Tag Archives: Movies

Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

Posted on October 25, 2015 | 1 comment

hard rock zombies

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rock band becomes zombified.

An up-and-coming rock band travels to a small town for their next gig. There the lead singer falls for a young girl named Cassie (Jennifer Coe) while also catching the wrath of the town’s conservative residents who still feel that rock n’ roll is the ‘devil’s music’. The place also harbors Adolph Hitler (Jack Bliesener) who has been secretly hiding out there under a disguise while plotting his next world takeover. After the band members are killed by the evil Nazis they come back to life in the form of zombies killing everyone else and turning the whole town into one big zombie fest.

I have to admit the zombie popularity that has entranced so many people and formed its own special niche escapes me as I find the whole concept to be rather boring. However, certain films like Shaun of the Dead have managed to reinvent the formula by mixing hip humor with a good amount of realistic gore and thus satisfying both the gore hounds and those looking for a laugh. This film tries to do the same, but fails miserable as the humor is corny and the special effects are poor to pathetic.

In fact I was stunned that a well-known director who did some other successful projects was involved with this or even willing to have his name listed on the credits as it’s extraordinarily amateurish and looking like it was put together by novices while drunk. Had it been even remotely more polished, or written by someone who had actually watched zombie movies and appreciated them, it might have worked.

The members who make up the band show no acting ability and having to listen to their generic sounding songs that seem to go forever is another problem and one that almost turns this mess into an annoying music video instead. The second half in which they come back as zombies doesn’t improve things as they still continue to play their songs and worse yet begin to resemble the rock group KISS with their makeup and in fact the similarity is so extreme that I was surprised they weren’t sued.

The zombie parodies are numerous and seemingly never-ending. The majority of them aren’t very good, but this one may very well take the prize as being the worst.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: August 28, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated R

Director: Krishna Shah

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: DVD

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Parody, Slasher/Gore, Zombie Movies

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To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

Posted on October 23, 2015 | 1 comment

to the devil a daughter 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He sacrifices his daughter.

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

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

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

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

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

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 4, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Sykes

Studio: Hammer Films

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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

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Village of the Damned (1960)

Posted on October 22, 2015 | 6 comments

village of the damned 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: The eyes have it.

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

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

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

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

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 5, 1960

Runtime: 1Hour 17Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Wolf Rilla

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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

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Deadly Friend (1986)

Posted on October 20, 2015 | 1 comment

deadly friend 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: He resurrects his girlfriend.

Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux) is a teen with a genius I.Q. who teaches classes on robotics at a local university. His next-door neighbor is Samantha (Kristy Swanson) a beautiful teen girl who is tormented and abused by her alcoholic father (Richard Marcus). When she becomes brain dead after falling down the stairs during one of her father’s rages Paul tries to bring her back to life by implementing the microchip from his robot’s brain into hers. However, instead of the pretty, sweet girl that she once was she is now a killing machine getting back at anyone who ever wronged her and Paul becomes unable to stop her.

The film suffers severely as a result of the studio having a different idea on the direction they wanted to take it versus what director Wes Craven or its screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin had. Craven and Rubin wanted an offbeat love story while the producers pushed for the conventional ‘80s horror. The result is a mishmash of different genres that throws in everything from blood and gore to silly robots that do cutesy things and look better suited for a kid-friendly Disney movie.

The plot has a logic loophole as well as the reincarnated Samantha somehow gains super human strength, which makes no sense. She may have the robot’s brain, but it’s still her same body, so whatever strength the robot had would not transition to her since he was made from mechanical parts. The part where she lifts a biker dude over her head would probably have broken her back and I wasn’t sure what the dark circles around her eyes was so supposed to mean. Was this to represent that she was slowly dying and decaying? If so then her skin should be rotting and peeling off and not just looking like someone who went a little overboard with the eye shadow.

The misguided nightmare segments are another issue. The scene where Samantha dreams that she stabs her father in the stomach with a broken glass vase that causes blood to rush out of him appears more like an erect penis pissing out blood. The moment where Paul sees Samantha’s dead and burned father’s head popping out of his bed is too reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street and comes off looking like Craven was going to the same well too often.

The characters are dull and poorly fleshed out. Paul is too clean cut and the fact that he is super smart at everything becomes annoying. Samantha seems overly passive and sheltered and her loathsome father becomes nothing more than a walking, talking cliché trucked straight in from Redneckville.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is by far the worst part as it features Paul coming into the morgue after Samantha has been killed and then having her inexplicable and without explanation turn into a robot. Whether this was simply a dream or a misguided attempt to turn the plotline into some sort of sequel is unclear, but it helps cement this as a complete catastrophe despite its good production values and a perfect testament to what happens when the producer and director are not on the same page.

End of Spoiler Alert!

deadly friend 2

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube 

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Romance, Sci-Fi, Slasher/Gore

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The Changeling (1980)

Posted on October 18, 2015 | 6 comments

the changeling

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dead child haunts house.

