Category Archives: Movies with Nudity

Martin (1977)

Posted on October 31, 2024 | 3 comments

martin2

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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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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Creepshow 2 (1987)

Posted on October 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

creepshow2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three stories of terror.

Due to the success of the 1982 installment Stephen King and George Romero got together to write a second script based on three of King’s short stories and directing duties were turned over to Michael Gornick who had been the cinematographer on the first one. The budget was much lower than the first, which hampered the special effects and critical reception though it still made $14 million at the box office and has garnered a cult following amongst contemporary audiences.

The first, which is the weakest, stars George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour, in her last film appearance, as owners of a small-town general store that’s no longer making any profit. An Indian tribe elder (Frank Selsado) gives the couple a bag filled with jewelry as repayment for a debt and then later that night three hooligans lead by the long-haired Sam (Holt McCallany) rob the store and kill the couple. The three think they’ve gotten off scot-free, but then the cigar store Indian that stood in front of the store comes to life and avenges the couple’s deaths by murdering the three boys one-by-one.

This segment takes a while to get going and really doesn’t get interesting until the robbery happens, which should’ve occurred sooner. While the effects of showing the wooden Indian moving around is impressive as it really looks like he’s made of wood and not just somebody in a costume it would’ve been more intriguing had it not given away who the killer was. Simply shown the three being hacked by some mysterious, shadowy figure and then only at the very, very end alluded to it being the Indian.

The second story is better and deals with four college friends (Paul Satterfield, Jeremy Green, Daniel Beer, Page Hannah) going for a swim on a remote lake. They leave their car running and then all dive into the water and swim out onto a wooden raft, but then notice a black, gooey substance that surrounds them. The four feel trapped and when one of the young ladies puts her hand into the water the blob sucks her in and drowns her. The blob then seeps its way through the cracks of the raft and kills another one leaving only two left.

This one is genuinely creepy and I liked how it’s shot under a bright sunny sky making the area appear inviting and no need for anyone to be guarded until it’s too late. The constant shots of the running car sitting on the beach not far from where the swimmers are on the raft, but still unable to get to it, heightens the tension as well as the fact that there’s never any answer to just what this substance is, which in this case accentuates the intrigue. The only thing that I didn’t like is that after being stuck on the raft for an entire day the guy holding the sleeping girl lays her down onto the raft floor, but then uses the opportunity to undress her and admire her breasts, but I’d think with the situation they were in he’d be too exhausted and frightened to think about sex. The ‘twist’ at the end, which shows a No Swimming sign posted in a grove of trees, which the young adults hadn’t spotted, doesn’t totally work because if there’s no swimming in that lake then why would there be a wooden raft in the middle of it and who put it there?

The third story is the best and features a middle-aged woman, played by Lois Chiles, who goes on a drive late one night and accidentally kills a hitchhiker (Tom Wright) when her car goes spinning out-of-control. Instead of offering aid to the man she just drives-off, but then becomes plagued by visions of him constantly reappearing during the rest of her trip making her panic as she attempts to ‘re-kill’ the man, so she can be rid of him once and for all.

Initially this one seemed like a redo of the classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episode that featured actress Inger Stevens who went on a car trip and kept seeing the same hitch-hiker at various intervals on her drive, but this one takes it a step further by having Chiles use her car to literally smash the guy again and again, which gives it a gruesome over-the-top quality that deftly mixes in gore and black humor perfectly.

The film was set to have two other stories, ‘Cat from Hell’ and ‘Pinfall’, but due to budgetary limitations it was decided not to proceed with those and they were never filmed. In the ‘Cat from Hell’ one a hitman gets paid $100,000 to kill a cat that’s supposedly killed three other people. The ‘Pinfall’ one deals with competing bowling teams where the one team kills the other one, by tinkering with the van they ride in, and then the dead team coming back to life as zombies and killing the other team in unique ways by using things only available in a bowling alley, which sounded really cool and it’s a shame this segment wasn’t made as it would’ve been the best of the bunch.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 1, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Gornick

Studio: New World Pictures

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies with Nudity

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Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Posted on October 20, 2024 | 1 comment

fright2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Vampire’s sister stalks teen.

