Category Archives: Horror

Julie Darling (1982)

Posted on October 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wanting father to herself.

Julie (Isabelle Mejias) is a possessive daughter with weird interests like having a pet snake in which she enthusiastically feeds it live mice much to the shock of her best friend (Natascha Raybakowski). She also shows an unhealthy affection for her father (Anthony Franciosa) even going as far as fantasizing about making love to him. Because of this she hates her mother (Cindy Girling), so when her mom is attacked one day by the delivery boy (Paul Hubburd) she does not make any attempt to stop it despite having a rifle in her hand. Instead, she watches him crush her mother’s head onto the cement floor, which instantly kills her and then later when he is a part of a line-up at a police station she does not identify him and allows him to go free, but she does this for ulterior reasons. As her father has remarried to Susan (Sybil Danning) causing her jealousy to start all over again and motivating her to ‘hire’ the delivery boy to do what he did to her mother to Susan.

This is a surprisingly inventive story that works for the most part despite the majority of the action taking place in one setting, namely the house, which creates a boring visual. I was a bit taken back why this isn’t better known, or at the very least acquired a small cult following, though the fact that it has very little gore, with the exception of the groin stabbing via a glass bottle, it may have been enough to turn off the horror diehards though if you’re a patient viewer the climax should be rewarding.

Unfortunately, there are some eye-rolling moments as well. The mother’s inability to pick-up on the fact that the delivery guy was coming on to her even after making remarks about her ‘nice figure’, until it was too late didn’t jive with me. I’ve found females are very alert to guys making a pass to them, or ‘flirting’ as it were, so having this woman be completely oblivious, especially when the guy was at the age where you’d expect him to make some moves, proved unrealistic. The father’s relationship with Danning needed better fleshing out. Apparently he was already having a hot-and-heavy- relationship with her without the mother or daughter being aware, which is kind of hard to do, but most of the time the other woman doesn’t want to stay in that position forever and usually pushes the guy to get a divorce, so at the beginning of the movie he shouldn’t have been so conciliatory to the wife’s demands like he is, knowing of course that he already had a ‘spare tire’, and instead used that as an opportunity to request a break-up.

Having Danning move in with the father, and even get married to him, so soon after the wife’s murder should’ve created suspicion with the police chief. Normally the husband is always the initial suspect in these types of investigations especially since the daughter states that she didn’t get a good look at the assailant and could not describe any defining features, which means it could very well have been the husband who did it, or hired someone to do it, in order to get her out of the way and bring his new lover in and the fact that the cops never ever consider this makes them quite inept.

Mejias is badly miscast in the lead. Her moody facial expressions signal right from the start that she’s a psycho nutcase and there’s no character arc, or transition making all of her scenes one-dimensional. What’s worse is that she’s supposedly playing someone who’s 10-to-12, but even with being dressed in clothes for a pre-adolescent she still looks to be at least 16 and in fact was actually 20 at the time of filming. Having an actual age-appropriate child actor in the role with a more angelic face would’ve been far more interesting particularly if she were portrayed as being a ‘good girl’ at first and then had her dark side slowly emerge later. 

Despite all this I still found the twists that occur during the final 30-minutes makes up for the most part the other issues. While it’s remained obscure, I feel it has cult potential. Horror fans tired of the same old formula may enjoy its offbeat nature. 

Alternate Title: Daughter of Death

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: May 21, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Nicholas

Studio: Twin Continental

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Roku Channel

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies from Canada

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The Other (1972)

Posted on October 8, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Twin brother causes havoc.

Niles and Holland (Chris and Martin Udvarnoky) are twin brothers living with their mother (Diana Muldaur) and aunt and uncle (Norma Connolly, Lou Frizzell) on an isolated farm. Niles becomes good friends with Ada (Uta Hagen) a neighbor lady who taps into Niles’ special abilities. She teaches him a technique in which he can separate his mind from his body and then have it harbor in another body be it a person, or animal, or even a bird. Ada though fears Niles is using this ability for evil purposes when those around him begin turning up dead. When his mother is found at the bottom of the stairs unconscious and stuck to a wheelchair the rest of her life afterwards Ada tries to convince Niles to give up the game, but Niles insists it’s really his brother Holland that’s committing the acts of violence and not him, but Ada refuses to believe him as she’s in on a secret that Niles is refusing to accept.

Tom Tryon, who had been an actor throughout the 50’s and 60’s, became frustrated at the quality of roles he’d been offered and wanted to try novel writing. After watching Rosemary’s Baby and seeing the reaction it got he decided to write his own horror story basing it on some of the experiences he had gone through while growing up in a small New England town. It took nine different rewrites before he was able to get it published where it became a best seller and allowed him to quit acting and become an author fulltime. When it was bought into a movie Tryon retained the rights to the story, which allowed him to write the screenplay though he later admitted to not liking the finished product and blaming it on the casting and editing, which had cut out a significant portion of the story, over 25-minutes of it, based on feedback from test audiences.

