Category Archives: Horror

Mirrors (1978)

Posted on October 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

mirrors

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Woman haunted by voodoo.

Marianne (Kitty Winn) and Gary ( William Paul Burns) are a newlywed couple who travel to the French Quarter of New Orleans for their honeymoon. Little do they know that a secret group of people, including the owner of the hotel that they’re staying at, have decided to possess Marianne with the spirit of a dead black woman. Soon after arriving Marianne begins having frightening dreams and the reflections of someone else when she looks in the mirror. Strange occurrences happen around her including the deaths of dogs and even her husband. Eventually she gets taken to a psychiatric hospital where Dr. Godard (Peter Donat) listens to her case and agrees to try and help her.

This was the third feature film of director Noel Black. He attained the attention of film critics with his 1965 movie short Skaterdater, which lead to funding for his second project Pretty Poison, which starred Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld and garnered a cult following. Soon after he became highly in-demand, but he made the mistake of deciding it was more important to stay busy in the business than holding out for a good script. He took on directing the notorious Cover Me Babe, which features what may be the most unlikable protagonist in film history, and a movie Black later admitted “should never have been made”. He followed this up with Jennifer on My Mind, which met with equal disdain by both the critics and at the box office. By 1974, when this film was shot, Black was just trying to remain relevant as the studios that initially adored him were now no longer calling. This film was meant to showcase his visual talent, but he and the producers could never get on the same page as to what direction to take the story culminating in a muddled script that goes nowhere.

That’s not to say there aren’t things about this movie that I liked. The music score by Stephen Lawrence is haunting and the on-location shooting of the French Quarter offers a nice ambiance. I liked the point-of-view shots done when Marianne first gets wheeled into the hospital and the scenes inside an abandoned train station are spooky.

The story though lacks focus. The film opens right away with us seeing the notorious voodoo group in action, but it would’ve been more interesting had we not been given this information right away and instead made it more of a mystery for the viewer as to whether she was going insane, like the other characters in the movie think she is, or not. Winn’s performance is good. She’s better known for her part in a much more famous horror movie The Exorcist, where she appeared more youthful while here her hair is cut short and with make-up given a middle-aged demeanor. Her character though is poorly fleshed-out and shows no unique qualities and in that respect she’s quite boring, but as she becomes repeatedly terrorized by the group the viewer softens to her, mostly due to her good acting, and ultimately cares about her fate.

Spoiler Alert!

The story has similar themes with the cult hit Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and had it been better realized could’ve been a minor success, but the ending is too ambiguous. Winn turns to the camera in the final shot and shows a weird expression making us believe, I guess, that she’s been possessed by a spirit, but why was she chosen? There’s many people that come to New Orleans, so why does this group pick her to go through all this and not someone else? What’s the purpose, or end game of the group and what do they hope to achieve? None of this gets answered making the viewer feel afterwards that it was a big pointless waste of time. Black admitted that it didn’t work out right, but blames the fact that it was taken out of his hands and revised in a way that he didn’t approve of. All of this may be true, but in either case it’s best not to come into it with high expectations as you’ll leave gravely disappointed afterwards.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 8, 1978 (Filmed in May of 1974)

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Noel Black

Studio: First American Films

Available: DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with a Hotel setting, Obscure Movies

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Blood Song (1982)

Posted on October 8, 2022 | 2 comments

blood1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Psychic connection with psycho.

Filmed entirely on-location in Coos Bay, Oregon with a script written by Frank Avainca, a former rock singer, and Lenny Montana, a former wrestler. The story centers on Marion (Donna Wilkes) a teenager whose leg got injured years before when her father (Richard Jaeckel) accidentally ran over it while intoxicated, which forces her to wear a brace. It was during surgery while trying to repair it that doctors gave her a transfusion from a very rare blood type. The only one that had this same type was Paul (Frankie Avalon) who had been institutionalized since he was a child after witnessing his father murder his mother and her lover after the father caught them in bed together before then seeing the father kill himself. Paul manages to escape from the institution and while Marion goes on living her life she begins seeing visions of Paul murdering other people. Nobody believes her when she tells them about it. One day she goes walking in the woods and comes face-to-face with Paul as she witnesses him burying one of his latest victims. She is able to run from him at that point, but begins living in terror that he’s now stalking her, which he is.