Charley (William Ragsdale) is now in college and having been convinced by his therapist (Ernie Sabella) that the ordeal he went through when he was in high school with his next-door neighbor Jerry Dandridge really wasn’t about a vampire, but instead the man had simply been a serial killer. In order to celebrate his successful ‘conversion’ he takes his new girlfriend Alex (Traci Lind) over to visit Peter (Roddy McDowall) who had been instrumental in helping Charley defeat Jerry. While there Charley looks out a window and sees movers hauling in three giant crates that look similar in size to coffins and he begins to fear the old ordeal is starting all over again. He begins dreaming that beautiful woman named Regine (Julie Carmen) visits him in his apartment one night and bites him on his neck and soon he begins showing odd traits like having to wear dark glasses because he no longer likes the sunlight. After going to a party with Peter where Regine is also in attendance, he becomes convinced that she’s really just a performance artist and no longer fears her until Peter takes out his trusty hand-held mirror and notices that he can’t see her reflection. Once Regine realizes that Peter’s on to her she admits that she really is a vampire and out for revenge over what he and Charley did to Jerry who happened to be her brother.

As sequels go this one isn’t bad though there’s quite a few things that are different from the first one, which is mainly a who slew of new faces. Amanda Bearse, who had figured so prominently as Charley’s original girlfriend is nowhere to be seen as she was working on the TV-show ‘Married With Children’ and not able to reprise her role while Stephen Geoffreys, who played Charley’s friend Ed was busy starring in 976-Evil and thus not available.  Director Tom Holland and Chris Sarandon, who had played Jerry Dandridge in the first, were involved in Child’s Play, and thus unable to commit though purportedly Sarandon did visit the shoot in order to offer emotional support.

Tommy Lee Wallace, who was best known for having directed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a film that was a critical and commercial failure when first released, but has through the years gained a cult following, got tabbed to direct this one and his background doing music videos can be clearly sensed here as it features a lot of quick edits and a moody vibe, which I really liked. Regine and her vampire clan that constantly surround her dress almost like a kitschy 80’s rock glam band, which is silly looking and campy, but also in a weird way creepy. Despite the low budget the special effects are still good particularly the monstrous transformations and the climactic sequence that takes place inside an elevator.

While Sarandon was highly impressive in the first version and there was simply no way that any other actor could’ve topped his performance Carmen is an adequate replacement. Too many times when producers can’t get a certain actor they then go out of their way to find someone similar, but here they wisely took the other route by finding someone who was quite the opposite. Instead of being verbally intimidating like with Jerry she does her stalking through being sexually alluring and the result is just as scary.

It’s also great seeing McDowall return as his presence in the first installment had been quite entertaining and his character here remains just as fun and I felt his hair looked better too. In the original the white in his hair appeared to have been sprayed on similar to how a white Christmas tree would look while in this one it’s a more natural looking gray with the white appearing on the edges, but the top part of his head still having a brownish color. I was though confused about how he was able to afford such a spacious pad in a ritzy apartment building that resembled a castle since in the first film he had been living in a cramped, dingy apartment that he was being evicted from and still working at the same job, so where he found the influx of cash to being able to move-up to a new swanky place is not explained.

The two things though that I didn’t care for was having Charley so easily convinced that what he had seen with his own eyes, Jerry being a vampire, was somehow not real, which made the character come-off as weak, easily influenced, and not reliable and like someone you really didn’t feel like rooting for if they could be brainwashed to that effective a degree. Also, having him slowly start to turn into a vampire wasn’t interesting in the least and having the bite mark continue to bleed even after it was bandaged didn’t make sense. Even if the puncture is created by a vampire the blood should still clot like it would with any other wound and not just turn the victim into a hemophiliac, which is what it kind of started to appear like.

