Ace of Aces
Alice
Alice Sweet Alice
Alucarda
The Antichrist
Any Gun Can Play
Atom Age Vampire
Audition
Abbot
White (C, 1982)
Obscure supernatural kung fu flick with dubbing that's a lot worse than
usual - it sounds like it was dubbed by native Chinese speakers (the L's
and R's take as much of a beating as the title character's enemies), and
they didn't seem sure how to go about it because you can hear bits of
the original soundtrack in the background. As a young boy, a Shaolin disciple
enters a forbidden room at the top of a pagoda and, meddling around, unleashes
an evil spirit called The Devil Claw, which possesses him. He grows up
to be a pale-faced bald-headed killer with red eyebrows, and dresses all
in white (white is the traditional Chinese color for death and is considered
very ominous). He commits evil acts of rape and murder, but no one seems
able to stop him since his kung fu is unbeatable, his skin is invulnerable,
he can turn into an untouchable ghost form, and he can even detach his
arm and launch it at his adversaries! Some of the time he's an innocent
nice guy who has no knowledge of his demonic side, however, and a girl
who befriends his good half helps him set things right. Weird old-school
kung fu horror which was supposedly one of the most rare and sought-after
titles in recent memory, until the lackluster DVD came out. -zwolf
Abhay (C, 2001) AKA Alavandhan
An Indian commando is planning a wedding because he got his girlfriend
pregnant. His brother Abhay may not be able to attend, however, because
he's an extremely dangerous psychopathic killer, locked in an institution.
She's a TV reporter who talked them into keeping him there, so he wants
to kill her for that, as well as to "save" his brother from having to
marry her - he thinks she's a witch trying to trap him. He's very
creepy (kinda Hannibal Lector like) and can bite chunks out of concrete
and spit them with enough force to make them semi-lethal. He soon works
out an ingenious plan and escapes (carrying a friend's severed head in
a bag - he set it up so everybody will think he was killed and
so they won't be on the lookout for him, but for the friend). He gets
drugs, which lead to some weird visions (one involves Ronald McDonald,
and some are animated - people become cartoons that look a lot like footage
from Heavy Metal - and people jump out of signs and TVs for Matrix-style
fights. Since he's schizophrenic and drugged, they manage to fit in some
elaborate, surreal, effects-filled musical numbers, using his odd grip
on reality as an excuse. This turns what was setting up to be a scary
movie into kind of a light, silly thing... but it does alternate back
into scary stuff, which creates a disturbing effect overall. A long flashback
section reveals Abhay's twisted childhood, and his evil stepmother. And
it comes back to modern times with a very-much-crazy car-truck-motorcycle
chase involving over-the-top wrecks and explosions, and more stalking
by a now-heavily-tattooed Abhay. Some very impressive filmwork here, even
if there are a few shortcomings (too many musical numbers, narrative could
use tightening up, and the comedic changes in tone compromise the really
good terror-inducing thing Abhay had going), and overall it's a unique
Bollywood film (more sex, special effects, violence, blood, and drugs
than most) that you should check out. There's some absolutely ridiculous
stunts, but who needs "believable" if you've got "entertaining" nailed
so well? -zwolf
Abominable Dr. Phibes
(C, 1971) AKA Dr. Phibes, Curse of Dr. Phibes
Strange Vincent Price classic that goes for the surreal with style to
burn. Price is Dr. Phibes, a scarred-to-the-bone undead mastermind whose
face is all prosthetic makeup and who speaks through a hole in his neck.
He wants revenge on nine doctors who killed his wife (Caroline Munro,
or at least a picture of her). With the help of his female sidekick Vulnavia,
a lot of inventive gimmicks, and a definite sense of flair, he unleashes
death on his enemies in the form of old Biblical curses - bees, bats,
frogs, blood, rats, hail, beasts, locusts, death of the first born, and
darkness. Whenever he kills one, he melts an effigy of them and then plays
an organ, accompanied by a clockwork band. Price is grim, the atmosphere
is weird, and the killings are gruesome, but even though it's all played
(mostly) straight it's still so outlandish that it's obviously tongue-in-cheek.
Somehow smacks of both James Bond and A Clockwork Orange at the
same time. Must see, as is the sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again.