The only redeeming thing in this cardboard horror is the performance by Wilkes with this being the second of the three horror films that she did during the 80’s. While she was already 22 at the time it was filmed, which was in October of 1980, she still comes across very much like an actual adolescent. She also gives a likable performance making you care about her character and thus more wrapped-up in the story than you might otherwise. I did though take issue with the crippled leg. If you have a person with a noticeable handicap than that needs to come into play. Here though it really doesn’t. She does run with a bit of limp, but still able to get way. If she has a bum leg then running should’ve been completely impossible otherwise what’s the point of introducing the bad leg in the first place? She then would’ve been forced to find another way to get away from him, which in-turn could’ve made the story more creative and the victim’s quandary more unique.

Avalon was a famous teen singer during the late 50’s and early 60’s before graduating to movies, particularly the Beach Party ones. Then in the late 70’s he had a career resurgence with his appearance in the hit film Grease, but by the 80’s he was back to irrelevance, so I have no idea why they thought this former teen heartthrob would make for a good psycho other than the producer apparently seeing him guest star on an episode of ‘Fantasy Island’ and from that gave him the role. His performance though is one-note and having the killer revert to a child-like voice and mannerisms at times, in an effort I guess to show that he has a ‘split personality’, is corny and cliched.

The dream sequences, in which Wilkes supposedly sees things from Avalon’s perspective, isn’t believable because if that were the case then she wouldn’t see the killer’s face, unless of course he were looking in a mirror, which he never does. It would’ve been far more intriguing if the killer’s identity hadn’t been known until the end and thus heightening the tension because everyone she would meet could be the culprit and she and the viewer wouldn’t know. The explanation for the psychic connection with him (the blood transfusion) should’ve been kept a secret until the end as well and thus adding another layer of mystery instead of spelling it all out right away and then plodding to a predictable finish.

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic chase, which takes place inside a saw mill, offers some diversion, but not enough. Having her sent to a mental hospital after she is found by the police, is stupid. Apparently this was because when they searched the lake where Avalon fell into they didn’t find his body, only the body of another one of his victims, the saw mill nightwatchmen, and thus causing them to believe that Wilkes was the killer, but why didn’t they consider the possibility that the real killer might’ve just swam away? Taking a murder suspect to jail first is realistic and then once they’ve been examined by a court appointed psychiatrist would they possibly be turned over to mental facility versus having them immediately taken there like it gets done here.

The final twist, where Avalon dresses up as a Dr. at the mental hospital in order to get into Wilkes’ room, I figured out the moment they showed someone wearing a white Dr’s jacket, but not revealing his face, making the ‘big surprise ending’ no surprise at all. It’s also a cop-out because we never find out if he killer gets caught. They should’ve just continued the chase inside the hospital and culminating in a final climactic showdown between the killer and victim instead of ending it with all sorts of loose ends.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 1, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alan J. Levi

Studio: Summa Vista Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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Schizoid (1980)

Posted on October 7, 2022 | 1 comment

schizoid1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killing group therapy members.

Julie (Marinna Hill) is an advice columnist who after going through a recent divorce begins attending group therapy sessions run by Dr. Pieter Fales inside his home. The Dr. soon falls for Julie and the two form a romantic relationship much to the dismay of both Alison (Donna Wilkes), the Dr.’s teenage daughter whom he live with, and Julie’s volatile ex-husband Doug (Craig Wasson). It’s also around this time that Julie begins receiving anonymous letters threatening to kill her. When she goes to the police they dismiss it as harmless, but then members of her therapy group begin turning-up dead.

