Month: February 2019

The Hunchback of Soho (1966)

THE HUNCHBACK OF SOHO (1966)
aka Der Bucklige von Soho
Article 3343 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-24-2010
Posting Date: 10-9-2010
Directed by Alfred Vohrer
Featuring Gunther Stoll, Pinkas Braun, Monika Peitsch
Country: West Germany
What it is: Krimi… in Color!

Police investigate a series of strangulation murders. These appear to be tied to the disappearance of an heiress and her replacement by a substitute.

This was the first of the German Edgar Wallace movies of the sixties to be shot in color. To my mind, this stripped the series of one of its strengths; the black-and-white photography of the earlier movies gave them a serious, moody ambiance that is missing in this brightly lit movie. Furthermore, though it may be just the dubbing, I do really get the sense that the comic relief has inexplicably taken over the movie; it gives the impression that everyone is playing for laughs which aren’t in the script. On top of that, the score sounds like someone hired an avant-garde jazz composer to write a James Bond-style score with vocals by a black-belt karate expert practicing his kicks; it’s disorientingly strange. Fortunately, the score isn’t used near as much as it might have been, and once you get through the confusing first half of the movie, the plot finally gains momentum and it turns out not half bad. The hunchback strangler is the horror element of this one, which isn’t a giveaway – it’s established before the opening credits. Though some of the later color movies in the series would show a bit more skill in retaining the moodiness, it was starting to be obvious at this point that the series was starting to go downhill.

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The Beast of Babylon Against the Son of Hercules (1963)

THE BEAST OF BABYLON AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)
aka L’eroe di Babilonia
Article 3342 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-23-2010
Posting Date: 10-8-2010
Directed by Siro Marcellini
Featuring Gordon Scott, Genevieve Grad, Andrea Scotti
Country: France / Italy
What it is: Sword and Sandal mayhem

A noble of Babylon returns to find the king has become a cruel tyrant who indulges in human sacrifice. He decides to help some rebels who plan a revolution with the aid of an invading Persian army.

The beast of the title is metaphorical, so there’s no monsters in this one; in fact, this is another case where the only fantastic content is the great strength of the hero (called Nippur). There are some nice touches to this one; the character of the tyrannical king is particularly well played, and the head of the invading army is a more interesting character than is usual for this sort of thing. Furthermore, there is at least one impressive scene of spectacle; it’s a battle scene which features several layers of soldiers, some on horses and some on foot, running in opposite directions. However, you don’t have to have seen too many of these movies to know that the plot here is strictly by-the-numbers, and after a while the movie gets a bit tedious in its predictability. It’s far from the worst of these movies; in fact, it may be one of the better ones, but I’m really at the point with these types of movies that if they don’t offer something new or up the fantastic content a bit, I find little satisfaction in watching them.

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The Velvet Vampire (1971)

THE VELVET VAMPIRE (1971)
Article 3341 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-22-2010
Posting Date: 10-7-2010
Directed by Stephanie Rothman
Featuring Michael Blodgett, Sherry Miles, Celeste Yarnall
Country: USA / Philippines
What it is: Arty vampire tale

A young couple is invited to spend some time in the home of a mysterious woman who lives in the desert. They begin to suspect she is a vampire… and has designs on both of them.

Stephanie Rothman was one of the directors who worked on the bizarre hodgepodge TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE; having watched this movie, I suspect that she was responsible for the dancing on the beach sequence at least. She returns to vampires here, and the result is not unlike DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, in which a seductive older bisexual female vampire gets involved in the lives of a young couple. She’s got an impressive visual sense, especially with montages; there’s a luxurious sensuality to this movie, and there’s something so appropriate at having a vampire live in the middle of the desert, an area that seems to have been drained of life. She also has a nice sense for the music; the score is quite haunting. I’m less impressed, however, with some of the other aspects of her work; the dialogue is terse and lacks the sensuous quality of the visuals, the story becomes obvious and rather silly, especially towards the end, and the acting is often mannered and fairly weak. Still, these strikes against it don’t take away the visual sense, and the movie lingers. Had it been better around the edges, it might have been a classic.

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Souls for Sale (1962)

SOULS FOR SALE (1962)
aka Confessions of an Opium Eater
Article 3340 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-21-2010
Posting Date: 10-6-2010
Directed by Albert Zugsmith
Featuring Vincent Price, Linda Ho, Richard Loo
Country: USA
What it is: Exploitation melodrama

An adventurer goes to Chinatown and becomes entangled in a slavery racket.