Since Phibes's first name is Anton and he plays the organ and plots all
sorts of diabolical things and loves clockwork androids, I have to wonder
if he may not be a nod to Anton LaVey... -zwolf
Ace of Aces
(B&W, 1933) AKA Bird of Prey
A peace-loving sculptor is shamed by his fiancé (who accuses him
of cowardice) into joining up in World War I, even though he doesn't believe
in the cause. He becomes a pilot and at first he has a guy in his sights
and can't shoot, but then the same ungrateful guy shoots him, so he guns
him down. He soon gets a taste for it which becomes a craving, and he
becomes bloodthirsty and brutal... on the ground and off. Soon he's a
lone wolf ace, flying solo missions and trying to see how many kills he
can rack up. He loves war, to such a degree that it shocks his girlfriend
when he meets her again. Then during a hospital stay, he meets a German
cadet he shot down (even though the kid was only delivering a note that
one of the missing British pilots was okay) and gets a dose of reality.
Great combat sequences and an antiwar message; a powerful little film.
-zwolf
Aks (C, 2001)
Bizarre Indian action-horror epic in which a very creepy psychotic assassin
named Raghavan, who looks a little like a mixture of Jim Morrison and
Glenn Danzig, is a master of disguise, quotes the Bhagad Gita, and has
this horrible wheezing laugh like "Muttley" from the cartoons whenever
he does something evil. He assumes the identity of a top-ranked intelligence
agent (who'd be Al Pacino if this was an American flick, so it's the Indian
equivalent, Amitabh Bachhan) to assassinate a defense minister and steal
some secrets, and then he kills another criminal who's amazingly even
creepier than he is! Yakub only has a brief appearance but will give you
nightmares anyway. Imagine Gandhi possessed by demons. Raghavan becomes
the target of a huge manhunt, headed, of course, by the special agent
he impersonated. He's finally caught and killed, but his spirit possesses
the agent, causing him to start seeing Raghavan in the mirror. Pretty
soon he's killing off the people who killed Raghavan and assaulting his
own wife. People around him figure out he's possessed, but getting rid
of Raghavan in the physical world was hard enough... It's kind of a horror
film, at least by Indian standards (they don't do horror all that much),
and there are certainly disturbing elements (Raghavan is world-class creepy;
I've never seen a bad guy quite like him) but it's not really very scary,
and works best as a weird crime drama. It's extremely well-made, with
a dark sense of style that sometimes seems almost Argentoesque, and it
has some deep subtext about the interdependency of good and evil. The
musical numbers fit in better than usual. It's overlong at three hours,
to be sure, but it's well worth seeing. -zwolf
Alice (C, 1988)
AKA Neco z Alenky
Bizarre and creepy retelling of Alice in Wonderland (looks more
like Alice Cooper in Wonderland... welcome to somebody's nightmare)
from Czech stop-motion-animation guru Jan Svankmajer. Imaginative
young Alice follows a horrible bug-eyed rat-toothed sawdust-bleeding taxidermied
rabbit through the drawer of a desk that's been left in a wasteland, then
down a dirty elevator that runs from the bottom of a bucket. She drinks
a potion and shrinks into a creepy porcelain doll... then eats a cookie
that makes her big... too big to fit through a tiny door to follow the
rabbit. She cries and floods the grimy little room, and a well-dressed
mouse drives stakes into her head and cooks his dinner. After lots more
craziness involving animal skulls, she finds all the lost socks in the
world burrowing holes through the floor. One sock, with glass eyes and
false teeth, serves as the Caterpillar. After an episode with a shrinking
house, she goes to the Mad Hatter's tea party. He's a wooden man, and
the March Hare is a wind-up rabbit on wheels. They spread butter on pocketwatches
and repeat things a lot. Then she plays croquet with playing card people
and some real animals. It's a bizarre and surreal story made more bizarre/surreal
than ever due to the animation of scary-looking stuff, the amazingly-dingy
surroundings (what abandoned house did they film this in?), an annoying
habit of showing close-ups of the little girl's mouth as a narrator, and
a general air of somebody-made-this-so-there-is-insanity-in-the-world.
