Month: November 2024

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Alucarda, The Awakening, The Boneyard, Shocker

Alucarda – 1977, Mexico, 78m. Director: Juan López Moctezuma.

The Awakening – 1980, UK, 100m. Director: Mike Newell.

The Boneyard – 1991, US, 98m. Director: James Cummins.

Shocker – 1989, US, 109m. Director: Wes Craven.

ALUCARDA (1977) (AKA: Sisters of Satan) In 1865, young Justine (Susana Kimini) is sent to live in a convent where she meets another orphan, Alucarda (Tina Romero), whose obsession with death leads them to a nearby crypt and the opening of Alucarda’s mother’s coffin. The act bewitches both girls into reciting a Satanic prayer and invoking a demonic power that possesses them. Justine and Alucarda confess their love for each other, perform blood rituals, and participate in gypsy orgies. A priest (David Silva) decides to rid the evil from the two girls by carrying out a torturous exorcism, which backfires and results in a nun being immolated and decapitated. Alucarda features enough nudity, violence, and visual imagery to fill two movies, making its scant 78 minutes feel all the more fresh and exciting. In fact, Alucarda succeeds where so many European exploitation/Exorcist-inspired movies failed simply because the makers were thoughtful enough to write a script. Avoid the heavily censored version currently on YouTube. B (Currently unavailable.)

THE AWAKENING (1980) The pregnant wife of high-strung archeologist Charlton Heston slips into a coma while accompanying her husband on a dig in Egypt. Heston’s work priorities send him back into the field, where he discovers the lost tomb of Egyptian queen Kara, whose sarcophagus is opened at the exact moment his wife gives birth to a baby girl. A series of bizarre deaths in the wake of the tomb’s opening plagues Heston and his daughter (Stephanie Zimbalist) who, come her eighteenth birthday, realizes she’s the reincarnation of the evil Egyptian pharaoh. In the tradition of The Omen, those closest to Heston meet creatively gruesome ends at the hands of the spectral Kara—including Heston’s second wife, who plunges through the ceiling of a greenhouse and is impaled on a shard of glass. But unlike The Omen, The Awakening is too sedate to get excited over. None of the characters are worth caring about, and their interactions often feel melodramatic and silly; a subplot in which everyone equates Heston’s interest in Kara to an obsession grows increasingly tired. The feature film directorial debut of Mike Newell, before he went on to make real horror movies like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. C (Currently unavailable.)

THE BONEYARD (1991) Homicide detective Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) enlists the help of distraught psychic Alley Oats (Deborah Rose) to help solve a case involving the remains of three unidentified kids who were abducted and force fed dead flesh by a mortician before he killed himself. Unfortunately for our protagonists, the young victims are reanimated as ghoulish zombies and turn the local corner’s office (dubbed “the boneyard”) into a buffet of glistening innards as they feast on the staff during the quiet graveyard shift. The makers of this film have obviously seen Return of the Living Dead and Dead Heat. It turns out the mortician was descended from a family cursed by an ancient Chinese warlock—and the victims aren’t children but some sort of mummified demonic creatures. I think. The plot is convoluted and makes little sense, but that doesn’t matter because this movie is all about style, and luckily The Boneyard is swimming in it. Director/writer James Cummins never allows the gory action to overwhelm the story, but instead places the well-written characters at center stage and creates a few suspenseful set pieces. A highlight is Phyllis Diller’s pampered poodle being turned into an unstoppable ten-foot tall monster. Slight but inventive fun. B– (Currently streaming on Prime.)

SHOCKER (1989) A small town is torn apart by a series of vicious murders committed by a ranting television repairman named Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi). Pinker’s identity is exposed by teen Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg) after the high schooler has a dream in which Pinker slaughters his family—an act that materializes in reality and ultimately sends Pinker to the electric chair. But the unstoppable Horace comes from the Freddy Krueger generation and soon returns from the grave via black magic, subsequently body-jumping into Parker’s friends in order to enact bloody revenge. With a lack of substantial clues, and a string of bodies connected to his son, Parker’s dumbbell cop father (Michael Murphy) places the teen under arrest, and sets the third act in the tried-and-true Hitchcockian mold of the innocent-man-on-the-run. There’s some interesting ideas floating around here, but Shocker is too disjointed and silly to be truly effective, made worse by an unconvincing performance by Pileggi as Horace. He’s a good actor (proven on nine season of The X-Files), but here comes off as a cut-and-paste Krueger wannabe; a precursor, perhaps, to De Niro’s Kruegeresque performance in Cape Fear (1991). Director Wes Craven infuses the story with several inventive set pieces, although one can’t help but compare Shocker with the majority of the Elm Street sequels and admit with full confidence that Freddy did it better. Sorry, Wes. C– (Currently unavailable.)