On the surface the film really doesn’t seem much like a horror movie, or at least what modern audiences have come to expect from horror. There’s no gore, several of the killings aren’t even shown and just implied, there’s also no shocks, or scares and the majority of the plot takes place outside in the sunshine versus the darkness of night. Initially viewers didn’t take to it too well and it lost money at the box office with many feeling that Robert Mulligan, best known for having done To Kill a Mockingbird, was not the right choice for this type of material with the biggest complaint being that the movie was ‘too beautiful’ and made more like a drama, which had been my feeling when I first saw it years ago on TV. However, after viewing it again in its complete form without any commercials I was able to get into it more and if one is patient, it can have many benefits.

It still could’ve been played up more, and I didn’t like the setting at all. It was shot in Murphys and Angel Camp, California even though the setting in the book had been a small town in the east. Originally Mulligan had wanted to shoot it in Connecticut, but since the story took place in the summer and they weren’t able to begin production until the fall he felt the leaves changing color would have a negative effect and thus choose to do it in the west, but topography is all wrong as all you get is very dry, brown, parched earth that doesn’t allow for much atmosphere. The eastern autumn foliage would’ve been to its benefit and made it even creepier as it would’ve reminded one of Halloween.

Despite this there are some good moments like the twin’s trip to the circus where they sneak behind the curtains and view the participants of the freakshow including witnessing a fetus floating in a glass jar of liquid, which is a great foreshadowing. Niles ability to view things outside himself like witnessing the point of view of a crow as it flies around the property is well done too though the best moment comes at the end when a baby is found missing during the night that creates a panic and is quite riveting both emotionally and visually.

The Udvarnoky twins was an unusual choice as they hadn’t been in any movies before, nor did anything films afterwards and only became aware of the roles through their grade school teacher who sent in their headshots upon learning that a film was being shot in the area and searching for twins to star in it. Originally the part was meant for Mark Lester, who could’ve done it easily since neither twin is ever in the same shot, but the brothers do admirably especially Chris, who sadly died at the young age of 49 from kidney disease, who’s able to carry the film throughout and in just about every scene though their constant whispering may eventually become irritating to some. Uta Hagen, who was known for being an acclaimed acting teacher as well as for her stage work, but had never been in a movie before, is splendid and the one element that keeps it both compelling and unnerving. Good work too by Victor French in a small, but pivotal bit and a young John Ritter.

Spoiler Alert!

The story was actually given three different endings. In the book we find that Niles is sitting inside a mental hospital as an adult and describing what happened through flashbacks. In the version broadcast on TV Niles is able to escape the fire set by Ada, but then through voiceover is heard talking to his dead brother where he states that they’ll be ‘taken away’ (most likely an institution) and will be able to ‘play the game’ there. In the film though we see Niles looking out his bedroom window before being called down to dinner revealing that he had escaped detection by the others who did not suspect him of committing the killings and thus was still free to kill again, which is the scariest.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: May 26, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Mulligan

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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Giallo in Venice (1979)

Posted on October 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

giallo2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Investigating a couple’s murder.

Inspector Angelo (Jeff Blynn) heads the investigation of the death of a couple (Gianni Dei, Leonora Fani) who were murdered brutally in broad daylight along the riverside and in full view of the public though only an old man living in a nearby apartment is able to offer any tangible eyewitness testimony. The odd thing is that the killer for some reason saves the woman victim from drowning only to then stab her later once he brings her to shore. To learn more about the couple Angelo speaks with a local prostitute named Marzia (Mariangela Giordana) who confides that Fabio, the male victim, had deep seated sexual perversions that came-out during his marriage to Flavia the female victim. His drive to pursue these dark fantasies, which we see through flashback, and forcing his wife to play into them, she believes in some indirect way is what lead to their deaths.

This film is considered to be the final word in giallo shock cinema that permeated the Italian movie scene all through the 70’s and into the early 80’s. Not only does it contain some remarkably savage deaths, which get captured in explicit detail, but an extraordinary amount of sex, which has made some liken it to a porn film. It was directed by Mario Landi, who got his start in the 60’s making dramas and even spiritual films before moving into the tawdry drive-in fare of the 70’s that featured stories dealing with prostitutes and drugs. It wasn’t until the end of 70’s when he finally ventured his way to horror, but because of his late arrival and because there were so many other bigger names already in the genre he decided in order to draw some attention and have his movie stand-out in a cluttered field by taking things to the most extreme violent and sexual level he could, which in that respect you could say he succeeds valiantly.