It's like a fever dream made from the contents of a very sick child's
toybox. And that's why you've gotta love it! The DVD also contains a disturbing
short called "Darkness Light Darkness" in which some claymation arms in
a very small room collect and assemble body parts (some clay, some dentures,
and some actual flesh!) to build itself into a man... sort of. This short's
one of Svankmajer's best and isn't found on the two collections of his
other work. Extremely weird package overall. -zwolf
Alice Sweet Alice
(C, 1976) AKA Communion, Holy Terror
There's no doubt that young Alice is a horrible little girl, but did she
murder her sister (Brooke Shields, nine years old and acting very convincingly
spoiled) on the day of her first communion? Somebody wearing a yellow
slicker and creepy clear smiling mask like Alice's strangled her, stuffed
her into a chest, and then set her on fire. Alice seems hateful and crazy
enough to do such a thing, as well as the killings that happen subsequently,
but there are plenty of creeps around their building. The landlord, for
instance, is a morbidly obese pederast who's so unhygienic he feeds his
cats in his bed. The stains in this guy's shorts probably weigh a few
pounds, he's so astoundingly huge and filthy. Then there's Alice's mean
ol' aunt, who gets stabbed in the legs. And then there's a guy who dies
extremely unpleasantly after being pounded in the teeth with
a brick. Psychological tests run on Alice prove that she's a very unsound
young lady, but that doesn't mean she's doing all the killings. Or does
it? Alfred Sole's Hitchcockian direction keeps you guessing... and wincing
at the brutality of the killings, which are not just your standard knife-flailing.
This plays a lot like an American giallo film, and would fit in comfortably
alongside some of Argento's early work. The film was re-released under
retitles later to capitalize on Brooke Shields's popularity, even though
she gets killed early, and despite the gore and anti-Catholic leanings,
it was widely distributed on videotape in the early days of cheap home
video. One of those movies that, if you don't watch it for a few years,
you forget how good it is and then it surprises you. -zwolf
Alucarda (C, 1978) AKA Innocents
from Hell, Mark of the Devil 3, Sisters of Satan, Alucarda,
la hija de las tinieblas
Alejandro Jodorowsky wouldn't work with anyone normal, and he worked
with Juan Lopez Moctezuma, who directed this completely insane Satanic
witchcraft movie, totally packed with beautifully-composed but often-disturbing
images. A girl named Justine comes to a convent (sort of an asylum run
by nuns, really) and forms a quick, obsessive friendship with a very strange
young witch named Alucarda, who likes to upset people by blaspheming,
screaming, and spinning around. A hippie-looking wizard gets them to do
strange lesbian rituals while it rains blood. Alucarda is apparently possessed
by a spirit from a grave she opened (of a girl named Lucy Westerna, who
should be familiar to readers of Dracula). There are orgies presided
over by goat-headed priests while nuns weep and sweat blood. Finally their
blasphemies become so extreme that the priest and nuns perform an exorcism
which results in Justine's death by torture. But don't worry - she'll
be back... Crazy, surreal variation on Ken Russell's The Devils
is full of nudity, blood, and elaborately gothic sets and orchestrated
scenes of witchcraft-madness, some of which gets pretty nightmarish. Excellent
creepy stuff for fans of serious bizarre horror. If The Exorcist
disturbed you, however, beware... -zwolf
Always Outnumbered (C, 1998)
Walter Mosley adapted his own Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
for this made-for-HBO production that really deserves a theatrical run.
Even though I pictured the Socrates Fortlow character as older and a little
crazier in the book, I'm willing to accept the change so Lawrence Fishburne
can fill the role, because Fishburne, as always, does an excellent job
and is easily one of the best actors in America. This guy's presence can
make a film. The movie (like the book of short-stories-that-make-a-novel)
is the episodic tale of a nearly-homeless bottles-and-cans man in L.A.
who tries to keep his dignity - and the dignity of his community - in
a world that is (at worst) geared against him, or (at best) just doesn't
care. Great cameo appearances by some of the best black acting talent
working, none of whom come up short. You should definitely check this
one out, and it shouldn't stop you from reading the book, either, which
is one of the best things I've ever read. -zwolf
American History X (C, 1998)
Ed Norton is a neo-Nazi skinhead scumbag who kills a couple of black guys
when they try to rob him, which might've been okay - hey, they were armed
- 'cept he was pretty sick about it (nastiest "bite the curb" scene since
the underground short film, Red). While he's in jail, he learns
that racism is a pretty damned stupid thing, but by the time he gets out,
his little brother Eddie "I'm in every movie made since 1990" Furlong
is following in his old Doc Marten prints, and the local skinhead scene
is thriving. Even though Ed was about as scummy as you can get through
the first half, he pays - heavily - for his sins, and comes out sympathetic
in the end. Great performance by Ed... you can tell he's a good actor,
because he actually makes a SCARY skinhead, even though normally there
are few creatures less scary than Ed Norton. He really should've gotten
an award for this - he's great. Good script, good message, check it out
even though it'll make you upset. But then, who really likes "feel good
movies" anyway? The DVD contains deleted scenes, one of which - Stacy
Keach and the fat guy getting their just desserts - explains a few things
but was probably too comedic for the rest of the movie... -zwolf
Angel Heart (C, 1987)
William Hjortsberg wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of his excellent
noir-horror novel, Falling Angel. Mickey Roarke is low-rent 1950's
detective Harry Angel, hired by a mysterious Mr. Louis Cyphre (Robert
DeNiro with long hair and fingernails) to find out if a singer named Johnny
Favorite is alive or dead, because he had a contract with Mr. Cyphre,
payable on his death. This Johnny Favorite was turned into an amnesia-case
in the war, which complicates things. The farther Angel goes with the
investigation, the more people start dying, and the closer he gets to
a secret he'd probably rather not learn.... Plenty of Satanism and voodoo
and violent death, but what made the film infamous upon its release was
a sex scene involving Lisa Bonet, who was big at the time due to her role
in the always-wholesome Cosby Show. Even though it wasn't particularly
graphic, they made director Alan Parker cut out ten seconds of it to avoid
an X rating. The book's better, but the film ain't bad. -zwolf
Angels Hard As They Come (C, 1971) AKA Angels,
Angels - Hell On Harleys
Jonathan Demme wrote and directed this decent biker flick in which a few
members of the Angels party with another gang called The Dragons, in a
ghost town which is also home to a bunch of hippies (one of whom is Gary
Busey, who probably shoulda been a biker since he got his head cracked
open in the good ol' days when he was still against the helmet laws).