This was yet another product of the notorious Cannon Group studio whose output was highly variable. This production proved to be on the low-end where writer/director David Paulsen was assigned to write a script in 1-month that had to be a horror story, which needed come in under $1 million budget and had to have Klaus Kinski in the cast as he was currently under contract. Paulsen is better known for having done Savage Weekend, which is considered the first slasher movie. While that movie was intended to be a murder mystery, but ended up by accident giving birth to a whole new genre this one worked in reverse as the intent was to make a horror film, but the result is a bland murder mystery.

A lot of the problem stems from the murder scenes, which are too brief and too spread out and no imagination given to how they’re pulled-off. Just one stab with the scissors and the victim goes down, which gets old fast. The killer is never seen. Having a mystery as to his identity is fine, but he still needs to be wearing some sort of mask, or frightening get-up that allows him to be memorable. Having him just be a shadowy figure that’s seen in only brief snippets does not build tension. The group therapy scenes get botched too. The topics discussed could easily be done in polite company over dinner and nothing close to any actual psychological issues making these moments as boring as the killings.

Klaus Kinski is one of the few things that keep it diverting. While he alienated many a director he worked with and wasn’t exactly loved by even his own family members he’s still with his unique facial features a fascinating actor to watch. Having him play a psychiatrist when he was known in real-life to be rather crazy and erratic is inspired casting and he manages to pull-off the good guy role in successful fashion though his presence didn’t come without controversy. Flo Lawrence, who gets billed as Flo Gerish, stated that during a scene where he makes-out with her he touched her in private areas that was not called for in the script and her look of shock and discomfort in the moment is genuine.

Wilkes is equally magnetic and you get to see her fully nude near the beginning and she looks great. She easily steals every scene that she’s in and should’ve been made the star while the cardboard Hill, who gives a flatlined performance, dumped. I was impressed too with the way she was able to hold her own in the scenes that she did with Klauski as he was known to be notoriously difficult with his co-stars. In his autobiography ‘Kinski Uncut’ he alleges that the two had an affair though Wilkes has never confirmed this and while she has a fan page on Facebook this is one movie that she rarely ever mentions.

Spoiler Alert!

While the film remains moderately watchable the end reveal of the killer, which turns out to be Wasson, was a big disappointment. Normally I can start to figure out who the killer is near the end and in some rare cases I can be completely surprised, but I knew the second Wasson’s character gets introduced that he was clearly the bad guy. There is a point in the film where a detective, who’s speaking with Hill, picks up some scissors that she has on a book shelf in her office, making me believe that she might actually be the culprit. Had that been the case this might’ve gotten a few more props it also would’ve helped explain the film’s title as she’d be exposed as having a dual personality, but as it is the title really doesn’t have anything to do with the story.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: September 15, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: David Paulsen

Studio: The Cannon Group

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

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Mansion of the Doomed (1976)

Posted on October 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

mansion

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Gouging eyes for daughter.

Dr. Leonard Chaney (Richard Basehart) is a man tormented with guilt. He was the one driving the car the day he got into an accident that caused his daughter Nancy (Trish Stewart), who was a passenger in the vehicle, to lose her sight. Since he already had a background in eye research he begins working on finding ways to restore her vision. He finally comes upon the idea of transferring the eyes from a person with sight to hers. He chooses her boyfriend Dan (Lance Henrikson), who is also a doctor, as his guinea pig. At first the surgery is a success, but then later Nancy again goes blind. Chaney becomes even more determined to find a cure and begins kidnapping more people for his eye harvesting. Once the victims have their eyes removed he does not kill them, but instead keeps them prisoner in a cage in the basement of his mansion where his nurse and cohort, Katherine (Gloria Grahame), feeds them while also sending them electrical shocks through the metal bars of the cage just in case they try to get out-of-line.