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Cannibal Man, Wait Until Dark, The Worm Eaters

Cannibal Man – 1972, Spain, 97m. Director: Eloy de la Iglesia.

The Dead Are Alive – 1972, Italy/West Germany/Yugoslavia, 105m. Director: Armando Crispino.

Wait Until Dark – 1967, US, 107m. Director: Terence Young.

The Worm Eaters – 1977, US, 89m. Director: Herb Robins.

CANNIBAL MAN (1972) Abattoir worker Marcos (Vincente Parra) kills a man in self-defense and subsequently begins a series of murders to cover-up the crime. The first to go is his hot-to-trot fiancée, who demands he go to the police but is strangled and stuffed under the bed. Marcos’ future sister-in-law comes sniffing around and, upon discovery of the carnage, has her throat bled out like one of his workplace cattle. Marcos uses his expertise as a butcher to dispose of the evidence by chopping up the corpses and tossing the remains into an industrial meat grinder. The stress consumes him and turns him into a social pariah, exacerbated by a budding relationship with a male neighbor (Eusebio Poncela) that draws out Marcos’ latent homosexuality. Ignore the meaningless title—which is either metaphorical or the original Spanish title was lost in translation—this is a thoughtful and suspenseful film worth checking out. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

THE DEAD ARE ALIVE (1972) A smug American professor (Alex Cord) on an archeological excursion in Italy gets wrapped up in a murder mystery when two people are found bludgeoned to death at his dig site. The police are called into action and The Dead Are Alive turns into yet another good-looking but painfully slow Italian/European psycho-thriller, or giallo as the subgenre is more popularly known. Another victim, a female, is found wearing red fuck-me pumps designed specifically for a local ballet. The gay ballet costume designer who minces around in a skin-tight tank top becomes the prime suspect, but one can’t help but feel this is because the film was written by men who were still living in 1950. The revelation that Cord was once committed to a mental hospital does little to persuade the viewer he’s responsible for the murders. But frankly, by that point, I didn’t care in the slightest. This is a movie with zero character interest and the mystery feels about as involving as a party where you’re the only guest. If you really want to know who the killer is you’ll have to slog through one hour and forty-five minutes to find out. Good luck. D (Currently available on YouTube.)

WAIT UNTIL DARK (1967) Audrey Hepburn gives a terrific performances in this smart psychological slow-burn. Hepburn plays Susy, a recently blinded New Yorker terrorized by a trio of thugs in her Greenwich Village apartment. The robbers present themselves as cops investigating a recent murder—but unbeknownst to Susy, the men, lead by the creepy Roat (Alan Arkin), are desperately searching her apartment for a heroin-stuffed doll. Director Terence Young (Goldfinger) steadily tightens the screws, building to a white-knuckle climax worthy of the best of Hitchcock. Hepburn is strong-willed and sympathetic; Arkin is quietly intimidating, especially when he flashes his knife. Frederick Knott, who wrote the screenplay, also penned the stage production as well as the Hitchcock adaptation of Dial M for Murder. B+ (Currently unavailable.)

THE WORM EATERS (1977) In a desperate attempt to revitalize a small town, a greedy mayor tries to pull the wool over the eyes of a worm farmer (Herb Robins) who holds the deed to a piece of dried up swampland where the mayor wishes to start construction. The town, which seems to be inhabited by idiots, doesn’t know Robins is a demented old fart who’s plotting revenge against everyone by making a special kind of worm that, when ingested, turns people into half-worm, half-humanoid creatures—or wormaid? The film never explains how this happens, but it’s probably for the best. And this is supposed to be a comedy! The culmination of this stupendously moronic movie is a dream sequence in which seventies Playgirl centerfold Barry Hostetler, as the King of the Worm People, pleas with Robins for human/worm coexistence. The best part of The Worm Eaters is the opening credits played to the tune of “You’ll End Up Eating Worms,” a song adaptation of a children’s nursery rhyme. After those three minutes, it’s all downhill. A real turd. F (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

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Blood Legacy, A Candle for the Devil, The Cat and the Canary

Blood Legacy – 1971, US, 82m. Director: Carl Monson.