The attempts at humor were misguided and genuinely got into the way of the scares and the whole thing would’ve been more effective had it been played straight. Overall though I felt was an effective follow-up and in certain ways even a bit better than the first. Finding a print of it though may be challenging as it’s never been released onto Blu-ray and the DVD issue, which came-out in 2003, is now out-of-print. It’s also not streamed anywhere. Even on its initial release it was only seen at select theaters for a brief time before falling off into obscurity. The main reason for this is that was produced by a production company run by Joseph Mendez, who while the movie was being filmed, was murdered along with his wife by their two teenage sons, which sent the company into bankruptcy and hampered the film from getting out. It also hurt the production of Part 3, which had already been in the planning stages. Infact both McDowall and Holland had a meeting with Mendez about moving forward with the third installment on the morning of his murder. That meeting though had proved to be a bit contentious, so when McDowall heard about the murder the next day he then immediately called Holland and said: “I didn’t do it, did you?”

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 8, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Studio: New Century/Vista

Available: DVD (out-of-print)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sequels

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Brainwaves (1982)

Posted on October 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

brainwaves

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Transferred brainwaves cause nightmares.

Kaylie (Suzanna Love) is a married mother of a young child living in San Francisco. One day while running out to the grocery store she gets the heel of her shoe caught in a trolley car track and this causes her to get hit by a car and suffer severe brain damage. Dr. Clavius (Tony Curtis) is heading experimental surgery that can transfer brainwaves from one victim to another. Kaylie’s husband Julian (Kier Dullea) agrees to the procedure in an effort to bring his wife back to her former state. Unbeknownst to him the other victim was a woman named Leila (Corinne Wahl) who was murdered in her bathtub by an unknown assailant. When Kaylie receives the brain transfer she begins having nightmares about the murderous incident. They then go on a search to try and unravel the mystery, but inadvertently get the attention of the killer who now begins stalking Kaylie in order to silence her before anymore oppressed memories come to light, which could identify him.

The film was directed by Ulli Lommel with a script that he had co-written with Love, who was also his real-life wife. The two had success a couple of years earlier with The Boogeyman and thus it inspired them to attempt another horror film. The concept is great and could’ve created an excellent plot, but the second-half labors too much in the recovery phase inside the hospital, which losses all the tension. The killer, whom we only see from the back, disappears from the story completely during the middle-half to the point you forget about him only to have him finally return by the third act, but by then it’s too late.

Dullea, as the concerned husband, is excellent even though acting here was a major comedown as he was getting leading man roles in major studio productions back in the 60’s, but now was relegated to low budget horror films though with that said he still makes the most of it. The same unfortunately can’t be stated for Tony Curtis, who only got the role because John Huston, who was the original choice, was too ill. Curtis had been a leading man in the 50’s and 60’s, so having to accept a part in such a minor production where he wasn’t even the star was certainly taxing on his ego and it shows as he appears grouchy and irritable throughout and seems like he wanted to be anywhere else, but in this movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The opening murder is okay though you know once she walks into the bathroom and turns on a portable radio that it’s most likely going to end up in an electrocution, so when it does finally occur it’s no surprise. The trolly car incident is nicely shot as well, but the ‘big reveal’ of who the killer is, which turns out to be non other than the victim’s boyfriend, which is the first person you would’ve suspected and thus is a complete letdown. The film should’ve had a wider array of suspects to choose from and played this part out more. The climactic sequence, done near the Golden Gate Bridge, gets shot in slow motion, which gives the proceedings a really tacky look.

The final twist features the dead body of the killer being wheeled into the doctor’s lab where it will apparently be used as a brain donor to another crash victim is cool, but the film then ends when it should’ve continued on with the psycho now chasing after Kaylie inside whatever body his brainwaves got transferred to. By having writer/director Lommel not take full advantage of the myriad plot twists as it could’ve is what really hurts it making it no wonder that it’s box office proceeds was a disastrous $3,111 out of a budget that had been $2.5 million.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 19. 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ulli Lommel

Studio: Motion Picture Marketing

Available: VHS, DVD-R (out-of-print)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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Psycho III (1986)

Posted on October 15, 2024 | 1 comment

psycho3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Norman gets a girlfriend.