Of course this has lead it to be quite controversial even to this day and very hard to find a complete director’s cut. The version currently streaming on Tubi is heavily edited and runs only 1 Hour 15 Minutes, but the full version, which is 1 Hour 39 Minutes, can be obtained through Full Moon Features, which released the DVD with all gore and sex fully intact in 2022 and this review is based on the viewing of that one.

Many commentors on Amazon and IMDb argue whether this is even a horror film as so much is loaded with sex, and a blaring melodic music score that seemed better suited for a blissful romantic flick, that it gets hard to tell. Some will accuse this of being a cheap soft core porn flick, and they have a point while others will insist that because it has a plot to it and mystery that puts it outside of being an adult film as those focus only on the sex and nothing else. Personally I think both sides could be right and this could easily be labeled the first porn horror film.

While the sex is excessive I did find these moments intriguing simply because of Favio, who I suppose could be considered an early example of what we would now call a porn addict who looks at old pictures of perverse sex acts and then forces his wife to play them out, sometimes with him as a participant, or having her do it with strangers. Things become progressively more extreme as that’s the only way he can continue to get-off making these scenes far darker and creepier than the violent ones featuring the killer. In fact this becomes one of those very rare horror films where the killer is quite forgettable and doesn’t stand-out at all while it’s the victims who are memorable.

The film though is most noted for its graphic violence with the highpoint, or low point depending on your point-of-view, being when the killer slices into a naked women’s leg as she’s tied to a kitchen table, which is prolonged and leaves little to the imagination.  While this is certainly gory what I found more disturbing was when the killer burns a man alive and then, once the flames have been stamped out, you see nothing but the victim’s eyes moving back and forth inside his otherwise blackened, charred head.

The story is not as well thought out as the effects. The opening murder happens in the daytime in a public area with the victim’s screaming out loudly as they’re stabbed making it hard to believe it wouldn’t have drawn more attention than just one lonely old man. The police inspector looks like he spent more time on his perfectly blow-dried hair than the case and his constant egg eating and having one always in his hand gets overplayed. The ultimate killer reveal isn’t surprising nor captivating making this one of the weaker giallos case-wise but makes-up for it with the violence if that’s what you’re into.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 31, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Not Rated 

Director: Mario Landi

Studio: Variety Distribution

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

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Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Posted on December 26, 2024 | Leave a comment

silent

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: A killer Santa Claus.

When he’s only 5-years-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) has a very traumatic experience. It starts when he and his family are visiting their grandfather (Will Hare) inside a senior living facility. While his parents and younger brother are temporarily out of the room his grandfather, who usually never says a word, suddenly speaks by warning him about Santa Claus and how he punishes those who’ve been naughty. On the car ride home, his family is attacked by a gunmen dressed as Santa (Charles Dierkop) who has just robbed a liquor store. Both his parents are killed by the man, but Billy manages to escape by running out of the vehicle and hiding behind some bushes. Things now flash forward to the year 1984 where Billy (now played by Robert Brian Wilson) is 18 and still suffering from the dark memories of the event as well as the abusive upbringing inside the orphanage he was sent to that was ruled by a tyrannical Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). Working as a stock boy at a nearby toy store, he gets asked to fill-in as Santa when the man who usually plays him calls-in sick. Playing the part though brings back up all the repressed emotions of what happened years earlier causing him to have a mental breakdown and turning him into a killer. 

This film ended up becoming quite controversial and it all started when producer Scott J. Schiend accepted story submissions from the public to help him decide what movie project he’d like to finance next. One of those submissions was short story written by a recent college grad named Paul Caimi entitled ‘He Sees You When You’re Sleeping’, which involved a killer Santa. Schnied became intrigued by the concept and hired Michael Hickey to write a full-length screenplay around the premise. Once completed the script was shopped around until Tri-Star Pictures decided to pick-it-up and finance it as well as act as its distributor. 

Since there were already two other films that had been released that dealt with a killer Claus including the 1972 horror anthology Tales from the Crypt, and the 1980 slasher You Better Watch Out! no one behind-the-scenes was expecting this one to create much controversy since neither of those had. However, mainly because of an aggressive marketing campaign, it soon caused the ire of many parents who felt based off of the TV-ads that this film would tarnish the image of Santa Claus and make children fear him and thus a movement to have the movie removed from theaters was created. Even Siskel and Ebert got in on it by focusing an entire episode of their show to it and reading out the names of the cast and crew in order to ‘shame’ them for having worked on the production. The movie was soon pulled after having been in theaters for only a week, but the controversy ended up having a Streisand effect as it garnered it more attention than it would’ve otherwise, and it made a hefty profit at the box office and ultimately became a cult hit that spawned 4 sequels as well as a reboot.  