No, it’s not a horror movie, but between some of the macabre imagery and the whole fever-dream style of the movie, it has enough atmosphere that it doesn’t matter that much. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but that hardly matters either; the rush of strange characters, odd images, and surreal action gives the movie a momentum all its own. I’ve encountered director Albert Zugsmith before with SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE and THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM AND EVE, and though both of those were pretty weird, they didn’t prepare me for this. Let’s face it; any movie where a score by Albert Glasser is one of the subtler touches is a movie to be reckoned with. The most memorable character is a Chinese midget played by Yvonne Moray; she steals every scene she’s in, which isn’t an easy thing when you’re working with Vincent Price. Some people describe it as being “so bad it’s good”, but I think this one transcends any ordinary scale of quality; it just is. Angelo Rossitto plays a newsboy near the beginning, and that’s just another odd touch in a movie swimming with them.

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Dominique (1978)

DOMINIQUE (1978)
aka Dominique is Dead
Article 3339 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-19-2010
Posting Date: 10-5-2010
Directed by Michael Anderson
Featuring Cliff Robertson, Jean Simmons, Jenny Agutter
Country: UK
What it is: Revenge from beyond the grave…or is it?

A rich woman with frayed nerves believes her husband is trying to drive her crazy. Nonetheless, her loneliness and isolation get the best of her and she commits suicide. However, the shoe is on the other foot now, and the husband begins to see visions of his dead wife come back to haunt him…

The movie opens with a GASLIGHT-style scenario, and though I usually don’t care for this type of story, I like it here, largely because Jean Simmons doesn’t play up the fear as much as the frustration of knowing she’s being manipulated and the sadness of knowing that she is alone and has no one to turn to. Still, the GASLIGHT plot points are only a setup for the rest of the movie. The movie is underplayed, going for quiet chills rather than big scares, and I like that. Unfortunately, the movie never overcomes its major problem, and that is that it’s a little too obvious what is really going on, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of brain work to figure who is responsible. Furthermore, the husband himself is particularly dim in handling his situation; if I had encountered the piano playing itself as he did, I most assuredly know what I’d investigate if I suspected someone was trying to scare me. The most unexpected plot twist comes about two-thirds of the way in after the exhumation of a grave; I became really curious why an unexpected character was flipping out, but even then it didn’t take me too long to figure out what was behind that as well. Ultimately, the movie is a mixed bag; it’s half empty and half full, and how much you enjoy it depends on which half you concentrate on.

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The Seducers (1977)

THE SEDUCERS (1977)
aka Death Game
Article 3338 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-18-2010
Posting Date: 10-4-2010
Directed by Peter S. Traynor
Featuring Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp, Seymour Cassel
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho thriller

A successful businessman allows two lost women to come in out of a storm and use the phone. They seduce him, but then refuse to leave, and start playing mind games with him. He finally gets rid of them, but they won’t be gotten rid of that easily…

If I had to give an award for the most annoying movie I’ve seen for this whole series, this one would be the prime contender. It’s an exploitation-heavy psycho thriller, and the second half of the movie consists of little more than having the two insane women terrorize the captive man in any number of ways. What makes the movie almost unwatchable isn’t how scary these women are; it’s how annoying they are. Their lousy manners, constant giggling, bizarre and pretentious attitudes, and infantile behavior all come together not to make you feel the suspense of being terrorized by psychos but the grating twitchiness of having to supervise the world’s most obnoxious slumber party, where all the girls have had way too much sugar and just won’t go to sleep. Combine this with the decidedly freaky musical choices of the score, the overabundance of editing, and an aspiration towards inappropriate artiness that often renders individual scenes unintelligible, and you have a movie that wears out its welcome long before it’s over. Well, at least the ending is different, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t find it stupid. For exploitation fans who think nudity redeems everything only.

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Death at Love House (1976)

DEATH AT LOVE HOUSE (1976)
TV-Movie
Article 3337 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2010
Posting Date: 10-3-2010
Directed by E.W. Swackhamer
Featuring Robert Wagner, Kate Jackson, Sylvia Sidney
Country: USA
What it is: TV-movie ghost story

A writer and his pregnant wife move into the mansion of a deceased Hollywood actress who had an affair with the writer’s father. Mysterious things begin happening. Could the actress be haunting the mansion?

There’s a couple of decent ideas in the basic story here, but a weak script, indifferent direction, and an overfamiliar approach to the story all conspire to make this one mediocre at best. I don’t know how often I’ve seen the basic scenario here; husband and wife move into new home, husband begins acting distant, detached and hostile, wife feels neglected, frightened and in danger of her life… really, you need something pretty striking to add to this mix to make this scenario compelling, and the movie never comes up with anything to do the trick. A few cameos from Joan Blondell, John Carradine and Dorothy Lamour add to the interest level a little, but the movie fails to follow up on some of its more interesting details, such as the stuffed cat that may keep reappearing as a living cat. In short, this is largely a tepid, uninspired TV-movie offering.

