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
