin color than the full-shots of the victim making it quite obvious that the close-ups are that of a mannequin. The scene where a car’s bumper crushes a man’s skull against a wall looks realistic enough, but then a few seconds later it cuts back to a shot of the victim and his skull is perfectly intact with only some blood running out of his nose even though the previous shot made it look like his head had been busted in half.

Spoiler Alert!

The third act in which Suzy Kendall sleeps through the murders of her friends downstairs and then awakens to find herself alone in the house with the killer still present is the only time it actually gets intense. Having her quietly observe him cutting-up her friend’s limbs is genuinely horrifying and watching her try to come-up with creative ways to escape is intriguing, but then having a male doctor swoop-in and fight-off the killer for her was disappointing as this was her story and she needed to be the one to find a way to take down the killer herself.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: January 4, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Sergio Martino

Studio: Interfilm

Available: DVD, Fandor, Tubi

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Cult, Foreign Films, Gay/Lesbian, Horror, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , ,

The Attic (1980)

Posted on October 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

attic1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Attic holds a secret.

Louise (Carrie Snodgress) is a middle-aged librarian who loses her job when she sets the place on fire, which was deemed an accident, but similar to the one set at her father’s (Ray Milland) department store years earlier that forced him to jump out of a second story window and has left him bound to a wheelchair. She now takes care of him in their home, but finds his tyrannical nature to be overbearing. She fantasizes daily about Robert, a man she was set to marry until he disappeared on their wedding day and has never been seen since. To help aid her in her loneliness her friend Emily (Ruth Cox) buys her a pet chimpanzee, which she names Dickie, but her father does not like the animal and the monkey soon disappears just like Robert did 19 years earlier and Louise begins to wonder if there might be a connection.

Ponderously slow film that has very little of a plot. It seems like the ending twist was the starting point and then the rest of the script was created around it, but the story gets stretched thin and not enough going on to keep it interesting. The dream sequences where Louise fantasizes about killing her father has a campy tone making them more funny than scary and the whole thing lacks even mild shocks until the very end, which may be too late for some. It didn’t help matters that writer/director George Edwards was reportedly detached emotionally from the project and would at times walk-off the set forcing cinematographer Gary Graver to take over and in fact it was his close personal friendship that he attained with Snodgress while working on this that lead to her allowing him to use her home for his own horror movie that he directed 3 years later called Trick or Treat. 

This was meant as a sequel to The Killing Kind, which was also directed by Edwards and came out 7 years earlier. The producers of that film though were not thrilled with this script and therefore refused to finance it and it took Edwards several years to find new investors. Once he did they demanded several changes including having the two characters, which had been played by Peter Brocco and Luana Anders in the first one, recast to Milland and Snodgress, who they felt were more famous and could help attract a wider audience. They also insisted that the setting be switched from Los Angeles to Wichita, Kansas a move that was hard on Edwards as he had a fear of flying forcing him to take a train to get there, but he became ill while onboard stranding him halfway and requiring him to take a cab ride the rest of the way, which cost $1,500, or $6,132 in today’s dollars.

The performance by Snodgress is the only thing that’s compelling as she reaches back to her Diary of a Mad Housewife character who’s constantly being ignored and oppressed by the man in her life. In that one it was her husband while here it was the father and her array of tormented emotions is effective, but I couldn’t understand why this otherwise attractive woman couldn’t find another eligible suitor. Certainly there was other men around and 19 years is a long time and since she was reasonably pretty and didn’t mind casual sex as she hooks-up at one point for a brief encounter with a sailor, so why no other boyfriends? If she was made to look ugly, or suffered from a deformity that caused her to remain isolated and a detraction to other men, that would’ve made it more understandable.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist at the end in which it’s revealed that the father can walk is not as surprising as it could’ve been since the viewer is already shown in a scene earlier of him getting out of his chair when he kills the monkey, and for the simple sake of surprise that scene should’ve been cut. The fact that he didn’t need to be confined to a wheelchair and had a lot of money then puts into question why did he play the ruse to begin with? He didn’t seem to like his daughter, so why play crippled just to keep her around? With his wealth he could’ve easily found another woman that he’d like better, so why not take that route? For that matter why did he kill Louise’s suitor so many years before, which is another big reveal we learn about when she finds the dead body in the attic. If it was because the father had a twisted sexual thing for his daughter and therefore didn’t want any other men in her life then that needed to get alluded too, which the film doesn’t do, which ultimately makes the whole scenario quite empty-headed and pointless.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 19, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: George Edwards

Studio: Atlantic Releasing Corporation

Available: DVD

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Mystery

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Mask of Murder (1988)

Posted on October 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

mask1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: A copycat psycho killer.