While the Dragons are trying to gang-rape this hippie chick, somebody
knifes her... and they get the idea that they were trying to kill the
Dragon's president (a goof who's called The General, probably because
of the silly spiked German helmet he wears). The Angels are found guilty
of attempted assassination and the Dragons try to execute them in some
gladiator-type motorcycle games. One escapes and goes to get the rest
of the Angels gang to come down hard on the Dragons and free his brothers.
Meanwhile the two remaining captives manage to pull some tricks with the
help of the hippies (who are upset at all the violence) and some LSD.
Things move along nicely enough and there's a big brawl payoff. The choppers
are also nicer than usual. -zwolf
Angry Red Planet (C, 1959)
The angry technicolor TV screen! This AIP sci-fi flick really took advantage
of being in color. A space ship returns from a Mars expedition with its
astronauts near dead. One guy is covered with a weird growth, and they
don't know how to save him. So they turn to a female astronaut from the
trip, but she can't remember anything after a certain point... that being
the point where anything interesting starts happening. So they give her
drugs to make her remember, but this warps things (mainly by turning them
pinkish and overexposed-looking), and she and the rest of the crew (two
legit scientists and a chubby oaf who cracks silly jokes) go out with
their .45's and ultrasonic freeze guns, and they see a lot of weird plants
that are obvious cartoon drawings, and a venus flytrap that's left over
from somebody's "Life In Outer Space"-themed prom. And there are worse
things out there... lurking amidst the paper cut-outs are crazy giant
puppets (half rat, half insect), guys in wacky suits (with three buggy
eyes and all scowly), gargantuan googly-eyed jellyfish-amoeba (that eats
one of the astronauts - they can see him being digested! - and then tries
to eat the whole ship). It all looks like a way to shoot half the movie
in black and white and save a few bucks by dying the film stock pink and
telling the audience they're getting a bonus. But overall the film's goofy
fun, good Saturday-afternoon stuff. Tune in at the wrong part, though,
and you'll think your picture tube is dying... -zwolf
The Antichrist
(C, 1974) AKA The Tempter, L' Anticristo
One of the bigger Exorcist-ploitation clones, this one
contains some pretty twisted stuff. A rather annoying woman who's stuck
in a wheelchair because her legs are paralyzed (possibly psychosomatically)
learns that she was burned as a Satanic witch in a past life, and she
has visions of unholy orgies, toad-head eating, and goat-anus-licking
(don't worry, it's tastefully done). Soon she becomes a foul-mouthed,
puking, slutty, demon-possessed hellion who looks (and sorta acts, really)
like Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols. She does some creatively nasty
things - levitating, detaching limbs, puking up green gack and making
a wannabe exorcist lick it up, making furniture fly around... but most
of the special effects are pretty bad, which is a little distracting since
the rest of the movie is fairly stylish and well made. She also plans
to give birth to the Antichrist, just to raise the stakes. Some of it
is kinda creepy, definitely a contender in the genre of Exorcist
rip-offs. Some of the profanities are hilarious, though. ("You
stinking pots of shit!") -zwolf
Any Gun Can Play
(C, 1967) AKA For a Few Bullets More, Go Kill and Come Back,
Blood River, Vado... l'ammazzo e torno
Spaghetti western that looks like it's trying hard to be a Leone
imitation (and that's a good thing). In the opening segment, George Hamilton
(known only as The Stranger) guns down three guys who are obvious parodies
of Lee Van Cleef, Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, and a guy who could
either be Django or the guy from The Great Silence. Then he sets
out after the bounty on a notorious bandit named Monetaro, but bides his
time and lets the guy commit more robberies so the price on his head will
go up! And Monetaro is also searching for a huge cache
of hidden gold. He and Hamilton each have half of a medallion that may
lead them to the treasure, and another guy is the only one who can decipher
its secret. So, basically, you have a Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
situation. Even though this one's definitely a Leone wannabe and is good
enough to be very cool and entertaining, it's not on a Leone level, with
lots of zoom-lens shots substituting for Leone's distinctive style. Still,
once you've seen all the Leones and the other A-list spaghettis (Django,