The story begins a month after the one in the second installment ended with police searching for the whereabouts of Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar) whom Norman (Anthony Perkins) killed and now keeps her preserved body in his home and yet curiously the police don’t suspect him. Meanwhile a roving journalist named Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxell) does and she keeps trying to get interviews with Norman in an effort to weed-out the truth while also snooping around his property any chance she gets. Maureen (Diana Scarwid) is a nun who’s lost her faith and thus left the convent and rents a room at the Bates Hotel. She closely resembles Marion Crane, one of Norman’s earlier victims, which sets off his desire to kill again, but when he goes into her room in an attempt to stab her he finds that she’s already slit her wrists and bleeding profusely, which sets off his emotional senses to help her and thus he takes her to the nearest hospital, which in-turn gets her to fall for him and the two begin a romantic relationship once she gets out. Norman also hires a wanna-be music artist named Duane (Jeff Fahey) to help out around the hotel as an assistant manager, but Duane becomes aware of Norman’s mother fixation and tries to use it against him just as an assortment of strange murders reoccur on the premises.

The third installment of the franchise is by far the weakest and it’s no surprise that it didn’t do as well at the box office and pretty much nixed anymore sequels getting released with the Part IV one, which came out 4 years later, being made as a TV-movie instead of a theatrical one. Perkins, who made his directorial debut here, starts things off with some intriguing segues and a good death scene of showing a nun falling off of a high ledge, but the storyline itself is getting quite old. Watching the ‘mother’ committing murders is no longer scary, interesting, or even remotely shocking. The script offers no new intriguing angles and things become quite predictable and boring very quickly.

Perkins gives another fun performance, which is pretty much the only entertaining element of the film, and Scarwid is compelling as a young emotionally fragile woman trying to find her way in a cold, cruel world. Maxwell though as the snooping reporter is unlikable and thus if she is meant to be the protagonist it doesn’t work. Fahey’s character is also a turn-off as his sleazebag persona is too much of a caricature and having him predictable do sleazy things as you’d expect from the start is not interesting at all.

The whole mystery angle has very little teeth and the way the reporter figures out her the clues comes way too easily. For instance she goes to Spool’s old apartment and sees a phone number scrawled out several times on a magazine cover sitting on the coffee table, so she calls it and finds out it’s for the Bates Motel and thus connects that Norman most likely had something to do with her disappearance, but wouldn’t you think the police would’ve searched the apartment before and seen that same number and made the same connection much earlier? Also, what kind of landlord would leave a place intact months later after the former tenant fails to ever come back? Most landlords are in the business to make money and would’ve had the place cleaned-out long ago and rented it to someone new.

The fact that the police don’t ever suspect Norman particularly the town’s sheriff, played by Hugh Gillin, is equally absurd. Cops by their very nature suspect everybody sometimes even when the person is innocent. It’s just part of their job to be suspicious and constantly prepare for the worst, so having a sheriff not even get an inkling that these disappearances could have something to do with Norman, a man with a very hefty and well known homicidal past, is too goofy to make any sense and starts to turn the whole thing especially the scene where a dead corpse sits right in front of him in a ice machine, but he doesn’t spot it, into a misguided campiness that doesn’t work at all.

I didn’t like the whole ‘party scene’ that takes place at the hotel, which occurs when a bunch of drunken football fans decide to stay there. I get that in an effort to be realistic there needed to be some other customers that would stay there for the place to remain open, though you’d think with the hotel’s well-known history most people would be too afraid to. Either way the constant noise, running around and racket that these people put-on takes away from the creepiness and starts to make the thing resemble more of a wild frat party than a horror movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The death by drowning scene is pretty cool, but everything else falls unfortunately flat. The final twist where it’s explained that Spool really wasn’t his mother after all sets the whole narrative back and makes the storyline look like it’s just going in circles and not moving forward with any revealing new information making this third installment feel pointless and like it shouldn’t have even been made. Screenwriter’s Charles Edward Pogue’s original script had Duane being the real killer while the Maureen character would be a psychologist who would come to visit Norman and who would be played by Janet Leigh, who had played Marion Crane in the first film. Her uncanny resemblance to one his earlier victims would then set Norman’s shaky mental state to go spiraling out-of-control, which all seemed like a really cool concept, certainly far better than what we eventually got here, but of course the studio execs considered this idea to be ‘too far out’ and insisted he should reel it back in with a more conventional storyline, which is a real shame.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 2, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Anthony Perkins

Studio: Universal

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)

Posted on October 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

solange

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bearded priest murders schoolgirls.