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

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

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

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

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

Spoiler Alert!

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

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

End of Spoiler Alert!

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

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 28, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Medak

Studio: Associated Film Distribution (AFD)

Available: VHS, DVD

6 Comments

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

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Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)

Posted on October 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

don't torture a duckling 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spoiler Alert!

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

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

End of Spoiler Alert!

don't torture a duckling 4

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: September 29, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Lucio Fulci

Studio: Medusa Distribuzione

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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

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Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)

Posted on October 16, 2015 | 1 comment

poor pretty eddie 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wrong turn to hickville.

Liz Weatherly (Leslie Uggams) was simply looking for a break from her hectic touring schedule and a chance to take some nature photos when her car breaks down on a lonely southern dirt road near an isolated lodge run by an aging, overweight lush (Shelley Winters) and her much younger boyfriend Eddie (Michael Christian). Eddie recognizes Liz as being a famous singer and since he has dreams of that nature as well tries to convince her to help him get his foot-in-the-door, but his talents do not match his ambitions and he fails to impress her. He then delays the repairing of her car hoping to wear her down and work things into a sexual relationship. When she resists this he rapes her and traps her at the remote hotel with no vehicle for escape. When she goes to the police the backwoods sheriff (Slim Pickens) humiliates her further, which crumbles her inner strength and makes her feel like a droid to the perversion around her that ultimately has her forced into a shotgun wedding.

This turgid drama is full of provocative southern gothic elements and wallows in areas that others fear to tread. The creative camerawork and backdrop sounds are impressive especially for a low budget film and the slow motion violence adds an evocative touch that stays with you long after it’s over. The character’s sexual repression gets relayed in an equally interesting way by showing scenes of them sucking and slurping their food like it’s a sexual substitute.

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Prolific character actor Pickens gets one of his best roles as the slimy hick sheriff in a part he seems almost born to play and Dub Taylor is spot-on as a self-imposed backwoods judge who creates a makeshift trial in the middle of his ragtag bar while also amusingly comparing Yankees to hemorrhoids. Ted Cassidy is good as well and makes a strong impression despite having limited lines.

I was not as impressed with the female performances as star Uggams comes off as too cold and one-dimensionally rigid without showing any type of preliminary vulnerability. Winters is competent as always, but playing a lonely, aging, pathetic woman begging for love is too similar to the character that she played in Lolita and making it seem more like typecasting.

The climactic bloody shootout is fun, but ends up being more of a spectacle than anything.  B.W. Sandefur’s script lacks any type of twist, introduces psychological elements that it fails to follow through on and wades in tired southern stereotypes making this a warped piece of ‘70s cinema that falls just short of being a cult classic.

poor pretty eddie 2

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Alternate Titles: Redneck County, Heartbreak Hotel, Black Vengeance

Released: June 16, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 22Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Robinson, David Worth

Studio: WestAmerican Films

Available: DVD

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with a rural setting, Rape/Revenge

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Shock Waves (1977)

Posted on October 14, 2015 | Leave a comment

shock waves 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Zombie soldiers inhabit island.

During WWII a Nazi commandment experimented with the supernatural by taking dead soldiers and turning them into zombies who would become killing machines that could not be taken down and impossible to destroy. When the war ended a lone SS Commander (Peter Cushing) took these zombies to an isolated island where he hoped to destroy them, but instead they became more powerful. When some castaways from a waterlogged boat arrive at the island they are greeted by these zombies who waste no time in returning to their killing ways.

The film starts out with promise and the idea has potential, but the film reverts too much to a pedestrian narrative that bogs down the action and turns it into a bore. The dialogue is banal and the characters annoying. The film would’ve worked much better had it taken a Dario Argento approach where the focus stayed solely on mood, imagery and a pounding music score while completely scrapping the dull characterizations altogether. In fact having only one or two people make it to the island would’ve been perfect as the rest of the supporting cast seem better suited for a pathetic B-comedy.

shock waves

The zombies aren’t all that interesting either. The shot showing one of them walking on the ocean bottom without any breathing apparatus was impressive, but otherwise they spend the majority of time simply lurking around in the backdrop. They can also easily be killed by having the shaded goggles that they wear taken off, which isn’t too exciting. Having the Cushing character describe their origin even though it had already been explained at the beginning by a narrator was unnecessary and in many ways no explanation or only supplying one at the very end would’ve made it creepier.

Veteran character actors John Carradine and Cushing both made $5,000 for their efforts, but their presence in both cases was not needed. Brooke Adams is good in her first credited speaking role in a film, but the rest of the cast came off like amateurs and Buck Henry lookalike Jack Davidson seemed like he had walked onto the wrong movie altogether.