Great Silence, Keoma, etc.) then this is a good one to go
to. Lots of shooting but none of the Django-style brutality; it
has moments of slapstick instead, but not so much that it messes things
up. -zwolf
Apocalypse Now (C, 1979)
Francis Ford Coppola went overbudget and had a lot of production problems
making this Vietnam epic, but it was worth it because he turned out one
of the best movies ever made. Troubled special ops soldier Martin Sheen
is given a mission that's more than he bargained for when he's sent upriver
to terminate the command of a certain Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando at
his weirdest), who's been out in the jungle too long and has gone insane,
forming a cult of natives who see him as a god. As Sheen travels upriver
with the crew of a PVC boat, the war gets weirder, crazier, and more surreal,
the physical environment becoming a metaphor for the mind. The boat itself
becomes more primitive (the roof catches fire and they replace it with
palm leaves, one soldier drops acid and sheds most of his clothes, paints
his face, and acts kind of monkey-like, people are killed with spears
instead of bullets, etc.) and Sheen becomes less sure of his mission,
because how can anyone be called insane in a war that has become little
more than a free-range asylum. All-around genius film-making, with a great
cast - be sure to look for a young Lawrence Fishburne as "Mr. Clean."
It's an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness,
and is an improvement on the source material. This movie gets better every
time you see it, so it's worth investing in a good copy. Highest recommendations.
-zwolf
Apt Pupil (C, 1998)
Ultra-dark and daring adaptation of Stephen King's novella about the seductiveness
of evil. Honor student Todd Boden (Brad Renfro), who has a fascination
(or even a fetish) for Nazis and the Holocaust, figures out that his neighbor,
old Albert Decker (Ian McKellen), is actually Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander.
Dussander has adapted to American life and tried to live quietly and forget
his evil past, but Todd blackmails him into telling him all the gory details
of the death camps, all the "stuff they're afraid to teach us in school."
These stories not only disturb and corrupt Todd's mind, but they awaken
the buried monster in Dussander, and soon the two have a sick, mutually-parasitic
relationship going on (kinda reminds me of The Hitcher). This is
a pretty surprising film for Hollywood, in that there's no good guy and
no happy ending potential. Some critics weren't impressed, but I think
that maybe they couldn't handle the darkness and the unpleasant nature
of the plot, and wanted to distance themselves. This is as close as an
American film will get to something like In a Glass Cage. -zwolf
Arhats In Fury (C, 1985) AKA Baat
Baak Law Hon
Better production values than usual and a complex plot elevate the class
of this kung fu flick. Monks in the temple keep breaking rules by using
their skills to help the local populace fight off invading Jins, instead
of just bowing to them as the antiquated temple rules dictate. Despite
being punished, they still desire justice, because the invaders are raping
women and beating up kids. The monks fight back, resulting in some intense
acrobatic battles. But if the temple finds out, they'll cut the monks'
tendons. The invaders start gathering nitre to make gunpowder and plan
to kill all the monks, and (as evil invaders will) they finally go too
far and push even the stubbornly-misguided monks out of their pacifism,
and you've got a kung fu movie on your hands. Imagine Billy Jack
with a couple hundred Billy Jacks instead of just one. Get it? Amazingly
the monks get help from armies of birds and monkeys! Seems nobody's fond
of evil invaders. Another bizarre thing: this movie has one of the most
gorgeous girls you'll ever see, and the monks think she's a man! And at
one point an invader sings the Irish traditional "Wild Rover" song! Incredible
on more than one level. The director also happens to be the writer of
Instant Kung Fu Man, which may be familiar to some. -zwolf
Asylum of Satan (C, 1972)
Sort of a self-taught student film, this is the directorial debut of William
Girdler (The Manitou, Three on a Meathook, Grizzly,
Abby) and it's a pretty amazing terrible movie. A young woman is
transferred to an obscure hospital run by a "Dr. Spector" (no relation
to the guy from the Gold Key comics in the '70's), for reasons she's not
told. The hospital is full of white-robed unmoving figures in wheelchairs,
and her few regular inmates all have handicaps - they're blind, mute,