The was the first feature length film to be produced by Charles Band, who has become known has a B-horror movie maestro. He had just gotten done producing the short Last Foxtrot in Burbank, which was virtually a shot-for-shot spoof of the Last Tango in Paris, which won him enough attention and accolades that it allowed him to get funding for this project. The star of that film Michael Pataki was commissioned to direct this one and Frank Ray Perilli, another B-actor who helped write the script for the first one, was assigned writing the screenplay here. Although the story is quite ghoulish the special effects are decent and the microscopic close-ups of eyes being poked at while in surgery will effectively make many quite squeamish.

Unlike other low budgets horrors the acting is excellent. Basehart, who was a one time considered an up-and-coming leading man but was clearly in a career decline by this point is still able to drive the story. I liked the way his character is conflicted and feels through his guilt that he’s doing the ‘right thing’ even when he isn’t, which made him a far more interesting villain than just the one-dimensional evil one. Gloria Grahame, another actor who had success, and even an Academy Award, decades earlier before plummeting into B-movie hell, isn’t as strong and her paralyzed upper lip, the unfortunate effect of too much cosmetic surgery, I found a bit annoying when she spoke, but fortunately she isn’t seen doing that too often. Henriksen is great as a caged prisoner who refuses to go down without a fight, but Vic Tayback, who had appeared with Grahame just a few years earlier in another horror flick, Blood and Lace, gets stuck with an extremely small role, as a police sergeant, which has very little screen time.

The script is a bit one-note and the second act has a redundant quality as we see one eye surgery after another. The victims become a bit too easy to subdue as well. One scene has two angry men, played by JoJo D’Amore and Al Ferrara, who chase Chaney into his home after he crashes into their car. All the Dr. does to ‘make it right’ is hand them a check for $1,000, but the men accept this offer too quickly. How would they know the check wouldn’t bounce, or that Chaney would stop payment on it before they tried to cash it? Other segments have him kidnapping a hitchhiker (Katherine Stewart) and a real-estate agent (Donna Andressen), but it’s never shown how exactly he’s able to overpower them. This was a short guy who was aging (already in his 60’s) and not too big, so he wouldn’t have necessarily had the upper-hand on these other women who were much younger and more agile, so playing-out the struggles he has with them should’ve been shown.

The blinded victims locked in a dungeon is what helps this film stand apart. Granted there are logistical issues that never get explained like how do all these people crammed into a small space pee and poop? Do they just all do it in the small cage and if so how and who scoops it out? Other than that though the make-up effects where their faces are shown with empty eye sockets is genuinely horrifying and realistic. Their efforts at trying to escape are both gripping and exciting.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 1, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Pataki

Studio: Charles Band Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror

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One Dark Night (1982)

Posted on October 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

one2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Overnight in a mausoleum.

Julie (Meg Tilly) is a high school student hoping to join a snotty clique called The Sisters, which is lead by Carol (Robin Evans). Carol is unhappy that Julie is dating her former boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels), so she decides to make things tough for her by insisting that to become a member of the clique she must spend the night in a mausoleum. Julie is hesitant at first, but eventually agrees. Carol and another member of The Sisters, Kitty (Leslie Speights), return late at night after dropping Julie off at the mausoleum entrance. The two hope to scare Julie and make her think that the place is haunted, but little do they know that the body of renowned occultist Karl Raymar is buried there and his psychic powers bring the dead bodies back to life that terrorize all three.

It’s always tough to start-out the annual Horrorween festival by watching a stinker, but unfortunately this thing really clunks, which a shame as it begins decently. I like how the paramedics come into the room to haul away the dead bodies and see all sorts of bizarre things in the room like silverware smashed into the walls, which is creepy. The tracking shot done inside the mausoleum, the interiors were done at The Abby of the Psalm Mausoleum and the exteriors shot at The Hollywood Cathedral Mausoleum, are cool and help give off an eclectic energy. Unfortunately everything inside the mausoleum is painted white, which makes the place, despite the coffins, too bright and inviting. It doesn’t help either that the only part of the place we see is the main corridor, which visually becomes boring.

