SANTO Y BLUE DEMON VS DRACULA Y EL HOMBRE LOBO (1973)
aka Santo and Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolf Man
Article 3432 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-27-2010
Posting Date: 1-6-2011
Directed by Miguel M. Delgado
Country: Mexico
What it is: Wrestlers vs Monsters

When Dracula and the Wolf Man are revived, Santo calls on the services of his friend Blue Demon to help defeat them.

It looks like someone in charge of these movies has watched a few of the Hammer horrors; the revival of Dracula here is quite similar to the one in DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Apparently, the same process works on the Wolf Man as well. This is pretty much what you’d expect from one of these movies; wrestling scenes interspersed with the monsters plotting mayhem and scenes of the two wrestlers figuring out how to defeat them. Granted, since my copy was in unsubtitled Spanish, I no doubt missed some subtleties, but, truth to tell, I don’t think there’s a lot of them here. Apparently, Dracula and Wolf Man are building minion armies; there’s lots of fanged women wearing big red negligees as well as several very hairy men, and the two wrestlers take them on near the end. For those of you not into the wrestling films, I’m going to warn you that the movie goes on another ten minutes after it’s essentially over. Why? So we can see Santo and Blue Demon tag team a wrestling match. On a side note, it’s good to see that Santo is taking my advice and not wearing his cape when he tools around in his convertible; good for him! Now if I could only be sure he was buckling up…

SPELL OF EVIL (1973)
Feature length TV episode
Article 3431 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-26-2010
Posting Date: 1-5-2010
Directed by John Sichel
Featuring Diane Cilento, Edward de Souza, Jennifer Daniel
Country: UK
What it is: Witch story

A banker gets married to a mysterious woman who turns out to be a witch… and is after his money.

At its best, the British TV series “Thriller” gave us interesting and offbeat stories; at its worst, the stories were obvious and slow-moving. This is one of the latter; I’ve seen the basic premise several times before, and the low-budget TV production and dull direction do little to enliven the story. However, I do find it fortunate that I picked up a complete collection of the series when the opportunity arose; it looks like quite a few of these are popping up on my hunt list, and it’s handy not to hunt all over for them.

SNOWBEAST (1977)
TV-Movie
Article 3430 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-25-2010
Posting Date: 1-4-2011
Directed by Herb Wallerstein
Featuring Bo Svenson, Yvette Mimieux, Robert Logan
Country: USA
What it is: Killer bigfoot movie

A skiing resort is terrorized by a vicious bigfoot-style creature.

I wouldn’t exactly describe this made-for-TV movie as awful, but it’s one of those movies where you just can’t escape the fact that it lifts most of its plot from JAWS. Furthermore, it handles those plot elements in a perfunctory fashion; the subplot about the ski lodge fearing to lose business during its winter festival is thrown into the story and proceeds to have no impact on it, as does the plot element of the killing of the wrong animal and passing it off as the creature. The only thing that doesn’t seem derived from JAWS is a romantic triangle subplot that is unimaginatively handled and itself a bit of a cliche. As a result, I get the sense that it was written on automatic, and the direction certainly doesn’t add anything special either. In short, this is routine and uninspired.

SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978)
aka La montagna del dio cannibale
Article 3429 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-24-2010
Posting Date: 1-3-2010
Directed by Sergo Martino
Featuring Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach, Claudio Cassinnelli
Country: Italy
What it is: Italian cannibal flick

A woman organizes an expedition into forbidden territory to find her missing husband. However, the territory is the home of cannibals.

My version of the movie runs only 82 minutes, which is even shorter than the 86 minutes R-rated version, according to IMDB. The longest version runs 103 minutes. There doesn’t seem to be much missing plotwise, so I can only assume that I’m missing much of the gross-out footage and animal killing footage. I can spot some of the moments where the footage would belong, such as the moment when the cannibals feast on the remains of one of the dead expedition members; there’s obviously some detail missing. Maybe it’s just as well; gross-out for the sake of gross-out is not really my bag, and though the human killings are faked, the animal killings were not, and there’s at least one notorious scene in which a monkey is killed by a boa constrictor that I’d rather not see, especially as there is evidence that suggests that the filmmakers actually threw the monkey to his certain death. The plot isn’t much; it’s your basic Double-Stuffed Safari-o with animal killing footage substituted for stock footage, though there is at least one unexpected plot twist where we discover that one character’s motivations aren’t quite altruistic. The presence of Ursula Andress as the film’s star also gives a hint that the ending may not be as nihilistic as some of the more extreme Italian cannibal films.

SHANKS (1974)
Article 3427 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-22-2010
Posting Date: 1-1-2011
Directed by William Castle
Featuring Marcel Marceau, Tsilla Chelton, Philippe Clay
Country: USA
What it is: Very strange horror fantasy

A mute puppeteer is hired as an assistant to a scientist who has learned how to animate the dead. When the scientist dies, and the puppeteer finds himself at the mercy of his own abusive family, he uses his new knowledge and his puppetry skills to regain control of his life.

This was William Castle’s last directorial effort (though he would go on to produce BUG), and he couldn’t have gone out on a stranger note. The movie is an intriguing but uneven mixture of horror, fantasy, fairy tale, mime and silent movie pastiche; in fact, the silent movie influence is so strong that it’s quite jarring whenever a character speaks. Marceau not only plays two roles, but he served as choreographer as well; the humans who become living puppets have obviously been trained well. The novelty value of this one is enormous, and the casting of Marceau is obviously much more than a gimmick. However, the movie doesn’t quite capture that fairy tale quality that it aspires to, and the direction isn’t quite strong enough to bring some of the duller sequences to life. Still, there’s nothing else like it out there, and is worth catching at least once.