It seems to me that most people that protested the movie didn’t actually watch it because if they had they’d realize that it’s made very clear that the guy doing the killings isn’t really Santa nor does he even look much like him. The kid who plays him doesn’t even bother putting the beard on and his own face is constantly exposed while he does the butchering, so at no point does the viewer ever see him as being anyone other than a troubled teen with severe mental issues. I actually wished the part had been played by Dierkop who portrays the initial Santa during the hold-up and puts far better energy into the role and genuinely looks more like the classic Claus both in his age and physical build. 

The movie puts a lot of effort into showing how Billy became the way he does, but for me that was a problem as it gets too plodding and seems to take forever for the carnage to get going, which for a slasher fan is what you really want to see. Would’ve been better had it started out right away with this guy Santa killing people, maybe even one of the kids who sits on his lap at the store, and with no reason why he was doing it, and then through intermittent flashbacks allow his back story to be revealed versus having the background painfully elaborated from the start, which takes away any mystery, or surprise. There’s also the issue of young Billy having prominent brown eyes, but when he reaches adolescence his eye color suddenly turns to blue. 

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest complaint though is with the Mother Superior. Chauvin plays the part quite well making the nun scarier than the killer and somebody you really love to hate, but she’s never killed off, which is a huge disappointment. Many people who grew up going to a strict Catholic School might’ve enjoyed seeing a disciplinarian nun get hacked and it might’ve been cathartic and thus having it not occur doesn’t give the film a sufficient payoff. 

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 9, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Charles E. Sellier Jr.

Studio: Tri-Star Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Christmas Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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Martin (1977)

Posted on October 31, 2024 | 3 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Teenager craves women’s blood.

Martin (John Amplas) is a teenager, who has dreams of living long ago as a vampire, who travels to live with Tateh (Lincoln Maazel) in the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Tateh is an elderly man that is highly superstitious and immediately suspects Martin of being a vampire and puts up certain ‘repellents’ like a crucifix and garlic as a defense against him though these prove to have no effect. Martin gets a job as a grocery delivery boy where he meets Abbie (Elayne Nadeau) a lonely housewife who makes attempts to seduce him. Martin has some attraction towards her, but still craves blood and uses some syringes that he has to attack female victims by injecting them with a serum that will put them to sleep and allow him to cut their arms and drink their blood. He though internally struggles with his actions and feelings and thus calls a radio station to discuss his quandary with the DJ, which goes out over the air and he soon becomes a local celebrity known at ‘The Count’.

By the time this was ready to be made writer/director George A. Romero was deep in debt and struggling to maintain a living as a filmmaker and considering get out of the business altogether. While he had achieved great success with Night of the Living Dead he’s subsequent films failed to generate any profit and where critically panned. Many of the investors of those projects refused to give him any money to make this one fearing it would be a financial dud forcing him to scrape together a meager $100,000 on his own in order to get it produced while leaning on friends and family members, including Romero himself who plays a priest, to fill-in as cast members. However, for the most part the low budget works in the film’s favor. I liked the grainy, faded color that helped accentuate Martin’s fringe, lonely existence and the on-location shooting done in the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania gives it an earthy, rustic appeal.

The best part though is that it works against the vampire stereotypes and gives the age-old folklore a fresh new perspective. The fact that the expected vampire repellents don’t work on him kept it fun by not devolving into the tired cliches. The mystery too as to whether Martin really was a vampire, or just thought he was and no real explanation as to his ‘memories’, which get shot in black-and-white, as being just that, or instead simply fantasies, kept it intriguing. It also forces the viewer to see things from a different point-of-view as in this case it’s not the kid who thinks he’s vampire that’s the real threat, but more the ‘normal’ people around him. This leads to the movie’s best and most memorable moment where he quietly sneaks into the home of a potential female victim that he thinks is alone only to find to his shock that she’s having a secret affair with another man and the chaos that ensues, where both sides misreading the other, is both humorous and exciting while putting a new spin on how we perceive horror.

The only drawbacks are with Martin’s belief that he’s ‘careful’ during his attacks, so that he’ll ‘never get caught’, which is a bit flawed. For one thing he doesn’t wear a mask, so a witness could easily identify him later and there’s no explanation about the injecting sleep potion and how being a kid with little money he’s able to obtain it, or if it’s something he cooked-up himself and if so what did he use to make-it? It is though fun to watch the effects of it as it doesn’t work immediately and his victims will struggle with him quite a bit before they finally go under, which is another element that puts this above most other horror films as the perpetrator is usually always shown as being confident and fully in-control when attacking those he preys on while here it’s the opposite and many times comes close to the victim getting close to overpowering him, which actually heightens the tension.