etc. To make matters worse, there's a mutilated zombie running around
and sometimes Dr. Spector acts like a lunatic (he's played by a local
Kentucky TV horror-host who has several roles in the film... including
dressing up in drag to play Spector's assistant!). Meanwhile the girl's
boyfriend is trying to rescue her, but when he brings help to the asylum,
it's abandoned! At times the movie manages a creepy, surreal atmosphere,
but then it does something goofy, like attacks by snakes in a swimming
pool (some were real, some were obviously from the dimestore) or by rubber
bugs dragged along on strings. And wait'll you get a look at the devil,
who appears during a ritual at the end! It's the same devil suit that
was used in Rosemary's Baby, but it sure ain't the mask! Church
of Satan (and now Temple of Set) member Michael Aquino re-wrote some ritual
scenes to make them more Satanically-authentic. Amazingly enough, he still
admits it! Made in Louisville, Kentucky. Girdler was independently wealthy,
but you can't tell it from the production values here. "Love Slaves Of
Satan Tortured To Blood-Dripping Death!" -zwolf
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (B&W, 1963) AKA À
Meia Noite Levarei Sua Alma
One of the first horror films from psychologically-disturbed Brazilian
director Jose Mojica Marins, who stars as evil, sadistic bastard Ze do
Caixo, which translates as "Joseph The Grave" or, more commonly, "Coffin
Joe." Coffin Joe terrorizes people in the town where he lives, and spends
much of his time going to funerals. He also visits a bar and gorily amputates
several of a guy's fingers using a broken wine bottle. Later he terrifies
a tied-up girl with a tarantula, because he wants the perfect woman to
bear his child and she's not up to snuff. He commits more atrocities -
stabbings, rapes, eye-gouging, and blasphemies - until his victims return
to take him to Hell... Weird, dark, and disturbing film made by a man
who is definitely talented but probably a bit mentally sick as well. The
levels of gore and sadism are pretty shocking for a film made in '63 and
remain disturbing today. Other Marins sickie-film-manifestations include
The Strange World of Coffin Joe and Hallucinations of a Deranged
Mind. -zwolf
Atom Age Vampire
(B&W, 1960) AKA Seddok - L'Erede di Satana
Despite his assistant's wish to just stay home and listen to records,
a mad scientist goes out and kills women for their glands so he can restore
the scarred face of a skanky exotic dancer who was burned in a car wreck.
There's some pretty good stop-motion as the scars disappear from her face...
and it's used again in scenes where the creepy doctor turns into a crusty-looking
ghoul, on account of some serum he injected himself with so he'd have
the nerve to kill, and do it bestially enough so that everybody'll think
an escaped gorilla is doing the butchery. Meanwhile, he becomes more and
more possessive of the girl and tries to guilt her into liking him...
even though her scar tissue keeps returning. The bad dubbing makes it
all kind of silly, but this is still considered a minor classic. Maybe
it's better at the uncut 105 minutes. Be forewarned that the versions
currently on DVD (both on the Madacy double-feature DVD and the Alpha
DVD) only run 68 minutes. The quality of the print's not that great, either,
but I could handle that if it was uncut. I don't wanna watch the Reader's
Digest condensed version, damnit, especially since they cut out almost
every killing and a strip tease dance (and you can see parts of those
on the trailer included in the double-feature disc, even though they don't
show up in the movie!). Hopefully a better, uncut DVD will come out someday,
but as it currently stands, you're better off catching this late night
on TNT (their print runs somewhere in the 85-minute mark, I think). -zwolf
Atomic War Bride (B&W, 1960)
AKA Rat, War
Bizarre Cold War relic from Yugoslavia. Right after his wedding a guy
named John is shanghaied into the army. It's a pretty ridiculous army,
though, considering that they spend a lot of their time practicing to
look like sheep or shrubbery. His brother-in-law has a bad heart and drops
dead during shrubbery practice. John hardly gets to see his wife until
they're reunited in a bomb shelter, where they listen to propaganda and
watch atomic bombs destroy cities on television. He decides to lead a
protest against the war, since all the citizens are against it, but the
army wants to execute him for it. Then the point becomes moot... Very
strange, rather silly anti-war drama that seems to have some black comedy
to it, but is funnier than it intends to be... yet remains grim, as well.