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The Day of the Dolphin (1973)

THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN (1973)
Article 3336 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-16-2010
Posting Date: 10-2-2010
Directed by Mike Nichols
Featuring George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Paul Sorvino
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction thriller/drama

A scientist has learned to teach a dolphin how to talk, and is trying to keep the discovery a secret to keep his test subject from becoming the sensation of a media circus. Unfortunately, he encounters resistance from a nosy writer who blackmails his way onto the island where the experiments are conducted, and also from the company who is financing the experiments. Little does he know that he has even more to worry about…

You know, I try to keep my plot descriptions from giving away too much of the story, but sometimes I feel that it’s a lost cause, especially when every other plot description I’ve encountered of the movie and the actual tagline used in the advertising give away a plot point that doesn’t appear until eighty percent of the movie is over. Granted, I understand the logic of giving away that plot point; the advertising people have to try to sell the movie in the way they think will bring in the most viewers, and emphasizing the thriller aspects of this movie no doubt seemed like the best way to go about it. Still, I can imagine that early viewers, drawn by he advertising, might find the movie wastes an awful lot of time before it gets down to the meat of the story, and word of mouth would probably suffice to keep the movie from being a hit; it was a box office failure. But then, the thriller aspect of the story isn’t really the heart of the matter here; what really seems to matter to the makers of the film is the emotional bond that results between the scientist and the dolphin, and the thriller aspects of the story largely exist to drive the central characters into making some very difficult decisions concerning their relationships. Watch it for the thrills and you’ll be disappointed. Watch it for the emotional resonance and you’ll find it a lot more powerful. Good performances from George C. Scott, Paul Sorvino and Fritz Weaver help the movie quite a bit.

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Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)

CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1973)
aka La tumba de la isla maldita
Article 3335 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-15-2010
Posting Date: 10-1-2010
Directed by Julio Salvador and Ray Danton
Featuring Andrew Prine, Patty Shepard and Mark Damon
Country: USA / Spain
What it is: Vampire flick

A man visits an island to bury his archaeologist father whose body is trapped beneath an ancient tomb. In order to retrieve his father’s body, he removes the seal of the tomb and releases a vampire who has been trapped inside for 700 years.

One of the alternate titles of this movie is HANNAH, QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES, which makes for a handy title if you want to have an Andrew Prine double feature along with SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES. I’ve heard tell that this movie had new footage added for its American release, but I’ve also heard that it had footage cut for the Spanish release. I’ve also heard that it’s in color, but my copy happens to be in black and white for some reason. The movie has a poor reputation, and I can understand that; it’s occasionally campy, often slow, and the structure is rather confusing at times. Yet, I was rather taken with it; the atmosphere was nice, it has some interesting story touches, the location footage from Turkey is interesting, and the final battle with the vampire is striking to say the least. No, it’s not a great movie, but I thought it worked well enough.

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Criminally Insane (1975)

CRIMINALLY INSANE (1975)
Article 3334 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-14-2010
Posting Date: 9-30-2010
Directed by Nick Millard
Featuring Priscilla Alden, Michael Flood, Jane Lambert
Country: USA
What it is: Serial killer movie

An overweight woman named Ethel with rage issues is released from a hospital to the care of her grandmother. When the grandmother tries to follow the doctor’s instructions to force Ethel to lose weight, Ethel flips out and kills her. She then finds herself having to continue her murderous rampage in order to keep herself fed and cover up the crimes.

I’ve encountered Nick Millard before as the director and writer of the extreme-low-budget SATAN’S BLACK WEDDING. This may be his most famous movie; at least it was famous enough that he felt compelled to make a sequel. It’s awful, but also fascinating; the concept of using gluttony as motivation for a serial killer is tasteless but also darkly comic, and the white-trash characters (Ethel’s sister is a nymphomaniac/prostitute who brings men into the home every night and makes out with her abusive regular lover in front of her sister) give the movie an interesting context in which the story works. It’s also complicated by the fact that Ethel is simply none too bright, and her inability to figure out how to dispose of the growing pile of bodies combined with her sloppiness will prove her undoing. The special effects are atrocious, and it makes some ill-advised stabs at artiness, but these just add somewhat to the fascination. It’s like some freaky cross between REPULSION and CANNIBAL MAN, and the ending twist has the air of inevitability given the setup, though I do have to admit that I had suspicions the story would eventually go in that direction. I have to admit that, as awful as it is, the movie more or less works, and I’ve seen plenty of much bigger-budgeted movies that don’t.

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