Having Abie, a middle-aged woman, essentially come-on to Martin right away and even answers her door half-dressed seemed inauthentic. Maybe it’s a product of a bygone era where teens were still considered overall innocent and only the adults with dirty ulterior motives, but she seemed way too unguarded while believing that because he was shy that made him ‘harmless’. While children that are quiet that can sometimes be considered the case, but with teens who don’t say much and being loners can be perceived as anti-social and thus single women would be more defensive around someone like that instead of less.

I also didn’t care for actor Jon Amplas’ teeth as the front tooth appeared capped with a bright white crown while the ones around it where yellowish though I suppose this worked with the character as he was too poor to afford a decent dentist and some could also read into it that the white crown represented possibly a ‘fang’ of some sort. Overall though it’s quite good and helped resurrect Romero’s career. The surprise ending alone makes it worth it. Definitely one vampire movie that deserves more attention and should be listed as one of the best of its genre.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 27, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R

Director: George A. Romero

Studio: Libra Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Tubi

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies with a train setting, Movies with Nudity, Vampire Movies

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The Nest (1988)

Posted on October 28, 2024 | Leave a comment

nest

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cockroaches invade small town.

Richard (Franc Luz) is the sheriff of a small New England town, who wakes-up one morning to find cockroaches all over his home. He goes to the airport to pick-up Elizabeth (Lisa Langlios) a former girlfriend who’s also the daughter of Elias (Robert Lansing) the town’s mayor. During her visit they become aware of several dog deaths where the animal’s entire bodies are rapidly eaten raw by some sort of insect that leaves only the bloody carcass of their prey behind. Elias calls-in Dr Morgan (Terri Treas) who specializes in insect research. She soon determines that these are not the normal kind of cockroaches, but instead an engineered species created inside a lab for the purpose of eating off the other insects on the island that the town is on and then promptly dying-off after one generation. Unfortunately, the mutated species found a way to survive and continues to reproduce while being immune to the regular forms of pest control causing the mayor to consider making the difficult decision of having the entire town’s populace vacate the island before the roaches completely take it over.

The film was directed by Terence H. Winkless who up until this time was best known for having done the short film Foster’s Release in 1971 about a stalker who terrorizes a babysitter that later inspired The Sitter, Halloween, and When a Stranger Calls. This film though, his first feature length release, lacks the tension and atmosphere of those. The biggest detriment is the setting as it’s too bright and sunny and horror films work much better when things are dark and gloomy, which creates an eerie feeling that this thing doesn’t have. While it’s supposed to take place in New England it’s very clear that it’s instead California, which is so obvious that it’s almost embarrassing to pretend it’s anything else. If the producers didn’t have the money to shoot it on-location, then they should’ve changed the story’s location to California and chucked the pathetic charade.

The type of insect that gets used isn’t all that scary. I’ve lived in Texas for 10 years now and have seen first-hand cockroaches that seem to invade everyone’s homes down here. These roaches are far bigger than what you see in the film, and they move very quick and even have a creepy way that they crawl. Had those types of roaches been used in the movie it might’ve actually been scary, but compromising on the smaller version (apparently because they were more plentiful and easier to trap) does it in. We also don’t get to see all that much of them, there’s a fleeting shot here and there, but mostly it relies on a loud hissing sound that they make, which becomes too constant and eventually quite annoying.

The script makes the mistake of revealing its cards too soon. Had it remained more of a mystery of what was killing the pets it might’ve allowed for more intrigue, but by the second act it’s made clear what’s causing it. Thus, the rest of the movie becomes redundant as we’re shown, over-and-over, the bugs and the noise they make until it gets quite boring and seems to be going nowhere. Seeing the bugs actually bite into the animal’s flesh, which would be difficult to do, but still possible with micro photography, might’ve helped add a memorable image, but just seeing a quick glimpse of a bloody carcass isn’t as impressive. The bugs are also somehow able to devour the flesh of an animal in literally seconds, which even with a genetically engineered breed seems wildly exaggerated.

The script was in desperate need of some sort of a subplot. Possibly having a violent confrontation between the sheriff and mayor, which it kind of teases, but never actually happens, or even having the mayor hold the sheriff hostage and thus preventing him from warning others and then him try to find a way to escape in time could’ve helped make things a lot more intriguing. Also, not giving away that Dr. Morgan was a nut until the very end could’ve allowed for a surprise reveal/twist of which there is none.

Spoiler Alert!

The roaches being able to mutate into whatever species they’ve eaten is when the whole thing jumps-the-shark. I suppose some might be impressed with the special effects of seeing the mayor morph into a giant rodent, which the filmmaker’s were clearly banking-on as being the movies’ ‘shock highlight’, but it’s overreaching. Trying to do some hybrid insect/monster movie doesn’t work when the logic isn’t there, which in this case it definitely wasn’t. While I’ve never seen a bug movie that I’ve totally liked there’s still plenty out there that are better than this one.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 20, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Terence H. Winkless

Studio: Concorde Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Plex, Tubi, Amazon Video

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Wedding Trough (1975)

Posted on October 27, 2024 | 3 comments

wedding

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Man fucks his pig.