-zwolf
Attack From Space
(B&W, 1965)
An evil alien race called the Superians (who dress remarkably like communist/fascists)
is attacking Earth, but first they need an engine for one of their spaceships,
which - despite their superiority - they need to steal from an Earth scientist.
To prove they're evil, they even throw Hitler salutes. Peace-loving aliens
from the Emerald Planet equip a rather somber, dopey-looking guy with
a silly leotard and a fancy watch gizmo and he becomes Starman. He flies
through space and battles the bad guys with the most awkward, artless,
weak-looking karate/wrestling ever captured on film. He kind of just flounces
around touching them and they fall over, and then he stops every once
in a while to assume a muscleman pose. They think they kill Starman with
a missile and start terrorizing Earth by blowing up a Himalayan mountain
and big buildings. A kidnapped professor and his children act as resistance
fighters while Starman takes his own sweet time before
showing up and pushing the bad guys around and shooting some cap guns,
and doing more heroic poses. Occasionally the enemies wait patiently while
he does a few cartwheels. He looks more like some high-school football
team mascot than the savior of Earth, but hey. I still think Santo could
(and probably should) kick his ass. Similar to a lot of other old Japanese
sci-fi, but a bit funnier than usual. -zwolf
The Attic (C, 1979)
Carrie Snodgress is a sad, repressed librarian who slits her wrists while
watching old home movies of her lost love. She's lonely (despite having
a pet chimp) because she's haunted by the past and oppressed by her complete-and-utter-bastard
father, Ray Milland, who is in a wheelchair and bosses her around unmercifully
because he wants to keep her as his personal slave. She fantasizes about
standing up to him, and even dreams of killing him... and she just might,
once she finds the dark secret hidden in the attic... Very good, imaginative
and atmospheric gothic horror that used to pop up on late-night TV, which
is the optimum viewing time for this flick - save it for the wee hours
just before dawn... -zwolf
Audition (C,
2000) AKA Oodishon
Really crazy, intense, unique Japanese art film from crazed director Takashi
Miike, who, if he acknowledges that there are limits to anything at all,
probably sees them as an enemy. He's declared war on them - and probably
on you, too - here. You absolutely cannot prepare for this movie; it sets
you up and takes you out. You're better off knowing as little as possible
about it beforehand, but this is a review so I have to tell you something,
so... a lonely widower decides he wants to remarry, but isn't sure how
to find the right woman. A friend comes up with a plan to act like they're
casting a movie, starring an actress who would fit the widower's criteria,
and he could interview them and decide who he wants to try to romance.
He's instantly taken with a strange, shy girl named Asami (played by fashion
model Eihi Shiina), who isn't really as submissive as she seems. At home
she keeps something tied in a sack, and no matter how terrible you think
the sack-thing will end up being I swear to you, it's worse, and the widower
is in more trouble than any description could do justice to. You'll just
have to see it for yourself, if you can handle it... and don't be so sure
you can, because some friends of mine who are well-versed in horror flicks
had a really hard time with this one. It starts out as sort of a romantic
comedy but becomes a surreal nightmare that will not stop... even when
you think surely they won't keep going, they do. The fact that the whole
movie is so incredibly well-made (the actors and script are great, and
Miike's direction is classic-level) makes it even more of an assault.
Disturbing horror that will catch you off guard even if you think you're
prepared. See it - definitely, see it - but watch your step. -zwolf
Autopsy (C, 1973) AKA Autopsia
Weird, obscure Spanish drama formed around a lot of real autopsy footage.
A war reporter sees a girl give birth in the middle of a battle in Vietnam,
and then sees children burned by napalm (that famous footage from Hearts
and Minds) and then goes through firefights and gets badly wounded
and almost dies. He goes home and recovers, but becomes obsessed with
mortality and starts interviewing people on the street about death. Disturbed
by people's indifference, he decides to witness an autopsy. Scenes of
street interviews and such are intercut with actual footage of post-mortem
dissection; the body is disemboweled, ribs are sheared open, organs are
sliced and removed, and the skull is sawed open to expose the brain, while
the narrator drones on and on, waxing philosophic and quoting poetry.