A Candle for the Devil – 1973, Spain, 87m. Director: Eugenio Martin.

Cannibal Girls – 1973, Canada, 85m. Director: Ivan Reitman.

The Cat and the Canary – 1978, UK/US, 91m. Director: Radley Metzger.

BLOOD LEGACY (1971) (AKA: Legacy of Blood; Will to Die) The spoiled offspring of a dead millionaire (John Carradine) must spend a week living in the family mansion in order to collect their inheritance. The majority of the children, along with their spouses, don’t make it far before someone with a grudge starts sending them to join daddy—a severed head is found on the kitchen table the first night. In between the murders are dull scenes of sibling rivalry and banter from the ominous house servants, including a wild-eyed, self-flagellating butler named Igor (Buck Kartalian). In a completely shocking twist (cough…. choke…) the killer is unmasked as the very much alive Carradine who went cuckoo from his wife’s infidelity years ago. The only redeeming moment that viewers can take away from this morose experience is when the housekeeper, after discovering the secret, winks at the camera and mutters, “And you thought it was the butler all along!” Touché. A deservedly forgotten film, also known as Legacy of Blood—not to be confused with Andy Milligan’s Legacy of Blood from 1978, which features the exact same plot! D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

A CANDLE FOR THE DEVIL (1973) (AKA: It Happened at Nightmare Inn; Nightmare Hotel) Two uptight Catholic sisters operating a hotel in a Spanish village discover their buxom guest sunbathing topless and, in a fit of rage, accidentally kill the woman. Believing it’s a sign from God, the eldest sister (Aurora Bautista) quickly covers up the crime by chopping up the body and incinerating the remains in their brick fire oven. In what is either a homage or rip-off of Psycho, the dead woman’s sister (Judy Geeson) arrives in town and grows suspicious of the two owners. Yet another nubile guest triggers Bautista, who sends sis (Esperanza Roy) to the knife-sharpener for another round of God’s holy work. Later, the libidinous Roy has sex with a local man, and on her walk-of-shame home bares her thighs while trudging through thorn bushes. Geeson uses a local friend to pose as her husband and the two check in to the hotel to investigate, causing a rift in the murderous sisters’ holier-than-thou bloodshed. Tasteless and exploitative, but also very enjoyable. Avoid the heavily censored version dubbed It Happened at Nightmare Inn, which eliminates most the movie’s nudity and violence. B (Currently streaming on Tubi as It Happened at Nightmare Inn.)

CANNIBAL GIRLS (1973) A couple (Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin) on a weekend drive through some Ontario backcountry stumble upon the small town of Farmhamville. At first the place seems like a quaint hamlet, prime for food and shelter, until Martin slowly realizes the town is overlorded by a demented man known as the Reverend (Ronald Ulrich) and his three equally demented female followers. Over the years, the Reverend has turned Farmhamville into a thriving meatpacking district—the secret ingredient being human beef which is served to the community in ample amounts. A salty, weird, enjoyable bit of early seventies comedy-horror from future Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman. B– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1978) In 1934, the surviving clan of the late Cyrus West gather at the deceased’s estate for the reading of his will. The cousins are the usual assortment of self-involved yuppies, all of whom could be chosen as the sole heir of the West fortune. That is until young Annabelle (Carol Lynley) is selected as the inheritor, with the caveat that Annabelle must stay the night in the West mansion with her relatives and deemed sane the next morning. To top off the night, a madman who believes he’s a cat has escaped from an asylum and is stalking the area, and may already be inside the house. Despite this being the umpteenth filming of John Willard’s play—the most famous being the 1927 silent classic of the same name—the movie feels fresh thanks to good direction by porn auteur Radley Metzger, and a first-rate cast—Bond Girl Honor Blackman is a hoot as the sly Susan Sillsby, a conniving huntress having an incestuous relationship with her cousin (Olivia Hussey). Worth checking out for Willard enthusiasts. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

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Carnival of Blood, Hush… Hush Sweet Charlotte, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Carnival of Blood – 1970, US, 87m. Director: Leonard Kirtman.

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte – 1964, US, 132m. Director: Robert Aldrich.