Tilly, who retired from acting in 1995 to raise her kids and write novels and who now runs a YouTube channel called Meg’s Tea Time, is a wonderful actress whose performance in Agnes of God I’ll never forget and she’s quite likable here too. The problem is that the story doesn’t focus on her enough. She’s the only cast member with actual appeal and we need to see her battling the evil powers not the two snotty sorority sisters whose acting abilities are not up to Meg’s. I didn’t like how the character of Olivia (Melissa Newman), the daughter of the occultist Raymar, comes-in at the end either. Meg is the only one that we care for and therefore it should’ve been her sole responsibility to fight Raymar’s powers and no one else’s.

Spoiler Alert!

The thing that really bugged me though is that there just aren’t enough scares. It goes almost an hour in with virtually no frights to the point I almost started to wonder if there would even be any. Once the special effects do kick-in it’s nothing special. The corpses look like melted wax dummies connected to a track that wheels them forward. The lightning bolts coming-out of the eye sockets of the occultist are cheesy. The ending offers no interesting twist and fizzles out without any proverbial bang.

Director Tom McLoughlin and writer Michael Hawes insist that the problem was that the film was taken out of their hands and they had no control over the final cut. The original ending had Carol and Kitty getting permanently entombed in the crypt while still alive, which could’ve been cool and there was a scene where Tilly’s eyes would cast an eerie glow as she looked back at the camera in order to represent that Raymar’s spirit had been transferred to her body, but for whatever reason this got cut out and what’s left isn’t impressive.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: July 9, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tom McLoughlin

Studio: Liberty International Entertainment

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Freevee, Pluto TV, Tubi, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror

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Horrorween Part 11

Posted on October 2, 2022 | 1 comment

scary

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 10 out of 10

4-Word Review: Scary movies all month.

Since 2012 Scopophilia has been reserving the month of October to exclusively reviewing only horror movies and this year will be no different. While other movie blogs also do this regular readers of this blog will know that we dig a bit deeper, really deep, looking for lost obscurities that other sites have either overlooked, or haven’t heard of. So, buckle up. Besides reviewing some well known favorites we’ll also be looking at lost gems (or non gems), both foreign and domestic, that may pique your interest (or maybe not). It all begins tomorrow, so sleep tight as you’ll probably be too scared to get much for the rest of the month!

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Posted in Horror

The Mutilator (1984)

Posted on October 31, 2021 | Leave a comment

mutilator1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Father harbors a vendetta.

As a child Ed (Trace Cooper) accidentally kills his mother (Pamela Weddle Cooper) while cleaning his dad’s rifle. His father (Jack Chatham) becomes distraught at seeing his wife killed and his relationship with his son is irrevocably destroyed. When Ed (Matt Mittler) grows up to go to college his father asks him to help close up the family’s summer home in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Having nothing better to do, and on fall break, he and his college clique decide to head over to the place where they hope to use it to hang-out and party. Unbeknownst to them is that the father is hiding on the premises planning to kill Ed once he gets there, but his friends get in the way, so he starts killing them off as well one-by-one.

Even for a low budget 80’s slasher this is shockingly cardboard with the only thing going for being the special effects, at least I presume that’s why it’s gotten a cult following as I cannot figure out any other reason. While some of the effects are quite graphic others fall flat. The scene where the father fantasizes about slashing his young son’s throat gets botched because you can clearly see that there’s a blood pack patched onto the child’s neck and underneath some clay-like skin. The drowning of one victim, played by Frances Rains, doesn’t work either. The original idea was to have her killed by a spear gun underwater, which would’ve been better, but they couldn’t get the effect to work, so they simply had the killer swim underwater and reach up with his hands and force her under, but I found it hard to believe that this couple being all alone in this otherwise empty room, and the only two people in a clear water pool wouldn’t be able to detect someone else getting in. The scene would’ve been improved had the viewer seen things from the victim’s boyfriend’s point-of-view, where he thinks she’s still alive and gotten out of the pool on her own while leaving a trail of clothes leading to a vacant shack where he presume she’s awaiting to have a sexual tryst only for the guy to get a shock of his life when he opens up the door of the shack and sees the killer, which would’ve also been a jolt to the audience had the director not already made us aware of what was coming.