Bizarre, controversial film that was first shown at the Perth International Film Festival in Australia where it was immediately met with outrage and walkouts that quickly got it banned from being shown again by the government, a ban of which still stands today. Since then it’s turned-up sporadically a various film festivals throughout the decades, with the last one being in 2008 in Switzerland, but was never released theatrically and was considered an obscurity before finally getting a DVD issue in 2018. The film has no dialogue and shot in black-and-white at an abandoned farm in the outskirts of Belgium. It was directed by Thierry Zeno who had a noted fascination with all things morbid and followed this one up with a documentary on death and decay called Des Morts. This one deals with taboo subjects of zoophilia and coprophagia, which gets shown graphically. Many label this a horror movie for its grim and unrelenting subject matter, and some have even considered it a forerunner to Eraserhead. 

The plot description, which will contain SPOILERS, though in this case I feel is a good thing, so you know exactly what you’re getting into if you attempt to watch it, deals with a lonely farmer, played by Dominique Garny, who also co-wrote the screenplay, who begins to have amorous feelings towards his pet pig. One day he gets naked and has sex with it. Later on, the pig gives birth to three piglets. The man tries to bond with his brood by sleeping with them inside a giant basket, but the piglets prefer the comfort of their mother over him. Feeling that he’s now been ‘abandoned by his children’ it sends him into a rage causing him to kill the piglets by hanging them. This causes a great deal of stress for the mother pig who drowns herself in a nearby pond. The farmer now feels guilty about what he’s done, so he ‘punishes himself’ by concocting a drink made of his feces and urine and warms it inside a black pot before then forcing himself to swallow it.

While the sex scenes are simulated, though still graphic enough, the pooping and eating of it isn’t, which many will find gross enough. The hanging of the piglets though is quite unsettling. I’d like to feel that the ones that are hung were stillborn, since they do appear a bit smaller in size from the ones seen running around, but I’m not completely sure. However, the mother pig does become quite stressed in a very real way when she sees the dead piglets and runs around squealing in a high and frantic pitch, which is very disturbing.

Some have for decades sought this movie out as evidenced by the IMDb comments simply their love of shock cinema and this film’s notorious reputation for being at the top of the list. While it is unequivocally gross it’s also boring and disgusting with the abuse of the animals being the worst thing you’ll take from it. Not recommended.

Alternate Titles: Vase de Noces, The Pig Fucking Movie.

Released: April 11, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 19 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Theirry Zeno

Studio: Zeno Films

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black & White, Exploitation, Foreign Films, Horror, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Don’t Look in the Basement (1973)

Posted on October 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

dontlook

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Murder inside insane asylum.

Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) gets hired by the director of a rural mental health institute, but when she arrives she finds only one nurse there, Dr. Geraldine Masters (Annabelle Weenick), who reluctantly agrees to take-in Charlotte though warning that the institute’s director was killed earlier by one of the patients, but she is determined to carry-on his work in his absence. The hospital is unusual in that it allows the patients to freely walk around with no perimeters as well as acting-out all of their fantasies versus trying to have them reeled-in back to reality. Charlotte though finds her stay there to be stressful as some of the patients try to attack her and she’s not allowed to leave the premises. She begins to wonder if she’s really there to help treat the insane, or instead slowly turned into becoming like one of them.

The film was shot in the summer of 1972 in the very small town of Tehuacana, Texas, which has a population of only 228 people. While the isolation works to some degree, particularly the exterior shots of the old white building that stands-in as the hospital, the interior action takes place in only 4 of the rooms and a hallway and thus there is no visual variety to the shot selections. You start to see the same shots over and over like a repeating loop that ultimately becomes redundant and boring.

The mentally ill patients are not captured in any type of realistic way as they’re characterized as being simpletons perpetually locked in child-like fantasies. In reality those with mental health issues can still be quite intelligent and simply suffering from dangerous delusions, thoughts, or emotional imbalance versus like here where they’re portrayed as being overgrown children lost in make believe and who never got past age 4. What’s worse is the entire thing gets solely focused on them, their silly antics and inane dialogue, making it seem more like a misguided, unfunny comedy than a horror film.

The staff members, or what little of them there are, are poorly fleshed-out as well. Nurse Charlotte immediately becomes spooked by one of the elderly residents on her first night like she’s had absolutely no training on how to handle mentally ill people. At each and every turn she gets more and more thrown off by them like someone who has no educational background in that field and the part could’ve easily just been some pedestrian thrown in there and you’d never know the difference.