Something Wicked This Way Comes – 1983, US, 95m. Director: Jack Clayton.

The Willies – 1990, US, 91m. Director: Brian Peck.

CARNIVAL OF BLOOD (1970) A man having a night out with his shrill wife at Coney Island’s amusement park is beset by a mad killer who follows them into the funhouse. The man comes out alive but his wife’s head is missing, ensuring a quiet evening for the man—and the audience. The next night, a nagging prostitute is stabbed under the park’s boardwalk, her intestines subsequently yanked out by the madman and stuffed inside a teddy bear—an effectively unnerving detail. Could there be a pattern to the killer’s modus operandi? Could it have something to do with the slow-witted carnival employee (the late Burt Young in an inauspicious film debut) who has a distaste for critical women? Do you smell a twist emanating from the lousy screenplay? This has the look and feel of a Herschell Gordon Lewis flick, but Carnival of Blood lacks the unintentional humor and colorful characters associated with Lewis’s work, and instead wallows in its dull, Psycho-infused narrative. It also doesn’t help matters that hero Martin Barolsky and his girlfriend Judith Resnick don’t have winning personalities—he’s a hotheaded dolt and she’s a whining narcissist. Great Brooklyn locations, though. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964) Decades after supposedly chopping her married lover into pieces, Charlotte Hollis (Bette Davis) has turned into a reclusive spinster living out her days inside a crumbling Louisiana manor. The county’s plans to demolish Charlotte’s house sends the heiress into a tailspin of madness, made worse by the arrival of Charlotte’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks cousin (Olivia de Havilland). Charlotte’s mental capacity all but collapses after nightly visitations from her headless ex. This B&W chiller reunited Davis with Baby Jane director Robert Aldrich, and while the results aren’t nearly as titillating, Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte offers the viewer a juicy mystery wrapped in good acting and a couple of gory moments—the opening murder via meat cleaver is quite gruesome for its time. Overlong, and with a twist that rips off Diabolique (1955)—but still a solid film. As Charlotte’s faithful maid, Agnes Moorehead is a hoot. B (Currently not streaming.)

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1983) A handsomely photographed but uneven adaptation of the Ray Bradbury book, this is an example of massive studio interference (by Walt Disney) resulting in a film that feels incomplete. A small American town is overtaken by a mysterious traveling carnival and its sinister proprietor, Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce), who grants the locals their innermost desires in exchange for their souls, which he harbors inside one of his circus tents. Bradbury dropped out of the project after Disney rejected his original script treatment. He still gets writing credit, but many scenes were rewritten by John Mortimer, including a sequence in which the young protagonists are attacked by spiders—this scene was clearly shot at least a year after principle photography, as both child actors are visibly older. The good cast helps, especially Pryce in one of his earliest film roles, Jason Robards as a heroic father, and Pam Grier as Mr. Dark’s seductive sidekick. A muddled tone of Light vs. Dark (Good vs. Evil), and some heavy-handed plot conveniences creates more confusion than anything else, although there is an eventful climax boasted by some terrific special FX. It makes the viewer wonder what could have been accomplished had Bradbury stayed on course. A missed opportunity, indeed. C (Currently unavailable.)

THE WILLIES (1990) A comedic anthology in the E.C. tradition, with a trio of kids camping in the woods trying to creep each other out by telling ghost stories and gross-out jokes. After the predictable spinning of popular urban legends—like the dog in the microwave and the rat in the bucket of fried chicken—the oldest teen (Sean Astin) lays into the film’s first story involving a nerdy boy who’s not only harassed by his classmates but constantly persecuted by his tyrannical teacher (Kathleen Freeman). That is until he discovers a hungry creature lurking in the bathroom, which he uses to his advantage to dispose the bullies buffet-style. The second tale revolves around obnoxious brat, Gordy (Michael Bower), who has a fascination with pulling the wings off flies and gluing the bodies to a series of dioramas he keeps in the basement. He also bakes cookies and substitutes raisins with flies, which he serves to the kids at school. Gordy ultimately gets his just desserts when the flies come back as ginormous monsters, thanks to a local disgruntled farmer’s growth hormone serum. This story has moments but runs too long and lacks the inventiveness of the previous chapter. But, in terms of low-budget anthology titles, you could do a lot worse than The Willies. C+ (Currently streaming on Tubi.)