The opening flashback scene is gets messed-up too. It’s intended to show the kid accidentally killing the mom and the father getting angry when he come home and sees it, but personally I saw it differently. To me it seemed like the kid intentionally wanted her dead as he looks out the door to make sure she’s standing by the counter in the kitchen and then quietly closes it to clean the gun, which he perfectly aims at the door. When the mom falls to the ground he doesn’t cry or shed a tear and when the father arrives he pours himself a drink almost like he’s relieved that she’s gone. I thought the two had some sort of sick pact that the kid would kill the mom for the father as his birthday present, but stage it to look like an accident. Then years later the twist would be that the kid now grown up would intentionally bring his friends to the beachfront for his father to kill, as the two shared a weird blood lust and enjoyed seeing each other slaughter people, which would’ve been a lot more of interesting twist than what we do get, which is nothing at all.

Like with most of slasher films it starts with a lot talky scenes, but unlike those others, the tension doesn’t grow once the killings start. Instead we only get an intermittent few minutes of killings here-and-there and then it goes back to drawn-out talky moments with no attempt to quicken the pace and thus there’s no tension at all and since we already know who the killer is and what motivates him there’s no mystery or intrigue either. It all adds up to a dud of a movie though those that are simply into gory effects may still like it, but even in that category I’ve seen better.

Alternate Title: Fall Break

Released: October 5, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Buddy Cooper

Studio: Ocean King Releasing

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, AMC+

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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The Chair (1988)

Posted on October 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

chair2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: The prison is haunted.

Dr. Langer (James Coco) is a psychiatrist who decides to reopen an abandoned prison with the help of his assistant, the beautiful young Lisa (Trini Alvarado). The problem is that the warden, Ed (Paul Benedict) is plagued by nightmares of a prisoner uprising that he had to deal with many years earlier, that cost the life of his friend Joe who he abandoned when he tried to go for help. While he lay hidden Joe was dragged by the prisoners to an electric chair and killed. Now, years later, the prison has become haunted by Joe’s spirit, but Dr. Langer refuses to believe this until he comes face-to-face with the ghostly presence forcing him to apologize to the prisoners who he had initially disbelieved, but the prisoners are seething from a lack of a working fan, caused by the ghost, and the heat in their cells has become stifling and motivates them to take out their frustrations on the defenseless Langer.

This film, which was directed by a man better known for his work in industrial films, is an odd mix of quirky comedy and surreal horror. The first act works as a soft satire to the new wave of ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ psychiatry that has its share of mildly amusing moments. James Coco is perfect as a Dr. who seems confident and in-control to his prisoners, but deeply out-of-control when dealing with his personal life. Had the movie centered solely on Coco, a highly talented character actor whose obesity was the only thing that held him back from receiving better roles, it might’ve worked.This though will be turn-off to the regular horror fan who will likely find the broadly comical overtones as the beginning off-putting and even confusing as at times, at least initially, it doesn’t seem like a horror flick at all.

The second-half gets darker and even features a few deaths though it cuts away too quickly, particularly with the scene featuring the guard named Wilson (Mike Starr) who gets electrocuted in gruesome fashion, but no follow-up scenes showing how they removed his mutilated body, or who discovered him. The flashbacks dealing with the uprising don’t happen until 55-minutes in, which is too long of a wait to be introducing something that’s an integral element to the plot. There’s also numerous shots of an image of an eyeball appearing inside a light bulb, which becomes redundant and isn’t scary.