Enrico (Fabio Testi) is a high school teacher who’s having an affair with Elizabeth (Cristina Galbo) who’s one of his students. While making-out with her on a boat at a park Elizabeth spots a shadowy figure murdering a young girl in a nearby wooded area. The girl turns-out to be one of her classmates, but Enrico convinces her not to tell anyone for fear that it could jeopardize his job. Once the murder gets discovered and reported on the news Enrico goes back to the scene to check for clues only to be photographed by the police who are there doing the investigation. Inspector Barth (Joachim Fuchsberger) spots Enrico in the photo and brings him in for questioning. Enrico denies any knowledge of the killing, but comes under suspicion especially after Elizabeth is later found murdered in her bath tub. Enrico then reconciles with his frigid wife Herta (Karin Baal) in order to have her help him do their own investigation, so they can unmask who the real killer is before the police are able to close in on him.

The film is a unique partnership between a West German production company and an Italian one that was filmed on-location in London. While there are many German actors in the cast the film as a whole is modeled after an Italian giallo and has many of the mystery, gore, and sleaze elements that you’d expect from those. The direction, by Massimo Dallamano, who was a cinematographer of Spaghetti westerns during the 60’s, approaches the material with a visual elegance. The photography is crisp and detailed with some evocative camera work and angles as well as a few graphic shots including the murderers modus operandi, which is shoving a large knife up his victim’s vaginas, which not only gets revealed on the corpses, but also in x-ray version, but also a drowning death in a bath tub that gets played-out moderately well. In most slasher flicks the victim goes down easily when they’re attacked by surprise by their killer, but here this one struggles quite a bit making the killing more drawn-out and thus more realistic.

The plot though, particularly the second act, gets stretched too thin. We have an intriguing set-up and a zesty conclusion, but in-between it meanders. The biggest reason for this is that the protagonist and his quandary becomes neutered and thus all the potential drama from his situation evaporates. Having the inspector tell him upfront that he doesn’t think he did it hurts the tension and would’ve been intriguing if they thought he did, or he even became their prime suspect. Having Enrico make amends with his wife, at the beginning they’re at extreme odds and even close to fully hating each other, further moderates things as the wife could’ve been an interesting possible suspect too, killing the school girls and trying to make the hubby look like he did it in order to get back at him for cheating on her, but then having the two team-up just fizzles away a potentially dark undercurrent to their relationship. Showing Enrico working with the inspector ultimately makes him seem more like a side character in his own movie and by the end like he’s not really the star at all as the inspector completely takes over.

The one performer that does stand-out is Camille Keaton. She’s better known for her starring role in the cult hit I Spit On Your Grave, but here in one of her first performances in the front of the camera she’s quite impressive and she does so without uttering a single line of dialogue. She comes-in real late too to the extent I was starting to think she’d have some minor part and be spotted for only a few seconds, but her character comes-on strong despite not saying anything and is an integral component to the whole mystery. What I liked most about her was her trance-like demeanor and glazed over look in her eyes that’s both effective, creepy, and disturbing at the same time.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s wrap-up could’ve been better done as it elaborates about the motives of the killer and the elements of the case too much saying things that the viewer should’ve been able to pick-up on during the course of the movie. For instance it describes the sex parties that these teen girls attended, but snippets of these orgies should’ve been shown and not just discussed. The film had no qualms with the violence, so why not have a little explicit sex as well. Also, Keaton’s character going in to have an abortion like it’s going to be some ‘fun activity’ didn’t seem believable. The attempt was to show that she was naive about how rough the procedure would be and thus became ‘traumatized’ by it afterwards, but she still should’ve shown some trepidation upfront as just about anybody else would.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Massimo Dallamano

Studio: Italian International Films

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

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

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White Mischief (1987)

Posted on September 28, 2024 | 1 comment

whitemischief

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

My Rating: Unsolved murder in Kenya.