Chief Superintendent Jonathan Rich (Christopher Lee) and Police Chief Bob McLaine (Rod Taylor) surround an abandoned home where a killer, who has sliced the throats of several women in the town, is hiding-out. When the killer makes an attempt to escape he shoots and injures the superintendent forcing Bob to return fire and kill the fleeing suspect. Everyone in the town believes that with the bad guy now dead the killings will stop, but instead they continue. Could there be a copycat killer, or is it someone on the police force who’s studied the killer’s methods and is now playing them-out?

A very odd mix that seems at times to being a wanna-be slasher film and at other points a detective thriller and even a psychological study, but on all three levels it fails. The killings lack inspiration and no effort is made for build-up, tension, or atmosphere. They’re captured in a routine way and the special effects are unconvincing. Instead of looking like the victim’s throat is getting slashed it appears more like a streak of lipstick, or bright red nail polish.

The setting is a fictitious Canadian town, but was clearly shot in Sweden, as all the cars have Swedish license plates and the vehicles are much smaller than what you’d find in the North America at that time. The ambulances have a different sound to their sirens and there’s even business signs seen in Swedish. Having Valerie Perrine, who plays Taylor’s wife, go off to Bermuda with her lover Ray (Sam Cook) looks quite fake as we never see any palm trees, or beaches making it seem more like it was shot in a hotel room in Sweden.

Lee gives a solid performance, but he disappears for long periods and only comes back near the end. Despite being several years younger, Taylor, with his very worn, lined face, ends up looking much older. His presence is dour and his inner angst that comes out every once in awhile is neither riveting or intense. Taylor doesn’t carry the movie like a good leading actor should, but instead drags it down. Perrine for her part, isn’t in it long enough to make much of a difference though she does appear nude from the back.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist in which Lee realizes Taylor is the killer doesn’t come-off as any shocking surprise since the film leads us to this conclusion from the very beginning and therefore once it gets revealed it’s more ho-hum than anything. Having Taylor shoot his wife’s lover by tricking him into wearing the mask and thus allow himself to be killed by Taylor in an attempt to make it seem like he had ‘the real killer’ when really it was just a way for him to get rid of a rival for his wife’s affections was too easy of a way out. Most likely there would’ve been some overlooked loopholes in his scheme that would’ve eventually gotten him arrested, so watching him proudly walk away in the snow as the credit’s role doesn’t gel and more a flimsy ending that leaves open too many loose ends.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 1, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Arne Mattsson

Studio: Master Film Production

Available: DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Police Drama

Tagged , , , , ,

The Orphan (1979)

Posted on October 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

orphan

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Oppressive aunt dominates kid.

David (Dan Owens) is a child of around 10 growing-up in the 1920’s who witnesses his mother (Joanna Miles) die a violent death and then later has to deal with his father’s untimely death as well.  His Aunt Martha (Peggy Fleury), who was the sister of David’s mother and who also had a secret affair with his father (Donn Whyte) years before, moves into the home and takes over as his adoptive parent. Since she had no children of her own she doesn’t know how to communicate with kids and instead lays down a lot of rules that David doesn’t like and pushes him into a make-believe world. He spends most of his time in an old backyard chicken coop where he talks to a stuffed monkey that he believes holds power and can make changes in his life for the better particularly when it comes to his aunt.

This film’s biggest claim-to-fame was its original title which was Friday the 13th: The Orphan and the producers of the Friday the 13th movie, which was filming around the same time that this one was released, feared it would get confused with theirs and thus went into negotiations to get the title changed. It was anticipated at that time that this one would do better as it took more of an old-fashioned approach to horror by working-off of atmosphere, imagery, and mood while the other one was an all-out slasher, which was still considered to be a fringe genre that would only attract small, select audience. Instead that one became a huge hit while this one fell into virtual obscurity.

For the most part I though it was an interesting and while not completely successful does have its moments. The pacing is indeed off especially during the first act where nothing much happens and there’s few if any frights, which made me start to wonder if it was even a horror movie at all, but it gets handled well on the technical end and I remained intrigued enough to keep watching. Things did improve by the second act and there’s a few creepy nightmare segments including David’s vision, captured with a fish-eye camera lens, of entering an orphanage, which is visually unnerving and I wondered if possibly writer/director John Ballard was going back to his own childhood experiences and the dark memories that he harbored as these scenes start to seem quite personal.

The acting by the kid is phenomenal. Usually child actors, even if they’re good, aren’t quite up to carrying a movie, but Owens does and I was surprised to find that he’s never appeared in any others as I felt he was talented enough to have a memorable career. He has, with his overbite, a creepy look about him and very much resembles, Ike Eisenmann, another famous child actor from the 70’s. However, I wasn’t sure if finding a kid that gave-off a scary vibe right away was necessarily the right move as the horror might’ve been more effective had he seemed cute and precocious initially, and someone the viewer could like, only to have, as a surprise twist, the dark elements come out later versus telegraphing it from the beginning.

Spoiler Alert!