The man who gets electrocuted on the chair, and whose name doesn’t appear in the credits, is seen too little and needed to have a bigger part onscreen. The shift in tone from playful camp to gory effects is jarring and makes the whole thing seem like it was done by amateurs who had no idea what they were doing. It also features a completely impotent ‘hero’, played by Gary McCleery, who gets for some reason trapped in his cell when everyone else is able to escape and thus cannot not stop, or prevent any of the violence that happens, which makes him a completely useless character that had no need being in the story at all. If anything Coco, who’s fun despite the anemic material, should’ve been the protagonist and having him disappear before it’s over was a mistake.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending features Lisa marrying Rick, but this gets explained through a newspaper headline even though movies are a visual medium and thus should’ve been shown. The twist of some real estate developers deciding to turn the place into a senior citizen center, is novel, but having this occur at the beginning would’ve been better, as watching a bunch of old-timers fighting off the ghosts would’ve been far more entertaining than anything else that goes on.

Alternate Title: Hot Seat

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 13, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Waldemar Korzeniowsky

Studio: Angelika Films

Available: VHS, DVD (Import Reg. 0)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Low Budget, Obscure Movies, Offbeat, Prison Flicks

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Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

Posted on October 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

bloodsucking2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Women forced into slavery.

Sardu (Seamus O’Brien) runs an underground theater in the SoHo District of New York where they put on live stage shows that feature naked women tortured and mutilated all to the delight of a paying audience. The members of the public who come to see it believe it’s all an act, but in reality the women are kidnapped and forced to do things against their will through hypnosis. When a theater critic named Creasy Silo (Alan Dellay) refuses to write a positive review about the place in his newspaper Sardu summons his dwarf assistant Ralphus (Luis De Jesus) to kidnap him where he is then chained in the basement of the theater and tortured like the others. Sardu also has famous ballet dance Natasha (Viju Krem) kidnapped where she eventually, through the power  of hypnosis, puts on a perverse dance, but Natasha’s boyfriend Tom (Niles McMaster) doesn’t believe she’s doing it willingly, so he calls on police detective John Tucci (Dan Fauci) to investigate. The problem is that Tucci is corrupt and secretly agrees to do nothing about Sardu’s crimes as long as he gets bribe money. 

Out of all of the exploitative films that came out during the 70’s this one still holds the top prize of being the most notorious and rightly so, as what it shows went far beyond many other provocative films of that decade that promised sensationalism, but delivered little. This one definitely delivers to the extent that writer/director Joel M. Reed professed to losing many of his longtime friends after they watched it. While intended as a dark comedy, a very dark one, how much one enjoys will be dependent on how twisted their sense of humor is with some finding it entertaining, even darkly inventive, while others will be downright shocked and appalled. 

The effects are done from a campy perspective and have not aged well though still potent. The two that took me aback a bit was when a young woman, played by Illa Howe, gets put on a guillotine and has her head chopped-off. The severed head then is taken out of the basket it was dropped in and it really does resemble her face and not that of a mannequin’s like you’d expect. The infamous brain sucking scene, which became the inspiration for the film’s title, where a sadistic Dr., played by soap star Ernie Pysher, drills a hole into a women’s head, played by Lynette Sheldon, who has since gone on to become a well renown acting teacher, and then sucks her brains out through a straw is pretty grisly too.

The film was picketed by women’s groups, including women against pornography, outside of theaters that showed it. Many labeled it misogynistic and I’d have to agree as all the women characters have no discernible personality other than jut running around naked while allowing themselves to be tortured, beaten and even mutilated as passive victims with no resistance. The premise explains this is because of ‘hypnosis’, but that pushes that concept far beyond believability making it more like a twisted male fantasy than a movie.

The film has also gained notoriety for the violent deaths of its two stars with O’Brien becoming a homicide victim of a home invasion less than a year after its released while six years later Krem perished from an accidental shooting while on a hunting trip. Personally I found Fauci, who is the founder of The Actor’s Institute and has been the acting coach of such notables as Fisher Stevens and Marisa Tomei, to be the funniest. He plays the caricature of a corrupt cop, but does it in such an amusing way that every time he utters a line it’s highly entertaining.