During the Second World War many British aristocrats with money escaped the tensions and horror in Europe by relocating at a settlement in Kenya that became known as Happy Valley. Here without the typical societal restraints of back-home they were able to indulge in all their provocative desires including rampant drug use and promiscuous sex. One such philanderer, possibly the most notorious of the bunch, was Josslyn Hay the Earl of Erroll (Charles Dance). He had already had various trysts with many of the women there including Alice (Sarah Miles) before dumping her due to her drug addiction. He then sets his sights on Diana (Greta Scacchi). She is married to Jock (Joss Ackland) who is older than her by several decades, and the two share a marriage of convenience with a pre-nuptial agreement that if either falls in love with someone else the other person will not impede it. Earl goes after Diana aggressively and despite some initial reluctance the two eventually become an open couple. Jock puts up a stoic front and allows her to go with him without any resistance, but internally he seethes with rage. Then one night Earl gets shot dead while driving his car in an isolate area. Did Jock pull the trigger?

The film is based on the book of the same name written by James Fox that was published in 1982 and in-turn based on the real-life incident that occurred on January 24, 1941 where the Earl of Erroll, like in the movie, is was found dead in his car and Jock, being the prime suspect, was put on trial, but then found not guilty due to a lack of evidence. For decades it sat as an unsolved case with no answers to what really happened until 1969 when Fox, along with fellow writer Cyril Connelly, became fascinated with the subject and began researching it vigorously. The book contains many interviews with people who lived through the ordeal and give first person accounts of the trial proceedings. Fox even traveled to the Kenya region to get a better understanding of the area and people and came to the conclusion that Jock had been the culprit with new evidence he unearthed, which makes up the book’s entire second-half though officially the case remains open.

The movie’s best quality is its visual element especially its ability to capture the expansive beauty of Africa as the film’s director Michael Radford proudly proclaimed before production even started that “films of Africa should be made by Africans” and you really get that sense here. The screenplay by noted playwright Jonathan Gems is also superb with it’s use of minimalistic dialogue where the conversations and characters never say too much, many times just brief sentences, and the emphasis is much more into what is implied.

On the negative end the attempts at eroticism are pathetic and overdone. The most absurd moment comes when the Sarah Miles character, during the open casket viewing portion of Earl’s funeral, reaches under her skirt and masturbates in full view of everyone before eventually putting her ‘love juices’ on the deceased, which came off as ridiculous and simply put in for a cheap laugh, or misguided ‘shock value’ and hard to imagine it occurred in reality. Both Scacchi’s and Dance’s characters are quite boring and their love scenes lack spark making the whole affair angle seem quite predictable.

The film’s saving grace though is with Ackland’s character where you really get inside his head and see things from his perspective. Normally in most films the jilted spouse is portrayed as someone to fear and a one-dimensional jealous machine who serves no purpose other than to get revenge. Here though we feel his quandary and sympathize with his internal struggle of trying to take the high road while also wracked with hurt and betrayal. Instead of being the culprit we ultimately see him as a sad victim even as his personality completely unravels by the end and because of this aspect I felt the movie works and is worth seeking out. Director Radford probably said it best when he stated that the film was about “people who have everything and yet have nothing. It’s about people who want to possess what they can’t possess” and with the excellently crafted Josh character you can really see that.

This is also a great chance to see acting legend Trevor Howard in one of his last performances. He was suffering severely at the time from his alcoholism and cirrhosis that he comes-off appearing like a wrinkled corpse put upright and there’s several scenes where he’s seen just standing there, but says nothing due to the filmmakers fear that he wouldn’t remember his lines, or if he did wouldn’t be able to articulate them. However, he does come through during a pivotal moment inside the prison when he visits Ackland and what he says and does there is great. John Hurt’s performance is the same way as initially he’s seen little and says no more than a couple of one word responses to the point I thought he was wasted, but then at the end he reappears and comes-on strong in an unique way.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: November 10, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Radford

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD (Import Reg. 2), Amazon Video, Roku 

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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