Shot in 1975 the abandoned hotel on an island setting adds a bit of ambience, but overall it’s a wasted effort. The scares, tension and special effects are all quite minimal and the story’s original elements become overshadowed by a flat and unimaginative script.

shock waves 2

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: July 15, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 24Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ken Weiderhorn

Studio: Zopix Company

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in Florida, Movies with a rural setting, Zombie Movies

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Deadly Blessing (1981)

Posted on October 12, 2015 | 1 comment

deadly blessing

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Murder in bible country.

When her husband is killed in a mysterious tractor accident Martha (Maren Jensen) must try to forge on alone while living on an isolated farm surrounded by a religious sect known as The Hittites who show great disdain towards her due to the fact that she is not one of them. Lana and Vicky (Sharon Stone, Susan Buckner) are two of her friends who come to visit and offer solace. Soon more deaths and strange events begin to occur convincing them that the feared incubus, which is a male demon who descends onto female victims as they sleep, may soon be approaching.

This low budget foray, which was filmed in both Ohio and Texas and directed by Wes Craven, is competent enough to hold the viewer’s attention despite a convoluted story that goes on longer than it should. The best part of the film is its female cast, which to date marks the last acting role for both Jensen and Buckner as well as the first speaking part for Stone. Jensen, whose nude scenes were done by a body double, is okay, but Stone is the better actress and looks just as beautiful today as she did back then. In case you thought that actors didn’t earn their pay she certainly does here by allowing a live spider, albeit with its teeth removed, to fall into her mouth during a creepy nightmare segment that I’m not sure I would’ve been up to myself. The film also features Lisa Hartman and the ageless Lois Nettleton as her mother.

The shocks are trite and the creepiness at only a minimum. However, the segment where a large snake crawls into the bathtub while Jensen is in it had me creeped out and the scene involving Buckner having her car set on fire while she is still inside is good too, but both of these segments are similar to ones that Craven used in his later films making me believe that his horror concepts had a definite limit.

The Hittites, which are presumably so strict that they make the Amish look like ‘swingers’, are too one-dimensional and their leader, which gets played stoically by Ernest Borgnine, seems unusually hateful.  I can’t say that there aren’t religious sect leaders that are like him, but I don’t believe they would be so outwardly hostile to people from outside his group and would try to put on more of a kindly façade. I also thought the idea of the Buckner character starting a relationship with one of the Hittite boys, which is played by Jeff East, was unrealistic as they came from such vastly different backgrounds that trying to form any lasting bond or connection would be expectedly slim.

Michael Berryman as one of the more aggressive sect members gives an energetic performance and the fact that Craven advertises another one of his other projects, the TV-Movie Summer of Fear, on a theater marquee during a segment shot in the town, deserves a few merits, but what I really liked was the completely unexpected surprise ending that helps the film rise above the usual ‘80s horror and was something that was forced onto Craven by the producers and not actually of his own devising.

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My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 14, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity

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The Raven (1963)

Posted on October 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

raven 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: The search for Lenore.

Dr. Craven (Vincent Price) is a former sorcerer who one night is visited by a talking raven. The raven is actually Dr. Bedlo (Peter Lorre) who has been turned into a bird by the evil Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Craven manages to concoct a potion that allows Bedlo to turn back into his human form and in appreciation he tells Craven that he has seen Lenore (Hazel Court), who Craven was once married to and was thought to be dead, living with Scarabus in his castle. Craven decides to pay Scarabus a visit to see if this is true and brings along his daughter Estelle (Olive Sturgess) as well as Bedlo and Bedlo’s son Rexford (Jack Nicholson). When they arrive they are greeted by the conniving wizard who at first denies any wrongdoing, but it soon becomes clear that he is jealous of Craven’s powers and wants to attain them for himself, which leads to a climactic cosmic duel between the two sorcerers.

This film marked the fourth collaboration between writer Richard Matheson and director Roger Corman and for the most part it is an entertaining success. The two apparently had so much fun creating the comic story of ‘The Black Cat’ in Tales of Terror trilogy that they decided to do a feature length horror/comedy that is very loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem. Despite being shot in only 15 days the film isn’t as limited by Corman’s usual low budget constraints and I was genuinely surprised how imaginative the special effects where and the overall impressive background sets.

The film’s biggest boost is clearly the three lead actors who are all at their absolute peak. I especially enjoyed Lorre who brazenly steals every scene he is in and ad-libbed many of his funny lines much to the consternation of his co-stars. In fact if Lorre wasn’t in this it wouldn’t have been half as enjoyable. A young Nicholson as his son is equally entertaining and the frosty relationship that the two characters have was apparently a carry-over from how they felt about each other from behind-the-scenes.

Some of the effects are clearly animated, which looks tacky and as the group arrive at Scarabus’ castle one can see that the place is merely a painting matted on the screen. The story also does have its share of lulls, but all of this gets forgiven by the climactic sorcerer’s duel, which is the film’s highlight.

raven

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 25, 1963

Runtime: 1Hour 26Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Roger Corman

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black Comedy, Surreal/Fantasy

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