Special mention must also go to dwarf actor De Jesus, who came to fame 5 years earlier in the porn flick The Anal Dwarf, where he attempted to have sex with a regular sized woman as apparently not every part of his body was small. Here, I found his facial expressions and overall energy to be engaging and had he and Fauci been the stars, playing adversaries, the film would’ve been funnier.

On the technical end the remastered blu-ray has a faded color and a spotty sound, making it look like it was captured on cheap, vastly inferior equipment from the get-go. Of course for those that came to see the explicit sadomasochism these other issues won’t matter.

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Alternate Title: The Incredible Torture Show

Released: November 3, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joel M. Reed

Studio: American Film Distributing Corporation

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Exploitation, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity

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Spasms (1983)

Posted on October 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Giant snake uses telepathy.

Years earlier millionaire philanthropist Jason Kincaid (Oliver Reed) got attacked by a giant serpent snake while on a trip in Micronesia. His brother, who went with him, died from the attack, but Jason survived and in the process began acquiring a telepathic connection to the snake. He pays some poachers to capture it and have it brought to his mansion. He also tries to use the services of Dr. Brasilian (Peter Fonda) who specializes in ESP research to help end the ongoing communication that the snake has with him.While Kincaid’s private lab is being constructed the snake is kept at the university lab run by Brasilian, but the reptile escapes and begins killing anyone it sees.

The film is based on the novel ‘Death Bite’ by Michael Marky and Brent Monahan, who wrote it in hopes of cashing in on the Jaws craze and having it made into a movie. The two were excited when a Canadian production company decided to produce it, but quickly became disillusioned with all the production delays and rewrites. When the original studio went bankrupt and the new one insisted on adding in a supernatural element the two writers to walk-off the set and disown the project.

Despite the film’s checkered history I found the production values to be quite impressive especially for a horror movie. The on-location shooting is varied and authentic, particularly the island setting and the main character played by Reed is less cardboard than in most other scary movies. Unfortunately the pacing is slow and not enough happens. I was expecting more scares and blood, but there really isn’t much of it.

The film’s biggest downfall is that you never get to see the snake. Initially during the attacks everything gets shown from the snake’s point-of-view by having a blue filter put over the camera lens, which doesn’t work because it’s done via a tracking shot making it look like the snake glides through the air instead of slithering like a real one would. Outside of a few seconds of seeing its head pop-up, which looks like a hand puppet, we’re never shown the beast in its entirety. Originally the idea was to use live snakes, which would’ve been great, and a 14-foot Indian Python was brought in, but this was found to be too costly and time-consuming, so it got scrapped. They then tried to use animatronics, but director William Fruet didn’t like the way it looked onscreen, so this was shelved too essentially making this a snake movie, but without any snake.

Despite being reportedly drunk most of the time during the production Reed adds a nice intensity though it made no sense at the end when he begins walking around without a cane even though he had being using one the whole time earlier. The special effects showing the victim’s arms and faces ballooning out after they’re bitten is pretty cool, but the ending is a letdown. It was supposed to feature a violent showdown between Reed and the snake, including having his arm swallowed by the beast, but director Fruet didn’t like the look of the special effects, so these scenes were cut and flashbacks showing things that had happened earlier got thrown-in simply to pad the runtime.

The big lesson here is that if you’re going to make a movie about a giant, monstrous snake then you need to at some point show it. Even if it means spending big on computer effects, or bringing in a real one, the effort has to be made. Trying to do one without actually showing the snake, as the snake here is probably seen a combined 10 seconds and never its full body, and expecting the audience to still go home satisfied afterwards is pretty absurd.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 28, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Fruet

Studio: Pan-Canadian Film Distributors

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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