Dr. Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death (1979)

Article 6063 by Dave Sindelar

Date: 7-31-2022

Directed by James Wood

Featuring James Mathers, John F. Kearney, Dawn Carver Kelly

Country: U.S.

What it is: Much scenery was chewed during the making of this movie.

A mad descendant of the original Dr. Jekyll experiments with a version of his ancestor’s serum enhanced by Nazis.  He tries to get a sane scientist to help him out by kidnapping the latter’s daughter.
This is such a cheap and shoddy little movie that one is tempted to just point to its financial shortcomings and be done with it, but that’s a little too easy. As an example, I’ve seen the movie criticized for much of it being underlit, and though I’ve occasionally criticized some movies for that very reason, that’s not a problem here; because what you do see is sufficient for the purposes of the story. No, my problem comes down to the script in that a) the story is not well told and b) even if it were, it wouldn’t be worth telling. It’s one of those movies where you know where it’s going after the first ten minutes and that most of the time spent watching the movie is waiting for the end scene where practically everyone will die.  There are at least two performers here who are way over the top, and perhaps the most impressive sequences (the martial arts fights) are marred by the fact that they don’t look anything like the rage-filled acts of violence the plot requires them to be and instead look just like choreographed martial arts fights. Ultimately, the movie is a bore and never even begins to look like it might not be. A waste of time.

Devil Dog: The Hound from Hell (1978)
Article 6061 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-15-2022
Directed by Curtis Harrington
Featuring Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, Kim Richards
Country: USA
What it is: Not a good boy

A suburban family is given a puppy as a gift, but it turns out to be an evil force that possesses the family and kills anyone who threatens it.

What this TV-Movie amounts to is a variation of THE OMEN in which the Antichrist is replaced with a demon dog. And for what it is, it’s passable at best, I suppose, but there are some annoyances; there’s some silly dialogue and the score is truly tedious. It’s biggest problem is the snail’s pace of the story; quite frankly, you could ignore it for several minutes at a time and be confident you haven’t missed anything important. For a while I thought this was going to prove to be one of those TV-movies not intended as a pilot, but check in on the last five minutes and you’ll catch them setting it up. I’m glad they didn’t bite: imagine a version of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER in which characters less interesting than Kolchak chase the same monster every week.

Dr. Strange (1978)
Article 6060 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-2-2022
Directed by Philip DeGuere Jr.
Featuring Peter Hooten, Clyde Kusatsu, Jessica Walters
Country: USA
What it is: Failed series pilot, comic book subgenre

Ancient sorceress Morgan LeFey is sent to Earth by the forces of evil to prevent a sorcerer from passing his powers to his successor, thereby making sure an origin story doesn’t take place.

If the trivia section of IMDB is correct, this was one of Stan Lee’s favorites among the comic book adaptations he worked on during the seventies. It’s definitely a failed pilot; the movie makes all the moves you’d expect from something intended to launch one. However, the movie failed to garner much attention from an audience probably watching “ROOTS” at the time. Still, I do wonder if it would have flown as a series. In my own estimation, if they found a different score and were careful with the special effects, they might have pulled it off. In my own opinion, it’s okay at best, and I personally felt it was the type of story for which it would have been better to save for an era when the special effects had reached a higher level.

The Devil’s Rain (1975)
Article 6059 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-13-2022
Directed by Robert Fuest
Featuring Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino
Country: Mexico / United States
What it is: A 64-pack of Crayola crayons left in the sun.

A family in possession of a book of evil do battle with a Satanic cult.

With Robert Fuest’s name in the credits, I expected there would be some interesting stylistic touches to the movie, and there are. In fact, the movie’s vibe works pretty well for me during the first third of the movie. At that point the movie starts to wander, and once we reach the sequence in which we find out about the burning of a sorcerer three hundred years ago, it shows it’s not averse to traversing the path of well-worn cliches. The movie seems mostly remembered nowadays for two things. One is the presence of John Travolta in an early role, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to his fans as anything but a curiosity. The other is the extended meltathon that ends the movie, and since we get a taste of the effect in the opening scenes of the movie, it’s a bit like enjoying a hamburger in the beginning and then having to eat the whole cow at the end. It’s a shame; I like some of the aspects of the movie so well (especially the desolate locations) that I wish a decent story had been attached to the movie.