There are a couple of good murders, but you’re going to have to wait until literally almost the very end to see them. The plot is also heavy-handed as it’s obvious that there’s going to be an ultimate clash between the kid and the aunt and endlessly dragging-it-out to where the viewer knows  where it’s headed, but takes its sweet time to get there, gets a bit frustrating. I also didn’t understand why the story had to take place in the 1920’s as I didn’t think it added anything and could’ve easily been set in the modern day and the attempts to make it seem like a period piece, especially on a low budget, doesn’t completely work.

Also, the plot synopsis in IMDb for this movie is inaccurate. It describes the kid as having ‘horrific headaches’, which he believes ‘make him commit murders’, but in the print I saw, which as supposedly the uncut, extended version there was no talk about headaches, or even observing him having one.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 10, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes (Extended Cut)

Rated R

Director: John Ballard

Studio: Cinema Investments Company

Available: DVD-R (j4hi.com, dvdlady.com)

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Short Stories, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , , ,

Scalpel (1977)

Posted on October 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

scalpel1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Surgeon alters patient’s face.

Dr. Phillip Reynolds (Robert Lansing) is an esteemed plastic surgeon who secretly harbors a dark side. When he sees his daughter Heather (Judith Chapman) making-love to her boyfriend he flies into a rage and kills the boy and then stages it to look like an accident. Heather runs away in terror and is not heard of for quite awhile. In the meantime Phillip’s father-in-law dies and bequeaths his entire fortune of $5 million to Heather, but since she’s nowhere to be found the money remains in escrow until she can come forward to claim it. Later, as Phillip is driving along a city street with his brother-in-law (Arlen Dean Snyder), they come upon a nightclub stripper (also played by Chapman) who has had her face crushed when a bouncer rammed it into a brick wall. Phillip decides to reconstruct the woman’s face to resemble his daughter’s, so she can claim the fortune and the two can split it. Things work smoothly as Philip trains her on all of her daughter’s traits and able to identify member’s of the extended family. Everyone comes to believe she’s the real daughter and the two are able to get their hands on the money only to have the real Heather suddenly reappear.

This movie, amongst IMDb reviewers, gets high marks with most rating it between 7 to even a 10 out of 10. I rate it lower, which I’ll go into, but they’re are things about that I did like. The performance by Lansing is excellent and perfectly conveys a character that seems nice and respectable on the outside, but could turn sinister, sometimes in unexpected ways, all of a sudden. The surgery scenes are realistic and even a bit graphic and the film has a few slick touches including the cinematography by Edward Lachman that nicely captures Georgia’s topography.

The plot has an intriguing premise and there’s no shortage of twists, but the way the stripper character gets handled I had a big problem with. There’s absolutely no backstory as to who this woman is, or why she got into the situation that she did. It doesn’t even seem like a real person, but a transparent entity that conveniently pops-in out-of-nowhere with essentially no past to her. I think the filmmakers were working-off of an old-fashioned belief that a sex workers had ‘no life’ and therefore would be more than happy to walk away from their former existence and take-on a new one without any regret, but this just isn’t true. Sex workers have friends and family and a past just like anyone else and wouldn’t necessarily want to just completely turn their backs on their old connections. The script also doesn’t bother to explain why a bouncer would shove a women’s face into a brick wall as he throws her out of the bar, or what might’ve happened to lead up to that, which to me was a plot hole.

Some may argue that maybe she lost her memory when her head hit the wall. Even if this was possibly the case (it never gets confirmed and in one instance Heather asks the woman about her past and she looks down like she does recall it, but is ashamed of it) it would most likely be temporary amnesia which can happen at times during a traumatic event or accident, but the old memories will usually come trickling back eventually. Either way it would’ve added an intriguing wrinkle to the story, if someone from her past tracked her down and became a part of the plot.

In addition I didn’t feel that Chapman’s acting was so great as she seems to be playing the same person instead of two different individuals. More contrasts needed to be made into the dual character’s personalities other than one can play the piano while the other couldn’t. I didn’t like that both spoke in an extremely distinctive twangy southern accent either. The impostor could’ve put on the affected accent when needed, but in private should’ve spoken in a way that was much different.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending in which the fake Heather takes the inheritance money after signing-off on it and then flying away on a private jet, is a letdown. Her signature would be different than the real Heather’s and during her ‘training’ on how to be like Heather that would’ve most likely been a point they’d overlook. A really cool twist would’ve had her thinking she had gotten away with it only for the jet to land and the police waiting for her as they recognized that the signatures didn’t match, or in her haste she had forgotten and wrote in her real name instead.

There’s another segment, just before the ending, where a hitman, disguised as a policeman, chases the fake Heather through a forest in an attempt to kill her, and he manages to catch-up with her and points a gun in her face, but then the film cuts away. The fake Heather then reappears in the mansion wearing the hitman’s police uniform, but no explanation for how she got away, which should’ve been played-out.

Alternate Title: False Face

Released: January 15, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R (Reissued as PG with erotic nude scenes removed).

Director: John Grissmer

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: Blu-ray, Fandor, Tubi

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in the South

Tagged , , , , ,