The gore is quite minimal and even pathetic. When the doctor gets axed in the back he immediately falls down to the ground dead. I could understand this happening if the ax got him in the head, but instead it cuts into his shoulder, which shouldn’t have been enough to kill him, at least not instantly, and he instead should’ve been screaming out in pain versus just lying there motionless. The ax killings at the end are equally lame showing only small trickles of blood crawling down the victim’s faces when with a blade that big and that sharp their whole heads, if not entire bodies, should’ve been drowning in red.

Spoiler Alert!

The final 15-minutes are slightly creepy, but it’s not enough to make sitting through the rest of it worth it. The ‘big twist’ in which Nurse Masters is revealed to be a mental patient like the rest of them is no surprise as I had been suspecting it the whole time. There’s also no conclusion to what happens to the main character Charlotte, we see her escape outside into the rain, but not what she does after that. Does she go to the police and report what happens, or does she get committed since it’s intimated earlier that she may be crazy too, or does she just get lost in the wilderness surrounding the place and die? Nothing gets answered on this, but really should’ve.

In 2014 the director’s son, Tony Brownrigg, rebooted the franchise by doing a sequel, which was filmed at the same location as this one with one of the cast members, Camilla Carr, who was the only one still living, returning to play a part, but as a different character from the first one.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: May 16, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: S.F. Brownrigg

Studio: Hallmark Releasing Corporation

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2), Plex, Pluto, Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity

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Monkey Shines (1988)

Posted on October 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

monkey

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Chimp terrorizes paralyzed man.

Allan (Jason Beghe) becomes paralyzed after getting hit by a truck one morning while jogging. Since he’s unable to get along with his live-in nurse, Maryanne (Christine Forrest), or his meddling mother (Joyce Van Patten), his friend Geoffrey (John Pankow) suggests he use a monkey specifically trained to help handicapped patients. Initially Allan likes the monkey, whom he names Ella, as he’s able to do a lot of tasks that helps Allan with the situation that he’s in. However, Geoffrey fails to mention that Ella is no ordinary monkey as she’s been injected with human brain serum in an effort to boost her intelligence. He’s hoping that having the chimp interact with a human will prove that his research studies are a success and allow his department to receive some desperately needed funding. Things though start to take a terrifying turn as the monkey falls-in-love with Allan and fights-off anyone she considers a potential rival including Melanie (Kate McNeil), a beautiful young lady who had helped train Ella for this project. Ella also begins carrying-out Allan’s vengeful fantasies and shows an ability to read Allan’s mind and vice-versa.

The film is based on the 1983 novel of the same name written by Michael Stewart. The script follows the story relatively closely with the biggest difference being the setting where in the book it takes place in England and in the movie it’s in Pittsburgh. While the concept is intriguing, I kept watching just waiting to see how it would turn-out, it doesn’t fully work as a horror movie. Having to watch Allan’s difficulty in adjusting to being fully paralyzed, and even his attempted suicide, was horrifying enough and bringing the monkey in, actually alleviated the tension instead of heightening it.

Had the monkey started to rebel on his own without the scientific experiment angle would’ve been more frightening because we wouldn’t know what was causing it. Showing this super sleazy scientist injecting the chimp with a mysterious serum telegraphs to the viewer right away that something terrible is going to happen, so there’s no element of surprise as the viewer is already braced for trouble from the get-go versus having them come-in less guarded. The ability for the monkey to supposedly read Allan’s mind, or for him to visualize things from the chimp’s point-of-view, made no sense. The injections were supposed to make the animal smarter, not acquire ESP, and since Allan doesn’t receive the same injections how then are the emotions and visions between the two transferable?

The whole thing becomes too preposterous to be able to take seriously and thus the interest level ultimately wanes. I might’ve actually gone with the monkey being possessed from something and that caused him to become so aggressive, but only when he’s alone with Allan, but with other people he remains well behaved and thus Allan’s protesting that he’s become a ‘bad monkey’ would initially fall on deaf ears. Since Allan is so helpless due to his physical state having a chimp run amok and nobody believe him could be genuinely scary without any of the extra nonsense that the movie throws-in.

The Melanie character doesn’t really gel either. For one thing she’s super, super hot; a cover girl quality, so why doesn’t this babe have every eligible suitor in the area chasing after her? Since she could, based on her looks, get any guy she wanted why then would she settle for one that couldn’t move? I was willing to overlook this though as some people can have unusual tastes in who they fall for, but the sex scene between the two seemed way over-the-top. I’ve read where certain paraplegics can still have an active sex life, but someone who is fully paralyzed like this one it didn’t seem it would possible. I’m not a medical expert, so I don’t want to say for sure it couldn’t happen, but it’s gotta be quite a stretch especially with the stylized way it gets captured looking like something straight out of a music video, which makes the movie come-off as even more ridiculous than it already is.