Between all of this is footage of people dancing in the forest and walking
down the street, etc., to show that life goes on. And it all teaches him
that life is short and death is long but is natural, so life should be
enjoyed and death should be respected but not feared. And that's all very
nice, but face it, the only reason anybody's watching this thing is to
see the sicko autopsy footage... which admittedly delivers the goods,
but you gotta sit through a lot of boring pretentious dreck just to get
your prize of being grossed out. Still, it's the only viable and hygienic
way to watch an autopsy in your own living room. If you can dig up the
video, that is - they're kinda scarce. No major loss... -zwolf
Autopsy (C, 1974) AKA Tarot, Tension, The
Victim, Macche Solari
Mimsy Farmer is a frigid pathologist writing on a thesis on suicide who's
been working too hard - she has visions of some of her autopsy subjects
getting off the slabs and having sex. One eerily-smiling corpse looks
a lot like Rudy Ray Moore! She's been busy lately because a rash of suicides
- apparently caused by the influence of solar activity - is sweeping Rome.
One girl shoots herself on the beach, but her brother - a mentally-unbalanced
priest (Barry Primus) who used to be a race-car driver who accidentally
killed spectators in a wreck - doesn't believe it was a suicide. He works
with Mimsy to try to prove it was murder, and they discover the girl was
having an affair with Mimsy's father. Meanwhile the suicides continue
- her landlord hangs himself and her father jumps off of a building and
ends up a vegetable. Mimsy finds out that the girl wasn't a suicide, and
that there's a twisted conspiracy afoot, and she may become the next victim
of it unless Barry can save her. This is more of a giallo-style mystery
than a regular horror film, and it has lots of nudity and sex. There are
rumors that actual autopsy footage was used for this, but it's only special
effects... although fairly-effective and well-researched ones. The autopsy
scenes are made more disturbing because one of the pathologists is a pervert.
The living dead hallucinations at the beginning are pretty creepy - too
bad the rest of the film didn't go in that direction. The mystery is so
complicated that it's hard to follow, but the movie does have its moments...
it just doesn't live up to its full potential. Be careful - there's another
movie on video shelves (if the tapes are still intact - the thing's probably
been out of print for well over a decade) called Autopsy - that
one's not really a horror movie, but a meditation on death, and it does
include real autopsy footage. This movie sometimes shared a double-feature
bill with Torso and includes an odd, kind of annoying score by
Ennio Morricone. -zwolf
Avenging Eagle (C, 1978) AKA Long xie shi san ying,
Cold Blooded Eagles
A friendship is formed between a pair of drifting kung fu masters when
they meet in the desert. One of them is a refugee from the Eagle Clan,
a mob led by an evil master who abuses them from childhood so they'll
grow to be inhuman killers; any boy who shows any kindness in this training
would be tortured to death for it. Now that he's gone renegade and started
to regain some humanity, the rest of his clan is hunting him. His new
friend mysteriously decides to help him battle the Eagles, perhaps out
of friendship, or from a hidden agenda of his own. This is one case where
the plot is almost as powerful as the fighting... there's actual pathos
here, and the acting skills of the late, lamented Alexander Fu Sheng (the
guy in white with the wrist blades) and Ti Lung (the guy in black with
the tri-sectional staff who looks a lot like Wang Yu did in the great
Blood of the Dragon) keep pretty good pace with their fighting
prowess, which is on good display in the climax where they face off against
the evil master, who's donned a pair of wicked brass claws. Gotta love
this one. -zwolf
Awful Dr. Orlof (B&W, 1962)
AKA Gritos en la noche, Cries in the Night, Demon Doctor,
Diabolical Dr. Satan, Horrible Docteur Orlof, Screams
in the Night
Some people consider Jess Franco an underrated genius. They're wrong.
He's a pitiful hack. But this, his first major movie, would make you think
that he had some promise. He was actually trying on this one, and although
the pacing is for shit and the performances are stiff, it does have some
atmosphere and style. A variation on Eyes Without a Face, this
mad scientist sickie stars Franco fave Howard Vernon as the title doctor,
who's been using his blind, mute brother Morpho to kidnap women so he
can graft their skin onto the scarred face of his daughter. Morpho - who
has a scarred up, mannequin-like face and staring, plastic-looking eyes
- has a tendency to bite the girls he catches, but Orlof decides he needs
to start bringing them home alive, because he wants to attain maximum
freshness for the skin grafts by slicing it off of them while they're
still alive. A ballet dancer is a few steps ahead of the police in investigating
the killings and gets in serious trouble. Because this is a Franco film,
there's not much in the way of gore (they make a few weak attempts, though,
but it's nothing you couldn't do at home), but there are a few bare titties
here and there. The cinematography isn't bad, so even though it is another
bad Franco flick, at least it looks better than most. There were several
sequels, and apparently Franco has a remake in the works. Somebody stop
him! -zwolf