Spoiler Alert!

It was director George A. Romero’s intention to have Allan remain paralyzed, just like in the book, but Orion Pictures was desperate for a hit, so they insisted on a more positive conclusion. The alternate ending, which can be seen as part of the bonus feature in the 2014 Blu-ray release, has Geoffrey’s superior, Dean Burbage, played by Stephen Root, inject the rest of the monkeys in Geoffrey’s lab with the serum and then eventually having those monkeys take-over the Dean’s mind.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: July 29, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 53 Minutes

Rated R

Director: George A. Romero

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Pluto TV, Roku, 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Intruder (1989)

Posted on October 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

intruder2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer in grocery store.

Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox) and Linda (Renee Estevez) are two cashiers working the night shift at a grocery store. Just before closing Jennifer gets confronted by Craig (David Byrnes) a man she dated briefly who pressures her to get back together. When she refuses he becomes irate prompting Linda to alert the store owners (Dan Hicks, Eugene Robert Glazer). The police are eventually called in, but by then Craig has disappeared yet as the night progresses the night crew begins being stalked by some mysterious person that they can’t see. Eventually they start to turn-up dead having been killed in gruesome and novel ways. Is Craig the one behind it, or is it possibly someone else?

The concept is an interesting one as all the action takes place entirely on the grocery store premises with the majority done inside though there’s a few scenes that happen just outside of it. Scott Speigel, who co-wrote Evil Dead II with Sam Raimi, who appears as one of the store employees, got the idea for the film after working as part of the night crew at a Michigan grocery store and in fact ‘Night Crew’ was the movie’s original title, as well as the short film that was shot before they found funding to make a feature length version, but the distributors felt a more generic horror title would help it sell better. It was shot inside a former grocery store that was now empty in Bell, California where they hired a company to deliver two tons of damaged goods in order to use that to line the shelves.

The film is well directed with a lot of unique camera angles including a shot seen through a wine bottle another one where the point-of-view from inside a telephone looking-up and another showing someone from the outside turning a lock on a door and then having the camera shot rotate in tandem to it. The killings, once they finally get going, are adequately grisly and should suffice for gore fans.

While I enjoyed the store setting and felt they did an admirable job in making it appear like a real grocery market I was put-off with the lighting. All grocery stores that I’ve ever been to always are brightly lit in order to give-off this inviting feel and make people want to come inside. This store however was very dark and shadowy looking like no grocery place I’d ever been to and as a result it hurt the believability. Some may argue that this was the night shift and hence no need for all the lights to be on since only the overnight crew was in it, but it was very shadowy from the beginning even before it had closed and customers were still in it. I also didn’t care for the cameo appearances by Aly Moore and Tom Lester, two men who had been cast members in the old ‘Green Acres’ TV-show. Not sure what the relevance was for having them appear here, but they don’t really add much to the story and their bumbling ways don’t help add any tension and if anything detract from it.

The story moves a bit too slowly to the extent I started to worry if the killings were ever going to get going, or if it all was just one of those gimmicky horror flicks that ultimately isn’t very scary, or gory at all. The tension ebbs quite a bit and it would’ve worked better had the killer had some sort of identity, even if it was just wearing a goofy mask, versus having it be someone we never see. The idea that this killer would be able to single-handedly lift someone into the air simply by grabbing the victim’s hair and then proceed to shove them completely through store shelves, or hang them effortlessly on meat hooks, is absurd and makes the culprit seem more like a supernatural entity instead of the human that he is.

Spoiler Alert!

The ultimate reveal where the killer is exposed as being Bill the store’s co-owner was a bit of a surprise, but his motivations didn’t make sense. I could understand that he was upset about the store going out-of-business and would want to kill his partner for allowing it, but why kill all of the employees? If the idea is to ‘save’ the store this isn’t exactly a good way of going about doing it. His explanation that he simply got ‘carried away’ doesn’t suffice. If he really is just ‘crazy’ then elements of his insane personality should’ve come to the surface long before just that night.

Having Jennifer and her former boyfriend Craig, the only two survivors, get arrested for the crimes does have an ironic twist to it, but then leaving everything as a sort-of cliffhanger isn’t satisfying. The original ending was to have the camera go inside Jennifer’s screaming mouth, as she’s protesting her arrest, and down her throat until it got to her heart, which would then be shown as stop beating, but because it would be too complicated to shoot the idea got scrapped, but it would’ve been a cool final shot for sure.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 27, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes (Unrated Version)

Director: Scott Spiegel

Studio: Empire Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, Full Moon

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Slasher/Gore

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